Moojinorbit

You know how sometimes right before bed you remember a dream from the previous night? Well, tonight I’m about to get out of the bath when last night’s long repetitive dream comes to me:

I’m standing on the roof of a tall building with a friend. He’s trying to get me to jump off, tells me the backpacks we’re wearing will release parachutes and we’ll be fine. He jumps, and I watch him plunge/drift away. I can’t do it.

Again: I’m standing at the top of a cliff, out in some kind of canyon territory. I’m with a friend. Backpacks with parachutes. They jump. I can’t do it. To my right, some guy takes off on an aqua-green hang glider. He’s obviously a novice, but he catches a wind current and soars into the sky, somewhat awkwardly, but he’s fine. It looks lovely. I can’t do it.

I’m atop a building–again. Above me are some guys in some kind of hot air balloon contraption. They look like they’re going to careen right into another building, but they don’t. And there’s me and my ridiculous backpack. How the hell do I know it’s going to open? I think. I really am not up for dying. Can’t do it.

Multiple opportunities to leap. Can’t bring myself to it. Hmm. The question is, exactly which part of my life is that about?

I know we’ve been in three days of nonstop media Obamagasm, and I imagine everyone would now like to be left alone to absorb the historic moment in her/his own way. But if you’ll kindly bear with the political science professor for a post, she can’t resist offering a few reflections on the eve of the inauguration…

First, as zillions of pundits have already pointed out, this really is happening, and it really is hard to believe. I know a lot of people who study race in American politics, and I can assure you that not one of them would have dared to claim, even two years ago, that this country would be ready for an African American president. What the campaign pulled off, and how the grassroots showed up, is nothing short of a miracle, a sea change. The analysts aren’t exaggerating. We can’t take it for granted.

I have never felt so moved on election night as I did in November. After the election, though, I think I personally drifted into a mild state of suspended disbelief that this amazing man would actually enter office. Only 12 years of my 40 (is that possible? yes, I double-checked) have been lived under a Democratic administration. I was born the year Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated; the year the hateful George Wallace ran for office under a racist campaign and effectively rooted the Southern Strategy for the next three decades; the year Nixon took over the presidency from Johnson and folks rioted at the DNC and across the nation over race, class, sex, Vietnam, and the soiled American Dream. When the political Right found the motor for its backlash, things changed for a long time. They played on our lesser instincts as a country. My (our) political experience is basically Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and bad, bad race politics all around. Not much fun. Not good. I hope the second 40 are a serious political improvement.

But enough about me. Here’s my inner political scientist weighing in:

Obama is happening because different currents in American political culture, which were always simmering beneath whatever gleeful authoritarian viral-capitalist nightmare we were living, finally began to find some traction after a long, unmoored period. Scholars a lot smarter than I have observed two major traditions in American political life, called “classical liberalism,” and “classical republicanism.” These are a bit hard to keep track of because they’re basically the opposite of what you’re thinking. To boil it down, classical liberalism is about our fixation on the (John) Lockean values of individual liberty. It’s sort of the selfish side of Americans, the part gets obsessed with pursuit of wealth; keeping government at bay; doing things the way we want when we want, goddammit; letting other people (or paying them to) worry about the hard business of governing; and blindly trusting that capitalist markets will work out in favor of some vaguely equal playing field. Yeah, classical liberalism is basically what we’ve come to call Republicanism. I like to use the founding father Alexander Hamilton as an early template of the liberal mold. It’s not that the liberal mold is inherently evil; in fact, its self-protective, libertarian, and mildly paranoid drives about government have given us great tools like the Bill of Rights.

Classical republicanism, on the other hand, is the more (Thomas) Jeffersonian idea that no democracy is worth its salt without virtuous, educated, active citizens who learn how to participate from the local level on up. My favorite FF (though flawed, I realize) also held that revolution is good shit for democracy, literally: “it is it’s natural manure.” And because he leaned small-r republican (and, to further confuse, he also led what was then called the Democratic-Republican Party), he advocated these things called ward systems, which were basically small-town civic structures through which people (read: ordinary yeoman farmers) would govern themselves with little intervention from the Federal government. To socialize citizens capable of such self-government he founded the University of Virginia, one of the first public universities.

I like to explain classical republicanism to students as the “We, the People” tone of the Preamble to the Constitution, or the whole Declaration of Independence. It’s about how we carry out the demands of active, accountable, messy citizenry, not simply by getting the government off our backs, but by being and doing good government. In our classically republican moments, we come out of our churches, our volunteer associations, our schools, our jobs–or, as Tocqueville noticed, we stay actively in them–and we pitch in to shoulder our part of the burden of creating a just community. In order to do this, and by doing it, we evolve into virtuous moral citizens.

The punchline here is that I believe Obama is happening, not just because he is uniquely Obama, but because after a long period of classical liberalism (or what political economists call neoliberalism) run amok, we’ve rediscovered our republican heartbeat. Collectively, we got exceedingly self-absorbed for awhile. But as markets have crumbled, corporations have vomited their toxic insides and given up the ghost, thieves have pillaged until there was nothing left to steal, presidents have broken sacred democratic promises, people have gotten epidemically depressed, and things have become profoundly fucked up, some deeper, older, saner part of “our better natures” (as O. keeps repeating) began to awaken. And someone came along, speaking just the right words with just the right tone and a whole lot of brilliant, informed strategizing–and we found a way to do the impossible. In turn, in asking us to hold his feet to the fire, in urging us to stay involved, to serve each other, to keep government accountable, he hopes that we will act like small r-republicans.

Here’s what I fear, though: that we will hang everything on the one man and not on ourselves; on a leader, and not on a process; on a hero, not a collective will that produced him. Because the one man is, as 1968 (and ‘63, and ‘65) should remind us, only a man, and a vulnerable man like all our best, truest heroes. If, God forbid, he should fall and we in turn falter and surrender to the darkest kind of despair, I fear we will be irreparably lost. We have been living on the edge already, and making the world pay. Look what happened in 40 years, when our heroes died and we got lost.

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for the mighty, mighty security apparatus around him, but my hope is that we on this side, on the Obama movement side, will gain a newly empowered sense of we from this that doesn’t hang only on the man. He keeps reminding us over and over that We Can; he keeps assuring us that he comes from us, that his life, his story, are only possible because of what we, as part of a radical social experiment, created. My hope is that we remember what he has inspired in us–and not let things get that bad ever again.

Sorry for going temporarily radio silent again. I’ve been back in the saddle of teaching, and let’s just say it’s kind of chafing my balls.

Not that I don’t like being back in the classroom. That part’s nice, plus I’m teaching a new course about Political Forgiveness that promises to be emotionally and philosophically rewarding, though an existential rollercoaster. Already the ten brave souls who signed up for it have showed courage and psychic stamina in the face of overwhelming topics like forgiveness of Nazi doctors who conducted meaningless genetic experiments on children at Auschwitz. (Great, now onto incest survival!) My other class, Religion in American Politics, I’ve taught for years, though always with new material. It usually goes well and should this time, but for the fact that I have a big, verbose, dominating OAF in the class, whom all of my colleagues have warned me about, and whom I’ll have to find subtle and overt methods to control so he doesn’t ruin the fun for everybody.

Mostly, the transition chafes because of how easy it is to feel bombarded with details and distractions. I’m seriously going to find a way to try to work at home at least two days a week to avoid the tsunami of the office, where people are constantly knocking on the door, maybe just to say hi or maybe to get a signature, maybe to deliver a package, maybe to ask where Professor So and So’s office is because they can’t fricking READ name tags next to doors. But staying home won’t keep me from the piling on of emails that happens when students have questions to ask or things to tell you about their mononucleosis or their ailing grandmother, which they always do. I have seen with mine own eyes that some of my colleagues are more graceful and gracious with the myriad annoyances that come with teaching, but I personally find myself taking a lot of deep breaths and trying not to scream. It’s part of the job, I get it, but it chafeth.

The night before last, my eye caught on a line in Lisa Kogan’s column for O Magazine. She was talking about women over 40 and the weathermarks of experience, and she tossed out, “We are very tired–we’ve thought seriously about penciling in a nervous breakdown for ourselves, but we’ve been through everything the world has to throw at us so many times that it’s damn near impossible to get nervous about much of anything.”

Now, I don’t know about the second part of the sentence, because most of the women I know are still capable of getting nervous, even if they’re mostly undaunted. But that first part about penciling in a nervous breakdown resonates. First, you gotta pencil it in because you’re so committed to all the details that it’s hard to imagine stopping for even one day. And/or the only way we know how to deal is to stay more or less “in control,” which means that nervous breakdowns have to be scheduled. But flashing before my mind’s eye even now are all of you, all of us, with everything we’re juggling, like

• kids, daycare, coparents, ear infections, craft projects, screaming, cereal all over the floor
• mothers dying, degenerating, self-destructing, persevering, calling, not calling, crying, having boundaries, not having boundaries, enjoying health, losing health
• getting to work on time, somehow remembering all the 144 individual items you have to bring with you in three bags or less
• navigating the needs, whims, and personalities of the supervisors, senior colleagues, partners, chairpersons, and condescending administrators
• managing email, Facebook, LinkedIn, the blogs, the news, the New Yorker, the weather, the recycling, and the compost
• installing the eco-friendly lights, the batteries in the smoke detector, the carbon monoxide detector, the alarm, and the freaking furnace filters
• compiling the briefs, the summary judgments, the articles, chapters, books, reports, Excel files, grant summaries, IRB protocols, course proposals, assessments, and direct reports
• trying to stay on diet, control the drinking, eat more fiber, get enough protein, find time for snacks, brush teeth and somehow still floss
• walk the dog, feed the cats, clean the fish tank, sweep up the dead bird, keep the mice out, and change the pillows enough to avoid the dust mites
• oh yeah, and manage to get to the gym enough to make it worth it

My personal list reflects only a fraction of those enumerated above, and yet I get all nervous breakdowny periodically. Like yesterday when after a long insomniac night spent tossing and turning, eventually moving to the couch, I couldn’t summon enthusiasm or energy for anything I had to do. I felt like dog doo–that is, if dog doo feel morose and self-pitying and pathetic. Luckily it was a work at home day, and I had a little flexibility (though not really; I have so much to do there is not possibly enough time in the month to do it). But I was–for once–worrying about money and why I’ve been living check to check my whole adult life even though I’ve made so many changes, blah blah blah, and am I really in the right career, and will I get this stuff published, etc. I just got stuck in a hole for whatever reason and started shutting down. Email was a mountain I was trying to scale in a 1920s wheelchair.

Luckily, Grandpa (Kris) faked sick at work, left early, and rescued me. We went to PetsMart, where we bought new tropical plastic decorations and picked out three new fish for the 50-gallon fish tank Katie bequeathed to her (the moving of which is a whole other blog). After getting home and introducing the new fish to the eight others in the tank, I pulled up a chair and let myself become transfixed by their world. I must have sat there for an hour, gazing into the tank, like a kid (oh, and maybe a little stoned, too). And then we watched Finding Nemo in its entirety on the new flat screen. I laughed and screamed and rooted for Nemo, Dora, and Marlin. And everything I was supposed to do got scrapped. And it made me feel a million times better. I even caught up on my reading when I got home.

So now I’m back at it, fresher and more optimistic. Good case for penciling in a minor meltdown, at least.

People have been known to call me a “cat person,” or, worse, “a cat-loving lesbian.”

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my family includes two black, long-haired, bright-eyed street urchins I took in over the last decade. And it’s true: I do, on the whole, adore cats. I love the sublime of cats. Their regal gaze, their natural sense of boundaries, their independence, their calm poise, the way they make you feel chosen when they cuddle up to you. Of course, cats are also needy and annoying sometimes, and Paco and Rico certainly have the ability to drive Mama right up the wall.

I’ve also, among some people in certain eras of my life, gotten the reputation as “not a dog person.” And although I’ve been known to bitch about certain dog behavior (which I’ve since decided was largely attributable to human behavior), I never felt that negative label was quite fair. I love dogs.

Alright, maybe not universally. I don’t like little yappy dogs, and I’m not crazy about barky-barky backyard dogs that lunge at you when you walk by. And I’m not a fan of walking into someone’s party and being jumped on by dogs while I’m holding a beautiful cake I just finished (or for any other reason). Nor am I always clear why people feel the need to bring ALL of their dogs to a summer BBQ so they can race through knocking over everybody’s beer. Yeah, I tend to prefer French-kissing partners who have not been licking their asses and who brush their teeth on occasion. So sue me for being a prude. But also, dogs are dogs, and their masters are, well, human. I get it.

I love the ebullience of dogs, even the intransigence–to a point. The funny thing is, the dogs I’m most drawn to are the dogs most people aren’t so psyched about. BIG dogs. Better yet, big, drooly, lumbering, goofball dogs. Dogs that more resemble horses or prehistoric mammals. I don’t think this attraction directly correlates to the fact that the dog-love of my childhood was a 120-lb German Shepherd named Hero. He was big, smart, and strong, yeah, but not drooly and lumbering like, say…a St. Bernard. A Bernese Mountain Dog! A Bull Mastiff!!

A Great Dane!!!! Oh, for a Great Dane someday. Don’t think I haven’t already been on the Rocky Mountain Dane Rescue website a few times. A dog that walks beside me at chest level and loves to sleep: that’s what I’m talking about.

So then, being all googly over what the Denver Dumb Friends League calls “Gentle Giants,” I was pretty enthusiastic when in October Katie decided to adopt a big ol’ brindle mutt of indeterminate age (maybe 6 years?) and significant poundage (85 lbs so far). She thought (hoped) he might be a Boxer-Rhodesian mix, but now we’re thinking Plott Hound, ‘cuz he’s almost textbook Plott. Either way, he’s a hell of a dog, and to my mind he’s got some Dane qualities, especially his massive neck and Scooby Doo personality (indoors, that is). Outside, he’s more like Mr. T. on crack, wearing squirrel goggles.

Katie named him Brody, but I affectionately call him The Beast. And that has a little irony to it, because I’m not the one daily dealing with his beastly ways. (I’m more like the relief player, sent in when the QB is pooped.) Having chosen to the role of Master to The Beast, my sweet, mild-mannered girlfriend has the unenviable job of becoming, as Cesar Millan puts it, his “calm, assertive Pack Leader.” To say that’s not easy is something of an understatement; the dog is a wall of muscle with a will chiseled by Satan’s minions. Becoming the Beast’s #1 Pack Leader meant quite a bit of study and practice on Katie’s part, and let’s just say I was starting to feel like Number 1.5 in the household ranking. The girl loves the beasty dog.

(This picture doesn’t quite capture his size, but it’s all I’ve got for now, and it does capture his manipulative lovieness. Trust me, he’s a Beast for All Time.)

I could relay lots of illustrative stories about Brody’s will, but I’ll have to use the device of retrospect. Yesterday, we brought The Beast to big City Park, where we enjoyed a long walk, taking turns trying to keep his totally overstimulated self under some semblance of control (look, squirrel! look, squirrel! squirrel!!! wait: SquirrelTreeDogLake!!! went his brain; I could hear it). We so wanted to let him off leash, see if he’d catch a Frisbee across a big field, but it quickly became clear that Beast is not ready for the big field yet. What he is ready to do is sniff out and kill things that move; he’s a hound for chrissake. Eventually, he was so excited he went into in something of a fugue state, eyes glazed over, oblivious to treat-bait. But it is clear that Beast does a lot better, and is a lot calmer, trotting along with his “pack” (us) on his short leash. That became clear when he almost hauled my butt across 17th Avenue when we tried the retractable and he saw, I don’t know, a duck across the street.

Anyway, toward the end of the walk we realized that Brody had passed within five feet of no fewer than a dozen dogs without barking, lunging, biting, or freaking out. He also did not sit down and sulk, back away from the leash, or spaz in any way. He walked past gaggles of geese, wildly curious but without acting like an idiot. He responded to our voices. He was totally happy, if restrained. In retrospect, it was obvious how much progress Katie has made as a Pack Leader–after a hell of a lot of work, frustration, love and obsession. Which, of course, only made me love both of them more. Yeah, I’m in love with the Beast, too.

And to make matters worse, today I went on a run and saw the most beautiful spectacle: In the late afternoon glow, there is a tawny Great Dane, huge. He is frolicking with his masters, a woman and a man. In high gallop he resembles a teeter-totter, front legs down, back legs up, then, front legs high in the air, almost vertical. He’s playing, and his whole body radiates laughter. He looks like a total dork, teeter-tottering around on the grass, playing hide-and-seek as the man waits for him behind trees. The December sun sparkles off of his hide.

Yeah, I’m not a dog person. Not a whit.

Call it pride, but there are not enough tranquilizers, narcotics, and muscle relaxants in the world to unwind my psyche after sitting in the passenger seat, with my dad at the wheel of his 1979 peach and white Ford Ranchero (complete with topper, so he can cram the back full of junk and tools), while we execute the longest, slow-motion trek in history from Silverthorne to Frisco, Colorado on the back roads, not the highway, with chains on the tires, going to and from a very mediocre dinner at 20 mph or less, to hang out with a 20 year-old Christian named Jennifer.

I purposely made that one sentence. Now I’ll try to break it down (rather than breakdown).

(Close enough, but imagine a topper, and white instead of rust, and covered with dirt.)

I carved three days to spend “Christmas” with my dad this week. This was a sacrifice for me, because it’s really, really bad timing for me to effectively throw a few days to the wind that might otherwise be used to help me gear up for the end of my minisabbatical and the beginning of the new year. It was not a generous sacrifice, though, because I did not feel generous in my heart about it but, clearly, grumpy and resentful. Three days with the person who triggers me most in the world is a very long time. But we got to hang in the timeshare Katie has up in Silverthorne, and it’s a really nice condo, and we spent today skiing at Copper, which is a nice thing. But any of you following this blog for long know that my relationship with Cowboy is ambivalent at best. Once I get past the 24-hour window, serious emotional cabin fever sets in and I feel homicidal urges. Especially given that now that he’s half deaf, I have to YELL everything TWICE, and the act of yelling just calls out my anger from the various dusty compartments where I keep it.

So, he mentions last night he wants to take me out to dinner. Fine; great; dinner on him; a miracle! But then he says something about this pastor and his wife he knows in Frisco and this “young lady, Jennifer” that lives with them, and how he sent her a Christmas card and thought maybe he’d bring her to dinner. Um, okay, I’m thinking. Random, but at least I’ll have someone under 80 to talk to. He gets on his cell and phones this Jennifer and next thing I know we’re gonna meet her tonight for dinner. I can’t imagine why in the world the woman said yes.

Now, the chains are on the Ranchero, because though it made it all the way up the 2 mile hill to the condo, there is this kind of steep 100′ driveway, and it was really slick when he arrived, so he had to put on chains to make it. And, understandably, he doesn’t want to take them off for the drive to Frisco and then put ‘em back on to get up the driveway again. And for some reason I haven’t put all the pieces together about what this combination of factors will mean and offer to drive. So we head off to Frisco with the chains on.

Which means we’re going literally about 15 miles per hour. And if we speed up one of the chains starts slapping the wheelwell like a raging, whip-wielding dominatrix, so we slow back down. People in 4-wheel drives are crawling up our backs, wanting to pass but being too chicken to, which makes Cowboy angry, so he’s talking back to them, or slowing down so they can pass and then ridiculing them for not acting fast enough. Pleasant, indeed. But the worst is realizing that what should be taking about 7 minutes is going on 30 now, and I’m stuck in a slush-encrusted low-rider with no seatbelt and an 81-year-old at the wheel, cussing in “fake” cuss (dag nabbit, jiminy christmas, etc.)

Fast forward to dinner. Who is Jennifer? Oh, just some pretty young, bright-eyed, shy brunette who goes on missions to Mexico City with the church, works at the knitting store in town, and just finished her AA. A total sweetheart, really. She wants to study linguistics. I tell her she should definitely apply (though she doesn’t seem to have a clue that linguistics is a pretty wild-ass theoretical program, not just a Spanish major). “Conversation” is filled with verbal Grand Canyons, and Cowboy–who probably can’t hear the deafening silence anyway–is no help. This poor girl seems as bewildered as I that my dad has befriended her. I try to make a couple cracks that he can’t hear, but she has that good Christian girl sense of humor–which is to say, none. All I can gather is that a) he somehow felt gracious toward her because she is a pretty, modest working girl; and b) he heard she can draw and he wants her to draw some old wagon that he saw one time. Whatever; the whole dinner was what I refer to as a Tweak Pocket, a bizarre collision in the Universe.

So, after years of my life have been robbed from me, we’re back on the road with the clanking chain, driving along snow-covered Lake Dillon, and I’m sitting there seatbeltless (did I mention the belt was broken?) having dark fantasies about my own death unfolding as a result of this journey. What if we slide off the road and crash through the ice below? What if some mad rich guy who’s over how annoying we are trolling down the road decides to run us off with his Hummer? And all of a sudden, it hits me, the feeling I felt through so much of my childhood with this man. A simple feeling:

Helpless.

Helpless to change the situation, to have any meaningful control. Helpless about where we were going and how we’d get there. Helpless because we could only listen to Country radio or church-on-tape. Helpless because I couldn’t really be myself, or didn’t feel I could, and still don’t feel I can, because he does not want to know, because he’s so deeply absorbed in his own oddball world. Stuck in parking lots, waiting for him to get out of the bank or the grocery store, which always took forever. Stuck on really long road trips through the West. Stuck while he rode in some pockmarked town to track down someone he hadn’t talked to in 30 years but looked up in the phonebook. Embarrassed that we always seemed to be imposing on folks without warning. So, a little ashamed. And then guilty for feeling helpless and ashamed about my own dad.

For all the other things I could say about the man to balance this out–things that are real, and true, about how he is a good man–my truth in this moment is that I spent the better part of my childhood feeling helpless in his presence. I became a mollusk, shrunk way inside, listening, paying attention, silently, looking outward, inside a shell.

And that, my friends, is why I am a writer.

Yeah, yeah, I know; gratitude. Whatever.

Sometimes, like when I’m working a particularly thankless, tipless banquet bartending shift, a wave of self-pity swells in the distance. I see it coming and try to stay in shallow waters, focusing on stacking glasses, wiping counters. But it’s hard to stop an active mind once it’s piqued, and after I calculate that I’ve given the last six hours of my life to the world’s most boring holiday party for zombie-eyed, government contract lawyers and their equally Land-of-the-Living-Dead spouses, and only one person in the room–one young guy–has donated all six of my dollars, the wave pulls me under.

What the hell am I doing here? I could, and should, be home finishing my article. I should be hanging out with my girlfriend, my cats, a book, Rachel Maddow–but instead I’m working on a Thursday night alongside people my students’ age, trying not to get in trouble (like I did last week) for eating a fucking leftover eggroll behind the bar, because I hadn’t eaten for seven hours.

The hotel management where I tend bar has been busy lately working themselves into a frenzy about how to successfully compete for those elusive expendable dollars that fewer and fewer Americans have in a constricting economy. (My university is basically doing the same thing.) As these scarcity-minded, basement-dwelling food and beverage supervisors like to do, they’ve changed the rules, made up new ones, and started firing people right and left to prove a few points and, mostly, keep everyone else afraid of losing their jobs. I’m almost embarrassed to say I had to sit through a “mandatory” 90-minute meeting this week at which the F&B head laughably tried to compare our hotel to the Ritz Carlton. “You would never see an employee taking a bite of food in the hotel at The Ritz,” she pleaded (hopefully not referring to my eggroll), and then lectured about how we’re “professionals” and should “act like a team!” Rah rah rah. Right. A team where the players ride with the luggage and act grateful. I’d love to stroll into Jane’s office and go, “hey, do ya think The Ritz has their bartenders vacuum the club at the end of the night and doesn’t let ‘em put a tip jar out?” as happened to yours truly last night. “No, because The Ritz splurges on a CLEANING CREW, Hello? (Go team!”)  Because you know it’s bad when the hired band feels sorry for you.

Anyway, so I can definitely go there with the self-pity thing. As grateful I am for all bartending has taught me, and for all the decent and sometimes lucrative nights that have made it possible for me to pay a few more bills and sometimes even have some spending money, I just get pissed off that my debt and income levels require me to have two jobs. But because I can’t bear taking on so much extra teaching and writing that my mojo wears out and I go blind, bartending has been a temporary solution.

Just when I’m sniveling down the self-pity road, though, I invariably stumble into a conversation with one of my coworkers and promptly regain some perspective.

[I am using fake names below.]

Tim
Take, for instance, my favorite bartending comrade. Tim, whose last name is impossible for English speakers to pronounce, managed (I’m not quite sure how) to get himself to the states when he was just about 20, from Lithuania. Now he’s maybe 28–a blonde toughguy with cherry cherub lips and piercing blue eyes. His English is perfect, though with some charmingly Eastern-bloc syntax (“Why these assholes hang around when d’ fucking bar is closed, Nancy?”). He works three different bartending and serving jobs at venues around the city. At night, he’s putting himself through college, course by course. After he read a bunch of Kant in a philosophy class, we started having long conversations about political philosophy. He loves telling stories about cars, snowboarding, and reckless mountain bike adventures and, when I’m lucky, a shred of information about his long-time girlfriend Victoria, from Belarus. (About the most he ever offers about her, at my prompting, is “she’s okay.”)

So, in the land of milk and honey Tim fully supports his mortgage, school, and snowboarding on bartending money. But last night he let me in on dirty secrets of how to avoid paying for emergency medical services in the U.S. when you don’t have health insurance–as he doesn’t because, he says, it’s “too fucking expensive, man”. I get it, I tell him; I went a good three years without health insurance in my twenties. Anyway, let’s just say that Victoria got a great deal on a fix for a broken arm in Keystone last week.

Cat
This is the executive chef who got fired last week after the general manager found out she was drinking on the job. I can’t say I blame her, given the inadequate equipment she had to prep thousands of meals with weekly, the constant, stressful cascade of bride-dominated, chicken-or-filet banquets, the idiot managers swarming over her, and the high turnover among sous staff. I’ve served her more times than I can remember (she really liked my Absolute Pear Press) but I thought she was for some reason allowed to drink after she got the banquet food out. At any rate, the poor woman was supporting three kids on her own–I don’t know how, since it seemed like she was always on the job. Apparently she begged, sobbing, for a second chance when they were “letting her go” (and, by the way, what a horrible, deceitful phrase).

Who the hell am I to complain about an eggroll scolding?

Ramón
Born in Mexico, raised in Denver, this young guy, all of 19 years old, is the cutest thing you’ve ever seen and an unbelievable workhorse. I’m glad he’s been promoted from server to shift manager now, but he’s the kind of person who’ll work so hard, with so little complaint, that if he’s not careful, managers will exploit him for the rest of his life. I keep asking him what he “really wants to do,” just so he’ll think about it before the hard labor of flipping ballrooms and everything that goes with it wears him out.

Ramón is the one who snagged the eggroll for me, demonstrating grace-in-action. He’s not the one who snitched.

Leslie
If I have a favorite at the hotel, it’s got to be this molasses-skinned, half toothless, smiling 51-year old dishwasher from Liberia. Night after long night, the man burns his muscles at one of the nastiest, most thankless jobs, with nothing but a Mountain Dew and some inner strength to keep him company. He told me he used to be an alcoholic, “so bad, Nahncy! Really bad-bad!) but now his only poison is the Dew. We’ve talked about history, Liberia, world politics (though I’m such an amateur compared to him, and if we had time I could learn so much). The first time I came into the kitchen after Obama won, we jumped up and down embracing and laughing, getting dish schmutz all over ourselves. He was so happy. So, apparently, was most of Liberia.

Last night I found out Leslie has 6 children, one of whom immigrated to the U.S. and somehow managed to file papers that got Leslie and his wife to Colorado. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to have five of your offspring struggling away in Liberia while you clean up after wealthy Americans in a foreign land. Leslie doesn’t sleep much, because he gets home from his shift at about 2 a.m., then drives his wife to her job at the hospital two hours later, every morning. I don’t think the guy’s seen much daylight in the U.S. But his spirit is as bright as I’ve ever seen, and his heart is huge, and he works his ass off, like most of the immigrants I know, whose jobs most Americans would snub their noses at. Which is why I freaked out last night when the cook was yelling at Leslie about not putting the silverware away fast enough. I was worried he was going to get fired. (Thank god he didn’t.) What would he do? What would happen to the family he no doubt helps support with dishwasher wages?

Now is where I’d like to go off on a full-blown rampage about the bullshit ideas circulating in this blessed country about “dirty” or “lazy” or “stupid” immigrants; about the shame we should all feel about the god awful system of thievery some of our elective officials have the nerve to call “the best healthcare system in the world”; about how the American upper class doesn’t know the meaning of hard work; and on an on. But you already know that stuff and I don’t want to grouse when we all have the right to hope we’re at a turning point. Plus, I’m too tired and I have to get back to work.

I’ve made my own choices, yeah, but I didn’t think my doctorate would find me, at 40, vacuuming at 2 a.m. as part of my second job. On the other hand, a little perspective reminds me how truly good I have it.

(Sneaking a smidge out of my designated article time today. I’m still desperately Chipping Away, but sometimes I just have to play a little hooky…)

One of the special things a woman gets to do when she turns 40, if she’s otherwise healthy and doesn’t have a Super Red Flag family history of breast cancer, is go in for her baseline mammogram. I started working at 6 a.m. yesterday to allow time for my virgin trek to Kaiser’s radiology department, where they offer walk-in mammograms on Mondays and Wednesdays. (For anyone keeping tabs on my health care righteousness, I also visited the nurse practitioner for a pap smear, a tetanus update, flu shot, skin check, thyroid screen, and Xanax refill–which, believe me, I needed after all that.)

As my educated readers undoubtedly know, the first mammogram is a “baseline,” against which doctors will measure changes in my breast annually or thereabouts for the rest of my life. Paying attention to this stuff is critical, given that about 1 in 8 American women gets breast cancer in a lifetime. For the past decade, since I did some work on breast cancer during my Master’s degree, I’d been wondering who among us would be the “1s,” especially given that several–several!–good friends’ mothers died of breast cancer before my friends were adults.

So far, the closest 1s to me have been my maternal aunt (twice cursed with the ugly beast, and amazingly resilient) and my best friend growing up, Missy. And lots and lots of acquaintances.

Katie and I visited Missy and another childhood friend Gloria over Thanksgiving. Missy (40), who after being diagnosed with pretty aggressive cancer in one breast, had a double mastectomy last year. This really shocked me, given that I grew up with her flashing her adolescent buds, then her teen knobs, then her big gozangas at me my whole life. They were like second cousins to me, and now they were just gone, kaput? Disorienting, indeed.

After a few glasses of champagne, Missy was generous enough to show us the second cousin replacements she now sported, courtesy of a very skilled plastic surgeon. Damn, were they impressive. Not all fakey fakey, but proud and soft and perky, with pale pink aureoles and pretty little flat, artful nipples–quite different, in this last respect from the assertive ‘rocket knobs’ she use to sport (hey, that’s what we called ‘em). Under the aureoles, the thinnest horizontal scars. Amazing, and easy to imagine in a bikini. Having come of feminist age at happy-hairy UCSC with that poster of the open-armed, tattooed breast cancer warrior-survivor emblazoned on my psyche, Missy’s post-cancer boobs were truly a surprise. I was happy for her to have this gorgeous rack as a condolence gift, but much happier she survived to continue raising her boys and loving her husband and being the total ornery BIOTCH she is.

So anyway, all this to say, I was pretty interested in the experience of getting my baseline mammogram.

First I met the radiologist, a comfortably rounded, short, smart mooj who instantly put me at ease. (Let’s call her Mary.) She bade me to take off my upper clothes, wipe down my breasts and armpits with a wetnap, and don a midriff/half-smock that opens in the front–totally different from the buttcrack dress you usually get, so already you feel like a woman (well, girl; I think mine had pink rabbits on it). Then she invited me into her tidy, equipment-filled hollow and explained in careful detail how the whole thing would go and why, for my own sake, I should do exactly what she said–mainly, let her ‘place’ my breast between the plates and then keep the hell still while she took some snapshots.

These things I obligingly did, and, yeah, it was weird. You’re standing there (yeah, standing) with your poor boob on a glossy black shelf and then, with a push of a button, Mary brings the plastic ‘plate’ above down against the top of your boob and cranks a knob until the whole thing, and what feels like half your sternum, is pancaked in the vise. What I didn’t expect was to be able to glance down and see the miserable flesh squashed there like…I don’t know, I can’t think of a metaphor. Like a big boobcake. And you do that for two angles per boob, one angle being very awkwardly diagonal.

But Mary and I had a few laughs in the process. Watching her deftly lift my left bosom for shot #2 with a straight face, it strikes me that this is what this woman does all day long, what she gets paid for. I call her The Breastmaster and compliment her skills. We laugh. I ask her how a woman like Katie (or God forbid, Marce), whose breasts would barely fill a small ladle, can even get her lil’ tittie in a vise without, I don’t know, having her nose scraped when the top plate descends. I mean her Adam’s apple has a more distinct profile than her breasts, not that that’s a bad thing at all. Mary tells me she has smaller plates for such individuals. Marce, I seriously want to come to your baseline appointment and take pics. That would be priceless.

When it was over, I asked Mary if she’d mind showing me the films, just to see what they looked like. For a second she seemed wary, but I assured her I wouldn’t make any assumptions or freak out about what I saw. Convinced I was just curious, she let me wait in the waiting room while she unloaded at the slides and then conspiratorialy “psssst’d” me back into her hollow. Like a Vegas card dealer, she placed all four on the light box and waited for my reaction.

I wish I could show you the real slides, but I’ll do the best I can with Google Images.

What I saw was moons at night. Four half moons, all mysterious and distant, with a magic topography all aglow against a dark-space background.

Boob: Moon:

(p.s., I think the boob above has something suspicious going on with it, but it’s the closest image to my moonboob. I didn’t see any such masses but I’m sure that doesn’t mean boo(b).)

Anyway, so I completed my baseline mammogram. And, walking home, I had all these other thoughts about baselines–what is your baseline breast health, what is your emotional baseline, your financial baseline, your spiritual baseline, and how do you get in touch with and keep track of it, and improve on it?–all that great material, but I ain’t got time to write it up, so I’ll just leave it with you.

Okay: loves to you, and prayers for all the strong breast-cancer stricken, and surviving, moonboob moojes.

Forgive me, sisters and brothers, for I have sinned. It’s been a full month since my last post.

It’s not that I didn’t want to, or had nothing to say. There has been so much since November 5th I’ve wanted to discuss:  a new president elect; a big disappointment in California (but a good article out of it); a trip to the Amish Pennsylvania heartland that generated much fodder for posting; three sessions of interstate travel that inspired entire new musings on the Human Filler phenomenon; a pride-inducing sit-in on Dawn’s kick-ass serial rapist trial; visits with dear friends from my past; days of dread and anxiety; days of enthusiasm and victory.

But, alas, the objectives of my professional life have prevented me from posting in good conscience. I can’t bear the prospect of looking back on this minisabbatical, this precious few months of teaching-free time, and report that I posted 300 pages to the blog but got nothing else turned in. Instead, I’ve made myself stick to my scholarship, be it interviewing, conferencing, writing, editing, writing, editing, freaking out, going back to the drawing board, revising, submitting, or outlining. I’ve gotten a lot done–not exactly what I expected, and not necessarily in the order I expected, and certainly not as smoothly as I might have hoped, but I have a decent list of accomplishments after five months, such that the temporary sacrifice of my creative nonfiction work feels more or less worth it. I think. I hope. We’ll see when I’m done with my ‘third-year review’ in the Spring.

Still, oh how I miss this blog and you people. And oh the things I’ve longed to describe and confess.

Mostly, I’ve been reminded that it’s all a process of Chipping Away. And it’s a maddening, exasperating, sometimes rewarding, but perpetual process. It’s the only darn way any of it’s going to get done. I’m thinking you can relate.

It’s like every day there’s a huge mountain to scale–or two or three mountains–and it just looks more intimidating the more you think about it. And the more you think about it the more you want to hide in your sleeping bag at base camp and put it off. So it’s really not a good idea to think about it, especially at night, and even, maybe, in the morning, when you’re still warm in your sleeping bag. You can’t think about it; it’s too much. It’ll drag you down into the big, abundant well of Inertia. Inertia: the well that is a mountain in reverse.

I need to finish that introduction, I think. I need to finish it TODAY. But I also need to deal with that stack of bills, which I’ve already put off one day so I could get that proposal in.

Two mountains there. But they’re going to be two bigger mountains soon; in fact, they’re going to be three mountains, the third being Inertia, if I don’t at least chip away at one.

But then, somehow, I’ve found my way into it. I’m scaling the first mountain, I’ve found the momentum, and I’m actually enjoying it, making use of all my equipment, focusing, maybe even enjoying the view. And then–crash–I have to go to a meeting across town, or my co-editor calls, or I have to deal with the whatever it was. I’m a quarter of the way up the mountain, and I have to stop. Start again tomorrow. And maybe, later, chip away at the second mountain tonight.

That’s how I’ve spent 5-6 days a week for the last five months, chipping away at my mountains, especially the range called Remembering that I’m A Scholar and The Tenure Clock is a Terrifying Thing. I’m amazed that I’ve only had one day when I melted down in the form of refusing to get out of bed because I was surrounded by mountains and I couldn’t deal. Poor Marcy that day. But that turned out to be a breakthrough afternoon, so I learned something. I’ve had a lot of grumpy, resistant mornings, and evenings spent flipping in my bedsheets like a dying fish.

But I’m still chipping away and, looking back, the value of it shows. Two chapters, an edited volume almost ready to submit, two articles (if I finish drafting one by month’s end), a revised book framework, two conferences, and a lot of new interviews. Also: eight pounds gained and a lot of straining waistbands.

I guess gone are the days of scaling a whole fourteener in an afternoon. Too much to juggle now–and that’s without even having kids–so chipping away is the best option. What else can we do?

Talk about never thinking we’d see the day. Barack Obama is elected, the White House will be not-nearly-so-white, my stubbornly red state turned blue at long last, and I’ve never been so proud of the majority of my country for listening to their better angels.

So much I want to say, but the truth is that between the politics and meetings and advising and conference travel, I’ve been running on such a concentration deficit for the last few weeks that I’m hoping I can finally now take a deep breath and finish this chapter I keep not finding a way to finish. I’ll put my attention to that today, then, and breathe a whole lot easier while doing so.

Congratulations, friends. This is amazing.

Well, I’m a Treat-Seeking Missile, baby         (b’ bah nah bump)
You might think it’s kinda rude        (b’ bah nah bump, bah nah bump)
But I’m a Treat-Seeking Missile for your love, baby
Just slide on over and bring me that fattenin’ food

Cuz when it comes to treats
You know I got the heat
Nothin’ like treats to get me in the mood.

Well, I was walking down the street, honey
Just a mindin’ my own beat
Yeah, I was walking on down the boulevard, baybay
When my nose smelled somethin’ sweet

You know I’m feelin’ like a louse
But I keep stuffin’ ‘em in my mowf
Just give me one more low down hi-cal treat.

Well, my baby gon’ say I’m fat
Don’t want to hold me anymore!
She say you keep eatin’ more of that
You ain’t gon’ get your ass through the front door
I say, Mama, you don’t understand
when I see that lil’ angel on the cake stand
I just can’t keep my feet on the mother fuckin’ floor!

Well now I know I gotta stop
These treats are killin’ me like crack
Yeah, I know I gotta get on a diet, baby
And pull this Treat Monkey off my back

But like a desert seeks the heat
This chubby missile seeks the treat
I pray this appetite will cut me some ever-lovin’ slack.