Ephemeral

It's been summer break for Baz and I've been kind of a mess with all the caretaking. But right now I was just watching him, listening to him babble about some story called Farmer Dale's Red Pickup Truck, and I realized that little voice will mature at one point and things will never be the same.

Without words

I can't begin to describe what happened when Baz and I met my father in Monterey this week. Suffice to say I left early and under bad circumstances.

Grrr

Can't. Fucking. Sleep.

Thinking. Too. Fucking. Much.

Never a good idea.

Breakthrough

We got notice that our landlord selling our place last August, so it's been nearly a year. In that time I haven't been able to think about 2214 Grant Street in any sort of positive way, though (or perhaps because) we'd been there so long.

Then last night I pictured myself out on the small porch, the one facing the ivy with the peeling black paint on the railings. In the memory, I was on the phone with my insurance company, who had just doubled the premium on my policy. "Well," the customer-service rep said, "it's due to Mr. Sandler's driving record."

"Really," I said, amused. I was always the fuckup in the relationship. "Why don't you tell me about Mr. Sandler's record?"

Turns out it was something that wasn't his fault, but that's not the point. The point was the memory was good, powerful, and positive. And welcome.

I did just make the mistake of looking through the pictures on the listing again. Man. They managed to erase any facet of charm in the Farm, which was our cottage in the back. I guess you can slap on a coat of white paint and put up some stupid sign saying "Cherries" in the backyard and draw out all the individual quirkiness that made it what it was and ask nearly $1.3 mil for the whole shebang-a-bang, right? Fuck.

The Oversharer

The question is, how much do I say and how much do I keep to myself? When you put something out in the world it supposedly can't be taken back. That usually doesn't bother me, but it does here.

Bob Seger, "Night Moves"

Funny how the night moves
When you just don't seem to have that much to lose
Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in

Random Facebook memories from this day

Revise

Ruth had loved two men before Jack came along. One was Gary, her husband, blue of eye, faithful of heart. The other was Russ. Right now, the less said about Russ the better. In time.

Later she would wonder if there might have been another way, if she and Gary had been in a different place, a better one, if things might not have gone differently. Under the covers, in the dark, she would know that would never be the case.

When we love, read a book she’d picked up in college and never finished, we always strive to become better than we are. In the months after Jack walked in, she would wonder if this was true. She certainly didn’t feel as though she was striving for anything. In fact, as the relationship progressed, the only striving that was occurring was her continued insistence on secrecy, her demands on herself that they were to remain just friends.

Just friends! What did that even mean? Did it mean an absolute lack of sexual tension, no interest whatsoever? Was there really such a thing?

"A touch self-indulgent"

Adam might as well burn down my shit cause that's kind of what he means when he says that.

Today's writing

We each have our packet of loves. We hold them close to the vest, fanning them out like playing cards, sometimes thinking what-if, sometimes feeling thank God. Love, of course, comes in all flavors. Some people fall in love 20 times a day. Others, like me, have but a handful. The number is less relevant than the fact.

Unless you live resolutely in the present – and some of us do – we take out the deck every so often and flip through the bygone possibilities.

Soundtrack for the middle of the night

"Our House"- Crosby, Stills and Nash

"My One and Only Love" - Sting version

Only I need to know why.

From THE THIRD MAN

I grew up watching sitcoms where the mother had breakfast on the table at a certain hour, everything orderly and waiting for her smartass kids to drift down and give her shit while they ate it. Me, I stuck a piece of bread in the toaster and whipped out the peanut butter.

“Hey,” Adam said, “how much do you have for the credit-card bill?”

Oh God. My stomach knotted the way it always did when he asked me that question, because I never had enough. I mumbled something about money coming in the following week, which was total bullshit because I hadn’t even invoiced yet. And I hadn’t yet invoiced because I hadn’t been doing any work.

In other words, I was tapped.

He touched my arm. “Just level with me. How much do you have?”

Like any good feminist, I broke into tears.

When we first got together, I broke my ass to make sure that I covered half of whatever we bought, whether that was dinner or plane tickets. Sometimes that meant stupid shit like delaying rent or taking an advance from my credit card, just to hide the fact that my freelancing simply wasn’t cutting it.

Thinking about the last post

Part of me wanted to take it down. That's why I didn't.

No, my marriage is not perfect. It's one thing to say it and it's another thing to really know it. Fact is, things can be hard. We're both confused. We're both in pain in our own ways. Things I never expected to happen have happened, are happening.

I will always love him.

Yesterday morning

I was just up. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't stop thinking. I couldn't get off the mental carousel. All I could do was stare and cry and occasionally type something, and recount so many memories Adam and I had made, the ones we had made and the ones we still dream of creating.

Baby Can I Hold You

Today's writing

I didn’t think I was innocent when I met Jack. I was long married, the mother of a young son. I’d traveled, lived abroad, gotten down in a sex club for God’s sake. I was 43 years old. Innocence was in the rear-view. My life was purely in the present.

What I didn’t know at the time was how one person can blow you open and leave you questioning every fiber as it waves in the wind.

Congrats on all your accomplishments he wrote over Facebook. It took me a moment to connect the name with the person, and still I couldn’t dredge up a memory of his face. That’s awesome! Just wanted to cruise by and say hi.

What I didn’t realize was how corners conceal. One minute you don’t know what’s around that bend; the next you’re getting hit full in the face with the entirety of its being.

Thanks, I wrote, and turned away to change my son’s diaper. When I turned back, I found myself writing want to get some coffee at some point?

Innocence is not recognizable in the present. It’s lodged in the past, embedded in the look backward. It’s in that reflection, the oh-God-that’s-how-I-was.

Up at 3 a.m.

But with the connection we get into trouble. 

Jesus Christ. Yes, we do.

Evanescence, "Bring Me to Life"

How can you see into my eyes like open doors?
Leading you down, into my core
Where I've become so numb, without a soul
My spirit's sleeping somewhere cold
Until you find it there, and lead it, back, home

Wake me up inside
Wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark
Bid my blood to run
Before I come undone
Save me from the nothing I've become

Now that I know what I'm without
You can't just leave me
Breathe into me and make me real
Bring me to life

Wake me up inside
Wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark
Bid my blood to run
Before I come undone
Save me from the nothing I've become

Bring me to life
Bring me to life

Frozen inside, without your touch
Without your love, darling
Only you are my life
Among the dead

I've been sleeping a thousand years it seems
Got to open my eyes to everything
Don't let me die here
Bring, me, to, life

Wake me up inside
Wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark
Bid my blood to run
Before I come undone
Save me from the nothing I've become

Bring me to life
Bring me to life
Bring me to life

Kansas, "Dust in the Wind"

I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone
All my dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind
All they are is dust in the wind

Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
Oh, ho, ho

Now, don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won't another minute buy
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
Dust in the wind
Everything is dust in the wind
Everything is dust in the wind
The wind

Flash fiction

I started writing something about weight last week. I was working on it yesterday. Adam said: "I like it, but I feel like I've heard it before."

I'm wondering if that meant that he's simply heard the story -- hell, lived through it with me -- or if it's been told before. Those are two different things. But what isn't different is if I'm enjoying writing it. That I can't tell quite yet.

Summer Break

And so it begins.

From THE THIRD MAN

“There you are,” Adam said. He was holding Baz’s hand. In that moment I resented the shit out of them. I would love to say that I had no idea why, to play innocent, but that would be a bunch of bullshit. Fact was, I knew exactly why I felt as I did. They represented a beloved blockage. Because they existed, because they were such a bulwark of my life, I couldn’t play around like I wanted to. I couldn’t randomly screw some dude just cause. I couldn’t decide to spend six months in the Czech Republic without even being able to point it out on a map, without realizing that it was not and had not been Czechoslovakia for years.

I couldn’t live as if life ultimately didn’t matter, because like the Velveteen Rabbit, love had made it real.

You think I tell you a lot

I tell you nothing.

We clean up well

Back in 2013 ...

Peter Gabriel, "In Your Eyes"

Love I get so lost, sometimes
Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart
When I want to run away
I drive off in my car
But whichever way I go
I come back to the place you are

All my instincts, they return
And the grand facade, so soon will burn
Without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

In your eyes
The light the heat
In your eyes
I am complete
In your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
In your eyes
The resolution of all the fruitless searches
In your eyes
I see the light and the heat
In your eyes
Oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light
The heat I see in your eyes

Love, I don't like to see so much pain
So much wasted and this moment keeps slipping away
I get so tired of working so hard for our survival
I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive

And all my instincts, they return
And the grand facade, so soon will burn
Without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

In your eyes
The light the heat
In your eyes
I am complete
In your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
In your eyes
The resolution of all the fruitless searches
In your eyes
I see the light and the heat
In your eyes
Oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light,
The heat I see in your eyes
In your eyes, in your eyes
In your eyes, in your eyes
In your eyes, in your eyes

My babies

Today is Jack and Maizie's 9th birthday. They are just about as nuts as the day they were born. I love them more each day even as they drive me insane. I've got to get to the pet store today and get them something overpriced and delicious.

I love you babies!

17 years ago today

Adam and I met. I thought I didn't like him. What I didn't realize was that I loved him.

From THE THIRD MAN

“I should go.”

“Hey.” He put his hand on my shoulder and I realized how little physical contact we’d had in the time we’d known each other. Even when we hugged, it was like hugging your grandfather. I got it. You don’t stick your hand in the fire unless you want it to get consumed. “You’ve had a couple of drinks. Maybe wait it out?”

I had, hadn’t I?

The drinks were strong, too, mojitos whose sugar conned me into drinking them fast, faster. Then when the check came, he covered it and tried to wave away my tip money. I forced him to take it and watched the room spin while I did.

“You’re a cheap date,” Adam always said, “and I like cheap.”

I’d promised him. I’d promised.

“Hold on,” I said, and stepped away for a minute. There, on quiet Solano Avenue, I called my husband to tell him a partial lie and a partial truth.

“I can’t drive,” I said. “I had a couple of drinks.”

Fact was, the room might have spun around me, but the fresh outside air sobered me right up. I was perfectly capable of hopping in the Mazdaspeed and motoring on home.

I just didn’t want to.

“So you’re going to sober up,” he said, voice tight, “right?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

The Pub was right across the street. In addition to alcohol, it also had coffee and tea.

“Give me a little bit,” I said. “I promise I won’t be long.”

“You promised you’d be home by 10.”

“I know. I – I’m sorry.”

“Are you? Are you really?”

It was like my mind burst in two at this point: a split screen, two different ways of seeing what was happening. Part of me understood his frustration, knew that being home with the kid while your spouse was out carousing around wasn’t exactly a big old ice cream sundae.

Another part of me was like, fuck you, dude. Stop sitting on my ass. It’s starting to sting. This resentment seemed very, very old, probably because it was.

“You know what?” I said in a voice that didn’t sound anything like my own, “I’m not.”

“No. I knew it.”

It would have been polite for Jack to take a few steps away from me, down the street, busy himself with his phone, get back in his truck even. A little privacy, please? But I didn’t want that. I wanted him to overhear. I wanted him to see me push back.

I wanted a witness.

“Look,” I said, “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Neither of us seemed entirely loving in that moment. But that’s the time when I love you most needs to be said. That’s the time you need to remember, to grasp that thread and understand what it holds together, that to unravel it is to forever lose the connection.

Done!

The current version of BAD HAIR (formerly BEARDED LADY) is done and off to Miriam in New York! Boy is that a ton of work ... and so very worth it.

Tunes

Up early, listening to music. Joni Mitchell, "The Last Time I Saw Richard" -- Jesus. So evocative. So real. I can think of people this applies to. I can think of people this describes perfectly. People who turned from vibrant to gray over time, and why? The wrong decisions, the wrong timing. Bad luck, poor ideas.

Yeah, fuck you guys. You earned it. Except I don't mean that at all.

Van Morrison, "Into the Mystic"

We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was won
As we sailed into the mystic

Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly
Into the mystic

And when that foghorn blows
I will be coming home, mmm mmm
And when the foghorn blows
I want to hear it
I don't have to fear it

I wanna rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
Then magnificently we will float
Into the mystic

When that foghorn blows
You know I will be coming home
And when that foghorn whistle blows
I gotta hear it
I don't have to fear it

And I wanna rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
And together we will float
Into the mystic
Come on girl

Will they stop now

More

Matt wanted me. It was obvious. He took Tina as a consolation prize, but somewhere along the way he knew he wanted me. He couldn’t just leave this alone. He couldn’t let me be. He was going to keep worrying it like the dogs at the shelter gnawed after their frozen Kongs. Difference was that they eventually get their peanut butter. Him, he got nothing.

Finally, I was sure of it.

There were so many things I could say and none that I wanted to hear come out of my mouth, so many ways that I guessed I could feel and none that I really did.

“It’s not creepy,” I said. “I just don’t understand why you couldn’t have, I don’t know, told me that you were coming. I seriously about peed myself.”

He came close, too close. “Want me to check?”

There it was: feeling two things at the same time. Yes, Daniel Tiger, that was okay. But it sure came off as weird. In this case, I was both grossed out and a little turned on.

“You just keep turning up,” I said. “Everywhere I look.”

“Maybe there’s a reason for that.”

His hand on mine, rubbing, rubbing. His eyes locked on my face. His heart beating so loudly I could practically hear it. I knew it.

I knew him. I loved him. So why couldn’t I just let go and give in to what he wanted?

Because I didn’t want it.

Matt was that mirage we studied in geography, something born not of reality but of a wish. It’s the vision of a person as a vessel, a container filled with one’s own hopes and fantasies. Chase the vessel and you chase a mirage. Cross that desert and drink from an empty golden cup.

We can’t touch a mirage. We can only follow it until we die of thirst.

Today's writing

“Hey,” Matt said.

For a minute that seemed perfectly normal. Then I realized it wasn’t. I hadn’t even seen his car when I pulled down into the driveway, but now that I understood he was here, I realized he had parked in the shadows, where I couldn’t see, where his presence would be a surprise.

“What the hell?” There wasn’t much else that came to mind, not many other words poised to exit my mouth. He scared the piss out of me. Why?

All around us Poway was doing its thing: coyotes howling, washing machines tumbling, swimmers stretching their way from the pool to the hot tub, flexing muscles covered with tanned skin. The air smelled like fading heat and full bank accounts. My neighbor’s homes glowed inside and out.

It was the place I called home. Not forever, but for now.

Berkeley rent control ... or lack thereof

When we lost our home nearly a year ago, this was basically what was behind it: we lived in a golden duplex, which exempted us from rent control and gave us absolutely no rights.

It was heartbreaking beyond heartbreaking. We lived at 2214 1/2 Grant Street, Berkeley, CA 94703 for 13 years. I still wake up thinking I'm there and we've been in our current place since October.

I don't like my neighborhood. It's too little for too much money. Our place is fine, but it just happens to be situated on a charmless street with a lot of loudmouths and bumping music. We will move eventually, but this time -- because we have rent control -- we will do it on our time frame.

Never again will I live in a golden duplex. Nor will I rent from an individual landlord. Never.

Just written

Once again I led a guy through the maze of halls that was the shelter. This time we didn’t even touch. Maybe he was still mad at me. But he was here. That was what mattered.

“This guy’s my favorite,” I said.

There he was, chilling in his cage. The look he gave me – it was like why? What did I do wrong? Nothing, Romeo. You only committed the sin of being without a home.

“A Pit,” Paul said, and for a moment I thought it was a negative. Then I turned around and saw the tears in his eyes.

I hugged him. He wrapped his arms around me, his touch so very different from Matt’s. Where Matt’s hands were searching, possessive, Paul was warm and present. Matt felt like he would take you away from yourself. Paul felt like he would help you find who you were.

There is, of course, no black and white. I barely knew this guy. He could be a serial killer or a Taylor Swift fan. I very well could have been making him into some god when he was just a person. But it felt so good to believe that he was just a sweet, decent dude.

I muttered against his chest: “You like Pit Bulls?”

“Like them? They’re the bomb.”

Well, that tore it. If I hadn’t liked him before, I liked him now. Fact was, so many people couldn’t stand Pits for the very fact of what they were. So many people couldn’t see beyond the stereotype: vicious, hair-trigger, jaws that locked and tore. They couldn’t look past the muscular bodies, the blocky heads; they couldn’t imagine running their hands over the short, bristly fur. Paul seemed to have no such problem, and for that I loved him for one sharp, sweet second.

Random images

Teaching again at Writing Salon!

I am honored to have been invited to teach again at the Writing Salon! More details as they become available.

Truth

You can drive all night
Looking for the answers in the pouring rain

- Cage the Elephant, "Cigarette Daydreams"

Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters

And now I know
Spanish Harlem are not just pretty words to say
I thought I knew
But now I know that rose trees never grow
In New York City

Until you've seen this trash can dream come true
You stand at the edge while people run you through
And I thank the Lord
There's people out there like you
I thank the Lord there's people out there like you

While Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters
Sons of bankers, sons of lawyers
Turn around and say good morning to the night
For unless they see the sky
But they can't and that is why
They know not if it's dark outside or light

This Broadway's got
It's got a lot of songs to sing
If I knew the tunes I might join in
I'll go my way alone
Grow my own, my own seeds shall be sown, in New York City

Subway's no way for a good man to go down
Rich man can ride and the hobo he can drown
And I thank the Lord for the people I have found
I thank the Lord for the people I have found

While Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters
Sons of bankers, sons of lawyers
Turn around and say good morning to the night
For unless they see the sky
But they can't and that is why
They know not if it's dark outside or light

And now I know
Spanish Harlem are not just pretty words to say
I thought I knew
But now I know that rose trees never grow
In New York City

Subway's no way for a good man to go down
Rich man can ride and the hobo he can drown
And I thank the Lord for the people I have found
I thank the Lord for the people I have found

While Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters
Sons of bankers, sons of lawyers
Turn around and say good morning to the night
For unless they see the sky
But they can't and that is why
They know not if it's dark outside or light
They know not if it's dark outside or light

- Elton John

I think I hate this judge

"Judge Troiano said there was a “distinction” between “a sexual assault and a rape.”

"He said 'the traditional case of rape' generally involved two or more males using a gun or weapon to corner a victim into an abandoned house, shed or shack, 'and just simply taking advantage of the person as well as beating the person, threatening the person.'

"It was under those egregious circumstances, he said, that the state would try a juvenile in adult court."

Fucker. 

Getting closer

I'm on page 120 of 163 when it comes to final edits. These are pretty nerve-wracking, but I also think they are what the manuscript needs. I hope, at any rate. I can only hope.

Tonight

Davis

From last weekend