If I swallowed truth serum

Could you handle hearing it?

2011, St. Louis

 

The world is full of signs

The trick is following them.

He became a father

Our friend Maya says that she watched Adam become a father when he gave a speech at Baz's bris. She's right.

Prague

I was standing

You were there

Two worlds collided

And they could never tear us apart

Written to a friend

Maybe that's how feelings change: not because you try to make them change, but because you can't stop them from changing.

Pride Festival in Downtown Berkeley, 2019

Back in the quaint days when you could, y'know, gather.

This morning's meditation

Yoga with Adriene. She rocks!

Natalie Goldberg at the Upaya Zen Center

You can't just be out there, asleep or with the constellations. You have to brush your teeth. You have to drink a cup of coffee.

Full talk here.

Name one bad idea

I’ll take looking up exes for a thousand, Alex. 

Nadia Bolz-Weber on Christmas

So I am delighted to finally say Merry Christmas, because we could use some good news of great joy for all the people right about now.

And I believe that the Christ child is always born where he is most needed, where he is most cherished, where he is most potent. So wherever in your life you need this babe – that is always where he is to be found. 

Whoever listening right now who needs this baby…

It is unto you a child is born.

Unto you.

Unto you the mother without her own children.

Unto you an addict who can’t keep clean.

Unto you the survivor.

Unto you who can’t lose it because you have to keep it together for everyone else.

Unto you the bullied kid.

Unto you whose family never got you.

Unto you who lost your parents this year.

Unto you who doesn't know how in the world you can keep going.

Unto you.

Unto you a child is born. And also unto me. 

And also unto me and all who already smell of sheep and grass a dirt. 

Because the Christ child is always born wherever he is most needed. Wherever a soul needs to feel it’s worth.

Merry Christmas, family.

Amen.

This morning's writing

We lived at 13442 Black Hills Road, accessed by Salmon River Road and Sawtooth Way. I mention these because they are such anomalies in the San Diego world of streets. Most are Spanish for honeysuckle or dog dick. For a town that near-obsessively protects its southern border, San Diego is whooped on the language. It’s pretty until you realize that it’s all the same. Then it seems prettier because monochrome is sometimes the way to go. No real need to differentiate, to shift your vision. Only Caminito and Bernardo and Rancho Penasquitos, which was where we lived, and if you can picture a shitload of red tile roofs – minus ours, stubbornly shingle because my father was too cheap to upgrade – and scrub-brush lawns, you’ve got it.

 There is no need for cynicism. It’s just the suburbs. But as it so happens, the burbs make a particularly nice home for it. It’s a comfy home, an apt one. In the 1980s the suburbs looked slightly different only because there were different chains: Crown Books instead of Barnes & Noble, Heidi’s Frozen Yogurt rather than TCBY. Eminent domain hadn’t yet come to Paseo Montalban; the Ted Williams Parkway hadn’t rendered the destruction of so many burrito joints. Yet the loved was the loved regardless of how cookie-cutter it might appear. In kindergarten my mother took us by foot to the 7-Eleven after school, choosing carefully from ice creams stacked in frozen cases. That walk down Carmel Mountain Road a beloved eternity, hands linked, me and my brother always shunted away from roadside so that in the event of a terrible accident, my mother would get clocked first. Who said parenthood doesn’t equal sacrifice?

THREE WOMEN, Lisa Taddeo

Some people, Maggie thinks, live their lives as if they are sure they're going to get another one. One more chance to be cool and popular or smart and rich and have a lot of sex. They act as though it's okay to hang back on this one and merely watch it like a movie. Maggie is devoutly Catholic and doesn't believe in multiple lives. She's intent on making the most out of this one. She wants to experience everything, but she also wants to follow the mandates of her religion. She was upset, for example, when Melia first told her she was pregnant. It isn't right to have sex outside of marriage. But Emily, the little girl, is sinless, starry. Maggie can't imagine her born of sin. Especially now that Dane and Melia have one resounding last name. They have a blender. Nothing is as Catholic and binding as a clean, white blender. 

Just written in email

I think you have to get there organically, whatever the hell that means. I guess what I mean by that is that no one else can tell you where to go with it, how to feel, or where you draw the line. I think I just hit this point today where I was like -- no. I don't have unlimited time. I don't have unlimited energy. I want to believe I have both, but I have neither. It saddened me, but it also woke me up. All the repeated things I do, the things I grumble over, the things I dread or come close to regretting -- they don't have to happen. Hand-washing underwear where there's been a potty accident, yes. I just did that. That's a given. The things that are taking my life away cell by cell -- that's a different story. But you have to get to a certain place with it. I don't know that there's any controlling it.

Heather Farm Playground

We took Baz out to Walnut Creek yesterday. Something so normal as a playground visit -- but it was amazing too. He's been in the house too much. He hasn't been around other kids enough. It was awesome to see him play and enjoy himself.

What happens when I try to write

 

Ocean breaths and roller-coaster breaths

Baz has the awesome transitional-kindergarten teacher. She's amazing. Part of what she teaches are meditation principles: ocean breaths, roller-coaster breaths, star breaths. I know you can laugh and say, Jesus, Berkeley. I do and yet I don't. It's what I want him to learn.

That doesn't mean he'll always be in the Berkeley school system. I don't want to live here forever. But I do like the schools -- and the enrichment. He's got two dance classes, music, gardening, library. Virtual schooling can be a pain in the ass, but at least I get to see what he does up close and personal.

Today's writing

Make yourself at home. Cliché, right? Except for a six-year-old, the one looking for exactly that. A first-grader doesn’t know pleasantry, only that words spoken are promises meant. “Thank you,” I said, and I imagine her looking down into who I was, who I remain: the wide-eyed, the slightly disbelieving. To this day I cannot imagine someone is actually in love with me; tell that to my husband of 12 years. I cannot believe I too could be wanted, desired, needed.

Or in this case, welcomed.

 

This morning's writing

The Morrisons’ house stood out. A two-story Mediterranean that towered more than it sprawled, it was soon to impress me with its surprises. The entryway, first off, was huge, the marble floor dappled by strategic light from an oval chandelier. Down two oval steps was the living room, a space that looked like it hadn’t been used once since the furniture was set into place. A dual-step platform led to an impressive circular staircase, but we didn’t go up there. Instead Leslie – Mrs. Morrison – led me through a pastel kitchen into a wonderfully jumbled family room.

 

That’s where the girls were.

 

The female energy in that space was nearly enough to cause me to back out through the French doors, past the poodle and into the pool.

You Wear it Well

Texting with Marcus, I wrote: "Right? I wear it well." (Don't ask what I was responding to.)

His response:

Today's writing

When we got to the front door my mind locked up. Something shut down inside of me, went hard and flat. An envelope of sorts, mailing thoughts, emotions, fears. Wait a minute, Mr. Postman. The front door itself was a sculpted master class in craftsmanship. The whorls alone could rival a fingertip, the depth, the intricacy. The ugliness was so deep that it was lovely. It was beautiful in that way that six-year-olds regard as beautiful, something gaudy and careless, something without the significance of subtlety or the framing of creative fear. It was simply what it was, and what it was was one crazy piece of shit.

 

I reached for my mother’s hand. She looked at me as if I were a mental disease and she the reluctant lithium. “What’s with you?”

 

Scared, I said. I was scared.

 

“Jesus Christ. It’s a sleepover, not a scalping.”

 

She jabbed at the doorbell with such force that I thought she’d knock off her Lee Press-On. I grabbed that hand, too. We stood there with both hands entwined. It could have been a sweet goddamn moment, but this was my mother.

 

Leslie Morrison came to the door. She was taller and darker than my mother. She held a cigarette. Do parents still do that today? Aren’t they all relegated to puffing in some dark outpost of the backyard?

Cool Hand Luke

 

Yes, I delete posts all the time.

Why do you ask?

Early-morning writing

The take-your-order guy, also known as a waiter in case you forgot restaurant terminology, looks from one face to the next. “You folks ready?”

 

“Yeah,” your father says, “I’ll have the kippers and eggs.”

 

You find kippers disgusting, but what does it matter? You don’t have to eat it. You know your father will try to pull family-style on you, though, lifting from his plate, stealing from yours. Share and share alike, right, Steve? Adam always manages to slip out of this tradition, leaving it to you and your father to share even though you hate sharing food – probably because you grew up on this horseshit.

 

You order the Reuben – a whole, not a half, with a side of matzoh ball soup. You can hear Adam silently losing his mind. You’ll never finish this meal. You’ll never even begin to consume these mass quantities. But they won’t go wasted.

 

“I’ll have two latkes,” Adam says, knowing he’ll be able to tuck into your food. Share, as we say, and share alike.

 

Coffees and waters all around, and take-your-order guy retreats to the kitchen to get matters going. “But,” your father says, “we didn’t order anything for Baz.”

 

“He’ll eat what we eat.”

 

Your father regards Adam as the human equivalent of shit on a shingle. “Will he eat what we eat?” he asks you.

 

You shrug. Of course he will. Or, rather, he’ll eat a piece of toast, nibble on some type of meat or another, maybe deign to try a latke, and all will be well. Your father seems to regard your son as some type of strange space creature with his own set of rules and regulations. He’s just a damn kid. You love him, he’s your heart, but he’s just a kid.

 

Here’s the thing, though: you’re jealous of him, jealous of the fact that your father takes such an interest in him. When he was first born, your father said: “I’d like to come up every few months to watch him grow up. I don’t want him not to know his grandpa.” Touching, true, but also dispiriting. You lived in the same house as him for 18 years and he rarely showed interest in your knowing him. Times change, of course, but let’s face it: our hearts continue to sing the same song.

Deborah sent me this

It's pretty goddamned accurate. 

We're all living so many lies. The work of life is to get down to the fucking truth and do something about it. Starting now. 

The edge

Some days you feel like you're going to fall apart. There's a moment like that in every day for me. I yelled at Baz this morning: "Fuck!" He was pissing me off and I had had it. I've had it with everything. 

"You're good"

Earlier this year, we were thrown out of couples counseling. "I see you two," our counselor said. "You're good."

Adam crows about that shit. "We got thrown out," he says. "Don't tell me we're not good."

The Meatball

 

A record

I did an overnight in Santa Cruz this weekend. Took not one picture, wrote not a single Facebook post. This wasn't about reportage. It was about sanity. It was Adam's idea. "Why don't you do an overnight?" he said. "Before the lockdown comes down."

I didn't do a whole hell of a lot. Hung out on Pacific Avenue. Froze my way through a delicious dinner where Adam and I once sat and watched waitstaff dance. Listened to the most ridiculous public-broadcasting show ever. ("Can we talk about the patriarchy in Santa Cruz? Can we?") 

Less than 24 hours. Necessary.

Beginning of a new essay

Your father doesn’t do anything halfway. That includes getting a Radio Flyer for your son. He comes up with the idea while visiting during a September weekend. Baz has just turned four. His hair extends down beyond his shoulders. You have yet to learn he may be autistic. You have so much to learn.

 

“He needs a wagon,” your dad says. By now he’s almost entirely bald. He looks nothing like the man who raised you. He looks – if you are to be honest – like a latter-day Chevy Chase: round of cheek, gray of face. And Chevy Chase was always known to be a son of a bitch.

 

“He doesn’t need anything other than what he has,” your husband says. You stuff another pickle in your mouth because you’re at Saul’s and they’re free and it keeps you from freaking out over the fact that they always, always fight. Saul’s is what Moses would look like if he lived in Berkeley for a while: Judaism, hippified. They do a hell of a Reuben, though.

 

“Let me amend that,” your father says, leaving out the operative word: asshole. “I’m going to buy him a wagon. And I’m going to pull him around in it until I drop dead of a heart attack.”

 

The framed photos quiver on the wall. An earthquake, hyper-localized.

 

Your father and husband can barely stand each other. Never much could. Being around them is like being in a gas chamber filled with fruit flies. Not only do you die a horrible death, but you do it with them. Your husband tries to tell him something in his halting way and your father barely restrains his impatience. Your father talks about his points and miles and your husband only partly bites back his laughter. Derision, frustration; this lends to the type of environment that has you eating extra pickles because otherwise you’d have to address it. None of you really wants that.

 

2015

 

Andrea Fella on truth

Let's look at what's true in terms of what's true in the moment. What's the truth of this experience right now? The truth is that the mind is spinning, trying to figure something out. That's the truth of the moment ... What's arising? What is this experience that's arising?

2009

Love this creepy picture by our wedding photographer, Luke Snyder. 

Recent writing

This is what happens to you since you move here: you grow hard. Your soul, sharpened on the treeless sidewalks, the glaring lights, the thumping music that takes you from day into night and back again. Your eyes, narrowed against the abandoned cars, stolen and crashed and stowed here on the Berkeley-Oakland border, hoods stripped to reveal the guts inside, seats pushed forward so thieves can take what they can grab.

I gave birth to this

 

2014

 

Too Funky

Memories of dancing around my college-girl apartment. 811 Camino Pescadero #0 (yes, zero) ... the memories go on and on ...

Recent writing

After is always easier. The adrenaline flows, arrowing down your arms toward your wrists and then back up through the shoulders, into the chest, joining with your heartbeat. You sweat through your shirt. You always sweat through your shirt.

They’re down there while you read, watching you. The first thing you always do is adjust the microphone to accommodate your – let’s face it – short stature. Down there, watching you. You place your multiple-times-folded printout on the podium, run your hands down your hips for no reason other than assuring yourself of your own existence. Eyes upturned, waiting.

Taking the temperature of an audience is akin to watching the weather. Walk out and you’ll immediately know rain is on its way. Same principle with figuring out if an audience is friendly, hostile, or in that swampy ground between. Less logic, more sense. You see it in the shifting of bodies, crossing of legs, surreptitious check of cell phones. You can tell when the room heats up just that little bit, the straight backs, the forgotten purses, and you know you’ve hit a nerve.

You know from the start that the audience is receptive. They’re hushed, not quiet – those are two different things. You want them to make noise. You want them to sigh, to suck back their breath in surprise. You want them to laugh, to make that hmm noise that means you’ve struck a chord. More than anything you want them to feel, to touch them at a level they may not even realize exists within them.

Up there you can be anything, but can you really? The elements that make you malleable tend to shiver when you’re on stage. You can be anything, but you must be yourself. Whatever pieces button together to allow that, however their jagged parts come together, it is incumbent upon you to let them do just that. Neglect the need to be oneself and no one is going to listen to you for shit.

You hear yourself take one breath, then another, then start speaking.

Thanksgiving

 

One day before Thanksgiving

I'm thankful for you. You, who reads this. You, who shows interest. You, the reader. Yes, you.

Realization

It took until I was in my late 20s, but I seized the bad girl in me. Turns out she was always there. She lay in wait, smoking a cigarette, chuffing straight lines and circles. She was patient and canny. Finally she emerged.

A good read

Monica Delahooke on the things to ask for when your child is diagnosed with autism. 

A snippet

Then there’s the whole you’re-with-your-husband bit. The intimacy of sharing a glass of wine, a stroller, the child in it. The life that lies between the two of you, the home together, even the fights because they, too, are shared. You know how it feels to want that brand of intimacy. You want it for years before you ever meet Adam, feeling as though you’re pressing your nose against glass and looking in at a life you can’t even imagine inhabiting. You prefer inside to out. You prefer the intimacy to the solitude, even with its lack of control, its messy boundaries.

 

If you were on Facebook

You would know Baz is being evaluated for autism. You would also know that I'm committed to being there for him today, tomorrow, and always. You would know lots of things you can't possibly know from here. 

You also know much more by talking to me directly, by being my friend, by sharing a drink with me, even if we're wearing masks. You would know the real story if you were willing to break that wall.

All-time favorite song lyrics

I will live by my own policies

I will sleep with a clear conscience

I will sleep in peace

- Sinead O'Connor, "The Emperor's New Clothes"

Gil Fronsdal on wholeness

When we sit, when we live, and we're mostly in our thoughts, we're not whole. And if we don't engage our mind's capacity for awareness and live mostly in the body and the energies of the body, we're not whole. But bringing mind and body together to be whole and not divided from each other within ourselves is really the wonderful way, wonderful place, for our goodwill to flow, when there's no energy division within us. When we're whole, then there's lots of room for our goodness, for our kindness. Being whole, we discover there's lots of room: lots of room to receive, to experience, to take the world in so there's time for deeper wisdom and kindness to respond. That's not possible if react and are quick and fast; it's not possible if we're divided in ourselves. 

Recent writing

Then, inexplicably, a man pushing a stroller approaches. Long hair, a Dylan t-shirt, a walk seemingly free of gravity or gravitas or worry. Just one foot in front of the other, moving.

 

It is your husband.

 

They nod at each other but don’t shake hands. There is a look that passes between them. You can’t read it or perhaps don’t want to. You imagine there is almost a complicity there: you get this side of her, I get the rest. Except the argument comes over who gets which.

 

It’s an opportunity to look at the similarities, the contrasts. There are more of the latter than the former. Adam is loose, shoulders relaxed; Mac holds himself as if preparing for action. Your husband moves easily in the world – he decides long ago that he doesn’t give a fuck about what people think. Mac cares, probably too much. You relate strongly to one. The other is your husband.

 

But is that true?

 

Saying it just seems so easy: well, I relate more strongly to someone who’s not my spouse. He’s the person. He’s the connection. Easy enough when that person doesn’t see you with bad breath in the morning, sweating and shaking on the delivery table. Easy enough when you can put on your image, pull down the invisible hooded cloak of who you want to be rather than the revealing garb of what you are.

 

WordSpace Studios Residency

Man, I cannot wait to experience this. I don't know exactly when ... but it's in the works!

Yesterday

 

A great dharma talk

"Deepening the Truths We Can Say" by Diana Clark really opened me to gratitude. Definitely worth a listen. 

The Gambler

Ten o'clock. You're tired and drunk and putting the final touches on your opinion pages for the UCSB Daily Nexus. This song comes on and it's like God talking directly to you.

Woodstock's Pizza, Davis

 

Gil Fronsdal on Buddha's Six Principles of Love and Concord

It's the virtuous behavior that is liberating. We don't often see virtue, ethics, and liberation together in the same sentence. Maybe they're not so separate from each other.

Recent writing

Getting down to San Jose is a bitch. Of course, you leave after 5, after Adam gets off of work, after you’ve picked up Baz at preschool, after everything that comes before you in this world. By the time you get on the road, everyone and their brother is heading south and you’re screwed, simply screwed.

 

“It doesn’t start until 7.” Adam downshifts, then gives up and goes into first gear. You’re headed nowhere fast and your heart is starting to pulse hard. Never mind the fact that you always freak before readings, play the what-if game. You could fall, could burp in the middle, could fuck up in one of many myriad ways. Most of all you could have an audience that just hates you or worse, doesn’t get your work. When that happens you feel that your stomach is a pit unearthed in the soil, never-ending. Not that you’re dramatic in describing it at all.

 

You fiddle with the radio. It’s Super Hits of the Seventies right now, something you recognize as a band called Bread.

 

Life can be short or long

Love can be right or wrong

And if I chose the one I’d like to help me through

I’d like to make it with you

 

“Jesus,” Adam says, and flips the channel.

 

“Thanks for asking me if I wanted to listen to it.”

 

“I know you did. You loved it when you were seven. That officially means it sucks.”

 

Asshole. But he’s right. You have legendarily bad taste in music, juvenile and crass all at the same time. Or, in the case of this tune, just ridiculous.

 

Your phone tingles in your lap. I’m here, Mac writes. Where are you?

 

“Who’s that?”

 

“Mac.”

 

“Oh yeah.” Adam furrows his brow, stares at the road ahead. “Him.”

A boy and his Maizie

 

I should be in Boston doing this

Damn you, COVID. That said, I'm glad to participate in advocacy in any form. 

The FB profile-pics game

Then ... and now.

 

On Biden's speech

I think Slate kind of nailed it. Fuck fascists. I'm not reaching across the aisle to them.

That said, of course I'm thrilled at the election results. I practically screamed myself hoarse on Saturday morning. Shit, who didn't? 

Well, I know a few.

Boogie Oogie Oogie

It's a disco sort of morning. My blogging class went well last night and I feel like celebrating. Tonight Marisa and I kick off our Marketing class and I'm super excited about it -- I've never co-taught before and Marisa is the one to do it with. Then Baz has no school on Wednesday and I'm probably way more thrilled than him about that.

Still processing therapy. I've often told Adam that it takes a few days to really get to the meat of what I've talked about. It's good, though. It's good.

Intense therapy session

Still processing, which is a good sign. I think if you walk out of a therapy session and aren't still processing a few hours -- or days -- later, you should rethink your choice in therapists. 

Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Carmel

 

Facebook Memories, 2012

"I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us, so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting." - Barack Obama

Just written

Adam is watching you, a line of inquiry between his brows.

 

“I didn’t say anything,” you say, idiotically.

 

His face carries a what? expression.

 

“You’re always there.” Your voice, your feet, digging in. The resentment, the acute awareness. Leave me alone. Let me be.

 

His face, collapsing into hurt. Ah, shit. Adam doesn’t often betray feelings, but today cannot be denied. His mouth, turned down slightly, reminds you of Baz, that slight quiver. Are those tears? Fuck-fuck-fuck. You need to say something, get your lazy ass up out of the chair, give him a hug, remind him how much he means to you, how much you love him.

 

“Oh,” you say, “come on.”

 

Bitch. You are a bitch. The moment feels frozen, icicles hanging from its edges. How to get over yourself and reach out to him? How to vault the transom, even for a single second?

 

He shakes his head, walks away. It feels like a victory and yet even that sweetness on your tongue is bitter.

 

You are caught, so caught. You are stuck, trapped, gasping for air in a tight pocket.

 

Do you ever want to be a mother? A wife? When you are twenty-two and graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara, you want nothing more than to inhabit some hell-forsaken garret in New York, to scratch out words while ducking the landlord month after month. It’s romantic, yes, but it’s also something more: a dream that will take you years to even recognize is achievable. As a newly minted graduate, you don’t think it’s possible. How in the hell can you relocate to New York, get the money to even find that garret? You don’t want eight roommates in the middle of Queens. You just don’t. You want your own space, your own tiny territory, and so in the end you forsake the idea for something entirely different: you move to North Platte, Nebraska to take a job as a wire editor at a rural newspaper. The Telegraph covers 13 counties, one of which is so small that if you call the operator and ask for Buck, you won’t need to give a last name.

Tracy Chapman, "Telling Stories"

There is fiction in the space between

Lines on your page and memories

Write it down but it doesn't mean

We're not just telling stories

Election and Monterey

Who hasn't been exhausted this week? I sure as hell have been. That's why I'm taking off for Monterey this weekend. Damn it, I need it. A room with a fireplace and some fucking quiet. Now we're talking.

Apropos of nothing, the song that got me to Tokyo years ago.

The Cure, "Just Like Heaven"

Behind the song. 

“The song’s about hyper-ventilating – kissing and fainting to the floor. Mary dances with me in the video because she was the girl, so it had to be her. The idea is that one night like that is worth a thousand hours of drudgery.” And, after all, isn’t that what love really is? Knowing that aside from all of the mire that the modern world seems to spew at us every single minute, that we have some solace in someone else.

Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick

The one that makes me scream she said
The one that makes me laugh she said
Threw her arms around my neck
Show me how you do it and I'll promise you
I'll promise that I'll run away with you, I'll run away with you

Spinning on that dizzy edge
Kissed her face and kissed her head
Dreamed of all the different ways, I had to make her glow
Why are you so far away she said
Why won't you ever know that I'm in love with you?
That I'm in love with you?

You, soft and only, you lost and lonely
You, strange as angels
Dancing in the deepest oceans
Twisting in the water
You're just like a dream
You're just like a dream

Daylight licked me into shape
I must have been asleep for days
And moving lips to breathe her name
I opened up my eyes
And found myself alone, alone, alone above a raging sea
That stole the only girl I loved and drowned her deep inside of me

You soft and only
You lost and lonely
You just like heaven

Not just a Nirvana song

I've added lithium to my psychiatric retinue. The difference is pretty amazing. When my shrink first suggested it, I laughed. I mean, come on. To me lithium is a punchline. But really, who gives a damn? It helps me get up in the morning. It's giving me hope where before there was darkness. I'll take it. And I do.

Just written

You’re trying to write. Doing it in the living room: that’s your mistake. The husband, the kid, the dogs. Nowhere to go in the outside world. Cafes and restaurants, takeout only. Those are always your haunts. That’s where you go to be you, the purest version of it, really, unencumbered. Except you are always cumbered. Stress makes its home along the slope of your neck, the curve of your shoulders. Especially now.

“Baz,” you say, “stop getting in Jack’s face.”

The signals: swish of a tail, flip of the ears. But the dog is rolling on his back, paws stretched to the sky, and you don’t know what to make of anything anyway.

“Baz,” you say, “just stop it.”

Adam, distracted. Adam, always distracted. “That’s not true,” he says.

Perhaps not. Life, the accumulation of the stories you tell yourself. Nothing more than the truth you believe is factual, or that you make factual. You believe it and so it is.

You don’t know when your house turns into a circus, only that your definition of it sours over time. When Baz is young you post pictures on Facebook, him and the dogs: my circus, 3:23 a.m. Charming, but really, is it ever? A draw-and-quarter of the mind, brain tearing rather than flesh. More painful? More searing? More immutable?

“It’s okay,” Adam says. “I’ve got them.”

This should make you feel relieved. It doesn’t. 

 

Workin' from home

 

Marcus op-ed

 I love Marcus's writing! Check out his piece in Undark today. 

Last night

The marriage is my rock. I can do anything because you're here.

This song, over and over

Adanna Literary Journal, "Mothering in a Pandemic" edition

 

"Loved it when I was 6"

Adam always gives me shit about my taste in music. "If it's from 1981," he will often say, "you loved it."

Well, duh.

South Lake Tahoe

I'm going for an overnight in a few weeks. I need this. These overnights help save my sanity in these stupid days of COVID. Just me and the car and my music. I don't really want to go for any longer than that, but I can sure take a night away. 

Joni Mitchell, "The Last Time I Saw Richard"

He put a quarter in the Wurlitzer

and he pushed three buttons and the thing began to whir

and a barmaid came by in fishnet stockings and said

drink up now, it's time for close

Sunday morning

The open door is found where there is an absence of preoccupation. ... Whatever experience you're having, know it and receive it. ... Just allow things to pass. - Gil Fronsdal

Up early and trying to pull my feelings together about everything. Moving forward isn't just the only way; it's the only option.

Love

 

Was this only two years ago?

 

I used to be a phone person

I would spend hours. Hours. Talking, analyzing, playing therapist. Now I cringe if someone proposes even a brief phone call. It's not because I'm a parent. It's because I'm me.

As seen on FB

 

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At Yosemite last month

 

Dead Man's Party

Adam loves Boingo. Always has. I'm sitting here listening to "Dead Man's Party" thinking that I am the hugest asshole known to man. 

Some annoying, condescending internet lines

"I don't think (insert word here) is what you think it is."

"There, I fixed it."

I'm sure I'll think of more. I'm just sick of the bullshit pretention I see online, now and always. 

Grateful Dead, "Touch of Grey"

 It must be getting early, clocks are running late

Paint-by-number morning sky looks so phony
Dawn is breaking everywhere, light a candle, curse the glare
Draw the curtains, I don't care 'cause it's alright

I will get by
I will get by
I will get by
I will survive

I see you've got your list out, say your piece and get out
Guess I get the gist of it, but it's alright
Sorry that you feel that way, the only thing there is to say
Every silver lining's got a touch of grey

I will get by
I will get by
I will get by
I will survive

It's a lesson to me
The Ables and the Bakers and the C's
The ABC's we all must face
Try to keep a little grace

It's a lesson to me
The Deltas and the East and the Freeze
The ABC's we all think of
And try to wean a little love

I know the rent is in arrears, the dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears, but it's alright
Cow is giving kerosene, kid can't read at seventeen
The words he knows are all obscene, but it's alright

I will get by
I will get by
I will get by
I will survive

The shoe is on the hand it fits, there's really nothing much to it
Whistle through your teeth and spit 'cause it's alright
Oh well, a touch of grey kinda suits you anyway
And that was all I had to say and it's alright

I will get by
I will get by
I will get by
I will survive

We will get by
We will get by
We will get by
We will survive

We will get by
We will get by
We will get by

Gil Fronsdal on letting go

So how to let go? To let go without aversion, without insistence, without expectation to be successful even, to do it with an open hand, an open heart, an open mind, to do it calmly, to not be in a hurry, to offer something up, and then, after you've let go, take a moment to appreciate the goodness or the rightness or the feelings of uplift that come with letting go. Don't just let go and rush off to the next moment to whatever you're going to feel or do.

Tears

Jack and Maizie's doggie brother has bone cancer. Of course now I'm going to be wonked all day. I love those fuckers. 

Simon and Garfunkel, "The Sound of Silence"

 Hello darkness, my old friend

I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools" said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

Within the sound of silence