Remember my name

 

I can catch the moon in my hands 

Don't you know who I am?

 

This is for those who believed in me

I cannot thank you enough. There are so many of you. The notes, the emails, the texts, the kicks in the ass when I was down. They made all the difference. You made all the difference.

Adam never gave up, even when I wanted to. It just takes one he said over and over. He was right.

Well, now.

I received a traditional publishing contract today for my memoir BEARDED LADY.

Oh yes I DID!

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

I will live by my own policies
I will sleep with a clear conscience
I will sleep in peace

Today's writing

But eventually we all get stung. There’s really no escaping it. My turn came on a sunny winter day where the sky’s promise was dashed by the wind. It was cold. Still, we were eating outside because we did that until we couldn’t do it anymore. We wanted to be outside. We spent enough time indoors. When it came to lunch, we wanted trees and sun, even if the former were dead and the latter a lie.

 

I was sitting on the concrete, a fourth grader with legs crossed – criss-cross applesauce, as they said – when it happened. Katherine was trying to take my Devil Dogs. “Don’t touch the merchandise,” I warned her, waving a hand in her face.

 

Then a sting in the crook of my arm. It felt like someone had opened a tiny hole in my flesh and poured in bleach. I yelped. To this day I’m not sure if I was more disturbed by the pain or the surprise. Probably both. Possibly neither. Sometimes we don’t know why we do what we do until a long way down the road, if we ever find out at all.

 

But I didn’t die. That much is obvious. For years I liked to believe this taught me that very little was so dire as to be the end, other than the end itself. A chunk of concrete to the head. A disease ripping you from the inside out. Pain so profound that it could only by ended by one’s own hand.

Take it with you

The old aphorism -- wherever you go, there you are -- is true. Right here I'm in North Beach chewing my lip over stupid trivial shit that doesn't matter now, let alone in a day or a week or a year. Can't I just escape my own bullshit and enjoy where I am? Why is that so damn hard?

A pretty picture from my walk up there because visuals count.

Ridiculous

I just teared up at an image of a woman breast-feeding. I never even breast-fed. It doesn't matter. It was that little hand wrapped around her finger, same as Baz does even today, hand in hand as we cross the street.

He won't always do that. I have to accept that. The times I push away, the times I wall off. I will never get those moments, those seconds, those fragments back. 

I am so vulnerable, so weak. 

Gerry Rafferty, "Right Down the Line"

 

You know I need your love
You've got that hold over me
Long as I've got your love
You know that I'll never leave
When I wanted you to share my life
I had no doubt in my mind
And it's been you woman
Right down the line

I know how much I lean on you
Only you can see
The changes that I've been through
Have left a mark on me
You've been as constant as a Northern Star
The brightest light that shines
It's been you, woman
Right down the line

I just want to say this is my way
Of tellin' you everything
I could never say before

Yeah this is my way of tellin' you
That every day I'm lovin' you so much more
'Cause you believed in me through my darkest night
Put somethin' better inside of me
You brought me into the light
Threw away all those crazy dreams
I put them all behind
And it was you, woman
Right down the line

I just want to say this is my way
Of tellin' you everything
I could never say before

Yeah this is my way of tellin' you
That every day I'm lovin' you so much more
If I should doubt myself
If I'm losing ground
I won't turn to someone else
They'd only let me down
When I wanted you to share my life
I had no doubt in my mind
And it's been you, woman
Right down the line

Mom win

I bought my kid light-up shoes last night.

They were $40 and worth every goddamned cent. 

Small snippet of today's writing

Then I’m hit with this brick barrier of anxiety. It walls me off from everyone and everything. It leaves me with a tiny sip of air and I’m gasping to get it into my lungs. But from my vantage point, my fishbowl, I can see. I can see everything:

 

The wood stove, muttering, burning.

 

The stains on the carpet.

 

The trees fading fast into the night.

Still, they don’t notice. I don’t know how they don’t, but they don’t. Okay, I do know. They’re wrapped in some sort of conversation, the kind that you just know leads to more.

 

What the fuck have I set into motion?

 

Their voices come to me as if through glass, muttered and molded. Weirdly, I can smell her. It’s a scent I associate with earth, with good clean dirt. It’s something base and primitive, knowing in its way. It’s a scent that nods at you, crooks a finger, says come here. 

 

In a galaxy far, far away

 

Up too damn early

I fight domesticity, but there are times I love it. Witness this picture from last November -- Adam on a conference call with Baz and Maizie at the ready.

 

These two

 

U2, "Walk On"

And love is not the easy thing
The only baggage that you can bring...
And love is not the easy thing
The only baggage you can bring
Is all that you can't leave behind

And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for a second you turn back
Oh no, be strong

Walk on, walk on
What you got they can't steal it
No, they can't even feel it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight

You're packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been
A place that has to be believed to be seen
You could have flown away
A singing bird in an open cage
Who will only fly, only fly for freedom

Walk on, walk on
What you've got they can't deny it
Can't sell it, or buy it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight

And I know it aches
And your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on
walk on

Home, hard to know what it is if you've never had one
Home, I can't say where it is but I know I'm going home
That's where the hurt is

And I know it aches
And your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on

Leave it behind
You've got to leave it behind

All that you fashion
All that you make
All that you build
All that you break
All that you measure
All that you steal
All this you feel
All that you reason
All that you care (It's only time)
And I'll never fill up all my mind
All that you sense
All that you speak
All you dress up
And all that you scheme
All you create
All that you wreck
All that you hate

Took him to Old Spaghetti Factory

And mini-golf, and the bookstore, where we got a Daniel Tiger tome and The Little Engine that Could, which he picked out himself.

Remember when

Someone told you parenthood was going to bring up all of your triggers, all of your shit, and they were right, you know that? So right. Because when you were the age your child is right now, your mother was threatening to divorce your father and dump your dog down in the canyon, because no one was going to want her. 

So much of it centered on the dog. Because I loved her. And they knew it.

Irene Cara, "Fame"

Always my jam -- now, then, forever. 

Stephen Dobyns, "How to Like It"

These are the first days of fall. The wind

at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let's tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let's pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let's dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn't been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff
people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he'll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let's just go back inside.
Let's not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing. The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept-
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.

When you get to feeling helpless

You push against what you can push against. You tackle what you can. You break it down little by little, bird by bird, because if Anne Lamott could do it, so can you.

The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night

This was the processional at my wedding. I heard it at the Palace Grill in Santa Barbara when I was pregnant and didn't know it. I'm listening to it now with my son leaning against my shoulder.

Special.

Resonance

The Gabby Petito thing gets me because of the narcissism angle and also because of the potential domestic violence involved. I grew up with that shit. I saw it happen right in front of me. My father denies it, but he can go screw. So yeah, this gets to me. 

Twue wuv

 

Trying to write, redux

Here's what I've got so far:

I could leave. I could walk away. I could flee and never look back, except I can’t because there’s Danny and he sees me. He waves like he’s a puppet with someone jerking his arm back and forth, smiles as if someone drew it in. He’s so clearly not down with this. I guess it’s one thing to make out with the help in the lobby, but another to invite her into your cabin.

Trying to write

Maybe I've been staring at screens too much lately. This is starting to get depressing. We're going to see Circus Bella with friends later today. Maybe I should pack up, get ready, peel myself away from the words for the time being. 

Memory

Four years old. Something spied through a doorway: my mother watching television. That smeary way of childhood recollection, not knowing truth from the manufactured.

What will my son remember?

 

Stephen King, "Misery"

"The gotta, as in: “I think I’ll stay up another fifteen-twenty minutes, honey, I gotta see how this chapter comes out.” Even though the guy who says it spent the day at work thinking about getting laid and knows the odds are good his wife is going to be asleep when he finally gets up to the bedroom. The gotta, as in: “I know I should be starting supper now — he’ll be mad if it’s TV dinners again — but I gotta see how this ends.” I gotta know will she live. I gotta know will he catch the shitheel who killed his father. I gotta know if she finds out her best friend’s screwing her husband. The gotta. Nasty as a hand-job in a sleazy bar, fine as a fuck from the world’s most talented call-girl. Oh boy it was bad and oh boy it was good and oh boy in the end it didn’t matter how rude it was or how crude it was because in the end it was just like the Jacksons said on that record — don’t stop til you get enough."

The creative process

I can't believe how long it took me to write these 56 words:

The moment lasts a stupid amount of time. You could tuck several lifetimes into that moment. Children and grandchildren multiplied. Birth and death in the space of a cough.

 

“Coming,” I say.

 

Then I’m in his arms and it’s not so bad, it’s not the difficulty I’d expected. It’s just – Danny. What else had I expected?

Wells Beach, Maine, 2009

 

Ridiculous

Some people have parents. I have people who think they know more than they do. Both of them have questioned Baz's autism and ADHD diagnoses. My father sees him once every few months, max. My mother? Not since he was three weeks old, and she smoked right before she held him and made sure his head was totally drooping as she did.

Fuck them.

Nadia Bolz-Weber on submission and blessing

For most of my life, when asked how I am, I would answer by referencing the last shitty thing that happened to me. But after a lifetime of seeing the glass as half fuck-you I wish now that I could tie these kinds of moments together with ribbon and don them in my greying hair. I want to make a wreath of them, a potpourri of blessings to make myself more beautiful. Because, readers, I so often have done the opposite. I so often have mined my memories for ore to fuel a coal fire of hurt.

Round House Cafe

 

Ambitions

I've been busy.

Applied to this.

And this.

And this.

And also this. 

Fingers crossed!

Hard morning

Parenthood, I've heard, is not easy. I feel like I'm so tied to Baz sometimes that if he's feeling down in any way, I'm feeling it. But he gets back up. It's a little harder for me.

What I've eked out the last few days

What do you bring to a threesome? Flowers? A houseplant? Some Trader Joe’s bourgie bullshit? Or do you just cut straight to the chase and offer up some lube? Is that the way to go? I’m really not sure. Never having experienced this before, I could use some assistance.

 

But Andy – who I’m sure has experienced this – is no help. He’s getting even more stoned, sitting cross-legged on his crappy couch, ruminating. “Dude,” I say, “can you please be focused for a single goddamned minute? Please?”

 

He blinks. Okay, it’s a start.

 

We’d agreed upon 7 p.m. That’s an hour away. I’m not sure if I want the time to crawl on its belly or rush like a coyote crossing a busy road. And what is with these fucking metaphors anyway? I’m seized by a strange urge to paint my nails. And what do you know, I have a tiny little bottle with its tiny little brush in my bag. I don’t usually carry stuff like that, but sometimes providence sits on your face.

 

Jack!

 

20 years ago

I was packing for Pardubice. I had no idea. Did anyone?

Today's writing

It’s like she’s proposing a porn movie and I’m not sure about watching it. That’s not me. That’s never been me. I like porn. I’ve always liked porn. I like the vanilla stuff; I like the nasty shit. I do draw some lines. I’m not into incest or midgets. Gay porn isn’t my thing. Hey, everyone’s got their own thing, right?

 

Lately I’ve been watching a lot of Hot Guys Fuck. It’s this gonzo porn thing, this reality porn. Two people who supposedly just met get it on. For me that’s part of the appeal, the bullshit aspect. Yeah sure they just met. Like they haven’t both been around the scene back and forth. Like somewhere in the archives there isn’t another scene with them, her hair dyed differently, him minus a tattoo or two, getting it on. Maybe they just met then, except probably not.

 

Then again, how different is it from me and Tabitha?

Writing it out

I get terrified of picking Baz up at school. Terrified of being pulled aside and told he acted in an unacceptable way. That I've done something wrong. Just plain terrified. I drive up to John Muir in a half-panic, half-survival mode sort of state. It's ridiculous. Meditate. Medicate. Just don't deal with it anymore. 

Today's writing

When she leaves, I watch Danny’s mouth. It’s moving. He’s saying something. I make myself pay attention to what it is.

 

“I guess,” he says, then takes another drink. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”

 

“I don’t know. Do you want a choice? Do you want a say? This is a flexible plan, you know. We can include you if you like.”

 

Atten-tion! At front! There’s no adequate way to describe the power rush other than addictive. A woman wronged is vindictive – didn’t Aesop say something to that effect? Maybe I’m just making the shit up. It doesn’t matter.

 

I mean, come on, man, sometimes you gotta take the wheel. Life leaves you no choice. It’s calling, screaming, at you. You just need to – as my grandfather used to say – take the shit out of your ears and listen.

 

“Well.” He takes another sip of iced tea, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, “I guess I owe you, don’t I?”

 

“Is that you see it? Some sort of obligation?”

 

Out of nowhere

Every year we go to Jewish Gateways' High Holiday services. A few years back we noticed the lovely cantor we'd enjoyed was replaced by another lovely cantor. We wondered what had happened to the original person.

She died, that's what.

No excuse not to live in the present. 

My birthday boy

Six!

Today's writing

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I say. We’re sitting at the Thai restaurant in Anchor Bay. It’s a stupid move because the fire’s bearing down from that direction. I’m surprised they’re still open. But they are, and they’re serving pad see ew with beef, and that’s Danny’s favorite, and we’re eating like nothing’s wrong, except something is. It all is.

 

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I say again, starting to clear my throat. I feel like I sound like an asshole, but I’m also feeling like I don’t really give a damn. I can sound like an asshole all I want. It’s what I do. It’s often what I am. And right now it’s very, very deserved. “She’s coming over. We’re going to make her feel welcome. We’re going to make her feel at home. We’re going to make her naked. And then I’m going to fuck her in front of you.”

Did you know that writing is hard?

Am I telling you something you already knew? Sorry. It's true. Sometimes it bears repeating. Time to stop running from my feelings around it. Time to face them. 

Frustration

The resentment I feel these days when it comes to caretaking. Every time one of the dogs whines or Baz has something he wants or needs. Every time I'm taken away from what I want to do. 

Beginnings

"When did your pandemic begin? When did something shift?"

Matthew Kozan Palevsky on "Jubilee: Exploring Radical Freedom."

Santa Rosa, 2010

 

Isla Vista, 2017

 

Stress

My kid is autistic and almost certainly has ADHD. Right now I got a call from his school: he's hitting, getting grabby, throwing things. What. The. Fuck. He's damn lucky he's not around me right now because I'd be setting his ass straight par none. 

David Foster Wallace

Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of a Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or for something important you've tried to engineer.

Email

Dear Ms. Landa,

This email confirms that you have successfully submitted your application for the Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program. Thank you for your interest in participating in our program, and for dedicating the time and effort to apply.

Your application will be considered in a two-tiered process, first by experts in relevant fields, then by a multidisciplinary selection committee. Please consult the Selection Process section of our FAQs for more information.

Although you may no longer edit your application, you can continue to log onto the application portal to track the status of your letters of recommendation. If you need to print out your application, you can log onto the application portal and click the Print Application link.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please be in touch with us at fellowships@radcliffe.harvard.edu. We will notify applicants of the results of our selection process by late March.

Tahoe seems to have been spared

I mean, we'll see, but it's looking better than it was a day or so ago. I really love that place even though I don't go there as much as I want to. And why am I rambling about Tahoe anyway?

I've decided

I'm applying to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. This will be my second time and hopefully I won't need a third.