Brings me back to the Czech Republic

Buddies

 

2018

 

Today's writing

I had a headache on our third evening there. Ross wanted to take a walk. I lay on the tatami mat, waving him away. He forgot his phone – I couldn’t track him. I couldn’t reach him. There was no reaching him, no knowing when he would return.

Minutes were glacial, seconds agonizing. What was he doing and who was he doing it with? And why didn’t I trust him? Why?

I don’t know how long it took for him to come back. I’d ducked and dived in and out of sleep, trying to flee the pain of body and mind. While awake I longed to be unconscious; in dreams I clawed my way out of slumber.

When he walked in, I was mostly out. I heard his feet on the landing, the key in the door. He looked so fucking happy to see me that I had no other choice but to spring.

Honey, I broke the dog

 

Propranolol, first day

You take it for anxiety. I think I feel something but am not sure. I'm so accustomed to the anxiety. Maybe it just lives in my head. 

Does this make any damn sense?

That’s not the concern in St. Louis. Tornados are the thing there. A while back they had a series rip through and now you can drive down the street to the tune of torn-up houses that have sat for years without repair. Punched-down roofs, kicked-in doors. It’s like God decided that the Gateway to the West had been a bad boy and needed some hands-on divine discipline. Lilith grew up to the tune of the sirens, that wailing wind, but never got used to them. That was easily half the reason she left – she couldn’t take the idea of the already half-destroyed city being chipped away around her. Sometimes you leave what you love because seeing it decimated hurts your heart, your being. You would rather be without it than let it be without itself.

Yoshi

 

From last night

 

I'm in CanvasRebel!

It's here!

From CONFLAGRATION

Lilith’s little cabin isn’t exactly swank: stained carpet, chipped tiles. Still, she’s made the most of what she has. She is, apparently, the kind of person who can toss a blanket and some peacock feathers around and give birth to style. The place is a tiny junior one-bedroom, but isn’t that enough for someone who is –

 

“Nineteen,” she says when I ask. “Twenty in December.”

 

Jesus Christ. I feel a little sick. Why don’t I just put on a trenchcoat and go to perv school? I mean, she’s legal and all, but how could I think that a young girl like this would want some sort of weird romantic entanglement with a middle-aged couple? How could I think that, indeed?

I miss my Baba

 

Writing versus editing

I've spent a few months editing and now I'm writing. It's shifting into an entirely different gear. Writing comes far more easily to me and yet it's hard to get there. Ya know?

2015

 

This Wednesday -- Berkeley Library, North Branch

 Author event, baby! 

From Facebook

I drive listening to Tori Amos, "Silent All These Years." Singing it, really belting it out. I listened to this in college, warming up my faulty car in the narrow parking lot behind my apartment, shifting gears from first to reverse and first again, gunning it, hoping it would work for once. Fog burns off the slopes of the hills. The female GPS voice on my phone robots off the directions.

"I hear my voice -- I hear my voice -- I hear my voice and it's been here: silent all these years."

Babies in 2013

 

From the Young Adult novel

I tried to look beyond his grin, his dimple, his teeth that just seemed bigger and whiter than ever before, to get a glimpse of the truth. What I found was – nothing. It was like scratching the surface and finding even more surface. You could dig down to the core of the earth that way, excavating with a spoon until you reached red-hot molten lava. But by then it was too late. You were already burned.

Home with the Yoshinator

 

Indigo Girls, "Galileo"

I'm not making a joke
You know me I take everything so seriously
If we wait for the time 'til all souls get it right
Then at least I know there'll be no nuclear annihilation in my life time
I'm still not right

What I look like when very happy

 

With my baby in 2015

In silence, the space

Residences are very quiet. This is by design. The signs around here say WRITERS AT WORK! And we are. Right now I have a YouTube mix on, playing very quietly, and I can hear the sounds of squirrels rustling through the leaves and cars passing. 

The idea is to get the sound of your own head. It's starting to take effect.

Writing, the lonely pursuit

I forgot that I would get anxious at these residences, that the wealth of time and paucity of structure would make the day yawn away. Especially at MacDowell, where the town of Peterborough lay down a daunting hill and isolation sat atop. 

But that was a decade ago. I've learned the value of time and attention. I'm getting the most I can out of this week.

Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow

 

Tulsa

I'm here on my way to Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow. I'm staying in this crazy AirBnb and right now am at an amazing coffeeshop (Berkeley, take note: you don't have anything like this) right next to the 24-7 dispensary. Dang.

Screw the ball, give me kisses!

 

Altar

 

Goons

 

I miss my babies

Yosh is a great dog, but he's still new. He's learning himself; we're still learning each other. It's a process.

This morning I'm flashing back to Maizie. She died in Adam's arms. He rushed her to PETS Referral in Berkeley. Carried her to the door. I think we've lost her. Texted me. They're looking for a heartbeat. Then a minute later: She's gone. 

She went on her own terms, that girl. My heart dog, my baby. Jack, my soul doggie. How do you ever get over it?

The world's laziest puppy

 

I'm ready

When I wrote the memoir, I was ready to go deep. I've been resting on my laurels since then for the most part.

Time to dive down again. 

When my babies were Yosh's age

  

Jaws

 

Toad the Wet Sprocket, "I Will Not Take These Things for Granted"

 One part of me just wants to tell you everything

One part just needs the quiet
And if I'm lonely here, I'm lonely here
And on the telephone, you offer reassurance

I will not take these things for granted
I will not take these things

How can I hold the part of me that only you can carry?
It needs a strength I haven't found
But if it's frightening, I'll bear the cold
And on the telephone, you offer warm asylum

I'm listening, flowers in the garden
Laughter in the hall, children in the park

I will not take these things for granted
I will not take these things for granted
I will not take these things for granted
I will not take these things anymore

To crawl inside the wire and feel something near me
To feel this accepting
That it is lonely here, but not alone
And on the telephone, you offer visions dancing

I'm listening, music in the bedroom
Laughter in the hall, dive into the ocean
Singing by the fire, running through the forest
Standing in the wind, the rolling canyons

I will not take these things for granted
I will not take these things for granted
I will not take these things for granted
I will not take these things anymore

I will not take these things for granted (flowers in the garden)
I will not take these things for granted (laughter in the hall)
I will not take these things for granted (a child in the park)
I will not take these things for granted (dive into the ocean)
I will not take these things for granted (singing by the fire)
I will not take these things for granted (the rolling canyons)

Second grade

 

Yoshi

The newest addition to our family, courtesy of Berkeley Humane. He's a 3-month-old hound mix and currently snoozing on our floor. 

2014

 

How it happened

I may be ready to write publicly about this. Maizie woke up early Saturday morning and we could tell she was in distress. We agreed that we would wait until Baz got up, then take her to the emergency vet. We knew we would likely have to put her to sleep.

But Little Miss had other ideas.

She died in Adam's arms, right after I kissed her. He took her to the vet. They looked for a heartbeat. There was none. I already knew there wouldn't be. 

She was thirteen years, two months, and six days old.

I miss these faces

 

My baby

Maizie died at home yesterday. It was peaceful and loving. We are broken.

Maizie

My little girl is getting older. She's having a hard time walking without falling. She's very picky when it comes to eating. God, I love her so much.

Wake me up when September ends, will you?

It's still not real

I wake up every morning and it hits me. Did I expect her to never die?

I did. Yes, I did.

My mom at her Sweet Sixteen

 

At CoRo Cafe

Watching people coding, reading, surfing Facebook. I don't know how to work through the grief right now.

I miss my mom

It's her birthday today. I can't believe I've crossed into the territory of having lost my mom. I know it will get easier, but for right now it sucks.

From Facebook

Landa, you were dealt one of the most difficult hands of cards to play in the history of American high school and came out of it swinging like Voltron. I'm proud to call you a colleague and a friend, and I'd have your back in a zombie apocalypse to my last round of ammo.

Mom Death Poem No. 4

Action, you told me, is the antidote to anxiety. Nice alliteration, I said, ignoring its meaning. Later I found out there is wisdom under just about any rock if you know how to turn it over correctly. But your calls to my house spurred more anxiety than action. They put me in the fetal position, dotted my palms with sweat. I always worried that what has happened would happen: something could go wrong, you could be sick or – God forbid – dying. Today you are dying and you say nothing to me because you are basically in a coma, catatonic, can’t talk. How’s that for alliteration? I think, bending over you, playing John Denver on my phone. You used to hold me while this song spun itself out on the record player: Thank God I’m a country boy! Yee-ah! In the movies this would wake you up and you would tell me something else profound before ducking back into the Great Darkness. This is not the movies.

My mom died yesterday

Anything else you want to know? 

So true

One of my students wrote this to me:

Grief is a two-faced bitch that shows up at your doorstep when you're in the middle of dinner, pulls up a chair, and overstays her welcome.  

Smart woman. It's so true. I'm with my mother right now. She's gone. She's 97 percent gone. There's so little left, even of her body. It's eating itself alive. She's dying from complications of dementia. I haven't talked about it because what was there to talk about? Why did I want to tell you?

Why did I want to tell myself?

Jesus Christ

My mother is dying. I'm in San Diego, trying to deal with it. We've known this has been going on for a while, but didn't expect things to decline as they have. Also, I have a pinched nerve in my leg and Maizie likely has cancer.

And how are you?

Bon Jovi, "Let it Rock"

I saw Roxy on the table
Her girlfriend down below
They'll give it up to the king of swing
Before it's time to go

Pain

In childbirth, one of the nurses explained to me how to work with the pain, timing pushes along with contractions. I'm learning this is true to a degree with a pinched nerve, though I won't end up with a cute little six-pound bundle. 

Pinched nerve

I've been in agony for two days. I have a pinched nerve in my right leg. It's fucking killing me. I mean, it's not unusual for me to be up at this hour typing away, but not for this reason. Healing thoughts, please. 

Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Nightingale Song"

Little ever changes
If anything at all
Just remind ourselves
How small we are

A visual

 

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Nothing compared to her

I liked Sinead O'Connor. I like her. Her death today didn't shock me, but it did sadden me. My favorite song lyrics come from her: I will live by my own policies/I will sleep with a clear conscience/I will sleep in peace. I was just thinking about Robin Williams yesterday, about suicide and how it comes from people you might see as happy. Sinead was not like that, but he was.

Damn shame. RIP.

Beast Crawl

It's over now, but I like this graphic from my reading with the SF Institute of Creative Writing.

Where did summer go?

Baz starts school on Aug. 16. How did that happen? He has one more week of day camp on the heels of Krem, and then two weeks with us before school starts. We're going to enjoy it as much as possible!

Indigo Girls, "Shame on You"

My friend Tanner she says, "You know

Me and Jesus we're of the same heart
The only thing that keeps us distant
Is that I keep fuckin' up"

The concert ended with this song

 Appropriate.

Lucky 13

Oh, and we went to The Pub too! Seven bars!

Our week

Baz went to Camp Krem on Sunday. We dropped him off in 110-degree temperatures and drove away with excitement, but also a little bit of mixed feelings. 

Since then we've been to six bars -- The Hideout in Mariposa, Lucky 13 in Alameda, Eli's Mile High Club in Oakland, Zeitgeist in the Mission, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem in the Mission, and Last Rites in Duboce Triangle -- and the Toad the Wet Sprocket concert last night, which was so special to me. I came of age as a college student listening to them in Santa Barbara, their hometown. 

Most importantly, we've had amazing conversations and a great time together, underscoring the decision we made in 2008 to braid our lives together. And Baz has done great at camp. I feel so lucky. 

And I can't wait to see my baby when he comes home today!

Toad the Wet Sprocket, HopMonk Novato, July 19.

Look at that Cartman grin!

The Beatles, "Don't Let Me Down"

It's the love that lasts forever
It's the love that has no past

A year

My doggie Jack left us a year ago today: July 14, 2022. I will always miss his beautiful face, incredible sense of humor, and love for everything and everyone. I love you, Baba.

RIP Milan Kundera

Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love. - The Unbearable Lightness of Being

From CONFLAGRATION

He putters into the bedroom and a minute later I hear the water running. Ross takes long-ass showers. I don’t know what for. He’s got like an inch of hair, an on-the-smaller-side body. How long does it take to wash it all? Then again, maybe that’s his way of doing what I’m about to do: relax. Maybe it’s less about need and more about desire, about wanting to remain under that steaming water, needing to tip his face up to the spray. The politics of forgetting, the persistence of memory. Let him have his space.

After a sleepless night

I arise to find that I don't give a fuck what people think. I mean, that's not totally true. But I'd wager it's truer than me than most. 

MacDowell fellers and their new books

And whaddya ya know, I'm one of them.

The collection of the James Baldwin Library at MacDowell grows with new works supported by MacDowell residencies!

Plus, each new book, album, score, and original artwork in the library comes as a gift from a MacDowell Fellow! https://t.co/UyRlBFvn1F pic.twitter.com/LXaHSHuyo0

— MacDowell (@MacDowell1907) June 28, 2023

Moving

I've been trying to find a half-ass decent place for us within the permutations of what we've got going: a dog, a kid, the need to stay in Berkeley for said kid's education, a budget. It's a giant pain in the ass. The only places around here, it seems, are 500-square-foot two-bedroom apartments that are tiny and cramped. Man, am I sick of this shit.

Today's revised paragraph

We proceed as a family, three now, a triangle rather than a square. Death is a shape-shifter. They don’t tell you that, whoever they are. Our square felt cozy, homey, even as it was fragmented and jagged. Our triangle feels more tentative and broken. It’s the new normal. You’ll get used to it. Take it day by day.

Today's writing

What we don’t know is that something lies in wait. Something bigger than all of us combined. Something chemical and reactionary. Heat and light, ignition and flame. Nothing we can flee to extinguish. Something trained to teach surrender. 

MacDuff's Pub, Tahoe, 2011

 

I miss you, Mr. Baba

 

Pieces of a morning

• Awesome white-girl meditation
• Coffee in my Cafe Du Monte mug
• A candle called Chai.

From CONFLAGRATION

We climb out of the car, gather our bearings. It’s been a long drive. Ross takes the bags. I grab Sid’s leash. He gets up, stretches slowly. He has grown older, old. It wasn’t that I didn’t notice. I have. It’s that I didn’t want to see. I veiled my vision; I kept my attention at half-mast. I was too busy with my phone, my computer, pounding out stupid real-estate copy that never, ever changed. Meanwhile my dog was aging. And my son –

My son –

Easier to close your eyes. Easier to keep trying to pull higher themes out of a laundry list of qualities handed to you by a client, a bloodless task. You’ve climbed the ladder. The view is your reward. Rich shit like that. Sometimes my own writing makes me want to hurl all over myself. That’s not the worst feeling, though. The worst is when you just don’t give a holy good goddamn. When you’re so disconnected. When your life feels like something framed on a wall in front of you.

This morning's writing

Saint Orres doesn’t loom or hunker. It simply regards. Highway One, the Pacific Ocean, cars wending their way along the rise, brush tattooing the slope on which it sits. In California, brush is a fuck-you to the environment, a fount of fire. Yet you see it everywhere. Such is the arrogance of this state.

Missing

This face, this home. Always, always with me.

Happy Father's Day

 

Lauren Hough, "Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing"

The fundamental misunderstanding of depression is the idea that the suicidal want to die. I didn't want to die. But some misfire in my brain treats existential pain like a dog reacts to vomiting: Fuck it, I'm gonna dig a hole to die in. Even on a good day, my brain will point out a few easy ways out: Take a hard left in front of that truck. It'll be over before you feel it. But when it's dark, when I'm hopeless, I'm just white-knuckling my way through the nights for no reason but instinct. 

Revised paragraph

Jenner is a beautiful wide spot in the road held softly by the Russian River and Pacific Ocean. A sign tells us the population is 136. There’s a perceptible shift when we hit town limits. The air here is cleaner, the environment quieter. There’s a certain slowness here, a pace endemic to small towns that fail to exceed 150 souls.

We're seeing them in July

 

Thank God I'm a Country Boy

 

2016

 

100 percent

 

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Kettle set to boil

Marcus has lately been comparing me to water just about to boil. When I was bitching about needing sleep the other day, he said: "Even boiling water settles down to simmer, Toots." (Or something of that ilk. Yes, we call each other Toots.) 

It's an apt metaphor. 

Lafayette Reservoir

 

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Go A's -- in 2015!

 

So true.

So. True. 

I'd like to thank those who hurt me

 Seriously. You sons of bitches gave me reason to go on, purpose to push past the pain. Thanks, assholes. 

Open House

 

Family Secrets trailer

It's here. I'm in the beginning. 

Pixar!

 

Dan Hoyle's performance class

I'm doing it this time around. From what I'm writing:

I move to kiss Baz goodbye, but he’s already gone and following instructions. “Well,” I say, “I’m going to slip out before he gets back.” She smiles in response, but there is no need for me to hide my departure. He loves it here. He doesn’t care that I’m leaving. He’s never had separation anxiety. If that’s such a good thing, why does it hurt so much?

Today's writing

It wasn’t as though I’m saying Jax and Sid were always tight. That would be a little too perfect, too punchy, too much of a love story. It also wouldn’t be the truth.

Sid was always the perfect dog for a boy, but Jax not often the perfect boy for that dog. In his slobbery, panting way, Sid needs, wants love. This pissed Jax off. I wish I could say I didn’t understand why, but the fact is that I know: he just didn’t want to give the energy, the time, the space, the attention. What he gave to others took away from him.

I know this because I am the same way.

 

Dreams

I dreamt last night that Adam asked for a divorce. I woke up terrified and so relieved it wasn't real. I asked him about it and he said: "You're not going to have that dream fulfilled."

Thing is, I bring up divorce when I'm pissed. I bring it up far more than I should. This really makes me rethink that little tactic. 

Anxiety

Things feel messy and incomplete. The revision is challenging at the very least. Time to unplug for a while. 

WordSpace residency

I'm in San Francisco trying to write. Or, rather, attempting to revise. Revision is a bitch or, rather, I am revision's bitch. It's so hard for me to look at a completed manuscript and figure out where to from here. It's easier to rewrite the goddamned thing. I feel so stuck right now.

Here's my first paragraph:

Sid changes just when I’m beginning to heal. I keep telling myself that it’s no big deal, just the aging process, but I’ve trained myself for too long to look for the little signs. Personality, behavior, habits – all shifting away from the dog I’ve always known.

Where to from here? Who knows?

Tonight

 

Hot child in the city

Hot day in the East Bay. It's a whirlwind here, really, and I'm writing during a break in my writing support group to express that. I don't even know what I'm writing or what I'm saying, only that I'm enjoying writing it. I've been revising, and it hasn't been fun in the least. I miss the writing process. But it's all a part of it. Right? Of course right, as they say in Fiddler.

2019

 

Tahoe

 

Three years ago

 

Today's writing

Jax smelled like himself. He breathed in in that Jax-way, almost a huff. A person is a person and they are their own being, regardless of whether you see them that way or not. It’s tempting to look at a herd of kids and think that they’re all the same, but they’re not. They all have their own quirks, their own ways. That’s how you recognize your own kid – you know how they run, how they cry, and yes, how they breathe.

 

“Babe,” I said, a litmus test. He hated that nickname.

 

But this morning he just leaned a little further into me. My eyebrows raised with surprise. I put my arm around him.

 

“Babe,” I said, “are you okay?”

 

“I don’t know,” he said. “I feel – weird.”

 

When I look back on that moment I think of one word: depression. It was in him that day and part of me recognized it, even though I didn’t want to admit or accept it. I could feel it. I could almost smell and taste it. When you give birth to someone, you’re linked. Whether you never speak to them again or you’re best friends for life or (probably) somewhere along the spectrum, that thread exists. Could be golden, could be burned, but it will never be cut.

 

Today's writing

Let’s cut to the chase: of course we found him. He’d gone to the café down the street, French Hotel, before it changed its name to something incomprehensible. We were just going down Shattuck asking various business owners if they’d seen a little boy, and the guys at French Hotel had. They’d set him up with a cookie and a hot chocolate and had just – as we walked in the door – found his phone number in his backpack.

 

“We were going to call you!” the guy at the counter crowed when we came in. “But you got here first!”

 

The hugs. Oh, the hugs. And still I was hyperventilating. I didn’t stop when we got back to the car. I didn’t stop on the drive home. I only stopped when we were safely behind our own front door.

 

And isn’t that the irony? Because in the end, that’s where it happened. In the supposed safety and security of his own bedroom. Instead, that’s what he planned within those walls. Right there in that small square of life. Planned and executed.

 

While I’m at it, I’m going to tell you the worst thought I’ve had through this whole thing: At least he didn’t go shoot up a school.

 

God forgive me.

We looked good pregnant

 

WordSpace residency

 

In my defense, I was stoned

But I kind of like this Facebook status:

Tonight I realized that Baz was sent to me. Divine intervention, you could call it. A message from beyond, sure. The heavens sighed, and a son was born.

All rea