WashWords

PLEASE GO HERE!

2008-08-07T11:41:00.002-05:00

Washwords can now be found here.

See you there!

Google and I are through

2008-03-31T18:32:00.003-05:00

No really, we're splitsville.

I mean it.

Well, okay, not google so much as blogger, which did the equivalent of slamming the door on me last night when it would not let me start my new snark vs. lark blog.

Fortunately, all is well in the universe. I hadn't gotten very far so I just moved it all over here.

And blogger, with you "please send us this error code when you write us which we won't anywhere on our web site tell you how to do..." really, it's not me, it's you.

And also, I was cheating on you!!!!

scooping away the rain

2008-03-05T20:57:00.004-05:00

Last night I watched you, literally, try to stop the rain with a small plastic bucket.

I hadn't meant to wake you, tiptoeing through the shadows: moon, water, streetlight. I traced my finger against the edge of the bathroom window - it was too fogged up to see, just hear: water against black tar, my pink toenails against the tile.

Back in your room, I could hear it coming harder now, great gusts carrying leafy twigs, water, earth.

I had to see.

I went to the window and you heard the water, too; but didn't hear the rhythmic drumming or the pattering poems, just the flooding basement. "Guess, I'll start digging" you said, sliding on jeans and coat and rubber boots.

I could only watch, meekly ask if I could help, knowing you'd say no. I offered tea, warm blankets, to don boots and buckets with you, but you said no.

So instead I climbed back up the wooden staircase to the bedroom, blue draping your walls and windows and opened the curtains, lifted the window. It was 60 degrees, rain coming straight down and I watched you take that little bucket back and forth and back, shining the yellow light ahead of you then up the window at me.

I waved but didn't break the plane of quiet, of blue. You didn't either. I let the curtain go and turned out the bedside lamp, so when you came inside it would be warm instead.

talk about settling

2008-03-04T00:27:00.003-05:00

Why should women settle for Mr. Right Enough? -- Newsday.com

BY MEGHAN DAUM | Los Angeles Times, March 3, 2008

...by all means, if you're truly listening to yourself rather than buying society's relentless parenthood sales pitch, have a child, find a mate or both. But when it comes to Gottlieb's case for "settling" at all costs, I can't help but wonder if what's missing from the prototypical unhappy single woman's life isn't a man or a baby but an imagination.
There are infinite ways to define a fulfilling life. Why enshrine the one whose accompanying illustration shows a marriage certificate and a baby stroller? Talk about settling.

Wikipedia

2008-03-03T22:12:00.002-05:00

I dreamt last night that my niece (6 mos.) said her first word:

"Wikipedia!"

Wikipedia, baby?" I asked in the dream.

My sister, her mom, scolded me: "Don't say that! She'll think she made a mistake and she'll be afraid to say it next time!"

It made perfect sense.

I don't want to open my heart

2008-03-03T21:25:00.008-05:00

*B* tells me she can't have a baby.

B, the friend who spread out a blanket with me in the wet bluegreen grass outside our dorm room so we could have a slumber party under the stars (while our suitemates went clubbing). B, who when I broached the unspeakable ... "divorce", asked me earnestly, warmly "so what if you do?" allowing me to be okay in the eyes of at least one human.

Other friends said my voice changed whenever I talked to B. We'd listen to jazz in the dark or eat cheese and grapes or go for snowy walks. We'd joke that it was too bad we weren't attracted to women - marrying each other would be so much simpler. But in truth, I was glad we weren't; asexually,we were able to love each other so much more - more purely, more authentically.

So when she writes me out of the blue that she is hurting and fearful and ashamed, I tell her what I know to be true: that God is not punishing her, that as she so often told me that God has a plan, for her precious gifts too.

And B, my pastor friend, spiritual counselor, doctor of theology, asked why it was that at her Christian college and Christian world the only spiritual guidance she got was from me, her Jewish friend, her soulmate.

I tell her I wish I could have a baby for her, because suddenly, surpisingly, I am just not sure I want a baby of my own.

She says her acupuncturist gave her a CD called "open your heart to a new life"

"And," says B "I realized I wasn't sure I wanted to open my heart to a new life."

I say I understand. I do.

Orwell: Politics and the English Language

2008-03-03T00:05:00.000-05:00

Orwell: Politics and the English Language:
a classic!

"Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible."

In Pictures: The World's 25 Dirtiest Cities

2008-03-02T22:37:00.001-05:00

A tragic but compelling way to see how bad conditions are in so many areas of the world today.

read more | digg story

The Year 2000, according to LHJ 1900

2008-03-02T19:29:00.001-05:00

Fascinating article from the Ladies Home Journal in 1900 reporting on what they believed to be the big changes ahead for the 100 years to follow for mankind. Man, they were all over those pneumatic tubes!

read more | digg story

from music to ethics

2008-03-02T14:43:00.004-05:00

from ejazznews.com (March 2, 2008)
Israeli jazz saxophonist Gilad Atzmon's essay on "The Primacy of the Ear"

Rather often I face the same question when interviewed by Arab media outlets: "Gilad, how is it that you observe that which so many Israelis fail to see?" Indeed, not many Israelis interpret the Israeli ethical failure as an inherent symptom. For many years I didn't have any answer to offer.

However, recently I realised that it must have something to do with my Saxophone. It is music that has shaped my views of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and formed my criticism of Jewish identity. Today I will talk about the road from music to ethics.

"an artistic icebreaker"

2008-03-02T14:26:00.001-05:00

from: The spirits behind the writers - Los Angeles Times:
"The spirits behind the writers Understanding the great scribes' fondness for alcohol"
By Joseph Tartakovsky
February 27, 2008 - LA Times www.latimes.com

Horace reports that the 5th century Athenian poet Cratinus, in a light-hearted defense of his famed intemperance, declared, 'No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by water drinkers.' Cratinus wasn't entirely kidding: Legend says he died of grief upon seeing a full cask of wine break into pieces. And writers of subsequent ages have taken his sentiment to heart. Wherever you find the pen-and-ink set, drink is an emblem of vivacity and wit, at times regarded with semireligious reverence."
....
Drink rarely causes a writer to underestimate his talents. And tippling is a handy excuse: Inspired writing produced under the influence is still inspired. But you wrote a tissue of nonsense? Well, one overindulges.

writing the truth

2008-03-01T21:57:00.004-05:00

f rom: Story untangles distorted memories and reveals truths

by jerry wexler
memorywritersnetwork.com

During one fateful day in ninth grade, I discreetly positioned a science fiction book on my desk and was reading it while the English teacher droned on. I was so absorbed in the exploration of the galaxy that Mr. Disharoon walked up behind me, caught me red handed and confiscated the book.

I always assumed the ‘C’ I received in that class, my only ‘C’ in high school, was based more on revenge than poor performance....

Now that I write about that incident, I look deeper, and I immediately see flaws in my original version. For one thing, I was the one who was breaking the rules, and he was doing his job by enforcing them. It would be self-serving of me to forgive myself for the crime, while blaming him for the punishment. I shift to his point of view. Through his eyes I see a bratty kid who doesn’t seem interested in learning.

....How could I have been so far off the mark? I look for evidence to prove Mr. Disharoon was a spiteful man, but I can’t find any.

All of these lessons about myself come from the simple act of trying to tell a proper story. When I tried writing it in the form it has always presented itself in my mind, it didn’t sound right. To turn it into a readable story I had to strip away the layers of self-righteousness and expose the actual events. In the process, I feel lighter. I’ve released my load of blame and I learned more about the events that shaped me.

this i believe (i): people can heal

2008-03-01T21:36:00.003-05:00

this i believe: people can heal.

things and people and life can hurt. intentionally or not.

but people can heal.

happiness, ultimately, is at least part choice, even (especially) when it does not feel like it. And it's so much easier to choose happy.

Lopate describes essaying

2008-03-01T21:27:00.001-05:00

To Philip Lopate’s mind, honesty is of prime importance in essays, but it’s not easy to achieve. “We fool ourselves so easily,” he said. “I try to be honest, but I’m always aware of a tendency to rationalize, to put myself in the best light, so that has to be guarded against, as does self-righteousness, defensiveness, and so on. But it’s inevitable; I don’t think you can ever cure yourself of it. The hardest thing to do is to accurately assess your strengths as well as your weaknesses. It’s distorting to pretend that you’re totally inept if you’re not, so you have to somehow tip off the reader to your assets as well as your liabilities without seeming to be bragging. It’s a curiosity about yourself, not smugness and not self-dislike.”"

Though he receives the most recognition for his personal essays, Lopate found that his experience with fiction, poetry, and film writing proved invaluable to the formation of his essayistic voice. “The heroic forms are fiction and poetry, and I first wanted to be a fiction writer; I don’t think many adolescents fantasize about becoming essayists. I wrote stories and novels, and then my life got very complicated and difficult and I began writing poetry. After several years, I came at last to the personal essay, which seemed to be a way of combining poetry and fiction, to take from poetry that associate leaping quality and not have to build the arc quite so much the way you do in a short story, but to still have a through line, a kind of plot....

I found that I had written a kind of unconscious collection of personal essays, which I only realized when I began to read the great masters of the essay form, like Hazlitt and Montaigne. It may be unfair of me to say this, but it’s a form that young people are not as well-equipped for because it requires a certain amount of experience and reflection. This was a form that had been lying in wait for me all my life.”

from:
Getting Personal with Phillip Lopate By Colin Marshall
www.independent.com Thursday, February 21, 2008

Netscape Navigator's Last Day: A Haiku

2008-02-29T14:20:00.000-05:00

Netscape Navigator's Last Day: A Haiku

remember netscape?

Is there paxil for this?

2008-02-29T14:19:00.001-05:00

the scary new world that is...

Social (Media) Anxiety Disorder - Media Bullseye

gripes (do you have to be from maine?)

2008-02-26T21:36:00.005-05:00

Is there something that really irks you?

Please keep your gripe to under 60 words.

--SunJournal.com - What's your gripe?

Over

2008-02-26T19:17:00.009-05:00

I get to the starbucks where we're supposed to meet.

The one you sent me copied from the web page. the one that's south of the metro but north of the circle., not north of the metro and south of the circle. It's 5:58. I'm right on time.

I hope you're there first. I look for you ahead of me, behind me on the long escalator up and down the rainy sidewalks, through the glass windows of the starbucks, but you're not there. I pull the door and it's locked.

I push you to tell me so you do.

"Well, I'm engaged."

I nod and say congratulations and that I'm glad for you, I really am.

Should I ask about her, the wedding, the plans? Is she like me? Do you ever by accident speak "our language" to her? Do you miss me? Did we make a mistake getting married? Getting divorced? Do you know that I'm sorry?

I ask a few polite questions instead of any of these. I suggest ways she can get to work... then wonder aloud why I am planning my ex-husband's fiance's commute.

No one takes our order. You say maybe it wasn't meant to be and that you had a headache anyway, so we step outside. I say we could walk around the block. You say you'd better go.

We hug and I say goodbye and use your name because it is a Big Moment.

I don't turn back. I go straight home, taking deep breaths, wiping my eyes.

I open the door.

I am home.

The place of pain

2008-02-22T18:06:00.000-05:00

The miracle of melancholia - Los Angeles Times:

"does the American addiction to happiness make any sense, especially in light of the poverty, ecological disaster and war that now haunt the globe, daily annihilating hundreds if not thousands? Isn't it, in fact, a recipe for delusion?

And aren't we merely trying to slice away what is most probably an essential part of our hearts, that part that can reconcile us to facts, no matter how harsh, and that also can inspire us to imagine new and more creative ways to engage with the world? Bereft of this integral element of our selves, we settle for a status quo. We yearn for comfort at any cost. We covet a good night's sleep. We trade fortitude for blandness."

-- Eric G. Wilson is a professor of English at Wake Forest University and author of "Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy." (as published in the LA Times, 2-17-2008)

What is the place of pain in creativity, in functioning, in contributing? It is something I think about fairly often, as someone who struggles with pain, but also with self-pity. Which is which? How do I feel the deepest truest feelings, often the ones that aren't pretty or fun, without trivializing the pain of others, the more serious real issues in the world? How do I give place to the true questions and aches from which great ideas could spring, without dwelling and sinking into that dark place?

And, when the light does come forth and happier days beckon, how do I honor those times too - the ones that don't stab or prick and therefore sometimes don't seem worthy of mention.

****

Jealous through jalousies

2008-02-22T17:55:00.000-05:00

Alain Robbe-Grillet - Telegraph

The book is set in a colonial house on a Caribbean banana plantation and engages in a quasi-scientific inspection of human observation. The world is seen from the distorted, obsessionally detailed perspective of a jealous husband spying on his wife through slatted shutters (punningly, jalousies in French).

from Telegraph.co.uk on "Jealousy," the 1957 novel by post-war French writer/director Alain Robbe Grillet (died, Feb. 18, 2008)

***

Your life story in six words

2008-02-22T16:25:00.001-05:00

Ink: Say It All in Six Words: The Talk of the Town: The New Yorker

"Brevity: a good thing in writing. Exploited by texters, gossip columnists, haikuists. Not associated with the biography genre. But then—why shouldn’t it be? Life expectancies rise; attention spans shrink. Six words can tell a story. That’s a new book’s premise, anyway. “Not Quite What I Was Planning.” A compilation of teeny tiny memoirs. The forebear, it’s assumed, is Hemingway. (Legend: he wrote a miniature masterpiece. “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Slightly sappy, but a decent sixer.)" from the New Yorker online 2/25/08

Girl writes, grows, wonders; heals again.

Your turn....

What facebooks tells insurers

2008-02-22T13:42:00.001-05:00

Why Health Insurers Want to Read your Facebook Page — FiLife

Becoming geekily obsessed with facebook, twitter and all newmedia/social marketing etc. mad, mad, world.

Barack = West Wing's Santos?

2008-02-21T21:15:00.001-05:00

NPR: Barack Obama Was Model for West Wing's Santos

if only we knew who was bartlett.... oh wait. we do. :)

***

Am I not a woman?

2008-02-21T20:26:00.002-05:00

Persephone Speaks: So You Have a Problem with Men?

from a great writer, Tayari Jones, whose class I should have taken when when was at GWU last year. ah well... interesting food for though. Today, I'm just trying to decide - am i the girl that likes american idol and facebook or the woman who is a senior editor or a writer or...

IM - Part I

2007-02-07T17:30:00.005-05:00

On instant messenger, I ask my sister, “What’s the name of the birth control pill we both didn’t like?”
“Why?” she asks. “So you can not be on it again?”
“Exactly. So what one do you take now?”

We talk like that. One long conversation rolling over minutes into years, from yahoo to hotmail to google chat. We trade momisms. We trade stories of where each of us are. I tell her about my dating life -- the guy who rated me over dinner, the guy who told me he was time-sharing a cow - should I give them a second chance? She tells me about her husband’s nemesis, the rival E-bayer who always seems to snag the best historical sailing publications a second after my brother-in-law bids.

We detail the annoying people we see on the train, in the office, everywhere. We don't need to describe them much - we can simply say "mega" - our own shorthand developed years ago for those who are mega-annoying, mega-jerks, and all other manner of mega-bad.

It didn’t always used to be like this. Not until IM.

For the complete text of this personal essay, to publish or broadcast it, please contact me at washwords.dc@gmail.com.

***

Not a thing like poultry

2007-01-29T01:03:00.002-05:00

from vienna, with my british tour group

Judith says, "This is curious. It looks like pork, but tastes just like poultry."

"Don't you think? Don't you think it looks just like pork?"

"No," says Chris, running her fork through the gravy. "I don't think it's a thing like pork, or poultry."

thanks

2006-08-18T01:08:00.000-05:00

the earth slipping into the sea
you into me
cotton against sand
against green
against you

Like time-sharing: cow-lease guy

2005-05-01T02:31:00.002-05:00

This was a new one. Intelliconnect. Instead of winking, you peered over your spectacles at someone of interest. This was Internet matching for the intellectually elite.
Of course, there was no IQ test, but never mind.

I arranged to meet C at Teaism, Dupont Circle.

(Teaism had been a parting gift from S. I got Teaism and his black umbrella, the one with the bended spoke that caved inward in the wind. Teaism, he always said, was a good date place, because if things worked out you could stay and have dinner or go elsewhere and if not, “welp, finish up your tea and off you go.” He would know; he was probably still going there while we were dating.)

C seemed to like the suggestion well enough. He came pulled along by a bouncy, panting springer spaniel, Boxie. We settled Boxie down, fastening him to a nearby tree and sign one occurred. He sighed, heavy-hearted; a sigh of heaving, monumental despondence. Unhappiness frightens me. It makes me smile hard, teeth blaring, which, in not too much time at all makes my jaw hurt. Badly.

“Hey,” he said, blandly. “Well, I just came from the farmer’s market, haven’t been there in years….”

And, we were off.

He talked in long rolling sighs as we approached the counter.

I always wonder about the little things – the logistics of a date. I care if people notice their surroundings, leave room in the conversation for speaking, for giving and taking.

I wonder, for example, when someone starts with a story as they approach the counter in a tea house: how will we order? When do I interrupt? When do I say “Hello, nice to meet you. My name is…”

But never mind, C was still talking as we ordered tea and carried it back to a little table. He kept talking, rolling over hills of his disappointment in the farmer’s market – something about cheese, and how it was made – to having not been to Dupont in a while and how commercial and bland my neighborhood had gotten, to hoping the person taking our tea order had understood him when he asked about the milk they served with the tea.

As we sat, he was saying, “Yeah, I actually try to stick to raw milk. I like pure foods, you know the raw foods movement. Are you involved in that at all?” His eyes sparked black just for a second and quickly back to flat again.

I tilted my head, poured my own tea, “Mmmmm?”

“Raw foods. The raw foods movement?” he carried on. “You know the idea that you only use pure, organic ingredients. And don’t treat them chemically, in any way. That’s why I was really surprised at the market that they didn’t offer raw cheese, made with un-pasteurized milk. Most places, most markets do.”

I swirled my spoon in the teacup, mulling “unpasteurized” like cider sloshing through my head.

“You know milk is better for you when it’s not pasteurized. Much better. There are lots of studies. It doesn’t have all the chemicals… but, most stores can’t sell it -- ” Here he paused to roll his eyes.

“Mmmm,” I looked, deep into my tea, unable to meet his eyes, “because of the health codes?”

“Yes, which is so ridiculous. JAMA’s done studies. Everyone has!”

I nodded.

He softened, subdued.
“It’s really… it’s just become so difficult to find. I mean even the farmer’s markets don’t seem to offer it anymore.” His lower lip poked out, the mere thought of being unable to buy milk straight from the cow’s teat to his lips, clearly wounding him to his core.

For a moment, I was disheartened, too, on his behalf. We both sat in stillness, mesmerized by spoons and teacups, silently mourning the loss of cow-to-lips milk in our world.

And though I knew I could never become a raw-milk-drinking kind of gal, for a moment I looked at him, into his saddened, hurting heart and I thought “Could I?”

After all, here was someone who cared for something, cared passionately about purity and naturalness and health. Who could be against that? And there were studies! Perhaps my impression of the advantages of modern science on food preparation and delivery was the one that was skewed. Maybe I’d feel better, lose weight, lighten my load if I lessened my exposure to chemicals myself. Could it really hurt to consider? Didn’t I say I wanted open-minded? Here was a man who wanted purity and goodness, in ways tempting in their concreteness.

Then he spoke.

“That’s why,” he said, “I’m considering renting a cow.”

I giggled. See, and he was funny, too. “Oh yeah? A cow? Like a timeshare?”

A wave of light spread speedily across his now glowing cheeks. “Yes!” he said joyously. “Exactly like time-sharing!”

He went on. Apparently, in many modern cities, cow sharing has become in vogue. Along with the cow, you get the farmer, and the labor of milking the cow, and the bottling, and preparing of your milk order. You simply go to pick it up.

There were raw foods groups, he went on to explain, where one could meet people to form such a cow-share experience. While there, recipes were traded for vegan organic delights, farming tips offered - though, truth be told, none of the members he knew really did any farming per se. There were lists circulated of stores and – e-gads – restaurants friendly to the non-pasteurized set.

He was chattering away, animatedly now. But I could only stir Moroccan Mint and pick at the salty oat cookie that I’m sure would never meet his seal of approval.

And I had to be honest.
No, I could not be with this man. Not ever.

We finished our tea. He asked if I wanted to walk with him and Boxie and I said sure. It was a beautiful day, yellow and orange-brown leaves touching the tips of sky.
And then I kept walking, feeling sad for C, and for Boxie, who seemed like a perfectly nice dog.

And , mostly, admittedly, feeling sad for me.

To read more of washwords' tales from the dating crypt, look for her pending book release.

passing trains

2005-04-15T12:51:00.002-05:00

I stand on the platform waiting for the Red line.

The old men in Washington Senators jackets make me chuckle, eyes that reveal themselves as boys. The summer sundresses, click of heels, remind me that it is not winter, that I have a garden waiting and more sunny walks to take, and friends to linger drinking margaritas and half-priced bottles of wine with.

I'm late to work and too sleepy to be too worried.

As i walk downstairs the train I need pulls away and I see blurs of colors and co-Metro-ers: high school class trippers, other late workers, baseball's-return celebrators, meeting-goers, giggling couples, k-street execs.

I take a left rather than right at the bottom of the escalator, moving away from the clusters of people that will gather in the long five minutes till the next train.

The Red Line to Shady Grove, going the opposite direction of mine, zooms past. And here is what I see: A man my age, dressed casual, alone, carrying just one object: The largest container they make of Scope Blue Mouthwash.

"So sorry...

2005-04-15T12:01:00.001-05:00

you're going through all this" you tell me. "I hope these things move out of your life soon."

As if I'm a stranger. As if you are. As if these things that have moved into my life fell from the sky like raindrops, irritating, but soon to pass.

I ponder, write and rewrite how to respond. Knowing I won't get any closures, answers, epiphanies. Knowing I should let it go, be the bigger person, move on.

But the thing is, there WAS something you could do to help. You could have told me about her. You could have not gone on the trip. You could have been "honest, honest, honest" like your profile STILL on the site reads. You could have been open to the possibility of loving me, or at least not needed adoration, admiring disciples so much.

And the question, unfaceitious, unhysterical, completely sincere remains. Why?

I hope you will tell me the rest before it hits. Like a truck. From nowhere. Again. From police reports or message archives (that turn my stomach!) or the gods at Lexis.Nexis. I expect that you won't, but I must ask all the same.

Three Sweatshirts

2005-04-04T17:09:00.001-05:00

I'm having the best day I have so far this week, cleaning up, straightening out. Onward and Upward. Other Fish in the Sea. Wasn't meant to be. I'm Doing the Right Thing.

I'm putting away new shoes, folding fresh towels to celebrate clean starts, living with just me. And then I get to the sweatshirt.

The sweatshirt. Grey and red, with its three letters, latin writing. It's two, maybe three sizes too big for me. He had it, I imagine, since he started grad school, since shortly after his son was born, nearly 10 years before I met him. We joked, him laughing, saying "Is that really even mine now? I think it belongs to you."

And when we did the final analysis, the "logistics" of our separation, he told me, "You should just keep it." I nodded, through blurry swollen eyes.

I wore it for the first time on our wondrous weeklong getaway, just weeks after meeting him He said "I know, I know, its way too soon for a trip, way too soon especially for a WEDDING trip for my friends. But if you're not there I'm just going to be missing you and thinking about you the whole time." I bought my ticket before I hung up the phone.

I had sweatshirts of my own on that trip but chose to wear his. I'm wearing it in that picture by the waterfall, with my fisherman hat and sparkling eyes. Loving that we took that plunge to do the crazy trip, loving that we made couple friends, had journeys, never ran out of excitement or energy or conversation. Loved that I was falling into loving him.

His eyes, arms wrapped tight around me, sparkle back. In his own trademark fleece. The one he asked me and every sales clerk within listening distance of the outlet malls if he could wear to his new job. The new job I got him. He deserved it and more. But I made it happen. And four days before he started there, we were over.

I press the sweatshirt to me, smelling his laundry soap on it, feeling for a moment that i could put it on, have him holding me again. On that twinkling bridge by the water fall when our eyes sparkled and possibility draped over branches.

Then I fold it up and put it on my second highest closet shelf, on top of two other grey and burgundy sweatshirts.

There's the gray one with thin burgundy stripes, just my size though I'd wished it were bigger, the one I can still picture my ex-husband wearing in college, with sweatpants or jeans, late in the newspaper office, or years later on our bed, wrapped in his brown blanket.

And the burgundy one from my MREB.* Well till now. MREB brought the sweatshirt for me to have at his mom's knowing I'd be cold and then forgot was his, packing it in a bag of socks and hairdryers and books of mine he returned some months later.

I climb the stepladder, fold it gently once more, smooth it down. Then climb down, close the door and breathe. I am not cold, for a change.

*most recent ex-boyfriend

why i have to

2005-03-23T14:08:00.001-05:00

*your hand on her thigh
*in another year I might be ready to start thinking about it
* live for the moment
* no, don't come over
* no, you can't help
* no, I can't figure that out yet
* keen.
* your hand on her thigh
* your arms around her
*the not calling
* the things are hard for ME
* the "luck" with which you found your job.
* the exclusion
* the different places - your casualness, my drama
* the way you let me love your little boy, take care of him
* the way you just don't love me

what it feels like

2005-03-22T13:48:00.001-05:00

for girls (apologies to Christina Aguilera or whoever sings that song). Besides maybe it feels like this for boys too. And of course, really I can only approximate what it felt like as a girl, so really it's as a woman that I can write about best. But I digress.

What does it feel like?

No, like I've said before, not a green-eyed monster. (See "Valentines' Day" ). It's more like the Charlie Brown raincloud hovering overhead, moving when you move, pausing when you pause, that won't be fooled no matter how you try to sidestep. But it's darker, greyer, more omnipresent. And closer overhead. And thick, oppressive - it seeps into the ground, enveloping you inside. Will not shake you free. It's panic. Fear. And complete empty but chaotic opaque space. It sucks time so that it feels like "while most people have a day, you have two or three hours" (Virgina Heffernan, "A Delicious Placebo" in Unholy Ghost, 2002, Nell Casey, ed.) Tornado-like it swirls sucking energy from you and those around you, especially the ones you love. It pushes you down. It shades everything blue-grey-black so that all the colors are distorted, and even the bright times and places look like hurtful ones. It makes smooth edges jagged and dangerous. It makes jagged edges life-threatening. It's more than hopeless. You forget hope exists. It's worse than bleak- the emptiness isn't passive - it jabs and twists.

And when it lifts, which you know it does and will though you can't ever seem to remember while enveloped, it's just as sudden, just as clear. You're stronger, more hopeful, more lifted than the best of them. And can't see the swirling twirling mess of dirt and tears and broken glass below, until you fall again. But the others can.

imaginary BF

2005-03-22T13:35:00.001-05:00

S.P.* tells me hers is named Joe. He's a kindergarten teacher who also loves animals and buys her jewelry, including the aquamarine ring I so admire. When Tiffani (AT) points out that Joe also should be the only kindergarten teacher with a six-figure income, S.P. explains that Joe is independently wealthy. "That's how's able to send his salary directly to charity." To valuable women's causes, I note. I also remind S.P. that Joe is gorgeous and very attentive and likes to spend most of his time admiring her. "Yes, and mostly he has a dog. He has to have a dog!" S.P proclaims.

Why not two I think? Imaginary dogs, like imaginary boyfriends, have lots of advantages over the real thing.

* All names (and initials!) have been changed of course. They know who they are. Well except for Joe. His name is real.

mud pie

2005-03-04T11:38:00.000-05:00

i sampled a dessert in the cafeteria today called "mudslide pie."

it sure loooked like explosive poo, as my colleagues and i have oft referred to certain work products. except it was delicious!!!

and here's what i think it was: several varieties of donuts smooshed together! there was a familiar taste and suddenly i recognized it: jelly donut! then i detected the subtle hint of glazed donut.

tasty.

Involuntarily Intoxicated

2005-02-16T10:50:00.001-05:00

"We've got 12-year-old kids, we give them pills and say, 'Here, take this,' as if they had some choice to disobey," Mr. [Andy] Vickery [a defense attorney] said. "And we know it's a mind-altering pill. What in the name of God are we doing to our children?"

from "Boy Who Took Antidepressants Is Convicted in Killings"

By SHAILA DEWAN and BARRY MEIER

New York Times, Feb. 16, 2005

The New York Times > National > Boy Who Took Antidepressant Is Convicted in Killings

Christopher Pittman, 15, told the jury an antidepressant -- specifically, the SSRI Zoloft -- made him kill his grandparents. His attorneys and supporters say he was "involuntarily intoxicated," given a powerful chemical he probably did not completely understand without explicit consent. Pfizer, Zoloft's manufacturer, laments the tragedy that the drug neither helped enough with Pittman's mental illness, nor caused the criminal acts. Christopher's "maternal step-grandfather" warned the rest of us, "This could happen to you."

And it could, I suppose. Like Christopher Pittman's maternal step-grandfather, we could see violence up close from a place we never expected it. We could be surprised, saddened, frightened by the behavior of someone we thought we knew. We could suffer from mental illness in ourselves or in people we love. We could be unable to prevent it. We could wonder why we were so subjected, or so spared.

And we could be involuntarily intoxicated. Some of us, yes, with legally prescribed mind-altering drugs, even the doctors prescribing them don't truly understand yet. Some with drugs of a different sort. Some with pain - whether raw and new or crusted over, buried under what appears healed though we know it is not.

People become involuntarily intoxicated with love, too. Others with joy, with pride, with exercise and food, endorphins and adrenaline.

But most of the time, most of us don't need to be involuntarily intoxicated. We seek it out.

The growing "Prozac nation," we hear about, or this new "Zoloft defense" is not so new. It's just the newest form of intoxication. Involuntary? That sure would give us a break on taking any responsibility for our drunken state. But is anything completely involuntary? Could we even assess that?

I don't know why Christopher Pittman, at 12, shot his grandparents each once in the head, before setting their house on fire and driving away in their car. I don't know why he lied at first to police or why hours earlier he'd been violent with a classmate, or why he took the punishment of his grandparents so hard. I try to imagine why, searching news accounts for clues of his family, his story, his truth. I try to find why a 12-year-old boy would want to be intoxicated, blinded to the world already.

His defense would say, of course, that the point is he didn't want to become intoxicated at all, that it was the act of the drugs. The jury said it was his youth that made the case a challenge at all. I can't know how the drugs affected him. Nor can I guess whether his fights with schoolmates, his acting out at home that prompted the prescription and family decision that he should live with his grandparents, were attempts to intoxicate himself.

I wish I could. I want to know, as if knowing intent will make it understandable, will put the world back into clean lines again.

Instead, I just wonder. I wonder what the difference is between "I was drunk, I didn't know what I was doing," and "mind-altering drugs affected me. They made me do it." And how different are either of those propositions from "I was joking. I didn't mean it," or, in fact,
from "mental illness makes me act this way. I'm depressed, I'm scarred, I'm wounded."

I don't wonder whether Christopher is guilty or innocent, whether we should blame children on drugs for the way they're affected by these chemicals. None of us really know what these chemicals do, especially to children. (But this case is not just about children, of course. Phil Hartman's wife's murder-suicide was only the most publicized of Zoloft-gone-bad stories that seem to make drugs, if not the primary cause of bad decisions, a supporting actor at least.)

What I wonder about is why we've devised so many ways to intoxicate ourselves as a culture, and why it's so important to believe this act of intoxication is involuntary. If, as a parent, we give our child a drug that we know hasn't yet had time to be studied properly, or we take one ourselves, or we go to a bar, or we fall in love, or we get a burst of energy, or a wave of depressive exhaustion, can we ever really assess the exact percentage of our willful participation in these intoxicating events?

Some days involuntary intoxication sounds pretty darn good to me. Other days, days when I'm feeling strong, solid in myself, I don't want to intoxicate myself at all. And then there are those murky other in-between days when I feel okay but for minutes or moments I intoxicate myself with drinks at a bar, with comfort food, with friends, with love and sex, with daydreams and slumber, and yes, sometimes, with antidepressants. I call those days life.

Valentines' Day

2005-02-14T12:55:00.001-05:00

From the windows of the car, the slush and rain reflects gray back to me, to the world and back again. I have behaved so poorly. Outrageously, even my therapist agrees. "Why are feelings so important?" she asks me. What else is, I wonder.

I try to stamp down, shut out the pervasive green sea-monster that rises and grows inside me. I try to see it for what it is, a monster, a demon, an addiction - like heroin, she says, that I must resist, that I must quit cold turkey. But something about it is soft and soothing, Muppet-like and reminiscent of girlhood rainy days warmed by books and cozy lights.

So maybe I shouldn't think of it as a green monster, this omnipotent jealosy, this seething rage. I picture thunderstorms, hurricane Jennie as a colleague once called me after a short rage-filled elevator ride with me. I picture demons, heroin, murderers, poison, venom, steely jagged hurts.

I don't do it to punish myself. That's not where the weakness lies. I do it in the hopes of jolting, shaking myself into submission with the horror that these are things my heart contains.

I do it so I can stop. Stop lashing out at the ones I love. Stop judging, presuming the worse, filling with hate and with fear. Stop sabotaging, willfully breaking and twisting the most important and precious of bonds. I do it to stop hurting, hating, spinning, twisting, aching. I do it to stop, to turn off the engines, shut off the motor, curtail spinning wheels, retract all moving parts back into their shell.

I picture the horrors of my heart over and over, in more fantastic and terrifying ways all just to stop moving, clear a path, and try to find the still, calm, deeper Jennie. I do it because I am curious -- behind all this swirling, spinning fury, what will I find? I'm afraid to say it outloud but I'm hopeful there's a stiller stronger loving me in there, a girl I'm sure I once knew.

Republican Boy Resurfaces

2005-02-01T12:43:00.001-05:00

Ah, Republican Boy, aka RB. Those of you who heard the legends might be wondering... what happened to him after our brief emotionally-entangled (is there any other way) affair? Did he follow his boss to a high-ranking position in the state dept.? Was he named chair of the Young Republicans? King of all Conservatives -Who-Have-Gay-Friends. NO really. REALLY.

Did he become president of the fan club for Maroon Five, launching a web site to praise their "deep" lyrics? Did he take over Fox News? Gannett? Write a how-to manual filled with seemingly sensitive, but actually swarmy seduction strategies.

Apparently no, as the City Paper so helpfully informed me. In fact, it's off to that other journalistic high-water-mark, that great pinnacle of literary and socio-political thought, the former Journal newspapers outgrowth itself.

Hmm.. interesting choice.

To think all that trouble could have been avoided. If only this career shift could have happened months ago.

Then again, i still would have been a summer size 8. I still would have just dyed my hair red and bought a slew of sexy blousy tops. I still would have been just feeling better. Still would have just started a new job, new meds, new friends.

I still would have found nothing a bigger aphrodisiac than the damn witty banter - be it in the form of a text message to my phone or clips from a slew of impressive pubs, easily summoned with the slightest click of google.

Perhaps, I still would have been cursed to waste two weeks of my life.

Two days later I met Steven...

Megas I

2003-08-03T01:29:00.003-05:00

There are leaners out there in the world. Always leaning too close, on the bus, on the Metro, pushing their heads and backpacks into your chest and face, stopping you from breathing.

Sometimes they're fidgeters in disguise, reaching into their pockets, thrusting their arms and legs like wayward rockets, pretending they don't see you in their path.

There are also:

gum-chompers
agitated yellers
sorority gigglers
dancing drunkards
the swayers
the standers
the surly faced
the pretentious space-takers
the umbrella spinners,
the heavy sprawlers.

I long for peace, still-sitting, gentle-speaking buses filled with zen and calm and space.

conversations on a train

2003-02-18T01:20:00.003-05:00

"yeah but it still doesn't work"

"Jeff? Yeah, I got something for you. Monday, Monday."

"I'm getting a message that it's been resolved. Yeah, yeah, but, it hasn't."

"to protect our side as much as the other... so maybe if we agressively market, on all three, right close on all three places..."

"hello yes, how are you? Yes, may I speak with Meg? Yes, Megan. Meg.

Hi Baby, how are you. yes, everything is fine. Well once we got to explain it to them. Well no, no, but once we got to explain it to them, I got a really good feeling. Well yah, no, not really. Yeah. yeah. Okay."

the running of the bulls

2002-10-17T00:52:00.002-05:00

Joserra's story (my tour guide on a hike through the Basque Country, 2002)

This man, he was called Greg Smith, and his wife was very beautiful and he said that he wanted to run with the bulls, how could I help him sign up for that, and would I do it, too?

I did not want to do it but he, the man, Greg Smith, says his wife will not let him, but if I say yes, then we both can go. So I agree, but... a disgusting feeling was growing.

on the day of the running, i see greg smith and his wife, standing very close. I think she is giving him a goodbye kiss but no, he says to me, "Josera, I'm very sorry, but my wife says I can't go."

So that is how I ran with the bulls, by myself.

Well, that is neither here nor there.

Do you know of a band called the J. Giles Band? I think that this is the most excellent American band.

2002-10-17T00:39:00.002-05:00

Dear _____,
Today I walked through a misty silver forest, knee deep in orange and brown fallen leaves, past stone walls, tinkling sheep, laughing baking villagers,

and I thought:

You should be here.

and I laughed over vino and gateau basque in espanol/anglais/francais, and I was golden, delighting people, the way I once did you, walking over velvet lush rolling hills, the softest place I've ever seen.

I missed you.
and you
missed me.

2002-04-02T02:04:00.001-05:00

“ So, journalist, eh?” the guy chewing on the swizzle stick across the table from me was saying to me.

“Yes, yes,” I sighed. I didn’t know well enough then. Didn’t know not to engage this sort of fellow.

He snorted. “Well, I can ask good questions,” he boasted. “Just try me! I bet I can ask better questions than you. Oh, I know – a contest!”

I got that feeling in my throat. I wanted to cry.
But I didn’t. And I didn’t yet know: This isn’ how it’s supposed to feel. If you want to cry within the first few minutes of a date, you shouldn’t stay.
But stay I did.

And I let him ask questions that escalated in their riskiness, in their personal nature, in their shock value.

He asked me all the standard Grade A “Truth and Dare’ throwaways: Where was the first place, the most crazy place, the place you always wanted to? What’s the best lie you ever told? What would you cheat for?

It reminded me of eighth grade, playing scruples with my best friend J and our two best guy friends. Little did I know they’d be the first of many fake boyfriends I’d have throughout my life.

Swizzle Stick's questions didn’t shock me actually at all, nor did they impress me or particularly pique my interest.

What it did do was annoy me. I felt invaded, intruded upon, for of course, I was.

Then he went to the biggie, a gleam in his eye.

“On a scale of one to ten,” he smirked, “how attracted would you say you are to me, right now?”
He sat back, utterly pleased with himself, oozing pride.
I grimaced, actually flinched. It was that painful.
But I did not leave.

He smiled, almost cruelly, and drummed his fingers infuriatingly on the table top.
“Oh, I can’t answer that. I don’t know,” I stammered.

“No really. Mizz Journalist! Do it, you can say. C’mon.” He pushed, I resisted. It would have been romantic, a mating dance if it weren’t so utterly terrorizing.
“C’mon,” he needled, “Just say a number… 1 to 10, c’mon!”

I squirmed, stared, started, bit my lip to keep the words inside, but still, I didn’t leave.

“Fine, I don’t know, 6.” I’d inflated the number it should go without saying. Substantially. Why, I’m not sure I could say, even now, some several years later.

He nodded. He smiled. He took it all in. “hmm…” The smirking continued.
“Well,” he started, though I hadn’t asked for reciprocation, and certainly didn’t want it. “Well, I would have given you a 9, but… you’re not very confident, so I lowered it. I give you a 4.5.”

I didn’t leave. Still.

Border Trouble

2002-03-07T01:38:00.004-05:00

"Well I guess you're going to have to go back home then."

I thought the punk was flirting with me. He was 19, blond and smirking.

And not kidding. or flirting.

He sent me to customs where I cried. I'd left my passport at home. It was only Canada after all.

The tears got me through but it turned out, the snarky, not-flirting Canadian border patrol was right: I should have gone home.

Because once I emerged -- teary and frazzled and terrified and thrilled -- into the sea of waiting people, dead straight into your strong arms, it was too late.

***

"This is great!" you said, surprised, your hand on my knee in your car. You knew your way around the snowy February old city. You were both confident as if we'd been lovers for years and tender as if every touch was new, important.

I wanted it to be so very much. I wanted to be new and life-filled and young and beautiful. I wanted it for you. You needed it so much.