This time of year, getting to work at 6am means getting to work after the sun has risen. I miss the predawn haze over the waterway west of Bel Marin Keys, and the sunrises that make getting up in the dark worth it.
But now I arrive to find wide ribbons of water in a satin nickel finish below my second-story window. Yesterday, there was a flock of pelicans compulsively plunging their bills into the pond and swallowing the dark fish they found. The eucalyptus trees stand on the horizon and also lie in a blurred mirror in the water.
The surface sparkles where the river's current enters the pond. Little dances of light because of something happening underneath.
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
May 26, 2004
Kate pointed out something I'd already known because I've already done what Robin Williams calls ego-surfing. If you Google my name, you find links to poetry, to quotes I've given to the press about hard drives, and to my (slow-but-steady) race times.
I think about how you could set out to recreate your self simply by deciding what you'd like a Google search of your name to pull up. And then doing whatever it takes to make those hits happen. Does this correspond to anything else in history? Is it like what a debutante would do in order to have newspaper to clip, programs from social events to save? Is it like what people in the earliest civilizations might have done in order to give a story to the bard, or storyteller, or wise woman?
How many of the hunters represented on cave walls took no pleasure in the hunt itself but took great pleasure in seeing their exploits in carbon and mineral oxide in the flickering firelight?
I think about how you could set out to recreate your self simply by deciding what you'd like a Google search of your name to pull up. And then doing whatever it takes to make those hits happen. Does this correspond to anything else in history? Is it like what a debutante would do in order to have newspaper to clip, programs from social events to save? Is it like what people in the earliest civilizations might have done in order to give a story to the bard, or storyteller, or wise woman?
How many of the hunters represented on cave walls took no pleasure in the hunt itself but took great pleasure in seeing their exploits in carbon and mineral oxide in the flickering firelight?
Monday, May 24, 2004
Observation at the Taqueria
The woman who works the counter at the local taqueria casually runs her palm across the wet side of the drink machine behind her. Then she turns and puts a burrito into a plastic bag. The condensation from the machine dampens her fingers and makes it easier for her to separate the plastic of the bag. When I caught her doing this Friday, I told her I thought it was a clever trick. But really I was thinking how I must write this down, write down how this little efficient thing she does dozens of times a day is so like the caress a mother would give a young child in passing.
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Well, this is silly.
I have things to say and the will to say them, but not the time. Not if I want to be a responsible employee or Mom. I'm back to the same familiar brick wall. I think I'm starting to recognize individual pieces of flaking mortar.
If only I didn't need sleep. Yeah, right, but here's the rub: if I didn't sleep, I wouldn't have the dreams that are giving me so much to write about.
whine, whine, whine.
Okay. Done whining.
I have things to say and the will to say them, but not the time. Not if I want to be a responsible employee or Mom. I'm back to the same familiar brick wall. I think I'm starting to recognize individual pieces of flaking mortar.
If only I didn't need sleep. Yeah, right, but here's the rub: if I didn't sleep, I wouldn't have the dreams that are giving me so much to write about.
whine, whine, whine.
Okay. Done whining.
Monday, May 17, 2004
I’ve been exposed to a lot of violence on film lately. I’m not just talking about The Passion of the Christ. I’m also talking about some of the most brutal and inhuman footage that came out of Iraq last week.
My lack of response to this abhorrent cruelty has amazed acquaintances. After all, I haven't had TV since 1989. I don't watch violent films. I'm not a soldier or a nurse. I'm more likely to escort an ant outside than to kill it. To those who don't know me well, I seem to be a wholesome kind of gal. How can I be so detached and clinical about it all?
Even I, knowing my own dark side, have been a little surprised by my blasé reactions. But then, as I was describing my philosophical approach to this violence to D., I realized why I wasn't horrified by what I'd seen.
It's no worse than what I see in my dreams on a regular basis.
Okay, so I suppose now you're thinking I need some serious therapy. But the fact is that body counts, blood, and matter-of-fact evil have been a part of my dreams since I was a child. They may not be pleasant, but I don't wake up in a screaming cold sweat from every nightmare I have. It's just that two or three times a week, I have these annoying, disturbing dreams, and I try vaguely to figure out why, and I move on.
More on this later.
Work calls.
My lack of response to this abhorrent cruelty has amazed acquaintances. After all, I haven't had TV since 1989. I don't watch violent films. I'm not a soldier or a nurse. I'm more likely to escort an ant outside than to kill it. To those who don't know me well, I seem to be a wholesome kind of gal. How can I be so detached and clinical about it all?
Even I, knowing my own dark side, have been a little surprised by my blasé reactions. But then, as I was describing my philosophical approach to this violence to D., I realized why I wasn't horrified by what I'd seen.
It's no worse than what I see in my dreams on a regular basis.
Okay, so I suppose now you're thinking I need some serious therapy. But the fact is that body counts, blood, and matter-of-fact evil have been a part of my dreams since I was a child. They may not be pleasant, but I don't wake up in a screaming cold sweat from every nightmare I have. It's just that two or three times a week, I have these annoying, disturbing dreams, and I try vaguely to figure out why, and I move on.
Work calls.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
May 12, 2004
Last night my Writers Group met.
I feel much better now.
I brought a couple of poems instead of prose this time. Although working on a short story can be like slogging backwards through a marsh at night with dark glasses on, writing poetry always feels to me like a nice hike on solid ground in a well-lit world.
There's a particular state of being I enter when working on a poem. I'd call it a mood, except that it often encompasses several emotions at once. I'm sure this is a common phenomenon for poets, and I know other people have talked about it. About their muse, their vision, their gift. But that's not going to stop me from talking about it too.
Making a poem joins two aspects of my personality in a kind of dance. There's my creative, emotional self - the self that loves to throw metaphors on the page with wild abandon, use words together that normally don't give each other the time of day, bind and braid lines with sound and image. I get a high off of doing all of that, especially in a first draft. But then there's also the analytic editor who gets a kick out of checking the rhythm and rhyme (if there is rhyme), cutting like a surgeon through what I don't need or what I'm not trying to say - basically tweaking and excising until the right poem is what's left over. Okay, I like doing that kind of thing too. So there.
Writing poetry feels good. It's about the only thing that will keep me so engrossed that I forget to eat, I forget to sleep, I forget my children's names or even the fact that I have children.
It's not like I'm transported to a peaceful place and am One with the Universe when working on a poem. I've been known to bark at the innocent people who try to interrupt me before the final line is really nailed down. But so far, writing poetry is never ever a chore. It's a joy.
I worry a little - because I chew worries like a cow chews cud - that the reason poetry is so - dare I say it?- easy is because I'm not really working at my craft enough, not reaching or learning or developing. Maybe it will get harder as I dig in deeper. Maybe not. As it is, I feel like I'm getting away with something when people praise my poems. Do they know that they don't take long to write? Do they know that it was play, rather than work? At worst, a poem is a puzzle I put together or a problem I have to solve. But I enjoy those things too.
I guess I'll just stay grateful that so far, no one has caught on and so far, it hasn't been painful. And in the meantime, I'll keep dancing.
I feel much better now.
I brought a couple of poems instead of prose this time. Although working on a short story can be like slogging backwards through a marsh at night with dark glasses on, writing poetry always feels to me like a nice hike on solid ground in a well-lit world.
There's a particular state of being I enter when working on a poem. I'd call it a mood, except that it often encompasses several emotions at once. I'm sure this is a common phenomenon for poets, and I know other people have talked about it. About their muse, their vision, their gift. But that's not going to stop me from talking about it too.
Making a poem joins two aspects of my personality in a kind of dance. There's my creative, emotional self - the self that loves to throw metaphors on the page with wild abandon, use words together that normally don't give each other the time of day, bind and braid lines with sound and image. I get a high off of doing all of that, especially in a first draft. But then there's also the analytic editor who gets a kick out of checking the rhythm and rhyme (if there is rhyme), cutting like a surgeon through what I don't need or what I'm not trying to say - basically tweaking and excising until the right poem is what's left over. Okay, I like doing that kind of thing too. So there.
Writing poetry feels good. It's about the only thing that will keep me so engrossed that I forget to eat, I forget to sleep, I forget my children's names or even the fact that I have children.
It's not like I'm transported to a peaceful place and am One with the Universe when working on a poem. I've been known to bark at the innocent people who try to interrupt me before the final line is really nailed down. But so far, writing poetry is never ever a chore. It's a joy.
I worry a little - because I chew worries like a cow chews cud - that the reason poetry is so - dare I say it?- easy is because I'm not really working at my craft enough, not reaching or learning or developing. Maybe it will get harder as I dig in deeper. Maybe not. As it is, I feel like I'm getting away with something when people praise my poems. Do they know that they don't take long to write? Do they know that it was play, rather than work? At worst, a poem is a puzzle I put together or a problem I have to solve. But I enjoy those things too.
I guess I'll just stay grateful that so far, no one has caught on and so far, it hasn't been painful. And in the meantime, I'll keep dancing.
Monday, May 10, 2004
Two Mothers
I have two mothers to celebrate on Mothers Day: my mom, and my birth mother. I am so amazingly blessed by this fact that it still catches me by surprise sometimes.
I am who I am because of these two women, and even to some extent in spite of them. But I am grateful for their friendship, and for the unconditional love they have shown me.
I met Diane in 1998. A few months before, she and I had both (coincidently) decided it was time to look for one another. Around 4:30 pm one Friday in the Winter of 1997, I had gone to an online adoption registry and entered my birth date, birth place, and the fact that I was an adoptee looking for birth relatives. The next morning at 7:30, the manager of the registry called me to say that there was a match and that I had an entire family in Utah just waiting for me to "phone home."
We started slowly, by exchanging emails and pictures. I'd never had a sense of abandonment as an adopted child. I'd never dreamed of running off to find my biological parents. My parents had made it very clear that they'd chosen me especially, so I didn't feel like I'd been short-changed at all - I felt, well, special, chosen. But I'd waited my whole life to look like someone else, and the pictures Diane sent me were like a homecoming. A few months later, we met in person. The last time we had seen each other - not that I remember - was just after my birth in 1966.
She and her family have welcomed me in so complete a way, I'll never be able to repay them.
There are so many more details to write - what we share, what we don't, what the whole reunion has been like. But I have only these few minutes grabbing a break at work to write this, and what I have to say would take hours to compose.
So it'll have to be another post. Or another poem. Or another set of poems. Or maybe even a book.
I realize I've tied my hands a bit with the last post. I will no doubt write about family and my running and my writing here. They're central to my life, and if I don't write about them, I struggle with finding something else profound to write about. Better to write. Still, to stretch. But at least to write.
I am who I am because of these two women, and even to some extent in spite of them. But I am grateful for their friendship, and for the unconditional love they have shown me.
I met Diane in 1998. A few months before, she and I had both (coincidently) decided it was time to look for one another. Around 4:30 pm one Friday in the Winter of 1997, I had gone to an online adoption registry and entered my birth date, birth place, and the fact that I was an adoptee looking for birth relatives. The next morning at 7:30, the manager of the registry called me to say that there was a match and that I had an entire family in Utah just waiting for me to "phone home."
We started slowly, by exchanging emails and pictures. I'd never had a sense of abandonment as an adopted child. I'd never dreamed of running off to find my biological parents. My parents had made it very clear that they'd chosen me especially, so I didn't feel like I'd been short-changed at all - I felt, well, special, chosen. But I'd waited my whole life to look like someone else, and the pictures Diane sent me were like a homecoming. A few months later, we met in person. The last time we had seen each other - not that I remember - was just after my birth in 1966.
She and her family have welcomed me in so complete a way, I'll never be able to repay them.
There are so many more details to write - what we share, what we don't, what the whole reunion has been like. But I have only these few minutes grabbing a break at work to write this, and what I have to say would take hours to compose.
So it'll have to be another post. Or another poem. Or another set of poems. Or maybe even a book.
I realize I've tied my hands a bit with the last post. I will no doubt write about family and my running and my writing here. They're central to my life, and if I don't write about them, I struggle with finding something else profound to write about. Better to write. Still, to stretch. But at least to write.
Friday, May 07, 2004
May 7, 2004
I started keeping a diary when I was about 15. For years and years, I wrote entries about three things: my insecurity about my body, my desire to write, and my boyfriend. I mean seriously, that was it. Here's a typical entry:
1/13/85 22:30 "Saw D. Need to work on my story. Ran 2 miles."
I have pages like that. No. Not just pages - books like that.
Another popular entry type was this:
3/24/89 23:46 "Too tired to write."
I didn't compose long Anais Nin entries. I didn't ponder my place in the universe. Instead, I wrote about wanting to write or run or see my boyfriend. In the middle of it all, I recognized that it was not terribly good literature, but I didn't change my approach.
When I got married and had children, it expanded my repertoire. Now I could write about writing, running, my husband, and the kids.
Apart from this post, I have promised myself that this web log will NOT be only about those things.
Time to stretch my wings.
1/13/85 22:30 "Saw D. Need to work on my story. Ran 2 miles."
I have pages like that. No. Not just pages - books like that.
Another popular entry type was this:
3/24/89 23:46 "Too tired to write."
I didn't compose long Anais Nin entries. I didn't ponder my place in the universe. Instead, I wrote about wanting to write or run or see my boyfriend. In the middle of it all, I recognized that it was not terribly good literature, but I didn't change my approach.
When I got married and had children, it expanded my repertoire. Now I could write about writing, running, my husband, and the kids.
Apart from this post, I have promised myself that this web log will NOT be only about those things.
Time to stretch my wings.
Thursday, May 06, 2004
May 6, 2004
I'm learning Japanese in anticipation of a business trip there. I'll grab any excuse to learn a new language.
It's slow going with this, though. Except for the vocabulary that's obviously based on English, there aren't any existing words in my mental files to hook the new words onto, as there has been with the Romance languages I've studied. Even Welsh, somehow, was much much easier than Japanese has been. By October, I may know how to say two of the six versions of "train." However, I'm enjoying the challenge. I've even learned about half of the Katakana alphabet. Just for fun.
This time, I'm not going to make the mistake I made when I learned how to say "I do not speak Greek," with such a convincing accent that none of the people I talked to in Athens believed me.
What a silly phrase to learn proficiently. Why do they teach it? You'd think that saying "Look, I hear sounds that I recognize as human, but don't understand a thing you're so helpfully saying," in one's own language would be a good tip-off.
I know I won't really be able to manage in Japanese in Japan, nor will I really need to. But I can now say "I'm tired" in seven languages.
If I were some kind of international prostitute, I think this knowledge would be very handy.
Then again, if I were an international prostitute worth my garter-belt, my ability to communicate with body language would be more practiced, and I wouldn't need to know handy catchphrases in many tongues. So to speak.
Plus, my stamina would be better.
It's slow going with this, though. Except for the vocabulary that's obviously based on English, there aren't any existing words in my mental files to hook the new words onto, as there has been with the Romance languages I've studied. Even Welsh, somehow, was much much easier than Japanese has been. By October, I may know how to say two of the six versions of "train." However, I'm enjoying the challenge. I've even learned about half of the Katakana alphabet. Just for fun.
This time, I'm not going to make the mistake I made when I learned how to say "I do not speak Greek," with such a convincing accent that none of the people I talked to in Athens believed me.
What a silly phrase to learn proficiently. Why do they teach it? You'd think that saying "Look, I hear sounds that I recognize as human, but don't understand a thing you're so helpfully saying," in one's own language would be a good tip-off.
I know I won't really be able to manage in Japanese in Japan, nor will I really need to. But I can now say "I'm tired" in seven languages.
If I were some kind of international prostitute, I think this knowledge would be very handy.
Then again, if I were an international prostitute worth my garter-belt, my ability to communicate with body language would be more practiced, and I wouldn't need to know handy catchphrases in many tongues. So to speak.
Plus, my stamina would be better.
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
You'll notice I now have a link to "na foine ting" which is Kate's blog page.
Kate has been instrumental in getting me blogging. She's also been instrumental in getting me to step out and do all sorts of other things that have been scary, wonderful, and otherwise good for my development as a thinking, feeling, stepping-out kinda human being.
She's even been good for strengthening my ability to set limits and say "Hey - that's too scary for me but let me stand back here and admire your courage while you do it."
Kate has been instrumental in getting me blogging. She's also been instrumental in getting me to step out and do all sorts of other things that have been scary, wonderful, and otherwise good for my development as a thinking, feeling, stepping-out kinda human being.
She's even been good for strengthening my ability to set limits and say "Hey - that's too scary for me but let me stand back here and admire your courage while you do it."
Medieval Morality Play
Sometimes I think the pattern of my day is like a medieval morality play. It is not always easy getting out of bed before 5am on a regular, responsible basis. But once I get moving my optimism wakes up, and by mid-day, I'm not only tackling whatever life is chucking at me, I'm also thinking of the many important things I'll accomplish at the end of the day, once the kids are happily asleep. Things above and beyond folding the laundry, I mean.
But somewhere around seven pm, I feel my strength start to leach away. I mean, it just goes. I understand how a vampire feels when the pre-dawn glow is beginning to dim the stars. The roosters are stirring. Time is short. Panic sets in.
I try to pace myself and stay calm, because some part of me is still alert enough to know that yelling, "Go to bed NOW!" to my kids will only backfire. Children sense when you're in a hurry. The more quickly you need them to move, the proportionally slower they become, with more toothbrushes dropping into bathroom dust bunnies , and more time deciding which book is really the one they want to have read to them.
You'd think there'd be some deep, deep animal instinct left over from when early humans roamed the earth in groups and it was the stragglers that got picked off first. You'd think that children would sense the importance of keeping up with the group, but as any trip to any amusement park in the world will show, if there is such an instinct, it's dormant in children and only awake in parents and goat herders. That's what those kid leashes are all about. That's what dragging the toddler from the wrist is all about.
But I digress.
What I mean to say is that come 7:15pm, I know I can't deplete what I have left of my energy by doing anything to slow the children down, such as suggesting they each take a 30 second bath. And I just start to pray that I won't fall asleep yet again reading the bedtime story. Even "Good Night Moon" can start to sound like a surrealist poem when I'm at that stage.
Goodnight room
Goodnight moon
Penguins purple top bling fullstop amoeba current under
("Mommy! Wake up!")
Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
linoleum overeasy ash dungbeetle biddybiddy doowapwapp
("Mommy!")
Why a medieval morality play? Because I wonder if my day is like an allegory of my life. I fear that I'll reach some ripe old age and all of the coffee and best intensions in the world won't be enough to allow me to finish my life's work before I’m sapped of energy. I fear that I’m somewhere around 3:50pm and only think I’ll publish a book of poems or run a marathon or travel the world when in fact, I’ll only manage a few more things before I trip over my walker and end up in a bed eating tapioca pudding (which I hate), mumbling, “Good night noises sprinkler lick motorcross spiddyboo everywhere.”
But somewhere around seven pm, I feel my strength start to leach away. I mean, it just goes. I understand how a vampire feels when the pre-dawn glow is beginning to dim the stars. The roosters are stirring. Time is short. Panic sets in.
I try to pace myself and stay calm, because some part of me is still alert enough to know that yelling, "Go to bed NOW!" to my kids will only backfire. Children sense when you're in a hurry. The more quickly you need them to move, the proportionally slower they become, with more toothbrushes dropping into bathroom dust bunnies , and more time deciding which book is really the one they want to have read to them.
You'd think there'd be some deep, deep animal instinct left over from when early humans roamed the earth in groups and it was the stragglers that got picked off first. You'd think that children would sense the importance of keeping up with the group, but as any trip to any amusement park in the world will show, if there is such an instinct, it's dormant in children and only awake in parents and goat herders. That's what those kid leashes are all about. That's what dragging the toddler from the wrist is all about.
But I digress.
What I mean to say is that come 7:15pm, I know I can't deplete what I have left of my energy by doing anything to slow the children down, such as suggesting they each take a 30 second bath. And I just start to pray that I won't fall asleep yet again reading the bedtime story. Even "Good Night Moon" can start to sound like a surrealist poem when I'm at that stage.
Goodnight room
Goodnight moon
Penguins purple top bling fullstop amoeba current under
("Mommy! Wake up!")
Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
linoleum overeasy ash dungbeetle biddybiddy doowapwapp
("Mommy!")
Why a medieval morality play? Because I wonder if my day is like an allegory of my life. I fear that I'll reach some ripe old age and all of the coffee and best intensions in the world won't be enough to allow me to finish my life's work before I’m sapped of energy. I fear that I’m somewhere around 3:50pm and only think I’ll publish a book of poems or run a marathon or travel the world when in fact, I’ll only manage a few more things before I trip over my walker and end up in a bed eating tapioca pudding (which I hate), mumbling, “Good night noises sprinkler lick motorcross spiddyboo everywhere.”
Monday, May 03, 2004
May 3, 2004
Confession: most workdays, after about the 4th time I've hit the snooze alarm, I cajole myself out of bed with an inner monologue that goes something like this:
"Come on, honey. You can do it. Come on. You're such a good girl."
The thoughts are in a tone you'd use with a dog or a reluctant child. Sickening, but it works.
Granted, I sometimes have to add, "Think of all the fun things that might happen today!" before I manage to turn off my alarm, make sure Dan's is set, and get myself to the shower.
I just realized that there's never another voice arguing with this mental cheerleader; there's just the warm pillow and the lure of more muddled dreams and the thought that the rest of my family will be be sleep for another two hours.
I'm writing a poem about Abraham taking Isaac up the mountain. About how sometimes when I get up in the morning, I feel like both the father, leading his child to be sacrificed, and the son, following out of the habit of obedience.
"Come on, honey. You can do it. Come on. You're such a good girl."
The thoughts are in a tone you'd use with a dog or a reluctant child. Sickening, but it works.
Granted, I sometimes have to add, "Think of all the fun things that might happen today!" before I manage to turn off my alarm, make sure Dan's is set, and get myself to the shower.
I just realized that there's never another voice arguing with this mental cheerleader; there's just the warm pillow and the lure of more muddled dreams and the thought that the rest of my family will be be sleep for another two hours.
I'm writing a poem about Abraham taking Isaac up the mountain. About how sometimes when I get up in the morning, I feel like both the father, leading his child to be sacrificed, and the son, following out of the habit of obedience.
Saturday, May 01, 2004
May 1, 2004
I like to end the day in a clean house having written, run, practiced the fiddle, and spent time with my family. These are goals. Most nights, I crawl into bed too late feeling defeated by a sense of what I haven't done. Didn't finish the dishes, didn't write, didn't work out, didn't find a cure for cancer. Again.
In a moment of frustration, I said to my writer group last week that "Virginia fucking Woolf didn't have fucking children." But children are really just a convenient excuse for not writing more often. Take now, for instance. Now they are happily running around in the yard giving me all sorts of time to write this. In the back of my head a frantic voice is warning me that any minute one of them will step on a rusty nail or find some spare plutonium lying around, but I'm trying to drown out that voice with the sound of typing.
So far, so good.
Except the youngest has just started banging on the sliding glass door yelling "Maahh=meee!!"
Fucking Virginia Woolf.
In a moment of frustration, I said to my writer group last week that "Virginia fucking Woolf didn't have fucking children." But children are really just a convenient excuse for not writing more often. Take now, for instance. Now they are happily running around in the yard giving me all sorts of time to write this. In the back of my head a frantic voice is warning me that any minute one of them will step on a rusty nail or find some spare plutonium lying around, but I'm trying to drown out that voice with the sound of typing.
So far, so good.
Except the youngest has just started banging on the sliding glass door yelling "Maahh=meee!!"
Fucking Virginia Woolf.
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