proteanme

Day 7 on antibiotics and  a self-imposed dose of generally taking it easy.  I think the sinus infection is mostly gone.  Finally.

I’ve been reading Joan Didion’s Blue Nights. A Christmas present to myself and the second time I’ve spent then holidays reading JD write about grief. I don’t know why I tend to read heavy book over the holidays. A while back, I had a stretch of Christmases where I read Holocaust books. And there was a couple years of reading war books. Maybe I just don’t read much light fair in general. I am trying to make Blue Nights last as long as I can; it could easily be finished in on one sitting. JD is such a great writer and in this book her writing seems even more poetic and looser, in a way, than in other books of hers I’ve read. It’s really moving.

RU and I took a low key road trip on Monday down to Silver Falls. We drove back roads, which is our favorite thing to do, and on our way we made a detour to Mount Angel. First, we visited the Abbey. We got there just in time for a noon prayer service, which was perfect, both for its brevity and because it was sung. I think it was cool for RU to see these monks and think of the similarities and differences with her Buddhist monks. I’m not sure cool is the right word, but it will have to do. I forgot that there would be bowing any time we heard “Father, Son and Holy Ghost” said together. People used to do that at All Saints. In fact, I think my mom used to bow. But All Saints was very a Catholic Episcopal church. I wished I would have tracked better the short reading from the New Testament, because it felt kind of antisemitic. There was something about how the Jews tried to argue with the Christians, but the Jews were wrong and we, the good Christians, forgive the Jews for their persecution of us. I’m paraphrasing, obviously. But I did feel like cringing and then I thought of Mel Gibson, which made me want to cringe more. I also thought of this PBS documentary I watched about how Jesus became Christ. One of the things the scholars talked about  was how the texts, even the Gospels, changed over time, to turn the Jews, not the Romans, into the bad guys. I’m paraphrasing here, too. We walked around the church after the service was over and then a little around the campus after that. It is a beautiful place and really wonderful that it is open to the public.

We had some excellent, excellent Mexican back in the town of Mt. Angel. We debated trying the Gloskenspiel, to get the authentic Mt Angel-Little Germany experience, but it seemed over priced. It’s weird, but anytime I visit an “o little town of Germany” town I immediately recall the scene from Cabaret where the Nazi youth stands up in the beer garden and starts singing “Tomorrow belongs to me” and a bunch of people stand up and join him and you know things are going to be fucked. And I don’t know if RU was thinking the same thing, but as we walked down the street, she said, “I wonder if they like the gays here?” Which is always on my mind when we travel anywhere outside the I-5 corridor. My experience is gays are tolerated in lots of parts of Oregon, but not very well liked.

We made it to Silver Falls but because RU’s foot is messed up, we only took a couple of short walks and stopped to get out of the car at look out spots, which as fine, as our goal had been to get out of town and breath in nature. If you’ve not been down to Silver Falls before you should check it out. There’s a great hike around the 10 falls which I did once with Becky when she came out to visit from Indiana. It was built by the CCC, a wonderful and sad reminder of what a real government stimulus package looks like. I think we read it took something like 7 years to build the park and the workers were paid $1 a day.

Getting out of town, even only an hour and a half away, is usually a treat for me and RU. There’s a little adventure to it and usually we head to place with more nature than the places we usually go in town. And even a hike in Forest Park is not the same as a hike out on the woods an hour a way. More woods? More nature? I don’t know.

Day three  on antibiotics and I am rejoining the living. Slowly. Left the house. Saw lots of people I did not know. Came back home.

I am feeling encouraged by the sun and the brief company of strangers.

Christmas makes me miss Indiana and also makes me a little nostalgic for the past. For instance, I was thinking of my grandmother this morning. She died this past April, several months after her 100th birthday. It was a long decline that started in earnest at least 7 or 8 years ago and for a while it pushed out the ability to see her any other way except declining.

But recently I’ve been thinking of her the way I knew her best — her hair permed, her house immaculate, cooking, cleaning, and watching TV with her leg swung over the arm of her big, black leather lazy boy.

My grandmother loved car trips. She loved to garden. She loved to play cards. She was a good cook. She made the best fudge. She made the best apple dumplings. She made the best chocolate pie. She liked Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. She watched Lawrence Welk and HeeHaw on TV. She saved paper bags and margarine tubs. She baked her Christmas cookies ahead of time and then hid them in her house, even when there were no longer kids or grand kids sneaking around to try and find them. She was a good whistler.  She was a terrible driver. She wore Estee Lauder perfume. She wore clip on earrings. She wore a thin and delicate watch on her left wrist. She ironed her sheets. She always made her bed. She liked hard candy. She drunmed her fingers on table tops and arm rests and the outside of her purse. She had good china. She had good silver. She told us grand kids to “sit up straight” and called us “kiddo.” She made sweet tea.

Which is what I was thinking about this morning. I was about thinking about my Grandmother getting ready to have everybody over on Christmas and picturing her standing at her kitchen counter, pouring boiled water from her kettle into her teapot, the 7 or so bags of Lipton tea squeezed under the lid.

I regularly get called sir or am regularly otherwise assumed to be a guy. And, actually, I like it (probably no surprise there), except that it often leads to an expression of embarrassment or some other awkward or uncomfortable feeling from the other person, who feels like they’ve made a mistake, which I understand, even though I don’t feel it’s mistake. The gender binary really does suck.

Nothing this year rivals some of the classics from the past, like the time I was asked to show my ID as I started walking into a ladies changing room or the time at the SF airport when I was walking into the women’s restroom and this women behind me told me I was wrong place or the time RU and I were walking around our neighborhood park and this kid who had climbed up in a tree asked me if he could ask me a question, which was: was I a girl or a boy. Still, I thought I’d recount a few of the more memorable incidents from 2011

• A TSA guy working the security line at the PDX airport waved me forward with a “Next, sir.” I handed him my ID and he quietly looked at it and my ticket for more than a few uncomfortable seconds. (I have an irrational fear that I’ll be strip searched to prove who I am.) Finally he said to me “I guess I need to start wearing my glasses.”
• While walking around the NYC’s lower east side with RU this fall, we passed a guy on street who yelled out at me “What are you anyway?” And then the guy said something about my haircut and was a guy or not. I don’t remember his exact words about my haircut because I was fighting the urge to tell him to go fuck himself.
• I was shopping at Food 4 Less and check out lady called me “sir” about 5 or 6 times in a row even though I was using my debit card, which has my name on it.
• I was checking out the sale rack at J Crew in downtown Portland and this very cute gay guy who worked there came up to me said , “Are you looking for anything in particular, sir?” I told him “no,” and looked around for a few more minutes, but then I got started feeling awkward and left, but then I came back because it felt stupid to feel awkward. Plus, it was a good sale and I’ve been obsessed with trying to find good wool sweaters. I picked up a bunch of sweaters I wanted to try on and headed to the men,s dressing room and the same guy who called me sir came over to help me and we started talking about the holiday shopping madness. As he opened the door to one of the tiny changing rooms he waved his hand torward the room me and said “Oh girl, just leave whatever doesn’t work out for you.”

The combination of antibiotics and sleep is amazing. I’m no longer contemplating tragedies; nor am I groaning because I feel like crap all over. All this just in time for solstice, which I think I’ll commemorate by getting out of bed and taking a shower, which could be seen in the great solstice tradition of rebirthings and new beginnings, as me celebrating beginning of getting better.

I’ve been trying to reflect back on this year. In the past I’ve done this by making lists of favorite songs and books and movies and meals, but this year I’d like try to to pick out memorable events and occurrences and determine if there’s some bigger picture to tie it all together.  To that end I’ve got a list things that happened in 2011 that were meaningful to me or that I liked or that I feel grateful for.

1. Hanging out with Becky in Portland, especially riding bikes, especially at night.
2. Spending time with Lowen, my favorite nephew (who is technically not my nephew).
3. Seeing all of my family even though it was for the incredibly sad occasion of my grandmother’s funeral.
4. Flying from the funeral back to Portland with my sister and feeling glad I had a good shoulder for her to put her head on when we had to non-dramatically abort out landing in Las Vegas.
5. Spending 3 unexpected weeks getting to know Rachel’s cousins better.
6. Spending time with Martha in NYC.
7. Hosting a buddhist nun for 10 days at our house.
8. Camping near the Fossil beds with RU.
9. Writing and reading with the Thank You writers.
10. Figuring out how to teach my REDCap class.
11. Seeing, in person, art by Richard Serra, Willem De Kooning and Lucien Freud.
12. Walking the new section of the Highline.
13. Watching the sun set on the Hudson.
14. Stumbling across Occupy Wallstreet at its beginning.
15. Seeing Jennifer Egan at Wordstock and talking to her when she signed my book.
16. Learning to make great larb.
17. Growing green beans.
18. Making one batch of kick ass ice cream.
19. Eating Thanksgiving turkey and pie with my sister and niece.
20. Taking in a lot of the TBA, including seeing a really good play, The Method Gun. Thank you Susan.
21. Talking to RU on phone right after a retreat.
22. Spending time with Deirdre in DC.
23. Reading out loud part of a story I’m working on and making a lot of people laugh.
24. Listening to hymns when I was feeling sad.
25. Working in my yard. A lot.
26. Buying a bunch of shoes that I’m now trying to sell at Buffalo Exchange.
27. Feeling heartened by the Occupy Movement and feeling disgusted by the U.S. congress.
28. Feeling curiosity  and something like dread at the thought of turning 50.
29. Thinking a lot about my gender.
30. A really great dinner at June with the Uris’es and a great breakfast at Navarre with RU. Both vaguely birthday related events.
31. A couple nice long drives with RU around the Oregon country side.

I am sick. Sinusitis. I thought I  just had a crappy ass cold, but then yesterday I added a fever, chills, sore neck and aching face parts to the copious amounts of phlegm I’d been producing so today I headed to the doctor. Sitting up in the waiting room and in the office just about did me in. I kind of wanted to cry, but yay antibiotics! After just 1 dose and a longish nap, I’m starting to feel better.

I don’t get sick that often, but when I do my mind spins out in couple different ways. One, I think what if this is something worse, like today I got the idea of meningitis stuck in my brain, even though I clearly didn’t have most of the symptoms. Among other things, this led to Ween’s Spinal Meningitis song playing over and over in my mind. Two, I think how did people survive gulags and concentration camps and forced marches, etc. when they were sick. It seems so impossible, but somehow at least some percentage did survive. When I am sick, I think I would not be in that percentage. Sometimes, I also wonder why we never hear about the president being sick. Not just Obama, but any president. Even if it’s only a one term president, he must get sick enough at least once or twice in 4 years that he has cancel meetings and lie around in his presidential sealed pjs drinking tea with honey and lemon. Or maybe he gets some kind of crazy super inoculation shots as soon as he takes office.

Going to bed now.

The sun is out. I’m riding Amtrak back home from spending Thanksgiving down in Eugene with my sister and niece. I just ate a sandwich of left over turkey and had a piece of pie. All around me is the Oregon landscape preserved by urban growth boundaries. There are a 1000 things to be thankful for. RU, family, good health, food, shelter, a good job, love, little debt, friends, 50 degree weather, two seats to myself on the train, a subscription to the New Yorker, quiet, drinking water, friendly neighbors who watch my house and feed my cats when I’m out of town, flocks of birds, colorful leaves, sheep, backyards, the time to notice these things . . .

My father served as Marine in WWII. He was in the artillery – G Battery, 3rd Battalion, 11th Marines, 1st Division. I don’t know military speak, so I’m not sure if I’m saying that right. The 1st Marine Division is known as the Old Breed. My understanding is that they are stoic and bad ass group. I borrowed the title of this post from a book, a memoir actually, that was written by an Old Breed vet, Eugene Sledge. If you want to know what combat was like in the Pacific, read this book.

Dad’s platoon was sent in as replacements on Pelalu, where the the 1st Division suffered a 65% casualty rate, and after that he was sent in on front lines at Okinawa, where over 250,00 people total lost their lives. The following is an except from a letter Dad wrote me about his experience.

The night before Easter Sun we stopped within sight of Okinawa. You could see the flashes of the shelling and bombing ashore. I was leaning over the rail and someone came up to me and said, “Tomorrow may be your last day alive.” Somehow he didn’t really bother me, but I spent the night cleaning my rifle and making sure I had ammo in all my pouches. Nervous but not really afraid (I was 18 years old). Most of us were in our teens or early 20’s. Some people with us were in their 40’s.

In the morning (they did feed us) you had to eat on deck. The first thing  I saw were two planes with big red balls on the wings (the rising sun) not 50 feet above us. The sky was full of black smoke puffs from anti aircraft guns. We had to go in the “hold” and got in “ducks” small landing boats.

When we reached the beach I saw my first dead people. About three of them near the beach. The water was dyed red around them. It wasn’t like John Wayne movies. After a while you were indifferent to death and corpses. It was like going by a dead squirrel or cat in the road. There was always the smell and the maggots, but it became a way of life? You didn’t make close friends because in the next minute they could be “scrambled eggs” (dead or worse). 

Last night I had a dream about Herman Cain. In my dream Herman looked different than he does in any of the photos I’ve seen, but it was still him, and I knew it was him the same the way I once knew in a dream I had in high school that this guy in bad drag, who looked like Anthony Hopkins in The Birds, was my grandfather.

The dream started out with me and Herman sitting face to face in a small office. It was like we were in a therapy session and I was the therapist. Except it wasn’t like any therapy session I’ve ever been part of. For one thing, the door was part way open. Anyway, I was confronting Herman about sexually harassing women and arguing with him about how he was always citing these inaccurate financial figures. I started yelling at him about how he was lying. I remember being really loud and pointing my finger at him and Herman trying to defend himself, but then just shaking his head at me. In the middle of my tirade I stopped myself. A good therapist wouldn’t yell at a client, I thought, and I then I just sat there, telling myself over over to just breath and listen. Herman got pissed at me anyway and got up and left.

Next thing you know I’m walking through this college campus that reminds me a lot of IU, and it’s sunny and there’s blue skies and people are walking around like they are trying to get somewhere. I’m looking for Herman. I head down this windy path and up ahead I see Herman’s body hanging from a rope, which is hanging from the limb of a tree. I think ‘oh my god’ Herman has killed himself, but as I approach, Herman releases the rope and jumps down. He kind of shrugs his shoulders at me and says something like ‘you can’t blame a guy for trying.’ I say something to Herman like ‘you like horses, don’t you Herman.’ I signal someone who’s standing off to the side, as though I’m on a set, and the person leads out to horse. Both horses are saddle up with these weird looking small saddles, kind like a jockey saddle that has enormous round wire stirrups.

Herman and I mount our horses start to down the path together. Herman is  laughing and kind of whooping a little and I’m feeling good to because I feel like I’ve made things better.  Herman start riding faster and but all of the sudden Herman’s horse is dressed up like a big Chinese paper dragon. His horse is jumping over things. Big, tall things like a tree.

I stop my horse to watch Herman. His horse is way up in the air, with its front legs extended forward and its back legs extended behind it, and it’s like the horse is flying and Herman is holding onto the reins with just one hand.  He’s flung his other arm up in the air. He’s laughing. It’s like he’s having the time of his life.  I remember thinking to myself, man, that horse can sure jump high.

The last several days I’ve thought of some great opening lines for new pieces of writing and then gotten distracted and forgotten them before I could write them down. In one instance I was falling asleep and I told myself I’d remember the line in the morning. But of course I didn’t. What’s so frustrating is that I always carry around in my pockets a pen and a small notebook. Plus, I keep paper and pen by my bed. I am my own worst enemy

For me a good first line is like a hook in a tune. It’s the way into whatever “story” I’m trying to tell. Even if it the line gets moved around and it does’t end up being the first line, it feels crucial to making the writing compelling or at least interesting or at least worth writing. Hopefully worth reading.

I’ve been reflecting back on how this hasn’t been a very prolific year for me with regard to blogging, something I find kind of disappointing because part of the reason why I haven’t posted is I waste so much time online reading taste and trend blogs like hypebeast and uncrate or looking at Facebook photos of friends of friends. It’s like I’ve replaced my junior high penchant for watching TV with being online. Ugh. But the other issue is I’ve run into so many things this year that I don’t want to blog about or don’t know how to blog about. For instance I’ve spent a lot of time this year thinking about aging and gender and relationships and I don’t want to explore any of it publicly. And then there’s the state of the world, which has seemed so extremely shitty and exhausting this year and has left me speechless. I don’t know how to find the write word to talk about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan or the famine in Africa or the Norweigan massacre or the uprisings in Egypt or Syria or any individual country involved in the Arab or the debt ceiling crisis or the killing of Osama Bin Laden or the tornadoes in the Midwest or Hurricane Irene or the collapse or the Euro. The whole world seems to be in upheaval in 2011.

Blue skies. And sun shine. Even if it was mostly experienced from the inside of a window, the window was big and I got to ride my bike home in all of its glory. I know when it’s clear, it’s colder, but that’s ok with me right now. I don’t mind.

A woman chatted with me on the tram this morning. That almost never happens – prolonged chatting. I was as just telling RU about it. How the woman was from Jersey but had lived in Florida. And how she offered me a tissue when I was sniffing and asked me if I rode my bike all the time and I told her yes and I asked her if she rode and she said “are your kidding” and then told me she was premenopausal and that made her feel more fearful. RU said she couldn’t believe I knew so much about a stranger, which is funny because I only told RU half of what the woman shared me, which made for a pleasant tram ride, especially because the tram was jam packed today, like a subway car.

Depending on which way the tram is going it has to ascend or descend up and over this big ass tower. And either way it creates a front to back swinging motion, the severity of which depends on how fast the tram is going. Severe is maybe not the best word; pronounced is probably better. Sometimes the swing throws people off, especially new riders, but most often in the morning when I’m riding, which is around 7:20 or so, the tram is full of people going to work or class and they are oblivious to the motion. But last week a woman sitting in one of the four little jumps that line the side of the cabin yelled “oh lord, oh lord, oh lord” as we were cresting the tower and then repeated the phrase when the cabin dipped in it’s first swing. Some good humored words of encouragement floated through the crowd and I thought to myself, good for her, to just get it out there in the open. I was silently saying as much to myself this time last year.