Artomatic 411

I was part of a performance at Artomatic 411 this weekend. It was called Two Rebeccas: Endless Waiting. I'm posting highlights for peeps who have interest and for everyone who couldn't make it.

Into: Tribute to John Swaile.

John was a friend. A lovely man, a great poet and very cool. I read his poem, Nothing as Wonderful; Becca (Rebecca V. Wood) read her poem, Before the Viewing.

Nothing as Wonderful
by John Swaile

There's nothing as wonderful as waking up to the sound of rain,
or lying down next to a boy or girl who loves you.

That's what this poem is about.

Love and life and everything that comes in between.
And while there's nothing as wonderful as waking up,
or playing an instrument,
or reading a book,
or going outside and watching the sunset while sitting next to a boy or girl who loves you,
don't waste time or breath.

Do what you love to do now,
because later, there's nothing.
And as wonderful as waking up may be,
maybe it's better to make love,
or eat,
or listen to Charlie Parker
while sitting next to a boy or girl who loves you.

Don't expect to touch the sky with both hands,
and don't expect answers.
Just remember that's there's nothing as wonderful
as waking up next to a boy or girl who loves you.

Next, was a section about an ex I had (I call him "Morgan" in the essay) and about a poem Becca wrote that reminded me of him. I'm posting her poem, but not the ex essay. There are reasons.

The Ugly Man with no Pants
by Rebecca V. Wood

Your face is a mud-rutted vacant lot, strewn with old beer cans, broken glass,
Fast-food wrappers, and someone's discarded roadkill hair-weave,
Ripe for an onslaught of do-gooding earth children willing to take a chance
On stray bullets and lead dust strafing their tomato plants.

I have explained to my mother that after thirty-five, the dating pool
Is largely made up of two-and-three-time losers, assorted damaged goods,
And something even worse; The suspiciously mint-condition
Middle-aged single, all of whom are -furthermore -
Probably thinking the same thing about you.

And c'mon; Can you really make an air-tight case to the contrary?
I mean, are you really sure that you just accidentally married a bad man
And stayed with him for thirty-four years?
Are the bad genes really all on his side?
I've met Grandpa and Grandma remember, and God help us if they're our good half.

The more you fuck up, the more rules you come up with
That the rest of us have to follow, that will make our lives one long
Better Homes and Gardens photo-spread;
Don't wear earth tones, the make you look washed-out,
Don't make tea in luke-warm tap water, it won't brew,
Don't use check-cashing stores, they rip you off,
Don't heat things up in plastic containers, they give you cancer,
And for God's sake, never, ever put anything in the microwave
Not specifically labeled "micro-wave safe",
Or you'll be out a dollar's worth of soup & plastic,
And have to commit hari-kari for the shame and horror of it all!

Don't dream big or get excited about things,
Or you'll bring on disaster,
Never date more than two years above or below your age,
Avoid the broken ones, and under no circumstances admit that you
Are one of them.

Don't make mistakes, or your life will instantly transform
Into a permanent and irreversible Greek Tragedy; Don't ask me how, but things
Willl somehow get worse.
Commit suicide slowly through inaction,
Because anything you want to do is wrong, and you should aim to be
A meek and tidy, well-maintained mental patient
That I can be less ashamed of, oh my God, could anyone who sees me
As just a piece of ass be worse than this?

Come here and give me some hep-C and a cour-date, baby!
I need to do something to earn the punishment for once.
I need for somebody to see me.

Next, I did a tribute to Becca and her colorful stories. I am redacting some identifying names.

Wood Pussies
be Rebeca Golden

Ever hear the term "wood pussy?" It sounds like a masturbation aid popular amongst the Amish. Or maybe a good name for an all-lady death metal band. Woods and pussies are not similar. None of the Woods I know or have heard tell of are pussies in the anti-woman, boys locker room sense of the word. Nor are they skunks -- that's a real wood pussy, in fact. My friend, Rebecca Vivienne Wood (aka, Becca), comes from a long line of crazy, backwoods thieves, pimps and natural born killers. She's not a pussy. She's a badass bitch. And so are all her dead relatives, and one or two of the live ones.
Becca tells a lot of stories. The relative who poisoned himself trying to strip batteries for the component metals. The horse thief murdered by a nephew. I think. Details are muddy and it happened in Michigan in the 19th century. Something to do with horses and the Civil War and a whole town who despised the dead profiteer so deeply that no arrest followed the killing, nor did any trial. There might've been a parade, cakes baked in honor of the perpetrator. Maybe horses could be had on the cheap, maybe they cooked and ate the horse trader. It's muddy. It happened in Michigan.
In Germany, in the late 60s or thereabouts, Becca's dad threw men across German bars for sport. Papa Wood, 6-foot-8, shoes roughly the size of the lower peninsula, kicked ass but forgot to take names. He has other things on his mind. A German girlfriend, an American girlfriend, the conception of Rebecca Vivenne Wood in a quaint hotel. I imagine lederhosen were involved. The Ricola jingle as the sexy soundtrack. Alps in the background and legs in the air.
And then: Michigan. Always Michigan. Ann Arbor, where two completely disastrous people came together to raise their young and study the most dangerous trade of all: Library Science! Poor college students with a baby and a love of books and book accessories. Mrs. Becca's Dad, the former Debbie Jean Mitchell, told jokes to beat the band, despite the fact that her own childhood home, a pretty postcard place by Lake Michigan, contained an alcoholic railroad man and a woman who alternated between schizophrenia and Pentecostalism like some women do between white shoes and not-white, before and after Labor Day.
Debbie Jean is not anyone's lover. She's a mother who lives in Boring Green in a house with cats and books and quilts and cloth and family treasures hidden or discarded, to go to or to be taken from rightful and wrongful heirs.
Sometimes, Livvy visits. The second wood pussy in the Mitchell pile. She's a tall drink of strong water, Livvy Wood. Sweet-faced, whiskey-voiced, tough-talking, shit-kicking, take-no-prisoners -- she is a New Yorker and fuck you very much for noticing. She lives with a sweet guy, who Debbie Jean swears will help pick a nice nursing home. Nice, competent, perhaps not one of the places where they tie you to the furniture, or maybe one that does! So long as he gets a good price, eh? Nothing to good for Mrs. Wood, I say.
Wood pussies are a tough bunch. Born or made. Becca grew and prospered and studied and marched. Becca in the band, a horn strapped to her chest, stomping proudly down the field for the honor of Boring Green. Becca by the lake in Cleveland. Becca in Tampico. She saw la vigin there. She learned to eat the spices and habla the es-pag-nowl. She taught me to say a few things.
"Donde esta el bano, cabron?"
"Vaya a la chingata, cabron!"
"Necessitos sus fluidos seminales para que hacer flan."
"Yo tengo papel hygenico por mi culo muy merdioso."
"Mi esposo tiennes una pistola, cabron"

And I taught myself to say "Mi amiga Rebecca m'enseno esta espression." I leave "cabron" off the end of that one for the sake of plausible deniability.
There was one time involving mi culo and merda. I don't like to speak of it. I had the flu. I thought I might die. There was....leakage. Becca tended me and cleaned up and took me to a hospital. I thought I was having a stroke. I had the flu. She fed my cats when I broke my back. She put up with me when Morgan and I were off and on and on and off and on and finally, totally off. She helped me scrape cat shit out of carpet and elderly food out of the meat drawer of the world's scariest fridge -- not mine, I swear. We were cleaning a house for cash one broke-ass summer. I will say that when meat is 5 years old, even in the freezer, the time comes where you either throw it out or buy it shoes and send it to kindergarten. We went with the trash for that elderly roast. In the same house, after stumbling on (oh, wait -- it's not stumbling when the stuff is in the open, on every surface, rug and coffee table) a porn cache that would put the actual Internet to shame.
Becca helped me think of titles and plots to the films missing between two seminal classics: Big Black Gang Bang 2 and Big Black Gang Bang 16. It turns out, there's a twist ending! A tiny white woman gets fucked! In all of them. Of "I Fucked the Black Basketball Team," she said "I pity the dumb bitch who opted for the White Basketball Team." And I concurred.
There are dark times between Michigan and here, times in shelters, times spent with men who preferred to sleep with lizards. I don't like to imagine these times, because I hate seeing Becca sad. Her face falls like a cake if you stomp hard by the oven. Her bright blue eyes puff and swell. I am made of hugs and it still isn't enough.
Wood pussies aren't just for the Amish. They aren't coming to a scummy rock club near you. Woods aren't pussies. They are badass bitches -- even the men. Even the Woods by marriage, as the former Allie Hall , Becca's stepmother, can tell you. She ran over an uppity ex-boyfriend in a 600-pound wheelchair. She has chunks of people like you in her poo. I'm guessing -- I don't check it or anything. She made a social worker cry once. She is not to be messed with.
And neither is her stepdaughter. Despite the slings and arrows of outrageous motherfucking fortune, Rebecca V. Wood is not taking any crap from anyone. Not today. At least not today. She will claw and fight and stand her ground. She is a tough, battle-hardened warrior rockstar in a dress and high-heeled boots. Woodpussies aren't roadkill. Woodpussies are killer road warriors. Is this a love letter? Is it a poem? Is it a song? I like to think it's a comic book legend. Because I love you, woodpussy. Also? I will sell the movie rights.

Then, Becca read some poems inspired by her childhood memories:

Go Tell your Mommy she Wants You
by Rebecca V. Wood

Some nights the mother that I've forgetten, or never had
Seeps into my dreams, whispering lullabies,
Telling me things I never knew I knew, and for a few seconds,
I am safe and welcome here;
Who's a happy girl?
Who's a happy girl?

The woman I came out of is burning my old gradeschool art
While my uterus gives up the fight to keep refurbishing it'self
For a guest who never comes.
I said once at age five that I would run away when I grew up,
And she laughed, as do mothers who's story ends better.

In the world outside my skin, I look like somebody's mother,
Because I'm old and not too mean;
The girl with the pierced eyebrows at the busstop
Who's on the phone trying to talk her boyfriend
Into not lying in wait back at her trailer when she gets back
From the welfare department,
And the cat who abandoned her own kittens,
And comes crying to me to cuddle her
The way her own mother didn't.

I saved it all up for forty years,;
Nurtured nothing, not even myself,
Couldn't even keep a potted plant alive until after 35,
To have these little crumbs to give strangers I'll know
For minutes or hours,
Pets that aren't even mine.

I'm starting to see that the whole world wants its mommy,
And nobody knows where she's gone;
She's shooting up behind a dumpster
In the alley of our souls, while we
Try to piece her together from fragmented photos
Cut out of a magazine;
We are making her up
As we go along.


Reconciliation
by Rebecca V. Wood

Reconciliation

Don’t you remember, we lived in the palace,

Someday you’d be as beautiful as me.

If you wore your best dress and were very quiet,

I’d let you watch when the ladies came for tea.

How can I help what that awful huntsman told you?

Why did you have to run away and live here

In these stunted deviants’ miniature sty?

How can you refuse such a lonely old woman,

Bringing round a present to brighten up my day.

Just take a bite of the pretty red apple, all wrapped in tissue

Before I’m on my way.

I’ll make a coffin from the finest crystal

Just like Comrade Lenin’s, unfrosted by your breath,

So that the crowds can see my mirror image

Dream-self as white and immaculate as death.


Finally, we wrapped up with our parody of Toledo Alive. Toledo Alive is a hideous promo song for Toledo, popular on local TV in the 80s. It is, as Becca says "damning with faint praise." It looks alive....we thought we saw its chest move, that kind of thing. Becca wrote 98% of this. I came up with the line about poking it with a stick.

Toledo................Alive?

When they cut our life-support,
Nobody went to court;
Alive! Though the DNR was signed!

Tried the fogging-mirror trick,
Poked it with a long, sharp stick;
Alive...if the term's broad ly defined!

Alive!
No-one knows quite why,
Alive!
'Cause it just won't die,
Mike Bell wears assless chaps
And tries to plug our funding gaps!

Alive!
And despite our plight,
Alive!
At least we're not Detroit,
We'll let our gardens grow,
Tell Davis Besse we won't glow.

Alive Toledo,
We think it's still alive.
We're rocking Miserable City;
It only looks dead!

Snowpcalypse Now

Frigging snowpocalypse ATE MY CAR. It's true. Dammit.

Actual Linkage

Here's the Groupon thing. I used to remember HTML and how to actually insert links

Group-Off

Groupon denied me! the story appears here:

If you're feeling kind (or, you know, not) please stop by and like me/comment. If you want to read my book in the states, you should totally say so here. It's much-read in publishing.

Limbo

I could go in any of a number of directions.

Okay, so all movement is subject to a lot of hoop jumping and appeals to potential bosses or mentors. My track record with these things is not encouraging.

I am 38. I live in an apartment. I have three jobs or so -- only one of which is reliable. I'd like not to be doing this when I'm 50.

School? I consider it. Fully funded programs, etc. But then there are application fees and GRE fees and fees upon fees and no guarantees, even with the book and the other writing.

Teaching? I'm not a good fit for Teach for America. I got rejected by a program I had planned to opt out of. I can't afford a master's degree or a certification program.

Newspaper? Tell me where there is one hiring. Or one that wants someone with a public track record of quirkiness.

When your retirement plan is "maybe I'll inherit money", there's something wrong.

Maybe I should just drink all the time and not think about this. I need to learn to make my own booze.

Hamsters!

Okay, so I never get to write about anything other than 1) weight stuff 2) poverty and 3) local Toledo stuff for the local Toledo weekly that I slum it up with sometimes.

Here's something I wrote that's not going anywhere else. I think hamsters are damned important. Also, er, "urban".

“What’s the difference between a hamster and gerbil?” my boyfriend asked as I changed lanes doing about 80 miles an hour. We’d been talking about my latest obsession, the Kia Soul commercial where “urban” hamsters head-bob in unison to The Choice is Yours by the Black Sheep.

“Gerbils have a longer tail,” I said. “Also, they’d probably buy American.”

Ironically, this conversation about a Korean automaker and its spokesrodents happened on the Southfield Freeway near Detroit. As I zoomed by Ford’s world headquarters, a shiny glass building that dominates the highway, I pondered urban hamsters in baggy pants and hoodies. Hamsters who live on Hamsterdam Avenue and drive shiny new Kia Souls while their (strangely nude) non-Kia cohorts drive things like washing machines and cardboard boxes.

These anthropomorphic rapping rodents have a seriously macho quality. The female hamsters in the ad wear old-school cheerleader skirts. They have no tops to speak of. The urban paradise of the Kia hamster features everything a dude could possibly want: woman-free time with the boyz in the Kia, the all-male barbershop for relaxation, and topless cheerleaders at the roadside, waiting in lush anticipation for the first hoodied-ham-stud in a Kia Soul to pull over and open the shiny green passenger side door. As a feminist, I should find all of this kind of insulting. Instead, I envision my own suburban Kia fantasy.

The man and woman hamster ride silently. No music – sadly, not a bit of Black Sheep to lighten the mood in their pristine silver Soul. The Hamstress (despite having no facial expression of any kind) seems distressed. She fishes around in the I-used-to-be-a-plastic-bag recycled tote and seems relieved to discover that she has indeed remembered the Hamayonaise.

I can’t stop talking about this Kia commercial. I’ve also watched it online at least ten times. I find myself finishing thoughts with “Do, da, dippity,” imitating the cadence and accent of the Black Sheep frontman, despite the fact that I am the whitest woman on earth; I carried a Bermuda bag to school every single day for at least six months in the fifth grade.

Why are these hamsters so fascinating? Part of it is the animation and the catchy song. Created by David & Goliath, the Los Angeles ad agency also responsible for the Bacardi & Cola campaign, the ad is an intricately detailed mini masterpiece of cutting-edge computer animation and smart ideas. According to D&G’s chairman, David Angelo, the hamsters represent sameness, going around in circles, and only the Kia Soul can save us from the sad ubiquity of workaday middle class existence. The shiny green hamster car would deliver Emma Bovary to a young lover (exactly five minutes after she drops the kids at soccer practice, one presumes).

Not only have the ads tapped some sort of angsty, bourgeois zeitgeist, they’ve sold a lot of cars. According to a Kia dealer quoted in Fortune, “"Demand has definitely exceeded expectations. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time we've sold out.” Fortune also found that 80% of Kia dealers nationwide had sold out on the Soul.

As successful as this ad is and as much as I personally enjoy it, I wonder about the urbanness of those dancing hamsters. They live near Hamsterdam Avenue. They frequent a barbershop, where the neighborhood’s elderstatesrodents gather to gossip and soak up the culture. In their baggy pants and hoodies, these cunning urban rodents are clearly stand-ins for African Americans.

Are African Americans cool enough to sell Kias, but still somehow too threatening for ads? I wonder, though I like to think – because I pretty much watch this commercial on a loop and have talked it up to everyone who’ll listen to me for more than 30 seconds – that the hamsters are just cuter and cleverer than any human beings (regardless of race) could ever hope to be. Also, African Americans couldn’t drive a toaster or washing machine, and these bad “choices” kind of make the ad.

I will not apologize for loving the Kia hamsters. I will not buy a Soul, either; I’m driving my six-year-old (mostly) paid-for Saturn Ion til it explodes in a shower of bolts at the side of the road, just like Elwood’s police car in the Blues Brothers. I’m not in the market for a car, but I think the hamsters could sell me almost anything else. Like, for example, a Black Sheep song from 1991.

Money Shot? NOT!!!

I have an essay on Salon's front page! Totally thrilled. Of course, the art....is not my favorite. I've been lucky with that kind of thing. I especially love the paper doll illustration from the first thing I wrote for them and the teddy for my Nerve sex thing. Of course, the cover art on the book....wellllll.....yeah. Not my favorite thing in the world.

So the kid's eating ice cream, not getting the wrong kind of facial.

But, more to the point: YAY!

Saturday Night in Toledo, Ohio

There's never anything a single person can do alone. And I'm not single, really, just geographically inconvenient to my sweetie, who lives in Michigan and who I won't see tll next week. I'm at Starbucks working, but thought I'd treat myself to a midnight movie. No dice. The new movie company in Toledo, Rave Motion Pictures, now declines to show movies after 11 pm. So I could go to a bar or a Waffle House. I think I'll go home and watch a movie on the tube, snuggle my cats and rest up. I've got a killer week ahead between the three jobs I'm juggling, my writing, and social and family obligations.

Tomorrow, I'll help my (sort of) stepdad move a stack of 40-pound pavers into the backyard so he can anchor his new cantilevered umbrella over the patio furniture. There's leftover ribs in it for me (in the job, not, I hope, in the furniture).

All this underscores a need to move. Not to Michigan, though my sweetie would love that. I miss Boston. I miss movies that start at 1 am and having a million things to do any night of the week. I miss the ocean and the Cape. I miss all of it. No idea if I'll ever live there again, or anywhere other than here.

Still, despite being nearly as good a pilot as he was a singer, John Denver got it right when he covered that shitty song about my town. It's like noplace at all, and I want to be someplace....someplace lovely.

Julianne: Ben Folds Project

"I don't miss Julianne"
From "Julianne", Ben Folds Five

The thing is, I do. Julie, one of the best friends I've ever know, lives in Canada now. We met online through the quiz tournament community, becoming friends and then quiz teammates at various masters' events. For the last fifteen years, Julie and I have had many adventures in a variety of crappy old cars, chugging along I-75 at 80 miles an hour.

I miss her. Then again, we've never lived in the same town, so I can't say what it'd be like to see her all the time. I doubt I'd get sick of her. We could hang at the bookstore or have coffee in my tiny apartment. We could watch Metalocalpyse with Rick (her husband, and another dear friend, though Ben Folds has yet to write him into a song). Julie has comfortable furniture and loves to cook, making her the perfect hostess.

So I do miss Julie (formerly Julie Ann -- a first/middle combination she always despised and correct via a maiden name swap out). I miss her a lot.

"She'd make a reason for the things that I did and give me credit for the things I never did." Ben got that right, though he doesn't know Julie. For a genius and a thinker and a PhD biologist, she's by far the most optimistic person I know, especially where other people and their variouos bad behaviors are concerned. When the optimism falters, she happily offers to unleash her lab wasps on thine enemies. I love that in a pal.

Disclaimer: Unlike the Julianne in Ben's song, Julie looks nothing like Axl Rose. Nor does sohe go home with strange musicians and sleep in her clothes. Strange invertebrates? Most definitely, but that's another story.

The way he makes me feel

My relationship status has changed, and not just on Facebook. His name is Mike. He's the bee's knees. He makes me laugh all the time. He's smart and kind and a little evil (as am I...muahahahaha!). He has amazing upper body strength. This may have something to do with the chair. He has cerebral palsy. Yes, folks, his junk works fine, thanks for wondering!

Telling Mike's story would take a whole book, and that's a book Mike needs to write himself. A guy who's met Ronald Reagan, William Shatner, Soupy Sales and various Detroit Lions, and who had Kwame Kilpatric as his schoolyard bully has more than a few amazing stories to tell. That Kwame! Playing the race card since 1979. At least he didn't kill the class flirt.

Mike met my mom and didn't run (er, roll) screaming for the door. He thinks I'm amazing, which is a lot to live up to.

I'll give it my all.

Real men eat quiche

I had a birthday party. I am old now. 37. So my friends came over and we did karaoke OnDemand. Also, I made many delicious foods. I made mini quiches. Never tried it before, but everyone scrafed them, especially the dudes.

My friend Mike came all the way from beautiful downtown Melvindale to hang out with me. He ate quiche. He went to the drag bar with me. He's the man! He came to the drag show because he likes me. He ate quiche because quiche is delicious. He likes me....I dunno why. I want to believe all the sweet things he says about me, but I've got a lifetime of negative reinforcement to work through.

Monni sang "Baby Got Back". My new work friend Kristin has an awesome voice. Also, four dozen cookies seem to have vanished into my pals. It's mysterious. I made sugar cookies and decorated them. Halloween. Nummy.

Happy birthday to me. Happy Sweetest Day to Mike (who is a sweetie). Happy! For now.

Screwing Up

Sometimes, I screw up. I forget things. I can be careless. I screw up without malice. It's not like I'm some weird modern saint, but I can't remember actually forming a plan to hurt someone. I've said things when I'm angry that I regret, and a few that I don't. But I never set out to ruin someone's day.

What do you do if you inadvertently hurt someone? What do you do when they lay it all out, and you apologize, and they are vague about whether or not they accept? If I apologize, I mean it. I just don't know what else I need to do.

This is really vague, purposely so. The situation I'm dealing with involves someone I love, who's been angry at me for a while, and who vacillates between acting like we're friends and acting like I'm a shitty person who should just go away and die in hole someplace. And when I go away (not to die, but to live my life of tutoring and family obligations, and cleaning houses, and writing and trying to have friends and date), she gets angry at me for not paying attention to what's going on in her life.

Nothing I do works in this situation. I don't think I'm a rotten person. I don't want to buy my friend off. Given the level of anger, I wonder what I owe myself? I like me a bit. I don't know that avoidance is a bad idea, either.

Why can't we all just get along? Oy.

Lighting up the Night

My friend Dan had huge blue eyes and said "fuck" an awful lot. He name dropped the top-notch Atlanta country club where he'd managed the dining room. He got into fights in Boston, defending his restaurant from marauding teenage idiots.

"They thought they'd teach the little faggot a lesson, but I was one tough little faggot," Dan told me.

Dan made lobster bisque so light and creamy and beautiful it almost convinced me I like lobster. He brought chocolate pots de creme to me and my mother, and we shared a bottle of Tokaj with him. I met Dan covering the local Stonewall Democrats for my old paper, and soon began inviting him along whenever I reviewed restaurants. Dan trained as a chef in Italy. He had marvelous taste and a twisted sense of humor.

Dan catered a Christmas party for my mother. He came both as caterer and guest, and had all of us in stitches with stories of weird times in the hospital. Dan had cancer, but had been in remission for years.

"Some young tech could not believe my nipple rings," he told us. "So I had to show him the tattoo on my ass. Red devil. Gets 'em every time."

Two weeks later, my mother and Dan were in rooms in different wings of the same hospital. My mother was recovering from a planned double knee replacement. Dan's lymphoma returned. He called my mother's room from his, told us both that he loved us, and died a couple of weeks later.

Dan deserved more than fifty years. Dan had so much kindness and wit and talent and love in him. I miss him every time I pass the farmers market where he sold exquisite homemade cookies and handmade red wine syrup. One of the last kind things Dan did for me was to walk me through the process of applying for disability. Dan knew the program because of earlier, devastating bouts with lymphoma. When I called him for help, I weighed nearly 600 pounds and was immobilized by sciatica. The advice Dan gave me led me to health insurance, surgery and a healthy, worthwhile life. I truly believe that, without his grace and good sense, I might not be alive today.

I owe him. On October 17th, I hope to repay a few of his many kindnesses to me during our all too brief friendship. I will Light up the Night for Dan Holmes.

Anyone who'd like to sponsor me can e-mail me through the blog. I'm not really in it for the donations, but the charity would probably appreciate it.

Ben Folds Project:Philosophy

I'm crazy, but I get the job done.


A couple of years ago,my therapist left Catholic Charities, and I made her a CD that organized my magical mental health in song form. I drew a human brain on the CD using Sharpies. I drew the brain in rainbow colors and loaded it with songs. I started off with the Johnny Cash version of "Hurt", moved along through such sad girl classics as "Save me" (Aimee Mann) and "Because of You" (Kelly Clarkson). The disc gets less depressing with songs like "In Between Days" (Ben Folds' cover, naturally) beforing ending with "Proud" (yes, the song from The Biggest Loser, a show I kind of despise for reasons I won't get into here).

"You made a mix tape for your shrink!" My friend Paul could barely get the words out, he was laughing so hard at the idea.

I like to think I take a creative approach to mental illness. Over the years, I've made my shrink cookies, crocheted her a hat and scarf, and passed along Hungarian recipes. She's helped me to realize that I can't change other people. Sometimes, I can't fathom changing myself, but I keep trying, at least where it matters the most.

A few years ago, I'd cry for hours if the cat got out. I once wept uncontrollably because I couldn't find my keys. Which were in my car's ignition. I don't do those things anymore.

I don't know that I always see the forrest for the trees. I'm trying to imagine the mortar, block and glass that'll be my city when I'm done. When will I be done? Are we ever really finished? Don't ask me. I'm crazy. But I get the job done.*





*Litter box cleaning not included.

Ben Folds Project: Jackson Cannery

I'm starting a new project. I love Ben Folds. Why? Because he's a genius. His sense of humor, the brilliance of his piano playing, the plaintive keen/whiteboy whine in his voice....I don't know if Ben Folds is perfect as a musician, but he's the perfect musician for me.

I'm going to use his songs as jumping off points for blog posts. Some of the posts will have almost nothing to do with the songs. Some of the posts might describe the things I associate with the songs. No rules, just Ben and me.

#1: Jackson Cannery
(Track 1, Ben Folds Five, 1995)

Stop the Bus....Don't want to be lonely

I do lonely well. Better than I do almost anything else, or, at least, I do it more often than I do other things or other moods. I go to bars alone. I don't drink. I might meet acquaintances. I dance by myself. I watch pretty people mime intercourse and simultaneously envy and disdain them. I leave, alone. To my apartment, alone. To bed. Alone.

I go to the bookstore. I put on makeup. Maybe someone will talk to me. Maybe a man. Maybe I'll run into friends. It's happened. I talk to the barristas in the bookstore cafe. I know their names and college majors. I bring them cookies at Christmas. I've lived in Toledo for ten years. I've been invited to exactly two Christmas parties.

Odd that I love Chirstmas. I bake and give gingerbread men to friends. No one ever gives me cookies. My friends don't bake. Or host parties. They work. They date. They have children. I press my face against the glass and watch couples looking at wedding magazines. I see young mothers choosing picture books. Goth kids in little clusters, talking and laughing. I drink coffee by myself. I go home alone.

Weekends, I scramble. I call and text and e-mail. I chat. No one has time. No one wants to have coffee or see a movie or come to my place so I can make them a lovely dinner. No one feels like singing or dancing or talking. I go to the bookstore. I go to the grocery at 10 pm on a Saturday night. I think the place will be empty, but it's full of couples. Old, toothless men in wifebeaters with the wives I hope they're not actually beating. Yuppies giggling over the bottle of pinot grigio they're buying. A black woman in a sleeveless sundress, hair dyed platinum. She has to weigh 250 pounds, but there's a guy walking by her cart, carrying her purse. I buy ingredients to make risotto. I scale the recipe for one and go home alone.

Stop the bus. Stop it. Don't. Ben's right. Seconds pass slowly. Days go flying by. Just....stop.

Late

Late at night, when I can't sleep, I sometimes read his blog. The one with the halitosis. The one with the twin bed and the artsy, smoky roommates. Him. And I wonder how it is that a man who had breath like an unflushed toilet, a man who expressed fear of soup and who had never eaten a strawberry before I fed one to him, I wonder how a man like that can have a girlfriend when I'm alone.

And I look at pictures of the other one. The one who called me a whore because he was terrified I'd write about him. The last guy who kissed me. I wonder if he's the last guy ever. I really hope not.

What have I learned? Tall isn't a good personal quality. Nice isn't enough. I need to remember to brush my tongue.

It's something, no?

Tiny dogs, Huge house

Today, A. and I cleaned a giant McMansion --no, a McEstate -- on 40 acres in the middle of nowhere. Huge house. 8000 square feet. Every floor in the place was made of wood or marble or stone tile. The basement entertainment lounge had a fireplace, a full kitchen, a bar, a skeeball table, a pool table, a ping pong table and many presents from the asses of the family's collection of tiny, yappy dogs. And larger dogs. And cats. I cleaned a spot of something biological off a window ledge. A. told me the owner told her it was doggie-rhea. I want to bleach my entire body.

That said, the house had a central vac system and the owners had a wheelie mop bucket. This made cleaning the place not so bad. A long, exhausting job, but not impossible. The owner's 24-year-old son (hottttttttt) came into the basement just after A. told me about the 'rhea. I'd used one of my own rags wiping the spot. I said something about mailing it to her ex as a tea bag. Then, as Hottt Sonnnn was walking in, I made one of those comments that echo and expand and you wish you could unsay them.

"You ex'll love it. He lives for tea bagging." Hottt Sonnnn seemed like he didn't mind. Later, upstairs in the dining room (lovely tray ceiling, Broyhill knock-off furniture, three mouldering, hair-shrouded dog beds), he introduced one of the dogs.

"I think something's licking my ankle," I said.

"That's Buddy. He's a mini-pinscher."

The dog looked like a Doberman. Only tiny. I said another one of those echo-y things.

"I want to breed a pack of them and train them to hunt midgets." Hott Sonnn laughed. I laughed. Little People of America sent an angry letter of protest to the mailbox in my head. Joking! But sometimes, I have these bad thoughts.

The family who own the McEstate (40 acres, no mule) consist entirely of 6-foot blondes, including the 22-year-old daughter. They were all so shiny and tan and blonde and perfect that I wanted to have a weird orgy with all of them. Hottt Sonnnn eats ice cream in the tub. I know this because I found an empty carton of Haagen-Daazs Dulce de Leche in the soap niche along with a spoon. I imagined myself in his parents' enormous spa tub, licking caramel ice cream off his chest.

And then we cleaned the rest of the house. The lady of the house came home in the middle of the cleaning, unaware that cleaning and spackling (an impromptu project for her husband) would be taking place. She screamed at Hottt Dad, scattered dogs around the dining room like so many yappy, shitting throw cushions, then went out to have a nice, angry smoke by the pool.

Hotttt Sonnn paid in full, didn't dispute our price, and complimented the work, and said something about having us back the next time the Hottts throw a party.

I can't wait. I'm buying Haagen Daasz and a loofah.

Death, Birth, Phlegm

My friend John had a heart attack a week ago today. I met him through a dating website, and our single date involved looking over crochet patterns and drinking coffee. He told me about his family. He hugged me goodbye because "Hugs are good." He reminded me of a polar bear. Not the real kind who would totally eat you but are probably starving to death because of global warming and Al Gore. The kind from Coke commercials. I could imagine John enjoying a Coke and sharing his treat with cute seal pups.

John had already found the love of his life, though. He and Carmela were back together, probably before my Starbucks cup hit the trash can as I waved goodbye after the coffee date and wandered toward my car. I forgave this lapse -- I didn't enjoy feeling like a backup plan, but John's kindness and gruff sense of humor eventually won me over. He ran a local open mic where I did the first readings from Butterbabe. He gave me advice about my last boyfriend ("Dump him. "Dump him. DUMP HIM"). I called him to check up from time to time. We always had funny conversations and I'd hang up the phone feeling a bit lighter and more cheerful than when we'd started.

John struggled with Type 2 diabetes his entire adult life. He spent most of the fall and winter last year having toes chopped off and recovering in a nursing home. He had a demented roommate who'd sit in his wheelchair in a hospital gown, spindly legs bare, knees wide apart. Carmela stayed with him as much as she could. I came by with a copy of the book, and for more boyfriend advice ("Seriously -- dump him. He's a douche.").

I last saw John at Artomatic 411, a sort of grand fleamarket of the arts that ran for three weekends in May and June. In a warehouse downtown, local painters and sculptors and writers and musicians and filmmakers put on a show. John looked so much better than he had in the nursing home. He'd lost weight, become engaged to Carmela and was making plans to finish his social work degree.

John had a heart attack a week ago today. I know I told you that, but I still don't believe it, and I feel like if I say it, I'll convince myself. I'd rather not believe it, but it's immutable and sad and terribly real now. John died a week ago today. He lived 47 years, all of them in Toledo. He wrote lovely, gritty, clever, poems that evoke this rusty little town by the Maumee and Michigan. He made the place softly forlorn, shaved the edges so that the city's oddball charm stood out, glowing softly like sodium lights in a steady rain.

Becca and I went to the visitation. We hugged Carmela and beautiful Caroline, the brilliant young woman John mentored and loved like a little sister or daughter. We met his mother. We left.

Becca's birthday was Saturday. She's 43 now. We had delicious food and a party in the park. There were gifts and songs and piggyback rides. I can't believe I can carry a 180-pound woman, but I used to carry a good 250 more pounds than I do now just in my own body weight, so I guess it makes sense.

And now I have a head cold and the phlegm keeps coming.

Better things are coming. Better days ahead. They have to be. My birthday is in six weeks. At least I've had another year.

Hitler!

Hitler! He ruined that mustache for everyone.

I saw Inglorious Basterds. Enjoyed it, but also came at it from a fairly unique perspective. The movie centers on the titular group of soldiers, Jews who fight a guerilla campaign and kill Nazis in occupied France. My father, a Jew who fought in WWII, was sort of a bastard, too. Note the correct spelling there.

My father died in 1996. We never managed to come up with a functional relationship. During his last days in the hospital, he went from gesturing inarticulately into the silence of a morphine coma. I never managed to forgive him and he never managed to express any feeling for me apart from a sort of bemused contempt. We didn't understand each other. He never told me about the war.

Every dark-haired young man in uniform, all eight original Basterds, reminded me of my father. In wartime photos, my father looks like the actors in the Tarnatino movie.

Inglorius. Kind of a bastard. My dad. I'm pretty sure he never scalped any Germans, as they didn't store many of those in New Guinea or Australia. And I still haven't a clue about who he really was.

I'd like to blame Hitler for this, too.

He's got Bite

Tonight, I did laundry for my mother and hung out with her and her boyfriend. The boyfriend, Mike, has an African grey parrot named Crocky. Crocky is cute but unpredictable. He sometimes tries to attack my toes. I asked Mike if Crocky enjoys the taste of human flesh when he bites you.

"Crocky bites you because he wants to bite you," Mike said.

Weirdly zen and pithy, I thought. I'm keeping my toes to myself.