Calling Over Time

New Poetry (?) Blog

2006-06-09T21:51:00.000-07:00

It's not exactly poetry, but then again, it isn't exactly not either.
This is a new space, under construction but I'll likely be spending more time there:
www.becomingpros.wordpress.com Come visit.

How I started a revolution by knitting-Or Alienated a Lot of Awesome People by Trying

2006-05-23T22:45:00.000-07:00

Tonight, a friend and housemate nearly reduced me to tears by saying, in so many words, that, lacking proof of productivity as a visual artist, I might not qualify to take up permanent residence in the 13-person warehouse collective I’ve been calling home for the last three months.

Exhausted from days of work, band practice and very little sleep, I slumped disconsolately over my jam jar of warm beer, almost too weary to defend myself. “Where to begin?” I thought. With a lecture on the more subtle art forms of tact and sensitivity? Or the news that in three weeks my mother will no longer be employed leaving the entire family (including two siblings with chronic debilitating illness) at the risk of being uninsured? Perhaps heart-rending weeping over how much I hate myself every day that I fail to write?

Fighting back tears, I motioned weakly to the slop-stained trash compactor adjacent the moldy sink. “It takes a real artist to hand scoop all the garbage out of there when the bag is torn and everyone else ignores it like it’s not their problem.”

It’s ironic that what finally compels me to sit down and write is my absolute disdain for artists right now. So much so that I think this blog might detour into a manifesto like series of essays on the topic. My detractor makes a lot of neat art. I guess. To her credit, she helped found and runs an art gallery/craft collective out here in the east bay that hosts lots of free shows and workshops. Troubling however is her conviction in having found the true “right way to live” and her often course myopia in defending these sketchy ideals. Oh, and one more little thing…she is also financially poised to not have to work. I bet that’s nice. In fact I know it is, I’ve been there myself. I got a lot of writing done.

I am currently in the middle of Ellie Wiesel’s newest novel, a meandering web of elegant racontuering, “The Time of the Uprooted.” It’s a fitting read for someone who still lives out of a backpack and finds herself from time to time (like last night) roomless and hunkered in her trusty sleeping bag on the living room sofa. On my way home from work this evening I came across a particularly moving passage in which a character is brought back from the brink of suicide by a visit from a friend. A powerful conversation with his rabbi ensues. Rebbe Zusya says:

Don’t you understand that each life is sacred and irreplaceable? That a single life, any life, yours as well as mine, is worth more than all that has been written about Life. (italics mine, but note the capital ‘L’).

I suppose I’ll open it up to my wise and beautiful readership because after a quarter of a century, years of education, and life far from, at and over the edge, I still don’t understand who merits the title of ’Artist.’ More urgently, when it comes to creating viable, idealistic spaces for alternative communal living, how critical is this nebulous honor? I means, from time to time, (to make like teenagers do) can’t I just fucking live?

If I have one wish for my socio-cultural-economic cohorts it would be for everyone to start taking very honest stock of how and why we create and what it means to create in the ways that we do. Whereas I might have once believed art to be a life-or-death necessity, the grand explicator of truths wholly pure and divine, I have come now to regard it mostly as play. Art is something we do to build community, to feel good about ourselves and validated among our peers, to engage in so we sublimate our violent tendencies and stay out of trouble. Art is something we do to create a richer, more nuanced, ultimately more interesting world. And these are good things. But art is not the only means to these ends. In fact, at times (like when it’s wielded as some socially Darwinian caste system club), I would argue it is absolutely counter-productive.

The fact of the matter is, I’ve been inspired by artists and I’ve also been bored out of my skull by artists. At the risk of re-inventing the wheel here, I have to sound the reminder that flinging paint on a canvas is a priori proof of neither intelligence nor depth of character. I barely lasted one semester in art school I found this anti-axiom so disheartening.

Of all the artists I know, those I really care about, certainly the only ones with whom I’d want to live, also happen to be fantastic people. I try to be a generous, responsible, fun and supportive housemate. I have even been known to book shows, play music, write poetry and sew quilts. I assumed most people would be judging me more on the former set but I guess to some people that’s not enough. Was it the eternally quotable Mark Twain who said something like “when I was younger I admired people who were clever, now that I’m older I admire people who are kind.”

Maybe this is a sign that I should move into a studio apartment, get a cat and a television and give up on this charade once and for all. Yep, tonight, thanks to my awesome artists’ collective I can finally say I’m going to bed inspired.

The Person Formerly Known as "An Artist"

2006-05-19T16:33:00.000-07:00

(I will start writing again out of boundless gratitude to Mark and Mark, my loyal-perhaps only-readers. I hope you’re both doing well).

Sometimes I feel like no one understands me and I haven’t got anyone in this world. And then I remember that I’ve got Richard. Richard and I talk on the phone long-distance about once a week. He is a good friend, warm and funny, a companion, a sympathetic ear, a supporter. After all, only a close, stand-up buddy would lend me $7,000 in a pinch like Richard did.

Well, he didn’t exactly lend it to me personally.

Actually, he works for National Education Lending Corps. He’s my debt manager. And a really nice guy. I rather like talking with him more than a lot of people I know and it’s come to the point where sometimes I call him just to chat. I’m always telling him I wish we were business partners on different terms and he always chuckles at that.

Just the other day I was standing in the stairwell at work punching his extension into the phone menu at their headquarters back in my former home of Chicago. “This is Richard,” I hear after a couple rings. “Richard hi it’s Abbyg.” I’m breathless with excitement.
“Abby, how’s it going, I was just going to call you!”
“Did my check come??”
“It just came today, a money order no less, I’m impressed.”
“Are you proud of me Richard?”
“Very proud indeed.”

What we’re talking about is the largest single monetary transaction I’ve made since an obscene wad of bills stuffed awkwardly into my shoe for a jaunt across the street between the bank and the travel agency when I was 17 and preparing to move to Israel. Last week, after months of arduous saving, I mailed off a check to national education for $1,000 (addressed to Richard’s attention) - a fraction of the debt I managed to incur from JUST ONE semester of graduate school at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Phases are funny. When I moved to California a few months ago I figured I would spend all my days drinking coffee and writing rhapsodic poetry about the fog and the hills and the piss stained concrete. Or working on my masterful memoir-style contribution to the contemporary Jewish literary cannon. Or fleshing out that play of vignettes investigating the spiritual/material nature of Stuff.

But I suppose I had another kind of trajectory planned for myself.
I’m dry.
I’ve got nothing particularly interesting to write about. But I AM working like a fucking horse, 6-7 days a week right now, singularly obsessed with getting myself out of debt and putting aside money for my next series of escapades. I tend to seek out reading material that only reinforces whatever kind of tunnel-visioned mode I find myself in, so right now, for a “good” (i.e. Terrifying, depressing) read I recommend Anya Kamenetz’ book Generation Debt .

Debt is so real and so scary. Kids, don’t do it. Richard congratulates on my hard work, shares his own frustrated English Major dreams of at least becoming a financial educator because he sees all these kids sinking in deep for junk educations. He’s my friend and during our talks he confirms everything in Kamenetz’s book and more. I do not regret dropping out of graduate school for even one moment when I think about how debt-sick I would have been at the end.

Despite all my beautiful artist friends, my cynicism about art, creativity and class is plumbing new bored and sardonic depths these days. So until I’m ready to tug on that tenuous line, consider me “the person formerly known as an artist.” Right now I’m convinced that remaining free from children, debt and want for Stuff (you know, material things you’d end up giving away or throwing out if you had to move) is my ticket to liberty on a serious level. I’m taking a breather from my bohemian laziness to pull myself out of this mire.

Tell me the poetry will come back one day because without it, I am feeling kind of lonely. But when it does, I want to be ready to run off to Mexico, drink Chinaco on the beach and be nobody’s bitch but mine.

Conversation with a Young Art Historian

2006-03-14T16:27:00.000-08:00

“If it’s money you’re after,” I chuckle uncomfortably, “I’m afraid to tell you I just lost my job today and I haven’t really got any!”

For a few days a mysterious Oberlin Ohio number had been appearing in my missed calls register. The voicemail yielded no clues and to be honest it was bugging me a little. Finally, curled up in bed reading yesterday evening I got my answer: A chipper young sophomore calling from the Oberlin fund. That’s right. My grace period of normal post-collegiate poverty has supposedly passed and I’m now on their roster of illustrious potential donor alumni.

“Sweetheart, you have the most difficult job, I’m sorry I’m so busted right now,” I told him genuinely apologetic, “If I had it, I’d give it to you because I loved Oberlin, the thing is, in a lot of ways I’m a typical Oberlin grad, I’m totally broke. I refuse to grow up.” I confessed, ruefully adding, “ if only you knew how many of my Oberlin friends are paying off their educations now working at coffee shops and video stores you would be shocked, kid. I am sorry we’re such a lot of losers!”

The kid laughed. “At least you’re nice about it.” He said.
“I wish there was something I could do for you that didn’t involve money,” I mused. “I had a number of friends who worked at the fund when I was an undergrad and I know how hard it is.”

“Well actually,” he began “It says here that you majored in art history and, well, I’m new to the department but I think it’s going to be my major so I was kind of curious what you’ve done with your degree and how you liked it and whatnot.”

A warm nostalgia spread over me and I started regaling him with questions. “Who are you taking classes with? Who is your advisor?” As it happened, the kid was becoming close with the professor who wrote me all my recommendations for jobs and graduate school and he worked as a docent in the museum just like I had. The young art historian and I began to talk some serious shop. I gave him gossip and tips and advice. He wanted more so I told him about the internships I’d taken and about beginning graduate school at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. Turns out the ophomore is from northern Indiana and has dreams of a similar academic migration.

As I counseled him, revisiting my undergraduate career as a promising scholar with a mixture of pride and aching sadness, I became aware of how authoritative, crazy and, well, old I sounded. I had been a wild asshole, an emotional wreck and a raging alcoholic, but I was also a very good art historian. For years it was something that came naturally, it was a gift and I was being groomed to go great places. I did go great places. I beat out over a hundred applicants for both my job at the Brooklyn Museum and my spot in the graduate program at SAIC. I was poised to be a rock star, all except for the fact that I pretty much woke up one day and decided that art didn’t mean anything to me anymore. When I went to galleries I shuddered. In museums I yawned. I had no other choice but to drop out of school. It’s around the time that I did that this blog began.

“So what are you doing now?” Sophomore asks me. Again the chuckle.

“Well, I moved out to California kind of on a whim, shacked up in a warehouse with a friend of mine, another Obie actually, and I was working for this famous author but that fell apart and to be honest, I’m not really sure what I’m doing besides reading 3 novels a week and being frustrated with myself for not writing more poetry.”

I think this scared the kid. I didn’t really mean for it to. “Don’t worry honey, “ I told him “You are in an amazing program at a great school. Work hard and be friendly and you will be able to do whatever you want when you leave. I promise. And when you go to grad school, because you will go to grad school-everybody has to these days-go all the way. Get your PHD because otherwise you’ll pay through your ass ok? Do your homework. Get lots of help from the adults. I wish I had done a better job at that.”

I concluded by telling him he could drop my name up at the art library when he applied for a job on the condition that he promised never to fuck up there because Paula, my boss there is one of the most amazing people in the world.

By this point we’d killed half an hour rapping. “It’s great actually,” he said “I get paid to do this.” Before I relinquished him he managed to nail me for $5 miserable dollars, telling me that an anonymous professor was giving that amount for every new first-time alumni donation.”

“Are you sure you’re not laughing at me?” I asked him desperately as I read him my bankcard number. “I swear I’m not” he assured me. “It’s awesome that you’re giving anything at all…do you want the money earmarked anywhere in particular? The art library? The art museum?”

“Scholarships.” I answered immediately “I’m 7 G’s in the hole off one lousy semester of grad school, sweetheart.” I heard him making the appropriate clicks on the monitor.

“One more thing, Abby,” The sophmore said, “Do you have a change of address? We want to send you a thank you card.”
“Dude, my five dollars hardly warrants a thank you card!”
“Well I was going to write it personally because it’s been so nice and helpful talking to you.”

I really liked this sweet boy. But again, deep shame and discomfort.

“Thing is, I’m only at this address for another two weeks and then, well, I don’t really have a place to live after that so I don’t know where I’ll be. I told you honey, I’m really pretty embarrassing.”

Instead I gave him my email address and told him to write to me if he had any more questions thinking that I could morph into a former version of myself and take him under my wing.

A Mildly Censored San Francisco Rhapsody

2006-02-27T23:54:00.000-08:00

It’s pouring rain in San Francisco. It’s nighttime. I’m in a black Mercedes Benz that’s winding down the famous tortuous curves of Lombard street in Russian Hill. I’m sitting unnaturally straight in my heated leather passenger seat, terrified, thrilled. The driver is my literary hero, Kate Braverman. She’s my boss now and we’re coming home from the grocery store where she let me pick out anything I wanted and put it in the shopping cart.

“Normally I never drive in a monsoon like this.” She had yelled over the music.
This then, of all moments to take me down the most treacherous, scenic street in the whole city.

“Look at this,” Kate says as the car hinges itself over the horizon. In front of me, down below, glittering in the rain and fog is practically the entire mystical Valhalla of San Francisco. “I like to come here and say ‘I’m the girl in the postcard.’ You can be the girl in the postcard too.” She says yanking at the wheel with two hands like we’re aboard a schooner on choppy seas.

My eyes fill with tears.

It took me 8 months to figure out a way to get back here but I did it.

Sometimes when I fall asleep the last thought on my mind and the first one I have in the morning is simply “California.” Sometimes the last thing I whisper to Mark at night, and the first thing I say in the morning is just “California.” And we smile at each other and into the darkness of the room. The California darkness. Then I have trouble falling asleep because I’m excited about California. I bounce out of bed early in the morning for no other reason than that same electric thought: California.

This is not my life. And it is. I’m here. Buying peaches to seal the deal on February. Perhaps the only February of my life through which I’m not stalked by overpowering impulses to negate myself. I’m here. I’m sitting in the study of the woman who wrote a novel that turned me inside out and shook out the guts that clung to the lining of my being’s pockets. I’m drinking her beer and she’s asking me what I think about the passages her French translator has recommended for readings. I’m practically mute. I pick up a copy and follow along as she reads. Again, I’m almost crying.

Kate keeps saying I look so much better than when we first met almost exactly a year ago. “I mean what have you done? Did you gain some weight?” she asks. I navigate the shopping cart out into the drizzly night. “I had a rough spring last year, Kate.” I admit, knowing that’s all I have to say for her to understand what I mean. “And,” I add, working up a tearful grin, “I moved to California.”

Discipline and Organize: A Hazy Outline for Becoming

2006-02-26T14:14:00.000-08:00

Any proud slayer of gloating demons will be happy to know that today it is actually raining in sunny California. It’s coming in small drops, taping like transistor static on my skylight and the flat roof of our warehouse abode in West Oakland. Outside, water swells into the bike-menacing old train tracks that snake through the industrial corridor I now call home. Tufts of weeds poking though the buckled cement shuckle and stagger in the intermittent showers. The Semi-truck cabs that line our street stand mute in the grey weekend repose, beads of water dripping from their curly red coils onto oil-spotted patches of road. The yowling stray cats have too been quieted.

The house is cool and quiet and dark. It’s taken to pouring once an hour so I’ve pretty much resigned myself to never leaving the house, obtaining the cup of coffee I’ve been dreaming about seemingly since last night. I move through the spacious room I am subletting from my friend Nat, thankful for its special variation. I spend an hour on the little couch reading, and then migrate up the shallow staircase to “the office” where I contemplate the onerous chore of organizing my defunct email address book, or attempting to cull together the little mini videos I took in Mississippi and sending them to Hank for his screening.

Perhaps not since the 8th grade have I felt so inspired to organize my life. Like 8th grade, this desperate quest for self-improvement hinges obsessively on the acquisition of a common material object: a planner.

Most of you know this, but in case it’s not readily apparent, I failed out of school my entire life until I got to college. My memories of school are dominated by mornings spent in the principle’s office or a locked supply closet (yes, that is true, it was a private parochial school- they could do that there) and slews of failed organizational and behavior modification regimens (the gold stars, the daily reports, the threats, the entreatments). I was forever losing or forgetting my homework or plain refusing to do it. I engaged my haggard teachers in power struggles, which ultimately, we both lost. I suffered from a terrible lack of confidence but this might not have been outwardly apparent; rather, I came off as rather unlikable kid. Defiant, petulant, stubborn, lazy.

My parents begged me repeatedly to “get with the program” to learn how to “play the game” so I could be happier and live up to my vague, lofty potential. Despite harboring such deep, misplaced anger for my authorities, and myself part of me really longed to succeed. I didn’t really like failing. When I think back on the late-August ritual of school-supply shopping, it’s a freighted sort of ceremony in my memory. I selected my pencils, trapper keepers and packs of pristine ruled paper with hopeful solemnity. Every fall was a clean slate. A chance not to be a fuck up.

The planner is a kind of scholastic coming of age object. It enters the panoply of academic accoutrements roughly around middle school. The planner signifies that one is adult enough not just to organize and manage her responsibilities, but to recognize this process as some meta-scholarly project in and of itself, possessing its own merits as milestone of intellectual development. It was not that the planner would simply allow me to remember I had a vocabulary quiz on Tuesday; it was that the manager of an effective planner had a handle on the broader scope of her life. She was prepared. She impressed kids and adults alike. She had the tools and the ironclad will to see her ideas through from whims to realities. She didn’t just get by, she got things done.

The planner became a magical talisman or sorts. I always picked out nice ones, which my mother, ever hopeful, always agreed to buy. I would inhale the crisp, acrid scent of the rubber-binding, stroke the Velcro closures and as I penciled my name and contact information into the appropriate slots on the first page, I would think to myself “ This is the year I get organized. This is the year I do well.”

Of course it never worked.

In college I evened out somewhat. I found my voice and got better at playing the game. Suddenly, teachers didn’t hate me anymore. They were no longer my adversaries but fountains of knowledge I could badger giddily with questions in the hall, office-hour drop by’s. I became a good student but only by virtue of my enthusiasm, never by my habits. I still lost and misplaced things. Forgot things. Missed things. I never flaked out on the important stuff, yet I was never as prepared as I should have been.

School is done now (for the time being), so my anguished disorganization seeps out, oozing unfettered into all other aspects of my life. I think I already lost one of my w-9 forms so how am I going to do my taxes? I sent my transcript request to my college fully a week late (because I couldn’t find an envelope for three days and contemplated making one out of paper but then couldn’t find tape) and had to then concoct an apologetic lie for the scholarship committee; this blog still looks like garbage because I keep saying I’m going to hunker down and really learn some web design but never do it; Shayne and I are supposed to be starting a Clean cover band called “Tidy” but have yet to actually sit down and work on the songs. Our Hot Toddy cocktail recipe book is already meeting a similar purgatorial fate.

When it comes down to it I think there are two fundamental types of people in this world. People who can get things done and people who can’t get things done. It’s difficult to convey how desperately I long to change camps. I’m hoping that circumstances are conspiring to help me.

In a surreal turn of events Kate Braverman , an author
I’ve long admired has hired me as her personal assistant. She’s a brilliant artist and a volatile personality. Already she’s been hurling me scores of assignments a swirling maelstrom of PR phone calls, Internet research, and emotional support. I’m ecstatic. I am also scared. Here, a famous person, an intense personality, is placing faith in me as person capable of organizing and managing her affairs. At first I was terrified by her brusqueness, her barrage of demands, but then it mellowed into a strange kind of inspiring comfort. I need to become the kind of person who will not put things off or let them fall through the cracks. I need to become that person in order to help someone else. And in the process, hopefully, I will grow more adept at my managing my own life.

I walked around the mission all day Friday with my friend Karl drinking coffee and catching up on life, dragging him into every book and stationary store on Valencia Street. In my mind I had the image of the perfect organizer I need to pull this off. It would be kind of like a moleskin notebook, a substantial but portable size with a hard damage-resistant cover. In the back it would have an address section where I could keep and easily access the numbers Kate has me digging up and calling (The web master at the Bay Guardian to demand a link be created from her interview with William T. Vollman to her website, the events coordinator at a prominent Berkeley book store to set up a reading in May etc.) As an ideal sort of bonus it might have a little pocket where I could store clippings and scraps of dubious note. Finally, it would be beautiful and expensive (like $12) because whenever I saw it I wanted to feel good about it.

I grew increasingly frustrated leafing through a million notebooks that were not the one I wanted. I dismissed them for offenses like narrow pages, cheesy San Francisco themed cover art, lack of pleasing, swaddling, elastic binding loop. Eventually, I gave up on my dream of the Address book/notebook combo and settled on a delightful, marble-covered number that meets all the other qualifications. I have decided to designate 26 pages at the rear and make the appropriate markings in Sharpie Marker. My dream is to be able to close each day with a little ‘to-do’/’done’ list on a page of the notebook. I will keep running tabs on the tasks I’ve accomplished and those I’m still working on.

I have bought the notebook, but of course, have yet to do any of the other stuff. I went so far as to peel off the giant sticker on the back but in all honesty, Shayne actually did that because he likes peeling stickers off of things.

I need to break a quarter of a century of poor organizational habits. I am trying to become a different kind of person. The kind of person who actually gets things done. I welcome your encouragements and your suggestions.

Citizen Impotent: A Walk in the Park with New Orleans City Cops

2006-02-20T08:45:00.000-08:00

Friday night was my last night in New Orleans. I’d been spending quite a bit of time with my childhood friend Jason who had mysteriously appeared in the city a few days ago on a spiritual sort of odyssey in a borrowed truck. J had generously offered to drive me to the airport early Saturday morning and we were both exhausted from Thursday night’s drunken escapades that had begun uptown at a sweltering, life-affirming performance by a 10 piece brass band, and ending (for me) in unconscionable stupidity and recklessness: stumbling around the Bywater at 4 am, oscillating with my computer in search of a wireless signal like a nut on a beach looking for gold before settling down in a pile of debris, weeping, writing an email to my estranged high school sweetheart. I haven’t yet figured out how to triage this disaster but it will have to wait. Jason and I had one last order of important business around midnight last night: A mission to the French Quarter for French Fry Po-boys.

The idea of a French fry po-boy will likely shock and disturb anyone but native New Orleanians and possibly Pittsburghers. It’s a rhapsodic treatise of starch: French bread stuffed with French fried potatoes and topped with a standard array of sandwich fixings. I’d had one on my last trip to New Orleans, but this time around I’d come close to missing out, subsisting largely on fried eggs, coffee and beer. We headed to our friend Shanna’s place of employment, the Quarter Master at the end of Bourbon Street. Our order took eternity to process which gave us ample time to discuss vegetarianism with a heavy set young cop waiting in line for his bar-b-qued catfish. “Y’all is ‘try-atarians’” he guffawed affectionately when we confessed that we eat meat from time to time but usually feel guilty about it.

It was midnight and we were exhausted; too tired to even drink beer and opting for ginger ale instead. We walked to the dog park on Dauphine and Governor Nichols and settled down on some brick rubble stumps to devour our food. To our dismay the guys had forgotten the cheese we’d requested (necessary from an architectural perspective as it sorts of binds the fried together in a gooey suspension). Luckily I had managed to hustle them for two sides of olive salad, which we dumped on in oily deluges all over the desiccated messes. As we ate and chatted a strange young man pulled up a rubble heap nearby. He was also eating a sandwich and I exchanged some friendly words with him, though his erratic behavior (making clicking noises, talking half to us and half to himself) was rather annoying. He seemed like a bit of a tweaker and soon took off down the block muttering.

Jason and I were nearly done with our greasy snack when a police squad car pulled up on the sleepy corner. Tow hefty cops emerged and quickly approached us.
“What are you doing here?” They demanded gruffly.
“Just eating a sandwich and drinking a soda.”
“Where you from?”
“Michigan.”
“Where you staying?”
‘The Bywater.”
“What street?”
“Dauphine.”
“You working here?”
“No, just visiting a friend?”
“Where is your friend?”
“Dauphine, 3200 block.”
“We gonna find anything on you tonight?”

Their tone was absolutely terrifying. At this point Jason, ever calm and compliant, a seasoned punk with lots of cop experience in his repertoire, quietly raised his hands. One cop began roughly rummaging in his pockets. A cigarette lighter and a box of dental floss clattered to the concrete. I stood by nervously, grateful we’d been drinking soda; grateful they wouldn’t find anything on us. These were very mean cops with an agenda of terror and things were only about to get worse.

“What are you doing to them?” A voice called. Our friend the sandwich eating tweaker appeared in the park behind us. “They were just eating a sandwich.”
“This ain’t no place to eat.” A cop barked.
“Why is that?” they guy fired back.
“Cos people get robbed here that’s why.” Said the cop, his temper visibly flaring. Adding “Who are you?”
“I’m Arthur.”
“Get over here.” The cops demanded.
“Fine,” said the guy hopping off the brick wall, “but I felt a sure felt a lot safer before you guys showed up.”

Wrong thing to say to vicious, crooked cops. Wrong thing.

“You feel safer without us?” they snarled and within seconds they had the guy bent over the back of the cruiser and were snapping on the cuffs.

“Help me!” the tweaker screamed. He looked at me and Jason and screamed it again
Then he started hollering and struggling and the cops knocked him to the ground and he bit one of the cops on the hand. “Fucking shit.” The cop swore, reaching for his radio, blood pouring down his thumb. “Jesus fucking Christ help me somebody! The guy screamed, “I need to go to a mental institution.” The cop kneed him in the nuts but he kept squirming. Jason and I looked on terror stricken, unsure what to do. I climbed outside my body and saw myself utterly frozen, impotent. I knew that the guy was crazy, probably on crystal meth or something, but I also knew the way the cops were treating him was wrong. Finally, I knew that their wrath was boundless and they were only too eager to rain it on everyone. And they had guns. “Jason,” I whispered panicked, “what do we do? What do we do?”
“Abby, there’s nothing we can do.”

At this moment a bouggie kind of hippy guy striding ahead of a small retinue of well-dressed friends arrived on the seen.
“What’s going on here?” He asked breathily “I heard someone calling for help!”
“Who are you?” bellowed one of the cops
“I’m a person who heard someone calling for help.” The guy said.
“Come ‘ere!”
And they immediately handcuffed this guy too and shoved him into the cruiser. While that was going on the tweaker broke free from the bleeding cop and booked off down the street, hands still shackled behind him.

“Let’s go.” Jason whispered, tugging on my elbow. We began heading briskly towards the car in a state of utter shock. “What the fuck was that?” I gasped. My eyes were tearing and I could feel the French fry po-boy rising in my stomach. I had just witnessed a gruesome abuse of police power. “Sweetie,” Jason said, putting an arm around me as we hurried down Esplanade, “Those were very bad cops.” My stomach dipped again as two cruisers, rushed past us, sirens wailing. Inside the truck we tore up the dashboard looking for cigarettes but turning up only a butt that we smoked down beyond the filter.

J and I stayed up late replaying the scenario trying to make sense of it. Maybe they had gotten a call about a disturbance and were actually looking for the tweaker. Maybe they would have left us alone if he hadn’t shown up. Maybe they would have booked us on some bogus pretext and sent us to prison (that’s right, there’s no jail in New Orleans, only prison). I have witnessed strange and upsetting police action at protests but even that I felt could somehow be justified by desperation to control crowds. This was different. This was a totally unprovoked, Gestapo style display of intimidation. I felt like I had been tested and given no chance to do anything but fail. That impotence left me deeply disturbed.

On our way down to Quarter Master, Jason and I had agreed that New Orleans is one of the few cities in the world, probably the only one in the United States that can really be said to have soul. It’s really, really alive. More than New York, more than San Francisco, more that any other crazy place I’ve spent time, New Orleans is a whole other animal. And it’s alive because it’s just that: it’s crazy feral. It’s full of mysticism and darkness and voo doo and the celebration and the gaiety and the art and the carnival there is unparalleled in this country of ours, but that is all equal to the crime and savagery baseness that haunts its magical streets.

I love New Orleans but ultimately, with its swampy summers, and torrid sensuality, and bleakness and destruction and fevered heights and depths of desperation, it overwhelms me. I’ve remarked to people that living in New Orleans for one week right now, during post-Katrina mardi gras, is equivalent to 6 months of life pretty much anywhere else. New Orleans hardly feels like earth. Awed, elated, disturbed, I’m running to the west coast. Running, but unable to keep from peering back.

Sketches: New Orleans

2006-02-15T12:26:00.000-08:00

Of all the cities I visited last summer, two in particular stood out as the most magical, mystical cities in the country. I am moving to one (San Francisco) but not before waylaying in the other: New Orleans.

This was my first experience of New Orleans if anyone is interested. A few months ago I got a drunken friendster message from an old high school acquaintance who has been living down there for the last 7 years. She graciously offered me her home as a crash pad so my brother and I drove down here from Mississippi on Saturday night, arriving just in time for the Krieux du Vieux parade, the first parade of the Mardi Gras season.

In the past few days there has been much to digest. What follows then, let’s agree to treat as sketches. These vignettes are perhaps as much a celebration of subculture as they are snapshots of New Orleans as it was, as it is and as it will be.

The Bywater District and how to Bucket Flush

I’m staying in the bywater district, an area I think is sort of northeast but I’m not exactly sure. I’ve been warned that in this city a grasp of cardinal directions is hopelessly elusive. The narrow streets are lined with low, peeling little bungalows. The area has been slowly gentrifying for a few years now. It was not hit particularly hard by the storm but was not exactly glamorous to begin with. My friend moved into her current place on Dauphine a few months ago after her home had been flooded. This place used to belong to a mother and her grown daughter who had lived there for many years who evacuated and never returned. They left some antique furniture the landlord has talked about reclaiming. My friend was able to move in on condition that she does a lot of the cleaning and restoration work herself. The people I’m meeting here are not the kind of rich people who are paying to have work done for them. They do it themselves. They scrub and strike and saw and hack and haul.

I’ve always considered myself an interloper between punk and hipster subcultures. Ultimately too prim for the former and too scrappy for the latter I have a chameleon ability to adapt cultural surroundings. If it’s obnoxious retro-clothing and ipods and video artists then so I will be. If it’s dirty fingernails and bike grease and dumpstered amenities so be it too. Right now I’m nice and dirty. To some friends I’m on the prima donna end of the spectrum, others might be dismayed by the habits I can lapse into: sleeping in clothes and then wearing them again and again, bathing only now and then, in a dirty crooked, claw foot tub, no shower, no door, but hot water yessssss. I’m reminded how silly and stupid it is to put some much worry into the hyper-hygienic ritualistic concern over appearance. In an odd way I’m much prettier like this. If you think about it, that sort of thing is much more of a hassle than having to flush a broken toilet by dumping a bucket of used sink water into the bowl. Much.

Notes on the Bywater:

-Desire and Piety streets are parallel to one another
-I come to café Flora on Royal and Franklin every day and drink coffee
-The streets, even and especially the remote ones, are littered with mardi gras beads. It’s eerie.
-At Markey’s bar on Royal you can play free pool, free darts and free shuffleboard. Shuffleboard I’ve discovered is a game of delicacy, control and restraint. Weighted chromed pucks hovering atop a suspension of wax sand, coasting along a 20-foot expanse of shiny, shellacked wood is one of the most pleasing things I can think of in this world.
-A Few blocks south of Luisa, the train tracks run. They are busy tracks used, I think, for switching. The freight trains therefore lumber through very slowly and often stop to back up and shift. You could get stuck at the crossing for 15 minutes sometimes listening to the clanging chimes, but two feet from the train. What a beautiful place to get stuck.
-The huge gutted lot to the east by the river used to be warehouses full of propane. After the storm the warehouses exploded. People who were here said it sounded like artillery shelling.

Dogs

Everyone here has a dog. I’m staying with two dogs. Dinah is a white pitbull, fierce looking but quite affectionate with people. Not so much with other dogs, except, luckily, her new roommate, the puppy. Someone found the puppy in the neighborhood and gave it to Casey (who lives around the corner) at a party. Casey couldn’t take it home because one of his houseguests has a pitbull named Fiona who was a rescued fighting dog who cannot be around other dogs as, quite plainly, she will kill them. Thus the puppy stays with us. We don’t know what he is or how old he is or even what his name will be once Casey and Ben can adopt him. All we know if that he’s intoxicatingly cute, a little black thing with floppy ears and outsized paws, and that he has a mysterious growth on his stomach we think might be a hernia. We’re trying to get him an appointment at the vet. I spend a fair amount of time cleaning up his messes (this morning, on my sleeping bag case) and attempting to discipline him, a failure of course. I love the puppy and he’s taken to sleeping with me at night. I have a new alarm clock. It’s a bite on the face.

Jeff and George

I’m sitting outside café Flora writing. I’m in the company of a handsome, (very) young man who just yesterday hopped freight trains in from Memphis. He’s one of the many houseguests piling into Ben and Casey’s dilapidated house and last night, after the Kriex du Poux festivities in the street, elected to spend the night on a futon in the garbage outside some house on desire. He emerges from the café with a coffee and a hardboiled egg and a great grin on his face. “Someone bought this for me>” he beamed, palming the egg with joy. That someone was sitting behind me smoking a cigarette and drinking an amazingly carnelian colored beverage. “Fresh juice with a little bit of everything in it.” He says to me. He also bought a coffee for a slight, middle-aged guy in a beret who sits down next to him. They begin talking to each other and also sort of to me about the FEMA evictions currently raging here. The man in the Beret, a native New Orleanian, had spent 6 days in dome, and used to work as a house painter but is currently homeless and out of work. This is how the conversation evolves:

“What you need to get by painting?”
“I don’t know, ten an hour I’d be alright.”
“Can you be here tomorrow, nine am?”
“Yeah, yeah I can.”
“Alright meet me here and I’ll give you some painting work. I’m trying to build up some more jobs.”
“You got any painters whites I could wear?”
“No but I got some coveralls you can use.”
“Thanks that would be great man. What’s your name man? I’m George.”
“I’m Jeff”
(Handshake)
“Nice to meet you. 9 am tomorrow. I’ll put you to work.”

And they part.

More sketches to follow.
I’m totally and completely overwhelmed. Drifting.
I think that this is the craziest place I could be.

Mississippi Motion

2006-02-07T08:21:00.000-08:00

Loyal Readers,

Let's meander, together for a little while:

Mississippi Motion

Pornography: A First Exposure

2006-02-05T09:51:00.000-08:00

What follows is an account of the first time I saw pornography. It is not a sexy story.

*

My friend Mariya has been working on a short story called Trumpet , a surreal fable about an unlikely communiqué between two strange and disparate worlds. Early in the story is a scene in which a young girl stumbles upon a stack of pornographic magazines in an alley. Curiosity tempered by a calm nonchalance, she takes one home to discover it serves as a portal to another realm.

Initially, I had a little trouble moving beyond this early part of the story. It was eerie, uncanny. What Mariya had described was almost exactly my first encounter with pornography. Though my reaction was hardly that cool.

It’s probably 1990 or so. I’m about 10 years old. Back then, before it was walled off and made the exclusive property of the U of M football team, the giant field next to Yost arena in Ann Arbor was more or less open to the public. It was right across the street from my childhood home on Granger and State. My brother and sister and I used to traipse over there on windy afternoons and fly kites. Due to a work related Sabbath prohibition against carrying objects outside the house (yes, I am for real), on Saturdays we would wander over there empty handed and entertain ourselves by snooping around the railroad tracks at the outlying western perimeter of the field.

Like normal kids, my brother and I were obsessed with treasure. Raised by an obsessive antiques-collecting father we had a broad appreciation for what counted as treasure. A faded pop can for instance, the kind bearing an unusually shaped, antiquated looking mouth, was for us, a magical, monumental find. We horded this kind of junk (cans, torn, moldy paperback books, dirt encrusted shards of cheap jewelry) with a sort of mythic-taxonomic fascination. We imagined great narratives about their origins, elaborate epics and ghost stories whose veracity we’d manage to convince ourselves of chillingly.

Dad instilled in us an innate curiosity and appreciation for every over-looked component of the man-made material universe. He treated every piece of junk we ever brought him with an awed collectors eye. “Very neat” he’d conclude approvingly, turning over a faded bottle cap while we stood there expectantly. “But is it collectible,” we’d press him. “Hang onto it and we’ll see if we can look up any information about it.”

One Saturday afternoon we were playing around the tracks when something colorful, mashed up against some weeds on fence caught my eye. It was the glossy pages of a magazine flapping in the wind. I moved a little closer, sensing with a strange foreboding that this was something bad, something my siblings should not see. I shooed them home telling them I’d catch up soon and went to investigate this ominous object.

I had never seen a dirty magazine before. It’s difficult to explain the way in which this visual/cerebral experience was so alien. Later on, as I gained some perspective and points of reference on this sort of thing, I could classify the magazine I saw that day as decidedly not of the innocent, soft-core porn variety. In developmental terms this was, rather plainly, a lot of information to assimilate.

With a terror-stricken fascination, akin to rubbernecking at the scene of a gory accident, I flipped through the magazine. There were strange objects being inserted in the women’s hairless vaginas. What were they? The women looked pained. Worse, they looked mean. Their eyebrows were drawn on in sharp, nefarious arcs, their lips curled into haughty sneers. What did the words “Creaming Pussies” mean? This phrase locked itself into my mind, repeating itself hauntingly, obsessively.

After a few moments I threw down the magazine, shuddering in disgust. What should I do with it? I couldn’t just leave it there. What if some other kids found it? I can’t remember if I threw it in a garbage can or stashed it behind some leaves or what. All I knew what that it was noisome to the touch. I wanted it burned. I wanted it erased from the universe.

I returned to my parents’ house queasy and uncharacteristically withdrawn. Predictably, that night I had terrible trouble falling asleep. The phrase “creaming pussies” wouldn’t leave me alone. The alien flesh and the degradation harassed me relentlessly. Why did those girls do that? I felt so sorry for them. Who wanted to look at that? Why? Who would leave it out the railroad tracks to torture me? The hours rolled away and my anguish grew into a feverish panic. I sat in bed, in the glow of my nightlight racked with misery. Eventually I began sobbing and calling for my mother.

My mom appeared in my doorway, bleary eyed, rubbing her arms in her flannel nighty. She sat down and I crawled into her lap weeping disconsolately. I felt guilty because by seeing the dirty pictures I had somehow become implicated in the business of pornography. I was ashamed but I thought I would die if I didn’t unburden myself so hiccupping, sniffling, I told her about my discovery at the railroad tracks. My beautiful mother, so warm and comforting assured me that I had done nothing wrong. As I write this now I’m struggling to remember what words of consolation she offered me. Sadly, this kind of middle-of the night summoning was hardly out of the ordinary. When I reflect on my childhood sleeplessness is one of my most prominent memories. Given to obsessive thinking and worrying, I always had trouble falling asleep. Thoughts about death were the usual culprits.

Once, when I was 7, my dad took my brother and me to the Natural History museum in Washington D.C. where we saw a special exhibit about mummies. One of the mummies was only two feet long, a baby mummy. I couldn’t’ sleep at night for a long time after that because I though the baby mummy was tucked under my covers at the foot of my bed, that terrifying expanse of space my tiny body couldn’t’ fill. I had seen another archeological exhibit featuring some kind of mausoleum from South America and this tortured me too. Every night for weeks my mother had to sit with me at bedtime for hours and hours trying to sooth me into sleep. What did she do to deserve such a morbid child?

“Mom, you’re going to die one day,” I wailed.
“Sweet heart that isn’t going to happen for a very, very long time.”
“But when you do die what am I going to do? Who will take care of me?”
“By then you’ll have your own children who will take care of you.”
“But dad’s going to die too.”
“Yes but that also won’t be for a long time. You don’t have to worry about it now.”
“And grandma and grandpa will die and all my friends are going to die and I’m going to die too! What happens when we die?”
“Abby, you can’t worry so much about all these things that are so far in the future. We have so much life to enjoy in the meantime.”
And then just when it seemed like I had calmed down:
“Mom, what’s going to happen to me when you die?”

And on and on and on.

Other horrific thoughts that kept me awake for months at a time: ships that had sunk to the bottom of the ocean full of treasure and corpses and barnacles, concentration camps and Nazis, toys I had lost and never recovered (not so much being bereft of them as the terror of being unable to account for their whereabouts). Add to this list now shaved, oiled women with foreign objects in their orifices and mean looks on their faces,

I don’t know why it hit me that hard but looking back on it that was a defining loss of innocence for me. I remembered thinking, even years later, that if someone offered me an unfathomable sum of money, a million dollars perhaps, on the condition that I would have to relive that anguish, I would never accept it.

Although the memory is distant now, out of duty to the hypersensitive girl I used to be I’d have to say I would not choose any differently today.

I’m not sure how to end this story without segueing into some debate about pornography. I think it goes without saying that I have since matured into a liberal, reasonably savvy adult (?) with a richer, more nuanced understanding of such a complex issue. At the tender age of 10 I didn’t know anything about sex-positive porn, or feminist porn, or the celebration of deviancy, or theory-laden discourses about inverting gaze. It was just traumatizing.

If You really Loved Me, You Wouldn't Give Me a Thing

2006-01-31T16:29:00.000-08:00

In the last three weeks I have had the incredible fortune of:

Spending a weekend at the Chicago Boat and Outdoor Show (truly a Jew adrift on a decidedly gentile sea) selling shoe insoles for a crazed, 21-year old entrepreneur, making amends with two very beautiful-but in the last six months also very estranged-close friends, serving as book signing assistant for famous author Pat Conroy (and later, absconding with the pen he used to sign all the autographs, in the hopes that some sort of writerly power-object could help end this writer’s block), recording songs with my “band” in a real studio, and finding a place to live out in the SF bay area. A lot has happened. But for some reason I feel like starting farther back. Rewind now to the first week in January 2006…

(What follows is in honor of a dear friend and loyal reader, you know who you are…I hope)

It was a Friday morning. I stepped out into soft, wet snow that dissolved into hungry mud puddles as soon as it touched the ground. Occasionally, if you have nowhere in particular to be, there is something oddly soothing about a hangover. What else could make one thankful for the overcast Pittsburgh sky? I walked down Forbes to Wightman feeling full of clean air and peace, and another strange feeling-happiness.

It was the first thing Mark said to me really, after picking me up down the street and bringing me back to his parents house. “Wow, for once you look happy.” He exclaimed handing me a glass of water in the kitchen. I blushed. Our friendship had been forged during my senior year of college, admittedly one of the darkest moments of my life and perhaps in his mind I’m forever frozen in some iconic desperation. “I’m not miserable all the time you know” I smiled back and to prove it went out to 80’s night where we managed to clear a huge chunk of the college-studented dance floor with our outrageous mayhem.

I had come to Pittsburgh that weekend with my father for two reasons: to visit my grandparents and so that Mark and I could work on our plans to move to San Francisco. That weekend we pledged that after six months of hopeful, but ultimately empty talk, we were going to do it. Pack up all our stuff into backpacks and move across the country, unsure of where we would live or work. We would do this because it felt magical and right and important. Because we don’t want to be afraid not to do it. Because we took stock of everything and concluded that there is no possible way we could fuck things up so badly out there that we wouldn’t be able to somehow find our ways back home and pick up where we left off.

I was trying to explain this to a friend at a party a few months ago. Inevitably, at some point in the conversation my city-hopping history finds it’s way to the table. “What are you running from, Abbyg.?” he asked playfully. I shrugged. Only later that night did I realize I should have gently rephrased the question as “What am I running towards?”

I talked about this a little bit late last May as I prepared for a cross-country rock n’ roll tour that turned into three solid months of homelessness and travel. I am elated and dismayed to report that in many ways I still feel exactly the same way as I did last spring.

I leave Chicago on Monday Feb. 6th. It's been difficult to concentrate on reading and writing lately and I realize this might plague me up until the moment I leave. I am traveling down to Mississippi and New Orleans for a couple weeks before arriving in Oakland, CA in order to do some visiting and some serious writing. If this ramble can achieve anything at all, It's my hope to at least set the stage for some timely ruminations, reflections and theories on Stuff (Note the capital ‘S’). Also forthcoming, of course, impressions from one of the few places in this country, to me, still completely shrouded in mystery: the Deep South.

Publication Notation

2006-01-26T09:19:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the gap in storytelling. I'm preparing to move across the country and, as you might imagine, have much say about that. In the meantime, I'm happy to announce that one of my stories has been published as part of the mini-book series with fledgling Chicago Indie publishers Featherproof Press . Visit the website to obtain your own, beautifully designed, free copy of my story as well as half a dozen other great little books.

The mini book format is actually an amazing concept, one of the most brilliant new things I've seen in terms of synthesizing the "zine" or literary ephemera cultures with new paradigms of transmiting the written word. Directions on how to print and assemble your copy are in the "mini book" section of the site. While you're there, read a free chapter or two of Brian Costello's sweat and rock n' roll soaked memoir-esque novel The Enchanters Vs. Sprawlburg Springs. It is a fun and clever book, especially for the rock music savvy. Feel free to leave those amazing boys at Featherproof any kind of donation for their creativity and hard work!

more soon!

Everything We've Ever Wondered About Art: AbbyG. "Reponds" To Scandal in the Literary World

2006-01-12T11:02:00.000-08:00

I am shelving two works in progress (recollections of my grandparents’ home in Pittsburgh, and a post-Marxist reading of Peter Jackson’s King Kong , to respond briefly to the maelstrom of controversy surrounding authors James Frey and JT Leroy. I have read and thoroughly enjoyed (if that is even the right word when speaking of stories that explore, in harrowingly gory detail, the miserable realms of drug addiction and prostitution) works by both these authors, strenuously recommended them even. Yes, I came to these books under the impression that they were memoirs, i.e. “non-fiction.” Yes, I’m sure that somehow influenced my opinion of the stories as I read and evaluated them. But, for reasons I’m struggling to explain, I just can’t seem to bring myself to feel angry, cheated, or even particularly bothered to find that in reality the stories were (if Frey’s case) embellished or even (in Leroy’s case) completely fabricated.

I fell asleep on the sofa last night around 2 am discussing all this with Eric, who to his credit is a fantastic arguer. I don’t argue so well, as anyone who knows me or has even taken and introductory logic course can testify, so perhaps you, dear readers, can help me make sense of this. Before sketching out some of my thoughts (which will hardly come in a cogent, thesis-driven format), allow me catch you up. A few years ago, James Frey published his riveting memoir A Million Little Pieces , chronicling his odyssey of recovery from an extreme drug addiction. Frey’s book is receiving scrutiny because of allegations that certain events in the story (i.e. A stint in prison) didn’t actually happen. I have heard that you can now return your copy of the book for a refund. (Does this remind you of anything, say, circa 1989? I’ll come back to that later….)

JT Leroy’s story is even murkier. In 2000 a young, reclusive, transgender author appears on the scene with a memoir called Sarah the supposed tale of Leroy’s childhood as a backwoods, teenage truck stop prostitute. Leroy, a supposed HIV positive drug addict, won the sympathy and literary acclaim of celebrities, literary and otherwise. As it turns out , the books as well as the entire persona of JT Leroy, was a scam cooked up by a mysterious author. Now famous writers and literary critics feel duped and embarrassed. Groups are hollering minority exploitation and the lines between art and reality have been gooily blurred. What a mess!

I just struggled for 20 minutes with a paragraph I had to erase because I realized I was attempting to sketch out for you not only 5 years of studies in art history, my moth-eaten philosophy of art, as well the 20th century shift away from enlightenment philosophy and decided that was biting off decidedly more than I can chew (got a new cavity filled over break incidentally). I might as well jump right in. The bullet points maestro! (Consider this an essay test and these are topics to “respond to”)

Consider:

• Uh, does objective truth exist? I told Eric that although I pretty much exclusively read memoirs and works of “creative non-fiction,” I’m not really offended to learn that some of them are not true. In fact, I assume that there is untruth inherent to the stories, not even for the steroid-pumped details included, but more for every omission. When I tell you my stories, I’m sorry to admit it dear reader, but there is lots of information I leave out. It’s still the truth right? I suggested that perhaps it is not the veracity of these books, that appeals to me, per se, but rather, the aesthetic form that emerges from such a narrative premise. Eric asked: Suppose the readers of your blog found out all these stories were actually being written by a 40 year old male house-dad? What would they think? I couldn’t really answer on your behalf but as for myself, I said I would be so impressed with the imposter’s ability to inhabit the banal existence of this aimless, identity-crisis-addled, directionless, 20-something that I wouldn’t really care. “So why does he have to pretend to be you?” Eric asks wisely, “Why can’t he just write a novel, a work of fiction?” Touché, which brings us to bullet #2

• Does art imitate life or is it the other way around? Or both? I’m not bothered if a writer of creative non-fiction charms her way into my world of ideas, but, Eric points out, I might be very bothered if a con-artist charms her way into my life and after performing any number of clever and entertaining lyrical tricks, absconds with, say, my computer. The elaborate sham created by the author of JT Leroy’s books, is in my opinion, one of the most brilliant, provocative works or art I’ve heard about in a long time, if only for the fact that it has caused us to wrestle with such a plethora of deep, deep questions. But it was also mean, and capitalistic. Almost the entire cast had no idea they were involved in the performance, a candid camera of the literary canon if you will. And this author has millions in the bank now. I know I’m asking the oldest questions in the book but to what extent need ethics apply to art? If we forgive these breeches atop the aesthetic peaks of ideas, will it lead to an avalanche of depravity in the “real world” down below? (should a president be able to, I don't know, get away with leading a country into war over false pretenses? Do journalists obliged to report "the truth?") That snowy slope is, after all, rather a slippery one. But although I haven't sorted through all the details, I remain unconvinced.

*The hierarchy of authentic experience.
I’m gonna come out and say it. The Comfortable, privileged and safe literati have an unquenchable thirst for, and grotesque fascination with suffering. I feel qualified to say this because I am describing myself here. Many of us know our comforts were not really earned. We secretly hate ourselves for being so lucky. Our lives are dull and inauthentic. “Out there” (some vague place where life is full of danger and adventure, the stuff that really constitutes “living”) are people with amazing stories to tell. Stories about triumph over adversity. The details are like rubbernecking at the scene of a car accident. These are primal instincts at work. We need to hear the stories from these poor people to make us feel alive, but more over to experience powerful feelings of pity and hope. How dare someone fuck with our sentimentality? Our vicarious nightmarish fantasies? How dare one of US, capitalize on one of THEM? What we call “exploitation” has a good deal to do with our phenomenological strategies for ordering the world. Simply put, if I embellished any of my stories no one would care. Because they are boring stories to begin with. And that’s why I’m not a famous writer. That, or because I wasn’t brilliant, or depraved enough, to pretend to be someone I’m not.

I have to go to work. Before I leave I will tell you about one of the best presents I ever got (true story, I swear). When I was 16, shortly after we’d been busted for smoking cigarettes at school and had to make a very costly appearance in juvenile court with our drawn-faced mothers (through which I sat on the bench sullenly hunched over a copy of Notes from the Underground, Jenny gave me her one and only Milli Vanilli tape. As you may recall, when the Milli Vanilli lip-synching scandal broke, people rushed to the stores to return their “in authentic” tapes for a cash refund. I’m inclined to think this eagerness to recover a buck demonstrates a human impulse equally onerous to the one that prompted the fraudulent producers of the record to fabricate (ha ha, Fab!) a product and mislead a popular culture market. I’m not sure why I was so enthralled to have that tape. I think I really liked the songs. I might have had inkling that I possessed a relic from a site, which, as an adult, I’d come to view as one of the most important ruptures in contemporary theory.

Now days no one really cares about that scandal. Shakira sings through a mic that adjusts her pitch when it leaves her mouth. We have bent and stretched a little on what we find acceptable when it comes to authentic and inauthentic. And my guess is that we will continue to do so.

You won’t catch me asking the library to refund the 20 cents in fines I incurred on my copy of A Million Little Pieces. I considered, for a laugh, returning the copy of JT Leroy’s Sarah that I shoplifted from a Naperville Barnes and Noble (“yeah, turns out it wasn’t a real story, so here, you can have it back, sorry about that”), but I don’t think so. Besides, if you want to know the whole story, the book was a present to Victor (who was the first to break all this news to me and another reader who enjoyed it very much even when he found out it wasn’t “real”).

There is lots and lots of reading to be done on these scandals. So Enjoy!

The Who Doing What? Turning Penetration Outside-In

2006-01-05T17:13:00.000-08:00

We’re exiting the freeway in Maumee, OH to get some gas, dad and I. He’d forgotten to bring any music for the trip so I’m nervously playing DJ on the seek button. The Who comes on and I settle back cautiously. This seems like something Dad will be fine with. But within moments I’m feeling a little uncomfortable. I stare out the passenger window into the flat, grey, rainy afternoon, lost in over-analysis, watching drops of water wiggle on the window.

The refrain you know so well:

Mama’s got a squeezebox, daddy never sleeps at night

I guess it occurred to me before but I never really thought about it. The squeezebox, of course, is the vagina. Daddy never sleeps at night because he’s getting so hella laid. Any implied musical cacophony probably signifies mother’s spirited libido (after all, amorous unions have been described through musical metaphor since the dawn of time). As far as musical instruments go, the accordion (layered audibly but not exactly prominently into the driving, acoustic mix- particularly towards the end) is a brilliant sign for female sexuality through the anatomical locus thereof. The squeezing of the instrument required to produce its sound references the flexing of vaginal muscles- highly instrumental (ha ha) in facilitating .

Mama the accordionist is a capable and empowered lover. The next line of the refrain solidifies her agency: she goes in and out and in and out… I mean, hold on here, this is no mistake, the most obvious mechanical component of sexual intercourse, the penetration and ensuing thrusting motion, commonly the exclusive biological enterprise of the male sexual domain, is here repossessed and ascribed to the female. If the binary terms “in” and “out” do not refer here to entrance and exit but rather to expansion and contraction, we have ourselves a radically different linguistical reading of the very concept of penetration as it effects our perception of female/male sexual intercourse.

When I was 19, I got to go see Gloria Steinam speak at the Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor. My dad, somewhat of a local celebrity, got free tickets through his work but had no interest in attending. One of the most memorable parts of her talk was when Steinam (laughing amiably, I might add) asked the audience “Why is it that we refer to sex as “penetration?” Why, instead, don’t we call it “envelopment?” It was also that night that I learned the existence of the word “gynocentric.” Kind of gets you thinking.

Is this song then a castration/emasculation ballad? I like to think it isn’t, that it manages to exalt and empower female sexuality without any of the Freudian hysteria, male anxiety normally associated with this shift in thinking. (As an aside, I delight in this choice of words, as hysteria, as we all know, was a uniquely female pathology fabricated exclusively by male doctors). But that may not be the case. We would have to establish, however, how content daddy is to be so sleep deprived. Is it the thrilling, exciting, sleep-is-for-the-dead, stay up drinking and lovin’ till the morning light kind of sleep deprivation or is it the up all night, tortured, restless, anxious and worried kind of sleepless. Is daddy in a crisis of masculinity? Worse still, even if he is enjoying himself in the present, is mama just another archetypal succubus, oversexed, hedonistic ultimately leading him down the path to ruin? With her musical prowess is she more like his unreliable muse, or his brilliant teacher, possessing musical genius usually reserved for males?

Um.

I don’t know. Do you? I just love pop music.

A Decade Comes To A Close

2005-12-23T19:36:00.000-08:00

All right. This is the last installment of the project: A Decade of New Years. Thank you so much for enduring my memories.

Happy New Years, everyone.

2004
Ann Arbor, MI

A decision I have never regretted: It’s the summer of 2003. I’ve just made my escape from New York and I’m waylaying back at home for a month. I called this woman at the Bruce Museum of Arts and Science in Greenwich, CT from a Greyhound bus to Chicago. I explained that although I was very flattered they were offering me a position in their education department, I would have to respectfully decline.

My dad gave me a ride to the bus station, his anger and disappointment condensing into an uncomfortable cloud of silence.
“Why would you pass up a job like this, Abby?” He finally asked, sighing, shaking his head.
“I can’t do it Dad. I think I would die if I did.”
“So you do it for a year or two, make connections, move on to something better, it’s an opportunity.”
I didn’t have any response. A rare occasion.
“I mean, what’s your plan?” He needled, growing more irritated, “Come back here and work in a liquor store?”
“It’ll be O.K dad. It’s just for a little while. It’s what I need.”

Poor dad. Imagine if he had known that I was going to the station to meet Tommy and we were embarking on a summer of hopping freight trains and hitchhiking around the country? I didn’t know where I’d end up. But I had a feeling that I’d be coming back to Ann Arbor. A few weeks before leaving on this grand adventure I’d met the sweetest, brown-eyed boy and unlike all the boys I’d met in New York, he liked me. He didn’t play games or lie or disappear. He called when he said he’d call. He told me I was beautiful. Not just now and then but every single morning. Seriously. Billy was the antidote for everything I’d suffered through the last few years. He was safe and kind and loving. So come September, sure enough, my beloved hometown opened up its arms. I moved in with Jorge and kept working at the store. I learned to cook. I learned how to drink wine. I read lots of books. I studied for the GRE. I applied to grad schools. I basked in the warmth of lazy, small town familiarity, the comfort of friends and family, and the love of an incredible boyfriend. There was no more anguish in my world.

New Years 2004 then, not surprisingly, passed pretty uneventfully. Jorge cooked an amazing dinner and then Billy and I went to a party at the Ghostly Records “pad” (Sam’s place was swanky enough to be a pad instead of a place) and the Blind Pig, of course. And then a couple parties I don’t remember too well. I got really drunk and threw up when we stumbled back to Billy’s house. I collapsed in his bed in my clothes. I came too (sort of) a few minutes later as Billy, forever the sweetheart, was trying to gently remove the humongous hoop earrings from my ears. “You trying to take advantage of me?” I slurred accusingly. “I’m trying to get these earrings out because they’re tangled in your hair and they’re gonna poke you if you sleep in them.” He reasoned perfectly. I let him help me and in the morning we had quite a laugh about it.

2005
Chicago, IL

I willfully uproot myself from the bliss and ease of life in Ann Arbor. It’s like I know I’m not meant to be content. Time to move again. I moved to Chicago in the fall of 2004 to start grad school. By the eve of 2005, I have already dropped out of grad school. It’s around then that this blog began.

New Years eve and its freezing. I’m kind of in between jobs and experiencing a desperate sort of destitution. Heather and I were living off of pasta and butter for a couple weeks there. One night we found a bag of dried beans in the pantry and danced around the kitchen, singing about beans for our pasta.

Myles and I took the bus (free on New Years!) up to the Ukrainian village for a party. She was broke too. We stopped at the liquor store and pooled all our change to buy a pint of Jim Beam. We walked to the party briskly, shivering, thinking that getting a start on the whiskey would warm us up. I cracked the cap, took a pull and passed her the paper bag. She hit it and passed it back to me. Not breaking my stride, I stupidly grabbed the package by the lip of the bag instead of securely around the bottle. The bag ripped and our brand new pint of whiskey plummeted to the ground shattering on the sidewalk of a peaceful residential block. “Fuck!” Myles hollered, her voice carrying remarkably through the cold still night. Truly, my first instinct was to get down on all fours and lap it up. What were we going to drink now? “Sorry” I mumbled. “Fuckin’ whatever,” Myles shrugged “we’ll give people our sob story, they’ll share their drinks and drugs with us.” And that’s exactly what happened.

After a boring ball drop at that crowded party we migrated to the Buddy space where we met up with the rest of the texas/diamonds crew. As I recall, the music was pretty bad but everyone had a good time dancing. I got very drunk and made out with a good friend. I also made out with the 20-year-old boy from my “Visualized Communities” seminar. Our semester-long flirtation came to a head as he followed me out of the party, begging me to stay with him that night. For some reason I felt sort of old and tragic but oddly full of peace and ready to go home. I bid him farewell and headed for the bus.

Shivering on Ashland Avenue, I waited alongside a 6 foot something, disheveled 300 pound black man who was either drunk or crazy or both. “Gimme a kiss, darlin! It’s New Years!” He hollered jovially. I figured ‘what the fuck, he’s right.” So I gave him a big kiss on the lips. Love needs to go around on a shitty holiday like New Years.

Len called to see what I was up to. I’d only known him for the one week since he’d moved into our house but we were becoming fast friends. He was on his way home too and we convened in the kitchen around 3 or 4 am, both reasonably drunk and jolly. We sat around my room listening to records and telling each other about our lives for a good hour or two until we were both exhausted and he padded next door to his room and I collapsed in mine.

How was I to know that within a few months We’d be entangled in some sort of thing that didn’t make any sense and I’d be falling desperately in love with him, hoping that sense would make somehow make itself. It never did and that’s another story with an unhappy ending. Quite a lot can happen in a year actually. By New Years 2006, we would no longer be speaking.

2006
?
My New Years anxiety is worse this year than perhaps it’s ever been. I don’t know where I’ll be or with whom. I will certainly be drunk. That’s for sure. Beyond that I’m not sure. Ask me about it next year.

When I Woke Up It Was Suddenly as if A Year Had Passed

2005-12-19T21:39:00.000-08:00

Whoa doggie. This one got away from me a little bit. The Decade of New Years Continues...

2003
New York, NY

I’m back in New York but things are different because this time around I live there. Through some miracle I’d managed to graduate from college in the spring of ’02. The best way I can describe achieving this milestone is through cinematic device. Imagine me staggering up to the finish line with a bottle of whiskey in my hand. The time slows down. I jog towards my goal, lungs heaving, muscles struggling. I drop to the ground amid a sweaty cloud of dust. People are chanting and cheering but the voices melt into far away echoes. A concerted heartbeat track kicks in. my arm uncurls from my exhausted, crippled frame. Zoom in on the hand as it flops onto the finish line and releases the bottle of whiskey. The bottle rolls in the dust. The crowd goes wild. I did it.

And then I did the thing that all Oberlin kids do upon graduating: I moved to New York. Unlike everyone else who was migrating there to work on his or her films or become a rock star, I really couldn’t care less about New York City. I only went because, ironically enough, I had somehow managed to land an amazing job. My life peaked that year in terms of navigating the path towards proper adulthood. I had a real grown up job, which involved very mature things like meetings and comp time and health insurance. I had friends in New York, sure, but ultimately it wasn’t a charming life at all. Rather isolated in fact. I felt poor and poorly connected. Overwhelmed, under whelmed. Everyone who has waxed poetic about crowded cities being the loneliest places on earth is absolutely right.

They say that if you can hack it in New York than you can hack it anywhere. Let’s pause for a wormy syllogism brewed up by my foremost philosophical mind: I couldn’t hack it in New York. Ergo, I can’t hack it anywhere. Which, if you think about it, is basically another way of saying there is nowhere that I can hack it. For anyone who has ever wondered why I move around so much, I’ll just say this: reductio ad absurdum, baby.

I quickly suspected that I would never be happy in New York, but to see this prophesy through to self-fulfilling fruition, I had to go and make a sort of art project out of my loneliness, throwing myself into the fray of the new (well, new at the time) world of internet dating. These (mis) adventures eventually became a “zine” called New York Boyfriend (which, again, I can send you if you like).

Around the winter holidays that year I was going on dates with two men, Bobby (who was married) and Adam, with whom I fell swiftly, deeply, madly, self-destructively in love.

I go into detail about Adam quite a bit in NYBF so I won’t repeat it all here, but he was a year or two older than I, a native New Yorker, Jewish (!!) and brilliant. He spoke several languages, had traveled the world, getting into scrapes with law in at least several countries. An authority on all heady matters from obscure punk to neo-plasticity, he was a writer, film theorist, architect and a hoodlum. He’d studied with Baudrillard. He had a phenomenally mysterious chipped tooth. He smoked cigarettes out of a silver case and drank Wild Turkey. And he was handsome- dark hair, scarily intense black eyes, slight (I might as well admit once and for all, I have some kind of thing for short men), and, well, impish in his bizarre wardrobe befitting a French gamin. Predictably, he was also very mean.

While it’s true that I fall in and out of love perhaps more often than most, it is also true that I felt something unprecedented for Adam. It was more than a powerful crush, or deep affection, or lust. He made me want to wake up everyday in a different city, to talk and talk and never shut up (this I do anyways, I guess), to braid my brain with his into some kind of rope to swing through the miserable concrete jungle that became so full of wonder when I was with him. In the beginning I had tried to play it cool but the façade crumbled away when I realized how happy I’d be to have him around all the time. I wanted him so desperately that ultimately, there was no way it could end but in disaster.

We talked on the phone as I got ready to go out that New Years Eve. I had stopped at my favorite fabric store by Fulton Mall on my way home from work and gotten a yard of something glittery and stretchy and hideous to make a special shirt for the holiday. He read me portions from his latest round of grad school applications asking me if they sounded O.K. I couldn’t understand a word he’d written and it thrilled me. I had several parties to attend and so did he, so we agreed to be in touch throughout the evening and meet up eventually.

It became the night of a thousand parties. I started at Radhika’s in Windsor Terrace where we climbed onto the roof to watch the midnight fireworks. After that, Kathy and I embarked together on a string of parties which led us all over the city: Daniela’s loft in DUMBO, an old college friends’ parents’ embarrasingly posh place in the west village, and eventually Kathy’s brother’s in the upper east side.

As the night wore on, I became drunker and increasingly disconsolate as the difficulty of getting in touch with Adam grew. He called me once from a noisy party, saying I wouldn’t like it very much because “everyone is talking in French,” adding that he’d call back later. It was after 2 am and I was sitting on Kathy’s brother’s sofa knocking back wine, nibbling at cheese and feeling miserable. The crowd there was swanky and dull and I felt horrifically out of place. I surveyed the scene vacantly, checking my phone every thirty seconds. I felt like a caged animal at the edge of extinction. One of the pretty, very made-up women hobbled by me in a pair of shoes, the heel of one having snapped. For some reason that did it. An unsuturable rift opened right then in my night, my New Years, my whole life. That woman limping with the broken heal was the saddest thing conceivable. I became convinced I was on the brink of death and worst of all I had to keep this secret from Kathy because she would think I was utterly nuts. Only someone crazy like Adam would understand-find poetic even-thoughts like that. Why hadn’t he called?

And right then, he did.

“Where are you?” he asked casually, oblivious (or not) to the bedlam his reticence was reeking upon my evening, fragile psyche.
I gave him my grid coordinates as nonchalantly as I could, trying not to betray the fact that his phone call had somehow restored order to a universe unhinged from its axis.
“Why don’t you take a cab downtown and meet me?” he suggested. I was already struggling into my coat and flying down the stairs. I was so crazed, such a stupid jerk, I forgot to even say goodbye and happy New Years to Kathy.

I was so anxious I sipped surreptitiously from my pint of Jameson’s as the cab sped south. I got out at Houston and Broadway (only several blocks from where I’d been staying the New Year’s before) and waited. I waited. And waited. And drank. And waited. I loved him. I hated him. I was drunk. It was 4 am. And cold. I started crying. A group of people walked by and asked if I was ok. “I’m fine.” I sniffled curtly. Then they invited me to “party” with them in a way that sounded very dirty. “No!” I barked viciously, my tenuous grip on humanity rapidly disintegrating. I don’t know how long I waited. It might have been 10 minutes or 20 but I couldn’t bring myself to give up. I imagined a million reasons why he was detained. I stared at the traffic and shivered and hated New York. All I could think about was death and the cold, sucking emptiness of existence, and the cold sucking emptiness of winter and New Years and everything and then I felt a hand on my ass. I whipped around ready to scream at a fresh crop of molesters but it was Adam, grinning in a green army coat, pink oxford shirt and felt legionnaire cap.

He put an arm around me and hailed a cab with the other. The warmth of the cab was so divine, the vinyl, the stale smoke all felt indescribably safe. “Do you want to go back to Brooklyn?” He asked (he lived in Chinatown and we always seemed to end up there and never at my place). I nodded silently like a little kid, summoning all my strength to drape myself over the seat and give the cabbie my address. I collapsed back in to Adam’s arms.
“Happy New Year.” He said giving me some kind of light kiss on the head. “How was your night?” I pulled out the Jameson and took a hard pull. “Fine,” I whispered and dozed off on his shoulder as we climbed the Williamsburg Bridge.

My apartment was particularly shitty, even by New York standards and I wasn’t in great hostess form by the time we arrived. Fuzzy, stumbling slightly, I showed him around, never putting down the whiskey for a moment. He pointed to the rows of scoliosis-spined notebooks on my bookshelf asking, “What are those?”
“That’s my writing.” I shrugged, rolling my eyes.

“You’re very smart, Abby,” He said after taking a moment to consider it. Coming from him, there were no more beautiful words in the world. Drunk, overwhelmed, unsure how to accept the compliment I decided for some reason to read him one of my favorite poems, Six Significant Landscapes by Wallace Stevens, whose work he was, surprisingly enough, not terribly familiar with. If I’m reading poetry to a boy I’m usually gone. Far gone. In crazy deep. When I closed the book he plucked the whiskey from my hand as if he needed to do something dramatic to get my attention. “ I think I love you,” He murmured. There were more beautiful words after all. The curtain fell on the night.

I woke up early in the morning and watched him sleep. I remember feeling so desperately lonely without him even though he was right there beside me. That’s the kind of stuff Adam made me feel. I loved him too much in a scary kind of way.

New Years day we sat around the house eating Chinese food and watching the Sound of Music on T.V. He eventually left saying he had to get back to work on his applications. He kissed me goodbye and said he’d call me.

It was the last time we’d see each other in person.

Drinking the Champagne of the Dead (A Decade of New Years Continued)

2005-12-15T09:48:00.001-08:00

Note:

I was trying to redo this blog, however, predictably it got messy and the fiasco has now turned into a project more along the lines of "rebuilding" this blog. Thanks for your patience. Hopefully, in a few days it will be redesigned: pretty looking and full of all sorts of new stuff.

In the meantime...

A little catch up for anyone just visiting: I'm heart-deep in a project chronicalling the last decade of New Years Celebrations (See :It's New Years So Save Those Loving Arms For Me). I'm not sure that "Enjoy!" is the exactly the right word but here it goes...

A Decade of New Years
(a memoir of remembering quite a bit and not a whole lot, Part II)

2000
(Ann Arbor, MI)

I’m back in Ann Arbor because in the spring of 1999 my world fell apart. I had managed, only through the boundless love and assistance of my mother, to complete my transfer applications to Oberlin and Reed Colleges from the Psych ward at UofM medical centers. I was accepted and offered a full ride a Reed, a mostly full ride at Oberlin. For anyone who has ever wondered how I decided between the two it simply came down to this: I chose Oberlin because it was only 2 hours away, and could drive home whenever I needed to, even in the middle of the night (which I did do on a couple of occasions).

By fall I wasn’t ready to go back to school. After all, I had only recently remastered the little things like eating food and not staring at walls for hours on end. I was working at the same mom and pop party store I had been working at for a while and living in a house with 6 guy friends. I drank heavily, my boyfriend drank heavily.

It was the end of the century and I was a ghost. People were making a big fuss about Y2K, stocking up on water and batteries and expecting every computer in the world to crash. We knew it was all hype and yet, that New Years Eve there was a tinge of something apocalyptic in the air. It was thrilling and dangerous like it could be our last night on earth.

My boyfriend and I went to a party at the RAW house, an institutional Ann Arbor punk house which back then was in a particularly ripe moment in its crusty history, stocked with filthy traveling kids, vermin, broken down bikes, and on one occasion, a take-out container in the fridge full of bloody tampons. We showed up just in time for the ball drop (not like there was a T.V in the house). The band had just finished playing and the house was sweaty, stinky and packed. I knew virtually everyone there, many of them Ann Arbor kids I’d known since I was 15 years old. At midnight, the hugging and kissing lasted for a good 10 or 15 minutes solid. On no new years before or since have I experienced such family, such camaraderie. Everyone was wasted. Everyone was glad to be alive.

For some reason I had chosen Southern Comfort as my flask for the night. Later, I’d learn a valuable lesson regarding the unholiness of mixing that SoCo, with beer and champagne. I shared my liquor with my friend Dave upstairs in the keg room. I didn’t like the stuff much but he was excited to see it. When he died two years later I kept remembering for some reason, his big shit-eating happy fucking new years grin as I passed him the bottle and he took a mighty pull while filling my beer cup with his other hand.

My boyfriend and I walked the whole way back, a mighty long walk in the deep Michigan winter. We were wasted and along the way I started to cry for reasons I didn’t even understand. I was recovering from a traumatic experience earlier in December I couldn’t make sense of at the time in any way besides drinking. The portent of New Years Eve, feeling like the world was coming to an end just heightened everything. We stopped for a pizza on Packard St. and ate some of it on the way home. The steam from the pizza and our breaths cheered me somewhat. When we got home, Sara (who had just moved in to the basement) was up studying on one of the sofas. “Happy New years” I cried with slurry, forced gaiety. I stumbled toward the sofa opposite her and tried to sit down but somehow ended up flipping over the back of it onto the floor.

Sara just looked at my boyfriend in horror and said, “What did you do to her?” We were in bed shortly thereafter but no sooner had I gotten settled and the world began to swirl, I had to run to the bathroom and throw up all my pizza.

2001
(Pittsburgh, PA)

I’m back in Pittsburgh, this time visiting my friend Alicia. She’d moved into a new place on Penn Ave, which was quite an improvement over her last apartment in Friendship, a roach infested dump outside of which her car had been stolen (count them) 3 times and the previous tenant had been a pimp who’d been found murdered on the premises.

I was having a fantastic visit. The night before New Years we went to a show at the (now defunct) Millvale Industrial theatre. Alicia was working as an assistant to a potter whose studio was right across the parking lot in a blustery old warehouse. Alicia took me on a tour of the building, chilly and expansive and scary at night. The entire first floor was filled with junked cars, the overflow of which extended out into the lot. Some of them were ancient and beautiful, big bench seats, skinny wheels and converted push-button starters. We climbed up onto the roof and drank a bottle of MD 20/20 and smoked cigarettes and watched all the lights twinkling on all the bridges.

At the show I met Paul the famous rock star. He was good looking and the kind of drunk and raucous crazy I tend to find brilliantly attractive. When Alicia and I tired of dancing around atop a field of snow-covered, junked Pepsi machines outside, he and I started breaking into the old fancy cars, pretending we were going on trips. “Let’s go to Toronto” he suggested, flashing the most charming, mischievously boyish grin, “I’ll take you to Toronto, seriously.”

Back inside the show we talked a little about our New Years plans. “I’m going wherever Steve and Alicia take me,” I shrugged. “What about New Years Resolutions?” he asked quite earnestly. “Fuck ‘em,” I said, bumming him another cigarette, “Who really keeps them?”
“You should make just one resolution and see if you can keep it for the year.” He insisted.
“Fine,” I said, not one to back away from a challenge. “What should I resolve to do?”
“Or not do…” He mused, face getting all mischievous again. “How about this? How about for the entire year of 2001 you won’t eat any grapes? Not a single grape.”
“Red or Green?”
“Neither.”
“What about wine?”
“Wine’s ok, just no actual grapes.”

Gawd I liked this boy.

“Deal.” I said. And we shook on it before ten of us piled into cars and drove to Ritters where Alicia and I rolled our eyes and conspiratorially tried to discuss worldly matters while the boys argued vociferously about their favorite Van Halen albums.

The next night, New Years, Alicia, her boyfriend and I went to a party at the Don Caballero house. I remember lots of framed pictures of betty Page on the wall and Alicia and I getting into a friendly, smack-down wrestling match in the living room. The night wore on and eventually I meandered down to the basement where I ran into Paul the famous rock star. Someone had given me a tube of smarties and I was consuming them with voracious, drunken relish. “Can I have one?” he asked, looking so handsome in his beatle boots and tweed jacket and crocheted scarf. I didn’t stop to think it over I just did what seemed natural, which was prying a smartie out of the plastic and slipping it coyly into his mouth. The next moment we were kissing.

I brought him home with me to Alicia’s house and we made out all night on the sofa. He was surprisingly gentlemanly and although not exactly smart, very good company nonetheless.

I went back to school in Ohio with a monster crush on a worthless rockstar. Needless to say there wasn’t a happy ending. I tried to get in touch, he blew me off. I had trouble taking the hint but eventually got it. A month or two later I was back in Pittsburgh visiting Alicia again. We were sitting at the Eat N’ Park on Murray avenue having a meal that was somewhere between lunch and dinner. “He’s a total dick, Abby.” She offered, trying to console me. “Everyone knows it. At their last show, they had a chick take her shirt off and dance topless while they played.” It was a small comfort. When you like a guy, after all, they could do just about anything--murder your mom even-- and you’d find a way to explain it.

It was gloomy and wintery outside. I pulled out the creased crossword I'd been working on for two days and asked Alicia for help until our meal arrived. The waitress gave me a strange look as she set down our food.

All I had ordered was a bowl of grapes.

2002
(New York, NY)

This year I have a boyfriend and he’s from New York. He invited me to spend New Years with him at his parents’ house. I was thrilled. It was to be my first trip to New York since visiting with my grandparents as a kid.

My provincial mid-western ways clearly pained my boyfriend, the son of two artists, who fancied himself very hip and tough and sophisticated, having grown up in a So Ho loft all his life. (There is more about him in a book I wrote entitled “New York Boyfriend” if you are interested, just holler and I can send you a copy). Fortunately his parent were very warm and welcoming and sweet and enjoyed proudly showing off their city. On my first morning there, his dad led me to a coat closet with a New York transit map pinned to the inside. “Ok, “ He began using a pencil like a school marm’s pointer, “These are the boroughs…” and he had me recite the names as he moved the pen across the map. I nodded studiously. I was on my way to untangling the mystery of New York.

“Its like John Updike once said,” his dad beamed at me from across the breakfast table, “There’s two places in this world, New York…and everywhere else.” I laughed uncomfortably. His mom rolled her eyes. After all, she was a Michigan girl like me. She used to party in Ann Arbor with Iggy Pop and the Ashton brothers. “Those were crazy times,” she’d say with a rueful laugh, still totally fucking gorgeous on the cusp of 50, “too bad I don’t remember too much of it!”

On New Years, his parents hosted a dinner party. My boyfriend’s mother made delicious lasagna for everyone. The younger set sat in Boyfriend’s room smoking Marlboros out on his fire escape and blowing coke and drinking whiskey. I had plans to go with Avi to Darren’s party way uptown and then take a cab out to Brooklyn and meet up with the boyfriend. I know it’s embarrassing (and I could never tell my New York Boyfriend because he’d roll his eyes) but I really wanted to see the ball drop in Madison Square. Avi and I galloped through the train station, the bottle of champagne I’d stuffed in my coat bruising my ribs, only to emerge five seconds after midnight. I was somewhat crestfallen.

I drank a lot of vodka and orange juice at Darren’s party. Avi walked me out and hailed me a cab. I didn’t know shit about New York. Recalling Ric’s lesson, I knew that Manhattan was a borough and that Brooklyn was another borough and I was in one and needed to get to the other but that’s about it. All I had was the mystical codex of a post-it note on which the boyfriend had scrawled the address of the loft party. It was a letter street that’s all I remember. My cabby nodded confidently and we sped off, chatting about terrorism, racism and the newly minted post-9/11 New York. Right by the bridge a limo wiped out in front of us, swerving and clipping a fire hydrant with a violent crunch. It was very scary but I was so drunk and ecstatic to be in New York on New Years I started bouncing around in my seat and clapping. The scenery went by in a blur until we were in some industrial looking neighborhood. The cab had slowed to a crawl.

“This is your address?” the cabby asked skeptically in a thick Pakistani accent. Truly, there was nothing going on. He checked my paper again and nodded like he’d suddenly got a brilliant idea. He rammed the cab in reverse and we tore through three full blocks going backwards. He peeled out and wove through a grey labyrinth of streets before eventually arriving in front of a loft, bearing an address similar to the one I’d handed him, and looking mighty populated. “This is it!” I cried thanking him profusely and handing him a ten-dollar tip. I teetered out of the cab and bounded up the stairs. The party was throbbing but amazingly enough the first person I saw when I walked through the door was my boyfriend. He caught me up in a tremendous hug, telling me how worried he was because he realized he’d given me the wrong address and didn’t know how to get in touch with me. Now that we have cell phones we might get lost less frequently but we are also deprived of that joy of being found.

I can’t even remember how many parties and bars we went to after that. We shared a very crowded cab back to the city and still ended up with a bit of a walk back to his parents’ house. It was about 4 or 5 in the morning and no one was around. Through my drunken haze I realized that I was squinting in the glow of brilliant electric lights. “What’s all the light?” I asked squeezing his hand. “That,” he said, gesturing with his free hand, breath escaping from him mouth in a way that suddenly struck me as utterly exquisite, “is ground zero.” And that’s the closest I ever got to it.

Back at home we stumbled into Boyfriend’s room, spent, cashed, exhausted. We were just starting to disrobe when there was a knock on the door. It was his dad. He was always so friendly and accommodating but this was a little odd. “Hey guys, Happy New Years.” He grinned brightly. We were drunk, on drugs, reeking of a thousand cigarettes and it was the middle of the night. “Hi.” We mustered weakly, eyes blood-shot and weary. “I brought you this blow up mattress,” He continued, presenting us with a glossy box. “Thought it might be more comfortable that that little bed.” My boyfriend raised his head and I watched his face slowly form into a look at once totally quizzical and withering. It was very surreal. “We’ll be fine, dad, goodnight.” And that was that. Then we got in bed and made the sweet, sweet love until the sun dawned over Manhattan and the year 2002.

(Donna says I should end this story on a happy note so I’ll save the part about our miserable breakup for another time.)

The Eve of Eternity (or) It's New Years so Save Those Loving Arms for Me (part 1)

2005-12-09T18:37:00.000-08:00

Those who know me have probably heard my deep conviction in this simple cosmic truth:

There are two days in the year that everyone (provided you’re, well into this kind of thing) should get laid: One’s birthday and New Years Eve. I’m not sure how and when I came to believe in this so fiercely but I do. It’s also a known fact that I’m not very fond of either New Years or my birthday for that matter so it might necessarily follow that I’m not a fan of sex. This is not exactly true.

After absorbing this wacko adage, a friend once pointed out to me the obvious relationship between these two days, which has helped me, in turn, explain their connection to “Intimate Company” (I’m not a purist after all; for all intents and purposes a simple makeout sleepover on these days would, in my book, more than suffice). In some ways New Years and birthdays are celebrations: we celebrate our accomplishments and look forward to good things to come. But they are dark holidays too. They are both mile markers in that what they chart is the passage of time. Now I don’t know about you, and I don’t mean to be all doom and gloom here but I don’t find the passage of time to be an exclusively happy phenomena. I’m not really at peace with the idea that I’m growing older and that one-day I’m going to die. This unsettling subtext haunts our celebrations, sweeps us through the nights with melancholy undercurrents. I would venture to say that in the whole history of humanity, there has been no singular motivator as successful at driving us to the comforts of alcohol and the pleasures of the flesh as the throbbing existential anxiety over our own mortality.

The other night I tried (and failed dismally), to explain my new years anxiety over Instant Messenger to one potential date. I felt like a morose teenager. I hated giving this guy the impression that all I do on New Years is sit weeping wrapped around a bottle of whiskey. Well, to set the record straight, that’s not ALL I do.

I know I’m not alone and in reality New Years in the number one holiday people love to hate. Perhaps the reason I cling to the hope of creating momentous New Years celebrations is a form of parasitical fabrication of memory. Is there any other holiday for which you can recall with such consistency, what you did and with whom you did it every year for the last ten years? Go on. I challenge you. I bet your new years memories are more easily summoned that most other special days. And more vivid. As I struggle to imprint myself on the world and the world upon my existence, like a conniving gene I’ll attach to worthy carriers. It’s like time is a beach and New Years is like leaving prints higher up, further from the tide. Eventually they will erode, but perhaps not as quickly. So I want to make it good.

As I prepare for yet another New Year Holiday It occurred to me that this New Years Eve, 2006 marks a curious anniversary. It signals 10 years that I’ve been “celebrating” New Years as an adult (read: going out and misbehaving). How successful I've been in securing that Intimate Company is clearly up for debate.

Like it or not, what follows is a walking tour through the New Years of my life beginning in 1996. So as to neither skimp on all the details nor overwhelm you I’m going to take a cue from Mariya and split it up in a couple installments. Take my hand and stumble with me as I lead you through...

A Decade of New Years
(a memoir of remembering quite a bit and not a whole lot)

1996
(Ann Arbor, MI)

I am a sullen but fiery and mischievous teenager who is just starting to get into a lot of trouble. “Fuck New Years,” I decided. I was actually in my room in my pajamas when the doorbell rang. It was Sam and Jenny and Jesse who had come to drag me out. I obliged. As soon as we were outside I got excited and somehow this night turned into the first time I dropped acid. What better occasion could I have been saving it for really? We went to a party at this girl Laura’s house; all the theatre kids and a bunch of punks were there. No Doubt’s “I’m Just a Girl” was really big at that time and to this day I associate that song with residual chemical-tinged memories of sitting under a ping-pong table in a dimly lit basement convinced the world was completely and utterly full of wonder. It was a very snowy night.

After the party we went to the Arb and rolled through the snow. Everything shimmered. We wandered in to town and somewhere around 1 am, right outside the bagel deli where I worked my friend Ron (A coworker, quite a bit older than me but one of my best friends none-theless) stumbled by with some friends, incoherently drunk. He had keys to the deli so we went inside. Sam hung out with us for a while and then Ron and I sat smoking cigarettes and drinking Italian sodas and coffee until the sun came up and he was more or less sober and I was more or less off my trip. We lay on the floor under the luncheon counter stools and decided that the mysteries of the universe were wholly encoded in some weird paint markings under one stool seat, which looked like characters from a strange Asian alphabet. I lumbered home around 7 am and curled up on the sofa in the den watching Howard the Duck on network television, hoping that when my family came downstairs it would simply look like I’d slept there all night. It must have because no one ever said a thing.

1997
(Ann Arbor, MI)

Alex, my high school sweetheart, the love of my life, and I have, at this point been dating for over half a year. His band, the Butler, was slated to play a house show over on Fifth Avenue. I wasn’t a big drinker in high school (oh just you wait!) but it seemed like the appropriate, and very adult thing to do on New Years. I was still working at the same Bagel Deli (there is some major work forthcoming about that place but its still percolating) and as I was sweeping up the store I handed a crinkly 10-dollar bill to one of my older coworkers. I asked him to go to the liquor store right next door and buy me the biggest bottle of red wine that would get me. That seemed like a sophisticated choice. How he managed to screw up something that simple I’ll never know but he returned 5 minutes later with a magnum of rose zinfandel.

Quite the high school oenologist, I looked at him in disgust.
“This is pink, not red.”
“Red, pink, whatever, I can’t tell the difference." Sighing, I thought about making him exchange it but then remembered that I was 16 and in no position to be terribly picky.

I don’t remember much about the show but afterwards Jenny and Alex came home with me. We drank most of the disgusting wine but not all of it. I gave jenny my bed and Alex and I, in the tender, virginal kind of intimacy that characterized our 2 and a half-year romance, curled up under a blanket on the floor. I remember waking up in the early morning clinging to Alex, shivering so intensely my body ached. Never in my life before or since have I experienced being that cold.

1998
(Ann Arbor, MI)

Alex and I are in one of our broken up phases. I don’t know where he is and I’m dying. But I’m acting like I’m getting along so I go to a party on S. Forest at Dan’s apartment. It’s all the old gang from highschool only they are off in college now and I’m still stuck in Ann Arbor. Feeling very uncomfortable I leave the party and walk down the street to my friend Jeff’s house. It was the house I would move into a month later. Jeff and todd were there just the two of them drinking Tequilla. They welcomed me in, rolled me cigarettes and poured me shots. We blew all the coke their boss at the record store had given them as a Christmas bonus and then pulled out the instruments: My electric guitar that I’d passed along to Jeff, Todd’s bass and a whole bunch of assorted little tikes musical toys. Eventually I went home to my parent’s house. A pretty forgettable New Years really.

1999
(Pittsburgh, PA)

Though there are a million things I can’t stand about him, I find myself falling in love with my friend Nathaniel who was home visiting his family on winter break. Though I have a few friends in Pittsburgh, I am lonely, fragile, applying myself rigorously to my studies, writing lots of poetry and given to crying on the bus for no particular reason. We were spending nearly every day and evening together meandering around suburban strip malls, drinking coffee at Ritter’s diner and taking chaste but portentous naps in his bed. In the evenings I’d stay at his house for dinner eating around the table while Frank Sinatra wafted in from the Bose stereo in the T.V room. Nathaniel was brilliant and sullen and when his dad asked him a simple question like “how are you feeling today” he’d say something hysterical like “eviscerated.”

I invited him to come with me to my friend Jessica’s New Years party in Squirrel hill, a fancy dress up affair. Nathaniel and I went shopping at a thrift store for our outfits. I bought a beautiful red satin and chiffon cocktail dress. Nathaniel got a very pimp-looking pinstriped suit and matched it with a white feathered had that resembled a fedora but was clearly designed for women.

We modeled our outfits for his mother who disapproved of us prancing around ironically in “what had once been someone’s best clothing.” Nathaniel got irritated and barked something like “Can’t you just let me live?” adding to me with an exasperated sigh “come on let’s get out of here.” We retreated to his room decorated with all sorts of Jazz records and art museum postcards for another one of our famous naps during which we would almost kiss but never quite.

I picked up Nathaniel that night my legs shivering in the cold against the unforgiving vinyl of my car interior. The understanding being that he was to sleep over at my apartment after the party. The party was not terribly memorable. Someone took a picture of us that I wish I had now but somehow got lost. We drove back to my place and sat around my room listening to records. He didn’t have any pajamas so I lent him a pair of sweatpants which was funny since he’s about 6 feet tall and I’m really rather small. It was around 3 am and we were getting ready for bed when Nathaniel suddenly said, “I feel like going home. Could you take me home?” What could I do? We got dressed and trudged out to the car. The night was freezing cold. I schlepped him all the way back to his parents’ house and watched him disappear through the front door.

I whipped my car around the snowy cul-de-sac with reckless ferocity. By the time I’d reached the mouth I had to wait to make my turn onto the street. I was crying so uncontrollably I couldn't see a thing.

Coming soon…I become a drinker, fin-du-siecle Y2K madness, the undying quest for adventure, whiskey and of course, Intimate Company (does it get juicier? uh-huh you bet)

What’s Become of AbbyG.?

2005-11-29T23:01:00.000-08:00

What follows is a virtually unprecedented breech of format; meaning I don’t really have any specific story to tell, yet feel compelled to explain my sparseness nonetheless. It’s possible that I’ve been busy, or coasting for nearly a month without any emotional outbursts, but more than likely I’ve just been uninspired.

It’s decidedly winter now and that itchy wanderlust settles in with the dismal cold. Chicago begins its revolting season and I begin to seek escape. Thus I’m proud to say I’ve spent the last two weekends away. The first was a trip to Minneapolis, hardly tropical this time of year but believe me when I wink and remind you with a conspiratorial smile that us life-long Midwesterners have rather reliable tricks for keeping warm.

Then I flew to Florida for much anticipated (read: dreaded) G. family reunion thanksgiving, courtesy of my generous stockbroker uncle in Wrong Island. It’s rare that I’m at a loss for words, and to be fair I have been expending most of my writing energy on book reviews lately, but trying to describe the experience of spending four days in a hotel in Miami Beach with my entire extended paternal family is too daunting a task. Weirdly enough, the weekend was relatively uneventful because when it comes down to it, we really are a very nice and loving family and in weather that nice, everyone got along pleasantly.

I cringed to the core of my being when my dad, the rabbi, began sermonizing to our Taxi driver about Noah’s ark. (Somehow they started off talking about baseball, which gave way to local weather, then tsunamis and eventually some germane apocryphal commentary my father had been studying up on). Admittedly, I interacted somewhat awkwardly with my cousins’ small children who despite their cuteness, reaffirmed that I have no interest whatsoever in childbearing. Mostly I spent a good deal of time with my siblings, commiserating about the rest of the family, and lying in the sun.

When I went to Florida last March, I accidentally/not-so-accidentally got myself a violent sunburn. The bizarre thing is, despite the pain and the itching, I didn’t really mind. Chicago winters make you so depressed, so chilled to cellular fibers of your body, that when you finally have access to sunshine like that you forget how to make sense of it, manage it responsibly. It’s not a masochistic impulse, rather a healing impulse gone frankensteinly awry. This time I grudgingly took care to apply the sun blocker, still desiring nothing more than to thoroughly scorch my body-inside and out- in preparation for winter.

I’m back now, relaxed and chemical free for nearly 6 days. On the plane I drafted a to-do list for the week and while I can’t officially strike anything from the list just yet, I’m close. Full of fresh resolve not to submit to winter by gaining weight or developing couply feelings for any boy I make out with these days, I ought to be flying high until about the weekend, when predictably, I'll cave and back-peddle on all this healthy progress.

In short, I promise a story within the week. All in good time, meaning, once I get off my very best behavior.

She Should Have been Moving, Instead of Reducing (A Tearful Encounter)

2005-11-08T19:25:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my generous benefactor, professional net worker and very close friend, Avi, I managed to stumble into a bi-weekly poetry workshop here in Chicago with some fantastic local poets. It’s a bit nerve racking. They’re all older, published, honed in their craft. Yet, the atmosphere is convivial, loving and supportive. We meet at B___’s house every other Monday night bringing our works in progress and bottles of wine to share. We read our poems and make candid critiques. All told, it’s one of the scarier but more rewarding things I’ve committed myself to in recent years.

A sad thing happened, coincidently around the time I started the workshop in September. I stopped writing poetry.

I thought I’d cure the problem in a week or two but I realize now I’m stuck. I wrote to B_____on Sunday night asking him for a homework assignment to spark an idea. He instructed me to write a poem touching on all of the following:

A food I hate
Veterans Day
The senses of smell and touch

I spent my morning at the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, chatting with hordes of visiting high schoolers, trying to gently explain the difference between “writing desk” and “sculpture” among other worldly concepts. I witnessed a particularly distressing exchange in the powerful new photography exhibit “Purple Hearts,” portraits of young veterans recently returned from Iraq. Later, I migrated to the Asher Library at Spertus to burn the afternoon oil and attempt my first poem in two months. Eventually jettisoning the segment dealing with unsavory food (Ikura, if you must know, those salty red roe balls you get at the sushi shop….ewwwwww) I, dashed off my effort in attachment form, reasonably confident that 3 out of 4 wasn’t too bad.

I arrived at B____’s particularly giddy and nervous as he’d informed the group that we’d be guest hosting his good friend, a prominent writing professor and current poet Laureate of a mid-western state. B____introduced me to the guest of honor and as is his affectionate, curmudgeonly way, began picking at my work, shaking his head and saying things like “Didn’t they teach you punctuation at Oberlin?”

When everyone arrived, B_____volunteered me to read first. It’s hard to resist the temptation to retroactively edit, but to be fair, I’ve decided to share with you exactly the poem I shared with them:

Field Trip

Specialist Jose Martinez has lost his face.
Some of it evaporated into the air
(Lusty matter conserves, eloping at the alter of Elvis)
And the rest, like party gamers, changed place.

Now, at age 20,
He’s a real phantom of the opera
Whose exploding aria began in Karbalah
And echoes still in Texas.
Sustained, through a year of surgeries,
It’s the curse of a crescendo turned infinite.

Two boys come before Martinez.
“Do this,” One says to his friend,
Leaning his face into the photograph closer and
Closer until I, protector of the artworks, get nervous.
His pimply cheek nearly grazes
The swimming, shadowy puddle of flesh
Where surely kisses once fished.
“And smell it,” He says
Conjuring in an instant the crackle of tinder
And the thrilling terror of marshmallows
Melting onto sticks.

“I thought he was gonna bite me,”
Says his friend and in a cloud of crumbling giggles
The dome of portent descends.
I stand in the doorway consumed by a singular thought:
“My God, you little shits.”

Clearly, this poem needs some work. There’s some vague and bloated language. There are some problems of perspective. It’s a grammatical morass. The assertion of the author’s presence is dubious, perhaps it could be served by a more regular form etc.

My usual workshop buddies raised these points in their usual encouraging manner, adding the odd compliment along the way. And then we got to The Famous Poet (I’m withholding her identity because as hurt as I maybe, it seems in poor taste to name her). Adjusting her spectacles (and they really were spectacles, not glasses if you know what I mean) TFP begins with the disingenuous, self-deprecating excuse “Now I’m sure you’re all much better poets than I am, but this poem really fails to even hook me in…”

From there she went on to criticize the dubiousness of the word “Specialist” (someone tried to explain that it was a Military term and she eventually conceded, but not without a long fight), find fault with virtually every line of the poem, saying it was very confusing, not very interesting, and concluding imperiously that she did “not like poems that are like Easter egg hunts.”

I guess I should have brought that other poem I had. You know, the one that’s a manual on how to set the alarm clock on your cell phone.

I sat there through her screed, dying inside. From across the table, Mary, attempted a wan, consoling smile. Bonnie gently nudged the bottle of Shiraz towards my glass. I summoned every cell in my body to an emergency no-crying summit. Numb, I nodded and thanked everyone for their remarks.

It’s true that I am a thin-skinned crybaby. I’m a proud lion and I bruise like over-ripe fruit. But it is also true that this TFP, I’m afraid to say, is a complete and utter bitch.

Workshops are not free and as you can imagine I have to work several hours of depressing retail to afford each session there. This night was ruined for me. It took so much energy just to maintain my composure I couldn’t comment on anyone else’s work. Great. Not only does the TFP think I’m a lousy poet, she also thinks I am incapable of discussing anyone else’s poetry.

For anyone wondering how it’s done, getting me to shut up that is, I can now offer you this simple, highly effective method: humiliate me, shame me and attack my art, (preferably in public) and you will find the most enigmatic of beasts: a meek, withdrawn and utterly tacit Abbyg. She’s hiding in the Yeti’s undiscovered blustery grotto, curled up weeping in a cavernous paw print cast in cold, crunchy snow.

For the record, TFP went on to graciously praise everyone else’s work.

We closed the evening with an writing exercise the TFP brought which consisted, egotistically enough, of freeing our minds by attempting a poem based on a poem of hers translated into Ojibwa (which she read in the way you can tell someone who is feigning familiarity with a foreign language, fudges it and hopes that no one else will notice). Everyone seemed kind of puzzled about how the assignment worked. I think we were supposed to translate it, even if we got it totally wrong. As a hint of sorts, she offered each of us the opportunity to ask her one yes or no question about the poem.

I passed. I Guess I just left my ribbon-trimmed basket at home.

After the workshop I tried to make a quick getaway but B_____ snared me in an untimely discussion about Judaism and Patriarchy, something I’m usually only too eager to debate. As I hedged uncomfortably in the doorway, TFP came over to “apologize.”

“I’m sorry I came down so hard on you (hesitating, trying to remember my name), Abby. I realize now that you worked very hard on your poem.”

“Actually, I didn’t. I just wrote it this afternoon.” I said flatly. How little or much work I put in to it was not really the point.

“Well I’m sorry I’m such a hardliner. I’m really tough on my students and it’s like I always tell them ‘I’m gonna be honest. You might hate me forever but I’m gonna be honest.’”

I simply gave her a half-nod. It was truly the kind of tepid, defensive apology that people who have trouble apologizing tend to make. To really ask for someone’s forgiveness means to check one’s ego at the doorway to the temple of Otherness. She wasn’t sorry. She didn’t care.

As soon as I stepped out into the night, the tears I’d been holding back for two hours sprang free, pouring down my cheeks with a piteous teleos. I knew I would cry at some point but I’m proud she never saw it.

I have always maintained that there is a tender art to delivering criticism. When a friend or colleague places trust in me to reveal the plastic renderings of her spirit and soul, I can, and will, ALWAYS find some thing nice to say. I will also speak honestly to the flaws in any work. But I will try to do it gently, respectfully, aware that I’m holding that person tenderly in hand.

Don VanVliet, the Immortal Captain Beefheart once said, “The way I stay in touch with the world is very gingerly because the world touches too hard.”

To that famous poet who shattered me that night: surely you must realize how hard words can touch; otherwise you wouldn’t handle them to the extent that you do.

As I embark on the daunting task of sifting through potential MFA programs, there is now at least one school I can confidently strike from the list

The Peaceful Sleep of Clay

2005-11-02T20:57:00.000-08:00

In his children’s book The Golem , Isaac Batshevis Singer illuminates the tale of the Jewish Frankenstein. When blood libels threaten the Jews of 16th century Prague, their Cabbalist leader Rabbi Leib receives orders to fashion a giant human form out of clay. Once the holy name of God is inscribed on his forehead, the lumbering goon comes to life and saves the community. Rabbi Leib retains control over his creation as long as he can etch and erase the divine name on his visage. Early in the story, after he first animates the golem, he lulls him to bed, assuring him he will be called upon when the time for his mission comes.

“Until then,” the rabbi instructs, “Go back to the attic where I formed you and sleep there the peaceful sleep of clay.”

The last few nights, up in my garret room, weary and way under the weather from a weekend of Halloween parties, I’m sleeping long, deep, intimately sculpted sleep. Molded by marijuana, cold medication, a bottomless cup of hot toddies and plain old exhaustion, it’s been long and powerful. Interestingly, My dreams haven’t been so involved and vivid in quite some time.

I had the strangest dream last night. It was brilliantly long and episodic, set in some city in the sky that was an odd amalgam of Israeli Kibbutz and Ivy League college campus. Everyone I knew seemed to inhabit this insular little world. Family and friends coexisting in the most peculiar ways. For example, on this collegiate commune, the boy (who shall remain nameless but suffice it to say he is, well, a crush I guess is the word) is taking a biochemistry class with…my father.

The Freudian circus of my subconscious compounds when I try to enlist my dad-as buddy- to help me woo the boy. In reality, the boy (sigh, like all the boys) is like my father, except, of course, an alcoholic version of my father. In my dream I skulk around the hallway waiting for their class to let out, because I have something I want to give the boy: a little silver key ring or some sort of trinket, something on an incredibly delicate chain.

Time moves in the nonchalant nonlinearity that is solely the oneiric domain. All of a sudden everything is white and sunshine. I’m napping in a world that is all white down comforter and bright light. The boy is near me and he drowsily leans his head on my arm. I wake up and there’s a soft rustle of covers as I draw him to me.

I’m watching all of this through the loop of the dangling silver chain.

He murmurs something affectionate like “Baby” and my insides flood with waves of smiles.
“What am I going to do next?” He asks, softly, sleepily.

“Take a nap?” I suggest in a whisper, sweetly, teasingly, knowing he has more worldly matters on his mind.

“I mean, you’re not the only one.” He says, burying himself deeper in my arms.

In my dream the words hurt, but surprisingly not too much. The light and the whiteness anesthetize all.
“At least you can tell me.” I say, eyes fluttering closed, as I drift off to sleep.

The chain drops somewhere in the sea of down.

And it ends there.

I wake up hating myself for clinging like a barnacle to the most hateful men, worse still, to the most paltry hopes.

Cereal: Something to Jew on

2005-10-25T08:58:00.000-07:00

An anonymous commenter (oh anonymous commenters, how I crave your typing touch! I wonder who you are, I have my guesses of course, but the mystery somehow sustains me, you make me feel worthwhile and for that I love you) asks: “What is your favorite cereal?”

Obviously, there is no simple answer. I am, after all, in the business of telling you more than you wanted to know. And since I enjoy food over perhaps all else in this world ( Preparing it, eating it, hearing about it, talking about it, worrying about it and of course, writing about it) I see no reason not to indulge a loyal reader...

In the earliest part of my youth, breakfast cereal was a modest affair. There are pictures of me as a toddler seated in my under-shirted dad’s lap at the table, two spoons (one big, one small) hacking, geologist style, at a stubborn, sugar topped barge of shredded wheat bobbing in a whole-milk lagoon. In those days I recall eating a lot of Raisin Bran, Cornflakes, Cheerios, and this delicious (probably now extinct) thing called Quaker Crunchy Oat Bran, a cereal that consisted of puffy brown squares of lightly sweated meal which disintegrated rapidly in milk, quickly gaining a peculiar but not unpleasant fuzzy or slimy sort of quality.

My father, already in the onset of digestive woes, was and remains very adamant about eating lots of fruit. On those occasions that he did the grocery shopping back in the days of yore, I feel as though he always came home with just two things: Entenmanns donuts and bags and bags of fruit. At breakfast time he’d hover over us with a peach and a knife like a nutritional proctor of sorts saying as he sliced, “You gotta get some of this baby in there! Whoo this is a sweet one!”

It worked. We really liked our simple cereals adorned with whatever seasonal offering of “nature’s candy” the self proclaimed “Captain Fruit” had managed to procure, and a judiciously administered dusting of sugar (Captain Fruit after all, was still a product of the 1950’s “sugar pops” and “sugar flakes” era of breakfast cereal). Occasionally, at Grandma’s house, we’d eat cream of wheat or oatmeal (initially, I preferred the first and then somewhere along the line graduated to the latter).

All was edenic until Sugar cereals arrived on the scene. Just like my poor mother swore we’d only watch PBS and then found herself powerless against our desperate and unrelenting lobbying for He-Man after school, she lost again at the great Sugar Cereal Battle of 1985, whisps of hoary sweetness and steamy breath of hollering hyper kids rising through the early morning air.

Enter the Apple Jacks, the Cap’n Crunch, the Honey Comb, The Golden Grahams, The Fruit loops, Golden Smacks, The Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles, Cocoa Puffs, and about a zillion more I’m forgetting now.

Do you notice any Major Hitters missing from this roster? Pause for a moment and think.

They are the cereals we NEVER, EVER ate: Lucky Charms, anything from Count Chocula’s cavity crypt, in short any sugar cereal that contained what in those days’ we imagined to be the holy grail or white truffles of breakfast cereal ingredients: marshmallows.

Sad but true. Such sodden bliss never passed through my tiny lips.
Why?
Well, I grew up in a family that adheres strictly to the laws of Kosher. Any and all mainstream arshmallow products were strictly forbidden as they contain the infamous, pig-derived Jewish kids’ party killer: gelatin. Every now and then my mother would turn up a bag of marshmallows made from plant-derived gelatin, at some over-priced kosher foods specialty store so I knew what marshmallows tasted like. They were a treat of such rarified proportions that we ate them with an almost religious ecstasy. They were divine and mysterious. And to think! Some kids could just tip a box of cereal, and like nuggets of gold, they’d come tumbling out into the bowl shaped like all sorts of magical talismans to boot! Horseshoes, blob-like ghouls, an infinity of referent cycles I longed to break between my teeth.

The unfairness of it was truly maddening for my siblings and me. Our marshmallow dreams were colored through a prism of the Lucky Charms rainbow. When the commercials came on T.V. we sat transfixed, licking our lips, desperately wondering what they tasted like. When we went grocery shopping with our mom we’d linger forlornly besides the tantalizing rows of our forbidden treasure, occasionally being so bold as to toss a box into the cart, or clutch one fiercely in the throes of a tempter tantrum. Again and again, the boxes (now creased in the corners) were plucked from the cart, wrenched from our vice-like grips.

And so it was.

Back on non-marshmallow front, the breakfast cereal wars continued with causalities (and by that I mean cavities) climbing into the dozens. Eventually, somewhere around 1988, my mom put her foot down and in one tactical move managed to elegantly lay down the law while simultaneously reinforcing our reluctant religious faith. A new rule mandated that Sugar Cereals were to be consumed only on Saturday mornings as a special Sabbath treat. Amid much grumbling we accepted the compromise; terrorized by my mother’s tales of friends she knew whose (likely mal-adjusted) children’s only sugar intake came in the form of dried carob.

Saturday mornings thus became a sugar cereal gorging Olympics. We’d eat bowl after bowl, experimenting with combinations of different cereals and residual discolored milk leftovers. We’d fight over prizes and stuff ourselves sick until my mother chased us upstairs to get dressed for synagogue.

And so it went.

When I was 17, my boyfriend was shocked and horrified to discover I’d never eaten lucky charms and promptly bought me a box. I sat in the kitchen at his mother’s house while he ceremoniously poured me a bowl like a doting butler awaiting approval on a fois de gras.

You know what folks? It tasted like ass.

“This Marshmallow isn’t chewy!” I cried in heart-rending dismay. Rather, it was chalky, dissolving in my mouth with a sickening crunch.
“Duh,” he said, “They freeze dry them or something.”

All those years I’d imagined something gloriously squishy, the divine stuff of gooey s'mores. It was (quite literally) a crushing let down.

A few years back, my mother, weary and now working full time, relented on some sugar cereal rules and the family has reverted to a free for all, though the no marshmallow rule of course persists. When I go home I’m wowed by the selection of cereals but rarely eat them. The thing is that somewhere in my early adulthood, I lost interest in cereal. (“Fodder for fools” my South American Friend Jorge calls it, preferring real breakfasts of zatar seasoned eggs and delicious fried plantains).

These days I eat cereal, sugary or not, more like a dessert or a special treat. When I do, however, these are some for which I maintain a particular fondness: Cheerios, Wild Berry Kix, Life (and Cinnamon Life), Cap’n crunch, and these new fangled organic ones full of dried strawberries and mango.

I try to make Captain Fruit proud you know.

The Message From Water (continued)

2005-10-16T17:22:00.000-07:00

A Message in Two Parts

Part One: The Crying Log
Part Two: Tashlich

One

Seemingly every little thing scrapes up my insides. It’s like rug burn. The world slides into me so fast it leaves raw, tender spots on the inside of my throat, my lungs my stomach. My blood pauses during circulation to paint ancient pictures on the underside of my skin. Hunters with spears, chaffs of wheat, celestial bodies and weather effects.

Sitting in a crappy tacqueria killing time as the sun might be beginning to set but no bother because it was grey all day. It does its sexy thing behind a drab silk screen…

In my reading on constructivist education theory I come across a passage from a letter by a third grade student to a teacher: “You are the North Star of the class. You don’t’ tell us where to go but you guide us there.” The burn comes inching up around my eyeballs.

Just then, a big fat black man in a trench coat and a haggard blond lady amble in together. Loudly, raspily, she proclaims this place “authentic” and orders a steak burrito. They sit behind me and he tells her “You look good. Casually dressed, but good.” She says she’s tired that’s all. She talks like a drug addict who has seen very rough things. He tells her about his sleep schedule, how he’s got it all worked out: He sleeps from 5-12, then gets up and goes about his day, “power naps” around 5:30 so he can spend some time with the kids and then off to work.

Her order is called.

As they walk out she says, “Feel how heavy it is.” Palming the white paper bag like a dumbbell trophy. He pauses at the door and kisses her on the forehead.
Who are they?
Why are they?

Again, tears, fresh.

Two

The Jewish custom of Tashlich is one of the most beautiful we have. The name, etymological cousin of “to send” and “messenger,” means a casting off. The ritual is traditionally performed on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year that occurs in the fall. On the surface the holiday is naturally a time of celebration, well wishing and festive meal gorging. On another level, it portentously begins a period of solemn self-reflection. The period between the start of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is called the Ten Days of Atonement in which we are obliged to examine the events of the last year, take stock of our mistakes and make the necessary apologies and resolutions. This humbling clearing of the air reaches a powerful denouement on Yom Kippur as Jews make a final bid for absolution before God.

Tashlich is a way of marking this effort to start anew. One simply walks to a live body of water (river, lake, stream or sea), with a pocketful of bread crumbs and in a cleansing gesture, the crumbs, symbols of mistakes and transgressions, are cast into the water. There is no specific liturgy for the ritual and while certain psalms are often recited there is much room for personal improvisation.

It’s been many years since I’ve done Tashlich but somehow, this autumn, I became fixated on it. This can be attributed to several things (most notably the rising pitch of my miserable Jewish identity crisis), but more romantically, it’s a lake thing. This, after all, is Chicago.

The lake shore in Chicago is one of the few things about the city that reliably, consistently makes sense in the way that only things which fill your body and being with such awe and beauty so complete it’s nearly stomach turning do. At night the lake is big and silent and black and goes on forever. You can move through city on your bike as if compelled by a secret mission, magnetically drawn due east until you end up on a concrete pier feeling yourself disappear before the enormity of the night, the twinkling grandiosity of a steel and concrete Valhalla, the sky, the vague knowledge that somewhere over there lies Michigan, and somewhere elsewhere lies Singapore, San Francisco or Seville.

I had dreams of becoming a runner of sorts, taking people, friends, and lovers, to the lake to do Tashlich. This I wanted. It didn’t happen. I was too busy. Too lazy. I dream more easily than I accomplish and time got away. By the day before Yom Kippur eve I still hadn’t done Tashlich. So I revised my vision and came up with a more modest version, to involve stopping at the Damen bridge just south of Diversy on my way to the bar. Ripe with curiosity and general autumnal contemplativeness, I had no trouble roping Donna and Antonia into accompanying me.

I toasted a heel of bread and wrapped it in some foil. We donned our layers and clanked out on our bikes, rapidly falling into formation, a giddy phalanx headed the wrong way down Barry. A prickly drizzle fell from a murky night sky. On the bridge we propped our bikes up in a line and leaning out on the slippery orange railing, gazed quietly at the sludgy, opaque river running a dozen meters beneath us.

The bread divided, I explained the ritual of Tashlich and read in Hebrew and English a traditional Tashlich passage, Micah 7:18. (I had attempted my own translation in an effort to neutralize the male-centered language but it came out too clunky to be powerful so -with reservations-I reverted to the standard)

Who is a God like you? Who passes over the sins of his inheritors?
God does not retain anger forever because he delights in merciful kindness

And then all but the softness of the rain, the occasional slick sputter of passing cars, and the crumbling of bread, silence. I broke off big pieces for the most obvious things that came immediately to mind. Terrible things I’m not sure I want to talk about here. I allowed myself to remember the events. Savor them with distance, tasting like marbles, bland, hard, terrorizing, I rolled them around a predictable course of shutes and slides in my mind. Ashamed. Sorry. Hopefully somewhat wiser now, even if only to a barely perceptible degree. I watched the pieces of toast fall into the river and move along. Maybe fish or birds would eat them. I found that thought oddly comforting, as though at least then, on top of everything else I wouldn’t be guilty of wasting food as well.

Antonia asked me for more bread saying with a solemn, rueful smile that she had “a lot to get rid of.” We all did. We all do. I knew that it was not some vague omniscient God whom I was petitioning; rather it was my own forgiveness I sought. In the last year I had done more damage to myself than to anyone else. At least I sincerely hope that’s the case because I barely managed to survive some of my assaults, anything of that magnitude inflicted on someone else would be unconscionable, requiring substantial stock holdings in wheat.

With this in mind I recited to A&D a line from the Rosh Hashanah liturgy. “God is merciful to all his creatures on the day of Judgment.” “So too,” I ventured cautiously, “We should be kind and merciful to ourselves.”

It’s a very hard thing to do.

We stood in silence for a few more moments, taking in the surprising awe of the hideous scenery. Antonia and Donna kept seeing fish splashing in the filthy water. I kept missing them, tuning in just in time to see the ripples I swore had to have been caused by falling rocks since the idea of life in that water seemed unfathomable. Life is, above all else, persistent.

Finally, with deep sighs,, in the hazy glow of street lamps and the big Vienna beef factory sign, we remounted our bikes and pressing on again south, headed to the bar, ready, despite the purity of my intentions, to start all over again.

Atop Maslow’s Hoary Peaks, or Critical Approaches to the Self-Congratulatory Production of Culture

2005-09-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

As I write this, I am seated at a folding table next to my friend Ezra in a lecture hall at the DePaul University student center, participating in the Ephemera Festival, a celebration of D.I.Y (do it yourself) culture.

Ez and I are fidgeting in our chairs, munching on veggie sticks and passing notes back and forth, as we struggle to endure the inflated, garbled, address delivered by our Keynote speaker, a professor of social justice here at the school.

The upshot of his lecture you could probably guess. He makes the usual (erroneous) allusions to all the diversity and individuality represented in the room, pats us on the back for being “cultural workers” and celebrating our home publications as revolutionary opposition to dominant media, traces our roots, not surprisingly, right back to our pamphleteering, revolutionary forefathers.

Ya da ya da.

Give me a break. And when you’ve done that, stick around to hear my thoughts on what zine publication (or craft making, or playing in a band for that matter) is really about.

Unpopular a stance as it may be, I am willing to stand up and say that at root, there is little to nothing revolutionary about this kind of cultural production, that it might in fact, be a pure manifestation of status-quo preservation in action. No hate or disrespect to my many creative friends, least of all to my own call-for-validation creative endeavors, but the time seems nigh for a little break from our “revolution” in order to examine how and why we create.

Some 70 years ago Psychologist Abraham Maslow first formulated his now famous pyramid model for human development called Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Maslow posits that in order to become a healthy, productive member of society, a person must pass through stages where certain needs are met in. One cannot progress to the next stage until satisfied at the previous station. At the base of the ladder are the primal needs of sustenance then safety. Once these have been secured, a person can effectively cultivate relationships based on love and belonging, which lead to self-esteem building. The final phase is one of self-actualization in which a person is able to positively intellectualize her existence and see herself as a worthwhile entity, orbiting in complex relation to other like entities.

I know little to nothing about the field of psychology but the model makes a good deal of sense. While creativity happens at all levels of the hierarchy (I studied the history of art in school for a good number of years so need no one regale with fantastic stories of tormented, impoverished geniuses or eccentric visionaries), I will confidently argue that while a creative spirit may burn inside the homeless drug addict or the exhausted factory worker, these demographics do not constitute a sizeable (or visible, I should say) slice of the cultural production pie.

Why is this? To be painfully, childishly Marxist, fighting, I mean really fighting for survival leaves all but the most exceptional people with little time or energy left over for creative endeavors. Furthermore, having to claw so desperately at that Maslowian hierarchy might mean for some it takes longer to climb. It might not even occur to a person that creative avenues for self-expression exist when one is stuck somewhere along the way to actualizing this self. Of course people who face incredible obstacles manage to create, often resulting in work that is unspeakably raw and powerful. Let me be absolutely clear that my aim is not to myopically preclude or elide these voices from the cannons. Rather, I am choosing to focus on the sectors of cultural production where creative expression is the rule, not the exception.

Who then is making most of the music, the art, the writing? Go take a nice long gaze in the mirror.
I will.
It’s people just like me.

Just how diverse was the representation in the conference room that morning? In terms of subject matter treated in the overwhelming spread of home publications, impressive: travelogues, cookbooks, poetry, fiction, music writing, agit-prop on topics spanning mental health, environmental and prison activism. Nice spread. But (not surprisingly) what did we have in common? The usual suspects: mostly white, “counter culture”, and almost certainly college educated (if not “more”).

We all shared a quiet camaraderie that functions on several levels. There is the obvious and self-congratulatory level at which we are attempting to hack out space for personal narrative and alternative expression in a so-called increasingly “streamlined” culture of corporate media conglomarization Beneath this thin veneer, however, is the true nature of our cadre: We create because we’ve been taught that we can. Moreover, that we must.

The Ephemera Festival, like my constellation of friends, like climate at the small liberal arts college, contains a striking proportion of creative types. While the details of our lives obviously vary, for the most part we are all white, middle class kids who were raised in homes where, despite the usual gamut of struggles and eccentricities, we were fed, clothed, loved, nurtured and educated. Somehow along the way we picked up the notion that college was not just a place for Frat parties and honor society networking opportunities. It was a place to immerse oneself in world of ideas (and the occasional/not so occasional whiskey ablutions). While we worked hard, both at our studies and paying our ways, we enjoyed the comforting presence of familial and socio-cultural safety nets waiting (though sometimes distantly) beneath our stumbling feet. We learned that lives not lived in the pursuit of knowledge are somehow incomplete. To slog through the drudgery of existence is insufficient- one must wrestle with the world’s great tangle of mystery, and preferably, leave some relic of this struggle in plastic form.

Plainly, whether conscious choice or magnetic gravitation, I have ended up in a section of society that places an incredibly high premium on contemplative cultural practice and creative production. Like many people I know, I do not write, make art or play music because I really think I am changing the world. I maintain creative projects because at this stage in the self-actualization game, it’s what’s expected of me. I am primed to confidently assert that I have something to say and armed with a clunky arsenal of painful self-awareness, a modest but undeniably elite grasp of the history of ideas, aesthetic movements and all sorts of cultural arcana, I’m going to cough it out.

But it’s not all a rosy picture of positive reinforcement, mind you. Beyond the Carrot and Stick, lurks the Discipline and Punish. Consider it a sort of Foucaultian panopticism: if I fail to create, well then, I’m out of the club. Where I ended up, these are the rules for how one is expected to engage with the world. And the invisible spirit of ideas and ghosts of class, like the engines of capitalism themselves, demand results.

There is no moral to this story. Not even an embittered call to trade in our self-indulgent projects (from the hackneyed to the prophetic) for posts in shantytown AIDS clinics worldwide (though is the undeniably more noble path). And fear not gang, we make such amazing things! We rock, we move to tears, we open discourses, we stimulate minds and most impressively (potentially imperialist value judgment fast approaching), we do this all INSTEAD of kicking the shit out of each other and robbing convenience stores.

Most of us will accomplish little more with our endeavors than massively enriching our own lives and the lives of those close to us. But Goddamn we are incredibly lucky to have the resources and the time to reflect ponderously and gloriously on all our heartbreaks and tribulations, our pain and our elation.

Actually, maybe that is a moral after all.

Comments on Comment Erasure

2005-09-19T08:02:00.000-07:00

This blog has been getting spammed by fake comments that offer some lame congradulatory encouragement following by stock advertisement plugs for anything from energy drinks to credit cards. This is a gross, creepy violation of peoples' reading/writing space and I've since tried to activate a blocker that will ask commenters to decode a fuzzy looking word before posting. In the meantime I've been deleting the insidious ads. They have no place here. Or anywhere really...

Taking Jalen in Arms

2005-09-18T20:36:00.000-07:00

I’m not comfortable with the idea of having children. Not just me having children (this, clearly is a bad idea) but anyone having children really. My parents and more conventional amongst my friends are hoping this is bitter, immature phase I’ll grow out of. I probably will too, coinciding perfectly no doubt with the onset of infertility. In the meantime, I’m spending my prime childbearing years regarding the business of procreation irksome if not deeply, cosmically wrong.

Ironic thing is, I like children and I do alright with them. I used to be one afterall and a frustrated, sensitive, poorly behaved one at that. Childhood is hard and of course, as well all know, it never gets any easier. Since it never gets any easier, sometimes we need help from those who have yet to figure that out.

Therefore I have a new job working in an after school program at a charter school in Bucktown. The hours are paltry and the pay pitiful but I think that like most self-absorbed, twenty-something hipsters I only stand to become a more worthwhile person by taking care of children.

“This is what’s missing from my life, all of our lives,” I told Radhika with a weirdly earnest enthusiasm a few weeks ago “We’ve got to get beyond ourselves, you know? Little kids need help, they need you. It’ll be a nice change from all the usual worrying over where the next party, or pint, or regrettable make-out is coming from.”

It’s funny how you have to keep learning the things you already know. The other day I experienced a concrete moment of that abstract but powerful notion of being needed. Not surprisingly, it took a five year old to make me feel more worthwhile than I’d felt in a very long time.

Jalen was the first kid I met at work actually and based on our initial interaction I should have known he would prove a force to contend with. The first day of this newly minted program was complete an utter pandemonium as two hundred kids raced through the gym shrieking, flinging back-packs and spraying hot-cheetos crumbs everywhere while us frenzied teachers, working off various lists which of course didn’t match up, attempted to assert order. Amidst the chaos, I got a desperate tug on the hem of my shirt.

“Teacher,” this little kid wheezed, “I’m going to throw up!”
Now, as the eldest of six kids, a former day-care employee, and a particularly squeamish individual, I know that puke is nothing to fuck around with. Drop everything to take care of puke. This is a rule of mine.

“Come on honey.” I said making some vague “outdoors” gesture to the nearest harried adult. I put my hand on his shoulder and led him to the nearest exit. I figured we should head towards nature, but damn concrete jungle, there wasn’t much to be found. Just a parking lot. I guided Jalen over to the church next door, sporting a few patches of lawn.
“Let it on out.” I said stoically as if the chore were mine not his.
Jalen coughed theatrically, bent over and spit out a slimy strand of cheetos-colored drool.
“I think I feel better now.” He said.

Crisis averted. What I didn’t quite realize at the time but understand in retrospect is that in all likelihood Jalen didn’t need to throw up at all. Whether he knew it or not, like any hyperactive kindergartener, shit, like any regular kindergartener, he just needed to get outside for a little break.

Over the following weeks I got a better sense of Jalen’s (in)famous condition at the school. Adorable and loving, he’s also clearly ADD and very high maintenance. He acts out, can’t concentrate, and seems to get in a lot fights with the other kids. Why a parent would stick this five year old child with special needs in an after school program, five days a week ON TOP of a normal, grueling 8-3 school day is beyond me. But that’s not really my business. My business is taking care of Jalen, and when I find the chance, the rest of the kids too.

Jalen’s week was off to a bad start last Monday. He arrived in the gym for after school, already in tears. It took me a few attempts to decipher the blubbering but I managed to ascertain that he’d gotten a red dot in class that day for kicking a classmate.

“My momma’s gonna whoop me.” He howled piteously, stroking my arm in a desperate, meaningless motion.
“Sounds like you made a pretty poor decision today” I suggested consolingly, adopting the school’s model of teaching responsibility. He nodded into my ribs. I did my best to get him excited about Spanish club that afternoon but it was a tenuous peace- Jalen was barely hanging in there. Shortly before dismissal time around 6 pm, the poor kid, exhausted and overwhelmed reached a meltdown point.

I’m not sure what set it off, but it happened, inconveniently enough as I was trying to organize the kids and their belongings in a line by the classroom door. Seems he remembered he was going to be disciplined when he got home and got hit with a fresh wave of fear and aggravation. Jalen’s sobs grew louder and more frantic until, eventually, I had this tiny little boy clinging to my legs like a barnacle, bawling inconsolably. At this point he was out of control and way beyond reprimanding or the usual tricks of concocting special helper jobs or errands for him to run.

“What’s wrong with him?” Another little kid asked, clearly concerned by her classmate’s histrionics.
“He’s had a long day.” I replied gently, trying to pry him off my knees. It was a crazy moment and I let Mr. Miller escort the class out while I dealt with Jalen the only way I knew how.

I took him in my arms.

I held Jalen, shuddering and sputtering, in my arms for a few minutes and rubbed his back while he cried it out. Eventually the tears began to subside.
“I think you need a nice dinner and some rest.” I told him. I offered to play intercessor and suiggest to mom that she go easy when it came to the Red Dot. Sniffling, he told me it was ok; he would be fine on his own.

Hand in hand, we returned the mug of Pencils to Ms. Morales’ classroom and went upstairs. By the time we got outside he’d recovered and bounded off, disappearing into the swarm of kids on the school steps.

Something about this encounter got to me. My life right now, I’d say could is marked by a distinct lack of being needed. I’m not even complaining here about what I need , but more of what I can be poised to give others. Sure there are the usual friends and family, but as weird as it sounds, I crave the desperate, middle of the night drunken phone calls. I always fall in love with boys I hope will let me take care of them and it never pans out. Lovers and friends can't always validate you, you can't force them to call on you for help. The next best thing is sublimating, finding creative, unexpected ways to feel useful, depended upon, loved.

I’m sure Jalen doesn’t even remember how badly he needed me briefly there that evening. And that’s fine. He’s just a little kid. In a weird way, I reflect upon those moments as ultimately being more about me than him.

Bokbunja Berries and Chicago PD Blues

2005-09-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gents, every word of the story you are about to read is true. It’s difficult to believe, and trust me, even harder to write since I’m be attempting to weave together not one, but several coterminous adventures. Time is the best narrator; the stunned subject is a paltry second. In any case, sit back and let me regale you with the facts of how in the span of just two days I became the darling of the windy city wine festival, got paid two sweet bens to get drunk off an exotic Korean wine while I did it, had a tussle with the law that prompted a hysterical breakdown in the heart of Lakeview, and the unbelievable way I managed to clear my name. Like I said, I couldn’t have made this up if I tried.

I’ve got an idea taking shape for a little book called ‘Gig’ in which I’ll tell you all about the ridiculous one-off jobs I’ve taken to eke out this pittance of an existence while keeping the onerous 9-5 life at bay. Beyond my traditional work experience in retail and education, I can, at this point, also list a bizarre, Sedaris-esque host of other colorful positions: costumed dinner party actress, wedding caterer, handler of unfathomably expensive artworks, hocker of designer clothing the list goes on…nothing excitingly bawdy, alas, just weird, random.

Fresh off a gig folding overpriced jeans and telling the Lincoln Park women who love them how great their asses look in ‘em for Colleen S________the jet-set designer/manufacturer from Sonoma, I managed to land another lucky gig pouring wine at the windy city Wine Festival down in Daley center this weekend.

“I’m your woman.” I banged out in my feverish email response to the craigslist posting.
“I’m cute, friendly, can sell anyone anything and what’s more, I know my gewürztraminer from my Shiraz, hell, my Shiraz from my syrah!”

“U got a pic?” came the terse reply not two minutes later.

I sent the guy a picture Lynn took of me in California in my catering uniform, serving up a copy of Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory like a tray of hors d'oeuvres. I’m not exactly Bacardi Girl material but I do all right. Shave a girl’s armpits, slap some earrings on her and presto, you’ve got yourself a woman the boys won’t laugh at. It’s amazing.

I spent all day Saturday sweltering in a booth for an importing company based half in the Chicago burbs, half in Seoul S. Korea. They specialize in organic Korean cosmetics, textiles and spirits, most excitingly Korea’s sophisticated soju for the 21st century, a highly alcoholic raspberry wine called Bokbunja. My bosses Michael and Young, laid back chain smokers who guzzled the product openly and frequently didn’t have high expectations. “Turn out’s gonna be low, I bet” Michael shrugged one hour into the day. “Whatever, we’ll just try to get the product out there, hopefully sell a few bottles.”

Oh ye of little faith. The trick to selling, and I mean this in a sincere not a slimy way, is to make people feel good not just about what they’re buying but while they’re shopping. Wine is pretty easy to sell because everyone is self-conscious about knowing too little so they compensate by nervously throwing their money around. Nothing in the world however can be easier than selling wine at a wine festival where people are already feeling good, jolly and drunk.

I repeated my spiel about the wines probably a thousand times, getting good and soused on weird concoctions of Bokbunja and iced tea, Bokbunja and champagne, Bokbunja and anything really, yucking it up with the yuppie chumps all the while. I left that night confident in a job well done. The guys were certainly impressed. “Wish you weren’t moving to California.” Mike said mopping his brow “I’d hire you right now, fly you out to Korea, you’d love it.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

The next day I dawdled over an involved omlette project and ended up racing to work in a fierce hurry. At Belmont I made the unfortunate executive decision to forgo the train, thinking that if I peddled ferociously I could make it down to lake just as fast on my bike. Pre-occupied with fear that tardiness might dash my hopes for a bonus at the end of the night, brain registering only the immediate danger of oncoming traffic, I veered right onto Clark without stopping at the red light. Unlucky mistake. Within an instant a cop was barking at me to pull over.

I have never been pulled over on my bike before. How humiliating. Now I’d really be late. Flushed and sweaty I fidgeted on the curb while this abusive officer P______ harangued me for disregarding the traffic signal and accused me of starting guff with him by not pulling over quick enough. Sunday fucking morning. Everyone else was at church or eating crepes except this asshole, whose idea of “weekend” meant bullying little girls on mauve bikes. Where was this traffic safety hero every time some ornery Chicago motorist consciously tried to run me off the road? I watched him laughing to himself in the car as he wrote up my ticket. When he presented me with the paperwork I asked him calmly why my license wasn’t with it.

“Oh I’m keeping that for bond.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s right, I’m keeping it for bond.”
“Now hold on just a minute,” I said, aware my voice was getting shrill as my diffident, kiss ass exterior gave way to terror, impotence and panic. I began dialing Donna for a legal consultation.

“I don’t have to wait for your calls.” Sneered the abominable officer P______.
“You at least have to wait for me to get your badge number.” I shot back, trying to threaten him.
Donna instructed me to request something called an I-Bond. But everything was happening too quickly. The cop thrust a piece of paper at me on which he’d scrawled his badge number and then took off-with my license.

I ain’t ashamed to tell you I was so shaken and confused that I burst into violent sobs right there on the corner of Clark and Belmont. Shuddering and blubbering, I paced on the phone with Donna for a good ten minutes before I could manage, still weeping, to heft my bike on the train.

“Why didn’t you just lose him down an alley?” Mike asked when I called to report I was now going to be not just late but really late. “That’s what I would have done.”

Don’t the French have some word for that? The quip you wish you had said that miserably, only comes to you later that night in the shower? If only.

A big glass of chilled Bokbunja was waiting for me when I finally made it to the booth. The ladies in the Fisher nuts booth next door were particularly sympathetic and directed the wind from their neon colored pocket fans my way while I recounted the tale of terrible woe. After an hour or two and several Bokbunja cocktails I managed to regain my cheery composure. A guy from Binny’s came over to tell us we’d blown every other vendor out of the water.

That night Mike said he was sorry he wasn’t authorized to give me a bonus but offered me as “much wine as you can carry.” With a wink, Pete from the Chadon booth even slipped me a bottle of my favorite, the Riche, for good measure. Drunk, staggering under the weight of a dozen clanking bottles, worried my bag would split at the seams like in some moralizing fable, I lumbered back to the train. Despite my earlier interaction with officer P_____the world seemed magical that night and I felt full of grace. I left a bottle of Bokbunja near the coin-spattered guitar case of a lady-busker outside the art museum. “Put it on ice girl!” I called behind me.

This morning I woke up with a bit of a Bokbunja hangover. Supposedly the wine is free of sulfites, a selling point I touted with great enthusiasm but it is rather sugary. Why delay the inevitable I told myself, reheating some two day old coffee I found in the French press on the counter and settling down to tackle the most unpleasant items on my list. I wrote a check to National Education lending corp. with a note apologizing for my overdue payments promising to do better in the future. That done I embarked on a quest to recover my license. An hour of phone calls later no officer in either of the districts controlling that intersection had any trace of my paperwork.

Beaten and weary I resigned myself to fate, hoping when I got to New York this weekend there’d be at least a few bartenders generous enough to accept my paper moving violation and defunct graduate school I.D as proof of existence, advanced youth. I packed my bag and prepared to head into town to claim my bike and go to work.

And then the doorbell rang.

And this folks, is where things get psychedelic.

I peered down the stairs and to my horror saw that Antonia was talking to a cop on our doorstep. “You want Abbyg.?” I heard her asking warily. What now?

I clattered down there and found myself facing none other than officer P______from the day before.
“Yes.” I said curtly.
“Abigail, I came by to bring you this.” He began sheepishly, holding up my license in a plastic sheet.
“Seems you were right about the I-Bond. Since you’re from Michigan you were exempt from our seizure procedures.”
“I’m certainly glad to have it back.” I said, softening now that things were looking up.
“You know,” He continued “I kind of regret writing that ticket. In retrospect, I’m not even positive you had a red light.”

(I did. I certainly did)

“That’s possible. I was in such a rush I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Yeah, well anyway, I’m not going to go to court on this. Arrange a date and they’ll just throw it out. Here’s your license back and I’m sorry for the trouble.”
“Thanks.” I replied. “Glad you caught me I was just on my way out the door.”
“You need a ride anywhere?” he asked, motioning to his squad car parked on our corner. It was an offer too deliciously weird to refuse.
“Sure.”

So Officer P_____gave me a lift to the Belmont redline station. On the way we talked about my upcoming trip to New York, his favorite blues bar in Chicago and the hazards of biking in the city. When we got to the station he got out of the car, exchanged a brief word with the lady at the turnstile booth and the gate opened up for me. Officer P____ handed me a piece of paper with the information about my court date, tentatively scheduled for October 28th.
“I put my number on it here.” He said ‘In case you have any questions...”
Pause
“...Or you want to get a beer or something.”

(Yep you read that correctly. He was asking me on a date)

“Well thanks a lot offer P______,” I said extending my hand.
“Please” He beamed “Call me Sean.”

The heart is a muscle the size of a fist and the dick is mightier than the pen.

All that remains to close this case is for us to get married I guess.
But I don’t think I’ll call him. I’m sure you understand.

Besides, until I deplete my cache of Bokbunja, I’m so over beer.

"That's Not Me" Or Body World's Hyperreal Travels Close to Home

2005-09-07T11:32:00.000-07:00

This essay is a DRAFT. A Work in progess. I really welcome your comments, sugggestions and edits (you know I really suffer when it comes to spelling, commas and the like...)

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Back in 1975 Italian theorist, novelist and social critic Umberto Ecco published the classic essay Travels in Hyperreality . True to the tradition of European intellectuals who just love crossing the ocean to gawk at America’s infinite capacity for tastelessness, Travels reads like an encyclopedic compendium of our country’s entertaining and educational tableaux, Vegas style mini-cities, wax museums, and tacky sites of historic re-creation.

In these garish places, Ecco observed a bizarre, what he feels to be a uniquely American obsession with the production, or rather re-production of authenticity. (A dubious assertion I might interject, especially coming from the sophisticated continent that spent much of the middle ages worshipping reliquaries). It’s as though what is real is not real until it is culturally canonized as such, heralded, paraded, worshipped and most importantly, frozen in time. From costumed interpreters to tromp l’oeil simulacra, we tend to push reality into a realm where truth resides in the “absolute fake.” In this world mere reality is insufficient, eschewed instead for a conscious creation of reality known as the hyperreal.

Last night, at three in the morning, I found myself at the Museum of Science and Industry in Hyde Park viewing Gunther Von Hagan’s much hyped Body Worlds: An Exhibition of Real Human Bodies . The idea of the exhibit, for those unfamiliar, is initially almost impossible to wrap one’s mind around. Preserved through a technology called “plastination” (the term itself intriguing, the process of rendering fake), Von Hagan brings us galleries full of artfully arranged actual human bodies. Stripped of skin, sliced and flayed, the idea is to take viewers on a trip through the most secret, mystifying terrain on earth: our own bodies.

It’s an awesome, gruesome romp indeed, a violent perhaps final iteration of Eccoian Hyperreality. Add to this the museum’s rather surreal decision (wowed by unending demand for Body Worlds) to keep the exhibit open round the clock for its final days in Chicago and you have perhaps the strangest night out imaginable. Bleary-eyed and weak-stomached, myself and several thousand other curious souls elected to spend twenty dollars and two hours in the middle of the night milling through brightly lit galleries examining what were, or had once been, dead human bodies.

Unlike the shellacked specimens in the exhibit, the scientific enlightenment spirit is alive and well. Walls adorned with stirring corporeally oriented quotes from the likes of Rene Descartes, Aurelius Augustinus, William Shakespeare and other famous men, the exhibit environment is meant not only to edify but to inspire and astound. While “The primary goal of body Worlds is health education,” we have clearly come a long way from drab pickled specimens in vitrines. Set against the backdrop of Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson the bone and muscle figures become a cast of macabre, elegant characters. There is the chess player hunched in concentration over a game board, his spinal column removed to highlight the cerebral cortex, the dancer ossified in an eternal pirouette of striated grace, the rider-a male perched atop a similarly plastinated galloping steed. Horseman of the Humanist apocalypse our cowboy holds a brain in each skeletal hand, one his own, the other (of astonishingly similar size) belongs to the horse.

Interspersed between the anatomical statues visitors could also marvel at isolated body parts in cases. Ever wonder what a real smoker’s lungs look like? Gallstones? Ovarian Tumors? A Cirrhotic liver? Displayed alongside healthy counterparts these specimens satisfy our curiosity for the aberrant and soothe our pathological tendencies to divide the world into binary categories- normal and abnormal, right and wrong.

While making no overt moralizing gestures, it is interesting to note Body World’s sometimes clunky mix of cold science and divine rhapsody. Consider the Origins of Life section, a corner of the exhibit walled off by flowing white curtains. More temple than circus ring, the room contains embryos and fetuses from every point of gestation and most impressively, a plastinated woman, 8-months pregnant, arranged in the classic posture of a reclining nude. Belly opened to reveal the baby she carried, she is the noble sight of a dual tragedy. Visitors file through slowly through the room in an awed, glossy silence. In contrast to the rest of the exhibit, which uses no sound effects, here a track of ambient twinkling chimes wafts through the air. Everything is death except for life. Kidney stones, constipation, artery blockages-these are things that happen to the unlucky or the imprudent. Babies on the other hand, well these are something special.

It was an unsettling form of resurrection. To X-ray a live dancer might be interesting but nowhere near as thrilling as reviving the dead. Truly, these bodies needed to have been dead in order to be reanimated as innards on parade. Inescapable when considering Body World’s appeal is the fact that this is not a peek into the functioning of the body, but rather, bodies once functioning. Perhaps it was this inability to account for the body in time that created a critical disjunct in my appreciation of Body World’s exciting reality factor. I just couldn’t shake what I’d initially dismissed as a girly, squeamish reaction: the simple insistence that “That’s not me.”

Is this really a crisis of abjection though? I lingered in a moment of pure aesthetic pleasure at the human arm comprised of nothing but a ghostly crimson network of arterial meanderings. The infinite complexity of tendrils and fibers floated in the air like an Andy Goldsworthy on water-supremely delicate, impossibly impermanent. It’s not that the body is particularly gross; it just made very little sense from Body' World's stark perspective. I peered in particular confusion at the shriveled disembodied male and female genitals. I admit it’s been a little while but I remember reality as distinctly more sexy. “Is this really what we use to do it?” I wondered. I hate to betray the scientific tradition to which we owe an undeniable debt but really, whatever happened to singing the body electric?

At once too real and not real enough, Body Worlds may enchant but let’s not forget all else that does. On my way out I paused to sleepily flip through the guestbook. The comments ranged from the standard “Fantastic! Very informative!” to the touching (in painstaking, sloping child’s print) “I leanrdt so much abut the body” to the comical “Usually at this time of night I’m looking at sexy bodies at the bar, thanks for another perspective.” While my friend searched for the plastination donation forms I added a hasty line or two of my own:

“…And yet I can’t help but recall all the insides I saw yesterday on the bus, looking up in the bumps and jolts after rereading numerous times just the opening line of Theodore Roethke’s The Waking “I wake to sleep and take my waking slow…”

The Lonely Alphabet from A to Z

2005-08-19T21:14:00.000-07:00

I sat in a cafe I didn't even know the name of. Alexis ate his French toast and chicken sausage while I watched a little girl at the next table learn how to dispense syrup onto her pancakes- a spongy brown stack surrounded by scattered blueberries.

"Christy honey, do you see how the tip has a pointed spout on one side?" her mother instructed from across the table, "Flip it around."

I laughed.

The world that day was a charred metal grate. Black. Impossible.
"What did you drink last night anyways?" Alexis asks. "Gin or something?"

Wounded, I squinted at him over my glass of water, beads of condensations slipping down the sides. Gin?

"What do you think?"
"Whiskey?"
"Can you smell it?"
"Yeah."
"Well that's the smell inside my head, that's why I can't eat anything."
"I wish you would."
"Food is the enemy."

I drank an apple juice. Most of it. It seemed I couldn't really scrub the sour taste out of my mouth. The night before I had stood on Western avenue sobbing inconsolably while Victor held me and tried to turn it around. It was the best anyone could have done for me. Breaking free from his embrace, blubbering that I was sick of "not smoking just to impress people" we crossed the street and I bought a pack of cigarettes. My first in a long long time.

I can't remember if I started crying in the bar or not. I didn't want to go out that night anyways. I was upset. Alexis dragged me with promises of honey liqueur. I socialized to the best of my ability but failed, eventually retreating to a mostly empty table to write. A surly man who didn't speak much English, I think he was Polish, sat down across from me. What ensued was an awkward exchange I didn't have patience for. He was clearly drunk and very angry at not being able to communicate. Apologizing (though really somewhat irked at being approached in the first place) I migrated to the bar for another beer. There, Alexis introduced me to his new Acquaintance 'Z'.

Z told me he was 54, roughly my father's age, though Z is much worse for the wear. A drunken, haggard old soul, his wheel chair stood folded in a nook by the pool table. He was wasted and (as is the case with drunk homeless men) kept telling me how lovely I am. As is the case with me when I'm drunk and unhappy, I was inclined to accept such accolades as divinely portentous, heart-wrenchingly sincere.

In Ann Arbor, when I was 17, I had a close friend by the name of Mike Hinchey, or "eat my fuck Mike" as he was known around town. He was a rambler, a handsome, sly old coot, a homeless blues singing bum never seen without a half-pint of vodka in his back pocket, a comb in breast pocket. He always came into town in the summer and left in the fall. Hopping trains, taking greyhounds to visit his children in warm places like Arizona, skirting incarceration. Mike's line was "Gimme a quarter and I'll sing you a song." Upon delivery of quarter (or a cigarette) he'd draw in his breath and below from his scrawny ribcage an astonishingly deep and sloshy gurgle of blues. "Well I'm going to Ypsilanti, Ypsilanti here I'd come..." He'd wail, doing this drunken knock-need little dance "they got some big fat old women there and I'm gonna get me one..."

When he was relatively sober we could sit on the street and talk about poetry for hours. When he was violently drunk he'd stand and scream things like "eat my fuck!" and "I was Lenny Bruce before there was Lenny Bruce!" When he got like that I'd beg him to shut up so the cops wouldn't take him away. Usually, I was able to bring him back. He called me "little darling" and referred to himself as my uncle. My boyfriend at the time let him move into the basement of the notorious Butler house the summer after high school graduation, the most tumultuous summer of my life (until this one). When Alex cheated on me it was Mike who held me when I cried telling me "Little girl, don't cry, he loves you, I know he loves you its just that he's a man, he can't help himself." Before the weather turned that year I gave him an inscribed copy of As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, to this day one of my favorite books. When he returned next summer he told me he read it repeatedly while stuck in jail for three months in Minnesota.

I haven't seen Mike in a few summers.

Z reminded me a lot of mike. When he told me he was a poet I suggested we write each other poems. His was a disjointed ramble about my loveliness. Loveliness was hardly on my mind that night and saddly, Z was decidedly unsatisfied with my poem:

Ok. There were pastures
But the closer we moved
The more strange flesh hung off the cows

They were not steaks, nor were they darling
And their moos were hardly the stuff
Of polished cream, dyed brown for chocolate,
Black-blotched bossy, gold-earringed
And sweet.

They stood in their shit
And didn't mind.
While I watched,
They chewed.

"This is not about me!" Z reeled, clunkily trying to recap his pen into the tangled holster of copper wire rigged to one of his fraying belt loops. "What is this poetry?" He lambasted.

I was getting pretty drunk at this point.

"Poetry is the expression of an eternal remembrance,� I said, oscillating miserably on my barstool.
"So why did you not go for eternal? Why did you talk about shit and pastures!"
"I don't know, Z. Because that stuff is a remembrance and it's eternal."

Eventually, laughing, he conceded and told me again how much he liked me because I'm "Simple."

"I could never possess you, Abby (sounds like 'baby')" The old man muttered, struggling with the cigarette he'd been attempting roll for the last 12 minutes.
"No one could, Z." I said, trying for a rueful defiance.
"The ones you give yourself to might."

And that right there might have been what did it.
Z, as it turns out, knows everything there is to know about me.
When I left he gave me his business card. It says:

Zbigniew____________

Photographer
Poet
Nonist

Z, like mike, is in many ways, the embodiment of what everyone I know is afraid of becoming. And that's why I love him and why I loved mike so much too.

It took me a while but later that day I eventually managed to eat.

Tears Tip Eastward Once Again

2005-07-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, on one of my first nights in San Francisco I saw a girl crying on the MUNI. She was in the next tramcar, wearing a long, stylish leather coat and blubbering into her cell phone. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but she was clearly shattered, distraught, and somewhat frantic. The image remained with me. After all, it’s humiliating to cry on public transportation, especially in front of all the put-together strangers in San Francisco.

This morning the crying girl on the BART was I.

A vague anxiety about returning home has been hovering around the periphery of my consciousness since the Pacific Northwest. It passes through phases, ebbs and swells. Last night around midnight it bloomed brutally. Princess that I am I had finally gotten used to sleeping with just the one flat pillow I’d brought with me from Chicago. Suddenly, last night it seemed insubstantial and horribly uncomfortable. Exhausted and achy from several days of long, hilly bike rides, due to be up and traveling in five hours, predictably, sleep seemed out of reach.

“Life is empty.” I said to Lynn from my mattress on the floor when he walked in around one from Raf’s birthday party.
“Do you really think that Abby?” he said consolingly, shoving the mess of shrink wrapped yellow “Live Strong” Lance Armstrong bracelets that, much to our glee, had arrived in the mail that afternoon, off his sleeping bag next to me.
“Well it isn’t always.” I conceded dolefully “But when it is, it’s unbearably so.”

The crisis is manifold, complex and like most things worth getting upset about, mostly impossible to understand. I don’t ever want to work again. I don’t feel like I belong anywhere. I feel only tenuously connected to anything in this world. Worst of all, I’m finding this out a few years too late.

Lynn woke up early with me and helped me carry my bags to the station on Market st. The air was cool. An old man stood just inside the station entrance playing guitar; his song incredibly lovely. I’d spent two days last week down on Fisherman’s Wharf busking for money on a borrowed guitar (with little success, I have to admit) and I felt that broke as I was, it wouldn’t be proper to leave town without giving him a dollar. Every now and then I receive these little hints that Karma or Causality might actually exist. When I got to the turnstiles they were taped open. It seems I had the great fortune of traveling on “Spare the Air Day” meaning free train rides between 4 and 9 am. Have I mentioned I love San Francisco?

Deeply pained, I hugged Lynn goodbye, ran down the stairs and jumped right on my train. I’m not sure what set it off, fog perhaps, the train map on the wall, but I started to cry. It was quick and tasteful-just a few silent tears. Truly, a fraction of the deluge I wanted to be washed away in. I wept because I am returning home with a more acute feeling of venturing into the unknown than I had when I left two months ago. What kind of sense does that make? Plainly, It’s terrifying.

The tour already seems like ancient history, a troubling sensation in and of itself, and I was just starting to get used to life in San Francisco. Cooking for the boys, visiting friends, writing, staggering up those hills feeling full of wonder. It seemed that in San Francisco my thoughts came to me prepackaged in poetic form. I began thinking in verse, an adaptation heartbreaking to sever.

I’d been taking it pretty east, a little too easy, in fact, right up until the very end. Lynn’s parents were in town visiting the last few days and with their typical generosity took me along on all sorts of family outings and out to family dinners. The other day we did something very important. We took a bike ride down through the Presidio, over the golden gate bridge and into marine.

I refuse to believe that there is a single person I know who hasn’t at some point, if only for a flickering instant, considered jumping to her doom from the Golden Gate bridge. Sam, a San Francisco native, says that idea is mostly urban legend. “Where did you hear that? That lots of people kill themselves that way?” he wanted to know. “Are you kidding?” I answered, eyes widening. It just is that way. Everyone knows it. It’s got to be one of the most Romantic ways to go.

Half way across the bridge I paused and climbed off my bike to gaze down at the foamy rocks below. It is really rather windy up there and it occurred to me that perhaps many people have been in the process of contemplating jumping and then the wind came along and made the decision for them. All in all we rode a good 25 miles through Sausalito, Tiburon, all around the bay, and then took a ferry home. My borrowed bike I’d been living on for a week had a rock-hard seat and snarky gears. I struggled nobly and my ass is ruined.

There is something inexplicably divine, almost holy, about biking on those hills. You move on a continuum of toil and redemption. You struggle up feeling like your lungs will burst, your legs drop right off your body like some consumptive insect, and then you crest and the way down is delicious in perfect proportion.

Retuning home I cooked the leftover Indian food I’d grifted from a catering gig I’d worked the night before. An Indian wedding party that had me scrubbing pots caked with charred korma until two in the morning. The work was exhausting and the night didn’t end until 3 am when I trekked back to the restaurant to collect my pay and my bike. All the prostitutes were out on Polk at that hour. Most of them trannies. My feet ached from standing on my feet in dress shoes for 12 hours, my arms sore from hefting dishes, carafes and garbage. While climbing onto my bike and huffing back to Chinatown I passed by a prostitute, a little girl who couldn’t have been more than 12. A total Jodie Foster Taxi Driver deal for real, and felt suddenly that any complaints I might have were wholly inappropriate. A bunch of thugged out dudes in a BMW idling at the intersection hooted and called at her “Hey little one! Come ‘ere little one.” My heart broke and I had trouble sleeping that night too.

Direct flights were decidedly out of my budget and I had to stop in Denver. On my first flight I had the uncomfortable experience of sitting next to a girl who by all surface accounts was just like me. About my age, similarly dressed, she read a hardcover copy of Anna Karenina (one of my favorite books) and clicked away on an ibook identical to mine. I’m nothing. Nobody. Just like everyone else.

Towards the end of our flight we encountered some of the worst, most prolonged turbulence I’ve ever suffered through. The plane dipped and jerked, metal cabinets in the kitchen rattling and slamming. My stomach fluttered through my body, exploring the outer reaches of my trembling fingers and toes. I closed my eyes, tried to breathe deeply and remind myself that I’m not scared of dying. I like to think that I’m not scared of dying; rather look forward to it actually, but in that moment my will to live betrayed me. It was really, really scary.

Right after 9-11 I found myself morbidly and obsessively consumed by the curiosity of what those final moments before a crash must be like on board. Probably everyone has this fantasy in some form or another my fantasy was clean and romantic (until the flames and fuselage that is,) and involves nice things like holding hands with the stranger next to you, making last declarations, confessions, resignations. Now I understand that you probably don’t have the stomach or the presence of mind for such profound, Romantic niceties. In reality people are probably screaming, vomiting, shitting, scrambling like crazed animals. Given a choice, I’d take the Golden Gate route in an instant.

Weeks ago, on our way from Olympia to Portland we gave a lift to Allen’s friend, the rock star Anna Oxygen, a lovely and inspiring woman. “Sometimes, when I get back from tour,” she admitted, “I need to be alone for a good two weeks before I can see anyone.” At the time that struck me as a lonely prospect. I’m the kind of person who can’t stand to be alone, so scared of being alone I often conspire to avoid it, even if I end up feeling lonely in the presence of other people. Which is why I’m so astonished to find myself wishing I had the luxury of doing that, at least for a few days but I’m still adrift, without a home, without space of my own. I’m going to try hard not to act like a weirdo when I get back. All told, I’ll probably fare better than I fear but a heads up from the heart just incase I don’t.

Greener, Warmer, Colder Grass

2005-07-20T15:22:00.000-07:00

When we were in Omaha Nebraska this 17-year-old kid told us the following joke:

So these three guys die and go to hell. The Devil asks each one what he would like to experience for the next 1000 years-whatever they desire they will have their wishes. The first guy says “I love food, I want to sit around and eat the most delicious food in the world forever.” The Second guy says, “I love bitches. Just lock me away with the finest women and I’m set.” The third Guys says, “ I love to get high, give me a never ending supply of the craziest weed.”

Wishes granted.

1000 years later the devil unlocks their chambers and checks in. The first guy rolls out miserable and sick. “Ooooooooh” he groans, “I’m sooo full, I can’t eat another bite again.” The second guy runs out haggard and weary “Shit” he pants, “I’m all worn out, I’m sick of fucking.” When the door opens on the third guy he dashes out franticly hollering, “Hey, anybody got a lighter?”

What can we learn from this story (besides that stoners are morons)? First, I’m smoking a lot of pot these days. Second, be careful what you wish for. Which brings me to some truths about San Francisco. My brother once said he doesn’t feel particularly sorry for hurricane victims in Florida. “It’s the price they pay Abs for living in paradise. Every now and then, it gets fucked up. That’s the gamble they make. The rest of us, we take our horrid weather one safe, predictable, miserable winter at a time.”

Callous but true right?

San Francisco seems like a dream until you realize it’s a weird dream realm in which, predictably, something is just a little bit wrong. Today, as I sat on a bus ambling down the Embarcadero it finally occurred to me what it is.

You can’t go swimming.

It’s always “nice” here, meaning about 70 degrees all the time all year round, but when is it ever sweltering enough to deeply, truly enjoy a dip in a pool or lake? For that matter, when is it ever cold enough to appreciate the coma inducing halcyon of wriggling under the covers next to the warm body of your special person while the fierce February wind leaks through the brick walls of your frigid loft?

The answer to both is Never.

And now you know why I’ve lived all my life in the Midwest and on the east coast. Because you need to be careful what you wish for and as much as my general mood and emotional stability might improve with regular exposure to sunshine and inoffensive climes, I’m not sure I could handle the loss of Romantic environmental extremes. These stupid things matter. They shape who we are and the moments that define us. They make love matter; stand out against the icy pallor and languorous torpor. Without the miseries of snow and humidity we might as well be robots. We might as well be Californians. There. I said it. Sorry.

I really do love San Francisco. If this city can just show me one day warm enough for sweaty fucking or cold enough for desperate cuddling, I’d be convinced and mark my words, I’d be here in an instant. Until then, I’m kind of eyeing poor, embarrassing, modest Chicago and like a total masochist, thinking it might be kind of nice to get on get home and complain about the heat, the sleet, the snow, the wind.

Chimeras, Those Warm San Franciscan Nights

2005-07-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

The year is something like 1994. I must be about 14 years old. It's mid July. I remember gravel and curbs made of rotten logs. Sunshine. The sound of car wheels crunching the gravel. Backpacks zipping and unzipping, pens being uncapped and recapped. Paper flapping. Camera's clicking.

It's the last day of summer camp and all the girls are crying.

All day Wednesday, as I moved through the brisk San Francisco sunshine, that memory consumed me. I wondered if I was reliving a version of that childish bereavement- knowing that I was in the act of stowing a set of experiences in the past. This time around, however, there wasn't much fan fare.

We played our final show at the Stork Club in Oakland that night. Friends from virtually every phase of my life came out and it gave me a curious joy to introduce them and see them getting along. Around midnight, Sam reminded us that Cinderella style, we were about to be stranded on that side of the bay if we didn't run for the last BART. Goodbyes, ergo, were rushed and incomplete. Sam, Lynn, Becca and I rode the train back to San Francisco thinking maybe we'd meet up with the band for a drink but that didn't happen. I left a message for Devon. Some time later, as we sat in a taqueria, he called back to say they were at a bar but leaving soon.

"Yeah, gimme a call tomorrow if you find my missing jean shirt."
He'd been hounding me all day for that shirt as he swore I was the last person he saw wearing it, which I did, for about one hour when I was shivering in the van during a late night drive, days and days ago. I had no idea where the thing went.

"I don't think I'll find it." I returned unsteadily, cracking open one of the tallboy cans of Tecate I'd snuck into the restaurant in a paper bag. I think I felt sad, maybe even momentarily miserable, and certainly compelled to keep drinking even when everyone else was done for the night.
"Well, ok, keep an eye out."
"Right."
"Nighty-noony."
"Yeah, later."

Our goodbye, after traveling the country and living together for 5 weeks, went something like that. I suppose things between us had disintegrated to a point from which they could never be redeemed.

click.

I have one pair of jeans and still have half a dozen guitar pics in the hip pocket.

Click.

I've been staying with my old friend Lynn at his friends’ house in Noe Valley where he's been dog sitting for a week. The Dog, Izzy, is a young lab of some sort, still possessing his manhood and hence wild. He never tires of humping this one pillow, which in turn never ceases to make us giggle uncomfortably. I've been spending the last few days in shock, trying to absorb the reality that this epic trip has ended, trying to digest, decompress, enjoy the beautiful place where I am. My body is screaming, yanked from an atrophied state of car riding, non-stop beer and 7 layer burrito consuming, and hurled onto the pavement of the city's majestic hills. Once again, I am attempting to quit smoking.

This morning I woke up at 5 am and climbed the spiral staircase to the bathroom, bladder heaving. On the way back down, in my half-slumbering state, I couldn't resist pausing in the kitchen and staring out the window over the city of San Francisco in the Sunrise. To the east, over the bay, the sun made its creeping entrance. The sky seemed divided in two hemispheres, as the bright pink wash of dawn appeared to sweep the dark clouds of night westward to the ocean. A thick, mysterious mist of fog hovered around me on the hills. I shivered in the beauty and the early morning chill and feeling satisfied, returned to bed for another two hours.

I'll be here in the Bay, eating burritos, riding bikes and writing poetry about pink houses and girls crying on the MUNI until the 26th of July. At that point I'll finally head back to Chicago, turn 25, make some attempts to live like an adult. For a while at least.

The Divine Feminine Soaks to the Bone(r)

2005-07-12T11:25:00.000-07:00

To see pictures from this rock n’ roll tour around the country click Here and for more: HERE

**

The Pacific Northwest, Olympia Washington in particular, makes sense to me. Even the strangeness of the weather-cold rain non-stop, seeing your breath in chilly July night air-didn’t strike me as any troubling anomaly. The two long sleeved shirts I’d packed had slipped, grubby and crumpled to the farthest bottom reaches of my bag. With great effort I managed to unearth them, along with a forgotten pair or two on socks. I quickly realized I’d need a piece of outerwear to manage the precipitation and invested in a neon pink and purple windbreaker at the thrift store, a loud number that earned me a “hey, bold jacket” from some dude at a bar.

Steve and Jerri welcomed us into their home in the historic Bigelow neighborhood on the east side of the city. A quick stumble in to downtown, the quiet tree-lined streets read like a little walking tour of rock n’ roll history. Our friend Tim lives around the corner in a house once occupied by Slim Moon who ran the Kill Rock Stars label out of the basement at the time. Two blocks down, one of Kurt Cobain’s former residences.

After three weeks of constant motion we suddenly found ourselves uniquely poised to settle in for a couple of days. With shows in nearby Puyallup, Seattle and Portland, we adopted Steve and Jerri’s as a home base of sorts, spending our days kicking around town, driving out an hour or two each evening to play a show, and then returning to Olympia to crash. We got to come and go as we pleased, drift off on our own, live like normal people.

I can’t speak to the Evergreen College or state government elements of the city but from all else I observed, Olympia operates on a magnificently effective, intimate micro-level. The place is teeming with twenty and thirty somethings making art, music, zines, drinking and generally delaying aging. Everyone has some kind of job at one of the local businesses at which everyone makes just enough money to live modestly and happily and channel money back into the same constellation of local businesses. Ever so modestly, the city sustains itself brilliantly. It’s cozy and familial and after just a few days there I began to recognize faces, make friends, feel part of the area.

We had some nice excursions to Seattle (Hillier than I expected, a regular cup of coffee murky and potent as an espresso anywhere else in the country) and Portland (pleasant visits with grandparents, cousins and old college friends). In my patchy tradition of reporting on venues I only give the Tractor Tavern in Seattle a mediocre rating. Nice stage, amiable enough staff but they did try to stiff us at the end of the night. Dietrich and I stood our ground, unwilling to believe that they made no money at the door when we saw at least 30 or 40 people on the floor. Finally they caved and gave us $50 dollars. The business of mendicant musicianship is a never-ending stream of humiliations. By Contrast, Berbati’s Pan in Portland (recently converted to a non-smoking venue, FYI) took good care of us. Once again, a booking mix-up and the venue wasn’t expecting us. The handsome booker was clearly seasoned and very gracious.

“Well you’re a touring band so if you don’t mind playing first, we’ll totally squeeze you in.” They hooked us up with drinks, some of the best sound of our tour, mixed by that enigmatic breed: nice sound guys, and even gave us a bit of money at the end of the night. Since the Northwest weather put a moratorium on swimming, I redirected my aquatic energies into Karaoke, doing He’s a Rebel and D-I-V-O-R-C-E (for Shelley) at Jake’s in Olympia and tearing up Chopsticks in Portland just after last call with a whiskey soaked, dance-swarmed rendition of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.”

Every night in Olympia is kind of like a weekend night. I suppose it’s not that different from anywhere else, after all, didn’t we launch a campaign in Chicago this spring proclaiming Sunday night the New Thursday Night? The evenings of bars and parties kind of bleed together but involved no minor consumption of chemicals, brawls in the street (one of which Dietrich the Diplomat diffused, though he has no memory of doing so) and other minor mayhem. Sunday, our last night in town, Steve had put together a show for us at the Voyeur with his band, Fierce Perm, and two awesome heavy, psychedelic outfits, Nudity and November Witch. November Witch did something I wish bands did more often, they ended their set by honoring the crowd’s sloppy chants of Louie Louie and tore into a fittingly shambolic cover with Chris from Nudity jumping on the mike. Everyone stomped, shimmied and clapped, soaked with beer and sweat.

After the show we moved what remained of the party to this girl’s apartment, full of records and ferrets. Her place was done up all mod and swanky with a moving picture lamp in the kitchen and chenille sheets on her humongous bed. A bunch of us crowded into the candle lit bedroom to smoke pot. An older guy in sunglasses by the name of Billy matched bowls with us. Only later did I find out that I’d been smoking with Billy Karren of Bikini Kill. Not only that but Toby Vail had been in the audience at our show. Nice.

The night wore on and eventually someone had the idea to climb up a rickety ladder to the roof of the building and watched the city at night. Every apartment in the complex had a skylight and we did a really creepy thing and crept around each one and peered down. In one a fat man without a shirt sat on the sofa watching T.V eating a bag of chips in his lap, possibly masturbating himself at the same time but we couldn’t be sure. In another, a young woman sat alone on the edge of neatly made bed staring into space. The hour was late and it felt weird so I quickly stopped. The city slept quietly on its side.

There is something of a powerful, divine femininity to Olympia. Several people, both ma;e and female, remarked to me separately that it’s truly the women who rule that town. Though I’m mostly powerless to explain it, I’m inclined to agree. Women there seem to exist in an advanced stage of empowerment, one in which it is naturally, implicitly assumed that they will make rock and roll, run collectives, manage businesses. The women fuel the creative engine in Olympia. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. And besides my observations, my body knows. Before this trip I’d been curious about the corporeal effects of living in a van with 4 boys for a month. The results, I can now report, are strange. After three days in Olympia I began menstruating- a full week and a half ahead of schedule. That’s how powerful the divine feminine is in Olympia.

For as long as I can remember I’ve tended to think by the month, conceive of the trajectory of my life thusly. I do not know if this is some innate proclivity characteristic of my sex or simply the way I navigate through time. Since the age of 18, it’s been some kind of nightly ritual to read back in my journal exactly one month to the date. I heap months into seasons and organize them according to weather. With only a few days left to the tour, this bizarre interruption of my monthly cycle coincided with my first waves of panic about the impeding end of my trip.

True, I circled the entire country, but all of a sudden I find myself scrambling for a detailed account of every single inch I covered, moment I spent. A long time ago Alexis told me firmly to enjoy myself because it was going to go fast. And how right he was. It has. Clearly, I must have absorbed a good deal more than I can immediately recall because otherwise I wouldn’t be so nervous about the prospect of re-integrating into the normal world. For better or worse, these people, this van, this way of living has become my life. Suddenly the idea of returning to Chicago, going back to work and signing a lease seems so common, so banal, so slow, so small.

I try to remember what it was like to sleep in a bed that is my own bed and the memories feel strange. Abstractly I know I desperately miss cooking dinner in a kitchen full of spices, wearing clean clothes and riding my bike to parties where I know people, the peace and solace of routine and familiarity, the people I love, some arms I want to be in, that sweet, coy, uncrackable code of Chicago. I miss it all but I also feel I could go on like this for quite some time. After long enough it becomes natural. I’ve been working since I was 14 and I now know this much: People only say they’d get bored of being on vacation forever as a way of consoling themselves in the face of drudgery and predictability.

When I get home I might spend a good minute or two looking at garlic and onions, palming and considering them before picking up a knife. Then I’ll cook you dinner. It’ll be good or bad depending how my ratio of excitement to rustiness works out. And as we eat, I’m gonna be really interested in hearing about everything I missed and in talking to you about where we’re gonna go next.

I've Got Two Thumbs, Son

2005-07-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

To see pictures from this rock n’ roll tour around the country click Here and for more: HERE

***

I am a proud, stubborn creature. Sometimes impulsive, usually wrong, but not always.

Things had transpired such a way on Monday night that when I woke up early Tuesday in the Spokane sun streaming in through the curtains in social hall of the Molotov room, I knew something didn’t feel right. My head throbbed and I needed water. At first I couldn’t find the boys, and then I saw them, all curled up in a row on the other side of the room like puppies or pastries; things that were designed to be stacked and rowed and kept together. I remember there had been Bar-B-Q-ing, and beer, lots of beer. There had been talks and there were fights. Yelling, strange accusatory tones, shrill and serious and I couldn’t handle it. I crept away and collapsed. I don’t know how they resolved things but to my knowledge the sun was up and nothing had been resolved at all. At least, not well.

This is all very vague but the gist of it is that somehow that night things came to a head and many factions and feelings made themselves known and for a number of reasons I woke up that morning feeling like a girl in the worst way possible. Feeling like despite everyone’s liberal education, at the end of the day, it proved magnificently elegant a solution for the boys to unite under the camaraderie of their sex, the chummy bonds of brotherhood I could never really infiltrate, and quietly displace the onus of conflict-root on to me. All of a sudden, these boys with whom I’d been living for a month, scared me. I needed to get away from them for a little while. I needed to do something my way for once.

I moved quickly, stealing out to the car and packing myself a small bag. I put on a lot of sunblock and left a note on the seat of the van saying simply: “Peace Dudes.” Some guy across the street in a PETA shirt sat in a jeep. I asked him for a ride to the highway which he said he’d be only to happy to give me as soon as he took care of some auto stuff at the license place across the street. I waited in the sun. The guy, Shannon, was about my age, very nice, a stone worker from Seattle out visiting his friends in Missoula, MO. “Shame you’re not heading back to Seattle.” I smiled as I hopped out. He offered me a cigarette and wished me luck.

I would not call myself a particularly seasoned hitchhiker but it is something I have done a bit. Mostly in the Midwest, which I have to say, is soul crushing. People love to think of the Midwest as friendly and relaxed but it’s not. Folks are very friendly to member of their insular communities but they do not look kindly on strangers. Especially drifters. I was reduced to tears a few summers ago, hitchhiking out in Wisconsin, my friend Tommy and I sitting for hours and hours trying to a ride. Not only would no one take us but they sneered at us and chided us too. People do not like people who attempt to get things for free, even if they are perfectly reasonable things to expect to get for free, like well-packed leftovers in garbage cans or rides from people with empty cars.

In my humble experience, things out in the Pacific Northwest are a little better. Hitchhikers travel route 5 heavily and people out here are different about that kind of thing. At least I’d like to think that. I stood on the corner by the exit ramp thumbing in the sun for a good 5 or ten minutes. This was the first time I’d thumbed for rides on the side of the road by myself. Dangerous, sure probably, but in the moment I saw myself more as fleeing a dangerous situation. At first I thought people would be more inclined to stop for a young woman, if only out of concern, but then it occurred to me that I might have appeared more like a prostitute at work than a mere, stubborn, plucky girl in distress. I became self-conscious, looking over my grubby t-shirt, fashionable shorts and bright orange sandals. Is this what people think a prostitute looks like? Am I holding my thumb like a prostitute? Who even knows these things? Why should it matter?

Eventually, a longhaired, corpulent guy in a terrible beater stopped. He was strange as hell, kind of a spaced out, Jerry Garcia burnout. He offered me a cigarette and only took me to the next highway exit, which didn’t disappoint me at all since that one had a gas station on the corner, dramatically improving my odds. No oned at the pumps seemed to be heading my way or have any room so again I waited and waited. I silently begged every stranger to help me out. And then one did.

Gary stopped his late model white Pontiac right in the exit ramp island, like he decided at the last possible Second to give me a ride. He shoved some Ziploc bags of muffins and cookies onto the floor to make room for me. His movements were awkward and I could tell right away he had some kind of disability.

“How far west you headed?” I asked as I climbed in.
“All the way down to Vancouver, then Vegas.”
“Perfect.”
“Why where you headed?”
“Well either, Seattle or Olympia, not sure which yet. Is it cool if I ride with you to one of them?”
“I’d be honored.”

First rule of hitchhiking is that you never know who is going to pick you up. I’ve gotten rides with the obvious truckers, drug dealers, etc. but also by timorous college students, mothers (one time with her 5 kids in the van!) and old people. Everyone has some interesting kind of story and Gary was no exception. An Ex-con, recovering drug addict, he had driven up from his home in southern California to get some temporary work and be closer to his two teenage sons on Spokane. Back in February he’d been mangled in a horrific machine accident at the poultry processing plant where he worked. This explains the trouble with his arm: permanent nerve damage, pain, loss of sensation and mobility, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from the accident on top of it all.

Gary’s attitude about all this however, was remarkable. He spoke about his incarceration and his injury with a calm, wise fortitude, nowhere a hint of malice or vindictiveness. “I’m a survivor is what it is Abbyg. And I can tell that’ you’re one too.” He said. As it turns out, his birthday is one day after mine and he wasn’t familiar with the Leo traits so I told him everything I knew about our sign.

“We’re very proud. We need a lot of attention. We are wounded easily, but on the other hand, we’re incredibly loving and generous, we have a lot to give.” As I spoke I realized the silly astrological bullshit I was spewing spoke perfectly to the crisis I had found myself in that day.

Devon had been calling and text messaging. I fired messages back and finally picked up enough reception to place a call.
“We’re on out way to Olympia, we’ll be in Seattle in an our or two. Where are you?” He needled edgily.
“ I’m halfway there.”
“How are you getting there?”
“I’ve got two thumbs, son.”

We agreed to meet up in Olympia.

Gary is also a self-taught artist who works in pastels, ink and most-recently, his new obsession, airbrushing. Making art healed him he told me, weaving bit of aesthetic rumination through his darker stories about drug dens and seeing people getting killed. I told him about my work at the NVVAM and he got excited. We talked about the Vietnam War and politics today and the imminence of natural disasters. We talked about unions and raising kids and the Grateful Dead (Gary was a big fan).

As we wound through the breathtaking Columbia River Gorge I felt completely reborn and full of peace. I thanked Gary repeatedly for stopping for me. It was just what I needed. Gary hung on my every word, he spoke kindly and respectfully. He made me feel good about myself. I suppose the feeling was mutual.

“Abbyg. This is heaven sent I tell you. Yesterday was my son’s 12th birthday and if I didn’t have you here, I’d be spending this whole drive depressed, thinking about how much I miss my boys.”

We stopped for lunch and I bought Gary and Sandwich and we had a little picnic in the scenery. Gary knew all sorts of factoids about the local geography and pointed out mountains and tree varieties by name. He also smoked a lot of pot, presumably to cope with his pain, which I accepted completely. At one point I smoked a little with him- probably a mistake because it was incredibly potent and I grew very paranoid about being in a motor vehicle with someone potentially more stoned than I, as we wound through the Cascade Mountains. We both sort of lapsed into silence, which was fine, as we’d been talking all day. Stoned, I stared out the window at the majesty of the scenery and dumbstruck, wondered with awe how it is that my life is actually my life.

When we pulled in to Olympia it was raining. Of course. Gary was in a hurry, due to pick up his sister in Vancouver that night and do some work on his van out there. He dropped me off in easy walking distance to the downtown. We smoked a little more before I left, which again I was thankful for, unsure what reconvening with my group was going to be like. Even better was when he popped the trunk in the rain to show me some artwork he was carrying around. One pastel, a desert scene, he wanted to deliver to a friend in Tacoma but didn’t’ have the time. I gave him a book of poetry I’d written and a very big hug. When we wished each other luck, I know we both meant it profoundly.

I meandered into town and found a nice bench to sit on. My feet melted into the concrete as I watched the shrugging Washington rain come down. Olympians are very adaptive to their climate as evidenced by the overhang that extends from every business downtown to cover the sidewalk outside. I thought about how the only other time I’d been in Olympia I’d hitched in as well. Peter and I came up from Portland to surprise our friend Liz. When the woman let us off by the freeway we picked a ton of blackberries and put them in Peter’s Nalgene bottle as a present for Liz.

Physically, emotionally wasted, I put in some phone calls to friends. I waited. Eventually, I saw our green van pass by two blocks down. I called Devon.
“You guys in downtown?”
“Yeah why? D’you see us.”
“Yeah, just now.”

I love towns like this. Right then I even loved the rain.

Every one seemed a little more at ease as we walked over to the burrito place where Allen and Troy’s friend Steve worked. There is a powerful importance to the art of making oneself disappear. I gambled and for the time being at least, actually got what I needed.

Cheyenne is Where Things Got Mystical.

2005-07-07T09:33:00.000-07:00

(Should you like, you can see PICTURESfrom our trip)

The most memorable part of our show in Denver was the 1-hour pow-wow we conducted in the van after we played trying to figure out what we were going to do. The bar had promised us a $100 guarantee and then only gave us $50. They had a full kitchen but only offered us a buy out for meals. The sound guys were really into being professional sound guys and I was terrified by all the sound checking, monitor adjusting etc. In the end we didn’t sound like us at all. We sounded muddy, voluminous, and unrecognizable to ourselves. I think when all is said and done, we prefer the thin sound of basements and dives, the intimate crackle of our practice amps, all that space between the sparseness of our instruments.

I think everyone was feeling Denver as pretty forgettable and no one was thinking we’d stay there the night. The question became whether or not to drive to Twin Falls Idaho to play a tentative show at some guy’s Bar-B-Q or drive to Cheyenne, get a room for the night and then use our day off to haul all the way to our next solid show in Spokane Washington. All sorts of wrangling, debate and compromise ensued. Finally we decided on Cheyenne. Since leaving Chicago, my body had lurched into some kind of angry revolt and I’ve been a little under the weather. I spent the two-hour drive up on the loft drifting in and out of sleep, moving through strange, fitful dreams. I was vaguely aware of us stopping at motel after motel unable to find a room with two beds, a quest that seemed to go on forever. The boys finally woke me as we pulled into the parking lot of the Firebird Motel.

Groggily, I slid out of the car, shivering in the night air. Our whole trip so far had been characterized by heat, every kind of intense summer heat, and now, all of a sudden the heat had dissipated. Instinctively, I rubbed my arms and absorbed the chill. True, I was only half awake but the eeriness in the air was palpable. The air was cold, silent and hollow and the wind blew with crystal meth and cooled coyote’s breath. A mini mart twinkled across the street; two dolled up vaqueros stood suspiciously on the corner. It was about three am and the place felt not of this world.

For 50 dollars, the room was really clean and nice. We staggered in and dumped our stuff on the beds. Troy and Allen went to flirt with the Mexican hustlers; the rest of us started showering. We lay around in the coolness watching an old taping of Martin doing stand-up. And then we slept.

The drive from Cheyenne to Spokane was epic. I settled into a rhythmic rotation in the car between reading, writing and sleeping. The day and the drive went on forever. It was the third of July. I’d driven through Montana once before on a greyhound bus and I think all told, it’s my favorite state to drive through. Every moment of it is beautiful and oh how many hours of those moments you get! Just before dusk, around 70 miles outside of Butte we saw our first firework in the sky. An hour or two later when the sun had fully set we drove past the city. Butte, a depressed old industrial town twinkled like any city is wont to do from the freeway at night. But tonight the sky was extra illuminated with fireworks exploding everywhere. Fireworks are normally a private, familial sort of experience, like you sit down on a blanket or a roof top with your friends and family and watch a specific show of them. But through the wide-angle lens of travel, here we could see everyone’s party. A patriotic syncopation of accidents in orchestration.

The whole day consumed by travel, I eventually gave up on sentience and around 1 am fell asleep. When I woke up it was close to 4 and we were driving down the desolate streets of some neighborhood in Spokane looking for our venue, the Molotov Room. A couple of kids wandered the street outside the venue. We rolled down the windows.
“Hey” Devon called “You live here?”
“Why?”
“Were playing a show here tomorrow night…is it cool if we come in and crash?”
The whole thing was very strange.
Within moments a young guy named Travis appeared on the street in his underwear to welcome us. As it turned out, the guy who booked our show months ago no longer worked at the place and failed to convey the information. In short, there was a show scheduled for the 4th but we were nowhere on the bill. The kids remembered Devon and Allen very fondly from their tour back in March and assured us it would be no problem for us to stay for a couple nights and to play at the show.

A number of years ago I read a fascinating article in the Atlantic Monthly about the extinction of American Men’s clubs. It seems to me that back in the 50’s nearly every single Middle class WASP man belonged to some local chapter of the masons, moose or elk lodge or a VA center. This is where they went to smoke and drink and play cards and escape their families. These places were inherently sexist, racist, highly hetero-normative. They espoused the idea that men needed a place to congregate and simply be men. The most interesting thing about these places is that they are now complete anachronisms.

The Molotov room is a former Masonic Temple that closed in 1985. The building had remained vacant and remarkably preserved until this last spring when some kids managed to rent it out and turn it into a an all ages performance venue/squat house. For a mere $700 a month they get a huge performance hall, bathrooms, balcony, offices. The place definitely emitted a strange vibe. When we trudged in at that late hour a whole bunch of teenagers were up watching a movie in the shag carpeted former main office, smoking cigarettes in their pajamas. Some meth heads ran a tattoo parlor upstairs. We unrolled our sleeping bags on a carpeted area near the massive stage and slept.

In the morning Allen, Troy and I went out in search of coffee. This depressed part of Spokane was truly a place untouched by time. It was the 4th of July and the streets were completely empty. Every business was an antiques store. We sat in an Exxon station and sipped watery coffee and then rounded up the boys and obtained directions to a swimming spot nearby. A little bit past the main beach on this lake was a more secluded rocky area. Someone had rigged a rope up to a tree and this was clearly the preferred hang out spot for area teenage boys. We took turns working up our nerve and flying off the rope. Despite the sun the water was chilly and my body went into a short bout of gasping, shaky shock after plunging in.

We made all sorts of acquaintances at the swimming spot, mostly young boys who swam with their gym shoes on and tried to persuade us to come jump off their other jump-off point, a cliff that barely extended over some scary, slippery cragginess down below. We declined repeatedly.

Happily sunned and swum, we went into downtown Spokane for a bit to check out a little fair going on and then to the Safeway for bar-b-q supplies. Back at the Molotov room it became clear that the show was not going to draw a particularly large crowd. Since we had been spontaneously added to the bill, we played first, and an abbreviated set. I appreciated that the sound person was a young woman only about 18 years old. She was just learning and it didn’t sound great, but I thanked her warmly and told her how much I appreciated seeing women learning these skills.

After that we started drinking and things got very apocalyptic.

Nebraska Is For Lovers

2005-07-04T17:44:00.000-07:00

First: You can now see PICTURES from tour...

I’ve always found the efforts of some states’ bureaus of tourism pretty comical. A lot of work goes into making these woebegone places look like the perfect vacation destinations. The ads feature sightseers, recommitting couples, river rides and fireworks all set to inspiring symphonic arrangements and oh those brilliant slogans: “Ohio…so much to offer,” “Delaware…better than you know.”

As our tour ambles back westward I find myself re-enchanted with pockets of the Midwest and I will say this: Nebraska, now Nebraska is for lovers. At least, Omaha is.

The crawl through middle America began on Wed morning with a radio performance we did in Cincinnati on WOXY. There are no call numbers because sadly, the station was pushed to extinction by clear channel and forced to reinvent itself in a web cast format. The staff was friendly and professional and we felt a little badly if they were expecting the same from us. We played a couple songs, shot a lot of pictures and stumbled awkwardly through an interview. I was wholly unaccustomed to playing with headphones and it really threw me off. A CD-R of the show exists and despite Dietrich’s embarrassed protestations to wait a week, we aired it in the van immediately on the way out of town, giggling, not sure when it will ever be played again.

From Cinci we headed up to Chicago, getting stuck in miserable traffic in the south suburbs. I fidgeted anxiously, homesick and bursting with excitement to see my friends. The Thick Records label showcase at the Bottom Lounge turned out to be by far the largest show we’d played on tour. I’m a sap but it did kind of bring tears to my eyes to see all my amazing friends who dug into their pockets for $8 to come out and see us, a band none of them had ever even heard before. Desperate to put on a good show for the people I know, I felt particularly sensitive and nervous on my home turf, and I struggled with some definite tension on stage.

The night percolated with all sorts of beer soaked drama my G-rated pledge to not write about love matters here in any real detail will not permit me to divulge. Suffice it to say that things are never easy, especially when you put your life on hold to move into a van, then pass through town for one night, ragged and wild after a week of extensive partying all along the east coast. Upon waking up Thursday morning I had all but decided to stay in Chicago and not finish tour. I received conflicting advice from two of my closest friends. One said to say, the other to go. In the end I went. I know now this was the right decision but it took me a little while to become sure of that.

On our way out of town we stopped by the Southern Records Distribution offices on Fullerton. They distribute the Fingers Cut Megamachine stuff on Thick and the staff there is very friendly. They welcomed us with coffee, internship offers and best wishes on our tour. We didn’t get on the road to Kansas City until around 2 pm. And throughout the drive Devon had to keep checking in with the kid who had booked the show, apologizing for our delay. We finally arrived around 10:30. As it turned out, the show was at the kid’s girlfriend’s apartment, which she had to vacate in the morning. A handful of teenagers sat around the bare floor, propped against boxes drinking beer and playing trivial pursuit. Ruby was a wonderful hostess, she bought us beer and after the show cooked us pasta. We sat around on the porch drinking and playing songs on the guitar until late at night. Eventually, people began staking out patches of floor and unrolling bags. I was getting drunk, but despite my weariness, not sleepy.

Somehow Devon, Dietrich and I ended up barefoot out on the sidewalk down the block at 3 am trying to work through a few issues. Dietrich is a masterful mediator, one of the most sensitive, diplomatic people I’ve known- an indispensable talent when it comes to negotiating a peace between my and Devon’s explosive, incorrigible, touchy personalities. We yelled, I cried, and eventually we reached some kind of delicate truce. In that moment I realized the awesome social experiment this type of undertaking becomes: pack 5 people, most of whom did not even know each other to begin with into a van for a month. Stir in personality conflicts, gender relationships, economic duress, a rigid timetable, alcohol, exhaustion and elation and see what happens.

Ruby had to wake us up at 8:30 so she could commence with her moving. She made us some pancakes and I fixed her leaky kitchen sink and washed all her dishes while the boys moved her sofa to her new apartment. Haggard, we got an early start on what was to be the most blissfully brief trip of our tour: Kansas City, Missouri to Omaha Nebraska- a mere three hours. This was one of the first times on the trip that we actually had the opportunity to spend a day in a new city instead of just pulling up, unloading, playing and crashing.

We parked the car near the venue in the Market District, a pleasing little tourist area of cobblestone streets, restaurants and gift shops. It was full of cheery vacationers and struck me as the kind of place that actually lived up to those bureau of tourism laudations. Truly a nice place for a modest romantic getaway. We saw lots of lovers dining, shopping, strolling hand in hand and surprisingly enough this pleased me.

Allen remembered eating in an amazing hippie restaurant there years ago and we asked some women in batik jumpers at the scented candle store for directions. It was a bit of a walk, one I didn’t quite feel up to in the heat. The buses in Omaha, I discovered, are cheap and well air-conditioned. I had a nice chat with the friendly driver who left me off right in front of McFosters Natural Kind Café, impossible to miss with its thatched roof and pride flags.

As I’m sure you know, I have a whole list of unhealthy addictions and indulgences but overall, I honestly enjoy eating well. I’m sure you also know that it is extremely hard to eat well when you are traveling. I’m no longer a strict vegetarian but I remember a few summers ago when my friend Tommy and I were hopping trains and hitching rides and we got to Minneapolis and went to the Seward café where some friends of friends worked and I almost cried into my stir-fry I was so thankful for the kind of food I loved. On this trip we eat a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, instant soups and cut up vegetables. It’s the best we can do. Allen and I have invented a game called “What’s on our salad.” Every time we play we imagine we’re building a new salad from scratch and describe with relish all the ingredients it will contain. McFosters was not cheap but since we’re all pretty much on the same page with the food dilemma, we were happy to treat ourselves. I ordered a cup of coconut milk and artichoke soup and a plate of hot curried greens on brown rice. The boys got Tempeh Reubens. Everything was delicious.

After lunch we kicked around the market district poking in and out of stores. Stores get dull, every town has them and really they all sell the same stuff. One thing Omaha has an amazing plethora of is public fountains. A few blocks off the main strip we came across a palatial structure on sprawling landscaped acreage, dotted with several huge fountains. Horse-drawn tourist buggies promenaded around the main fountain as folks pointed and snapped pictures. This Shangri-la as it turned out was the Con Agra Corporate headquarters. I’m far from politically astute but treading on the manicured base of operations for one the country’s most nepharious corporations definitely set me on edge. The day was hot; I hadn’t showered in a day or two. All things considered, it only seemed right that we take a bath in the Con Agra fountain. So stripping down to our dirty unds, that’s exactly what Devon and I did. Dancing, splashing and scrubbing we waved to the tourists on the horse buggy and then took off streaking into the lawns, whooping and turning cartwheels, in an effort to dry ourselves in the sun.

After swimming we hung out in the parked van for some time soaking up the wireless Internet connection from the Cubby’s convenience mart on the corner and resting up for the show. The show was at an ice cream parlor up the block called Ted and Wally’s. The arrangement is actually one of the most viable models for an all-ages venue space I’ve ever seen. Most all ages spaces end up folding because they can’t sustain themselves hosting rock shows and selling soda and zines to teenagers. This makes much more sense: approach a profitable, established local business and convince them to let you hold events after their business hours. Perfect. Unfortunately for us, it was a Friday night so after hours at Wally’s meant the show wouldn’t start until midnight. Again we took off walking and hung around the Gene Leahy fountain and some other fountains around the corner.

Out of all the cities we’ve been to so far, Omaha is really the first where I’ve seen teenagers out on the street at night, hanging out, jumping in fountains, flirting, skateboarding and in general being up to no good. Since that was my happy adolescence in Ann Arbor, I use it as some sort of marker by which to judge the quality of other cities. Omaha has great public spaces and people use them the way they should. It’s beautiful.

Playing in an ice cream parlor was a fun experience. We got free ice cream and the kids seemed generally receptive to our set. The show was by far not our best, I for one was exhausted, but it was decent. We even tried to hack out two bars of happy birthday for some kid in the audience who had left by the time we were able to set up. After the show, two young women who had driven 4 hours to come see us, offered to put us up at their “cabin” outside of Lincoln which they boasted had 5 bedrooms and an indoor pool. The poor kids wanted us (well, Devon) there so badly it took some time before they conceded the epic drive wouldn’t actually put us any closer to our next destination: Denver Colorado, a daunting 9 hours away.

Some boys from the other bands took us back to their place, spacious, nicely carpeted, furnished and air-conditioned with a huge kitchen, all of which they said the paid only $1000 a month for. Omaha just gets better and better.

The neighbors, a bunch of drag queens, were still awake having a party and we went over there for a little while but I could hardly keep my eyes open. I had trouble falling asleep and eventually went back there to get the car keys from Troy so I could unearth some stuff in the van. The next morning he thanked me for showing up, saying with a sly wink that he’d have gotten in way too much trouble if he’d stayed. “Anytime” I answered with a hug. There’s something nice about finding yourself in a town where people are that friendly.

American Interlude

2005-07-01T07:13:00.000-07:00

Last winter, at the end of my first (and possible last) semester of graduate school I wrote a paper for a seminar on contemporary theory entitled: A Text Under Tread: Post-Critical Approaches to the American Travelogue. I had already begun to suspect that art school was not the right place for me and the fact that I was turning my art papers into lit papers at every opportunity only encouraged me to drop out. That course and the paper, however, were great fun. The purpose was two-fold: to demonstrate the readability of the American travel experience by comparing two radically different travelogues from the early/mid ‘80s: Jean Baudrillard’s America and Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon, and to frame my findings in a post-critical approach to discursive text.

Working off the bricolage theory of Roland Barthes and Hayden White, sample essays like Julia Kristeva’s Stabat Mata and the aesthetics of concrete poetry, I aimed to arrange evidence lifted from the texts in such a manner that the original writing would bespeak my thesis; namely that there is no America other than the ones we choose to see.

Post-criticism distrusts the objective distance typically assumed between the critical text and the text being commented upon. Just as a the modernist break with mimetic reproduction launched a new art form of collage in the early 20th century, proponents of post-criticism urge a similar approach to working with text. In some ways this became a way for me to escape the sweat inducing toil of writing a traditional 20-page paper. But don’t laugh, It actually came out kind of interesting. The paper consisted of a chart and a corresponding index of disembodied annotations. The idea being to act as little as possible upon the texts, merely to play them against one another so they did all the work.

If you are interested in seeing the paper I’m happy to email it to you. I’m only bothering to tell you about it is because as I meander through the country right now the topic is on my mind. The upshot of my findings was that Baudrillard, a French intellectual and Least Heat Moon, a Native American novelist, saw two completely different versions of the United States and the disparity between their visions is everywhere from their itineraries to their tones. Baudrillard's America is a shallow smorgasbord of hyperreality; an obscenity of surface and speed. Moon’s America is modest, intricate, and full of narrative and history. Clearly, the way the writers designed their respective travel methods influenced the way they perceived the country. Baudrillard chose an erratic survey of freeways, strip malls and tourist spots, whereas Moon eschewed major interstates in favor of quieter roads, engaging extensively with locals in small towns.

As I travel, I find myself vacillating between these two texts both in my writing and my thoughts. Is my survey of America more like one or the other? In the end I think it’s actually some perfect hybrid of the two.

So much of my life right now is consumed by the vacuity of life in a van: hours and hours of driving. I feel like we devour distance. Space and time and the endless webs of grey concrete that thread these dimensions together become things almost literally chewed up by the grill of the van, digested as the wind passes under the piping-latticed belly, and then expelled behind us, consigned literally, spatially to the past. In this mode I see Baudrillard’s America. I see a sick, unhealthy America. I see it in the banal consistency of logos, the fumes of the traffic, the preponderance of slack-jawed, overweight people lumbering through rest stops. I see an America positively bloated and grotesque in the vastness of its empire, its consumption of resources. I feel like a stranger in this America. I am scared of this America and shuddering, I gaze at it with a glassy eyed contempt. This America fills me with confusion and awe.

But then we emerge from the car. I am in the habit now of waking up in one city and falling asleep in another and although my time in each one is brief, we are usually lucky enough to have some experience of the place. Who can enumerate that precious quality of subculture that creates an invisible familial network throughout the world? Between the 4 of us, in almost every town we stop in we know someone. Or we have friends who send us to someone. Or we meet someone. These someones know their places. They show us where to get cheap beer, where the parties are, where we can go swimming late at night. They bring us into their homes and make us coffee and snacks, lend us towels and blankets. As we get to know each other, they tell us funny stories about the place, about other places they’ve been. This America inspires me with wanderlust and love.

These two completely different modes of travel existence allow me to inhabit both Americas I studied, even prompt me to attempt the creation of my own. The parallax is disorienting and I’m torn between the passion of motion and the romance of stasis. Moving through America is more like sewing stitches than weaving strands. The traveler by definition cannot become part of the fabric, only interlace and act upon it.

So here we are: sampling, moving, suturing. The more I travel the more entrenched I become in my conviction that at root, America is too big to even be one place; any more than a sprawling potluck dinner could be a Meal. Then again, dreaming that there is an America inspires us to create and undertake the very missions we imagine are needed to find it and in so doing, manage to turn up some sort of something in the end. If nothing else, this is how we create a endless bank of manifold mythologies.

Doing the worm, this hungry machine now lumbers back west. It bastes place to place, strings a continuity of knots on a thread. In awe and boredom I stare out the window and periodically stretch my legs.

Here’s to every America ever invented.

From Concrete Jungle to Backwoods Babylon

2005-07-01T00:53:00.000-07:00

I used to live in New York and in the two yeas since I’ve only been back to visit a handful of times. Like most people, it fills me with an uncomfortable mix of awed enchantment and anxious trepidation. I will only say that out of all the many places I’ve lived, New York by far offers the lowest quality of life, the most emotional, social and economic distress. I could go on but I won’t. Rather, how about you come visit me in Chicago in August, and we’ll go ride bikes up to the lakeshore, drink some victory beers on the beach by the zoo and watch the city twinkle at night and you’ll understand what I mean.

Perhaps it’s a Fingers Cut Megamachine tradition, blasting Sparks as we emerge from the horrific traffic in the Holland Tunnel, barreling our way into the city, because I seem to recall that happening on tour last summer as well. Pete’s Candy store in Brooklyn is a lovely little neighborhood bar. The tiny performance space in the back looks like an old train car, and the cozy stage framed by big old-fashioned marquee board bulbs. Truthfully, it had always been a secret dream of mine to perform there. There was a Bar-B-Q going on the back patio and as the most affable, diplomatic and cheapest of the band, I immediately ran my usual beer and food tickets reconnaissance. We played a great show to an intimate crowd of loyal friends who showed up for the occasion. Everything was jolly until it came time to leave and I had to pay that final, awkward visit to the bartender.

“So…” I began in my sweetest, please-pay-us voice “I don’t know how you do things here but do we get tipped out from the bar at all?”
“Hmm…didn’t you pass the tip bucket?”
“The tip bucket?”
“Yeah that’s how we do it here, the bands pass a tip bucket. Whoever booked the show explained that to you right?”
“No, actually no one did.”
“Oh well, I’m sorry babe.”

Babe.

Awesome.

Despite all the friends we brought into the bar that bought drinks and left tips, it seemed we weren’t going see a penny. I was half way to drunk, too tired and elated from the show and seeing old friends that I just kind of shrugged it off. Since I’m working on not being such a grudge holder, I will simply note, not dwell upon their unprofessional conduct: Bands, beware the elusive tip bucket at Pete’s in Brooklyn.

After this blow, we migrated to several other bars in the neighborhood, getting apocalyptically stoned outside the first and then consuming a shit ton of free pizza at the second. The drive back to Carla’s house in Bushwick was mostly a haze but I quickly recognized that I had been to a show in her loft a couple years back. In the morning when we left, I included the story for them on the reverse side of the thank-you note we tacked to the fridge:

I had just moved to Brooklyn and got directions out to this place to see my friend Jacob’s band play. As my friends and I were exiting the subway station I noticed a curious sight on the stairs: all sorts of detritus like someone’s purse had spilled out: cosmetics, gum wrappers, broken pencils. I became absorbed in making an ocular inventory as I climbed, tuning out the rest of my surroundings. The trail of junk led to a couple of crack heads copulating right there on the dank Jefferson street L train station stairs and spacey clutz that I am, I almost tripped over them.

”My bad!” I apologized, dodging right and reaching out for Derek’s shoulder. As we emerged from the station my mind swelled with one singular awesome thought: “Wow. I live in New York now.”

Radical juxtaposition only serves to heighten the power of Place. From New York we drove first to Brattleboro and then Jamaica, Vermont. We stopped in the former to visit Allen’s friends, find a new head clutch for the drums and take a quick swim. The heat was sweltering and everyone moved at a pleasant, albeit somewhat confusing, gregarious amble. Perhaps not everyone in Vermont is a stoner hippy but I’m content to think they are. It seemed I had merely to contemplate crossing the street and cars would come to a sleepy halt for me yards away. For a city pedestrian/cyclist accustomed to a mostly treacherous, often acrimonious peace with motorists, I had trouble making some sense of this. But I liked it.

Jamaica, Vermont is a small town of two thousand close to the New Hampshire Border. Our friend Troy lives right off the “main” drag in an amazing, dilapidated, shack he inherited. The peaceful, modest abode is nestled on a bit of property, which includes an armada of broken down VW buses, woods and a pen of friendly goats. Troy did an incredible job of putting together a show for us at the local coffee shop and we played for an eclectic crowd of local kids and grown ups and a van or two of teenagers who drove all the way from western mass. A sweet kid from the town played electric fiddle with us, adding a very nice if not awkwardly mixed touch.

Unlike Pete’s, the people in Vermont knew how to take care of us. They served us local micro-brews, donated generously to our gas fund and bought lots of merchandise. After the show, everyone headed back to Troy’s where he turned a giant “burn pile” into a bonfire. Drinking, impromptu jamming and all sorts of fun ensued. Firm in our conviction that every night of tour without swimming constitutes some sort of failure, we took a late night drunken dip in the freezing creek down the road. The rocks were jagged and the water so cold we could scarcely do more than wade shivering and shouting before dashing naked back to the fire to scorch ourselves dry by the flames.

I stayed up as late as I could before drifting into one of the beds troy had laid for us so nicely in his spare room/yoga studio. Earlier that afternoon I’d helped him pull out the panes and hump the moldy mattresses from the van in through the window. The sun came in bright and fierce and despite my hangover and the late hour at which I’d retired, I got up early. Stepping barefoot and bleary into the yard, I headed for the hammock. The burn pile still smoldered and the scent clung in the air. The goats had been out all night traipsing through the yard, stepping around beer cans and discarded clothing, munching, amazingly enough, on everything but Troy’s garden.

I felt like I was moving through a life wholly not my own as I lumbered through the grass in my grubby underwear and petting the goats congregating around the hammock, climbed in to sway and watch the trees overhead and wait for the day to begin. I could have stayed In Jamaica barefoot, ragged and blissful for quite some time.

We ate a delicious breakfast at Cindy’s (“A Little Easting Spot”) over the hill, left food for Troy’s pregnant kitty and piled back in the van. We had left Josh in New York and now we had Troy. The van was full and cozy again. The idea that we had to make it from Vermont to Cincinnati in one driving stretch was so mind boggling we could only joke about it. We got lost several times and around midnight entered a vicious rainstorm. Dietrich handled the driving like a hero as the rest of us sat in nervous silence, listening to nick drake and filming the lightning with our digital cameras. The distance we covered was ungodly.

We pulled in to Yellow Springs Ohio, home of Devon and Dietrich’s alma mater, Antioch College, around 5 in the morning. Our friend Dylan came out to greet us and with a little bit of wrangling managed to break into a dorm closed for the summer. Sweaty and nearly delirious with exhaustion, we corralled a bunch of mattresses in one of those classic cinderblock-walled college dorm rooms. We took much-needed showers down the hall and enjoyed the low-grade transgressive pleasure of feeling like we had the run of the place. It made me more than a little nostalgic for my own small town Ohio college years; a constellation of thoughts and memories I dwelled on only briefly before collapsing into a deep sleep, the birds chirping, the sun already stretching and yawning in the curtainless windows.

Climbing the Eastern Seaboard

2005-06-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

From New Orleans the van ambled to Gainesville Florida. We arrived in town around midnight Sunday night and went directly to a house show, which we’d been hoping to play. By the time we peeled ourselves out of the car we realized we were too exhausted. Allen’s friend Jonas walked us to the corner store where we were dismayed to find that beer sales ended at 11 o clock on Sunday nights. The air inside the house was positively thick with heat and sweat and I felt overwhelmed by the pop-punk noise. I retreated to the porch where I found a sweaty 12 pack of beers and limply drank one as beads of condensation slipped down the sides.

After the show, Jonas took us to an apartment complex where we could go swimming. We cracked three more of the stolen beers, flung off our clothes and enjoyed a much-needed swim. When a crew of kids- more run-off from the show- appeared we joked that we became successively more naked as each figure came lumbering up the stairs.

Jonas and Erica live on a shady lane n a tiny house that used to be part of a hippie commune in the ‘60s called “Fort Ganga.” They retained the name for their house. Jonas made us some delicious snack out of tomatoes, beans and kale and we slept well. In the morning I met up with my friend Kathy who was preparing to move back to New York. I helped her transport a carload of heavy boxes to the mailbox and we ran other assorted errands and caught up on our lives. Kathy always amazes me.

Leaving Gainesville, we began our ascent along the eastern seaboard; next stop was Charleston South Caroline where we waylaid for two days to pick up our friend josh, just back from several months in Europe and staying there with his parents. The drive was only supposed to take 5 hours but due to some small interstate highway snafu it took 9. Josh was waiting for us faithfully outside a Wendy’s on the side of the road in a pink hat, little orange shorts and ratty espadrilles. It was midnight and after some aimless wandering we decided there was only one thing to do really: get some beer and go to the beach.

In one week we had traversed the country and it confused me to be on the atlantic coast. The beach was empty and infinite. The moon, just one day shy of full, radiated brilliantly, illuminating the gentle waves and turning the silver clouds drifting through the sky to diaphanous tinsel. In the distance, a ship loomed, its windows and lanterns like yellow holes in the night. We didn’t speak of the beauty but surely everyone was affected; we took our turns wandering away from the group and staring in silent awe. We’re a family now and as such, the trope of naked swimming has solidified. We took off our clothes and ran into the Ocean, the water warm and inviting even at that desolate hour. There we were, five of us, bobbing in the black expanse, drinking our beers, we ran up and down the beach and doing yoga in the moonlight. The water and air were so warm we didn’t need towels or to put our clothes on for quite sometime. Decently inebriated and besotted with awe, we returned to josh’s parents cozy house where we cooked bocca burgers and then, despite the existence of another room, piled into the big one together sleeping long and well.

South Carolina, Charleston in particular, gave me the creeps in its gory race-steeped classism. The following night we meandered around downtown with Josh’s friend Tom. King street is the kind of place that seems like it only comes alive on Saturday afternoons when people climb into their lexuses and come out to spend money. Eerily, it’s an upscale shopping mall au plain air. Pottery Barn, Sax Fifth Avenue, shoe boutique after shoe boutique, stores specializing in garish, overpriced matching khaki clothing for women and children. I moved uncomfortably through the grotesque promenade of wealth knowing that perhaps more than any place in the country, the riches here were amassed through the sweat and toil of slaves. Today, those lines are barely erased, merely redrawn, renamed, wiggly, hazy like the very torpid southern heat.

My new $5 sandals were destroying my feet and I was torn between hobbling in agony and going barefoot through streets teeming with giant cockroaches. I hobbled. Tom led us to a secluded courtyard by the art museum so we could drink some whiskey. It was dark and shady but we soon noticed the roach situation there was truly the stuff of Indiana Jones proportions. They skittered across the stones by the thousands, their huge black carapaces glinting in shadows, putting all but the most unfazed of us on edge. Dietrich offered me a piggyback ride back to the parking lot and I proudly refused, only to renege 30 seconds later and gladly accept.

From there we went to the Marina and swung on the giant porch swings playing our inane word games, planning the new pro sport of shark punching and our spin-off psychedelic band, Chocolate Chakra, until a security guard kicked us out. The next morning, we made fried potatoes for breakfast and packed up. Josh’s mother had folded our laundry in neat piles on the coffee table, a gesture I couldn’t get over and thanked her for profusely.

We drove to Charlotte North Caroline and played a nice show at little bar in the ghetto called the Milestone. Andy, the door guy was incredibly warm and funny and wowed us with stories of his former band, Fleshhouse, who last fall, had trashed the bar so thoroughly with a show cum orgy of flour and meat scraps that it took two days of scrubbing with industrial strength degreaser to restore the place to it’s normal state of filthy dilapidation. Once again, we elected to make an all night drive , this time to Baltimore, Dietrich’s home. I was actually able to doze for a few hours up in the loft. When I came too, sweaty and dazed, it was 10 am and we were stuck in beltway traffic.

My first inclination when we arrived at Liz’s house was to nap but the day was gorgeous so I visited an old friend from Oberlin who happened to live right around the corner. She and her boyfriend work at the local independent movie house and he, the projectionist, arranged a private screening of the Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall classic “To have and not to have” just for the three of us.

Later that day, as we shopped in the thift store I got a call from Ann Arbor informing me that the condition of a childhood friend of mine who had slipped into a coma two days earlier had been declared irreversible and that a funeral would be held on Sunday. Aside from a manageable IBD, this man was my age and perfectly healthy. While convalescing from a routine surgery, his heart mysteriously stopped and no one is sure how long he sat without oxygen before being found. Wary of people who use the tragic deaths of those not in their innermost familial or social spheres as some sort of stage on which to play out their own dramas, I digested the news stoically. Only later evening before our show in D.C, as I talked to my mother about whether or not I should leave tour to come back for the funeral did it begin to prey on me. Feeling heavy and quiet, I forwent dinner with the group at a famous chili joint, walking to the CVS across the street instead and buying my first pack of cigarettes in almost two months.

Once inside our venue, the velvet lounge, I hid upstairs and weeping, nursed a beer and tried to compose a letter to his family while another band conducted their sound check. I was there but not there the whole evening and decided not to return to Baltimore with the gang, opting instead to stay with my old friend David there in Columbia Heights. David and his housemate Jarrett gave me exactly what I needed: some pot to smoke, a delicious glass of pauliner at the bar down the street, a good hour of sleepy TV watching and a wonderful sofa to crash on. In the morning, Jarrett made me a delicious breakfast burrito and we lounged around the better part of the afternoon.

I took the MARC train back to Baltimore and made it to the venue in good time for an expedition to Jerome’s Liquors. Somehow we’d gotten billed with a bunch of hardcore bands and I felt badly for being so unsportsmanlike and drinking in the van during their sets but I couldn’t handle all the noise. By the time we played everyone was pretty drunk but this time we managed to finesse that gentle balance of shambling disorganization and loveable charm. We bore mistakes with grace and humor and jammed out for a good 5 or 6 minutes at the end of the set. Outside at the van I conducted a bumbling string of merch transactions, the hilarity heightened painfully when Dietrich accidentally dropped the entire crate of CD’s and shirts on my sandaled foot.

From the Charm City Art Space, we went dancing at a Lithuanian national hall, making ourselves enormously sweaty to old soul and drinking shots of a mysterious honey flavored liqueur and tall bottles of cheap, dense Lithuanian porter. It was great fun until josh, Allen and Devon, declared themselves ready for home by passing out on the sidewalk talking about heavy-duty things.

We slept in a cozy row on Liz’s floor and in the morning she made us a delicious breakfast of hash browns and blueberry pancakes. We got a late start this morning but continue our climb: detouring west just a little bit for a show tonight in my beloved once home of Pittsburgh. Adventures to be had in the hilly city of bridges...

The Stark and the Secret in the Big Sinking Easy

2005-06-22T09:50:00.000-07:00

New Orleans is a t once a city of obscene, stark salience and ethereal, furtive mystery. There is the decadence of Bourbon street: the everpresent stench of vomit, live sex shows featuring world famous “love acts,” the neon green plastic tumblers of alcohol, stereos blaring and tits bared and beads falling from the sky. The city is sinking, the water table unreliable so even the dead aren’t intered, but rather rest eternally out in the air above ground. But then there are the untold courtyards concealed behind the closed, cramped streets of the French quarter, the spooky spirits, and the poor.

Fortunately I had the opportunity to see the indulgent and the Spartan sides sides of the city.

Our show at the Dixie Tavern was disappointing. It was a metal dive that smelled like piss and although the posters announced a $5 cover, the door guy didn’t seem to be charging one. I could see where this was going. The crowd consisted of the other two bands and a woman who yaked loudly through our set. Devon needled her with some comment about the T.V. apparently being more interesting than we were. She responded to his teasing with scathing vitriol, informing us that if we were “as interesting as Judas Priest (ostensibly the subject of her audibly debated program) then maybe I’d pay attention to you instead.”

Ouch. What we should have done, what I wished we could have done was launched into a Judas Priest cover but that’s a bit of an order for this band.

“I don’t know how to break this to you” Devon began, visibly irked “but Judas Priest actually sucks.”

Which began a very uncomfortable trip down agressively argued, pop-music discourse lane. “Who’s seen Heavy Metal Parking Lot?” I tried to interject jovially without much placating success. Her badgering had definitely damaged something about our set and sensing the futility of the whole thing we cut it pretty short in order to sit outside and turn our attentions to the greater problem of where we were going to stay that night since none of us knew anyone in New Orleans. Calls to friends and friends of friends were put through, messages left and the waiting began.

Finally a kid name Laurent, a friend of Allen’s friends called us back and directed us back to the French quarter. We hung around Molly’s tavern drinking beer on the street (supposedly it needs to be in a plastic cup but no one observes this rule). We watched every weirdo in the world parade by. I saw a cop car and found myself actually surprised to see that they existed. You know in Back to the Future II when biff steals the sports book and goes back in time winning lots of money and thus creating a fucked up, depraved alter 1986? Well that world is not the stuff of pop-sci-fi dreams. It exists and it’s called New Orleans. Exhausted and overwhelmed I left the group for a peaceful park across the street.

I sat on a bench and felt dark and heavy and tried to write some poetry weakly likening an unfulfilling love affair to the teeth gritting justification process we go through after leaving a show unpaid. On the bench next to me a young man nodded woozily.
”you alright dude?” I called
“yeah. I think. Too drunk. I feel kinda sick.”
“You look it. Get up and go puke you’ll feel better.”
“I should but where am I gonna do it, this a is a public place.”
“This is New Orleans. The whole place smells like puke. If people don’t puke enough they release a chemical reproduction of vomit scent into the air so it feels authentic. We’re in a park too…pick a tree.”

He did. I could hear it. Then he came over and talked to me a bit. He smelled like gum. I’m glad he smelled like gum and not puke. I know it’s not a kind thing to say but the kid kind of reminded me of a thinner, alightly more intelligent version of the son from The Family Guy. He was 23, goes to Louisiana State up in Batton Rouge. Had an interesting accent and bought his dad a Stan Goetz record he had to be not hung over enough the next day to drive three hours and deliver to him for fathers day. I mentioned a few of the places I’ve lived and he got excited. When a freight train rumbled by right behind us I jumped up excitedly to watch it.

“What are you gonna do, hop it?” he teased.
“Not in these shoes” I laughed.
“You’re really interesting.” He said.
Now why can’t the boys I love think things like that?

Laurent was a handsome young man, just out of Bard college, a drifter, a punk and a puppeteer. He led us back to his house in a rough part of town. “Not like you’ll need to walk around here alone at three in the morning but…don’t.” he cautioned us matter of a factly. His house was a dilapidated, three room, cardboard-walled shack. He kept the iron grill over the front door chained with a pad lock and the bathroom was kind of like an outhouse in the back of the structure, access to which involved a complicated search for lights and manipulation of a blank-board door locking system. The shack, with a sizaeble back yard costs him $100 a month. The neighborhood reminded me a lot of Minneapolis, Insane numbers of arty punks filling up terrible neighborhoods. His friend walt who put up Dietrich and Devon lived down the street. The neighbors were also friends, fellow musicians, performers and puppeteers. I fell asleep with Allen on a grubby bed in the front room, mildy stoned, listening to Laurent’s dog Lunga prowling around, feeling relatively at peace except for a nagging fear of flying cockroaches.

In the morning we pooled some money and made eggs, potatoes and Turkish coffee for breakfast. I chopped the garlic and mushrooms and realized how desperately I missed the simple pleasure of preparing a meal. After brunch, Laurent took us to the neighbors yard to show us the tree house and all the amazing foliage. “Would you ever know this was here?” he beamed with awe and pride. The city is magical alright and it was getting to me. When I told him I wanted to come back in the winter he gave me his number and some earnest advice: “Do it. Winter here is the best. The best.”

The stark and the blatant. The modest and the hidden. New Orleans is puke and ghosts. The tits and the hearts that beat beneath them…

Keep Austin Wierd and Other Messes with Texas

2005-06-21T00:15:00.000-07:00

Texas is no Joke. The heat is searing and the state goes on forever and ever. We arrived in Austin around 6 pm after driving all through the night and day. The city is bisected by highway thirty-five and it delivered us into town just in time for rush hour. The air conditioning had quit a few hours back and we were pretty uncomfortable. Devon’s left arm was righteously burnt from resting on the driver’s window for 8 hours. “I don’t know guys” he suggested languorously “ I think we should take off all our clothes and, I don’t know, slime together.” A hideous image we all found pretty funny.

I hadn’t see my friend Nathaniel since the winter of 1998 when I was living in Pittsburgh and he came home from school to visit his family for winter break. As I recall we spent the entire month of December sitting around watching TV, meandering aimlessly through suburban strip malls and poetically fretting about all our anxieties and imagined problems.

I’m pleased to say that some things never change.

Instead of the grey frigid Pennsylvania winter, now we battled the insufferable heat of Texas in the summer. My first order of business upon arrival was a shower. From there, I helped him unearth the air conditioner from under a heap of boxes and fire it up (so to speak). Then I was ready for a good day or two of peaceful Internet dabbling, TV watching, Gatorade drinking, Austin sun shit talking. My first night there I passed out nice and early during a rerun of Law and Order. It was a deep and heartfelt sleep.

Living near Pilsen in Chicago, I’ve been fortunate enough to experience a no paucity of good, cheap Tortas and Burritos. In Austin, however, I learned about a whole new frontier of Mexican Cuisine: Breakfast Tacos. “Food,” as Nathaniel put it, “for people who don’t have a lot of money and who don’t like to eat too many times in one day. “ Truly, two of these will set you from morning ‘till night. The city is peppered with sweltering little stands where you can buy sodden tortillas stuffed with various permutations of eggs, cheese, potatoes and greasy meats for as little as 80 cents a pop. After breakfast I met up with the boys and our friend Brie and went swimming which was great fun despite the fact that not five minutes outside the pool and you’re dry and sweaty again. It’s amazing.

After swimming we drove out to Brie’s house and practiced for an hour. Devon’s electric guitar had sort of melted in the van, the neck warped and strings so soggy that it refused to remain tuned. Frustrated by the set backs the practice devolved into me and Allen banging out a cover of the Buzzcock’s Why Can’t I Touch It, which ever since we danced to in L.A last Sunday, has become part of the official soundtrack to our trip.

We were slated to play at an all ages venue in Austin called the Church of the Friendly Ghost but it closed last week due to some mysterious legal troubles. Brie was able to tack us on to the bill at an eastside neighborhood dive called the Long Branch Inn, a bar we understood to be a mixer bar, meaning you bring your own booze and they sell you the cups of ice. We’d already taken a healthy dip into our handle of Jim Beam before discovering at the door that since March, the Inn had obtained and actual liquor license and was now running a tighter operation. “Yeah, the owners were kind of going bankrupt” The door guy confessed. Imagine that.

Although we’re billed at a few of them, Fingers Cut Megamachine is dismally prepared for bar shows for a couple of reasons: first, the music we play is fairly quiet. Second, our equipment is so shoddy it really can’t compete with the din. Although I find it mildly unnerving to perform all ages shows for kids younger than my baby siblings, younger than students I’ve had, I will say this, they are incredibly respectful. Not yet jaded by all the nervous, alcohol soaked mating rituals of bar behavior, they stand in front of a band for one reason: to hear the music.

This was not the case at the Long Branch. No one gave a fuck about us. I think the jukebox might have even still been on. The boys were already drunk and over the course of our half hour set we passed through all the stages: first we were disappointed, then flustered, then irritated and finally, we became dicks. I knew we sounded terrible though I couldn’t even hear the parts I was hacking out. As usual, Devon whined for drinks and as usual was rewarded with a shot of whiskey. At one point he launched into a new song I’d never even heard before with little more heads up than a curt “It’s in A minor Ok guys?” Allen stepped into the crowd and began performing one of his solo songs and at one point we drifted into two bars of the Misfits “One Last Caress.” I gave up on being confused and embarrassed and just tried to endure it all as nobly as I could.

When the nightmare was over I ran out to the van, arms laden with equipment to find the whiskey was done. Only at this point did I fly into a depressed sort of rage. Nathaniel offered to buy me a drink but thankfully the bar tender hooked it up. Nathaniel and I sat at the bar drinking for a while, pretty oblivious to rest of the scene until I was jostled from behind and realized some sort of commotion was breaking out right near by. It appeared that some people were getting aggressively hustled out of the bar. Then I noticed those people were Devon and Allen. I slammed the rest of my beer and sprinted outdoors where the melee was drifting, a many-arms-swinging-mass, down the block. Everyone was shouting and shoving and I had no idea what was going on. I later found out that Allen and Dustin had decided to initiate a boxer-shorted dance party. Austin might be Austin but I guess Texas will always be Texas and this kind of behavior didn’t agree with a couple vigilante patrons who threatened and goaded the boys (rambunctious anyways, particularly when soused) into some retaliatory bottle smashing.

Eventually the crisis diffused, our shrill, slurred rally cry (lifted from a bumper sticker we’d seen earlier in the day) of “Keep Austin weird!” echoing down the block. The night was still young enough but clearly we had to find a new place to go. At this point we were all pretty fairly wasted and decided to move the party to the infamous Whiskey Bar downtown.

Devon was turned away at the door for wearing an immensely tattered shirt which I found pretty ridiculous given the preponderance of wretchedly done-up hipster types inside. “If the fringes had been fastidiously cut and it bore a picture of Taz would it have been acceptable?” I later sputtered. He managed a costume change on the street somehow and we all pushed our way into the club. The first thing I did there was accidentally pee in the Men’s room which set off a chorus of “Whoa’s!” and “Who-hoos” when I exited the stall. Then I quickly shifted to beer grifting mode, my first unsuspecting victim being the dude-half of some canoodling couple. I just kind of danced up to the unguarded beer on the counter and in an instant had absconded with it into the crowd. Devon and I discovered a little balcony lounge upstairs where we performed all sorts of climbing acrobatics on the furniture and drained every abandoned beers on the tables. On the way back I decided it would be a good idea to slide down the curvy banister onto the throbbing dance floor below. I had just set off when Devon had the sense to grab my shirt, yanking me back over the rail and tumbling onto the stairs. I was a little banged up but nothing compared to what would have happened if I’d seen my mission through.

Nathaniel couldn’t stand the Whiskey and soon migrated outside to send text messages. It didn’t take too long for me to join him. Truthfully, I’d been ready to leave before I even got there. The place was awful. The kind of place that makes you feel the need to shower out your soul. We went home and listened to amongst other records, a laughable concept album attempt by the Frankie Valie, and passed out around 5 am talking about the bible.

In the morning I was destroyed and had the horrible idea that Breakfast tacos would fix me. Predictably, they made everything worse. I sat in the air conditioning and watched Gremlins while I waited for the boys to come pick me up. It only took us about 4 hours to get to Spring Texas, which included time spent lost in a creepy horror-movie set historic district called “Old Town.”

We put on an excellent show for an intimate and adorning crowd of teenagers at the Rayford community center. We limited our alcohol intake to a 6 pack of Schlitz and behaved very nicely. The kid who organized the show took us back to his Oil-baron parents’ house in a secluded, ritzy Houston suburb where we enjoyed the amenities of a home movie theatre, swimming pool, trampoline, pancake breakfast and an enormous and a little too-friendly bull-mastiff puppy (Devon doesn’t want to talk about it).

Good shows are as good shows do. We’re now on our way to New Orleans- a drive that could take as little as 4 or as many as 7 hours; people’s estimates varied that dramatically. I think that ultimately, Texas is so mind-bogglingly huge that I really can’t fault anyone here for having somewhat skewed perspectives on space or time.

Seriously.

All Nighters All West

2005-06-15T18:19:00.000-07:00

Monday and Tuesday Jews worldwide observed the holiday Shavuot, the feast of weeks, on which we celebrate receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai. It is one of the most important, sacred holidays in the Jewish calendar. Religious Jews have a custom of staying up all night, or at least very late, the first night of Shavuot studying Torah. Due to my family’s adherence to religious practice they are sometimes compelled to pull late nighters. Over the years I’ve adopted my own religious sort of appreciation for forgoing sleep though my reasons are rarely as noble as pouring over sacred texts. On the other hand, in these postmodern times we are free to read anything like a text are we not? Dancing, whiskey, bodies, the webs of heartbroken faultlines.

Tuesday night I didn’t really sleep at all. I lay on a homemade loft in the back of a van and watched the sun rise over El Paso, Texas. We left Albuquerque last night around 2 am. It was humiliating hanging around the bar waiting for them to close out so we could collect what I knew would be a miserable pittance. $30. Not even a tank of gas. We’d have to rely on the leftover from the night before in phoenix to carry us the 12 hours on to Austin. And that might not be enough.

People seem to believe that “dry” heat is somehow languor-proof. It’s not. Phoenix is a strange place because it strikes me as barely inhabitable. Not even mid June and when we rolled in around 6 pm it was 103 degrees. Everything is air-conditioned. Everything moves slowly. Although I was barely exerting any energy the change in weather knocked me out. Flushed and headachy, I meandered out of the Modified arts space shortly before our set and padded into the dusty parking lot. The sun had just finished setting. Around me stood lots of squat palms that seemed to have just given up on the idea of getting taller. The night air and sky felt rich, velvety and full of hot dusty particles. I tried to write a poem in my head but gave up too heat-sick and exhausted.

The promoter who booked the show, an old acquaintance of Devon’s, who couldn’t make it to the show because he’d broken his toe and and moping about Hot Water Music breaking up, put us up for the night. When we arrived around midnight his wife brought us fruit and beer and cooked us a delicious pasta and garlic bread. Their house was very air-conditioned. Mercifully. Some of the best accommodations we’re likely to see on tour and we slept in blissfully.

The Drive to Albuquerque took a good six hours. Leaving Phoenix we passed through a long stretch of desert. As a vade mecum of sorts, I’ve been reading Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States on this trip. I tried to imagine human beings and animals, be they frontiersmen or displaced Indians actually walking through this extreme terrain. The rocks, the scrubby little patches of coarse vegetation, blanched, brittle, barely hanging on and I wonder how anything could manage to survive out here. Out west the desolation expands as far as the eye can see and much farther. It is not, however, a sad sort of desolation, rather, a majestic one. The earth just quietly informs us that we aren’t supposed to be here, that we don’t really belong.

On I-40, some 40 miles outside of Albuquerque, we came up on a horrific accident on the other side of the road. 4 fire trucks and about as many cop cars were tending to a semi trailer brutally crushed and so completely charred so it was barely more than a blackened steel box skeleton, burnt, indiscernible cargo remains flapping in the wind. I didn’t see the head of the truck anywhere but judging by the rest of the wreckage, it’s not likely the driver survived. A line of stopped traffic extended for a good 10 miles behind the scene. As we passed it we speculated on what our night would be like were we stuck in that direction, how many love affairs might result from the serendipitous interactions between strangers bound here in a common fate, how miserable the conditions must be aboard the two greyhound buses and for the horses in the horse trailers.

As the road curved and the backup continued on it occurred to me that those poor people, most of whom had climbed out of their cars, had little or know idea of why they were stopped or the nature of the catastrophe that lay ahead-but we did. As the line petered out and we passed free wheeling cars zipping around the bend soon to be caught up on the choked mess, I felt like the uncomfortable bearer of strange knowledge. It felt oddly godlike.

Alburquerque reminded me a lot of the “new” Ann Arbor. A college town with a pleasant downtown area full of sandwich and noodle shops. We also passed by a fancy senor frogs-esque bar called The Library, whose façade was built to look like a giant row of book spines bearing titles like “Gone with the Gin”, “Wrath of Grapes” and our favorite, “Tequila Mockingbird.” I’m always in awe of this world. It really makes no sense.

As the name might signify, Burt’s Tiki Lounge is done up all Hawaii Style. Prey to the classic kitsch-bar horror vacuii, it’s covered with nautical gear, leis, bamboo, lanterns, lamps, hand drums, beer-bottle shaped Christmas lights and surfing movie posters. I had a good feeling about our show when we first loaded in but something went wrong. Devon is a train wreck the rest of us are powerless to stop. When our set got off to a shaky start he seemed to lose his will to put on a good show and began berating the bar and the sparse crowd for more beer. I think the boys found the crowd abuse and purposely shambling delivery funny but I was mortified. There’s no use in even trying to argue with him either.

Just before the bar closed, I bought Dietrich a coke as he had volunteered for the first driving shift: Albuquerque to El Paso. I climbed onto the loft and tried to sleep without much success as our van barreled through the night. At one point in time two of my former heartbreaks lived in Texas. I’ve never been there before but I always thought that because of them, when I did finally make it, it would be crawling on all fours. Thankfully, I’ve cured myself of feelings for one and the other recently moved on to grayer pastures in New York.

Still, a big state on little sleep is likely to be no joke.

Treading Air In A Floating City

2005-06-11T20:16:00.000-07:00

Southern California is an alien world. There is nothing gravitous about it. Everything wafts, floats, skims, hovers. It worships the sun; bright, constant, bathing everything in pastels. Nature and the built environment respond to the sun. Buildings are gently molded stucco, horizontal, lithe and mass less-painted in creams, pinks, and sea green; a box of mints is home. The vegetation is gifted in diversity. Since water is scarce, it seems to exist in just the right quantity to announce and coyly parade its variety: palms, ferns, creepers, lilacs, matted manicured grass and hedges.

Here, even decay has levity; for a ruinous shack can only ever be as bad as just that. There is nothing of the gothic dereliction known back east in steel and stone, cement or brick. The rusts, the grays, the soot, the weight of immemorial time, the denseness of navigating an earth altered, scarred, shoved, tugged and shaped so that the hollowed shells of structures seem at once extracted from and part of it.

In Southern California, the world rests on the earth. Lounging. Feet up, fishing on the dock.

It’s summer all the time, in every conceivable way, even when it’s not summer. It makes no sense. Los Angeles is a floating city. Nothing here, not even the mountains or the ocean, seems to weigh a thing.

******************************************************************

This was my impression of Los Angeles yesterday, all day, until the sun went down. Nowhere has it ever been truer that night falls like a curtain than in downtown Los Angles.

We played our first show last night at an all ages venue called the Smell. And smell it did. The alley behind the club was rank with the pungent stench of urine and something about the inside of the club reminded me of the primate habitat at the zoo. We loaded in, stuck around for a couple of the first band’s forgettably generic emo power-punk numbers and promptly decided a beer was in order.

Cautiously, we ambled around the corner to a giant Mexican gay bar. The alley opened onto a street corner notorious for hosting the highest number of stabbings of any corner in the city. The bar was raucous, full of Mexican flamers of all ages, shapes and sizes. A whole retinue of men in tight jeans and matching ivory snake-skin cowboy hats sauntered in together. “Ooooh! Los Vaqueros!” I whispered to Ricky as I squeezed his arm in awe.

We nursed our Bud Lights at a decent pace; not wanting to miss Hanalei’s set back at the Smell. While we sat, a toothless, leathery faced old man in the booth behind us tapped Devon on the shoulder. Motioning to Allan with his filthy hands, he passed a tiny, stuffed green gorilla through the lattice work. “Is free” he kept repeating sluridly, speech thickly accented with a weak grasp of English and no small amount of drugs and alcohol circulating through his system. No one seemed to want the gorilla. I looked at it and it looked back at me, for an instant, the way my precious stuffed animals did when I was very little. It looked sad and tender, wholly anthropomorphized. I don’t know where this poor guy obtained it, what germs it was harboring or why he gave it to us but it made me feel like crying so I tucked it in my bag.

I have never seen a more concentrated area of post-apocalyptic, urban wretchedness than downtown Los Angeles. The extent of the bleakness, misery and destitution is boggling. Entire blocks of sidewalk resembling far-away shanty towns. A contiguous network of cardboard mats and huts, an eternal queue of zombie-like, hollow eyed figures asleep in grimy blankets, dazed and jerkily lumbering aimlessly with shopping carts full of salvaged scraps. This is not the first time I’ve encountered homelessness mind you. I’ve seen it plenty, but this; I swear there was something different about this. For blocks and blocks truly the aberration was us, not them. There wasn’t even any semblance of an integrated ghetto. There were no poor people in poor looking houses. There was only homelessness. Stark, bare, everywhere. Totally forgotten by the city, the state, the world.

I felt uncomfortable to be alive.
Certainly uncomfortable to be there playing music for other nice, clean, well fed, educated, lucky young people like myself.

Our set went off without too many disasters. I made mistakes but, surprisingly, did not fulfill my worst fears of completely blanking on any of the songs. Although I’m hardly a musician and for this project, am performing music wholly written by someone else, I did feel a certain pride to be the only female on the stage that entire night. I was baffled, when after the show, three teenagers approached me and asked to have a picture taken with me. I’d seen this happen to Devon many times before but me? How on earth did they even know my name? Flattered but somewhat stupefied, I complied graciously and thanked them for coming.

From there the night took many turns including a party thrown by Wendy of Made By Wendy® at her Boutique (sponsored by this strange new Budweiser product I cautiously imbibed called “Bud E”- a horrific malt beverage tasting concoction of beer, caffeine and ginseng), a visit to the famous Canters Deli, where I ate the biggest matzo ball I’ve ever laid eyes on, marveling at the prostitutes on Hollywood boulevard (tacked cloyingly and flamboyantly onto the night like those dots of candy that come on paper strips) and finally ending somewhere around 6 in the morning all bundled up in bed watching sode after sode of the Chappell show.

When me, Devon and Dietrich finally decided to call it a night the birds were out chirping in full effect- throwing down some amazing beats, Dietr and I noted. Nature’s secret syncopations are cool alright, but not when you’re exhausted. “ Go eat some fucking worms, bitches!” I harrumphed in exasperation, which for reasons I don't fully understand, Devon and Dietrich found so hilarious they giggled in bed for a full two minutes and were still talking about it at practice this afternoon.

As Seen at Rock N' Roll Boot Camp

2005-06-10T11:54:00.000-07:00

As Seen at Rock N' Roll Boot Camp
Originally uploaded by sweetabbyg.

Some pictures from the never ending practice here in L.A. Here: Allan, Dietrich, Devon. The tiny space we share together. Haven't killed eachother yet. At least it's bigger than a van.
Below: Me and Dietrich. I am aware that my clothes don't match but It's Ok. In California you can wear whatever you want and not feel weird- Even a short skirt. People here are more accustomed to the sight of flesh.

2005-06-10T11:51:00.000-07:00

Originally uploaded by sweetabbyg.

Rock N' Roll Bootcamp

2005-06-09T12:00:00.000-07:00

This doesn’t exactly feel like vacation. It’s more like Rock N’ Roll boot camp. Dietrich, Devon and I holed up in Devon’s sparse little studio apartment with Allan a few miles bike ride away in Vegan Bike punk house in silver lake. I wake up long before the boys and walk to Sunset Boulevard to park myself at the local coffee shop, read, write, correspond and generally obtain the much needed peace and distance from the band. It’s surprising how quickly rituals can form.

Yesterday, I returned around noon and the boys were still struggling to get out of bed. Originally we were supposed to drive out to Vegas to play a show with Hanalei but thankfully, the night before, Devon realized this was a ridiculous idea and, eating his pride, called Brian to cancel. Around 1, Allan arrived with his boyfriend Ricky and we all took a trip to Trader Joes. The other morning I took an inventory of food stuffs in Devon’s kitchen and it was something like this: 1 bag pasta, 1 jar pasta sauce, peanut butter, jelly, half a loaf of bread, several half consumed bags of pre-packaged cut up vegetables at various stages of decay, salad dressing, a tin of oats and two cans of Budweiser. I felt a deep swell of maternal affection for my new family, overcome with the powerful urge to cook big delicious meals for them. But this is Rock n’ Roll boot camp and we haven’t got the time. Ricky graciously busied himself in the kitchen making potatoes and omelets while we got plugged in and began hacking though the songs.

Devon and I, I realize, have very different practicing styles. He can’t handle doing any song more than thrice in a row-he gets agitated. I prefer to drill something into my head with relentless repetition. Far and away the least musician of the group, also the most timid when it comes to playing with a group, especially with boys, I battle my self-confidence issues with every song. I’m so clumsy! On Mousetrap I miss my guitar riff with such astonishing consistency that everyone has come to expect the screw up instead of the right way and actually start laughing in advance of my mistake.

We broke for lunch and an episode of Ren and Stimpy. Ricky, after dozing on the sofa, climbed on his bike and headed off for Amoeba music, where he and Devon work. After a little more practice we decided to take a trip to guitar center. “If we’re going on tour for a month we should really get, you know, the stuff we need.” Allan suggested diffidently “the drum head, a bass, a bass-case….” The list went on and on and was actually kind of funny.

Any Guitar Center makes my skin crawl. The Hollywood Guitar Center on Sunset Boulevard is unlike anything else. Outside in the pavement is a little Rock-Walk of fame where you can put your hands in the prints of Robert Smith and Joe Satriani and gaze at all sorts of fantastic rock memorabilia in the display window like Keith Moon’s drum kit and three foot tall boots worn by someone in Twisted Sister. Dietrich and I had a hysterical conversation with the bag check guy about the bass drum rim he was carrying in.

“What do you have there, a hula hoop?”
“No, it’s a bass drum rim.”
“Does it have any marks on it that make it look old?” he jotted down notes on a tally sheet while he looked it over, pleased to find some distinguishing ratty duct tape in one spot.
“O.K good. Uh, how big is it?”
“We don’t know. That’s why we brought it here to measure the drum heads.”
“Right….I’m sorry….what did you say this thing was again?”

After making a huge racket in the tackily African themed percussion room and listening to three separate renditions of both Stairway to Heaven and Enter Sandman, wailed out in the cavernous guitar palace we fled.

Practice continued until Devon received a mysterious voice mail from an Officer Davis at the L.A PD calling “with regard to Ricardo.” Allan’s frantic calls back to the precinct yielded no information and we pressed on nervously for a few hours until he was able to reach someone back at his house. Apparently somewhere around 8 pm Ricky just walked in to the front door with a cast on his arm and knowing nothing about how it got there. We piled back in the van and sped to Echo Park.

Poor Ricky’s face was pretty cut and bruised and he was visibly discombobulated. His shoulder bag was missing but he had his address book in his pocket. Inside, Allan found a note saying, “Bike is at the fire station on Cuhuenga and Homewood.” Ricky had no memory of anything and kept saying, “I don’t know, I thought you guys were with me.”
“We weren’t with you Ricky, you left and then we went to guitar center. It was around three o’clock.” Ricky just shook his head and said he couldn't remember.

Feeling a little uncomfortable, Devon, Dietrich and I volunteered to retrieve the bike. Whatever happened happened just a few blocks from Devon’s house. Outside the fire station we smoother our hair and rang the doorbell. The guy who answered was pretty friendly. Ricky’s bike was so fucked up he couldn’t wheel it out to us, he had to kind of pass it off. The front fork was completely bent, crushing the wheel so tightly it couldn’t move. “Do you know what happened to our friend?” I asked the fireman.
“Not sure, we arrived with the ambulance…there was a ford explorer with a ding in the back, with think he must have ran into the car.”

Judging by the condition of the bike, the impact was intense and I’m so glad Ricky had been wearing a helmet. Since this makes my second friend to be involved in a serious car accident in the last week, I hereby firmly resolve to start wearing a helmet when I return to Chicago.

We thanked the fireman and carried the twisted bike out to the van. “No sense in returning it now,” Devon observed “no one can ride it like that…let’s go to the bar.”
I was a little worn out from Rock N’ roll boot camp so I let the boys go without me, opting, instead to pass out on Devon’s bed.

I imagine today will be similar, though perhaps less eventful. We keep talking about going to the beach but that’s not likely to happen. Our first show is on Friday night and I’m still a mess.

(I'll be posting pictures for you just as soon as I get this camera thing resolved...)

Hoofing and Hefting in L.A.

2005-06-07T14:47:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, the L.A Metro has four colored lines: Blue, Green, Yellow and Red. Not surprisingly, I had to ride three of the four (plus an airport shuttle) to get from point A (airport) to point B (Devon’s house in north Hollywood). The hour was late, I was exhausted from packing all morning and then sitting through hours of terrible turbulence, legs cramping and breathing recycled air, and carrying some 50 pounds of stuff (and it really is just that, stuff) of my back. I should have accepted Devon’s offer of a ride once he got off work but I felt bad about interrupting his date, I severely misjudged how difficult the trek would be and to top it off, I’m stubbornly independent.

What a mess.

I learned, somewhat discomfittingly, that it is extremely hard not to look terribly conspicuous on Los Angeles public transportation if: It is late at night, you are white, an unaccompanied female, not a drug addict, and, weighted like a pack mule, wearing a big camping pack and two bloated, pendulous shoulder bags.

I’ve lived in enough places to know that plenty of environments seem scary until they become familiar. This was just one of those things. Sleepily swatting away guy after guy trying to sell chocolate bars for a dollar or spange for the “tram” I soothed myself by mentally establishing train line after train line as my friendly, well traveled perlieu. “Compton…I’ve listened to NWA enough for that to feel just like home….7th and Flower….I’ve been to downtown L.A before, the library was beautiful I know that area just fine….” Stuff like that. Weary and spent, I unearthed a crumbly peanut butter and jelly sandwich in one of my bags. I try not to eat late at night but for some reason then, I felt peculiarly ravenous. Eating a sandwich also seemed somehow magically apotropaic, as if engaging in a benign, quotidian activity would somehow keep people like the guy in the next car hollering “Nigga you DON”T KNOW ME!!” at the top of his lungs from molesting or depressing me.

Waiting for the red line, my final transfer, I struck up a conversation with a guy who as it turns out, grew up in Chicago. Having spent time in all three places, we rapped for four stops about the differences between New York, Chicago and L.A. Chicago, with all it’s world-class pretensions and pudding-faced midwestern charms, I suspect, being the dearest to both our hearts.

“Los Angeles” he said “is like a packet of fast-food ketchup lying in a sweltering parking lot and then someone comes a long and stomps on it.” Here he made a grand explosion and diffusion gesture with his hands “And boom! There’s your city.”

I liked that a lot.

Another Peculiar thing I observed about the L.A Metro is that the fare system appears to operate entirely along the lines of Foucaultian panopticism. In theory, the rides cost money (not much I feel I should note, much cheaper than Chicago), but at no point along my route was I required to swipe or insert any kind of card. Rather, the machine spit out something that looked like a movie ticket stub and instructed me to carry this “proof of fare” on me at all times. The train station and car interiors were heavily festooned with signage reminding riders of this. Somewhere loomed the elusive watchful eye of god, morality, municipal works and discipline and punish. Not once did I have to stare it down. The penalty for Fare evasion is $250. One has to wonder how many times a day all over this sprawling city that risk is taken. I’m debating it myself.

When I finally emerged at Hollywood and Vine I sat shivering on a bench waiting for Devon and his friend to come get me. Since it was 90 degrees in Chicago when I left, I figured it would have to easily be, I don’t know, 165 degrees in southern California. I was wrong and once again poorly prepared.

Of course they showed up in a Convertible. A rather nice once.

I have a week to enjoy the pleasures of walking and metro-ing In Los Angeles before we leave for tour on Monday. I have no particular plans other than table diving as much free food as I can, playing music and getting to the beach at least once. After lazing around the house this morning practicing my bass parts and trying to concoct a breakfast out of the meager inventory of comestibles in Devon’s kitchen, I set out into the sunshine. I walked up to the coffee shop on Caheunga and Sunset feeling the watchful presence of the immortal “Hollywood” sign nestled above me in the hills with me every step.

For a Midwestern girl like me stuff like that is quietly epic.

The Many ways Chicago Says Good-bye

2005-06-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

My last day in Chicago was almost a sweltering 90 degrees. Summer is here and I should have been spending my final moments at the beach. Instead, I was mucking through an assortment of low-grade hassles- the kind that become monumentally aggravating as you are in the process of packing up your life and departing for the unknown.

As it turns out, the replacement camera overnighted to me by the Digital Megastore is also defective. I should have known better than to subsist on peanut butter for two weeks just to attempt to own the kinds of nice things rich people have.

“I’ve never had two defective returns.” said Jenny, my “account manager” and new best friend.
“I must be the unluckiest person in the world.” I muttered ruefully. Not sure whether to sulk over the immovable restocking fee or gloat that I managed to pity her reimbursing me for my shipping.

It’s embarrassing to admit, but in these moments, it’s hard not to think that way. I woke up Saturday morning to find that sometime between the hours of 3 am and 11 am my bike had been stolen out of our front vestibule. The National Education Lending Corporation seems to think I owe them $1500 more in student loans than I actually do. The little things. Despite these irksome snags, it did manage to dawn on me as I was sweatily hefting my last few boxes onto the storage platform over our bathroom, that I am very, very lucky. I’m doing something most people only dream of: flying to the west coast, climbing into a van with three friends, and touring the country playing music. This is more important than a camera, more important than bureaucratic hassles.

I’ve apologized to my friends effusively for being so cranky about the little things. As I sit here on the terminal floor at O’Hare I think I’d prefer to reflect on the more monumental ways in which Chicago and I bid each other our farewell.

On Saturday the NVVAM hosted its Vietnam Veteran’s Awareness biker run. All was going well until a powerful storm rapidly swept in. When the rain came, we herded everyone inside and wildness ensued. I gave myself the thankless job of trying to politely ask 6 foot something, sleeve tattooed, leather-clad Harley dudes to kindly not regard the artwork as table tops on which to park their burgers and Old-Styles.

After those fetivities, I went up north to Shelley’s for the party at the Landmark, to some degree, in my honor. Parties at Shelley’s are small and somewhat more adult. The evening wore on and we still hadn’t performed our set, eventually opting to give a private bedroom concert on her bed for Andy, Jesse and Donna. The evening was warm and by 1 or 2 am everyone ended up drunk on the roof. I got Shelley’s guitar and we sang songs and tried to avoid sitting in the puddles left up there from the storm but mostly failed on that account. When Emilio and I left around 4, I found it difficult to articulate to Shelley how immensely her friendship has improved my quality of life. Donna gave me empty boxes and implored me to come back to Chicago. Antonia told me to make out with everyone in the band. I laughed.

Several important things happened on our drive back south. The first being a horrible murder scene. Rumor had it that the Ashland bridge down by Cermak was finally open. It’s been closed the whole time I’ve lived in Chicago and giddily, we decided to investigate this development. A few blocks south of Division the night was disco throbbing with cop car lights. Outside a corner chicken shack, police were roping off the street with yellow caution tape. On the ground lay a large man. His back was to the street, his body sprawled. The first thing I noticed was that his pants had fallen down a little, his big white ass, truly illuminated like the moon. The second thing I noticed was that his brains were pouring out of the back of his head.

My stomach turned and for once in my life I was grateful, so, so grateful I hadn’t passed by on my bike and had to absorb any more of the scene. For some reason I t really bothered me that the poor dead guy’s ass was on view to all who passed down Ashland Avenue.
“It’s humiliating.”
“Not really,” Emilio shrugged. “It’s not like we know the guy.”

As we neared the intersection of Ashland and Blue Island I got the sensation that we were on a roller coaster inching its way up the thrilling, neck-snapping incline. For reasons I can’t explain I was really excited. I told Emilio I thought the car might blast-off into the sky, chitty-chitty bang-bang style once we made it onto the bridge. As usual, I was a little let down. The bridge, this bridge they’d been working on for a year or two at least, is actually rather short. Worse still, it occurred to us that all things considered, the detour along Loomis was actually just as efficient, if not quicker, for getting back to our house.

So it is.

In a few hours I’ll be in L.A. Our first show is on Friday night and I’m nothing resembling prepared. Sam dropped out of the tour and last week Devon called to tell me that Allan, the bass player, can actually do the guitar parts.
“So, uh, how do you feel about playing bass?” He asked
“Well, aside from the fact that I’ve never touched one before, I feel fine.” Was all I could think to answer. I’ve been practicing hard. But I have a lot of work left to do.

Visit the Fingers cut megamachine website to see our tour dates. We’ll be back in Chicago on June 29th. I’m looking forward to a rock star’s welcome…

Thunder Thighs Moves into A Van Down By the Nowhere

2005-05-31T11:47:00.000-07:00

A brief aside before I get to the meat:

Yesterday confirmed something I've long suspected: I am only happy while riding my bike. It's the only way I can commune with the weirdly phlegmatic city of Chicago and feel generally excited about being alive. I bike a good deal. Usually around 20 miles a day depending on what I'm up to, what errands I invent for myself. Yesterday's mission involved riding up the lakeshore to Montrose Beach. The pathway was so packed with pedestrians, cyclists and roller bladers, I found myself almost wistful for the dangers of car-traffic. Before I reached the shore, I had been barreling down North Avenue and experienced a peculiar sensation of air moving through my body. Being out in the sunshine, in motion through the world calms and blanches my mind.

At the beach Vic and I were joking about the bodily transformations a bicycling life-style effects on one's person. For some time I'd been laughing about getting thunder thighs but now, today, it's dawned on me, in a really corporeal way of knowing, that it's happened. My thighs are decidedly bigger. They make contact with one another when I walk and this is startling. Jesse assured me that since it's all muscle this is sexy. But what will become of it in the winter? How true it is that like the proverbial miser, the more jealously you possess something, the more fearfully obsessive you become about losing it. I've been blessed with at least a couple bits of luck in that in spite of all the abuse I've heaped on myself, I am pretty thin and youthful looking. I am positively terrified, however, about losing my looks. I think about aging all the time. I've become distrustful of my body, all bodies actually, as I enter a new phase in my life in which entropy begins to make itself known. People my age are beginning to gain weight, lose hair, and just look, in a way that's hard to describe, a little bit older in the face.

Not surprisingly, there seems to be a direct correlation between my panicky fretting about aging and my near terminal inability to grow up. And here's where we get to what I really wanted to tell you:

I'm leaving town.
And I don't know when I'll be back.

1 year is my absolute cap. Since I was 17, I have never managed to stay put in one place longer than a year. And rarely a year. The true max is more like 10 months. I shan't bother to list all the countries, states and cities, (not to mention all the houses within those places) I've lived in the past 7 years but there have been quite a few. I attended three colleges and have already dropped out of my first graduate program. I spent two summers in a row homeless and aimless. I've road-tripped, hitchhiked, and hopped freight trains. I've slept on a lot of sofas, in vans, boxcars and under bridges. And I'm about to do it again. And I'll let you in on a little secret:

I hate moving. I hate traveling and above all else, I hate change.

And yet, I'm always up and going. Truly, I am a desperately sedentary creature who had the deep misfortune of ending up in the existence of a wanderlust. Every time I relocate it's with the hopes of finding love, peace and fulfillment and settling down. But that keeps not happening. And I get disappointed. A deep, sad sort of disappointment that unlaces things inside, pulls out shoddily basted stitches and then runs the threads across ticklish places. I get to thinking it's time to go, to seek fortune elsewhere.

When I was 19, preparing to move to Pittsburgh, my friend Allan, over cigarettes and a piece of apple pie, told me something I will never forget. "Abby" he said shaking his head "You're a real fool if you think you can move anywhere in this world and your problems won't follow you." I thought I had it. I was moving, after all, to escape the torturous ravages of my dissolving epic first love affair and figured if I could leave him in Michigan I could start all over. What I know now but didn't know then was that this heartbroken escapism would become a trope for me. All to often it strikes me as easier to move than simply move on. It's not that I have any trouble tackling my problems head-on. I tend to over tackle, really to cripple. I move so far through and beyond my targets I emerge on the other side and find there's nowhere to go. I'm so full of hope I become hopeless.

Whenever my most recent swell of schemes for stability is thwarted I react like a petulant child. Things aren't working out? I'm still alone, without a respectable salary, material possessions to speak of, well why bother trying? Instead, why not willfully place myself in the most unstable, transient scenario possible? Enter my plans for this summer, which will go into effect this Monday June 6th.

Devon and Sam graciously invited me to join their band for a cross-country tour as a sort of catchall girl. My involvement will be varied and minimal, some vocals and keyboard and depending on Sam's plans, perhaps some bass. Over the course of a month we're touring from California to New York and back. I've rented out my room, quit my job and am preparing to pack my stuff in storage, unsure when or if I'll ever return. I'm taking stock of my meager possessions and lending them out in a will-making sort of fashion:

Mattress and dresser- to Tyler
My busted old classical guitar, the one my father used to serenade my mother- to Emilio
My jambox- to Heather since she keeps it in her studio all the time anyways.

The computer will come with me as I have a lot of writing projects scheduled for the summer.

I love the boys and although we will certainly have some difficult moments, living in a van the 5 of us, I'm looking forward to playing music, visiting places I've never been like New Mexico and Texas, sleeping all rolled together like puppies.

One thing I'm going to miss desperately, however, is riding my bike.

That muscle might turn to mush long before the cold weather sets in. But then again, I'm leaving Chicago; maybe the cold weather will never set in again.

I Don't Take Hints, But I'll Get a Frying Pan to the Face

2005-05-24T06:28:00.000-07:00

There is something spectacular about being forced to witness, over the course of an evening, the object of your affections draw nearer to and fall deeper in conversation with another girl. It's a special kind of sucking humiliation. The kind reserved for things like farting around a very important person, or getting caught masturbating, except this situation calls for an extended inhabitation of that brief agonizing instant. yes, in this case, the torment lasted the entire duration of several bands and several beers. And the way home, and more embarassing still, into the morning.

Garnish on my misery: On his way out with her he taps me on the shoulder to say goodbye. I can't remember what words we exchanged since I'd long ago made the decision to get myself decently drunk in an effort to cope with the situation. It was distracting and kept itching annoyingly at the periphery of my vision, repeatedly drawing my attention to the wreckage off in a corner by the stage. There I was, Rubber necking at the scene of my own disaster. I had no choice but to become an outside observer of my life. In times of emotional duress such as this one I have a little mantra I use to calm myself: That wasn't me, It didn't happen, This isn't my life. I focus on those words until I manage to back away from a treacherous precipice. I would need those words later but at that moment, blessedly, I was still at a bar.

It was last call, I had to be up for work in 6 hours and not before an 8-mile bike ride home.

I ordered a whiskey.

At any given moment in time it's fair to say there is at least one boy I'm fretfully, heartbrokenly obsessing over. Sometimes the constellation of unrequited passion is more complicated: at present there seem to be two. As is usually the case, both have made it pretty clear they are not interested in me. Oddly, being jilted by one kind of sent me volleying back to the other, as though in the wake of fresh heartbreak, it somehow becomes acceptable, even comforting to return to the site of an previous catastrophe.

This boy from last night and I have a history. A particularly ugly one, in fact and to be perfectly honest, I realized recently that by now he really could have murdered my mother and I would have found some way to magnanimously make sense of it. Predictably, I tend to set my sights on the alcoholics, and the Mama's boys, the emotionally crippled and unavailable, the uncommunicative, the unappreciative, the plain old immature, broken, sad and akward. I'm a lot like everyone else also, in that, when it comes down to it, I really don't want anything to do with any of the nice young men who lavish me with attention, praise and affection. That's not a conscious decision of course, it just works out that way. It is precisely because these characters are so awful that I end up loving them, drinking heavily in honor of their abuse, suffering from troubled sleep that gives way to mornings steeped in feelings of utter uselessness, writing songs and filling reams with poetry about them: their eyes, their poesy, proclivities and problems.

If I didn't have to work so hard it wouldn't be very much fun now would it?

I did not cry on the bike ride home. In a miaculous way, the Birds of America CD I'd put on while unlocking my bike outside the bar ended just as I was turning the key in my front door. I believe in signs more than I like to admit. I tried to console myself with vague appeals to a pride I barely possess, attempting to conjure up some sort of Romantic mystique for the waters-running-deep mystery girl who always goes home alone.

Paltry, I know. But if any of them were to actually become mine I'd be too busy being content to get down any of the songs and poems. And I have to wonder if right now, somehow, that isn't what I want just as much.

Scabby Arms and the Mayor's Fleshy Hand

2005-05-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

I wanted to write a story about a girl who for some time had been giddily awaiting attending a black tie-affair at the Chicago Hilton, at which she was going to meet, among other celebrities, Mayor Richard Daley. Rarely seen or smelled in anything fancier than a pair of bicycle grease-stained jeans and grubby cut-away T-shirts, she went to Family Thrift and invested in a tasteful and elegant evening dress and pretty shoes. She resolved to wear a strand of fake pearls, comb her hair and, most impressively, shave her legs for the first time in 7 years in honor of the event.

Then two weeks before the Fundraising dinner, owing to a terrible accident, The young woman manage to slice her arm up pretty badly, a mishap that left some rather creepy looking gashes and scabs no little black dress was going to cover. As the day of the event drew nearer the girl began to panic. Every night before going to sleep she supplicated herself in a moment of silent prayer to the regenerative powers of her epidermis. The girl was poor and worse, poorly connected. She never got to go to fancy dinners, rub shoulders with city society. She was very proud of the volunteer work she did for the museum and wanted to tell the mayor and other important people all about it in the vague hope of securing some sort of funding for her position. She wanted to look pretty in her dress. She did not want to scare the mayor or any other important people with arm lacerations. Every morning and on breaks at work she furtively examined her wounds. 'God helps those who help themselves' she was told as a young child in Jewish Day School. Prayers alone might not suffice. She might have to ideate some creative, albeit awkward solution. Elbow length silk gloves? A fur stole? A carpal tunnel-esque brace?

The big day arrived. The girl decided several things. One: with the scabs scrubbed off, the cuts had faded to a less-conspicuous mostly-inoffensive pink. Two: she would be surrounded by Vietnam War veterans, their families and supporters, all of whom, surely, had either seen or could sympathetically imagine things infinitely worse than a few abrasions. After a hectic afternoon of assembling and sorting place cards, she donned her pretty dress, her pretty shoes and her fake pearl necklace. She combed her hair, threw on her dingy blue puffy vest wishing it were made of fur, or at least not so ratty looking, and climbed into a cab like an elegant person, ready to go meet the Mayor.

That girl of course, is me.

My other job, the one that pays me nothing, is at the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum I first visited this modest museum in Chicago's south loop on a class visit last fall. The course, Art, Activism and Response, was pretty terrible but if nothing else, I thank the professor for bringing me there. I spent most of the two hours in tears. Not only is the art profoundly moving (it's all created by men and women who served in the Vietnam War), but visits there begin with a talk from a volunteer Veteran. Rick Davis (a fine man, wonderful speaker and accomplished author) told us his story of how he enlisted as a young college student in the wake of his first major heartbreak. He went on to serve two tours working one of the most horrific wartime jobs I can imagine, Graves Registration. As he spoke, he passed around his photo albums, some of the snap shots, too terrible to look at. Also circulated was his wedding picture. When he came back he and the high school sweetheart who had prompted him to go to war in the first place were eventually married and remain so to this day. I cried and cried and cried.

I kept coming back to the museum and crying. I wrote a paper about the museum for another class. I told them about my background in museum education and that I wanted to help. At that time the "education department" was being run by one lovely woman who worked solely on a volunteer basis. They were grateful to have me. So now I assist the museum in designing educational materials. I research the collection, exhibitions and related topical information to create classroom and gallery activities. I am writing a tour of the permanent collection with the aim of building a docent program. I have dreams of starting a paper ephemera archive to include books, comics, propaganda and psychological operations pamphlet literature. I learn a lot. It makes me feel a little bit more whole. It still makes me cry.

In an effort to raise funds and build PR (have I mentioned how poor and grass roots this place is?), the museum just held its second annual Above and Beyond Memorial Dinner at which they present their "Patriot Award." Last year's recipient was Gary Sinise (Lieutenant Dan from Forest Gump), Chicago native and champion of VWV causes. This year the museum invited him back to present the award to Mayor Daley. Mayor Daley. What to say? Problematic, sketchy, imperfect? Certainly. A major patron of the arts, supporter of bicycling and green spaces? Yes that too. While his ulterior motives were clearly legacy building and family-city relations healing (the museum opened to the public on the almost exact anniversary of the infamous 1968 Chicago DNC anti-war riots that so grievously marred both the image of the city and his father, Mayor Daley the elder), the museum would not exist today without Daley's investment and support.

After assembling centerpieces and then running the registration table for a while, I was able to sneak into the packed auditorium for the second half of the awards presentation. Huddled in a corner I watched Barak Obama speak to us live via satellite. I listened to Gary Sinise and Mayor Daley. I stood awkwardly for the singing of "America the Beautiful" feeling like a traitor for joining in and a traitor for remaining mute. I got spooked during the ceremonial "Retiring of the colors" conducted by cadets with big guns.

I am anti-war. I'm a pretty flaming liberal. But I want you all to know that working with a veteran population has certain given me a richer, more complicated, nuanced appreciation for conflict. I'm still me, but more empathetic, sensitive and confused on these matters. Daley's remarks distressed me at points, like when he spoke beamingly about the young men and women from Chicago's most underperforming schools who were being accepted to top military academies and earning military scholarships for college. After all, no one asked me to risk my life for a college scholarship. It was just given to me outright.

But I wanted to meet him nonetheless. Celebrity mania. And Gary Sinise too. I spied my chance with the latter a few minutes before dinner on a trip down to the restroom. I saw him chatting with a few people in a little foyer and I prayed he'd still be there when I came back out.

Prayers answered and upgraded. Not only was he there but sitting alone too!
I'm not a shy person.

"Mr. Sinise, My name is Abby G________, it's an honor and a privilege." I piped up confidently extending my hand. Gary Sinise is short and handsome and very nice. I told him about my work at the museum and he thanked me warmly, and shook my hand again before a woman came down to tell him the Mayor was waiting for him in the ballroom. We walked upstairs together arm in arm.
"Are you flying back to New York tonight?" I asked politely
"Actually I live in California"
"Oh" I stammered, gravely embarrassed. "I thought since your TV show (CSI) was set in New York..."
"Oh, it's all fake New York! We film it all in L.A" he said with a laugh.
"My father is a huge fan of the show. Never misses an episode." I told him (which is true, what I didn't tell him was that every time I go home my dad badgers me to watch it with him though I'm not terribly interested in crime shows or TV in general)
"Why thank you!" Said Mr. Sinise, so genuinely warm and nice. "You tell your dad not to miss next week's episode. It's really good. I like it a lot."

And with another smile, he was gone.

One down, one to go. I enjoyed a free fancy dinner with courses, waiters serving salad dressing on my salad, wine and a live band. "this," I thought to myself "must be what expensive weddings are like."

Daley was rumored to only have been staying for half an hour but after dinner I saw him still mingling. I grabbed Claudia, another volunteer and informed her with determination, "Come on, we're going to meet the mayor." I planted myself right by his side and waited. I glanced over my shoulder at my coworkers and winked. Eventually I seized on a break in his conversation.
"Mr. Mayor, Abby G_________, A pleasure to meet you, I'm a volunteer at the museum." The Mayor, short, grizzled, portly and friendly, smiled warmly and put out his hand. His hand was soft and fleshy. A squishy handshake but not unpleasant. I wasn't done yet. "Could I trouble you for a picture?" I asked sweetly. In half a second’s time the mayor had one arm around me, one around Claudia and his personal photographer had captured us in time. In one deft, continuous movement, the photographer lowered his camera and reaching into his pocket, produced two little cards with instructions on how to claim our free pictures with the mayor. What a job. Personal Photographer to the Mayor of Chicago.

"What's that like?" I asked him (his name is Jim by the way).
"It's good. It's crazy. It's good." was his reply.

"Unbelievable." clucked David our volunteer conservator in his English accent "All day all she's been talking about was meeting the mayor and then she up and did it."

After dinner I stayed around to clean up and help Jerry and Mike (Two amazing artists and veterans) load up the truck and trek back to the museum. I'd never been in there at night and it was kind of creepy heading up the darkened offices to change out of my eveningwear.
"Boyfriend coming to pick you up?" Jerry teased.
"If by boyfriend you mean bike." I clipped back with a rueful smile.

The next day I had the pleasure of calling my dad to deliver Gary Sinise's message to him. He actually said "Well I'll be!" which made me laugh.

I'm thinking about writing to my new friend Gary and asking him for some money. I like what I do but shit if I wouldn't like to get paid.

I'm getting into some new research on Post-traumatic Stress disorder for our upcoming exhibition, entitled, cheerily, "Trauma and Metamorphosis". Trying to finish up a bunch of projects before I leave town for the summer.

Also, My arm is looking quite a bit better.

Finally, come visit the museum. It might make you cry but sometimes that's a good thing, or if not a good thing, at least an important thing.

The Insomniac is Handed a Mid-Week Day of Rest

2005-05-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

Freelancing is best on your own turf.

Owing to the fact that two of my friends in the security department at my museum happen to be rock stars and are both on tour at present, I was fortuitously solicited with the opportunity to pick up some extra hours by manning the desk in the rear of the current exhibit. Today has been miraculously slow, no school groups, little visitor traffic and I am greatful with every fiber of my exhausted being for this peaceful day of minimum wage rest. My day thus far:

9:30-9:45- Hang out with Emanuel, drink tea with real sugar in it (I'm getting over the equal), receive crash course on tallying visitors and taking cash. Talk about the artwork of Fred Wilson

9:45-10:00-ish- Flip through the front section of the paper Emanuel bought for me so I could have a crossword for the afternoon. Read about the Daley city trucking scandal, shake my head in disbelief for the hundred millionth time over how fucking young that Lyndie England is, and learn that the Prime minister of Vietnam will be visiting washington next month, the first visit from an official of the United Vietnam in the 30 years since the end of the war (the anniversary of which, BTW, we just celebrated on the 30th of April)

10-11:15- Time spent feverishly, at moments tearfully, filling some 8 pages of my journal, chronicalling the savage weekend I just barely managed to live through, excerpts of which I am tempted to include here but feel, however, it might be in poor taste to do so. We'll see.

11:15-12:45- Began reading Contempt by Alberto Moravia. I love this book. I've had a date with this book for over a year.

12:45-1:05- Begin work on a poem about how humiliating the interior world of a paper lunch bag can be for grade schoolers. My parents were poor and my lunches therefore akward and almost always unpalatable compared to other kids'. Why are kids forced to eat lunch together and thus reveal everything about their families?

1:05-present- Lunch. Warm my throat with some soup in a tupperwear container. Continue work on poem. Gaze out the window for a little while. Call housemate. Leave message. Come down to the library. Start blogging.

Estimated schedule for rest of the day:

2-2:45- Begin crossword. Work on crossword until frustrated, humiliated, ready to give up.
2:45-somewhere between 3 and 4, return to Contempt
Between 4 and 5- Come back to the crossword. Make some headway, but soon give up again, still feeling stymied and insuffciently literate, capapble of elegant problem solving skills.
5 pm-leave work. Bike up to the north side. Buy burritos for me and Shelley. Get to Shelley's, eat burrito, take a much anticipated nap in Shelley's bed while she goes to her accordian lesson.
8:30-whenever, hang out with Shelley. Play her my new songs, listen to hers, talk about boys, most likely consume some alcohol.

That's as far as I've planned, for now...

Given the way the last few days have been going, I'm sure sleep will hardly figure into the agenda.

Sigh.

A WWII Vet walks into a Judaica Shop and asks for a Tetragrammaton

2005-05-04T12:28:00.000-07:00

Grizzled, eyes twinkling, wearing a faded baseball cap and battered green silk windbreaker festooned with with akwardly stitched combat patches, this peculiar figure approaches the counter.

I was just packaging up a tiny baby-size yarmulka for the woman next to him.
"Who in the gift shop will answer a query?" He intoned
Since everyone else was on lunch the obvious answer was me.
"I can try to answer a query."
"Alright" he says, leaning an elbow on the glass counter, flipping over his visitors sticker and handing me a pen. "The four letter hebrew name for God, the one we say like 'Yaweh' in English, can you write it for me in Hebrew?"

"Sure."

It was not unlike the moment I had on friday night, drunk as hell at a huge party in my living room, when I was approached by two young women bearing an Israeli Bazooka Joe comic from a piece of kosher gum. "Your housemate says you can translate this for us." said one.

"Try me when I'm sober." I snarked, pocketing the gum.

"Four letters" He says suspiciously eyeing my work. "What are they called?" Drawing fuzzy little arrows, I labeled each letter for him. "Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, we say it like 'Adonai'."
"No vowels?"
"Well Hebrew doesn't have a vowel system like English. instead of a set family of vowel letters-"
"Yeah I know, diacritic characters, it uses diacritic characters, I know all about this stuff. That's why Jehovah was wrong. Because the vowels were all messed up. How many names for god are there in Hebrew?"
I had to chuckle. "I don't know, but MANY."
"more than Arabic?"
That I really couldn't tell you." I said humbly.

I asked him if he was here to see the museum.
"Naw. What's in it?"
"It's a Jewish museum."
"That holocaust stuff gets oppressive."
"sure does."
"Will you answer another query?"
"Again, I can try."
"what could have been more sincere than the prayers of six million people in the throes of death? Why weren't they answered?"
"Why are those same prayers uttered every day all over the world in a million languages and never answered?"
"Now that's a good question."

This guy was an eccentric and a polyglot and visiting from Ohio. In the brief span of ten minutes he told me the name of his sailing boat in cambodian, grilled me about A dying generation of Chicago authors, told me why he hates washington D.C ("Ugly city full of syringes and used condoms. Black men there can't do anything but strip copper wire and that's not even beer money, and those diplomats just roll up their limo windows when they drive by...")and proposed his solution for peace in the middle east ("Love thy neighbor") formally inserting yet another query: "What is wrong with Sharon? What is wrong with that guy?"

Since I now work with closely with a small segment of the veteran population at my other job, I was curious about his time in the service.
"Cold war years. 67-78"
"What did you do?"
"Filled up the B-52's with as much gasoline as they needed to get to Russia and wished them on their way."
"Where were you stationed?"
"Upstate New York, California. When to Iran once. Teheran...say, one more query"
"I'm ready."
"Do you know how many people have come back from Iraq so far maimed and injured?"
"Tell me"
"80 Thousand. And that's not counting all the psychological trauma."
"What are we doing there?"
"making a mistake."

And we shared a brief, akward moment of silence.
"Well Listen, it was nice talking to you. I didn't mean to make you depressed. I mean this is just the gift shop, you're not the professor or anything..."
I assured him It was ok and I'd had a nice time wrestling with all his "queries."

Then, just like that, he wandered out of the building. Never got his name.

Upon reflection, the whole thing was truly, oddly messianic.

Between the pages of a Simple Machine.

2005-04-26T18:12:00.000-07:00

I went home to Ann Arbor to spend the first days of Passover with my family. I blew into the kitchen Friday afternoon and made Charoset (delicious passover ritual food made of chopped apples nuts and wine), matzo balls, vegetable soup and washed a ton of dishes. Feeling less bad about ditching the hectic kitchen after that flurry of productivity, I fled to Sara's house.

Sara is finding herself at odds with current trends in the cannon of literary theory and I drank tea and listened respectfully ( and somewhat awed, I must admit, finding myself growing suprisingly excited about getting back to the musty old "things themselves"), and tried on shoes she'd decided to get rid of. I was very tired from my early morning train ride from Chicago and eventually dozed off on her sofa after staring sleepily at the Bakhtin reader on her shelf, an indescribably pleasing shade of purple. When I woke up it was rainy and we were late for dinner at my parents house.

We drove in sara's car, navigating circuitously through the burns park neighborhood to avoid being sighted my any Jews returning from synagogue, trangressing the sabbath such as we were. "I can't believe this" I muttered in deep embarrasment as we wound blocks and blocks out of our way to secure a safe parking spot down the street. I told Sara she was the only one who could understand. And she just about is.

After dinner we returned to Sara's and she graciously offered to lend me her car so I could go visit Jorge. Making sure she was set to work productively, I headed out to her parking lot behind the house. It was dark and I backed the car up slowly, very nervous about hitting the truck parked incoveniently at the bend where I had to cut the wheel and guide myself out the driveway. I cleared the truck and breathed a sigh of relief. At that precise moment, I heard a horrible grinding sound and the car stopped with an awful lurch. I got out and discovered, to my horror, that there is a long cement barrier needlessly seperating her driveway from the adjacent one belonging to the house next door. I had driven the car over the median and it was stuck straddling the divide. I guess it made a fair amount of noise and her pajama clad downstairs neighbors quickly appeared to my aid.

"Oh this is bad" Scott observed. "This happened to my friend's car at the gas station last week and she ruined her transmission by bending the axle."

Soon Sara joined us and calmly assured me not to worry. she got in the car and rammed it in reverse humping the right side of the aged Toyota Tercel wagon back on to the right path. The front left wheel remained stuck at the barrier spinning helplessly. None of us could fathom paying for a tow truck. A better solution had to exist. After much debate we decided the best thing to do would be to construct a wedge under the wheel to guide the the car to safety. Using scott's hydraulic jack, we cranked up the car in preparation for the wedge building, but we still lacked obvious materials like planks of wood. I dragged over a cinder block I found by the back porch which we quickly dismissed, for being too solid and foreboding. The rain continued to sprinkle. I leaned on the car feeling monstrously guilty and embarrased. Gazing into the darkened window of her back seat an Idea came to me, which I couldn't bring myself to suggest in complete earnestness. Piled back there were four paper grocery bags of books Sara had been carting around trying to figure out a way to get rid of.

"well, we got all these books" I teased dolefully.
"Haul em out" she ordered.
"you can't be serious."
Books are holy. You can't use them to build a wedge under your muddy car wheel.
"they'll survive."

Out came the books.

Nathaniel West, Albert Camus, a tourists guide to St. Petersburg. I grabbed them by the fistful and handed them down to Sara who was crouching by the tire.
"keep them coming" she instructed.
Shaking my head in disbelief I obeyed. The more I got used to the idea the more funny it became and the more I started to embrace the scenario.
"Oh good, here's some Phillip Roth" I piped with relish "get that sucker in there tight."
The Organic chemistry course packs were especially prime because they were wide and flexible. I stacked the Tennesse Williams and American Short stories, laying them like erudite bricks in a rickety, desecratory wall.

The only book she refused to use was a cookbook.
Good comparative lit doctoral student.
I almost died of love for her right then.

Eventually we were satisfied with our simple machine. We brought the car down and drew in our breaths. Sara climbed into the drivers seat and once again kicked it into reverse. Without so much as a whisper, the wheel took to our book tower and kissed itself over the wall. Problem solved.

Cheering, we collected the books and found that with the exception of one biology text, whose cover was badly ripped, all the books had survived. We wiped them off and piled them back in the bags, returning them to their sad, waylaid, fate.

I bow respectfully before the manifold usefulness of ideas.

Letter from a Young Poet

2005-04-20T07:37:00.000-07:00

This morning I recieved an email from the 18 year old son of a high school English teacher with whom I have recently been trying to re establish contact. Responding, with charicturistic brevity to my intitial flare in the dark several weeks back, he mentioned his son was writing poetry and begining to publish. It was difficult for me to conceive of this little fawn-like boy from years past as a semi-adult, a poet nonetheless, and I expressed an intense curiosity to see his writing. Rather than send me drafts himself, Mr. C_____ rerouted our corresondence entirely.

E___ wrote to send me some of his poems, each with a brief contextualization. He said he liked some of the poems I sent to his father last week and that he remembers me from when he was young, remembers that I "was really nice."

It feels nice to be remembered as really nice.

I didn't have time to read the poems just then because I was out the door on my way to work. In the kitchen, slathering peanut butter and raspberry jelly on my ritual breakfast sandwhich (to be eaten at work after microwaving for 20 seconds to un-stale the bread, with a cup of watery office-coffee, ), I began to cry.

When I was 15, Mr. C____ told my father at a parent teacher conference that I was writing some poetry that might be worth looking at. My father, stormy, aloof and mysterious is also a high order man of letters and an incredibly sensitive thinker. When we were young, he spun wild epic stories for us at bedtime, tracking the escapades of a motley retinue of characters: The adventuresome brother and sister Shoopy and Boopy, Inky Raisin, the girl who loved butterflies, Gusto Freeze, the loveable popsicle slurping friend from the north pole, Lapidary the monster made of colored stones. He read to us from the dictionary , wrote us songs and quoted verse.

A number of years ago, while poking around my grandparents' basement, my brother I and melted into giggles on the musty floor when we stumbled upon the mother lode of finds: a little journal titled "Rod's Poetry Corner." To our great dismay, it was blank inside save for a few fantastical doodles of duck like creatures in stovepipe hats.

My father and I have never gotten along, according to my mother, because we are too much alike. Truly, I look exactly like him and unfortunately exhibit some of his fretful, obsessive tendencies. Beyond these observations, and a few others, I can honestly say, I do not know him, and he does not know me. I've always been scared of him. I won't catalogue here every bump in the road of our relationship, it would become a book, just that one particular day that weighs heavily on me after all these years.

I was sitting in the Dining room on the computer, clacking away at something when he approached me and repeating my teacher's words, asked if perhaps I would be willing to share my poetry with him sometime. Peer to peer, poet to poet. Bewildered, I looked up at him full of shock, fear and contrite teenage revenge-lust.

"No dad, I don't think so." I answered quietly, turning my head back to the computer screen.

He didn't say anything, he just walked out of the room. In the 10 years since, the horror of what I did continues to compound, nipping at me with wincing waves. I know I broke my father's heart right then. But, I reasoned in the moment, he had been breaking me all my life. He knows this. He knew it then and in a rare gesture, he attempted to extend himself to me, something I know if painfully difficult for him. The obvious thing to do would be to apologize to him. But where to go from there? To this day, my father has only read two poems I wrote (that I'm aware of), a silly piece of 5th grade melodrama inspired by the book Let the Circle be Unbroken which earned an honorable mention in some minor grade school contest, and a poem I wrote this winter at a bookmaking workshop in the public library with my baby sister.

"Don't your parents know about any of this stuff?" Mr. C_____asked me once, as I sat with him and his wife in their study one afternoon, years and years ago when I drove out to Detroit to visit them.
"Of course not."
"You know Abby," he needled "Your parents weren't always married to eachother."
I think I knew what he was getting at but I wasn't buying.
"Yes they were." I said resolutely.

Because, compared to me, they were.

I'm looking forward to Reading E___'s poems. In an abstract way, I'm also looking forward to the day I can share my writing with my father, because only then could I begin to know him and love him instead of fearing him.

I doubt that day will ever come.

Curry Sweet Potato Suicide Soup

2005-04-19T12:34:00.000-07:00

Many people in this part of the world suffer from Seasonal Affect Disorder, meaning, for the most part, owing to a lack of sunshine, they become morbidly depressed in the winter time. My problem, it seems, is an equal opportunity destroyer. My day off started out fine enough but around 5 pm, the sun high in the sky, the air an inviting 75 degress, I found myself, for reasons I can't explain, lying in bed contemplating doom. I stared at the wall blankly for quite some time, sulking about having to be alive, wondering how normal, peaceful people like myself go about obtaining a gun. Incapable of accomplishing any of the actual tasks I needed to do, I became more and more convinced that the only thing I could handle was to cook a nice dinner. Chopping things on a cutting board suddenly struck me as the most mollifying, healing activity in the entire world.

With Herculian effort I rolled out of bed and put on my shoes. I got on my bike and rode up 31st street to the egg store, a little produce mart on Halstead I hadn't visited in a long time. They were experiencing problems with a register and were down to one check out lane. A line of customers snaked all the way through the store, extending to the Bok Choi case in the very back. I'm on the brink of death I thought, I could wait all day, ambling around directionless, dumbly clutching my bag of sweet potatoes and ginger and watching other people shop. One woman picked judiciously through a jumble of green peppers while her children chased eachother around her legs shrieking in a mix of chinese and English. A baby boy cried in his shopping cart seat until placated with a 25 cent bag of cheetos. A man with a hand bastket full of glass bottles of apple juice.

All this, somehow, spoke to me of how hard it is to be alive. grapes in slotted bags, little pearl onions, turnips, living lettuce in plastic domes. My eyes misted tragically.

I ended up making a very nice meal and lay on the sofa, smoking, doing more aimless staring while waiting for Emilio to come home and eat it with me and Heather. The soup came out particularly well and I thought I might share it with you, incase you find yourself in a similarly dark place and needing to cook.

Abbyg.'s Curry Ginger Sweet Potato Suicide Soup

*note: I don't really always follow recipes I kind of concocted this. you should adjust the flavoring to your own tastes. Also, I tend to cook for a large "family" so this will yeild a big pot of soup. Why you'd want to go through the trouble for less is beyond me but cut it in half if you don't need that much

4 med/big sweet potatoes
3-4 cloves of garlic
2 small/med onions
1 little stump fresh ginger
2 tsps. honey
2-ish Tbs curry powder
1-ish Tbs. allspice
1-ish Tbs. cinamon
1 dash cayenne pepper
1 cup vegetable stock (boullion cube is fine)
1/2 cup soy milk
some olive oil
a bunch of water
salt/pepper to taste.

peel and cut up the potatos into big chunks. slice onions, garlic and ginger. in a big pot, sautee the onions in olive oil. add the garlic and ginger, stir a minute or two and then add spices and salt. Add the sweet potato chunks and fill pot with the stock and water until it covers the potatoes. Add the honey. Stir. Cover. Bring to a boil then turn down to simmer. Let cook about 25 minutes until the potatoes are soft. Transfer half or all the soup to a blender and puree in batches. put it back in the pot and stir adding soymilk (if you like) and more water if needed. taste and adjust spices. cook a little while longer on low heat. You could garnish it with a bit of cinnamon or cilantro if you like. I didn't have any cilantro.

Our Blender was fucked up and actually exploded on me while I was blending batch two of the soup. I cursed and almost started crying. As if I needed one more reason to die. Fortunately, Heather helped me clean it up. It looked like a baby had shit all over the kitchen.

Other random stuff I made:

Tumeric Peanut Pilaf

In a rice cooker put in two cups white rice, plus 2-3 cups water. Stir in some salt and a teaspoon or so of Tumeric. When the rice is halfway cooked, pour in some dry roasted peanuts and replace the lid.

Zucchini

1 med onion cut in rings
olive oil
2 large zucchinis cut into half moons
1 TBS.-ish rosemary
Salt and pepper

sautee the onions and add the rosemary, salt, pepper and zucchini. stir and cover, don't let it over cook or it will get soggy.

We ate all this with a bottle of innexpensive Cote Du Rhone. I am hardly a master pairer of food and wine, and besides it was just what I happened to have around but I think it was a lucky combination. As a rule, these Burgundy's are elegant and controlled so there's no wild oak or crazy fruit or sugar to compete with the sweetness of the soup.

An orange and cigarettes for desert.

I Think I'm doing a little better today but I can't be sure.

Beat Me, Shame Me, Abuse Me Lila Gold

2005-04-13T08:27:00.000-07:00

First, A few words of Inspiration from a bellicose publishing magnate:

"Life goes on no matter how much midriff you bare,
no matter how much bad art you look at."

As only fate would have it, I happened to answer the phone at work the other day when Lila Gold called for my boss.
"Tell her I'll call her later" she mouthed, waving a frantic hand. "She wants to TALK and I haven't got the time."

But retailing at 10 bucks an hour, I sure did. And 20 minutes later,after my first but hopefully not last conversation with this woman, my mind was completely blown.

Lila Gold is 71 years old and runs a Jewish publishing company by the name of Nightingale Resources.
"We print Non-Text Judaica" she clipped, haughtily adding "Do you care to know what that is?"
"yes,” I answered meekly.
"Well, when people do Jewish books we have to distinguish between texts like bible, Talmud etc. and non texts."
"So novels? You do literature?"
"Why is that the first thing you think of?!" she exploded "Why don't Jews learn their history! Do you read your history? What Jewish books do you read?" she demanded.
I explained my new fascination with Kate Braverman only to be met with
"You need to read your classics first my girl. However, I have to say, I met Cynthia Ozek and I found her very unpleasent. The more I think about it, Philip Roth is a much better Jewish writer."

time out:

Stick a fork in it lady. I've read so much Roth I could puke.
Ear to the ground lady. I'm a 24 year old Jew about as hip as they come and I'm telling YOU that we're making our own Roths right now. (are you out there Shalom Auslander? I'm ashamed our director of programming myopically nixed our bid to get your book signing slated here at Spertus. Once your memoirs are published, he'll live to regret it I know...)

Time in:

I couldn't shake Lila Gold. And I didn't want to shake Lila Gold. The bombast, the vitriol, the abuse she rained on me was so absurd I wanted to stand there on the phone catching every charicaturistic drop.

After mocking me for being unable to spontaneously recall the name of Braverman’s publisher, then embarrasingly confusing Israel Joshua Singer with his more famous younger brother, Issac Batsheva, we managed to push on. I got so far as taking down the area code of her phone number. 718.
"You're in Brooklyn." I noted. "Whereabouts?"
"It used to be called Flatbush but now they call it Midwood. Why? Are you from New York?"
"I used to live in Greenpoint."
"Whatever FOR?! Unless you're Polish!"

When I explained that I used to work at the the Brooklyn Museum, I ran into her hard-nosed wall of immovable old school . I had entered Judge Lila’s court where contempt is the rule of conduct and she bangs her gavel of justice maniacally over her various and sundry rulings on the world at large:

"I've been supporting the Brooklyn Museum for years. My favorite place though really is the (botanical) Gardens."
"Well now that the weathers nice you ought to be able to enjoy that" I suggested benignly.
"Oh Puh-lease! Life goes on no matter how much midriff you bare,
no matter how much bad art you look at. What a sickening episode with the Saatchi collection... *

(She's talking here about the infamous 1999 Sensations exhibition at which Chris Offili's elephant dung madonna prompted Guilliani to threaten revocation of the museums NEA funding...not to worry patrons of the arts, Mayor Bloomberg took care of that anyways a couple years later in his fateful budget unveiling of 2003)*

...The Saatchis never collected art when I lived in London. What a horrific collection. I really feel bad for you. I really pity your generation. So much bad art."

"But that show put the museum on the map. It brought in so many young people." I attempted defensively, wishing I had Arthur Danto and his eloquent art-world pluralism in my corner of the ring.
"And I bet not a single one bought a membership!" She snarled "The young people love FREE events, free concerts in the park where they go and bring a $100 bottle of wine but will they support the arts? no! never! All they do is hang out in bars in the lower east side, where, I might add, I wouldn't send HITLER to live, talking about DUMBO and SHMUMBO and all their terrible art. A shame. Sickening!"

Time out:

yes this conversation is really happening.
You know the worst part of it?
Crazy Lila Gold couldn't be more perspicuitous.

Time In:

Lila wanted to know where and what I studied. I tried to stand up tall and tell her I'm an Art Historian but tall is still small. Lila, a scholar of renaissance and reformation history shrilly informs me that she could walk through Florence blindfolded and know every intimate step of the city. Lila is upset that I'm not a painter because she wants painting back. ("All this conceptual art, I have to wonder, where are the concepts?") and not just painting, but get this, PASTELS. Her massively talented, good friend Jimmy Wright at the Art Institute ("You really have to look him up, you're wasting your education if you don't") is in a PASTELS phase right now.

Apparently it is Lila's dream to underwrite and curate a traveling exhibition of pastels.
"I defy these genius painters to try, just try to work with pastels. Have you ever been to the Jocelyn in Omaha? They have beautiful painting there. They appreciate Pastels."

At this point my eyes are tearing. I'm crouched on the floor with a fist in my mouth shaking my head in awe. My Boss and coworkers are looking at me, amused, horrified. One began calling my name, fabricating an excuse to end this conversation. I waved them on. It dawned on me that perhaps I'm some kind of sick-o with a Lila Gold bondage and domination fetish. If I cut her off, I'd never have the chance to know what she could have spewed next. How on earth did she get any work done at her publishing company if she spent all day on the phone lambasting perfect strangers? One has to wonder.

Before going I managed to eke one compliment out of her. She wanted to know where I was from.
"Ann Arbor Michigan"
"Are your parents accademics or aging hippies?"
"They were too young to be hippies. I guess they're closer to academics."
"Well good for you! I'll tell you this, all the brightest people I've met have been from Michigan."

Oh Lila!

Eventually I had to extricate myself and get back to work.
"Yes, yes, yes. It was nice talking to you, Abby. Tell A_____to call me later though if she doesn't have the time to talk, I understand."

All I can think about now is writing a book about Lila and submitting it, green, smarmy, completely ungrounded in the classics, to Nightingale press. I'm going to go to New York and I'm going to find her. I'm going to sit in her office and soak her up all day. I'll sit there until the sun sets in colors like the welts she'll leave on my tender little ego.

There is no doubt about. I swear to God. This time next year, the art world will be aglow in pastels...

An Eccentric Famous Author Walks into a Judaica Shop and Asks for Channukah Candles

2005-04-10T23:08:00.000-07:00

Minor celebrities live amongst us and every now and then they visit the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies.

It was a little odd when two women walked in to my store last week asking for Channukah Candles. With Passover (the real Jewish Christmas) looming at the end of this month I recently completed an "Anatomy of a Seder Plate" informational card for our largely unaffiliated, uninformed clientelle base and these days am mostly fielding queries about matzah, chametz, miriam and elijah cups, Haggadah's and other Passover related items. Channukah seems distant. With the exception of our finest steel, brass and painted porcelin specimens, the menorahs and dressings have been retired to storage for the season.

I guided the women to a cabinet in the back of the store and began pulling out various boxes of candles. Hand dipped, scented, beeswax, clearence items, what was their fancy? Unconcerned with the price, they grilled me intently about the size. Will this fit in a normal menorah? how do these compare to the manishevitz ones in the orange boxes we used to sell as a fundraiser back in Hebrew School? Somewhat flummoxed I tried to explain that in theory at least, there was some sort of standardization system if only to ensure the candles burnt long enough to be in compliance with Talmudic law (what that time frame is, i couldn't tell you, we'd have to ask my father, the Rabbi).

One of the women was quite thin, in her 50's, with very dark, intense eyes. It became clear these candles were for her and her friend was just helping her shop.

"Get them both" she urged gesturing to the two pricey boxes in her hand "it's for you art."
"You make Menorahs?" I asked
"Well, I'm working on a design for one right now and at this point its all math." she responded in a way at once painfully deliberate and distracted. "I need to make sure the cups can accomodate a standard candle."

The three of us began heading back to the register. Always latching on to conversation with strangers to alleviate the boredom of retail I pressed on amiably.
"What's your medium?" I asked innocently expecting another mosaicist or metal worker.
The bird-like dark eyed woman paused emiting something between a hiccup and a chuckle.
"Actually, my husband and I are making a menorah out marble and a Bison Jaw. Can you get a picture of the shape in your head?"
"I think so" I nodded struggling to conjure up a vision of what this bizarre tex-mex judaica mash-up might look like.
"Do either of you have background in stone working?" I inquired casually, begining to enter the barcodes in the register.
She paused akwardly before delivering the strangest of answers.
"Well, I'm a writer. A Jewish Writer."

I wasn's sure how to respond to this. Perhaps the only other person who could have elegantly used such an answer in this context would have been Moses himself up on mount Sinai. Fortunately, Her friend intergected here.
"She's really quite well known. A wonderful writer, perhaps you've read her work, this is Kate Braverman you have here!"
The name did not register.
"I want to be a Jewish writer" I chirped. "I have an idea for a book but I'm too scared to write it, you know, my family and all..."
"Oh don't worry about that!" Braverman assured me "By the time its written they won't care. That's what I've found."

Right. sure.
"Tell me," she mused spacily, appealing to me flatteringly as some sort of comrad "Do you find that people are unreceptive to your writing as a Jewish woman unless you've had some kind of prim, perfect life?"
This confused me.
"Well what kind of story would that make?" I wondered with a sly grin, silently recalling the opening lines of Anna Karenina where Tolstoy states that all happy families are alike while all unhappy ones are each miserable in a unique way.

As I waited for her credit card to go through I hurridly scribbled my blog and email address on a post-it note and stuck it on her bag.
"I would really love to see a picture of your menorah." I said in complete earnestness.
"But of course!" Braverman nodded enthusiastically. "I'll send you a JPEG."

As soon as they left I immediately googled her name and found that she has written several novels and books of poetry and short fiction. Several of which have won some presigious awards. Entranced I stopped at the Harold Washington on my way home from work and checked out two of them: Lithium for Medea (a novel) and Lullaby for Sinners (poems).
So far I've only had the time to read a few poems, which honestly, are rather good.

I'm preparing to enter the eccentric world of Kate Braverman. And regretting I didn't ask her for her email address when I gave her mine.

Adventures in (attempted) Consuming

2005-04-05T18:41:00.000-07:00

For people of means, making major purchases is a smooth and effortless process.

When you are poor you will be thwarted every step of the way.

I woke up Monday morning parched, head splitting and miserable. Sunday night had ended somehwere between three and four in the morning with an old classic: passed out on the ashland bus. I stood with my bike in the bus shelter vaguely wishing I were sober enough to ride the 7 miles home, knowing full well I wasn't. I wondered about the middle aged woman waiting there with me and clumsily offered her a cigarette wishing my spanish were anything more advanced than "quierre una?...si, tengo frio."

Feeling utterly powerless to control the downward spiraling unfoldings of what I suppose could be called a love life, I burst into conciousness that morning determined to wrest action from impotence. You cannot make anyone love you. You cannot make anything make sense but shit if you can't heal your soul by spending some money. This, I decided, was the day I buy a computer.

Pulling jeans over my grimy, slept in underclothes, I left the house with no more than a glass of water in my belly and began peddling furiously up to north michigan avenue. I'd made a hurried call to the apple store to inquire about financing and spoke to a nice man named Derrick. I'd gotten a mile down Archer before pausing under a highway overpass to call him again. I realized I'd left my Student ID (vital for the fake-out education discount, Apple, after all, believes in our minds) at home. Over the rush of highway 55 traffic overheard, Derrick informed me a pay stub would do. through some miracle, I unearthed one in my backpack, a wrinkled one dating from november covered in phone numbers and other ephemera.

I couldn't find anywhere to park my bike outside the apple store and wandered around aimlessly casing the block for some sort of suitable parking meter or something for which I ened up backtracking a block and a half to the burberry store. Once inside I located Derrick who got me set up on a computer applying for the apple credit card. I was promptly denied, which stung, and had I not been in such a manic phase, might have served as some ominous, leveling reminder that I am much too poor to be making this kind of ridiculous investment. Not to be detered, I used the twinkling display G5 to navigate myself to the nearest TCF branch three blocks away, the bank that housed the sum total of my lifes savings, 700 dollars, in a dormant CD account.

Pacing the bank sweaty and hungry, I learned that closing a Michigan account in Illinois was no simple affair. Eventually the Branch Manager invited me into his office. I fidgited nervously thinking what a waste of this important man's time I and my piddly bank account were and tried to compensate by assuring him repeatedly that I was only cashing in to buy a computer not because I'd had anything but excellent experiences with the TCF company. This last year my account limpingly managed to acrue a whopping $1.40 in interest. Closing it before it's maturation date (funnily enough, my birthday) would mean a $25 penalty fee. How true is the old addage that one must have money in order to make money.

Feeling highly eccentric, I ambled back in to the apple store with 6 crisp one hundred dollar bills folded into quarters in my hip pocket and a grubby ATM receipt in my hand, on which I'd scribbled all sorts of hurried calculations. As I debated warranties and memory upgrades with Angee, the delightful woman helping me, this paper served as some sort of mystical codex.

"well, how much do you have to spend?" she asked.
"uh" I said unwrinkling the paper and double checking my addition "$1330."
I'd arrived at this figure after some judicious skin-of-teeth grocery budgeting. I was elated and ashamed.Wave after wave of self-concious eccentricity washed over me. I shifted uneasily in my peeling vinyl boots and glanced wistfully at all the nice people loading up on docks and speakers for their ipod minis.

Angee felt bad for me that I couldn't afford to put out the extra hundred dollars for a printer which would be fully refunded later via rebate. "Bring in the money with your receipt within 14 days and I'll hook it up for you" she said earnestly.
I believe her.

While my RAM was installed I attempted to eat some tupperwared leftovers on the stoop of the historical society but was shooed away by a grumpy proprietor. Of all places, i sought refuge in the American Girls Place store on Rush street, an insane experience in and of itself (blog forthcoming). While I wandered around the gold coast shopping district, my mind kept returning to the simple thought: "I am now the kind of person who owns a computer. And not just a computer, an Apple computer. " I was a Modern Times charlie chaplan exploring the stage set cogs of commodity fetishism. It felt gross, and grosser still, it felt good.

My computer arrived in a glossy, boxy cardboard briefcase. I couldn't bear to ruin the thrill of unpacking it ceremoniously at home so it seemed I was in for still more humiliation and idiocy. No car, no cab money. Just me (hangover now replaced with peculiar adrenaline induced by mild bi-polar disorder and high of having just spent more money than I've ever spent in my whole life), my green bike, and this briefcase. Heading south, he three of us merged with unsteady determination into the rushour traffic on Michigan Avenue. I said a silent thankyou that my mother could not see me, weaving helmetless, around cabs and city buses, the briefcase swinging like a suicidal pendulum bent on self-destruction.

I made it down to school and found myles who thankfully, helped me carry everything home on the bus. My mania lasted just long enough for me to cook dinner for the house and blabber like wound up chattering teeth about my time spent in the American girls store. By the time I actually set up my computer I was following the trajectory of the battery I was attempting to calibrate: wearing down. When I encountered problems downloading limewire I was too wasted to even care and shruggingly, closed it up and settled down with a book. One of those old-fashioned books.

Today I'm convinced that if I were rich and had bought the 14 inch screen, Limewire would download without a hitch. I might be a poor eccentric but money is downright weird.

Life In Shadows

2005-03-18T09:36:00.000-08:00

The new exhibit opening this Sunday at the Spertus museum (where I work) is entitled, Life in Shadows: Hidden Children and the Holocaust. The day before I left for my vacation to the holy land (I'm talking about Florida) I had the opportunity to walk through the show in its final phase of preparation.

My Boss encouraged me to go and I balked. It was a sunny day. A nice day. Moreover, I was terrified to go in. Last week, we got a debriefing from the museum director about the show and related programing. "When people ask what age this exhibit is appropriate for" she said " we tell them about 10 and up for Jewish children, Middle School and up for non-Jews."

And there you have it.

Growing up in Jewish day school we were started young. Every year on Yom Ha Shoa (Day of Holocaust remembrance), the whole school was herded into the chapel where we watched videos of the most grisly, graphic death camp footage. After one such viewing in 7th grade, I was fully unable to sleep for an entire month. My poor mother had to sit with me at the edge of my bed smoothing the blankets around my legs for an hour everynight alternating between soothing small talk and impotent attempts at explaining all this to her petrified young daughter. I learned to avoid holocaust memorials, museums and exhibits. On class field trips, I begged to be permitted to wait in the lobby. Once, a teacher forced me to enter, saying I had to see it. I defied her by putting my coat over my head and crying in the steamy fog of my hot breath in the nylon tent over my face. My mother assured me that it was ok. That I would deal with it when I was ready.

12 years later, it occures to me that I'm too ready.

Passing through the threshold of the glass doors, I immediately wished I wasn't alone. I wanted a hand to hold in silence. Funnily enough, I wasn't feeling picky. I would have settled for someone who, in words unspoken, simply understood what all this meant to me (was forced to mean to me), or someone who, moving along side me, was quietly learning, or trying to learn what it meant.

I remember clearly one particular night when Jorge and I were up drinking late. We had been talking about history or identity or something and is wont to happen when he's drunk, he went off on a rampage. "What Holocaust, Abby? Whose Holocaust, Abby?" He sputtered scooping at the air with with his arms, the smoke from his cigarette tracing angry question marks over the table.

I knew he was right. And I felt ashamed. How did jews obtain exclusive rights to "The" Holocaust? The next day, Jorge apologized for being a dick but since then I've tried to qualify the term. I keep trying different things but none seem to sound right. "The Nazi Holocaust", "The Jewish Holocaust" (uh, which one?), "The 20th Century European Holocaust."

Pretty much the first thing non-jews know about jews is that they aren't supposed to eat pork. The next thing they know is that we live in the shadow of this aspect of our history. It's very hard to explain to people. One of the books I unpacked in the store that we ordered to accompany the exhibit was a giant tome. About 2000 pages thick, on the order of a massive English dictionary, it was a dossier of Jewish French children who went missing in the war. What the fuck was this book really I had to wonder, flipping through it tearily. Is this a coffee table book? If it is, can anyone understand how fucked up this makes a person?

As poets have well documented, death is intimately hinged to the deepest, desperate kind of arousal. There is nothing quite like a reminder of our mortality to drive us to lovemaking, late night whispering, the need-whatever the cost- not to feel alone.

I have only ever had one Jewish boyfriend. That was years ago, in college. He was barely Jewish really; his family had a christmas tree. Jewish only in his classic neuroticism, his affection for woody allen, jazz music, New York city, but also lineage. Jewish not because of what he did but because of what he was. I remember one night when we lay awake in bed, in the dark, sharing our family holocaust stories. I told him how my grandmother moved here from Frankfurt at the age of three because back in the thirties, my great grandfather had a strange premonition. He left everything he knew and moved his wife and 5 daughters over seas to small town Ohio. His family in Germany thought he was crazy. A decade later, they were all dead.

J___'s grandfather had been a wealthy dutchman who lost everything in the war. Moving to the states penniless, he changed his name so as to appear less Jewish. J__, being an only child, bears this family name as a middle name.

I also remember one night when we were both indescribably depressed. He and my housemate had been in a bad car accident earlier in the day and death was too much on his mind for us to enjoy the party we were at. We went back to his house and in complete silence he drew us a bath. He put on some music, a piece I can't remember, I just remember him telling me it had been composed in a nazi death camp. In the bathroom was a small blue neon light, that made the room glow eerily. In silence, we took off our clothes and climbed into the hot blue water, bringing a bottle of whiskey with us. In silence, we sat in the the darkness, the blue glow and the music and the whiskey and the weight.

I have never told anyone about this. I don't think. It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. He understood nothing about me. But there was something he could understand. We could understand. I loved him very much for reasons like this, reasons that shouldn't matter but do.

I thought about all this as I moved through the show. As predicted, I shed many tears absorbing the texts and looking at the relics: worn childrens boots a three year old wore at the time of his camp's liberation, an olive green wristwatch given to one terrified little boy by his older brother who promised to come back and claim it in two weeks but never did, the rosaries and peasent blouses kids in hiding used to disguise themselves, photographs of tiny tattood arms.

Truly, identity is a project, one that takes many hands. What Nazi Germany may have started, we are constantly finishing. Over and Over. It's oppressive.

I'm a cry baby and a Jew.

Robbins Eggs and Other Little Blues

2005-03-09T21:43:00.000-08:00

I put down Mark Dehry's Pyrotechnic Insanitarium.
After plowing through 60 pages straight without so much as glancing up, just picking up my ears every now and then wondering if my phone would ring, I realized I'd been curled so tightly in my reading chair that my legs were full of pain. Odd how a book published only six years ago already seems such a quaint relic. All that rhapsodic late '90s culture jamming and millenial hysteria...by now we've already begun to make peace...

I pulled open a drawer and fished for some little blue sleeping pills. I thought the supply was depleted but I unearthed half a sheet of foil backed drug store babies. Blues, in a ideal world of capping off a very unideal night, should mean valiums but Im hardly so lucky. For a fleeting instant the indefatigable adolescent urge to eat them all passed through my mind. A joke that would ultimately accomplish nothing more than making me sleep way too late tommorrow and socking my tender liver with a taxing all nighter of it's own.

The little blues have been a constant buddy for as long as I can remember but in the last few months have been kind of like a long-distance friend with whom, fortunately, I've been too busy to keep in touch. Tonight just seemed like one of those bummer nights, the kind that at some point, you just have to kiss on the forhead and walk away from, padding sock-footed down a hall of groggy bliss.

I had some trouble with the pull tab, snarky little gesture at perforation, since my wrist, it seems, has not fully healed from my bike accident weeks ago. This is a concern that hovers at the periphery of my very un-medically insured mind, one I shove away with the occasional moment of lamely self-administered joint massage and reminders not to give in to hypochodriacal fretting.

As I shook the little blues into my palm, one bounced out and landed in the folds of my sweatshirted lap. In that moment, I was assailed by a very ancient memory.

Years and years ago, Ari's family lived out in Ypsilanti on little bit of property. We must have been in Kindergarden and sometimes I'd go over there to play. His mom drove a maroon dodge minivan. The outside was maroon and so was the inside. Everyone has one of these cars in her memory. I can see and feel the dark maroon dot patternation in the upolstory, the soothing constancy of the maroom vinyl steering wheel to match.

It was a sunny day and we played in the yard that might have been more acerage than yard but I can't remember. Traipsing around, we stumbled upon a broken robbin's egg lying on the ground. A black-flecked broken little bit of blue. The inside of the shell was white, crusted with a bit of sallow albumen or some other appropriately eggish substance, mildly discomfitting when observed out in nature rather than the kitchen. We bent down on our scabby knees to inspect it, fully aware that it was an empty shell that had at some point in time housed a living, or once living creature.

Nature is, of course, miraculous, especially to five year olds but I was a little grossed out. Ari was decidely more enthusiastic. What else would you expect from a boy who used to coat his fingers with elmers glue and then peel it off tortuously infront of squealing girls all the while exclaiming "I'm Queen Frosteen!". Years later, when our fifth grade class incubated, hatched and raised baby quails as a science project, he figured prominently in the vociferous little-boy lobby for access to the eggs that failed to hatch. Our teacher acquiesced and between the cracks of my fingers I glanced nervously down the rectangular table as they peeled back the shells on raggedy pieces of brown paper towling and prodded at the sticky, still born chicks, poking their tiny eye balls with pencils.

I went down to the kitchen and finished the whiskey. Tightening my sweater against the draft, I sat down and waited for the pills to explore my circulatory system, sending out runners in reconnaisance mission Cozy. Slightly more attuned than usual to the constant hum of cars passing outside the window on 55, I'm still sitting and waiting, thinking about that robbin's egg and all my other little blues...

What Happens to the Dream (Vacation) Deferred?

2005-03-09T10:43:00.000-08:00

Emilio and I spent a good week or so infront of his computer everynight interloping between three open internet windows: weather.com, Ata.com and cheap tickets.com. Plainly, we decided we would kill ourselves if we didn't go on vacation. With no money, weak adventuring spirit, and terminal inability to follow through with any plans we weren't getting far.

At a certain point it occured to me that obsessivly researching vacations had in some warped way, become vacation for us. "Isn't this just symptomatic of the condition in which we live?" I mourned in exasperation. All we want is a little beach, a little sunshine...is that asking for too much?

Loopy from the winter doldrum desperation, neck-kinking screen staring, and soul crushing money worrying, we decided the most fruitful way to proceed with our dreaming and scheming would be to smoke some pot and write a book. Whic brings us to:

Floridian Somnambulist Death March
(A Vacation Adventure)
By
Abbyg. and Emilio

A tale in which two desperate characters (uh, Abbyg. and Emilio) forced to forgo sleep accomodations on vacation due to lack of funds, embark on a sleepwalking crime spree through the state of Florida.

The book has been "printed" and I am happy to send you a copy. Just email me (sweetabbyg@yahoo.com)

As a post-script, it looks like we will both be getting our vacations afterall. Emilio left this morning for North Carolina and In two weeks Avi and I will be heading south to...where else?...Florida!

An Asshole Walks into a Judaica Shop and Asks for a Tallit

2005-03-06T22:19:00.000-08:00

As some of you may or may not know, I gift wrap Judaica for a living.
Barely a living.
I'm not sure how I ended up with this job but it is a never ending source of amusement to me the way that after all these years of running from my faith, all of a sudden I'm some sort of scholarly authority on the premises. When customers need the hebrew on their jewlery translated or some peculiar custom explained, inevitably, they get turned over to me. I know I should have learned this a long time ago but it seems I'm constantly being reminded that the Judaism I grew up with is quite different from the Judaism many other Jews know.

People just love to browse in overpriced gift shops, and as is the nature of retail work, I am obliged to kiss their asses, fetch tray after tray of roman glass star of david pendants for old grannies who I know have come only to finger every bit of merchandise only to proclaim everything too expensive and leave with, at most, a bar-mitzvah greeting card. Without a doubt the most annoying item in the store to suffer with non-commital shoppers are the talitot, or Prayer shawls. I'm not sure what exactly the significance of these prayer shawlsis. God told the men they should make themselves a four cornered garment with fringes. So they wear them. As with all things jewish, the type of prayer shawl (or yarmulka, or skirt style, head scarf etc. etc.) you wear announces to the world just what kind of jew you are. small black suede yarmulka? Very nice frum (religious) Yeshiva boy who might have broken with his insular world just long enough to get an MBA at Wharton before hightailing it home and marrying promptly. A flaxen talit woven with a rainbow of colored stripes, a new age renewal hippy jew.

My dad only ever had two Talitot that I know of. His standard issue white with black stripes that he wears at services, the folds of which slip off his shoulders and are forever in need of adjusting during his sermons, and an all white one which he wore at his wedding and every year for yom kippur. My father (who, incidentally, taught me how to dumspter dive a good ten years before any punks did) is also the type who wears his shoes out until the soles virtually cease to exist and his sweaters until his elbows are poking out of holes in the sleeves. It never really occured to me then that there was a whole world of fashion connected to these basic ceremonial objects. Unfortunately, you learn something new each day.

In the shop today I overheard parents calling to children named the following attrocities: Dakota, Sherridan, and Buddy. Who are these people? Are they really Jewish? Buddy's story was the tragic one. It seems he's got a bar mitzvah coming up and mom and dad brought him in today to do a little Tallit shopping. I heaved out pile after pile of shawls, each folded neatly in its own embroidered bag, for them to paw through. Buddy, like a good 12 year old boy, immediatly found one he liked and would have prefered to end the shopping expedition right there. This, however, was not acceptable to his dad who, over the course of a painful half hour, would prove himself one monster dick.

Buddy helped his mom try on a lovely hand painted silk shawl and Yarmulka. "It looks nice on you mom" he said sweetly as she patted herself and pivoted in her mirror. "Check it out dad, doesn't it look good on her?"
"What are you doing?" Dad shook his head in disgust. "We're here for HIM, not you."
Crushed, she removed the ensemble.

But it seems they weren't there for the kid because then dad starts asking "yeah, do you have anything in black? I'm wearing a black suit and I want a tallit to match."

To match? Huh?
four corners. fringers. That's all god said. Nowhere in there is a "matching" clause. I pulled out all the white and black ones and as he looked through them he kept asking buddy "Are you sure that's the one you want? That's the one? How about this one? or This one?" At one point he picked up one which mom pointed out was $400.
"What are you? An accountant?" He snarled. Wounded, she wandered off to look at some books.

Dad's voice softened when he found a Talit he liked. Embroidered around the collar was the Hebrew blessing one says when donning the garment. He, of course, did not know this. I had to explain it and translate it for him. Then came the search for a Yarmulka to match. Silver or black? decorated or not? He enlisted Buddy for help, who had by this time, been slumped against a display case, glassy eyed and miserable for a good 15 minutes. Mom reappeared like some meek mongerel puppy and while I helped other customers I could hear his abuse escalating. "..oh Don't bring that up now. That is in such poor taste. Can't you seem I'm here shopping with MY son?!"

This guy was such a bag of dicks. I wanted him out of the store. I wanted him out the world. I wanted to strangle him to death with crappy prayer shawl that he didn't give a shit about besides the fact that it matched his new suit and yarmulka. I wanted to punch his face, tell his wife to get a life and give poor buddy a hug and his first cigarette.

Finally the dad approached the register ready to pay for everything. Amazing. Someone was actually buying not one, but two Talitot instead of just making me unfold and refold them forever and ever. If I worked on commssion I would have made bank but who even cares. Stowing all my firey politcal ideology I just kept smiling as I bagged up his stuff.

"Have a nice evening" I said to dad and then pausing, trying to catch buddy's eye and pass him a sly wink, added "And Mazel Tov on your bar-mitzvah."
"Thanks" He replied "It's going to be super."

A Beer for a A Song

2005-03-04T08:26:00.000-08:00

I am looking back at all the years I spent paying for drinks in bars and feeling a little bit foolish. Why it took me so many years to figure this out I don't know, but last night it finally dawned on me: In this moment of obscene late capitalism, when anything and everything is for sale, there is no reason why I shouldn't be bartering my pitiful services in exchange for goods...

When I called Len from Shelley's house last night I wasn't sure if I was investigating the possibility of a ride home or angling to go out and find some adventure. He and Raf were just about to leave Texas and hit the bars.
"If you guys are going out to pick up women, I don't want to get in the way of that!"
"Are you kidding?" Said Raf, a PHD student who recently, had been making a scholarly inquiry into the lies, narratives and myths men tell themselves when attempting to pick up women in bars (as you can imagine, the field reserach aspect of this paper involved going out for a lot of drinking and fun). "Cuteness begets more cuteness. Our Wing-Woman you shall be!"

Hip-Hop night at Lava Lounge is certainly a change of scenery. The bars I frequent, blessed but alas, are always filled with enclaves of sullen hipsters, looking hot but never approachable. I quickly noticed two things about Lava lounge:1) It was full of (gasp!) black, brown and yellow people and 2) Nearly all of them were men. Instantly, I felt a little insecure about the way I looked, my bangs ragged from yesterday's miserable self-administered hair cut butchery, wearing a pilly, holey (but thankfully at least, very tight) home-screen-printed thrift store sweatshirt. "These people dress like they have real jobs" I whispered nervously, more accustomed to the self-conciously anti-glamour stylings of desultory twenty somthings cobbling together no real justification for their pricey liberal arts degrees as temps, dog walkers and coffee servers.

Jack and coke's and corona's were on special and when Raf bought the first round I opted for the latter with two points of reason in mind: first, go easy tonight, just go easy. two, drinking corona would make me feel like I were on the beach. "that only means their advertising has worked on you." raf cited cynically. "Nonsense." I replied lifting the bottle to my ear. "If I listen carefully, I can hear all the peaceful beach sounds. It's like I'm holding a crystal conch."

When the boy's turn came up at pool (I declined to participate assuring them my bumbling presence would only be a hindrance) I needed something to do. And a new drink. I picked up my bag and migrated back into the front room, casing the bar in search of a John. Sitting down on a leather sofa-lette I pulled out a notebook and pen, began doodling mysteriously and waited. A handsome man sat down next to me and stared into the crowd, nodding his head slightly to the music. Before I had a chance to think about it, I could hear myself speaking to him.

"Excuse me. Any chance I could trade you a poem for a beer?"
"you want to write me a poem?"
"Well yes. Actually, you can get me started. Give me four words, any four you want and I'll write a poem with them right now."
He mulled this over briefly with a twinkly sort of grin.
"Alright. you ready for my words? Here they are:

Royalty
Confidence
Inhibition
Pride

Now, what kind of beer you want?"
"Corona would be fine." I smiled.

The guy disappeared to the bar and I took stock of my task. Clearly I had been catapulted into an incredibly masculine realm. Give the people what they want I decided. It was his three dollars, might as well make him happy. I worked briskly in the red light and thumping music. What emerged was a page of verse loosley about the dynamics of a pride of lions, subtely allowing my John to see him self as the ruling, roaring head. I ripped it from my notebook and exchanged it for the beer he'd brought me. What Len and Raf told me later was that I was, at this point, under no obligation to stick around, but I've never been great at the fuck and run. I watched him read the page, his head nodding, lightly shaking the curly strands that bobbled at the edge where it had become detached from the spriral of wire binding.

"Alright?" I asked feeling like I'd just administered a different kind of job with my hand.
"Yes. Thank you...so when's your novel coming out?"
I laughed and felt bad just leaving so I stuck around and talked to my new friend Otto for a while which, despite his being a nice, handsome guy, proved considerably harder work than cranking out a poem.

I returned to the pool table to check on the game. The boys were winning and in good spirits. I told len that next time I do this I ought to bring a piece of carbon to stick between my pages, since I tend to keep obsessive track of everything I produce.
"Naw...let it go abby, just let it be ephemeral."

Aglow with success, I returned for another hit. Resettling in my same spot I nabbed a dude sitting in that way that some men do, slouched down, arms and legs splayed, taking up a whole lot of space. I gave him my line.
"You want me to buy you a beer?" he asked like it was not big deal.
"No. Well, not exactly, I'd like to work for it. Like we barter..."
His four words:

Love
Immaculate
Unbelievable
Sex

Why are men so fucking funny? That's all I want to know. Or maybe it was just these men. The sallow rockstars boys I lust after, if I could even get them to play this game with me in the first place, would probably offer things like "deconstruction, provincial, tarot and curt" Me? I'd be so irritated at someone trying to scam me like this I'd do "melifluous, animadversion, philatalist, and toast."

but It's not a scam.
People really enjoy this. This time I stuck around just long enough to watch the guy read my work. For some reason this is important to me. It's importatnt that they feel satisfied, like they got a good deal. Upon finishing he closed his eyes momentarily and extended his hand for me to half shake, half slap like we were Bra's like I did a job well done.

Just as we were finishing this transaction, Len appeared with his coat. "We leaving now?" I asked. "but I just got this beer!" The three of us retreated back to the pool table, the site of a recent crushing defeat I later learned and shared my sort-of hard earned corona.

I listened to the waves and reminded myself to keep it ephemeral

The One to Skip

2005-02-28T09:27:00.000-08:00

My world is a version of yours.

A version.
*
Words cannot describe the disapointment of waking up this morning and finding that, against all possible hope, I was still alive.

I had been dreaming about pieces of water colour paper soaking in coloured solutions so diluted the hues were scarecely perceptible. I can't remember what this meant but somehow, these sodden, tinted sheets of paper explained me to myself. Signifier and signified coupled in almost divine unity, I fought desperately to keep the sign fixed in my mind. The image soothed me inefably and it seemed all the secrets of the world were revealed to me as I watched the paper float silently atop vaguely orange-ish water in pyrex dishes.

I was happy there, deep down under, but against my wishes, something tugged on my line.

I began barreling towards conciousness at break neck speed, the tranquility curdled by nitrogen invading blood, chaos wresting peace. When I got there the bends were crippling. Just before breaking through the surface, I lost the papers. The trays of delicate solutions emptied out into a stormy sea of sentience and in chemical terms became nothing more than parts per millions, parts per zillions and so on forever.

The cold and snow today is peaceful, cleans out my lungs and calms me. I'm fixated on peace and calm today, after the rock and roll, whiskey and heartbreaking ravages of last night. This then, is also one of those days when, inexplicably, everything brings tears to my eyes. On the way to work I rode the train all the way around the loop instead of getting off and walking a few extra blocks like I usually do. It felt peaceful on the train. I was moving through an alien world. Chicago is a piece of this alien world.

Winding the corner onto Lake, I peered into the secret world of a parking garage. The cars were parked on an incline, leaning to one side and looking like they'd tumble down were someone to flick the first one in the row. Rolling, crashing like steel dominos they'd cascade clunkily down the concrete slope, glass shattering, metal groaning. This made me want to cry for no reason I can explain.

I thought aboug going to the art museum after picking up my pay check. One would be hard pressed to find a more peaceful place than still, silent galleries. Late last night, I was saying to someone how painting is like a stuffed vaccum cleaner bag. It did it's job. It's over. It has passed from the realm of potentiation. My analogy-generating machines clearly hampered by a stretch of 24 wakeful hours, a smokey campfire I'd doused with alcohol. I don't understand why I was being so contrary. I could have just as easily recounted how when I was younger I would sit and meditate in front of the signature Mark Rothko at every museum I visited. I would sit for a very long time until my legs cramped up and tears streamed down my cheeks. At the carnegie museum in Pittsburgh, there was a particular Sam Francis painting I used to drop in on regularly as if it were some child with whom I'd established visitation rights. In my solipsistic 19 year old world, I was convinced that this painting was a plastic embodiment of a poem I had written entitled "The Historyless Morning" and privately refered to the "composition no. 12" or whatever it was called, by the same title.

My sentimentality knows no bounds of taste or reason and it was this, truly, that led me to study art in the first place. I miss that version of myself and on days like today I catch a glimpse of it.

If I had a magic genie lamp the first thing I'd wish for would be a 1000 more wishes. the second thing I'd wish for would be to be lying on the beach right now. Any beach, it doesn't matter as long as the sun is toasting my skin and its all red and yellow and orange under my eyelids and the beach sounds and voices sound echoey and far away until people walk by and then they grow louder and then fainter again as they pass in the sand. My Third wish would be to regularly cry again in front of paintings.

Instead of going to the museum, I might just get on a train I don't normally ride and ride it for a long time and just go where it goes and watch the snow.

Hopefully in a day or two I'll feel better. I'm going to quit drinking and smoking for three days.
I stop just short of making that a promise.