White gauze curtain

Okay, just to finish the thread about fiction vs memoir. It's pretty clear that most of you want me to write a novel. "More artistic license," my friend Steve whispered into my ear at Tosca last night. I agree. I don't think I could bear to declare "this is real" in a longform narrative. In other words, not to have the gauzy curtain of fiction to protect me. My skin is not so thick. It's enough to do that here in the blogosphere where there are no editors or economics to smack me down. I've already told you how hard this is for me.

So I choose the abyss of nothingness. It's cleaner. It's like...starting in a clean little room instead of eyeballs deep in landfill. Even though your little room that is all white and clutter-free is  in the middle of the landfill. When you open the door the wall of crap starts oozing in. It's easier to keep the door closed while I write than to feel myself getting sucked into the turgid quicksand of "reality." The tidal wave of shit in your brain.

Since I went to the dump a couple of times on Saturday to joyfully heave truckloads of my parents' crap into its welcoming slope...to watch the broken toys and files from 2001 get immediately turned under by the tractor and thus becoming one with the earth...I feel...better. Like I'm a better person. And even more sure that I need a clutter- free room in which to distill my narrative into something beautiful. For me and hopefully for you. So it's decided: I will stick to the novel.

It's weird bumping into you who are reading this blog. "In person." It's like we've been in close touch, only it's one way. Once you say, "I've been reading your blog," there is a moment of recognition when we look into each others' eyes. I run through a list of "oh shits" then "oh wells." We can start our conversation in a different place. It's like we stood together on the tailgate of the truck and watched the tractor shovel all of my shit into the landfill of our collective consciousness. We can thus dispense with my story in short order and focus on yours. There is an efficiency I quite like.

I'm feeling a sense of gratitude. For you. I am writing to you now. I can just do that. I can just tell you that I know you are there. You can hide and lurk and be anonymous, and that's okay. I still feel you behind the white gauze curtain, the one that still protects me even here, in this "reality" which is messy and unruly. You are bold enough to touch me through the sheer fabric. I still love you. I feel your heartbeat. Come closer. Don't be afraid. My skin is thin but not that thin.

Which abyss?

Only a few people, maybe the writers, are interested in the Fiction vs Memoir question. The rest of you might want to skip this post. Don't worry, I just need to get this out of my system.

Last night I read David Foster Wallace's intro to The Best American Essays 2007 - in which he freely admits he "isn't sure what an essay even is." The first astonishing selection Werner felt very much like a short story. Was it, as he suggests, "narrative essay?" Whoa.

Anyway, he says:

"Writing-wise, fiction is scarier, but nonfiction is harder--because nonfiction's based in reality, and today's felt reality is overwhelmingly, circuit-blowingly huge and complex. Whereas fiction comes out of nothing. Actually, so wait: the truth is that both genres are scary; both feel like they're executed on tightropes, over the abysses--it's the abysses that are different. Fiction's abyss is silence, nada. Whereas nonfiction's abyss is Total Noise, the seething static of every particular thing and experience, and one's total freedom of infinite choice about what to choose to attend to and represent and connect, and how, and why, etc.

"...With a few big exceptions, I don't much care for abreactive or confessional memoirs. I'm not sure how to explain this. There is probably a sound, serious argument to be made about the popularity of confessional memoirs as a symptom of something especially sick and narcissistic/voyeuristic about U.S. culture right now. About certain deep connections between narcissism and voyeurism in the mediated psyche. But this isn't it. I think the real reason is that I just don't trust them. Memoirs/confessions I mean. Not so much their factual truth as their agenda. The sense I get from a lot of contemporary memoirs is that they have an unconscious and unacknowledged project, which is to make the memoirist seem as endlessly fascinating and important to the reader as they are to themselves. I find most of them sad in a way that I don't think their authors intend. There are, to be sure, some memoirish-type pieces in this year's BAE--although these tend either to be about hair-raisingly unusual circumstances or else to use the confessional stuff as part of a larger and (to me) much richer scheme or story."

Okay, so it kind of sounds like DFW votes for fiction, or nonabreactive nonfiction. The abyss...there is always the abyss, whether it's Nothing or Total Noise. I guess I am using the blog to grapple with the Noise, to quiet some of it. I hope it doesn't feel like my agenda is to make myself endlessly fascinating. But I don't really think that's it for me. I have enough places where I confess. It's really about telling a story and not being afraid of you, the reader. Is that abreactive? Don't know. Maybe.

The abyss of nothingness where fiction hovers...It is a scary place, and one to which I am irrationally drawn. And maybe there is abreaction in fiction, too.

DFW hung himself three years ago. Maybe he could have used a little more abreaction.

Abreaction

This is for the rest of you.

I like to drink ginger tea with vodka. On a Monday night.

I am married and have an imaginary lover whom I may not be seeing but whom I still love.

I have two therapists.

I need two therapists and two men. At least.

I have a big appetite.

I like to fuck.

I am older than most of my friends. Except the ones that are much older than me.

I am my Mother's mother.

My children are smarter than me.

I am "exceptionally orgasmic."

I am not afraid of you.

I don't want to take care of you.

I am not responsible for you.

Fiction vs Memoir

I have a novel that is well underway. Maybe you do, too. I have worked hard at fictionalizing my characters. But a bunch of you, my friends, are telling me to consider writing a memoir instead. Or maybe in addition.

Memoir scares the fuck out of me. I feel like writing a memoir is more egotistical than writing fiction. Why? In both instances, the writer is saying, "I've written something of universal value, something that will entertain you, and give you insight, and remind you of yourself - either by how different the characters are from you or how similar. And I want you to spend some time reading it." This is true of both fiction and nonfiction, right?

Why do I feel okay about blogging but not about memoir? Isn't blogging a form of memoir? It is, in this Wikipedia sense: In ancient Greece and Rome, memoirs were like "memos," pieces of unfinished and unpublished writing which a writer might use as a memory aid to make a more finished document later on.

In fiction, I create a couple of layers of protection against the accusing eye of imaginary readers. But I'm writing about my experience. Duh. When I fictionalize, I change names and locations and sometimes merge two or three people into one. I do that enough to say that I do it, so that imaginary readers will not be able to point fingers at me and say, "You are wrong about her/me!" If it's fiction, all you have to say is, "Yes, but it's fiction. I am allowed to be wrong."

And that imagined response has given me comfort and freedom. Would I be able to own that stance in writing a memoir? Could I say, "Yes, I may be wrong. But it is how I experienced you, or that event." I just don't know.

Writing fiction is harder than writing a blog. For me. To achieve an authentic voice in an imagined parallel universe is hard.

I guess I want to ask You: Should I finish my novel as a piece of third person fiction about love, marriage, and being a woman in the 21st century? Or should I write a memoir? The subject would be the same. Or should I write a novel in first person that blurs the line even further?

I can't promise that I'll take your advice, but I want to know: Which would you rather read, a novel or a memoir?

"This is water" by David Foster Wallace

For some reason I read this commencement speech from 2005 TODAY, which expresses exactly what I was trying to get at in Benign reality this morning. DFW said:

"It will actually be within your power to experience a hot, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars--compassion, love, the subsurface unity of all things.

"Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it.

"This, I submit, is the freedom of real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted: You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't."

This is what Zoe showed me yesterday.

Benign reality

After I wrote Things that freak me out, I remembered that Zoe wanted to take a walk before we loaded the truck for the dump run. We decided to take baby V, my feisty, curious and adorable little niece. Zoe had made a point to connect with V, had figured out how to give her a respectful sense of freedom and yet set boundaries.

The three of us walked together down the long gravel road on my parents' 18 acre property in San Miguel. Casey the dog ran ahead. The house my parents built about eight years ago sits on top of a  hill surrounded by oak trees and small vineyards, including 27 rows of Petite Sirah and Muscat Canelli on their northwest slope.

The sun was out but the morning fog was still hovering, making it bright but with visibility so low that all we could see was the road just ahead and behind. V would veer off and run into the plowed fields and look over her shoulder at Zoe with her mischievous little face. Zoe would run and catch up to her, gently pick her up and turn her around. "We are going this way, V," and take her little hand and walk her back to the road.

"It's really beautiful here," Zoe said.

I told her I was freaked out. She said she was having a hard time figuring out how to connect with my parents on this visit. I told her Me, too.

"Maybe it's the circumstances, Mom," she said. Afterall, we were there to prepare for a CPS inspection, which meant scrutinizing my parents' house and all its contents through a harsh lens in search of poisons and unlocked firearms and other hazards.

"Yes, no doubt," I said, but added that all the accumulated crap was really getting me down. The way my parents hold onto things.

Zoe said, "Ultimately it's all about nostalgia." I added that a dimension of nostalgia was letting go of potentials. Keeping things means the potential of using them in the future. Letting go means those things will never be used. They have no future. You hold onto the things you hope you will need. Maybe it was about the fear of death.

We remembered how my grandparents lived through the depression, and though my parents climbed up into comfort, like their parents they continue to hold tightly onto things just in case. It's something inside me, too: a fear of scarcity.

I told Zoe I was really sad.

"It seems normal to be sad and disappointed by your parents and their choices, Mom," she said. Baby V ran ahead, chasing the dog down the hill. Zoe lovingly ran after them, not yelling at them to come back, just letting them run. It was safe. It was the middle of fucking nowhere.

Alone in the bright fog I started bawling. When we caught up to each other again, Zoe said gently, "You can keep crying, Mom. It's the human condition. It's good to cry...But then, when you are done, you can come up for air and see the benign reality. I mean, look around." The sun was burning through the fog revealing the rows and rows of orange, yellow and red grape leaves close by and on the rolling hills as far as you could see.

"Many more human beings are leading much harder lives right now, and in the past and always will be. When you are ready,  you can put on another lens and see the beauty." We started walking back up the hill towards the house surrounded by the young willow and sycamore trees my Mom planted.

"To be honest," Zoe said, "I've had more than one session in which I've cried deeply about the sacrifices you have made, the life of the artist you didn't get to lead because of them. Then I feel better, and can see that this is your life."

I was speechless. Just the sound of our feet on the crushed granite. Baby V and the dog ran ahead. Zoe put her arm around me and we walked back. I was able to see the benign reality.

Things that freak me out

Cluttery crap

The food in my parents’ refrigerator

Mice

Weird undefinable smells

Polyester blankets

Murky ethics displayed by your parents that hint at something corrupt inside you.

I unfriended my Mom before sending this, and went through and unfriended a few other family members, exercising my facebook-given right to do so, and an inconsistent “single generation” facebook policy that my daughter ruthlessly initiated. She will not friend me. My son unfriended me when he took one look at this blog. In fact he unfriended himself from my account while sitting at my computer when I noted to him that my blog link would have probably popped up on his wall.

At first he said, “That’s not a good enough reason for me to unfriend you, Mom,” in a moment of magnanimous facebook-generosity. We looked at each other and thought the same thing, “But…I think…it’s probably better if I unfriend you…” I agreed.

Easier for me to unfriend my own Mom today. When in doubt, unfriend.

I unfriended my Mom because I am at my parents’ house right now. I’m writing from the kitchen table where I wearily played a fierce game of Sudoku from 2:30 to 4:30am because I couldn’t sleep. I won. But it didn’t help me sleep.

The murky ethics thing. The mice. Murky ethics like mice running around in your tired brain. Quiet! you silently shout while tossing around on the couch under polyester blankets that were once electric, so probably belonged to your grandmother who died in 1982.

You put in your earplugs. But you know the mice are there. Running around even more boldly because you can’t hear them anymore. The things that have hobbled your parents’ are too close to the surface for you to sleep. Their foibles, their misguided form of anti-authority that erupts when they feel backed into a corner. It’s heartbreaking to hear your father talk about moving from one real estate office to another because of a "misunderstanding." He admitted he was crushed – “But I walked into the xx office one minute later and they accepted me with open arms.” How do you get fired when you are working on commission? By pissing people off.

Jeez. I hope I figure some things out by the time I’m 76. Later he told me some stories about how two different people had screwed him over in the 70s. These are part of a long anthology of his called, "The Many Who Screwed Me Over." 

I remember when he left Petersen Publishing and we went from a middle class family in West L.A. to dirt poor, living in my grandmother’s two one room houses – the “middle house” and the “North house” out in Canoga Park. All eight of us. My Mom and Dad gave the oldest three kids the North house because it was bigger, the size of a double garage. In the middle house, two of my brothers slept on bunk beds in the bathroom/laundry room, and my parents slept on the fold out couch bed with my baby brother.

It was while living there that the whole terrible scene happened. It was while living there that my dad got colon cancer. For me it was less than a year: I got out at age 17 and headed North to Berkeley and never went back.

The old refrigerator that didn’t keep things cold. The ancient sink. The over-taxed septic system.

Those houses are gone now. Tract houses replaced them after my grandmother died.

I’m freaked out. My dad is cooking eggs that I don’t want to eat. We are on a mission today to child-proof this house for the inspection by Child Protective Services on Tuesday. There is so much crap that all I want to do is load up their truck and take it to the dump. My parents are hoarders. Though they grew up in the forties, they became like their own depression-era parents. The only reason you can walk around in this house is that it’s big enough for a whole lot of crap. They have a three-car garage full of crap. And now all my brother's and his wife’s crap is comingling with my parents’ crap. It’s overwhelming.

Every few years there is some crisis that requires some of us kids to come here and purge their crap. Like they are so broke we insist they have a garage sale to get rid of some of this crap. Or we have to make room for someone to move into a room that is full of crap.

I’m so freaked out I can hardly function. On the surface I seem fine. Zoe is playing with my adorable niece, and the sounds of those lovely voices make me feel calmer. I’m going to go get the truck now and start loading it up with as much crap as I can wrest from their watchful eyes and hoarding arms. It will feel so good to toss away all the pvc pipe and old broken tiles and Cool Whip containers and sea shells and broken gadgets and artificial flower arrangements.

Then I will drive home with Zoe. I will ask her to help me “discharge” all of my angst. Maybe we will have a co-counseling session to help me do this. When I listen to my daughter talking with my niece I think thank god for evolution (!).

Therapy

I was having a difficult conversation with a friend about another friend who thinks I betrayed her. I place such a high value on my female friendships, almost higher than my marriage, so this misunderstanding about a work matter that's intruding on our friendship is extremely disturbing to me.

I was pacing the long hallway here at the Hotel Hibernia aka The Sweatshop aka the Art Asylum. Without thinking much and without even getting off the phone I walked into the open door of a cute couple who waived me in. They were sitting on their plush burgundy carpet in front of an alter and had a bong loaded up. While listening to my friend I took one deep drag. It was Friday-like. I wanted to change my reality.

I kept listening to my friend explain why my other friend is so hurt by my actions. I understood better as the high grade Santa Cruz Kush with a bit of kief sprinkled lovingly on top seeped into my brain.

But then remembered I had to make a deposit at the f-ing bank. So I kept listening and talking as I walked down Market Street. My friend laughed at me when I told her what I was doing. I was having trouble with the ATM machine but still rapt in conversation about feelings and the politics of the workplace. It was dark by now, and I hoped that the neon sign over my head flashing "not paying attention" did not register with anyone lurking and looking for an easy target.

I concluded that I need to apologize to my other friend, and do whatever it takes to make her feel better. It doesn't matter who is right.

When I got home with cash in my pocket Joe arrived. I like to tell him right away that I'm stoned, so that he doesn't make fun of me or get mad when he notices. "Just letting you know," I like to say. I only allow myself to get stoned on weekends and special occasions. It's cheap therapy.

Joe said immediately, "What about therapy?"

Ooops. That's a rule. Never get stoned before therapy or important talks. Or of course work or anything work-ish like paying bills. Shit.

"Don't be mad at me baby, please?" He was mad for a few seconds, then decided not to be.

So when we arrived at our therapist's offie I told her immediately, "I'm stoned." She said without missing a beat, "Welcome to the club." We spent the first few minutes while I made out her check talking about joining a pot club, how she loves learning about and tasting all the different strains. I should have known that she would not be mad.

I love our therapist. She's so genius. It was the best session we've ever had. She got to watch Joe and me in action in a way that has never happened before and she kept bringing it back and asking hard questions while mingling it with anecdotes. She gets Joe in a way that no one else ever has, and it helps me see him differently.

She gets me, too, in a freakishly accurate way that startles me.

First we talked about how great it is that I finally have my own studio. How it allows me to see Joe in a new way, as an individual. We talked about Mating in Captivity, the Esther Perel book that inspired the title of my novel and this blog. Joe expressed his skepticism about Perel's "over-use of anecdotes" about couples that does not, in his view, represent "researched-based science." Our therapist argued that her own books about couples were not at all scientific, and that there are just too many variables in human behavior. We talked about the work of Virginia Satir the "Mother of Family Therapy."

I expressed my fear that we will fall back into bad patterns. "What are the triggers?" I asked out loud. "Oh yeah...Money."

Then we broached that painful subject. She identified with Joe's commitment to keeping a wide open schedule so he can do his art. And the hardship that results from it. And commended us for declaring financial independence from one another. Somehow she validated me in the discussion while also validating Joe. She watched as I theorized that I use our money problems to distance myself from Joe, as a device for creating that necessary space between us. She brought it back to reality: my anxiety about money is real and anyone would be deeply anxious in my situation. And suggested ways that we can talk about our own anxieties without blaming the other or taking blame.

We talked about why blogging is good for me after she made seemless reference to things I'd written about in Acting My Age and Money, Love and Art. "Having children forces you into routines and predictability, and now you are entering a phase where that isn't as necessary. You finally have more expansiveness, and you are chaffing at Joe's desire for you to remain predictable." "Gosh, Dxxx," I said, "I really feel like I'm getting my money's worth when you spend time off the clock on my backstory." Again, she didn't miss a beat.

She gave us some clear steps for "no-lose" conflict resolution. It's all about deciding to make appointments for the hardest talks. About being able to say, "I'm not ready for this conversation," but making a commitment to having it at a specific time in the future. About giving yourself time to prepare and really figure out how to say the hard things. Then saying them when you are ready.

Somehow all of this and much more in a short 50 minutes.

Now I realize that is what I need to do with my friend who is mad at me. She has not been ready to have the hard talk, and is figuring out what she wants to say. And so am I.

My Neighbors

Last night on 6th Street a woman came toward me in a wheel chair and said, "Hey mama, you got some change?" She was African American, maybe in her forties, missing a front tooth or two. Her leg was bandaged. I was reaching into my pocket to see what I had and she said, "Got shot four times. Here, let me show you," and started pulling up her shirt. "It's okay," I said and handed her a dollar. But I saw her stomach wound all bandaged up.

Shit. Getting shot and killed is one thing. It's over then. No more trying to scratch out a living on the street. But to get wounded and live on the street? I never thought of that. That seems way worse.

The woman looked up at me as I handed her the dollar like I was some kind of hero. I smiled and kept walking. "Mama, come back! I need to talk to you!" she said as I kept walking away. "There's something else I gotta show you!" I looked over my shoulder. She was straining in her wheel chair to see me. "I gotta go," I said and kept walking.

We walked past junkies with sad sunken faces. Those are mostly white people. Sometimes they look like "regular" people from behind, then as you walk past you see their shriveled faces. Aged and collapsed around a mouth that has few teeth or none.

A man walking across the street reached down and picked up a lit cigarette butt and smoked the last of it. We turned the corner and there were the usual suspects that live or just lurk on our street. OG Will was tucked into the doorway of the Marinello Beauty School. Every time we see him he says, "Another day in paradise."

I'm used to it. I'm used to seeing people pissing against a wall in broad daylight. I don't often see people shitting but there is evidence every day that some people have no other place to go. We joke about it, but I imagine there is a line people cross the first time they have to take a dump and there is no place to go except right on the sidewalk or between two cars. None of them were raised to do that. Even if they were dirt poor. But a lot more people than you'd think have crossed that line, at least in my neighborhood.

People crouch in the doorway together, one lighting a pipe for the other to suck hard before whatever they are smoking is gone and they have to go looking for more. Something to give their lives a fleeting moment of joy or at least relief. I understand that.

People buy and sell sex for the same reason. I've seen someone giving another person head between two parked cars on my street.

People often talk to themselves on my street. Or yell at unseen other people, maybe their mother or someone who left them behind or ripped them off or who didn't love them enough. Sometimes people scream and cry for hours while they pick through a trash can looking for something lost that can never be found.

I really try to see these people. I try to make eye contact. I know it's not "recommended." But it's my instinct to acknowledge them. To recognize their humanity even for one moment. I feel safer when we can see each other.

I'm not sure what more I want to tell you. It's almost Thanksgiving and cold outside. I wish there were more I could do to help my neighbors. I'm going to think of something. 

Aesthetics of Surprise

I value surprise. I enjoy the unexpected. A blog that has no other purpose than to please me affords unprecedented opportunity to write like a motherfucker - without the limiting eye of a page-counting editor or the buzz-killing economics of traditional publishing.

It's fun for me. And I take fun wherever I can get it.

I can put stuff up and take it down at any time. Fuck you, mister word-counter. More importantly, fuck you mister it's-not-the-right-content or not-the-right-tone or it's-too-personal or it's-not-consistent or it's-not-what-you-expected or it's-not-the-right-genre. You're not my boss. Fuck you mister you-can't-put-up-more-than-one-post-in-24-hours.

You don't have to read this or anything else. I'm not your boss.

I want to lure you into a place of comfort then surprise you. I want you to think you are safe then pounce on you. Then when I open my mouth it's soft and warm inside. I won't harm you. But I will, I hope, make you ask questions.

What the fuck is she doing? Who does she think she is? Why am I oddly compelled to read this instead of working? or checking the New York Times? or my favorite porn site? or my friend's YouTube video?

I hope it's because you don't know where this is going. Maybe it's a little out of control. Maybe it will just stop.

Disquietude

Things I might write about:

Magic's Cock
(which I have never seen)

Lori's Blue Eyes

White Chili with Roasted Tomatillos

Female Ejaculation

Porn

Racism

Pale Shadows

Adultery

Asexuality

Cigarettes

Fortune Tellers

Catholicism

Yosemite

Disqueitude

Pale Shadows

Sweet

Imaginary Lover

I'm missing you

I think it's better

for me if

today

is merely

Monday

without

the Fu

rising up

inside

I can't justify

pale shadow

I know you

what I'm saying

I love you so much

and need you

in my life

Please stay

there.

Brokering Power

I dreamed I was scripting a peace negotiation between two factions. It was a highly tense situation. The negotiation was to take place at the intersection of two streets on the edge of each groups' territory. When I woke up I stayed in the dream as long as I could to work out the details of the choreography before it all faded out of memory.

I don't know who the two sides were, but we were both armed. The peace negotiators were to enter the intersection at the same time, unarmed. They were to extend their hands. They were not to be wearing headsets, though that was being decided in the dream. It was understood that both sides would have people watching from hidden vantage points, and that those people would most likely be armed.

I was helping with the choreography and the actual words that would be spoken by the side I was on, which apparently was in control, at least of the script. I was both the actor preparing for the moment of confrontation, getting ready to extend my hand in peace, and the hidden protector, crouching nearby with a headset on and ready to use my weapon if needed, but hoping desperately that I wouldn't.

Brokering power.

It is what I often find myself doing. At work..say, between the bigger boss and the employees. Trying to level out the playing field, to remove or mitigate perceived power imbalances so that communication may take place. So that work can get done. Together.

At home, between myself, Joe and each of my kids.

Between three of my brothers who have deep seeded resentments and seemingly irreconcilable differences. And who love to play music together more than almost anything.

Between members of Joe's family day before yesterday at an akward "family reunion." It was at a restaurant/sports bar in a shiny new mall in East Bumfuck, aka the Inland Empire.

Neutral territory is key. Round tables are best. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the sports bar on Saturday people were already seated at long bar table with high bar stools. Why in the bar and not the restaurant? Because I was not in charge. Cocktails, I discovered though, can help. I was relieved that the Christian contingent was also drinking. I didn't care that the uptight stepmom was teetotalling, as usual.

It was the first such meeting in seven years, since Joe's dad died. There were new kids we hadn't met. There were teens who had been little kids before. I made sure to engage as many people as I could including the overweight sixteen year old who looked so buttoned up and straight, as though from another era. He looked exactly like his dad, Joe's brother, who we are pretty sure is developing secret weapons for the U.S. government. (Oops! Is that classified?)

I'm glad it's over. Two hours and fifteen minutes, and now we are done with them for perhaps many years. It was successful simply because we made it there, and we made it out in just over two hours. I wanted my own kids to know their father's family a little bit more. Most of his family has never visited us.

My friend Arianne said last night, "You do not have to go back there." My kids are grown now. Now, it is up to them. And to Joe.

Why do I write about that this morning?

I guess because the holidays mean family, and family means brokering highly charged situations with people you both love and hate. It brings up jealousy and bad memories, and pity, and rage as well as all the warm feelings of love that family is supposed to conjure. Family: where we are most vulnerable.

My poor unconscious brain is working overtime to prepare. To make sure the table is set for peace. That the right people are in charge so that it doesn't turn into a shit show. We all know that can happen. Too many cocktails can be as bad as too few. The blarring TV can totally ruin a gathering.

Four days until Thanksgiving. A relatively small contingent is going to my parents' house on Friday. Small because I did not insist on a plan six months ago. We were all distracted with my brother's arrest and the horrific dealings with "Child Protective Services." Yeah. The agency that is supposed to protect families.

On Saturday, Zoe, now 25, asked in the car as we were approaching the sports/bar, "What do we each want out of this meeting?" It was a good question. It was good to confront our expectations, to air them, and to notch them down, or to remind us we each had a responsibility to at least try for what we wanted. Zoe wanted to find out where Joe's mother, her grandmother who died in 1970, was buried. I told her I didn't think anyone there would know. Except Joe's stepmom. The woman who told her four young step kids never to mention their real mom again, and hid all the pictures from them and weirdly mailed them to us about a decade ago. I think Zoe decided not to ask her.

What do I want at this Friday's Thanksgiving? I want something real to take place. But not too real. In fact, maybe I just want to have some cocktails and enjoy watching my kids play with their baby cousin, the one who suffered months of foster care and is finally back with my brother and his wife. That's good enough. Nothing too heavy.

What do you want?

Gratitude, and getting free

Girlfriend, I'm writing to you this morning. Because you are always there for me. I'm kind of choked up. Sister, you don't care what kind of shape I'm in. You take me as I am.

I don't know, Girlfriend, if I could make it without you. Yes, I'm talking to you. I'm grateful for your love. Even if I haven't seen you in so long that it hurts. When I hear your voice, time disappears. I tell you that I love you. You tell me in so many ways.

I take things too seriously sometimes. I am 51 and phobic about readership, for example. Posting in this weirdly impersonal and highly personal way is helping me break down internal barriers. You know what I'm talking about. When I say I am still that 16 year old, I really mean it. I am still suffering from rejection that is now 35 years old.

You know the story, Sister. Even this morning I had to remember it, as I woke up wondering if you would still love me after reading these innocuous posts.

Can I forgive my Mother for reading my innocent journal back in 1976?

Can I forgive my Father for telling me that my Mother had committed suicide because she read it? Then their removing me from the family, forcing me to say goodbye "forever" to my five younger siblings, telling me they were putting me in foster care because of what I had done and written about? It's so painful to write that I'm having a hot flash.

I need to let this go.

My Mom was visiting San Francisco this year and for the first time in 35 years I wanted to talk about that painful time. She said she didn't know that my Dad had told me she'd killed herself. She forgot about his rage when I said I'd take the one-way plane ticket offer instead of foster care. She was sitting in the car when he put me in a police choke hold on the sidewalk. We were on some forgotten street in Canoga Park. He stopped choking me before I passed out. Mom said she has no recollection of any of this. That she was just so numb that it was all a blur.
 
Now that I have three kids who are all older than 16 and have all taken more drugs than I have and are sexually active and still seem extremely healthy (not in spite of but because they are experienced), I had the courage to ask my Mom, why? What had she read in my journal that upset her so much?

She said, "It was that you were not like me. I just couldn't understand how you had become that way."

At first I felt compassion for her as a parent. I understood. It's hard when you realize your kid is not like you.

Then, as the days passed and she was back home several hundred miles from here, I felt rage and sadness that her response to my difference was so violent - that even though she did not choke me, or rip me out of my home and take me to the LAPD for interrogation by my Dad's police buddies, she allowed it.

Girlfriend, you know this story. You've heard me tell it, and held me through the rage and sadness. Will you help me get over it now? I need to let it go. 35 years is long enough.

I need to forgive my Mom so I can write and feel okay about someone reading my words.

I feel like I'm getting close. I'm grateful, Girlfriend, for your loving support.

Soon I will be strong enough to forgive my Dad. Then, maybe I will be free enough to finish my novel.

Money, Love and Art

What happens when people who love each other want different things? When you want what you want and your partner doesn't? I'm not talking about kinky sex. I'm talking about things like...being able to travel once in awhile, or take your kids snowboarding, or go to the spa, or have an expensive dinner...Things that seem like luxuries but also make you feel alive. Things that take you away from your daily reality for a minute or a week, and that make life tolerable.

What if your partner wants to live without all these things?

Then you have to do them yourself.

What scares me is that declaring my financial independence, which means my absolute right to do these things for myself and pay for them myself, feels like I am rejecting the man that I have protected and supported for half of my life. I have defended his stoic stance against materialism while spoiling him by paying for everything he considered luxury. So...to stop paying for him now is to leave him to his more austere lifestyle. Which I respect very much, but which doesn't have room for my spendthrift frivolity - from which, whether or not he admits it, he has greatly benefited.

I look around this gorgeous studio flooded with winter light. Which I found and for which I negotiated a long term lease so he'd have a place to paint that wasn't a windowless office in the Tenderloin (which is what he said he wanted.) The high thread-count sheets and duvet on the down comforter, the bamboo flooring which I insisted upon. My grandmother's dusty rose china which he would have chucked 10 moves ago.

Joe's aesthetic became more and more austere over the years. When we met he was a collage artist, cutting up magazines, gluing with spray mount, making big messes, staying up all night with friends, giving away his art in the morning.  I wanted him to get more serious, to make work that was more lasting, to put his ideas to bigger tests. So I put him through art school. I believed in him as an artist, and still do.

Now Joe paints on aluminum, layer upon layer of pigment in a medium using a technique that produces the most luminous color fields, and that are guaranteed to last a minimum of 500 years. A series of black paintings that come to life only after staring at them for a long time. Squares of color so rich you want to disappear into them. He's extremely neat. He is extremely committed to his routines. He doesn't do drugs except on special occassion and never when making art.

The problem is that as his aesthetic gets more and more minimalistic, he wants less and less clutter in his life. While I respect that, and enjoy its effects on our living space, it is not me. I'm a storyteller, and stories are not so neat. They meander and go off on tangents and pick up people and things along the way that give life color and keep me feeling alive.  Joe wants me to be predictable, to fit into his controlled environment so he can focus on the interaction of color and light on the surface of his paintings.

I am not predictable. I don't want to be predictable.

This is why I need my own studio.

Marijuana

It's a fact. There it is, a plant. I know, my husband will say, "everything is natural." Even crude oil and all it's byproducts. But a plant that grows in soil like its primordial cousins is hard to compare  to highly processed narcotics like crack or heroin. Or crystal meth. But that is how weed is classified by the feds.

My sons were convinced that their generation was going to see marijuana legalized. They thought the world had indeed already changed. As did I, when Obama was elected. Is that because my kids grew up in a tiny coastal hippie town where everyone smokes pot? Probably.

Nevertheless, the pendulum has swung to the right so quickly it has caught many liberals off guard. See Obama's War on Weed in SF Weekly. Behind the lenient California legislation that went up against federal "controlled substance" laws were dickless law enforcement agents, waiting in the wings to castrate the marijuana-loving heathens who took their jobs away. Also, friends surmise, there's not much crack around these days to keep the DEA busy, and coke is so cheap thanks to the War on Drugs that there's not as much related crime. So off to the fields of Humboldt they go!

Poor Obama is losing a lot of young voters out here in Northern California. Pity. I'm still voting for him. I'm old enough to know that it doesn't get any better than Obama. He's still one of us, not them. He's still easier on the eye and smarter than some born again dumbfuck I fear would take his place.

What can I say? The Drug Czar backlash took only a year to ensnare several members of my own family. My brother, married to a beautiful and substance-free Mormon, had their one-year-old taken away by the LA County M.A.R.T. (Multi Area Response Team) because of alleged marijuana cultivation. They supposedly "endangered" their baby by allowing her to play in a waiting room at a music studio where there was an old bag of trim found buried deep in some cabinet. A colossal waste of taxpayer dollars and a heartbreaking and damaging event to a very young child, who is still not reunited with her parents after four months. Fortunately my sister stepped up, and everyone in the family has rallied around to help. But talk about an interruption: it turned my family upside down, and is costing untold dollars in attorney fees and collateral damage.

Obviously, I'm biased. I'm not against pot. I'm for it. I see how young people act when they smoke weed. It can be depressing if they have no structure in their lives and sit around doing nothing. But it can also be entertaining in a not unwholesome way. More often than not, I see kids sitting in a circle  laughing and talking. The other day I heard an alarming report that in our device-mediated society young people are losing the art of conversation. Pot functions for many in the opposite direction, forcing people to talk instead of geek out in front of their screens.

Many smoke weed and do geek out. Then they fall asleep. And that is goddam so unAmerican!

But when young people, especially the underaged drink alcohol? Get me the fuck away - or get them away from me! They are dangerous. In fact, get me away from half of my best friends if they have more than, say, three drinks. And that does happen. People learn to monitor, or they don't, with all substances. The prison-industrial complex built around controlling weed is clearly an apparatus of oppression. We must dismantle it.

Imaginary Lover

Dear Imaginary Lover,

Where are you tonight? Are you at home? Come here. Sit by me. That's it.

Imaginary Lover, do you mind if I give you a name? It should have I and L in it I think. Lil' Rick? Lonnie? How about Ali? Because, yes, Ali, your skin is different. It's a different color, it is smooth like silk, like a chai latte. No, darker, like milk chocolate. Or...

Ali, when you sit by me like that I feel so young. I feel different. I am, in fact, a different person. When I'm with you, Ali, I am someone like me, but not me. I am a third person.

Her name...is it Lana? Is it Lisa? Lana is so distinct. Not many Lana's out there. But Lisa is the name of my best friend in third grade, and two of my sisters-in-law, and my best friend's sister, and many others born in or around 1960-70. It could have been my name. Lisa...

Lisa is sexy. Lisa is not me. She was born in L.A. and decided to stay there. She went away to college, but she came back. She lives in Topanga. She is married to a surfer and an artist. Let's call him John.

Lisa is...a real estate agent. She kicks ass. She is better than me, but not as tall. She looks like Mary Louise Parker. She has attitude.

Lisa sees Ali at an open house in the Hollywood Hills. He looks familiar. She humiliates him very subtly. She makes him wear blue hospital booties to tour her open house. It's her listing. She is a broker, and he is a rooky agent. She's kind of a bitch. He doesn't seem phazed. They hardly exchange any words. But there is a recognition.

Lisa drives home the long way, taking Sunset to PCH. It's November, but it's warm enough to drive with the top down. It's dark when she gets home. The flat screen is glowing blue in the living room. John is eating pizza and watching football. He hardly notices when she comes in.

"Hey," John says. "There's pizza on the counter." Leaning over his plate staring at the TV he stomps his foot on the wood floor and mumbles something indiscernible with a "Fuck!"

"Thanks, honey," she says, flicks on the bedroom light and kicks her shoes off into a pile outside her closet. She strips off her white linen jacket and black pants, and pulls on some sweats and goes back to the kitchen. No one else is home.

She sits on the stool at the counter and eats warm pizza thinking about Ali. His skin looked so smooth and creamy. He looked at her, and he smiled.

Is this her imaginary lover?

Nebbish Blog-Limiting Gym Nazi

AKA my husband. He wants me to stay in shape. He may not be a "provider" in all the ways I want him to be, but he's in fucking great shape and insists that I work out on a frequent basis. He's in such good shape these days it's a bit annoying. And because of him, I'm in pretty good shape. It's not that he shames me into it exactly, but he inspires a marital competitiveness. If he can do it, so can I goddam it.

To blog or to work out? To work my abs and gluts or my freakishly juvenile blogspot? It's a dilemma that won't go away no matter how tight my ass or how many pointless missives I shoot out into the void. It's a dilemma that has plagued me for decades perhaps. And perhaps I've always chosen to get up and run, and later walk, and that meant running away from the terror of completing anything substantial. I mean terror.

The clock is ticking this Monday morning and on my life and the gym nazi inside me is going to win today. The idea of becoming too soft and overweight is more terrifying than being a failed writer. At least this morning. Or maybe I just don't have anything to say. Maybe I'm terrified of the void inside me that eventually will consume me, i.e., when I die. Maybe I just want to be a regular person and go to the gym and play volleyball with the nice middle aged Asians or push myself to do a whole 50 minutes on the elliptical machine and listen to melancholic music on Pandora and stare out the window at Treasure Island.

I thought probably the only person who has read this goddam blog is my loyal husband, and yet I checked the stats expecting to see "2" readers, representing myself and him, and instead there were 106 views. Not counting me. That freaks me out. Makes me want to go run on the treadmill and pretend I misread that stat. How can that be true? Why would anyone read this?

I want to talk to you directly. I want to hear your voice. I want to know you... before I run in terror. I want to close my eyes and imagine yours, and force you to respond when I tell you I love you. When I tell you, I will always run away, but I always come back.

Acting My Age

So what if I don't act my age?

Maybe I feel more like a 17 year old sometimes. What's weird about being 51 is that I am all the people I have been, not just THIS person at THIS age. I AM that teenage girl who knew the power of my sexuality and used it. And I am the 23 year old recluse who cut off all my hair and stayed home to read erotic novels and screenplays for a living. And the 32 year old mother of three small children, married and living in Portland, having a long distance romance with a family friend. And the 37 year old back in the Bay Area living in a tiny hippie beach town and commuting to San Francisco to support my family, and partially insane from the pressure. And the 45 year old working two full time jobs with three teenagers at home and completely insane with the pressure, spending money wildly to compensate for the absolute lack of free time or privacy. 

And at every age, I was always looking for love. And love always found me.

Maybe I've always been a little bit insane. I've always wanted more, and taken on more than I could handle. Arianne thinks it's what keeps me happy: to have too much going on in my life.

And now I'm the woman with three mostly grown children, all older and wiser than I was at 17...And I'm still married, and still wanting more.

Maybe I'm greedy. Maybe I'll never be satisfied. I admit that I want it all...I want my husband to be there for me when I need him. I know what he is capable of, and I am grateful. But I still want more than he can give me.

I am finding a new freedom in accepting that the husband I chose will never support me financially. It's nothing new, but accepting that truth frees me from years of resentment, and allows me to love him for all that he does offer. And he offers a lot. He's always been honest about the limitation of his financial support. Why has it taken so long to accept? It's a relief.

I am responsible for myself. For my own happiness. And I finally get that I am also responsible for my own financial security. I officially release my husband from that pressure. He never accepted that responsibility to begin with, so I am releasing something internal, something false, something that was corrosive inside me, some orphaned notion that came between us and that I no longer need. I am officially financially independent. And it feels right. So I have a little debt? Who doesn't. It's my debt. I'll take care of it.

I am happy when I'm alone. I want more time with myself. To nurture the person who existed before the crazed hormonal breeding and getting in debt phases of life. I am that person before I had kids, before marriage. Before debt. Beyond all activities. Underneath the surface. There is a person, the 'I' that exists before and after.

When you turn 50 you realize you are over half way there. No denying it. The ratio of time left alive over the time already spent is getting smaller and smaller, and time goes faster and faster until you blink and a year has passed, and you blink again and you are on your deathbed looking around and wondering if you loved all the right people enough, and you hope that you told them, and hope they are all right there with you and holding your hand as you face the ultimate fear.

When you are 51 you have no time to waste, and you don't give a shit anymore what other people think. Because you KNOW you are in living in your integrity. You can act 17 and 23 and 32 and 45 all on the same day.

When you are 51 you can have a lover if you want one. And it's your business.

Is that what I want? If it is, I have no doubt a lover will find me.

Battle for survival

How can I not love a man who buys me fresh flowers every week? The dozen white roses in front of me eagerly reaching up toward their untimely death, perched atop their sturdy stems that will soon wither in the compost. I will never be younger than I am today. And someone loves me. These flowers remind: "Twenty six years of training..." Training almost complete.

My space. I have not yet inhabited it. It waits for me patiently, calling softly for me to come and finish the novel that I started last October. Before I go, I want to establish with a man who loves me that I am not abandoning him. That I am the woman who leaves and comes back.

But am I afraid myself of losing this sustaining love? Am I avoiding that room that awaits because the departure from my routines of 26 years are too difficult even for me? Because what awaits is unknown and terrifying?

Yes. All of that. And more.

White roses, a symbol of what? Peace? Something to fill a void?

Yes. All of that and more.

Today I will work my heart hard at the gym, and my arms, and my legs. I'll push myself in a battle against time and gravity to keep blood flowing strong enough to lead my colleagues in another battle for survival. Then we will all socialize with smiles of optimism for the many audiences we serve.

Tomorrow night, after that battle and celebration, back to the silent room to work on Mates in Captivity. I will buy flowers for myself.

Blogging Naked

I am distraught over the smallest things, and must face the day soon.

But first wanted to launch a blog. Why?

To face head on my fear of publishing. Of being read. Of being public. These are private thoughts in a public sphere.

And it terrifies me.

Why are you reading this? Because I asked you to? Because you searched my name or a name similar  and had a free minute or two? How much time do I get to pique your interest? What are you avoiding?

Sex. Being married. Writing about lovers. That is what I want to explore. The notion of a public identity. Creating intimacy in the most public of spheres. I have experienced it. It's like kissing in a booth at the Make Out Room. It's like fucking in a car on Capp Street in the middle of the day. It's hot, and dangerous. It's sweaty and sticky.

I have a room of my own for the first time....in 26 years. Since I met my husband. It is the place where I will begin to confront my fear of this intimate public space. I will share myself. I will get naked alone in the bay window. I will reveal myself to you.

You are in the shadows just outside. I feel you but do not see you. You approach. I close my eyes and touch your face. You are not the enemy.