Story time (Part 2)

This is my favorite. (I originally mentioned it here). Plus, although orange, I look pretty good. Later evidence will show that this is not always the case.

Porchlight's 8th Anniversary Show, July 2010. The theme was "Magic 8 Ball." Video once again by Evan Karp, whom I do not know, but who I made laugh a couple of times.

Festivals and parades

If festivals and parades aren't your thing, then maybe you could do some dancing in your living room or have a quiet drink. The point is, celebrations are in order. My accursed neighbors with their crashy, screamy children are moving away by mid-August.

There are no words to describe the joy this brings me.

Say a prayer to the gods of tenancy that whoever the new neighbors are prove to be light-footed book-readers who enjoy silent contemplation of life's mysteries.

Thoughts from Tahoe

1. Smoking indoors is legal in some places. You will have forgotten this. It will not be pleasant to remember.

2. When you win on a slot machine, it will be completely unclear to you why even though the "pay line" is helpfully highlighted.

3. Lake Tahoe itself is primarily made of melted snow, which makes it very cold indeed. Nevertheless, it is unaccountably elating to swim in it. After taking the full underwater plunge, you may not laugh uncontrollably for five minutes, but I did.

4. It is possible for a bed to be too soft.

5. Miniature golf is pretty much always a good idea.

Go jump in a lake

The "I am going to" is silent.


Off to Tahoe, but I'll be back.

BART's new service

A slightly garbled announcement is broadcast over the BART speakers.

"A reminder that passengers with bicycles must use the stairs or the elevator. Thank you and enjoy the sunshine."

Meanwhile, two guys hoist their bikes over their heads and make their way up the stairs. "What did he say?" one guy asks the other, "Enjoy the french fries?"

Ow: redux

You know what's more fun than a mammogram? A second mammogram. Oh, yes. After I had written this, I got a call that the screening showed some abnormalities and that I needed to come in for additional imaging and was I free that afternoon? And so I cried. And cried and cried. I was weirdly never concerned that I might have breast cancer; I just didn't want another test--particularly two days after the awful one.

I bring this up merely for the record. Now hear this: Mammogram #2 turned out to be much more like I expected mammograms to be to begin with. That is, kind of weird, a bit painful, not something you'd want to do as a special treat, but not horrible. Perhaps it was the pad they used the second time? Perhaps it was because I was crying and they took it to heart? Perhaps Friday was just a more robust and hearty day for my boobs than Wednesday? I don't know, but I am relieved.

Additionally, I don't have cancer, which is pleasant.

And now, I'm going to the circus.


P.S. During the ultrasound part of the screening there were three doctors and a nurse in a very small, dim room with me. Each of them, with the exception of the nurse, took a turn um...sonograming. When the attending physician had taken the wheel, as it were, another doctor said to her, "Do you mind if I just show this fellow how the machine works while you conduct your exam?" Since he was the only man in the room I thought he was going to go out in the hall and come back with some random chap who was interested in sonogram machines. Only slowly did it dawn on me that the other young woman--still a med student-- was "the fellow."

Story time (Part 1)

I have been weirdly paranoid about putting images of myself on my own blog, but then, I am a person who was for a long time very distrustful about depositing checks directly into the ATM. This Safety First stance might have had some merit back in the days when there really were no images of me online, but those days are long since past. There are all sorts of unflattering photos of me onstage, as well as some nice wobbly videos available for the determined Googler, so why be coy?

Out there in public over the past few years, I have told stories at Porchlight, and the Mill Valley Public Library's First Friday series, as well as done a reading for the Literary Death Match. For my own benefit as much as yours, I decided it was time to gather the evidence.

The first story I told for Porchlight was in December 2008. The theme was "All that Glitters is Not Gold." There is no evidence that this ever happened (with this small exception), which, considering that it was a story about an ex of mine, is just as well.

The second story I told was in March 2010. The theme was "Danger!" or "Beware!" or something like that.

It went like this:



video taken by Mystery Videographer, Evan Karp.

First the mouse, then the girl, now the camp

People, I just joined a gym. Sorry. I should have broken it to you more gently. Are you okay?

For a brief moment many years ago, I had a quasi-regular thing going with swimming and then I discovered that I had way more in common with Netflix. So, as is the way in these matters, I broke up with kinda-fitness and devoted myself exclusively to movies. It was going really well until I recently almost had a heart attack walking up the stairs from the box office to the balcony of the symphony hall. Bad sign. I don't need to be an Olympian, but I do need to be able to get to the cheap seats without having an episode.

And so. My "I'm a real swimmer" no-frills bathing suit (in which my Netflix belly will be unattractively prominent) will once again be reunited with water. I haven't told it yet, but I think it's going to be pretty excited. I have no idea how this will go, but having access to a pool is a first step. Please cross your fingers for me. I have trouble with this sector of life.

This is one aspect of a larger project that could be entitled: Stop Thinking Endlessly about Things and Actually Do Them except that that is not a very catchy title. I am going to Camp Mighty in November and I am terribly excited about it. I am not much of a goal-setter or a big-dreamer or even a list-maker, but Mighty Girl said I had to make a list in order to go have cocktails with delightful people and so I did. I will probably put it up here eventually (although, frankly, some of it is none of your bee's wax). The remarkable thing is just writing things down and knowing that I'll be talking about them in a few months has made a difference. I'm trying to be better about the blog; I'm going to renew efforts to not let my body totally atrophy; I got a cookbook with some inspiring vegetarian recipes; I am even taking an Italian class starting on July 12. Good lord, I'm already crossing things off the list and the list has only existed for about two weeks. She might be on to something.

Presumably the self-actualization will not continue at this frenetic pace indefinitely, but for now, I admit it. I do feel mightier.

Tell me no secrets

If the enemy captures me and gives me a mammogram, I am going to tell them everything I know. Immediately. Even if it means they will kill your entire family. When I was living cheerfully in ignorance an hour ago, I would have thought your secrets were safe with me, but I am now living on the other side of the dark curtain of mammography and I know different.

If anyone tells you that a mammogram will cause "some discomfort," punch them in the face. If someone says, "It will hurt more than you can fucking believe and you will wonder how this ludicrously ham-fisted procedure is the best we can do in a time when the iPad exists" thank them for being the only honest person you have ever met.


I wish, like a private eye of yesteryear, I had a bottle of whiskey in my desk drawer. Alas, I will have to wait until I get home to try to drown the memory.

Crank it up

From an NPR review of Gillian Welch's new album:

"Some of the territory is familiar: fear of the unknown, desperation, exhaustion."


Yee ha! Don't just stand there; ask me to dance.


*******

And then there's this from Netflix.

"More like Strictly Ballroom: Little Voice; Priscilla, Queen of the Desert; Cosi; The Piano..."

Excuse me? Did you just say The Piano? The PIANO?
That's certainly a double feature just waiting to happen.

Love letters

I send Marja an email telling her I'd just received the most depressing email of my life. Subject heading: We miss you!
Sender: Linens N Things.

An hour later I get an email from Marja.
Subject heading: You're my soulmate
Email message in its entirety: Bev Mo


Proving once again, boys and girls, that life without Marja would be merely a hollow, meaningless trudge toward the grave.

Open letter

Dear gentlemen of the Mission,

Please shave.
There are some indications that you may be quite handsome, but how could anyone be sure?

Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,
A concerned citizen

By special request

I am deriving some small pleasure from turning up Tom Waits to (attempt to) drown out the much-loathed upstairs-dwelling kinder. Not as much pleasure as I would derive from learning of their imminent plans to attend boarding school in Switzerland, but since it is a bit of a straw-grasping scenario, I'll take whatever pleasure I can get.

Now then. It has happened once again. The conversation that goes like this:

Other person: you should have a blog.
Me (sheepishly): Um...I do have a blog. I just don't tell people about it much. And I'm really bad about updating it.
OP: ??? [general bafflement at what sort of purpose a secret blog with no actual writing on it would serve]

Anyway, I provided this latest individual with the blog address, thinking that I might get more praise out of him (after all, there are more than 300 posts that he's never read), but I have just received an email that includes this. I shall quote. Ahem.

My dear, you really need to pull it together in the next four days and get a new post up there so there is not a big goose egg for June.

The nerve.

So here I am. Folding under peer pressure. Though, to be fair, he also suggested yesterday that I should take a bong hit, and I declined, proving that I am still in possession of at least a bit of spine. (There was no bong present for the conversation. It was more a theoretical bong hit of the future. Possibly, though not necessarily, in Yemen. He has a lot of goals for me, apparently.)

It is Pride weekend and though my instinct was to basically avoid all Pride-related things and zones of the city, that's not to say I'm not proud. Also, I would like a drag queen to teach me to apply eye makeup, so that I too may be glamorous. If you happen to be a drag queen with some spare time, do get in touch.

I came home from my sunny expedition having purchased a remaindered Mollie Katzen cookbook--yet another attempt to jump start a legitimate interest in vegetables and/or cooking--and, in related news, a bunch of radishes, which I am tempted to affix to the front of my frock, corsage-style. However, wishing to wear vegetables is not quite the interest in them I was trying to generate, unless wearing vegetables promotes slimness and good health as much as eating vegetables. If so, stay tuned for some sort of fetching cloche fashioned from kale.

June is no longer a "big goose egg." I hope you are all satisfied.

Slipping

Interestingly, the fact that I am still wearing my nightgown at 2pm does not disquiet me in the least, whereas my realization just now that it is on inside out startled me considerably, suggesting as it does that Standards are not What They Once Were around here.

I slay me

I woke up laughing at 4am from what was apparently a hilarious dream that involved rather a lot of singing. Then the very fact that I had awakened myself with laughter cracked me up, so I just lay there chuckling (and humming the hilarious song which I have since forgotten) for about five minutes before closing my eyes and getting back to the richly rewarding work of sleeping.

Idolotry

It is, we are told, forbidden to worship false gods. But surely it's just as sinful to fail to recognize the real ones when you see them. What if you should happen to find yourself in the enviable position of sitting at your kitchen table with two as yet unopened books--one by Peter Carey and one by Billy Collins? And what if, within minutes, it is clear to you that worship is really the only appropriate verb to apply to the situation? That were you to begin at the beginning: to admire, to appreciate, to applaud...you would find most verbs simply inadequate to the task. You might as well skip ahead to "w" perhaps pausing at "v" to venerate.

Maybe there is a simple way out of the theological quagmire. Maybe they are the one true God--two parts of the Trinity. Billy, the Son, making it look human scale and decidedly easy (which Jesus would be the first to tell you, it is not) and Peter, the Father, making it look magnificently impossible. Perhaps the Holy Spirit just moves between the two of them. Or maybe I am the Holy Spirit. And you. And every reader who finds, bounding from phrase to delightful phrase, that it is suddenly 4pm and she is still in her nightgown.

From Parrot & Olivier in America by Peter Carey

"[It] was one of those dazzling machines that are initially mocked for their impracticality until, all in a great rush, like an Italian footman falling down a staircase, they arrive in front of us, unavoidably real and extraordinarily useful."

From horoscopes for the dead by Billy Collins

Feedback

The woman who wrote from Phoenix
after my reading there

to tell me they were still talking about it

just wrote again
to tell me that they had stopped.

Mysterious

Outside, on the landing, are two small boxes that have been left neither in front of my door, nor my neighbors' door, but snugly against the door of the third apartment, which has been vacant since January. They have been there since I left for work yesterday morning. One box contains the unabridged audio recording of Brideshead Revisited and the other the unabridged audio recording of Pride and Prejudice. Both sets are recorded on cassette. There is no note.

My neighbors and I have now passed these tapes several times and neither household has claimed them. My confusion is increased by the fact that I have a great fondness for both of these books (while also harboring enough general snobbery and specific hostility toward my clattery neighbors [who fill the shared recycling bin to the brim with their uncollapsed boxes each week] to believe that a similar appreciation cannot be attributed to them). Yet, I do not know of anyone who would sneak up the stairs in the late night or early morning to leave recordings for me.

Perhaps most vexingly of all, even if these are a gift just for me from the patron saint of dead English writers, I no longer own a tape player.

John Hughes, eat your heart out.

Tonight at the school's spring concert:

A boy who two years ago was challenged by simply sitting in a chair (seriously, I saw him fall off a chair. Twice.) sang a rip roaring jazz solo accompanied by a full jazz band in front of hundreds of people.

A handsome, polished boy with a perfect suit and a shiny trumpet was the featured soloist on the next piece, after which he called a fellow musician onstage and formally asked her to be his prom date. (She said yes [who on earth would have said no?] and then went to get her bass for the next song.)

Another natty lad thanked his teacher, the band leader. "Scott," he said, "I wanted to say something, particularly on behalf of the seniors. For the past two or three years, you've guided us through the jazz desert. [Pause] We would have gotten you some flowers. Only they don't grow in the jazz desert. But I do offer my thanks."

If I could find a man of 40 with as much panache as the majority of jazz band seniors, I would marry him.

Happy V Day

Some students are producing Eve Ensler's seminal work this spring and they want to make sure we all know.

Of course, there's nothing profane about calling things by their anatomically correct names. And I am certain that if there were signs everywhere that said ARM or KNEE or even LARGE INTESTINE, I'd be just fine. Nevertheless, I do find it a bit disconcerting to have flyers all over the school screaming VAGINA in 200pt bright red caps. Apparently, I'm not all that mature.

Still, I guess it doesn't hurt to have a reminder posted every few feet. I wouldn't want to absent-mindedly leave my vagina in the lunchroom or something. Now I'm prompted constantly to just make sure I still have it with me.

Directions

Last week I was very aware of how all the cool people were at SxSW and how, if I had made some different choices, say, ten years ago, I might have been one of those people. But I did not and, thus, am not. To wit:

1. I am not altogether clear on what SxSW even is. I mean, yes, there is a lot of music. A great, great deal of music. But how is it also a technological extravaganza? I know nothing. I just joined Facebook for goodness sake.

2. Today, looking over the SxSW musical highlights on NPR, I find I have heard of exactly one of the performers. I am not familiar with his work, mind you, but I have heard of him,

I do have the DVD of North by Northwest, however, if you want to come over.