A Different Song by U2, or, I Found What I'm Looking For

Ok, let's be pleasant. My last few posts weren't pleasant. Let's make some pleasantness, shall we?

Recognize the title of the book in this picture?

It's ok, I'll give you a little time...or a little more time...

Remember now? Ok, here's the exciting conclusion:

Last Thursday I took a day to explore a couple of the libraries in the City. I was homesick for the library experience I had at Carlsbad and I wanted to curl up again and read in a library. I've never had that kind of experience at the libraries in the City because, well, usually there's either someone there who doesn't speak English who's ignoring the "sssshhhh" rule, or there's a homeless person leaving a odorous print on the environment, or some such thing that sets me off.

It didn't happen this time. Now, it probably helped not having a traditional job--I could slow down and enjoy my library time, which I did. I didn't enjoy it in the same way as I did in Carlsbad, but I enjoyed it all the same, giving me a chance to say to myself, "hey, why don't we try a new one every week?" I fell in love in a hesitant way with my local one in the Sunset (there was some chatter in Cantonese, but it passed quickly enough when the ladies found what they wanted in the new fiction shelves), and after reading there for a couple of hours I even crossed the street and tried a new hotdog joint called Underdog, which was tasty and exotic, in its own organic way.

Then I took the train down to the Main Branch of the library and explored the other floors after donating five books and checking out two (I'm never going to win this "no new books" struggle, am I?). Normally when I go into this branch it's a quick walk around the first floor fiction and then checkout and go, so I was completely unaware of the study rooms on the third and fourth floors, as well as the breath-taking periodicals room with the spiraling staircase to the sixth floor. (Shockingly enough I have taken the elevator to the sixth floor before when the museum they have there had a display on Harvey Milk. Completely bypassed all the other floors. Yes, I'm a jerk.) I spent some time on the international floor and general collections writing in my journal (where everyone was quiet as mice, English or no), wrote for another hour in one of the study rooms, and walked the rest of the building slowly.

Then it hit me...I wonder if "Desert Solitaire" is here.

It was listed as there, but it wasn't in the racks in the general collection or in the "new books" by the Page Desk, which is where the location listing was. Sigh. Ok, fine. But it was also at another library.

I'll give you three guesses on which one it was at. And the first two guesses don't count.

Yeeees...the Sunset branch.

No problem, I thought. It's early, 2:30 p.m.--I'll put it on hold now and pick it up tomorrow.

It took them TWO DAYS to put the thing on hold. What's so funny about this is I am used to Grainger picking an item in stock and putting it on hold for a customer in no more than thirty minutes. So you can imagine why I was stir crazy. But they finally had it, and Saturday I walked into the library and picked it up in the holds section and just stood there, with a huge grin on my face, trying not to cry. Abbey, you bastard, I found you. I have climbed highest mountains, I have run through the fields, and HERE...YOU...ARE.

And now, to pick up where I left off in Carlsbad. By the way, if you can get a copy, it's worth the search.

Onward to the next quest, dear reader.

P.S. - This song is where today's post of Life For Rent comes from. It's the first song I thought of when I walked home with the book. The heart is indeed a bloom.

That Song by Adele, or, You Can't Go Home Again

Never thought I would see a box in these colors again.

Keep in mind that this box was bigger than what it should have been. It included the one thing I wanted sent from my previous employer, and it included a bunch of crap that I asked be discarded on site. I explained to several people, on several occasions, that what I left behind I didn't want. If someone else needed them, they could use them. Whoever packed the box packed what I wanted and promptly used that other stuff as packing material.

Which, of course, caused quite the flashback.

I wanted to be bigger, though, so I responded to the two messages you see above in text messages to the people who wrote them. One isn't signed, but I know who he is.

No acknowledgment of the texts from either one.

To be honest, I have sent folks from that branch text messages just after leaving, with very limited response. Two people know me on Facebook, so we can stay in touch one way or another. But the others have completely ignored me. I'm always a little stunned by this, given how much I used to do for the people who worked for me.

I try to rationalize it. It doesn't work. I've often thought of just walking in on them one day to say hi, but honestly...would any of them care one way or the other? Two of them would, but we see each other on Facebook.

About a month out, I talked to the Airman about this. He said it would probably just be best to stay in touch with those who wanted to, and to not walk back in that building. He wasn't trying to protect me, he just didn't see the point.

If nothing else, this will teach me not to look back. I have a whole new set of "coworkers" now in the Meetup writing sessions that I attend, and some of them I see over and over. Others I saw twice and they disappeared. It teaches me, once again, not to take things for granted. To take in and relax with every interaction, and to appreciate people for as long as I get to know them. This will also teach me how much weight to give people...differing degrees of commitment from others should grant me options in how much commitment I portion out to others. When I worked with my last employer, I had these nightmares where I would work the counter or phones alone, with no employees. And then it really happened, during a little period expansion, and it happened for a month. I learned that I could do it, but that I shouldn't do it. There are limits to health. And I crossed them. Several times.

Given that I have been deserted while I worked with these people (I won't discuss how that happened when I broke my hand) and that it took them over two months to send the one thing I wanted from Oakland to San Francisco (and the fact that they didn't listen and included about twelve things I didn't need when I finally did get it), tells me that that part of my life is over, regardless of how desperate in the employment department I get.

Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This is where the title of today's post of Life For Rent comes from. It seemed extreme...for only about a minute. "I won't let you close enough to hurt me." Again.

That Song by Gloria Estefan, and the Food Network Teaching Me

If you've read any of the other posts in this blog, you'll know my writing history. Perhaps it would be best to give a brief teaching history, if only for philosophy.

I started teaching in 1997, for a sporting goods company called Bass Pro Shops. When I first began, the goal was just not to fall on my face--someone had selected me as a teacher, with no prior experience on my part, after having me as a student in their class. (Sadly, I wish I could say that teacher was good. She wasn't my cup of tea.) After teaching a while though, I found I got a high from one thing specifically--watching that wave of "Oh, NOW I get it" crossing the face of the student. I live for that moment. It happened a lot when I first started, too, because most of my classes were beginning employees, and, against modesty here, I'm good at teaching.

The second phase of how to be a good teacher didn't sharpen in me until the last four years, working at Grainger--if you want to be a good teacher, beyond beginners, you better enjoy listening too, so that you create a learning plan that gives back more and more of those "Oh, NOW I get it" moments. By the time I left Grainger I was damn good at listening--but the missing link was having very little or no empowerment, as an ASSISTANT manager, to make changes. I taught things and watched them fall flat, sort of like flying a kite by running all day instead of having a good wind behind you.

Leaving and working alone, you would think I wouldn't be able to teach anyone. I'm alone about 85% of the time now. (When I define alone, I mean, not with people interacting with me. In a City like San Francisco alone is all relative. I've been known to go to bars and coffee shops to CREATE interactions, but, I digress.) I'm a writer, which, for overall best productivity means that the writer sits alone, even in a cafe, and spins out a world of words. My expectation of REACH, either by association or by teaching, is low for two reasons: I'm in a solitary occupation, and in the last occupation I did get a wind to keep my kite up from the Airman, but no one else. Not expecting to having impact, I keep writing, and I keep going to my writing Meetups, even on nights where no one else is there or only one person shows up. Read me, or don't. Meet me, or don't. My devotion has to be the same whether I have wind or not.

This past week all kinds of wind brought in all kinds of "Oh, NOW I get it" on faces, even when I couldn't see them. Tuesday I wrote a piece about an event at a local bookstore as part of my work as a contract writer with the Examiner, and got all kinds of feedback from readers. I was stunned. Someone was reading me and, of all things, LIKED what they read. The article created new interactions on Facebook and on Twitter, and my audience got bigger. I REACHED someone. No, I'm not teaching at Harvard yet, but I'm teaching. Somebody learned something. Including me.

Last night I hosted what may be my final facilitating gig with Meetup for a little while. (When I first got into Meetup I had no intention of EVER being a facilitator--I was a manager at the time and just wanted to be a "student"--but people had the tendency to see dependability in me, so if they couldn't lead then they asked me to.) I have to be honest--I was dreading it. The facilitator who asked me to host has been asking about four weeks out of six, and I was wrestling with taking care of this group with a) no credit to my name for doing it, or b) no compensation for doing so. Facilitators of Meetups don't do it as a profit, but I was looking at this from a just-a-few-weeks-ago manager perspective: "What? I'm not listed as the Big Kahuna? Screw you." I sat down the last couple of days and did a lot of writing about it, and remembered why I teach, and tried to apply that: "Look for the recognition in the eyes, Jo, and give the group a place of no judgment from which to write." I had to go back to the writings of Natalie Goldberg, to the teachings of the Good Doctor, and to the question from the Healer asking me two weeks out of managerial jail, "Why do you want to write?" I want to write to reach someone. Normally, filling in for this facilitator, I'm all nervous because I want to make him proud that I can hold down the fort for him. Last night, nothing to lose, no judgment and wanting only recognition that the participants can do what they desire as writers, I OWNED that time. I was a teacher again, the good kind, and this morning two of the participants voiced how much they were able to accomplish with the group last night. REACHED them again. (To understand why I think that I've reached them is to know that I haven't seen comments the next day from this group since I joined in 2007. For ANY facilitator.) Five pairs of eyes, "Oh, NOW I get it."

God, I love teaching.

(Before you ask, I will probably facilitate again. But I have to be a student again for a little while, with a different branch of my writing Meetup, to help get it off its feet. Going where I'm most needed, I'm off to be someone else's wind. Selah.)

*****

Along with teaching and re-grounding myself, I'm seeing something else happen in my art...I'm getting leaner.

I'm sure all of my readers have seen the Food Network, so this analogy might be best unfurled with the following metaphor. There are two reasons to strain something when you are in food preparation: one is to strain to get out the big unwanted pieces, as in jelly, sauces, or stock; and the other one is to remove unwanted liquid, as in marinades, starchy vegetables, and yogurt. Lately my writing has reminded me of the second example--I write about five hours a day and publish about an eighth of that, if I'm lucky. (And most of that is self-publishing, which means a lot of stuff doesn't meet my own standard.) I noticed that the liquid was getting strained out this morning in particular when I came up with a poem. Now, I don't write poems unless I'm sitting in the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto--for some reason that's the only place I can get inspired for poetry, and where I came up with one about not knowing Spanish in a bi-lingual state. (I'd link it here but apparently it's up and gone, like a fart in the wind. So I'll type it out and get it in the blog another day.) This morning, however, after weeks of writing, reading, and reading a little poetry every morning, I wrote one:

Pears

They're red, not green,

But sit cockeyed in a green bowl

With high walls like a vase.

Their red necks turn this way

And that way,

Leaning on each other

Like fat, rednecked drunks

Wearing their union stickers

"308, Inspected by Local,"

Proudly.

Whether or not it's good is up to the reader. I like it, but I like the imagery of pears as blue-collar fruit, so sue me. What was most interesting to me was that I wrote something compact and poetic in a place that didn't involve black-and-white film and a huge organ. I squeezed out the formerly necessary setting, a lot of extra stuff that I don't need in my daily round, and now...Something's changing in how I do this writing thing, and I like where it's going.

Onward, dear reader.

P.S.-This is where the title of this post of Life for Rent comes from. (The Olympics in the 90's meant something to me, what can I say.)

That Song By Kelly Clarkson, Part 1

The Good Doctor always said, "Point of view is a moral decision." I'm thinking about this as I add in today's blog. Peter Gabriel wrote, "Grab your things I've come to take you home." Sooner or later, someone would have said that to me. I was lucky enough to look deep in a mirror and see no other course of action.

I imagine, in terms of point of view, that my employees were just as relieved as I was to hear that I was to leave on April 15th, but their points of view are theirs to write. Perhaps someday they will be the subject of a short story, a collection of such stories, or a novel, where I can imagine that relief full-fledged. But this stream is my point of view, or POV, as the Good Doctor would call it.

How long did I know I would leave my last traditional workplace? In all terms I guess you could say from the first day of my tenure there, technically. Unlike my first two jobs, I never felt that this last one was permanent at any time--rather, I felt like I was a contract worker in both the sense that I could be dismissed at any time and that I was of a different make and model than the rest of the blockade. (At one point one of my employees asked me just when it was that I decided it was okay to eat from a shovel instead of a silver spoon, but he was referring to a different situation, so we'll leave that on the mantle for now and come back to it when I'm ready to pull that trigger.) I never stopped holding my breath. That may have come from getting laid off from the first two jobs in California (the last time I had been laid off prior to that was in Ohio--I had gone TWELVE YEARS without a lay-off in Missouri), but it was feasted on by my leadership. I have a feeling it started when I revealed in the initial in-person interview that I was looking for a position with a company that wouldn't lay me off in a year.

But, you ask, when did I know that I would have to leave? What pushed me over the edge? Nothing "pushed" me. When you are in a position of no family, no spouse, some money saved, and at least two people in your friendship circle who believe that you could accomplish amazing things if you would just go do what you were meant to do instead of, well, you know--WORKING IN A JOB YOU RESENT AND ARE PROBABLY SHARING THAT RESENTMENT WITH YOUR EMPLOYEES. The better question might be: "Why did you wait so cursed long to leave?" I had to wait for it to be right. And shortly after a shake-up of all kinds of leadership in the district, in the company, and in my heart, it was right. It was no longer a decision, but a path.

Could I have done what I wanted to do within my last traditional workplace? Yep. But I decided I wasn't going to get that opportunity in my workplace. And as the Airman would say, in translation: "The donkey wasn't born gun-shy. Someone made her that way."

So here's what happened after April 15th, in broad strokes. We'll come back to pieces of this in future visitation.

Month One

Week 1

Last Day

• Bailed early to meet my brother and sis-in-love in Las Vegas for four days. Forgot where I used to work in a flurry of shows, sights, drinks, and too much food. God bless you, fountains of the Bellagio.
• Came home and panicked. Money situation fine, but how to stop from waking up at 5 am and calling the old work-place at 7 to make sure that they were ok?
• No one calling me from the old workplace for how to do something. Another right hook from reality. Triggered hatred of the times where I got sick at work on nearly daily basis from shoving food down to finish lunch in 7 minutes, times I went into work soaking wet so that I could take care of a building with no power, times where I worked 50 hours straight to count a building in the ugly month of October.
• Started writing more than three pages per day.
• Started new blogs.
• Started going to writing groups, to try them all.
• Started liking people in general again.

Week 2

• Met with the Healer and with another friend, both of whom I hadn't seen in forever.
• Realized to my relief that the Healer wasn't going to change.
• Realized to my disappointment that the other friend wasn't going to change either. Damn.
• Kept going to writers' groups. Stepped in as facilitator on one of them. Realized I don't mind leading people if they are accountable for their success.
• Then realized, as though Dorothy-from-Oz, that all of these people had the accountability of their own success the whole time.
• Still didn't want to go back and lead people at the place where I left. Just felt that realization was useful going forward.
• Got job writing for money. Now even more accountable.

Week 3

• Started feeling normal. Example of normality found in that I could eat a meal without wolfing it and without concentrating on not wolfing it.
• Struggled with an exercise regimen. Decided best one is just to get out in fresh air. Stopped with the marathon training.
• Writing up to 12 pages, longhand, a day. Frustrated as hell that it hasn't turned into a novel.
• Sleeping weird at night. Have the energy to crank out entire empires at 1 a.m.; can't create a damn sentence at 2 p.m. Would probably have a third shift schedule if I wasn't concerned with waking an entire building.
• Building discipline based on advice from the Airman when I worked with him: "Show me your focus, your discipline." Yes, sir.
• Anchored by memories of not letting the Healer and Airman down by self-sabotage. Taking on a Zen approach to writing.

Week 4

• Writing.
• Writing.
• Checking for self understanding.
• Writing.
• Talked to the Airman. Felt better afterword, but not because I needed a pep-talk. Just liked the reset.

Week 5

• Removed the schedule to see if I could trust my imagination. Sort of like taking away a net on the trapeze. That would have scared me shitless on the trapeze if they would have done that.
• Writing.
• No gulping. No hoarding. Spring cleaning. Purging of all kinds of material garbage. Also discovering that I can't avoid the fact that I can only read ONE BOOK AT A TIME.
• Gaining encouragement from nooks and crannies, instead of all of the wide open spaces I gave my life to support.
• Have more followers on Twitter than on Facebook. Different party, different props.

And now, Month Two.

P.S. - This is where the title for this post of Life for Rent comes from.

That Song by Clint Black, Part 2

"It's just going to be the same somewhere else."

Have you ever read John Updike's short story "A&P"? (*Gulp*...I hate to ask, but do you remember what the A&P was?) The story is about a young man who quits his job to impress girls--sorry, John, but that's the best summary. Ok, ok, here's a better telling.

I was thinking about this story when I thought about this post early last week. I left my last employer at probably the strangest possible time that could be chosen, but, as the Airman said, "There is no good time." For four years I had put off vacations, dentist appointments, doctors appointments, bloodwork, and holidays so that it would be a "good time" for everyone else. (God help me if I ever would have gotten pregnant. "Now's not a good time." Oh, ok, I'll just have an abortion. No problem.) There was no way that my leaving would be convenient. I wasn't intentionally trying to sabotage (to do that would have meant giving my notice the same day that my boss got his new job--I at least waited a week after he left to give my notice, a three-week difference), but I'm sure that any date would have looked that way.

For four years I had thought about other opportunities, particularly those that were more to my expertise and less about taking care of my employees. I had this incredible notion that if you were an adult you were supposed to act like one, no spoon-feeding, but with this company it felt like spoon-feeding was the prerequisite to employee retention. I was a hard-ass in Missouri (I'm talking of my time as a teacher at Bass Pro) and 75 people a week loved me for it because they knew that there would be no bullshit involved in my leadership. They knew me to be fair and that I had equally high expectations of everyone. But at this job as a manager I was told to soften it up, or, since I had no idea of how to do that, I became their mother. First in San Francisco, and then in San Leandro. You want a drill sergeant? I can do that. You want a kindergarten teacher? I can do that. But a manager? With soft lines? What the...

As I grew older and older with the company, I looked for ways out. But everyone, everywhere, told me it would be the same. "You can't get away from that," they said. "It's just going to be the same wherever you go." These statements more often than not came from other employees, not mine, but other employees in other buildings and not from managers. Was that what was keeping them there? These are the types of people that I felt I was working FOR, and yet by traditional definition they were supposed to be working for managers like me, and they wouldn't leave because it was just the same anywhere else.

To me, that made as much sense as comparing my high school education to my university education. I loved some of my high school teachers, but I detested high school in general. I loved my university experience, and that was with the hatred of some of my college professors (mostly from the history side, sadly). When I left high school I swore that I would never go back in an academic setting to learn how to write--it's just going to keep being like high school, right? But luckily enough for me someone came along who loved their professor at a community college and I was hooked for life--the cliques and popularity contests were gone, and being smart made me popular, despite my shyness. To sit forever with an employer because the next one could be a continuation of this one--that's pretty narrow-minded. And it also means that I don't have much faith in myself as a contributor to society. My best-laid plans are not to let the next employer take over my work/life balance. I'll see, at the end of this sabbatical, if I can do that.

*****

Knee-deep in Month Two, here are my latest accomplishments, learned from the time out of water:

• The Giants still have the ability to surprise the crap out of me. Regardless of who's on the DL. I guess you could say that means we're all expendable, but I'd like to think it teaches us to make the absent person proud should they return. Or should they be watching. The day after Crawford's grand slam, Posey sent him a text: "You're my new favorite player." I know I would try to match that from now on, regardless of whether or not the guy's expendable. That's called "legacy" in my book.
• Unless I accomplish everything that I want to in that particular day, I still panic. I have this delusional impression that I should be more prolific than Virginia Woolf. After about 20 minutes of the nonsense I usually remember what the Healer taught me: "Take the black and turn it to blue." In my case I was shooting for aquamarine, but it's more along the principle of meditating all that dark color out of the mind. Works pretty well, too.
• I believe in M&M's: Meditation and Melatonin (see above bullet point). My brain seems to think that I will sleep when I'm dead, and my body insists that if I don't sleep I will be dead. Meditation and Melatonin help.
• I've given up Facebook, as a rule. No one's checking it, or the people who do check it can't see me because of the popularity contest they have for a friend list, and I'm just the nerdy reader/movie critic/art nut in the corner. I'm checking in once a week so folks don't think I'm dead. The rest of the time I'm writing or working the web in other ways.
• I'm still not in shape. Damn it. Working on changing that.

P.S. - This is where the title for this post of Life For Rent comes from.

That Song By Dido, An Introduction

A couple of weeks back a reading friend suggested that I write a blog or series of posts on what it was like to be unemployed by choice in today's economy. It seemed like a wonderful idea at the time--I was two weeks out of work and surprisingly calm most of the time, but there continued to be some struggle in the fact that I often wondered what was next, and how to proceed on a day-to-day basis with what my plans were vs. what everyone else thought I should do to fit in. My friend asked me if I thought I was the only person in the world right now who had tried this, and, if not, I might be able to relate to a certain audience from the experience if I were to put it to words.

Still, I had misgivings.

There are a whole list of aspects that I don't want this series to cross over and into:

• Beating up on dead horses: I don't want to rag on past employers. When you leave your workplace in the manner that I did, where you didn't have your back against a wall, then it's not good form to keep throwing punches. I also understand that it's not good form to burn bridges, but if that's justified, I'll do it. There are certain past college professors and romantic partners that I would gladly strike a match to the buttresses for. But so far, no employers.
• Sucking up to dead horses: On the flip side, I don't want to paint my past experiences as all puppies and kittens and cookies. This is not the forum for that. If you want to see that sort of professional display, then you can review my blog that I keep open for employers, found here. On this blog, my hope is to give as honest and open a story of my development, and MY DEVELOPMENT ONLY. The companies' developments are up to them.
• An expose of all of the people I worked with: Please. My choices make theirs look boring. But in the bargain, I won't be revealing things that aren't crucial to the telling of the story just so that a reader will search the text for something juicy. If you're reading for that reason, you might want to check out less reputable blogs by porn stars or drug kingpins. My objective is writing you can relate to, not writing that will titillate. I save that for the other blogs that I don't tell you about. (JUST KIDDING.)
• A "how-to": How and why I chose this path won't work for everyone. Come to think of it, it won't work for most people. I'm not saying that you're not up to it, but I'm just saying that a lot of this isn't going to look very smart to the outsider. As an episode of the West Wing taught me once about decision-making and addiction: Decisions of the heart aren't about being smart. "Do you know how many Mensa candidates are alcoholics?" If you want a how-to on how to leave your job you'd best speak to a therapist or a life coach. I'm not either.
• A smug, free-spirited tirade on how I rose to the enlightened level of a freeloader: A) I'm not a freeloader. I'm living off of my money. B) There is nothing smug about what I'm doing. There will be moments of bliss. There were moments of bliss when I was in a conventional job. I'm just looking for more of them without stepping on someone's back or asking for a handout.

Knowing this, I plow in. The objective here is to give you what I experience, take you back to a similar or related experience when I was at a conventional job, and let you, the reader, decide. For this post you should probably be aware, as well, of a cast of characters that may pop up from time to time in these posts. In introducing them I should probably also mention that I'm going to come clean now in terms of fiction and non-fiction; since one of the characters is, in all practical measures, deceased, you should probably be advised that her parts in the play are true, but are the fabrication of a compilation of memories of what she would say or had said in the past, and not necessarily said at the time that they came to my mind as relevant. Hell, that could be said of all of these characters.

If you read this and you recognize yourself in the list, my point is to pay you homage. If you read this and you don't see yourself in the list, it's not that you aren't important--you just weren't a force in the change.

Here is the supporting cast:

• The Healer: Not a licensed psycho-therapist or psychiatrist. She's my physical therapist.
• The Good Doctor: My first mentor, my college advisor, and my literature professor for several classes in college.
• The Airman: My second mentor who knew the best way to get me to lead employees and live authentically was to read about it. And then show him that I could learn from what I read.
• The Spirit: If you guessed this one as the deceased one, you win the keys to the Buick. This one, by the way, is the only one I'll identify directly--the Spirit is my mother. (I can be slightly blasphemous here because I'm Unitarian. Deal.)
• The Reader: One of two people--an literary friend of mine who encourages me as a writer, and, well, you, the reader. If I do my job right as a writer you'll get the difference.

With that, and all the cards on the table, dear reader, onward.

P.S.--This is where the title for this series of posts comes from.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Reading, Part 3

The Language of Literature

My mother started me on books before I learned how to read--her favorite selections at bookstores were from the crafts, gardening, and children's literature sections. She was picky about her literature, too, and most of it was in verse until I started to read for myself. There was a lot of A.A. Milne, Dr. Seuss, and Shel Silverstein. There were even anthologies of children's verse by various poets. There was no mention of Shakespeare (I didn't fall in love with the Bard until my third year of college) but there was the Song of Solomon and the Song of Hiawatha.

Because of where my birthday fell (late in the year), I started school late. Since I was raised in rural Ohio in the late seventies, there no opportunity for public preschool--I had to wait my turn to join kindergarten. I was 6 years old when I started, only two months from turning 7, and my memory tells me that I could read before I started school. (There's a chance that I couldn't, but one of my earliest memories is words dawning on the page in my mother's company, not with a roomful of other kids and a teacher.) My first books were the Little House books, with lengthy descriptions of farms (I could relate to that) and food. Despite the intense poverty that I later discovered between the lines of these books, my early readings of them were nearly magical in the history and exotic nature of having taken place nearly 100 years prior to my reading of them. As a little girl I drifted to loving sunbonnets, horses, and the well-formed sentence from this start in literature.

My parents saw potential problems instead of potential in that last-listed passion, and set out to correct my tendency toward precociousness by purposely mis-pronouncing words. Looking back, I don't know why this would have been the way to go in my development--I could have been expert at language and stood out that way (regardless of what my classmates thought of me), or been the laughing stock instead because I didn't know how to correctly pronounce words. Perhaps it was a lesson in humility and lightening up--not only was I precocious with reading and words, but I was startlingly neat (my mother had to command me to stop organizing my toys and to play with them on several occasions). Until my first year at school I thought the long, string-like pasta was called SPAG-etti (emphasis on the first syllable, not the second, so I could offend English and Italian speakers), a negotiation was another word for com-PROM-iss (compromise, *sigh*), and one of the words didn't get corrected until I turned 19 and was living in a different state: YOZE-mite for Yo-sem-it-ee. While this tactic was a humbling and entertaining experience for everyone else, it also served to keep me a very quiet child, since I appeared not to know English.

I didn't really have a whole lot of friends until about the fifth grade or so--I talked funny by my parents design or by reading too much, was poor, painfully shy, and was made fun of for knowing about how things worked on the farm. I was an easy target. After long days at school of being bullied or isolated by kids who didn't read much of anything, I would go home, open a book of literature, and found myself back with my language. The closest thing I can compare it to was moving to California years later and encountering people who spoke English as a second language--their primary languages being Spanish, Cantonese, or Korean. Other mono-linguistic speakers would often ask me, "Doesn't it drive you crazy when people speak a foreign language around you when they could speak English?" I would usually shrug--it didn't, actually. A Spanish speaker once told me that he spoke Spanish when he could find another Spanish speaker, and he didn't care if English-only speakers heard it, because he was just relieved that he could speak Spanish with someone. I understood--I am the same way with the language of literature, whether it's Shakespearean English, Faulkner-ian English, Forrester-ian English of India, translated English of the Chilean literature of Isabel Allende, etc. The language of literature is different, it sings in my ears, and, if I'm alone, tastes in my mouth. I relish the time I get to speak it.

Are there books that don't speak my language, even written in English? Oh, yes. But then there are English speakers who don't speak my language, peppering their sentences with "like" or going to the other extreme and correcting my grammar. I will say one thing that my parents' game created, and that was an empathy for slips in grammar. Despite the fact that I'm a writer, I do not walk around with a red pen correcting speech, letters, e-mails, or texts. People stop writing around those who do that, and that turns people into the judgmental person my parents thought I would end up being before they screwed with my English. My philosophy is simple--love words, love playing with their possibilities, and don't slip into laziness by trying to sound like, you know, a valley girl, or like, that. If I live by love of words and love of language possibility, I continue to speak literature as language.

*****

This post is the last in a series of my thoughts on reading, so I wanted to make a couple of program notes. Starting next Thursday, Notes will feature my thoughts on writing in a three-part series, and starting next Monday I will begin a series on my occupational situation. About a week or so ago a friend of mine made a suggestion for my blog, and while I normally don't take writing requests (the tendency is that I end up writing a piece someone else could have written, instead of one that rings true for me), I felt that this request might come from my heart more than from anyone else's. So...that post starts Monday.

In the meantime...onward, dear reader.

Undoing

This weekend on Twitter a friend asked all of us followers: Who is your undoing? I admitted that mine was men who asked me out--I had no standards for fear that I would miss any chances at all, and now, stripped of the temptation, know that I want no part of trying to find standards or chances.

You might say the same thing applies to career choices.

I spent last night trying to organize a shit-pile of work items that I just kept throwing into piles in my desk. I figured it was a good incentive to get me to walk into work. It's not. This morning I found another reason to walk into work--use the experience in my writing. I don't plan to set up a diatribe of how crappy my workplace is. I think how crappy my workplace is will be evident enough. But I intend to be fair--my faults in the process included.

Ok, now I can go back to work. Like Melville getting back on a ship with someone not named Ahab at the helm. We glean what we can.

Meantime, Monster.com has really tricked up their website.

Onward.

Where I'm Headed and What I'm Looking Forward To

Yesterday I addressed what I loved about 2010, after being inspired to do so by writer Susan Orlean on Twitter. I also promised to provide a list of what I am looking forward to in 2011. I got this list from a combination of resolutions and processes that I'm working on right now. In no particular order:

• Maintaining breath, instead of holding it
• Trying one new thing every day, no matter how small or large
• Not buying any new books in 2011. I'm reading down the formidable stack in my room that I've already bought, reading some of my roommate's books that tempt me on the shelves in the living room, and rediscovering the San Francisco Public Library
• Not buying any new pens in 2011. For those who have seen some of my pens, you know this will be a challenge, but for those of you who have seen my pens, you know I have way too many
• Finding my peace with Facebook. I received some tips on how to make it better this past week from a friend (thanks much, Mike!) and I've put those in play and already feel better
• Being more entertaining on Twitter. I crack myself up
• Writing more of these blog entries. It's something I love to do and something I've sold myself out on
• Giving up sex for a year. Liz Gilbert seems healthier for it, and I could use an adult relationship
• Enjoying food again, instead of hoarding it in case I don't get to eat for the rest of the day
• Wanting what I've got
• Processing instead of reacting and resenting
• Dreaming
• Getting back on a saddle, literally
• Trying the trapeze again
• Opening Day at At&t Park
• Meditation
• Walking to the ocean more
• Meeting new people
• Learning a language so that I'm fluent

Not saying that they will all come true...I'm just saying that I'm looking forward to the effort.

Onward.

What I Loved And When I Loved It

Interesting thing I saw from writer Susan Orlean today on Twitter--she posted a series of tweets about what she loved best about 2010. In that inspirational spirit, here's my list, in no particular order:

• Being able to use my right hand again
• Finally getting a Mac
• Discovering Alt.Latino podcasts
• Meeting my boss
• Trying trapeze
• Living in my City, as always
• Rediscovering red wine
• My team, the one everyone thought was a joke, winning the World Series
• The Yankees not winning the playoffs
• The extra time that I got to spend with my brother in September because he was working up here
• My friends, virtual and live
• My Visconti pen
• Jon Stewart and "The Daily Show"'s impact on the news
• The books I read, particularly "The Lacuna"
• The movies that I saw, particularly "The King's Speech"
• Trying new things and failing, like cooking goose
• The orchid that I bought in August that still has one lone bloom on it
• The concerts I saw this year--Huey Lewis, Rufus Wainwright, etc
• Trying on a wedding dress, even if it was probably for the last time
• Falling in love with anejo tequila
• Learning new words in Italian and Spanish ("Attraversiamo," "Que milagro")
• Writing...one more year

Tomorrow--what I look forward to in 2011. Onward.

Tales From a Tunnel

Yesterday I actually got on the road, so to speak, a little sooner than normal so that I could do my morning pages on the way instead having to set the alarm sooner. (Seems impossible, but it can be done.) I finished half of them over oatmeal and yogurt at Specialty's Bakery in downtown San Francisco, and then figured I would wrap them up on the Bay Area Rapid Transit train to the East Bay, specifically the Oakland Airport area. Not only did I finish them, but I burnt up all of my Alt.Latino podcasts and half of the day's New York Times before I realized that the usual creeping approach to Downtown Oakland's Lake Merritt station was no longer an approach--it was a stop, pure and simple. We made it to Lake Merritt station, but no farther.

I should probably pause the narrative here to reveal a little background about the days leading up to yesterday. The the last month I have applied for two positions with my current employer that I thought were closer to my skill set--before Thanksgiving I was turned down for one, Thursday I was turned down for the other, so my employer didn't seem to agree. On Tuesday I attended a managerial meeting that gave me a rare opportunity to meet with my peers, with friends among them--but from a couple that weren't friends in the mix, it was a reminder that I really couldn't be classified as a manager in their eyes. Oh, and on Tuesday night I called it quits with yet another guy who was only putting up with me for the hope of casual sex. No relationship to go with it, just sex.

So when I started my morning pages Friday morning I was in a special place, you could say--free of two abusive relationships. The first abusive relationship, one that had been going on for four years, is set to end January 30th of 2011. The other was with a "friend" that I had thought was going somewhere but instead was just killing time. Hey, at least he was honest, right?

A step up from the marrieds, but not good enough.

So when the train stopped, the doors shut and the lights dimmed to generator power, and then revealed that it would not proceed, we all departed from the train with the promise from the young woman in the cockpit that the train right behind us would pick us up momentarily. I didn't believe her, but I didn't doubt her maliciously--my pages were done, my workplace didn't want what I could offer, and I wasn't trying to make it to any church on time.

In other words, I wanted an adventure.

As we all stood on both sides of the platform, trains stopped in both directions, I sent my mentor/boss/business partner (note to self: gotta find a title for this guy that fits in a few letters or less) a text outlining the situation, to which he replied by telling me to be safe and take my time, and I settled in. I didn't have to wait long--in the train on the opposite platform two Latina women in sweatshirts and oversized pants couldn't handle each other anymore, and started a punching match against each other. We were all asked to stay put to help out the police with witness statements, a request I found amusing since it seemed unlikely any of us would get away on a train. After statements, however, I did exit--up the stairs and to the daylight. It seemed remarkable to me that so many people where crammed underground, but on street level I could only count about six people in a four block radius.

I have no knowledge of downtown Oakland transit--while most of the Muni map is familiar to me whether I take lines like K or M or not, AC transit is a pure-neccessity item, need-to-know only. When I go into the unfamiliar I often try the dumbest idea first, which in this case was to find a cab.

No dice. None. Nada. Zero.

Then my brain went one step further in the ridiculous meter--maybe if I walked to an area that was some semblance to a tourist destination, there would be cabs there. The only one that I could think of that might be close was Jack London Square--and by close I mean that it was about 10-15 blocks from Lake Merritt station. That, and I soon remembered my impression that no tourist in his right mind would want to travel to Oakland, because there were no cabs in Jack London Square, either.

So it was back to Lake Merritt station to check on the trains, which were still locked. At last logic took over, however--I walked the station in hopes of a simple guide on how to vacate by bus, and found my answer in the AC Transit 62 line to Fruitvale BART. The announcements coming over the loudspeakers were to find transportation to the "other side of this thing"--which meant that all passengers should find buses to the West Oakland, 12th Street, and Fruitvale stations--another amusing point since the system was locked up power-wise and was therefore probably dead everywhere...but I'm not an engineer.

As we made it back to the surface people began gathering at intersections--surely there are cabs in a city the size of Oakland when there's a BART issue of this magnitude, yes? Still no. People were asking each other for cabs--I got two requests, and tried not to smile thinking of a taxi hiding in my hip pocket or handbag. When the bus finally arrived a whole crowd of us filled it--I was lucky enough to sit and see the entire city of Oakland as a tour on this line. The 62 is perhaps the longest bus line I have ever experienced, stopping so much that to add any stops would mean that we would be stopping at residential driveways between intersections.

The surreal picture of the Fruitvale BART station prompted a renewed prayer in finding a taxi there--the track in Fruitvale is elevated, which means that for those who had the foresight to look up when they got off the bus there was the immediate knowledge that we were not on "the other side of the problem." Trains were stopped every quarter mile or so in both directions. The good news was taxis were in rotation--there wasn't a line of them waiting for fares, but I managed to snag the second one that drove up.

"How's your morning going?" the driver asked me in tone that spelled oblivious.

"Adventuresome," I replied quietly, grinning.

"Really? Why's that?"

"Let's just say that if you were at the Lake Merritt BART station right now you would be making money hand over fist."

He eyeballed me warily in the rearview, wondering. "Why's that?" he asked again.

"Because the power grid is out on BART, and that station is where it started."

"For real?"

"Look at the line above us."

Looking back, I considered it wise on my part to have pointed this out while we were stopped at a light, or my driver might have run us off the road in his excitement. For the rest of my journey to my employer's location he alternated between profusely thanking me and calling buddies on the phone--"Yeah, brother, I'm telling you it's locked. You gotta see this. It looks like an f-in' railyard." Someone had hit the lottery.

Ah, the perfect solution:

• I got some time off from a job that no longer needs me
• I got to benefit a guy in a casual relationship without having utilize sex at some point

Onward, thank God, to the next adventure.

Fix You

115 mg.

When I haven't had a tall eggnog latte from Starbucks or Peet's, that's how much cholesterol I'm leaving off. (The last one I had prior to today was a week and a half ago.) On a daily basis, a person is supposed to have 213 mg or less of cholesterol. I know this number very well these days.

There is no number for how many ounces/mg/percentage of stress you're supposed to have. For that number, you're on your own.

So here's what I've been eating each day:

• Breakfast: no fat yogurt, large oatmeal with dried cranberries and a teaspoon of brown sugar
• Snacks: a palmful of nuts, usually almonds
• Lunch: Spinach salad with avocado, tomato, onion, and hard-boiled egg whites
• Dinner: One of the following whole grain muffins--apple/cranberry, oatmeal/banana, pumpkin/walnut, or zucchini/wheat bran

And here's what causes me stress:

• Work
• Not being healthy enough to have a baby
• Not having time to have a routine to get healthy, because of...
• Work

This morning, God gave me a day without rain and a warm day without rain, at that. Yes, I know he has better things to do, but it feels good to know that I get these days as gifts, and that I have someone to thank for them. I took the gift and pried myself out of my flannel-inticed and lethargic bed and went for a fast, heart-starting walk to the ocean.

If you never try, you'll never know...just what you're worth.

After the walk I had lunch of chicken barley soup with Triskets, and a gingerbread ninja, and then drifted off into a nap, and then picked up my laundry and realized THE GIFT WAS STILL THERE, so I headed down the hill again, and got that drink that is 38% poison, according to chemistry, and did it with a smile on my face. The air was warm, the light was pink, the world slower and without a soundtrack, just breathing around me and CPR-ing me slower too. I drifted to the Park, I watched the fountains in the Music Concourse, I said "thank you" to no one in particular and someone I loved. I loved on that latte, and my shoulders fell in place, my body filled with that other part of chemistry, with the element named O, and I couldn't stop grinning.

NO STRESS.

Yes, that's an EGG NOG LATTE. And I'm willing to bet you if you took a blood test right now it would read in 100's, where it's supposed to be.

Lights will guide you home...and ignite your bones...and I will try...to fix you.

Onward.

From the Files of Misery Loves Company

Open Apology To Those Who Want Me to Join Something...Or Join Anything...Or Be Someone They'll Like More:

• I'm sorry, but that's not me.
• I'm sorry, I saw the same concept in another book that seems a little kinder.
• I'm sorry, this bullet-pointed grammar sucks.
• I'm sorry, but I don't respond well to being strong-armed.
• I'm sorry that I wanted to find my own passions.
• I'm sorry that I need to be fixed.
• I'm sorry, just in general, because you believe I won't be joining you in the afterlife.
• I'm sorry, BUT ONLY I KNOW HOW TO FIX ME...ONLY I KNOW WHAT CAUSES I WANT TO BELIEVE IN...
• I'm sorry, but I'm Unitarian.
• I'm sorry, but I believe in God.
• I'm sorry, but I believe in true love. I wish I didn't, but I do.
• I'm sorry, but I like country music.
• I'm sorry, but I like ABBA.
• I'm sorry, but I liked "Love and Other Drugs."
• I'm sorry, but I prefer novels to non-fiction.
• I'm sorry, but I'm an Independent.
• I'm sorry, but I voted for the guy in the White House. And I'll do it again.
• I'm sorry, but I love the Giants.
• I'm sorry, but I drink tequila.
• I'm sorry, but I can't drink beer.
• I'm sorry, but I love New York City.
• I'm sorry, but I love the country life.
• I'm sorry, but I don't have a car.
• I am who I am. THAT I'm not sorry for.

Live, and let me live. Onward.

Spicy Mind Food, or, Vodka, Preferring Tequila

"Good morning from canyon land!"

Oops. Wrong beginning. :)

In few minutes I'm off to Pac Heights for a doctor appointment, hopefully the last one of the annual autumn series, but the good news is I took the day off to keep this appointment (seemed stupid to travel two hours after the appointment to go to work for two hours and then travel two hours home, particularly since what I would probably end up doing at work is serving others). Taking the day off for a mid-day appointment means sleeping in, reading The New York Times in flannel, and catching up on podcasts. My habits are such that I am drawn to certain podcasts first--Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac," NPR Books and Food podcasts, and "Fresh Air." Strangely, although it's the only podcast that lets me multi-task, I always end up putting off NPR All Songs Considered until there are four or five podcasts piled up, and then every time I finally get around to them I'm exasperated with myself for putting it off, because there's always something I like that I have to load off of iTunes.

This morning the first podcast yielded a Christmas song by Paul Simon with a very global feel, and then the second podcast was a glimpse into an NPR Latino program called Alt.Latino, which I fell in love with by the third bar of guitar. That one sent me back to iTunes to load all of the podcasts for Alt.Latino, which features music written and performed from all of South America, Central America, Mexico, and Southwest United States. This program served up a Texas Chicano piece and a Brazilian beat that I loved. So now I have 20 music podcasts to put off...

Let's try to break the habit, shall we, Jo?

*****

In a side note, here's where my Facebook status comes from today, taken from a message sent to me:

Last year it was about writing the color of the bra you were wearing in your FB status... and it left men wondering for days why did the girls have colors (apparently random) in our status.

This year it has to do with our love relationships, in other words, for the moment you are going through with your relationships.
What do you drink?

tequila: I'm a single woman
rum: I'm a touch and go woman
champagne: I'm an engaged woman
redbull: I'm a woman in a relationship
beer: I'm a married woman
vodka: I'm the "other one"
sprite: I'm a woman that can't find the right man
whisky: I'm a single woman but with friends that won't stop partying
liquor: I'm a woman that wishes she was single.
gin: I'm a woman that wants to get married

Rock, Hard Place

35,040 hours.

*****

This past week a movie opened in national release called "127 Hours." I haven't read the book, but I did see news on this story back when it happened, so I know ahead of time that I'm probably not strong enough to handle this film. (I might have been strong enough to handle this film before July of last year, but we'll never know.) Similar films have been difficult to handle, films like "Into the Wild" (I'm okay until the part where the animals can smell death on him and run from him) and "Touching the Void" (where I can handle it until the filmmaker puts the camera in the hands of the actor who plays Joe Simpson and has him point the lens at his face). Maybe later on in my life I'll watch "127 Hours."

"127 Hours" reminds me of a story that the Unitarian minister told in the homily last Sunday on premeditated mercy. A man who had a parrot in a cage traveled to a far-off land where the parrot had come from to ask the parrot's family if there was a message for him. When the man found the parrot's family, he asked the parrot's brother for a message, and the brother cried a single tear and then fell over dead. The man was in shock for having killed his parrot's brother inexplicably, and went home to share the story with his parrot. When he told the parrot what had happened, the parrot did the same thing as his brother--he shed a single tear and fell over dead. The owner was devastated--he took the parrot outside to bury it and laid it on the ground to dig the hole. As he did, the parrot revived and flew up in the treetops. The man looked up at the parrot and said, "I don't understand--I thought you were dead." And the parrot replied, "No. See, my brother told me that sometimes the only way you can escape the cage you're in is to die. You should die to live."

Or amputate a part of your life.

I don't know why I thought of all of that this week. No, yes I do. But it doesn't make as much sense right now as I would like it to. The first line of this post is only the beginning.

Onward.

Hey, You've Got to Hide Your Love Away

More and more days at work involve me wondering why I even go in. So I particularly enjoy the littlest victories where I can find them.

So tonight I celebrated the arrival of the Beatles on iTunes by downloading "Day in the Life" and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away."

Internet tourism, part 973.

Onward.

Want One

I blame the Giants.

*Slight smile crosses the lips*

Prior to the playoffs, I never read the Examiner--just passed it up as one more piece of junk mail that I didn't need in the morning. "It's okay, I have something to read," I thought to myself when they thrust that paper out at me in the mornings on the sidewalks of downtown, patting my bag with the Kindle inside. I subscribe to half a dozen items on the Kindle, one of which is the New York Times. I had that to catch up on in the mornings.

And then the playoffs rolled around and the Examiner not only dressed up in orange and black every day but it plastered itself with big sign-like pages with phrases like "Beat the Braves!" and "Phinish Philly!" so I started picking it up, and in the process started making the day of the guy handing out the papers on 3rd and Market--everyone else just grunted and took a paper, but he offered one to me and I said, "You bet I'll take one" and gave him a big smile.

And I couldn't stop doing that once we won the World Series.

It seemed a waste to grab the paper and not at least skim the damn thing, so I started doing that. There was the Examiner with local news over breakfast, and then the Times on the train. And earlier this week (I think it was Wednesday), I flipped to the arts section and felt a slap between the eyes. Rufus.

*****

I was first introduced to Rufus Wainwright's talents in third semester French back at Missouri State University. My French teacher at that time played us an album called "The McGarrigle Hour"--a family and friend reunion of two sisters and their songs recorded on a compact disc. The McGarrigles are French-Canadian (although Rufus's generation was born in New York), and half the songs were in French, perfect for learning. There were also some quirky songs on album in English, like "NaCl," which talks about the "romance" of elements to create table salt. I bought the album shortly after hearing it and listened to it to practice French, but fell in love with two other songs on the album: one being a cover of Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do?" and the other being "Talk to Me of Mendocino." "What'll I Do?" appeared on the album as a tribute to Kate and Anna McGarrigle's late mother, and featured Rufus for a majority of the vocals.

About nine months after moving to California a Brazilian friend of mine asked me if I knew who Rufus Wainwright was, and I said yes and explained how. He adored Rufus without the singing of his family around him, and my friend ripped me two albums worth of Rufus to listen to. I was floored--one song in particular, "Beautiful Child" from the album "Want One," was a favorite for me to set to repeat. His music is quirky, borderline chaotic--probably the best description of it that I've seen in print is "pop-baroque." "Beautiful Child" sounds like a circus train on a fast track, with lots of musicians hanging their heads out the windows like dogs on holiday and letting the wind comb their hair. I can't even identify two of the instruments in it (there's a video on YouTube, but that's a concert version, which looks to have employed a synthesizer for half of the instrumentation).

The article in the Examiner that stopped me this week was about his visit to San Francisco to perform with the San Francisco Symphony. He has composed arrangements to five sonnets by Shakespeare--the orchestra plays his arrangement while he sings the sonnets. Rufus the pop artist has a pretty limited vocal range, but Rufus the classical artist made his voice do things I had never heard him do before, and a couple of times I felt myself gasp. He is a song-writing genius, yes, but somewhere along the line he received a precious gift: the range of an opera diva. My cup runneth over, and my heart breaketh afresh--I have always loved the art of Rufus, made stronger by this performance, but even if there weren't the whole fame thing, I would never get to hear this sonnets from him in a social setting. He's the only gay man I have ever had a crush on.

Onward.

Page One

Gotta start somewhere.

And tonight, I started work-life balance by realizing physical therapy. The toxins are going to kick my ass and take a few names, but I did something that took my mind off of work and felt good with no calories.

Tomorrow, God-willin' and the toxins don't rise, it's writing group.

Onward.

Listing

It's a rainy Sunday morning here in the City by the Bay, with me in my favorite Sunday ritual--gentle tide of raindrops hitting the windows, the bed stacked with Kindle (and selected to the fat Sunday New York Times), a toy-sized copy of "The Velveteen Rabbit," and the luxuriously thick paperback of Barbara Kingsolver's "The Lacuna," which I am reading in mere two or three pages at a time and then setting aside and daydreaming, sipping tea.

With my loss of IQ and memory, I find myself reading in smaller bites and listening to music. Music doesn't require a sharing of the remote, a focus on conversion of words, or a whole lot of patience, and the year is wrapping up, which means more and more "best of" lists are hitting the world, which I love. I have little money and even less time to just pick random MP3 files, books, and movies and hope that they will be enjoyable, so I tend to go with lists...this weekend I watched a movie released in my childhood that I had never seen ("Children of a Lesser God"--I probably wasn't old enough to be watching it when it came out) based on a list of William Hurt movies that a must-see from a recent "Fresh Air" podcast, added a book to the Kindle based on recommendation from a website that shouldn't know me this well but actually knows me better than most people ("Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put On My Pajamas, and Found Happiness," by Dominique Browning and offered on the Amazon home page), and am currently downloading the highest-grossing album to be released by anyone in quite some time, particularly from someone so young...yes...*gulp*...Taylor Swift's "Speak Now," featured in a review list from "Fresh Air" this past week.

To put things on a list the list-makers usually have to say why they put something on a list, and therein lies the hook--I don't just consume everything on a list for sheer presence on a list. If I had the means and bandwidth to consume EVERYTHING, with no lists, by God I would, but that's unreasonable, even for lottery winners. You have to do something with your life besides read all of the books that ever were. So I don't think of the lists as limiting, and I demand to know why something made a list. Sometimes, if it made it to more than one list, that's enough--"it must be good: the New York Times AND NPR like it"--but if they sell it with parts of the art to enjoy, then I'm sold. Such a thing happened with the Swift music...the reviewer played a piece of a song from the new album with the following lyric:

I was a flight risk with a fear of falling...

Damn. Yep, that's enough. One line was enough. Oh, and I have a secret vice in another area of Swift's music...brace yourself...it's inherited from Alison Krauss...I absolutely love music with banjos in it. Can't help it. I know, it's like admitting to never getting enough of the bagpipes (that's my brother's problem, by the way, so we are the biggest set of musically-bred nerds in the world, methinks), but there's something comforting in an instrument that looks like a combination of snare drum and guitar and sounds like a discontinued echo.

I thoroughly enjoyed "Children of a Lesser God," and will probably rent it again someday. The slice of "Slow Love" that I've read has been therapeutic, despite the fact that it's memoir is based on a woman who's loaded. As for Swift, I'll let you know. Can't go too wrong with banjos, though.

Onward.

Assassin

I behaved myself for most of the morning and fell into the proper intellectual role, but this afternoon the podcasts were done and the playlist fell on "Assassin" by John Mayer. I know, he's not an artist obscure, but there's something about that song today, while I picked up the makeup of beef bourguignon, a prescription, and grabbed a bowl of creamy hot chocolate at La Boulange de Cole that spoke to me. Deep drums, intended mischief turned, and I hit the back button to hear it again.

You get in, you get done and then you get gone...

Last night was awful. The kind of awful where you have a drink at your fourth choice of a bar only to find out it's cash only for something that probably isn't Don Julio Anejo, as asked for. Then the solution was tried of getting a small pizza with extra basil and taking it back home to enjoy with a glass of wine.

That just made things worse.

Should have turned around and left before the sun came up again...

But the sun came up again. And I left the phone off and dressed in misfit colors of orange and black and went to the ocean. I listened to the stories and classrooms of my MP3 and lifted my face to a curtain of fog. Ah, sweet fog. Like snow, drizzle, a brumisateur, fine gray sunshine. The sky clouded over and I took off my cap, wind running through my scalp. Slopes and grass, tall trees and reasons for green.

My phone stayed off today. All day I was quiet. There are probably messages on there, and my employer probably needed something today and I didn't answer, but I needed a safety net last night where there was none and I knew the most important thing was just to do what they tell you to do in trapeze school--"shut off your mind and listen to the commands." What were the commands? Shut off the phone. Shut off Twitter, which is still rehashing a victory and several losses. Go on Facebook, sign off with some cryptic one-liner, and then go back to what I love, word-slaying. According to the world, I suck at this, but if people want to find it and read it, they can find it. The witty one-liners, the hope of network, the belief that there's still wonder--that will now all be found here.

I was a killer, I was the best they've ever seen, I'm an assassin...

Tonight's comfort is a bottle of chianti, a good book, and satisfaction that I created a kick-ass meal from a Julia Child cookbook tonight. My successes. What I can do.

I'm not a complete failure. I have a job to do. Little did I know that the rest of the world were assassins too.

Thanks, John. :)