mercuryfern

Hurricane Musings

Listening to friends and strangers discuss Katrina this morning dredged up a few thoughts.

I was in Ohio when the northeast lost power due to First Energy fucking up.  NYC was without lights for a coupla hours.  It was all over the news for a week afterwards, photographs everywhere of traumatized Yankees bravely pulling through.  Meanwhile, Detroit not only lost power for *three days*, but the sewage system broke down such that there was shit tainted water flowing in the streets, and non potable mysteriously brown sludge coming from what faucets weren’t entirely dry.  Motown had no water or electricity for half a week and the rest of the country didn’t even know, let alone care.  But god, New York, are you okay?  Ohmygod, you had to *light* *candles*??  That’s awful.  I’m so sorry.

The lesson being: if you are going to fall victim to a disaster, do it in an area where the real estate values are high.

Of course there is the Northeast’s notorious regionalism.  In New York last week, I ran into an acquaintance I hadn’t seen for five years on the streets of Manhattan, both of us on our way to some urban nightlife.  I’d been on the East Coast for less than three days, here I am brushing past pieces of my old life.  At nearly the same moment, my current housemate, at a conference in the Berkshires, ended up rooming with a stranger who turned out ot be a former housemate of mine.   The big Northeastern cities and their affiliated countryside are so dense with activity, it’s easy to believe that everything that happens, happens here.  Conversely, everything that doesn’t happen here, isn’t really happening.  Isn’t important enough to mention, anyway.

I found myself the object of raised eyebrows in The City when I unabashedly sang the praises of Ohio.  With all of the reminders of the many wonderful things about living in this region, and don't get me worng, I do adore it, I’d forgotten why I left the Northeast in the first place: the deliberate obliviousness to everyone else.

Call

“Simon! The phone is for you!!!” One hand grasped the bannister while she yelled this, her body swinging lazily at a forty five degree angle to the floor as she pushed the words up two flights of stairs. A pause. “Emmanuel Goldstien! From the magazine!!” After a second pause which evidently contained reassurances that the caller had or would soon be attended to, she walked over to the waiting phone and, after briefly putting it to her ear, replaced it on the receiver.

“Does that guy call here a lot?” The boy who asked was sitting at the kitchen table, watching the girl mess with the large unlabled jars of oils, grains, and spices which seemed to line every horizontal surface in the place. These, plus some scraggly plants she’d pulled from the small garden in the back, would be transformed into something better than edible by processes that were mysterious and sometimes vaguely threatening to him. They were both eighteen.

“I think so. I’m not here during the day, though. Simon is working on an action over this jailed hacker kid. That guy is helping, I guess.”

“What’s the name of the magazine?” He leaned forward, looking slightly amazed.

“Ah...” She took her hands out of the dough, put them on her hips and stepped back from the counter, gaze on the floor. “Shit. I forgot. It’s a number.” The kneading resumed, without eye contact.

“2600?”

“Sounds right, why?”

“You’re seriously asking me why?”

“Is he famous or something?”

“Um. Yeah. He’s been writing this ah... computer... magazine which I’ve been reading since I was like, twelve. Taught me how to break into my middle school’s records.”

“Really?” She looked up, her eyebrows jovially askew. “Weird. Small world, huh?”

“Yeah.” Such amusement was contagious. Biting his smile, the boy tousled his own hair and looked away.

“Honestly, the whole premise of a hacker march is a bit ridiculous. They are more paranoid about controlling access to their precious identities than your average anarcho-polyamourist urban homesteader. Simon’s not getting many takers on the sign holding/ chanting idea. Poor guy, he’s really busting his ass.”

They laughed again, both heads shaking.

Chez Bakerina

To answer a wondrous woman's question: No, of course I wouldn't rather spend my Sunday with a sane person. I try to spend as little time as possible with sane people. Besides, Do You Know How Some of Them Spend Their Sunday Mornings?!? (shudder)

To everyone else who is not Bunni: Nyah-nyah Nyah Nyah-nyah! I hung out at Bakerina's house! Yes, friends, the plum cake was as good as you imagined. If your imagination is heavily influenced by sensory enhancing hallucinogens, that is. Otherwise, I'd say the deliciousness of her baking far exceeds your puny cognitive abilities. I will not taunt you with descriptions of the ratatouille pizza you didn't eat. No need to go around giving people inferiority complexes or existential crisis.

Just as I was fretting about my pop culture ignorance, three smarty pants New Yorkers conspired to give me a customized tour of only the most irreverent comedy stylings from both sides of the pond. Further, my face is cleaner than it has ever been. I suspect the mask removed moral and spiritual impurities as well. (Not to worry, these last will be reinstated shortly) The woman is running a debaucherous den of domestic decadence. She will sugar you up, serve you wine, her hubby will make you french press coffee, and you will leave a very fragrant princess.

Incidentally, Elithea was there in spirit, as my hostess was toting one of her finely crafted and much complimented bags. (Cards were given out, m'dear.)

Now that the New York trip is over, I can officially announce that at no point was I irrevocably disoriented *or* prostituted in any way. Whew.

(technical note: My new computer situation includes a browser which is not interfacing well with Typepad. No, no, let's give Safari the benefit of the doubt. It's probably Typepad which is not interfacing well with the browser. In any case, the links function is not working, but if it was, you would be asked to head to www.bakerina.com and http://www.misslapin.blogspot.com/ repeatedly throughout this post. Thank you kindly.)

Nonconsensual Guest Blogging

Awwwww, you guys, check out this email my husband just wrote me. The boy's got a BFA and he's not afraid to use it. Somebody get him a blog. No, don't bother, he wouldn't post anyway. *crestfallen sigh* Ah well, I'm just as bad. About a week ago I showed him a piece of which I was particularly proud, and he said, "Honey, I'll never understand why you are fucking around with this blogging business. You've obviously got a novel to write." Um, thanks??

-------------------
Sitting in a dirty strip club on the outskirts of Columbus at 3 am, a gyrating cunt 12 inches from my face, Jason turns to me and reiterates how especially odd and drowning in intricate moments existence is. The subject turns to how beautiful a subway explosion may look in infrared, how an atom bomb is a blooming flower when viewed from outer space. The next day we trespass to swim in a private quarry. It takes hours to cross over and back, I kick at the lapping water that cradles my head and fills my ears with another world's sounds. I drive home exhausted, watching a sunset I wish I could broadcast in Times Square for you to see. I want everyone to see it. The strippers, the swimmers, the fighters, the welders, the miners, the cheaters, the devoted, the missing, the ancient, the confused, the rotting, I want them all to see it. I want the universe to crucify me, tear me into molecules and spread me across the surface of this crumbling rock that careens precariously around a giant ball of nuclear explosions.

I want to save everyone.

Hootenanny Report

The pigeons in front of the Natural History Museum loved my reading.  I paused strategically, let the tension in my voice build and crest but never quite break.  Pacing up and down the sidewalks, hurriedly penning improvements  on a printed out version of this, finally running over the polished gem two or three extra times until the sound of it was tattooed on my brain; those birds got the best I have. 

Later, at the artist's loft full of paintings and painters, fashonistas and minor celebrities,  between lines, between breaths, I could hear them absorbed into my story.  I held them there, despite my shaking, despite my too fast pace, despite my eyes never leaving the page to beckon more deeply into the words as I had done with the filthy doves.   My nerves jangled enough to give the whole affair the excitement of a first kiss.   I made cameos in three other skits, at the request of the friends performing them.    All in all, a pleasant experience, this hootenanning.

It was the hobnobbing afterwards that did me in.

It started off well enough, the hostess told me twice that my piece really moved her, two other people did as well.   Not that they diegned to have a conversation with me, just threw little compliments en route to more interesting conversation.

Actually, I doubt those other conversations were more interesting, just more prestigious.  My depression tells many lies; that I am boring is not among these.  I may be incompetent, I may be ignorant.  Sometimes, at my worst, I suspect I am unworthy.  I will have you people know, however, that I am goddamn fascinating.

I am not famous, though.

It's not that celebrities are particularly annoying, but that the people who aspire to be taken into their inner circle are.  Against the rules, plenty of people didn't perform.  These were the folks who really shone during the hobnobbing component.  They moved between conversations aggressively, eying which would most enhance their own status as a chatting commodity.

The party moved to a bar down the street at three.  I left after a guy I wasn't really interested in continuing to flirt with asked me to wait while he responded to a cross bar summons from a lady in the rag trade.

My four inch heels took me steadily out the door, past carefully disheveled window displays and ever so tasteful potted plants.  The clean city breeze washed all hesitation from my step.   It's redemptive power is a constant anywhere you find street lights reflecting in puddles.  There is comfort in knowing this place exists the way we imagine it; the fates bless me this week with a glimpse of it's insides. My arms swinging with happiness, line after glittery line of people hoping to gain admittance reminded me how grateful I am not to inhabit their striving lives.      

I am less of a redneck than I feared.

My walking around muscles hurt.  So much.  I thought I was in good shape, what with all the  bike riding, but I turns out there is a whole different set of muscles involved in traipsing through urban parks, muscles which I apparently have never used before.

I was worried that my dear friend and I had drifted apart, that I was no longer the fascinating conversationalist I once imagined myself to be.  Totally unreasonable.  We  started over where we left off years ago, chatted affectionately and wittily (if I do say so myself) on all the relevant topics of the day. This being a rather political crowd, my tales of swing state living enraptured some acquaintances we met at a bar.   My friend still kicks ass and so do I.  As an added benefit, his ladyfriend is even more excellent than I remember, and I posses not a trace of any social awkwardness in larger social gatherings.

This last is important.  I am invited to a party Friday night, a Hootinanny, they call it, and the price of admission is that everyone must participate in a talent show.  I am an anxietyfest, without obscure talents, so such things fill me with enough dread to make performance unattractive if not impossible.  Also, there will be some Entertainment Industry Professionals in the audience.  If I was not an ignoramus, I would remember their names and what famous making thing they do.  Guess that's another hidden benefit of not keeping up on the telly- I am unfazed around minor celebrities.

I'm going to read something I've written here, likely the contest winner featured a few days ago.  I've never read it out loud and will not have time to do so before the Hootinanny.  Apparently most people do silly things, but I'm told something serious is not outside the realm of appropriate.

It is all too surreal to be nervous over.

Too Young to Be Old

Pop culture’s never been my schtick. My mom didn’t allow us to watch much TV, and I never quite developed the media sophistication to strike the appropriate balance of allusion and cynicism in talking about what few shows I did watch. Even now, I’m not much of a connoisseur. Sometimes I’m in a TV watching mood, in which case any old thing, a commercial, whatever, is fascinating. Ooooh, the pictures move. And talk. The rest of the time, the thing gives me vertigo. A small dose of Fox News, soundtrack of my inlaw’s house, reminds me that the more you watch, the less you know. Terrorism! Obscure deadly diseases! Child kidnappings! Celebrities making ill-advised fashion decisions! You Are All Going to Die in Horrible Painful Ways!!!

One of the benefits of affiliating yourself with punk rock is that you are against everything, everything is crap, you get points for disassociating. I don’t watch TV, I don’t drink soda, I am a baddass extrodinaire.

I am living now with friends who are self proclaimed Luddites: a Boy Scout Park Ranger and his partner. They know about this cartoon thing which, and I quote, “everyone between the ages of twelve and fifty is following” What? Strong Mad? Huh? Not only had I not seen it until today, but I had no idea it existed. And, just in case my pariah status needs confirming, I don’t think it’s funny. Sure, some of the lines are certainly quotable later, but I like my humor to be amusing the first time around. These kids today...

A few hours ago I was planning my impending trip to The Big City, getting the public transportation schedule all worked out, when it occurred to me that I am a bumpkin. I have not ridden a subway in ages. I was seventeen. That’s seven subwayless years for those of you doing the math at home. Sure, I’ve spent some time on Amtraks and airplanes, but I think we all know that doesn’t count. Clearly, I am going to make a fool of myself, possibly get irrevocably disoriented and sold into prostitution.

From tomorrow afternoon until Sunday morning, I will be visiting someone I’ve known since before I could vote or get tattoos, with whom I have not spent any significant amount of time in the last five years. In the interim, I’ve become an old married lady whose ignorance knows no bounds. What if, with his fancy Brooklyn life and his important dot org job, we have nothing left to talk about?

Posting From the Road

Look at me, I'm just like a William Gibson character, flitting about the globe, connected to the Internet all the while!

Mere hours ago, I pulled in to my semi-perminant woodland home, then tomorrow I'll head to New York to make the rounds among my legions of fans there before retreating to the forest for the autumn. Last night I had quite the hotel adventure, staying in a room where only some of the lights worked and there was mold on both the floor and ceiling of the bathroom. Because I'd been driving for about 12 hours at that point, I had not the energy to firmly yet politely request both a change of room and a discount, instead crashing out (on top of the sheets). This morning I threw an appropriately subdued hissy fit and got almost half of my money back, which meant I still paid too much, but I began my morning drive feeling victorious.

Long ago, I made peace with the fact that everyplace in this country is the same. Whatever hand wringing was once justified over the impending homogenization of national culture is too late now. When was the last time you could identify the region of origin of someone with whom you were engaged in conversation? My best friends in college were from Maine, Boston, Texas, both Virginias, and upstate New York. Their habits of speech have been indistinguishable from my own since I have known them.

Every rest stop has the same fast food, the same pseudo farmers markets. Every mall sells the same crap in the same displays. Same same same. Everywhere you go, there is too much orange fake bake on everyone's skin, too many aspiring aryans with brittle color stripped hair.

The trick is to expect this, so that when you hear someone in a gas station rest stop outside of Albany mention their vacation to Flahridah, you will remember how everyone in the Ohio cookie factory dreamed of one day moving to Florda where all their problems would be solved, and your heart will leap. When a woman in that same rest stop admonishes her three year old "Don't you *dayah*!" before smacking her bottom with a noise which makes everyone in the place turn, you will be overjoyed that she is disciplining in a regionally specific way.

As I entered the Berkshires, a road sign advertising a cell phone touted that one could get coverage on both coasts *and* in Western Mass. This last is a grandiose claim, as any of the region's plentiful college students can tell you. Even as I thought this the radio station fuzzed out. Oh, right. New England has *mountains*. Speaking of the radio, I picked up the most adorable science programming. The midwest cares not at all about invasive species. How I've missed you, Alan Shartock.

The village where I lived in Ohio is generally considered pretentious. We have this reputation in common, and neither of us puts much energy into disproving it. The reason I love Yellow Springs, though, is that stands against the otherwise all consuming onslaught of bigbox retail. The downtown, at all of two blocks long, is chock full of thriving community supported independant businesses: a drugstore, hardware store, grocery store, barbershop, beauty shop, flower shop, movie theater, bike shop, and three count em three independant bookstores. Admittedly, there is also a head shop and more storefront space full of ridiculous expensive hippy junk than any one town needs. And the restaurant food is boring or expensive. Yes yes, it is a tourist town, and fast becoming a retirement town. And the utilities and taxes are insanely high. Yes.

But. I can buy everything I need within the village, and safely ride my bike to get there. Great Barrington, Quaint New England Village Extrodinaire, can't boast that, nor can any other place else I've ever lived. Don't even make me tell you about he 1k nature preserve and extensive rails to trails which abut the downtown and are less than a mile from all of the residential areas. They’re icing.

I guess I'm a little homesick after pulling up my roots, but I'm a bit defensive, too. My husband never tires of mocking how high falutin the village is. It is a convenient punching bag for anyone in the region with an inkling of class consciousness.

Mostly I'm just grateful for having had the chance to know such an exquisite place. My eyes are open to the different beauty I will see here. I'm trying not to be dismayed at the limited bike transport possibilities implied by the narrow winding roads and sprawling land use patterns. The mountains are stunning. The food is excellent. Historical significance and natural beauty abound.

After this first month of transience, I am sure that where ever I go, part of my heart will always be in that tiny Ohio village: politically progressive, neighborly, and free of sprawl. Contrived white picket fences and bland food not withstanding, it is my home.

Well, one of them anyway.

The Zen of Fourth Grade: Cats Rule and Dogs Drool

Visiting my in-laws the last few days, I am reminded just how much the over-sized butthole of their Boston Terrier disgusts me.  His slobbering breathing technique and incessant humping of any proximate legs or furniture doesn't endear him either.

About the only thing that he can do right is situate himself in the animal hierarchy.  My cat, who spent her kittenhood on the mean streets of Xenia, takes no slack from him.  The dog appropriately defers.  She no longer even has to actually give him the beating he deserves, but need simply raise her paw dispassionately for him to be sent scurrying away.  Sometimes just a threatening look will do the trick. 

This of course, is all wonderful fodder for me to taunt my father in law with.  We are talking about a man who suffers the unsavory behavior of a perpetually sexually frustrated dog rather than let him be unburdened by his testes because: "I wouldn't want somebody to cut my balls off."  Yes, but if you were constantly masturbating against the sofa in the presence of guests, we certainly would. 

But I digress.  The point is, for all the macho anthropomorphizing, the dog is an uncontested wuss.

My father in law has taken to feeding the neighborhood squirrels peanuts.  Apparently they do tricks.  All I can see is that they are freakishly obese.  And mean.  I think part of the original idea was to lure into the yard some prey on which the Boston Terrier might hone his natural rodent hunting skills.  It didn't quite work out like that.  (he HE, your dog is a *coward*)

The other day, the Terrier was fleeing from a squirrel onslaught, to the shame of his human.  My cat, in an uncharacteristic show of sympathy, chased the squirrels away. 

Rides Various and Sundry

Have you ever noticed that blogless rodents come up with the best memes?  Well, they do.

I rode horses first.  In the earliest recesses of my memory, where things are a jumble of contextless sensation, there is the repeated image of two small children in addition to myself piled in to the western saddle of a palomino named Peanut.  The horse belonged to my aunt’s fiancé.  Later that year, she left the man for his best friend.

When horselust hit me at seven my parents (claimed they) couldn’t afford lessons (so what’s with the trips to Cancun?), but they did send me to riding camp for two weeks every summer.  I was the only girl my third year who could jump.  Now matter how I begged my aunt, now a dairy farmer with the husband/best friend, to keep horses that I might fulfill my destiny as a great horsewoman, her stalls stayed empty.

I’ve ridden waves on the Jersey Shore in the days after a hurricane, a rectangle of styrofoam carrying me repeatedly onto the sand too fast too fast; such quantities of seaweed and primordial corpses to contend with.  By the end of each annual week, I fancied myself an expert on reading the undulations, on knowing just when to turn my back and launch.  Getting too far ahead meant that, rather than being propelled forward with all the force of the worlds largest body of water coddling you to a safe thrill, the board would suddenly catch on the fast approaching sand then your stomach, allowing the water to exhaust itself dragging your ten year old face across the high tide line.  For the rest of the summer, strangers stared horrified when I wasn’t looking but cringed from my gaze.  It didn’t heal in time for school pictures.

I’ve ridden a candy mogul’s rollercoasters shouting obscenities with my dearest pierced friends.  It meant less than the annual Catholic High Fair, lasting only a week each June.

I’ve ridden poems like luck dragons late into the night when pubescent rage and an excess of spine kept me from taking any small blue pills.  The words came to me but not from me in a torrent of snot and angry tears to give me resolve.  It would be broken.

When I got out, my grrls took me first thing to our hometown’s annual hosting of itinerant gravity defiance.  We got the bracelets and rode all night.  Danny didn’t come, though I called him.  As he took the phone in his hand, the older brother mumbled that some white girl was on the line.  Waiting for the pirate ship, I ran into a cheerleader who was wont to punish herself with impressive feats of starvation.  She’d gotten out weeks before and hadn’t heard from anyone.  Our posses eyed each other menacingly and declined to borrow lighters across clique lines while we embraced.

I’ve ridden trains two hours each way; pain the tuition myself at fifteen because I wanted to spend my days in a place where my passions could be honed rather than quashed; even if I had to labor at the greenhouse four days weekly; even if there was always a critical mass too busy smoking snorting injecting to revel in learning without coercion.

I’ve ridden in cars; but come to think of it, usually driven when the miles went to three and four digits: back and forth between New England and Amish Country for college and breaks; to the southwest instead of Christmas with our families; fast and sleepless weekend trips, the tiny Geo Metro seats full to the brim with dissidents journeying down the eastern seaboard to register our complaints in crowns of fifty sixty one hundred thousand.  The papers always underestimated.

I’ve ridden my bike through summer traffic in Philadelphia, through all seasons of double decker highways in Austin, through a union organizer's spring in Chicago.  I do not block traffic.  I am traffic.  Live more; drive less.  Cars are coffins, etc etc.

I’ve ridden Navy Pier’s cheap sentimental Ferris Wheel; the city that fired me tiny below the slow peak.  Teenagers jockeyed for romantic position on all sides of us.  I did not cry for the quotas I missed on crutches; shock at the futility of hard work in the face of petty office politics emptied me of any emotion.  People who devote their lives to big causes are as small in their daily interactions as everyone else.

I rode the clumsy circle that night and others, let it spin my injury into knowledge.