Or at least I hope that's where they are in their educational process, because when Jo asked me question number 4- what is your favorite poem and/or who is your favorite poet? I spit out my knee-jerk answer before she even got to and/or. My favorite poem- that's easy- that's a cinch. My favorite poem is "The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock" by TS Eliot. (Though he is perhaps not my overall favorite poet- that position belongs more squarely in Whitman's camp. Or maybe Dickinson or Plath. Eliot is phenomenal, but really beyond Prufrock I'm not as rabid a fan.)
And I love how my daughter decided, after I read her the entire poem at her request that because of my choice, I am a 'sophistocate.' (Perhaps only by proxy, right? The poem is just about one of the most elegant collection of words strung together upon this coil of mortality in the entire history of human writing. And though Josephine understood perhaps less than 10% of it, she did absorb the depth and universal ringtone.)
I mean really, yes- I took a 19th-20th Century Modern Poetry course in my sophomore year of college and thereupon had my mind blown open by the genius of the classics of that period. But by no means am I some sort of poetry guru. I feel as if saying Prufrock is my favorite poem is almost as bland as confessing that the Beatles might be my favorite pop band.
But who cares. To my rosebud 10 year old, just opening her petals to all the glorious pieces of human creation that are out there in this big old wide world, I am a giant of intellect. A monster of sophistication. Awesome- let's just let that one ride for awhile.
After my sincere presentation of the Eliot monument to my daughter, I sat a little breathless. Again wrapped in the clarity of this man's feeling. And how as I grow older (and roll my trousers ever higher) I just keep living this piece of poetry. I just keep falling down in deeper and deeper into its beautiful human melancholy.
Which reminded me- hey! I wrote a blog about this very thing perhaps a little less than a year ago! The end of last spring. And I posted it up on my old blog on hollylong.com. It was called "The Fake Plastic Lovesong of J Alfred Long" because it was equally an homage to Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Watering Can". A dual love song, as it were.
So, I think I'd like to repost it here and now upon revisiting this poem in the most achingly gorgeous of ways-- me with a glass of wine in my hand, lemonade in my kids,' and quiet tears perched haltingly in each of our eyes.
I humbly present to you a re-run of "THE FAKE PLASTIC LOVESONG OF H ALFRED LONG." I hope you dig in:
I cannot think of a more beautiful poem than The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I had the distinct aching joy of a re-introduction to it today as I sat basking in a sea of my favorite songs of all time. (Brought to you by Spotify. Itunes for the music obsessed.) Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees" was spinning for the third time in a row- maybe fourth. I just kept pressing play as the swelling third verse brought stinging tears to my eyes' corners and burgeoning mucus to all membranes-- a barely leveed flood for the face and the heart.
And as "She lives with a broken man. A cracked polystyrene man who just crumbles and burns" floats out of Thom Yorke's blotchy redheaded mouth, I must read Prufrock. "She looks like the real thing- she tastes like the real thing..." Yorke pleads. And I'm pulling up All the Women Come and Go- Talking of Michelangelo.
And now the tears that were teasing and stinging in my ducts now come roaring down, bellowing out like clear lava forming little caves and ravines of Prescription Formula Number 40 foundation on my cheeks. Because as it wears out Yorke's cracked plastic surgeon who eventually loses out to gravity every time, I am reaching desperately toward Eliot's "attendant lord- no- not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be. One that will do, though, to swell a progress, start a scene or two. At times indeed almost ridiculous. Almost at times the Fool."
And I can no longer remain sitting up straight. I am bowled over from the middle - cut in half- reduced to wracked sobbing. Quiet, long streams of wails emitting out of my mouth with the searing gorgeous painful truth of these lovely, wretched human souls.
Because you see- my grandmother is losing her mind.
And I am going to visit her this weekend with my mother and my aunt. We are all purposefully traveling to the middle of the country- to the bread basket, the heartland of America-- to Salina Kansas. We are coming to hold her and envelope her and guide her like whatshisname over the river Styx as her life passes from its final stages of rich independent livlihood to the waiting room of death that is Salina Kansas' best assisted-living retirement community-- The Manor. This barely disguised hole of finality. Encased in soft ecru and mauve tones-- damask on the pillows of the overstuffed couches. This is where my Nana Ruth will now reside until the last of her days. It is where her mother, Lula Mae Buchanan (nee Moon) spent the last decade of her years. It is where most of her friends currently live. It is the beginning of the end.
And there's something about being roughly half her age now, roughly half of what she's accumulated in wisdom and experience- in Prufrock's measured coffee spoons- that makes me swoon with recognition at both the Radiohead lead characters in "Fake Plastic Trees" as well as Eliot's Hamlet substitute. A man balding slowly- losing virility- losing gravity- losing sense of purpose and power that he is finding was all an illusion anyway.
So- perhaps- more the crumpled styrene surgeon coming to terms with the scales always being tipped in gravity's favor- I dig, I dig, I dig that space. I vibe to that- I get it. I live it. I awaken at 4 am to the hour of the wolf with sweaty palms and a heart beat too fast for such an hour lying in a supine position obsessed and anxious about only the big issues. Death. The end. The destruction. The last desperate squeeze of the heart- the squish of the blood through the valves. The end of being here and now as I know it.
And I wonder at what must be running through the brain of my grandmother. As her brain slowly calcifies- denying her access to the most basic of information that had been hers for the taking for decades. I wonder at her current concept of her reality. She forgets names, dates, having taken her multitude of medicines on time or not, the story she just told you 10 minutes ago that she'll tell you again...but perhaps is her reality any closer to actual reality? Now that she's sinking deeper into the chasm of The Manor? Of hospital-like fluorescents in the hallways (only turned on after 11pm through the night) and of oatmeal berber carpet on the living space of her 250 square foot apartment to enable easier cleaning? Is she somehow more able to grasp the moment to moment child like view of the world that allows her an ability to live somehow more presently? Or is it just a constant sea of o confusion. That in and of itself, possiblly a more authentic way of looking at the human experience.
I am not a stranger to confusion myself. Though I have not been friends with it so much. Confusion has at times brought about rage at my own limitations or misfortunes. Confusion has convinced me that I have Not Done It Right so many times at the 4am witching hour. I wonder if Confusion is really a starting point- a launching pad from which we (I) should more often be comfortable launching. Or not. Perhaps just camping out upon.
"I grow old...I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."
And now I am traveling back in time. To a world not so long ago- not so distant in time or space. A world right here in sunny smoggy Los Angeles. A world of beginnings and sex and possibilities where I am running--late-- to my 3rd quarter junior year poetry class at UCLA's Royce Hall. My long tanned limbs are beating the stones of the old-world section of campus clad in some short flowy 80's mini skirt. I most assuredly have some white high heeled leather booties on my feet, making it hard for me to run very fast. But I am not even 21, and so my joints and bones and cartilage are all very up to the task. No physical repercussions are forthcoming. And this poetry class is a course I had every right, and every privilege to be able to sign up for.
Because, you see, I am a theater major- attaining my bachelor's degree as an artist. I am a student of every subject. And so I am allowed to take astronomy- ancient Chinese History, European Art History of the 17th-19th Centuries, a TV class where I learn how to run a 3 camera studio shoot a la "Cheers" or "Archie Bunker."
And I sail into class and find an empty seat near the door just as my efficiently artsy and bespectacled sweater vest professor jabs passionately in the air with his pencil and tells us vehemently to turn to page 426 of our Anthology Of Poetry. For today we will tackle Prufrock. Today we will start at least on the first two paragraphs- we will analyze, we will wrack our brains, we will work caringly, dilligently and slowly through this work. Because this might be perhaps the most accomplished of all the post modern poems- this just might be our anthem for the Western World through time immemorial. And I am engaged and titillated by such talk. I have heard vaguely about this poem- though I have no real knowledge of it. I'm just busy crossing my legs and adjusting my very short very fashionable mini skirt so that any of the potentially inquisitive men- young or old- sitting vaguely in front of me might not get such a wanton show should Prufrock not prove as absorbing as sweater vest professes it will.
And we begin our reading. And I remember immediately being drawn by the cadence of the thing. By the words themselves and how they presented next to each other. By the sheer juxtaposition of language- I remember thinking- this is deep. This is dense. This is a grouping of words that deserves my utmost attention and this is the sort of thing I hoped to encounter when I decided to enroll in such a course- this is the very kind of 'message' that I need to be able to learn how to take in and absorb. Yes- bring it, Prufrock. Bring it to my young eager overly sensitized intellectualized brain stem. Push this up past my white booties and though the cotton of my skirt up through the reach of my spine past any young bouncy bodily section of me and plant this firmly in the old tree root that I know is my heart. Put 'er there, TS- you know you've got a friend in me.
But for all my yearning- for all my desire- Prufrock was no more than a beautiful masterful tapestry of divine syllables then and for a long time afterwards. It was strings of pearly words draped neatly and deftly upon each other. Back in 1991, I had no more idea what to make of J Alfred Prufrock than I would have a urine stained nursing home bed pan. And now... And now somehow. I am closer. I do.
Now I think no more of this poem in terms of its paragraphs- of its "stanzas"- of the Michelangelo theme refrain...of its catchy clever phrases. No - now I consume this poem as a whole. As a big juicy pear that doesn't actually satisfy, but feeds anyway. In fact- it is so nutritious for me, I almost don't even need to read beyond the first few paragraphs. Once the evening has spread itself against the sky like an anesthetized patient, and we're remembering the sawdust restaurant floors covered in oyster shells, I only really need to get to the yellow fog rubbing its back and muzzle on the window panes, and I'm already there. I'm already breaking. "Fake Plastic Trees" hasn't even mentioned the surgeon, and I'm gripped in the throes of the deepest most profound bourgois ennui that is so painstakingly executed by Eliot's Prufrock. And somehow so gorgeously set to music by Radiohead.
I am thankful for the recognition of this new juxtaposition for me. I am not looking forward to seeing my grandmother, though I do love her deeply and soundly and want so much to make a difference and help this passage for her be if only slightly less burdensome. As I hope some loved one will do for me one day.
"Streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question...Oh, do not ask, "what is it?" Let us go and make our visit."
I am coming to see you Nana.
I cannot think of a more beautiful poem than The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I had the distinct aching joy of a re-introduction to it today as I sat basking in a sea of my favorite songs of all time. (Brought to you by Spotify. Itunes for the music obsessed.) Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” was spinning for the third time in a row- maybe fourth. I just kept pressing play as the swelling third verse brought stinging tears to my eyes’ corners and burgeoning mucus to all membranes– a barely leveed flood for the face and the heart. And as “She lives with a broken man. A cracked polystyrene man who just crumbles and burns” floats out of Thom Yorke’s blotchy redheaded mouth, I must read Prufrock. ”She looks like the real thing- she tastes like the real thing…” Yorke pleads. And I’m pulling up All the Women Come and Go- Talking of Michelangelo.
And now the tears that were teasing and stinging in my ducts now come roaring down, bellowing out like clear lava forming little caves and ravines of Prescription Formula Number 40 foundation on my cheeks. Because as it wears out Yorke’s cracked plastic surgeon who eventually loses out to gravity every time, I am reaching desperately toward Eliot’s “attendant lord- no- not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be. One that will do, though, to swell a progress, start a scene or two. At times indeed almost ridiculous. Almost at times the Fool.”
And I can no longer remain sitting up straight. I am bowled over from the middle – cut in half- reduced to wracked sobbing. Quiet, long streams of wails emitting out of my mouth with the searing gorgeous painful truth of these lovely, wretched human souls.
Because you see- my grandmother is losing her mind.
And I am going to visit her this weekend with my mother and my aunt. We are all purposefully traveling to the middle of the country- to the bread basket, the heartland of America– to Salina Kansas. We are coming to hold her and envelope her and guide her like whatshisname over the river Styx as her life passes from its final stages of rich independent livlihood to the waiting room of death that is Salina Kansas’ best assisted-living retirement community– The Manor. This barely disguised hole of finality. Encased in soft ecru and mauve tones– damask on the pillows of the overstuffed couches. This is where my Nana Ruth will now reside until the last of her days. It is where her mother, Lula Mae Buchanan (nee Moon) spent the last decade of her years. It is where most of her friends currently live. It is the beginning of the end.
And there’s something about being roughly half her age now, roughly half of what she’s accumulated in wisdom and experience- in Prufrock’s measured tea spoons- that makes me swoon with recognition at both the Radiohead lead characters in “Fake Plastic Trees” as well as Eliot’s Hamlet substitute. A man balding slowly- losing virility- losing gravity- losing sense of purpose and power that he is finding was all an illusion anyway. So- perhaps- more the crumpled styrene surgeon coming to terms with the scales always being tipped in gravity’s favor- I dig, I dig, I dig that space. I vibe to that- I get it. I live it. I awaken at 4 am to the hour of the wolf with sweaty palms and a heart beat too fast for such an hour lying in a supine position obsessed and anxious about only the big issues. Death. The end. The destruction. The last desperate squeeze of the heart- the squish of the blood through the valves. The end of being here and now as I know it.
And I wonder at what must be running through the brain of my grandmother. As her brain slowly calcifies- denying her access to the most basic of information that had been hers for the taking for decades. I wonder at her current concept of her reality. She forgets names, dates, having taken her multitude of medicines on time or not, the story she just told you 10 minutes ago that she’ll tell you again…but perhaps is her reality any closer to actual reality? Now that she’s sinking deeper into the chasm of The Manor? Of hospital-like fluorescents in the hallways (only turned on after 11pm through the night) and of oatmeal berber carpet on the living space of her 250 square foot apartment to enable easier cleaning? Is she somehow more able to grasp the moment to moment child like view of the world that allows her an ability to live somehow more presently? Or is it just a constant sea of o confusion. That in and of itself, possiblly a more authentic way of looking at the human experience.
I am not a stranger to confusion myself. Though I have not been friends with it so much. Confusion has at times brought about rage at my own limitations or misfortunes. Confusion has convinced me that I have Not Done It Right so many times at the 4am witching hour. I wonder if Confusion is really a starting point- a launching pad from which we (I) should more often be comfortable launching. Or not. Perhaps just camping out upon.
“I grow old…I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
And now I am traveling back in time. To a world not so long ago- not so distant in time or space. A world right here in sunny smoggy Los Angeles. A world of beginnings and sex and possibilities where I am running–late– to my 3rd quarter junior year poetry class at UCLA’s Royce Hall. My long tanned limbs are beating the stones of the old-world section of campus clad in some short flowy 80′s mini skirt. I most assuredly have some white high heeled leather booties on my feet, making it hard for me to run very fast. But I am not even 21, and so my joints and bones and cartilage are all very up to the task. No physical repercussions are forthcoming. And this poetry class is a course I had every right, and every privilege to be able to sign up for. Because, you see, I am a theater major- attaining my bachelor’s degree as an artist. I am a student of every subject. And so I am allowed to take astronomy- ancient Chinese History, European Art History of the 17th-19th Centuries, a TV class where I learn how to run a 3 camera studio shoot a la “Cheers” or “Archie Bunker.”
And I sail into class and find an empty seat near the door just as my efficiently artsy and bespectacled sweater vest professor jabs passionately in the air with his pencil and tells us vehemently to turn to page 426 of our Anthology Of Poetry. For today we will tackle Prufrock. Today we will start at least on the first two paragraphs- we will analyze, we will wrack our brains, we will work caringly, dilligently and slowly through this work. Because this might be perhaps the most accomplished of all the post modern poems- this just might be our anthem for the Western World through time immemorial. And I am engaged and titillated by such talk. I have heard vaguely about this poem- though I have no real knowledge of it. I’m just busy crossing my legs and adjusting my very short very fashionable mini skirt so that any of the potentially inquisitive men- young or old- sitting vaguely in front of me might not get such a wanton show should Prufrock not prove as absorbing as sweater vest professes it will.
And we begin our reading. And I remember immediately being drawn by the cadence of the thing. By the words themselves and how they presented next to each other. By the sheer juxtaposition of language- I remember thinking- this is deep. This is dense. This is a grouping of words that deserves my utmost attention and this is the sort of thing I hoped to encounter when I decided to enroll in such a course- this is the very kind of ‘message’ that I need to be able to learn how to take in and absorb. Yes- bring it, Prufrock. Bring it to my young eager overly sensitized intellectualized brain stem. Push this up past my white booties and though the cotton of my skirt up through the reach of my spine past any young bouncy bodily section of me and plant this firmly in the old tree root that I know is my heart. Put ‘er there, TS- you know you’ve got a friend in me.
But for all my yearning- for all my desire- Prufrock was no more than a beautiful masterful tapestry of divine syllables then and for a long time afterwards. It was strings of pearly words draped neatly and deftly upon each other. Back in 1991, I had no more idea what to make of J Alfred Prufrock than I would have a urine stained nursing home bed pan. And now… And now somehow. I am closer. I do.
Now I think no more of this poem in terms of its paragraphs- of its “stanzas”- of the Michelangelo theme refrain…of its catchy clever phrases. No – now I consume this poem as a whole. As a big juicy pear that doesn’t actually satisfy, but feeds anyway. In fact- it is so nutritious for me, I almost don’t even need to read beyond the first few paragraphs. Once the evening has spread itself against the sky like an anesthetized patient, and we’re remembering the sawdust restaurant floors covered in oyster shells, I only really need to get to the yellow fog rubbing its back and muzzle on the window panes, and I’m already there. I’m already breaking. “Fake Plastic Trees” hasn’t even mentioned the surgeon, and I’m gripped in the throes of the deepest most profound bourgois ennui that is so painstakingly executed by Eliot’s Prufrock. And somehow so gorgeously set to music by Radiohead.
I am thankful for the recognition of this new juxtaposition for me. I am not looking forward to seeing my grandmother, though I do love her deeply and soundly and want so much to make a difference and help this passage for her be if only slightly less burdensome. As I hope some loved one will do for me one day.
“Streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question…Oh, do not ask, “what is it?” Let us go and make our visit.”
I am coming to see you Nana.
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And now the tears that were teasing and stinging in my ducts now come roaring down, bellowing out like clear lava forming little caves and ravines of Prescription Formula Number 40 foundation on my cheeks. Because as it wears out Yorke’s cracked plastic surgeon who eventually loses out to gravity every time, I am reaching desperately toward Eliot’s “attendant lord- no- not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be. One that will do, though, to swell a progress, start a scene or two. At times indeed almost ridiculous. Almost at times the Fool.”
And I can no longer remain sitting up straight. I am bowled over from the middle – cut in half- reduced to wracked sobbing. Quiet, long streams of wails emitting out of my mouth with the searing gorgeous painful truth of these lovely, wretched human souls.
Because you see- my grandmother is losing her mind.
And I am going to visit her this weekend with my mother and my aunt. We are all purposefully traveling to the middle of the country- to the bread basket, the heartland of America– to Salina Kansas. We are coming to hold her and envelope her and guide her like whatshisname over the river Styx as her life passes from its final stages of rich independent livlihood to the waiting room of death that is Salina Kansas’ best assisted-living retirement community– The Manor. This barely disguised hole of finality. Encased in soft ecru and mauve tones– damask on the pillows of the overstuffed couches. This is where my Nana Ruth will now reside until the last of her days. It is where her mother, Lula Mae Buchanan (nee Moon) spent the last decade of her years. It is where most of her friends currently live. It is the beginning of the end.
And there’s something about being roughly half her age now, roughly half of what she’s accumulated in wisdom and experience- in Prufrock’s measured tea spoons- that makes me swoon with recognition at both the Radiohead lead characters in “Fake Plastic Trees” as well as Eliot’s Hamlet substitute. A man balding slowly- losing virility- losing gravity- losing sense of purpose and power that he is finding was all an illusion anyway. So- perhaps- more the crumpled styrene surgeon coming to terms with the scales always being tipped in gravity’s favor- I dig, I dig, I dig that space. I vibe to that- I get it. I live it. I awaken at 4 am to the hour of the wolf with sweaty palms and a heart beat too fast for such an hour lying in a supine position obsessed and anxious about only the big issues. Death. The end. The destruction. The last desperate squeeze of the heart- the squish of the blood through the valves. The end of being here and now as I know it.
And I wonder at what must be running through the brain of my grandmother. As her brain slowly calcifies- denying her access to the most basic of information that had been hers for the taking for decades. I wonder at her current concept of her reality. She forgets names, dates, having taken her multitude of medicines on time or not, the story she just told you 10 minutes ago that she’ll tell you again…but perhaps is her reality any closer to actual reality? Now that she’s sinking deeper into the chasm of The Manor? Of hospital-like fluorescents in the hallways (only turned on after 11pm through the night) and of oatmeal berber carpet on the living space of her 250 square foot apartment to enable easier cleaning? Is she somehow more able to grasp the moment to moment child like view of the world that allows her an ability to live somehow more presently? Or is it just a constant sea of o confusion. That in and of itself, possiblly a more authentic way of looking at the human experience.
I am not a stranger to confusion myself. Though I have not been friends with it so much. Confusion has at times brought about rage at my own limitations or misfortunes. Confusion has convinced me that I have Not Done It Right so many times at the 4am witching hour. I wonder if Confusion is really a starting point- a launching pad from which we (I) should more often be comfortable launching. Or not. Perhaps just camping out upon.
“I grow old…I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
And now I am traveling back in time. To a world not so long ago- not so distant in time or space. A world right here in sunny smoggy Los Angeles. A world of beginnings and sex and possibilities where I am running–late– to my 3rd quarter junior year poetry class at UCLA’s Royce Hall. My long tanned limbs are beating the stones of the old-world section of campus clad in some short flowy 80′s mini skirt. I most assuredly have some white high heeled leather booties on my feet, making it hard for me to run very fast. But I am not even 21, and so my joints and bones and cartilage are all very up to the task. No physical repercussions are forthcoming. And this poetry class is a course I had every right, and every privilege to be able to sign up for. Because, you see, I am a theater major- attaining my bachelor’s degree as an artist. I am a student of every subject. And so I am allowed to take astronomy- ancient Chinese History, European Art History of the 17th-19th Centuries, a TV class where I learn how to run a 3 camera studio shoot a la “Cheers” or “Archie Bunker.”
And I sail into class and find an empty seat near the door just as my efficiently artsy and bespectacled sweater vest professor jabs passionately in the air with his pencil and tells us vehemently to turn to page 426 of our Anthology Of Poetry. For today we will tackle Prufrock. Today we will start at least on the first two paragraphs- we will analyze, we will wrack our brains, we will work caringly, dilligently and slowly through this work. Because this might be perhaps the most accomplished of all the post modern poems- this just might be our anthem for the Western World through time immemorial. And I am engaged and titillated by such talk. I have heard vaguely about this poem- though I have no real knowledge of it. I’m just busy crossing my legs and adjusting my very short very fashionable mini skirt so that any of the potentially inquisitive men- young or old- sitting vaguely in front of me might not get such a wanton show should Prufrock not prove as absorbing as sweater vest professes it will.
And we begin our reading. And I remember immediately being drawn by the cadence of the thing. By the words themselves and how they presented next to each other. By the sheer juxtaposition of language- I remember thinking- this is deep. This is dense. This is a grouping of words that deserves my utmost attention and this is the sort of thing I hoped to encounter when I decided to enroll in such a course- this is the very kind of ‘message’ that I need to be able to learn how to take in and absorb. Yes- bring it, Prufrock. Bring it to my young eager overly sensitized intellectualized brain stem. Push this up past my white booties and though the cotton of my skirt up through the reach of my spine past any young bouncy bodily section of me and plant this firmly in the old tree root that I know is my heart. Put ‘er there, TS- you know you’ve got a friend in me.
But for all my yearning- for all my desire- Prufrock was no more than a beautiful masterful tapestry of divine syllables then and for a long time afterwards. It was strings of pearly words draped neatly and deftly upon each other. Back in 1991, I had no more idea what to make of J Alfred Prufrock than I would have a urine stained nursing home bed pan. And now… And now somehow. I am closer. I do.
Now I think no more of this poem in terms of its paragraphs- of its “stanzas”- of the Michelangelo theme refrain…of its catchy clever phrases. No – now I consume this poem as a whole. As a big juicy pear that doesn’t actually satisfy, but feeds anyway. In fact- it is so nutritious for me, I almost don’t even need to read beyond the first few paragraphs. Once the evening has spread itself against the sky like an anesthetized patient, and we’re remembering the sawdust restaurant floors covered in oyster shells, I only really need to get to the yellow fog rubbing its back and muzzle on the window panes, and I’m already there. I’m already breaking. “Fake Plastic Trees” hasn’t even mentioned the surgeon, and I’m gripped in the throes of the deepest most profound bourgois ennui that is so painstakingly executed by Eliot’s Prufrock. And somehow so gorgeously set to music by Radiohead.
I am thankful for the recognition of this new juxtaposition for me. I am not looking forward to seeing my grandmother, though I do love her deeply and soundly and want so much to make a difference and help this passage for her be if only slightly less burdensome. As I hope some loved one will do for me one day.
“Streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question…Oh, do not ask, “what is it?” Let us go and make our visit.”
I am coming to see you Nana.
Skin In The Game
April 20, 2012When I was in my twenties, I had the strange privilege and the desperate misfortune of living through a particularly deadly health disorder called Endocarditis. It’s a massive bacterial infection of the heart- either the lining or a valve, which brings on systematic organ shutdown and if left untreated for a mere few days to a week, will lead to death. The great composer and conductor Gustav Mahler died of Endocarditis (as I recently discovered.) The wondrous icon Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets and Sesame Street, died of it too.
I mention my bout with Endocarditis briefly in my bio on my website. In fact, it used to take up more space on the page- as it took up more space in my brain the closer the events were in proximity to my current life. My spotty memories of that rush to the ICU- the hazy unconsciousness/coma state brought on by intensely high fever- the slow awakening from this near death state-the dread of realizing how direly ill I had become- the hope and strength and terror and countless procedures and bags and bags of liquid antibiotics that lead me to recovery—all that…all of it used to loom large as the most foundational memory in my life. Because it changed everything about my life. My body was forever scarred and changed and ultimately healed, but my spirit and soul were also more deeply rooted suddenly in the here and now. I felt what it was like to come to the brink of death, and feel powerless, and terrified, and then to be saved from it all, excruciatingly slowly and painfully, one step at a time over the course of over a year after my month long hospital stay.
It wasn’t really until my children were born in my thirties that any event eclipsed this Endocarditis in my mind. And I believe I decided to give birth to my first child, Josephine, without the use of an epidural because somewhere deep inside of me I wanted to know I was a kick ass survivor. That I had won over the bacteria- that my body was strong and vital and healthy and that I could birth another human into this world without drugs—that I just needed my bottom dwelling primal yells and Deep Mother Chi.
(It didn’t really work that way. I mean, maybe it did on paper. But in actuality, I puked and shook and wheedled the whole 24 hours worth for pain killers. My doula kept me on track through all of my blubbering assertions that I knew I was not going to make it. Through the pooping the table and the clutching her fingers and sobbing like a toddler who’s just realized he’s not the only human being on earth…so yes- I did successfully give birth to Jo without an epidural. A process I would never recommend to anyone. Ever. Turns out, the primal screams were there- that part happened. They were deep and guttural and would have scared the bejesus out of me if I wasn’t already so fucking terrified– SO sure that my body was going to rip itself in half and I was going to die a horrible primeval death by alien life form exeunting from twixt the center of me.)
But I did it.
And then two years later, I did it again- I gave birth a second time. And when the puking and the light-headedness and shakes started again during labor, I took my same doula by the collar of her sweet hand-crocheted baby blue bunny festooned sweater and told her to get me the effing epidural NOW. And she did. And so Truman was born in a haze of sweet dozing sleep as opposed to Josephine who came into the world sort of like the Nazis bombing London.
And it was only these two experiences that shook the Endocarditis out of its Kingly position in my memory. It was only the revisitation of a different hospital (Cedars for the heart infection- UCLA Santa Monica for the kids) that superceded the original hospital experience. I basically just swapped mauve tiles for light minty green. One squeaky waxed linoleum floor for another. One achingly ugly Aztec pine framed print above my head for another equally as soulless and sad.
Though all the smells were the same. Hospital smells. The smells of the beginning and the end of lives. Bleachy cleaners. Floor wax. Urine. Citrus room freshener. Mild liquid body cleanser- no added dyes or odors. Lilies. Daisies. Death.
I don’t live in those memories very often. I do like to ritually revisit the birth stories of my kids for each of them on their respective birthdays- but only if they want to go there with me. I would never press those moments on them- though it is fun to go through the first early photos in each of their baby books. Look at the bracelets. Trace their first footy prints and feel the lock of hair.
(I may have missed my calling as a professional Scrapbooker actually. Though I didn’t and I don’t keep EVERYTHING- I’m a stickler for photos in books. In the right order. With terse captions if necessary. And yes, I’ve scrapbooked our families’ big vacations- was in charge of my own wedding book. Honeymoon album. None of them are ridiculous or overly splendid in any way, but I do have a knack for it. Jesus, don’t tell anyone- it will TOTALLY screw with my hard-ass rocker mom rep.)
On the other end of the spectrum- I have happily stopped revisiting my brush with death so often. That big ripe bundle of memories is mostly safely tucked away on the top shelf of a very dark closet in my brain now, and it only comes out every so often. Unfortunately though, that bundle does tend to come out whenever I am dealing with anything dark and scary- like my childrens’ ongoing health issues, or my own. When my infant son started developing a scary tendency to wheeze and gasp for air in the third month of his life and we discovered he had RSV, I remembered my heart. And then when he had to have surgery to correct a mild birth defect at nine months and they wheeled him away to get aenesthetized, I remembered my heart. And four years later when my daughter came down with a terrifyingly high fever and horrible back pain and had to be hospitalized for 4 days with an acute kidney infection, I remembered my heart.
And then finally this past month what with the initial re-breaking of the foot… and then subsequent scary information I received regarding my beautiful girl’s ongoing bladder issues now having something to do with a tethered spinal cord (SPINAL CORD- gives me sweaty hands just typing it)…and then my own need to revisit the cardiologist to get another look at my Endocarditis-scarred leaky heart valve- getting leakier… it’s been a month of remembering Cedars Sinai. A month of begrudgingly taking down that bundle of santizer soaked hospital memories and having to relive little frightened moments in claustrophobic, fluorescent lit rooms. With tubes sticking out of me and freshly scrubbed healthy men and women poking and prodding and the whole time feeling just so– tired. So desperately….weak…and…broken….and…tired.
And I just want to throw on my running shoes and fly to the beach with some AC/DC blaring in my earpads. To say Fuck You, you magnificent crazy reeling silly scary world! I’m still fucking HERE! I’m alive and my heart is BEATING and I’m running and breathing hard because I’m a motherfucker- you can’t kill me that EASY! But I can’t. Because my foot, she is still healing….
And I just DON”T want to go to Salina Kansas in June to help my mom and my aunt move my grandmother out of her house for the first and last time into an assisted living facility where all her friends now reside because her Alzheimers has finally gotten too severe for her to live alone. I don’t want to be a part of watching the family parcel out her belongings from that beautiful house that used to feel so safe and so lovely and so timeless to me as a kid. But I can’t not go. Because I may not see my grandmother alive for much longer- and she needs me now. And this may be the last time she can actually remember who I am…
And I just want to scoop up my children and hold them close to me and stop time- literally FREEZE it- so that we can just stay in this relatively healthy precious moment together. So that Jo won’t have to go through the fear of small spinal surgery in a few short months. So that Truman won’t wake up with another night terror and have to fall back to sleep shivering and clinging to me in mommy and daddy’s bed (a habit he developed a few years ago, and still has occasional dealings with.) So that they won’t have to crack open my chest—which they will eventually have to do whether this decade of my life or the next. And I will have to again fumble with the ties of that flimsy cheap pastel hospital gown, open in the back for all to see. I will again have to pad down the waxed linoleum floored halls wheeling my IV …face pale and slightly sweaty from the effort of walking…again in recovery. Again. Resting and healing my poor body after they’ve put a small saw through my breastplate and carefully replaced my fluttery, thickened human valve with one from a generous, not so fortunate swine.
But these are just fantasies. Fantasties that I can avoid these and all subsequent frightening moments in my life. Fantasies that I won’t have to go through the crying jags and the heart palpitations and the white knuckle minutes that seem to last days and the dry heaving in the toilets. I cannot pretend. Because as one of my best friends said the other day- “You have too much skin in the game, Hol.” This is the beauty of our lives- this is everything that’s worth anything and this is the center of the horror now.
It’s not that I’m actually all that esoterically afraid of dying anymore. Barring a suicidal end, when and how I die is basically not going to be up to me- and I’m more ok with that than I’ve ever been. Having to live with a chronic heart condition has enabled me to have a dialogue with death like I simply was not able to do previous to my infection. So, I’m far from “fine” with it. But I think I can mostly make peace with simply dying- because it’s the next thing. It’s the next portal through which we all pass eventually.
But it’s the thought of those that I would leave behind that now torture my life-filled, heart beating soul when I must come to the precipice of thinking about death. Now that I’ve swapped mauve tiles for light green, I’ve got too much skin in the game to make anything easy. Everything is costly now. Everything is beautifully, painfully important.
Now that there are two breathing living life forms that came bounding out from twixt the center of me- it’s all changed. There is no more bluffing- there is no more fantasizing. There is no more pretending I am only a lone small little soul back home in my tiny Eastside LA apartment after four weeks in a hospital that saved my life, trying to manage the searing pain in my head that is the healing brain scars, slowly grow back all the hair that fell out and the 25 pounds of muscle mass gone–dissolved from days on end of lying supine in a dreary hospital bed with sheets covered in fading moons and stars.
Now it’s really real. The heart that beats in my breast beats for two other creatures more than for anyone else. More than for myself. And I would do anything to have that heart beat as long as it possibly can for them. To allow for this body to squeeze any life out they need from me now and forever more.
And so basically I suppose, who better to crack my chest open for? It already feels like I have.
“Skin in the game, baby.”
(She pushes the entirety of her poker chips to the center of the table.)
“I’m all in.”
…
Broken Foot or You Can Teach an Old Dog New Tricks
April 14, 2012It has been with much humility, and not a whole lot of grace that I have had to accept hobbling around on my orthopedic boot for the past four weeks after ONCE AGAIN causing a hairline stress fracture in one of my metatarsels. From running. This time the fracture is on my left foot.
My foot- she is healing, which is the good news. The bad news is that I’m not sure I can really engage in this whole “barefoot running” notion, or more recently, “flatshoe running” that I’ve been participating in. And I think, it’s not because those ways of running are inherently wrong and bad for your body. In fact, I actually believe the opposite to be true. Turns out I’m just too old and have been running on puffy running shoes for too long now to really be able to successfully change my stride from heel slammer/toe rocker to the much-better-for-you barefoot strike which is something akin to how children naturally run shoeless in the grass on a summer day. (Sliding down to the ground from the ball/toe of your foot first, then to the heel and finally springing off the toe. Try running in the park barefoot- it’s kinda what your foot wants to do naturally.)
I’d been trying to re-create my inner 7-year-old Holly over the past few months- or rather channel the 7-year-old Holly- in a noble attempt to allow myself the ability to run far into my senior years. See, those big old puffy running shoes that we humans have been plogging around on now for a few decades are kinda the worst thing for your body imaginable. They make you slam your heel down, which causes strain on your lower back, and secondly over-extend your knees. All this misaligns your body as you lean forward to run faster…farther…atop your over-extended knee. It’s no wonder why so many runners quit in their 40′s or 50′s with blown out backs, knees, hip pain.
Yet, attempting to side-step said pain by running on flatter shoes (or none at all) was clearly not the right direction for me. Help for the knees and back ended up blowing out the little bones on the top of my feet a number of times. So, I’ve been dejectedly entertaining the notion that perhaps– no. As far as running goes, you can’t teach this old dog new tricks. If I’m going to continue to run, I need to get back out there on my pumped up Nikes or Sauconys or New Balances, continue to pop my Omega 3′s, and just pray that my knees and joints hold out for at least the next decade.
This vaguely depresses me. Because running for me is akin to crack cocaine. Though I’ve never run longer than 5 miles at a stretch, running to me is something like a religion and it keeps me healthy and happy and if not stress-free- definitely stress-reduced.
So- I’ve decided to make a list in the other direction. A list of ways I HAVE changed lately. A reminder of how it IS possible to evolve. That not all attempts to alter one’s foot fall in this life end up in ugly black velcro laden boots that literally look good with zero fashion ensembles. And I’ve tried.
Here goes.
1. I walked into a Carl’s Jr today. I’ve NEVER eaten in a Carl’s Jr! I’ve eaten at many other fast food restaurants in my time, but until today- no love for Carl. This was not hard when you consider the horrid rumors I’ve neard about how he is a low-life racist and gives large amounts of money to politicians who would attempt to bring our country back to the good old days of the early 60′s. Additionally, I frequently scoffed at what I came to decide were Carl’s Jr’s dopey ad campaigns which seem strategically aimed at 15 year old boys. If it’s not some splooch of mustard sliding down the front of some girl’s tight white T-shirt, or glamorizing the amount of mess created from eating a Carl’s Jr burger by counting the napkins needed, it’s the “unreasonable-ness” of sit-down restaurants wanting to charge $6 for a decent hamburger. My god. Why would you ever pay $6 for a hamburger, when you can get something that LOOKS very much like that sit-down restaurant hamburger at Carl’s Jr for almost half that price?! (Where, by the way, is there a non-fast food restaurant serving a burger that’s anywhere near $6? Did anyone else find that to be a strangely silly lowball figure? Almost counter-productive to their own message? I mean, even at a joint like Marie Callendar’s- when you order a hamburger, you better be sure you have at LEAST 10 bucks floating around in your pocket. And that’s not even counting drink and tip!) But I digress. So-
Out running errands this afternoon, I got a hankerin for a hunka burger today for lunch. And seeing as it’s about that time of month I thought- yes Holly. You’re allowed a big old nasty fat burger. You need the protein- you need the iron. Go for it. As I drove toward home with my carnivorous fangs dripping, Carl’s Jr loomed ahead- mere blocks from my gastronomical brainstorm. The drive thru line was around the block. But lo- there was one little parking space left right in front of the entrance. So I swung myself and my big old velcro-festooned boot through the doors and ordered me a Six Dollar Burger. And by golly, if it didn’t turn out to be almost as good as if I had gone to one of those restaurants where they serve real burgers for about $12.95! And, btw, six napkins worth of mess. So there’s some truth in advertising. I’ll probably never align with Carl’s politics, but he now has $6.48 of my money and I was far from dissatisfied.
2. (Remember this was a list?) Here’s another new thing for me: So- I shushed someone I didn’t know today sitting next to me and my kid in our school’s weekly Friday morning “All School Meeting.” (This isn’t really the new thing for me, but I’ll get to that, so bear with me for a little bit.) The ASM, as it’s affectionately called round the hood of our school, is a four parts lovely, two parts frivolous, one part annoying tradition where all kids, parents, teachers, etc meet for (what you hope is) about 35 minutes in the Common area. Kids share songs, skits…fifth graders lead the meetings, thereby culminating their private school elementary experience with a very public display of self-confidence, school information is passed around, sometimes visiting performers come to share their talents. It’s really mostly very nice.
However, for this particularly curmudgeonly mom, I find some elements of the tradition to be tiresome- the most common of which is the propensity for TALKING during the meeting. And I don’t mean kids talking. The students at school are for the most part fairly kind, helpful, thoughtful people. They are capable of actually sitting around for a long time criss-cross-applesauce on the floor with a bare minimum of disruption. Perhaps because these meetings are weekly, the kids get used to shutting up and mostly paying attention. And mostly not talking to their friends who might be sitting right next to them or across the room. I cannot say the same thing about the adults. It’s the PARENTS who tend to be so frigging annoying. It’s the clueless entitled private school PARENTS who cannot seem to stop talking to each other during ASM. As if the code of silence only applies to their younguns and not to them. As if politeness is an overly tight snakeskin that one eventually molts out of. Well, I for one don’t agree. I don’t go often any more to these all school meetings, but when I do, I try as hard as I can to mirror for the kids what I think it is we are attempting to teach them with our communal silence and attention to whatever is happening onstage– self control and respect for others.
So today I had it. There was a middle aged man and his teenage son sitting next to me and my son just yakking away during the beginning of the meeting. Now, I didn’t recognize them so it is possible they were visiting relatives of one of the students– perhaps even one of the fifth graders leading the meeting. But suffice to say, there was plenty of “shushing” at the onset of the meeting, so it seemed evident to me there was no lack of clarity about the desire for- the need for- silence from the audience. And the meeting begins- and there’s some talk. And then a song that we’re all singing together- a call and response sort of thing. And during both the call, and the response this father and his son are still talking to each other in regular voices. Not even really an attempt to whisper at all. And I’m starting to boil with rage. (Did I mention it’s about that time of the month for me? Just so we’re clear.) Because it’s really the lack of awareness that just niggles at me. It’s the lack of ability to apparently realize you’re in a room with many OTHER individuals who are there together- trying to co-create an experience. That maybe just shutting the fuck UP might be the best thing to do. You can giggle with your teenage son after the thing is over. So, I try to sit on it. Try to sit on it. Sit. Just sit, Holly. Just Sit on– and then I can’t any longer, and instead of slightly turning my head, vaguely looking into the middle of nowhere and uttering some sort of passive aggressive “ShhHHH” like I would imagine might be the normally accepted way of handling the situation, I actually turn to completely face these two and say something like, “Hey, could you both stop talking please? It’s loud and hard to concentrate.” There’s a pause. And then because I am literally 28.9 cm away from them both and have to spend the rest of the meeting sitting next to them, I turn back to mitigate a bit and say, “I’m sorry if I sound really rude, but it’s just distracting. Thank you.” Both the father and son say nothing. They sort of glare at me as if they realize they’ve accidentally opted to sit next to the school crazy. Then they look away haughtily. And I look away. And that’s the end of the encounter.
But now here’s the part that belongs in my list today. This is new for me: I was relatively calm afterwards. My heart did not continue to beat hard after I said my little piece. I was able to breathe normally and not regret what I had said. I did not feel the need to further mitigate the situation. I did not feel the need to try to make myself more likable and look at them later with apologetic eyes, which I believe is what my slightly younger self would have done. In other words, I believe I’m getting a little better at speaking my truth and letting it hang in the air without needing to make anyone else comfortable. That’s a biggie for me.
3. Ok. What else? I could list how I recently took my kids on a plane by myself (bootlegged) to Atlanta over spring break and how I didn’t let my peri-menopausal CRUSHING travel anxiety get the better of me. (I love you, Ativan.) Or I could say something about how when during my trip to the doc three days ago to re-check some hormone levels, and my well-intentioned GP mentioned something about how my facial melasma looks really bad- like it’s gotten worse- and it must be because I didn’t have any makeup on, I didn’t go down the self-esteem rabbit hole. Despite the fact that I had just seconds before her entrance been applying foundation to my face with the few minutes I had to myself in the exam room. Nor did I really care to inform her that for six months now I’ve been applying a very expensive bleaching cream that my dermatologist has recommended to me and that actually, my melasma is significantly better than it was the last time I saw her. I think she was trying to be supportive of my assertion that my estrogen is rising. (Melasma is a sign of high estrogen. I think she was trying to be a Yes Girl.)
4. Ah wait– I’ve got one. This is good. Two weeks ago I had a gig at a local joint. Fun place- two blocks from my house. And I hobbled over on my boot. Ready to rock it onstage with the Black Velcroed Wonder. And I brought out– for the very first time– my Fender Telecaster. Which is an electric guitar, for those who don’t know. And for those who don’t know me, I’d NEVER played my Fender Telecaster onstage before – never. Though the guitar was cool looking, and though I had posed with it slung on my back for the cover of my third album, and though the guitar came to me out of the blue- literally showed up on my doorstep one day back in 2001 after I’d put out my first record (I unwittingly won some online contest that I hadn’t even entered myself in) –I could not bring myself to play it. In fact, until 10 days ago, it still sported the same lightweight strings that it came with, propped up against my front door back in 2001 with a congratulatory note taped to it.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to play the Telecaster. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to honor the nudge that the universal forces were apparently giving me right at the dawn of my recording career. It was just that the thought of figuring out what sort of AMP to buy for it, and what kind of STRINGS it might require and how it might change the way I was already haltingly picking and struming my acoustic guitar… I just wasn’t READY for it, I decided. The universe is never wrong, but in this case, I had decided the universe had shown up to the party a little early and would just have to hang around by the buffet with a drink and wait for the rest of the party guests to arrive.
So of course I didn’t play it or even pay any attention to it for a long time. And when any musician would come over to practice with me and notice the poor neglected Tele leaning expectantly in its stand in the corner of my office, he would comment on how- Oh Hol! I didn’t know you had a Fender! That’s cool. Why don’t you ever play it? And then the litany of whys would pour out of me.
And it wasn’t until 2012 that I really decided to own the ONLY reason why I wasn’t playing this delightful gift of the Magi that showed up like Moses in the basket to Pharoh’s wife. I wasn’t playing this guitar because I was SCARED. I was scared of trying something I didn’t know how to do. I was terrified of my eventual trips to Guitar Center armed with my little Tele, forced to go ask one of the tattoo encrusted sales dudes, “What kind of amp do you think I should buy for this guitar?” And I would be forced to say “I don’t know anything about anything when it comes to pedals and sounds and effects. I only know that they exist and that I won this guitar and I should probably start playing around with some gear and such and stuff.” I didn’t want to appear as the Soccer-Mom-Wanna-Be-Middle-Age Rockster whose smiling face would soon grace an ad-hoc WANTED poster in the Guitar Center break room: ”Seen this tall, slightly wrinkly, totally clueless loser? Warning- knows nothing about anything! If you happen to encounter, pitch only expensive reject guitar gear. She apparently has dough to burn! Claims to play the “keyboard.”
I finally swallowed my pride this month and borrowed a cool little amp. And a tremolo pedal. And immediately wrote a song on the 11 year old lightweight strings. And then showed up armed with said guitar, amp, pedal and song to my gig of two weeks ago. The best part is of course, the high E string broke onstage just as I was about to play the new tune. Though I played it anyway- struggling every moment with the guitar wailing painfully out of tune. See, when one string is missing on the neck of the guitar, the balance of tension gets all off and it will pull the remainder of the strings off their game. It was hilarious listening to my guitar in the monitor get softer and softer as the song progressed. (Thank you sound man.) Luckily, I was performing with my pal Eric who is a SMOKIN guitarist and who sort of took over the song even though he had never heard it and was wingin it the whole way through. Suffice to say, the song rocked. Even though I did not on my Fender Tele.
So there’s more. But I believe I have now reached the organic end of this blog post. It feels like it’s done. I think I’ve made my point to myself and the millions of tiny etheral quarks which surround me as I sit here typing away that I am indeed, if only very slowly and very slightly, evolving. I am learning to face my fears one broken guitar string at a time. I am edging farther away from my safe position of moralism, and learning to live who am I more consistently. Even though I may irritate a fellow human being or two seated next to me. Even though I may accomplish something as mundane and unnecessary as patronizing a fast food restaurant.
Because I suppose I can still surprise even myself. And that is something I never want to break.
I cannot think of a more beautiful poem than The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I had the distinct aching joy of a re-introduction to it today as I sat basking in a sea of my favorite songs of all time. (Brought to you by Spotify. Itunes for the music obsessed.) Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” was spinning for the third time in a row- maybe fourth. I just kept pressing play as the swelling third verse brought stinging tears to my eyes’ corners and burgeoning mucus to all membranes– a barely leveed flood for the face and the heart. And as “She lives with a broken man. A cracked polystyrene man who just crumbles and burns” floats out of Thom Yorke’s blotchy redheaded mouth, I must read Prufrock. ”She looks like the real thing- she tastes like the real thing…” Yorke pleads. And I’m pulling up All the Women Come and Go- Talking of Michelangelo.
And now the tears that were teasing and stinging in my ducts now come roaring down, bellowing out like clear lava forming little caves and ravines of Prescription Formula Number 40 foundation on my cheeks. Because as it wears out Yorke’s cracked plastic surgeon who eventually loses out to gravity every time, I am reaching desperately toward Eliot’s “attendant lord- no- not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be. One that will do, though, to swell a progress, start a scene or two. At times indeed almost ridiculous. Almost at times the Fool.”
And I can no longer remain sitting up straight. I am bowled over from the middle – cut in half- reduced to wracked sobbing. Quiet, long streams of wails emitting out of my mouth with the searing gorgeous painful truth of these lovely, wretched human souls.
Because you see- my grandmother is losing her mind.
And I am going to visit her this weekend with my mother and my aunt. We are all purposefully traveling to the middle of the country- to the bread basket, the heartland of America– to Salina Kansas. We are coming to hold her and envelope her and guide her like whatshisname over the river Styx as her life passes from its final stages of rich independent livlihood to the waiting room of death that is Salina Kansas’ best assisted-living retirement community– The Manor. This barely disguised hole of finality. Encased in soft ecru and mauve tones– damask on the pillows of the overstuffed couches. This is where my Nana Ruth will now reside until the last of her days. It is where her mother, Lula Mae Buchanan (nee Moon) spent the last decade of her years. It is where most of her friends currently live. It is the beginning of the end.
And there’s something about being roughly half her age now, roughly half of what she’s accumulated in wisdom and experience- in Prufrock’s measured tea spoons- that makes me swoon with recognition at both the Radiohead lead characters in “Fake Plastic Trees” as well as Eliot’s Hamlet substitute. A man balding slowly- losing virility- losing gravity- losing sense of purpose and power that he is finding was all an illusion anyway. So- perhaps- more the crumpled styrene surgeon coming to terms with the scales always being tipped in gravity’s favor- I dig, I dig, I dig that space. I vibe to that- I get it. I live it. I awaken at 4 am to the hour of the wolf with sweaty palms and a heart beat too fast for such an hour lying in a supine position obsessed and anxious about only the big issues. Death. The end. The destruction. The last desperate squeeze of the heart- the squish of the blood through the valves. The end of being here and now as I know it.
And I wonder at what must be running through the brain of my grandmother. As her brain slowly calcifies- denying her access to the most basic of information that had been hers for the taking for decades. I wonder at her current concept of her reality. She forgets names, dates, having taken her multitude of medicines on time or not, the story she just told you 10 minutes ago that she’ll tell you again…but perhaps is her reality any closer to actual reality? Now that she’s sinking deeper into the chasm of The Manor? Of hospital-like fluorescents in the hallways (only turned on after 11pm through the night) and of oatmeal berber carpet on the living space of her 250 square foot apartment to enable easier cleaning? Is she somehow more able to grasp the moment to moment child like view of the world that allows her an ability to live somehow more presently? Or is it just a constant sea of o confusion. That in and of itself, possiblly a more authentic way of looking at the human experience.
I am not a stranger to confusion myself. Though I have not been friends with it so much. Confusion has at times brought about rage at my own limitations or misfortunes. Confusion has convinced me that I have Not Done It Right so many times at the 4am witching hour. I wonder if Confusion is really a starting point- a launching pad from which we (I) should more often be comfortable launching. Or not. Perhaps just camping out upon.
“I grow old…I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
And now I am traveling back in time. To a world not so long ago- not so distant in time or space. A world right here in sunny smoggy Los Angeles. A world of beginnings and sex and possibilities where I am running–late– to my 3rd quarter junior year poetry class at UCLA’s Royce Hall. My long tanned limbs are beating the stones of the old-world section of campus clad in some short flowy 80′s mini skirt. I most assuredly have some white high heeled leather booties on my feet, making it hard for me to run very fast. But I am not even 21, and so my joints and bones and cartilage are all very up to the task. No physical repercussions are forthcoming. And this poetry class is a course I had every right, and every privilege to be able to sign up for. Because, you see, I am a theater major- attaining my bachelor’s degree as an artist. I am a student of every subject. And so I am allowed to take astronomy- ancient Chinese History, European Art History of the 17th-19th Centuries, a TV class where I learn how to run a 3 camera studio shoot a la “Cheers” or “Archie Bunker.”
And I sail into class and find an empty seat near the door just as my efficiently artsy and bespectacled sweater vest professor jabs passionately in the air with his pencil and tells us vehemently to turn to page 426 of our Anthology Of Poetry. For today we will tackle Prufrock. Today we will start at least on the first two paragraphs- we will analyze, we will wrack our brains, we will work caringly, dilligently and slowly through this work. Because this might be perhaps the most accomplished of all the post modern poems- this just might be our anthem for the Western World through time immemorial. And I am engaged and titillated by such talk. I have heard vaguely about this poem- though I have no real knowledge of it. I’m just busy crossing my legs and adjusting my very short very fashionable mini skirt so that any of the potentially inquisitive men- young or old- sitting vaguely in front of me might not get such a wanton show should Prufrock not prove as absorbing as sweater vest professes it will.
And we begin our reading. And I remember immediately being drawn by the cadence of the thing. By the words themselves and how they presented next to each other. By the sheer juxtaposition of language- I remember thinking- this is deep. This is dense. This is a grouping of words that deserves my utmost attention and this is the sort of thing I hoped to encounter when I decided to enroll in such a course- this is the very kind of ‘message’ that I need to be able to learn how to take in and absorb. Yes- bring it, Prufrock. Bring it to my young eager overly sensitized intellectualized brain stem. Push this up past my white booties and though the cotton of my skirt up through the reach of my spine past any young bouncy bodily section of me and plant this firmly in the old tree root that I know is my heart. Put ‘er there, TS- you know you’ve got a friend in me.
But for all my yearning- for all my desire- Prufrock was no more than a beautiful masterful tapestry of divine syllables then and for a long time afterwards. It was strings of pearly words draped neatly and deftly upon each other. Back in 1991, I had no more idea what to make of J Alfred Prufrock than I would have a urine stained nursing home bed pan. And now… And now somehow. I am closer. I do.
Now I think no more of this poem in terms of its paragraphs- of its “stanzas”- of the Michelangelo theme refrain…of its catchy clever phrases. No – now I consume this poem as a whole. As a big juicy pear that doesn’t actually satisfy, but feeds anyway. In fact- it is so nutritious for me, I almost don’t even need to read beyond the first few paragraphs. Once the evening has spread itself against the sky like an anesthetized patient, and we’re remembering the sawdust restaurant floors covered in oyster shells, I only really need to get to the yellow fog rubbing its back and muzzle on the window panes, and I’m already there. I’m already breaking. “Fake Plastic Trees” hasn’t even mentioned the surgeon, and I’m gripped in the throes of the deepest most profound bourgois ennui that is so painstakingly executed by Eliot’s Prufrock. And somehow so gorgeously set to music by Radiohead.
I am thankful for the recognition of this new juxtaposition for me. I am not looking forward to seeing my grandmother, though I do love her deeply and soundly and want so much to make a difference and help this passage for her be if only slightly less burdensome. As I hope some loved one will do for me one day.
“Streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question…Oh, do not ask, “what is it?” Let us go and make our visit.”
I am coming to see you Nana.
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And now the tears that were teasing and stinging in my ducts now come roaring down, bellowing out like clear lava forming little caves and ravines of Prescription Formula Number 40 foundation on my cheeks. Because as it wears out Yorke’s cracked plastic surgeon who eventually loses out to gravity every time, I am reaching desperately toward Eliot’s “attendant lord- no- not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be. One that will do, though, to swell a progress, start a scene or two. At times indeed almost ridiculous. Almost at times the Fool.”
And I can no longer remain sitting up straight. I am bowled over from the middle – cut in half- reduced to wracked sobbing. Quiet, long streams of wails emitting out of my mouth with the searing gorgeous painful truth of these lovely, wretched human souls.
Because you see- my grandmother is losing her mind.
And I am going to visit her this weekend with my mother and my aunt. We are all purposefully traveling to the middle of the country- to the bread basket, the heartland of America– to Salina Kansas. We are coming to hold her and envelope her and guide her like whatshisname over the river Styx as her life passes from its final stages of rich independent livlihood to the waiting room of death that is Salina Kansas’ best assisted-living retirement community– The Manor. This barely disguised hole of finality. Encased in soft ecru and mauve tones– damask on the pillows of the overstuffed couches. This is where my Nana Ruth will now reside until the last of her days. It is where her mother, Lula Mae Buchanan (nee Moon) spent the last decade of her years. It is where most of her friends currently live. It is the beginning of the end.
And there’s something about being roughly half her age now, roughly half of what she’s accumulated in wisdom and experience- in Prufrock’s measured tea spoons- that makes me swoon with recognition at both the Radiohead lead characters in “Fake Plastic Trees” as well as Eliot’s Hamlet substitute. A man balding slowly- losing virility- losing gravity- losing sense of purpose and power that he is finding was all an illusion anyway. So- perhaps- more the crumpled styrene surgeon coming to terms with the scales always being tipped in gravity’s favor- I dig, I dig, I dig that space. I vibe to that- I get it. I live it. I awaken at 4 am to the hour of the wolf with sweaty palms and a heart beat too fast for such an hour lying in a supine position obsessed and anxious about only the big issues. Death. The end. The destruction. The last desperate squeeze of the heart- the squish of the blood through the valves. The end of being here and now as I know it.
And I wonder at what must be running through the brain of my grandmother. As her brain slowly calcifies- denying her access to the most basic of information that had been hers for the taking for decades. I wonder at her current concept of her reality. She forgets names, dates, having taken her multitude of medicines on time or not, the story she just told you 10 minutes ago that she’ll tell you again…but perhaps is her reality any closer to actual reality? Now that she’s sinking deeper into the chasm of The Manor? Of hospital-like fluorescents in the hallways (only turned on after 11pm through the night) and of oatmeal berber carpet on the living space of her 250 square foot apartment to enable easier cleaning? Is she somehow more able to grasp the moment to moment child like view of the world that allows her an ability to live somehow more presently? Or is it just a constant sea of o confusion. That in and of itself, possiblly a more authentic way of looking at the human experience.
I am not a stranger to confusion myself. Though I have not been friends with it so much. Confusion has at times brought about rage at my own limitations or misfortunes. Confusion has convinced me that I have Not Done It Right so many times at the 4am witching hour. I wonder if Confusion is really a starting point- a launching pad from which we (I) should more often be comfortable launching. Or not. Perhaps just camping out upon.
“I grow old…I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
And now I am traveling back in time. To a world not so long ago- not so distant in time or space. A world right here in sunny smoggy Los Angeles. A world of beginnings and sex and possibilities where I am running–late– to my 3rd quarter junior year poetry class at UCLA’s Royce Hall. My long tanned limbs are beating the stones of the old-world section of campus clad in some short flowy 80′s mini skirt. I most assuredly have some white high heeled leather booties on my feet, making it hard for me to run very fast. But I am not even 21, and so my joints and bones and cartilage are all very up to the task. No physical repercussions are forthcoming. And this poetry class is a course I had every right, and every privilege to be able to sign up for. Because, you see, I am a theater major- attaining my bachelor’s degree as an artist. I am a student of every subject. And so I am allowed to take astronomy- ancient Chinese History, European Art History of the 17th-19th Centuries, a TV class where I learn how to run a 3 camera studio shoot a la “Cheers” or “Archie Bunker.”
And I sail into class and find an empty seat near the door just as my efficiently artsy and bespectacled sweater vest professor jabs passionately in the air with his pencil and tells us vehemently to turn to page 426 of our Anthology Of Poetry. For today we will tackle Prufrock. Today we will start at least on the first two paragraphs- we will analyze, we will wrack our brains, we will work caringly, dilligently and slowly through this work. Because this might be perhaps the most accomplished of all the post modern poems- this just might be our anthem for the Western World through time immemorial. And I am engaged and titillated by such talk. I have heard vaguely about this poem- though I have no real knowledge of it. I’m just busy crossing my legs and adjusting my very short very fashionable mini skirt so that any of the potentially inquisitive men- young or old- sitting vaguely in front of me might not get such a wanton show should Prufrock not prove as absorbing as sweater vest professes it will.
And we begin our reading. And I remember immediately being drawn by the cadence of the thing. By the words themselves and how they presented next to each other. By the sheer juxtaposition of language- I remember thinking- this is deep. This is dense. This is a grouping of words that deserves my utmost attention and this is the sort of thing I hoped to encounter when I decided to enroll in such a course- this is the very kind of ‘message’ that I need to be able to learn how to take in and absorb. Yes- bring it, Prufrock. Bring it to my young eager overly sensitized intellectualized brain stem. Push this up past my white booties and though the cotton of my skirt up through the reach of my spine past any young bouncy bodily section of me and plant this firmly in the old tree root that I know is my heart. Put ‘er there, TS- you know you’ve got a friend in me.
But for all my yearning- for all my desire- Prufrock was no more than a beautiful masterful tapestry of divine syllables then and for a long time afterwards. It was strings of pearly words draped neatly and deftly upon each other. Back in 1991, I had no more idea what to make of J Alfred Prufrock than I would have a urine stained nursing home bed pan. And now… And now somehow. I am closer. I do.
Now I think no more of this poem in terms of its paragraphs- of its “stanzas”- of the Michelangelo theme refrain…of its catchy clever phrases. No – now I consume this poem as a whole. As a big juicy pear that doesn’t actually satisfy, but feeds anyway. In fact- it is so nutritious for me, I almost don’t even need to read beyond the first few paragraphs. Once the evening has spread itself against the sky like an anesthetized patient, and we’re remembering the sawdust restaurant floors covered in oyster shells, I only really need to get to the yellow fog rubbing its back and muzzle on the window panes, and I’m already there. I’m already breaking. “Fake Plastic Trees” hasn’t even mentioned the surgeon, and I’m gripped in the throes of the deepest most profound bourgois ennui that is so painstakingly executed by Eliot’s Prufrock. And somehow so gorgeously set to music by Radiohead.
I am thankful for the recognition of this new juxtaposition for me. I am not looking forward to seeing my grandmother, though I do love her deeply and soundly and want so much to make a difference and help this passage for her be if only slightly less burdensome. As I hope some loved one will do for me one day.
“Streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question…Oh, do not ask, “what is it?” Let us go and make our visit.”
I am coming to see you Nana.
Skin In The Game
April 20, 2012When I was in my twenties, I had the strange privilege and the desperate misfortune of living through a particularly deadly health disorder called Endocarditis. It’s a massive bacterial infection of the heart- either the lining or a valve, which brings on systematic organ shutdown and if left untreated for a mere few days to a week, will lead to death. The great composer and conductor Gustav Mahler died of Endocarditis (as I recently discovered.) The wondrous icon Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets and Sesame Street, died of it too.
I mention my bout with Endocarditis briefly in my bio on my website. In fact, it used to take up more space on the page- as it took up more space in my brain the closer the events were in proximity to my current life. My spotty memories of that rush to the ICU- the hazy unconsciousness/coma state brought on by intensely high fever- the slow awakening from this near death state-the dread of realizing how direly ill I had become- the hope and strength and terror and countless procedures and bags and bags of liquid antibiotics that lead me to recovery—all that…all of it used to loom large as the most foundational memory in my life. Because it changed everything about my life. My body was forever scarred and changed and ultimately healed, but my spirit and soul were also more deeply rooted suddenly in the here and now. I felt what it was like to come to the brink of death, and feel powerless, and terrified, and then to be saved from it all, excruciatingly slowly and painfully, one step at a time over the course of over a year after my month long hospital stay.
It wasn’t really until my children were born in my thirties that any event eclipsed this Endocarditis in my mind. And I believe I decided to give birth to my first child, Josephine, without the use of an epidural because somewhere deep inside of me I wanted to know I was a kick ass survivor. That I had won over the bacteria- that my body was strong and vital and healthy and that I could birth another human into this world without drugs—that I just needed my bottom dwelling primal yells and Deep Mother Chi.
(It didn’t really work that way. I mean, maybe it did on paper. But in actuality, I puked and shook and wheedled the whole 24 hours worth for pain killers. My doula kept me on track through all of my blubbering assertions that I knew I was not going to make it. Through the pooping the table and the clutching her fingers and sobbing like a toddler who’s just realized he’s not the only human being on earth…so yes- I did successfully give birth to Jo without an epidural. A process I would never recommend to anyone. Ever. Turns out, the primal screams were there- that part happened. They were deep and guttural and would have scared the bejesus out of me if I wasn’t already so fucking terrified– SO sure that my body was going to rip itself in half and I was going to die a horrible primeval death by alien life form exeunting from twixt the center of me.)
But I did it.
And then two years later, I did it again- I gave birth a second time. And when the puking and the light-headedness and shakes started again during labor, I took my same doula by the collar of her sweet hand-crocheted baby blue bunny festooned sweater and told her to get me the effing epidural NOW. And she did. And so Truman was born in a haze of sweet dozing sleep as opposed to Josephine who came into the world sort of like the Nazis bombing London.
And it was only these two experiences that shook the Endocarditis out of its Kingly position in my memory. It was only the revisitation of a different hospital (Cedars for the heart infection- UCLA Santa Monica for the kids) that superceded the original hospital experience. I basically just swapped mauve tiles for light minty green. One squeaky waxed linoleum floor for another. One achingly ugly Aztec pine framed print above my head for another equally as soulless and sad.
Though all the smells were the same. Hospital smells. The smells of the beginning and the end of lives. Bleachy cleaners. Floor wax. Urine. Citrus room freshener. Mild liquid body cleanser- no added dyes or odors. Lilies. Daisies. Death.
I don’t live in those memories very often. I do like to ritually revisit the birth stories of my kids for each of them on their respective birthdays- but only if they want to go there with me. I would never press those moments on them- though it is fun to go through the first early photos in each of their baby books. Look at the bracelets. Trace their first footy prints and feel the lock of hair.
(I may have missed my calling as a professional Scrapbooker actually. Though I didn’t and I don’t keep EVERYTHING- I’m a stickler for photos in books. In the right order. With terse captions if necessary. And yes, I’ve scrapbooked our families’ big vacations- was in charge of my own wedding book. Honeymoon album. None of them are ridiculous or overly splendid in any way, but I do have a knack for it. Jesus, don’t tell anyone- it will TOTALLY screw with my hard-ass rocker mom rep.)
On the other end of the spectrum- I have happily stopped revisiting my brush with death so often. That big ripe bundle of memories is mostly safely tucked away on the top shelf of a very dark closet in my brain now, and it only comes out every so often. Unfortunately though, that bundle does tend to come out whenever I am dealing with anything dark and scary- like my childrens’ ongoing health issues, or my own. When my infant son started developing a scary tendency to wheeze and gasp for air in the third month of his life and we discovered he had RSV, I remembered my heart. And then when he had to have surgery to correct a mild birth defect at nine months and they wheeled him away to get aenesthetized, I remembered my heart. And four years later when my daughter came down with a terrifyingly high fever and horrible back pain and had to be hospitalized for 4 days with an acute kidney infection, I remembered my heart.
And then finally this past month what with the initial re-breaking of the foot… and then subsequent scary information I received regarding my beautiful girl’s ongoing bladder issues now having something to do with a tethered spinal cord (SPINAL CORD- gives me sweaty hands just typing it)…and then my own need to revisit the cardiologist to get another look at my Endocarditis-scarred leaky heart valve- getting leakier… it’s been a month of remembering Cedars Sinai. A month of begrudgingly taking down that bundle of santizer soaked hospital memories and having to relive little frightened moments in claustrophobic, fluorescent lit rooms. With tubes sticking out of me and freshly scrubbed healthy men and women poking and prodding and the whole time feeling just so– tired. So desperately….weak…and…broken….and…tired.
And I just want to throw on my running shoes and fly to the beach with some AC/DC blaring in my earpads. To say Fuck You, you magnificent crazy reeling silly scary world! I’m still fucking HERE! I’m alive and my heart is BEATING and I’m running and breathing hard because I’m a motherfucker- you can’t kill me that EASY! But I can’t. Because my foot, she is still healing….
And I just DON”T want to go to Salina Kansas in June to help my mom and my aunt move my grandmother out of her house for the first and last time into an assisted living facility where all her friends now reside because her Alzheimers has finally gotten too severe for her to live alone. I don’t want to be a part of watching the family parcel out her belongings from that beautiful house that used to feel so safe and so lovely and so timeless to me as a kid. But I can’t not go. Because I may not see my grandmother alive for much longer- and she needs me now. And this may be the last time she can actually remember who I am…
And I just want to scoop up my children and hold them close to me and stop time- literally FREEZE it- so that we can just stay in this relatively healthy precious moment together. So that Jo won’t have to go through the fear of small spinal surgery in a few short months. So that Truman won’t wake up with another night terror and have to fall back to sleep shivering and clinging to me in mommy and daddy’s bed (a habit he developed a few years ago, and still has occasional dealings with.) So that they won’t have to crack open my chest—which they will eventually have to do whether this decade of my life or the next. And I will have to again fumble with the ties of that flimsy cheap pastel hospital gown, open in the back for all to see. I will again have to pad down the waxed linoleum floored halls wheeling my IV …face pale and slightly sweaty from the effort of walking…again in recovery. Again. Resting and healing my poor body after they’ve put a small saw through my breastplate and carefully replaced my fluttery, thickened human valve with one from a generous, not so fortunate swine.
But these are just fantasies. Fantasties that I can avoid these and all subsequent frightening moments in my life. Fantasies that I won’t have to go through the crying jags and the heart palpitations and the white knuckle minutes that seem to last days and the dry heaving in the toilets. I cannot pretend. Because as one of my best friends said the other day- “You have too much skin in the game, Hol.” This is the beauty of our lives- this is everything that’s worth anything and this is the center of the horror now.
It’s not that I’m actually all that esoterically afraid of dying anymore. Barring a suicidal end, when and how I die is basically not going to be up to me- and I’m more ok with that than I’ve ever been. Having to live with a chronic heart condition has enabled me to have a dialogue with death like I simply was not able to do previous to my infection. So, I’m far from “fine” with it. But I think I can mostly make peace with simply dying- because it’s the next thing. It’s the next portal through which we all pass eventually.
But it’s the thought of those that I would leave behind that now torture my life-filled, heart beating soul when I must come to the precipice of thinking about death. Now that I’ve swapped mauve tiles for light green, I’ve got too much skin in the game to make anything easy. Everything is costly now. Everything is beautifully, painfully important.
Now that there are two breathing living life forms that came bounding out from twixt the center of me- it’s all changed. There is no more bluffing- there is no more fantasizing. There is no more pretending I am only a lone small little soul back home in my tiny Eastside LA apartment after four weeks in a hospital that saved my life, trying to manage the searing pain in my head that is the healing brain scars, slowly grow back all the hair that fell out and the 25 pounds of muscle mass gone–dissolved from days on end of lying supine in a dreary hospital bed with sheets covered in fading moons and stars.
Now it’s really real. The heart that beats in my breast beats for two other creatures more than for anyone else. More than for myself. And I would do anything to have that heart beat as long as it possibly can for them. To allow for this body to squeeze any life out they need from me now and forever more.
And so basically I suppose, who better to crack my chest open for? It already feels like I have.
“Skin in the game, baby.”
(She pushes the entirety of her poker chips to the center of the table.)
“I’m all in.”
…
Broken Foot or You Can Teach an Old Dog New Tricks
April 14, 2012It has been with much humility, and not a whole lot of grace that I have had to accept hobbling around on my orthopedic boot for the past four weeks after ONCE AGAIN causing a hairline stress fracture in one of my metatarsels. From running. This time the fracture is on my left foot.
My foot- she is healing, which is the good news. The bad news is that I’m not sure I can really engage in this whole “barefoot running” notion, or more recently, “flatshoe running” that I’ve been participating in. And I think, it’s not because those ways of running are inherently wrong and bad for your body. In fact, I actually believe the opposite to be true. Turns out I’m just too old and have been running on puffy running shoes for too long now to really be able to successfully change my stride from heel slammer/toe rocker to the much-better-for-you barefoot strike which is something akin to how children naturally run shoeless in the grass on a summer day. (Sliding down to the ground from the ball/toe of your foot first, then to the heel and finally springing off the toe. Try running in the park barefoot- it’s kinda what your foot wants to do naturally.)
I’d been trying to re-create my inner 7-year-old Holly over the past few months- or rather channel the 7-year-old Holly- in a noble attempt to allow myself the ability to run far into my senior years. See, those big old puffy running shoes that we humans have been plogging around on now for a few decades are kinda the worst thing for your body imaginable. They make you slam your heel down, which causes strain on your lower back, and secondly over-extend your knees. All this misaligns your body as you lean forward to run faster…farther…atop your over-extended knee. It’s no wonder why so many runners quit in their 40′s or 50′s with blown out backs, knees, hip pain.
Yet, attempting to side-step said pain by running on flatter shoes (or none at all) was clearly not the right direction for me. Help for the knees and back ended up blowing out the little bones on the top of my feet a number of times. So, I’ve been dejectedly entertaining the notion that perhaps– no. As far as running goes, you can’t teach this old dog new tricks. If I’m going to continue to run, I need to get back out there on my pumped up Nikes or Sauconys or New Balances, continue to pop my Omega 3′s, and just pray that my knees and joints hold out for at least the next decade.
This vaguely depresses me. Because running for me is akin to crack cocaine. Though I’ve never run longer than 5 miles at a stretch, running to me is something like a religion and it keeps me healthy and happy and if not stress-free- definitely stress-reduced.
So- I’ve decided to make a list in the other direction. A list of ways I HAVE changed lately. A reminder of how it IS possible to evolve. That not all attempts to alter one’s foot fall in this life end up in ugly black velcro laden boots that literally look good with zero fashion ensembles. And I’ve tried.
Here goes.
1. I walked into a Carl’s Jr today. I’ve NEVER eaten in a Carl’s Jr! I’ve eaten at many other fast food restaurants in my time, but until today- no love for Carl. This was not hard when you consider the horrid rumors I’ve neard about how he is a low-life racist and gives large amounts of money to politicians who would attempt to bring our country back to the good old days of the early 60′s. Additionally, I frequently scoffed at what I came to decide were Carl’s Jr’s dopey ad campaigns which seem strategically aimed at 15 year old boys. If it’s not some splooch of mustard sliding down the front of some girl’s tight white T-shirt, or glamorizing the amount of mess created from eating a Carl’s Jr burger by counting the napkins needed, it’s the “unreasonable-ness” of sit-down restaurants wanting to charge $6 for a decent hamburger. My god. Why would you ever pay $6 for a hamburger, when you can get something that LOOKS very much like that sit-down restaurant hamburger at Carl’s Jr for almost half that price?! (Where, by the way, is there a non-fast food restaurant serving a burger that’s anywhere near $6? Did anyone else find that to be a strangely silly lowball figure? Almost counter-productive to their own message? I mean, even at a joint like Marie Callendar’s- when you order a hamburger, you better be sure you have at LEAST 10 bucks floating around in your pocket. And that’s not even counting drink and tip!) But I digress. So-
Out running errands this afternoon, I got a hankerin for a hunka burger today for lunch. And seeing as it’s about that time of month I thought- yes Holly. You’re allowed a big old nasty fat burger. You need the protein- you need the iron. Go for it. As I drove toward home with my carnivorous fangs dripping, Carl’s Jr loomed ahead- mere blocks from my gastronomical brainstorm. The drive thru line was around the block. But lo- there was one little parking space left right in front of the entrance. So I swung myself and my big old velcro-festooned boot through the doors and ordered me a Six Dollar Burger. And by golly, if it didn’t turn out to be almost as good as if I had gone to one of those restaurants where they serve real burgers for about $12.95! And, btw, six napkins worth of mess. So there’s some truth in advertising. I’ll probably never align with Carl’s politics, but he now has $6.48 of my money and I was far from dissatisfied.
2. (Remember this was a list?) Here’s another new thing for me: So- I shushed someone I didn’t know today sitting next to me and my kid in our school’s weekly Friday morning “All School Meeting.” (This isn’t really the new thing for me, but I’ll get to that, so bear with me for a little bit.) The ASM, as it’s affectionately called round the hood of our school, is a four parts lovely, two parts frivolous, one part annoying tradition where all kids, parents, teachers, etc meet for (what you hope is) about 35 minutes in the Common area. Kids share songs, skits…fifth graders lead the meetings, thereby culminating their private school elementary experience with a very public display of self-confidence, school information is passed around, sometimes visiting performers come to share their talents. It’s really mostly very nice.
However, for this particularly curmudgeonly mom, I find some elements of the tradition to be tiresome- the most common of which is the propensity for TALKING during the meeting. And I don’t mean kids talking. The students at school are for the most part fairly kind, helpful, thoughtful people. They are capable of actually sitting around for a long time criss-cross-applesauce on the floor with a bare minimum of disruption. Perhaps because these meetings are weekly, the kids get used to shutting up and mostly paying attention. And mostly not talking to their friends who might be sitting right next to them or across the room. I cannot say the same thing about the adults. It’s the PARENTS who tend to be so frigging annoying. It’s the clueless entitled private school PARENTS who cannot seem to stop talking to each other during ASM. As if the code of silence only applies to their younguns and not to them. As if politeness is an overly tight snakeskin that one eventually molts out of. Well, I for one don’t agree. I don’t go often any more to these all school meetings, but when I do, I try as hard as I can to mirror for the kids what I think it is we are attempting to teach them with our communal silence and attention to whatever is happening onstage– self control and respect for others.
So today I had it. There was a middle aged man and his teenage son sitting next to me and my son just yakking away during the beginning of the meeting. Now, I didn’t recognize them so it is possible they were visiting relatives of one of the students– perhaps even one of the fifth graders leading the meeting. But suffice to say, there was plenty of “shushing” at the onset of the meeting, so it seemed evident to me there was no lack of clarity about the desire for- the need for- silence from the audience. And the meeting begins- and there’s some talk. And then a song that we’re all singing together- a call and response sort of thing. And during both the call, and the response this father and his son are still talking to each other in regular voices. Not even really an attempt to whisper at all. And I’m starting to boil with rage. (Did I mention it’s about that time of the month for me? Just so we’re clear.) Because it’s really the lack of awareness that just niggles at me. It’s the lack of ability to apparently realize you’re in a room with many OTHER individuals who are there together- trying to co-create an experience. That maybe just shutting the fuck UP might be the best thing to do. You can giggle with your teenage son after the thing is over. So, I try to sit on it. Try to sit on it. Sit. Just sit, Holly. Just Sit on– and then I can’t any longer, and instead of slightly turning my head, vaguely looking into the middle of nowhere and uttering some sort of passive aggressive “ShhHHH” like I would imagine might be the normally accepted way of handling the situation, I actually turn to completely face these two and say something like, “Hey, could you both stop talking please? It’s loud and hard to concentrate.” There’s a pause. And then because I am literally 28.9 cm away from them both and have to spend the rest of the meeting sitting next to them, I turn back to mitigate a bit and say, “I’m sorry if I sound really rude, but it’s just distracting. Thank you.” Both the father and son say nothing. They sort of glare at me as if they realize they’ve accidentally opted to sit next to the school crazy. Then they look away haughtily. And I look away. And that’s the end of the encounter.
But now here’s the part that belongs in my list today. This is new for me: I was relatively calm afterwards. My heart did not continue to beat hard after I said my little piece. I was able to breathe normally and not regret what I had said. I did not feel the need to further mitigate the situation. I did not feel the need to try to make myself more likable and look at them later with apologetic eyes, which I believe is what my slightly younger self would have done. In other words, I believe I’m getting a little better at speaking my truth and letting it hang in the air without needing to make anyone else comfortable. That’s a biggie for me.
3. Ok. What else? I could list how I recently took my kids on a plane by myself (bootlegged) to Atlanta over spring break and how I didn’t let my peri-menopausal CRUSHING travel anxiety get the better of me. (I love you, Ativan.) Or I could say something about how when during my trip to the doc three days ago to re-check some hormone levels, and my well-intentioned GP mentioned something about how my facial melasma looks really bad- like it’s gotten worse- and it must be because I didn’t have any makeup on, I didn’t go down the self-esteem rabbit hole. Despite the fact that I had just seconds before her entrance been applying foundation to my face with the few minutes I had to myself in the exam room. Nor did I really care to inform her that for six months now I’ve been applying a very expensive bleaching cream that my dermatologist has recommended to me and that actually, my melasma is significantly better than it was the last time I saw her. I think she was trying to be supportive of my assertion that my estrogen is rising. (Melasma is a sign of high estrogen. I think she was trying to be a Yes Girl.)
4. Ah wait– I’ve got one. This is good. Two weeks ago I had a gig at a local joint. Fun place- two blocks from my house. And I hobbled over on my boot. Ready to rock it onstage with the Black Velcroed Wonder. And I brought out– for the very first time– my Fender Telecaster. Which is an electric guitar, for those who don’t know. And for those who don’t know me, I’d NEVER played my Fender Telecaster onstage before – never. Though the guitar was cool looking, and though I had posed with it slung on my back for the cover of my third album, and though the guitar came to me out of the blue- literally showed up on my doorstep one day back in 2001 after I’d put out my first record (I unwittingly won some online contest that I hadn’t even entered myself in) –I could not bring myself to play it. In fact, until 10 days ago, it still sported the same lightweight strings that it came with, propped up against my front door back in 2001 with a congratulatory note taped to it.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to play the Telecaster. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to honor the nudge that the universal forces were apparently giving me right at the dawn of my recording career. It was just that the thought of figuring out what sort of AMP to buy for it, and what kind of STRINGS it might require and how it might change the way I was already haltingly picking and struming my acoustic guitar… I just wasn’t READY for it, I decided. The universe is never wrong, but in this case, I had decided the universe had shown up to the party a little early and would just have to hang around by the buffet with a drink and wait for the rest of the party guests to arrive.
So of course I didn’t play it or even pay any attention to it for a long time. And when any musician would come over to practice with me and notice the poor neglected Tele leaning expectantly in its stand in the corner of my office, he would comment on how- Oh Hol! I didn’t know you had a Fender! That’s cool. Why don’t you ever play it? And then the litany of whys would pour out of me.
And it wasn’t until 2012 that I really decided to own the ONLY reason why I wasn’t playing this delightful gift of the Magi that showed up like Moses in the basket to Pharoh’s wife. I wasn’t playing this guitar because I was SCARED. I was scared of trying something I didn’t know how to do. I was terrified of my eventual trips to Guitar Center armed with my little Tele, forced to go ask one of the tattoo encrusted sales dudes, “What kind of amp do you think I should buy for this guitar?” And I would be forced to say “I don’t know anything about anything when it comes to pedals and sounds and effects. I only know that they exist and that I won this guitar and I should probably start playing around with some gear and such and stuff.” I didn’t want to appear as the Soccer-Mom-Wanna-Be-Middle-Age Rockster whose smiling face would soon grace an ad-hoc WANTED poster in the Guitar Center break room: ”Seen this tall, slightly wrinkly, totally clueless loser? Warning- knows nothing about anything! If you happen to encounter, pitch only expensive reject guitar gear. She apparently has dough to burn! Claims to play the “keyboard.”
I finally swallowed my pride this month and borrowed a cool little amp. And a tremolo pedal. And immediately wrote a song on the 11 year old lightweight strings. And then showed up armed with said guitar, amp, pedal and song to my gig of two weeks ago. The best part is of course, the high E string broke onstage just as I was about to play the new tune. Though I played it anyway- struggling every moment with the guitar wailing painfully out of tune. See, when one string is missing on the neck of the guitar, the balance of tension gets all off and it will pull the remainder of the strings off their game. It was hilarious listening to my guitar in the monitor get softer and softer as the song progressed. (Thank you sound man.) Luckily, I was performing with my pal Eric who is a SMOKIN guitarist and who sort of took over the song even though he had never heard it and was wingin it the whole way through. Suffice to say, the song rocked. Even though I did not on my Fender Tele.
So there’s more. But I believe I have now reached the organic end of this blog post. It feels like it’s done. I think I’ve made my point to myself and the millions of tiny etheral quarks which surround me as I sit here typing away that I am indeed, if only very slowly and very slightly, evolving. I am learning to face my fears one broken guitar string at a time. I am edging farther away from my safe position of moralism, and learning to live who am I more consistently. Even though I may irritate a fellow human being or two seated next to me. Even though I may accomplish something as mundane and unnecessary as patronizing a fast food restaurant.
Because I suppose I can still surprise even myself. And that is something I never want to break.
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