It sound a bit cute, but it’s true: I’ve got Restless Life Syndrome.
As a youth, I was not particularly wiggly. I seem to remember sitting quietly and being good. I was definitely not bad. My mom says I was a happy baby, an easy one. I don’t know when it happened, but at some point I stopped being satisfied. I have been on the move ever since. Dammit!
From time to time, I read articles in magazines about some sad, harried woman’s magical transformation into a content, happy woman who stops working 24/7 and starts appreciating the beauty of the hummingbirds in her garden — the garden she now tends lovingly instead of stabbing at spreadsheets all day. One wonders if her perfect azaleas are stand-ins for her then-perfect quarterly reports, but to hear her talk she’s truly mellowed, is truly at peace because she stopped worrying about absolutely everything she used to worry about. She just “woke up.”
These articles do not inspire me. They make me nervous. Because I am not looking at hummingbirds. I am on a plane. I am trying to do something, here.
I don’t know what it feels like to check out. I can’t do it. I’ve tried. The people who do the hummingbird thing are mysterious to me. I do try hard to notice the world, but there can be no doubt I’m missing tracts of it right and left because I’m getting into another taxi in another city or making wheat-free bread that will supposedly save my health and so far is absolutely not doing that. My days are spent working; many nights too, because I feel workiness is next to worthiness (also because I’m lame in social situations involving more than two people.) To be fair, “working” to me means “making money to live on” but also “quilting” and “writing,” so no need to feel sorry for me. Besides, I make money doing (mostly) what I love to do. I’m grateful every day for that and will work hard to keep it that way.
Which brings me to the hummingbirds. I don’t think I’m “set.” I don’t take all this for granted. You want something big, you gotta do big things. You gotta hustle. There may not be as many diaphanous gowns in your life — or as many gardens — but there is beauty in the airplane. Beauty in the leather jacket you’ve got on.
Harvesting grapes, from a book created in the 14th century. These people have never heard of a pumpkin spice latte.
Q: What do autumn and a New York City fashion model have in common?
A: They real chilly.
Today feels like fall has arrived and also like my first day in one place in about a month; this is probably because fall has arrived and it is my first day in one place in about a month. My September saw Georgia, Iowa, South Carolina, and Florida; if you count the layovers, throw in Michigan and Tennessee, too.
My friend Bari said something the other day that made me laugh out loud. She said, “Your life seems kind of glamorous, Mar, jetting off here and there.” But glamour has something to do with someone carrying your luggage, I think, and cooking (or at least fetching) your food. As it happens, I am very much in charge of my own suitcase(es) and am the only person making myself almond meal cookies and broiled fish. But perception is everything and I love the idea that while I’m hauling my quilt-laden suitcase around the country, someone out there thinks I’m special enough to have “people” to do it for me.
Of course, the month contained disaster, too. “The Atlanta Incident,” as we might call it, didn’t just bring me low physically; it shook my confidence down, too. I don’t much like looking into the future and seeing it obscured by shadowy shapes of emergency rooms in faraway towns; I don’t like seeing blood in places it ought not to be (and I’ll let you figure that one out on your own.) Should I have cancelled September and come home? Should I have cancelled even my New York Adventure and gone home home, to Chicago, in the name of equilibrium? As my condo is presently rented, that would be difficult. No, stopping everything would be far more disruptive than just continuing; besides, my Midwestern work ethic is as stubborn as the cows so it’s no use to tell me to call in sick unless I’m half dead. Which is always possible.
I’m off to the Seattle area next week to lecture with Mom, then it’s back to Florida again. Yuri is peeved that I’m leaving again so soon, but I keep telling him that these trips are planned at least a year in advance, in most cases, and that there’s very little I can do. When I come back, I will commence the tests that my Chicago doctor recommended I have and Yuri will hold my hand through those. The only thing good about hospital tests is that I have to actually be in town for them.
Today it rained and the ground was soaked; In autumn, chill and sky are yoked And fall complaints of average kind: Ailing body, troubled mind.
You spend lots of time in air travel, you’re bound to amass air travel stories. I’ve promised this blog will never be about one thing, but I’d better watch it or it will become Paper(Airplane)Girl before our very eyes. Unfortunately, the plane-related tale tonight is hardly as lighthearted as yesterday’s baby-on-a-crime-spree.
Our flight from Midway landed safely at LaGuardia last night. A delay at the jetway meant that everyone had to sit tight for a few minutes. I’m sitting in my aisle seat and suddenly I hear a barking dog. Not a real dog; I was hearing the sound effect of a dog. The barking was coming from a cell phone — it was the phone’s ringer.
The phone was inside the pants pocket of stout businessman of about fifty. He was standing in the aisle, his belt buckle too close to my head. His hand brushed my shoulder as he stuck it into his pocket to get at the phone. It was 8:30pm and folks were quiet and tired and everyone was hearing this barking dog.
“The bitch is calling,” he said with a chortle and silenced the ringer.
It was clear as a bell, or a gunshot: His wife was calling.
He had set his ringer to sound a barking dog when his wife called him and he thought this was so clever that he’d toss it out to a plane-full of people for our amusement, too. Sure enough, several men around the man sniggered.
She could be awful. Yesterday might’ve been the worst day of his life. Maybe “bitch” is a term of endearment for those two. You don’t know what goes on between two people. But I was coming in to town with a lot of questions, confusions, hopes, and fears about what comes next in life and his “joke” seemed so needlessly mean. We’ve all been cruel, me included. It’s nothing to be proud of. You can try to curtail that stuff, improve. Anyone can try to do better.
While washing my hands in the bathroom of the Des Moines Airport, I overheard two girls of seventeen or eighteen having this conversation:
GIRL A: I’m 136 right now. Which isn’t too bad, I guess.
GIRL B: No…
GIRL A: But this summer —
GIRL B: What were you this summer?
GIRL A: 128? 127?
The anxiety was palpable. Both of the girls were pretty, even dressed as they were in sweatpants and UGG boots.
The weight conversation pained me for reasons that tangled up in my head as I lathered up at the sink. I felt first the Ms. Magazine stab, angry that young girls were wasting breath on an eight-pound fluctuation in weight while they’re clearly still forming. I felt a stab of nostalgia for an age I will never be again; seventeen was lousy in some ways (e.g., school, acne, etc.) but so great in others (e.g., inventing sex.) I’m ashamed to admit that there was a flicker of jealousy (or envy? I never know the difference) as I glanced at their tanned wrists and thick hair. I feel so poor today, so compromised — I had a pretty grim setback last night. Ah, but to be a young adult in good health is a beautiful thing — for a split second, I longed to change places with either of those kids.
The pair also reminded me of a promise I made to myself many years ago. At Mayo Clinic in 2008, in the darkest hour of that period, in a lucid moment — there were many moments I was not present for — I looked down at my infected ileostomy site, at the four different IR drains woven through my belly and rear, the IV, the PICC line, and all the bruises and my rapidly disappearing pounds of flesh and I said, “If I get through this, I will never hate on my body again. I promise. I will never complain that I feel fat, I will never say I look bad. I will love myself.”
I have not kept that promise. I still complain that my thighs aren’t toned enough. I worry about my hips. I try various Retinol treatments to improve the quality of my complexion, which is never satisfactory, ever. The desire to measure up to a beauty ideal has shown itself to be — at least in me — stronger than the memory of all that mortal devastation. And it’s about the saddest thing I can tell you.
It’s good to look your best. You’ve only got one life: Dress for it. And eat right because you’ll feel better if you do.
But girls, girls, girls. Ain’t nothing wrong with you.
I frequently google image search “kitten in a pocket” or “kitten in a sock.” And I can do that from anywhere.
1. Make Yuri dinner. Before I left for Atlanta, I made food for Yuri and packed it lovingly into labeled containers and stacked it all in the freezer. I’m sure he’s gone through it all by now and has moved onto Operation: Chipotle Every Day. (My darling!!)
2. Make Yuri breakfast.
When we first began living in sin, I wowed this man with my oatmeal-making skills. “Do you like oatmeal?” I asked him. He said that he didn’t, exactly, but that he knew how good it was for him, so he could choke it down. Not a ringing endorsement for oatmeal, but then, he had never had my oatmeal. When I served up piping hot organic oats with real cream, slivered almonds, dried blueberries and a scoop of soft brown sugar, well. Yuri likes oatmeal, now.
3. Make Yuri laugh.
4. Do an Aztec Mud Mask.
Yuri has this jar of weird “Aztec” clay powder that you mix with (smelly) vinegar and smear all over your face. It hardens in 15 minutes and when you wash it off, you have skin smooth as a baby’s for at least five minutes.
5. Get a glass of wine with my sister Nan at Bar Veloce.
Bar Veloce only serves wine and beer (and small sandwiches?? I can’t remember.) It’s kinda snobby but also kinda great, and you know all the wine is fresh. It better be, sister, at those prices!
6. See my NYC doctors and make sure they’re talking to my Chicago doctors.
7. Go to a live taping of an Intelligence Squared Debate!!
It’s not happening till November, but I am already wiggling. Google “Intelligence Squared Debates” and read all about it. Then look at the debate for November 13th. Andrew Solomon is of my favorite authors of all time and is possibly one of the smartest people alive and writing today — and he’s a freaking panelist that night. Live IQ2 and Andrew Solomon on the same night? The topic is less important than the event itself. Andrew Solomon could be debating whether quinoa is a seed or a grain and I’d be riveted. I will be in wannabe-intellectual, academiac heaven that night and I can’t wait.
10. Try to get my head around New York City. Because I haven’t, yet. Not really. Confession: Every plane trip I’ve taken since June, if I could avoid it, I’ve tried to not fly through Chicago. It’s too painful. I miss her terribly. I can’t bear to see Midway Airport because Midway Airport is so close to my home, my real home, in the South Loop. I ache for Chicago, I long for her shores. When I go back to New York, I must embrace New York again, go to the monolith differently; open up anew. There’s more than enough there for me, but if I don’t want it, I’ll be tossed nothing but scraps.
In NYC a few weeks back, I set about getting myself a Known Traveler Number.
A Known Traveler Number (KTN) is a number assigned to you if you have filled out a bunch of forms and passed identification tests set up by the National Security Administration. You have to be a felon-free citizen. You give your fingerprints. Your passport gets triple-checked and you pay eighty-five dollars and if you do all this and look okay to the gov’ment, you get your special number, which tells the NSA you’ve been pre-screened and can now keep your shoes on in airport security lines (a benefit worth far more than eighty-five dollars, in my view.) There’s a special “TSA PreCheck” lane reserved for people with KTNs and this is also desirable. For months and months I found myself in crummy, regular security lines, looking at the people whizzing through the TSA PreCheck lane, twisted up with envy and self-chastisement. Why, why had I not gotten on the TSA PreCheck train? When would I just march myself to one of the places where they do it and just do it??
I procrastinated because I feared a DOT-like experience — and I was in New York City! Images of day-long waits and bus station-like environs kept pushing the errand to the bottom of my list. As It turned out, the process was painless and quick and as of today, I have a Known Traveler Number! I feel that life can truly begin. Kids, get your shoes on! We’re goin’ to the Sizzler!
In celebration of this momentous occasion, a flashback post. Some PaperGirl readers will remember the story of Gracie, Hell on Flight #3282; I hope you can bear reliving her, Grandpa, and the rest of the family. For those of you newer to the blog, I think you’ll like this one. I suffered for your pleasure.
Click here to read about a special flight and the darling, enchanting…Gracie.
File under “Famous Advocates.”Sally Field and Crystal Lee Sutton, the woman who inspired the 1979 film, “Norma Rae.” Photo: Wikipedia.
If the first trip to the ER in Atlanta was harrowing and depressing, the second trip restored my faith in humanity. Oh, it was still harrowing and there was plenty to be depressed about, but I had a friend with me on the second trip and that made all the difference. (First half of this two-part post here; more on how I got here in the first place, here. )
So there it was, Saturday morning. I’m in my hotel room, and nothing good is going to happen. After agonizing deliberation (because I didn’t want to make a fuss, be dramatic, or admit defeat) I called my friend and colleague, Marlene.
A word about Marlene.
You know the feeling you get at Thanksgiving dinner when all the casserole dishes have been put out and your mom has finally taken off her apron and is sitting down for Pete’s sake; when everyone has wine and rolls, and the turkey’s out and the gravy pitcher is already making the rounds; that moment when everyone raises their glasses to toast and the kids are toasting with juice or milk and you’re just overwhelmed with love and gratitude because people are generally good and the world is spinning at the correct speed for once? That feeling? That is Marlene. She is the embodiment of the Thanksgiving toast. She is everything that is good.
She’s also a successful businesswoman at the helm of a national network of convention center-sized quilt shows — including Quilting LIVE!, the show that had taken me to Atlanta. Tools Marlene carries at any given time might include: a laptop, bluetooth headset, box cutter, first-aid kit, talent contracts, cash box, dinner reservations and a little gift she got you, just because. As you can see, Marlene is a good person to call when you’re slightly dying.
Marlene arrived in lightning speed and helped me down to the car. Her husband was waiting right outside. (Don’t get me started on Stan; if Marlene is the Thanksgiving toast, Stan is like, birthday cake the day before your birthday.)
Here are excerpts from conversations that morning at the hospital. These are pretty much verbatim and all illustrate the need for an advocate at the hospital — preferably Marlene:
Conversation No. 1
NURSE: (to me) What do you do, hon?
ME: (weakly) I’m a…quilter. Writer.
MARLENE: This young lady is a national television star. She’s a magazine editor, an author, and an expert quilter here for the quilt show in town this weekend. She’s a dear part of our team and we care about her very much. We’d like to see the doctor. Now.
NURSE: Uh, yes, right away!
Conversation No. 2
ME: (feebly, to NURSE.) Please… The pain medicine. Please, when you —
MARLENE: (to NURSE.) I’ve asked you three times for lidocaine and pain medicine. If I have to ask again, I will not be very nice. Thank you, we appreciate it.
Conversation No. 3 NURSE: Okay, here’s that pain medicine. This should help.
ME: Oh, thank you. Thank you.
MARLENE: Now we’re getting somewhere. (to ME.) I’ll go down and get the prescriptions, hon, you just sit back and let that take effect. That’s the good stuff.
The help with the nurses, the coordination to help cover my show duties that morning, and of course the ride to the hospital — all that was beautiful. But perhaps the best thing Marlene did for me was when I lay on the bed in the exam room, twitching and gnashing my teeth. She stood above me and smoothed my hair, stroked it softly as we waited for the doctor. That simple, compassionate action did more for me than the Dilaudid, I swear.
“I miss my cat!” she laughed. “You’re my cat right now, Mar.” And she made me laugh, and I felt better. And then, ever thinking, my advocate said, “Does this bother you? Do you want me to stop?”
A still from television’s Little House on the Prairie. Kids these days!
Happy Labor Day.
The U.S. Department of Labor tells us that in 1887, there were five forward-thinking states that voted to observe a newfangled thing called “Labor Day.” Among those five states: New York. Perhaps that’s why everyone has been so crazy in the city this weekend; I’m sure everyone living here knows New York was an early adopter of Labor Day and the knowledge has made them drunk on power. And alcohol.
Before I get to the story about nearly stepping on two kids making out in my apartment building last night, a terrific quote from one Mr. Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners back in the early 1880s. McGuire was a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor and he is credited by many as being the first to suggest there oughtta be a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”
I think that’s pretty well-said, don’t you? “Who from rude nature” and “delved and carved” are downright snazzy, son. And he’s right, too: We do behold grandeur, all over the place, all the time. If you don’t see it, you should clean your glasses.
Now, about stepping on these kids.
Several of Yuri’s friends were in New York to attend the U.S. Open and we went out with them last night. It was very, very difficult for me to wrench myself away from my sewing machine (I’m working on entering a quilt in QuiltCon this year) but I delved and carved myself into a Roberto Cavalli dress that made me feel like a real kitten and I got into the mood. I checked my diet rulebook and, to my delight, found that tequila is allowed. I had two modest servings of Don Julio on the rocks last night and nothing horrifying occurred. Good news for my guts and my brain, which was starting to feel a little “all work, no play.”
We taxied to a place. We danced. We clinked glasses with friends. We moved to another place. There was revelry. But not surprisingly, I was ready to go home before Yuri was ready. There was no drama in this. We’re reasonable people and we have different thresholds and clocks and such.
“Honey, I think I’m gonna dip!” I shouted over the boots-cats-boots-cats music throbbing through the speakers somewhere deep in the Lower East Side.
“What?” Yuri turned his ear toward me. An extremely enthusiastic Puerto Rican girl who wasn’t an inch over five feet tall careened past us and slammed into a man I hoped was her boyfriend. Splash.
“I’m gonna take off! I’ve had fun! I’m good! You stay out!” Behind me, a hand rested lightly on my waist. I realized it was not Yuri and gave the man behind me a filthy look; he retreated.
Yuri gave me a look of “I don’t want you to leave” but, being a reasonable person who knows me by now, said, “Are you sure?” and when I nodded vigorously, hugged me tight and said, “Okay, baby. Let’s get you a cab.”
When I got home, I had a dickens of a time getting the front gate open. I was at it for 10 minutes and when I finally got in the door, I was elated. It was nearly two in the morning and I was in very high heels. I was so happy, I didn’t mind that I nearly stepped on two youngsters in flagrante on the floor. Right there, on the floor of the building, at the foot of the stairs, laying on top of each other and vigorously making out, was the son of my landlord and a cute little blond gal.
“Oh! Uh, sorry,” I said, and waited for them to sort of roll out of my way. I needed to go up the stairs.
“No, we’re sorry,” said the young man, and kind of smooshed his way over to the side. I can’t verify it, but I’m guessing they had been drinking. An iPhone fell out of the girl’s pocket and I barely missed stepping on that. I’m telling you, they were lying on the floor! The landlord’s kid! And some girl who looked like she just had her sweet sixteen! A Labor Day scandal!
“Watch your phone, there,” I said, and I couldn’t help but smile as I made my way up the stairs. I thought about those kids — they were maybe college freshman-age? younger? — and how different their lives are from mine. I mean, this apartment building is really pretty amazing and the young guy, his dad owns it. In New York City. It’s huge. It’s pre-war. It’s a stunning place, with art all over the walls and vaulted ceilings. No wonder the landlord’s kid can nab the cute blondes, you know? He’s got game. My make-out sessions in high school (which totaled about four, by the way) took place in cars or cornfields. Same planet — but you know what they say about the worlds.
Enjoy your four-day work week, you crazy New Yorkers. And me, and you. Let’s all enjoy the grandeur of the week however many bodies we have to step over as we labor.
I have exactly one Versace teacup. I got it on eBay and yeah, the tea tastes better. Currently in storage.
This morning, I drank tea and wrote in my journal. It was the same as so many mornings, save for two differences: the tea was black and the sky was light. Not long ago, it was the other way around.
Almost every day of last year and into a healthy slice of this one, I would get up before the sun to read and write. I rarely set an alarm; I just woke up, sometimes at 3:30 in the morning, unable to go back to sleep. This was due partly because I was excited by the prospect of being up when so few others were. I felt as though the hours from 3:30am to 5:30am were on sale; perfectly fine hours that no one really wanted. They came cheap.
But I also woke up because like a newborn baby, I needed soothing. I was scared and sad and lonesome, “waking at four to soundless dark.”** Having my tea tray in bed in the middle of the night with my journal and books all around me was how I soothed myself. The routine was the gentle mother, swaying me to calm.
The fall of 2012 was the worst time of my life, health-wise. The despair of searing, chronic pain worked its way into every fiber of my frame. The sheer exhaustion of day-in, day-out agony management had constricted my world into a hard, glittering dot. I worked very hard. I was in a relationship I cherished, but there were limits to it and we both knew it. My social life outside of seeing Mr. X dwindled to zero, as most of the time I didn’t have the energy to make plans, much less make good on them. I fought with my sisters or I withdrew from them. My mom and I weren’t getting along, either. I didn’t want any of this whittling away to be true, except that I did, if it meant sanity. The hard, glittering dot I could focus on. Everything else was too hard. I was in the hospital all the time.
The medication I was taking made my head feel like a rainstick. You know those things you get in hippie music stores? It was like that when I sat up in bed. “Wffffffft,” my face and brain would go, one way, then I’d put my head on the headboard and breathe and “Wfffffff,” the rainstick would run the other way. I’d take a deep breath — not too deep — and determine if my guts were good, bad, or a real laugh riot. At that time, it was usually the riot. After gentle tummy rub and pat and an admonishment to stop flirting with cigarettes (there were days I’d have half a one, feeling it was justified, being in the trenches and all) I’d decide that I could make it to the kitchen. I’d usually have to stop halfway from my bedroom to put my hand on the living room table and let the rainstick go for a minute, but I never fainted.
Then tea tray preparation would commence and I so enjoyed it. While I waited for the water to boil in my stainless steel kettle (I brought it to New York with me, like a goldfish) I would do the things. Into the French press went the tea: Earl Gray Creme, loose, from Teavana or Argo Tea. No variation there; I’ve been drinking this tea for years. Then, into a little monkey dish my sister Rebecca made in her pottery class, almonds: Dry Roasted & Salted from Trader Joe’s. They had to be these almonds; no others would do. Then…Nutella. I’d scoop a big scoop of Nutella into the little monkey dish because Nutella and Dry Roasted & Salted almonds from Trader Joe’s is delicious. It’s like eating a candy bar in a bowl. Sweet, salty, and totally decadent without being half a cheesecake or a box of petit fours. (One of the results of being so physically miserable all the time is that you feel you have license to eat whatever the Sam Hill you want to, especially if you’re only managing about 1000 calories a day.)
With the honey pot, the pichet of milk, a couple spoons, a little dish of meds, and my fancy Versace teacup, I’d be ready. The water would reach pre-boiling, I’d pour it into the French press, and then I’d carry the whole operation back to my fluffy, lovely bed and sink into the cloud again.
I read all kinds of things. And I wrote pages and pages. I wrote my grad school essay that way and I would work, too, so there’s a lot of those mornings in Quilty, however invisible they may be in a happy quilting magazine. You never know; maybe the weirdness is there. Quilty is kinda weird.
The 4am mornings, they’ve been slipping away. This spring, when I was first in NYC with Yuri, I kept them up a little, but my body and brain were soon in agreement that sleeping in the arms of love is better than sitting alone, crunching hard almonds coated in the sugar that was probably killing you all along.
Yuri sleeps later than me still, though, so I still get up and read and write. But the tea is black. And the sky is light. And that rhymes and I love it, and I love that it rhymes.
**From Philip Larkin’s “Aubade,” the finest poem in the English language, in my view, and a kind of poetic soundtrack, if you will, to this entire era.
The cinnamon rolls, from the Minimalist Baker. (Recipe in comments!)
There’s a real trick to living, a knack one has to get. I totally get the knack on lock for a minute but then I lose it again. It would be nice for the ground to stop moving under my feet; maybe then, maybe then.
Thank goodness this post is about homemade cinnamon rolls.
If I love you, I cook for you. I’m not a lusty Italian woman with an ample bosom and flour on her apron, caught in a perpetual loop of plucking ripe tomatoes off the vine (for love.) But I recently came across these words from that man about food, Michael Pollan, and he’s got it right:
“For is there any practice less selfish, any labor less alienated, any time less wasted, than preparing something delicious and nourishing for people you love?”
We all know Yuri likes cookys, and I don’t think I’ve mentioned that my skills with cheesecake send him over the moon. But I got it into my head last week that I needed to bake something else special for this special man, something truly “Woah.” Cinnamon rolls seemed to be the “woah” ticket. Gooey, ooey, warm cinnamon rolls that might look right at home on a farmhouse table with a pot of hot coffee nearby. Lordy! Bring me my purse! We got groceries to git!
My rolls were interesting to make and they turned out beautifully. But as I was drowning the hot, cinnamony bombs of yum in thick cream cheese frosting, I knew there was something else going on, something other than the “Let me feed you” thing. There is nothing in a pan of homemade cinnamon rolls that is “legal” for me to eat except the cinnamon — and even that isn’t recommended for a few weeks. The cinnamon rolls, which I have never made in my life until now, were clearly me living vicariously through Yuri.
Which is okay. I mean, there are cinnamon rolls as a result, so it can’t be that awful. It is dangerous, though: I very nearly popped a frosting-coated finger into my mouth as I put the empty bowl into the sink. This is not an option for me today. Why make such a gorgeous city and lock yourself out of the gates?
Eva Phillips, Lora King and Crystal Cruise on side of quilt frame. Photo: Terry Eiler, 1978.
Nestled cozily in the Library of Congress, waiting for me to discover it tonight while doing research, the photograph above shows members of the Meadows of Dan Baptist Church quilting group hand quilting a Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt on a frame. Isn’t it marvelous?
Quilts have wrapped around me, covered the ground under me, and been pulled over me my whole life. As a tot, I sat on a lap I had to share with a wooden hoop (didn’t mind.) I played under tables in church basements while quilts were basted above me. Spools of thread were great tables for my sisters and my Sullivan Family figurines. Being immersed like this means I have had a deep love for the American patchwork quilt for a long time, almost like a person loves her country. There’s no question, almost no notice taken of the love and honor one has for it; it’s just who you are.
As a result of this immersion and by sheer osmosis I’ve known a fair bit about quilts and quiltmaking for some time — even when I wasn’t making quilts myself.
My “quilt epiphany” happened right around the time I got sick. Life as I knew it was falling to pieces, and it made perfect sense to tear fabric up into pieces and sew it back together again, but prettier. Growing along with my passion for making quilts grew a deep and abiding love for the history of the American quilt, the story of the thing, the reasons why, the hows, the styles, etc. And so my quilt geekhood has ripened into true geekdom. I could talk double-pinks and madder browns all day, I think. The stories, the people, the quilts themselves never get old. Even when they are old.
This post has taken me well over an hour to compose and it’s still not right. My brain is in a fog. The diet is very difficult. My guts feel better — honestly, they do. In fact, there are several reasons to be extremely happy with the results of this major change so far.
But I’m slow. And I’m foggy. And I keep looking at those women quilting and I would like to crawl under the table and be six.
Of all the streets I’ve lived on in my life (are there ten? twelve?) St. Mark’s Place is the most colorful.
This is a street with a popular history. I’m sure 29th and 112th Street have their lore, and we all know about Broadway and Madison Ave., the hogs! But St. Mark’s hauls itself into the better-known of New York streets because of the now-famous punk scene that flourished here in the 70s. The American punk, an eye-catching animal, continues to slink around the neighborhood, reminding you of the history of the place. There has not been a real punk “scene” here for decades and decades, but some young punks (from Oregon, or Iowa, or maybe just Far Rockaway) come here just the same, still.
St. Mark’s Place is three blocks long. That’s it. The street starts (or ends, depending on which direction you’re walking) at 3rd Ave. and dead-ends at Thompkins Square Park, there at Avenue A. Manhattan streets are numbered going up after Houston St. in Lower Manhattan. If you’re walking north on, say, 3rd Ave., you cross Houston and hit 1st St., then 2nd St., and so on. If St. Mark’s were a number, it would be 8th St., followed by 9th, etc.
The street is named for nearby St. Mark’s Church In-The-Bowery (which makes me think of Stratford-Upon-Avon but is very far away from that place.) St. Mark’s Church is very old. The first incarnation of the church was a chapel built in 1660 by early New York City player Peter Stuyvesant and he is buried there, but we’re not here to talk about him. We’re here to talk about why there are so many kids with safety pins through their lips on my block. They would ask why I’m on their block, and I can appreciate that.
In 1967, Abbie Hoffman started the Youth International Party (they called themselves “yippies”) at a club on St. Mark’s and counterculture settled in (it has a tendency to do that quickly, much to the chagrin of all the counterculturists standing around.) The yippies and the hippies and their ilk needed places to hang out and party, so clubs like Electric Circus opened where Andy Warhol and Jimi Hendrix and The Velvet Underground all made art and did heroic amounts of drugs. But what to wear? A pair of shops called Trash & Vaudeville opened in the early 70s right in the middle of St. Mark’s. Debbie Harry shopped there and The Ramones, too, and the punk rock scene was really taking off because of bands like The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and Damned In London, who were all singing and screaming and making music which, at the time, was a person had to admit was really fresh and amazing and different, even if you hated it. Which most people did.
For true punk people, the music was only legit from like, 1976 to 1979. This is what I’ve learned in researching St. Mark’s. But boy, did it have an effect. The look of the musicians was hard, all spikes and leather and neon mohawks and pierced everything. It was a look that said, “Back off” and “I am pretty sure I don’t like you already.” Mean? Scary? Revolting? Maybe a little of all that, but a) they achieved what they wanted, perception-wise, so you gotta give the kids credit and b) I’m sure many of the punks (then and now) are roly-poly little bunny-shaped sweethearts when you get to know them. Isn’t that how it works?
There are so many punks hanging out on the street this summer. Several people have told me there are more than usual. Maybe because the weather hasn’t been too bad. Maybe because there are good punk bands playing here in NYC this summer and they’ve all made the pilgrimage. Many of them are painful to look at, with sores and things. I wonder if they do have a place to go and choose not to go there or if they are as homeless as their signs say. I could ask, but I’m not sure that would be appropriate. Sometimes I put change in the cups.
Perhaps I could tell them I went as a “punk rocker” like five times for Halloween when I was a kid. That could be a good conversation starter. Or not.
I have a mission in life: I am going to save my j-pouch.
If you don’t know what a j-pouch is, that’s good, because it means you’ve never been personally introduced. If you do know what a j-pouch (or “ileal-anal” pouch) is, you and I could sit down and talk about a lot, I’ll bet.
Either way, if you’re new around here you might want to read Part I and Part II of my health history timeline because you’ll want some background for tonight’s post. Warning: It’s not a fun tale and I wouldn’t recommend eating while reading, so put down the snacks.
If you don’t have time to go through all that, here’s what you should know:
1) I was/am a gimp** because of Ulcerative Colitis (UC); 2) I was treated for UC but made more gimpy in some ways because of not-so-successful surgeries, each with new and exciting complications; 3) Today I am less gimpy than I was but still a gimp and now have a decision to make: Do I opt for a permanent ostomy bag or continue living with my dubiously successful j-pouch and its attendant woe?
While an ostomy bag isn’t the end of the world — I know firsthand, having had one for a total of three years — it does blow. More than what I’m dealing with now? Hard to say. But I’m not giving up my internal ileal pouch without a fight. I’m going to do whatever it takes to make my ruined gutscape look and feel like a damn prom queen. Think sunshine on a field of daisies. Think kittens frolicking in strawberry patches. Think pretty — the opposite of what I got.
* * *
Back in the 1960’s, a woman named Elaine Gottschall had a young daughter with Ulcerative Colitis.
Elaine and her husband lived in New York City. They went to specialist after specialist and their poor kid went on massive steroids and other drugs only to face surgery, anyway. Then the Gottschalls had a stroke of luck. They met a doctor who stared down the hopeless mother and asked:
“What have you been feeding this child?” None of the 15 docs they tried had asked that one.
“Um, food?” was the answer he got.
The doctor put little Judy on a very strict diet: zero starch, zero sugar, and lots of homemade yogurt. Within ten days, surgery was not a pressing concern. Within a year, Judy was growing like a weed, no longer bleeding, no longer living in the bathroom. The kid was better. No, no: She was a lot better.
Elaine was hoppin’ mad that her little girl had been through so much, how she had narrowly escaped being super sick and having an ostomy for the rest of her life, or, you know, dying. She decided to check out how it was that food could cure digestive maladies — and why she hadn’t known that till it was almost too late.
Elaine went to the library. She read many books. Elaine came of age during the Depression, so she never had the opportunity to go to college. She decided to go. At 47, she went to college to find out more about why the diet helped her kid and how it could help other people, too. She got degrees in biology, nutritional biochemistry, and cellular biology. Then she wrote a book. Then she wrote another book. Twenty years and a zillion testimonials later, Gotschall’s work is still in print and many lives have been saved, many more vastly improved, all through the science of nutrition as it applies to sorry souls who are smote with intestinal disorders.
Look, Elaine Gottschall was just a person. But she helped a lot of people.
Along with some other treatments — and under the care of my physicians — I’ve begun Gottschall’s Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), which is designed to starve out harmful (to me) bacteria in the gut and repopulate it with healthy bacteria. It’s a rebalancing act, a total, very much “natural” intestinal renovation. “Gut remodel” would be an appropriate, if too cute, way to put it.
Above all, it’s a major change. “Lifestyle modification” begins to describe it. I can’t use the wooden spoons I use for Yuri’s food because of cross-contamination. “Puree” is a word I have to get comfortable with for awhile. I have to eat an insanely limited number of foods the first phase of the thing, though after the first period I can start to branch out. If I thought about how I can never have chocolate again, ever, I would give up this second.
Maybe not, though.
Because it’s funny how any food becomes far less delicious-looking when it makes you cry a couple hours after you eat it.
Ninety days. Then we’ll see.
**Yeah, I can say “gimp.” We can call ourselves that, but if you’re not a gimp, you can’t call us that.
Woman on subway, NYC 1973. Photo: Erik Calonius, US National Archives.
My Big Apple bedazzlement continues.
In 2013, the Census Bureau reported 8,405,837 million people living in New York City. If nothing about that number has changed except that me and Yuri moved here, it’s now 8,405,839. If you count my sock monkey in the number, which you should, we can get to a nicer, roundish number of 8,405,840. I’m confident Yuri, Pendennis, and moi are not the only changes to the New York City population since last year, but this is why its funny.
All of these people. There’s one of everything.
I play a little game when I’m out and about. When I see someone totally one-of-a-kind, or outlandish, or remarkable in any way (and everyone is remarkable in some way) I note their characteristics and then try to imagine imagining them. Like:
“Could there be on this earth, at this moment, a person who is a nun, around fifty years old with pink socks, a guitar, and a suitcase with a Grateful Dead sticker on it? Could that person possibly exist in this wide, wide world?”
Then I answer myself that yes, there could plausibly be such a person because in that moment when I’m asking myself, that means I am looking at a person who matches that exact description. The nun was standing in front of Penn Station the other day, waiting for a bus, I assume. Then I play some more.
“Does a person exist who has a spiderweb tattooed on his face and wears corrective shoes?”
Yes, this person lives on my block. Yuri and I call him “Spiderman” and he is frightening to behold. He is acutely homeless.
“Could there be a 4’5 Asian-American girl with a panda backpack and a tattoo of a Pac Man ghost that covers her entire leg, who is screaming at her boyfriend that she wanted peanut butter froyo, not caramel froyo, dammit Reggie????”
Yes, that argument happened about an hour ago out on St. Mark’s Place.
“Is there a male model whose girlfriend is also a model, and are they both wearing large hats and are they both wearing all denim, and are they both Serbian?”
Yep, and yep. Just another piece of the crowd on any given day.
And consider what you’re wearing. Right now, look at your outfit. Someone in New York has that exact thing on, I’m telling you. I can’t say I’ve seen them in it because of course, I can’t see you in it. But someone has it on. They might even share your name.
There’s only one you, but New York gives that concept a run for its money.
Free label, letters by me. Oh, to have a full-time graphic designer on staff. Or a staff!
I saw a woman wearing denim overalls today.
Though I would like to write about how every few years the public must endure Fashion’s attempts to make denim overalls cool (oh, how they try and fail!) and how this is just silly and I can’t believe we haven’t learned to ignore Fashion on this, I think that ought to wait till tomorrow. To go straight from talk of ambulances and surgeries to ill-fitting overalls is not nice. It’s like going from a popsicle to a steak. Jarring. Rude, in some cultures.
And so as I went about my day today, I tried to think of a good bridge. “I could write about what I’ve learned since getting sick,” I thought, and mentally wandered down that road. But on the way I came upon all the things that I feel more confused about, and things that I observed that didn’t necessarily teach me anything so much as simply surprised me.
So tonight, a few lists; tomorrow, overalls.
My Oprah Winfrey, “What I Know For Sure” List
– The saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is bizarre and largely untrue. More often, what doesn’t kill you leaves you weakened, compromised.
– You can get used to anything.
– There is no time. You must do it now.
– Being in a hospital blows. Stay out if you can, but if you must go in, pack a bag. Take your phone charger, your sock monkey, your journal. Take your glasses (if you wear them), your laptop (if you use one) and anything else you would want if you have to be there for long. As bad as you feel, try, try, try to pack a bag from home to take with you. It will bring you great comfort when you wake up.
– Visiting people when they’re in the hospital is one of the kindest, nicest, most lovely things you can do for a person. I remember every last person who came to see me. Thank you. It meant everything, every time, bless your hearts forever and ever. (Rebecca, if you’re reading this, I’m looking at you right now especially. You too, Bilal.)
Curiosities – I’ve seen myself from the inside out: I have handled my own intestines. I am kind of a badass.
– Very few people in the Eastern hemisphere get UC or Crohn’s. These are maladies of the industrialized West. One day we will know why and keep people from getting sick like this.
– Losing my hair really sucked. It came out in clumps in the shower. That was one of the worst times in terms of feeling attractive (or not.) The stoma was rough; in some ways, losing my hair was harder. A female thing?
Disappointments – In a hospital in Tucson, AZ, in ’09 or ’10 (ER trip while visiting then-husband) I looked at my frail, perforated body and all the medicine bags hanging around my head and thought, “I will never, ever hate my body again or tell myself I should lose five pounds when I don’t need to.” But I still do that.
– You can’t go back. You can never be ten years old again, happy, healthy, running through the yard in bare feet.
Moving to a new city means finding a new salon, a new grocery store, a new bank branch. For me, it also means finding new doctors. On my shopping list: GI, OB-GYN, primary care, anesthesiologist, and possibly a colorectal surgeon, but I was crossing my fingers that last one could wait. Looks like not.
It’s not that I want to have all these doctors. I’d like to have zero doctors (no offense to any physicians out there) but that’s not realistic for me. My case file is the size of an oak tree stump: I need people with stethoscopes in my life. And so I did some hunting and found a primary care doc I like and he has so far made good referrals to me.
On Wednesday, I saw my new GI. It was my second visit. He was wearing a bow-tie this time. If he had been wearing a bow-tie on my first visit as well, I might not like him as much as I do. But he is a man who clearly varies his bold neck-tie choices; this causes me to put more confidence into him as a physician. Sure, it’s solid reasoning.
Dr. L. is concerned about me. I’ve got some issues that aren’t going away since my last surgery in 2011. Sometimes they hang out off in the distance, sometimes they creep into the frame and cause real trouble, sometimes they come in and kill everything.
“Have you ever considered…” Dr. L. paused, and set down his pen. What he was about to say required full eye-contact.
“Have you ever considered going back to the ostomy?” he asked. He paused. “Choosing a permanent ostomy, I mean?”
I didn’t say anything. “Choosing” is not a word that has come into play much in the years since I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. Not in doctor’s offices.
“The troubles you have, they would go away with a permanent ostomy,” Dr. L. said. “It’s a big decision, I realize that. But…” I was staring at my feet. My feet were dirty because I live in New York City now and New York City is filthy and I was wearing sandals. My feet looked cute and filthy. I thought about how my sister and her fiance Jack went to Tokyo for New Year’s and Rebecca told me all about how in Tokyo, there are no garbage cans. Everyone packs their trash in little bags and throws everything away at home. Toyko compared to New York!
“I’m not sure I’m ready for…” I trailed off. “I don’t know.” My voice was a croak. The ostomy. Permanent. I thought I was done.
My throat felt tight and hot. Though my body is often weak and I live an inconvenient, painful, and senseless physical existence (as it relates to my guts) 80% of the time, the one thing I have going for me is that there is not, presently, a bag affixed to my abdomen that catches excrement that oozes out of a pulled-out piece of my intestine. I did have one of those bags and one of those pulled-out pieces of intestine for about three years, in total. Not great.
But what I deal with now is also not so great.
“Do you think,” asked Dr. L., “That your partner would be okay with something like that? Do you think he would be…understanding?”
My heart clenched. An inward moan. Yuri.
“I don’t know. I’m not quite ready for that, Doc,” I said. No crying, no crying. “He’d be wonderful, sure, but… I’m just not. He’s younger, you know, and I just, ah…” Tears were forming and I needed to stop the conversation immediately. “I’ll think about it.”
“Okay,” said Dr. L. with a kind smile. “I’d like you to see a colorectal surgeon about a treatment we can do for you in the meantime.” He then explained the treatment, and I was glad he did because it’s so awful, it got my mind off the ostomy. I could instead be horrified by what the surgeon will do to me (for me?) in a few week’s time. Much easier to focus on that and my filthy feet.
“Thanks, Doc,” I said, and got the surgeon’s name and number. “I like your bow-tie, by the way.”
“Thank you,” the doctor said, and went out the door. I hopped off the exam table, removed my paper gown, and got dressed to go back out into the city.
I have made a new pal this year. Her name is Jennifer.
Jennifer is a rawther famous fabric designer, and I might’ve met her at Quilt Market, or maybe at an industry cocktail party (not that I go to those all the time but it’s possible.) We didn’t meet that way, though. I first met Jennifer Paganelli outside a train station in Connecticut.
One day last spring, a mutual friend and I were invited to her home for the day, because that’s how Jennifer Paganelli is: if you’ve passed a basic-level “this person is not a psychopath” test, she is more than willing to make a seat for you at her (fabulous) dinner table. And so it was that my friend and I took the train from New York out to Connecticut and Jennifer met us at the station in her car. I remember she had this great navy blue, boat-necked sweater on. (Why do we remember these things and not other things? I don’t remember how she had done her hair. And isn’t it funny how we often stress about our hair when it’s the sweater everyone remembers.)
When I first started making quilts, I was as dazzled as anyone else by the amount of gorgeous fabric in the world. It was 2008, and I had a stash to build. My local quilt shop, Quiltology, was run by my friend Colette, and Colette had excellent taste. She stocked Kaffe Fassett, Joel Dewberry, Kona Cottons in as many shades as she could fit, and bolts of other fabrics by great designers who, for this quilter, absolutely provided the inspiration needed to get started on making quilts that didn’t look like my mom’s. If you’ve heard me lecture, you know that a) I love my mom, b) I love my mom’s quilts, and c) I don’t want to make my mom’s quilts. The fabric I found at Quiltology and online was the beginning for me in finding my own path in the art, and, eventually, in the business.
Jennifer Paganelli prints — there were many on offer at Quiltology — are in all my first quilts. Her fabrics are in a lot of my later quilts, too. Heck, I think there’s one in my latest latest quilt, the one in my machine right now. These are fabrics full of color, whimsy, good-humor, and generally full of life. Basically, the woman’s fabrics are like the woman herself. And her extremely large dog, George. He is also full of whimsy.
At the house, we spent time in her archives, looking at just some of the amazing vintage textiles she collects. It was upstairs in a studio room where I spied of the original fabric that I had used years ago in my first quilts. If you’ve ever tried to squelch a fangirl moment, you know how I felt. Jennifer and our friend were checking out something on the other side of the room and then I squawked. It went something like this:
ME: Oh, wow! Sorry. I know this fabric. I had this in a couple quilts and actually, you know, the laminate version… I put that down as the liner in my silverware drawer for several years. That’s like… That’s like my life, that fabric.
JENNIFER PAGANELLI: (looking over, smiling.) How cool is that?! That’s great!
ME:It’s so cool you designed this. That is…cool. Wow.
I’m saying I was real smooth, is what I’m saying.
Throughout the day, Jennifer absolutely showered my friend and I with gifts (I have a Sis Boom skirt and an apron combo I wear when I’m baking that Yuri likes quite a bit) and then her husband made an absolutely delicious dinner for everyone. There was tender, juicy meat involved, fresh vegetables, and also ricotta cheesecake, which, coming out of the oven the way it did in that big beautiful farmhouse in Connecticut, it may have been illegal. Some old vice law on the Connecticut books was surely violated when that pillowy, sweet-but-not-too-sweet ricotta masterpiece was placed on the marble countertop. Oy.
Way more important than all these (oft-literally) material things to a new friendship, though, is the other stuff. Jennifer has become a true friend because she is a good listener and because she has great compassion for humans. She is also really funny and her life, from what I have surmised, has all the trappings of a well-lived-so-far life: joy mixed with suffering mixed with change mixed with survival mixed with joy.
And so this is my blog post about my friend Jennifer Paganelli. Thanks, Jen, for helping me out. I woke up today wanting to do something out-of-the-blue nice, just because. I woke up wanting to do something you would do.
James Taylor and Carly Simon “at their Vineyard home.” Photo: Peter Simon.
Yuri plays the piano brilliantly.
I sing…passably.
We’re probably going to start a band.
Living in New York City, it’s required by law that you have a gig one night a week. It can be anything. Smack fish on your head to Metal Machine Music outside La Mama; present a tinikling showcase in Tompkins Square Park; host a series of one-woman one-act plays on the subway — sky’s the limit. And fear not:if what you do is poorly attended, all the better, as this means you must really want it.
I’m kidding about starting a band or a duo act with Yuri — kinda. I’ve made up songs all my life but, never being formally trained to play an instrument, all songs I’ve “composed” either stayed in my head or died immediately on the mental/vocal vine. My love of writing poems is a result of my love of writing little songs — or the other way around. I like words, so I like to play with them in all kinds of ways. When words have different tones (a.k.a. become songs) well, that’s terrific.
The other night, Yuri and I went to go see a singer at Joe’s Pub. She was wonderful. Floanne was her name; she is French. We went because Yuri was having trouble getting a bike out of the Citibike docking station the day before the show, when a pretty lady approached him and helped him out because that is what happens in New York City constantly, as I have discovered.** The pretty lady was Floanne. She gave him a flyer after helping him with the bike. “Eets a good show for a date,” Floanne said with a wink. Yuri brought the flyer home and said, “Baby, I’ma take you out tomorrow night!” And sure enough, he did. Boy, did we have fun. And there was a big screen onstage for live tweeting during Floanne’s show and I tweeted that we were there because of the bike assistance incident. Floanne is now following me on Twitter.
Where was I?
Oh, right: Yuri and my plot to become the next Carly Simon/James Taylor musical power couple.
The first song on the album is going to be my song about Shipshewana. When I was there last month for the big quilt festival, I drove in from Chicago. As I got deeper and deeper into Amish country, I got more and more inspired. The fields were verdant! The sky was blue. And I had been told by someone that the county is a dry one, which means you can’t buy or sell alcohol. Like, maybe at all? I’ll have to check on that one. It didn’t bother me much: I didn’t have plans to do any drinkin’, but I started singing this song about Shipshewana, a kind of ode, but real Judy Garland-y, and it went like this:
“The cows are lowing/the traffic is slowing,
The buggies are all on the shoulder!
There’s lemonade to be had/and that ain’t so bad
But it’s Saturday night/alright, alright,
And whatchoo gonna do?
[CHORUS]
So.. Whatcha’wanna do/Shipshewana, you
Whatcha’wanna do, tonight?
Can’t drink
Can’t smoke
Caaaaaaaan’t even dance
So whatcha’wanna do…tonight.”
It’s a real sweet-sounding song, so please don’t read those lyrics and think I’m dogging on Shipshewana. I love it there. It’s just a song about not doing all the things that most of the rest of the state of Indiana is probably doing on a Saturday night. It’s really fun to say the word “Shipshewana” and it’s even more fun to sing it and rhyme it with “whatcha’wanna.”
Now if only we had enough money to buy Yuri a baby grand and a whole other apartment to put it in.
**It’s not that pretty French singers constantly come to your aid in New York — it’s people in general who do. You’ll have to go to Paris for more pretty singers per block…maybe.
Tulane cheerleaders, 2008. Image in the public domain.
The toughest thing about being in a new place is the lack of perspective.
I live in New York City and I have no perspective on this experience yet and won’t have it for some time, because that’s how perspective works.
I look back on my twelve-plus years in Chicago, I see eras. There were the First Years, the rough ones, with their questionable choices and misbehaviors (all with the best of intentions, of course.) Those years contained the Poetry Years, thank goodness, or I might not’ve survived at all. That era, with all its earnest youthful disregard gave way to a better time: the Affianced Years. That was pleasant. I had found someone I cared for deeply and was enough of an adult to pair up in a real way. My foolish choices were slashed down to (almost) nil. And I wasn’t a waitress anymore. Right before the Affianced Years began, I began to be able to make my living as a full-time writer-performer and I clung desperately to that fact. The proclamation was (and has remained) a cornerstone of my entire identity. It probably matters too much, but for me, I can’t do it any other way.
The Marriage Years immediately followed the Affianced ones (they’ll do that) and they overlapped entirely with the era known as When I Was Sick. (I was diagnosed less than a month after I walked down the aisle; surgery was a month later — to the day? — of my wedding.) But inside those years were the Best Theater Years I ever had, making art with the Neo-Futurists.
And then The Divorce. And then Downtown Me. And then I left.
Anyway, all this is to paint — mostly for myself, I have to admit — the picture of what happened back in Illinois. Broad strokes, yes, but it’s chronologically correct.
I’m in the First Years again.
And it’s great here, and I’m not the twenty-one-year-old girl (good grief!) that I was when I had my first round of First Years, but I know full well that I have a whole lot of perspective to make. I will get lost a dozen times. I will be mistaken about the character of this or that person. I will embarrass myself. I will not find my favorite shops for at least 6-12 months. There’s no way I can learn the shortcuts: I don’t even know the longcuts.
I’m not exactly bummed, but tonight, I know too much about not knowing anything at all.
It all begins at about 6am. It’s gone this way for years, now, with few variations.
1. Wake. Blink. Consider previous day: Was exercise executed? Were healthful comestibles consumed in sane quantities? Was enough work done to avoid panic immediately upon the opening of the eyes? If the answer is “yes” to at least 2 out of 3 of these status questions, optimism is available.
2. Look left. Consider sleeping man. Kiss sleeping man’s shoulder. Sigh with contentment.
3. Rise. Pad into kitchen. Fill kettle. Put kettle on stove. Activate burner.
4. Enter bathroom. Perform noncommittal morning ablutions. Mostly just look in mirror and make faces. Consider birthday next month.
5. Cross back through kitchen. Eye kettle. Prepare tea tray with honey, milk, spoon, mug Rebecca made for me in her pottery class that I love more than life itself, cloth napkin, French press with tea in it. Consider a) cutting back on the tea; b) loving the mug slightly less because it’s a mug for heaven’s sake.
6. Feel generally anxious about day.
7. While waiting for water to boil, flop on couch and pick up something to read. Read a little bit of it before the kettle whistles.
8. Bolt up, leap in three bounds to the kettle to flip the lid so it doesn’t wake Yuri. Pour water into French press. Take tea tray into living room. Set on coffee table. Consider the hurt feelings of the tea tray: coffee gets a whole table.
9. Drink tea and write or read for a good hour. Toward the end of the hour, feel more anxious about day but internally struggle with need to have a few more minutes. Consider taking a short, post-tea nap with sleeping man.
Is Hollywood destroying humanity or am I just no fun?
A couple months ago, my internal struggle was refreshed with the blood of Godzilla, which remains the last movie I saw, in the theater or otherwise.
Yuri and I had a night off, and I was actually the one who suggested we go. I’ve been to the movie theater maybe five times in two years. I completely get that many folks love movies — my sister and her fiance work in the industry and I have tremendous respect for them, their art, and their specific path — but feature films just aren’t my jam. I don’t see a lot of movies like I don’t read a lot of fiction. I’m a documentary-lovin’, non-fiction readin’ real-time junkie. I feel manipulated by film, I guess, and not in a good way. Still, every once in awhile, there’s a film that looks like such pure spectacle, such pure, 21st century American entertainment, I gotta do it. It’s like eating a Cinnabon or a Auntie Anne’s pretzel once every couple of years: indulging feels very wrong/momentarily good. The 2014 remake of Godzilla looked cool from the previews my sister Nan played for me; the monster was so big! The cities were so small!
“Yuri, let’s go see Godzilla.”
“Seriously?”
We got our tickets and sat down with cups of tea and smuggled chocolate, fully prepared to be entertained. I had an open mind. I really wanted to have fun.
But I didn’t have fun. Because Hollywood sucks. Hollywood creates a facsimile of life for scores of people whose general well-being I care about. Hollywood cheapens the human experience. At its best, Hollywood inspires great floods of emotion that can be cathartic. But at its worst, Hollywood movies are irreverent, disrespectful, and hypnotic. And false. And confusing. And they are all expensive.
My main trouble wasn’t with Godzilla. It was not a great movie, but that’s okay. I was more troubled by the previews, the first one for a Scarlett Johannsen film coming out soon called Lucy. In the preview, we see a clip of Johannsen enduring forced abdominal surgery. The bad guys open her belly and insert something inside of her that she must transport against her will, the thing now being inside her and all. I’ve had multiple abdominal surgeries that might as well have been forced — if I didn’t have them, I’d have died so the choice was nil — and take it from me: There is nothing entertaining about being filleted. The reality of that sucks so much. I realize I have personal experience that most folks do not regarding this plot development in Lucy and clearly, I am going to be more sensitive to seeing such an experience portrayed fictionally, but like…can’t you pretend about something else? There’s so much to choose from.
Like…war. After Lucy, there were several previews for war movies where people were getting creamed right and left. Legs were getting blown off. Men were screaming, men were crying. After that, a preview for Non-Stop, which is about an airplane hijacking. Jet black guns, exploding pieces of airplane, crying women with hysterical, terrorized babies, a rugged Liam Neeson flinging himself backward down the aisle, shooting multiple rounds.
Am I missing something? Why is this entertaining? I’m not being rhetorical. I don’t understand. Surgical procedures, wars, gunfire, terrorist plots on planes, and death are things that create suffering. They are realities of life that require seas of compassion and support to endure and process. It’s not funny to see someone get shot to death on a plane flying at 35,000 feet. It’s terrifying. It should be terrifying. I beg someone to explain to me why people spend millions of dollars to create fictional suffering to last on film forever for people to watch in theaters while they sit eating snacks. Escapism? But how?
Maybe I’m just no fun.
That’s entirely possible! I do feel like I have blind spot, that there’s a “Kick Me” sign on my back and I’m just being snippy and snobby and old and lame. Everyone goes to the movies, right? Folks have preferences, too, and discernment. I shouldn’t say “Hollywood is this” because Hollywood is a lot of things and people and there’s good art that comes out of the place, I realize. But just when I was thinking, “Mary, chill. There is more to the movies than the crassness of Non-Stop,” the last preview presented itself. It was for a movie called The Other Woman, in which three hot blondes are real ornery about a man and exact their revenge on him for his misdeeds. There were boobs everywhere. And toilet humor, which is always better/grosser when there are girls involved, I suppose.
It’s just all so hostile. To be sure, there is great cinema in the world, but this is the stuff the general public is eating, the movies that are “in theaters everywhere starting Friday.” Mere blocks from where I sit, there are art house cinemas and legendary film centers that show incredible stories put to film. But people go see the Godzillas and The Other Womanses in Des Moines because that’s what’s playing there. I grew up not far from Des Moines, so I know. If you don’t have options, how can you discern?
No one should be stopped from making whatever sort of movie they want to make. Advocating for censorship will never be on my list of things to do, as much as I dislike these kinds of movies. I’ll just stay home.
(On my list of things to do, “Take on Hollywood” was also not there. Oh well.)
That’s Pendleton wool, by the way. I’m never leaving this place!
Whatever you’ve heard about New Yorkers not being nice, or that they are flat out rude, that is not correct information. Let me share three things that happened in the course of a single day here in the Great Big City:
1. The Scruffy Kids at the Resale Shop Welcomed Me To the Neighborhood
After fully unpacking and settling in, there were a few items of clothing that would not fit in this small apartment’s closets. We actually have kind of a lot of closet space, which is nothing short of luxurious, I know. Still, that weird, never-worn, neon-jacquard-leopard print blazer that sorta fit but not that well? That had to go, along with a couple pairs of shorts and a few dresses that never really worked too well. Off I went to a nearby resale shop, and I engaged with the scruffy kids behind the counter. Well! We had a blast! There was this crazy rapport right off the bat for some reason: I said something funny, they said something funny, and I’m selling my clothes and we’re talking about NYC vs. Chicago and it was just this delightful experience. When I left, we were all on a first-name basis. As I went out the door, the guy with the lip ring said, “Hey, welcome to the ‘hood!” And I was like, “Rock on!!”
2. The Lady Who Held the Door For Me When I Had a Big Box There was a box. I had to go pick it up. It was huge and heavy — very huge and very heavy. There is a gate to our building. It is a heavy gate with a weird button lock that never works except on the third try. So there I am, balancing this big box, trying to get the code right and I finally do, but then I have real problems. Because I have to hold the box and open the door and get down the stairs. Well! Along comes this older lady and just comes right up and puts her friendly hand on the door to hold it for me and like we’d known each other for years, she goes, “There better be something prreeeeeetty good in that big heavy box!” and I’m like, “It’s quilts!” and she goes, “Well, that’s pretty good!” and I’m like, “Yeah!!” And that was that. (Well, then I took it up three flights of stairs and then that was that.)
3. The Fashion Designer Who Is Giving Me Fabric Okay, so there’s this fashion designer. I met her when I was in NYC in 2008 for a month, doing the show here with the Neo-Futurists. I was at yoga, and this glamorous girl comes into the studio wearing this stunning cloak. I’m like, “That is a stunning cloak!” and she says, “I made it.” And she told me her name and I went to her website and she was a small operation but her cloak was still too much money for me to buy one. Well! Over the years, do you know what happened? That fashion designer has really gotten to be a big deal! I have seen her name in fashion magazines — big ones, like Elle and stuff! So the other day, I’m walking around the Lower East Side, slightly lost, and I see that this designer has her own storefront. I go in. She’s there. I’m like, “You do NOT remember me, no way, no possibility, but I did meet you and this was years ago and I just wanted to tell you congrats because I’ve seen you sorta rise through the thing, and I am a big fan!” We get to talking and do you know what happened next? She says, “It’s so cool you’re a quilter,” because I told her I’m a quilter, “And I wonder if you’d like these Pendleton wool scraps we have in the back. We were going to make makeup cases from them but it didn’t work out and I wonder if you’d want them.” So I signed a copy of my book and I’m going to take it over there tomorrow and pick up these big bags of wool — Pendletonwool — scraps!
This photo was filed in WikiCommons under “Sweaty” for the sweaty nose of the cow. Perfect!
I’m all up in my Bikram yoga now that I’m mostly settled, practicing with regularity at the small-but-mighty Bikram studio on the Lower East Side. What this means is that numerous times a week — every day if I have my way — I am packed like a sardine in a can of sardines, if sardines were naked and sweaty and practicing yoga on the Lower East Side. You know, sardines could aptly be described as both naked and sweaty; alas, being dead fish, they do not practice yoga, so my little simile must only go some of the distance for us.
When I say I’m naked and sweaty and Sardinian (?), I’m talking about my state post yoga class. During the yoga, we students wear clothes* in the hot room. (For the uninitiated: Bikram yoga is a 90-minute yoga series of 26 postures and two breathing exercises practiced in a room heated to 105-degrees. And yes, you pay for this on purpose.) After class, when the very will to live has been nearly wrung out of us and we drag our taut, glowy, and utterly eviscerated carcasses out of there, that’s when it gets real.
There is no space in Manhattan. None to spare. The women’s locker/shower/changing room in the yoga studio is maybe…500 feet square? It’s small. You’ve got a bank of lockers, two shower stalls, one bathroom, and a lot of sweaty, naked women attempting to change out of sopping wet yoga togs into normal street clothes, which is tough because a) there is nowhere to bend over to get your wet leg into your jeans and b) getting a wet leg into jeans in any room is like trying to give a sick cat ear infection medicine: extremely, extremely difficult and exasperating. You want someone else to do it for you really, really bad. But no one ever will. It’s your cat. It’s your leg.
I have bumped a bare bottom with my own bare bottom. Oh, it’s true! I’ve turned my head just as a gal was exiting the shower stall and whammo! the lass’s entire self, just hey-how-are-ya, right there in my letterbox. I’m pretty cool with bodies, so none of this exactly bothers me unless I think about the fact that we are all animals, because then I think about chicken coops and pig pens and cattle shoots and that’s bad. All those animals are naked, too, so I’ll be trying to pull denim up over a wet booty (mine) and suddenly I’m having the sixth existential crisis of the day — and I usually take the noon class!
The worst, though, is when there’s zydeco music playing.
The studio is great in the way they just hit “play” on some endless music mix in the sky/on the web and you never know what you’ll get. Sometimes, you’re headed into the hot room to the dulcet tones of jock rock; sometimes you get wailing house divas. Sometimes it’s all spa music in the changing room; other times you get hip-hop. I love the variety. But once, when the class that had just been tortured was changing to leave and the next class was arriving to go into the heat, when everyone was hopping around on one foot, boobies out, sweat flinging this way and that, effing zydecomusic came through the speakers and I thought I might die of shame. Surely, someone, somewhere (God?) was laughing hysterically at all this. It would be impossible to come up with a soundtrack less becoming to a roomful of naked, hopping women.
That day, I ran.
*”Clothes” is mostly right. You wears small slingshots of fabric to cover the bits and that goes for the men and the women alike. This state of underdress makes for excellent scenery or not-so-excellent scenery, depending on where you’re standing and what you’re into.
I love planes so much, I’d marry them. I’d marry planes and have plane babies. And those babieswould play with toy planes on planes. And they would be very well behaved, my children.
I like airports too, quite a lot. As a rule, I arrive at least two hours early to any flight I take just so that I can walk through the terminal a bit then find my gate and plop down to work. I get more done in airports than anywhere else. I’d wager there’s 15% increase in my overall productivity and a 10% spike in creativity. If I knew how to merge those numbers to yield some kind of work-probability number I could stick into a P&L, well, I wouldn’t be a content creator, I’d be doing something else and probably be flying first-class.*
People move through space in airports with a plan and a purpose and that is a comfort to me. I like the scale of airports, even the small ones. I like that I can buy stamps, newspapers, and hot coffee every fifteen feet; I like how airports are basically vast, continuous newsstands where planes drop down and scoop you up and deposit you someplace else.
It’s lucky I feel this kind of way, since I seem to be traveling by plane every other week right now. Maybe it’s because I fly so much that I’ve come to love planes and airports like I do; maybe it’s just the familiarity. After all, I have my rituals, like anyone else who travels all the time for work; everyone loves their rituals, travel or otherwise. (A few of mine: if I’m on a flight out of Midway before 10am I go see my friend Sam at Potbelly’s, who never charges me for extra cheese; I always bring my journal, a book, and and eyemask; I know where the secret bathroom is at LaGuardia; I visit the USO and donate money wherever there’s a USO and I have enough time. Stuff like that.)
I hear air travel used to be sort of glamorous, but I don’t know anything about that. I book my own flights. I schlep my own stuff. From time to (glorious) time there will be a car service waiting to pick me up and my name will be one of the names on signs when I come down the escalator, but that’s atypical. Usually, it’s a solo walk to a taxi line. Indeed, loving airports is loving them alone most of the time and in spite of the hiccups and the headaches that will forever occur.
But we can fly. And that’s the real reason I’ll always love being there.
Human beings can fly through the air. Airplanes, and the airports that facilitate their operation, are human ingenuity and effort, materialized. There were so many failures. It took so long. The Wright brothers were just one part of a really, really long process of creating viable air transportation — a process that has probably only begun, in the grand scheme of things. And to coordinate the hundreds of thousands of people who fly every day, to get their bodies and their belongings safely from one end of the earth to the other — it can’t possibly ever work. Of course it fails, sometimes, but more often, the system does not fail. And I love humans for that. I love what we make and that we know we need to make it better, now, so that air travel is gentler on the earth. (I don’t have a car, by the way, or a kid, or a TV, so I feel like I kind of offset my footprint in those ways.)
I love planes and airports so much, I would tattoo a plane on my body. Hypothetically.
*I am A-List on Southwest at this point! Glamour for days!!
From the NYC Capoeira website. This is a much larger event/group than I saw on Friday, but you get the idea.
In Shipshewana this past week, I had classrooms full of students. Before the lecture or session would begin, I would chat up the ladies in the audience. It’s nice to get to know people and breaks the ice a little bit.
I would say “Hi!” and they would say, “Hi! I watch you every week!” and I would say, “Yes, and I watch you every week,” because it’s funny to tell people that I can see them from inside the television. Then I would say, “What’s new?” and they would say what’s new and then they would ask, “What’s new with you?” and I would tell them that I moved to New York City. Then they would say, “Wow! Cool!” and then, invariably, “How come?”
“For love!” I would declare brazenly. Now, even though most people light up when you say you’ve done something for love, they still want to know you haven’t lost your mind. So I usually say I moved mostly for love but also for work reasons, and then I add the fact my older sister has lived in the East Village for over fifteen years and that I know New York City pretty well. Everyone feels a little relieved that I have family here and that there are reasons other than young Russian love for me to uproot my life and move to a city perpetually threatened by natural disaster, contagion, and terrorism.
This post is about going to watch my sister Nan practice capoeira on Friday night.
Nan used to be an experienced Brazilian jiu-jitsu star, but now she’s a fledgling Brazilian capoeira star. Jiu-jitsu was starting to take its toll on her body and she was a little burnt out, honestly, though I’m not sure she’d say so. But she is a talented combat-sport athlete, so when she left the body-slamming sparring sessions of jiu-jitsu, she didn’t go eat bonbons. No, she alighted to the New York Capoeira Center on the Lower East Side and proceeded to fall in love with the sport/game/dance/meditation that is capoeira. Yuri and I went to watch her and her class and it was extraordinary.
Capoeira has a fascinating, if spotty, history in the world; spotty because the art of capoeira has been concealed out of necessity and therefore not a lot has been written down about it from decade to decade, century to century. The bones of the story are this: millions of African slaves were brought to Brazil by the Portuguese beginning in the 1500s. From the motherland (the exact regions of Africa are speculated about but non-verifiable) slaves brought music and dance that then mixed with the people already living there.
The practice is part dance, part aerobic exercise, and part game, with people kicking, sweeping legs, and moving arms and feet in a perpetual, languid motion while repetitive music is played (think gourds and tambourine.) But capoeira is also part martial art, and that’s the incredible part. Those African slaves in Brazil were steadily developing a rather deadly form of self-defense disguised as this dance/game, practicing those pretty leg sweeps and languid moving arms with a secret purpose: to kick serious a** when necessary. People who saw the slaves practicing capoeira called it “the zebra dance” (the capoeiristas who really know what they’re doing absolutely look like zebras, back-kicking and going up on two legs and fiercely prancing around, defying gravity) and onlookers thought it was really beautiful and weird-looking — until they were knocked out, literally, by a zebra kick to the solar plexus. I read one thing that said a village defended itself for centuries against attackers using capoeira and left the enemies dazed, confused, and extremely injured or dead.
There is so much to say about capoeira. I can’t possibly give you a real history on it in a single blog post. But I can tell you that my sister Nan is so good at it and watching that room full of people dance, sweep, kick, go low, jump high, and sway, sway, sway to that tribal-sounding music (played live by a group of three people, one of them being the instructor) was beautiful. Yuri and I both were transfixed, sitting there on the bench, and we both had a profound New York moment: they do capoeira in a lot of places in the world, but the diverse group of people we were watching Friday night could only be zebra dancing together, here, like that, right then.
By the way: in 1889, Princess Isabel signed “The Golden Law,” that marked the official end of slavery in Brazil. We should be happy that there was a Princess Isabel, that her law was so gorgeously named “The Golden Law.” We should be horrified that that didn’t happen until 1889.
