nudle

God's country.

See if you can guess where we are.

Brief hiatus.

To my twelve dear readers...

I'm off to the motherland, otherwise known as God's country, and I'm leaving my laptop at home. To be honest, this leave of absence began weeks ago. When I come back next week I promise I'll write every day, no matter what.

Farewell!

Continuing education.

Things I've learned recently:

On activism: Nothing happens unless you make it happen because, though everything is happening all the time you don't really know it unless you're in it, involved in it, because it's only ever real for us if we're doing it. Right?

If you don't climb onto the roof when the light is shining just right on the trees you'll miss it. I'm not a live-in-the-moment-or-else fanatic. I'm just saying.

The abortion argument is tiring me out; we shouldn't be having it at all; Kathleen Blanco is making a mistake; and a certain blonde conservative carny I hate to name because it will give her exposure to ten more people should shut UP already.

I'm going to wear a hat and SPF 30 for the rest of my life but I am the first to admit that a real suntan looks good.

Fathers are important (okay, I always knew this, but thought I might mention it for obvious reasons). Thank you, Dad. And thank you too, Ewan.

Saturday night randomness.

It's very late and I'm watching Walking and Talking, a movie by Nicole Holofcener. I'm eating cheese and oat cakes (oat cakes are a Scottish thing). Catherine Keener is getting rejected by a total loser (of course, he'll turn out to not be a loser or at least will have something redeeming about him so she is humbled even more than she is already as the underdog in this movie) but that would never happen, Catherine Keener being rejected by a video store attendant with big glasses, because she has great hair and coloring and a flat stomach even though she is wearing really horrible denim shorts and now you know how judgmental I am about horrible denim.

Drunk people are standing right outside our open window and saying nothing good but here it is:

It's not that lucrative.
I have like a grand I've saved up.
(Mobile phone bleeps).
This is my best friend! DOUG! BLAINE! Sarah, this is Sarah.
I'm sorry. Why did I just call you Doug?
I've got this job and I can't take time off. I live with my parents and it's full time and I can't take time off.
How'd you meet ol' Danny here?
Through my friend Nick.
Nick I met because I met him on the train. Nick lives on the fucking south side now. I have their number. Him and Mo live in St. Charles now...I'm in Elgin right now, and I'm telling my school I live in the city. It's a lot cheaper for me to lie about it.
How you doin' Man? Yeah I'm good.
I'm thinkin' maybe I'll go get my law degree.
Yeah, you could come to work for me if you wanna be my secretary.
It's a pretty big firm, it's got a USSL, Kid Rock is doing something something and something for us.
Well my birthday was late so I was held back.
I did sound for George Clinton.
Yeah, I get $500. But I only work once a week. This is for filming music videos.
It's really hard to fold the clothes. Yeah.
Trailers? When they're doing car scenes. And Lenny Kravitz, and some girl who toured with Britney Spears.
Do you know Mister Blotto?
Dude, no. Who are they?
They've been a pretty big band in Chicago.
R Kelly bought two of Chicago's old studios.
I'm going to be project manager, however, there is no artistic freedom. I would love to be somewhere else and I'd work my way up.
You should come over to my house, I have a studio.
Fuckin' heroin junkie. He like robbed some ol lady. He's in jail last I heard.
Allison Rodez? You ever know her?
Yeah, Lacie? She was a piece of shit too.

This is the kind of thing we hear outside our open window every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night in the summer. Most times it's a solo conversation between a party and their significant other on the phone, a fight. Or someone saying, "What is this? This place? It's kind of cool, with the ceiling tiles?" "Um hmm." (We have a tin ceiling.) Some blessed someone has them smoking around the corner, far away from us, and not under our open window. That's unbelievably good.

Walking and Talking is a pretty terrific movie. Put it on your Netflix.

Ewan is flat out on the floor and he is snoring, something I usually do. Not the flat-out part but the snoring.

Catherine Keener totally got her teeth fixed since this was filmed (doesn't that sound like someone outside the door said it?), or they just made them look normal for for this movie, which was made in 1996. Guess what! Allison Janey is in this movie as a fellow cat-lover to Catherine Keener! And you know what? Anne Heche? She isn't very good! Or maybe she is good at being a really awful character, one who is not very likable. But Liev Schreiber is so believable and reminds me of my ex-fiance.

It is hot, sweaty weather, maybe 80 degrees and it's trickling down the sides of my face. The music in the movie right now is joyful and rambunctious and fun. I think it's the Waterboys but I'm not sure. If it is, I get to jump up and down and yell, "I win! I win!" But only the drunks standing outside my window will hear.

Damn. It's not the Waterboys. It's Billy Bragg.

Also: the music coming out of the bar is rambunctious. And it's time to get Ewan off the sofa (where he moved from the floor ten minutes ago) and upstairs to bed.

Saved by Jesus.

Today I went to a meeting at Starbucks downtown. I'm teaching a class beginning in August called Intro to Design, and it's the second time I've taught it, and it has to be kick-ass (because last time, my first time, wasn't). So I'm starting early (which is why I haven't posted much this week, really). I rushed to get to this meeting, running from the pay-lot even, and it turned out that my date, an Assistant Professor (whom I hired years ago when I was a working professional) forgot. Blew me off. Now he owes me.

Since I was in the neighborhood I ended up in my school library searching for Christopher Alexander's books and, by some miracle, I found them. When I went to retrieve the car my battery was as dead as the bare midriff, as dead as reality TV, as dead as low-carb mania. As dead as...pleated slacks. That dead.

I called the roadside assistance program we got as part of the package when we bought our used car a few years ago. It worked! A truck drove up forty-five minutes later; it was AAA. The guy got out and I kid you not, his name was JESUS F. I was saved today by Jesus. Only Jesus was sort of an extreme, tattooed, shaved-head Fu Manchu-moustachioed burlyman.

He was all business at first: "Ma'am please step out of the car," and "Could you step over to the truck please." I felt like he was about to give me a breathalyzer. But once I asked about his tattoos he softened.

"What is that? I've been trying to figure it out." I pointed to the art on his forearm.

"Yeah, that's a tribal mask with a heart woven in behind it," he answered. "See? Here's the mouth, it's sort of screaming? Here's the heart. See?"

It was beautiful, all in black ink, with shadows along the edges that made it dimensional. How a tattoo artist makes something look smudged just using a needle on skin is beyond me.

Pointing to the two-inch script capital letters on the other side of his arm I asked, "Is that your wife?" The name was Jocelyn.

Jesus hesitated. "No, that's my daughter. She would be five months now. She didn't make it. My girlfriend miscarried. Yeah, Sunday is going to be really tough."

"I'm so sorry," I said. "That's hard."

"Yeah, I'm more mad than sad," he said. "Because her ex-boyfriend did it to her. I'm the kind of guy who usually goes after revenge, but I decided not to. I knew she would be all over my case, and it just wasn't worth it so I played it cool."

I wondered how the ex could do that to her and decided the prospect was too horrible to delve into. I looked at Jesus. He had no neck. He seemed like someone who could cause harm if he wanted to. I muttered, "It's good you didn't pursue revenge," or something like that. Or maybe I just said "Hm." But I couldn't just let things lie.

"Are you still with her?" I asked.

"Nah," he shook his head. "She ended up being too possessive. Didn't like it when I went out. Didn't want me to talk to anyone but her. She could talk to her friends, but I couldn't talk to anyone but her."

"Yeah," I said. "it's important to have your own life, isn't it?" I thought about how I'd found my own way out of the broken-down-car dilemma without any help. I thought about Sports Day, that most of the dads were there but Ewan wasn't. I thought about how it sometimes feels like parallel play when I'm with Ewan these days. But mostly I felt damned lucky.

"Hang in there," I said to Jesus. "On Sunday."

"Yeah, it'll be okay. Some good friends and a few beers. I'll get through it."

Sports Day.

Our first really hot day this year also happened to be Sports Day at Iona's school. She was only partially into it, kind of wandering off and whimpering periodically in between various beanbag-inspired games. I was trying to "volunteer" by "keeping score" though I suspect the whole thing was rigged since I asked Miss Large (that's her "real" name) how to score the beanbag "distance" throw and she answered, "Oh, just make it up!" Then all the students received "medals." Is this okay? Where's the notion of healthy competition? I can see the "everyone wins" thing being appropriate in Nursery and Reception (aka preschool and kindergarten) but what about grade eleven?

Iona didn't get sunburned and I didn't fall over from heat stroke, so I guess it went "fine."

HP Compaq tc4200 Tablet PC.

Ewan got a new notebook computer and its screen is also a TABLET. You can draw and write on it. The screen swivels around like that girl in The Exorcist's head and then you can click it horizontal and it's a writing surface. Or a drawing pad.

Draw-ring by Ewan:

Garbage lunch.

I was backing the car out of the garage to go get Iona at school and take her to camp and in our alley was the tiniest, wizened woman. She was going through the garbage can next to ours. I was shocked. It's not like I haven't seen people going through our trash before; sadly, I have. But they've always been men, aged fifty or younger, not someone so elderly.

I was cutting it close on time to make it to school like I always do, and was probably going to be four to six minutes late to pick Iona up but there was no way I was going to let this woman's lunch be garbage. In fact, I was just thinking how deluxe I make Iona's lunches, in hopes that she'll eat something. Today she had a cream cheese sandwich on wheat, cut up pineapple, cut up apple, yogurt, soy chips and milk. She didn't need half of what was in there. I grabbed a yogurt out of her lunch bag and what was left of a box of cereal bars I always have in the car, jumped out of the car and took them over to the woman. She accepted them with dignified thanks. I felt like shouting, "Where do you live? Where are the people who are supposed to be taking care of you? How does someone end up like this?" Instead I drove away and waited for the tears that didn't come. How do we get so inured to these daily tragedies? I've created a thick, solid cocoon around my emotions in order to survive, but I don't like it.

I've got to do something about this bullshit. People shouldn't be eating out of garbage cans, ever. Especially someone's grandmother, or great-grandmother. Maybe I could keep those frozen kids' sandwiches on hand, or just put food out in the alley every day. Maybe I can find out where the nearest food bank or soup kitchen is and post it in the alley. I'm definitely going to watch for that woman. If I see her again I'm going to ask how I can help.

The Boat.

It was her idea to do the scuba diving lessons. She posed it as a choice for her fiancé, knowing what he'd choose. Dance lessons or diving lessons.

Somewhere along the way she had forgotten about her fear of water, of drowning in it. Not really forgotten her fear, but she thought maybe she had outgrown it, or that under the right gentle tutelage she would overcome it. If she were being honest, she would admit that a whiff of chlorine could transport her back in time to swimming lessons at the indoor community pool, a cavernous building that was dim inside, and clammy. Once a week in the summer when she was eight she would stand at the edge of the pool consumed with dread, skinny limbs shaking while the burly female swimming instructor in navy Speedo, with a voice like a bullhorn shouted SWIM THE LENGTH OF THE POOL TWICE WITHOUT STOPPING. The other pupils, sleek porpoises, slid through the water. She hated the burning feeling of the blue water in her eyes and was blind without her glasses so she couldn't follow the black tile lines along the floor of the pool. She weaved left and right as she floundered along the interminable Olympic length. When she finished all the other children would be bobbing in the water, one hand on the side, laughing, dunking, splashing each other. At the end of each lesson the burly instructor barked at her mother that she swam farther than anyone else. It was meant to be a joke.

So now she sits in a new wetsuit, in a motorboat with her new husband and ten others. A familiar feeling is lodged in the pit of her stomach. She recognizes it from her swimming lesson days: dread. She suddenly realizes that dread has been her gloomy companion through the wedding festivities in Scotland and all during the journey to the island paradise in the Seychelles. Chicken dread, scared of water. Because he was quiet and pretty much minded his own business, she and dread had gotten along okay until this morning, when he perked up and cheerfully helped her remember that she had barely passed the scuba lessons in the indoor pool at home in Chicago. You're going to have to get in open water. It will be dark underneath you. You're going to have to breathe under water even though people are not designed for it! Then dread imitated the booming voice of the childhood swimming instructor. OKAY, WE'RE DOWN THIRTY FEET! IT'S TIME TO TAKE OFF YOUR MASK AND PUT IT BACK ON! OPEN YOUR EYES! REMEMBER, IF YOU TRY TO SURFACE QUICKLY, YOU'LL PERISH! NOW, TWO LENGTHS!

Shut up, she mutters.

Her husband asks if she just said something.

For the hundredth time that morning she says, I'm scared.

For the hundredth time he assures her that he will be right there beside her the whole time. He is patient and steadfast and totally unafraid, which is why she married him. He is like her father.

Still moored to the resort dock, the boat bobs. The other divers chatter excitedly in German, Jamaican and English about the various dives they've done. They all look hip in their wetsuits. She wants to be one of them. She wants to be anyone else. She thinks, if I just get through this dive I'll be okay. I can start my new life and have fun. There is a flurry of activity as the dive master and beautiful golden Seychellois crew finish checking and loading the equipment. The dive master starts the motor. She looks over. He's speaking in agitated Creole to one of the crewmembers, a lovely boy who looks sixteen. Master diver's voice booms. He is not calm. He is in charge of the dive. She realizes she doesn't like him. The beautiful sixteen-year-old throws in the line and jumps in after it, the boat pulls away from the dock, and she begins to pray.

As the boat moves out into open water she notices how choppy it is. Their island paradise moves away. She watches it get small and yearns for it, grieves for it. She wants to be reading a book on the patio of their hotel. She smiles and tells the waiter who brings a mimosa, yes, I'm waiting for my husband. He is a diver. She enjoys the newness of saying my husband. No. Here she is, unwilling to give up and show her new husband that she is a coward even though she is making their honeymoon miserable. Her new husband doesn't understand how she feels. He is excited to dive. He is pointing things out to her. Look at those fluffy clouds. I think that island is Felicite, and that one in the distance might be Praslin. Can you believe how blue the sky is. His voice sounds far away. She is busy making deals with God. This time I really promise. If you get me through this, I'll stop saying Jesus Christ Almighty. I'll finally find grace. I will not be petty. I will devote my free time to good works. The breeze has picked up and her husband shouts over the motor: The waves are so loud I can't hear you, he yells. He is smiling. The boat is crashing continuously, colliding loudly with the waves. She realizes her lips were moving and he thinks she was talking to him, not God. She thought she was praying silently, in her head.

Suddenly the boat slows and stops about a half mile from an island. Waves throw themselves against the jagged rocks in suicide missions. An anchor drops, each clank reverberating. The chic divers ready themselves, efficiently unzipping dive bags, pulling out flippers, masks, snorkels. The master diver is shouting: Snorkels regulators two at a time into the water!

The dive partners fall backward off the side. They are there and then, all at once, gone. They go two by two until it is her turn, hers and her new husband's. She looks over the side at the carefree and snorkeled bobbing and waving to each other. The waves are large. Her hands, arms and legs are numb and her new husband has to help her with everything. She observes this scene from a short distance. The person she sees is eight years old. Her form is dwarfed by the tank strapped to her back and she looks small in her oversized flippers. Her head is light. The equipment is heavy. At one point she falls, sprawling on the wet deck. The master diver shouts that they are next. He wears a frown. He thinks she can't do it. He knows she is a coward.

Her voice is small when she says to her new husband, I don't think I can do this.

He tells her she will be fine once she gets under water. His words of reassurance make her feel more like an outsider. Why is this so terrifying when all these people are enjoying themselves? Then it comes to her: They are crazy and she is sane. People are not meant to breathe underwater! She has married an insane man! She falls backward off the boat, regulator in her mouth.

For a moment she is under. She is floating, flying. She looks at the peaceful dark and sees fish. Lucky fish, they are good at this. She looks up and sees the surface and the light and it is beautiful. She hears her breath begin to slow and this calms her. I am going to be okay. I can do this. Then she surfaces and the first wave washes over her.

Get me out of here I have to get out I am getting on! The! Boat! She is screaming. Dread is cavorting and laughing and he is pulling her down.

Her husband puts his hand on her arm. She flings it off, starts to swim toward the boat. How did it get so far away?

The master diver is shouting. His accent sounds French. He is swimming over. She hates him and would like for him to drown. She is getting the fuck into the boat and staying there for the rest of her life.

Then she is full of joy because her hand is on the boat's ladder. She tries to climb it and her flippers catch and trip her and she falls back in the water but she is calm now. She removes her flippers and turns to watch them float away. She won't be needing them. She pulls herself up with superhuman strength and climbs up and into the boat. She sits and looks for dread but he is no longer with her. She is sorry because she wants to put her hands around his throat and squeeze the life out of him. The beautiful boy gently helps her off with her tank and then sits on the bench beside her. The sun warms them. She turns to the boy and kisses him on the mouth and though it is only a moment, it feels like forever.

Nothing ever happens on my block.

I don't seem to be having too many fresh, coherent thoughts. Perhaps that's because nothing ever happens on my block; just the same old obsessions about people who have left me without explanations or goodbyes, the same old musings about whether or not I have intermittent explosive disorder (IED), the same old inability to have a telephone conversation if Iona is around, the same feelings of awe toward her artwork and the same proud and completely amused embarrassment when she says things like "My mom has bouncy breasts!" loudly to the naked woman next to us in the gym locker room, the same old detached sinking feeling looking at the face of a dead man on mainstream TV, the same old thwarted desire to be earth mother, the same old thwarted desire to be a siren, the same old frustrated, guilty wonder at how hard Ewan works while I while away the hours, conferrin' with the flowers, consultin' with the rain, the same old inability to write fiction to save my life, the same old inability to really let people in, the same old desire to have a glass of wine on a Thursday night instead of giving something fresh to the twelve lovely readers of this blog.

Nothing ever happens on my block. When I grow up I think I'll move. (That is, after the Charleston party on Saturday.)

What's new with you?