io sono il formaggio

Joie de Jo?

2011-10-15T18:59:00.003-04:00

English Jo is having a baby, a little nerdy baby with surely extraordinary musical abilities and terrible eyesight and a penchant for Americanisms with a London accent. This is such a good thing.

And yet with other friends of mine, the moment they become parents I tend to clam up and disappear. We all know I like kiddos; in fact, I usually prefer them to the bitter, non-curious, shut-off adults I run into much more frequently. I like watching a baby see things and hear things and touch things for the first time, because I want to remember that the world is always new to someone and there are good things in it.


When L. Bloom was new

But, there's also a part of me that feels I will never be a mother, never create a stable little nuclear family with a steady life mate and a mortgage and milk money on the table. I will sustain myself, not out of self-preservation so much as a keen sense of how much I would hurt others if I let myself fade. I will not be so irresponsible as to let someone love me, or create life with that person, or raise a child in such close vicinity to this omnipresent aura of poison that either follows me or is me. And so watching my friends creating their families, my brothers even, feels a little like a sick voyeurism and only makes me long for something I must not allow myself to have.

Turns out, however, that I still haven't learned one of the simplest and most repetitive lessons in life; I cannot control the feelings and thoughts of others. Influence, yes. Control... not even a little. Hell, most of my battles stem from my need and failures to control myself!

So a man grows attached to me. He doesn't know the depths of the shitstorm I carry around in my head, but he also doesn't mind that I'm dealing with one. He laughs with me and at me and worries when I have some small thing he can carry. He talks about "what we'll do for the holidays" in July... "When we move in together..." Not if. When. "We will have to figure that out," he says, like a man buying a slanting, leaky house with every penny he has in the world, simply determined to make it shine. And he has me thinking...

fragile stuff

2011-10-10T19:39:00.000-04:00

Faded Roses, Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Elizabeth was the kind of girl who would silently hold a grudge for a good long while if you, say, didn't say "please," when asking her to pass the potatoes. It wouldn't be the kind of grudge that turns into a vendetta, just a strong demerit in her overall tally of your trustworthiness and respectability. So, yes, she would take it personally if you forgot her birthday. She would find a way to mention it in passing to send a shock of shame through you on the sly.

I've been trained, therefore, to start feeling guilty right around the beginning of September. I start thinking of sending her a card or a little gift - maybe a cookbook - and then I think of how she doesn't accumulate crap, really. She has maybe a dozen shirts and washes and wears them carefully. She purges her kitchen, her library and her office regularly, gleaning only the necessary pieces. Every space she rules is elegantly composed and purposeful. How do you give a gift to a woman who has chosen every small detail of her life?

Well, almost. She did not choose to get pregnant while she was here in Boston and had several credits to finish up on her Master's degree. She didn't exactly choose to move in with her in-laws in Santa Barbara. She didn't choose to have her sweet cat served up as lunch to the local coyote. She most definitely did not choose cervical cancer.

I suppose that by now we know that I have the fairly human need to distance myself from things that hurt. I practically shunned my friends from St. Bonaventure after Shane died. I can't bear to speak about my mother's mother, or even go into the part of my parents' basement where I cried myself nauseous after returning from the ER. And here I am again, in full ability to communicate with people I respect and love, who supported me in my intellectual growth and personal flounderings, but I do not want to talk about jLiz. I won't forget her; no, I will curl myself around my guilt for every birthday I missed, for the times I didn't call, for not knowing how bad it all was. I'll cultivate and feed that guilt and make very sure it continues to sink its teeth deeper into my flesh.

I asked the Current Man in My Life if he noticed that I know a lot of dead people. Then I immediately said, "well of course you have. I keep inviting them over." How can I know what I'm doing and not stop it?

A few weeks ago, Labor Day actually, I snuck home on an overpriced flight to see family. Remember when this was a terrible idea for my sanity? Well, clearly, I'm old. And things have changed. Possibly it's this sense of entropy... that if I don't take every moment I can to see my nieces and nephew and brothers and parents, they will wither away and fade from me. The human body, it appears, is made of nothing terribly permanent. We are composed of fragile stuff.

And so I got on that flight on a whim, asking my roommate to throw a few things in my backpack and meet me at work so I could make the trip. My Uncle Maui was home on what he called his "Aloha Means Goodbye Tour." My grandmother Biv is 93 years old and pretty much takes it personally that we allowed her to get so old and worn out. She doesn't want to make it to 94. Uncle Maui spent days with her, just letting her bitch and watching her nod off while reading, sitting by her while she slept. He got infuriated and bored and fell in love with her - all the truest familial feelings a person can have. And he said goodbye.

I didn't see her at all because his time with her seemed too precious. I didn't want to interfere with this capsuled moment that I wish I'd had with Shane or Elizabeth or... well let's not list. But on the flight back I found myself thinking of her hands, my mother rubbing lotion into the soft, lax skin. She likes rose scents and rosy hues, and the backs of her hands are so much like rose petals after they droop on the stem. Soft, too soft, and fragile. The coils of your fingerprint seem to bite into that thin and tender petal and it wants to rip or fall.

I am so painfully aware of the ephemeral. I am aching for the strong people who, ultimately, fade and rip and fall limp in scattered petals.

Clearly, shoving this awareness into a tiny Box of Awful To Hide Away... well, it's not working. Not only that, it's created a sort of mottled lens through which I obliquely see the world, one that I know is beautiful and captivating but have not felt I could bear to see at full strength. I'm vowing, again, to be alive, in full knowledge of the complicated contract we sign when we decide to be hurt, overjoyed, ignored and thrilled and disappointed. I'm vowing to allow all things, again; to be a cog in the machine in faith that it will produce incredible joy alongside the suffering.

I will try, anyway, and I will tell you about it. Maybe you will hear me.

Groundhog Day - do not repeat

2011-02-03T16:20:00.001-05:00

5:38 am: Nightmare about my parents’ toilet being set across from the front door of the house without walls or doors. I’m stuck there in the middle of being very sick and the doorbell is ringing. Alarm wakes me and I run to the bathroom.

6:20 am: Showered, teeth brushed, puffy eye noted, hot compress deliberated. I decide I don’t have time. We just got a buttload of snow and I already know my commute will be slow. Throw on undies, bra, dress, take ibuprofen, sit on my bed to put on tights. Everything hurts. I get the bad foot in one leg of the tights and the pain is exhausting. I lay back in my bed and set the alarm for eight minutes, thinking maybe the drugs will have started working. Note that my stomach is iffy and blame it on the meds. Ignore everything, close my eyes…

6:30 am: C’mon, Jo, keep moving keep moving keep moving… Mrs. Not My Boss has been watching every little move, every minute I’m late, every put-off phone call. Get up and go, dammit. Tights are on… knee-high socks over them. Holy hell the pain… Eight more minutes.

10:20 am: Panic.

10:30 am: No longer snowing, not really raining… My coat isn’t quite waterproof and through the foot and a half of snow there are about two inches of slush against the sidewalk. I didn’t bring a purse, knowing it would throw my balance off. I can’t go down St. Paul Street because I know I’ll slip down the hill. Catching myself from slipping every three feet. My back hates me.

10:40 am: Call my manager from the T stop, tell her voicemail I’m on my way. Don’t have any story to tell, other than my body continually telling me I shouldn’t be awake today, which doesn’t seem valid.

11:10 am: Train finally arrives. My phone has been in my pocket but it’s wet when I take it out to tap my T pass. Ugh.

The train is blissfully empty. I sit across from a dad in a kind of Indiana Jones-esque hat and a curly-haired blond kid, about seven, in full snow gear. The father has just said, “record store.”

Kid: What’s that?

Dad: What’s what?

Kid: A record store?

Dad: It’s a place to buy records.

Kid: Yeah, but what’s a record?

Dad: It’s like CD’s, but before CD’s. For decades it was records.

Kid: Are there CD stores?

Dad: Umm.. I guess not really. I mean, a few.

Kid: Why are there CD stores?

Dad: For people who still have stereos, I guess.

Kid: Oh.

Dad: I’ll show you a music store, okay? There’s one in Cambridge.

Kid: Okay.

11:20 am: Arrive at Park Street station. The acrid scent of oily smoke rises from the Red Line stairways. Several stairways are blocked off by big yellow expandable gates. I head down the stairs to yet more smoke, crowds of bewildered passengers, and an Ashmont train that’s been stopped several yards back from its usual position. In front of it, a blazing light and the source of the smoke: the third rail is somehow exposed in three blindingly bright places, flickering and sparking against the water continually dripping from the masses of snow above. Three men in T uniform stand with hands on their hips and clearly have no idea how to handle the situation. One man, the brightest, I believe, turns around to tell passengers that this train won’t open its doors here, and he doubts they’ll let the Alewife train stop either. Find alternative routes.

I head up the stairs and call my co-worker, tell her the train is en fuego and I’ll slide down the hill from Government Center, knowing… God, knowing how much that’ll hurt and how likely I am to fall and kill myself.

11:44 am: I arrive at work, near tears, stomach wobbling, sharp pains shooting through my back and leg. My feet are soaked as the waterproof function of my boots has apparently given up. My co-worker is on the phone but gives me a thumbs-up to acknowledge my arrival. I sit and contemplate coffee. Stomach won’t allow it. Headache seems to be begging for it. Should eat something… get up to grab saltines and ginger ale from the stash we keep for chemo patients. I’m likely going to hell.

12:00 pm: Answer several emails, get responses letting me know that all has been sorted before I got to work today. I’m on the edge of tears and put on the internet radio just in time to cover a slight sob.

12:04 pm: Mrs. Not My Boss takes a look in our cubicle and says, “Anyone in here in the mood for Viva Burrito? They’re delivering…” She takes one look at my face and has her answer, strides down the corridor to more likely punters.

12:30 pm: Still haven’t spotted my boss to tell her I’m at work. Trying to get my brain to function against rising nausea. Co-worker also not healthy, and she hasn’t been for at least a week. I fear I’ll have to withstand nausea as long as she has and wonder at her fortitude. In the meantime I open up my timesheet to make sure I record that I got here at 11 effing forty. Don’t allow myself to check my paycheck to see how much Earned Time I have because I know it’s depressing.

At some point I get up from my chair and return to notice that the edge of the seat is soaked. Looking at my dress there is an equator of soaking material, about a foot and a half of skirt that ought to be wrung out. Yet another opinionated co-worker says I should find an air dryer. We don’t have them on our floor and we all contemplate that absurdity.

1:13 pm: Mexican food arrives. I take two tums, one green and one pink, hoping it will settle my stomach but truly doubting it. Answer some phone calls and make a few more, covering my nose to keep the sent of seasoned beef at bay.

1:15 pm: Run out of the clinic past desks with open dishes on them on all sides, hand over my mouth and nose. I use the outside bathroom, hoping for something vile to come out of me the usual way and praying not to puke. Spend an extra minute washing at the sink, letting the scent of the soap fill my nostrils. I come out and sit in the hallway, looking out the glass wall at Beacon Hill and the continual snow and sleet. I breathe deeply. A man with a hospital pass sits next to me. Really, dude? This hallway is empty and you sit here? Well, at least he doesn’t smell like refried beans.

I think I’ve gotten control over my stomach. I head back in. Head to my desk. Co-worker is trudging along with OR calls and doctors invading our space. I mention something about Mexican food sucking ass when you’re nauseous, and then suddenly I’m running for the bathroom.

Pink and green spots. The ginger ale isn’t as vile coming up as I thought it might be. Maybe it’s the Tums. I’m crying and puking, yet detached somewhere, thinking these things.

1:26 pm: Shaking and crying and trying to get a grip, chills rolling through my body… Co-worker has quietly ordered me to go home, bless her. I write an email.

To: Manager

From: Jo

Subject: Puked. Going home

1:28 pm: Mrs. Not My Boss strolls by.

Mrs. NMB: Oh no, Jo, are you not feeling well?

Jo: (still can’t stop crying) I’m sick.

Mrs. NMB: You should go home.

Jo: I’m trying.

Mrs. NMB: You really shouldn’t be here if you’re sick.

Jo: (closing computer programs and putting away patient files) I don’t know how I’m getting home… (thinking of hellish train ride, envisioning puking on the exposed third rail. Then envisioning cabbie on the horrendous roads, sliding into a triple-car pile up.

Mrs. NMB: Just take a cab, why don’t you?

Jo: (bites tongue, wanting to say, “I’d love to, but since I won’t get paid for today I have to watch my wallet a bit, don’t I?” Still gulping back tears, because puking makes me think of my grandmother who died after I watched her puke for eight hours straight.)

I’m so embarrassed… I don’t want to be crying.

Mrs. NMB: Just go. Take a cab. Go down to the cab stand.

She wanders away. I zip up and head out.

Co-worker: (sees me through the glass and looks alarmed) Your purse??

Jo: (shaking head.)

Co-worker: Oh yeah, you fall over.

Jo: (Nodding head.)

Co-worker: Go!

1:35 pm: The cabs are hidden behind an eight-foot mound of plowed snow. There’s no access except to walk into the middle of the busiest intersection of the hospital straight at traffic. I slip. I catch myself. A little self-pitying sob escapes me as a lance of pain shoots through my back. The cab at the front of the queue is a small SUV type with snow tires, at least. Clean, no smoky smells. Bless this cab. After what feels like hours he drops me across from my apartment at a driveway that’s been cleared so I don’t have to step through five feet of snow. The meter reads $12 something. I give him a twenty and thank him for driving on the shittiest day Boston ever made.

1:58 pm: Changed into pj’s, tell roommate I’m sick and quarantining myself, gingerly put myself to bed. I want my mommy and Pirates of Penzance. She always made us watch it when we were sick in case we were faking. She thought it was punishment but we all secretly loved it. I’m falling asleep while trying to remember things you’re supposed to do when you’re sick. Jell-o? Fluids? Should I check for fever? Pull the trash can closer to the bedside and pray I don’t need it…

10:40 pm: Awoken by roommate making toast. Analyze stomach ickiness to be low, but definitely not hungry. Get up, pee, take pain pills for back, face down on the pillow and I’m out.

If you write...

2010-09-27T22:08:00.003-04:00

...eventually you tend to go back and read yourself. And perhaps you realize how small and claustrophobic your skull has become. And perhaps you want out.

So you don't write for a while.

Then words come and come, racing and leapfrogging to the front of things until they insist to be set in type. It no longer matters if writing is worthwhile, if you have an audience, if you're improving a craft or spilling your ugly guts. Writing is better, you hope, than trapping the words in the ever-shrinking real estate of your brain. Anything, when trapped, displays its most primal side. Something trapped will hide in a shell or lash out, hopelessly but nevertheless driven by animal instinct to flail against its cage.

Don't mind my flailing words. Once I start letting them out in the light here and there they will settle down. Their wings will flutter then fold, and they will know they have all the time in the world to pass on their tiny messages.

and also red.

2010-01-10T16:10:00.004-05:00

I was up in my parents' room, Baby Bean in her christmas outfit finally, after days of wearing nothing but her pajamas. She's six now, getting longer but still so small next to kids her age. Her face has changed shape, gone from cute to astonishingly pretty.

I brushed her hair back from her face as she sat primly on my mother's vanity stool. She was busy messing with the three mirrors my mother keeps there now that she has trifocals.

"Whoa, I'm upside down," she said, leaning into the first and going silly on me.

"Get up closer until you're right side up," I said. She approached the mirror slowly, expecting a trick of some kind.

"There!" she said, her nose nearly touching the surface.

"Why does Gramma have three mirrors?" she asked.

"Because each one shows her a different distance. She sees in three distances."

She sat up again and told me she wanted her hair way up, "like this," she said, with a fist on the top of her head, "like a rock star."

I brushed and brushed her soft hair. It's brown with a red tint to it and lighter streaks. It would be impossible to replicate that color in a salon. As I brushed she moved her head a bit, leaning into the caress of the brush like a cat. I caught her eye in the mirror.

"Actually, I think," she said, "that with his outfit, maybe not the rock star hair."

"What do you want, peanut?"

"Umm... I dunno."

"Braids?"

"Yeah, braids is good!"

"Okay, but you have to sit still for a while."

She sat up straight again and put her hands in her lap. I chattered to her about christmas, her brother, grandma's amazing tri-focal eyes. At some point I noticed she was staring at me again. I thought suddenly of this role reversal, the many times I sat here while my mother wrestled with my tangles and attempted french braids, later on when she helped me blow it dry and straighten it. I used to watch her face, the furrow in her forehead and the hairpins in her lips. She would talk around them as I asked her questions, a ponytail holder tight around her strong wrist.

"Aunt Jo, why is your hair brown and also red?" asked the Bean.

I smiled at her in the mirror as I completed the first braid. "Because I am cheap and also lazy," I said. This joke was not funny to her, so I gave her the real answer.

"Because I went to the salon and had it colored, like your mommy does." She nodded. "But it's been a while since I had it dyed. Now you can see my real color." She squinched up her nose. "Can you tell which one is my real color?" I asked.

"Ummmmmmm... the brown!" she said, hopping a little in her seat.

"Smart girl."

There was another answer I could have given her. I could have told her I don't see the point in spending money on myself these days. I could tell her I barely notice what I look like from day to day, only keeping to my strict patterns and rules about cleanliness and order. How do you ever tell a six year old girl that her Aunt Jo is so depressed that she can't imagine investing even that little bit in herself? It was insufferable to tell this child, the one my mother calls Jo accidentally, the one sitting just where I sat so many years ago, that I have curdled somehow and I don't know how to fix it, that I'm usually in the middle of a gesture to give up entirely.

I finished the second braid and wrapped a tiny clear ponytail holder around it.

"Okay, shake to see if it stays," I said. She shook her head fiercely from side to side, laughing. "Good. All done. Go show Grandma."

She skipped, actually skipped out of the room. I sat in front of the mirror and pulled my hair until my fingers hurt and the fierce need to cry melted away.

Death in the children's store

2009-08-30T15:23:00.006-04:00

The bells on the door jingle. I look up to see Mr. H (for Harmless) and his new pal. Both 60-ish, a little scruffy, and markedly slow. Mr. New (his buddy) wears a cap that’s been washed a few times and won’t ever look nice again. His baseline expression is one of slight amusement, near-smiling. They both slouch. Mr. H has big lips that chew up his words as he gets them out. He looks at me only from the periphery, but he always comes in. I wonder what he’ll take out with him today. It’s usually a free brochure on businesses in Cambridge. Sometimes it’s a flyer for a babysitter or cloth diaper service.

Mr. H: Hellah-o. You’ve seen us before, right?

Jo: Yes I have.

Mr. H: Because we come in here sometimes.

Jo: Every weekend.

Mr. New: Everyone has to pass away eventually

Jo: busies herself looking in cabinets.

Mr. H: We come in here. Me and my buddy here. What’s your name again?

Jo: It’s Jo.

Mr. H: Jooaa… Jo?

Jo: Yes. Jo.

Mr. New: Do we all have to pass away? Why should we all have to pass away?

Mr. H: Yoomans do pass away. We have to.

Mr. New: looking to me, although seemingly addressing Mr. H
I don’t see why we should have to.

Mr. H: plucking a business card, because he only takes things that are free.
The animals, they don’t live as long as yoomans.

Mr. New: We should live forever.

Jo: as though there’s something essential inside cabinets that must be found. looking busier...

Mr. H: If you think of a dog they only get to be about twenty before they die.

Jo: eyebrow spike...

Mr. H: Or a small dog they only make it to about twelve.

Jo: Yep.

Mr. New: But why should anything die?

Mr. H: rocking from foot to foot.
What do you think about little people? I bet little people pass away earlier. I bet they don’t last as long as we do.

Jo: shrug.

Mr. H: I’m 58. That’s me, I’m 58 years old now. This year.

Mr. New: How is it we’re going to pass away?

Jo: I don’t have an answer.

Mr. New: It seems like we should have been made better to not pass away. Why do you think it is we pass away?

Jo: Um… well, we’re made out of stuff that rots.

Mr. H: Because if you think of it little people are like little dogs. They probably don’t last as long.

Mr. New: I think maybe we won’t pass away.

Mr. H: heading for the door
We will though.

Mr. New: following
I’m not so sure about that.

The door jingles as they exit, still jabbering, talking to themselves as though they were never speaking to me. Out into the world.

Ahh, memories.

2009-08-26T22:05:00.002-04:00

I found myself saying this today and I'm still chortling:

"I thought we were dating, but it turns out he was merely French."

I guess this is proof that those "you'll look back on this and laugh" moments truly exist...

the boulevard of broken strings

2009-08-15T23:22:00.002-04:00

There are few events that can come up that will make me cancel plans with other people I like, but Jake Armerding playing at Club Passim is one of those events.

Apologies, person with whom I canceled plans, but the show was flippin' amazing!

I forget, over and over again, how much I love live music, only to be smacked in the face with the power of it when I'm in its presence again. Watching these men expertly, lovingly drawing music out of mandolins, saxophones, guitars, guitar cases! There's an alchemy there that I miss and feel throbbing like a phantom limb. I used to be capable of that.

More than that I miss Arahsae, who introduced me to Jake Armerding. I miss listening to my brother play his guitar/bass/whatever through the bedroom wall, even being annoyed with him for it. I miss the feeling of slipping my voice between the notes of guitar, trumpet, keyboard in that basement jazz club in Galway.

Last night Cap'n Armerding broke a string during the first song, which he solved prettily enough by switching for his mandolin. Then he asked the crowd if anyone could change a guitar string. I wanted to raise my little hand, but honestly, I'm clumsy. There was a moment when I would have done anything to hold the guitar, warm from the performers hands, be somehow a part of the machine of that music.

I hope the neighbors didn't mind me belting in the shower this morning.

2009-07-23T21:32:00.001-04:00

Seventh grade. I carried six notebooks most days for each subject, six binders, the occasional steno pad and calculator, all in a tired backpack populated by whole villages of broken pock-marked pencils and non-functional pens. The school year waxed and waned and my notebooks became predictably tattooed with notes, doodles, stains and other batterings.

I carried one folder. Inside this folder I kept the loose leaf collection of the awkward stories I wrote and let no one see. They were halting, haunting and very likely unfleshed. At the time I thought writing could only be an organic process – an unplanned and unsupervised ride powered by some punch-drunk muse.

The stories were universally dark… about suicide pacts, deadly car accidents, people wasting away with horrible diseases. If I had known what Goth or Emo meant, I might have found a niche. Perhaps not… I was horrified by the nightmare highway my muse continually chose. I was afraid and fascinated by my own propensity for darkness. It was manageable, however, because no one else knew.

It was eighth grade. That was the year terrible things began to happen. A classmate, already socially shunned and ridiculed, found out that his mother died during the school day. He disintegrated before our eyes into a mass of howls. That same year another classmate’s obese sister was found dead. There were rumors; she’d overdosed on diet pills, she’d had a heart attack, she’d choked on a sandwich, her brother killed her with emotional abuse. I felt I knew the truth then. These horrible things happened because I wrote them.

I remember so well the feeling that the events around me were like a camera’s iris, closing into tighter focus. I was choking inside that aperture like it was a 360 degree guillotine. Now I see that my brain was ready for all of it. I was an open soul, begging to be trod on and tried. I didn’t create the events; they blazed inward, highlighting pre-existing sensitivities. It was as though I had an acute sunburn in the winter time and was utterly surprised when dishwater scalded me.

I think of this today because my vocabulary of this life has expanded once more and opened me to new sensitivities. Where before I thought of cancer as a general, unfathomable disease, I can now hear the word cancer across a crowded subway train and it sets my brain reeling. I think of the women who call me at work begging for an earlier surgery. I think of the wheelchair-bound patients in the elevator with their wigs askew and their fragile, bare ankles. I think of how a nurse talked of one of her patients, how he already smelled like death.

So at my brother’s wedding my ears twitched open to the family friend, the woman we call “Aunt” and whose husband we call “Uncle.” Her cancer, I hadn’t known, was one I deal with daily. She asked me if I could pull strings to have her seen at Mass General. I told her, honestly, that I’m new there, and I have no idea. I didn’t want to discuss it further. I hated the immediacy of knowing the possibilities.

And now, a month later, another family friend was claimed by cancer. I saw the New York area code on my work phone but it didn’t click until halfway through my, “This is Jo, how can I help you.” My dad told me to call my mother tonight. Our old neighbor died after a long and strenuous fight. I asked about the kind of cancer, how long it’s been going on (and no one told me). She had a gynecologic cancer, the kind I deal with. She had metastases in her lungs.

Is it possible I was so self-involved before that I never noticed that the women I love on this earth are dying? Is there some energy in the world that draws these coincidences together? I want to believe that it has to do with this sensitivity, like the honing of a musical skill. I can hear the pitch and color of the word cancer in its full spectrum now. It existed before I could hear it and won’t stop its cacophonous echo now that I can.

the incredible shrinking jobiv

2009-07-18T11:48:00.003-04:00

I truly am disappearing. There's a positive aspect, at last: I'm losing weight.

I can't figure out how I'm doing it, either. At first it was pure poverty, and maybe the stress of running between four different jobs, never quite remembering my stomach needed feeding. There were several nights when I'd get home at 10 and realize that it was far too late for dinner.

And now, I think, it has something to do with financial security. I can't completely connect the dots, but perhaps it's that I grab and gulp less. I used to devour food whenever I could get my hands on it because it seemed like a precious commodity - one I couldn't afford most days. Now I'm at leisure to choose what I consume. Very new.

On the dark side of all this is my increasing need to become invisible. I am full to bursting with a distressing dichotomy: I'm ever so happy in my work life and find the rest of the world outside of it deeply embarrassing and troubling. More and more I find myself sending brainwave imperatives to those around me: "Don't look at me. Don't look too closely. I'm not here. Don't notice me."

This is apropos of the need for new clothes, by the way... I've been shopping because my clothes look funny on me - too big - but find myself shying away from colors I used to love. My wardrobe is a limited and muted spectrum of gray, beige, black and brown.

I am a cloud passing through. Don't notice me. I am a mud puddle. Avoid me. I am blending with the pavement, shiftitng my chameleonic skin to the steel of subway stations. I'm invisible.

Why, though... I push my thoughts out to grab at answers and they come back empty handed.

in which our heroine hates doctors but takes a job in a hospital

2009-07-12T20:18:00.003-04:00

Working among health professionals strikes me as perilous for a person as unhealthy as I am. I knew this, going in. I knew I'd be walking directly into the lion's den every morning and sitting among them, reeking of delicious eland or ibex or whatever lions particularly love to eat.

It's difficult to guard my health issues, most of which I keep extremely private because I usually think my body came along for the ride with my soul just to embarrass me. At a hospital, however, there is no thing they have not seen before. Practically.

One of my least favorite nurses, with whom I do not work directly, thank god, loudly pointed out my limp one day. "Do you have foot drop?" she exclaimed, like she'd discovered proof of my deep dark past and was displaying it to the jury. Yes, I told her... yes I do. I limp. I had a back thing. It's much better now. MOST people don't notice, or at least never mention it.

The woman who sits in my glass cage with me has noticed many a symptom by now. At first I was good at controlling my little issues, but soon enough the hair began to fall. I don't even notice when I'm pulling at it. She's never said anything, but she watches out of the corner of her eye with a creased forehead. I do it when I'm speaking to someone on the phone, begging for OR time, or convincing a woman with cancer that she can wait six weeks for surgery because the doctor said it's okay.

And of course the panic attacks haven't truly abated. The more I try to suppress them, the more likely they are to spread and fester. So I try to use every coping strategy I've ever learned. I try to pull from my secret stores of strength. There was one morning, though, when I couldn't control it and I hadn't even left for work yet. There was no mistaking that I'd been crying and distressed since the wee hours of the morning. I called my doctor's office for some other little thing, got an appointment, called in to work to say I had to see the doctor and would be in later... told people some vague thing about allergies - not a lie, but imprecise.

These disguises are so thin among women who work with distressed women. They notice everything, down to the nurse who points as she walks past and says, "squinting!" to remind me to visit the optometrist. In my more paranoid moments I'm sure she'll walk by, pointing and shouting out my darkest secrets, like the old crone in The Princess Bride who boos Princess Buttercup in her nightmare. "Bow down to the queen of putrescence," etc. I don't even know what this nurse could notice that could be so bad and why I think I'm not obvious as it is. Is it so horrible if people know I'm anxious or tend towards depression?

It is if it's incapacitating. If it interferes with my job... if I'm not able to help people get the care they need because my personal resources are so depleted...

In the immortal words of D. Bowie, "Turn and face the strain."

2009-06-10T10:46:00.006-04:00

Wednesday morning and I woke up in an immaculately clean room. I stretched for an hour, got up and assessed the milk situation (completely out), made a cup of jasmine green tea and a serving of corn mush. Everything is different from the last time I was out of milk; that’s what I thought to myself. Just a few months ago I was getting creative with all I could afford – cheap, chewy bread, eggs, and heads of lettuce. I made myself eat the greenest parts. I hate the really green parts. They offer no resistance for the teeth, but that’s where the vitamins hide.

A few months ago I would check my bank account daily to make sure no weird little fees were going to incapacitate my rent check. A few months ago I would wake up before God for my daily corporate coffee catechism: “Good morning, how are you today? Would you like room for milk? Soy milk is on the counter now. Have a nice day!”

Here it is, June of 2009. My brother Cripps got laid off and just lost his work-from-home job, too. My dad is always reading on the back deck when I call him, “Waiting for a business call.” My friends are scrambling to keep jobs they hate. And I got hired at the hospital.

This feeling is something like survivor’s guilt, I think. I’m thrilled, on one hand, to have lucked out so completely; I temped in two places, loved the second one and they loved me back. It was a mutual fit with some time to luxuriate and research if it made sense for me. I’m still adjusting, of course. I went from working 6 hour shifts at a coffee shop, running to old lady sitting, running to the kids’ clothing store… Now I have one job to dress for. One place to establish friendships. One set of people to surprise or disappoint. I can faithfully say I’ve never had just one thing on my plate until now. It’s jarring and strange, but I tell myself it’s a good thing.

Here’s the extraordinary part: I write the rent check without looking now. I can do it with one hand tied behind my back. I’d have to hold down the checkbook with my nose, but still…

All of this puts me in a better position for the week to come. I’m still scared shitless, but, y’know, when people ask what I do I have an answer that doesn’t make me cringe.

My brother Smacks gets married this weekend. I’m headed home.

I actually took off Monday and Tuesday (and clearly Wednesday) to prepare myself. I couldn’t explain it to anyone at work so I told them I had to catch up with doctors’ appointments. The truth is I need this time to breathe and be sure of myself. I cleaned the crap out of my room, I went through old journals, I fed myself kindly… I want to think of Boston while I’m there and remember how well I’ve done. I won’t be able to say it much so I have to know it.

The truth is that these are still lonely, scary days. I know the day will come when I’ll have a panic attack at the hospital and they’ll have to know a few things I don’t want to share. And I still have to face the part of me that was so sure I’d grow up to be something different – someone completely in my own skin, creative and growing and bursting with extra love to give out freely.

I’m not there yet. I’m getting there. I can almost see that person behind my reflection, kinda waving me forward, encouraging my steps.

speak

2009-03-11T13:02:00.000-04:00

The small birds are chattering in rained-on outrage. I wish I could say what kind they are, but they’re puny and hide in bushes. I only hear their tiny voices, raised together to form a brave cacophony.

I only have one voice, and it’s surely puny right now.

My panic attacks are leading to another job ending abruptly. This will be the third time. It’s very hard to speak up for oneself when one's throat is collapsing.

2009-03-02T22:06:00.004-05:00

The path near the intersection of St. Paul and Beacon is a narrow one, hedges on one side bullying pedestrians toward the curb. The concrete slabs of sidewalk pitch and lean whichever way. Huge roots push them around in the summer time and ice splits them in the winter. It's not unsafe to walk there; merely difficult. Being a bit tilted, I feel like a wide, ponderous load for those who exit the trolley at that same stop. Most of the crowd heads the same way - up that narrow path.

I've made an art of unreadiness and it seems to help. I hold my book until the last minute, bury my gloves in the bottom of my bag and leave my coat unbuttoned. I stand there under the shelter for a moment, fixing and digging and putting-away. These little natural movements make me appear merely disorganized, I hope, although they are carefully choreographed. To a girl with a limp, a pair of gloves are a saving grace. A finicky bag is a godsend. Every button on a coat makes the walk more endurable. People rush past and I let them, along with the terror of becoming a hindrance to humanity in general. Pass me by pass me by... please oh please pass me by.

and thank you for riding the MBTA

2009-02-05T22:28:00.000-05:00

Confession: I secretly believe that Lucretia The Guitar and I will rise to stardom through busking in train stations. I will be that pitiable yet alluring starving artist who rejuvenates songs by one-hit-wonders that have since settled into the backwaters of pop music due to overly rich and hopelessly dated soprano saxophone solos. People will lean against tiled pillars, perusing their text messages and avoiding each other’s eyes until, lo!, they hear a familiar strain and can’t quite place it. Such musicality! Such expressiveness! What talent to draw out pure beauty from a song heretofore passed over by even the most nostalgic of music lovers! Unrecognizable, and yet immediately embraced by those weary denizens of rat-races and corporate ladders! Yea, even the Ugg-clad adolescents find they must lower the volume on their sonic devices to hear her rend her soul for the mere coins in her guitar case…

I should learn how to tune my guitar first.

I fall down sometimes.

2009-02-04T15:12:00.006-05:00

Especially when it's icy and gross outside, and the irresponsible/over-privileged citizens of Brookline and Boston don't clear their sidewalks.

The other day I did a split on some black ice. Well, it was more of a jack-knife maneuver than anything, but the result was the same searing muscle pain that comes from stretching a part of one's body that has not been stretched in, oh, say, ever.

Over the course of two days, I fell five times.

Other people fall down when it's icy. I just fall more. It's this here limp, y'see. It's the lack of control over my left foot. I think I'm fine and then I slip a little and can't get my muscles to do what they're supposed to and fwoop, "Mother EFFER!" Down I go.

At the moment I'm sitting in bed after my get-this-coffee-smell-offa-me shower and letting my scabs dry and heal while my knees are bent so they won't tear open when I go to walk. I remembered that trick from childhood playground injuries of yore.

My knees always looked like this in those days.

Although I did tan better back then.

2009-01-07T22:28:00.002-05:00

Once again, that deep ache has solidified my ribcage. It's the ache of impossibility, I think. By that I mean I keep wanting the course of my life to shift to something it can't be. I want it to shift to loving families and exciting work and a healthy body. How is it that I can't get there? It's this Alice-y feeling of frustration - just barely catching a glimpse of the right path and not getting my feet on it in time.

To clarify; the ache isn't merely that I don't have satisfying work, it's that I don't have the courage to find it. It's not that my body isn't functional, it's that I have one more layer added to the nonfunctionality of my already messy body. It's not that it's my brother's 30th birthday tomorrow and I can't be there, it's that he doesn't want me there.

I feel my ribs hardening and cracking and resisting the expansion of my lungs. I can't make any of it right. I can't write a script for my life that anyone else will read out with me. "Just do this, stand here, and say the following," I want to say. It never, ever works that way.

Resolute.

2009-01-05T17:58:00.002-05:00

I shall not do my roommates' dishes anymore. I will stick to this, even if I begin to twitch and cry and they find me rocking myself on the kitchen floor when they come home.

I shall not plan trips to Le Victoir that span longer than 72 hours.

I shall write to the people whom I love in this world, and, when I have time, to the people I like and admire. (Luckily, the two categories overlap quite a bit.)

I shall cook with zeal, not only because I can't afford ready-made meals, but because food is fun.

I shall divorce myself from Starbucks. And soon.

Giving actual factual thanks

2008-11-29T09:52:00.002-05:00

I worked on Thanksgiving morning. We were understaffed because we were just as crazy busy as I told people we would be and I was mildly ignored. Ah well. We got a lot of people their coffee who would have otherwise had caffeine headaches, including hospital staff, stranded foreign research types, and families on their way to the feast. I saw one of my regulars put a fiver in the tip box out of sheer appreciation. Awesome.

But here's the excellent news: Christmas came early! Santa deeply appreciated my ingratiating comments and poured socks and chocolate and can openers and happiness down upon me! Not one, but TWO tear-inducing boxes showed up on my doorstep brimming with help from lovely, lovely friends.

And here's what I have to say: Thank you, thank you, thank you. And also, thank you for reading past my self-amusing bullshit to help me out when I'm too ashamed to really ask for help.

My feet are warm. Delicious.

Calling all cooks...

2008-11-24T15:07:00.003-05:00

It's that time of year again, when I am pointedly not in New York for Thanksgiving. Please send me a favorite holiday recipe for my mini-feast! I will think of you fondly as I prepare it in my jammies on Thursday morning.

a baleful bachelorette

2008-11-23T21:56:00.002-05:00

Galloping toward me with terrifying velocity, here comes my ten-year high school reunion. Put aside the usual stressors of the holidays and think of the horror of facing high school all over again. I wasn’t so good at it the first time.

I freely acknowledge that I’m not actually going back to high school. It’s not like the movies – we’re not queuing up outside the gym in nice suits and shoulder-padded dresses, playing grown-up in the nursery. The class president (who’s actually not a douche, thank goodness) organized some space at a bar big enough to accommodate a crowd.

Not sure who will show up, but I know I won’t remember names or details. We will ask each other, “So what are you doing these days?” and, “How’s life in Florida?” and, “How are the kids?”

It’s occurred to me that I should have a sentence prepared that I can repeat on command; something simple and only slightly artful where facts are smudged. I need something translucent but not transparent. No one need know how much I’ve struggled over the last ten years, right?

My parents, who were in town this weekend for a chorus concert, bless’m, reminded me that my view of my own life is a bit exclusive these days. My mother reminded me of grad school, travels abroad, publishing, non-profits, Boston, singing… The facts are all there and they seem impressive from afar. My brain glances over these things as surreal or unimportant and clings to hospitals, deaths, surgeries, dumpings… the soul-swindling monotony of a job that does not pay a living wage for a company I can’t believe in.

Here’s the fascinating thing, however: my mother kept bringing up my single status. She said that I could tell them I was “in love, and now looking again,” to appease them. I know that a ton of people from my class are married or attached, but it never occurred to me to be uncomfortable as a bachelorette. She mentioned it enough to make me realize how preoccupied she is with my marriage prospects, or total lack thereof. This must be one of the things she worries about when she frets away with thoughts of me. To her, I must be lonely.

So I present to you yet another dimension of parent-induced insanity. While they’re here they not only convince me that I’m unstable, unable to support myself, sickly and pitiful, but now I’m also incredibly lonely – adrift in the world without a captain to steer me right.

Yes, I know that’s ridiculous. I know I should have some rallying anger against the very thought. I should dig up thoughts of all my excellent friends, tepid dates, excellent daily flirtings; all the things that show my own agency in creating connections in this city. Alas, there’s something tempting in my post-parental-visit emotional hangover that pushes me toward self-pity. I am alone. I am lonely. I am unloved… even (gasp!) ten years after High School. I am a hopeless case.

So this is the feeling that propels tv heroines to take a stranger to a party and pretend he’s the fiancée. Silly.

booooks are goooood

2008-11-19T23:49:00.003-05:00

Paper Towns came in at the library! Yay John Green!

JoBiv: (smiling, thrusting library card at young, pleasant librarian) I have a book! I have a book!
Young Pleasant Librarian: You do, eh? (She pops out of seat and checks her shelf)
JoBiv: I do! I'm kinda excited.
YPL: No kiddin'. John Green? (Returning to seat and proceeding with checkout.)
JoBiv: Have you read him? Great stuff: funny, intelligent, respectful to the reader...
YPL: I've been meaning to read him... He wrote... An Abundance of Katherines...?
JoBiv: Yes yes! So good! Read it read it!
YPL: Okay... (laughing, humoring JoBiv) ... So you have a two-week due date on this book, but by the look of things you won't need that much time.
JoBiv: I don't think it'll be a problem. (melodiously) Thank yooouuu!
YPL: Thank you. Heehee.

Oh holidays.

2008-11-19T14:04:00.002-05:00

So.

I don't go home for Thanksgiving. I haven't been home for Thanksgiving since undergrad, I believe, and this has worked well for me. I have my little ritual: rent movies that I would be embarrassed to watch with other people around, watch the parade in the morning and cook recipes from friends for a mini-feast.

Last year I ended up at a serious feast after working the day at the cafe. That worked out alright. It was a huge crowd of friends and I enjoyed myself, but honestly, was pretty happy to get the hell outta dodge when it was all over.

The year before I spent with The Novelist's family in a quaint picturebook New England house. Roaring fire, spiked hot cocoa, fair isle sweaters included.

This year I want to work at the cafe, and I'll tell you several excellent reasons why:

1. I don't need to go home, and several other people do. Being available that day means other people can spend time with their families. That's cool with me.

2. I like to see my regulars on holidays when they expect us to be closed and are ever-so-happy when they see we're open. They need their coffee before they travel, they need a place to study for the paper that's due next Monday (there's always a paper due after Thanksgiving), they need a warm place to take the kids for an hour so their mother/father/caregiver doesn't kill them with a turkey baster. And the hospital doesn't close on holidays, does it? No sir. How pissed would you be if you had to do surgery on Thanksgiving and there was no good coffee around to start your day? PISSED, I tell you.

3. I like to laugh at foreigners who have no idea why the whole city closes down so people can eat turkey in celebration of a handful of religious zealots swindling the aboriginal culture. Poor foreigners.

4. We make mad tips, and we split them for that day. Whatever we're tipped we take home, on the spot. This usually doubles my tip income for the week.

5. It's a palpable excuse for staying in Boston. Maybe that should be number one.

Our manager conducted a casual poll on everyone's holiday plans and discovered that - lo! - all the college kids would be gone. Shocker. He scrambled to figure out everyone's availability. I told him that not only am I available, I would LOVE to work on Thanksgiving.

He... didn't schedule me.

Hmm. What now?

I could go on with my mini-feast, but I honestly can't afford the groceries. I could acquiesce to several impatient friends who have invited me to their assorted meals. I could beg some of the people who ARE scheduled to give me that shift.

Yeah. Think I'll beg.

good grief?

2008-11-18T11:58:00.001-05:00

Watching one of my closest friends deal with the slow whittling away of her grandfather, I’ve been a valuable support because I’ve seen it. I can sympathize. I can do what she needs me to do, which is mostly to exist in common knowledge; to share the onus.

And then, when she’s not looking, I choke on my memories and the freshly overturned soil of my past losses. I ache in that weird spot in my chest where my heart must be squeezing itself in useless, useless grief.

How is it that my life is most punctuated by funerals? I’m trying to figure this out: is it that there have been more in my life than in others? Or was it timing? I started going to funerals when I was eleven, so it’s possible that I’ve clung to those experiences because of the absolute shock to my eleven-year-old mind with the first one. Psychologically it makes sense that I’m still ruminating over something that was so bewildering then. It left a big messy pile in my brain that won’t right itself.

Then I think that maybe this is natural, too. The grieving process has no set time limit. Who can say how long a person can hurt? Memories can blindside you whenever they surface. I can catch a scent of beeswax and find myself transported to the Russian Orthodox church, kissing a paper crown on my grandmother’s forehead with my brain whirring away, trying to figure out if I killed her with inaction. Countless hospital patients come in and out of the café with their tired gaits and pinched faces, all evoking the Via Dolorosa of a passage to death. Without warning I’m eleven again, pressing myself against the too-clean wall of a hospital corridor, desperately seeking the courage to go in and look at my dried-out grandfather, speak to him, smile at him, bring him some last comforts, avoiding the leering ghosts in wheelchairs who cough around their dismantling bodies.

The truth is that I forgot about the healing process entirely. I’m separated enough from those family and friends, those with whom I mourned, to have forgotten the period of communal laughter and tears. My friend had piles of pictures with her last night. There she was with various embarrassing hairstyles and awkward body shapes, laughing and loved by her warm grandfather. Here’s the beach house where they spent their Augusts together, the whole family. Here’s the graduation party for her brother. Here are the countless times she got stuck or lost and he reached in to untangle the problem and deliver her to safety. Here are the jokes and the memories – stories she’d never heard before and the stories they’ve all memorized by rote.

The wake is tonight. Shane’s was the last wake I attended, inappropriately dressed and manic with proprietal grief. I remember the vast line, the clogged funeral home, his parents smiling and sharing memories, graciously, so graciously making a space for the rest of us to mourn him. I’d turned over a box of artifacts to them: livid paper towel doodles of inside jokes and odd notes that showed his bizarre and contagious sense of humor. I finally got to meet his high school friends and the all the people who’d watched him go through his childhood dramas. We all poured our love and grief into the middle of that space. We fed off of it desperately. I gave and took angrily, not knowing what I would need for my own stores in the coming years without him.

I hope for my friend that her process is more cathartic. God, that sounds almost clinical, but I do mean it. I hope she cries her heart out and then finds that space that hurts with emptiness, and slowly gathers memories to fill it in again over the years. There will be the spot on the pew where her grandfather should have sat at her wedding. She will tell her babies about how he would have loved to meet them. She’ll be caught off guard reaching for the phone when she needs to know which back road leads to her destination, realizing she can’t rely on Gramps this time. It will hurt, but it will also slowly heal.

An early Christmas list

2008-11-11T14:41:00.003-05:00

Dear Santa,

The past year was a sparse one in terms of lifestyle, and I do not ask to catapult to a life of luxury, but please, I would giggle with glee if you would tote the following things to my apartment this Christmas:

1. A can opener. One that isn't rusty. It doesn't even have to be new.
2. A mattress pad for a queen-sized bed. It DOES have to be new.
3. Socks. No really, I won't complain if you bring me socks like I did when I was an ungrateful brat of an eight-year-old.

Also, Santa, have you lost some weight? No really, you're doing something different with your hair, maybe. You look fantastic! I'm not just saying that.

Love,
Jo

October hauntings

2008-10-20T23:40:00.003-04:00

Wes once wrote a supportive response to a post about nightmares I'd had (also in October, I noted): "I do think writing one's dreams - letting them out for others to see, too - takes away their power," he said. I guess I've dabbled in dreamlogging (like weblogging, right?) here and there, when my dreams force my hand. Lately they've been fairly forceful.

The night before last I was on a huge ship of some kind. There was a danger lurking, and a kind of us-versus-them tension. I'm not sure who made up the crew of people on my side, but the other side was rumored to be unnatural; maybe they'd attack as trolls, or bats, or shadows. When they did attack I thought they were visitors.

They walked onto the ship from the sea, normal people in boring clothes with welcoming smiles, easy conversations. At some point I became aware that they were specters of some kind - projections from the true fiends who hid somewhere else. We tried to attack them but their unreal bodies proved impermeable to hooks, broken glass, fireplace pokers, and even, I believe, some kind of heavy kitchen utensil I'd found. A meat mallet? Something strange.

When the real bodies of the enemies arrived we couldn't tell which ones to spend our energy attacking. They were identical to their specters and seemingly benign. They had placid faces and boring clothes. I still felt the need to attack. My poker would deflect off of a specter body and sink squishily into the real body, loosing blood and screams and pain. Meanwhile the ship steadily sank - not tipsy like the Titanic, but evenly, grade by grade, the way I imagine the coasts disappearing with global warming. I woke up with a Charlie horse, all my muscles tense and pulsing.

The night after that I dreamed about my father. He was much older, saggy and little. My brothers and I were playing a kind of serious game, keeping a wine bottle out of his hands. At least, I was keeping the wine bottle out of his hands - my brothers kept handing it back and forth between them, and occasionally handing it straight to him without seeming to notice.

When my father drank from the bottle we could all hear the liquid splashing through his dried-up organs. It leaked out of his chest and onto his chair and left holes. He never looked at any of us. His eyes were grey instead of their usual warm brown, and he seemed blind.

My brothers were talking and arguing but my voice, as in so many of my dreams, grew tinier the more I tried to shout. I tired to whisper to see if the opposite would be true, but found that whispering shut me into a different room. When I tried to yell the walls would vanish and I'd be back in the game, but useless.

I've had several dreams about my body lately. They seem to be about privacy - like not being able to find a bathroom to change in, or often one thought I have will expose a part of my body to the person to whom I'm talking. For instance, the person will be telling me something, and I'll think, "I should write this down," except every time I think that a part of my shirt goes invisible and the person can now see my left breast and a big scar on it. Everything hinges on word play and I can't figure out the code.

I have this repeating image, too. I wouldn't call it a dream. In the vision there's a little girl swinging in a dark space. She's clinging, actually, and I think it's a rope at first, but then I look and look at it and the image reveals itself. The girl is clinging to a long and delicate set of vertebrae that stretch upward into darkness. She's near the bottom, her legs laced through and her arms clutching like it's a swing or a rope ladder. She's stuck - she can't go up or down. There's nothing around her, just the bones and the stuff joining them, floating in that space.

My mother tried to help me with my nightmares when I was younger, because they've always been vivid. She told me that if I thought about the way the different dreams felt I'd get closer to their purpose. She thought of dreams as the brain's recovery time. In dreams, according to my mother, you let feelings surface that you were unable to feel during wakefulness. So, if the overriding sensation is anxiety, frustration, tenacity - that feeling is worth investigating, and you can kind of throw out the symbols that seem to point elsewhere.

I kind of buy that, but I think I've read too much to allow my dreams to just lie. My brain gives things purpose all the time because I like to think that way. I think this makes my dreams more pungent, in a way.

That being said, the most disturbing thing about the aforementioned dreams is actually my own disgust of them. I'm repulsed by my brain's ability to come up with gory, macabre and violent dreams. And so, unsurprisingly, I suppose it all comes down to my overall disgust with my lack of control - over my life, my body, and especially my own mind.

Labors of love

2008-10-13T13:29:00.005-04:00

I've been working on projects for the little people in my life, because it's all I can do, financially. I can't even afford birthday cards, but I can sew a little, so I'm trying out my Project Runway skills.

Here's an apron I made for the little one I babysat:

She's officially THE Starbucks baby, so it seemed appropriate. I'd show you a pic of her wearing it but I don't think her parents would appreciate it.

I made this as a going-away present. The mean terrible parents moved to Seattle without asking me. How selfish!

And then Baby Girl turned the big FIVE this week. I called her up on her birthday and she answered saying, "I'm five years old and it's my birthday all day!" She'd had a bit of sugar at that point.

I went home this weekend and it wasn't terrible, considering my brothers are still douche booketts and my mother is chronically coughing and my dad is a bag of awful. It was all worth it to see Baby Girl in my latest creation. I give you... the princess cape!

I know you can't tell that it's purple brocade with a satin lining (which, together, cost me less than $10) but it IS and it's beautiful and she seems to like it!

Score one for Aunt Jo!

I'm back early from my trip home, by the way, because I have lovely white dots on my tonsils. Strep, I believe, to be confirmed after a 3:30 doctor's appointment that I cannot afford to go to. Sigh.

Just so ya know...

2008-09-20T14:32:00.003-04:00

The following things, since I know you've been wondering, have crawled up my ass of late:

1. Lost my T pass. The monthly one. The $60 one. I'm simultaneously stranded and strapped for cash.

2. Just paid my September rent yesterday. Can't imagine getting the funds together to pay October, especially since rent goes up Oct. 1.

3. My roommate ignores me or returns all queries with growls and grunts. Won't explain why, but I imagine it has to do with her passive aggressive attempts to get ME to call our landlord about HER mouse problem. I did call, and got yelled at by the surly receptionist because someone else has been calling her nonstop.

4. Three panic attacks at work in five days. Bad ones. Crying, gulping, gagging bad. So fucking embarrassing. Usually follow my trip home to Brookline with a straight-to-bedroom-shut-door cryfest. Could contribute to roommate's testiness.

5. Local babysitting job drying up abruptly, as the family shall abscond to Seattle tomorrow. Dealing with my mini-bereavement because, as usual, I have fallen utterly in love with the little one.

6. Did I mention the money problem? Have no insurance, stopped going to physical therapy (or any other therapy for that matter), thus in pain. Keep selling my stuff hoping to boost my finances - s'long file cabinet, stereo, maybe guitar next. Returned PAYLESS shoes I bought for interviews because a) I can't afford $12 shoes right now and b) I'm too gutless for interviews. What was I thinking? Also can't leave the house because (refer to item 1) I can't afford to go anywhere, see friends, eat food...

7. The Baby Girl's birthday is October 9th. Raise your hand if you can afford (mentally, physically, financially, emotionally) a trip home to Le Victoire - NOT SO FAST JoBiv!

8. Losing weight. Not on purpose, but none of my clothes fit correctly. Paradoxically always feel dumpy and gross and fat in my clothes.

9. Election season. My wee brain and shrinking faith can't take another bad one.

10. Because there might as well be 10... JoCD is back in full force. Lists, scratches, bald spots, blatherings...

Eggs tarragon, avec loneliness.

2008-09-20T12:42:00.004-04:00

This is a lovely little Saturday morning omelet for a party of one. That's you, JoBiv.

You'll need:

2 eggs - the last two in the carton. Yikes.
2 sections of shallot, diced
1 roma tomato that may or may not be your roommate's, seeded and diced
2-3 tablespoons of grated parm
1 tablespoon tarragon
splash o' milk (1% today! Oh luxury!)
salt n' pepa (not the hip-hop phenomenon, the staple condiments)
2 slices of that creepy Trader Joe's bread that never goes bad. Seriously, I bought this loaf three weeks ago and it's still in tact! Non-furry! Of course, it tastes like cardboard, but whatevs. I mean seriously, remember last week when you thought you didn't have any bread? And then you find this forgotten loaf in the back of your shelf and are sure it's gone native to find... useful food!

1. Get some butter melting in a smallish pan, very low heat.

2. Whisk together eggs and milk until a little frothy. Whisk in tarragon, then parm.

3. Pour slowly into pan. Slide in the diced veggies.

4. Make yourself coffee, put the bread in the toaster but don't toast yet, and generally take yer dang time. This one's best cooked slow. When you can hear the butter crackling and the sides of the egg have released from the pan, start the toaster.

5. Fold the omelet (or don't, I don't particularly care, but it's nice for presentation) and let cook a little while you butter your creepy bread. Divide in two, plate prettily and serve. To self.

6. Eat. No, really, go ahead and eat. Cry later, over the sink full of dishes.

A plea

2008-09-17T20:47:00.003-04:00

O, High Maintenance Women of Boston, hear me: If you must ride public transportation in stiletto heels, do so with utmost caution and consideration for us fragile humans. Please make use of poles and handles whilst complaining with your friends, so as to lessen the chance of your foot-weaponry impaling fellow passengers. Every time you lose your balance, we gasp in chorus, pray for our feet, and snatch our children from your windfall. The constant threat of bodily harm is too much for us to take on our journeys home from work. Have mercy on us, the Lesser Beings, the plebeians who shuffle from our surely tawdry homes to our surely tawdry places of work.

Also, your feet will whither and crumple by the time you're sixty if you keep wearing those damned shoes. I have a nurse friend who will speak to this.

Nuggets

2008-09-14T11:10:00.002-04:00

On the summer days or presidents’ week vacation, I’d follow my mother around the house, curious about what she did on a normal day. With the boys somewhat self-sufficient and me always more responsible than they were, she took on the onus of our stuffed house, her parents, and my father. We mostly took up emotional energy, I realize now, and actively undid all her work on the house without realizing it.

We always joked about my mother leaving glasses of water all over the house. In her bustling she’d realize she was thirsty, forget she’d already filled and left a glass of water around the kitchen, and bring the next cup of water with her wherever she was headed. She’d get busy or called away by her obnoxious kids, and later that evening we’d have to collect her water glasses when we ran the dishwasher. More often than not, one of the glasses would end up spilled before the day was over. Thus they were christened, “water bombs.”

I suppose in a house of six people the logic goes thisaway: Look, there’s a glass of water; I wonder if it’s mine. It can’t possibly be mine, there are five other people, plus guests, roaming this house right now. At least three of them have hacking colds, too. If I move it, one of the kids will yell about me throwing out his glass of water. I will leave it.

So when some skinny elbow or flailing overexcited hand brushed one off a shelf, or the hearth, or the washing machine, or the end table… the permutations are endless. We all did it, and we all smiled patiently, laughed together, and screamed out, “Water Bomb!” My mother rolled her eyes, surely thinking they couldn’t all be her glasses of water, and handed us the paper towels.

Just as a game, though, when I was following my mother around on those rainy vacation days, I’d count myself lucky if I found her morning tea. It was never anywhere near the kitchen. I figured out it was closest to the location of the first errand of the day, left cold and lonely in a linen closet, the basement, the shelf above the recycling in the garage, next to the stack of library books that needed to go back. I’d find it and rejoice privately, the real thing after ten false-gold nuggets in the form of water bombs. And before I’d wander back to the kitchen with it, or offer it to her wherever she was, I’d take a sip.

Black tea, English breakfast or the equivalent, not enough sugar for me, a lot of skim milk, stone cold. Maybe this explains why I can never drink mine hot.

Saturday Morning Fancy Eggs

2008-09-13T11:21:00.003-04:00

You will need the following:

A freezer full of hamburger buns you bought for a friend's Labor Day BBQ that required, she claimed, "shitloads" of buns, the purchase of which took up two weeks of your grocery budget.

Okay, not really, you only need

2 hamburger buns, defrosted on a plate over the pilot light. Sliced bread would work, too, if you had any.

2 eggyweggs

1 cube frozen basil
1/4 cube frozen garlic (these cube things are the coolest! Of course you could use fresh if you had it.)

splash o' roommate's milk

salt and pepper

1. Beat eggs with milk, add basil and garlic. Beat beat beat til frothy and green. Add salt and pepper.

2. Using the tops of the hamburger buns, slice off the seedy part. Cut holes in the center using cookie cutter shaped like an autumn leaf that you got when you threw a party with an old roommate/once-upon-a-time friend. Stuff bottom slice of hamburger bun in your mouth unconsciously.

3. Get a pan on the burner with some oil. Get it not-quite-cracklin' hot.

4. Place hole-y roll in the pan. Carefully pour about 1/4 cup of the egg mixture into the center of the bun. Let the bread absorb a little, then pour a little more. Cook 'til it puffs, then flip and cook until it REALLY puffs. Wonder idly what happened to the bottoms of the hamburger buns.

5. Garnish with sliced tomato and parmesan. Eat while thinking that next time it would be fun to have ingredients like Italian bread, cream, pancetta, fresh rosemary, shallots... Shut self up and try to eat mindfully.

Kittens to cats

2008-09-06T23:31:00.005-04:00

The week of September 1st is always a bit jagged in Boston, and especially for me. Between the move-ins and move-outs, the crap on the sidewalks, the moms and dads navigating badly as they drop off their freshmen/women, pretty much everything reminds me of school.

Now, I miss school, and not just because I have a fondness for anxiety. I miss the smell of new notebooks, the click of new pens, and the neat, exact edges of unopened books. I love peeling price stickers off of things that are so new that the price sticker is barely on there. I miss the reunions with people you've missed all summer, the eager introductions with people you're just meeting, the promise of brand-spankin'-newness everywhere.

But these days, I miss feeling the rusty cogs of my brain begin to turn again. I try to self-educate, but I miss the brilliancy of the moment when someone else's perspective cracks a window in my brain and I just... see new things. Of course my reading and poking does this for me, but I love a conversation that challenges my every thought.

Which actually comes down to this: I miss my fellow nerds.

I talked to Arahsae today via gchat, or whatever it's called. And I ran into two other Simmons peeps near various train stops. And I have more and more people asking me, all the time, "Why are you at Starbucks? Aren't you in school or something?"

Or something.

But here's the underlying truth, the covenant with fate I seem to keep... All ends in entropy. Everything goes pear-shaped eventually, as my favorite Brits say. Some things start new and make life better while you work on them, but all things unmanaged age and fade and fall apart. Kittens inevitably turn into cats. Cats are okay, but kittens are waaaay cooler.

That's not a direct line of logic, I guess. More than preferring my metaphorical kittens, I'm just sick at heart from all the people and things that have left me here in my dismal patterns. It's completely natural to leave things behind and therefore to occasionally feel left-behind, but I'm just tired of it. Sus once said that every friendship has an expiration date; it may be tomorrow, it may be seven years from now, it may be the year 3012. I guess in my life this has held true, but not only for friendships. Every new situation has an expiration date. That's what kills me. These days I'm apt to obsess about the ends of things before they start because I'm sick to death of entropy. I've had my fucking fill of cats.

Et voila!

2008-09-03T22:59:00.003-04:00

Two versions, and this is merely the beginning...

1.

"Who's ever heard of a
parakeet funeral?"
Christopher asked as we
put the corpse in

Strawberry tupperware
(anti-microbial)
hoping against hope it
wasn't a sin.

Not bad, eh?

2.

Maybe it wasn't an
Avian heart attack:
We can't blame Dad for Doc's
tragic malaise--

Could be some allergy
anaphylactical.
Parakeet's seemingly
bescorn a cage.

So that one forces a rhyme, sentence structure, and sense, but it has promise, no?

Anticipation...

2008-09-01T22:05:00.002-04:00

Good news, I think. I'm back to writing some poetry. I'm currently working on a double-dactyl poem. Here's my favorite (and I don't think I can top it):

Higgeldy Piggeldy
Hamlet of Elsinore
Ruffled the critics by
dropping this bomb:

"Phooey on Freud and his
Psychoanalysis.
Oedipus, shmoedipus.
I just loved mom!"

-Anon. (until proven otherwise.)

So far I have a few thematic lines that could work for a short tale about the death of my pet bird. How does "parakeet funeral" strike you? I'm sure I can work in "anaphylactical," although it doesn't seem to be a word yet.

Cafe Microcosmo

2008-08-18T21:09:00.003-04:00

4:00 am: Skunk fight outside my window. Ends predictably.
6:30 am: Stench wears off. Alarm chirps.
7:30 am: Arrive what I think is a half-hour early for work, enough to get my tea and breakfast and sit peacefu... FUCK, Old Lech is here and wants to whisper sweet garlicky nothings in my ear. Hide in the basement.
7:57 am: On the floor in apron, hat and forced smile. Informed I am still one half-hour early. Learn I have the same exact schedule as the Special Needs Girl, because both of us are a bit useless and together might make up a whole person on the floor. Shittiness sinks in.
8:15 am: Punch in anyway. Proceed to be pushed around by grumpy Monday Morning types. Try to keep up with Regulars in a fairly cheery fashion, meanwhile dropping $30 worth of pastries on the floor, getting yelled at for cleaning too thoroughly, and nearly killing myself on the stairs.
9:30 am: Inform shift manager that an artist is coming for us to review work for us to put up on our walls. She shrugs. I try to get her excited and fail.
10:48 am: Behind the bar, cranking out drinks frantically, manager and friend both go on their half-hour breaks at the same time. Artist's wife arrives for conference. I send her around a corner with a free drink and frantically yell for help. While scurrying for whipped cream, someone tells me I need to be off the floor to help with sorting tips. My elbow catches a milk pitcher, sends it flying sideways, dumping its 180 degree contents down my calf and ankle, soaking my sock, seeping into my shoe...
10:49 am: "Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit...."
10:49:23 am: Yank off shoe and sock, rip apart First Aid pack for a burn pad, slap the slimey thing on my ankle, wiggle my shoe back on, and go to interview the artist's wife.
10:55am: Artist's wife schools me on corporate procedures about these things. And here I thought I was the resident expert. Shamefacedly shuffle downstairs to print out necessary paperwork.
10:58am: Changing in "dungeon," Special Needs Girl argues about who gets to do tips. In my underwear with floppy wet burn thing sliding off my foot and a whip-smart artist's wife waiting for me upstairs while our printer pops out one. letter. at. a. time, I simply say, "Please be quiet." Tears well up in S.N.G.'s eyes.
11:00am: Shove paperwork at artist's wife, bumble through polite farewells, run/limp out door with co-worker.
11:01-11:40am: Take sloooow train over Longfellow Bridge, which may be breaking beneath us, to bank where our coins stop up the counting machine three times. Gossip about the cafe half-heartedly while praying I get enough tips to cover groceries for two weeks.
12ish to 1ish: S.N.G. is off the clock, but waiting in the basement for us to sort out the cash, staring and making terrible social gaffs. I can't stand other humans anymore so I start drawing bananas on each person's tip envelope. Banana scenarious include but are not limited to: Banana Tourist, Banana Incognito, Banana Silent Treatment, Banana Olympics, Banana in a Hammock (literal, not sexual), Banana Nun Loaf (banana in habit with little poop - terrible, I know, but my brain fell apart), and Banana in a Hot Air Balloon. Why not?
1:34pm: clock out, but stay to read and decompress and enjoy A/C. Regulars look at me like I'm a little pathetic to spend all my time here. In return, I begin to feel a little pathetic and take myself home.
2ish pm: Run into current favorite Irishman from Chorus. Reunite joyfully and plan on gettin' the gang together. Heart pitter-patters with hope and promises are made for future rendezvous.
2:20ish pm: On the train in my non-cafe clothes, I still reek of coffee. It smells like skunks to me. I try to make sense of the day. I get out of my seat so a three-year-old girl with Downs Syndrome can sit safely with her Mom or nanny or whoever. She waves eagerly. I feel like a puke as I think of S.N.G., who isn't nearly as needy as this little girl but is almost always as joyful. I think of how little joy I return to her.
Later than 2:20ish: Feeling abruptly returns to burned foot on train. Swallow scream.
3ish pm: Forge through Coolidge Corner to pick up ginger root and pork and a sense of self.
Afternoon and onward... Cook from Arahsae's 3rd cookerie 'zine. Spray things with bleach. Calm heartbeats and hatebeats. Eat near roommate, but not with roommate.
Now: Full stall. Literally full of yummy pork. Muy consada.

Learning blows.

2008-08-15T15:59:00.003-04:00

This, apparently, is the week for old friends to come back from my checkered past to make me feel like a pile o' somethin' smelly. I assume they don't mean to do this. I have the proclivity to travel pile o' shitwise these days. At any rate, these people somehow draw out my worst traits and I tend toward several unlikable behaviors:

1. intellectual oneupmanship,
2. bluffing,
3. and sundry manipulative affection-demanding gestures.

While standing by the mailbox on the street with my roomie walking toward me and my world crumbly around the edges, I had an epiphany. It went like this:

I act exactly this way with my father and brothers. I am repeating impossible relationships in my life in hopes of solving a massive problem, i. e. my family. Instead of changing my behavior, I fall back into subconsciously ritualized behaviors as a last-resort survival tactic.

Epiphany, Part the Second: the rituals never work.

You can imagine how useless they are considering they go like this:

1. Oh yeah? Well I'm super smart and stuff!
2. Then I don't give a shit, I'm just fine over here and not miserable at all!
3. But I'm cute as a button, right? Don't you want to touch me?

No one ought to be on the receiving end of that, even if they deserve a little confusion in repayment for all the shit they put me through.

That's the end of today's psychology lesson. I hope you learned something.

I hope I learned something.

But what is she DOING?

2008-08-03T21:39:00.003-04:00

Because people seem to be wondering, I shall provide you with the following mundane list of the crap that fills my days.

1. Avoiding phone calls.
2. Making unavoidable phone calls.
3. Carefully timing all checks sent to landlord and utilities.
4. Putting various band-aids on various lacerations/blisters/vulnerabilities on my still-mostly-dead foot.
5. Making corporate coffee. Avec smile. (Sometimes genuine.)
6. Buying more band-aids whilst postponing rent checks.
7. Babysitting a ten-month-old baby girl who screams at the top of her lungs for the first fifteen minutes. EVERY TIME I WATCH HER.
8. Lying awake.
9. Avoiding you. Yes, even you, although I love you and want to have something wonderful to say to you about my life. I don't, and so I am quiet.

Edenic

2008-07-10T14:11:00.002-04:00

The young family comes out around seven every night. The babysitter trades off with Mom and Dad, and the two little girls run sloppy laps around the ersatz courtyard, squealing and giggling for a half hour until they're tuckered enough for a bath and bed.

Last night they sat on a blanket, Mom and the girls at first, reading and playing. The sky rolled in with gray furrows and distant mutterings. As I rose to close our ancient pulley windows the littlest one stood barefoot on the blanket, her feathery hair blown over her eyes, chubby hands fisted. She looked out as though she could see the thunder approaching and would take it down a peg once it reached her. The older girl clung to her mother and shuddered. She jumped as I slid the windows down, craning her neck to find the source of the rumbling too-close noise.

Usually I say hello to the little family, but last night I was distracted and awed by their impunity. Even mother nature didn't dare rain on them. The father smiled gently as he gazed in the direction of his toddler's stare.

and dreams

2008-07-01T20:36:00.004-04:00

Lately it’s every time I go through Park Street station; there he is, packing up his guitar, wrapping up cords, zipping bags and gathering gear. I always miss the music.

He has brown eyes, big bear build, colorful, detailed tattoos sleeving strong arms. His head is shaved shiny. He wears brown and jeans and has a wallet chain. When he sings into his mic, his voice surprises me with its flannel softness.

In my work I don’t waste time with shyness, or coyness for that matter. The café is a stage and I act my ass off. The day flies by in a series of vignettes – this customer likes to be courted with sweet how-was-your-weekends and how-is-your-handsome-sons, the other one likes to be teased, told we’re out of his favorite things, made to pout before delivering his order exactly as he likes it. Old Man T comes in for his bagel, toasted darkly, one butter, small coffee, and sings vaudeville tunes to me as I hustle for him, trying to smile in appreciation when I can.

It’s funny that Park Street Guitar Guy leaves me tongue-tied. Musicians in general, performers in general, leave me tongue-tied. Perhaps it’s my own discomfort as a performer – it’s nice to be told someone enjoyed your performance, but also unmanageable. You say, “Thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed it,” and try to sound sincere, but really you know all the little things you missed and mangled and want to tell everyone how unworthy of praise you feel at the moment. And so what do you say to an artist you admire?

As I lean on the fourth metal column, past the second fan, across from the big subway map, I think of how to talk to him.

“My timing’s off. I always miss your music now…”

What would he say to that? Sounds like the start of an awkward conversation. And even though we make eye contact fairly often, I don’t know if he remembers seeing me. If he does remember seeing me, perhaps he won’t like the familiarity. Who needs a stalker?

“So, do you make any real money?” Hmm, seems rude. As does, “Do you play anywhere… else? Like, real gigs?” How could I put that better? “Nice elbows.” Thinking that, I laugh to myself. He looks up and I hide behind the column for a minute.

Well, I console myself, he could be a douche. He does play a lot of Dave Matthews, after all. He’s probably like all the pseudo-hippie frat boys I’ve learned to avoid, trying to get laid with a little heartfelt tune here and there, playing the misunderstood, suffering artist. Ugh. If he has a pocket-sized dog-eared copy of On the Road or Howl on his person at all times, it’s already over.

Still, there's something to be said for hormones and dreams, isn't there? A crush is a crush. It makes your heart bubble, makes you sweep your hair back, straighten your back, and hope.

2008-05-06T22:31:00.003-04:00

Regular customer: Hey, Jo, when's your chorus concert?
Jo: It's this weekend actually, on Saturday.
RC: Oh that's great! Are your parents coming?
Jo: Yep, coming in on Saturday and staying the night.
Mitch (from across the cafe): Goddammit!
RC: (bewildered expression)
Jo: Mitch hates it when I see my parents.
Mitch: She's freakin' useless for like a week after.
RC: That bad?
Jo and Mitch together: THAT bad.

they're coming.

2008-05-05T22:53:00.002-04:00

If you should see these people on the streets of Brookline... pray for me.

remember when i was a writer?

2008-05-04T22:08:00.002-04:00

I don't.

I did have some creative fun making this today, however...

... for a Chorus fundraiser. I've done more cheerleading than raising of funds, since I'm historically terrible at asking people for money. (Thanks, however, to the good, kind, much-too-nice-for-their-own-good people who have helped out. Sweet nothings shall be whispered in your general direction.)

2008-04-21T16:39:00.001-04:00

waking is a struggle of birth
body tossing spirits away
mewling against the light of day
still tethered to the heaving earth

Sunday Mornin' Saffron Pancakes

2008-04-06T13:26:00.002-04:00

Start by pouring a half cup of boiling water over a generous pinch of saffron. Seal in airtight container, allow to steep for a few hours (or a few days).

A couple years later, prepare some pancake batter, like so...

Dry ingredients in one (bigger) bowl:

1 1/2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 tbs sugar

Wet ingredients in another bowl:

1 egg, lightly beaten
3 tbs melted butter
1 cup ROOM TEMP milk (fattier milk works better)
1/4 c saffron infusion
1/2 tsp lemon juice

Lightly mix wet into dry. Fry up in a buttery pan (or on a griddle if you have one). Sprinkle pancakes with powdered sugar and devour. They should be thin and light and perrrfect.

Keep cooking batter until all important matters which you have been avoiding finally catch up with your conscience. Clean the kitchen instead of dealing with these matters. Write blog entry about procrastination to pretend that said procrastination has ceased.

People don't suck. Not always.

2008-03-29T18:55:00.004-04:00

I need to leave my job, and I know this, quite solidly, but every time I think I'm gonna scream some amazing customer makes me reconsider.

We have a young nanny who comes in after dropping off her charge at the local nursery school. She sits in a comfy chair and reads, naps, chats, reads s'more. At noon she takes off to pick up the little one, but before she goes we talk a little about books, music, nannying, Boston... anything. The other day we talked about children's lit. Next morning she paid for her drink and handed me a big ol' book - a collection of short stories by Roald Dahl.

Then there's the big T. He comes in two times a day and gets the same thing in the morning: the NY Times, a multi-grain bagel toasted twice with butter, and a large coffee. He's about 65 and works odd mornings at a school somewhere, and works as a tour guide in some historic site on the weekends. He studies furiously for both jobs, highly nervous about them. He insists that I should be an actress. He also insists that Sinatra, if he'd put as much work into acting as he had into singing, could have won an academy award. This gentleman talked up Bonnie and Clyde with such reverence that I eventually felt I had to rent it to see for myself. He fairly glowed with happiness when I shared my review with him. "I saw it at every theater in Boston on its opening night. The audience... You could hear them gasp in that last scene..."

One of my customers started out surly. He's a young Irish researcher affiliated with the hospital in some way. He'd come in and order a large coffee, dump half of it in the trash and fill it up with milk. One day I yelled at him: "Dude, just order a small coffee in a big cup. You're throwing away a good fifty cents every time you come in." Since then he's warmed up a bit and we've had jokes back and forth. When I came back from my surgery he announced loudly, "Oh, I thought they'd finally fired you!" Thanks, dude. One of the girls I work with said something like, "Whoa, I didn't know he could talk." Since then I've set out to sweeten him up with everyone else. This mission resulted in a contract trading 20 seconds of Irish jigging for 14 days of free coffee. He turned purple with embarrassment but eventually signed it and taught me a simple jig. Now he comes in with a big ol' tip ready for whoever serves him.

The nanny, just so you know, was so intent on her reading that she missed the jigging. Woe is she!

Smoky Night

2008-03-16T15:06:00.004-04:00

This video (title link) shows footage of a fire that consumed a house behind my apartment building. Those evacuated include my roommate and myself. She woke me with panicked shouting and we blundered into shoes and out the door. I was sure our roof was on fire - the sky glowed orange and sparks flew up and over, floating into our courtyard. Running out to the street, we stepped over hoses and around trucks and spun on our heels to watch out for the next truck as sirens wailed. Wandering through the peculiar desolation of Coolidge Corner at 4am, we finally pulled out our phones and tried to find a place to sleep for the night. Melis had couches and blankets ready. Somehow, when our hearts stopped pounding, we slept.

(Pictured here, the site where a house used to be. The brick building with the iron porches is my building. Too close for comfort.)

Today, a house is gone, another house is damaged, three firefighters are injured, and a whole neighborhood is investing in new batteries for smoke alarms.

focus

2008-03-14T23:15:00.003-04:00

I had an interview today for an interesting but possibly not career-oriented job, and found myself saying all kinds of things about my passions that I don't want to believe. I was saying that Children's Literature is a private endeavor, has no application in my real life or career. That writing is a personal pleasure and not a profession. That my education was fun but completely self-indulgent...

The thing is, I'm beginning to believe those statements. And truthfully, I have no idea where I go from here.

silhouette nouveau

2008-03-13T14:45:00.006-04:00

Got m'hairs cut. One of my regulars insisted on cutting it as I would be an instant advertisement for his shop. Smart, and he gave me a deeep discount. He also insisted on coloring it. I'm not so comfortable with the highlights, but hey, it's only hair.

My brother's lung, oh worriers, is on the mend. They've blown it up, done some confusing surgery and sealed him shut. He's still in the hospital and they'll release him when he's able to take pain medication orally. Should be soon.

I'm going home for Easter.

Sigh.

My brother's lung

2008-03-10T23:17:00.003-04:00

... went POP again.

He's okay, it's re-inflated, they're planning surgery, he's not in much pain, the babies are taken care of...

but I guess I'm going home for Easter.

Because I need to see him

and poke him for myself to make sure he's still alive. And then beat him up for not quitting smoking when he said he would. And then hug him but not too hard lest he burst something else important.

Morning rituals

2008-03-09T13:47:00.003-04:00

By the time Bostonians are restlessly tossing in their early Sunday morning hangover beds, I'm standing in the freezing cold, waiting for the Green Line trolley to amble its way down the hill. The driver and I exchange polite grunts and I stow myself in a forward-facing seat. I take out my book and try to get my eyes to focus. Sometimes I succeed.

The other people traveling at this time fall into categories.

Category 1: The people who run Boston so you can pretend YOU'RE running Boston. I'm talking T drivers, cleaning crews, Dunkies' and Starbucks staff, more cleaning crews, and construction workers. I'm sad to say that the hours before the morning rush hour are the only time I tend to see people of any significant shade of color other than pasty-ass white on the Beacon St. train.

Category 2: The mentally ill/retarded/homeless. One Downs dude, two tiny asian trash-pickers and one lady wearing seven-thousand layers and reeking of pee all fall into this category. One dude must have a municipal job. He wears a clean but ill-fitting suit, has the narrowest face and the biggest cartoon hawk nose, bouffant hair and the most irritating voice I've ever heard. When he recognizes someone he talks incessantly about his health in that nasally whine. "...But I stopped seeing that doctor because my mother said I should get a second opinion..." This man is probably in his fifties. His mother must be pretty old to be that domineering.

Category three: Financial district workaholics and workoutaholics. It has to be pretty bad if you get into the office not only before dawn, but before all your co-workers could collectively manage to spell the word 'dawn.' I guess that's a competitive edge. Women in yoga pants with their work shoes in chic shopping bags (Neiman Marcus is a popular choice) belong in this category. Some of them have showered and made themselves up for the train ride. Yes, the 5 am train ride that takes them to their workouts.

I don't spend much time evaluating the crowd anymore. The train rocks along and I read or sleep the open-mouthed, drooling sleep of the truly exhausted. At some point I wake up and say, "Whoa, where the hell am I?" As yet, I have not screwed up so badly as to pass my stop. I have, at least thrice, had mini-heart attacks upon realizing that I wake up AT my stop as the doors are closing, at which point I leap up and scream and roll out in the nick of time Indiana Jones style.

Then I switch trains.
After limping down the stairs I stare at the same people across the Red Line tracks. There are two Brazilians who know each other but seem to only talk while waiting for the train. They cease conversation once they board. There's an older black dude with a cane who sits on the far side of the bench so the Brazilians can chat. There's a challenged woman who walks waaaay too close to the edge of the platform. She wobbles, too. It's disconcerting.

Because I'm challenged in my own way, I travel one stop, exit with all the people who work at the hospital, and yield to the right, toward the elevators. The same women board the elevator every time I use it. They are round, short, one's southern black and one's West Indian. They are both middle-aged and tired. Every time we enter the elevator, one of them exclaims something faintly religious.

"Ah Lawd and Save-yah!"

"My Lawd God in Heav'n!"

"My sweet baby Jesus..."

These exclamations seem to mean the following things in the inarticulated early morning conversation: "It's fucking cold, it's fucking early, and I can't believe I'm fucking working."

At least, that's my interpretation. I never open my mouth in these exchanges but smile knowingly and nod in agreement. I give my, "Hooo doggies you're dead on!" look and let them exit the elevator first like a good little girl who was brought up right.

So you can imagine, by the time I get to my Starbucks, apron-up, clock-in and set up the store, I've done a lot of living considering how long I've been awake.

And this, all this, is why I can manage a half-smile and a "Do you want room in your coffee?" by 6:00 in the goddamn morning. With a two-hour lead time, it's almost like I'm awake.

Wake-up call for Miss Biv...

2008-03-03T23:48:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow morning my therapist will call me at 9:45 to tell me a joke.

Several reasons behind this:

1. I'm afraid of the phone, and have many scary phone calls to make tomorrow. The first phone interaction, by his decree, will be easy.

2. I have the day off (kinda) and would sleep all day, or pretend to sleep, if I didn't have a concrete reason to do otherwise.

3. He really, really wants to help keep me afloat and doesn't know what I need, so I asked him for some very basic survival help. The phone call is his idea but dovetails nicely with other help I've asked for. (I believe my phrasing went something like, "I need consistent kicks in the ass.")

What would Freud think, I wonder?

DJ Jazzy JoBiv

2008-02-22T13:09:00.006-05:00

Last night I helped out my Canuck Melissa with a wee project. She's running an event (a benefit gala) for her work and needed a soundtrack. Now, last year we developed a short album of carefully chosen songs that would bring people in for hors d'oeuvres and then kick them out at the end of the event. I sat and wrangled tracks from all over my CD collection, flexing and stretching to appease the client.

This year, I was prepared. Having lots of time on my hands these days (artificially, anyway), I put together 38 tracks of possibilities, choosing with Canuck's pickiness in mind. The songs had to be clean, classic, and not too adventurous. I, of course, insisted on putting in a few gems that she simply had to hear, 'though I knew they wouldn't make it to her compilation.

So after two hours, two bowls of homemade chili, two pudding cups and too much music, she walked away with three perfected soundtracks, hand-picked and groomed. Some great things got left out (my favorite version of Chet Baker's "My Funny Valentine" got blacklisted for its extensive, but I think understated, drum solo) but some greater things will get an introduction (Madeleine Peyroux, Jamie Cullum - new school meets old school).

All of this is to say that I was shocked at how happily I drifted off to sleep last night, completely immersed in my music. I was full of my expert status and gleeful after sharing music that's informed my vocal personality (including non-vocal tracks, mind you). The silly thing is, I forgot about this. I forgot that I'm good at something. Or some things. I forgot how good it feels to share and teach the things that make me passionate.

Let me cling to it a little longer. There has to be a way to use this in my life, right?

i rambini

2008-02-11T19:23:00.000-05:00

Bizarro Sunday…

On my way home from a sad, painful little shift at the Bux, I wound up on the T across from two teen-aged boys. At first I was zoned out, buried in thoughts of how to initiate a few big discussions with various people (my manager, therapist, surgeon, roommates…) and was shocked out of my anxious meanderings by mention of guns.

“He’s got this rifle that’s like old Civil War but like way better and it reloads faster and the bullets are like made with…”

Inspecting the kids from across the aisle, there were no outward signs that they’d be in much contact with firearms. I don’t know what I was expecting, but the whiteness, the abercrombie-ness, the general we-live-in-Brookline quality was baffling to me. And they would. not. shut. up.

“… And there’s this gun where like the bullet’s like this big (gesturing with hands to the rough size of a basketball) and you can only shoot one and it’s like all your ammo for like weeks but it like tears shit apart and then you can’t shoot it for like a month but it’s like this big…”

What? Video games maybe?

“…he was just in the Airforce which, like, they don’t even have real guns because they don’t shoot people like Marines, so I don’t think he even saw a gun but there was this cool one that this Marine kid had and he can carry it anywhere and wouldn’t it be cool if I got a gun and I could...”

Yikes.

This reminds me of my mother’s take on the Second Amendment. Her theory is that the founding fathers would be overjoyed if those who still insist on upholding this particular amendment may only do so in an historically accurate manner. That is, they may carry 18^th century bayonets, which are impossible to aim, take about five minutes to reload and require such constant upkeep that really, how much damage could a person do with one? I don’t think this argument is particularly helpful, but charming thought, no?

Anyway, the Gun Fiends got off at my stop and lurched behind me for most of my limp home. My rough estimate on the time invested in their deep conversation… twenty minutes or more. On GUNS. This is the kind of instance that makes me think that I could never write convincing enough characters for a good novel because my brain would never conceive of a person, much less TWO people, who could sustain that kind of conversation for more than five seconds. I'm (appropriately) blown away.

Found an old notebook...

2008-01-29T09:59:00.000-05:00

I was looking for blank pages so I could take notes on my scary phone call of the day (Mass Rehab) and found pages of doodles and poetry. Only a few pages had anything on them and I believe all the of the material came from my trip to NYC last year. At the time I was unsure of The Novelist and of myself, in a very dark moment.

How's this for indicative poetry?

Shoes and Lovers

Shoes and lovers hurt you
From knowing you too little
And knowing you too well
You can never know how long
You linger in the middle
The best days of the pair

I should tell you that I had a date last night -- a good one, I thought. It involved tea and a bookstore, so how could it be bad? The slight complication is that the gentleman in question works in the same offices as The Novelist. I don't want to hurt my wee writer. Well, I mostly don't want to hurt my wee writer... There's a part of me that is still angry.

un edit ed

2008-01-22T13:36:00.000-05:00

I don't know where to start, so I'll just start. I worked a my first shift back at Starbucks yesterday. My doctor said I could go back to work so I took a shift that someone bailed out on. Three hours in my scar started puffing up. By the time i got home it was bleeding. I was tired, of course, and aching everywhere and not even useful in the store and completely unsure of how many hours I could work, and then... bleeding.

I have no money coming. My surgeon's assistant never mailed the forms he was supposed to mail, despite my constant calls, so I missed the file date with my insurance. My parents finally got a big fat envelope of forms postmarked january 7th. Clearly the guy didn't touch it til at least a week after he got back from vacation. By the time my parents forwarded the envelope, I opened it to find out it said I could go back to work immediately. Good? Not good? I had no idea, considering I hadn't seen the surgeon again.

I had an appointment the next day, actually, and brought up the forms. I asked my surgeon to extend the date because I couldn't get hours at starbucks and can't afford to shut off the income from the insurance til i start getting hours. This is all assuming that the insurance will work out.

As an extra happy surprise, I got several statements from my insurance detailing my surgery and the parts they'll cover. Apparently I owe about $3,000. Honestly, it wouldn't matter if it were $30, I can't pay anything. I've saved that freakout for another day.

So now... today... I dunno. I have to call Starbucks and tell them I'm bleeding and I do want hours but I can't DO anything. I should maybe, okay definitely call the surgeon's office to let them know the wound opened up and find out if that's a big deal or not. I have to call insurance people every day for the rest of my life until they can help me. I have to take a shower and brush my teeth and wear clothes and read mail and every little thing seems impossible.

I'm so tired. How do I stop being tired?

I've been going on dates willy nilly, too. I was going to omit that, but it's important. I'm in this very juvenile frame of mind these days where I need constant approval and attention, and so I throw myself at people and beg beg beg them to like me. I'm so fucking pissed that I have to wear a brace and can't walk properly can't earn money and I want some proof from the world that I'm still some kind of adorable human being. So I let men buy me dinner and tell me all the things about their lives that would normally make me say, "I think I hear my mother calling," and leave. I let them kiss me and try to feel convinced. And of course, as predicted, none of it works for the positive, except maybe getting dinner or coffee for free.

It's my brother Chris's birthday today. Also The Novelist's. My chest kind of squeezes around that weirdly. Everything, everything is so uncomfortable.

Trying to find a positive note, but then again we talked about that, didn't we? How i try to be positive for you sometimes, try to make other people more comfortable with my hardships. Maybe I don't have the strength today.

First day back at work

2008-01-21T22:53:00.000-05:00

and my stitches opened up. That's right, five hours of work and I'm BLEEDING.

This can only end in tears, as they say.

'strange' is wunnathose words

2008-01-20T22:49:00.000-05:00

Walking out of a long, high-tension movie (Atonement) with my friend, she stood waiting for me to put myself together. As I put on a sweater and a coat and a scarf, something strange happened.

I feel that this thing was so private and harsh to my friend that I can’t tell you about it, yet I need to write something because my head is spinning. And so, in a sort of prophylactic attempt to save her story I’ll tell one of mine.

It was a hard Thursday last year when I hadn’t managed to get out of the apartment for a week or so. I’d missed therapy and was about to miss group therapy. I found myself spending hours playing checkers online with strangers, who are much easier to talk to than the people who care about you when you’re in a mind to hate yourself. I’d decided to meet some guy I’d met through Match or checkers or something else. I’d decided to put on make-up and go out for a flirty, meaningless coffee because I couldn’t stand to take myself to group therapy. Mostly, I couldn’t stand to deal with my own shit that day.

And of course, while I was walking with this person, having just met in Coolidge Corner, a man from my therapy group was getting into a cab on his way to the hospital. He spotted me and yelled out a Hulloo.

“Oh, hi,” I said, careful not to use his name, because it’s strange territory among… groupees, “How are you?”

“Well, I’m headed over there right now. I’m going to be a little late but I really need to go. It’s good for me to go even when I don’t want to go…” etc. etc.

At some point it dawned on him that I wasn’t going and that I had company.

Now it was equally impossible to introduce this person I’d just met. I felt it wasn’t my right to give his name or to exchange it for the groupee’s name. All I could do was stand there and look stunned.

“I left a message with the secretary,” was all I said.

“Okay, well, hope to see you next week,” said Groupee.

Even though no one had been hurt, and only I had suffered some embarrassment, I still remember that cold, tight feeling in my abdomen of every single thing having gone wrong somehow, of all my deep and terrible secrets being bared, and worst of all, of those secrets becoming so instantaneously stupid and tiny.

Rationally, I knew that, in fact, nothing had happened, yet my mind twirled in inflated confusion for days afterward. I know my friend is feeling some of that now. I could see it on her face. Just as no one could soothe that feeling out of me, I knew that anything I said would only make her embarrassment more acute.

How do any of us sleep while so many people are hurting?

As we left each other tonight I apologized for my long silence over the past months. I said, "I'll try not to be such a stranger."

She said something like, "Oh, don't worry, you're not a stranger, you're just strange."

"Strange" is one of those words that if you say it over and over and over it loses meaning and sounds foreign. In fact, it makes everything more strange. strange. strange. strange. strange. strange. strange.

my left foot

2008-01-19T18:25:00.001-05:00

THAT's why she's so grumpy. She can't feel her foot and the doctor told her that's not a good sign but too bad it could be like that for the rest of your goddamn life so let's just get that brace altered and send you on your way to a life of ugly too-big shoes and unsexiness and oh my fucking god...

Effing brace. I'm so sick of it I could SCREEEEAAAAAM!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHGHHHHHHHHHH!

the momanomaly

2008-01-19T09:34:00.000-05:00

On day five after surgery, I awoke from the last shards of morphine into a new version of my life. In this version, pain and discomfort was constant but normal, I was fairly helpless all the time, and my mother lived on the floor of my bedroom.

I need to tell you about those days with my mother because it was so otherworldly. She was not the same creature I’ve grown to accept and fear. She was placid, strong and giving.

Even better, my roommates seemed to calm in her presence. One of them got sick that first week and we spent a lot of time letting my mother baby us. We had our rituals of tea and TV and simple meals. When I felt well enough we walked to Trader Joe’s and I tried to keep my mother from bringing the whole store home.

And despite irrationally blaming my mother for my tanking love life (as though I’d have dates lined out the door a week after surgery [or ever]) and my flailing social life (think I’m bad with the phone when I’m NOT on narcotics?), the days were mostly lovely in that, “wow, she expects absolutely nothing of me,” kinda way.

By week two, several changes had occurred. One, my mother ran out of her nasal nicotine cigarette-replacement spray. At home she would have been pacing and gnawing. In my apartment she calmly drank tea and tooled at crossword puzzles. Also, I had gotten well enough to regain my rigid sense of personal space and felt a bit claustrophobic. Because I’m predictable, I ended up crying to my mother about how hard this must be for her, to give up her routines and her privacy to help me.

Here’s the cool thing: she totally caught me out in my pathological game. My mother, whom I’ve been defensively mothering for at least a decade now, coolly dissected my reactions and let me be upset about the things that upset me. I cried on the couch where I couldn’t quite sit comfortably and she told me it was okay, that life sucks, that THIS sucks. She allowed my puerile manipulations and excused them and in the end she was simply there.

And then Dad’s phone calls kept her phone buzzing off of tables. My roommates got used to saying, “It’s PapaBiv!” whenever they heard the ringtone. It was always PapaBiv. He had decided to pick us up.

It wasn’t until my father had called from Schenectady that I noticed my mother unraveling. She started having coughing fits and slipping snide comments into her usually gentle instructions. She made and edited lists out loud, urging her frantic energy onto my plate and begging for me to pick it up.

The night before my Dad rolled in I was able to hear what she’d been saying for a few days. “It’s been so nice to be here, among girls. I never had that. I never lived on my own with a bunch of girls and had my own life.” By the time Dad reached Springfield, those phrases became a spite-tinged litany.

On Christmas Eve, when my father had become completely irascible, I caught my mother’s eye and said, “Y’know, there are a lot of nice men in Boston.” There was a true wistfulness in her eye as she washed out wine bottles in a series of deft, well-practiced movements.

A week in pictures (and poverty)

2008-01-19T01:29:00.000-05:00

There was snow. It was purty, and impossible to walk on with only one good foot.

Eggs and bananas. Bananas and eggs. (And toast, at the time, although I've run out of bread since.)

Proof that I left the apartment and made it to the movies with my roomie. Good Jo! Tut tut.

Dressed up for dates, because if I go on dates someone else will pay for my coffee/drinks/dinner. And I'm less bored. Okay, and I like boys.

Proof that I still love Boston, even though I've been dealt the worst blows of my life here (and they just keep coming).

Art therapy.

2008-01-07T23:51:00.000-05:00

I thought I felt like this today.

Turns out this Ramona is a gross understatement.

*No Ramonas were harmed during the making of this post.
** I would tell you the story of today but it's an internal one and completely boring. Let's just hope it's a temporary funk a la Ramona.

Forgotten poem

2008-01-07T13:06:00.000-05:00

I wrote this when I was with The Novelist and never published it here. Trying to get back in my poettish frame of mine, so I'll share it, even tattered as it is.

I've noticed that we've learned to fit each other.
We take turns, leave space in our breath
for each other. We crawl around time
and give hours to each other. We
slice open our inner ears for each other.
We leave our hands empty and wait
for each other. We break all our eggs,
but tiptoe for each other. Perhaps
we save up our best lies for each other.
(And I wonder; would one of us die
for the other?) We keep sacred one drop
in the eye of the other. We conquer
the others, submit to each other.

3/26/06

riding the crazy train

2008-01-04T15:58:00.000-05:00

I got my brace fitted on Monday, New Year's Eve. It's purple with bright planets on it, because that's how I roll. Er... limp. Understand, please, that I need the brace because my foot is still dead and my calf muscles only partly work. This, according to my surgeon, is not a hopeful sign.

On Tuesday I decided to test out the brace a bit and took myself downtown to my former place of work. The T ride was the most entertaining part of the day. Of course there were the hungover young folk still wearing their stained party clothes and reeking of greasy food and appletinis. Then there were First Night families trying to figure out why Boston SUCKS on New Year's Day when it was ever-so-fun the night before. I sat facing one family with three middle school aged kids. The littlest one was absolutely beautiful with her awkward glasses and sweet cowlick.

Then two blue-collarish guys got on, walked past me and sat lengthwise across back-to-back double seats, so as to assert their masculinity, one can only guess. One was a short latino with ridiculously long eyelashes and a baby face. The other was red. Red hair, red skin, red bloodshot eyes. I caught him looking at me and looked right back, then turned away. Apparently, this was an invitation.

He got up while the train was in motion. He sat across from me on the edge of a double seat, knees jutting into the aisle, leaning forward.

"Hi," said Red.

"Hello," said Jo.

"Do I know you from somewhere? You look so familiar to me," said Red.

"That's funny, because I have no idea who you are," I said, countering my rudeness with a wee smile.

"Oh. Well I just thought I knew you..."

"I'm pretty sure I've never met you," I said.

"Okay. Well. How was your New Year's?" asked Red.

"It was okay." (Actually, it was dead quiet. I didn't manage to leave the apartment.) "How was yours?"

"Oh mine was... blah blah... worked all night... been driving... blah..." he said, I think. There were huge gaps in his speech during which the train squealed or rumbled and he spoke too quietly and I couldn't hear a thing he said.

"What?" I said.

"I was driving with my buddy from... ...and we .... and then... so we're tired as hell..."

"Do you get to go home and rest?" I asked.

"Yeah, we're headed to the North End. I'm staying in the North End," said Red.

"Cool," I said, nodding and smiling.

"You have a really nice smile," he said.

BLUSH, I said. "Thank you."

Awkward silence.

"So," I said, "You're not from around here?"

"No," he said, "I'm from... ... up by... ... just in town for a while, thinking about moving here..."

I nodded, not bothering to have him repeat. At this point I realized the entire First Night family was watching us fiercely, especially the little girl. Her eyes fled from one face to the other like she was watching a ping pong tourney. I thought I should be a little more polite.

"And you? Are you from here," he asked.

"No, I'm from western New York. Six hour drive away."

"Ohh, and you live around here?"

"Yep, I'm not going back," I said. "I found a good place in Brookline."

"Brookline," he repeated.

"I came here for grad school and I'm staying," I said.

"Grad school," he repeated.

It was then that I realized I sounded like a prick. Red lost some of his gusto as the interview continued. For some reason, I felt like I had to efface myself a bit to make him more comfortable. I started babbling about how my grad degree didn't lead to a good job and I'm barely making it, like everyone else in the city. Through all the jabbering there were longer moments of stilted silence. When was he getting off this train? We'd been on it from Kenmore.

"I'm Chris, by the way," he said, reaching out his hand for me to shake.

"I'm Jo," I said, finding no reason to lie to him.

"It was really good talking to you, Jo."

"Yeah, well I hope you get some rest. It was nice talking to you, too."

"So could I get... ... if you don't..."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Could I... ...my number? Or could you... ... your number?"

My mind raced a bit. The little girl across from me peered intently, watching my every gesture. I thought about myself first, all the things that are currently fractured in my life and how undateable I am right now. I thought about him, not really living here, just some random dude to whom I was not all that attracted. I thought about getting a free dinner out of him - a practicality I could certainly use. I thought of excuses I could give him to make him feel better. In the end I said,

"No, I don't think so."

He smiled and took it well, then repeated the whole "It was nice talking to you" bit.

In the sudden and absolute silence there was nothing to do. I looked out the window at the dark tunnel, I looked across to the little girl, who was squirming in shared discomfort. I smiled back at Red a bit. I decided to get off at Boylston to end the awkwardness. I could just hop on the next train and keep going.

I got up, gathered myself, and just then remembered the brace. Red's baby-faced friend got up, too, hovering by the stairs. Shit.

"This is my stop, too," said Red.

Shit shit shit.

"You really do have a great smile," he said.

"Thanks," I said, flushing from the compliment and the coming gaff.

The doors opened and I let myself down the stairs one at a time. Red followed. I limped along and Red and Baby-face passed me. Red said a nice goodbye. Baby-face turned around, pointedly looked at my leg and gave me a pitying look. "Have a good New Year," he said.

I thanked him and whipped out my cellphone, pretending to check messages, not wanting to pass the gates and have to pay again.

A man waiting for a Lechmere train saw the whole thing. I waited for the next train, leaning on a column, regaining my composure. I bent to hide the brace a bit more. No use.

This, I thought, is your New Year.

The Post-Opera

2007-12-27T12:38:00.000-05:00

Our last report from JoBivlion hinted at an upcoming surgery. Here, in its entirety, is the drama of the event, which I like to call:

The Post-Opera

Aaaaaand... Curtain!

Act I: A Rude Awakening

Waking up from surgery sucks. I suggest you never try it. All of the doctors – the anesthesiologist, the surgeon – were careful to tell me every little thing they were doing. The put me out, then flipped me onto my stomach, performed the surgery, flipped me back and let me wake up. There’s this lapse point between the pain medication they give you during surgery and the stuff they give you once you’re awake. That part SUCKS.

And then there was: “Have you told my parents I’m okay yet? Please tell them I’m okay…” I had this vision of my mother chewing through naugahyde. “No, I know I’M okay, but do THEY know I’m okay…”

Eventually, they said they’d talked to my dad and I shut up.

Actually it was the drugs. I had this lovely self-metered morphine drip thingie which I could press once every six minutes for relief. I don’t know why they don’t make that automatic, because it took me exactly ten minutes to find out the excruciating pain resulting from missing a dose. From then on I was trained better than Pavlov’s puppy. Nary did I speak, nap, or sip for longer than five minutes for the next two days.

Act II: Enter Chorus

My mother looked about seven years older than I’d left her. Walking in with dad she was trying not to react to something. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I reassured her and Dad with smiles and weak jokes. We all strolled together (well, I rolled) to my hospital room, watched people poke me, talked about how amazing the staff had been, etc.

Eventually I was alone except for the woman in the neighboring bed. She spoke Spanish and had gray hair. That’s all I could know of her.

I drifted and woke and drifted again. The world shrank to a microcosm of my pain, my magic morphine button, tiny beeping noises and constant buzzing of electricity. And hacking coughs from the little lady, followed by, “Ay, Dios mio! Ay, Maria!”

At some point I realized my parents were in the room again. I faked sleep, too tired to acknowledge them, but then the pain grew too intolerable and I had to push my button.

Now, according to my parents, we had an hour-long, incredibly lucid and relaxed conversation about art and literature, during which I said several important things which no one recalls. I remember my parents glancing at each other in disbelief, and quietly responding with mysterious smiles. My mother later told me that she wished I was on morphine all the time: I was so at ease in myself, defenses down, pure intelligence. I think I have the key to future doctoral work.

Act III: The Great Battle Scene

Probably the ickiest bit of the post-op play comes when the nursing staff expects you to answer questions, drink, eat, and generally use your body, which feels pretty unusable. This was my least favorite part and I prefer not to dwell on it. Let’s just say that I was in such oblivion that I had no idea I’d been catheterized until a nurse brought it up.

I couldn’t eat or drink without extreme nausea. My surgery resulted in a tiny nick in my spinal cord, which would cause migraine-esque headaches if I tried to sit up. My left leg pain was gone, but in its place was this searing wrongness at the site of the incision, and constant muscle pain in my back. I was rendered helpless. It’s fortunate I couldn’t reach my hair to pull it out.

My parents hovered all day until they were forced out, and then came the long night. My neighbor, it turns out, was the cutest little lady anyone had ever seen, but she was restless and didn’t want to sit in her bed all day. She constantly bungled her escape plans by forgetting that her bed had an alarm on it. The nurses would rush in, none of them Spanish speakers, and coax her back into bed. Eventually, she won, and they rolled her out into the nurses station so she could see some action.

My night nurse was a sweet guy. He kept me company (mostly to get away from the Ay, Marias, I think) and we talked about all kinds of things – where he’d gone to school, Boston rent, my non-career. When he left to do his work I would try to sleep. The problem was, it had finally caught up with me in my short dreams that I was in the hospital. My weird memories of my last hospitalization settled over me. When my nurse came back I wanted to ask him to stay and watch me.

I got through that night somehow, not sleeping, trying hard not to think. The morning seemed blessed to me, like I’d made it through a long, deep tunnel. I hadn’t known I was fighting until the exhaustion swept over me with the sunrise.

Act IV: Our Heroine Emerges Victorious

Midmorning, my new nurse took me off the morphine drip and had me take a pill. She brought me breakfast (beef broth, yogurt, jell-o and tea) and encouraged me to try eating. I was confused and encouraged.

My parents appeared suddenly, happy to see me looking more lively, eating real food (kinda) and actually awake. By afternoon the catheter had been removed and I had to try to walk. It was bizarre, each little movement a huge effort. Getting out of bed was the worst part, but I was cheerful about it. My mother kept admonishing me to go slowly, not to hurry, stay in bed if it feels better. The nurse quietly shushed her and encouraged me.

A few hours later I was walking slow laps around the nurses station. My new nurse showed me how to manage stairs. I felt like a working prototype. It was time to go home.

Act V: The Homecoming

Somehow, I dressed and cleaned myself and got into a car and arrived (three minutes later) at my apartment. I managed the stairs with my parents’ help. My father ran out for necessities and my mother eased me into bed.

At some point I was up, staring into my bathroom mirror at my slackened, dry, discolored face. I looked like the undead. I realized then how I must have looked to my mother when I came out of surgery – much worse than this, surely.

My father drove back to Rochester. My mother set up an air mattress on my floor. We drank tea and she watched me dissolve medicine, appearing to help whenever she could. It took nearly a week for the morphine to wear off. There was one day when my roommates and my mother pronounced me living. I looked in the mirror and saw my pink lips and flushed cheeks. I ate with more vigor. I grew bored and restless. The worst was over.

Back in Action

2007-12-26T14:31:00.001-05:00

Kinda...

My bro asked me to edit a bit for his family's safety from an evil witch - long story - and it took me FOREVOR.

Shall post soon, m'loves!

Surgery Eve

2007-11-29T22:24:00.000-05:00

What I Did The Night Before Surgery, By Jo Biv

I was aaalll ready to make myself crazy, running around the apartment, picking up all the stuff that I haven't picked up (because it hurts) and distracting myself thusly. Then my roommate came home and said, "Hey, First Light is tonight."

Waah... How did I end up missing it? First Light is my favorite Brookline thingie! It's basically the official beginning of the holiday season when they turn on all the lights. Tons of local businesses sponsor performances and give away freebies.

So Amy and I ate dinner and planned our boring nights. Eventually I said, "Amy, change outta yer pj's. We're goin' to First Light."

These photos come from my marvelous phone. My favorite First Light tradition happens at Party Favors. They clear out their huge front windows and make it a cake workshop. Standing outside, you can watch the pastry chef decorating impossibly beautiful cakes. We watched him create a gorgeously ornate Christmas tree cake, and then he made a princess with a doll stuck into a big bell-shaped cake. These pictures show him whipping off the skirt. He made a dozen frosting roses, each one taking less than five seconds. It was cooool.

So then we limped home (I limped, Amy walked), and as I finished up some laundry (pj's for the hospital), Amy had started Elf in the living room. Who can clean when there's Christmas on the telly?

And now I'm watching Food Network and pulling out my hair. What a busy night!

See ya post-op.

The knife.

2007-11-28T17:20:00.000-05:00

Soooo I don't think I told you that I can't feel or move my left foot. It's been two-ish weeks now and my doctor has been frantically shoving me to various appointments - MRI's, x-rays, orthopedic surgeons.

This morning, a verdict. I have a severely herniated disk.

Doctor: Not the worst I've seen, but certainly tied for second.
JoBiv: Um... is that some kind of honor?
Doctor: [chuckle]
JoBiv: [stare]

He's a charming, congenial, not to mention youngish and handsome kind of man and I want to like him. He gave me a slideshow of my body from various angles and cross-sections, explaining that if it were just the disk, he wouldn't suggest surgery. In my case it's nerve damage. A herniated disk heals itself; nerve damage can be permanent.

He suggested surgery for tomorrow's bill of fare.

JoBiv: (after an hour of careful Q&A replete with models, posters and various pokings) And is there a chance I could get muscle control back in my foot without surgery? With physical therapy? Anything?
Doctor: Honestly, no. You could wear a brace to support your foot so you don't drag it. I've had people decide to do that. Meanwhile, the longer you wait to get surgery, the longer it will take for you to regain that control.
JoBiv: So... [panicking] I'd have to... [panicking further]
Doctor: [incredulous] Are you crying?
JoBiv: [crying] Yeah, I guess I am.

Doctor: [hustles to find tissues while muttering self-consciously about the badly stocked exam room, places inadequately tiny box of phyllo-thin tissues beside me.]
JoBiv: Hooonk. [sniffling. breathing deeply.] So this is how I operate...
Doctor: [with clear relief, but not picking up the pun] Yes! Tell me.
JoBiv: I'm going to go home, freak out, make some phone calls and do some research on my own. Then I'll call you with the questions I come up with and we'll figure it out. There's no way I can go into surgery tomorrow.

The doctor wished me good luck with my freaking out and gave me a number to call that wouldn't lead to endless voice-prompts and myriad receptionists. I guess he means business.

And now I've done my research, I've left my messages, I've consulted friends and parents. I'm waiting for my doctor to call me back, to let me know if I should see a neurologist or a second orthopedic surgeon. And then... the knife?

R.I.P. Maurice III, IV, V

2007-11-16T22:51:00.000-05:00

My plant has passed on. It was a lovely dracaena - three plants, actually, that came in one pot, which I transferred to a very large ceramic urn. They lived happily for a while, spiking out their happy leaves from sad apartment to sad apartment. They accepted, with aplomb, over-watering and starvation. They bent, they shriveled, they flourished, they... died.

I don't recall when I named the first Maurice, which I got from a grateful parent back when I worked at the YMCA camp. That little plant lasted through the end of college, my first rented apartment in Ithaca, a brief sojourn in Victor while I was away in Ireland (Mom sent me polaroids to assure me of his health), and the first year of grad school.

Maurice the first was tough. He died the same week Shane died. I came back from the funeral and found him crumpled, brown, and beyond rejuvenation.

Maurice the second came puny and remained puny. He liked his little life on Beacon Street, looking out the fifth floor window at the manicured patio below. He withstood a bit of Christmas decoration and several tipping accidents, but then he got bored or fried or something, and he gave up the ghost riiiight about the time I found out the Big U was semi-dumping me.

Les Maurices III, IV, V died last week, really, only I haven't gotten around to a proper burial until now. These fine fellows loved the front porch of my otherwise delapidated house on Winchester Street. It's actually a very good thing I never brought them inside, because we had some kind of larva infestation that surely would have snuck into Maurices' gorgeous green locks.
And then here, on Longwood, Les Maurices seemed happy. They gave all outward signs of health. I mean, they leaned a bit longingly toward the big front windows - the only windows that get any kind of steady natural light - but it seemed to me like a winsome, sweet leaning. Alas, when my brother's dog whined out at the world by that window, she knocked Les Maurices over, as well as a few other fragile things, and the poor dears were less anchored than I thought. Their roots torn, their summer light fading, they perished within a month of Tom's visit.

Here's the eerie thing; when I went home for Baby Girl's birthday, I found out that the same week Les Maurices passed on, so did my great-uncle Doc.

Spooooooky...

Anyway, here's to Les Maurices! All five of 'em! That's the end of dracaenae stewardship for me, my friends. It's just irresponsible to buy another, both for the plant's sake and the fragile threads of my sanity.

dirty laundry indeed

2007-11-14T11:36:00.000-05:00

Some day, I often think, I will cross Beacon Street with a little too much confidence and a trolley will flatten me. Smoosh. Game over. And then what’s left of me in the world?

There’s a spiffy but worn-out wardrobe, a gorgeous collection of books, one kickin’ music library, and… all this writing, doodles, paintings, letters never sent, obsessions.

Morbid, I know, to think of one’s leavings, and sometimes I’m in a self-pitying morbid mood. Other times I simply strive to comprehend what I’ve made in this world, whether any of it is worthy of existence.

I know I wrote a post once upon a time about including as much as I can on this blog. I try not to edit and I don’t go back and delete embarrassing posts. I still insist there’s some value in the awkward moments. Usually I’m able to look back on them with some self-forgiveness. It’s like the photos my mother took of me giving myself a bath in the bathroom sink when I was about four. For years I cringed when I saw that photo, and now it makes me giggle uncontrollably. I like to remember that weird little person I was and try to imagine having her thoughts again.

Still, looking at the Collected Works of Me, I find it very hard to swallow all the melancholy. Even harder to face-- all the feelings toward my family. If I catalogued myself, there would be a mighty section for family anxiety. It’s too bad, because they’re the only people who would spend the time to look through all these things if that trolley flattens me.

All this is to say, in anticipation, that I’m so sorry. I love you people. I don’t think I belong to you, but I love you so fucking much.

Parents and pain - oddly synonymous

2007-11-09T12:27:00.000-05:00

Due to my sniveling cowardice, my parents are probably coming to my next choir concert. I could have said, “I don’t want you to come,” or something kinder riddled with lies, but I couldn’t do it. Instead, I passive-aggressively forgot to look up the date for them. That didn’t work.

I’m imagining M&P seeing me on that weekend and saying, “It looks like you’re lost weight.”

I shall say, “Why, yes I have. It seems I have a parasite. His name is Billy, and he’s quite keen on my innards.”

That would also be a lie. What I will have to tell them… what I always end up telling them, is the truth.

Mom, Dad, I was in the hospital again, this time for back and leg pain the likes of which I have never suffered before. It’s kept me from eating, sleeping, shitting, speaking, writing, working... I didn’t tell you because… Well, I’ll come back to that.

I’ve been in all kinds of pain before. I can only liken this to having a constant Charlie horse that will not loosen up. I can’t stand up straight and mostly hobble from bed to bathroom to living room. The other day I attempted a trip the bank out of pure necessity, and hurt myself badly enough to stick to my bed for the following 20 hours.

In short, I’m 84 years old without warning.

So parents, I didn’t tell you because you’d want to come help me, or drill me about every conversation with every doctor, or tell me I should sue someone, or offer some other kind of ridiculous advice that would only make me intensely angry. And if you came to help, there would be nothing you could do since you won’t drive in the city and you can’t donate a new spine and you have no money at all yourselves.

Think that’ll work on them? Me neither.

So today’s goal is to walk as far as the T, take a little trip, see how much it hurts, maybe get my paycheck from Starbucks if it seems possible. The Bucks expects me to work this weekend. I’m trying to see if that’s logical in any way. I have this sinking feeling that I already know…

joblivion revisited

2007-10-27T14:20:00.000-04:00

I am very small. Teeny, tiny, shrinking, minute. I come home full of the reek of the cafe, my efforts there, the people there, and I shed it all to disappear.

This is how: remove shoes, place keys on plate for keys. Put away pursey thing. Trade pants for pjs, shirt for t-shirt. Stare at the bed. Will self to find some other healthy thing to do than stare at the bed and/or get in it.

Give in. Fold self into sheets and blankets and cold and panic. Disregard outside noises as they disregard you.

There. You don't exist.

This doesn't actually work, I realize, as much as I pray and hope and will it to work. I close my eyes and wish sleep would shut my brain down. Sleep never shuts anything off for me; it recycles, rekindles, reimagines... Lately I dream of dead bodies cornering me, all of them replicas of myself. I battle them one at a time until I'm so exhausted that I have to wake up. In these dreams, each injury I inflict on the dead bodies lacerates my body as well.

I don't know why I feel like writing about that dream. I usually keep my nightmares and daymares to myself because they make me feel completely out of control and crazy. I have this weird feeling that writing about them makes them more permanent, as though I have some power over them at all (which, it turns out, I don't.) I've tried so many weird little things to keep my dreams as ephemeral as possible. Nothing really works. I might as well write about them.

Last night as I tried to relax myself for sleep after a fitful waking, I thought again of how I used to stretch my arms across the bed when I was little. I must have been tiny - I remember wanting to be able to reach both edges of the bed and not quite being able to. I wonder how, at such a young age, I'd garnered this sense of having to hold on tight to the world in my sleep, as though it would continually attempt to buck me off. These days I wonder how I can reconfigure myself to let go.

2007-10-10T22:31:00.000-04:00

Once again, I have to admit that it will do me no good to give a play-by-play of a weekend at home. It must suffice to say that things have gotten worse. My father has dug himself into so deep a hole of self-hate that the rest of us are powerless to help. My mother has chosen to ignore all of the deep conflicts by relishing in town gossip and cattily cutting into the people she loves the most (besides my father). My brothers are, respectively, newly jobless, increasingly whiny, and voluntarily absent. My niece and nephew strain between bored negligence and hyper-vigilance.

I can't open my mouth there, for fear of hearing what I might say.

Abstractions on love and grapes

2007-10-01T21:52:00.001-04:00

A few years back I had a friend try Concord grapes that I had bought. This friend was very surprised by the taste. She said, “Oh, it tastes like purple popsicles.”

This was remarkable to me for two reasons:

Are we really at the point in our national diet that artificial flavors are our base experience, and the natural flavor is the abstraction?
I’ve had a fairly earthy life so far, growing up around vineyards, farm stands, real cows, etc. I forget that these things are soooo far away from the urban childhood.

You may cut me off at the pass here and realize that I’m trying to get myself excited about going home to Le Victoire. I called my mother last night to tell her I’d be able to make it home for the Beanie’s birthday (she’s turning four.) My mother broke out in tears of joy. TEARS OF JOY, people.

She asked me, as she always does, if there’s anything I’d like to eat while I’m home. This is sweetness masking compliment-fishing. I suppose that’s okay.

“Concord grapes,” I said, musing on the fact that I haven’t been able to get them in the city yet this year.

“Concord grapes,” she repeated, unenthused. I think she hoped to hear, “Gee, Mom, I’ve been dying to get a taste of your spaghetti sauce.” I have, actually, but I had this nightmare vision of the hours spent rolling meatballs, the masses of Tupperware (because she always makes way too much), the days of teasing tomato stains out of linens. In our house, nothing is simple. Even spaghetti sauce comes with guilt and grief.

Concord grapes stain, too, I realize. She’ll probably go to the extreme and try to make a grape pie, which is the most tedious pastry ever invented. Ever de-seeded 200 grapes to find that you still don’t have enough to fill a pie shell? It’s a special kind of hell. You lean over the sink, back aching, eyes blurring, fingers raw, deep red stains up your arms to the elbow. It is NO FUN.

Of course, there’s a part of me that loves my mother for wanting to do these things in my honor. There’s a part of me that wants a red carpet unfurled when I go home because, goddammit, it’s hard for me. There should be some kind of reward for going through it all, right?

That sentiment doesn’t last, though, as I sit on the couch at night, up later than my parents, and they each touch my head before they go to sleep. My mother sweeps my hair behind my ear and tells me not to pull. She gets a little teary-eyed and says she loves me, she loves to see me sitting there, she loves having me home.

I think of her love for me and how she says you can’t know how a parent loves a child until you are a parent. I think how maybe all the love in my life is the purple popsicle, and her love for her children is the grape.

Coffee, pants, or coffeepants?

2007-09-29T20:59:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I got to sleep in til about nine, which was very nice, but it was my first lie-in for about, ohh, sixhundredandthirtyseven days. I woke up tired, sat up (eventually) and contemplated the following:

Pants. To put on one's pants, one must arise from the bed. Alarming how far away one's pants are. Even more alarming how far away one's feet are. The whole ordeal is quite overwhelming.

Coffee. Perhaps if there was some brewing, one could be stirred to put on pants. Should one put on pants before coffee, or should one hope coffee-making will jettison oneself into pant-putting-on fervor?

My thoughts oscillated thusly for a long, long, embarrassingly long while.

My roommate, godluvver, said nothing while I made coffee in my undies. I tried to explain the whole feet-being-too-far-away thing. She nodded and smirked, and helped herself to coffee once I offered.

The coffee/pants conundrum solved itself later in the day while I was at work. I was ducking out of someone's way (we have a new girl who is tall and has titanium weapons-grade elbows) and I leaned against the coffee spout in such a way that I poured coffee down my own pants.

It was hot.

I yelped.

So, where before I believed that coffee and pants had a tidy sort of relationship - that is, one facilitates the getting of the other - I now understand that the two are more intimately acquainted, and their love affair is much more complex than I erstwhile believed.

And I burned my ass.

transference in the laundry room

2007-09-16T20:59:00.000-04:00

To fold a fitted sheet, you put your hands into two corners so the seam makes an inside-out mitt. You tuck those mitts into the other corners, then fold those two on top of two. In the end there is one gathered corner. Folding the rest is easy.

My mother taught me this. Likewise, she taught me that the print side of the flat sheet goes face down on the bed. This is so it’s pretty when you fold down a corner before bed. Printed sheets with a frilly top edge show this: the print seems to be upside down, but really it’s for the effect of the dainty sight of a perfectly turned-down bed.

She showed me how to sew buttons, how to sew patches, how to hem skirts and darn socks. In the quiet summer days when the boys were elsewhere, we did our minuet with the laundry, folding queen-sized sheets between us in the bright hot family room. We'd stir up hurricanes of dust motes and carry two chin-high piles of towels up the stairs to the second floor. I'd nestle my chin into the soft pillow cases on top, and sniff them.

Folding a queen-sized sheet in a muddy-floored laundry room with nothing but a rusty table and a collection of linty forgotten bikes... well, it leaves something to be desired. I want two more strong hands. I want a friend who knows the steps.

I think of my mother at home with her piles of towels and sheets. She must be lonely when she folds laundry without me.

Jock Incognito

2007-09-09T16:36:00.000-04:00

Oh yeah baby, I'm a jock.

Yesterday I went kayaking on the Charles River, and I didn't flip the kayak or kill any people or wildlife or drown or nuthin!

It was FUN!

I forget how much I like flailing around in a semi-sporty way.

SOOPRISE!

2007-09-02T21:33:00.001-04:00

Welcome to Boston, Tom. Say hello to the nice people.

"Hello, nice people."

Good lad.

Tom called me on Thursday night. The conversation went like this.

"Hey, I'm in Pee Body. Isn't that close to you?"
"Peebiddy Mass?"
"Yeah, Pee Body... I'm near Boston, right?"
"What the hell are you doing in Peebiddy?"
"I have this job driving a truck. I've been driving and I ended up in Massachusetts."
"Whoa. That's... Yeah, you're really close! How long will you be here?"

After a few confusing conversations, we decided he should come down to Boston and visit. Three days later we have conquered East Boston traffic, a serious parking problem (he has a 24-foot truck), a skunked dog, incredible poverty, a broken phone, torn contacts, and constant hunger.

AND, we've seen Boston. To be more specific, we've seen Fanueil hall, Coolidge Corner, Government Center, Harvard Square, Coolidge Corner, the freedom trail, Revere Beach, Coolidge Corner, Trader Joe's... wait, that's still Coolidge Corner. Anyway, we've done pretty much everything there is to do without spending money. We're impressive, no?

I'll tell you the real story in 2010, when I'm no longer exhausted.

2007-08-29T21:21:00.000-04:00

I got a camera phone.

This has prompted several strange phenomena:

A renewed sense of self-created loneliness upon realizing how few people call me and how few calls I can force myself to make
A yearning for a real camera (which I cannot afford, nor would I have any idea on how to use one at this point)
A game with Papa Biv

The game started the day after I got the phone, when I was excited and sent a photo of government center, asking my father to figure out where I was.

My father called me, sounding peeved, asking what the hell I sent him and why and he didn’t understand it. I gave a lame, giddy schpiel about how pretty Boston can be, and can he guess where that photo’s from, and blah blah.

He seemed unamused, but then again, he guessed wrong.

A week or so later, I sent this inscrutable gem.

No reply, until I called my mom a few days later and she asked about “that nice photo.”

Then today I had a date that ended… weirdly. I was left in downtown Boston during MBTA rush hour and decided to walk around. With the changing landscape I grew increasingly self-pitying and antsy and exhausted, having woken up at four for three days in a row. I headed toward Ugly, for some reason, and looked around me, trying to peer outside of myself. I counted trees, tuned in to birdsong, and watched the Fort Government Center swell and ebb in foot-traffic.

The paved, bricked, molded world was quiet. My legs ached. I was alone. The benches, I kept thinking, are so uncomfortable, but wide enough for the homeless to sleep on. I became a speck in an artless Speck that was trying to be a SPECK. I was disappearing.

My father’s voice is jubilant on my voicemail.

“Well my guess is – the picture you sent, is again, it’s from gov’t center, and it’s on the North Station side looking towards—umm the Oyster House .. and the Haymarket area, on the lefthand side of the square, um, where the ugliest iron sculpture ever created is. That’s my guess. Let me know if I’m right. Love you darlin’. Byeee.”

He’s right. But why did I send that picture?

2007-08-29T21:01:00.000-04:00

When I was small I used to try to sleep on my stomach with my arms spread. I would reach for the ends of the mattress, and wonder about the day when they would reach – how good it would feel. I felt I couldn’t truly sleep until my hands could grip the sides.

Now I look down my arm as I lie in bed, think how long it’s gotten. I try to remember my small arms, before chicken pox scars, countless summer burns, bumps, bruises, accidents and temper tantrums. Before I was heavy enough to make much of a dent in the mattress. I wonder if I felt myself set precariously on top of it, like I was balanced on the dome of a zeppelin. Why did I need to hold on? When was I first afraid of sleep?

winds of change

2007-08-06T09:34:00.000-04:00

When I come up from the Government Center station at 5:24 in the morning, I have to force optimism. Anyone would, I think, when greeted with a wide expanse of dusty brick nothing overseen by the harrowing jumble of dark concrete they call city hall.

I force myself to look around the corners of that building. I look around the drunk newspaper guy and the haunting scent of urine. In the corners of the world there is soft, felt blue sky and seagulls. The air moves in unpredictable ways, and every four seconds a whiff of sea air reaches me.

Some days that's enough. I stand there for a second and sniff it in and pretend that the ocean is two steps away, that I'm not really sallying forth to serve coffee to the masses. I put into my head a mantra something like "I live here. I actually live here in this city." I think of all the things I love about it, and that they're all within reach. I calm myself.

And THEN I sally forth.

What, I always wonder, propels me? Is it boredom or greed or curiosity? Maybe general embarrassment. At any rate, something is pushing me now. Maybe it's fall coming. I love that season and always feel most capable when the leaves start to turn. I'm sure it has something to do with the rhythm of school - how school was the strongest link to my teeny ego for twenty years. I feel like maybe my brain clicks on in September and all of my life hurdles bow down a bit.

I'm trying to keep this feeling under my skin as much as possible. I can do this. I can look into the world and withstand its long stare back at me. I can do this.

Borrowed Pesto

2007-07-19T18:57:00.000-04:00

Borrow, gather, and buy fresh:

2 fat juicy cloves of young garlic. Smush 'em with the broad side of your chef's knife. It's a satisfying crunch and the whole apartment will smell good for hours.

1/2 cup romano, grated from roommate who's in Philly. Promise self to buy her a new tub. Accidentally dump a huge clump of it into your mixture. Swear loudly. Promise self to buy a new tub, and really mean it this time.

1 handful roasted, unsalted almonds from other roomie, who points out their frighteningly passe' "sell by" date but blesses your efforts all the same. (Use in place of pine nuts, because, really, where the fuzz do you find pine nuts and why would you buy them when you can only really use them for pesto and those annoying salads in which all the pine nuts end up in the bottom anyway?)

1 overzealous handful (or two) of the fresh basil that took up 1/3 of your grocery budget, but it was totally worth it. It's the good stuff - kind of pointy and peppery with notes of fennel, so might as well use it before it goes black and sticky.

1/2 to 3/4 cup grocery store olive oil. Not the virgin stuff. Not because you don't have the virgin stuff, but because virgin overpowers the zing and zang of basil and garlic sometimes and makes it taste like every other italian thing anyone has ever made instead of YOUR pesto.

1 smidge of lemon juice. But since you cut up the lemon, throw the rest in your iced tea.

Put it all in the tiny, usually useless Black and Decker MiniPro food processor your dad (er... Santa) got you for Christmas two years ago. Pulse until the acrid smell of burning plastic overcomes the nice basily garlicky goodness you gots goin' on. Stop until the smell floats away. Pulse and repeat.

Add more basil.

And more oil.

Add more basil.

Cook pasta. Immediately put 3/4 of it away in the fridge, slightly melting the cheapo fake tupperware container you put it in.

ERSTWHILE: You have done the following...

Boiled water. Poured it over a 1/2 tsp of saffron. Let it sit overnight. Baked frozen chicken with a little garlic, a little seasoning salt, and the saffron tea.

Ruined abovementioned chicken by essentially boiling it instead of baking.

Get pretty pasta plate (inherited from a dear friend's move), dump remaining pasta on the plate. Spoon out some pesto onto the spagetts and toss it around. Add another spoonful. Aaaaand... another. Put a piece of chewy saffron chicken on the plate, too, not touching the pasta. The whole idea, after all, is to have a little rest from the spiciness of the pesto and force yourself to really taste the subtle saffron flavor. Mmm. That's nice. Even if the chicken is more alike to bubble gum in texture than to any meat you've ever cooked.

Eat it.

Clean dishes. Think to self: maybe I'll share this recipe. At least arahsae will read and enjoy.

Write post. Publish.

disappearing

2007-07-05T19:52:00.000-04:00

The spaces between my electrons
(if in fact they belong to me)
expand to allow transparency
spreading like a pulled lace
or a ride-the-whip, or sea
foam losing bubbles. We
(my atoms and I) disagree
on this point - they swear
they never liked solidity
but I abhor even more
invisibility

A fine dither

2007-06-05T21:36:00.000-04:00

No Honey Nut O's. No Unnecessarily Sugary Maple Wheat Bites. No Oatmeal Crunchy Flakes of Happiness.

Trader Joe, this means WAR.

(On the bright side, nothing much in my life has gotten me in this much of a flurry for a while, and maybe it's about time I got hoppin' mad about SOMEthing, be it cereal or Syriana.)

Another thoroughly predictable moment in Biv Birthday History

2007-06-01T11:54:00.002-04:00

I went home for a looong time. It was supposed to be a short stay, just for a family friend’s bridal shower, but then it was Bug’s birthday the next weekend. I altered my schedule severely so I could be there for the baby’s big One. I had to beg my brother to hold the party on Saturday so I could be there for it.

Then, on the first Saturday, while women crowded our house with linen and perfume and enflamed hair, we got a phone call from Lois. Baby Girl was supposed to be the star attraction at the shower – she’s the flower girl for the wedding – and she was conspicuously missing.

Turns out my brother Cripps had run to the doctor’s office with chest pains. He got to the hospital where they promptly shoved a tube in his chest to re-inflate a collapsed lung. A COLLAPSED LUNG!

How did it happen, the clamourers wonder… The doctors answer, “He’s tall, thin and a smoker.” No, seriously, that’s all they told us. He had numerous x-rays and tests to make sure it wasn’t something else (what else would it be? Free-floating glass shards?) and could find nothing.

I could tell you many many things about the horrors of my week home… Oh, god, many… But I will tell you this: by the end of the week my niece got in the habit of running at me like a euphoric bull and leaping into my arms so I could kiss her kiss her kiss her and tell her how beautiful she is. And Bug eased into me, from uncontrollable giggles to exhausted sweaty sleep on my shoulder.

The tale ends thusly: Cripps came home after a three-day stay in the hospital. He’s unable to lift his own children, but getting stronger. The party magically moved from Saturday to Sunday to accommodate my other brothers. I missed it.

2007-05-16T23:39:00.000-04:00

happy birthday to me
i live in a tree
i look like a monkey with enormous breasts and a tight budget but less hair in general
and i smell like chai tea

i smell like chai tea because i have chai syrup all over me. there's some on the inner part of my elbow, some on my collar, some on my ankle... it's better than smelling like a monkey, one must assume.

tired. opening tomorrow. wakey wakey at 4am for opening. thanks for well wishes, m'loves.

3:23 am

2007-05-08T22:42:00.000-04:00

As expected, she remembered
What she meant to say. That movie –
The actress’s name and the color she wore;
How it meant something then.
It was too late to call and her eyelids
Were sticky with sleep, though her mind
Prickled with a sense of tulips unfolding,
Asphalt burning, waves ascending
Her grey vinyl siding

On this night in particular
The earth seemed tiny to her,
And she a speck on it, an item
Of infinite minutia, and her thought,
The blue of that actress’s dress
Against a remarkable yellow
Chandeliered wig of curls –
Even more ephemeral, so much
Tinier than any thought, ever.

But to share it would be
To foster some growth. The image would move
From her microcosm
To his – a synapse short-circuit
Across a small city
From sleepy brain to brain. That little thought
Would expand in itself, inhale
And balloon, become a much speckier
Speck. Not nearly an earthly
Feature that satellites
Could photograph from space, but
A bump, a thing, a bubble
Of electricity set out in the world
To glow a bit,
to ebb, to ash.

Her hands know, without groping,
The exact location
Of each number to press to reach him.
Her immoveable eyes need not open.
She considers this – how the dial-tone buzz
Could disturb her, wake her too much.
She is caught in the panic of power,
Knowing that sharing, inspecting
A speck causes life to restart.

She wants this creation, this
Resuscitation. They will share it
And bring it to life. They will
Have it and pull it between them.
It is only color and movement,
Memory and mastery, but her body
Curls around her need for him
To know it. Blue dress. Yellow
Hair. The actress’s name.
Microscopic.

Cheese is good.

2007-04-25T21:22:00.000-04:00

Ah, cheese, the greatest manmade substance on this Earth, I laud you.

Starbucks. I'm running around frantically to fill orders and keep managers happy. A mom and small girl, about four years old, stand across the counter, the mother clearly encouraging the child to choose a lunch for herself. They are wearing similar clothing - red checked shirt and red gingham sundress (although it was not sunny enough today to warrant sundressing.)

"Do you want this?" the mother asks.

"No, I do not want that," the girl answers precisely.

"I'd like you to choose something to eat," the mother says.

"I don't know how that was made. Who made that? Did they make that?" The girl looks up at her mother as though she's an idiot to think she'd put something in her mouth that was produced by Starbucks employees.

"Sweetie, it's fruit and cheese. Will you eat a little of it?" The mother's getting annoyed but knows her daughter has the upper hand.

I decide to intervene gently.

"That's very good," I say to the little girl. "The cheese is tasty." I smile.

"I'm not sure if I want that cheese," says the girl, seriously.

The mother looks apologetic. "She'll be impressive in the business world someday," she says. I laugh at the condescending grown-up joke. The little girl hides behind her mother.

"Oh sweetie," I say, "we're not laughing at you."

She whispers to her mother, "that hurt my feelings when you laughed like that."

"We're smiling," I say, "because you're so smart and charming."

She puts out a distrusting bottom lip.

The mom throws a bunch of items on the counter, all expensive and unnecessary, I ring her up, and the two wander off to find chairs.

Moments later I'm running around again, emptying trash, wiping up after spills, sneaking sips of my drink. The girl and mother sit at the tasting bar on high stools. The girl is perched high, sitting on her knees, picking judiciously at her fruit and cheese plate. Apparently my trespasses are forgiven; she smiles at me when I acknowledge them.

"I think I might like this cheese!" she proclaims, showing me a mushed wedge of brie with several tiny bites missing.

Mom smiles a knowing, grown-up to grown-up smile.

"Does it taste good to you?" I ask the little girl.

"It does!" she says, full of amazement.

"Have you tasted that kind of cheese before?"

"No," she says, looking thoughtful, "but it tastes just exactly like white american cheese."

The mother laughs, but I know better by now.

"I'm glad you like it," I tell the little girl.

She appraises me very sternly. "I just didn't know if I would."

You're forgiven, too, four-year-old. Where did this kid come from?

of cabbages and kings

2007-04-25T21:07:00.000-04:00

Are we sick of Shane posts?

Me too. Just have him on the brain.

Had another panic attack at work and it got me on a crying jag that would not stop. I figure it has more to do with medication issues than anything else, but it's significant that it was Heart Day, and I had a strong memory of Shane.

And then a daymare.

I remembered the physical feeling of Shane running at me, leaping into my arms like a four-year-old, and then in my mind's eye and touch, I felt the back of his shirt growing wet, his skin peeling away in front and back, his heart boiling out of his body, arms loosening their grip, face resigned... fading... gone.

I think it's my peculiar morbidity that keeps Shane so alive in my sadness. I don't know how his other friends feel him and remember him, but I'm getting worn out by how I feel him.

Before I lost my mind, I used to ritualize everything, and it seemed to comfort me. If there was something to DO every time I felt a certain way, I at least knew what would happen next, even if it wasted my time, hurt me, didn't change the feeling. Things were simply more knowable, and that's always comforting.

When Shane Days came, I would find a way to push a cabbage into people's lives. I would push myself into this super-social wacky persona and shout the gospel of the cabbage to anyone who would listen. Since last February I've grown so tired. I let my memories rise and sink in me as they come. All of this life remains within the borders of my skin.

I think I'm unable to express and spread the joy of Shane because he's now linked with my own private difficulties, which are incredibly embarrassing to me. Shane relates to college, which reminds me of the brain I no longer have and the friends I've abandoned, which reminds me of how my whole life is in constant entropy, which reminds me that I'm a waste of cellular material, etc.

Shut up, JoBiv.

Okay.

GAAAAAAAH!

2007-04-04T17:55:00.000-04:00

My litmag summer camp already exists, AND I'M NOT A PART OF IT!

sob

Uncloistered?

2007-04-01T16:04:00.000-04:00

I think I have other posts about the phenomenon of self-forgetfulness. Nontheless, I write this one.

I was in NYC this weekend, which was scary and fun and bizarre and adventurous. I was visiting Maria, my dearest American friend from my semester in Ireland, and Gutter, The Brave and Beautiful, long-time acquaintance from El Victoir, friend for many a year now.

Friend. What a meaningless word. I'm also friends with the early morning T driver who smiles weakly at me when I nearly kill myself tripping up the steps. Also friends with my mother, whose calls and worries I dodge with increasing agility.

Gutter and I are friends like this: we know nothing about each other, really, except that we grew in the same fishbowl with similar attributes ignored or undernourished. We were cerebral, lonely, entertaining and unknowable. He loves my family and they him. They've adopted him, want to know him in and out, and his mother probably wouldn't know me from Marky Mark.

Ha. I almost forgot about forgetting. Here I am, back again on topic. My point about my visit and self-forgetfulness is this: I forgot how excellent, sweet and full I feel when I'm with Gutter and Maria. This is the feeling of being with an intellectual peer, an alive soul. I have friends in Boston, of course, and I love them dearly. I didn't know how much I was missing THIS, though.

The link above comes from Sunday's adventure at the Met's Cloisters (very near Gutter's apartment.) We walked steadily up a wooded path cut into a huge cliff, the city dwindling on one side, the river opening up below, the castle-like museum above. It was surreal and brought out a disorienting homesickness. I don't know exactly where that ache of nostalgia connected - it seemed to be a general sensitivity reaching out to a dozen memories of paths, quiet, lungs, views. I felt myself opening a little.

The Cloisters reminds me of the Isabella Stewart Gardner in that many an archway, sepulchre and tapestry has been artfully woven into the building itself in such a way that one feels she's happened upon a pre-existing marvel where everything within it was created there, in timelessness, one culture spiking deep into that place and making sense of itself. Of COURSE there are unicorn tapestries and moorish spanish triptychs glowing with saffron and cobalt. Perhaps it's a peculiarly American attitude on my part to feel like everything was supposed to be in that space. I like that Rockefeller and Gardner shared that same compulsion to tailor palaces for these artifacts they found fascinating. How could a person stand in Paris dumbfounded by the beauty of a medieval sculpture and say, "I dunno, I could find a better place for that." Such arrogance! And yet... the effect... I was wooed and won.

I wrote this, you nosey clamourer, while Gutter practiced piano. He decided to take lessons, bought himself a keyboard with all 88 keys, and has attained an alarming proficiency in a period of months. Did I mention he is a Favorite Person?

2007-03-21T19:05:00.000-04:00

My sheet has a long horizontal rip in it. I’m not sure when it happened, and I think this is because its happening wasn’t a singular thing. It’s not like a bolt of lightening felling a tree or a balloon popping. This tear began one day on a microscopic scale. It widened and festered and unzipped slowly. I noticed it, peripherally. I did nothing. Besides notice it, I mean.

Also, I lost my job with the foundation. This was a singular thing. It happened yesterday. I had it, and worked hard at having it, and then yesterday it was taken back.

Also, it's death day. This past weekend I ended up staying over a friend's house. Everyone seemed to want to conk out early, so I asked for nighty-night books from my hostess. She gave me Truth and Beauty, by Ann Patchett, whose work I love. I couldn't read the book, however. Within the first chapter I was introduced to Shane's female counterpart - an underweight flamboyant mascot-of-the-campus woman who flung herself physically into people's arms.

This rip is really big; that's the thing. I can't just go on pretending this sheet is useful. I'll have to take it off and throw it out.

Food glorious...

2007-03-04T19:41:00.001-05:00

Remember the devolution of cafeteria food in college? Well, a lot of you went to nice colleges with fairly good food service. I went to St. Bonaventure University, which rated at the top of the Princeton Review's "Is It Food?" list about five years running.

This was the progression over a period of 72 hours:

1. Chicken fingers. Edible.

2. General Xiao's chicken (chicken fingers plus gooey spicy overly sweetened soy sauce). Edible if you found pieces without sauce.

3. Chicken parm. Edible with LOTS of sauce and extra cheese microwaved into a gloppy mess.

4. Chicken soup. Suspect.

Now, I don't have proof that these were the same fingers all the way through. I didn't get them fingerprinted. HAHAHAhahaha... Oh my god I'm so freakin' funny! ... Anyway, can't be certain it was the exact same product, but it became obvious over a period of time that no trucking company wanted to come to the Back O' Beyond, New York to deliver fresh food to us. More importantly, our tuition dollars had to go toward the essentials - fresh paint on the basketball court every season, frinstance.

Either way, I noticed that the food service seemed to order all food by the metric ton, and would not try to hide that fact by altering their offerings on a daily basis. NO, if they had canned peaches, by GOD, no Bonaventure student would go an hour without seeing a canned peach, at least peripherally.

Day 1 of peaches:

"Yay, I looove peaches! In pure corn syrup! Yum!"

Day 2:

"Think I'll put some cinnamon on 'em. There, that's different and still quite yummy."

Day 3:

"Hmm. The syrup is congealing. The peaches are still tender, though..."

Day 4:

"Isn't that yellow color a little startling? Anyone?"

Day 5:

"I... just... can't... Hey, whipped cream, guys!"

Day 6:

"Sorry, professor, I'm late because there was a peach-slide of apocalyptic proportions, the syrup and peaches making the dining hall a veritable slip n' slide of terror. Our lawyers have advised my parents to sue."

Day 7:

"PEACH FIGHT!"
"Dude, I wish peaches had better aerodynamics."

Day 10:

"That little piece of cottage cheese was in there yesterday. Grody."

Day 14:

"I wonder if they biodegrade?"

Day 21:

"Hey kids, guess what's for dinner at the bomb shelter? Clue: it comes out of a can..."

Day 37:

"PEARS! I looove pears...."

All this is to say that I'm beginning to admire our food service and wonder how they got so clever. I'm trying to be economical and clever myself, trying to think of the ways my mother disquised leftovers (ineffectually) and my babysitters got us to eat "good" food (by heaping it with sugar, salt and/or grease).

Here's my quandary: How do I make my italian sausage, red and green pepper, onion, cheese, tomatoes and garlic interesting for one. more. night. I've done the obvious sausage, p&o sandwich. I've done pizza today using frozen naan. Tomorrow I might get out the blender and make a peppery garlicky version of V-8. The sausage I'll stick in my ears.

Having griped so long, I have to admit, I never, EVOR passed up the canned pineapple. Even when I had canker sores. Pineapples are good, man.

Happy happy happy soooprise!

2007-03-03T20:51:00.000-05:00

GUESS WHAT I GOT! noreallyguessohmygodit'soexciting...

GROCERIES!

I bought exactly four varieties of vegetables.

Two (or three counting tomatoes) varieties of fruit. One fresh, one frozen.

I bought CEREAL and EGGS.

I bought MILK and YOGURT!

I bought FOOD for-to EAT!

But damn, Sarah, I forgot the cheese.

Quantifying

2007-02-07T13:39:00.000-05:00

Things The Novelist never liked about me:

My mercurial attitude toward cats (which I think is only what the species deserves considering its mercurial attitude toward me)

My unfixableness

My fear of
1. spinach
2. exercise
3. family
4. outer space
5. the military

My inability to share an umbrella

My fluctuating ability to sleep (countered with incredible powers of tossy-turny, nightmare-induced fits)

The way I pointed out his eye boogers. At least I stopped trying to pick them out myself.

The way I hated myself.

The way I left his bed messy in the morning. His bed is impossible; old sheets, old mattress, egg-cup foam thing – all askew (see above referenced tossy-turny abilities)

My disdain for frozen vegetables.

My abundant social life. (I kid you not. I’M the social one.)

My untouchable subjects.

My tendency toward disappearance…

Things I never liked about The Novelist:

His fervent need to spread the joy of military history to ME, though repeatedly told of the unwillingness of his audience.

The great agility with which he dismissed my nightmares.

The way he insisted on sharing an umbrella.

His love for me. Highly suspect.

Things I really don’t like about The Novelist now:

His un-love for me.

And the Lord sayeth unto JoBiv, I shall destroy you further!

2007-02-02T22:24:00.000-05:00

The Novelist. JoBiv. No longer. He's done with me. Near the anniversary of hospitalization and our first dates.

I am not strong enough for this.

Sleep is for the weak. And JoBiv.

2007-01-28T22:55:00.000-05:00

The weak and JoBiv - not mutually exclusive.

I slept through the past week. No, really. I showed up for work here and there, but I didn't exist for anything else outside my bed. Sometimes I took off my pants before I slept. Sometimes I had funny hair when I woke up. I'm sure I had funny hair lots of times but had no proof because I was not inclined to look in mirrors. I was inclined to sleep.

Not so much inclined as fully horizontal.

Everyone I know thought I was injured or hospitalized, except my co-workers. They saw me for four-hour periods of time.

List of people who thought I was dead, injured, hospitalized, or incarcerated:

1. My therapist. I was not in his presence, where I ought to have been, the two times a week I ought to have been there.

2. My psychiatrist. But that was nearly purposeful. He thinks I'm bi-polar and I'm sick of his shit.

3. My chorus. I had a nightmare during that sleep. Someone had pooped in the bathtub and no one would clean it. I kept getting filthier and filthier and wished there were cleaning supplies so I could clean everything and myself.

4. My boyfriend. He actually yelled at me a little (in his way - he generally doesn't yell unless his brother is coming at him with a spatula.) I finally got in touch with him and he was pretty mad. He wants me to be okay.

5. Becca, English Jo, Major Healey, choir Melis, my boss... all people with whom I had made plans. All people who I disappointed.

6. My brother Tom, who has called me twice in the past month, which is weird considering he forgets how to pronounce my name sometimes.

7. My parents. They called, paged, voicemailed, messenger-pigeoned. I was not awake.

Where was JoBiv?

In my bed, having nightmares, waking for short periods of time during which I hated myself utterly for sleeping during the day, ate sliced bread, and went back to my bed. Sometimes I drank tea to wake myself up, but I'd get dizzy and my eyes would slip shut and I found myself in bed again, dreaming of research facilities where little girls forcibly underwent CPR and made papier mache collages of huge serpents, where deformed people were kept standing in stalls with blue curtains that showed their heads and feet, like dressing rooms, where a teenager had to seduce her nextdoor neighbor to keep him from kicking her little sisters' dogs, where I walked up to people who had to hear me but I would walk through them, mute and transient. Or else I was half-awake, pulling out the bad hairs and trying to distract my mind with a funny book or movie or thought - anything.

Is she back to stay?

It's hard to be back but it was hard to be there, too. When I informed my mom that I am alive she mentioned that maybe I shouldn't be working. This year has been hard, after all, and I'm not strong enough to work two jobs, earn my own rent, run my own life.

It hurts, but not because she doubts me when I need her support. It hurts in the place between my ribs and lungs where I can see myself going home to my girlhood bed, her hand sweeping my hair from my forehead and encouraging the tears.

Work clothes shmerk clothes

2006-10-22T21:32:00.000-04:00

I currently sit at my new desk. It is a symphony of particle board and wood laminate. It maintains its regal shape by a system of dowels, cams, and lusty screws that twist to the sultry dance of the allen wrench.

It is a wonder.

And it's in my living room. Have you seen my apartment? No? Well, it's bigger than the Beacon St. place, MUCH bigger than the hovel on Queensberry Street, but alas, there are no extra rooms yearning to become offices. Luckily, the living room is FREAKIN' HUGE! and my rather large Ode to Laminate fits nicely in one corner without disturbing the natural flow of life amongst my fellow apartment dwellers.

I'm pretty sure I'll feel a disturbance. I'm the one who works at home. From home. IN home. Hm. Can I do this? I already survived the big Benefit Gala Whooziwazzit last Monday evening. I dressed myself up and kept my heels on and shook hands with as many people as possible, gleaning pieces of their stories from my co-workers. I sipped champagne and passed up the refill, ate strawberries dipped first in white, then milk chocolate and decorated to look like they wore tuxes. I made sure everyone had a good time. If they didn't, I let them tell me why. I told approx. 620 women where to powder their collective noses.

And now, in stark contrast to my heels and gentlewomanly ways, I sit in my pj's and pipe information into a big database. Next I send letters all over. After that I get to learn the true meaning of my job, which is actually many many jobs rolled up into one that should take up 20-30 hours of my week.

I'm thinking I'll put a suit on every day for this week. Y'know, 'til it sinks in.

staccato fermata

2006-10-16T13:18:00.000-04:00

staccato:

1.	shortened and detached when played or sung: staccato notes.

2.	characterized by performance in which the notes are abruptly disconnected: a staccato style of playing.

fermata:

1.	the sustaining of a note, chord, or rest for a duration longer than the indicated time value, with the length of the extension at the performer's discretion.

2.	a symbol placed over a note, chord, or rest indicating a fermata.*

panic attacks:

1. staccato fermata

*Thank you Dictionary.com

io sono il formaggio

Joie de Jo?

fragile stuff

Groundhog Day - do not repeat

If you write...

and also red.

Death in the children's store

Ahh, memories.

the boulevard of broken strings

the incredible shrinking jobiv

in which our heroine hates doctors but takes a job in a hospital

In the immortal words of D. Bowie, "Turn and face the strain."

speak

and thank you for riding the MBTA

I fall down sometimes.

Resolute.

Giving actual factual thanks

Calling all cooks...

a baleful bachelorette

booooks are goooood

Oh holidays.

good grief?

An early Christmas list

October hauntings

Labors of love

Just so ya know...

Eggs tarragon, avec loneliness.

A plea

Nuggets

Saturday Morning Fancy Eggs

Kittens to cats

Et voila!

Anticipation...

Sponsored by the Letter J

Cafe Microcosmo

Learning blows.

But what is she DOING?

Edenic

and dreams

they're coming.

remember when i was a writer?

Sunday Mornin' Saffron Pancakes

People don't suck. Not always.

Smoky Night

focus

silhouette nouveau

My brother's lung

Morning rituals

Wake-up call for Miss Biv...

DJ Jazzy JoBiv

i rambini

Found an old notebook...

un edit ed

First day back at work

'strange' is wunnathose words

my left foot

the momanomaly

A week in pictures (and poverty)

Art therapy.

Forgotten poem

riding the crazy train

The Post-Opera

Back in Action

Surgery Eve

The knife.

R.I.P. Maurice III, IV, V

dirty laundry indeed

Parents and pain - oddly synonymous

joblivion revisited

Abstractions on love and grapes

Coffee, pants, or coffeepants?

transference in the laundry room

Jock Incognito

SOOPRISE!

winds of change

Borrowed Pesto

disappearing

A fine dither

Another thoroughly predictable moment in Biv Birthday History

3:23 am