Fin in a Waste of Waters

My amazing life, remembered by my grandchildren

2007-10-15T20:52:00.000+01:00

The morning after the day I die, my grandchildren will gather in my house. They will gather in my kitchen and drink tea from colorful, mismatched cups accumulated over years, using the leaves left in bright ceramic pots. Someone will have brought coffee, and mixed cinnamon in the grounds the way I will have for him when he used to for him whenever he visited. Sun will stream through the windows; there will be no tears on this morning. My grandchildren will have visited me in my home often, and each will drink from their own "special" cup, the cup that he or she has always drunk from when visiting. They will gather in the kitchen, some at the table, some on the floor, some on chairs pulled in from the dining room. My grandchildren will be many. Once they are settled, once they have their drinks, someone, the wife of my eldest grandson, perhaps, will begin: "She had such an amazing life..." There will be no regrets: no one will say, "I only wish I would have known her better." They all will have gotten to know me, and I them. Old photos will be brought to the table; stories will be recalled and recounted, stories that I will have told them, stories that Rasheed will have told them; and many stories that my mother will have told my children, their parents, who will have then passed on to them.

They will recall a story my mother told her grandchildren when they first learned to ride bikes: she will tell them the story of their mother and her little yellow tricycle, which she raced over and over again all the way down the long hill of her parents' nursery, only waiting for her mother, by then 8 months pregnant with the son who would become Daniel, then Danny, then Dan, and finally, "Lil' Bro,'" to come and carry it back uphill, and she would race it down again. Until one day, when the front wheel of the little bike got caught, perhaps a stone or a rut, and its rider, who could have only be just over 2 years old, went flying over its handlebars and face-first into the dirt. My mother, of course, started down the hill - until her daughter, to the horror of Ben, an employee of the nursery working nearby, stood up, stood her tricycle back upright, mounted again, and rode it at full speed down the rest of the hill! When she reached me, my mother understood the look of horror on Ben's face: my own was covered in dirt. She will tell the story to my own children when they learn to ride, and they will laugh at their silly mother, but when the time comes, they, too, will tell the story to their own children. And on this morning, my grandchildren will laugh at their silly grandmother. Someone will add between breaths: "Oh, she was so stubborn! Such determination."

This word will render the room silent, each occupant surrendering to his or her own memory. My youngest granddaughter will stand, wander the room, opening and closing cabinets, drawers, looking through my things. She will touch the tips of my knife set - "She always took such good care to keep them sharp..." - my tea kettle - "green tea, every day" - and she will open a drawer of utensils, take out an old wooden spoon, still smooth, carved from an olive tree. "Paris," she will say to the room, holding it out to Daniel, named after his father, in turn named after their great-uncle their grandmother's brother. Daniel is the cook in the bunch; and all will know that the spoon with all of my recipes was meant for him. "They got it on the first trip together to Paris," the room will recall. "It was her birthday. She had just finished two term papers at SUssex, come home that night and thrown a party - they packed the next morning and ran to the train station - theirs was delayed, anyway." They will laugh. Remember: "he brought her a croissant and orange juice every morning in bed while they were there. How they loved..." They will recall my travels, beginning with the move to London - "She was so young...only, what? 22? 23?" They will decide on 22. "Leaving everything she knew behind for him. So brave."

"Yes, she was." They will repeat. Their grandmother, who fought a brain tumor at the age of 20 and its recurrence at the age of 24 - during college; during her first year in a PhD program. "So brave." They will repeat, not with sadness, but with the fullness like that which comes from having eaten a good meal, a nutritious meal, a deep-seated joy in the life of their grandmother.

She lived in London and Brighton and California, saw Paris, Budapest...and later, Ireland, Istanbul, India, Africa, Japan, Canada. And so many more. They will go through my rooms, dividing among themselves the pieces from these places. They will not know it until days later, but in these pieces, their grandmother will have tucked little notes, scraps - written memories not yet divulged of these travels. Last will have been one more trip to London, a visit to see friends, and to see the places that were friends themselves. Oxfam and Apostrophe were gone, they recall, but not the building at 69-71 Queensborough Terrace. "But she could not bear to go in," a granddaughter will recall from our last conversation over tea, "she could not bear to see it changed. It will be, to her, always their first home, full of books, tea-stains on the arms of the couch - all her doing, of course."

They will roam my house, thumbing through my books. They will come to, tucked away in the bottom corner of a shelf, those written by their grandmother herself. They will pull them out: all will know who has read them, and who not (the younger grandchildren, who will look sheepishly at their shoes). Laughing, understanding, the elder will distribute them amongst the younger. Their names will be inscribed in the early pages, in the plot itself sometimes. They will study my picture in the back jacket leaf, my picture, together with Rasheed, high above the noise of the streets on our plant-filled balcony, progressively older with each subsequent book, but invariably happy, at peace. "How they loved..." My grandchildren will repeat, murmuring, fingers pressed against the picture.

Finally, they will find my first pair of dance shoes. They will still fit. "A dancer up 'til her last days," one of my grandsons will smile. Dancing everywhere she lived, and starting groups where she could not find them. "A dancing spirit, a dancing soul, she always said she had," my granddaughter whom I taught to dance will say. New dancing shoes for every birthday - she wore them out as quickly as I. They will burn me in my first pair of shoes at the crematorium; I will dance with them at the wake. Each grandchild will take a portion of my ashes to a place where I have lived, and in this way, my grandchildren will never be alone in the world, regardless of where they go. "What an amazing life she led," they will breathe, letting my dust go on the wind, into the sea, into rivers. "How she loved."

Argh

2007-09-26T18:48:00.001+01:00

Or rather: rrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. Because that has been the high-pitched whine I've been listening to all morning. Never have I lived anywhere where they were so anal about keeping up the appearance of the lawn. Every day or so is there a team of men with lawn mowers, weed-whackers (don't know if that's the official name; it's what my dad calls it, so official enough), and blowers paroling our community and disrupting the morning peace. Not only my community's & my morning, but my character's morning - ironically, I am rewriting the nursery portion, and have been laboring at the early morning (ie, quiet & peaceful) opening scene. I have headphones (to little avail), green tea, and am trying to breathe myself into the stillness of his morning....

And the whine raises a pitch.

(I'm allowed to complain sometimes, right? At least they'll in all probability be out there when I'm working on the rototiller parts - LOUD parts... But right now, I just want them to go take lunch.)

Thanksgiving

2007-09-16T21:16:00.000+01:00

Last night, cooking for Rasheed & myself, I realized (not simply “thought,” but fully, forcefully [mentally, spiritually, bodily with every ounce of marrow] realized) that God has given us everything we need for health and happiness. I have more and more frequently in the last few years felt an increasing thankfulness for the good - nurturing, protective, healing, restorative qualities - in the foods God has given us, but last night, pausing over my dinner prep - the range of greens in the wakame, the asparagus, the green cabbage; the clean country rain-wet scent of the freshly cut carrots and the zing of the ginger - was the first time that I felt this staggering gratitude for what God (or Great Spirit, Allah, Yhwh, Supreme Being, Brahma or whatever name you know Him, Her by, speakable or not) has given us. Staggering gratitude, but sadness, too: God has given us everything we need, but we have pushed for more, we have thrown the balance off, poisoning ourselves with pesticides, GMOs, etc. While I have now more than ever tried to eat organic for my health, hoping to avoid these contaminants, it has until last night been science. Last night, it became an understanding of God's gift: He has given me everything I need to restore my health. And I thought: "this is Thanksgiving." Every day, every meal, I will approach with thanksgiving.

An Open Letter to Zohreh Sullivan

2007-09-14T01:49:00.000+01:00

12 September 2007

Dear Zohreh,

I’ve been meaning to write you for about a week now (the words were already coming to me as we sat across from each other at Espresso Royale), but then I had my doctor’s appointment the very next day, and this, with the move to California, has thrown off my writing, understandably, I suppose, though I feel that it is during these times when I should be writing, recording, remembering.

And the same for my dissertation/thesis: I was so exhausted by the writing of it that I still haven’t written about its writing, which is what I so wanted to tell you about at Espresso if we’d had more time – but it works out, because now I might write it to you instead of wasting my words by frittering them all away on talk (so ephemeral). Now that I’ve found a post office not too far from me, though, I can write it to you.

I wanted to write to tell you about the sheer intensity of writing about Woolf, an intensity that I had never tapped into until now (with the exception of a paper I wrote on Katherine Mansfield & “Bliss” – but that was an intensity so close that it terrified me, and I shied away from her, leaving the piece as “breathless” as its subject. Writing about Woolf, however, this intensity became rather a calm center of extreme focus, a gathering of fragments, a comfortable closeness (reading her letters and diaries, I began unconsciously to think of her as Virginia, or sometimes, if I was feeling particularly protective of her, as “my Virginia”). I realized towards the end of te writing process that (though I’d already had many undesirable interruptions during the summer) I was purposefully slowing my writing down, procrastinating not by avoiding the work but by sinking more deeply into details. I was reluctant to let either it or Virginia go; I regretted turning in what had nurtured me (if it tortured me at times) for nearly two years. (Luckily, I saved one of her novels, Flush, to read later, and carried it with me here to Irvine so that though there may be geographical disconnect, there is no severance.)

So while understanding the dangers of identifying with one’s topic (especially a subject like Woolf), I nevertheless allowed myself (or imagined?) an understanding with her, quiet, tender at times, undramatic (unlike the identification I imagined myself to have with Mansfield, which was destructive, frightening – like clinging desperately with no saddle nor reins to the slick back of a black horse who races through a lightless vacuum you know is Time; Limited Time; 5 year’s Time – while I loved her and her writing, working on her cut too close, fed my fears, would have been my collapse [here, I wanted to write “death,” but that seemed too dramatic a word]). In Virginia, however, I identified a quiet strength, a balance, a knowing guide. While writing her, I dreamed her, along with the Wars identified in her writing. During this year, these were the major moments:

An email from D.S., my first love before Rasheed (a young love – D. was a conservative who didn’t believe the ERA should be passed, but somehow he still managed to love my feminist tenacity – it was an inexperienced love that didn’t survive the year of my illness and finally the removal of the tumor in ’04, but everything for a reason – perhaps I wouldn’t have found Rasheed otherwise!). Years ago, when D. & I were still dating, I dreamt that he went to fight in the war (this must have been just before or just after Bush invaded; this of course is the ever-constant weight that bore on the writing of my diss.). In this dream, he was leaving for the service, and we stood facing each other on a wooden train platform (dusty & the color of his neatly pressed uniform – like he had never worn it before) saying good-bye. I knew in the dream I would never see him again; I knew it, and gripped his head between my two hands & sobbed, despite his calm, even slightly amused, reassurance: “It’s going to be okay. I’ll be fine.” Up until this point in our relationship (‘02-03), he hadn’t mentioned enlisting in the military. In fact, it wasn’t until years later, when I was living with Rasheed in London, that I heard from Dan that he was going into the service. I immediately recalled that dream. I phoned him the night before he left home for training to wish him luck, but didn’t tell him about the dream. I haven’t seen him since before I first moved to London, and indeed, had not even heard from him since he left, until, a couple of months ago, in the midst of writing about Virginia (and about Virginia writing about war), there was an email from him.

Then, the aeroplanes. This was nearly constant. During the summer, there were a number of air shows around Brighton – new planes & antique, show planes & trick planes. Again and again do the war planes appear in Woolf’s diary, droning over London and Monks House (she wondered that a bomb didn’t drop right through the glass ceiling of her writing house), sawing the air – it seemed as though as she wrote it, so, too, I read it – these lingering sounds (which are right now, appropriately, perhaps, if anticlimactically, the high whine of a force of lawn mowers and weed whackers driven by a team of lawn care workers attacking our grad housing grounds!).

And the death of my grandfather, a World War II veteran of the Navy. At such a distance from him, I wasn’t sure if I’d lost him at all, or if perhaps I hadn’t actually lost him already, long ago, before my birth, before the birth of my father (his son) even. If he wasn’t always-already lost to me, a casualty of the war. I dreamt the night I learned of his death that he had died in that war, yet somehow, I still existed, and more, was still his grand-daughter.

Finally, a visit to Monks House. Rasheed & I went together during his most recent visit (we went, too, to Hogarth House in Richmond). We went to see the House, their bedrooms, the balcony where she installed a telescope, the gardens where he planted & dug & declared famously that these plants would still be growing long after Hitler was dead, the small house with the glass roof where she wrote most mornings from 10 to 1 at a great butcher’s block table. I used the outhouse there just for the joke of it – the house has an indoor toilet which Virginia was so excited to have installed after Mrs. Dalloway sold so well, but now that the house has new owners, all visitors must use the outbuilding. Then, we decided to rest & relax outside for awhile as the weather had finally turned nice again (the sun came & went with Rasheed this summer), and R. let me choose out of all the gardens and lawns where we would sit. I chose a small, semi-secluded garden with a square lily pond in its center. We rested there on the grass for a time, then left the house to explore the churchyard on the other side of the fence dividing the property of “the Woolves” from that of the church, where/when I realized I had forgotten to ask where the ashes of Virginia were buried (I knew that they were buried under one of the two great trees the Woolfs had nicknamed “Leonard” and “Virginia,” but also that those trees have since come down). So we went back to the house, and asked directions which led us back to the same garden where we had rested, even to the very same side of it where we had sat. Approaching this garden a second time, I felt an overwhelming awe for this woman, and gratitude for the understanding I had been granted during my writing. Perhaps here she had found peace in life and now after; perhaps it was the sense of that peace that led me here years later.

There were, of course, other dreams (R. & I, war refugees, in danger still, running through the night, through gunfire) and many, many other moments (seeing the portrait of the son she lost to war which Vanessa had hung over her bed at Charleston), but these were the four main things.

Love,
Tessa

Cleansing

2007-08-22T08:04:00.000+01:00

First, apologies for my long absence - it's the dissertation (UK)/thesis (US) grind, so I've been exhausting all of my creative energy on this paper, and have been going to sleep too dry to dream, it seems.

Until last night, when I dreamt I was cleansed. Of what, I'm not sure, but I know that I needed it. In the dream, I wandered I don't know where, until I found myself unknowingly inside of one particular building, directionless yet somehow knowing I had meant to be there. I don't think it was a church - if so, the sanctuary was hidden deep in its body - but it had the feeling of a church: all of the rooms had the feeling of not being a center in themselves but of centering instead around some much more important heart. I was met by an old-ish woman, a starched grey dress that buttoned stiffly over full stout breasts; thick, soft gray hair pulled into a knot at the back of her head; glasses; a gentle touch and discerning brown eyes that yet did not probe. She called me "dear." A nurse or an angel? - I didn't know. But a healer. She took me by one arm - light fingertips on my elbow - to a room where I could put down my bags. Then to another, grey like her, but darker. The only light from a high window, white sunlight. Below it, a deep stone & steel basin. A bath. She bid me undress. With no need for shame, but with exhausted arms and back, I removed piece by slow piece & put them in a heap, where, in the light of the window, they seemed to skulk like a small dirty animal - and I pitied them. I climbed into the bath & sat on one of its stone steps. She sat next to me with a nozzle in her hand, waiting patiently for the water; I asked, my limbs already trembling with chill: "Will it be cold?" She smiled down on me, "No, dear." And then, not with a gurgle or splash, the water came, a vital clear silent stream that she washed over my shoulders, my arms and my back; down my legs; and finally, over my head. She adjusted my head away from her, so that the right side (the bruised and bumped; the once-poisonous side) tilted up towards her. The water ran down it, soaking my hair and tingling on my skull; and she ran her hand again and again over that side, the third of the three most-sincere, most-intense & intensely-needed moments of touch I have had there (the first, in my fiction; the second, a friend, drunk). That someone would love that ugly, scary place. Then she shut the tap off, and took my hand, helping me up the slippery stone steps, water rushing, coursing in one clear cataract from my hair down my back down my buttocks down my calves. She gave me a towel, a white shift to wear. My skin was alive with cold, almost painfully alive to the rough-cotton feel of this short shapeless dress. She took me to another room, also grey, but lit with florescent lights, empty (though I implicitly felt the presence of other women in that building) but for a few brown couches whose rough brown covers scratched the backs of my legs when I sat on them. There, I would fast for the remainder of the day. There, she left me. And I felt my body clean, alive.

(Ironic, because I now go to make a cup of coffee to get going on the diss this morning after what was initially a perfect, beautiful, whole night, into which Rasheed threw a stone as into a pool...)

Chasing down the Dance

2007-07-22T11:15:00.000+01:00

Last night, one of those moments of beauty which life delivers at the most unexpected moments, one of those moments of complete understanding between complete, disparate even, strangers... A seemingly undeserved moment of reprieve that has come during unrelenting medical antagonism and academic stress; during flatmate (who has not yet forgiven me for missing part of her birthday; but I have faith in her goodness) & boyfriend (who has forgiven me) alienation; during this time of starvation when I have no time nor resource to refuel my exhausted mind, when tango even ceases to give me peace as my body fades, when what I crave most is to sit quietly, even silently, with good friends across a table of good food and let their presence fill the cracks in my own. Despite my downfalls, last night, life fed me -

I went (a wrecked ship), last night, to the Blues Brothers show at the Royal with my boss, who apparently asked me along because a) I'm as close to Chicago as he's ever gotten, and b) he knew I would dance with abandon, which I of course did - for the entire 3 hours. This latter meant leaving our cramped seats in the center of the stalls & moving to the side aisle where we wouldn't block our (incredibly disgruntled) neighbors' view & where we could actually dance. Out there, I met a couple of guys who actually work with the show (one, a 15-year-old, has been traveling with the Bros. for 12 years & will be the "new Jake" when the current Jake retires - what amazing lives people live!) - when they learned I was from the Chicago area AND danced swing/blues, I was named a "soul brother" & duly included in their previously double side-act.

Out there, I also noticed a young man, sitting with his father on the edge of the row, right on our aisle, with Down syndrome. A young man whose unadulterated rapture with the show, the music, the lights captured me (esp. after the late-middle-aged British priggishness of our row - "You know you've given up your seats for good now!" they snapped at us as we excuse me'd and apologized our way over their knees between songs). It was so pure - the entirely unselfconscious smile on this man's upturned face - such happiness - suddenly everything else seemed so unimportant next to this.

But one thing. As the music got louder, more and more people stood to rock & clap to the rhythm - except this man. He sat, rooted in his seat, hands gripping its arms; he still smiled, but occasionally, I saw conflict flit across his eyes. It wasn't until I saw him see me that I understood: I tapped into some of my swing footwork, my black&white saddle soft-shoes flashing - and I saw his eyes follow my feet up the floor and down again, and then - sensing I'd caught him watching - he looked into my face, and he grinned - I could only grin back - I understood. I didn't stop dancing the rest of the night, and waited to meet his eye again and again to smile again and again at him -

Until he at last stood up from his seat. He started slowly. He stood. He let his arms drop at his sides at first, then swayed them back and forth a bit, his smile tightening in concentration. Then his brown eyes wandered over to me again. I started rocking back and forth to the music, clapping first on the left and then on the right - and he rocked with me, to the left and to the right. And suddenly we hit the rhythm together - left, clap; right, clap - and his grin came back, and mine. By the time they closed with "Everybody needs somebody to love," he didn't even need me anymore, only the music.

And when the curtain dropped and as he was leaving with his father, he stopped to shake my hand, but I felt so much more that I should be shaking his for reminding me again of that unadulterated joy in dance, that connection (so strange yet so perfect that a complete stranger standing several feet away from me should do this), and that peace that comes when you finally chase it down, all the way down to the end of the world which you find suddenly, unexpectedly, is at your innermost center...

A public elegy

2007-07-16T12:30:00.000+01:00

An email from my mother early this morning (GMT)/late last night (central time): my grandfather died. A multiplicity of reactions:

The first, to do unthinkingly what I had to do this morning. A strange blurring of time and place and lives. The first thing I had to do was go to the hospital this morning, but for my own unresolved (and seemingly unresolvable; I mystify my doctors; I will have to go for more tests) medical issues. I ducked soundlessly out of the dark hushed flat, already running (literally) late for my appointment, roommates still sleeping, even Jess's cough quiet finally, and into the purgatorial fluorescent hall, elevator, finally plunging out the back door of the building into the cool grey day, still quiet and surprisingly clean for Brighton - perhaps there was rain last night, rinsing the car exhaust and bar fumes from the streets? I hurried out the gate, where I ran past Ray, the insufferable day porter (a bit of background: the man comes to our flat to shout at me [last, when our tap was dripping and I was concerned for the waste of water] & threatens that he'll have no more maintenance complaints from our flat; confrontations with him have triggered seizures in me, and so generally I avoid what I consider a presence noxious to my general well-being, though sometimes the inevitable encounter, such as this morning...) - he makes some comment on the morning, I don't even understand what, I nod my head as a response, hardly looking, and keep my stride. He shouts something at me, something rude and uncalled for, I can tell by his voice, though I still cannot process language yet... I turn and shout at him: "My grandfather died this morning!" I shock myself, there on the street, blurting it out - shouting it - to Ray - how funny, after everything, that Ray, intolerable Ray, is the first person I should tell. And funnier still: when I look, I find sympathy in his face. I've lost use of my language again; I put on my big dark glasses (indispensable for every doctor's appt, to the point where I pack them the night before) despite the clouds & run off for the bus. By this point I have a near-silent Rasheed on the phone; I've told him the news; I get nearer the bus stop: it's closed for construction. Having no idea where the next closest stop was and knowing I'd never make it to the hospital in time if I walked, feeling so pressed for time, and feeling, somehow, too, the press of mortality, I ran to the nearest cab corral & threw myself in the backseat of the first in line. At least it was quiet here; I could hear Rasheed on the phone now, at least his silence, and I felt for just a moment that he could help somehow, if I could tell him what I needed; I filled him in on the details, but when I had run out of them, and we lapsed into silence, I realized, looking at the brown and grey brick buildings go by outside, the futility of it - and so I arrived at the hospital to meet one of my doctors, and there found a waiting room full of old men, dying men, men in wheelchairs and men who slouched skeletal in cramped waiting room chairs pushing their dentures in and out of slack gums, and one old man who had come along with his middle-aged daughter & waited for her when she was called in to the office (he stood when she stood; "Are you fine waiting here, Dad?" she asked, and he sat) - and none of them were him - it was as if I had rushed to the hospital to be with him before he died, and I was too late - then, suddenly, I had no idea what I needed, if anything at all.

I was directed to another waiting room, where two old men were the only other occupants. They sat together - friends? They joked like they were, but maybe it was a generalized brotherhood amongst old men; maybe there is a universal language amongst old men who find themselves in hospitals (whereas we young people keep quiet as to cover ourselves from the curious, pitying stares of the old). I took out my book, but began to think instead. The nurse called me; I didn't understand my name; she called again. When I went to her, the men smiled kindly at me. I gave her the information she needed, sat back down, put my book away, and let myself think instead...

He is not the first I have lost since being here. It's so surreal a loss, the loss you will never know because you were not physically there to experience it. In a way, it is no loss at all. Mr G, Steve, Cookie (though she was a dog, she counted as human, at least counted herself as such), and now Pop - they all are both doubly lost (because even the losing has eluded me) and not lost at all to me - there is no closure. Pop will be the first for whom I write a "public" elegy. So, too, will we here give him our own service - a service on the sea, because he served in the Navy during the Second World War.

But it is important to avoid sentimentality. Pop and I had by no means an ideal grandparent-grandchild relationship. We saw eye-to-eye on very little, if on anything at all aside from our mutual love for my mother's Christmas sticky buns. There was his sexism; there was his racism. There was his joke about the old telephone he had picked up in a ruined Japan during the war which now sits on my father's bar; pointing to the Japanese characters on its face, he asked: "You think it says Jap-bell?" A joke my father has appropriated as his own. There was the day my mother had to physically drag me from the room after I had disagreed with him about something: it was not my place to argue with him, she chastised me; besides, she continued, he was old and too set in his ways for me to change him.

But, as he aged further & I matured, our relationship - or at least my feeling for him - softened. He softened, even so much so that I felt safe introducing Rasheed to him. I began to spend a few hours beside my grandmother on their couch before each "leaving" (whether to Champaign or Savoy or London or Brighton-via-London) going through old photographs. But more, I began to identify somewhat with him. My grandfather was one of those tough old bastards who just don't die. Though understanding it as inevitable, I think I never quite believed he would. After surviving heart attacks and heart surgeries (yes, that's plural), he kept on. In his 70s, he took up roller-skating. In his 80s, he was still driving. After my own surgery, I began to understand what this meant in a way that I couldn't as a child, when his surgeries actually happened (though his scars running purple and snakelike down his white chest chilled me as a child when we all went swimming in Sunday Lake; I suddenly recall him standing waist-deep in water, putting the pier together at the beginning of one summer). Against all bodily probability, he continued to live. And not only live, but do. He continued, after his surgeries, for many years, to take trips up to Sunday Lake with the family, where he fished & sometimes swam (and largely, sat in the sun or at the campfire, ate, drank, & generally enjoyed life). Mortality, be damned!

I recall my last meal with him. Beef-a-Roo (for all of the Illinois natives) at the last house he and my grandmother lived in together before she moved to her own apartment and he was put in a home as she was unable to take the care of him that he needed. He had onion rings, and tempted me to eat them with him; I ate the fruit salad my grandmother & I made together. (Mortality, be damned, up until the last!) We ate off paper plates. I teased him ("Have you been behaving?" "You know I'll hear about it if you're up to your tricks!") - as so many old men like to be reminded of their scruffy boyish glory days, making him smile and laugh his worn-out laugh. I told him about my plans for England, shouting, so that he could hear me, but I don't think he paid too much attention. I wondered where his mind was: maybe revisiting his own trip to England (one of a few, I think), decades ago? He had come on business, with my grandmother (the trip that gave her all her ammunition to protest very vehemently against my coming; better to stay at home, get married, and have children) - they had driven "on the wrong side of the road" with one of Pop's work friends who "drove way too fast!" and who had in a restaurant ordered my grandmother a "just terrible" dessert, "thinking he was giving her a real treat" - said she. I wondered what Pop remembered - I realize now I'll never know. I wonder what streets he wandered here; what pubs he drank in with his work buddies (because I know he would have). But, leaving that day - I stood on the step, in the doorway, to look back one last time - he was unable to stand up from the table, and I looked back into the room, into his face, and into his eyes which were suddenly a bright, clear, blue - the bluest I had ever seen them, as if a light beamed through them; it lit his entire face which was suddenly smiling ever so slightly, childlike, but knowing. And standing there on the step, looking back into his eyes for what must have been only a few seconds but felt like long minutes, I knew then that it was the last time I would see him.

Though there are so many other things (his 50th wedding anniversary; summers at the house on Belvidere; the war; the painting) - I will end here for now. There will always be more to be said, and somewhere, another elegy by the sea, a novel, I will say it.

Confession

2007-07-14T08:30:00.000+01:00

The honest truth? Here it is: California (especially southern California, and even more especially LA and...Irvine) scares me. I do not think that this is because I am a particularly fearful person; indeed, there is really only the one big thing. Nor do I think it is because I am afraid of change: no, I packed up quite cheerfully for Champaign for university (granted, this was only 3 and a half hours drive away); and, just over four years later, packed up again for London in perfect faith (in God's will, Rasheed's love, my quick decision), making my first international flight alone, quitting my job and leaving family, friends, and my dearest professors behind. True, I was loathe to leave London for Brighton several months later, and even now know that my heart is still in that city, but Brighton, while ugly and irritating at times (I'm thinking of the masses of tourists & the obnoxious mobs of disgusting drunk teenagers choking the streets day and night; the street fights; the drug deals and break-ups that happen in my alley; the audacity of the children here, like the 16-year-old kid who sexually harassed me at my last catering gig & then was brazen enough to try it again not a minute later), was never scary.

Why, then, does California terrify me? (Though I wonder: when the time comes down to it, will it scare me still? I somehow doubt it.) True, it is partly because I am not yet done with Brighton; I feel instead that I've only just now gotten into it (maybe because for the first few months, I was still largely living in London, spending half of my long weekends there with Rasheed in our former flat, and when not there physically, certainly spiritually, memorially...). Suddenly it is as if, just when I've fitted the last piece together, my flatmates are starting to leave (Sari first; we went to her last Shabbat dinner here in Brighton together last night), and then I need to wrap up my dissertation (which I will never feel digs deeply enough), and then, I am asked to leave these places and people I am only just coming to know in real ways? I only just discovered that modest churchyard cemetery in Hove last night...; I begin to realize that I will likely never dance the tango on a rooftop above the beach of Brighton again in my life; and, though not Brighton, but London, I've only just now begun to make friends with the people I dance with at the 100 Club. (It's true, I've only just recently gotten a phone!) And Kirsty, who first remembered my name, a kindred dancing soul; Neil, whom I have watched learn to dance like watching a child discover the world (because it is its own world, the music, the space hollowed between one dancer's shoulders and another, against a chest & beneath a chin), and whom I have tested to that end; Zsolt, whom I knew by the freckles on his nose that we would be friends, who taught me how to tie a tie (unsuccessfully), and with whom I talked books at my second day of work; Sue, so ebullient and young, so brilliant - our friendship cannot end here, I wait for her return from Paris; George, who moves with the powerful grace of a horse, and in whose large dark eyes I see the knowing wisdom of that animal, so reminiscent of Michael, patient, strong, broad-backed and certainly stored with greater knowledge of the world than a 17-year-old me clung lightly atop his steady body, George, for whom I have no time to know better; and finally Rob Hawke, a face like his name, whom I have left behind already.

But this cannot be all; there were people left behind in Illinois, all left for the one in London. True, most of these people were family (or near enough), and I knew that no matter where any of us were, we were never "left behind"; rather, we move together still in parallel lines that, when we are lucky or just plain determined, occasionally intersect. It was, however, to my occasionally over-dramatic sensibility, near-tragedy to part with some of the swing dancers, some of the people at Pages - people a few of whom I am lucky enough to hear from occasionally or to dream full rich dreams about (last night, I was at a family gathering at my Auntie Kay's - their old house at Colorado Ave, but decorated like the Cherry Valley house, and with its porch, where I found my aunts & my cousin John in the sunshine, eating soft pretzels off of white paper plates, and where I knew instinctively that my mom was in the kitchen pouring lemonade - they were not at all surprised to see me there - happy, but not surprised; and countless times have I dreamt myself onto the swing dance floor in Champaign, literally [thanks to time zone differences] dancing with that group again, 10 pm their time, 4 am mine). My fear leaving these people was that they would forget me, who would never forget them & who dream about them still. Not an egotism, as I have been accused. No. If two people remember, there is still togetherness; if one forgets, the thread is broken.

So, I have separated from people before (Rockford & area for Champaign & area for London for Brighton) - it cannot be this that so spooks me. No, I think it is the place itself. California; LA; Irvine - they none of them seem real places to me. For weeks now, I've looked up information on the internet, I've read articles & looked at photos in magazines and newspapers, I even met a woman at Buckingham who grew up in Irvine (but who had been living in London for over a decade) - nothing can convince me that there is a substantial place that is California; that beyond the name there is landscape and buildings and people, and finally, a small home, a room, even, somewhere in the midst of this empty space for me.

You may point out (and logically so) that it can never be real to me until I am there. But I will counter (completely, utterly irrationally so) that London was always real to me, even before I had ever arrived. Sometimes I couldn't believe I was really there, but London was always Real, and from that moment on the train when I rested my head on Rasheed's shoulder somewhere between Hatton Cross & Hounslow and looked out the window at the grey, sleeting sky, it was Home. It was Real & it was Home even when I was neither. At a time when I myself was Unreal - during the worst stretch of post-operation seizures, medical misdiagnosis, soaring and plummeting blood sugar, drug disrealization - it was a comfort (more than that) to be, even if a ghost, even if only the faintest beat of blood in thin veins, even if sucked under by sudden seizures with little or no warning, it was a comfort to be surrounded by a Real city; to put my feet on real streets; to follow where Virginia walked; to sit in the green deck chairs at Hyde Park & watch the dogs romp without leads & stand by Round Pond, feeding the starlings; to put coins on the base of the statue of Gandhi; to dance at Holi and again at Gay Pride; to row in Regent's Park & drift round the back of the island. If I was transparent - the city was stone. If I was ephemeral - it was eternal, somehow.

Eternal - somehow. True, not eternal, but lasting - old - older than perhaps anything else I have known. This, I think, is what scare me most: California is so new. I imagine (mistakenly, the rational side of me knows) a film-set city-scape which will fall at the least puff of breath. In California, I imagine I must be real, and unflinchingly so - I will not have the protection, the security of a history that allows - indeed forces - me to whisp unsubstantially through its solid streets. I find, though, that this has always been true of me, even before the surgery. The more I travel east of Rockford - London, Paris, Budapest - the more solid the world feels. At my childhood home, I was comfortable with the earth, the space of the skies & fields & trees, but not with the house itself, whose walls tremble in the winds, nor with most of Rockford, especially as it develops still. In Champaign, I was comfortable on the Quad, amongst its oldest buildings, regardless of the fact the two I spent the most time in (Lincoln Hall, my sculpture studio; and the English building, of course) were rated by the fire department as the two most structurally dangerous buildings on campus; I was most comfortable in my longest-standing apartment, and was never quite at ease in my last in Savoy, a cardboard building only a few years old. No, I am terrified to leave a country who has known the ways of the Woolves, who has known and survived plague and fire and war, who changes and accepts that change (itself time-won wisdom that my natal-land, at least its current govt., has not mastered); I am terrified to leave a country whose skyline even before I knew it was built of stone, and on the downs, of earth, and to leave it for a space which to me has always been empty, a flimsy paper-and-lights world. The truth: it terrifies me to leave the place that filled in my own empty spaces.

But, optimistically, I still have time to fill the Unreal spaces of myself as solidly as I can before I leave. Today, I go to Knole (to Vita, Orlando, and beyond). Today, I fill perhaps the space between two ribs, perhaps the nook behind my knee, so that I will be at least that much more substantial when I leave for California.

[A request I have of people who have known California: not "visited" nor "touristed," but known in a meaningful way: will you tell me your stories? (I'm thinking esp. of Holly, whose story is perhaps the most lasting story I have known to come from California: will you retell it to me?) Pictures, even, cannot make it real to me, but your words & the depths in your voices can.]

Waiting for inspiration...from my inspiration

2007-07-08T11:58:00.001+01:00

In one of several installments of his autobiography, Beginning Again: 1911-1918, Leonard Woolf recalls the way in which his wife Virginia's mind often worked: for days, weeks, even months, she would sit starting out the window, at the fire, at her paper, contemplating "the problem," until, in a sudden flash, she would solve it, her pen dashing across the page so that she could hardly keep up with her own voice - she finished The Waves with "such intensity and intoxication," she recorded.

Perhaps because I know this about her, my own writing about her fluctuates between contemplation and fulguration. True, I experience those "flashes" of inspiration (who doesn't, regardless of vocation/purpose/hobby?) in my other writing (fiction, epistolary, even email, even here [today not being an example of this]), and in my critical writing about other subjects (most notably Joyce, with whom I have a love-hate relationship; trapped in a dead-lock with the man/author/myth for weeks, until suddenly, either he or I give, and the words landslide down page after type-written, single-spaced page) - but with Virginia, the struggle is more exhausting; the inspiration, purer. Perhaps all Woolf scholars like to imagine this sort of intimacy with their subject, but I like to think that after years of reading and reading about Virginia, writing informally and more recently, formally, about her; after listening to her voice in the only existing recording of her at the library; after deciphering (rather unsuccessfully) her hand in the Monks House Papers; after visiting most of her homes (and her sister's) and haunting her neighborhoods and favorite walks (Regent's Park, St. George's Gardens, the downs, etc) - I like to think that after this, I have absorbed something of the essence of this presence who still permeates London, Sussex, and that this will in turn inform my writing of her.

Unfortunately for me, however, I have not the luxury of months to contemplate - nor even weeks. 3 September, work schedules, health concerns & autumn living plans inform my writing now. I become impatient with my research; and worse, with my writing. I push unprepared into unexplored territory, and naturally, lose myself in the brambling complexities of Virginia which are otherwise part of what I love best about her. And I finally find my way only to be heartbreakingly interrupted, never to lose sight of her in the thick, but rather, to lose my way to her. Only a few weeks ago: working steadily, writing well - then, a vague email from my doctor that my blood results have come back "abnormal"; he thinks kidney problems, but isn't sure what it means. A week of nearly daily doctors' appointments combined with at-home observation throws me. Then: the weekend. Relief: doctors don't call or email on weekends; there is no post on Sundays. I work again. Monday: a provisional "diagnosis" ("in all probability," they say - thank God it's not my kidneys; rather, it's miscommunication between my pituitary gland and my kidneys, it seems) which I continue to work under, unconfirmed and untreated as it is, waiting for the doctors. I work. Then: a week-long visit from my mother. We slog through a week of rain in London and Brighton (at least she got the "authentic" British experience! Jane Eyre: "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.") which leaves me sick for days after she's gone. My writing still has not recovered, exactly a week after she's departed. The ideas are all there; I write and rewrite; I cannot organize, which is why I have come here, in the hopes of, as if I were casually batting ideas around with you, as if you were here in this room with me (a time when a woman wants anything but a room of her own!!), the form will organize itself in my mind:

In this chapter in my diss, I am looking at Night and Day as one of Woolf's most important war novels - a novel which is often overlooked in the Woolf canon, and even charged with "deliberately looking away" (Briggs) from WWI, during which it was written. At this moment, I mean to be discussing the structure of repression (and the equally dual nature of that repression: both of the war experience & civilian "madness") practiced by the novel - at once contextual (the architecture within) & textual (the "architecture" of) which Woolf parallels from the opening pages (we enter the novel as Denham enters Cheyne Walk). Further, it is temporal repression on several levels: Mrs. Hilbery & Mr. Fortescue in the novel look even further backwards, thus highlighting the novel's own self-conscious awareness of its location in the past, which at moments threatens to erupt in masked references to the present. ... Sounds easy, right? I think I need a pen & paper for this one. And a moment of inspiration, as I've been staring at this for a week now...

In pursuit of coffee perfection

2007-06-19T12:55:00.000+01:00

You will think that I am a crazy woman.

But today, I absolutely. cannot. work. until...I have the perfect cup of coffee at my side. And so, I attempt to make said perfect cup of coffee: I brew it at home, Columbian organic with a dash of cinnamon in the grounds; let it steep, then add a splash of M&S soya milk (made with sunflower oil, so it doesn't curdle in your hot drinks) followed by just barely a half of raw sugar. But whoops - I used my organic Alpro soya unthinkingly, and it curdled. Whatever, I make a new cup, and use the right milk. It curdles. Is it the coffee? I'm at the end of the bag - could be. I open a new bag of coffee, begin the process again. Again: curdles. In a big way. And you know how it is when you have those certain things for certain days that really get you in the mood for certain types of work - I usually switch it up: Tan Dun & Yo-Yo Ma with green or white tea & fruit, or Benny Goodman & Miles Davis with coffee & cinnamon rolls (days when I know I won't be doing yoga lest I need to be rolled home). Today - today is a Benny Goodman day. And Benny's working for me, but my coffee...

So, an emergency trip to Starbucks has been planned. I guess every now & then you need to splurge.

An aside about coffee cliches: you know that saying, something along the lines of: "Some things are better rich: chocolate, coffee, men"? I always think to myself: I, too, like my men like I like my coffee...strong but sweet. And most days, I'm lucky to get it how I like it. Excepting today, but better the coffee than the man.

Inspiration

2007-06-18T14:51:00.000+01:00

Working on Woolf; from her essay, "George Eliot":

"...as we recollect all that she dared and achieved, how with every obstacle against her - sex and health and convention - she sought more knowledge and more freedom till the body, weighted with its double burden, sank worn out, we must lay upon her grave whatever we have it in our power to bestow of laurel and rose."

She is buried in Highgate, having died at the age of 61 of kidney problems & throat infection as Mary Ann Cross, in the section for religious dissenters. Before I leave this country, I will go to pay my respects.

More knowledge and more freedom.

Achieving peace, one fight at a time

2007-06-12T19:45:00.000+01:00

Last week, I broke up my first street fight - it was surreal, really...

So I was walking home from a catering gig at the Holiday Inn; it was about 2 a.m., and Saturday night was in full swing; bars bumpin' & bouncers ubiquitous (in my part of Brighton, we have bouncers guarding even the doors of convenience shops). What was surreal: my arms were full of flowers. We had just done a "beach party" event, & I was coming home from a looong evening of cleaning up after some very wild revelers (also surreal: the drag-queen they had for entertainment kissed me. In. front. of. everyone.) - but instead of throwing away the flowered leis we had given each of the guests, I took them all home, planning to hang them on my flatmates' & neighbors' doors, plus give one to our elderly night porter, Joe, whom I adore.

But, nearly home, I came across two young men in the street who had gathered a small crowd. They stood chest-to-chest, and were shouting into each others' faces; one man's face was bloodied, and I could see where it had dripped down the chest of his white shirt. The crowd was apparently made up of their friends, who were shouting at the men to "come on" and "let's go" and "stop it" - but they would not move any closer to the pair.

And so, slightly irrationally (combination of a late night; drag queen; and armful of flowers), I stepped beside the men, who at first ignored me, until I put a hand on first one, then the other's arm. "Gentlemen," I said. I said it quietly; I said it once. And this was all I needed to say. They stopped shouting; the first looked at me and sort of smiled; the second (bloody), paused to catch his breath and looked at me in confusion. I put a lei over the head of the first, who began laughing; then a lei over the head of the second, who looked increasingly confused. The first laughed even more, and said to the second: "There now, doesn't that make you feel better?" Then, one of their friends ran up to me, begging a lei off me ("I will give you SO much money if you give me just one of those!" "I'll give it you for free!" I put it around his neck); then, seeing I had given another away, a woman ran up to me: "May I have one too?" I put one over her head. At this, they all flocked around me. I began throwing lei after lei into the air, where they were caught by the seafront breeze and blown down the sidewalk, chased after by the small group.

And to think those leis would have been wasted, thrown away...

More terror dreams

2007-06-08T09:19:00.000+01:00

Even when I sleep do my dreams deny me rest now. For weeks, I've been having nightmares. Sometimes every night, sometimes only every few nights. Sometimes, I'm so worn out as to hardly remember my dreams at all (which is unusual for me). I wake up still-tired (sometimes more tired than when I went to bed), my face hurting from frowning...

Of the dreams I had last night, I remember two. The second (which I'll write about first, and probably remember more about as I write), I can't remember much about. It woke me up. I was running in it; running for my life; running from someone, but also running with someone, neither of whom I can remember. All I can remember is the feel of the air full in my lungs, so full that my chest was tight. AH! I remember another detail - it started out at a dance, the sort of event I've been catering, sort of like prom, but for adults; I had gone there in a group that included Rannier & Jessica, and I danced with Rannier - to the event, I wore my old prom dress, but when we started dancing, I wore "the dress" which Jess lent me. I was running with Rannier, then...but from whom? Someone who had been at the event? Again, what I remember most clearly is the feeling in my chest as I ran, lungs so full as I ran...no, I remember the feeling in my arms, too - I pumped them harder and harder, practically pushing myself forward by their momentum, ignoring the ache that reached from shoulders to fists. I ran with deadly seriousness; I ran with power - not because I actually had that sort of strength, really, but because I had no choice but to run with that sort of determination. When you run for your life, I think this must be how you run.

And the first dream...the first dream, I write about to purge myself of it. It was terrible; it was frightening, it was saddening; it is as if it still pollutes my body (I'll not skip yoga today; I've been skipping for work, but my seizures & my dreams are catching up to me - I owe it to myelf; I need to cleanse myself of this stress & most particularly this dream). In this dream, I witnessed what for some reason was classified a terrorist act. And weirdly, there was a movie made about it later, which somehow I already knew about in the present-time of the dream, and even then, or perhaps especially then, I wondered how they (they? movie producers, I guess?) could make a commercial film out of an event so terrifying, so sad - just for entertainment value. Perhaps it was that the film had just come out, and it made me remember my own part in the actual events, a memory which was still clear in the dream, if less so now that I am awake. In it, the terrorist - a man from Turkey - killed another man, a man who worked in a garage - I didn't know why this man was so important; I didn't know who he was; I didn't know why the government labeled it a "terrorist act." The beginning of the dream, I saw it as if I were in two positions - I saw it as a newsreel, from the air, the film grainy, drained of nearly all color, a thin dark man, all tendons and muscle, leaping from a car and tearing down the street (a dirty street, gray, lined with dingy shops) - in the newsreel, it looked as if he carried a large gun; but I saw it, too, from the street, felt the air move as he ran by me, and I saw that what he carried was not a gun, but rather, a small pair of white plastic tubes fused together. I followed him to the garage - but when I got there, the act had already been completed. I saw the garage-owner crumpled at the bottom of a flight of stairs (and I knew instinctually that he lived above the garage, and I knew, too, exactly which room I would find at the end of those stairs - the kitchen, linoleum-tiled, white and yellow, small, every fissure lined with grime from the garage), and at the top of those stairs, his wife, unmoving, her hands clinging one to the other at her chest, uncrying, even...and then, I cared nothing for the murderer or even where he was, if he was still in the garage, if I was in any danger - I cared only for this couple. But when I moved to go to her, I was forcibly stopped; I was collected by the police - I was a witness.

They took me to a small room, gray as well, and brown. In it were a few chairs, a couch, a refrigerator, a TV (not on), and it smelled of cigarette smoke, stale coffee, and bodies. It was full of people. Most sat on the floor. All were "witnesses" or "suspects." Witnesses sat on one side of the room nearest the door; suspects, on the other. There were so many of us that I could not see the floor, but I knew somehow that it was thinly carpeted in brown, rubbed bare in patches, and dirty, the dirt ground in. Then I saw Mur. sitting so low on the floor on the side of the suspects, his sad dark eyes the one point of stillness - a vacuum, nearly; a black hole - amongst the flux of bodies. He saw me. And for a moment we only looked - we could not speak. I didn't understand why we were on two separate sides. I looked at the other on that side of the room. Some were strangers, but many I knew, mostly from work. I knew no one on "my" side. The room was airless; I didn't know why I'd been brought there. I wondered where the man's wife was. I waited, I don't know how long.

Then, the police brought in 3 men dressed in black combat uniforms, carrying a case of guns, all exclaiming excitedly that they'd found the guns used in the supposed "terrorist plot." I looked at the case, remembered the white tubes the murderer had carried, remembered the garage owner's body at the foot of the stairs, his wife at the top. I knew that these were not the murder weapons. "No, that's not what he used!" I tried to tell the police. No one heard my voice; as I thought how the garage owner would not get justice, I shouted: "Listen! Those guns are just a cover-up! Those aren't the guns!" No one heard my voice. "Listen to me!" No one heard me over the volume of their own voices; my voice was so small; I could not be heard, as so often happens to me now. I could not will the people to hear me. I looked back at Mur., still not understanding how he was there, how we could not speak, how we were on opposite sides, and suddenly, I saw the same in his sad brown eyes - he, too, knew the truth, but nor would they listen to him. And so we waited, unspeaking, for how long, I don't know, in that room, in forced opposition, when all either of us wanted was to speak to each other...

I woke up at 5:30 from this dream, and fell back asleep into the other.

But today, yoga, and then, at David's advice (David, bless him, who reminds me that it is my health that counts, regardless of the work ethic I was forced into...I literally don't know how to relax; I had chest pains in Paris, trying to relax...), fewer hours catering next week so that I can focus on my research.

I am so...everything - but my complaints mean nothing. On with it.

Felled

2007-06-05T12:05:00.000+01:00

On the experience of having a seizure just now:

A seizure just now, whilst I was reading - and as it tightened its hold on me, the words for this entry formed in my mind, but now that I'm free of its hot grasp, I wonder if they will still flow...the image, however, remains, if adulterated, paradoxically, by what should in all practicality be greater coherence (though sometimes with these attacks comes strange clarity). The image:

So often when these spells hold me immobile on my bed, face turned to the wall, do I suddenly see by no self-conscious volition my body as no longer my own, but rather as that of some great 4-legged animal - most often a gazelle or a horse, but always strong, swift, long-limbed & supple, muscular - felled alone, unknown in a vast tract of yellow desert, spread on the sand, legs still, but ribs rising and falling, gleaming with heat - sweat & sun & salt. My eyes, the round dark globes of this desert animal, lodged in my immobile head (now also sleek & equine, stretched at the end of a long-muscled neck, thrown onto the sand where I fell), are all that can move now, and take in with the disquiet but expectant expression of the game prey my fallen body, acutely aware of both its potential power and utter lack of it, and I wait...and then -

it's as if one of the muscles in my legs flits; my skin twitches where a fly bites my thigh, my tail gives an involuntary switch - my body becomes my own slowly; I return; I heave my limbs from the sand & the bed at once; I am for a moment both, occupying both this world and that (and "this" & "that" themselves fluctuate as I straddle them); and then I am one - the seizure has passed. Today, the vision remained (if not the words which lined themselves up before I had fallen too far).

I cannot help feeling lucky when these images stay with me - it is not unlike remembering your dreams. How, how lucky I am when I am allowed to keep these rare moments when I remember the visions of the worlds I dip into during these moments that are paradoxically both utter confusion & even unconsciousness but yet queer clarity. I once, two years ago, told my mother that perhaps the tumor was a gift - in so many ways. These moments; these dreams; these other worlds I am allowed for only moments to occupy - this is just once of those ways.

This magic...

2007-05-26T12:57:00.000+01:00

Just a little bit of writing to loosen the screws tightened by other work:

Last week exactly was the 3-year anniversary of my surgery. I debated whether or not to mark this day, the words of Ryan (whom I always thought of as "John") reverberating eternally in my memory, words spoken two years ago, only one summer after the surgery: "Wasn't this a year ago? Shouldn't you be over this by now?" I don't know if this is something I will ever "be over," or if it something I "should" be over. At this point in time, "this" itself still differs daily, demanding constant adaptation, let alone "getting over." Perhaps with more time will come equilibrium. Perhaps - I think so.

But, though not for the reason above, I decided not to "mark" this day. I told/reminded no one here, not until after the fact. I reminded Rasheed on the phone that day. After all, what will the surgery have accomplished if I insisted on marking this day? I underwent the surgery so that I could have a (mostly) "normal" life again after. So this is what I decided to celebrate that day: the ordinariness of my life. I did exactly what I would do any other day, reading for my dissertation, writing, going to work that night (catering a Lion's Club banquet at the Holiday Inn where innumerable old men sang the opening lines of "Chicago" to me after learning where I come from), and, after, sharing a bottle of wine with some friends down on the beach.

But ways I did celebrate the day: I did all with a heightened sense of pleasure in each moment, entirely content in the quiet, squirreling away each moment for some winter, remembering how easily any of us may have not been afforded these moments. Also, I filled my last book on that eve, remembering what I wrote exactly three years ago, the eve of the surgery, writing only from obligation, feeling that what was supposedly such a momentous event in my life deserved a written record. I began a fresh book & moved my list of 100 Life Goals to it a few days after this anniversary.

Also did I involve those around me in these "celebrations" - that night on the beach, before we could even open the wine, I had a seizure. During it, I was told after, did I ask: "What sense does life have without this magic?" And it is; magic, that is. Standing at the edge of the sea, standing, I felt, in more than a physical sense, on the periphery of water, rocks, and stars, and then dropping to my knees there under the weight of the seizure - on this Day - coming out of the confusion of my mind with this moment of clarity: what sense would life have without this magic? Without the seizures? They are, sometimes I feel & have felt even before I knew that they were indeed seizures, my moments when I see through life, when I stand outside of it, and see it whole. For so long, I was afraid that I had wavered too long on the borders of "real" life, that I would never slip back inside of it. But outside is its own "real" -

And isn't this what I go riding after, too, in dance, so desperately, deliberately, in the first year, and now, with ease, with peace? That moment when I am released, when I feel that physical lift when I am set free of my body & life; when I am only spirit? The very next evening: one of those perfect evenings of dance - so completely "on"; connected with everyone I came into contact with. And, though she couldn't possibly have known it, Kirsty gave me a way to mark this anniversary. At the end of the night, when the lights have come back on in the restaurant & the staff clears away the remains of dinners & drinks, when we all change back into our street shoes, and put on coats & jumpers, looking like strangers in the strange light...I had one shoe on, one off already when I hear the beginning of a song I'd sent K. weeks ago. Then, her voice: "This one's for you, Tessa!" Without even thinking, I immediately shouted: "Let me get my other shoe back on!" Then I stood, and there she was, a rose-gold light gleaming it seemed in her eyes and cheeks and hair, and we had one last dance, just the two of us, together, in the middle of the floor, under the lights, laughing all through it, and I feeling as if something in me would fly away. ...She is one of those rare dancing souls whom I have written about here, and in my journals, and whom I have sought out in every city I've danced in. She is the only one I've found here for sure (I thought maybe Murat...but we'll see if he stays "quit"; a dancer who quits is no d.s. - but I bet he won't be able to stay away). She & I have always sparked in a good way on the floor, but never yet like that night - and after, I felt so completely understood, as if for the 3-minute space of this song, I had found peace with this person. Magic.

And finally, now, it continues (and so it will still, I think...). Now, writing this after Chinese left-overs from last night, green tea, and a fortune cookie. My fortune, so appropriately timed as I reflect on this Day? Good health will be yours for a long time. Magic. What sense would this life have without it?

From the diaries of Virginia Woolf...

2007-05-18T12:22:00.000+01:00

From my reading of the diaries of Virginia Woolf (vol. II):

"And if we didn't live venturously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, & trembling over precipices, we should never be depressed, I've no doubt; but already should be faded, fatalistic & aged."

I came here to prove that she was not indeed "mad" but saner than the "sane" who diagnosed her as such: here it is in one line.

Reading more & more of her life, I am increasingly in love with this woman & the way she lived her life.

House dreams

2007-05-16T23:36:00.000+01:00

For anyone who still checks here after my long hiatus:

Yes, another few house dreams. I've neglected writing it down for quite some time...but I'm having trouble picking through some other writing tonight, and I've shamefully neglected this blog, so here it is, if not in full detail...(because I owe myself some sort of writing tonight):

It was a house in the country-side of Greece in this dream; a low, single-storied & single-roomed stone house, warm with sun on its smooth weather-worn outside, cool and clean on the inside. Hard-packed dirt floors, and windows - all but one - with no glass: windows that were cut into the inches-thick stone and on whose stone-dry sills the sun was hot. In this house, my friend Neil (from tango) & I ran a printing press (I have been reading the diaries of Virginia Woolf, and so the Hogarth Press is much on my mind, among other things; with these latest house dreams have come dreams of wars in which I am killed & wake before my body falls). We worked in silence there: a compatible, content silence as we set the type by hand with tired but happy fingers.

Until, as always, the "seizure" came - this time, the classic mob with torches & pitchforks. Oddly, people I haven't seen, haven't thought about in ages. Years. But before they came, their words came. Words they had spoken about me back then, and in the meantime, and words that they drove ahead of them now. Hateful scrawls materialized on the walls of my home, even etched themselves into the glass of our one glass window, heralding my attackers' ambush.

In the beginning, they came one by one, appearing in this corner of the room, at that window, along this path outside, until there was no avoiding any of them. And finally, along the main road, I saw the mass of the people moving, a sinuous black snake winding down the red-brown sun-glazed road, cutting through the yellow-green fields. Panicked, I ran to Neil, who stood outside the house, who did not know these people nor at first understand their ominous significance. In our silence, which we still kept, I could not explain - only threw myself against his chest, his white shirt blinding in the sun. And the crowd surrounded us - he wrapped one arm around my back, and beat them back with the other until there was nothing left but to run, to abandon our stone house & printing press. We ran to the field behind the house - he ran behind me, and with one hand, pushed on my back, pushing me faster and faster until he himself couldn't keep up, and fell behind. But in our silence, I knew this was what he intended.

Strangely (as it happens in dreams), I understood the University of IL to be only a few hours' run through this field, and I understood that if I could get to campus, or even more specifically, if I could get to the Lieberman North Star sculpture on the engineering quad (the sculpture I went to so often when my own was finally defunct), I would be safe. But it would take hours, even running; it would be dark by then. I had to call...someone - and I had a mobile (which, incidentally, in real life, I had only just got that weekend).

So I made my "911" call, still running even as I dialed his number. I first asked how he was. Fine. I asked if he was still with his father (in the dream, it was Father's Day). No, not anymore. I asked if he could come pick me up and bring me to the sculpture (not asking if he would sit with me at its base, which I needed to feel even safer...). A long silence, during which I slowed, stopped, out of breath. "I don't think that would be a good idea." Without a goodbye, I hung up and simply began running again. At which point I woke up.

And another dream, which I had before that, but only remember a fragment of (but really, the most important bit I think):

I was in what I instinctively knew to be my new kitchen in Irvine. I stood barefoot in the unlit room alone with one box, and was unpacking one by one plates of all different colors - hefty, solid, "real" - plates, and then stacking them one by one in the cupboard above me. Doing this gave me a sense of not only filling my home, but somehow, of filling myself. Not my body, but my self. Stacking these plates, slowly, evenly, one by one - I was happy. This - this - was peace, I knew.

I drooled on the Queen's couch...

2007-03-28T10:20:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, as you all know if you read the last post, I met the Queen of England at a reception at Buckingham Palace. I have to admit, I felt pretty bad-ass walking THROUGH all of the tourists crowded in front of the gates, taking pictures through their thick black iron bars, and presenting my security passes (except, of course, I nearly couldn't find one in my enormous Mary-Poppins bag & almost had to turn around and walk back out, but luckily, it was caught in the cover of a book), to walk through those gates to the palace beyond. And then at the door of the palace, it was more security, and then more, and then the coat check - and that's when I knew I was "in."

And then it was time to chill for an hour or so in the Red Room (State Room) while we waited for the Queen. I met a woman who actually grew up in Irvine (SMALL WORLD!), so she told me a bit about my future home, and I chilled a little with my Fulbright homies (and Ray managed to say both "fuck" and "hell" in Buckingham; nice job) who were both suitably impressed by my borrowed dress "Stop staring, Ray...stop staring..." Shout out, Jess!), and then we were all called to line up in the White and Gold Room & shake hands with HRH - who wore a GLOVE, MJ-style, on only one hand, to shake hands with us. No, not even a GLOVE, because that's just not enough barrier, but a big black mitten. And then, it was back to chill in the Picture Gallery (the woman owns about 14 Rembrandts...but what I want to know is: where is she hiding all the modern art?!)....

....where I had a seizure. So, I was talking to one of the Buckingham Palace aids who was there for crowd control, and she was pretty young, and really interesting, until....I started to feel that weird derealization, at first thinking it was just Freud's entfremdungsgefuhl, you know, that I just couldn't believe I was standing in Buckingham Palace (that article, by the way, changed my LIFE) - but then the pulsing in my head began, and the conversation in the room was suddenly deafening to me, and I was dizzy and out of breath and my heart was pounding and, "I'm sorry to do this to you on your first day (that's right, it was the poor girl's first day on the job) but I'm going to have a seizure; I need to sit down," I told the aid. So she led me over to a couch that had to be over 100 years old, where I started to black out...and so drooled all over my leg & said couch (have I mentioned yet that it was white and kind of satiny?)...and then spilled my champagne glass of water onto the floor (luckily I had been drinking only water all night for fear of spilling worse on The Dress - shout out again, Jess!). I vaguely remember the aid beginning to lead me out of the room, and apparently (I didn't put two and two together until later) this other aid I had been talking to had gone to get the Palace Nurse, so the next thing I remember is sitting alone in a room with "my" aid, the Queen's Nurse, and about 5 other medical personnel. And some random guy. And what's the first thing I say when they ask me, "How are you feeling?" Answer: "Can I go back now?" They asked me a few other standard questions ("Does this happen often?" "What's your name?" "Do you know where you are?"), but then, the nurse, laughing, says to the other personnel: "She just wants to go back to the party!" And to me: "Don't you?" "Yeah I do!" Big grin. :) (Flatmate Sari says: "You made a MARK!")

And so they let me go back, where I had a brief conversation with HRH; met my new husband; and may have landed myself a guest role on a TV series that's in the works.

HRH: She basically asks you a rapid series of questions, most of which can be answered by a "yes" or "no," and then when she's done with you, turns and leaves, whether or not you've answered her last question (which I had not...). This is how our "talk" went: "So you're a student here?" "Yes." "And you study at...[peering at my name badge]...Sussex?" "Yes; I'm a Fulbrighter there." "Oh, a Fulbrighter [with approval]...What do you study?" "English literature." Long silence; blank expression, until: "There are quite a few of you Fulbrighters here tonight..." "Yes, there--" And she walks away. Should I feel dissed? I don't know how I feel about that long silence after I told her I study literature. ;) But at least she didn't make the face she made after Diep told her he's studying medical policy and NHS (which was a face of absolute disgust).

And then, my new husband: I saw this guy who had to be nearly 70, wearing the same HUGE black, thick-framed plastic glasses Larry David's dad wears on Curb Your Enthusiasm, which, appropriately as we will see, was the reason I started talking to him. As soon as I approach him: "Darling, you're a-DOR-able!" he tells me. I told him he was full of it (which he loved) and asked him what he did. Turns out, he's a TV producer who spends his time between LA and London. He asked me if I'd ever seen Curb, and I said I loved the show, and the whole reason I approached him was because his glasses looked like Larry's dad's. He said the guy stole the look from him (full of it!), but that he was actually working on a show with a similar concept, all about one socially-inept guy's life (in this case, him). While we're talking, this other TV producer approaches to start talking to Chuck, who introduces me to producer #2 as his WIFE. So what do I do? Play along. Oh yes, we've been married only a couple of weeks. Interrupted our honeymoon in Fiji to come to Buckingham. Met in LA. Etc. After all this, Chuck decides I'm okay, and says maybe I can have a guest appearance on one episode of his show. I say I'm moving to Irvine in the fall, and he says "perfect", they're doing some of their filming in LA, and then he hands over his card. We'll see how it goes.

Oh yes, and I may have dropped a sprig of something or other off one of my salmon rolls...and that was before the seizure, so we can just chalk it up to my usual clutziness. So there. ;)

Questions for the Queen

2007-03-25T02:08:00.000+01:00

Questions I've been asked to put to the Queen:

1) Say, "Hey, Lizzie!" from Jess.
2) Say, "What up, be-yatch?" from Nic.
3) Say, "Thanks for getting the fuck out of Jamaica," again, Jess.
4) Say, "Do you dance the tango?" From the dancers & More.

So, mostly I'm just scared to meet her & will likely not ask her ANYthing, let alone any of the above. Apparently, we're not allowed to wear black nor speak to her first (even if she approaches you!) nor a number of other terrifying rules...scary.

Oh yeah, did I mention I was invited to Buckingham for cocktails by the Queen & the Duke of Edinburgh? If anyone has any real questions to ask, blog me. ;) Although really, I'm just more curious to watch how she interacts with everyone...

Worth waking up to.../Happy New Year

2007-02-17T14:56:00.000Z

What they call a "deep dark secret": sometimes, I get discouraged. Yes, despite my wild love for my work, it sometimes happens, after days of solid work, when I haven't showered; grocery-shopped; nor even sometimes left the flat for more than a few minutes at a time, and then only to run outside to pick up the food I've ordered in (the delivery boys at Viceroy of India down the street know me by now); when I've gone cross-eyed reading (I literally lost the ability to focus last night for nearly twenty minutes); after I finally set it all aside for a moment before falling into fitful sleep and realize that these hours upon hours have made little or no dent in what I have left to do - sometimes, I get discouraged. And then, guilt follows: how, how do I justify letting myself get discouraged when I am living that long-worked-for goal? And then shame... And then, if I'm lucky, after tossing and turning, then sleep. Last night was one of these particularly hard nights - after days of meetings, relentless (if thoroughly, deeply satisfying) reading (from Woolf to Kristeva to Joyce), and of course, writing...all incredibly invigorating, but then last night - I realized that regardless of how much I've done in the last 5 days, I only had 2 days to get through twice as much more before my classes on Monday. Finally too tired to keep reading, I spent some quality time with Jess & Efua, playing patience on the floor of Efua's room, waiting for my body to unwind before I put it to bed (if not my mind)...this was our Friday night. Early in the a.m., a seizure woke me up (incredibly disheartening after the optimism of a 3-day streak seizure-free, a relief from the daily or twice-daily spells I've been suffering from since shortly before visiting the States in December); I ended up sleeping right up until my alarm went off at 9:30 (usually I wake up naturally by 8ish, which, with a sufficient side of coffee, is far more conducive to Kristeva; Woolf I like after lunch, reading her at the time of day when she wrote her letters...). Even with that extra bit of sleep, the seizure had left me shaky; I was slow getting out of bed, unsure if I could do it without another attack. But of course, we can't spend our days in bed, so I got up to check my email, of which there were 70 to sift through (Penn call for papers...)...one of which:

My first grad acceptance has come. Univ. of CA at Irvine. And they're willing to fight for me; they'd like to know what my other offers are (hopefully more will come) so that they can "negotiate" with me. More, they've offered to reimburse my travel expenses & put me in a hotel if I'd like to visit in March (which I will only do if they'll let me push up the date; otherwise, I'll be missing part of Rasheed's visit). Wow. This comes as such a relief - I have a place somewhere this fall - and is so humbling at the same time - have I done this? And after all of the work...what a reward.

To celebrate (and to get me out of the flat), Jess took me out for breakfast - specifically to the same table at the same Starbucks for the same drink as when I had my first moment of "waiting for grad acceptances" panic just a week ago. And what a beautiful morning: the sun was beaming on calm waves; the air, mild - warm, even; my latte & cinnamon roll, deliciously decadent (there are not enough "l's" within my momentarily limited reach (caffeine slump) to describe it, to make my tongue as happy pronouncing it as it was tasting it...); the people, easy and laughing - I saw a man playing the tuba on stilts in the Lanes, and this made me exorbitantly giddy - certainly worth the 20p I threw in the upturned hat lying at his "feet." We stopped in Jess's favorite chemist's (Boots) & then her favorite home store, where we drooled over the kitchen supplies (tea pots! coffee machines!) we can't afford to put in our non-existant houses. And finally, the Body Shop, where I treated myself to some hand cream (it's made out of hemp!), though in my defense, I had run out, and I have little cuts all over my knuckles where the skin dries and cracks...

And now, though I have come home to get back to work (and much invigorated!), I've realized, it's not over - far from. Tonight is the Eve of the Chinese New Year, the year of the pig. And I'm the pig. Already, it's my year (and a few of my flatmates & friends! In the words of Jess: "The rut is over!"). Tonight we go out to dinner for more celebration, both of the new year, and now, in my heart, of my first acceptance. Worth waking up to what? Life (the present in general, and Virginia Woolf's and Roger Fry's, whose I'm currently working through), the Lanes (and a man on stilts playing the tuba), a New Year!

Addendum

2007-02-11T00:21:00.000Z

I know that I'm bordering on redundancy of the worst kind (focusing on such a trivial matter), but I wanted to recall another moment of 'muff magic (because sometimes it's really the little things that count):

Once, just before the holidays, I was waiting for the bus. It was pretty late at night, cold, and I was alone, shivering. On top of that, I didn't have bus fare - I had a twenty pound note, but the bus doesn't take 20s, and all of the shops were closed, so I couldn't change it. A mother with her little boy stood at the other end of the stop, he gripping her hand and leaning against her knee, braced against the wind. I glanced at them, but didn't give them much else attention until: "Mama, MA-ma! I've seen her! Look! Look! I've seen Santa's elf!" The bus pulled up. He jumped up and down pointing at me. I started, bewildered - ah-ha...the muffs. The bus door opened; I shot the boy an elfish? smile, leapt on amidst cries of "Santa's elf!", proffered my twenty to the driver. He gave me a grin - "We don't take twenties - just go 'head an' sit" - and the door swooshed shut behind me.

Such was the magic of the muffs (in a time when we need more magic, which perhaps explains [if it doesn't quite excuse] my preoccupation with their passing).

Elegy for lost earmuffs

2007-02-08T13:40:00.000Z

Yesterday, my big fluffy white earmuffs broke...(I would never actually "lose" them, like at the supermaket or something). No, I was putting them on, and *snap* over my head, the band broke at its center.

My earmuffs...they were by no means one of a kind, not at all unique. No, we picked up one day at the Gap, my earmuffs, myself, and a pair of furry gloves. And ever since, my earmuffs and I have been inseparable - they've been with me back and forth over the Atlantic (and suffered an exploding pen situation on this most recent trip...loyal to the last, I wore them still, blue ink stains and all); they saw London for the first time with me, and Portland, OR; and finally, their ultimate resting-place, Brighton.

They were by no means unique, but they were my own, they were my trademark. They won compliments and comments and the occasional beep of a horn from complete strangers on the street; smiles from the overworked women who rang up my groceries at Marks&Spencer; drinks from lonely old men in pubs; jokes, hugs, and cuddling from those who knew me best ("You know those aren't legal in England?" prompted one professor). Walking home from tango one night with my friend Korhan - he looked away for a moment; I put on the earmuffs; he turned back to respond to some question of mine, saw the muffs, and burst out laughing, mid-sentence. "Now that was a moment!" I can't say it any better than he did that night. Such was the magic of the muffs. They had a life of their own, spirit.

And then that terrible, gut-wrenching *snap* over my head yesterday afternoon. The logical thing to do was to throw them away, right? No sense regretting irrevocably lost ties. They looked so sad and lifeless in the rubbish bin, like a small furry animal. I left them there for the day, left for campus. I came home that night, ate dinner. But when I tossed my banana peel away on top of them, it was too much, and I had to retrieve them. Such is our current condition: they lie mangled on my desk, leaving my ears cold in the weather here that's suddenly decided for the first time all winter to actually hit zero (celsius).

My poor lost muffs. What is there to do but lament your passing? (And start shopping for hats...there will never be muffs like you again.)

Preggers

2007-02-07T13:35:00.000Z

Recently, a new kind of dream (though I did dream a house-dream not too much previously; I was cleaning out my house/body, and in it, caught a bird whose warm soft body I held protectively in my hand, sensing I for some reason needed to shelter this being). A few nights ago, I dreamt that I was back at my parents' house, though it did not look like their house actually does - it was rather a log cabin, or lodge - thus is the logic of dreams. My friend Raymond was visiting me there, wearing for some reason fur. In this dream, we were closer friends than we actually are in reality; he sat with me in my bed, and I cozied up to his furs. First, he told me his own good news: that he had won another international study abroad grant (he's a fellow Fulbrighter), and that he was planning to study in Ottowa. He pointed it out to me on a map I had on my log-wall, though, and the place he pointed out to me does not actually exist, was some strange liminal land stranded between Canada and Greenland, floating somehow. When his finger touched the map, I had an immediate mental image of snow-swept plains, caves. "Explains the fur," I thought. Then he told me my own good news: that I was going to get pregnant. "Fat chance!" I laughed at him. He insisted that I would. I doubted my brash response...

In dreams, pregnancy doesn't necessarily mean pregnancy. Rather, it is the birth of something new, a new opportunity, a gift. A pregnancy dream is something to be excited about. Why, then, did I laugh? Was there some embittered part of my brain just conscious enough to deny me this dream? And why?

But the shakedown: on the same night, my friend Shadie dreamt that I was pregnant. So perhaps I am expecting...what? Something new; something big? There's a lot I have in the air right now, both new and big.

Katie Mitchell's The Waves

2007-02-06T17:56:00.000Z

Last night, I saw Katie Mitchell's stage adaptation of Woolf's The Waves at the National Theatre (they're running two more shows, Thurs. and Fri., for any of my local readers who have interest). Brilliant - a hybrid of narrative, theatre, and film. A narrator (Woolf herself, perhaps? A husky-voiced woman hunched over a desk with a cigarette and a pen, pensive but assured - perhaps a cliche representation, but Mitchell used it well) read scenes from the novel itself, and from other Woolf works (I was able to identify a few things, journal entries, A Sketch of the Past - not all...but Woolf recycles so much, it's hard to tell at times); the actors performed; actors not involved in the action at hand filmed those who were, projecting the images onto a screen dropped over the stage. The simultaneity was intense - the action as a whole unfolding while the minutest detail unravelled in tandem behind it...each character, separate, but on stage finally together (perhaps how Woolf intended, cutting so quickly from character to character, embodying them as the six/seven sides of a single carnation at dinner...) and regarding the others' individual reactions to the death of Percival, detached, watching it only on screen. And finally (achieving first Paul Fort's and then Oscar Wilde's dream), Mitchell has (unwittingly perhaps) engaged all of the senses simultaneously (at least if you sat in the front row, like me)...voice & music & the clatter of dishes, footsteps & tap-dancing & laundry flapping; the actors, at once so real, juxtaposed with the acute, painful detail of flower petals afloat in a bowl, a face - open-eyed, breathing out - underwater, red fingernails, a letter-opener; cigarette smoke; an acrid explosion on my tongue - cigar smoke; and finally, dust beaten from the gravel one woman walked in, dust kicked up to land in my eye.

The narrative decision Mitchell makes at the end, however... I will leave this blank so as not to spoil the ending of the novel or play for anyone who intends to read/see them. But whoever wants to talk about it...

I didn't want to leave at the end. Conversely, I wanted nothing but to leave, and beat my way mercilessly through the crowd at the coat-check to finally win the cold empty night air. I'm glad I went alone to this play. I could not talk about it at first, and still cannot completely. I wished that no one would talk after these things - why fritter away the effect by positing opinions, chit-chatting lamely, posing pretentiously until you have had time to think about what you've seen? The south bank, alone with my footfall and the purple lights of the theatre and the oleaginous black gleam of the river, in a light rain, following a line of street lamps...it was relief. Walking to the theatre and back...I was so nostalgic for London & for memories there, wanted so much to live there again (meeting Shadie for dinner earlier, he'd commented: "You're so happy to be here!" I was...I love Brighton, but London will always be "my city," the closest to home I've come to so far). Then, to get on the near-empty tube and rock and sway back to Victoria station... I wasn't alone. I'm never alone in that city. (And it made me think again about Woolf, about The London Scene...but now I'm in circles.)

On forgiveness

2007-01-28T10:06:00.000Z

Last night, after all of my (really) hard-won years of experience, I dreamt that my brother I went back to...high school. That's right, high school:

And to add insult to injury, we had to take the bus - and almost missed it! We had to chase it down the street. It stopped and the driver let us on board, though. It was nearly empty, just my brother and I, Brett B., and a kid that I think moved away before we even started high school, Aaron R. And finally, in the very back corner and staring out the bus window, Christina, arms crossed over her chest, dark hair loose, looking like she always did.

There's a bit of history here. Christina had been one of my friends in high school and during the first two years of college. I adored her; she was one of the most unique (and funniest!) people I'd ever met, and I always had a blast hanging out with her. So when she decided to apply to U of I for art education, I jumped (maybe a little too high) to help her get in. She filled in her application. She was approved for a portfolio review, and came down to the school, where I helped set her up, paid for the locksmith when she locked her keys in her car, let her stay with me, and then found a place to store her art for the week in case she got an interview...which she did (which was no great surprise to me). The next week, again, I helped her out. And then, terrific news: after such an arduous process, she got in! And none too late, either: at U of I, property is rented out nearly a year in advance, usually starting in October. So Mish and I started looking for an apartment and a fourth roommate for the two of us and Christina. We found both - Nicole, another waterskier, bubbly, blonde, and easy to befriend, and a cheap 4 bedroom place about 6 blocks from the quad. So we all signed the lease. And then, something happened. Christina changed her mind about coming down to school, couldn't move in with us. I have a feeling that her dad perhaps was putting pressure on her to go to school in Alabama (where he was from) or else close to home (he in fact threatened to cut her off if she came to Illinois). She could, though, pay for the first two months of rent. In that time, we talked to everyone we knew to find a subletter; we posted fliers; we ran ad after ad in the paper, Christina paying for some, me using my free words I was given as part of my salary there as an "ad-visor," finally, me paying for some more. The room stood empty. No one. Finally, Christina couldn't pay anymore, and her dad wouldn't help her. Now Mish, Nicole, and I were indebted to the landlord for Christina's rent. We got together with our parents, tried to work out a way to split it up. Mish and Nicole (understandably) didn't want to take on Christina's responsibility. And I (naturally, having known her the longest) felt guilty for bringing in the person who would fail to make rent. It came down to this: either I pay for both my own and Christina's rent, or we bring it to court to require her to pay. A terrible position for anyone to be in, especially when it's your friend (a lesson since learned: friends and money don't mix). I was a full-time student working three part-time jobs, and I was becoming increasingly ill with what I didn't yet know were seizures caused by the tumor. I was tired. I couldn't work any more than I already was to make up for the deficit. I went to court with Mish and Nicole. If I had had the money, this would have been something I would regret. But here, there was no room for regret. Naturally, however, the situation spurred a strong reaction against me not only in Christina, but in many of our mutual friends, many people who have since stopped talking to me (but still not yet about me, I hear now and again).

I held on to it for a long time. I felt hurt, I felt backed into a corner and forced to hurt her back, which was the last thing I wanted. For years, I wanted the chance to somehow make her understand that it was never personal; it was money. I wanted to be forgiven, and the chance to forgive her.

And so last night, when I met her on a near-empty bus in a dream, I picked the slightly-sticky grey-green vinyl schoolbus seat next to her. She turned to me in anger, arms still crossed. "Wait," I asked, and held out my hand to her. She at first refused to shake it. I still held it out, past any length of human pride. Finally, she took it. I looked into her face, took everything in, knowing, perhaps, it was my only opportunity to do so. It was just as I remembered it, except for her earlobes, where she wore a pear of pearl earrings which I had never seen before. I asked her what she had been doing. And as she began to tell me, I realized, everything had worked out the way it should. Her life was so different now, and it was amazing - she had done everything from going bowling with the love of her life to working on a new comic book. As her list went on, I became happier and happier for her. And then, suddenly, in the middle of our forgiveness...

The fire alarm went off in my building. At first, it was part of the dream, reverberating down the tin-can walls and windows of the bus - Christina and I broke apart, looking up and down the bus instead. And then I woke up, but didn't bother getting out of bed. I listened to Shadie (my houseguest here for a film shoot) snore through a few more seconds of it, and when he woke up, I told him it would shut off in a minute, that there was no point in getting up. And true, after a few more seconds, it was again quiet. A door slammed somewhere in the building. Shadie began snoring again after another minute. But it was a long time before I slept again.

I had a seizure when I woke up again this morning (they're still out of control), but after that, I felt good. More and more, after getting rolled earlier in the fall, hope is coming back.