blog archive (april-may 2008)
05/27/08: Real Monsters
My sons are fascinated by all things gruesome and scary. My son Sam, for instance, draws werewolves, weresharks, wererabbits, wererats, shark bullies, rat trolls, vampires, vamp-bullies, cat creatures and other creative monsters. But when he asks me, “Are there any real monsters?” I don’t know how to answer him. I think of the Westley Allan Dodds and the Ward Weavers and the Ted Bundys of the world, and I want to tell both my sons, “Yes, there are real monsters, but they don’t look like monsters.” I am torn between wanting them to be wary of strangers and wanting them to have their childhood without fears. I am struggling with whether and when to tell them the story of their maternal grandfather, my dad, who was killed by a hitchhiker when I was 10.
We play the What If game frequently. “What if a man stopped in his car and told you I had been in an accident and he was there to take you to the hospital?” or “What if someone had a puppy in their car they offered to let you pet?” and they learn the right answers, but I never know if, when faced with the real situation, they would respond appropriately.
When Ward Weaver was in the news a couple of years ago I took the opportunity to point out his picture in the newspaper to my son Max. “See that man?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered, glancing at the photo.
“Is he a good man or a bad man?”
Max looked at him carefully and said, "I can’t tell.”
“Exactly,” I told him. “That’s why we have to be careful.”
Drawing by Sam, age 8
05/20/08: Rain Confessions
I admit it: I love the rain. Although Maui is my favorite place on earth, Oregon rain flows through my veins like wind through the Gorge. My office is in my second-floor bedroom, separated from my sleeping area by a tri-fold wood screen and a soon-to-be-bare ficus. My new house has no central A/C (yet) and the last couple of days of hot weather have been murder. Fans don’t cut it. Window A/Cs are an aesthetic no-no. And I’m not about to call Comcast out AGAIN to wire me up somewhere else. I can bring my laptop downstairs but there’s no reliable WIFI in my ’hood, so I’m stuck carting it back and forth or sitting in a sauna-like atmosphere trying to see my monitor through the sweat pouring down my face.
Less writing time means I’ve had a lot more time for jogging. I have taken Sadie, my miniature schnoodle, through the trails skirting Rose City Golf course many times these past few days. Sadie likes running with her nose buried in the freshly mowed grass, sniffing for the edible or chasable. When she lifts her head, her face covered in grass clippings, she looks like an animated Chia pet.
This summer I plan a remodel which will include central A/C. In the meantime I’ll keep jogging and writing when and how I can. And I’ll keep loving the rain.
05/15/08: Sam He Am
With record high temperatures expected for the weekend, I thought a photo of my son Sam, taken in 2004 during a snowy spell, might cool things off a bit.
Sam is my darling angel, and responsible for 90% of my gray hair. See that truck in the background? That truck almost led to his death two years before this photo was taken. Sam was diagnosed with high-functioning autism at age 2 1/2. One of his symptoms was a lack of fear. He used to make a beeline for the road every time I had him in the front yard. That truck blocked the view of an approaching car, going too fast on our residential street. I was in the front yard with my neighbor when I saw the car coming at the same time I saw Sam making a dash for the street. He was fast. Although I ran toward him, my legs had turned to clay. He and the car were on a direct collision path and I knew I would not reach him in time.
My neighbor had seen what was transpiring and let out a blood curdling scream, which stopped Sam for a moment. In that moment I caught him. The driver sped by, oblivious.
Some day I will write a book about what a joy Sam has been in my life, and in the lives of so many others. He is recovering from autism but still has some language and social quirks. Mostly it’s a lack of focus that people notice, if they notice anything at all. He’s in a second/third grade blend in an academically accelerated private school, The Children’s Hour Academy, and doing great, keeping up with his same-age peers and beyond. He will tell you if you ask, “I’m in second grade, but I do third grade work.”
Sam is also an amazing artist, and will be working with a sculptor this summer for fun. I think he’ll like getting messy with clay.
I love this little man.
05/15/08: Climbing Out of the Funk
It is very unlike me to be low energy. My friends say I epitomize the Marine motto (to paraphrase): “She gets more done before 9 a.m. than most people get done all day.” But for the last several days I’ve been in a major funk. No exercising, no writing, I just wanted to crawl under the covers and not come up for air. Don’t know why.
I finally pulled myself out of the dreariness into the light of day. Maybe it’s the iron supplements prescribed to me by my new naturopath, Dr. Jason Zabell, of Urban Wellness. Maybe it’s the coming sunshine (it’s supposed to be a record-setting 95 this weekend), or maybe I’m just sick and tired of being sick and tired. I suppose you could say it was a small bout of depression that I’ve kicked in the butt. Depression doesn’t have to be for any particular reason: it may be hormonal, it may be a vitamin deficiency, or it could be because my white and red blood cells decided to go on a short vacation (Dr. Jason says they were very low, and that I was pretty anemic).
Whatever the reason, when I popped myself back up into the land of the living, here’s what I found:
- I have two great sons.
- I have an awesome boyfriend.
- I have amazing friends.
- I have a career I love which includes starting a new script writing contract with AngelVision Technologies and a start-up networking group PDX Synergy.
- I have family nearby and a great relationship with them all.
- I have a house with good bones in a sweet little neighborhood.
- I have no financial concerns to speak of.
- I live in a country that allows me to do whatever I want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.
And did I mention, the sunshine is coming?
05/14/08: What I’m Waiting For
For years, ever since I wrote my first poem and realized that I could be understood and loved for what I put on paper, I’ve waited to get what the hell it’s supposed to mean, this gift, this curse I have been given. Aren’t I supposed to Do Something with it? Isn’t it supposed to Mean Something? Yes, when I get published it feels good. When my words make someone laugh or cry or touch a secret part of their soul, I feel grateful and alive and connected. But it’s like sex without orgasm. When the connection breaks I think, “Is that all there is?”
Whenever I am complimented on my writing, it feels good, and I say “Thank you” but inside I am thinking, “I can do better.” So what am I waiting for? Where is Better? Where is my magnum opus? Harper Lee won a Pulitzer for To Kill a Mockingbird and left behind a literary legacy, but no other books. If I had written it, after the initial high had dissipated I would immediately begin looking for my next fix. And I’d damn it all to hell if it wasn’t better than the last one.
I am an addict who suffers the pain of the needle for relief I know won’t last. I am a vampire who suckles on language to stay alive. I am a donkey following a carrot I know I will never taste.
And I have no choice but to keep piercing veins, keep suckling, keep stretching my neck out, keep walking, keep writing, keep waiting.
05/09/08: “Look Mom, the Pussy Cat Club!”
My son Max will turn 10 next month, a huge event for me because I vividly remember turning 10 and thinking I knew it all. Thank God I didn’t. While driving down NE 82nd this morning Max called out, “Look Mom, the Pussy Cat Club!” He was excited because the Pussy Cat Club was where the “world’s three leading scientists” were kidnapped on a recent episode of Get Smart he’d seen. I bought him the whole Time Life series of the old TV show because I loved it at his age and thought he would too. I was right.
A few minutes later we were at the park and our dog was sniffing at a tree. I’d seen a cartoon about a dog sniffing a fire hydrant, and someone commenting that it was the My Space for dogs. I started to tell Max that story but then I realized with absolute relief that he has no idea what My Space is. He will soon enough. And that will be as it should be, I know. I want Max to have every good experience he can, but I don’t want him to get smart too early.
P.S. Steve Carrell and Anne Hathaway are remaking Get Smart for the Big Screen, due out next month. Early reviews are awesome.
05/08/08: Harpsicords and Keyboards
Why is it that when someone does something amazing that you deeply admire a niggly green monster works its way out of your soul and slaps you across the face? Or does that only happen to me?
I am in a writer’s group and, though I don’t write poetry, two members of my group do. On occasion one of them will come up with a turn of phrase, a bit of unexpected imagery or a whole friggin’ poem that sounds like it should have been written with an orchestra of angels playing harpsicord in the background. Damn, it’s good stuff. I think, “Why couldn’t I have written that?” and I get bitch-slapped by the Ghost of Clio or Erato or whomever.
After the stinging stops, I stand there, red-cheeked, open-jawed, eyes watering with resentment and shock. And then the monster slinks back into its place in my soul and I am overwhelmed with the desire to become a duvet hermit, alone in my bed surrounded by empty fast food containers and overused Kleenex.
Sometimes it takes minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes days, but eventually I feel the monster sit down at its keyboard and begin typing feverishly. Soon after my own hands catch up.
05/07/08: The Land of Barbie
Does Portland have a culture? A friend sent me a link to a spoof Barbie that was supposed to epitomize Portland’s culture. There she is on the right. Originally posted in Live Journal.
Barbie as smoker-grunge-headband,-active-wear,-mixed-race children’s mother. What happened to gay? Portland has a huge gay population. What about anti-Bush bumper stickers? Where is this woman’s political conviction? What about The Arts? Portland is huge into The Arts. This woman should be carrying a painter’s brush or something.
Portland isn’t one culture, but many. One doll can’t do all that.
Maybe I’m not the one to ask anyway. I never had a Barbie. I remember one year for Christmas my aunt Peggy sent me some Barbie doll clothes she’d painstakingly sewed. How she got the seams in those skinny sleeves and pant legs I'll never know. Because I had no doll to put the clothes on I would take them out and rearrange them on the floor, imagining an invisible doll in them. I thought it was pretty silly of her to send me clothes for a Barbie without checking first if I had the doll, but at that time everyone had a Barbie. My sister and I were raised Barbie-less, more of a financial statement than a political statement on our parents’ part. I’ve never felt the loss.
5/5/08: Happy Cinco de Mayo! I took some Spanish through an adult learning center once and came away with these phrases:
La cuenta por favor (“Check please”). And, appropriate for many of us today, Cervesa por favor (“Beer please”).
Not sure how often these will come in handy, but it may be more than I got out of two years of college French:
Tu peut marche jusqua l’autobus, non? (“You can walk as far as the bus, can’t you?”) I am also able to read whimsical gift shop signs: Chat de Guarde (“Guard Cat”).
It’s been a great day so far. I met with one of AngelVision’s resident angels, and have had two calls on writing jobs. Tonight I meet with my awesome Landmark group where we will again support each other in creating extraordinary lives in every aspect of our lives. Margaritaville can wait.
One minor setback: my darling puppy chewed through the power cord on my modem so I was offline for a while until the great folks at Comcast set me straight with a new power cord and a lesson in IP addresses. Now there’s a foreign language I can really use.
5/4/08: Neighborly Love
Shortly after I posted my blog yesterday I was working in my back yard learning that ivy is the anti-Christ when a neighbor poked her head above the fence. “I’m Camille," she said. She wanted us to know that her family of three, Camille, David and their young daughter Ava, often have hot tub parties on their patio and Camille asked me to let her know if they ever got too loud.
I told Camille I was very happy to meet her and had just been lamenting not knowing any of my neighbors. “Well, now that the weather is better, you’ll probably meet a lot of them.” Of course: I moved into my new house in November. Bad weather, holidays. No wonder I’d not met my neighbors yet.
One thing I have learned from Landmark education is that we often make stories up about things without knowing the truth, and we attach meaning to things that otherwise wouldn’t have them. I’d been making my neighbors wrong for not introducing themselves to me, when I could easily have introduced myself to them. And bad weather also played a role.
5/3/08: Moving Pains
I moved into a new house in November. In my old neighborhood when my family moved in the neighborhood had a progressive dinner party (remember those?) for our family and the family that was moving out. It was great to meet all of my neighbors, see their homes, taste their food, and learn to put names and houses with their faces. It was a warm welcome to what would be my family's home for the next 11 years. In my new home, I have only met one neighbor, who was also new when I moved in. I know his name but none of my other neighbors. I have been here nearly six months and no one has come by to welcome me.
Finally it occurred to me: I could actually go and introduce myself. It only took me six months to figure that out. I think I’ll start with the neighbors who just moved in across the street.
5/1/08: Happy May Day! I remember as a kid in elementary school doing the whole May Pole thing. Then somehow in our little town of Cottage Grove, Ore., someone decided that May Day was a “commie” holiday and the tradition was discontinued. I googled it, and the only communist reference I can find to May Day is that May 1st is often celebrated as International Worker’s Day by many political forms, including communism. Its origin, however is more heathenism than communism.:
Throughout the Northern Hemisphere, the month of May is a time to celebrate renewal of life. May is named for Maia, grandmother, the Goddess of death and fertility.
The May-pole is the most familiar feature of May festivities, but it has three distinct interpretations. In some cultures, the May-pole represented the world center, or alternately, the hub of the wheel of heaven. In ancient times, the intricate dance of weaving cords around the pole was a magical attempt to direct Nature.
In other cultures, the May-pole was the Tree of Life, or a symbol of it.
The third meaning of the May-pole most clearly remains today. It is the phallus, the male principle of fertilization. Female principles are represented by baskets and wreaths used in the dances around the pole. In past times, the hand-fasting movements of the dances would give young couples license to 'go into the green' together. Source: Salmon River Gazette
Maybe it wasn’t communism that the school was worried about after all.
4/28/08: Air Time
While visiting the ladies’ room at a seminar last night I decided to take my cell phone for a swim. I now know the expression “dead in the water” intimately. I went to the Verizon store on NE Broadway today and learned that while I have insurance, I will be without a cell phone for a day, perhaps two. It took me 40 minutes of waiting to learn that, and in the meantime I watched a little boy whose mother was visiting the store. The boy, who I guessed to be around four, had spotted a white balloon on the floor in Verizon’s back office. He came to me, a mere customer, and asked me if he could play with the balloon (we’d been flirting for a while so I suppose he imbued me with some sense of kindness and power). I told him to ask the lady behind the counter. When he could get her attention he did. He spent the next several minutes delightedly batting the balloon around the store, sometimes kicking it with his feet, sometimes whacking it with his hand, and laughing with glee whenever it hit the floor. I watched him for a while, then said to his mother, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could all find joy in such simple things?” She answered with a question of her own, “When did we lose that?” Neither of us had an answer, but we experienced a miniature version of his joy just watching him. He worked up a sweat and eventually had to remove his wool cardigan. “But I have two shirts, so it’s OK,” he explained just before he lost his face in the cardigan. Then he got back to the serious business of having fun.
So I’m without a cell phone for a day or two. Who knows what important messages I’m missing while I await the delivery of my new phone? On second thought, who cares? I think I’ll go buy a balloon.
4/27/08: Canine Sense
I recently recommitted to walking and jogging. I have a personal trainer of the four-legged variety so it helps. We make an odd couple, three-pound Sadie and me, jogging around Rose City Park golf club. Sadie is a cross between a miniature Schnauzer and a miniature poodle. She is a total flirt and though she keeps up well with me she often stops when another runner passes because she expects everyone will love her and want to pet her. Even when they don’t, she meets the next passerby with the same expectation.
We should all be so confident. We should all come from the attitude of “I’m adorable, I know it, and if you can’t see it, the next person certainly will.”
The great thing is, Sadie thinks I’m adorable. Even without makeup, even with my unwashed hair, arms pitted out and knees dirty from a tumble, to her, I’m adorable. We should all be so loving. Take each person as he or she is and love him/her all the way.
You can learn a lot from a dog.
4/25/08: Free Writing
My writer’s workshop met last evening, a celebration of the end of our first eight-week session. At some point in the night I stopped and watched us like an observer from the top deck of a stadium. I marveled at the rare and wonderful privilege of living in a country that allows people to gather and talk about anything. Women and men in the same room, discussing any topic that came up: sex, drugs, rock and roll, whatever. I don’t think politics came up once, or if it did it received little attention. We sat there, our small group, basking in the beauty and wonder of the written word, the freedom of expression, the glory of being alive and together and free, and not talking politics. Maybe it’s because we live in a country that no matter who wins, nothing much will change. No one is going to take away our right to gather and talk about sex, drugs and rock and roll. No one is going to tell us what we should and shouldn’t write. No one is going to stone a woman to death for speaking to an unmarried man, turn a ten-year-old boy into a soldier, circumcise a five-year-old girl to keep her chaste, or jail our relatives because we belong to the wrong religion.
All the talk about Hillary and Obama and McCain seems pretty lame in comparison. So we write, and in writing we celebrate our freedom, take it out into the light of day and kiss it full on the lips.
We’ve decided to make our next workshop three months long. I hope it never ends.
4/22/08: Fessing Up
Time to come clean. I’ve been alluding in my blog to a seminar I attended recently without actually naming it. The seminar is the Landmark Forum. I heard about it when I was checking out AngelVision Technologies, a totally rad local company that produces mini movies for businesses to use for promotional purposes. AngelVision had an opening for a script writer and I checked out their Web site. It blew my mind. It reminded me of a scene from the former hit show West Wing where the Rob Lowe character is watching an as-yet-unknown presidential candidate (Martin Sheen) speak before a small audience. When the speech is over, Lowe rushes out in the pouring rain to a phone booth and calls a political friend. “I’ve just seen him,” he says, breathless, rain dripping off his nose. “He’s the real deal.” When I read through AngelVision’s site (straight talk, humor, a sweatshirt-and-blue-jeans-take-us-as-you-are-and-you-will-be-amazed approach), I realized this was the real deal too. I felt like an adoptee who’d just found her entire birth family.
On the AngelVision site the company states that they will pay for any Landmark Education course their employees take. So I checked out Landmark (ya gotta love the Internet) and ended up registering for their flagship seminar, the Landmark Forum. After spending an intense 3 1/2 days with some amazing people (three of the days are 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. with only one meal break) I came away an entirely different person. Better, stronger, faster. And unlike Steve Austin, it didn’t cost anyone $6 million. I went in thinking I was going to work on one thing and ended up working on everything. It wasn’t easy. But if you want to have an extraordinary life, check out Landmark. My guess is that when you leave you will be the real deal too.
4/20/08: Ode to Nice
I am up and writing this at 2:09 a.m. because I had a disturbing dream. In it I am having a difficult conversation with two young people who in real life do not like me. One reason they have given for not liking me is that I am “too nice” which they perceive as being “insincere.” I am not insincere, I am just nice. But how do you make the X generation understand that? Being nice seems to be becoming a lost art, like crocheting and baking from scratch. In a seminar I took recently, the moderator lamented the fact that young people today are quick to get behind causes: Save the Whales, Save the Environment, Save the Soft-Shelled Crab, but to hell with the people in their lives. Whatever happened to people just being nice to one another? What about Save the Nice? There’s an endangered species.
Yesterday in Chown Hardware I saw this sign: “Maybe nice guys don’t actually finish last. Maybe they are running in a different race.”
I have met some Xers recently that have given me great hope for the future of niceness. In alphabetical order they are Amanda, Amanda, Amanda (yes, there are three), Franzi, Jake, Kevin, M’liss and Nina. These amazing young people willingly trade coolness for closeness and beam love out of them like lighthouses on foggy shores. I would run in a race with them any day.
4/18/08: The Voices in My Head
I’ve been reading and hearing a lot about being in the present: understanding that the only time we have is now. I also took a seminar recently that talked about that little voice in our head that keeps harping at us all day long. “What did you do that for, Stupid?” or “You could never wear anything like that.”
Eckart Tolle in The New Earth said he once observed a woman on the subway who was obviously disturbed. She was having an animated conversation with herself. Everyone who got on the train avoided sitting near her, even standing when there was an empty seat near her. He found himself a moment later in the men’s room talking to the little voice in his head about how crazy that woman was.Then he laughed because he realized that we all have conversations with ourselves, she just happened to have them out loud.
I was talking to my little voice this morning when I dropped my son Max off at school. I don’t even remember what the discussion was about, all I know is that when I finally came into the present I realized that I was alone in the car. Max had already gone into his school. I didn’t remember saying goodbye to him, or watching him leave. For all I knew he could have been abducted on the way into the building. I found him in his classroom having morning conversation with his friends, and I apologized to him for not saying a proper goodbye. We hugged. Later he told me that I actually had said goodbye to him. Maybe I did, but I wasn’t there for it.
Tolle in The Power of Now writes, “Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.” If we fail to be present, if we miss out on the now, life will go on without us. We will miss our goodbyes and our hellos because we’re too busy talking to that little voice in our head.
Now that would be crazy.
4/17/08: Catching the Chainsaw
Have you ever noticed that when one new thing enters your life: a new project, a new job, a seminar, a new workout schedule, a new book you just have to finish, a new family pet, it takes a while to incorporate that newcomer, and in the meantime, the rest of your life is a war zone? Your house is a mess, your car is filthy, you forget appointments, you forget the names of your children’s friends (and sometimes the names of your children), you break promises, you eat poorly, you head out the door with your pajama top jammed halfway into your sweats, no makeup, no socks, one earring, hair in a scunci, and teeth unbrushed? You look like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. And why? Because you’re an amateur juggler who’s finally mastered keeping a baseball, a Hacky Sack and a bowling pin going, and someone just threw you a chainsaw. And because it’s a chainsaw it demands immediate attention so you catch it, but everything else falls down.
Welcome to my world.
In the last two weeks I’ve taken a life-changing seminar (in a good way, but remember that term life-changing), got a new, as-yet unhousetrained puppy, switched careers, started two new writing projects, started a new skin care regimen (ask me how that’s going) made several awesome new friends, started working out with a personal trainer and started reading five new books. And this is after the very recent changes of moving to a new home, joining a writer’s workshop and starting work with a life coach.
So who can blame me if I’ve missed book club meetings, drove to pick my son Max up from a playdate at his friend Keegan’s house when he was actually at Kieren’s? Or that my bedroom-slash-office looks like a frat house after the party? Or that I have not seen my boyfriend in a week, and I ate chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, lunch and dinner yesterday? (Don’t tell my personal trainer.) Or that I found myself today driving down a one-way street the wrong way?
Hey, I caught the chainsaw (several chainsaws actually). So who can blame me? I can, of course, and do so hourly.
If I was my best friend, I would say: Cut yourself some slack, Yvonne. You’re making amazing changes, and your kids are still alive, your boyfriend still loves you, your book club hasn’t disowned you, your house is still standing, and you haven’t wrecked the car (yet). There will be a period of adjustment, and then everything will be spinning like clockwork again.
And then you’ll start looking for another chainsaw. That would be so like you.
