Jack Gilbert, "A Brief For The Defense"

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit that there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sounds of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Random India memos to self

enike (EH-nee-kay) Malayalam arietila - I don't speak Malayalam.
makan - son
makal - daughter
[name] de makan (DEH-ma-kan) - I am [name]'s son.
suade (SWAH-də) - tasty
nalla, suade (NAH-lə, SWAH-d&601;) - yummy, tasty
kollam (kohl-LAM) - good, tasty
nalla t (nalLA tə) - it is very good
mathi (MADhi) - enough, full
nandi (nanNI) - thank you
Poyuaram (POyu-aram) - see you later
namaste (nah-MA-stə) - hello (respectful)
adhe (AD-hei, Ade) - yes
illa (il-lə) - no
alla (əl-lə) - no

Signs in the Kanyakumari railway station:
"The soul of democracy is the doctrine of one man, one value." - Dr. Amebedkar
"Love is the subtlest force in the world" - M. K. Ghandi

More book recommendations:
"Rag Darbari" - Shrilal Shukla
"India ___" (sequel to "India: A Wounded Civilization.") - Khilnaki Cacadznic
"Area of Darkness" - V.S. Naipaul

Happy Birthday, Grammy!

Grammy at my Mom's age, on the beach. Grammy plays a mean hand of Skip-Bo. Grammy and her two daughters.

Road Trip Notes: My iPod battery and one tank of gas last exactly from my house to Grammy's. Divine Providence, surely. Underappreciated inventors: The persons who thought up the soap dispenser, the air hand-dryer, and the cruise control. Great road-trip music: Garbage. Note to self: arriving back at the office in time for work does not necessarily mean that one will actually be ready to work on time, particularly if one has gotten up at 2 a.m. in order to drive home. Grammy's Birthday: The reason for my little road trip to LA (the first road trip I've taken solo in more than five years), was my Grammy's 93rd birthday. Grammy looks better and healthier at 93 than she did at 92, and we all have great hopes for a 94th birthday celebration next year. I hope my brother is home by then. I'm actually hoping Grammy will hold out until we provide her with a little grandchild (named after her if it is a girl, as per an old promise I made her), but we're still a few years out on that one, so God will decide. Speaking of God deciding? If the world were a schoolroom, and God were the teacher, my Grammy would be, like, his favorite pupil ever. She always does the reading, never gossips, and helps everyone as best she can, with a smile on her face. I love her so much I can't even tell you. She's 93 and still crocheting (she made a beautiful lace afghan for our wedding). She raised my cousin Kimmy for years, when Kimmy's parents couldn't. She always remembers birthdays. She taught Sunday School. She was a substitute teacher for differently abled kids. She has incredible amounts of patience and wisdom. She's always thinking about how to make life better for other people. She traveled as much as she could in her retirement; her last international trip was to help build an orphanage in Mexico ... in her mid-eighties! She takes setbacks and disappointments with more grace than anyone else I know. She reads all the time, and gardens, too. She adores her cat. I told my friend I. that my Grammy was the most Christian woman I'd ever met, with the forgiveness and the other cheek and the love and all. She said, "Oh, you mean the real Christian part." Exactly. My cousin N is trying to get Grammy to do an oral history, but Aunt K says you'll never get the whole story out of her, because she won't say a bad word about anyone or anything. It's not any way I could ever be, myself, but knowing someone like that? It's a gift and a blessing. Happy Birthday, Grammy.

Oversharing depletes your natural secret reserves

A friend linked to postsecret, which is an art project that invites people to send in a postcard "reveal[ing] anything, as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before."

It's a powerful idea, in that grassroots college-art way, and well worth looking at. It also brought home the realization that I have no secrets. There is nothing I know about myself that I have not told someone. I have things I tell some people and not others; I might have things I downplay or exaggerate; and I often suspect that even when I tell the truth about some things people don't believe me. But I have no absolute secrets.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Sometimes I forget and lose my gratitude

It's not that I'm not still thankful for all the things for which I should be thankful. I bear constantly in mind how much worse things could be, how much less I could have, how lucky I am.

It's just that my brother is cutting again and acting out and has (just this evening) been sent back to the beginning of this (ostensibly six-month) program he's in, which he's already been in for more than a year. My parents will barely be able to see him at all when they visit next month. He never writes to me. I'm so goddamn angry with him I can barely see straight and yet I miss him. I'd like to be there for him. I'd like to be there for my parents. But really, only one person can fix this, and he's making some really, really bad choices and deciding that he is a victim and none of this is his fault. I know he's got some serious problems, and I love him and want him to get better, to come home, but I have less than no patience with people who don't take responsibility for their own behavior and actions.

So angry. So sad. So missing him. So frustrated and impotent and worried and upset. And angry. And sad.

In No Particular Order

Today I am thankful for my charming partner, cashmere, my health, chocolate, friends A. and I., internet downloads, my parents, narcissus flowers, porn, good weather, the kindness of strangers, ibuprofen, coffee, word processing programs, poetry, TiVo, meetings that go well, sleep, spaniels, iPods, my Grammy, privilege (not as a general concept, as a lived reality), my car, and ostrich eggs.

Among other things.

Intellectualizing my idiocy

I was recently talking about my poor decision-making skills with my friend A, and an old decision map I'd done came to mind.

I used this assignment, for a School-Based Decision-Making course in grad school, to explain the decision process that causes me to return rented movies late and incur fines. It was a small assignment, and a great deal of fun; you can click the link to see it in full; it's short and fairly light reading.

I really think, however, that I'm onto something with this. Procrastination is an investment of time and effort that has its own value, similar and opposed to the time and effort one might expend in direct action. The very act of putting something off invests the delay, as well as the thing, with an added weight (whether it be of monetary value, anxiety, importance, guilt, or something else). This may be part of why the initial step is hardest to take.

A.R. Ammons, "Tree Limbs Down"

I just found this while paging through the latest New Yorker and was powerfully struck by it. This is such an American poem, with its guilt and its need to want, and its repletion. I woke up a few years ago, myself, and realized I had pretty much every material thing I wanted. It was a crisis of sorts. I felt adrift, unpatriotic. I read serious books on consumerism and national identity. I thought a lot about privilege. This poem is a perfect glimpse of what that felt like.

Tree Limbs Down

The poverty of having everything is not
wanting anything: I trudge down the mall halls

and I see nothing wanting which would pick me
up: I stop at a cheap $79 piece of jewelry,

a little necklace dangler, and it has a diamond
chip in it hardly big enough to sparkle, but it

sparkles: a piece of junk, symbolically vast;
imagine, a life with a little sparkle in it, a

little sparkles like wanting something, like
wanting a little piece of shining, maybe the

world's smallest ruby: but if you have everything
the big carats are merely heavy with price and

somebody, maybe, trying to take you over: the dull
game of the comers-on, waiting everywhere like

moray eels poked out of holes: what did Christ
say, sell everything and give to the poor, and

immediacy enters; daily bread is the freshest
kind: dates, even, laid up in old larders, are

they sweet: come off sheets of the golden
desert, knees weak and mouth dry, what would

you think of an oasis, a handful of dates, and
a clear spring breaking out from under some stones:

but suppose bread can't daily be found or no
oasis materializes among the shimmers: lining

the outside of immediacy, alas, is uncertainty:
so the costly part of the crust of morning

bread is not knowing it will be there: it has
been said by others, though few, that nothing

is got for nothing: so I am reconciled: I
traipse my dull self down the aisles of

desire and settle for nothing, nothing wanted,
nothing spent, nothing got.

(From The New Yorker, March 15, 2005).

New York, I weep for your children.

Day two of crosswalking New York state standards to California state standards. A cursory read-through shows at least five noticeable errors in usage, punctuation, s/v agreement, etc. in the language standards alone. I weep for New York's children.

Don't get me wrong. I'm no grammar maven; the obvious stuff gets to me, but the real subtleties lose me entirely. So if I can spot it? It's pretty egregious.

I'm working from a third-party document, so here's hoping it's all transcription errors. *crosses fingers*

Pet humor and rain.

Oh, dear lord. How I love this woman and her freaky cats. Sars has made me laugh so hard I cried. Again. If pet humor leaves you cold, don't click.

Perhaps I should be ashamed of my love for pet humor. Perhaps it makes me like those people who cry over the heartwarming stories in Reader's Digest and laugh at the Playboy cartoons. I don't really care. Cats and dogs are fucking hilarious.

A completely unrelated anecdote: Last week, I was out walking the dogs, and it was pissing down, and I got soaked, and I came grumping back to my door with (wet, smelly) dogs thinking to myself, "I can't believe it's still raining in ..." and then I choked, mentally, because that's how spoilt I am, living in California. I almost actually completed the thought, "I can't believe it's still raining in February." Spoilt, spoilt, spoilt.

Whining. Nothing to see here.

• My dog peed on the floor last night; it's going to have to be replaced. (The flooring, not the dog.)
  
• My brother is cutting, and while I'm not too concerned about the actual behavior, I feel awful that he is so unhappy and has no other outlet.
  
• I'm back to utter misery about my work habits, and this lull we're in won't last forever; it's going to start mattering, very soon.
  
• I've barely seen Himself for the last month or more, because we are both gone all the time now, with his current work.
  
• Traffic ticket last week; I rolled a right turn at a light. Maybe I do need traffic school, because I had no idea you couldn't do that.
  
• My closest local friend is moving to L.A. in less than two months. (This town has an awful friend turnover rate).
  
• I put a small thing off again until it became a last minute panic. When will I learn?

I can only juggle, comfortably, three big things. Big things are like: work, love, family, friends, a hobby, my self-time, volunteer work, exercise. I know that this is pathetic and insupportable and besides I cannot choose, and so I try to juggle at least five or six, just like everyone else. It just seems like moments of approximate equilibrium are fewer and further between than they used to be, and possibly largely illusory. How the hell do people manage when they are parents?

And I know I've posted this poem before, as it is one of my very favorites and all-too-frequently applicable to my life, but I can't find it, so re-sharing:

You Want a Social Life, with Friends

You want a social life, with friends.
A passionate love life and as well
To work hard every day.  What's true
Is of these three you may have two
And two can pay you dividends
But never may have three.

There isn't time enough, my friends--
Though dawn begins, yet midnight ends--
To find the time to have love, work, and friends.
Michelangelo had feeling
For Vittoria and the Ceiling
But did he go to parties at day's end?

Homer nightly went to banquets
Wrote all day but had no lockets
Bright with pictures of his Girl.
I know one who loves and parties
And has done so since his thirties
But writes hardly anything at all.

— Kenneth Koch

H.D., "The Walls Do Not Fall"

[14]

Yet we, the latter-day twice-born,
have our bad moments when

dragging the forlorn
husk of self after us,

we are forced to confess to
malaise and embarrassment;

we pull at this dead shell,
struggle but we must wait

till the new Sun dries off
the old-body humours;

awkwardly, we drag this stale
old will, old volition, old habit

about with us;
we are these people,

wistful, ironical, wilful,
who have no part in

new-world reconstruction,
in the confederacy of labour,

the practical issues of art
and the cataloguing of utilities:

O, do not look up
into the air,

you who are occupied
in the bewildering

sand-heap maze
of present-day endeavor;

you will be, no so much frightened
as paralysed with inaction,

and anyhow,
we have not crawled so very far

up our individual grass-blade
toward our individual star."

Brow waxing of DOOM

Okay, that is the first and yet LAST time I go to the local salon. I thought, hey, they're local, they're likely cheaper and easier to get to than the chi-chi salons downtown, it's just a quick eyebrow shaping, no problem.

Dear lord.

I still have wax clumped in my right brow. Also, they are slightly uneven. Also, the nice waxing lady took off the top of my eyebrows, thereby lowering them and causing me to look like a Neanderthal. And then she couldn't understand me when I told her that I was allergic to the wax remover and smeared it all over half my face then made me wait while she cleaned up with tweezers before I could go wash it off. I hope to God I don't break out in a rash.

And the tweezing? Stray hairs everywhere, not to mention the vaguely flattish, bar-shaped caterpillars currently masquerading as my brows. And I can't find a pair of tweezers in the house to save my life, or I'd fix it myself.

She asked me if I liked it, afterwards. I didn't have the heart to tell her I was going to go home and have conniptions. I smiled. I tipped her well. I am never going back.

And it will be weeks before they grow back in again properly. WOE.

More music swappage

kay, peoples, I updated my music lists and iPod, and in so doing, I got hungry for MORE MUSICS.

Although I have no patience for uploading countless files to yousendit, if any of you want to exchange .zip files or CDs of 10-20 songs with me, I would be thrilled to get some new stuff and share some of my collection. My partner says my taste in music is "college radio station," for what that's worth.

All the music I currently have available is listed here, so see if there's anything you particularly like or want. Some files are iTunes Music Store or Audible files that may have sharing restrictions, and I won't burn whole albums by a single artist, but any mixy sharing you wanna do, let me know. As for me, I could probably particularly use upbeat stuff that falls short of bubblegum, and if you have a lot of punk or ska, I am particularly deficient in those areas. And yes, I know that I should be ashamed of myself for some of the things on there, but my shame reflex is malfunctioning and I strangely feel no embarrassment whatsoever.

Will, I know I owe you CDs already. Guilt is mine. Take a look and let me know what you want.