Brewing

Wow, it's been so long since I posted. Mostly because the latter half of this semester has been trying at best. There have been awful bits. There have been beautiful bits. Mostly there have been bits and bits and bits; so many that I had, for a little while there, difficulty remembering myself, remembering to eat, remembering to do anything, sometimes, but sit in a dark room and breathe.

But this is okay. It has been a difficult year, to say the least. It has been a year in which I've come to know that raw pocket of living that exists between the life you think you have and the life you actually have. It has been a confusing year, a heartwrenching year, a successful year and a year full of loss and sadness. It's been a year in which I begin to learn what it is to be unsafe. In a good way, I mean.

I know how this sounds. And I'm sorry for the obscurity. For the vague and vaguely new-life-sounding abstractions. I'll be able to fill you in good and hard soon. So soon. Distance and perspective. These things are important.

But no matter what, it's been my first year of grad school (2nd run), and now it's finished. And I'm going to clean my house and treat myself to a meal I can't afford. And then, so soon, I'll let you know how it all went.

Postscript

That last post was inspired by Kate Harding's wonderful musings on her excellent blog Shapely Prose, which is a safe space monitored by Kate and her whip-smart co-bloggers. I posted there about the content of "The Ugly Truth." But it got me thinking: Why do I feel like I should only talk about this in a "safe space"? And the answer was: Because I am ashamed. Because I still think it's my fault. Because my first response to the violence directed at me was, "That was crazy, but I probably deserved it." On her blog, Kate discusses the gendered nature of violence like this (and not just the violence itself, but the victim-blaming as well) as symptomatic of a deep and enduring misogyny in our culture.

The Ugly Truth

So, the whole Chris Brown and Rihanna thing. Wow. Didn't want to comment on it, but...here I go.

I was initially flabbergasted by all of the quotes from celebots putting in their two cents about how Chris Brown is really, underneath it all, actually a nice guy, and it's not like this has happened before. It's not like he has a *history* of beating women. He just screwed up! She was probably being mouthy! I couldn't believe that people actually think this way, in this day and age. Until I remembered: up until very recently, you thought that way too, Screwsan (and just because you thought it about yourself doesn't make it any less of a shitty sentiment).

I knew a nice guy once. We dated for awhile. Then, one time, after we broke up, when I was arguing with him on his front porch, he strangled me. He'd never been abusive before. He wasn't violent to me when we were dating. It was easy for his friends to take his side--after all, he's nice and I'm...well, I'm a mouthy bitch. And even those people who stood up for me and helped calm me down didn't really see this as a domestic violence issue. Neither did I. After all, victims of domestic violence are a certain way, they live with a pattern of abuse, and it often takes them years (as made-for-TV movies starring Candace Cameron tell us) to bust out of their terror-filled lives. Those kinds of domestic violence victims and abusers are all over the media, seared into our brains. It's a horrible reality that many victims of domestic violence live this way. It's very important to educate the masses about the cycle of domestic violence so that victims of it may feel empowered enough to leave their partners before they are killed.

But this trope of domestic violence is only part of the story. Then there's all the rest of us (and by "us," I mainly mean women here), who lead "normal" terror-free lives. There's all the rest of us who have nice boyfriends, boyfriends who, you know, only screwed up once and felt really really bad and would never do it again. (Or ex-boyfriends who only screwed up once and even then, after the fact.) There's the rest of us, who will not lead violence-filled lives, but may just be touched by violence. And we will ignore it. We will internalize it. We will learn to not talk about it, because he was a nice guy and he didn't mean it and it was only once. We will blame ourselves and our bad luck at relationships and our big, bitchy mouths. We will think that because there is no "cycle of violence" present in what happened to us that there won't ever be one. We will shrug it off and tell ourselves, "It's no big deal. i walked away from it. I'm not a victim of domestic violence."

But that's not true. And that kind of thinking is dangerous. That kind of thinking gives violence a foot in the door. That kind of thinking makes polite excuses for something we can't afford to be polite about. Violence in relationships (whether they are new relationships or old relationships or over relationships), violence against women, is never ever ever okay. Even when he's famous. Even when you're famous. Even if he's never done it before. Even if he's a nice guy. Even if you're on his front porch and you are angry. It's not fucking okay. It's abuse. And it's common. And it's probably happened to someone you know.

Black Silk Boxers With Hearts

When we were 16, I gave you a pair of black silk boxers with red hearts for Valentine's Day. They frayed, looked a bit tawdry, were older than our years, silly, slightly creepy, easily stained, warm. Like us. Cheap and happy. I miss you.

Letter from Cat

I've had a lot of coffee today, which means another blog post! I kind of feel bad about not posting since November and I just had what could end up to be a really dumb idea, but I'll roll with it. This semester I'm taking a fiction workshop. Every Monday in our fiction workshop, we write "creative responses" to the book we've been assigned to read the previous week. The responses are only 1-2 pages long and they're freewriting exercises, which means I can write whatever weird and stupid crap comes into my head without having to worry about polish or revision. I thought I might start posting some of my creative responses here because a) they're short and b) that way I'll potentially be posting at least once a week again and c) the three of you who read this blog can see firsthand the sort of silly crap one produces when one is in the process of being overeducated in writing. Plus maybe the anxiety of knowing that my creative responses will be posted will make them...not better but more productive somehow? Anyway, so here's my creative response from this week. I should explain that my workshop has an experimental bent; that I've recently been playing with collage and appropriation (aka stealing and plagiarism); and that I've been obsessed, all week, with the blog True Wife Confessions. So to make my slackitude work for me, I decided to write a piece that used my favorite sentences or clauses from a number (and what a number) of TWC posts and work them into a...not really a story, but...something. The rule, more or less, was I could use no more than one sentence or clause from each post. Here's what happened:

-------------------------------------------------------

Letter From Cat
(as excerpted from the blog True Wife Confessions)


Hey you,

These weak, underachieving drama queens are out of control. I put up with a string of asshole roommates. But you take the cake. True, you are affectionate (greatly so!), playful. I don’t dislike you, but I feel like I have way too much weight on my shoulders. I just want to be the freaking cat. I am not your friend. I do not want to sit by your bedside table and watch you fade away into your final slumber.

Living with you sucks the joy out of my soul. Your body is seriously out of proportion. You stink. Your gibberish makes my skin crawl. You do anything I ask at the snap of a finger, and you know what, it’s annoying. When I don’t feel good, you inquire as to my pooping. Just how hard is it to change the litter box?

You asshole rat-fuck gutless piece of shit bastard. Your girlfriend is a crazy ass bitch. I swear she is the ugliest human being I have ever seen in my life. One night in September, while you were sleeping, I peed on her toothbrush. I wish I could just kill her sometimes.

Your best friend…I tempted fate and decided to sit with him and watch TV. I really screwed up!!! One thing led to another, and we indulged in some very inappropriate touching. I don’t know what happened exactly. I’m glad it has stopped but I still think about it often. It makes me so sad.

I miss you so badly when we aren’t together. I’m starving for attention. I’m starving. Chopped liver? That’s what I want. Nothing more and nothing else.

I think I am starting to forgive you. You cuddle with me, rub my back. This is how you stole my heart to begin with. You were always under the surface. Yes it took a long time, but you were dedicated to pleasing me. I love you. I mean…I don’t dislike you, managing your ego. Get a job, seriously!

Here’s a confession…I hate you. I’m tired of smelling spit on your hands. I’m tired of all your excuses. Just so you know, you won’t be able to find three of your favorite sweaters ever again. When I see you I will act like everything is fine, but under my breath I will be saying have a nice day bitch. Lol.

After 45 minutes of licking, I’m going to take a nap.

Shut up shut up shut up,
The Cat

-----------------------------

Which I think basically sums up my feelings about cats and their feelings.

S

Fucking Yoga (A Rant)

You know, I like the act of yoga. I do. It makes me feel better than anything in the world. Without it, I’m prone to back pain and sore joints and strained muscles, especially now that I’m a wizened old hag. Yoga keeps me off the anti-Ds. Yoga feels really good to my body. But the culture of yoga, I have to say, often annoys the living shit out of me. It’s so restrictive. Good yogis don’t eat meat, or smoke or drink or toot a line now and then because they’re out on the Lower East Side and the DJ’s really good and beautiful people are dancing and some cute boy invited them into the bathroom and gave them a bump and then made out with them all night long. You know what I mean? I’m speaking hypothetically here.

I’ve never been much of a joiner, especially not when joining means behavior modification in pursuit of a “better” self via enlightenment or spirituality or whatever, which I’ve noticed can sometimes lead to viewing those around you (beneath you, really) with pity and disapproval, because this helps you to justify the fact that your life is now bacon-and-cocaine free and maybe a little bit boring. I think this is the same reason I’ve been resistant to organized religions. I don’t do well with proscription and I’m not a very goal-oriented person. If I had any, my mantras might be something like: “Make tremendous mistakes” and “Are you going to eat that.”

I think the culture of yoga can be incredibly helpful for many people. Yoga teaches you to have compassion for yourself, which many people—say addicts, or abuse victims, or people who, for whatever reason, don’t like themselves very much—could use a lot more of. In that respect, the belief system behind yoga can be good and healthy. But the thing about yoga culture and some of the people steeped in it is I get the feeling that they never lacked a healthy amount of compassion for themselves. And now they have permission, via a faux faith-based exercise regimen (which is the way it’s often practiced in America), to think about themselves all the time.

And look I’m a no stranger to narcissism—I’m a writer. This blog is like a tribute to narcissism. But at least I don’t pretend to be doing good works while flexing my awesomely toned muscles in front of a room-sized mirror. I mean, I’m still, metaphorically flexing the muscles in the mirror, but I goddamned well know I’m not helping anyone or putting any good vibes or auras or whatever-the-fuck out into the world. And I certainly don’t talk in an irritatingly soft voice and pretend like nothing ever pisses me off. Fucking yoga instructors.

Which brings me to the real, secret, selfish reason behind today’s yoga rant: My local yoga studio has a “public-school teachers and single parents discount” that just makes them affordable. Since they have no student discount, I thought I’d take them up on the teachers’ prices because, hey, I teach in the Utah public school system. I went for a trial class but was turned down for the discount on my first visit by a yoga instructor named Jim who refused to speak above a whisper. So when I got home I emailed the owner, explaining my situation (I teach at the University of Utah and would like the teacher discount) and was turned down again:

I offer the discount to teachers to honor their work with our youth. Not so much the money or lack of it, but the stress they are under and the good job they do. This is the same reason I offer the deal to single parents.

I’d just like to draw your attention to that phrase, “honor their work with our youth,” because that phrase in particular makes me want to punch this person in her calm yoga face. If you haven’t been to a lot of yoga classes before, this might sound like a totally normal and reasonable sentence. However, “honor” is a big yoga word and for me it conjures the image of a middle-aged, social X-ray-type in two hundred dollar yoga pants bowing to herself in the mirror and reverently whispering “namaste” in order to “honor” herself. I don’t know why this bothers me so much. Maybe I’m jealous that the hot-for-50 lady is hotter than me, mediocre-for-31. Or maybe I’m jealous because she can afford $200 yoga pants and mine are Old Navy brand and six years old. Or maybe, looking at that lady, I sense she’s never lacked for being “honored” in her life. Probably something like all of the above.

So that expression, “honor,” just galls me in the first place. And then there’s the rest of the email which is galling in general because it insinuates, by negation, that the work I do is less stressful and “good.” Forget for a moment that the line between teaching college freshmen and high school upperclassmen is flimsy at best. And let’s assume that I don’t do “good” work at all, that my desire to become a college professor is completely self-absorbed and maybe I’m bad at it. Maybe I’m poisoning young minds and bodies with episodes of “Family Guy” and the occasional donut. That’s fine. I’m not a special ed resource teacher who works with behavior-disordered and mentally disturbed youth. But you know what? Not all teachers are good and deserving of awesome yoga discounts. In fact I’ve met some pretty shit ones in my day, including:

-the pretty girl who teaches kindergarten until her doctor-boyfriend becomes her doctor-husband.
-the jock who may know something about coaching football, but not much about American history.
-the Dude who loves to sub because it’s easy.
-the “Mostly, I wanted to keep having summer break” teacher (note: actually the majority of teachers, according to a recent survey I read somewhere once).
-the one who sleeps with--or gives the appearance of being willing to sleep with--students. (related, tangentially, to the arrested-development high school teacher who cannot or will not relate to adults and instead seeks to relive glory days of own youth.)

I mean, as long as we’re going to generalize about groups of people and the “good” “work” they do or don’t do!

Look, I know most teachers work like crazy and that it’s a demanding job. I’ve seen season four of the “The Wire.” Seriously though, I get it. Teaching is hard. I’m not saying teachers don’t deserve an awesome yoga discount. I’m just saying I do too. My stress levels since beginning my PhD are absolutely through the roof. Not to mention that, no matter the false distinctions this yogi’s email makes between “money” and “stress,” when one’s annual salary is $12,000 (approximately 1/3 of the beginning annual public school teacher’s salary), the two cannot be pulled apart. And although from a professional standpoint I think education reform is very important in this country, personally, I just kind of get annoyed when people say shit like “honor their work with our youth.” Think of the children! I kind of hate the children, if you want to know the truth.

(sidenote: why isn’t she offering discounts to social workers and cops, whose burnout (and suicide) rates are far higher and faster than those of teachers?)

But anyway, you know, whatevs. If this yogi had just said, like, “Sorry, I can’t offer you a discount because I can’t afford to” and stopped there—fine. I would have had some measure of respect for that. But this flimsy and illogical response to my assertion that I should, under the terms of what’s listed on the yoga studio’s website, qualify for this discount, is sheer bullhonkey. And maybe that’s what this comes down to in the end—a sort of side-stepping of reality. The reality is: there’s something on your website that says I should be able to receive a discount. Don’t hide behind the pretty, silky veil of “honoring good works” when really, you just want me to pay full price.

I’ve noticed over the years at different yoga studios around the country that there is a nearly pathological resistance to discussing money or discounts, and yet yoga is incredibly expensive and very much caters to the sensibilities and cultures of a certain class. And I do mean “caters.” I don’t for a minute take for granted that yoga instructors or studio owners are necessarily of the same class as their clients. Maybe that’s why they don’t talk about money—it’s just not something they think the upper-middle class likes to do. Maybe they’re right. Maybe instructors and studio-owners are a bit trapped by the class system in which they’ve chosen to do business, which causes people like me, who have weird class hang-ups anyway, to throw shitfits on their personal blogs. I don’t know. As usual, I don’t know anything. Except that I should probably just buy a DVD and shut the fuck up already.

Election Day: This Time It's Personal

Work up way before the alarm clock this morning, nervous and excited. Took a picture of my living room in the early, rainy light because I needed to take a picture of something to hold this day in my brain. My brother will be in Grant Park tonight, one of 2 million strong. I've drunk the Kool Aid. I'm ready.

Patriots

Governor of Alaska...



Meet the Senator from Wisconsin.



You guys have a lot to talk about, just in time for Halloween. It's witch-hunting season, after all. Good luck routing out all those anti-American Congressmen and women.

Here Then Gone

CT was here for a whole week and I forgot to take pictures. Mostly, we got up late, laid around, ate food (some good, some bad) and watched movies. It snowed here for two days over the weekend, which smooshed us into a cozy huddle that we never quite recovered from, even when the snow melted and the sun came out and it was 65 degrees in the valley where I live. There is something about snow on mountains that demands hot chocolate and fresh croissants. Luckily, both are nearby. Real, dark hot chocolate mere blocks from my house. It's going to be a lovely winter.

The thing about visits from boyfriends is that it's not always possible to enjoy them fully when they're happening. There's always anxiety about having fun and making the most of your time. This eventually turns to anxiety about the impending departure. Then there was all the work hanging over my head the whole week. I think, though, that just maybe we pulled off a couple of perfect moments right there in the middle.

He left yesterday and I cried and, still crying, sat down to finish a very difficult paper--the first official academic paper of my doctoral career and that made me cry harder. It sounds pathetic but it was closer to hilarious, me sitting there in sweat pants, red and wet in the face, leaning over my post-it covered copy of Jean Genet's Querelle to write about anal sex and blow-jobs, which yes, made me miss CT and cry some more. Hilariously pathetic perhaps.

Later, after I had collected myself and texted CT the location of the smoking lounges in the Cincy airport, I saw his shoes sitting in the bedroom, cuddled up with my things. He calls them his work shoes but really they are just his shoes. I'm not sure what he flew home in. I should probably send them back soon, but I like having them here. I've put them in the hallway with my own shoes. They look like they're waiting for him, like any minute he'll walk through the door, home from wherever he's been.

Fear and Change

McCain’s campaign sideshow has not only gone off the rails, it’s gone out of its mind. I’ve been catching up on the news from the last week (thanks, grad school) and I’m appalled, stunned and revolted by the racist epithets and death threats against Obama that are now making regular appearances at McCain-Palin events. The Nation describes a recent rally in Florida as a near race-riot, with the crowd turning on reporters. One African-American TV crew member was told to “Sit down, boy” by a white Palin supporter.

Fucking terrifying.

And McCain-Palin have not done anything to stem the tide of hate-speech from supporters.

Fucking unacceptable.

Is this what it comes down to? Pandering to the lowest common denominator? The ignorant, the racist, the—hello—possibly sociopathic?!?!?

Well, M-P, there you go. You finally found your untapped voter population. It’s not young single women, it’s not Hispanics, it’s not college students or first time voters or any of the other target groups we’ve been hearing about for the last year.

No, quite simply, its the insane, the deranged, the inhumane, the disgusting, the psychotic, the moronic, the afraid.

Is this the Republican legacy? Is this the future they see for America? If I were a Republican, I’d be tearing up my membership card right about now.

So this is what it all comes down to: Do we as a country cower in fear of and condemn the new, the unknown, the different, the foreign? Or do we step out into the world as the face of progress, invention, diplomacy, and tolerance?

Sorry, I know the political posting tends to get old, especially in a campaign year but I am absolutely beside myself. "Sit down, boy"? "Kill him"?!?! What. The. Fuck. is going on?

Butts

It occurred to me today that my pets are like 65% butt, which somehow feels appropriate since my own body feels more like 65% butt lately than not. Oh pants. When shall I ever find a pair of you that fits and flatters (for less than $100)?

Truthfully, on the grad student budget, that figure should be more like < $30. I've found a Nordstrom Rack here, which is kind of like Filene's Basement, in that there you will find drastically reduced black polyester clothing by BCBG and wonder who really, anymore, wears black polyester clothing to work? and then buy it anyway because you read in a magazine once that wrap dresses flatter every figure.

I'm taking a non-fiction workshop this semester, which has been tough. I'd like to do longer, researched, journalistic pieces but my schedule is too packed for that, so I end up writing about myself, which, as long-time readers of this blog know, is boring. It's one thing to write a kicky, 400 word blog entry about one's ass. Just you try and sustain that for 15 pages. I did. Wow. Yeah. Fiction? I miss you.

In a recent attempt to write about something other than myself, I emailed the SLC popo this weekend to see if I could do a ride-along with one of their officers then write about it. In my email to them, I used the word "infrastructure" (as in: "as a new resident of SLC, I'm interested in how the infrastructure of the city works"). Apparently in SLC, examining the "infrastructure" is synonymous with spying. I got back a polite but suspicious email implying that if I were interested in ferreting out then exposing the inner-workings and secrets of the SLC police department, I should take my business elsewhere. I emailed them back and tried to explain what I meant by "infrastructure" without making unflattering comparisons to, say, the sanitation department or mayor's office. They haven't written me back yet, but I'm pretty sure I'm now on some list that, at some point, may involve my black-balling or deportation. I'm not sure, so in the meantime I'm just trying to be an upstanding citizen. Which means taking out my trash on time instead of letting it fester in my apartment for a week. Which means this morning (trash day), dressed in my professorial best, I took the trash out before heading off to teach class. When I got to my car, I smelled something funny. Maybe funny is the wrong word...maybe...horrible? Awful? Wretchingly acrid? Something along those lines.

I was confused--I'd cleaned out my car weeks earlier. I couldn't remember leaving any kind of foodstuff moldering beneath a seat. And yet something in my car reeked like the dead. I puzzled about this all the way to the parking lot at school. Then I got out of the car with ten minutes to class and realized that I still smelled the smell. I looked down at myself--as if a little part of my brain already knew--and realized it wasn't the car that reeked, it was me. One entire be-tighted leg all the way to the skirt was dripping with garbage juice. It was chilly today and my tights were thick--the moisture hadn't seeped to my skin yet and so had gone undetected. Well. It was too late to drive home and change. I made a spectacle of myself in the girl's bathroom and tried my hardest to get rid of the stink, but there was little I could do. I will tell you something about 18 year olds: they notice everything. Faced with the choice of letting my students think I was either completely unhygienic or just plain stupid and probably incompetent to teach a class they were each paying a thousand dollars to take...well, which do you think I chose? I'm just an American, after all.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Emptied Bank Account

Dear House Republicans,

I'd also be interested to hear what you think about fluoride in our drinking water. And them doomsday machines.

The Thing That's Missing

Here I am, in Salt Lake City. The past three weeks have been grueling, to say the least. Emotionally, physically, financially, etc. The trip out was quick and smooth, but the adjustments have been difficult, though the city is beautiful. My apartment is quite lovely too, but when I moved in, I found out almost immediately that, worse than sewer rats,



I have toilet bunnies. Gross. I've put out traps and cheese but I can't seem to catch the suckers.

Though the area is lovely (I see mountains when I walk out of my front door! It's always sunny!) and the people are so nice they make Midwesterners seem like Bostonians, we've all been having some difficulties getting used to not being in Iowa. Bailey was so disconcerted with his new environment, that he promptly stopped pooping, then eating, then drinking. He was hospitalized for three days for what was basically an extended colonic. Maybe we should have moved to L.A after all.

But the danger seems to have passed for now and he is his old goatish self again. 



Here he is mid feeding-frenzy. His eyes kind of roll back in his head, like a shark's. After recent events, if Bailey could disembowel me with one bite, he probably would, and who could blame him.

While he was gone, Kevin and I passed our Bailey-less nights eating blueberries (her) and drinking beer (me) and watching Denzel Washington movies (us). Single girls in a crazy new city! It was almost like a sitcom, except instead of two hot young things in New York, it was a thirty-something grad student and her overweight rabbit in the LDS capitol. Hmm...that just made me depressed.

Kevin was thrilled at Bailey's return. She groomed the vet-smell off his head and ears and then rolled over on her back with joy. Then she humped him, which sort of killed the moment.

I have not been so lucky. My boyfriend has not been getting colonics at the animal hospital, nor humped by me. Instead he's back there in Iowa, kicking the restaurant into high gear for the start of classes, the first football game, the post-bar hours. Leaving him was really hard. We talk on the phone a lot, but you know, it's not the same. And Birdie, my stepdog, the pig on the carpet...I lay awake in the mornings thinking about them, spooned together in a big, half-empty bed, waiting for me to come home.

The One Abroad

Flood cleanup has been going well. I'll post more about that soon. Right now, I'm just excited about the press coverage of the Obama world tour. Frank Rich's excellent analysis from today's Times, "How Obama Became Acting President," is a must-read. In it he links to a photo of Barack Obama speaking to 200,000 adoring Germans. Rich's point about this being the first time many American children have seen foreign audiences waving American flags instead of burning them is a powerful one. This is the man I want repping our country to the world. And this is the man the world wants. What an exciting time.

Worse Before Better

I've buzzed my hair.



Or rather, CT has buzzed my hair. It feels great, in all senses of the phrase. It is soft on my hand. The weather here is hot and very wet. My hair is cool and dry. It makes me feel stronger. Plus, hey, free haircut! All those shiny strands that catch the light just so? Those are all grays, btw. With many more TK.

So, we moved what we could out of my mom's house and my stepdad's house yesterday by pontoon. It was very terrible to see, but also beautiful. The river raged beside us, feet away. A storm blew up. The water rose so fast. We had to leave with what we could shove quickly into garbage bags. We boated out along the treetops.

I just got back from the grocery store, which was a madhouse. I bought tuna and saltines and water. The water was difficult to navigate. What is the difference between stocking and hoarding? I mean this in a practical sense. How much water should one person buy when it is difficult to know--when the power goes out, when the water treatment plant loses its last pump--how long we will be without clean water and electricity? Am I incorrect in buying now, before these things have happened (but which, the media tells us, are likely)? How much water does one person need for a day? For a week? A month? What if my family members--who are understandably a bit slow right now, a bit shell-shocked already--don't buy enough water or food for themselves?

Well, now that I am back at the office and in front of the friendly, helping internet, I see that the Red Cross recommends storing one gallon of water per person per day. But the question remains: how many days are we looking at here?

I bought what I thought was reasonable.

I'm full up on gas, have a store of cash, waders, a poncho. As more bridges, roads and interstates close every hour, Iowa City feels more and more like a remote island. I hesitate to use the word escape, but how else to say what it feels like here? It feels like very soon escape will not be an option. But that is okay. My family is here. We are all on high ground now. I wouldn't want to escape if I could. I'm very glad to be here right now and not watching TV, helpless, in a studio apartment in New Jersey.

CT and I are going out for a ridiculous, expensive, wonderful meal tonight at my favorite restaurant. I am going to get really drunk on red wine. I am going to sleep in tomorrow.

As Good As It Gets

This is a picture of my mom's house yesterday. The water has not yet gone over the dam spillway. Right now it is literally inches from the top. When it goes over, very soon now, Mom's house will likely flood another 4-8 feet. My stepdad's house is down the road. We couldn't get to his place because the currents were too strong to safely navigate in a canoe. This is as good as it gets. It will be a 500 year flood.



Right now, I'm basically on-call for my family. The waters came so fast, we couldn't get all the irreplaceables out of my mom's house before it flooded. But at this level, it's still not quite high enough on the road to be able use her pontoon boat to move things. So we have to wait until it really floods in earnest--until today, most likely--to be able to salvage whatever is left of her stuff. But it's a Catch-22, because to get to her stuff, the waters have to be high, and by then, there may not be much stuff left to salvage.

My sister and her husband live with my mom and are now minor local celebrities. They were the last two to leave so the news stations have been stopping by and interviewing them. They have been moving everything out, including their cats, by canoe.





My mom has rented storage space. She's now trying to find a house or pair of apartments to rent for everyone for the rest of the summer. She hasn't had much luck. Because Iowa City is a college town, almost all leases in Iowa City end on July 31 and begin on August 1. They will likely need housing into September. In addition, the competition is high. There are a lot of homes on the Iowa River and a lot of people newly homeless. More likely, the four of them (my sister, her husband, my mom and my stepdad) will move into an extended-stay hotel for the rest of the summer. The cats will have to be boarded until fall.

FEMA, in true FEMA form, has not yet declared Iowa City a disaster area. This essentially means that there is no widespread and organized relief for displaced people. FEMA has said they will not claim a state of emergency until the water is over the spillway.

My mom and stepdad are lucky: they are fully insured and financially stable. They have family members in the area and places to stay. Some people on the river don't. Unlike a lot of waterfront property, the Iowa River is not necessarily a high-income place to live, especially outside of town where my family lives. Some of their neighbors don't have insurance and are literal inches away from losing everything. Some don't have family on higher, drier ground with whom they can stay. A lot of people are out of luck. The Red Cross is helping out here. If you'd like to donate money or your services, please go to their website or call a local chapter:

Cedar Rapids Area: (319) 393-3500
Dubuque Area: (563) 583-6451

For The Motherfucking Love of All That is Left of This Country

CONCEDE!

Best Headline Ever?

"Monkeys Control a Robot Arm With Their Thoughts"

Not Buying What She's Selling

1) If Barack Obama is a sexist, then I am Mary Tyler Moore. Seriously, either Geraldine Ferraro has finally fallen completely off her rocker, or she’s taking a page from the George W. Bush playbook--Spin Rule #2,334: If you say it, it is so.

Only one candidate cut her teeth smearing and harassing other women in order to protect her philandering husband’s campaign and presidency and, uh, her name is not Barack Obama. Possession of a vagina and a degree from a women’s college do not innoculate one from being sexist or misogynist. I know of what I speak.

2) All this talk of Hilary winning the working-class whites is sort of irrelevant. Many, many working-class whites are union members. Many, many union members vote, and when they do, they vote in blocks. They all vote for a pre-approved candidate. In Iowa, John Edwards had early union support, now Hilary Clinton does. I’m willing to bet that if Clinton concedes and Obama spends some time with the union reps, those same votes that went to Hilary in West Virginia and Kentucky will go to Obama in the national. Racism is, in this case, a red herring. It’s all about throwing the unions some bones, which is part of every political campaign and will certainly be part of Obama’s once Hilary steps out.

Only one candidate cut his teeth organizing and speaking for working-class people and, uh, his name is not Hilary Clinton.

Recursion Theories

I have not known how to talk about this really, so I haven’t said much on the subject for many reasons such as: I’m still working out my own feelings on the matter; and, it’s kind of weird. But anyway, here’s the thing: I’m dating my landlord. Okay, you say, fine. Maybe a little strange, especially if your current landlord is anything like your previous landlord. But no big. Here’s the part where I tell you that my landlord is actually the first person I ever dated. Chief Truthseer, subject of a long-ago interview and blog post.

Things have been a touch, well, mortal around here lately, which of course always performs that clichéd trick of making you feel your own mortality pressing up against your heart like a blood clot. And so CT and I went away for a couple of days. We spent almost all that time in bed. Some of it, in a cozy triple-spoon with his sweet and elderly Chesapeake Bay Retriever. There was a little fighting (we’ve both been stressed and worried for our various aggrieved loved ones) but it was productive in the sense that it led me to say the most embarrassingly romantic thing I’ve ever said aloud, which was, “We could really be in love. I could love you…if you’d just let me.”

Reader, is it not obvious? My years in romance publishing have paid off. Silly, teary proclamations aside, I think it suddenly occurred to us both that we were actually sorta in love and it was finally okay to admit it and act like it. Like I said, it’s not been something I’ve been talking much about…not even to him. I think that’s because what has been going on has a tinge of the unreal to it: that dream feeling—light as tissue—that if you concentrate too hard on something it will tear. In two months I’m moving to Utah. I’ll live there for four years. Because of his work, he can’t come with me. Is it foolish that I am looking forward to this as a challenge? Is it ridiculous to think we might be okay?

As I said to him in a letter once, in some ways he represents the last vestiges of the home of my youth. The last year CT and I dated was the year my parents got a divorce, the year I moved as far east as possible for college, the year I discovered booze and drugs and the random hookup. As much as my break-up with CT was influenced by these things, that year before we split, he was the part of my life that was sane and grounded and safe. And so I ran away from all that, into my wild years. Fuck you all, I thought. I will get along just fine without you. And I did. But I have to say, it’s nice to be back here. To rediscover his kindness and intelligence and how our similarities sometimes border on disturbing. He sometimes feels like my brother. He is, in a way—we grew up together. We grew each other up. In some ways I feel responsible for him. And he takes good care of me, so I know he feels the same.

In a short story, this would be the perfect ending: surprising but inevitable. But this is not a short story or even an ending. He is a complication, but this is nothing new. He has always been there, all these years, someone I had separated from but who never quite felt separate from me. Being with him feels like the completion of something, even as I get ready for yet another beginning.

I guess we’ll see how this goes. After all, there is nothing I like better than a nice, dirty complication.