Year: 2008

I had my coin purse open to fish out the obligatory pound coin to recognize his essential genius, but the panhandler caught me unaware.

For the first time in a four year long daily nodding acquaintance, he decided we should have a chat.

Why? I have no idea.

What did we talk about? Everything: life, love, longing, loss, publishing – you know, the usual.

During the course of the conversation he confessed all sorts of transgressions with the calculating gaze of a conman, but here is one essential rule – never con a con.

I’m impervious. I stared right back and said You are a healthy strong person, you work for your money.

He tried the line about an abusive stepfather, and a long-suffering mother, but I replied So? She could have protected you. She chose him.

-Well, but my father beat her….

I broke in So? She chose that too.

-She was my mother, and I loved her, and I hurt her more than I can ever explain.

I shrugged, again: So?

He tried a few other pitches for sympathy and I delivered a monologue familiar to anyone unfortunate enough to hang out with me at a family funeral, namely: yes, your mother and father fuck you up. More often than not you love them anyway, and the devastation is enormous. But that is no excuse. Not for anything. Ever.

Life is meant to be lived, not lamented.

Most of the mainstream, ostensibly successful people I know would crack in this kind of conversation but street thugs and junkies are not just immune; they’re entranced.

His facade dissolved and I saw the real, raw, true person hovering just underneath.

Without any hesitation he slipped posthaste into a slipstream of hilarious observations and frenetic ideas and plans, admitting along the way to a privileged childhood and a university education superior to my own in all respects.

What did he get from me? I’ll tell anyone who really cares how much I dislike this city, and how much I miss the Northwest. I am completely upfront and uncensored about the ruins of my romantic relationships, growing up in poverty with cancer, and even what I do for a living.

The fact that this happens more easily with homeless addicts than the shiny academics I normally hang out with might be worrisome, if I were a different sort of person.

His dealer man was lurking about glaring and eventually we said goodbye.

As I departed he said Do you smoke? I replied truthfully I’ve never smoked anything, and I never will.

The final Himsa show is tonight at El Corazon.

RIP to the Seattle band I’ve had the most fun drinking with (especially after funerals).

I tried to poke around and figure out the allure of Facebook but only managed to stumble across a review of Lessons in Taxidermy from someone who hated the book.

Fair enough. But, rather than evaluating the literary or social relevance of the work, this reader points out that the narrator is not likeable.

Oh, how delicious – and accurate.

The narrator of the book (and this journal) is a carefully organized construct, a simulacrum, making specific points using traditional storytelling methods. None of which are designed to endear; in fact, my profound lack of interest in such matters is one of the major themes of the work.

Then there is the real person typing the words: a disheveled sarcastic harridan. Talk to me long enough and I will say exactly what you do not want to hear, and guess what? I don’t care.

I am ethical, honest, tenacious, and smart, all of which are attractive to the right audience – but even the people who love me would have to admit that they don’t particularly like me. I crave both complexity and clarity in all things, and while that might be alluring, it is never easy.

I am not nice.

I’ve been running social networking sites since the dawn of the web, but my particular interest has been marginalized groups and/or professional (translation: geeky and technical) resources, and always always always the point is community organizing or social action.

This means that I have only a limited understanding of sites like Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, etc. Personally I use them to keep track of the occasional friend who only communicates via those channels, and as publicity tools when I have something to promote. Other than that, I never bother to login and would certainly never trawl around reading random things. I don’t really get what other people use them for.

Myspace is the most annoying because of all the random band clutter, and also because it is so obviously a meat market. I rarely even bother to look at my inbox there because I have to wade through so many sketchy messages from random sleazy men.

Of the various options the best current site is certainly Facebook, but that is because it has clean design principles – something most of these start with and then lose as they become corporate (so watch out, FB friends, it is surely around the corner). However, lately I have received unsolicited unwanted attention even on Facebook, which up to now has only bothered me by encouraging high school nostalgia.

Exactly what does a stranger think they are going to accomplish by sending a message in all caps informing me that I am gorgeous? Do they honestly think they will get a date out of the encounter? Do people really do that?

When you live abroad there is one critical thing you must never, ever lose:

Your passport. The visa inside is quite important too, but without the encompassing proof of identity it is very difficult to establish the rest.

At the moment, my son has no passport.

Given the fact that I am in fact compulsive about keeping track of such things, and have already looked in all the obvious places in a shall we say rigorousfashion, the logical conclusion is that the object has gone missing. Or to be more specific, it has been stolen.

How much is a newish U.S. passport worth on the black market these days?

Replacing it will involve incredibly tedious trips to the embassy in London, a task I really do not enjoy. I would invite my other child along for a lark but she isn’t anywhere to be found (kind of like the passport).

Someone recently asked after her whereabouts and I was shocked; I replied She is a grownup, why would I know?

The fellow in question hectored the point in the bantering, hostile fashion I encounter more here than elsewhere. Quick tip: criticizing my parenting skills is never, ever a straight path to my heart. Let alone my nether regions.

The panicky freak out really only lasted as long as the anniversary. I never stay upset very long – I am too busy thinking about campanology, or whatever, to indulge messy emotions.

I’ve had mild reactions to the anniversary more often than not in recent years, so will presume my emotions were at least influenced by the oddity of hearing from lots of misplaced old friends lately.

By the time I finished drinking my tea yesterday it was back to normal programming (including watching the Rockford Files), and today has been entirely delightful. Mostly I wandered around letting friends feed me meals I think of as uniquely American. Like pancakes. For dinner I had steak and mashed potatoes, fondly remembering good times with Mash and her family, going to barn sales on Fox Island, listening to 45’s, rolling around on a new carpet shrieking with delight.

I remember a little store on the bay where we bought beef jerky and malted ice cream, and visiting a derelict cemetery just above. I remember an ill-advised effort to play tennis in which I bashed my own wrist rather than the ball. I remember a road trip to her grandparents lake cabin, and dinner in a diner where we played pinball.

I remember decency, and laughter, and love. I am lucky beyond words to have met that family, and to remain friends over the course of a tricky twenty-five years.

PTSD influences moods, thoughts, and behavior, but for me it is primarily a physical (or physiological) experience.

My essential optimistic can-do attitude was never reduced by trauma; I was changed irrevocably by the events of my early life, particularly what happened on August 1, 1988 – but I was a determined person when I went up that mountain, and remained so when I came back down again.

Some people drug themselves, others ask for prescriptions, many find solace at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

I run errands, fill out paperwork, ride my bicycle.

The adrenaline is going to flood my body regardless of what my rational brain would prefer, and I have learned that it is best to just keep moving.

I cycled furiously about moving large unwieldy objects from one place to another, cooked, cleaned, opened months of unread mail, indulged all the obsessive desires that soothe my damaged brain.

When I ran out of tasks and trials I decided to go to the movies as a final effort at distraction – strangers, in public, normally scare me in these circumstances, and that keeps all the rotten stuff from spilling out.

Except I didn’t reckon on the fact that I am a lot healthier than I have ever been in my entire life, and that I am on friendly terms with everyone who works at the movie theatre. I feel safe there.

I had a three minute charming conversation with one of the cute youngsters at the counter, turned away to walk to my seat, and the panic struck without warning.

I started to shake, Logical Mind watching with detached criticism reminding me that I find it humiliating to lose control.

It is really too bad that Logical Mind is running a federation instead of a dictatorship. My limbs were in open rebellion for a period of time I found intolerable, though nobody around me seemed to be paying too much attention.

Panic attacks are intrinsically private, and underscore the solitary nature of existence for everyone. We really are all alone, no matter how much we try to connect, nurture, provide.

When the fright chemicals finally subsided I turned to Byron and said: I’ve spent my entire life saying I am fine, and now I am surrounded by people who refuse to believe anything else even when I ask for help. True or false?

He shrugged dismissively. True.

I had elected to see the sort of film where the audience laughs throughout, then people start to bicker as they leave their seats. While my main criticism was that the lead was too preciously hip (oh look, he lives by Jaguar Shoes), various other threads of conversation were sparked by the movie.

Mostly I was still fixated on avoiding a return of the panic, and convinced that if I could just make it to midnight everything would be fine again.

Circumstances intervened and I fell apart while crossing the Jesus Green, and ended up sobbing hysterically I want Marisa! I want Mark!

Byron is not especially interested in being a sensitive caring person and he pointed out that none of my friends really take care of me, or want to listen. He said that Mark would just make fun.

I replied That is fine! I don’t want to talk! I just want to be distracted, I just want to forget!

Going along with the theme of the movie (and probably in reference to the fact that my younger traumatized self was a lot more voracious and erratic than the protagonist of the film) he went on Plus Mark wouldn’t want to sleep with you. Marisa probably would though!

This just made me cry harder and wail I want to go home!

Home.

Where is that, exactly? I brought most of the people I care about along when I moved to this country, but this place is not my home. The other people who love me all live between the Cascades and the Pacific ocean, but that does not make the Northwest my home. I miss the peninsula of my childhood, the landscape of the Puget Sound, with a wrenching urgency – but it is not, could never, be home.

The accident took away so much – breaking bones, smashing brains, delivering a death blow to youthful idealism.

If I learned anything, it is this: there is no home except what I carry inside me – good, bad, or indifferent.

Twenty years later I can still taste the blood, but I am alive. I was not destroyed, merely diverted.

There is no way to guess what would have happened otherwise, and that does not matter.

Happy twentieth anniversary to us.

On Sunday Jean was supposed to accompany me to a picnic on the Grantchester Meadows but he was still sleeping off the debauchery of a final night with Rachel – weakling!

The weather was in fact too brutal for your humble narrator to survive an hour-long walk and still be sociable, so I resorted to that most decadent of local conveniences: a taxi ride. I wonder if my working-class brain will ever rest easy with this particular mode of transport? It certainly has not been less problematic over time – I could probably provide a fairly comprehensive list of every ride I have ever paid for, and I have been riding for a decade now.

Steve had staked out a spot next to a swimming hole, and Sally joined bearing homemade strawberry tarts. The group swelled with families from France, Scotland, Israel – an eclectic group of archivists, anthropologists, artists.

One woman flatly refused to answer the question (posed by another, not me) So what do you do? and I clapped my hands in an ecstatic fashion.

My kid wandered off with a pack of boys, and I propped my umbrella on a trolley to cast a little bit of shade in the eighty-plus degree day. We talked, laughed, enjoyed yummy food and the delightful company for hours. Sally and Steve are away soon to perform at festivals (though I do not know what the current show is, they have in the past been puppeteers) and it was lovely to have such an idyllic afternoon with them.

Just as we were all packing to leave the sun passed behind an ominous dark cloud and we found ourselves in the middle of a driving rainstorm. We all dashed from tree to tree laughing maniacally until we finally struggled out of the meadows – by then so flooded the water was in places ankle deep – and reconvened in a thatched roof cottage to watch as the street became a river.

Everyone agreed the spectacle was remarkable, unheard of, then we settled down to play rounds of Chase the Ace and Cheat. I didn’t really follow the rules, but both were quite fun! Later the youngsters built a maze out of blocks and took bets on which resident hamster would win the course.

I bet that neither would make it to the end. The bookies were reluctant to issue odds, but in the end – I won.

I spend a fair amount of time at New Hall because that is the college Jean is affiliated with (though in what formal manner, I cannot say, as these distinctions are of no interest to me). I’m very fond of the place because portions of it are very modern in the same manner as Evergreen: lots of brutal concrete walls.

Another feature it shares with my alma mater is the art all over the place, generally ignored by passerby. In the case of New Hall, that would be the second largest collection of women’s art in the world.

The fact that such a thing just sits, benignly and without seeking attention, down yonder road, is a quintessentially Cambridge presentation. This city is full of surprises and hidden history that could take a lifetime to discover – a fact that is always shocking, since the place feels so sleepy and boring on an average day, when the struggle is just to acquire a pint of milk without running over a tourist.

Imagine my surprise then to read an article in the Guardian that takes as a fundamental premise the naive question what’s the point of a museum of art by women? Hmm. Backlash, anyone?

It is impossible to evaluate the worth of this collection based on the last decade of an inflated art market that does not, even at that level, equally reward all artists and genres. To phrase it differently: not everyone likes Tracy Emin.

Beyond that, the history of New Hall itself is given only a cursory glance. It is simply an appalling intellectual error to ignore the fact that Cambridge was the last university in the nation to refuse to grant women degrees – even when they scored higher than male students.

The struggle for equality in education here is not ancient history. There are senior professors who still remember extreme discrimination, and many of the junior members have had to deal with overt prejudice.

How many are rumored to have slept their way into their employment contracts? How many terrifically bright women are turned away by the insular, old-boys-club attitudes here?

There is simply no reason to debate the merits of a privately funded specialty art collection in this town. Other colleges preserve the cabinets Pepys kept his journals in, or the desk Whewell used when scribbling notes.

This place has a museum full of fossils, another full of zoology specimens. Each is just as worthy as the other.

Yesterday I went to a reception for a show of anatomical drawings and they proved deliciously creepy – not least because they were accompanied by audio recordings from a surgical suite.

I was able to use one illustration to point out the various bits of my face and neck ruined by injuries and surgeries, much to the dismay of my young companion. He is very sensitive.

After the show we went on a long countryside ramble to admire the fields full of bunnies, then retired to eat chocolate fudge cake from Fitzbillies and make summer rolls with peanut sauce (in that order). Mmm!

I was ready for bed and yawning when Rachel started to text and call from the Castle, tempting me out for the night, but I declined until after midnight when the gang transferred to a late opening pub I call Our Secret Clubhouse. I was still resisting but she said Jean had just arrived.

Walking across Castle Hill I happened upon Josh, and dragged his bewildered yet obliging self along for the debauchery. Including sitting outside and making way too much noise until two in the morning. Rachel brought along a special new friend who was extremely friendly: she talked to everyone inside the pub and quite a few passerby. She even decided to massage my neck – nobody ever touches me! She observed I am very tense and really ought to see a professional, but hey, that has been true since 1983. I seem to get by somehow.

Jean got semi-swept up in a hen do and was sporting a glitter crown for awhile, there was more scurrilous gossip and chatter, the wealth of William (we’re down to one now) delivered secret spy data, Pedro said he will marry Rosie once her parents provide a dowry of an orchard or cattle, and, you know, it was another night out in Cambridge.

Right now I have this sneaking suspicion that I am supposed to be somewhere, but can’t decide if that is true or just how the first weekend of the summer holiday always feels?

Either way, I think that I am going to pack up some flotation devices and head out on the river in an attempt to survive the eighty degree heat. England is not built for this kind of weather. Me neither.

Locals or visitors please note: there is at least theoretically a Busker Festival all week in the city centre. Remember to carry coins of the realm!

Courtesan, companion, conversationalist, brilliant artist and simply one of the most interesting people I have ever met: What else can be said about Byron Number Three, most commonly referred to as Gabriel?

Our lives have crossed inexplicably since 1995, but we didn’t formally meet until much later at a Sunnyside Co-operative School dance, when Sia blew my cover as the publisher of the magazine.

Upon hearing the news, Gabriel started to clap and spin in a wild and hilarious fashion.

That year we sat on the floor of school hallways with our journals, evoking the Bad Kid aesthetic even though we were both (nominally) responsible parents. Later I kidnapped him to accompany me on the Breeder tour, and still later our friends shipped us off to Italy in a post-9/11 apocalyptic moment.

Since then there have been too many stories, too many adventures, to even begin to convey how important he is in my life. Happy, happy birthday to a good parent, nice man, best friend!

Hours before she was born I wandered through hidden back corridors of the teaching hospital, staring at the specimens on display, convinced (along with my family and physicians) that I would not survive the day. That particular concern was immaterial – nonsense – I just had to get through the immediate physical challenge.

I did, we did, she was born – fist first and facing the wrong direction. That sums up the entirety of her life so far. The girl is a genius, autodidact, dropout, fiend.

She has a furious mentality that leaves me shocked and breathless, a wit so incandescent I can never even hope to keep up.

I never have any idea of what she will do, though she always does it well – and to extremes. Her friendship is a gift, her presence a worthwhile challenge.

She is my daughter, but more than that, she is herself, and I love her in the entirety of that concept. I sometimes wish that I could still hold her in my hands, and protect her from the world. But she is too ferocious and fearless for such niceties.

My daughter is, simply, amazing. I send sincere and good birthday wishes to the glorious and gorgeous girl, wherever she is in the world!