Year: 2009

When my first husband wandered off into the sunset he took his uniforms, the ironing board, and my original Hunter S. Thompson for Sheriff poster.

He left everything else: guns, knives, household goods, the baby.

Fair enough – although I never did manage to shift most of the stuff, some of the guns had street value. The rest of the weapons are scattered in storage units across the world. I still use the mixing bowls. And the baby, of course, is all grown-up. It happens.

I only owned the poster because I know people in Woody Creek, a trend that has continued throughout my life. The mountains of Colorado exert an eerie appeal, and the kids who grew up shooting shit in those canyons are amongst my favorite people, encountered routinely in Portland, Seattle, SF, NYC, London, Rome.

Last night I went to see Gonzo and it was fascinating. In large part, of course, because it illustrated the way that a truly iconoclastic and talented man squandered his early promise on bullshit macho posturing. Or drugs, depending on how you want to write the story.

Not that I have any particular problem with bullshit macho posturing – I am a pioneer descendent, my uncles were variously Hell’s Angels, union enforcers, or other flavors of criminal genius. I like guns. Heck, I’m probably a better shot than many people reading these words. I have made a lifelong habit of dating thugs and killers, because I like the aesthetic.

The ethos of rugged individualism, the values of the frontier, are simply part of me. It is only when those habits turn into caricature or farce that I shrug and walk away.

Drug addiction and the ensuing moody drama? Boring.

Thompson is rightfully revered for his earlier work, whether you like it personally or not, and the movie does a fantastic job of showing that era, including interesting archival footage and new interviews with McGovern, Carter, Wolfe, and even (gasp) Pat Buchanan.

The saddest part of the documentary is not the suicide – it is the fifteen or so years when he didn’t manage to write anything much at all. Let alone anything interesting.

Loot this year included all manner of treats, from a painting of me on safari by my elder child, family portraits of squirrels ordered from faraway SF, a new speaker to play the iphone, a shiny teapot, a huge bag of cinnamon jellybeans, a carved wooden owl that hoots, and an inflatable moosehead trophy (cause I wasn’t allowed to bring my taxidermy to this country).

The best however was a glass eye pendant, to replace the creepy necklace I’ve grown weary of, though unfortunately the chain did not fit the new trinket.

Lli was the only friend who consistently turned up to celebrate the doleful birthday, traversing snowstorm and bad public transit so our infants could crawl around poking dangerous things in my series of eccentric, semi-derelict houses back in Portland.

One year she gave me the most genius gift of my entire adult life – a human glass eye still in a presentation case – and it resides in a place of honor with my collection of antique medical gadgets and false teeth. The same shelf also holds the bits of jewelry collected during my travels, and today I went rummaging in the scientific cabinet to find a chain for the new eye.

The only one that fit was originally used to suspend a loteria card featuring a pierced heart, one of the visual elements that later became the tattoo, forcing retirement of the necklace it referred to. Later I used the chain to hold milagros from a pilgrimage to Chimayo, then medallions from Paris, Rome, and Tallinn.

Before I learned to flirt (or rather, realized that I already knew how, in my own vicious and marauding manner) these talismans were mainly just a private comfort, a way to mark and organize and remember chaotic events.

They were also the only thing anyone ever dared comment on, and the only breach in my defense systems, with Inga or Moe or Sasha or a dozen others feeling free to rummage around to get a better look at my cleavage as I rolled my eyes in exasperation.

Straight boys correctly sense they would swiftly have their fingers broken if they tried the same, but eventually I noticed that the necklaces implied permission for menfolk to look.

How tiresome, and how unfortunate that I noticed – it was so much more pleasant to drift around, oblivious and impervious.

On January 7 1983 I was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and granted an estimated survival of six months.

That was my twelfth birthday, and today I turned thirty-eight.

Happy birthday to me!

Happy giving-birthday to my mother!

Huge, impossible, endless thanks to all of you who have stuck with me through these mad years!

You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and your family.

Robert Darwin to his son Charles

There were several years I refused to acknowledge January 7 (or by extension the entire month) whatsoever, and it became my Not Birthday, recognized only by demand of friends and relations, but always with a certain level of fury.

I was really angry and sad – about everything, nothing, whatever. This sort of thing tends to happen when you are diagnosed with terminal cancer as you turn twelve… adolescent anxiety gets all mixed up with survival, and who needs that kind of anniversary looming in the darkest part of the winter?

Not me. However, now? This year?

For whatever reason, I honestly don’t care!

Though this means that there will be no party, in case you are one of the friends who would normally expect an invitation.

Instead, Saturday started at the British Library, where a display about Darwin helpfully included the fact that his father was strenuously opposed to him joining the Beagle expedition, and also thought he was something of a loser in general.

Oh, families!

The main attraction though was an excellent exhibit called Taking Liberties. Highly recommended (even for kids, though they should be over age ten and/or twitchy eccentrics like the fruit of my loins), and not just because they have an original Magna Carta on display.

Oh no – there is way more – including real recognition of radical history and the long bloody fight to achieve what nominal rights we currently have. Particularly the NHS, seen appropriately as a redistribution of wealth and a basic human right. One of the main people behind it said, essentially, private insurance is a scam, and there is no room for notions of profit in health care. Yes!

I don’t even need to remind you that childhood mortality improved by some startling statistic like thirty percent in the first ten years of the program, right?

Then onward to find lunch in a city partially closed for the holiday season – one awesome if frustrating thing about the UK in winter – and off to the Southbank Centre, because I asked for a BFI membership for my Sad Winter Birthday (TM).

We were there to watch Casablanca on a big grand screen, and gee whiz, the movie really does shine when viewed as it was meant to be seen.

On the way out we stopped to ride a carousel on the banks of the Thames with a view of Big Ben, the Shell Tower, and the Eye of London. My horse was named Kevin.

As the hours passed my evening plans unraveled, as they always do, so I dragged my kid across town to eat pho and salad rolls before grabbing an early train back to Cambridge.

The putative birthday does not strike until later in the week, but I’ve already had a fantastic time!

On my thirtieth birthday I had a sense of foreboding because, as I commented to anyone willing to listen (and hardly anyone listens to me around this time of year) This will be the deadly decade.

Not because I had any fears for my own health; such concerns are void until the next round of tests, then quickly forgotten. I was instead stricken with an awareness that, while I’d always been sickly, now my friends were going to start experiencing protracted ill health.

This has proved true.

People close to me have been diagnosed with all manner of ravaging diseases, a few will die, a few already have. Wherever possible I offer support in practical ways, or just an understanding ear, and if the individual allows it, a fair dose of gallows humor.

I have always been indignant when people read my work and claim it puts their problems in perspective. Life doesn’t work like that; a broken bone really fucking hurts whether or not the person next to you has just experienced an amputation. Pain and illness are individual, private experiences, no matter how publicly paraded.

If you are the sort of person who feels grateful for your good fortune because others are suffering, I don’t want to know you.

Yes, feel thankful for what you have – just avoid making specious comparisons. My life, while raw and painful and bloody, has always been wildly entertaining. I refuse to let anyone claim otherwise.

This holiday I’ve been feeling rather ill and suspect that I have worked my way back into another stupid sickness (the first time I was diagnosed with bleeding ulcers I was nine years old, so I can reasonably predict what is wrong right now). No, I don’t want to talk about it – leave me alone with my antacids and mushy plain food and I will be fine and dandy.

But while feeling doleful and queasy I’ve been reading narratives from many people here on the internet who are much more ill than me. Elsewhere other friends are dealing with painful invasive treatments. One ended up in hospital over the holiday – crossing fingers she gets out today.

I have an idiosyncratic inclination to protect the privacy of my sick friends, whether they are shy or exhibitionists. Yeah, I will donate to a medical or funeral fund when I have the money, or run a free ad campaign, or spend countless hours advocating for friends in emergency rooms and clinics, but it is rare for me to comment publicly or privately about the health of another person.

In this way I am often a failure as a friend, because some people want acknowledgment and validation of their troubles. If I’d ever consented to therapy I might even understand this urge, though I doubt I would share it. I’m still stuck in the lower gears of survivor guilt and would prefer to take all the pain myself. I’m pretty good at being stoic, after all.

This was really just a long way to say – I hope the new year brings solace and relief to those of you who are feeling awful.

I missed a phone call before setting up the voice mail, and then received a text that did not have a signature…. so, um, hiya to whoever it was!

The best thing about the iphone so far is the fact that I can stream last.fm recommendations. They were absolutely correct to play me some Merle Haggard and Barry Manilow first thing on Boxing Day…. but man, I’ve always hated Leonard Cohen songs. Even more so now that Hallelujah has taken both first and second in the UK pop charts.

Earlier today I was poking around trying to figure out other phone options. My pal David in Silicon Valley sent a message telling me how to set up KEXP, and now I’m sitting here in England listening to my friend DJ El Toro faraway in Seattle.

The wonders of modern technology!

Oh, and someone made a documentary about the Red House.

And also…. if you pick up the current stateside edition of Vogue and flick through to page 140, you can read about the secret project Byron and Tauba have been working on.

Lots of people have been posting reflective New Year thoughts, and I have nothing to offer, except the mild point that this is the first winter I have not been depressed.

Who knows why, or if it will last, but the (literal) fog of the season has had almost no influence on my mood this time round.

The tricky thing with me is that when I feel great, I always make big instant changes – go to grad school? Ditch a husband? Quit a whole career? Have a kid? Move to a new continent? Hey! No problem!

So what new big thing is around the corner for me? Well, you may notice that I have acquired the first contract phone of my entire life. This means that I have decided, for better or worse, to stick it out here in the UK for awhile.

However: I really do not like this town, and it eschews me right back. Four and a half years have not endeared us one to the other, and the few friends I’ve made have all moved away. Except Jean, who is busy working.

Many people might have predicted this would be a difficult place for me to live, but I have never once in my entire life had any problem cracking a social scene. I float, I’m a chameleon, perhaps controversial and demented – but also curious and excited.

This attitude worked to some extent here – I know everyone I could possibly want to know, I’ve caused more than my share of scandals, I hang out with famous scholars, people who have been knighted, the beggars and junkies on the corner. Pretty average for me. But something is intangibly different, hard to explain, impossible to deal with if you want more than just a surface connection, air kiss relationship.

Within six hours I knew this was not my home. Within six months I had deliberately fixed the immediate problems by scrabbling together a loose network of colleagues and companions. But, by the end of the first year, I still felt like my brain was cracking down fault lines, and I just didn’t understand.

It doesn’t make sense, but this is not my place, no matter how hard I try to make it work.

Until recently the best cure was just going back to the states to see friends, spend time with the water and mountains. Lately though that solution has been taken away, because for immigration purposes I need to remain resident within the UK for proscribed amounts of time.

Here in Cambridge, people squint at me and rather begrudgingly have conversations that go something like what you might remember from unpleasant parent-teacher conferences in junior high. Why? Because I’m not connected to the university, I have a peculiar job, and I dwell on a boat.

In other words, I’m a freak. Big surprise!

The only cred I have is the fact that I publish and by academic standards I am “famous” (I disagree, but you have to remember, these are people who judge according to obscure journal publications, and I have produced…. books) but for every person who is impressed there are a dozen who are dismissive or, worse, jealous.

Whatever! I don’t think like that, so leave me alone!

The comparison: recently I went to a literary party in London, where I tried to hide behind the poinsettias, but my agent dragged me out and introduced me to a screenwriter. I told him I did not know how to mix, and he offered to be my Mingling Mentor.

We ventured forth into the room and he thrust me at various people, explaining the experiment, and within about four minutes I met the film critic from the Daily Mail! I jumped up and down and squealed!

Several new movie-tv-and-book-writing friends later I was chatting with a fellow who had a good haircut and western shirt about his job in the financial world. His wife, as it turns out, knows the meaning of the word ‘zine.‘ Instant connection!

They invited me to a party in Bethnal Green the next night. On the way I heard from three other London friends, and, mysteriously, Rachel stopping by on her way from Canada to elsewhere.

I proceeded to the party, where I met at least a dozen new highly entertaining people, then dashed out in time to catch the last tube with a charming new companion.

The lesson?

As predicted from infancy, I really do need to live in a big city. Lucky me, I’m moored about an hour distant from one of the best in the world.

My big New Year decision is therefore: spend at least a portion of each week in London.

Previous years have found me suffering various existential crises at academic parties, then feeling fretful as I plucked famous drunken scientists out of shrubbery in the wee morning hours.

Last night I had a much better time:

Playing a rousing game of Monopoly, then going outside for a misty midnight sing-a-long with my kid, while we tried to light sparklers from damp matches!

Happy 2009 to all of you!

XO