Oh, the humanities!

Awwww. Idnit cute? It’s her first Modern Language Association Conference. You can tell by the self-important grey suit, the modestly-heeled couture shoes and the faint whiff of vomit about her. She must be on her way to an interview, poor thing.

So I know that there are all these amazing scholars giving presentations all over my hotel right now, but I’m too giddy to possibly listen to what they have to say. In fact, I am here for one reason and one reason only: the MLA happens once a year, and it’s where hundreds of universities interview for tenure-track faculty. Me needs a job!

The interviews are a bit like speed-dating. Each university has a little table in a huge room, and you check in at the front and proceed to your school’s numbered table, then interview right in front of Gayatri Spivak and everybody. The interviews are scheduled in advance, last about half an hour and seem to be largely about the universities communicating to you whether or not you’re about to become a colleague of a bunch of pompous windbags. While it’s far from the end-all be-all of finding a job in Academia, it’s probably the A-number-one most important schlep-fest in the biz.

De rigeur for interviewees this year was the Important-looking Black Bag. I guess I missed the memo on this crucial aspect of interviewing, and found myself wondering what I would put in an Important-looking Black Bag if I had one. My travel companion’s oh-so-savvy boyfriend had supplied her with one in anticipation. Just between you and me, she used it to store her dress shoes so she could trudge through the snowy Chicago streets without dirtying them. I suspect the other folks I saw probably did the same, or else had the good sense to leave in the paper stuffing from the manufacturer so that their Important-looking Black Bags appeared to be overflowing with evidences of their professional and academic superiority, the better to psych out the other candidates.

I’m happy to say I leave my one (modest) interview feeling chuffed. If I got this job it appears I would not be surrounded by douchebags, but instead by young, dynamic people, of whom one at least bears a striking resemblance to Matthew McConaughey {sic}. Except with corduroy patches on his elbows. I’d have to really eff up my campus visit in January to take myself out of the running for this one.

And even if I don’t get that job, the search continues, and meanwhile I got to catch up with some old friends from “el Máster”. Last night I successfully navigated us to my favorite Chicago restaurant, Café Ibérico, where we reconnected over authentic (cheap!) Spanish food and wine. Nothing like old friends and a toothsome dinner to diffuse the unfamiliar, competitive feel of vying for a lousy gig with 1500 colleagues, all of whom you know to be qualified and any one of whom could be your best friend under other circumstances.

kringle-krieg 2007!

So after much rending of hair and gnashing of teeth I submitted a bare-bones version of Chapter 3 last Friday. During the week that has elapsed since, the neighbs and I have been remarkably productive. We cooked and fed ourselves and used up all the groceries before they went bad (which may not sound like a big deal, but think about it), did tons of laundry, assembled a printer desk, shoveled snow, cleaned the apartment, shopped for Christmas, took out ALL the recycling, procured uniforms and worked a catering event, applied for jobs, landed an interview apiece, fixed my car, walked the dog lots, hung curtains, saw I am Legend, then came home and plasticked all the windows to secure the apartment from cold air and/or zombie attack, whichever seemed more imminent, and danced tango.

In addition, I made nine luggage tags (to great effect; I think they liked them, and if they didn't, tough, they STILL got a home-made present), burned a CD and compiled a fakebook, created some ridiculous fuzzy cat magnets and a homemade coupon, finished knitting a scarf, learned a top-secret technique I can't tell you about right now at the risk of Ruining Christmas, started quilting again, picked up my repaired sewing machine and fell in love with it all over again and took on any number of additional projects I will never finish until after Chapter 4.

Meanwhile the neighbs picked up several extra job applications, watched his niece and nephew, pow-wowed extensively with his family, packed for Spain, packed for Spain again, and left me. My tiny apartment feels like the goddamn Silverdome without him in it.

If the luggage tags survive their trip to Spain, I will take a picture of one. Other projects I will likewise photograph and post, but it's back to work for now.

the rooms

Back when he lived across the street, when we sometimes woke up together, the neighbs had the habit of waking up and immediately, before yawning, before stretching or saying good morning or scratching himself or anything, in this very I've-been-awake-for-twelve-plus-hours-already voice, telling me something like "so I had this dream that there were these three bratty teenage girls, and they were being really disobedient, so their dad tied them to the staircase and brought in this motivational speaker in a leotard to give them a talking-to..." First thing in the morning he will remember his dreams with an incredible degree of clarity. It's like nothing I've ever seen before. It doesn't happen every time, but definitely enough for it to be an identifiable trait.

But that's not all. He's also really excellent at my dreams, especially the bad ones. I'll wake up after a bad dream in the middle of the night, and I'll reach for him and say something like, "I dreamt I was being chased by an army of pink gorillas who were trying to pelt me with tiny teacups" and he'll throw a warm, hairy leg over me and, without fully waking up, he'll say "It's okay. It was just a dream. Your mother loves you very much and she isn't upset with you about what you said to her the other day." The uncanny thing is he's almost always spot on.

I was walking down Park Street the other day, past a house I almost moved into right before I found my current place, and I thought about everything that's happened that never would have happened if I had lived there instead of here. My apartment would have been at the back of the house on the third floor. I never would have met a boy dragging a wiggly black puppy down the sidewalk. I never would have met his friends, who would never have become my friends. My life would be radically different as a consequence.

I thought all these things, and this huge black hole started opening up inside me at the notion of how much I owe to the snap decision to take a crappy, mouse-ridden apartment over a different crappy, mouse-ridden apartment. I tried to console myself thinking that what mattered is that I did take this apartment, I did meet that boy and that puppy on that day, I do know his friends, who are in fact now my friends, but nothing seemed to mitigate the gnawing knowledge that but for happenstance, I might currently be living in that sad third floor apartment living out some simulacrum of my current happiness, trying to convince myself it's as good as the real thing that I'd never have known was going on just up the street. Logical fallacies aside, it's a vertiginous line of thinking.

Then I remembered that, the day I met him, I never expected to see him again, and I still did. Maybe not the night that it happened, but eventually, one or the other of us would have mustered the gumption to ask the other to dance. And the world that had started to close in on itself regained its contours. Somehow, knowing that there was a failsafe mechanism in this particular lucky streak was incredibly reassuring.

And now he's here, telling me more of those nutty dreams I love to hear.

cat-lady-in-waiting

Yesterday I decorated my apartment for Christmas, which I wasn't going to do, because who was I going to do it for, just me? The theory being that, instead of making me feel cheerful, decking the halls for just yours truly would be a bit depressing. Au contraire. It's cute in here, and it did improve my state of mind.

Thing is, though, I woke up this morning with the following thought: What if it isn't cute in here at all? What if someone else came into my apartment, which I think looks just fine, took one look around, then dialed the nearest mental institution? Like maybe I'm like that guy in 'A Beautiful Mind' or something. I hide it well enough for my students and the neighbs and the people I see in public or over at their houses, and meanwhile my surroundings look perfectly normal to me, because I'm CRAZY, and my dog doesn't care anyway, 'cause he's a dog, but step into my apartment and blammo, it's cuckoo time.

I heard this archived This American Life episode the other day? About obsession? Where this woman beaded a kitchen? That is to say, she covered every surface in the whole room -- appliances, walls, everything from soup cans to nutcrackers -- with tiny glass beads. This took five years, so I don't think I'm quite there yet, but this line of reflection has me somewhat concerned. I'm not scared of becoming one of those cat ladies, you know, the ones who live alone except for those nine hundred cats or whatever, but mostly I'm not scared because I'm allergic to cats. If I'm not careful, that could become the only thing stopping me.

So I guess I need to do two things: first, I need to stop living alone before my idiosyncrasies totally take hold. I need there to be someone else here to walk in on me and say, "what on God's green earth are you DOING?" before it's too late for that to make any difference. Second, I need to sit my ass down and write Chapter Three already, because this Christmas decorating, senseless shopping, loafing, munching, special-features-watching, may all be just one great big evasive tactic aimed at not working on my thesis.

Which reminds me.

happy t(of)urkey day

That's my attempt at a politically correct Thanksgiving salutation, something along the lines of "Season's Greetings".

Thanksgiving has never been one of my favorite holidays. In fact it's mostly caused me anguish over the years, not only because of its dubious historical premise, but also because it's a holiday based on prolonged sessions of overeating followed by hours of lethargy, also the Detroit Lions.

Not to mention that most often, folks have the good sense to prepare a whole lot of coffee for all the guests, of which I end up drinking more than my fair share. So I'll have like six cups of coffee with my pumpkin pie, then I'll walk into the room where everyone is in a post-Thanksgiving-dinner carbohydrate stupor and go, "What's WRONG with you people?! Don't you want to DO SOMETHING?! Bleeeaaaarrrrrggggghhhh!" then promptly go into cardiac arrest.

By that measure, this Thanksgiving was not only painless, but even enjoyable. There was a hootenanny {sic}, a kitten, lots of knitting, and booze. Also these praline things that were addictive. The neighbs monitored my coffee intake so I didn't go berzerkers.

Hope yours was good too.

really this is just a way for me to flaunt that I chat with Japan

I was chatting with a friend of mine this morning (who's in Japan, I'll hasten to say, just in case anyone thought they were being alluded to), who was reeling from the fact that he had just advised one of his friends to divorce her husband. I don't really believe in divorce, he said, and I was the first to tell her she should get one. The punchline is that my friend, himself, is divorced. And now he and I have this weird thing in common, which is this creepy tendency toward divorce evangelization.

I remember when I first noticed that the words "ditch him and move on" had become one of the things that, if I were one of those novelty dolls with a string you pull, would be one of the half dozen phrases I would utter (go ahead and take a deep breath and read it back, it makes sense I swear). I was really shocked at myself. At first I thought I had become one of those self-righteous, man-hating bitter women and was trying to bring everyone around to my own jaded view, but I don't hate men and I don't feel bitter or jaded, so I realized it can't be that simple.

It also occurred to me that perhaps it's easier for other women to open up to me about their relationship problems when they know I'm divorced, because they expect I'll be able to relate better than someone who has one of these Donna Reed-type marriages. Maybe it makes me more approachable, maybe they think I'll be more receptive to the messages they've been sending themselves. And my answer has a tendency to be "ditch him and move on" because in reality that's precisely what they've decided in their hearts, it just took the right listener to unlatch and authorize that feeling. Gosh, I can certainly sleep better at night with that explanation.

I love it when people work it out, which certainly happens. I give infinite credit to those who share enough love and trust to make a go of it. I hate it, however, when people lament that couples today get married thinking that, if it doesn't work out, they'll just pop down to the corner store and get them a DEE-vorce. No one who has experienced the anguish, fear, abysmal loneliness, hurt and vertiginous self-confrontation of a divorce would ever think that it could be taken so lightly. In fact, I think divorce is something people often enter into with a considerably greater degree of deliberation than marriage or parenthood. Which is a shame, because if people thought harder about those other things before they did them (and I do not exclude myself from this), maybe there would be less divorce.

It would be the height of cynicism to marry someone for any reason other than wanting to spend the rest of your life with that person. But what if it turns out you were wrong about that? Do you then have to stick out eternity making each other miserable? Do you forever deprive yourself and your partner of a shot at real happiness because of a severe early miscalculation? It's not that I think we have any inherent right to happiness, but not to try for it is just so... chicken-shit, I guess. Make no mistake, divorce doesn't absolve you of your responsibility to better yourself and confront your demons. By itself, making that break doesn't solve anything... but then, neither does just staying together. And from that standpoint it's a lot harder to be self-congratulatory about divorcing than about "sticking it out for the sake of the kids, the dog, etc". If you're busy feeling Quite the Hero for deigning to stay in your relationship, forgive me for saying so but you're unlikely to turn it around.

It also occurs to me that my pat, "ditch-him-and-move-on" response comes from the fact that I, myself, gambled on happiness. It wasn't pretty. I hurt somebody I loved, big-time. I will never again be one of those people who can say they have no regrets. There's puh-lenty I'd take back if I could. But what it comes down to is that I'm a better person now, and that I'm happy. After all the pain and fear and ugliness I both perpetrated and felt, I'm happy, so when somebody comes to me and says, ohhhh, I'm sooooo unhappy, blah blah blah, I get impatient. Stop bitching and do something about it, I want to say. For me the outcome of having been through a divorce is that I'm much more tolerant of people's shortcomings in general, having bunked in with some of my own, but much less tolerant of people who wallow in their unhappiness.

Truth is, it's an easy enough thing to pledge 'til death do us part' when you've never experienced eternity in the day-to-day. Some people know themselves and their partner well enough to get that right the first time, or they stumble into a good thing out of sheer shiny-cheeked optimism or dumb luck. Others, like me, need first-hand experience of something like eternity to decide with whom we should spend it. So that, next time, hopefully I can say: even knowing what spending-the-rest-of-my-life-with-you feels like from moment to moment, I'm just crazy enough to want to give it a try.

the first step is admitting your dog has a problem

It's three-thirty in the morning and I'm fast asleep, until I feel the dog jump off the bed and slink out of the bedroom. Oh well, I think. He probably got too hot under the covers and went to sleep on the couch for a while. I try to go back to sleep, but I'm interrupted by what sounds like someone drop-kicking a bee-hive, which turns out to be a very frustrated warbling, growling noise from my dog. Huh, I think. He must need to go outside.

So I open the door to let him out, and he stands there and looks at me, dumbfounded. Which does not altogether surprise me, since it's raining. Go on, you pansy, I say, a little rain won't hurt you. He obediently walks outside, then stands in the driveway pointedly not doing his business until I offer to let him back in. Guess that wasn't it either, I think, and check food and water bowls to make sure they're well-stocked. They are.

Perhaps if I just crash out on the couch with him, I think. So I curl up on the loveseat and offer him some space under the afghan. He considers this for a moment, then jumps up and settles himself in for no more than six seconds or so before hopping back down onto the floor. I hear his toenails clicking on the kitchen tile, then comes one exasperated WOOF! and suddenly it all becomes clear to me.

My dog has awakened me in the middle of the night to play with the stuffed hedgehog that lives on top of our refrigerator.

This is not the first hedgehog Grendl has had. This is Hedgehog Version 4.0 at least. Previous hedgehogs have been carelessly left within Grendl's reach and mercilessly devoured, which is why this one lives on top of the refrigerator. Actually, Hedgehog Version 3.0 lived up there too, but one day when I could no longer stand Grendl's withdrawal symptoms I delivered 3.0 into his loving jaws and bought myself a night's worth of peaceful study time while the dog silenced the squeaky plastic bubble buried inside his toy once and for all.

The funny thing is, a good deal of time elapsed between the demise of the last hedgehog and my purchase of this one, yet Grendl cruised the fridge at least once a day in the intervening months. He was like one of those faithful believers who worships the produce section where the Virgin Mary was supposed to have appeared in someone's potato. And, sure enough, after a dry spell, Hedgehog once again materialized on top of the refrigerator to reward Grendl's loyalty.

It's great knowing that there's one surefire way I can endlessly entertain my dog. The problem with Hedgehog is he's disgusting. They say dogs' mouths are cleaner than humans' and from this standpoint, handling Hedgehog's crusty fur, matted and brown with saliva, is enough to make me want to do a Listerine keg-stand. Even more troubling, though, is the way the scant few minutes Grendl spends each day with Hedgehog eclipses all other pleasures. His poor rope toy lies abandoned. He'll tug on it for a moment, but loses interest quickly, gazing wistfully at the refrigerator instead.



It's hard to know what to do as a pet owner. I long for the days before Hedgehog ever entered our lives, when the most interesting thing to materialize in the vicinity of the refrigerator was sausages. There's a simple enough way to finish off Hedgehog 4.0, but I know the dog will faithfully wait for Hedgehog to rise again. And you know, he's probably right, because when you believe in something that hard, your mom will probably cave in the next time she goes to buy you Milk Bones.

in search of Walla Walla

There really is a Walla Walla, you know. It's in Washington. It's very pretty, at least on GoogleEarth, in the Columbia River valley. It's also home to Whitman College, one of around sixty places I'm in the process of applying for a job. But for me and the neighbs, "Walla Walla" has come to stand in for "wherever I get a real job, most likely far, far away from here". And Walla Walla seems to loom large in most of our conversations lately.

I've been schlepping out these resumés, oscillating between the terror of leaving this town after eleven years and the tedium of assembling and mailing out parts of my portfolio. And the kicker is that where I go isn't really up to me, but instead depends on where I'm needed, so every time I drop a new round of envelopes in the mailbox I have to wrap my mind around what my life would be like a year from now if I ended up in L.A. or Miami or Burlington or Eugene or Newport News.

So far I haven't had to apply anywhere I simply couldn't imagine making a life for myself, although it's hard to tell. I look at the Michigan schools on the list, and they seem perfectly innocuous in black and white. But how do I know that I haven't accidentally applied at the Pennsylvania, or Louisiana, or Utah equivalent of Alma College? Not to say anything against Alma, it's just I'm willing to bet I'd have a significant commute if I craved sushi at 12:30 a.m. (or p.m, for that matter).

In lieu of a fool-proof method of ensuring I don't end up someplace sucky, I've come up with a no-K policy. I have yet to apply to any university in a state whose name contains the letter K.

Think about it.

I'd very much like to end up somewhere a reasonable person might reflect, "I wonder if I will need my snowbrush this year". I'd prefer a blue state, and I'd be willing to use the word "y'all" but not to the exclusion of "you guys". I'd rather be a Tarheel than a Buckeye, but I'd much sooner be a Buckeye than a Hoosier. Then again, having spent a significant amount of time among adjunct and part-time university instructors lately, trying to get them to unionize, I guess I'd settle for anywhere that had health insurance and a decent salary.

Unless of course it's in Texas.

too cool for school

So it's homecoming weekend, which has historically meant to me little more than that the public drunkenness, traffic stupidity, and feral sorority girls will be in greater supply than on a normal weekend. In fact, as usual, I didn't even know it was homecoming weekend until all the bronco-shenanigans directly interfered with my ability to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it.

What I wanted to do was go to the rec center. Somehow I failed to catch on to the beauties of the student gymnasium during my first, oh, NINE years of college (unfortunate, considering I spent the first two of those surviving on baked potatoes, sweet corn and saltines with key-lime jelly to avoid gaining the dreaded Freshman Fifteen) but now that I have to pay for it, rest assured I'm taking full advantage. Alas, not on Game Day. On Game Day, I was glibly informed by a couple of girls nursing hangovers, the Rec Center is cuh-losed, hello.

You know, my mom doesn't play football. My stepdad doesn't play football. Hell, he never went to college. Yet he can antagonize her by wearing a blue T-shirt with the name of her state emblazoned on it in yellow letters. They have entire friendships that are based on bantering about the relative virtues of Peloponnesian war heroes and ill-tempered woodland creatures. Regardless of the fact that their daughter has gone to Some Other State U for nine years. Did I say nine years? Yes, I did. NINE. I guess what I'm getting at is that football is something that seems largely irrelevant to my life, and seems to play a greater role in many people’s lives than seems warranted.

I was reflecting on this while I steamed and fumed back to my car (imagine, thanks to game traffic I had to park so far away I was forced to WALK ten minutes to get to the place I was going to try to get some exercise), and while I came no closer to an affinity for football, I did stumble onto the marching band, and I have to admit, they kind of had me on that one. I was, myself, a band geek. Back in high school I shouted my share of dorky cheers and came down with my share of head colds after hours’ worth of sleet down the back of my polyester collar. The frozen fingers, the chapped lips on cracked clarinet reeds, the elation of taking off the double-breasted coat in the smothering-hot gym after a performance. Best of all, the sensation of filing down the street with a full drum corps backing you up. You could feel those drums thumping in your chest. God, I wanted to hire them to follow me everywhere, running to the grocery store, pumping gas, down the hall to class… and let me tell you, my chosen university has one helluva marching band. You know, if you’re into that kind of thing.

So the band strutted their stuff in a little pre-game, pro-bono show across the street from the stadium, right next to the locked rec center, and I stuck around. And at the end, the director climbed up and invited alumni to gather round the band and people just kept appearing out of nowhere, twenty-year-olds, sixty-year-olds, everybody, and sang the alma mater. And here’s the thing: these were people who were here for four, maybe five years, some of them forty years ago. They came to this school and puked in parking lots and lit their farts on fire and slept with each other in the dorms and occasionally went to class, and something about those years was important enough that they come back and stand in a big circle and sing the words to a song that, after forty years, they still remember – a song that in my nine years here I have failed to learn because for so much of that time I was busy quietly feeling that my cynicism made me smarter, more interesting, superior.

Something tells me that’s not all I’ve failed to learn.

why it works

For the record, I offered not to publish the following conversation, just in case the neighbs thought anyone who knows him personally would breakfast upon his testicles if they happened to stumble onto it, but he said it was okay.

Him: what are you doing right now?

Me: I thought I'd go buy some shoes.

Him: Mmmmwwuuuuuuuuhhhhhhh....

Me: No, seriously. I got rid of two pairs and I'm planning on replacing them with just one pair.

Him: Oh. I guess that's not so bad then.

Me: I'm also going to see if my favorite shoes can be repaired, and if they can't I might have to buy another pair to replace them.

Him: [with (mostly) genuine alarm] Not the ones with the kitten heel?!

Need I say more?

escape from mackitraz

So, the neighbs has a good friend (and I daresay I now have a good friend) who spends summers as a historical interpreter at Fort Mackinac, and over the weekend we went up to visit him before the weather turns heinous. It was an unusual weekend for someone like me to be on Mackinac Island, considering the G.O.P. convention was being held there, along with some sort of Boy Scout shenanigans. Between these two groups, Im gonna go out on a limb and guess that it made for more khakis per capita on the island than perhaps any other weekend this year.

In case you're curious, this is where the Republicans stay when they come to Mackinac Island:



And this is where I stay with my friends and loved ones:



In exchange for these accommodations, we were strongly encouraged (or else obligated, Don Juan Dominguez's demeanor is so delightful that who's counting, really) to volunteer, which for the neighbs and company meant donning their Prussian blue woolens and firing rifles. This provided a couple of extra hysterical interpreters up at the fort on a very busy Saturday:



I, meanwhile, obstinately persisted in having a vagina, which means no woolens or rifles. I did manage to fire off the cannon when (almost) nobody was looking though:




This created the loudest sound I have ever personally made, though when I pointed this out the neighbs seemed dubious.

After a long day of being historical, what could be better than relaxing at Sinclair's with the world-famous Pub Runners, singing some raunchy Irish tunes, and watching paunchy trout-mouth homophobes toss racial epithets at the help and try to finger one another through their chinos? Too bad I'm telling this story out of order, because we actually did it the night before. Don Juan Dominguez and I took a moment to put in a plug for our favorite bizarrely-named presidential candidate:



All in all it was a beautiful weekend. You couldn't have ordered up better weather. Fiona and M-Yob(b?) arrived on Saturday in time for a church-basement Irish concert, and the neighbs and Ray got a chance to commune with nature:



I shook hands with Rudy Giuliani down on the ferry dock, and we got to listen again and again to the Ron Paul advocates make this compelling argument: RonPaulRonPaulRonPaulRonPaul. We got scolded by this lady on a bike for walking down the street on an island that has had no horseless carriages since 1898, and watched lots of stuffed shirts ride tandem bikes through horse poop, their quietly-striped ties flapping in the breeze like John McCain's combover.

In conclusion, my loved ones and I took some much-needed time away from our busy lives fretting about who will become president over a year from now to think about the things that really matter:

unsolicited movie & music review

So, I went to see “Once” at the Little Theater tonight and drove straight out to buy the soundtrack, and now I’m trying to decide if I would love these songs as much if I hadn’t seen the movie, or if I would like the movie as much if the songs weren’t so great. I still can’t make up my mind, but I’ve listened to the CD three times now and even played parts of it for a friend, so I’m guessing that the answer to the first question, at least, is…wait, what was the first question again?

“Once”, in case you don’t know, is a story about two people at roughly the same reckoning point in far-from-perfect relationships, though they come to that moment from very different places. Both are musicians, and while their artistic collaboration sprouts wings and soars almost instantaneously, their personal relationship has a harder time getting off the ground. A sort of clumsy romance defers a storybook ending and leaves the viewer hoping for the best for both of the engaging main characters.

The film was written and directed by John Carney, former The Frames bassist, and stars Glen Hansard, the band’s lead singer, opposite Czech pianist Marketa Irglova. These two had collaborated on 2005’s “Swell Sessions” and “Once” features several revisited tracks they recorded in Prague at that time. I knew Glen Hansard seemed familiar, and after a while, to my delight it hit me he was the same ingenuous redheaded boy I remembered from “The Commitments” (a 1990 favorite of mine based on a novel by Roddy Doyle), all grown up now but just as cuddly.

The movie was a little underproduced for my tastes; I found the low lighting distracting at times, though there are some lovely continuous camera shots down Dublin streets and along country highways. I felt impatient with a couple scenes that seemed to last just slightly longer than necessary. Varying sound levels were used as a near-seamless narrative device, knitting spontaneous live songs into the storyline. It all seemed so up-close and personal that it felt almost like an invasion of the musicians’ privacy to bear witness to some of these performances. The palpable vulnerability of the characters heightened this effect and almost launched the whole thing too far into the realm of the uncomfortable. I might have -- I’m not saying I did, just that I might have -- laughed at one scene where a sad guitarist pours his heart out over his guitar, sitting on his bed in his room under his Leonard Cohen poster, reflecting that Glen Hansard may well have spent his adolescence this way. The music was too good, though, and pulled me back just in time.

I couldn’t decide if some of the relationships and themes in the movie deserved greater development, or if I liked the spareness of the storyline, which consistently insinuated and suggested rather than drove home. In some ways, it seemed that the story was more of a scaffold for the songs than anything else, giving the film a revue-like quality. Still, the acting and writing were genuine enough to be engaging in their own right, and the musician-actors are certainly talented enough to pull it off. It never feels hackneyed or clunky the way traditional musicals can. Anyone who makes music or really really loves it will identify with the scene in which the protagonists first sing and play together, and the way they reveal themselves to one another more effectively through their music than through their conversations.

Which brings us to the music. I’ve not spent much time listening to The Frames but I suspect I will now have no choice. I like the frank, Cat-Stevensy quality of Hansard’s voice. His lyrics just ache, but at times he leaves them behind altogether to cry more melodically than any human being I’ve ever heard. The harmonies on the songs he shares with Marketa Irglova are absolutely enchanting. The songs seem at once deeply personal and anchored to the film, which again makes me wonder if I’d appreciate them the same had I not seen it, but there’s no denying they’re beguiling in their own right. Something is definitely laid bare there, and wants and deserves to be heard.

So, in short, go see “Once” and listen to the soundtrack. Or listen to the “Once” soundtrack and go see the movie. And if you remember, call me up and tell me if one of the set musicians in “Once” is Joey “the Lips” Fagan from “The Commitments”.

grumpopussy galore

So the neighbs and I have been taking these tango classes, right? And we're getting to where we feel marginally competent. At least I am getting to where I feel we're getting marginally competent (or, as the neighbs expressed to me last night, we feel I am getting marginally competent). Anyway, we're taking the "advanced beginners" class for the third -- yes, the third -- time.

Lest you judge us for only being advanced beginners after all this time (we've been in class with several people much less adept than us who consider themselves intermediate by now)you should keep in mind they recommend taking this class at least twice. But as a consequence for taking our time, we have this girl in our class now who looks like what would happen if Cruella DeVille and Betty Page got mashed into the same person, gained fifteen pounds and decided to sign up for tango lessons in Ann Arbor Michigan and make everyone's life just a little more obnoxious. The neighbs inadvertently nicknamed this unlikely character "grumpopussy" and I laughed until I snorted. The name stuck, of course.

This is a girl who plucks her eyebrows out and pencils them back in, for real. Who wears f**k-me shoes so naturally that you wonder if her feet might actually be cloven. Who is vehement and even noisy about how much she still loves D&D. Who, in case you're wondering, can't dance tango for shit, but will stop at nothing to derail the entire class until she gets her imbecile questions answered.

Last night she started in undermining the point the instructor was trying to make. Excuse me, she said. You're saying not to shift weight onto your front foot, but your back foot is completely off the ground. How is that possible if you're not shifting your weight? Never mind that everyone else understood exactly what he had meant. I bet she did too, she's just, you know, one of t h o s e people.

Later, some inane thing came up where she made this public service announcement to All Leaders of Tango Dances Everywhere in which she reminded them that it is their job to publicize to her their decision to dance on the opposite foot in order that she can respond accordingly. Even though their change of footing should not in any way affect her ability to dance the same as always -- that is, provided she is on the same planet as her partner.

Which is what the instructor told her, of course. Perhaps I'm not making myself clear, she said, and said the same thing over again. For half an hour.

Finally someone pointed at her and said, can you please deal with her separately after class? I just want to dance, NOW. Which in a vacuum would have been really pretty rude but under the circumstances seemed downright diplomatic, and allowed the evening to resume the course 30 people were hoping for, instead of just Grumpopussy.

Talking it over later with the neighbs, I expressed that I thought in spite of everything, Grumpopussy is going to turn out to be a really great tango dancer, if she doesn't quit first. Either 1.)she'll get disgusted with these amateurs from whom she clearly has nothing to learn and go do something else, 2.) some bigger bully than herself will strike just the right tone while handing her ample, vintage-clad ass to her, or 3.)she'll just learn to shut the hell up and listen to what another human being on the planet has to say for a change. She's just weird and tenacious enough that I'm going out on a limb to predict outcome #2 or #3.

The neighbs of course thinks I'm insane. But here's the thing. This summer, I had the pleasure-spiked-with-pain of working with Lulurias for the 2nd year in a row. Another person you can only wish was anti-social. And my friend Angélica, who is no contest the best teacher I have ever seen in action, handed her ass to her in velvet gloves. Why do you bother, I asked her? She's never going to change, you know. And Angie said, somewhere, somehow, someone's going to get through to her. Which is why Angie is no contest the best teacher I've ever seen in action: she's never off-duty.

My point is, here's to Grumpopussy. Yesterday, my first day teaching again, I told my students they damn well better ask questions in my class. So it's hypocritical for me to want to stick an ice pick through that freaky freaky forehead of hers for doing the same thing. Even though I do very much wish to stick an ice pick in her. But if I'm going to be a teacher, I have to start believing in people's ability to change, and in my ability to change them, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Anybody seen an ice pick lying around? I swear I just had one right here.

there's just a tinge of fall to the air these days, just an insinuating coolness at night that says, don't think summer's going to last forever, you'd better get on enjoying the dregs because something else is about to happen. Usually I love this time of year but this time around I'm feeling increasingly panicked about time passing, because it means I'm that much closer to a deadline I'm increasingly convinced I have no way of fulfilling.

My thesis is growing in fits and starts. I still dread sitting down to work on it, but hey. After much hemming and hawing I submitted the first twenty-three pages, which were returned to me with more red ink than black on them. I suspect this is not an unusual way to proceed, but illustrates all too clearly that I need to become far more thick-skinned and in short order.

The two most important lessons I have learned so far from this new intellectual milestone are as follows: a.) I am far smarter than I think I am, and b.) I am not nearly as smart as I think I am. I am smarter, in the sense that the Jedi Council seems to think I am worth training up in the ways of the Force, and my progress from here on out is individual. So far they haven't violently swept all my work off the table and said, "This is unserviceable folderol! Where do we even begin?!" Which, again, I think is a good sign.

I am not nearly as smart as I thought, in the sense that the more brilliant I feel one of my ideas is, the greater the likelihood someone else has already said it. I recently discovered that I will have to credit two of my most prized ideas because I was not the one to originate them. At least not the first one. I did originate them, since they came out of my own brain, just somebody else did it first is all. How disappointing.

And so I slog, still dreading sitting down to write, though less so on each occasion. I have taken advantage of my summer for the things that make Michigan summers special, in my estimation: farmers' market, fresh tomatoes, late night swimming, micro-brews on the porch and the sound of the crickets, listening to Beck: Sea Changes in the car in the dark with all the windows down. Though it sometimes feels that the only thing that could possibly matter is whether I finish writing this crazy book probably no one will ever read who isn't paid to, co-authoring it, or a member of my immediate family, these things remind me there is plenty to enjoy, and that when this summer closes, another will come hard on its heels.

the bshdsflkfourne identity

See, I think I've been brought here to take over living some other girl's life. This girl is someone whose file I've clearly read time and time again until I know it by heart, though I can't remember doing it. I can give you so much of her personal history you'd scarcely be able to find a hole in my impersonation of her: it's no wonder I was chosen for the job, since we look alike, sound alike and have practically identical taste in music and skill sets, identical shoe sizes and mannerisms. I don't know who has put me here or what my mission is, but I have become so immersed as her doppelganger that my real life, back in that other place, seems like a retreating dream.

Although I can't be sure whether I am here against her will or in keeping with her wishes, I'm beginning to suspect she's on my side. I can tell because she leaves me these clues all the time. Before disappearing, she left her house very much in order, applying for loans so that I might live comfortably, arranging for her mail to be forwarded so that it would not inundate me, carefully aligning overdue library books on the table so that I'd see them first thing and return them (after perusing them, naturally, to inform myself as to her recent subjects of investigation). In general she has made it easy to take the helm. I am certain that she even planted messages for me in conversations with friends, knowing they'd remind me later of things she said, all so I could go about her daily tasks without breaking character. My relationship with her lover, after a bit of initial awkwardness, has been shockingly sincere and comes so naturally it's alarming. If he has detected the substitution he has said nothing about me being an impostor.

I don't know if she's ever coming back, this prior avatar. Frankly I hope she stays gone a while because I'm rather enjoying the life she left in place for me. If she does return, she'll undoubtedly be surprised that I may not be willing to forfeit everything to her as quickly and easily as she anticipated. In fact I sometimes feel that my superior life and world experience might even make me more fit for the role than she ever could have been.

If she does come back I imagine we'll have to battle it out at dusk on some abandoned quay, and the whole melée will end with her swimming off into the night, never -- or ever -- to return. Or maybe things will just continue as they are, until I one day stumble upon the vital piece of evidence that reveals the mysterious connection that binds me to her.

To be continued.

I guess I got my wish

If my wish was to be a full-time writer, that is. My jobby-job seems to have evaporated while I was in foreign lands, so I've decided to dedicate 40 hours a week to writing my thesis. Friday was my first day and I overslept, then left off early...nonetheless, I made more solid progress than at any time in the last few months, so I think this might work.

I'm not sure how I'll eat in the meantime, but that's such a mundane concern that I prefer not to think about it for now. I did get approved for my first (and hopefully last) round of student loans for this fall, which is also unfamiliar territory for me.

In fact everything's a bit terrifying: the notion of not working for the first time in my adult life, the notion of writing a book, the self-discipline it will take to finish that task, accepting debt that I have no immediate, concrete method of paying back...

I guess it's in order to cope with my panic surrounding all this that I've begun to think of it all in terms of there's this girl I've hired to write my thesis for me. She seems competent enough, and I think she'll eventually get it done to my satisfaction. It's a financial risk I'm taking, and I've had to take out a loan to pay her a living wage and secure her some benefits, but I think it's worth it. If she comes through, the professional rewards I'll reap will be well worth the expense.

Meanwhile, this girl has hired me to write her thesis. I know she's not in the greatest of circumstances right now to be paying someone to do this, but I need the work and she's taking a chance on me, so I'm determined not to let her down. The money isn't the greatest but it's understandable why she can't pay me more, and the intellectual experience will be good for me.

Yeah, I reckon we'll make it through.

contents may have shifted upon re-entry

And then all the sudden you’re home. And your life returns to its normal course; well, almost. You perceive it all differently now; it’s as though there’s a film over your eyes, or as if a film has lifted. I reallly didn’t think enough time had passed for this to be true but as it turns out I was gone longer, or more profoundly gone, than I had thought I was.

So the funny thing is that there appears to be a ritual of returning. I can’t decide if I do these things to overcome my culture shock or to wallow in it a bit longer. I’m one of those annoying people who’s like, well, in MEXICO, they do things THIS way, and when I was in MEXICO, I did THAT thing. I can hear myself doing it but can’t seem to contain it for the time being, which suggests to me it’s simply something I need to do, at least for a while.

There are other surprising ways in which coming home this time has been the same as last time. For example, I’ve listened to a lot of Silvio Rodríguez. The funny thing is he isn’t even Mexican. But he does sing in Spanish and is very, very depressing. If you looked in my fridge right now you’d see tortillas, beans and lots of jalapeños. I made a brief foray into the garlicky, Italianesque flavors I had been missing, but two days on I once again crave chile and lime with everything.

There are tradeoffs, naturally: being reunited with Phantom Limb, as I nicknamed my dog after the first week I spent without him. The house I live in is vacant except for me and P.L. and though I only have access to the smallest of three apartments, I’m insulated from the comings and goings of neighbors at least til the end of this month. I have commandeered the porch and its furniture, even though it technically pertains to one of the vacant apartments, and intend to make enough of a tradition of drinking my morning coffee there that the new occupants will assume the porch is part mine (hopefully disregarding that to get to it I have to climb out my bedroom window). The porch chairs and table were left by the previous tenants, and since they are upholstered in brown and aqua and match my bedroom I have decided they shall henceforth belong to me. Having a car and a bike to get around with isn’t all bad, and though it feels like someone is breathing on me at close range all day long, the humidity and the tree-ey-ness (oh dear lord, there must be a real word for that) make me feel enclosed, sort of cradled and protected. The exact opposite of the “región más transparente del aire”, as Humboldt nicknamed the Mexican plateau.

I’m still seeing the States with an outsider’s perspective, I think. Everybody seems so trashy, maybe because in the last few days I’ve made 1482 trips to the Harding’s on Howard for one thing or another. People speak ungrammatically with these threadbare voices completely spent by cigarettes and booze, and drag their obese bodies around atop irredeemably ugly shoes. And surrounding these bizarre lumbering creatures, everything made for their use and amusement is so sleek and abundant.

Except my friends, of course. My friends are immediate, genuine and careful around me when I've been away. They are sparkling and busy with any number of noble and clever pursuits. I have promised them I will come home soon.

why I'll never go native

Yesterday a golondrina flew into my classroom. A golondrina is a swallow; as so often happens with birds its name is much more lyrical in Spanish and better fits a tiny, airborne feathered thing. I had only ever seen them soaring and swooping, the sun glinting blue-black off their sleek backs, a flash of red belly during a particularly daring dive. I used to go to a bridge over the dwindling river to watch them flit back and forth whenever I felt homesick.

In Mexico it’s good luck to have a golondrina. People plant nests for them hoping they will fill them, and the birds will roost, then disappear, then return again and again. The golondrina, in Mexican folklore anyway, is thus a precious, restless little creature who, despite its wanderlust, never forgets its home.

(Perhaps you begin to understand why I have one tattooed on my arm.)

This one I didn’t recognize at first. Cowering on the floor of a dark room, its feathers dulled to gray. It seemed injured or paralyzed by fear, far from evoking the lyrical acrobatics I associate with the word -- and the bird -- golondrina. I stood dumb, not knowing what to do but unable to leave the little bird trapped in a corner under a table.

Luisa, one of the student assistants, came in. O, she said, una golondrina. Pobrecita, está atrapada. Levántala. Pick her up. It won’t bite me? I said. Luisa glanced at me, quizzically but too kindly to say anything, and stooped. She cradled the tiny bird in her hands and carried it out to the terrace, where she knelt down and opened her palms.

The bird rested there, closing its eyes, stretching over these two shiny black seeds a pale gray veil of the most delicate tissue. At that moment I wanted nothing more than to take it in my own hands and feel its diminutive heart palpitating against my fingers. For several seconds it seemed lulled by the fresh air and light. No vuela, Luisa said, disappointed. No, I said, it can fly. Gently I stroked its belly and it shuddered awake, took two tentative steps across Luisa’s hand and traced a graceful arc over the lip of the terrace and across the courtyard out of sight.

This morning on the bus, while I was abstracted and thinking about the golondrina, a tiny person perched on the seat next to mine. I couldn’t tell at first whether it was a man or a woman; he, or she, wore a black stocking cap and a white fleece jacket several sizes too big, in spite of the heat that already pressed in on us at nine in the morning. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a brown and leathery face, cured by sun and wind, and the broad, angular nose that betrays the indigenous here. After a moment this person spoke to me in a quiet tenor that further failed to resolve itself into male or female. ¿No hace como friyito? the voice said. No, I replied, I didn’t feel cold. Other passengers turned to look, perhaps wondering why someone would confide in me, a stranger, a foreigner. I mentally checked the location of my passport, my backpack, my camera, my wallet.

It was when a tiny, icy hand rested on top of mine where they lay in my lap that I realized she was a woman. I looked up into her face. Why are you so cold? I asked her. I don’t know, she said. Sometimes I think I don’t have any blood anymore. You must have some, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, I said and smiled, not really knowing what else to say.

She regarded me blankly. I studied her back. A life spent smiling had carved crow’s feet around her eyes, but they were ringed with a watery film as if she had recently been crying or indeed very ill. She told me she supposed it was natural for her to have no blood, since they took hers little by little each day in a hospital, four o’clock in the afternoon, four o’clock in the morning. I wasn’t sure to have understood her, so I made some general sympathetic comment and fell back into silence. A moment later, she announced bueno, aquí me bajo and shambled out of her seat. When she turned her back to walk down the aisle of the bus I realized the stocking cap concealed a bald head, and out of the top of the fleece jacket protruded the bones of an undernourished spine. Cancer, I thought. And she had tried to tell me, had given me chances to ask, and I had failed to hear.

I felt ashamed. How hard would it have been for me to trust such a small and defenseless person? How hard would it have been for me to take those cold, misshapen little hands and hold them in my warm ones for the duration of a bus ride? How hard could a tiny golondrina have bitten me before I set it free? What is it in me that flees this contact, this encounter? I know what to do and I yearn to do it, so why do I mistrust when I should love, and only realize it after?

My hands on my keyboard feel scalding hot, cursed. They are full of warmth and life if I could figure out how to share them.

and yet...

Further evidence that Querétaro is increasingly my second home: upon visiting Mexico City this weekend, three weeks into my time here, it dawned on me: I’m in Mexico for the summer. I was at the National Anthropology Museum, far from the home-away-from-home of my mundane, routine pursuits, watching it rain when this obvious realization finally clunked into place.

It occurs to me the word “home” has been cropping up with startling frequency in my writings lately.

Mexico City is a megalopolis, which essentially means two things to the casual traveler: 1.) everything that’s cheap elsewhere is exorbitantly priced because of the massive, war-zone-like distribution problems, and 2.) a lifetime wouldn’t be enough to see and do everything you can think up to see and do over the course of two days, so you have to save something for next time and resign yourself to sensory overload and exhaustion. For example, day one: ruins at Tenochtitlán in the morning, anthropology museum in the afternoon, followed by a night of mariachis, lasso tricks, folkloric dancing and cock fights, all enjoyed over a supper of roasted goat. Day two: Chapultepec (Mexico City’s question, if Central Park is New York’s answer to it), palace and home of Mexico’s six-year emperor, palace of fine arts, lunch at a café after which one of your favorite bands has named itself, and the National Museum of Art.

Here’s a fun game to play when you’re in Mexico: find the one weird thing wherever you are. No matter where you are and what you’re doing there’s always at least one thing in your environment that’s completely incongruous. You’re in the art museum looking at painting after 17th century painting of martyrs and Marys and suddenly there’s a kid in a wrestling mask. You’re in a shi-shi restaurant eating a buffet lunch Mexicans have prepared thinking it will appeal to Americans (featuring, for example, a substance almost but not quite entirely unlike mashed potatoes) when out of nowhere a man in a feathered headdress and loincloth barges in and starts blowing into a conch and whooping and whirling about. Times like these you don’t have to look too far for incongruities. Other times you have to dig a little deeper, but don’t worry, they’re there.

Another thing about Mexico: it’s baroque by nature. Baroque everywhere else went out of style a couple hundred years ago. Here, baroque is like energy: it doesn’t disappear, it merely changes form. The Palacio de Bellas Artes, a triumph my friends and companions had to drag me from kicking and screaming because I didn’t ever want to leave EVER, has all the grace and harmony and whimsy of my beloved art deco while still remaining summarily, consummately Mexican. If you visit the post office you’ll need to sit down after mailing your letter; the post office is breathtaking, and I am not even exaggerating.

I used to be ambivalent to Mexico City. After this weekend I really like it. Someone gave me a book of poetry. I took a picture of a fireman with his dog in the Zócalo. I got stalked by some strolling minstrels. I scratched the surface, and I will go back.

mexico reloaded

The funny thing about going back is how different everything isn’t. The things that surprised you the first time around, you expect them to be at least a little novel or disconcerting upon reentry, but they aren’t, you just kind of assume them again very quickly. I guess I thought I’d hear music I’d forgotten, taste flavors I’d left behind, and visit places I had neglected to miss and feel nostalgic, but really, being here hasn’t jogged my memory about much. This time around my recollections seem to have been remarkably faithful. Maybe I just haven’t stayed away long enough.

This is probably tied in with why I don’t have any over-arching, grandiose observations about Mexican culture or people for the time being. There are definitely some differences since last time I was here, but mostly in me: this time around I’m much less interested in meeting people I don’t know. I’m much more protective of my time, where and how I spend it and with whom. I’m less into playing paddleball with my heart and more invested in my job and my friendships. I’m more critical of what takes place in my environment. All this in some ways makes me more Mexican, more like the people who live out their lives here without assigning any special significance to living out their lives here.

On the other hand my current existence in Queretaro is much more provisional than before. Last time it seemed important to unpack, decorate, make a home for myself. I have yet to unpack. Although I’m staying the same amount of time at China’s this year as I did last, I don’t feel uncomfortable with the notion of living out of my suitcase for another month.

I don’t feel the urge to travel. In fact I’d love an excuse to stay home for a weekend. I’m traveling anyway, because it’s free and I’d be sorry later if I didn’t, but somewhere along the way my fever for the open road seems to have broken.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m very happy here. Despite missing my dog and my neighbor there’s no place I’d rather be, at least for a little while. At times I feel disappointed with myself for feeling so complacent, for not taking advantage of every single moment to pack them with unforgettable adventures. Given the life I’ve chosen to lead for the last ten years or so I would consider the loss of my sense of adventure as a sort of death.

But then I take such pleasure from the most mundane occurrences. La China lends me the car. I find my favorite shampoo on sale. I get paid in pesos. All of this is also an adventure of sorts, being a normal person in normal circumstances in a place that’s very much not normal for me. I start feeling like I could do it forever if I had to, although unlike last time I’m now fairly certain I don’t want to. I tell all this to China, my fellow Globe-Trotting International Person of Talent and Intrigue. She shrugs and says, yeah, because it’s your second home.
Congratulations. You’ve finally made it. You’re culturally integrated. You can tell because you feel so damn prosaic. That’s the irony I guess…home is where you hang your wonder.

back to chamba

That's Mexican slang for work. Yup, I'm back in Queretaro, Mexico, my favorite slice of desert paradise. Although in some ways I feel I arrived before I actually got here.

The feeling of being back wasn't what I had expected. I helped my airplane seat-mate mortify his mother by pretending to be his gringa bride (it was sad...she actually almost cried when I turned out to be just another passenger) and found my way to my bus. So far so good, but when we started down the Distrito Federal's (that's Mexican for Mexico City) chaotic, labyrinthine streets I felt tired, annoyed and -- and here's the thing that really freaked me out -- not the least bit excited to be here.

Granted, I was physically exhausted, having worked through my last full day in the States and almost stayed up all night with Nayt and the neighbs in Chicago. I was also stressed from trying to move my trip up by 2 weeks and arranging to stay twice as long. But I was here now, shouldn't I be at least a little glad, excited, invigorated? Instead I felt hostile toward the pollution and litter, the traffic, the graffiti, the vatos locos thuggishly staring, trying to decide whether to talk me up or shake me down. I felt hostile toward Mexico in general, toward my own lack of plans for the afternoon. I resented my monster suitcase and having to carry it everywhere, having to buy a phone card to use the public telephone.

You must understand: I am never not excited to be in some far-flung land. Never.

I finally hit on it. As much as I loved being here the last time around, underneath the euphoria, the exhilaration, I was actually really sad. At the time I thought I had experienced the worst of my heartbreak, confusion, loneliness, grappling with the darkest portions of myself. Soon enough I would realize that the scariest and most painful part still awaited me. That sadness was all there, I just wasn't acknowledging it yet. Nonetheless it was the first thing I felt when I landed this time around.

When I got to Querétaro I had three phone numbers and no plans. I reached my future roommate and she chewed me out for not e-mailing her, then gave me directions to her family's (my adoptive familia's) house for lunch. I was welcomed with delighted hugs and a home-cooked feast. Later we had a party at the apartment with several of the people I've spent nearly a year missing, as well as some other welcome faces. The next day I saw all but a few of them, and since then I've managed to see all but two or three of my cuates (that's Mexican for buddies, güey).

In short, I'm in love with Querétaro all over again.

plain jane and juana plana

So, okay, maybe it wasn't the most disturbing thing in the news last week, but I did find the folderol surrounding the supposed Jane Austen portrait troubling. In case you didn't know, what was supposedly the only portrait of Brit Lit's sweetheart was to be auctioned at Christie's last week, its price set at a modest $800.000 USD.

It would have been worth a great deal more, of course, had anyone been able to prove it is indeed a painting of Jane Austen. It has been in possession of direct-line descendants of her brother Edward until now, the Rice family. Many compelling arguments exist to suggest that the subject of the Rice portrait is not our girl: the hair isn't dark or curly enough to match descriptions and other sketches of her, the dress wouldn't have come into fashion until she was in her 30's while this is clearly a study of an adolescent, there are no proper portraits of the other Austen children and no one in her family could have or would have afforded one, and so on. It's also compared unfavorably with her niece Cassandra's miniature of her.

Okay. Maybe it isn't her. So far I'm on board. Until they interview an art scholar on NPR and he says that the girl in the portrait is simply too pretty to be Jane Austen.

Say what?!

So I decide to dig a little deeper, and I go to a blog dedicated to Jane Austen, and I read a bunch of Austenites arguing --quite rightly -- that it's unreasonable for us to demand of Jane Austen that she be remembered as beautiful, as if her litererary accomplishments were superfluous to the achievement of being physically attractive. One of them says: "The impulse is not terrible. We Janeites want to believe that Jane Austen was a pretty woman; it is the most natural instinct in the world. However, as Jane herself said, she did not write for such dull elves as have not a good imagination themselves. Can’t we accept Cassandra’s portrait, and just imagine that face lit by humor and animation and color? Are we, as Janeites, such pictures of intellectual poverty?"

My qualms with this whole thing are two: First of all, the discussion, even by supposed fanatics of Austen's writings, revolves ceaselessly around her physical characteristics and fashion sense, which I'm sure whatever's left of her is tittering about behind a pretty little skeleton hand.

Secondly, and more importantly, at what point is it intellectual poverty on our part to conclude that because of her incredible talent, she must needs have been homely? Are we still so far from fathoming that a bright, talented woman might also have turned out to be beautiful? That looks and brains aren't necessarily mutually exclusive? Mr. Art-Radio Scholar said that no one in Austen's time could have written so authoritatively about the experience of homely, rural, modest, practical and resourceful girls unless she was herself one of them. I couldn't disagree more: all it takes is a measure of empathy and imagination.

Miguel de Cervantes was neither a choleric nobleman nor a phlegmatic fatso, and his Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha has over 400 characters, many of them splendidly drawn. His physical appearance isn't once thought to have had a bearing on his craft, other than that he couldn't have written his novel with his right hand, as it had already been chopped off. To use a more contemporary example, Federico Garcia Lorca was extraordinarily easy on the eyes but that didn't stop him from writing about alienation and the lot of homely women in La casa de Bernarda Alba.

Adrienne Rich observes in When We Dead Reawaken: Writing as Re-Vision how deeply we've bought into the notion that, in order to be an author, one must be deeply afflicted somehow, whether because of alcoholism or physical ugliness, handicap or misanthropy. So much had she herself believed this, that she felt ashamed of wanting a normal life and poetry at the same time, until she learned to see her art as growing something instead of destroying. Is it so unthinkable that Jane Austen could write good novels without being sad about being plain, or that as a pretty girl with an inquisitive mind she might have cared about the experience of others enough to inform herself and write about it?

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the 17th century Mexican nun, was by all accounts an exceptionally beautiful woman. Her works still challenge readers today, but she's still called "the 10th muse" by some scholars. She wasn't a muse at all, the object of someone else's inspiration, but a poet in her own right. About her own portrait, overly flattering in her opinion, she writes:

This, that you see, this colored treachery,
which, by displaying all the charms of art,
with those false syllogisms of its hues
deceptively subverts the sense of sight;

this, in which false praise has vainly sought
to shun the horrors of the passing years,
and conquering of time the cruelty,
to overcome age and oblivion's might,

is a vain artifice cautiously wrought,
is a fragile bloom caught by the wind,
is, to ward off fate, pure uselessness;

is a foolish effort that's gone wrong,
is a weakened zeal, and, rightly seen,
is corpse, is dust, is gloom, is nothingness.

Her beauty detracts nothing from her genius, nor from her modesty, though she struggled in life to undermine it, chopping her hair, donning a habit and, at intervals, rejecting human contact. In this way, physical beauty became her affliction and a recurring theme in her literature.

The startling thing for me about this whole discussion isn't the who's-hot-and-who's-not aspect of it, but the tapestry of preconceived notions it reveals about art and womanhood and creativity. I don't really care whether Jane Austen was beautiful, but it alarms me that someone - a scholarly someone at that - argues that she couldn't have been beautiful because she wrote good books. Had Jane Austen known Sor Juana, I'm inclined to think they would have painted the town together, talking books and breaking hearts.

Se llama Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia

So just when you think you can't possibly fight The Man any harder...

you meet The Woman.

I'll rouse YOUR rabble

It's amazing to me that I haven't used this space to bitch about the union yet, considering anyone who interacts with me in person is probably sick to death of hearing me complain about it. Well, here goes.

You know, I could be an activist forever, and I probably will, for one cause or another. I could fight injustice all day long. It's not the injustice that's the problem, though; fighting iniquity is the easy part. It's the damn apathy that turns out to be the hardest thing to fight.

My own, even: there are days it's hard for me to muster the energy to make union meetings and events. Time was, my laziness or just feeling like I had better things to do could keep me home. These days my sense of accountability wins out every time, and I'm actually confused and mildly irate every time other people's sense of accountability doesn't take over and get them on the picket line for an hour, or in a meeting on a Sunday afternoon when there's not even anything good on TV.

Either they don't value health care and a living wage, or they don't see the connection between their own participation and attaining those things. That's dogmatic on my part, but there it is; I can't explain it to myself any other way.

A broader problem is that, once you become an activist, you realize that you could make a full-time job out of protesting, picketing, canvassing and boycotting on behalf of causes you believe in. Suddenly they're everywhere: take back the night, gay rights parade, keep-PCB's-out-of-the-Kalamazoo-River efforts, panel on global warming, community garden, save the arts programs in our public schools, search for a university president, peace in the Middle East... so much to fight for, so little time. And suddenly it becomes easier to understand how someone fails to show up for any of it, because how do you fight for so many changes at the same time?

How do you cope with the disappointment of not moving that mountain? Then again, how do you stop trying to move it?

A long time ago I got accused of being a nihilist. As I said at the time, anyone who thinks I'm a nihilist clearly hasn't met my dog. I'm not a nihilist, just a pessimist. Deep down, I don't really believe that my actions can change the world. I don't believe I can defeat the system or change anyone's mind about things. But here's the funny thing: I don't see that as any excuse for not trying. Because honestly, what the hell else are you going to do?

I'm an Easter Scrooge

I don't know if it's because this is the first year I've lived alone in a long time -- okay, ever -- but Easter seems to have become a real big deal since the last time I checked in. As I believe I have mentioned before in this little pocket of cyberspace, I wasn't raised in the church, so Easter was never really about the resurrection of Jesus in my house. Mostly it was about jelly beans as I recall. Some time between the empty nest and the motor home my mom and stepdad started attending church and maybe that's part of it too, along with me living by myself, but folks seemed extra-concerned about me spending this Easter Sunday alone.

It started with the neighbs and his ma, who invited me to not one, but two family Easter celebrations. After much hemming and hawing I opted for PrEaster, which occurred last weekend as the name implies. I witnessed my first-ever egg hunt and cannot recall the last time I felt so cheated. I had no idea this kind of thing had been going on all around me all the time I was a kid.

Then I was trying to talk my mom into coming down from northern Michigan and staying Saturday night with me. "What?!" she said. "I can't leave my husband alone on Easter!!! " in the tone most people would reserve for saying something along the lines of "I can't leave my husband alone in the shark cage!!!" If it hadn't been for the frantic disgust conveyed in this statement, I might have pointed out he could probably handle putting out the jelly beans on his own this year, but I thought better of it.

Then there came a veritable flurry of invitations from any number of friends cajoling me to partake in ham with them on Sunday, and here's the thing of it: I started to sense maybe they were onto something. I actually got to where I was feeling sorry for myself for being all alone on Easter, and wondering if there was something wrong with me or something. Fortunately, I ended up joining in a ham-lasagna-and board-game Easter bonanza just in the nick of time. Otherwise who knows what might have happened, I might just have ended up under a bench in the park with an empty bottle of 5 o'clock, the plastic kind so I wouldn't hurt myself, another lonely pagan crying over her Cadbury egg.

The upshot of it is that, at last imbued with the festive spirit of Easter, I felt compelled to call my family. My dad thought that was the funniest thing ever, of course, and commented on how, though he loved hearing my voice, if I had failed to call him and wish him a Happy Easter he certainly never would have noticed. Meanwhile, the neighbs declined the nomination to dress up as a huge bunny and distribute goodies to the children. So we all came through okay is I guess what I'm saying here, and participated in Easter in respectively agreeable measures.

But I still hate jelly beans.

free-thinking and open-minded

So a friend of mine has recently started, er, seeing someone he never could have seen himself with previously. To me this seems fitting, since he's also undergoing some kind of crisis of faith and perhaps finding his true calling at the same time. Nonetheless it's startling enough when you go through it.

Thing is, she's something of an oddity, this girl he's taken a shine to, at least in our snooty academic circles. She's the cutest, gun-slingingest, Catholickest, stylishest, Republicanest awesome-person I've ever known, that's for sure, and she has an I.Q. of approximately a million jillion skillion. Hers is perhaps the first perspective I'll seek the next time anyone starts whinging about "activist liberal professors" and the unspoken but palpable prejudice conservatives experience in Academia.

I have my qualms about this. I tend to think of my country as having its whole raison d'être in activism, and I consider teaching young people critical thinking skills a sort of activism in itself. As for liberal, well, what looks like liberal on an ordinary day...and I get pretty sick of listening to conservatives blustering about all sorts of other supposedly unfair practices on the part of liberals that conservatives engage in equally, although sometimes much more subtly. In my humble estimation of course.

Although these two have given me a great deal to think about. In fact it's been irking me lately, the dogma that permeates the so-called free-thinking left. There's no reason whatever to behave as if critical thinking is the imminent domain of liberalism, and yet this is exactly what we do. Academics in particular are inclined to think they're liberal because they're more educated, and that no one who possessed a truly superior intellect could ever be a Republican. At my own most vitriolic moments I've indulged in this type of stereotyping, but deep down I know better. Which makes me a terrible communist when it comes down to it.

Note to Big Brother: I have never espoused membership to or even sympathy for the communist party. While this page is touted as an irony-free zone, I do indulge in the occasional wry comment. Please do not come to my house and revoke all my keyboards and pencils as I was only kidding about that last part.

So my friend asks himself: can I be with this person in spite of her politics? My answer, the more I think about it, is: can you NOT be with her simply because of her politics? For myself the answer might be yes. I certainly can't imagine being attracted to someone whose politics were radically different from my own. And if I found myself in my friend's situation, I'd want to be durned certain I wasn't somewhere in the recesses of my heart trying to change her, somehow hoping she'd one day see the light and become as brilliant as Liberal Me.

Which brings me to a recent observation I'm sure I'm not the first one to have had: in a post-everything world in which we industrialized adults can all (mostly) fend for ourselves, families still fulfill a powerful function: they keep us tolerant. For many of us our families are the only thing that remind us you can be a good person and still have shitty politics (whatever you consider those to be). Every day I have to reconcile myself to the fact that the people who taught me the notion that -- no, scratch that, who taught me most everything I know -- voted for the other guy, the guy that I routinely ask myself, screaming and frothing in my car, how anyone could ever have been stupid enough to vote for. Who are these people?! I bellow. And then, oh, yeah, they're the ones who bailed my stupid ass out of trouble for the first two decades of my life.

So there you have it: the truth must lie somewhere in between, as usual. Which in the case of some of us is bound to be pret-ty close to both of us, know what I'm sayin?

Nicanor Parra: "America: where Liberty is a statue"

Every once in a while I learn some little thing about the intuitive and illogical workings of my brain. Like how I think no one can recognize me if I'm wearing (or, these days, not wearing) my glasses. Or how I inherently trust dog owners and the prematurely balding. Or how, no matter how far from home I am, I feel more like I belong in a place if I'm wearing earrings or carrying an office supply item of some kind.

The first thing I learned about being an out-of-towner in New York is that all this knowledge of self gave me no sense of comfort at 8 a.m. on the subway platform, where I was doing a great job of looking frowsy yet overdressed. I might as well have plaited my hair and donned a gingham pinafore. No matter, I thought. I'm carrying a BINDER. I clearly have a PURPOSE here on the Island Nation of Manhattan. This as I surreptitiously removed my earrings.

CUNY's graduate center is right across the street (avenue?) from the Empire State Building. From the 8th floor cafeteria you can see just where King Kong clung. I spent the afternoon in the Museum of Modern Art with my new friend Jackson Pollock. I laughed out loud at the surrealists, which last I checked was a side effect they fully intended, and came as close as one comes to being shushed in NYC (evidently the Emperor still wears melting watches as far as MoMA patrons go).

I hearted NY from Friday til Monday. Dinner in Chinatown. Canolis and espresso in Little Italy. The Staten Island Ferry past the Big Green Lady and Ellis Island. Book-shopping the Strand. A miserable performance art, um, thing in a warehouse in Brooklyn. A giant hole, an absence made a presence, with a monument to the "heroes" who showed up to work on 9-11-2001. Eight year old Dominican girls with extensions. Subway breakdancers impervious to the shimmying of the trains. ATM instructions in sixteen languages. The smell of burning pretzels. Feeling honored someone would stop and ask ME for directions, then realizing it was because I was the only person who looked approachable. 30 seconds of ooh-shiny in Times Square before the shine wore off. A quiet sunny morning in Central Park and being ushered out of Rockefeller Center, then followed down the block to make sure we were really leaving. Mashed plantains with oxtail gravy in a bar where everybody sang drunken rumbas along with the stereo. Four days without seeing a single fat person. A citizenry both cosmopolitan and undeniably provincial (rumors of life beyond Manhattan do sneak in from time to time but are largely circumstancial).

And almost no shopping, I swear it. Instead I rekindled an old friendship in New Amsterdam. The kind that you pick up right where you left off no matter how much time, pain, joy and transformation has elapsed. Another thing I've learned is that no matter what people say, you don't pick your friends. You never know who's going to love you unconditionally and it's not always the people you'd expect or choose, but you learn to roll with it.

I wanted to visit my hero Eloise in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel and have my picture taken underneath her portrait picking my nose but alas, the Plaza was under construction. Rawther disappointing. So next time is crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, el Museo del Barrio and the Plaza Hotel.

Oooh, I absolutely love, love, love New York.

all language is metaphor

If Katy were a color. If Trace were a sickness. If I were a vessel. If a chair were chairness. Keep it going. Decode, then:

Romance is a big black puppy, sleek and grinning, bursting with play.

94 is the static concrete number of the wire along which our kinetic impulses travel.

To execute each next, uncertain step in our chosen dance we must listen closely through one another. We learn to move like waves, doubling back on ourselves; a restrained, perpetual invitation.

Trust is a watchful toothbrush.

A promise is sometimes a balloon, tied with a string ring.

hello, my name is

Jessica.
I tend to think that naming your child is your first act in parenting and therefore, it's reasonable to expect people with a certain name to behave a certain way. There's a reason the movie "Heathers" is called "Heathers". I have never met a Tiffany whose neurons were firing properly or an Angel who didn't think she was the center of the universe, and I almost always get along with Toms. Kevins seem for the most part easy-going and all three Alyssas I've met have been very smart. I've had three crushes on Andys so far in my lifetime, and had I been born a boy, rumor has it that would have been my name (coincidence?). I don't know what Jessicas are like, I really don't, but would be interested to know what motivated my parents to call me that and what images my name conjures for others.

I can tell how I feel about someone the first time they call me Jess, sometimes before I have consciously considered how I feel about that person. I never invite people to call me that, though most people who know me well do. If you call me Jess and it creeps me out, there's a good chance I'll never trust you. If I like it, I realize you're my friend. Only people who knew me when I was three get to call me Jessie, and if they spell it Jesse that's a boy's name and that's the end of that.

Christine.
Again, I'm not sure what motivated my parents to name me this, since my family is not particularly Christian. My mom says that combined with Jessica it has lots of nice hard sounds which made it easy to sound angry when scolding me. Really I don't think of my middle name as part of me. When I meet a Christine, I don't go, hey, that's my name too. I'd like my kids to feel differently about their middle names one day, and will maybe even pick ones I'd call them by at home.

Lynam.
Growing up this was a pain in the ass name to have because nobody seemed to know how to pronounce it. It also always sounded really nasally to me. When I took a married name, though, I missed it, and whenever anything would come addressed to me as Lynam I'd get warm fuzzies. Not to mention my married name was Dutch and I got sick of Dutch people getting all excited and wanting to include me in this secret Dutch club or something (If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much).

Now that I have it back I know I will never trade it again, not even if I get married seven hundred fifty times over. I will happily endure spelling and pronunciation errors for the rest of my life. I'm still undecided about hyphenating, but Lynam I am and Lynam I shall stay. I like it when people call me by my last name only; it seems playful and unfeminine, and I like inventing new ways to help people remember how to spell and say it (line 'em up and knock 'em down). I also feel like it's a big step in getting back to the business of being the person I want to be. The girl with the other name did some things I didn't like. That girl both was and wasn't me. I don't believe in clean starts. I have to own my mistakes, under any name, and this isn't an attempt not to. It just feels like one more step in the right direction to have my name back.

death to the weather

It's March now, thank the maker. Most people seem to think February has fewer days than any other month, but that's rubbish. February is the longest month of the year. It always finds a way to kick your ass. I can't explain it, but every February I think, this is the year February isn't going to be awful, and then it proves me wrong. So yay, March.

However, something still troubles me. I demand to know where all these weather proverbs come from. If the groundhog sees its shadow, six more weeks of winter. March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. April showers bring May flowers. This is a crock. I live in Michigan. None of these weather proverbs applies to me or anyone in my zip code. Nonetheless I hear people say these things, their voices quaking with desperate hope.

I don't know where whoever said those things the first time lived, but it wasn't here. News flash: whether or not the groundhog sees its shadow, Michigan is in for six more weeks of winter, maybe even six more months. March comes in like a lion and goes out much the same way. Any showers in April are more likely to bring about snowmen in May than flowers. Anyone who tells you different is a filthy liar and a jerk for trying to instill you with a false sense of spring being just around the corner and deserves to have his lights punched out.

According to some people, we're headed for the next ice age. So this might be the year spring never comes. I'm certainly not getting my hopes up and I recommend that you don't either, at least not yet, because you're only setting yourself up for the inevitable disappointment of several more months of crappy weather which, trust me, awaits us all.

This is the time of year I love to go to Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids to soak up the ozony, greenhouse air, watch the first butterflies hatch and try not to step on the baby quails -- quite possibly nature's cutest edible -- breathe deeply, take my coat off, and listen to the almost-forgotten rustling of air moving through leaves. Any takers?

in defense of crappy grammar

Today I would like to argue in favor of "where are you at," largely because I have started catching myself saying it and feel sheepish, but in some measure because I also feel it has a place in our lexicon.

Caveat: it should only be used figuratively and should never allude to a geographical location.

Acceptable: "Cummings! Where are we at on the creation of that Doomsday device?"

Unacceptable: "Winn Dixie? Where's that at?"

Thank you.

what we have here is a failure to communicate

I am by no means a Luddite. In fact, I am one of those people who tend, after all this time, to be astounded by what technology can do. It still amazes me that I can write this and you can read it moments after from practically anywhere. I’m still blown away that Google has a picture of my house -- or at least the roof -- that you can look at by typing in my address, or that the information from my retina can be used as a security device.

I am, however, skeptical of technology for technology’s sake, and there are at least a few devices concocted over the last couple of decades I find troublesome and even downright sinister. Most of them have in common an underlying function: they are anti-communication devices. Even in our millennial telecommunications wonderland, where we can communicate with people from across the world and talk incessantly into cell phones, we haven’t stopped coming up with devices to neglect, ignore and disrespect the people with whom we interact face to face. Here are just a few that spring to mind:

Evil Anti-Communication Device #1: The knee defender. Have you heard of this thing? Next time you want to see me start frothing at the mouth and shouting long streams of obscenities, talk to me about the knee defender. This is a sort of lock you can apply to the airplane seat in front of you to prevent the passenger ahead of you from reclining his/her seat and painfully banging your knees.

I am not a tall person and riding for several hours in a crowded airplane is already unpleasant, so I can only imagine it’s next to impossible to be both tall and comfortable on an airplane. For this reason, if someone said to me, excuse me, I’m tall and sitting behind you, could you please refrain from reclining your seat, or at least warn me before you do, I feel I’d be sympathetic to that. Perhaps naively, I venture to say most people would be. If, on the other hand, I went to recline my airplane seat and found I had been foiled by a plastic tool from the Sharper Image section of SkyMall, I would be likely to come unglued and provoke the kind of full-blown confrontation the knee-defender was undoubtedly designed to avoid.

Because to me, the subtext communicated here is “I am tall and have no character, while you are not a person who can be or deserves to be reasoned with. Fortunately for me I can preempt your lack of consideration and restrict your right to use the airline equipment you’ve paid for – all without having to deal with you on a human level.” Lucky for tall people everywhere I can’t afford to travel very often. I think I need to go lie down.

Evil Anti-Communication Device #2: TVs in the car. Do you remember the first commercial about this, back in the nineties? Two young parents listening to their kids bickering in the back seat of the family minivan, then they pop in a Bugs Bunny cartoon and stick headphones on the kids? The camera pans to the backseat, where the children gape, slack-jawed, at the screen, while up front Mom and Dad exchange placid smiles.

Okay. Where to even begin with this one. People who talk on their phones and drive take their share of flak, but I’m worried more about the accident I’m going to get in because I’m tailgating somebody’s TV, trying to figure out which Murder, She Wrote episode the driver ahead of me is watching.

Independently of that, though, and call me old-fashioned, but I thought family road trips were supposed to be tedious, cranky affairs where children went for hours at a stretch without being entertained, without even the expectation of being entertained. The monotony of being in the car with one’s siblings and parents, charting the trip on the odometer, getting sick of waiting for a “La Quinta Inn” sign to get past the Q in the alphabet game, the rise and fall of interminable Indiana corn fields outside the window, that was all part of it. Subtext here? “Isn’t it great that we can plug the kids into the TV just like at home, so that we can continue to not talk to each other until we get to wherever it is we’re going to Spend some Quality Time All Together As a Family?”

Yecchh.

Evil Anti-Communication Device #3: Political correctness. Technically this is not a feat of technology, but still. I’m with Rhodesian author Doris Lessing about this one, and she knows from politically correct. For starters, it’s just real dumb to think you can slap a new name on something and change the underlying prejudices that created a sense of taboo about whatever it is in the first place. Any negative connotation attached to the out-going term will just bleed onto the new term until you change the underlying discourse. Meanwhile, you’ve often taken a perfectly good word out of circulation. In some cases, the topic being discussed is so politically, historically or emotionally charged that we burn through nouns and adjectives faster than anyone can keep up, and we all end up scrambling to remember whatever it is we’re supposed to call Polish people these days. Do you see what this notion is doing to our word-scape?

Amazing, too, how political correctness has a way of imposing a value judgment on topics that don’t warrant them, sparking off whole new prejudices. For instance, someone once said to me “you’re not short, you’re vertically challenged.” Until then, I had lived in a safe little bubble in which being short was acceptable, but clearly I was deluded. I should have been aspiring to be taller all along ( note: naturally I told this person I wasn’t “challenged”, merely “differently abled”).

In my book the worst part about political correctness is that it makes certain meddlesome and self-righteous people feel as though they’ve accomplished something for some misrepresented sector of society by changing the rhetoric the rest of us use to talk about them when they’re not around. It’s what allows me to continue doing nothing about the under-enrollment of urban blacks in U.S. universities, all the while feeling warm and fuzzy about tossing around the latest and greatest in hyphenated terminology and still excluding them from the dialogue.

In short, political correctness = gaytarded.

So there you have it, gentle reader. I’m givin it to you straight. If you don’t agree with me, you know, that’s cool. You can tell me so. Just do me one favor: use your words.

remembering Betty Jane

My maternal grandmother, Betty Jane Greer, died Tuesday morning in her sleep in hospice care in St. Augustine, Florida. She was 86 years old.

She stood about 4 feet 10 inches tall and shrinking. She wore her hair, still naturally black except for one silver streak I pray to inherit, in a careless bun prickling with bobby pins, and her blue eyes were always magnified by enormous thick glasses. Decades of chain-smoking slim cigarettes had left her everyday attire of sweatpants and men's undershirts uniformly full of burn-holes. Although toward the end the cigarettes were, more than anything, a prop to be left burning in an ashtray or waved around at the end of her hand for effect. She'd leave a trail of ash on the things and then gesture with them while she spoke in a guttural, unexpectedly forceful voice that seemed to emanate from beyond her, and we'd wince, recoiling from that dangerous cherry threatening to fall with every emphatic thrust of her little fist.

Her face looked like a withered apple and she'd lost most of her teeth before I was born. She hated wearing her dentures but despised being seen in public without them, and as a consequence left the house as seldom as possible. When she did go out, accompanied by one of my uncles or my mother, she had a tendency to discomfit others with impertinent questions and "inappropriate" observations. She carried a variety of tupperware containers in her purse in case her outing resulted in leftovers.

Politically my grandmother fell somewhere to the right of Scary Fascist. As far as she was concerned even the most conservative elements in the U.S. government were wrapped up in a socialist conspiracy to undermine white people everywhere. She spent most of her time in one small back bedroom of her house, furnished simply with a sofa, a television, a coffee table, and ninety bazillion cassette tapes she used to record everything that happened on C-SPAN. She used cassette rather than video tapes because they afforded her the chance to superimpose her own analysis over that of the commentators. Tapes were piled up past the window frames and an arm's-depth into the corners of the room. To my knowledge she never listened to what she had recorded, and despite the fact she never catalogued or dated her tapes, she believed that they would one day constitute a valuable historical archive. Tragically, my grandfather, who died in '93, started the family tradition of recycling her tapes and if she ever noticed she didn't say so.

My oldest uncle and my mother remember a time when Betty Jane was coherent, gentle, lovely. Their younger brothers for the most part do not. Now she's the maelstrom they have to navigate in every conversation. Our family reunions are few and far between, but when they happen they tend to result in late nights around the kitchen table sipping coffee and trying to figure out where and when Betty wandered off. We cousins, I think, have a heightened sense of our parents' afflictedness, and have no illusions about the fact that we are to some extent afterthoughts, epilogues to a family drama that hasn't played itself out yet. Remarkable that such a small, eccentric and otherwise ineffectual person exerts such power over us in my family.

When I was little I used to be afraid of my grandmother: her loud voice, her cackling laugh and rough touch, the live end of her cigarette and her opaque rhetorical questions. As I got older she became an unpredictable source of amusement -- the few of my friends who met her found her fascinating, and I laughed with them, always with a trace of resentment, a trace of guilt.

Here's my favorite story about my grandmother: she went to a busy doctor's office after she had her hip replaced. The waiting room was full of grumpy, defeated-seeming people. After a couple of minutes, she turned to the young girl across from her, perforated with piercings, and said, and what made us decide to do that? The girl paused, obviously taken aback, and then answered. Soon they were in a conversation about which piercings had hurt the most, how much they cost and why she would choose to pierce this or that part of her body. Next she engaged a woman whose husband had just left her in telling her life story. So your husband left did he? Yes, so did mine, she said, and then another lady turned out to be that lady's neighbor, and this sparked off further conversation, and pretty soon the whole waiting room was laughing at this little old lady cursing and being honest, and she looked around her and said, well, I guess we aren't as sick and miserable as we thought.

Here's to Betty Jane; may she rest in peace, or in theories of chaos and conspiracy, whichever she prefers.