And there is also joy. . .

Grace Paley 1922-2007

"As for you, fellow independent thinker of the Western Bloc, if you have anything sensible to say, don't wait. Shout it out loud right this minute. In twenty years, give or take a spring, your grandchildren will be lying in sandboxes all over the world, their ears to the ground, listening for signals from long ago. In fact, kneeling now on the great plains in a snootful of gray dust, what do you hear? Pigs oinking, potatoes peeling, Indians running, winter coming?"
from "Faith in the Afternoon"

I haven't been able to stop thinking about the last boy I babysat for. Back then, he was a little kid playing kickball with me in his backyard. His father was the minister of the church I'd attended with my family for years and years, though at that point I'd become a full-blown atheist. The boy was all dimpled joy compared to his thinner, more serious older brother. Soon thereafter, I escaped that corner of the country and largely forgot about the boy. The boy became a teenager. The teenager committed suicide.

I can't pretend not to know how a person can get so desperate, so determined. I can't pretend to forget that I once wrote my friends trying to convince them that it didn't matter if things would get better. The unbearable was unbearable. I'm thankful that they weren't so easily convinced. I'm thankful for my own fear.

Mixed in with the bits and bothers of my desk, I keep my Bennington diploma and have since I received it. It's not on display for others or there to feed my occasional bouts of nostalgia, but rather, as a reminder of a community to which I am indebted. There's plenty of monetary debt, sure, but there's also my identity as a writer that the people, place and process brought to me.

I'm thankful that I lived to find that identity and hopeful that, someday, I'll find a few words to prove me worthy of it.

This is all the greenery I saw today. I've been inside all day rubbing my hands over other people's skin. Usually, I'm good at not absorbing my client's burdens, but it's been tougher lately. Maybe they're more burdened. Maybe I've got my guard down.

Here's the new Funk Shui album, Armored Vegetable. CD release show was last night. Great fun had by most. Three hours or so of sleep for me means few complete sentences. Now I can say that I wrote the lyrics to a song. Click here and listen to Artichoke. Listen to everything. Send an email to buy a CD. Or buy several so that Sean can keep me covered in diamonds and furs.

Speaking of which, I watched Blood Diamond the other night. Take Jennifer Connelly's atrocious bits out of it and it was a pretty decent movie. It was just gruesome and horrific enough to remind me that I should never complain about the weather ever again. It also gave me the tidbit of info that there's a false rarity attributed to diamonds. If you're shelling out the big big bucks for one then you've been duped by De Beers. Here's some more info.

This is the Keller Fountain Park. You can dunk your feet or fully submerge yourself or soak up some sun on the concrete. I wish I had a small one in my back yard, minus the teenage hoodlums and crying children. I raced to it the other day, fearful that summer was in town for its final few hours. Thankfully, it's still here, mostly.

I'm still sitting here with thoughts of Liam, or mostly, thoughts of his family and the people who work at the Writing Seminars. But they are thoughts, not words right now.

Liam Rector 1949-2007

I got one of those group Bennington emails late last night with the news that Liam Rector had killed himself. I searched for news that said otherwise, that somehow it wasn't true. It's hard to imagine the Bennington Writing Seminars without Liam's lecture on the Vortex or his joy in showing his favorite "Glengarry Glen Ross" clip or his looming, stage left presence above the lecturing students and guests.

While searching for the good news I never found, I pulled up a couple of his poems. Eerily, these are the first two I read:

From The Cortland Review

So We'll Go No More

So it's fare thee well, my own true love;
I'm leaving you behind. And not
For the early, for the young reasons, but

For these late, last, ill reasons. I'm almost
Kaput! Yea, you'll get no more of me....
Cancer, heart attack, bypass�all

In the same year? My chances
Are one out of two! And I'm fucking well
Ready, ready to go. To go!�how often

I've operated that way. That way
Almost the entire caper, the way
For people, places, things:

Abandon, abandon, nay abandon before
Being abandoned. But we've, we've
Stayed. You the third wife for me, I

The second such boy for you, and I love
Looking directly into you, as we look
Directly into this last get-go. We all

Have the talent for leaving, like it
Or no. And oh, how rich it is, how fine
To finally inherit!: the final thing

I was looking for, as it turns out,
The great power of leaving
All the breathtakingly brief all along.



From Pif Magazine

The Remarkable Objectivity of Your Old Friends


We did right by your death and went out,
Right away, to a public place to drink,
To be with each other, to face it.

We called other friends - the ones
Your mother hadn't called - and told them
What you had decided, and some said

What you did was right; it was the thing
You wanted and we'd just have to live
With that, that your life had been one

Long misery and they could see why you
Had chosen that, no matter what any of us
Thought about it, and anyway, one said,

Most of us abandoned each other a long
Time ago and we'd have to face that
If we had any hope of getting it right.

This makes me VERY happy. Plucked from my own backyard, I'm thinking of making it my new, though short-lived, pet.

A playhouse for only $38,000!!

NPR had this story on over the weekend about wealthy mothers who are having large families. "Competititve birthing" they called it. I also read about this trend at Slate and have even read about occuring in slightly less wealthy suburban families over at MSNBC.

"Why not?" asks one woman.

Am I simply outside the realm of understanding here? Am I just a crazy lady without a biological urge for children who simply doesn't get it? Or are some of these people just blindly breeding without any sense of larger responsibility?

What about the world into which they are delivering these large number of children? Just because the world population growth has slowed doesn't mean that everything is hunky dory. We will hit 400 million in the U.S. before 2050. Your kids will be rich and have gone to the best schools (well-educated? That's another question) but chances are they will also be ravenous consumers. Do these parents think that it's not their problem? I guess it isn't. It will be their kids problem.

Honestly, I'm just confused about this. Is the biolgical urge so strong that it wipes out reason? Could these women not redirect some of their energy and massive cash flow into volunteer work? What about adoption?

I know that I'm pessimistic about the world's future. It's not that I think complete and total collapse is just around the corner. It's that I think a slow, insidious deterioration is not only likely but happening right now. I also think that the personal is political. That's not just a slogan. I believe it. I believe our actions have larger consequences and that it's important to make a moral decision about bringing three and four and five kids into the world. I'd honestly like to hear a moral argument for this. Maybe I'm missing something.

Oh,and also, please forgive me if I have completely insulted you with this rant. Sometimes I feel like a republican at a table of anarchists or like myself at a table of my wealthy relatives.

My grandmother used to worry about me not knowing how to cook and not wanting to learn. As a woman skilled in simple but delicious Italian cuisine it was frustrating for her to know how much I loved food but hated being in grocery stores and kitchens. "If you won't learn, then you're going to have to marry a man who knows how," she would say every time I visited.

Well, here's Sean's dinner creation as proof that I did as I was told (okay, not the marrying part, but close enough): Fresh crab bruschetta with mushrooms and avocado.

Happy. Happy and fat.

Can you find all the bars in this picture? There are five in clear view, one on the way and a couple more not in the pic. Welcome to The Stumble Zone also known as my neighborhood. It really is an insane amount of liquor to squeeze into one block. It's hard to imagine that the new restaurant going in on the corner will be able to get a liquor license in this overly saturated market, but maybe the OLCC likes to keep it all in one spot. Now, if only the cops were also in that one spot when the bars closed and the jerkwads started their WOOO-HOOO-ing.

The WOOO-HOOO! is a weird phenomenon. It's kind of like shining a flashlight in someone's face. It seems like people (well-shnookered people) have an extremely hard time not doing this despite all the reasons not to. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to be done about it.

Can you imagine any admirable leader making this kind of bar-room brawl gesture?

Sometimes it feels like we are a whole nation of ill-behaved babies from the way we treat our friends and neighbors to the way we view other countries and cultures. It seems to me that part of being an adult is being thoughtful, taking others into consideration and not acting rashly. Or at least, that's what I used to think. I'll have to redefine that as being a good person. Sadly, being a good person is not the same as being an adult.

Being good can be difficult and we are a country addicted to ease and convenience. We are addicted to "saving face," to not looking at our mistakes or at the darker side of our behavior. I see this not only in our leaders but in people I know. I see it in the folks stumbling out of the bars at night and in myself.

I wonder if there is a way to reverse this trend, to do the more difficult thing and grow up.

Fire and Ice.
Camping in Western Oregon is often a chancy affair. Drive out into the woods in the middle of summer and you're as likely to get a cold, drizzly day as anything. Well, we missed the rain, but got the ol' cold and cloudy. Scoot a couple inches closer to the fire. Put on your sweatshirt. Have another shot of whiskey.

Of course, staying in town hasn't proven to be much better weather-wise. Our usual stellar summer has become blotchy and dull. I just have to remember that it's better than being flooded. Better than being scorched. Whine and grump if you must, I still think we live in paradise (currently appearing with a lower case "p").

My backyard. Finally stepped out and had a look.

I get into the mossy forest and feel the magic of it resonate with my six year old self. The little patch of woods and the little creek that ran behind my house in Pennsylvania would fit a million times and more along the trail I walked today. And yet, immediately, I get that tug that wants to play in the water and pretend to set up house in the curves of the rocks. I am a city girl at heart, but there is something about these trees and this river that rings against my bones.

Apparently, bridges fall down ALL THE TIME in the U.S. but they aren't usually very dramatic and therefore get no media coverage. Roads are boring. People don't want to elect officials who promise to put money into old things when there are so many shiny new things to be had. The media doesn't want to spend time on talking about the decay of our infrastructure until there are people dead, good photo ops and stories of triumph to fill up their newscasts.

It's not any one group's fault. I blame it on the short attention span of our whole country. I blame it on our lust for flash and melodrama. It would require so much more than we have at this point to get a majority of people interested in ANYTHING even vaguely slow and difficult.

I have no idea what the answer is to this gross apathy that I am plenty guilty of myself. Turn off the TV? Read more books? Extoll intelligence as much as we extoll mediocre half-dressed talent? What the hell, it might be worth a shot.

Zucchini flower. Squash blossom. To-may-to. To-mah-to. All I know is that if you dip these babies in some batter and fry them up they're some yummy. Personally, I like them a lot more than I do the squash. Then again, dip the zucchini in some batter and fry it up and it goes down pretty easy too.

Speaking of fried food, I got caught up in Shaq's reality show last night. How nice to see a celebrity put his power to good use by challenging obese kids to lose weight and challenge the state of Florida to stop passing off junk food as a balanced school lunch. I wish more celebrities would take this route when they felt compelled to have their own reality show. I won't rant about reality TV now though. That would take away from thinking about the pretty squash blossoms. . .

At one point yesterday when it started to drizzle, I put the Sanford and Son theme on my ipod and played it repeatedly. Of course, there were no customers, so nobody but Sean and I found this funny.

We did sell a few things, but what really got the pile of crap in picture one down to the smattering of crap in picture two is the infamous FREE PILE. I think people must know about this phenomenon and therefore just wait until the garage sale is over then come by at night and pick through the remnants. Good for them.

The only thing that I found sad about this are the remaining pairs of super ugly shoes. Either of these could win an ugly shoe contest. The KISS boots used to be nicer, but now that some kind of blue spray paint got on them, they'd be perfect for the glam rocker who wants to maintain his identity during his day job at the construction site. The other pair of white macrame shoes with rubber dual-heeled soles are the culprits in my first bout of serious back pain fifteen years ago. I haven't worn the things since, but I haven't been able to convince someone else to take them either. Any takers?

First there was Vicki who got out of the country and married a Hungarian soon after college. This September, Lynda will marry Todd. In October, Sally will marry Joe. And with that, all my dear friends from back in the day (the pimply, angst-ridden day) will be hitched. Back then, we were too busy being artsy and tromping around the cemetery to have any kind of fantasy wedding discussions. But I guess these things sneak up on you.

There must be a portion of the teenage population that dreams of white dresses and fancy cakes (and perhaps hot naked grooms) but it's a dream that I didn't understand then and still don't understand now. It's like my lack of baby lust. I was born without the gene that makes me crave such things. Maybe I'm missing out on something or maybe I'm saving myself and everyone I know from a horrible horrible fate.

Still, I'm truly happy for my friends. I find it amazing that we each found our way out and into the world and did it with a bit of grace. I'm happy that we each found a place to sit and a person to sit with.

This is a throw away image that my friend made while learning how to screenprint. My friend now has four of these Tom Selleck panels. I found the same image available as a $20 t-shirt. What exactly are you saying to the world when you wear a $20 Tom Selleck t-shirt? When will we stop embracing irony as a driving force in our culture? Does sincerity have even the slightest chance? And furthermore, what do you think I can get for this panel at my garage sale?

Aah, my first river day. Humidity gone, sun out, the river a beautiful cloudy aqua blue. But when we went to dive in, we found our usually deep swimming spot had no more than a few feet of water. The river was high on the banks but filled with tons of extra Sandy River sand.

When I got home, I read how just this afternoon they started demolishing the Marmot Dam on this river. It will be the largest dam demolition on the West coast in 40 years. It sounds like it was more of an economic decision than anything else. Still, hooray for the fishies. I kind of doubt this is the reason our swimming hole is now a wading pool, but so be it.

Click here to watch the dam explode!

Go out TWO nights in a row? Crazy. Stay out to 2 and 3am listening to music, dancing, drinking, talking to STRANGERS? Yep, that's me, the good girlfriend. Sean's birthday celebration started out on shaky grounds when his band got bumped from a craptastic show at the Roseland, but redeemed itself with a little dancing with Dr. Theopolis. I think I avoided this band in the past because I was turned off by the fake afro wig, but these guys put on a great show. Extra endearing was the fact that they sang the song "Sweet Love," "I made sweet love to your mama/Nasty wrinkly love" with the singers' mother standing at the front of the audience. Kudos.

I saw Sicko yesterday. I cried through a lot of it, partly because of hormones and partly because I have lost my steel-hearted immunity to any true story about loved ones getting sick or dying. Give me a story about someone who's been killed and my eyes will stay dry. I guess I'm still under the illusion that my loved ones are safe from the more dramatic kinds of death. May I never be disillusioned.

Anyway, it's a good movie for stirring up some bewildered anger and some desperate longing. Quick, I have to get to France NOW. But really, I don't want to go to France. I want things to be fixed here. I just fear that it's all too late. We've become too hardened against the poor, too enamored of the dream of wild amounts of wealth. I wonder if there is a cure for our selfishness other than the complete collapse of our economy and our environment.

I guess, we're all going to have to get better at self-surgery. Here's a story about an apparently sane man who decided to remove the steel plate from his ankle in the bathroom of his home, down the hall from where Mom was sleeping. He was not successful.

Rain, gobs of it. Yesterday, today, tomorrow(?). Only now, here in the evening, as a few streaks of blue crack the clouds, do I finally feel a bit of the drag drop from my feet. I should be happy to have 100% confirmation that the sunflowers turned out to be sunflowers.

Aah, family. Sean's dad has been visiting for the last few days. This photo was taken at a picnic where two other friends had visiting parents and siblings. Lots of bad jokes and lots of good cheese.

In the presence of other people's families, I am reminded to be thankful that my own family's primary sin is that of dullness, unless, of course, you are really into archeology, business assessment or lengthy arguments about who should pay the bill or who was sick what year on who's birthday.

Let us all learn from those who've gone before us.

I have a friend that paraphrases Camus at me, something about writers not showing their doubts, and sometimes I think this is good policy. But I'd also like to note that I don't always exclude myself from that group of people I put down in yesterday's post, the ones with stories worth telling and writing but not necessarily publishing. There is too much far too much mediocrity in the world of writing. As a girl with a well-off suburban childhood and a happy adulthood, I have to face the fact that I'm going to have to up the ante as far as language, observation and imagination go. Nobody needs another dull romp through the ennui of suburbia. Nobody NEEDS any of it so I better make it good.

Every summer I do this solo ritual of riding out over this Reed College "canyon" to hear readings and lectures at the Tin House Workshop. It's way too expensive to actually attend, so I slip in as unnoticed as possible into the back of the lecture hall and ampitheater and absorb a few good words.

I usually appreciate the guests, but there's something weird about all these hopeful writers gathered together in one of what must be dozens and dozens of summer writing workshops across the country. Who said that everyone has a story to tell? Maybe they should have said that while everyone has a story to tell not everyone needs to try and get their story published. Is that mean? Maybe. Fuck it.

100 degrees is no good for giving massages (I had to buy a tiny air conditioner for my room yesterday...sorry.) It is no good for the new shoots on my new plant that shriveled up into a crisp yesterday. It's no good for the old people who have no fans.
But still. . .
I love riding my bike through the heat, like I'm riding through water. I love lounging in the heat with a cigarette and a glass of whiskey and gingerale. I love the heavy wrap of it and the slick of sweat.

Tonight I was twenty-three again. We had Mai Tais and a full dose of Martin Denny at the Tiki Bar before I abandoned my friends and rode off to a poetry reading alone. Is there an age when it stops being okay to drink in kitchy bars? Is there a possibility that I will ever sit and listen to poetry in Portland and be able to roll my eyes and applaud in the company of a friend?

Lucky day. Lucky me. Berries make berry smoothies.



The sky is now streaked with that perfect orange-pink color but my view is slashed with wires and poles. I have to narrow my site on the smallest little part, on the evergreens many blocks away and pretend there is nothing in between me and that landscape.

This reminds me of the excellent Philip Johnson documentary "Dairy of an Eccentric Architect" that I watched the other night. At one point in the film he is showing off a huge Frank Stella sculpture and he talks about imagining he was very small and walking around in the caverns of contorted metal, then growing a little bigger so he could climb up to another part of the sculpture then coming back to his real size to enjoy the piece as a whole. I used to do this same thing on a plane while looking at the clouds, or with the patterned wallpaper of my bedroom. A little shift in perspective and the whole world is new.

Sorry to those who hate the blog tag. For what it's worth, I've found some new blogs I like because of it. For those feeling that unique kind of chain letter nausea, check out this guys research on chain letter evolution.

Now, let's move on...


This is a pic from a few years ago, but there are certain rituals which look more or less the same around here and picking berries on Sauvie's Island is one of them. My friend in her cowboy hat is part of that ritual. Mouthfuls of perfect raspberries and blueberries (all covered in deeeeeelicious pesticide I'm sure) are also part of that ritual. Now the freezer is full of fruit and my day in the country just twenty minutes from my house is complete. All I have to say is summer summer summersummersummersummmer.

Jordan Rosenfeld has tagged me "It." Jordan has a non-fiction book on crafting a scene due out this fall. Yeah Jordan! I generally hate tag and all tag-related games, but since I love Jordan and because it's not just me, but lots of "its" all over the land of blog, I will comply. Welcome to yet another interesting way people connect, promote and maybe even gloat in this weird voyeuristic universe.

Here are the rules:
1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Well hot damn, no one's ever called me a "player" so let's hit it.
1. Last night I watched this movie about the attempted coup against Chavez in Venezuela. Very interesting.

2. Last night I also watched about three minutes of Tony Danza practically having a heart attack trying to dance and sing really badly though his opening number at the D.C. 4th of July hoopla-thingymabob. Very bad.

3. I don't have a book to promote, so I'll promote Funk Shui instead. Their old album will kick your ass but the new album out next month will kick MY ass (and folks, that's a lot of booty).

4. I once rented Edward Penishands from a store called "American Family Video." Go figure.

5. When I used to listen to Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight" coming from the tape deck of our station wagon, I thought they were referring to ice cream sundaes at HoJos. I still have that tape, I still like that song and I still love ice cream.

6. I have a literary crush on Stuart Dybek because he writes about Chicago the way I hope to write about Portland.

7. Back in our college days I had a regular old crush on the man who designed this amazing lightbox

and imagined that some day in the future I would "convert" him to my team. I'm hoping to get one of these as a reward for (a) not attempting an actual conversion and (b) 18 years of friendship.

8. I'm a little drunk.

Okay, so that's the deal. Now I'm tagging these people, some of whom I know, some of whom I picked randomly and some I stole off Jordan's list. So there.
Hotel Overshare
Linera Lucas
Life's Persistent Mysteries
Guide for the Careering
Side Dish
Welcome to Blog
The Urban Emigrant
Myfanwy Collins

What would people talk about if they couldn't complain about the weather? It's getting hot here. HOT. I, personally, love it. To me, it means river time. Even if I'm stuck in the city, I like knowing that the rivers are out there, doing what they do, ready for me to plunge in at any moment. I was always a pool girl growing up, but now I'll take the river over the pool any day. It's colder and messier and a million times more beautiful.

It's very nice of my friends to agree to let me share these photos. It's very convenient too, since I've lent my camera to a friend and have no current pics to post.

If you are one of the two people reading this who aren't Jordan or Emily, then check out these lovely women in their more intelligent and thoughtful personas on these blogs:
Jordan Rosenfeld at Jordan's Muse
Emily Block at the Fit Pregnancy blog Emily, Expecting

I'm not kidding. I just counted. I have photos of twelve different people in this get-up. I'm pretty sure only a few of them were drunk. Mob mentality emerges in the oddest places, I swear. . .