domesticated anniversary
Tuesday 22 July 2008 | someone left a cookie
The Brujo and I have now been living together for one year. (NB that if I’m laconic or snappish during the following, it’s due not to any waning of passion but because I somehow threw out my shoulder last week, which makes typing literally a scream.) We’ve not only comingled our pots and pans and our cinnamons, but a couple of months ago, flinging terror to the winds along with mutual cautionary tales of all our romantic financial disasters to date, we combined checking accounts (which after all that hand-wringing hesitation has turned out to simplify the bookkeeping immensely). We share chores, pets, furniture, schedules, meals, utilities, movies, and hot dates at the lavandería; and we brush our teeth together at our pair of matching little oval 1950s-era bathroom sink basins, tiled (appallingly) in maroon and grey. It is all too scary for words. We have had an indecent amount of fun.
Last night, we stood in line at the Vegan Holy Man Market, burdened with expensive menstrual groceries (Spud Puppies, Reed’s Premium Ginger Beer, Late July saltine crackers, Dubliner Irish cheddar, locally made vanilla gelato). I mentioned to the Brujo that if you g••gl• our recently invented word ecorexia™, the Unnarrator is the only hit. [Update: This is sadly no longer true; now my comment on Dooce’s blog shows up, as well as a lot of something in Dutch, and the Un isn’t there at all.]
He quit gazing blankly at the glossy virtue-pushing magazines (who all seem to have Andrew Weil on their covers) and faced me fiercely, wiry arms clutched around bottles of mineral water. “We have to do something! It’s ours! We have to copyright it, or something!”
“What, are you nuts, you can’t own a word. It costs like $400 to trademark a brand name. Besides how do you make money off it? Only if you write a book to go with it.”
“But it’s our word!”
“Well, technically it’s your word. I only came up with envirorexia which isn’t nearly as catchy.” (Here I hesitate, because I rather suspect that Jenzai and Oleoptene in fact devised envirorexia. But the Brujo returned from a hike at the Poker Ranch with ecorexia™ in his pocket, well pleased with his efforts.)
“It’s our word. We’re in this together—see?!” He waggled the debit card at me with mock ferocity.
He frequently feigns being angry with me, and I partly find it detraumatizing, as when he lovingly whacks Finny over the head with a sock, which unusual therapy apparently cured her from being flinchy and head-shy after an abused puppyhood; and I partly find it unnerving. Because I am chronically uncertain about the difference between Playing and For Real. And, good daughter of Freud, have trained myself to be hypervigilant about pieces of others’ unconsciousness flying around and zonking me in the head, which they have in fact on occasion done.
I laughed dutifully at the verbal sock-whanging but privately resolved that I will never pay the US gummint to trademark a word for which we have no use. Other than muttering ecorexia ecorexia ecorexia™ under my breath as I watch myself painstakingly rinsing off the tinfoil tops to yogurts because I firmly believe that by so doing I am Helping Al Gore Save the World.
The seasons roll around, even here in exurbia, and again the B. and I do the things we were doing this time last year. A calendar of household activities. Raking up pods from the bean trees, for example. The long fistfuls ripen on the invasive mesquite trees, turn copper, rattle like snakes’ tails and blow everywhere in pre-monsoon winds, scattering flat shiny little brown seeds. When we’re outside talking, one or the other of us finds herself plucking up the dozens of new bright-green bilobial sprouts from the moist ground; they look temptingly like sunflower sprouts. (But you can’t eat ‘em. I know. I tried. They leave this intensely oily beany flavor in your mouth that persists for hours, despite Topo Chico-swilling and teeth-brushing. Maybe indigenous Tempeans liked the taste; I can’t seem to acquire it.)
So now it’s bean-raking time again. I can only open up the gigantic paper bags (in which we collect them, because with enough brown paper, we can Save the World) by standing up inside each one, which the dog and cat find respectively hilarious and contemptible. We rake beans, we mow, we edge, we eat lunch, we talk, we nap.
I stave off the supposedly inevitable, or fleeting but not-infrequent, thoughts of is-this-all by writing hostile, oppositional proto-poems in my journal. “Stave off” isn’t the right way of putting it—perhaps, “Offer blood-letting sacrifices to.” Sequelae. Selvedge. My great-grandmother’s maiden name was Savage.
There is that which will not be domesticated, which disregards matching pillowcases and is indifferent to the self-inking rubber stamp bearing our names and shared address. Pyewacket would say as much, if she spoke a human tongue. Why the Modernists refuse to use those most rural and Anglo-Saxon of domestic farming terms, husband and wife. Of course you can call it anything, or nothing; the archetypes still automatically seize us in their powerful jaws and do with us what they will. The mythological task of reinventing wildness within a sacred sealed place. Of uncontaining hermeticism. Recognizing virgin goddesses where they sit, legs folded beneath them in apparent contentment, by the flickering hearth.
Do not be deceived. You do not have me. All the Brujo needs to do is pick up his drumsticks for the first knowing to show its teeth.
“You’re such a rebel,” he says sleepily.
“Am I? I’m a rebel to you? (Joe Pesci is your new girlfriend.) How am I a rebel? For example. Give me an example.”
“Well…you rebel against the widely accepted General Theory Concerning the Effects of the Passage of Time upon Romantic Relationships. Which usually goes along with a Special Theory about diminishing or altered sexual desire. I’ve rebelled against these theories myself, in the past, but I’m not sure that refusing to acknowledge their validity as stories has done me that much good.”
I laugh angrily and flip over in bed. “Honey, I not only rebel against your General Theory, but I refuse to concede that such a narrative of entropy even unqualifiedly exists.” Because trust me buster I have plenty of Hegelian bromides about how relationships are supposed to proceed, and if I’d continued to believe most of them I wouldn’t be here in the first place.
He clears his throat, being Reasonable. “See, that’s what I’m talking about: You’re a rebel.” No hot tramp / I love you so.
I stand abruptly, collecting pillow, painkillers, journal, water glass in the dark.
“Hey, where you going? Put all that stuff down. Come back here.” A warm hand, strong despite its owner’s grogginess, detains my thigh.
“I don’t know how to say this, but, um, that’s one heck of a way to tell me that you feel less for me now than you did a year ago.”
A long moment of silence. “I can see why that’s what you heard. But that wasn’t what I was saying.”
Wilderness in a suburban bedroom. Untellable mysteries. Distance nestled within proximity.
“Change of subject, darling!” as Maman loved to announce. But not really.
When I was about twenty-five, I told myself that if I hadn’t met the love of my life by the time I turned thirty, I’d place this ad in the NYRB. Fortunately I married my ex-husband before such drastic measures became necessary.
So how self-important and nutbar and undergrad is this? Would anyone sane have answered it? Would the Brujo have drunkenly pissed himself laughing, especially since the only jazz pianists I knew at the time were Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson?
Don’t answer. Unless you’re (can she say it with a straight face) a true lover.
•
SOULS WITH LONGING. SEEKING SINGLE INDIVIDUAL, RACE, GENDER OR CLASS UNIMPORTANT, AN INVOLUNTARY MEMBER OF GENERATION X (PREFERABLY CLOSER TO THIRTY THAN TWENTY) WHO NEVERTHELESS UNDERSTANDS RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CONFUCIANISM AND TAOISM, THE CITY AND THE COUNTRY, THE REPUBLIC AND THE DEMOCRACY, PHILOSOPHY AND LYRIC, PLAYFULNESS AND INTENSITY. MUST BE PASSIONATE ABOUT SOMETHING; THE SPECIFICS ARE LESS IMPORTANT THAN THE DESIRE ITSELF, ALTHOUGH I MYSELF LOVE READING WRITING THINKING MUSIC AND BEING. MY CARE FOR SEEING HAS BEEN ILLUMINATED PRIMARILY BY DEAD WHITE MALE PHILOSOPHERS AND LIVING LAUGHING DANCING DRUMMING FEMALE SONGWRITERS, WITH A GENEROUS ASSORTMENT OF POETS JAZZ PIANISTS PAINTERS AND MYSTICS THROWN IN. YOU MUST BE TORN BETWEEN THE EAST AND THE WEST, BOTH COASTALLY AND CULTURALLY, BETWEEN ISOLATION AND THE MARKETPLACE. I LOVE PEOPLE SEPARATED FROM THEMSELVES BY CLEFTS AND RIFTS OF IRRECONCILIBLE MAGNITUDE, PEOPLE WHO BECOME WHO THEY ARE ONLY SLOWLY AND AFTER LONG FIERCE LABOR. I AM BY TRADE, EDUCATION, AND AVOCATION A WRITER; I AM A YOUNG WHITE WOMAN RAISED IN RURAL EAST TEXAS WHO HAS FOUGHT HER WAY TO MASSACHUSETTS AND THERE STUBBORNLY REFUSES TO GIVE UP ANY OF HER PAST. I WILL CORRESPOND WITH ANYONE WHO ARTICULATES HER/HIS PASSION AS ONLY TRUE LOVERS CAN.
after great pain, a formal feeling comes
Monday 21 July 2008 | 2 cookies in the jar
Come on, formal feeling! We’re waiting here.
act iii went up early
Saturday 19 July 2008 | 2 cookies in the jar
Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal, Joss Whedon!
tartarus has a brief cool moment
Friday 18 July 2008 | I like a cookie
whedon squee alert
Thursday 17 July 2008 | someone left a cookie
Did you ever really screw things up? I mean, really? Alienate loved ones, piss off acquaintances, irritate e-mail interlocutors, suffer not the little children to come unto you and in fact just generally not do a single damn thing that doesn’t somehow inspire entires on failblog.org? Oh, yeah? You think so, huh? Well take that and multiply it by about a squillion and then you just might have a sense of my personal observance of National Bonehead Day. Which was today, apparently. Right. Excellent wedding-day hairstyle, Charles.
I take tepid consolation from the fact that Dr. Horrible has similar problems.
“I’ve been turned down from plenty of jobs—even fired from a few.”
“I can’t imagine anyone firing you.”
“Neither could I! Now I can visualize it…really well.”
What means, Act II just went up and we have three days left to watch Joss being Joss for free, before evil interwebs faeries pull it down forever and then we have to pay iTunes $1.99. Which is really the least I deserve, considering.
tonight at 12:01 a.m.
Thursday 17 July 2008 | 4 cookies in the jar
That’s when the first screenings of The Dark Knight will start. Time was I’d have been scrunched down in the back row doodling in my notebook with my Sharpie by 11:15. They were already saying Nicholson, Brando; now they’re saying Pacino, DeNiro. I regretting having to write negative reviews of Casanova and The Brothers Grimm, not that he ever knew. And now he’s gone and joined that stupid club. But Heath, you had me at Monster’s Ball.
[PS: absolutely funniest, most sarcastic, snort-aloud, post on this movie ever.]
*YES.*
Wednesday 16 July 2008 | someone left a cookie
“Kay Ryan, Outsider With Sly Style, Named Poet Laureate” (NYT)
Addendum: I should say that while this is good news for the state of the union (and speaks rather highly for the taste of the current LOC director), it may be bad news for Ms. Ryan, who’s not much of a joiner. I certainly hope she can weather this tour of duty without, I don’t know, say, murdering Dana Gioia.
Then too, perhaps it is a fiendish prank on the part of said director—an appointment designed, with malicious glee, to ensure plenty of shoe-staring humiliation for President McCain when a certified Daughter of Bilitis gets to write and then read his inaugural poem.
A final, but potentially quite serious, drawback to the PLOTUS gig is that for reclusive types it’s historically been lousy in terms of output. I refer specifically to my late Russian’s infamous claim that he wrote nothing during the entire year but a single couplet, which I now reproduce as a cautionary tale for Ms. Ryan. Though admittedly a couplet from her is as good as a Collected Poems from some other people I could name. But won’t.
I sit at my desk;
My life’s grotesque.
feline drama in one act
Wednesday 16 July 2008 | I like a cookie
In the midst of an email to Mandarin (who has, inshallah, managed to find a kind hematologist knowledgeable about low ferritin), I heard Pyewacket wailing and carrying on outside. Strange behavior for her, because she’s so fat voluptuous and otherwise uninterested in local politics, especially when it’s this hot; she normally just lolls under the oleanders and watches it all go by. But I could hear all this yodeling and warbeling, all this feline grueling and smarling—and then Finny started to bark too, so I thought I’d better go check just in case she was, you know, surrounded or something.
In fact, a tinyTinyTINY black kitteh, about one-tenth her size, had Ms. P. completely cornered on the front porch. They had obviously tangled once already because Pye was quivering indignantly and her entire front was thoroughly beslimed with unbelievably smelly feral catspit.
When he saw me, Tiny Kitteh puffed himself up into maximum volume, fluffy with rage and groaning murderously.
“WORRAWORRAWORRAWORRA,” he informed both of us threateningly, waving a single paw splayed out like a catcher’s mitt (with tufts of Pye-fur stuck in his wee claws). I sidled toward them, trying to think how to remove her from the tableau without escalating matters. “WORRAWORRAWORRA!” he added, at a higher pitch, for my benefit.
Pye hissed back without much conviction. I could tell that this display of ferocity did not leave her unimpressed, but neither was she quite prepared to cede the valuable two feet of territory between herself and the cat flap.
I thought for a second, then lightly touched her ribcage on the side of her closest to Kitteh. She jumped a few feet into the air, spitting indiscriminately, and scrambled in the opposite direction. I was left alone with Tiny Kitteh, whom I faced sternly despite his being eyewateringly redolent of dead bird.
“Go away,” I said, stamping my foot on the porch concrete for emphasis. “It’s over! Psssst! Scoot!”
“WORRAWORRAWORRAWORRAWORRA,” he said again, not a bit scared. His little foot kept wiping circles in the air, as if casting a spell.
We continued to glare at one another as I backed away, collecting a still-hissing Pye en route. Inside I washed and dried her off and thanked Bastet that she got her shots three days ago. Once she was settled down and licking herself sulkily, I peeked through the cat flap: stinky Kitteh was gone. Though I have seen his tabby brethren and sistren these last hours, creeping around with their ears flattened to their skulls, hellbent on survival.
hoggify!
Tuesday 15 July 2008 | 2 cookies in the jar
My favorite moment (aside from any time the two falsetto vegan holy men appear to sing backup uncertainly) has long been right after “Oh, liver!” when Cocker, apparently overcome by the thought of organ meat and/or probiotics, FALLS DOWN (or anyway is offscreen for a long moment and then emerges from the bottom of the frame). I’ll have whatever he’s having, please.
[Special note to the Brujo, in NM: I know you practically know the whole documentary by heart, but you really must watch this specially subtitled clip if you can steal four minutes away from composing operas about tomboy princesses, Amazon tribesmen, ferrets, beetles and evil unicorns. Srsly!]
in which we consider ourselves warned
Monday 14 July 2008 | 2 cookies in the jar
| The last straw | |
During this time you may be much more irritable than usual and snappish with others, even though you cannot consciously recognize what you are angry about. Perhaps the most puzzling effect of this influence is that your irritability and anger seem completely irrational . They may not actually be irrational, but your anger may be about something that happened a while ago. This influence may create events that remind you of past anger that you didn’t show at the time. Now it is revived with such force that you have to show it. In this kind of situation a trivial incident makes you mad simply because it is the “last straw.” You are likely to be more angry with close friends or members of the family than with people you don’t know so well, immediate family being the most likely targets of your anger. |
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| Mars Conjunction Moon, activity period from 12 July 2008 to 15 July 2008 |
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