happy birthday to me
i live in a tree
i look like a monkey with enormous breasts and a tight budget but less hair in general
and i smell like chai tea



i smell like chai tea because i have chai syrup all over me. there's some on the inner part of my elbow, some on my collar, some on my ankle... it's better than smelling like a monkey, one must assume.

tired. opening tomorrow. wakey wakey at 4am for opening. thanks for well wishes, m'loves.

3:23 am

As expected, she remembered
What she meant to say. That movie –
The actress’s name and the color she wore;
How it meant something then.
It was too late to call and her eyelids
Were sticky with sleep, though her mind
Prickled with a sense of tulips unfolding,
Asphalt burning, waves ascending
Her grey vinyl siding

On this night in particular
The earth seemed tiny to her,
And she a speck on it, an item
Of infinite minutia, and her thought,
The blue of that actress’s dress
Against a remarkable yellow
Chandeliered wig of curls –
Even more ephemeral, so much
Tinier than any thought, ever.

But to share it would be
To foster some growth. The image would move
From her microcosm
To his – a synapse short-circuit
Across a small city
From sleepy brain to brain. That little thought
Would expand in itself, inhale
And balloon, become a much speckier
Speck. Not nearly an earthly
Feature that satellites
Could photograph from space, but
A bump, a thing, a bubble
Of electricity set out in the world
To glow a bit,
to ebb, to ash.

Her hands know, without groping,
The exact location
Of each number to press to reach him.
Her immoveable eyes need not open.
She considers this – how the dial-tone buzz
Could disturb her, wake her too much.
She is caught in the panic of power,
Knowing that sharing, inspecting
A speck causes life to restart.

She wants this creation, this
Resuscitation. They will share it
And bring it to life. They will
Have it and pull it between them.
It is only color and movement,
Memory and mastery, but her body
Curls around her need for him
To know it. Blue dress. Yellow
Hair. The actress’s name.
Microscopic.

Cheese is good.

Ah, cheese, the greatest manmade substance on this Earth, I laud you.

Starbucks. I'm running around frantically to fill orders and keep managers happy. A mom and small girl, about four years old, stand across the counter, the mother clearly encouraging the child to choose a lunch for herself. They are wearing similar clothing - red checked shirt and red gingham sundress (although it was not sunny enough today to warrant sundressing.)

"Do you want this?" the mother asks.

"No, I do not want that," the girl answers precisely.

"I'd like you to choose something to eat," the mother says.

"I don't know how that was made. Who made that? Did they make that?" The girl looks up at her mother as though she's an idiot to think she'd put something in her mouth that was produced by Starbucks employees.

"Sweetie, it's fruit and cheese. Will you eat a little of it?" The mother's getting annoyed but knows her daughter has the upper hand.

I decide to intervene gently.

"That's very good," I say to the little girl. "The cheese is tasty." I smile.

"I'm not sure if I want that cheese," says the girl, seriously.

The mother looks apologetic. "She'll be impressive in the business world someday," she says. I laugh at the condescending grown-up joke. The little girl hides behind her mother.

"Oh sweetie," I say, "we're not laughing at you."

She whispers to her mother, "that hurt my feelings when you laughed like that."

"We're smiling," I say, "because you're so smart and charming."

She puts out a distrusting bottom lip.

The mom throws a bunch of items on the counter, all expensive and unnecessary, I ring her up, and the two wander off to find chairs.

Moments later I'm running around again, emptying trash, wiping up after spills, sneaking sips of my drink. The girl and mother sit at the tasting bar on high stools. The girl is perched high, sitting on her knees, picking judiciously at her fruit and cheese plate. Apparently my trespasses are forgiven; she smiles at me when I acknowledge them.

"I think I might like this cheese!" she proclaims, showing me a mushed wedge of brie with several tiny bites missing.

Mom smiles a knowing, grown-up to grown-up smile.

"Does it taste good to you?" I ask the little girl.

"It does!" she says, full of amazement.

"Have you tasted that kind of cheese before?"

"No," she says, looking thoughtful, "but it tastes just exactly like white american cheese."

The mother laughs, but I know better by now.

"I'm glad you like it," I tell the little girl.

She appraises me very sternly. "I just didn't know if I would."

You're forgiven, too, four-year-old. Where did this kid come from?

of cabbages and kings

Are we sick of Shane posts?


Me too. Just have him on the brain.

Had another panic attack at work and it got me on a crying jag that would not stop. I figure it has more to do with medication issues than anything else, but it's significant that it was Heart Day, and I had a strong memory of Shane.

And then a daymare.

I remembered the physical feeling of Shane running at me, leaping into my arms like a four-year-old, and then in my mind's eye and touch, I felt the back of his shirt growing wet, his skin peeling away in front and back, his heart boiling out of his body, arms loosening their grip, face resigned... fading... gone.

I think it's my peculiar morbidity that keeps Shane so alive in my sadness. I don't know how his other friends feel him and remember him, but I'm getting worn out by how I feel him.

Before I lost my mind, I used to ritualize everything, and it seemed to comfort me. If there was something to DO every time I felt a certain way, I at least knew what would happen next, even if it wasted my time, hurt me, didn't change the feeling. Things were simply more knowable, and that's always comforting.

When Shane Days came, I would find a way to push a cabbage into people's lives. I would push myself into this super-social wacky persona and shout the gospel of the cabbage to anyone who would listen. Since last February I've grown so tired. I let my memories rise and sink in me as they come. All of this life remains within the borders of my skin.

I think I'm unable to express and spread the joy of Shane because he's now linked with my own private difficulties, which are incredibly embarrassing to me. Shane relates to college, which reminds me of the brain I no longer have and the friends I've abandoned, which reminds me of how my whole life is in constant entropy, which reminds me that I'm a waste of cellular material, etc.

Shut up, JoBiv.

Okay.

GAAAAAAAH!

My litmag summer camp already exists, AND I'M NOT A PART OF IT!

sob

Uncloistered?

I think I have other posts about the phenomenon of self-forgetfulness. Nontheless, I write this one.

I was in NYC this weekend, which was scary and fun and bizarre and adventurous. I was visiting Maria, my dearest American friend from my semester in Ireland, and Gutter, The Brave and Beautiful, long-time acquaintance from El Victoir, friend for many a year now.

Friend. What a meaningless word. I'm also friends with the early morning T driver who smiles weakly at me when I nearly kill myself tripping up the steps. Also friends with my mother, whose calls and worries I dodge with increasing agility.

Gutter and I are friends like this: we know nothing about each other, really, except that we grew in the same fishbowl with similar attributes ignored or undernourished. We were cerebral, lonely, entertaining and unknowable. He loves my family and they him. They've adopted him, want to know him in and out, and his mother probably wouldn't know me from Marky Mark.

Ha. I almost forgot about forgetting. Here I am, back again on topic. My point about my visit and self-forgetfulness is this: I forgot how excellent, sweet and full I feel when I'm with Gutter and Maria. This is the feeling of being with an intellectual peer, an alive soul. I have friends in Boston, of course, and I love them dearly. I didn't know how much I was missing THIS, though.

The link above comes from Sunday's adventure at the Met's Cloisters (very near Gutter's apartment.) We walked steadily up a wooded path cut into a huge cliff, the city dwindling on one side, the river opening up below, the castle-like museum above. It was surreal and brought out a disorienting homesickness. I don't know exactly where that ache of nostalgia connected - it seemed to be a general sensitivity reaching out to a dozen memories of paths, quiet, lungs, views. I felt myself opening a little.

The Cloisters reminds me of the Isabella Stewart Gardner in that many an archway, sepulchre and tapestry has been artfully woven into the building itself in such a way that one feels she's happened upon a pre-existing marvel where everything within it was created there, in timelessness, one culture spiking deep into that place and making sense of itself. Of COURSE there are unicorn tapestries and moorish spanish triptychs glowing with saffron and cobalt. Perhaps it's a peculiarly American attitude on my part to feel like everything was supposed to be in that space. I like that Rockefeller and Gardner shared that same compulsion to tailor palaces for these artifacts they found fascinating. How could a person stand in Paris dumbfounded by the beauty of a medieval sculpture and say, "I dunno, I could find a better place for that." Such arrogance! And yet... the effect... I was wooed and won.

I wrote this, you nosey clamourer, while Gutter practiced piano. He decided to take lessons, bought himself a keyboard with all 88 keys, and has attained an alarming proficiency in a period of months. Did I mention he is a Favorite Person?

My sheet has a long horizontal rip in it. I’m not sure when it happened, and I think this is because its happening wasn’t a singular thing. It’s not like a bolt of lightening felling a tree or a balloon popping. This tear began one day on a microscopic scale. It widened and festered and unzipped slowly. I noticed it, peripherally. I did nothing. Besides notice it, I mean.

Also, I lost my job with the foundation. This was a singular thing. It happened yesterday. I had it, and worked hard at having it, and then yesterday it was taken back.

Also, it's death day. This past weekend I ended up staying over a friend's house. Everyone seemed to want to conk out early, so I asked for nighty-night books from my hostess. She gave me Truth and Beauty, by Ann Patchett, whose work I love. I couldn't read the book, however. Within the first chapter I was introduced to Shane's female counterpart - an underweight flamboyant mascot-of-the-campus woman who flung herself physically into people's arms.

This rip is really big; that's the thing. I can't just go on pretending this sheet is useful. I'll have to take it off and throw it out.

Food glorious...

Remember the devolution of cafeteria food in college? Well, a lot of you went to nice colleges with fairly good food service. I went to St. Bonaventure University, which rated at the top of the Princeton Review's "Is It Food?" list about five years running.

This was the progression over a period of 72 hours:

1. Chicken fingers. Edible.

2. General Xiao's chicken (chicken fingers plus gooey spicy overly sweetened soy sauce). Edible if you found pieces without sauce.

3. Chicken parm. Edible with LOTS of sauce and extra cheese microwaved into a gloppy mess.

4. Chicken soup. Suspect.

Now, I don't have proof that these were the same fingers all the way through. I didn't get them fingerprinted. HAHAHAhahaha... Oh my god I'm so freakin' funny! ... Anyway, can't be certain it was the exact same product, but it became obvious over a period of time that no trucking company wanted to come to the Back O' Beyond, New York to deliver fresh food to us. More importantly, our tuition dollars had to go toward the essentials - fresh paint on the basketball court every season, frinstance.

Either way, I noticed that the food service seemed to order all food by the metric ton, and would not try to hide that fact by altering their offerings on a daily basis. NO, if they had canned peaches, by GOD, no Bonaventure student would go an hour without seeing a canned peach, at least peripherally.

Day 1 of peaches:

"Yay, I looove peaches! In pure corn syrup! Yum!"

Day 2:

"Think I'll put some cinnamon on 'em. There, that's different and still quite yummy."

Day 3:

"Hmm. The syrup is congealing. The peaches are still tender, though..."

Day 4:

"Isn't that yellow color a little startling? Anyone?"

Day 5:

"I... just... can't... Hey, whipped cream, guys!"

Day 6:

"Sorry, professor, I'm late because there was a peach-slide of apocalyptic proportions, the syrup and peaches making the dining hall a veritable slip n' slide of terror. Our lawyers have advised my parents to sue."

Day 7:

"PEACH FIGHT!"
"Dude, I wish peaches had better aerodynamics."

Day 10:

"That little piece of cottage cheese was in there yesterday. Grody."

Day 14:

"I wonder if they biodegrade?"

Day 21:

"Hey kids, guess what's for dinner at the bomb shelter? Clue: it comes out of a can..."

Day 37:

"PEARS! I looove pears...."

All this is to say that I'm beginning to admire our food service and wonder how they got so clever. I'm trying to be economical and clever myself, trying to think of the ways my mother disquised leftovers (ineffectually) and my babysitters got us to eat "good" food (by heaping it with sugar, salt and/or grease).

Here's my quandary: How do I make my italian sausage, red and green pepper, onion, cheese, tomatoes and garlic interesting for one. more. night. I've done the obvious sausage, p&o sandwich. I've done pizza today using frozen naan. Tomorrow I might get out the blender and make a peppery garlicky version of V-8. The sausage I'll stick in my ears.



Having griped so long, I have to admit, I never, EVOR passed up the canned pineapple. Even when I had canker sores. Pineapples are good, man.

Happy happy happy soooprise!

GUESS WHAT I GOT! noreallyguessohmygodit'soexciting...




GROCERIES!

I bought exactly four varieties of vegetables.

Two (or three counting tomatoes) varieties of fruit. One fresh, one frozen.

I bought CEREAL and EGGS.

I bought MILK and YOGURT!

I bought FOOD for-to EAT!

But damn, Sarah, I forgot the cheese.

Quantifying

Things The Novelist never liked about me:

My mercurial attitude toward cats (which I think is only what the species deserves considering its mercurial attitude toward me)

My unfixableness

My fear of
1. spinach
2. exercise
3. family
4. outer space
5. the military

My inability to share an umbrella

My fluctuating ability to sleep (countered with incredible powers of tossy-turny, nightmare-induced fits)

The way I pointed out his eye boogers. At least I stopped trying to pick them out myself.

The way I hated myself.

The way I left his bed messy in the morning. His bed is impossible; old sheets, old mattress, egg-cup foam thing – all askew (see above referenced tossy-turny abilities)

My disdain for frozen vegetables.

My abundant social life. (I kid you not. I’M the social one.)

My untouchable subjects.

My tendency toward disappearance…

Things I never liked about The Novelist:

His fervent need to spread the joy of military history to ME, though repeatedly told of the unwillingness of his audience.

The great agility with which he dismissed my nightmares.

The way he insisted on sharing an umbrella.

His love for me. Highly suspect.

Things I really don’t like about The Novelist now:

His un-love for me.

And the Lord sayeth unto JoBiv, I shall destroy you further!

The Novelist. JoBiv. No longer. He's done with me. Near the anniversary of hospitalization and our first dates.

I am not strong enough for this.

Sleep is for the weak. And JoBiv.

The weak and JoBiv - not mutually exclusive.

I slept through the past week. No, really. I showed up for work here and there, but I didn't exist for anything else outside my bed. Sometimes I took off my pants before I slept. Sometimes I had funny hair when I woke up. I'm sure I had funny hair lots of times but had no proof because I was not inclined to look in mirrors. I was inclined to sleep.

Not so much inclined as fully horizontal.

Everyone I know thought I was injured or hospitalized, except my co-workers. They saw me for four-hour periods of time.

List of people who thought I was dead, injured, hospitalized, or incarcerated:

1. My therapist. I was not in his presence, where I ought to have been, the two times a week I ought to have been there.

2. My psychiatrist. But that was nearly purposeful. He thinks I'm bi-polar and I'm sick of his shit.

3. My chorus. I had a nightmare during that sleep. Someone had pooped in the bathtub and no one would clean it. I kept getting filthier and filthier and wished there were cleaning supplies so I could clean everything and myself.

4. My boyfriend. He actually yelled at me a little (in his way - he generally doesn't yell unless his brother is coming at him with a spatula.) I finally got in touch with him and he was pretty mad. He wants me to be okay.

5. Becca, English Jo, Major Healey, choir Melis, my boss... all people with whom I had made plans. All people who I disappointed.

6. My brother Tom, who has called me twice in the past month, which is weird considering he forgets how to pronounce my name sometimes.

7. My parents. They called, paged, voicemailed, messenger-pigeoned. I was not awake.

Where was JoBiv?

In my bed, having nightmares, waking for short periods of time during which I hated myself utterly for sleeping during the day, ate sliced bread, and went back to my bed. Sometimes I drank tea to wake myself up, but I'd get dizzy and my eyes would slip shut and I found myself in bed again, dreaming of research facilities where little girls forcibly underwent CPR and made papier mache collages of huge serpents, where deformed people were kept standing in stalls with blue curtains that showed their heads and feet, like dressing rooms, where a teenager had to seduce her nextdoor neighbor to keep him from kicking her little sisters' dogs, where I walked up to people who had to hear me but I would walk through them, mute and transient. Or else I was half-awake, pulling out the bad hairs and trying to distract my mind with a funny book or movie or thought - anything.

Is she back to stay?

It's hard to be back but it was hard to be there, too. When I informed my mom that I am alive she mentioned that maybe I shouldn't be working. This year has been hard, after all, and I'm not strong enough to work two jobs, earn my own rent, run my own life.

It hurts, but not because she doubts me when I need her support. It hurts in the place between my ribs and lungs where I can see myself going home to my girlhood bed, her hand sweeping my hair from my forehead and encouraging the tears.

Work clothes shmerk clothes

I currently sit at my new desk. It is a symphony of particle board and wood laminate. It maintains its regal shape by a system of dowels, cams, and lusty screws that twist to the sultry dance of the allen wrench.

It is a wonder.

And it's in my living room. Have you seen my apartment? No? Well, it's bigger than the Beacon St. place, MUCH bigger than the hovel on Queensberry Street, but alas, there are no extra rooms yearning to become offices. Luckily, the living room is FREAKIN' HUGE! and my rather large Ode to Laminate fits nicely in one corner without disturbing the natural flow of life amongst my fellow apartment dwellers.

I'm pretty sure I'll feel a disturbance. I'm the one who works at home. From home. IN home. Hm. Can I do this? I already survived the big Benefit Gala Whooziwazzit last Monday evening. I dressed myself up and kept my heels on and shook hands with as many people as possible, gleaning pieces of their stories from my co-workers. I sipped champagne and passed up the refill, ate strawberries dipped first in white, then milk chocolate and decorated to look like they wore tuxes. I made sure everyone had a good time. If they didn't, I let them tell me why. I told approx. 620 women where to powder their collective noses.

And now, in stark contrast to my heels and gentlewomanly ways, I sit in my pj's and pipe information into a big database. Next I send letters all over. After that I get to learn the true meaning of my job, which is actually many many jobs rolled up into one that should take up 20-30 hours of my week.

I'm thinking I'll put a suit on every day for this week. Y'know, 'til it sinks in.

staccato fermata

staccato:

1.	shortened and detached when played or sung: staccato notes.

2.	characterized by performance in which the notes are abruptly disconnected: a staccato style of playing.

fermata:

1.	the sustaining of a note, chord, or rest for a duration longer than the indicated time value, with the length of the extension at the performer's discretion.

2.	a symbol placed over a note, chord, or rest indicating a fermata.*

panic attacks:

1. staccato fermata



*Thank you Dictionary.com

Now that I'm over myself...

I have to tell you how beautiful the wedding was, how blue-sky 18th century American it was. How amidst opulent surroundings (and food to which I would build altars), there was my stunning Sus in her simple, elegant dress, entirely herself, entirely joyful.

While I dodged social bullets, I got to talk with Liz, my old guitar teacher, for a good long time. I got to catch up with Meredith and Rob, Sus's sister-in-law, various old friends of Sus's... I got to slow dance with my beautiful boyfriend, who, as always, maintained his sparklingly gentlemanlike manners. He watched me and celebrated for me as I was celebrating.

The day after the wedding there was a slightly awkward trip to the Honey Pot Hill Apple Orchard. It was completely slammed with families taking advantage of a gorgeous, summer-like autumn day on Columbus Day weekend. The apples seemed ready for us, waiting patiently in heavy clusters. The first one I tasted was hot on one side from the sunlight, the other side tart and cold.

I walked with my friends, but often couldn't talk for fear of letting something monstrous out.

And on Tuesday I got more time with Sarah and Kristin (and Meredith, who works so close to my apartment that she might as well work in my armpit). I got some good quality SarahandJo time, catching up on all the things a person can't quite speak about in letters or postings.

So, it was a confusing weekend. And because I'm obnoxiously fragile these days, I'm having a hard time sorting out the hurt from the joy. I hate the ambiguity. I hate feeling out of control. I miss my friends so much and we had so little time.

I had some cool-ass shoes to wear for the wedding, though. I'll cling to that.

TAOTA: The Attack of the Acronyms

DBT: Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. Thursday nights at five. The idea is to take emotions like “my Dad pisses me off” and keep them from turning into “I’m a jerk for hating what my dad did and deserve horrific punishment.” Also supposed to give me control over: hair-pulling, obsessive cleaning, panic attacks… It’s group therapy, so it sucks.

IRS: Internal Revenue Service. They think I made money last year. They want the money I have now. Boy, will they be disappointed when they see the Sacajawea coin collecting dust in my piggy bank’s pink ceramic foot.

EMDR: No idea what it stands for anymore. It’s a type of therapy that’s supposed to help archive traumatic memories in a safer place than, say, right nextdoor to your fight or flight instincts. The goal is to reduce nightmares, make many of my memories “less present,” remove my hair trigger. I started a week ago and we only got to the “let’s rip everything wide open and stare inside” stage. Didn’t quite make it to the re-filing. Might explain the panic attacks’ increasing frequency, but that’s just a guess. This therapy currently SUCKS MY HUGE MISSHAPEN WHITE ASS.

TCMF: Terezín Chamber Music Foundation. My new employer! I feel like my life will level out a bit once I have more dependable hours. Do take a look at the website I’m hell-bent on renovating.

raise your hand if you have a job

and bad dreams every morning

money dwindling. bills gathering. cold seeping. clothes decaying.

i'm so tired some days. I curl myself up tight just to remember my body.

my body seems so pointless. why do I have it? it's just a machine that refuses to shut down when all i want to do is shut down. how silly and inconvenient a body is. i have to cover it and clean it and scratch it when it itches, medicate it when it hurts.

how did this brain come to be in this body? or rather, how did these thoughts get to be in this brain, this obnoxious organ that came with the whole package... i want to extract the thinking. i want it all silent and sweet in there.

i don't want to work on my life anymore.

Remember my friend, Jack Sprat? Whelp, he's getting married this weekend and I'm going to NY to witness it.

He's getting married at Saint Bonaventure. This is the first time I've had to return to the campus since Shane's funeral. I think I'll take a walk around campus on Saturday, along the Allegany/Allegheny/Allegeny River. (Seriously, can't remember which one's the town, which one's the River, and which one's the mountains, but I'm pretty sure they're all spelled creatively.)

The back of the St. Bona's campus goes from athletic fields to woods to river. The woods have these amazing raised pathways and ancient trees, occasionally deer, occasionally bears, occasionally grottoes with crudely and sincerely made altars. It makes sense if you know anything about St. Francis and his love and respect for nature. I plan to walk through the woods and visit those places. I don't think God watches me... Well, I have trouble thinking of God... but I do get this sense of the trees and the river and grottoes opening for me, making room, allowing my presence.

I'll have to go down the river trail to the park, too, of course. Must have a ceremonial swing on the swingset. I won't escape Shane there. It's past time to let him catch up with me.

The Facts of Life

I haven't written for a full month.

My hours got cut at the preschool. I now work 2:30 to 6:00. My last paycheck: $47.71. Also, the Brookline classrooms shut down due to mold, mice, caving ceilings and other unfriendly building issues. I have an hour and fifteen minute commute to Watertown to work my 3.5 hours.

I have to go to a wedding on the 19th. My parents have to drive me there and pick me up.

I spent last weekend in NYC. I still don't like NYC. As we rode out on the Fung Wah, we passed a cemetery that went on forever. Most of it was full of tall statues and obelisks. The skyscrapers in the background seemed a cheap imitation.

I've been to three different beaches this summer, three pools, and one pond. I'd forgotten how my body feels when it's suspended by water. Actually, I'd forgotten my body entirely.

A few weeks ago I put aside all the ripped, stained, or otherwise unusable clothing from my dresser and closet. A fourth of my wardrobe remains.

Last night The Novelist and I had dinner with English Jo in Harvard Square. After dinner we walked toward the sound of music. It was a brass ensemble, playing intricate classical pieces, ragtime, jazz... It suddenly felt like I was on vacation.

Within two weeks, I've had a stomach bug, a sinus infection, an ear infection, and back spasms.

Vicious nightmares.