Agosto 2005 Archives

Either you get over it or you just are over it. In the parlance of our times, I am so over it.
And I realized that teaching preschool is probably more like manufacturing fireworks than it is like anything else.
Grace is mostly a commitment.

In between the sneezing and snoring I have, since Thursday, been reconsidering church membership as a serious option. Pastor Mark said such a funny thing; something to this effect: "There seem to be a lot of PCA churches down there, as if that area attracts people who believe the Bible is true."

From the look on his face and his admission that he was called to PCUSA to work for "renewal," I took him to mean that we all want to be on the winning team because that is just one of the things we tell ourselves and yet it doesn't change the facts that God is sovereign and doesn't need us to be members of any denomination... because the word of God is true, no matter who says what. I don't mean to oversimplify or offend, for all I know he was saying something different and I just heard what I wanted to hear; that would not be a bit surprising.

Or maybe, though I know he would never say this, he meant to say what I probably need to hear: Oh, Abigail just shut up and hold still, this will only hurt (your pride) for a second. Altogether it is an honestly subversive remark to make (if that is possible) and I am taking it to heart. I think I could get behind a church that is so big it (unknowingly?)allows people like pastor Mark-believing the word of God to be inerrant, like he does-to, um, join in at the risk that he might (gasp) somehow bring with him some kind of renewal.

Here is where I apply the old Groucho joke: I wouldn't want to be a member of any club that would have someone like me for a member... or something like that. But I am not sure that the church body knows we aren't members already. It has only been since we moved back into town that we quit the worship team on Sunday mornings. Martin was even on the payroll for four years. Which begs the question: do they know we aren't members and, simply enough, they don't care?
In which case, it might be fun to ruffle a few feathers and confess that we are, at last, willing to, well, confess?

Which leads me to my next question: where is the PCA when you need it, anyway?

The answer is that there are five in San Jose, but the closest is about an hour away and my husband has this idea that maybe we should go to a church in the community we live in (clearly, he is the brains behind the operation) and I am here afforded the luxury of submission. That too is Pastor Mark's doing, he married us after all. I just keep telling myself: membership will be what it is and who am I if I don't stand up on teal colored carpet between two brown pews and praise Jesus?

You have to laugh if your car is crashed on the way to the demolition derby. Martin called and said he was in an accident and even though it wasn't his fault, he was in the car that spun him around so fast his glasses fell off his face and are probably somewhere in the ditch. The skid marks say the giant white truck didn't even hit the brakes until it was already in the intersection.
Good thing our car shot into the front yard of a man who sells fences (he advertises with the Pinnacle) and his wife said they were thinking of taking out the section martin drove through anyway. The skinny little tree he drove over bounced right back up into place.
They gave him a shot at the hospital, which he says is the worst part. He doesn't complain about the arm hair burned and bent by the airbag explosion, or the fact that he had taken the time to fold the laundry before it all flew out the rear window--the tow truck man had to sweep my clean underwear out of the street. Now I'm thinking maybe I should pass up the chance to put skid marks and underwear in the same entry.
This morning the man who would be dead except for the car my dad gave me in college, is sitting on the floor petting the cat telling her it is just to two of them today: Tetanus Arm and No Teeth. He looks up at me and says he just realized that the first thought that went through his mind was "well, we're not going to the demolition derby tonight, and I didn't even get to watch the airbag deploy."

sometimes...people be sayin' I like to know what happened to Lamarcus.
I'mjustsayin'isall.

Sometimes I allow myself to remember the times when I have heard the whispering from inside that this is real, this is really happening something is actually happening and it is real. In the memories I hear myself answer, an audible whisper: this isn't real.
and the empty denial is what I think I want because there is always a tiny bit of this left to hold on to: A picture of what is ahead and behind like a landscape full of trees and moss and hope.
I have never been able to make this picture go away. I know I still choose it, but only sometimes now. It is denial cutting things apart.
The hope just looks so beautiful even when it is tearing me to bits. The consequence: it is not fully faith, I am not trembling against the landscape- if I am even in the picture at all. It doesn't diappoint me, but it doesn't ask very much either, from a character like mine. Faith, on the other hand, propels me forward, drives me toward commitment, the fear that makes my nightmares unbearable. My little relief comes from how crazy change can make me.

This is how I explain it to myself, hoping I will ...stop it.

This is from my wedding:

From Part of Eve's Discussion
by Marie Howe
It was like the moment when a
bird decides not to eat from your
hand, and flies, just before
it flies, the moment the rivers
seem to still and stop because a storm
is coming, but there is no storm, as
when a hundred
starlings lift and bank together
before they wheel and drop,
very much like the moment
driving on bad ice, when it
occurs to you your car could spin
just before it slowly begins to spin,
like the moment just before you forgot
what it was you were about to say
it was like that, and after that it
was still like that, only all the time.

Falling in love is real, I know this much: the falling, and the love, and they are hard to part and hard to stop so you don't.

I took the day off to rest... but it is a joke. There are too many good things to do here. Moreover the cat just puked and is now back to carrying on the way she does: running up the walls and keeping watch from the high windows.
So I am ignoring her and her pukeitallupandjustgetonwithit way of doing things.

I bought this book for Martin because he really wanted it but then he didn't use it. I don't mind... I didn't know how good it is until today.

"Peach
Prunus persica Batsch
A well-known, small fruit tree with a
short trunk, spreading, rounded crown,
showy pink blossoms, long, narrow
leaves, and yellow to pink juicy fruit...
Leaves:...Lance-shaped or
narrowly oblong, finely saw-toothed, sides
often curved up from midvein; leafstalks
short with glands near tip. Shiny green
above, paler beneath. Crushed foliage
has a strong odor and bitter taste.
Bark: dark reddish-brown, smooth,
becoming rough, bitter..."
-
There are plenty of poems about peach trees and peaches, to be sure. But this I have found to be just as tantalizing as any, in spite of its prescient pose. High quality unintentional enjambment (hooray) blah blah blah... and the way such a fancy book would use the word twig with such authority. It is like an excercise in the subversive nature of four letter words: Screwbean Mesquite, Roemer Catclaw, Jerusalem Thorn, Silktree, Cliffrose, Oneseed Juniper and then you start to think this is your grammar school class picture, all your friends lined up, looking their best and such comforting common names: Tamarisk, Sugar Sumac, Saguaro, Lyontree, Little Walnut, Quaking Aspen.

What a great book to sneeze on.

Martin happens to have taken pictures of most of the people I stare at when we drive through Gilroy. Today it was a kid who looked too young to be driving a 1968 Volkswagen bug painted to look like Herbie.
"I know that kid."
"Which one?"
"The one you were looking at. He has chickens."
"Oh." (Keep in mind I am still feeling a little under the weather, trying to sit still and keep quiet.)
"They call him the chicken whisperer. His chickens are real calm."
I laughed really hard and kind of honked.
He is a very important kid. This is the second article.
This is the first.
Just thought you might want to know what it is like around here right now.

If that doesn't work, you can wait until September 19th at 8pm and watch the season premier of Arrested Development... whee!

new sniffles. There is a swarm of bees in my brain, each one angry and loathesome. I feel sorry for the four year old who had this cold before me.

about some things.
I like to eat mussels now, as long as there is plenty of garlic involved.

Paid vacation with a photojournalist means you buy one disposable camera and hope for the best.

I made the mistake of watching Eternal Sunshine of blah blah blah (titles!) and now it is even easier to explain to myself about hiding things and trying to forget where I put them. After, I peeled apart some old pictures and was very glad to draw lines around lips and curls up on the small bed in my memory.... Gummy candies don't keep well, though. Those can be thrown out but wait until you change your mind about them. Give it time.

when you have problems you are supposed to seek counsel so I remembered this poem I wrote about four years ago.

Takedown

They were married in a fishbowl--it would take Houdini.

and then recently I was reminded about this one, just as old, because a good title is very important. I'm sure it should not be so long it grates, I know, I just don't want to fix it tonight because it is really right--especially the annoying title. It feels like some kind of stupid prediction; as if shit everywhere is sort of okay.

I didn't know I could be a diarrhetic until I met you... but I must be: everytime we are together it is just shit, everywhere.

Shag carpet is like a treasure chest.
I keep finding things.
India ink
Hundred dollar bill
Milk
Wild animals like turkey, aunts.
Clear fingernail polish
Egg shells
the cello tape she called bandaids.

Swan Lake is back.
And just in time to glue yourself back together after the holidays.

On the flight home I sat next to a man who grilled the pilot in the aisle seat until the latter opened up his copy of the new Harry Potter book. I have come to understand that landing a plane is like playing the drums, all hands lifting and dropping at the right time while feet and ears follow a rythm.
But I have known for some time that playing the drums is about toes and fingers too.
The ballet explains all of this, don't you see? landing gear, trap sets, Tendue, sur le coup de pie, (French spelling abilities aside) you learn to curve your arm for a drop of water and it tells the truth, and you can even be taught to keep yourself from getting dizzy in the turning. No wonder we send little girls as soon as they can stand still; it is good to know what your arms are doing and how to keep from falling down when things fall apart.
Find your Bill Withers record and put it on. That works even if your eyes are closed: we have to stick together.

While I was away my cat fell out the window and landed in a bush with purple flowers. At least we know she lives with the right family; it has been a difficult week.
Two good things: first, taking showers at someone else's house means you can use all the fancy potions they keep in there. I can't recommend using the bar soaps-that is gross-but the sparkling moisturizing body wash and the fruit salad fortified microbead facial and the sea salt exfoliating scrub that feels like scratching itches you didn't know you had. If you are really lucky they will offer you a washcloth and you can just stand there with a hot washcloth over your face and breathe in, out and think about how to get your poems to rhyme or a word for the sound of your friend telling you "I don't know" and how comforting it is.
second, when you get home there are welcome home phone calls.
Home is a very new thing to me; it is important to keep track of what it is like to be home and not home... that way, when I begin to panic at the idea of sleeping in the same bed every night, I can tell myself to shut up. After all, the cat wasn't trying to run away, she was trying to take a nap.

"I love you" means that all I can do is promise to feed your sheep as soon as I find them-every last one.
Sometimes (every once in a while) it means I don't want to turn over the tables in the temple but I will if I have to.
That is why it is so important to say it over and over again.

When I die, go ahead and cremate me, but not until anyone who wants to see the body has done so.
And please pass out cigarettes to anyone who wants one, just in case they are feeling right on the edge of dead themselves. I know that seems self indulgent but I think things are getting past that point by now.
Death makes me feel really alone now. I have been thinking about it the way we Mexicans think about it, if you know what I mean, and I am beginning to see the skeletons get up and dance without a care for who is watching.
The funeral must really be for the living, the dead are lucky enough: not at home, waiting for a phone call.

It is inconvenient to need someone around just to stand around, I know, but I think it might be exactly what husbands are for... by nature they become well aqcuainted with inconvenience--especially mine who is flying into Seattle at midnight tonight just to stand around my mom's backyard and look like a nice person and maybe play some hymns on guitar and then go home tomorrow evening. Good thing he used to be a rockstar, it was good preparation for this marriage gig.

And another thing I think I should put here just for your information because my mom was pretty surprised when I told her:
A memorial service party might be the best kind of party to throw because the host could just hole up in her bedroom, get really drunk, smoke a pack of cigarettes and never even speak to the guests... and no one would wonder why. So you know where I'll be when Martin dies, I have a plan, but you can still come to the party.

your prayer was answered! the memorial will be at my mom's house (phew) and maybe everyone will get stuck outside in bad weather
and there are so many gd raspberries in that f' ing backyard right now, i would love for my nieces to just make themselves sick at that kind of party on raspberries and strawberries covered in dirt and snail slime. and imagine them. the only family members with red faces for good reason!

but here is the main good thing:
Emily Mercedes, who, upon turning three years old, graduated to finger puppets in March: "achoo!"
Tia Abigail: "is that a real sneeze?"
"nope, now you sneeze!"
"achoo."
"gezundtight! Now I sneeze."
"bless you."
"bleh shoo."

today is the first birthday for my niece, katherine isabel, she was at her grandma mary's house and fell down and hit her head so damn hard she has a huge blue bump on her forehead. she is so tiny she is a few months shy of the clothes she should wear. but she plays a mean peekaboo.

my gramps died last night.
i had to get on a plane and for the first time i really listened to each of the sounds the plane makes during take off. they were so loud and beautiful and painful, i think that is what sound it would make if you could hear your own heart let go of a thing that really hurts.

before we landed the flight attendant told us to be kind to each other. and the plane touched down with such force and sweep i thought of swans: how mean they are and how i want to touch them when i see them. and of rose petals and how they feel in your hand when you grab the bud and pull. and, i thought, maybe i'll get this chance to do the right thing.

I think this might make marriage out to be bad, but it isn't: I just want you to know what it is really like so you know the strange parts a little better
Lots of people will tell you there are good parts but they won't tell you how the good parts of the lollipop have some little bits of fuzz to get around.

I have heard that for marriage you choose someone you really want to annoy for the rest of your life.
What I have found to be true: you come to understand that this person has every reason to hate you, absolutely, but he is unable to get past the promise to be loyal and take up for you and live in peace. And so he doesn't hate you, even if he should. It just isn't in him because he would have to hate himself enough for making those vows in order to break them, and he isn't about to hate himself and you at the same time, it would really be worse than imaginable... so he doesn't hate you. It is a mystery how two people become folded together like this. It has something to do with hope and (ouch) love, I think.

Gerard Manley Hopkins is still one of my favorite poets ever.
And when I begin to think I really messed things up and I am definitely going to get what I deserve, I read The Wreck of the Deutschland. It is nice and long so that by the end of it I either feel bad enough to really do something about my most recent offense or I feel much better.

The aforementioned Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket has a similar effect but it is short a nun or two.

Walt Whitman, were counting on you."-Federico Garcia Lorca, from Ode to Walt Whitman trans. Jack Spicer

RJ and I get a little bored when His Kacey and Martin leave us to our own devices. I was teaching him about the surrealist poets and their two person poems. They break apart right in half--Poets taking over the scientific method.
Here is an example from the surrealists:
If newspapers were printed on silver foil then, shit.-Pierre Unik, Louis Aragon trans. Marcel Jean
And these are our results:
If a mouse combs past a crying child then I would pay snakes to bite someone like you.
If my mom really does have MS... then puberty hopes for a new virgin to abhor.
I don't mean to state the obvious, but I can't help thinking that RJ really wanted an answer.
It is a wild moment when you see what someone is worried about. The elipses is his. We could talk plenty about what worries us but the poem unwrapped it--the part I wrote was just so, well, mean. It is something that surprises me everytime, probably because I expect it; the way poems crack us in half like rocks.

and then there is always the option of looking back instead of forward.

A friend of mine was recently smacked in the butt by a bus driver on account of her questionable behavior and the way I am feeling right now, I can't let this one die.
I am coming to think that we are responsible for helping each other out.
Being married is supposed to give you another chance to get holy. Do we really know, instinctively, that love leads to commitment?
There are plenty of people out there who know me; People who will tell you how much I like beer and hate to nap alone. But what they might not tell you is that I am very stubborn and I have to watch my favorite movies on a rotating schedule just to stay cogent. Oh, and I never know how to end a phone call; I always count to three or else I don't say goodbye at all: I just clap the phone shut. Also, I have a pronounced uni brow but I pluck it so I don't scare my students' parents.
I have been to exactly one very catholic funeral. The Priest kept saying "blessedartthowwwah MUNnnnnnGwimmen." It was my husband's grandma Celia's body lying quietly behind him (she was taking some romance novels to wherever she was going-- they were there in the pink casket with her). I couldn't really cry. I had to be brave. It is a wife thing.
I nearly cried the other day when the hairspray I took from her bathroom clogged up.
I think I didn't talk to her enough before she died, which is wierd because I sure as hell can talk. But, by marriage, we were responsible for each other. Its this spiritual connection, see.
It isn't as if I was her bus driver, obligated to let her know if her bad personality took over.
You just have to know to whom you are connected and your obligations, that is all.
I'm telling you, try to figure out who you belong to. It is important.
"Don't tease me about my hobbies, I don't tease you about being an asshole."-Garden State

I have been thinking a lot about apologies. I collect them the same way I collected sea shells as a little girl. I have many. One that coils around itself and comes to a point at the end. One flat round one that rattles whenever I shake it. Another one is just a broken off piece but its very colorful.

I think about them over and over like a security blanket
and just like when I receive them, I feel like they are never loud enough or strong enough to really solve anything when I make them.