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Marzo 27, 2008
two things i always avoid
newspapers
cnn
so i didn't hear the speech; i read about it in the Stranger's Last Days column, which, you might be thinking qualifies as a newspaper but, trust me, it doesn't. Nobody knows news better than a photojournalist's wife and i'm here to tell you that the Last Days is NOT news--its much better!
so here is the Obama quote:
"The real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job--its that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit. I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together--unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction--towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren."
and here is what Last Days said about that:
"In a testament to Obama's conviction and/or acting chops [and/or speech writers--hooray writers!], none of this made Last Days want to throw up. Obama '08!"
then something about a man building a robot and programming it to kill him and they're calling it suicide..
then there is a bit about a pigeon running around 3rd and Union with a thyringe thtuck through ith head like an arrow (keep that in mind for Halloween costume next year).
"This week continues with one of the more pathos-rich scenarios to unfold on a Seattle street since LD watched that saltine dissolve in a shallow puddle...[i remember that!] ...Once LD posted Melyssa's report on the Slog, not one but 2 Slog commenters revealed they too had seen the syringe pigeon. 'I saw that pigeon in about the same place a week or two ago, 'wrote Andrew. 'For what it's worth, it appears to be a chronic condition for this pigeon rather than a fatal one.' 'I, too, saw that same bird, or another one with the same affliction, a week or so ago at the ... bus stop,'wrote DJ Girth [haha]. '2 junkies were laughing at it. It sort of felt like they had something to do with it.' These reminiscences brought a bracing rant from Greendyke: 'Jesus fuck--this pigeon has been walking around like this for 3 weeks and at least 3 sloggers have seen it and NO ONE in Seattle has helped it? I am ashamed to be a human being.' Finally, key perspective was provided by Comte: 'You ever try to catch a pigeon? I personally wouldn't feel all that comfortable trying to wrap my hands around a squirming bird with th business end of somebody's works sticking out of it. And while it may seem callous and inhumane, I would point out that the poor bird is apparently surviving, so that says something for the resiliency of Columba livia.'"
then, on my birthday: "Nothing happened today, unless you count the AP revelation that the 2-year-old [sic] boy in La Joya Texas, who was found dead with a fatally fractured skull was most likely accidentally crushed by a morbidly obese relative. Good one, God."
and then i got this email from our minister of outreach (who is one of the few people who understands my ministry most of the time):
Monday, March 24, 2008 - 10:05 AM PDT
State shuts down another North Seattle motel
Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle)
For the second time in less than a week, the Washington Department of Health has shut down a motel in the 12000 block of North Aurora Avenue in North Seattle.
This time, the state shut down the Seattle Motor Inn at 12245 N. Aurora Ave., with an inspector saying "members of the public who may choose to stay there are at risk of serious injury and/or illness because of the motel's unsanitary and unsafe condition."
Last week, the state shut down the Orion Motel
State officials said they're responding to complaints from the city of Seattle when inspecting and revoking the licenses of the North Seattle motels.
The Seattle Motor Inn, according to the state's inspection, revealed in one unit that "a five-gallon bucket filled with dark brown, fetid water from a leaking fixture was being stored under the vanity next to the bathroom."
In another unit, "sharp metal wire stuck out from the edge of the mattress ... and the walls were grimy and in poor condition with thick runny gobs of dried-on liquids found throughout."
In a third unit, "mold was found growing on the wall behind the toilet."
The pool at the motel "is one-third full of fetid, contaminated water" and the pool area "is littered with debris and discarded items." And the inspector noted that "nearly all of the smoke detectors tested at the property were not operable."
The owner of the Seattle Motor Inn, listed by the state as Dean and Jill Inman of Bothell, have 20 days to request a hearing and contest the charges. The motel's license was revoked on March 22.
sure, i like when government officials are as poetic as to use the phrase "runny gobs" in a report but i was there every Monday afternoon for a good many months and the fetid, gobby nast was real moreover, the children who played and lived and tried to do homework in those rooms were real. and they loved their moms and dads and that was real too. and i consider myself lucky not to have contracted a serious disease despite my very real dis-ease.
No wonder i felt so wild and weirded out last week.
i can't believe people worry about PMS when all this kind of roller coastering hopeful and otherwise shitty shit is really going on all around us; maybe we should all be moody and bitchy EVERYDAY.
did i mention i love you more than i love tomwaits, which is a lot?
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Marzo 24, 2008
tomwaits
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martin's wish list
the Tequila book
radiant heat
more south park episodes
new collared shirts (not blue)
beer, not pbr
new pants
nintendo wii supersmashbrothersbrawl
big pointy dog [just kidding]
grace
phoff to stop trying to convert him to lutheranism
a hole in the fence so our big [not] pointy dog can be friends with Andy and Mary's burmese mountain dog [actually Yuba is a mutt, but when the list was composed they were thinking of a burmese, and Yuba who munches quietly on ornamental cherry blossoms, is better than some weird mountain dog anyway]
teeshirt from the grinder [his favorite coffee stand] with special long sleeves sown in
kleen kanteen
a circular saw
40 0f his bestest friends to come to the baseball game and see something poetic on the jumbotron in his honor.
~
his birthday is coming up.
4/25/08
we're going to see the M's & A's which is sort of funny because one time he scratched the very same thing into the bridge over the creek where i grew up, but it wasn't about baseball back then... i think he must have been in love with me or something.
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Marzo 21, 2008
Emma says:
Hello Abigail,
I just wanted to wish you a very good day today. I wish I could hang out with you today and hear you laugh. It just turned to spring this morning in Kansas. An army of invisible birds have come out of the woodwork to make a whole bunch of noise. It’s beautiful and I like to think it’s for you and your birthday pal Shantelle.
Love!
--Emma
Abigail says:
spring is the best time to be born, over and over again.
consider this your engraved invitation:
"Love!"
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Marzo 20, 2008
a poem like a to do list.
...
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Marzo 19, 2008
research = bitch slap
"...in order to treat children ethically we need to be able to hear what it is they value and to be able to see how they make sense of the social world.[...] Children have standpoints which are not the same as adult standpoints; moreover they know a great deal about parenting and its consequences"(Smart, Neale, Wade, 2001).
they know.
you know.
i know.
we know.
more than anyone expected we would.
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Marzo 17, 2008
on the brink
"How can I, how dare I presume to form you from my rib?... To do justice to you an essential injustice is required. That is the heart of my dilemma. I can never be you:yet in order to be myself I must imagine what it is to be you."
--A. Brink, The Wall of the Plague (London: Fontana, 1985), p.446.
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Marzo 10, 2008
cfm like peterpan
last year at the easter vigil i led the procession of children away from the altar and out the main sanctuary doors.
afterward someone said i may be the new children and family minister but i am a little more like an imp, or the pied piper or peterpan.
but i don't do it for the parents to be rid of their children. i am careful to engineer each event so that children will have access to their parents. and slowly, and much to their dismay, the parents are beginning to realize this.
now i don't claim to know what the parents are going through as they struggle with flash floods of parenthood ambivalence. i don't have "my own kids". but i meet their frustration and pain with genuine concern and THANKGOD genuine curiosity--that is the prerogative of the childless children and family minister.
Dan allender says that really being with a family is like being on the autobahn and if you don't know where you're going to, you'll miss the turn off.
sometimes all i can do is believe in the healing power of a casserole. othertimes, well, miracles happen.
but the parents often respond to even the most genuine curiosity the way groan-ups often do:
we're fine.
we're well.
we're just tired.
they think i can't see behind the sad crinkles around their eyes or the way their lips tremble, just a little when they look to the left and try to evade the questions about what they did with the dead cat, or said about the dead grandpa. they don't think i notice the gray hairs they have grown this year or the tired way they slump to the altar railing for the host.
you can't depend on parents to understand children--it is so difficult. they spent so much energy trying to separate themselves from childhood and now, they somehow can't get back to neverland because they have run out of pleasant thoughts. sometimes they are, in the best innocence of the word and also in the worst way: children themselves.
they should call me the children and grown up children's minister.
you know, in the gospel reading from last week Jesus wept.
and i told the children sitting on the wine-soaked carpet stairs up to the altar:
weeping means big, giant tears come pouring out.
and they were looking right in my face. so i told them, i said it right into the lapel mic: it is OK to not be OK.
but i can't force you.
so today when i sat in my car and thought of the way i send mixed messages, and the way i confuse people because i hope beyond hope that they will read between the lines,
i felt real not ok and real bad, and so
i was weeping.
and i had this one tiny wonderful thought: even if you don't understand, i do.
i know exactly what is going on in my head and if you just stay with me a little, and get creative, and add in your two cents, and then ask a genuine question or two, you could understand too. but that is all debunked now.
i think today will be the first day i can stop expecting the adults in my life to understand. i think i can finally see how badly they want me to explain things to them in words they understand. not that i will be able to do this, but at least i have a new view of the problem.
and i called my husband and he said, "you have a prophets heart and you have to call these parents to more." and then i said that i feel like i chose to be in two worlds at the same time and he said, "because that is what you did."
because he just knows this stuff.
and i think its real difficult when i wake up on a gray morning in March and realize that my very presence is pressuring parents to put one foot in their child's world, and keep one foot in theirs and it really sucks to have to be both places. the word is "ambivalence" but it might as well be ambivolatile or ambifuckedover.
i know, because i am dumb enough to hope, they can do it; there is plenty of casserole around here and still a few miracles yet to get born.
and you have to realize that every week when i give the children's word as part of the liturgy the room falls silent because the children are interested (which is to say, not fidgeting behind a pewback too tall to see over) and
the parents are taking notes on how to talk to their children and
the grandparents are grateful that somebody can keep this shit simple, for once... and
the pastor is praying thankyouGodthatwasonethingicrossedoffmytodolist and
the childless couple is heartaching in the back row, holding onto somebody else's baby girl, as she sleeps in the barren arms hopefully realizing that Jesus probably fielded the questions and accusations about why he didn't get married or have kids or settle down or whatever. and
even my husband sits with the young adults and they listen in out of jealousy or hope for an entry point or something funny to happen because they want so very much to enjoy church.
i do not want you to think that i am in anyway tooting my own horn because you can see now the pressure i think i am under, i think we all just want out so bad that when i tell them that Jesus' sadness is, in fact, good news... well, it doesn't take a genius to hate me or at least smile knowingly that this is pretty insane, and think silently, to oneself, "oh, no she didn't".
and yet, they haven't fired me yet.
i may look like peterpan, leading your children off to some safe place where their childhood will stay the same forever... but really it is more like i'm hoping you're jealous and looking back and forth at your own life the way you watch a tennis match.
neverneverland is named such because i haven't been there and i can't suggest it: you have to take yourself with you when you grow up.
and that is why i am here to help, in my mixed message sort of way.
go on, give in to the morbid curiosity--lean over the casket and get a good wiff of or at least a good long look at the dead body of your dream that adulthood would be better. i'll be here when you look up again, just hanging around like some sort of good idea, bad idea whore on the corner, tempting you to dream a new, violently hopeful dream.
hinthint: adulthood is just another childhood but now you know the names for all the colors, all the flowers and all the people you just don't like, and some of them are the smallish folks you yourself named.
and that is ok with me, sad, realfuckingsad, but OK.
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Marzo 07, 2008
one million tiny risks
this is what it feels like to make sure your heart broke before,
by breaking my heart over and over.
when grandma celia died i really wanted to see the body.
this is sort of like that.
i will always want more.
always.
from you.
from me.
it feels like i'm losing it.
but not really.
there is something about reading
what i wrote
when it is
written all over your face.
i never knew my own strength
i never knew how much power i had
or didn't have.
a kind of power without any power
like magic, all tricks and turning
but it really mattered,
didn't it?
yeah.
every shining time.
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Marzo 04, 2008
words cannot
explain what was so upsetting.
so he just sighed a death rattle sigh and i threw up my hands and took off my glasses
to try to let him off the hook and
i guess it was too late because the damage was done.
it would be nice if people who are having a bad day would just pass around duct tape before they begin the meeting so i could cover my mouth.
but they don't.
they never do.
you can't count on them to even think of bringing duct tape, much less pass it around.
my heart just goddamn hurts over it.
every hero has to fall sometime.
i feel like some big hope is trying to hatch.
these days feel like the last days of middle school--slow walks and sleepless nights. hunger pangs and nervous laughter.
don't get me wrong: i'm not expecting a grand commencement. i'm thinking more along the lines of some great short-lived show of gratitude or apology or someway to mark the time we spent together. or else maybe this is just the way life feels when, at last, i can feel again and nothing will come of it because this is just how things go up and down and up and down because there isn't a singular cause or result, just the up and down and the pain runs through me and then through you like electricity, it just comes and goes but we stay and do the work and cry and laugh and keep on.
so i think i'll just keep all this in my brain, store it away and not say anything right away. i'll just add it into the mix of things i know him to be capable of, and hold the whole situation real gently and keep thinking of what might be hatching and what kinds of things hatch from hurts.
i can't really say much else about it, not much else at all.
in other sort of related news:
sometimes people put all kinds of shit in their front yard and it looks real good, you know? like nasty old shoes and plants grow up out of them, and old bed frames and bits of broken glass and pottery, like something Job would scratch an itch with. and it all looks real welcoming; like they want you to know that even plants know that shittiness is OK in a way, so come on in and stay a while. like maybe shit grows there like plants grow there. oh, i don't know!
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Marzo 03, 2008
when to say when
i may have told you this before but i've been on the roster at quite a few schools.
two preschools
presby kids
mudpies
one grammar
Harmony School,
one middle school
Salmon Creek Middle School.
El Molino High School
Shorecrest High School
Meadowdale High School
Edmonds Community College
Santa Rosa Junior College
Bethany Bible College
St. Mary's College
El Diablo Valley College
Sonoma State University
San Francisco State University
San Jose State University
Mars Hill Graduate school
read'em and weep.
over the past seven years i have taught at
Bryant Elementary
Campolindo High School
Fairmount Elementary
Jackson Elementary
Little Sonshine Preschool
Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church, ELCA
somewhere in there between schools, when
i was a barista or
a landscaper's assistant or when
i sold designer jeans or when
i was a cook at the summer camp,
i harnessed the power of a lateral lisp,
i buried a few friends and relatives,
got married and
wrote a pretty good poem or two.
so now you know my qualifications, i want to tell you something that you may not learn at anyoneschoolinparticular:
somebody really important in my littleworld, somebody who has a two year old son who sang to me holy holy holy
told me today that
sometimes i don't have to do what i don't want to do, which is sort of like last year when somebody else told me that
sometimes trying harder is not the answer.
i think this falls under the category of learning when to say when or learning about enjambment and also under the heading of seeing the past redeemed.
i just thought you might like to see it all here in lines and circles. maybe,
seeing it
written down like
a prescription or
a contract or
a receipt or
a love letter
makes it easier to refer to when you wonder what the hell is going on around here. and why i have finally landed, even though it ought to be about time for me to participate in commencement or transfer out, or something like that--i mean, two years at the same school is a long time for someone like me.
and if you want to know
why i do what i do, or
why i like what i like or
why i don't have what people call "kids of my own", or
why i am suddenly discovering
that having boundaries is a lot like having
a superpower
i think this might help to answer those questions too...
i'm already doing the best i can and i have a sneaking suspicion
that you might be too, so i'm pretty damn thankful--
confused, but thankful.
and since it is lent and we aren't so say all*l%&!, i won't, but i'm thinking it, and God knows and that is probably OK.
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