Invisible frogs

I can hear frogs when I step outside. A stagey chorus of frog voices. I hear them, but I can't see them, although I lurked beside the pond this afternoon, peering into crevices. No dice.

I can even hear them in here, in my room. Don't be fooled; it's a creature metropolis out here in the country. Teeming. Last night I needed to walk, but the dark here is deep. I saw a path leading up and into trees and I stepped in that direction, flashlight in hand.

I stepped in that direction, then stopped. All the childhood fears - of things moving in the dark, things unseen, of lives going on in the underbrush - all came running up to hit me square in the face. I'm a grown-up woman who walks easily by neighborhood toughs and crackheads and drunks, but this was too much. An unknown path in the deep dark of the forest is just too much.

I turned back to my room, ready to run laps up and down the stairs.

Today a jackrabbit the size of a beagle looks at me out the side of his eyes, giant ears alert, then dismisses me. I'm not a threat; I barely exist in its world. A mutant bumblebee circles my head, impossibly staying aloft, buzzing like a small plane coming in for a landing.

Two deer have a friendly shit together not five feet away, and I barely register. I'm irrelevant.

A person could get used to this. If I could stay here another week or three, my little dramas might shrink back down into proportion. But it's only another day and a half, and then I'll be back in my own wilderness.

Until then, the frogs belch in their amphitheaters, unfazed by my tromping boots while I try to find them out. They're performing for another crowd entirely.

Time to make the doughnuts

Because what a writer does is write. Because I said this blog is updated weekly, and it's been a week. Because when my brother owned a doughnut store, he got up at four or even three every morning to make the doughnuts, yeah, just like the guy in the commercial.

Because there's no such thing as writer's block. There's only the writer and the page and the words and you have to put the words on the page or you're not a writer.

You have to put the words on the page even when you think there's nothing to say. It's only when you start putting words on the page that you remember the German tourist in running clothes asking how to get to Castro, and then to Golden Gate Park, how you point back in the direction he came from and he's off and flying, ready to cover the whole city in his white running shoes.

And his shoes, like a dotted line, point the way to the blond sitting in a doorway, her head down. She asks for a cigarette when you're already past her. She doesn't look up, the words coming out of her like she's been saying them for years, pull her string and Spare a cigarette? and the string runs out and someone else walks by and her string is pulled again: Spare a cigarette?

From her to chalked exhortations on the sidewalk:

It May Not Seem Like It, But Things Will Get Better
You Rock My Socks
I Am A Better Person Because Of You

A neighborhood crackhead wavers on his feet, burning cig between his fingers. His eyes trace the one that reads:

You Are Exactly Where You Need To Be

After the Party

I can hear the footsteps of other guests heading toward their cars. One asks if I'd like a ride. No thanks, I say. Not tonight.

Tonight I want to hear the ocean to my right as I walk along the dark street. My own shoes on the pavement, my breath going in and out. The sound of a small pickup idling at the corner booms out in the silence. It is metallic and outsize, the sound of an entire factory clashing into production.

I turn onto Taraval. Music pushes out from the Riptide. Narrow windows give glances of a tight crowd; boys holding girls hard against them, smokers slouching just out front.

On the bench at the stop is a young kid in a big black cowboy hat. An older man stands guard over a pile of bags and backpacks.

"I'm gonna fill the tub with salt," says the kid.

"You ain't going there," the man says.

"Tsh! Tsh!" the kid shushes.

He stands up and paces back to check the display. He's limping; one heel doesn't reach the ground. "Eight minutes," he says, drawling it out: Aay-it.

The train is full of kids heading out for their Saturday night. They are loud and full and humming with energy. One tall boy wears sneakers with puffy, distended tongues. They look festive, cartoonish.

I get off a stop sooner than I intend, but it works out well. I walk through quieter streets, my head emptying of all the pushing voices.

The host of tonight's party got bad news this week. A tumor. The party had been planned weeks before. My breath stops. Everything at the party stops. He tells us he'll be okay. It's going to be okay. He wrote a song about it, in the key of E. Guitar and accordion and our host singing that he'll be all right, and we all join in for the chorus.

He's going to be okay, he says, but his and his wife's faces are wide open and pale. Their eyes are bright and they smile with their whole tired selves. In the warm of their kitchen, we sing songs and clap out the beat, and one by one we shrug on coats and say goodnight, shining with grace of these people, this moment of being alive.

Mixed tape

I'm sitting near the back of the bus, a group of college-age kids across the aisle.

"Oh that was a long time ago."

"Did you know that Sheila's dad's car has a tape deck? A tape deck!"

"When was the last time they made cars with tape decks?"

"Come on over and listen to my mix tape!"

They laugh uproariously.

But I'm snapped back in time - one instant on the bus, groceries at my feet - the next I'm the car with my brother. He's wired a CD player to the speakers, but it's delicate. On bumpy roads the CD skips. The technology is still new, and I wonder if they'll ever make them stable enough that cars will some day come with CD players built in.

"Oh, sure," says my brother, his arm resting on the sill of the driver's side window. We listen to Elvis Costello, hurtling through the dark.

My brother and I are escaping. It's New Year's, but we didn't spend Christmas home with family. We're in L.A., or rather, leaving L.A. We've each been on our separate trips this week, but tonight we're both staying at my former boyfriend's mother's house in Topanga Canyon.

The mother is away; it's just former boyfriend (now friend), brother and me. There's nothing but bags of wheat germ in the fridge, so the three of us take off down the other side of the canyon looking for food. We're almost ready to settle for a convenience store burrito when we find a bar that's open. The fifty-something waitress has high blond hair and blue eyeshadow. Bar patrons sing Auld Lang Syne and she brings us a vegetarian pizza. All the vegetables are grown in the garden out back, she says.

It seems to be the best pizza I've ever had.

All this I've told again and again. The pizza and how we learned we'd stumbled into San Fernando Valley when a girl exclaimed, "Oh, miga-aawd!"

But I've never told about the three of us in that mid-century modern house hidden in the trees. About the tall windows and the mirrored wall, reflecting our selves back, perched on three mismatched chairs. My brother with his long legs stretched out in front of him. About the deep quiet surrounding us, how I dream of a movie with this image: three people in a white room, trees outside whispering secrets to one another in the dark.

About the furtive kiss with the former boyfriend when my brother is in another room, the relationship over but our bodies unconcerned.

It's one of those rare moments when we're aware - my brother and I - that we're on the verge of something new. My brother will marry soon, become a father. It's the last time we'll be together like this, and I think we know it.

I'm on the bus on my way home from work, groceries between my feet, and I'm missing my brother sharply. Late night talks after a date. Riding to school with him in the '65 Mustang he'd fixed up, rolling in a cloud of music. Staring in shared terror at the black widow on the wall of his basement room, the red hourglass on her abdomen winking out. An early morning drive home from our brother's wedding, windows rolled down and music blasting to keep us awake. Lying on my stomach in his room, reading lyrics from his album covers.

That last drive in the living dark, music rolling over us, as I lean out the window to breathe in the green of the trees.

Shared Sacrifice

I've been a bad blogger lately, an unreliable blogger, an occasional blogger. But that isn't because I've stopped writing.

If you're jonesing for some Chemical goodness, check out the new online journal Shared Sacrifice. I'm not posting there every week, but I hope to be able to contribute on a regular basis. Today I'm hard at work on a new story for the next issue (with a short break for this plug), and you can read more of my work in the current issue and archives.

The journal is an outgrowth of the online radio program of the same name. Worth checking out.

If you'd like to contribute, they're still looking for writers and artists...

Nostalgia is a drug, part 2

Continued right away to give Geo a little something to read while she heals...

We ask the desk clerk (the twin who wears the dark glasses) for a Do Not Disturb sign. At least I think that's what I ask him. Behind his sunglasses, he gives no sign of even hearing me. I describe to him, in my parody of French, our adventure of the morning. We don't want another adventure, I believe I tell him.

He nods quietly, his sunglasses reflecting the light from the street.

We don't ride the metro in Paris. This surprises me a bit; I romanticize the metro - symbol of childhood freedom - it represents a big piece of my Paris memories. And I know how to find my way around from metro stops. Maybe that's one reason. I don't want to rely on ancient habits to find my childhood. I want a new route there.

And neither of us is interested in going underground and getting on another vehicle. We both want to walk. We've been cooped up too long; we want to wander and lose ourselves.

Paris is the place to lose yourself. People leave you alone. I appreciate this. When I was here as a kid, my family tried to teach me how to wear a "metro face." A metro face is stone cold, man. It tells strangers that you are not a soft touch, you are not interested in a date or a cheap watch. My sister had a great metro face, like a door coming down, shutting off her beautiful features behind bulletproof glass like the Mona Lisa. She looked like she was born here.

I looked like a goofy small-town kid from Utah. I'd give my gap-toothed grin to anyone, look people in the eye, chat with someone who tried to engage me. But here's the thing. Parisians don't engage.

I still have no metro face. I can shut it down some, if I'm paying close attention, but it takes a lot of concentration, and I can't keep it up for long. This gets me in trouble all over the world. Most often, it just means I get into some interesting conversations with colorful people. But it can be tiring, after a while. By the time we got to Paris, I was exhausted.

And I got to rest. In Paris, I can look people in the eye, I can smile at them, and they don't see it as an invitation. Parisians don't engage. This means a genuine rest for me. I can let my face do what it wants, and nobody expects anything from me.

I could have used a metro face in Provo much more than I need one in Paris.

As we walk, my bones loosen in their joints. I walk easily beside Mr. Billy, opening up, not caring where we go or how long it takes to get there. We follow side streets because they're small and curving and I see the wide doors I remember from this quarter. Behind these doors are broad courtyards and stairs leading to apartments or boarding-house rooms.

"Hey," says Mr. Billy, "I think the Luxembourg Gardens are right down there."

He points down a street. I can feel the past barreling in toward my chest; the pension was at one corner of Luxembourg.

We walk down the street, and my eyes are eating everything in our path.

"That's the metro stop," I say, pointing. I remember this. Climbing up and out of the metro onto a garden island in the street. I slow down. Many of the wide doors I remember have been replaced by slick storefronts. Children's clothing. High-end chocolate. None of this was here before, and I start to doubt myself. Maybe this isn't it. It's been thirty years. How would I know?

A paper store, called Marie Papier. This makes me smile, just a fraction. My mom's name was Marie, and she was a poet. A little joke, just for me.

Across the street is a patisserie. It's more than thirty years old, and it hasn't changed, it hasn't changed at all. I'm nine years old and pressing my forehead against the glass, counting my centimes for a mille feuilles or a chocolate eclair, dancing my eyes over cakes and trills of chocolate and fresh raspberries.



We're here. There, to the left, is the pension itself. It's a nondescript building, but for me it breathes and speaks stories into my mind. I can see the row of windows on the second floor, where the classrooms were. I would hang over the railing during class breaks to see what was happening in the street. The back window, where the French student stayed - the only one who wasn't part of our group - I had a crush on him. I don't remember his name, but he wore a scarf around his neck and little round glasses, and he would tell me, in English, that he was "teer-ed", and I would reply that I had fatigue.

I squeeze Mr. Billy's hand, drunk on memories. It's several minutes before I can move.

More to come...in the meantime, check out Mr. Billy's take on our adventures in France

Nostalgia is a drug

Our first morning in Paris, and we're sleeping in. Blissfully, hedonistically, sleeping late. Until we hear the doorknob rattle. We both scramble up, clutching the bedclothes to our chests, staring at the door.

"The maid?" says Mr. Billy.

"We have the key," I say.

In Parisian hotels, you leave your key at the front desk when you go out. No danger of losing the key, and the hotel always knows when you're in your room. No "Do not disturb" signs, but that shouldn't be a problem, should it?

The doorknob stops, and we stare for a moment before breathing, sighing, then snuggling back under the covers. The fingers of a dream are just creeping over my brain when the rattling starts up again. And then the unmistakable sound of a key sliding into a lock.

We leap into action: I lunge for the door, Mr. Billy for the safety of the bathroom.

"Nononononononon" I babble through the door, holding tight to the knob. The door opens an inch and I search the dusty files in my brain for the right phrase:

"Nous sommes ici! Nu! Nous sommes nu!"

I'm unsure if an announcement that we are naked will be enough of a deterrent, but the door closes at last, and I hear footsteps recede down the hall. Mr. Billy peeks around the bathroom door and I collapse on the bed, laughing hysterically.

"Well, we're up now. Wanna go see Paris?"

We have three days in Paris. No agenda, no appointments. We'd planned this break in the city without any ideas of hitting the tourist hot spots. In a way, Paris had been a big blank spot in my idea of our trip to France. We have no plans at all. We step out into the city, and I realize that we must not be far from the pension where I attended school when I lived here as a kid.

I use "attended school" loosely in this context. I was nine, and my dad was directing a University Study Abroad here. "School" was college classes at the pension where the students stayed. My family stayed in an apartment a few metro stops away. I completed the 4th grade via home study, and attended the college courses for fun. I got an A+ in French, but my 12-year-old brother showed me up with an A+++.

We were in Paris for less than a year, but that time was crazily overbalanced in my memory. Up until then, I was a kid from small-ish college town Provo, Utah. I could walk to my best friend's house & play in the field across the street. We could walk to school together and ride our bikes to the swimming pool, but to really get anywhere, I had to be driven.

One week in Paris with a metro map and a carte orange, and I could go anywhere I wanted in the city - all by myself. I hung out with college kids. I ate crepes made fresh from a street cart. My brother and I did the shopping for the whole family, because we'd picked up the language quicker than the older folks. It was paradise. This word has been overused, its juice and flavor squeezed out, but it was paradise in the full, fat, juicy sense of the word.

So I feign nonchalance when I propose to Mr. Billy that we try to find the pension. I don't want to make it a mission; that fear of disappointment is still strong, and most of what I want is unstructured time with Mr. Billy. We wander as aimless as eight-year-olds, pointing at buildings and eyeglass designs. We watch Parisians on the shared bicycles that belong to the city; you can pick one up just about anywhere, insert a token, and ride it to another part of the city, then drop it off.

A lot of people ride scooters. Helmet designs are particularly attractive here.

We wander, and we stop to eat hot crepes on the street, and we casually glance at the maps that are all over the city. I laugh when I see we've been walking in exactly the opposite direction from the pension.

To be continued...

I love Paris in the springtime

I was ready to be disappointed. The last time I was in Paris, I was twenty-one years old. I lived here when I was nine. But with age comes disillusion and cold, mature assessment. Paris would not - could not - wow me again.

Boy, was I wrong.

It starts the minute we leave the train station. I spy La Rotonde and the Café de Flore out the cab windows. It's all I can do to keep from squealing. Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre used to hang out here. We step out onto the narrow street and that old Paris smell - diesel exhaust and chocolate and a soft breath from somewhere above the buildings - spirals into my brain and sets the fireworks going.

We drag our bags behind us (the cab was unable to pull directly up to the hotel door) to our little hotel on the corner of the Rue d'Odessa. We learn later that this is where the finalists for "Nouvelle Star," the French version of "American Idol" are staying, but we would never have known: the place is small and sleepy. The desk clerks appear to be identical twins; one wears dark glasses. The elevator can only hold Mr. Billy with the bags, so I take the scenic route up the curling staircase.

I lean out the window of our tiny room. To my right is Montparnasse tower, and directly below are sidewalk cafés.

"Let's go out and walk around," I say to Mr. Billy. I feel like I'm nine years old again, or twenty-one. I bounce on my toes. "Let's go see Paris."

And so we do.

My doctor ordered me to take a vacation

...a real vacation, he said. No obligations, no running around. A good, solid rest.

No problem, I said. I'm going to France.

A direct flight is entirely too expensive, so we fly through Montreal. Nine o'clock in the morning on Sunday, we are on our way to the airport. At security, Mr. Billy is pulled aside. Suspicious character, Mr. Billy. Shifty eyes and whatnot.

He walks away with an official airport security shoehorn in his pocket. Thanks, security guys!

Eight hours or so later, we're in Montreal, or so they tell us. It's French-language training wheels. We wander through the clean, modern airport, the Limbo of air travel. Duty Free, bars, restaurants, endless shining hallways.

We are stuffed into another metal tube with wings, shaken and buzzed and fed and movied for another seven hours or twelve hours or fifteen days. Plastic shades are lowered over oval windows, and some people sleep.

Sleep does not come for us.

We touch earth at last. Paris. My head rings, a long, sustained note.

The training wheels are off, now, and my brain struggles to come up with the language I once knew. Mr. Billy has no French, so it's all mine to fuck up.

We follow the signs to the train station, down in the belly of the airport. We're scheduled to meet my dad on the Côte d'Azur this evening. It's Monday afternoon, local time.

We find the station. Victory! Now, we need to buy train tickets. TGV - Very Big Fast - the bullet train south. There are kiosks and vending machines and counters and signs and signs and my brain rings and the words mean nothing. Like writing in dreams, the words shift and change the moment I think I've decoded them. I leave Mr. Billy with the bags while I try to find something I can understand.

There, a queue of people, a sign that says something like what I need, I can't even form the question in English. I stand in line and I am standing in line for a lifetime and then I'm at the front of it. I walk up to the man at the counter and try my thirty-years rusty French.

"Two tickets, if you please, for San Raphael. Or Frejus."

He answers me in English. The train leaves in half an hour. All is well.

"Don't leave me for so long, next time," says Mr. Billy when I return. He's been sitting here, prisoner with bags. No language, no idea where I am. I'm hungry and thirsty, but don't dare spend a single precious Euro cent. The train tickets were much more than we expected. I can't even process the exchange rate. We can't afford this trip, not even close. What was I thinking?

There are no drinking fountains.

It's all right, though, our train is coming. We find the correct platform, we know which car we need to board. It's assigned seating on the TGV. The train arrives, and we look for our car.

No, we're at the wrong end of the train. We run the length of the platform. The car numbers are going the wrong way. No, somehow we missed our car. The note sings in my head, and thoughts are slow to swim to the surface. We should just get on, somewhere, but I can't articulate the thought, can't act on it. We're running, dragging our suitcases. I can't even see a door that's open, all we need is an open door, but it's too late, all the doors close, we're running and the train is moving, pulling away.

I can't speak, French or English. I make a panicked face at the attendants on the platform. They shrug at me. What's the fuss, they say. There'll be another train in twenty minutes.

Okay, okay, twenty minutes. I can deal with that. I'd better see if I need to change our tickets, I say to Mr. Billy. I have to leave him alone again. Back up to the queue. The minutes are ticking away. I get to the counter just in time. The platform attendants lied. It's another three hours until the next train.

We get to know the station very well. You have to pay to use the toilet. You have to pay for water you can drink. We sit, and we wait.

The train is twenty minutes late. We have to transfer in Marseilles. No problem; we have an hour between trains.

The train arrives thirty minutes late, and we get on the right car. We'll be all right now.

We watch the countryside out the window, but nothing sinks in. My ears sing. I'm tracking our progress on a map. The sun goes down. The next stop is Marseilles. It's dark outside, and the train slows, then stops. We look at the man across from us. He shrugs.

Some knocks. A clang. A loud report. A voice comes on the intercom. I can't understand these things in the U.S., let alone here. The announcer monologues. Clearly, it's quite a story. The man across from us looks at us for a moment.

"They don't know what's wrong," he says.

The process repeats. Knocks, clangs, the engine lurches, then silence. The voice monologues.

"They still don't know what's wrong," says our companion.

Again the ruckus, again the monologue. It's almost time for our transfer.

"They have no power," says the man across from us. He explains that we should still make our transfer - a lot of people are in the same boat, we just need to follow them.

The train begins to roll. The engine doesn't start up; they must have realized that there was enough of a slope to coast into the station. Softly as a dream, we pass graffitied walls and warehouses, and slide into the station.

We fall out of the train in the crush of bodies, dragging our corpse-suitcases. There are uniformed rail employees waiting on the platform.

"Transfer to St. Raphael?" I say, in French.

"Hurry!" says the rail worker. "It's leaving! Hurry up, hurry up!"

We step up the pace, rushing along with the crowd. The crowd rushes through the train station and out into the parking lot. Mr. Billy and I turn around, rushing back the way we came. There's the train, I see it now, we're running toward the train as it pulls away from the platform.

French comes flowing out of my mouth. I curse the rail worker eloquently.

"I told you to hurry," she says, shrugging.

"You didn't say where. Apparently that was too hard for you. Is your arm broken? Are you unable to point the way to the platform? I asked you about our transfer and all you said was hurry up. This was not helpful!"

She shrugs.

It's almost midnight, and we're in the Marseilles train station. The next train is tomorrow morning. I do what any grownup would do. I call Daddy.

"Don't worry," he says, "We'll pick you up."

It's more than an hour's drive, and my seventy-something-year-old Dad cheerfully suggests getting on the road at midnight to rescue us.

I find a bathroom (a pay bathroom, taking only coins, which requires me to buy water at McDonald's to get some change first), lock myself in the stall, and cry.

Mr. Billy is waiting out at the curb for me. We stare into the Marseilles night, nodding at the cat-sized rats that keep us company, and wait for Dad to arrive.

Sudden fall, part 2

(Writing from a seaside villa in France. Life is grand, for you kind and hardy souls still reading. A break was called for, and a break this is. The story from before, however, continues...)

"I think I might've cracked a tooth," I say from the bathroom. I'm inspecting the damage to my face in the mirror. Not too bad. A scrape from the tip of my nose to my mouth. It jogs a bit to the right as it courses over my top lip. My boss will tell me later today it looks like the scar after harelip surgery.

Right now it just looks like I have a nosebleed.

A goose-egg is growing on my chin. It's already starting to bruise up.

I go back to the living room, where Mr. Billy is icing his foot with a bag of frozen peas. I get another bag and hold it to my face. I look over at Mr. Billy. "We're the disaster twins."

He tells me I shouldn't go in to work. I don't answer that. In only a few days, we'll be leaving the country for a three week vacation. There's just too much to do to miss a day.

I do, however, take time out to see the dentist.

"That's not a crack," she says, peering in (while I breathe out, relieved). "That's bits of sidewalk. I'll just buff it out."

My teeth appear to be intact, but there may be other damage. She can't tell - not even with x-rays - because of the swelling. I may have fractured my jaw.

"Soft food for a month," she says. Soft food? Is she crazy? I'm going to France! No crusty French bread?

"Just the soft, inside part."

Blecch.

On the bus back to work, I think of all the delicious soft French foods I can eat, while people's eyes slide off me. The bruise is in full bloom already. I feel like I'm wearing blinking lights on my face.

Eclairs, pot de creme, onion soup, pate.

Nobody wants to look at me. This isn't an insouciant, adventurous bruise. Something along the cheekbone, maybe, would speak of a branch in my way as I snowboarded down a pristine mountain.

Brie, chocolate mousse.

A bruise on the chin, a scrape on the mouth - on a woman's mouth - these are ugly. People see only bad crazy things that end up here. Somewhere out on the edge of sweaty half-dreams, where the money runs out, the addictions take over, that thing lives. That thing that most never ask themselves - How far can I fall and still live? A face like mine answers, Farther than you dare imagine.

Cafe au lait, I think. Ratatouille.

Sudden fall, part 1

Two cars screech to a stop in the middle of the street. I watch the drivers jump out and run in my direction. This is interesting.

"Are you okay?"

"We saw you fall."

I'm on the ground, looking up at them. I just fell down, no big deal. A third person appears from somewhere behind me. I should probably get up, but it's not so bad, down here on the sidewalk.

I touch my face, and look at my fingers. Hm, blood. Maybe my nose is bleeding.

"Do you need a ride to the hospital?"

I look at the woman. It must have been a spectacular fall, to make her stop her car. I remember starting to fall, trying to catch myself. Taking giant steps, arms windmilling, all flapping limbs like Stan Laurel. My glasses are a couple of feet away. I pick them up and put them on. They aren't broken. Not even scratched.

"I just live right here, thanks," I say, gesturing vaguely behind me.

"Do you need help up the street?"

They really want to help. I thank them again. I'm just three steps from my front door. What was it the hobbit said? "It is a dangerous business going out your front door."

I find my keys, my purse, my book bag. I stand up. No problem. I unlock the door I just locked and walk inside.

"You're back," Mr. Billy calls from upstairs. He's laid up with a mashed foot.

"I fell down," I say, heading up the stairs. I sit down on the couch beside him. I'm sweating, and my vision starts to tunnel in. I put my head between my knees. Maybe I'll be a little late for work.

With my head between my knees, it occurs to me. This was a "sudden fall," a "drop attack," an "otolithic crisis of Tumarkin." Curse you, Tumarkin!

Let me back up.

Several weeks ago, I was tentatively diagnosed with Meniere's Disease. Dig the picture of the guy falling down. That's what happened to me, only I landed on my face instead of my ass.

I've been dealing with the whole Meniere's thing like the bowl of mush I am. Whining a lot. Hey, it's just dizziness. I should be able to deal with that. Had to change my diet, my work schedule, my sleep schedule. I can't drive anymore. That's all okay. I'm lucky to be able to make those adjustments.

But reading is difficult during a dizzy spell. This is not fair. Reading is the thing I do when I can't do anything else. When I was grounded as a kid, when I was recovering from surgeries, when I rode the bus, when I had to sit in a waiting room, I could always read. I'm a writer, dammit. If I can't read, I sure as hell can't write.

But drugs help. Diet helps. Reducing stress, reducing my workload - all of that helps. I was getting past the whining. Just the meat suit reminding me that my flesh outfit is me and I am it and we're in this thing together. All in all, it's a pretty good ensemble. My face fits me: kind of goofy-looking and friendly. I'm a decent dancer. I'm not especially tall or short or fat or skinny. Most of my parts work the way they should.

And then I fell down, and things got a little more interesting.

En Wye See

Inside for two days. Rattling around hotel elevator, conference room, conference room, hotel room, conference room. PowerPoint slides and airconditioning that turns my fingernails blue. Up too late at night, unadjusted to East Coast time, getting up far too early, co-workers reflecting back bleary and hungover, some not appearing until afternoon.

Moving through the grand lobby, I spy daylight out there, but then it's back to another conference room for lunch and more sessions.

A couple of hours before the flight home, two precious hours, and I'm outside, stumbling onto the sidewalk blinking like a matinee moviegoer, surprisingly mild air - it's January! - my eyes wide, drinking in all the images I can't record in the camera I forgot to bring. Overtired, the whole thing happening a few paces removed from me, my head still rolling around an empty conference room, seeing New York City projected in a PowerPoint slide on the wall.

I trail behind co-workers up a broad set of stairs, library lions on either side. The doorman nods and a security guard peers into our purses, and deep into the library we go, ceilings high and stacks of books, but they would only tease - I'm too far from home with too little time to check out even one - instead we move in to the temporary display.

Running up the center of the room is a long glass case, a single yellow page running end to end, Kerouac's On The Road, all on one long page, so he wouldn't have to check the flow long enough to change out a page.

I don't usually dig stuff like this. Biographical stuff. Artistic process shit. I'm always comparing, thinking, if he didn't wash his socks until a manuscript was finished, maybe I shouldn't either. And the life isn't the art, anyway, the art is. This is why I don't read writer biographies. I'd rather just read what they wrote.

But it gets me. I'm crooking my neck to read - security guard scolding us about leaning on the glass - and I can see his cross-outs (not many), his dead-ends and wrong turns. I can see it was good right from the start, and he knew it.

And it doesn't make me feel small. I'm reading it and I'm waking up. It's okay, I think, it's an okay world where something like this is written, and remembered. Where a glass case is constructed so people can crook their necks and see, for a second, into somebody else's head.

It's time to head back to the hotel for my bags before being churned through the intestines of JFK and hurled home in the belly of a plane.

I nod at the security guard at the door, and breathe in some outside air on the front steps. Beside one of the lions is a delicate-boned young woman with a cane, black hair hanging to her hips. She turns to show a porcelain doll face, maybe Eurasian. I fall in love with her right there on the steps, watching her move fluidly, cane and all, and I'm glad. The girl with the cane, the guard at the door, the man eating his lunch on the library steps, the tourists. I'm in New York City, and it's alive and a hundred people jostle by, leaving little bits of themselves inside me.

A short yarn

I want to be hibernating. This is the time of year to hibernate. Yes, I live in California, but the northern bit of it. It gets dark before five p.m. That means hibernation.

But, no such luck. I must muster out of bed in the dark of the a.m. and make my way to work, then home again home again in the deep dark of a winter's eve. Normally, the bus commute is reading time. But when it's dark outside, my stomach lurches by the second block, and by the third I'm reaching for the bell, sweat pouring down my face and hands a-tremble.

So reading's out.

Somehow, though, knitting is fine. I can look up often enough to see where we're going, no sweats, no trembling, no dry heaves into the lap of my neighbor.

Tonight I pull my knitting from my bag as soon as I'm seated. I'm practiced at this by now, removing the stoppers from my needles, checking my pattern to see where I am, I settle the whole works in my lap, when I see my yarn isn't where it should be.

The red ball of yarn has escaped from my bag, and now it rolls quietly down the aisle of the bus.

The bus is in motion, my hands are full, the ball rolls, playing out the line that leads all the way back to my needles. I'm sitting near the back, and all I can do is watch its progress. It rolls neatly ahead, then dips to the side as the bus turns, then out again into the aisle, passengers one by one taking note as it passes, it's pointless to chase it down while we're moving: the yarn is nimble and light, I am an ox carrying panniers of water.

It rolls all the way to the front, at last coming to rest against a passenger's foot. It nudges at her instep like a kitten, but she doesn't see, doesn't feel its soft insistence until I rustle, lumber, clank to retrieve my prodigal yarn.

I murmur a sorry as I brush against her shoe to pick up my rebellious red ball, then scurry back to my place.

No - I correct myself: I murmur a sorry, barely holding in the guffaws that inflate my cheeks. I'm laughing, all the way, I'm delighted, and as I pass, the other passengers look up and into my eyes and share the joke.

I resume my seat, the whole bus shaking with silent laughter, those invisible walls between stranger and stranger dissolved for a moment, and I'm glad, finally, that I emerged from my cave today.

This is my brain

According to credible reports, I am still here.


Not only that, my brain demonstrates no evidence for intraparenchymal signal abnormality.

The major intracranial signal voids are demonstrated, and the sagittal midline image demonstrates no evidence for pituitary mass or cerebellar tonsilar herniation.

To cap it all off, my ventricles and my sulci are age appropriate.


So I don't want to hear any more jokes about my immature sulci. Got it?

Quake that refreshes

Ka-boom-boom-boom-boom.

The flat started shaking as I was sharing a pomegranate with Mr. Billy. I had time to stare at Mr. Billy, think, "earthquake," put down the pomegranate, think, "damn, it's a long one."

And then it really got going.

BOOM-boom-BOOM-boom-boom.

We're looking around the flat for anything that might come flying off a shelf or a wall. We both stand up at the same time. Our black cat scrambles for her safe place under the bed.

Something crashes in the guest room.

The striped cat holds for dear life to his platform on the cat tree.

We stand ready for...something. Um, do we need to get under a doorway maybe?

I look at the picture behind the couch, swinging on the wall.

It stops. It doesn't wind down. It just stops. Mr. Billy moves quickly to me, puts his arms around me. We hold each other tightly, for a long time. He grins at me, his eyes big.

We take a minute to look around, see what fell. Nothing seems to be broken. We coo reassuringly at the cats, but it will be awhile before they've calmed down.

I'm putting away the leftovers, and it occurs to me: I'm happy.

Moments before I was Googling symptoms (note: do not do this. I can't stop myself, but you're better than me. Hint: whatever you have is cancer), checking work email, obsessing. Now I'm humming as I find a container for the pomegranate.

The seeds blink out at me like jewels.

(Everybody's got something to hide except for) Me and My Monkey (Part II)

Idexa agreed to take breaks so I could photograph our progress.


She worked for three hours.


I had a strong memory of my mother while Idexa's drill burred into my skin; one I hadn't thought of in years. She used to draw elaborate pictures on my feet. My favorite was a spiderweb that covered my foot and ran up the inside of my ankle, with a spider spinning away at the top.

"Do you like spiders?" Idexa asked.

"No," I said. In fact, both my mom and I were phobic. But somehow it was comforting, Mom lazily drawing the web as I lay back on her flowered quilt. She cradled my foot and we talked about nothing. I looked at my dad's painting that hung above their bed: a wingless angel flying overhead, cupping a palmful of light. If you fuzzed your eyes just a bit, though, it looked instead like the face of an old bearded man wearing goggles.


There it is, the finished product. You can say it - you know you're thinking it - I now have a monkey on my back.

(Everybody's got something to hide except for) Me and My Monkey

"Billy, what have you been up to?" you might well ask. And I might answer:

"Getting a monkey on my back."

Shortly after my mother died, and my uterus was ripped out, I decided to get a tattoo. I'd avoided marking myself up for years, but with a newly-scarred body I figured I had nothing to lose. And it seemed a suitably twisted way to mark a pretty major year in my life.

That was two and a half years ago. I asked my father, an artist, to design my tattoo. In typical fashion for my family, it took me about a year to figure out what I wanted the tattoo to be. It took my dad another year and a half to start the design, and then he whipped it out in about an hour. We Billys raise procratination to an art form.

So, Dad's design was beautiful. But it wasn't right for my tattoo. So I found another design online.

Then I had to find the tattoo artist. I accosted illustrated strangers on the bus, in the pub, on the street. "Where did you get your work done?"

I surfed tattoo websites. I haunted tattoo parlors.

Finally, I found Idexa at Black & Blue Tattoo.

First we made an appointment to discuss the design. I brought her the design I'd found online, my dad's design, pictures of my dad's work. We made an appointment for a couple of weeks ahead to look over her design & make any final adjustments.

Then we made an appointment for the inking.



To be continued...

"No more to build on there."

Note: Thanks, everyone for your kind words. I get to go to a memorial service for my friend this weekend, where we'll talk about her and laugh and hug.

It's time, past time, to get back to the business of living.

"...And they, since they/Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs."

Gone

A friend died yesterday. I don't know what to do with myself. I want to talk to people, to make connections, but it's her I want to be able to talk to. I want to ask her how it was for her, what was she thinking in those last few days, hours, what did she feel?

It's not an original observation, but the world is richer because she was in it.

Caregiver

He swiped the towel over her mouth a little too abruptly, lines appearing briefly between her eyebrows, then gone, her eyes dull as buttons.

"Sorry, Honey," moving the towel more gently now, efficient as a nurse, as a professional caregiver. One who gives care, as opposed to one who simply cares.

She was an Amazon, once. A head taller than any other woman, and most of the men. Queen of the campus, students lining up outside her office like acolytes, her smile calming them, opening up pathways into their brains the way she'd opened him, until he felt the sun shining straight into his cerebral cortex, like a piece of skull missing, his brain vulnerable to any passing breeze.

Her hands lay empty on the bedspread, eyes closing, already sinking back into sleep.

She was rounded and full once, her hips rising under his hand, heat coming off her like a promise. The way she laughed with her whole face, those rich lips open, eyes screwed tight as flowers.

Her wrists are skinny now, light as matches. He traces her outline with two fingers, not touching, then straightens up. She needs her sleep, the laundry needs doing, the dishes washed, her next dose ready.

She said she was a real Amazon after surgery, the two of them touching the flattened space, the scar after it healed. She laughed and pushed her belly against his hand, kissing him hard and laughing.

He's almost to the door and feels a tickle at the back of his neck. He turns to see her looking at him, her mouth almost smiling. It's been days since she's spoken. He drops the laundry, and crouches down beside the bed, his head level with hers.

Her eyes seem fully conscious, looking at him. He hasn't been lover for a long time now. Not partner, either. He can stand up and walk away, play basketball, eat pizza. Make plans for the summer.

No, he's something else, something they share only with each other, more intimate than love. A connection runs between them, deep and wide as their bodies and the souls that hover near, and he wonders if he will see the moment when hers pulls loose, trailing its silver thread, its umbilical cord, pulling free of the womb of this world.

With apologies and love to John and Lynn; to Geo and her Gram.