annoyance

I'm starting to get e-mails inviting me to Cinco de Mayo parties, causing me to get rather annoyed. It isn't that I have anything against May 5, but having grown up in a part of this country where the holiday actually MEANT something, I'm peeved that alcoholics in denial (and the marketing mavens who cater to such people) have - once again - co-opted a meaningful celebration and turned it into yet another excuse to drink.

St. Patrick's Day - initially a Christian festival meant to solidify nationalist feelings among members of the Church of Ireland during a most pious time (uh, LENT) - has devolved into an excuse for millions of people around the world to "become Irish for a day" or, in other words, get shit-faced drunk and act like complete assholes. Not only does this behavior completely pervert the spirit of St. Patrick (who escaped six years of slavery to devote his life to missionary work), it also plays on the worst stereotypes about the Irish people: that they are lazy but hot-headed people whose most meaningful goal in life is to don green clothing and drink until they pass out on somewhere on 95th Street after the South Side St. Patrick's Day Parade. How, exactly, is that a celebration of St. Patrick?

And now the same thing has happened to Cinco de Mayo, which is a Mexican celebration of the victory of General Seguin over French imperialist forces in 1862 (NOT Mexican Independence Day, which is on September 16). But I bet if you sat outside, say, El Jardin next Saturday night, and asked the people walking in to "celebrate Cinco de Mayo" what, exactly, they were celebrating, they wouldn't have a clue. Furthermore, just as with St. Patrick's Day, the holiday has become a glorification of all the worst stereotypes about Mexicans: that they are fun-loving people who can't wait to bask in the sun and drink margaritas and Corona beer until they pass out and wake up with sand in unmentionable places.

Maybe I'm a party pooper, or I haven't mastered the finer points of alcoholic behavior (for which I'm actually grateful), but it's all so distasteful to me. It's one thing if you're actually Irish or Mexican and want to honor these holidays for reasons related to their original meaning: a sense of national pride (though, even then, why is anyone who was born outside of Ireland celebrating?) or in remembrance of an important military victory. But to use these once-meaningful dates as an excuse for consuming alcohol in ungodly amounts? Call it for what it is: a sorry justification for a drinking problem that unnecessarily stereotypes entire cultures of people.

yikes

WEDNESDAY:
Tried to drop out of school, believing I was failing Sociolinguistics. Slightly amused when my professor asked me what kind of drugs I've been taking that would cause me to think that. Pleasantly surprised by a midnight visitor.

THURSDAY:
Yummy lunch at Earwax with welcome company followed by a trip to Quimby's and a mad dash to school on the "L" train. Later in the evening: Interesting entertainment at the Improv Olympic followed by a tofu scramble at Pick Me Up with a so-so bagel. The Grind's scrumptious bagels are ruining it for everyone else around town.

FRIDAY:
A day filled with anxiety and panic attacks and odd loneliness, though at some point (actually, while walking from the Ogilvie Transportation Center to the Merit School of Music, along Madison Street) I realized I'm in a good place in my life, and I remembered how all of what's happened the past two years has led me to a place where I can walk, alone, down Madison at dusk and feel completely sure of myself and the decisions I've made.

SATURDAY:
The 5K went off without a hitch. Spend the day with the B-boy, including lunch with Other Important Boys. And then came back to the apartment, where he watched Madagascar and I took a nap. Dinner was with Henry, who's in from Charleston (or, more accurately, Walterboro) SC, and then we went to the Hideout, where he was presented with t-shirts to take home to SC, where one of the Hideout owners' relatives live in abundance.

NOW:
It's technically Sunday morning. I'm eating dark chocolate and peanut butter and I am happy.

today...

It's one of those days where I'm missing my grandmother (again). I'm beating myself up for not finding the cemetery, and I feel like a fucking broken record. B's been sick the past few days, and it reminds me of all the times when W would be ill and she'd be the one who had the patience to rock him to sleep and feed him tiny sips of fennel tea. It also brings to mind how she was there when I wasn't feeling well. From the time I was a little girl, she always knew the best thing to say, even if it wasn't what I wanted to hear. I miss her so much. I want her to see how smart and grown up - and tall! - W has become. I want her to see B's big brown eyes and listen to him laugh and dance and sing. I want her to meet all the people who have brought joy into my life since she died, and I want her to be proud of me for all the things we both never thought I'd do: graduate from college, support myself, be happy.

I feel so damned selfish and stupid, crying when she's been dead for seven years and surely I should be over this by now. Instead, I sit here and feel sorry for myself and wonder how it is I get back to the point where I can feel that kind of love again, the kind where I have someone who will notice if (when) I fall off the face of the planet and can tell just the right way to bring me back from the edge. And that IS selfish and stupid, the idea that anyone could possibly love someone that much. Maybe she did do the impossible in that regard, or maybe I'm idealizing her when in reality she wasn't any better or worse than anyone else. And so I'm left here with my "I wants" and missing her in the worst way possible.

And: I'm dropping out of school for this semester. I said something had to give, and that looks to be it.

i'm wide awake it's morning

Sometimes song lyrics really do say how you feel. And on the heels of last night's Bright Eyes show, which left me wishing I'd bought tickets for both nights when I had the cash...

LANDLOCKED BLUES

If you walk away I walk away
first tell me which road you will take
I don't want to risk our paths crossing somday
so you walk that way I'll walk this way

and the future hangs over our heads
and it moves with each current event
until it falls all around like a cold steady rain
just stay in when it's lookin' this way

and the moon's laying low in the sky
forcing everything metal to shine
and the sidewalk holds diamonds like a jewelry store case
they argue "walk this way," "no walk this way"

and laura's asleep in my bed
as I'm leaving she wakes up and says
"I dreamed you were carried away on the crest of a wave
baby don't go away, come here"

and there's kids playing guns in the street
and one's pointing his tree branch at me
So I put my hands up I say:
"Enough is enough,
If you walk away I walk away."
(and he shot me dead)

I found a liquid cure
for my landlocked blues
it will pass away
like a slow parade
it's leaving but I don't know how soon

and the world's got me dizzy again
you'd think after 22 years I'd be used to the spin
and it only feels worse when I stay in one place
so I'm always pacing around or walking away

I keep drinking the ink from my pen
and I'm balancing history books up on my head
but it all boils down to one quoteable phrase
"If you love something give it away"

A good woman will pick you apart
a box full of suggestions for your possible heart
But you may be offended, and you may be afraid
but don't walk away, don't walk away

We made love on the living room floor
with the noise in the background from a televised war
And in the deafening pleasure I thought I heard someone say
"If we walk away,they’ll walk away"

But greed is a bottomless pit
And our freedom's a joke we're just taking a piss
And the whole world must watch the sad comic display
If you're still free start runnin' away
'cause we're comin' for ya!

I've grown tired of holding this pose
I feel more like a stranger each time I come home
So I'm making a deal with the devils of fame
Sayin' let me walk away, please

You'll be free child once you have died
from the shackles of language and measurable time
And then we can trade places, play musical graves
till then walk away walk away walk away walk away

So I'm up at dawn, putting on my shoes
I just want to make a clean escape
I'm leaving but I don't know where to
I know I'm leaving but I don't know where to

gimme a shiner!

Gruene Hall, from the many summers of my youth...

I've been seeing the ads in Time Out Chicago, but it takes a visit to the Drive-Thru at Gaper's Block to get it through my thick skull: Shiner Bock is now in Chicago. Be still my beating heart!

Yes, I am quite aware that People Outside of Texas (aka, people seriously in need of education about the Lone Star State) generally consider Shiner Bock to be the equivalent of Old Style (or, worse, Old Milwaukee). I suppose they have a point: it's the cheap beer Texas kids get drunk on, usually on some two-acre plot of land somebody's parents allows everyone to party on after a Friday night home football game. It was the first beer I ever had, the first one my brother ever got drunk on, and the only beer I've ever snuck into my suitcase. But Shiner has something Old Milwaukee never did or will: a real connection to an ethos usually only known to people who've had the experience of living in Texas. Call it cultural ignorance of the finer points of beer, or call it nostalgia: Shiner Bock is Texas through and through, and the mere mention of its name can (and often does) send true Texans into paroxysms of glee and delight.

I often say that people who've never been to Texas will never really be able to understand me, and the same thing that makes this true makes Shiner Bock something more than just a beer. Most people are born into being Texan, though I surely wasn't and there are things I carry inside me that go beyond having spent a few years there. Case in point: the one time I felt a connection (however slight) with George W. Bush is during his speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention, when he said, "Some people say that I have a swagger. In Texas, we call that walking." No one else laughed when that came across the television screen, and in that moment I knew something significant separated me from my city brethren.

The introduction of Shiner Bock into the Chicagoland area isn't a cultural coup for those of us (okay, me) who have (has) decided that the pull of the big city is (for now) more compelling than feeling deeply and thoroughly at home lounging in the midst of cedar trees on riverbanks, watching sunsets atop the dam at Canyon Lake, and eating dinner on the Guadalupe while listening to the muffled sounds of the next Merle Haggard coming from the dusty confines of Gruene Hall. Yet somehow its existence here, in my new world, reminds me that I need to rekindle the parts of my old self that have, over the years, been eclipsed and beaten down by urban life. It's a lot to ask from a beer, but it's no big deal for Shiner Bock. After all, everything is bigger in Texas.

fundamentals...

The equal toleration of all religions is the same as atheism.
- Pope Leo XIII

This may come as a surprise, but I have a good deal of respect for fundamentalists. This does not mean I agree with them or respect their (ill-formed and irrational) opinions; rather, I respect their adherence to a set of morals and principles which they (rightly) recognize are in direct contradiction to opposing value systems.

I first realized this in 2002, when I was enrolled in my first literary criticism class at UIC. It was the semester I had B. in the middle of, and I had an asshole T.A. who'd promised to record the lectures when I took two weeks' maternity leave but then decided he wanted to make mix tapes using the six-pack of Memorexes I'd given him. That's neither here nor there, though. Walter Benn Michaels was the instructor (the beginning of an intellectual love affair I had with him, and then Stanley Fish, that's now been eclipsed by my fascination with all things existentialist), and at some point the idea of opposing principles was broached.

The conversation was humorous - including Michaels attempting to pit an ethical vegan (not me) against an omniove - but the message was this: there are some beliefs we hold that are in contradiction to beliefs other people hold, and sometimes compromise isn't possible. For some issues, and in fact for many of them, reality requires neither tolerance nor respect.

As an example: Jews and Christians can tolerate each other if by toleration you mean "live in close proximity to each other without engaging in genocide." Clearly that's a worthy goal: to co-exist without a bloodbath. But if what you mean is "respect each other's perspective on the world," then we've got a problem. And by that I don't mean an ethical problem; I mean a cognitive one. By definition, Jews and Christians differ in their view of reality, and you can (crudely) sum this by saying Christians believe Jesus was the son of God, and Jews think (at best) he was a cool guy with a beard and a few memorable lines. The essential and defining characteristics of Judaism in relation and contrast to Christianity isn't that Jews and Christians happen to believe different things; it's that they believe different things that DIRECTLY CONTRADICT each other. To ask Jews and Christians to "respect" each other's points of view makes absolutely no sense.

This does not mean individual Jews should not be expected to respect individual Christians and their mutual rights to believe what they wish without fear of discrimination or ridicule. Certainly I believe everyone has the right to respect as living beings inhabiting the world; however, when people invoke the need to "respect someone else's point of view," that's not generally what is meant. Instead, what they are doing is the direct result of the perversion of postmodernism in contemporary society: attempting to turn ethical positions and epistemelogical perspectives into matters of personal preference. But it isn't the case that being a Jew (or a Christian) is the same thing as liking chocolate ice cream (soy, of course) over vanilla. Being an active member of one religion (rather than another) entails the acceptance of and belief in a set of well defined principles that are, by definition, in direct contradiction to completely different sets of principles held by opposing religions. Furthermore, changing from being a Christian to a Jew means you have to change the way you view the world, not simply change the building in which you worship or start wearing a yarmulke as a fashion statement.

It is in this sense, then, that I respect fundamentalists (and, for that matter, anti-abortion activists). It isn't that I respect their tactics or the positions they hold; I find the former reprehensible (not to mention counterproductive) and the latter to be ill-formed, illogical, and misinformed. Nonetheless, these two groups of people are some of the few in contemporary society who actually get that ethical positions and worldviews aren't something to "respect"; they are something to strive toward and fight for and work to get as many people to see your point of view as possible. However, most people are more scared of this than anything, as it requires them to (a) think and (b) take a stand.

I hate to invoke Chuck Klosterman here, but I think he does a remarkable job of pointing this out in "33" (contained in his Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto):

Americans have become conditioned to believe the world is a gray place without absolutes; this is because we're simultaneously cowardly and arrogant. We don't know the answers, so we assume they must not exist. But they do exist. They are unclear and/or unfathomable, but they're out there (98).

We live in a world in which it is deemed impolitic to hold strong passionate opinions, and Klosterman is correct when he says that this grows out of both fear and arrogance. Holding firm to the things in which we believe requires confidence and familiarity not only with one's own position but one's opponent's position. For many people, it's easier to say we "believe" things when what we mean is that we "feel" them, and thus we don't really have good reasons for what we are supposed to hold dear. And if we don't have good arguments (because we're not really even sure why we "feel" what we do), how can we engage on these issues? The sad thing is that, rather than exploring and questioning our own values to develop a thoughtful set of explanations and justifications for our positions, we remove ourselves from public discourse about these issues and chalk up what should be real differences as instances deserving tolerance and respect. And those who are well-versed in their ethical positions get branded as intolerant or freakish or cultish.

I don't at all think we should move back into a world where things are always black-and-white and people are unfairly judged for the positions they hold. Beyond being one of the more egregious logical fallacies (ad hominem), that is where respect and tolerance should come into play. Demanding that Jews respect the Christian faith may be a logically unintelligible request, but expecting them to take the time and effort to understand what the Christian faith is and develop an accurate account of the ways in which it epistemologically differs from Judaism is quite reasonable. [It is on this count that I believe both fundamentalism and anti-abortion activism fail; they demonize their opponents rather than undertaking an honest and benevolent account of the other side as a means of learning what IDEAS need to change before more people can be "converted."]

And so I agree with Pope Leo XIII when he says that equal toleration of all religions is tantamount to atheism. By definition, the ethical positions we hold are always in contradiction to someone else's; otherwise, whether we believe in capital punishment or democracy or civil rights becomes a preference akin to our taste for chocolate ice cream over vanilla. Because these intellectual positions are things for which we can have arguments (meaning intellectual positions, not the kind of fight where people are throwing china against the wall), they deserve more consideration than being thrown aside or glossed over in the name of "tolerating" other people.

As a younger atheist I found it odd that the people most willing to engage in productive and respectful debate on the existence of God were fundamentalists. Still, debates with those fundamentalists (who respected my right to thoughtfully articulate my own position, if not my position itself) taught me more about my stance as a nonbeliever than any atheist ever could have, and I have grown to appreciate the diversity of opinions in the world. It takes a certain amount of self-awareness and confidence to enter into a situation in which we may either call into question or strengthen our beliefs about things we hold dear, but I think it's a necessary step in truly adopting ethical positions as our own. Until we have a chance to enter a sort of intellectual marketplace of ideas, and engage in productive and respectful discussions with others whose views may well be opposed to our own, can we really say we're doing anything more than doing what "feels" right?

This, then, is the reason I believe we fall back on respect and toleration as buzzwords that really mean "I don't know enough about my own position to engage in this discussion." [Honestly think about times you've been in a discussion with someone about an ethical issue and when things get heated or one person feels they don't have a reason for their beliefs, the "respect" or "toleration" card gets put on the table. And think about how different - and more productive - that conversation could be if both people were brave and honest enough to articulate their differences and get to a real understanding of what the issues at hand were.]

All that being said, I hardly engage in the world in this manner on a regular basis. I'm guilty of sidestepping conversations on a plethora of issues, not because I'm unaware or uncertain of my own position but rather because I hate being branded as that person who's intolerant simply because I *do* have articulate and thoughtful positions on a number of topics. I look forward to the day where engaging in public discourse becomes en vogue once more, so that I don't have to look to people whose ethical positions I abhor as a model of intellectual honesty.

more satc...

"Easy? You men have no idea what we're dealing with down there. Teeth placement, and jaw stress, and suction, and gag reflex, and all the while bobbing up and down, moaning and trying to breathe through our noses. Easy? Honey, they don't call it a job for nothin'." - Samantha, Sex and the City

While I suppose it's a slight bit pathetic that I look forward to the point every month when HBO On Demand lists the channel's latest batch of Sex and the City episodes, they always seem to be oddly relevant to what's going on in my life. [Then again, given my life, when would SatC episodes NOT be relevant?]

It's interesting how the same issues circulate through many single women's lives: commitment vs. freedom, marriage vs. singledom, skepticism (or hope) about the existence of The One (that oft-fabled but rarely realized Perfect Guy), what-ifs concerning the ones who got away (even though we pushed them there...), heart/passion vs. head/logic, worries about The Number, guilt over breakups, guys and their mothers (ick), the trials and tribulations of living with someone past a break-up (or running into him after the heartache is supposed to have healed).

Do we all have our Mr. Bigs, our Steves, our Treys, our Aidans? Am I supposed to identify with one of the female characters and choose my mate accordingly? Since I've always thought of myself as Miranda, should I be searching for Steve? [Though after working my way through Season Three, I'm thinking Aidan is more my pace... though - oh my god! - why on Earth does Carrie sleep with Big???]

Who the heck knows what the answers are for me right now? I certainly have no clue. What I do know: I'm not a freak for trying to figure things out or muddle my way through life or worry about what real love looks like. Life is messy and complicated, and even though I know there's a huge (mostly male) contingent that believes the women on SatC are "cunts" (their word, not mine...), as someone whose life on an average day could more than produce enough fodder for an entire episode, I find it somewhat refreshing to be less lonely in my confusion (albeit with fictional company).

Cunt or no cunt, it is what it is. Inga Muscio would be proud. I think.

friday the 13th, indeed

[Note: Much of this is duplicating a post I made to the ChiHipFam listserv, so my apologies if it's redundant. It's just too much work typing out twice... but there is some new information at the end!]

CHAPTER ONE: MORNING
This morning, I went to where I thought my grandma was interred, and it was completely the wrong place. I drove around the area for a while to see if I could trigger memories of having driven there before, but other remembering a few vague things, it was of no use. I'm going to call my brother and see if he can surreptitiously ask my mom for the information... but I suppose today just wasn't the day. It was quite traumatic, and I felt like a fool, but it is what it is.

CHAPTER TWO: AFTERNOON
On a more depressing note, I'm back to the beginning with my health issues. After waiting five weeks to see a neurologist (after finding a champion for my cause in the neuropsychologist who adminstered nine hours' of tests to me in January) and only seeing the doctor a full two hours after my appointment time, every single one of my symptoms was scoffed at. Despite the neurospsychologist explicitly stating in his report that I needed an extended ambulatory EEG (and NOT a sleep/wake EEG) plus a detailed work-up to rule out auto-immune disorders and MS, all that I'm scheduled for is a sleep/wake EEG on Apr 26 and the neurologist doesn't even want to see me until 2-4 weeks AFTER that. [Mind you, I won't have health insurance after Aug 20 unless I'm willing to pay about $250 a month to continue on the UIC plan.... and given my already unbearable financial burden, I can't see how THAT is possible.]

And so in a situation where I've gotten to the point where I can't drive more than 20 minutes because the fatigue will hit me so suddenly and powerfully out of nowhere, I have episodes of numbness and motor difficulties, I have gaps in my memory ( e.g., getting out of the shower and never having remembered starting the water or getting in), where I am in danger of doing super-poorly in my classes because I cannot concentrate or stay awake long enough to focus on the material, I have to take naps every single day in order just to function, and I can't even walk down the stairs without falling down unless I am literally watching my feet touch each step, this is all supposed to be part of "getting older" or it's all in my head. [The doctor said, "maybe you're just not good at school anymore." Uh, fuck you, Mr. Neurologist.... 4.0 GPA for my first MA, a 99th %ile on the GREs, and an IQ in the PG range, and all of a sudden I'm just "not good at school anymore"?]

What on Earth do people do when they are screaming to be heard about their medical problems and no one will listen? The neuropsychologist I met with in January told me he would be my advocate for me if I ran into problems, and I'm definitely sending him an e-mail after I type out this one... but what else? This is now FOUR YEARS of complaining about these issues without almost anyone listening. And after being blown off before, and finding out that all along I had a brain tumor (and that the motor difficulties I have now could have been prevented if someone had just taken me seriously then and the tumor had been removed BEFORE it damaged my primary motor cortex significantly) I am completely and utterfly fed up with Western medicine. I want someone to take me seriously, damnit. And today, of all days, I needed that.

CHAPTER THREE: EVENING
Checked my work e-mail, and things had completely turned upside down since this morning! The tech guy who's our saviour is leaving, along with my boss' boss, AND one of the city editor positions is being subsumed by another city editor as of today. It wasn't long before my managing editor was calling everyone to reassure us that we're all going to still have jobs come fall. That's ALL I would've needed today, for me to find out I was losing that job. It would have almost been as bad as when I was in the hospital two days after 9/11 with hyperemesis gravidarum (i.e., really fucking bad morning sickness) and on disability from my newspaper gig when my editor showed up in my hospital room to tell me I'd been laid off (but, hey!, I'd get to stick it out until 9/30 and get two months' severance!).

CHAPTER FOUR: LATE NIGHT
Yet to be determined. Let's hope this isn't a Wiley Coyote cartoon and there will be no anvils falling on my head. Or, more likely, a wrecking ball comes through my window ala Stranger Than Fiction.

...all the doors are shut and the windows barely opened up...

What human fuck-ups have caused the environment to freak out so badly that it was like February in Chicago this morning? As if I didn't have enough to worry about with the periodical cicadas, now I'm digging out my heavy winter coat and snow boots in mid-April?

***

Is Adam Levine channeling Michael Jackson ca. 1985 with Maroon 5's latest CD (It Won't Be Soon Before Long, due out May 22)? I can't listen to their new songs without feeling the urge to moonwalk. Songs About Jane gave me that general feeling, too, but this is completely over the top old-school MJ. It's a wonder that the band's MySpace page lists The Beatles, George Martin (aka "The Fifth Beatle"), The Police, Stevie Wonder, and Prince as "Influences" ahead of Michael Jackson. The Beatles? What, indeed, is Adam Levine smoking?

***

I hate conflict, I hate fighting with people, and I hate name-calling. I wish I could snap my fingers and no one would ever feel insecure, lonely, lost, unsafe, or frustrated, most especially with and toward the people whom they love.

***

A couple of weeks ago, I had a chance to buy Peter Bjorn and John tickets, but I refrained because I was a bit worried about money (no surprise there). When I finally decided to bite the bullet, they were sold out! But never fear: another 5/8 show's been added to the Empty Bottle calendar and THOSE tickets go on sale Saturday morning at 10am. This seriously puts a crimp into my plans to go to the CIW Celebration Rally in Federal Plaza (where Zach de la Rocha and Tom Morello will be...), which also starts at 10am, but I'm thinking I'll work something out somehow...

***

Speaking of Tom Morello, I know a bunch of people are scoffing at his latest solo project, The Nightwatchman, but I'm really digging it. It's relatively nothing like anything he's done before - which is probably why so many RATM and Audioslave fans are pissing and moaning - but isn't that the whole fucking point of creativity and growth? I always really hate it when a band - or a musician - tries something new and gets reamed for it. Isn't that their perogative? And, really, when has it ever been exciting for musicians to do the same thing over and over? I mean, just 'cause it worked for The Eagles doesn't mean it's a career trajectory to follow...

***

I'm starting to get more than a bit freaked out that I don't have any official teaching gigs for the fall. I'm even applying for curriculum and development positions for educational non-profits and teaching jobs for private middle schools, I'm so worried...

***

Friday is the day of many stresses: driving W. to hell (aka Wheaton) and chatting with my ex-mother-in-law, visiting the cemetery, seeing the neurologist to schedule my extended EEG. You know, that 48-hour-long test in which I get to walk around with wires attached to my head while, um, trying to go about my normal schedule. Lovely.

in the mourning

Things don't seem to be getting much easier as I continue to grieve my grandmother. It's been seven years this Saturday, but I've cried more in the past day than in the last five years. Considering I cry fairly regularly, that's saying a heck of a lot. I'm holed up in my apartment, snipping at people who love me, feeling sorry for myself when friends don't pick up on my depressive state, and entertaining fantasies about moving to Montana.

[I have no idea why Montana plays a starring role in my escapism. The only thing I can think of is that, on CSI: New York, Carmine Giovinazzo's character falls for Anna Belknap's, and he always calls her "Montana." I know, a real stretch... but I digress.]

Because I'm trying to focus on the positive, and think of all the happy moments with my grandmother, I'm revisiting a list of memories I wrote for a writing workshop in 2005. I was taking advice from Luis Urrea by way of Kim Stafford, who says that sometimes writing a "random biography" can give us nuggets from which entire stories are born. And, indeed, each snippet warms my heart in a way only memories can. I don't expect any of these will mean anything to anyone other than me (and perhaps my younger brother, who may or may not read this blog), but still... enjoy what you can, whatever you take from this random bio.

*****

Random memories of my grandmother

• The name on her birth certificate was Anunciato Pacini. She had no middle name. People called her Nancy. My grandfather called her “hon.”

• I called her Gammy, a name my cousin gave her in 1968. My cousins stopped using it when they were old enough to be embarrassed. After she died, I was glad I didn’t.

• My Nonno – her father – didn’t allow her to speak English at home when she was a girl.

• The sound of her speaking Italian to her parents and brothers warmed me.

• I believed in reincarnation when a pregnancy test was positive the day of her funeral.

• Her mother – my Nonna – bought kitchen pots from a rag man who wheeled a cart through the alley and the echo of his voice – rags! rags! – was something she carried to her grave.

• In the days before refrigerators, there was an iceman and she played stickball in the streets with his daughter.

• Her older brother Guglielmo (Bill) died before I was born. I never learned how it happened. I only know it was after the war.

• When Nonna died and I hid under a coffee table at the funeral home because I thought my heart was going to explode in grief, she found me and held me without saying a word.

• She prayed I wouldn’t be born on the day her brother died. I wasn't.

• Everyone knew she smoked but she thought we didn’t. Her bathroom always smelled like cigarettes. She used Topol tooth polish.

• After my first son was born, she was often the only person who could get him to stop crying. Sometimes, she made him weak fennel tea.

• She was a Notch Baby.

• I almost stopped being an atheist after she died.

• I often want to walk up to strangers who look like her and ask for a hug.

• She only remembered Chicago. Italian was her first language. She had no desire to visit Italy.

• Just when I think the grief has dissipated I wish I were in second grade, where using really a million times is an appropriate way to emphasize how much you miss someone.

• She was proud to have graduated from high school.

• After Nonna died, she visited Nonno twice a week to clean and buy groceries until he died ten years later.

• I think she is the only person who ever really loved me.
  

• She let me eat Cocoa Puffs and Booberry Crunch. She always had cold bottles of Coca-Cola and served Neapolitan ice cream with cake cones.

• If I had her recipe for chicken cacciatore, I would make it even though I’m a vegan and an animal rights activist.

• I think she would be proud of me.

• When I was a little girl, and I spent the night at her house, she would rub my arms and back to help me go to sleep. She did the same thing when I was twenty and suffering from heartache.

• She had a photo of her family from when she was a toddler. It was large and in an ornate metal frame and I thought Nonna looked like Italian royalty.

• At her funeral, we needed Kleenex and I remembered the smell of the perfectly folded peach tissues she kept in her purse.

• She said she would have been divorced if it had been more socially acceptable for her generation.

• When her long-lost cousin Amalia signed the guest book at the wake but left before I could meet her, I felt brushed by a ghost. I’d wanted to change my name to Amelia.

• When she was a girl, she would walk to the corner store for bread and tobacco.

• The only thing she ever complained about was washing windows while seven months pregnant.

• I am in contact with no one who ever knew her. Sadness is sharper with unshared memories.

• Once I teased my grandfather about anniversary, Mother’s Day, and birthday gifts. For the last ten years of her life, he never missed a present. She thanked me two days before she died.

• When she fell ill and couldn’t keep house anymore, my grandfather took care of her. I wrote a poem thanking him that sits in a box in my attic.

• I liked sitting next to her at Mass, and especially holding her hand.

• She died of sepsis two years after having a cancerous lung removed.

• The four-flat apartment building my grandparents owned had strawberry fields behind it before developers took over. We picked strawberries on the Fourth of July and ate shortcake. In the winters, the pond in the back froze and I would go ice-skating. Once my cousin pushed me in and she yelled at him.

• She tried to get a job once. My grandfather spent the night on his mother’s couch in protest. She quit the next day.

• I found it annoying when she would call if she hadn’t heard from me for a week. Now, there are times I wish she would try to get in touch.

• When Christmas rolled around and I still had $100 to pay on a $750 loan from her, I gave back the check she’d tucked into my stocking and she cried.

• She took me in when my first marriage failed.

• Rubies were her favorite. My grandfather never bought her the ruby ring she wanted.

• She loved my grandfather. Deeply.

• She had an ability to accept and forgive others that I envy.

• She wanted to be a doctor. She said she would have been a nurse. She was a wife and mother.

• There is always a deeper place grief can grow. I think she would understand.

• She met my grandfather when, stood up by the neighborhood floozy, he entered the bar where she was drinking with her girlfriends. She invited him to the movies. He sat next to her. He proposed six weeks later. They married after six months. She had been married fifty-two years when she died.

• My partner never knew her. She would have liked him.

• I wanted to write her childhood stories down. I never had time and now I’ve forgotten.

• She came to my second wedding wearing a wig, bald from chemotherapy.

• My older son doesn’t remember her anymore.

• We had a fight before she died. We didn’t talk much those six months. We reconciled in the days before her death. My aunt said she died of heartbreak over me.

• I feel lucky to have known and loved her.

• Just when I think the sadness is gone it isn’t.

• There will always be something more to remember.

sherrybaby

After watching A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints on Friday, I was hoping Sherrybaby would offer a more chipper view of the world. Yes, I know. "Chipper" isn't exactly what comes to mind when thinking of the story of a recovering heroin addict who is out on parole, living in a halfway house away from her daughter, and fucking her way through Narcotics Anonymous. Nonetheless, I thought it MIGHT have an uplifting message or offer some hope for the future.

Throughout Sherrybaby - and for hours afterward - all I could think of was, "Wow. That's really fucked up." [That and, "Maggie Gyllenhaal must really like doing sex scenes."] Even after it ended, I couldn't really see what hope it offered, and I even felt kind of dirty for having rented the film. From explict sex to incest to gritty drug use, Sherrybaby was anything but the "mom down on her luck" story I had expected. "What a waste," I thought as we turned off the television. "There wasn't even any moral redemption." But the more I've thought about it, the more I disagree, not only because Sherry actually does grow as a character but also because I think I was perhaps asking too much. I don't think this was a movie predicated on the possibility of personal growth; rather, somewhat like Traffic, it served as a slice-of-life picture of the world of addiction, recovery, and abuse on a backdrop of contemporary motherhood.

I can't pretend to know anything about the specific topics addressed in the film. Incest, recovery, and addiction are all fairly foreign experiences; I've known people for whom these things are central aspects of their lives, and I seem to encounter a disproportionate number of people in recovery as I travel through my life, but for the most part I'm an outsider. Still, there's something that - 24 hours later - strikes me as rather important about this film: in its naturalistic tone and presentation, it nonetheless offers a portrait of how someone with SO MUCH going against them can, in the end, make the right decisions.

Sherry does some fucked up things: sucks dick to get a job working with children, substitutes alcohol for heroin, talks inappropriately to her daughter, and ultimately falls off the cocaine-heroin wagon. But we also learn something about how she got to the point where giving a blowjob to a fat bureaucrat seems like a good plan: her family is anything but supportive (with a father who has apparently molested her), she has little to no contact with her daughter (who won't even call her "Mommy"), and even the men she meets in NA see her as little more than the next notch on their bedposts. With so much squalor and such little hope, is it any surprise that she buckled under pressure and sought escape in any way possible?

The more I think about this film, the more profound the last few scenes become for me. Through a semi-violent encounter with a stranger (a woman verbally abusing a child), Sherry simultaneously realizes the depth of her situation and how ill-prepared she is to deal with her own life. Rather than kidnapping her own daughter (which we are led to believe is the initial plan), Sherry returns to New Jersey, where she faces reality (reporting to rehab on Monday morning, a daughter who doesn't live with her, losing her job). But rather than having a defeatist tone, the ending demonstrates how we can accept the things we need to do to make our lives better without succumbing to the fears we have about ourselves (and others). There are worse things, I think, than having to ask for help, and I'm glad Sherry reaches the point where she can realize this without falling back on sex or drugs or alcohol.

Perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but I did feel a change in Sherry during the final scenes. She may not have been clean or sane or even less than completely fucked up, but she'd reached a turning point. In my mind, Sherry realizes it isn't asking for help that's a weakness, but asking for it from people who choose to exploit her rather than help to start a healing process. And for all of us who have been damaged by our past, isn't that quite a bit of hope? I'd like to think so.