phenomenal anticlimactic days of the 21st century, with great thanks

Thanks for your weird e-cards. You may know how I feel about birthdays: Mainly they serve as an indication that one did not die in the previous year; additionally, they are an excellent excuse for you and all your friends and family to eat and drink more. In this way, one's own birthday is sort of no more exciting than a friend or family's birthday, especially if one is nearby to catch any falling cupcakes near slippery tabletop edges. (Thank you, Majkie, for the cupcake.) I did turn 26 and live to tell the tale. Never will they say about me, "And when she was 25, she died!" About this, I feel great. Boolakashaka, and so on. (And I ate a great cupcake.)

Yes, I commuted for a total of five hours today. Yes, I taught two sections of a composition class and held office hours that students actually attended. And yes, I got my foot cut at dinner. However, and in no particular order, there were highlights, too:

- Even in the midst of the San Ho, that place of purgatory, doom, and mohawks, the PWCM presented me with my very own "official" rodeo writing smock/shirt, a plaid, brown-embroidered, snap-down number that is extremely large on me and, it seems, has been languishing in the PWCM closet for some time, because it bears a strong and unique PWCM odor that I did not notice until I tried to take a nap on it on the Baby Bullet on the way back to San Francisco after classes. "It's amazing!" I said. I put it on right away. "I'm never taking it off for the rest of my life, not even to shower!" (It was accompanied by a highly suspect YA-type girls' sweet-sixteen DVD that a student in my office hours later openly suspected as kiddie porn.)

- I drank a beer out of a very large stein this evening with Michelle, Nate, Shaina, and Octavio, at the very same place where I drank beer out of a very large stein last year on my birthday. It's nice to know I can still drink several steins of beer and be as sober as the Doomsday Oracle, and also to know that I am still pretty much the most hard-rock fifth wheel in town.

- I got to talk to Ted for forty-five minutes about philosophy, or my extremely JV version of it. I enjoyed talking about so-called philosophy, but I was so happy to be talking to Ted that really it didn't even matter what we were talking about. After we got off the phone I realized that I had been walking in tight, ecstatic circles for the entire forty-five minutes, like a frantic dog.

-Meat Loaf, with whom I importantly share this day, turned 60. Never will they say about him, "And when he was 59, he died!" About this, I feel great.

department of motor vehicles and espionage

I had received a lot of advice about getting my new California driver's license.
"Make an appointment," Michelle had told me months ago.
"Bring proof of your residence!" Sarah reminded me.
"I get there at six in the morning and start lining up outside," Zach told me, a little embarrassed. "And study for your written test! I studied for four hours."
"Four hours?"I sputtered. "I didn't even study that long for the GRE."
"Yeah, and look how well that went," he pointed out.
Fair enough.

Sure enough, however, in my typical fashion, I arrived at the DMV this morning without an appointment, well past six o'clock, without proof of my residence, and having studied not at all. I got shuttled from line to line and had several numbers and letters assigned to me. I was supposed to sit in this large flock of chairs with lots of other people and stare at a screen, waiting until my number appeared on it, and get up when my number was called. I was then supposed to sally forth to get another number and go back and wait for my that number to be called. I kept one eye on the screen and one on my new Bomb, which came yesterday in a flourish of you're-receiving-this-periodical-because-you-tried-to-get-published-here-and-couldn't. I was enjoying the Jim Shepard story when I became aware of someone staring intently at my form.

The form, which was resting in my lap, had been filled out with my information -- name, address, old license number, and so on. I had also entered my height and weight there. I had been joking with Anders last night at what I was privately calling Crohn's Club, Population Two, that I was going to state my height as 5'11" and see what happened, but in fact I had not done this. I had listed my true height and my true weight. Okay, I lied by one pound on the weight; round numbers just look better.

The woman who was staring at my form was a very tall, very brusque, large, sort of scary looking person, the kind of person who could definitely have picked me up and thrashed me against a cement wall with no problem. She was wearing a sort of hot pink mesh thing over a white tank top and extreme eyeliner that had been applied near, but not near enough, to her eye.
"Your birthday's tomorrow?" she asked me.
Thanks for snooping.
"Uh-huh," I confirmed.
"Mine, too," she said.
"Happy birthday," I told her.
"Happy birthday to you."
Silence. I continued reading Bomb, which does not want to publish me.
"You're going to be twenty-six?"
Thank you for snooping very! carefully!
"Yeah," I said, putting my hand over the rest of my information, like my social security number.
"I'm going to be thirty-six," she told me. "You have your whole life ahead of you. There's no reason to start lying about your weight now!" And she laughed.
"I'm not lying about my weight," I said.
"Yes, you are! You can't possibly weigh that!" She was still laughing. "I weigh that, and I'm twice your size!"
"I'm dense," I said defensively. "My molecules are tightly grouped." What I was thinking was, You can't possibly weigh that, though I did not say so, it being none of my business.
There was more silence.
"What are you going to do on your birthday?" she asked me. She had not brought any reading material. Most people around us were reading the California Driver's Manual, which I had decided against (and I still passed! -- albeit with the maximum number of wrong answers, having particularly fucked up the one that asked: When are roads most slippery? a) When the rains are moist like a sauna, and raindrop diameter is between 3-5 millimeters b) When it rains, then snows, rains, snows, stops, three claps of thunder ensue, and then you feel a sensation in your left buttock, or c) When it rains sort of sideways, slanty-like, then Prince comes on the radio and you sing along the wrong lyrics to "Purple Rain." ...I honestly really wonder sometimes about who makes these tests).
"I'm going to... nothing," I said, "I have to work. What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to party with my friends!" she exclaimed loudly, suddenly animated. I jumped in my seat a little. Bomb, which apparently does not want to publish me, rustled. "We're going to drink and go out to dinner and it's going to be great! I like to barhop in my neighborhood! I got a new shirt!"
"Hunh," I said, and put my glasses back on. "That sounds like fun."
"It's really sad," she told me as my number got called, "that you young people don't do anything fun anymore."
Touche.

My driver's license, which I somehow obtained without either looking at the manual, knowing when roads are slippery, how many hoofbeats away from the rear bumper of a class TGJIDNKJN truck one needs to be, or anything else, will arrive in the mail in 2 weeks, bearing a picture of me in a faux-pregnancy shirt, looking bedraggled and alarmed, and presenting one snaggletooth to the camera.

I am a California driver. Eureka.

around the world around the wo-rld

Watching this music video while I was clearly supposed to be working, it occurred to me that the thought processes of the people who planned this video seem to be very similar to mine while planning stories: We'll just put, like, girls in bathing suits doing the crawl, and then, you know, really cute little skeletons! And mummies! Let's have giant gray hot dogs breakdancing! Androids! Swimming caps! And tons of stairs! Look at their little bones glow!

... You know, I worry for my writing career, but I love Daft Punk, and I love this video.

tristram sandy

I woke up this morning and my bed was covered in sand. It was good encouragement to get out of the bed, as if I needed any (you could practically hear the fifty student essays moaning in their Voice-of-Christmas-Past sopranos, "Geeeet up and graaaaade me! Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeet up and graaaaaaAAAAAAAde me!"), but it also lent an unpleasantly gritty sensation to all of the sheets and skin and tank tops and Phillips and whatnot that happened to be therein. Yesterday, while I was walking Frannie through the Mission, Shimon called with a reprise of his brilliant idea to go to the cold, cloudy beach in the middle of the day, with shoes on.
"Just for a little while," he assured me. "I have to finish my syllabus."
Since it was just for a little while, I agreed that this was a good idea, although what was patently not a good idea was going to the beach wearing shoes that have holes in the bottom of them. These, however, were the shoes I was wearing, and I was already pretty near his place. It was just going to have to be too bad.

What started out as a brief sojourn to beach and back ended up being a many mile walk along said beach during which sand -- apparently full-on hives of intrepid, swarming sand -- began buzzing in lumps into my shoes and then upward and around my entire person. It seems my bones are hollow or something, because every time I moved sand could be noted sifting this way and that, like I was a rain stick. (Shimon, meanwhile, appeared utterly unperturbed and sand-free, although he has other maladies to deal with that I do not envy, like a forehead full of stitches from what I sensitively joked was a frontal lobotomy before learning that he had actually cut his head last week on an errant piece of metal.) I took a shower when I got home, but apparently this did not deter the sand, which is now resting in a self-satisfied manner in dunes throughout my sheets. Fine. I'm not supposed to get back in there until tonight, by which point I will (magically!) have graded fifty essays, fifty quizzes, and planned a lecture for tomorrow. At which point I'm sure that sand will feel really good, or else like nothing at all.

So, the High Holidays are over. All our names are inscribed in the Book of Life, or whatever. I went to Kol Nidre services (thank you, Hammer!). I even fasted (to dubious triumph). I feel like I gave the whole High Holidays thing a pretty good go this year. The apologizing was a little lamer than it could have been; I think I left a few out. Please hold the line; love, as Toto wisely says, isn't always on time, and I'm working on it.

Yesterday I received a birthday present. It was a few days early, but no less exciting. It was my very own set of travel Boggle! Nate presented it to me with a flourish when I went over to Michelle & Nate's to pick up Frannie for our walk. I was delighted. I shook the case. You could hear the little Boggle cubes rumbling around in there, ready to shame others. On our walk, Frannie and I passed by Zachary's office hours.
"Hi," I said. "I got my own Boggle."
"Wow!" he told me. "Great!" in that way that people have when they could not feel more the opposite.
"We can finally have our rematch!"
"Um... yeah!" he said. "Hi, Frannie!" and began strenuously petting her.
Frannie bore this whole exchange in long-suffering dog silence. She, too, you see, is a fan of Boggle.
(Thanks again, Nate.)

Finally, frightened though I may be of mimes, I find this item very sad indeed.

terrified, delighted

As a representative of Fort Phil Collins, I have to know: What can this possibly mean?

things i have not been reading

Last night, Helene, Mike, Ruth, Dan, Amy, Zoe, and I convened in the Presidio to discuss Dubliners. I was sincerely hoping that no one would remember that we were supposed to have read Dubliners, since I certainly had not, although I felt I could probably engage in a lively discussion about what I have recently been reading: the soul-killing student reader; student essays on video games and rock 'n' roll; The New Yorker; The New York Times (online); trashy women's magazines; my hilarious subscription to Cooking Light (hilarious because all I eat these days are scant, stolen pieces of pizza here and there, and wretched faux bagels from a coffee counter in San Jose -- light fare indeed); uncopyedited children's books; other people's blogs; and my mail, which recently included a shredded rejection note that had been mauled and partially consumed by a postal service dog, then returned to me without indicating who the sender had been. This only partly explains why I so rarely burst into soulful renditions of The Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman."

To my great delight, only a few people had even touched Dubliners, and those who did had either done so years ago, or else skipped straight to "The Dead" and called it a day. (Luckily also for me, I had read "The Dead" in an ill-fated MFA seminar in which I did not learn very much except that when one is teaching, one should always keep one's shoes tied.)

We ended up talking about other things and fondling the jackets of Zoe's new book, already released in the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, and a variety of other places. "Someday!" a few people said wistfully, fondling, fondling. I could not help but think that such a "someday" seems very far away, at least for me. I have taken, recently, when people ask me what I'm writing about, to say, "Nothing." And then to look vaguely mean.

No, yesterday was not an excellent day for morale. I was so tired in the early hours that after a sucky morning section of my class, I did not pass go, did not collect two-hundred dollars, but hastened straight to the women's bathroom, where I cried like a pansy. I don't know if you know about the ancient art form of crying in bathroom stalls, but at least the way I do it, before you start crying, you undo your belt buckle. That's a non-negotiable. There is nothing that says, "Life, I'm done with you" more than an undone belt buckle. But don't take your pants off; this isn't that kind of moment. Of subsequent options, you have two; sitting is a little more pathetic. Sitting is for when you've been cruelly dumped, or you've just seen your best friend graffiting an unpleasant message involving your name on a public wall. Standing is for when you are simply tired. When you want to cry but there is no reason to cry. You are tired, overworked, have not had any coffee, or else are simply a fey pansy. Also, try not to be loud, because tenured faculty are probably in the bathroom, and they remember everything. I stood.

Later on, the day got better. The afternoon section was the best ever, or, to misappopriate part of a title from a children's book I once copyedited: He Was The Best. (Children's books aren't how you or I remember them.) Around 6:40, back in the city, Mike picked Ruth and me up at the Fort so we could make our way to the aforementioned non-Dubliners gathering. Driving up Valencia, he was telling us about his recent trip to New York when I rudely interrupted. Rudely. But I couldn't help it. I had seen something.

What I had seen was a former frequent character on this weblog, the Boy with the High Red Hair, looking extraordinarily sharp, his hair as high and as red as ever, either smiling or smirking into his cell phone and making his way into a bar only a few blocks from my apartment. I have seen neither hide nor high red hair of the Boy with the HRH since before we parted ways, since that -- the parting of ways -- unfortunately occurred over the classy forum of the internet. The last time I had seen him, in fact, he had been driving me to the BART in Berkeley, direct from his (also high) bed.

"SoinsdfuitstheBoywiththehighredhair!" I cried articulately, and promptly ducked down in the backseat to a level where only my eyes, and the places where my eyebrows would be if I had any, were showing over the lip of the door. (In addition to being a day of high morale, it was, as you can see, a day of immense bravery and maturity.) By the time we got to Market Street, I was most of the way back up in my seat again. The front seat was silent. Mike was looking at me in the rearview mirror. Ruth had partly turned around in her seat.
"Oh," I said. "Yeah, sorry there. That was a little weird of me."
Silence. A little bit of muffled tittering.
"Sorry I interrupted, Mike," I said.
He said it was okay, no problem.
"I'm glad," Ruth noted wisely, "that we were in a moving car."

It's probably not the most immaculately shining sort of day to have before your name is inscribed in the Book of Life, but it's going to have to do. In the meantime, I leave you with this passage from "The Dead," a fine story that we did not discuss at all. For that and for other things, Friends of the Presidio, I thank you.

"Of course, they had good reason to be fussy on such a night. And then it was long after ten o'clock and yet there was no sign of Gabriel and his wife. Besides they were dreadfully afraid that Freddy Malins might turn up screwed. They would not wish for worlds that any of Mary Jane's pupils should see him under the influence; and when he was like that it was sometimes very hard to manage him. Freddy Malins always came late, but they wondered what could be keeping Gabriel: and that was what brought them every two minutes to the banisters to ask Lily had Gabriel or Freddy come."

100% Imported Textured Acetate

This morning on the BART I flashed the good people of car 3132x for twenty, maybe thirty minutes. If only one of them had thought to tell me that my shirt was unbuttoned basically to my navel, a good deal of this inappropriate behavior could have been avoided. Horrified by my free-and-easy commute, I spent a lot of class time today continually checking my shirt buttons, half-expecting to find the whole operation flapping free, or maybe to find that I was wearing no clothes at all. Not that my students would have noticed, since a number of their heads were down on their desks anyway -- that is, those heads whose mohawks do not prevent them from effectively slicing the person in front of them in half when they move their heads too far forward and down at the same time.

There was a paper due this morning, which meant that a number of grave catastrophes befell my students, preventing them from coming to class. Cars -- cars that had previously been an owner's dream, a pimpin' ride, if you will -- failed to start. Family matters arose... elsewhere. Horrible coughs, colds, and even fevers erupted. One person's eye felt numb. Numb Eye Syndrome! I hate when that happens.

The most important lesson I learned today, however, gleaned from the essays of those who were not felled by the above or other ailments, is that the title of a piece simply need not correspond to the piece's content. For example, if you were writing about video games and their validity as art in modern culture, you might call your essay, Pop, Goes the Weasel. This would show your very humorous side, as well as your boundless wit. Don't worry if there are no pops, weasels, or other sound effects or mammals of the Mustelidae family involved in your argument. This is simply not important! In addition, this phenomenal phrase would contain incorrect punctuation, another mainstay of the essay title. For extra pizzazz, you might have spelled one of the words in the title "weezle." Don't limit yourself with the obvious choice of misspelling the "weasel" itself -- that's the easy way out! Why not try, Weezel! Weasel!? Oh, clever you.

what clint eastwood films omitted: mist spigots

I went to the Wild West, nee Arizona, for Shaina's wedding shower. Arizona is a mysterious place. It is dusty, and there are many small rocks there where you would expect grass, and the houses are low to the ground like sneaky robbers, sort of crouched flat double as if hiding from something. Perhaps the most amazing part of Arizona, however, besides its spectacularly welcoming and excellent denizens, is the mist craze: A line of spigots, arranged artfully so that no one knows they are there (I learned that the Arizonans do know they are there, but simply do not find it remarkable enough to warn others of their presence) willfully begin to shoot mist at passersby like so much poisonous gas, hissing and spraying so as to cool off the air. What began as terror of the Mist Spigots ended in so much prancing, adoring delight of the Mist Spigots that I found I could not stop talking about them. Offerings to the Mist Spigots! Hosanna, o ye Mist Spigots! On the plane ride home this afternoon, I devised a whole scene in my new story where the protagonist will have an amazing Mist Spigot Experience. (And we wonder why the Writers Who Are More Successful Than I Am have a population of "everyone.")

When I got home, I received a postcard from Jeff S. The front of it bore a picture of a stately edifice at the university where he teaches. The card informs me that this building houses administrative offices, the computer center, a counseling center, and some dining halls. (Wish you were here!) The message was simply an excerpt from Beckett's Endgame, and his signature. (How phenomenally articulate are the excerpts these academics choose. I felt delighted and also supremely boring, having no such excerpts easily on hand in my own Fort.) It also made me feel all the more guilty that the postcard that Michelle A. and I had bought for him, which depicted some vines and whatnot, girly, girly vines, had languished on my desk for weeks before being anticlimactically sent off to his residence bearing news of wine we had consumed weeks -- nay, nearly a month -- before. I am officially a bad correspondent.

I am posting it on my refrigerator next to the postcard of Tokyo ("The night scene of seaside city in Tokyo. Ordinary, well-composed. Its shiny lights excites you.") that Shimon sent this summer, a number of prescriptions, a receipt for granola bars on which I have written the plot of a story about nuns that I no longer wish to write, and a picture taken around June 2003 featuring Adrienne, Amy, Ted, and me looking vague and unfortunate, sitting on the long-suffering IKEA futon in its first incarnation, holding the saddest-looking bottles of sweating, wilting Yuengling while Phillip looks on, disapproving. We are also happy, because we are going to graduate, ostensibly, from college. Ted and I are wearing corduroys in ninety-degree heat. You know what would have really cooled this scene down?

wear your own name

I'm going to Shaina's wedding shower this weekend. It's in Phoenix, which means I have to pack my backpack full of crap, and then wear that crap when I get there. It's amazing to me that this is the same backpack that carried everything I needed for three, five, seven months at a time on other voyages, but that it is still full for a three-day trip to a never-before-visited state.

My problem is, I've never been to a wedding shower before. I had no idea what I was supposed to wear. This is not a bachelorette party, to which I would obviously wear my breast-tassles and a leather catsuit. This is a very refined sort of thing thrown for Shaina by her mother's friends, in 110-degree heat. I consulted the internet for guidance. A brief google search, admittedly more for entertainment -- and to put off e-mailing each of my students one by one about their rough drafts -- than for information, yielded this informative bit of fashion sagery:



Question answered.

sorry seems to be the hardest word

Maybe I've just been more attuned to it today because it's Rosh Hashanah, or maybe today, to misappropriate another Jewish turn of phrase, was a day different from all other days, but I heard a lot of "sorry" today, everywhere I went. "Sorry" on the BART and "sorry" on the Baby Bullet. "Sorry," even, on the San Jose DASH. "Sorry" in my classes, although those mostly pertained to being late or not having done the reading, or else being caught red-handed texting furiously, as though the Text Olympic Trials were imminent, in the middle of my lecture. I got some e-mails that contained a "sorry" or two as well. I can almost guarantee you that none of those "sorry"s conveyed an actual sense of remorse or regret -- and nor, in their respective contexts, should they have. It's not just the word that's lost meaning, though; it's the act of apologizing entire, and our expectations for what a gesture like that really means.

One question that Rosh Hashanah has always raised for me is if it makes a difference whether our apologies are aimed at a specific recipient, or simply released into the universe like an aimless flock of what-have-you. It's hard, as one of these atheist Jews, not to be keenly aware of others in a high holidays service, apologizing to God. The texts we're prompted to read aloud are explicit: Dear God, forgive us. It's a formula that western religions use more or less across the board. We're told we should apologize to God, or in some cases repent to God, but we're not given explicit directives for how we should make amends with one another. Or if we are, those directives are hardly figured as prominently, and never considered nearly as important. So what about those of us who don't believe in God, or aren't sure of the existence of a God? Are our apologies any less valid because they're addressed into an ether -- specifically, an ether that will likely never receive or comprehend our apologies? In that case, is it really an apology at all, or just an expression of our regret for our own purposes?

The culture of the anonymous apology has grown more and more popular as Internet sites become one of our favored modes of interaction. On a site like Craigslist.org, people can post missed connections, messages, pleas to the universe, without ever explicitly stating who they're for or from whom they've come. More often than apologies, what one finds on Craigslist is expressions of regret: Dear M, Wish I'd known how to treat you right when I had you. Wherever you are, I hope you're happy. Love, B -- and other similar things.

Perhaps the best example of this trend is joeapology.blogspot.com, where Internet users can post a full-scale apology and emotional outpouring with security in their anonymity. (True, many of these so-called "sorry"s run more along the lines of "sorry you are such an assrat," but this is another semantic intricacy for another day.) Why do we engage in these anonymous so-called apologies? It seems to me that if they are anonymous, and not directed toward the supposedly wronged party, they aren't really apologies at all, but simply expressions of regret. An expression of regret, and the articulation of it, can go a long way toward helping you not to make the same mistakes twice, to realize the repercussions of your actions, and to help you move on from something about which you feel remorse. But it isn't a communication -- and so its purpose, as a statement, is different than an apology's would be.

I admit to having posted on Joeapology myself, maybe five or six months ago. I'd done something I knew was inappropriate, and I needed to say so. But imagining myself apologizing to the person toward whom I'd acted badly made me feel sick to my stomach -- not because I was nervous to do so, but because I felt that he also owed me an apology -- perhaps one that was bigger than my own, and more important. I wanted to apologize, but I didn't want to minimize the things for which I felt he had to apologize. So I was a coward. I posted on Joeapology. And what I said there was read by strangers. Did I really think that the intended party might come across it and recognize himself in what I had to say? Not really. Did I really want him to? Maybe. Sort of. No. Yes.

My point is that the world of anonymous apologies isn't a world of apologies at all, but a forum for conflicted parties -- people who are not ready to apologize -- to draft what they want to say. It's a workshop, of sorts, but for people who have done things they aren't proud of.

This sort of "workshop" mentality is something that seems familiar to Judaism, a religion that after all prides itself on prioritizing journeys, be they intellectual, spiritual, or regarding one's relationship with God. We're even given a ten-day period to reflect upon the things we've done in the previous year, and to resolve how we'll improve our behavior in the coming one. We're given time to alter and revise our ideas about how we want to act differently before our names are inscribed in the Book of Life. Why, then, aren't we given the more obvious "workshop" option of apology -- the expression of regret without aim toward God, the "first draft" of admitting that we haven't been perfect?

Maybe none of us is truly apologizing on Rosh Hashanah, whether we preface our remarks with "Dear God" or not. I suspect that many among us, feeling we've done our part in mentioning our wrongs to God, don't feel a need to examine whether we truly want to apologize, or whether we have; moreover, we feel absolved of a need to apologize to one another. We've done the Big Deed and that's what counts. Isn't this part of what the idea of saying we're sorry has become -- more of a gesture toward social politeness than a real expression of regret about what we've done to each other in particular, and to particular each others?

l'shana tova, or the day on which we apologize for the mockery of others

On Rosh Hashanah, when I was a kid, we went to services on both days, which I now realize was extremely hard-core, even for my family. Most kids would delight in missing two consecutive days of school in a row, but not me, a) because I was a giant geek, b) because nobody else had to miss school for Rosh Hashanah, calling further attention to my geekery (a byproduct of going to an Episcopalian school), and c) because going to synagogue was traumatizing. I wore unflattering dresses, sizes too small, that belied the way-too-tight-around the waist hosiery I was forced to wear underneath. For accoutrement, I wore big-ass eyebrows. (I had eyebrows in those days.) Going to services in and of itself wasn't the bad part; the bad part was, being under 13, I had to go to Junior Congregation, a dank, wood-paneled room down a long hallway from where my parents would sit, filled with the congregation's youth -- a bunch of kids who knew and liked each other but did not know or like me. In this way, it was much like many other parts of childhood, except this was worse because there was Hebrew involved, and the aforementioned hosiery, and you never knew what time it was so you never knew how much time you had left to go because you were a kid and so you had no watch, and it was always humid in that wood-paneled room, and furthermore, you did not want to go to the bathroom no matter how much you had to go to the bathroom, a) because it meant getting up in front of all those mean kids and having them see you in your too-small clothes, and b) because once you got to the bathroom you would have to pull the hosiery down and then yank it back up again, which was inordinately labor intensive and involved the manipulation of rolls -- okay, rolls -- of fat.

At one point we would all get up and be led by some homely young women in long skirts to a stream near the synagogue, armed with pieces of bread. (Not for eating!) We would tear up the bread and throw the pieces into the stream, and each one would signify something we had done wrong that year that we were sorry for. Every year my bread pieces would correspond to some kind of physical damage that I had done to David, my brother (i.e., God, please forgive me for pushing David onto a pile of bricks and then making him say that he had fallen; that was wrong and I apologize, mostly); lies that I had told, usually whoppers performed for friends to great interpersonal effect; the thievery of food from my mother's cabinets, notably chocolate chips; and scheming. I would leave one large, general, open-ended piece of bread for the item mentally labeled "scheming," to encompass pretty much everything else I had done wrong. That is what we in the business call Extreme Thinking Ahead. In regards to that large piece of bread bearing the sin of "scheming," some things apparently never change.

This year, the wrongs I feel genuine remorse about weren't actually committed in the past twelve months, and I've already apologized, tearfully, enough times to make further apologies probably annoying. Yes, there has been unflattering conduct in the past twelve months, unwise conduct, unpleasant conduct, and certainly some highly unladylike conduct -- ahem, November/December 2006! -- but I feel that I've learned my lessons and apologized where needed or possible; certainly there is nothing left that warrants the actual discarding of perfectly good bread. Plus, as Ben W. and I decided this evening, it doesn't matter how many wrongs I apologize for; I've already bought my one-way ticket to hell by eating a ham-and-cheese croissant this morning. (For his nod toward Rosh Hashanah, he is going to be wearing what he describes as a "yarmulke-esque" bike helmet on his way to see The Dirty Projectors play tonight.)

Tomorrow maybe I ought to go to services. Even atheist Jews like me often go to high holidays services, and for the past few years, I have. I've even liked it, although maybe it has something to do with the fact that I now wear clothes that fit me and that rarely involve hosiery, and also because of the high-holidays company of an obscenely giggling Abby who nearly brought a thunderbolt down upon our heads two years ago during the list of sins, which included an item about being guilty of the "mocking of others." But it turns out that when you're the teacher, you can't miss class. Not even for God. Not even because you've been very, very bad, and you ought to say so.

So if you're going to services, please apologize for the mocking of others, among other things, for me. I'll be thinking about all the scheming I've done, and scheming about better and more ways to scheme for the next twelve months. Happy new year.

phillip's top ten favorite ways to wake up, #8; and an article that partly answers part of my question

Just when you think you've awoken covered in blood for the last time, you go ahead and awake covered in blood yet again.
I woke up to find Phillip looking over at my side of the bed with a mixture of distaste and horror.
"Good morning to you, too," I said. He always looks that way.
In the bathroom, I generally try not to look in the mirror while doing things at the sink. You never know what you may see there. This morning was a perfect example of why I try not to do this, since when I happened to catch a glimpse of my reflection, I saw what appeared to be a calf who had escaped from the butcher mid-slaying, inexplicably wearing my hair on its head and my blue tank top with BUENA PARK 80 written across the chest. Except it said just BUE ARK 80, and the rest was covered in an unpleasant viscous substance that was decidedly not supposed to be outside me.

One phone call to the doctor later (and a long, nervous shower during which I turned around continuously with my head over my shoulder, much like a dog chasing its own tail), it was ceremoniously revealed for the 436,752nd time since 1991 that I, to the surprise of many, have Crohn's Disease.

Nonetheless, Phillip requested to sit on the chaise lounge for the rest of the day, claiming that he had been "given the willies" by the sight of me in the bed covered in blood and desiring to be as far away from the locus of this vision as possible. Interestingly, there had not even been any blood that had gotten on the bed, but Phillip, who must be machine-washed whenever he gets something on him, expressed a great deal of hesitancy at risking it.

For the rest of the day, I dealt with quizzes. I wrote quizzes. I graded quizzes. I recorded the grades on the quizzes. I rued the day that I had ever thought up the idea of quizzes. I read a dubious article about modern-day Cinderella syndrome that I am apparently teaching tomorrow. I periodically checked myself in the bathroom mirror to evaluate my resemblance to any still from the movie Carrie. And then, I received this.

This article, sent to me by astute reader GHL in response to the previous post, appeared in Time on Thursday. I hope you will find it as semi-enlightening as I did.

on holding court, Q&As with the animal kingdom, and The Questions That Are Keeping Me Awake At Night

This morning I met Zachary at his office hours. He holds court at this particular cafe in our neighborhood at the same time on weekend mornings, reading Sherlock Holmes or whatever it is he does there. Speaking to dogs and misusing the word "meshugenah." People can come by to see him. True, I've never seen anyone else come to his office hours while I've been there, but admittedly, I haven't gone very much. I feel a little weird going to see him there -- almost like I'm paying some kind of visit to my feudal lord and should be toting my tithe with me -- and so, on weekend mornings, I generally take the long way around the cafe street in an attempt to avoid Zachary and maybe keep my tithe to myself.

Today Zachary wanted to see Frannie, Michelle & Nate's dog. I said I would see if she was available, and being a dog, she was. We decided we would take her to places she had never been before, and then give her exhaustive Q&As to gauge her reactions. (This was based on Zach's brilliant remark that if he had a cat, he would like to be able to take it on walks and, moreover, to have it be able to speak to him. Since cats are by nature cynical and self-involved, and rarely go to new places, their commentary would undoubtedly be extraordinary, he reasoned. I nodded seriously and then mocked him for this observation, which as you know usually denotes my strenuous effort not to fall madly in love.)

We took Frannie down Balmy Alley, and then to Precita Park, where, in error, thinking ourselves liberal and friendly, we let her off her leash and watched in horror as an enthusiastic bound across the grass ended in her nearly speeding over a cement wall and bodyslamming a gray Toyota Cressida, broadside. The leash went back on with extensive petting, convinced as we were that she had been terrified by this experience. (It turns out that dogs are pretty much unfazed by all near-death experiences.) There was a brief Q&A. We proceeded up to Bernal Park, where neither Frannie nor I had ever been. Frannie seemed tired, so we sat down. She was not, however, as tired as I was.

Hours later, after letting many children pet Frannie, engaging in a sing-off to win her love, and manually lifting her paw in and out of the way of her decorative purple leash, I was just about ready to collapse. Maybe it's because I'm in really terrible shape, or because I hadn't yet eaten and it was coming up on 3 p.m., or because it takes a lot of energy to sing Justin Timberlake in falsetto while walking up a big hill. On the other hand, maybe it was because I could practically feel the neurons firing in my head thinking about every number of unrelated things: trips on the BART where the cars stop underground, good titles and bad titles, gin in a glass with ice and why it turns viscous, MLA and the good it can do us (not much), how long elastic waistbands can last, trees that make people want to dance, the shakes, shinguards, aloe, to-do lists, dust bins and racing cars, and then, inevitably, how much we consistently confuse ourselves, and others, by our actions. When was the last time you asked yourself what you truly wanted, were able to answer clearly, and weren't ordering at a tacqueria?

They, whoever They are, say that you should be able to sum up your writing projects in a single sentence. If someone asks you what your story is about, you should be able to offer a compact reply. But what if someone were to ask you what your plan is, the connection between what you do every day and what you wish you were doing? And what if someone were to ask you what your feelings are -- about your relationships and your actions, the way you communicate with people, the amount of real communication you have? Could you answer them in a phrase? Could you tell them how you feel in one sentence? How do we really feel about each other? And is it even important to know?

You can see why I was tired when I got home. Instead of grading essays and writing a quiz on MLA guidelines, which is was what I was supposed to be doing, I ate some beans out of a can and slept for half an hour. This is what some in my acquaintance call the "disco nap" or the "power nap," though I have never been able to discern anything particularly disco or power about it. I was certain that when I woke up, this uncharacteristic sensation of having my mind populated with things other than 80s one-hit wonders, etymology, and tortillas would be gone. On the contrary, though, it seems all the more urgent to formulate these single sentences -- explanations or clarifications of sorts -- and increasingly hard to do so. Is this why we interact in such confusing ways: because it's easier than formulating a compact explanation of why we do what we do, and by extension, what we really want from each other?

on being the only girl in the bar who can anticipate steve winwood key changes, and other matters of lost virginity

Note: To view pictures larger on Sempre, click on them to enlarge in another window.

About six weeks have passed since the marathon. Other pace groups have already had their inaugural reunions, but the AIDS Marathon Jack Fosters were saving it up. What it was that we were saving, exactly, was unclear until we arrived. The Fosters, historically, have needed no plan. Historically, what we have done is run and terrify other running groups. Barring this time-honored event, we went for our second choice: frequenting the many fine gay bars of San Francisco. Around 1 pm, Matt revealed his Great Idea. He had been the Pace Group Leader. The time had come to lead. We, the Fosters, would sing karaoke.

Some were frightened, dubious, or possessed of a strong urge to feign distraction.




Not me. I'd been waiting 25 years, 11 months, 1 week and 5 days for this moment.

I was born to rock.


At the karaoke bar, I felt somewhat differently.
"What do you do?" I asked anxiously. "You just go up there and sing?"
A few people volunteered to demonstrate.




Finally, bolstered by the sight of my running group and their amazing musical acumen, I was ready for my first ever karaoke experience: a duet with Matt to Whitney Houston's Important Musical Work "How Will I Know (If He Really Loves Me)." At first, I was timid.


That did not last very long.


But all this was a warmup for my real number, which Edilbert kindly volunteered to sing with me even though he supposedly had never heard of it.
His job was to look good.
My job was to rock.
If Steve Winwood asks you to think about it, there must be higher love. 'Sall I'm saying.


How, bargoers might have wondered, does this young girl know every word to Steve Winwood's greatest hits by heart? What dark corner lives within her that might compel her to go off on a self-directed Steve Winwood "oh-ho/take me higher" riff that's not even in the song?

Clearly they didn't drive to school with my dad when they were kids.

I hereby declare the Case of the 25-Year-Old Karaoke Virgin closed. The Case of the 26-Year-Old Karaoke Addict, however, may just be beginning.

i'm 90% bar, 10% genius

Bill, the Evil, Errant, Unfriendly Mac, is supposedly fixed. According to the genius who helped me at the Genius Bar this morning, I fixed it myself. He showed me something that he called "the log," which basically just looked like a bunch of numbers and letters to me.
"It says here that you fixed it," he said. "Here in the log."
"How did I do that?" I asked.
"You put in this code," he said, pointing to some numbers and letters that pretty much looked like all the rest.
"I did?" I asked, impressed with myself.
"You did. ...You look skeptical."
"Well, it's just, you know, I don't know any codes. Do I look like the kind of person who knows any codes?"
"It's hard to know," he said, a little embarrassed, "just by looking at a person."
Clearly, he was not looking hard enough.
He then took Bill away into some back room, where he said he was giving it a "patch." I was hoping for some Nicoderm CQ or maybe a sort of Boy Scouts badge with a beaver or scythe on it, but when Bill and the genius reemerged, the former appeared untouched.
"So, it's going to work now?" I asked, clearly dubious.
The genius smiled magnanimously.
"It's going to work," he confirmed, adding again, "You fixed it!"
I think I now know what the tactic of these geniuses is: They make you feel like you are the genius, causing you to love them all the more for their praise and appreciation of your awesome computing wizardry -- that which is tantamount to basically pushing buttons as hard as you can, whacking things over the side of your computer, and cursing.

Okay, Bill, so I "fixed" you or whatever. That means you have to work now. Work, dammit! Work, work! I still hate the Mac.

I have another item to share with you from the Writers Who Are More Successful Than I Am Department, Population: Everyone. You may be interested in reading this inordinately favorable review of a story by the PWCM. (The PW here, as before, stands for "phenomenal writer.") I highly suggest this story, or any other by its four-initialed author, if you're looking for The Real Thing, in literary form. I've thought that these stories were better than best for a while, and clearly I'm not the only one. I suggested to the PWCM that he might like to silkscreen the review onto a sheet and then sleep under this sheet at night. What I restrained myself from adding was the idea that a sort of indoor sheet fort could be made out of this item, draped over chairs and lit from the inside by flashlights and bags of Bugles. This, in case you were wondering, is what I would do, if one of my stories were reviewed in such a way. Or reviewed at all. Or, you know, read at all. By which I mean, published. Or even glanced at, really. Or even transferred from one personal computer to another, unread by either sender or recipient. Or used as a firestarter? Good thing, in the meantime, I have Fort Phil Collins to protect me from inclement weather.

Adventures in Non-Dating: Great Lies of the 21st Century and What We Can Learn From Them

Great Lies of the 21st Century That Have Actually Been Used By Me:

- I cannot meet you tonight because I was stung by not one, but two, bees, and being allergic to bees, I immediately injected myself with a syringe full of epinephrine, which as everyone knows necessitates an immediate trip to the ER, and so, still jittery both from the experience of the stinging and the epinephrine/ER visit, I feel I would make rather sub-par company. But I was so looking forward to our blind date.

- I cannot meet you tonight because an extremely urgent call has just come in from the environs of San Mateo, where a youthful cousin of mine has just fallen off of a moving vehicle. Since I am my cousin's emergency contact, I must immediately hasten to the site of his accident and take care of all manner of legal, emotional, and logistical matters there. Wearing a smock. While it's possible that I may return from the greater San Mateo area by the time of our planned outing, it does, unfortunately, seem highly unlikely. But I was so looking forward to our blind date.

- I cannot meet you tonight because a very close friend has just called me dissolved in an unforeseeable swamp of tears, having ended her relationship of five years and needing a friendly shoulder to cry on. Sensitive and sympathetic as you are, and well-versed in the way of women, I'm sure you can understand why it would be callous, unfeeling -- nay, heartless -- for me to meet you tonight rather than offer myself as a supportive ear for one of my oldest and dearest friends in her time of need. I'm not saying she sounded suicidal or anything, though it is pretty rough to be kicked out on the street with no place to go. But I was so looking forward to our blind date.

-I cannot meet you tonight because I have Crohn's Disease. It's very contagious. Wouldn't want you to catch it. Should I have mentioned this earlier? Sorry. I was so looking forward to our blind date.*
*No, again, Crohn's Disease is not contagious.

Great Truths of the 21st Century as Gleaned from Great Lies of the 21st Century:

-If you are not of a persuasion to go on blind dates, and are not interested in having any, either because you do not like dating, are already interested in and/or endlessly/dubiously/nebulously attached to someone else or various someone elses, or are possessed of a heart made of pure, rock-solid ice, maybe it's better not to agree to go on them in the first place.

-Lies about bees are best conveyed over the internet, to avoid the inevitable "buzzing impression" ("They were like, zzzzzz! And then they were like, zz! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!") that will come during oral narration and totally bust your story with overkill.

-It's not a good idea to lie about Crohn's Disease to people whose sisters have Crohn's Disease, not that you really could have known that in advance.

-The name "Steve" is just not a plausible name for a made-up cousin. Neither introduced subtly into the story ("My cousin Steve has just phoned to report his careening downfall from a moving vehicle!") nor offered up as an answer to a question ("Wait, what's your cousin's name again?"... "My cousin? Is Steve.") does the name Steve offer even a modicum of realism to a situation.

laborious b.i.g.

Yesterday, while others were celebrating the temporary cessation of their labor, barbecuing various meats (or, in the Bay area, organically grown and ecologically sustainable non-meats of various unpronounceable titles), wielding tongs, and stowing away their pounds-large collection of white pantsuits, I was, per usual, engaged in other activities entirely.

First of all, I was touting Magical Majkin the Pastry Chef. Magical Majkin the PC, whose name now belies her true identity, has beat a hasty retreat from her pastry cheferie. She has fled the kitchen. Gone. Kitchen no more. This called for breakfast.
"I will have the Temple O' Spuds," Majkin told the waiter. I nodded solemnly. Majkin knows a lot about food. She was also hung over. If "O'" is a reputable middle name for a food, Majkin would be the one to know. And anything involving a temple is probably a good cure for the common hangover. Not being one to get the common hangover, I have little knowledge about this Important Topic. I generally tend to avoid "temples" of food, fearing the appearance of slain calves, drained virgins, etc. etc. But like I say, I yield to the expert.
I probably should have mentioned to her, however, that the night before, both Michelle and Zachary had caught Crohn's Disease from being in my general vicinity while eating -- and this while Zach was "dressed up" as a "cowboy" (i.e., wearing cowboy boots and thumb-looping his jeans, walking wide, and attempting to affect a sort of cowboy drawl that ended up, as all his accents do, somewhere hovering vaguely over the Indian subcontinent).* This, unfortunately, is what ended up happening to Magical Majkin the Ex-Pastry Chef as well, sans the accent and boots. So much for touting accomplishment. One can't help but picture a sort of stand-full of onlookers booing me and bellowing, "Get outta here! Leave the Crohn's at home next time!" Yeah, well, would that I could.
*No, you can't catch Crohn's Disease. But thanks for asking.

Later in the day, I met Zachary and a bunch of hipsters, small children, and mimes in the park. And by met hipsters, small children, mimes, I mean sneered at and avoided. And by a bunch of them, I mean swarms. Swarms of mimes. It took me a little while to find Zach there because he was lying all alone in a sea of hipsters and mimes with a hat on his face. The hat was green and bore a festive little red sickle on it. I.e., a hipster hat par excellence. How he expected me to find him with a hipster hat over his face amidst a sea of hipsters is beyond me. But at least he had forewarned me that his mission in going there was to work on erasing what he was referring to as a "white bra tan," some sort of bad white dagguerotype of a bra that had been imprinted upon his chest the previous day, when he had been wearing a sleeveless shirt. (Would that some of us could be so lucky.) Luckily I was able to find him by inspecting the bare chests of all the men in the park -- no pleasant task in Dolores, let me tell you. He was, unsurprisingly, the only one with a white bra tan besides the mimes.
I sat down next to the bra tan and the hatface.
"Hi," I said. "Way to make it hard to find you."
He did not take the hat off.
"There are a lot of hipsters here," came a voice from underneath the hat.
"I'm scared," I affirmed. Later on, perhaps as recompense, I got to wear the hat.

I would also relate to you the one-and-a-half hours of chairdancing that Michelle and I enacted while shamefully glued to the first half of Justin Timberlake's HBO-aired Future Sex Love Show, periodically stopping to warn backup dancers to take their hands off of Justin Timberlake's buttocks, feverish brow, etc., etc., but I might as well keep up the act of trying to maintain a shred of our dignity. Nate endured all this from a noble corner where, wearing headphones, he played some sort of computer game and occasionally looked over to shake his head and carry the brunt of our embarrassment for us. While spectating, Michelle read her anatomy book, and I, peon of the writing life, planned today's comp class for San Ho.

My impromptu performance of several bars of "Eye of the Tiger" (preview!) during the comp class morning section's discussion of violence and music might owe something to this planning strategy. What can I say: Justin's a good muse for lesson planning. After this morning's (unplanned? Justin-inspired?) tuneful interlude, all of the kids who had been text-messaging paid attention for at least another minute and a half. And seven hands went into the air. Seven. At once. Embarrassment of class-discussion riches. This is a record, friends. Granted, one of the comments was simply a request to leave and not come back, but no matter.

Finally, I want to tell you something exciting. My friend Dan turned in his book today. Turned it in. I'm talking, to be published. Keep your eye out for this book: It's going to be something really entertaining. Peon of the writing life? Ho ho! Not he.

you don't know where you're going/you walk across the street/ you don't know why you did/ you walk back across the street

Has it ever occurred to you that being a so-called writer might be a lot like being a so-called synthesizer player? It hadn't occurred to me until I saw this. West End Girls never had it so good. Bret, Jemaine, I'm available on timeshare.