Aftermath

And then Jesus said "Let there be pestilence and barfing! Lo! But there will be barfing! Verily, avast, the barfing shall be put forth all over the hallway, not two feet from ye olde commode."

But not before He commanded Great volumes of plastic and paper, croissants, orange juice and miniature chocolates inexplicably in the form of a fat man of mysterious Dutch origin known forth as SinterKlaas.

Happy birthday, Jesus. Hope you got everything you ever wanted because I sure did.
xo,
S

2006: No Hair; 2009: No Idea

2007

2008

2010

2011

2012

Xoxo (and a ho ho ho),
S

Sometimes the Clothes Do Not Make the Man (A Diversion)

1991
I'm a freshman at San Diego State and every weekend I drive up to Encinitas where Bryan is living in an apartment with a roommate who has a pillow airbrushed with tits. Bryan surfs while I sit on the beach. We drink. Fight. We are so young and tight but feel grown up. I drive my maroon Volkswagen Cabriolet way too fast on the freeway singing along to this song feeling like my mouth curves just like Christy's or Linda's, angling my jaw like they do in the video. On the weekends I do go-sees and watch House of Style and sketch clothes. I don't know it yet, but I am really unhappy.

Not sure what made me think of this song tonight but I did, and listening to it I am right back there as I mouth the words and feel hot and simple, my only worry that Bryan didn't call me back.

God, I love this song. Almost makes me want to put on shorts with tights and a belt, a unitard, a choker, ankle boots. Instead I think I will listen to it in my car this weekend, mouthing along like Christy and Linda, two carseats in the back.

Special

Surely I am not the only one feeling fragile lately, the need for kindness so great I smile at pigeons. So when Zoey sat down tonight and made this card for her first grade teacher I nearly wept--not cried, but wept--a feeling so raw it belongs among statues.

They had a holiday party at school today and were allowed to bring in their favorite stuffed animal. Her teacher brought in her childhood bear, old enough that it had stitches which seemed to fascinate Zoey.

Translation: Dear Ms. Cozza, I love you. Have a Merry Christmas. Love, Zoey. Then the bear is saying (starting backward): I will love you for the rest of my life. On the other side: Special.

Which. Just. Yes. Thank you to all of the teachers that take care of our children and make them feel safe and loved and special.

Rolling in seasonal sap as if it were armor of some kind,
S

This Is A Drill

This will not be a well-written post. Nor will it be pretty. There will be no pictures.

We got a message from Zoey's principal that there will be a drill on Tuesday. And the principal doesn't call to tell parents about fire drills or earthquake drills. He said that the staff will not mention the Connecticut school shooting, but that there will be a drill.

A fucking drill.

I am so fucking angry. Not at the principal or her school, but at the very fact that there has to be a drill. And that I have to tell Zoey something about what happened so she doesn't hear about it from someone else. So tonight I told her. Tried to say it lightly, as if such things can be said without wanting to fucking tear at my throat. And when I told her, she asked if the kids died, and I said yes, some of them did, and she said that if something like that happens at her school she will kick the bad guy in the weenie, so there is no need to have a drill. I hugged her and said not to worry about it, that there is nothing to worry about because I am doing everything I can to make sure the bad guys don't have guns and that she is safe.

Don't worry.

As if it were that simple.

Fuck. That's what I keep coming back to. Fuck.

Like so many people, I have been completely shattered by this, as if everything around me is totally fucking broken. It wasn't until I told Zoey about it that I realized I don't have the luxury of feeling broken. Because I have to make this right by my kids, make it whole and right and, in my own way from 3,000 miles away, I have to honor those kids that died.

Which is why I promised Zoey I would do everything I could to make sure the bad guys don't have guns. Oh, I know this is simplified, but what's the alternative? Sitting around feeling sad? Clearly that's not working and hopeless inaction is no longer acceptable.

Instead I am taking action. Like I said, this is not a well-written post. Instead it is a fucking drill. Here is what we need to do:

Sign petitions lobbying President Obama for gun control 

Support these gun control groups with time and donations

Donate to the Sandy Hook Elementary School Victims Relief Fund

And though I will never give that evil fuck shooter the (albeit infinitesimally small) glory of printing his name (I hate how the news gives him so much space), I do recognize that something needs to be done regarding how we treat the mentally ill. Can anyone point me to a good article, website or something...I don't even know where to start. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
UPDATE: Aha! My sister-in-law told me about Laura's Law. Read about it here and here.

For that matter, any ideas on how else to support gun control and/or how to help the victims' families...please leave them in the comments.

Hope you are all hanging in there.
xo,
S

Just Fuck It All To Hell

My soul is crushed from what happened in Connecticut yesterday, and I don't quite know how anything goes on from here. Pure evil. Of all the news reports--and I'm afraid to say I've become a bit obsessive in reading and watching all the coverage--by far the best journalism comes from The Onion, so I straight up pasted it below for you to read...

Fuck Everything, Nation Reports

December 14, 2012

WASHINGTON—Following the fatal shooting this morning at a Connecticut elementary school that left at least 27 dead, including 20 small children, sources across the nation shook their heads, stifled a sob in their voices, and reported fuck everything. Just fuck it all to hell.

All of it, sources added.

“I’m sorry, but fuck it, I can’t handle this—I just can’t handle it anymore,” said Deborah McEllis, who added that “no, no, no, no, no, this isn’t happening, this can’t be real.” “Seriously, what the hell is this? What’s even going on anymore? Why do things like this keep happening?”

Continued McEllis, before covering her face with her hands, “Why?”

Despairing sources confirmed that the gunman, armed with a semiautomatic assault rifle—a fucking combat rifle, Jesus—walked into a classroom full of goddamned children where his mother was a teacher and, good God, if this is what the world is becoming, then how about we just pack it in and fucking give up, because this is no way to live.

I mean, honestly, all 315 million Americans confirmed.

“Well, I suppose we have to try to pick up the pieces and make some sort of sense of this tragedy and—you know what? Fuck it, I can’t do this,” said Connecticut resident Michael Zaleski, his remarks understandable given the circumstances, because, holy shit, what else can one say? “I’m sorry, but I can’t fucking do this. Can you? Can anyone?”

Witnesses said the gunman fired at least 100 rounds during his deadly rampage, which, according to children in the school—goddamnit, how? How? Twenty children. Dead. In a fucking school.

No. No, no, no.

“I just feel so [why does it even matter what this person said when no words can bring 20 dead kids back to life?]” said some person who, just like everyone else, is completely unable to process or handle any of this. “It’s awful. Just too awful to bear.”

Americans reported feelings of overwhelming disgust with whatever abhorrent bastard did this and with the world at large for ever allowing it to happen, as well as with politicians, with the NRA, and above all with their own pathetic goddamn selves, sitting in front of a fucking computer instead of doing fucking anything to help anyone—Christ, as if that were even fucking possible, as if anyone could change what happened, as if the same fucking bullshit isn’t going to keep happening again and again and fucking again before people finally decide it’s time to change the way we live, so what’s the point? What the hell is the goddamned point?

“I…” said Tom Miller, 27, after reading an article about the tragedy online. “I just…”
“…” he added.
At press time…screw it, there’s nothing else to say.

See also: Right to Own Handheld Device That Shoots Deadly Metal Pellets At High Speed Worth All Of This

My Vote to Replace Santa This Year

Perhaps I've been a wee bit heavy here lately. Shorter days, dark, I've had a mean flare of sciatica, which is why I think we could all use a sweet seasonal dose of Chris "Christmas" Rodriguez.

Oh yeah. Happy Friday to you.
xo,
S
See all of Chris "Christmas" Rodriguez here.

Here. Hold This. (Again)

These are the things they push into my hands: colorful straws and Barbie shoes, cereal bar wrappers, bites of apple and stones, most of them irregular, some shaped vaguely like hearts. Hold this, they say, my palms the place for things they think worth saving. And so it is that later while waiting for the bus I pull sticks from my purse, pieces of somewhere else, poke at the tips of broken toys hidden in my pockets while at work, the other side of me pushed down like that.

The things they place into my palms are at times based on necessity, hair ties, a booger; other times by something needier, the placing of it at once blurry and wet, frantic. They place things into my hands that I cannot hold on to, trust, milk and the weight of their everything. How I want to swallow it all, push every last rock that they ask me to hold deep into my mouth so that I won't someday lose it.

(Have you ever had a book follow you around? Years after, you still find yourself seeing the words? That's how I've been with The Things They Carried now for over a decade. Here is where I wrote about it four years ago. This post is yet another inspired by Tim O'Brien.)

7 Snapshots of the Memorial Service

1. 

It is not really real until I get there, although I love the smell of real cold. In the morning it begins to snow and I sit at the foot of my cousin Tess's bed and advise her to draw penises in the margins of her eulogy so she doesn't break down. I can't stop looking out the window at the snow falling and think that this is the first time in a long time that I see Tess and there are no photo booths with props, the last decade filled with weddings.

2.

At the church I want to take pictures, it is so beautiful, but I don't want to be disrespectful. Instead I crack jokes with my brilliant cousin Oliver because the family is told to gather in The Pusey Room before and after the service, named after a former president and benefactor of Harvard. Everyone cries in The Pusey Room, we whisper to each other, it all begins and ends in The Pusey Room, twirling myself around to read the gold inlaid quote about education, my head spinning with the infinite possibilities of the name.

3. 

The organist plays fugues, Wagner, people read Mary Oliver and speak. At the end there are military honors, a 3 gun salute; I am stunned by how powerful it is. The exact way the impossibly young marines turn on their heels, fold the flag...how the marine on the far left fumbles with the corner for a few minutes and I feel bad for him...turning the corners in and in again. And then a marine from outside marches in to slip the shell casings inside the tight triangle of flag, a slow, measured, heavy salute, and we are all sobbing.

4.

The reception is held at The Harvard Museum of Natural History. I wonder if it is too late for me to do something extraordinary enough that people will gather there to remember me. Probably, though I wonder if maybe just having a few stuffed tigers at my memorial would suffice. I guesstimate that the average IQ of the crowd is 135.

5. 

There are boards with photos, and I fall in love with this one of a paleontological dig at a Crow Indian reservation in the 70's. There is my dad in the back with the rifle, my uncle seated in the front, on the far left my step-dad is holding a machete. I know I will never be as cool as these men.

6. 

Later, my dad tells us stories. The time he was jailed for murder in Africa (didn't do it), took acid on ice floes in Greenland, how when he was 15 and my uncle 18 they drove cross country in my uncle's Jaguar and camped on the very edge of the Grand Canyon because you could do that in 1957 at 15 years old, I guess. How they met some leathery traveler and spent the night smoking Lucky Strikes and listening to the man's stories, how in the morning they woke up to find a carved stick stabbed into the dirt with a note attached that just said Adios Amigos, John. They took the stick and named it the Amigo John Stick, gave it to their younger brother Andy who later died at 40.

My dad finds the Amigo John Stick in my uncle's study and takes it home with him.

7.

On the flight home the woman next to me chews gum with her mouth open for 6 hours straight. 6 hours straight of it sounding as if someone is eating a banana in my ear, and I think about how strange it is that I am not able to tell her to please close her mouth but totally able to punch her in the face. Instead I swipe my card to buy Direct TV, put on headphones and watch Real Housewives of Atlanta all the way home.

Back

He has a seemingly primordial need to return to the ocean, how he runs for it as fast as he can. Into the waves, lakes, fountains, puddles. He doesn't even laugh as he's doing it either; it's business, this push to go back. I would be lying if I didn't say Bryan isn't happy about this, visions of surf trips and days spent sailing no doubt running through his mind as he sprints to make sure Ozzy doesn't drown.

He is my little sea monkey, coming to life when wet, my dried up brine shrimp unfurling in salt water only to become like the cartoon version big-eyed silly thing in the back of comic books, a real life fun pet I grow myself. (The subtext reads: "So eager to please! They can even be trained!" This, not the only part of the ad that misleads.)

At the end of each bath I let the water drain and still he refuses to get out, lays on his tummy as the water recedes and there is nothing. Just him making out with the shiny wet bottom of the tub. Fiths! Fiths! My little boy who thinks he's a fish.

I end with this: Saturday afternoon, time to leave the beach. My sea monkey fish boy pissed off and sandy, flailing, gasping for more.

“We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came…” – John F. Kennedy

“From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.” – Jacques Yves Cousteau

"Fiths!" –Ozzy Alston


p.s. Apologies but I had to switch Word Verification back on as I was sick of deleting 100+ spam comments each day. This--this is why we can't have nice things.

I Regret to Inform You: I Did Not Hallucinate This Weekend.

Although I can tell you that when you scrunch up your face it crackles like the sound Doritos, and that flexing your toes is a gunshot.

I did a sensory deprivation tank this weekend, except I think we're not supposed to call it that anymore. It's isolation tank now, and I've been curious to try it since hearing Joe Rogan talk about it. So when I saw a Groupon for Conscious Drift I snatched that sheisse up right quick, one for me and one for Bryan, because nothing says date like floating in separate tanks of salinated water with no sound, no sight, no nothing but yourself. Score!

First off, we had to sign something promising that we would not pee, spit, defecate or "other" in the tank which--yeah. Whatever you do, don't think about an elephant, and then go float in a tank of lukewarm water and don't think about it some more. I guarantee you won't think about your own elephant per se, but other peoples' elephants will mess with your head.

The tank itself is a 5x8' white behemoth filled with 10 inches of water saturated with salt and magnesium and heated to 93.5 degrees, the same temperature as your skin. It's light and soundproof, the idea being that as you float you lose sense of light, sound, even touch, and most definitely of any tension. Which I did. And then some. Apparently 1 hour in an isolation tank is equal to 4 hours of REM sleep, something about brain theta waves, I don't know. When the lady explained it to us I was still reeling from signing away my right to pee in the water.

The door opens a bit like a DeLorean, and you step in naked and kind of clumsily--or maybe that was just me--and close the door and there is nothing. Which is a hard experience to describe or imagine, the sudden loss of senses. Nothing. All I could hear was my own heartbeat, and then I scrunched up my face and heard crunching. After who knows how long of me flexing and stretching I was able to really relax. Sometimes my arm would twitch or my leg, lactic acid releasing, and then suddenly I heard what sounded like a persistent fog horn. Over and over, low and long like at night. I wondered if maybe I was hearing something in the pipes of the building, but later when I asked Bryan he said he heard no such thing and that there's no way to hear through the tank. Later still I read more about isolation tanks and apparently this is a common experience: the knocking and groaning is the sound of your muscles letting go.

I really didn't want to fall asleep because I felt like it would be a waste of a float, but suddenly the door to my pod opened and there was the woman saying she had been knocking for quite some time and got worried about me. Me there floating naked and twitching. I guess I was in there for an hour and a half.

People float for meditation, visualization, rejuvenation, self observation, creativity, prayer, solitude, to solve problems, time travel even, though that may be taking the DeLorean door a bit too far. I went in there trying to guide my mind to hallucinate or light on a genius idea for a book all because I was curious and it was a Groupon. Alas, I twitched and heard fog horns, then fell asleep.

Note to self: you can't put hallucinate on your to-do list.

So that's that. Would I do it again? Yes, but only if I find another Groupon or Living Social deal. What can I say? Peace of mind 'aint cheap, but I am.

One hand clapping,
S

p.s. Caveat emptor: I am still digging crusted salt from my ears.

A Thank You Letter Written On An Old Typewriter

The day he died we took the kids to Stafford Lake, only the lake was low, the bed cracked and brackish and dry. Zoey pulled up sheets of hardened mud and goose shit, said it was dinosaur skin; Ozzy ran for the water line. I took deep breaths of cold air feeling impossibly, stupidly still. How can the world go on without everyone realizing everything has been forever changed?

I guess everyone who loses someone feels that, the After a strange landscape of surreal estate wherein you stand in line buying groceries wanting to scream that something has happened, can't anyone see? The thing is--and I don't mean to minimize anyone else's pain--but I know with an absolute objective certainty that the world truly has been changed by him being in it, from the shift of fossils tapped from the ground to his family, friends and students, people lucky enough to know his absurd wit and love firsthand. He was a man made for stories told in circles leaning inward, and if the universe tried for a hundred billion years it would not be able to create another him, the way he tipped his hat and put together words, everything about him measured, bespoke, curious and kind.

I'm not sure what any of this means except that the Minoans were a bronze-aged maritime civilization that flourished from the 27thC to 15thC BC, and that once upon a time when I was little the adults were all playing Trivial Pursuit by the fire of a New Year's Eve and nobody knew the answer until I answered, Minoans. The way he looked at me then: I was smart, really fucking smart; he was so proud of me and I have spent the rest of my life trying to prove him right even though I can't even remember what the question was.

Of course this post is not enough either, too many words jumbled when I saw just a sliver of the story. The truth is I hardly ever sent thank you cards even though I knew they meant something to him and I should have said thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It means something, and what is left now is me standing stupidly still thinking that Stafford Lake is probably a man-made lake anyway, created not by millions of years of slow-meandering pressure or even tectonic uplift, but by someone saying This. Here. This is where a lake will be, the vast indifference of it all made bearable only through love.

Farish A. Jenkins, Jr.
More tributes to my uncle here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. And that is just a surface search; undoubtedly there will be more to come, which just goes to show how amazing he was.

Vote for Tracy Flick! (Just Vote, Please)

4 years ago...(I have never been coy with my political leanings).

Strangely enough, I still have those glasses. And that adorable girl. And hope.
Happy Election Day.
xo,
S

An Homage to Chris Farley, Starring Ozzy as Chris Farley

Remember that one Halloween when Ozzy went as Chris Farley in that SNL skit with Patrick Swayze where they're auditioning to be in Chippendales? And he wore the collar and cuffs and danced with his belly like that? Yeah? Um, that was awesome.

I am El Nino. Yo soy El Nino. For those of you who don't habla espanol, El Nino is Spanish for: The Nino.

 Well la-di-freakin-dah! We got ourselves a dancer!

 Holy Schnikies, this guy knows how to put 'em back.

 At which point things get a little fuzzy. Fast.

I see a future where someone is doing a lot of doobie rolling while he's LIVING IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!

Remember that one time? I'm tellin' ya'--it was freaking awesome.
Happy Halloween!

p.s. Couldn't figure out how to fit this one in, yet I simply cannot leave it out. French fries!

Please

We got in a fight so she bought me flowers.

Granted they were ugly flowers, a bouquet of daisies dyed bright, and I am fairly certain Bryan actually bought them, but I know she picked them out so they were the most beautiful flowers ever and I wanted to eat the heads off each one I was so happy.

These days I find myself wanting to eat the heads off things more often than usual, equal parts in anger and in love. My love so thick I wonder if it's possible to love something too much, how quick I feel mean, her shoulders thin beneath my hands. Last night it was a Girl Scout party. I knew we shouldn't have gone. She was too tired from sailing, but we went, and when I threw away the paper ghost from the top of her cupcake she lost it and was mean so yes, I was mad. And mean. You hate me, she said, you always hate me, and I felt sliced through, as if nothing I do will ever be enough. Even now, writing this down after a night of sleep and a bouquet of daisies dyed bright, the fact that she said those words makes me feel like something dead. I don't hate you, I would never hate you. Right away I said all the words I am supposed to say. I love you with everything I am and even when I am mad at you I love you. That's what loving someone means, I told her, that you are able to be angry with them and still love them. I tripped over the words, said them backwards and forwards because if there is one thing I want her to be sure of it is that she is loved. Is loveable and loves herself. Pleasepleaseplease, let her know that. Let us both know that love is, by its very nature, thick and never spiteful.

And now it is today and she has already gone to another party where she kept the paper bird from the top of her cupcake which I did not throw it away. She has forgotten but tonight I will still slip into her room to kiss her eyelids as she sleeps.

First grade school picture. How could I not?

reepy Serets

The other day I found a fire engine in the fridge along with a shoe and later a part of something, not sure what. It was hard to write that seeing as how the other day the right side shift key on my laptop disappeared and then the letter -- you know, the one between b and d? That key--gone. Beause really it was a fire truk that I found in the fridge, a shoelae and later the plasti piee of a toy, not sure what. Quik! Tell a story without one letter. Diffiult fored to be hard, the world suddenly shrunk down to 25 letters.

Ozzy likes to be at the highest point in any room. He limbs (missing letter there!) on top of hairs (missing letter!), tables and ountertops (yes, again). He bangs and pulls at drawers, keyboards, opening things that are losed (not going to keep this up beause you get it now, yes?). My mind onstantly filling in the gap of what ould happen just like yours is right now filling in the missing letter. See? How our minds make sense of what is in front of us even if something is not quite right. Why shouldn't a shoelae go in the risper?

Have you seen this? This statue of an angel stood near a house door. One day a dog broke the angel's wing, and the statue's owner disovered a reepy seret inside.

I love shit like this.
xo,
S

p.s. Anyone know if I an just glue the keys bak, or will the glue fuk up my keyboard?

Though Now, Of Course, I Know She Was

It is 1979 and my brother wears striped tube socks with a fat lump in the inner ankle of one of them. You know how some memories are sharp like that? I smell the warmth of plum trees and am right back on Scenic Avenue wearing corduroy culottes while my brother stuffs his inhaler down into one sock.

The first time it happened was in early September. A stupid back-to-school cold that we passed around like the time. Not a big deal until it was and Ozzy couldn't breathe. A 2am trip to the ER where they put him on a nebulizer and I made jokes with the ER nurse about Dennis Hopper's gas mask in Blue Velvet. Only I think I said National Velvet because the nurse looked confused when he laughed and it was only later that I realized he was picturing Mickey Rooney with Elizabeth Taylor and that maybe it's standard medical practice to laugh at the jokes of scared mothers in the middle of the night. If it's not it should be.

I am not going to draw this out because it doesn't really merit a drawn out story. Another ER visit and blah blah later and Ozzy has asthma. Not a big deal, I tell myself, there are much, much worse things. (Still. Try saying that when he cannot breathe, the flip side of my gratitude a dull throbbing fear of fuckfuckfuck.) Shut up, right? And so it is that twice a day I give him a nebulizer treatment of budesonide, albuterol if he's wheezing. From now until the end of cold and flu season, we sit in his rocker and watch Elmo on my phone and read books, sing, Ozzy's mouth wet with medicinal mist and so I kiss it.

I remember my brother playing right field in little league baseball. Or left field. Whichever field is least dominant; he only played as rite of passage. Standing way out there in his Lions uniform with an inhaler lump in his sock while we sat on the hot metal bleachers and watched. I remember the smell of mustard and how one summer day our dog Alice pulled all the old chewed up gum from the sidewalk and got it stuck in her muzzle. I do not ever remember seeing my mom scared.