Wormy

These are the worms one of G's friends cooked up in our house last Saturday night. They brought them from Tuxtla. Apparently they're a delicacy and it's the season. (Ants, too, which we roasted over the barbecue the next night, but that's another story.) As soon as word got around they were being cooked, the party that had been next door moved mostly to our house. You could stretch the things out, joint by joint, which was what the cook did, to make them cook faster. Fried up, they didn't taste like much, but it was sort of an insane thing, and this pretty girl went around with a plate, offering them. Some people screwed up their noses, but most gave it a try. I'm not sure if eating the things was the reason, but the party got pretty insane. Shall we blame it on the worms? Or the mezcal and tequila? Or my delicious flan?

thank you!

Thanksgiving at the Pierce house was a lot of fun, as usual. Somehow, the kids table has turned into the under 30 table, and there were more of us than the "adults." My cousin R wowed us with his knowledge of wooing women (apparently, the dim ones can really be a lot more fun), and our guest P told us some things we never quite considered about the melding of medicine and business. D and Y were visiting from Cairo/New York, and seemed to have a pretty good time. My brussels sprouts (despite boohooing from several male family members) were received so well the full pan of them disappeared. Beforehand, we talked to my absent Aunt Y by Skype for the first time. My mom and Aunt A carried a laptop around the house, showing her the tables and the food--kind of cheesy but pretty cute. Didn't have anything else to eat after the 2pm meal, but did have some coffee at the movies later. We ended up heading to the only independent theater in northern virginia to see "Slumdog Millionnaire"--a film that more than made up for the bad choice we made at Blockbuster the previous night. Where "Snow Angels" was a self-indulgent, non-sensical myriad of characters and painful scenes, "Slumdog Millionnaire" was an exciting, colorful myriad of characters and lovely scenes. It was a cavalcade of colors and sounds but nothing about it was painful or forced or overdone. Quite sad in regards to the recent Mumbai attacks, the movie was something of a bittersweet entertiainment. Not sure what I'd say if I was familiar with real-life Mumbai at all, but, as it is, I admired the storytelling acumen of the writer of the novel that inspired it and the screenplay. I guess I just feel like a good movie is hard to come by in this day and age, and this definitely is one.

the tricks of memory

Cities and Memory #5 (from Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino)

"In Maurilia, the traveler is invited to visit the city and, at the same time, to examine old postcards that show as it used to be: the same identical square with a hen in the place of the bus station, a bandstand in the place of the overpass, two young ladies with white parasols in the place of munitions factory. If the traveler does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regret at the changes within definite limits; admitting that the magnificence and prosperity of the metropolis Maurilia, when compared to the old, provincial Maurilia, cannto compensate for a certain lost grace, which, however, can be appreciated only now in the old postcards, whereas before, when that provincial Maurilia was before one's eyes, one saw absolutely nothing graceful and would see it even less today, if Maurilia had remained unchanged; and in any case the metropolis has the added attraction that, through wat it has become, one can look back with nostalgia at what it was."

An absolutely stunning paragraph brought to my attention by one of my new teachers here in Richmond. Richmond, which felt so awkward and awful, like an ill-fitting shoe, when I first came here over a month ago now. Richmond, which now feels pretty okay, even though it's been raining for the past twenty-four hours. Actually such gloom might be the perfect thing for not making me feel like a shut-in as I stay home most of the weekend, reading and writing.

Had my first short story workshopped this week. So intense! I came home and fell asleep right away--couldn't do what I always did in San Francisco and read everyone's comments on the train ride home, since I bike home here and I was too, too tired.

Our first real party in my house last night. It was actually thrown by my roommate's girlfriend to raise $$ for a great cause. Amazing though (even if I was in pajamas and avoiding direct contact with any new people) to have the house full of bodies and warm food and voices. After they left sipped overly sweet wine (like nectar) out on the porch, happily talked about nothing, about the past, and watched the incredible lightnight shock the whole world around us almost as bright as day and listened to a rumble of thunder longer than I've ever heard. Thunder is just clouds bumping into each other, right?

(The picture at the top of this post was taken in Richmond near 1900. The young boy front and center is a newsboy, who lied at first when asked his age. He said eight first and, when prodded, went down to six.)

A Whole New World

Unfortunately the other day when my parents came to visit me in Richmond and we went out and about I forgot to put my battery in my camera, but here are a few photos I took on a long walk I went on last Friday, just as the sun was sinking...

This first one is of my house, or more the tree in front of my house. The house itself is incredible, with high ceilings, wood floors, two sets of stairs, very cool roommates, and a small community park and garden out back:


Many monuments dot this city, many of them having to do with the Civil War. There is a famous one of Arthur Ashe. Here is one that goes a little farther back:


Here is an artsy one. Me on one of those highway overpass things, with all the cars going past below, it sounded like the ocean:

One more, some houses with a Baptist church bus and some chairs set up for a gathering:


Yeah, so strange days, new world...

like moths, moments flitting in and out and back and forth...

Standing on a sidewalk in Boston the other night, alone, waiting, sorta tipsy, around 1:30am, I realized it was snowing. Not soft, white, fluffy, but small, hard shining--"wintry mix," they call it? No matter, it was lovely. I haven't seen snow in three years I guess, and I was already really happy anyway, and so it made me even more happy, punctuated that moment as perfect, etc. And I heard a young lady leaning up against the pizza place I was standing in front of complain loudly to her friend: "When is this f-ing snow sh-t gonna give up?" Ha. They proceeded to have a rather inane conversation with a guy who came up to them wearing a fluorescent safety vest. I can't recall it now but I was stuck to every word, distracted from my snow.

Maha is a common Arabic name and the name of the female character in the Arabic textbook I have been studying from for the past year. Maha is dour and sullen. She feels lonely as an Arab college student living in New York with her parents, who, although they let her dress like all her friends, do not permit her to stay out late or have a boyfriend. Maha is sort of pretty but it's hard to tell since she always looks sad or bewildered in the black and white photos in our textbook or the short monologues on our DVD. Today our new Arabic teacher told us that Maha means "cow's eye" in Arabic, so cow eyes are assumed to be beautiful things. I can't specifically remember ever looking a cow in the eye but I do suppose it would be beautiful, all big and glossy. It's still a sort of strange thing though.

Until today I had not known that there is ample evidence that the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad was a staged event. Thanks, P.

What else? Since I flew Jetblue this past weekend, I watched that personal Satellite tv they have. I watched probably ten times more tv than I have in the past three months combined. I want to know if there is any situation now where a camera crew is not present to record people's lives. I want to know why I was so hooked by "Intervention", a horrid show on A&E where a drug addict is followed through their days and then in the end surprised by an intervention of his loved ones. I watched this woman shoot meth, like, five times, and I swear the two men who were sitting around me watched it too. I could feel them both turn their heads to my screen as it happened.

And there is a woman unpacking an entire houseful of ikea-looking furniture into the floor level flat of the house in front of mine. I wonder if she knows how many transients have slept on her new stoop in the years the house has been worked on and I wonder if she fully understands that most of the windows look out onto a tiny passageway that allows home access to me and the 16 other people who live in the two houses behind hers. Or maybe it doesn't matter to her. Maybe she's just the assistant or the shopper or the realtor or the mistress or the whatever.

Weak entry. Tired girl.

Happy-ness

What is it to be happy? What is it to be good? I have come to believe the two are intertwined. They intersect and play off of each other, fuel each other.

I was pretty moody this past weekend. All stuck up in my own thoughts, and thoughts that weren't taking me anywhere but made my mind spin in circles. A few things made the spinning stop. First, was alcohol. A wine-tasting Friday night, more wine on Saturday, then by two beers while playing pool at a fun birthday gathering, and then mimosas Sunday morning at a lovely backyard brunch in Cole Valley. The dozen or so people gathered at this brunch directly discussed the nature of goodness in our world, and whether being good or seeking to be so somehow works against you, of whether it should be such a conscious quest. The champagne and the lovely garden we were sitting in made it a light and lovely exploration and certainly an interesting one to have with people who were mostly strangers to me. But then I came down off the alcohol later, right back into my stormy mood.

Other shocks of happy this weekend included:

--hanging out with my little cousin Maya, who immediately took my hand when I got to her house and insisted, over and over, on being tickled, and then laughing her guts out each time. When she was getting ready for bed, she insisted we play with her kitchen set and when I asked her for a(n imaginary) milkshake, she said "tikram 'aynik", an Arabic phrase which literally means "bless your eye." In English, I guess we would say, "your wish is my command" or something of the sort, basically a sweet response to "Please..." It was very warming since she's not even two and a half and has never said that to me before. And the exchange itself is something of a role reversal, since it's usually she who is asking for something.

--in a cafe, listening to mother explain to her young daughter, who must have been four years old or so, the following: "I read a news story the other day about a book someone wrote recently where he claims that the key to happiness is to do something that scares you every single day. Makes you brave and happy, he said." The girl solemnly nodded. I hope she remembers. I think it's good advice.

Happy today, too, when subbing for the fourth day at a tiny middle school near downtown where kids who had been terrors to me last week finally started to treat me like a human being, or at least listen to me. I had them all write letters to their new science teacher, introducing themselves to her, and then had the pleasure of reading each one. Some pretty fantastic stuff, and now I feel like I've learned a few more of their names and a lot more about them.

What else happy can I tell you? I've just begun cooking with kale, and it's pretty amazing. Favorite form so far: sauteed with garlic and oil and then sandwiched inside a grilled cheese with juicy, red California tomatoes.

And one last happy/good bit is that my old friend Lee Cohen has just started what promises to be a neat blog. A post on education caught my attention today, and has left me eager for the continuation of the story it begins.

good bye to seven

Eight is a good number. It used to be my favorite number because, on its side, the "8" stands for infinity. I don't have a favorite number anymore. I was having a conversation with a 3 year-old I'd just met the other day and when we ran out of things to say I just asked her what all her favorite things were: color? animal? food? And then I asked her what she wants to be when she grows up. "Princess," she said, looking down. She might just find a way. I'm leaving the east coast tomorrow, after two weeks visiting family and friends. Feels like I've been away from San Francisco forever, seen so many people out here I don't ordinarily see. One of the best things about this is they remind me about things I've forgotten. Things that I remind them of, like a pair of toe socks a friend I brought to visit from California wore at my parents' house, or stupid things I did to boys and boys did to me, or the time I tried to make cranberry white-chocolate cookies.... I've made a few resolutions but I don't want to tell you about them. I've got to get up in less than four hours to fly back to California, fly into 2008. My mom and I watched Dick Clark count down as the ball dropped in Times Square. It was absurd but also touching. The man had a stroke this year and had a bit of trouble getting the words out, and the young, fresh-faced correspondents helping him out kept repeating the same lines over and over again, such emptinesses as: "There's no place to be but right here, right now. If you haven't been, you should make it a point to come, at least once in your life. There's nothing like it." There's nothing quite like anything and everything is everything but also nothing. One foot in front of the other, here's to leaving 2007 behind.

catastrophic days

That is a photo of a dead, somewhat flattened pigeon shoved into a grate, headfirst. Encountered FRIDAY night at the corner of something and Valencia. Pretty devastating. And yesterday (SATURDAY) I saw two more, as I was biking around. Those two were much flatter, small raised discs of pigeon that I rolled by on the asphalt as I rode home from the grocery store.

On MONDAY I went to my cousin's house where they have satellite tv, and on the news there were stock market line graphs flashing downwards across the screen. Seems the market "has an upset stomach," as my father described it yesterday on the phone. And last night I was sitting in front of the same television again. We were watching something called "No Comment" on Euronews, a show that consisted of video coverage with no commentary, not even in a language I can't understand, not even scrolling across the bottom of the screen. There was footage of a mob of black-hoodied people in Prague, beating each other up, against grey walls. And then the cops showed up and then it switched to somewhere in the boondocks of Turkey, where peasants set up camp and hauled things against a stark desert. In the distance behind their tents, there were dunes of dark pebbles, what might have been coal? And all this as my little cousins expended energy at our feet:


On TUESDAY I woke up early and voted. Off-year, so there were like six propositions and of course Gavin Newsom won for mayor, perhaps because, as someone told me later that day, "He's just so damn good-looking," and the roster of people he was running against read like a variety show line-up. The volunteers were sweet, but seemed a little incompetent, and I wondered how voting could be more powerful than certain conversations.

On WEDNESDAY, this happened, but I didn't hear about it until THURSDAY, and even then I was too busy getting painfully drunk with the best coworkers a girl could ask for. And so I started to process it on FRIDAY. 36,000 gallons of oil fuel (which is somewhere in between gasoline and straight-up crude oil) spilled in San Francisco Bay. Unforgivably slow response and the poison spread quickly and far, closing down more than a dozen beaches, seriously the most amazing gems of our city and surrounds. But then this fine SUNDAY morning I happened to click on this. 1,300 tons of oil fuel spilled in the Black Sea after an oil tanker split in half?!

Still the thing that gets me most is that after a nice walk with a friend in yesterday's grey drizzle, about a half a block from my house I encountered a man I often see hanging out on the streets of my neighborhood. He was standing still right in the middle of the sidewalk, facing east, underneath one of those huge black umbrellas, the kind my dad used to have. And as I slowly walked by him, I realized his head was bowed towards his chest and he was sleeping.

Bookshelves

I would like to take a moment to thank shelves of books...

...for providing a way of getting to know someone.

...for being one of the best ways to wile away time at house parties when you don't feel like talking to anyone.

...for evidencing the things we have known and the things we want to know.

(Oh, and goodreads.com doesn't even hold a candle.)

blurt

oh my god is there no there other way than operating platform nightmares past midnight in april? and i want a land where passion drips from lips and paranoia is banished but we hold it oh so close, this need to wonder to question to interrogate. i'm full. and there is laughter echoing through the house, like nice music, like keeping me awake. and a stare across the darkened doorway pierces the dusky air, allows a flutter gut, a truth lull.

Rough Stuff

These are middle drafts of the three newest poems I've written. They've come out sort of as a series--because they are concerned with similar topics. I swear I am no where near ready to be married, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately, in the abstract I guess. I'd be curious if you married people had any thoughts, particularly about "And". Anyway, here goes:

And

And stand together but not too near together
For the pillars of the temple stand apart…
--from “On Marriage,” The Prophet, by Gibran Khalil Gibran

And (+) conj. 1. the most basic connector: “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” man and wife, man and woman, boy and girl, male and female, master and servant, mother and father, sister and brother… 2. Yin and Yang? Earth and Sky? 3. consequently: “I saw her across the room and my heart stopped and she made me do the craziest things. I couldn’t sleep! Days on end, I couldn’t eat! And then, finally, she agreed to marry me.” she: “And it’s been heaven since then, hasn’t it?” he: “What are you talking about woman?” and pinches her ass. she: giggles and sighs (and sighs and sighs and sighs and later they will moan their regular and uneven chorus). 5. The final joint in a series: ironing his shirts, cooking him dinner, and bearing his kids. 6. The present is an addition, the future an addition, to the past, and to our collected imagination, and our history, and our symbols and signifiers and systems. 7a. In the News, Marriage is turning into an Elite Institution, like before... Marriage in America is capitalism’s wet dream, full of SUV’s and IRA’s and Caribbean cruises and Thanksgiving feasts. 7b. And the revolutionary rant: Polyamory! Raising children in tribes! With many who can act as parents, and sharing knowledge and tasks and celebrations, like before… 8. But back to marriage, which your mother tells you is something that will certainly some happen to you, which your father tells you he put you on this earth to do: to marry and join your good genes with some other’s good genes, and in the end you will continue the line, fill out the tree. 9. The advice-giver clears the advice-giver’s throat (Ahem!): “A successful marriage is a combination of chemistry and hard work.” 10. The concave form and the convex it lays against; like two folds of flesh inside a closed fist.

after A. Van Jordan


After Dinner

I am happiest behind a sink
of dirty dishes; scrubbing pots
makes more sense than sitting
in the swill of satiated
conversation.

Try to talk about what is happening
or what happened or what will

happen,

and you might trap me,
briefly, in the bones of memory,

but then the light will catch
the corner of my periphery,
flash like a rocket’s sizzle
in a darkened sky, and I bolt upright,
for there will be water to boil
for Turkish coffee and tea,
tupperware to fill,

wilted, oil drenched lettuce
to brush off of plates.

I am

I am older wiser stronger stupid fragile
breakable fixable trickable tall pale
freckled smelly scented woman girl
female bitch whore angel virgin am I

Sometimes the house we live in
feels like a small, cold sickness,
tight and falling in on our heads;
then one day I came home,
slowly pushed open the door,
and the windows
flooded
the dusty floors
with light.

The food I cooked for dinner was
hidden, wilted, bought last week
that night we ate burritos instead,
but I cut it, touched it, built it
and we talked over it
and very slowly cleaned up,
talking still and eating
small, sweet berries, their
bright juice settling
over
the meal.

And there are spaces in my love for you,
where the thought of loving you
is laughable but
here there are stars
and tendrils of silent sidewalk air
crawl over us as we
trace street corners
and deeply
breathe
the night.

I am virgin angel whore bitch female
girl woman scented smelly freckled
pale tall trickable fixable breakable
fragile stupid stronger wiser older am I

(Thanks to my writing circle, Jim, my Individual Vision class, and my sister for reading some/all of these is such early stages.)