Life Events

Wakefulness.

What constitutes a "fucked-up life event?" Not something good or bad; just something that mixes who you were with who you’re going to be, and for an instant you sort of catch yourself moving from one state to the next. What is that? Maybe it’s when you’re old and feel yourself slipping via some portal running one-way out of your brain; the first moment you can’t remember what you just said, or if you told this person that story already. Maybe some thing (one) came along and changed everything. You could sense it the moment it happened. Or you dropped something. You looked everywhere for it. Then you found it. No, no, it was when you caught your breath in your throat and thought you hadn’t ever felt this way before. Or you woke up before knowing where you were. But it might have been the pain (or the insatiable peace, or joy); so immense you could hold it in your hand but not put it down. Could it be knowing exactly what to do but being paralyzed to actually do it? I think someone told me that—the paralysis of an arresting moment— is the root of every fucked-up life event. But they may have been wrong.

Series and series of these life events, averted adventures, stumblings of feet. Growls and snarls. Birthday parties, summertime, more dead Iraqis, clown school, prison sentences for white-collar criminals, backyard soccer games on dewy grass, political debates, manicures, and bridal veils. The scent of that person on your clothes. Baby starlings. Intuition. Somehow it all fits in. And somehow, the hardest things are also the most obvious.

We sat there and smiled and laughed and admitted we haven’t a clue what we’re doing or what solution makes sense (more maraschino cherry paste). Maybe I can find a way to be flattered by that. Or moved. I curled my toes. The wallpaper faded; my eyelashes were already sore from blinking. Then I sipped at my beer, concealed in a coozie fashioned out of a dirty sock.

The trick, she told herself, wasn’t to forget all at once.
It’s simply a matter of finding something every few minutes
That’s more distracting.
Remember, she said:
Falling in love doesn’t require long-term goals, either.

But sometimes it’s just a matter of walking through a carnival after dark with some friends, eating zeppolis and gambling. Or running through a house of mirrors, then riding unsafe carny rides; arms in the air; tears from laughter sticking hard against my cheeks. Maybe it’s then, in those moments, I’m the most like who I want to be—some girl spinning around with the wind in her face, laughing hard with the blurry world going by.

But still; it was out of the bus station that I walked—not toward it. Can this possibly be real life?

About a Boy: A New York family struggles to give their son a 'normal life'

[Originally published in the New York Press]
Writer Joe Pompeo
Photography Nicole Caldwell
[Photo caption: Despite suffering from rare genetic disorder, Hunter Cavanaugh, 6, smiles and plays like most boys his age. More photos here.]

The tracheostomy tube is one of the things that really makes Hunter different from the other kids. Inserted through a small hole in his neck, it creates an airway amid the tumors that clog his throat. He can’t breathe without it.

Then there is the gastric feeding tube that attaches to a hole in Hunter’s stomach, providing him with the nutrients he is unable to swallow. Though he’s recently been able to start drinking small bits of water, at age six, Hunter has never eaten a piece of food.

Read the rest of this article here.

The Scenic Route, via Candied-Apple Springs

Round and round we go.

"I have some of my best conversations with strangers, she said, because they have no idea who they're dealing with."—Brian Andreas

Spring in New York City is so good with her parks, wine and olives, live music, and unpredictable evening adventures.

A great moment: Getting one bottle of red wine deep with your buddy before realizing the two of you are sitting in a gay bar, and that somehow you've become involved in an argument with the barkeep over who the female vocalist is on Meatloaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That);" and even while arguing you realize you're singing along (the track is blasting) because you used to love this song, ever since you had your first kiss to it so many years ago.

It (as in life, as in reality) staggers me so my brain swims laps of the butterfly stroke. As the seasons, so goes the world: Things change, people come and go, all hell breaks loose, love turns, floors get pulled out from under you, and time passes, stops, speeds up and slows down. It's all some of us can do to just breathe and put one foot in front of the other. Or sigh, say "fuck" a few times, and try remembering how different everything seemed so recently. (And, maybe, asking, "How did I ever get by before all of this?")

"You have a good sense of humor," a stranger told me. "Don't lose that." But I was kind of buzzed and the bar was loud, so the conversation didn't last.

Maybe it's enough to have moments that catch you and hold you, showing you something you hadn't known before. Is that so bad? What else is there?

Maybe dusk, when the world is the color of sunflowers. Baby powder sprinkled on dance-hall (movie theater) floors. People with whom I share so much laughter, we don't know what to do with it all. Being so wild over someone that the backs of my kneecaps sweat. But maybe I'm talking about the same thing, or about something I thought of a long time ago.

So it goes?

Later on in the afternoon, we gathered on a big rock and looked out over the water.

Belly Rolls

"AH, THE WORLD! OH, THE WORLD!"—Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"

Thank goodness for laughter.

Combine giggling with one temporary tattoo of a praying mantis and a bottle of wine, and I think you'll find a young woman can be ready for anything: Fung Wah buses to Beantown; dark beers or classy wines (okay, also Carlo Rossi) with old friends; suicide bombings aimed at a darling V.P.; a controversy surrounding the discovery of a dude named Jesus' tomb; phone calls from people I've never met; kisses as light and airy as white wine; and standing around as if waiting for some giant to breathe.

I still can't finish this stupid Sunday crossword puzzle I've been carrying around since New Year's. And every time I write on it now, the paper just gives way so you can't even etch in the boxes anymore. Time to throw it out and move on. Some things just can't be done: No use forcing it.

Have been told I'm open with people in a limited way; as if I'm a declassified document with all the good parts blacked out. It would have been advantageous to make a discussion of this, but my "ssshhh" irritated him; my silence fanned.

She reassured me. While she spoke, I made eye contact with a beautiful branch on a gnarly-ass tree on my block and answered, "That's exactly what I needed to hear."

There was so much laughter and I don't know where to begin explaining it all. Then we shook hands, like superheroes might after averting disaster. I couldn't get enough of anything that was going on. I kind of just stood there, knowing it would be sad to forget any detail.

I am intellectually tickled. May the shenanigans shenan and igan indefinitely. I can't help wondering about things as I grin while riding underground. One musing: Supposedly you can't articulate thoughts from the collective unconscious. It's too deep. So we have to deal symbolically. Is that what glossy gossip mags, E-cards, and text messages are for?

"I need to say something," she said, wet snow falling fast around us as we stood at the entrance to the subway. But we never got that far.

Plot Line

Plot Line
Current mood: chipper
Category: Life

Only the story of my life involves chance encounters the moment before I'm meant to catch an airplane; then drives me head-first into Colorado characters-turned-business men and strangers I already know; my story careens me into dark humor, the jokes of which I just barely get.

You gotta love falling in love all the time with laughter and stories and people. Lucky me for living in the thick of it. Makes me want to climb a tall building or water tower or mountain and welcome myself home. What awaits?

I'm wondering about the possibility that I create the universe with my consciousness. Can it be, that all I deem as real is real only to the extent I can imagine it to be? Can that "tree falling in a forest" question possibly have an answer? Too, is it to be believed that each action has infinite possible reactions; all simultaneously playing out? How do so many people worry about celebrity weddings and eating disorders when we could be figuring out (at least, discussing) quantum theories related to being itself? I'm begging the question of whether something only becomes real when we lay our peepers on it. Some tell us we only perceive inanimate objects as still; in fact, their very composition is of millions of hurrying, flipping, folding atoms. And if you could speed the molecular composition, you might find cans of soup, a sock, a conch shell, a spoon and a stick walking along a highway out west under the bright orange fireball. I digress.

I'm also thinking about age and the strange mechanics of a mind; how like computers humans can seem. A little dust of age settles like a fog over certain transmitters and blowie!—you no longer know what you had to eat (indeed, if you ate at all) or to whom you last spoke. Are we all doing this incessantly throughout life? What makes some memories stick? Why does dementia in the old affect memories in reverse order? What makes consciousness any different from automatic synapses, when one sees how vulnerable the psyche is? Or is consciousness part of a higher level of being; something separate from brain wiring all together? I think it's more than bah-humbug coincidence that so many things overlap.

No answers so far; I'm working on teasing them out. Ah, so very much to wonder about as I sit here surrounded by ghosts.

String Theory

I sat in the back row of a Greyhound bus two months ago, trying to determine whether everything happens for a reason, or if up until the final moment there is choice, or if only in reflection we can say everything happens perfectly, in the only way it could, or if it's all really just about the string theory. I thought then this problem would be decipherable over the course of the next 28 days. How wrong a girl can be.

I'm reminded of this brain athleticism each morning while commuting through the delicious early-fall air on another bus, which is similar to a Greyhound but with 100 percent less socializing and story fodder.

Besides fate, I've been working on articulating, in the words of James Joyce, "imaginable itinerary through the particular universal." In English, that's thoughts and sweepy feelings (gasp). Tried figuring a way to talk about my own theories regarding found objects (belts strewn on sidewalks, plastic jewels in the street, discarded letters, food scraps); the millions of memories each nook of Manhattan holds (sites of lovelifedeathandothershenanigans); attempted to tell a friend he has traits not possessed by another human; or to her, that as a duo we know invincibility; or that I still miss those friends in such a specific way; or that the laughter I summon from memories is what I most fear losing.

But all I've said so far comes out sounding like maraschino cherry paste. On second thought, maybe that ain't half bad.

But more than that, it seems this conversation also turns to the damned string theory: someone leaves something behind and someone else picks it up; we try relaying our dreams and consequently spread or reduce confusion; we overlap, spread the love. Like a big heapin' knot of string.

Does everything come back to that? Here's to hoping so.

Largeness

Redwood trees have shallow but long roots. They stretch great distances underground, seeking out fellow redwood roots. Once found, the trees sort of embrace and hold each other up. Walking among the giants, keeping watch out for Bigfoot, I think of all these trees holding onto each other for dear life just a few feet below my step.

Two weeks on a Greyhound bus will do something to a woman. She'll play cowgirl to Nashville's honky-tonk, and by the next day she'll be dancing at a Laredo nightclub. She might sweat it out in the desert while locals moan and wail into karaoke machines, or sit poolside among saguaro cactus and so much sand. There's the beaches of San Diego, with body-building cancer-crusaders and street kids with eccentric stories; LA county with its studio lights and mechanical bulls; and Santa Cruz: ah, Santa Cruz.

All that, to find oneself nestled in a bunch of ancient trees at an overnight Yurok tribal dance intended to heal a sick child. Ceremonial fires, regalia dating back hundreds of years, chants as old as the salmon running in the rivers. And for tomorrow, a protest in Portland to shut down Klamath River's dams; the dams that make the salmon float belly-up in too-shallow and too-warm water. It's a grab at the old ways, at the sacred life-cycle and livelihood of an ancient people who know these trees, and those fish, and the river. I'm just along for the ride.

And what can there be, after that?