Awesome, Dude

Henry likes guitars.

Electric guitars, acoustic guitars, famous guitars, whatever has the word 'guitar' in it. Henry likes fat ripe loud raucous rock music. 70's bands. 60's bands. He knows songs from before he was born, stuff I don't even know and didn't know then. Henry likes NYC, Manhattan anyway. He likes the way it looks and feels and smells, the commotion and ubiquity and endless thereness of both cement and humanity. He the likes the crowds on the street and how alive it is day or night, how it etches itself into your skin and your brain and becomes part of you, how you're never alone there, even when you are. Henry likes sea creatures, rocks, sticks, saltwater, water, period, when it's not too cold and it's not too hot, wild things, Henry Potter books, Henry Potter films, anything apparently by Michael Bay (this, I'm waiting for him to be 15 and get over the guy) cultishly great Korean films, vampires (who doesn't), Arrested Development, The Flight of the Conchords (again, yes, what great taste he has), saying Dude and saying it repeatedly, poetry, a good campfire, fishing, sushi, great jokes, cilantro, the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the color 'black'. Henry makes mean guacamole, dude. Henry wrote a poem for the Oregon Student Poetry Contest that received Honorable Mention (and deserved more, dude) that goes like this:

I can't forget the fish

the one that got away

the pig of a fish

the fish that took my flies

both of my flies

I can't forget the feeling

the feeling of hooking a great fish

the feeling of the line snapping

snapping under the fish's strength

tearing the tippet

the heavy 4x tippet

I can't forget the satisfaction

the satisfaction of the jerk

the fish pulling my fly rod

the curt but amazing jerk

the satisfying feeling

of hooking a monster fish

Smart, sensitive, funny, strong, loving, so good at so many things, becoming himself moment by moment, a boy, a man, almost there. I used to think having a girl would be the end-all be-all. Then I met Henry.

- Janet

To be Alive

Merce Cunningham, the greatest living choreographer in the world, just died, age 90.

When he was 80 he danced a duet with Mikhail Baryshnikov. When he could no longer move his arthritic feet he would make up dances in his head. And so eloquently he said this about dance: 'You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscript to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.' I think of Charlotte when I think of him.

For Janet from Charlotte

Something I ran across today:

Fur, Feather, Flesh

I love animals. That seems like such an obvious thing to say. But the more I observe human behavior towards animals I know it’s not. Many people think animals are just fine. You can look at them. Occasionally touch them. You can feed them. Admire them from a distance. Own them. Dress them up in sequins and faux fur which is both redundant and insane. Give them up or throw them out when you've outgrown them or they've outgrown your children or the couch or the TV room. Because you know, they're okay, they're fine. Then there are others who honestly see almost no separation when they compare the way they feel about an animal and a human being. But when push comes to shove a majority of humanity still believes animals – domesticated or not - are ‘other’ and therefore less than us. And I think this has to do with our need to keep them at a distance so we can use them. As beasts of burden. As fabric. As a food source. As experiment. As killing sport. As the thing that can’t speak our language so can easily be made slave.

Most humans would roll their eyes at Albert Schweitzer's creed about animal life and slaughter: Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

And then I observe the rancor that comes when some people find out my charity extends almost solely to animal rights groups, refuges, sanctuaries. When I explain that as donations go, humans charities far, far exceed the number of donations that animal groups do, they don't listen. For them it's abnormal, and a little pathetic to put it frankly, to put other animals anywhere close to the throne we occupy. We are their gods. They are lucky for the lives we have allowed them to live.

And it’s all so incredibly odd to me. As humans, we are but animals. As humans, we no doubt evolved much later than most of the animals we treat so deplorably. But because we won the evolutionary jackpot and were blessed with the capability to both torture and revel in it, we get to hold dominion over them. Sometimes it’s the most humane, kindest type of dominion. But most often it’s so far from any definition of kindness.

When I read anyone claiming that humans who love animals to a greater degree do so because animals are ‘easier’ than human beings to interact with, I shake my head. And when in the mood, laugh. They purport we’re obviously wounded or shy or insecure around people, and animals allow us to hide with them, or behind them, or ask less of us. But nothing could be farther from the truth. My companion animals expect extraordinary things from me, just as my friends and husband do. I let them all down quite a bit. Human nature, I suppose – Hah! But I do not love them as equally as I love human beings because they ask less of me. I love them equally because quite often they give more. It is as simple and true as that. - Janet

Oh heck.

Clearly, the ex-Governor Palin does not read our blog. There I was rambling on about the merits of not quitting, and she does her damnedest to prove me wrong. Maybe that's why Janet and I don't have many readers: WE'RE NOT INSANE ENOUGH. Oh well. I'm sticking with sanity. If Ms. Palin tries to head to the white house, I think it'll be a worthwhile camp to sit in. (Did anyone notice the loons making a guest appearance during her announcement? Birds of a feather...)

I (would like to but can't) QUIT.

Sorry. So sorry. I've been "absent" lately. Not physically (who's ever physically absent in the world of the internet? Wow, that's kind of a depressing thought. Now you never have an excuse for not being there. Heavy.) Anyway, no. I've been mentally absent. Or preoccupied. Or whatever you want to call it.

So let's call it what it was. Crisis-ing. Yes, sad to say: I was in a panic, a tizzy, a "state" about the state of my career. I.e. that thing I do when I'm not raising my two beautiful children. Over time, it's begun looking like a hobby instead of a career and that's part of the problem. I want to excel and be brilliant and be "all over it" but I also want balance and time to watch the flowers grow (I include my daughters in that category) and time to smell the coffee, not to mention brew it. But the crisis wasn't about balance, it was about whether I'd "lost 'it'" or not.

I suppose this happens to all creative people every now and then. (Let me clarify something before going on: I think most everyone is creative, although there was that accountant I had so many years ago that maybe wasn't, but I use the word to refer to people who rely on their creativity to make a living and/or a reputation.) Anyway, I hit some sort of wall a month or so back. An internal wall. Something. I just felt like I was going nowhere. Had no more good ideas. Dried up. The economy wasn't helping of course, but that "high" I was on a while back in which I actually claimed that the slow economy was "okay" because it gave me time to get my life in order, well, let's just say that was over. And it wasn't just the lack of jobs, it was the lack of some spark in me...as if my reserve of gunpowder had been depleted. It was a really frightening feeling. Like my soul had changed or something.

Simultaneously, my mom, who is 77, was taking a class at NYU about modern Russia, in which she had to write two papers on the subject of her choosing. Mom is a professor by trade, still teaches at Pace University, but these assignments threw her. She too hit some sort of wall simultaneously. Teaching writing was one thing, but researching and writing on an unknown topic was something else. She began to doubt, to waffle, to wonder...she began to feel "old."

So here we were an ocean and three decades apart feeling over and done with, spent, and extremely unsure. My mom took the first leap. She decided to stick with her course, write her paper no matter how long it took, no matter how out of shape her brain felt for this specific task. She dug in and just did it. She wrote and rewrote and rewrote until she got it right. And she did get it right. And her professor's comments reflected that. Her conclusion at 77? "I'm going to do this every year. When I finish this course I'm starting another one." Ah, so that's how it's done?

For my part, I started to design something on my own. The going was slow...but it helped to shift the doubt ever so slightly out of the wallow it had created in the pit of my stomach. But the real kicker was a job that finally came alone. And it was a good one, a perfect chance to prove myself wrong. So I followed my mother's example. Dug in. Did it. Re-did it. Kept at it. You might say you don't have a choice when someone's paying you...but you sort of do. You can do it well. Or you can do it not well. Give your all. Or not. This time I did, or at least I tried, and it massaged out the knot of doubt...I'm not calling myself a genius by any means, but at least I don't feel paralyzed anymore. I feel like someone who knows her profession. Who's good at it. Who's not in the least ready to stop. (What was I thinking?) I feel like someone who just got through a bad patch. What's that line from the Speedo ad a gazillion years ago? "What doesn't kill you just makes you stronger"? Yep. Close enough.

---

So. As they say, "Quitting is not an option." It just isn't. True for my mom at 77. True for me at 40-something. And true for my daughter who is struggling through her first two weeks away at summer camp. She wanted to go. I paid (and paid and paid). Now she's there. First night: "I wanna come home!" (Sob. Sob. Wail. Wail.) "Come get me, puh-leeeeeeeze."

As much as it felt kind of rotten to say it, it also felt kind of right: "I'm sorry honey, I can't. You'll have to stick it out." And she will. And she is. And I'll bring her home this weekend. She'll be happy, in her comfort zone again...but little does she know that this is just the beginning. Of humps and hills and mountains to climb, icky stuff to get through with a stiff upper lip, experiences that ask you not to give up. Being unable to quit...and, in the end, being glad you didn't.

Let Us Now Praise Not So Famous Men

So I post this photo here for some simple reasons. It's Father's Day. And the first day of Summer two thousand and nine. And this picture - isn't it great? - captures both these thoughts pretty well. My dad died when I was nineteen years old and he was just 49; I was born on his 30th birthday. He was a riot, a charmer, a ball buster, a little bit Dean Martin a little bit Robert Mitchum. He taught me how to fish, tell elk prints from deer, make donuts and marinara sauce, the importance of hard work, beautiful music, raucous laughter, card games, true love, attention to detail, compassion, tolerance, wisdom, fearlessness.

Having a life. Not watching other people's lives pass by and calling it good, but honestly breathing and accomplishing something every single damn day. Even as he was sick and dying of cancer he was building a deck on our house. Passion, that's a good enough word. Passion for breathing in and breathing out. Here's to every father who lives with that kind of intensity, that kind of grabbing at life and appreciating its singular intensities. Here's to Charlotte's Dad and the time she had with him. I wish there had been more. And here's to the first day of Summer and the second day of Summer in Italy. Right now it looks like blue skies ahead.

Food, Inc. Because we are what we eat. So what are we?

A few weeks ago 96,000 lbs of US beef was recalled. Again. Ninety-six thousand pounds of meat and honestly no one here even bats an eye. Two years ago 15,000 Americans got sick and several died from eating salmonella contaminated Vegetable Pot Pies. Just a few weeks ago, thousands of gallons of mineral water tainted with E coli was recalled in Ireland. Across America we’ve had salmonella outbreaks in spinach, tomatoes, peanut butter and pistachios and too much e coli to count. It’s insane and shameful and still people – friends and strangers alike – find it more interesting to worry about 'swine' flu then they do the food and the lard and the truth right in front of them. On their plates.

Each time this happens, for a week or a few days, people won’t eat peanuts. Or they’ll throw out their spinach. They won't touch raw tomatoes but they'll eat fast food, processed food, gobs of it without caring what's in it or what it's doing to them. Because they don’t care about the big question: why does this keep happening, again and again, and why aren’t we doing anything about what’s causing it in the first place?

And now, because ConAgra can’t pinpoint which of the 25 ingredients in their pot pies carries salmonella, 100 million pot pies have just been labeled both ‘unsafe’ and ‘consumer is responsible for safety kill step of food’. That means you. Your grandmother. Your kids. We’re responsible and if we die, we really should have read the fine print. Because you can’t rinse E coli or salmonella off food. You can’t soak it or pray for it to be gone. And if it happened to tomatoes one month and peanuts the month after that and frozen food today, what makes you – any of us – think it won’t happen again and again ad nauseum (literally)? And unless it makes you sick – or makes your child die – do you even pay attention? Do you even care? We aren’t just what we eat. We’re how it was grown. How it was processed. How it was watered and picked and stored and distributed. Whatever we eat, be it animals or vegetables, we're also what we eat eats. If pesticides are used, we eat those. If hormones are used (hello meat, milk, eggs, ice cream, cheese) we’re that, too. What’s in our food, your food? Formaldahyde. Estrogen. Feces. Half of all US Sewage ends up on crops. Half of all US sewage waste – feces, PCBS’ dioxins, DDT, asbestos, parasitic worms, ratioactive material from hospitals – that’s right baby, radioactive waste - sleeping pills, birth control pills, etc etc etc all the stuff we throw down a toilet without caring – 50% of it ends up on crops. Not organic crops. Not sustainable crops. Big fat you just got it at Costco and Safeway and Fred Meyer crops. Because of loopholes in regulations, and the fact that Cargill, ConAgra, and Monsanto are as vocal and voracious as Big Oil, Big Tobacco, and Big Guns have ever been. In my view, worse. Because they are slowly, and in some cases, not so slowly killing us. Killing our children. If your children matter to you, shouldn't you give a damn? Shouldn't their health be as important as you keep saying it is?

Eating is a choice. It's a choice just like every other choice we make and it’s not nearly as difficult as most of them. You are what you eat. Where you eat. You are also where you refuse to eat. So what, exactly, are you? Go see the new film Food, Inc. Go to http://www.foodincmovie.com.

Grateful.

That’s the word of the day.

Sometimes it’s the one thing we don’t have much time for, that chance to feel grateful. Or it’s a passing emotion we barely acknowledge. But as trite or common or naïve as it may sound, there are so many things that deserve our gratitude. Our children being healthy instead of ill. Having a job we love that occasionally loves us back. Having a job at all in times like these. Great friends who keep us sane, or give us sanctuary, or who make us laugh like sinners, or forgive our sins on a daily basis. Friends like my stockbroker who’s getting his company to donate all – all – of their charitable donations this year to fight breast cancer. Answered prayers. Or ones that may yet be answered. Second chances and second chapters, because our lives are full of them, regardless of what Fitzgerald wrote. Today I kept internally complaining about the stupidest things – if it’s not the vacuuming or the sweeping or the laundry or the dog hair it’s the garden or the weeding or the watering or the cat food. It’s the writing job I don’t want to do but that screams to be done. The invoicing the clients the conference calls the essentials and the demanding and the needy and they never go away. But if they did, then what? Then there’d be complaining about that, too. I walk out and see the garden growing like literal and delicious (truly edible) weeds and think, we did that, we cultivated that, it’s worth everything and more. But it doesn't take a garden. It takes observation. It takes knowing things could be much worse. Much harder. Much less. We must find – I must find, anyway – the space to be consciously grateful. And some sort of constant way to be thankful more often than not.

The Phone Scares Me

Charlotte is scared of rational things. As irrational as they may feel, they're all based in some pretty normal fears. She's scared of airplanes, earthquakes, natural disasters, war. She's scared of death and of dying. But I sit over here on the other edge of the world, on the lip of the biggest ocean with enormous trees waving in the wind and and I'm scared of some insane, crazy shit.

I'm scared of moths. There, I said it. That's the fuzzy comfort of having a blog nobody reads but us. Here I can unload my freakish fears without worry someone from fourth grade will come running up to me spewing aloud my deepest secrets. Even if they do read and yell, who cares, we're old now. So anyway Moths, go figure...something to do with a short story by Arthur C. Clarke or H.P. Lovecraft when I was seven or eight. Soon afterwards I read 'Portnoy's Complaint' and was intrigued by liver, yes, yet never afraid of it. Hmmm, what else?

I'm scared of car accidents which is ridiculous when you live in a country so dependent on automobiles. Scared that someone I love who's five or ten minutes late is actually dead in a car and I'll find out at any moment. The knock on the door. The phone that rings late at night - there it is again, that ringing.

I'm scared that I'll jinx things by thinking about them or not thinking about them or saying them out loud or not giving them the reverence they deserve. As in 'Wow, we just made it to the airport in time! And brr, look at all that freezing rain coming down in absolute sheets. Thank God there's no chance whatsoever that our plane will go down! Look, there's someone from ZZ Top going into first class - and he's bringing his guitar. This will be the safest, fastest flight ever!" But in this above-mentioned fear I do take comfort being joined by roughly 25,000,000 others who throw salt over their shoulders, never walk under ladders, and talk to their own, individual, listening, nodding God. Perhaps I underestimate their number.

What else? I'm scared of turning on the TV and seeing the hunting channel or the fishing channel or anything to do with a trapped, wounded, scared, attacked, dying animal of any kind. I'm scared somebody will steal one of our dogs (twice now instead of 'dogs' I typed 'gods'; hence my point) so that when they're in the car and I leave, I hit the 'lock' button four, five, six times in a row as if my hand has a mute kind of Tourette Syndrome.

And I'm scared of the telephone. Not in some Tippy Hedren-it's-going-to-attack me phobia but what you have to do once you pick it up. You have to speak into the damn thing, and I hate it. Hate that it should be a comfort and connection and I fear I'm bothering the other side. Are they listening or have you interrupted them during sex? Are they thinking about the sex they just had, mulling it over as you speak? Do they want to talk to you or were they hoping you were the repairman? Do they want to listen or talk or both or neither and is this a good time or is the repairman coming over for sex? So many questions, so many ring tones, I hate it.

And yet the telephone is still a lifeline. Almost everyone I love lives far away. Charlotte in Italy and everyone else scattered from NY to Boston to LA to San Francisco to Seattle and Bend to Hawaii to Portland. Even if they live close by, a phone comes in handy. For years I'd tell my closest friends that I almost called them, I really thought about calling them, isn't that fantastic, the way other people think of sending a letter or card or trying out for American Idol. Derek and Kevin repeat it to this day: gee, I thought about calling you...isn't that enough? Yet for me this is truly sancrosanct: if I love you, you make it all the way to actual thought. But to press those numbers, well, it takes something out of my soul. Does anybody else do this? Mean to write, call, connect, approach, hold, make meaningful, keep thinking they'll always be enough time? And when did it change? Remember grade school, junior high, high school, rushing home to talk to the friends you just saw all day long in class? Remember pressing the phone against your head for hours until your ear was practically on fire? Practically sweating? And how can ears even sweat? Remember your parents screaming for you to get off the goddamn phone to eat dinner? Do homework? Texting, twittering, it's all the same thing just with a slightly different device, although no sixteen year old will ever understand outrageous ear heat. But it's connection, that thing Charlotte talks about, that way we reach out to someone else we trust, regardless the miles. The sound of someone you love on the other end of the phone is a gorgeous thing. The thought that anyone loves you enough to call when they could be doing something else, that's wonderful. Why would I be afraid of something so beautiful? Spontaneous? Alive? Maybe the saddest sound is a phone that never rings at all. That and a moth, trapped and scared beating against the light. Which is another reason to keep turning the lights off.

Another cycle to contend with.

O.K. So in addition to the fear cycle, the menstrual cycle, the climactic cycle and the motorcycle, there's the happiness/success cycle. Or so I'll call it. 

Recent research at the University of Virginia has revealed that "moderately happy people, while less successful in relationships, tend to achieve more, because being a little disgruntled can serve as an incentive to improve."

On another front, Jonathan Haidt, in his book The Happiness Hypothesis, "argues that humans have evolved to live like bees in a hive—in tight, cooperative groups. Haidt has found that many people, when asked to remember the happiest time in their life, will refer to an intense, hivelike group experience such as military experience, a band or just a time when they had a close group of friends. 'During the Enlightenment we busted out of the hive and created modern, independent ways of living,' Haidt says. 'Now we fly around asking, 'Why am I not satisfied'?" 

These two tidbits, thanks to my Spring 2009 issue of the University of Virginia Magazine, make great and disturbing sense to me. They explain why, when I was in my late twenties and early thirties, I lived through a heady period of creativity (i.e. success, in my mind) at Wieden + Kennedy which left me both exhilarated and constantly frustrated (read: miserable, despite my success) but which I have continued to search for elsewhere in life. I remember it as being a deeply happy and rewarding. 

In retrospect, I think what was rewarding was what I achieved, and, yes, the amazingly tight relationships which were formed and which continue to grow and deepen even today. My friendship with Janet, for example. (Thank you Dan Wieden for "giving" me Janet.) But what I have now—a deep, abiding and loving relationship, two beautiful children and a curiously fulfilling life in Italy—provides me with a greater happiness. I couldn't have had this profound happiness without giving up that earlier phase—that literally buzzing hive of group activity.

Flip side: I'm often not as creative, I fear, in this happy hive as I used to be in the disturbing one. When I confront the shift in personal creativity, I get grumpy, grumpiness spreads, and before you know it, something creative pops out of it again. I feel happy. The smiles come back, I enjoy life, creativity ebbs. 

Around and around and around. Happy - creative/successful - happy - creative/successful. And so we go. How lovely it would be to be happy and to feel creative, be creative at the same time. —Charlotte

Repeat after me.

My grandmothers, Rosa Sanders Thomas (left) and Gladys Hartz Moore (right).

Long time. No hear. Sorry about that. 

When last we spoke, I was tamping down various fears in order to go visit my mother in New York. Suffice it to say that once again the trip was well worth any pre-travel jitters. It was full and rich and meaningful on just about every level. 

I found my mother well, but contending with some degree of memory loss, which became in a way the centerpiece of my visit and of my thought-process even now long after the bags have been unpacked. I won't go into the details of why or how, but I will say this. Having a mind bent toward the metaphorical, I even see memory loss as a sort of metaphor, but also as a tool of nature to force human beings into a pattern of behavior that might serve our survival, or at least, the quality of our lives. 

The metaphor is that memory loss is a sort of editing tool that forces our minds in older age to focus on the things that matter. (The name of that woman you just met at the newsstand five minutes ago but have already forgotten? Probably doesn't matter. It's taking up disk space. Let it go.) 

The survival tool is this. I noticed with both my grandmothers (one who probably suffered from Alzheimers and the other who was mentally clear into her 100's) a tendency to repeat themselves. But what they repeated weren't grocery lists, phone numbers, or plans for the day. What they repeated were stories. Family myths. Personal tales of passage and growth. In the case of my forgetful grandmother, these stories were burnished and shaped by the passage of time and the loss of memories less important. In the case of my mentally acute grandmother, the stories, I realized later, were pertinent to my own growth. She knew exactly what she was saying, and she was going to say it as many times as possible before it was too late. In both cases, the stories in question were repeated to me over and over and over again. I always listened, aware in some way that they might serve me later, aware too that my grandmothers were telling me who I was and where I came from. 

At times it was boring. I sometimes wanted to say, "I know, I know. You told me this already." But I tried not to. I hope I didn't. Because what I realize now, is that my own mind needed that repetition to make the gist of the stories stick. Here I am, decades after their deaths, and I can't repeat the details of what I thought would be permanently tattooed on my gray matter, but I can remember the over-arching themes. I can remember the point. I can recall some of the texture and color. The emotion. I am beginning, as an adult, to relate to more and more of the "why" behind the telling. 

So. It dawns on me as memory problems plague so many of our parents, that perhaps nature has a plan. The American Indians kept their culture alive by listening to the stories of the Elders. Stories were told over and over and over again. Talk-story it was called. Lectures hidden in tales. Lessons interwoven in drama. History, not boring, but entertaining. Again and again. Repeated and repeated until it wasn't so much learned as absorbed. 

Now as my mother-in-law tells me daily of her life in France during WWII and my mother tells me one more time about her favorite teacher in high school, I realize that there is probably a deeper reason—a reason bigger than simple loss of memory or the need to talk—for the retelling of these particular tales. My survival will be served well by listening. My going forward will be informed by what they have to say. 

It's Nature's will that we forget, it seems. It may also be her will that we repeat what we remember. Because if we're not going to choose that the oral repetition of these stories be part of our way of life, if we're not going to formalize the passing down of these words, Nature's going to choose it for us. Because I'm sure, very sure, it is her will that we listen, learn, absorb, then tell again when it is our turn. —Charlotte

Fear. The Big One.

I've been afraid most of my life for some reason or other.

When I was young, I was afraid that my parents would abandon me—that they would fail to pick me up at school one day, and that would be that. I was afraid that the school bus I rode up and down the mountain where I grew up in Tennessee would slide off the road on one of the more treacherous turns. I was afraid of dogs, particularly Max the German Shepherd who lived in our neighborhood and who did eventually kill Charlie the Poodle, the only dog I was not afraid of.

In later years, before I could drive, I was still concerned about my mom not showing up to pick me up, but at this point the fear was not that she wanted to abandon me (she had put up with my shit for years, so it was clear she intended to stick it out with me), but that something horrible would happen to her.

And then, the fears vanished for a long period, because ugly stuff I'd never spent any time fearing began to happen in my life for real, the most dramatic of which was my parents getting divorced and selling the house I'd grown up in. I had to adjust to all sorts of things that were "strange." Moving from a house into an apartment. From a neighborhood to a complex my mother could afford at the time. Trying to connect with and buoy up a father who seemed to be suffering unfathomable pain. Being the kid at school who currently had "a problem." I remember hearing a teacher refer to me as a child from a "broken home." I told her off, as politely as a Southern girl could, and felt much better. 

This is small potatoes compared to the tragedy that many people deal with, but they were personal issues, nonetheless, that knocked my fears right out of the arena. Dealing with real life left no space for fear. And as the tectonic plates that had underpinned my childhood began shifting, so did I. I became more adventurous. I tried new things. I climbed mountains in the Rockies with my biology classmates. I befriended people I'd shied away from. I got a job. Bought my first plane ticket, took my first flight alone. I also started drinking, being "wild," testing the boundaries that had so safely and wordlessly delineated my upbringing. Fear was falling out of my lexicon—for better and for worse. 

Fast forward through a decade and a half of college, more schooling, frenzied careering right up to what would come to be known later by the people who coin such terms as a "starter marriage." My husband was a terribly handsome, warm, talented young man. We moved to Portland, settled into our careers (I more happily in those days than he), and bought a dear little house complete with, yes, a picket fence. We worked on the house, began work on a luxurious garden. And what do you think happened? I started to be afraid again. Really afraid. Really, truly deeply darkly afraid. 

Of what? Well, in hindsight, I'd say many things, mostly internal. Fear of being trapped. Fear of accepting the reality of my choice. Fear of no longer being mobile, free. Fear of not being able to become myself within the confines of a relationship. (I was immature, what can I say?) But, mostly, these fears manifested themselves as one big, giant fear of earthquakes. Or the fear of being targeted by the Uni-bomber who was active in those days. Or the fear of being bombed as I slept in my bed by angry Iraqis. The first Gulf War was going on. I hated it. It was all over the news. 24/7. Seemed like sooner or later I'd have to pay for all that bombing. Wouldn't I? And what better time than when you're not dealing with your marriage like a grown-up?

Portland is situated on a fault, and after the two big earthquakes in California hit, I hammered my husband mercilessly about leaving Oregon. He looked at me like I was crazy. Our life was good. Why would we unsettle ourselves? "Because," I would stammer, feeling the panic zip back and forth between my knees, my hands and my heart. I knew I didn't have a good reason, so I didn't dare offer it. I ran away from this fear (and the actual fears it masked) in a zillion useless, reckless and self-destructive ways while simultaneously having a glorious career. Not surprisingly, after four years of marriage, my husband called it quits. More tectonic plates crashing and sliding. More upheaval. 

But what did I do? Did I move away from Oregon, the place where my Personal Big One was waiting to happen? No. I stayed there, and ta-da, the fear vanished again. As another Charlotte-earthquake and its aftershocks required me to react/act/learn with some degree of maturity, the metaphorical earthquake and all the fear it inspired receded into the background. 

I'm still afraid of earthquakes, flying and dread diseases, because (hello) what I'm really afraid of is dying. Especially when things are going so beautifully. My life is full. My marriage is good. My children are amazing. I don't want anything to mess with that; I've worked hard to have it. But my fear is not rational. Of course, one day I will die, but letting the fear of it erode the joy of every passing day is simply not an option. So I've been learning to deal with it. To live my life anyway. To keep things in perspective. 

Somewhere during the Bush administration, I, like many Americans, had a front-row seat for the demonstration of "How Fear Weakens You, Makes You Vulnerable to Manipulation, and Siphons Off Valuable Energy You Could Otherwise Be Using to Live a Fuller and Better Life in a Healthier World." This was destiny throwing up a billboard that said, "Fight the good fight, Charlotte. You're on the right track. Don't give in to the fear."

Tomorrow, I leave my children and my loving rock/anchor/pillar of a husband, to board a plane and fly to New York (where I have not been since 9/11), while the media rages on about a Killer Flu and birds in airplane engines. I'm a little nervous, but nothing approaching panicky. And I know that my reason for going—to be with my mother for a few short days—is well worth setting aside the ungrounded fears I have about all of it.

Life is calling. And I'm determined not to be too afraid to answer.—Charlotte

p.s. Can't wait to hear from Janet, who will join us again soon from the Ground Zero of Swine Flu, where I'm sure she's had a lovely time.

Flying solo.

Charlotte with photo of Janet and Charlotte 

snapped 10 years ago, more or less.

Janet and I live two continents and an ocean apart, more or less. I never see her, not even using iChat or Skype. We write emails, occasionally post a letter, and send each other photos in which we are rarely present. We use stand-ins, dogs and children, to show who we "are" these days. 

But we couldn't be closer. She is a sister to me. A mentor. A rock. A shoulder. A soft and warm place. A psychologist. A fairy god mother. A measuring stick. A dose of truth and honesty. A mirror. The person who finishes, and often starts, my sentences. So many things. 

So when she goes on vacation, even though we are already more than 6000 miles apart, I miss her. Knowing that she's not at home with her dogs and her greenhouse and her wabi sabi cups and her mercurial ocean, makes me feel a little less stable than usual. Even blogging without her feels a little wobbly, even though we alternate all the time. 

Weird. 

Anyway, all's fair in love, war and friendship. When she gets back from Mexico. I'll go to New York. And she'll be "alone" for a week. During which you will all probably note a dramatic improvement in the quality of the posts. 

This is just to say, I miss her terribly. So, here's to Janet, my dear friend. May she travel safely, and come home rested. —Charlotte

More Susan Boyle. 10 years ago.

Something about her singing "Killing Me Softly" is just too touching for words. Take a listen. First up, "Cry Me A River" and then the Roberto Flack classic. (If you want to zip ahead to it, slide up to 4:19.) There are no comments equal to the pathos of her voice. —Charlotte

 

Sun, Surf, Sand, Margarita. Repeat.

A few year's ago Rick’s stepfather Bob was sitting on our deck, content, first time on the Oregon coast. Relaxing in the filtered sunshine coming through the Sitka Spruce, the tide making the rocks sing on the shore below, a hawk flying between the trees on the edge of the cape, one of those days that makes you certain everyone not living in Oregon is crazy-stupid or merely crazy-insane. We mentioned we were leaving for vacation in a week. He looked from forest to ocean, looked at us. ‘A vacation from this? Why?’ A poet in our midst. And his point was taken. But once again nature calls. In this case the small and highly intoxicating fishing village/surfing town/expat haven of Sayulita, Mexico. First Bend for three days, then a week with great friends. This means Charlotte will have the blogging to herself. Unless Mellie or one of our other one ripe friends wants to join in.

Yeast: the new Prozac.

I like to cook. I don't like the obligatory shopping / feeding / plate cleaning ritual that seems to take over my life, but when hours are long and the fam is relaxed and one job has been neatly filed away until the next one comes along, I do like to cook. In fact, I love it. But I've never been a bread person, at least not until this year. 

A couple weeks ago, for what reason I can't remember, I was feeling low. Blue. Down. And it dawned on me, in one of those rare epiphanies that occurs when you actually identify what it is you really desire, that I wanted to bake a loaf of bread. I called a trusted baker friend, got the low down on the perfect loaf of bread, and got started. By the end of the day, the last crumbs of that yeasty wonder were being wolfed down by my kids with generous portions of butter, and we were all basking in an unusual happiness that almost only comes with making things yourself. But in the case of the bread, it was more than that. It wasn't just that we made it, it was that the thing seemed to have a warm life of its own. The texture, so belly-like. The rising. The punching-down. The yeasty smell which increases over time. The miraculous elasticity of flour, water and little else. The physical exertion required to make it yield its best—an exchange of energy that, yes, is "life". I dunno. 

Today, we made pizza. Making the dough was a simplified version of the bread process with the addition of olive oil and a different ratio of ingredients. But the same magic took over again. The yeasty rising, the alive-ness of it. The ability of the dough to forgive and forget and succeed brilliantly despite the pummeling best efforts of strong hands and small weaker ones. 

It's my new drug of choice. Not that I had one before. But let's just say that it works as an antidepressant as well as the centerpiece of a warm day spent around home and hearth. Not to mention the fact that it's the perfect antidote to so much else in life that isn't quite right and downright wrong. —Charlotte

And then there's Saint Susan.

Some Major and Minor Saints, Part One

Some saints are highly secular. But for some of us they form our strongest religion. In no particular order whatsoever: Merce Cunningham. Diane Arbus. Kerouac & Cassady. Dickinson. Hemingway. Capote. Plath. Martha Graham. Anne Sexton. Jackie Robinson. Sandy Koufax. Julia Child. Muhammad Ali. Louis and Ella. Tenzing Norgay, because sherpas do all the heavy lifting. Jane Goodall. Harvey Milk. Tennessee Williams. James Baldwin. Langston Hughes. Robert Lowell. Billy Wilder and Kurosawa, Hitchcock and Truffaut, Polanski, Kubrick, Capra, Almodovar, Cuaron & Inarritu & del Toro. Imogen Cunningham. Lucien Freud. Francis Bacon, Botero, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Chuck Close, Robert Crumb, William Eggleston, Robert Frank, Tina Modotti, Claes Oldenburg, Meret Oppenheim, Diego Rivera, Cindy Sherman, Julian Schnabel, Wayne Thiebaud, John Currin, Helen Levitt, Richard Avedon. Hunter S. Thompson, dammit. Philip Roth. Joyce Carol Oates. Donald Barthelme. Raymond Carver. Roald Dahl. Salinger Salinger Saliger. Philip K. Dick. Junot Diaz. Nikolai Gogol. Amy Hempel. Patricia Highsmith. Shirley Jackson & Alice Munro. Grace Paley & Dorothy Parker. Annie Proulx. George Saunders. Ricky Gervais and Eddie Izzard forever amen. Christiane Amanpour. Hendrik Hertzberg and every single New Yorker writer. Rachel Maddow. Maira Kalman. Philip Petite. The French, period. While we're at it, the Italians. Anyone not going to a 'tea party' circa April 2009. The voters of Iowa and Vermont circa April 2009. Gore Vidal. Ingrid Newkirk. Michael Pollan. Fareed Zakaria. Toni Morrison. Tom Stoppard, still. Gloria Steinem, always.

Viva the Mod Squad!

It's a stunning image, isn't it? I was cruising through the New York Times slideshow on Michelle Obama's style while in Europe for the G20 summit, and this one stopped me in my tracks not because of what she's wearing but because of, well, let me count the ways. 

First, there's the hysterical size difference between the Lilliputian royals and the land-striding first couple. Second, there's the difference in complexion and all which that says about the strides we've made in the Unites States. (If the Queen and her consort were black and hip, I bet there'd be less discussion about doing away with the royal family. "What's your name? Who's ya daddy? Is he rich like me?") Then there's the décor, and the perceptible difference in smile-ability.

It was after I walked away from my morning peruse of the news to water the plants on my balcony that it struck me. It's so simple. 

The Obamas are modern. Queen & Gang, God bless'm, are not. By choice or by accident, they just aren't. Then it hit me that Bush wasn't modern either, and that was one of his major flaws. And McCain, as much as I sort of respect him, didn't strike me in many ways as modern, either. While conversations and debates raged on during the election about conservative v. liberal, capitalist v. socialist, right v. left, Republican v. Democrat, something was missing. We weren't talking about modernity, and we should have been.

Modernity is a great word. Because it's not about leaving the past behind. It's this: "The quality of being current, or of the present," and what could the world possibly need more than leaders who are "of the present"? 

Bush and Co. made me want to flee from "now," because they were essentially driving us back into the Dark Ages anyway. The Obama's, on the other hand, have so quickly restored my sense of happiness about being alive in this day. I rest my case and leave you with one more image. I'll go back to digging in my own modest—but modern—dirt now. —Charlotte