My grandfather is dying.

I write that knowing it makes it sound as if this comes as a surprise to us, as if we haven't known it for years. But it doesn't, and we have. We've known for a long time now (too long, I want to say) that Parkinson's is taking him away bit by bit, a little more every year. We know the prognosis is dismal. We know there's no miracle cure--scratch that, there's no cure period, miraculous or otherwise.

But maybe we've been fooled--or, more realistically, have allowed ourselves to be fooled--by his 'good' days (i.e., those in which he's at least somewhat lucid, or can open his eyes for 30 minutes at a stretch, or when he comes out with things we can't believe he has stored away in his brain, like the name of a couple who came to his and Gommy's wedding). They make us think that there's still a glimmer of a chance that he might pull through. I think we all know, though, whether or not we say it, that we're trying to pull him back to us with gossamer threads; we can't stop his leaving.

Dad writes, in his most recent letter, words that cause my breath to catch in my throat:

'I visited Poppa Wed. and Thurs. and found him in an even more weakened state than even a month ago. He spends almost all the time with his eyes closed, whether sleeping or not is hard to tell. He did show a glimmer of recognition when I showed him an old woodworking tool and [he] made a very faint gesture with it to indicate he knew how to use it. I suspect we are witnessing Poppa's twilight days that will soon bring an end to his long and productive life. As a man of great native intelligence, tho not always so cultured, I know he looked up to you as a kindred spirit who better than most understands the workings of the world and never ceases to add to your quest for knowledge. To be curious is a good thing, he would admit.'

There are losses far worse, I know, than an 87-year-old man who has lived, by all accounts, an explosively full life. If he had the words, I imagine Poppa would acknowledge that he's had the chance to cover most of life's bases. But what loss is ever easy, however long in the making or inevitable? I can't help ruing the coming end of a life that has so profoundly shaped my own.

In Seattle, as we're getting dressed one morning, Sarah and I chat about Poppa. She leans forward toward the mirror and, as she brushes on mascara, says, 'I dream of him a lot these days, and always--really, every time--he's his old self.' This stops me. 'God, I have those dreams, too. He's always up and about, laughing and talking like he used to. It feels' --and here I am trying not to cry--'almost as if he's trying to reach me now the only way he can.'

And that's the truth: when I dream of him it's as if we're communing. As if the things he wants to tell me, the things he's got stored in his brilliant mind that can no longer reach his lips or his fingers, can pour out in my dreams.

I'm not a big believer in the mystical, and there are definite limits to what I find plausible as far as human communication goes, but I do cling to my dreams of Poppa. And I wonder whether he doesn't have his own dreams, coming to him in all those hours of closed eyes and half-consciousness, dreams in which we speak to him. Dreams in which the 3000 miles between us, and his disease-racked body, and the limits of the flesh--dreams in which none of that matters. And he can hear me say, 'I love you, just impossibly love you.' And, 'I always loved making you proud.' And, 'Know what I miss? Your big, callused hand around mine as we walked into the fields in Brewster; the way we rode the waves in Lake Worth; how you used to bolster my spirits throughout my gawky adolescence by reassuring me that someday I'd find a partner who would both love me and be worthy of my love; the tilt of your smile.'

And, 'Whenever you're ready, you can let go.'

Come again?

Also, here's today's nonsensical headline from Yahoo! News:

Study: Sperm Donor Women Fear Time

The drive-in

It's a good thing the entry I just wrote was more or less expendible, as Blogger has tossed it off into the void. Take 2:

The upcoming Independence Day holiday has instilled in me the desire to load up the trusty Corolla with friends and go to a drive-in. This stems, I think, both from the fact that I quite like the concept and from my unfilled hankering for a good dose of straight-up Americana, the likes of which can be hard to find in the Bay Area. (We like our fusion here.)

As I recall, I've not been to a drive-in for quite a while, at least since we had the blue VW bus (whose lack of heat was bearable in the summer). We equipped the back of the van with sleeping bags so Greg and I could retire at our leisure, filled the trusty Coleman cooler with dinner, and went to the theater over in Waterford to watch, if I remember correctly, Animal House. There must've been a kids' movie as the first half of that night's double feature (perhaps Lady and the Tramp?), but far clearer in my mind is the memory of watching Jim Belushi and friends stumble about in togas.

Anyway, thinking of drive-ins this morning brought to mind the eternally pleasant Let's All Go to the Lobby trailer (stills here), whose cavorting foodstuffs were meant to incite in patrons the need to proceed to the concession stand with all deliberate speed. I find it fascinating that this film was added to the National Film Registry in 2000, joining such other luminaries as Apocalypse Now, Lawrence of Arabia, and Porky in Wackyland. A prescient move on someone's part, to be sure. If only more theater operators replaced their tired, mid-80s live action concessions trailers with this one, moviegoing might once again seem sort of whimsical.

Achtung!

Mom sent me one of those FW:FW:FW:FW-type emails over the weekend, this one about safety tips for women. Now, I know the intentions behind these things are generally good, and it won't harm anyone to brush up on pre-basic safety skills (e.g., Be AWARE when walking back to your car in the middle of the night in a dark, empty parking lot).

But still, does no one realize by now that the 'Woman finds flat tire on her car, man offers to help fix it then requests ride to his car on other side of mall, turns out to have been plotting to rape and kill her' story did not, in fact, just happen to your friend Betty's daughter's friend at the mall last week? It's been making the rounds for years, and while I couldn't find a listing for it on snopes.com, it still smacks to me of urban legend.

Here's a direct quote from the list of tips:

(b.) If you are parked next to a big van, enter your car from the
passenger door. Most serial killers attack their victims by pulling
them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their
cars.

While I will not claim to have tapped into the workings of serial killers' minds, I will venture to guess that most serial killers don't go hunting down their victims by sitting in vans in mall parking lots.

Just in case I'm wrong about, though, I'll exercise extreme caution the next time I park my car anywhere but my own garage, will learn to enter and exit through the passenger side door, and will work on BEING AWARE. Because, as the message informed me, YOU NEVER KNOW!!!

It's a mixtape/random quotation/regain perspective kind of day.

When I find myself likely to wallow in a sad or disturbing or otherwise unpleasant situation over which I have limited control, I try (not always successfully) to pull myself together in one of two ways: either by engaging in a sort of Schadenfreude fest in which I allow myself to make positive (from my perspective) comparisons between my own current pickle and the significantly brinier pickles of others; or by reminding myself that even if the current unpleasantness were to end in the most horrid way possible (which, God and the boy and my own moody Cancerian self willing, it won't), it would not spell the end of my world (despite initial appearances).

A river in a time of dryness/a harbor in the tempest

So I walk down Market this morning, iced Peet's in hand, and think, first, you must give sad and sorry thanks (always, always) for the fact that this street is not your home (an extreme view, but a useful and humbling reminder). Then I think, whatever you might lose now, you will always have that drunken night of donut soccer with Dave and Otis; those quiet moments of holding baby Ev, just up from her nap, in Mom and Dad's living room, and for a while it's just the two of you, her exceedingly pleasant weight in your arms; you and Sarah in laughing tears as you model her new underwear over your jeans; wandering around Nashville with Eric and Erfert, Tenneesse whiskey on the brain; lying on the grass with Dave and Jimmy at Kelt and Kristina's wedding and just looking up, forever up, and out, and beyond.

Is it so wrong/to think there's more?

Some Buddhist scholar (I'm blanking on the specifics) wrote an article in Yoga Journal last year in which he noted that it's folly to believe that you're either the cause of or the solution to all of the problems you face in life. It's a folly, I admit, to which I often subscribe. When I stumble, I spend what may be a phenomenal amount of time wondering what I could've done to prevent that stumble (even in those cases when the answer is clearly, 'Not much') and scrambling to right myself (and whoever else I might've taken down with me as I fell). But I think the lesson I'm missing in all of this is not, Why did I stumble? or How can I get up again? but How can I get myself on surer footing in the future? Because in this linear world, in which there isn't the chance for do-overs, isn't that the only thing truly worth learning?

You'll cry/believe me/come back

My head is full of words: imaginary conversations, apologies, strings of poetry, too many songs. But they can only take me so far. I can only plaintively quote Marge Piercy ('There is a turn in things/that makes the heart catch./We are ripening, all the hard/green grasping, the stony will/swelling into sweetness, the acid/and sugar in balance...') or Springsteen ('I'm no hero/that's understood') or Li-Young Lee ('Song, wisdom, sadness, joy:sweetness/equals three of any of these gravities') before everything becomes a blur, and I risk excess, and should just rest, allow some silence in, remember that it's either life or freedom from briars.

Whatever happens, whatever, we say, and hold hard, and let go, and go on.

Relative measure

From a Times article on the publishing world's lack of interest in an Andersen juror's tale:

'Reconstructing the ruminations of the Andersen jury and exploring their ramifications is "not the worst idea I ever heard," Jonathan Karp, an executive editor at Random House, said meditatively. "I think the worst idea was the Bible diet, where you ate all of the foods mentioned in the Bible. That was the worst. Although for all I know that became a best seller."'

Small wonder

I think the Wonder Twins may have been sort of Super Hero Lite fare, aimed more at those of us who were not yet ready to identify with the Twins' more impressive brethren, or who were perhaps content to strive to be--someday, somehow--the sort of kids who could dress all in purple, sport magical rings, and transform themselves into endlessly useful permutations of water and animals.

My support for the cartoon WT does not, however, mean that I'll willingly go see the live action movie based on same when it comes out. Because, really, have we not yet learned to stop filching after-school or Saturday morning cartoons for movie ideas? (I suppose if the lesson is that movies based on cartoons may be dumb beyond words but are also painfully lucrative, it has been learned, and repeatedly taken to the bank, and we won't stop being inundated with such movies anytime soon.) Surely there must be better material for kid-appropriate movies out there. Can't we allow the Wonder Twins (and the Flintstones, and Scooby Doo) to remain in the animated realm, thereby saving their good names from the sullying affects of live action and computer animation?

Dear Metropolitan Diary

I've not yet read the Metropolitan Diary in today's Times, but I think I have a pretty good idea of what it might include:

• story about an elderly woman on a bus with (choose at least one) a large bag of groceries, a small dog, or an inappropriately warm coat
  
• story about elevator shenanigans in some co-op or other
  
• story about how, despite everyone's expectations, a New Yorker did right by one of his brethren, thereby exploding the myth that all New Yorkers are self-involved and ungiving

(Mind, I fully acknowledge the fact that the San Francisco version of the Diary would include endless variations on Muni whinging, tales of dot-com failures, and tourists in shorts in the middle of July. I'm not dissing the Diary.)

It's this last part I thought of last night when the middle seat in the row in front of me was taken, at the next-to-last minute, by a young woman who came barrelling down the aisle with a large suitcase, glared at us as she said, 'Well, SOMEONE has taken my seat' (when, in fact, she was looking at the wrong row), and finally plopped herself down after handing the bag to a flight attendant and almost hissing, 'That had BETTER be gate-checked.' She then put her tray table down to finish the cup of ice cream she'd brought on board and, after she'd finished it, thrust it in the direction of the passing flight attendant and said, 'Will you take care of this?'

In a nutshell, she made me want to smack her. I don't often have that desire. And while this is surely completely unfair and stereotypical and what-have-you, she also seemed to me the perfect example of the sort of insensitive, self-involved, purely selfish New Yorker who gives the rest of the city and its populace a bad name. Alas, on the plane, unlike in the Diary, there was no sudden change of heart, no turn for the good. She started the flight as a bitch and ended it the same way.

And, sure, no doubt she's nothing like the corrupt, Tonga-swindling businessman, but there still seems to me no reason to be so unpleasant. What's the benefit? Who wins out in the end?

I didn't dare ask and risk actually having to speak to her. Instead, I just waited in the aisle while she bustled out and down the jetway and into the maze of SFO with her gate-checked luggage and her self-righteous air.

Learned

Reading back through old journals is the sort of activity that's kind of painful while I'm in the midst of it, but winds up being clarifying and somehow refreshing--a bit like rolling about in the snow in the altogether after coming out of a sauna. It's easy to cringe at all of my past screw-ups, at all the stupid things I did or thought or allowed myself to feel, but in the end I find that I need to be thankful for precisely those things that make me shudder, since they contributed to the convoluted path that's landed me where I am now.

(As an aside, I sometimes think that if I ever need to inure myself to public humiliation and/or criticism, all I'll need to do is publish my journals in toto and let the world have at me.)

I could write reams on the particular subject of Past Mistakes in the Boy Department, as Recorded for Posterity on Paper, but the less gut-wrenching (not to mention more politic) course of action would simply be to sum up those mistakes by noting that they've taught me what I don't want while reinforcing the details of what I do. I've let myself stumble into (more than) enough of the former to truly understand that what I have now--the sweet, gut-shaking, heart-palpitation-inducing latter--is meant to be held onto.

I intend to do just that.

True Crime

Erfert has shared with us this criminal news tidbit:

I did read one interesting article this week -- the one about how a San Francisco banker bilked the tiny island nation of Tonga out of its entire $26 million national emergency fund (which the king claimed he had put into an American bank so Tongan authorities wouldn't use the money to fix roads). ... Before his dastardly deeds were discovered, the American managed to get himself declared court jester of Tonga. I assume that job is now open. I am adding it to my list of career possibilities if joining the circus doesn't pan out.

It makes me wonder whether the entire human race is always headed toward moral corruption, but most of us are able to keep ourselves from leaping over that ledge (sort of like how everyone carries around some strain of herpes, the vast majority of which are harmless), or whether the reverse is true: we're really all quite good, but some of us just can't hold ourselves back from making that terrible, sullying leap.

It also makes me wonder how many nations still employ court jesters.

The Phantom Tollbooth

Although it seems unpossible (as Ralphie might say) that I managed to make it through a rather book-filled childhood without reading The Phantom Tollbooth, that seems to be the sad truth. (Too much time spent reading and re-reading Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, perhaps, although James W. and Christopher K. agree that it's a classic.) Powells' interview with author Norton Juster sort of makes me want to jettison the rest of the reading material stacked up on my desk and go right to Dictionopolis.

True, true:

'You cannot live and keep free of briars.' --William Carlos Williams, 'The Ivy Crown'

Notes

I was planning to write something about Milan Kundera's musings on nostalgia in his New Yorker story The Great Return, but that was before I spent the day editing other people's work and fighting off impending illness. So for now I'll settle instead for two notes:

1.) Benicassim keeps getting better. B&S! Sigur Ros! Low! I'm increasingly sure that the experience will be worth trekking halfway (or so) across the globe and inserting myself into the belly of a Catalunian summer.

2.) Sloo and I once went to get coffee at the little pre-Specialty's cafe in the China Basin building and were wildly amused by the rolling hot dog machine, stamped with words advertising its contents that, as David noted, just had to be in a font called 'Hot Dog.' So I've done a search, and while I've not yet come across the lower-case, right-listing font we saw that day, I did find this, which is both Swedish and supremely cool.

Of heartbreak and Vancouver at dusk

It's both depressing and reassuring to learn that gay boys can be just as assholic and incomprehensible as straight boys. (As an aside, I should note here that the vast majority of the straight boys I know have been well-behaved lately, leaving the screw-ups and stupid decisions instead to the straight girls.) I mean, I'm never happy to hear about a friend being treated badly, but I do have to admit that it's oddly refreshing to be reminded that there are socially inept and emotionally cruel people spread across the sexual orientation spectrum.

On a wholly unrelated note, I find myself especially wistful for Vancouver around 9.15 p.m., when it's just passing into darkness here, and when it's still impossibly light there. And while I'd be a fool to deny San Francisco's natural charms, the impetuous part of me keeps stomping its feet and whining, 'Yes, but there are no mountains, and there's less waaater, and it's not as greeeeeeen here.'

Would that I could legally and feasibly divide my time between the two cities. That would surely be the best of both worlds.

Oh you're bound to look like a monkey when you're old

In Nashville, loopy from fatigue, hunger, and the desire not to be standing on a random street corner waiting for a cab to bring us to Mad Hatter where we could finally finally eat (and, heavens, drink), Eric, Erfert, and I started singing camp songs. The fact that we were able to dredge these up with little to no effort speaks to the odd phenomenon of the mind holding fast to things that probably don't have much use in the wider world. Why is it that I can remember clear as day the lyrics to any song ever to hit the Top 40 at any point in the 80s but cannot easily fathom, say, basic European geography is something of a disappointment.

But maybe my brain's desire to squirrel away camp songs stems from the fact that it associates them with years in which I actually had proper summer vacations (with proper summer weather to match) and got to devote my energies to tasks like keeping my perms as curly as possible and mastering the culinary intricacies of s'mores rather than balancing my checkbook and dealing with the various stresses of the workaday world.

Longing for a return to one's childhood summers is probably exceedingly trite, I admit, but sometimes what's trite is also what's undeniably true.

Wilska's Complaint

If you really, really need to program your cellphone with the major theme of 'The William Tell Overture' as its ringtone, at least have the common decency not to leave it sitting on your desk in an office of open cubicles, ringer at top volume and voicemail programmed to pick up only after, like, six rings, while you skip off to lunch, because, you know, that's just damn annoying.

Justice is served.

A question

If we accept the definition of 'desert' as an arid and generally water-less locale, is 'desert island' (as in, shipwrecked on) not a complete contradiction in terms? Or is the idea more that while the island itself (being an island and all) is surrounded by water, it doesn't actually host a (fresh)water source?

These are the quandries that threaten to keep me up nights.

Like a daydream, or a fever

My head is filled with words today, and half-formed thoughts, all jockeying for prime position so that I might latch onto them and investigate them further: lost, found, aphorism, Schadenfreude, the nature (and limits) of forgiveness, poetry as solace, recovery, guilt.

But I can't focus. I need to let myself be all over the place, because this seems like some bizarre treasure hunt of sorts, and I'm not sure where I'll find the next clue.

In no way is it easy to watch a friend suffer, even (or perhaps *especially*) if she's brought the suffering on herself. My instinct, countless hours of empathic listening training aside, is to make things better. But of course I can't do that here, because I'm neither the cause of nor the solution to the problem. So I do what I can--listen (and hear), take her out for wine, try not to let my own opinions and neuroses come too much into play.

There's a saying, often attributed to the Dalai Lama (although really, who knows) that when you lose, you should not lose the lesson. I don't think Val is in any danger of losing the lesson here. And although I'm not the one who has lost (knock on wood), I'd still like to believe there's something for me to learn from all of this as well.

I guess when the walls that have been surrounding your life as you know it start to crack and crumble, you can do one of two things: either stand there in the midst of the rubble and rue what you've lost, or step beyond the mess for a while, over those broken walls, and see what's there.

Public ablutions

Add to the list of Things I'll Never Understand the insistence on grooming oneself on public transportation. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll admit that I've filed a nail once or twice while on (or waiting for, or cursing) Muni, but I try to do it as subtly and quickly as possible.

Subtlety and speed clearly did not interest the man performing a serious cleaning of his ears this morning on the inbound train I had the misfortune to board at the same time he did. This cleaning process--stick index finger in ear; move finger around to gather whatever substance is in ear; remove finger to investigate substance before wiping it off on shoulder bag; repeat ad infin-fucking-itum-- lasted from Van Ness to Embarcadero, which is a seven- or eight-minute ride in the best of times, and significantly longer when your train is subject to mysterious waits, as ours was.

I tried to bury my eyes in my magazine, but such is the curse of peripheral vision that the process of emptying this man's aural cavities kept seeping into the corners of my sight. I eventually wised up and turned my back to him, but I still felt queasy and creepingly annoyed.

This begs the question, do people who groom (clean ears, cut nails, empty sinus cavities in an unending series of nose blowings, etc.) in public places (especially enclosed, relatively inescapable public places) do it because they have no idea how unpleasant it is for everyone around them, or precisely because they do know, and are making some sort of statement? Further, if it's the latter, are their lives so devoid of other meaning that they're reduced to making faux political/cultural statements simply by being disgusting? This has put me in high dudgeon.

I hope Squeaky Clean Ear Man is benefiting from his newly-emptied ear canals, and I further hope that the next time he finds himself in need of such grooming, he happens to be somewhere other than on Muni.