Mending Wall

There's an arm draped over my hip. The room is dark, quiet, the Olympics in the living room finally turned off, the offensively loudly ticking clock in the kitchen shorn of its batteries for the night. We talk about TV chefs, books, something else I'm not really concentrating on. I wonder if I would sleep better at home.

And then it snaps into my head: Something there is that doesn't love a wall.

These lines come to me half-bidden sometimes. I'll be standing in my kitchen in mid-afternoon, watching the light seep through the window, and there it is: the end of Richard Hugo's "Degrees of Grey in Philipsburg." Plath's "fountains": anywhere, anytime, always aided by moodiness. Ditto Millay.

But "Mending Wall"? That's a fairly unusual one. I'm not expecting it.

I open my eyes to the blank wall in front of me. I'm still talking, or (half-) listening, but now I'm wondering about Robert Frost. This is the only line of the poem I really know. What random file drawer of memory did I pull it from?

The arm is a limited time offer (though it stays for longer than expected). The warmth, the chatter, the prelude: all of it is limited, asterisked, carefully delineated. That's the agreement, the understanding. That's--oh--the wall.

Got it.

A lifetime ago, back in the first year of G., I held out for a long time on falling for him (or admitting that I had), explaining that, for a panoply of reasons, I felt the need to be the Hoover Dam. But late in the year I caved, and, with a shrug, could only say that the Hoover Dam had sprung a leak. (Within a few months, it had all but completely crumbled and floated away.)

I've never been good with walls--my own or others'.

So it was that last night I found myself staring at a blank expanse of a literal one, an expanse I've fixed my eyes on before, feeling something kick around in my chest as I thought, This can only tide me over for so long. Because these current flashes of delight notwithstanding, all of this feels like an odd, murky combination of scattershot and heavy on the rules and regs.

And what I carry with me all the time, patiently waiting and hoping to find it again, is the sense memory of an early morning last fall, of opening my eyes from sleep to see a boy walking toward me, of understanding, for a little while, what it is to be utterly without walls.

'...Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.'

Annual Summer Weather Complaint, 2008 Version

Last Saturday, having hit MoMA with Sean, I went to 42nd Street to catch a train to Brooklyn, where I was scheduled to meet up with Rachel, David, and Joseph. I can't possibly be the first person to compare the 42nd Street Subway station in mid-summer with the center ring of hell, but regardless, it's a comparison worth repeating. It was so hot and so unbelievably humid down there that my skin instantly glossed over with a layer of sweat and condensed humanity, all of which evaporated into a layer of grossness when I got on the air-conditioned train.

But hear me now, people: I would be back there in a second, back to that damp and steamy subterranean hole (and might even put up for long stretches with the fellow who was "playing"--with what I can charitably describe as a modicum of talent--some upturned plastic buckets), if I could be, because here in San Francisco it's 56 degrees and gray.

For two weeks I got to wear sartorial items many of you might take for granted, but which are anathema here in the City by the Bay: shorts, tank tops, flip flops, light, breezy, summery skirts. I got my toenails painted and actually got to see them all day long. I developed a dorky but deep arm tan. I went running in the morning and came back pouring sweat, which somehow managed to seem more satisfying than straight-up disgusting (though it was that, too). I went outside in the evening without a sweater, long pants, and a jacket.

To all of that: so long, farewell, auf wiedersehn, adieu. I'm back in San Francisco, and it's August.

I'm Tired of China

So, look. The earthquake that did so much damage to China earlier this year was unquestionably a disaster, and I have unmitigated sympathy for the people whose lives were affected by it. I also hope that coverage of the relief effort does not get wholly subsumed by coverage of the Olympics, though I realize the chances of that are slim.

[Sorry, an aside: how is it that "fat chance" and "chances are slim" can mean the same thing? Curious.]

But here's the thing: earthquake notwithstanding, I'm so insanely tired of hearing about China. Really, I am--and have been for a while now. I'm tired of hearing about the Chinese government's human rights abuses du jour, tired of hearing about the (shockingly!) unsustainable breakneck development of dour, huge, soulless Chinese cities, tired of hearing about the latest health issues stemming from whatever toxins Chinese factories are using in their manufacturing processes. I'm just so totally and completely done with China.

Which means, of course, that I should be climbing into a cave for the next few weeks, stuffing my ears with cotton, and sewing my eyes shut. Or just, you know, muttering discontentedly sotto voce until this whole Olympics hoo-haa passes and, I hope, we choose another country to focus 85% of our collective attention on. (How about Bulgaria?)

Sweet Baby

Witness my adorable, darling, well-behaved little niece, Kate. She is a sweet light in my world.

We Are So Much What We've Come from: Part 1

I come east and, for a while, my world rockets backwards.

I.
Last Thursday we go to see Ian's jazz trio play at the local winery. (Not a typo--there are indeed wineries in Connecticut, and the one in question is actually quite good.) Ian is quite possibly the sweetest, kindest, happiest person I've ever had the luck to know. We were good friends in high school, and although I've seen him only sporadically in the ensuing years, every time I do, it's as if no time at all has passed. Years and miles collapse, and I'm as close to him as I ever was. We laugh, call each other E-N and M-A, say over and over, "It's so weird," referring to a Black Point night several worlds back, the full details of which have long since fallen away.

But this much about that night we remember: for a while we go along with someone's vaguely ridiculous idea and find ourselves in Old Black Point, on a road we don't know, probably searching in vain for whoever we were meant to meet out there, for whatever it is we were meant to do. We likely never meet who we're supposed to or get where we might've been going. Instead, the rest of the group goes ahead and Ian and I start talking--about my ill-advised tangles with Dave, probably, about the darkness of the road we're on, about the unfamiliarity of wherever it is we are. We deem it all weird. Our conversation is by turns profound and heartfelt, light and goofy. It's so weird, we keep saying. So weird.

There was something about that night, our walk, that discussion, those few inky hours--something that, as pat as this will sound, yanked Ian and I together in a way we hadn't been for the rest of the summer. I went home at the end of that long evening feeling like I knew him better than I ever had, and he me, despite our long years of friendship. So weird.

We were so far from that night last Thursday, and yet, as we hugged and talked after he finished his set, as he told me about his daughter and asked me about my business, as we kept up a stream of It's so weird! and It's so good to see you, it felt like there was so little separating then and now, as if, at any moment, Jeff or Jason or Chris might call to us from down the road--What's taking you guys?--and we would quicken our pace to reach them, agreeing with their claim that the night had been a wash rather than letting on--because how could we explain?--that it hadn't. Weirdly, it hadn't.

The Week That Was

I.
Last Saturday night, Jacob holds his gin and tonic out for me to take a sip and I wrinkle my nose. "Eiww, no thanks!" I say--ok, yell--over the insane din that has enveloped Luna Park. "I'm not a gin girl." My attentions go instead to the Technicolor fruitiness of whatever I've just ordered, and the boy gives up (temporarily) on attempting to share his drink.

Then comes Sunday. [It occurs to me here that this post is about to read like a chronicle of a soused week. So be it.] Boss and I meet up at the Big Four for some belated birthday cocktails and patrician-watching. On my way to the bar, I'd been thinking about what to order; at the Big Four, the Manhattan is my standard, but for some reason I felt on Sunday like going father afield.

So when we sit down at the bar and there in my eyeline is a bottle of Hendrick's gin, I don't hesitate, asking the bartender for a Hendrick's gimlet. I'm wary--too many sips of undrinkable G&Ts have made me gin-phobic--but, upon sip #1, am delighted to discover what may be the best drink ever. Several more of same follow. (Thanks, Boss, for picking up that tab.)

Equally delightful was waking up on Monday morning without the slightest bit of a hangover. Praise be to the clear alcohol! I praised it again on Tuesday, when Erfert, Boss, and I went to Bourbon and Branch and I once again went the gimlet route (with a brief detour through a bourbon-based drink; when in Rome, etc.).

People, I have seen the light! I will probably continue to brook no gin that isn't Hendrick's or otherwise foofy (e.g., cucumber-infused), but give me the good stuff and a masterful bartender and I'm totally Gin Girl 3000. I'm sure there's a lesson here for all of us; I leave it to you to figure out what that might be.

II.
Katie, my editor, e-mailed me on Tuesday evening to let me know that the proof of my book was ready for review. She directed me to the PDF and offered to overnight a hard copy; I took her up on that offer because, as otherwise perfect as my little MacBook is, it does not have a screen that lends itself to easy review of landscape format PDFs.

The proof went out on Wednesday and was due to reach me on Thursday, which it did, though indirectly. I came home from my client meeting that afternoon to find a FedEx box addressed to me on the sidewalk in front of my steps, roughly torn open and emptied of its contents. I was approximately 75 different kinds of baffled when I picked up the box: had the FedEx guy left it on the steps? Had someone taken it from under the front gate? Would not any normal thief, upon discovering the contents of such a box, immediately jettison them? And if so, why couldn't I find a chunk of pages anywhere in the vicinity of my house?

It was while stumbling around, box in hand, that I noticed someone sitting on my neighbor Jody's steps, chatting with another guy who stood on the sidewalk in front of him. I walked toward them and felt my heart threaten to jump clear out of my chest when I saw, on the step next to the sitter--a semi-homeless guy I've seen around the neighborhood, and have previously caught stealing my Sunday paper--the folded-over, rubber-banded pages of my proof.

This will sound pat, but as my brain wrapped around what was happening, my entire body tensed up in what was the largest, strongest, most utterly overwhelming burst of anger I can ever recall feeling. I screamed so long and so loud that, by the time I got back to my house (proof in hand), I was utterly spent. That level of anger? Scary, scary stuff.

Fast forward several hours. My doorbell rang. I opened the door cautiously, and there on the steps was Sandy, a neighbor from down the street. He told me the thief was his brother, Gary, who had severe mental issues. He apologized profusely. I said I knew he couldn't be his brother's keeper, told him in detail what had happened, listened as he told me about how he and Gary's doctor try to monitor him as closely as they can, listened as he vowed to me that he would direct Gary to stay away from the neighborhood.

It was probably the stress of the afternoon and the stress of working under a tight deadline to finish the review and any number of other flavors of stress, but as Sandy and I talked, it was all I could do not to dissolve into tears. Because, yes, it was maddening beyond words to have had my proof stolen, and creepy in the extreme to think that Gary is disturbed and adept enough to pull things from under our gate. In the end, though, I got my proof back, and all I could really focus on as Sandy apologized again and again was what it might be like to bear the responsibility for a family member gone wrong, to know that there's so very little you can do.

That, by a mile, is the harder row to hoe.

III.
The eyelashes. I had forgotten, or maybe hadn't noticed before. The hazel eyes, those I remembered, but those long, stunning, dark eyelashes--those were new.

So a temporary goodbye, defenses, and nice try, though we both knew we were sort of doomed from the start, and that (for today, at least) was sort of the point. Blame the eyelashes, the eyes, the impish grin, the tap of a finger on my bottom lip, our matching pearline shirt buttons, the completed Saturday Times crossword (we missed just one square), a dozen other things that feel like not-unpleasant little kicks to the gut.

But don't make yourself too scarce; there will all too likely be work for you in the weeks ahead, given what This is and isn't and might and might not be. Next time, though, we'll try to be better prepared, you and I. Remember the eyelashes.

Officially the Least of My Concerns

Baby Kate

Katherine Rosalie

I'm an auntie! Baby Kate arrived on Monday night, two days before she was scheduled to be evicted from her mama's womb.

Though I won't get to meet her until I go back east in July, I can already tell that she's adorable and delightful and will make her aunt swell with pride for years to come.

The Corner, The Turning

It's a little early for all this.
Everything's still very bare--
nevertheless, something's different today from yesterday.

--Louise Gluck, from "March"

It was while gazing at another ceiling, with mid-morning light poking in through another window, hearing another set of lungs quietly at work, waiting for another pair of eyes to open, that I thought, Right. This isn't it. That room, those hours, those lungs and eyes added up to something that used to be familiar (a warm Boston apartment, March 2001; a Seattle room near the train tracks, sometime before that; a gray July morning on Geary, not so very long ago)--a sighing blend of acceptance, understanding, and resignation that takes as its unofficial soundtrack Elliot Smith's "Oh Well, Okay" and, if in title and melody only, Cat Power's "Maybe Not."

I've felt this before, and this isn't it.

What struck me this time around, though, was what came next.

Which was this: But still, I'm somewhere else today. I wasn't thinking physically or literally, though indeed I was somewhere else (in a Valley that wasn't mine); rather, I felt like I'd come to a corner and had turned it. Suddenly it felt like I could exhale completely, for the first time in months, and that I didn't have to force myself to loosen my grip on what I'd been holding: it loosened on its own (well, ok, with a bit of a hazel-eyed nudge). Something in me went soft and slack, and for a while I closed my eyes and fell back asleep.

The morning wore on. The light changed. Our breathing changed. A while later, in front of my house, I said goodbye to those other eyes and came inside. Everything seemed familiar. Everything seemed just a shade different.

Dog Poop Police

Dear San Francisco City Government,
Please take a cue from New York and hire people to ticket the legions of lazy, irresponsible, uncaring dog owners who refuse to pick up after their pets.

Because, really, for such a beautiful city, we have streets smeared in way too much dog waste, and that sucks.

Yours,
Emily

I Had Planned to Buy Riunite

On Sunday, in celebration of her birthday, Dana had a BBQ fiesta, the unofficial theme of which was "foodstuffs from 1975" (the year of her birth). The festivities got underway in the early afternoon, but Josh and I had to teach a class until 5, so I planned to head over as soon as we were done.

Driving to Joshy's seemed like a good idea that morning. I'd brought my coffee maker to his house the previous day and didn't feel like schlepping it to Dana's on foot or by Muni on Sunday evening, nor did I feel like going out of the way to bring the thing home before heading into the Mission. I also figured that driving would get me to D's more speedily than taking the bus, and had the grand idea to stop at Safeway en route to pick up a bottle of Riunite (on ice, natch) so that I might be thematically proper.

I parked the car on 8th Street at Natoma around 9, putting my toolkit in the trunk and triple-checking all of the locks before I walked away from it for the next eight hours. It was Sunday. The daylight was broad. There was nothing visible in my luxurious 1993 Toyota Corolla save for a bag of plastic bags (destined for the recycling bin at Safeway), an empty printer cartridge (on its way to Office Depot), a packing tape dispenser, my garage door opener, my mileage log, and the piece of plastic that fits into my cassette deck (yes) and allows me to play my iPod through my stereo.

Evidently, this bounty was temptation enough for the denizens of 8th Street. Around 5, as Josh and I left his house and walked toward my car, we saw one of our students heading toward us. "Did you get our messages?" she asked. We said we hadn't, and she replied that she and another student had called both of us from around the corner as they came upon my car (bearing magnetic signs on the doors with my business name, which is how they knew it was mine) and noted the glittering pile of glass on the sidewalk next to it.

Adios, driver's side window. Hello, giant mess. Loot scored by whatever crackhead or tweaker or just plain asshole broke into and ransacked my car: garage door opener, mileage log, tape dispenser, bag of bags, empty ink cartridge. No doubt you're having a field day with those highly valuable things.

In the end--after driving to the carwash to vacuum up as much glass as possible, after calling Glass Pro to arrange an appointment the following day, after sitting in front of my garage for a while and waiting in vain for one of the other car owners who parks there to come or go--I did make it to Dana's. In fact, she and Brad were good enough to let me park my window-less car in their garage that night. I was late in arriving--even later than anticipated--but things were still swinging when I got there, and there was still plenty of Champagne Jell-o mold to enjoy.

But I'm sorry I showed up empty-handed. D, your next bottle of "wine product with natural flavors" is on me.

Headline of the Day

Thanks, New York Times, for this info we didn't know we needed:

Bacteria Thrive in Inner Elbow; No Harm Done

Please Don't

A few things Stadia Suites, Santa Fe, DF would like you to know:

Rules and Regulations

4th Clause. It is strictly forbidden to:
A) Make annoying noises, start a fight, introduce musicians, pets, and in general, cause disturbances that make other guests feel uncomfortable.
B) The use of Suites for gambling or any other illegal action that may disturb the public order or break the law.
C) The use of electrical outlets and appliances for a different purpose than the one originally intended for.
D) To damage the furniture, ornaments, or any other Stadia Suites' properties by giving it improper use.
E) Carry out any act that may damage the other guests, the property and employees or that goes against the social rules and good behavior.
F) Any act that can cause damage to the hotel, to the rest of the guests or affect the commonwealth.

[I'm happy to report that, as of night #2, I'm still on the right side of these rules and regs: no pets or musicians introduced, no electrical tomfoolery, no improper use of ornaments, and no damaging other guests. Two more nights to go.]

John Cougar Mellencamp, I Beg to Differ

Hold onto 16 as long as you can
Changes come around real soon
Make us women and men.

In the midst of the heat this afternoon, Jenn and I sat in my living room talking about the downsides of self-employment and minor workaholism. We'd come to no solid conclusions (to contract out or no? Will s-e taxes kill us both? Is it ever totally possible to separate the personal and professional realms?) when Jenn looked out the window and asked, "Well, what's happening here?"

On the stoop of the house across the way (i.e., the house that's born more than its fair share of vexations and bad luck) we saw what appeared to be a young couple, a boy and a girl who seemed to be around 15. They sat close, both facing ahead with their feet on the sidewalk, and the girl appeared to be crying. Though we couldn't hear what they said (not even when, channeling my always lovely but sometimes nosy grandmother, I opened my front door), we surmised from what we could see of their faces and body language that we were witnessing a breakup.

Jenn and I kept chatting, and the probably-a-breakup continued, with more tears from the girl and a relatively straight but clearly sad face on the boy. When J left around 6.20 and I opened the gate to walk her out, the pair looked up at us briefly before turning back to their grief.

That grief continued until well past 8, with varying degrees of drama (including, at one point, the girl on her knees on the sidewalk in front of the fellow, in a posture I can only describe as beseeching and somewhat Shakespearean). I didn't see them leave.

There is, I think, a particular flavor of heartbreak and sadness and disappointment that you can feel only in your teens. It's so sharp and new and often unexpected that it's hard to know what to do with, and the first few times you feel it you're sure--up and down sure--that it will never go away.

It does go away, of course, and after enough times through the cycle of elation and crashing and emptiness and utter overflowing goodness you come to understand that none of it lasts forever. But no one can tell you that and have you believe it; you have to go through the wringer a few times on your own. For many of us--for me, at least--much of that wringer-going happens somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 19.

And it's for that reason that, as Jenn and I tried to spy this afternoon, I said, "15: an age I'm happy I never have to be again." It was a great place to be for a little while, that land of teendom, but I was happy to move out of it, and happy not to have to go back.

And so, sweet weepy teens, at least one of whom appeared to have your heart broken this evening, I would tell you that things will mend in time, that your first love is almost never your last, that someday soon-ish all of this will fade, but you might not believe that telling. So instead I'll say that despite whatever sweetness your high school years may bring, and regardless of what John Cougar Mellencamp might claim, there's a lot to be said for letting go of 16 as soon as it's gone.

Burnout

Last night, as Josh and I were moderating a panel discussion on burnout at the NAPO chapter meeting, what started as a flutter of fatigue somewhere in my chest rapidly, and scarily, became the sensation that I would fall on my ass (or my face, depending how I stood) if I did not get out of the room and sit down immediately. I whispered to Josh, I need to go, and slipped out of the room as unobtrusively as one can slip out of a room one happens to be at the very front of, with all eyes in her direction.

In the hall, I found a chair near an unused conference room and sat down with my head back, my pulse racing and a thin veneer of sweat on my face. I eventually got up and made my way to the bathroom, where I sat for a while before splashing some water on my face and slipping back into the room via a side door. There I stood, propped against the doorframe, until the panel was over.

The irony was not lost on me: while moderating a discussion on how to avoid burnout, I managed to spiral down into my own little pool of exhaustion-induced messiness. (You turned a totally different color, Josh said to me later. That was freaky.) Even despite what was more or less an Actual Day Off last Sunday, I still feel like I've been working non-stop for months. That has seemed like a necessity, but it's a pace I can't sustain, and the thought that I might wind up as some sort of overwork poster child is an unpleasant one. I will not become a Lifetime movie, so help me god. My body will see to that, evidently, even if my mind disagrees.

In Defense of Organizers and Civil Debate

Al Gore was the guest on Tuesday's Fresh Air. He'd been invited on the show to discuss his book The Assault on Reason, which, from what I gathered from Terry Gross' description, is about how Americans' increasing unwillingness (and inability?) to engage in reasoned, thoughtful, civic debate, preferring instead the combative and dismissive Fox News/CNN/Bush Administration model, is ultimately leaving us less informed and less capable of sustaining a healthy democracy.

It was fascinating to hear Gore speak, both for what he had to say and for the way he said it: if ever there's been an aural definition of "reasoned, measured tones," this was it. He spoke calmly and unflappably, with pauses between his words and rarely even a hint of a raised voice. It was as if he were, solely by his tone, defying the yellers and the absolutists to take issue with his message.

Tuesday also happened to be the day that Merlin Mann, whom I respect and admire quite a lot, posted to 43 Folders about the NSGCD and its resources for the chronically disorganized. In describing the NSGCD (short--if barely--for the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization), he referred to it as "primarily a trade group for 'professional organizers'". That's true enough to a certain extent, but I wondered why Merlin had put professional organizers in quotes. So I posted a comment and asked.

Then he posted a reply, and I posted a reply to his reply, and I asked some of my colleagues to read the whole kit and caboodle, and some of them left comments, too. It was all--from my perspective, at least--very Al Gore-ish: no yelling, no flaming, lots of general calmness and well-reasoned attempts to argue varying viewpoints.

But it's interesting: in the wake of the first point/counterpoint Merlin and I had, the message I most wanted to get across was not so much that professional organizers are worthy of a level of respect that quote marks deny, but that his apparent view of what we do--put crap in boxes, go to the Container Store, and try to make things look pretty without doing anything at all to address the underlying issues of overconsumption and unexamined keeping--is way, way off the mark. I said as much in my second comment, as did several people who commented after me, POs and clients alike. Yet what a few of the commenters who didn't identify themselves as either being organizers or working with organizers seemed to latch onto was that initial sense of being taken aback by the quotes.

Let's channel Al Gore, people, and move beyond the punctuation to read the rest of the discussion. It's about having your profession sort of maligned through an inaccurate and incomplete description, and about trying to explain why you take issue with those inaccuracies and incompletes. But beyond a point, there's only so much you can do or say to ask people to read (or hear) and absorb your words. Is it inevitable that, no matter how logical, calm, or well-reasoned the other side's argument might be, we'll always revert to our own bunkers, determined that we're right (or at least not wrong)? Do we ever really have the capacity to bring someone around?

I wish I could convince Merlin Mann that the work I do is no more fluffy, inconsequential, or unimportant than the work he does, and that although professional organizer might be a funny-sounding title, it's a serious profession. I hope he takes me up on my offer to help give him a clearer sense of what POs actually do, and how, in many ways, it's not a far cry from what he does.

But all of that is beyond my control: he's the only one who can choose what he thinks and does. Ditto for the people who can read all the smart, insightful, thoughtful things written in that comments stream and only take away that a bunch of POs have their label makers and binder clips in a snit over nothing more than the use of a bit of punctuation. In this, as in any discussion or debate, all I (or anyone) can ever do is put my words out there in a calm, balanced, and (I somewhat hate this term, but, alas) constructive way and hope that they fall on at least a few appreciative and open pairs of eyes and ears.

March

By Louise Gluck

The light stays longer in the sky, but it's a cold light,
it brings no relief from winter.

My neighbor stares out the window,
talking to her dog. He's sniffing the garden,
trying to reach a decision about the dead flowers.

It's a little early for all this.
Everything's still very bare--
nevertheless, something's different today from yesterday.

We can see the mountain: the peak's glittering where the ice catches the light.
But on the sides the snow's melted, exposing bare rock.

My neighbor's calling the dog, making her unconvincing doglike sounds.
The dog's polite; he raises his head when she calls,
but he doesn't move. So she goes on calling,
her failed bark slowly deteriorating into a human voice.

All her life she dreamed of living by the sea
but fate didn't put her there.
It laughed at her dreams;
it locked her up in the hills, where no one escapes.

The sun beats down on the earth, the earth flourishes.
And every winter, it's as though the rock underneath the earth rises
higher and higher and the earth becomes rock, cold and rejecting.

She says hope killed her parents, it killed her grandparents.
It rose up each spring with the wheat
and died between the heat of summer and the raw cold.
In the end, they told her to live near the sea,
as though that would make a difference.

By late spring she'll be garrulous, but now she's down to two words,
never and only, to express this sense that life's cheated her.

Never the cries of the gulls, only, in summer, the crickets, cicadas.
Only the smell of the field, when all she wanted
was the smell of the sea, of disappearance.

The sky above the fields has turned a sort of grayish pink
as the sun sinks. The clouds are silk yarn, magenta and crimson.

And everywhere the earth is rustling, not lying still.
And the dog senses this stirring; his ears twitch.

He walks back and forth, vaguely remembering
from other years this elation. The season of discoveries
is beginning. Always the same discoveries, but to the dog
intoxicating and new, not duplicitous.

I tell my neighbor we'll be like this
when we lose our memories. I ask her if she's ever seen the sea
and she says, once, in a movie.
It was a sad story, nothing worked out at all.

The lovers part. The sea hammers the shore, the mark each wave leaves
wiped out by the wave that follows.
Never accumulation, never one wave trying to build on another,
never the promise of shelter--

The sea doesn't change as the earth changes;
it doesn't lie.
You ask the sea, what can you promise me
and it speaks the truth; it says erasure.

Finally the dog goes in.
We watch the crescent moon,
very faint at first, then clearer and clearer
as the night grows dark.
Soon it will be the sky of early spring, stretching above the stubborn ferns and violets.

Nothing can be forced to live.
The earth is like a drug now, like a voice from far away,
a lover or master. In the end, you do what the voice tells you.
It says forget, you forget.
It says begin again, you begin again.

Important Clarification

Serving Suggestion

OK, this is a terrible photo, but it was the best I was willing to do for the sake of a snarky blog post, so bear with me.

The product pictured above is a bag of cinnamon crunch granola made specifically for people with food allergies, which, I'm happy to say, don't affect me but, I'm less happy to say, do affect my friend Connie, the original purchaser of this breakfast treat. It turns out that this free-of-everything-else (wheat, nuts, soy, flavor) granola contains flax seeds, which Connie can't do, so she offered the bag to me.

And here's what I find delightful and maddening in equal measures. The image on the front of the package is of a very simple, totally unadorned bowl of granola--no fruit on top, no milk peeking out from under the granola clumps, nothing. It's very literally a bowl of granola. In the background there's an orange gerbera daisy and a few sticks of cinnamon. And down in the bottom left corner, below the big green "Allergen Free" emblem, are the words "Serving Suggestion."

Now, OK, I've complained here before about ridiculous food labels (notably the can of 100% cashews that bore a "Contains cashews" notice), and I'm sure there are all sorts of ridiculous American litigious reasons behind this, but seriously. Are there people who really expect that, upon opening this bag, they will discover not only granola pellets but also the bowl, flower, and decorative spice sticks pictured on the package? Must they be encouraged to go ahead with their planned consumption of this cereal even if their breakfast table does not identically resemble the one shown here? Do they truly need the reassurance that this is a suggestion--only a suggestion!--and not the required serving method and layout?

I understand the whole "Serving Suggestion" disclaimer on food packages that show their contents all tarted up in some sort of foodie version of the boudoir photo, with parts that glisten and garnishes so ripe and fresh they threaten to explode, but seriously, this whole granola photo could not be more straightforward unless it showed the cereal in a heap on a table with the open, empty bag lurking in the background. And even then, perhaps the manufacturer would have to clarify that the table itself was not included.

Are we as a nation really this dumb?

Desperate Times &c

Having finally given in last night and e-filed the tax return for which I owe the United States Treasury my weight in gold, I did the only thing I could think to do to keep my mind from wandering toward thoughts of, "Right, then, how am I actually going to pay that sum?" I did the only thing that, at that moment, could bring succor, could provide temporary protection from the (figurative) wolves of the IRS at my (figurative) door.

I went to iTunes and downloaded some Air Supply.

And now, though I'm still somewhat mystified as to where I might procure all of the funds the taxing authorities are asking of me, at least the soundtrack to this mystification includes "Making Love Out of Nothing at All." Better yet, I discovered that I still have a credit on iTunes from the gift card I got from Greg and Sara for Christmas, so I didn't even have to pay anything. That's 99 cents I can hand directly over to the Feds.

Who writes this stuff?

From the Netflix envelope for Hotel Rwanda:

Amid the holocaust of internecine tribal fighting in Rwanda that sees the wanton and savage butchering of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, one ordinary man (Don Cheadle) musters the courage to save more than 1,000 helpless refugees by sheltering them in the hotel he manages. Djimon Honsou, Nick Nolte, and Joaquin Phoenix co-star in this powerful film (sort of an African version of Schindler's List) directed by Terry George.

I know "the holocaust of internecine tribal fighting" is a fairly accurate description of the Rwanda disaster, but really, who thought such a highfalutin' and contorted turn of phrase would bring people swarming to see this film? Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't internecine mean "within a group"? And wasn't the fighting between the Tutsis and the Hutus actually between groups?

And then, on the other end of the descriptive spectrum, there's "sort of an African version of Schindler's List." Perhaps they should've added, "Just substitute Don Cheadle for Liam Neeson and a hotel for a metalworking factory." All very oddly reductive.

Still, my hopes are high that the movie itself will rise significantly above the quality of the envelope copy.