Gone Fishin'

I've been in California since Xmas Day. I came for the MLA convention in San Francisco, which is the largest collection of humanities professors in the country. Maybe the world. Usually it is very uptight and filled with people scratchy in suits who are nervous about their upcoming job interviews in cramped hotel rooms. Many people hate coming to the MLA. I always like it because it's like being able to sit in on a bunch of different classes. There are tons and tons of panels and though some of them are quite boring and narrow (and you have to be very very careful not to be swayed by the clever titles), some are quite interesting. It was at an MLA years ago I first heard of the writer Dawn Powell, who was coming into a posthumous renaissance.

This year I did a presenation on William De Morgan, who is known today as a wonderful tile artist (see above photos), but was known in the last years of his life as a best-selling author. It was one of the two William Morris panels and I got to hang out with the Morrisians, who are goofy and smart like the kids I hung around with in high school, but more knowledgable. (I thought that college would be full of goofy and smart kids, but I was wrong. It was filled with the pre-professional, but that is another story.)

The best overheard quote from the convention: You see, all postmodern buildings are designed for humiliation.

(The worst thing about the quote is that it seems to be true.)

We are now in Point Reyes Station, in a cabin (not primitive) that L rented on the web. He and R and C are out hiking on the beach. I am inside where I can see Nature through the big windows: a hill and trees and another hill (or mountain) behind that. L picked this place because it is walking distance to Town, and I need a Town when I vacation. There is an espresso place, but it is sort of in an open-air garage, and I can probably sit there for a while if I bundle up. Last night we saw stars stars stars, which makes you sad when you think how they're obscured in the city. I just read The Mistress' Daughter by A.M. Homes, picking it up on a Free shelf outside the Point Reyes library yesterday. Homes talks about her grandmother, who thought the sky was pure black until she was 15 and got glasses. We sat outside for hours last night on the little porch outside our cabin, huddling near the clay stove and watching the fire and talking.

This is a fancy little town, with four kinds of fresh mushrooms at the supermarket, locally grown wool hats for $65, local organic unpasteurized milk (in bottles, cream on top), but also a Saloon where in the afternoon people gathered and talked to one another as a group, making it seem a local hangout. There is yoga at 6 every night behind the largest cute store. L notes that there's a ruggedness to the place, which is true, making it different from Cape Cod or Lake Forest (IL).

Yesterday in Town we saw a hand-written sign about free hair mats. Next to it was a round mat of dark hair hanging on the outside wall. I looked it up on the web last night and saw that a Bay Area woman has been collected hair from salons, sending the hair to Georgia, where it's woven into mats and sent back, and then she's been given them away as motor-oil absorbers. They're also used to clean oil spills. The greatest thing is that they can host mushrooms (donated by my friend B's brother, who is a famous mushroom man) and decompose.

Thus is the new century. In the 1980s we made art from hair, now we are improving the planet with it. There is hope. Si, se puede.

Nobody Likes Blago--Not Even Komen

Maybe Blago will keep sliding away until he's gone from the the frame.

The Dallas Morning News blog tells us that Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation gave nearly $45,000 to our disgraced governor. The story? Tony Rezko spent the money on Blago, then the guv paid it back by giving the tainted funds to charity--mostly to Komen. Komen didn't want it and gave it back. Opines the DMN: And it's folks like Blagojevich that no doubt makes them Run from the Cur.

Cancer Bitch reported on this earlier, quoting Capitol Fax.

For a pic of our guv and Trickie Dickie, click here.

My Achilles' heel

Ladies, don't throw away the removable pocket of your mastectomy camisole! You can use it to cover your toes when you get your foot in a cast to heal your Achilles tendon! NB: When the temperature drops to the teens, you'll have to use a fuzzy sock instead.

Yes, I am casted in fiberglass. It looks like I broke my leg. The cast is there to keep me from moving my foot up and down so that my Achilles tendon can get some rest. It needs to rest because a couple of weeks before the cast, the back of my ankle hurt every time I walked. It is not ruptured, but it is inflamed.

When the cast is removed, on Dec. 22, I will need twice-weekly massage for I don't know how long. Three days later we are going to San Francisco, land of hills.

I'm driving everywhere instead of walking and clumping up and down the stairs and using elevators. I've been to two of my regular yoga classes and I was able to do some of the positions. But having your foot semi-permanently flexed does get in the way of many things, including downward-facing dog and child's pose.

Achilles' mother, you may recall, made him immortal by dunking him in the River Styx. Unfortunately, she held him by the heel and so that part of his body was vulnerable, mortal.

There are other stories about Achilles. They say that he tried to avoid his predicted death from battle by dressing as a woman. All the girls were offered presents. He outed himself by choosing a weapon instead of something girly.

But as we all know, in myths you can't outwit your fate. It comes and grabs you and shakes you and makes you weak.


His fatal flaws, besides his mortal heel, were pride and stubbornness. He died by an arrow shot into his heel. Which must have hurt way more than my tendonitis.



The cause of my pain is overuse or worn-out shoes or cortisone or antibiotics. Antibiotics? How does that make sense? We take one remedy for one problem then of course the side effectts cause another problem, for which we have to have treatment. And so on and so on until we slip slide away.

My book cover

On the cover is a photo of a specially-made Cancer Bitch. I'm told it's small and somehow it's a whistle--I think if you take off the head. It was my friend S's idea to have the circle-slash over the left breast. Click here to read more about this book.

Comet

Today I was rushing to meet an editing client at 2pm when L called. He said, I have bad news. He told me that our good friends' son was killed in a car accident earlier today. At first I was in minor shock, just feeling shaky and unable to process it. I knew people died in car accidents, and I knew the son, but I couldn't connect the two. Later I found the news story on the web and just keep thinking about the times I've seen this kid (who was 28). The last time was a few years ago at his wedding.

People say that when you have cancer you start worshiping at the altar of carpe diem. It's one thing to think of yourself slowly fading away; it's quite another to find out that a healthy 28-year-old was thrown out of his car when a tire blew out while he was on the exit ramp.

I'm sure that his parents, our friends, will replay the "what ifs" forever and ever.

***

It's amazing that we drive these machines that are so deadly. Many of us can name people who were killed in car accidents. The mother of a friend of mine was killed on the road between Austin and Houston, in 1991. Her daughter, my friend's older sister, was in the car with her. My friend A's cousins lived with their grandparents because their parents had died young in a car crash. And then one of the cousins, in his late twenties or thirties, and married, died of lymphoma. If I'm not mistaken, there's a part of Milan Kundera's novel Immortality, which I read back in the 1990s, that discusses the strangeness of the very high rate of deaths caused by automobiles. Why do we accept it?

I read once in In These Times, I think, that in Germany (and this may have been back when there was an East and West, and this was in West), conscientious objectors who refuse to pick up guns are not allowed to drive cars, because they too, are fatal weapons. I couldn't confirm this, but the (Christian) Orthodox Peace Fellowship reports, "Thus there are Orthodox priests who do not drive a car because of the danger of inadvertently causing someone’s death."

It is dangerous to drive. It's even dangerous to be around cars. I know someone who was walking downtown and was struck by an out-of-control car that roared up on the curb. She is now quadriplegic.

Amazon

This is a painting of Diana, goddess of the hunt, not quite an Amazon, but she could pass. According to legend the Amazons cut or burned off their right breasts so they could shoot arrows better. This is by Artemisia Gentileschi.

The reason I was looking for an Amazon is that now Cancer Bitch is on Amazon. With blurbs and everything--except not a cover image yet.

In Grant Park

It was nice, I tell people. Yes, it was nice.

That's not what they want to hear. They want to hear that the Obama rally in Grant Park on Tuesday was fantastic. Exhilarating. Incredible. Moving. They want to hear all that, but they'll have to hear it from someone else. I wish they could hear it from me. I wish I had burst into tears, like other people standing around me, like my husband. I wish that I'd felt a whoosh, a thrill, when I clapped along with everyone else when we heard that Iowa was going for Obama, and then Ohio. I wish that when I yelled in my green Obama t-shirt, among the tens of thousands in their t-shirts and caps and hijabs, holding their American flags aloft, wearing Obama pins, one girl with Vote Obama written on her face in blue, that I felt a thump in my chest, a heave in my heart. I wish that when I cheered along with everyone else when the CNN announcer on the JumboTron said, "It's looking exceedingly grim for John McCain," I felt gleeful. But I didn't.

CNN announced that Obama was the apparent winner. My friend Garnett, standing next to me said, "For the first time the country can actually get better." I agreed with her. A voice came over the loudspeaker: "Final sound check for the next president of the United States." Then I shouted along with everyone else, "Not for us!" when McCain said it was natural to feel some disappointment. I sang the chorus to "Sweet Home Chicago" along with the rest of the crowd. Then the president-elect came on stage (though I couldn't see him with my naked eye), but I didn't feel anything. I felt like the girl who sings "Nothing" in A Chorus Line. Except she became defiant about not feeling the way her acting teacher wanted her to, and I was disturbed.

What was wrong with me? This was historic, the first African-American president-elect. A brilliant man, a non-imperialist, a person we wouldn't have to disavow when traveling abroad. This was what I wanted--this is why I made phone calls to Iowa and rang doorbells in Indiana and Wisconsin, and organized a fundraiser in Chicago. This was the result I had hoped for, when I argued with Hillary supporters early on. In the park I listened to Obama, his stirring words about unity and inclusion and sacrifice, I listened to him say everything I would want a president to say--and still...

Wednesday I felt--or didn't feel--the same way. I kept trying to figure out what was going on. I kept thinking of syllogisms. Like: This country is conservative. Obama is progressive and I agree with him. But the country elected him. Therefore, Obama can't be progressive.

Maybe, I thought, I never supported a winning candidate before. That's partly true, except I voted for both Obama and Durbin for the Senate. How did I feel when Obama won his Senate seat? I don't remember. I did a tiny bit of work for that campaign. I campaigned for Harold Washington's second term. I was out of state for his first win. But he was hamstrung by a racist bloc of aldermen--at least at the beginning. I worked for an aldermanic candidate who lost twice. I voted for Carter and Clinton--but I didn't support either of them in the primaries.

Most of my adult life I've been politically marginal. My friends ran for state office on the Iowa Socialist Party ticket, and I voted for them. That was the choice: you vote for your beliefs or you vote for the compromisers. You vote your dreams or you sigh and vote for the possible. This is so ingrained in me that when I finally support a candidate who wins, with whom I agree, with whom I share a world view--my brain short-circuits and threatens to explode. How could suddenly a nation that I don’t quite feel a part of, embrace the same candidate that I embrace? How did that happen? Am I in shock?

Or am I depressed?