Bee Lavender

I am, as previously noted, spoiled rotten. The most obvious way this manifests is my devotion to particular brands of cosmetics, but beyond that, I have no problem spending massive amounts of money on restaurant food.

Though only when it is good. I have a long-running argument with local gastronomes like Satnam about whether or not Midsummer House is, in a word, disgusting. Grapefruit foam with shrimp, anyone? Ick. The presence of a Michelin star or several only guarantees a large bill, not a tasty or even safe dining experience.

I worked at the health department long enough to have a shall-we-say-visceral understanding of the dangers of improper food prep, and I generally do know the approximate cleanliness scores of various establishments wherever I live. Midsummer House, for instance, often comes in lower than the kebab huts or burger joints.

Now Heston Blumenthal has closed his restaurant after forty customers fell ill. Proving my point.

No snail porridge for anyone this week then!

 

2.27.2009 commons

 

2.26.2009 poked

Yesterday I was trying to prompt my sleepy teenager to get up and go to school.

Given the need for creative approaches, I poked him and asked Are you my own little budgie?

-Yes.

What is the proper name for a budgie?

-Budgerigar.

What color are you?

-Turquoise and yellow.

 

2.25.2009 status

In response to my fury over proposed changes in UK immigration policies, a friend suggests that my younger child, as a thin winsome and anachronistic sort of chap, could qualify for residence by pursuing jobs like coal mining, or maybe, chimney sweeping.

The elder offspring, already an “official” adult and therefore much more in need of a job under proposed guidelines, despite not yet finishing her high school education, could pursue a career in “personal services.” Because she is, ya know, smoking hot and all. This of course ignores the inconvenient fact that she is a certified genius, and her time might be much better devoted to a PhD.

When I inquired about my own status he replied If I were Immigration Czar I’d let in everyone with big breasts.

Now that would be an interesting heuristic.

Perhaps all immigration policy should be predicated on aesthetics, changing with each relevant administration, therefore allowing all the different tastes and fetishes to cycle through…..

 

2.24.2009 values

One of the bad bits of life on a boat is the fact that, although we pay licensing fees equivalent to council tax, we do not have mail service, garbage pickup, or any recycling facilities.

Just now I stomped off muttering about isolationism and did a bit of, uh, vigorous recycling, flinging all of my accumulated glass in the municipal bins.

It is so satisfying to break things.

Then I wandered around the corner store, where the immigrant shopkeepers can routinely be found taking tender care of elderly people and customers undergoing chemotherapy. They always call me dear and genuinely seem to care – about me, the neighborhood, the city.

I am aware that I enjoy certain privileges denied other people based on income, ethnicity, or other factors. The recent fight to get equal rights for all Ghurka soldiers – people who put their lives on the line for this empire, only to be denied equal access to services – underscored the disparity of the system.

Knowing that doesn’t make me feel any better.

One of the few things that binds all immigrants together is the fact that we are displaced. Some of us move for economic opportunities, others are fleeing war and famine, but we have left one life behind in the hopes that we can build another.

To be told that we are not wanted is a harsh rebuke.

My life started by accident and proceeded in a perilous fashion. I grew up in poverty, with cancer, and fought hard just to stay alive. I will always be scarred, literally, by my past.

I’m also the plucky outsider who worked my way through school as a single teenage mother. I played the system – and won. Yet I chose to leave my homeland as a deliberate political protest, seeking a new home in a place that offers health care and basic services to all.

I do not wish to be the poster child of any cause (no matter how worthy). In this particular debate, the fundamental truth is that I am not exceptional – I am just one face amongst many, a person who wishes to live and work and contribute in a society that values the presence of people like me.

Is that desire just a fantasy? Have I wasted years of my life caring about a country that would rather I just go away?

How alarming.

 

2.23.2009 rage

Since nobody is around to listen to me pontificate, y’all get to witness a flash of my rage!

Recent suggested “improvements” to UK immigration policy have included limiting foreign workers access to the NHS – despite the fact that we have no other recourse to public funds and pay massive taxes. And in the case of us Americans, we are required to pay in both countries, forever and ever.

The NHS policy change is idiotic given current administrative controls. Our health system, while superb compared to the states, is unable to keep track of basic records – let alone maintain tiered billing systems.

Now? The Home Secretary suggested that families may be kept out unless wives (and the word ‘wife’ was invoked rather than ‘spouse’) and other dependents are actively employed. Something like “be a good parent” or “attend school” would not count.

Do you want to know what an immigrant looks like? How about: all of my world-class academic pals, across numerous disciplines. The scientists and economists bringing innovation and energy to a stagnant economy. The health care and social services workers and teachers to replace those this country has proved unable to educate, train, and retain.

People in the ‘highly skilled’ category are generally required to prove that nobody else can do their job. They also need a corporate or similar sponsor. Yet they won’t be allowed to bring their families unless they can meet some arbitrary other standard? Oh?

How exactly are children, for instance, supposed to prove they contribute? My kids routinely score in the top 1% of scholastic aptitude and achievement. Does that count for, or against? If current trends hold, they will be resented for taking up the spot in the school system that some imaginary British child might have taken.

If my kids were more ordinary, earning (as most British children do) mediocre grades, would they be denied entry?

Or how about me. I’m highly educated, but self-employed. What are my contributions worth?

Clearly, not enough.

Fine.

I could have moved anywhere in the world, and the same is true of all my professional friends. If the UK wants to introduce flagrantly stupid new rules, know what? We will leave.

 

2.22.2009 caring

One day I was hanging around a BBC studio waiting to do interviews and I started chatting with two fellows known as the Hairy Bikers.

One of them asked what my book was about and I replied Cancer, poverty, and violence! — then started to giggle. They laughed uproariously, then we proceeded to have a jolly chat about all manner of topics.

Our publicists looked queasy (for good reason, since I continued to snicker my way through all the interviews). At the time I had no idea why one of the bikers in particular was not fazed at all by my caustic humor, but this might explain it:

Which parent do you think you can cope better with? – Dave Myers on the experience of caring for two disabled parents.

 

2.18.2009 listening

When we’re not listening to P.G. Wodehouse (mebbe 10% of any given day) I have been playing Schoolhouse Rock like a demented pusher.

RIP, Blossom Dearie.

However, since I have the box set, this means the lists include the tribute songs.

Most of them are okay, but whenever the Lemonheads cover of My Hero, Zero comes on my kid shudders and quietly clicks to the next song.

He really does have exquisitely good taste.

 

2.17.2009 ick

It is some variety of school vacation hereabouts but I failed to book tickets for, um, anything, so we’re listening to P.G. Wodehouse and catching up on the news…. or rather the “allegedly more upscale stories reported by papers other than the fabulous Daily Mail.”

This is the best so far have been about <i>exciting new crisp flavors.</i>

Don’t believe anyone could possibly market “Cajun Squirrel” as a food item? Well, Walkers did.

For an extra special treat, try the ‘flavour facts’ option on the website and watch one of the most famous chefs in the UK act like he actually cares.

WTF is up with Heston Blumenthal anyway? Snail porridge? I don’t get it. Ick.

Anyway, the only person I’ve met who has actually tried any of these crisps was very enthusiastic. Five minutes later we were comparing brain injuries – my skull has been fractured three times, but he has a very impressive scar after undergoing a form of trepanation to fix a massive bleed following, uh, moshing.

Clearly, nobody won that particular credibility contest.

Though I would never eat squirrel flavored anything.

 

2.16.2009 polite

The pain in my neck was so intense I was nauseous, dizzy, and my jaw kept locking up with the stress.

One afternoon I also received some bad news from my hometown, and although I was not much interested in talking Byron cornered me and wanted to chat. After making my dismal mood clear I tried to quietly excuse myself, but my charming companion embarked on a rant about….. his fear of male pattern hair loss.

For this particular person the concern is purely imaginary – he has as much hair as he ever did in youth, and all sets of grandparents and parents demonstrably kept their hair until death.

Beyond that, this is one of those “normal” problems I have little patience with, given my history. I defy anyone to wake up following cancer treatment at age thirteen with chunks of hair coming out in big handfuls to grow up at all let alone arrive in middle age with all their empathy and tolerance intact.

I did my best to reassure and then joke my way out of the conversation but he just kept getting more and more wound up, even after I pointed out that I was a wee bit too distraught to be a happy little helper.

When he continued I put up a finger and said So, are you persisting because you are trying to distract me, or because you are self-centerered and vain?

He paused then replied Uh, the latter, I guess. 

 

2.13.2009 polite

Yesterday morning I bravely ventured forth to have a massage, hugely disturbed by the thought of strangers touching my neck.

I had forgotten to worry about the fact that I live in a small town, so the odds that it would be a stranger hovered somewhere around zero. In fact, the first thing the therapist said was You’re Karen’s friend, right?

Uh, yeah.

Then we sat down for the obligatory intake questions, including Do you have any health problems?

I opened my eyes very wide and said No.

Why did I do that?

Who knows. Clearly pathological behavior, but hey! I’m allowed the occasional twitch!

Especially since she would figure it out shortly, as she then proceeded to do deep tissue massage of my torso, home to three hundred plus biopsy scars, and neck, sliced halfway round to hack out massive malignant tumors.

This very nice and professional woman hesitated when she caught her first glimpse of the scars, and nearly stopped when her fingers encountered the large supposedly “benign” thing growing in the right side of my neck.

She did not at any point ask me what the heck she was looking at.

British people are so polite! Or…. something.

Other than the strange suspension of narrative integrity, the experience was good. My neck feels much better now.

Though I miss Ana Helena’s wit and brutality, blasting Scopotones or punk music or the Velvet Underground and saying feel the pain or you will never get better as she pounded away, somehow in the madness restoring the function of my right arm, and my sense of smell, lost more than a decade earlier.

Or to state it a different way: I want to go home.

 

2.12.2009 procedure

Somewhere on the train journey from London to Cambridge I managed to throw out my neck.

It has been suggested that the pain is psychosomatic and derived from my hatred of this city, but I’m not buying that nonsense.

Unfortunately for me, pain is a purely physiological experience. If it hurts, something is broken.

Hot baths, ice packs, stretching, and tentative prodding have not helped at all so I will almost certainly need to visit some kind of professional to get it fixed.

I loathe, detest, and abhor strangers touching me. Especially my face or neck.

Though the prospect of a medical procedure is certainly better than sitting around contemplating the memories the pain brings up.

Like spending the majority of the fifth and sixth grades in a neck brace and arm sling.

Yes, like Joan Cusack aka Geek Girl # 1 in Sixteen Candles….. my early adolescence was no fun at all.

 

2.10.2009 flood

The river flooded and I forgot to put my gangplank out!

 

2.2.2009 barter

Like I’ve mentioned before (though I suspect nobody believes it) my life functions largely at the mercy of a rickety barter system. This week, that has meant that I’m reading research statements in exchange for some tech work.

To call the task tedious would be the understatement of the decade. Though I do get to issue dire warnings against excessive use of e.g. and similar poor grammar choices!

 

2.1.2009 resources

I’ve continued to ponder where to spend my precious few weeks in the states, while evaluating salacious stories that have been trickling in.

What a conundrum; I really can’t decide who to visit. Several people I would have once thought fun have turned their attention to sabotaging marriages (their own or others). Why, I do not know, though I suppose it might be a developmental plateau of some sort. Like turning five, or thirteen.

These antics baffle me on a fundamental level, though I’ve been rifling through my mental files and cross-referencing with old stories in an effort to understand.

For instance: once, years ago, I was casually chatting with one of my rock star friends at some bar and his girlfriend turned up and was so visibly enraged I thought she was going to leap across the table and attack me.

What was I talking to her partner about? Grotesque abdominal surgeries. Even a backwards person like yours truly can assert that does not count as flirting. No matter how much cleavage I had on display.

Though I just shrugged and wandered off – thinking weird, but whatever. I wouldn’t have even remembered the incident except, within the next twenty-four hours, she tried to seduce my husband.

I was puzzled, and that has remained my dominant reaction to similar situations. Why are some people so possessive, if they also engage in poaching? If you are capable of having one thought (this person is my possession) then how is the other (I will now steal the possession of another person) tenable?

I don’t understand either belief, let alone how people maintain both at once. I have many faults, but I am not a hypocrite.

It would take several more years before I went on the Hunt for Bad Boys and Lumberjacks with Ana Erotica, who announced the explicit operating principle Straight Girls Have No Solidarity.

Oh. Really? I never knew.

While it would be foolish to make generalizations about such a large slice of humanity, this was an illuminating instruction – it had seriously never occurred to me that anyone would think like that.

When I was seventeen I was quite shocked to find my best friend (since kindergarten) making out with my boyfriend in the laundry room. Not because I felt betrayed by him, oh no. What I failed to grasp then or ever was why she made that choice.

I still don’t really understand why she would have picked a few seconds of reckless affection in a dank basement over the entire lifetime of experience we had enjoyed. Even if he was one of maybe two heterosexual males in our scene.

Wandering along behind Ana Erotica as she rampaged across the Hill that week I watched with amazement as she racked up conquests and made enemies. Along the way I took lots of notes and made several enduring friendships with people she rejected as Not Dirty Enough. Heck, I even seem to be stuck forever dealing with the truly heinous boys who caused all the trouble that inspired the campaign – and I dislike them both.

You have to remember that the majority of my early social life was conducted amongst activists and children, two social groups notorious for highly calibrated ethics. Like them, I am a purist, completely loyal to first principles even at my most wicked.

It was clear to me at a very young age that antics like fucking your way through the housemates and/or their loved ones made it very difficult to split up the monthly phone bill. This lesson can be extrapolated to fit almost any other scenario where you might need to choose between having a family, community, job, or …. a quickie.

I know lots of people who competently practice non-monogamy. That is not what I am talking about – there is a big gap between consensual ‘open’ relationships and the active, deliberate destruction of emotional and practical resources some of my friends are engaging in at the moment.

I may be hedonistic, but I understand and respect boundaries. This is, I think, a reasonable way to view the world.

Happy, happy, happy birthday wishes Iain Aitch!

The last time he showed up to visit he handed me a present and I pushed him at a room full of about one hundred strangers brandishing it and shouting Hey everyone! Look! Iain just published a new book! You should definitely buy it!

We’re always laughing too much to actually take a good picture, but I’m absolutely delighted he is my friend:

 

1.30.2009 cursed

Yesterday started with a stroppy teenager screaming that I had ruined his life by moving here. I mildly replied It wasn’t my idea but of course, that response was not appreciated.

Then I urgently needed to print a draft but found that I could not do so from Word.

Q: When has Word ever worked for me?

A: Never.

Too bad my career is in, oh, publishing, huh? It is just so frivolous that I need to be able to handle and produce, well, documents…..

I did not repudiate January this year but I am extremely thankful the cursed month is almost over.

 

1.29.2009 quality

Oh, and, btw, guess what I miss most today in the Something I Never Appreciated category?

Free weekly alternative newspapers.

Of whatever varying quality.

 

1.25.2009 biopsy

I bruise easily – the slightest jolt leaves weltering marks – and I am also quite clumsy. This means that I generally look like I have been mixin’ it up even when I have mostly been sitting around reading books.

One of my local charming companions finds this hilarious and likes to grab whatever piece of flesh that can be reached and take a big bite chomp chomp chomp because it is apparently amusing to watch me trudge through annoying social situations with visible bite marks.

Um, thanks.

However, after a recent encounter, I realized that one of my scars had fallen prey to the attack. Not too surprising, since I have approximately three hundred between my waist and chin. However, the ‘normal’ behavior of scars more than twenty years old is just to, well, hang out. They sit there, flat and flaccid, without reproach or any other message to deliver.

This one turned red, then swelled up, and remained inflamed. For about ten days. Given that it is an area that has been hacked away three times because a malignant tumor persists in returning…. well.

I’m kind of passive aggressive about the whole skin cancer thing, but this reminded me that if it has been four and a half years since the last positive biopsy, it has been exactly that amount of time since my last check-up.

Shhh! Don’t tell! I’m supposed to go in every six months….

I just really, really hate visiting hospitals. And while I heart the NHS most sincerely, they provide an institutional aesthetic that I have trouble enduring since I was a sick kid in the 1970’s.

Wanna see visual evidence? Hallway, cancer ward, leading teaching hospital in the UK, 2008:

 

1.24.2009 nature

The first time I went back to Seattle as an adult I was riding around with Ariel and Inga before a reading at some bookstore or other and I was overwhelmed with sadness to be back in the scene of so many youthful misadventures.

Inga offered sexual favors to cheer me up, but I just closed my eyes and said I don’t think that would help.

Ten years later, I can’t imagine that anything else would have, but hey – I know both more and less now, compared to when I was twenty-eight.

Eventually of course I moved to Seattle, because I wanted to win the tormented game I have always played with my past. For the most part, it worked – though I would sometimes find myself on particular roads and have to pull over because it was hard to drive while sobbing.

Various Seattle friends are privy to the information that I’ll be in the states this spring and keep asking if I will visit, and the answer is: I don’t know.

During my brief residence in that city I was responsible for two houses, two cars, and three young children. I was entrenched in an intricate and vast community stretching between Portland, Olympia, and Seattle, and the complications of an extended family six miles away across the Sound. There was too much work to deal with, too many invitations, too much noise. I had a whole lot to accomplish and only a little bit of time available.

Now I live on the other side of the world. I have a boat, a bicycle, and half-share in one adolescent boy. I have no discernible ambitions, aspirations, goals, plans for the future, or even interest in any of the concepts implied. I haven’t been on a stage in years.

One of my more maniacal friends, hearing these stories, just shrugs and says At least you got a book out of it. True, but possibly more significant than he might think.

I’ve changed. I’m not the sick kid dying in the cold public hospital, or the reckless teenager stripping and dancing around in the fountains at the Science Center. I’m not the resolute youngster who refused to go back, or the adult who felt she had conquered the world by purchasing a house on top of Beacon Hill.

Since leaving I have spent about a month of each year in the city. Stupid, shitty things have happened alongside the wondrous and weird; that is the nature of the place.

I feel that I should go back this spring, and that I want to, but that does not mean that I can. It might be healthier to go somewhere new, or at least, somewhere I am less likely to meet ghosts.

 

1.23.2009 special

Yesterday I received a letter notifying me that my kid has been selected to participate in an advanced reading group operating outside of school hours.

I was so furious I nearly tossed the letter on the fire. Then I remembered that I am a good mother and dutifully passed it on, asking what he wanted to do.

He read it with an expression close to my own, for roughly the same reasons.

Children are perfectly capable of understanding the dangers of elitism in a classroom, and the practice of breaking out achievement groups is just plain nasty.

Maybe people judged to be right in the middle have a fine time, but dwelling on either end of the spectrum is not fun. Even in a posh English school, there is social stigma associated with both under and over achieving.

Beyond that, the trend in education (here at least, can’t comment on elsewhere as my kids never attended proper stateside schools) is to use faddish popular literature rather than the canon.

Amongst various other texts, this means my son has been assigned The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

I have no opinion at all about the quality of the book, since my grown-up child told me that I was too sensitive to read tit. She was shocked that her (then eleven year old) sibling was given the book, because he, like me, is… sensitive.

The fact that a child has the cognitive ability to read at a high level does not mean that they can or should consume everything on offer.

I’m not proposing that books should be rejected because of controversial content – I am instead suggesting that quality should be the main criteria in selecting textbooks.

In principle teachers choose recent books to spark an interest. In practice, these works are often inferior to the favorites of earlier generations.

My kid is independently working his way through Alcott, Montgomery, Twain, Dickens, and Dumas. When he needs a little light entertainment he switches to Wilde or Wodehouse. Every single one of those authors offers challenging ideas. The opportunities to discuss the mechanics of literature, and debate social and cultural context, is tremendous.

Or how about going right back to basics, and teaching Shakespeare? Particularly in this town, there are abundant opportunities to attend performances and even hang out in the exact courtyard where the man staged his plays.

I could go on. Wanna visit the mill Chaucer was talking about? It is just past the Orchard in Grantchester. You know, that place where the Bloomsbury kids hung out. We’d have to cross the field where Augustus John pretended to live like a gypsy. On the way we would pass Byron’s Pool, so called because, you know, Lord Byron used to swim there.

Though all of that would involve walking twenty minutes or so through idyllic countryside. Without leaving town, we could see rooms once occupied by E. M. Forster, Bertrand Russell, Laurence Stern, Samuel Coleridge, John Milton, Alfred Tennyson, William Wordsworth, Francis Bacon, Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Samuel Pepys, heck, even C.S. Lewis. Not to mention Douglas Adams. If you’re not careful you might literally get run over by Stephen Hawking.

This town offers, if nothing else, an abundance of history.

Yet the school entrusted with the intellectual development of my child is picking books off the Amazon bestseller lists. The predictable consequence? He has developed a sincere hatred of his English class.

So, no, he will not be attending the ‘special’ reading group. He has elected to go to science club instead.

 

1.22.2009 tautology

My daughter showed me a website about so-called American Vagabonds.

I squinted at the pictures and replied Eh, I only know…. a couple of em.

She was shocked – whyever did I know such people?

I was shocked – has she forgotten her childhood?

It is true that I took her away from her homeland at age thirteen, so it must be hard to retain more than vague impressions of what it was like to be a kid. Certainly, neither child was aware that we were poor, because while we lived far below the poverty level, our life was rich with music and art and literature and friendship.

I refrained from pointing that out, or even delivering a lecture about the tautology of placing punks – who have access to a vast array of resources, including but not limited to community houses, infoshops, radio shows, zines, bartered medical care – in the same category as people who are homeless without choice.

See, sometimes I can curtail my caustic opinions!

The girl persisted with questions about riding the rails and was thrilled to realize that I know more than might be presumed about the topic. I ruthlessly squashed any hopes in that direction by pointing that an acquaintance had both legs chopped off pursuing such adventures. Not exactly romantic.

Of course her attention span does not sustain lengthy discussions (she says her brain feels like a LocoRoco game) so the next question was What is the creepiest example of someone flirting with you?

I replied Nobody flirts with me.

She stamped her foot and hollered SHUT UP! People flirt with you all day long!

I blinked in bewilderment. Not true! Give me an example!

She said I never hang out with you, so I don’t know! But you are just stupid to claim otherwise!

Shrug. So I’m still oblivious, even after advanced research and training. I really don’t notice much until people declare they are in love with me, a claim that can generally be analyzed as a passing fancy since they get over it within a year or two. Any other subtleties are beyond my comprehension.

This is certainly easier than getting tangled up with the misplaced desires of other people. Particularly in this town.

 

1.20.2009 heckling

I went out to buy new music but purchased Jim Croce instead cause I’m a sap.

Then I dragged a recalcitrant young man to visit Carmelo, The Gentlemen’s Hairdresser, where I ordered a cut for my kid described as Y’know, like Brideshead Revisited, 30’s aristocrat crossed with 80’s pop star…. which amused the barber. Though not, it must be admitted, my son.

I was planning to read a newspaper, but the receptionist was quite unexpectedly watching the inauguration. We sat entranced, half listening to the heckling of the Italian hairdressers.

It was quite a thrilling way to experience the whole thing, actually!

 

1.19.2009 dirges

I’m not feeling especially gloomy but my more obsessive traits pop up like a wack-a-mole game on days like this.

Right now that means I am listening to music that makes my kid act like his ears are bleeding, but hey, he is off recording his radio show! I can listen to whatever I like!

Too bad I can’t find what I really wanna hear: an early, unreleased, and presumably contraband copy of [band name suppressed to protect the guilty] without all the studio mixing that fixes the rough and charming bits.

Unfortunately I used to listen to it back in the days before I had my music on a computer (ooh, archaic!) so I guess it is an actual tactile possession lost in one of the moves.

Oh well.

I have lots of other dismal dirges to play!

 

1.19.2009 fit

Now that I’ve posted about my rather silly set of illnesses, I just feel mildly annoyed with myself for whining.

I have very little patience for “normal” problems, however you define the term. One of the larger societal obsessions is, of course, weight loss.

When I find myself trapped in some hideous situation where people talk about such things I tend to say in a bright shiny voice Have you heard of the best diet ever? I lost one third of my body weight in just under five weeks! The plan is easy. It is called cancer.

Of course, I was then hospitalized with malnutrition and force-fed before ending up back on the operating table undergoing surgeries that left me with massively debilitating internal scarring – but hey – I was thin!

Barely able to walk, mutilated beyond understanding, horrified by what I had just lived through, facing a lifetime of potential pain, I then had to endure “compliments” about my appearance.

Let us be clear: I looked awful.

Did anyone seriously believe Jobs when he claimed to be ok? We’ll ignore the ADA and ethical implications of the disclosure of health care status to prop up shares for now. I’m more interested in the fact that he just looks very ill, in a way that some people persist in describing as ‘fit.’

 

1.18.2009 life

First my tummy rebelled in a way consistent with previous episodes of ulcers/gallbladder/adhesions/choose-your-own-adventure and I could no longer eat or drink much of anything. Then I caught a head cold, which of course I cannot treat because all available meds interfere with the set keeping me alive. That turned into a sinus infection, morphing into a complete loss of my voice for ten days. By the end of a month of dreary illness I was mainly existing on a steady diet of Tums and Ricola, and drifted into anemia. By then I mainly just wanted to curl up on a chaise lounge, fainting, one handed pressed to a weary brow.

Except I don’t own one. Plus the insomnia is never mitigated by anything so I was still creeping around twenty hours out of every day, albeit in a slightly cranky and loopy fashion.

I’m barely functional but accumulated chores dictate I will now proceed with a massive cleaning purge. In a country where it takes four hours to wash one load of clothes.

What a glamorous life I lead.

 

1.17.2009 bells

The church bells will start ringing at 7:15 tonight to celebrate the fact that Cambridge is 800 years old.

 

1.16.2009 empty

When the Farm Store opened two years ago, they had literally no choice of properties – everything was fully booked.

Now? According to the local paper, 35 Shops Stand Empty in City.

To give those who do not live here some context, the commercial district is about the size of an American city block, maybe smaller. When they talk about ‘Peas Hill’ and ‘Rose Crescent’ those are just names for few dozen buildings that once made a street in 1345 or so – practically on top of each other. Not separate outlying neighborhoods.

For those traitors who moved away, check it – we’re talking about what looks to my untrained eye like half the stores have closed, and the Grand Arcade is still mostly vacant.

Add to that the bailiffs shutting at least eight pubs, and one of the main musical venues, and it is…. eerie.

 

1.16.2009 scar

Recently Byron looked at me and commented enthusiastically Hey, that scar has vanished!

You know, the vicious slash I acquired a few weeks after moving here, when the experts noticed a cancerous lesion.

In the middle of my face. Requiring immediate removal.

Resulting, of course, in a mark that aged me by at least five years – I’d certainly always without fail been carded before, even in a country that has a drinking age of eighteen.

In the states I would have been referred to a plastic surgeon (even when I was poor) to remove a tumor in this location. Not in Cambridge; nope, they just go with mutilation. Though everyone was very polite about it at the time.

I blinked and reviewed my mental files, then said So for the last four and a half years you have been lying about the fact that it was visible at all, let alone a disfiguring feature?

He replied Well… yeah.

Not surprising at all coming from someone proud to be known as the Lindsay Lohan of Logic.

Still. I knew it was there, and the fact that everyone (except, of course, the resident teenager) rushed to reassure me did not help.

 

1.15.2009 stalkers

I make a determined effort not to read too much on social networking sites, mainly because I need to preserve my bad eyesight for “work” – or whatever.

Every so often I succumb to the temptation to wander over and look at something, and that just never goes well.

The reasons are rather obvious when it comes to facebook – as Mash asked me recently X [edited to protect the guilty] is a bad guy, right?

We are required to share that kind of check-in, because our heads were bashed in The Accident. There are a few murky episodes that nobody really wants to talk about.

But, yes, there are a few bad guys in our collective past. Perhaps compelling, or sexy, but not safe to hang out with. Ever.

Though I’m not especially concerned that the serial rapist is two clicks away, since there is still a contract on his life. Nothing to do with me! I can look after myself! I broke his nose the last time he tried to hurt me, and he only smacked my elbow. No, his mistake was messing around with people who could not defend themselves, though they had a great talent for attracting the patronage of the criminal underclass.

My contribution to the debacle has been to routinely, for twenty years, show up at hometown social events (weddings, funerals, reunions, you know, the usual) and refer to the incidents openly, then laugh maniacally. This has not helped my reputation, but hey, what do I care?

All of that is beside the point and the thoughts only wandered through my brain this week because I thought of whats-his-face, that hilarious first husband of mine who made off with the Hunter S. Thompson poster. If he had been the sort to stay in touch with his kid, we might still be the best of friends. But he didn’t, so we aren’t. Once again: boring.

The more interesting point is that growing up with a certain set of values and experiences determines how you interact with the world later, whether in sympathy or opposition. That has certainly been true for me. I have a high tolerance for liars, tricksters, all manner of public and private malfeasance.

Because I grew up in a bifurcation of managing cancer treatments (proper, procedural, bureaucratic), and dealing with the junkie behavior of my family (chaotic, intense, psychotic), I am exquisitely sensitive to subtle dangers.

Often a heartbeat too late.

It took a very long time to understand that leaving and making a new life did not mean that I had escaped.

I have always been reasonably careful because, while inherently hedonistic, I also had a good mother. I was destined to place the safety of my kids ahead of any inclination toward annihilation. If you take that job seriously, you might be able to fuck around some, but only within defined limits.

I can wander through any party scene, ghetto, or similar marginal adventures, because I can feel trouble.

That is not the same thing as knowing what I am looking at.

The one thing I have always lacked is the relevant sensors to parse middle-class mainstream existence.

The other day on facebook I randomly stumbled across the only truly evil person I have ever known in my entire adult life.

Please note that I have met thousands upon thousands of people, befriended hundreds. I have had all manner of sketchy and hugely entertaining escapades. I hold no grudges, not against abandoned lovers, nor treacherous friends, nor even the people who have stolen my money. Heck, not even against the person who held a gun to my temple and informed me that his life would be easier if I were dead.

So, then, evil – what a concept – especially for a confirmed atheist to espouse.

Evil – why?

Our friendship started in the early days of the internet, before many people figured out that this form of communication is a great way to distort truth and reality. Fine – I got it, even back then.

What I had never encountered in my daily life was a person who worked so hard to create an intricate screen of distractions, opinions, decorations, music, finery, schools (but only the best, private, progressive sort). To hide what exactly, I do not know, though it obfuscated the fact that the person was secretly, viciously, verbally abusing children.

Perhaps more. Or rather, I suspect that more happened, but I had no actionable evidence to take to the police.

I wasn’t that close – not a teacher, trusted confidante, priest or in any way privy to the internal workings of this family. I just had a hunch. That creepy, raised hair on the back of your neck, something is wrong here intuition.

For this – expressed in nothing more than a raised eyebrow and inquiry about why the elder child was so … angry… around… kittens, I was exiled.

Then the person in question started a very long siege attack in the form of a whisper campaign. Presumably the goal was to trash my reputation, and I have certainly noticed a rippling impact in certain quarters.

Vicious rumors fans of the magazine might have heard? They can be directly attributed to this former friend, by way of a former volunteer, via a semi-delusional disenchanted fan, dribbling down in a noxious thin stream.

None of which has even merited comment for the last decade.

I honestly do not care – I find the whole thing really sad, and just hope that the people in question get sorted out eventually.

My only complaint is that I would like to use facebook in the obvious way, reading funny/racy updates, looking at hilarious high school pictures, and otherwise taking a break from real life, without encountering stalkers.

Oh well! I should probably be working anyway!

 

1.14.2009 predicted

My son is growing, on average, an inch every other week. This means he needs a new school uniform for the third time in two months.

Twelve years old, exactly my height, predicted to shoot up to six foot eight or so (I’m not exaggerating), and fighting a mighty battle not to acquire a British accent, he has nonetheless taken to saying hilarious things like Run along and fetch me some buttered toast, dear.

-and-

I am finished with this sceptred isle!

 

1.13.2009 posturing

When my first husband wandered off into the sunset he took his uniforms, the ironing board, and my original Hunter S. Thompson for Sheriff poster.

He left everything else: guns, knives, household goods, the baby.

Fair enough – although I never did manage to shift most of the stuff, some of the guns had street value. The rest of the weapons are scattered in storage units across the world. I still use the mixing bowls. And the baby, of course, is all grown-up. It happens.

I only owned the poster because I know people in Woody Creek, a trend that has continued throughout my life. The mountains of Colorado exert an eerie appeal, and the kids who grew up shooting shit in those canyons are amongst my favorite people, encountered routinely in Portland, Seattle, SF, NYC, London, Rome.

Last night I went to see Gonzo and it was fascinating. In large part, of course, because it illustrated the way that a truly iconoclastic and talented man squandered his early promise on bullshit macho posturing. Or drugs, depending on how you want to write the story.

Not that I have any particular problem with bullshit macho posturing – I am a pioneer descendent, my uncles were variously Hell’s Angels, union enforcers, or other flavors of criminal genius. I like guns. Heck, I’m probably a better shot than many people reading these words. I have made a lifelong habit of dating thugs and killers, because I like the aesthetic.

The ethos of rugged individualism, the values of the frontier, are simply part of me. It is only when those habits turn into caricature or farce that I shrug and walk away.

Drug addiction and the ensuing moody drama? Boring.

Thompson is rightfully revered for his earlier work, whether you like it personally or not, and the movie does a fantastic job of showing that era, including interesting archival footage and new interviews with McGovern, Carter, Wolfe, and even (gasp) Pat Buchanan.

The saddest part of the documentary is not the suicide – it is the fifteen or so years when he didn’t manage to write anything much at all. Let alone anything interesting.

 

1.9.2009 impervious

Loot this year included all manner of treats, from a painting of me on safari by my elder child, family portraits of squirrels ordered from faraway SF, a new speaker to play the iphone, a shiny teapot, a huge bag of cinnamon jellybeans, a carved wooden owl that hoots, and an inflatable moosehead trophy (cause I wasn’t allowed to bring my taxidermy to this country).

The best however was a glass eye pendant, to replace the creepy necklace I’ve grown weary of, though unfortunately the chain did not fit the new trinket.

Lli was the only friend who consistently turned up to celebrate the doleful birthday, traversing snowstorm and bad public transit so our infants could crawl around poking dangerous things in my series of eccentric, semi-derelict houses back in Portland.

One year she gave me the most genius gift of my entire adult life – a human glass eye still in a presentation case – and it resides in a place of honor with my collection of antique medical gadgets and false teeth. The same shelf also holds the bits of jewelry collected during my travels, and today I went rummaging in the scientific cabinet to find a chain for the new eye.

The only one that fit was originally used to suspend a loteria card featuring a pierced heart, one of the visual elements that later became the tattoo, forcing retirement of the necklace it referred to. Later I used the chain to hold milagros from a pilgrimage to Chimayo, then medallions from Paris, Rome, and Tallinn.

Before I learned to flirt (or rather, realized that I already knew how, in my own vicious and marauding manner) these talismans were mainly just a private comfort, a way to mark and organize and remember chaotic events.

They were also the only thing anyone ever dared comment on, and the only breach in my defense systems, with Inga or Moe or Sasha or a dozen others feeling free to rummage around to get a better look at my cleavage as I rolled my eyes in exasperation.

Straight boys correctly sense they would swiftly have their fingers broken if they tried the same, but eventually I noticed that the necklaces implied permission for menfolk to look.

How tiresome, and how unfortunate that I noticed – it was so much more pleasant to drift around, oblivious and impervious.

 

1.7.2009 birthday

On January 7 1983 I was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and granted an estimated survival of six months.

That was my twelfth birthday, and today I turned thirty-eight.

Happy birthday to me!

Happy giving-birthday to my mother!

Huge, impossible, endless thanks to all of you who have stuck with me through these mad years!

 

 

1.5.2009 shine

You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and your family. –Robert Darwin to his son Charles

There were several years I refused to acknowledge January 7 (or by extension the entire month) whatsoever, and it became my Not Birthday, recognized only by demand of friends and relations, but always with a certain level of fury.

I was really angry and sad – about everything, nothing, whatever. This sort of thing tends to happen when you are diagnosed with terminal cancer as you turn twelve… adolescent anxiety gets all mixed up with survival, and who needs that kind of anniversary looming in the darkest part of the winter?

Not me. However, now? This year?

For whatever reason, I honestly don’t care!

Though this means that there will be no party, in case you are one of the friends who would normally expect an invitation.

Instead, Saturday started at the British Library, where a display about Darwin helpfully included the fact that his father was strenuously opposed to him joining the Beagle expedition, and also thought he was something of a loser in general.

Oh, families!

The main attraction though was an excellent exhibit called Taking Liberties. Highly recommended (even for kids, though they should be over age ten and/or twitchy eccentrics like the fruit of my loins), and not just because they have an original Magna Carta on display.

Oh no – there is way more – including real recognition of radical history and the long bloody fight to achieve what nominal rights we currently have. Particularly the NHS, seen appropriately as a redistribution of wealth and a basic human right. One of the main people behind it said, essentially, private insurance is a scam, and there is no room for notions of profit in health care. Yes!

I don’t even need to remind you that childhood mortality improved by some startling statistic like thirty percent in the first ten years of the program, right?

Then onward to find lunch in a city partially closed for the holiday season – one awesome if frustrating thing about the UK in winter – and off to the Southbank Centre, because I asked for a BFI membership for my Sad Winter Birthday (TM).

We were there to watch Casablanca on a big grand screen, and gee whiz, the movie really does shine when viewed as it was meant to be seen.

On the way out we stopped to ride a carousel on the banks of the Thames with a view of Big Ben, the Shell Tower, and the Eye of London. My horse was named Kevin.

As the hours passed my evening plans unraveled, as they always do, so I dragged my kid across town to eat pho and salad rolls before grabbing an early train back to Cambridge.

The putative birthday does not strike until later in the week, but I’ve already had a fantastic time!

 

1.3.2009 thankful

On my thirtieth birthday I had a sense of foreboding because, as I commented to anyone willing to listen (and hardly anyone listens to me around this time of year) This will be the deadly decade.

Not because I had any fears for my own health; such concerns are void until the next round of tests, then quickly forgotten. I was instead stricken with an awareness that, while I’d always been sickly, now my friends were going to start experiencing protracted ill health.

This has proved true.

People close to me have been diagnosed with all manner of ravaging diseases, a few will die, a few already have. Wherever possible I offer support in practical ways, or just an understanding ear, and if the individual allows it, a fair dose of gallows humor.

I have always been indignant when people read my work and claim it puts their problems in perspective. Life doesn’t work like that; a broken bone really fucking hurts whether or not the person next to you has just experienced an amputation. Pain and illness are individual, private experiences, no matter how publicly paraded.

If you are the sort of person who feels grateful for your good fortune because others are suffering, I don’t want to know you.

Yes, feel thankful for what you have – just avoid making specious comparisons. My life, while raw and painful and bloody, has always been wildly entertaining. I refuse to let anyone claim otherwise.

This holiday I’ve been feeling rather ill and suspect that I have worked my way back into another stupid sickness (the first time I was diagnosed with bleeding ulcers I was nine years old, so I can reasonably predict what is wrong right now). No, I don’t want to talk about it – leave me alone with my antacids and mushy plain food and I will be fine and dandy.

But while feeling doleful and queasy I’ve been reading narratives from many people here on the internet who are much more ill than me. Elsewhere other friends are dealing with painful invasive treatments. One ended up in hospital over the holiday – crossing fingers she gets out today.

I have an idiosyncratic inclination to protect the privacy of my sick friends, whether they are shy or exhibitionists. Yeah, I will donate to a medical or funeral fund when I have the money, or run a free ad campaign, or spend countless hours advocating for friends in emergency rooms and clinics, but it is rare for me to comment publicly or privately about the health of another person.

In this way I am often a failure as a friend, because some people want acknowledgment and validation of their troubles. If I’d ever consented to therapy I might even understand this urge, though I doubt I would share it. I’m still stuck in the lower gears of survivor guilt and would prefer to take all the pain myself. I’m pretty good at being stoic, after all.

This was really just a long way to say – I hope the new year brings solace and relief to those of you who are feeling awful.

 

1.2.2009 technology

I missed a phone call before setting up the voice mail, and then received a text that did not have a signature…. so, um, hiya to whoever it was!

The best thing about the iphone so far is the fact that I can stream last.fm recommendations. They were absolutely correct to play me some Merle Haggard and Barry Manilow first thing on Boxing Day…. but man, I’ve always hated Leonard Cohen songs. Even more so now that Hallelujah has taken both first and second in the UK pop charts.

Earlier today I was poking around trying to figure out other phone options. My pal David in Silicon Valley sent a message telling me how to set up KEXP, and now I’m sitting here in England listening to my friend DJ El Toro faraway in Seattle.

The wonders of modern technology!

Oh, and someone made a documentary about the Red House.

And also…. if you pick up the current stateside edition of Vogue and flick through to page 140, you can read about the secret project Byron and Tauba have been working on.

 

1.1.2009 resolution

Lots of people have been posting reflective New Year thoughts, and I have nothing to offer, except the mild point that this is the first winter I have not been depressed.

Who knows why, or if it will last, but the (literal) fog of the season has had almost no influence on my mood this time round.

The tricky thing with me is that when I feel great, I always make big instant changes – go to grad school? Ditch a husband? Quit a whole career? Have a kid? Move to a new continent? Hey! No problem!

So what new big thing is around the corner for me? Well, you may notice that I have acquired the first contract phone of my entire life. This means that I have decided, for better or worse, to stick it out here in the UK for awhile.

However: I really do not like this town, and it eschews me right back. Four and a half years have not endeared us one to the other, and the few friends I’ve made have all moved away. Except Jean, who is busy working.

Many people might have predicted this would be a difficult place for me to live, but I have never once in my entire life had any problem cracking a social scene. I float, I’m a chameleon, perhaps controversial and demented – but also curious and excited.

This attitude worked to some extent here – I know everyone I could possibly want to know, I’ve caused more than my share of scandals, I hang out with famous scholars, people who have been knighted, the beggars and junkies on the corner. Pretty average for me. But something is intangibly different, hard to explain, impossible to deal with if you want more than just a surface connection, air kiss relationship.

Within six hours I knew this was not my home. Within six months I had deliberately fixed the immediate problems by scrabbling together a loose network of colleagues and companions. But, by the end of the first year, I still felt like my brain was cracking down fault lines, and I just didn’t understand.

It doesn’t make sense, but this is not my place, no matter how hard I try to make it work.

Until recently the best cure was just going back to the states to see friends, spend time with the water and mountains. Lately though that solution has been taken away, because for immigration purposes I need to remain resident within the UK for proscribed amounts of time.

Here in Cambridge, people squint at me and rather begrudgingly have conversations that go something like what you might remember from unpleasant parent-teacher conferences in junior high. Why? Because I’m not connected to the university, I have a peculiar job, and I dwell on a boat.

In other words, I’m a freak. Big surprise!

The only cred I have is the fact that I publish and by academic standards I am “famous” (I disagree, but you have to remember, these are people who judge according to obscure journal publications, and I have produced…. books) but for every person who is impressed there are a dozen who are dismissive or, worse, jealous.

Whatever! I don’t think like that, so leave me alone!

The comparison: recently I went to a literary party in London, where I tried to hide behind the poinsettias, but my agent dragged me out and introduced me to a screenwriter. I told him I did not know how to mix, and he offered to be my Mingling Mentor.

We ventured forth into the room and he thrust me at various people, explaining the experiment, and within about four minutes I met the film critic from the Daily Mail! I jumped up and down and squealed!

Several new movie-tv-and-book-writing friends later I was chatting with a fellow who had a good haircut and western shirt about his job in the financial world. His wife, as it turns out, knows the meaning of the word ‘zine.‘ Instant connection!

They invited me to a party in Bethnal Green the next night. On the way I heard from three other London friends, and, mysteriously, Rachel stopping by on her way from Canada to elsewhere.

I proceeded to the party, where I met at least a dozen new highly entertaining people, then dashed out in time to catch the last tube with a charming new companion.

The lesson?

As predicted from infancy, I really do need to live in a big city. Lucky me, I’m moored about an hour distant from one of the best in the world.

My big New Year decision is therefore: spend at least a portion of each week in London.

 

1.1.2009 better

Previous years have found me suffering various existential crises at academic parties, then feeling fretful as I plucked famous drunken scientists out of shrubbery in the wee morning hours.

Last night I had a much better time:

Playing a rousing game of Monopoly, then going outside for a misty midnight sing-a-long with my kid, while we tried to light sparklers from damp matches!

Happy 2009 to all of you!

XO

Earlier in the week I took my kid to Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park, where he enjoyed Dutch pancakes and rides on metal reindeer, and we were both thrilled to partake of a mighty fine carousel.

Then we raced over to the Southbank Centre for a magical, hilarious, and rather creepy appointment to visit Santa’s Secret Village.

Now we’re building robots and eating leftovers and enjoying the waning days of the year.

Whatever you celebrate or decry, merry winter wishes!

 

12.15.2008 absurd

In the continuing annals of procrastination, why the heck does Evergreen advertise on KEXP? How absurd.

Some trivia: the original TESC site was designed by Phan, Byron, Brian Ventura, and probably that dude who lived under the floorboards. At the time, the administration did not understand why a college could possibly need such a thing, and therefore failed to complete the technical changes required to make it resolve to the correct name… it was just a string of numbers for years.

Some more: Back in ye olden days I was the only person in any of the grad programs who had an email account, and one of perhaps 4 in the entire institution – professors often asked me to send messages to faraway colleagues on their behalf.

 

12.14.2008 dunno

Of course I work best in the midst of chaos, and the day has certainly delivered on that level!

Though my spotty memory – my kid calls it ‘nominal aphasia’ which is as good a term as any since most of it devolves to the head injury – is interfering with the project.

A couple of years ago I was hanging out with KTS in NYC and he squinted and said What was the name of that first guy you married?

I pondered, then replied Um, dunno.

KTS has been a friend long enough he just sighed and said Dude was the scariest person I have ever met!

Lucky KTS, especially given he, like me, grew up in the grimmer forgotten corners of the NW.

I perceived my first husband as amusing and sweet, even if I do sometimes forget his name. Perhaps because we haven’t talked in the last fifteen years, though technically the failure might convey more than should be allowed about my skewed mental faculties in 1989. I’m not opposed to teen marriage in principle. Just my own teen marriage.

Sigh.

 

12.12.2008 bifurcation

I’m way behind on a deadline but rather than buckling down I am instead attempting to purchase xmas presents on ebay.

Procrastination can be fun!

Though technically I am struggling with the thing I am supposed to be writing, since it is about stuff that happened in the late eighties.

You might think the fact that I’ve published a memoir means I have exhausted the topic of youthful indiscretions, but no…. in fact, several years and most of the formative experiences were skipped entirely.

I still haven’t figured out how to accurately describe the way madness, matrimony, secrecy, and poverty smacked up against each other and eventually forced me to leave the peninsula.

My tshirt might have proclaimed One Shot, One Kill but I was intent on rescuing everyone –regardless of their desire or need to be saved. I never had any problem messing around with any sort of bad kid, so long as they were prepared to be reformed. Lonely addicts, violent thugs, multipurpose assholes? I always believed that if they followed my simple rules each and every one could find a better life.

Strangely, my messianic approach worked in most cases. It appears that I was very convincing. Especially when they wanted to sleep with (or marry) me.

Now of course I am bored by the results.

I have no grudges, and care so little I do not even wonder where they are. It all seems like a dream, not just because youth often fades to a strange luster, but because I was recovering from a major head injury.

I do not recognize myself in any of the stories from August of 1988 until, oh, the winter of 1993. During which time almost everything you could fear or imagine happening…. happened.

The bifurcation of my life was tremendous yet I had almost no emotions at all. Nor did I sleep, except occasionally passing out in the car during my 120 mile daily round-trip commute. The only bits I remember enjoying were playing with my kid, reading case law, and arguing with housemates about post-structuralism.

Nothing really made sense then, and the intervening years have not helped. People who were around are often surprised when I reveal some pulpy and preposterous true fact that was hidden at the time.

And yet I’m still unable to remember large swaths of the daily reality. It seems odd that I have to write to KTS, James, Byron, the other Byron, and occasionally my mother to ask Did XYZ actually go down the way I remember? No… really?!

 

12.10.2008 amusement

The other night someone asked if I’m having an affair and I replied in astonishment Here, in Cambridge? With who exactly?

In a word: ick!

Why do so many people insinuate that would be the best solution for my perpetual boredom with this town? Just because I pontificate about health education does not mean I’m looking for a hookup, and very specifically not with a drab academic. I don’t even enjoy talking to them for the most part!

Even if there were sexy people around, I do not desire additional encumbrances, and I have never successfully managed to pull off a light-hearted romance. They always want to marry me, and that is tedious.

I think the locals just want me to act up for their own amusement, in the same way Jean expects me to regale his dinner parties with gun stories.

Too bad! I am not a court jester!

The only thing I’m asking Santa for this year is more time to work.

 

12.5.2008 train

Last night I was invited to go partying in London with some coked up Eurotrash kids, but I declined.

Have I finally grown up?

Or do I just dislike taking the late train home?

Presumably the latter.

Though I have never enjoyed any bar scene (aside from the Bus Stop – but that was more like a home than a drinking establishment). I certainly do not feel inclined to spend any more time or money in Shoreditch than is strictly necessary.

 

12.4.2008 residence

One of the hideous aspects of doing taxes is the fact that I have to account for my whereabouts on every single day, and state whether or not I was working.

While this might be fun when simply musing, it is a massive pain to present in a form accepted by tax and immigration officials.

During the two years I documented yesterday, I was never in my designated residence longer than four weeks at a time.

2006 found me in Seattle, Amsterdam, NYC, San Francisco, Barcelona, Trento, Venice, then back to Seattle again – with lots of trips to London in between.

2007 looks better at a glance but the trips were longer, including a whole summer in the Pacific Northwest, then the South of France, Paris, Rome, San Francisco, Denver.

Both years were easier than 2005, when I traveled in a similar fashion and also went on two long book tours.

In the abstract it all looks like great fun, and it would be churlish to claim otherwise. I am delighted that I had the freedom, opportunity, money, and sufficiently good health to go on all the trips, no matter how difficult or strange.

I started this journal in 2002 to document the process of abandoning my home in Portland for what looks easy in retrospect – just a move up the I-5 corridor to a house on top of a hill in Seattle. At the time the decision seemed perilous, risky, extreme.

I didn’t know that a little over a year later I would end up leaving not only the Pacific Northwest but also the country. I had no idea I would end up in England, let alone this rarefied and irritating academic enclave. I did not guess that I had the capacity to spend most of my time recklessly, on the road, or that my domestic arrangements would devolve to include not much more than a boat and a bicycle. I did not understand that I could love an unsettled existence more than the security of home.

When I finished filling out all the fiddly little details I closed the folder and said I want my old life back.

 

12.3.2008 bleeding

I worked too hard, cooked too much, stayed up too late, indulged beyond reason, and thrashed my immune system. I always forget that I am technically fragile, and should restrict my actions or risk some health consequence.

This time the curse has taken the form of bleeding hands. Fun!

Possibly the only thing more fun than having this mysterious stigmata is using the bleeding knuckles to do my taxes. Especially given that I’m self-employed, need to file in two countries with tax years that do not match, and …. etc.

My life is filled with excitement and glamor!

Speaking of which, last night someone pointed out that my music collection includes no love songs whatsoever. I was quite huffy – what, Elliott Smith isn’t romantic?!

But then I was able to dredge up some John Denver and Stevie Wonder, so my reputation was saved.

 

12.2.2008 local

Anyone living in or near Cambridge, England (and even those beyond) should definitely consider snagging tickets for The Magic Lamp.

Yes, I know it claims to be a ‘family’ show…. but it is my mates Sally and Steve – two of the most interesting people I know here  – at the Junction!

The show will be fabulous, for everyone! Buy!

 

12.1.2008 bigger

Planning for my annual expat feast always starts with the directive Borrow a house.

This year it should have been Borrow a bigger house.

People congregated from near and far, sworn vegetarian Nick made the meaty gravy like always, I bustled around making food and holding babies and laughing.

I have no idea how many people turned up, but it was so crowded I couldn’t get in the room to serve the turkey. Or sit. Or eat.

In fact, I did not even get a slice of pie!

It was an honor to feed my friends and loved ones a traditional harvest meal, and to reflect on all the things I am thankful for.

Top of the list, even after all these years? The National Health Service.

Perhaps one day my homeland will offer decent provision of health services to all citizens. Maybe our new president will keep his promises.

Happy Thanksgiving!

For those who have a prurient interest, here is the menu for the overwhelmingly organic, free range, locally sourced, ambidextrous (carnivore, vegetarian, vegan, gluten free – you all have an oft-replenished seat at my table) feast. Made by my own hands, no shortcuts. Scaled to serve at least sixty:

Starter:
Bread, cheese, olives, pickles

Main:
25 pound turkey
10 pounds mashed potato
Candied sweet potato
Stuffing
Gravy
Spicy green beans
Brussels sprouts
Beet & cabbage slaw
Green salad
Pasta salad
Cranberries

Dessert:
Apple crumble
Pumpkin pie
Ice cream
Whipped cream

No, I’m not a masochist.

 

11.26.2008 emotions

Yesterday morning was brilliantly bright and achingly cold – the worst sort of weather for me, since I am both clinically photosensitive and have that pesky “fingers feel like they are about to snap off” disorder.

Trudging from store to store, stall to stall, unable to find not only pumpkins but also new pie tins, cheesecloth, half a dozen other required items, I just lost it, indulging in a moment of quivering dismay.

Much to the irritation of Byron, who instantly took my state as a direct attack, and chastised me.

I burst into tears and said I’m only in trouble because I learned to have emotions!

Charming companion looked startled, then agreed True…. I liked you better when you were a robot.

 

11.25.2008 pie

Seasonal trauma alert!

I have not been able to find the necessary requirements to make pie.

The farm kids can’t get “eating pumpkin” until the end of the week, and the market square farmers I normally bribe have gone walkabout.

This morning I trekked to Waitrose, savior last year with cans of the good stuff, to no avail.

I’ve now checked every logical local store, every faraway illogical store, all online vendors, and enough of the rest of the country to state that there is no canned pumpkin to be had in jolly ye olde world.

Oh, woe is me!

In desperation I finally tracked down a bulbous green object claiming to be a pumpkin, and will now proceed with the experimental baking required to ascertain if it will work in a pie.

Cause nobody can tell me what it actually is, or what it is for.

Wish me luck.

 

11.24.2008 debt

Recently I was on a train traveling from France to Germany and had one of those strange moments of floating displacement, looking out the window with amazement and unease and thinking However did this happen?

I certainly was not born to have this life; I was never meant to move more than six miles from the homestead on the northern end of the Kitsap Peninsula.

It occurred to me then that the reason might be simple: my home county had a truly great children’s librarian.

When we were small she read to us with a large dragon puppet on her shoulder. When we were older she made sure that we had access to high quality, challenging books – pushing us to participate in summer reading programs with incentives, yes, but at the same time making sure we knew which books had been banned in other areas, and talking about the underlying issues.

I finished all of the kid and juvenile books (reading alphabetically through the stacks) by age eleven, when she pointed me onward to the classics most suitable to encourage a lifelong reading habit.

Literature was a revelation, the only possible escape from a life mired in the muck of cancer and poverty, before video games and cable television offered quick fixes.

What else did I have going on? Nothing whatsoever: for years I was either in the hospital or sitting on a stack of tires in the back room of a gas station.

Cue maudlin violin music here.

The librarian changed my life, but also other lives through me – even when they were little, my kids read comics, but also the New Yorker. They were denied television and video games in preference for literature, and they are both (while admittedly eccentric) excessively bright and verbal, with vocabularies far beyond many people who have finished a PhD.

My daughter is grown-up now, with a bruising and urgent need to discuss philosophy that often leaves me clutching my hair and moaning.

My son has been a massive P.G. Wodehouse fan since age three, and has recently been on a Louisa May Alcott binge. He is also reading the Anne of Green Gables series – and enjoying it far more than anything published in his lifetime.

Who knows where any of us will end up; the point is, reading books gave us the freedom to go.

I feel a great debt to that modest, determined, rural librarian.

When I went home for the funeral of my namesake the librarian spoke to the assembled crowd, and I would have liked to tell her how much her work meant to me. It just didn’t seem like the right moment, and besides, I suspect we are both too shy for that conversation.

 

11.22.2008 sleep

The first night of fitful sleep after a ruptured ovarian cyst featured a reunion with Dwayne – hardly surprising, not just because I miss him, but also because his mom was the receptionist for my surgeon at the height of my cancer treatments. She was the first person to see me enter the clinic for each appointment, and the last person we talked to when my mother settled the bill.

Of course I didn’t recognize Dwayne when we met as adults. It took a few years of singing together before we were lounging around at a lingerie-and-glasses breakfast for me to figure out that he was the cute boy who worked at the record store next to my high school. My best friend would drag me over there so she could stare at him while I sighed and looked through the albums. Or wander off to visit the guinea pigs at the pet store.

Oh, memories….

What did we do in the dream? We sat around talking about nothing in particular. My dreams are never very interesting.

Last night I was feeling better physically but that is when I always freak out (the fact that the pain was located directly under the six inch scar on my lower right abdomen did not help matters).

For the most part, I did not sleep, though when I managed to drift off near dawn I experienced a paranoid mixed up return to the Seattle house, which as you may recall was located at the top of the Beacon Hill crack staircase. This was fine with me when it was my daily reality – but my neighbors were always spying on strangers and each other. Those antics caused me way more anxiety than dealing with the whores and junkies.

I did not know Mark Mitchell when we lived in the same city, but happily he turned up in the dream with some houseplants and caustic comments. We sat on the porch mocking the neighbors until my alarm cut off the festivities at 6:30am.

The interesting thing to me is that nobody I’ve ever dated shows up in my dreams, or in any aspect of real life. Whenever I broke up with someone (and I was always the breaker upper) they’re gone – forever – scrubbed from every aspect of my life, including my subconscious.

I can’t even remember their names. But why?

Byron knew me at age twenty-one, when I was still married to someone else, and about to dismantle the first version of my identity. Back then he kind of drifted around in my orbit, yearning but not speaking, watching the mayhem. Our courtship did not happen until a couple of years later.

But he is the only available witness so I asked him why the people who fall in love with me lurk around for years after I break their hearts, hoping for a reconciliation or at least sex, lavishing me with attention and hilarious adventures. And also: why the people who claim to fall in love with me vanish when something goes seriously awry.

The answer: Because you would never be attracted to anyone who would take care of you the way you should be looked after. Oh no. You think chaos is hot. Just look at [long list of thugs, thieves, liars, and killers, though only one rapist]. In fact, you married the two craziest people you could find. Why did you ever bother dating? You would have been better off moving to Kansas and kissing a tornado!

Two hours of sleep over three consecutive nights does not translate to a positive, optimistic view of the world. If only I could take naps!

 

11.19.2008 sick

I woke up today with an awful belly ache, and it never went away.

Even during one of the best treats available each month, the British Film Institute archival films (this time, ‘Austerity Britain’ – propaganda about coal mines and comprehensive education), I was nearly doubled over with wrenching pain.

This is not the flu, or some kind of easy virus – oh no. Symptoms tally to exactly one option: the rupture of an ovarian cyst.

It happens every few years, but has been sufficiently destructive various physicians have offered to snatch away the ovaries in a prophylactic fashion. You can even see the damage on ultrasound scan, if you ever wish to accompany me to the various appointments intended to identify ovarian cancer before it (some would say inevitably) kills me.

The pain is somewhat unique in that I want to stretch against it – push it away – instead of curling up around the burning center.

Since I am such a practiced patient, I know that there are no relevant treatment options, aside from pain medication, and I’m allergic.

Unless I start to hemorrhage, there is no reason to seek expert advice or go to the hospital.

Knowing that does not in any way translate to comfort or solace.

I hate this. Not because of the pain, but because of what it reminds me of, what it represents, what I can never escape, the way I have to prioritize taking care of the people around me instead of just feeling.

Dissolve in tears? That might be a relief, but I have a kid who needs supper.

I’m sad and sick and very tired.

 

11.19.2008 mayhem

Yesterday was the thirtieth anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre.

One of my pals back in the Seattle remembers the event as the first that truly scared him as a child. The mass suicide is certainly the first international news I can clearly recall from my childhood, though I always had a sense that the world was a dangerous place.

Not a very radical or delusional concept, given the fact that we had three serial killers on the loose in the Northwest. Ted Bundy, Westley Allan Dodd, and The Green River Killer (I’ll never be able to think of him as Gary Ridgway) were active, real threats, not phantom fears.

Even the most innocent activities were fraught with anxiety – I was at Campfire Girls sleepaway camp the summer the Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders hit the news.

Of course I also grew up in brutal yet aesthetically ravishing rural poverty. There is a reason Twin Peaks was filmed partly in my hometown. Where I’m from, victim and perpetrator were conflated. Violence was a standard expression of devotion.

I was conditioned to be wary, but also to accept the grim as normal. Why have I always consorted with criminals and killers? That is the life I know. The people who have fallen in love with me start on the pathological liar point in the spectrum, veering out across serial rapist to sociopathic killer.

I didn’t choose them, I just went along with whoever came my way. Though I have always been highly amused by the ensuing antics.

The other day I posted a short, throwaway anecdote about something that happened when I was nineteen. It was (in my opinion) just a funny little memory.

Ten minutes later I erased it.

When I moved to England I was relieved because the risk of custodial kidnap was reduced by the complexity of crossing international borders. When my daughter reached the age of majority the danger vanished entirely.

This does not mean I am safe, since I was informed – with a loaded gun at my temple – that a certain person would be much happier if I were dead. At the time I was exasperated, and the years have not tempered my response.

I was never afraid. I just accepted the facts of the case.

I am widely and correctly perceived to be a cold-hearted bitch, but the truth is: I am too tolerant of mayhem, too entranced by trouble. I moved far from my home to raise my children with a different set of values.

It is hardly surprising that I struggle to make polite conversation at Cambridge dinner parties.

 

11.18.2008 misery

Another misery memoir is front page news, challenged as lies! Fun!

I am amused; although my intention in writing Lessons in Taxidermy was to subvert the genre, I was extremely careful to use only those facts that could be verified by medical records, school reports, court documents, and newspaper accounts. I can prove my claims.

While it is true that I could have written several books from the same source materials, my family declined to participate and I took that as a big flashing danger sign to avoid intruding on any portion of the history that would distress them. Or they are dead and beyond either testifying or caring – but that is another matter entirely.

Without the contribution of witnesses I did not think it safe to rely on my own memories as fully accurate – since I was in horrendous pain, often drugged, and very young.

Wherever I am fanciful in the book, it is presented as exactly that – the whimsy of a childish imagination. Since I was, in fact, a child.

Yes, truth is subjective – but childhood is even more so.

 

11.16.2008 entertainment

Every year the lighting of the Cambridge Christmas tree at the Guildhall features a master of ceremonies from the entertainment industry.

The last time I attended Stella and Al were visiting and we stood around in the sparsely populated, freezing market square to watch  The Damned laughing as they hit the button to illuminate our wintry lives.

Controversial, that. Santa even wrote a letter of protest to the newspaper.

Tonight I stood in a massive crowd, elbowing shrieking girls as they crowded too close, to watch the ceremony. I had no clue who would come on stage, and was mildly interested given the size and excited nature of the crowd.

Over the last few weeks the city has been buzzing with all sorts of elaborate tributes to Syd Barrett since he died and can no longer object to such things.

I was assuming the evening would continue in that direction – or at least feature something worthwhile, given the giddy anticipation all around me.

And it was…. some random girl voted off the X Factor.

End times, people. End times.

 

11.14.2008 turkey

This will be the first year without overseas visitors for Thanksgiving. Translation: Bee Does Everything Her Own Self. From shopping to cooking to cleaning up after (including the inevitable expulsion of drunken guests near dawn).

For, on average, fifty people. Though the numbers may climb higher than that.

I decided to cancel.

Upon hearing this, various friends rushed to offer help – and I even believe the London contingent are sincere! Though I suspect people just want my pie.

Regardless, it seems I only needed a little stroking, because my enthusiasm revived, even knowing that I will in fact get about 1% more help than the previous 0 I had been counting on.

Tonight I ordered the bird – very exciting!

My fancy literary agent wrote to say I just had a vision of you cycling home with your trailer containing the world’s biggest turkey!

Locals will in fact have the option of watching me slog back and forth across the city with vast piles of food. Lucky my bike cart can handle the load, even if I routinely fall over!

 

11.11.2008 talk

Today I went to see Salt of the Earth and it was amazing to watch on the big screen – if you have the chance, definitely go to a theatre to view it.

Of course I alternated between tears and maniacal suppressed laughter while all the elderly posh people around me watched with sober attention. But hey – I’m allowed – I am legitimately working class.

When the movie ended I turned to my kid and said You won’t remember, but that is how people talk where we come from.

Not the accent, but the attitude.

Then I resisted delivering extensive lectures about the history of labor organizing, life in the company towns of the Pacific Northwest, and the Centralia Massacre.

Instead, I walked around humming songs I have not performed for nearly eight years.

 

Union Maid
Original source: Woody Guthrie
As interpreted by the Amalgamated Everlasting Union Chorus Local 824

There once was a union maid
Who never was afraid
Of goons and ginks and company finks
And deputy sheriffs who made the raid
She went to the union hall
When a meeting it was called
And when the company boys came round
She always stood her ground

Chorus:
Oh you can’t scare me, I’m stickin’ with the union
I’m stickin’ with the union, I’m stickin’ with the union
Oh you can’t scare me, I’m stickin’ with the union
I’m stickin’ with the union til the day I die

This union maid was wise
To the tricks of the company spies
She’d never be fooled by the company stools
She’d always organize the guys
She’d always get her way
When she struck for higher pay
She’d show her card to the company guard
And this is what she’d say

[Chorus]

When the union boys they seen
This badass union queen
Stand up and sing in the deputy’s face
They laughed and yelled all over the place
And you know what they done?
Those two gun company thugs?
When they heard this union song
They tucked their tails and run!

[Chorus]

A woman’s life is hard
Even with a union card
She’s got to stand on her own two feet
And not be a servant to the male elite
We’ve got to take a stand
Keep working hand in hand
‘Cause there’s a job that’s gotta be done
And a fight that must be won!

Oh you can’t scare me, I’m stickin’ with the union
I’m stickin’ with the union, I’m stickin’ with the union
Oh you can’t scare me, I’m stickin’ with the union
I’m stickin’ with the union til the day I die!

 

11.10.2008 privileges

I do not have university library privileges, because acquiring them would involve extracting a letter from my publisher verifying that I am working on a relevant project. The trouble with that is, well, I’m not.

Completely aside from the fact that it is already hard enough getting royalties out of the people who have published my books, let alone affidavits.

This might be tolerable except our central public library closed years ago for “renovations.” In the meanwhile (and the amount of time is predicted to be much longer than anyone admitted before they knocked down the walls) we commoners are expected to make do with a bookmobile parked in the market square during odd hours.

Today I urgently needed a reference that could not be located online. I know exactly where the book sat in the stacks when the library was open, but of course it could not be extracted from the bookmobile, or a branch, unless I ordered it – and that wasn’t fast enough.

In the midst of my horrifying skirt shopping experience I dropped in the various bookstores without much hope, and my expectations proved correct: the title is out of print.

Bookstore staff informed me that it is easier and faster to order from Amazon resellers than use local resources to solve the problem.

There are many elements of life in Portland that I did not fully appreciate at the time – the wondrous downtown library, of course, but also the vast resource that is Powell’s. The obscure UK title I am seeking? It is, according to a quick search, sitting on a shelf in the Burnside store, priced at $8.50.

 

11.10.2008 skirt

After the surgery five years ago I was left with several asymmetrical scars dictating:

1. I could not wear clothes that came into contact with the incisions.

-yet-

2. I did not own any clothes that did not come into contact with the incisions.

This meant I had to shuffle around in shapeless ratty yoga pants and tshirts, but also could not wear tights – oh no!

I did not own socks, nor would I ever consider wearing that category of garment unless a major illness dictated the choice.

That week I went and bought my first and last pair of the decade, and they have valiantly persevered, traveling with me across cities, states, and continents as early morning foot protection gear- until this week, when they rapidly became more hole than hosiery.

Four days ago I ventured forth and bought a replacement set of knitted niceness, but it was a perilous process. Mark Mitchell can attest that I do not enjoy shopping; in fact, the experience takes on nightmare proportions, for me and everyone else who has to participate.

Heck, I don’t even like bookstores let alone the rest of the options on offer!

Yet I persevered, then retired in a state of exhaustion.

Then guess what – just guess? Yeah, I knew you saw this one coming…. my beloved and only skirt died.

What is actually worse than shopping for a skirt? I do not know. Maybe the jokes made by friends about chasing skirt. Regardless, my cupboards yielded only a poplin pinstripe option, and you know, that kind of thing is not exactly suitable for people who muck around with boat engines and bicycles on muddy riverbanks.

Today I trudged around the city in a desultory fashion and finally, after long and painful effort, found a reasonable plain option that fits – hurray!

Except it was raining, and I was wearing the hat bought in a moment of desperation in Seattle three years ago with Jeffrey, when we dashed into a haberdashery to escape a rainstorm.

The new skirt is quite nice – but it also has buttons up the front and pockets at each hip. Way too Sixteen Candles.

What next – pastels??

 

11.9.2008 legerdemain

There are some people I see or hear from only every few years, without disrupting our friendship in any way – that is just how the time is organized.

I moved to the other side of the world, I’m not an especially good correspondent, I never talk on the telephone, I prefer to be alone most of the time – I presume that most failings in communication are my own, and thank those friends who do not take the distance and silence personally.

Certainly it does not bother me when other people act in the same way; if our relationship was based on singing together in a defunct chorus, or sitting around on stoops in a neighborhood I left six years ago, or more cryptic excursions, it makes sense that we have drifted. The sheer delight I feel when I see them again is genuine, and true, even when they do not reciprocate.

Last year I ran into Patrice on a sidewalk in Seattle and we only talked for about five minutes but the whole thing was a vivid and important part of my summer.

When I finally caught up with Dwayne at a party at the 19th Street House in Portland I marched over and exclaimed I miss you!

He looked away and answered I know.

We have too much history and genuine affection to abandon the friendship, even if he has relegated me to some kind of emotional deep freeze. I miss him, and I wish that the complications of life could bring us together instead of pushing us apart. If he chooses otherwise  I would never impose myself. His choice is his own.

There are other stateside friends who, by virtue of the internet, remain connected on a daily and sometimes even hourly basis. As a direct result, I notice their absence more than I would the disappearance of the less technologically adept.

Sometimes there is a reason clearly defined or at least guessed at: I’ve been outrageous and offensive, I’ve cancelled a book contract, I’ve rejected a declaration of love. Other times, there is absolutely nothing – and that is when I get worried.

One of my devoted friends vanished a few months ago. No text messages, no social media, no nothing.

Given that I had not committed a discernible friendship crime, aside from being stuck here over the summer, I was actively distressed and wondering.

Recently the person in question finally sent a message: I’m in rehab.

Somewhere around my seventeenth birthday I decided that there was only room in my life for one junkie. That spot was claimed by my aunt until quite recently, and I have repelled all further offers with the defense of the quota system.

On the day of her funeral I allowed someone else to sneak up and grab the spot.

I’ve never paid much attention to addiction lore, literature, legerdemain. Yes, I grew up with junkies, and no, I won’t accept those transgressions and imputations as part of my life.

When this kind of thing is a normal part of your routine and history and you hear that someone with major chemical dependencies (and all the mental health problems that likely contributed to or expanded the condition) is in rehab, you think Oh, good, he/she is alive!

Or you think When will he/she die already? – depending on what you have invested in thoughts, dollars, and despair.

This friend has never hurt me in any way. In fact, he has adored and cajoled and enhanced my life. I am completely committed to supporting him and sticking around even when it isn’t easy.

Still, I did not and will not ask what precipitated this spell in rehab, and do not care if it was a minor slip-up, a major binge, or a transcontinental nightmare Bacchanal.

Instead I asked Will you still be able to vote?!

 

11.8.2008 wishes

This is the second year in a row I’m missing the Jeffrey birthday festivities – oh no!

Jeffrey has been a dear and true friend through all manner of disorder and hilarity, and I miss him. He is adorable, sweet, sarcastic, and sings opera in the shower (not to mention on the professional stage).

He is also one of the few people who would ever dare bite me. What more could you ask for in a friend?

Happy birthday wishes to him!

 

11.5.2008 symbolic

Tonight on my doorstep (or whatever they call it on a boat):

Fun fair, fireworks, twenty-five thousand people, and a massive bonfire. Too exciting for words!

This holiday is pretty gosh darn interesting given the historic and symbolic framework: religious recusants, confessions extracted under torture, a bloody and public execution, and centuries of yearly celebrations including the symbolic torching of people of faith.

Of course, schools no longer teach the whole poem. So here you go:

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent
To blow up King and Parliament.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

A penny loaf to feed the Pope
A farthing o’ cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we’ll say ol’ Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah hoorah!

 

11.5.2008 optimistic

I went to the Cambridge Student Union, location of many historic debates (like Should women be granted the vote?) to watch the election returns with an unruly mob of drunken undergrads, Americans, and the occasional intellectual.

My little crew mainly consisted of mad scientists but Jean showed up after midnight with his friend, a German academic with tattoos – shocking! The boys dragged at our shirts and we both revealed too much decorated skin, a very unusual experience in that context.

I had an entertaining hours-long discussion with an economist ranging across matters political and fiscal and dietary (he has a gluten allergy).

Cambridge is in many ways an awful place to live, but the scene at the Union (including a drinks queue of at least a hundred people respectfully jostling for position in that special way that Brits do) sums up everything that is good about the city.

Several strangers, upon hearing my accent, thanked me for voting – a delightful addition to any evening, but especially nice given the harsh way my obvious American-ness has been regarded by many people over the years in this town.

Though I was not happy to be cornered by a television news crew.

Yes, I look theatrical, but really, I do not give good soundbite. When asked by a chipper blonde person why everyone was so excited I replied in typically testy fashion I have no idea, and find the phenomenon annoying.

She blinked and tried to extract a better quote but I was unyielding, admitting only to an interest in the gubernatorial race in my home state.

I doubt my comments made the edit for the evening news this time around, but plaintively ask once again, why me? Every freaking thing I’ve done since age ten ends with a camera in my face and I do not seek the attention.

Jean laughed hysterically and disputed my complaint so I thumped him in the chest, but we held hands and enjoyed the absolutely bizarre spectacle as the votes were tallied.

I didn’t think it could or would happen, right up to the moment I watched the acceptance speech.

I’m still cynical, and predict massive disappointments ahead, but – how amazing.

Today I’m celebrating the election results by eating a grilled cheese sandwich with ketchup and pickles (or as they call them here, ‘cocktail gherkins’) and pondering big questions like Does this mean I can move back home now?

The answer is, obviously, no. Or at least, not yet.

It will take more than one rousing speech to fix the systemic problems that forced the decision to move to a country with socialized medicine.

Though I feel a lot more optimistic about incremental and small reforms than I have since, oh, the Carter administration. When I was so young I used to play with an Amy Peanut doll.

 

11.4.2008 hard

A couple of weeks ago my son had to have two teeth extracted because they stubbornly refused to go, no matter how often wiggled.

He had resisted for months, but after the procedure conducted in the kind and cheerful environs of an NHS dentist, he walked away and marveled That wasn’t hard at all!

This was in reference to the last time, when he was assaulted, face bashed into a brick wall, at age six. During the course of a supposedly normal day at the happy hippie alternative school in Seattle.

That day, the handsomely compensated stateside dentist held him down with brutal and callous force as the boy screamed and writhed against the injustice. Three ruined teeth were yanked out.

This afternoon he poked at one of his other teeth and it came away cleanly without professional or thuggish intervention…. hurray!

We went over to the farm store to pick up supper and they asked who we hope will win. We replied in unison Obama!

 

11.3.2008 food

Ten years ago I didn’t even know how to chop garlic, nor did I care to try. My explicit domestic policies included the refrain I do not cook, or clean, or care. When challenged by a family member I would frown and reply I’m not your housekeeper – I already have a job!

In my mid-twenties Polly predicted I would have an epiphany and be a master chef by age forty, but I always scoffed. Stella later spent a good number of years trying to teach me, supplying tempting treats and training and cookbooks, but again – I never made much progress.

I loved our champagne breakfasts on the beach, but had no inherent capacity to learn how to recreate the experience.

This makes sense since I lacked a sense of smell; food made almost no impression… because I couldn’t taste it.

Right around the time my olfactory capacities were restored I moved to the International District of Seattle, had money for the first time in my adult life. I discovered sushi, the burrito bus, pho, Vietnamese delis, all the wonders of the culinary world that had formerly been beyond imagining.

One year later I moved to a very odd corner of England, where the food lives up to all the bad stereotypes you have ever encountered in the media.

It is true that I have had excellent meals in London, Oxford, Edinburgh, and Bristol. Heck, I’ve even had good food in Margate and Cromer. I recently visited an awesome outdoor market in Norwich – there are high quality options for food in all sorts of unexpected places.

Cambridge is just the city where I live and shop, and thus the place I feel the pleasures and perils of both most keenly. The fact that this particular city fails so spectacularly cannot easily be explained – even my bougie or decadent friends are uneasy when pressed to name a restaurant that is truly worth spending the money on.

This is good in the sense that we all save a lot of money, and inevitably throw more dinner parties.

However. It isn’t just hard to find good salsa; it is nearly impossible to find the constituent elements to make it. Ditto nearly all the staple ingredients I was accustomed to, even in the bland years of greens and tofu.

I’m lucky enough to have the money to scamper off to Rome or Paris or Barcelona (flying to another city is literally cheaper than dinner at the only good local restaurant) when I start to crave the simple delicious foods that Europe offers. Those adventures have been great fun.

But during the course of an average day, I have had to start from scratch, learning not just basic cooking techniques but also conquering major barriers like, you know, the metric system. Four years and four months into this experiment, I still can’t tell you the difference between a gram or kilogram, and I have no idea why some foods are weighed while others are measured, yet I have persevered.

Thanksgiving was of course the main challenge, and Stella came one year to help, Marisa another. Then I was on my own, and somehow managed to pull it off, right down to bribing farmers to scour the countryside for a bird and a pumpkin.

Then I extrapolated that to baking chickens, and making stock, and even soup – loathed all these decades – then tortillas, and onward!

Last night without any particular effort I made a four course dinner featuring a reasonably authentic chili con carne Byron swore was the best meal ever served in England!

I’m sure the compliment was excessive, but it is a dish otherwise not available in any legitimate form on this quadrant of the green island. I’m not bragging – I am, instead, surprised. My mother can assure you that I could barely make toast and certainly didn’t even knew how to cook an egg when I left home.

Of course I still stand by the premise that I am not a servant and will only cook for my own idiosyncratic pleasures, regardless of any other factors.

The fact that I learned how without paying all that much attention is baffling.

 

11.2.2008 adhesions

Five years ago I was in the hospital with acute cholecystitis and cholelithiasis exacerbated by existing abdominal adhesions.

In other words, my gallbladder was strangled and killed by scar tissue as the delayed result of a massive gangrenous infection (you know, the one that technically killed me). The ensuing secondary drama was fairly, um, serious. Though it seemed easy-peasy compared to previous invasive procedures. I had anesthesia, at least!

When I woke up the surgeon reported that what should have been a diseased or distressed organ had in fact been reduced to black sludge.

Hurray for five years without continuing complications! Hurray for five years without surgeries (if you ignore the biopsy regimen, shh)!

Though I haven’t been able to drink coffee since.

I definitely miss it.

 

11.1.2008 practical

One of the best features of Cambridge is the farm store, and today they celebrated their second anniversary.

I popped over to eat cake, buy yummy fruit and veg, and wish them well.

These kids are easily some of my favorite people in all of the UK, and contribute to my day in countless practical ways!

 

 

10.29.08 reform

I tried to watch the thirty minute political advertisement but only lasted ten minutes or so before I started to exclaim things like which motherfucking assholes thought NAFTA was a good plan, huh? HUH?

Byron said Walk away from the tv, Bee! Just walk away!

I replied It isn’t tv, it is youtube!

The Democratic candidate certainly gets credit for, well, not being in office back then. But I find it infuriating that the Democrats are using anti-globalization rhetoric to win the race. Just sayin’.

Of course I am also such a wingnut I haven’t been able to watch any appreciable amount of television since the Oklahoma City bombing, so I took the advice and stomped off, still muttering.

I voted weeks ago so there is not much reason for me to pay attention until election night, but my take on what I watched is summed up with Well, duh.

Reform is around the corner, but it will be a tepid centrist variety. This is nice (I’m a bureaucrat by temperament and training) but hardly revolutionary or even surprising. My only real hope is for core changes in the health care industry (like, for instance, disconnecting it from the concept of profit), but those childish dreams died long ago.

I’m actually much more thrilled by super tasty Washington ballot items like assisted suicide, extending the lightrail, earthquake-proofing the Pike Place Market, and a furiously tight gubernatorial race.

 

10.28.08 birthday

October of 1996 found me languishing on my side in a hospital bed that had been my home for five weeks, following five whole months on medically mandated home bedrest.

That particular afternoon featured a massive hemorrhage, then an emergency abdominal surgery performed without sufficient anesthesia. The objective was to save my life, and maybe another.

I passed out but eyewitness accounts attest to the lavish loss of blood, splattered across all attending medical staff, bystanders, the floor.

When I woke up I was surprised to find the infant snatched from my belly had also survived – gasping for breath, born too soon, encumbered with too many names because it was all way too much to cope with – but still, alive.

When I took him home from the hospital he was twenty-two inches long and weighed five pounds.

Now that sad little waif of a baby is nearly my height, an autonomous brilliant person just as likely to put on a puppet show as launch conversations about Descartes.

The last week has been a nonstop celebration in honor of the boy, including sushi dinners, tickets for plays and a circus, a trip to London to see the King’s Privy Wardrobe, with random detours for The 39 Steps and Ripley’s, cake, laughter, love.

I’m not allowed to post current photographs but here he is in a younger incarnation – Barcelona 2006:

 

 

10.22.08 decadent

The news from the states has been remarkably dismal, and as a consequence I’ve lately been afflicted with Appropriate Timely Emotions.

To the extent that if you were at the Arts Picturehouse last night you could have spied me sitting in the middle of a crowd of strangers crying.

That kind of thing never happens.

Back to regular programming: tomorrow I’m off to London to wallow in decadent debauchery, and really, that is the best possible option for distraction, no matter how backwards the solution sounds.

Even reclusive, suspicious, obsessive people like me need a break sometimes.

Plus, my idea of decadence often involves, aside from the mandatory drunken literary salon thing, wholesome excursions to English Heritage monuments.

 

10.21.08 faith

I’ve pretty much forgotten not only the experiences described but also the text of Lessons in Taxidermy. One of the only bits I remember clearly is the fact that, in real life and the book, nearly all of our vast network of friends and family abandoned us in the midst of my medical problems.

People are prone to grief fatigue; it happens. Particularly when you are confronted with someone like me, who remains dismally sick for years and decades, the attrition rate of support is predictable.

Last month I heard that someone back home had entered hospice, and I sat in the market square crying as I wrote a letter thanking her for being a nice person and good friend.

This woman was singular in remaining a stalwart friend through the crisis, to the extent that she donated her annual leave so my mother could spend at least a few precious days in the hospital with me. She conscientiously, persistently showed up, sent flowers, invited us for dinner, took my mother to lunch and tried to make her laugh. She even responded to my teen pregnancy with a gentle, sweet benevolence and interest rather than the much more common horror and scorn.

This was a byproduct of her religious faith but she did not proselytize – she just acted in a decent, plain way to take care of people who needed tending.

Yesterday I received a reply to my letter in her careful penmanship, and could not bring myself to open the envelope. Hours later my mother sent email reporting that our old friend passed away.

I’m thinking about her husband and son, and wish that I could somehow do more.

 

10.16.08 displacement

Today Dani called to say that she is visiting Exeter, which reminds her of Evergreen except populated entirely by Paris Hilton clones.

Now that is a mental image!

She will be in the UK long enough I can almost certainly arrange a visit, even if I have to take trains to exotic destinations like Brighton. Hurray!

The phone call kicked off an afternoon remembering things like the night lots of Chorus members congregated at the Jockey Club (grubby dive bar in North Portland later demolished) to play Truth or Dare, and Byron made out with a taxidermied moose, someone stripped, and the smoking hot ambiguously gendered bartender kept throwing down shots, then danced on our table.

When the bar closed we staggered a few blocks to the house where Ana Helena lived and she cooked a feast of corn tortillas with cheese and salsa verde over an open flame.

I don’t think Dani was around that particular night, but now she lives in Italy – the closest person in geographic terms offering a connection with those times, except when Ana Helena intermittently shows up in Barcelona.

There are dozens of additional NW friends I would dearly love to spend more time with, but only a small number have remained in the old haunts. I was not the first to hit the road. One of the significant features of my homesickness is the knowledge that even if I went back to the same exact place, it would not be the same experience.

My kid laments his displacement in extravagant, exquisite language. I listen and offer comfort but it always seems that, while he truly misses the place, what he is grieving is not the loss of a community or homeland but rather, the end of his infancy.

I completely agree.

Portland, 2000:

 

 

10.13.08 landscapes

The family member recovering from heart surgery has made huge progress, though he is now dealing with the complications of a blood clot.

I’ve been sad for him and fretful because I am too far away to be of any practical assistance.

This morning somewhere before dawn my internal alarm bells started up a mighty clanging and I was worried that there might have been a change for the worse, so I hustled to check email, only to find that a different faraway family member is in the hospital with chest pain.

Marisa’s Holiday Motel album, and the pain intensifies to a nearly intolerable level. The songs evoke recognizable landscapes – Portland, Swan Island, crowded bars and romantic drama, the stages we’ve shared, the long empty roads of the west, an ICU waiting room where we sat together waiting to hear if Stevie would survive.

Marisa is one of the rare people I can turn to for comfort, but with an ocean and two continents separating us I’m left listening to a recording of her voice singing I won’t follow any road signs, won’t look at any maps.

It is impossible to go back, or forward; life has to be lived in the present. The medical misadventures of my stateside relatives, my own experiences here with the NHS, and the worldwide banking crisis underscore the reasons why I moved away.

The principle that time heals all pain is valid, and I have recovered from every messy wound regardless of circumstance. The good things – the ability to take risks, wander, love, leave – have proved much more difficult.

I miss my friends and family more as the years pass – a hopeless, dreadful heartache that never mends.

 

10.10.08 elective

As a general rule I forget to eat while working, subsisting on cinnamon jelly beans and pistachio nuts with the occasional can of soup. But sometimes those provisions run out and I have to brave the mid-day tourist-infested city to buy food.

Today was that kind of day, and I reluctantly put down my pen to venture forth to the M&S at the Grafton Centre, on the principle that it would be less crowded than other options while offering all the items I desired.

While shopping I was mostly distracted by irritations like the fact that packages of raspberries of the same size and price were from either England or the United States.

This would be exactly why I normally shop at the farm store, relying on them to sort out what is local and fresh. I’m not any adequate kind of environmentalist, but come on – you do have to have some standards in this life.

Today speed was necessary so I picked up a simple medium sized salad, two small packets of localish (I’ve at least been to Kent) berries, two bottles of water, and a newspaper.

When the clerk rang up these selections my mouth literally dropped open with shock over the total: eleven pounds.

This is fully one third more than I would have been charged a few months ago for the identical items.

My idiosyncratic habits mean that I have mostly been isolated from price fluctuations in food since the economic meltdown started, though I have read about it. Yes, bread costs more, but I make most of my food from scratch, and stick to simple menus. Or I eat out. Significantly, what I paid for my spartan (albeit pre-packaged) lunch was more than I would pay for a noon meal at a chain like Wagamama. Even with a glass of wine.

I have noticed the increase in heating costs, and that it is simply more difficult to get fuel, though I do not drive so that has been a minor concern. Rising airline costs might have worried me, if I could travel. I had trouble rounding up money to deal with necessary repairs on the house Gabriel rents from me in the states and had to sell stuff to raise the cash, but that can be attributed to my own paralytic fear of debt.

Other than that, the spiraling economic crisis has had no direct impact on my life, because I predicted it would happen and have strategically divested myself of everything, before anyone could snatch it away.

Beyond that I do not expect to live long enough to retire, so I don’t need pension accounts. I’m not willing to put money in education accounts since I paid my own way through school and feel my offspring should also have a work ethic.

I sold the last of my high tech stocks about ten seconds before the market dropped. Not for a huge profit, just for enough money to fix a perilous staircase and paint the bathroom of a house I haven’t lived in for over six years that might be considered an investment of sorts if I charged market rent. But I’m not that person – I subsidize the people who live there because they are friends.

Canny? No. Paranoid is more like it – though I can’t really help it since the grandparents who helped raise me lived through the deprivations of the Great Depression and inculcated their values. I was taught to work hard and take care of the people I love, but there was never any aspiration for more than basic subsistence.

I also studied economics as a mandatory subject in a public administration program, and came of age during such a grim time the speaker at my graduation ceremony warned us we would never get jobs. The (student selected!) theme when I finished grad school was You want flies with that? – a jest on the concept that we wold all end up working the counter at a burger joint.

Despite my avowed adult commitment to ascetic poverty I have always had a natural sense for money, buying and selling cars and houses and ephemera at huge profits, jumping in and out of jobs or homelands or marriages with some kind of strange instinct for survival.

I have a rare genetic disorder and corresponding need to be fiscally stable to stay alive, more than many of my peers, and it takes real effort to piece together all of the subtle clues to know exactly how to achieve that state.

My obsessive newspaper reading habit has not been this bad since the early eighties, when I was a notorious and frequent contributor to the letters to the editor section of my hometown newspaper. (Back then I was probably most worried about the fact that I was, oh, dying and all, but I sublimated my fears with a campaign of criticism that saw me published, and the subject of two feature stories, before age thirteen.)

The news this week from the financial sector has been so hugely historic I can’t even begin to address it – nor can most of the press, reeling along with our assorted politicians. The fact that the crisis will have a decisive impact on the U.S. election is of course rather thrilling: I pessimistically predicted the Democrats would not secure an electoral college majority, but now I think it will be a victory in their favor and a true mandate for change.

Otherwise, the news has been horribly frightening.

Many issues that would normally be front page are being shuffled to auxiliary sections of the papers, and this is dangerous. I never read the sports pages until I use them to light a fire but I could not ignore the headline Olympic village in line for 1 billion pound taxpayer bail-out.

Apparently they were relying on private banks and developers to ante up, then make a profit later to justify the expense. As one did, before the autumn of 2008.

This is the reality of supply side trickle-down economics – all of those public private partnerships so favored under not just Tory or Republican but also New Labour and New Democrat administrations?

Watch em crash and burn. If payment is not compulsory, it will not be made.

There was a point in nationalizing industries and investing public funds in public infrastructure, not least normalizing and forcing minimum standards of service. Today we have news that numerous UK agencies, from children’s hospices to regional governments to universities to fire fighter retirement funds, put their money in accounts held by banks that just failed in Iceland. In other words, we have a big fucking mess to sort out.

The prime minister responded that he is willing to use anti-terrorism legislation to address this appalling yet, let us be clear, elective disaster.

Really? Is that why the laws were devised? Even my cynical sad little brain had hoped for better, on so many levels.

I’ve managed through excessive and semi-obscene effort to protect myself, at least for a little while. Lots of my friends and family have not, regardless of class, culture, country, education, inclination, intelligence. Most people I know work hard for admirable, basic, and rational reasons – to raise or care for family members, live decently, have a little fun.

None of us deserve the consequences of a systemic and predictable economic failure, though we will be the ones to pay.

 

10.06.08 invisible

I have zero interest in the academic schedule but I know the students are back because, once again, there is no bread anywhere in the city.

During my search I stopped at the farm store and was completely delighted to find that after a recent chat they are now stocking not only kale but also fresh ginger and coconut milk. If they get bread back in I’ll never have to go anywhere else for food!

Though when I trundled over to Bacchanalia for water I mentioned this and the fellow at the counter said he already knew because I came up in conversation the last time he was over there.

Oh no!

Remember, I’m used to being invisible.

I do not like the new phenomenon of people talking to me, let alone talking about me.

Whatever now? I already had to bribe someone to go to the dry cleaner this week. I can’t outsource vegetable shopping!

10.05.08 chic

For the most part I ignore my own dreary medical drama. There isn’t enough time in life to accommodate all the good stuff: adventure, travel, friends, love, lunacy.

This does not mean that I am exempt from fear and grief. I just save it up until the crisis has passed.

Riding the bus back to the city centre after my appointment, I could feel my heart racing, see my hands shaking.

Since I didn’t have my bicycle I could not literally ride away on a wave of anxiety, so I did the next best thing – talked to a friend who mocked me into a reasonably calm state.

Then I went searching for gifts for new babies, sweet boys, sick relatives.

At the toy store I queued up clutching a Playmobil figure without paying too much attention to my surroundings.

Apparently I had accidentally dropped in on a fashion conversation because the woman at the counter gestured and said Now this lady is chic.

I stared about in amazement since you would never normally see such a creature in this town but she was pointing at me.

Huh? What? I’m no lady (fill in your own vaudeville joke here) and my tattered sartorial state does not equate with ‘chic’ even on a good day.

I was not having a good day.

Though I have a special leftover childhood reserve of anxiety over what to wear to visit the doctor, this has in the last few years mainly translated to concepts like wear clean clothes that cover the tattoo.

And that was the extent of my effort to prepare for the cursed cancer tests. Head to toe description: tangled unkempt hair, dark sunglasses, black wool scarf, demented and very wrong green plaid blazer over black jumper, black skirt, threadbare and slightly torn black tights, ugly black orthopedic shoes. Covering a body ravaged by disease and figure not even remotely popular in this century or my lifetime.

The only possible explanation for why this reads as stylish is the way I hold myself, and I will admit that I am bold and dismissive. I don’t know or care what anyone thinks of the way I look even if they shout it in my face – whether a criticism or compliment, I am immune. The only reason I noticed this particular exchange? I was in a toy store in Cambridge England.

These things do not happen here.

 

10.03.08 sorted

If I had been truly worried about breast cancer I would have raised all holy hell to get an earlier appointment, but my hunch (despite significant symptoms and family history) was that it would simply be too absurd to have yet another diagnosis.

This belief carried me across town and into an examination room where a very kind woman poked and prodded at the suspect tissue.

I was expecting her to take a look and send me home. Instead, she pulled out a pen and drew a big red circle on my body, telling me that a mammogram would be “offered.” Immediately.

We had a short and concise discussion about the radiation risks, during which she informed me that there is no funding for MRI testing for breast cancer screening in this NHS trust no matter what my geneticist recommends.

Opting out of testing altogether was not on offer.

I walked out to the lobby in a haze of confusion – before that moment I had been intermittently dismayed, concerned, and angry, but I had not experienced fear.

There was no time to indulge in terror because I was called to the xray suite almost immediately.

Having a stranger wrangle your breasts into position to be squeezed by a machine is certainly not the most pleasant experience but halfway through I said in amazement This is easy! I have way worse tests all the time!

The technician replied You are the first person who has ever said that.

Then she told me that I needed an ultrasound.

Here is a significant difference between the states and the UK – each of these component tests back home would be scheduled with days or even weeks between, and cost an enormous amount of money.

This morning I trundled from room to room with the big red circle defining danger as the experts sorted it out – for free.

Reclining half naked waiting for the sonogram to commence I told the story of how, freshly diagnosed with thyroid cancer, I was totally psyched to hear that my first ever ultrasound proved I could not have needle aspiration. Why? Because I had a paranoid fear of needles.

I was eleven years old and had no relative clue that surgery was in fact much more painful and scary. Let alone that the diagnosis they were developing included the word terminal..

Life, death, whatever – I was just a little kid, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

Many people have fond recollections related to ultrasound, because that is often their first glimpse of a beloved baby. Me? It is all about tracking diseased ovaries, failing kidneys, scar tissue strangling organs, decay, rot. Even the tests performed during my confinements (and I use the term deliberately since both pregnancies were conducted almost entirely on medically ordered bedrest) were mostly about answering questions like – is the spine growing inside or outside?

This morning, one arm behind my head, I watched the screen as the technician dragged the magic wand back and forth to evaluate irregularity and viscosity.

We stared silently and shared the knowledge – all clear.

It is official. I do not have breast cancer – or rather, I do not have breast cancer today.

 

10.02.08 pragmatic

Last night I had dinner with two fellow cancer kids and one person who has a chronic life-threatening illness.

The relief I feel in these situations is enormous – I never censor my conversation, but it can be tiresome to deal with the emotional reactions of healthy people when the macabre and hilarious anecdotes slip out.

Tomorrow is the big appointment with the Breast Clinic and I am reacting in a predictable way: bickering with a friend over whether or not I need an escort. I say no but the consensus amongst those who know me in real life is that I may well bolt rather than attend.

Whatever!

On a related topic, I’ve been obsessively watching the economic news and have developed an urgent desire to move to Ireland or Luxembourg or one of the countries making sensible efforts to guarantee financial institutions.

This follows my instinct over the last few years to cancel all of my credit cards, pay off the student loans, close my bank accounts, and take up residence in a country with socialized medicine.

I spend every cent I earn immediately, or give it away.

I have no assets, no pension, I own precisely nothing of value – for purely pragmatic reasons.

I remember the brutal experience of selling off the family homestead to pay for grandpa to enter a nursing home. I remember my great-grandma living in a shoddy metal trailer at age 99 because anything nicer would mean losing her government aid, after a lifetime of hard work and decency.

I know exactly what my childhood illness cost, even with insurance, and I was mortified to watch my parents lose everything as they worked double and triple time to pay my medical bills.

If I get sick again (and the news might arrive as early as 10am tomorrow) I would rather be proactively indigent than watch my family spiral into bankruptcy to care for me as I die.

Eminently sensible, yes, but also tremendously frightening. What a waste of resources – I would be a diligent earner and saver if only I felt safe.

 

I’ve been reading fashion magazines (as one does when the world economy crumbles) and I am baffled once again by the forecast that “pale white skin and bright red lips” constitute a major trend for the autumn/winter season.

It is a look I’ve been fronting for well over a decade, in several different countries and the most fashion forward communities, without meeting more than maybe five other people who also ascribe.

This particular trend prognostication happens about every eighteen months, with no discernible impact on street culture. It just doesn’t work for a lot of skin types, and anyway, the hassle factor is quite extreme.

Who would bother? Only the most obsessive, and you know what? We aren’t doing it because some random magazine dictated the choice.

In a similar vein, the menswear guides are pushing posh.

Now, I live in the most rarefied of all the British cities, and often hang out with landed gentry. For real. Still, I know precisely one person who routinely wears three piece suits with all the accoutrements: my son.

In fact, he finds it disturbing that his school uniform consists of a casual jumper and slacks. He hurries home to change into more civilized garments. Like a waistcoat and bow-tie.

Of course he started dressing like this when he was eighteen months old, for his own idiosyncratic and compulsive reasons. I doubt it is a style that could be acquired otherwise.

The main point though is that we are not fashionable. We’re just freaks.

 

9.27.08 conceivably

I just got back from an obscure town in Germany where I was visiting a famous institute you have never heard of.

Much fanfare attended this trip because they’re trying to recruit my husband to be a director, and therefore must convince me that I want to move somewhere excessively obscure.

For instance, Andrey arranged a bike rental so I could attempt to find Gulliver Welt (and he waved vaguely in the direction I should cycle).  One of the professors invited us to dinner.

This was genuinely the extent of the efforts to persuade me; the reasons are opaque but the general impression is that I am supposed to be in awe of the prestige surrounding the institute. Furthermore, I am supposed to so supportive of aforesaid husband I am willing to move to the middle of nowhere, give up my career (because my immigration status would not allow me to earn money, though I could “always volunteer”), and accept that as a spouse I only qualify for a visa renewed every year — whereas my husband, as a director, would have permanent residency.

Other fun facts: while my husband would have guaranteed private health insurance (the best in the world) that benefit does not cover spouses. Upon further review, the institute suggested that I could make do with the public system, although accessing it would mean getting a job, which is (review previous paragraph) technically not viable for someone with the type of sponsored visa I would have.  Or a foreigner with pre-existing conditions, regardless.

Hey, guess what? I smell a “not consistent with EU immigration law” kind of thing here. Though as an American, I’m not protected by EU regulations. The larger problem is that there are no jobs in my sector in the region. The institute has a solution though! Someone suggested they could create a job for me. I could be…. long pause… something…. what is it I do again? Oh right. There are no jobs in my sector in the region. Back to the “support your husband, sacrifice your entire career and everything you care about, because he is an important man who has been offered a very prestigious job.”

All of which is unacceptable but amusing. The best part though? The institute seems puzzled that I would even enquire about a visa for my high school age child.

Hmm. Guess we’ll see if I take that deal, huh?

I am however a fair person so I didn’t want to say no without due diligence. Just about the only thing that could convince me to move is improvement in the quality of housing, so I requested the department arrange some viewings.

One included a top floor maisonette with a few of the river, the hills, and vineyards stretching all the way to France. When I arrived the tenant, a stranger, looked puzzled and said Have we met?

I replied no, on the principle that her scientific career does not intersect with my life in any way. We have nothing obvious in common, and no known mutual acquaintances. It was unlikely we had met in ye olden times, as there was no discernible overlap with my education or west coast life. She does not connect with my Cambridge existence, and definitely didn’t seem like someone who subscribes to my magazine (an assessment based mostly on the fact that she does not have children, but still, a safe bet).

At some point she mentioned doing her postdoc in Montreal, then frowned and said I think your name came up?

I shrugged but then she was describing the apartment she subletted and I said From Rachel?!

Why yes – indeed – this random person who could not conceivably know me otherwise did in fact rent an apartment in Canada from one of my best Cambridge pals.

These coincidences still creep me out no matter how often they happen. Also: Gulliver Welt was closed.

 

9.23.08 words

Recently I went out to lunch with David. We were chatting about his move from Cambridge to Sacramento and the culture shock (and seasonal allergy risk) of going back home.

I described a few of the places I might move next, holding up two hands to mime weighing the options, and asked Which one seems more me?

He laughed and said I don’t think you will ever fit in anywhere, Bee!

This is a valid observation.

There are certainly cities that offer a closer match to my extracurricular interests, other places where I enjoy the company of good friends, still others where the landscape offers consolation.

Yet, despite the affection I feel for those places, I live here on purpose.

When I make a major life choice it is always perilous and precipitous. I am sure that I will leave Cambridge the same way I arrived – all in a dash without a forwarding address – though I have no way of knowing when that will happen.

Yesterday I ran into David again near the much hyped and very odd Corpus Christi clock and he wondered if I would have time to hang out again before he leaves for the states.

The answer on reflection was no – I have film and play tickets, plus a million chores to finish before racing off to Germany before dawn tomorrow.

Walking around this ancient city after we talked I felt awful, certainly worse than turning down the invitation warranted. He will come back, and I will visit his family in California. Our friendship will continue.

Poking around in my brain I realized that while I was upset over the lack of time to accomplish everything this week, I was also deeply sad about other news.

My grandmother’s health has now deteriorated to the extent she no longer recognizes anyone except my father, based on the visual cue of his bright red hair. Another family member is struggling to recover from heart surgery. One of the only grown-ups to show any degree of compassion when I was a sick kid has just entered hospice, her fight against cancer nearly at an end.

I am intrinsically and historically rubbish at much of the work of being a daughter, niece, cousin, friend. Even my offspring will confirm that I am a strange automaton, puzzled by many elements of life that other people find easy. I don’t talk on the phone, I rarely answer email, I have walked away from every community that I call home.

The only things I can reliably offer are organizational: I am a master planner, the queen of the deadline. I am also exceptionally calm in a crisis. I’m the person who makes the trip to the emergency room, the one faithfully standing guard in the hospital ward, the individual who can make funeral arrangements and scare up the money to pay while everyone else dissolves in grief.

I was raised to believe that true love is expressed with direct action, and everything that has happened in my adult life has supported the concept. Words are just words, no matter how nicely stated.

Right now it is not possible to fly back to the states no matter how much I want to go.

I did not move here for selfish reasons, but knowing that is worse than useless when people I care about are in pain and I can’t go home to help.

Yesterday I bought cards and sat in the market square crying and writing letters to people I may never see again.

 

9.19.08 radiation

My appointment with the breast cancer clinic finally came through — fourteen months after the initial referral.

Of course, the appointment falls on one of the precisely two days I will be out of the country this year.

Oh, and did I mention that various issues (like exceeding my lifetime safe limit of radiation before my thirteenth birthday – you know, small details) contraindicate having a mammogram? If I need testing, they will most likely do an MRI.

What fun.

 

9.17.08 thoughts

Remember a couple of years ago when my son’s beloved grandfather went in for routine surgery, and everything went completely wrong, and he ended up in a coma for a month?

Apparently he had a heart attack, though the damage was only just diagnosed. He has recently progressed rapidly toward congestive heart failure.

Today he goes back in for a triple bypass.

This is a man who devoted his entire professional life to tending the most vulnerable people – children unable to live in foster care due to extreme abuse or illness. He is respected and admired for his devotion to saving and rebuilding young lives, and he is one of the sweetest people you could ever meet.

I hope that the surgery goes well and he recovers quickly.

 

 

9.12.08 force

Forget all the news distracting grown-ups lately – my kid is very worried about what some mad scientists have been up to.

My reply? They’re Swiss, they won’t blow up the world, they couldn’t make any money on it!!

This did not prove comforting.

I do not know Stephen Hawking personally (though he nearly ran me over one night as he raced from the Fort St. George to Midsummer House) but luckily I do know many other Cambridge trained physicists.

I wrote and asked Paul for a synposis to soothe my worried son. After explaining the experiment (which you all understand, right?) this was his answer:

They’re hoping to find something called the Higgs boson – the ‘God’ particle that supposedly pervades the universe and gives matter the property of mass. Personally, I think they’re barking up the wrong tree with that one – it sounds rather like phlogiston and the aether theory of the 19th century. I don’t think there need be anything that gives particles the property of mass, as I don’t think it can be separated from the fact that the presence of matter in space-time distorts it, thus creating the necessary reconstruction of the universe itself that registers the presence of matter. This explains gravity quite easily, and I thought Einstein had it right in this sense. Physicists have failed to unify gravity with the three other forces in the universe and I think the reason is that it’s not a force.

So, to conclude, I think it’s very unlikely that the machines will produce anything untoward, and potentially even anything all that interesting. If the latter is the case, then they’ll build a far bigger one, of course, and the debate will reopen, although I would venture the same opinions again.

Now you know.

 

9.11.08 mystery

I am notorious amongst friends and family for blithe indifference to certain kinds of danger, particularly the sort that threatens my health.

Sure, I’ll stop drinking coffee if it hurts my tummy, give up sugar when it causes a rash, buy organic and local when doing so seems prudent. I’ve never smoked or used recreational drugs, I ride a bicycle everywhere – I could be the poster child for clean living.

But I have lived with chronic pain and incapacitating illness so long I regard both with benign indifference. There isn’t much that could surprise me, and I really can’t be bothered to have any emotions about the whole thing.

The recent session with the geneticist did not strike me as particularly illuminating, mainly because I did not want to think about what happened at the end of the appointment.

We had already discussed the assorted referrals (including sending my kid off to visit the cardiologists) and I was vaguely looking around, preparing to depart.

The expert on familial cancer leaned back in her chair and informed me that when she reviewed the chart she would have thought I had an entirely different genetic disorder.

Except, she went on, the presentation of skin cancer absolutely confirms the diagnosis. The trouble, the mystery, is how or why I simultaneously also had a virulent primary and unrelated cancer, since nobody else with the genetic disorder has ever presented with those symptoms in combination.

Especially not at age twelve, and more precisely, not in the accelerated and bizarre manner my disease announced itself.

The geneticist went on to say it would just be rotten luck to have two dominant disorders. On top of the sundry minor traits transmitted down the family lines.

True, though as I responded, I’m already deeply unlucky, with the DNA profile of a cesspit.

This might be a philosophical question, but which is better – to know and name the trouble, or to remain mired in mystery?

I gave up asking why why why approximately twenty years ago, and while I blinked in astonishment over the suggestion of an additional diagnosis, failed to even take note of what it is called.

Instead I asked How would my treatment change if I had this too?

She said that they would do frequent thyroid monitoring, but I’ve already had that organ hacked out. She went on that they would test for cancers of the reproductive system, but I’m well stuck in that routine based on symptoms.

Nothing else would differ, except I would have yet another pre-existing conditions mark against me in the great cosmic quest for health insurance.

Hurray for me.

 

9.10.08 conflagration

Summer never truly arrived this year, and autumn is already here, with conkers falling off the trees, torrential rain, muddy fields, cold dark mornings.

My day does not properly start until I have lit the fire.

In the past, this was a protracted and messy ordeal that left me coughing, frustrated, and redolent of smoke, with very little warmth to show for it.

But over the course of last winter I discovered the most fantastic solution, courtesy of Andy at Midsummer Energy: eco-logs.

What are they? Essentially, tubes of compressed sawdust that you can break down to any size you need.

They arrive in 15kg bags that inform me the contents are recycled pure wood waste, C02 neutral, and produce low flue gas (which is apparently better for the chimney).

The description claims they are easy to light, and though I was skeptical this has proved accurate. I turn on a seven minute song and by the end of the lovely tune I have a roaring conflagration that will, with tending, keep me toasty all through the day and night.

Of course I am still not quite awake at that point, and spend another hour or so stumbling around unable to focus; but at least I am not shivering while doing so!

Best of all, if I can’t face the long cold slog down to pick up more, the nice bike messengers at Outspoken Delivery will cheerfully deliver for a very small surcharge.

Life on the river is in fact sweet.

 

9.8.08 emphasis

During the school holiday I took my kid to Audley End, where I was bemused by the accumulation and display of centuries of private wealth, and he had fun playing Victorian games on the lawn.

If they call it a lawn here.

Walking back from the train station I absent-mindedly glanced in the window of a house and noticed a Trader Joe’s shopping bag: a common object back home but absolutely unheard of here. The sight made me clap my hands together and squeal (yes, I really do act like that) until I realized I was being both a voyeur and foolish.

Just then a face popped up behind the bag – it was Karen holding her gorgeous daughter.

The fact I had no idea she lived there underscores a few interesting truths about life in this town, not least the hunch that I have not worked hard enough to sustain local friendships.

Karen graciously invited us in and fed us dinner, during which we had many fantastically entertaining conversations and my son (who used to hiss at babies) sweetly entertained a lively toddler.

I was especially intrigued to hear that, even though Karen certainly likes the town more than I do, she also misses the west coast in approximately the same way. Not just the landscape, or family, but the collaborative and community based nature of the arts scene.

Cambridge offers many advantages I have never experienced elsewhere, but there is literally no discernible underground. Artists, yes. Intellectuals, yes. Musicians, definitely – so many highly trained and brilliant musicians you stumble over them all the livelong day. We don’t just have buskers, we have opera singers on every other corner.

But the emphasis is very much on the cultural elite – the competitive and refined, whether mainstream or esoteric, is always always inherently part of the system.

This town is literally the definition of Establishment.

I’m sure it was different in earlier eras – I have read enough to grasp the incendiary nature of intellectual discourse here at various points. Though those times tended to coincide with a lack of en suite plumbing.

Now the town is too expensive and too transitory. This place is not like certain U.S. college towns where the waiter at the cafe has a PhD in chemistry, or your friendly bike messenger is a trained medievalist.

This is not a criticism. Karen agreed with me that the west coast can feel claustrophobic, overly idealistic, too personally demanding, often anti-intellectual. Exactly the opposite of Cambridge.

When I decided to move here I craved solitude above all else, and that is something I certainly did find.

 

9.5.08 best

I’ve been working flat out all morning, hair yanked up and sitting askew in a knot, glasses on crooked, dressed in ratty yoga pants and hardly anything else, writing about my favorite topics under a (self-imposed but nevertheless urgent) deadline. The best sort of day!

When I noted physical demands like “eat food” and “drink fluids” I shuffled into some clothes and went to Bacchanalia to buy water. Oh, and just in case anyone wondered, the water in the tank on my boat is not potable. I have to buy, even when I refrain from imbibing bubbles – and yes, I will in fact cycle half way across the city to buy from an independent shop.

It was only 11 AM so the girl at the counter squinted at me and asked So do you have the day off then?

I looked up, down, around, pondered the truthful answer, remembered that I am having lunch with David in an hour which counts as “leisure” and mumbled Erm, ah, sort of, eh, no.

Why, oh why can’t I answer the question, given that writing and publishing have constituted my day job for well over a decade now? I have no idea, but the week in news has made me pine for, and simultaneously rejoice leaving, the United States. Like you wouldn’t believe.

 

9.3.08 pithy

I am a working class person who survived childhood cancer to become a mother in my teens – and then defied all expectations to raise my family out of poverty.

When I grew up I became a scholar of politics and policy, then worked in government – including the office of a controversial western Governor – and have devoted my entire adult life to service.

My work has been recognized with awards, accolades, media attention, and financial remuneration.

I represent the ultimate bootstrap success story. The American Dream.

Oh, except I had to move to a different country because I have a rare genetic disorder that prevents me from acquiring health insurance at any price.

I have been following the news from home with an eye to writing about the election, but after watching the crackdown over the protests at both conventions and the officially approved speeches inside the various buildings, know what?

I just want to vomit.

I have nothing pithy to say.

 

9.2.08 welcome

The genetecist drew up a family tree and we both stared calmly at the results – entire branches marked off with a hatch, meaning: dead.

If most of your blood kin are gone, it is very hard to establish the veracity of a DNA claim.

I grieve for them in the extravagant, quiet way they would appreciate, but no matter how much I care, they will never come back.

My uncle Rodger was a world-class wit and only about fifteen years older than me. To a large extent our childhoods overlapped, and he was certainly the most playful of his set of siblings. Every year at Christmas we wore matching Santa hats.

When I evolved into a teenager with broken down cars he was the one who always rescued me – and my friends – with grace and good humor.

He died too young, before his own son came of age.

This morning when I checked my email there was a message and a photograph from the states announcing the arrival of a new little cousin.

Welcome to the world, Neven. Your grandfather would be tremendously, lavishly proud, and the rest of us are all so pleased to meet you!

 

9.1.08 corollary

Last summer I went to the GP with a few health concerns. She did a brief exam, heard the phrase “rare genetic disorder” and promptly wrote a referral to send me along to the breast clinic at the teaching hospital.

When the referral went through, that clinic noted the diagnosis of a “rare genetic disorder” and redirected me to Medical Genetics without first extending the courtesy of an exam, let alone a conversation.

I wrote a letter disputing the assessment, since I wanted to be seen by a breast cancer expert for a routine check. I’m fully aware of the risks and symptoms associated with my primary diagnosis, and checking in with my geneticist pals would not be illuminating given that I had symptoms rather than questions.

My main concern, which proved true, was that routing through Medical Genetics would extend the whole diagnostic process a dangerously long time. If the actual symptoms had been evaluated, I could have been in and out within weeks.

Instead, thirteen months elapsed before I was allocated an appointment with the genetics clinic.

Within three minutes the geneticist, baffled, pointed out that I should have been seen in the breast clinic. When I explained the efforts I had made to go there first she shook her head and promised to sort it out.

There is a a great deal of legitimate controversy about breast cancer screening, and I am considered too young for mammography in this country. Beyond that, I have already exceeded the safe lifetime dosage of radiation, so it isn’t like I am begging for more exposure to something that could kill me in the long run.

I just wanted to have a properly trained specialist look at my body, evaluate the concerns, and advise on an appropriate protocol for future checks. My GP is simply not qualified, but more importantly, not interested. If I will be routinely kicked to speciality clinics for average care, all that I ask is to be sent to the right place.

Having said all that, I remain astonished by the professionalism, compassion, and quality of care once I actually get the appointments.

The principle of rationing is effective and smart. I like knowing that, even if the system is slow, it does move along… and everyone gets the same access to services.

I doubt that my symptoms will result in yet another cancer diagnosis, partly because I have a superstitious belief that it would be unfair. I have already had more than my share.

But if I am wrong, will this one be the one that gets me? Something will, inevitably – I am not long for the world, not just because of the genetic disorder but also because of the treatments that have kept me ticking so far.

The larger point is: if I am diagnosed, what then? I have no support, no network or community or anything at all in the UK aside from a few friends busy with their own lives, and the children I produced – one too young and sensitive to cope, the other too old and adventurous to be constrained.

If I were still in the NW (or SF, or NYC) this would be different, and I would know that a huge group of people would swoop in to help.

In all of those places this would also be the corollary: I would not have appropriate health insurance, access to the best doctors, enough money to take the edge off the rest.

Life is a series of compromises and this is why I live in Europe – I believe, emphatically, in paying whatever is necessary to build a durable system of health care that benefits everyone. Not for selfish reasons but rather because I fundamentally understand what if feels like to go without.

The fact that I have abdicated everything else my heart desires is entirely beside the point.

I’ve been (as the kids say) hella busy – away on madcap adventures involving all manner of hilarity, including but not limited to visiting Knights Templar retirement homes and rambling along behind Victorian flower fairy hunts – in the presence of Queen Victoria. Or at least, a re-enactor portraying her.

My favorite kind of fun! For instance, this weekend I was – check it – riding on the very same carousel you might remember from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. No, really.

 

8.20.08 performing

I’ve made a point of avoiding the city centre for weeks now, partly because of the hordes of tourists, but mainly because of my latent anxiety over living in a socially constricted town (more on that later).

Today I deviated from the rule because my old pal insomnia was calling out for a dose of herbal sleep meds. Walking along, much to my surprise, what did I encounter?

On the corner in front of Holy Trinity there was a band called playing at enthusiastic volume for the gathered crowd. I watched with delight while my son sighed next to me, anxious to get on to the next errand.

Six years after moving away he still openly grieves about leaving Portland, but the truth is that he never much cared for the aspects of that life that were most important to me.

Standing there in the pallid, sweaty light of August in England, I could smell the band – though of course I do not have functional olfactory perception so what I was actually experiencing was a haunting, a ghost, the sensory memory of singing in public.

In a daily life sense I am about as introverted as it is possible to be and still function, but the stage is something else entirely. Whether the audience is big or small, hostile or celebratory, the best part of my odd job has definitely been performing.

Touring: long drives, cranky passengers, setting up and breaking down, irregular access to food and baths, crying or laughing down the phone to the people left behind, glimpses of old friends, either too much or too little time to accomplish what needs to be done, a near constant feeling of being lost – I love every last bit of the experience.

That is the one thing I have not been able to recreate here.

I miss having practice sessions in my living room. I miss sitting on my front porch late at night singing with friends. I miss the zine release parties, events at Reading Frenzy, dropping into the IPRC, making things and performing with friends

I still travel all the time, but I miss life on the road.

The band was playing later at the Portland Arms and I paid the cover charge, then stood at the back enjoying the particular and fleeting joy of watching live music.

 

8.19.08 spicy

I went over to Bacchanalia to surreptitiously purchase sparkling water and chocolate (shh, don’t tell) and the fellow at the desk asked Doing something spicy tonight?

I recoiled in shock and exclaimed No! Not in Cambridge!

 

8.18.08 decadent

I opened up the files from last summer to look for a photograph of an old friend from junior high but, although I have several hundred images from that trip to Seattle, there were none of him.

Then I remembered that the only time I saw him was one late night on Capitol Hill, when he heard my peeling laughter from down the block and came over to say hello before departing to play Pac-Man at Pony.

Or something along those lines.

During our email exchange about the accident anniversary Mash asked why I didn’t visit last summer, and I replied truthfully that I did not see any of my old friends.

Jeffrey got a handful of evenings of karaoke (I watch, he sings). Marisa came up for the opera. I spent an afternoon with Stevie, Anna Ruby, and Erin Scarum. Byron One, Two, and Three were all nearby, but snagged no more than twenty-four hours of my time to split amongst the group, never contiguously. I had dinner with Stella and Al. I ran into Scott one day on the sidewalk in front of Bauhaus, but we didn’t even sit down for a cup of tea.

I would like to say that I spent more time with my offspring, but I only ran into my grown-up daughter randomly one afternoon in Portland at the Zine Symposium. I snatched a few days with my son, in the middle of his visits with grandparents and friends.

The main reason for the trip was a funeral, and I did go back to the county for the gathering of the clan.

I stuck around only for the afternoon.

I certainly wanted to spend more time with mother, grandmother, and cousins – but the situation was simply too complicated and painful.

We all mourn in our own ways. Last year I sought the solace of the strange.

By dinner time that day I had been deposited, funerary attire still sprinkled with the ashes of my aunt, at the big rock show known as the Block Party. I met Laura, previously encountered as a Crescent DJ, and her pal Jody, someone I had only befriended days before, to watch bands I had never listened to play for a massive crowd of strangers. When that ended I went downtown and stayed out all night with the Himsa kids.

That formed the pattern for the rest of the summer. I hung out with Mark Mitchell and went to the Bus Stop. I deliberately though unconsciously surrounded myself with friends, but they were all new, with no shared memories of my aunt, no need to talk about growing up together.

It might seem counter-intuitive to lament the suicide of a junkie by disappearing into the nightlife of the city of our shared youth, but from the distance of a year the whole thing makes sense.

Most of my new friends have faced the same sort of dreadful damage my aunt sustained, but they somehow managed to stay alive. Several have kicked serious drug habits. They were all, without exception, willing to accept my precarious and perilous self at face value.

They didn’t ask for or need anything at all, and I had nothing to offer.

Last summer I took a break from being trustworthy, mature, and responsible. I needed the vacation.

Of course the new friends I made are now entwined in my life and other relationships.

But for that brief, precious, decadent summer – they let me laugh.

 

8.17.08 underneath

I had my coin purse open to fish out the obligatory pound coin to recognize his essential genius, but the panhandler caught me unaware.

For the first time in a four year long daily nodding acquaintance, he decided we should have a chat.

Why? I have no idea.

What did we talk about? Everything: life, love, longing, loss, publishing – you know, the usual.

During the course of the conversation he confessed all sorts of transgressions with the calculating gaze of a conman, but here is one essential rule – never con a con.

I’m impervious. I stared right back and said You are a healthy strong person, you work for your money.

He tried the line about an abusive stepfather, and a long-suffering mother, but I replied So? She could have protected you. She chose him.

-Well, but my father beat her….

I broke in So? She chose that too.

-She was my mother, and I loved her, and I hurt her more than I can ever explain.

I shrugged, again: So?

He tried a few other pitches for sympathy and I delivered a monologue familiar to anyone unfortunate enough to hang out with me at a family funeral, namely: yes, your mother and father fuck you up. More often than not you love them anyway, and the devastation is enormous. But that is no excuse. Not for anything. Ever.

Life is meant to be lived, not lamented.

Most of the mainstream, ostensibly successful people I know would crack in this kind of conversation but street thugs and junkies are not just immune; they’re entranced.

His facade dissolved and I saw the real, raw, true person hovering just underneath.

Without any hesitation he slipped posthaste into a slipstream of hilarious observations and frenetic ideas and plans, admitting along the way to a privileged childhood and a university education superior to my own in all respects.

What did he get from me? I’ll tell anyone who really cares how much I dislike this city, and how much I miss the Northwest. I am completely upfront and uncensored about the ruins of my romantic relationships, growing up in poverty with cancer, and even what I do for a living.

The fact that this happens more easily with homeless addicts than the shiny academics I normally hang out with might be worrisome, if I were a different sort of person.

His dealer man was lurking about glaring and eventually we said goodbye.

As I departed he said Do you smoke? I replied truthfully I’ve never smoked anything, and I never will.

 

8.16.08 last

The final Himsa show is tonight at El Corazon.

RIP to the Seattle band I’ve had the most fun drinking with (especially after funerals).

 

8.13.08 nice

I tried to poke around and figure out the allure of Facebook but only managed to stumble across a review of Lessons in Taxidermy from someone who hated the book.

Fair enough. But, rather than evaluating the literary or social relevance of the work, this reader points out that the narrator is not likeable.

Oh, how delicious – and accurate.

The narrator of the book (and this journal) is a carefully organized construct, a simulacrum, making specific points using traditional storytelling methods. None of which are designed to endear; in fact, my profound lack of interest in such matters is one of the major themes of the work.

Then there is the real person typing the words: a disheveled sarcastic harridan. Talk to me long enough and I will say exactly what you do not want to hear, and guess what? I don’t care.

I am ethical, honest, tenacious, and smart, all of which are attractive to the right audience – but even the people who love me would have to admit that they don’t particularly like me. I crave both complexity and clarity in all things, and while that might be alluring, it is never easy.

I am not nice.

 

8.11.08 sleazy

I’ve been running social networking sites since the dawn of the web, but my particular interest has been marginalized groups and/or professional (translation: geeky and technical) resources, and always always always the point is community organizing or social action.

This means that I have only a limited understanding of sites like Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, etc. Personally I use them to keep track of the occasional friend who only communicates via those channels, and as publicity tools when I have something to promote. Other than that, I never bother to login and would certainly never trawl around reading random things. I don’t really get what other people use them for.

Myspace is the most annoying because of all the random band clutter, and also because it is so obviously a meat market. I rarely even bother to look at my inbox there because I have to wade through so many sketchy messages from random sleazy men.

Of the various options the best current site is certainly Facebook, but that is because it has clean design principles – something most of these start with and then lose as they become corporate (so watch out, FB friends, it is surely around the corner). However, lately I have received unsolicited unwanted attention even on Facebook, which up to now has only bothered me by encouraging high school nostalgia.

Exactly what does a stranger think they are going to accomplish by sending a message in all caps informing me that I am gorgeous? Do they honestly think they will get a date out of the encounter? Do people really do that?

 

8.7.08 straight

When you live abroad there is one critical thing you must never, ever lose:

Your passport. The visa inside is quite important too, but without the encompassing proof of identity it is very difficult to establish the rest.

At the moment, my son has no passport.

Given the fact that I am in fact compulsive about keeping track of such things, and have already looked in all the obvious places in a shall we say rigorous fashion, the logical conclusion is that the object has gone missing. Or to be more specific, it has been stolen.

How much is a newish U.S. passport worth on the black market these days?

Replacing it will involve incredibly tedious trips to the embassy in London, a task I really do not enjoy. I would invite my other child along for a lark but she isn’t anywhere to be found (kind of like the passport).

Someone recently asked after her whereabouts and I was shocked; I replied She is a grownup, why would I know?

The fellow in question hectored the point in the bantering, hostile fashion I encounter more here than elsewhere. Quick tip: criticizing my parenting skills is never, ever a straight path to my heart. Let alone my nether regions.

 

8.4.08 good

The panicky freak out really only lasted as long as the anniversary. I never stay upset very long – I am too busy thinking about campanology, or whatever, to indulge messy emotions.

I’ve had mild reactions to the anniversary more often than not in recent years, so will presume my emotions were at least influenced by the oddity of hearing from lots of misplaced old friends lately.

By the time I finished drinking my tea yesterday it was back to normal programming (including watching the Rockford Files), and today has been entirely delightful. Mostly I wandered around letting friends feed me meals I think of as uniquely American. Like pancakes. For dinner I had steak and mashed potatoes, fondly remembering good times with Mash and her family, going to barn sales on Fox Island, listening to 45’s, rolling around on a new carpet shrieking with delight.

I remember a little store on the bay where we bought beef jerky and malted ice cream, and visiting a derelict cemetery just above. I remember an ill-advised effort to play tennis in which I bashed my own wrist rather than the ball. I remember a road trip to her grandparents lake cabin, and dinner in a diner where we played pinball.

I remember decency, and laughter, and love. I am lucky beyond words to have met that family, and to remain friends over the course of a tricky twenty-five years.

 

8.2.08 anniversary

PTSD influences moods, thoughts, and behavior, but for me it is primarily a physical (or physiological) experience.

My essential optimistic can-do attitude was never reduced by trauma; I was changed irrevocably by the events of my early life, particularly what happened on August 1, 1988 – but I was a determined person when I went up that mountain, and remained so when I came back down again.

Some people drug themselves, others ask for prescriptions, many find solace at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

I run errands, fill out paperwork, ride my bicycle.

The adrenaline is going to flood my body regardless of what my rational brain would prefer, and I have learned that it is best to just keep moving.

I cycled furiously about moving large unwieldy objects from one place to another, cooked, cleaned, opened months of unread mail, indulged all the obsessive desires that soothe my damaged brain.

When I ran out of tasks and trials I decided to go to the movies as a final effort at distraction – strangers, in public, normally scare me in these circumstances, and that keeps all the rotten stuff from spilling out.

Except I didn’t reckon on the fact that I am a lot healthier than I have ever been in my entire life, and that I am on friendly terms with everyone who works at the movie theatre. I feel safe there.

I had a three minute charming conversation with one of the cute youngsters at the counter, turned away to walk to my seat, and the panic struck without warning.

I started to shake, Logical Mind watching with detached criticism reminding me that I find it humiliating to lose control.

It is really too bad that Logical Mind is running a federation instead of a dictatorship. My limbs were in open rebellion for a period of time I found intolerable, though nobody around me seemed to be paying too much attention.

Panic attacks are intrinsically private, and underscore the solitary nature of existence for everyone. We really are all alone, no matter how much we try to connect, nurture, provide.

When the fright chemicals finally subsided I turned to Byron and said: I’ve spent my entire life saying I am fine, and now I am surrounded by people who refuse to believe anything else even when I ask for help. True or false?

He shrugged dismissively. True.

I had elected to see the sort of film where the audience laughs throughout, then people start to bicker as they leave their seats. While my main criticism was that the lead was too preciously hip (oh look, he lives by Jaguar Shoes), various other threads of conversation were sparked by the movie.

Mostly I was still fixated on avoiding a return of the panic, and convinced that if I could just make it to midnight everything would be fine again.

Circumstances intervened and I fell apart while crossing the Jesus Green, and ended up sobbing hysterically I want Marisa! I want Mark!

Byron is not especially interested in being a sensitive caring person and he pointed out that none of my friends really take care of me, or want to listen. He said that Mark would just make fun.

I replied That is fine! I don’t want to talk! I just want to be distracted, I just want to forget!

Going along with the theme of the movie (and probably in reference to the fact that my younger traumatized self was a lot more voracious and erratic than the protagonist of the film) he went on Plus Mark wouldn’t want to sleep with you. Marisa probably would though!

This just made me cry harder and wail I want to go home!

Home.

Where is that, exactly? I brought most of the people I care about along when I moved to this country, but this place is not my home. The other people who love me all live between the Cascades and the Pacific ocean, but that does not make the Northwest my home. I miss the peninsula of my childhood, the landscape of the Puget Sound, with a wrenching urgency – but it is not, could never, be home.

The accident took away so much – breaking bones, smashing brains, delivering a death blow to youthful idealism.

If I learned anything, it is this: there is no home except what I carry inside me – good, bad, or indifferent.

Twenty years later I can still taste the blood, but I am alive. I was not destroyed, merely diverted.

There is no way to guess what would have happened otherwise, and that does not matter.

Happy twentieth anniversary to us.

On Sunday Jean was supposed to accompany me to a picnic on the Grantchester Meadows but he was still sleeping off the debauchery of a final night with Rachel – weakling!

The weather was in fact too brutal for your humble narrator to survive an hour-long walk and still be sociable, so I resorted to that most decadent of local conveniences: a taxi ride. I wonder if my working-class brain will ever rest easy with this particular mode of transport? It certainly has not been less problematic over time – I could probably provide a fairly comprehensive list of every ride I have ever paid for, and I have been riding for a decade now.

Steve had staked out a spot next to a swimming hole, and Sally joined bearing homemade strawberry tarts. The group swelled with families from France, Scotland, Israel – an eclectic group of archivists, anthropologists, artists.

One woman flatly refused to answer the question (posed by another, not me) So what do you do? and I clapped my hands in an ecstatic fashion.

My kid wandered off with a pack of boys, and I propped my umbrella on a trolley to cast a little bit of shade in the eighty-plus degree day. We talked, laughed, enjoyed yummy food and the delightful company for hours. Sally and Steve are away soon to perform at festivals (though I do not know what the current show is, they have in the past been puppeteers) and it was lovely to have such an idyllic afternoon with them.

Just as we were all packing to leave the sun passed behind an ominous dark cloud and we found ourselves in the middle of a driving rainstorm. We all dashed from tree to tree laughing maniacally until we finally struggled out of the meadows – by then so flooded the water was in places ankle deep – and reconvened in a thatched roof cottage to watch as the street became a river.

Everyone agreed the spectacle was remarkable, unheard of, then we settled down to play rounds of Chase the Ace and Cheat. I didn’t really follow the rules, but both were quite fun! Later the youngsters built a maze out of blocks and took bets on which resident hamster would win the course.

I bet that neither would make it to the end. The bookies were reluctant to issue odds, but in the end – I won.

 

7.28.08 preserve

I spend a fair amount of time at New Hall because that is the college Jean is affiliated with (though in what formal manner, I cannot say, as these distinctions are of no interest to me). I’m very fond of the place because portions of it are very modern in the same manner as Evergreen: lots of brutal concrete walls.

Another feature it shares with my alma mater is the art all over the place, generally ignored by passerby. In the case of New Hall, that would be the second largest collection of women’s art in the world.

The fact that such a thing just sits, benignly and without seeking attention, down yonder road, is a quintessentially Cambridge presentation. This city is full of surprises and hidden history that could take a lifetime to discover – a fact that is always shocking, since the place feels so sleepy and boring on an average day, when the struggle is just to acquire a pint of milk without running over a tourist.

Imagine my surprise then to read an article in the Guardian that takes as a fundamental premise the naive question what’s the point of a museum of art by women? Hmm. Backlash, anyone?

It is impossible to evaluate the worth of this collection based on the last decade of an inflated art market that does not, even at that level, equally reward all artists and genres. To phrase it differently: not everyone likes Tracy Emin.

Beyond that, the history of New Hall itself is given only a cursory glance. It is simply an appalling intellectual error to ignore the fact that Cambridge was the last university in the nation to refuse to grant women degrees – even when they scored higher than male students.

The struggle for equality in education here is not ancient history. There are senior professors who still remember extreme discrimination, and many of the junior members have had to deal with overt prejudice.

How many are rumored to have slept their way into their employment contracts? How many terrifically bright women are turned away by the insular, old-boys-club attitudes here?

There is simply no reason to debate the merits of a privately funded specialty art collection in this town. Other colleges preserve the cabinets Pepys kept his journals in, or the desk Whewell used when scribbling notes.

This place has a museum full of fossils, another full of zoology specimens. Each is just as worthy as the other.

 

7.26.08 festival

Yesterday I went to a reception for a show of anatomical drawings and they proved deliciously creepy – not least because they were accompanied by audio recordings from a surgical suite.

I was able to use one illustration to point out the various bits of my face and neck ruined by injuries and surgeries, much to the dismay of my young companion. He is very sensitive.

After the show we went on a long countryside ramble to admire the fields full of bunnies, then retired to eat chocolate fudge cake from Fitzbillies and make summer rolls with peanut sauce (in that order). Mmm!

I was ready for bed and yawning when Rachel started to text and call from the Castle, tempting me out for the night, but I declined until after midnight when the gang transferred to a late opening pub I call Our Secret Clubhouse. I was still resisting but she said Jean had just arrived.

Walking across Castle Hill I happened upon Josh, and dragged his bewildered yet obliging self along for the debauchery. Including sitting outside and making way too much noise until two in the morning. Rachel brought along a special new friend who was extremely friendly: she talked to everyone inside the pub and quite a few passerby. She even decided to massage my neck – nobody ever touches me! She observed I am very tense and really ought to see a professional, but hey, that has been true since 1983. I seem to get by somehow.

Jean got semi-swept up in a hen do and was sporting a glitter crown for awhile, there was more scurrilous gossip and chatter, the wealth of William (we’re down to one now) delivered secret spy data, Pedro said he will marry Rosie once her parents provide a dowry of an orchard or cattle, and, you know, it was another night out in Cambridge.

Right now I have this sneaking suspicion that I am supposed to be somewhere, but can’t decide if that is true or just how the first weekend of the summer holiday always feels?

Either way, I think that I am going to pack up some flotation devices and head out on the river in an attempt to survive the eighty degree heat. England is not built for this kind of weather. Me neither.

Locals or visitors please note: there is at least theoretically a Busker Festival all week in the city centre. Remember to carry coins of the realm!

 

7.23.08 best

Courtesan, companion, conversationalist, brilliant artist and simply one of the most interesting people I have ever met: What else can be said about Byron Number Three, most commonly referred to as Gabriel?

Our lives have crossed inexplicably since 1995, but we didn’t formally meet until much later at a Sunnyside Co-operative School dance, when Sia blew my cover as the publisher of the magazine.

Upon hearing the news, Gabriel started to clap and spin in a wild and hilarious fashion.

That year we sat on the floor of school hallways with our journals, evoking the Bad Kid aesthetic even though we were both (nominally) responsible parents. Later I kidnapped him to accompany me on the Breeder tour, and still later our friends shipped us off to Italy in a post-9/11 apocalyptic moment.

Since then there have been too many stories, too many adventures, to even begin to convey how important he is in my life. Happy, happy birthday to a good parent, nice man, best friend!

 

7.21.08 wishes

Hours before she was born I wandered through hidden back corridors of the teaching hospital, staring at the specimens on display, convinced (along with my family and physicians) that I would not survive the day. That particular concern was immaterial – nonsense – I just had to get through the immediate physical challenge.

I did, we did, she was born – fist first and facing the wrong direction. That sums up the entirety of her life so far. The girl is a genius, autodidact, dropout, fiend.

She has a furious mentality that leaves me shocked and breathless, a wit so incandescent I can never even hope to keep up.

I never have any idea of what she will do, though she always does it well – and to extremes. Her friendship is a gift, her presence a worthwhile challenge.

She is my daughter, but more than that, she is herself, and I love her in the entirety of that concept. I sometimes wish that I could still hold her in my hands, and protect her from the world. But she is too ferocious and fearless for such niceties.

My daughter is, simply, amazing. I send sincere and good birthday wishes to the glorious and gorgeous girl, wherever she is in the world!

 

7.20.08 colloquial

My colloquial side came out in that last post when I typed navy yard – the local phrasing, said fast and running together – instead of the more correct shipyard, which I routinely use now in conversation. How strange. I didn’t think I had any of those inflections left after so many years away.

 

7.20.08 confirm

I’m experiencing a virtual high school reunion on facebook lately, with Scott, David, James, Arthur, Cari, KTS, Mash, and a few random others twirling about. That about covers the crew who could normally be found in my car on any given day in the late eighties.

Who is missing? Hmm. Dennis, last seen the day he finished university in 1994. Marc, off in SF presumably doing all sorts of interesting things. Pell-Mell, lost to the eastern desert. Thomas, last seen at the pride store in Seattle though I ducked rather than saying hello (the shock was too much for my shy self and he was gone before I collected my wits).

And, of course, Anne – best friend from the first day of kindergarten until the day she watched me nearly die giving birth, at which point she vanished from the narrative. I hear she works at the navy yard but that fact has not been independently verified.

The girls who dated the gay boys are, as always, lurking vaguely on the margins. I didn’t understand them then – why all the heartbreak and drama over people who do not want to have sex with you? And they didn’t like me at all, because their gay boyfriends like me too much. But, well, whatever.

The interesting thing about all of these people popping up again, not just individually but in one clearly defined (albeit imaginary) space is the fact that I really enjoyed our time together. 1986 was the year my illness stabilized – if you can call six bouts of bronchitis, four of pneumonia, and a standing monthly appointment to hack cancerous lesions off your torso good health.

Sixteen and seventeen were good years, with days and nights on rocky beaches, marching band trips, rotating dates, ferry rides and blindfolded picnics. We forked lawns, moved effigies from one wooded copse to another, drove aimlessly around in a cavalcade of ratty old cars, and when all else failed, amused ourselves by standing around 24 hour supermarkets.

We took over the International Society to have an officially sanctioned clubhouse, and gleefully ran the social lives of all the exchange students in the south end of the county whether they liked it or not. We joined the political clubs of all descriptions because our simple presence at the meetings drove the serious youngsters nearly to tears.

We dragged the taxidermied mascot wolf out of a cupboard and rode it until the ear fell off. We misbehaved as much as anyone could without getting kicked out of honor society.

During her visit my mother asked Do you remember that day I got a call from the school asking if your early release note was forged? Except I already knew you were skipping because I had watched from the shore as you and a dozen of your friends got on the Seattle ferry.

I replied Yeah, we went to see a matinee of The Tempest. Oh, how shocking! Shakespeare as the downfall of society!

When I see David in London we raise a drink and toast the innocence of those years. We were collectively just so good – no alcohol, no drugs, no criminal activities whatsoever, and those of us having sex kept it a strictly guarded secret.

One of our group got pregnant, and shocked the administration by refusing to drop out, but her methodology included obtaining a very large bunny costume and wearing it as much as possible.

All of our antics stand in contrast to the fact that a certain administration favorite was the biggest drug dealer in the school. Popular kids were dying in fiery drunken crashes or having their brains blown out in coke deals gone bad.

My little gang of outcasts, punks, mods, musicians and thespians circulated petitions and staged dog weddings. The idyll lasted about a year and a half, then Scott and David and half the group graduated. The accident happened a month or so later.

Injuries, lies, and lawsuits took away everything else. Now I remember high school as a bleak, destructive, disastrous time – but that is too simplistic. There were delirious, brilliant moments along with all the bad.

I loved the people who went through those years with me, perhaps in an immature and imperfect way, but that is what we had to offer each other, and that was enough. It is good to meet them again so many years later, and confirm that we are all approximately who we always were.

 

7.19.08 normal

I have continued to ponder the Definitely Unwanted Attention of recent months, and have developed a theory.

When I had a baby in my teens, the choice was well within the norm of my hometown, family, and age. In those days and that place, it was merely incidental to the rest of my life and not a hindrance to dating or whatever.

But rather than staying home, I marched off to college, where I was certainly the first in my class to procreate. During the entirety of my university career at a state university, I reckon there were perhaps a half dozen students who kept their babies while staying in school.

In fact, I can name them all and know where most ended up. Four thousand or so young people on a campus with a deserved reputation for rebellion, drug abuse, and promiscuity should surely have produced more infants. The fact they did not I attribute to the indisputable fact my classmates were almost entirely middle-class.

To the extent that working class locals like me were considered affirmative action admissions.

Who knows what the other young parents experienced – we never talked about it – but I found being a mother in that environment quite difficult. I’ve written enough about the academic side and I’m not going into that now. What I have been contemplating lately is the fact that even those people who obviously wanted to date me could not deal with the fact that I had a kid. Including the one I later married.

This is not interesting or even remarkable – the sort of youngster who chooses that college is not trawling around looking for responsibilities. Even the people with children struggled at times to reconcile the loss of freedom.

I have clear memories of certain people openly expressing their disgust or dismay. I know and could provide a tally of all the social events I was excluded from, all the opportunities that were missed, and all of the people who annoyed me in the process. Some are famous now, many are friends: but they were cruelly dismissive back then.

If I am being completely honest, I knew that mentioning my kid would shut down a flirtation, and I did so with glee. At the time, that made sense. I was too busy stomping around enforcing unpopular civil rights laws and taking care of my child. But gee, in retrospect: how sad.

During the years when people are theoretically figuring out all of the courtship stuff, I was not just oblivious but entirely cut off. Because of my background, my injuries, and my parenting status, I was a grown-up when my peers were all merely independent.

Byron admits that he lusted after me from our first meeting. But he resisted making a move because he did not think he was mature enough to date a mother. Since I have a clinical interest in such manners I asked him to describe me at age twenty. He replied You looked about twelve years old, you had the spectacles of a 1930’s intellectual, and you wore blazers. You were fierce and frightening!

Frightening, because I was so serious. Frightening, because my life in that raw incarnation was about blood and birth and death. Frightening, because I put my child and my career before all other relationships – and had already ditched one husband to support the claim.

None of this bothered me at the time; I was too busy to deal with the games preoccupying my peers. My tender sweet side was available only to my daughter: I was not interested in romance, I was playing patty-cake!

I was still a distraught, raggedy teenager when I realized I was pregnant, and from that day until I was thirty it was rare to find me without anywhere between two and two dozen children swarming around my person. I gravitated toward other marginalized parents, ran a parenting magazine, unschooled my kid, or sometimes begrudgingly helped run proper schools. My whole life revolved around raising children.

I didn’t want to know if anyone thought that was sexy, and I still don’t. Ditto the scars. I’ve only learned to accept compliments when they make sense, not when they are nauseating. Though I digress. I am mostly the same in appearance, attitude, and behavior. I am still wearing the spectacles and strangely formal yet perpetually wrong clothes, still pontificating with exasperated urgency about history, politics, and public policy, to the detrimental exclusion of idle chat.

Most everyone except babies, abused dogs, and bouncers find me frightening, at least upon first introduction. What is the big difference between then and now? Mainly, my age. My theory, to be simplistic, is that the people I knew before my thirties were afraid to approach partly because of the disease, partly because I was a parent, and in an overall sense because I was autonomous and self-sufficient. None of these are signature traits of youth.

Now that I am in a new age bracket, I am meeting people who may or may not have children of their own, but who know lots of people who have made that choice. They have had a chance to acquire diverse life experiences, including for most at least one serious injury or illness (even if it is just a bad back). They have lost friends and family, and know that they will lose more.

Nowadays when I mention the fact that I am a mother, or the cancer thing comes up, people just look interested instead of recoiling in shock. Is it possible, I wonder, that I have finally arrived in a period of my life where all the things that once made me peculiar are simply normal and appropriate?

 

7.15.08 infection

Last night as I fell asleep I thought If I’ve given up every other freaking thing I love, maybe I can start drinking coffee again!

This morning, the thought makes me queasy. Oh, the difficulties of being a sensitive flower! Especially when you are sturdy of stalk and stamen.

Somewhere earlier in the week my kid looked at the back of my leg and gasped What happened to you?!

I twisted the limb around to observe a five inch gash that had evidently been bleeding for quite some time, though I hadn’t felt a thing. Oh, I was probably attacked by my bike pedal….

The fantastically lurid injury did not in fact hurt until the inevitable infection set in (the whole point of the juicing folly is the suspicion that my old pal systemic lupus is starting to play coy tricks again).

I inquired of assembled charming companions Will you still love me when they amputate my leg?

They all chorused NO!

 

7.13.08 habit

Today I went to the farm store to feed my juicing habit (yes, apparently, I am the sort to run off and buy a juicing machine…. uh-oh!) and ended up buying lots of interesting seasonal vegetables, including something labeled as yellow beans.

They look exactly what I would call green beans or french beans if cut lengthwise. They must have a name other than a color.

 

7.12.08 ascetic

Recently in consultation with one of my charming companions I was freaking out and describing the onslaught of attention from locals.

He inquired So are you going to run off and have a torrid affair?

Shocked, I said No. That would not be advisable!

He laughed and asked Since when has that ever stopped you? – then offered up a concise list of my recent follies, including but not limited to leaving the Northwest on a whim, settling in an improbable new city, and spending my entire life savings on a boat – without any previous interest in matters nautical.

I shrugged off the points; this particular character is marauding around New York City with Ana Erotica and should thus be able to generate at least a little sympathy for my woefully stranded self. Instead, he asked what Mark Mitchell would advise.

That is easy – he would tell me that I should be in Seattle with him. Obviously. I don’t even need to ask; I know full well how to solve the underlying problem. I need to go back to the Puget Sound, to be with my friends and family, not just for the decadent wild times but for the daily gritty reality of helping in times of trouble.

Beyond that, I honestly need to dwell in that landscape. I’ve been homesick ever since I left for college nineteen years ago and it is very clear that this will never change. I just don’t have the money or time to take the cure.

If I am resolutely avoiding all local entanglements even if they are just invitations to tea, and cannot go home or travel at all, what is left? Tedious things.

Like the fact that my Annual Horrifying Cancer Tests came due while I was in Prague, which means my mother was alerted and will now exert long-distance pressure to reschedule.

I would probably try to ignore the whole thing a bit longer but a month with her always include reminders that while I was the youngest cousin diagnosed with cancer, I am now one of the oldest surviving members of the clan.

There really isn’t anything more entertaining to do here so hey, why not be ascetic? I certainly have the personality for it. I’ve already mostly given up alcohol, chocolate, and (this is the hardest) cinnamon jelly beans.

If memory serves a strictly controlled doctor approved regimen would mainly involve eating, well, raw carrots. Except I can’t because I do not have cartilage in my jaw. Will I really turn into a raw food macrobiotic sort of person? Will I run out and buy a juice machine? I certainly hope not. It is far too difficult to shop in this town!

 

7.10.08 sympathy

I’ve written a lot about missing my friends back in the states, and all of those sentiments were true.

It is equally true that my favorite part about life in this city (aside from the ducklings) is the sense of isolation. I grew up in a small town, went to school in a small town, lived in well defined communities in small western cities as an adult.

Wherever I went, I always knew everyone, and they knew me, and I found the experience oppressive. I liked moving to a place where I was not only unknown, but invisible. Nobody registered my existence, nobody cared.

The only people I talked to on a daily basis were beggars, buskers, Big Issue salesman, and the brothers at Bacchanalia. Even the other boaters are people I mostly just exchanged friendly waves with, aside from the occasional rescue operation. This suited me.

I have always yearned for solitude more than companionship. This might be a byproduct of being an only child, or the lifetime of chronic illness. Whatever the reason, these four years in England have offered a melancholy sort of liberation. I liked being alone. Over the last few weeks my life has changed in a radical way, and I am horrifically upset about it. In fact, way more disturbed than I would be about things like, you know, cancer tests.

What happened? People decided to talk to me. All sorts of people, including a vast contingent who have studiously ignored me every single day. Suddenly, instead of just a few scattered North Americans and a couple of nice Londoners, I seem to know, well, everybody.

In fact, I think it safe to say that I have not only made friends, I have been officially adopted by my new homeland. Rule, Brittania!

Before you speculate that this change has anything to do with my behavior, I can assure you it does not. And my physical appearance has not changed whatsoever – I am wearing, literally, the same outfit I arrived in. Lipstick, hair, and attitude are also intact. If anything the isolation has brought out my mischievous and scandalous sides – I say what I mean and mean what I say, but there are no other filters in operation.

Perhaps the British like this sort of misbehavior – back home, people would flinch. Though I doubt this explains the phenomenon.

The more logical reason is basic: this is a famously standoffish society, and it was bound to take at least twice as long to settle. Living in Cambridge, the city that gave the world words like scientist and concepts like evolution is a whole other quagmire.

Regardless, I am not amused to find myself suddenly popular. I loathe small town, parochial games and sensibilities. If I had wanted to live that way, I would never have left home in the first place.

What always happens when this mood hits? There is no mystery – I move.

Unfortunately I am stuck here for at least twelve months. I can’t even get away for the traditional mental health break of summer in Seattle; I would have been there already if I could go.

Yes, I know that my problems are ridiculous. Stateside friends often throw up their hands and say I have no sympathy for you!

 

7.7.08 dream

The other day I was meandering around Cambridge with my mother and picked up the 1972 edition of a brochure describing a place that I have been talking about visiting for, well, decades.

How have I managed to live here four whole years without realizing my lifelong dream? This is quite the mystery, and it may well go unsolved since my stated goal of the summer is to finally, finally, finally make it to Moominworld.

Still, a girl can dream! Mine is to go here: Bekonscot Model Village.

 

7.6.08 pins

Somewhere around three in the morning two fine young gentlemen decided it would be a lark to pull out the mooring pins and shove my boat out into the middle of the river.

It is lucky I was out of town. They would not have enjoyed making my acquaintance in those circumstances.

In the absence of my ferocity some boat friends scared them off and pulled the boat back to shore, for which I am eternally thankful.

I was slamming the mooring pins into beds of nettles this evening when Gordon called to see if I have truly been regressing in my phone skills. The answer is yes, though I did talk to him for fifty-eight minutes and forty-two seconds, during which I failed to Ladychat but did manage to Share and Relate.

Or at least, I confided I know, this might shock you…. but…. I kind of hate Cambridge!

He replied No, really? Then he asked if I had worn gloves for the nettle part of the evening.

Who, me? No. I was entirely truthful about the anger I feel tonight, with stinging fingers and favors owed.

Though the main point is the fact that Cambridge is not a neutral place – for every woeful low there is an incredible high, whether that is watching the moorchicks paddling around in Jesus Ditch or joining in the raging debates that erupt during dinner parties.

Right now I can’t imagine living anywhere else, which is useful, given that I am stuck for the next little while.

 

7.5.08 glamor

Today is the school fete – the last primary school event of my career as a mother – how strange and exciting! Last night we attended the Cambridgeshire Young People’s Film Festival awards ceremony, featuring several hundred children in fancy dress and an appearance by Lee Carter. The children were psyched.

Earlier in the week my son performed in the King’s College Chapel. Yes, our lives are awash with glamour. My kid even bought a new suit.

 

7.4.08 independence

I woke at four in the morning to call and make sure my mother was ready for the car I ordered to drive her to the airport, then fell back asleep listening to the river. By the time I woke properly and stumbled off the boat to collect my child for the school run grandma was already settled at the airport.

The morning was bright and warm but fragmented with sorrow; the first act of the day was drying the tears of a child who wishes more than anything that he could move back home.

I empathize with his pain – living so far away from the familiar and beloved is like having an open wound that never heals.

Today is the fourth anniversary of moving to the United Kingdom, and I feel just as conflicted as the day I stepped on the airplane. Having my mother here for a month underscored that fact.

I know that she loves us, and enjoys the month she spends here every year, but I am an only child and I moved to the other side of the planet. There is no solution to this quandary.

My son is right to cry; it is very hard to say goodbye to someone or something you love.

Happy Independence Day.

 

7.2.08 baffled

Recently I was lurking around a wine store resisting the temptation to purchase sparkling water and the fellow at the counter asked what I’d been up to that day. I replied I went to the Arts Picturehouse to watch Imperial War Museum archival movies.

He queried D’ya mean ‘films’?

I answered Yes, whatever you call them… they are screened early in the day so it is always an auditorium full of 85 year olds – plus me!

He asked Were they all hitting on you?

I rolled my eyes and said No! Nobody would dare!

He laughed and replied Mores the pity!

Of course I scurried away rather than following wherever that conversation might go, though I was in fact telling the truth. Until very recently it was a rare unto nonexistent experience for strangers to talk to me at all, let alone feel bold enough to try their luck.

That changed during the Hunt for Bad Boys and Lumberjacks, when Ana Erotica gave me the essential tool kit to understand this form of communication. Though I do not use the skills, I have at least been vaguely aware that people are staring at me. Sometimes.

If I had finished the Ladychat lessons I would presumably be much closer to my goal of becoming a truly functional human, but Sarah moved away and I have nobody to practice with!

Imagine then my profound bewilderment, after accumulating more probable pickup attempts in ten days than I have experienced in an entire adult lifetime.

Three examples:

*One hot sticky day in Prague I was standing in the dairy section of the grocery store at the end of the Charles Bridge when the person next to me asked if I speak Czech. I replied in the negative but he inquired if I could help him figure out which container of cream to buy, and I obliged, both of us squinting at the indecipherable writing on the pots. He managed to tell me all about his career and siblings and was obviously trying to go somewhere with the chat but I was still innocently shaking the bottles to evaluate viscosity. When I realized he had a working class Scottish accent I was vaguely alerted to the fact that he might be interested in more than just cream. The rest of the conversation confirmed that fact, and I predictably had no ability to cope, defaulting to my normal Um, I need to…. go …. now….

*In a professional context I fell into conversation with a very proper lady who is also a lesbian with a capital L. Given that this is the UK, most work or academic or almost any events involve ingesting vast quantities of alcohol. This does not change my behavior (I misbehave just as much with or without) but it does bring out the shall-we-say-adventurous side of the English. I’ve been privy to more alarming confidences and scathing stories at alcohol-fuelled garden parties than I would be in the middle of the night in the clubs of San Francisco – honest. During this particular encounter I was acting like myself, which might be a wee bit scandalous by British standards, but everyone else was acting wildly unlike their normal daily selves. I might not have noticed anything but the person I was talking to emphasized her point by stroking my thigh. Now, I might be obtuse, but I am not stupid! What to do, what to do? I lack not just the etiquette but also the practice to smoothly extricate myself from such things. Just then a boy sitting next to me said to someone on his other side I can’t help it, I like the cock! I flung myself in his direction and said What a coincidence – me too! We have so much in common! Later I felt fairly dreadful about this prevarication, even though it seems more polite to be unavailable due to preference than it would be to say I’m not attracted to you. You might wonder – “but couldn’t you just claim that you are ‘taken’ to avoid the whole question?” The answer is: nobody seems to mind here. Especially not after the fifth drink.

*Wandering about trying to think of a major whiz bang tourist destination to dazzle my mother, I finally gave up and stepped inside a travel agency to ask for help. The fellow at the counter had only been talking to me for about a minute when he abandoned all pretense of selling anything on his list, though he did pick up the phone and call around several places tracking information for me. He also pried out various details about my life and loves. Why is it that boys who want a date always ask what kind of music you like? I have no idea, and always refuse to answer beyond a true but misleading John Denver, Bobby Goldsboro, Gordon Lightfoot response. This one had a canny strategy – he walked me through the list of all the shows touring the country at the moment. Very clever! He also had the great advantage of looking like a hooligan while sweetly rendering assistance. I simply adore tender lovin’ thugs – they are my favorite of all urban species. Before I skittered away this fellow had managed to solve my tourist problems, show me his vacation photos, talk about his divorce, invite me to a play, and, check it, give me his phone number.

The last is of course truly a milestone. I’ve married people without knowing their phone number, for goodness sake! Not to mention the fact that nobody has ever asked me out on a date before. Not even the people I’ve married!

From my perspective I was in no way encouraging the fellow, though Iain recently informed me that Cleavage + no ring = available.

Maybe here – but that certainly isn’t true where I come from!

There is no moral to this story: I am, simply, baffled. Why me, why now? If this is the consequence of my research projects, could I possibly resign?

 

I was feeling around in the lining of the beloved small suitcase that has traveled with me ever since the first Lessons in Taxidermy tour, and guess what I found?

Pressed pennies from San Diego, the Woodland Park Zoo, and Central Park Zoo. This is remarkable in part because I am such a maniac about pressed pennies – they always get sorted and stored!

 

6.23.2008 different

This morning I waved goodbye to my eleven year old son as he departed to attend his first ever sleepaway camp with his Church of England school classmates.

I’m seriously freaked out – he is my baby! So young! So sensitive! Though I am also sure he will have a great time, except for the prayer and hymn singing. He doesn’t care for that bit.

Of course at the same age his sister went on a road trip to Yellowstone sporting an Impeach Bush button that generated massive fights with strangers throughout the journey. As far as I know she didn’t punch anyone, but it is sometimes best not to ask these questions.

During that trip several kids had sex in the school bus, and one girl overdosed, but hey! It was groovy good fun with the happy hippie school, man. My kids are so very… different.

 

6.21.2008 exterminate

A London friend pointed this out and I think it is super awesome:

The Hair Force

And, though some might get all haughty about paying for the service, it is also a return to a traditional industry. Lice are just a normal part of life as a parent. But as a parent, I’m also susceptible…. and I’m psyched that I can pay to have an actual human pick through my hair instead of grappling with chemicals and combs!

 

6.20.2008 happy

When Jeffrey dragged me to the Bus Stop the first time I resisted – bars have never been my scene. What a tremendous shock to find myself instantly adopted by a crew of charming reprobates under the direction of the notorious and noteworthy Mark Mitchell!

Mark is in fact the only person I have ever met who completely understands everything I say, or fail to mention, instinctively and truly, without the need for excessive discussion. He just gets it in a profound and unique way. Hanging out with him is the best tonic I can imagine, and of course, endlessly hilarious and entertaining. Even when he makes me go shopping.

Many happy birthday wishes to a brilliant, amazing, supremely scathing person. I am lucky beyond words to have him as a friend.

 

 

6.21.2008 ponies

If you remember two highlights of 2007 – Pony Attack and Pony Update and wondered – hey, what the heck is happening with the ponies at Ely Cathedral? Never fear, we made the annual pilgrimage, though we forgot to film a movie, and there were no faraway friends in attendance. England is truly a gorgeous land:

 

6.20.2008 busy

This has been an extraordinarily busy week, with my mother here to entertain during the day, one visiting artist and a flock of scientists to visit at night, Jonathan (minus Hiya, plus mother) arriving tomorrow, one massive fair ending and another even more sinister one starting requiring me to bodily protect my boat, and, oh yeah, a circus. I’m a wee bit tired and also highly allergic to something or other in the air.

 

6.19.2008 remaindered

I am a peripatetic reader in the sense that I consume whatever is offered, and make purchases in a semi-random fashion, usually based on price.

Translation: I buy second hand or remaindered books and presume the adventure will take me where I need to go. There is a lot of good stuff to be had in this academic city, so I never lack interesting reading material.

Yesterday I took my mother to the cheap, strange, moldy bookstore next to Sidney Sussex (aka the place where Oliver Cromwell’s head is buried) to peruse the racks. Imagine my surprise and delight to find my very own self marked down to a quid!

This is the ugly “literary” version of the book… the attractive one sold out:

 

6.16.2008 improbable

Late one night in a dark club an academic was confused about my antecedents and my reply included geographic information since we grew up on the same continent:

I went to school in Olympia – I started – but he interrupted and exclaimed Like the Courtney Love song!

I replied Um, yeah.

He asked Is the song accurate?

I shrugged and said In some respects. Except she didn’t actually go to school there. And I definitely dated more people in that town than she ever did, so I feel confident saying no… they don’t fuck the same.

This summary caused some consternation but, well, he asked.

Later in the same week a British born, raised, and educated scientist asked where I went to school and I restricted myself to a one word reply: Evergreen.

He clapped his hands in delight and said Matt Groening! The Simpsons!

Oh, indeed. Though as I pointed out, the show had not yet premiered when I applied to attend that institute of higher education.

Though I was always a fan of both MG and Lynda Barry, when they published in alternative weeklies. I would not have survived junior high let alone made it to university if I hadn’t discovered Marlys and Life in Hell, huddled in the art room cupboard while my feral schoolmates ate lunch.

This was on my mind over the weekend because the public administration alumni association emailed to ask for help with Super Saturday. The evidence suggests I finished grad school fourteen years ago. How improbable.

 

6.15.2008 friends

The other night I dashed around London attempting to attend book release and art opening parties all happening simultaneously. This was, of course, impossible, though I did have a nice chat with the always charming Michael Moran at the pub celebration for his amusing new book, Sod Abroad.

Then it was off to a reading at a bookstore in King’s Cross, where I fell into conversation on the sidewalk with someone who not only understands the literary scene I left behind in the states, but also knows one of my publishers. I laughed with delight and said I made him cry once!

Then we had a jolly chat and he handed me free copies of intriguing books. Later inside the venue I was chatting with various people and a man I have never met appeared in front of me. He said Hello, Bee.

Extrapolating the fact that Stewart Home had been performing, I presumed it was him, though he doesn’t look much like his photographs. Unlike me, apparently.

When I said hello in return Stewart reeled back and exclaimed You have an American accent!

I said What else would I have?

Steward: If you live here, you should have an English accent!

Me: I don’t live here. I live in Cambridge.

Stewart: But why??

Me: I’m in exile for my sins!

 

6.11.2008 palpable

The excitement about an extended Grandma Visit is palpable around these quarters – and now she is officially in transit!

The only major problem on the horizon is the fact that the primary school is experiencing the fifth round of lice infestation this spring. And bugs love me.

And, while the latest lice treatment seems highly effective, it also did not wash out. Four cycles with Expensive Imported Lady Products left me still looking like a greasy urchin and I had to tie it all up and go searching for cheap toxic shampoo to finish the job.

When I finished that, I realized that my feet were covered in bug bites – there are no mosquitoes around so who knows what they are – but not just ordinary bug bites, oh no; I could ignore those.

Instead I have Badly Infected Bug Bites Requiring Treatment. This takes the form of using (once again imported, cause I can’t get the good stuff here) antibiotic creams and bandages. Except, you know, I am allergic to the adhesive used in medical tapes. Ouch.

To round out my list of woes, I have lost the little coin purse I use to organize my (also expensive and imported) face powder. Including the contents, which cannot be replaced on this continent.

I’m way too OCD to lose things – it just doesn’t happen – so this is quite a wrenching experience.

My kid commented Mama, if you were a cat you’d have a crooked tail!

Indeed. I do not like spending money on misery, and this lice adventure is adding up to no fun at all! The worst indignity, however, is the fact that putting my hair up makes me look ten years old again. Oh, woe is me!

 

6.10.2008 delayed

Oh, what a shocker: <Teenagers with cancer often face significant delays in being initially diagnosed, researchers have warned.

Since my primary genetic disorder went undiagnosed for thirteen years and my rare and virulent [and obvious given the massive tumor at the front of my, you know, neck] thyroid cancer was ignored so long it wandered over to my lymph system way back in ye olden times (aka the 1980’s) this is just, well, unacceptable.

We should have learned a little bit more by now. I do not think this is specific to the UK: it is an inherent attitude on the part of even the most experienced and well-meaning medical professionals.

With my excessive personal and family background, and history of advocacy, it still took over two years of persistent arguing to get my sick child diagnosed with a chronic Thankfully Not Cancer disorder.

When the doctors finally started to pay attention they ended up doing a biopsy of her esophagus: quite a different answer than the original refrain “Oh, she is a teenager, she is probably making it up to skive off school” expressed numerous times by her physicians.

While there are definitely Ferris Beuller characters wandering around this planet, it is simply unfair to characterize all sick kids as malingerers – or worse.

Children and teenagers have, perhaps more than adults, a keen understanding of their health – an intuitive ability to report when something is really wrong. I always knew before the doctors when my remission ended.

Always.

I say it all the time but feel the need to repeat once again: listen to kids. They are the best experts on their own lives.

 

6.9.2008 geek

My son begrudgingly finished his ever so annoying standardized tests and as a reward I took him to London: whatever he wanted to do, we would at least try to fit it in.

His list included (in this order):

The zoo

The arcade

Peter Pan Park (aka Princess Diana Memorial Playground)

Coram’s Fields

Science Museum

Roald Dahl House

Benjamin Franklin House

Sherlock Holmes Museum

See a play

Shop for toys and shoes

We crossed off most of these, though the Roald Dahl excursion proved too complicated since it is off in a far distant shire. The Franklin and Holmes options fell off the table in favor of other choices, but were not missed, as our time was a nonstop cavalcade of fun and adventure. Plus a few hours of television at a friends house, oh, forbidden treat!

Of course it rained most of the time, and I ended up huddling in bushes while my kid played, but this is to be expected on holiday. The best part was, of course, the Science Museum, specifically Dan Dare & the Birth of Hi-Tech Britain and Plasticity: 100 Years of Making Plastics. Yes, as my grown-up child often points out, I am a total geek:

 

6.8.2008 movie

Let’s Get Lost is enjoying a much deserved theatrical re-release here in jolly ye olde world this week. If you have a chance, it is definitely worth seeing on the big screen. Bruce Weber is in town to talk about the film tonight but that sort of thing makes me twitch so I went to the matinee on Friday instead. Kind of ruined my whole day, but hey! It was still very interesting!

I would also make the observation that fifty-seven is really an amazing age for a junkie to reach; most of the drug addicts I’ve loved were dead by thirty-five, and only one made it to her late forties.

 

6.6.2008 type

Recently I took a little throwaway quiz that ranked my skills as a 1930’s housewife and was not surprised to get a high score. Why? Because even in my most severe, sarcastic, and extreme incarnations I’ve always been the marrying type.

Much to my dismay, since I do not approve of the formal institution.

I was never the sort of child who dreamed of weddings or babies; I just wanted to be alone reading books. I was never the sort of youngster who sought or desired a relationship; I just wanted my independence, and maybe a built-in source of entertainment (and later, free high quality baby-sitting). So long as the person didn’t annoy me too much.

Why then do people stick to me like barnacles? Why do people perceive that I would be a marvelous wife, even though I lack most of the overtly feminine and nurturing traits? Why have I never dated, though my private life is strewn with marriage proposals and broken hearts?

Maybe because I am by nature a pragmatic bureaucrat with a specific focus on civil rights (translation: civil, fair, rational behavior). I’m very good at designing and implementing policies and procedures that create a greater common good. I do what is right, not what is easy – and I never feel martyred by my ethical code. I am, intrinsically, fair.

In other words, a really good mother – and that, my friends, is something a lot of people are seeking… without even realizing they need that sort of love more than they need a girlfriend.

There is a fundamental, inescapable reason why babies, abused dogs, and broken boys are my biggest fans. Kinda sucks to be me, as far as that goes. I would have been a much more pleasant twenty-two year old if I had been hedonistic instead of honorable.

 

6.2.2008 precarious

I’ve been collecting opinions about spending my repudiated so-called birthday in the ski resort where Kafka wrote The Castle.

James replied with a baffled and emphatic No. He suggests, if I must retreat to that land in that season, a spa vacation including long soaks in whatever it is people soak in there. Of course he also, at various times and for long periods, elected to live in Arizona – something I would never consider. Beyond that he developed a sincere devotion to public bathing during his years in Tokyo.

None of which really explains how a friend of twenty-one years has failed to pick up the fact that I am not allowed to participate in shared water activities. Especially since he went to Governors’ School with me in 1988 and therefore knows that the single, solitary time I was exposed to communal showers I picked up a staph infection requiring the partial amputation of a toe. I’m not joking.

There are valid reasons why my doctors have always forcibly advised against hot tubs, swimming pools, dorm washing facilities, and the like. My immune system just can’t take it, not even splendid options like the mineral baths in Glenwood Springs or the saltwater pool in Seattle.

Add to that a chlorine allergy that leaves my entire epidermis a screaming rash after no more than ten minutes exposure: I suspect I am the only person permanently excluded from swimming lessons in a school district requiring certification of mastery to leave the cursed facility.

I’m very sensitive.

I’m also the sort of person who rarely allows such things to intrude on my daily activities; for the most part, I don’t spend time thinking about the rules and restrictions. This in turn means I rarely talk about them, even when acknowledging physical limitations would be a more acceptable answer than my stock I don’t want to, I don’t feel like it, I have better things to do, I don’t care.

The truly amazing fact is that James could know me so long and so well, yet fail to account for the very real limitations of my life. This is I suppose a credit to my faultless facade of strength, but mostly a reflection of the fact that people who love me just don’t want to know that my health is, at best, precarious.

I can’t blame them: I don’t want to know either.

 

 

Over the weekend my kid decided to rent a canoe and paddle way out for a picnic on the Grantchester Meadows.

The journey took us past the old Darwin family home (now the nucleus of Darwin College) and the associated private island, past fields of drunken revelry, and to the weir.

At that point you have to disembark, haul the vessel up a steep bank, and cross a busy foot path before dropping the canoe back in the upper river – a messy wet business at best!

We spied fields of sheep, countless baby ducklings, and a whole flotilla of goslings before arriving at our destination. The whole enterprise was impossibly beautiful:

 

 

 

5.24.2008 hatched

Last year the big event happened on a day I was stricken and horrified by career success (contrary, me?). The fact that I rolled up just in time to see eggs crack and babies tumble down to the river was easily the coolest event of all of 2007.

That, however, was early in May. I’ve been quite worried about why there were no cygnets hatching this year, and yesterday marched out to check on them once again. While I stood watching in amazement, guess what happened? They hatched!

 

5.22.2008 day

On May 22, 2002 I was offered a choice: stay in Portland, in my awesome house, living in a beloved community surrounded by friends, or pursue a new and somehow old adventure.

That was to move to Seattle, the city I knew best from childhood hospitalizations and countless obscure music shows in my youth. I picked Seattle and within days had miraculously also purchased an implausibly beautiful house from a friend.

Then, two years later, another choice – stay in my fantastic home on Beacon Hill, near my biological family, in a city that represents my every youthful ambition and desire. Or leave, throw it all away, emigrate to Europe?

On May 22 2004 I was sitting on a bench outside the Fort St. George, a riverside pub in Cambridge England, bemused and horrified to encounter my newly adopted home city for the first time.

I stared at the river, wondering if I had made a huge mistake, and then noticed the narrowboats moored on the banks. This, I thought, will do.

That hunch proved accurate; the river is the best part of the city, and I am thrilled every day to hang out on my boat. May 22 has since retained a strange significance, with secrets and excursions small and large accruing to that date in the calendar.

Early in the day this year I had a misguided encounter with a baguette, piece of brie, and a butter knife, slicing three fingers open – ouch! It is quite likely I am the only person who could sustain such a serious wound with such poor equipment. So much to celebrate!

 

5.19.2008 looks

Want to know what life looks like here in jolly ye olde world?

The Botanic Gardens – older than my own homeland by a couple hundred years:

Plus, bonus feature for Mark Mitchell: the sensible shoes he mocked so thoroughly enjoying an earned rest!

 

 

5.18.2008 dangerous

The other night I was reminiscing about my misspent youth and commented about an ex-boyfriend He was so beautiful, it is just impossibly sad he went insane.

My dinner companion said Are you sad you didn’t stick around to help him with his brain problems?

I was shocked at the question, and replied Do you know what he liked to do when he was mad? He would punch whichever of my wounds he could reach. He would grab my damaged arm and smash it. He would…

But the audience, of course, was too squeamish to hear more. I’m probably too sensitive to know what happened, and I was there.

Of course I was never a passive victim – I was raised to defend myself, and I did, with vicious force. The years have been kind in dimming the memories.

When that beautiful boy appears in my dreams (and that is a rare event) his ghost is always mutilated, a ravaged burned bloody creature who poses no threat. Awake or asleep, all I feel for him is compassion mixed with regret. We were both messed up kids from chaotic families. The love we shared was not sufficient when the world fell apart.

His violence against me, and other women, and male friends, and strangers in the 7-11 parking lot, is not excusable. Though I can explain the sudden and frightening switch: head injuries often cause behavioral changes in otherwise rational people. The one I sustained in the car accident certainly did not improve my mood.

Beyond that he had no other resources growing up in a racist impoverished miserable town. His own family did not offer much in the way of support or role models; when I talk about knowing gangsters please take that to mean, literally, gang members with tears tattooed under their eyes. His cousins were not exactly keen to discuss the fears or sadness of a messed up punk kid – though they did in fact, as recently reported in the press, love the Smiths just as much as he did.

They loved me too, and I loved them all in return. During those years I needed a family, and they took me in, earning my eternal gratitude. Should I have stuck around to render aid, attempt to heal that broken boy? The answer is a simple and emphatic no – we were both far too damaged to help each other, and staying together would likely have ended in death. Breaking up was only slightly less dangerous.

For his own sake I hope he managed to find the perilous path to recovery, that he is surrounded by people who nurture and care for him. I hope he learned to seek out people who are strong without raising their voices or hands in anger.

News from home has lately been horrible, but I’m not going back to help. I moved away on purpose. My children will grow up without ever knowing their extended family, or any of the characters in my stories.

Violence is handed down across generations. I’ve seen the consequences, and I chose something else.

 

5.17.2008 counting

This afternoon I was wandering through the city centre when my mate the Wonderwall busker cycled past.

I always keep a pound or two in my pocket to hand off – buskers are my most expensive habit in this massively expensive town – but just as I was about to nod hello he was stopped by two policemen stepping out in his path.

They blocked his way and proceeded to berate him. I stood on the sidewalk watching, in an openly appalled fashion, but my presence was ignored. I am, after all, just another displaced foreigner. I know too little about the culture of this place, let alone the class war implied by the fact that this guy, with his broken teeth and dirty clothes, cover songs and caustic comments, is the only busker ever busted. For what great crime? Singing in public.

While Iain (husband of Karen, frequent guest at my holiday suppers, middle class music teacher) plays out with his band whenever he likes. Or how about the guy with the violin? Or the one with the accordion? Or how many other examples of people who are scrubbed and wholesome but like to play music on the sidewalk?

Nobody else was paying attention to the whimsically helmeted officers harassing the homeless guy, except my son, who stood next to me similarly appalled. Once I ascertained that it was simple harassment there seemed no choice but to move on, worrying by then that my mate would be embarrassed to know I witnessed the exchange.

Just another day in Cambridge, the least likely place I could have chosen to live (three years, ten months, and counting).

 

5.16.2008 rituals

The other day one of the very few people I talk to in this peculiar town asked how I was. Given that we’re in the middle of a heat wave I replied I’m too hot!

He laughed and retorted We all know that!

Uh-oh. Double entendre alert! I’m really not qualified to engage in that kind of banter. But the event reminded me of something that might be a relief for those of you who do not wish to hear more harrowing death stories. In the midst of all of my worries about faraway friends and family, immigration issues, and tricky work problems, guess what happened? Something creepy and awful: a local person hit on me.

Now you might think this is a normal occurrence, but it really is not – or at least before Ana Erotica put me through flirting lessons, I never noticed, wherever I was in the world. Once I started to notice elsewhere I was still protected here because I don’t understand the British. And the few times something questionable happened everyone was drunk – it was easy enough to laugh off an awkward half-stated pickup in that context.

This time dude was sober, though he did make a valiant effort to corral me into a pub. I was really hoping that my sterling anti-social-anti-scandal shield would hold since I’ve never been available, regardless of any other factor. Partnered, single, on the make – nobody has ever had permission to hit on me.

In fact, I should have a big neon sign over my head that reads Don’t even fucking try, Buster!

Why, oh why did I have to abandon my former obtuse ways? Life was so much easier when I was profoundly stupid about mating rituals! But I digress.

While normal people might have skills for these things, I clearly do not. Unless laughing like a loon and literally running away counts. I guess that might be interpreted as “no” but suspect it might translate as an encouraging sign, depending on the degree of lecherous intent felt by the other party. Ugh!

My strategy: avoid seeing the person ever again. Complicated given the fact that I encounter every single person I know more than once in the course of a day…. this is in fact a very small town.

Making a huge swath of the city a no-go zone will complicate my bike rides in an extraordinary fashion.

 

5.14.2008 view

There has been more impossibly sad news from home, and this morning started with email from a friend: Okay, you are like me — always able to muddle on through in a stoic manner, no matter what. Consequently, people tend not to worry much about us making it to the other side. We are seen as staunch and indestructible.

She went on to express concern about the recent losses (coming on top of the rest of the year) I have not even begun to address in this journal, and asked if there is anything she can do to help.

Over the weekend Gordon called to check on me, though I was way out on the Fens in my boat and could not return the call.

Later Jean caught me as I sat down to dinner at the Cutter Inn, trying to coax me out for the night, but I had already planned to stay in Ely and listen to the trains.

Mark Mitchell wrote to say he misses me – and oh, how I miss him – and Seattle – and wish I could be there now.

I really do not know what to do with all of this kind attention – it has only been about a year and a half since I decided to be Friendly, Charming, and Have Emotions. But I am nevertheless sincerely appreciative of those friends who have made the effort to look after me after all the sad news.

Jeffrey grew up in a similar macabre NW landscape and he just buried his own grandmother. He performed Ave Maria at the funeral and reported:

Apparently I did a good job because the audience disregarded the sanctity of the memorial and started clapping. I couldn’t help but laugh. Then some old lady who was a friend of the family asked me if I would perform at her funeral. I asked her if she had any idea when that might be so I could pencil her in.

This brings up a very important point: the musical element of major life events. For my first haphazard wedding I played Let’s Go Crazy as the processional. For the second clandestine effort annoyingly crashed by a television news crew I had a homeless Elvis impersonator (or Elvis himself, hard to say).

Mortality is the theme of the moment, and I feel obliged to state that I do not want a funeral. However, I suspect people will organize something, as the living are the ones who decide. I’m a practical sort and have thus chosen a song in advance: The Rainbow Connection.

That is the song we sang at sixth grade graduation, when I knew that the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes. It is also what I crooned to my babies when they were new to the world and astonished by light and sound. Yes, I do have at least a few sentimental urges. Mock if you will, I don’t care!

Just remember at the critical moment, as my immediate family members will be distraught and collectively lack planning skills.

Also, if the service is conducted in Cambridge it would be awesome if someone could organize my mate the Wonderwall busker to lead the singing. I do not know his name. Someone else will have to sort that out.

 

5.13.2008 exhausted

Last week I was corresponding with Amy via email about the funeral arrangements and at some point she described her surprise that another of our childhood associates also recently died of cancer.

I was sad and surprised, but not shocked. This was not someone I was at all close to, though I did harass his brother quite extensively with my ET Lives plots back in the day. How many families in my immediate circle from that rural childhood now officially have a member diagnosed with cancer – or dead from the disease – or multiple experiences of both?

It might be easier to count how many haven’t: something like zero.

Yet, please recall, the official government story is that there are no cancer clusters.

They were telling me that on the cancer ward when nobody could explain why I had a virulent form of the disease only seen in people subjected to high rates of radiation – while all the other beds were filled with refugees from Chernobyl.

You know what? I’m still a little bit suspicious.

Righteous anger is definitely easier than grief, but I’m too exhausted for rage these days.

 

5.5.2008 RIP

The first time I met Nate I was thirteen and he was a very small child, the younger brother of a friend, his life revolving around action figures and jumping on the trampoline. Later he grew, as children do, stretching up to a considerable height, acquiring a precocious interest in history.

From our earliest acquaintance he was always fascinating – bright, intriguing, the kind of kid who was just as comfortable talking to adults as playing with toddlers. His entire family was without exception sweet – a big, boisterous clan who expected their kids to go to morning religious services but didn’t care all that much if they were clutching cups of coffee en route.

I was mostly friends with Amy, the oldest girl, who insisted that she get home by curfew every night. Her elder brother Eric would ride along to drop her off but always come back out again for the nocturnal and innocent adventures that defined our youth in that small town.

When I had a baby in my teens this family adopted her as their first honorary grandchild: quite a contrast with some of my biological relatives, who disowned me and never established a meaningful relationship with my children.

All the kids growing up in that house in Olalla were genius in their own special way, and supported by parents who truly believed in their potential. Private school or public, dance classes, massive parties when they turned sixteen – they were close, loving, lovable.

Nate was the most classically academic of the children, and the one I was most likely to engage in delightful intellectual debates. Shortly after he left home for university he came down with a sore throat and cough.

Clinics, nurses, doctors all said it was nothing. The symptoms did not disappear.

Eventually, someone came up with a diagnosis: <i>cancer</i>.

He left school to deal with the ensuing treatments, maintain insurance, enjoy a little bit of freedom without knowing what the future would include. Saturday Amy wrote to say I lost my brother last night.

Valiant, beautiful, strong, impossibly young – and now dead. RIP Nathan: son, brother, uncle, husband, friend.

 

5.3.2008 depression

The new mayor of Rome was greeted by adoring crowds with fascist salutes and chants of Duce! Duce! The new apparent mayor of London is best known, aside from his floppy Old Etonian hairstyle, for referring to black people as pickaninnies. I really don’t know what to say. Depression abounds.

 

5.2.2008 complicated

This afternoon my eleven year old son walked home from school with his mates without any parental supervision for the first time.

I was only moderately terrified.

This does of course offer a sharp contrast with my latchkey childhood, but then again, I grew up in the woods. There were no speeding taxi cabs to worry about!

While he was off gallivanting I had to reluctantly turn down a much-needed, totally free, completely awesome trip to NYC to hang out with KTS, Ana Erotica, Ayun, Jess, and all the other fine friends who reside in that metropolis.

Why?

Because the dates conflict with the school fete. And the Year Six Leaver’s Disco. And, most critically, secondary school induction.

Parenting gets easier in some ways as children grow up but also more complicated – if slightly less messy.

 

5.1.2008 ditch

For those who inquired, the Jesus Ditch is a body of water separating Jesus College (private) from Jesus Green (public – even, gasp, common). Like a moat. We’re very monastic in these parts – and that particular college has quite a murky reputation for monkish shenanigans.

The bench in the foreground is dedicated to a Reformation Martyr and is, I believe, in the approximate position where witches and similar heretics were burned.

Yes, my daily life is ridiculously idyllic. I am drenched in beauty.

The Ditch: