Bee Lavender

I was standing next to the Swiss Family Tree House at Disneyland Paris listening to my daughter debate the theories of Lacan. I said why don’t you go ride a roller coaster like a normal teenager?

She just laughed at me and said Because I’m not normal, silly!

Later that same night we left the kids at the hotel with my mother and went walking next to the Seine. Past Notre Dame we encountered a group of hip young things smoking and practicing music on a banjo, a couple of guitars, a french horn, a trombone, and a tuba.

We sat and listened until some bike punks showed up and started doing jumps that took them flying at high speeds right past our heads. Byron whispered I could take ’em but in fact, he could not, so we wandered up into the Latin Quarter.

We found a table at Cafe Contrescarpe and the waiter said something to my arm before dropping a glass of wine on my foot. We all laughed and I remembered the first trip to Paris, when I sat in the same cafe, depressed by world events and the realization that I had once again chosen to take on complicated work projects that left no time for writing.

Back then I wondered if I would be satisfied with my life if I continued to commit all of my time to running a social media company, and decided the answer was no. I started to think about my whole life, from the fundamentals of our family structure to the complexities of my social scene. I realized that I felt trapped, and that is probably the feeling I dislike the most.

From that afternoon four years ago came the series of questions that took us from Portland to Seattle and then to England, so abruptly that many of my friends still do not know that I’ve left Portland.

From being bored and stuck in the Northwest, I’ve become the sort of person who travels half the year. I move easily across wildly divergent social scenes. I do the work I wish to do, which looks something like it did back then – but also includes lashings of time to write, even time to write things that I have no intention of publishing.

Sometimes saying no is the most appropriate choice.

10.28.2005 sunset

I exorcised some of my guilt over being a bad daughter (I moved to a different country and never call or send photographs) by taking my mother to the top of the Eiffel Tower to watch the sunset. The children tumbled about laughing while we stared down at the lights of the city.

Later we left my children and mother at the hotel and had dinner with various interesting Parisian people, including someone described as a businessman. I know lots of people who work for businesses, including but not limited to nefarious multinational corporations. But they all have technical jobs – mostly doing obscure research.

This fellow is employed to make business for a company, and also advise other companies on how to do business.

We were fascinated and pestered him with questions, but no clarity was achieved.

Twenty years ago, I would never have predicted that this would be my life.

10.27.2005 station

The Gare du Nord train station was unseasonably warm, the air muggy, too warm for a jacket. I walked down the stairs just ahead of Byron, who whispered You’re turning on the tourists.

I scowled at him and asked what do you mean?

He started to tell me that people were staring at my tattoo. Just then a disheveled drunken man walked up and started shouting what appeared to be compliments, before saluting my left arm. I just kept walking.

We found a table at a crowded cafe under the Eurostar departure gate, and before we could order a different drunken wreck of a man made his way to our table. He stood in front of me making elaborate lewd gestures as I stared straight through him. Two well-dressed elderly ladies at the next table laughed, and one turned in her chair to stare at me.

I am not accustomed to creating such a stir. As a general rule, people do not talk to me at all, and they certainly do not come right up and make sexually suggestive remarks about my body. I felt confused and queasy, and wondered out loud if All Soul’s Day makes people more crazy than usual. Byron shrugged.

The women at the next table stood to leave. The one who had been staring pointed at my shoulder, indicating that she wanted to see the whole design. I obliged, pulling my sleeve up to show the top of the dagger. She reached out a hand and traced the design, smiling, a gold tooth flashing. Her friend stood back, nodding.

We were all smiling when she started to roll up her sleeve. Byron laughed but I froze.

Before she had pulled her sweater far enough to show the first line I knew what she was about to show us: a serial number etched on her forearm in smudgy ink. I reached toward her reflexively, then flinched back. We did not need a translator to understand as she asked if we recognized what it was.

Concentration camp, Byron replied, and she nodded, still smiling, before turning to leave.

10.25.2005 mail

One of the perils of living on a different continent is the perpetual conundrum of mail. It is never certain that anything will arrive at all, let alone in a timely fashion.

Today I received a package mailed on August 13 from the states. Stella returned a book borrowed long ago, and presented me with a new cookbook. The note attached mentions that it is the end of their time in Olympia, that they are about to move to upstate New York. She scrawled Thanksgiving….?

I can’t wait to see their new home.

10.25.2005 oncology

Upon hearing that my referral for testing never went through, the GP pulled up the file, glanced through it, and agreed that I should have been seen more than a year ago. The fact that the referral was for oncology didn’t seem to strike him as an unusual glitch in the system; in fact, we had quite a nice conversation about the structure of health care trusts and the sneaky habits of a certain teaching hospital.

I now have the direct phone number for the oncologist, and approval to invoke my private insurance if there is any further delay in getting an appointment. Which is all well and good, except the bit where I really do not want to do the tests.

In more interesting news, we spent the weekend in London and showed my mother all sorts of things, including but not limited to Kensington Palace, where we had a tour of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon’s shabby 60’s era kitchen. I was very impressed that the private stairwells all had the same sort of rub and skid marks that haunt my own walls. Apparently even the royals can be somewhat lax when it comes to upkeep.

We left the children with their grandmother and the televised celebration of Trafalgar Day to meet up with Iain and Xtina for dinner and drinks. We had a fantastic time; they are hilarious and have excellent taste in restaurants. The pub they chose even featured a photograph of the Queen Mother pulling pints – with extraordinary glee.

Byron left for Paris this afternoon; on the way out the door he said that he couldn’t wait to get to the hotel and sleep. I retorted You aren’t going to stay in, you are going to go to a cafe and get picked up by strangers who will take you out to fabulous clubs and parties.

He opened his eyes very wide in an expression of mock innocence.

10.20.2005 appointments

I’m very annoyed that I have to go to the doctor next week; the appointment conflicted with my Paris trip and I am losing a day in France in favor of berating my recalcitrant GP. But it must be done: I am now three years overdue for one of my routine cancer tests. Mostly because I dislike the test.

I also dislike doctors, hospitals, and, well, having cancer.

This morning in the bath I remembered that when I started driving (the day it was legally possible, mostly because it was necessary to take myself to medical appointments) I had to wedge such things into my social routine.

It was normal to pick up assorted friends to go to a show, stop at the clinic on the way, tell everyone to wait for a bit, and pop in to have a couple dozen cancerous lesions sliced off my torso. Then back to the car without a word, and onward to see some random band.

From what I recall and what the more dependable witnesses report, I never mentioned what happened in the clinic, and certainly never let the whole stupid thing halt my schemes.

My behavior probably warped my personality, but what were the other options? Staying home, or crying? It was better by far to keep moving.

10.19.2005 view

Living in Cambridge has turned me into a curmudgeon: spending large portions of my daily life stepping around tourists with cameras is quite tiresome.

If I’m just trying to go to the grocery store for milk, why do I have to dodge (on average) two dozen attempts by strangers to get a picture of their head with the Trinity college chapel in the background? Usually I just trudge straight through the shot without noticing. This is, after all, where I live. If I accommodated every tour group I would never make it past the Round Church.

But then again, most of my trips over the last few months have been to quaint old towns. I’m just as guilty as any other tourist when it comes to the collection of personal souvenirs. Though arguably I am also much more lazy; I never take more than a handful of photographs, and usually those feature things like Soviet observation towers, rather than my own knotty head.

10.19.2005 view

Byron hadn’t been back to Granada since he lived in the Albaicin twelve or thirteen years ago. The place has changed – Sacromonte, for instance, appears to have been at least partially gentrified. We took lots of reading materials and some work but remained far too busy walking and talking:

The Alhambra at night with a full moon

Sunlight – how daring. The Abadia del Sacromonte:

A view of the city from the top of Sacromonte</a>.

The city wall and the moon

We saw a parade

Some graffiti

The Palacios Nazaries gardens

10.18.2005 slasher

His arrival in this world was a bit like a slasher flick, but luckily that afternoon was in no way symbolic. My thoughtful, eccentric son turned nine today.

We’re off to London to see Mary Poppins.

10.10.2005 fortune

I’ve been running (up or down? I do not know) to London recently. During one trip we stopped at a restaurant and the children exclaimed that our waiter looked exactly like the lead singer of Belle & Sebastian. But that is impossible they added.

Why? I asked.

Because he is famous!

I said Lots of famous people have regular jobs.

The children chorused But that is impossible!

I stared at them in amazement. They have met scores of people who are well-known for their creative work, but still need to keep their day jobs. I reeled through examples from our friend group, and from history, and eventually they understood.

But if my kids don’t get it, what about the rest of the world? This is a simple concept: fame and fortune are uneasy bedfellows. The amount of money a person earns from a book, album, or art very seldom has anything to do with the importance of the work.

10.08.2005 list

Lessons in Taxidermy is on the Forbes book list.

10.06.2005 details

Byron has been hanging out with Jeffrey and sending me random texts containing gossip about the indie rock underbelly of Seattle. None of which is appropriate for public dissemination, except a muddled brief report about a karaoke bar and Tori Spelling, but I couldn’t make out the details.

Texting is not a very sophisticated mode of communication.

Then my phone lit up with dozens of texts from Seattle to say that Tori Spelling was (right at that moment) sitting on Byron’s lap.

I was puzzled, but The Stranger confirms the incident, albeit not in detail.

I asked Byron Did Tori sit on your lap?

He thought for a minute, and said I don’t think so. But her sidekick sat on Jeffrey. 

Ah, youth.

10.05.2005 chat

I’m scheduled to do a Mothering Magazine live chat on October 19.

Hope some of you join in and ask me good questions!

10.04.2005 game

The tricky part of having a two-career egalitarian relationship is all in the details. For the most part we take turns traveling and rarely have any conflicts. Unfortunately, we both have events and meetings in the states in November and December.

No matter how we tried to arrange the schedule, there was simply no solution available. We can’t take the kids out of school and our friends here are all busy with work.

Normally I refuse to play the If we were in Portland…. game but could not resist the allure this time. If we were in Portland, my friends could help…

But wait! If I asked, wouldn’t they help me regardless of where I live? And might one of them actually quite enjoy visiting the UK?

The answer is yes: Marisa cheerfully agreed to come stay with the kids for a bit, and spend some time with us upon our return.

Marisa is one of my all-time favorite people.

10.03.2005 hit

Last night we went to see Howl’s Moving Castle; the children attended the world premiere during the film festival this summer, and insisted that I should not miss seeing it in the theatre. I resisted because I’m a cheapskate but they persevered; they said that we would have fun.

My son couldn’t read the captions fast enough so I craned my neck over his seat, whispering each line. Walking home from the (very good) movie, we stopped on the Jesus Green to look at the stars. He pointed out the constellations, and I saw the Big Dipper for the first time.

In other news, it was “Walk to School Week” and my son interpreted this to mean that he must not ride his bicycle.

This morning on the walk to school we watched as a cyclist was hit by a car. It could have been much more bloody than it was; the bus that could have run over him stopped.

I would have preferred not to have this object lesson to reinforce my fundamental views, namely, that it is important to strive for safety but also enjoy life when possible.

Anything could change at any moment.

Lessons in Taxidermy came out at about the same time as a couple of new novels about 9/11.

My book presented a true account of a child forced to confront danger and despair. The novels use imaginary scenarios and characters to explore an event the writers did not experience, except in the pages of a newspaper.

My book received uniformly good reviews; the novels are receiving some extremely hostile attention. I haven’t read all the novels so I can’t comment on the relative literary value of the books, but I think that I understand some of the public reaction.

It is not, as some writers have stated plaintively, that there is no longer a need for novels. The trouble with writing about 9/11 is that most people are not prepared to accept that an individual who was not harmed in the attack could profit off an event that caused so much collective agony.

This is in my opinion a more honorable position than the implied voyeurism (and explicit exhibitionism) of the memoir form. I did not want to profit on my childhood, or settle scores, but still felt compelled to tell the stories. Figuring out how to structure the book in a way that was not mercenary delayed publication by years.

Much of the gossip about these novelists hinges on the size of their advances. Why? Because the vast majority of writers do not earn a basic living wage. The normal human response to disparity is jealousy – which is of course pernicious and banal, so I will not address it.

As Byron often points out, you would have to be a capitalist to care.

The more important issue is a question of ethics: what is the responsibility of the writer, in the writing?

My book does not feature even a single reference to 9/11, and this was a deliberate choice. I thought that it would be cheap and lazy to use an event that I did not directly witness as a narrative theme. Beyond that, although I’ve written a memoir, I do not believe that most direct experience is appropriate to use for some obscure literary goal.

If I was trying to make a point with my own book, it is that human suffering is not symbolic. My pain, and rage, stand for nothing whatsoever. My body is simply a body.

This does not mean that the events of the past few years have not influenced my writing and life. Within weeks of the attack I was on a plane for Italy; there were perhaps a dozen other passengers and we all stared down in shock at the smoke billowing from Ground Zero. Wandering around Rome, I started to take the notes that form the foundation of Lessons in Taxidermy, and resolved that I would move to Europe at the first opportunity.

Back home again I watched the digital economy implode, and the print publishing world destabilize to a perilous degree. My small family felt the impact as advertising revenue vanished and companies across the world failed. Colleagues lost jobs, and I had to implement major changes in my business to adjust to the new normal.

Then someone I love nearly died in an accident. Then two people I loved committed suicide.

There is no way to communicate how desperately horrible that time was. I can say this with conviction because I tried, and failed, to write that book. I generated two hundred thousand words on the subject, not a bit of it interesting. That manuscript was junk, and I threw it away.

One of the primary difficulties in writing about 9/11 or the devastation of New Orleans is the fact that the events are not, essentially, extraordinary. They are tragic. They are inexcusable. But events of this scale and severity happen all the time, all around the world, and always will.

The experiences I describe in my book are not shocking, despite what some reviewers say: fear, hunger, confusion, and terror are normal features of too many lives. This is called the human condition. Only a society that is both spoiled and complacent would think otherwise, or fail so miserably to respond.

But I am a member of that society; worse yet, a citizen expatriate. I love my country but I left, a decision more wrenching than any other I’ve experienced. With the action I made a deliberate statement of intent: I moved to a different country because that was the only option that might offer my children material security.

This does not mean that I stopped thinking about what is happening at home. I’m just hampered in writing about it because of my belief that I am most qualified to address what I know is true. In other words, I am not a novelist.

I do not have an imagination sufficient to comprehend what evacuated people are dealing with right now; but in a way it is merciful that I cannot, because I am already stricken and adrift, my mind churning with all the hundreds of bureaucratic details.

To translate: I will not rush off to write a short story about people stranded in an attic while water rises as a way of expiating my own anxiety. I am a pragmatist, and must continue to reiterate that public health and safety should be of paramount concern to a wealthy nation.

I find solace in almost nothing except literature, and recently I’ve been reading books written during and just after WWII. Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, George Orwell, MFK Fisher, and scores of others certainly believed that their experiences were fit subjects for review, analysis, and even fiction.

Their books tell us something about what happened in those years; their ideas challenge us to debate the meaning of existence, and the responsibility of the writer, long after the lives have ended.

Should we ask whether current novelists are making an appropriate choice in writing about 9/11? Probably, but only if we also ask why so few people have dared attempt to render a literary account of this part of our history.

The decision to publish these books is not better or worse than the instinct that many people have to remain silent in the face of tragedy. My decision to exclude ideas, episodes, or people from a book about danger is no more or less ethical than any other decision made in the text.

Writers write, or don’t write, according to their own idiosyncratic desires.

Marguerite Duras asked Why do people write about writers? Surely their books should suffice.

But remember, she wasn’t just a novelist, and her life was not summed up by a colonial love affair. She is also the author and protagonist of La Douleur.

9.25.05 belief

Recently someone asked if we have any trips planned this autumn and we both reflexively answered no.

Then, upon reflection, we realized that Byron needs to venture out to York and Manchester, spend some time in Sweden, and pop over to Seattle. We’re both going to Spain and France. My mother will be visiting and I’ll take her on various escapades, as yet unspecified. I’m planning another stateside book tour. In fact, we travel so much that our suitcases sit half-packed at all times.

Why, then, do we both feel like we never go anywhere?

I have no definitive opinion. Although I should probably state that this itinerant existence is by no means as glamorous and thrilling as it might look from the outside.

Life doesn’t feel any different now than it ever did — and this is probably why I keep moving. I’m convinced, even with evidence to the contrary, that the next adventure will be the good bit.

This belief is of course useful when you lead a life complicated by chronic illness. If I allowed myself to remember all the reasons why I cannot move easily through the world, I would be incapacitated by fear.

The illnesses are nowhere near as difficult to manage as the frustration of living with a dysfunctional body.

9.23.05 drifting

Charlotte came to town on Friday to see an exhibition at the <a href=”http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/”>Scott Polar Institute</a>. Over lunch in a cafe decorated with images of sinister clowns, we had a lovely discussion about publishing and life and whatnot and she asked how I’m settling in England (or something along those lines).

I replied, truthfully, that I am still drifting between surprise and confusion.

To illustrate I told her where I had been all morning: a Church of England harvest festival ceremony in the Trinity College Chapel, listening to one hundred small children sing hymns in what might be described as posh accents.

This seems so improbable.

9.20.05 frenzy

London friends – you should all check out The Reading Frenzy on Saturday.

Chloe has always been a generous and amusing friend; I miss wandering through the store and hearing the latest news and gossip delivered in her dulcet voice. I also miss the store itself; her taste in books and knick-nacks is impeccable. My 3D wallet was stolen in Barcelona two years ago and I have never been able to replace it.

The contribution that Chloe has made to the lives and careers of countless artists, musicians, and writers is impossible to sum up. So, really — don’t miss the event!

9.9.05 day

Last year one of the terms under which I purchased the boat was a repudiation of the entire month of January. Instead of a birthday and cancer anniversary I now have Boat Day.

Which is today.

9.8.05 anxiety

Truman Capote wrote: Anxiety, as any expensive psychiatrist will tell you, is caused by depression; but depression, as the same psychiatrist will inform you on a second visit and for an additional fee, is caused by anxiety. I rotated around in that humdrum circle all afternoon…. when you’re in that kind of a sweat, the only lasting remedy is to ride with it: accept the anxiety, be depressed, relax, and let the current carry you where it will.

In the same passage he also decides that he is too upset to go out for food, and eats a moldy chocolate cake. He doesn’t mention whether or not he was popping pills, but there was definitely some hard alcohol mixed up in the whole scene.

I followed his essential advice, minus brandy and fungus, by laying out flat on the floor of the boat and reading Truman Capote on New Orleans:

Some cities will always remain wrapped boxes, containers of riddles never to be solved, nor even to be seen by vacationing visitors, or, for that matter, the most inquisitive, persistent travelers. To know such cities, to unwrap them, as it were, one has to have been born there…. of all secret cities, New Orleans, so it seems to me, is the most secretive, the most unlike, in reality, what an outsider is permitted to observe…

9.8.05 crime

There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when ‘our’ side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified — still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function.
–George Orwell
Notes on Nationalism

When people ask why I moved to England the invariable reply goes something like: I believe that a wealthy nation should provide free basic health care to all citizens. I moved to a place where that is true. This is the version I provide whether talking to a national broadcast audience, a dinner party, or a border guard.

The truth is of course more complicated and harder to address. There are fragments that might make a larger picture – the fact that I was fifteen years old when I started volunteering in a veterans home. The fact that, because basic health education was banned in my high school and condoms were not easy to obtain, I took on a personal crusade to distribute hundreds in the provincial school and town. The fact that as an undergrad I was encouraged to become a writer, but chose to study public policy and work at the health department.

The fact that I believed it was my personal responsibility to force an institution of higher education to fully implement the Americans with Disabilities Act within weeks of passing, and after a year of activism was hired by the school to write the policy. The fact that while many of my peers were partying, I took an advanced degree in public administration. The fact that I went on to a career implementing federal civil rights laws.

Even after I stopped working for the government I retained my essential commitment to service. I am not partisan to any political party; I am instead wedded to a larger idea of justice. This, to me, is mostly about health, safety, and civil rights. I would vote for any politician who has a track record of commitment to public infrastructures that protect the citizenry.

Since September of 2000 I have watched in appalled disbelief as the institutions that should protect my fellow citizens have been systematically dismantled. I have said, and honestly believe, that letting our activism focus on the war distracts us from the fact that all of the systems we have counted on are being reduced or eradicated.

Because I still have many friends who work in government I hear about all of the subtle and lethal changes – it is quite possible to destroy an entrenched public policy (like equal rights for people with disabilities) by simply refusing to issue the official opinions on implementation of rules.

For years I’ve rattled on about the fact that critical disaster relief services are underfunded or nonexistent. If my nation truly wishes to defend against terrorism, it should surely have adequate plans in place for mass evacuations — and should obviously have sufficient supplies of firefighters, ambulance drivers, nurses, and community police officers.

Not to mention all of the equipment, supplies, drugs, and blood that might be required if another American city is attacked. The fact that we do not is very difficult for me to understand; do the members of the radical right think that their own children will be somehow magically impervious to disaster?

I grew up in a military town. When I was poor and desperate I married and became a military spouse. I have shopped at the commissary. I have used military hospitals. I have supported our armed forces, absolutely without question, even when I did not intellectually agree with their assignments. I have been critical of base closures, and have consistently opposed reductions in force — because a standing army is central to national security.

When it became clear that our forces, after many reductions, were so stretched that we could not viably fight overseas without involving the National Guard, I railed endlessly to whoever would listen. Because the National Guard is supposed to protect our shores; the National Guard is supposed to be around to protect us in times of national crisis. They cannot do so if they have been sent elsewhere.

I asked, again and again, What if we have an earthquake? Flood? Wild fires?

It is a matter of simple math to realize that if you send a third of your available military overseas, a third are ramping up to go, and a third are new recruits (if that is even true these days – recruitment is down), you are asking for trouble.

Watching as public health and safety systems were slowly eroded made my heart hurt, literally. I had more panic attacks in 2003 than I had in the previous ten years combined – because I can in fact imagine what it looks like when the world falls apart.

But I did not want to move away, even when the opportunity was presented. Although it is not necessary for me to live in the United States to continue my work (I can write anywhere), it seemed somehow wrong to leave, so long as I was safe.

The critical moment for me came when veterans services, which are by all accounts woefully inadequate, were cut once again. When I heard the news it honestly felt like my brain buckled.

If those of our citizens who should be most honored are no longer entitled to the basic services their valor has earned, that single fact has more meaning than anything else. The United States, personified by our presidential administration and all the elected politicians who consented to this travesty, made a clear statement. Of faith, if you will.

I knew, in a visceral and often painful way, that the next disaster would be a colossal tragedy. I left the United States because I was frightened and weary. I knew that I might not survive a significant natural or man-made disaster without a unified public safety system in place. I knew that even if I could, it would hurt too much to watch my neighbors die.

This is a classic immigration story: my family moved because another country offered us greater material security. In doing so we’re no more selfish than any of the people who streamed out of Europe in times of trouble to create the United States, my own great-grandparents included. The main difference is our destination.

My country does not want me – no matter what my accomplishments I am just another anonymous vulnerable person, along with all the veterans, the elderly, the poor, the sick, the disenfranchised.

What happened in New Orleans is, simply, criminal. There is no way to excuse the obscene and immoral way that our nation failed to protect its citizens. I am shocked, but not surprised, that anyone would try to argue otherwise.

9.4.05 enigma

The practical objection to a holiday in the United Kingdom is simple: it costs more for four people to stay in a decrepit seaside town for a few days than it would to fly to Spain. This is an inexplicable and unavoidable fact – and I am a cheapskate.

Beyond that, both adults in the family travel so often the idea of being home is actually more seductive than any other option. I mostly just want to be on the boat. But still, if you call it a holiday, you must fill up the time with some activities that are not part of the daily routine.

On the first official day of our vacation we walked to Cineworld to catch a matinee showing of High Society. This remake of The Philadelphia Story was definitely a bad idea; casting Bing Crosby in the Cary Grant part? Frank Sinatra in place of Jimmy Stewart? Grace Kelly where Katharine Hepburn should be? Appalling, really – but then they also decided to make it a sort of quasi-musical with Louis Armstrong and his band providing narration, which made up for the rest.

Seeing it on the large screen was also quite a treat; the theatre was nearly empty so nobody minded as we giggled through the film. Though the sexual politics of the original script seemed both more banal and more sinister, as depicted by Bing in his cap.

When Grace, addled with a hangover, about to marry one man and in love with ol’ Bing, thinks that she has slept with Sinatra, she says (to paraphrase): I’m an unholy mess of a girl!

Bing replies (I’m approximating as I did not take notes) now that isn’t even good conversation. This is hilarious, and adds a twist to all of my childhood memories of his boring family Christmas specials.

The elder child has limited reserves of energy because of her illness (for those of you following that narrative track she has been diagnosed and it won’t kill her, so we feel deeply relieved and very lucky), but the youngest was amenable to joining us on some excursions.

We took him to the Museum of Zoology, the Whipple, the the Sedgwick, and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. We are not the sort of parents who march children around, forcing them to appreciate things, and we never bother with the activities museums (wrongly, in our case) imagine children will enjoy. We just drift and offer interpretations when asked; this is much easier when the museums are free and empty, as was true in all of the facilities we visited.

Our son, who at age eight stands as tall as my chin, is a studious sort of child. He is quiet and conscientious and made a complete tour of each room before declaring an opinion, which usually displayed some piece of arcane scientific knowledge I did not know he possessed. A few hours after we left the zoology museum he asked to go back to see one of the skeletons; he wanted to make a sketch and needed the real model to assure that his depiction was anatomically correct. And yes, he does use all of these ten cent words.

I remember being chided for having a large vocabulary as a child – I guess it is just a genetic predilection. My son looks like Byron but acts like me; the girl is my clone but acts like her father (either one, they are…. similar). Byron and I wandered around shivering in the excessive air conditioning, looking at the taxidermy specimens, while the boy very patiently completed his drawing.

Of course, all of the social activity meant that my email slid out of control again, but this is a consequence of holidaying. Byron had to sneak off to check his. He texted me on the boat with the news from the states, which was grim, made grimmer by the immediate media focus on gas prices.

As the days passed and the trauma increased we both retreated into a state of repressed depression. We couldn’t talk about any of it because our son is too sensitive to deal with news of this nature, particularly given that he knows we live on the edge of the Fens. It has already occurred to him that the town could be flooded, but he feels reassured by the fact that we live on a boat. He knows that I would collect him before being washed downstream.

I tend to wait until after a crisis passes to be upset, but this spring and summer were awash with sorrow over the tragic death of a colleague, the wrenching loss of a beloved aunt, yet another cousin diagnosed with cancer, the bombings in London, and sundry other things I have not yet had time to think about.

The news from New Orleans hit me hard, and by that I mean in every traumatized neural pathway, every broken bone, every scar. Whenever people weren’t looking, I was crying.

It is hard to maintain a facade of calm and competence, but I believe that it is necessary to try, in part because I know that life offers an unending supply of sadness and you have to create the little bits of happiness on the margins.

I decided to take everyone out on the river. I needed petrol, which requires a three hour journey to the marina at the Fish and Duck. We sailed through countryside: flat, endless fields, sheep, cattle, herons — this is the best part about living in England. Life on the boat is serene, even when it is mucky and hard.

The children lounged around in the cabin or sat on top of the boat reading. Byron and I took turns steering, which gave me another chance to be astonished by my newly found physical strength, as the rattle and pull of the engine shook up my ruined arm without a hint of pain.

It was too sunny for me to be outside, but I put on my straw hat (there has been some debate as to whether it is actually a hat, or a decorative planter) and slathered the exposed bits of my body with sunblock every fifteen minutes. By the end of the first day I was literally filthy, covered in dirt and spider webs and streaks of grease.

I think it is safe to say that I have never before, in my entire life, been dirty. My mother reports that I was even pristine as an infant – insisting on changing clothes if a speck of food soiled my dress. It was quite honestly amazing to find myself, at age thirty-four, piloting a canal boat through rural England, covered in grime.

We bought diesel at a pub older than the country we are citizens of and set off for Ely, where we found a mooring on Lavender Walk. It is nice to live in a place where your surname is considered normal. It was too late to visit the Cathedral or Oliver Cromwell’s house but we walked through parks and churchyards as the sun set.

You know all of those religious paintings in American churches, that show fantastically unimaginable light streaming through clouds? It looked like that.

We settled down for the night as a lightning storm rolled into to town, lighting the sky above us, and fell asleep to the sound of rain hitting the water.

After a (for the adults) hugely entertaining visit to the chandlery Byron did assorted repairs on the boat to prepare her for winter. For some reason Ely has a large population of Muscovy ducks, and a very strong and menacing contingent of swans. At one point there were fully ten gathered at the hatch, and I had to close it against the lunging beaks. Before I moved here I would not have believed it, but swans are scary.

The trip home to Cambridge took most of a day, with minor stops at pubs and to fish my hat out of the water. We met some very interesting people going through the locks, and moored at home just as the light disappeared.

On the last day of our holiday we took a bus to Milton Keynes, and from there a train, to reach Bletchley Park. For anyone concerned with the history of computer science, code-breaking, or WWII tradecraft, visiting the huts at Bletchley is akin to a religious pilgrimage.

This does not happen to fully describe either of my children, who enjoyed looking at the Enigma machines and then spent the rest of the day hanging out on the playground.

Byron and I wandered around in a daze, trying to see as much as possible. The complex, for obscure reasons, offers a model railway and toy museum along with the diplomatic telegraphy hut, the war pigeon display, and a huge room crammed with Churchill memorabilia. Oh, and they also have a photography museum.

It was the oddest and somehow most endearing assemblage I’ve seen in this country. Though I haven’t traveled much.

Several years ago my friend Polly turned up at one of my parties toting an infant she had given birth to in her home about twenty hours earlier. She was, as was her way, completely unfazed. In fact, she was probably more energetic than the rest of us. This seemed to set an impossibly high standard.

But this morning we went to a brunch in Grantchester to visit Don and Barbara and wish her a happy birthday – and they introduced us to their brand new baby boy, born at lunchtime yesterday after a quick dash in a van and twelve minutes in the hospital.

We sat in the garden of a thatched cottage, toasting her with champagne, marveling at her hospitality and cheer.

8.27.05 inky

The most recent issue of the East Village Inky features a story about our recent visit to New York City… including an illustration of me sitting on the beach at Coney Island. This is a rare spectacle, you should definitely buy a copy.

On the next page Ayun offers a drawing of an additional adventure we had while standing in line at Nathan’s Famous. She did in fact try to do some kind of crazy yoga dance, and then went tumbling backwards before landing on a pram.

What the illustration fails to capture is the fact that we were standing in an oppressive (and potentially violent) crowd. The bit I didn’t get at the time was her motivation to start the shimmy.

Can this really be Issue Number 28? My goodness.

8.25.05 holiday

Byron flew to San Francisco on Saturday, and arrives back in England today at lunchtime. During his whirlwind visit he presented a paper at a conference, had meetings with various colleagues, went on madcap shopping adventures to track down new trousers, spent a few evenings with Jen K, and drove to Sonoma for an overnight house-party-river-adventure fifth anniversary celebration for Hiya and Jonathan. It is safe to assume that he also spent a lot of time talking to his interns, checked in code several times each day, and probably thought of some new important mathematical innovation.

How did he manage all this? I doubt that he slept more than a few hours all week. This is his normal routine, at home or away.

This schedule is not sustainable. His primary stated reason for moving to England was to relax, but he has already managed to forfeit five weeks of paid leave, because he is too busy to go on holiday. We both have a fairly demented (and very American) notion that we are on vacation when we get to travel for work. We return home from intense trips and wonder why we are so tired.

This is the end of what people call summer hols for the children. It has also been raining steadily most days. The most ambitious thing we’ve attempted was a dash to Ely one rare sunny afternoon to look at the Cathedral (I haven’t yet managed to find the church with Etheldreda’s withered hand, but my children do not enjoy such morbid curiosities).

Other than that, I’ve been sitting in my pajamas on the boat, researching places to go for an official holiday trip. Various friends have offered extremely helpful tips; now I just need to choose and book a hotel room before I give up in confusion over distances and train schedules.

I’ve also been reading the hilarious A Fete Worse than Death  (dunno how to make the accent mark) by Iain Aitch. This is possibly the closest I will get to the sort of holiday I would enjoy, as my family members consistently veto excursions to view things like ferret racing and historical re-enactments.

They couldn’t be coaxed to go to Grantchester to watch local women being rolled around in barrels – even when we thought one of our friends would be in a barrel. Though to be fair, half the family would prefer not to go outside. Ever.

8.18.05 dates

Byron went to Estonia for a conference, and we tagged along because Tallinn sounded interesting. Byron was away all day and most evenings with his colleagues, and the rest of us huddled in a hotel room avoiding the rain. The children watched Nickolodeon shows dubbed into Russian, I walked around fetching groceries, and we read a lot of books.

One evening I caught up with Byron in the market square, and met an Italian man who lives in Iowa City.

Cesare was surprised – he said me that he heard me speaking on NPR without knowing that I was married to one of his friends.

The observation that our world is excessively small still holds, even so far from home.

Tallinn is in fact beautiful – splendid even – with an old town center that has not been developed into a boring homogenous shopping mall. I took a great deal of pleasure in my walk up and down Toompea and through All-Linn in search of comestibles.

We went to the oldest functioning pharmacy in Europe, and a marzipan museum, where we bought a kitty to take pride of place on the girl’s birthday cake. But because I couldn’t find a cake she wasn’t allergic to, the kitty was destined to go home with us and make an appearance on an organic cake – and because she was gracious about the whole thing I knew that I would end up throwing not one but three parties. My daughter is now fifteen years old.

This is perplexing, but nonetheless true. She likes us, which is an honor.

Her birthday also marks the mysterious moment when Byron and I decided that we didn’t in fact hate each other, and despite (or because) of the scandal it caused, we’ve been together since that day twelve years ago.

When he was finished with his conference and work dinners we left the kids at the hotel and walked around the old city pretending that we were on dates. I’ve never been on real dates, and I’m not sure that he has either; but we persevered.

Byron took one day off and we rode the high-speed ferry over to Helsinki to visit his friend Vappu, a girl who attended the same alternative high school as an exchange student. She showed us around the market, and her apartment, and it was eerie to be in a place where people wandering the streets look just like my relatives.

I didn’t see myself reflected in the population, but I did see dead ringers for all of my aunts and half of my cousins. My charismatic elder child exerted her charm on our hosts, the boy fell asleep on a tram, and we bought paper doll books before waving goodbye. The border guard on the Finnish side attempted to banter with me, which was less painful than normal because we were both equally awkward and slow in our quips.

On the last day we went back to the beach and the boys built sandcastles with ferocious intensity. I went wading in the Baltic in the shadow of an abandoned Soviet watchtower, clutching my skirts as high as possible. Then my daughter and I sat hunched against the wind, watching the engineers of the family exerting serious effort to build a canal.

8.14.05 crack

Our Seattle house was situated above these steps; the people in the picture are my old neighbors:

Crack Staircase.

Gee, I loved that house. Especially coming from a neighborhood in Portland where, when we moved in, it was normal to see corpses on the corner. Or have a high speed chase end in your yard. Or spend major holidays sitting in the stairwell, waiting for the celebratory gun volleys to halt.

Everything is relative; I thought we got off lightly in Seattle when we were robbed – and the thief only took a birthday cake and a bottle of wine.

8.10.05 everyone

Over the weekend the older child begged for a trip to London; she desperately needed to see the Mr. Clement show before it closed. I was opposed in theory not only because of the bombings, but because I do not wish to see undercover police officers shoot innocent people in the head. But since I walk through life anticipating imminent destruction I rarely let these things dictate my actions.

It seemed statistically improbable that we would get blown up.

The first thing we saw upon entering King’s Cross was a poster for the film Me and You and Everyone We Know. My daughter stopped, pointed, and exclaimed Hey! I was in one of her movies!

I nodded and nudged her to move because she was blocking pedestrian traffic. But the poster appeared around every corner, in every tube station, throughout the day. Byron didn’t notice because he was lost in his own internal world of maths but the small boy, who appeared in The Swan Tool, counted dozens of posters throughout the day.

The children were nicely distracted by the posters, and the macabre toys they purchased at the store featuring the Mr. Clement show. They did not even notice that we were evacuated from Liverpool Street Station.

8.8.05 video

Oh, glorious day – Cambridge has a new independent movie store! Mr. Stacey’s Most Excellent Video Emporium is located on Mill Road, which to me may as well be on the other side of the planet, but it is there! I visited, I browsed, I borrowed. I am pleased.

Today I watched Y Tu Mama Tambien. Byron asked me what I thought of the film and my first response was to say I’m glad I have never known boys like that.

I do not enjoy scatological humor, or any of the other characteristics of normal teenage boys. But seconds later, I realized that I was mistaken. Because in my teens I dated someone who looked and acted like the Gael Garcia Bernal character; in fact, my duplicitous boyfriend was prettier, wilder, more intense – not least because we both survived those years. He was also more damaged than the character on the screen, and that is the point where I say goodbye and forget. I will never talk to him again, but I do appreciate what we learned in those years.

The film itself? It was a nice thing to watch on a rainy afternoon after a week of dealing with sick family members. I haven’t decided if the main message is the idea that one is only truly liberated when death is imminent, or if the film conveys the concept that the punishment for freedom is death. Either way – we all die, so it doesn’t really matter.

I also find it extremely fascinating and cool that Alfonso Cuaron directed the best yet Harry Potter movie.

8.8.05 sturdy

During my first visit to England I sat on the banks of the river next to the Fort St. George, staring at the narrowboats, and announced that I wanted one. After we moved here I went to the Boat Open Day and decided that the idea was feasible; within a few weeks I had purchased one, and it has been a singular joy. When I have to travel for work I dream about my boat. Everywhere I go, I wonder could I moor my boat here?

The idea of letting strangers walk through the boat was too difficult (for many reasons) so I went to the latest Open Day as an observer once again. But we bought Camboaters shirts and sat idly on the decks of other boats, talking about mooring policies and eating biscuits.

One of my new boat friends said So you are a writer?

I nodded.

He asked What do you write?

I replied (as is my custom – or bad habit) Books.

Everyone laughed — which is why I like the people who live on boats. Other sorts of people are confused or offended by my natural reticence.

When Stevie visited she consistently tried to help me with the small tasks I could not perform when we lived in the same town, and for the first time in my life I could say Don’t worry, I’m strong.

I could not reliably turn a doorknob or hold a paintbrush three years ago, but now my wrecked arm is sturdy enough to hold a steel-hulled canal boat against the shore.

Jen K. mailed photographs after her latest visit and when the children opened the envelope they said That is what you really look like, mom.

8.4.05 blancmange

The August 1 issue of The New Yorker has a review of the Michael Winterbottom film 9 Songscontaining this quote:

There is a fine film to be made about the retreat from worldly obligation into erotic rite, and Brando and Bertolucci made it in 1972. But what ‘Last Tango in Paris’ proved was that our skin-grazing view of a body makes us more, not less, enthusiastic to grasp the shape of the soul that it enshrines. Sex, in other words, is a surprising revelation of character, and when the characters in question, like those in ‘9 Songs,’ are drab to the point of inane, their lovemaking becomes as heated and gripping as blancmange.

Now, setting aside the fact that this is hilarious (and I had to look up the recipe for blancmange), I doubt very much that the director of the film was trying to make any large statements about the nature of the human soul. I hadn’t read anything about the movie when I saw it, and while it was surprising in many ways, my primary response was disbelief that it passed the censors uncut with an 18 certificate.

This movie, friends, is the first mainstream manifestation of the tenets of what might be described as alternative-feminist porn. My eyebrows were raised less by what happened on-screen (multiple scenes of real explicit consensual sex and a female lead allowed to enjoy herself without negative narrative consequences) than by the fact that anyone can rent the movie from the indie shelf of their local videostore.

Whereas one of the main criticisms of the film in other publications is that it is not porn, because the action is kind of boring. Which makes me wonder: have these writers watched any porn lately? I think not.

Maybe there was some kind of artistic statement underlying the whole scheme (Winterbottom originally wanted to make a film of the Houellebecq novel Platform which might be interpreted to contain philosophy of … some kind). But in practice, the movie basically shows an extremely normal no-hope relationship based around physical contact and rock shows.

One hopes that this is how many people conduct their lives in their teens and twenties. One knows that the average mid-30’s scientist is more likely to be worried about marriage and mortgages (though I can attest that the British Antarctic survey folks tend to be marginally hotter than other flavors of scientist – they’re the extreme sports-people of the research community). But fundamentally, there is no plot and no attempt to make a grand statement. Except, perhaps, for the whole thing about screening real sex at Cannes.

The seriously depressing thing about this movie followed the UK release. The established (former child star) mid-30’s male actor, Kieran O’Brien, rightfully proclaimed It wasn’t difficult for me to make and I’m really proud of it…. I was quite prepared to talk to anybody anywhere about how proud I was to work on the film and how good it was… I was always the opposite of ashamed.

The young female actor, Margot Stilley, said It isn’t shocking… If you know you are going to watch a film like this, it’s not abrasive. It’s normal sex that everyone has, not crazy stuff.

Of course, it was Margot Stilley who was pursued by tabloids, watched her family being harassed by the press, and eventually asked that her name be withdrawn from the promotion of the film.

Now that the movie is being screened in the states I presume that there will be even more backlash. C’mon, people. Double standards are so tacky.

8.3.05 sweater

Gabriel confirmed that Maria Fabulosa offered the cowboy hat as a bribe so he would stay on the Breeder tour; but he also reminded me that I sweetened the deal by giving him the best sweater I have ever owned. Four years later he still wears the thing, so I asked him to describe it:

Bee,

The skanky sweater is a cardigan, a little short in the waist and sleeve, pale brown and a wee bit stripy, fairly fuzzy and somewhat itchy. It does have a few holes and occasionally smells a bit off. It is of a three material blend that no one can identify. Against all expectation, it may be the sexiest piece of clothing I’ve ever owned.

I guess it was the combination of sweater and hat that inspired the old man in the Castro to call me a freak when I walked past. To my knowledge this is the only time a stranger has audibly referred to me as a freak.

Love,
Gabriel

We all pitched in to feed and entertain the roadies, but later I contrived to provide Gabriel with an official wage. After we got home I tracked down and purchased more than two hundred of the small books he converts to tiles.

One of those became the cover art for Lessons in Taxidermy.

I woke up to what Byron calls perfect weather: another grey, overcast English day. I met Byron in the market for tea and then we sat on the wall in front of King’s, listening to the bells of Great St. Mary’s and watching hoards of tourists stream past Senate House.

We talked idly about what I should do as my “public risk” for the reading in November and he suggested I take volunteers from the audience to kiss (because I’ve slept with more people than I’ve kissed and symmetry is important to my obsessive mind). But that would involve fixing my lipstick in the middle of an event. Which would be annoying. I’ll have to come up with a better scheme.

Byron left for work and I wandered through the market, buying chorizo and olive oil from a man who is shutting down his stall and going home to Malaga. I stopped at the bread cart for a loaf of calamata, then at the olive stall for tapenade and pesto; the olive lady helpfully informed me that she will not be around next weekend so I bought extra.

Today was the first day I’ve made it to market while the organic vegetable people are still stocked up; it was thrilling to pick through bins of lettuce and cucumbers and kale before handing my coins over.

7.17.05 parenthetically

The whole family is mad for KTS: he is and always has been more scathing, hilarious, and decent than almost anyone I know. Of course he denies the claim (the first time we spoke after years of silence he apologized for being such a jerk) but he is a truly good person. The proof of this is the fact that my children adore him and refuse to share his company. We parents were dispatched on errands so the younger set could have the guest all to themselves.

Our friendship started in an odd way, on the periphery of a youth leadership program run along the lines of a cult (though I may be biased in this view). It was random chance that put us in the same — er — cohort group, and we probably would not have talked then if not for the fact that our leader lost one of the kids; everyone fanned out to find her but KTS and I sat on a boulder, reckoning she was already dead.

The people in charge of the summer institute kept us awake most of the time, cut off much of our contact with outside friends and family, exposed us to books and films designed to breach our pre-existing world views, sent us to watch war games on a military base, marched us to the gay pride rally, put us through media training, and generally did whatever they could to incite our nascent political consciousness, in whichever direction would prove most unsettling.

We were challenged (some would say coerced) to do whatever was absolutely impossible; my fear of public speaking was forever extinguished by the fact that my graduation speech ended up on the evening news.

The institute was brilliant, and dreadful.

Two days after I went home, KTS came over to watch movies with some of my friends; I don’t think I have ever asked him if he knew that my boyfriend and best friend were hiding in the next room kissing while we innocently sat on the couch watching a bad gothic film about Lord Byron.

The boyfriend was a burden I had been trying to shed, so I wasn’t terribly upset, although the guest list for the next day was changed to exclude the best friend (for her appalling manners; she could have had the boyfriend if she had asked nicely). In the end I was also too harassed to pick up KTS, and only four of us ended up in the car on the day of the accident.

KTS turned up at the hospital and sat next to my bed in intensive care for an entire day, listening to me talk fast through a fractured face. He did not wince; he did not display anything except sarcastic wit. It was exactly what I needed.

That crazy year played out in various sinister and horrible ways. Some people might have found refuge in music, art, or religion. I found a different One True Way: I distracted myself by starting a nonprofit.

I may not have been sane, but that didn’t stop me from working endlessly to create the Youth Initiative, to travel around the state and meet kids in every high school, to do a hundred or a thousand sundry tasks at the service of an abstract goal. It was easier than staying home. My friends from the institute didn’t understand about the accident; nobody knew about the cancer. The work let me be a different person, and that person survived.

KTS shows up in this narrative as the amenable albeit exasperated boy who was embroiled in my plans. I presume he was bored; there isn’t really much to do where we grew up. But regardless, it is baffling now to think of everything he did at my bidding: show up for countless committee meetings, help set up and run symposiums, speak at the breakfast meetings of fraternal organizations. I mean, really; I even made him join the Sea Scouts (so we could get access to a warehouse on the waterfront). I have no idea why he went along with my schemes. He doesn’t even remember doing it.

There were one hundred people at the summer institute, and four of us went on to attend the same college. We didn’t have much to do with each other; we were all trying to establish adult identities. The strangest thing about my story happens at this juncture — because Byron met KTS before he met me, at that small red hipster house (it had a name that I cannot recall) that was later torn down.

Byron was hanging out and KTS showed up with a mix tape. Memorable? Not really, but for some reason the incident lodged in various brains. Next Byron met and developed a crush on Buffy (who could resist? Nobody I knew), the genius mathematician girl James dated during and after the institute. The first time I glimpsed Byron I was trying to convince her to eat, while he was laying across her bed playing chess. Then Byron moved into a house where James was already resident, without connecting any of the other three people. Then I showed up.

I didn’t put together any of the connections until this weekend, as Byron and KTS were stretched out underneath the dining room table chatting, when it struck me as statistically improbable.

It was a small town but not that small; I have scores of friends now who were there at the same time and we never encountered each other back in the day. Byron did not meet my other friends from high school, or my stalker, or my best friend, or the boy I would marry that year. Our lives intersected only with fellows of the institute (who mostly were not talking to each other).

Seventeen years later, KTS is a reformed DJ and determined medievalist. We walked around this old city and he told me more than I had ever hoped to know about the place. I’m so pleased that he is my friend.

7.14.05 pleasure

My experiment in pure hedonism was bound to fail. When not occupied by work or family I am capable of wandering around in a haze of sensation. But that only takes up a portion of the day; at some point the fugue state lifts and it is inevitable: I start to think about something abstract. This week it was the politics of pleasure.

Stevie has a peculiar ability to ask questions that solicit secrets, and KTS shares memories of things best forgotten (he even, unlike me, remembers the names of the principal characters).

I’ve always done exactly what I liked, but I am intrinsically ethical and conscientious; I believe that life should be fair and fun.

In fact, I could never enjoy one without the other. I wish that more people felt the same.

Stevie and I walked all over Cambridge singing chorus songs. Between us we should have known at least a dozen, if not more, but the memories have faded. It was startling to observe how much can be forgotten; we practiced together every week for years but can’t get through an entire song without stumbling.

I asked Did you know that I cried when I left?

She replied No.

Of course this means that she probably does not know how hard it was to leave.

That final weekend I went to the coast for Writer’s on the Edge. The event was in a theater and after I read three passages from the Lessons in Taxidermy manuscript Marisa did a set. Later we went out to a bar with our friends and a crew of local artists and musicians. Someone offered me drugs, for the first time in my life, and I was so surprised I was probably too sharp in the way I refused.

We walked along the beach with a bright moon illuminating the dunes and ocean, sat on driftwood and watched Anna Ruby and Stevie dancing in the moonlight. As the others talked quietly I put my head down and cried silently, tears dropping on the sand.

Marisa and Jody were sharing our room and everyone laughed before falling asleep; I turned my head on the pillow and cried quietly.

There were mad escapades on the beach in the morning and when Stevie and AR embraced me for the final time I started to cry, tears slipping down the side of my face, obscured by snarls of hair. As we pulled out of the parking lot our friends flashed us, and then we were on the road.

Byron and Marisa tactfully ignored my tears. I gripped the armrest and cried and cried for hours. It was all I could do not to break into wrenching sobs.

Eventually the tears stopped; we found a roadside burrito stand and watched in baffled amazement as a girl at the next table vomited and her friends just kept eating their lunch. We got back on the road and talked and laughed for the rest of the ride.

I knew that I would see everyone again, and that the ocean would always be there.

Stevie is remarkable for many reasons, but singular amongst my friends in that she once forced me to admit that I love her. I don’t throw that word around easily, no matter how strong the feeling; there are people I care about equally who have never heard me profess any emotion whatsoever.

Now she has gone home again. I’ll miss her.

7.11.05 festival

In other news, the film festival has a series of Studio Ghibli features, and last night we went to see Whisper of the Heart.

This film would have my eternal allegiance just for the use of Take Me Home, Country Roads as a central plot element. But the depiction of love based on career competition was extraordinary.

The idea that relationships can not only survive separation but thrive on the challenge was more true (for me at least) than any movie I’ve seen in recent memory. The movie suggests that knowing people with huge transgressive aspirations will force you to want more, do more, achieve more, feel more.

Seems pretty accurate to me.

7.04.05 independence

Many of our conversations over the weekend centered on figuring out how we feel about living in a small calm university town. Before we arrived various people were worried; they tried to warn us that we would not be able to maintain our hectic lives in this setting. More than one told us we were insane to come here.

We rode our bikes along the tow path, past the Baits Bite Lock, talking about how our lives have changed. While it is true that there isn’t much going on in town, this means that we have lavish amounts of time to do our work. When we aren’t working we ride bicycles, wander through cemeteries, eat picnics in parks, and drift along on the river.

Our daily life is in all respects more satisfying than the way we lived in the states; our careers are exponentially more interesting and rewarding; our children are flourishing; we have lots of new friends. We can go home whenever we like, and many of our old friends visit us here. I have created a new and independent space for myself on the boat.

I do feel somewhat nostalgic for what we left behind. I could call the feeling homesickness, but that word doesn’t have much resonance right now. I’ve never really belonged anywhere, and claim no affiliation with any community. I have made enormous emotional investments in friendships with people who are never around, and this arrangement suits me. The truth is that I’ve always felt almost exactly how I feel now; the difference is that my rootless ways were never visible to others.

I’ve been sad and even despondent at various points in the process. I have even, secretly, cried. But I know that I’m lucky. I also know that the amazing crazy fun times in the past had nothing to do with geography. Those other cities were not more fun than this one; I just threw more parties back then.

Yesterday I opened the cupboards that store the remnants of my wardrobe. I gave away hundreds of dresses before we moved, and dozens were ruined in transit, but there are a few left. I haven’t worn them in years but I picked through, pulling out the best ones, remembering the trips and performances. At the very bottom of the cupboard I found my favorite dress, a blue wraparound so well-worn the unraveling seams can no longer be repaired.

I wore the dress during my first trip to Paris with Byron, when a sudden gust of wind undressed me in a park, much to the delight of passerby. Later we had a fabulous dinner and were befriended by an elderly man and his companion, who declared that she was a whore.

I wore it on the Breeder tour; there is a picture of me with Gabriel, laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. I wore it when I covered the door at various events, stuffing cash in my cleavage for lack of pockets.

I wore it to the formal wedding of a good friend, and took Stevie Ann as my date; it didn’t occur to me that I would scandalize anyone with an outfit cut so low my red undergarments were on full display.

When Gabriel and I ran away to Italy for a month I took the dress along, though I was not wearing it the day we stared down at the swans on the Arno and I declared that it was necessary to move to Europe.

I pulled the dress out and put it on, then we cycled out to Grantchester for a fabulous garden party.

One year ago today we moved to England.

This new life is brilliant.

Happy Independence Day.

We rode out to Fen Ditton and sat cross-legged at the edge of the river, drinking wine from plastic cups and watching the May Bumps. For those who might be confused, this is an event that used to happen in May (along with the Balls) and nobody bothered to change the name.

The basic idea is that rowing teams race toward town, trying to bump the boat ahead of them. If a boat is touched by another it is out of the race. Or something along those lines. The most interesting thing about the whole event is how shockingly athletic the teams are; I spend all of my time on the river and still had no idea.

During the May Balls (translation: each college throws a big party, kind of like a prom, but way more elaborate) the city was suddenly full of youngsters in black tie or ballgowns. The boys appeared more confident than they normally do but most of the girls didn’t exactly know how to wear fancy outfits; they looked so fragile in their silks and satins, shoulders hunched, tottering on heels.

Each of these parties involves massive decadence of a variety I have never before witnessed, including fireworks displays and partying until dawn – all month. Everyone else is used to the phenomenon but we were bemused and spent quite a bit of time stretched out in the middle of Jesus Green, watching the sky light up.

According to the BBC, the temperatures here were higher than Greece or Miami or anywhere else except Egypt. I had to carry a parasol and still scuttled from one spot of shade to the next. Plus it was windy; I’ve lived here nearly a year and I’m still not used to the fact that my skirts are constantly flying up. I’ve never lived in a place this windy – that is simultaneously too hot.

Midsummer Fair brought an encampment and huge rowdy crowds to the commons. In the past there has been trouble with vandalism so all of the boats moved — which is complicated, because there isn’t enough room for us elsewhere. Some people went above the lock, others double moored, and many boats left town entirely. I couldn’t leave but some boats shuffled along to make space for me to moor.

Between the solstice, the full moon, the raging parties, the fair, and the oppressive heat, people started to act a little strange. There were fights, and half-dressed people rolling around making out in every park, and strangest of all, some folks decided to swim in the river.

I was surprised that anyone would want to jump in the lock. I was shocked when I saw people jumping off the Victoria Bridge into what might be the most shallow stretch of the river. To put this in context, it is a lot like jumping off a typical American freeway overpass into a mud puddle.

One day while I was riding my bicycle and worrying about my sick kid a young gentleman who might be described by a newspaper as a “yob” (I can’t translate this; the word says it all) jumped in front of my bike in a partially jokey, mostly harassing way. The point, I presume, was to make me stop.

Unfortunately for him, he picked the wrong female to bother. I didn’t pause or think, I just turned my wheel directly toward his gut and ran him off the path. He stumbled away, hands up, and his friend said admiringly nice glasses.

Father’s Day arrived and the children presented Byron with a DVD of the first season of Knight Rider. Belated best wishes to anyone else who holds that honorary title!

6.18.05 box

It has been brilliantly sunny and hot enough that I had to abandon my normal summer outfit of long sleeved black shirts. I don’t like to wear t-shirts featuring the magazine or my books, and today the first suitable option I encountered was a Chorus shirt.

Dwayne designed and cut the stencil of two hands clasping while we were all camping just before performing at the original Ladyfest. We all used it for years, and I remember exactly when I shook a bottle of black spray paint to make the shirt I pulled out of a box today.

James was visiting from Chicago, long before he moved to Tokyo. Per was visiting from Sweden, and we were trying to persuade both of them to move near us. That week was a long dreamy sequence of sunny days and hot nights, sitting out on the stoop or lolling on the porch, leaning against each other and talking in the dark.

I threw one of my big parties. Was it the going-away party for Amy Joy? A costume party? The travelers party? I don’t know. But the day after the party we used the stencil and spray paint and made shirts for everyone who wandered by. Then I sprayed the design on the wood of the front porch.

Some of those friends send letters and email and call. Others have visited, and I was in Portland a few weeks ago. But I don’t live there any longer. Today I put the shirt on and stared at myself in the mirror and missed my friends more than I thought was possible.

I took the shirt off and put it back in the box.

6.14.05 believe

My daughter has been mysteriously sick for awhile, and a series of tests have ruled out the easy answers. I will not discuss the details publicly because she deserves to have a private life. But this situation is very difficult for all of us, and the fact that I am a skilled advocate makes very little difference when she is in pain.

I do not allow myself the indulgence of denial. There is no point avoiding despair; but there is no justification for letting sadness drown out everything else.

My children need to believe that everything will be fine. I need to believe that too.

I’m not going to write about illness and fear.

Instead I will play records at top volume, go for long bicycle rides across open fields, sit on the banks of the river, read a novel, and love my family with fierce devotion.

6.12.05 r.i.p.

It is with profound sadness and a wrenching sense of loss that the staff of Hip Mama have learned that our valued colleague Allison Crews has died.

Allison was the producer of Girl-Mom for nearly five years. During that time she worked endlessly hard to build a strong, dynamic community. Through her work on the site, her accomplishment in creating the National Day to Support Teen Parents, her writing, and her life, Alli created social change. Alli was brilliant, forceful, and talented. She changed lives; she helped people. We will miss her.

The Girl-Mom moderators are collecting money to be used to help Alli’s young family in this profoundly sad time. If you would like to contribute, please send a donation via the site.

6.10.05 quill

Lessons in Taxidermy has been nominated for a Quill Award.

6.10.05 quote

Lavender’s memoir is exquisite, precise and deeply affecting from beginning to end.

Bookslut review – click for more.

6.9.05 press

The writing is beautiful… Lavender is living proof of how much strength and determination one human being can possess… Reading Lessons in Taxidermy will pull your head out of pathetic self-pity. You will think again and realize that you are not all alone in this world. You will discover your own strength.

Lessons in Taxidermy reviewed in the Jackson Free Press.

6.8.05 queen

Home again and so jetlagged I cannot possibly begin to describe the adventures of the past few months. I’ve changed time zones so many times I no longer know night from day.

This afternoon I was running errands in the city centre and when I walked out to unlock my bike there was a huge crowd swarming in front of one of the colleges. The scene was so intense I had to push my way to the bike, then ask three people to climb down from the posts while I unlocked.

I asked one of the people pressing forward what they were waiting for; he stared at me with a baffled expression and said The Queen.

To be in such fine company is an honor:

Lessons in Taxidermy on the VLS Bestsellers list.

5.18.05 spiral

Bee Lavender’s story is a testament to guts, endurance and an indomitable will to not succumb to the maladies that are laying siege to her body. You think nobody knows the trouble you’ve seen? Read this, and stop whining.

Lessons in Taxidermy reviewed in Small Spiral Notebook.

5.17.05 nominated

Lessons in Taxidermy has been nominated for an American Library Association award.

I love librarians.

5.15.05 assault

I haven’t managed to unpack yet and there are far too many chores to accomplish before the next trip, but I never let these things worry me.

Jen K is in town for a visit; we were born and raised in the same place, graduated from the same college, but we know each other from a summer leadership institute for teenagers that was run along the lines of a cult. We both noticed but didn’t much care; we each received the top honors, presented by a Washington State Governor (the one who  always wore a rumpled baby blue suit) and broadcast on the local NBC affiliate.

Except she knew ahead of time, and wore a respectable outfit. I was ambushed and thus appeared on the evening news in a psychedelic peacock frock.

Today we had a picnic on Jesus Green with an assortment of friends who also hail (at least recently) from Berkeley. Late in the afternoon the children clamored for a river trip so I motored down to Fen Ditton to drink a pint and admire the scenery.

Yes, I know that this is a cinematic cliche of an English life.

But it is more fun to think about than the other big event of the weekend, when a friend was assaulted by random drunk strangers on a quiet street in broad daylight.

5.12.05 club

Upcoming Event:

Tues., May 31, 7pm Accompanied Library National Arts Club

Readings by Bee Lavender and Miles Marshall Lewis

5.10.05 day

…There’s a deep, almost painful beauty in her seemingly dispassionate language, and as Lavender interweaves the story of her most recent illness with those of her childhood and young adulthood, she also gives context to the physical contours and social history of the working-class Pacific Northwest landscape that was her home. In sifting through her unwanted memories, poking at the still-raw scars and bruises, Lavender shows how it is possible to transcend the body and its demands, to construct a whole and rewarding life out of a fractured past.

Lessons in Taxidermy reviewed in Bitch Magazine: Feminist Response to Pop Culture

5.7.05 day

I flew to the east coast, where I was pleased to do the KGB Reading Series again. The other writers were promoting, variously, a book about a failed explorer and a book about invasive species. I told the crowd that our common theme was danger.

Eli, Justin, KTS, and bunches of other people turned out to say hello. During ambles around the city I was recognized four times, which was very strange.

The tour ended in NYC on Lauren’s birthday, reading in a dark club filled to capacity by a friendly crowd who laughed at all the right places.

On the road again we drove through endless gorgeous countryside, with wildflowers blooming everywhere. San Francisco offered moments of sanity after the hustle of LA.

The event at City Lights was one of the best of the whole tour — almost too much fun.

Hiya and Jonathan, Jen K, and Gordon were just a few of the friends I caught up with. The cheese posse from Rainbow gave us a cooler full of tasty food that lasted the rest of the journey; I was still eating the ginger cookies on the flight to the UK.

Portland – what can I say? There was a party at the 19th street house and I slouched on a sofa overwhelmed with nostalgia as I talked to Anna Ruby, Ana Helena, Stevie, and Marisa. People grabbed me and held on tight; I’ve missed the rampant physicality of these people more than I knew.

The event at Reading Frenzy was hugely fun, thanks to the beneficence of Chloe. During the Q&A I said all sorts of things I did not mean, with assistance from the rowdy crowd.

Stevie mischievously asked So Bee, why do you have cancer?

I replied Maybe a wheat allergy, or possibly negative thinking.

We laughed and laughed. I’m not sure if the audience got the joke.

The Seattle reading was always going to be the hardest: after all, the book alleges that the environmental toxins of my hometown poisoned my body. Saying so to an audience of locals was alarming, but at least my cousins didn’t show up.

I reminded myself that I moved away, on purpose. More than once. The anxiety I felt over being there was redeemed by the fact that I was able to see Jeffrey, Scott, Jenni, and Tizzy.

Onward to Olympia and the tender care of Stella and Al, who organized a really great event and then threw an excellent party. I talked to scores of people I didn’t know when we were all in college together.

Cliched but true: youth is wasted on the young.

4.26.05 shield

In Illinois I carried an umbrella to protect against rain; in California, to shield myself from the sun. In the land of short shorts and flip-flops I remained entirely covered in black clothing. Several people stopped me on the street to compliment my style and ask if I’m from New York.

This was very odd as strangers only talk to me if they want directions. I started to wonder what had changed.

I didn’t tell my mother about the memoir until the day before the tour started, when I sent email telling her that she should not read it, tell the family about it, or come to any of the events.

This advice was offered out of sensitivity to the potentially catastrophic reaction of the surviving relatives. Imagine my surprise then to find my mother, her sister, and assorted cousins were all going to meet up in Los Angeles when I was there. Then imagine me walking into a hotel room and finding them holding copies of the book.

I figured that the book would not alienate me from my parents; I am after all an only child and therefore hard to shake. But I didn’t know how my mother would feel, or if she would understand that the work is a tribute to her strength. I was relieved and surprised at her reaction: she seemed to like the book. Or at least, she didn’t rage at me.

Many amusing things happened in Los Angeles, not least a trip to Disneyland with my family, during which my mother told me all sorts of things about my early life and illness that I had forgotten. If anyone winced at the details in the book… I can assure you that the reality was much worse.

One of my cousins turned up for the bookstore reading, and at a critical moment I stopped and asked her to verify the veracity of the story. She gleefully told the crowd that it was all true.

During the festival I stood in the Akashic booth hustling my book for hours and at one point Jerry Stahl stopped to chat and buy a copy. I predicted that Byron would ask if he is more attractive in person than the Ben Stiller movie version so I tried to pay attention; the answer is yes.

I met so many other writers I can’t even make an adequate list but here are a few highlights: Nina Revoyr, Jervey Tervalon, Gary Phillips, and Ron Kovic, who is also more interesting in person than as portrayed in film.

One night I found myself at Chateau Marmont with a gaggle of writers, musicians, and assorted lovelies, which as usual kicked off an existential crisis. Why, you might ask? It is not entirely clear, but in those situations that would have been beyond the imagination of my younger self, I often feel… sad.

Another night we went to a party for The Nation at Arianna Huffington’s house. I watched hordes of people dancing attendance on Gore Vidal, who looked distinctly unamused.

I observed another famous writer screaming at his teenage daughter, but I’m not naming names.

The thing that impressed me the most was a glimpse of the Huffington garage as we waited for the valet to bring our car around. Even the rich and famous have utility shelves and old mattresses.

Los Angeles was the start of a deeply unexpected response on the part of various people from my past: the book, strangely, has served as a point of reconciliation.

Of course, I do not wish to be reconciled with lots of these people. The basic rule of thumb for anyone wondering if they should get in touch: if I’ve ever punched you in the face, don’t bother.

4.20.05 peculiar

During one interview, the person talking to us had clearly not read either book. She asked assorted peculiar questions, culminating in Bee, how does your life differ from the main character in Lauren’s novel?

I said I’m not a murderer.

The midwest is unbelievably vast. We found ourselves at various points on the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Highway, at the largest truck stop in the world, and near the Ronald Reagan birthplace memorial.

Since Lauren was the designated driver I was in charge of anecdotes, and rattled happily for hours. One unexpected bonus of traveling with a new person is the fact they do not know all of your favorite stories.

We arrived in Iowa City thirty minutes before the reading. As we pulled into a parking place Lauren’s phone rang; our publicist was calling to tell us that the reading would both be filmed for the university and broadcast live on the local NPR affiliate.

This made no difference to me, but Lauren was planning to read a chapter that is not, shall we say, FCC friendly.

The Prairie Lights staff were fantastic. When I asked for some ideas of things to do in town, they assured me that there was absolutely nothing… but when I asked about large balls of twine or cheese tourism they had many suggestions.

By the time we split to fly to other destinations I was excessively thankful to travel with Lauren. She is calm, professional, a cautious driver, funny, and believes in rest stops. I’ve been on tours that took me to the outer edge of sanity, and had lots of fun, but sometimes it is a relief to act like a respectable grownup.

Which may not sound consistent with the fact that we were crashing on couches and going to drag shows in our spare time, but somehow the whole thing seemed quite genteel.

4.13.05 suction

Lauren was flying in from New York and would meet me at Quimby’s just before the event. I wandered in early and had some time to say hello to a few friends. When AEM showed up I apologized for throwing away all of her potted meats, but was able to hand her copies of Cambridgeshire Life and Lady magazines, along with a box of Man Size Tissue and that candy that claims it isn’t for girls.

Joe Meno reported that he took my book on a plane trip. He said that when he got to the Road Trip chapter he shouted No! Why??  – much to the consternation of the people in surrounding seats.

The only thing I remembered for sure about Lauren was that she had curly hair, but we managed to find each other and work out a set that would last for the whole tour.

By the time I went on stage jetlag had kicked in; I’m never nervous during events but at one point it literally looked like the words were floating off the page. I was sufficiently confused that I started to laugh at the phrase suction catheter and had trouble restraining myself from giggling through the rest of my piece.

I met several people I’ve only known via the internet, had dinner with Dan and AEM and Lauren, and then we set off for the wilds of the midwest.

4.12.05 skills

It is true that I lack assorted basic social skills. I do not want to chat about the weather. I do not enjoy the banal routines of daily life. But give me an opportunity to go on a month long trip with a writer I’ve only met once over lunch? No problem.

Read deeply harrowing and personal stories to crowds of strangers? Sounds like fun!

The strategy was to travel with as little luggage as possible. This meant that my trip packing consisted of locating a sturdy plastic bag and filling it with black t-shirts and amusing gifts for AEM.

By the time I had trudged through King’s Cross my plastic bag was fraying. Before I made it to Heathrow, the handle had given way completely. I bought some magazines and tried to shuffle everything into a new bag, but that one ripped immediately.

The only thing I really want out of an international flight is an aisle seat. Clutching my possessions, now spilling every which way out of three ripped bags, I found my seat and settled in. Just as the flight was about to take off a man in a fluorescent vest stopped and asked to see my boarding card. He squinted at it and told me that I needed to move to a different seat. Unfortunately, that one was occupied.

The man with the vest sent me to a progression of other seats, all with people already in them, setting off a chain reaction of a dozen disgruntled people arguing with stewards who were also perturbed at the (unexplained) changes.

I decided to take up residence in the coffee service area and observe. I was still standing there, laughing at the chaos, when all the other passengers were sorted and the flight was ready to depart – and there were no vacancies left in the cheap seats.

By staying out of the way (and remaining cheerful) I somehow managed to get promoted to a swanky new seat in first class.

My bags were in tatters as we approached customs, and as I struggled to pull them together I saw the posters. I had completely forgotten that you are not allowed to bring most food to the states. It wasn’t clear if this injunction included my cans of spotted dick and meat paste, but I am a law-abiding citizen and could not face the prospect of a conversation with border patrol on the subject. I turned in at the first restroom and threw most of the food in the garbage.

Relieved of the heavy tins, my stuff was much easier to carry. I figured out the public transit system and arrived at Dan’s  house in the evening. Janice asked what I wanted to do the next day; a museum? Some cultural attraction? I felt no shame (I’ve never enjoyed any punk credibility and never will) in saying emphatically: I need to go shopping. They blinked at me in confusion but helpfully provided directions to the stores.

I had only a few hours to acquire the items I would need for the trip and any items that are hard to find in the UK. I rushed from one store to the next, buying a five year supply of dental floss before arriving at my primary destination: the lingerie department of Nordstrom. Some might say that my dependency on this department store chain is unhealthy, but I have done extensive research and can assure you that it is impossible to get the exact items I require anywhere else.

Or at least not in the English stores I have access to, which is baffling; how can a nation have such an obsession with breasts, without a corollary effort to manufacture and distribute undergarments that are attractive and ergonomic?

It doesn’t make much sense that I had to fly to Chicago to buy German underwear, but there you have it.

4.10.05 travel

Recently during a trip to Edinburgh I stopped at the Writer’s Museum and jotted down the following quote:

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour. — Robert Louis Stevenson

I’m flying out tomorrow and I’ll be on the road for an entire month. Hope that I can meet many of you. Spread the word if you know folks who live in the cities I will be visiting!

4.8.05 time

Lessons in Taxidermy reviewed in Time Out Chicago:

There’s little sense of comfort in Taxidermy; it’s a brutal story, told with no sense of victimhood or blame. The result is a terrifying tale of a woman trying to live a complete life with a body that fails her in the most horrific ways imaginable. It’s the type of book that breaks a reader’s heart in the first five pages and repeats the process on each page for the remaining 155. The lone relief comes from knowing Lavender, now relatively healthy, survived it all to write such a stirring memoir.

The first review of Lessons in Taxidermy appeared in Publishers Weekly as a starred pick. They also ran the cover image — apparently they only do this for a select few titles. An excerpt:

Lavender… holds nothing back as she recounts her life spent in and out of hospitals and her subsequent dissociation from her own body and emotions. She struggles with health problems from birth, which are compounded by her surroundings, including frequent encounters with street fights, domestic violence and poverty. Her voice is as strong as the front she puts up for the multitude of doctors she sees, and it’s hard not to be in awe of what one fragile human being can withstand in the course of such a short lifetime…. witnessing her strength and sheer determination to live makes this striking book completely engrossing.

3.27.05 daffodils

Last week a sweet and gentle relative had major spinal surgery. We were worried, particularly given what happened when her husband had a similar operation. But we live too far away to provide any practical assistance.

I’ve been fretful and anxious, and my main distraction has been the work required to fix a massive hacker attack against one of my sites, and then transfer the domains to a new server. This work is complicated and difficult and does not in any way relieve stress.

One could claim that such tasks make life exponentially more difficult. But at least it is something to think about. Now the work is mostly done, and we are just waiting for the domain names to rollover. Byron called home learned that the beloved family member was able to sit up, stand up, and walk.

Yesterday we had a picnic on Jesus Green with friends. Today the children were dazzled by chocolate eggs and manga and plastic bunnies who live in plastic mushrooms.

We went on a six-hour walk, through obscure parts of the city we have never visited, admiring the daffodils and other flowers I could not identify. My glasses were misted with rain as I looked at the colleges, gardens, and river, still bemused by the fact that we live here.

Tonight I feel very lucky.

3.22.05 hobby

I was away for the weekend and came home to find a box of books waiting. The cover, courtesy of Gabriel, is gorgeous. Most writers don’t have the chance to work with publishers who are open to collaboration on book design; I feel extraordinarily lucky sitting here with the finished book in my hand.

Apparently you can now order it from a site devoted to taxidermy hobby books. I hope that the people who pick it up expecting something in the way of tips on skinning and stretching aren’t too disappointed.

The title is not ironic, but it may be a bit misleading for certain audiences.

3.11.05 harmless

Several people have asked what my next project is. When I shrug and say dunno they narrow their eyes in disbelief.

But it is true. I think that I should be able to just buckle down and do something new. In the past, nothing could have deterred me from at least conceiving an idea, even if only to discard it later.

Now, for whatever reason, I feel like my brain is empty. I keep trying to start a much-delayed essay about the experience of moving to a new country but the sentences do not form.

Instead, I have continued to read, tearing through novels faster than I can replenish the supply and rummaging through our dusty stacks when I need a new fix. I can read three hundred pages a day without much trouble, and twice that on days without parties and excursions.

It is such a terrific feeling to dissolve into a fictional world. Some of the books I’ve read aren’t very good but others are so amazing it is almost painful to put them down.

3.10.05 text

Text messaging is genius. I can communicate with people via the telephone, without actually talking!

Yesterday Byron sent a message reading I’m in Paris…

I replied I’m at Tesco…

3.6.05 mothering

Mother’s Day is mostly a work thing for me. I have to dig up the obligatory feature article that expounds on the fact that the holiday was originally conceived as a protest for peace. I also have to field lots of interview questions. The day happens earlier in the UK (and apparently has no historic connection with the US version), but Mamaphonic hasn’t been released here yet.

For the first time in several years, the day was really my own.

Too bad half the family is still stateside.

But my daughter and I had an excellent weekend. Her school trip to France was cancelled so we took the opportunity to go to London to get her fringe trimmed, go shopping, and eat a noodle dinner. We even got evacuated from a tube station! It was quite exciting.

This morning she made me a Dutch Baby for breakfast. Later we went down to the river and, after talking to tourists about my solar panel, had great fun just sitting around reading books.

Now we’re sitting here listening to Portugese translations of David Bowie songs. I’m going to make pizza and salad for dinner, and then we have some movies to watch.

Happy Mothering Sunday!

3.4.05 snow

I tried something new this morning: cycling in the snow.

Can’t say that I recommend it.

My glasses were coated with fat wet snowflakes, my hair and wool coat were soaked, and my back wheel kept sliding sideways. I only made it to the end of the block before I decided to give up and go back to the boat.

Perhaps I will venture forth on foot. Though I don’t own boots.

3.2.05 scar

The new scar on my face has settled into a thin long streak of red, mostly covered by layers of sunblock and makeup. It is currently in that itchy phase of healing that I have always loathed. Pain never bothers me. This prickly throbbing is maddening.

The doctor said that the scar would fold into my laugh line; it would be more accurate to say that it created one. Byron claims he can’t see it but platitudes are part of the job description of spouse.

The fourteen year old is a much better resource. I asked Does the scar make me look like I’ve aged years?

She squinted at me and replied Only on half of your face.

At least I find the whole thing amusing. It would be terrible if I actually cared about my appearance.

3.1.05 sense

In high school most classes were seated alphabetically. Because we were both in the vocational arts track and our surnames started with the same letter, this meant that James and I spent most of our days together in the late eighties.

Even when I refused to talk to him over some minor transgression, there we sat, furiously not talking. I refused to acknowledge his existence for an entire year after the accident; he was just the ghost at my left elbow. I worked in the photography lab with my injured arm held above my head, staring straight through James if he ever offered to help.

When we get along everything is brilliant; when we disagree it can be dreadful. Since 1986 it has been rather like having a sibling. We look after each other and bicker and hold communal memories. We are more than friends. James is a member of my family.

But even though he was present for more than half of the stories in the new book, either as a witness to the action or the salvage operation, he does not appear as a named character. I find this very strange; but the book is about danger, and James represents something else.

When I turned in the manuscript I wrote to apologize for the exclusion. I did not mean to write him out of the stories; he just didn’t fit in the schematic, and the book was never intended to be a traditional memoir.

James replied:

. . .i am in all your stories. but then i am not. right? even when i was involved, my role was to make sense of things. even if that sense was naive or stupid or simplisitic or even wrong. i was somehow innocent of the drama. even if my thoughts/ideas/saying complicated the drama. i somehow remain apart.

George Orwell once noted that Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

The book did not feel completely finished until the manuscript went to the printer. Up until that moment there was still a chance that something might go wrong, or bits would need to be changed, and in fact there was a last-minute edit that was crucial.

Now it is absolutely true: the project is done. Tension that has existed, in variable doses of grim determination, for nearly five years – is finished. I didn’t know what I would think; completing such a long piece of work could have rendered me anxious and slightly paranoid. But I don’t have any thoughts about the thing. I just feel limp and ragged, like surfacing after a bout of food poisoning.

Of course the start of that Orwell quote is: All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery.

Looking over the galleys, I really do not know why I wrote the book. I’m not being disingenuous when I say it just sort of. . . happened.

2.17.05 mermaid

By the time I finished writing I was too tired to bother with the author photo. Even thinking about it made me feel itchy and unhappy. In the end I found the publicity shots for Breeder, some random
photobooth pictures, and twenty or so photographs I’ve snapped myself with the digital camera.

I had a hunch that it was best to make the decision by committee; my own inclination is always to remain invisible. The family made the first cut, then I sent the remainder to James for his professional opinion. He picked an image I took sitting on the side of the bathtub back in Seattle, because he said it makes me look like an extraterrestrial mermaid.

I emailed Gabriel to check the decision and he replied It looks like you, almost. And it is one of your questioning gazes, almost. In other words it is probably perfect for the book as it looks good without being alienating or quite giving away what you actually look like thereby providing a certain amount of anonymity. Of course, I could be wrong.

Essentially, they are both saying that the image is an improvement on reality, which is true. The point of this particular photograph is to appear not scary.

In real life I am  awkward, unkempt, with a facial expression that discourages idle chit-chat. It is fascinating that photographs can tell a different story.

2.11.05 book

For the past few years I’ve been working on a series of stories about danger. The collection is now done, and will be published in April as Lessons in Taxidermy.

2.04.05 rust

One day last week I had a brief respite from deadlines and took a bit of time to tidy the boat. I washed all of my dirty teacups, organized the bookshelves, mucked out the stove, and sorted all the tools Byron leaves strewn about the engine room.

Then I built a fire and sat down to read a book of oral histories about the Pacific Northwest. When I locked the boat down to go to town everything was in order. Hours later as I cycled toward the river I was smug with the conviction that another brilliant afternoon would unfurl.

It is never good to be smug.

As I unlocked the door I could hear an ominous buzzing sound. I jumped down into the cabin and saw with horror that the kitchen was flooded, water pooled across the counter and stove. The noise was the water pump; it only sounds like that when the storage tank is empty. I grabbed a spanner and rushed to the back of the boat, pried up one of the floorboards, and stared down at three inches of standing water… where none belonged.

Of course my mobile phone was down to the last fifty pence worth of time, so when I called Byron to ask for assistance he thought I said that she was taking on water from the river. He came rushing across the city thinking the boat was scuppered.

When we both calmed down the problem seemed fairly standard. We poked around and tried to get the available pumps to suck out the water, with no luck. Byron went off to the old-fashioned hardware store to acquire tools and gadgets while I mopped up the kitchen. He came back with a pump powered by an electric drill. Genius! Except he did not buy a cordless drill, and the mains on the boat can’t handle heavy appliances.

Over the course of the next few days we tried various fixes with no luck. Back home this would not have happened; we lived in a community. Regardless of the problem, there was always someone to call, someone to help, or someone who needed help. Staring down at the murky water under the floorboards, I missed my friends more than ever.

But then I remembered that I wasn’t alone on the river.

I haven’t met most of the other narrowboat owners, so it seemed forward to impose, but I put out an email asking for advice. I heard back instantly from someone who offered to talk me through the plumbing repairs.

Then I thought of the interesting, kind people who tied down my boat when she blew off her moorings. I asked if they had a drill to borrow. They cheerfully offered not only a drill, but also to come along and help us. On the way they stopped to borrow equipment from various boats, and then they proceeded to pump out all the water. We laughed and talked and finished the job faster than I could have imagined.

There was still some water that couldn’t be pumped, and it took the better part of a day to get it out, lying flat on my belly with an arm contorted to reach the puddles with a sponge. By the end I was covered in rust, dust, and small cuts. But the boat is dry.

2.02.05 corn

Yesterday I had a wild craving for fresh tortillas with beans and rice.

In Seattle I would have driven down south to assuage my desire in a restaurant where the cook always chided us for not letting the kids drink soda.

In Portland there were at least five good burrito shops in the neighborhood. But as far as I can tell, there are no good tortillas in England. Or at least not in Cambridge; I should not rush to judge an entire country based on the comestibles available in one university town.

Most of the time I think that nostalgia is an aberration better squelched than tended. Particularly when the emotion is attached to something completely out of reach. As a general rule I do not even remember what I have lost.

But tortillas are a different matter. Somewhere in my wicked youth I was lucky enough to know a woman who taught me how to make them. She made a big batch every week and while I dawdled around the kitchen she showed me how.

Tortillas will forever be associated with a kitchen that looked out over a forest, pressing dough between cold fingers, learning the rules of a family I did not claim, choosing a future that would allow no room for old friends and places.

Last night I pulled out a big mixing bowl, measured the masa, heated a pan, and started to cook.

2.01.05 scenery

I was born in a working naval port town, and grew up just across the bay in a town built on pilings over the water. There were majestic mountain ranges on either side of our little peninsula, and water everywhere. But most of the towns were built with their facades facing the street, not the scenery.

This was a working class place, populated by working people. Many of my relatives took the decrepit foot ferry to work in the shipyard every day. Friends worked the forests or went out in the fishing boats when the season allowed.

As I grew up in that place I watched the small towns dwindle. When the traditional industries faltered or disappeared one town after the next had to figure out a way to survive, or simply give up.

Port Orchard was reinvented by the antiques trade. Poulsbo went for twee ethnic tourism. Bremerton just died. The core of the downtown, including all the grand department stores and office buildings with marble stairs, were shuttered and then scheduled for demolition. In each of these cases, even if I personally did not like the aesthetics of the process, it made sense. It was an example of a natural evolution of the local communities.

I love the Kitsap Peninsula more than I care about most people. The mountains, water, and forests are intrinsically part of my identity. But recently when I have visited I have watched the enroaching gentrification, as rich commuters move in to snap up the last parcels of the homesteads, as a place that seemed impervious to development starts to look more and more like Bainbridge Island – previously the only part of the county known to host the wealthy elite.

This process is inexorable and logical. It is a beautiful place and I understand why people want to live there. But every time I go home there is something new and treacherous to think about. On a trip last year I tried to take my kids to one of the beaches that was central to my childhood. I was shocked beyond speech to find that a five dollar parking fee had been instituted. If there had been such a stiff charge to visit a county park when I was small, we simply would not have visited.

There is a fiscal explanation behind user fees: state and federal agencies have been choked by budget cuts. But it is obvious and bluntly ruinous that the charges will mainly impact the people who cannot afford to pay.

During the first thirty-two years of my life I would not have been able to afford the admission price to visit Mt. Rainier, or the public beaches of my own hometown. Most of the wonders of the Northwest would have been out of reach.

Now that I can afford to pay for whatever adventures I wish to seek out, it seems more important to remember the days when I didn’t have an extra dollar in my pocket. It is imperative to keep our public holdings free and accessible for everyone.

Will we turn all of our natural resources into playgrounds for the wealthy? Will we give up our communal, hard-won rights to enjoy the land and water together?

Last night I had a dream about the St. Vincent de Paul store in Bremerton. The dream was so real and detailed, from the smell of the place to the likely content of each rack and display counter, I woke up expecting to have an excellent thrifted wool coat to wear.

But it was just a dream, and I sat on the edge of the bed looking at the river and thinking about all the bits and pieces I dragged from the states to our new home in England. It is probably time to get rid of some of the ephemera of that old life.

There is one thing I will always keep. I’ve been wearing this wedding ring since my grandmother bought it for one dollar at the St. Vincent store, before the move from the old bank building. She just liked the look of it, and didn’t know that it was actually white gold, or that it wouldn’t fit any of the grownups in the family.

Since I have tiny hands that never grew the ring fit me, and I’ve been wearing it since I was a little kid.

The ring has nothing to do with my marital status. It reminds me of my grandmother, and growing up on the peninsula.

1.24.05 manifesto

For those who may have wondered about the reasons: my expatriate manifesto can be found in the Home & Away issue of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture.

1.13.05 month

Repudiating the month of January has turned out to be the best idea ever. No stress, no sadness, no birthday!

The weather here is, to my profound surprise, a vast improvement on the Pacific Northwest. Days are short but never stormy; there are stiff winds but only occasional rain.

On what would have been the birthday packages started to arrive. There were email wishes from all manner of friends near and far, and in the days since then slips for more packages keep falling through the mail slot.

At the weekend I picked a treat: we went to the Canal Museum, then walked along the Regent Canal and through the Camden Lock complex, ignoring the crowds and squinting at the outlines of the old buildings. Later we went to Brick Lane and ate Urubeesi Gaata at The Shampan.

This week I have been working relentlessly against various deadlines, building fires in the boat and huddling in front of the crackle of wood and glow of coal, ignoring the cygnets who occasionally tap on the window asking for bread.

I’m thirty-four now, and it feels pretty good.