Leslie F. Miller

(there's no such thing as shameless) self-promotion

2012-02-09T19:22:00.004-05:00

I can flirt with the best of them. I can make lewd comments, behave boldly, brashly, wear low-cut shirts, talk trash, cuss like a sailor, pinch a friend’s ass, and take seductive fat-girl photos. But I can’t toot—blow—my own horn.

Back when The Book was being published, people would ask me about it, and I’d do the pshaw wave. (It’s the opposite of the Queen of England’s wave; it says not hello or goodbye but getthefuckouttahere.)

I didn't know I was supposed to be promoting it; I thought that was the publisher’s job. For a month—and, to my surprise, only a month—they scheduled me to appear in magazines and newspapers and cool online sites. I spoke on radio—“A Chef’s Table” (syndicated NPR) and several Satellite radio stations. Nah, let’s talk about you, I wanted to say. What are you doing these days? That’s more interesting to me, even if it’s less funny.

Self-promotion skeeves me out. I don’t like to brag or boast unless it’s about my daughter, and then I can be relentless. But it’s unseemly to promote yourself. Tacky. Fugly.

I often sign up for those marketing-tip emails from fierce bloggers and self-promoters, thinking it’ll give me a kick in the pants about just doing what has to be done to survive as an artist, to reclaim my envied position at the desk in my dining room. But I hate those people. They sound smarmy and loud. I read their first two emails with the voice of Billy Mays or Aussie crocodile wrestler, Steve Irwin. (Ironic: they're both dead.) And I wind up deleting all the rest of them unread. I can’t bring myself to send the “remove me” message. It’s like quitting.

Self-promotion has been a sore spot with me where a friend is concerned. He does it; I don’t like it. I had another friend—used to shake your hand with a business card in it, like it was a plastic baggie full of crack. Butt crack is more like it.

I’m not saying I don’t want attention and admiration and overwhelming envy from you. I will flash you a poem or a song, usually with cleavage to make it more palatable, usually on a Saturday, when I think no one’s looking, and I will whack you over the head with a photograph or 20. But they’re usually not accompanied by: “And I am selling these photographs for money. Hit me up for deets!”

Sure, I post links to my blog from Facebook and Twitter and Flickr; those email marketers have taught me well (in their first two emails). But I usually follow them with a links to things more amazing, like Chuck Prophet's new CD, Temple Beautiful. (He was just on "Fresh Air"!)

Do I lack confidence? Am I shy? No way! I am fucking awesome. I’m just uncomfortable asking you to prove our friendship is important by shelling out some money for yet another thing I've made. I would rather give you some. That's why my next paragraph has me already hurting in the groin.

Please pre-order my book of poetry, BOYGIRLBOYGIRL, published by Finishing Line Press. It’s not that expensive, it has a pretty cover, and the more books I sell before March 5th, the more copies they print. (Imagine sticking the publisher with a thousand of these babies!)

I should mention this: each week, I get a recap of the sales. With names. So if you are my friend, and you don’t order, I’ll know about it. I'd rather not. Because it can't help but become this uncomfortable thing between us. Like an unvited hard-on.

Try before you buy. Then, please, buy.

Your Friend,

The Skanky Ho

u.n.c.l.e.

2012-02-02T22:37:00.007-05:00

Today was a day like most other weekdays: long commute, long day writing mostly the same words in a slightly different order, work drama, some laughter coupled with paranoia and worry, a long commute, a beer, dinner, and the laptop and TV in bed.

On Thursdays, I go to shiatsu. I call it that, but Jim Hill doesn't really do pure shiatsu anymore. He's a "healer." He knows what hurts me by what hurts him, and he takes care of it with his own brand of acupressure. I call it poking.

Jim presses my flesh hard with his thumbs and fingers and palms and knees and feet. While I lie on my stomach, he puts the flat of his foot on my tailbone, picks up my legs, one in each hand, shakes them like he's spreading out a sheet on a bed, and pulls slowly. I am an inch taller, but it doesn't count.

When I'm on my side, he twists my arm behind my back in some sort of therapeutic wrestling hold. No holds barred. I say "uncle" in my head and whimper while U.N.K.L.E. plays on the utopia Internet radio station. I'm the only one of his clients who requests something other than the mind-numbing new age sounds. We go for trip-hop—Radiohead and Bjork and Zero7 and Thievery Corporation. My current favorite is Eel, but I don't like them much when I'm not lying on the floor.

Jim presses on my ribs. He grinds his knees into the backs of my thighs, his elbows into my butt, his fists into my shoulder blades. While I'm on my back, he pulls me from my neck, slowly, slowly, and I can feel my tailbone rising up, tucking inside my body, as if I'm turning inside-out.

Before I leave work on Thursdays, I take a half a hydrocodone. I pay $100 for two hours of tortuous poking. Some nights, the pain is just short of intense, and I can fall asleep for a few moments. Other nights, like tonight, It's too much. Jim stops working on my legs to poke a sore line that follows the underwire of my bra. These are lung points, he says, and asks if I've had trouble breathing—he means before now. I cough a little when I lie down, I say. I'll be sure to remember my inhaler. When he goes toward my left side, I worry that he'll touch the cancer. That it'll bust open and gush through my body like an ocean. Last night, I had a dream that I needed back surgery and chemotherapy at the same time.

When my treatment was over, I got dressed and raced home, cursing the slow drivers, blessing my heated seats. On Perring Parkway, I pulled over to let a slow-moving Emergency Medical Services vehicle get in front of me. Through the back window, I saw the EMT pumping someone's chest. He pumped and pumped and pumped. He stopped and looked at a machine and pumped again. He was frantic. I stared through the window, unblinking, hoping the tech would keep going because that would mean the patient was still alive. The ambulance was going too slowly. For two miles, from the beltway to Echodale, I was staring through the back window, thinking of that deer. The tech kept pumping, even as the truck turned right toward the hospital, so I did not cry.

I came home and drank a beer, ate dinner, and came upstairs, where I sit against a kind of pillow called a husband, The Mentalist on in the background, laptop engaged.

- - - - -

how I feel about that

2012-01-19T16:52:00.004-05:00

It may surprise people to know this, but I used to go to a shrink. Another surprise: it was not because I’m crazy; I just forgot how to sleep.

Therapy isn’t like the olden days, when you were asked how you feel about that by a bearded and bespectacled older man, who encouraged you to badmouth your mother and talk about your dreams and return weekly for the rest of your life. You deal with each crisis as it comes, with months, even years, of untherapeutic living in between. That’s how it was with me. I'd get nervous about something, stop sleeping, and make an appointment.

In one session, I talked about my father. I was troubled by one of his oft-repeated offers: “You want it? I’ll buy it.” Truth is there was no question; it was more of a run-on sentence.

Dad would utter this for everything while we were on vacation—often, embarrassingly, in front of a store owner to whom I was only being polite when I said those fancy jeans were cool. (A $250 pair of jeans is not cool.) While I was never rolling in dough, I would still sneak away to buy, with my own money, the things I wanted or needed—even when I was forty.

When Beth and I were kids, our family was lower than lower-middle class. But we didn’t know we were poor because we had everything: tiny black and white Luskin’s TVs and Realistic stereos and shag carpeting in our bedrooms. I had a pink princess phone, and my sister had a regular blue one. I wanted to go to NYU for college, but my dad said it would kill my mother if I left, so he bought me a car as a bribe. After he did, we couldn’t even afford Towson University, which was only about $20 a credit back then. My great aunt paid my tuition for a year, and I didn't find out until a decade or more later.

When I discovered how poor we really were back then (after hearing stories about my mom hocking her engagement ring to pay the phone bill), I assumed we'd had all those things because my dad didn't want us to know we were poor. But maybe it was because he traveled often and felt like it was the only way he could show his affection, since time with us was not an option.

But twenty years ago, he began doing well in his career. He was home, but we were gone. And the gifts got bigger. And as his generosity grew, so did his insistence that we accept his offers.

“You want it I’ll buy it” became his mantra. He didn’t want his girls to go without anything. I was pregnant, and my dad didn’t want me to fix the carburetor of my six-year-old, paid-off Honda Civic; I needed a new $35,000 Pathfinder. He paid most of the lease.

Critics—my friends, my brother-in-law, even my husband—thought I was spoiled. Marty and I would argue about it at the dinner table—about how many times I said no to something before I was just plain worn out. The badgering was relentless. I said no to a new car at least a dozen times. "I hate to see you drive that thing. It's not safe for my grandchild," he would tell me, often before hello.

What I learned in therapy was that this was how my father said he loved us. Saying no to his gifts was the equivalent of rejecting his love. So I began handling it differently, bartering, accepting a few offers with effusive gratitude. I promised I would let my father know when I found something I really wanted. I even began asking for things I needed.

This is one reason I worry so much about him now. Since his last cancer treatment, he has become so weak and sick. He was still going to work through his third chemotherapy infusion. In fact, I can’t remember him missing work or even being sick with a cold more than a handful of times in my life, except for surgeries on his broken leg. But he’s not been to his office since October. In the hospital and at rehab these months, he sometimes just stared into space, not even turning on the TV, not reading a book or a magazine.

If he’s not at work—where he feels valuable and important—he’s not maintaining his income. And he’s not able to offer us gifts to let us know he loves us.

At almost 75, he is finally realizing that we know. We have always known.

- - - - -

A little more about my dad here.

SOPA? NOPA. PIPA? also NOPA.

2012-01-18T09:42:00.007-05:00

wake up and fight

2011-12-31T08:29:00.005-05:00

By now, you've seen Woody Guthrie's "New Years Rulin's." The list lover in me is as tickled as the fan. Big surprise: Not much has changed in seventy years. We still want to "read lots good books." We still want to "eat good." We still don't learn people very well.

So maybe we are not running out to the banks to deposit our extra money or shining our shoes. But we're still fighting fascism (or should be, especially right here at home), and we're still doing what it takes to crank up that ol' hoping machine every day.

On our secret lists—yours and mine—we're reminding ourselves to floss more this year, to love people, to make the bed every morning. And while we may tailor our out-loud resolutions to individual goals ("write a song a day"), the two-thirds of us who are overweight are hoping to eat better—or, in my case, less. I have a few more things I want to accomplish.

To Do in 2012

1. Read more books. Novels, short stories, poetry.

1. Blueprints for Building Better Girls, by Elissa Schappell
2. God Bless America, by Steve Almond
3. Black Elvis, by Geoffrey Becker
4. The Greatest Show, by Michael Downs.

2. Write more poetry.

My poetry mojo has been stuffed in a too-small pair of underpants, further constringed by a girdle, squeezed into black control-top hose, and packed into tight leather pants that nobody wears anymore. It's itchy and lonely and hot and needs to go commando.

It's been a long time since I wrote a poem without having to rely on single, unrelated words from Facebook friends. But as soon as I made the resolution, I wrote a poem in my head. It's about buttons. It's going to be good; I can feel it. I just need to squeeze it out.

3. Take more photographs.

I'm not talking about pointing at and shooting so many sunrises and sunsets, so much of the minutiae of my day, the birds, the rockstar kids I know, people, food, buildings.

I'm talking about sunrises and sunsets! The minutiae of my day! Oh, the birds! Those rockstar kids I know! People! Food! Buildings!

More, but better! I'm hoping for a series of self-portraits in the new year. Maybe superheroes. Maybe art recreations. Something weekly.

4. Concentrate on the concentrations of goodness wherever it's found.

I find mine in Tuesday nights with friends, in a fancy Maudite glass, in the basement, on the dog bed. In fact, wherever there are good people and good food and good music, I'm usually pretty happy. There's some of that for all of us every day. Yes?

5. Play guitar every day.

Even though I suck. Maybe I'll suck less.

6. Lose weight. Move More.

There's nothing worse than being old except being old and fat. I hurt myself in a pilates class at work, and now even my fat pants don't fit. I've given myself permission to satisfy sadness and stress and pain with beer and pizza, even though it only feeds a pathetic fire. So after I ring in the new year with a roasted pig, I'll stop being one. I'll be on Medifast for a month—at least until I learn how to control myself.

Finally,

7. Wake up and fight.

For far too many mornings since June, I have found myself in the company of those who wake up and surrender. Tonight, I burn the white flags.

My wish for you in 2012 is my wish for me and everyone else. Take more pictures—with your camera, your words, your mind. Love. Pleasure yourself while you pleasure others (doesn't even require two hands). Listen to good music and drink good beverages and eat good food and keep good company.

Remember to put the oxygen mask on yourself first. It's how you run the hoping machine.

What are your plans for 2012? Will you learn a new language? A new instrument? Will you take a leap of faith? Will you trust more, worry less?

merry giftsmas and happy chanustuff

2011-12-24T09:18:00.006-05:00

It’s 7:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve. The sky is still dark, and my dogs are snoring at my feet. My husband and daughter are away until afternoon. The last sip of the coffee I made at 5:45 is still hot in my lidded Thermos mug. The tree is twinkling, and the crows are barking hello to me as they fly over the house.

The room where I write is full of stuff—books, wrapped presents, framed photographs, guitars, a collection of cake plates, crow-themed items. The eight leather chairs are new.

Every year, without fail, I amass new stuff (alas, without purging much of the old). Because we’re not in hock, with credit card debt and a mortgage that’s higher than our home’s value, we can usually take care of the little emergencies—and even some luxuries, like a concierge doctor or a guitar.

For the last few years, I had a tough time getting jingly wit’ Christmas. Sure, I’m always up for eggnog and cookies, a couple of favorite holiday songs, festive lights (the gaudier the better). But the frantic buying of stuff has bugged me.

I guess that’s ironic, given that I am a material girl.

The other day, a friend was torn about lamenting. Her favorite ornament—a one-of-a-kind, personalized item given to her by her sister—had broken, and she wondered how to come to terms with the loss when she generally takes a Buddhist approach to attachments.

Well, cross that religion off my list! I love things! I mean, I love things.

Lording over the living room is a taxidermy crow. On the sofa is a crow hand puppet so soft and fluffy that I put my hand inside it regularly. On Halloween, I gave it a clown nose, and it cheers me. On the bookshelf, I have a glass vase filled with hundreds of paper cranes. Those cake plates? I have seven of them.

Some of the things I have can be replaced, but so much of what I love most is a reminder of whom I love most: my thoughtful husband and daughter, who brought me a frozen crow in the dead of winter; my sister, who always gives the best gifts and helps to talk me down from the ledge; Grace, a young artist, who is already a star in my book but who is destined for others’ books; friends who helped me celebrate the release of my own book.

The woman who’d lost her ornament quoted someone named Peter Walsh. “The memento is not the memory,” she reminded me. True! But for me—menopausal, forgetful, busy, over-stimulated—that memento is the trigger for that memory. It reminds me to think of those people and their goodness every day, not just when they pop randomly into my head.

For the past few years, I’ve been a Christmas curmudgeon. This year, though, I’ve made some new material attachments. And to temper all this getting—paintings, earrings, magnets that say “Fuck” and “Shit”—I gave. I supported half a dozen Kickstarters. I donated to public radio and poetry and Wikipedia! Now they are my things, too.

I still hate that stuff-buying is a holiday. I want giving and receiving to be more special than that. People should display their affection with material items when they come across something that is you, something that would always remind you of their love, like the way they share a link on your Facebook wall. It shouldn’t be dictated by the calendar. Or maybe it should be on your own birthday, rather than someone else's.

How do you fight that, especially when you have children, even though that's when it seems most important to try?

The Christmas card I made for the year (yes, it’s a Christmas card; Rudolph is on the front) says, “May your joys outnumber your toys.” I do mean it. And if your toys bring you joy, too—well, you do the math.

Steven Wright said, “You can’t have everything; where would you put it?” He’s right, of course. But I still have some room.

* * * *

I miss you, Mark Harp. This will forever be your day.

RIP, Cleopatra.

deer

2011-12-05T18:41:00.005-05:00

My hands smell like deer. It's a gamey smell—wilder than horse but tamer than buffalo.

I was thinking about deer today after having pulled out last year's Christmas card, a Hipstamatic shot of a plastic deer bathed in the delicious rainbow of sunflare. I got the idea to make a new card for this year and started working on it after lunch.

At five, after a full day at work, I bolted out of my office, ready for my beer and my family (in that order), and as I was driving the winding, rural roads, in my usual hurry, the card flashed in my mind. I slowed down and adjusted my seat back a little. These roads are littered with road kill. And deer are everywhere.

A few miles down Greenspring Avenue, I thought I saw one cross the dark roadway; indeed, a bunch of cars slowed down and sped back up, as if waiting for it to pass. The streets were surprisingly empty for a rush-hour Monday night. I got to the intersection of the beltway and Greenspring in just fifteen minutes, but the good time I'd made was about to disappear.

A baby deer lay squirming in the road.

I stopped my car, backed up, and turned on my hazards. I was on automatic pilot—clearly not thinking. The deer had been hit, but no one was here on my side of the street, normally a busy intersection. The animal was between the two lanes, and I was blocking one of them. I saw the mother on the hill, looking down and running away at the same time.

You can't unsee an animal in pain. And that instinct just kicked in, you know? How could I let this gentle creature die alone? I massaged his fur, and when I was sure he wasn't going to bite me, I hugged him to feel his weight.

Cars were coming, so I stood up and motioned for help. Lifting is an issue, so I turned and faced the growing number of headlights, like a deer in them myself, and begged: Will someone please help me?

They just wanted to go home. I know. I'm one of them, usually. I'd have been leaning on my horn, screaming at me to get out of the fucking street on any other day.

So I cradled the animal's head, which was too far in the other lane, and directed traffic around us.

I asked again if someone could please help me move the deer to the side of the road, and a Jeep pulled up behind my car. A man got out and walked toward me. "I'm a veterinarian," he said. "Is he dead?"

He wasn't, but I felt like the deer had relaxed in my hands, was less anxious. Dying. The man said, "What are the chances that a veterinarian would be behind you?"

"Thank you," I said.

"I'm going to put him down," he said, and went back to the Jeep for some medicine. Last time I saw that medicine was December 13, when we said goodbye to Cleopatra.

"I love you," I told the man, and I left. I did love him. I do.

I cried the whole way home, headlights and streetlights a wet blur, gamey smell of deer on my fingers.

- - - - - - -

If you know this veterinarian (maybe he told you this story), please email me at dogfaceboy@gmail.com.

paper

2011-11-26T09:53:00.009-05:00

There's an old saying in the editorial business: If it's June, it must be Christmas. That's because monthly magazines work on their issues at least 4-6 months ahead of time. For me, if it's Thanksgiving, it's next year.

During the Thanksgiving weekend for the past few years, I have gotten my photo calendars done. One features traditional digital photographs (is that ironic?); the other is full of photos taken with my iPhone and the Hipstamatic App.^{1, 2}

Choosing takes weeks, even without a full-time job. My Hipstamatic folder holds over 2,000 photos—and that's after discarding at least three-quarters of them. My real camera was neglected for a good part of the year; that calendar was easier.

Last year, strangers, friends, and wannabe lovers bought about 80 calendars. I sold them on my blog, on Etsy, in person (always a stash in my car), and at the Red Canoe³ (I'm doing their personal calendar this year, too!). Some lovely people (Monica, Lynne) bought them in bulk.

Aren't you a sucker for a good calendar? I used to buy at least six irresistible beauties (kitchen, office, three bedrooms, Marty's work, wherever) at Daedalus Books and put them everywhere. (Desk calendars are fab, too, though I rarely crack them open because of iCal, which now, sadly, syncs to life's every nook and cranny.)

Paper is brilliant—maybe even more so because its mother, the tree, is god. Books should have spines, not be wimpy and hide behind a screen, where they can't get into the bathtub with you. I like to write in books—underline the poetry, discuss with the author in the margins. I like when writers sign their books; I bought five a couple weeks ago got them signed. Steve Almond signed my own book—next to the signature of his man crush, Bob Schneider.

Oh! Joy! Notebook paper with college-ruled lines! Moleskines! Spiral-bound journals and colorful hardbound blank books from the dollar store! Stationery and notebooks from Levenger. Those black-covered, hardbound sketchbooks we used to need for art class. This is an ode to printing things out with the brightest, heaviest, freshest paper. My printer enjoys it all—three different kinds of photo paper, brochure paper, card stock, paper for labels, vellum and scrapbook papers and kraft paper—by the sheet and the roll.

My beautiful young friend, Grace Macfarlane, gave me 1,000 paper cranes, a confetti of memories of my grandfather, king of paper cranes.

This morning, I'm touching last year's calendar, flipping through the pages, hoping the new ones, calendars and year, hold as much promise. I want to fill the dates with things like Bob Schneider at 8x10, School of Rock FUNK show at Recher, Chuck Prophet!!!! at SoundStage, rather than reminders about CT scans and doctors' appointments and my father's number in the hospital.

I hope all of our calendars are full of good things: new babies, dogs' birthdays, dinner with friends, big birthday parties, music, love.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Calendar Orders
I have placed an order for 10 each, due to arrive by the second week of December. (Before ordering more, I want to make sure they are perfect.) If you'd like to put some on hold, please drop me a line at lesliefmiller@yahoo.com; specify how many you'd like of which calendar and where they should be sent when the time comes. Before I ship, I'll send you a request for payment via PayPal or that new company, Dwolla. Calendars are $15. Shipping is free for locals, if we can catch up somewhere; $2.50 domestic for the first, $1.00 each additional; $4.00 overseas for the first, $2.00 each additional. (I'm trying to be fair, but I really don't know the shipping cost yet.)

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

¹ I hate using app as a word. I'm sorry I did it.

² I love the Hipstamatic company. Not only do they make a delicious product (called an app), but they have excellent customer service. They make me proud to be a fan. If you have an iPhone, buy the app. It's 99 cents, for heaven's sake. If you don't, visit Hipstamart for some goodies, like that cool Black Keys t-shirt.

³ Get down to the Red Canoe—or the stores in your 'hood—today for Small Business Saturday. I won't lecture you about how you should be supporting the independent booksellers every day, but you should remember that the extra money you spend not getting a deal on that book goes directly back into your pocket by giving you a better quality of life and steady property values, not to mention a hug or a smile or both from the shop owner.

*The large signature on The Book is from Bob Schneider. The heart with SA + BS was drawn by Steve Almond, author and fellow fan of both Bob and BS. I can only hope the inscription below, "Lets here it for," is followed by "good grammer" and is meant as a joke. Truth be told, I'm afraid to look.

canned applause

2011-11-13T14:21:00.020-05:00

It's no surprise that boost is an anagram of boots. Every time I wear the Frida Kahlo boots, bought last winter during a period of mourning, I get a lift. I feel important.

I had a Coat with the same effect (cato?). Though I bought it at C-Mart, you’d never have known; it was made of the most voluptuous cherry-red fur, lined in satin, trimmed with shiny cerise buttons. The label said Saks. The collar stood at attention, and so did everyone I met while wearing The Coat. It kept me warm during Bill Clinton’s first inauguration, where a friend and I upgraded our own seats to Bill Bradley’s section—demurely giggling behind our fingertips and plopping down behind Kim Bassinger and Alec Baldwin, Kathleen Turner, and Jack Nicholson. Photographers cruised the aisles making note of the noteworthy, stopping, always, before me with a certain look that said, “I can’t make you out, but that Coat! You must be someone!”

I was a cherry dot in a Time Magazine centerfold.

Looking important goes a long way toward feeling important. People say if you fake a smile when you're but a pimple on the ass of knowledge, you’ll eventually feel sunny. So it is with The Boots.

I wore them yesterday. I already wore an air of importance; after all, I'd been asked to be on a panel of food writer¹ at a conference where Steve Almond was the keynote speaker. When I arrived, a woman held the door for me and referenced The Boots in a loving manner. “I wore them,” I told her, “so that people would compliment me all day long.”

And they did. Everyone—men, women, gods—bowed before my fancy footwear. After the conference, The Boots drove me to the mall and clopped the entire length of the fourth floor, from Crate & Barrel to Nordstrom. People stopped their conversations to gawk. Jaws dropped. Eyes followed The Boots to their vanishing point. I could feel the pull of longing from every young girl in low rise jeans and pierced navel, every old biddy in warmup suit.

The night before the conference, my daughter, husband, and I saw guitar miracle Joe Bonamassa. During the show, Serena had to pee. She'd held it in as long as she could, and, frankly, so had I, but I needed to make her feel responsible for our missing a Bonamassa feat. While we were washing our hands, I explained my rule of audience departure and return: we must head down the aisle between songs. First, it's rude to walk out in the middle of a song. It's like saying, "Sorry, Joe; that tune's piss poor, and I'm piss rich."

But the real reason is this: as you waltz back to your seat, you can pretend all those cheers are for you.

At the Writers' Conference yesterday, I caught up with my old pal Rick Peabody, editor of Gargoyle. A friend once gave him a box of applause. Every so often, he opens the lid and takes a bow.

Few of us ever get to experience the thunder of a thousand cheers. Rock stars. Ball players. The pope. Most of us, if we get any kind of applause at all, get a golf clap. A thank-you clap. Polite hands of mild gratitude. I don't know that I could handle it anyway. I imagine it's like seeing God after a lifetime of disbelief.

I would cry, maybe vomit, and then I'd stop breathing.

¹Almost: Henry Hong got locked out and arrived fifteen minutes late.

you're the tops

2011-11-01T09:31:00.009-04:00

Topping my list of writing devices is The List. Lists are bare-bones instructions, yet they are also the meat. They are written with an affectionate detachment. They mean everything—and nothing. They are shallow, yet they come from deep within your soul.

In my favorite books are lists of kinds of apples and kinds of orchids, and there is poetry in the arrangement. You keep reading because it sounds like music. My favorite list appears in my number two favorite song of all time:

a bag of dead kittens and mufflers and engines
an army of rats and Colt 45
bottles and tires and shipwrecks and trashcans
a porcelain Jesus, your old Christmas trees

—"It's Only Money, Tyrone," by Marah

I recently donated fifty bucks to WTMD. I try to do it every year, even though the radio doesn’t turn me on much. But this year, I tuned in during the station’s fund drive—and its Top 500 Songs of All Time countdown. I gave because I wanted to belong to the club that voted for the Buzzcocks (“Ever Fallen In Love,” #195), even though I’d have to belong to the club that voted for “Free Bird,” too.

But nostalgia is a powerful love maker. There’s a familiarity and warmth that has you singing along with #149, smiling—if you’re of a certain age, of course. The age of our collective consciousness changes the game. It’s why you find songs by Adele and the Black Keys and Mumford and Sons and My Morning Jacket on that list, despite their having zero traction. These songs are someone’s favorites at the moment. How does yesterday’s hit overthrow the song you’ve loved for a whole life? “The Boys are Back in Town,” for instance. “Bennie and the Jets.”

My husband wants to know why we make lists of favorites at all. Who cares but the list maker? We all do! Lists are how you find a compatible mate or friend. Lists remind us who we were, who we have become, and who we still are. They bring back the summer of “Sarah Smile,” when Andrea Palefsky and I fell in love with the same boy on the beach. They remind us of the summer we pretended to love “Kashmir” for a boy—and found we really loved the song but not the boy.

My lists don’t change much. Sometimes my top four films rotate positions, but they are, always, Bladerunner, American Beauty, Lost in Translation, and Amelie (the newest). Sometimes #5 is Garden State. Sometimes it’s Big Fish. It might even be The Runaways.

Of my top five songs, four did not make it.

5. “Bennie and the Jets,” Elton John
4. “Young Americans,” David Bowie
3. “The Boys are Back in Town,” Thin Lizzy
2. “It’s Only Money, Tyrone,” Marah

My number one song of all time rarely changes. I am, apparently, right.

And while two of my top three musicians did not make the list (to hear him is to love him), the third—the one who makes my monkey dance, the one who put the ram in my rama-lama-ding-dong, was the monkey in the middle, caught at #276.

My friend Kim drove us an hour away to watch him play for only an hour on Saturday night. We talked to him after the show, just as we did the last time—a year ago—and found him, once again, good and kind and interesting. He was also interested. He remembered me and The Book, asked about my recent work.

So—you know. Chuck Prophet "put the bomp in the bomp-shooby-dooby-bomp." He did. He's number one.

[solutions]

2011-09-25T12:43:00.005-04:00

If you're unhappy with Facebook's changes, don't despair. (Or do, but do it quietly, then take action, then share!) Help is usually a search-engine word or two away.

If you're not browsing in Firefox or Chrome, remedy that right away. Chrome users can install Ad Block Plus, so you won't have to see any more ads in your sidebar. And—wait for it—install The Ticker Hider. (Thanks, Dawn.)

Here are the versions for Firefox: Hide Ticker; Ad Block Plus.

It's also helpful to remember that search engines are pretty sophisticated. If you are looking for the name of the plastic thing on the end of a shoelace, you can simply type in: name of the plastic thing on the end of a shoelace. Ask, and ye shall be answered.

[uproar]

2011-09-24T14:19:00.003-04:00

If it’s not mostly quarters, is change just unnecessary weight and an unsatisfying jangle?

We’re used to doing the things we do the way we always do them. We’re efficient—and complacent—that way. Most of us don’t even rearrange our furniture or get an entirely new hairstyle, despite all the evidence that change does our brains and our bodies good. Something as simple as driving a different way every so often can keep our minds from lapsing into forgetfulness, and the muscle confusion that comes from changing workout routines is encouraged by fitness gurus. We can even suffer from a phenomenon known as taste fatigue when we eat the same things all the time. (I rotate my ales regularly.)

But this uproar over the latest round of Facebook changes?

In all these years, all that Facebook stuff—all the networking and friendship and rekindling of old flames and sharing of videos and photos, all the love and support, all the drunken midnight status updating and the PopCap games—is still free. So if you quit in a mostly unnoticed protest over what you may mistakenly believe is yet another invasion of your privacy, understand that you miss more than LOLCATS and vomiting pumpkins and bad grammar.

Here’s the real problem, the real reason you are aggravated. You’ve been on Facebook for more than a year, and you still don’t know how to use it. You have a useful tool in your hands, but it might as well be a weapon. You post but don’t assume responsibility for the things you say, to whom.¹ You can’t tell the difference between spam and porn, and your desire for the latter by clicking the former leads to an embarrassing tell. We’ve all made the mistake, but so many of you don’t know what to do about it immediately to make it go away.

Like VCRs, Facebook is not intuitive. You need to read the directions or “take the tour.” But most people don’t want to stop for a few minutes to peek at privacy settings, organize contacts, disable applications. You actually do have a right to complain about the president if you don’t vote. But how can you complain that the posts you make available to all your friends suddenly show up on a feed where all your friends can see it? Especially since the first time you complained about Facebook’s changes, it was because you didn’t see enough of your friends’ updates?!

One of the first privacy-related things I did when I joined Facebook was put my friends into categories. From day one, from the first friend I got, I started lists of people—NOGLI for people in my neighborhood; Homies for people who live in town; School of Rock kids and School of Rock parents. I have a category called “Anything Goes” populated by folks I know won’t mind my politics, my bawdy sense of humor, my cussing, my issues. When I post things that aren’t appropriate for kids, I exclude them for only those posts. I turn off my wall for people in the category called “People I Don’t Really Know.”

A few weeks ago, a social media expert was talking about the new “lists” feature developed to compete with Google+'s circles. I said, “New? Facebook has always had lists!” He was incredulous. Even the experts don't know how to use the medium!

Some remarkable things have happened to me through Facebook. I sold scarves when I had back surgery, so I could afford an expensive red leather electric recliner. I got a lot of freelance work. I sold photographs. I got people to come out to Serena’s gigs and my poetry readings. I found old friends and made a hundred new ones. I fraternized with rock stars (one of them even made my photo his profile picture today!) and shared sunsets and songs and knowledge and jokes, good and bad, with everyone I know or almost know.

And yes: I share. You could call me an over-sharer, but don’t. I am a nonfiction writer and a poet, with all the eccentricities those titles bring. Plunk me down in a land called Facebook, and I am at home. Responding to me with a “TMI” or an un-friending is like bitching about drunk people in a bar. Some people have a drink or two. Some are the designated drivers. Some get tipsy. And some just need to kill the pain of the shit of their lives. Most of us have been all those people at some time.

Deal with them—with us—compassionately. Even on Facebook.

And quit yer whining about it.

¹A few months ago during a political scandal, my husband, a teacher of social studies (which includes politics and current events), stuffed his bike shorts with about twenty pairs of socks, poking fun at Anthony Weiner. It was an effort to make me laugh, something I was doing with less frequency after the lymphoma diagnoses (my dad’s and mine). I posted this photo on my Facebook page—invisible to kids, despite it being harmless—because it was the funniest thing I’d seen in weeks

Though I have but a handful of school affiliates as friends on Facebook, someone reported me to the boss. My guess is it’s someone who doesn’t know how to use Facebook, someone who didn’t realize that I’d had the good sense to restrict the photo’s visibility. I sent them all an email explaining why I had to remove them from my page.

While I do take responsibility for the things I post, I ask my Facebook friends to take responsibility for friendship. If you come across a questionable post, an email or a phone call works much better than being a tattletale.

a bouquet of words—with a stamp: an open letter to jon stewart

2011-09-11T10:58:00.011-04:00

Dear Jon Stewart,

Mock all you want, but Senator Claire McCaskill is right.

While, as the Jewish mother of a 13-year-old girl, I applaud McCaskill's public calling out of her daughters, I defend her today as an advocate for good English and the preservation of delight. Yes, both at the same time.

You can chuckle at that, like you chuckled at McCaskill's idea of a marketing campaign. But sometimes the positive result of money spent is not merely money gained.

When I stopped teaching college English in 2007 to write a book (published by Simon & Schuster in 2009—shameless plug), students were already losing their memories to Google and their spelling and punctuation skills to texting and emailing. I considered it my job, especially as an instructor of "ideas in writing," my course title, to teach students how to get noticed by writing fucking brilliant letters—letters of introduction, of complaint, of thanks, and, most important, of compliment.

People—strangers, even—tell you they love you every day. (By the way, Jon, I love you.) But imagine how wonderful it is for a customer service representative to open a letter—even an email—that says, "You are doing a great job! I love my [Page Nibs from Levenger]! And they were delivered the next day! I don't know how I lived without these little metal miracles. And you. Thank you."

The rep who received a letter similar to that one sent me a reply, saying that the CSRs passed it around the office as a reminder that they do things right sometimes, because all they ever hear are complaints. It made them happy! The owner of the company sent me a copy of his book, signed, as thanks for my thanks!

With well-written letters, I've gotten free Ray Bans and coupons for favorite foods. I've gotten replies from rock stars. Imagine being a fifteen-year-old girl (yeah, go ahead and imagine that!) and exchanging letters with Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen! Or getting a letter in the mail from Patti Smith's bassist, Ivan Kral, or from actress Melissa Leo, or from Jane Siberry—or anyone you admire.

Perhaps even better: imagine getting a card for every holiday, occasion, or mental breakdown you celebrate. (My friend Derek does that.) My friend Lysandra sends me chocolates from Hawaii when I'm feeling down, and Monica sends thoughtful goodies to say she's thinking of me. When I had back surgery, I received cards, letters, and packages from all over the world. I might have died without those letters. They meant more to me than blog replies and emails because people had to make extra effort to get in touch.

Last year, my husband went camping by himself and wrote me and our daughter several letters from Utah. Those letters were bouquets of words, jewels. We anticipated them and went to the mailbox, hopefully¹, every day. I wrote about it on my blog, and it inspired others to send letters.

A marketing campaign to encourage people to write more letters is like a marketing campaign to keep people from smoking. It's a public service. Letters—writing them, receiving them—make you healthy. They improve your vocabulary, your attention to detail, your memory, and your appreciation. They slow you down. They teach you how important your words can be and how to choose them wisely. And, unlike an essay you write in high school or college, the outcome is personal. (And you can get free stuff.)

Even if you send the letter as an email, without buying a stamp from the post office, the very act of writing a letter, as opposed to emailing someone, has improved our current state of grammatical affairs.

Letters of thanks and appreciation, annual New Years catch-up letters sent to the whole slue of family and friends, love letters—those are worth the wait. It's too easy when you're angry to pop off a nasty email; Send is commanding and irreversible. But an angry letter? By the time you print it, reread it, address an envelope, and stamp it, you've cooled down. That letter on the counter, waiting to be mailed, could be insignificant by morning. In the end, you get to keep your friend.

That's just a little of what a marketing campaign could do. It can teach us that letters are more than IDK, OMG, and WTF. It can help us regain our thoughtfulness and our intelligence and our beauty. Forget about saving the job of the nasty pink-haired biddy at your neighborhood post office. The mail is not about her. It is in spite of her.

One week after September 11, the anthrax attacks began. People took potholders and oven mitts with them to retrieve the mail. Companies stopped accepting letters, and employees in mail rooms and post offices had to wear protective gear before opening letters. Our refusal to send or receive mail is partially responsible for the post office's collapse; it's another way the terrorists win—and the government continues to erode our freedoms.

Our mailboxes should be shrines—full of thanks and love letters and beautiful magazines and the occasional flyer from the local Chinese joint, all misspelled for laughs. I'd say that bills, jury duty notices, work, and things that require immediate attention should come by email, but what about those who don't have computers or email access? These things are still a luxury for so many Americans. But mail comes to everyone.

So, while this letter, which took nearly an hour to compose on a Sunday morning (even longer to proofread and edit), will appear on my blog (with pictures and links), it will also get a 44-cent stamp and come to you in the mail.

It will also say: Thank you, Jon Stewart, for your common sense and decency and wicked humor and honesty.

With admiration and affection,

Leslie

¹ Note the correct use of hopefully.

beer, luxurious beer: what aleth thee?

2011-08-17T18:30:00.003-04:00

The other day, my friend Bruce posted this funny-but-true joke on my wall:

Leslie was drinking a glass of beer while outside with her husband, Marty.
Leslie said, “I love you so much! I don’t know how I could ever live without you.”
Marty asked, “Is that you or the beer talking?”
Leslie replied, “It’s me—talking to the beer, of course.”

So when The Daily Post asked for the one luxury I refuse to live without, the hops that spring eternal sprang to mind.

But my whole life is luxurious. I have not just one computer, but three—a big Mac and two Macbook Pros (one is a work issue). I have an iPhone, a bunch of TVs, appliances. I have window air conditioners, a green-emissions SUV, and don’t get me started on the guitars. Guitars for backpacking and sitting in the kitchen and plugging in and turning up loud.

Gabi thinks our technologies aren’t luxuries—to us. She says we all have those, so we should keep that in perspective. After all, she doesn’t indulge in other luxuries: cars, dinners in restaurants, meat.

But where I live, technology is still a luxury. The buses are crowded with people who don’t drive because they can’t afford cars, and people are robbed for their cell phones. In fact, being a vegetarian—getting to eschew readily available foods in preference for others—is one of the greatest luxuries of all.

When my husband worked as a GED teacher at a school for at-risk youth (a misnomer; they’d already lost), we both saw a good deal of poverty. We lived in a raggedy rowhouse then and were pretty poor ourselves. But not by comparison.

I recognize that now. My whole life is luxurious. A nightly bath in a tub of clean water in a semi-clean bathroom is decadent. A piece of chocolate is heavenly. My job, my paprika-orange ride. But the one thing, the only thing (not person, not animal family) that makes coping with the other shit of life worthwhile, to me, is some bitter, sharp, tasty, hoppy, hopeful ale—preferably Resurrection or Dead Guy or Flying Dog variety. It’s my coping mechanism. It’s my go-to gulp, my heart mender, my mind bender. Even when I was making nothing, I was drinking something amazing.

And while I recognize that nearly everything in my life—from my cracked tile floor and leaking toilets to my pot of chili on the stove and two well-fed dogs—is luxurious, I don’t apologize for having any of it.

Instead, I share.

A Challenging June

2011-06-21T11:24:00.006-04:00

On June 2, I had nine biopsies of some enlarged lymph nodes in my mesentery (that's the "double layer of peritoneum that suspends the jejunum and ileum from the posterior wall of the abdomen," which, I'm certain, gives you a clear picture). I don't think my jejunum and ileum are in danger, but my peritoneum was less lucky. I have lymphoma.

I have lymphoma. I have lymphoma. Lymphoma. Lymmmmm-phoooooo-muhhhhhhh. I say that over and over again. It's low-grade, B-cell lymphoma, which means that it originates in the bone and will grow slowly, and I'll go into remission, but it won't die. It probably won't kill me, either. Yet when I say lymphoma, it still sounds like cancer.

Cancer should be a beautiful thing. It rhymes with Dancer and Prancer—happy reindeer. It rhymes with romancer. My dog, Chancer. And though it also rhymes with answer, I have nothing but questions.

When I was first diagnosed, I did not look on the Internet for information except for the one time I saw that the median survival was ten to fifteen years. I've spoken about it on Facebook. I mention it in conversation. I use it, sometimes, to explain my tears over simple things like getting an IV stick before a colonoscopy. And everywhere I say it, someone tells me his uncle or her grandmother—or, as in the case of the nurse nervously spilling my blood in her second attempt at an IV stick, her daughter—has lymphoma, and he/she has never been treated or is ninety-five or is in remission or is under the care of my own doctor.

Today, I am awaiting the results of my endoscopy/colonoscopy biopsies. Next week, I will have my bone marrow tested. Because I have a stomachache, I will need some sort of treatment, most likely with an antigen—a four-hour weekly infusion. It is not supposed to have side effects, according to my doctor, but it does. (He also says the bone marrow test doesn't hurt, but having Novocaine injected on either side of your spine, then more into your bones, then having the marrow extracted is likely more unpleasant than most things I can think of. So I try not to think of it.)

I am grateful to have had some good care at Good Samaritan Hospital, where I went not for the primary symptom of a stomachache but for a prescription for Nitroglycerine, in case I ever get another episode of the family curse: a spastic esophagus. Before I was to leave the hospital that day in March, the doctor examined me and feared I had appendicitis. I was in tears because I was just about to take my daughter to see Bob Schneider in concert for her first time. The results—nothing wrong in my organs but enlarged lymph nodes that would need to be rescanned in six weeks—weren't particularly scary. Food poisoning or a virus seemed reasonable; lymphoma did not. Nearly all of these discoveries of lymphoma (lymmmm-phooooo-muhhhhhh, lymphoma, cancer) are accidental.

I am also grateful to Dr. Marc Gertner for taking such excellent care of me, for leading me to believe I have a good attitude, for treating me like he would a person he cares about. And to my family for their kindness and patience and money (insurance is denying everything, naturally). And a special thank you to my friends for thinking of me, checking up on me, for letting me cry and vent and be selfish. Thanks for all the cards and messages and homemade foods and offers of financial aid in the form of rock benefits and all the other niceties that somehow seem to rain down on me when I need them most.

But I am uncomfortable needing them. That has made this month even more of a challenge—as have a new car payment and job interviews. Still, I'm plugging away, getting my work done, writing for Baltimore Fishbowl, watching my daughter's musical talent explode. Songs, new and old, are still being sung. Photographs are still being taken. The beer is still being drunk. This life is still being lived.

*That's my girl on drums!

I brake for crying.

2011-05-31T13:48:00.001-04:00

Last time I wrote, I'd taken Jett to the vet. I took her today, too, to get her second Lyme vaccination and meet Dr. Andrew. (He adopted one of Cleo's pups, so we are a favorite family.) He was pretty pleased with everything about her. You could feel all the instant, genuine love for our new dog, and that's why I've never changed vets in all these years.

On the drive over, I feel a little down. I'm in a brand new car I can't afford, I have a job interview tomorrow, and I am scheduled for a possible biopsy on Thursday. So much potential change in life, so much unknown, and a big extra expense. I'm sulking a bit, listing the things I have to do today and the amount of money it will cost—tag return ($4), duplicate title ($50), groceries ($70), vet $44).

A pickup truck is stopped at a light in front of me, and I notice a whole lot of white type on the back window. It reminds me of the sticker with the boy peeing; I see that on lots of trucks like this. So I assume it's humor. The first line is kind of touching: "I'm looking for someone special." The last line, I see, is a phone number, and I think: this is an odd way to find a wife!

The light changes, and we move, and I find myself trying to read the funny sticker. It's long—about seven lines—and I think I'm seeing words like "lonely" and "love" and "life." In fact, I'm sure this person is asking for someone to "save his life." Now it's a preoccupation. I have to read that sticker. Finally, we stop again, and I see one of the lower lines, which says something like, "I know it's a lot to ask, but it's my husband."

The driver wasn't looking for love in all the strange places. She was looking for a kidney to save her husband's life.

No matter how bad it sometimes is, it's hardly ever that bad.

flotsam and jett-some

2011-05-16T12:21:00.007-04:00

It's probably normal for people to give their pets nicknames in ways they wouldn't think to name their friends¹—unless they're the guy making the copies. Marty's and my first dog, Beowulf King o' the Geats Miller, became The Wulfman; Wulf McMannus, Attorney at Dog; Woof; and Dogfaceboy. Cleopatra was Queen of Denial, Cleo-yo, Cleedle Dee, and Ledo, after Serena's baby name for her. Their baby, Buddha, was Boo-Boo and Boo Didley. And Chance has a few of his own: Chancey Gardener, Chancery Cursive, and, especially at Christmas, Chancer Dancer Prancer Vixen. (Yes, he answers to each of them, and so did our other dogs.)

Enter Jett. In her month with us, she's become Jetty, Jettster, Jett Ski, Jettison (the Medicine), and, sadly, Jettitals. And, sadly, she answers to none of her names and to no one.

After she backed out of her collar at the park two weeks ago, I've been cautious on our walks. I've had a recurring dream that Jett runs out the front door and into traffic, that a neighbor refuses to grab her when he can and instead reprimands me for not having trained my dog. "She's new! She's new!" I yell to him, crying. "She's just new!" It stresses me out to know that if she leaves, she might be gone forever.

I've always been a conscientious pet owner, especially when it comes to training. I don't like my dogs to bark outside, so I make them stop after they've gotten me the message that the neighbor is tending her garden. I don't allow jumping on people, so I make them stop a little louder. We're all consistent—and on the same page in the dog-training manual. We don't hit, we sometimes treat, and we use the dog's name for commands but not for reprimands.

Jett's education has been slow. She came to us from three months in a crate and had the kind of energy that said she worried she'd be put back in one at any moment. She was trained to do nothing (except pee and poop outside—an important thing, yes). Within a week of my care, she could sit and give a paw (even give the "other paw" when asked). Last week, she still wouldn't come inside when we opened the door and would often run away when we reached for her. It sometimes took twenty minutes to catch her! But she's learning to trust us, so she comes in half the time.

Lady Jetterly's Lover, as I sometimes call her, has not yet stolen my heart; it took awhile to get used to Chance and Cleo, too, as they were not babies with us. I can tell, with every full night of sleep and every Frisbee she catches, that she's going to be one hell of a dog.

This morning, the vet gave Jett two thumbs up and a Lyme disease shot. He was much happier to see her than she was to see him. She started shaking on the drive over and continued to shiver during the visit, like most of my dogs, despite how much fun we try to make it. Yea! A ride! Woo hoo! While we were in the office, she refused to exhibit any kind of wild behavior. So of course the vet was incredulous when I told him of her mad romping in pine tar and mud and dirt, her noisy play growling and mouthiness, the maniacal facial expressions when taunting us with our own shoes and socks, the nipping and yipping and jumping. When they commended me on how well I'd trained her, I was incredulous!

I paid my bill (a whopping forty dollars) and overheard an older woman who had come in. She told the receptionist that she was bringing a dog to be put to sleep and wanted to pay in advance. My heart sank. It was like someone was picking at the fresh scab of grief. I took Jett to the car and opened the hatch. A man my age was in the parking lot waiting, near the grass, for his dog; that's the usual pre-visit pit stop area. We stepped back, and Jett took a running leap into the truck, where I gave her a kiss and closed the door.

I looked back and saw the man's beautiful big dog on a leash. I am the dog yeller, so I called, "Hi, pretty doggy! What a sweetie pie!" and then I saw the woman from inside. They were together. She took the leash from the man and walked the dog slowly toward the door. "She's old," the lady said. "I know," I replied. And then I was full-on sobbing. "I'm sorry," I said to her, choking on tears. She thanked me, and it was ten minutes before I could see clearly enough to drive away.

It never gets easier to lose a loved one. In spite of that, it never gets any harder to love.

- - - - - - - - - -

¹With one exception: I have ten friends named Kim on my Facebook. I see or speak with five of them several times a week and have taken to combining their first name and last syllable. E.G. Kim Carlin is Kimlin; Kim Stanbro is Kimbro; Kim Webster is Kimster; Kim Hosey is Kimsey; and Kim Myslinski is Kimski.

letter to my daughter

2011-04-30T09:20:00.002-04:00

"A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on. " Carl Sandburg

On weekend mornings, I make coffee and sit at my desk for a leisurely perusal of news and facebook. Inevitably, a post will catch my eye, and I'll write some long-winded-but-well-thought-out response to someone's throwaway comment that I might not have noticed later in the day. This morning, the post I took on belonged to my daughter. She'd listed ten things she thought would make the world end in 2012:

Rebecca Black
Walmart
Lady Gaga
Country Singers
Autotune
Desperate Housewives
The iPad
Ugg Boots
Nicki Minaj
Vin Diesel

We could argue with the merits of the list, but I'm sure my daughter doesn't believe the world will end or that Vin Diesel will be the cause of it. Frankly, if it does end, all those things will have contributed, just like taking one's first breath contributes to the taking of the last. But a facebook post doesn't call for that sort of existential philosophy.

As you can imagine, a provocative opinion (especially on a place like facebook, especially when one's friends are users of the items in said opinion) causes some to take umbrage. Is it necessary to hate on Gaga? Whoa, Watch the Nicki Minaj stuff! Come on—what's wrong with Walmart?

My kid has a good mind, and I'm sure she can articulate why these items and people could contribute to the end of the world—or at least the downfall of Western Civilization. But something she said struck me because it's something I expect from other facebook users, not my daughter. "I copied these things from my best friend's status—that doesn't necessarily mean I believe they're all bad."

Whoa.

So I'm copying my letter to her right here. It's my letter to you, too, and to your kids. The funny thing is that I don't feel unqualified to give the advice, even though I don't exactly fit the measure of success in this world. My house is so small that when the six band members come upstairs from the basement, I feel like I will explode. Yesterday, I spent $60 I didn't have on dinner and a museum admission, and I'm feeling panicky this morning. I have two inches of roots that I can't afford to make match to the rest of my hair. My weight loss breaks for Berger's cookies. And my eleven-year-old SUV is rust held together with bird shit.

Still, I make things with my hands, my heart, and my brain. I am fulfilled by my experiences. I try new things, eat delicious foods, go interesting places. I don't have the added stress of a job I loathe and a boss I hate or clients who treat me like a slave. I'm surrounded by beauty and by friends who make me laugh and animals that lick my face. And I suppose this is why.

- - - - - - - -

Here are some worthwhile tips about life.

Never JUST copy anything. Always make it your own. Look at Ted Brodysseus Merrill. He can play like the record, but he plays the song with his hair, too, and in pink clothing. Or like Brett Diamond, who plays leads by deadening notes on the neck.
If you don't like something, be open to changing your mind. I'm open to changing my mind about Nikki Minaj and Lady Gaga. Hasn't happened yet, but I'm open to it.
Don't let anyone bully you into changing your mind. See their point that yes, Gaga sings and plays well, but no, she's not your (or my) cup of tea. (Or, thankfully, soy latte. Blech.)
Spend your dollars at the places you think best represent your interests (i.e. not Walmart). Spend more to buy in your neighborhood, so stores stay open, and your house stays valuable. Doing so amounts to more dollars in your pocket eventually, when store owners tell others what a good person you are and help you get gigs and work, not where you are just an invisible nit not worthy of a clean restroom.
Never wear Ugg boots. You'll find plenty of cool boots that don't look like anyone else's hideous (Ugg--short for uggggggly) footwear. (See my beautiful turquoise cowboy boots with Frida Kahlo hearts on them, for example.)
The iPad is stupid, but it won't make the world end. Windows-based programs will do that.
Finally, while it's cool to dis Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black (and Ke$ha and Taylor $wift and all those mediocre-to-lousy YouTube stars), fight the genre by being the best you can be, practicing regularly, being prepared, and enjoying the hell out of all you do—whether it's saxophone, drums, guitar, vocals, writing, drawing, reading, school.

Stop the world from ending by being the reason for it to go on. I know you are mine.

Love,

The Crazy-Ass Bitch Who Buys You Shit and Cooks You Stuff and Drives Your Ass All Over Town

P.S. Country singers are STILL writing the best songs. Ignoring that fact will be of no help where numbers 1 and 7 are concerned.

- - - - -

photos of a few things I love, top to bottom: new puppy, Jett; three of my Kims; Ted Merrill's awesome guitarring; Serena, the reason.

the new no?

2011-04-05T11:41:00.007-04:00

I have applied for jobs randomly over the past few years, but a few months ago, I answered an ad for a position that seemed a perfect fit for me. Within a day, I’d scheduled a telephone interview.

This job was different from any other I’d seen in that I actually wanted it. The talk went well: I’d read up on the company, so I was able to ask some good questions. When I hung up the phone, I was actually excited and thought I had a pretty good shot at doing communications—writing, video, photography—for a rabble-rousing organization. (Perfect, right?)

I followed up with a thank-you email to the interviewer and reiterated that the position sounded perfect. After two weeks, I sent another note letting him know that I was still excited and was hoping to hear from him about setting up an in-person interview. Still nothing. Another two weeks passed, and I wrote again, this time just to ask if he would please reply regardless of whether I was still being considered.

Nothing.

“Silence,” says my friend Ira Kessler, “is the new no.”

Why replace it? No is delightful closure, as final as the last period in a book! It doesn’t dash hopes but instead extinguishes the burning fires of desire. No can be appropriately terse or delightfully polite. It can be firm and direct. It can be nope or nah or nuh-uh, for the ultra hip and casual.

No can come with excuses to soothe the sting: it’s not you, it’s me. No can acknowledge the pain of loss without implying fault: I’m sorry to inform you….

Best of all, no is fast. No. One point two-five seconds. Add a sorry; there’s still time. But how about this: Dear Ms. Miller, I have filled the position. Thank you for your interest. Thirteen seconds, including a typing correction. Press reply, and Bob’s yer uncle.

My third email to that guy was going to be a bridge burner, asking him whether silence was, indeed, the new no, admonishing him for not being considerate. But my mother, my regular proofreader and compass of right and wrong, told me to reconsider. What if the person he went with doesn’t work out?

Like the two people who had already held this position before he began his search again? I bet he told them no.

It might sound as though I haven’t let this go. I have, but it's a fine example of how advances in communication technologies lead to lapses of etiquette. I need the no—or, at the very least, the acknowledgment that my paragraphs have reached their intended target. How do I know that my emails to him—or the people at the stained glass store, to whom I have sent four unanswered emails since March 10; or the several people to whom I’ve submitted résumés; or the countless others from whom I’ve requested information, quotes, prices, etc.—were not caught in some virtual ethereal web of tangled ethereal virtualness? They are not the kind of messages that one would expect to remain unanswered.

It’s not like I’m asking someone to make a poster for my missing cat. And if I did, nothing is not better than no. No is still perfect.

thirty-year-itch sonnet

2011-03-09T09:06:00.018-05:00

My husband's and my love affair began in November of 1981 or 2—I've forgotten, but does a year really matter when we're talking about a relationship that has spanned about three decades?

We're still together, though it's been a far-from-perfect thirty years. And some weeks are more difficult than others. Is it possible, at this late stage in our lives together, to reverse the trend? So many people around us can't and don't. I doubt it will happen if my husband continues to wake me at 6:30 a.m. with his acoustic rendition of "Crazy on You" booming through the floor beneath my bed, though I must admit I do dig it when I'm fully awake. So I have faith.

It's been said that money is the number one cause of fights between couples—even in this relationship, where lack of money was never a surprise. The one thousand or so of you who've read The Book know that when I met Marty, he was quite content looking like, and earning the income of, a bag man—and even told me once that his goal was to impregnate one beautiful woman in every country in the world to create the "international family of peace." I know he loves me because he stopped after the first one.

Now that I've gone through menopause (I'm not old, I'm early; it's genetic), I'm even more convinced I need a wad of cash, if not for the repairs of the pesky and irritating flaws of my home—the spatter-warped cabinets and cracked kitchen floor tiles, the rotten bathroom floor, the absent hot tub—then to fix my drooping eyelids and pay the personal trainer to work off these extra fifteen Facebook-exacerbated menopause pounds. But we're both financially underemployed. I don't want anything frivolous—not stuff like a new guitar or camera, though, privately, I dream.

The sonnet I just wrote (only the second in my life, the first about eating the contents of an ashtray, which was the basis for a song I performed with my band in the eighties) captures what it's like when two people choke each other out with alternating arguments and silence. There's no blame; if one has mood swings and flab, the other has unkempt hair and makes chewing noises.

I couldn't have written this poem—well, wouldn't have—without the help of a few of my Facebook friends. For the past year, I've been requesting random words in my status updates. Those who feel like it submit a word, and when I think I have enough, I write a poem using one of the supplied words in each line. They take at least a week to write. Much of the time, they've been good poems—surprisingly good—so I'm saving them for a book, rather than publishing them here. But yesterday, I asked for seven pairs of rhyming words for a sonnet. This is the poem that emerged.

It is no more autobiographical than any other poem I have written. That is: there's a mix of true for me and true for you. Poems take liberties. They are life stories, but they do not concern themselves with facts. And they are only a single moment, not thirty years. We can tolerate five minutes of crack-of-dawn "Crazy on You" because of years of good times, good smells, and good tunes.

thirty-year itch

I hear unspoken words in every sigh

and in your heavy footsteps on the floor

I hear the truth you never tell. The lie

instead is uttered while the rotten core

infects the flesh—where once was love is pain.

we’re ugly like the belching of a trumpet

prisoners of notes that make it strain,

exploding on the other notes that bump it,

cacophonous like falling silverware.

together, honey, both our names are mud.

though some might say we have this savoir flair,

I can promise this: there will be blood.

If we’re to stay together through this jinx,

I'll need a couple carats and some minks.

old yeller

2011-02-27T22:34:00.006-05:00

My name is Leslie, and I yell. (Please don’t call me a yellaholic; I prefer ale to yellahol.) If there were a club, a deity-free 12-step program, a debriefing, a detoxification, a reprogramming, I’d be in.

I don’t need anger management. I’m not particularly angry (though perpetual pain does make me snappish); I’m frustrated. Most of the time, I yell to get people to listen, to recognize that I’ve asked three times nicely already. CLEAN YOUR ROOM! I AM SICK OF YOUR PILE OF CLOTHES! Or I yell to stress to them that I really did tell them last week we were going to dinner at Beth's. I TOLD YOU LAST WEEK WE WERE GOING TO DINNER AT BETH’S!

Sometimes I yell at the dog after I step on him. I yell at the TV when the news is on. I yell at people to get out of the kitchen, to stop using my computer, to PUT MY FUCKING CAPO BACK ON MY GUITAR WHERE IT BELONGS.

Yelling is more love than hate. It is more caring than not caring.

Sometimes the yelling is the reaction of a control freak trying to control areas that she can’t control (people) because she’s unsuccessful at controlling what she can control (pizza). Today I yelled at an acquaintance. Instead of being the trainer barking obedience into a dog, which is the way it’s supposed to work, it backfired, and the dog ran away, which is the way it sometimes goes. Because this was a person, not a dog.

I could blame it on my family. I was raised by a pair of yellers. My first words were yelled. When my sister was about to be born, my parents drove me to my grandmother’s house. I fell off the back seat when we went over a bump, and I yelled, “OH, SHIT!” I was four. The old familiar familial yelling bothered me when I was little, but I couldn’t beat them, so I joined, yelling at my sister, my parents, our dogs and cats. I moved out when I was seventeen, and, though I yelled a little less with the help of mellowing agents, I yelled more because of my punk rock band.

Yelling is an exorcism of sorts. GODDAMMITRASSUMFRASSUM is usually followed with Hi. I don’t yell to hurt anyone’s feelings. In fact, I hate that about yelling. But I yell if you’ve hurt mine.

I don’t mean to excuse it. I just want to explain it. I often resolve to stop it. But I don't know how.

I tried to quit yelling once a few years ago. My therapist (he retired, or I’d be on the phone with him right now instead of talking to you) told me that every time I yelled, I had to do some housework I disliked. I chose to wash the filthy kitchen floor. For two weeks, I had the cleanest fucking floor in Baltimore. Sometimes I would yell with the wet mop in my hand. And soon, like the skinny bitch I put on the refrigerator to remind me not to eat the pizza, the mop became invisible.

My name is Leslie. I yell, and my floors are dirty.

missing

2011-02-27T15:05:00.002-05:00

I've temporarily disabled my Facebook account. Could be a day, could be a week. Place your bets here.

beer googles

2011-01-19T09:55:00.009-05:00

Beer and cake are the most heavenly foods on earth. How do I reconcile my worship of a bitter, carbonated nectar with my equal rapture in the presence of the sweet, dense manna? Hell is having to choose between them.

But I can choose, and I choose beer. Nearly every day. But beer has a stigma: it's undignified, manly, aggressive, unlike its more refined counterpart, wine. It's associated with frat parties and thick-necked guys and redneck softball teams, where the outfielder has a cigarette in one hand and a can of Natty Boh by his feet. Tell someone you drink a glass of wine every night with dinner, and she'll tell you how healthy it is. Now tell her you drink a beer every day at 4:00, and she'll think you're an alcoholic. Even though beer is good for you, but soda is not, beer still loses; no one thinks you're a drunk if you have a can of Coke with lunch.

You should know that when I talk about beer, I don't really mean beer; beer is, typically, lager—that piss-water-colored stuff that tastes nasty. I always mean ale. I like hoppy, bitter, light brown beers—no food-thick stouts with weird additives like chocolate. Give me some Flying Dog Doggie Style or some Harpoon IPA or some Rogue Dead Guy (perfect for Good Friday) or the holy grail of ales, The Brewer's Art's Resurrection (perfect for Easter Sunday).

I'd be lying if I said I didn't like the alcohol in beer. Coffee tastes delicious, but most of the people I know drink it for the flavor and the caffeine. Look, in a world that's as fucked up as ours, we need all the legal drugs we can get. Back when I suffered from insomnia, my therapist told me I should live like a starlet—popping uppers for breakfast and downers for dinner. And I do. Did.

On Monday, I took a beer-drinking hiatus, at least during the week, so of course I can think of nothing but beer. I quit because it's obvious I have a problem. That's right: I can't fit into my fat jeans. My problem isn't an alcohol addiction. If I had to pick from among Budweiser, Miller, Coors, or even Yuengling, I would abstain. If all you had was wine, I'd chew gum.(Possible exception: Riesling. Hey—I was raised on Maneschewitz, which spoiled me for Merlot.) Don't even mention diet beers. Blech.

Last night, my husband cracked open a Resurrection. Curses! I went upstairs and got in bed to wait for The Good Wife. The defendant had a drinking problem, and there was a picture of him with a beer in his hand. Last night I dreamt I was cooking eggs for breakfast—while drinking a beer. This morning, I found a pair of Flying Dog caps in the silverware drawer. I am Flying Dogfaceboy.

It's going to take the patience of Saul and the faith of Job to get to Friday with two six packs of Resurrection in the fridge. I like beer. A lot. But there's something I want a little more.

I want to fit in those white dragon pants.

I made this.

2011-01-13T20:37:00.005-05:00

The first time I saw the press-kit photo of Jimmy Page on the wall of the School of Rock, I was in love. Not with Jimmy, though his sloppy, many-layered solos and his squinty eyes are timeless and sexy. With the suit, the suit of dragons and poppies. It's not a suit just any man can pull off, especially without good reason.

But a girl? A girl could wear the hell out of that suit! So when Serena signed up for the School of Rock's Tribute to Led Zeppelin, I knew what had to be done—and, true to form, I waited until the last minute to get on it. Last Saturday, with a week to go, I dragged a friend to some thrift shops in search of white pants and a white jacket, and when I blew ten bucks on three pairs of too-tight white jeans, I dragged my kid with me to the Belair Road Goodwill. I hit the jackpot.

In case you want to know the details so you can try this at home (and you can!), I did a Google search for "dragon" and "dragon art" and "dragon clip art" and "dragon suit" "jimmy hendrix." I didn't find a single beast I liked, so I combined the perfect clip-art dragon head with the body of some guy's back tattoo, using a cut-out filter to turn the photo into art. When I liked the results, I printed the dragon out (it took four transfers—it's about 26" long) three times, and ironed it on the clothing. I did the same thing with some clip-art poppies. Then I painted over everything with fabric paint, slopping some glitter-filled house paint on the dragon scales.

Every day, my daughter walks by the pants hanging on the door of the armoire in the living room, and she says, "Those are some fucking awesome pants."

Hey, I make some good stuff. My kid is the best of the best stuff I make.

Serena—and her suit—are on about a third of the songs at this weekend's School of Rock tribute to Led Zeppelin (4:00 Saturday, 1:00 Sunday at the Recher; $10). If you are in the area (and not watching the playoffs), come watch these amazing teenage musicians show off the chops they've been polishing since September, and throw yourself right back to 1975, at the Capital Centre. If I'd been born yet, I'd have gone with Andrea Palefsky.

I heard Page didn't wear The Suit that night. We've got that show beat.

hermommie and the order of the feedus

2011-01-06T10:49:00.006-05:00

Today, my daughter, Hormonie, is thirteen. She may think January 6th, the Epiphany, is about her, but it’s all about me. Hermommie woke up looking like a Death Eater, the Dark Mark under each eye, evil roots black as night, and skin of—what else?—elder. Overnight, I became the parent of a teenager. A teenanger.

It won’t be all bad, will it? It could hardly be worse than last year. And there’s evidence that she’s outgrown her parseltongue. Last night, at dinner, she told me she loved me. And I didn’t even have to give her money.

But it’s not about her, a girl whose favorite bands are Pink Floyd, Sweet, and the Records, while other girls her age are drooling over Justin Bieber; a girl who can nail the sax solo in “Us and Them,” then hit the drums on “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” and then play the lead guitar on “Over the Hills and Far Away” and then sing “Use Somebody”—while drumming!—and sound like the record; a girl who is so quick witted that when I apologized yesterday for my foul language (“The crows are fucking amazing!”), she replied, “I don’t give a shit”; a girl who—wait! It’s not about her.

For Christmas this year, Serena got me a gift certificate for a facial. My appointment is today, but I doubt that even Gina’s powerful elderflower and polyjuice potion can turn back the withered, arthritic hands of time. I guess that's OK. Truth be told, I wear my marks of motherhood with pride (and just a dash of Photoshop magic).

All of this is just a fancy way to declare my continuing love for my daughter, despite her age and disposition, and to say, in the clearest way* that she will understand:

*Happy Birthday, Serena!

If you want to translate English to parseltongue, go to the parselmouth.

the joy luck club

2011-01-01T17:32:00.001-05:00

I forgot to resolve. I'm sure I was supposed to join most of the rest of America and engage in the annual ritualistic declaration, but I have been tiptoeing around the baby new year, afraid I'll wake him; 2010 was just that good—at least in comparison to the last batch of years. On Monday, I hope to stop eating like I have two assholes. That's about it.

Twenty ten began with an attitude adjustment, a concerted effort not to tell myself I suck with every passing minute. I focused less on whining my ailments to the world and more on putting them to music (C, G, D, usually, but occasionally D, A, G and sometimes Em). I have liked living this way. The benefit to feeling pain but not sharing it all the time is that you get to create some pretty twisted poetry and still have a bunch of friends with whom to share it.

Twenty eleven is much harder to say, but I hope it will be no less easy to do. The morning began like last year's, with an incredible sunrise and the serenade of crows, followed by a brisk walk in the park. It will end with Harry Potter at our favorite theater. In between, I stood around in the street gabbing with friendly neighbors and eating a roasted pig sandwich and chocolate truffles, drinking ale, telling jokes, and taking pictures. Perpetually-pink-haired Paula Willey, Your Neighborhood Librarian, was the pig tender—and boy was the pig tender! (Sorry.) I tasted brains for the first time (creamy and rich, with a little metallic aftertaste; almost delicious, except for the part about them being brains), though I'm pretty sure black-eyed peas are slightly luckier.

I've put in a request for lots of joy this year, a heaping helping of good times with friends and family, smooth skin, good hair, deep relaxing breaths, a pinch of luck, and just a tiny dash of strife to keep the art interesting. Happy New Year!

once more to the attic

2010-12-31T16:29:00.008-05:00

For the past couple of years, I've been writing what I call the Facebook Poems. I ask, as a status update, for my friends to submit words, and each supplies one until I cut the thread. I like to keep it rule-less, but I have to remind people to keep the words simple. The goal is not merely for me to write a poem; it's for people to like poetry; somehow, if they have invested a word in it, they are more interested in watching it come to life. To some extent, I think they are surprised by how beautiful a poem can be—intelligible, too, and enjoyable.

Still, I get oddball words—words even I have to look up, words that sound icky, like my least favorite of all words, refrigerator. It troubles me to use "forthwith" in a poem because no one says forthwith in daily conversation. Banana is hard, too, especially for a serious poem. Bananas are insanely funny.

I got this set of words a few weeks ago, and I've been stifled. But I was determined to end this year with a new poem. And it brings me to my goal for the new year. I am hoping to write the rest of my Facebook Poems and send the complete book off to a publisher or an agent or something. I'm tired of my poems languishing while my blog flourishes.

Of course, my goal for last year was to get into a recording studio with a few of our best songs, and that never happened. So I'ma make it happen, hear me? This year.

Best wishes to you out there in space and time. I hope to see you again—always better in real space and real time, but I'll take what I can get. Without further ado, the words and then the poem.

humble (kim g), loquacious (tamelyn f), gold (beth mvb), lost (julie h), wicker (jane t), caress (sarah b), strength (gail d), fervent (lynne f), quixotic (sandra r), forthwith (jason d), magenta (randy s), rime (sarah m), phoenix (julie f), warmth (beth s), parchment (michele d), scumble (craig h), lactation (jamie c), banana (mindi s), banal (peggy b), serenade (patrick p)

once more to the attic
for Bruce Ansley and Cleopatra

in the golden space between house and tree
—now magenta, now indigo—
in that space of fiery fervent sky,
I swim, lost in the bleeding striations of sunset.
In the attic, with its wicker chairs, old floors, and new heat
that squeak and hiss and settle, loquacious
as an eager child, I test my strength:
if I climb, I live, though it sounds banal.

in the rimed space between house and tree,
we bury the dog in a caress of old blankets,
pacified momentarily by the gesture of warmth,
like an infant suckling water for lactose,
a serenade of rush-hour crows poking holes
in the blurry scumble of greys above us.
we are raw as parchment’s deckle edge,
small humble mourners trembling.

in the quixotic space between house and tree
the scent of banana bread wafts outside, licks the bleak air
and, forthwith, shoots embers to the heavens.
like a phoenix, and once more to the attic I climb, I live.

rest her soul

2010-12-15T08:45:00.005-05:00

For a little while yesterday, her body was shaped like a crescent in her bed beside the desk. I would stop my work and look at her and hold completely still and, unblinking, watch for movement. Marty was standing in the doorway, and we confessed to each other that we both could see her body rise and fall in a regular rhythm, the black coat playing tricks as the radiator heat and leaky windows blew her hairs gently. Cleo’s eyes were open—a result of the anesthesia—but they were dark enough to seem closed.

Where did she go, Marty wanted to know. Her body got cold almost right away, all that leftover heat from circulating blood and physical energy just dissipating in the air like vapor. We’d all like to think some clump of soul goes first, intact and at some perfect age of wisdom and agility. If Mary Roach couldn’t prove it in Spook, I’m not inclined to believe in that perfect soul leaving the body’s building at thirty-four seconds past death. I think it’s the job of your memories to reconstruct the souls of the departed. They visit you sometimes via the corner of your eye, when the light hits just right, and a shadow flits, or when a heavy truck goes by and shakes your house and your bed, and you sense an impression on the mattress; the apparition, the disappearance—there’s your ghost, their soul.

I’m moving slowly for a few days. I’m missing the sound of Cleo’s labored breathing, the struggle of her toenails against the wood floor. I can pull my kitchen chairs out at will. Chance is missing her, too. We put his bowl where hers used to be, and he looked at us as if to ask for permission, and he ate cautiously.

In the early afternoon, against yesterday’s bitter cold, Marty finished digging and wrapped her in my old electric blanket. He covered her with garden dirt and tears, and then it was done before I even knew. Marty came inside, and I went out to stand with her and thank her.

More than sadness and grief, I feel relief. We can live with pain or indignity or loss of senses or limited mobility, but should we have to live with all of them, even when our ability to make that choice—especially when the ability to make the choice—is gone? For all this talk of “quality of life,” why is it still the quantity of life that we attempt to preserve in the face of all of these ills?

For some, it’s a religious belief. It would seem that a major world religion was borne of the suffering of one man. “It’s not the Christian way,” someone at the Catholic school said of euthanasia. Then she leaned in and whispered, “I don’t care; I wouldn’t want to live like that.” Sometimes man learns the wrong lessons from history. For me, the sin is in the suffering, the godliness in the compassion.

to sleep, perchance to dream

2010-12-13T22:31:00.001-05:00

I haven’t slept in six months. If there wasn’t a dog beside my bed, snoring through thickened airways or panting heavily with pain or wandering the hallway, clunking the water bowl with her collar, pacing, peeing on the hallway rug, then there was a dog at the bottom of the steps, scratching at the barrier to come up, panting so heavily I could hear her through a closed door, above the din of the 1:00 a.m. TV. I’d get in bed and watch some cop show or The Good Wife, and I’d hear clunking and have to run downstairs, where I’d find Cleo stuck under a table or in a corner, trapped, frustrated. I could feel her panic and embarrassment.

My hearing and smell are already hypersensitive (something that happened when I was pregnant and never left me), but from the moment I got into bed each night, my whole body would tense up with anticipation. I knew she’d want to come up or need to go out or something just as soon as I’d start to drift off. Getting in bed has not been relaxing for a long, long time. And despite the frustration I've been known to express and the tears I've shed, I never once resented my dog.

I lie here now, some lame singing show (why are the women in these shows too lazy to think of words for things [“you owned it, you killed, you rocked it]?) on the tube, just an hour after saying our goodbyes to Cleo. Her limp body is lying in her bed in the dining room, and she looks more comfortable than I’ve seen her in two years. Yet my body is still tense, my ears still pricked, waiting for the panting and the moving furniture.

At eleven every night, when the news started, I would go down and lie with her, whisper loving things to her that she couldn’t hear but I’m sure felt, make sure she was comfortable, check that the basement door was closed and the barrier was up. I won’t have to do that anymore. I won’t get to do that anymore.

I poured a shot of brandy while Marty threw back a last sip of beer. “I’m going up to bed,” he said. Already? “And you should go to bed, too. You need to sleep.” I do need to sleep, I said. I haven’t slept in six months.

But first, one last goodnight.

RIP, Cleopatra Queen-of-Denial Miller. You were a very good dog.

- - - - - - - - - -

Thank you, everyone, for keeping my family in your thoughts. We appreciate it more than you can know.

the queen of denial, part two

2010-12-13T11:27:00.003-05:00

In the summer, we thought it might be time. Cleo was sleeping 23 hours a day, snoring loudly because of a thickening in her throat. She was suffering from arthritis, maybe a disc or other neurological issue. She was deaf, sometimes disoriented, incontinent with increasing frequency. It was difficult to wake her sometimes, and she was having trouble keeping her footing on the slippery tile floor. Then she couldn’t get up the steps by herself. Then she started falling down the stairs. We got a barrier and kept her on the first floor at night, but she’d stand at the bottom step and scratch on the makeshift gate for an hour. We'd sometimes give in, depending on the strength of Marty’s back. But she grew more restless at night and wandered the hallway, panting and knocking over things. She seemed to suffer from dementia and would get herself stuck under chairs or in corners, unable to back up—she’d just stand in the corner and pant.

My living room is now full of barriers—big foam core walls—to danger. I feared she’d burn herself on a floor lamp or start a fire with electrical cords. She got her head stuck between the fridge and the wall, where we stored some folding chairs; they tipped a little and seemed to pin her head—gently, but she didn't know the difference.

Still, she seemed to enjoy going to the park and would often perk up to see Chance and Marty getting ready. She was always hungry, too, and didn't that mean she still wanted to live? So that made it hard for us to agree on the time. Perhaps my family felt that my fear of a second back surgery (the first a result of having to lift Cleopatra each day to put her in the truck for a walk at the park) made me more eager to be rid of this physical burden—pulling her out of corners and lifting her onto her feet. And who could blame them for their love?

From the moment this five-month-old puppy wandered into our back yard in April of 1996, Cleopatra Queen-of-Denial Miller has been a loyal and delightful companion. Where Beowulf King-of-the-Geats Miller was a favorite among certain menfolk in our lives, Cleo was one of the most beloved dogs at the park. This is no hyperbole. Our dogsitter never charged us to watch her. My sister, who is highly allergic, would often bury her face in Cleo’s fur. My brother-in-law would have taken Cleo for his own, despite his wife's allergies. In fact, we got a lot of similar offers. People loved our dogs so much that when Cleo had Beowulf’s puppies, our vet took one. A neighbor took two. We kept Buddha.

Cleo’s always told us what she wanted or needed. She’d scratch at the back door to go out or come in; she’d fetch sticks and drop them at our feet or put balls in our lap. She didn’t take no for an answer, either, and would bark at us or paw us until we played. She spoke in a sweet little trill, slept on her back with all four paws in the air, licked our faces, played a mean game of tug-o-war (often snatching sticks from other dogs). She never bit us, not even by accident. She was only really sick once—with Lyme disease. And she took care of us, waiting for whomever was trailing behind.

In the last few weeks, it’s been clear to me in her pleading eyes. I’ve been waiting for my husband’s realization to catch up with my own. We’ve done this before—lost three dogs and two cats during our twenty-eight-year relationship, never mind those pets that came and went before we met. So it was never a question of whether it was the right thing to do.

When our daughter, Serena, was born, Beowulf was dying from kidney disease. We were waiting for the sign that he was done, and it came on a cold February morning. Marty took Wulf to the picnic table outside and covered him, spoke to him, kept him warm with hugs while we waited for the vet to come to the house. The shot that usually goes to work in a few short seconds took more than two minutes to work. Wulf let out a howl that is forever etched in our memories. I let it get to me sometimes, let myself believe that Wulf was trying to stop us instead of thanking us for his wonderful life and saying goodbye. His body had completely shut down; he couldn’t even metabolize the euthanasia agent. No question it was the right thing.

I had a feeling this final image was clouding my husband’s judgment, just as it haunted me. But Cleo’s decline over the last few days has been swift. She can no longer stand on her own and is often found trying to scramble away from her puddle of pee. When we stand her up and put her in the yard, she wanders around in crooked, slanted circles, stumbling. At least once every day, I am alone and having to wrap Cleo’s pee soaked body in my arms to move her. And she has finally lost her appetite. On Saturday, she refused her bone, and I called the vet.

It took that, I think—the indignity of lying in one’s own urine and excrement coupled with lack of a desire for food—to make her condition urgent. I have been crying, with small periods of clear speech (usually to yell at someone), since Saturday. Last night at midnight, I heard some furniture moving in the kitchen and rescued Cleo from what I hope and wish is her last puddle. I slept fitfully.

This morning, before he left for work, Marty stood in the kitchen and cried. If you think something is already a big pile sad, set a crying man on top. Serena left her homework in the dining room, so I took the opportunity at school to inform the staff that my people are fragile today. As if they couldn’t already tell.

The vet will come tonight, and we will bury Cleo in the morning. This is as right as our hearts are broken. Our dogs have always been beloved members of our family. They celebrate our joys and comfort us in times of grief. When they go, pieces of us go with them.

Their people will be fragile for a little while.

harford road

2010-12-06T13:13:00.001-05:00

If you live in the area—or in Baltimore (city or county)—you might find something of interest on my new blog about local businesses on Harford Road. It's all about doing all you can do in your own neighborhood. You keep your house from being devalued. You reduce your dependence on oil. You keep your neighbors from losing their businesses and their homes. You show larger businesses and Internet stores that you value human contact and personal service.

Harford Road

overstuffed

2010-12-02T09:19:00.012-05:00

Things. Objects. Junk. Stuff. I have a lot of it, and sometimes I feel as though it has me.

In the rooms where I write, I am haunted by great writers; the floor-to-almost-ceiling bookshelves packed with books in various stages of use by authors who question my worth behind my fancy Herman Miller desk chair. A three-year-old copy of Ginsberg’s Collected Poems still makes a cracking noise when you open it, while Mila 18’s title on the spine is indiscernible. Hundreds more books live in the bedrooms—and even the bathrooms—upstairs, while thousands breathe life into the attic, many snoring from boxes under the eaves, still packed from our move here 18 years ago.

Atop the bookcases in my dining room are no fewer than seven glamorous cake plates, as if I’ve ever made more than two cakes at one time. From where I sit, I see three acoustic guitars, a DSLR camera, some high-tech speakers, and lots of art. Never mind the tchotchkes.

Last year at Christmas, we decided that we have everything we could possibly need, including a brand new iMac, our family gift. We didn’t even get a tree for probably the second time since we moved here. It’s not that we were all bah-humbuggy. We just thought: enough’s enough. Christmas (and Hanukkah, though it’s a little quieter) seemed absurd.

I thought it would change this year: some cold days would settle in to let us know that winter was arriving, and I’d get the bug to hang some balls on something, maybe a tree, and light a fire in the rarely used fireplace. But the holidays still seem absurd to me.

This season, I’m feeling a little bit of revulsion. I get anxious when I hear the phrase “door busters.” I am queasy over extended shopping hours. Indeed, the thought of some stores opening their doors at, gasp, three a.m. on Black Friday gave me a migraine. I’m angered by the people being trampled on their way to get a deal on a Wii. I am super pissed off at the TV husbands (obviously from a well-off planet) who give their wives a new Lexus. And I am creeped out by Stinky the Garbage Truck.

I tried to stimulate my holiday appetite. I hosted Thanksgiving and made homemade eggnog and eggnog cheesecake and carrot cake. I had my own turkey for the first time in a decade (we’re still eating it a week later as salad and stew and sandwiches). I had friends stop over the next day to help make a dent in the sweets and the troughs of stuffing and mac and cheese my sister left here. But I am missing the spirit that makes me want to shop. And I can’t think of anything I want. The kind of stuff I need—new tires, new windows, new kitchen cabinets—are not gift material.

My kind of Christmas comes as a card in the mail with a personal message to me, like “I love you, Facebook Queen” or “Can’t wait to drink a Dead Guy Ale with you on Good Friday and a Resurrection with you on Easter Sunday” or “I sure hope you get a job in the new year, because your FB status updates kinda freak me out.” I mean, sure, your family/kids/dogs/reptiles/even cats are cute in the photo on your card, and I guess the post office really needs that forty-four cents, but while you’re at it, tell me something good or something funny or something happy about yourself. I already know your name.

My kind of Christmas stars the little kids who still believe in Santa, while I drink a cocktail in Kim’s massage chair next to her beautiful tree and sing along with Chuck Prophet. My kind of Christmas is heading down to the basement with my own family band to play real live Guitar Hero.

Did I just outgrow the holiday? Or am I simply responding to my inability to finance it? How have your feelings toward Christmas changed, if at all?

- - - - -

If you're not feeling Scrooge-y, someone you know would probably love a calendar.

chain reaction: shop locally

2010-11-28T14:16:00.028-05:00

Before you go shopping for that special gift for someone you love or like or are obligated to lavish with pretend affection, ask yourself, first, whether it will be truly special and, second, where your money might do you the most good. You’ll no doubt give some to Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, and you may have a significant portion of your purchases delivered to your door in boxes marked Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Target and Walmart will also catch you coming and going more times than you’d like to admit.

But the chains don’t need you like you need you.

If you can shop in your neighborhood—whether it’s for groceries or liquor or flowers—do it. If there’s a jewelry shop or a camera store or tiny burger joint near your house, buy something there. Because here’s what happens when you stay in your neck of the woods: your house retains its value.

It works like this: open, busy shops attract people, and people deter crime. Buildings are less likely to become vandalized and are more likely to become fixed immediately if they do. Bustling commercial areas in small neighborhoods make those neighborhoods appealing to potential home buyers, especially those with families. Your house—just up the street from a coffee shop, book store, hip happening hairdresser, hardware store, restaurant, pub, and fabulous boutique—retains its value—not only monetarily but personally. Your quality of life is vastly improved by community. (And remember Snowmageddon? It's a lot less dismal when you can walk to a place that's open because the owners walked there, too.)

I’ve heard before from people—even those with a good deal of disposable income—that they don’t get as great a “value” from shopping locally; that is, the books cost a little more. But when I buy a book at the Red Canoe, I visit with my neighbors and friends, chat with the owners, taste a sample of the newest muffin, and get a cup of coffee that’s roasted so locally I can smell it from my house. I learn the latest neighborhood news (and scuttlebutt, which is a little more fun). I am treated like a person, and that makes me feel good. I give my money to a friendly college student with good taste in music and a knack for making a killer sandwich. That, my friends, is value, and it radiates for blocks. It’s what the credit card company means by “priceless.”

If you’re not lucky enough to have a strip of independent stores in your neighborhood, come to mine. All up and down Harford Road you can find things that are truly special, one-of-a-kind items that no one else owns.

Studio C Jewelry & Gifts
410-444-7979
4337 B Harford Road
10-5 T-Sat., 10-3 Sun
like them on Facebook

Constance Scott makes gorgeous beaded and tin jewelry and accessories, and she carries some of the coolest stuff around: letter hooks; pearl pens; bottle stoppers with golf balls and antique door knobs; funky locally-created clothing (made by converting two items into a single unique top or skirt!); magnets; hats; soaps; a whole line of gorgeous serving items from Swirl; and so much more. How can you resist a $4 package of the strongest magnets in the world or fancy bookmarks that fit in your daughter's stocking? You can’t leave without finding something special for someone special.

The Red Canoe
410-444-4440
4337 Harford Road
7-5 T-Sat., 9-3 Sun.

Betty White may have put the fun back into talking about muffins, but Peter Selhorst put the fun back into eating them. They are the best muffins anywhere. If you want a sweet muffin, pick the cranberry chocolate chip or everyone’s favorite coffee cake muffin. Maybe you want a hot, crusty muffin, with spinach and cheese, gently heated and slathered with butter. (Dare I say "moist"?)

But Red Canoe is more than the sum of some of its muffins. It’s coffee and soups and sandwiches (try the Zacker—a grilled force of panini to be reckoned with). And, of course, it's books—for kids and grownups, with a huge selection of local authors' books. (Rumor has it that the Red Canoe carries a certain someone’s calendars, too.) Nicole and Peter support authors and artists as book-signing-party hosts, sellers, and wall-art displayers.

Koco’s Pub
410-426-3519
4301 Harford Road

For the universe’s best crab cakes, with all jumbo lump and rarely a speck of filler, it’s Koco’s. Joanna, the owner, once told me she used a loaf of bread per twenty pounds of crab. If you find a piece of it, save it; it’s a little like finding a pearl in an oyster. Koco’s is on my speed dial.

The Chop Shop
410-426-2300
4329 Harford Road

You need cool hair? Baby, she’s got cool hair. Visit Our Coiffed Lady of the Locks, Lisa Hawks, for hip happenin’ hairdos and trusty tresses that will make you the belle of any holiday ball. And you get some spicy shop talk, too.

Beth’s DIY
443-708-0786
4321 Harford Road

Hey, just because it’s Christmas doesn’t mean you don’t need a key made or a window rescreened. Beth knows what she’s doing, and she can show you, too.

The Chameleon Café
410-254-2376
4341 Harford Road
5-9 T-Thurs, 5-10 Fri.-Sat.

Steak and lamb and scallops and vegetarian dishes and charcuterie—nothing in this restaurant is short of delightful. The space is sweet, and the food is as local and in season as it can possibly be. Brenda and Jeff Smith have created a heavenly foodie haven that’s been applauded by all the local magazines and newspapers. There’s even a prix fixe menu for those of us whose income is broken!

Lou’s Liquors
4516 Harford Road
410-426-5645

Lou’s has a good selection of craft beers (and the usual crap beers, for those who like that sort of thing), as well as big jugs of Manischewitz. It’s also great for Lotto, cigarettes, and shorties.

Up the Road

Further north up Harford Road, you can find other hunks of awesomesauce:
· Zeke's Coffee (4607 Harford Road) has those fabulous, roasted-right-here (in the alley between the Chameleon and Safeway) beans and lots of coffee-related merch;
· Lakein's Jewelers (5400 Harford Road) for watch repairs and sterling chains and an ear piercing (really? you'd let a teenager from Claire's pierce your kid's ears?);
· Clementine (5402 Harford Road) for the yummy sandwiches and meals and fancy cocktails (best: chicken salad with havarti and lemon jam);
· Hamilton Vacuum (5421 Harford Road—buy it here once or repair the ones you didn't buy here each year;
· Hamilton Arts Collective (5440 Harford Road), because art is essential, not optional;
· Big Bad Wolf's House of Barbecue (5713 Harford Road) for your big bad appetite for barbecue;
· Shockers Smoke Shop (7110 Harford Road), for all your bong needs;
· Fenwick Bakery (7219 Harford Road) for donuts, cake, and pie (my husband buys a dozen cinnamon bismarcks here every week!);
· a strip of antique shops;
· Mueller’s Delicatessen (7207 Harford Road), for German goodies;
· Dead Freddies (7209 Harford Road) to watch the game while eating their shrimp salad on pretzel bread—best I've ever had;
· Home Discount Tile Center (7350 Harford Road) (a little like a car dealership, but more colorful).

Get your Christmas tree at the fabulous Walther Gardens, 4715 Walther Avenue (and, in the summer, Baltimore's Best Snowball, with ice cream on the bottom, thick chocolate syrup in the middle, and marshmallow on top; shop in the greenhouse, too, for herbs, annuals, and veggie plants). Those people are so nice, and their dog is good.

Move over to Old Harford Road, and find cool stick candies, wreaths, and greens at Poor Boys. Then get your Christmas facial and brow pluck from the beautiful and divine Gina at Giuseppe's (also in my speed dial—2616 Taylor, 410-665-4490). Finally, because you're gonna need it after all that shopping, ask for some Resurrection at the Liquor Pump (8535 Old Harford Road, 410-668-1820), and tell owner Harry Mehta that Leslie the Beer Goddess sent you. It's one of the nicest liquor stores ever, with a huge variety of fancy craft beer. The place holds tastings, too, so look for them on Facebook.

You don't have to be rich to shop locally, but if you shop locally, you will be rich. It's in the cards. If you don't trust me, go have them read at this place at the corner of Overland and Harford, between your rockin' crab cake and your bitchin' hairdo.

verklempt

2010-11-16T10:08:00.014-05:00

photo by Steven Parke

My daughter became a bat mitzvah a little over a week ago, and I can't find the words to describe how I feel about it: about our weekly meetings with the rabbi, about our growth individually and as a family, about our incredible daughter (who tie-dyed her own tallit and braided its fringes and who still managed to pull straight As despite adding Hebrew lessons and rabbi visits to her busy music schedule and her creature maintenance), and about the party my mother threw to celebrate this simcha with mishpucha.

I'm not sure why all my revelations emerge as sentimentality rather than wisdom, as cliché rather than poetry. I seem to be mourning. Our Wednesdays with the rabbi were some of the most sacred and treasured hours I've had in years, and putting together 120 hand-made programs kept me focused on something other than my ailments and my dying dog and my lack of employment. When it's all over, I find my bullies have been quietly building up arms and ammo against me. I am perched between kvelling and yelling, and my reflexes are sharp, despite my physical decrepitude.

I have nothing but this poem I stumbled through, verklempt, the Sunday my daughter became responsible for her own goodness, her godliness.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

rock mitzvah
(for Serena, with a nod to Frank O'Hara)

it was a quick trade: umbilical for patch cord
my baby for bay-beh bay-beh bay-beh.
thirteen meticulous whirls past the sun
and she knows her way around a fret pattern
even before she’s fingering the tallit’s fringe.
the years are but a filmy dream that wakes up amid
ancient tongue (we have nothing if not endurance)
tremulous melody, pomp, and splendor
when all I’ve done to date is sigh. bark. write.
she must have flown here on the Puca’s back
reckless brown tresses whipping in wind
alighting at the bimah like a new angel.

I don’t see the crumbs of morning toast
on nervous lips she bit to crimson
don’t hear a skip in her smooth recitations.
so do I mourn this loss of little girl
or squash the selfish pangs and celebrate—
with a very real laughter she’d be proud of—
the way she wears her prayer shawl like wings?

you need cool calendars; baby, I got cool calendars

2010-11-13T08:12:00.011-05:00

My calendars looked so beautiful last year that I'm printing two new calendars for 2011--photos from the Hipsta and photos with a real camera! Click on the image below to enlarge it a tad.

HIPSTA SISTA

REAL CALENDAR

If you're interested, they're $15 each, plus $2 shipping in the US. (Please add $5 for overseas.) They're payable by PayPal (lesliefmiller@yahoo.com), and I'll send them out as soon as they arrive, which is about a week. Don't forget your mailing address, and please specify which calendar you'd like.

And don't worry: I'll remind you again when it's closer to time to buy a calendar.

Broken

2010-10-19T13:25:00.007-04:00

Bur first, an interview with the Ripstick Queen, two and a half years ago.

Note: the helmet and wrist guards, the mother running beside the daughter to check for cars.

It was common knowledge that you didn’t have breakfast at the Morning Edition near Patterson Park unless you had three hours to spend. It’s not that it was too crowded—it was, but it was a narrow first floor of a rowhouse and held fifty people or so in church pews and wobbly, cast-out chairs. But it was quirky, and the food was delicious, and sometimes you were willing to wait, even though service was so bad it was obscene: a server would bring you a cup of coffee, set it down at your table, and look at you surprised when you asked for cream and sugar. Then she'd walk back for the cream, set it down at your table, then look at you surprised when you asked again for sugar, then walk back for the sugar, then set it down at your table and look at you surprised when you asked for a spoon to stir it all, then walk back for the spoon and only sometimes return.

Now imagine that you’re not at the Morning Edition for some ridiculously decadent French Toast but at the ER for x-rays and stitches after a terrible accident. You’d expect a little more from nurse. You get nice. You don't get efficient. There has to be a better way.

I'll back up. I had just turned dinner on, poured a Resurrection into a fancy glass, and sat down with my guitar to learn Radiohead's "No Surprises," when Marty came back too early from the park. Serena had fallen from her ripstick. Yes, a ripstick is a horrible piece of shit wheeled toy that I like to call “a skateboard—only dangerouser,” and she went speeding down a hill, sans helmet, sans wrist guards (not that either would have helped, as only luck spared her from a broken wrist and a brain injury). She was going too fast and dismounted, her left arm—her fret-playing arm—breaking, literally, her fall, and then her face stopped it the rest of the way. When we arrived at a local hospital's ER at 5:45, the waiting room was full. I’d forgotten what it was like here—hundreds of patients using the hospital’s emergency facility as a primary care physician—mostly because this hospital saved my life when I was in anaphylaxis after taking a dose of penicillin, and because of the hand clinic. If something was wrong with her hand, she needed to be at this place.

Serena’s face is bloody, her nose bruised, her jaw and arm too sore to move. I sign in, noting on the form next to “reason for visit” that she suffered a terrible fall in an accident. She was triaged quickly because the pair of young nurses was caught up, and she was given an ice pack for her face and told that she’d get a room as soon as one was available. More than an hour later, at 7:15, I started listening more carefully; everyone was told the same thing. So much for keeping hope and patients’ spirits alive.

The woman at registrar had told us to sit at her desk; she’d taken pity on Serena and was making phone calls trying to get her Tylenol and a room. She tells us we are going to “flex care,” as if that were some special kind of white-table-cloth restaurant that takes a little longer but has much better food. But we are still at her desk at 7:30. Finally, she gets up and cleans three rooms herself—the first (and only) sign of real initiative at the hospital—and takes us back to the Flex Care waiting room, where we wait after another fifteen minutes until the nurse comes.

Serena is given a preliminary glance—asked what hurts—and sent to x-ray. We wait there for ten minutes or so, and then Serena’s arm is x-rayed, and we are delivered back to the tiny cubbyhole to wait another half hour or so for the pediatrician. He is a cheerful Dutch guy who is pleased to tell us he studied under Serena’s pediatrician twenty years ago. The tools in our cubby don’t work, so he stretches them from the room next door, where a girl who’d had strep for more than a week and has been waiting for a doctor just a little longer than we were is being seen. That girl has had asthma since birth, and the doctor is incredulous that the mother has no asthma medicine at all, not even an emergency inhaler. The teen is told that her throat looks like strep, but test results would take two days, so she’s getting a shot of antibiotics. Two days? The ER doesn’t have a 20-minute strep test like every pediatrician’s office and Patient First on the planet? Really?

Our doctor says that Serena’s x-rays indicate a fracture, but he is waiting for confirmation from an orthopedist. He tells us a nurse will come and clean Serena’s wounds, and goes to sit at his desk and eat. He sits there for a good thirty minutes, while the nurse, who sees me lurking in the hallway and apologizes each time, saying, “I’m coming,” finally does come with an armload of stuff to clean up the blood that’s dripping from her chin and head.

I had to remind myself that the nurse was not the waitress. Yet she came to us with the coffee but not the cream, sugar, or spoon. She came with her hands full of things she needed, then left in search of things she forgot, gone a good ten minutes between, apologizing along the way. She wondered whether the triple antibiotic ointment she brought contained penicillin, despite the fact that it said “active ingredient: bacitracin” on the packet, and left for another ten minutes to find out. She put on the ointment, and we reminded her that she’d not cleaned Serena’s scraped knees, so she went back for the peroxide and water. And then she left to get more ointment. I don't blame her; she was the only nurse! It's the hospital's fault.

Where’s my fucking French Toast?

Last week, at Alonso’s, a popular restaurant and bar where I’ve been a customer nearly once a week for two years and have been treated kindly by most of the wait staff, we sat, on a busy Friday night, at a sticky, filthy spot at the bar for twenty minutes, unable to get the bartender’s attention—after taking twenty minutes to get served a beer—so I went behind the bar, grabbed a wet rag, bused the dirty dishes, and wiped the bar. It took seconds. The bartender hollered at me. Why? Because customers are not allowed behind the bar.

So how could this whole scenario been improved? I could've cleaned her myself. Marty’d already cleaned her before we arrived. This was three hours of bleeding. What about one of those triage nurses? Couldn’t they have cleaned her wounds after they took her blood pressure, in the room where they had all the equipment to do it, in a room that wasn’t being used by anyone but us because they were all caught up? What about the pediatrician in ER? Couldn’t he have done it quickly, before sitting down to dinner and waiting for the next underage patient, who didn’t show up until 9:30 p.m.?

There’s a bleeding, broken kid in the ER, and it’s just like a bad restaurant. Where’s my fucking coffee?

At 9:00, three hours and fifteen minutes after we had arrived, we are still waiting for a phone call or a visit from the orthopedist, and Serena is finally glowing with sticky ointment. I am blotting the blood drips from her chin with a tissue brought to us by the guy cleaning the rooms. At 9:30, we are sent for more x-rays, this time of the elbow, and the receptionist is talking on the phone for the first ten minutes, until I mention to Marty that no one would even know we were here if she didn’t finish her call. She hangs up and takes us back. She is the tech. She obviously doesn’t know that ER patients have been sitting for hours and hours before they reach her care.

We are back in our cubby at almost ten, and I’m threatening to leave. My back is killing me, my husband is asleep on the stretcher, and my daughter is crying again and saying fuck a lot. The doctor tells us, again, that the ortho “is coming,” but she’s been coming for the past hour, and the hospital’s not that big. It takes the nurse to tell us that “she’s in surgery, and we have no way of knowing when she’ll be finished.” But! But! You all keep saying she’s coming! As if she’s actually walking toward us! She’s not coming! She’s in surgery! Aware is different from coming! I understand aware! I want to leave, but the nurse reminds us of all the time we have invested. Do we invest ten minutes more or two hours more? Probably somewhere in between, the nurse tells us.

Is all this done to give the patient hope or shield them from the verbal hostility of frustrated patients? Is this the waitress soothing the ire of her hungry customers by telling us again and again that the food will be out shortly, that it’s next up, that she saw it back there, that it’s on the way out to us, even though the kitchen is short-staffed and has its attention on the six omelets that were easier to make than your fancy French Toast?

At last, the ortho arrives, and she spends nearly every moment of the next two hours working on Serena, stopping only to locate a cast saw because the one she had was overheating too quickly and burning Serena and to send us for a third and final, we hoped, x-ray. Fortunately, her break was set properly, and we are discharged. At midnight. Six hours and fifteen minutes after walking through the door.

Serena is just one patient. Some of the people who had arrived before or during our stay were parked on stretchers in the hallways with black eyes and bloody noses or zombiefied or comatose or just slumped over in alcoholic or drug-induced stupors. Or maybe they were just exhausted.

Let me say right now that everyone has been nice, kind, gentle, and generous. I know they were doing their best. And let me add that I haven't a clue about how to run a small business, much less an ER. I'm just a frustrated parent who saw countless missed opportunities to keep someone from waiting an hour for a glass of water. A woman got locked in the bathroom, and an alarm sounded and lights flashed, and the clean-up guy had nothing with which to open the bathroom door! He finally, and not in any real hurry (I guess he knew it wasn't a true emergency), located a screwdriver and opened the door. So I know they're understaffed and overworked (that same guy complained to us he was going on his twelfth hour of work, to which I replied that he was getting paid, and we were paying—not the same thing). I know they have a system. But things don't work this poorly at other hospitals, many of whom have hired independent consultants to fix things. I'm just suggesting that this is a hospital that needs fixing.

So what if the nurse helped one patient from start to finish, handing that patient over to the x-ray tech after cleaning the dripping blood from her chin, x-ray tech then handing the patient to the doctor while the nurse attends to the next patient, on and on until everyone is out of there or in the care of the appropriate specialist within an hour or two? Instead, there’s a waitress walking in and out of twenty cubbyhole rooms taking all the drink orders before putting a single one in, not returning to take the dinner orders until the drinks are up and delivered to each table. Where’s the manager? The food here is not worth suffering through the service.

The Morning Edition eventually closed, but we can make our own breakfast. We can’t stitch our own cuts, take x-rays, dispense pain relievers, set breaks, make casts. Still, it seems like the people who can would want to do it for grateful people, rather than tearful, weary, angry, powerless ones who feel so defeated by the system that they’re ready to walk out with serious injuries to become a drain on somebody else’s emergency room or worse—sit in the halls taking up space and being treated like they’re used to being treated—as though their lives don’t matter, which they believe. They are mostly alone and have no one to fight for them.

When we go in an ER broken, we do not expect to be broken even more. We don’t deserve it. So we either fix the ER (I am looking for a job!), or we wrap our children in foam peanuts and bubble wrap.

queen of denial

2010-10-05T16:49:00.012-04:00

I’m about to lose another pet—my fifth as an adult. Their pictures, two cats and two dogs, sit together on the fireplace mantel; the shot of Cleopatra sits at the other end, waiting to join the group. Cleo is snoring on the dog bed next to my desk. Her eyes are open, but she’s asleep. She is deaf but feels my footsteps on the floor beside her and looks at me with one eye, the other still rolled back. She’s fifteen. Her hair mats in painful lumps behind her ears and back legs, and she’s too fragile to brush, so we sometimes cut the pieces out. A pink skin tag peeks above the black fur between her eyes, which have a blotch of black in each. She’s stiff from arthritis, and a bad disc in her neck makes her walk on her toes. Sometimes her back legs slide out from under her, and sometimes she stands as if gathering strength to lie back down.

I didn’t think she’d make it through the summer. Last week, she didn’t go to the park two days in a row, but on the third, she had a bounce in her step. She hasn’t moved all day today until Marty’s voice boomed, “Cleo, want to go for a walk?” and she bolted upright. She took baby steps to the back door and followed him and Chance outside, went to the park, and walked up a hill.

Cleo wandered into our yard in March of 1996, fell instantly in love with Beowulf, and had five of his babies in August of 1997, while I was pregnant with Serena. (Buddha, the first born, stayed with us. He was hit by a car when Serena was five; before that, hardly a photo of her exists without all or part of Buddha in it.) Wulf, a.k.a. Dogfaceboy, died, shortly after the puppies were born, in Marty’s lap while Serena was a new-born infant.

We all like to think our pets are the smartest, most soulful beasts, but Cleo has always been spectacular, in that border-collie-meets-black-lab way. She chortled and purred and engaged us in incessant rounds of fetch; she caught flying discs and balls high in the air and from a long distance. She played tug of war with sticks, tricking other dogs into letting go of their toys and stealing them. If she wasn’t finished with your affections, she would paw you for continued rubbing or push the ball toward you with her nose, barking until you caved in and threw it. She was always our protector, too. When we went for walks, she wouldn’t follow until the last person had caught up. She liked to bring up the rear, to herd us. This is the last trait to go, though I can’t tell if she’s waiting or just too tired to go on.

Every night, Cleo has to be carried up the stairs, and every morning, she must be carried down. She has twice fallen down the stairs at four a.m. in an attempt to relieve herself on the beautiful rug. Now we have a makeshift gate made of a cork bulletin board, so she pees on the bathroom tile or the hall carpet. Sometimes she poops on my bedroom floor—several hard lumps scattered here and there, and I can’t avoid the late-night landmines as I drag my groggy self to the bathroom.

Cleo pants, but she doesn’t whine. She snores when she sleeps, but she grunts when you rub her right. It’s been ages since she’s wagged her tail or barked, even at the mailman. But she eats. She eats like a crazy old lady with Alzheimers, like Marty’s grandma Ginny, who would sit at the table and finish a large breakfast at 8:30, then come back and yell, “Well, golly, it’s almost 9:00! Isn’t anybody going to feed me?!” Every time I open the refrigerator, she stands in the way, looking and smelling.

Our vet, the one who put Beowulf to sleep when he was moaning and unable to move because of kidney failure, took the last and second best of Cleo’s puppies, named him Timber. I’m sure he would come to us to spare his doggy mommy the frightening drive. But how will I know when she is ready? Every time I think she’s done with the world, she walks up a hill; every time I think she’s improving, she falls down it.

Beowulf’s health declined during my pregnancy, and I sat with him every day, begging him to hang in there until the baby was born. He did it for me, but he didn’t last long after Serena was born. Wulf had never been too sick to snarl at the mailman until one cold February day. His body was limp, and he moaned in pain, so Marty took him outside to the picnic table and stroked his fur and comforted him until Dr. Andrew arrived—on the heels of close friends who loved our dog. The dog lay in Marty’s lap. Andrew took out the needle, and Wulf let out a howl—a long, piercing, pitiful lament. I don't know if that howl said I love you or goodbye or thank you. I don't know if it said take care of the little one. I just pray, whenever I think about it, that it didn't say no, please don't, I'm not ready to go.

I can’t make this decision for Cleopatra, Queen of Denial, no matter how sad she seems to me. Each night, I lie with her on the floor and tell her that we will all miss her so very much, but that it’s OK to stay asleep if she is ready to be done with this world. We will understand.

I whisper into her deaf, matted ear that she doesn’t have to wait for us to catch up anymore.

come by here

2010-09-29T08:44:00.011-04:00

My daughter is about to become a bat mitzvah, literally translated, daughter of the commandments. It’s odd, if not ironic, because she’s already literally the daughter of two nonbelievers, as well as the granddaughter of two agnostic grandmothers and a quietly believing grandfather who hasn’t been to shul for the high holidays in more than a dozen years. And then there’s the matter of Serena having gone to Catholic School since she was three. (Free ham may be a stereotypical dilemma in that old joke, but believe me: for a Jew in Baltimore City, free Catholic school is no dilemma; it’s a no-brainer.)

I was never a bat mitzvah; I think my continued expression of doubt about a god who would allow the Holocaust got me invited to leave Temple Emmanuel’s Sunday school when I was eleven. I never looked back, never pined for any sort of god—other than the pine itself, which if not a deity is certainly omnipresent and tall enough to provide a foreboding reminder that someone big can whoop your ass if you’re not good. And that eternal can of whoopass seems to be humankind’s do-good motivator, else what’s a hell for?

But a few months ago, when my parents offered Serena the chance to learn some Hebrew for thirty minutes a week and have a party at the end of it, I left the choice up to her, with the caveat that once made, the choice could not be undone. If she has had any regrets each week when Norman comes to teach her a new part of the Hebrew she’ll read at the ceremony, they’re all vanished now.

We met Rabbi Geoff over dessert and coffee at my parents’ house. He informed us then that he wasn’t any kind of rent-a-rabbi, and if that’s what we wanted, well, we’d need to find somebody else. He expected more of a familial commitment—weekly, every other week at least. I worried whether Marty, who is already oversaturated with organized religion as a Catholic-school teacher, would balk. But we learned that evening about this new kind of Judaism called Reconstructionist, and we were interested. Though it seems a bit closer to Conservative than to the pick-and-choose Reform we’re used to, its secular humanism focus seemed to light a fire under us all. Instead of concentrating on the worship of a capital-g God, the Reconstructionists concentrate on how we can nurture our lower-case-g godliness. And so we return, once more, to the notion of doing unto others, simply because it’s the right thing to do, rather than because you fear eternal damnation.

September was such a busy month—what with Serena’s band, the Oxi-Morons, practicing five days a week to play out three times—that we could only commit to two meetings. Now we’re all practically begging to see Rabbi Geoff weekly.

I can’t describe what goes on in the large sitting room, which holds two sofas, a bunch of chairs, a coffee table, a piano, a couple of Jewish paintings, and a small table set up for coffee, which Geoff brews fresh so that the whole place smells good when we get there. I just know that we talk. We have a guided discussion about our participation in the world, about the things we love and the way we engage others, and we leave feeling lighter and refreshed, like we’ve sloughed off some dead skin.

Rabbi Geoff gives Serena homework—what’s a tallit? what’s a mitzvah?—so we usually start with a discussion of that. We go over points on a handout, like it’s school, and Serena’s not the only one who participates. But dang, is she ever smart. We discover things about each other (Marty is a thinker, Serena is a feeler, I’m a doer), and we continue our discussion on the drive home.

This week’s lesson was about the 613 mitzvot, or commandments, and what they mean and what are good and bad reasons for following them. Because it’s not so much the commandments (we’re not going to light any Sabbath candles; that’s not who we are) but the intention behind them (lighting those candles says stop, breathe, reflect; work is done).

During our meeting, a black father and son came into the church-slash-synagogue (even the shared building is more than symbolic). They were about twenty minutes early for their discussion group with the rabbi, but Geoff invited them to hang out and wait anywhere in the building. Instead of wandering around, they pulled up a chair and joined in, obviously unaware this was our time. I was initially taken aback—that they just came in and joined us and that the rabbi didn’t tell them he meant anywhere else in the building—but I realized this is exactly what I love so much about being there. Intention. What better way to understand people than to discuss, together, the intention to be good people in the world.

We left the second meeting feeling the same way as the first, looking forward to coming back for another 90 minutes of philosophical thought. It’s luxurious to think! It's luxurious to discuss, to marry abstract thought to concrete action. It's luxurious to put away all the technology and think and talk, to have this preplanned time, like a massage appointment, without feeling the need to rush away to the next chore. For that hour or so, we engage each other, and our minds meet. It’s as if they are holding each other’s hands and singing Kumbaya. I’m not being sarcastic. I mean Kumbaya, “come by here,” as it was traditionally sung to represent both a human and a spiritual meeting. I wouldn't mind adding a guitar and a fire, maybe a beer, but it's delicious as is.

Look, I’m not ready to run off and join a synagogue; I still have my doubts as to whether organized religion, even one that seems to focus on a secular humanism, albeit with a Jewish bent, does good. But I don’t feel any kind of conflicted about my daughter becoming a daughter of the commandments, especially when some of those commandments can be expressed with a commitment to recycling and giving to charity.

And I like the idea that my daughter now has some sort of spiritual guidance available to her. For almost thirteen years, we’ve answered Serena’s religious questions and educated her about traditions and customs as openly and without prejudice as we could, but I want her to come into her own beliefs the way I came into mine, and I am grateful, and somewhat relieved, that she now has someone who can coax her gently into godliness. And she's excited, too, because she has always felt apart from the Catholic community, in whose buildings she spends so many hours a day.

I am especially proud to be the mother of this daughter of the commandments.

she will rock you—if there's time

2010-09-13T07:35:00.015-04:00

My daughter is running for student council president. I'm torn. She's a great kid who will do a great job. But when will she have the time?

I used to tsk at all those moms out there with multiple kids and a mini-van, moms who had a full-time job just in carting their kids around. My best friend has two children in two different schools many miles apart. The son plays a sport that practices an hour away, takes a weekly instrument lesson, has hockey games on the weekend; he's also in a band with Serena. The daughter has high-school stuff. But their mom works more than thirty hours a week and has little help from her soon-to-be ex-husband, who lives an hour away. How she doesn't melt down is beyond my comprehension. I melt down just making this list.

Yesterday was the first full band practice in weeks (the Oxi-morons have six members). Afterward, the parents sat down at the table to schedule rehearsals; they have a paying gig coming up. The nine-year-old drummer lives an hour north but goes to the same school as four of the kids; the ten-year-old bassist lives twenty minutes away but goes to a different school and has a math tutor, an instrument lesson, and Arena Rock rehearsal at School of Rock each week—as well as two working parents who can't get him here. Two kids have music lessons and soccer, and one of them is on the Tom Petty show at SoR. Serena gave up her soccer, reluctantly, realizing that she couldn't fit it in among the two weekly SoR (Tom Petty and Led Zeppelin) rehearsals; the once-weekly TWIGS saxophone clinic, guitar lessons, and bat mitzvah lessons; and the daily practice for each thing, in addition to weekday homework, band practice, and daily care for a bearded dragons. What do we do if she becomes president?

I've seen all those articles about over-achieving kids, parents who push their sons and daughters to be all they can be before their sixteenth birthday; I still tsk at them. But sometimes the parents are pushing the kids to drop something. Heaven knows we don't want to be their chauffeurs. How do you choose a thing to take away? Sports are good for kids' bodies, and music is good for their minds—and both teach teamwork, cooperation, good sportsmanship, and things I find so much more useful to them than homework.

Serena has been sick for three weeks; I've been down for two. We finally had a spare moment Sunday morning, and I took us to Patient First. We returned with two antibiotic prescriptions—hers for strep, mine for a sinus infection. After yesterday's band practice, the girl sat at the kitchen table watching a rerun of a dumb sit-com on Disney—one of the shows about kids with no parents or magic parents or parents so rich they're on a perpetual cruise. My husband hates that she watches it and gave her the usual raft of crap about it.

I had to remind him of all the things she does well, including the fact that she's a straight-A student who can play Pink Floyd's "Us and Them" on saxophone—and that she did much of it for the first three weeks of school while having strep and a cold! So what if she wants to veg out in front of the TV or play a game on the computer? So what if there's a witch riding a bicycle through the smelly-socks air in her room?

This morning, I fed her Throat Soother tea, oatmeal, and a banana. She didn't have time to drink all the tea or eat any of the banana. And right now, she's giving the speech she worked on until 9:00 p.m. yesterday, and then the kids will vote. My fingers are crossed. If she wins, she goes to meet the mayor. If she doesn't, it's one less thing to do. May she get the thing she needs.

it's only rock and roll, tyrone

2010-08-24T09:20:00.025-04:00

The river’s muddy guts had backed up, exploded
Spillin’ out the facts, fast and a lot
Spillin’ out the facts of the city’s dirty secrets
Like a city surfacing from out of the brack

"It's Only Money Tyrone," Marah

I saw my favorite still-together (though sometimes just barely) band last weekend at the 8x10. They played to about twenty still-living (though sometimes just barely) people. It was a Sunday night. As if that were an excuse.

Marah is Nick Hornby’s favorite band, too (About A Boy, High Fidelity); you can trust him. Trust Sarah Vowell and Bruce Springsteen and Steve Earle. But most of all trust me. You missed something serious.¹

Favorite has different manifestations these days. As a kid, I pinned pictures of my favorites to the bedroom wall. If the poster was nice, I caught the corners with the flat part of the tack, rather than poke a hole in the paper, a trick my decorator mother taught me. I clipped and collected articles about the bands from Creem and Circus and Trouser Press and any other magazine that featured them. I knew all the members’ names and what they looked like and all the lyrics to all the songs and owned all the records, including the Japanese bootlegs and the colored vinyls, which I bought at Howie’s Music Machine in Pikesville, where, it seemed, older hipsters spent the entire day in their leather jackets, leaning on the racks, listening to music no one else had ever heard of, where I spent the day when I became an older hipster, leaning, listening. If Ivan Kral had walked down any street, I’d have recognized him. No way could Lenny Kaye or Earl Slick or Julian Cope escape me.

When you got home from the record store, you could run your fingernail down the middle of your album jacket, which was wrapped in thin cellophane, and in seconds you were transported to a place you stayed for hours. If you were lucky, inside would be something more than just a white sleeve with a circular cutout that made the record label visible. Lyrics were especially precious, but posters were adored. And there was another secret about a record: in that end space of smooth, unrecorded vinyl, you could sometimes find a hand-printed message like “ANT MUSIC….”

So who are Marah? They are a gritty, loud rock band, in the tradition of Springsteen—but with the edge of the Replacements and the poetry of Dylan. I would probably recognize the lead singer/guitarist and founding member, Dave Bielanko, on the street, but only the fishnets gave Christine Smith away in the ladies room at 8x10. I don’t know all the words to a single song by heart except the second best song ever recorded, “It’s Only Money Tyrone.”² I think I know the name of only one album (Kids in Philly) besides the new one.

Part of the blame falls on a group that keeps breaking up and replacing its members. I asked the newest, guitarist Bruce Derr, why Marah frequently disbands. Hired three months ago for the tour, Derr’s not even on the latest record, Life is a Problem (which was released on vinyl and cassette). “It’s definitely not Dave,” he said. “Dave’s one of the six nicest people I’ve ever met in my life.”

My friend Kim and I don’t really believe him, partly because Dave's the one constant, and partly since Bielanco basically called us all douches when we didn’t clap at the end of one of the songs. I think we were awestruck. Honestly, even if we could tell the song was finished, the band immediately started the next without a pause, and then Dave mumbled a conversation with himself about our lack of applause.

Dave, we loved it. You are brilliant.

“I really don’t know why [members quit],” Derr said. It's not like they bitch and gripe in the van, which carries the four men and one woman and all their gear from here to there to way over there, with Bielanko and Derr at the wheel; they're the ones who don't drink. Mostly, he told me, they ride in a comfortable quiet.

I'd like to give the talented (keyboards, accordion, harmonica, vocals, coolness) Christine Smith a medal for sticking it out so long—“five and a half years—longer than anybody,” she said. Except Dave, the only original member of the band on this tour.

But that’s a small part of the story. Most of the blame lies with the digital download. It is bad enough wrestling with a CD’s shrink wrap, then trying to pry the too-sticky silver tape from the ends before getting the damned thing open, only to crack the door off the plastic case. Sometimes you get lyrics and photos inside, but, Sonny, I’m too old and tired and busy to get my magnifying glass to read that shit. And when it’s one of those fancy folding things, trying to refold it and squeeze it back into the slot of the front of the case when it’s suddenly expanded and puffed out, like a fucking map, is even more frustrating. And then—FUCK this CD, bitch! YOU listen to it.

Now we have the digital download. We go to iTunes and buy whatever songs we want, sometimes not even a band’s whole album. We stick the songs on our iPods, where they compete with a thousand other songs we’ve not listened to enough, and now what? How do we know the words or the band members’ faces if we are not listening to the records in our bedrooms all day long, staring at the album cover, the images and words etching themselves forever in our minds the way serial numbers and “ANT MUSIC…” “FOR SEX PEOPLE” are etched in the vinyl of Adam and the Ants’ first album?

Who the hell is Marah? No wonder you missed them. But I didn’t. I didn’t miss one moment of their energy and power. I didn’t miss the chance to yell, “ONLY MONEY!” when it looked like Dave was trying to decide which last two songs to do, and I didn’t miss him say, “Yeah, let’s make this one count” to Bruce, who did make it count.

I didn’t miss the chance to hear my new number one favorite song of all time, live, like they meant it, like it's never been played before, ever, from my favorite band, Marah.

¹You miss something serious when you miss Chuck Prophet, too.*

²”Thunder Road.”**

* I would say you’re missing something serious when you miss Bob Schneider, but I’m wishing a lot of you drunk fratboys and party girls would miss that show altogether and leave him to the drunk grownups.

**The Boys are Back in Town” is number 3.

summer lovin', had me a blast

2010-08-18T14:08:00.023-04:00

Today, I nearly suffocated in my daughter’s room, buried alive under a mountain of clothing, a lot of it gorgeous, most of it too small. Half still had tags; the other half was barely worn because my daughter prefers to wear the same pair of shorts and the same Beatles t-shirt every day. After she’s worn something else, she drops it on the floor of her closet, where it soon becomes buried under the next thing that’s not her favorite shorts. For two hours this morning, she tried on everything, every single piece of clothing, including costumes appropriated for School of Rock shows. As the hills of shirts, pants, dresses, and school clothes eroded, new mountains formed—these marked for uniform exchange night or a friend's daughter or her cousins. I filled paper shopping bags until they tore. The air in Serena's room was suddenly oppressive, mixed with fabric chemical smell and anxious lizard smell and stress armpit smell—mine and hers. We had to take a break before tackling the drawers.

This is part of our back-to-school ritual. So are wondering whether we skipped this back-to-school ritual last year and lamenting the brisk disappearance of summer vacation. What too-moist beast ate the days? Yet when I look back on the friendships I forged in three short months, the places I visited¹, the pictures I took, the nose I pierced, the concerts² and meals and leisurely drinks I enjoyed, I feel fulfilled and lucky.

While my husband was on his annual retreat in Zion Canyon, Utah, his personal mecca, from where he sent us amazing letters, we were each supposed to write a song to be played upon his return. Serena started some complicated piece about Freddie Kruger. Marty played some chords he didn’t commit to memory. But I did my assignment with gusto, writing what I call “The Country-ass Song.” The lyrics start like this:

You keep moonshine whiskey on the kitchen sink
So when you’re doin’ the dishes you can take a drink
And wash it all away
Like you try to do every day

Spy your girl through the window on the tire swing
You always told your baby she could do anything
But so could you
And this is what you choose to do

So no regrets, no tears
Throw in the towel
Toss back a few more beers.

It’s not autobiographical. Well, the beers part, maybe. But I do like my days. Even today. Especially today. This kind of purge and reorganization is spiritually cleansing and enlightening (note to relatives and friends: don’t buy the girl anything pink or with any kind of heart or flower or bow). Sure, summer’s a tough act to follow—this weekend alone is jam packed with concerts and dinners and lunches and company. But autumn always kicks ass!

Now, post-ritualistic closet upheaval, I feel more ready to let go of the summer of 2010, one of the hottest summers on record; the summer of Resurrection in a can; the summer of a bouffant ‘do and Hairspray at the pool; of running five miles again; of dinner and drinks with my homegirl, Sheri Booker, and our agent, Betsy Lerner; sushi with Bahhhhhhhb’s drummer; crabcakes with Monica Mansfield. So long, summer of poetry and music and friends and one delightful, glittery gem twinkling beside my nostril.

Shameless Plugs

¹I spent the perfect amount of time at the beach—with my sister’s family and my daughter, as well as with a new friend, Betsy Merrill. I overcame my fear of flying to attend the Madison, Wisconsin wedding celebration of a dear friend, Gabi Helfert, overcoming severe stage fright to play her and her new partner (and my new dear friend), Joey Johannsen, a song. I stayed with a beautiful woman, Lee Davenport, whom I met online, and visited with the talented printmaker, Tracy Ducasse, my funniest friend , Teena, and the beautiful writer, Carrie Kilman. People visited me, too—like Janer and Joy, two pals from back when the Internet was only just invented! My house has been full of love this summer. One good pal, Monica Mansfield, examined my old dog, Cleo, and brought her medicine; instant love right there. And Gail Dragon was my buddy for an overnighter, seeing Jason Ager at a tea house before driving home to North Carolina. I relished my time with BFFs, too—Kim Webster, Kim Stanbro.

²Peter Frampton, Yes, Bahhhhhhhb (Bob Schneider, for the uninitiated), Taylor and Evan, Justin Trawick (this Friday, 8x10, CD release!), Jason Ager, The Dead [Fucking] Weather(!). And the best: I watched my daughter nail sax, guitar, and vocals on The Beatles and Pink Floyd, and I watched her band, the Oxi-Morons, play a block party. Oh, and she plays again Saturday and Sunday at Angel's Rock bar, the hits of 1970, followed Sunday by Marah!

pierced

2010-08-11T11:08:00.007-04:00

When she discovered that the glittery gem on my nose went all the way through it, my mother cried. “You’re forty- [inaudible mumbling],” she stuttered through the tears, as if there were a deadline on body mutilation.

The good news is that since it’s not a pre-existing condition (like tattoos and, now, tongue piercing), I’m not out of the will. And after the initial shock, it was business as usual—telling jokes at brunch, planning my daughter’s bat mitzvah. I sat to the right of my mother, the glittery booger visible only to my husband and daughter.

No one who has seen me has asked why I did it. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t seem out of character. Maybe it looks as though it’s always been there. When I tell people on the phone or online, about half of them ask why.

I did it because I could. Because it would only hurt for a minute. I did it because I met a woman twenty-five years ago, a waitress at Bertha’s, who had a stud in her nose, and she was exquisite—certainly not in spite of it and maybe not even because of it, but it gave her a pinch of exotica. Since that day I longed for one of my own. I did it because it had just enough risk—a little bit of pain but not too much, a little bit of permanence but not too dramatic should I decide to just rock the empty large pore for the rest of my life. And it’s pretty. I like it. I can’t think of a better reason than the last one.

For awhile, I got the stick-on kind, just to see how it would look. When I’d remember, which was rarely, I’d carefully remove one diamond chip from the adhesive and drop it down the bathroom sink drain. Then, with the drain stopper in place, I’d remove a second one and affix it with Liquid Bandage, which would sting and smell bad for a few seconds. I’d go out somewhere, and, within an hour or two, I would scratch my eye, accidentally brushing against the chip, which would disappear into the ether.

Those who’d caught its glint would ask me if I finally went and did it. When I’d say it was a stick-on, I could see both their relief and their disappointment. Perhaps the relief was more because they didn’t have to imagine the pain of the needle. But the disappointment was, to me, more palpable.

I am not a faker. I have never pretended to be something I’m not, never lied about my skills, not even on a job application or my résumé. I had fake nails for my wedding only; I bit them off on my honeymoon. I color my hair, but it’s real color on real hair. I don’t pretend to like bands just because they’re cool.¹ And I don’t lie.²

I’d given up the idea a month ago when a friend told me I’d have to take it out for surgery or x-rays, that the hole would never close. And then I thought: who lives that way? Who makes a decision based on what would happen should she ever need surgery? So when my sister told me on the boardwalk that she’d asked about the nose piercing at Dimensions and that she’d pay for half, I started to consider it seriously. Serena came in with us and whined the whole time, having just been turned upside-down (by choice) and around and around (also by choice) and become so sick that only a snowball would make her feel better. So we left, and I vowed to give it serious thought. That night, I talked to my husband for a half hour. He’d already hated the idea, even though he didn’t think it looked bad at all. And when he finally said what I wished all people would say—“It’s your body; I have no right to tell you what to do with it”—fate was sealed.³

I prepared my daughter, who also hated the idea, and sent her to the pool with her cousins and uncle. I chased a beer with a big shot of vodka from the freezer (thanks, Tom), and gave Beth the keys to my car. She drove me to Dimensions, where I handed over my ID, signed the Health Department’s forms, and picked my nose ring. I waited upstairs. When it was my turn, I sat in a big scary chair and watched the tattooed dude open the big scary autoclaved tools. My sister squeezed my hand. At some point, while the big scary needle was dangling from my nose, she stopped looking.

“That wasn’t so bad,” I said.

“That was the easy part,” the dude said. And then he put the jewel in.

“Ow,” I said. But I was completely still, unlike my sister, whose face was buried in my back. When it was over, it stung a little, but it wasn’t awful. We went back to the condo, and I took a swim, after which it bled a bit. And, with the exception of the occasionally pawing in the night, it’s only given me a moment of trouble.

With my mom. And only for a moment.

* * * * *

¹I’m sorry, Vampire Weekend and Decemberists. [yawn]

²In fact, there’s only one lie I’ve told with regularity, and it had to do with whether I was smoking. I have not smoked since I was pregnant—not even once—but I used to keep my smoking habits secret from my family.*

*Then again, it’s totally within my power to shave a few inches off my thighs in a self-portrait, to lighten the dark circles under my eyes, to smooth out the kinks and dings in my skin. But that’s art. And, with the exception of nonfiction, art can’t lie.

³I ask because we are a team. And though he can’t prevent me from poking a hole in my nose or writing on my skin, I respect his opinion, and his unhappiness with my decision would make this a mistake.

my baby, he wrote me a letter!

2010-07-27T16:02:00.023-04:00

When I was fourteen or so, I put a free pen pal ad in the back of Rock Scene Magazine—something about Cheap Trick girl seeks fans of same. Perhaps I made mention of some other band, like Foreigner.¹ Perhaps I signed my name Rainbow Leigh or Crystal Leigh.²

Those were the days when a teenage girl could publish her real address with a fake stripper name in a national magazine without alerting any pedophiles³ (unless you count the rock stars, who had groupies my age). I got lots of replies, including a string of post cards from Rick Nielsen, who was flattered at first but then annoyed by all my questions. I wrote to (we called it “writing to” back then and would often say, “Do you write to so-and-so?”) Becky Olenchak, June Feinstein, Cathy Pearce, Dan Bonham, and a handful of other really cool teenagers and twenty-somethings, who helped me get through the hell of high school. We met in real life, too, at various locales like New York's Bleecker Street and St. Marks Place and the Rock and Roll Convention in Philly (the Ramones played!). Within weeks of getting my first car—a two-tone Mustang hatchback—at 16 or 17, with no such thing as a cell phone, I drove to Cathy’s house in Lynchburg.

Music was my passion. I did little else then but write death poetry and play Patti Smith’s Radio Ethiopia over and over again and check the mailbox. The mailman brought me stuffed-full letters every day and would often leave big packages for me by the door of my apartment—bootlegs and imports of the Ramones or the Runaways in Japan, groovy singles like the neon yellow "Nasty, Nice" by Jane Eyre and the Belvederes. The best days were when I got home from school and found a letter from Becky, who’d tell me about her exploits with some famous-to-us rock star of extraordinary hotness, with photographic evidence tucked in the stationery; I looked at it first, foreplay.

Although the thrill of getting the mail dies with your first credit card statement, every once in awhile, I’ll get something cool from my Internet friends—beautiful photos and paintings and post cards, care packages from all over the world. But I don’t get any Slam books anymore. I rarely get a letter in longhand.

Last week’s letter from my husband might have been the first one in years. Marty’s been away for nearly two weeks. He doesn’t have a cell phone, and I can’t blame him; my own preoccupation with connectivity needs to be checked. But when he’s out there in the wilderness of Utah, I worry for him—the flash floods, the heights, the heat. And it’s sometimes annoying that I can’t catch him up on life back home. But I know he deserves the solitude and isolation. This is how he recharges his own cells: hiking the Watchman trail, wading through the Narrows, swimming in the frigid Kolab Reservoir of Zion Canyon. He wakes up before dawn and makes coffee, takes his book and his guitar out to a spectacular overlook, and reads, strums, thinks. He writes poetry in his head and music in his heart. He's there for every sunset, too. And I envy the person who could do this alone.

It had been several days since we’d put him on the plane, and the only contact we had was a ten-second call from a stranger’s cellphone. He said, “Serena, I’m on top of Angel’s Landing,” and the signal was lost.

The next day, though, a two-page (fronts and backs) letter came.⁴ Marty wrote it after he checked into the hotel in Mesquite before heading out to Zion in the morning. He began:

Yo Ho Chick-E-LA-Las… No phone? No E-Mail? No Internet? No…No…Ahhh!!

But wait! What about the MAIL? Remember—“my baby, she wrote me a letter”? Yeah…I’ll talk to you the ol’ fashioned way.

The rest of it was details of the flight, the weather forecast (it’s always 115 when he lands in Vegas), his hopes for the trip, a request for us to “play music!” and a peace sign. A day or two later, a three-page letter arrived. It was on the same lined paper, ripped out of a bound journal, and it ended with the usual peace sign and a reminder to play music. On Monday, we got another letter, ripped more sloppily so that we had to fill in the words on the edge, Serena and I sharing the pages and reading like it were an adventure, like we were some sort of pioneers who received the note by pony. This one was written at the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, Marty recounting the story of slaughtered women and children. It started on a bummer but ended with his having held an impromptu concert at the top of [secret camping location] for a troop of teenage bicyclists and their chaperones on their summer adventure program. “Make music!” he said again at the end, the peace sign torn at the edge.

Since the first letter, I’ve been singing the song Alex Chilton wrote and performed with the Box Tops when he was just sixteen. And yesterday, one of the School of Rock show directors asked my daughter to play the sax solo in Joe Cocker’s version of “The Letter.”

And now, ten days after he flew off, I’m sitting here in the kitchen, waiting for the mailman. I have checked the box three times today, even though I’ve heard no squeak of metal on metal, no rusty door opening, no sound of papers becoming suffocated, no rusty door closing.

Our mailbox is sixteen years old, a wedding gift from a friend. It used to have a wooden frog head and four wooden frog feet, but they rotted long ago—perhaps when the mail itself rotted. It used to be so much more than bills, credit card offers, and circulars for places with mediocre pizza and Chinese food. I’ve wanted to replace the box, maybe build some mosaic masterpiece, but the junk that comes never seems worthy.

And now I regret not having something more beautiful and protective for these rare treasures, words from someone I love, though I know a fancy box is more likely to attract thieves and vandals and less likely to summon something so precious. We should remedy the latter.

A few days ago, Marty borrowed another stranger's phone. They'd just finished having dinner together, and he talked to us for what seemed like an hour, apologizing to the man at regular intervals for the length of his call. He said he'd written a letter just for me—a separate letter not signed Marty/Dad. And I couldn't wait to get it.

I nearly held my breath at the mailbox this afternoon, but the only things inside were the latest Musician's Friend and Guitar Center catalogs and a circular for some lame pizza joint.

Maybe tomorrow.

	BOX TOPS - Box Tops - The Letter .mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

* * * * *

¹Shut up.

²Shut up.

³There were some pervs, though, including a guy named Phil, who used to request worn underwear in exchange for records and, sometimes, cash. My mom corresponded with him for a time, pretending to be a teenage girl. He was mad when he found out she was my mom, but he didn't come to our apartment with an axe.

⁴Also in the mail was a $40 speeding ticket, only my third in my life; my first came when I was sixteen and on my way to Cathy Pearce's house.⁵

⁵My second was on Stevenson Lane, driving really fast when I'd decided to close my health food store. I was listening to "Gravedigger" and crying. And that's what I told the cop, who gave me the ticket anyway.

turn and face the strange changes

2010-07-22T09:37:00.013-04:00

My daughter hates my new hair color, whatever color it is—the newness an issue more than the color. Heaven forbid I move a chair or swap furniture between rooms; my husband has a fit. Some people will suffer for years with that devil-they-know of a job or spouse they despise, rather than deal with looking for a potentially less-painful—but possibly more fabulous and probably way better—career or lover.

It seems that most people hate the idea of change even more than the actual change. (Contrary to my beliefs, a candidate did run and win on the promise of change, but perhaps everyone knew nothing would really change but the president’s skin color.) Granted, divorce sucks. But what if your husband or wife sucks, too? What if he or she makes only a nasty, negative contribution to your life? Imagine someone more loving waiting in the wings. Someone surely is.

But I’m not talking about the changes brought on by tragedy; rather, it’s the tiny ones, cosmetic or functional ones, so-called improvements, that seem to get everyone’s knickers in a bunch—your wife ran out of cheese and had to pack you a different sandwich, your usual bank teller is sick, a website is redesigned (with many of your previous complaints fixed).

I thrive on change. I like the freshness of it. I like new seasons, new responsibilities and opportunities, a different routine. I can’t eat leftovers for three days, antsy for a new dish. My iPod is on perpetual shuffle, and my favorite artist of all time, David Bowie, is a musical chameleon. My photography is random: flowers, dogs, rock bands, food—sometimes in the same day. I try new beers all the time. My hair is curly one day, ironed flat the next. And my thoughts, as you can probably tell, are all over the place.

I love waking up to a completely different paint color now and again, even if I enjoyed the last color for a decade—especially if I enjoyed the last color for a decade! It’s only paint.

I used to let my hair grow for two years, then get it chopped off short. A hairdresser I know refused to cut it because he was worried it would be too drastic and I’d blame him. My best friend for twenty years never once altered the way she wore hers. It’s only hair!

Some people hate change so much they won’t even change their minds, despite their being presented with new evidence, as if stubbornness equaled righteousness, correctness, or, sometimes, cuteness.

If we take death and devastation off the table and talk about rearranging some furniture or trying a new hairstyle or replacing a bad habit with a good one or getting out of that rut you’ve been spinning your wheels in for years, what’s the worry? Even fitness experts tell you to change your exercise routine after three weeks.

What little, or great big, thing have you been dying to change, stopped only by fear? And what is it you fear? And what will you change-fearers change today?

C’mon. Change is gonna do you good.*

- - - - - -

*For a beer on me next time I see you, if you're old enough, and without searching for the answer, what 1970s song has "change is gonna do you good" as a lyric?

got change?

2010-06-16T12:21:00.013-04:00

No. You don't.*

Right now, I choose my political candidate based on whether he or she supports a woman's right to choose.** A politician's views on the environment, education, war, space, health care, and just about everything else aren't important to me anymore, because those opinions change depending on bill sponsorship and corporate funding. I can't count on my elected official to represent me anywhere except in my reproductive freedom. (I don't really believe I can count on that one, either.)

But if you think there's any other real political difference between the candidates, well, keep taking the pills they're feeding you over at Fox and CNN.

Now that BP has soiled our seas, and our leerless feeder has not offered a single solution, nor arrested those responsible for the crime (some accidents are criminal), I think it's high time we surrendered our stars and flew a more accurate flag. We can sew the corporate logos on the new flag, like patches on a Boy Scout uniform, each year according to Fortune 500's annual profits list. The changing of the logos can be celebrated on Flag Day each year, and some lucky citizens can attend the annual celebration at the mall (a real mall, not some strip of museum-front property) and take home a plastic bag of free stuff--AIG-imprinted pencils, a Pfizer heartburn-relief sample pack, coupons for Pepsi, a plastic Bank of America keychain (maybe with the key of someone's foreclosed-upon home!), an oil-soaked pelican Beanie Baby. It sounds remarkably similar to this year's World Expo in Shanghai.

Oh, and a souvenir mini-flag.

- - - - - -

*OK, sure you do. We got rid of a few of some of the previous administrations' insane policies (torture, don't-ask-don't-tell, etc.), and are working toward restoring the civil liberties stolen under the Patriot Act. But I'm angry, so please forgive the hyperbole and hyperventilation.

**Intelligence counts, too, I ~~suppose keep thinking~~ want to believe.

disclaimer: logos are for satirical purposes only and do not represent corporate endorsement; all logos are (probably) registered trademarks of the corporations they represent; offer void where prohibited; drinking recommended

the spot on the wall

2010-06-03T08:04:00.011-04:00

part two

For breakfast Monday morning
I cook my daughter oatmeal
perfect ratio of salt to sugar to oats
served with teaspoon, splash of cream
because I am a bad mother
out of milk since Friday.

I scrub the teakettle shiny again
detail the gas stove’s nooks
hose down the sticky laminate
and bad wife guilt and shame
for this dirty house
its understocked larder.

I break down at the supermarket
cartful of milk and cheese
paused beyond the baby food
asking the floor what a good mom
would have done these twelve years
four months and seven days.

A large kitchen picture hides
the haphazard hashes of inches
random intervals from toddler to ‘tween
whenever I looked up mid-preoccupation
to notice her size and breadth and depth
the bigness of will and spirit.

Sometimes I pull the picture down
and stare at months of marks
wonder what we did that day and why
I put her back against that wall
and whether she was happy then
and whether we had milk.

the spot on the wall

2010-05-20T10:51:00.004-04:00

part one

I told a friend I was having a bit of an identity crisis. I’m not sure what I am—an author, a photographer, a mosaic artist, just another creative Libra with undiag- nosed adult ADD. She asked how I wanted to be known. I don’t even have to think about the answer. I am a writer. It’s like skin on a body; you can’t detach yourself from it without stinging, burning, bleeding out. I stopped writing in 1997, and I didn’t sleep for five years.

It seems I could feel that way about photography, too. I’m never without my camera—sometimes because I want to capture the essence of a thing with words later, but more because I don’t feel like I see as fully without it. Photographs verify and fortify and rectify my vision—even enhance it. (Amazing how much of a bird you can see by zooming in with a 300mm lens.) But take my camera away, and, although I’ll flounder a bit, I’ll still be me to my core. I’ll still sleep.

I rarely go somewhere just for the pictures of an event, but almost every interesting thing I've done in my life is for the writing of it. If you are a writer, you do things—interesting things—things other than playing endless rounds of Bejewelled Blitz and posting status updates. In November, I drove members of Bob Schneider’s band to their hotel and back to the venue, an unglamorous thing for a fan to do, just so I could write about the experience. I went to Rock & Roll Fantasy Camp for a day two summers ago as part of a writing project. I enrolled my daughter in the School of Rock and went to Ladies Rock Camp for three days last summer for the same writing project. It’s why I meet people for coffee. It's why I ask questions. I land a photo shoot for an interesting person, and before we book the session, I’m interviewing my subject, trying to parlay our meeting into a story. I am a dog, and everything outside of myself is, potentially, a bone.

I guess the crisis is less with my own identity than it is with experiences. Photography subjects are endless—flowers in drizzle are always beautiful, my dog Chance is always handsome. But I have nothing to do right now, nowhere to go; I have nothing to say. I’ve been sitting around for the past few dreary, chilly, rainy days wallowing in the miserable sitting. I am a shapeless blob at my kitchen table wondering who I am, staring at a spot on the wall.

From the time I was six years old, I would ask my mother to give me a subject, and she’d say something like, “Write a poem about the dog." And I would. She'd point and say, "Write a poem about that spot on the wall.” And I would.

I’m all grown up, but I still feel like I need someone to tell me what to write. Agents and editors are often unwilling, and my mom isn't much help in that area anymore. Lately, I can't even write a poem on my own; my last five were composed around a bunch of random words donated by my friends on Facebook.

So here I sit, with an open call to the universe, waiting, prepared, ready with all the perfect words, all my soldiers, my children. Here I sit, staring at this spot on the wall. The spot where I’ve recorded my daughter’s height for the last eight years of her life.

oldies are goodies

2010-05-10T08:55:00.011-04:00

My mother worked outside the home before any other mother I knew. She was a school teacher when I was little. Later, she took a job with some architects, as a secretary, sure, but she always did more. She made the firm smarter, more grammatical, prettier. When a few of the architects left to start their own businesses, my mother went with one of them. She’s been the other half of her firm for three decades.

My mom taught me the maxim: old is good, new is bad. It fits in so many areas of life. Old houses are better built than new ones. Old appliances were made to last. Old furniture has style and character. Even the methods we use now to make jobs easy tend to complicate life. Mom’s partner, Dick, doesn’t use any kind of CAD system to design houses he’s built for people like Brooks Robinson; he drafts by hand. He prints in draftsman’s block, doesn’t need no stinkin’ font. My mom still has an IBM Selectric typewriter at her office. Nothing beats it for typing an envelope.

I’ve been thinking a lot about old things, and not just because of the new lines on my face, the new grey wires poking from my head. I think we’ve traded a lot of our soul for modern, for fast, for instant gratification. We can get the answers to anything so quickly that we’ve lost our ability to hold a thought, nurture a question. It’s good for the sentence, but it’s not so good for standing in line or for saving up for something special. It does nothing for discipline. We are spoiled.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and I complained, again, that it was a day of cooking and cleaning, rather than a day of pampering. I made two quiches and a cake for brunch at my sister’s; she, in turn, shopped, cleaned, set the table, entertained. Is this the way it’s supposed to be? Where’s my special bouquet, my sterling silver bird skull pendant, my gift certificate for a fabulous tin belt buckle at Studio C? (As Woody Allen declared in an essay on phrase origins, “Where are my bellows and fruit, eh? All I rate is fiddlesticks!”)

I had been led to believe, by the new Mother’s Day Machine, that the second Sunday in May was supposed to bring me a card, a pedicure, some flowers, and a restaurant meal. But that’s not what Appalachian mom Anna Jarvis had in mind when she lobbied presidents for the national holiday. It’s not what her daughter wanted, either; before her death, she admitted regretting that Mother’s Day had become a holiday at all, if it was just going to be a way for florists and greeting card companies and restaurateurs to profit.

I know. Bah humbug. Mother's Day detractors are just like those decrying the commercialization of Christmas. But every time I heard from or delivered to someone a "Happy Mother's Day" greeting, I couldn't help but recall the movie Brazil, in which it's always Christmas, and everyone has some fancy-wrapped gift at the ready.

But is there anything I don’t have that I truly need or want or have room to store? And what could be a better gift than my daughter having learned “I Love Playing With Fire,” by the Runaways, just because I was a fan? Every day, my house is full of the music I love played by the people I love. Did I really need a new belt? I have a dozen that fit around my old, smaller waist.

After typing my husband’s school work and begging my daughter to wear something nice and take the ponytail out of her hair, after baking my grandmother’s sour cream cake, after wolfing down food I shouldn’t ought to have et (but which was delicious), and listening to the kids in my life play old Beatles and Doors songs together, my not-yet-three-year-old nephew, Marcus, on air drums with two plastic forks, I did what any old mother might appreciate. I went to Target for some hair dye, sunless tanner, and Slim Fast. I came home to my old house, drank a beer, dyed my hair, and slathered my dry skin with moisturizing sunless tanner, mentally preparing myself for a couple weeks of dietary discipline so that I may take advantage of a fabulous and too-long-neglected wardrobe.

I do believe, at least in the philosophic sense, that old *is better than new,** but it can use a facelift or a tuneup or a fresh coat of paint every now and again.

*not too old
**not necessarily where technology is concerned

Magical Beauties

2010-05-08T20:20:00.007-04:00

Happy Mother's Day!

of machines and men

2010-05-05T11:02:00.008-04:00

I squint at the six open DIY check stands at Home Despot (I call it that in honor of my Peepop, who once said “depot” when he meant “despot” during the annual reading of the Hagaddah). I had cash. I didn’t know whether the machines could handle cash, and I didn’t want to find out. I spied a guy and asked if he would do me the pleasure of ringing me up, and he was delighted.

“I hate those machines,” I tell him. “I feel like they take jobs from people.” I do.

“I can’t comment on that, so I will just say thank you very much.” He smiles.

He’s a decorated employee. By that, I mean his many tattoos, a sign of his loyalties, are visible. A still-scabbing tat shows Woody Guthrie with his guitar and the famous slogan from it: “This machine kills fascists.”

“Did you see this one?” he asks, proudly showing off the asterisk on his left arm, with “and so it goes” beneath it. Of course. My friend Dave and I both know it—Kurt Vonnegut, from Breakfast of Champions (and everything else).

I get permission to take his photo and am wrestling with my camera as a line forms. Here are like-minded people—regular folks who probably have mastered a Google search—lined up to be checked out by a real person.

I don’t want a drum machine or a phone router or an ATM. I want someone to pump my gas. And even if I had to choose between a robot or the nasty witch at the post office who can never manage a smile and will actually rear up and ask, “What did you just say?” if she thinks you might have called her on her bitchness, or the crazy old bat at Burlington Coat Factory who grumbles and complains about everything and slams your shit down if it doesn’t have a price and asks you why you couldn’t get the one with the tag on it—I’d probably still choose the real people.

Or maybe companies can hire more people like the Home Depot guy or the two ladies at Family Dollar on Harford Road. Yesterday, while hanging our 3 Hipstateers* show with Dave Pugh and Steve Parke, Steve and I stopped in to get some long nails; we didn’t have the right ones to hang our photographs. A woman asked, “Can I help you find something?” I told her I was looking for nails. She said, “Oh, they’re in the front of the store, just past those two young ladies.”

I looked at the two people up the aisle—a middle-aged woman and her mother—and I turned to tell the woman how sweet she was. She smiled. But I was lost when I got to the front of the store and didn’t find any hardware. Why, this is all—fingernails! I shared a good, emotional belly laugh with the woman who sent me to the nails that most of the women in our area would have meant.

At the cash register, our checker gave us the once over. “You two are rockin’ the superhero shirts.” Steve and I didn't really understand her at first, but we looked down. Not only were we both wearing t-shirts with superheroes on them, but we had the same four superheros on our shirts. “Ya’all didn’t know that?” she asked, surprised that we hadn't consulted on our outfits that morning.

You don’t get any good stories from an ATM. Your computer does nothing delightful. No DIY checker will ever tell you that you're rockin' a superhero shirt. And no robot is going to love you like I do.

- - - - -

*Please join the 3 Hipstateers—me, Steve Parke, and Dave Pugh—for a show of photos taken exclusively with our iPhones (a machine that can't do anything without a person at the controls), Thursday, 6-8, at Clementine Fine Foods, 5402 Harford Road.

Less Miserables

2010-04-13T10:38:00.019-04:00

The change machine at Safeway spit out a Tennessee quarter, guitar-side up, and I considered it a sign: I should play my guitar! I consider everything a sign these days: the sale of a photo, the rejection of a proposal, an un-stolen iPhone left in an unlocked car with all the windows down.

But I’ve changed how I deal with the signs. Last year, the rejection of a proposal meant giving up writing altogether. The sale of a photo meant something else would go wrong. An item of value left in my car overnight would not have signified my incredible luck but my overwhelming carelessness. Eh, I say now. Mistakes happen. But maybe I should buy a lottery ticket!

Is this really the result of a simple attitude adjustment?

A year ago at this time, I might have told you it was impossible. I might have argued with you the way I argued with my mother, who has, for years, told me to smile and pretend, because there’s a chance it could rub off. But she was right.

I’m not saying you can become happy—or even that you should. Who said happiness was a normal state? Some of us are not cut from cheerful cloth. But we don’t have to be miserable. At least we can be less miserable.

When I didn’t believe in it, I thought those smilers looked like morons. In truth, I was a little resentful: what did they have that I didn’t? Probably a song in their heads or the memory of that grove of iridescent grackles or a picture of their kids playing saxophone along with Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them.”

The famous and handsome author/filmmaker Michael Kimball (Dear Everybody, I Will Smash You) and I discussed happiness at lunch one afternoon. He told me that smiling has been proven to release endorphins that cause you to actually feel happier.

So I’m sitting here now, smiling, on a gray day. Did you catch that? I spelled gray without an e; the latter seems so much more moody and dismal that I rarely feel compelled to use it anymore, even to describe those annoying squiggly wires coming out of my head en masse. I’m sitting here composing, writing, typing, with a smile on my face. Do I look like a moron? Maybe, but I’m a moron whose daughter rocks, who is writing in the face of rejection, who is listening to “Us and Them” on her un-stolen iPhone. I am a @#%&*! smiler who has a shiny Tennessee quarter in her pocket, a smiler who is about to play her guitar and sing.

What will you smile about right now?

words love to be loved

2010-03-24T08:51:00.005-04:00

with thanks to David Bowie. and spring.

a poem about life during wartime—in the spring

2010-03-19T12:14:00.008-04:00

things in the road

driving home from the market
prime fillet and avocados
in bags beside her
she sees a thing in the road—
a thing in the road is always a bomb
that detonates the moment
her car makes a shadow on it.

in minutes she’s made headlines
like "meat and murder,"
imagined the flash of light
and resultant rubble—
blood and strawberries
and smoked salmon salad,
flesh and meat both well done.

now she's in the hospital,
a Dalton Trumbo heroine,
coming upon the thing in the road,
bracing herself and squinting
as she drives over the bomb
drives over the bomb
over the bomb

she turns right down her street
the day warm and brilliant
the grassy median a kind of heaven
exploding with star magnolias.

to stuff or not to stuff: that WAS the crowstion

2010-02-27T21:24:00.010-05:00

For most people, a dead crow in the grass is hardly a jackpot. It would more likely elicit a shiver of revulsion and a step back, rarely a second glance, hardly a second thought. Those who might linger over its body are among an elite group: five-to-ten-year-old boys, devil worshippers, scientists. And me.

I admit it sounds a little creepy that someone would come home bearing the gift of a dead animal; it may be creepier still to recognize said dead animal as gift. But how often do you get to see a bird that close? I think it’s weirder not to look! It’s weirder not to recognize the unique beauty of a creature.

That said, it’s hard to argue for going beyond rolling the thing over with a stick, snapping a few quick photographs, marveling at the shape of its feet, noting they are, indeed, like the lines around my eyes. I could, as my husband and daughter would, bury it in the yard and examine its bones later; bones are cool. The reasons to choose the bones over the body are rational ones: I’m underemployed and broke; our house is cluttered with things; this is not something I need, like a prescription refill or a computer repair; taxidermy is a bizarre art. And do we really want to have a harbinger of death staring down at us?

But:

1.) I have given up my 4:00 beer, my weekday ale, thereby reducing the amount of money I drink from a cold pint glass by at least $10 a week. This crow is the new beer.

2.) Writers gather experiences about which to write; the most resourceful of us hope to parlay those words into publication, paying publication. This crow is my experience.

3.) Photographers are always in the market for models. This crow is my model.

4.) Things—jewelry, instruments, art—can’t make us happy, but they can certainly provide us with diversion from our problems. This crow is my diversion.

5.) I collect crows. I study them, I read about them, I take pictures of them. They are in my stories, essays, and poems. I have crow coasters, two crow puppets, crow statues, a set of wings, wall decals. I have t-shirts and masks and feathers. My first poetry chapbook was called Croetry (I sold it on my blog). This crow is the feather in the cap of my collection.

6.) My mother’s brother, who’d be known as my uncle had he uncle’d me any time in the past three decades, is a trophy hunter. He hunts all kinds of exotic animals and has them stuffed to populate his frozen zoo. He confessed to me a few years ago that he has an electronic box that replicates crow calls, which he and his hunter friends used to lure crows to them for target practice. He has no crowphy, however. They are not such a prize. This crow is a totem to replace his irreverence with my love.

7.) One hour after the crow came to us, our old friend, John Guttierrez, a fabulous furniture designer and my brother-in-law’s employer, died after a brief battle with late-stage cancer. This crow is a symbol in loving memory.

8.) Crows saved my own life. For the months of my back surgery recovery, when I knew only pain, the black birds I usually visited on the hill at sunset came to me, stopping to pick fruit from the flowering crabapple tree in front of my house. For their brief visit, I stopped crying. This crow is, ironically, my choice to live.

9.) For all I know, I am a crow. I like shiny things. I squawk when I am not pleased. I look good in black. This crow is self-preservation.

10.) Cawpe diem. I’m forty-seven, and I have never before found an intact crow on the ground. This is the crow.

The answer is clear. And it is beautiful.

crowked

2010-02-26T10:40:00.010-05:00

The dead crow is on my deck, on a snack table, in a box, in a black garbage bag, weighted down by a rusty metal vise. The whole package of crow and box and vise is partially covered by this morning’s snow.

While my husband and daughter were walking the dogs in the park yesterday, a fellow dog walker was looking for the keys he lost in the snow. Marty and Serena helped him look, and Steve eventually found them, so they headed back out of the park together. Steve put his dog on the leash and cautioned them about the dead crow that lay up ahead. Moments later, Marty and Serena were carefully rolling it into a discarded box with a stick while the walker looked on, incredulous. “What, are you channeling your inner ten-year-old?” Steve asked.

“It’s for my wife,” Marty told him.

“Well, she’s either gonna be really pleased or really pissed off!”

After some bit of (probably) unsatisfactory explanation, my family came home. I was in the kitchen pondering dinner. “We brought you something,” Marty said, a gleam in his eye.

"You're gonna love it," Serena added.

As revealing as it is that a man would bring his wife a dead crow—her first and only crow, living or dead—it is equally telling that his wife could guess the surprise just by the expression on her husband’s face. I nearly cried with reverent delight.

While Marty went back out to retrieve the frozen blackbird, I fetched some rubber gloves and my camera, set up a spot with the best light, and locked the dogs out of the kitchen.

I put on one of the gloves to pick it up and was surprised by its lack of weight. Still, the crow required two hands because of its size and its broken neck. The head and neck bobbed and flopped like a slinky. His eyes had disintegrated into crust; his beak was grained like wood. But his feathers were good as new, with a glorious kiss of red, and I imagined him flying over my house at sunset on his way to the park, wings glowing auburn in the last light.

Shooting the dead crow’s portrait was difficult. His wiggly neck made an upright pose impossible, and the kitchen’s dull yellow light added an artificial sickness. Too long inside and a moment of hot lights would have thawed him, and I wasn’t ready for the decomp to begin, so I let Marty pose him on some white foam core while I shot quickly and returned him to the cold.

Marty’s plan was to bury him in the yard, let him decompose, and dig him up later for the skeleton to add to our collection of rodent, fox, and deer skulls, turtle shells, and random bones of random beasts. But a skeleton has to be rearticulated, or it’s just another pile. “You could always try taxidermy,” Marty said, and before he could say another word, I was hunting down the maker of my trophy.

Having never priced taxidermy, I hadn’t a clue—three hundred bucks? A hundred? And what would be the most I’d pay, considering I have only outgo (and no income)? Naturally, taxidermists seem to set up shop in the wilderness—faraway Maryland counties with a hunting season—rather than in the middle of the city. But I found one willing to stuff my bird for a mere $120. It will take two months because this is the end of hunting season, and the shop is full of stuff to stuff.

Last night, my sleep was fitful. The wind rattled the windows and whipped around some stuff in the yard, and all I could think about was the bird—whether it would be ripped apart in the wind, whether some animal would get it, whether it would be covered with snow. I promised myself that if the crow remained intact overnight, I would get thee to taxidermy, and it did.

But my husband is squawking at the price, so while he showered, I prepared a list of reasons he should tell me to go ahead and stuff it.

To be continued.

(Next: To Stuff or Not to Stuff: That is the Question)

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If you would like to help me pay for the taxidermy, I would be happy to exchange it for a 5x7 dead crow print of your choice, signed and numbered!

but ours is no cookie-cutter love

2010-02-14T09:06:00.015-05:00

I can think of a few holidays I adore: Rosh Hashanah—for me, not just a dry run for the changing of the year but a day of peaceful bread kneading and self-reflection; Halloween—the crazy costumes, the school dances; and my birthday still rocks after forty-[inaudible mumbling] of them. But Valentine’s Day?

First, let’s dispense with the myth that this is an invented, á la Hallmark, holiday. The greeting card company turned 100 on January 10th, but Shakespeare was waaaaay older. Consider this:

To-morrow is St. Valentine’s Day.
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window
To be your Valentine.

So sings the grief-stricken Ophelia shortly after Hamlet murders her dad, Polonius. I’m not quite sure what she meant by her cryptic song (she’s crazy, after all), but I do know this: Mr. Hallmark could have had nothing to do with the holiday known around these parts as “Valentimes, Hon!”

The legends of the love holiday’s origin are many and varied, but I like this one. Valentine was a priest in Rome in about 270 AD, when Christianity was not nearly as popular as it is now. In fact, he was jailed for it. On February 14th, when all attempts to make the priest renounce his faith had proved fruitless, Valentine was beaten with clubs and then beheaded. (You can see why I like it!)

So what’s love got to do, got to do with it? Coincidentally, February 14th was already a day associated with the mating of birds. The priest’s martyrdom merely provided a name for the annual celebration of avian booty.

Before Valentines were written (few peasants could read and write), they were sung. Perhaps to make his time of imprisonment move Allegrissimo in the Tower of London, Charles, Duke of Orleans (a Frenchman, naturellement), wrote down his song, giving birth to the first recorded Valentine’s day greeting in 1415.

Hundreds of years passed without any revolution in the love industry until 1847, when a Massachusetts woman named Esther Howland received her first decorated card from England. The Martha Stewart of her day, Howland began making her own lacy cards to sell in her father’s shop—an idea so successful that she earned almost $100,000 a year in the greeting card business!

While Valentine’s Day is not as old as Christmas, it’s been celebrated on this day for more than 1,700 years—longer than your birthday or your wedding anniversary. So why, on February 13th, is your husband ill-prepared to express his love in verse, with a side of flowers and chocolate?

I can’t recall the last time I got a Valentine from my husband, who knows how much I love 70% cocoa and Gerbera daisies but who, in 1997, got me a book of poems by Ogden Nash. Yes, Ogden "Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker” Nash. Hardly a romantic gift. But we have other romantic days to celebrate, like the anniversary of our first date, December 16th, 1982, otherwise known as End All Rats Day (so named because the rats used in a Halloween display in the hippie mansion where we lived had found freedom and had to be eradicated by exterminator, December 16, 1980).

I still have that funny poetry book, and it still makes me laugh. I still have the man, too, and he still makes me laugh. Even after twenty-seven years. And this year, for Valentine's Day, he learned a song to serenade me. He's singing it now.

"And I may be the Mayor of Simpleton / But I know one thing, and that's / I love you."

live

2010-01-26T12:47:00.009-05:00

When people asked me 13 years ago what I was having, I said, “a guitarist.” The sex of my baby wasn’t important, as long as I had created a musical human. I dragged my embryo and fetus to Ani Difranco several times, birthed my baby girl to Mazzy Star, enhanced her afternoon naps with Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark, nursed her to Keb Mo, took her for car rides serenaded by the Indigo Girls, and dressed her in a Righteous Baby onesie of my own design. When Serena could talk, she’d request her favorite: “'Pow[er] of Two,’ Mommy.” At three, she invited Ani Difranco to dinner. Since she emerged twelve years ago, she’s seen the Indigo Girls (as an infant), Regina Spektor, Ani Difranco, Billy Bragg, and Willy Porter. She slept through all but the last. (I’m not allowed to mention Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers.)

Over the past few weeks, we’ve watched the School of Rock’s tributes to Eric Clapton, Steely Dan, and, last Saturday, CBGB. As always, the kids were as impressive as the finest adult cover bands. But Serena hasn’t made a lot of friends at the cliquey school, so she usually watches with detachment instead of excitement.

Consequently, I was worried that I’d made a mistake spending $100 for our two tickets to see Cheap Trick at the Rams Head, catty corner to Angel’s Rock Bar, where Marty and I bobbed up and down to old favorites by the Bad Brains and Television, while Serena read a book of ghost stories on a sofa in the corner. After the show, I fueled her up on some crappy McDonald’s food (which helped her recall why she hasn’t eaten anything from McDonald’s in over two years), and we took our place in line in the long hallway of the club, where someone said, “I hate people who come to see the opening act.”

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “I went to see an opening act called Cheap Trick in 1979 at the Baltimore Civic Center!” They were on the bill with UFO, whom I liked, and Rush, whom I loathed. I pulled out my photos of that night—Robin signing an autograph while being pulled out the door by his tour manager, Rick giving me the thumbs up in front of a curtain. My treasures. “It’s people like us who turn opening acts into superstars.”

When we got in, we made our way quickly to a spot at the balcony, where no people could push in front of us and where we’d have room to lean and a place to put drinks—important, as I had to pre-caffeinate the kid to keep her standing.

Jason Faulkner (who is as easy on the eyes as a young Jon Bon Jovi) and Roger Manning of Jellyfish were the openers, and I could feel Serena’s excitement growing. But when it was time for the greatest fucking rock and roll band to take the stage, I could see that edge in her. She was captivated, enrapt. She screamed and yelled and woo-hooed and reveled in wide-eyed awe. And while she didn’t know a lot of the songs, she sang along anyway, because you can do that with Cheap Trick. They were never a band to be bogged down by pesky political verse and awkward, fancy timings. They are jump-up-and-down-able; even the crippled old mommies became all right while they played. And, damn it, they are still cute after all these years. Hello, Tom Petersson, you handsome old dandy in your purple duster and your rhinestone-spangled bass!

During the concert, I asked Serena whether she thought Rick Nielsen was a great guitarist, and she said, “DUH.” And I asked whether she was enjoying herself, and she said, “DUH.” And I asked if she liked Robin’s voice and Tom’s bass and Bun E.’s drumming and even the addition of Jason and Roger to the band, and she answered “DUH” to each. And then she added, “For a bunch of old guys, they can sure move around!”

When the show ended, I figured Serena would want to get out of there quickly, as it was late, and we’d been in loud clubs since 5:00, but she was intent on getting guitar picks. We went to the floor by the stage to find the strays. I begged a stage hand to get my “12-year-old daughter” a souvenir from her “first concert,” and he did. Serena stuck her finger between spaces in the barricade and got a purple pick for me before catching another flung into the air. Then came the begging. She wanted to go backstage, so she had me ask the guard if we could go up. I showed him the post cards Rick sent me in 1977. A nice story, he said, but he’s heard them all. Serena told me I should try again, show him the pictures, but I declined, and she was too shy to do it herself.

“What would you say to them, Serena? Hi, you’re great? My mom loves you?”

“Yeah. I don’t know. I just want to meet them.”

As we were leaving in the cold, without coats, we walked out by the bus, and Serena wished out loud that we could wait for them. “I wish I lived back in your day, when you could just meet bands,” she said, referring to my planned encounters with the likes of the Ramones, U2, and Cheap Trick. But it’s not that security has gotten any tighter. You simply have to catch those stars before they rise.

I knew when Serena was born that there’d be a small chance, despite our political and cultural influence, that my baby would grow up to be a banker or a stripper. I might have prevented the latter by giving her a name that doesn’t end in i and isn’t a color or a food. But the truth is that I really don’t care what she becomes, as long as she is passionate about it, and as long as she is still passionate about music—listening to it, performing it, and seeing it. Live. I know her mom still is.

this one's important.

2010-01-15T12:12:00.001-05:00

Leslie F. Miller's Nomination | Baker Artist Awards

the order of the teen-ix (xii)

2010-01-10T12:57:00.017-05:00

This is where it starts to get hairy, literally. On Wednesday, my eleven-year-old daughter became—whisper it—twelve.

On Twelfth Night, the anniversary of my own epiphany, Serena Joy Utah Miller began her after-dinner chores by dropping my new butter dish. It was an accident of course, but I was a little loud about it; I’d finally replaced the one my husband chipped in 1995.* The lid of the new dish was unharmed, but I tossed it in the trash along with the bottom in a heap of exasperation, then restored the chipped pink butter dish, a wedding gift to us, to its former spot of glory on the counter.

The next night, while cleaning up from dinner (the previous night’s leftovers of beef stew and cheese bread), Serena dropped the lid of the old butter dish, which shattered into tiny pieces on the tile floor. We all erupted momentarily, under the impression that our daughter was spending too much time watching TV and playing games on the computer, because clearly she’d lost her ability to pay attention to what she’s doing.

Then it hit me: the yelling, the inattentiveness, the rolled eyes, the appearance of humiliation when we speak to her friends, and the kicker—Wockenfuss chocolates for breakfast. I smiled the all-knowing mom smile, fished the blue lid out of the trash, washed it, and placed it on the pink base. (Now I have a hideous, mismatched butter dish, and, with my luck, no one will break it.) I decided Serena should call her band Butter Finger. She cried. As I hugged her, I wondered how much longer she’d let me.

Unlike eleven, twelve is not merely “one louder.” It is what Bob Schneider posted as his Facebook status update and what the tabloids have called Lindsay Lohan and her ilk: a drama tornado. The way I deal with anything these days in this, the year of my annoying positivity (which, incidentally, is lost on my family) is to write a song about it.

“Hurricane Serena blew into town / like a hundred cannonballs / she touched down / now she’s raining axe handles / and barn doors / and I can’t find my little girl anymore.” Chorus: “a drama tornado / whisked away my daughter / dropped a house upon her / now she is a goner.”

Last night, after some random disagreement, I gave her a belated birthday present—the DVD of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. She said, “You didn’t need to get me anything. The Les Paul is sort of holding me over.” I saw a glimmer of my daughter under all that brand-spanking-new twelve-ness. Then she looked down at the movie in her hand and, in a moment of perfect self-realization, declared, “Oh my God! I am Hormone-y Granger!”

I am still waiting for the Dark Mark to appear, waiting for the Hairy Potters to dazzle her with their magic, waiting for her to choose some creep I’ll call “He Who Must Not Be Named.” But it won’t be long. The boy who asked her to the dance surprised her with a set of guitar strings and designer picks. And I hear things breaking in the distance. And 15 chocolates are now missing from the Wockenfuss box.

* We still argue about who's responsible, like it matters when you've been together for 27 years. (He is.)

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P.S. If you like my writing and can spare a minute, please vote for me. I'm not exactly a Mommy blogger (and I hate popularity contests because I'm unpopular), but what I write is informed by motherhood, as well as wifeliness, writership, and rockerism.

amplitude

2010-01-04T12:02:00.012-05:00

I would rather spend my life close to the birds than wishing I had wings.”
~House, episode 1, season 5, “Dying Changes Everything.”

While 2009 was preparing to be shoved out the back door by people with more energy, my husband and I were asleep. We didn’t watch it go. I awoke at a few seconds after midnight to the sounds of applause and thought: 2010 must be lookin’ good. Then I smiled and fell back to sleep. In the morning, my favorite sound woke me: crow rush hour.

I will not miss the old year, despite all the good it brought: the helpful friends, The Book, all the music—in clubs and at home. And I have no regrets about the time I spent wallowing, mired in misery, even beyond the worst of the pain; I needed it then. But I don’t want to forget it because I don’t want to repeat it.

So how do you change your penchant for negativity when life seems to knock you down? Why do some people get right back up again and others sit in a weeping heap first, sometimes for ages? I know which of these people I want to be, and I know who I am; they are different.

Don’t you find yourself wishing you could snap your fingers and snap out of it—your mood, your depression, your funk, your anxiety—even if it has roots in reason, like catching the flu or waking up to four slashed tires? Don’t you wish you could glide through it, that the wrinkle in your day doesn’t become a tear in your fabric? That you could just turn the dial on your brain and adjust your attitude, like you would a guitar amp, to get the mindset you want, so that all the stuff that goes in through that cool yellow patch cord connecting your ears to your mind gets processed and comes out with some ethereal reverb and some happy country twang? Sweet Peavey Alchemy!

You know me. I’m not one for bullshit or all that new-age hooey. (I still cringe at my shiatsu guy’s choice of music; while I’m getting painfully pulled and poked, it sounds like a Chinese restaurant. Just put on The Prodigy, I tell him; that’s what my body hears.) I don’t need any cross-stitch philosophy or self-help books or letters from the universe telling me how great I am. But it never hurts to remind yourself that thoughts become things. It’s those messages from water all over again.

Years ago, when I was suffering from insomnia, my therapist taught me an interesting trick. He said that we sometimes have bad dreams, but we can control their outcomes. Even with a subliminal knowledge that anything is possible in a dream, we can escape from whatever is chasing us.

I bet we can learn to do that a little while we’re awake, too. You don’t have to go around telling your glass of water that it’s beautiful before you drink it, but you do have to drink it. A lot of it. So depression is chemical; does that mean your only treatment ought to be chemical? It’s situational, too. It’s environmental. It’s medical. It’s not only that you’re born with or develop a deficiency in serotonin or norepinephrine or dopamine; it’s that the deficiency keeps you from getting the other things that make your brain healthy: good food, exercise, positive thoughts. If you don’t want to be around yourself, who is going to want to be around you?

An acquaintance sent me an email the other day. “We are now living in the future … hope to see you in it soon.” When he does, I am going to be smiling, if for no other reason than because it's what I’ve decided to do.

“Leslie F. Miller will write more, shoot more, sing more, play more, move more, smile more, do more, be more. And she'll whine less, bitch less, and eat less. The cussing's gonna stay the same. I can't fucking change everything.”

~facebook status message, 01/01/10

alchemy

2009-12-23T09:31:00.012-05:00

It’s Christmas, but you wouldn’t know it by my house, which has no tree, no wrapped presents, no fauxflake or stocking or stray spray of tinsel. It’s not because I’m a curmudgeon. I just started thinking: What do we need that we don’t have? What do we want that we don’t get nearly as quickly as the thought pops into our heads? While this condition is much the same for us every year, it’s the first time I have been stricken by the absurdity—of frantic shopping, of wrapping surprises on the same pre-scheduled day as most of this country and some of the world, as if we’d deprive our child, now too old (not to mention too Jewish) to believe in Santa, of her reasonable heart’s desires for an entire year, as if we should have waited on Hendrix the Creature, her pet bearded dragon. As if guitar picks should be stocking stuffers rather than tools of her trade.

As I sit here, my daughter is pounding insanely on the drums while her friend makes repetitive keyboard sounds, my husband is watching some dull war documentary, the kitchen countertop is covered with crumbs, my back is sore, and my dogs are where they always are—beneath my feet, a perpetual tripping hazard—one of them, Cleo, snoring so loudly that I can hear her over the drums.

But I am practicing a new craft. I am waving away the fog of depression, turning the ugly floaters into the swirling glitter of a snow globe. My daughter taught herself how to play the drums, and she’s good; she has a friend with her, and they are making music, not noise. My husband is watching the movie on our brand new shiny iMac. My counter is crumby because I’ve just made warm, delicious brownies filled with the free bag of chocolate chips Safeway gave us for spending twenty bucks on the ingredients for brownies and chicken stew. My back is sore because I’ve been standing up playing guitar, something I couldn’t do a few months ago. And my dogs are beautiful; at fourteen, Cleopatra’s cacophony is a comfort because it means she is still alive.

If I have a resolution for the coming year, it’s to practice more of this kind of witchcraft, to discover a way to transmute anxiety and sadness into something bright and gleaming, something the crow dragged in.

I have spent far too much of 2009 listing the things that have gone wrong. It’s not that I didn’t earn the right, but pacing back and forth along this path has put a rut in it. Sometimes I wonder if it’s as awful as it is habitual. Now the rut is a damned trench, which makes the climb out a little tougher. All I really need to do is start filling it with each good thing until that, the filling, becomes my groove.

Habits, old or new, are hard to break; however, I’m wise enough to know that my blessings are many. My family, friends, and social networks have literally kept me alive when I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay that way. We had foster families at the beginning of this year, people who fed us and drove us around and made sure we were safe.

Before I sat down to review the year, I’d already panned 2009, in my mind worse than at least forty other years. But some pretty remarkable things happened this year.

• I knitted and sold enough scarves to help pay for an expensive chair, which was instrumental in my recovery.

• I ran almost two miles six months after back surgery.

• I felt the force of several thousand crows lifting off from a field where I stood.

• Bob Schneider sat next to me in my car, and, a week later, I got to hang out for half an hour with the very cool Chuck Prophet.

• I have written at least five really good songs this year and will record them in the studio soon.

• I was in two movies, I Will Smash You and 60 Writers, 60 Places, both of them released recently. In two different glowing reviews, my parts were singled out for positive acknowlegment.

• My daughter, Serena, got straight A pluses (except for the A in religion), improved her saxophone, guitar, and drum playing and her singing. She landed the acoustic intro to one of my favorite songs ever, “ Crazy on You,” by Heart, for the Seattle Sounds show in January, and she’s nailing it.

• The Book was published! Let Me Eat Cake was not the best book ever written, and I got down on myself a lot after negative reviews, but you know what? Simon & Schuster liked it enough to pay me for my words and to publish them with a beautiful cover and pictures inside. I don’t know too many people who can say that. So there!

I’m not completely skipping gifts and holiday cheer, but I am finally questioning them in light of our dwindling bank account and increasing debt and dismal prospects for employment. And all we have already and all we discard every day. For instance, this week, I’ve received ten Christmas cards in the mail. Half were store bought; the other half were personalized with family photos. Not a single one of the senders wrote more than a generic, nameless greeting and a signature. I appreciate that you thought of me among the mountain of friends who give your hand a writer’s cramp each year, that you’d truly like me to have a blessed holiday, that you’d share your beautiful family with mine. But tell me something—that I’m a good neighbor, a good friend. Tell me you love me and my family, that we’ll make an effort to get together more this year, that you hope my back heals, that I write another book, that I stay with my husband for the 28th year. Make me laugh or think or cry over your sentiment. Those are the cards I save and reread when I need a quick reminder that I’m worthwhile. Unfortunately, my recycling bin fills up first.

So many of you have touched my soul this year. Telling you each might take me the majority of 2010. Until I do, please enjoy the card I made from photographs of the beautiful snow, an icy windshield, and the birds I love. Print it out if you’d like to keep it. When I see you next, I’ll write on the back of it what I love most about you.

Peace.

bmm: bad mommy moments

2009-12-13T15:08:00.013-05:00

In the following story, the names have been changed to protect the guilty. Photos are for illustration purposes only and do not depict actual persons or television shows.

A friend of mine, Mary, is a little stressed out. In addition to her nearly full-time career, she has two kids in different schools, both involved in sports and artistic endeavors, and her husband is mostly away.

She wakes her son, Ken, for school every day at about 7; he’s usually quick to get ready, and they’re a family of late sleepers, so that’s the last possible minute. One day, Mary calls to him from the other room and gets in the shower. He is of an age that he shouldn’t have to be watched, but you know how that goes; at 7:15, he is still in bed. Mary doesn’t hear him stirring and sees that he’s still asleep. “Get UP!” she screams. “It’s time for school! Get up NOW or else!”

“Or else what, Mom,” Ken calls back before he promptly falls back asleep.

Mary yells again. “Get UP NOW, or I’m gonna come in there and beat your butt!”

“Hahaha, Mom. I’d love to see that!” her son yells back, cackling. He doesn’t budge.

At 7:30, the boy is still in bed, and his mom is yelling again, “I mean it! I’m not kidding! Don’t mess with me! Get up NOW! I swear if you are not up in the next few seconds, I am coming in there to beat your butt!”

Ken erupts into spasms of laughter. “I’d like to see that! Yup, I’d sure like to see you do that! Hahahaha, Mom. Good one, Mom.” And at 7:40, Mary goes in the room and plants a good whallop on his tiny rear end right through his covers, and leaves the room with an extra "Now GET UP" for good measure.

The boy shrieks. “You hit me! Mom! Mom, you really hit me!” He gets up and dresses quickly, though obviously still in shock, alternating between mutters and bursts of yelling. “Mom, it still stings, Mom! It stings from where you REALLY! HIT! ME!”

Mary is now downstairs in her kitchen, facing a new dilemma: what to feed her kid for lunch. Ken had recently declared a disinterest in sandwiches, so Mary had begun packing peanut butter crackers and yogurt. Now the yogurt is coming home nearly uneaten, and there's not much left to give him. “Will you eat peanut butter?” Mary calls to the still-muttering boy. He feels the sting of messing with her, so he asks nicely if she'll put some marshmallows on it.

I am close to tears from laughing at my friend's hysterical tale, but I suck air through my teeth when she gets to the bread. Mary's a little disgusted and embarrassed; she's surprised I'm laughing, as if this were an example of parenting gone horribly wrong. “I was looking at the kitchen counter. My mom was just here, and she did the shopping and bought white bread. So here I am, spreading peanut butter and marshmallows on top of Wonder Bread after having just beaten my kid. Could I be any more white trash?”

Sure. She whooped him through the covers, after all—not with a wet hand. And although the bread pushes it just to the edge, she would have to be missing some teeth and living in a trailer park in West Virginia, and even then she wouldn't make an episode of Springer.

We all have our bad-mommy moments. I yell too much, and I cuss (I could fund Serena's college education with my contributions to the swear jar). I spend too much time on the computer. I sometimes feed the girl cereal for dinner when my husband’s not home. But I pick her up and drop her off on time, make nutritious meals, and grunt disapprovingly when she wears her pants too short or her shirt has a stain on it. I pay attention to her hygiene. I clean the poop from her creature's cage and sit alone in the car next to a bag of crickets every week because she has a tough schedule. I sometimes put the contents of her drawers, her closet, and beneath the bed in a mountain on her floor—something I learned from my own good mom. But I’ve never left her anywhere (unless you count the time I almost drove off from the Target parking lot while she stood banging on the window of the locked back door—a fluke), and I only make her rub my feet when they really, really hurt (usually in exchange for something, like a delayed bedtime so she can watch Law & Order SVU or, her favorite, Criminal Minds).

Roseanne Barr used to say, “I figure by the time my husband comes home at night, if those kids are still alive, I’ve done my job.” While both history and news are full of fucked up parents and damaged children, it's still funny in the proper perspective. After all, a smack on the rump and makeshift fluffernutter on Wonder Bread are not going to put our kids in therapy or give them a movie of the week.

Still, next time, Mary, you'd better use whole wheat.

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Do you have a BMM? What is the most embarrassing thing you've ever done, the thing that you were sure made you the worst mom on the planet?

driving mr. schneider: my day as a runner for the bob schneider band (part 2)

2009-11-28T19:45:00.033-05:00

(continued from part 1)

I am sitting in the lobby of Bob Schneider’s hotel, waiting for my favorite rock star to finish showering and get back into my car. As I say this, I still can’t believe Bob Schneider was just in the front seat of my car! It’s even more surreal than the time I touched Kip Winger’s stomach. I look in the bathroom mirror at my face. It’s older than it was this morning, and I have a bunch more new silver hairs sprouting from my center part. But I don’t bother with refreshment makeup or my hat. I find a giant round ottoman close to the coffee bar and try to stretch my still-crippled back by lounging. I imagine I look like a black widow stricken with the Cruciatus Curse—or, worse, like one of those sit-com women who tries to seduce a man by splaying herself atop a bed, putting her body in several awkward positions, eventually giving up and doing something hideous, at which time the boyfriend comes into the room. I prop myself against a mirrored column and call a friend.

I’m a groupie. It doesn’t mean what you think: I am an appreciator, an aficionado, an enthusiast—at least when it comes to a few individual bands (most of whom are mentioned by name in the acknowledgments of The Book). I like seeing live bands more than I like food; indeed, I get through this entire day on a scrambled egg and some beer. I bask in the afterglow of sweaty rock stardom much the way Hendrix the Creature, our bearded dragon, basks on a rock: with his tongue out and a big snaggle-toothed grin.

It’s not celebrity. I wouldn’t wait in line for an actor’s autograph; would not seek out the artist at an opening; don’t care much to meet my favorite writers (I would have my books signed if the line is short). It’s not about sex, either—at least I don’t think it’s about that, though who has not imagined making out with an attractive, talented, famous person (Bruce Springsteen comes to mind—a lot). Hell, I’ve thought about making out with Brandi Carlile, and I don’t even swing that way.

It’s music. Music makes me swoon. Music and lust and love are intertwined in an intoxicating three-way.

Maybe I think that rubbing elbows with talented people will take me back to when I fronted a band and performed every weekend for dancing crowds who knew the pretentious words to my eighties band’s songs (a time before we had computers, sonny). Or maybe all this psychoanalysis of my musical motives is bullshit, and I’m just an old band whore with a solid moral center and a flabby self-image.

When Bob comes down from showering (does he look even better with wet hair?), I barely see him because I’m trying to catch the score of the Ravens game, out of bored curiosity rather than concern. And I think it’s the first time Bob even looks at me, though it may be with a little bit of annoyance—I can’t tell. I just smile.

We get in the car, and he wants to know about museums and galleries, and I give him as much of the scoop as I know about the Visionary and the probably-closed galleries up Charles Street, where I don’t take him, though I could easily have given him a brief tour. We had time. Instead, I turn down Light Street as he admires the bird skull I’d hung from the rearview—it replaced that awful blue and gold Goucher tassel. And now, because “where’d you get it?” inevitably leads to Marty, which leads to "what does he do," which leads to my humorous-but-misrepresentational answer, that “he's an atheist-communist teaching at a Catholic school,” I am sucked, and I mean shop-vac’d, into a discussion about God—or god, as it is in my case.

Oh, why couldn’t we be talking about his son’s little electric guitar or naming the album of songs left after my favorite ones were put on The Californian? (I suggest The Baltimorean, and he loves the sound of it, says it a couple of times, nods, “The Baltimorean, yeah!”)

Without turning his head, Bob asks how a person arrives at that—at atheism. “It’s just another brand,” he tells me. Perhaps it would be, I argue, if we actually celebrated or reveled in the atheism, but we don’t. I’m looking straight ahead, like a deer in the headlights, but with a view of the Maryland Science Center and encroaching traffic. If I crash, it will be God’s fault. “Every religion known to man, from the ancient Egyptians to the present-day religions, is founded on Do Unto Others, and I think we know that moral code from birth. It’s innate. It’s why we feel bad when we hurt someone’s feelings. And those who don’t have that conscience turn out to be psychopaths and sociopaths. I don’t think god can save those people,” I say in similar words.

Is Bob answering me? I don’t know. I am busy rambling about how ridiculous it is that people who treat others with cruelty get to accept Jesus on their death beds and go to heaven. I talk about how I’d rather think of the pretty trees—which change color, lose leaves, come back with a whole new sense of tree-ness—as miracles and everything else man’s fault. Otherwise, if we give credit to a god for the good things, we have to blame him for the Holocaust and kidnapping and rape.

Poor Bob. He might as well be a member of my family now; he can’t get a word in edgewise. He tries to clarify that he’s against organized religion, that it’s just another “brand,” too; he is struggling not to be misunderstood. Or maybe he is listening and thinking. I can’t tell. I am absorbed in making the case for atheism, practically turning it into the irreligious conviction I had previously denied.

By the time we are at the venue, the conversation comes to a halt with the car, and I practically shove him out the door—“Out you go!” or “Well, here you are!”—and go to a bar to drink with the Raven maniacs.

Not exactly. First I make friends with a football-fan-hating cop, who allows me to park with my rear end hanging past the sign. Then I run into Harmoni while strolling back past the club. “There’s so much cool stuff,” she tells me while looking through a store window. She’s lamenting all the money she spends in cities before shows, and I ask what she can do besides shop. “I will sometimes go to a park and take pictures,” she says, and I tell her about the view from Federal Hill, about overlooking the Visionary Arts museum. I’m attempting to walk her out the door, maybe go with her to the hill, but she’s hinting that she’s a solo flyer, so I point in the general vicinity and take my cue to duck into the bar.

I am on duty, but I’m waiting for sound check, which I expect to be between 4:30 and 5:00 and take about an hour. So a 3:00-ish Sierra Nevada is not irresponsible. I’d rather be eating sushi with the guitarist or on the hill with the bassist. After my beer, I charge my phone in the car, and talk to Marty and my sister, who wonders if Bob'll do "Titty Bangin'" tonight, as if I could gauge that by our god discussion. I get Ted's text, and I'm off to sound check.

It’s uneventful at first—a lot of nnns and uuuuhs and “more monitor” and wire detanglement and cord arrangement, but eventually it’s time for drums, and Conrad Choucroun takes his spot at the kit. He looks up and sees me on the second floor. He waves. “Hi, Leslie!”

The whole world stops. Nothing else is happening. At all. (Hint to men: women like this.)

In a few minutes, I’m (mostly) over the flattery and taking pictures and even secretly, guiltily filming a little of the sound check. An hour later, when it’s all over, my handshake to Conrad is replied with a hug. Bob asks for dining advice, and Harmoni worries about time and a shower. Both she and Conrad walk to my car for a lift.

"So what are you working on now," Conrad asks. "Another book?" I'm surprised. I didn't tell anyone about the book—not Ted, not Bob. Perhaps they looked me up on Ted's laptop, or maybe he looked over the summer, when I added him as a My Space "friend." He wants to know if it's a food book, but I say I'm over that and working on a book about going to rock and roll camp. I tell them how hot Kip Winger is in person, and then we segue to crime, and they want to know if it's really like The Wire. I get graphic with my tale of the guy who died on my corner, how I watched the last blood gurgle from a murdered gang banger’s mouth on the corner of my street. I was robbed at gunpoint. And my parents were mugged and my mother beaten up in front of her house. And my sister was robbed at gunpoint at work. "But it’s not
so bad."

I write my cell phone number on Conrad’s key envelope (he still hasn’t called), and I start the driving race—home to pick up Marty and Serena, to my mom’s to drop off Serena, back to the hotel to pick up Conrad and Harmoni. Uptown, across town, and downtown across town. I am there in 43 minutes, despite having to turn around to get Marty's show ticket. I'm three minutes shy of my 7:00 promise, but my charges had only just come outside. When they get in, I apologize for scaring them out of their wits, and they both laugh, somewhat relieved; I might have really worried them. Then Marty does all the talking for the rest of the drive, asking the questions I should’ve asked—how long they’ve been playing, whether they like being in Bob’s band, where they live. Back at the 8x10, I get an excellent parking space, find my name on the guest list, and go inside to drink. I deserve it.

The show’s opening act, One Eskimo, is like a slowed-down Phil Collins with one long, ethereal song performed by not one but four Eskimos with unusual hair. I drink two pints of ale during their short set (and get a third once Bob’s band comes out). Meanwhile, Marty is flirting with two blonds. He picks them up by telling them his wife drove Bob Schneider around all day, and one of them, the drunk dumb one who's my new best friend, says he must really trust me to let me—his hot, young wife—do that.

Marty sits on a stool against the wall with his bleary eyes closed most of the night. I’m on the side of the stage with a couple of friends and have a good view of everyone except Harmoni and Ollie Steck, the horn player. Only once during the show does the front man look my way, and when he does, there’s a slight smile of recognition. Bob is Bob. He sings great, cusses, gets crude, and peforms what I call “The Pussy Song.” I don't like it, but it dispels any rumors that he’s really become Daddy Man, making his songs and shows safe for Rachel Ray’s viewers. Actually, Bob's usual audience is probably those very same viewers—women who love it when someone talks dirty to them. The men love him, too, for getting to say all the things they'd like to but would get slapped for. And he warms up their females. A Bob Schneider show is all the foreplay most people need.

I don’t get a chance to shout out my favorite song, “Game Plan,” and that’s OK because Bob plays “The Hulk.” I yell a thank-you afterward, as if my liking the song in the car that afternoon reminded him to play it.

The show lasts about two hours, by which time I’ve had three pints of beer and leave without my Frunk or any goodbyes, except a text to Teddy asking him to save me a CD of the show. Marty drives us home, and we both agree it was one of Bob Schneider’s best, most hard-rocking shows. That’s all we say to each other. And while my husband is upstairs asleep at midnight, I eat leftover lasagna and think of all the things I should’ve done differently—from my fashion choices to the quality and quantity of my conversation. My biggest regret is not getting any casual, daylight, non-concert photos, for fear I’d look like a fan instead of a professional rock ‘n’ roll driver.

I also regret not using this perfect reply when Bob asked what my husband did for a living: "Oh, he's a titty banger from way back."