Motherless Propagation

I was reading Mitsu’s excellent blog, Synthetic Zero, and was moved by these porcelain ceramic pieces by his friend Heather Anne.





His entry: “She said that when she wrote about them in her journal last year, she had all sorts of thoughts about ‘motherless propagation, speechless creatures, families without hierarchy’... I love these creature/plant/families.”

(M: I hope you do not mind my reposting here.)

(I keep trying to make Mitsu's site's link active, but something bloggy is wrong with my html. See the "Synthetic Zero" link on the right to get to his blog.)

It's a Freezy Rain Christmas!

'Twas a Chinese-food Christmas, and all through the newsroom, editors worked their pages with a blasé, food-coma, attempting-to-finesse gloom.

Last night I attended a loosely arranged Julefest, complete with a long-snouted marzipan pig and a spindly-armed tinsel tree. I'm too broccolied-out to explain whither-the-pig. Google it if you need to.

In needing-to-vent news, I was amazed at the audacious snootiness* of someone I met this weekend, who asked every question with a knife-sharp edge of condescension and pretended not to be listening to a conversation until you addressed her directly, and even then she only barely responded, so great was her need to continue to disdain those around her. [Eyes subtly flutter. Like a tiny, eye-sized hummingbird. Two of them.] She was a bee-yute, in the old-fashioned carnival huckster sense of the word. These people…these…humans.

In needing-to-vent-further news, as a Jew in New York, I'm on overload with all the "Jew in New York" Christmas stories in this weekend's papers, specifically in the New York Times. I understand the hegemony of the "Jews With Trees" movement maybe better than most, and still I'm a little up to my ears in all the remarkable! unveiling of this new! phenomenon! in the past couple of days. Why am I surprised, why do I even surmise?

In the News of the Children front, a friend told me tonight about the gentleness of his 4-year-old nephew. This story plays out with pirate and Viking dolls.

"Let's go steal their treasure!" my friend said to his nephew.

"No, we'll ask to borrow their treasure," the little boy corrected. A face-to-face negotiation ensued.

"Excuse me, Viking. Can we please borrow some of your treasure?"

"I don't know," Signor Viking told Monsieur Pirate. He then proceeded to gravely consider the matter. "Hmmm, ok. You can borrow a little."

In the world-rights-itself-with-a- delicate-bubbly-and-whimsical-Small- Child-story non-news from a sort-of-Jew-who-does-not-have- a-tree-but-whose-sister-does, merry all of it, and goodnight. [Wait, first enjoy these photos by NYT's Fred R. Conrad. New York in all its camel-faced, tiny-tourist-skating glory.]

[Grand, orchestral hyphenated- flourish…and fin.]

_______

*Different from "snouty."

I Am in Love with a Dead Woman

But have you seen "Vampyros Lesbos"? Go rent it now, if you have not. See left, if you need a reason. Maybe my favorite thing about that movie (besides Soledad Miranda, who tragically died in a car accident at age 27) is that it seems to run with English subtitles while dubbed from Spanish (Portuguese?) into German. The basic story of a voracious vampiress luring hot chicks to her biting mouth is besides the point, clearly. A highlight is the afflicted blonde in a room in a "private clinic" on some unnamed Turkish island who feels (nay, agonizingly experiences) everything the vampiress does out in the world. We see shots of this locked-away writhing blonde with little context. Delicious, incongruous psychosexual candy in a mesmerizing film with a sexy, long-dead, undead villain.

Onward. And less-lasciviousward.

Read "My Father's Suitcase" by Orhan Pamuk in the New Yorker this week.
It's one of the most honest assessments of why a writer writes I have ever read.

Here:

"Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy."

I think this is honest and jaded but full of childlike trust, too:

"For me, to be a writer is to acknowledge the secret wounds that we carry inside us, wounds so secret that we ourselves are barely aware of them, and to patiently explore them, know them, illuminate them, own them, and make them a conscious part of our spirit and our writing.

…When a writer uses his secret wounds as his starting point, he is, whether he is aware of it or not, putting great faith in humanity."

And then there is this passage, which basically sums up better than I ever could what I worry over as a reporter and sometime-other-kind-of writer, like a stone I have worked a groove into with my tired, constantly rubbing thumb:

"The writer who shuts himself up in a room and goes on a journey inside himself will, over the years, discover literature’s eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they were other people’s stories, and to tell other people’s stories as if they were his own, for that is what literature is."

Luxembourg Shall Set Us Free

Steel for the "Freedom Tower" is beginning to arrive from Differdange, Luxembourg. Steel for the World Trade Center came from the now-defunct Bethlehem Steel (Bethlehem, Penn.), U.S. Steel and many smaller American companies.

A clear example of this country's fall from world trade dominance and self-reliance — with or without the 2001 strike to its heart.

Memory Is Smoke in a Room (It Fills the Empty Crevices)

I guess I've been thinking a lot about the space someone holds inside you—people you haven't seen in years and likely will never see again. (See, um, twenty of my earlier posts.) And then I read this tonight: from this week's New Yorker "Winter Fiction Issue," an essay by Julian Barnes called "The Past Conditional: What Mother Would Have Wanted", and, well, I have nothing to say about it that reading it won't express. (No, not the Jewy part. We chosen people do not get to make such choices.) Here you go:

"I might, I suppose, if it had been possible to choose, have become Jewish. I went to a school where, out of about nine hundred boys, a hundred and fifty or so were Jewish. On the whole, they seemed cleverer, and both socially and sartorially more advanced; they had better shoes (one contemporary even had a pair of elastic-sided Chelsea boots) and they knew about girls. They also got extra holidays, which seemed an advantage. And it would have usefully shocked my parents, who had the low-level anti-Semitism of their time and class. (As the credits rolled at the end of a TV play and a name like Aaronson occurred, one or the other of my parents might comment wryly, “Another Welshman.”) Not that they behaved any differently to my Jewish friends, one of whom was named, rightly, it seemed to me, Alex Brilliant. He was reading Wittgenstein at sixteen, and writing poetry that rippled with ambiguities—double, triple, quadruple, like heart bypasses. He took a scholarship to Cambridge, after which I lost sight of him; but I would occasionally think of him down the years, assuming that he had forged ahead in one of the liberal professions. I was over fifty when I learned that for more than half my life I had been thinking of someone as alive who was in fact dead. Brilliant had killed himself in his twenties, for no reason my informant could determine."

"Plastics."

"Did you type that with mittens on?" one editor just asked another. Heh. Yeah, he did.

To backtrack...

Patti Smith Made Me Cry.

Almost.

I unexpectedly saw her perform last night, and within three notes I felt a creature climbing up through my gut. (A good creature. Like a puppy, maybe. A puppy with claws.) That woman, as the world knows, can sing. I'd gone to hear some guys I know perform--big in their own right--with some talented people who usually play with even better known people (not necessarily deservedly so). Mostly the show was Xmasy-crappy. Nobody wants to hear the former lead singer for Styx sing "Holly Jolly Christmas," but he sang some such crud, I promise you.

After the concert I wound up at plastic-cupped party with kids. Not children, but young uns. Packed, college-like into a Brooklyn brownstone, most in their early to mid-20s. With beards. Literal ones. Full ones. No "5 o'clock shadow" fake-out pseudoshite. More kinda log cabin lumberboy. Why are the kids these days rocking beards? I cannot answer this.

At some point, I found out a number of people there had gone to my university (classes of 2003/4). "Hey, I'm class of '97," I enthused to some dudes on the couch. The response was, um, bizarre, if autonomic.

One guy did a little head-shakey stuttery thing. I fuck you not. Like, his body convulsed a little.

"You really should check that shit," I told him.

"Uh, well, I guess I didn't expect that," he said, as if I'd just told him I have the ability to shoot spear-tipped flames out my nostrils.

I went on to tell some other kid at the party about this happening, and he said, "Well, you look really good for your age."

Yeah. My stock response to this oft-heard piece of snarffly drivel? Actually, I hope I look my age, cause I love being in my 30s blah blah fuck you. Should I somehow look wretched at 31? Should my crow's feet be ready to take flight off my face and my breasts be making quiet love to my knees? What do you think 31 looks like, male people? I ask this sincerely.

Shouldn't we look wizened? Shouldn't we look not 22 and milk-faced, but like we've lived a little and taken possession of our bodies and minds the way a human being hopefully will at some point? You know, downed a few bourbons but still childishly giggly at things like beards on young men and boys who say, when you wish them good luck in law school as they leave a party, "I have my work ethic and my intellect. I don't need luck..."? (Fine. Not childishly giggly at that one. More like hilariously obnoxious condescendingly stunned. "Yeah, you're really going to need that luck, buddy," I said.)

Parting shot: Anne Bancroft was 36 when she played Mrs. Robinson.

(I think I just confused myself.)

This Was an Entirely Different Man Altogether (Or, Why I Love New York, Part 4,652)

"I saw a man arguing with a tree on my way here," I told my boss. "It was a very skinny tree, and he was winning."

"I wonder if that was the same man who squawked at me. Did he have feathers on his head?" she asked.

"No," I replied. "No, he didn't."

Discipline on the A

Smack.

The mother's arm whacked at the little girl's leg and then her arm.

"I told you to stop it!" she said in a vicious voice.

A couple of minutes before this, the mother had been giggling and scratching her daughter's milky-brown back with unusual zest, but the girl seemed to like it. She listed away from me and toward her mom while her pink furry jacket brushed my thigh.

Thunder came before lightning.

"I told you not to kick her!" Smack.

"She didn't kick me," I said to the mother. I said it with intent. I made sure the mother heard me. She mumbled something and didn't look at me. Then I smiled right into the little girl's eyes: Please don't let this ruin you, I told her silently. Please don't let this violence destroy you. Please know you didn't do anything to deserve that and never will do anything to ever deserve it.

The little girl's huge brown eyes stayed on mine.

"She didn't kick you 'cause I keep watching her," the mother said to me.

"She didn't kick me," I said again, emphatically. I wondered if the mother's mother had yanked her around and smacked her the same way. And I wondered if little girl would become a mother who would do the same thing when she has a child.

I caught the little girl's eyes again and smiled again.

Please.

No, They Weren't "Orange"

Because I have gotten a larger-than-expected amount of "Why are you blogging about penises?" e-mails, I will hereby not blog about penises here. Not in this entry, anyway.

The prettiest thing I saw today was a bouquet of mango-colored roses for sale outside a deli. Besides that one outing, I've been in bed convalescing all day. I am pleased to announce the arrival of my very first winter cold. Welcome! Fie!

The dial on my brain has been switched to "Hazy/Low-Functioning," so I will be back whenever it returns to "Abnormal/Semi-Functioning." Or whenever I find a reason to blog about vaginas. See you soon.

You Rang, Freud?

So I wonder what it means when you dream of a man who has many—many—penises.

It was anthropological, the reason I saw them.

This man and I worked together in a bar. He wanted to show me some mural-frescoes the couple he was staying with had made ("Come on down to my apartment —I want to show you some remarkably fine etchings I just bought." —Dorothy Parker.)

The frescoes were colorful and anachronistic. Long, Impressionist scenes of tree-filled café society. Oranges, greens, yellows. Fine. The guy, as we're about to leave to go to work, which we're late for, suddenly turns to me and drops his pants. I am speechless. He has three semi-attached penises, somewhat to the left side of center. They are of normal size, each.

"Yeah, but look at this," he says.

I shift my gaze to the center of his crotch and there, where just one set of genitals normally sits, are countless of them. It's like the Indian sculpture at Villa D'Este of the goddess with many breasts. Only here there are many penises. Small ones, medium-sized ones, ones that look like pinkies, others that look like antennae. The more I stare at it, the more there seem to be.

Through my head flashes disgust and grand curiosity: How does this man have sex?

The whole thing looks wriggly and unfortunate, although he seems quite thrilled with it.

This is where the dream ended as my phone rang at 8 a.m. I awoke thinking, To each his own. To each, in this case, his many, many own, I suppose.

~

I spoke to my mother today.

"You have a cold?" she asked.

"The beginning of one, yeah," I said.

"Go get some chicken soup," she said.

"I don't eat chicken, mom. When was the last time I ate chicken?" I said.

"You know, get some of those vegetable cubes and make chicken soup," she said.

"I should make chicken soup out of vegetable stock, mom?"

[Commence degeneration into confused laughter.]

W. Ho.

So in the stultifying world of my personal coincidences, I'd like to share this latest with the hopes that (for once) you, too, will be utterly amazed and mesmerized by the confluence of events I am about to describe.*

A love(ish) letter a lovely man wrote me 10 years ago will be published in a book about love letters. This came about after an acquaintance told me she was working for the editor who was putting it together. The editor of said book and I discussed by phone the origins of said letter today, and when I told him what town in the world it originated from, the town in which I spent my junior year in college abroad…he sort of freaked and said he spent a year there, too. Ten years earlier. Fine, odd coincidence, you say. But I said, "Whoa."

"Whoa," I said.
"Whoa," he said.

"But what college did you go to in the U.S.?" I asked him.
"Wackadoodle University," he said.**
"Shit, me, too," I said.***

"Whoa," he said.
"Whoa," I said.

He lives in an apartment three blocks from me (yeah, sort of "whoa"****), which I dutifully walked to in order to deposit said love(ish) letter into his hands. We stood in his entryway and sort of started at each other like, "Whoa."*****

_________
*MotN: All I hear is "Wah wah wah wah…" like the teacher on Charlie Brown, okay?
**Wackadoodle=Not the Real Name of My University, Although Possibly a Better Name for It
***There were only about 2,500 students at this school.
****Nine out of 10 editors/writers in America live in my neighborhood.
*****And then the seas parted and the sky rained tiny rabbit-faced fishes and I then got on the subway and went to work.

Nerdrectifying Provocation, I Know

"I suppose this is our first sub-freezing evening," says the swank-a-dope on the classical station of the radio right now.

Perf.

Just a quick hello from the McBickelope (I mean the McBickelobe. The McBickers. The McBike. Whatever. I'm a she they tell me anyway).

I am about to begin work at the lovely midnight hour. But before I go, here's what I heard tonight on the subway from a man holding a bike made by Jeep to another man who wore a loud striped tie:

"I don't eat no red meat. No chicken, no. I don't eat no red meat. No swan."

No. Swan.

No swan, damn you! I will not eat that swan! Step away with that swan!

I know, I know, all swans belong to the Queen anyway. I know. Don't go getting all smarty-pants know-it-all Brightolonian on me. (Brightotopian. Brightorontian. Whatever. Anglofreaks, as way of explanation to my Canadian, Romanian and 'Merican friends.) Stephen Colbert calls that sort of chastising enjoyment a "nerdrection," and I see no reason not to nail you to the wall with that phrase if you start that "swans belong to the Queen" shit here. So watch it, Brightoflauntians.

Back to the beginning of work with me.

Oh Good. Now the Neighbor Is Playing His Ukulele

I am the luckiest girl in the world. (Do you hear the swirl of harp? The lilt of lutes? Do you see the rainbow-colored faeries twittering about the air?)

The kids in Brighton made me a fancy photo of them holding a sign saying "Hey McBickle!" and I feel like I've been coddled by the loving hands of Olympic minor deities. (I would post it for you here, only I fear I would be outing the secret cabal of spies I pay to keep on an eye on things over there. Sh.)

But I can tell you they are mightily, heavily British, especially the dude on the right who is rocking the best haircut I've seen in a while. The pasty-white pallor of their skin equals my own, so we have basically sealed our lifelong friendship on the basis of being see-through. No one has anything but lovely teeth though, so knock that stereotype right out of your prejudiced heads, you silly American snobs!

In other news, I blew my fuse tonight by using the toaster. And a radio. AM radio. I have one circuit for my whole apartment, a radiator AD is convinced will explode while I sleep and a whole bevy of mightily stressed looking ceiling tiles that could cave at any moment. Rockin out in Brooklyn, I tell you.

Allora. So I went to the gym because at 5 p.m., it was already dark, and I could not get into the basement to fix the blown fuse. And my 157-year-old landlady was unreachable. Fine. I don't want to ever meet the birds I hear chirping from down there anyway. So I go to the gym. I work out (huff, puff) I get groceries (yeah, more salsa, some cheese, some lentils, um, pretzels? tomatoes) and I head toward home, hoping by now the landlady has found my note and returned the light to my life.

It will not be so.

I will live in the dark for an indeterminate time longer.

But to add to the absolutely delightful afternoon I've been having, allow me to tell you that I somehow lost my keys between the house and the gym. I finally had a neighbor let me in only to find my keys on the landing step in the foyer of my building. (Flustery, flustera.) I borrowed a lighter from her to illuminate my waiting stanky candles, handily escaped the neighbor's pot-filled lair of Wiccan sin, showered by firelight and found the bulbs lit as I dried off. Life, as they say, is fucked-up bananacake doosh. Dooshery.