A POEM BY DINUH (KITTEN-WRITTEN)

teh luvly krunch uv tinie bonz
but its hart still beets
maybe it will try 2 git away
wun moar time

2 bad humins R so larj
they wud screem
and screem

Read More...

Summary only...

DAILY JOURNAL: SASQUATCH, ADDICTION, AND THE FIRST RAIN IN MONTHS

I forgot to take my Zyrtec before I went to sleep this morning, so I woke up half an hour ago with a dull headache. I took a tablet belatedly (it's a 24-hour effect) and now will try to write my way through both the headache and the pill's drowsiness.

Dinah watched me leave the bedroom from her Cabe. She will be joining me soon, to request her daily treat and to try to find SOMETHING to do in this boring place. She is back entirely to her old self, which means mostly if I reach out to pet her without her having come to interrupt me and demand it, she recoils as if I have ricin on my hands.


I just got an e-mail from Barbara, the person who does such a fabulous job grocery shopping for me, that she is sick this week and cannot get to my list until next weekend. She's reliable and extremely good, so mostly I'm just feeling sympathy for her. And I'll be okay waiting. I'm low on cat treats but can ration them out, and have drank the last of my Coky-Cola so will go through withdrawal, but as I periodically try to quit my 10 oz daily habit anyhow, I'm familiar with the withdrawal. (More headaches.)


I'm in good shape because, the highlight of my week, I got a care package from Little Gator. (Never sure if I should capitalize these cyber handles or not.) It was chock full of things I LOVE to eat, including whole wheat Barilla penne, tuna in water, canned chicken, pure canned pumpkin, the kind of bath soap I use, a few other things I can't recall at this still-not-entirely-awake instant, and a jar of handmade tomato sauce from Sicily. PLUS: A batch of Deep Shit cookies made by Little Gator herself. These are rolled cookies which look like cat turds -- if they are the variety with coconut flakes in them, then they look like cat turds with tapeworm segments. I'd heard of them but never tasted one. There are two versions, chocolate and ginger, and I actually ate them all the first day they arrived. Extraordinarily good. Dinah watched me with disbelief. Little Gator was also kind enough to send me the recipe, but I cannot share it with you because it appears to be a closely guarded secret.

This is the first food I've eaten that was made by someone else's hands in months and months.

Dinah still has not arrived at my desk. It's early in the day for me, and she hates it when I go off schedule. Perhaps she's gone back to sleep. If I'm in the same room, I can tell when she's deep in sleep because she snores softly.

Today is the last day of my free trial with Netflix. I've been on a viewing orgy. I went through two entire seasons of Weeds (the only two available) in two sittings, gorging myself. I have things to say about it later on. I watched almost half of the final Pirates of the Caribbean movie before becoming too bored and clicking off. The afterlife surreal scenes with Johnny Depp were fun, but otherwise it was predictable. I watched 21, about card counters, mostly for glimpses of math -- not a movie I'd recommend. (Amanda, if you're reading this, I know you're probably thinking "What did I expect with a Kevin Spacey movie?")

I watched several episodes of Good Neighbors, noting that the three supporting actors in the early series (Felicity Kendal, Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington) all went on to more fame than the billed star, Richard Briers. At least from this side of the pond. I adored Paul Eddington in Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister. Not to mention Nigel Hawthorne, of course. And I'm currently enjoying a much older (and tastier) Felicity Kendal in Rosemary and Thyme on our local PBS station.

I rewatched an episode of Dead Like Me in mourning for where this incredible series could have gone (like Firefly). I checked out Mythbusters and found it entertaining. I also rewatched several Kolchak: The Night Stalker episodes -- Chris Carter said this was his main inspiration for The X-Files. I watched one episode of Walking With Dinosaurs but got tired of CGI gore. I watched several episodes of Terry Jones' Medieval Lives and found it extremely good -- Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones of the Pythons taking a mostly straightforward historical look at what life was actually like for various segments of the population during the Middle Ages. This is a series worth having on DVD, I think -- along with Terry Jones' examination of the origins of zero that was on PBS last year.

Speaking of Python alums, I won't have time to take in Michael Palin's Pole to Pole, but I caught a lot of this series on PBS. I do want to sample The Human Face with John Cleese before my deadline arrives. And perhaps check out Ripping Yarns.

I will not have time to view Elizabeth R or U-571 or My Kid Could Paint That, dammit. But I will make sure I watch Persepolis before midnight.

One thing I squeezed in during daylight hours earlier this week was the Ancient Mysteries episode on sasquatch. I gave a morbid fear of sasquatch to one of the main characters in my novel Ginny Bates, and it's based on my own paranoia. I thought I'd seen all the documentaries out there about this perhaps mythical creature, but this one was new to me and actually quite good, taking a hard look at the science, pro and con, without sensationalism. I watched it eight hours before bedtime, worried it would set off another wave of bigfoot nightmares, but I was fine. And that's even with another aggravating factor arriving unexpectedly last week.


The new computer game I've been playing in rationed chunks (no more than an hour a day), Westward, had a "disaster quest" that plopped my hero down in a Western desert and scrub woodland landscape with three gunslingers and told her she had to round up three dangerous wild animals to holding pens without killing them or being killed: a bighorn sheep, a grizzly bear, and a sasquatch. It took me five restarts to succeed. The gunslingers were no help at all, I had to squirrel them away in a side canyon because every time they laid eyes on one of the critters, they whipped out rifles and began firing until the animals were dead. (Realistic enough, I suppose.) I had to get right behind the beasts until they wheeled on me, then run like hell across the entire fucking map until I, hopefully, zipped through the holding pen ahead of them and the gate swung shut. The sasquatch, however, was able to keep up with me and I had to keep circling back around and galloping through the pen again. I was sweaty and short of breath, sitting here in my chair, by the time I finished this quest. My reward was being given sheep for my ranches.

There's a sort of Easter Egg with this game where, if you build ten flowerboxes for your little town, you can then build beehives, and if you build three beehives, you get honey for your general store PLUS a grizzly bear shows up to join your team of gunslingers and deputies. The grizzly bear does major damage on bandits, but will not go to every level with you. Apparently if you play the Sandbox version of the game (which I've not done yet), you can acquire your own sasquatch who will also be a companion on adventures. Might be therapeutic for me, ya think?

I also watched a mini-documentary titled Betrayal at Little Big Horn which was poorly done. Much less information in it than, say, Evan S. Connell's book Son of the Morning Star. Mostly it was tubby white men obsessing about ways Custer could have not died, which holds no interest for me at all. Custer fucking deserved to die, preferably before Little Washita. Here's a thought for you: How come the genocidal war on the Plains Indians was carried out by the same heroes who supposedly fought the Civil War to free black people from slavery?

If you're going to make documentaries about events for which descendants from both sides are still alive, you better interview experts from both sides equally. At least Evan S. Connell made an effort. For both Little Big Horn and the Alamo, we should be reading the accounts of the folks who whupped our asses instead of the excuse-makers, ¿claro?

Four nights ago as I was working I was hearing a strange sibilant sound I couldn't place. I kept pulling off my headphones to listen, and accusing Dinah of mischief. It took me half an hour to identify it as rain. It's been that long since it rained here. It rained two or three times since, though not nearly enough to rescue this season's wildflowers or, more significantly, farmers. The same week PRick Perry, our leftover Governor from the Bush era, announced he was rejecting half a billion dollars in stimulus funds for unemployment. I was so angry I had to stop thinking about it. I earnestly hope this is political suicide for him, that no Texan forgets this single act -- because it will affect every Texan in the state in a decidedly negative way.

For the past two weeks, I've had more work available at my online job, which will mean a little more money in three weeks (though not enough to cover what's coming down the pike, but hey, every little bit helps), and my energy has been focused there ahead of writing. Well, work first, basic quality of life second, then either writing or play and this week play has won out. Which also includes reading a couple of used mysteries I'd not picked up before, by Laurie R. King and Martha Grimes. I'm a major reader of mysteries whose form is, essentially, that of the novel. Here's my favorite mystery writers, not in order: Martha Grimes, Laurie R. King, Nevada Barr, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Rex Stout, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Sara Paretsky, Ruth Rendell, P.D. James, Elizabeth George, Ellis Peters, Tony Hillerman, Frances and Richard Lockridge, Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall, Elizabeth Peters, Carolyn Heilbrun/Amanda Cross, Patricia Cornwell, Janet Evanovich, Marcia Muller, Josephine Tey, Elmore Leonard, and of course Patricia Highsmith, a distant relative of mine.


Seguing from writing back to Weeds: I can easily see why this series keeps accumulating Emmys and Golden Globes. It's got extremely good writing and plotting, stellar performances, and it addresses, in a comprehensive but not always obvious fashion, the major American cultural trait of addiction. The imaginary suburb in which it is set, Agrestic, is full of addicts because the very definition of suburbs lends itself to addiction, a means of escaping reality, emotion, the messy demands of human connection.

Not that these characters' lives aren't messy. It's one poor decision after another in this series. But believable, in-character self-destruction, often with humor and empathy elicited despite the unsavory aspects of their personalities fully evident. That's great writing and acting for you.

I appreciated how interwoven examinations of race and class are integral to the plot. I wish the same were true of gender, but the cast is male-heavy and male-worshipping, and the writers are clearly either male or of the "post-feminist" female headset ("We don't have to think about real equality because it just makes us boring to the boys.) Except for the lead, Mary-Louise Parker, the stunning Tonye Patano, and intermittently Elizabeth Perkins (mostly by dint of her break-through acting), the girls and women in Agrestic are mostly foils for male fantasy and utility.

Children are pushed into addiction early, with either no adult attention available or it arriving through seriously fucked-up filters (Uncle Andy the woman-hater should be kept miles away from any boy you care about). They are encouraged to be fixated on possessions, status, violence, sugar, caffeine, heteronormativity, stimulation, and sex without intimacy -- in other words, prepared for adulthood in Agrestic. Pot becomes a way of "mellowing out" from the jagged highs of the other addictions.

Anne Wilson Schaef's writings, popular among those who attend 12-step programs, repeatedly urge us to view America as an owning class, addicted empire, where even if you are neither owning class nor a substance abuser, in terms of your relationship to the rest of the globe you need to be in active recovery or else you are in denial. Addiction is how we fueled our conquest of the continent. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark very deliberately ensured they had enough daily rations of alcohol to give their "Corps of Discovery" until they were past the point of turning back -- because without liquor to blur the boundaries, you cannot reliably persuade human beings to do the work of empire. Similarly, last century's British polar explorers might run out of fuel or ascorbic acid, but they made sure they had rations of alcohol and chocolate to the bitter end.

While Weeds' take on the lives of its African-American characters is not completely spot-on, it offers far more complicated and interesting roles than almost anything else on TV. Heylia James voices bitter commentary but not Magical Negro wisdom, because her own flaws are evident. (Although her line "White people get soda pop, n*****s get bullets" is one of the great analyses of all time.)

The sex in Weeds is unremittingly pornified. So much so that I began to wonder if it was not a subtle statement on the use of sex as avoidance but instead, perhaps, the writers couldn't imagine "hot" sex without a pornographic overlay. (You know, pornography is to good sex as McDonald's is to good food.) It quickly palled for me and I began fast-forwarding through those parts, the only places where I wasn't riveted on the characters' acting.

I also was distracted by the enormous sums of money these characters had at their disposal. I have no way of knowing how accurately this reflects a 2005-ish suburban California lifestyle, but I have grave suspicions. I remember after the remade Father of the Bride movie came out (the one with Steve Martin and Diane Keaton), some major magazine did an analysis of how distorted the class messages were in this film, one of whose plot points was the "humor" of a father being talked into spending extravagantly on his daughter's wedding. The father supposedly owned a running shoe factory. The magazine article pointed out that the set for the kitchen in the home of this character contained items whose net value ran into the hundreds of thousands and would mean, if the rest of the house followed its example, that his home was worth exponentially more than his alleged small business. It was beyond product placement, it's the Hollywood subliminal "this is what successful REAL people own" that is a major class lie.

The larger point, though, is that good writing and good art should generate these kinds of questions within us. Raise the energy (to quote Sharon Bridgforth) and engage the dormant parts of our brains. And with that, I'll leave you to hopefully create some of my own examples. Dinah is now here and requests a game before I open the Ginny Bates file. She says her needs are not addiction, they are basic biological imperative.

Read More...

Summary only...

GINNY BATES: THE ECDYSIAST

Here's another installment of my Great American Lesbian Novel (in progress), Ginny Bates. If you are new to reading GB, go to the section in the right-hand column labeled Ginny Bates to read background and find out how to catch up.

November 16 and 17, 2009

Chris went to Allie and Edwina's for dinner Saturday night and stayed over with them. Margie had plans with friends, and even Carly and Eric didn't come by. Myra and Ginny ate a meal of leftovers and salad, then wondered what to do with themselves. Ginny lit candles all over Myra's study, turning off lights elsewhere. They made out a while on Myra's daybed, but were somehow not in the mood to move on to lovemaking.

After a while, Ginny said “I think you should write. You've not had nearly enough writing time this month.”

“What will you do?” Myra didn't want Ginny to begin another painting.

“I'll get my sketch block and sit here nearby. Maybe work on some projects, but I won't leave the room.” Ginny felt some small urge to reclaim Myra's daybed from Chris's frequent occupancy.

“That would be super” said Myra. They sat up late, listening to music and stopping to chat when Myra reached a breathing point in her writing. They went to bed at the same time, and when Myra got up the next morning, she felt rested for the first time in what seemed like weeks. Chris had called to say she was going out to brunch, so Ginny joined Myra at Quaker Meeting, sitting between her and Gillam, and holding both Charlie and Lucia when the children joined the silent worship for the last 15 minutes.


Since they had a critical mass of adults, they went to a cafeteria afterward for lunch. The children always asked for jello in the salad section, and Gillam always had to remind them “if you get jello, then no dessert when we reach the pies and cakes later on down the row”. Jello never won against Boston cream pie or strawberry shortcake. Eating out still could not be leisurely, not with toddler attention spans needing diversion once dessert had been inhaled. They went to Volunteer afterward, because the day was clear, feeding ducks at the pond and climbing to the top of the Water Tower before returning home.

Chris was on Myra's daybed with one of her boxes, Keller, Franklin, and Anthea occupying three of the four compass points around her. She had finished sanding all 21 of the boxes and was now rubbing several coats of oil into each. Ginny had found a compound to bring out the grain that was “as least toxic as can be bought, given what it basically is”, and Chris wore a bandanna over her mouth as she worked to keep from breathing in the fumes. She pulled it down to ask “Have either of you heard back from Sima?”

Ginny shook her head. Chris let her sadness show for a minute, then resumed her mask and replenished her polishing rag with oil. Ginny said “I'm going to call Cathy, I'll be in my studio” and left.

Myra checked her e-mail, then on a whim, googled “Susan Levy”. This turned up an alarming number of hits, and she modified it to include Ph.D. and then “Harvard”. She quickly turned up Susan's blog, which was mostly dedicated to promoting her books and speaking availability, but at the bottom of the page was a photograph of her at some event with Sima at her side, Sima's arm around Susan's waist, her hair in a new and trendy style.

Myra quickly clicked to another site before Chris saw. She glanced over at the daybed and found Chris immersed in her meditative polishing. Keller turned her head toward Myra, however, chirruped and hopped down, coming to join her at the desk.

“Did you hear my breathing change?” Myra murmured to her. She felt like her skin was tingling, and did not yet identify it as rage. She pulled toward her the fat folder of Chris's health records, sitting close at hand, and found the envelope of images from the last bone scan. She took the clearest of these to her scanner at the other table and copied it to her hard drive.

Back at her computer, she returned to Susan's site long enough to gather her e-mail address. She wrote a letter to Sima without pause, attaching the bone scan and sending a copy to Susan.

“Dear Sima,

“Chris got the necklace you made for her birthday and strung onto it the elk teeth you gave her at the beginning of your relationship. It means a great deal to her. She told us the story about going camping when you were new lovers and the bear walking around your tent, the terror she felt that kept her from being able to move.

“That terror looks like a walk in the park, right about now.

“The cancer has invaded her bones and her liver is on its last legs. I am counting every hour with her now as precious. Ginny is going for hospice training tomorrow. Chris is not on narcotics for the pain yet – she will hold off as long as she can because it will cream her liver, but it won't be delayed much, given how much it hurts her to walk or sit already.

“Human beings are not replaceable parts of existence. I thought you of all people knew that. There is nothing in your present life which will offer you what Chris gave you for 30 years. I'm sure of it. She came out of the most terrifying circumstances a human being can face without dying, figured out how to love herself and have a good life, and she chose you (out of quite an array of women who wanted her, let's be clear about that) as the one she wanted to share that good life.

“You have the right to change your mind and change your choices, but there is a price to pay for refusing to tell people what is going on or make clean transitions. It's hard for me to say this, because I am so unbelievably angry at you right now, but when you reach the point of having to pay that price, if there's a way I can help, please know you can come to me. I say this because I do love you, even though I don't much like you at the moment. And because I owe it to Chris as well as you – she chose you for all the right reasons.

“Chris has requested burial next to her mother and sister, and a service in Colville for her family, when the time comes. At some point after that, we'll have a memorial service here in town. I'll let you know when she's gone, and when the service will be in time for you to attend, if you have enough support from your current life to make that journey.

“Ginny painted her yesterday. It's glorious, of course. The canvas is still wet or else I'd send you a scan of that as well.

"The rest of us are all right as we can be with hearts that break more deeply every day. We have each other, and that makes it possible. Take care of yourself in every way you can.”

She pushed send without giving herself a chance to second-guess. After it was on its way, she reopened the letter and forwarded copies to Gillam, Margie, and Allie. She pushed back from her desk, belatedly realizing the surge in her body was dangerous fury, and went to Ginny's work station.

“I just wrote Sima” she whispered. “Maybe you better read it.”

Ginny's eyes widened. She followed Myra back to her desk and sat down to read the letter. Chris had looked up and was studying Myra.

“What's going on?” she asked.

“I...I wrote Sima. And that fucker Susan. I sent her a copy of your bone scan and...well, I guess you should read it, too.”

Chris switched her gaze to Ginny, who had finished the letter. Ginny said “It's all right, Myra. It's brutally honest but it's not mean. Well, except for that oblique reference to how little support she has in her current life, I guess you couldn't help that.”

Chris asking Ginny “Do I need to read it?”

Ginny thought for a minute. “Probably not. Unless you're curious.”

“I know what Myra thinks and how she speaks. Any move on my part to get involved in this will take away energy from – other places. I'll leave it to you and Sima.” Chris turned her box to another side, then looked at Myra once more to say “Thanks, kid.”

Ginny stood and kissed Myra before she said “I'd ask you to remind me never to piss you off, but I don't need that reminder.” She stepped over to kiss the top of Chris's head before returning to her studio.

Myra sat down at her computer and opened the current chapter she was working on, still the creek girl second book. She took a cleansing breath and began rereading the last few pages.

That night they had agreed to have a sushi-making potluck at Jane and Gillam's. Frances used her seafood purveyors to buy all the sashimi, “rrraw and wriggly” she said with a disturbing mimicry of Gollum. Myra had marinated a pork loin in teriyaki before roasting and cutting it into strips as an alternative ingredient, and Ginny was bringing avocados and dried tomatoes from last summer. Everyone in the family had been assigned an ingredient, coordinated by Frances and Ginny. Imani won points by showing up with a pot of creamy polenta as a replacement for rice. The first hour, they were all busy at the table and countertops, chopping, rolling, and making dips, handing out slivers of this and that to the hungry children.

When they finally sat down, it was “like a tsunami of sushi rolls”, as Eric put it, had washed over the table in front of them. The polenta, avocado, smoked tomato, and pecorino rolls were a big hit with Mimi. Lucia in her high chair kept demanding of Chris beside her “Wat's dat? Can I have dat?”

Once the first ten minutes of sampling and exclaiming were past, Margie said, with a mouth of crab roll, “Mom, I read that letter you sent Aunt Sima. 'Bout time, I say.”

Gillam was nodding his head, also, and Myra felt a small relief. Allie said quietly to Chris “What'd you think?” and Chris replied “I didn't read it. Doesn't matter.”

Myra felt a tingle return to her bones. Ginny, her eyes watering from wasabi, said “I was thinking about what you said, and I remembered when I went to Susan Levy's class with Sima, I didn't hear her have one good thing to say about our generation. She was snide at every opportunity about how we screwed up feminism for those who came after us.”

Chris and Myra both stared at her. Chris said “That's new information.”

“Yeah, I just remembered it” said Ginny apologetically. “When I was introduced to her, she said she'd read your book, Myra. But she didn't comment on it further.”

Myra said slowly “We had ten or fifteen years to come up with a counterweight against 4000 years of patriarchy, and we didn't pull it off. I am so fucking sick of their whining about how we weren't the perfect mothers, about how the questions we raised threatened their prospects of being able to get the boys' approval even if they were willing to pretend like slam-bam penetration was exactly how women want it.”

“Mama” said Gillam softly, nodding his head at Leah next to Myra. All the children had stopped eating and were looking at Myra intently. Leah said “Are you mad at somebody, Gramma?”

“She's mad because we're starting to drop in the desert without having gotten a glimpse of the promised land” answered Edwina gently.

Chris caught Myra's eyes and said, even more gently, “More to the point – she's mad at me for leaving her.”

“Where you going?” said Lucia as Myra rose from her chair, but her question was to Chris, not Myra. Myra headed for the back door, saying to Allie “Don't let her come after me, it's not fair for her to have to deal with this.”

As she slammed the sliding door shut, Leah slid from her chair, but Chris grabbed her and said “It needs to be me this time. No matter what she said. I'll make it better, you keep watch over my plate, okay?”

Myra was huddled on the bench under the sycamore, her knees pulled up to her forehead, sobbing. Chris said “Shove over so I can get behind you.”

“Don't go, Kash-Kash, I don't know how I'll ever be happy again without you!” wailed Myra.

“I know” said Chris, pulling Myra against her and letting her own tears come. “I fucking don't want to be without you, either.”

They wept for a while together. Then Chris wiped Myra's face with her sleeve and said “You're no good at being this noble. You have to bring some of this to me. It actually helps me to see your mess, it always has.”

“There is no balm in Gilead” whispered Myra.

“Well, you've lost me there, I was raised Catholic and that sounds pretty Baptist to me” said Chris, making them both laugh. “Listen, it's cold out here and I don't have my robe, are you ready to go back in?”

“What will I tell the kids?” said Myra.

“Jane and Gillam will have already handled that” said Chris. “But if they ask you, tell them the truth.”

Myra noticed Chris's teeth were chattering. “Fuck, come on” she said, pulling Chris to her feet and walking with her arm around her. Ginny had hot tea waiting on them. Leah crawled into Myra's lap and asked “You feel better now? You cry it out?”

“I didn't cry it all out, but yes, I'm better, thank you, my love” said Myra, kissing the top of Leah's glossy head with her eyes closed.

“Leah ate your teriyaki roll” said Mimi.

“That's all right, there's plenty. We always have plenty to eat at our family dinners, don't we? It's a blessing most of the world does not share” said Myra.

For dessert, Thad had brought green tea ice cream, which made Myra turn around and grin at Ginny. She said to Charlie, now on her lap, “The first time your Bubbe and I went to the restaurant that's now where Carminati's is, this is what we had for dessert. We were holding hands under the table, and I was falling in love with her. After we went out on the sidewalk, your Bubbe kissed me for the first time, and I could taste the ice cream on her lips.”

Charlie tilted his head to beam at her. “Taste like dis?”

“Kiss me and let's see” said Myra. He gave her a chaste peck on her mouth, and she smacked her lips, saying “Yummy, yummy.” He laughed delightedly.

They went into the family room for singing, Jane choosing her cello tonight and Thad taking the piano. They had to begin, of course, with the Golden Horde anthem, followed by one patriotic song and “Amazon ABC”, the children's ritual. Later on in the evening, they had moved into show tunes, and Thad struck up “Everything's Coming Up Roses.”

“What's that from, 'Damn Yankees'?” asked Carly. Over the chorus of children saying “Language!” to Carly, Thad replied “No, 'Gypsy'. That great American homage to ecdysiasis.”

As Mimi and David both switched to asking “What is that word?”, Chris said “Which reminds me, I never did get that stripper on my birthday”, grinning at Allie and Myra.

Allie said to Myra “I think we being dissed”. Myra stood and said “I may not be much of a dancer, but bump and grind, that I can do.” She began singing, and after the first bar, Thad jumped in to accompany her. She crossed to Chris and did a creditable series of provocative shimmies and thrusts, remaining clothed, as she breathily minced

When I'm feeling blue, all I have to do
Is take a look at you, then I'm not so blue
When you're close to me, I can feel your heart beat
I can hear you breathing in my ear

Wouldn't you agree, baby you and me,
We got a groovy kinda love

Any time you want to, you can turn me on to
Anything you want to, any time at all
When I'm in your arms, nothing seems to matter
If the world should shatter, I won't care

Wouldn't you agree, baby you and me,
We got a groovy kinda love
We got a groovy kinda love

Chris's face had gone a burgundy color by the end, and when Thad played his final chord, there was a stunned silence in the room. David, leaning against Jane, asked her in a stage whisper “Is Gramma being bad?”

Ginny reached over and swung him into her arms, saying “Most definitely not, honey boy. She's being uninhibited.” The tension among the adults diminished with Ginny's pronouncement, although Edwina gave a stern look to Allie.

On the way home that night, Ginny slid her arm through Chris's and said “You got the striptease, I need her in my bed tonight, okay?”

Chris laughed hard. “Deal.”


© 2009 Maggie Jochild.

Read More...

Summary only...

LOLCATS WEEKLY ROUND-UP, 10 MARCH 2009

Here's the weekly best of what I've gleaned from I Can Has Cheezburger efforts. There are some really creative folks out there. As usual, those from little gator lead the pack.

Read More...

Summary only...

GINNY BATES: FRAMING DOORS

Here's another installment of my Great American Lesbian Novel (in progress), Ginny Bates. If you are new to reading GB, go to the section in the right-hand column labeled Ginny Bates to read background and find out how to catch up.

Mid-November 2919

The next day, Myra, Ginny and Chris returned from the doctor visits in time for a late lunch, which was heated up veggie soup and turkey sandwiches. At 1:00, Allie and Edwina arrived. Allie began fidgeting with the salt shaker as soon as she sat at the table next to Chris.

“What'd they say?” she asked.

Chris wiped her mouth slowly before giving a succinct account of her options and new information. She finished with “I need to have a longer interview with the PA, but I think she'll be okay. Ginny's going for a hospice training all day on Monday.”

“That's it? He didn't argue with you?” Clearly this wasn't what Allie had wanted to hear.


Chris ate her final bite of sandwich and wiped her mouth again. She said “I'm out of steam.” Myra wondered which way she meant that. Chris stood and said “I have to sleep a while. But wake me up before Mystery Box, okay?”

Allie stood also and said “Can I go lie down with you?”

“Sure. But no talking. Not right now” said Chris.

After they left, Edwina said “I guess we're going to be here all afternoon. Okay if I use your second computer?”

“Yeah. I need to start bread. And figure out what to make for shabbos dinner. I think maybe it's a defrost lasagna night, I could really use a short nap myself before the kids come” said Myra. She looked at Ginny. “Are you going to make challah or should I pull out extra from the freezer as well?”

“I...Are you okay?”

“No. Not in the big scheme of things. But yeah, I'm hanging in.”

“I'm feeling driven about the painting. Can you handle this afternoon without me? You really can say no” said Ginny.

“No, I want to see your painting finished, too.” Ginny kissed her and cleared the table swiftly before going upstairs, Edwina on her heels. Myra put lasagnas in to bake, set out challah to thaw, and mixed her sponges. She turned off the downstairs phone and carried the kitchen timer with her in to the living room, where she went to sleep instantly on the couch, rousing after an hour feeling disoriented for a few minutes. She punched down her dough savagely and turned the phone back on.

Chris had found an old plumb bob at a thrift store and this Mystery Box item lead to extended play, using it as a fortune-telling device. She and Allie led the children around the yard, asking the plumb bob questions about events which once occurred or might happen in the future at various spots. Myra finished her loaves and found room for another 15 minute lie-down.

After lighting candles and partaking of bread and wine, everyone gathered around Gillam and Jane's dining table to hear the same news that Allie and Edwina had received earlier. Chris sat in the middle of the long side, Myra on one side of her, Allie on the other. Ginny and Edwina finished out the chairs on that side, a row of five women with white hair and an almost visible crackle of power.

We must look like the Furies lined up here thought Myra. No wonder the grandchildren are drawn like moths to a flame.

The meal was somber at first, but Charlie managed to turn over Eric's glass of tea next to him and then Mimi asked Margie “What's a cocksucker?”

“Where did you hear that word?” asked Jane severely.

“At school, Eddie called somebody that” said Mimi, swiftly shifting blame. Eddie seemed to get a lot of blame for things, Myra had noticed.

“It's a term that's used as a bad word, although technically it's not” said Gillam.

“So what is it, then?” tried Mimi again.

“I'll tell you after dinner” said Gillam. Myra hoped she was around to hear how he handled that one. Jane followed with “We don't use that word, understand?” looking directly at David.

Carly looked over at Chris and said “Did you hear about the gay whale who fell in love with a submarine?”

“Hey” said Gillam in a warning tone. To deflect the avalanche of questions every child was about to unleash, Myra asked “Did any of your plumb bob investigations today hint at where the Warrum Arsenica might hibernate during the winter?”

This gambit worked. Lucia eventually tried to slide from her high chair, saying “We go find out now”.

During dessert, Mimi said “When I get bigger, I get to have a bedroom all to myself.” David looked wounded and Leah was trying to come up with an argument, but Margie replied “Yeah, I remember how great it was when I didn't have to share a room with your daddy any more.”

“You had a room with Daddy?” asked Charlie.

“When we were little. We shared the room Mimi and David are in now, but then I moved into the room you share with Leah and Lucia” explained Margie.

“Where was Mommy?” pressed Charlie.

“I didn't know Daddy yet” said Jane. This was still hard for Charlie to imagine.

“I'll be in that room there” said Mimi, pointing to the spare bedroom. “And I get to paint it any color I want.”

“Who told you that?” asked Jane. Gillam looked guilty, but Edwina saved him by saying to Mimi “When your Daddy was little and lived here, every room in this house was a different color. Most of them very bright colors.”

“Really?” said Leah, looking envious. “Like, what was this room?”

“Cobalt blue” said Ginny.

“Same as your dining area now?” asked Thad.

“Almost” said Ginny. “I came up with a slightly different mix.”

He grinned at her. “You do all the color choices, I gather?”

“I'd rather live in Ginny's view than whatever I could come up with” said Myra, sound a little gallant. Chris snorted and said “Oh, don't act like you graciously bow to her will.”

“Thank you” said Ginny, leaning around Myra to look at Chris.

Chris said to Allie “Remember how it took them three goddamned years to settle the sheets thing?”

“What sheets thing?” asked Margie and Carly almost in unison.

Allie sighed as Myra said, her voice rising, “When we first began sharing a bed, Ginny would take off the top sheet, wanting to have only a comforter. And since she usually got to bed first, I'd get there and have to remake it.”

“Oh” said Margie. “Well, I guess you won that one” she said to Ginny.

“No, she did NOT” objected Myra. “We finally came up with a compromise. We bought washable comforters that were soft as sheets that we could change out a couple of times a week, so I got to keep the feeling of not doing without a top sheet.”

“It made Myra feel like a trashy little poor girl” said Ginny confidentially to Margie.

“Yeah, well for you it was all about doing things that you knew Helen would find objectionable” retorted Myra.

“Here we go” said Allie softly to Edwina.

“And when we stay at hotels, we keep the top sheet on because their bedspreads are crawling with bodily fluids” continued Myra. “Unless we've brought our own comforter.”

“That's why you travel with those” said Gillam. “I thought it might be some kind of temperature issue.”

“No, Myra keeps me toasty” said Ginny.

“She is a hotbox” agreed Chris. There was a slightly uncomfortable silence at the table, broken by Leah asking “Can I have another piece of cobbler?”

“Nope, we're all done” said Jane, standing and gathering plates. After the table was cleared, Ginny begged off from the poker game to return to her painting. Lucia sat in Chris's lap during the game, where Chris silently pointed to cards in her hand and Myra began to think Lucia might understand some of Chris's strategy. Eventually the children were taken, under protest, to bed, and the adults continued on until nearly midnight.

It was a very dark night and Myra held into Chris's arm as they walked through the two yards. Their own back porch light was off, as was everything in the house except the front room light giving some illumination down the hall. Myra said “I'd like to be with Ginny tonight, if you're okay.”

“I am. I'm not even going to bathe, I'm so tired.” Chris kissed her cheek and let Anthea lead the way to her bedroom.

When Myra walked out of the elevator, Franklin was sitting next to Ginny's daybed, staring at her. Returning his look, she saw that Ginny was sacked out on the daybed under a quilt. She had cupped her own cheek with one hand and wrapped the other arm around her waist, a sleeping position she only assumed if she dropped off alone. Myra thought it was because Ginny needed to be holding someone to sleep, even if it was just herself. She walked to the daybed, pulled off her shoes and pants, and slid in beside Ginny under the quilt. Ginny sighed and rolled over toward her, never waking. She smelled of linseed oil and lasagna. Myra whispered “I don't care what's on the bed, as long as you're in it” as she closed her eyes.

The next morning, Ginny got up when she heard Chris refilling the kettle in the kitchen directly below. They made breakfast together quietly, and decided to try planting the heirloom cabbage and kale sets that Chris had begun a few weeks earlier. Ginny had removable cold weather covers enough to protect two of the four raised veggie beds.

Chris pushed her wheelchair to beside her plot and sat in it under the buffalo robe to bend over and do her gardening. Ginny pulled the sets in the children's red wagon she commonly borrowed for yard use. Anthea came to sit sentry. The sun was weak and the earth chilled, but it still smelled good to be outside on a clear early winter day.

After several minutes, Chris asked "Did Sima tell you exactly why she left me?"

Ginny sat up, tines in hand, and looked at her. "You know why. For Susan Levy."

"No, I mean...She would not have given up on me if she was still in love with me like I think she once was."

"Chris, I really don't understand it. I didn't know things had -- shifted between you."

"Did she not tell you anything?"

Ginny looked into Chris's eyes. Her sclerae looked more ivory than white today, and she wondered what Myra would have her do. But she forced herself to sift through her memory. She swallowed and said "She told me you two didn't have the fairy tale version like me and Myra. She said you were -- always in recovery. Another time, she said something about getting to let completely go emotionally with Susan."

Chris closed her eyes. Ginny instantly second-guessed her own motivations. But Chris said, still with closed eyes, "Thanks for that. It helps to not just wonder."

After a bit, Chris opened her eyes and said "I saved dozens of seeds from those little yellow pear tomatoes, Ginny. They tasted like sunlight itself."

Ginny looked away, dodging the issue of who would plant them next spring. She said “Yet another miracle the native people of the Americas gave the rest of the world."

"You know, Marco Polo brought back noodles from China, and that fucker Columbus returned with tomatoes. Makes you wonder what Italians ate before that, doesn't it?" grinned Chris.

They laughed. Ginny handed Chris another baby cabbage.

Chris said "Do you get tired of Myra being in recovery? I mean, I know it's not the same. I was in the loonybin, that's a whole other degree of losing it."

"You were not locked up because you lost it" said Ginny fiercely. "You lost it because you were locked up. Right?"

Chris nodded.

"And, no, I don't get tired of Myra's recovery. I'm sick to death of the fact that she got hurt so much, that nobody helped her. But that's being sick of injustice, not of her. I wonder if Sima stopped being able to tell the difference."

"Ahh" said Chris. Ginny wasn't sure if she was just sighing or about to speak. After a long pause, Chris said "I haven't always been easy to be close to. I know you'll agree."

Ginny grinned. "I've often found you to be a pain in the fucking ass. But I'm pretty sure that impression went both ways."

Chris laughed hard. Then she said "I wish Sima had told me. I honestly don't remember her saying anything about it."

"You can't blame yourself for her decision" began Ginny.

"I can, and I do. Takes two to end a relationship" said Chris. "I knew, have known since I got out, that I couldn't just let go, as Sima put it. I've always had to be a little careful. Well – not always. It actually wasn't my nature...before. I was a lot like Margie as a kid. People have this stereotype about the quiet, thoughtful Indian, who speaks in parables -- Kalijah, and all that. Where the fuck that myth comes from -- they should have spent a Saturday night at my family's house, if they wanted to see drama and people not thinking before they opened their mouths."

Ginny laughed. "Yeah, like Jews are supposed to be loud and stomping all over each other's boundaries. But not in Helen Bates' house, no way."

After another long pause, Chris said "That's why I said no to Myra, you know."

Ginny got very still.

"It wasn't that I didn't want her. Because, in fact, I did. I'm not like Allie that way. I said no because Myra was all over the map, like me, and somebody had to be grounded. I needed somebody like Sima. I thought...I thought the deal we had was what she wanted, too." Tears began leaking out of Chris's eyes, although they were wide open and she was not overtly crying.

Ginny got up and knelt beside Chris, taking her hand. "If you're saying that I am the grounded one in my relationship with Myra, you're nuts. Pardon the expression."

Chris giggled. "No, you're both runaway mares, it's true. But you figured out how to take turns. And neither of you were scared off by prairie-fire passion."

"You have been Myra's rock all these years, Chris. Just as much as she's been yours. She needs you like nothing else on earth."

Chris squeezed Ginny's hand. "I'm glad we found a way. That we all did. I'm glad for what I did have with Sima. Sure could use her now, but, hey, them's the breaks."

It was patently manufactured bravado. It scared Ginny more than doctor's careful sentences or the numbers on blood test results.

As they were reaching the end of the last row, Myra appeared at the back door, still pantless. “Hey, how's the crops?" she called out.

"Clutching their goosepimples like you” replied Ginny. “We ate already.”

“I'm going to have that last piece of lasagna” said Myra. “It's in the microwave.”

“I finished the painting” said Ginny. “I'll show you when we come in.”

Myra ate quickly, and carried her tea with her upstairs to re-don her pants, waiting at Ginny's workbench and trying to locate both geckos in their mini jungle as she waited for the gardeners to wash their tools and hands before joining her.

Chris filled most of the right side of the canvas, big as life, turned to look out at the viewer with the expression on her face she had when considering an answer to a question. She wore the crimson tunic she'd dressed in for Allie and Edwina's wedding, and her hair was gleaming black, halfway down her back, as it had been in her 40s. Around her waist was her leather carpenter apron, full of her favorite tools. She was installing a door facing. Through the opening could be seen several other rooms with doors already in place and standing open, the vista curving to the left until only an edge of the final door was visible. Every room was different – some of them were not rooms as all, but outdoor spaces.

Myra felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Chris was completely silent. Ginny shifted from foot to foot, looking anxious, and said “I've always coveted having a carpenter's belt like that. But with my ass and hips, it would look like a dirndl on me.”

Chris finally turned and looked at her. “Thank you” she said hoarsely. She reached out and touched Ginny's hand lightly. She walked with a clear limp to the front stairs and went down them, leaning heavily on the railing.

“She's okay, right?” Ginny whispered to Myra.

“Overwhelmed. As am I.” Myra hoped Chris's more pronounced limp was from being outside in the cold for so long.

Ginny said “We haven't had a chance to talk, just you and me, since we all went to the doctors yesterday.”

“Let's go lie down in our room” said Myra, holding out her hand.


© 2009 Maggie Jochild.

Read More...

Summary only...

MEERKATS, GUNSLINGERS, AND LOUISIANA SAUSAGE

I'm finishing a breakfast of a hot link sandwich on whole wheat with Coky-Cola. I partly blame Rachael Ray, whose "What's For Dinner Tonight" segment today included andouille. But I was also in the mood to not do food balancing.

Plus, I want to write on Ginny Bates a good long chunk after I get this bit'o'journal out of the way. I tend to fuel my muse on caffeine. White trash caffeine, that is.


As I type, Sarah Connor and Dollhouse are being taped. I'm hanging in there with Dollhouse because, after all, it took Buffy and Firefly a while to get established. But I'm not that happy with it so far. Way too much sexual objectification, and the whole "I'm on a camping trip with a man who wants to fuck me and then hunt me with a bow and arrow" episode was so unbelievably cliched and woman-hating, like a Lifetime movie written by Andrew Dice Clay. I hate the brain-zapper guy, and I know we're supposed to warm to the paternalism of the dimple-chinned black guy but that actor was a prick on an old ER arc and I've never liked him since. I was, however, brought to sudden attention at the very end of the last episode, when Echo signaled to Sierra "Not now, not in front of the watchers". So, I'll hang in for six or eight episodes. The writing better improve, however.

I note that a new series starts this week, Castle, which stars Nathan Fillion, known to all of us Firefly fans as Mal. I'll tape it as well and see what it's about. I have been watching Life on Mars with growing appreciation, especially for the role and acting of Gretchen Moll. It's certainly not the 1973 I knew, but I'm intrigued with how the plot line keeps us wondering: Real time travel? A prolonged coma hallucination? Tinkering from the overlords?

I got an e-mail offer from Netflix last week to please come on back home, although it's been two years since I had reliable mail delivery enough to make use of their service and cancelled. However, they now have the ability to view episodes instantly on your PC. I called 'em and checked it out, was told I had to have blah-blah-blah plus Silverlight on my computer (which I do), and signed up for a two week free trial. Which immediately did not work. I went through their tech support, who blamed it on Microsoft; went through an obsequious guy named Zhang at Microsoft, who had a ridiculous list of procedures that I declined (I should not have to Safe Boot to watch a movie, sorry); and was gonna give up, but as a last ditch did the old "delete application and reinstall" of Silverlight. Worked just fine after that.

I began browsing last night. They have a fair number of documentaries available for "Watch Instantly" that I find interesting. I've seen all the sci-fi and new arrivals there I want to, but there were several British comedies I'm going to either sample or re-view. Especially Good Neighbors, which (along with 'Allo, 'Allo) in 1989 kept me in hysterics on Sunday evenings, available through our local PBS station here. They also have Weeds and Mythbusters, both of which I've heard a lot about but never seen.

What I did wade right into, however, was Meerkat Manor, which is rather famous out there. I watched the first three episodes and am seriously hooked. I dreamed about little Shakespeare last night. It's all deliciously new to me, so while I may be spoiling things for another neophyte out there, please don't say something in comments that will give away future plots for me, 'kay?

I woke up wondering about at what point during the ten-year 24-hour study of this colony of meerkats in the Kalihari did one of the researchers, possibly enthralling his friends and family with yet another development, have the bright idea of "this would make one hell of a TV series"? I'll have to research that, I bet there's a story behind the story out there somewhere. (Fine to lead me in that direction if you want.) I also wonder about the naming of the animals, what protocols they're using. I mean, Zaphod and Youssarian are litter-mates, which raises the question if they had siblings named something like Xerxes and Wittgenstein. Is there a whole string of names like Daisy for the daughters of the matriarch, Flower? I especially loved how three littermates wound up with the monikers of Tosca, Mozart, and Shakespeare, with no regard for gender policing.

I also question the tagging (during the character intro before each episode) of Tosca as "rebellious" and Mozart as "caring", when in fact both of them are "unwed mothers" and both of them gave up foraging to sit watch over poor little Shakespeare. Is this the old madonna/whore dichotomy applied to females? And how much has being labeled with "social problems" perhaps pushed Youssarian over the edge? (As if his name wasn't enough.) But, as I say, I've only watched three episodes. To be honest, "social problems" seems to apply to all of them, with miniscule attention spans and erratic moods apparently part of meerkat DNA.

I'll have to cram in as much as I can before the two-week deadline. I'm not going to continue Netflix beyond the free trial, ten bucks a month is not in my budget, especially not for movies.


As if this is not distraction enough, I also discovered the Westward game series this past week. Like Virtual Villagers with goldmines and WOC gunslingers. This is from Sandlot Games, the same folks who developed the Tradewinds series, and engrossing really covers it. I dearly love the Western drawl of the female character who complains "Awl right" when you drag her from one spot to another, and the "bad sheriff" who, when you click on him, says in a Clint Eastwood growl "Leave me alone". I am also convinced that one of the Copperhead Gang, the bandits who have to be gunned down frequently, declares as she collapses in a small pool of blood on the dirt "Well, shee-yit". (This is not a children's game.) Like Tradewinds, the operating mantra is "save early, save often" and balance of trade/food reserves. There's three sets of this series out so far, and I'm only well into Part II, so there's weeks or months of fun ahead of me. The Sandlot website runs a Blue Plate Special each week where you can buy their already established games for five bucks, which I decided to splurge on. Since I've not bought anything but life essentials for over six months.

That's the lighter developments of my life this week. Otherwise, I'm contending with grim burdens having to do with family dysfunction, new health problems, and, oh, yeah, family dysfunction. Spring came and went here in about fifteen minutes. One day last week, a day when folks in Vermont were getting heavy snowfall, it got up to almost 90 degrees here in Austin (94 just west of here). We are now in the worst drought in recorded history. If heavy winds coincide with a fire that threatens the wilderness area which backs up to the parking lot outside my front door, I'll have to be evacuated.

But art supersedes, and humor. And kittehs. Now to go write in my alternate universe.

Read More...

Summary only...

GINNY BATES: HYPERPHAGIA

(Bear painted on walls of Chauvet - Pont D'Arc Cave 30,000 years ago)

Here's another installment of my Great American Lesbian Novel (in progress), Ginny Bates. If you are new to reading GB, go to the section in the right-hand column labeled Ginny Bates to read background and find out how to catch up.

Mid-November 2019

Margie, Carly and Eric arrived for dinner, along with Allie and Edwina. Myra sent Carly and Eric out to the grill with burgers and tuna steaks, and had Margie cut up potatoes for oven fries. With a big salad, she thought that was enough: She was saving the rich beef soup for Chris. She did put in a couple of cherry pies to bake, however.

After dinner, Myra could tell Carly and Eric wanted to hang around. Ginny excused herself to go stretch a canvas, having delayed the onset of her new painting all day. Chris said “If you start a poker game, I'll join you later, but first – Myra, I bet you got all kinds of websites for amazing kids' toys and educational gizmos on your computer, right? Can I use it for a while?”

“Help yourself” said Myra. “And yeah, there's a folder of links labeled 'Kiddos', click on that.”


“What are you looking for?” asked Margie.

“Christmas gifts” said Chris. This caused a small silence. Myra bet everyone was wondering if this meant she knew she'd be with them still for Christmas. Chris grinned and said to Margie “You want to help me make my choices?”

Margie was on her feet instantly. Myra said to Allie and Edwina “You interested in poker?”

Edwina said “I'm going to go talk with Ginny before she goes into the zone.” Allie watched Chris and Margie climbing the stairs, then sighed and said “Yeah. Deal me in.”

Once the game was underway, Carly and Eric asked quiet questions about Chris's condition and plans. Carly said “Are you going to – will she stay here the whole time, rather than going into a hospice?”

“Yes” said Myra. “Come hell or high water. We'll hire private nurses if we have to.”

“When you have to” said Carly knowingly. “Listen, I know a PA who specializes in end-of-life care, I'll give you her name and number.”

Myra felt a headache coming on. Allie looked blank, but her mind wasn't on the game, either. They played without much competition for an hour. When Chris and Margie came back downstairs, they gladly folded the game and went into the living room to watch the video of Craven Raven's debut in the puppet realm. Allie sat close to Chris, her arm behind her on the couch. They laughed nonstop at the Raven's double meanings and the children's free-for-all imagination. Chris got up to heat a second piece of pie and top it with ice cream.

After the video, Allie and Chris began reminiscing about a camping trip they'd taken where everything that could go wrong seemed to have occurred, including being sprayed by a skunk who crept inside their tent that night.

Chris continued with “My most memorable experience was a time when I went up into the lower slopes of Rainier with Sima, not long after we got together. It was late summer, and the ranger who sold us our backpacking permit warned us the bears were in hyperphagia.”

“What's that?” asked Eric.

“They're eating everything in sight to get ready for hibernation” said Chris. “If they have access to it, they'll eat over 15,000 calories a day, and several gallons of water. We were warned to absolutely not have anything that smelled edible in our tent at night, and to tie our food high in a tree. Sima was nervous. I wasn't so much because I'd run into a lot of bears when I was a kid traipsing around near Colville, and as long as it wasn't a mother with little cubs – which was less likely at the onset of autumn – they don't mess with you. If you don't mess with them, or be stupid enough to run away, that is.”

She stopped for a minute, looking at her pie plate as if she was considering a third piece. She resumed “Our first night, it began snowing lightly as we were washing up from dinner. Absolutely gorgeous in the twilight. We decided against building up the fire because – well, we were eager to get into the tent.” She grinned to herself. “We were zealous about getting rid of any trace of food scent near our tent, and we chose a cache tree that was a hundred yards away. Sima asked me if I thought it was better for her to have brushed her teeth, to remove the smell of her last meal, or if the minty toothpaste might attract them.”

Chris laughed to herself again. “Anyhow...We zipped up our little two-person dome tent as if it was some kind of shelter. By the time we went to sleep, we were warmed up and ready for serious slumber. It had continued to snow, and when I woke up later, the first thing I noticed was that the moonlight which had been coming through the nylon roof was now dulled. I realized there was a layer of snow over the whole tent. Which was kinda comforting, and definitely insulating. We – we didn't have any clothes on, and I was facing the side of the tent, two inches away from me. I could feel the chill of the air on that side. Sima was spooned against me from the back, and that side of me was much warmer. I lay there for a minute, coming to consciousness. And then I realized what had woke me up.

“I saw a shadow pass by the tent wall in front of me. A massive, round shadow. Simultaneously, I heard footsteps on snow – soft steps, despite the crunch of new snow, but it was more than two footfalls. It was a four-footed tread. Then I heard it breathe out. It was circling the tent, snuffling at the corners every so often. I was paralyzed with fear. I mean, I could not move a muscle. I knew I needed to sit up, yell out, try to scare it away, at the very least to warn Sima who I could tell was sound asleep – but I could not move. I couldn't make a sound. I just lay there, listening to it check us out, helpless – have you ever seen a cat play with something that isn't dead yet but it's given up on getting away? That's how I felt. Blinding terror, and no connection any longer between my brain and my muscles. After a long time, I heard it pad away, in the direction of the cache tree. I kept waiting for my will to return, so I could roll over and warn Sima, we could get dressed and figure out what to do. Instead, I fell asleep again, and didn't wake up until morning, when I was stiff and aching from not having moved at all in my sleep.

“Sima was furious with me when I told her. She simply didn't understand that I'd had no choice. When we got dressed and went to investigate, the size of those tracks in the snow – I mean, they were probably exaggerated because the snow fall had gone on and so they were just hollows, not crisp any more, and looked bigger as a result – but it must have been a really big bruiser. And it had really tried to get at our food. There were massive muddy prints on the bark of that tree, way higher up than the top of my head, and on one side it had left four claw marks. Deep rifts in the bark that went to green wood, and oozed sap.

“That was it for Sima. We packed up without making breakfast and headed back down the trail to our car. She made me lead, and at every turn of the trail, I made a little noise so I wouldn't come up on something without giving it warning. We drove to the first cafe we found, ate as much as we could hold, and came on home.”

“You never told us about that” said Allie slowly.

“I was – ashamed, I guess, of how scared I got. I asked Sima not to talk about it, once she got over ragging on me about my cowardice. But I don't think it was cowardice now. I think it was – another way of seeing things. Another kind of intelligence.” Chris closed her eyes. Myra saw the stricken expressions on Margie and Carly's faces, and wished she knew what to say to make things better.

Chris opened her eyes again. “Anyhow...It was not long after that when I bought that bear claw necklace for myself. Trying to work my way past it. Sima thought it was funny, and that Christmas she gave me this elk tooth necklace instead. Said I was more of an elk than a bear.” Chris pulled the necklace out from her collar.

“You ever take that off?” asked Edwina.

“Nope. You need my DNA for some reason, I'm sure it's got decades' worth on it” said Chris, her grin returning. She turned to Myra. “I'm still hungry. Or maybe it's the memory making me want to eat.”

“There's lots of pie left” said Myra.

“I was thinking about that soup, maybe with some rice added in. We got cooked rice in the fridge, right?”

“We always have cooked rice” said Myra, starting to stand.

“No, I'll get it” said Chris. “You all decide on a movie, let's watch something.”

“How about “Grizzly Adams'?” said Carly, dodging the kick she aimed at him as she walked with almost a limp toward the kitchen.

It was a late night. Carly, Eric and Margie left together, walking out the back door. Allie and Edwina lingered until Edwina shepherded them toward home as well. Myra started the dishwasher as Chris went outside to check on the temperature inside the plant canopies. When she came back in, Myra said “You want to be alone or can I bunk with you tonight?”

“Come join me. But I'm going to take a long soak first.”

“I'll go say goodnight to Ginny. Maybe check my e-mail” said Myra.

“Just come whenever you're ready. If I'm asleep, don't turn on the light, okay?”

Myra wound up writing most of a poem at her desk, listening to Ginny whistling to herself as she ground pigments. The house was creaking more than usual – probably the cold snap they were having. When she finally went to Chris's bed, she warmed her hands in her armpits on the way so she wouldn't wake Chris with icy fingers as she pulled Chris back into the curve of her body.

The next morning, she woke up alone. Chris was in the kitchen, making toast. She said “Ginny went off to bed an hour ago. I got some hot cereal into her.”

“Thanks, Chris. I'm making eggs, you want some?”

“If you scramble them. You want toast?”

“Yeah. That date-walnut bread.”

Chris buttered her own two slices and said “Rain's due in before noon, but with it is a warm-up. What's on the hopper for Science Day?”

“Well, Ginny bought those make-your-own kaleidoscope kits, but I don't want to do that without her. And if it's raining, outside will be mucky. You got any ideas?”

Chris asked if Myra wanted butter or cream cheese on her toast before answering. “Let's pull out those Invisible Man and Woman models you have and go over the internal organs again.”

“They'll love that” said Myra. “Afterward, I could have a dough started, and we can make biscuits in the shape of kidneys and spleens.”

“Yum, over-kneaded viscera to go with our winter soups” said Chris. “Listen, I talked with Ricky. He called me before he left for work today.”

Myra turned to look at Chris. “How is he?”

“Numb. Wants me to come for a visit.”

“Say when, and I'll go with you” said Myra.

Chris sighed. “I've got a lot still to figure out.” They went to the table together. Myra looked at the yard. She could see where Chris had been sitting by the pond because the outline of her rump had melted the shine of ice found on the rest of the bench. She knew Chris had something else to say, and she waited.

“Myra...I'm not as smart as you think I am.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm not a dummy, but you've always acted like I'm some kind of genius, and I'm not” said Chris.

“Well, you've been smarter than me more times than I can count, so that's genius enough for me” said Myra, grinning.

Chris laughed. “That's like the old joke, the medical definition of an alcoholic is anyone who drinks more than their doctor. But, no, my point is...I'm not going to have any parting wisdom. I'm not going to be handing out inspiration and Brian's Song kinds of lessons here.”

Myra forced herself to keep chewing. “Didn't expect you would. Not your style.” She corrected herself. “Fuck, Chris, no, you don't come at things like Gandhi-ji, but you actually do hand out inspiration. To me at least, all the time. You don't mean to, it just happens.”

“Whatever.” Chris looked irritated.

“The pressure is off, Kash-Kash, if that's what you want to hear” said Myra.

“Maybe you could spread the word?” said Chris.

“All right. Oh, shit, look at the clock. We've got an appointment with Nancy in an hour. I'll have to roust Ginny from sleep early, she'll be a zombie” said Myra.

“I'll make chai” said Chris, helping herself to more eggs as Myra began wolfing her food.

The work with Nancy was primal. Myra wouldn't have known how to describe it to Ginny if Ginny hadn't been there as witness. The one coherent sentence she got out was “I don't remember a time when I wasn't afraid that my mother was going to die”. Ginny's turn also seemed to come from ancient roots, though it wasn't about death, per se – more garden variety abandonment, thought Myra. Although death is the ultimate abandonment, I guess.

She felt clearer afterward but still weary. Sleeping with Chris fed some need in her, but also left her not quite restored in the morning. She was aware of pouring her essence into Chris while she was unconscious, or at least attempting that feat. She could not say whether it was working, whether Chris was accepting it from her.

Ginny ate lunch with them, then returned to her painting. It was another life-size canvas and Myra kept herself from looking at it because she wanted the shock that Ginny's final result always gave her. Especially since it was about Chris.

During Science Class, Mimi and Leah got into a pitched battle over possession of their model's kidneys. Myra had to put them at opposite ends of the coffee table they were all sitting around on the living room floor. She muttered to Chris “I hope this isn't a premonition of something that actually occurs when they're adults and one of them has renal failure.”

Chris found this hilarious, and Lucia kept asking “What so funny, Namesake?” A few minutes later, Myra noticed Chris had gone silent, fingering the small cluster of plastic intestines in her hand. She said quietly “Are you missing your innards? I sometimes wish I'd asked for my uterus, so I could bury it under Ginny's roses.”

“God no” said Chris. “I was – I'm eating a ton, Myra, but – it's not completely digesting. Just coming on out of me sometimes not much changed from how it went in.”

Myra could tell Leah was watching her, listening, and willed herself to not go pale. “Your oncology visit is tomorrow at 9:30, right?”

“Yeah. If we're done by 11:00, that person Carly recommended said we could drop by for 15 minutes. She's in the same general neighborhood.”

Myra reminded herself to make sure Ginny remembered these appointments; she thought Ginny would want to be in the room with them. Fifteen minutes to assess whether someone was who you wanted helping you shuffle off this mortal coil. She swallowed down the taste of bile in her mouth.

When Jane and Gillam came to get their children, the four adults had a logistical discussion about Thanksgiving, finally deciding it should be at Myra and Ginny's with extra tables set up for all the additional family: Jane's parents, Thad plus friend, Cathy, Annie Gagliardi, Imani, Nika and her new girlfriend, plus maybe Ricky. Chris said “I do want turkey and stuffing, all the usual, but I'd also like to unleash the cooks in this bunch to make their favorite non-Thanksgiving dishes.”

“Will you do camas root?” asked Gillam.

“Yep. And I want you to make those sour cream enchiladas of yours” said Chris.

Gillam pinked with pleasure. “And Jane, in addition to all the pies, will you do that butter pecan cake, the seven layer one?” continued Chris.

“My honor” said Jane. Leah began tugging at her hand, saying “For tonight? Are we having cake for tonight?”

“I have one more request” said Chris, her grin full on as she looked at Myra. “You remember that song you all made up on the land collective? The one you used to try to teach us sometimes as we made pies the night before Thanksgiving? To the tune of 'Over The River And Through The Woods'?”

“Oh my god” said Gillam. “I'd forgotten about that.”

“Well, I want you to teach it to these children” said Chris, starting to laugh.

“What song?” asked David. “Can we do it now?”

Gillam shrugged at Myra, saying to Jane “You won't believe this one.”

Myra thought for half a minute to be sure of the lyrics, then took David's hand and began:

Out of the city and into the woods
To lesbian land we go
Our truck tires have spikes
To carry the dykes
Through the mud and drifting sno-ow

Away from misogyny, commerce and mess
To wimmin's land we press
We'll cleanse our heads and share our beds
With thanks to Great Goddess

She could hear Jane and Gillam still giggling as they passed through the back gate.


© 2009 Maggie Jochild.

Read More...

Summary only...