Damocles’ sword

Los Angeles is hot, and back in the heat, I feel exhausted. Mark did all the driving, but I’m still tired.

One of my favorite stories as a kid was Damocles’ sword. In the story, Damocles is allowed to be king, but only if he is willing to have a sword hanging over his head. Many of us are willing to live in what feels like peril as long as we can have something we want.

The thing I was most afraid of was being kicked out on my own, leaving the Farm which was the only way to Heaven, and not knowing anyone and being out in the cold. And then it was happening, and it was cold, but it was always wonderful. The thing we are most afraid of is sometimes the thing that when it’s traveling toward us at light speed, it might be the best thing for you and you don’t know it. That breakup, leaving your job, having your car blow up like George Clooney’s did in Michael Clayton. And all that is rushing toward you and you wake up and you know that you’re in a new part of your life, and that part is an adventure too. But that adventure scares us.

When you sit on one side of the hill, you’re crouched there, often afraid that there are tigers on the other side of the hill. People tell you that the tigers want to eat you, but they don’t. The tigers are on the other side of the hill, lying in a field of lilies and in those lilies, there you are. The tigers are not really going to hurt you.

That isn’t to say that people don’t quit their job and sometimes wish they hadn’t or leave their spouse and then regret it. But, even in those tangled webs, we learn that we aren’t as smart as we thought we were. That’s how we move forward.

Oddly, we resist change in others. Four people I know are hitting the rocks with their relationships, and at least most of them, I wish would stay with their partners. We get used to people being together and we wish for them to stay with their partners. We get used to them as a couple. And even when they’re telling everyone loud and clear that they need to move on, people around them like to stick them back together like paper dolls and glue.

Whenever change happens at the press, I wish things would stay the same, but the changes are always for the best. That’s work.

But love and relationships change and move. Relationships must move around like water. They cannot stay static. Some of the changes feel good. Others feel like we are a star expanding and contracting and we’re not ready to be galactic beings. Or we don’t think we are, but we are. We are.

A very good Mother’s Day. We got to Skype with Steve in Australia. Technology is an amazing thing; we can skype with our iPhones and his phone is just running on local Wifi; it’s not even turned on for our plan. It sounds like he is having a good time and has met some Australian girls which is good. The girls in New Zealand were nice, and it was sad to leave them behind. There was a lot of other news, but little of it was fit to print, so let’s just say he seems like he’s doing just super.

We went to brunch at this great place where they have good food but very slow service. We got there at 11:30 and we drank champagne until 1 when they finally served us. But the food, when it arrived was very good.

We walked around the city for a while and then went to dinner at Mark’s brother’s house. His wife Annette is very nice, and she is reading my favorite play, Long Day’s Journey into Night in her literature class, a story about how sad a family can be when they never really speak honestly to each other. It’s a very American play. We talk around or ignore what we do not understand.

Mark’s brother made fresh pasta and fresh key lime pie. I’m going to have diet for a month to make up for it, but it was worth it. The key lime pie was just crazy good. I love pie.

Here are pies that I like:

Strawberry rhubarb
Strawberry
Apple
Key lime
Berry pie

Pies I’m not so crazy about:
Weird pies like coconut cream

We had a very good time. They had wine and their garden is coming in, they have such lovely fruit trees. Lemon, avocado, apple and they even have some blackberries growing up against the wall. In other parts of the country, one can’t imagine simply planting trees and berries; they have wisteria climbing over the fence and trailing up the walls. Northern California allows for berries, apples, hydrangea and foxgloves, all of which are difficult in Southern California.

The children of Israel dreamed of a promised land, a land of milk and honey, a land where wine flows and fruit grow in abundance. Perhaps, we’ve all continued to hope for a land where the windows open into fruit and flowers, where there the signature we leave in time and space is one of relaxation.

Mother’s Day was good, more relaxing than I had expected. Tomorrow we drive back to So Cal where it’s so much hotter, where our avocado tree is struggling, our lemon tree still small, our blood orange tree taking up the sky. I want do to more exercise, sleep more, read more, start doing yoga, and feel myself stretching into the warm parts of life, the parts where you take deep breaths, spend more time with my kids and with the hubby, but mostly breathe.

Mother’s Day is tomorrow.

Having a great weekend in SF. We got up here Thursday night and went out to a place called Live Sushi which was excellent fish. And then yesterday we went to Santa Cruz. Mark went to the Rosicrucian Museum and I slept. Today, Mark went to Berkeley to all these bookstores and I slept. I’m a real barrel of laughs. I am staggering from lack of sleep, and there is so much partying to do at night up here in the Nor Cal, so I need to sleep in the daytime. It’s the end of the semester that fricking kicked my ass out of the ball park, it’s amazing I can still walk straight.

We had so much fun at Doug Lawson’s house it was like being on planet fun. I did tequila shots followed by orange slices and cinnamon with him which is like entering the romance of spice and wild. And we had lots of wine, and they have this cool outdoor patio area and you can see the stars coming out and they have a heater on the patio and their kids Ben and Skyler are going off to dances and coming back and not wanting to take their bath or go to bed and clearly so ready for summer and it’s light late at night and early morning, and they have chickens and dogs and if I were those kids, I’d want to enter the otter pop of summers and have a hammock and a sprinkler to run through and never think of the word, “School,” again and just keep running all summer and getting very dirty and playing late night games like the candles we lit back at the beginning of the world when all stories started with dark and stormy nights. Their mother’s painting are so beautiful, Giselle paints green, blue and orange, mostly green and blue like entering the sea and wild green air full of bees and birds and the feathered edges of life. We own some of her paintings and will own more, before she gets too famous, she’s already getting there, so I’m getting while the getting is good, before all this art falls off the edge of the world into another income bracket that we’ll never enter and then we’ll be able to visit the sky and the chickens and the children at the end of the road, and we’ll look at the paintings at Giselle Gautreau’s studio but they’ll be out of a reach, like climbing a high ladder where the top rings are into the sky.

http://gisellegautreau.com/

Being a mother is a life changing experience. I have lots of friends who do not have children, and they seem younger than me. They seem more carefree. Not having children means that you don’t have the big things to worry about. But human beings tend to find things to worry about anyway. When you have a children, that becomes the most important thing in your life. No one says, “My life is fine, it’s great. I have a good job and a great husband but my kids and I are not getting along.” But you do hear the reverse, “My kids are great and they love me so it’s all good, I do need to work on my job and my marriage, but the kids are good.” I love my kids and I want for their happiness, for our happiness. I also want to do great creative work, I want to push out into my own edges with my writing, but always, I hope my kids will love me and want to be around me and of course, I want us to all be moving forward in our lives toward love and sky, toward creation of great work, toward wild.

What makes us feel comfortable around certain people and not others?

What makes us uncomfortable?

1. If someone seems to have power over you. Like your boss. That’s a little anxiety producing.
2. If someone thinks they know more than you. Are better than you. More educated. More. More anything.
3. If someone has no sense of humor.
4. If it really matters that everything goes right. Like if you’re meeting your new love’s family. It would really be nice if they would like you.
5. If someone appears to be mean or belligerent.
6. If someone is in your face.
7. If someone stares at you coldly.
8. If the person you are interacting with has almost nothing to say. You have to do all the talking. They got nothing. They’re boring you. They got nothing.
9. If someone is talking about stuff you have no interest in. Brabantia in the Middle Ages. Who cares?
10. If someone just won’t stop talking about themselves. They keep putting their words in your face. Over and over. On and on. They keep telling you this and that about themselves. You just have to listen and listen and you want to be anywhere else on the planet, like maybe under a bridge outside Sydney, Australia. Oh wait, I think that’s what my son is doing.

What makes us cozy being around someone.

1. The trick isn’t that they are “nicer,” it’s that they, whoever they are, are more like you. We are comfortable with people who we have enough in common with.
2. People who listen.
3. People who really like you.
4. Respect you.
5. Think you’re funny.
6. Want to find out what else they have in common with you.
7. You like cheese, they like cheese. Not so important. You like art museums and walks in the park and trees and books and the way air tastes when it’s full of fennel and heat and so do they.
8. If you act weird, they’re okay, they just laugh and give you a break.
9. You can breathe.
10. You can relax. Nothing you say or do can or will be held against you.

Here is the thing. In your work life, in your public life, you can’t expect to only deal with people you are comfortable around. The likelihood of that happening is very slim. I suppose if you are very rich, you can manage to not be around people who make you uncomfortable, but for most of us, that just isn’t possible. In your life, there are going to be people who you are uncomfortable being around. To cope, we all put on armor, we find ways to behave properly, to keep it together, keep it together.

In an ideal world, these people who make you uncomfortable are people you don’t have to be around in your private life and certainly don’t have living with you. In America, we feel that we do get to choose who we live with. We don’t have to live with members of the tribe who we don’t get along with. People around whom we feel small and insignificant.

Around Mother’s Day and the holidays, you end up with the relatives who you get all tense around. Breathe my friend, that’s what I do. I breathe deeply. I say to myself. Yo, I got it going on. I’m going to be just fine.

The sun continues to rise. There are grilled onions and grilled cheese sandwiches with tomatoes. There are pomegranates and there is raw fish and Johnny Depp movies and hopefully your children love you. Because if they do, you can conquer the world.

In preparation for Mother’s Day

Well now, if you haven’t made plans and you are planning on celebrating, then there’s probably a grocery store near you. Plan on cooking.

Rules for Mother’s Day in case you were dropped here by Vogons and are waiting and hoping to be extricated from this planet by a passing space ship but in the meantime, you would like to know what’s going on here.

I have two new moms in my life who had babies in the last month. I will text them and wish them a Happy Mother’s Day. Since they just gave birth, their husbands should cook for them and shower them with flowers, candy etc. They probably don’t want to go out.

Mostly what moms want is to be with as many of their children and grandchildren as possible. Often that’s not possible because some of the kids are far away and some of them are with their kids and don’t want to travel. But, you do your best. I always spend Mother’s Day with whichever of my kids are available.

There was a time when we would gather at a nice restaurant –the kids, the grand kids and the Mother-in-law. This was fun for her I believe since she liked both the gathering in her honor which was always in some restaurant in Pasadena with a lot of white and seemed very Rose Kennedy and of course the good food, but it wasn’t fun for me. It went on past the time (10 minutes) when my kids could be well behaved in a nice restaurant. I know this sounds like my kids were bad, but they were active. So it was not fun and I ended up scolding them and not enjoying a minute of Mother’s Day.

So we changed the game. I spend Mother’s Day with my kids and we do active things. Even now with them in their twenties. We go to Venice Beach or the Huntington or the Haight. We get brunch. We walk around. We do not have to be all dressed up and behaving unless we’re at the Huntington and even there you can walk the grounds. My mother-in-law spends the day with her son or in the case of last year and this year—her sons. Which is perfect. Because she can bask in their presence. Especially the older one who is perfect in her opinion, a god-like figure dominating the Alameda landscape. If he were as amazing as she thinks, world domination would be just a little leap from his small house and working in plumbing to world president.

They will have a great day and we will have a great day.

Now to presents:

For younger moms—flowers, chocolate, maybe one thing like a book that the mom wants or lotion –girlie stuff.

For the mom with teenagers—some books on survival, trips to Mexico to fill up the prescription bottles (kidding!) but a spa day is a good thing, something to acknowledge that she’s trying to keep her sanity. Maybe not trying hard enough?

For the older mom—like my mother-in-law, flowers are a safe bet and then of course there’s the scarf/perfume route. We’re going shopping tomorrow for said gift, so we’re a little late on this, but I feel sure we’ll find something. Maybe even something slightly quirky, who knows?

Things to stay away from:

Things for the house

Cooking stuff unless she is a major cook. No pots, pans etc.

Stuff that’s for the whole family like movies.

Electronics she won’t figure out how to use.

Stuff that’s really about you—that includes thongs, girdles, 4 inch heels—anything that shows you’re actually an old man with a fetish for the days when you didn’t get to go to the Playboy Mansion and the objectification of women etc. Stop that. Grow up.

Think about what makes her clap her hands. I wanted the new Claire Messud book, The Woman Upstairs. He got it for me. It’s in the bag.

Going out to eat vs. eating at home, Going to Celestino tonight so thinking about restaurants

Advantages to going out to eat.

1. You do not have to do the dishes. If I ever go to a restaurant where you have to wash the dishes, I will leave.
2. They bring your food to the table.
3. You get to choose from different menu items.
4. Waiters pretend to like you.
5. You can choose the kind of people you want to be around. Like noise? Go to Hometown Buffet. Like quiet? Go to a nice restaurant, the kind that has linen.
6. You can choose the kind of food you want to eat. Like good food? Stay away from chains. Like crappy food? Go to Hometown Buffet. Like really crappy food? Go to Dennys. (They don’t screw up breakfasts, but I wouldn’t trust them for other meals.
7. You can take home the food you don’t eat.
8. You can order dessert, linger over coffee.
9. They have wine lists.
10. If it’s a sushi bar, they have sake.

Advantages to eating at home.

1. You get to do the cooking and you can get creative with it.
2. You can talk with your guests and your family while you do the cooking.
3. You can drink wine while you do the cooking. Note to self. This does not always improve the cooking.
4. You can decide from your limited list of cooking abilities (unless you’re Martha Stewart and then I assume there are no limits) what to make.
5. You can invite over anyone you want.
6. You can drink whatever you want and it’s a lot cheaper than drinking at a restaurant and if you’re at your own home, you don’t have to worry about driving.
7. You can have dessert and linger over coffee.
8. You can stay longer than at a restaurant.
9. You can leave the dishes for the next day. (Other people can, I cannot. I hate waking up to dishes. It makes me sad. I like to get them into the dishwasher before I go to bed.) On that subject, my brother-in-law who we are seeing on Mother’s Day, last I checked does not believe in their using their dishwasher. Weird. If my husband said that he didn’t believe in our using the dishwasher, I would rebel. I would never wash another dish. I believe in dishwashers. They have a purpose. To wash the dishes for me. It’s like the washing machine. Seriously, why not wash your own clothes? Because you don’t want to.
10. The big reason to eat at home is that it’s more relaxing, you can wear whatever you want to. You can dress up or down. You can watch a movie or have a conversation. What we know how to cook—Italian, Mexican, sushi, and all kinds of salads and chickens and fish and soups. What we can’t make so we have to go out for it: Thai, Indian, Lebanese etc. But I like eating at our home and I love eating at my friend Lisa’s home because it is cozy. And the food is yummy. And they’re great. Some people’s homes you have to be nice. And behave. I’m going to behave this weekend when we visit my in-laws. Seriously. Maybe I’ll even post some pictures of me behaving.

Reading tonight at Boston Court, May 7th, 2013

All three of these readers are amazing. You do not want to miss this one as Red Hen wraps up the spring season. Co-sponsored by PSA, the Boston Court readings are always spectacular.

Meghan O’Rourke, Douglas Kearney, and Maggie Nelson, 7 pm

http://redhen.org/events/rhp-at-boston-court/

Getting ready to go to San Francisco for Mother’s Day. Here is what happens when you drive from LA to the Bay Area. Nada mucho.

There is Los Angeles and traffic and swarms of people. Then, there’s the whole Valencia, Canyon Country area which is one big mass of houses that all look exactly like each other. There are also many chain restaurants which you can see hopped in there with the houses that are all mirrors of each other. It’s a Mctown with Mc restaurants. It’s all very tiring.

Then, the long hill which goes on and on, the Grapevine which is a lot harder to get over when you’re coming south. I don’t think my car could make it over at this point. Amy’s car can’t do it any more. You see cars stopped by the road on the way up the Grapevine, people waiting for their engines to cool.

Then you’re into the desert and it goes along like that for miles. For hours and hours. You’re just driving along, and it’s very boring. Here is what you see: Oil drilling, brown hills, cows, almond trees—they’re nice. Nothingness forever. Then you’re finally going over the Pacheco Pass and then you’re in San Francisco. We’re staying one night with the daughter, one night with our friends in Santa Cruz at their house and then a couple nights at the French Hotel in Berkeley. The best thing at the hotel is the coffee shop.

While we’re in SF, they’re taking us clubbing. Although I spent all my undergraduate years on the dance floor, I haven’t done much clubbing since then. During graduate school I had Amy and then it seemed my dancing days were over, but this weekend we get to find out what moves we have left. The part Mark is going to like the most is that we are going to a club that plays 80s music. I don’t think he was really fond of 80s music in the 80s, so it’s going to be pretty exciting for him to rekindle his affection for the rock and roll. Plus, I will get to see his dance moves which I am sure must be formidable.

The plan is to go see the DeYoung Museum which I haven’t seen for years. What writers and publishers like us enjoy doing when we travel is go and look at art. If I could afford to, I would buy more art. I like having art around because it makes you feel like you are in a space where you are touching the fiery belly of the universe. You feel it vibrating; you feel it talking to you saying, “You can do anything.”

Families are weird.

And don’t forget it. Weird families make great stories. Who wants a story about a husband and wife who are loving and raise two adorable children? Nobody. But, when you’re in the throes of a crazy life, you’re wishing for one of those peaceful lives that isn’t worth telling a single story about.

When the kids were in high school, I’d say, God! If there were any more drama in this household, I’d open a theatre! And they weren’t the kind of kids that were part of relationships with pecking order; they didn’t belong to cliques, they didn’t have to show off clothes or shoes or other stuff, they didn’t create drama about being invited to prom. Amy took three girls to prom. She went in with two of them and one waited for her in the car. (I’m not kidding here.) Steve took one girl to prom and wore a tux and Chuck Taylors. But still, there was drama—the girlfriends, parties, and more late night parties, our house had parties and noise complaints. And our neighbors, who are Christians, prayed to God that he would send Steve far away and when Steve took off to Nepal, they renewed their vows to the Christian church to which they belonged as well they might. That is a God that answers unlikely prayers on a grand scale.

Our family has four children and their significant others. So that makes ten of us in the family. Four kids all bringing home girls. Lots of girls. Tall girls and skinny girls, smart girls and crazy girls, tattooed girls, punk girls, rock and roll girls, a lot of girls. Two of the boys are musicians so that’s a lot of girls right there, one is a gamer, so there you have the geek girls, and one is a frighteningly smart lesbian, so you have the clever gay girls. Only one is married, and their marriage seems to have little drama and that’s a good thing. My daughter’s been with her girlfriend five years and we all like the girl friend so not a lot of drama there. The youngest one hasn’t settled down yet and the Portland son has a smart gamer girlfriend from England. She’s smart, but she seems even smarter, if that’s possible because a British accent always amplifies how smart you seem.

So we have less drama now, but enough for stories. The problem for writers is choosing what stories we should tell. Do you want to write the story of your mother-in-law or any of your in laws for that matter? And those stories of your kids and your spouse? you should be careful. And your exes? Be very careful. My friend Nicelle has written a story in poetry called Becoming Judas with fingers all through her family history. When it comes out, surely the members of her family will think, “That’s not the way I remember it.” Hopefully they’ll remind themselves that this is her story.

My story:
He rescued me.

His story:
I rescued him.

And we’re both remembering the same story.
And we’re both right.

Sadness

And God said, Let there be light and there was light upon the face of the deep. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Sadness that won’t go away is one of the first transformative experiences. Kids are often sad. They’re sad when you take away their toys, when they can’t see their mom or dad, when their siblings won’t play with them because they have to do homework, when they themselves eventually have to turn off the television and do homework. But what you figure out slowly as a kid, it sinks in, is that sadness is mostly temporary. You get sad when you don’t have immediate gratification, but you get better. When you wake up in the morning, you don’t care any more. The giant lollipop you missed, the bear, the blanket, the game your friends were attending, the party, the sleepover, the fact that you were sad about it sometimes seems trivial. You look back on yesterday’s self swaddled in grief and you want to pat that person on the back and say, “What a baby,” but kindly, and you want to remember how much different you are now that you aren’t in the throes of that sadness.

And then something comes along that’s bigger and that bigger thing STILL makes you sad even when you wake up in the morning. When you wake, it doesn’t go away like the sadness over not getting to play with the fire engine or not getting to have pizza for dinner. It’s still there, waiting by your bedside like a huge hand waiting to strike. As a child, I remember the big sadness of knowing I was in trouble and would be for days.

Oddly, the really sad things—knowing I would never see my father, knowing that I wouldn’t see my mother for many months, I managed to not think about those things at all, they were too big and there was no way for my mind to walk around them properly.

I think we teach ourselves as children to be sad about the manageable and to ignore the massive, the catastrophic until we can wrap them with our brain. Divorces, alcoholism, infidelity, illnesses, we wait until they aren’t looming. That’s why you see people ignoring problems you think they should be facing. Probably, they aren’t ready yet.

Big sadness that you can’t get away from becomes depression—a sadness that lasts weeks and stays with you like sticky glue in your hair and on your skin. You feel it when you walk.

I haven’t been depressed but I’ve seen it with friends. And I’ve been sad. And had trouble figuring things out. And I say to myself, Sadness is good. It’s an emotion like anger or grief or fear. Walk through it. While you’re still in it, you’ll start to realize there’s another side, that you won’t be in it forever. Close your eyes, reach out, feel the edges of it and say to yourself, “I can see beyond it. I can see beyond it.”

Eloise Klein Healy further press release

Thank you for the outpouring love for Eloise Klein Healy:

As was previously released, Eloise Klein Healy, the Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, is temporarily cancelling all her public appearances due to a health concern. Here is an update on her condition: Eloise has had a serious viral infection that caused medical issues. The virus was caught early, which means she has a very good prognosis, but recovery will take time, during which she will not be receiving visitors. Please continue sending cards and other well-wishes intended for Eloise to the following address:

Eloise Klein Healy
c/o Red Hen Press
1335 N. Lake Ave., Suite 200
Pasadena, CA 91104

She is very appreciative of all the support she has received. Thank you for respecting her need for rest and privacy