Author: admin

In Which We Rebuild Civilization from the Comfort of Our Living Room

The other night, Raymond and I were sitting around in our “living room,” which consists of our beloved plush brown sofa that we shipped from Pittsburgh to the West Coast, plus a few square feet of surrounding floor space. We’ve each got a folding tray table, supposedly for eating on, but instead we have piled them with our respective messes. We take our meals from plates that we hold in our laps.

Raymond’s pile consists mostly of reading matter. His library books cover topics like social justice, Bach, and how to rebuild civilization in the wake of catastrophic events. Typically, it’s just one of these topics per book, but sometimes there’s an overlap. Resting askew on open copies of the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, mingled with an e-reader, a t-shirt, or a moleskine or two, these look ready to slide into a catastrophe of their own, although they never actually fall.CCI19112014_3

My mess consists of polymer and pulp: clear boxes of paper scraps, smeared and scratched and dotted with acrylic paint. Brightly painted paper scraps stuffed into envelopes and freezer bags.

The more enterprising paper scraps liberate themselves from their boxes and bags. I corral them back from the floor and the sofa cushions but never seem to get the table entirely clear. They congregate around the bottle of liquid matte medium, the perfect glue to compensate for my lack of patience and precision. Unlike the glossy stuff, which crisps up into shards, the matte medium can get all over your fingers and will just peel off when it dries. Other landmarks include pens, scissors, and black trays that used to hold frozen chicken tikka masala. The world’s smallest art studio, my little folding table bustles like a village.

So when Raymond and I sit on the sofa, we are often in several places at once, shipping off through various methods of cultural transport. Raymond picks up the New York Review, and he’s outside the walls of Troy with Mary Beard. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been to the White House with Olivia Pope—and if you’re reading this in 2014, it’s possible that the same is true for you.

On the night in question, however, having caught up with all available episodes of Scandal and anything else worth watching, having even zip-lined over a tropical forest and dangled a few perps out the window on Hawaii 5-0, we were listening to a podcast.

Heckling a podcast, to be exact. The author David Gilbert was reading Steven Polansky’s short story “Leg,” in which a father, helplessly alienated from his wife and son, refuses treatment for his injured and eventually festering limb. As Dad tried to “cauterized” his wound with a scalding-hot towel, we shouted our objections, to no avail. (Olivia never listens to us, either.)

After a few days, he’s unable to walk, and his distracted wife gets around to asking, half-heartedly, whether he might want to go to the doctor. At this point, the crowd—that is, Raymond and I—went wild. We gave up trying to straighten out the characters and started hollering at each other. If your leg ever starts stinking and oozing, nobody around here is going to be asking. Your ass will be at the doctor’s. That’s me with the bad language. “Emergency room,” said Raymond. “Get him to the emergency room.”

And it’s only as I write these words that I realize that this essay is about more than sitting around on the couch. Though there’s been no literal festering, we’ve encountered loved ones who shied from—or bristled at—support that they needed. Unlike the characters in the story, we are blessed with family and friends who are warm, attentive, even vigilant about one another’s well being. Still, we sometimes feel a need to reaffirm our interdependence.

Rolling around on the sofa, howling and laughing, clutching our own uninjured legs, we are also extracting promises from each other. Offering them, too:

I promise not to break your heart with worry. If I need care, I will submit. If you’re the one in trouble, I won’t get distracted. I won’t let you go to ruin. My table may be messy, but you’re a different story.

When is Now, Part I

I am sitting at a black granite topped table in a famous Berkeley coffee shop at the corner of Walnut and Vine. It’s an indoor-outdoor scene here, where the walls are mostly windows and the door is propped wide open. The doorway frames a view of a lush and prideful horse chestnut tree that magnanimously shades the far side of the street. Out on the sidewalk, a man has parked his motorized wheelchair and is holding a bright red plastic cup in his lap. Heavy lidded, he speaks to no one. Eventually, someone drops a couple of bills into the cup. The man with the wheelchair tucks the money inside his jacket. A minute later, without any change in facial expression, he puts the wheelchair into gear (or so it seems) and then drives off at full speed.

peets for upload At the table next to me sits a woman with a slender, rounded back. She might have stood five feet tall when her back was straight. The strap of her cloth bag has frayed a hole in her red and yellow wool blazer, but I wouldn’t have spotted if I weren’t looking so hard at what’s going on around me. She’s rested her turquoise string bag on the little canvas folding stool that she carries around town. Someone waves at her, a tall, very pregnant woman in a clingy and very stripy dress.

I caught her once, on an AC Transit bus that lurched forward, hurling her toward the back of the bus. I stretched out an arm. Stopping her fall was uncannily easy, like catching a grocery bag full of paper towels. I don’t imagine she’d appreciate my saying so. She shook me off quickly after she got her balance back, and has never given so much as a blink of acknowledgment since.

Once, over the long, boring summer when I was 15, I lay on my bed with the window thrown wide open, just like the door here at Peet’s: no storm barrier, no screen. I was wearing a button-down blouse that had once belonged to my mom. Lime green, with a distressed texture, this blouse buttoned low. It made me look dramatic, mysterious, adult, even sexy. An anomaly—most greens make me look like a ghoul. I had wrestled my impossible thick hair into braids. I had my bed arranged diagonally in one corner, and I lay there imagining that I and my open window, the warm breeze and the underlying rumble of cicadas, were part of some ancient story—or that we would be ancient some day. In some future, people would sit around and imagine these days, the way I liked to imagine life in ancient Greece or Rome.

And I was right—that stuff feels ancient now. Those days before cable and internet and reflexive overscheduling, when it was possible for a young person to have absolutely nothing. Nothing but daydream and breath. This afternoon at Peet’s has that feeling for me too: a moment in history, as mundane as cash registers and coffee cups, and yet resplendent as plastic-sealed packets of madeleines, iPads propped up against plastic water bottles, as straw fedoras and red high tops and bicycles locked to Japanese maples.

• Keeping Things Airy

pencilgrabpurplepaperclip2Sweeping, dusting, and occasionally even scrubbing–digging out collage pieces from between the sofa cushions, recycling old bottles of toilet cleaner, sorting papers from the dozen classes, workshops, and seminars one or the other of us taught in the past year–Hubby and I have managed to clean the Micropalace! Thankfully, we have downgraded our condition from CHAOS (Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome, a term coined by Maria Cilley, doyenne of de-cluttering) to a run-of-the-mill case of CHaMSOS, and we’re both at peace with the idea that we Can’t Have Martha Stewart Over.

I grew up wearing the scarlet M of the messy kid, lacking the skills, and sometimes the willingness, to manage my possessions and my time. Hubby, on the other hand, is a very tidy individual whose possessions nonetheless accumulate in archaeological layers. My messiness arises from eternal optimism: Really soon I’m going to finish that painting project, wear that sweater again, reuse that handout, and find a purpose for all my empty roller-ball pens and a stack of 47 green plastic fruit baskets. Hubby’s comes from hardworking single-mindedness; areas outside of his range of laser focus tend to blur.

scrap1Since the clean-up, we can reach our bookshelves without climbing over anything. We can get into the bathroom without crab-walking. And, heaven help us, we now live in fear. Specters of distraction, fatigue, irritability, and laziness–the four horsemen of the dishpocalypse–haunt our kitchen area. What will happen to our newly uncovered floor space if we lapse into old ways? What if we can’t keep up with the forces of nature? Our apartment, which nestles up against a damp hillside, tends perniciously toward mildew. Herds of dust buffaloes–black, furry, hump-backed, mycotoxic grime balls–thunder through our dreams.

To keep the place “airy”–that’s our watchword–we’re planning on doing lots of chummy, domestic reciprocal nagging. Rather than ban “bossy,” we celebrate the concept (within limits). House rules say that I can boss him around as long as I push him to do things he actually wants to do. As for me, I’m too defensive to take suggestions, but I can be led by example. yarn

If shared self-discipline falters (hopefully, even if it doesn’t) we’ll fall back on a time-tested housekeeping method: Having People Over. If anything can conquer chaos, it’s love.

Shame alone doesn’t work. I’m pretty sure of that. When notebooks misplace themselves or homework gets left in a locker at school, the parents of one or another of my tutoring clients may encourage me to scold the student, calling on me to take a stand when I don’t have a leg to stand on. I wind up telling the kid, “I lose things, too. All you can do is keep trying.”

Understandably, the parents worry that, their child, if left unchastised, will some day show up unprepared for college seminars or disheveled at job interviews. Such situations must be prevented if possible, of course. On the other hand, should disorder prove inevitable, head-hanging will magnify the self-sabotage.

penlidIn fact, a chin-up, results-oriented approach has seen me through potential mishaps. In my tender twenties, I had an meeting with the University of Pittsburgh’s Assistant Vice President for News and Publications, a cheerful, compact, authoritative woman in a navy blue suit. At this informational interview, which would ultimately lead me to my first professional writing job, I reached around in purse for a pen and found no writing implements at all.

Note-taking in an informational interview is only polite, and on top of that the AVP was giving me the job number of a position I could apply for. Could I have been more scattered? My self-esteem imploded but, through the dust that rose from the rubble, I scanned the woman’s desk and palm one of her pens. Used it and put it back, too, without her noticing. It made a funny story six years later at the goodbye party they threw me when I left that job.

For a long time my own mother fretted over my organizational habits, tucking tags into my collar, letting me know I’d misbuttoned my blouse, shaking her head when I lost my shoes again. Once or twice, she went so far as to reorganize my apartment for me while I was at work. earring

When I got married, she let go of any efforts to improve me–not because I had pulled my life together, and not because I was someone else’s responsibility. On the morning of my wedding, 38 years after I made my first mess (in some hospital diaper), my mother had to send my step-sister out to buy replacements for the white satin slippers I couldn’t find in my closet. With some relief, I imagine, she finally saw that tidying me up was a hopeless cause.

More recently, she has spoken comforting words: “You lose your shoes because you are thinking about other things, important things.” It’s true that most of my redding up (that’s Pittsburghese for cleaning) takes place in my mind. My instincts as a visual artist compel me to pocket bolts and washers and ceramic pieces from the sidewalk, for eventual inclusion in a sculpture or mosaic. Likewise, my mind gathers observations and stories, trying to piece them into meaningful forms.

I take comfort, too, in the notion that simply as human beings, we are all born organizers. Our complex brains transform the sunlight into new forms of energy–gardens and bicycles, soccer teams and law courts, temper tantrums, fantasies, and jokes.

Some scientists theorize that the cosmos will someday have spent all of this energy, reaching a state where neither fires nor computers nor life can exist. Through our mere existence–our work, our emotions, our breath, we are dancing out anti-entropic patterns on the path to the heat death of the universe. Let’s snap our homework into our binders, dust the cobwebs from the corner, and clear the paperclips from the laser printer–in exultation rather than in fear. Chaos will win in the end, but not today.

• Strong Like Me

In the uncanny world of my dreams last night, I was wearing my teaching credential around my neck, as a charm on a chain. The credential was a dogtag the length of a small fingernail. It hung next to another charm, a religious symbol, the Unitarian Universalist chalice, which is usually represented as a flat dish with a flame above it. In this dream, though, the chalice had a lid and a spout, like Aladdin’s lamp.

I had students in my charge, but they were nowhere to be seen. We had ventured into a moss green field surrounded by birch trees; I had sent them off to the woods to look for hidden treasure. It was clear to me in the dream that this was the most worthwhile lesson I could offer.

lampglobeInstead of tending to my students, I was standing next to a picnic table, chatting with a young man who had come to observe my class, I held the necklace in my hands and tried to explain its meaning. My identity as a (lapsed) Unitarian, with its focus on questions rather than answers, on possibilities rather than dogmas, was something I never mentioned explicitly in my teaching, but it certainly informed the decisions I made.

When I looked down, though, the necklace had transformed into a thick white plastic collar. Inset within the plastic shape, spinning on a form-molded axis, was a racquetball-sized plastic globe in blue and green. Within the dream-symbol workshop of my unconscious mind, the product designers were working overtime!

In fact, the little globe was identical to a real object, a little treasure of mine that I keep in a drawer in the studio Micropalace where we live (as opposed to the storage space where Hubby and I stockpile most of our possessions). I received it from a dear friend, who was five at the time (now she’s eight).

She belongs to my adopted Bay Area family, former housemates of my husband’s, with whom we have been having dinner once a week for the past nine years. Over these years, the parents have allowed Hubby and me to be true auntie and uncle to their three talented, whip-smart, athletic daughters. Their precocious social skills have been enhanced, I like to think, both by an absence of television and by the constant meddling of their many adult friends.

One instance of preternatural empathy and grace manifested itself years ago, when I was grieving my father. The Middle Child, not quite six years old at the time, assured me consolingly that death is a natural and universal experience. Everybody dies, she confided, with a pat on the arm and an earnest gaze. Everybody. Even me. To pester, nag, encourage, proofread, and giggle with all three of them–and to receive their dazzling expressions of youthful wisdom–has been one of the great privileges of my life.

Unsurprisingly, the Youngest One has exhibited leadership qualities since well before she could speak. While learning to walk, she skillfully managed her adult staff, coordinating their hand-holding shifts. Once she was walking, she was strutting around patting pillows, rounding us up for stuffed animal tea parties. Pulling on sleeves, she dragged us up to dance.

She explored her environment avidly, reacting with the same shocked tears of outrage every time she ignored our warnings and toddled herself off the dining room bench. Then she was up and at it again.

Not long after her fourth birthday, at her eldest sister’s middle school graduation, I spotted Youngest One off from the festivities, seated under a redwood tree, holding court with three or four preteen boys.

For a brief phase, though, she played a little rough with her age mates, insisting on the games she wanted, stealing turns, hoarding toys. Once, in her living room, when she yanked a block out of a smaller kid’s hand, I got indignant. Stop that!

What?! Here, she executed a preternatural eye roll but also blushed, clearly upset that I had hollered at her.

That’s your guest! I insisted.

She held my glance for a few moments, then shrugged philosophically and gave back the block.

This was quite a new pattern for her. Usually, when reproached, she went and hid behind the floral chair in the corner. It was the next week when she came up to me and pressed the little blue globe into my hand. A present, she declared in her piccolo voice. Because you’re strong, like me!

In my dream as well as in my drawer, then, the globe constitutes a pep-talk, a reminder of Young One’s élan and my own occasional outbreaks of personal efficacy. It’s a pep talk that I can use about now, because I am feeling the temptation to wallow in helplessness. On another front, a dear, lifelong friend of mine is gravely ill, and there’s not a thing I can do about it. That means that in the abstract sense my own world is cracking.

When it comes to the larger world, I struggle for my footing against political forces pushing for education cuts, the monetization of the electoral process, the elimination of environmental accountability, and hegemony for the largest corporate players in the economy, with in the government, and even on the net. (Why do I feel like I’m “injecting politics” into a personal essay, harping on these issues, when the other side is politicking so relentlessly.)

As for the teaching tag and the magic chalice, they seem to be a prayer both for the power to effect change and the wisdom to use it well, qualities that feel like they’re far out of my reach. It has taken me most of my life just to learn how to nudge a good-hearted but strong-willed child to put down a block and play nice. Now I want to nudge a whole freaking planet, and keep nudging, in a scenario where the kids with the most toys will never stop grabbing for more.