Alpha on Delta Intrusion

2009-05-09T14:38:00.001-04:00

Also, I only just now realized that I have to write TWO juxtaposition pieces, so I'm not out of the woods yet. I pretty much scoured my Stedmans books to get that funky little poem. Unfortunately sample medical reports are purged of the vast majority of the interesting and funny bits -- and I would never use actual patient reports as it would be horribly unethical.

So I have to figure out where the get the material for the second one... So close, yet no cigar.

Week 16 Post

2009-05-09T14:33:00.002-04:00

I took the revision option. I combined 2 pieces about my father, one true and one made up. The first piece I took the funny part out of the middle of it (you had said it clashed in tone, and I agree). I might be tone deaf about this, but I really like the combination of the fact/fiction here:

It is 5:15 a.m., and already the day surgery waiting area is crammed with people. The lighting is apologetic, not quite fluorescent, not quite tungsten as if it's afraid to bother us. We are underground. I know this only because of the winding journey we took through the hospital. There are no windows. Jeff, the poor strung-out thing, is squinting in frustration. I don't bother asking him again what's the matter. I know by now that the interference from our low altitude is making it impossible for him to listen to NPR. Not only that but the last time I asked what was wrong, he nearly killed me. We've only had 4 hours of sleep and are on edge.

My mother comes by. Says my dad wants to to see us. We rise and go to his stretcher, shake hands with the surgeon and his intern. Dad and mom brag to them about my medical job. The intern compliments my profession, saying that our training is like the first 2 years of medical school. I'm startled by the kind words but try to maintain an air of scrutiny. This is my father they're cutting into. They'll get no mercy from me. They go through the procedure, where dad'll be and when. He needs more imaging, 3 surgeries. The tumor is huge, the size of his fist. We've heard most of this before. After he leaves, my mom asks me questions about certain things the surgeon said. I do my best to translate. I tell her my general expectations garnered from similar cases but warn her that nothing is certain.

Jeff and I go back to the waiting area and sit with my brother, Jim. As tired as we are, Jim looks practically undead. He drove straight to Portland after a week working overtime in Calais, the managing engineer on a big construction project. He is mentally and physically exhausted. His face is expressionless. I head to the gift shop to buy a paper to check on the Susan Collins-Tom Allen race and a book of Sudoku. When I return, I sit down and read the whole paper. Jeff's fallen asleep and is leaning on my shoulder. Jim's hands are folded in his lap. His eyes dart around the room. He is trying to look nonchalant and absent-minded, but it's clear to me that it's posturing. The seconds drag like hours.

It is 11:32 a.m., and day surgery is still crammed with people. However, they are different people, and I am taking this as a good sign. Suddenly, the surgeon emerges. "Janet," he says. This is my mother's name. She rises to meet him and follows. I stiffen. A mere minute later, she is back with tears in her eyes. Oh God. Something terrible has happened. I steel myself, try to cling to the clinical part of my mind -- the sometimes, contingencies, plan B place. She motions for us to follow.

*

When I hand my father the flask, he regards me suspiciously. "What's up with the fancy glass?"

"Just drink it, Dad. Doctor's orders."

He hesitates. "Well you're the one with the medical job," he finally concedes.

As he tips it back, my chest seizes up. He has taken it like I wanted. Do I want to even hear what he has to say? Is this regret? Certainly the deed is done.

"So Dad?" I say.

"Hm?"

"What do you think?"

"About what?" he says. He stretches his neck and coughs into his hand.

"About... I don't know, about me?" I say. The tight feeling returns.

"I did the best I could. I know as little as you. We're all doing this for the first time, right? You were a beautiful baby; now you're a little too much. I'm tired. You make me tired. Your mom makes me tired. All you girls make me tired."

"I think I understand," I say. I don't want to.

"The time you asked me if I really believed in God in the car before your confirmation, all I said was yes. I always regretted that. What I meant to say is what's the harm, Jojo?"

"What's the harm?"

"Yeah," he says. "What's the harm? Why can't you let yourself have a little treat once in a while? Why dissect everything that makes you happy? You're like your sister eating chicken."

I laugh.

"Anyway," he continues, "That's what I should have said. What's the harm? What does it matter? I believe in God as much as I believe in anything, and it's enough for me." He yawns.

"You okay?"

"I told you I was tired," he says.

Week 15 Theme

2009-05-09T03:35:00.003-04:00

taken from sample operative reports from Stedmans medical word book series

Care was taken to avoid her stated age
as the patient was followed annually.
It is like a cluster phenomenon. Following
a lengthy discussion, I did not feel that
she would be comfortable at the time of death.

Once we had control, the patient settled onto
the floor and complained very little.

The patient met her husband at church. He was
exposed to atomic radiation while working with
survivors in Hiroshima not long after the
bomb was dropped. He suffered a gunshot wound outside
a nightclub after an argument with another male,
a retail clerk in a department store.

She was shocked.

She finds she has strange dreams. The peel of
the orange. She cannot state the exact nature
of how to keep the child from eating orange
peels. Air was expelled from the abdomen.
Exquisite tenderness. Throat of the broach.

I have done everything possible up to this
point.

She indulges in an occasional glass of wine,
is distractible and hyperactive and
frequently smiles. More or less dependent.

The patient decided almost immediately following
the procedure that she wanted the tattooing removed.

The patient has been a healthy child.
The patient is a vegetarian as are other
members of her family.

She finds she has strange dreams.

2009-05-09T03:06:00.000-04:00

Week 14 Prompts

The Week In Review

The Good: Jeff scored a killer deal on massive quantities of Nyquil. The stockpile is growing and still have not been accused of being meth dealers.

The Bad: Flu shot won't do a lick of good against the old H1N1.

The Ugly: Jeff seems to have come down with a mystery virus.

The Bad: Dad has to get a full-body scan to check for tumor recurrence.

The Good: With Mom out of town, she isn't calling constantly.

The Ugly: She keeps leaving really sad messages.

The Good: A good friend managed to get a job in this economy.

The Bad: A good friend has been in a really pissy mood lately, and it's bringing everyone down.

The Ugly: A good friend is losing custody of his daughter.

The Bad: Husband's ex-girlfriend friended him on Facebook.

The Good: Husband says it's because she's a trainwreck and wants to watch the big explosion.

The Ugly: Somehow am still a little jealous monster about this, but allegiance to the facade of being a "cool wife" disallows leveling about the matter.

The Ugly: Upstairs neighbor blasted music at full volume at 7:20 in the morning on workday. Waking time was supposed to be 8.

The Bad: She drunkenly apologized and said she was "studying for a final" 2 days later during chance meeting.

The Good: They moved out today, and the Orono apartment scene is a ghost town from June through August.

Post-Its Found In and Around Work Desk

4:10 = Greater Grace World Outreach
anergia

*

-clean fridge drawer
-unpack spice tubes in office

*

.9
1.8
4.2
1.2
2

*

Spoyoi!

*

-get electric transferred to our name
-mail partial month (230) to NH
-get my Lexapro
-ask about renter's insurance
-complain about door

*

cap of Listerine
dishpan (warm water)
BIW-TIW

*

ESS
PW - username?
IS Help

*

right/left
Chlorasept around 21 seconds
1:14

*

4/16 (Thurs :( )
Day shift
April 21 - 1
April 22 - 1:30 + 2:45

*

>4 hours
w/o feeding/
even overnight

*

The peace is tentative. The
truces do not last. We decide
to talk to the person
we want the other to be.

*

A1 - interior design

*

demodicosis

Week 13 Theme

2009-05-09T02:34:00.001-04:00

Week 13 Theme

When I was a child, history was something that happened out of virtue, a teleology where draconian ways of the past conceded to fairness. Our books glazed over the bloodshed and discord, and we learned that we children had landed in the golden age, a day beyond prejudice. We were in the wake of women's suffrage and the Civil Rights Movement, and no group would ever be persecuted again. This was America, the land of opportunity, the land of freedom, a land that respected its citizens' rights to personal liberty as long as it did not threaten the safety of others. They told us history was at an end, and we believed them.

However, we'd only recently learned to tell time.

Over the years, I've heard those around me spew more words of suspicion, vitriol, hostility, and fear about homosexuals, bisexuals, and the transgendered than I will ever be able to forget. It has never made sense to me. Listening to the hatred that an unusual sexual identity evokes in an otherwise warm and pleasant person has taught me more about the world, human nature, insecurity, and willful ignorance than I would ever wish on another person.

It has profoundly shaped me as an individual.

When I learned on Wednesday afternoon that Baldacci had signed the bill allowing same sex marriage in Maine, I quite literally burst into tears. Finally, a sign that someday reason would win out against prejudice on this issue. It was a fine start. Having experienced my own different sex civil union, I knew how powerful official recognition could be in forming a life together. I was overjoyed for my sister Jen that she could marry her partner of many years and be legally recognized in this state as a family with their 2 children. I hope I get to be a part of the ceremony.

*

Bumming on Jen's futon was paradise, really the best part of Mom kicking me out of the house.

"Thanks for taking her," my mom had said. "I might have strangled her otherwise."

"I heard that!" I'd yelled from down the hall.

"It's cool, Mom," Jen had said, closing the door.

When we were sure the coast was clear, Stephanie, my sister's current girlfriend, popped in my Dragon Warrior IV cartridge into the Nintendo and fired it up. "Here you go, Jo."

"Sweet." Stephanie was thoughtful. Not much to look at and a bit on the slow side but always looking out for me.

"Just don't want you getting bored while we're at work."

Of course, I wouldn't. After they left, I raided their room, trying to unravel what my sister and her new flame were really like, if Jen had changed since she'd lived at home. I found some magazines with scantily clad women, some Melissa Etheridge albums, and a couple packs of tarot cards. Not many clues there, other than the obvious.

Instead, I curled back up on the futon and called my boyfriend on the telephone, playing Dragon Warrior IV with the sound off while I regaled him with a highly exaggerated version of events that led to my sorry 14-year-old self being banished to my 20-year-old sister's killer basement apartment. This was the life.

Later, Jen and Stephanie picked me up, and we cruised around town. They bought me coffee. I feebly told them dirty jokes, and we all laughed together.

*

We heard the screaming from the other side of the house. My brother Jimmy and I froze in place. This was not something that happened in our home. The wails were earsplitting, but the words were completely indiscernible. These were not noises a human being should make. Jim was too terrified to get anywhere near the commotion, but I crept upstairs to investigate.

I passed Jen on the stairs, her face ashen, her eyes obviously red from crying. She grabbed my arm. "Don't go in there," she said. Her grip was steely. Another cry erupted from down the upstairs hall. Jen let my arm go and fled down the stairs. I couldn't turn back. I had to see what was going on.

When I reached my parents' room, I saw my mother doubled over in her chair, her head buried in her lap, clutching her knees. She wailed again, and this time I had to cover my ears, letting out a little shriek of surprise. She jerked her head up, alarmed.

"Get... out... of... here," she said. I had never heard my mother growl before, and it was mortifying. I bolted.

Later, Dad took the reins, explained that we needed to let Mom sleep, that she just needed some time to herself -- that she was just disappointed in Jen's "decisions." Neither of them could even bring themselves to utter the word "gay" or "lesbian." When I said those words, Dad would wince. "There will be no discussion. We're not talking about this," he'd say.

Jen had sat me down earlier to explain, before coming out to mom. I remember it now like it just happened. She was so careful, so gentle, trying to explain that she felt about girls how most women felt about guys. "That makes a lot of sense. It explains everything," I had said. She looked stunned.

But my mother had been devastated. It took her months to recover from the shock, to get back to a place where she didn't suddenly burst into tears at the thought of her oldest daughter being into women. Even now, she says it was the one of the most terrible days of her life.

*

"Don't sit near the stupid dyke," Gail said. "She'll try to rape you."

"Fuck you, Gail," I said, setting my lunch tray down.

"See, what did I tell you! If you sit with her, the rest of you are all dykes, too."

My friends slid further down the table away from me.

"Cowards. This is ridiculous," I said. I rose angrily, tears welling in my eyes. I threw away my uneaten lunch and went to go stand by the lunchroom door.

"Are you okay?" The teacher watching lunch asked me.

"Fine." I said. Then after a second, "I think I have a migraine."

She sent me to the nurse's office. We called my mom, who came to pick me up.

"Faker," she said as I climbed in.

"So?" I rebutted.

"This wouldn't have happened if she'd stop rubbing it in everybody's face," my mom said.

Jen had been seen holding hands with her girlfriend when the fair was in town. Evidently, one of my classmates had seen it, and ever since, I'd been teased relentlessly first as the sister of a lesbian, and then when I didn't immediately denounce my sister, as clearly a lesbian myself, and then somehow mysteriously, a lesbian whose mission it was to rape everyone. Middle school was Hell.

"What Jen does shouldn't have any bearing on me. It's those girls' fault. Stop blaming her," I said.

Mom laughed. "It doesn't matter whether it should matter, Johanne. It just does."

*

It is my sister Jesi's wedding reception. Jesi has chosen to involve neither Jen nor me in her wedding. We are not good enough. We are freaks. Jen's been acting weird all day. Gloomy. Avoidant. I'm faking enough cheerfulness for both of us.

A couple margaritas later, I drag Jen onto the dance floor. The dancing is pitiful, clumsy at best. She still looks miserable. It's then that I gave her a hug for the first time in my adult life and say to her, "The hell with those bitches. I love you," and she bursts into tears.

Week 12 Theme - Risks

2009-04-25T12:27:00.000-04:00

I almost take joy sifting through the contents. The purple shovel is light in my hand. Grains of litter fall away like sands through an hourglass. Another of the days of my lives.

It's simple work: Scoop. Wait. Into the Hannaford bag. The cat rubs against my feet behind me, purring. I've come to admire the fruits of his labor. This is teacher's conference night for him. He's been making drawings for me all quarter. He wove a mat out of craft store yarn for the Latin American culture festival -- and don't you know it, his grades have come up. He tries to climb into the box. I effortlessly swing my free hand to stop him. My weight's the final word.

The sands shift. Scoop. Wait. What is he eating anyway? The box is bottomless. Scoop. Wait.

My knees are starting to ache from being crouched over. It doesn't help that genius just isn't coming out. Scoop. Wait.

The cat meows. I meow back at him. I feel like I've been milking my third eye all day. Scoop. Wait.

The world "milk" has been ruined for me. It was the worst party ever. Scoop. Wait.

My husband's ex-girlfriend tagged along with a mutual friend of theirs to our New Year's Party. Regaled us with tales of how long she lactated after they took her baby away. Scoop. Wait.

Worst. Party. Ever. I downed 6 Corona Lights in the space of 2 minutes and retreated to the porch, dangling my feet off the edge of the second story porch wondering about the acceleration of gravity. Scoop. Wait.

Throw the bag away.

Week 11 - when words mean something beyond themselves

2009-04-25T12:01:00.000-04:00

I dreamt last night that I was taking 3 classes and had attended none of them for 3 weeks. The professor regarded me curiously when I reentered and sat down. I had no books. No pen. No paper. Just myself. He went to chastise me (of this I was certain), but I cut him off saying, "I'm here to do my best," and somehow the assertiveness made a difference. After class I found Jeff and filled him in. He informed me that physics was hopeless. No way to get anything respectable in that class anymore. "Not even a C minus?" I said.

I woke up sweaty and dazed. Went to go make coffee.

*

We are driving in the car. "You know we're behind," I say.

He shrugs. Always finds this topic painful. Finally he offers, "I don't know what I was doing thinking I had enough discipline for an online class. I just -- thought it'd be fun to take a class with you."

*

We are tethered together. When one of us falls, the other follows. I hate this. He thinks it means we're close. I've never been a team player. Always kick people out of my groups in school. Go off at my own at work. I get the work done and then let other people take the credit. I hate that his problems affect me. He hates that I blame him.

*

"You think this whole thing means I'm not cut out for taking classes at UMaine next semester? I mean, it's easier to force out math than creativity."

He says, "For you, maybe." And then, "The fact that you're thinking about it means you need to really stop and consider it."

"I can't tell if I try too hard or not hard enough," I concede.

*

I want to be a giant. The person who gets everything done. The gamble seems easy. Accepting the consequences is the hard part.

Week 10 -- distancing and alienation

2009-04-18T00:55:00.000-04:00

"No yellow," my husband instructs. "The toilet's white and the wall's off-white. Yellow just won't... pop."

"You think so?" I ask. I pick up a mixed neon bouquet. "How about this one?"

"Too much yellow."

"But that purple!" I say.

"I'm just not digging it."

We turn the corner. "Maybe roses?"

"Maybe," he says.

I examine the tag. "Pricy."

"Well, they ARE roses."

We muck around a bit and finally settle on a bouquet of red and purple mystery flowers with a lone sunflower stuck in the middle like a giant eye. It's yellow, but it works.

"Let's get these home and put them in some water," I crack.

Jeff is unimpressed.

*

As I open the bedroom door, the cat leaps at me with unbridled ferocity. I slam the door quickly behind me hissing and stomping my feet. I hear Jeff moving in the hall, setting up his tripod. I lie down on the bed, and the cat has forgiven my rude entrance already. He crawls onto my chest, rubbing his face against mine.

"I'm done," Jeff announces. "You can let Archie out."

The cat, ever a flight risk, darts out into the hallway after me as I leave the bedroom. He saunters into the bathroom and begins chewing on the bouquet in the trash. "Archie!" I say. "This is why you get shut up during photo shoots."

*

The flowers look vibrant in the finished photos, stellate in their white porcelain vase.

"The contest theme was 'Misplaced'?" I say.

"Yeah."

"I hope you win."

Week 9 -- Literary pointillism

2009-04-17T17:43:00.000-04:00

It's gorgeous -- if the size of a shoebox. Weak yellow floor in the kitchen. We set up a dented card table with rusted legs in the living room. It's not quite level, but it'll support the weight of a bottle of Arbor Mist. Snaggy carpet in the bedroom, what little you can see from around the bed. Stained tile in the bathroom. It's like peeing in a phone booth.

We have no use for chores, and soon the floors are a swirling sea of dirty clothes and dishes. Stripping down wherever. Eating in every available space.

Cleaning up takes me and my mom hours. Still don't get the deposit back.

*

I find the walls garishly girly, easter egg colors, speckled with frail flowers. Even for wallflowers, these are wallflowers. When the heat climbs, the walls sweat nicotine. It's a miracle. I find the Virgin Mary in chipped paint on the enormous windowseat in the bedroom but don't tell Jeff because he'll laugh at me. You can hear the river flowing and the train whistle blowing at night. That summer I dream of wet trains, spirits, flying, and men. Our water burns my throat. I think the pipes are rusty.

The landlord frowns on us for leaving in October. Now he has to heat the place.

*

Every building is the same, but there's a fastidiousness to the symmetry. Even a dirty place looks cleaner under these conditions. This place has 2 floors. Our neighbors fight night and day. Strange men show up at our door at 8:30 in the morning looking for the woman who live next door. Everyone's got to make a living.

The office manager thanks me profusely for cleaning the oven.

*

We pack up the old lady's stuff box by box and throw our own stuff in a back room. In every window, she has crammed as many glass roosters as will fit. Their little eyes seem to follow me as I move across the room.

In the master bathroom, there is a tub so big it could eat you if it only had teeth.

I set up my home office in a room the size of a walk-in closet, draw the shades, and settle in for a long tour of duty

Week 8 Theme: Vignette

2009-03-22T14:31:00.001-04:00

We arrive 15 minutes early in the Pizza Hut parking lot. I slump down in my seat and try to look casual though I'm dreading going inside. Jeff lights up a Camel. The air tastes like poison, but I'm too tired to step outside. Lungs be damned. My sister Jen pulls up in her car. "Not looking forward to this at all," she agrees. She and her partner are massively hungover, and their children are shrieking in the back seat. This seems like a portend.

My other sister Jesi pops out of the building. "Don't look now, the bitch is back," I jibe. We laugh quickly.

"You guys can come inside already," Jesi tells us when she reaches our cars. "It's a surprise party. A bunch of us are already in the restaurant."

This is news to us. We stumble in. The air is thick with tomato sauce. I see some distant relatives in the room reserved for parties. My evil sister's in-laws. Joy.

I place our present for my nephew (a plastic Spider-Man riding a motorcycle) next to a gigantic 5-shaped balloon.

Jeff finds a good corner to take pictures from with his professional-grade camera. I envy him openly having a way to cope with what I know will be a trying party. Jen informs me Pizza Hut does serve beer. I seriously consider this for a moment, but I'm so exhausted that I worry I'll pass out if alcohol comes into the picture. I make awkward small talk with my brother instead, warning him to not to order curlie fries lest they be stolen. I'm famished.

Nearly 1/2 hour late, my brother-in-law arrives with my nephew Reilly in tow. We are warned of their arrival, and I yell, "Surprise!" with the others. Reilly walks through the room unphased barely acknowledging any of us.

Soon, I'm being pressured to put on a child-sized party hat with a psychotic-looking frog on it. The elastic neck string nearly strangles me. My sister Jen's baby bursts into loud, angry, grating paroxysms of tears when he is also forced to put this foolish contraption on. "There, there," I say. "The Dow is up a percentage and a half today. Don't worry." This makes Jen laugh.

"No thanks to Obama," my dad interjects. "You notice how his stock has been dropping ever since he took office while Palin's just getting more and more popular?"

"Dad," I say, "I don't want to talk about it."

"What?" he replies. "Am I not allowed to attack your precious Obama?"

"I don't want to talk about it. Not at a kid's birthday party."

He chortles and turns to my brother, and together they commiserate on how President Obama will destroy the country, how he basically gave AIG the money, and how much of a buffoon my father believes Joe Biden to be.

More children are crying at the other end of the long table.

Before I know it, my husband is asking me loudly, "Johanne, do you want to leave?" because I've burst into tears in front of everyone.

Week 7 Theme: Character

2009-03-14T20:07:00.001-04:00

I had a dream that I went with my husband to visit our friend Dan, and he was sobbing. Red eyes-runny nose-sobbing. "Do you want me to hold you?" Dream me asked him. He nodded timidly, and I clutched him to me, and his tears ran down my neck. It was as if they were my tears.

***

He is my husband's weird cousin and my best friend. He is also the least emotional guy I know. When he broke up with his girfriend of 8 years, his favorite activity the first few months was to imitate her protests a la Scarlett O'Hara, "I'll never love again!"

I do declare! Oh lands, Dan.

He says he used to be emotional, that he had to learn to man it up years ago, but I've never even heard him yell.

***

We meet Dan and his girlfriend at Margarita's at 6:30. According to my husband, they are 2 seconds late. We've seen them a few times since "it" happened while helping them move into their new apartment, but I don't know how to begin to address the gravity of what's happened to him. His mother died a month ago in her mid 50s. She had a seizure at the breakfast table, went into a coma, and was gone a week later.

I break the ice by recounting an internet mud fight my husband and I got into with a fervent libertarian when we questioned the inductive reasoning of a strange flash movie that equated property with life and theft with murder. Dan loves this story and begins to rant wildly about abortion and the medieval nature of the sex offender registry, another one of his favorite activities.

Our food arrives and I recount the strange dream I had and Dan's wild despair. This, too, evokes laughter, though even remembering the dream fills me with pain. His girlfriend recalls some weird dreams they've had, and my husband and I analyze them, me in Freudian terms, my husband Jungian.

And then before I even realize I'm saying it aloud, I tell them, "I get it. I understand my dream. It's about your mom, Dan."

There's an incredibly uncomfortable silence, but I know I have to press on.

"When it happened to you, I wanted so badly to help you, but there was nothing that I could do. I wanted to be there for you, but I knew that what you might need most was privacy. We kept telling you that if you needed anything to ask, and we meant it. I kept hoping you'd ask for something extravagant. Anything. Just to do something. I kept thinking for fuck's sake, just ask for a pony or something. I want to buy you a pony."

I expect Dan to clam up or get angry, but he smiles a little. He looks touched. "You guys did the right thing," he says. "I needed my space."

Week 6 Theme: Place, setting

2009-03-04T19:46:00.003-05:00

After Charles Simic read at the Belfast Poetry Festival, the three of us lit a fire in the drizzle on that damp beach waxing fussy on first world problems like gender identity, poetics, oil prices. We were frogs with clam bellies bloated with bistro pizza.

Behind us, the ocean smeared the beach and framed our motley triptych:

-Me, chilled in my electric blue sweater that smelled like old ghosts, wiping my nose with nervous constance.

-Jeff, his voice sermonic with conviction though reflexively professing atrophy.

-David, a wizened tiki torch, his tiny face framed by flames. He was always emaciated but never this alive, and it infused him with a profound ghoulishness as though even he did not fully know if he were alive or dead. Chilled to the bone, he clutched his bravado to himself like a bag of dirty clothes salvaged from a stranger's house, and for that moment, I was sick with the virulent film of him, the way he seemed to own everything.

Week 5 Theme

2009-02-22T18:42:00.000-05:00

"Is my head straight?"

Snip snip. Snip snip snip.

"Yep. Wellll -- just a sec." My husband presses his palm down hard on the dome of my skull."There, now it's straight."

*

I was shocked when he had volunteered to cut my hair off. He'd caught me in front of the bathroom mirror frowning at the length. "You know," I'd said, "if I pulled it to the front, I bet I could cut it myself."

*

My aversion to hairdressers is no state secret. When they play surrogate girlfriend chipper with slumber party chats, I squirm in my seat, yet again painfully aware of how out of sorts I am as a nonmember of the Confederacy of Women. I know I'm supposed to adore wicker furniture and the color pink and yearn to be pampered, and yet I throw up in my mouth a little when confronted with these niceties. And yet, I'm not trim or sassy or independent enough to be a tomboy. As a result, I'm sure I come off awkward and implacable -- perhaps even sexually confused -- at the beautician's.

*

As he moved the scissors through my hair, neither of us spoke. I tried to radiate a cone of calm silence, though I was struggling not to shake. I had never felt this vulnerable in my life. He did not hesitate, clipping away, but I knew him too well to miss that he was nervous, too. It took about 2 minutes.

"There," he said. "I think it came out okay." Then, "Where the hell is the dustpan?"

"I dunno," I said. I checked in the laundry room. "Mystery of the century."

"You should go look at it. Tell me how you like it."

It was perfect. I could suddenly see how he saw me and regretted all the times I'd silently brushed away his declarations of love as perfunctory and means to an end. Here was a man who understood me, who had a plan for me and the sense to not force it on me unless it was what I truly desired.

*

Three days later, I go to lunch with my mother and my little niece while my sister is at the doctor's. I ford the unplowed mounds of snow in my driveway and climb into mom's Jeep Wrangler. "You got your hair cut!" She says. "When was that?"

"Oh, the other night," I say. "I have a new stylist."

"It's so cute."

"Thanks," I say, "Jeff did it."

"Really?!" she says. "I never would have guessed."

"That's why I waited for you to compliment me on it first."

She laughs. "It looks really good."

"It was actually kinda fun," I say. "We went out to Target and bought a nice new pair of scissors and a comb and voila!"

"Unky Jeff cut your hair with scissors?" my niece chimes in from the backseat.

"Oh no," mom says.

"No, no, Aunt Jojo is just being silly," I say, realizing the error of my ways.

"Yeaaah, Jojo -- scissors are for paper," my niece corrects me.

"Really, Jojo. What were you thinking?" My mom agrees.

Week 4: Truth... or Consequences

2009-02-08T22:09:00.002-05:00

The Messiah Complex

1.

Just about everyone else in my family is Catholic (except for a few crazy uncles we were never allowed to associate with except for at large family gatherings). Many women in my family love angels. My mother is especially fond of them. She remarked on many occasions that it was a bizarre coincidence that I was born a week after my great grandmother died. I apparently resemble her physically and have a lot of the same personality traits. She had a dream one time that her father who had passed away told her that I was not of this world and that there was something different about me. Not long after, I called to her in the night, and when she came to me, I told her that an angel had been there and that she talked to me. I was 3. My mother was quite spooked by this whole event.

2.

I was raised Catholic, and this was a major part of my formative years and really shaped my personality. My family was very devoted and passionate about religion, though not always completely faithful to the dogma. I enjoyed the time that we spent together as a family especially spending time with my grandmother after mass.

My mom, my grandmother, and my aunts were as interested in angels (if not more) as they were any part of their religion, even Jesus. My mom had a near brush with death when a car nearly ran her over the same year her cousin was killed by a drunk driver. I think she was a teenager at the time. She swears that she was pushed out of the way by a pair of hands, that she could feel them, though I always had my doubts. She told me this when we were picking fiddleheads out near our camp one summer.

My mother collected angel statues. They totally freaked me out. I thought all religious artifacts were scary. It might be that they look so severe or are like a set of eyes or a hidden camera watching you. It's bad enough to be watched in church where you can't laugh or stand up if you feel like you need to unless everybody else is going to.

I used to have nightmares about angels. I'm sure one time I just told my mom it was real to get her attention (though how can I be absolutely certain -- not to feed into a messianic complex). This is the kind of thing 3-year-olds do, after all. But my mother is very superstitious and was taken with the coincidence of the timing of my birth to the death of my great grandmother and spooked by a recent dream that she had where her father told her there was something different about me, something not human. Perhaps she just wanted to think her kid was special. No matter the case, I got her attention.

3.

It was there before I could even begin to understand it. Catholic. A basic fact of me, like my last name or my address. Except I didn't have to memorize "Catholic" in case of a fire. Because of the family I was born into, it was an integral part of my formative years. They were followers of Christ, though I wouldn't exactly say they were sheep. Plus, it had its own rewards. Often, I would get the opportunity to be invited to my grandmother's house after mass where she repeatedly offered me Diet Pepsi (did she not remember she'd asked, or did she want to get rid of it?) and I'd abscond to the bathroom to weigh myself. Scales were verboten at my house as they reminded my mother of THE INADEQUACY. My grandmother would wave her hand at me when I worriedly repeated the priest's words about the threat of homosexuality to the church's way of life. "Nothing wrong with people having someone to love." She believed mostly in the Book of Matthew, the Gospel of Love. My mother was more into the Old Testament, though I suspected that was really just about the lushness of Charlton Heston's beard. The God-fearing women in my family all had their own persuasions, but one fact was non-negotiable: The existence of angels.

My female relatives were wild about them. Angels were the new Elvis! Every Christmas or birthday without fail, they exchanged angel paraphernalia with flowery notes that smelled like potpourri, ribbons, and pictures of Jesus. It was like the Angel of the Month Club. You might say my mom was the ringleader. She'd been a believer in angels ever since one saved her from being killed by an out-of-control car. It was the same year her cousin was hit by a drunk driver and made quite an impression on her.

When I was growing up, my mother's cabinets were studded with angel figurines. Seraphim with their lances guarded the mantel. The cherubs on top of the piano had their mouth stretched in wide o's. Joy or agony? I wasn't sure. I began to feel like the statues could see into my soul. What did they see? I was afraid to find out. I tried to avoid them, but every morning as I headed downstairs to get my pancakes, I passed the angels (hurrying past and singing under my breath) and tried to avoid eye contact with Jesus. He was even meaner than I was in the morning, his eyes twisted in agony underneath his crown of thorns.

I couldn't even hide from them in my sleep. I dreamed of their empty faces blank with judgment regarding me. What is this wicked child? they seemed to say. The one who asks so many questions. I grew exhausted and frightened to go to sleep. I took to half-consciousness trying, like my friend Wanda had shown me, to actually sleep with one eye open. The light descended upon me, and I wasn't sure if I were asleep or awake. Words filled my head, braids of words too intertwined to decipher. I floated in the interstice before surfacing. The light vanished, and I bolted from my room as quickly as my tiny legs would carry me.

"Ma," I said, poking my head into her room.

She roused quickly. "What?"

"An angel came to me," I said. "I was so afraid."

"There, there now, Jojo. There's no need to be afraid," she said. Her words were comforting, but I could sense unease in her tone. "I know who you are. Your grandfather told me."

Week 3: Scene setting and dialogue

2009-02-01T19:39:00.002-05:00

Every Tuesday night, I violate the conditions of my house arrest to play poker with our friends Mike and Nicole. It's my favorite night of the week. They have 2 young children and work opposite shifts to take care of them. As a result, they have no social life. These are my kind of people. Add in the thrill of wiping up the $5 buy-ins and antagonizing the losers (a joy usually reserved for my husband, a notorious card shark) and Mike gifting murky mystery ales, there is nothing more wonderful.

This Tuesday my husband and I arrive at the appointed time raring to go. Mike answers the door. His face is swollen and pained. He looks like he's been up for days. Nicole is nowhere to be found. Their son Isaac, now a touch over 2 years old, greets me with a broad, "Hi," and then, "Mommy?" He is clearly confused. My friend Nicole is a tremendous person, bright, charismatic, and virtually infallible, but physically we are negatives of each other. Accustomed to Isaac, I kind of shrug it off, though I'm admittedly creeped out. A shy kid, this is the first time he's ever spoken to me.

Mike explains carefully to Isaac in a Mr. Rogers kind of voice, "That's not Mommy, Isaac. It's just Mommy and Daddy's weird friends."

My husband Jeff says, "Can you say freaks?"

Isaac gives him an incredulous look and runs off to his room.

"Well that settles it," Jeff says.

Nicole's working late. She is an important person with an important job where she does important things, and some important stuff came up. This happens about half the time, so Jeff and I come prepared. We whip out the spoils of our journey, a few pounds of chicken wings from the Hannaford Union Street wing bar, or as I like to call it, Heaven With Serving Tongs. We invite Mike to join us, and he gratefully accepts. Juggling 2 kids, he often forgets to do important things like feed himself.

As we're gossiping about mutual friends who are dating each other and whether we think it'll last, I feel a tug at my shirt. "Oh hey, Isaac," I say.

He tilts his head seeming to take this in and considers my greeting for a moment. Finally, he points at Jeff and says what sounds like, "mmh gay."

"Dude," Jeff says to Mike. "I think your kid just outted me."

"All right!" Mike says. "High five!" Isaac gleefully complies.

"Yeah, Isaac, show me some skin!" I say.

Everyone is looking at me funny. Nicole, having just returned at that instant, says, "Uh, I think you mean 'slap me some skin.'"

"Unless you have a thing for naked kids," Jeff adds.

"Oh no," I say. "Now this, this is why I shouldn't leave my house."

Isaac is of course oblivious to my gaffe. This is one of the few things I like about children.

Mike picks up an ugly-looking stuffed animal that I assume must be a turkey and says, "Watch this." He pulls back a rubber strap on the turkey toy (at this point I realize it's a slingshot), and lets it fly. The turkey flies through the air making one of the most horrible sounds I've ever heard. I imagine this must be what a turkey sounds like being fed alive through a grinder. It's positively blood curdling. Isaac claps his hands together, laughs, and chases after the bird. He brings it back and hands it to Mike saying "again?"

"Can you say 'please'?" Mike says.

"Again?" Isaac says.

"Good enough." He lets it fly again.

This time I chase after it, too. I'm half wondering if it has an off switch and half wanting to play with it. Being incredibly immature, I end up playing with it. Isaac joins me. Mike bows out gracefully, and all of a sudden, I'm playing catch with Isaac. It's fun at first, but I quickly grow bored with it and am at my wit's end with the turkey's yowling. What's worse, there's no off switch. Even over Isaac's laughter and the turkey's infernal screaming, I can hear Nicole telling a grown-up story, and knowing Nicole, it's definitely one I would like. It's time for swift and decisive action. "Can you go long, Isaac? Run, run, run," I say. While Isaac is running to the front door and his back is turned, I wedge the turkey under one of the couch pillows. All the adults in the kitchen see me and roar with laughter.

"Isaac," I say, "Where'd the bird go?"

He runs in crazed little circles, moving his toys, peering under the furniture.

Nicole smirks and says, "I think he got tired and went to bed, Isaac."

"Yeah, the bird told me he was tired," I say. It's a conspiracy!

Isaac dashes off to check his bedroom. He comes back. "Gerra bar lino," he says to me. I do not speak child, so I look to Nicole for a translation.

"I think Mr. Turkey flew off to where the birdies sleep," she says to Isaac.

"But he'll be back," I add trying to be helpful.

Isaac seems satisfied with this and goes off to his room to play quietly with his toys.

"I can't believe that actually worked," Nicole says.

"I'm a master of illusion," I say.

Week 2 Piece -- Today Nintendo, Tomorrow the World

2009-01-23T20:31:00.002-05:00

1988: My grandmother woke us in the middle of the night. I saw her standing there in the hallway in her velvet bathrobe looking quite the grande dame and knew instantly. My brother and I leapt from our beds and jumped up and down like little howler monkeys. Our parents were home!

They'd only been gone for two days on a trip to Portland, a little adult time. We jumped and shrieked, jumped and shrieked. It was pure ecstasy. What's more, they'd come bearing gifts. My dad laid the box before us. “I looked everywhere,” he beamed, “but I finally found one.”

One what? we wanted to know. The box had a mysteriously long word on it. I'd never seen it on my spelling tests.

“What's that say?” my little brother asked, cocking his head to the side.

“Nintendo,” my mom replied.

We soon figured out that Nintendo was the toy to top all toys. The particular package they'd bought us had a track and field game that came with a mat. The running events were pretty simple. You ran on the mat and tried to run faster than the computer player, who mysteriously rain or shine always ran the same speed. What a bad ass. For the jumping levels, you would jump as high as you could, and the computer would calculate your height through simple physics and project that into distance. Our parents were pleased. It was great exercise and of course great fun to watch us overexert ourselves.

That was of course until my cunning plan. I quickly became suspicious of the machine and set out to outsmart it.

I knelt on the floor and slapped my hands on the foot pads on the mat in a quick alternating pattern. My player zipped ahead of the frumpy old computer schmuck like a streaker in January. It was glorious!

But that left the jumping events. Watching my sister with her long legs leap into the air, I surmised what I must do. On my turn, I jumped off the map -- sideways to the floor beside it. My little track man flew and flew. I counted to 10 and then confidently stepped back on. This Olympian had jumped a half a mile.

Unfortunately, I was not praised as a savior. I had ruined the game. Track and field had degraded into an exercise in demon drumming and popping out for a snack during jumping events, track man flying miles above earth, his tiny pixellated face staring wide eyed at trees and houses below as he careened towards the planet, chanting oh god oh god oh god...

1990: My countless hours of high-pitched appeals had not gone to waste. “But moooooom, all real writers use them – and how'm I supposed to get into Harvard without one?” I had finally conned my parents into buying me my own computer for my birthday. In actuality, they were probably just sick of me hogging the typewriter, the incessant peck-peck-peck in the dining room at hours past my bedtime. No matter.

To my delight, my father, all too aware of my incessant hero worship of Alex Trebek, had also included a Jeopardy game where I could compete against either a computer player or another human being, if of course I could somehow convince somebody to join me. It's on! I thought, setting out in search of a sucker to hustle. My siblings, no doubt knowing how much of a trivia sadist I could be, weren't having any of it. My mom also refused but suggested, “Maybe your father will play with you.” How quick she was to throw this man to the lions. When I approached him, to my delight, he agreed – but of course, he would be working a shut-down for the next three weeks, stopping only to sleep and eat, so our showdown would have to wait, “you know how these things go, kid,” but I knew I had heard a yes.

My life became all about the Jeopardy. All my hobbies went on hold, stamp albums pushed into the closet, half-finished manuscripts into the desk. I crouched before the lit screen for hours every night, monastic in my conviction. While my father toiled on the paper machines before driving hours to collapse in his bed, I devoted myself to the memorization of knowledge. I began to feel as though I could sense computerized Trebek's thoughts. I was one with the Daily Double.

When the shut-down finally ended and dad was again spending some of his moments conscious around the house, I broached the subject of our match. He seemed confused and had forgotten but after some prodding agreed to the showdown.

The battle was on! I wheeled him in a second chair, trying hard to conceal my smugness. My father fought furiously but buzzed in before even knowing the answers, wringing his hands in frustration as the CPU rejected his spelling. The result was inevitable. I sleep-walked through the questions, having seen them all a myriad of times. I emerged the victor! My father shuffled out of the room, disgusted. Alex Trebek shouldn't care about “i” before “e.”

That sore loser couldn't ruin my fun. I had beaten my father, The Machine. I was John Henry from the picture books at school. Unstoppable.

2009: I'm a child of the Information Age. My living room is a hall of mirrors. There are screens in every direction, a 42-inch flat-screen plasma on a stand, our trailer's crown jewel, a floor model snapped up for 60% off, purchased with our stimulus check. It is large enough that I could dive easily into it if there were something on the other side. Sitting atop a 3-foot speaker, there is a 14-inch color TV we dragged out with rabbit ears to watch election night results live nearly 3 months ago. We can't be bothered to put it away. My husband and I each have 2 monitors apiece hooked up to our computers. While I write, do research, or play games on one monitor, streaming video is playing on the other. Our shelves are lined with video games, movies, and TV box sets.

The first thing I say when someone asks me a question is, “I dunno. I'll Google it.” My mom calls me as a kind of “information support.” For her I cradle the phone between my shoulder and neck and look up low-phosphorous foods. For her I visit Eastern Maine's on-line newborn nursery and print off photos of her grandson while he's still on the neonate floor. For her I research the tax implications of gifting real estate. Each morning, I start my day with an hour of news recorded the night before. I read headlines on my lunch break. I wallow in the past, present, and future.

I've met all kinds of characters traipsing about on the Internet, people that mirror the ones I meet in the real world and ones that seem to be troubling though interesting new forms of life. When I befriend the son of a Pakistani ambassador, I brush up on basic Urdu and learn how to cook biryani. When I become acquainted with an escort living near Seattle, I visit the forums where she advertises and read “provider” reviews and learn industry euphemisms. At parties, I am a real hit.

We spend an embarrassing number of hours playing video games. Now I'm even programming one, fleshing it out from within, crafting the perfect toy. When our mothers call and ask if they're interrupting anything, we tell them we are “watching a movie.” We hate to admit some of our best friends don't even exist and still others we don't even know.

When I was a child, the world was still real. Now the digital has replaced the tangible. I think in shorthand.

2009-01-22T14:40:00.003-05:00

I just posted the second draft of the confessional piece I wrote for the second week prompts below. I'm not entirely satisfied with it, but I think it's a little better than it was in the first draft. I probably just need some more distance from the piece. I think writing about high school is painful for me because I was such a jerk back then, and my days were so empty and shallow and full of posturing. This class has been real stretch for me so far because I don't usually write about my life. I've actually been accused of being obscurantist and purposefully obtuse as a poet, never confessional or even accessible for that matter...

I took out that aside and scrapped the two expository paragraphs about high school. I don't think the voice is quite right in the ones I put in instead though. It's a little clipped, a little flat or something... I don't quite know.

Still working on the Week 2 assignment for history, making excellent headway... I should be done with that one soon. That one's in a much lighter mode, and I'm having a good time writing it.

new draft of week 2 prompts

2009-01-22T14:39:00.000-05:00

I'm the hyper, nauseatingly precocious kid in all the snaps, wearing an evening gown at the breakfast table, correcting my mother's grammar in a Grover t-shirt. A good Catholic girl who still idolizes her father because he works 70 hours a week and never says anything to her.

Those are the years before I understand loneliness as more than an abstraction, when "I'm lonely" means "don't ignore me" like "ouch" means "don't touch me."

My father has a photographic memory so they like him at work. That seems to be where he is really living his life. Wiped out from the long shifts redolent of eau de mill, he is a mysterious monolith half-unconscious on the couch. My mother is ebullient and constantly bakes cakes shaped like things. One day, I ask for a brontosaurus, and she looks it up in one of my dinosaur books tracing the shape of its long neck with one finger in the air, squinting her nose while she divines how much batter she will need, the cake arriving almost automatically within the hour. My parents are perfectionists. My brother and my sisters are perfect children, hard-working, pious, obedient, punctual, polite. Even I am yet to become the middle child with "so much potential," "the lazy one."

My parents first know there is something wrong with me when my mom is called in for a teacher's conference. I am 12 and know I will surely be killed. Mrs. H has confiscated my greatest achievement of my life so far, a real work of literary ingenuity, "Beneath the Rocks of Castaway Cove," a dramatic piece that is a bizarre mixture of murder mystery, erotica, and sci fi carefully scribed into 2 full manuscript notebooks and distributed among the entire sixth grade population and most of seventh as a wildly successful single-copy 2-volume edition. I have become popular as a result and then unfortunately subsequently vulnerable to the administration. My mom recoils at the terrible news: I'm subversive and dishonest, but worst of all -- I'm curious about sex. They decide that writing is a potentially unhealthy outlet for me and forbid me from writing about awful, offensive, or obscene subjects. I nod and go about my business. Later my deception is discovered when my mother comes upon a cache of poems I had written questioning the existence of God. When confronting me, she calls me "devil spawn" and grounds me for 2 weeks. This is the point I start writing in cipher. My mom, seeing my room festooned with sheets of numbers, is pleased that I've taken a renewed interest in my math homework.

In high school, my mother and I begin to address each other as if we are the person we each want the other to be. When I strut around in a funky vintage sweater, she asks me, “Are you trying to look poor?” and I retaliate by misquoting Marx. At least my sisters have the decency to act out at home. I just make her look like a bad mother. Am I so ungrateful for all they've done for me? I know she's onto something but sass her anyway, snap that anyone worth knowing will make the distinction between her and me. She throws my keyboard down the stairs. It lies there gap-toothed, missing the low “C” key. I storm out of the house, jump in my car, and drive away before there's violence.

Whenever my best friend's mother opens the door and finds me standing there with rudiments of luggage, she knows what's happened. I don't even have to explain. Inevitably, my mother will call to let us know that she'd rather I not come home. My friend's mother looks pained delivering the news to us. I pull out what money I have. Tell her mom I'll pay for my own food. Even sleep in the basement. She tells me not to worry. We go through this every time. When she leaves for her boyfriend's house for the night, my friend pulls out 2 Virginia Slims she's stolen from her, and we smoke in the back yard complaining about how misunderstood we are, one of our favorite hobbies, reeling in the bliss of stolen cigarettes. I stay there for two weeks. When I finally come home, my mom and I act like nothing has happened.

In the pictures from my first try at college, I'm the one who never sleeps, lies about where she's been. You can tell because I won't look directly into the lens. You might be able to read it out of my eyes. I take the occasional break from writing a film noir novella to throw back a handful of pills. I think I look glamorous, but really I'm just bony. This stranger is my great grandmother with wilder hair, a bit lewd but fierce.

I'm up for anything, the life of the party. My skin is turning gray. In the two-bedroom apartment we share, all six of us roommates pass out on the living room floor together. Days disappear from me. Months. I feel like I emit an aura of mystery and that I'm radiant, a natural. I probably just stink. My much older boyfriend teaches me what cocktail of vitamins to take so I can function the mornings after and hold down my gig as a maid. It's a code. Do what you want, but don't become a cartoon junkie. I think he's a terrific catch because he dropped acid with Ken Kesey and has an encyclopedic knowledge of contraband horticulture. I still won't look at the camera.

My new family shrinks and grows, shrinks and grows, an accordian complete with raves, homeless stints, busts, and the occasional assault. This is not my mother's polka.

The girl with so much to give, destined for greatness, is strung out, oozing irony.

In the midst of disintegrating, I'm brought back to my first family paranoid, weak, and exhausted and confused about who I am, where I am, or how I got there. My parents still make as little sense to me as they did before, but nursed back to health by this alien species, I learn their customs, perform their rituals. When my boyfriend calls looking for me, my mother tells him to go away, that I'm not here, that I may never be here again, that he's killed her daughter, I'm a shell now, isn't he satisfied? I'm there for the whole thing, hear her yelling into the receiver, but it takes me years to understand.

It's been almost a decade since then. I'm a different person than the girl in the pictures, though my DNA would match hers. I'm a law-abiding citizen, happily married, and hold down a good job. Most people I meet think I'm a prude until they get to know me. Sometimes I even clean my house.

January 3, 2009: The younger sister of a friend of mine, just barely an adult, sits with me on my porch. She makes me promise not to tell her brother (I won't) and confesses to me that she hates her body, hates her life, looks up to me (I tell her not to), and knows I won't judge her. Says she's smoking weed and purging. I'm not her, but she reminds me of a younger version except she is beautiful to a degree I will never achieve, modelesque and fiery with an incredible intellect.

I muster as much austerity as I can manage and tell her I understand what she's going through as much as anyone can understand what anyone else is going through. I tell her I kind of understand. I tell her to cut her losses, go see a therapist, get out before something terrible happens. I tell her how beautiful she is on the outside and then tell her that she is 10 times more beautiful on the inside (not to simply console her but because it is true and strikingly obvious). I tell her, "I almost died," but as the words leave my mouth, her eyes flicker a mere millisecond after the word "almost," like I've promised her immortality, that she's fixated on an impossible expectation, and it's then that I realize I've made a terrible mistake.

Final Journal Day (7)

2009-01-22T07:48:00.002-05:00

I was a wreck yesterday, a jittery, nasty ball of nerves. I woke up with a headache that just wouldn't go away (starting to expect it was a referred toothache or something). At work, I was bored and restless. Both the cat and Jeff were avoiding me.

I was still grouchy when I emerged from my office when the scent of chili powder hit me. My husband's chili, my favorite food! I was saved.

I ate 2 whole bowls and drained my Sprite and somehow transformed into a reasonable human being once again.

Dear Diary, I'm In Love (Journal Day 6)

2009-01-20T23:59:00.002-05:00

He caught my attention with his silky baritone, clear diction, his high-flown prose. It was the 2004 DNC. The hall was crammed with people. A thin sheet of glass separated us. But were were the only 2 people in the room. I sat up and took notice.

It was all over when I heard his super-sexy policies. "He's too liberal! This is a center-right country." But all I heard was the beating of my own heart. I had a bad case of the junior senator from the state of Illinois.

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

I just got back from the inaugural party. My head is aching. My throat is sore. I just laughed for 5 hours straight. The champagne was some kind of sweet blush. It was terrific.

We pleaded with Dan to not fast forward through Rick Warren. Every time he ended a sentence, we'd all cry in unison the tagline, "But not for the gays!"

Eleven of my dearest friends. Stupid jokes. Commentary on Schieffer's slow and creepy transformation. Brutal but playful attacks on everyone who appeared on the screen. We fantasize about tripping Dick Cheney ("it'd be worth the sentence"). During commercials, we reminisce, remark on the surreality of the past few months. When Obama reads his speech, I cry. Everyone thinks this is cute. It's wonderful to be with people I love and to feel patriotic and proud. They cut to the Oval Office. I want to know what Obama is signing.

The digital box is screwed up. The recording cuts out in parts. We vow to look the coverage up on youtube.

What a charmed night.

Journal Day 5

2009-01-19T22:00:00.002-05:00

I'm so exhausted I probably won't write much of any significance on the old journal assignment this evening, but doing things that you don't want to do because you said you would builds character... or something.

Not a lot happened today. I was incredibly tired all day (had the worst time getting to sleep last night) and guzzled caffeine. I managed to be relatively productive at work while ensuring that the documents were still coming out accurate.

I finally finished the essay on the week 2 prompts (been working on it with a passion the last 2 days), thought about not posting it, but went ahead and did it anyway. It was a really cathartic project. I know I went overboard, but I'm really glad I tried to fully realize on the page what sprung to mind when I saw the weekly prompts. These things are like inkblot tests. I guess that would make John our writing therapist...

The piece on my life in history is coming together more gradually. I know what I'm going to write about, some of the anecdotes, etc., but haven't quite gotten the right voice down. I think sound is really important to a piece of writing, and if I can't hear how it should sound before I start putting the ideas out there, I know I'm in trouble.

That said, I abuse parentheses and asides. I can never quite get myself to make one point at a time. I have no idea what to do about it though.

Journal Day 4

2009-01-18T18:41:00.003-05:00

In yesterday's journal entry, I attacked one of the "big" issues facing our time. It worked so well then that today I'm going to again wrestle a behemoth whilst performing that ages old juggling act of avoiding coming off arrogant, uninformed, or stodgy.

I want to tackle the issue of salad dressing.

Because I love to pose as a healthy person and then soak up the praises and envy of those who actually believe my ruse, I eat an inordinate amount of salad. I actually am a little shocked at this point that I haven't turned green. The only problem is that I have taste buds. Accordingly, I can't feign the little missus act and say full of demure piety to others (be it my husband, a server, or even myself, basically anyone who serves me a salad), "Hold the dressing." Well, I guess I could say it, but then I'd have to dump something fatty onto it as soon as they turned their backs. But I digress. The point is, I require salad dressing.

Unfortunately, while I balance a mean checkbook and am one scary bastich in Scrabble, I have a serious spatial intelligence deficit. I wasn't able to tie my shoes until I was 12 years old relying on first Velcro and then the kindness of strangers at the age that Velcro became an unseemly embarrassment to get around safely and in relative style. I rely on a series of bizarre mnemonics to remember how to get to places I visit frequently. Subsequently, it should come as no surprise that I can't for the life of me figure out a reliable way to judge how much dressing I should pour onto a salad, short of measuring, and who can be bothered to stoop to such a reasonable practice? Because of this, I have made more slimy salads than I can count with greens that wilt before I can pick up my fork and force them down.

That was until yesterday, the blessed day when I finally discovered the solution to all my ills: Oil-based dressing. Now my greens float on a pond of Greek dressing like pristine lily pads rather than ending up as pond scum clinging to the plate. And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost, eat your heart out.

Cost of Living (journal day 3)

2009-01-17T18:25:00.003-05:00

This whole fiasco with medical costs is spinning wildly out of control. I've realized this in for a while now, though in a strictly intellectual sense, being involved in patient care as a necessary eavesdropper, a spy with a keyboard. In my line of work the more you can produce, the more you get paid (and the converse is also true; if nothing gets done, you take home nothing), so I, being both money hungry and a born strategist, conspire to squeeze every drop of productivity out of work days. This means that I end up handling an extraordinary number of patients in any given week, let alone month or year, and through this, patterns emerge, so it had occurred to me long ago that all the buzz in the media about medical costs getting more and more outrageous with each passing day is not sensationalism and that this reality has a staggering impact on the lives on not only the truly unfortunate (those who suffer heart attacks, cancers, etc.) but also people who are relatively healthy and are basically just having to pay for the grave insult they've done upon humanity simply by aging (how inconsiderate of them). Again, I've known this for quite some time with it particularly reinforced through my professional involvement but never really felt it in my bones. Until today.

My husband and I stopped at the pharmacy to pick up our prescriptions. Now, before you imagine us as invalids with tubes coming out of us and a whole team of attendants to spot us in case we take a sudden tumble, I have to set out the following: We are on the brink of 30, free of any serious maladies, albeit sedentary and needing to lose a few pounds. We don't have recreational medicine use as a hobby either. Of the two of us, I'm the more stoic and less likely to worry about my health (strangely, hearing about sick people just makes me feel really healthy and not consumed with fears about being beset with bizarre illness), but neither of us is particularly spleeny. (I should know; one of my sisters is a hypochondriac. She loves being attended to. It's kind of amazing how much “sicker” she was than everyone else in the universe, basically on her deathbed with a sinus infection, while at the same time managing to keep up an active social life, manipulate and guilt my parents into changing the entire family's plans to suit her, and make my life miserable in general. But of course, that's another story entirely.) All told, the bill came to $100. One hundred dollars! My heart nearly stopped – but then of course, I had to regain my composure because think of the medical bills if I couldn't get it started again. No, thank you, ma'am. I have really good insurance because we're part of the Eastern Maine Healthcare System, and our plan is swank, but they really hit us with the pharmacy co-pay increases. Oh yeah, and the premiums went up $100 every two weeks. And the dental plan coverage was slashed.

I know, boo hoo, poor me. I have this gold-plated toilet kind of plan, and I'm whining about increases. Don't mistake me, I know that I'm nowhere near the neighborhood of true hardship with this, and theoretically, I won't drop dead (at least not for a while) if I stopped a medication or two. But how much could I realistically contribute to the economy if I was bedridden with migraines for days on end? How much more complicated would my life be (both personally and financially) if I were suddenly joined by unwanted offspring because I wasn't privileged enough to be able to afford my reproductive rights? And this is all in my cushy, lovely moonbeams and gumdrops personal world. I feel hopelessly bourgeois kvetching about price hikes and the shaving away of the margin of disposable income while I know full well people are being forced out of their homes, people are losing their licenses because they're unable to pay their child support (and subsequently their transportation and ability to keep their jobs), children are going hungry because their parents are laid off, and old ladies are trying to overdose on their meds because they don't know how they're going to make it through the winter and don't want to suffer anymore or be a burden (all true stories from work). But even my gold-plated toilet couldn't shelter me from feeling faint at how things are getting worse and worse. Yes, I have high ground in this situation, but it doesn't mean I like to listen to everyone drowning or even can stay sane while it's happening for that matter.

I have a few casual friends who are pretty hardcore libertarians and especially so when it comes to the idea of the government helping the populace with healthcare, and I just can't fathom sometimes how it must be to be able to just let things take its course, to be so Darwinian about who deserves a safe life and who doesn't, who deserves checkups and who should be allowed to have pieces just fall off them because of lack of routine maintenance... or that Class (with a capital “c”) is something that resets every generation, an even playing field with lack of handicap, or that this country wasn't built on the backs of the conquered, the enslaved, the wronged... that birth is enough of a gift to ensure we have equal opportunity to the things that truly matter. I don't think the right to the preservation of life of confirmed human beings (I don't want to begin addressing the distinctions re: fetuses, zygotes, first date conversations between the future parents, etc., because I won't make this point) should be a rousing competition. I don't think affording a colonoscopy should be a way to wow the neighbors. I'd be a terrible animal. My primal instincts are so deeply repressed and subverted, I might as well be an aloe plant.

I also don't think by reducing government to the size of a thimble is the surest way to protect our citizenry just as a tent isn't the best structure to keep out burglars, but my mother ate a ton of fish while she was pregnant, so I probably have some form of mercury-induced encephalopathy, for what it's worth.

This is a mammoth post, but no matter how much I write or say about this subject, I never feel like I have said enough. I want to scream at everyone I see, “Don't you know people are dying needlessly?!”

Illness doesn't care how good of a person you are. A blood clot isn't necessarily a reflection on what kind of life you've lived. That's been one of the more chilling aspects of my job – the seeming randomness of it all. Sure, you can improve your odds by eating well, exercising, taking those (not quite bargain priced) blood pressure and cholesterol pills, getting plenty of sleep, not smoking, etc., but there are no guarantees. I have heard of people who do everything right and roll snake eyes (sometimes a matter of inheritance, sometimes just plain bad luck) and people who totally abuse their bodies and have nothing but good luck rolling twelve after twelve (work with me here, it's a cheesy dice metaphor).

So maybe it's rude. Maybe I have no right. Maybe my opinions on this matter are hopelessly biased by my proximity to the situation of those who are sinking in the midst of this maelstrom, but I'm at the point now where I don't want to listen to people saying things are fine with our private insurer system and that nothing has to be done and that the government helping people is un-American.

That said, I have no way to fix the system. I'm by no means an expert about how it should be done – but to suggest at this point that the system will work itself out or that is fine the way it is, is not only fatuous and a little crazy – it is downright offensive.

cold (day 2)

2009-01-17T02:16:00.002-05:00

Last night was absolute madness. About an hour after I posted, our heat went out, and our pipes froze. Fun, fun. I had to call Jeff away from his enriching social interaction to wait with me for Dead River. Thank goodness for my little space heater. Best 30 bucks I ever spent. When the repair guy finally finished patching things up (our volume gauge was broken and letting moisture in -- or at least that's what he told me; I'm at the mercy of the mechanically gifted to tell me the truth about these things), it was 2 a.m. Jeff and I stayed up to 3:30 playing video games with the blanket warmer on. It's now 70 in here, and I'm still cold today. That's how cold it got in here yesterday. It wouldn't be a big deal (I mean, yeesh, a little 20 below night here and there without heat's nothing up this way, right?), but this is the second time this has happened in the last month. Last time once we got the furnace fixed, the pipes went back to normal in a couple of hours (kind of eerie, no permanent damage though). This time, it's been over 24 hours and still no dice. It's only one room that's affected right now, so we're not totally without water, but I've got a sinking feeling this is going to be expensive. Luckily overtime's been a frequent visitor, and I with my doomsday fears (think Mad Max -- maybe "apocolyptophobia") decided to behave as if heating oil would cost $10 a gallon this winter when saving in the summer/fall, but it doesn't make me feel any about that once we've finally gotten this place paid off, it's started falling apart. Sort of a reprisal of the cosmic joke. The absurdity of our hopeless battle against transience. Man, this is a weird time of night for pseudophilosophy.

Earlier today I spent an hour in a doctor's office waiting room (my husband was having a check-up) doing a book of logic puzzles. It's hard for me to wait without something to do (journal, book, puzzles, etc.) Distractions for me are ways to trick myself into thinking nobody sees me -- like those flimsy old telephone booths (preened away by the ubiquity of cell phones). You might as well be using a clear shower curtain. Yeah, there's the illusion of privacy as they're (mostly) soundproof, but I always felt like I was on display at a museum ("Modern Woman With Plenty of Pocket Change Killing 10 Minutes Bothering Someone"). So today I was sweating it out laboring over a cryptoquiz and trying to act inconspicuous while simultaneously realizing the more I tried to blend in, the more I looked like a damned fool when the most uncanny thing happened. The receptionist started having this amazingly juicy conversation with one of her co-workers about her sister. Apparently she'd shacked up with a guy twice her age with unpaid child support. To clarify, when I say juicy, it wasn't technically anything I hadn't heard before. It was just the juxtaposition of the story with the professional environment. I'm also fairly certainly she didn't think the patients could hear (I was really close to the window and have really sensitive hearing). It was at that precise moment that I realized that she and I were doing precisely the same thing. Sneaking around poorly. Thinking we were invisible (or inaudible).

I guess this is technically Saturday (2-ish in the morning), so I'll probably try to write tomorrow during the day sometime. We're night owls, so sometimes midnight seems an arbitrary way to define the separation of days. My husband's on a student's schedule, so I always end staying up stupidly late on the weekends and getting jet lagged through the week when I go back to first shift hours, but hey, you have to do what you have to do to keep your marriage together, right?

Journal Day 1

2009-01-15T19:56:00.003-05:00

I'm so glad this week is over, and I have a few days off from work. It's probably because I had last week off, but this week was rough. It didn't help that I typed rehab a lot this week (I suspect I was covering someone else's vacation) and had a ton of notes for patients with brain injuries or amputations to transcribe this week. I'm sure it sounds uncomparably selfish (as my dissatisfaction with being involved with their care is the merest sliver of a shadow of the trauma they have undergone), but I so usually enjoy my work that I have completely lost the ability to cope with any sort of unpleasantness at my job. Gosh, I never thought I'd say that when I worked at my old job (it was Hell). So it goes. Also, I won't go into the gore, but there are a lot of steps and details between traumatic event and fitting with a prosthetic, relearning how to perform activities of daily living (ambulation, self-care, etc.) when missing a crucial part of yourself that you always thought you would have (be it a body part, your memory, or even your identity), etc., that are gory and troubling and are never things anyone who hadn't experienced it (be it a patient or a care provider) would ever think about or even realize happen. Death is an abstraction, a mystery, a series of reactions that we understand only by absence, forever a negative in the darkroom. We can't begin to understand the absence of death as it's always through that filter of grief or the anxiety of the unknown -- but to lose vital pieces of yourself... and to know it.. and understand it... and have it on the agenda like laundry or inspecting the car -- it leaves me cold. Bloodless.

Five days to the inauguration party! I'm dying to get sauced on cheap champagne and spit and/or hiss obscenities at Rick Warren while Dan fast forwards through his address. I'll decide which that day. Sometimes you can be too prepared. Kind of kills the esprit.

I'm so desperately enrapt with Barack Obama. The whole universe seems to be buzzing, and I can't help but feel like we're teetering on the edge between certain disaster and ectasy. I was watching Cosby on Meet the Press (msnbc.com is my pseudocable) talk about parenting, and even he can't help but ooze love when Obama comes up in conversation (and all that same kind of crap Limbaugh's spun about Powell's endorsement being race-based can just roll over and die already -- it's just as absurd when applied to Cosby by the way). I'm just so hopeful for the first time in years. The fact that the son of an absent immigrant father (deceased in his early childhood) and an atheist single mother managed to work his way through school, graduate from Harvard Law School (as the president of the Harvard Law Review), and become president of the United States just blows me away. I mean, come on, it's been 2 months, and I'm still reeling and obsessing. I voted as hard as I possibly could. I think I'm still voting. Not to mention he's assembling a dream team, and between reading about those appointments (and hearings) and the new policy that's coming out, I'm getting so excited. OOOOK. I need to stop talking about Barack Obama because it will take over my blog.

In other news (quite literally), I'm really nervous about the situation in the Gaza. I mean, c'mon, shelling a UN building! This is terrible. Not that I'm a champion of Hamas or anything, but it seems awfully precarious for us that our ally (i.e., Israel) is really out of line here. Self-defense, sure, but there's definitely such a thing as overkill.

My nephew got out of the hospital! YAY! Of course, I'm spinning conspiracy theories about why his arm keeps getting infected. I don't dare divulge too much on this blog as it's sensitive stuff, but here's a hint: I'm not blaming the hospital/healthcare providers. 'Nuff said.

I might write later tonight. I don't know... I'm going to try to write at least once daily for 7 days for this theme. I need to take a rest now, eat some rutabaga salad (it's like potato salad but with rutabagas; it's much better -- seriously), and work on making my game.

I hope Jeff gets home early-ish tonight. I haven't seen him all day, and I miss him. At least I got a lot done tonight after work.

Week 1, Part I

2009-01-15T17:49:00.004-05:00

Writer's Autobiography

First Person

Growing up in the Maine "suburbs" meant that I was surrounded by woods and nothing of any interest was accessible by foot. Because my parents were far too sensible to regale us with death machines like four-wheelers or snowmobiles (oh, how I resented them for it at the time!), books were my constant companion, and every Saturday after my mother returned from another yard sale adventure, they arrived by the truckload. I especially liked to read horror novels, murder mysteries, and romances (the ones with anatomically impossible madams and avatars of testosterone on the jackets) because they spoke bluntly, a far cry from the dilute civility I encountered in my life as a child. As with any conversation, I became restless and longed to speak back. My first literary endeavors were short stories set in the evil world of Malcony that I wrote in manic frenzies at the age of 7, owing greatly to C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. Writing this now, I cannot think of a single time in my life which was not mirrored by my writer's life. It has always been there, as my spine, as the evidence of my inner life (much like an EEG reads electrical activity from the brain), galvanizing me with its protean charm when successful and in weaker moments leaving me wounded and hateful.

Second Person

You found a way to never be alone, a high available to you at any time. Like the lotus eaters, you lived lives parallel to your own while merely inhabiting yours. From your private moments sprung infinite variations of experience. True control could be achieved by editing realities, manipulating the truth.

You were isolated forever while surrounded by friends. So popular because no one ever knew the real you. You even wandered in and engaged the theater, though it was eerily postmodern watching your words coming out of the mouths of actors. Everyone praised you, but you felt exposed as though the whole world had seen inside you and knew your peculiarities, proclivities, predilections.

Third Person

She found poetry the most intense high. Everything else tended to recede into grayscale, mundane in the wake of experiments with half-meaning (a sort of meta-meaning!) and shades of intent.

She originally majored in poetry before ending up at community college with an associate's degree and entering a profitable trade. Lucrative day job under her belt, she is taking this course as a refresher for her writing skills before she plans to transfer to UMaine for the fall semester to finish her bachelor's and possibly her master's studying poetry (for the sake of self-actualization).