Juxtapositioning

Yo, an interview

The Evil Queen is hot. The princesses are SOOOOO overrated at Disney. I’m a villain stalker when I go down to Orlando, and they aren’t easy to find, either, dammit.

I have slipped a poison apple or two over the last 15 years I’ve been a professional writer- of course, I prefer the poison PEN version. I try to keep my poison-pen-posts to a minimum (because I just end up sounding whiny and emo) but once in awhile, I serve up the green bubbly apple dippers. Because being a villain is cool like that.

Believe it or not, I go camping with the Schmoneys every year- if they invite me back after that little crapping in their woods incident. I love camping (with Jack Daniels and Slim Jims)- and plan to invest in a warm weather sleeping bag for future frozen run-ins with Mother Nature, who I totally forgive for trying to kill me.

My 1881 Victorian is totally haunted. I haven’t been able to choose my own ghosts so hmmmm, cool question. Let’s see. I would want Frank Sinatra to haunt me, so he could sing “The Lady is a Tramp” and then make out with me. Also, I would want Michael Jackson to haunt me so we could do the “Thriller” dance together at my Halloween party, with the added bonus of my making tons of coin on Access Hollywood and Youtube because Michael Jackson is haunting my house.

Both! Any kind! But, if I’m at the bakery choosing one of each, it would be blueberry pie with red velvet cake for dessert.

It’s always ‘down the shore,’ baby! We still go to the Jersey beaches- Cape May every year! Was born in Jersey so love me some Jersey every summer, because everyone reminds me of my grandmother and I can get a decent cheesesteak.

ooommmggg Twitter. Faster, more fun, better conversations, no Mafia or farming apps, plus my mom’s not on Twitter! I am a total Twitter addict- follow me @marymac- I always follow back, unless there is a chick giving head in your avatar.

Wait I thought we learned in #1 it’s the Evil Queen!

We did. My bad.

Or did you mean a non-fictional character this time? Right. Ok, well I’d say definitely Erma Bombeck- she INVENTED finding the humor in the oft-mundane everyday life of a mom- I read her columns and books growing up. I want to be like her when (er, if) I grow up!

This is going to sound dorky, but I sort of have my ideal posse. My JavaJammers (the cool readers who come hang out on my blog PajamasandCoffee.com) are so much fun- I laugh out loud at their comments, love hanging out with them on Twitter- or in some cases- in real life! I appreciate them reading so I can write. If I could add anyone to the posse it would be Jon Stewart because I worship him on the Daily Show and I want to lick him.

That writing about licking people is slutty.

No, wait, let’s see. Um, I hope I’ve been a fun mom to my 4 kids- I am definitely not THE BEST mom (my blog slogan ‘Where Mediocrity Kicks Perfection’s Ass’ applies to parenthood as well) but I love my four kids more than life itself and being a mom is my best life achievement.

I wrote for print (newspapers and magazines) for nearly a decade before I found blogging. I prefer blogging because I have NO EDITOR! No offense to editors- I’ve been one, but they want things in their voices, while blogging is all about your voice. My advice would be stick with it, it takes time to find your readers (or is that just me? um..). Don’t get overly preoccupied with statistics and making money- those will come with time (I hope..). Just write well, don’t worry so much about ‘blogging with integrity’ (whatever the hell that means) and instead blog with honesty. My last piece of advice would be to read Pajamas and Coffee every day and tell all your friends to as well! Heh.

Ordinary

Yesterday we went for a walk. It was raining a little and I put my hood up to cover my hair, missing my favorite black beret that disappeared last week into The Land of Misfit Hats when the mighty wind blew and trees toppled. We wove our way through art galleries. I admired some pieces and took away new inspiration. There was nothing that needed to be bought, not even the beautifully-colored large glass octopus that called to me from its waterless perch. I turned my eyes quickly  away from a young woman’s impossibly large nose, even though she is probably accustomed to nasal scrutiny. A plate of untouched and drying  fruit stood near the counter.

We walked through a boatyard. Two signs: “Empty” and “Full,” with no other explanation, were posted on the side of the building. Instant art. We went around to the bayside after standing and studying the hundred-years old dog-drowning pool where Padden Creek meets the bay. No dogs now. We crossed the tracks and step-crunched mussel shells on the empty beach, singing improvised Irish drinking songs. I flipped the mitten-ends of my fingerless gloves over my fingertips against the cold coming off the water. An empty cruise ship stood in the bay.

Neighbors stoked the fire in the coffee house across the street when we came in bringing the cold of the bay with us. We watched the flames flare up and then die back down again while we talked in a sine wave of unremarkable connection.

Inhale, exhale.

we take an ass that doesn’t hurt for granted

I fell the other night. Out of bed, apparently. I remember yelling — screaming maybe — something profound like, “Ow!”  And feeling like my body had been glued to the floor. And now, practically every movement I make with my ass (these are surprisingly numerous) hurts.

I can’t help but think that it’s part of the Universe’s plan for me. Tilting on its axis suddenly and causing me to fall out of bed and break my ass. That’s it, isn’t it?

I could also blame alcohol. Why not? My ass hurts when I breathe and I have to point the finger at somebody. And after all, coming home at night to find that my motorcycle had been kicked over for a 4th time had its effect on me. I called the police (“maybe it was the wind?”) and accepted the glass of passion fruit vodka that Matthew handed me. We watched an episode of House — always a good choice when you’re feeling vaguely misanthropic — and clinked sticky passion fruity glasses.

Hmm, misanthropy has its uses. Right now I am feeling untrusting. The rug has been pulled out from under me and I am pissed off. Out of the frying pan only to find out I never left it after all.

This post sounded a lot better in the shower 4 hours ago.

I am afraid and feel alone and there is no one who can help me. Even my ass is on vacation.

Note to Future Self: Do not get divorced from someone who subsequently will go to law school. Just don’t.

Note to Future Self Part Two: Stop being so damned idealistic. You know it gets you into trouble.

Note to Future Self Part Three: I have no other suggestions. You’re on your own from here on out.

What do you do when you just want to die?

Right now, in this moment, I want to die.

While this isn’t purely hypothetical, please don’t freak out. Don’t refer me to a suicide hotline. Don’t tell me I need counseling. Because baby, I can guarantee you 100 percent that I am not the only person in the Universe who feels this way — at least sometimes. Momentarily. But I am one of a handful who is willing to talk about it.

It wasn’t long ago that I first began really embracing this feeling when it comes up. Emotions, to me, are waves. They come, they go, they move through and around and beyond me. Ripples in a pond. Yeah, I’m an emotional person. I would be the first to offer that. And that glorious aspect of me made people around me uncomfortable as a child, so I learned to push it away. Was I successful? Not so much.

Feeling of helplessness, anger, and hopelessness have always been oddly connected for me. I know it has much to do with a panoply of things like that initial childhood dynamic and other perceptual choices I made. I sort of love the irony in that my work, my love, is about helping other people through similar spaces. Healer, heal thyself, right?

So I offer this.

I don’t think of death as something to fear. Yeah, people would miss me. Yeah, there’d be things I wouldn’t do, lives I wouldn’t touch, if my body was no longer infused with my essence. Do I feel a sense of responsibility about that? Not really. I’m all about letting go of responsibilities that aren’t mine. You over there — you have your own life to live irrespective of mine. Even though I love you unabashedly the way I do.

Death would be a respite. In the space I’m in right now, which is ALL ABOUT hopelessness, letting go of that sounds fantastic. Brilliant. The best idea ever.

So this is what I do when I feel like this.

Nothing.

Nothing special, anyway. I don’t try to get over it, past it, or beyond it. I make a pot of congee. I take a shower. I hunt for new apps for my iPhone. I Twitter and Facebook, feeling the interwoven tapestries of all to whom I am connected. I listen to my love laughing upstairs. I write about whatever comes to mind. I breathe, not in any special way. Just in and out.

That’s it. Nothing changes, not for now, but everything changes. Annica.

Inevitability

She looked across the choppy waves, feeling her mind begin to undulate slightly with the incessant in-out motion of the water. The invitation was clear: jump in. The waves sighed at her resistance. Breathing? There is no need for breathing. We are all the breath you need.

High above, a sea bird circled and cried its impatience and acceptance.

Her mind moved in rhythm with the dark churning waves. She began to feel spiny sea creatures moving slowly within her, along with smooth-sided cetaceans and the gills of millions upon millions of fish, each opening and closing like the petals of a flower. She longed to be a part of that flower, simply existing in millionfold duplicate, silvery with scales and glittering with anticipation. She felt her body lean forward with the wanting. The water, the air — they were the same. Her neck would grow gills under those dark waves. Her feet would melt to one another in tandem. Her slippery body would greet the dark depths. Her mind would expand into the nothingness of being.

Across the water, a light. A fishing boat, headed for home. A warm dinner. Dry clothes.

She sighed, aware of the parting between her thighs. No silvery scales stretched across her hips. The dark waves beckoned. She leaned still further.

Cold, cold, down, down, a weight, floating. Stillness.

The light from above dimmed, feathery, cold. The depths grew dark shapes that bumped against her sides and arms. The world expanded, supernovas became black holes, sudden brightness into peaceful dark. Swimming, reaching, breathing the life-giving dark ocean.

Hello Kitty is 35

This is as full of awesome as it gets.

Who knew that an 80′s icon would survive this long? Now Hello Kitty is ironic. Depth of flavor.

Let’s examine some other 80′s icons, and find out whether they slipped quietly into ex-iconic obscurity, or became ironic-iconic. Shall we?

Boy George. Jumped the shark. Sorry, Boy. Now you’re old and creepy.

Breakfast Club. Timeless. Does it help that director John Hughes has died? Do we feel older now? Will you recognize me? Call my name or walk on by?

The A-Team. Oh, come on. You can hum the theme song, can’t you? It doesn’t get more retro-cool than that, especially considering I avoided this show like the plague when it was running. Some things just become a part of you by osmosis.

Madonna. Does something smell like shark in here? Shark with a lot of excellent plastic surgery? And a faux English accent?

Optimus Prime. Wow. Did you see that? You just sat up straighter. A little taller. That’s the effect of Optimus Prime. Even now. I am Optimus Prime, and I send this message so that our past will always be remembered. For in those memories we live on. (Nah, I never watched this either.)

David Lee Roth. Ol’ Diamond Dave was jumping over sharks before there were sharks. Instant kitsch! He’ll be cool again in about 10 years, when we’re sure he’d break a leg or pull a groin muscle. Right now he’s in that in between stage, where you can’t help but just … look … away.

Spuds McKenzie. I can’t even comment. The memories are just too painful.

Forest love song

It started two years ago (or was it two millennia?).  I rented a wee dollhouse in the forest space high above the rock-strewn beach of Pt. Roberts, WA, a tiny peninsula that juts from Canada into Boundary Bay and that because of oversight or a mapmaker’s joke actually belongs to the U.S., requiring border crossings and passports. My dollhouse-in-the-woods was to be the perfect writers’ retreat — difficult to get to, remote, quiet. I could overlook the tiny bathroom/shower combination, sit on the wee sofa built for two, and write.

I found myself drawn outside, though. Late-season blackberries still dotted the tangled vines marking the steep trail down to the beach. Beaches had to be walked. Driftwood and mollusk shells had to be examined. Photos of texture — some rocky, some pebbled, some wood-grained — had to be snapped. The ocean’s calm waves had to be gazed at. Forest trails had to be run through.

And I ran through the forest, marveling that every trail felt like it went downhill. I stood under tree canopies, with rain dripping gently over me through a leafy filter. I shuffled through ankle-deep drifts of maple leaves the size of dinner plates. I knelt reverently under the One Tree, its wide trunk belying its wisdom. I drank in the love of trees, of the forest.

Trees and forests like this don’t exist in Pennsylvania, where I was living at the time. After my ten days in the Pacific Northwest forest, I went back to PA and looked at the Blair Witch trees there. It wasn’t the same. My heart was with the tall mossy firs of the wet west.

Now I live a short walk from the forest. I ran the nearby trail the other day, taking in the heady scent of fallen leaves that reminds me of the smell of pumpkin carving, remembering. My forest runs are meditational. This one was filled with color — gold, deep crimson, and moldering deep wet green-black. An artist neighbor who makes colorful banners that decorate this part of the city with unexpected waving splashes of color made a banner in those colors exactly. It waves on a bamboo pole just opposite my livingroom window next to the wide tree across the street.

Matthew’s house is not far from another magical forest. We go there at night, when the walls become the world all around and the trees disappear into time. We sit under a big tree, melting into the rough bark, remembering when trees were our world, and feeling the slow sap heartbeat awaken within us. I hear whispers in that place, and the tall trees bend their branches down, inclining their regal heads, remembering.

Lessons in non-attachment

I am told I sometimes take things too seriously. This may be true and I am learning to let go of my issues — one clenched death-grip finger at a time.

1. Control of space. My landlords are cheap. I should have known this when I moved in, I should have smelled it on their clothes or something, but since I was dealing with “real people” instead of a faceless corporation, my expectations grew exponentially. I would be treated with care, I thought. Like a person. Loved. Because I would love my place and it would be my home. My place, my home, is an extension of me. I have:

• Broken down in a tearful puddle when the kitchen sink backed up. Clearly a personal attack!
• Freaked out when I found out that none of the three (3) smoke detectors in my home contained actual batteries, and were therefore non-functional.
• Had vengeful thoughts when the toilet leaked all over the floor for the 8th time, even after Cheap Landlord Guy replaced the wax ring (impressed by my toilet knowledge? I also know what a ball cock is).
• Vowed (silently, passive-aggressively) to take revenge when the washing machine failed to spin the water out of my laundry, forcing me to lift a heavy, dripping, sodden load of bed sheets into the dryer to spend the next 12 hours drying while I slept that night wrapped in a blanket. Landlord refuses to repair it.

This last was surprisingly important. Who knew how valuable clean laundry could be? I found a guy who refurbishes old washers and got him to deliver one this afternoon. I watched him heave the landlord’s broken one  out into the rain.

Satisfying, that.

2. Fixing people and situations. I sing in a community choir. Not everyone there is on the same level with choral niceties like reading music or counting or even singing the right notes. Whatever. In the past, the constant mistakes of others would have driven me crazy and I would have felt compelled to point them out to the group, thinking I was helping support the efforts of the tireless choir director whose tender ears were surely in agony over the plethora of errors.

Fortunately, there is someone already doing this job. She’s highly annoying; we all sigh whenever she opens her mouth; I find her seriousness amusing. She gets the job done and it means I don’t have to.

I love her.

3. Looking stupid in public. One of the best things I’ve done recently is signing up for improv class. I love that we are actively encouraged to take risks and fuck up and then laugh at one another about it. I’m four years old again and everything is funny.

Last week we played a game called “Emotional Nursery Rhyme,” where we were given an emotion to evince while saying a simple nursery rhyme over and over. The emotion I was assigned?  “Sultry.” I am told my rendition of it brought “Little Boy Blue, Come Blow Your Horn” to a new level.

OCD much?

It has recently been pointed out to me — not thrown in my face, since that would be, well, awkward, wouldn’t it? — that I might be a teensy bit controlling. The world “rules” was used, maybe even the phrase “lots of rules.” Repeatedly.

Ahem.

This may or may not be true.

But in visiting my house, there are a few things you should know.

1. Anything that touches or may possibly touch my naked or sleeping body (or the naked or sleeping body of anyone whose body may at some point touch any portion of my own), including but not limited to sheets, blankets, pillows, duvets, towels, and clothing of any kind (unless obviously dirty and therefore unwearable), may not also touch the floor without a complete tour through the entire laundry cycle.

2. Toilet seat lids shall stay down lest some wayward item befall a watery death, having instantly been rendered forever untouchable.

3. Hands that touch any part of me shall ideally have been washed within at least the past hour.

4. Cabinet doors, drawers, etc must be kept closed, not left standing open unless in active use.

5. All horizontal surfaces must be kept free from clutter, debris, and should ideally be lickable. However, lickable horizontal surfaces must immediately be cleaned after having been licked, should that occasion occur.

6. “Clutter” shall be defined as “anything not belonging directly to me”.

7. Floors shall ideally be vacuumed daily, or at least be free from discernible crunchy pieces that may be felt when stepped upon. Portions of floors left unvacuumed because they are under furniture may be left undisturbed at my discretion. Anyone other than me wielding a vacuum must of course leave no floor surface undisturbed.

8. Uncontained liquids (including but not limited to water, overexuberant cleaning splashes, and bodily fluids) in the bathroom or kitchen shall not be tolerated, especially on the floor or other horizontal surfaces.

9. The act of dusting shall not occur or be discussed except at infrequent and sporadic intervals, prompted by a suddenly obvious need to have all surfaces free from accumulated dust, in which case the dust freeing process must be completed immediately.

10. Foods descending rapidly and accidentally, if in the amount of a single bite or less, and especially if consisting of chocolate or anything crunchy and salty, to the floor and residing there less than six (6) seconds may be consumed, especially if no one else is present, at which occurrence the time constraint may be extended at my sole discretion. If this act is performed by someone other than myself, I reserve the right to prepare a facial expression that could be described as “mild sneer” and also to utter the single syllable “ew.”

See? No big deal, right?

All the pretty little horses

At 6, given a shiny penny to throw into the tinkling fountain at the mall we visited once a year in order to buy school clothes, I knew exactly what to wish for. I closed my eyes tight, imagined the elegant, stately horse I knew would be mine one day, and threw the penny into the water, feeling that odd mix of anticipation for something wonderful happening someday and regret for having thrown something valuable away.

At 7 in the car, we’d pass horses sometimes. Living in what was once a cowtown and now was an emerging bedroom community of physicists and engineers and their kids, we were surrounded by empty golden fields dotted with scrubby tiny-leafed live oak trees, fields that were lined with tumbling barbed wire fences and sometimes contained horses instead of cows. And if there was a white horse, that meant a wish. I saw no irony in wishing FOR a horse when wishing ON a horse — after all, wasn’t that natural? Didn’t everyone want a horse?

At 8, I started seeing my power. I was awarded the opportunity to spend two weeks with horses that summer, in an all-day camp. Horses in the morning, crafts in the afternoon. Disappointment was huge when I was assigned the camp’s only mule — not a horse — to learn to care for and ride. Sure, I was the youngest there but I couldn’t help but feel my horse had been taken from me. Sitting astride my mule’s short back, his sharp spine a deterrent to bouncier gaits like galloping, I looked upward at the girls dashing about on spirited mounts. Someday.

At 9, another magical thing happened. Once a week I’d leave right after school and be driven far in the wrong direction to a former chicken ranch that was now where a woman taught horse riding lessons. We’d ride around the ring learning to change gaits, make turns, and understood that if we kept this up long enough, we could learn to jump. After a few months I was taken to a western shop where I had to choose plain and simple (cheap) amid all the sparkly rhinestone western shirts, pants, and hats — I was getting duded up to be in a show. Showing Western Pleasure and Equitation, I received no colored ribbons, as I had imagined doing, and never understood what other riders did better than me. It was a blur of horse and rider and loudspeaker’d voice and people’s faces watching us go around and around.

At 10, the ultimate. Pepper was an ornery pony, at least that’s what the unpleasant beefy man, the friend of my mom’s alcoholic Austrian friend said. Everyone had an opinion. But I loved Pepper and wanted to ride him, even though he was just a pony. Pepper gave way to Copper after a few weeks. Copper was large, plodding, solid, but he had some get up and go. The first time I rode him off by myself, I fell. I took him to the large grassy field behind the nearby Church of the Latter Day Saints. Copper spied a small fence and ran toward it, convinced he wanted to jump over it. I couldn’t turn him away from the fence. He jumped, and immediately came back to see why I had fallen off. He looked contrite and I forgave him. We had Copper for 7 years.

At 11, Copper got a friend. Dusty was small and neat, an Appaloosa with no discernible spots, with a bushy stand-up mane like a zebra’s. Dusty had a mind of her own. I took to riding her, deciding to ride saddleless and bridleless. Saddles hurt my knees and bridles were yucky to put on the horse (it was the sticking a finger in the horse’s mouth to get him to open up for the bit), and I imagined Dusty’s pleasure at being ridden by me,  a small light person who didn’t knee her in the belly in order to tighten a cinch. Dusty lived with Copper in a rented field that grew only dust, and ate alfalfa that we kept stacked in the old barn, a remnant of our town’s cattleman past. On weekends I’d ride my bike the two miles to get there, smelling barn smells of hay and dust and old wood, digging my hands deep into the molasses-scented oat and grain mixture the horse loved as a treat and picking out the flattened corn kernels to crunch as I sat on the fence, talking to the horses.

Horses gave way to play rehearsals and boys and a part-time job at the donut shop. I felt sad when Dusty was sold. Something had ended. Copper remained for a few more years, even though no one rode him. He finally got a new home with the aunt and uncle of a friend. He was close to 20 then, pretty old for a horse. I never went to visit him. That part of my life was over.

Serena, younger daughter and maker of small everyday magic like turning red stoplights green, crafted her own horse magic as we left Pennsylvania four years ago and drove four days west into the sunset of Colorado. In Colorado, she told us, she’d have a horse. His name was King. She knew what he looked like — he was white — and only needed to find him. She spotted him one day, his white color magically now coppery, but that was definitely King, standing tall among 15 or 20 horses left on their own in a large wild field with its own stream and plenty of scrubby trees and grass. All year we watched King and his band while the seasons turned and autumn turned to icy winter and then spring again. Serena’s belief in her magical powers never waned — one day she would own King, and we all saw in our minds the someday place we called our Horse House that had horses grazing in the back yard — but leaving him to drive east again just a year later meant we were leaving behind her dream. Well, and my dream, since my own horse dreams were reawakened that year, kindled by Serena’s certainty and passion.

Today, horses don’t populate my dreams. Like when I was 16 and looking ahead, that part of my life seems over now. It’s been a complicated maze, getting from there to here, but here I am.