Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Non-Newtonian Horoscopes


Aries (3/21 – 4/19) The other day S. and I took the baby to see the waterfalls (or is that "waterfall"?  How many waters need to fall to make it plural?)  Anyway, she didn't seem to notice the falls but she's a good baby and seemed content to just hang out holding a graham cracker.  Aries, see if you can get someone to dress you up in a fleece thingy and carry you around for a few hours.  Bring your own graham cracker.  I think that's just what you need this week.

Taurus (4/20 – 5/20):  The college boy was home for a bit which means I would get those phone calls downstairs, "Hello, handset one?  This is handset two.  Can you make me some bacon?"  Which one could find irritating or charming, depending on your POV.  I vote for charming, and keep making the bacon.  Sidebar:  if you are going to make bacon, don't be cheap about it.  Get good stuff, like Hempler's.  But back to your horoscope:  keep walking all the way around to the other side until things look good.  Wear rain gear and bring provisions.  It may be a long journey from where you are.  You being like a patient, not even etherized.

Gemini (5/21 – 6/21):  So I'm sitting in the coffee shop trying to write horoscopes, and a little 7-year old girl whom I don't know came and sat at my table because she saw that we're both eating breakfast sandwiches.  "Isn't this the best sandwich ever?" she asked? "Yes!" I replied, hopefully not too enthusiastically.  And she went into a long commentary about the cheese, and how it melts and gets all over everything, and we were communing over the sandwich until her mother called her back to their table, and she went, but looked back at me with a little shrug, like I know, that's how it goes some times.  Gemini, that is how it goes sometimes.  Enjoy the moments.

Cancer 6/22 – 7/21:  It remains unclear whether Gold Bar is getting dissolved or not.  It's a little confusing, but don't be confused this week, Cancer.  Just breathe, have clarity, and don't dissolve, even if it's the will of the voters.  Be like a non-Newtonian fluid.  And I mean that in a good way.

Leo (7/23 – 8/22):  So I'm overhearing one of the people in the coffee shop answering the phone, and his first words were, "So, I'll see you tomorrow night.  Should I bring my handcuffs?"  To my credit, I stopped listening then, Leo.  Because I'm pretty sure that's a private conversation.  Anyway, listen in just the right amount this week.  Not a creepy amount.

Virgo (8/23 – 9/22):  R. asked me where I was the other night, and I told him I was at a dance party from 7 to 8:30.  "Oh, wow, mom. A dance party that went from 7 to 8:30?  That's so cool!  Did anyone consider lingering until 8:35 or even 8:37?  Or did you guys have to all be in bed by 9?"  Yeah, anyway, Virgo, there's no shame in being in bed by 9.  Really.  All the cool kids are doing it.

Libra (9/23 – 10/22):  I had this dream the other night where I was giving away a mattress, and the guy who came to get it said, "So, does this just not fit you anymore?"  And there I was, in my dream, arguing with some random mattress-picker-upper guy about how mattresses are standard sizes, and there's really not such a thing as outgrowing a normal-sized mattress, and it's obvious that I have way too many beds here, yadda yadda yadda, and as I woke up I just thought, seriously?  In my sleep, that's what's going on?  Sheesh.

Scorpio (10/23 – 11/21):  So again, or should I say, still, I'm sitting in the coffee house, trying to write horoscopes, and I think I'm kind of stealth, no one really pays much attention to me sitting with a laptop in the corner, and I realized how I'd much rather be writing with a pen in a notebook, but for some reason, that looks too unabomberish.  Right?  Some cat lady in the corner scribbling in a notebook?  I think people's first thought in that situation is, "We should probably call someone...."  Somewhere along the way, longhand went spooky, at least at coffee shops.  But that's not even the point, Scorpio.  The point is that I'm sitting there, and the two people at the cool kids table asked me to define "several".  I held up seven fingers, and one of the men said, "see, six.  Six is several."  The other person was all, "No, but if it's a relationship, what's several years?"  I agreed that you could go lower, especially in a tedious relationship.  "Maybe three years could be several if the noun is relationship.  If it's rat infestation, I don't think three gets you there."  One of the people thought it was kind of sad that my first thought when asked about relationships was rats, but hey, it's the dark time of year, right?  Anyway, Scorpio, take nice walks with your people.  Lots of them!

Sagittarius (11/22 – 12/21):    Strangely, as I sat there privately trying to write horoscopes, they said, "Hey, Betsy, can you get horoscopes on the internet?  We can't find that section of the paper."  And there I was with a blog full of horoscopes.  How often does that happen?  "Sure," I said, and scanned back over some old 'scopes.  I found a few that I thought could work, and read them.  A Cancer and a Leo.  "Wow.  Those are really weird," was all they said.  "Is that a regular newspaper?"  Luckily, The Librarian walked in about then, and everyone forgot what they were talking about.  Libraries are such a great resource, and librarians are even better.

Kowloon Walled City
Capricorn (12/22 – 1/19):  Does your life sometimes feel like the walled City of Kowloon?  With 3.2 million people per square mile?  What I learned about Kowloon is that there was rampant prostitution, gambling, mafia activity, and unlicensed dentistry.  Is one of these things not like the other?  Like, forget about back alley abortions and organized crime -- we have unauthorized flossing happening on the 14th floor...  What this all means, in case it isn't obvious:  your week will be amazing.   I know.  That's what the stars say.



Aquarius (1/20 – 2/18):  Have you ever had that thing where you're writing a book, and you wish the trajectory involved "eat pray love," maybe without so much praying, but its turning out more like eat, dink around on the internet, get old and eat cat food?  I hate it when that happens.  R. suggests that I write the book as a thriller, loosely based on my life.  Aquarius, let that be the story of your week.  A thriller, in a good way.  A small but surmountable challenge, victory, then celebration.  Do it.

Pisces (2/19 – 3/20):  So every year on Thanksgiving, I make invite all of the guests to make up a story about who Aunt Gladys was, and why we eat this steamed cranberry pudding.  I'd like to say that this year's crop of stories was particularly excellent, and involved insane asylums, time travel, portals, the war, and so much more that I can't recount them all.  So much better than that one awkward story that a random guest told last year -- that inappropriate pornographic-ish one.  I know, you're wondering about the "ish".  I guess I'm letting people come to their own conclusions, Pisces.  This week, do that.  Draw your conclusions, possibly with a purple crayon, and leave others to their own.  Oh, and hang out with me more too.  It is written in the stars.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Nitrogen



I’ve been about to clean my house for a week now, but first I had to create a playlist of just the right music, but before I could do that, I had to get recommendations, and then I had to listen to the suggestions, and then, while I was at it, I might as well listen to related artists, and then I should probably go to allmusic.com and read up on everyone, and then download a bunch of songs and put them through my rigorous method of getting onto the various playlists, and then, well, entire days have elapsed this way, with a lot of yoga and a little bit of hospital visiting sprinkled in there.  This is what I do when I say I’m writing.

 So today I decided I should go to the store, test drive the housecleaning playlist and start moving forward towards creating a thanksgiving feast.

I wander around the store aimlessly for a while watching all the bustling people, and it’s all going so fast.  Which makes me think about coffee.  So I go to the coffee aisle, select some beans, and start grinding them.  A woman walks up holding a small plastic can of folgers decaf, and asks which is better: the fresh Tully’s beans that I’m purchasing, or the folgers that was probably ground in Kansas City in 1964. 

“Well, I prefer this,” I say, trying to be tactful.  “Who will be drinking the coffee?”

“My grown children.  They’re coffee drinkers.  Should I get the kind you’re getting?”

I didn’t know how to respond, so I was quiet for a minute, which gave her the chance to tell me about her husband’s back surgery, and how he’s doing okay, but the kids are cooking the thanksgiving meal, and they went to Olympia to get a real turkey from a farm. She said she’s never had a real turkey before.  I didn’t know what she meant by that, so I was quiet again, or maybe I should say “still”, and she used that gap to tell me that all she has to do is set the table, provide the coffee, and make a salad.  She pointed to two large bags of shredded iceberg lettuce in her cart next to a large jar of ranch dressing.  

“I think your kids might enjoy this coffee,” I said, indicating the fresh beans.

 “Oh, you’ve been so helpful,” she said.  

“Uh, glad to hear it.  Have a nice thanksgiving,“ I responded.

I had no idea where my cart was, so I wandered around for a while and remembered that I wanted to buy ammonia, which wasn’t on my list.  I had to hunt for it, because it’s on the bottom shelf. While I was searching in the cleaning supply aisle, a woman walked up to me.

“I saw this show, I think it was Oprah.  No, maybe it was something else.  It was about our cleaning products, and how poison they are. Did you know you can use vinegar for just about everything?”

“Oh, that’s great,” I said as I picked up the ammonia.

“What do you use ammonia for?”

I didn’t really want to tell her.  I didn’t want her to know that I’ve been growing lettuce under lights in my kitchen for about a month, and it’s not very vigorous, and I’ve been hunting around my house for a cheap nitrogen source.  And I know where to get nitrogen, but seriously, I’m not going to pee on the lettuce.  

“Oh, just cleaning,” I answered.

“Yeah, see, I think you can get by with vinegar.  You might want to reconsider,” she said as she walked away.

I sat down in the cleaning aisle and composed an e-mail to my writing teacher on my tiny cell phone, the kind that’s smart-ish, but not really meant for that sort of thing.

“Why am I writing this dark book again? It’s kind of slow and painful and maybe I should scrap it.”

By the time she replied I was in the produce section, fondling the pomegranates.  She said she knows.  She knows how hard it is.  She’s trying to write her own book about divorce, and has spent the morning researching plane tickets to Hawaii, talking to the cat, preparing and eating three breakfasts, and designing a kitchen remodel.  And now she’s writing her book as a fictional story where the main character can be as bat shit crazy as she wants, and no one will ask what’s wrong with her, they’ll just think the author is really creative.

A woman came up to me as I was reading the e-mail and asked if I’ve had any pomegranates yet this year.  

“Just two.”

“Oh, I had one yesterday, you can see the stains on my fingers still.” She held her blood-stained palm up to my face, and I nodded, as she continued.  “How do you extract the seeds?  I’ve tried a few ways, but I usually just slice them into hemispheres.  That’s what I do.”

“Me too,” I said, mostly just to be agreeable, but I have done it that way.  I stayed crouched there for a minute and texted C.  “I think I’m going to change my book to fiction.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.  It could be funny and interesting.”

“That’s a huge and important question.  We need to talk.”

“You mean text messaging isn’t the best way to  have huge and important conversations?”  

To her credit, she didn’t reply.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Oh, the humans


So I’m sitting in the coffee house, and it’s usually the same people in here every day; I know what to expect.  There’s the lady who must sit at her exact table to such an extreme that once, when the whole place was empty my friend unknowingly sat at that table.  When I arrived, I joined her there, and when the woman arrived, she looked really irritated but sat down next to me, harrumphing but not saying anything to us.  So, empty coffee shop, 12 other free tables, you get it. We moved, because we’re flexible that way, and that’s the good thing about this town.  We work around each other for the most part, like that movie Lars and the Real Girl.  I think if I conjured up an inflatable friend, people would just go along with it and include my inflatable friend in whatever is going on.  (Not that I'm anywhere close to being the person with an inflatable friend.  Sheesh.)

I like writing here because for one thing, it’s warm, (unlike my house), but mostly because it helps me focus. I’d be pretty embarrassed to sit here and play solitaire on the computer, for example.  Oh, was I using my inside voice just then?  

But the main thing is that it’s a little slice of our sweet quirky town.  A week or so ago, one of my neighbors arrived with a large garbage sack full of tee-shirts from what he referred to as “the secret Buddhist dumpster,” and told me to take as many as I wanted.  The shirts were leftover from the Dalai Lama’s visit in 2008. I took two, walked across the street and mailed one to R., and one I’m saving for when I need that sort of thing, the sort of gift that should be from the SBD.  My neighbor was just acting as the middle man – he didn’t know exactly where the dumpster was; he was just tasked with giving the shirts away.

A few days later, the lawnmower repairman came in and sat with me for a minute, saying the same thing:  “Betsy, do you want some tee shirts?  I got these from the secret Buddhist dumpster.  You can have as many as you want.”

“Oh, D. gave me a couple the other day.  I think I’m set.”

“No, really, you can have more.  I can set you up.  Don’t be shy.  I can’t tell you where the Buddhist dumpster is, but I can get you stuff.”  Which is just so kind I can hardly bear it sometimes.  

And none of this seems weird until I start telling someone, and they’re like, “Wait.  Back up.  So you’re just sitting by yourself and some guy walks up with a garbage sack full of tee shirts and a story about a secret Buddhist dumpster?  Is this a true story?”

The other really nice thing is that I can just walk in and sit down and eventually, H. will appear with my exact kind of coffee, and I don’t have to say anything if I don’t feel like it.  Or sometimes it gets even better, like when I ordered a ham and cheese corn muffin, and she said, “do you want that the secret special way?”

If anyone ever asks you that, you’re an idiot if you say no.

 Writing here is like that.  

But this morning, some guy I didn’t recognize walked in and started talking to one of the regulars.  What I overheard:

“Yeah, I’m done with her.  I’m sick of her screaming at me for three hours every night.  Every night, some damn thing or another for three hours.  I didn’t do this, or didn’t do that, or I don’t make enough money, or I did something wrong. And I got her a goddamn house overlooking the lake, it’s worth $800K, and I put in a hot tub.  I don’t know what her problem is.  So I’m looking at the weather, and as soon as it’s nice, I’m outta there.  I’m taking my shit and I’m outta there.  I don’t know what her problem is.  The only thing I’m sad about is the dog.”

And I wrote that down, not to be creepy, but because a good writing exercise is to write down what people actually say so you can practice dialog. But all I could think was, Oh, the humans.  The poor humans and their suffering.

Anyway, I was thinking how angry and sad he seemed, but also curious that he seemed to know everyone.  Like, stranger comes to town but he isn’t a stranger?  And then after a little bit he walked over to my table and said, “wow, Betsy?!  Hey, it’s been a long time.  Great to see you!”  And then I pretended to know who he was, and just thought, ugh, the humans. They do suffer.


Sunday, November 11, 2012

Salt


I keep losing things.  Like my camera, and scarves, and so on.  I sort of keep track, and have a tally in my head – my scarf is probably at the grill, that book might be under my bed, I should really look harder for the camera, and so on.  But what’s on my mind is salt.  It’s ridiculous:  I made salt again this year, which isn’t actually making something, it’s taking what was already there and waiting.  

Here’s how it went:  M. invited to me to Whidbey Island to help with some gardening, which was fun and hard work and good company and the only tiny downside was when, after hours of digging up sod and planting trees, I laid down on my back for a minute to rest, and in the gentlest way possible, she said, “I think I’m going to discount your time for being a little slow.”  This is the young person who voted for Jill Stein, campaigned for Obama, and wrote the POTUS a letter that she described as “stern but congratulatory” earlier this week, reminding him of right and wrong and what he should do this term.  She's not someone you want to disappoint, because she's so hardworking and sincere and awesome.

Anyway, after a few days we finished planting trees and went to the beach, waded in, and collected water from the Sound.  Since then, like a month ago, I’ve been making it into salt. I don’t know why.  I really don’t.  I did it last year, and it was a novelty.  Now it’s crossed that line and I’m afraid it’s become one of the Things I Do.  Arrgh.

I’ve been minorly irritated at myself for putting so much effort into the salt.  Here’s how it goes: I pour seawater into a cooking pan, spilling some on the floor.  It’s sticky.  I put the pan on the stove and try to heat it up to that sweet spot, maybe 200 degrees, but get distracted and it boils over, causing more stickiness and rust.  I wear a digital thermometer around my neck to remind me to focus on the temperature, and then put a Spirit Corps bandana on my head for good measure.  I hope no one drops by, and more importantly, I hope I remember to rinse the thermometer off before I test my coffee temperature in the morning. 

As the substance evaporates, I add more seawater, and continue to spill it everywhere.  All this stickiness and rust in the name of getting salt, for goddsakes, which is about as cheap and available as anything.  This goes on for weeks and weeks.   Everything is rusting, including the top of the woodstove and my nice cooking pots and the inside of the oven, and every time I want to cook something I have to consolidate many vats of salt potion to come up with an empty pot.

But I feel like it’s good practice to do something that requires mostly waiting and being attentive but detached, and not being irritated that it’s messy and slow and complicated, and not expecting something amazing, but just something decent.  


Eventually, I have a collection of beautiful white salt crystals, and I have to say, they are stunning, fanned out on a piece of parchment paper like glittery jewels.  I give some to Cake Boss and some to The Competition, and they seemed pleased, and I’m almost done with the 5 gallons of water, except for one small vessel that’s still evaporating.

I fill a mason jar with the new salt, and take a picture of it with my other salt, which, really?  I’m that person?  I have an awkward amount of self-awareness where I realize this isn’t quite right, but I can’t stop myself either.  Let’s call that mental health, where I understand that painting a watercolor backdrop for a portrait of salt is perhaps the tiniest bit, um, I'm not sure what the word is, but it hasn't escaped my notice.  I think that's a good sign.

Anyway I took the picture with my cell phone due to the missing camera, put the salt away where it belongs, went back a few days later to use some, and it's gone.  Poof.  I'm not sure what to make of any of this.

Friday, November 9, 2012

No Scopes

I wrote a bunch of horoscopes, sheesh, slowly yanking each one out of my foggy brain, and I even liked a few.  I might have gotten as far as Capricorn. And then poof, one accidental “select all” followed by blogger’s incessant autosave, and it’s all gone.

I can’t remember what they were about, but I got up really early to write, and it’s dark and cold and beautiful around here, so I guess I'll just be happy that this little mishap prompted me to go stand outside in the dark and see that sliver of a moon that was so sweet and not very lurky.

Cake Boss loves the moon. It’s almost like the third person in her marriage -- she wants to move to where she can be closer to it, see it more often with less hassle, spend evenings with it.  I have mixed feelings.  The moon is amazing, but can also be a little lurky sometimes, especially when it’s that just past full phase, waning gibbous, I guess you call it.  But this morning, the air was crisp and cold and dark and starry and the moon was perfect.

I spent a little while trying to reconstruct the horoscopes, and then I was like, really?  Is this how you plan to spend your little bit of time on the planet?


Sunday, November 4, 2012

Bleeding


I’m trying to write a book.

I thought, hey, I write all kinds of stuff, blog posts, reports, essays -- I love writing, so why not?  I have more time than I’ve ever had in my whole life.  If not now, when, as they say.  

So I’m writing a memoir.  I’m self-conscious saying that out loud.  People tend to confuse memoir with autobiography.  Autobiography is for Patty Hearst and Hilary Clinton, people who’ve had amazing, accomplished, interesting lives, and everyone wants to know the details.  I’m not Patty Hearst.

Memoir is a little nugget, a piece of your story that might be interesting not because of your accomplishments or adventures, but rather, because it contains universal elements, which is code for love and loss, the only story. It documents our human condition, it makes us closer to one another.  I read a good memoir and think, “I know!  Me too!”  And in that instant, the world gets smaller, richer, easier to bear.  But still, I feel self-conscious saying, “Yeah, I’m writing a book about, uh, yeah, about me.”

It turns out that writing a book is hard.  I’m like the person who made a box in a woodworking class, and the box turned out okay, so I decided I was ready to build a house.  

Books are long, and they have to join together into an actual story with a beginning, middle, and an end, a story that could hold a reader’s attention for more than 5 minutes.  I think I’m better at the five minutes part, which I could go into a long and sorry sidebar about, but I’ll spare us.  

So far, it’s not a real book. I’ve stacked a bunch of little boxes on top of each other, and it wasn’t quite like a house, so I drilled holes in the boxes and lashed them together and tried to add windows and staircases, but in the process, it’s possible that I broke the boxes.  

I have no idea how to build a house, but I’m pretty sure you don’t start with windows and stairs.  

I want feedback, but it’s complicated.  I ask my writing teacher, and every time I send her something, she says, “this is great, but can you go deeper?” So I get out the scalpel and poke around, scraping the inner walls of my heart for scraps to add. I try to remember how it felt when a certain thing happened, and feel that thing again, and stare at the computer and wonder why I’m doing this when I could just collect stamps or create bonsai trees out of tiny hemlock seedlings. 

I stop writing and walk in the rain to one of my spots to look for mushrooms or fish or peace, but eventually return to poke another vein, bleed it onto the page, and send it back to my teacher. “Much better!” she responds, “but can you go a little deeper?” 

I know she won’t be satisfied until my heart is a glob of dissected matter on the paper, oozy and warm and sticky.  I’m turning into that heroin addict who can’t find a good vein anymore, but I keep poking around. 

Having a collection of pages that I’ve written is like having a baby.  But at least a baby has it’s own heart and lungs.  This is sort of a weird, cojoined infant that shares organs with me.  Or maybe it’s a zombie baby that wants to eat my heart.  The more I write about it, the creepier it sounds.

But it’s hard for me to write without feedback, and it’s awkward to have my friends read stuff, because for one, they already know my story.  They automatically fill in the gaps, like those tests on the Internet where there’s an assemblage of letters, and even though the vowels are missing, after a second, you can read it fluently.  And it puts them in a weird spot too. “Um, yeah, about your book, Betsy. Um, yup, reading it.  Lemme get back to you on that.”  And I'm not sure exactly what that means, but what I imagine is, “Sheesh.  Why are you doing this?  Have you considered just trying to stop the bleeding?  Would it really be so terrible to get a cat and join a bowling league?  There’s no shame in that, honey.”

So I decided I needed a random but kind reader, which isn't easy.  Think about it -- if you need someone random, how would you know they’re kind?  And if you already know they’re kind, how can that be random?

I made a Venn diagram showing the intersection of those sets, and discovered there actually are a few people colonizing that space.  One person faithfully reads my blog, and sometimes comments.  I don’t know who she is or how she found the blog, but she’s always encouraging and thoughtful.  Most blog commenters are bloggers themselves, and it’s easy to learn about them.  But she doesn’t have a blog. I know nothing about her.

Yesterday, I wrote to her to thank her for her nice comments, and ask if she could read the first 50 pages. I know, that can go weird in so many ways. Like for starters, I’m that person now. 

Once, I told a waitress at a restaurant that I frequented, “Oh, yay! We get you, you’re my favorite.” And she turned beet red and left, sending the cook over to finish the transaction.  She couldn’t even carry our food to the table.  Really?  If you don’t like complements, you really shouldn’t work in the food service industry.  You should probably review building permits for wetland and stream impacts.  Anyway, knowing full well that this could go down in some weird and unpredictable way, I sent a note to her.

Because I think she’d get it, that it is just a baby, and the baby might cry and act weird, and be inconsolable and wet her pants and spit up, but she would know that where there’s a baby, there’s hope, and she’ll be gentle and forgiving and demanding all at once, because she won’t settle for letting the baby grow up to be weird and horrible.

Anyway, she wrote back and told me she’d be delighted to read it, and that, unlike me, she does have cats, and the name she uses when commenting isn’t her real one because she lives in a small town far away from here where the trees are small and the attitudes are provincial, and she’s private and doesn’t want people to see her tracks on the internet.  She told me her real first name, but let’s just call her Anonymous.

I’m private too, Anonymous, except for the part where I’m about to take off my clothes and stand naked and bleeding in your living room.

Thank you, dear readers, for everything.

I'm excited to report that the author Celeste Ng has selected m y modern love essay to read for the Modern Love podcast next week. Suc...