The story goes like this.

Last year, I wrote a book.  It took about seven months.  I edited it for another seven and here I am.  I've got a third draft of a manuscript that needs more than a drawer-- more like a coffin.  It's ample and I'm not entirely sure what to do with it going forward.  I've sent out about 20 query letters.  Not enough.  I've heard back from one agent who wanted to read more, but not the whole thing.  I've received five rejections.  Everyone else remains intractably quiet.

The book is about dead kids.  Who doesn't love them?  Before you get in a huff, they're teenagers-- human enough that compassion doesn't have to take the shape of repulsion.  The kids are in charge of the stage set; without them, we'd live among bleak utility.  The context wouldn't be inspiring.  We'd wonder why anyone ever bothered to write poetry or take pictures.  Not that people don't wonder that already.  To them, I say, be grateful something is there to catch you up when your head gets too full up of self.  To them, I'd also say, good luck in love.

This December, I promised myself to try to write a novel in a month.  Sure, I was supposed to do it in November, but I was busy with some stories and a fair bit of hysteria over my future.  This month, I'm calm.  And I'm rushing headlong into a loosely outlined story to follow up on our heroic dead kids.  I'm promising myself it won't reach the paunchy proportions of the first.  After all, I only have a month.

So here's the thing.  As with all phases of delightful hysteria, its passage has left me feeling a little rambunctious; I'd like a little upheaval in the story.  So while the first book concentrates on the young female protagonist, this one is following her partner, a guy who knows just a bit more but doesn't realize what he actually knows.  I guess my question is whether this is a ridiculous mistake?  I like his voice and I wanted to hear it.  So fuck it, I suppose.  It's my story to tell.  And if I want to tell the second part through him, then I guess I get to do exactly that.

You've been most helpful.

Surprises in various sizes

The news this week is good.  I'm admitted to a Masters program at Victoria University's International Institute of Modern Letters.  I heard a couple days ago after I'd spent a fair amount of energy convincing myself-- and concocting pretty decent stories in support of-- a rejection.  Rejection is sometimes easier than success.  I know how to file it away.  Even after a couple nights of decent sleep, I'm still not sure how to respond to the good news.  Instead, I'm sort of pretending like there might have been a mistake.  When March rolls around and the class starts, I'll attend and deal with a new reality.

Although not so much a surprise as a shock, I discovered this morning that we've stumbled into December. Once again, I'm faced with the brain twister that wants me to reconcile Christmas trees with summer light.  I may have grown up in San Diego and I may have experienced winters far warmer than any summer day down in these island parts, but at least we pretended.  We wore scarves and boots because the calendar-- if not the sun-- asked for it.  And no matter the temperature outside, we weren't throwing carrot sticks on the roof under a sky that slowly goes grey after 9.  At least we all take many days off.

The novel writing project starts today.  I've written, oh, a paragraph or two.  With the news about the MA program, I'm a little more committed.  I want a second book in draft before I start all the shenanigans of the new year.  And then, when the Mayan calendar collapses us, I'll have three, which is nice little way to complete my universe.  Ah, good thoughts.

Here's a picture of clouds over Sydney.  These clouds existed at a moment when you were not there so you should feel very lucky for a peek.  I'm just saying.  Be grateful that you stumble into December with me.  Because even with clouds, it's a pretty spectacular moment in time that hosts them.

And when you're in Sydney next, consider that you've already missed this particular grouping of cloud bits.  You'll get your own, I promise.

An Indulgent (star-crossed) Thanks.

Back at home, it's Thanksgiving.  Here, it's just Friday.  I could stand smug-- been there, done that, like six days ago-- but I'd rather have more pie.  It would also be nice to hug my mother.  She's being held hostage by siblings, however, who have turkey on their table and limited time, I guess, to turn on the Skype machine.  I moan to the drone of my dishwasher.  It holds the plastic tubs that held leftovers until today.

Lately, I've been spinning in the silly pirouette of a seven-year old's unrequitable lust for the remotest likelihood.  Like I want a pony, but that's not it, exactly.  I've never liked horses and smaller versions, oddly, provoke a greater aversion.  It's the greater potential of the miniatures to climb on my lap and expect me to like them that makes me shudder.  That, and the impression I've always had that smaller versions are always malformed.  See, supra, several posts about my childlessness.

Back to the clumsy dance: god damn it all if I didn't want something too much which is a surefire way to disappoint yourself and spoil all the perfectly slow moments transpiring between hoping and dashing the hope.  If time could remain as slow as I settle my soul with other candied morsels of future possibility, then I'd feel like the wanting was at least fruitful.  I'll keep you posted.

The thing I wanted?  I'm not saying.  It's not really so sad.  There's tons to do and now a few more moments in which to do it.  Slower moments, fingers crossed.  Although, fingers crossed didn't work so well for me previously.  So fuck it.  Fingers wide apart and busy.  I'm going to see if I can't write a 50,000-word novel in December as a follow-up to my first.  Then, I can self-publish both and feel productive.  I got the idea from the National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known-- maybe?-- as nanowrimo.  Of course, it was supposed to be done in November, but with my fingers tangled up on the doused fuse of my anxious pipe-dream, I delayed.  Now, unwound, they're ready.  And I'm ready.  Third revise on the first book tells me that I may as well march on.

And so, as I resign myself to the notion that all that lost hope ain't found somewhere in a cluttered box-- St. Anthony, where are you-- I cruise along.  Maybe you saw that finger flip or maybe I was stretching.  It's all the same.  Thanks for freeing me up.  Really.

Fools and rules and pepper spray

Hey there.  Well, the Super Committee is failing.  But here's something that the U.S. Congress seems competent to do.


Did you hear that they might actually get their shit together to classify pizza as a vegetable for the purpose of school lunch menus?  They say it's just too expensive to provide healthy foods and besides, food companies that make frozen pizzas, the salt industry and potato growers are sad at the prospect of losing so much business.  Ah, there's the propulsion for forward momentum.  Of course, it's not parents.  Despite the fact that the lunch program was modified based on recommendations by the Institute of Medicine, as an attempt to curb childhood obesity and skyrocketing future health care costs, Republican Congressional members say that the government shouldn't tell kids what to eat.  Unless, I guess, it's telling kids to eat frozen pizza and french fries in support of the food lobby.  Then it's a-okay.


And people wonder why protestors won't break camp and head on home.  Speaking of.

Have you watched the paramilitary forces of the UC campuses brutalize its students?  At UC Berkeley, students who linked arms took the brunt of baton-weilding policy in their bellies, ribs and spines before many were arrested.  A former U.S. poet laureate was bashed.  And the UCB chancellor said "linking arms is not non-violent civil disobedience."  Um. 


And then, this past weekend, it was time for the junta of UC Davis to give their arsenal an airing.  The students of UC Davis-- truly my alma mater-- sat quietly on a path running through the student-occupied quad and refused to move when the cops demanded.  They refused quietly.  They refused non-violently (as per the standard definition and not Chancellor Birgeneau's inexplicable misconstruction of it-- would he even get into Cal?).  And because they didn't move, and perhaps because they didn't threaten enough to warrant the frustrated presence of the police force, the cops vented their pepper spray directly into the somber, scared faces of the students.  From three feet away.  Students gagged, coughed, coughed blood.  But they didn't fight.  They sat.  And others, who were not in need of medical attention, kept the peace where the cops could not.  After a mic check, the UCD protestors informed the cops that they could go in a chant.  And the cops, proving themselves to have an ounce of common sense, went.  This was the most impressive demonstration of peaceful protest I've ever seen.  The protestors released the cops and the power of calm prevailed over force.  Hold your tears or maybe let them flow.

The First Amendment is always messy and often expensive.  Violent police response in the manner we're seeing will only accrue benefit to the protestors.  Leadership, whether on campuses or in cities, has failed to recognize that the media savviness of these camps is far beyond government understanding.  Videos of peaceful protests join our second lives on Facebook among pictures of friends and family.  The old red herrings of black-hooded anarchists have rotted to nothing but a stink, which is all they ever were.  The protestors hold each other up intelligently and amorphously; they have books and self-control.  And, in a resounding censure of government, they don't talk politics.  It's their silence on this particular issue that peals loudly against the current status quo.  The system as it stands is too dysfunctional to even contemplate the changes that would be required to alleviate its problems.  And the leadership is forced into a corner of befuddlement.  Confusion among those who hold power makes them vulnerable; they act stupidly. See Mayor of Oakland and the dumbs chancellors of UCB and UCD.


For those who squealed with delight at the pepper-spray that saturated the scarves and hoods of the UCD students because you thought "that's good, they were breaking rules," I'll wage a gentle disagreement.  When you consider rule-breaking, also consider the surfeit of rules codified to the benefit of those who hold power already.  "Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it," said Thoreau.  There is always a rule or law to be broken, without even an intent.  Standing for too long becomes disorderly conduct.  Not moving quickly enough becomes failing to obey the order of an officer or, worse, obstruction of government action.  So the rule becomes convenient for the imposition of power.  The First Amendment states that freedom of expression may not be abridged but you can't stand there, sit there, stay there after a certain hour.  Only fools would grant priority to these rules over the peaceful objections of those who suffer.


Finally, Go Ags.  Continue to be great.

Fear and Loathing

Occupy Wellington.

Woke up this morning to hear that the folks of Occupy Wall Street had been forcibly removed in the early hours of the morning by the NYPD.  I sighed.  And then of course, there were the ridiculous status messages on Facebook that insisted that this was exactly the right course.  A lawyer "friend" rejoiced that the court action considering the protestors rights to remain in the park meant that the lawyers win.  This particular guy is always on the side of lawyers making money.  At least he's consistent if not cynical.

More troubling is the subscription to a belief that the first amendment can be abridged by a frustrated government.  That, actually, is precisely the purpose of the First Amendment.  In a New York Times article, Mayor Bloomberg is described as becoming increasingly "fed up with their inability to police the park, with complaints about noise, disruptions to businesses and odors, and a leaderless movement that they just could not figure out how to deal with."  The Mayor ordered the middle of the night raid ostensibly because public health and safety demanded it.  That was his message to the media anyway.  There had been a few assaults among campers, true, and a large encampment, as all summer campers know, generates less than lovely smells.  But when the cops surrounded Zuccotti Park to vacate the occupiers, they also threw 5000 books into a dumpster.  And when the occupiers who were not arrested-- as approximately 200 were, including a City Councilman-- walked off to find other venues, the cops appeared to disrupt their continued efforts.  As in, your first amendment rights are no longer welcome here.  Anywhere.  The protestors set up in front of City Hall and were dispersed.  They went to a park along Canal Street: same thing.

Now, less than 24-hours after the raid, and a court hearing that validated the city's assertion that the first amendment does not also guarantee the right to form an encampment-- funny because it does guarantee the right to spend money on elections, so maybe the NLG lawyers could have argued the value of the tents as expression-- the protestors have reclaimed Zuccotti Park.  It's been power washed and barricades surround it.  Cops line the perimeter and have formed a bottleneck to permit (slow) re-entry.

Whatever you want to think about the Occupy movement, it's a tribute to them that they've successfully confounded the leaders of several major cities across the country.  Portland and Oakland camps have been raided; leaders of cities are trying to coordinate with each other to deal with the predictable joining of cities'  homeless populations-- and their drug and mental illness problems-- to the movement.  It is to their credit that cities are trying to determine how to balance the expression of the movement against the possible infiltration of a criminal element, but I have to wonder, just how much of a criminal element is present?  It's convenient to assert that bad things-- crimes!-- are occurring among a large gathering of people seeking to claim their pro-rata share of governance in this world.  And to object to the possibility of crimes preemptively, as UC Berkeley did last week when the cops violently "nudged" with batons an incipient group of Occupiers, well, then, it's clear that the vulnerability of the leaders is their befuddlement and not a more media-friendly concern for public safety.  I've got an idea!  What if the cops, who clearly want something to do and are getting a lot of OT hours to do it, were to target the crimes that have been committed by the bankers from their lofty offices in skyscrapers looming over these paltry encampments?  Yeah.  What if.

Occupy Wellington's second suburb.

What I hope people come to see in this cycle of protests is precisely the vulnerability of their leadership.  Because that's who we have the power to seat or unseat in elections, to call upon for assistance in our communities, and to demand accountability from throughout their tenure.  And I hope that people come to see that these leaders must be accountable to us, and not to the corporate interests who pay for their protection.  I hope people are inspired to become leaders themselves, for the good of the people and not the possible girth of their wallet.  And finally, I hope that people come to see that we are all given a voice that we can use to seek change.  When we finally start using it again, for our own benefit and not the benefit of banks and multinational companies, then we will indeed be more powerful than the corporate interests currently in control.  At least, I hope.  We can and should first say, "fuck this system."  Then we need to demand another.

I also hope that despite their frustration, our leaders will remember that we have rights to assemble and rights to speak.  The First Amendment-- shit, democracy-- is inconvenient, expensive, messy.   No one likes to hear things that question their imperatives but, hey, if they relax and listen, they might see that they have a player in the game as well.  And when they say that our rights are guaranteed for only as long as we break no laws but there are far too many laws at their disposal, then we need to sit down and resist.  Some laws are going to be broken; I hope that the offenses are nonviolent and the response as well.

Maybe time liquified.

I recently finished a collection of Murakami's short stories called After the Quake.  Published in 1995, each story references the tragedy of the Kobe earthquake-- what was horrible then remains horrible in the compounded complexity that another quake brought 16 years later.

I read the stories in a quick sitting and then re-read.  I sat alone and thought.  I finished some work and read again.  I came away with the following: alienation and solitude never grow old; they wax and wane until we accept them as natural conditions.

But maybe I'm saying that only because a box arrived for me in the middle of the afternoon.  Inside the box was every report card I received until I was 20.  News articles with my name in them.  Letters home inviting someone to an award ceremony.  Certificates.  A college entry essay and a booklet of poetry.  There were photos of friends doing things that shouldn't be photographed.  Photos of me with a drooping, rolled cigarette hanging on my lip.  Photos of my dad appearing sober or at least happy to see me.  All of this from another life that was long housed safely in a metal filing cabinet.  It would have been easier to control the girl described by all that paper if she'd been kept there too.  Now, I get the papers.

I finished a couple stories over the last couple weeks.  One is about family and the other about a movie star who lives next door.  Neither are experiential so don't worry.  I think now I'd like to work on something so all that paper finally gets to mean something.  Alternatively, I could put all that paper on the deck and watch the gales pick them up and take them away.

But I wouldn't do that.  That would be littering and my life really shouldn't be litter.

Cry me a river of molten gold

In NZ, I don't think there are 90,000 square foot houses.

I started to write about whinging, because I'm playing with the sound of the word in my head.  Whining is totally onomatopoeic, right?  Whinging, however, well, I'm not so sure.  I'm trying to decide.  If I whine, I sound like "whiiiiiiiiieeennnneee."  I don't really play with that soft /j/ palatal while I'm complaining.  My whines are pretty strictly comprised of screechy vowels let loose like a punctured balloon.

Anyhoo, whether you whinge or whine, please join me in a collective gasp of offense at this article from Saturday's Wall Street Journal, which describes the awful-- just awful-- economic woes of the 1%.  These folks are struggling.  Did you know?  It's heartbreaking.  Go ahead and cry in your ramen.  I'm wringing  tears from my sleeve to use for laundry later.

I like to cruise the Wall Street Journal.  I do it with the same tourist sensibility that I use when I ogle La Jolla or Malibu homes.  I like to imagine where the dirty laundry is piled, whether the toilet lid is up or down, whether the puppy's pee stain ever really came out of the carpet.  I imagine the fights between mothers and daughters, because these always happen, and the just as inevitable silence between fathers and their adolescent sons.  And I imagine how much more effort all these things might take because of the colossal scale of the living quarters.  Like, how many toilet lids are there to close?  How many hidden corners did the puppy exploit?  If you've got room, someone's going to get lost in it.

Which is why it's always boggled my mind why someone would want to showcase their wealth so ostentatiously.  Do you really need two home theaters and thirteen bathrooms?  Do you have to have a bowling alley and six soaking pools inside?  Why would you ever make use of the 20 cars in the garage if you had all that at home?  Why bother with a yacht if you can roller-skate around your great hall when there aren't 500 people doing the Viennese waltz or cabbage patch in it?

I mean, really, we're all going to suffer the same first-world problems.  We have a choice, however, of how much harder we choose to make it on ourselves.  If I ever have millions, I can promise you that I'm not building a house with it.  Unless it's one of those prefab enviro things with a small, sunny courtyard in the middle and a lot of solar panels.  Multiple bathrooms are really overrated.  And 20 cars.  Can you imagine dealing with the registrations on all of them?

But clearly, I am unAmerican in my dreaming.  If I was a true patriot, maybe I would want more.  Like, say, the Siegels did.  In the article, the Siegel family laments the calling of multiple loans on a 90,000 square foot property they were building in Florida.  Mrs. Siegel wanted enough space for 500 guests because the 26,000 square foot place they have now doesn't fit more than 400 people comfortably.  Her husband made bank selling timeshares, I guess.  It's been tough over the last few years so the plans they laid to own the largest single family home in the States have been scraped.  Poor family.  They had to give up their Gulfstream too, a tragedy which caused one of their children to question the presence of strangers on a commercial flight they recently took.  (I'm going to guess they were in first class when the kid asked because in economy, someone surely would have alerted an air marshal.)  Don't be too sad, though.  The Siegels still get to use their Gulfstream on occasion with the bank's permission.  Just like all those people who are losing their homes and cars get to use... oh wait.  Nevermind.

The article makes all these points about the taxes the wealthy pay and the problems they're having in keeping their income stable.  It mentions that there are other assets available for their use, when, say, they have to let go of the over-compensating skeleton of a house in a fire sale but really, come on.  Does the WSJ really expect that the wild ride of the 1% is in any way similar to the plight of the millions of people who can't negotiate with banks to stay in their homes, who have lost their jobs and exhausted their savings, seen their retirement accounts eviscerated and security upheaved?

Unfortunately, we're all going to suffer our first world problems.  We're going to have plumbing problems and broken computers.  We're going to get frustrated by our children and angry at our spouses for their neglect with the toilet seat.  The bright side of these issues?  They make up the human experience that unites us.  But we don't remember because all of that is behind closed doors-- mahogany or steel, hollow or grand.  Our lives are magnificently parallel.  But some of us have money and most of us do not.  It would be really super awesome if those who had the money recognized that the ability to contend with the first world problems is severely compromised by homelessness, unemployment and financial insecurity.  And, you know, there are a whole lot more of us than there are of you.

The 99% is kicking and screaming.

It seems that winter is reluctant to leave.  Or at least, it's interested in making a statement before it does.  We had beautiful, windless sunshine for six days straight last week but it couldn't stand up to the rain.  The rain is here.

Maybe the weather reminds me a little of the incipient protests on New York's Wall Street and in other US cities.  A little heat comes along to remind folks of their position: they're free, they have voices, they can wear shorts and liberate their legs.  And then the cold front returns, forcing everyone back into their homes to stew miserably in their frustrated efforts to surmount these crazy bad times.  Maybe I see the weather-- so out of my control-- a little like I see the many, many things that stand in the way of making things a little better.  Maybe I'm a cynic.

The thing is, I'm pretty sure I'm wrong.  I'm right that the weather will do as it does.  But it's no use feeling powerless against the powers that be.  That, actually, is not beyond my position.  Or your position.  That is actually our obligation.

We have no reason to be ashamed of our naked legs when the sun shines.  And despite major news outlet commenting that the Occupy Wall Street bunch seems somehow disorganized, off-point, dirty, young, aimless or rambling, they're out there and they're trying to make springtime come. 

When I see the thousands of people gathering to stake their claim as the true majority, I cross my fingers that more will join them.  When I see the police lines confronting them, I wonder how long before show of solidarity outweighs the show of force.  (I also say a little prayer that the cops, based on pay scale, might empathize or at least keep their guns holstered.)  There must be a tipping point, when the people realize that the means of control used to silence them are no longer stronger than the force they can exert for themselves.  That said, any tipping point achieved would be but a brief moment in time that sets off its own consequences.  Power shifts quickly and radically and usually remains in the hands of those who know how to juggle it.

That power seems bound by inertia is no reason not to push to reverse its direction.  I hope more people join the Occupy Wall Street movement.  I hope they find a decent set of talking points to appease a media hungry for soundbites over more substantive meals.  But most of all, I hope everyone remains courageous in the face of angry cops threatening force against them.  Standing up to power is the only thing that ever made it change.

No me gusta.

So here's a funny thing about living in the southern hemisphere: seasonal affective disorder is totally upside down.  Like, there's just no point in being depressed in January, despite overspending on Christmas presents and siphoning gallons of whipped cream directly into your esophagus.  It's summertime in January.  All that post-hoc rationalization that northerners go through to explain why January sucks so much actually becomes pretty transparent.  It's not that they're suddenly roly-polies in elastic waist pants; it's that sunlight is never actually hitting their skin.  They can and should boohoo, but not because it's January.  Because it's the dark of winter.

Now, me, well.  Not that you asked, but anyway.  I've never been a big fan of springtime.  As a kid, spring meant Easter and way too much church.  You want me to dye an egg, hide it in the sun and then eat it?  Foul.  As a teenager, spring meant watching everyone around me strip down to pastel shorts.  I spent months with eyes averted.  Later, I got hay fever.  Fuck spring, I thought.  It's a loser's season.  Made for weaklings in pink.

As it happens, my birthday is in October.  Personally, over a plentiful number of years, I've enjoyed the experience of birth and some sort of metaphorical rebirth in the fall.  Sure, it's crispy and cool.  Sure, it's getting dark a little earlier.  But, it's also a very clever palette that fall brings.  Much more complementary to my skin tones and soothing to a rational mind.  (Yes, if you prefer the peachy pastels of the primavera, I'm judging you.  You want to punch me with that pink satchel?  Because I promise I'll get ink on it, pronto.)  Spring is fragile, undeveloped, thin.  Fall is hardy, robust, and dependable.  You can't jump into a pile of cherry blossoms.  

So, now I'm confronted with anemic spring hosting my birthday.  And I don't want to appear ungracious (though I absolutely am), so I'm contemplating an antipodean revision.  Is it okay to celebrate six months hence?

See, I don't want to get the spring mopes while I try to get amped for cake.  I want to ridicule the transience of the flowers, go get waxed and prepare for summer.  And when the time comes, when the air cools and the leaves start to change, then I'll be happy to do the good kind of deep thinking that birthdays inspire.  Yes, older.  Yes, wiser.  Yes, cooler and richer and stronger and cozier.  Like fall.

Ah, geez. Home is here and there.

Well.  Hello, friend.  It's been too long.  You might want to know just where I've been.  Or not.  Either way, I'm telling you.

Sand doesn't come softer.

I went home.  The other home.  The northern hemisphere home.  And although it was perfectly possible for me to sit for a minute to tap out a few snarky comments about the super abundance of inane television or fat people or super abundance of fat, inane people on television, I didn't.  I was busy.  Doing things that make me not fat or inane, I guess.  So there.

Mostly, we played on the beach.  That's South Mission, if you're wondering.  Home to the rickety old Giant Dipper and the highest per capita rate of dude bros anywhere in San Diego County.  I love home.  Almost as much as I love this home.

We cruised the boardwalk on cheapass cruisers purchased for the month we had.  In the U.S.A., it's cheaper just to buy a brand-spanking-new bicycle than to find a used one.  I know; I tried.  The only bike I found for cheaper than the smooth Chinese coaster required that I wait three weeks before I could actually take possession as the store wanted to check the police records.  Yeah, see, that wasn't going to work for me.  And renting a bike would have required a mortgage.  So.  Yes.  I purchased two bikes.  Fortunately, we gifted them to the needy bike-less when we left so they'll continue to prowl the sandy strip.

Not realizing the masochism this could later impose, I counted the number of rolled tacos I ate while in San Diego.  That would be 14.  I also had chilaquiles 5 times.  And I drank 6 glasses of horchata.  Remind me not to review this post in about a month when the cravings awaken from their satiated slumber.

God of Tacos?  We need you here.

Almost everyday, under an indecisive summer sun, we paddled out onto Mission Bay for a little stand-up paddle action.  Really works your core, my long-time bud sarcastically teased, and yes, indeed, it does.  A little.  Like, if you haven't really used your core in 15 years because you've been watching all of the gajillion Iron Sous Prep and Bus Chef shows from the comfort of a barco-lounger.  Or, I suppose, if you actually go into some killer waves.  Which I didn't.  Still.  It's cool and relaxing, civilized even.  Like taking an evening stroll on the water.  How you like them eggs, Jesus?

Cheap but not lame.

Home meant a time for lofty goal-setting.  Here's what we came up with: retire as soon as possible.  For reals.  Despite the obvious and tragic disadvantages of the rampant unemployment in the States right now, I got to say it was really nice spending time with jobless friends and jobless strangers who had the time and energy to meander through farmer's markets.  The farmers, for their part, seemed responsive to the conundrum and advised that everything was cheap.  Yes.  It was.

I love you, San Diego.  And all the people in it, or near it, or who traveled to be in it with us.  Friends and city alike are missed, and I'm not just saying that because we had like a foot of hail attack us today and most of it is still frozen in the cracks of our deck.

Music and whatnots

I take the minor victories pretty seriously these days.  Example?  Of course.

I heard Jesus Fever twice yesterday and that nauseating tickle of a teenage memory would not be relieved until I bumbled onto youtube to listen to it again.  And again.  And again.  Good song.

And I wanted to know where the hell I'd heard it before.

Something... something about the guitar... something in the ghostly way it resonates in that damn song was making me think of a long bus ride to Encinitas when I was probably too young to take it but who was paying attention anyway?  I used to hop on at the beach and transfer near UCSD with a book that I read for only as long as it took to get beyond the familiar.  When I couldn't name the streets, I watched the suburbs blur in the salt-sticky window and the coastal fog linger in old Torrey Pines.  When I was a little older, I took the same bus leaning into a friend who got sent away-- for something or other-- to a military school beyond even the unfamiliar.

But on the particular trip nagging my craw, I was alone.  Maybe I had my walkman on.  Or maybe I didn't.  Either way, eventually I got off the bus in front of Lou's Records.  And there, I acted like I knew what I was doing even though I didn't.  I went straight to The Smiths because that was the best way to pretend.  From there, I searched for vinyl-- judging the music by its cover art-- hoping that the music in the sleeve would play the smarts or darkness or confusion or gravity or whimsy of the album design.  Hoping, I guess, that it would play just for me and all my supercharged adolescent angst.

At Lou's, I memorized the posters on the walls and the album covers that I wanted and the t-shirts I could never afford but would covet on the widening shoulders of boys I knew.  I found REM and Alien Sex Fiend and Echo and Psychic TV and the Buzzcocks and Bauhaus and Siouxsie and I wished, back then, that music stores could be more like libraries, so I could sit and listen undisturbed as I gauged an opinion on whether the songs would do anything to make me feel a little... better.  A little... something.  A little... cool.

Lou's would let me listen to an album but only with permission.  And that required human interaction that, at 13 as at 36, put me off.  I never liked authority and I didn't want to talk to some pompous, world-wise 18-year old in an over washed version of the shirts I wanted.  Or t-shirts that introduced me to bands I didn't know so eventually, I would covet the shirt.

On this one afternoon, I remember the guy's fading shirt.  It was The The.  And so I bought an album because the guy wore horn-rims and I'd noted, under the torn cardigan he was wearing on a previous visit, a Smiths shirt.  So, after a long trip back on the bus, I heard Uncertain Smile for the first time.  Or so.

Yesterday, as I listened to Jesus Fever, I heard The The again, buried in a ditch so shallow I could still recognize its form.  So I searched for Uncertain Smile.  And I listened to it.  Again and again.

And that was the minor victory.  Finding it.  Someday, maybe I'll get a fiefdom or sell a screenplay or be able to play the crazy hard chop chord on mandolin that seems more impossible than either of the other goals.  Maybe.  But for now, the minor victory of linking the good in the old and the new is cool.  The memory was too.

How does he do it?

Last night, I had a dream that I was in Tokyo, drinking heavily and watching a lot of kids dance to bad reggae.  I've got to give my brain big props for its integrity with my language skills.  Instead of pretending like I could understand the chattering of the cool kids, I simply sat, struggling to recall the language I used to know.  When a Japanese word or phrase surfaced in my surplus memory, I used it.  Tabetai!  Kirei na?  Chodai!  "I want to eat!" I was saying.  "Pretty, huh?"  "Gimme!"

And when someone responded in Japanese, I waited for a translation, because that's what I would need now.  And when I awoke, I wanted to smoke a cigarette more than I wanted to learn Japanese again.

I have a friend, or something like that, who was always willing to take risks that I couldn't fathom.  He smoked pot early and fucked early and had a nervous breakdown well before any of our peer group had even started to comprehend the value of one.  One night, he rearranged my room while I cooked dinner.  I never doubted the superiority of his floor plan since he was the artist and I was just a residual friend, held over from adolescence for reasons that would never bear consideration but weren't necessary in the face of some mutual, molecular bond.  In those early days, the formation of stable molecules trumped other rational factors, I think.

Nowadays, I don't talk with the friend but I think we keep up with each other.  And these days, I'm admiring his decisions, from afar, wishing- with crossed fingers- that I might ask him just how he puts one foot in front of the other to take the life-saving steps that Saint-Exupery says we must take.  I'm not entirely sure why I want his viewpoint on the matter, but it's probably because I imagine that he makes art day in and day out, and to do this, I wonder, does he complete some daily reckoning or does he save that for the end?

I cross my fingers for the same reason that I used to tune out some of the innocence-fouling stories he shared sleepily with me in late, late night phone calls.  Maybe I can't hear it yet.  Or maybe I never wanted to know.  Truly, does anyone need to know that another eighth grader was just that willing while everyone else was watching Halloween?  Maybe I only need to know that life demands that steps must be taken, and maybe I don't need to know how someone else takes the steps.

Maybe, like all things worthwhile in life, it's better to generate my own rambling apocrypha than to rely on the musings of other minds.  That said, I'm comfortable reporting that one foot in front of the other is the way I take my steps.  It's the riskiest damn thing I've ever done.

Babies v. babies

I've just come home from an afternoon at the cafe.  It's not a bad life.  I sit, eat lunch, drink a pot of tea and wait for inspiration.  The cafe is about a quarter mile from my house.  I walk there, and it might be the only trip into the public realm I make all day.  I don't mind that one bit, having realized lately that the more I keep from interacting with people, the less annoyed by people I am.  From people, I exclude those that I know, those on bikes, those who run when I run, and those who take their dog to the park when I do (as long as we don't have to do too much chitchatting).

Look, it's my epiphany and I'm happy here and usually I start to see the ugly bits of the underbelly well within a year somewhere but this pleasant isolation is saving me the sight.  Yay!

At the cafe, women minded their children.  Or didn't.  A kid came to stare at me while I wrote so I smiled first, hoping to end whatever mesmerization had overtaken the kid.  Then I raised my eyebrows, tilted my head and exhaled, at a moderate volume.  The kid moved away.  I'm not entirely sure if I'm supposed to indulge wandering kids like that, but even if I did, what would I possibly have to say to them.  "Hey, kid, you like to stare at women slurping tea, huh?"  I'm not sure this contributes in any more beneficial way to the village we're supposed to raise than my loud, impatient sigh.  Kids gotta learn, right?

All of this to preface two funny articles appearing today on the tabloid wannabe online paper over here:  the first, headlined, "New 'win a baby' game draws fire," and the second, headlined, "Get sterilised... and win a car."  They use an 's' in sterilized.  I'm just quoting.

Ah, cultural deficiencies.  Whereas India is battling the conundrum of overpopulation by incentivizing a sterilization scheme with offers of a car, motorcycle and tvs, plus a little cash bonus of about twenty bucks to go through with the procedure, over in the UK, a fertility charity got a license from the gambling commission to sell tickets for IVF treatments.  You'd think, maybe, the two countries could just have a chat about their disparate conundrums and engineer some sort of population swap.  Is that horrible?  Well.  Just a thought.

I swear I'm pretty sure there are a sufficient number of babies in the world to keep us all in baby puke and intrusive stares for all time.  As my intentionally child-free doctor told me, "I'm going to be so much richer than all those silly mums.  Plus, I don't have a list of complaints to share with my co-workers."  Indeed.  Well, she did complain about the complaints, but I suppose that's a bit like complaining about the transfixed kid in the cafe.  We get to walk away if the parents don't figure out how much their offspring (or complaints about their offspring) bug.  Yay.  I'll take my $20 now, thank you.

Oh snap. It's winter.

Birds in winter.

Hi.  Yeah.  Um.  I live in the southern hemisphere.  It's easy to forget because, despite the fact that the accent is unconquerable and that generous Kiwi hospitality flies out the window when they get behind the wheel of a car, this enZed living really offers a snug fit.  Sure, like every other dumb Amurican here, I miss my carne asada and I still get a little gooey-- I mean, seriously teary-eyed-- when my doctor spends almost an hour with me and only charges me forty bucks, but most days, when I look out the window, I don't consciously acknowledge that my new home is thousands of miles in distance and history from my old one.  Most days, I look out the window and think, "Damn, I'm fucking lucky."

This morning, I woke up to a lavender sky.  The ocean was jade beneath it.  The air, felt only on my face and neck as Dottie and I rambled down to the beach to watch the sunrise, was piercing.  Because it's winter.  Even wrapped in several layers, I'd failed to put it together.  I think there's a cognitive disconnect.  It's June.  School is out.  Summer starts.  I want to go to the fair and swim at night and ride my bike through the heat rising from a sunbaked asphalt.  I need a bathing suit and maybe I should consider waxing my legs.  I should eat a salad.  Somewhere.

But not necessarily here.  Here, I should make casseroles, I guess.  Or eggnog?  Maybe I should build a gingerbread house.  Without a guiding winter holiday, I'm a little unclear on the appropriate steps to take to reconnect the season with reality.  Christmas down under means sunnies and a surfing Santa.  So, I need something else.  With Flag Day already gone, maybe I appropriate Bastille Day or Canada Day.  I don't want to take the Fourth of July.  That one gets corndogs.  Period.

A quick review of public holiday options in New Zealand tells me that, whoa, there is no public holiday until September.  Bummer.  I could go with the obscure and celebrate Disobedience Day on the Third of July.  Or maybe Pecan Pie Day on July 12.  That sounds both plausible and palatable.  I suppose the long and short of it is, there's just no decent commercial holiday that's going to guide me through this new winter in summer paradigm.  And that means, shit, I'll have to figure out some sort of tradition on my own.  How liberating.  How lonely.  How brilliant.  I'm going to go buy some pecans.

Thinking Faulkner...

Well, that makes me sound much smarter than I am.  I'm actually thinking of one silly little quote of Faulkner's which is really pretty prosaic compared to some of his more greater poetics.  "Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or your predecessors.  Try to be better than yourself."  Okay.  Not a bad push, right?  And there's nothing wrong with stopping the messy gazes at those who are so easy to elevate.  But damn it all if being better than yourself doesn't introduce immediate conflict with your very achievements.

For example, yay for me because I recently submitted my first screenplay to a contest.  That was nice.  I'd like to do it again.  But let's say that my first effort produces results akin to a ceremonial dump in the trash.  I expect no less, honestly.  Does that mean that I have to curb my expectations the next time around to believe that my effort may actually get read and appreciated by one person?  Or does that mean that I have to aspire to win?

Or, maybe, if I'm trying to be better than myself, I should try to try to take out the trash, so to speak, and stop believing that the rubbish bin is the appropriate storage facility for my work.

Well.  Now, that's an entirely new read on it.  I know a woman who can talk about herself until I'm nauseous.  I asked her one time to be quiet so I could finish my trivial contribution to the conversation, which was totally unnecessary but the only way to stifle the shuddering clamminess rising from the pit of my tummy as she continued to claw away at the parameters of dialogue.  Instead of deferring, she became offended and suggested that I should listen more carefully and then she started in on a story about the importance of her perspectives.  Yes.  I surrendered at that point and haven't spoken with her since.  I suspect that I may have offended her but at least I don't have to worry about tasting vomit in my mouth at events that are supposed to be fun and sweet.

The reason I bring this up is this: as I think about becoming better than myself, I think of this woman.  I have the suspicion that she wakes up every morning knowing that she's better than everyone else and interested in enforcing that reality.  Frankly, I don't like competition all that much, so the idea of being better than anyone, let alone myself, makes me feel that same nausea.  Well.  The heart does grow strong in conflict, doesn't it?  And the stories of these conflicts are usually the most worthwhile out there.  And, this, I suppose, is the reason that being better than oneself is a decent path to pursue.  I think that I prefer to pursue it quietly.  Despite that instinct, I'll still publish this post.  Why the hell not?

Different kinds of blah blah blah

This is Nelson.  We went there recently.

I know, I know.  I've got a project to finish.  And I'm getting it done.  I swear.  I have about 90 pages left to edit-- cut, revise, improve, karatechop, annihilate-- and I feel pretty okay about all that.  Let me tell you, finishing a book is a lot harder than starting it.  Or, outlining it.  Or writing it.  I've got a completely arbitrary deadline to meet though and thank god for my completely obsessive belief that I'm absolutely worthless if I don't do exactly as I tell myself to.  Yay me!

But for the last two weeks, I've jumped into a couple other projects.  One: I met a nice person with a killer idea for a children's educational series.  We met and brainstormed and now I'm on the case.  Which is really to say, I took notes and stuck it on the back-burner because obsessives are pretty good at prioritizing.  The very nice person knows my priorities and she's willing to wait.  That's only part of the reason why she's so nice.

Two: I decided to write a starter chapter for this chainbooks, a project that strikes me as abysmally sad and ridiculously entertaining and head-poundingly frustrating, all at the same time!  Some venture capitalist from Australia wants to make books out of dubious online collaborations between writers. It's sort of like the drawing game.  I make the head, you make the torso and you give it to the drunk guy in the corner to do the legs.  Inevitably, the drunk guy draws two penises balanced on rolling balls.  Yep.  In that spirit, I wrote a first chapter that could handle a couple of penis legs.  Penis legs might actually improve it.  If anyone considering contribution is reading this, hey!  Penis legs!

Three, and this one is Craaazy, although probably only to me and not you since you likely could give a shit what I'm actually doing with my rapidly darkening winter days: I wrote a screenplay.  It's almost done, even!  In January, I set a goal to write a screenplay by June 15.  That wasn't so arbitrary a deadline because it actually coincides with the late submission date for a contest in LA.  So, as a good obsessive does, I threw everything else to the wind to punch out a screenplay that might be worthy of submission.  Screenplays are interesting.  Screenplays are like outlines with dialogue.  Screenplays are like watching a movie in your head and writing it down at the same time.  I haven't minded this screenplay writing fun.

I heard on the radio today that everyday in Yemen is like Thanksgiving.  Really?  Sort of makes me reconsider the whole abaya thing.  Maybe I wouldn't mind covering up a little if I could stuffing everyday.

Rapture abated.

Well.  I'm still here.  Not that I thought I'd be going anywhere.  My dog's still here too, and it was her I was most worried about, actually.  She's pure of heart and all that.  I'm glad she still cruises among us because I would hate to drag her leash around, all alone, on daily walks.

In other news, I have two questions.  The first: why does the manuscript assessment program care if my novel has more than 100,000 words?  I get it.  That's a lot of words.  But I don't want a lazy assessor.  And lots of books have lots of words.  I wonder if he knows how Anna Karenina ends?

Second question: how come no one ever told me just how easy it is to turn a man's shirt into a shirt that actually fits me?  Three new shirts today.  That's right.  The new Singer sang.  And I finally get to rock my Pie n' Burger shirt.  I wish I could actually go to Pie n' Burger though.  I'd really like some pie and a burger.

In case of rapture, I'll just be here.

My dog can predict stuff too.

It seems that an 89-year old man successfully maneuvered through the social media and crazy train networks of Christers to broadcast his urgent message of (dubious, cynical, perverse?) hope.  Hey!  Yay!  The world is going to end on May 21!  Save the date, 'kay!?  Because, kind guy that he is, he didn't want anyone to miss the fun by... say... visiting a luddite uncle or seeing a movie or something equally mundane yet out of hearing range so they'd miss the fireworks as 200 million naked folks streak into the sky for Jesus's big, boring bash in the clouds.  No spiked punch for them.

I'm of the opinion that the faster these folks get siphoned off the planet, the better.  Don't let the stratosphere hit you on your way up and out, okay?  I'll kick it down here, sigh contentedly and throw my arms wide for the calm age of reason that should follow.  And the legalized pot.

Okay, the whole rapture business is bat shit crazy, but what's crazier than the bat shit is the bat food gobbled into the pious (probably Tagament-coated) digestive track of the hordes of the fat and holy hopefuls.  There's an incredible hierarchy of unbelievably insane homework that had to be completed to finish the term and receive one of the cool Rapture t-shirts folks are sporting under smiles that don't know that getting saved means getting dead.  Yay, kids!  We stopped saving for your college tuition!  Who's ready to meet the maker?

First, the impatient rapture ticketholders had to believe that Harold Camping's reading of the bible is somehow authoritative.  He's a civil engineer, for pete's sake.  For chrissake, I mean.  (I'm really anxious to be among those left behind.)  Second, they had to follow his math, which, if I remember anything from math classes, usually requires numbers that aren't randomly made up just to get the correct answer.  Mr. Flattum always frowned on my creative number replacements while he gently massaged the shoulders of the boy in front of me.  Mr. Flattum had soft-hands, I'm told.  Third, you have to add up ages in the bible because the bible is really precise on the longevity of those tribal elders.  For example, some guys lived over 150 years.  And Noah, well he was in his 600th year when he decided to build his ark.  So, you take those ages and add them all up because there's no reason to question how those Old Testament guys were living to such ripe old ages  when most humans would have fully ripened and started to rot by 35, if they actually made it through their first five years.  Finally, I guess, they also have to believe there's some dude who's going to plop down to earth, take a look around, then hop back up into the sky to report to some other dude who's got the power to smite us all.  And that we will be smote by him.  And that somehow, a good smiting will be different than the physically torturous adventure of getting sucked through the earth's atmosphere with no clothes on.  Oh, geez.  I mean, oh fucking lord.  People really buy this shit?



Shit.  I'm pretty keen to see how this all shakes out.  All joking aside... no.  I can't do that.  It's too fucking funny.  I mean, like, it's funny in that way that I want to point at everyone who exhausted their savings because they had the hubris to think that they'd be specially selected to clear out of this mortal coil and I want to hold my stomach while I laugh at them.  And I'm usually pretty nice.  But with this.  Nah.  No need to be nice while they squirm to abandon ship.

Yeah, well, there's always a DIY option since you won't be able to pay rent next month, dumb-dumb.  And maybe that's mean, but come on.  It's actually really fucking funny.

I am remiss.

I have a friend in Colorado with whom I maintain a holidays-only correspondence.  So far, he's missed Easter and the MLK birthday but he made up for it by finding Waitangi Day.  At this moment, I'm deciding whether to make a go of it for Cinco de Mayo despite today's sad deficit of pinatas and warm weather.  I do have warm Coronas in the cupboard.  Maybe I let her rip?

A completely separate thought: paying taxes in this country doesn't make me feel any more connected to it. In fact, the opposite may be true.  And while I self-tag as a bleeding heart, the taxes I pay to the U.S. don't really offer much return on the investment either.  So, what am I becoming?  Surely, not a grumbling libertarian.  I mean, come on.  How silly is that political leaning?  Whoops, I mean, political stand.  Because a libertarian who tries to lean on anything should certainly fall flat on her face unless she's provided her own column for the purpose.  Otherwise, she's not very principled, is she?

No, I think my problem is personal, not political.  (Granted, I'm not thrilled with sending taxes to the U.S. to continue funding the war, nor do I believe that the government is efficiently managing the fun money we send it.)  But, this doesn't mean I don't want to pay for my governments.  It's just, I want to pay for my governments to govern me, which, in the case of the U.S. means that I want them to maintain or build programs that will take care of those who need it now and be available for me when or if I need it later.  In the case of NZ, I think I need to pay a little more attention.  See, it's old school here.  There's still a level of accountability in this government that shocks my long-neglected advocate's heart.  But I don't necessarily investigate the broad options available to me.  Maybe I'm going to go have a chat with legal aid.  Maybe I'd like to visit the free museum.  Oh, here's something I know I appreciate already: moderately clean, public superloos.

I do use the roads, as a motorist and cyclist, and though I moan the absence of bike lanes, I'm becoming aware of a slow conversion among policy makers here to ensure greater safety to bike riders.  Okay.  There's that.  My doctor's visits are relatively inexpensive, though I don't care to push that benefit, thank you very much.  When I decide to go back to school, I'll get a kickass deal.  Alright.  So, I know the taxes are flowing toward resources that I, as a human being, can actually use (unlike the money I sent to the U.S., which seems to accrue to non-human corporations whose quest for parity has put them in a power position that I won't likely know in my lifetime).  But I do need to create the connections that make me feel these benefits more keenly rather than relying on a rambling blog post to stoke some cognitive affirmation of them.

Maybe I should cruise by the Community Advice Clinic.  They exist just to answer those questions that keep us awake at night.  They're like google people, except they don't get paid and they actually talk to people who don't live on the interwebs.

I'll get myself connected yet.  Here I go.  Right after I hold my nose for that warm Corona.

Oh my god, the tomb is empty. The holiday.

Gorge on it.  That's holy business.

In general, I'm a big fan of holidays.  I don't usually care much about their underlying purpose, I'll admit, but I'm totally down with the sanctioned rest.  Honestly, I don't know why humans are so utterly incompetent when it comes to providing these little respites for themselves, but I'm game for following the calendar to secure a little downtime.  At a minimum, it provides justification for the rest that is imperative to keeping a soul in working order.  Even if you don't believe in souls.

So here's the thing.  The sticking point, if you will, since this is one of those perverse holidays that uses sugar-coatings to mask the absolute horror of the events leading up to the death of Jesus.  If you know me, you know I'm no Christer.  I like the guy.  He seems like a great community activist and I have always enjoyed listening to Jesus-quality spiels at never-ending town hall meetings.  But Easter?  Come on now people.  Let's use some common sense on this one.

I opened facebook this morning to find a truckload of Easter greetings from people who I know don't know the religious history or even religious dogma that set the foundation for the holiday.  It's supposed to be holiest of holy days, you know?  It's supposed to commemorate the mystery of Jesus's disappearance from his tomb, where he was interred days earlier after perishing on the cross.  Bummer, right?  Personally, I love the plot twist even if I can't quite see beyond its implausibility.  And it makes me think that the writers of the story really didn't think through their tale, or respect their readers enough, to prop up the twist with the rebar of believability.

First.  I mean, come on, you leave a dead guy in a tomb and return three days later to find it empty.  Does that really support a leap to resurrection?  How many zombie books did these guys read?  If I found a tomb empty, I think I'd report a crime.  And I'd probably want to have a good long chat with the medical examiner to see whether death had really claimed the missing body before burial.

Second.  The church continues to call it Easter.  Despite long written history that this refers to an Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre in charge of dawn, or maybe sunrise, possibly light and bits of fertility, (all good things), the church kind of jumped on the name and ran with it.  That's cool, I guess, but let's give some honor to that stuff too, if we're going to use it so freely.  Fair use is fair use.

Third.  Seriously, painted eggs and chocolate?  Okay, I know that wasn't what the original writers probably had in mind, but still.  I remember egg hunts in front of St. Therese when I was little.  Whether or not church elders are as adept at egg-dying as they are at covering up pedophiliac exploits, I don't know.  But they certainly exploit the strange pagan ritual to keep us coming back for more.  Unless you're like me and you find the thought of searching for cooked and colorful eggs in the non-refrigerated lawn where the dog poops pretty repulsive.

Okay, so here it is, my wish for you: have a really wonderful, quiet or otherwise, restful or otherwise, chocolate-filled or otherwise, day off and maybe give a thought to the light, your fertility, the sunrise and the reaction you would have if you discovered a dead and buried loved one removed from their resting spot.  Yeah, that's right.  A stern talk with the gravedigger would be in order.

Time for Pie

It's friggin' cold outside.  A mild Sunday offering occasional hints of sunshine proved to be a giant red herring because here I am, it's Monday, and the southerlies are howling at my idiotic hope for a mild fall.  They are a sardonic wind.

I am almost a quarter through with my rewrites and if I can maintain my pace, I'll be done by June 5th.  Here's what I've learned: there is no shortcut.  Every word deserves some kind of scrutiny even if it's the foulest set of letters ever assembled.  And if it is so foul, it better persuade me of its function among others less homely.  Here's another lesson: I shouldn't hate myself for using foul words in the first place.  There is a time and a place for them, I suppose, even if I decide to swear off some of them for the remainder of my days.

I'm supposed to go outside soon but I would turn away from a dinner party if I heard a screamer on the other side of the door.  The wind is a maniac and I'm not sure I want to interact with it.  I'll keep my head down, avoid eye contact and count time until I shut the door safely behind me with the wind on the other side.

It's a cold, cold day.

And I could go on and on about how repulsive I find the lasting trend of American politicians playing dumb but I'd rather not.  Because, I've decided, it doesn't really matter.  Playing dumb is like a national past time.  Americans are good at it.  So, elevate it and love it.  I'm not there.  I'm here, watching the grey water spill excited white waves onto a deserted shore.

And this is what I'm listening to:

I like those dance moves.  I gotta get me some of those.

Out and About Somewhere Else

Here's the things that I've done in the last week:

Surrogate friends. As good as real ones.

1. Hosted surrogate friends, who are now new friends.  Living on the roundest bit of the earth's butt cheek, we've had trouble inducing friends who are closer to the world's... what?... sternum, I guess, to come visit.  Price, distance, time, blah blah blah.  I get it.  It's far and money is a finite resource for those of us who don't own major multinational corporations.  Really, it's stupid that we don't own something bigger than ourselves as it would provide us with many, many more rights than we currently have as mere people, but I digress.  Our friends.  They're not visiting.  So, we've put the call out to accept friends of friends.  Friends of friends of friends.  Distant relatives on tour?  Send them my way.  Goddaughter on a round-the-world ticket?  Yes.  I will meet her for coffee and if she's house-trained, she can stay with us.

Last week, two friends of a dear friend hopped into town for a couple days and I caught myself pretending that my dear friend was smuggled somewhere in the confines of these friendly men's skin.  Something like an alien in sheep's clothing, except neither my friend nor my new friends require disguise.  Anyhoo, that was last week, and that's over.  The house is empty again and we await the next random stranger to be sent our way.

Bats under a blue sky.

2. We went to Sydney.  You may be thinking, a lady of leisure requires no vacation.  Well.  That's probably true.  But I didn't mind the respite from long afternoons inspecting longer chapters for some sort of treasure worthy of salvage.  (Hint: my chest does not runneth over.)  Sydney is a magic city that deserves the dreams of all those forlorn itinerants looking for the greenest grass.  Everyone should want to live in Sydney.  I kind of want to live in Sydney.  Although, like New York, I would prefer to do it with the infinite resources that would come if only I recognized the importance of profit-taking.  As it is, I'm now blogging for two Wellington sites for free.  I have a non-profit heart.  (It does not come with a tax exemption.)

Here's a little tidbit you may not know about Sydney: in its Botanical Garden, there is a colony of bats that defies all nocturnal apocrypha.  Under a brilliant sun, the furry beasts hung upside down bleating at the injustice of it all.  Or maybe it was a song.  They were loud and they occasionally dive-bombed us, which is what led me to think they may have some unjust score to settle.  I promise you, I did nothing to set them off.

3. Having returned home, I can happily report that this home, where I sit and stare over waves gently toppling over each other and I smell the pungent brine of sun-soaked seaweed, is the best home.  For now.  Yay home!

That's all.  Please enjoy.

Elves or Journals?

A few weeks past, I went to the Elven casting call for The Hobbit.  I fit the height requirements so what choice did I really have?  Tall people should never back away from a request made solely based on their altitude.  I consider it a civic duty.  You want me to open a cabinet for you?

Funny thing now is that I'm more interested in hearing the results of the lanky, lithe cattle call than learning whether my most recent story submission is going to get published.  Have I failed to arrange my priorities correctly?  Or maybe I'm just a realist?  Not really.  Maybe it's because I'm not stacking my deck the right way.  I should be sending stories to as many journals as I can but instead I'm auditioning for elven extras and doing random google searches for journal deadlines.  I only have one story out now, and that's probably not going to give me the same odds as becoming one in 500 elves, standing anonymously in a cape in some woodland crowd scene.  Alright, I can own it.  It is a matter of priorities.

And so, I will commit to finding some damn journals and sending some damn stories to them.  Really, I hate this part.  I don't care about rejection; I care about the process.  It's a distracting drain on time.  Like trying out to be an elf, I guess, but that, at least, let me look at the other tall, skinny elven wannabes so I could assess the likelihood of my own potential for elfdom.  My assessment?  There are many, many better elves in this world, and it seems a lot of them happen to live in Wellington.  But I can promise that I know how to rock a cape.  I did that for years in high school and I'm looking for some pay-off.  

What's Tepco's Story Now?

Two things in one day have started my fist a-shaking.

First, I read in the wee hours of the morning before sleep but after a lot of wine that Japan's nuclear disaster continues to rage without any moment for rest and respite.  Oh, right, because it's powered by nuclear rods which didn't come equipped with an on/off switch.  When I read this article from the Radio New Zealand site that reported "radiation levels 10 million times higher than it should be for water inside the reactor," I immediately slurred an epithet directed toward the owners of the Tokyo Electric Power Company and then I took an aspirin because me and the vino are fair-weather friends.

Then, after a short sleep fueled by fitful dreams of teenagers-- always a nightmarish addition to sleep vision-- camping on my deck and practicing embarrassing hip hop moves, I awoke to this BBC article and video which describes the frightening spike-- an order of magnitude above appropriate radiation levels-- as a mistake.  Okay.  I guess.  But, really?  Do we just keep accepting this disjointed and anorexic information at face value?  Or maybe it's time to do some fist-shaking?

After admitting its mistake and offering an apology (which, really, has to be as welcome as the pimply cousin who has to play bad piano at Christmas), Tepco revised the levels measured to 100,000 times normal.  In their revision, I can't help but think that there's too much soothing apology and too little straightforward explanation of the continued danger presented by this dire situation.  I'm certainly happy that the radiation levels were incorrectly read last night, but the levels now reported-- 100,000 times higher than what would be tolerated normally-- still demand a serious gut check.  A worker spending an hour face-to-face with that kind of radioactivity would be exposed to four times the acceptable level of radiation for an entire year.  Meanwhile, incomprehensible explanations are being offered for those elevated levels: yes, it's fuel rods; yes, they've temporarily melted down; no, there are no leaks.  Maybe it was the big wave that washed the water out from around the rods into these now ominous puddles.  Maybe.  Maybe it was a radioactive supervillain who took a piss into the reactor.  Maybe!

I feel immensely sorry for the Japanese people who are so altruistic, even in the face of tragedy, and yet somehow not provided the full story they deserve in their recovery.  No matter how patient or pragmatic a population may be, it still deserves correct information and it deserves a game plan.  What happens next?  Is Tepco attempting to recover functionality in the hope that the plant can be used again?  Is Tepco the appropriate actor to police its own disaster?  Will Tepco try to save the land for its future use?  Will it be contaminated for decades?

This ProPublica article helpfully suggests that the effects of the nuclear disaster will not spread beyond a local reach.  Granted, the article is now 10 days old and relies heavily on experts based in the U.S.  But a  positive point that deserves repetition is that the cores are cooler now, lacking the same energy they would have had when operational.  So, while contamination remains possible, the effects of even a worst-case scenario meltdown would be manageable with prompt evacuation of additional areas.

So, maybe that's good.  But, wouldn't it feel a whole lot better if this kind of analysis came from Japan?  Because, as much as I like to think that the overseas experts' assessments are correct, I can't help but suspect that what the experts call "manageable" might be mismanaged by Tepco at this point.  And because of that, I'm shaking my fist at them.

And finally, while still muttering epithets though not influenced by copious amounts of wine, I'm also shaking my fist at anyone who thinks that private enterprise can be expected to properly take care of our social welfare.  Because, frankly, that's not in their interest.  Even when their society is the most altruistic among us.

We can't replace what's lost but we can help restore It (hopefully).

In my last post, I remembered my friends in Japan, and prayed that they were okay.  It had been too many years that were full of too many stories they should have heard, too many parties they should have attended, and too many moments that would have loved their company.  Still, the years stuttered by.  I've noticed they become more fluid, gathering speed as they amass.  I wish that wasn't the case.

I'm so relieved to learn that both Sachi and Masa are happy and healthy and raising families far from the destruction unleashed by the March 11 quake and tsunami.  And I'm happy the distance that time wedged between us collapsed as quickly a moment.  And maybe it was only just a moment after all.

Although my friends are okay, the friends of many others are not.  The families of others are not.  Please take a moment to donate anything you can to the recovery efforts.  There are still 500,000 people without homes.  That means half a million people without the clothes in their closets, the food in their cupboards, the keepsakes from happier times and mementos of loved ones who've passed, the bundles of letters, the albums of photos, the stacks of read books and walls of painted memories.  For all these people, the anchors we drop to secure our pasts have been cut.  They'll be fine, thankfully.  But life, for them, has been interrupted.

And then there are those who remain missing or have died.  Almost 10,000 are confirmed dead and another 12,000 are missing.  When I was a little girl, maybe 7 years old, I read about 250 marines killed in Beirut and tried to understand exactly what that meant.  I imagined all the kids in my classroom lining up on the field.  And I added the fourth-graders in the class next door.  Then I added the kindergartners.  That only got me 70 but it was too many already.  I stopped lining up kids in my head because I couldn't bear to imagine 250 of us wiped away from that day, from recess, and dinner with our moms at night, and bike rides back to school in the morning.

I thought about trying to line up groups of people to fathom the loss of 10,000 people in a single, devastating event but I couldn't even start.  Instead, I made a donation, in the hope that the recovery and reconstruction in Japan will be quick, and that people will rise from the suffering, and that they will begin to find new mementos and keepsakes to remind them of their hopes for the future.

From the U.S., you can make easy donations of $10 to several organizations by text as follows:

• American Red Cross: text REDCROSS to 90999  
• Save the Children: text JAPAN to 20222
• Mercy Corps: text MERCY to 25383

The mobile giving campaign of American Red Cross is organized by the mGive Foundation.  The campaigns for Save the Children and Mercy Corps is organized by Mobile Giving.

From New Zealand, the NZ Red Cross has started a campaign to collect donations to benefit the Japanese Red Cross.  You may consider donating to both the Japan relief efforts as well as the continuing work of the NZ Red Cross in Christchurch.