Mad Men season finale, plus Obama's grandmother's death. There's not enough ibuprofen on earth.
This is the worst election of my adult life, bar none. I've been reading the archives of Pundit Kitchen because even Fivethirtyeight is too raw for me right now.
Wake me up after Obama's inauguration, srsly.
Wake me up after Obama's inauguration, srsly.
I regret not believing her the first time she told me. I don't think anyone believed her, not even her Dad. Not even, she said, the Bishop, who had daughters around our age.
Amy and Zoe will be that age soon. What if they tell me something like that? GOD FORBID. I hope they won't - I hope I am not as amenable to authority as our parents' generation could be - I hope our rigorously-chosen local surrogate family doesn't harbour any molesters. But you can never be sure. In my case, it was the guy at the bus stop and the dentist at university. You have to wonder what on earth is the MATTER with men? It's enough to make me a separatist, with special dispensation only for Himself. I could do without the rest. I really could.
I am a very angry woman. He once had to remind me that the girls have no baggage. Maybe they should have some? Some kind of ward or medal to keep the black shadows at bay? What can I give them other than my love and righteous anger, my faith in them, the last faith of all.
Faith. I would have to believe them. It is at the core of my new self, my real self, that these children are my highest and best achievement. If they told me the truth then surely, surely I would see it in their eyes and come to their defence.
But if that's the case, what the FUCK was wrong with Lucy's father? Jesus Christ.
I didn't mean that as an answer to the question, but perhaps it is.
Amy and Zoe will be that age soon. What if they tell me something like that? GOD FORBID. I hope they won't - I hope I am not as amenable to authority as our parents' generation could be - I hope our rigorously-chosen local surrogate family doesn't harbour any molesters. But you can never be sure. In my case, it was the guy at the bus stop and the dentist at university. You have to wonder what on earth is the MATTER with men? It's enough to make me a separatist, with special dispensation only for Himself. I could do without the rest. I really could.
I am a very angry woman. He once had to remind me that the girls have no baggage. Maybe they should have some? Some kind of ward or medal to keep the black shadows at bay? What can I give them other than my love and righteous anger, my faith in them, the last faith of all.
Faith. I would have to believe them. It is at the core of my new self, my real self, that these children are my highest and best achievement. If they told me the truth then surely, surely I would see it in their eyes and come to their defence.
But if that's the case, what the FUCK was wrong with Lucy's father? Jesus Christ.
I didn't mean that as an answer to the question, but perhaps it is.
Himself notes that Celtic jewellery is not the first thing that leaps to mind when he hears the phrase "true love knots". I assured himself that he is a filthy pervert, and missed him more than ever. He will be here tomorrow to take up his part of the slack of raising our Love and our Life. And presently he will be gone again. How truly does Facebook specify that: "It's complicated."
I'm actually starting to think of it as a sentence: what true love does, is tie you up in knots. Knots of pain and pleasure, certainly, but also knots of obligation, of family, of duty, of place, of identity. My life is full of love and it's a cat's-cradle, a tangle of things that absolutely had to be done yesterday, of conflicting demands and priorities, all chosen. I fled an unintentional life for an intentional one and regret, basically, nothing; I don't have time anymore to regret anything. I am far too busy. Maybe this was Piaf's secret too?
My cunning ploy has failed. Amy is still awake and thrashing around on the sofa, kicking me. I require tea, and possibly opiates. And a Democratic victory. Maybe I'll just go and constantly-reload Fivethirtynine.com some more.
I'm actually starting to think of it as a sentence: what true love does, is tie you up in knots. Knots of pain and pleasure, certainly, but also knots of obligation, of family, of duty, of place, of identity. My life is full of love and it's a cat's-cradle, a tangle of things that absolutely had to be done yesterday, of conflicting demands and priorities, all chosen. I fled an unintentional life for an intentional one and regret, basically, nothing; I don't have time anymore to regret anything. I am far too busy. Maybe this was Piaf's secret too?
My cunning ploy has failed. Amy is still awake and thrashing around on the sofa, kicking me. I require tea, and possibly opiates. And a Democratic victory. Maybe I'll just go and constantly-reload Fivethirtynine.com some more.
I am so deeply tired it's reminding me, a little, of when Amy was almost three and I was pregnant with Zoe. I have the same dull ache in my pelvis and hips and the long bones of my legs. I wanted to hit the Hunters Point Open Studios today but was OVERRULED by a 2/3 majority for the library. Of course we arrived at noon because it FELT like 1pm, and had to kill an hour. The Woodhouse Fish Company saved my life, with its available parking, proteinaceous kid-friendliness and coffee.
I know I should ditch my beloved car but the thought of a day like today on public transport is hard to fathom. It's pretty much inexcusable given how completely bus- and train-friendly our lives mostly are but STILL. A dedicated person would have made it out to Hunters Point one way or another.
The couple next to us at Woodhouse knew the couple next to them, and they had all recently been gay re-married to each other. I eavesdropped shamelessly. One of the women said how strange it is that they had to show up at City Hall and renew vows now thirty years old. One of the men said he thinks a lot of people are getting married before the election and taking it too lightly. The women agreed; it's a serious social contract. I kinda wanted to make sure they saw my No On 8 sticker, but I was too busy de-ketchuping the brats. They are my Love and Life, my alpha and omega, but no one warned me about all the red sauce. Sometimes I feel I have bathed in the revolting crap.
Strange double vision over the election; my present-self having volunteered for Obama twice this week, once at the Market Street field office then again yesterday while the girls were napping ("Hi, I am a volunteer with Barack Obama's campaign..." "Oh God NOT AGAIN. Look, I have ALREADY VOTED for him, OKAY?" "Yes, sir, thanks so much, sir, I really appreciate it sir!") and donated well over what we can afford to both Obama and No on 8; my past-self of course remembering very well exactly which scriptures gay marriage can be said to contradict, and understanding very well the appeal of McCain and the fear of change.
You'd think double vision would give me depth perception, but I think not; I think I see cross-eyed.
Amy just dug up three lost library books, bless her. Zoe's asleep. I got Amy to lie down on the sofa and tucked a blanket around her. WITHOUT ULTERIOR MOTIVE. Nuh-uh.
I know I should ditch my beloved car but the thought of a day like today on public transport is hard to fathom. It's pretty much inexcusable given how completely bus- and train-friendly our lives mostly are but STILL. A dedicated person would have made it out to Hunters Point one way or another.
The couple next to us at Woodhouse knew the couple next to them, and they had all recently been gay re-married to each other. I eavesdropped shamelessly. One of the women said how strange it is that they had to show up at City Hall and renew vows now thirty years old. One of the men said he thinks a lot of people are getting married before the election and taking it too lightly. The women agreed; it's a serious social contract. I kinda wanted to make sure they saw my No On 8 sticker, but I was too busy de-ketchuping the brats. They are my Love and Life, my alpha and omega, but no one warned me about all the red sauce. Sometimes I feel I have bathed in the revolting crap.
Strange double vision over the election; my present-self having volunteered for Obama twice this week, once at the Market Street field office then again yesterday while the girls were napping ("Hi, I am a volunteer with Barack Obama's campaign..." "Oh God NOT AGAIN. Look, I have ALREADY VOTED for him, OKAY?" "Yes, sir, thanks so much, sir, I really appreciate it sir!") and donated well over what we can afford to both Obama and No on 8; my past-self of course remembering very well exactly which scriptures gay marriage can be said to contradict, and understanding very well the appeal of McCain and the fear of change.
You'd think double vision would give me depth perception, but I think not; I think I see cross-eyed.
Amy just dug up three lost library books, bless her. Zoe's asleep. I got Amy to lie down on the sofa and tucked a blanket around her. WITHOUT ULTERIOR MOTIVE. Nuh-uh.
Why would I live in the past when there is SO. Much PRESENT? It's called the present for a reason! I can hear Amy and Zoe babbling to one another from their bunks, Amy of course performing exegesis on her latest chapter book because she is THAT MUCH a bookworm like me, Zoe naturally worshiping every action of her big sister hero AS IT IS WRITTEN, and as I at three naturally worshiped a sister of my own.
BEGONE DULL PAST I spurn you with my boot.
The kids! A birthday party today; they fled from me and were absorbed into a kid-herd which swept, single-souled, from room to room destroying as it swept. A plague of children! God never thought of that one, which proves he has never trodden on Lego at midnight, which means WHO IS HE TO JUDGE.
God, brain, stop it.
BEGONE DULL PAST I spurn you with my boot.
The kids! A birthday party today; they fled from me and were absorbed into a kid-herd which swept, single-souled, from room to room destroying as it swept. A plague of children! God never thought of that one, which proves he has never trodden on Lego at midnight, which means WHO IS HE TO JUDGE.
God, brain, stop it.
I should make a list. There was Sister Angela, who built the monastery at Stroud out of mud brick with nothing more than a tractor and the cast-iron conviction, brought back from a near-death experience during her radical mastectomy for breast cancer, that "Death is dancy, darlings. There'll be nothing but dancing and dancing!" Speaking of dancing, there are more gay men and lesbians than I can count, and you can dismiss their kindness as chemical if you wish, but it would make you an idiot. I have felt closer to God in the crush at the front of the Hordern Pavilion at 3am on Mardi Gras morning than most other places, ever.
There are the Austrian and German women who ran the Pony Club and riding schools near where I grew up, the salt of the earth every one of them, as capable of riding an elegant shoulder-in as of mucking out a stall or lancing an abscessed hoof. There are the large animal vets I have known, and some of the public school teachers - the ones who sidestepped both burnout and the ever-present temptations to interfere, in every sense of the word. There are cafe-owners who cared for nothing but the quality of their flat whites and macchiatos. There are librarians and lead singers of pub-rock bands with political lyrics and owners of bookstores and people who rehabilitate native animals that were hit by cars. There are docents and nurses, oh God, God bless all the nurses, and firefighters and I suppose there are probably lifeguards who aren't wankers. The volunteers with the State Emergency Service certainly aren't. There are probably lots of quite incorruptible police. There are ordinary mums and dads and farmers and truckers and people working the checkouts in supermarkets and they're probably all fine and okay.
I would not, however, describe the culture in which I grew up - and caveat caveat caveat it has no doubt ALL CHANGED in the ten years since I shook its dust off my feet - I would not describe that culture as nice, or kind, or meritocratic, or incorruptible if you want me to be perfectly frank. And at the same time I don't honestly believe it's worse than anywhere else. It's like I am told they say in The Program, and in California The Program whatever it is is always invoked in title case, that you are comparing your insides with somebody else's outsides. Sydney is my insides.
You might say I am about to spill my guts.
There are the Austrian and German women who ran the Pony Club and riding schools near where I grew up, the salt of the earth every one of them, as capable of riding an elegant shoulder-in as of mucking out a stall or lancing an abscessed hoof. There are the large animal vets I have known, and some of the public school teachers - the ones who sidestepped both burnout and the ever-present temptations to interfere, in every sense of the word. There are cafe-owners who cared for nothing but the quality of their flat whites and macchiatos. There are librarians and lead singers of pub-rock bands with political lyrics and owners of bookstores and people who rehabilitate native animals that were hit by cars. There are docents and nurses, oh God, God bless all the nurses, and firefighters and I suppose there are probably lifeguards who aren't wankers. The volunteers with the State Emergency Service certainly aren't. There are probably lots of quite incorruptible police. There are ordinary mums and dads and farmers and truckers and people working the checkouts in supermarkets and they're probably all fine and okay.
I would not, however, describe the culture in which I grew up - and caveat caveat caveat it has no doubt ALL CHANGED in the ten years since I shook its dust off my feet - I would not describe that culture as nice, or kind, or meritocratic, or incorruptible if you want me to be perfectly frank. And at the same time I don't honestly believe it's worse than anywhere else. It's like I am told they say in The Program, and in California The Program whatever it is is always invoked in title case, that you are comparing your insides with somebody else's outsides. Sydney is my insides.
You might say I am about to spill my guts.
With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;
Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,
Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.
Coleridge, natch, although I always get it mixed up with the Eliot one -
Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.
Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.
Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense;
To seize and clutch and penetrate,
Expert beyond experience,
He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
Lots of possibilities there obvs - sturdycripple woulda bin a good LJ handle, it occurs, or forgeandfireblast (over 15 chars?) or lustsandluxuries. Trueloveknots sounds like a Celtic jewelry store but hell, it's done now, and in any case how apt is all this talk of skulls and the metaphys. with Halloween and el dia de los muertos upon us, along with the damn election and all this rain? END OF THE WORLD my friends and no mistake; every sentence an exercise in eschatology.
The kids wore utterly ridick costumes, Disneyfied to fuck, Princesses Regressive and Sleeping Palin or what have, and we rampaged up and down Cortland amid throngs of Spiders-men and ninjae and such; saw mizchalmers and malaclyps and cait and josh and valerie all with respective entourages but no hazelbroom - where were ya babe? - and harvested unfeasible candy quantities, ruthlessly culled after a late loud bedtime by your friendly neighborhood utterly unrepentant me.
I didn't even feel like eating it, which wigs, as I am a candy fiend under the right circs, which are non-local. Candy! We didn't even call it that in TEH OLD COUNTRIES, it was lollies, and it was BETTER. One's own comfort food is, even if I suppose it is fermented shark in the case of Iceland. Lollies do share with fermented shark the overuse of gelatinous goo. There are a squillion-odd variations on the notion of chewy jelly-like substances made from horse's hooves: as frinstance teeth and milk bottles (?) and strawberries and cream, which look like tiny fried eggs with a red yolk, and pineapples; all these are sort of milky jellies. Clear jellies come in the form of jellybabies and snakes. Then there are cobbers or Fantails - chocolate-coated caramels - and freckles, which are chocolates with hundreds-and-thousands - don't even know what you call these; sprinkles? Then little blobs of yellow chocolate, and licorice allsorts, with layers of licorice and brightly coloured sugary poo. Oh! And bananas, which are a strange hard foam tasting of chemicals.
These were all sold loose for a cent or two; you got given 25c and agonized for hours over how to allocate. No quarter given! We don't have quarters, you got a 20c piece, called a 20c piece, with a lovely platypus design, and a 5c piece, called a 5c piece, with an echidna.
Older you graduated to a dollar, and this was before the dollar coin when you still had a dollar note, all seventies brown and orange with cool Aboriginal art (Christ I am so old). With a dollar you could aim higher, to Peppermint Patties which i guess are a little like the York somethings you get here only BETTER, ditto Snickers and Mars Bars -
Look, it is like coffee and I know how it bores you to have this pointed out (These Romans are crazy! as Asterix would say) but baristas here (except at Ritual and Four Barrel and Blue Bottle) scald the God damn milk. It is not, or not only a matter of single-origin, fresh roasted beans, it is respect for the lactose! Which observation obviously opens the door to the cultural-genetic consequences of the lactose tolerance mutation and I kinda don't wanna go there, my point such as it was having been that your chocolate, people, tastes like ass; it is much lower in cocoa butter than our chocolate, it is in fact oftentimes compount chocolate with the cocoa butter extracted and replace with vegetable fat; oftentimes it is merely brown sludge with grease and sugar shit.
I do not mean to imply that things were better there. I got it again the other day, someone asking about the accent and me saying I am from Sydney and them off with the ecstatics: "Oh! I was there on holiday once - the sun and the sea - and all the people there were SO NICE, you must miss it!" Well, I miss the coffee, sure. And the proper lollies. And I miss my mum and dad, God do I miss them, especially when I need emergency minders for Les Sprogs, the Princesses of Disney-fication -
I wonder if I could do something with that, Disney and Sydney, Dis is almost Syd backward, can't think of what, Donne, Coleridge or Eliot could but I am not they -
But: the people there are so nice? Well. I am sure plenty are.
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;
Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,
Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.
Coleridge, natch, although I always get it mixed up with the Eliot one -
Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.
Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.
Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense;
To seize and clutch and penetrate,
Expert beyond experience,
He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
Lots of possibilities there obvs - sturdycripple woulda bin a good LJ handle, it occurs, or forgeandfireblast (over 15 chars?) or lustsandluxuries. Trueloveknots sounds like a Celtic jewelry store but hell, it's done now, and in any case how apt is all this talk of skulls and the metaphys. with Halloween and el dia de los muertos upon us, along with the damn election and all this rain? END OF THE WORLD my friends and no mistake; every sentence an exercise in eschatology.
The kids wore utterly ridick costumes, Disneyfied to fuck, Princesses Regressive and Sleeping Palin or what have, and we rampaged up and down Cortland amid throngs of Spiders-men and ninjae and such; saw mizchalmers and malaclyps and cait and josh and valerie all with respective entourages but no hazelbroom - where were ya babe? - and harvested unfeasible candy quantities, ruthlessly culled after a late loud bedtime by your friendly neighborhood utterly unrepentant me.
I didn't even feel like eating it, which wigs, as I am a candy fiend under the right circs, which are non-local. Candy! We didn't even call it that in TEH OLD COUNTRIES, it was lollies, and it was BETTER. One's own comfort food is, even if I suppose it is fermented shark in the case of Iceland. Lollies do share with fermented shark the overuse of gelatinous goo. There are a squillion-odd variations on the notion of chewy jelly-like substances made from horse's hooves: as frinstance teeth and milk bottles (?) and strawberries and cream, which look like tiny fried eggs with a red yolk, and pineapples; all these are sort of milky jellies. Clear jellies come in the form of jellybabies and snakes. Then there are cobbers or Fantails - chocolate-coated caramels - and freckles, which are chocolates with hundreds-and-thousands - don't even know what you call these; sprinkles? Then little blobs of yellow chocolate, and licorice allsorts, with layers of licorice and brightly coloured sugary poo. Oh! And bananas, which are a strange hard foam tasting of chemicals.
These were all sold loose for a cent or two; you got given 25c and agonized for hours over how to allocate. No quarter given! We don't have quarters, you got a 20c piece, called a 20c piece, with a lovely platypus design, and a 5c piece, called a 5c piece, with an echidna.
Older you graduated to a dollar, and this was before the dollar coin when you still had a dollar note, all seventies brown and orange with cool Aboriginal art (Christ I am so old). With a dollar you could aim higher, to Peppermint Patties which i guess are a little like the York somethings you get here only BETTER, ditto Snickers and Mars Bars -
Look, it is like coffee and I know how it bores you to have this pointed out (These Romans are crazy! as Asterix would say) but baristas here (except at Ritual and Four Barrel and Blue Bottle) scald the God damn milk. It is not, or not only a matter of single-origin, fresh roasted beans, it is respect for the lactose! Which observation obviously opens the door to the cultural-genetic consequences of the lactose tolerance mutation and I kinda don't wanna go there, my point such as it was having been that your chocolate, people, tastes like ass; it is much lower in cocoa butter than our chocolate, it is in fact oftentimes compount chocolate with the cocoa butter extracted and replace with vegetable fat; oftentimes it is merely brown sludge with grease and sugar shit.
I do not mean to imply that things were better there. I got it again the other day, someone asking about the accent and me saying I am from Sydney and them off with the ecstatics: "Oh! I was there on holiday once - the sun and the sea - and all the people there were SO NICE, you must miss it!" Well, I miss the coffee, sure. And the proper lollies. And I miss my mum and dad, God do I miss them, especially when I need emergency minders for Les Sprogs, the Princesses of Disney-fication -
I wonder if I could do something with that, Disney and Sydney, Dis is almost Syd backward, can't think of what, Donne, Coleridge or Eliot could but I am not they -
But: the people there are so nice? Well. I am sure plenty are.
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