Baby We Are Back!

The woman in black has changed her clothes. Last night I watched Democratic candidates for whom I have volunteered, given money, written issue papers, and prayed, take House and Governor seats, win back the state legislature, and show the whole world that this country has both a heart and a head after all. I watched a woman from the most liberal district in the country become the next Speaker of the House. No more black today, baby.

Evacuation of Lebanon

I find the photos of people evacuating Lebanon terribly moving. Part of it is the rush to abandon everything to preserve their lives, and part of it is this phenomenon of the industrialized world exerting its wealth to protect its own. We won't send troops - we won't stop the bombardment - but we'll send cruise ships to extract everyone with an American, Canadian, French, German, Swedish, Danish, Turkish, Australian, etc., passport. If you come from a country that can't afford or can't get organized to charter the Orient Queen, you are SOL. Or if you are just Lebanese, not hyphenated Lebanese. Or unable to travel. There is a feeling you get when you find yourself in danger in some distant part of the world, holding a first world passport, speaking a few first world languages fluently, living in white skin. You feel a fierce greed for these talismans. They are the signs that you are worth saving. I've tried to get my head around what it must be like not to bear the signs, but I find that I can't. They're too embedded into who I think I am. I find it impossible to think of myself as not worth saving. Maybe the Lebanese find it impossible too.

Quittin time

Thank. God. I have finally gotten a firm leaving date at work and I'll be free as of August 11. It's been 13 months of the most depressive experience I hope to have in my life. Whatever else is out there for me, it's got to be better than this. I have an adjunct teaching job. I have a couple of book proposals to shop around. I have increasingly good prospects of opening my own public interest environmental law office. Any one of those is great news. Let's put on some happy music and celebrate being alive with a lot of good years left on the engine.

Qui perd sa langue...

There's an article in the New York Times today about a cultural renaissance for Franco-Americans in Maine. What a long-overdue development. My great grandfather, Horace, born in Terrebonne, Minnesota in the 1880s, was the last francophone generation of our family. I bear his unspellable (to Anglos) last name. Horace refused to speak French to the children and grandchildren, and several of his sons changed the spelling of their name to make it easier for Anglos (who still can't spell or pronounce it). Somehow, though, he managed to transmit his enduring pride in being French, always French, no matter how distant the bloodline that led back to Normandie.

Some fond recollection of Horace must have led me to study French and pursue the language of my ancestors until I could fool French Canadians into thinking I'm French, or French into thinking I'm French Canadian - although I can never seem to fool the natives into thinking I'm one of them. And I'm not. I'm Franco-American, and so is my son. I speak French to him at home, and as he goes out into the world and sees how wholly Anglo it is here, he answers my French in English more and more. It's a second loss. I search daily for ways to prevent it, to dig in for the long haul and make French a necessary part of my son's life. No one actively punishes him for speaking French outside our home, but there are so few francophones to respond to his elegant, childlike phrases, more francophone than anything I can do because they're the instinctive efforts of a native speaker. He never learned French, he is francophone. It is his mother tongue. I'm absurdly, fiercely proud of this recovered heritage we share.

I have been Australian

Outside the Melbourne Tennis Centre at the tram stop, packed tight among half-drunk Aussies who’d just poured out of a late Australian doubles win at the Australian Open, I heard the chant begin. Someone on our platform shouted out “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!”, and from the opposite platform the crowd took up the reply: “Oy! Oy! Oy!” Encouraged, the whole of our platform roared back “AUSSIE! AUSSIE! AUSSIE!”, and we were off, belly laughing, our heads thrown back for better projection, screaming the words, our identity, our sea-girt selves, as if we’d all been in the sunburnt country a thousand years, rooted like the eucalypts. The platform trembled and we stamped harder, a pack, a people. I was Australian then.

Triathlon Redux

For those of you tuning in from the triathlon side of the world, here is the state of my training program:

My next tri - a sprint - is coming up the first week in June. I've done this one twice before and placed in my age group last year. Right now I'm riding my bike a lot back and forth from work. It takes about an hour each way and means I fill up my gas tank much less frequently. Sometimes I swim, about once a week right now. I swam diligently throughout the winter and have had about enough of very early mornings and chilly chlorinated water, thank you. Sometimes I run, mostly around the neighborhood and not very fast. Increasingly I just walk the dog. She's happy, I'm happy, and really, who the hell cares?

The 13 Year Itch

My son will graduate from high school in 13 years. That's how long I reckon I have to wait to have a life again. I'm stuck for the interim in Buttfuck, U.S.A., unable to practice my chosen profession and suffering rejection after rejection as I try to get myself out of here. My husband doesn't want to leave. He wants to kick back, enjoy the small town life, drink strong coffee and grow his belly. I think I need some strong medication that will allow me to wake up long enough to be a happy Mommy while Jr. is around and otherwise permit a Van Winkle like nap until I'm 47 and can rejoin the living.

Walk up to my house

You'll notice the magnolia first, blooming ardently this year, making up for lost time and the single earnest bud it gave the first year with us. The maple, dotted in maiden green, feeling the springtime lightness of buds before the baroque leaves come down. Snowdrops. The beginnings of all the varieties of lilies: tiger, plantain, day. Chives and garlic grass run perfectly wild across the lawn. Rhododendron - buried to its neck in winter - now showing improbable brilliant pink.

And then the garden beds. The lowly onion sets, brave against the danger of late frost, waving over new-raked earth. The immortal rhubarb. The compost: our dead come alive again. And there are secrets too: seeds cast, a black promise under black earth, known only to the gardener. Wapsipinicon heirloom peach tomatoes. Potted basil under glass. Lavender. Cosmos. Red milkweed. Echinacea. The waiting. The watch we keep. All part of the ritual of the season that has come.

Obnoxious

Sometimes I worry that I'm obnoxious. Then I think, naaaaaah.

There's such a distance between what one person says and thinks and what another sees. We might as well be sending up smoke signals for all the actual communication that takes place, one humanoid to another.

The Nightmare

You can have a dream sometimes that doesn't register as a nightmare until you look back at it and realize what was happening. In my nightmare last night, my husband had to go into a closed ceremonial chamber to bargain with two big fat black demons (more on my sublimated racism in a later post). When he came out, my son and I were ushered beyond the chamber into the public areas of a big old hotel full of people who looked like they'd been there a while. They were watching sports on TV. I couldn't see the television, but there was that half-subliminal buzz of commentators and cheers. Others were playing foosball or sitting on shabby furniture, smoking. I knew my husband was there somewhere with us, but for most of the dream I stood there holding my son's hand and asking people who passed by if there was any way out.

The windows were covered by giant shutters. All the light was artificial. A short, thin woman who seemed to be running things stood by me for a while and discussed the history of the demon occupation. She wasn't old and she wore a pretty dress, but there was something not present about her. Everyone seemed that way, like maybe they were undead but didn't know what to do about it. She said that in earlier days they'd tried to sell the hotel, because then of course the new owners would evict the demons and the residents and everyone would be free. Somehow no buyers took an interest in evicting two big fat black demons and legions of foosball-playing undead. They remained hopeful though. In a tight real estate market anything might happen.

That's all I remember. My husband thinks the hotel is Iowa.

I make more than my husband

Not twice as much, but enough that it's noticeable on the monthly receipts. I get better benefits. I wear suits and hand out business cards. My husband wears pretty much whatever he wants and spends more time with our son than I do. My husband loves his job. On a good day, I don't hate mine. This seems precisely the reverse of the usual pattern. And while I don't love my job, I do like being the primary breadwinner. I like the power of it, the affirmation of my worth. I need to make a career change to something that gives me more satisfaction, I know that. But if my salary drops, I also know that I'll miss this feeling.

Bread and Roses

As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses!

As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses.

As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too.

As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days,
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses, bread and roses.

Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
hearts starve as well as bodies; bread and roses, bread and roses.

Contemporary romance in the sticks

I've been reading several other posts talking about how smart young men really are interested in smart young women, and that's all grand in the urban areas where it's true. Out here in the sticks, though, sisters, it's not the same game. I'm a lawyer, and the young male lawyers my age (early 30s) are almost universally marrying down, either economically or socially and economically. Of the professional men who come to mind who've married in the last year or two, here are the stats:

Groom: Ph.D. Candidate
Bride: Hairdresser and volleyball coach

Groom: Lawyer
Bride: Hairdresser

Groom: Lawyer
Bride: First-grade teacher (quit within 6 months upon getting pregnant)

Groom: Banker
Bride: Student (working on grade school teaching certification)

Groom: Lawyer
Bride: Physical therapist

I wouldn't count out Maureen Dowd's hypothesis: it stands up pretty well out here in flyover land.

A season in hell

A qui me louer? Quelle bête faut-il adorer? Quelle sainte image attaque-t-on? Quels coeurs briserai-je? Quel mensonge dois-je tenir? - Dans quel sang marcher?

- Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer

To whom shall I rent myself? What beast must be worshipped? What holy image attacked? What hearts will I break? What lie must I maintain? In what blood walk?

Can any artist really tell the truth

about her own people? Isn't it the ultimate betrayal?

her house

She lives at the end of a cul-de-sac in a middle-aged part of town, houses from the 60s and 70s with irregular lot lines and wide siding. Kids play hockey year round in the quiet street, rolling the net out of the way when a car comes through, then starting up with the shout of "Game on!" The neighbors consist of young families that have bought into the low-priced real estate and couples or singles near retirement who will sell out soon for a smaller space or a warmer climate or both. Little happens in the front yards other than mowing. The back yards come together in a patchwork of fences, lawn maintenance problems, incongruous home improvements and a higher than average incidence of dog shit per square mile. The dogs are the large breeds that their owners enjoyed as farm children: German shepherds, Labradors, golden retrievers. They're too big for this suburban setting and prowl the fencelines, barking in voices that whine up at the end, pleading rather than menacing.

The house itself has been the same color for forty years because it's brown and the extra coats to turn it a lighter color would cost too much. The trim is yellow. There's something edible and confectionery-like about the color scheme, but combined with the dated architecture the colors only evoke faded magazines and women in puffy skirts with glossy smiles.

The garage, in which a previous owner hung himself, faces onto the street. Small trees, mountain ashes and Russian olives and pines, have been growing around the house for years but never achieved much stature. Although it's a two car garage there is nearly always a third car parked in the driveway. Over the years that car has metamorphosed from an early model Volvo with no shine left, through a rusting Honda hatchback, an Oldsmobile Cutlass, and a Ford Escort. The family prides itself on extracting the maximum utility out of mechanical objects, cars particularly, and an old car is more likely fixable than a new one with all its expensive gadgetry.

Mad

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'" - Jack Kerouac, On the Road

The good news is, I'm mad. The bad news is, this is a hell of a way to live.

Toltecs

You know who the Toltecs were? They ruled in ancient Mexico. They were legendary builders, metalworkers and artists. The Toltecs intimately understood the movements of the planets and incorporated solar elements into their architecture. They had rulers with names like Cloud Serpent and warrior clans with names like Jaguar and Eagle. You can still go down there and see what we figure are their temples, kind of like someone in a thousand years going to see Hoover Dam and saying "Now what the hell?!" Even what was left behind after the fall of their civilization is so impressive that the saying "work like a Toltec" has survived to this day.

At 5:42 a.m., while I am pulling through the last gut-heaving minutes of a head-racing piece in a bow-coxed four down on the not-so-sanitary Sanitary and Ship Canal on the Chicago River, I gain that last ounce of strength by imagining that I am a Toltec.

We've been winning gold medals at every regatta this fall.

Tacking

I'm working with a strong wind to starboard, tacking to gain ground. Even when I sit still the movement is too much for me. I need more: time, rest, space. The stolen hours are never enough. I miss Australia, the sunburnt country, and I want time to stop. The future is imminent: the work I've worked to have, the home I've waited to find, all of it so big and real that I want to throw up a billowing spinnaker against the brilliance of the light.

Triathlons are over for this summer. It will be rowing now, back in skinny boats with long oars and that spectacular sensation of flight when the keel stands balanced and runs out beneath you while your wake runs on in rivers. Let it run, they say. Soft hands. Breathe. It is meditation. It is God come down.

winding down

Today is my last day at the current firm. No triathlons are scheduled for the immediate future because we're flying off tomorrow for several weeks in Japan and Australia, visiting old friends. I may do a few late-season races when we get back, but the training is on the back burner at the moment.

In very good news, I got an MRI and MRA to see if there's any abnormality in my brain that's causing the bad headaches I get when I swim hard. You guessed it: they examined my head and found nothing. There's a history of stroke and brain aneurysm in my family, so I bolt to the nearest neurologist when I get a pain in my head. Luckily this time it's just a headache, nothing more. The MRI machine is the closest to a medieval torture device I ever hope to get. They stuck me up to my waist in it for 25 minutes and I imagined I was surfing - it made sense with all the vibration and noise. I rode the waves at Torquay and JanJuc the whole time, bobbing in that infinite, dark southern ocean, so far away nothing could touch me. It would have been too scary otherwise.