Gone so long...

It looks like Sunday to me...

Sorry I'm not really here. I'm off having the best weekend ever!!!

Thursday, we had turkey with Chris' family. Friday we got all our stuff done and went out for pizza and music (ymmy pedal steel, heartfelt fontina) with Thisbe. I had a lot of wine. Saturday, we made turkey (we had rescheduled the holiday) and green bean casserole and stuffing and mashed and gravy and my grandmas cranberry salad (always a hit despite being a jello mold) and played catchphrase.

And then today, I put Chris on a plane to Sacramento and walked the dog for like, hours. which made me happy. So fun!

But sad too, because I called Susan, and she was meeting Liz and Anth at Cafe Hon... but I wasn't in Baltimore, so I couldn't meet them too.

So often happy and sad go hand in hand.

But yay! Happy turkey to you all! Happy cranberry salad as well!

Gertrude Mathilda Louisa Hazel Snyder...

I'm very distressed... distraught...

All of the good names are getting taken, and I don't have any kids to name. Yet.

I hope that soon I'll have a squalling little bundle of nameless joy. So that I can name it and steal its joy and bemoan its squalls.

My mother and my boyfriend are equally bewildered by my fierce desire for babyness, for their own different reasons.
But I'm serious!

I think about babies a lot. I plan for them. I examine baby food in the grocery store.

And yesterday I went into the Stride Rite to look at all the TINY SHOES. When the man asked me what i was looking for, I replied, "Oh, nothing. I just enjoy staring at TINY SHOES."

I think he was concerned and creeped.

But aren't they amazing? Itty bitty adidas and red sparkly mary-janes and weency snow boots! Oh the glory of it...

But back to my point...

IF- I want a baby.
AND- I don't have a baby. YET.
AND- All of the great baby names are becoming suddenly overused.
THAN- There will be no cool names left for MY BABY.

Logic. Plain and Simple!

So she'll end up with a name like Calamine or Wimple or something. She'll end up with an adjective or an adverb. I might even mistakenly name her something that has a copyright, so that I end up paying Kraft or Coca-Cola or RJReynolds every year for the use of her name.

First, Hannah got taken, and now Emma is gone.

By the time it's my turn, NORA ROSE will be as common as Jennifer. Oh Woe!

See for yourself right here and you'll discover the sorry state of things.

All the good ones are gone!

The afterlife update...

I know what happens when you die!

When you die, you fly up through the clouds. You shoot straight up into the sky, past the sun (and/or moon) and through a thick wall of cloud. The wall is precisely as thick as the Great Wall of China.

Then you're standing on the wall, and all around you is heaven, the way you thought it would look when you were 7. It's fluffy and blue and white and gilded with sunshine. And standing before you is a man in a long robe. He holds out a piece of parchment, or what looks like parchments.

You think, "Maybe it's the death diploma!"

But it isn't. It's a spread sheet with a pie graph beside it.

And the man tells you the EXACT number of hours you spent on earth. Precisely.

And the spread sheet breaks down how you spent your hours, in terms of efficiency. No value judgements, but it chronicles the degree of sloth.

So like, television watching and hungover mornings and nights drinking pitcher beer while having a conversation you've had a MILLION times before, and hours spent on ebay, not buying anything, and hours spent fighting for no good reason. ALL THE TIME YOU"VE WASTED!

And then too, the spread sheet shows the hours you've spent productively. The hours spent cooking amazing meals, writing novels, making music, cleaning the house, talking a friend through a rough spot, refinishing a table, etc.

And the pie graph displays the spread sheet, and if your sloth outweighs your productivity, you go to one place. And if your productivity outweighs your sloth, you go to a different place.

So that the lazy people can sit and watch TV without feeling guilty, and the busy people can get busy, without having to pick up after the lazy people.

And that is what happens when you die.

I love my daddy...

He's really an incredible guy. And so funny.

Every week he sends a Shabbat Shalom email to my sibs and I. Generally it discusses the fact that he isn't finished with his D (what he calls his dissertation-- he went back to do a PhD a few years ago). And it offers us updates on each other.

Today it read:

Life is busy, but the weather is beautiful today, so life is full of sunshine. Call me Pollyanna.

I am thinking of writing a bunch of one page script outlines for disneyfied classics of literature. King Lear with a jolly old king who mistankenly divides his kingdom and then has to embark on a quest to reunify it. Everyone lives happily ever after, including the wizard Hubris, whose spell led to his rash action in the first place.

I just had to share. Bet you wish you had my daddy!

It's all about me...

It has come to my attention that most bloggers seem to REPORT things...

Like, for instance, Michael Jackson is a freak, and the bombings in Turkey are horrible. Also, other smaller things are happening all over the world, as well as (maybe) larger things we don't know about yet. People are dying. geniuses are being born. Somewhere there is a resurgence of interest in Schoolhouse Rock.

And somewhere, a woman is tattooing her short story on the bodies of willing and literate (we assume) strangers. Very interesting. Check it out!

But I don't generally point people to this sort of stuff, the interesting stuff I stumble over in my daily meanderings online. Why?

Maybe I'm selfish, but more likely, I'm just assuming... trusting that you'll all find this stuff anyway.

So then why? Why don't I write more about the world?

Because I'm totally obsessed with myself?

Dingdingdingding!!!!!!

I AM totally obsessed with my own life and mind, which is pretty gross.... to be honest.

But I'm also obsessed with your life and mind. Does that make it better? And if you have a website like this one, and I know about it, I'm probably reading you too!

In other news, I'm working on this:

student body.pub

and this:

body poster.pub

Challah back at me...

Woot Woot...

When my friend Whitney (another Jewish Student Life Coordinator) first AIMed me and typed, "Challah!" I thought it was really cool. I thought it was funny, and I liked sharing a Jewjoke with someone.

But I have come to realize that this is not an uncommon use of the word.

It would seem that within the tiny walls of the "Jewish Education Community" this is a regular occurance, this pun on Challah, the traditional Jewbread. It is no longer funny.

And while it is possible that each individual who makes this joke has arrived at it independently...

I find it unlikely. And so, I refuse to say it after this post. Ever. I refuse to be someone who picks up the humorous (or not so humorous) jargon of their particular professional world.

Challah is bread. I hereby reclaim that meaning.

Looks like somebody has a case of the Thursdays?

The mysterious death of Mr. P. Oetry...

I've been reading (I may already have mentioned this) a lot of murder mysteries.

To be more specific, I've been eating my way through a shopping bag of mildewed Agatha Christie dime novels, which my friend Adam left on my doorstep when he moved to St. Paul.

I didn't think, when he gave them to me, that I'd actually read the whole dang bag. But I will.

My favorite so far... So Many Steps to Death.

But of course I need to justify this "project" by writing about the formula, the methods of the genre, or by telling everyone I know that I'm "using" the books.

So I'm writing a series of "Who Dun It" poems. Yep. For real.

Oh who ever knows if I'll get it done... I have a lot of projects on my plate right now.

But I'm thinking...

Maybe that's what poetry needs. Punchlines. Cliffhangers. Red Herrings.

So many poems whimper and fizzle in a melancholy way. And it's pretty and all. Or thought provoking. Or you get left with a sense of...

"YES, that is the way the world happens... quietly and with a bird above it."

But it isn't really the kind of ending you want, the kind of race-to-the-finish that makes you dash home to finish the poem. Is it?

I mean, SO OFTEN you find a poem that has the elements of excitement (Death, Sex, Anger, Envy, Fury, Injustice) but then it totally fades, usually with a person looking out a window, or an image from totally outside the poem. A sigh.

Like this:

I'm really angry at Jeff,
who married Josie,
the woman I wanted to FUCK.
I want to kill Jeff. I think
I will kill Jeff, that bitch.
I think I'll put a knife
in his throat until it gurgles,
while I watch the river
wind it's way into the next
morning. There is one
you know. A morning.
Usually. When the deer
come to the salt lick, they
hold their ears back. Just so.

Okay okay okay. Maybe that's a little bit exagerated, and I wrote it in 94 seconds (I timed myself). But you know what I mean.

But what if instead the poem started with:

They found Jeff, his throat
gurgling on the Persian Carpet.
The deer outside had already
fled. Josie was weeping.

And then what if the poem went on, and there were many culprits and clues. Would you read to the end? I think you would. For the gory details? What if there were pictures. Spooky ones, in which a person was disappearing through a dark door, so you could only see his dark foot, enshrouded in a dark cloak and some darkness.

I need to ponder more on this theme, but I think I'm onto something. Perhaps I can single-handedly save the illustrious and mysterious Mr. P. Oetry.

Poor guy. Would you care?

Pardon my plug...

Totally random. Shamelessly corporate. Nothing the least bit philosophical or contemplative or even PERSONAL about this post.

But have you tried La Creme ( the incredibly creamy and mild yogurt) from DANNON?

It is, if I do say so myself, the bomb-diggity.

Really!

This August, on Air France, flying home from a ridiculously extravagant (as in, more than anyone could afford) family vacation in Tuscany, bloated with deliciousness and more than ready to return to my own meager kitchen, I was served La Creme with my dinner.

And I was all, "Yo, even the DANNON is better in Europe. Why can't WE have this good stuff in the glorious United States of America?"

I savored every little bite.

And then, a few weeks ago, in my GROCER'S FREEZER (or fridge, actually), there it was! La Creme!

Right next to the pink lid Yoplait and the Stoneyfield Farm and the Blue Bunny (my usual brand).

A ray of light was shinging gently down upon the little carton of four miniature yogurt cups. I chose the Rasberry.

I suggest you do the same.

I may not be able to have all the fresh pasta and cold-press olive oil and Frescati and sole and good good tomatoes. I may have left that all behind in San Gimigniano. But I can have La Creme. Which is really SOMETHING!

It's THAT good. Even Chris likes it.

Just like old times...

Last year, and for many years before last year... I was a social creature.

Now, I'm still social, but I'm not social the way I used to be. Which is to say that I no longer feel totally obligated to hang out with everyone all the time. I no longer live at the Foxhead or the Mill. I no longer close the bar down at 2. I no longer apologize when I don't make it to the birthday party of someone whose last name I don't know.

I blame this transition on several things:
1. I'm getting older, and constant whiskey guzzling looks bad on me.
2. I quit smoking and can't handle the barsmoke.
3. My best friends are either living with me (Chris ) or in other parts of the country (Susan, Emma), and hence there is little to leave home for.
4. I'm writing a lot.
5. Dave the dog.
6. I'm broke.
7.The Sopranos, on DVD.

But whatever the reason, I'm much happier this way, wandering around the house in sweatpants, making gingerbread, walking the dog, running up the long distance bill, waking up happy and healthy, without a pile of clothes on the floor that smells like 42 ashtrays.

And then too, my best-friend-in-town lives 2 blocks away, so I can drop in any old time for coffee. Nice.

But this weekend I went out on the town. For fun. Not blasted-head-pounding-illegal-rock-and-roll fun. But fun in bars with friends I don't always see.

Friday night, I had a visitor, a Jewish girl who recently moved to Waterloo, IA. In search of fun and semitic hijinks, she called me at Hillel, and drove down to visit. So I took her (She proved to be a delight) out on the town. We met up with some folks at the Foxhead... drank and chatted and laughed and had fun. Then we went home and pestered Chris, who called me a drunken monkey.

But in the midst of it all, Annie and Atom turned up. So then on Saturday night, I went (aftter a nice dinner with Thisbe) to the Mill, to watch Kelly (Pardekooper) play a few sets... which is something I haven't done in ages. And we had wine. And there was music and strangers. Nice.

But now, despite that I'm not hungover or anything, I feel like I had too much fun. I feel saturated with social treats. I feel like I didn't "use" my weekend to its fullest.

So today I'm revising the stupid book that will never be done, the kid's novel. And it's feeling dang good.

People keep dying...

Okay, a few weeks back, we were supposed to have a program (100 Jewish Voices).

A woman, Fern, was supposed to come to campus to perform Jewish poetry for students.

But then... two days before I was supposed to pick her up at the airport, BAM! her sister died. Very very sad. A pisser.

Now, it's happened again. Alan Lew was supposed to arrive last night, and BAM!

(or maybe not Bam. Maybe wheeze or float or whimper. I dunno) But at any rate, his father-in-law passed away.

So no Alan Lew. Very sad. Very sad for Rabbi Lew and his wife. My thoughts are with them.

But now I'm worried that maybe we've been cursed or something. Does that happen? Did that ever really happen?

In other news, I'm taking a KRAV MAGA class on Sunday. So Uma Thurman watch OUT!

K-POW!

Except that.....

I abso-friggin-lutely insist you ALL look at this ebay sale. Forwarded to me from Chris!

Ye gods!!!!!!!!

Zen it up...

This week, we're bringing in the Zen Rabbi, Alan Lew...

And so I'm looking forward to meditation sessions and vegetarian Shabbat dinners and lectures by super-smart minds.

But it's got me busy and so I'm neglecting the site.

My apologies.

Back next week.

So I don't foget...

We just finished services...

Jerry led services tonight, and at one point he stopped to explain (I have no idea about the source) that Shabbat is a time to rejoice.

I didn't digest fully. But then I got it, and realized I'd never thought about it before.

Shabbat is a time, as opposed to a place or an event. Nothing marks it but time.

Instead of the creation, it's the moment of creation.

We should recognize the holiness of time, rather than the thing marking it.

Pretty neat. even if I'm not saying it as well as Jerry.

Pro-zac/Anti-zac...

Because I have nothing to say, I'll say something about prozac. I'm on it.

Lexapro, actually. And how I came to Lexapro is a roundabout story.

Basically, I was unhappy. I couldn't sleep. Chris and I were regularly fighting and silent. Sometimes both.

So I took these teeny tiny pills, and they made me feel better.

Hmmm. Maybe not so roundabout, but there it is.

The trick to the situation is that I was one of those really vehement anti-zac folks. I was convinced that it was a quick-fix, an avoidance technique, a plague on my nation. I was angry when other members of the family tried the shit, and I was confused by the generally pleasing results that everyone kept reporting.

I was opposed. To the pleasing results. To the general contentment.

Now... you should know that I have an excuse for my anti-zac-ness, which is that I was medicated on and off (mostly on) from age 5 to age 25... for epilepsy.

And in high school, I was on a particularly bad anti-convulsant called Tegratol. So I was sleeping all the time. I mean, ALL the time. I was sleeping in school, and failing. I was sleeping in the basement from the time I came home until dinner. And then I was sleeping after dinner. I was also drinking on the weekends (and such). Which didn't help. And I did some stupid things, so I went to therapy, and they told me that I might be manic-depressive (though I never really saw much mania in that particular year).

Until FINALLY they checked my blood levels and discovered that I was TOXIC.

They said I should be dead, which I wasn't.

So they rescinded my bipolar diagnosis, switched my meds, and I woke up!!

I stopped sleeping and my grades improved and I smiled and I ate and all kinds of other goodness happened.

They switched me to Depakote, which worked for me until I was 22 and I discovered (through research for a paper) that Depakote (if I became pregnant) would cause me to bear a child (most likely) with Spinabifida.

Seriously. I was 22 and I'd been dating (and living with) the same man for 4 years. I wasn't planning a baby, but I wasn't feeling opposed to the idea.

So I went to the doctors and asked if they knew about the baby thing, and they nodded their medical heads.

I asked what they planned to do with me if I became pregnant. And they replied that they'd have to terminate the pregnancy.

They'd terminate the pregnancy.

So I stopped taking meds altogether. Until the Lexapro.

Which explains my vehement anti-zac status prior to last year, as well as the extremity of last years status.

Both now finished.

Jewishy Irishy for real...

Today I'd like to take a break from the flow of general-lifely-blogging...

to think about Jewishy Irishy for real. (Maybe because nothing much happened yesterday?)

Right now I'm in the process of writing a kid's book for interfaith families and also, I'm attempting to compile a collection of essays by half-Jew-ish writers.

But I'd like to take a minute to think about WHY this matters, why it's worth my time at all.

When JewishyIrishy.com began last month... it began because I was lonely, because I felt a need to make a little community of my OWN KIND. I had discovered a few JewishyIrishy types and I felt a kinship with them...

and I wanted more.

But in thinking about this anthology, I find myself thinking about it as an exporation of the diversity within the interfaith community.

I don't want to DESCRIBE what it is to BE JEWISHY. I want to provoke a dialogue about how it feels to be outside the streamlined religious identity. I don't want to create a whole new subset (though that subset IS forming), I want to discuss being outside, with people who feel outside.

Which is different, I think.

Because I think anomalies are interesting, and this may not be an anomaly for very long. I think it's possible that the reason I know so many in-betweenish writers...

is that there is something in the nature of being in-betweenish that makes one self-examine. That there is something about identifying OUTSIDE the norm that makes one want to think about identity differently.

Which is, often, fruitful.

Anyone disagree?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY...

TO STEVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My stepfather is the best.

Really, I should make up a new word for him, because "stepfather" conjures up images of stiff hugs and obligatory family situations. And Steve Gettinger is the exact opposite of those things.

He is the only person to ever plaster his office with my poems. He makes the funnist faces and the silliest jokes. He sings, even though he sings offkey. His smile is the slowest smile, but it means the most.

He's good to everyone. My sister would be a bundle of jelly if it weren't for Steve, and my mom would have spun right off this planet... into the stratosphere... if he weren't there to hold her hand.

He pours the good wine and sits patiently when the rest of us refuse to shut up. He makes the flowers grow. He sneaks donuts when nobody is looking.

This summer, he had shingles while we were in Italy, and he never complained... just gritted his teeth, swallowed some painkillers, and kept on trooping.

Near the end of the trip my mom found him sitting at a table in front of some VAPE (bug poison) and she said, "Steve?"

And Steve said, "I'm going to eat the VAPE. I'm going to eat it" He gritted his teeth and looked up at her...

Because he was MISERABLE. But he he wanted to make it funny.

He made it. Funny. He made it happy. He does that. Often.

I love Steve, and I admire him. He's one of my heroes, though I'm not sure he always knows it.

Last year, Steve's kitty died, and the kitty was his mommy's kitty. And before that his mommy passed away too.

All of those things are very sad, and they were VERY sad for Steve. Because Steve, being a quiet kind person, feels things ALOT, even when he doesn't say much. You can just tell. He feels things.

And since I live in Iowa, I can't be with Steve today, but if I could be with him, I'd hug him. And I would give him a kitty.

But I can't so I want to give him this:






Meow. Steve. Meow to you!

You can never (entirely) go home again...

But the reason why is different each time.

It was a wonderful trip in so many ways. And though I'm feeling a little overstimulated and worn by the experience, it was so so so happy overall.

The reason why for this particular trip... is that I found myself wanting to move back there...

The city is sooooooo lovely. And the weather is so warm and the food is so good and the mountains are so low and beautiful and the people are so nice.

But it doesn't have any of the things on our "where to move next" checklist. No airport hub. No chance of transferring my job. Nope.

But to sit on the river, walk the dog at Coolidge Park, drive to Nashville on the weekends. So nice.

Part of the wonderfulness came with the fact that I was staying with Maria's family. They are so GOOD! Though I could have done without the M&Ms in my pancakes. But it was a small sacrifice.

AND

The big feeling, besides wanting to move back:

Hmmmmmm......

It's really hard not to JUDGE the life you choose to leave. It's hard not to look at the people who stayed behind, when you see them sitting at the same bar, living in the same place, working at the same job...

and think that they SHOULD be moving forward.

Because it's hard to accept that MAYBE they are happy, and don't need to constantly be bustling and moving like you (I) do. It's hard to understand how people can be content when you (I) can't see to be content. And it's so much easier to look at the content world and say, "How pathetic... that they don't want anything MORE... that they can be happy with THAT!"

When what you really mean is... "Do they know something I don't know?"

BUT

I love Chattanooga, and all of the people I saw there. And I could totally live there, and make my life there, and (I think) be content there.

It felt more like home than I knew what to do with.

Blowin mah own horn...

Today I got a wonderful letter from someone I've never met... and it made me happy to my toes. Here is part (much) of the letter:

By that particular blend of happenstance of determinism that gives form to internet travels, I met you through a contribution to Killing The Buddha, continued on to jewishyirishy.com (drawn, like Narcissus to the waters, by the exact reflection of my heritage), and rested at Land-Grant College Review. Along the way, I enjoyed an honesty in language I've rarely encountered. After reading features on Land-Grant, I wrote a letter to express my satisfaction with the experience, and before sending it, realized that, properly, I should thank you directly, as your online work was a catalyst.

How cool is that?

The old old mountains, and the old old friends...

Chattavegas, Tennessee...

Maria and I met in Nashville on Thursday and drove to Chattanooga, where so many things happened to both of us... and so many of them together.

Thursday night, after Cuban dinner with her family, we drove into "downtown" and rented a room at the Read House... the swanky, but dilapidated old hotel in town. Then we headed out to our old haunts...

which were haunted.

It was sad... not running into the folks we wanted to see, but seeing so many faces we knew, in the same bars, having the same conversations. It made me feel like having a baby and writing a book. It made me feel like doing things. Things! THINGS!

But then yesterday, after a calzone at Lupi's (which I'd been dreaming about since I moved away)... we went for a walk in North Chatt, and found our friends! Hao James rolled in from Knoxville, and Bay from Ringgold, and finally Eddie (from Trick-o-Treating).

And we talked and drank silly fruity drinks (mine had a pineapple in it, or at least a piece of one!) and talked more. And we kept having BIG questions... going in a circle and answering them one at a time, like:

List 3 big goals for the next five years (It had been 5 years since we'd all sat together)

and

How have you changed?

Pretty amazing. And mutual admiration was spoken, and long-time apologies were made, which no longer felt necessary... but they mattered a lot.

And then a HUGE concert/party started up next door on the top (vacant) floor of the building, and costumes began flooding past us, so we went to the party. And the blues band, the Black Diamond Heavies, was INCREDIBLE.

And later, I heard "LAUREL?!"

And the ZOMBIE FIDEL I'd been seeing all night turned into my friend Gabe. Which was happy!!! And hugs were had. And I came home, to Maria's happy house.

And slept.

And today I'll see Kristen and maybe Cole.

I had forgotten how beautiful it is here, especially in the fall. The colors all on the mountains, and the lights of the city reflected in the river, and the four bridges.

I had almost forgotten.