Death is nothing to us

Dead bodies seem like sacks of dust to me. I don't see a person when I look at a dead body. I see an envelope where a person once lived. The force that stirred that dust is gone, and with it, the thing I loved.

Beyond the bright anguish of fresh grief, I have no attachment to bodies, and I don't care what happens to mine after I'm gone, but I've always been fascinated by the memento mori. It seems an odd way to hold onto the memory of love: by making a picture of the moment of your greatest anguish, of the moment when the person has ceased to be. It's like keeping a picture of a package that held the letter that brought some dreadful news. It's not the letter; it's not the news. It's merely what was left when everything was done—some wrapping paper, a bit of string, a few clots of stuffing—as evidence of what was lost.

While I find the memento mori strange, I find the pictures in the Life Before Death series strangely soothing, as if of strangers who have crossed a threshold and left something behind to reassure me of how deep and quiet is that long, long sleep.

[eta: link fixed]

Courtesy of dooce.

Drive Time

I knew that I had to start re-planning my commute when I heard the traffic report on the radio. But I didn't think about it much until, once it was light enough to get good video, the news helicopters started hovering loudly over my apartment. (In this regard, I was glad today was cloudy - had it been sunny, I would have awakened to the choppy drone of rotor blades, instead of my alarm clock.) By the time I left for work, people who'd moved north to Everett, chasing more affordable housing, had a two-hour commute on their hands. I did the simple thing - rather than use the on-ramp nearest my home, I drove down a couple of miles to the one at NE 124th Street - neatly bypassing the accident. It turned out that so many people lived on the wrong side of the backup, and even though there was only a single lane blocked, the bottleneck was so tight, that my commute time was cut literally in half. Traffic was barely any heavier than one would expect on a Saturday. There wasn't even enough volume to trigger the traffic metering lights on the on-ramps. Rather than stop-and-go, it was sixty-plus miles-per-hour all the way to the junction with State Route 520.

I found it difficult, the entire morning, to submerge being pleasantly surprised with my unexpectedly speedy commute beneath the nagging obligation I felt to feel sorry for the man whose death had enabled it.

Cruel Shoes

I was late getting out so I pulled on what was handy: a pair of black dress pants that are on the long side with my highest heels, sling-backs with a tiny peek-a-boo opening at the toe, an inch-high platform of unpadded wood under the ball of my foot, and about five inches of heel in back. They look like something a Vargas girl might wear, though perhaps not out on the town.

They’re my cruel shoes. I don’t know why I didn’t throw them out the last time I wore them, but what I keep doing instead is I let them sit in my closet until I forget the special agony of walking in them, and then I blithely put them on and go out. Not many mincing little steps later, I remember: they’re torture. Every step makes the flesh on the balls of my feet burn, and the places where the bones press down threaten to blister before I’ve traveled a single city block, but do I go home? No. Of course not. I have things to do.

Taking tiny steps, I try to affect a casual stroll. My feet shriek in protest. I entertain the idea that the shoes fit my current mood of self-loathing: they are the hair shirt, the horse-hair flogger with which I will suffer for my sins, which are legion. Not only do the shoes alter my posture, tilting my pelvis forward and making my ass stick out, I notice that they also have an effect on my expression, but it’s not a grimace of pain that I’m wearing, which would be understandable and appropriate; no, as I mince along in the heels, I tuck my chin under, open my eyes wide, and pucker my lips as if I’m ready to be kissed.

Because I’m innocent and fragile in my very tall shoes, and desperately in need of a man’s protection.

I notice the other women out on the town on this Friday night. Many are also wearing shoes or boots with soaring heels. In my cruel shoes, I can’t imagine their suffering is as acute as mine, but, like me, they tuck their chins under and teeter along the sidewalk, taking little steps. I stop watching myself and watch them.

It’s the first time it’s been plainly visible to me, this performance of femininity, and I stand there in my clingy black pants and my ridiculous shoes, with my padded, push-up bra under my too-tight black top, and I watch the other trussed and hobbled females parade like corseted show dogs in a ring. Skinny jeans tucked into skinny boots with a glittery bag. White semi-sheer tights with black stiletto pumps and a pencil skirt. Beside them, their male companions seem steady and non-descript, like trainers.

I watch them, and I’m struck by the absurdity of human beings squeezing themselves into these uncomfortable costumes and perching atop precariously high heels with expressions of sweet dismay on their faces in order to appear—what? Weak, yet graceful? Docile, yet alluring? Constrained, yet compelling? Easily captured, I think, because the clothing and the shoes are antithetical to movement, least of all a sprint for safety. Hell, dressed like this, we can barely get in and out of a car without assistance.

I’m waiting for my Starbucks’ coffee when a young woman approaches with her beau. Spotting me in her path, she stops and gives me the giant doe-eyes and chin tuck of sexalicious deference until I give her the signal that it’s okay to pass. Oh, please. I think, watching her tiptoe behind the boy to a seat at the back of the café. Must we keep up this charade? It’s too much. Do men really want this silly performance? Tonight it seems parodic to me. We are caricatures. We’ve made ourselves into barbie doll urban kittens, and how do we like the results?

I finish off my coffee, pick up a few groceries, and I’m making my slow and painful way back to my car when a pan-handler sitting at the base of a lamp post asks me for some spare change. He leans towards me as I walk by, and I step sideways to avoid him, shaking my head ‘no’. “That’s some boo-tay,” he shouts after me as I walk away.

I get home and kick off the dreadful shoes. I examine my feet. A couple of hot spots threaten to sprout blisters, and I decide that I’ve had enough: if I can’t get an insole that will protect my poor feet, these shoes are going in the garbage.

Book Club

We’ve done a couple of book clubs on wikifray so far, and they’ve been interesting and engaging (for the participants, at least). We’ll need some more people to join in to get another one going.
Links:

• The Echo Maker
• The Mystery Guest (a number of people weren't able to get the book in time to participate, including me)

We haven’t settled on a book yet, for this one, but there’ve been murmurs of approval of the title august suggested, The Invention of Everything Else, by Samantha Hunt, about the inventor Tesla. The suggestion captured my interest, and I’m going to see a play about him tomorrow night and the Cultch.

Here are some I’ve been thinking about:

• The Parable books by Octavia Butler
• Mischa Berlinski's Fieldwork
• Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but everyone seems to have read it already
• Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, by Marc Estrin
• Circuit of Heaven, by Dennis Danvers.

The one I’d really like to do, though, is this one: Little, Big, by John Crowley.

Feel free to express interest in taking part, and make suggestions of your own.

Initial book club post.

Canadian Woman Marries 12 Americans

British Columbia resident Dawn Coyote made national headlines last week when, in Canada’s first plural marriage across international borders, she wed twelve US citizens and brought them to live on her organic strawberry patch on the outskirts of Vancouver. The move had folks from all over the political spectrum up in arms, and the Canadian government has ordered a task force investigation of Ms. Coyote’s marriage.

If they are found to be in contravention of Canada’s laws, the federal government will likely begin deporting Ms. Coyote’s seven husbands and five wives. Ms. Coyote has said that if that happens, she will fight it on the grounds that her spouses will face religious persecution if returned to the US, where, she says, they could be detained at a Repentance Camp for an unspecified length of time, and could be charged with heresy under America’s recently adopted theocratic doctrine, Nation Under God (NUG).

The legal issues affecting the group's plural union include the recent defeat of Canada’s anti-polygamy law, the laws regarding same sex marriage, and the support requirement for immigrating spouses. We asked Ms. Coyote if she took all this into account prior to formalizing her relationship with these twelve individuals. “Of course,” Ms. Coyote responded, “My spouses and I are not breaking any laws. We are merely trying to create an extended family in which we might all live and thrive. We possess sufficient resources to sustain ourselves, and we ought be left alone to tend our strawberry patch in peace.”

There has been speculation from some quarters that this union is a scheme cooked up to give people amnesty from America’s new theocratic laws, to provide access to universal health care, and to avoid the costs and complications of immigrating to Canada in the conventional way.

We asked Ms. Coyote about the sleeping arrangements of the group, but she demurred, saying that the media has no business in the bedrooms of ordinary citizens. Ms. Coyote did explain that she considers each individual in the union to be the full spouse of every other individual, and that they may act on this status as desire and mutual respect dictate. The newlyweds, who refer to themselves collectively as the Coyote Clan, declare themselves to be non-practicing atheists, and in keeping with their goals of living sustainably, they have no plans to bring children into the union. They say they will work on the organic strawberry patch, which they now own collectively, and there is talk of converting the unused acres of the property into a writer’s retreat.

The Golden Flute of Krishna

chango, who vanished from our little online community some time ago, has apparently set out to do more with his massive, throbbing talent than just hang around and break our hearts.

Since leaving us, our cheeky and much-beloved chango (known in the real world as Paul Miailovich) has gone on to write and direct a play which opens in LA this weekend. Click on the image for details.

I've read some of his earlier stuff, and I'm certain this new work will be insolent, insouciant and irresistible. Just like him.

light

Lately Manhattan sunlight has blinded me. I'm still a relative newcomer to the city, and this luminescence is taking me by surprise. Why the hell can't I see the curb? How do people avoid getting run over by errant cabs? How am I supposed to walk home? Is this all a side-effect of my spending too much time indoors?

The thing is, in movies etc, Manhattan is always dim. Watching Sex in the City or (more to the point) a Hopper painting, you'd think it was a city of the occasional spotlight, the dark corner, the lonely yet crowded boulevard. I think Hopper helped create this darker Manhattan, and that he stands as a progenitor of noir, a harbinger of shadows.

And yet, despite his deceptive palate, Hopper got it right. It turns out the sun is just as isolating as the darkness. So Sixth Avenue is to me solitude's supernova. No wonder I'm blind. If you can paint loneliness, you know Manhattan.

Anyone feel like...

...fixing the banner so that it's clickable again? I don't exactly remember how to do it. I could figure it out, but it would take me an hour or so. If someone can find and fix it without wasting much of their time, I'd be most grateful.

Pathetic, I know. Please?

(also, any other improvements or suggestions for same are welcome. I'm thinking it's time for another book club, if y'all are interested.)

Whiteout

Jeanne was looking at the pickup turned over in the frozen grass about twenty feet off the highway and so she didn’t see the patch of black ice until she hit it. The pickup’s headlights were still on. There was a highway patrol car parked on the side of the road just below it. She could see the officer sitting inside. Why was he just sitting there? Jeanne wondered, as the Cadillac hit the ice and glided off the road.

“Fucking hell.” The car was heavy and going about seventy miles an hour. The entire road had become a skating rink. She couldn’t stop the slide until the tires hit the gravel on the shoulder of the road and caught and then, good and spooked, she slowed down to a crawl. She was stuck in some kind of freak storm, because it was March and she’d had the air conditioning on not a hundred miles back. Climbing into the mountains, it had started to rain and then hail. Now the snow was falling in fine flakes that blew and drifted and made it hard to see the road. Jeanne had no experience driving in snow. Roy should be driving, but he was asleep in the passenger seat, sick with the flu since yesterday, and so here she was, creeping along a treacherous road in the failing light. Besides the flipped over pickup and the patrol car, she hadn’t seen another vehicle in an hour.

The snow was billowing now, engulfing what was left of the day. It boiled up over the road in great gouts, and her brain, deprived of other stimuli, tried to resolve these shifting flurries into things that couldn’t be there: a child’s Big Wheel, a lion crouched in the oncoming lane, a giant humanoid shape shambling toward her. It was like dreaming, the way her eyes played tricks on her with these phantom shapes in the snow. Barely able to make out the road, she could feel the ice when the tires lost traction and the car skated sideways before catching again. It was all more than a little unnerving, so when the lights of a truck stop loomed out of the whiteness, she was more than ready to get off the road. Still going slow, Jeanne pulled up to the main building and shut the car off. Through the snow she could make out a couple of semis parked nearby, but there was no one at the pumps. Inside, a lone cashier was cleaning the glass that covered a selection of lottery tickets. Otherwise the place seemed deserted.

The cashier looked up from her work and greeted Jeanne. “Some whiteout, huh?”

“I couldn’t see a thing,” Jeanne said. “Except for an accident a ways back, I haven’t seen anything but snow in a while.”

“Accident?”

“A red pickup hit the ice and flipped over. It didn’t look like the vehicle suffered a lot of damage, but the police were there, and they weren’t doing much, so maybe there was nothing to do.”

“A red pickup? Did it have chrome bumpers?”

Jeanne frowned. “I think it did have chrome bumpers, now that you mention it.”

“No—” The cashier’s face was stark dismay. “Jesus, are you sure?”

“I’m not sure,” Jeanne said. “Who—?” The woman was already around the counter, pulling on her coat.

“My boyfriend,” she said, and she was gone. A puff of snow blew in the door as it swung closed behind her.

Jeanne watched as she disappeared into the snow. Should she have offered to help? She didn’t want to go back out in that for anything, and she couldn’t forget Roy. She couldn’t leave him out in the car, not sick like he was. She looked around the deserted store. There was a restaurant area off to the left, but it had only stools to sit on. That wouldn’t work. She walked past the aisles of merchandise into the back. There were public restrooms off to the right, and a hallway to the left with a sign above it that said, “Drivers’ Facilities,” and a smaller one below that that said, “Professional drivers only.” It might be a long night. She’d have a look around and she what she could find. Maybe there was a place back there where Roy could lay down and rest until they could get going again.

Jeanne heard the sound of a tap running, and as she rounded a corner, she saw a short woman in high heels standing at a sink surrounded by washers and dryers. The woman called out without turning around, “Hey, Tammy, I’ll be right out. I’m just getting cleaned up.” She shut off the tap and tugged the hem of her short skirt down her thighs. She adjusted her tank top.

“Um, Tammy’s gone.”

“What?” The woman spun around. “Where’s Tammy? Who are you?”

“She thought her boyfriend might have been in an accident, so she left. I’m Jeanne.”

The door adjacent to the laundry area opened just then. A man poked his head out. He had on a Nascar ball cap, which he wore folded up into itself so that it sat high on his bald pate. The bill was rolled down on the sides, which were decorated with yellow and orange flames. There was some indeterminate signature in yellow across one side.

“Chi,” he said, addressing the woman at the sink, “I need to eat something. You cooking?”

“Sure,” Chi said, “just as soon as I figure out what the hell’s going on.” The guy in the ball cap withdrew behind the door. Chi turned to Jeanne. “You say Tammy’s boyfriend was in an accident?”

Jeanne explained the overturned pickup, the black ice, the whiteout. “Damn,” Chi said, shaking her head. “I’m on my own here, then, and right now I’ve got to cook that dude some grub. What about you—you hungry?”

“I am,” she said, and she was. Since he’d fallen sick, Roy couldn’t stand the smell of food, so Jeanne hadn’t eaten anything solid since yesterday. “But first I’ve got to get my boyfriend out of the car. He’s sick with the flu. Is there somewhere back here where he can lay down?”

“Down the hall there’s a couple of rooms with fold-up cots in ‘em. Put him in one of those.” With that, Chi headed out front while Jeanne went to find a place for Roy. She opened the first door and discovered a room with a cot, but there was a man sitting on it. He was wearing only a towel.

“Oh, hey—you looking for a shower, ma’am? That’s down the hall.” Jeanne apologized for disturbing him and backed out of the room. At the next door, she knocked quietly before opening it. Inside there was a cot, which, it appeared, no one else had yet laid claim to.

Satisfied, Jeanne went out to the car. Roy wasn’t happy to be woken up. “What are you doing?” he barked. “Why did you stop? I told you not to stop.” She helped him stand up, explaining that the roads were too bad to keep going, so they were going to have to stay here for a bit.

“Fucking Chirst, Jeannie! Can’t you even drive a car through a few mountains? What the hell are you good for, anyway?” She apologized as she helped him get into an upright position beside the car. He stood there swaying, smelling of sour sweat and greasy hair. “Damn women,” he said. “Can’t rely on them for anything.” She led him into the truck stop and back to the room inside. He settled onto the cot and lay there shivering. She looked around for something to cover him with, and, finding nothing, finally took off her coat and draped it over him. She left the door open so she would hear him if he called out for her.

Jeanne crossed to the restaurant area. Nascar hat guy was sitting on a stool at the counter, watching Chi cook something on the grill. As Jeanne approached he looked her up and down. She’d forgotten how she was dressed—in one of those tops that Roy liked her to wear, tight and cut low. Nascar hat’s gaze lingered for a long moment on her breasts.

Chi leaned over the counter. “I’m making him some eggs,” she said. “What are you in the mood for?” Jeanne looked up at the short menu posted above the grill.

“Maybe she’s in the mood for one of your special coffees,” Nascar hat smirked. “I’m always up for one of those, myself.”

“That special is over for the day, hon,” Chi said, without looking around.

“Special coffee?” Jeanne said, “What’s that?”

“About fifty bucks,” Nascar said, still smirking.

“Fifty bucks, huh? Is it made with coffee beans that have passed through the digestive tracks of small African cats?”

Chi barked laughter. “No, not exactly.” She put a plate of eggs and hash browns in front of Nascar hat, shooting him a meaningful glare as she did. He put his head down and began shoveling eggs into his mouth. “Your toast will be another minute.” She turned to Jeanne. “What about you, sweets?”

“How about an omelet?”

“Cheese and mushroom okay? Two eggs or three?”

“Three, please.”

“You just sit yourself down while I get that together for you,” Chi said, turning back to her grill. Jeanne didn’t want to sit down yet. Her body, tight from sitting behind a wheel for ten hours, was just starting to loosen up.

“I’m going to get myself a coffee from over here,” she said. The dark liquid she poured from the urn smelled fresh and good. She was adding cream when the man with the towel came up behind her. He was wearing jeans now, with a sweatshirt and sneakers.

“Your husband sounds pretty bad in there,” he said. “His breathing is rough. Maybe you should look in on him, make sure he’s not about to kick it.”

The thought of Roy dying left Jeanne strangely unmoved. “Boyfriend,” she corrected him. “I’ll go see.” Jeanne grabbed some Gatoraid from the cooler on the way back into the Drivers’ Facilities area. She made a mental note of the price, adding it to the price of the coffee.