Nesting

A family of not-so-cute birdies have made a home in a tiny hole where some siding of my house has disintegrated off. They built a sort of duplex-nest right on the other side of the wall where we sleep in our bedroom.

"I told you so," I said to Dan at the crack of dawn a few weeks ago when the birds heralded the 'morn with loud tweets (and I mean old-school-tweets, not Kanye tweets). These tweets were so raucous they sounded fake, like a gaggle of teenagers were standing outside my house, drunk and shouting.

"You NEED to destroy that nest," I cried for the umpteenth time. But I know why Dan won't do it:
A) It requires getting a ladder (and personnel) much taller than the ones we have; I'm not sure how to get up that high, actually.
B) Dan doesn't have the heart to pull the nest out and displace the baby birdies.
C) Awww! 

"I'm not a killer," he said, rolling over and blissfully going back to sleep, leaving me to ponder the metaphor (birds/nests/home/marriage) in my deep, time-wasting way.

I've been manic, getting my house in spring shape. I want a new kitchen, especially, but frak it, the cost. Better to hoard the nest egg for the great unknown future.

As I type this, this black-feathered, arrogant bird LITERALLY flew by my window and stopped for a second on the phone wire. She's looking at me. She has a huge twig in her mouth. She's heading to the hole. She's going to make that nest bigger. She's such a bitch!

Dinner with Norman Bates

I showed my "The Nature of Evil" classes the movie Psycho last week, hoping to finally win those frisky bastards over with my coolness and intelligence ("hey guys! I bet you didn't know that movies can be analyzed like books! this is going to be so fun! did you know that's chocolate syrup going down the drain in that scene?" to which some of them promptly replied, "I don't watch anything in black and white.").   I think the unit went quite well, actually. The kids had no idea that Norman and his mom were one and the same, and it was fun to watch them puzzle the whole thing out. A few kids ventured that the combination of implied violence with Norman's cross dressing was ten times more upsetting than any overt horror movie they've ever seen. And the archetype of "Mother/Monster" in this age of helicopter parenting...dare I say...hit home for some of them.

The thing about Psycho that's apparently all-the-rage in the psychoanalytic film community (one step above the Shipwreck-exploration community in terms of coolness) is to look at the house and Bates Motel as representations of Norman's mind: the basement, where he stashes his mom's corpse at one point, as the darkest, most secret/carnal place (the ID?); the ground floor, where he lives as normal and quiet man who eats candy a lot (superego); and the top floor/bedroom, where he internally battles/argues externally and internally at the same time with his mom's corpse (ego?).  Something like that. You could rearrange all that and still be right. It gets so confusing.

 Anyway, it made me think about my own basement, which, according to the metaphor, represents some savage and hidden part of myself. So, I'll tell you something. I have not been in my own basement for at least a year. I quickly ran down there when Dan was in Chicago to make sure there was no flooding during some rain (and to assure myself there was no chupacabra waiting down there to eat me. hey, you never know). But I hate my basement and part of my psychic/spiritual healing project for this summer is to confront this basement head on.

Thus, according to Freud, my refusal/fear to spend time "in my basement" means I've been avoiding the dark side of myself. I'm experiencing shame. I'm afraid of conflict. Have you been in my basement? It's really yucky. I'm so lucky Dan does the laundry. The basement is everything I'm insecure about regarding my house all consolidated into one space: all mess, all wrong.

When we bought the house, that basement was dry as a bone, and tidy. I fantasized about making one of those charming "laundry stations" that they show in Good Housekeeping with the blue appliances, tiled folding tables, adorable baskets, etc. (Dan deserves the best).  The day we moved in, I kid you not, a friggin' MONSOON came in and filled that damn basement with puddles and a family of fat, selfish mice with old school politically incorrect Mexican sombreros saying "hey Gringo, you got some cheese???" (Dan said that once. That wasn't me) and mildew. I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS.  We left our apartment in West Orange to get away from mice, now I have them here? When our sump pump malfunctioned later on that year and Dan tore up the carpet revealing a dingy concrete floor, I promptly decided never to go down there again.

Is this whole thing a metaphor, Norman?

Like certain aspects of my psyche, there are some places I don't like to go. It seems like a  cliche, though, the fear of the underworld/Basement Monster, that's really just a fear of me.

Side note: if I were to kill people, I would do it dressed as Norman dressed as his Mother, just to stump/challenge the detectives. I would like to be played by Salma Hayek in the movie.

the swimsuit part of the pageant

I don't know why, but last night I went to Marshall's with Dan and my inclination was to purchase two bikinis (one cutesy, one sexy)  that were somewhat inappropriate for my body type.  I get this strange rebellious streak when it comes to bathing suits. It feels natural and right for me to be as bare as possible at the beach without causing too much attention on myself. In other words, after carefully combing my subconscious and my conscious mind I decided that I really don't want the world to think I'm grossly misinformed over my own body's limitations. There are women on the beach that I see, full figured and sloppy in their postage stamp bathing suits, and think: what is she thinking??  I can be just as snotty and judgmental as the rest of them. Ninety percent of the time, you'll see me stretched out on my towel, all classy in my navy blue one piece with the tummy-slimming panel. Or in my elegant strapless brown one that says to the world.....well nothing. It says nothing. It says, "don't look over here. I'm plump. I'm not here to be hot. I'm here to swim." (that's a low blow regarding the brown suit. It's actually pretty cute. It's just sometimes I want to be the girl in the bikini even though my body isn't quite on board).

Enter the scandalous scraps of bargain store sexiness.

When I put those bathing suits on in the safety of my dimly lit bedroom last night, I know what I'm thinking. I'm thinking I'm practically naked and I like it. I felt sexy: how bizarre. I loathe my body most days. I have issues, believe me. Why did I feel so awesome strutting around in a bikini, with my soft belly gently dipping over the ridge of the bikini bottom? (I originally typed "flopping" but decided that was too mean). I know I look like the "before" picture in one of those diet pill ads. It's really just my stomach that's the technical problem. Call it genetics, call it candy. I have a really soft, protruding stomach. And no kids yet. I don't even want to think about what will happen when I have a baby. I have a few spidery stretch marks on my hips and on the side of my breasts but those are actually not so bad. They are in the exact place where the side straps of the bottom usually cover. My arms and legs are passable. My belly button is a tragedy, though.

One suit is from Jessica Simpson and it's actually pretty modest: a bandeau top with cute buttons, and a sort of boy short bottom. The problem is the short cuts a bit too much into my hip, leaving a slight indentation. You wouldn't notice it unless I told you to look, because there's a pretty busy pattern going on there. I'm pondering buying a different bottom to go with the top if I can't lose the magical 10 pounds likely required to make the shorts fit better.

The second suit is a Tommy Hilfiger bikini with polka dots. A flimsy triangle bikini top and an adjustable bottom with side bows. Very skimpy. It requires a tan, some Xanex, and a truck load of sass. Even my husband, who would support me if I suddenly decided to assassinate a world leader, said carefully, "that bathing suit is definitely making a statement. People will be looking at you."

The villagers are watching, said Foucault. Or was that someone else? I wonder what kind of swimsuit Foucault would wear. Probably something really small. He was French.

I go through life, like most women, wanting to be seen and un-seen at the same time.  I want to be the woman on the boardwalk with the ice cream cone and the maxi dress, leaving no doubt to the world of my charm, wit, education. That woman needs no validation. But I also want to be that girl in the tiny swimsuit, standing at the water's edge, brown and soft and womanly.

She's full of mischief. She's a little bit inappropriate. She's making you say: what is she thinking?

natural beauty

What would I have looked like if I lived in the 1800's...before the invention of contact lenses, professional hair straightening, eyebrow waxing, anti-aging cosmetics?  I would have been not so cute, me thinks.

I suppose by age 33 I'd already have nearly grown kids...I could even be a grandma....so I'm attractive for an early elderly woman. I'm an 8 out of 10 in the Gold Rush Grandma circuit.

If I think about how I looked at age 15, which is sort of a poor-girl married age for the early 1800's (I'm thinking Jane Austen's times, maybe), I would not have married with any land holding aristocrat. I'd be Charlotte Lucas, begging the weird guy to take me off my parents' hands. Ouch! Maybe not so bad. I'd probably be the governess falling in love with all the mysterious, emo older men. I'd end up in unmarried, spinster disgrace, selling apples to sailors on the wharf and coughing. Or maybe I'd be the clever, non conformist political suffragette type. It wouldn't be a bad life.

I don't mean to berate my looks. I'm just saying that much of my cuteness is strictly 21st century. In the future, will everyone be very cute, making cute...well...ordinary?

It's all relative. I mean, obviously beauty standards are constructed by the times (ie, no one is Jane Austen's England tweezed their brows even if they looked like chubby inchworms; my ridiculous hair was perhaps made for the ten thousand hairpins required for a Victorian pompadour thing.)

I can't shake the notion that it just plain sucked for women before the invention of modern beauty products like clever razors with shaving soap stuck to it. I know, I know: they had much more important things to do then worry about their legs and hairy legs probably were just as natural as unpainted toes.  Their lives were an endless rotation of labor and children and keeping the house together and pleasing their husbands and, most likely, had few pleasures besides needlepoint, reading, and family. When they washed their hair on Saturday nights in preparation for church the next day, did they think, "aaaaaah, finally some 'me' time!" or did they simply not think of themselves at all? 

Their world was small, but it's not like they thought of it like that. Did they?

Into the Garden, Out of Africa

Stanley Kunitz writes in one of my favorite poems, "the longing for the dance stirs the buried life/one season only, and it's gone." He's standing in his garden staking down plants, admiring the intricate world of crickets.  He's thinking about getting old and how fast time goes: the first lines are summer is late/ my heart. 

Simple ideas stated with such magnificence.  As we tie down delicate things for the certainty of storms, it's hard not to think on the metaphor of the garden and the life.  My husband noted the timid blooms of our flowers this week in the unseasonable warmth; he had to say it three times because my head was a jumble of details like calls I needed to return and things I needed to buy at the store. And those pesky birds are back, poking, talking, foraging in the dawn outside my bedroom window, waking me up a bit too early.

Here comes another settled season. What stirs in the buried life?

I'm laid up this weekend with a neck sprain. Trying not to be crabby about it.  It was at least a good opportunity to curl up with a heating pack and painkillers and Out of Africa, a movie I never saw until today.

It's an epic tome, totally in my wheelhouse. Loosely based on the life and stories of Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen, played by Meryl Streep),  it's all sweeping landscapes of Africa. Mountains, veldts, waterfalls, picnics with camp chairs and wine and marauding lions, Masai warriors. Rugged, poetry-reciting Hemingway hunter Robert Redford sensuously washes Meryl Streep's hair with river water and a jug. Love found. Love lost. The inevitable destiny of colonialization ruining everyone's fun. The protagonist learns that her deep passion for free spirited Robert Redford and desire to claim him is, predictably, about as easy as taming Africa herself. 

Of course movies, like books and poetry, stir that buried life. I find myself thinking, why can't I have a coffee plantation in Africa and go hunting with Robert Redford?  Where's my safari picnic?  I find myself Googling "teacher trips to Africa" and "scholarships for teachers, international travel." Uh-oh. I'm supposed to be saving money for a new kitchen. Because, you know, my kitchen is old and creepy.

Feeling the same sort of ennui, Dan has been scouring the internet looking for reasonable ways to road trip out west.

Kunitz asks, What is it that makes the engine go?  He answers it:
Desire, desire, desire. 


 
 

hoarders

I listened to a surprisingly touching radio interview with one of the guys who works for the show Hoarders, Matt Paxton. He heads a special clean-up crew who go into those horror show homes and rake through nests of rats to find things like dead cats and pristine newspapers lamenting JFK's death.  I was struck by his rather kindhearted desire to help people by mucking out their homes.

What was especially fascinating was his revelation that doing this work suited him nicely, since he's a recovering addict and perhaps isn't easy to shock and unlikely  to judge anyone. Even more interesting: he prefers to work with recovering addicts and people fresh from jail, out on parole. He said some of his crew are convicted murderers.

It makes sense, what they have in common: people on the fringes, people who've hit near-bottom, etc., have strong stomachs and are hard to disturb (more practically, hard to employ in other professions perhaps). Also, as these guys stand in these terrible houses and fill up trash bags with moldy dishes and roach-eaten pillowcases, they seem close to a sense of redemption. In that one specific space of their rebuilt lives, they are practically saintly. 

 

little things

Little Things 

Little things in my coat pocket. detached purple button from the Union Square farmer's market where it popped off. How I wanted to buy flowers but couldn't. They will wilt on the train, lose their remarkable ballet necks, shed petals underfoot.

Some little things make me nervous.  I can't swallow sometimes. Driving alone on a road with no shoulder. Crying babies, long awkward silences at dinner parties when everyone looks at me for help.

Little things, such quick happiness, like flickering rainbows gone before you can call someone to say you saw a rainbow. How it lit up the sky and no one saw it except you and some guy at the softball field who barely cared. 

A little foolish thing: a blouse from Anthropologie that costs $128.  If I buy this blouse I will look so thin, so put together. Everything will fall into place like fingers flying through stacks of paper.

A stone is a little thing. Everyone knows women who fill up glass jars with shells and things. They seem to say, "I'm putting a stone in here, for no reason, just because it's so lovely and quirky." If only it was that easy, a stone in a jar.