Electric Surprise!!

"I don't want to read a poem. I don't want to read a short story. I want to read Chapter One. That's it," said my friend Allison cruelly.

"You should write your book this weekend," said Dan, as if writing a book and making a beef stew were one and the same (to be fair, he just means I should be writing on the weekend.)

"Why aren't you writing a book? Where's the book?" asked my Dad. "Your book should be about an electrical systems operator who accidentally teams up with terrorists by destroying the power grid."

"Dad...do you think I'm writing a book about you working at Con Ed?"

"It could be called Electric Surprise," he declared, a gleam in his eye. "And the guy...let's  say he has gambling debt, a working class Joe, like me..."

"Lord help us, " said Mom.

"And so he tells these guys for a certain amount of money...he'll shut off the power grid in New York for a little bit. And he doesn't realize they're terrorists."

"That's a great idea for a book," said Mom. "Like Dirk Pitt. Or that other guy. Those books make a lot of money."

"I don't know if I have the technical expertise to write that kind of book," I replied. "I usually write stories about unfulfilled middle class white women who long for adventure. Oprah type stuff. "

"You could have the guy's daughter be that character. She could, like, infiltrate the terrorist group and avenge her dad..."

"Sweet!" said my husband.

"Electric Surprise?" I repeated.

"You can change the title. It's a working title," said Dad, waving his fork dismissively. "Send me Chapter One."

Anyone know anything about the power grid?

Ocean Grove Woman's Club

We rented a beach house in Ocean Grove; I was tickled to see it was a former Woman's Club at the turn of the century into the 1930's, complete with framed receipts for three dollar rooms and an elegant back story. It was a place for single ladies to stay when traveling without the indecent dilemma of sharing a hotel with men.

I can imagine these women on a Methodist Camp pilgrimage-- and of course I thought I could feel their ghosts banging around the great old living room. My bed was actually on an enclosed portion of what used to be a twenty foot stage, and that was, well, quite sexy (lolling around in the place where some virgin stood announcing the day's agenda of beach strolling and prayer? It's a bit sexy, right?)

I wrote a sestina-- that's six ending words rotating around in a specific pattern. I did cheat a little, though. (Side note-- throbbing star is a Keats reference, I can't claim that one. Hot, hot, hot! You get the notion.)

The Women’s Club Hotel (est. 1870), Ocean Grove, NJ

   (Plaque reads: A Respectable Hotel for Chaperoned Single Gentlewomen)

I’m staying in a Victorian where women

once boarded with valises and maps alone,

long before my time. They must have burned

some bridges to gage that distance

from social rules. They couldn’t touch

any man besides their fathers; they might’ve fallen

prey to fortune hunters,  or fallen

into disgrace,  even from other women.

But surely they longed for the feather touch

of a lover’s glove on their arm, like a lone

blackbird dipping the distance

between valley and silt:  how he dives and burns.

I’ve seen their umbrellas: these girls didn’t burn

from cobwebs of late sun, they fell into

shaded flocks like flitting moths,  with distant

white smiles and white umbrellas teasing good men

with a lemonade stroll; but never with a man alone.

It must have been so hard not to touch.

But I’m probably wrong about the need for touch,

especially back then.  Even the word “burn”

seems too sexy regarding my great grandmother, who alone

crossed the ocean, gave a strange man everything, falling

away from love like a fever. She was a woman

who knew marriage—a way to survive that distance.

All I really know about her is 2,756: the nautical distance

between Galway and New York (it was in my father’s papers. Don’t touch).

But, really, only longing measures the heart of a woman—

I can see everything in her signature.  Irish women didn’t burn;

they were fierce and hard. God forbid your husband fell

off his horse. The women might whisper you were better off alone.

Maybe that’s always the real fear: being alone.

Or being that woman who needs distance

from her house and parents or risk falling,

like a throbbing star, into the touch

of a stranger’s mouth and hands, burning

for some unnamed thing. That’s being a woman.

Madame Marie of Asbury Park Sent Me This Dream

Yesterday we strolled around Asbury Park. It rained heavily in the morning and when it lifted, the sun burned off the clouds and the boardwalk stretched like a splintered tongue towards packing crates-turned-crepe stands and slightly edgy, talkative surfers. The water (Florida hurricane coming?) was rip tide-churning and seemed to slap anyone who came too close.

Everything was fairly empty because of the earlier rain. I liked seeing the tourists from afar, dotted under the peeling Casino sign like roadside flowers.

My mother in law bought a silk tunic/sari thing for her daughter's wedding from a sassy lady selling penis shaped bottle openers.   I was in a pleasant fog all day.

I was disappointed to see that Madame Marie of the Bruce Springsteen song had died and supposedly her daughter works there instead. No one in my party seemed overly interested in getting a reading anyway.

But that purple hut and its third eye pyramid gifted me a wild dream. I was in a sort of nightclub, decorated like a garish carnival-- wheezing carousel, sing song-y men in purple tuxedos with tails, women in feathered leotards doing contortions, fire-eating girls and all the Hollywood hallmarks of a Great Depression traveling sideshow mish-mashed with me and my high school friends, dancing and talking about an upcoming blizzard.

My high school friend Dustin was there, who frequently appears in my dreams and has for years, despite the fact I haven't seen him in at least five years and we weren't especially close. He's become a symbol, maybe, synthesized energy of youth and maybe longing. There he was: drinking a beer on the side of the dance floor, watching me and my friends dance; it was all vaguely sexual and outside of time, like dreams always are. I'm me as an adult, but he's himself at nineteen, and some of the players on that dance floor are people I've met at various times of my life (one friend, Megan, is there, with green hair, inexplicably). The squeezebox music is out of time, like Dustin is.  Or maybe I'm out of time, stepping into the alternate world, the portal where Dustin and these people live, dancing and drinking outside boundaries of space. (I'm sure you've had a dream so vivid you had to wonder if the dream was real and the sleeping person you are is the illusion-- you know, those conversations you've had in college when you thought you were insanely deep).

But there's a blizzard coming, I told everyone, including Dustin, who can't hear me, because of the music.  He disappears, and I suddenly can't find anyone I know. Everyone is going home, and I don't have a ride. I am now crying and alone and can't find a coat. The coat check girl is screwing a guy right in front of me: she's probably on top of my coat.

I felt so alive in my desperation. This is the part of the dream that seems so real: the frantic need to say, a blizzard is coming everyone! I need to find Dustin! I don't have my coat! And the carnival churns on around me as if I'm not there.

When I woke up a few minutes ago, it felt like this dream was a burning prophecy from Madame Marie's shack. It felt that important.

Now that I typed it all out, it looks just like any dream I might have before the new school year starts up again. Pretty prosaic. You can break it down so easily, especially if you know me.

circus= life/summer/fun/anxiety to start school
Dustin= youth/longing/sexuality/the past
Dustin's disappearance= typical abandonment issues/fear of getting old
lack of coat= insecurity/exposure
slutty coat check girl= everyone is having fun but me
blizzard= baby/pregnancy procrastination

I'll set up a shack on that boardwalk: dream interpretation. And cheese fries.

the end of the summer

I wrote him a desperate, wordy letter that said, "the summer's almost over and I wanted to tell you I love you." It really didn't say that exactly-- I was around nineteen and not nearly articulate enough for that. I thought it said that, but really I probably wrote something like, "I just wanted to say I miss you and I hope that you don't hate me because of the bad way we split up" or something awkward/uncool to that effect (I probably should have apologized for the threatening Sharpie sign I put on his car that declared my hate-- that happened at the beginning of the summer, when such displays of crazy seem like a great idea).

I may or may not have included bad poetry about how I hate/the sound/ of crickets/because now/ when I hear their August moan/I'm not kissing you/I'm all alone. (Will someone invent a special time machine that transports us to these moments of abysmal, naked longing so we can edit them and make ourselves...well...less abysmally naked?)

This time of year, when it's hot and bright and I'm tan and busy, I think about July romances and the cliche of the weepy goodbye: teenagers leaving summer camp boyfriends behind, the kisses wet on their memories like grass; people breaking up before going to college; the crackly burn of a vacation hook-up soon fizzling to a hazy flashback-- an anecdote told to a friend over melting ice cream.

I walked with my friend Allison around her neighborhood last night. It was so steamy out, you could see the moisture rising off the grass, and our quiet chit chat in the little parking lot behind the bank somehow sent us both back, reeling, to that age where the summer and all its promises and drama was all that was going on.  She said that she felt just like she did when she was a kid, and she would go swimming all day in someone's pool, and then go back to someone's house for a sleepover, all tired from the sun yet ready to disclose the deepest recesses of her soul to whatever best friend of the moment was with her.

It's just that muggy, distinct summer air: so August. 

So today I'm remembering that first real broken heart. How it got wound up like a wristwatch, beating with love, how he pulled the pin, stopping time, or so it seemed. 

A few nights after I sent that ill-advised letter, I sat on my back porch and tried to explain to my father: I hate the end of the summer.

I had that veneer of bitterness and resolve. But I knew it would happen all over again, probably the next summer.

the bluejay

I went for a jog a few weeks ago and met a jarringly beautiful blue jay huddled next to the Livingston High School air conditioner, the latter which rumbled and rattled as cheerleaders and soccer players waited in droves to get picked up by their parents.

"Wow, look at that!" I couldn't help but stop and watch. He was bright and chubby and about the size of my hand; he looked almost like a fake, a beady eyed plush toy left behind by some dog or toddler. But when he shook his head a tiny bit at the commotion around him his real-ness was confirmed.

The kids around me were unimpressed and soon scattered. Tired from trying to jog in the heat, I took a break on the cement stairs outside the high school gym, where I could catch my breath and observe the endearingly plump little guy, now on my immediate and intimate line of vision.

He was so still for so long I started to think that I imagined that he moved and that he's actually dead, propped up against the air conditioner as his final resting place.  With my foot, I nudged a piece of popcorn his way (high school kids always leave bird-friendly litter around). He sat stoically.

I thought, is this bird dead? If so, it just happened; he's about as alive-looking and fresh as I've ever seen. What kind of bird doesn't want popcorn, right under his beak?

I must have sat for a solid fifteen minutes in that sunshine, trying to figure out if he was alive or not. Every jogger and person with a stroller that went by, I wanted to say, there's a dead or dying bird here, I think. We have to do something. We have to call someone.  But of course I didn't. I mean, what could I do? What could anyone do? That's just life.

The whole thing was so strange. Eventually I went back to my jog, thinking I'd check that spot again on my way back. But I ran home a different way and eventually forgot, until about three days later when my husband and I shared a bottle of wine and I told him about it. I felt bad about the whole thing for some reason-- maybe the notion that I can be moved by a certain moment of connection and then just forget about it. I guess that everyone, everything has a right to die with dignity and privacy-- but also to be recognized, to be seen. It just seems sad that the whole world passed this bird by at the most important moment of its existence, maybe not including its own birth from the egg or its first flight.

I went for a walk the next morning and sure enough, there was a little pile of bones and some feathers where my friend stood four days before. 

As I passed by, I thought: what a brave little thing. I saw you. I saw.

I Ate You, California

My husband and I went to California for nine days; it seemed the most obvious choice with the impending costly rotation of home repairs/improvements and my biological clock and all that (that's said with playful irony meant to make you admire our hip disregard for playing by the rules! that's how we roll!)  Just when I thought I was the most financially foolhardy person in my relationship, Dan took me on a whirlwind tour of Central California and we literally ate our way down Coastal Highway 1.  No regrets! Here's the epicurean highlight list (strangely, I only gained like 3 pounds):

1.  Clams in San Francisco's Chinatown: "you can't order two. they're huge," said Dan. I showed him! I showed them all!
2.  Dark chocolate hot fudge sundae in Ghirandelli Square: to be fair, Dan had most of it. In fact, he suggested two separate tables so he could have alone time with his ice cream.
3.  Half Moon Bay: Lobster Roll at Sam's with views of the sea and attractive people. A few days and many miles later in Golden Gate Park, just when I was saddened at the cost of the Japanese Tea Garden, I spotted Sam's Mobile Food Truck and shrieked. I never thought I'd  see that lobster roll again. It was like the ending of The Color Purple when Celie finally sees her long lost sister and they sob in each other's arms.
4.  Cinnamon pull apart in Carmel-by-the-Sea-- the only thing we could afford there....it was hot and sweet and gooey (I'll let you insert a joke here like 'that's what she said' etc)
5.  Avocado and Asparagus Eggs Benedict at the Apple Farm Inn in San Luis Obispo
6.  Grilled Corn with Chili Powder at Farmer's Market, San Luis Obispo
7.  Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen in St. Helena: Artichoke with impressive garlic lemon aioli that changed Dan's feelings on spiky vegetables. I didn't have the heart (no pun intended) to tell him that aioli is just hot mayonnaise.
8. And finally...turkey and fig jam sandwich in Napa Valley at some fancy, beautiful winery...the taste of which was not spoiled by my tipsy fall down a four foot ditch. Damn you, peach tree. Damn you. I was just trying to take your picture.

the bubble game

Recently I went over to my friend Allison's and watched her daughter blow bubbles in the sun-dappled yard. The game, of course, is to run into the bubbles head-first to break them. She would express disappointment and then start to whine, then smile when Allison would blow another one for her and then she could do it all over again.  Promptly forgetting the irritation of the previous tragedy of the bubble that went before, she runs like around in the paradox of the bubble game: you can't love the bubble too long, you must rush to break it. 

Her joy/disappointment cycle is dizzying and remarkable. This is everything. Happiness in a flash, then it's gone, only to re-form, in a slightly different shape. Last spring we paid a hefty price to slash some tree branches that were dropping acorns on my roof and inchworms into my morning coffee on the deck; I'm irked at how soon those branches grow, marring the tidy bend of the tree with puffs of green. It's only another five years, I bet, before those branches are humping my roof again, making trouble. 
Until then, I'll enjoy this perfect moment on my deck, right now.  The sky is perfect. The coffee is perfect.

Here we go, chasing down those bubbles to break. The next one will be rise up like the moon, so beautiful.