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Saturday, March 8th, 2003
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5:39 pm - (no pun intended)
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| Tuesday, March 4th, 2003
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11:53 pm - I can't attest to the demographics of Rotterdam Junction
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11:44 am - note
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The movie "Parenthood" is a LOT less funny when you've just lost a parent.
Even the scene where Dianne Wiest finds the dirty pictures.
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(sharpen your repartee)
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6:58 am - GE -- We bring good things to death.
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This is disturbing, but gloomily cheering in its zealotry.
I don't doubt much of what it says. I wouldn't be surprised if the Knolls Atomic Power Lab was an unreported Superfund site. I wouldn't put it past GE. I just wonder how many more people have to die of cancer before we do something about all the environmental dangers in this country. At what risk is my sister, or father, or Matt and Noah?
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(sharpen your repartee)
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| Thursday, February 27th, 2003
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1:28 pm - my childhood is truly over
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1:13 am - what i wouldn't do for a tomato
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I was remiss the other day in not mentioning Carrie's kind and immediate message when she heard about my mother. I've listened to it about ten times in the ensuing week.
I also got a really classy sympathy card today from Landis. As my mother would say, somebody raised that girl right.
Tired. Depressed. Relieved to be hibernating. In serious need of groceries.
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(2 witty rejoinders | sharpen your repartee)
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| Sunday, February 23rd, 2003
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2:24 am - seven days after the fact
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| Wednesday, February 19th, 2003
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1:13 pm - round and round and round she goes, where she stops...
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i actually slept last night. halle-fucking-lujah. a. is the wonder drug. i think he secretes valerian from his pores.
i dreamed i went into this building and my sister and her friend charisse and a whole bunch of people were there singing "will the circle be unbroken." it was touching and i chimed in.
god, i'm such a fucking folkie.
then i dreamed i got stuck in an elevator, trying to get to the third floor, but the elevator would only go to the seventh.
when someone dies you're supposed to eat round foods, to remind yourself of the circle of life. if i see another hard-boiled egg ever it will be too soon.
***
yesterday was a long, long day. oh, and a's awake.
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(2 witty rejoinders | sharpen your repartee)
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| Monday, February 17th, 2003
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10:38 pm - is this really happening?
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today i woke up at 7 am at matt and noah's house. they took me out to breakfast at the townhouse diner, where i smoked copious tobacco and picked at a salad. there were four teenage boys sitting at the next table, having the most ridiculous conversation about how hot their teachers were and how drunk they got this weekend and how they never seemed to score. i wanted to beat them up for being idiots, but settled for stopping by their table on the way out and wishing them "good luck with the ladies," which pleased them immensely and had noah and matt in hysterics the whole way home.
then my pop & sister and i met with the rabbi for a couple of hours to help him prepare the eulogy and to go over the plans for the funeral. he guilted my sister pretty harsh for not wanting to follow all the grieving customs. in judaism, you're supposed to cut out music and gatherings and anything even remotely celebratory for a year, i guess to cut short your denial. he told my sister that she had to face what was happening, as if she isn't. it was the closest i ever came to telling a rabbi to suck my silicone shlong.
he's okay though. i think the eulogy will be decent. and i think he genuinely wanted to communicate the customs and felt that they would be helpful.
rabbis have such a fascinating job. part shrink, part scholar, part community builder, part spiritual leader. did i ever tell you i wanted to be one when i was little? but then i decided you couldn't be a rabbi and a writer at the same time and do them both well, so here i am in poetry school and not rabbinical school.
plus you still can't be a dyke in the conservative moment, and reform judaism is a little too rinky-dinky for me.
in the afternoon/evening i cleaned the dining room cart, going through stacks and stacks of papers, unearthing such haunted goodies as school papers from as far back as 7th grade ("The Red Squirrel and the Red Fox: A Comparison"), caffe lena schedules from 1993, the script and sheet music for "sweet charity" (i was in the chorus for it in 9th grade, although i think i got overworked and dropped out if i remember correctly), every single issue of our high school newspaper and amtrak timetables from the reagan era. it was deep. my mother fucking kept everything.
today i talked on the phone to: naomi, barbara, jessie o., jeff (twice), ruth and ben (with their two-week old baby wailing in the background), ben's mother esther, our distant cousin judy from florida, my aunt mindy, my cousin lori, a. (twice), matt, noah, danielle, rachel, the other rachel (both exes), the mother of my friend lisa from high school, my sister (five hundred million thousand times), the funeral parlor guy, jeanne from the indy, chris from the indy and his girlfriend jessica. holy freaking shit.
look what rachel wrote about my mom. isn't that the most wonderful thing?
it hurts. it hurts and it hurts and it hurts, and i'm not even feeling it.
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(6 witty rejoinders | sharpen your repartee)
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| Sunday, February 16th, 2003
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2:24 pm
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My mother died last night. My sister called me with the news this morning.
The funeral's on Tuesday in Schenectady. Please come if you can, and be in touch if you can't.
I can deal with the past tense -- she died -- but not with the present tense. This way it leaves some room for -- resurrection?
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(20 witty rejoinders | sharpen your repartee)
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| Friday, February 14th, 2003
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1:28 am - not to mention
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| Monday, February 10th, 2003
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1:02 am - ice ice baby
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| Thursday, February 6th, 2003
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7:18 pm - where can i find a woman like that?
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1:32 am - Homesick for Homeschoolers*
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I changed my mind, I wanna teach here.
*I said "Homeschoolers" rather than "Unschoolers" because, well, who gets unsick? And otherwise you just lose the symmetry.
current mood: overpunctuative
current music: oh my god nanci griffith who would have guessed it??
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(4 witty rejoinders | sharpen your repartee)
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| Wednesday, February 5th, 2003
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2:00 am - That's right, I'm not from Texas.
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I want to say that I've listened to Nanci Griffith's "Winter Marquee" about thirty-six times since taking it out of the Schenectady library in late December, and I still get surprised and excited every single time she brings out Emmylou Harris as a guest vocalist on track 9.
( But Texas wants me anyway. )
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(sharpen your repartee)
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1:02 am - "War is silly, whack your willy."
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A whole spate of interesting news has come through my inbox lately, some good, some bad.
The dates have been set for Quo Vadis: May 26 through June 1.
Relatedly, Abandon Ship has released their first album. See website for ordering details.
On this coast, Bluestockings Women's Bookstore is closing their doors. I saw it coming; they've been discounting entire sections, not updating their stock, and never seem to have any customers. It's too bad.
Also, did anyone catch the interesting article on Leslie Cagan in today's Times? Cagan is a (the?) major organizer with United for Peace and Justice, the largest American anti-war organization that isn't a Stalinist front. Part hatchet job, part promo for the February 15 march, the article is classic Times. I hadn't known that Cagan was partnered with Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (whose name they misspelled in the article). They get my vote for Couple of the Day.
Finally, I am deeply grateful to Quinn for pointing me towards these folks. Now there's a movement I could really, er, get into.
current mood: decent
current music: my own crunching (and nanci griffith)
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(4 witty rejoinders | sharpen your repartee)
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| Tuesday, February 4th, 2003
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12:30 am - you don't need no baggage you just get on board
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Today I ran errands and then TAed and then had my three-hour workshop and then ran more errands on campus and then went swimming and then came home and dropped off my stuff and had a snack and then dashed out to the Co-op and bought food and came home and put it all away.
Alison was in bed. I sat in the dark living room, in the chair by the window overlooking Eastern Parkway, eating a tomato, and realized quietly that I'm depressed, and have been for some time. And have been running at breakneck speed to avoid it.
I thought things would be different by the time I turned 26.
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(1 witty rejoinder | sharpen your repartee)
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| Sunday, February 2nd, 2003
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3:39 pm - name that tune
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2:39 am - Why I Love the Internet, Reason #59654
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Went Googling tonight for a site that discussed the weekly Torah portion. Found a whole heck of a bunch. As my buddy Chris said today, "What did we do before the Internet?" To which I replied, "Well, we talked to people." But still. The Internet. Is great.
Here's some of what I found, for those who are interested:
1.Big overview page... but all the sites listed seem to be Orthodox or Conservative.
2.Orthodox. The standard.
3.Reconstructionist. Often takes unsubstantiated intepretive leaps... but then again, they're Reconstructionist.
I also found this really touching and thought D'var Torah given by a man from my synagogue on his wedding -- which was held the Shabbat after Sept. 11. I advise you to check it out.
By the way, when I Googled "torah" + "weekly portion" + "feminist," nearly half of the results referenced Bridges. Ha, I say.
Still, I didn't find a feminist weekly parsha (portion) interpretation. Meh.
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(1 witty rejoinder | sharpen your repartee)
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| Friday, January 31st, 2003
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2:28 pm - decisiveness
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In the letter he sent, my friend Matt wrote that acting decisively, even when you know what you're doing is best for you, can hurt like hell.
It's really true. This week I've been trying to decisively hack my way out of the jungle of stressful shit the world's been throwing at me. I'm making concrete, non-New York plans for the summer, hard as that is. I'm investigating what sort of life I could have living upstate for those few months. I want to be near mom, even though the Capital District can be a very lonely place, without much to plug into in terms of meeting new people and finding challenging projects. Parts of this summer -- being in the pretty, seeing my upstate friends, being near mom, being a little less stressed about money if I don't have an apartment in the city -- are really cool. But overall it's pretty terrifying.
And going into school three hours early Monday, knocking on doors to find out who I was TAing for and setting up a meeting with the professor -- that was tough. I'm shy, though it doesn't always show. And knocking on doors again to get out of this one awful class I'm in -- to beg to get out of the requirement -- and then to beg to get into the class I want instead -- it may sound easy, but it's not. It takes decision-making and door-knocking. Facing people.
And last night, hanging out with A., listening to his barrage of criticism, the shitty things he said to me -- which I won't even repeat, they're so horrific -- I realize that he's not healthy for me, either.
The easy thing to do would be to put up with Alison's shit, to put up with the school's shit, to put up with A.'s shit -- but I can't anymore. Can't as in Won't.
No one's going to give me the life I want. I have to go out and get it. Hard as that is.
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(1 witty rejoinder | sharpen your repartee)
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