My Brother Is Dead

GTD

2009-02-25T09:41:00.001-05:00

They keep coming. Here's one from 619***6903:

Kaiya's tests came back normal!!! Thanks for the prayers! Love you all!

Prayer

2009-02-25T08:32:00.004-05:00

I haven't checked my blogger email in nearly a year, but this morning I read an article about Leonard Cohen's new tour. Some of you may remember that I had a brief Cohen encounter back in October of 07, and so I logged into my email to read what he'd said again and get that small thrill that comes from seeing a celebrity's name in your inbox.

Scrolling through my unread email, most of which was junk, I noticed a few notes from strangers who had stumbled on my blog, all of whom were incredibly supportive (even if they all didn't necessarily agree with my strong opinions on Charles Baxter). Shay, Josephine, Kathryn, Ryan, Elle, Matt, and Bill - thank you for reading and taking the time to write. It's incredibly moving to know that in some small way we are connected.

I also received emails from four women who lost their brothers, too. Sarah, Lisa, Kelly, Julia. I'm so sorry for your loss. Your emails reminded me that even as my raw wound knots into a scar, that there are people living through their own July 5ths everyday. There are people, right now, in tremendous pain. I am thinking about you.

Lastly, I'd like to catch you up on one of the most suprising changes I've noticed in myself over the past year and a half. I have, somehow, become a spiritual person. This may seem unremarkable to most, but I have been a staunch athiest for most of my 27 years - the kind who gesuhdneit's instead of blesses you when you sneeze. It's only since Kyle's death that I've felt an increasingly strengthening need to pray. Not to God, whom I still can't convince myself of, but to something. To connectedness. To internal peace. To compassion. I haven't really figured this out yet. I am a spiritual baby. I've haven't gotten much farther than Sanskrit chanting in yoga class and a growing obsession with Krista Tippett. But I understand now that there are broken parts of me that will not be fixed by new boots or a new job or even a new family. Just give me the blood, Eli. I need help in this life.

Dancing

2008-07-10T08:29:00.004-04:00

Remember my mother's obsession with Snowball? Well, I've developed an obsession of my own. Maybe you've seen this video - it's got 5.5 million hits on Youtube and a million since yesterday (at least a dozen from me) - but I'm posting it here because its the perfect antidote to a depressing anniversary.

How cute is Madagascar??

One Year Down

2008-07-09T16:23:00.007-04:00

The first anniversary of Kyle's death was sometime last weekend. Depending on your definition of "death," he passed on the 5th or the 7th, but when I think about it I start on the 4th, Independence Day, red and white and smelling like grill smoke. Kyle and his friends took a train to the beach for what I think was a concert and stayed overnight. It was the next day, the 5th, around 7 pm, when he fell. I'm not clear on the details. They've been explained to me many times, but in my mind the moving train, the ascending ladder, the platform, the pool of blood, and my brother are a sickly blur. He hit his head, his brain died, and if you believe that life has to do with personality and consciousness, then that's when he died.

They brought his body to the hospital and put it on life support. By the time I arrived midday on the 6th, I was told that he still looked alive, like he was in a coma. Like there might be some hope, when of course there wasn't.

At first, I didn't want to see him. He had hit his head. What if I didn't recognize him? Or couldn't look at him? Or got sick? Or fainted? But by the time I got to him he'd been cleaned up. One side of his face was bandaged, and the other looked just like it always had. His eye was open a bit and it was like if I stared in hard enough, I could get a message through. His hands were warm and a little swollen. His skin was so soft - like mine and my mom's - and he had beautiful wrists. He was all beautiful, even banged up. Dead.

They harvested his organs shortly after midnight on the morning of the 7th. If you believe life has to do with the body - blood and breathing and a beating heart - then that's when he died.

A few nights ago, I watched a new reality show called Hopkins. It follows the staff of John Hopkins Hospital around while they perform miracles and fight with their spouses. It's a good show, but on this particular episode a donor body was being harvested and teams of surgeons and nurses with flashing tools and disturbingly mundane coolers were swarming the hospital bed. I closed my eyes, but in the breathless second before I realized that that's what they did to Kyle. They swarmed him - shouting, messy, efficient - sliced his parts, and sewed him up lighter than before.

So those are the dates. Melancholy fireworks on through the 7th. There's also the 13th - the day we buried him and the day he was born. Plenty to pick from if you're looking for an anniversary. His last trip, his last train ride, his last thought, his last breath, his last moments above ground.

I miss you. Rest in peace.

Bad Blogger

2008-06-11T09:32:00.000-04:00

Hello.

I owe you an apology. I just disappeared, with no warning or goodbye. I haven't responded to your emails. I left important milestones - Ky's birthday (April 13), my graduation (I have a Masters now, albeit in fiction) and the selection of the first black man as the Democratic nominee (!) - unaddressed. How rude.

And I don't even have a good excuse. I got busy with school and teaching, I began using my free time to write fiction again, I had family in and out of town, but most of all I was avoiding. I think avoidance might've been a new step for me in this whole grief thing. As time has went on, Kyle's death actually became harder, not easier, to think about. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to blog about it. I didn't want to read my mother's blog about it. My mom sent me two beautifully framed pictures of Ky, and they sat wrapped in plastic on my couch for weeks before I even looked at them. The whole thing was just too much to deal with on a daily basis if I also wanted to get my papers graded or my manuscript ready for class. So I didn't.

But recently, I forced myself to hang up one of Ky's pictures. I almost took it right down - I could barely look at it for the first week without tearing up - but it seemed right to leave it there. And today, I forced myself to login to Blogger for the first time in months. So maybe I'm past avoidance. Maybe I'm on to something new.

I Heart Derrick

2008-02-22T10:46:00.003-05:00

J's dad sent this. It's called Interviewer Picks the Wrong Obama Supporter to Try to Railroad, and it's absolutely amazing.

Viva Obama! Viva!

2008-02-22T00:11:00.000-05:00

Making Our Thirty-Year-Old Dreams Come True

2008-02-20T12:47:00.004-05:00

I've been ridiculously busy. Between writing, teaching, school, and watching campaign coverage, I haven't had time to blog in weeks. But I just couldn't let this Hillary video go. It's about as inspiring (and timely) as she is.

"Start immediately on challenges!"

It Is a Better Thing

2008-02-09T00:04:00.001-05:00

I Heart New York 4

2008-01-24T10:04:00.000-05:00

Look at this:I took this picture yesterday from my apartment. I was working on my computer, sitting on my bed (which also serves as my office), when J's eyes got really big and he told me to turn around. Slowly. A hawk had landed on our fire escape, not two feet from where I sat. A hawk.

I've seen hawks in the city before, usually in the park from a distance, but this time the thing landed just a pane of glass away. And in its talons was a freshly-killed pigeon. As we watched, the hawk eyed us up and down, repositioned himself on top of his dinner, and began to tear its feathers out.

J, Justin, the two cats and I sat by the window for a full hour, both gleeful and horrified, as the hawk ate first the pigeon's head, then its heart, guts, and even choked down one whole leg - foot and all. I've never seen anything like it.

The thing was gorgeous, and huge, though its hard to tell from the photo. But if you look closely you'll see it's standing on a pigeon - not a small bird - and you can get a sense of how massive the thing was.

Once it was done, the hawk flew away, leaving our fire escape covered in feathers, bird shit, and the carcass:

It was the most intimate National Geographic moment I've ever had, and in New York City, of all places.

To top it all off, we may have solved the mystery of the demon bird...

GTD from 760***0487:
mir Come to the bathrooms

Updates

2008-01-23T09:26:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was my mom's birthday. Historically, my mom kind of gets shafted on her birthday. Before the divorce, there were brunches and flowers and expensive bottles of Coco Chanel, but after the divorce, it was homemade cards and hastily wrapped books. And even though my dad spent years reminding us not to forget our mother, once we left for college, gifts were sent back late, or sometimes not at all. There was even a year when I forgot her birthday entirely, and didn't remember to call until weeks later. Luckily, my mom is a rare and awesome women lacking both resentment and materialism, and never once has she guilted Kyle or I for our lackluster celebration of her birth. So head on over to her page and wish her a happy belated.

Yesterday was also the first day of school. I don't start my graduate workshop until next week, but I did start teaching my undergraduate intermediate fiction class at NYU. And, as someone who's Googled teachers for years, I'm now wondering at the wisdom of have a public but very personal blog out there. Is it okay for your students to know the date when you last cried? Or that you have a virulent disrespect for Charles Baxter? Or what you look like sitting six feet above your buried brother? Oh well. I'm sure the veneer of authority would've slipped soon enough. Writing gets me excited, and in the last class I taught I blew my cover the first day by breaking into a clapping, beaming, barely-seated book cheer. Goooooo fiction!

In other news, I'm reading for the first time this Friday at NYU's Emerging Writers' Reading Series. Darin Strauss is headlining, which is exciting, so email me if you're in town and want details.

And last, but hardly least, the scaffolding that's been up in front of my building for six months finally came down. It's like God lifted the roof off of the sky.

GTD from 760***0487:
mir goddd. i wish you werent in texas travis is having a huge party tonight i think. uughhh. but i needa talk to ya girliee.

Oh. My. God.

2008-01-16T21:42:00.000-05:00

I had a bad day today. I cried over Kyle for the first time in a while. And then, just now, I got this on my phone:

From 217.549.6743@VTEXT.COM:
Hey its ok nvm
$KYLE$
Jan 16th, 9:35 pm

Literally, a ghost text.

"Savage Thoughts" or "How Everything, Even the Oscars, Has Something To Do With Me"

2008-01-09T10:20:00.000-05:00

I saw The Savages. Have you? Stop reading if you plan to, because this post has SPOILERS.

It's a movie about a dying family. Mom is gone, dad has dementia, and their two grown kids are midlife and mateless. Wendy Savage (Laura Linney) is a late-thirties MFA grad and "autobiographical playwright" with a sex life limited to an occassional visit from her married neighbor. She lives alone in New York City with a cat, works a sad and unrelated day job, and applies endlessly for grants she won't receive. She is, essentially, the future version of me I'm most terrified of becoming, with one significant difference:

Wendy has a brother.

Jon Savage (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is a more successful but more depressed upstate philosophy professor, and he meets his sister in Arizona to try and figure out what to do with their non-functioning father, their meager resources, the realization that soon they'll be all that's left of their family.

Let's stop here for a moment. At this point in the movie, about twenty minutes in, I'm a little overwhelmed. I didn't know anything about The Savages - it was just one of those Oscar-list movies I feel obligated to see - and from the title I assumed it was going to be a documentary about the Bush Administration or some snarky comedy about brilliant and narcissistic English academics locked in a death match for tenure.

But it doesn't take me long to realize, no. I was wrong. The Savages isn't nearly so easy. Instead, it's about the person I am most afraid of becoming facing the thing I most fear armed only with the income I fear will be mine.

I felt like I was watching a well-produced nightmare, a futuristic horror show where between the ticket booth and my seat they somehow uploaded my most well-repressed fears, strung them together into a coherant narrative, and got incredibly talented actors to play out every nuance.

All in all, even if you're not me, it's still a pretty despressing film. Wendy and Jon have to warehouse their dad in an east coast nursing home just in time for the holidays, and they fight and bicker and bend under the guilt of not being able to provide for their father. Luckily (unluckily?), the nursing home stay proves to be fleeting. After just a few weeks there, dad dies.

The Savages return to their respective homes. Jon has allowed the deportation of his Polish girlfriend, Wendy has broken it off with her neighbor, and both are banished to the Desert of the Sexless.

Here, thankfully, the movie takes pity on its abused viewer and allows for one of those "light-hearted" tragic-comic endings:

The last scene is a rehersal of Wendy's autobiographical play. In it, an actor playing her father slaps a boy playing her brother again and again, until the boy rises up, angel-like, over stage. Cut to Jon crying in the audience. Cut to Wendy walking him to a cab. He's on his way to Poland, her play was really, really good, and he will be back opening night. They have one of those tender film moments, one of those shared small smiles, in which the audience realizes that they will be ok, that will not kill themlseves, that while life is hard and their parents are dead, at the very least they have each other.

And this is where I started to cry. The happy ending. Because even worse than seeing my failed dreams and dying parents in Technicolor was being reminded that when I get the call, when I go to Arizona, when I research "assisted living facilities" out of my price range, I will be alone. I will be A McLeod. I will have lost my "s," my plurality, the one thing that kept The Savages from being the most depressing movie made since Schindler's List.

GTD from 724***6601:
FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD: u send fwds u better send this one if u dont u will never get a fwd again and 2008 will suck send to 15 people in the next 10 min HURRY UP!

Obama Looks Like God

2008-01-04T18:44:00.000-05:00

I woke up late this morning. It was freezing outside and warm in bed, I didn't have to work, so I just lay there and thought about Barack Obama.

I was so excited. There was a fuzziness in my belly like there used to be Christmas morning, and I pulled the covers up and fantasized about a sparkling, environmentally-sensitive utopia of postgraduate health care, student loan forgiveness, and generous, renewable, minority-friendly artists' grants.

I know I'm being naive, but I can't help it. I really do think he might be a biracial superhero come to save the world. I mean, just look at him.

Doesn't he look a little like God? Or at least like Morgan Freeman playing God?

So Happy New Year, America! Considering that I'm guaranteed not to lose another sibling, 2008 is already going to kick 2007's ass in my book. But with Obama barreling his black self towards the White House, we all may be about to watch the making of history, and 2008 could be one of those years we talk about for the rest of our lives.

A Good Cause

2007-12-31T11:56:00.000-05:00

After Kyle died, I sort of opted out of any familial logistical decisions. At the hospital, as they prepared my brother for organ donation, my parents asked me simple questions about burial, funeral, and memorial arrangements, and the only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted a grave to visit. But everything else - death certificates and headstones and slideshows and biographies - I stayed out of. It just all felt so exhausting.

So maybe that's why it didn't occur to me until now to post something about the scholarship fund my parents established in Kyle's name. It's called the San Francisco State University Kyle Campbell Whitham McLeod Scholarship in Latin American History, and it was set up to provide some relief to “students experiencing financial hardship and enable them to continue on their path towards graduation.” Kyle talked a lot about the growing cost of state education in California, about how friends of his were being priced out of what is supposed to be affordable public education, so I know he would be proud that an annual scholarship in his name will help other students in his major get through school.

Thanks to the generosity of friends and family (and my parents' unions), we've already received the minimum amount needed to establish an endowment. The more contributions we get, though, the larger the annual scholarship amount, and the more help a needy kid gets each year.

SO, if you haven't already, please consider donating.

Make checks payable to the SF State Foundation, and make sure to designate that it is a donation to the Kyle McLeod Scholarship Fund. Mail donations to:

San Francisco State University
Office of Development – ADM 153
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, California
94132

Past and future donors, thank you!

GTD from 818***7818:
Ur mom hates you

The Taiwanese Are Nothing Like Us

2007-12-27T11:21:00.000-05:00

Christmas is over. Thank God. Let's move on.

In this era of global warming, global villages, and global economies, it's easy to get caught up in all the We Are One hype. But I'm here to remind you that we are not one. We are separate and distinct, we are nothing like our neighbors. Unspeakable customs, incomprehensible people, and absolutely disgusting dishware can be found all over this wide, wide world.

Take Taiwan, for instance. In Kaohsiung, Taiwan, there's an eatery called the Marton Theme Restaurant. Marton is a derivative of the Chinese word matong. Can you guess what that means? That's right, toilet. Matong means "toilet."

I have no explanation, but Eric Wang does. He's the 26-year-old founder of Marton Theme Restaurant.

"Most customers think the more disgusting and exaggerated, the funnier the dining experience is.”

And while I would be quick to point out that he is wrong, that disgusting is not funny and funny does not make for fine dining, that eating mock shit out of a mock toilet is only slightly less horrible than eating real shit out of a real toilet, it seems the residents of Taiwan would disagree with me.

Due to its popularity, Mr. Wang was able to open a second Marton restaurant just seven months after the first.

I don't know about you, but for me, suddenly the gulf between the Israelis and Palestinians, the Sunnis and Shia, the Democrats and Republicans seems not just understandable, but inevitable.

What a world.

Blue Santa

2007-12-25T12:38:00.000-05:00

They found this in Ohio a few years ago. Leave it up to the Germans to come up with a mascot for the sadder side of Christmas.

Froehliche Weihnachten everybody!

Blue Christmas

2007-12-24T22:53:00.000-05:00

I just got home from Christmas with my dad. We went ice skating in Central Park, trailed Leann's well-bundled grandkids through an amazing throng of foreigners to see the Big Tree, and had coco and pizza and presents under a decorated palm in the hotel suite.

It was a really lovely evening.

Now I'm home in pj's, The Godfather's on, and my Google searches show a number of permutations of "dead" and "Christmas." So I thought I'd post this. Not because I'm miserable, but because in the back of my mind even on my best days there's a soft blue whisper, a reminder that the hardest time to be sad is when you are expected to be happy.

Firsts

2007-12-22T11:08:00.000-05:00

1. I just got a new cell phone. My old one was this overpriced piece of crap and when you called me it sounded like I was in the middle of a tornado. So I went to Verizon and, in exchange for promising to pay them an exorbitant monthly fee well into my thirties, they gave me a new phone for free.

Get excited.

The woman at Verizon was really nice, but she couldn't change transfer my contacts from my old phone to my new phone - I guess she was missing a cord? - so when I got home I went through my old phone manually. I just transfered the necessities. Mom, Dad, friends, etc. It was kind of fun, my new phone has a QWERTY keyboard that I just love, but then I got to the K's.

Kyle's number.

What should I do with Kyle's number? Transferring it seemed weird, but not transferring it, just throwing my phone away without recording it, that felt like a loss. An unnecessary loss. And we've had enough of those.

So here:

310.422.5644

310.422.5644

310.422.5644

310.422.5644

310.422.5644
310.422.5644
310.422.5644

2. This will be my first Christmas without a stocking, my first Christmas in New York, the first Christmas I won't have to give my brother a present. The last, I have to say, is a relief.

Kyle was impossible to shop for. He was a semi-socialist who sneered at baubles and only wanted really expensive electronic equipment or music that I could never be cool enough to have heard of.

I bought him novels he wasn't interested in. I bought him art supplies and alcohol.

Now, I won't have to guess at what he'll like. Now, he won't have to assure me that it was fine, really. That he appreciated it.

3. I heard an organ donor story on This American Life last week. A girl who's heart came from a murdered boy finally met his family. I cried louder than I thought I would. I so, so, so very much want to meet the recipients of Kyle's organs.

Someone is walking around with my brother's eyes.

I'm Feeling Ambivalent About New York - Part II

2007-12-18T15:13:00.000-05:00

I avoid Midtown.

Not completely - no one can avoid Midtown completely - but I do my best. Sure, I've been to a few plays there, I had a couple friends who lived unsettlingly close to Times Square and once, for reasons not quite clear to me, I ended up doing yoga under the Cup O'Noodles billboard, but mostly I've managed to stay away from that particular part of the city.

But last week my boss asked me to take a huge stack of papers up to 53rd and Park for signatures and what could I say? "Midtown's a little busy for me" is not a valid excuse at work.

So off I went. Here's what I was wearing: work boots, unfashionable jeans, a hoodie with cuffs so worn they look like lace, fingerless gloves left over from my smoking days, and a puffy, maroon Rocawear jacket that might be styling in Harlem, but is definitely not up to the rest of Manhattan's hipster code.

I got off the subway, climbed the stairs, and found myself headed east on a crosstown street that resembled nothing if not an Armani runway. Tailored suits, splashy ties, colored purses matched - but not too matched - with leather pumps. Pinstripes, lipstick, jewelry sets. Edgy buns, salads in plastic, shapeshifting cell phones. Diamonds and pearls and gold. And me dodging briefcases in my torn MFA chic, crooked glasses and all.

This alone wouldn't have phased me. I've spent years being underdressed around rich people. Besides, writers are allowed a certain nerdy carelessness, like we've just got too much going on to check a mirror on the way out the door. What got to me, what made me feel suddenly and strongly ambivalent about New York, even after all my gushing and my Metrocard miracle, was that those perfectly dressed people were just like me - twenty-somethings on $25-an-hour errands, everyone stern and eager, walking really, really fast, in desperate need of rent money.

And in that moment, I hated this place.

Young people here have to work so hard. Our rent is more than our parents' mortgage. We spend more on food than most families of four. Why else would we go to such ridiculous lengths? Matching pearls? Dry cleaning bills? Humanitarian dreams reduced to zeros? In our twenties? Even those of us wandering the creative path are only plunging further into graduate debt, grasping laughably at the slim Lotto shot of paying it back in less than forty years. We were all so desperate that Midtown afternoon, pounding down 53rd, jostling at lights for a position out front, determined to show our bosses, each other, how worth it we were.

As I neared Park Ave, a girl came towards me in a a fitted gray suit, hair and heels high, cell phone squeezed between her shoulder and cheek. She was carrying four Starbucks coffees, three shopping bags, a five-inch three-ring binder, and her purse. Which matched her shoes. "Of course," she was saying into her phone. "Whole grain, dijon, chicken breast." She looked like she was about to cry.

I almost stopped her.

"Hey," I wanted to say. "It's okay. I don't know how I'm going to make it to Friday, either. And even though my feet hurt less than yours, and your bank account is less terrifying than mine, at the end of the day we're all just getting coffee for some rich guy.

"We can live here, we can swing rent, we might even manage health insurance, but God forbid we mistake this city for a place that wants us. New York doesn't want us. If it wanted us, you wouldn't be dressed like your mother, I wouldn't be dressed like a bum, and living here amidst the millionaires wouldn't feel so much like begging."

Christmas '05

2007-12-15T19:58:00.000-05:00

Aunt Della just sent out new pictures she found of Kyle et all. We are, clockwise from me, across-the-pond Juliesan, the infamous Katie B, Kyle big as ever, and James and Joe, the only brothers I have left.

GTD from 530***5858:
Im gonna go up the hill but if I get called back ill come oven

Because I Call Myself a Fiction Writer

2007-12-15T10:14:00.000-05:00

I haven't blogged all week. I'm sorry. And it's not because I don't love you anymore, or don't need you anymore, or because Kyle has risen from the dead.

It's because I'm writing again. I've finally returned to fiction in earnest, and I've found that it uses the same part of my brain that blogging does. Which means that it's hard to do both on a daily basis. For months, I've been putting all my energies into blogging, but now I finally have a fiction project I'm excited about working on.

So. I'm sorry to say that I'll be blogging less in the future. More of a weekly/bi-weekly thing. But the upside is I'll be inching ever closer to that magical day when I can beg you all to buy my book.

I'm Feeling Ambivalent About New York - Part I

2007-12-10T23:55:00.000-05:00

I had a bad morning. I was late and in a shitty mood and the weather was being coy - too wet for my hair but too dry for an umbrella. I walked as fast as I could to the subway, not even pausing to pull out my iPod. That's how bad my sulk was. Music would make me feel better and I didn't want to give it the chance.

You should've seen my face. I scowled at the garbage man, I scowled at the school kids. I scowled at the tree farmer who sells Evergreens in front of the Wallgreens. The trees in the cold smelled like Christmas, but I breathed through my mouth. The cigarette stand man threw a treat to a passing Labrador, who caught it in the air, and I looked away. I'd be damned if some charming neighborhood traditions were going to make me feel better.

I stopped at the top of the subway stairs to get out my Metrocard. This is harder than it sounds. As a little girl, I watched my mother stand at a register or gas pump or ATM and fish through her massive purse for her massive wallet, which held a massive brick of receipts and business cards and credit cards, only one of which she needed at that particular time. I would think, as I watched her, that there had to be a better way.

Well, there's not.

When I finally found my wallet and finally rifled through it, I discovered two cards. One had $20 on it but was bent and unusable (they say I have to mail it in), but the second one looked okay.

I started down the steps. I could hear a train, it was going my way. If you hold your card right and hurry, it's just possible to get down the stairs, swipe through, get down the second flight of stairs, and make it onto a car before the doors close. I readied my card, I ran, I swiped, but in taunting green letters:

INSUFFICIENT FARE.

Sometimes a feeling comes over me when I'm frustrated like this, and I hate absolutely everything I see. Hate.

I fumbled for my bent card. This entrance wasn't a normal entrance, it was a sort of half entrance, with just a turnstile and no way to buy a new card. The nearest booth was two blocks away. I heard the train brake, the ding of the doors. I swiped.

PLEASE SWIPE AGAIN

I swiped. People started coming up the stairs, filing past me through the exit turnstile. I swiped and swiped and swiped. I was so late. I don't mind telling you almost started crying.

And then from behind me, "Hey."

I turned. It was some Spanish guy in a puffy coat. He had just come off the train, he'd seen me swiping, and when I saw he was talking to me I gave him the meanest, most slit-eyed look I knew. Even Kyle never saw a look this mean. There's something about New York, people think that just because you're on the street, you want to be talked to.

But this guy didn't say anything else, just pulled out his card, swiped me through, and walked away. He barely looked at me. Just swiped and turned. He was halfway up the stairs when I thanked him.

Here in New York, I feel like the city performs miracles. I mean that literally. The guts and steam and press of the city makes miracles happen and every once in a while you get one, right when you're about to give. This guy in the puffy coat gets off his train, comes up the stairs, and sees me cussing at a turnstile. It's 7:46 a.m. and because the train doors are closing and it's shitty out and my card is bent and it's apparent that for whatever reason this is the day I'm gonna go, because he has felt that exact buckle in his knees, because everyone here is a few ounces from breaking even if we hide it most of the time, he and New York took pity. They swiped me through. They let me through the turnstiles and I didn't have to pay a thing.

And all was right with the city, until a complicated real estate catastrophe forced me out of Chelsea's gardens and construction sites and into power pumped, pinstriped mid-50s Park Avenue. That's right, dear reader...MIDTOWN!!!

(to be continued...)

It's Christmas Time, In Case You've Forgotten

2007-12-08T18:06:00.000-05:00

Here I am, trying to procrastinate from writing fiction by writing a blog, when suddenly there is a roar - a sustained, growling roar - coming from the street below. It's followed by unintelligible singing. Then bells and cheering, and general loud drunken revelry. It goes on for a while. It's still going on. And I only notice because it's a bit early for this kind of drunken extremism, even for a Saturday, so I get up and look out and see this:

Okay, so it's not so impressive all blurry and from a distance, but that there is a bar full of Santas. So many Santas that they're spilling out onto the street. So many Santas shouting in unison that they sound like they're partying on my fire escape, five flights up, even with my windows closed.

17 days till Christmas and counting...

Normally Depressing Laundrymat Undergoes Surprisingly Inoffensive Holiday Makeover

2007-12-07T21:52:00.000-05:00

My local laundrymat is run by a squadron of short, broad Spanish women and one white-haired man. The women do the washing and folding in back, so you don't really see them. Instead, you see the man. He wanders silently around the front of the store, always in a pair of those high waisted farmer jeans, the kind with cuffs wide enough to cover work boots. He carries a spray bottle and wash rag. It's a little unclear what exactly his job is. He dusts the tops of the machines, mops the floors, and endlessly sprays the leaves of the robust spider plants hanging from the ceiling.

Today, after a good three weeks of procrastination, J and I finally bit the bullet and hauled our fifty pounds of laundry to the mat, only to discover that it had been completely transformed. It seems the silent man has another, more creative responsibility.

Decoration.

I mean, just look at this:

And this:

Here, he's hand-stringing Christmas bulbs onto fishing wire to tack in necklaces from the fluorescent lights:

I mean, have you ever seen a more focused, more detailed, more thorough seventy-year-old male Christmas decorator?

I'm not complaining though. I'm generally not a fan of cheesy Christmas decorations, but when done with such enthusiasm, such flourish, such stern-mouthed passion, they completely win me over.

So thank you, silent laundry man, for keeping depression at bay with your unsmiling Christmas cheer and extensive Santa collection.

Aunt Della

2007-12-06T10:27:00.000-05:00

On the night of Kyle's accident, it took them awhile to track my parents down. He was alone at the hospital as they wheeled him in and hooked him up and tried for some sign of brain activity. They searched his cell phone for family members, but for some reason he'd entered my parents into his phone by name, not by label, and it took them awhile to get my dad on the line. It took him awhile to get my mom on the line. By the time both my parents had been told about these, their new lives, it was 11:30 at night and the airports were closed. They were going to have to drive. They were going to have to leave my brother alone for the six hours it would take to get to Palo Alto.

So my mom called Aunt Della.

Aunt Della is not really my aunt. She's my mother's best friend, the mother of my best friend, and she's known me my entire life. Before the divorces, our mothers and fathers and Katie B and me and our band of brothers would have late afternoon Los Angeles barbeques. After the divorces, we did Christmases and Thanksgivings. We visited each other at hospitals. We knew the sound of each other's cars, the smell of each other's linens. My point is that family is about blood, but it is also about choice, about circumstance, about the strange spikes of fate a more religious person might chalk up to God.

I've taken Aunt Della for granted most of my life. She was just a mom, after all. Another disciplinarian, another set of eyes, another maker of rules and bedtimes and nutritious meals. For years I thought of her like I did a neighbor, or a babysitter, or any other familiar adult. I didn't realize she was family - not really, not concretely - until my brother died.

Aunt Della was home when my mom called. She was on her way to bed, she had work in the morning, but she picked up the phone. I don't know how my mom told her. It must've been hard to understand through the sobbing. When I try to imagine this, my mother choking in a dark car, Aunt Della sitting up in bed, trying to get her friend to slow down, to speak clearly, my mind jumps instead to when I was ten years old and crying on the phone to Katie B, trying to get out that my parents were separating while she asked over and over, her voice rising in fear, "Mir, what is it? What is it, Mir?"

But that doesn't matter. What matters is that Aunt Della hung up the phone, dressed and drove to Palo Alto, where she sat holding my brother's hand and listening to his tubes breathe while my parents sputtered up California, nothing but black farms and headlights and my number tried over and over, because I didn't know yet.

The coincidence of this is staggering. At least to me. For our whole lives, Katie B and I lived in LA. Even after we left for school, our parents stayed in or near the city. But then, last year, Aunt Della remarried and moved to Berkeley. It seemed sad at the time. Katie and her brothers would now be going upstate in December, and Kyle and I would be going to LA. No more shared holidays. No more Christmas breaks spent riding around our hometown, talking about people we used to know.

But then my brother fell, the airports closed, and suddenly my mom realized we knew someone who could go to Kyle, who could sit with him and tell him that he wasn't alone. Who my mom could call over and over as they inched upstate. And not just anyone. Family.

Teenagers are Funny

2007-12-05T09:54:00.000-05:00

The week of Kyle's accident is pretty fuzzy. I remember the call, but not what day it was. I remember the flight, but not the airports. I remember the high school science lab smell of my brother, how it got stronger when I leaned in to kiss him, but I don't remember the doctors or nurses or psychiatrists that shuttled in and out. I remember some of the drive down to LA for the funeral - Big Sur's big cliffs and the violet ocean, the small arc of Cayucos and how it hasn't changed at all since Kyle and I walked out to the end of the endless pier. I remember some of LA - staying in a Santa Monica hotel instead of my mother's house, driving a rental instead of her car, everything both familiar and absolutely strange. I remember the funeral. I remember the coffin. It looked so much more beautiful than I thought it would look. I remember wanting to stay and watch them fill the dirt in on top of my brother, but knowing that I was expected to leave, that these things are usually done without the swollen, judgemental eyes of family around.

I also remember a song. I left New York with a strange collection of things - five sweaters for an LA summer but only three pairs of underwear, a bathing suit but no socks, a whole stack of novels I of course didn't read. I also forgot my iPod, so the only music we had for the car was J's Shuffle, and on it a random sampling of songs from his ridiculously large and obscure music collection, most of which seemed to lack a melody or identifiable lyrics. One song, though, stood out. It was by Bright Eyes (a shocker, I know), I'd never heard it before, but once I did I played it over and over.

You know how songs can become linked to events? How you hear a verse for the first time when you're falling in love, or moving to a new city, or driving around your hometown with a dead brother on your back, and it fuses to the memory of your experience. It makes you cry. Well, that's what this song did for me. It's called Cleanse Song, and I think that for the rest of my life it will be the soundtrack of my brother's week-long journey from train platform to hospital to grave.

I was looking for the Cleanse Song video on YouTube to show you, but apparently there isn't one. Instead, I found this - a teenager being painfully and publicly emotive. Just like me.

Power. To the. Peeeeeple!

2007-12-03T10:16:00.000-05:00

Have you heard of YouTuber rx2008? He makes videos out of political footage and surprisingly appropriate songs, and the Bush mashup he did last year is one of the most-viewed political videos on YouTube:

Apparently rx2008 is a fan of Mike Gravel, because he approached Gravel's staffers at a Las Vegas dinner in November and said he wanted to make a video with him. At first they demured - despite his exclusion from the debates, Gravel is running for president and can't be making YouTube spots with just anyone. But then rx2008 said he was the guy behind "Sunday Bloody Sunday," a staffer favorite, and Gravel agreed to be filmed. Here is the "weird, wonderful" result:

Isn't it catchy? Now I just have to figure out how to get it on my ipod.

In other weird, wonderful news, My Brother Is Dead is now a sermon!

J's dad is a Methodist minister in a small Texas town, and he emailed to ask if he could quote a bit of my blog in his Sunday sermon. And, even though the last "sermon" I attended was a Unitarian meditation on peace my mother brought us to in middle school, I have to say it's a pretty cool feeling to know that, last Sunday morning, 103 people is a north Texas church were thinking about Kyle and me. The world is endlessly surprising.

Go here to read the sermon, and here to visit David's blog.

It's SNOWING!!!

2007-12-02T11:04:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning surprised to find I wasn't hung over and that it was SNOWING!!

I love the snow. I guess everyone does, but I still marvel with wide-eyed west coast wonder at the versatility of rain. This is our first snow of the season, after a disappointingly snowless winter last year, and to wake up on December 2nd to your world gone white is a really cozy feeling.

Especially if you don't have to go anywhere.

Unfortunately, poor Katie B had to wake up this morning and go to work in this stuff. And after what became quite a late night. The party was great, tons of people showed and Mom, your eggnog was a HIT. As was the decorate-your-own Christmas-cookies station and the baked brie trick I stole from Aunt Di over Thanksgiving.

Now I'm going to get back under the covers, listen to This American Life, and watch the snow. I love Sundays.

It's Christmas Time in the City

2007-12-01T10:18:00.000-05:00

Despite all my holiday grouchiness, I have to say there's something nice about a Christmas party. Carols can actually be kind of pretty when they're not being piped into a 100,000 sq ft box store, and the only gift you're expected to bring is a bottle of wine.

So when my friend Katie B decided to throw a holiday party this year, I agreed to help. It's tonight, the theme is Peruvian Casual Chic (she and her boyfriend Dominique just got back from Machu Picchu, I haven't seen the pictures yet, but apparently they're spectacular (and they brought me back the softest skein of alpaca wool, the dears)), and we're making my mom's famous hard eggnog and Aunt Della's famous spiced nuts and we're baking sugar cookies to decorate. Isn't that exciting?

The thing though, about entertaining in New York in your mid twenties is that you have nothing. After eight moves, all the First Apartment kitchenware your parents bought you when you left for college is long gone, and New York's ravenous landlords have steadily bled you of any money you've earned since. No matter how many friends you call, no one has any cookie cutters to lend you.

So as I type this, Katie is whipping through Bed Bath & Beyond for last minute necessities and I'm headed off to the flower district to buy the requisite poinsettas and holly and mistletoe. We have ten hours and a lot to do. And I have to paint these nails.

There's Still So Much I Haven't Figured Out

2007-11-30T15:45:00.000-05:00

Can we take a break from social commentary and heavy life stuff for a minute? I this problem, I've had it for years, and despite my best efforts I just can't figure out what to do about it. Maybe you can help.

What do you do with clothes that aren't dirty, but aren't clean either?

I rewear clothes. You might think I'm gross, but it's because I'm not a shopper. My closet is meager by any girl's standards, and my limited wardrobe and the five flights and two blocks between me and my laundry mat means I'll work a pair of jeans nice and good before I throw them in the hamper. I still shower regularly and everything, but I just can't bring myself to believe that that my favorite pants or the occasional t-shirt is unwearable after one round. Am I disgusting? Should I be embarrassed? I can't tell.

But that's not my problem. My problem is that, in any room I've ever inhabited since the age of 13, I accumulate these clothes in cleanliness purgatory, and they pile up on the biggest available surface. This time around, it's the cute little loveseat we have in our bedroom. I think I've sat in it twice, and the rest of the time it's served as a large, open-air hamper for clothes that I don't want to fold back up and put in my bureau but that aren't ready for the wash pile.

So maybe you have some advice. What do you do with your still-good clothes? Do you put them back in the drawers to mix indiscriminately with the Downy-fresh unworns? Some sort of rack or hooks on the wall? Or does anything you touch go straight to the hamper? Is it odd that after thirteen years I'm still finding this difficult?

GTD from 805***7317:
hihi it poois im a monkey ooahah hehe lol
rokmysox jobro

What the Hell is Going On?

2007-11-29T09:25:00.000-05:00

Have you seen Sears' new marketing campaign? It's called the "Don't just give a gift, grant a wish" campaign, and I'm only aware of it because it's been gravely offending me with its TV spots this holiday season.

The first time it came to my attention, I didn't see the whole commercial. What I did see was a mother throwing open the door to a ten-year-old girl's walk-in closet to reveal about thirty outfits complete with shoes, excessories, etc. The girl squealed and hugged her mom, and over this timeless image of familial joy a spokeswoman advised, "This holiday season, don't just give a gift. Grant a wish!"

I'd obviously misheard. Or missed an essential part of the commercial. This kid was dying from cancer, right? She was a crackhead baby who spent her life in a burlap sack and had finally been adopted into a family who acknowleged the necessity of clothing, right? At the very least, the mother must've warned the girl just before I tuned in, "Now Susie, remember that we'll be sharing what's in here with your thirteen other sisters." Right??

Wrong. A few days later, I saw the commercial in full and all I'd missed was the mom explaining, "Susie has always loved fashion. She wants to be a fashion designer when she grows up. But the last couple of years, she's gone a school that requires a uniform!" Cut to shot of privately-educated Susie walking home from school in plaid and knee socks, the poor thing. "Well, this year, Susie's moving to a new school that doesn't require uniforms, and I decided to make her Christmas really special." Cut to closet door, cut to wretched excess, cut to spoiled, spoiled child hugging indulgent, credit card-weilding mom. Dad isn't around. He's out whipping the backs of Chinese slaves to pay for his TEN-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER'S BRAND NEW WARDROBE.

Is this not insane to anyone else?

This year, Sears has given up on advertising present possibilities to instead suggest that America buy multiples of what would've been one generous gift in past years. Are we really there? As a nation, I mean? Has innovation just given up? Have we forgone the possibility of spending our declining dollars on, I dunno, eco-friendly, oil-free, socially-aware products and instead said fuck it, let's just buy ten of what we already have? Who's idea was this?

Oh, that's right. Sears.

It's spreading, too. I saw another Sears commercial that showed a giggling family reveal to a shocked dad that this year, the hell with saving for college! Insead we got you...an entire garage filled with tools! And I think it's American Express? Maybe Visa that has a holiday commercial showing dad surprising mom with not one, but two cars. The implication being, "Any hardworking jackass can buy his wife one car. But are you man enough to take on the debt of two brand new, overly-loaded, luxury vehicles?"

And people are treating this like it's completely normal. I Googled "Don't just give a gift, grant a wish" and the articles that came up were all on how nice it is that Sears is including brown people in its commercials and going green this year by offering their catalogue online. I feel like I'm going crazy.

Don't let them do this to us, America. We've well explored the path of excess and look where it got us. The last thing we should want is to widen it into a five-lane interstate of excess. So this year, you should consider not buying things at all, and if you must, I'm sure one will suffice. And whatever you do, DON'T BUY IT FROM SEARS.

I mean...Jesus.

Great Lies

2007-11-28T16:28:00.000-05:00

"The great lie in America is that happiness is available to anyone whose means and desires coincide."

GTD from sheli_kaysevin@agenturblum.de:
Put your lassie on fire of pleasement!

I Heart New York City Shoe Repair Shops

2007-11-27T23:42:00.000-05:00

I've already told you about the joys of Uriel's, but I immediately felt bad about it because I really should have told you about St. Mark's Shoe Repair first. It's in my neighborhood, it's where I go to get all my shoes repaired, and it's absolute heaven.

First of all, it's impossibly small. Even smaller then Uriel's. You can see it here, but I'm not kidding when I tell you the photo makes it look bigger. After doing some internet research, I've come to realize that St. Marks Shoe Repair is actually famous for making custom shoes - I guess Kate Moss has a pair? - but my relationship with them is strictly repair related. It first started because I had this really perfectly fantastic pair of brown leather Kenneth Cole boots that I wore every day walking miles around the city for like two years, and needless to say I was constantly wearing the soles out.

I found St. Marks Shoe Repair when I snapped the heel of my boot off one day, leaving this horrific stagger of nails sticking out of the sole. I didn't have another pair of shoes on me, of course, because I was on foot and miles away from my apartment (although I usually don't miss owning a car, there's something to be said for always having a trunk with you at times like this, and in it shoes and shirts and purses and books and a herd of loose lip glosses rolling around).

Luckily, that fateful day I was on St. Marks Place - a familiar street. I got my tongue pierced on St. Marks in 1999 when I first moved to New York (and spent a year lisping and enraging my father), and remembered that just across the from the piercing shop was a tiny little store that sold used Converse (gross), and housed a bent man working leather in the back. I hobbled over, and Boris, the nice Belarusian man who always wears a Tam and works the front, told me they could fix my boots while I waited.

As with Uriel at Uriel's, Boris is the soul of St. Marks Shoe Repair. He has a thick Eastern European accent, chain smokes in his shop with post-Giuliani abandon, and treats even my most desperate, embarrassing, neglected, swiss cheese-soled jobs with wonderful nonchalance. This? he seems to say with his shrug, squinting through the smoke at the fist-sized hole in the heel of my boot. I have repaired holes three times this size with an awl and the tendon of a rabbit in the dark of a Minsk February night with only the light of a quarter moon to see by. Of course I can repair your tame Manhattan walking boot.

"Twenty dollars for the whole thing, come back tomorrow," is all I actually get, but it's enough. I pay, he hands me a ticket. The work is always flawless.

And as if dramatic former-Soviet fantasies aren't reason enough to go, I have now been to St. Marks Shoe Repair enough times that Boris recognizes me and waves me up to the front of the line. It's a truly proud moment, to squeeze past the ass-crack leather and NYU ponytails of the browsers to Boris, who doesn't smile, doesn't chat, just takes my shoes and gives me my ticket with an easiness made sweet by repetition, by the simple act of sharing something with someone over and over.

Photos by Jefferson Siegel

Insulation is Important

2007-11-26T14:35:00.000-05:00

We made it home safe and sound. Kenny Loggins, though, proved to be a real pain in the ass. We discovered that the heater no longer worked a half hour into the trip but, because we were sort of bundled up and still in temperate lower New York, thought it wouldn't be a problem. Besides, what with the engine running and our combined body heat, the van had to warm up eventually, right?

Actually, no.

I don't know if you've ever ridden around in a moving van whose insulation was ripped out in order to make more room in the back for queen mattresses and oversized vanities, but I don't recommend it. At least not in Massachusetts in November. About halfway there my toes started aching with cold, and by the time we arrived at my aunt and uncle's house, I couldn't feel them at all. I thought coming back to New York would be better, since we were traveling while the sun was out and heading south, but the temperature had dropped to the 30s and we kept having to stop to warm up at gas stations and depressing, rural McDonalds.

And to make matters worse, Kenny's radio stopped working about an hour into the ride back. I know. Shitty. Car radios, I've found, actually encourage conversation, because they fill the silence and take pressure off the passengers. All we had was a whistle of air coming through the dash somewhere and the rattle of a toolbox in the back, lulling us into a meditation on the passing road and the nature of cold.

Anyway, we're back home, and despite this post and the last, I'm glad we went. This Thanksgiving would've been hard wherever I was, and it was really nice to have family and a fire and did I mention the hot tub?? There was a hot tub. And nothing alleviates I'm-about-to-explode bloat like hot water under a cool moon.

Now I have to go write a ten page paper. A paper! I haven't written a paper since 2003. Back then, though, it was whole treatises on Mongolian genetic proliferation and social networking among sexual deviants. This time around, I only have to discuss Sherman Alexie's What You Pawn I Will Redeem, and I still find myself at a loss. How do you fill ten pages without making things up? Do yourself a favor and go read it, it's really good. And if you can figure out what in the world the ending's about, shoot me an email.

Enough procrastination.

Go.

I'm Going to Hate the Holidays

2007-11-23T12:02:00.000-05:00

In our long-distance world, where families are strung out across the country or the globe, the holidays are the one time of year everyone comes together to be reminded who they're related to. So it makes sense that it can be a tough time for the grieving. The pamphlets warned me about this. I was expecting it. So why was yesterday so hard?

By all other accounts, it was a really lovely Thanksgiving. My Aunt Di cooked an absolutely beautiful meal and Uncle Buff carved the turkey, and there was the requisite stuffing and gravy and pie, and wine and cocktails and dogs and a fire, and my cousins Devon and Sienna flew in from Los Angeles, and Sienna's girlfriend Tharyn was here from Boston, and my other cousin Rhea and her girlfriend Sam came over from Easthampton, and of course J and I, and the whole thing was festive and cozy and the house smelled amazing.

But then we sat down, and it was announced that we would all say out loud what we were thankful for this year, and suddenly what had felt warm and right and completely without discomfort turned on me. I was one of the last to go, and as we worked our way around the table I wracked my brain for something to say. There had to be something, after all. Life, love, health, if not happiness. Everyone has something to be thankful. That's the point of the whole exercise.

Not me, though. I thought and thought and all I could come up with was the furious realization that I wasn't thankful at all. Not for a goddamn thing. Everything I have, everything I should be grateful for, paled in comparison to the nasty, bloated thoughts taking up my mind. I'm not thankful. I'm miserable. And no one should expect me to be anything but. My brother is dead and around me every day are brothers and siblings, their shared histories suddenly excessive, their shared intimacies suddenly garish. And the last thing I wanted to do was suck it up, be mature, and admit that I really do have it good, after all.

"I'm thankful for family," I said lamely. I felt like crying.

So I did. Not at dinner - I wasn't going for spectacle - but afterwards, down in the basement room where I'm staying, face down on the bed with a ball of my aunt's supersoft toiletpaper clenched in my hand. Rhea came to say goodbye and I gave her a snotty, swollen hug. Later, after I felt better, I washed my face and went back upstairs to eat a turkey and stuffing sandwich.

I can't wait for January. Apparently, I'm becoming one of those people who hates the holidays.

Well, We're Off

2007-11-21T12:07:00.000-05:00

And we're late.

We're taking Kenny Loggins up to Amherst to have Thanksgiving with my Aunt Di and Uncle Buff (but you can't call him that, only people who knew him before 1970 and their offspring can call him Uncle Buff. He now goes by Blair). I am so very excited! Don't you just love Thanksgiving? As a nation, have we ever come up with a better meal?? Stuffing and gravy and pie???

Last year, J and I went up to Sylvia's in Harlem for Thanksgiving, and it was delicious and wonderful and everything, but then we woke up Friday with the sudden and horrible understanding as to why Thanksgiving should not be done at a restaurant - no leftovers!

So we're hanging around my aunt and uncle's house until at Saturday to take as much advantage of leftovers as we can, and on Friday we'll be getting together with Kyle's boss, who also happens to be in Amherst for Thanksgiving, and who spent a lot of time with my brother over the last year.

My posting may be intermittent this week, but I'm bringing my camera and will post pictures when I can.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Play For Me, I'll Cry For You

2007-11-20T23:53:00.001-05:00

So the Bright Eyes show was absolutely amazing. And I'm not just saying that. I had been repeatedly warned that their shows tend to be not that great. Unprofessional, short, and drunken were the adjectives of choice. So I was prepared for them to suck, even at Radio City Music Hall, and I was willing to come back and report to you that my beloved Bright Eyes were a disappointment live.

But before I tell you how wrong I was, can we talk for a second about Radio City? Have you ever been there? It's massive and grand with a ridiculous amount of orange fabric everywhere. I mean, just look at this:

But what blew my mind were the acoustics. They were spectacular. I thought the thing about live music was that the quality is never as good as a studio recording, that you went because the immediacy and energy made up for it. But I was wrong. Apparently, all you need is a really great sound mixer and one of the most famous venues in America to make absolutely gorgeous live music.

And of course it helps if the band is genius. Bright Eyes really had their shit together last night. The lyrics were brilliant, the trumpet player kept making me shiver, and they covered my favorite Tom Petty song in the whole wide world. No one seemed drunk, either.

I have something to confess, though. I cried. I cried at the last Modest Mouse show, too. I haven't been crying too much these days, but there's something about the intensity of a live performance that just gets me. They're hunched and screaming up there, they're thrashing their instruments, and the way my collarbones vibrate it's like they're telling me they know. It doesn't matter if the song's about war or love or New York, when it gets to the part where the guitars are wild and the singer is pushing the last bit of air from his lungs, my eyes start to burn and I have to look up and remind myself that I'm happy.

I wonder if this will continue, if I'll always cry at live music, if it will always make me think of my brother. I don't mind if it does. It's cathartic. When I left the Bright Eyes show the air was brisk and I was spent and calm. If I felt a little sad, it was the sweet kind.

Birthday Dream

2007-11-19T13:31:00.000-05:00

I had a birthday Saturday, which was a lot of fun, though I ended up with food poisoning on Sunday. Severe vomiting was hardly an auspicious beginning to my 26th year...but hey, there's no way 26 can be worse than 25, right?

That night, some of my girlfriends and I went to a bar, and let me tell you (if you already don't know), tipsy women will get into some bizarre conversations when there's no testosterone around. Did you know they have hair-dyeing kits specifically for the pubic region? Me neither.

And the celebration continues. Tonight, J and I are going to a Bright Eyes show at Radio City Music Hall. I haven't seen Bright Eyes live, nor have I been to Radio City, and my excitement grows by the hour.

But really, the reason I'm writing this post is to tell you about the dream I had Friday night. It was a Kyle dream, only my second since he died, and, unlike 99.9% of the dreams I have, I woke up with it absolutely clear and coherent in my mind.

Kyle and I were in my apartment, but my apartment was in some sort of New York City projects skyscraper, and out the window I could see one of those benched courtyards that drug dealers use as commercial spaces. Kyle and I were just hanging out...well, hanging out isn't the right phrase. We were more coexisiting, sharing the same space out of necessity more than choice. Just like families do.

And Kyle was being a brat. Bugging me for this and that, going through my shit, being an overall pain in the ass, just like he was in life. This struck me as funny, even in the dream. I had a sort of half awareness that he was already dead, and in the dream I couldn't help but laugh at the contrast between how reverentially we've all been treating him in death and the reality of his life, in which he was frequently a loud, obnoxious, punk-ass kid. It was reassuring, though. I'd been feeling all this guilt at having spent so much of my time squabbling with him, and the dream was a reminder that hey, just because Kyle's dead doesn't change the fact that he could be a real jerk sometimes. He was a little brother, for chrissakes, and while I certainly could have had more big-sisterly patience, he could've spent a little less time snooping through my stuff.

Anyway, at the end of the dream, Kyle leaned out the window to shout to all the people down in the courtyard, "My sister's doing a reading in ten minutes! And she has huge tits!" The crowd roared, and I looked out to see not the few dozen people that had been milling around out there, but hundreds and hundreds of cheering people in puffy coats, all with their faces turned up to me, all begging for the show to begin.

So I picked up a play (I don't know which one or who wrote it, regrettably), stripped to my waist, stood in the window, and began to monologue. I only got a few words out, though, because then the cops came and began busting heads, and I watched, bare-breasted, as a riot broke out below me.

Weird, huh?

GTD from 760***4827:
Wana get up nails dond wit me 2nite? N den chil at my casa?

The Little Things

2007-11-16T21:25:00.000-05:00

We stole our air conditioner.

A year or so ago, the people in the apartment next to ours moved out in the middle of the night and left their door ajar. We went in after a few days to make sure no one was dead, and found that they'd left some stuff, including a naked half-mannequin and a functional if knobless air conditioner.

We installed the AC in our window and it served us well most of the summer, but towards the end of August it became clear that this would be its last season. Last night, we finally took it out (and set it next to the trash can, where it will no doubt sit for weeks until we lug it downstairs).

My point, though, is that I woke up this morning to find my bedroom flooded with light. It was really amazing. Yes, our AC was ancient and large, but who knew its removal would let in 150% more sun.

It's hard to overstate how much you can feel the change. I don't know if you get this where you're from, but the streets are so narrow and the buildings so tall in New York that a little thing like putting in an AC can severely darken a room. And the worst part is, you get used to it. Sunlight is such a luxury that when faced with the possibility of a little less, you just kind of shrug and talk about buying another lamp. What with your income, you can barely afford the sunlight you have.

The same thing happens when scaffolding goes up. In New York, scaffolding goes up and stays up. For ever. I don't know why, but for some reason it doesn't seem to cost anyone anything to just leave scaffolding wherever they want for an eternity. So it's a sad morning when you step outside and the scaffolding truck is illegally parked in front of your stoop, promising to block the light for five months longer than it takes to finish the city-mandated repairs your landlord finally acknowledged.

But then, one fine day, what feels like years after you've forgotten that you live above ground, you step outside to find the scaffolding gone and it's like God lifted the roof off of the sky. The sun kisses your skin, you float down your stairs, and for weeks you pause with your key at the door and turn to smile at all that beautiful wide air above you.

It's a really wonderful feeling. It's a lot like hauling the largest AC anyone's ever seen out of one of your two windows and remembering that there's all that light to let back in.

The Harder They Fall

2007-11-15T09:36:00.000-05:00

I stopped blogging about mosquitoes because, what with Kyle and Iraq and my monthly student loan statements, the tragedy of scratching through the night sort of pales in comparison.

But that's not to say the attacks have stopped. Here we are, November 15th, and somehow a super race of cold weather mosquitoes is breeding in my apartment. We've taken out the screens and taped up every crack in the windows and still, night after night I wake up scratching. My nightstand is cluttered with sprays and lotions and anti-itch creams. The shapes of the bottles have become so familiar I can reach over and apply an ointment without even waking up all the way. Occasionally I get lucky and am able to kill one, but there's always another the next night, buzzing my ear as I drift off to sleep, taunting me to get up, turn on the light, and go to battle.

There's one mosquito in particular that's the bane of my existence. This guy is huge, much larger than the bitty ones I'm able to kill, and evolutionarily superior. He knows how to hide. I only ever get a glimpse of him before bed, and no matter how quickly I rushed to turn on the light and track the son of a bitch down, he always eludes me. I've come to see him as the Mosquito Big Boss, watching from the shadows as I swat at his foot soldiers, waiting until I'm completely unconscious before coming out to torture me. And how long a mosquito is supposed to live exactly? Because I swear this dude has been feasting on me for weeks. Weeks.

Anyway, this morning at around 6:30, J got up and sat at the end of the bed. I had no idea what he was doing - I suspected it was cat-related - and I wasn't going to waste my last half hour of sleep figuring it out. When my alarm went off, I stumbled to the bathroom with my don't-fucking-talk-to-me look on my face.

I came back a few minutes later, teeth brushed and ready to engage in human interaction, and J was still sitting on the edge of the bed. "Babe," he said. "Come here. I have something to show you that's going to make your morning."

Unless he had a suitcase full of cash or a copy of the published novel I'd unknowingly written and sold in a Fight Club trance, there was no way he was going to make my morning. I stayed up too late last night. The sky was gray and the forecast predicted rain. But oh, how I'd underestimated him.

He patted the blanket, I sat down, and then he slowly turned to point at a half-dollar-sized bloodstain on our white walls.

"Is that..."

"It is."

"Is it...him?"

"Babe, I got him."

He was got alright, with what looked like a pint of our blood bursting from his evil little belly. Rain or not, work or not, J was right. What a fantastically terrific morning. May November 15th, 2007, be forever remembered as the day J felled the beast. For in a time of great turmoil and uncertainty, it is the little victories that help us fight on another day.

I'm Getting Older, Kyle Isn't

2007-11-14T13:15:00.000-05:00

I have a birthday coming up and I'm feeling kind of weird about it (not in the usual kind of way - while I have friends in their twenties who have already started fretting about how old we're getting, I have enough to worry about right now without forcing a premature midlife crisis).

Instead, what's bothering me is the obvious reality that I will continue to have birthdays. Once a year, every year. For the rest of my life. And this is suddenly strange because this morning I realized that, while I will continue to get older, Kyle will not. He will always be 22. The three and a half years that separated us our entire lives will now grow larger and larger, so that next year I'll be four and a half years older, and then five and a half years older, six and a half after that, and on and on until someday (if I'm lucky) I'll be an old woman and my brother will be still young and smooth and straight, the only pictures of him glowing with a careless expectation that life will go on forever.

It's a weird feeling, to be free of the three-and-a-half-year chain that linked Kyle and I. It was just long enough that I got a good headstart on everything, but short enough that I always felt him a step behind me. Grade school, middle school, adolescence, high school, college. I did it all first, spent enough time there to get used to the idea so that when Kyle arrived I could affect a jaded boredom with the nuances of the lunch line, the DMV, the apartment hunt.

Not any more, though. All the firsts of adulthood - marriage and a house and a job that doesn't require me to run errands - I'll try and fail and eventually figure out on my own. But when I turn around to tell Kyle just what's what in that patronizing tone only a big sister can adopt, all I'll find is a many-year silence stretching back to this birthday, to the last time I was three and a half years older, to the time when my brother didn't know anything about life that I couldn't teach him.

Call It, Friend-O

2007-11-13T23:15:00.000-05:00

Go here to get your very own death portrait. It's part of a Canadian No Country for Old Men ad campaign. You can't access it through the American site, which is weird, as is the feeling of willingly participating in a corporate marketing experiment. But still, it's fun.

GTD from 617***6041:
I landed. thanks for tunes and good time. luv u.

Poll Part II

2007-11-13T10:03:00.000-05:00

A big thanks to all of you who weighed in on the Do You Realize? debate. Here are the results:

There were 4 resounding No's, ages 41, 46, 49, and 59. Since I have decided that Kyle would also be a no (if only because I am a yes), we'll add a 22 and call it 5.

There were 8 Yes's, ages 20, 22, late 20s, 33, 48, 49, 50s, and 58. And then there's me of course, at the tail end of 25, making it a total of 9.

While my sample is hardly representative, I think it's safe to say that there's a definite age bias working here. With the exception of Kyle, the No's all cleared 40. And with the exception of my roommate (41, m, and only likes psychadelic or dub music made between February and August of 1967), the No's were all women, and related to me. Draw from that what you will.

So how about this guy? He's the new Dylan, as far as I'm concerned. And Kyle didn't like him, either.

I've Been Watching a Lot of Stuff

2007-11-12T20:26:00.000-05:00

I'm back.

Man, that was a bad one. I went to a joint birthday party Saturday night with a"Cruising-1979" theme. I'm still not quite sure what that means, except that there were big sunglasses, a few afros, and something called Dramamine Punch.

I know, I know. Never drink the punch. But I did, and paid for it all of Sunday.

The only upside was I spent my time in bed watching a dozen Heroes episodes. Have you seen it? If you've ever worn glasses or read comic books or had desperate fantasies about magical creatures and superhuman abilities, you will absolutely love this show. Love. It's nerd porn.

Anyway, did you see the Dog apology?

While normally I hate the celebrity public talk show apology for its PR-handbook, blatantly insincere, dull-eyed recitation, I have to admit Dog's kinda got to me. Sincerity has always been his strong suit, and his seventh grade education and years spent in jail go a long way towards explaining why he would use the dreaded N-word.

But still, Dog really needs to watch himself. As Jay-Z said on Charlie Rose recently, "If you suffer through the experience of being black, you earn the right to use that word." Which means I can only use it on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and every other Sunday, and Dog can't use it at all.

Last, but nowhere near least, I saw No Country for Old Men. I'm not really sure what to say about it, because my superlatives won't do it justice. I'll just say that it's my new favorite movie ever. Cormac McCarthy and the Cohen Brothers. I know, I get chills, too. Go see it while it's still on the big screen. Those hills? That brush? That's the landscape of my dreams.

I Have So Much to Tell You But...

2007-11-11T13:53:00.000-05:00

I saw No Country for Old Men and Dog gave a tearful apology on Larry King, but I can't even begin to post right now because I am so.

hung.

over.

Gross.

I Have Another Question For You

2007-11-09T09:30:00.000-05:00

So, as you may have read, I included a Flaming Lips song in my Wyoming is Beautiful post, because when I looked at Cindy's photograph with its big sky and little flowers and reaching, hopeful grain, I could only think of the bells and grandeur and wild happiness of Do You Realize? And I posted it sure that, even if no one else got the connection, they could love the photo and the song, because each were so obviously beautiful and easy on the senses.

But then my mom left this comment:

"i am not getting this. cindy's beautiful photo i get. but what's with that dreadful video. that wretched song. fake rabbits. bad dancers.an elephant? help me out here. has it to do with the GTD?
oh. maybe hallucinogens."

And I have to say, this shocked the hell out of me. Here I thought the Flaming Lips were doing a modern day Beatles thing, what with their catchy, expansive melodies, Ringo Starr drum rolls, and love-conquers-all lyrics. I thought if any song on my iPod would play well to a Baby Boomer ear, Do You Realize? would be it.

So will you do me a favor? Listen to the song again and tell me what you think. Do you love it? Hate it? Understand it? Have I discovered one of those often discussed but rarely realized Generation Gaps, or is this just a case of my mom and I not seeing eye to eye? Please include your age (or at least your decade) in your response.

The Year of the Bird

2007-11-08T09:13:00.000-05:00

I left my apartment this morning to go to work and found a bird in my hallway. It was a pigeon and it didn't seemed to mind me too much, it just waddled away when it saw me. In fact, I think I minded it more than it minded me. This is now my fifth bird infiltration since September. Here I had gone almost twenty-six years with only one blurry childhood bird-in-the-house memory, and then within the space of two months I've had five birds of varying species come indoors. What in God's name is going on?

I had a vague memory of some symbolism or superstition attached to a bird in the house, so when I got to work, I did a Google search. Yahoo Answers had this for me. Apparently, a bird in the house means someone in your family is going to die unexpectedly within a year.

Scary, I know. I don't have that many immediate family members left to lose. And I'm the one seeing all these birds. What if it's me who's destined for a premature death? If I only have a year, how the hell am I going to get a novel written? What will my parents do with both kids gone?

Luckily, reason soon prevailed. My brother died unexpectedly, and not one bird came in to warn me beforehand. All these birds I'm seeing now must be late arrivals, sent from the far off land where these things are decided and only just making it to me with tardy warnings of my brother's death. Or maybe their presence now is an apology. "We meant to tell you," they're saying, "you want to be prepared for this sort of thing. But no one told us you have those cats and we had to go back and find a business address for you...anyway, we're here now. And we just want to say how sorry we are. Twenty-two years old. Jesus Christ."

GTD from 710***2611:
when does your hockey start?

Wyoming Is Beautiful

2007-11-07T21:02:00.000-05:00

Look at this.
My dad's photographer friend (she's my friend, too, but he found her first) Cindy Bennett took it. It reminds me of the Flaming Lips. Check Cindy out.

GTD from dawna.maguire@sensormatic.com:
(If your in your office, keep the speakers low, lol) I know you will like this. Heck you might even pass it on. LOL

What to Say at Your Brother's Funeral

2007-11-07T20:43:00.000-05:00

I get a lot of hits from people searching for something to say at their brother's funeral. Coincidentally enough, I was faced with this exact same problem recently, though I have to admit it never occurred to me to turn to Google. Instead, I fretted and procrastinated and talked incessantly about how I had no clue what the hell I was going to say. How do you sum up someone else's life when you spent a good portion of it fighting with them? What words could possibly help your mother and your father and all your brother's friends on the worst day of their lives? How do you say goodbye to someone you never thought would leave?

The pressure was too much. I decided I wasn't going to say anything at all, then changed my mind, then changed it back. In the end, I wrote something down the morning of, partly because I knew I'd feel bad if I didn't, and partly because my mother's been telling everyone for years what a great writer I am, and what practical use is a writer in the family if you can't use her at times like this?

So yes, I've been through it, but if you've just lost a brother and came here looking for help or advice, I don't have much. You can read what I said here, and feel free to use it, but cream puffs may not resonate quite the same way with your family. Instead, say something that's going to make you feel better. Your brother is dead and your family loves you, so it doesn't matter what comes out of your mouth. Just make sure it means something to you, because later that night, when you're crying in your mother's house, it'll only matter that you got up there and said out loud what you maybe haven't said enough in life - that you love your brother, and that you'll miss him now that he's gone.

Can You Make It Up to the Dead?

2007-11-06T11:05:00.000-05:00

My dad read my Movies Make It Better post and emailed me to let me know this truly amazing fact:

Bumpy Johnson, the much-revered Harlem gangster who mentored Frank Lucas, was my great aunt Gloria's boyfriend! I know!! I'm not sure if this was before or after her six-year stint on the arm of Sugar Ray Robinson, but one thing I am sure of is that great aunt Gloria must've been one hot cookie. Sugar Ray and Bumpy J?

You'd never guess any of this, because looking at great aunt Gloria now all you'd see is her eighty-something, church-going, sweet grandma self. You'd never guess she burned up Lenox Ave, owned her own nightclub, and draped her windows in black because she hated "for the sun to catch me up." Kyle and I met her for the first time only two Thanksgivings ago and watched in awe as she flew up and down her daughter's steep staircase like it was nothing. In our last conversation, Kyle told me about how he was going to visit her down in Atlanta later that summer, and then maybe head up to New York to stay with me a few days. Maybe go to the corner where her nightclub used to be. Take a few pictures, even though none of it would look the same anymore.

I should do that for him. The last time Kyle was in New York by himself, I never got around to taking him to CBGBs like he wanted. He didn't even see that much of Manhattan. He stayed with me in my Bronx apartment. It was summer and sweltering, and I still refused to let him share my bed in the air-conditioned bedroom. He sweated the night out on the couch, his legs hanging off, an oscillating fan set up inches from his face.

I feel really bad about that.

Movies Make It Better

2007-11-04T16:43:00.000-05:00

I haven't blogged in days, maybe you've noticed. I feel really bad about it. And I haven't checked my stats either, because when I see you visit me and nothing new is up I feel like such a tease. I don't mean to be, it's just that I haven't had anything to say. Do you ever feel that way? Like your brain is a white room with nothing - not even you - in it?

When I speak, I feel this way all the time - like I've got nothing. I'll be talking to you and suddenly I go blank, zero, empty of everything except a low emotional chord, plucked and buzzing where my thoughts used to be. I panic then. I'm in the middle of a conversation. I have to come up with something. But I can't. Because my brain has flipped into this lower, animal mode and I'm back in a room so white it doesn't have walls or a ceiling or even a floor, just a smothering emptiness in one dimension and a guitarstrum background, one-note emoting, the long buzz of how I feel.

Am I sounding crazy? I feel like I'm sounding crazy. You'd tell me if I sounded crazy, right?

But let's move on, because we've got some ground to cover.

Dog the Bounty Hunter is a racist. I'm sure you've heard, it's been big in the news. I'm disappointed, downright embarrassed really, because I gave him such a rousing endorsement not too long ago. I never would've guessed that hiding behind all those Dreamcatchers and Aloha's and Indian warrior beading was a niggersayer. Though maybe I should have. Just like how the loudest homophobe in the locker room tends to slap the most ass, Dog's gaudy cloak of Brown Spirituality should've tipped me off.

In better brown news, American Gangster is just so awesome I can't stand it. Denzel Washington in a suit with a gun, Harlem gritty in seventies glamor, Russell Crowe rumpled and righteous - I can't think of a better way to spend two hours and forty minutes.

If you haven't seen it or the previews, American Gangster is a biopic about Frank Lucas, the badass Harlem gangster who cornered New York's heroin market during the Vietnam War by importing the stuff direct from the war zone in American soldiers' coffins. He was able to get away with everything because he was black - no one believed a nigger (as Dog would say) had the competency or balls to take on the Italians and the cops.

Reviews have been mixed, but I couldn't be a bigger fan. Biopics so easily become such a worshipful mash of details you can just feel the writer sweating as he tries to jam into a two hundred-page script the dozens of interesting themes and subplots he clipped from the six-hundred page biography that gave him the idea. American Gangster avoids this pitfall beautifully, sacrificing Lucas' fascinating young adulthood and later cop collaboration in order to give the heart of the story the room it needs.

Besides, it's a gangster flick. And, like Martin Scorsese and Sergio Leone well know, there's nothing better than a genre that explores power, loyalty, violence, and the coolest parts of wardrobe.

GTD from SILENTKILLER7@vtext.com:
Sorry guy time is actually 6:30am leaving to go if thats too early then you can meet up at chevychase at 8am with Renu

You Are Not Where You Went to College

2007-10-31T09:28:00.000-04:00

So I've noticed something, and perhaps you've noticed it too.

Some people hang onto the email addresses they were given by their undergraduate institutions. Five, ten, fifteen years out of college and you're still getting notes from myinitials@thecollegeigraduatedfromyearsago.edu. Which is fine - who am I to dictate anyone's cyberaddress? - except in one very particular circumstance:

It is absolutely unacceptable to use your alma mater email address if you went to an Ivy League school.

I only bring this up because it's on my mind. I've recently been getting very long, self-promoting, and patronizing emails from a distant acquaintance. These emails are really insufferable, they read like the most padded of resumes, but what really puts me over the top is that this guy uses his old Ivy League email address.

Perhaps you think I'm being overly critical? I'm not. Here's why.

The only thing an Ivy League diploma says about you is that you're lucky. You're lucky to come from a privileged family, you're lucky to have gone to a good high school. You're lucky you had all those SAT tutors, you're lucky you weren't born with any learning disabilities. Expensive extra curriculars, college admissions advisers, a schedule freed by the lack of a job. Lucky lucky lucky. The fact that you got accepted at all? Lucky. And by lucky? I mean rich.

(Of course this isn't entirely true. There's the scholarship kids and the requisite brown folk plucked from the middle classes, but these are the exceptions, not the rule.)

Which is not to say you shouldn't be proud of your education. You had a good one. And when you're applying to jobs, fellowships, or grants, of course you should toot your own ivory horn. I'm not making an argument here for leaving resources unutilized. What I'm saying is that if your self worth is so wrapped up in the fancy monogrammed envelope Dartmouth sent you ten years ago that you mustmustmust continue on a daily basis to communicate with the world using a big ol' Ivy League stamp on every one of your electronic missives, you are pathetic. Get over yourself. Do something else worth bragging about, because the fact that mommy and daddy earned (or inherited) enough to bankroll you into a good school and put you up there for four years does not mean that you have achieved something in this life. It means you're lucky. So be thankful. And get a goddamned Gmail account like the rest of us.

P.S. For those readers who don't actually know me, this rant must sound like I have a pretty big chip on my shoulder. Well, I do, but not because of any dashed collegiate hopes. For four years, I was mpm336@columbia.edu. But then I graduated and when offered the chance to keep my email indefinitely, I declined. Because I could think of nothing more embarrassing than bragging about how lucky I am in every email I send for the rest of my life. I moved the fuck on, and selfpromoter04@ivyleague.edu? You should, too.

If You're Under 30, You May Not Want to Read This...If You're Over 30, You Likely Don't Have To

2007-10-29T12:01:00.000-04:00

I've got a new theory. Working title: The Cross to Bear Hypothesis. All of you out there who are older and wiser can let me know if I'm getting warm.

Basically, the theory hinges on the fact that life sucks. I know that sounds juvenile, but I mean it in more of a Buddhist "the only certainty is suffering" kind of way than in an adolescent "whatever" kind of way. Nor do I mean that because life sucks, there's no pleasure or happiness. There's pleasure and happiness in spades, it's just interspersed with (or even overlapped by) periods of colossal, unmanageable, truly heart-shattering pain.

I don't mean damn-it-I've-got-to-go-to-the-dentist pain or I'm-fighting-with-my-significant-other pain or even where-the-hell-will-I-find-rent-money-this-month pain. I mean the sort of pain that is so bad you're 100% sure there's no way you can make it. The kind of pain where you keep your cell close at hand, because you many need 911 any minute now. The kind of pain that makes you sure no one else in the entire world is hurting as much as you are, because if they were, you'd be able to hear their screams.

So my theory is that, despite our seeming uniqueness and depth of emotion and confidence that no one else could possibly have it this bad, we all are suffering. All of us. Bill Gates. Paris Hilton. George God-Help-Us Bush. Our human capacity for suffering far outweighs any stockpile of money or guns or critical accolades. Them, me, you, we are all walking around with the most unbearable load on our backs, sure that we're going to break any minute now. And if you don't believe me, if you don't have some burden that makes it hard to breathe, don't worry. You will. You'll get a horrible disease or your house will burn down or your brother will fall over and die. Divorce. Bankruptcy. Suffocating loneliness. It's just a matter of time.

I know, I know. I'm a depressed bitch. But I bring this up only to help. Because the thing I'm coming to realize, the thing that's really amazing, is not that we all have our crosses to bear. It's that we're able to bear them. The world is so much more horrible than we ever could have guessed at age 5, 15, 25, but what makes us as humans so miraculous, so capable, so strong, is that we can handle the horror. We can deal with the very thing we're terrified of. That which doesn't kill us, we can live with. I'm not sure how, except that it has to do with evolution, religion, and anti-depressants.

And hope. Our capacity for suffering may be outweighed only by our capacity to imagine what it's like not to suffer.

Dead Brothers Aren't Funny

2007-10-27T13:51:00.000-04:00

Now that Kyle is dead, I have to tell people about it. I try not to do it too often - it's a pretty big burden to drop on a casual acquaintance - but occasionally I find myself with a choice to make: I can either tell someone I don't know too well that my brother died this past summer, or I can lie.

Last week, I met with my craft teacher to discuss the lack of progress my fiction's been making these days. She asked about my "novel" - eighty directionless pages set in Cayucos, a beach town my family used to visit in the summers - and I told her that I couldn't really work on it anymore, at least not now, and that I was flailing around, looking for other subject matter.

"Short stories?"

"Well, yes, but I really still want to write a novel, see. I'm craving a longer project--"

"But you already have a novel. Why aren't you working on it?"

I looked away. Should I tell her the truth - that this novel of mine is set in a real place with a real beach and my brother and I in sweatshirts and shorts would take real dollar bills to a real candy store with huge glass jars and buy plastic bags of candy to eat while we watched old men fish off the pier? That the fact that my novel lacked a plot and a purpose was the least of its problems, because the real reason I couldn't write about Cayucos was my brother, who was dead?

I started to bullshit. "Well, it was a pretty ambitious project, a bit more than I could chew, really..." But I trailed off. I was here for help, she might as well have all the facts.

Then, before I could start over, before I could affect the tone and stance of the bereaved and softly explain that there had been an accident, I did the most inappropriate thing.

I laughed.

I laughed kind of wearily, like I was about to launch into a three-part story about how my laptop caught a nasty virus and now the tech people were having trouble retrieving my Word files.

And while laughing, I learned something: laughter is the wrong preface to a death announcement. It throws people off, sets them up for a humorous anecdote, not news of a kid dying. Laughing, you sound like you don't take the death seriously, like you're more concerned about making someone uncomfortable than the death of your loved one. It makes you sound crazy.

So I laughed, pulled myself together, and told my teacher that my brother had died. I could see her trying to figure out what I was saying, the expressions clashing on her face as she guessed how to respond.

We got everything clear, eventually. She asked what happened, how old he was, and expressed her condolences. And then she said what I was afraid she'd say: that I could never expect to find, or fix, a novel if I wasn't writing fiction every day.

I thanked her and left. I would take her advice. I would write fiction everyday. But first I would go home and write a blog about inappropriate laughter, because I'm not crazy. Or cold-hearted. I laughed because there is something inherently funny about that moment before you tell someone that your 22-year-old brother died in a train accident. Here you are, holding this really horrible information and someone asks you for it, and you know that they don't really want it, that it's awful and sad and will just make their day worse for knowing, but they're asking you and you don't want to be rude or a liar so you're going to give it to them. But before you do you laugh, because man, they have no idea what they're getting themselves into.

I don't regret telling my teacher about my brother, even if I did seem crazy. Maybe she'll look on me a little more kindly when my attention drifts in class. But, in the future, I have to remember not to laugh first. You can't laugh and then dump news like that on someone. That's why we have things like social cues and body language - information of that magnitude needs to be prefaced. Otherwise, it's too much of a shock to the system.

Long Overdue

2007-10-25T11:56:00.000-04:00

I don't know much about computers, especially for someone my age. Luckily, Blogger makes it easy, and I've had little trouble posting text, pics, even video.

But then I got greedy.

I wanted to put sharing and bookmarking links on my posts to increase traffic, and after too many hours looking up html code and trying to convert it to something that the Blogger template could read, I gave, picked up my phone, and called Katie B.

Katie B lives across the street from me. She's my friend since the beginning, the closest thing I now have to a sibling, and, conveniently enough, has a hottie European boyfriend who is also a computer programming wonder. So I brought my crippled code across the street, dumped it in Dominique's lap, and then played Wii with Katie while he wrangled my joke html into something actually coherent.

The result? That little share/bookmark scroll down thingy at the bottom of every post. Cool, huh? It's been up for a few weeks but, like a true narcissist, I'm only now remembering to publicly acknowledge my html hero.

So thank you, Dominique!

Gone Wild

2007-10-25T10:43:00.000-04:00

I have to start closing the windows.

I arrived at work today to find not one, but two birds flapping around the office. This is now the third bird emergency I've had to deal with (I didn't blog on the second one, as it was a brief encounter - a sparrow came and perched on the window ledge, I eyed him a warning, he disregarded it, swooped in, did a victory lap, and swooped back out again).

What is up with these things? I know, I know, my own fault for leaving the windows open, and we're on the 20th floor, which im guessing is right in their flight path, but still. These are wild animals. Why do they keep trying to come inside? What could possibly be attractive about a white-walled room filled with office equipment?

This time, I got them out pretty quickly by cornering them against a closed window and sliding it open. And let me tell you, they burst out of there like I was a serial killer with my back turned.

So, lesson (repeatedly) learned. I'll close the windows before I leave today.

Or, maybe I should fill the office with plants, hang bird feeders from the flourescent lights, and get a couple of bird baths going. I could build some nesting boxes. Set up some heat lamps. I could turn this square of air above the city into a wildlife refuge and, when my boss comes back from Germany in a couple of weeks, he'll come in to find me under my desk, hair and eyes wild, a strange discoloration to my skin and the unmistakable odor of rotting fruit, bird shit, and unwashed Miranda filling the humid jungle of our office...

GTD from 616***8776:

Hatvd a nice day

My Own Private Hanoi

2007-10-24T09:34:00.000-04:00

I've been blogging for almost three months now and - this is going to sound silly - one of the joys of posting daily is watching the total number of posts tick ever upwards. Uploading my tenth post was pretty exciting, as was my fiftieth, but I was really looking forward to reaching 100. 100 of anything is a lot, but 100 things written by me - all in one place, in one font, on (arguably) one theme - thrills me. So when I got to post #90, I started counting down. Nine posts left. Five posts left. Three...two...one post left...

And then disaster struck.

As any of you who've battled depression know, it's inescapable. It sneaks up on you with Viet Cong stealth and, by the time you realize that floppy clump of foliage is actually the camouflaged headgear of Charlie himself, it's too late, your hands are up, and you're being marched through malarial swamps to a northern prison camp, where you will stare at your jungle walls and stew in your misery, kept alive by maggot-strewn rice balls and the dim hope that your shrink will plan a prisoner extraction and somehow sneak you back to the World.

My most recent visit to the POW camp of my mind was a brief one but - like the Tet Offensive - it fell on a day that should've been full of joy and celebration: Sunday, October 21st, 2007. The day of the 100th post.

I know! Tragedy!

Instead of posting some fun little fireworks clip art and thanking those that have helped me along the way, I used my 100th post to say, "I got nothing."

And I really didn't have anything. I could think of absolutely nothing to write about. That's what depression is - having planned for weeks a 100th post celebration, only to find on the big day your face swollen, your mind blank, and your blog announcing your creative impotence to everyone you know.

Life is Not Measured by the Number of Breaths We Take, But by the Moments that Take Our Breath Away

2007-10-23T09:52:00.000-04:00

I'm not a sentimental girl.

Still, I've been crying a lot these days. It's obviously about Kyle on some level, but the triggers tend to be much less sensational. Checking my bank balance, editing a story, or putting my clothes away can get me started. A cheesy father-son embrace on a State Farm commercial. My goddamn cat swiping everything from the top of my dresser to the floor. Any and all of Jay Allison's StoryCorps pieces aired on NPR. In this state I'm in, tragedies are everywhere and I've developed a frightening susceptbility to Hallmark summations of Love, Family, or Sympathy. A Disney movie would have me in waterworks.

Which is why I've started watching The Shield. I've been hearing great things about it for years, but only just started the first season a few weeks ago. It's really good. Like an updated NYPD Blue with a more nuanced set of characters and the Los Angeles backdrop of my childhood. It's violent, though. Rape, torture, murder. Dirty cops, heartless hookers, and in one scene a dude they called "the porcupine" because of all the needles dangling out of his collapsed veins.

Still, I have no problem watching. Even in my delicate state, not a tear, not a flinch. It's the other stuff on TV that gets me going. Show me a lady getting her arm sawed off, I'm cool, but one shot of an oversized Minnie Mouse kneeling down to give some blonde kid an all-inclusive Disney World hug and I need a tissue. Child rape? No problem. A midewestern man on a tractor talking about how proud he was when his son joined the army? Sobs. Killer coke seizures? Turn it up. Mom and daughter making Rice Krispie treats in sepia tones? I need a minute.

It's quite a shift for me. I've always been suspicious, if not downright sneering, of sentimentality. I couldn't roll my eyes hard enough at inspirational forwards or cross-stitched wisdom. But then my brother died and suddenly I instinctively understand why grandmothers everywhere collect those little china munchkin figurines. The Lifetime Channel makes sense. I'm in the market for a poster explaining in cursive script what Wisdom Is...

Luckily, I still have 4.5 seasons of The Shield to watch, and there's always despair.com:

Bad Day

2007-10-21T18:24:00.000-04:00

I got nothing.

Maybe back tomorrow.

Three Month Old Robert Olen Butler Email Still Fantastic

2007-10-20T13:06:00.000-04:00

This is old news, but it occurred to me that those of you who aren't regular frequenters of New York gossip sites or MFA-affiliated may have missed this delightful example of writerly instability.

Before I was alerted to this email, Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler had only entered my radar on two other occasions. The first was when my roommate alerted me to the fact that Deep Green Sea is the worst book ever written. The second was when J and I saw him read in Atlanta at last year's AWP conference.

It was pretty weird. He read these crazy short shorts that speculated about what two famous characters might say to one another after having sex.

Example: What would Hitler say to Snow White while enjoying the afterglow in a 1945 bunker? What would Bugs Bunny say to Charles de Gaulle as they buckled up in a 1960s government building in Algeria? What would Nancy Reagan say to Flash Gordon in a Hollywood hotel room in 1982?

Each story was a specific number of words - 260 or something. Read one after the other like that, they sounded like the diary of a touched man.

So I already had a less than glowing view of Butler, and then Gawker posted this email, originally sent to graduate students at Florida State University in response to Butler's impending divorce with his wife, the novelist Elizabeth Dewberry.

Rumors will soon be swirling around the department, so I want to tell the full and nuanced story to the five of you among the graduate students and ask that you clarify the issues for any of your fellow grad students who ask. This sort of thing can get wildly distorted pretty quickly. You can feel free to use any part or all of this email to do so. I really appreciate your help.
Put down your cup of coffee or you might spill it.

Elizabeth is leaving me for Ted Turner.

She and I will remain the best of friends. She also knows about, endorses, and even encourages that I tell this much detail of the story:
She has spoken openly in her work and in her public life of the fact that she was molested by her grandfather from an early age, a molestation that was known and tacitly condoned by her radically Evangelical Christian parents. She then went into a decade-long abusive marriage. I met her when she was in a terminally desperate state from this lifetime of abuse, and we married and we truly loved each other.

I was able to help her a great deal. She says I saved her life. But de facto therapy as the initial foundation of a marriage eventually sucks the life out of a relationship. And it is very common for a woman to be drawn to men who remind them of their childhood abusers. Ted is such a man, though fortunately, he is far from being abusive. From all that I can tell, he is kind to her, loyal, considerate, and devoted to his family, and perhaps, therefore, he can redeem some things for her.

Further, Elizabeth has never been able to step out of the shadow of the Pulitzer. As you know-and she knows-I have been an avid admirer and supporter of her work. Everyone has heard me proclaim my sincere high regard for her as an artist. I often did this publicly. But she has published two brilliant novels since she's been with me and neither has gotten anywhere near the recognition that they richly deserve. That made it harder and harder for her to live with the ongoing praise and opportunity that flows to a Pulitzer winner. Not because of jealousy. She has always been very happy for me. But the multitude of small reflections of regard that came my way inevitably threw a spotlight on the absence of those expressions of regard for her. She felt as if she was failing as a writer.

Then, in March, she nearly died from an intestinal blockage in Argentina while on a trip with Ted. The trauma of that led her further to profoundly question her own identity. It became clear to her that the only way she can truly find herself is by making this change in her life.

She will not be Ted's only girlfriend. Ted is permanently and avowedly non-monogamous. But though he has several girlfriends, it is a very small number, and he does not take them up lightly and he gives them his absolute support when he does. And Elizabeth's leaving me is as much about the three weeks a month she is alone as it is about the week a month she is with Ted. She will find her own space and her own light in which to create the great works of art she is destined to create.

I will keep my house. I will keep my dogs and cats. I will keep virtually everything. She is being characteristically generous about that. But I will lose Elizabeth. And that is very sad. But the loss has been happening through many years of our shared struggle to make her whole. In that, I've done all I can do, as has she. I wish her the best. I ask you not to think ill of her in any way.

Elizabeth and I will now conduct ourselves as if this is public knowledge. So as I suggested at the outset, you need not keep this to yourself, if the occasion arises to speak of it to someone. This is best anyway, since I am not up to the task of telling this story over and over.
I have a high regard and affection for the students in our program. I hope this will help them sort out this rather intense story in an appropriate way.
Best,
Bob Butler

And I think I'll just leave it at that.

Google Search

2007-10-19T19:52:00.000-04:00

I use this thing called statcounter to track my blog. With it, I can see what Google searches have led to my page.

There's the expected:

"Miranda McLeod"
"my brother is dead blog"
"Miranda Kyle dead"

The unexpected:

"High waisted jeans"
"How to cook a goat"
"Is a dog an autistic cat"
"Dead troll"
"Pingpongpoms"

And then there's the searches that break my heart:

"My baby brother is dead"
"Dreaming of dead brother"
"My brother died while I was in college"
"Lonely Christmas"
"I found my brother dead when I was 14"
"Poems for my brothers funeral"

It's easy for me to forget that there are a lot of dead brothers in this world. A lot of leftover sisters. A lot of people tonight will lie in their beds and fantasize about the future and past, anything to keep the present out of the space before they sleep.

I take melancholy comfort in that. You should, too. Tonight we'll both kick the sheets and hope that tomorrow we'll be stronger. Better. Able somehow to deal with the weight that today almost killed us.

I Heart New York 3

2007-10-18T19:08:00.000-04:00

There's an antique store in my neighborhood that I walk by all the time. Dressers and fake flowers spill out onto the sidewalk. Lots of painted wood and wicker. Mirrors and watering cans and big price tags on everything.

I hate that store.

I've never been inside, and it's not that I have anything against antiques, but this one particular store pisses me off. Everything is overpriced. And I don't mean boutiquey overpriced, I mean $100-for-a-baby-stool overpriced. And it's normal-ass stuff. Not hand-carved. Not intricately painted. The kind of stuff you'd find in your grandparents' barn. It's just unconscionable.

Earlier today, J and I happened to be walking by this particular pastel outpost of capitalistic evil and, as we do, pointed out the most overpriced thing we could spot - $75 step ladder! $150 hand mirror! -as we passed.

In front of us, two Puerto Rican lesbians were walking hand in hand. The sidewalk was really narrow and they were doing that ghetto slow/wide wandering thing that can be infuriating if you get caught behind and have someplace to be. No matter how close you get, or how loud you talk in their ear, they don't let you pass. They just stroll, strung out along the pavement like in a poster for The Wild Bunch.

J and I weren't really in a hurry, but as soon as a break in the parked cars allowed, we slipped past them. Now they were behind us, and as the gap between us widened we heard, "Seventy-five dollars! I mean, nobody'd be so stupid, spend seventy-five dollars on that shit. That's shit people leave out on the street. Put some paint on a chair, gonna charge something like that."

They were shit-talking the antique store, too.

Which is why I love New York. Because it reminds me that wide-walking Puerto Rican lesbians and I have more in common than just our skin color.

I Wish I Could Apologize to My Younger Brother For the Way I Treated Him Growing Up

2007-10-17T14:41:00.000-04:00

I just discovered PostSecret.blogspot.com. I'm last to the party - it's already been made into four books - but if you also managed to miss it you should go take a look. It's by this guy, Frank Warren, who collects and publishes postcard secrets from people all over the world. It's a really lovely site.

In an introduction to his most recent book, Warren describes a talk he gave on a book tour:

I began my presentation by handing out blank postcards to everyone in the auditorium. I invited each person to anonymously write down a secret on a card and then pass it on. For the next hour, the postcards circulated and were read silently multiple times. At the end of my talk, I asked if anyone would like to stand and read the secret they were holding at that moment. A man in the front row stood up and haltingly read:
I wish I could apologize to my younger brother for the way I treated him growing up.
He sat down and exchanged a long look with the young man next to him. After more volunteers read aloud some of the other secrets that had been passed around, I collected all the cards. The man in the front row handed me the postcard he had read from, and the two men walked out together.

His postcard was blank.

I read that and began to cry.

I'm jealous that some dude and his brother went to a Frank Warren reading and mended their relationship over a blank postcard.

I never apologized to Kyle. I don't know what I was waiting for. I guess I thought I had more time.

It Just Never Ends With These Guys

2007-10-16T22:36:00.000-04:00

My roommate Justin joined the good fight a few weeks ago and bought packing tape to seal up all the cracks in our old window frames. It seemed to work - we haven't had a mosquito sighting since. That is, until last night. How it got in, I don't know, but right as we were drifting off J roused me with a solemn warning. "Babe, I just saw a mosquito."

I was already half asleep. I just pulled the covers up and my last thought was a hope that J didn't know what he was talking about.

I woke up itching and furious at 3 AM. It's October. What the hell was a mosquito doing in my fifth floor apartment in October, waking me up like I had nowhere to be in the morning?

I'd kicked off the sheet in my sleep and my back was bear to the wilds of my room. I was lying there, trying to muster the will to get the bug spray or at least to pull the blankets back up, when I felt the lightest brush across my skin. It could've been anything. It could've been my imagination. But in that zen-like state of half sleep I reached behind me and with one sure, slow swipe I crushed that little fucker. I knew even with my eyes closed that I'd got him. There was that particular combination of grit and liquid to roll into a satisfying ball and flick away. Only I didn't get that far. I just left the thing smashed against me and fell back asleep.

Second Demon Bird Discovered By Alert Aunt

2007-10-16T16:03:00.000-04:00

I have a wonderful family. Especially in this difficult time, they've provided a steady stream of love and support, the most recent manifestation of which is my aunt Sally's response to the demon bird mystery. She scoured the internet and came up with this possible suspect (listen to the bird in the background):

A very good guess, since this bird obviously came straight from the gates of hell, but it's not the NYC demon bird, I'm afraid. The NYC demon call is more of two toned thing, with the stress on the second syllable. errrAWWW errrAWWW! But thanks for your diligent observation, aunt Sal!

GTD from steeve.Rudolph@riot-productions.com:
(anurous) hello gorgeous mir
once you get it there's no turning back

This One's So Good It Deserves Its Own Post

2007-10-15T14:26:00.000-04:00

GTD from 702***1612:
The police found a body with no brains, bad hair, fucked up teeth, and an ugly retarded face. I'm worried. Call me if ur ok.

Maybe You've Seen This, But It Shocked the Hell Out of Me

2007-10-15T08:26:00.000-04:00

Do me a favor and watch this video. You don't have to sit though all of it - you likely won't want to - but hang on until the first chorus and try to see who's singing. Whatever you do, though, don't scroll down until you've watched.

Okay, now....

...scroll....

...down....

Do you see? Do you see that that is Jada Pinkett Smith? Will Smith's wife of ten years? Screaming in front of a metal band on David Letterman???

Is that weird to anyone else? Or am I just perpetuating that hateful and harmful stereotype that you can't be both black and a twenty-sided-dice rolling, comic-book reading, lilly-white-adolescent-music-loving nerd?

GTD from 605***5047:
mom was wondering when you're picking up the boys?

Grief Hiccups

2007-10-14T12:46:00.000-04:00

I grieve in hiccups. I'm fine most days. I don't think about Kyle. Or, I think about him, but when I do I let him go right through me. I have things to do. I'm at work or on the street or trying to focus on a movie and following Ky whenever he appears is not conducive to getting through the day. So I let him go and I'm fine.

But then, every couple of weeks, I hiccup. Suddenly I'm sobbing and there Kyle is, sitting on top of my chest, his arms full of everything I worry about, his pockets stuffed with my CV, my bank account, my goddamn bathroom scale. I can't breathe and I can't move and I think, Oh good. I'm a normal human being. My brother died, and I'm crying, and this is what grieving is.

Because not crying for two weeks worries me. I worry about what that says about the calibration of my heart - a dead brother and two weeks of dry eyes. I worry that I'm getting over it too fast. That I'm cold and hard and somehow lacking something I should have been born with. But then I hiccup and start to cry and feel in the tightening of my chest a deep relief. That I'm socially appropriate. That I really did love my brother. That if I get nothing else right, I'll mourn thoroughly and honestly and know that I'm the sort of person who can.

GTD from 718***8048:
hey do me a favor dont charge kathy from city for the weekends thanks

Who's Crafty?

2007-10-13T18:35:00.000-04:00

I've been on birth control for years. As anyone on it (or with someone on it) knows, it comes in these rounded plastic clamshells of varying shapes and sizes. Each month, when I open up a new pack and throw the old one away, I feel a guilty, global-warming pang in my stomach. It seems like such a waste. I've tossed out approximately 120 birth control containers in my life, and each time, as they lay there in the trash, so sturdy and undamaged, I'm sure that there must be something else they can be used for. They have a latch and a hinge, for chrissakes.

So, dear reader, what do you do with your empty birth control containers? What could you do if you had the time and inclination to store up six months worth? My shrink says I need to take it easy, relax, take time for myself, and doing something crafty with birth control containers sounds like just what the doctor ordered.

Demon Hints, Dream Pics, and Ghost Texts

2007-10-12T10:45:00.000-04:00

Well folks, I've gotten some good alternative theories as to the identity of New York City's newest monster. Mom and Aunt Sal suggested a mockingbird, and I suppose if it had spent some time hanging around the sulfur pits of hell learning the local lingo, it could indeed be a mockingbird. My roommate Justin also suggested a Peregrine Falcon, which apparently can sound like the tortured screams of a thousand babies when defending its nest. I'm not sure about a loose domesticated South American parrot...if those birds made this noise, they never would've been domesticated in the first place.

On a less hellish note, I had my first Kyle dream last night. He actually wasn't in the dream, but his likeness was. I was in our old Eagle Rock house, which was like a ship, and somehow a stopper got loose and the basement began to flood (the actual house didn't have a basement and wasn't a ship, just for the sake of clarity). We (J, Katie B, my mom, and me, as well as a number of frantic but unrecognizable folk) rushed around the house trying to save our valuables.

My old room in my old house was my father's office before he moved out and I moved in, and as a result it held a huge, heavy wooden desk with a lot of drawers. Over the years, I filled those drawers up with all sorts of useless junk, and in the dream I was yanking the drawers open to make sure I hadn't missed anything. The top drawer, which in real life held stamps and paper clips and childhood bracelets made of dirty string, was filled with pictures of Kyle. Little pictures, like the kind you get out of those instant photo booths, and some wallet-sized snapshots. There were tons of them. All of Kyle in different expressions of childhood. I was so relieved to have found them. In the dream, my brother was already dead, and I knew that there would be nothing more precious in the whole house than a handful of pictures saved from the water.

Finally, I was delighted to hear that Cousin Robin missed the GTDs! I never got any response on them one way or the other, so I kind of let them go. But I still get them - I still sleep with my phone off - so here Robin, in your honor, the best GTD in my inbox right now:

From: Predeschly@blue-bungalow.com
Nice to meet you mir. WAnt to be a p0rnstar? Now you can!!

Demon Bird Infiltrates NYC

2007-10-11T10:18:00.000-04:00

New York City has a new monster. I think.

I've been hearing this weird, chilling, hair-raising noise in the city recently. It sounds kind of like errrAWWW! errrAWWW! but that doesn't do it justice. Call me if you want and I'll do it for you, or just hang around the East Village.

That's where I first noticed it. I thought it was just some asshole being loud - asshole runoff is the village's natural soundscape - but then I heard it again and again, day after day, always in the afternoon, always the same pitch, never dissolving into drunk choking-laughter. So it's either an unbelievably consistent asshole, or a terrifying, leather-taloned, flesh-ripping, fire-eyed birdmonster.

And then, not ten minutes ago, as I sat in my office in Chelsea, I heard the noise again! And for the first time, outside of the village! New York City's newest predator is expanding its territory.

So, dear reader, I need your help. New Yorkers, New Englanders, nature enthusiasts - has anyone else heard this noise? What animal sounds like Satan's MC and can survive on pizza crusts and neon green gutter water? I know we've got hawks in central park, but they don't scream like ancient demons, do they? And this bird is decidedly the downtown sort. What creature would wing past the great green square of the park for a Chelsea construction site?

Though, if I'm being honest, what I really want to know is why I've never heard this noise before. I've been here eight years, and it seems an unfunny coincidence that it's only now, after my brother died, that suddenly I'm being followed by an angry avian scream. I know, I know, it's crazily narcissitic to assume that New York's first supernatural predator since Ghostbusters would someone be linked to my California brother's premature passing. But I can't help it.

So, who knows what's going on? Any hints, theories, or protection spells would be greatly appreciated.

I'm Just a Red Nigger

2007-10-10T16:36:00.000-04:00

I'm trying to get back into fiction, so last week I bought Junot Diaz' new book on half.com. It starts with an excerpt from The Schooner 'Flight', a poem by Nobel laureate and proud mulatto Derek Walcott. Here are the last four lines of the stanza:

I'm just a red nigger who love the sea,
I had a sound colonial education,
I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,
and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation.

I mean come on. I got chills when I read that. And I don't like poetry.

It's Fall

2007-10-10T09:27:00.000-04:00

Last night we slept with the window open - instead of the AC on - for the first time since summer. This morning, I woke up late because the light was weak, even at seven. There's a fog over the city dissolving the tops of buildings and I'm reminded just how high those buildings are and just how low the sky can get. It's supposed to rain today. Fall is here, and I am so excited.

Growing up in Los Angeles, you have no choice but to worhsip the sun. I was never a beach bum, but my skin was gloriously dark and I spent the majority of my life in flip flops. I was a sun junky by default.

Then I came east. I lived in a college suite with three girls who immediately pledged a sorority. I thought I was like them - into keggers and brunches and wearing bikinis in central park. I thought I needed blonde highlights. I worried about getting a tanning salon membership before winter started. I was so lucky, they said, to have such a solid base. I could keep my color with just a weekly appointment.

But now, eight years later, I finally know both New York and myself well enough to recognize that I am a fall person. I love the fall. And not just the gorgeous, crisp, windy days. I love the rain. I love the chill. I love the promise of winter. Los Angeles and my sorority suitemates had me fooled. I thought I was a sunny person, but I'm not. Invite me to a party, you'll see. I won't like half the people there. If I even come. I don't own a sundress. My skin has faded to a sad, sickly yellow and I don't mind. It fits my mood these days.

Proposal

2007-10-09T22:34:00.000-04:00

I was listening to NPR today and had a thought:

I am so much looking forward to a lifetime of NPR.

Those soothing voices, that melodious syntax, all that correct grammar and specific pronunciation. And then there's the constant reassurance of its breadth and scope, as if not one newsworthy story in the whole wide world is missed by NPR's all-seeing, all-analyzing eye. It's calming, it's inoffensive, it's what Steven Colbert brilliantly called "light gray."

My parents listened to NPR. In the car, in the kitchen, in the living room. I've been steeped in it my whole life. For me, the sun rises to Morning Edition. All Things Considered is time to come in for dinner. Weekend Edition is scones and big pancakes and, before it became such an ego-soaked Garrison songfest, A Prairie Home Companion was long Sunday evenings with homework still to do.

In high school, I discovered This American Life. In college, I became a member. Every morning my alarm goes off and Steve Inskeep coaxes me into consciousness. I shower with the radio turned up load enough to hear Ira Glass. I walk around New York to Jay Allison.

NPR, I love you. I've always loved you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.

Will you marry me?

This Woman is Grown...

2007-10-09T08:53:00.000-04:00

Dear Kyle

2007-10-08T19:38:00.000-04:00

The internet is a powerful, mysterious place capable of summoning people I thought were inaccessible, so here goes:

Dear Kyle,

What the fuck? You died, leaving mom and dad and yes, even me, in all kinds of ridiculous pain. And why? Because you thought it was a good idea to leap onto a moving train. Who does that? No one does that, because it's a totally retarded move. And what makes it particularly retarded in your case is that you were smart. Quick. Clever. Wise. Whatever you want to call it, you had it, which makes it all the less understandable how such a goddamn boneheaded move could've killed you.

Have you been reading mom's blog? She has this one post I'd like to direct you to. She's worrying about the possibility that you might still be existing somewhere somehow and that, if you are, you're likely kicking yourself and punching walls and raging about your stupidity. She feels bad that you might be feeling bad.

Well, you should be. You're an idiot.

But I miss you. I don't know if I ever told you this, but I was really looking forward to getting old with you. Not in a creepy, unmarried, middle-aged roommate kind of way, but in an across the country, across the world, hand-written letter, yearly meetings with drinks and a joint and funny, sad stories kind of way. I was looking forward to being an aunt. I was looking forward to having someone, after mom and dad are gone, who knew how it was in Los Angeles in the 80s in our little Tudor house with Spike and Quaker and our beautiful bougainvillea. We could pick lemons from my bedroom window. We had the loudest alarm that went off a dozen times at least, but only because we lost our keys or the Santa Anas were blowing hot and hard across the city.

The house is gone, you know. And of course there's mom and dad. Quaker's dead, Spike's dead, and Kyle, you're dead. It's gonna be just me.

Which I guess isn't that big a deal. Only children do it all the time. But I spent twenty-five years rolling my eyes at you, only to have to spend the next fifty regretting it. I'm not an only child, I'm an only sibling. And I'm really pissed.

So up yours,
with love,

Mir

P.S. I get the bedroom at Christmas now. Ha.

She's a Natural

2007-10-07T12:39:00.000-04:00

Did you listen to This American Life this week? (It's airing today. Go to PublicRadioFan.org to stream). The theme was parenting, and one of the essays was sent in by an Midwestern women with a dead marriage and three teenage girls. It absolutely blew me away. This woman's writing was so honest, so unafraid, that it was read on air by a TAL producer to protect the family's identity. And what was so impressive was less the actual themes - ambiguous parenting skills, sneaky teenage sex, beer-soaked financial frustrations - than the writing itself.

Though I don't know for sure, I'm almost certain the author is not a professional writer. We're told nothing about her, but I just don't believe that a writer, aspiring or otherwise, would ever let something of theirs be read on TAL anonymously. We're too vain for that.

And this woman is amazing. Her writing is instinctively clean and crisp and completely unsentimental. I watch myself and other MFA students struggle tooth and nail - and almost always fail - to achieve the tone she uses so naturally. Maybe she's one of those geniuses, closets filled with brilliant childhood diaries. Maybe it's her Midwestern humility and lack of flourish. But really, you should listen to it. And feel a little ping inside because for some people, it really is that easy.

I'm Dirty 2

2007-10-06T17:58:00.000-04:00

My apartment's not as bad as it was before, I swear. We've been keeping it cleaner and sweeping now and then, but still, we had our second mouse emergency last night.

Turk, the little bastard, came trotting into the bedroom with a live mouse in his mouth.

"Oh my God!" J said.

"Oh my God!" I said.

We stood up and Turk dodged us, confused. He'd been expected celebration. He darted left and right, lowering his head every now and then like he was going to put the mouse down. "Nonono!" We shouted at him. We waved our arms. We didn't know what to do, but we knew we didn't want him to let that mouse go.

Eventually, we got Turk, Bean, and the mouse sealed off in the kitchen. We stood on the other side of the door, our hearts racing, trying to come up with a plan. The thing was alive. If we got it away from the cats, we would be dealing with a live mouse. Or, even worse, an injured mouse in need of our attention somehow.

"We'd have to kill it," I said. "If it's bleeding or broken or half-dead we can't just throw it away and let it die for six hours in the trash can. We have to whack it or something."

Neither J or I wanted to whack it.

We carefully let ourselves into the kitchen. Turk had the mouse trapped behind the garbage can. Bean was guarding the closet, the most likely escape route. The mouse dashed from one side of the can to the other, trying desperately to outmaneuver Turk.

"Well, I guess we've got to try and...get it."

Does this sound dumb? Are you laughing at us? I feel like this is something we should've known - how to deal with a mouse in the house. This is one of those ancient human problems, right? I mean, isn't this why we domesticated cats? To catch mice? But then again, mice are disease-ridden, right? Do we really want our cats eating them? And is it morally wrong to let our cats torture a mouse for hours? And what if it gets away and dies of its injuries and rots under our couch? And why, at the age of 26 and 33, did we not know how to handle this?

Our best guess was to take an empty, kitten-sized litter box left over from Turk's baby days, edge the cats away from the mouse, and try to capture it. It wasn't easy. The mouse was fleeing us now and kept darting under Turk, hiding in his chest while he sniffed frantically around, tail puffed and eyes wild, knowing the prey was close but not realizing how close.

Finally, I slammed the box down on the mouse, pinching Turk's paw and the mouse's tail in the process, but small price to pay. The rodent was contained. Now, the matter of what to do with it.

"I mean, I guess we could...what? Put it in a bag? Slam it with something or something?" The cats weaved through our legs with yellow eyes. They had been torturing the mouse, and now we were torturing them. Whatever we were going to do, we needed to do it now.

We decided to let the mouse go. I slid a piece of cardboard under the box and carried the trapped mouse upstairs to the roof. When I lifted the box, the mouse was still there, huddled in a ball on the cardboard, looking adorable and terrified. I waved my arm and the mouse squeaked, turned, and fled. It ran pretty fast, like any injuries it had might be minimal.

I know we made the wrong decision. Mice are pests. Humans kill them, and not out of any sadism or superiority. It's not healthy to live with mice. That's just how things are. And to release a mouse because you're too squeamish to kill it goes against the ancient collective knowledge of our species. But seeing that little tail disappear into the shadows made me feel better. Sure, the mouse might return. But there are nineteen other apartments in my building to chose from, most without cats. Next time, someone else'll get the opportunity to kill the damn thing.

Hallelujah

2007-10-06T12:07:00.000-04:00

Well folks, I was witness to an honest-to-god internet miracle. Are you ready for this? I don't know if you are. Sit down.

Leonard Cohen read my God in South Africa post and emailed me. I know! Can you believe it? How does that even happen?

I'll tell you how. The internet. The internet is the sort of place where you can write a blog about being judgmentally teary in yoga class and preferring Cohen's version of Hallelujah, and in return get an email from the singer himself.

And that's not even the best part. I emailed him back (of course) and he was so kind as to send a self portrait he'd done, with permission to post it.

So, America, here's a Leonard Cohen original. I think it's great:

P.S. If any of you go back to watch the 1984 performance (and I highly recommend it), keep your eye on the right side of the pillar directly behind Cohen. At 3:44, the singer back there pokes his head out, and then at 3:38 he misses his cue and comes out late. It's great.

Baseball Talk

2007-10-05T20:48:00.000-04:00

It's baseball post season, and around my house, that means baseball talk. Serves me right I guess, living with two guys, but man, is it a whole lot of nothing.

You watching the game? Heck of a game. Yup. Pitcher A's on fire. Heck of a pitcher. Yeah, I wasn't too sure about him at first, either, but man has he come through.

Ohohoh! Overpaid Batter B just struck out! I know, I know, it's awesome. I'll tell you one thing though, you can't win a game with the bat on your shoulder. With all those zeros on his check you think he'd know that.

They gotta get a double play here. Gotta turn two. Oh, Jesus! Did you see that? Where the hell was he going? You can't do that, not now. October's got no time for errors.

They took Pitcher A out! That's insane! He must've been on a pitch count. Sure, he would've loved to stay in. Who wouldn't? The Hall of Fame doesn't just send out invitations.

Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. Absolutely. Fuck the Yankees.

And I'll tell you another thing, this is one heck of a game.

God in South Africa

2007-10-04T16:15:00.000-04:00

There's a 12:30 weekday class at this yoga studio near my work. Mary Dana was supposed to teach today, and she's one of my favorites, but I showed up to discover that someone was subbing for her. A white woman named Deborah who explained that her accent was South African.

White South Africans creep me out. I know that's incredibly xenophobic, but it's like meeting a really old German - you can't help thinking, and where were you back when? Now, I know all South Africans aren't racist, and Deborah is really young, so it's hardly like she was an exiled member of the apartheid government or anything, but still. I took one look at her and wondered what black mother had left her own children each day to travel past machine-gunned checkpoints to the white part of town, where sweet baby Deborah waited for her milk, curls and blue eyes shining.

We all got settled, Deborah introduced the theme of the month, and here, my second prejudice of the day reared it's self-righteous head. God.

Each month the studio chooses a theme, and usually it's something inoffensive like Mudras, or Mother, or Forgiveness. October, apparently, was God's month.

There's a certain tic an atheist displays when hearing the word "God." It's a subtle eye roll paired with the quietest release of air in the back of the throat, a short, breathy -uh sound, sort of like the dismissive noise a teenage girl makes right before she says, "whatever." It's not meant to be rude, or even noticed by the speaker. It's more of an emotive gesture, a release of frustration, the sort that develops after a lifetime of uninvited God references in and from neighbors, relatives, strangers, books, door-to-door proselytizers, weddings and, as I recently discovered, funerals.

God really is everywhere.

So, needless to say, I was all set for this to be the worst yoga class ever. A honey-voiced apartheid baby was going to God-talk me to death while running us through an endless series of painful, sweaty, mind-expanding poses. Great.

But then Deborah did something really unexpected. "Let's keep our eyes open," she said as the class began. "We'll start today by looking around the room, seeing all the people in this room, and recognizing that any one of them might be in a great amount of pain right now."

I almost raised my hand. It was amazing. It was like Deborah was this superyogi who could smell the sadness of death. And I was all the way in the back.

The whole class was like that - gentle and surprising and without the usual crazy drive to out-chaturanga the yogi next to me. And then at the end, you do this thing called shavasana, which means corpse pose, and you lie very still on your back and just relax. It's nice.

You know that Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah? Well, Jeff Buckley did a version sometime in the 90s, and Deborah had it on her iPod and played it during shavasana and it was like the height of cheesiness and I bet you can guess what happened next...

There's this thing I like to call the shavasana sob, and every once in a while someone just starts crying in corpse pose. It's really weird. All that twisting and straining and ancient physiological tuning and by the end, some people burst into tears. It's kind of awkward, and everyone else in the room is like damn, what the hell happened? and no one knows if you should just ignore it or go get a tissue, or what.

And today, I was the sobber. Yup, that was me. The shavasana sob had never happened to me before, but ever since Kyle died, I've been waiting for it. I just didn't think Jeff Buckley would be involved.

I wasn't really loud or anything, just sort of quivering and sniffly, and then, like an angel from a formerly-segregated heaven, Deborah was there. She smoothed my forehead. She rubbed my ears. She wiped the tears from my face, laid her hands on my neck, and let them just sit there. It felt really good. I stopped crying.

Deborah, you are a fantastic teacher. That was the most amazing yoga class I've ever been to.

So here, in your honor, because it's fun and the better version anyway, is Leonard Cohen singing on what looks like a 1980s Scandinavian television show:

UPDATE: I now have it on the highest authority that this clip was not filmed in Scandinavia, but in Germany in 1984. Thank you, dear reader. You made my week.

Nerd

2007-10-03T20:21:00.000-04:00

I like to pretend that I'm crafty. I have a lot of yarn I sometimes knit and then unknit. I collect magazines and cheap paintbrushes. J found a bunch of old slides from the 50s that I am convinced I'll do something brilliant with someday.

Today I'm feeling very blah, so I'll distract with you some weird collages I've done while I sit and stew about how I have nothing to say:

High school friend Julie (and recent memory donor - thanks!) gave me the Mary statuette back when I drove a Mary-themed 1987 Toyota Camry. It glows in the dark (Mary, not the car).

I call this one Opera Sex:

Pan-Asian meaninglessness. Yes, that's Korean and Chinese script, Buddhist statues, and elephants from God knows where:

I don't have an explanation for this:

This is my least favorite. Look at those ugly colors. But there's a cartoon My Little Pony in the middle:

My current project:

I should be writing.

Bitching Saves Lives

2007-10-02T15:10:00.000-04:00

Did you see this? Women who don't express their feelings while arguing with their husbands are four times more likely to die than women who speak their minds. In other words, it is physiologically essential for women to complain, nag, whine, kvetch, and/or bitch.

Isn't science amazing?

I Heart New York 2

2007-10-02T14:20:00.000-04:00

I bought the cutest purse the other day. It was $25, one of those cheap street deals that'll fall apart in a month. Well, I thought I had a month. Turned out, the zipper on the outside pocket broke the day after I bought it. Normally this wouldn't have fazed me (I get all my purses and earrings off the street, so I constantly have cheap Chinese hardware falling off me), but I really liked this purse and I'd just gotten it, so I wanted it fixed.

One of my responsibilities at my not-very-demanding job is to check the PO box once a week. It's three cross town blocks away, not a short walk, but not ridiculous. I usually just get into an iPod reverie and I'm there before I know it. This morning, though, a sign caught my eye - URIEL'S SHOE REPAIR SHOP. The place was open, so I went inside.

New York City shoe repair places tend to be impossibly small. Smaller than the smallest store you've ever been in, so small that two people can't stand next to each other without becoming embarrassingly intimate. Uriel's was no exception. I pushed open the door to find the place already filled to capacity with two Russian men in yarmulkes.

I asked if they could fix purse zippers and the man behind the counter said sure. While I waited. I just had to empty my purse.

They watched everything come out of it. Book, notebook, wallet, cinnamon gum, pens, Tide-to-Go, lipgloss, worry beads, Leatherman, the last piece of Nicorette I keep for emergencies. "What?" the second Russian said. "No candy?" And then, like magic, I reached into the very bottom of the bag and pulled out an M&M Kudos bar I'd completely forgotten about. "See," the guy said, triumphant, "I know women!"

I balanced on a narrow bench and opened my book. The second man inched aside to give my knees some room, and they resumed their conversation in Russian. My stuff sat in an embarrassing pile on the counter.

Suddenly, the door flew open, almost hitting me. A fourth person squeezed her way into the shop. She was stooped over, holding one of her pant legs by the cuff. "Uriel!" she called, even though he was not three feet away. "Help me!"

We all looked up, but the woman was staring at me, not Uriel. She was black, middle aged, and had on multicolored polkadot glasses. "Oh my god, those earrings are gorgeous." She let her pants leg fall. "Where in God's name did you get them because I am always looking for the perfect earrings."

I was disappointed to realize I didn't know. I liked this woman (I liked being flattered) and I wanted to help, but I stop at every one of those street stands I see looking for earrings and purses, and I couldn't begin to even guess if I'd found them in the Bronx or Morningside Heights or the Village.

But she had already moved on.

"I need a needle, Uriel. I need one in the worst way. Here I am on the way to work and I rip my goddamn seam out with my heel and it's only by the luck of the Lord that I did it across the street from you."

Uriel was bent over my purse, sewing my zipper back in. He didn't smile. "Needle's busy," he said.

"Oh for crissakes, Uriel."

Without looking up, Uriel pulled a magnetic needle holder out from under the counter and set a spool of dark blue thread next to it. The woman leaned against the Russian guy - who didn't seem to notice - crossed her foot over one knee, and began to sew.

That's all I needed. I was in love with the place. I wanted to be just like this woman, able to find a joke in Uriel's unsmiling face, to lean against the Russian without a word. I began running through all my purses in my mind, trying to remember which needed repairs. I wanted to be part of Uriel's in-crowd.

And then, as if just to drive the point home, a big gray cat weaved it's way out from the back and jumped into my lap.

"Do you know Masha?" the Russian asked.

"Know her?"

"Masha is famous. Everybody knows Masha."

The black woman eyed the cat. "I know Masha. Masha, you stay the hell away. I'm in navy."

Masha mewed.

"Are you married?" The Russian asked me.

"No."

"Do you have cats?"

"Two."

"Masha can always tell." He pointed at me, not accusingly, but with emphasis. "A women with cats needs babies."

Uriel looked up. "You can go ahead and tell him yourself," he said to me, gesturing at the Russian.

"I'm too young for babies."

The black woman snorted.

"All right, done." She used Uriel's long, heavy scissors to clip the thread and carefully placed her needle back in its holder. "A lifesaver."

I leaned back to let her open the door. Masha followed the woman out, twitching her tail with lazy confidence.

Uriel passed my purse back to me and I filled all its little pockets with the appropriate things. The charge was ten dollars. My $25 purse had become a $35 purse in just two days, but as Uriel and the Russian resumed their talk, barely nodding their heads as I said goodbye, I couldn't have minded less.

I'm Only Black Half the Time

2007-10-01T18:45:00.000-04:00

Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson came out with a NYT op-ed today that gets at the heart of my ambiguous relationship with the black community. Go ahead and read it. It's short, I'll wait.

So you see the problem? Black people are incarcerated in absolutely unacceptable numbers. Drug laws, mandatory sentencing, and a lack of rehabilitation have led to a culture of imprisonment, and when I think about this, the side of me I feel most strongly is black. And pissed. Those convicts are my cousins and uncles and it makes me think, against my better judgment, that this is a country of moral and charitable destitution and little else.

But, as Patterson points out, there is a second part of the equation. Black men are actively fucking things up. They are pissing where they sleep. Like kicked dogs, they turn the humiliation of a stifled life onto their women and children and compound a problem already festering with poverty, racism, and the pervasiveness of habit.

A strong caveat here. My dad is a black man has never been abusive, physically or verbally, towards anyone. And he was a present dad. Even after my parents' divorce I saw him three days a week until I went to college. Black men like this - loyal, hardworking fathers - I'm not talking about these men. I'm talking about those other motherfuckers.

I didn't grow up in a black neighborhood and I tend to steer clear of anyone who uses the word "bitch" too liberally - so, like most of America, what I know of the motherfuckers comes from hiphop. And hiphop tells me that the motherfuckers hate women. They don't come right out and say it. They sing ballads they claim to be love songs. But what they really love is sex, and it is a rare rhyme that acknowledges any part of a woman not meant for reproduction. And living in New York ghettos I've seen how how this music pervades not just every car, stereo, and iPod, but the very eyes of the men as they watch women walk down the street. And this makes me feel very, very un-black.

The problem, of course, is in allowing the motherfuckers to define blackness. But how could we not? The ghetto is where the interesting stories are, where death and war and basic human struggle are played out so starkly. How could we expect the media to cover black high school graduations while people are being shot around the corner? Why would black professors be held up as symbols of black culture when rappers wear so many more sparkles? How could black women be praised for their minds when we already spend so much air time praising their asses? Until black culture is publicly acknowledged, from within and without, to incorporate more than only the most impoverished black stories, how can I, in my privileged, educated world, feel more than an intellectual connection to my supposed people?

One Hour 52 Minutes....

2007-09-30T19:08:00.000-04:00

....until the start of the new season of Dexter!!!!!!

Into the Wild

2007-09-30T10:56:00.000-04:00

I saw Into the Wild a couple of days ago. It's the true story of a rich kid who graduated from college, abandoned society, and starved to death in the wilderness. The movie's pretty good, if a bit self-conscious. Director Sean Penn just can't seem to let the story tell itself, and an otherwise compelling narrative is repeatedly interrupted by split screens, floating words, faux-seventies home videos and, most horribly of all, Eddie Vedder's ego-driven wailing.

But still, I liked it. Mostly because I related to it. Adventurer Christopher McCandless reminded me of my brother. And Carine, his younger sister, reminded me of me. Its not an exact match. Chris hated his parents and shunned his family in a fit of adolescent self-righteousness, while Kyle had a comparatively good relationship with mom and dad. Chris formed meaningful friendships only to abandon them in service of some perceived greater good, while my brother formed friendships as if that were what he were put on this earth to do. But one thing the movie did well was show us that there was something magical about Chris, some element in his speech and smile that put people in awe, and everyone who knew Kyle saw the same thing in him.

Chris spends a lot of the movie meeting strangers and making them love him. Moms, grandpas, drunks, they all fall for Chris. They're surprised by their love, they don't understand how such a young punk could have hooked them so thoroughly, and when he goes they cry because they will miss him so much. Wherever he is, Chris doesn't want for things. People give him jobs and rides and food, and he seems to know they will before they do, so that he sets out on baking tarmac into the dessert, confident he will be picked up and driven to the other side. Chris was a revolutionary. At the start of his journey, he donates his savings and cuts up his credit cards. He wants to live free of things and tested by his capabilities. He abandons his car. He burns his money.

Kyle was not this drastic. Maybe because he didn't have the time. He was still in college when he died. He had just began to wander the world, taking trips with a backpack and one pair of pants, flying without a plan and trusting that he would find a couch. But who knows who he would have become if he had had more time. He read old books, he broke the law, he had surprising wisdom. He saw life's opportunities not in career or status, but in people and places. He was capable of being loved wherever he went. His email address for years was burnyourmoney@sbcglobal.net.

Carine and I aren't a perfect match, either. I'm older than Kyle and didn't spend much time with Carine's fawn-eyed look on my face. But I recognized in her narration a sadness and longing and deep, deep respect for who her brother was. She saw that her brother a better person than the rest of us. A braver, wiser, freer person, and she knew that people like that must be allowed their wildness and refusal and seemingly foolish decisions. You have to trust them, because they're going for something different, something you can't even conceive of, and even if they fail, that they tried is a better thing than you will ever do.

Carine figured it out early, while her brother was still alive. Me, it took Kyle's death. But I don't mind. As I learned from brother, timetables don't matter. What matters is that I finally came to see what the rest of you knew about Kyle all along.

Kyle, Annoyed, with Bag

2007-09-28T15:49:00.001-04:00

Memories have started coming in. Here's a pic my friend Kate S sent me. I sent it to her years ago to show her what my brother looked like, and then completely forgot about it. Thanks Kate!

And thanks to everyone else who's contributed. Keep them coming!

Frank Mulatto UPDATE

2007-09-28T13:26:00.000-04:00

Here's the full speech, with both better production and the ending. You may have to sit through a short but brightly-colored, choreographed commercial at the beginning, though.

Fire it UP!

And here's my choice for Obama's new theme song. I know he's under a lot of pressure to black himself up and everything, so his show is very hiphop heavy, but if you listen to the speech you'll see why Modest Mouse is an obvious choice:

Support Barack Obama for president! I've given money and I don't have any, so you should to.

Refreshingly Frank Mulatto to Save World

2007-09-27T23:46:00.000-04:00

Barack Obama had a rally in Washington Square Park last night. I found out about it a couple of weeks ago, registered online for a "rapid pass," and then went so far as to show up on time. I was excited.

When I got to the park, there was the biggest line I'd ever seen. 25,000 people filed in two columns towards four laughably inadequate metal detectors. Bags were checked. Security wanded people with anal precision. The line moved forward at a rate of three steps per ten minutes. No joke, I was timing it.

The crowd started getting impatient. It was 5, then 5:30, then 6. We were no closer to getting in. We couldn't even see the stage. We all had these useless "rapid passes," which we stared at and showed to each other while grumbling that we wouldn't even be able to hear what was going on. Music started in the distance. Someone mumbled into a mike. People started leaving. It was very frustrating.

But then the Obama organizers did something amazing. They realized they had 25,000 unhappy people who had stood in line for an hour and a half. They walked through the crowd, assuring us that we were in the right line and that we would get in. They brought in cases of water and passed them through the crowd. They treated us like we were...well, people. It was nice.

Then the MC started getting everyone riled up. We could hear cheering and distant snippets of Obama this and Obama that. The rally was about to start and we were going to miss it. Off to my left, someone started shouting. Let us in! It grew, as catchy, insistent chants do, and soon the whole crowd was chanting. Let us in! Let us in! Let us in! The skeptics among us began to leave in greater numbers.

And then something absolutely unheard of happened. They stopped the metal detectors, they stopped the bag check, and just started letting everyone in. I'd never seen anything like it. The campaign organizers saw that their security regimen was inadequately slow, weighed the risk, and just decided to let people hear what Obama had to say. It was amazing. Here was a political bureaucracy that assessed an unsatisfactory situation and chose to do something much more reasonable. I'm telling you, it filled my heart with hope.

We all rushed forward, filled the space around the stage, and Obama began to speak.

I'm in love with that man. Here he is, blurry, distant, and with his back to me, but by God, this is an actual real life photo of Obama himself - mulatto powerhouse, savior of the world, one of very few Americans who can claim to be both a politician and a human being - taken with my own two hands:

And here is a shot of someone else getting a shot of him. I think you can actually see him clearer on this guy's screen than you could on mine:

Part of the crowd. I couldn't get up high enough to capture everyone that was there - I needed a press pass, of all things, to climb the scaffolding - but here's the outer edge:

Here we are dispersing after. I know you can't tell, but we all have these dreamy looks on our faces.

I'm not going to go into the details of the speech, other than to say that he is an excellent speaker. I had the shivers about 60% of the time. Out of Iraq by March. Health care for all. Student loan forgiveness!! Folks, Obama is going to save us. Please please please let him.

Here's his speech, in three parts. It's just riveting. You should watch it. For some ridiculous reason, the last part doesn't actually go to the very end of his speech, which is just a shame, because the end is amazing, but I'll try to find it and post it as an update.

Call For Memories

2007-09-27T11:46:00.000-04:00

I'm worried that I'm forgetting my brother. Whenever I try to find a memory of him, my mind goes mute, like I'm back in 7th grade, staring at a quiz question I know I know but can't for the life of me answer. So I'm sending out an open call for any and all Kyle stories. Things he did, things you heard, even stories about him I might have told you in the past. Pictures, too. I want it all.

You can share them here with everyone, or you can send them to me directly.

Nothing's too big or too small. Really.

Merry Christmas

2007-09-26T10:01:00.000-04:00

It's entirely too early to be thinking about this, but the price of airline travel has forced my family to start talking about Christmas. In September.

Ugh.

Usually, Ky and I fly in from our respective schools and do Christmas Eve at my mom's and Christmas Day at my dad's. It's a casual affair - we're not a religious family and only slightly interested in ceremony. We usually end up trimming a tree, we stuff stockings that we may not hang, we exchange presents geared much more to necessity than luxury. Nothing spectacular. We may dress up to go to my dad's, but only because mom insists each year that she doesn't have any pictures of us, and with a photographer for a father, for chrissake. It's pretty laid back. We like it that way.

Which makes it a little surprising that, when I think about Christmas this year, I get shaky. Now, here, sitting at work in September, thinking about a holiday that I'm at best indifferent to and at worst annoyed by (I challenge you to come up with a setting more nauseating than a Christmastime mall), I want to cry. The reasons are obvious, I guess. In LA, we stay with my mom in her two bedroom condo and having no one to fight with over the second bedroom, no one to fight with over the car, no one to gossip with about my parents, no one to drive with to my dad's Christmas Day is more lonely a feeling than I knew existed.

So I told my parents this, and they agreed that it sounded horrible, and now they're going to fly back east so we can all do Christmas in New York. My dad's wife Leann has kids and grandkids here. My mom has friends here. It makes sense. Crisis averted.

But I'm still a bit worried. New York is not entirely Kyle-free. He visited me here. He was supposed to come again this past summer. Christmas may come and I may find myself walking past the shell of CBGB's, remembering how I promised to take him there and never did. Christmas may come and I may find myself outside of Amsterdam Cafe, remembering how patiently he read at the bar, drinking every flavor of milkshake we had and waiting for my shift to end. Christmas may come and I may find myself hurrying through the streets and remembering how slow he walked, even with those legs of his, his LA pace absolutely inappropriate for Broadway. New York has its own dangers.

So mom, dad, Leann, I propose that next year, we go even further. Let's do Christmas in Tahiti or Tuscany. Let's do the strangest Christmas we can think of. Let's abandon stockings and Evergreens and expensive wrapping paper and go someplace where they boil sheep heads to celebrate Christ's birth. Or make candy with cardamon. Or dance for three days in feathers and cow parts. Let's have our Christmas in exile and when we find ourselves tight-lipped and staring and very, very tired it will just look like homesickness. Or jet lag. And everyone will understand.

Politics in Black and White

2007-09-25T09:30:00.000-04:00

Have you read this? Go read it. It's short.

A Personnel Suggestion for Mr. Ahmadinejad

2007-09-25T08:27:00.000-04:00

Did you watch all the Ahmadinejad coverage yesterday? Doesn't his personal translator have the most sarcastic, infuriating voice in the entire world? It drove me crazy. I was actually more bothered by her voice than by the lunatic things coming out of Ahmadinejad's mouth. She combines the angry insistence of an eighty year old Middle Eastern woman cutting in line at the grocery store with the haughty quaver of a British school librarian. Mr. Ahmadinejad, I suggest you reconsider your staff.

I had trouble finding the perfect audio of her insane voice, but start listening to this about a minute in and you'll get the idea:

I Could Teach Tom Cruise a Thing or Two About War

2007-09-24T20:49:00.000-04:00

It's on.

Two mosquitoes infiltrated my room last night. The New York front must've heard about my DC victory, because I was barely home before I had two fresh bites. Luckily, I spotted the bastards early, while the lights were still on, and was able to kill one before bedtime. But the other still lurked and reinforcements were likely on their way, so I doused myself in Off before I went to sleep. My bed smells like a campsite, but at least I woke up swell-free.

There's been some confusion about Kenny Loggins, so here's an explanation:

Last summer, J bought a 1992 GMC Vandura in Jacksboro, Texas. He used to be in this band, The Golden Falcons, and they took the as-yet-unnamed-van on the road. They left out of Dallas, chose the unluckiest of routes, and were plagued the entire trip by transmission trouble and an overheating engine. They were pulled over just outside of Emporia, Kansas, towed by the sadistic parents of NASCAR racer Clint Bower, and one of them was arrested, requiring the rest of them to scrounge enough money to release not only the van, but their bandmate as well. It was a complete disaster, and somehow most of the responsibility was heaped onto the poor Vandura.

Hence, the name. Have you ever heard Highway to the Danger Zone from Top Gun? It's got a great music video. Kenny can't writhe on the bed hard enough.

Happy Birthday J!!!!

2007-09-24T08:28:00.000-04:00

Well, We Made It Home

2007-09-23T20:59:00.000-04:00

DC was great. We saw J's mom and Aunt Sue and the American Indian Museum and a bit of the West Building of the National Archives. We slept in and food was cooked for us and Aunt Sue let me do a load of laundry. It was a lovely weekend.

Except for the mosquito.

Yup. Apparently my last post really pissed off the East Coast mosquito community, because we arrived at Aunt Sue's on Friday night and one of the little fuckers got me three times. Twice on the face. I itched through the night and woke up sore, red, and lumpy. And pissed.

Saturday night I read a little before going to bed (Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. Both Kidder and Paul Farmer, the book's subject, are really something else). I was about to turn off the light when I glanced over and there he was, a mosquito as big and black and bold as they come, sucking from my bicep like he had all night. I swatted at him but he buzzed off to a dark corner to twirl his diabolical little mosquito moustache and wait to strike again.

I was tired, I wanted to turn out the light, but there was no way I was letting the bastard win. I went back to reading, keeping one eye on the page and the other on the soft, exposed skin of my arm.

I began to itch - he'd already gotten me three times that night - but I tried not to fidget. Mosquitoes are attracted to the carbon dioxide of your breath (though some breath more than others, apparently. The mosquito flew right over J each time he attacked me). I breathed deeply and slowly. He was coming back. I just had to outwait him.

Can you see that? That's the beautiful bloody smear of a dead mosquito caught unawares by a seemingly sleeping Miranda McLeod.

I won. Ha.

But the thing that's going to stay with me is the road trip. The last time we drove down to DC in Kenny Loggins was when I was on my way to the Hurston/Wright Writers' Week. It was July 15th. Kyle's funeral had been two days before. We arrived back in New York on Saturday and woke up early on Sunday to drive down.

I'd already been accepted and paid money, but I really didn't want to go. My submission wasn't ready. I was tired. I wasn't sure yet how things were going to be, after the call and the flight and the hospital and the California coast and LA and the funeral.

But I went. It was something to do, a series of steps, a meditation on logistics. Packing and driving and registering and finding rooms were all possible victories. I cried on the way down. Not the whole way, but songs kept coming on my iPod that had played during the death week. I felt a little like a crazy person.

The Writers' Week was amazing. Life-changing. It sounds trite, but just when I lost my brother, my other biracial person, the only other member of our demographic of two, I went to DC and met a bunch of other black writers, biracial writers, writers like me. I had conversations I'd only had with my brother. It was awesome.

This time around, I didn't think the drive would bother me. So we were in the same car, on the same road, with the same soundtrack, going to stay at the same house. I'd be fine.

And for the most part, I was. But I cried again. Both going down and coming back. It was sudden and unexpected and a little embarrassing, as if I should be over these non sequitur crying jags. It's been more than two months. Most days, I'm OK. How long does it take? Will I ever have control of myself again? Or for the rest of my life will I just tear abruptly and inappropriately at any slow guitar? And what happens when I stop? Is it alright to stop crying for your brother? Or does that mean something about you is more self-preserving than feeling? I feel like I'm in danger of losing my feeling.

We saw this on the way back:

Hear hear.

I Torture Bugs, Horses Aren't Scary, and Some Vans Have Names

2007-09-21T12:13:00.000-04:00

First of all, as you already may know, I hate mosquitoes. I hate everything about them. They're cruel and unnecessary. Sure, birds and spiders have to eat, but there's a gazillion bugs in this world, so what the hell do we need mosquitoes for? They suck blood. They spread disease. They kill babies. But worst of all, they make me itch like crazy. I'm allergic. When I get bitten by a mosquito, the whole area swells up to the size of a golf ball. Once, I got bitten right by my eye and it puffed up so huge that I woke up not being able to see and not knowing what the hell was going on and went to the emergency room and it took them forever to figure out that it was a bug bite. They'd never seen anything like it. We have screens on every single one of our windows - I even found a baby screen for the bathroom - and still I am plagued by mosquitoes. One snuck in last night and I stayed up until 3 AM scratching and having unbelievably detailed fantasies about dismembering the little fucker, slowly pulling off each of its limbs before slicing its nasty belly open to free my blood from its miserable little body. I mean, if you have to have my blood, fine, you're welcome to it. As long as you save me some, I'm sleeping, I don't care. But whywhywhy must you make me itch? That's just hard-hearted.

Second of all, Vicente Fox came out with a lovely little detail in his new book: George Bush is afraid of horses. I love that so much. Remember Will Ferrell's brilliant Bush impression in that ACT commercial a couple of years ago? Talk about prescience.

Third of all, J and I are headed down to DC today. His mom is up from Texas visiting his Aunt Sue and we're going to take Kenny Loggins down there for the weekend. I don't know what the internet situation will be, so I may not be able to post anything new until Sunday.

Devastating, I know.

Nepal is Like a Home to Me!

2007-09-21T02:01:00.000-04:00

If you liked Yoga Thong, you'll love Inappropriate Yoga Guy: