I met my new Little Sister today. She is not-quite seven, gorgeous little girl, who tied two jumpropes together for me to jump because, she said, "You're pretty tall." Then we played Monopoly, with the breathtaking surrealism of first grade.

"This property costs two hundred dollars," I report.

"Would you take a five?" she offers.

"Okay."

It is exactly the correct antidote to the general panic around bank failures, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and whatever else there is out there, to be playing Monopoly with a little girl who declares, "I am the bank and all the money is mine."

If she lands on Go To Jail and she doesn't want to go, she just skips over it. I don't contradict her. I want her to grow up to make her own rules.

When I was helping her ride her bike in their tiny backyard, she said, "I thought you was gonna be black."

"Did you want me to be black?" I asked. "Would that make you more comfortable?"

"Yeah," she said. It was one of the more honest conversations about race that I've had.

Later, as we were playing Monopoly, she said, "All of the Presidents were white."

"Until this year," I said. "But maybe this year we might bget a black President."

"I know," she said.

"Do you know what his name is?"

"Obama. My granny is going to vote for him."

"Me too."

I wonder if Barack obama could have any way of knpowing that his choice to run is impacting the world view of a first grader in Oakland with chipped purple nail polish and a pink bike with no training wheels.

"But how come...?" she asked, and then stopped. She likes me, for having only known me a little while, but trust takes a long time to build.

"What?" I ask.

She mumbles something that sounds like,"shot," and we keep on rolling the dice and moving our little figures around the Monopoly board. I wonder what she knows about Martin Luther King. Does her granny openly fear assassination for Obama, and does she talk about it? Do people at her granny's church pray for Obama's safety?

I can see that I will be learning as much from this little one as I will be teaching her. She wanted a date with me, "tomorrow," but tomorrow I go with Carla to Harbin Hot Springs, where we will loll around naked in the pools, eat great food, and DO NOTHING.

Carla is the busiest dying person there ever was. How many other people with fatal diseases are gigging, recording, performing weddings, writing, parenting, throwing bachelorette parties, composing, endorsing, befriending, and embarking on new adventures daily?

I got the bulk of Elizabeth's piece In remembrance Of written...six monologues so far. She may want me to write one or two more, but I've got material for each of her dancer-actors to work with, and I can go away with a clear conscience, knowing she will be doing wonderful things to shape and highlight and choreograph the material. the show will be the first two weekends in September at St. Gregory of Nyssa's Church in San Francisco, where See How We Almost Fly was produced in May of 2007. Tight turnaround!

Three beautiful days in Ashland, Oregon; we saw three plays and went river rafting--huge fun! The plays: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner by Luis Alfaro. Magical realism about an overweight woman who becomes morbidly obese during the course of the play, experiences a spiritual sea-change and floats away. I loved the poetry of the physical metaphors and the empathetic approach (the playwright himself is fat) to America's consumption disorder--but I felt like so much more could have been done with those strong themes and the actual plot did not fulfill the promise of its premise.

I loved the language in the play though, and the set was simple yet very inventive, with a huge walk-in refrigerator, which the main character seemed to live in, and a portable police cruiser with flashing lights, and a trap door in the ceiling with wires for flying people in the air. God, I would love to have a play produced in the New Theatre at Ashland!

The next play we saw was The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler by Jeff Whitty, the young writer whose first show was Avenue Q. This play was brilliant--it dealt with archetypes of the theatre wo can never die. Hedda gabler is condemned to shoot herself endlessly on the cul-de-sac of tragic heroines where her neighbors are Medea and Tosca. Determined to change her fate, she takes off in the company of Mammy from Gone With The Wind. Hedda wants to be happy and Mammy wants to rid herself of her slave mentality and be free. They travel together to The Furnace, which is a fearsome place inside the writer's mind where new creations are smelted down and reformed on a daily basis. Most of them have a short life-span, living only for a season or two; some, like Hedda, endure, whether they want to or not.

It's such a clever idea, and Whitty milks it for everything it's worth, exploring issues of free will, destiny, theatre, stereotype, and audience participation along the way. The metaphor of The Furnace felt particularly apt to me, coming off of the finish of Shame Circus--it did feel burning hot and uncomfortable and frightening and ecstatic to be in the heart of the flame, making that play.

The hot seat, literally. Sometimes I can't concentrate here for more than a few minutes at a time.

We also saw a very good production of Othello, which was enhanced for us by having read the play together beforehand and watched the Kenneth Branagh, Lawrence Fishbourne movie of it. C commented that he enjoyed Shakespeare much more when he knew what was going on, and he wouldn't mind studying another play with me. I want to do either Hamlet or Antony and Cleopatra (my favorite play) although I also wouldn't mind doing one I've never read before, like Coriolanus, or King John. Also, I want to rent that documentary that Al Pacino made called Looking for Richard, where he plays King Richard the evil hunchback, and researches him.

I used to think Othello was about jealousy; now I se it as being about vulnerability. Othello and Desdemona have it all, as long as they have confidence, but confidence, which feels so strong when you are sitting in its embrace, turns out to be flimsy after all; it is just a state of mind. It unravels like all other states of mind, it is composed entirely of thoughts. (I love how Shakespeare is really a Buddhist!) I see othello as a sobering reminder of how vulnerable even the happiest marriage is, how frail even the strngest-seeming man or woman. Perhaps the stronger-seeming people are the most vulnerable.

Thursday we went river rafting which was a new adventure for both of us--this trip took us over rapids which were rated 4+--5+ is the highest they go to. It wasn't really a trip for rank beginners, but we had a fantastic guide, who knew every rock in the river--literally--and skillfully piloted us around all the danger spots. Both of us managed to stay on the raft, by wedging our feet and keeping our butts firmly planted even when the rocking and rolling and splashing began in earnest. The water foamed and boiled like a vat of Coca Cola on the Klamath Falls; we saw a bald eagle, osprey, and herons.

On the way home we talked about other adventures we'd like to take--Outward Bound, Habitat for Humanity. I said I'd like adventure trips that would combine physical challenges with being helpful in some way. if we get good at the tandem, maybe we'll do the AIDS ride. To that end, and because the work on the in-law is still ongoing, C tried to teach me to use more power tools today--the nailer, which I've already had some experience on, and a compound mitre saw. Since I have small hands, achey wrists, no sense of balance and zero talent for geometry I am not a natural for home construction projects. But I was the lead teacher on learning Othello and he's the lead teacher on this. It will come in handy if we do ever do a Habitat project together--I want to be able to at least hold my own.

I do have some aptitude for caulking, which is what I'm going to do as soon as I'm done typing this. Tonight a performance with Wing It! at Interplayce, 2273 Telegraph Ave. 7:30 p.m.: Playing with politics. Don't know what I'll have to say as I have paid no attention to politics for the past three days and the world seems to have gone on turning without me following the news. Driving home we passed the fire areaqs. While we didn't see actual burned areas, we saw and smelled the smoke hanging in the air. I don't know if that's political or not, but it's the public thing I am thinking about; fire, and water, the overabundance of one and shortage of the other. The furnace.

We also came home to find Carla's gig at Anna's Jazz Island was sold out. There was a wonderful piece about her in the paper--I can't do links on this thing, but if you go to www.sfgate.com and type "Carla Zilbersmith" into the search box it will pop right up.

Shame Circus is out in the world, red and squalling and dripping and howling. Lots of pushing and a little assist from C, some good comments from Ruth and Bethie and my Dad, and ouf! I'm done. For now.

I am such a super-sensitive (not in a good way) dweeb around my own creative process. On my computer I have taped a quote from the Tao: "Do your work and step back. The only path to serenity." I am trying to practice that. In a few more decades I should have it down.

In the meantime, i go through my manic-depressive cycle every time I finsih something new. It's great, it's wonderful, I want everyone to read it, send it to berkeley Rep, send it to Yale Rep, send it out! Then cold reality sets in and the opposite voice says, It sucks, don't read it, it's terrible, shit, what possessed me to spend so much time and effort on something no one in their right mind would ever want to produce?

reality lies somewhere in-between. In the meantime: back away from the computer. Back away from the computer. Step away...

I've got to water all the plants now and the garden and finish packing. We leave for Ashland bright and early for a few days vacation--have reservations booked for three plays and a river rafting trip. C developed the pictures we took on his camera and they are beautiful. As soon as he sends them to me I will post one.

We spent the 4th with Carla and her Dad--a lovely lunch and lively conversation. then Carla went in for a nap, and we went on to party with C-R and friends, old-timey folkie singers and players. lots of mandolins and lutes. then watched the fireworks from our window while Othellow with Kenneth Branaugh and Lawrence Fishbourne played. It's amazingly quiet and peaceful, lots of time and space to write and goof around. We've slowed the frantic pace of in-law renovation for a moment in order to savor the summer. Okay, packing...

Making this play, Shame Circus, has been such a delicate, difficult, and uphill process. My characters are still somewhat mysterious to me. That’s okay, I tell myself. They’re alive. I don’t always know the right thing for them to say, but when I type the wrong one, then I know it. So I hit the wrong notes and erase them until I find the right one. It’s a slow process.

Iit’s like assembling an airplane in the dark, entirely by feel, hoping it will fly. But I can only see one line ahead of me as I write and sometimes not even that. I write a line, delete it, write another one, sit and stare at it awhile, chew my fingernail, go back. Refill my water glass, fetch some iced coffee.

Dede, who has been diagnosed with failing kidneys and anemia, lies languidly on the bed. What’s she thinking about? The bed is a boat. We’re floating away on an evening of music. I’m here, next to the light, tapping away at my laptop. C is playing piano downstairs, switching back and forth between piano and his new bass, the one he built himself, from a kit, and wired up. It sounds like a real bass!

I hear him fingering through a passage, hesitating, trying it slightly differently, switching instruments. I like this dual process, parallel play, both of us I n the house together, wrestling with our own alligators.

I liked playwriting class, hearing everyone else’s projects, knowing that they are going through the same sweet agony as I am. The ironic thing is that I want to finish this play so that I can start on my next one. How crazy is that? I want to finish edging across this precipice so that I can find myself on another one, clinging to a little fingerfull of rock. It never stops. “Behind Mountains there are mountains,” as the Haitian proverb says.

One way or another I will always be visiting this dar place, the unconscious, place where I know very little and am constantly humbled by the process. Writing fiction or a play— inventing the world--is a lonely manic-depressive business. When friends ask how I am I say I’m happy, and I am. Very happy. But preoccupied, all the time, a little worried, working something out in a part of my brain I can’t reach. I hope I can get this last bit done before we leave for Ashland. I’m at the transition stage of labor right now, so close to the end I’m feeling the urge to push, but not wanting to push too fast or too hard, for fear of damaging the baby getting it out.

I’m writing this with my leg propped up on the coffee table and an ice pack wrapped around my ankle. Must have hurt something doing those front snap kicks. If I’m going to really go for this self-defense thing I have to remember to take my glucosamine. chondroitin. I was up and down the stepladder for hours today, helping C paint the in-law and now my joints are all mad at me.

Elizabeth Mendana, who set my poems to dance and song and theatre last year in See How We Almost Fly, asked me to write the text for her next show, In Remembrance Of…Women in World War 2. She was inspired by the story of a great aunt who served as a WAC to research women’s experiences during the war. When the WAC began in 1942, 35,000 women applied for 1,000 officer positions. It was a unique opportunity for women who would otherwise be relegated to farmwork, housework, and factory jobs.

She’s amassed a fair amount of research, oral histories, letters, but couldn’t figure out how to hone the words. We agreed I’d come aboard as the writer and write seven or eight dramatic monologues.

I went to a rehearsal today, to watch what she’s doing, meet her six dancers, and to explore the topic with them. It was an interesting crew; one German woman, a Swiss woman, two Latinas, an African American woman, another Euro-American woman whose two grandfathers had both served, and Elizabeth.

The women were very vocal and passionate about being sick of all the World War 2 cliches and not wanting to reproduce them, not wanting to glorify it as “the good war,” not wanting to glorify war at all. I tried to reassure them as best I could that neither Elizabeth nor I would do that. I feel absolute trust and confidence working with E. Having improvised together for five years means we share an intimate aesthetic vocabulary. I know that I can throw the ball in her general direction and she will swoop in and pick it up and do something beautiful with it, and she knows the same thing about me. We don’t step on each other’s toes and trust the process.

This piece is going to be a challenge—I would ideally like to make poems that are good enough to stand on their own as well as fitting together into a whole. Some little ideas are beginning to come to me, but they are fighting for space with the remnants of the last act of Shame Circus which still lies in scribbled pages in my notebook, waiting to be pulled together, and the hal-finished essay I’d like to get done and in the mail before we leave for Ashland.

There’s a temptation to surrender to the pleasure of collaboration rather than forge ahead on completing my own projects, many of which have reached sticky places of impasse. It is a rare privilege to be able to trust a creative collaborator the way you learn to trust in Wing It! Sometimes I forget that.

I can hear C drilling holes in the house to install burglar bars right now. The light is fading and he’s been working on house stuff all day—painting, going to Home Depot, and now doing this frustrating job on stucco so old and hard it has the consistency of concrete. Last night I was privileged to attend a meeting of the wedding consiglieri, a subset of the Driving Miss Craisy group who are helping Lisa with last-minute details for her wedding. I learned many valuable things about white tablecloths with colorful iridescent overlays, (just made the Freudian typo “loverlays,”) about candles floating in tiny colored glasses of water, and boxes with a dozen live butterflies inside them (only ninety dollars!) I’m sure all this knowledge will come in handy someday, but for right now it’s making me want to run away to Vegas and get married by an Elvis impersonator.

One last rant and then I’m done: I got an email today telling me my manuscript See How We Almost Fly is a finalist in The Marsh Hawk contest. There are thirty-five of us and the Grand Prize winner and finalists will be culled from this pool. See How We Almost Fly has been a finalist and a first runner-up in half a dozen contests. On the one hand, that’s a good thing, shows I’m on the right track. On the other hand, I’m so sick or sending it out, sending it out, sending it out, and second or third place is useless because you don’t get the book publication.

I noticed that on the same list was Chana Bloch. I’m very flattered to be a finalist alongside her; she’s an accomplished poet with several books. She was the head of the Poetry department at Mills College for years. But I’m also outraged on her account that a poet of her stature should have to keep competing in these penny ante contests, sending in her twenty-five bucks and hoping along with the rest of us. In a sane artistic society, she would have a long-term relationship with a publisher by now. But since poetry sells so poorly compared with blockbuster thrillers, small presses resort to these contests and everyone is competing, jumping through the same slippery hoops for the same pathetic prizes.

I just want a sustainable relationship with a press that will publish, promote and distribute my books. I want to build a body of work, book after book, and not waste my energy sending my manuscript out to dozens of contests. I’d prefer this dream press to be mid-size rather than small, but vigor and commitment are more important than size. I’m so sick of this poetry-go-round, everyone grasping for the same brass ring..

Five burly muggers face one sweet-looking older woman with white hair. They charge her in a scrimmage. She picks them off like ripe corn and within five minutes the bodies are strewn all over the mat. Their bodies. She roars: "Look! Assess! No!" in a voice like a lion, then jogs off.

I whisper to the woman standing next to me in line, "It looks like the final scene in Hamlet." I have so much adrenaline going through my system it is impossible to contain it. I shake my hands out, wriggle my arms, bounce up and down on my toes, try to remember all of the thousand things we have learned this weekend. Breathe. Vocalize. Line them up. Pull them out. Keep moving. One strike at a time. Don't get in the middle. Yell. Elbow strike. Roundhouse kick. Slap kick. Butt strike. Groin slap. Keep moving. Don't get caught in the middle.

By the end of the weekend I have lost track of how many times I have fought off two, three, and even four assailants. It's the most exhausting work-out I have ever endured. All of us are tired. The male instructors pull off their helmets during breaks and down quarts of juice. One woman is too tired at the end of her fight even to lift her knee for a final knee to the groin strike. I'm worried if I will have anything left to "perform" with when our supporters come in.

C sits in the audience, on the floor, watching us fight one at a time, cheering for everyone. I realize this is ritual healing theatre. Time after time, the woman is outnumbered. Even big women look small compared to these bubble-headed monsters. Yet time after time, all expectations are reversed and the impossible happens. The muggers are downed. It is a reworking of a scene out of a classic tragedy--in this case the tragedy of the patriarchy where women always lose power and speech and often, life. In this re-enactment, the women are left intact and in full voice. Their attackers are ritually sacrificed, over and over again.

What kind of man would do this work? Voluntarily put on a big heavy uncomfortable padded suit and charge women so that they can practise bringing them down, a kick, a strike at a time. What a gift. Perhaps they have wounds to heal as well. Perhaps we are healing this wound for all of society.

After it's all over, C takes me out to dinner. I have paella and he has stuffed chiles pablano. We toast each other with wine and some well-earned cheesecake. I was so scared during class. Even though our "muggers" are some of the most benign men on the planet, they are big guys, and it is primally terrifying when several of them rush you at once. It rouses a panic that lies deep in the gut.

G joins us later to celebrate our engagement with a glass of wine and to be regaled with war stories. Job well done. Late that night, I awaken at three. So much adrenaline has been released into my bloodstream I can't sleep, even though I'm dead tired. I lie awake, reciting the psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. She maketh me lie down in green pastures, She leads me by the still waters, She restores my soul, She leads me down paths of righteousness for Her name's sake."

Although I've fought for the right to feel righteous, instead I am filled with that automatic middle of the night self-loathing. Things I said or didn't say. Small transgressions, insensitivities. Gross failings. Those are my multiple assailants. The myriad hordes of self-doubts and self-reproaches that double-team me, sneak up from behind, grab me by the neck when I'm least expecting them.

Half of California is burning--we saw on the news the other night that there are over 700 wildfires around the state--and the air is white and ashy. We are advised to stay indoors, not to do aerobic exercise which could pull more of the polluted air into our lungs. Nevertheless we walked around the lake the other night at sunset. The flocks of geese have multiplied into the millions--they are well-fed and prosperous, and their poop makes a green carpet all around the banks of Lake Merritt. The sun was setting, only because of the mixture of fog and smog there was no real sunset, just a throbbing huge red-orange ball slowly descending. It looked like something out of the Martian Chronicles.

We watched There Will Be Blood last night. Daniel Day-Lewis is amazing--he richly deserved his Best Actor award--but the movie was so unremittingly bleak. Materialism was shown to be empty; spirituality was likewise shown to be empty, at least as personified in the character of the preacher. What else is left? The Daniel Day-Lewis character started out isolated and driven and ended up insane, with a little detour of sweetness with his son for a while--but by the end that too was in ruins.

What was missing from the landscape of the film was simple humanism. There was only this Orthodox fanatical brand of religion and the greed and carelessness of the oil men. There was no character who carried a vision of making things livable for everyone--the Daniel Day-Lewis character talked about it a bit in some of his speeches, but they were simply cynical ploys to win over the townspeople.

What the greedy materialism of the oilmen and the religious fanaticism of the townspeople have in common is grandiosity. "I can heal people by the laying on of hands." "I can spread gold all over the lands." Nowhere is the simple message of the Tao: "Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity."

Today we're prepping and priming the in-law. I've committed myself to 1,000 words a day, either of the new essay I just started, or on the third act of Shame Circus, which I fear will be difficult--but a good stretch. I'm reading Hedda Gabler--very interesting, surprisingly modern--and today we'll start reading Othello aloud together in preparation for Ashland.

Yesterday was clouds and sun. We packed up a vast picnic brunch, like the kind we used to eat when we first started dating--thermos of strong coffee, cheese, thick chewy bread with walnuts, salami, fruit, hard-boiled eggs--and headed over to the Marina.

Found a spot that was sheltered from sun and wind, spread out a blanket, and ate. I lay on my back and just moaned with pleasure and relaxation. I'd taught, all weekend, with Laurie Wagner--our first Spit 'n' Polish workshop. It was great, twelve wonderful women, and Laurie and I worked smoothly together--but it was a lot of sitting and writing and talking and interacting. Monday I went to Wing It! rehearsal and then an equally intense playwriting class I'm taking at Playwright's Foundation--an hour in on BART, three hours of sitting and writing, an hour back.

So yesterday was the first real day of vacation, of silence and nature, time away from words. We watched squirrels and chipmunks, and I want to say gophers but I'm not sure--anyway, there are whole colonies of them at the Marina. They appear to have vacation homes out by the rocks, and then burrows farther inland. A whole underground city. They are fat and tame because of all the poeple who feed them, like the old man we saw handing out peanuts. Several of them came and begged shamelessly right at our shoes.

There were red-tailed hawks too: circling, gliding, stalling--one of them hung in the air only a few feet from us, for three or four moments, perfectly still, planing--so we could practically count its feathers. I've never had a hawk come so close or stay so suspended. It was a strong headwind, and the hawks were going with it, playing with it, keeping an eye out all the time for squirrels.

We saw a gull flying straight at the hawk, chasing it off. Maybe the gull was protecting its nest...

This was the scene of our first date, when we walked the mile loop of the Marina talking. I remember stealing glances at C's profile. He seemed shy and serious and eager. I liked his dry wit, and the beautiful architecture of his face, his strong nose, and the way yo8u could see his Dutch ancestry. I remember laughing a lot.

Yesterday after one and a half loops around, he headed out for some rocks over the ocean and I followed him. We sat on a smooth rock, and he blurted out, "Do you think it's too soon after sixteen months to talk about marriage?"

I said, "No, I don't think it's too soon."

"Then I'd like to marry you," he said.

I gaped at him. "Are you proposing?"

"I am."

We both started laughing, a little teary-eyed. I kissed him and whispered "Yes," into his neck. Then he really surprised me by pulling out a little black box. Inside was the ring his grandfather gave his grandmother--the ring I'm wearing now as I type this. It fit perfectly--he'd sneaked around and taken one of my rings and had it sized. It looks simple and beautiful and unquestionably engagement-esque. Kind of traditional. I've spent my whole life not being traditional and it feels sweet to slip into this at mid-life.

As soon as we got home I got on the phone. My father was anxiously waiting news of my stepbrother's wife, who was in labor, so he had his cell phone with him and turned on for once. He was so happy and overwhelmed. He said, "I can't even describe to you all that I'm feeling right now." I called the whole family which took a good part of the evening, asking each niece to be a flower girl. "What does a flower girl do?" one of them wanted to know, very reasonably. Then I made chicken mole and tried to finsih a blanket for the new baby. We had champagne with dinner.

Liam Francis was born a little after 2:00 in the morning East Coast time, looking peaceful and radiant.

Carla and I lurched along the sidewalk from her house to Trader Joe's and then back again. A somewhat quixotic errand--alright, crazy--it's half a mile each way. But Carla gamely said, "Let's try it." So we tried it. On the way back she said, "I don't think I can do both legs of this trip anymore," and it was decided that next time we'll just walk one way and have a car waiting on the other end. Magic cab.

We laughed a lot as we were lurching, trying to manouver the piece-o-shit grocery cart with one hand, which doesn't work well with cracks in the sidewalk. She thinks Johnny Depp is a dreamboat--I beg to differ. Johnny Depp is a little boy playing dress-up. Give me Viggo Mortensen any day. (This is a highly expurgated account of one small part of the conversation.)

The more important part--really the heart of the conversation, no matter what the topic--is how fleeting everything is. Only a few months ago we made it easily to the top of Solano, which is a fair-sized hill. Now, no longer.

When I spend time with Carla I am aware of living inside a myth. Not a fairy-tale--an old-fashioned primal myth. The Descent of Inanna. Sisyphus. The impossible koan of human experience. It's beautiful and painful and enlivening. Fortunately we can argue about who's cuter, Johnny Depp or Viggo Mortenesen, for all eternity.

I also told her I want to be included with the rest of the girl-posse when we go to MAC cosmetics to learn how to do her make-up for her, despite my having said I would not trust myself with a mascara wand anywhere in the vicinity of someone else's eyes. (That's all she needs right now--to be blinded by a good friend who's trying to help her look pretty while dealing with ALS.) But I think the MAC outing will be a hoot, and I'm sure I can learn to apply foundation, blush and eyeshadow with the best of them.

On my way home, after a brief shopping trip, I got pulled over on the freeway, because of expired tags. The cop was about 16 years old. He directed me (via bullhorn) to pull over somewhere in the middle of West Oakland. I ended up sandwiched between a vacant lot and a billboard, looking at a freeway overpass. I made the mistake of leaving my key in the ignition while he was writing out his slap-on-the-wrist fix-it ticket, and after 20 minutes in the broiling hot sun, the battery died. The cop and his buddy drove off to fight crime and there I was stuck in West Oakland.

I called C; I called Triple A. I sat in the car and sweated. Triple A finally came, the guy gave me a jump and told me I need a new battery. I proceeded homeward, jumped in the shower, threw a salad together and Vicky came over. We had a nice dinner and chat--she's also a special ed teacher, so she and C had much to commiserate, celebrate and agitate about.

The day was a day of catastrophes narrowly averted; the ticket could have been much worse, getting a new battery is about the cheapest fix you can make to a car, and the house had been left unlocked for half a day because of Masankho forgetting to lock up after the Comcast guy, and yet luckily no one had broken in and stolen C's guitars, amps, speakers, or my laptop. Thank God!

Monday night I went to the Playwright's Foundation class. I like the teacher Liz Duffy, very much. Her energy reminds me of my old theatre friend Karen Henry, so gentle and thoughtful, yet with a spark. She had us write the world's worst 2-page play as an opening exercise. I thought the class would be based on the I Ching and I brought my book--instead it turns out to be based on the Tao Te Ching. Went out and bought it yesterday--that was one of my shopping errands. The Tao Te Ching is all about accomplishing things without making an effort, not getting all caught up in striving., just letting things take their course. It seems a good philosophy to learn to live by these days.

My heart is very full of Carla, Carla, Carla. last night C and I, along with Ruth and my old friend Jeremy and Jeremy's son Aidan went to hear Carla perform at the Jazz School. So many times I found myself blinking with tears. As she finished I Could Drink A Case Of You, Jeremy leaned over and whispered to me, "That song always makes me cry."

That song does not always make me cry. It was the way Carla sang it, and how radiant she looked on stage cracking herself up with corny jokes that brought me to an emotional edge I don't have the words to describe. Today it spilled over when C and I talked in the kitchen.

"I really liked the way she did 'I'll be seeing you (in all the old familiar places,)'" he said.

"She did that song for Maclen, thinking about after she's gone, everywhere he'll look in Berkeley he'll see her and think of her--" and then the real tears started, because I can't hold onto my denial anymore. Even me, who is so good at it, who had 30 years practise with my mom's M.S. I can't stay there, plus Carla won't let me. She's moving so fast now, the physical symptoms are progressing, and so is the light and understanding within her, as if they were in a race to keep pace with each other.

I can't keep up.

Today she told me about the breathing machine she'll start using, about feeling the end of being able to sing in the future, and about needing a wheelchair more and more.

"It's hard for me to hear this," I said, because there was nothing else I could say.

"I know. But I have to tell you; I have to be honest about what's happening."

"I want you to tell me. I feel honored that you tell me. It's just hard for me to hear."

"I know. But it would be worse if it weren't hard, wouldn't it?"

So we sat a minute in the hardness of it. Then a minute later we were laughing about euphemisms for blow jobs. That's Carla.

Quiet weekend. We've been working on the in-law--that is, C's been working on it. He put in a security door, and is re-roping windows and preparing a major overhaul of the bathroom, plus preparing to paint the whole thing. There's very little I can do at this point, so I'm sitting here staring at my new play, Shame Circus.

I have a good feeling about this play. I think the concept and the execution are more interesting, more wild, closer to poetry than anything else I've done yet. Tomorrow I'll go to a Playwright's Foundation class about using the I Ching as an oracle to help in the playwriting process--which sounds far-out, but also fascinating. Another essay rejected by MORE; one left to go. I shouldn't count my chickens before they hatch. I sent another essay to The Sun. The Ledge accepted a poem: "$18.88." (That's the name of the poem.)

Love is having its way with me, working me, softening and deepening and joying and me and preparing me for greater sorrows than I ever wanted to face. Moments almost too sweet to be borne: watching C from the kitchen window as he brings roses into the house. He sees me there and holds out the biggest reddest rose to me. The look that passes between us would make a room full of teetotalers drunk. I don't know what to say about love because the power of it makes me speechless. I can only surrender to it. I'm living inside an answered prayer.

The other night after a long day scraping the ceiling he turned to me as we were both dropping off to sleep. The feeling of love was overwhelming. We found ourselves in each others' arms. It was not about sex, not passion only. It was like being swept along in some sort of great tide, one that makes me feel I am exactly in the right place.

Outwardly, things are quiet. C is finishing up his last days of school (seven and counting...) I am here at the computer, looking at a handful of projects: two plays, a couple of essays, two book projects for other people, one collaboration. The house needs to be cleaned and readied for dinner guests and sleepover guests. There are classes to be taught and taken. Trips to the grocery store to pick up lettuce and avocados. On the surface things are mundane.

But running through everything is this flow, this sense, not of "doing the work" as my earnest spiritual friends say, but of letting the work have its way with me. I wanted a family; we will not be having or even adopting a young baby or child. At one time, eating dinner with just the two of us in this big house felt a little fearful and too quiet--I kept listening for the sound of children's laughter that i felt was missing from our life. Now I'm not listening for anything more. The moment is full enough. Love has not met all of my agendas, but allowed me the grace to set my agendas aside and open to whatever comes next.

It has not made me a better, thinner, or more efficient person. I'm still just going to the grocery store and forgetting to get more Lact-Aid 2% milk. What has shifted has been so subtle; less fear, more love. I did not want to love C this completely, because I feared/fear he will die before I do. My mother died, Alan died. Carla has a fatal disease. C is in good shape, but he has diabetes, which is associated with heart attacks and strokes. I was afraid; I am still afraid, but less so. I am loving fully despite fear of loss. That is all. It's simple and hard. Keep opening, keep opening.

Also; I was afraid to love anyone fully because I was afraid they would discover what a dweeb I am; how messy, inefficient, lazy, and all the other faults I accuse myself of. Well, C has seen. He knows. He's dragged me out of bed by the heel on a cold winter morning when I did not want to go to work. He's observed me wasting time, and being immature, close-up and personal. And he loves me anyway. And he's a dweeb as well. Again, a simple, ordinary, mundane miracle, but one I never thought would be mine. And here it is, glowing, not in the center of my palm, where I can grasp it or drop it, but in the center of my being.

I spent sweet time with Carla the other day, just massaging her shoulder, talking and listening. This is still just daily life, more heightened now, but all the same content. Driving places, picking up, dropping off. Creating, editing, paying bills, making the bed. This miracle of love, like a live, pulsing, muscular river, flowing through everything.

It is not there to feed my vanity, help me lose weight, or make me better or more special. If anything I feel less special, more humble and grateful just to be alive and blessed with this ordinary extraordinary gift. Just eating salad together at night after a hard-fought game of tennis, with a cold beer and a couple of candles, brings tears, is a feast of gratitude almost too rich to eat.

Yesterday I walked around the lake with Laurie and we talked about plans for the class we will teach weekend after next and the book we want to write. Today I picked up my Tony Hoagland book (he's one of my favorite poets! Read him!) and found the following passage, which I love so much I will copy it out here.

The Slipperiness of Metaphor

There is something irreconclably, neurologically primal about the act of metaphor. This primal wildness conceals it from us. Of the hinterlands of the gray matter, where metaphors roam free, our data is all rumor, conjecture, and anecdote. Because metaphorical speech is such a commonplace, because almost anyone can and does produce metaphor on a daily basis, we assume that it is scrutable. Because it is a mental process, because it takes place within our own heads (on our property), because it leaves our own authorial lips, we assume we know something of its workings. But we do not. Invariably, the only adequate way to describe the metaphorical event is by another metaphor. It is a mystery hand going into a black mystery box. The head says, "Fetch me a metaphor, hand," and the hand disappears under a cloth. A moment later, the hand reappears, metaphor on its extended palm. But, despite the spontaneity and ease of this event, we have only a vague idea where the image came from. In fact, we don't know. And neither does the hand."

from "Tis Backed Like a Weasel" The slipperiness of metaphor
Real Sofistikashon, Essays on Poetry and Craft by Tony Hoagland

We've started renovating the in-law, which means that yesterday found both of us on top of stepladders (one of my least comfortable places, coming in second or third to being at the gynecologiest's with my feet up in stirrups,) scraping toxic plaster gunk off the ceiling. Apparantly it was fashionable in the 70s to spray this popcorn-textured stuff onto the ceiling--don't ask me why--and don't ask me what it's made of. I'm just praying it's not asbestos because I got almost as much of it in my hair, eyes and clothing as I did on the floor.

To do this work, we first had to re-route the garden hose into the window and spray the ceiling with water. Then up on the ladders with scrapers. We worked well together and did the whole thing in about two hours of hard labor, with no fighting or biting, just a lot of sweating and grunting. I insisted we take before and after pictures so the whole laborious process is getting documented.

Next weekend we'll spend a glamorous time doing further scraping and then priming and ultimately painting. C is in charge of the project, because of his superior skills and knowledge of construction. He's the one who's going to install a new toilet, sink and vanity in the in-law bathroom, as well as renovate the shower. I'll follow along, doing whatever I can (more and more, the more I learn how to use the tools. I can use the power drill now--sort of.)

It's not exactly a day at the beach, but it's not so bad, either. We have a good physical rapport, which allows us to work together. I'm glad we're attempting this project at our current stage of relationship. Doing it earlier we would have run into more problems because of the difference in our styles: he is careful, methodical, meticulous. I am impatient and impulsive. As soon as it was decided we'd rehab the in-law I went in there and started trying to pry nails out of the wall with my bare hands. C followed me around with the proper tools, encouraging me to use them.

But I've (mostly) stopped biting his head off when he corrects what I'm doing or suggests a better approach, and he's learned to trust that I'm a hard worker and that I'll hang in next to him when it gets gritty and nasty. So, I think we're ready for this next step into deep intimacy: home improvement.

After the work we took a ride out to Pleasanton to look at tandem bicycles. they cost an unholy amount of money, but it looks like huge fun, and it would solve the problem of C wanting to take long bike rides and me not being much of a cyclist. As long as I can have a big fat cushy woman's seat for my big fat cushy rear-end, I'm game to do it.

I have been reading plays; the latest is Doubt, by John Patrick Shanley. It's like a finely constructed mini-cathedral, the structure perfectly balanced, the argument fairly and intricately and equally balanced on all sides so you are left really not knowing who is right. The audience is left to struggle with their own doubt, which is brilliant.

Over the weekend I revised the Marie Antoinette play--finally got it right--and then added a small ten-minute play based on the Larry Craig debacle that broke last year--the men's room in the airport gay sex sting. I need a third or perhaps a fourth scandal to make this trilogy complete--I'm calling it Shame Circus, Three Arias. I've sent away for Caryl Churchill's plays--she uses avant garde structures, where the same actors reappear in different roles, and environments and times change radically within the course of the play.

Unlike Shanley's more classic structure--Doubt is the quintessential "well-made play,"--Churchill makes the aundience take great leaps. There's a lot of risk and I'm not sure how she does it, except that this stuff must cook a lot in her subconscious. I'm hoping the collections of her plays include an essay about her process. I'm having my own little mini-literature course at home this summer, completely self-directed. Dad has sent me some of the short early novels of Philip Roth, which are in a pile, waiting to be read; meanwhile, last night I started on a comllection of Tony Hoagland's essays about poetry. Hoagland is one of my favorite poets, one of the ones I would most like to study with, and his prose is lively and funny just like his poetry.

Such a wild surge of hope and elation and gratitude and fear and tremulousness and...hope, watching Barack Obama claim the Democratic nomination last night. We only get the educational channel and a Spanish language channel on our TV and so watched him in Spanish. What a beautiful, moving sight. And his wife, Michelle, is a queen, such grace and majesty and she is a big woman, tall and solid and strong. I'm so glad she's not a sylph!

Watching them, I felt the same crazy rush of romantic hope one feels at the beginning of a love affair, coupled with the gut-churning fear of all the possible scary places this could lead--committment, heartbreak, betrayal, death. I can't help it. That is the moment we as a nation are in right now. The moment of one more time allowing ourselves to fall in love with hope. Possibility.

Carla says that hope is not good for her right now. She says if a cure is found, great, but she can't live in that place of wanting and expecting. She has to live in what is, and take her joy in the fleeting present moments of reality.

Emily Dickinson said, "Hope is that thing with feathers."

Fragile, dangerous. Hope, like happiness, makes us vulnerable to disappointment. I couldn't stand it if something happened to Obama. I want to encase him in a big bubble of protection. I couldn't stand it if something were to happen to C. To Carla. I can't stand it that I can't protect my loves, my hopes, my hope for a long peaceful happy healthy life.

To tune into the news these days is to veer between despair and terror and...hope.

Yesterday I received an email from my friend Jackie that was so powerful and eloquent I asked if I could share it on this blog. She and her partner, Dawn, have been together 24 years. They have raised five children together, four of them adopted, and are now helping to raise their grandchildren. They have weathered illnesses, disability, job loss, financial problems, and high school--five times. They have stayed the course with humor and tough love. If any two people deserve to call themselves married, these do.

I had written to Jackie inviting them to come down and get married at my synagogue. My rabbi, David Cooper, is doing a big wedding for gay and lesbian couples later this month. Jackie gave me permission to share her response here.

Bless you for offering your home and hospitality. We thank you. It would be really cool to visit your synagogue. I'm not sure we could afford to do something... formal at this point. We're sort of stunned that the chance might present itself, and at the thought that we'd have to take an airplane without our family to do this. If the court doesn't put a "stay" on this and it really happens we'll have to figure it out and make it work. You can imagine we are not optimistic that it will happen for real, or about the reality that the voters could annul this in November. You've got to wonder, what's the point if they're going to take it back? I felt so heartbroken for the San Francisco couples that tied the knot and got it taken away again...

As I write, I realize I had no idea just how frightening a risk it would be to go the distance and to live with the potential of revocation. I also didn't realize how fragile and vulnerable I felt around this precious window of opportunity. I've been an activist my whole adult life about the rights of other groups and the rights of my tribe. I have wanted to have this particular right for us for so long. I appear confident, cavalier, or intense to others, but rarely vulnerable.

I've been present and rock steady when they stitched up my kids at the emergency room, or set a bone, and when my grandbabies crowned and arrived in the wide world. I was concerned or thrilled and experienced waves of emotion the crested and broke, ebbed and flowed. I was still standing and still holding onto strength for each event. Somehow, the ground becomes soft and slippery at the onramp to this bridge. I'm not the least bit nervous about getting hitched, but the idea that it might require retreat, backing the bus over the bridge and back down the ramp brings me to tears, instantly.

When Noah was about 4 he asked me, "Gramma, what does 'holy cow' mean?" I told him people said that when they were amazed, and often when they didn't know what else to say or didn't have the right words to express how big something was or how impressed they felt. This child had an immense vocabulary. A similar question followed about 'holy smokes.' Not long after that when something really peaked his wonder he exclaimed, "Holy smokes AND cow!" I think that says it all, don't you? J

Love you,
Jax

C was up till all hours last night, fixing the agitator in the washing machine, and then fixing the nailer. He gets such pleasure out of handling tools, making things work, intelligent design. A good balance to the work at Juvenile Hall where you can do your best but the outcome is out of your hands.

We're revving up for summer vacation--mine has already started. I'm back at my desk, reconfiguring See How We Almost Fly for the 10,000th time, getting ready to send it out to five new contests. I wonder if this process will ever end. It is discouraging, it feels like flushing twenty-dollar bills down the toilet. I've entered a bunch of contests this past year, won two for individual poems, netting $2,000.00, nothing to complain about, but the book contract has so far eluded me. For seven years now. So I'm complaining.

Free-lance writing is a lot about waiting: I'm waiting to hear from the editor at MORE about two essays which I sent her--she says the end of next week. The Sun has two other essays of mine--they've had them for months. I'm not on tenterhooks or anything, I know they'll get back to me whenever. Modern Love has another essay and I'll either hear from them or I won't.

I'm still waiting for the check to come in for the production of my play, for the money to come from the second poetry contest I won; to get paid for the classes I taught at the high school, for the class I've been teaching in the city. I just now got paid for the second grade class I taught this spring. Waiting, waiting.

Like C, I need something that gives predicable solid gratification, that takes me into the now. For me, it's dancing, improvising, painting sometimes, gardening sometimes. I'm going to go to Urban Re-leaf this Saturday and plant some trees. I'm signed up to volunteer to assist in a self-defense class, and I'll be taking another class at the end of this month--multiple assailants and weapons. And I just got called by Big Brothers/Big Sisters--they've matched me up with another girl, a young one, seven years old. Yay! Children are the most grounding energizing force I can think of.

And I'm knitting a blue baby blanket for my stepbrother's child, due later this month. Out of the silkiest softest organic cotton.

Left brain, right brain. I have been thinking about Jill Bolte Taylor's work on this topic. Taylor was--is--a neuroscientist who experienced a stroke as a result of a brain hemorrhage. She almost died and it took her eight years to fully recover. Meanwhile, she says that what she experienced when her left brain was disabled from the stroke was Nirvana, a state where there was no separate self, just unending oceans of bliss.

I'd like some of that.

Meditators have been talking about this forever. Dancing and music can get you there. Even tennis. Intense love experiences. The opening of the heart all the way wide without the yammering intrusion of the critical brain.

I personally spend a lot of time in the critical brain, trying to shape sentences, order manuscripts, edit my students' pieces, look for places to sell my work, apply for grants, get my list of publications in order.

I think the reason C is basically a contented man when left to his own devices is that playing music gives him time and space in that magical other part of himself.

As Carla's ALS progresses I know that the only way to get through will be to dwell more and more in that right brain, the place where everything, even death is all right, because it's just energy moving into and through the body, into the vast beyond.

Taylor, who "died" in the ambulance as it was taking her to the hospital, and then came painfully back into her body, says she has learned how to "step into" that bliss state as a result of her stroke. She says she has conscious choice, and that one very simple technique she uses is to think of someone or something she loves deeply. This is so like the advice my mother gave me years ago when I was a child and couldn't sleep: "Think of pleasant things."

I've always been someone who thinks too much. There should be a 12-step meeting for folks like me who are addicted to our own obsessive-compulsive intellects. It can be good for the writing because in going over and over a topic, turning it around in my mind restlessly like a dog with a bone, I learn more about it. By the time i come to write, I've gone several layers deeper than the surface. It's tiring though. And not particularly ecstatic.

I want to practice stepping into that other side of my brain, both for my own sake and so that I can be a source of peace for others rather than a source of critical inquiry (and irritation.)

I am blogging about this now because that old Christian-Jewish Wing It! issue came up for me this week. Several of our members are being ordained as various flavors of Protestant ministers. I'm happy for them that they have managed to complete challenging graduate programs, and I wish them well. But I also notice in the din of an election year, with the newspapers full of Obama's pastor said this, and here's a photo of the Clintons coming out of their church, or McCain and family coming out of their church--that it would be virtually impossible to get elected President at this time in America if you weren't Christian.

Not just your average perfunctory non-churchgoing person of Christian descent either, but the full monte--someone who enthusiastically and whole-heartedly (and constantly) professes their faith. If you don't do that, might as well not run.

I'm not even talking about a Jewish American President, mind you. That would raise its own interesting can of worms. But just say, someone regular who was a non-believer, who said, "I don't know about this God business, and yeah, Jesus was a good guy, but I basically believe in kindness and respect and p.s. I have a plan to solve global warming and get us out of Iraq."

Which seems to me to be what we need. A secular humanist. A smart, science-oriented secular humanist.

And why, with all this media focus on the historicity of this election--first viable black candidate, first viable woman candidate--don't we take a minute to point out that--hey!--everyone's a professed, God-fearing Christian? In other words, our diversity work is not done. We may be inching toward more gender and race equality (though we've got a long way to go in both realms) but who is talking about the erosion of the separation of church and state in recent elections?

I wish we had a law that said you couldn't know a candidate's religious affiliation, if any. I wish religion were something private and sacred (root word: secret) instead of a show everyone feels they have to participate in. I wrote a little editorial to this effect and sent it in to Tikkun. They may or may not take it; they don't pay their writers anything, so it won't make any difference to my finances. But it's a good editorial idea I think, and one which I've been mulling over (read: obsessing) for several days.

The truth is, my critical mind is a little bit in love with itself. It's so witty. So intelligent. So capable of vivid images and wicked sarcasm. But it's not entirely honest; it prefers a good show of verbal pyrotechnics to the deeper more heartfelt truths underneath.

When I was at Melinda's church in '07 it was not a Wonder Bread experience. Eighty percent black attendees with an African American lesbian pastor, it was something of a cross between a revival meeting and a recovery 12-step group, with people openly wrestling with their addictions, their demons. I felt a variety of conflicting emotions. Confusion (why is everyone going off, screaming and shouting and getting happy every time the pastor says "Jesus"--which she does three or four times per sentence? I don't feel anything.) Envy ("It looks like they're orgasming while I'm just sitting here feeling stiff and awkward and trying to pretend I don't think it's crazy.) Anger: ("All those things they are attributing to Jesus are a normal part of the Jewish religion--he didn't make any of it up--they're co-opting us--and not even accurately!") And some other things I can't even name.

Obsessing and analyzing all this doesn't make me happy. Yet somehow my brain feels it needs to do it.

Someone once said that being right is the booby prize. I'm fairly sure I'm right on this one. I mean it's a well-reasoned point that's been brewing and stewing in my brain for a while now. But it's also been keeping me up at night and increasing my sense of separation from dear churchgoing friends. I don't want to feel separate. I don't want to give up my wonderful critical thinking abilities either. Is there a way to do both? Bolte Taylor suggests we can step from one side of our brain to the other, at will. At least she can, and by implication anyone can learn to. Can I?

I've just finished up a two-day process of going through all my back issues of The Sun--16 years' worth--and cataloging the poems and stories I've published there. The score so far: 52 poems, and 15 prose pieces--and that tally might be a little low, there were a few issues missing from my collection.

My. God. It was both amazing and appalling to sit at the dining room table with towering stacks of magazines all around me. I rediscovered some little poems that I didn't even remember writing. After two laptop thefts, I never recreated my database of poems entirely. I'm glad those were published so that there's a record of them somewhere.

The appalled part came from the reckoning of how much of my life has been spent in this pursuit: writing poems, revising poems, sending out poems. I can remember addressing so many envelopes, putting so many stamps on, so many trips to the mailbox.

I've done this rather than any of the million zillion things humans do to pass their time one earth. I did not plant a forest-worth of trees, like the custodian I read about in People Magazine, who slowly, patiently planted seedling after seedling, week after week, until after thirty years, he had restored a whole barren clear-cut mountain side, miles and miles of it, to its former forest glory.

I did not adopt a dozen children from the four corners of the earth, I didn't go to graduate school and enter a helping profession like social worker or therapist, as my college advisor urged me to do. I didn't even become a full-time teacher, although I spent a lot of time telling myself I should.

I didn't have my own children. I didn't wander the world with a backpack, I didn't become an actor, painter, bread baker. For better or for worse, I've been sitting at a typewriter (and in the last twenty five years a computer,) typing, year in, year out, and this three or four page list of publications, which I'm compiling for grant applications, a book submission, letters to prospective agents, is what I have to show for it. Scary to see it reduced to that--sobering, and medicinbal too, in its own bracing way. So. This is what you've got. Is it what you wanted? What else now?

Writing being what it is, it seems I have dropped a trail of personal breadcrumbs over the house of memory that is my past--reading those back issues of The Sun, I can trace the period when I was working with people with AIDS, when I got divorced, this love affair, that love affair, teaching, counseling, food, neighborhoods...up to the present day, where my hair is grayer than I ever imagined it would be, and the pictures G took of me for my new web site (yes! After four years on now-obsolete software, we are doing a complete update!) look... old.

"See, those ones came out kind of bad, but these ones are great," he said, showing me. From his perspective as photographer, the photos that were bad were the ones that were slightly out of focus. Privately, I thought that could be an improvement. The ones he thought were "great" were high-resolution, sharp as meedles. They showed every wrinkle with merciless clarity. I resisted the impulse to ask him if he couldn't photo-shop my neck. And my forehead, while he's at it. And my upper arms.

After all, this is reckoning time, this forty-ninth year. This is the time for the counting of the first harvest. If my life were a Jewish calendar, this would be my time of Shevuous, or perhaps, Sukkot. End of summer with its illusion of endless days. Time for the facing of the face in the mirror.

It's like my first Weight Watcher's meeting when I actually stepped on the scale. Thanks to the wonders of spandex and other stretch materials, it's possible to be blithely in denial (due to a typo, I wrote "lithely," which works as well,) as long as you don't look at the numbers. But I'm e3ven more curious than I am vain--which is saying something, since I am very vain. In the end, this curiosity may be the quality that saves me. I want to know what I really look like now, I want to see how I've spent--or misspent my time, I want to ask the hard questions and endure the answers. And then I want G to photo-shop my neck.

We went to see Young@Heart Sunday and laughed and cried our way through it. What an incredible testament to spirit that movie is! The 92-year-old woman who started doing a strip-tease with the chorus when she was 70, the old men and their sweetness--reminds me of a poem by I think it is Jack Grapes, about old women--something about beehives which are so packed with honey. Rich storehouses. I feel that way about my father. He has ripened into a sweetness that brings tears to my eyes whenever I think of it.

I sent off the tennis essay and immediately turned to working on an essay about the women's self-defense class--too immediately. I was hyper--caught up in big ideas about making lots of money doing these personbal essays. I worked and worked on it, but it's not there. I need to let it rest and marinate--need to let myself rest and marinate. I'm blessed and cursed with an overabuncance of imagination, which means I constantly dream up scemes and plans and projects. It's hard to take a mental break from all that.

Lauren just called an offered a date with her two-year-old daughter to the zoo!

My friend E went to an eco-conference recently that attracted forward-thinkers from all over the world. At lunch she sat at a table with a woman from india who told her that in the place she lives it is always hot, but lately it has been SO hot, so much hotter than hot--125 degrees Fahrenheit--that birds were dropping dead out of the branches.

It wasn't that hot here, but almost 100 I think. I taught out in Lafayette, feeling tired and yet light. At the end of the day one of the regular teachers said to me, "Some of us were talking about you, and how this year--you're different. So relaxed with the kids, and they have been really enjoying you. I don't know if you could tell, but your lessons have been wonderful."

"Thank you, thank you for telling me," I said. I was overwhelmed. No, I couldn't tell. I thought I was just tired and burned out, as usual. And fat, to boot. But the big changes I have gone through this year--and the happiness of having a real home life to come home to--must be showing up. "Thank you for telling me," I said again, and passed out of there, gratefully.

And then E woke me from a nap this afternoon, crying with joy on the phone because of the historic decision: the California Supreme Court has upheld the rights of same sex couples to marry. Of course there will be challenges. of course this is not the last of the fight. But the tide is turning, as surely and inexporably as it did when the rights of white and black people to intermarry were contested. Soon, this struggle will seem as quaint and obvious as that one does to us now.

A happy day. The Castro will be a huge party tonight, heat or no heat. As for us, we're going to sip a celebratory glass of wine and watch "Back to the Future."

C was furiously cleaning the house and I was feeling guilty, lazy, exhausted and annoyed.

"When I even hear about a man cleaning house," Carla said to me once. "I get turned on." (She actually used a more graphic phrase, but we'll leave it at 'turned on.')

I'm sure most women feel the way she does. It would be great if I did too. But when he takes out the mop and the Murphy's oil soap, the anit-bacterial hand soap, and the Green eco-whatever liquid soap we have, I want to run away to the nearest debauched place and drink beer (and I don't even like beer,) and waste my money on strippers and poker. In short, I feel morally inferior.

"Can't you just stop?" I whined. He was a whirling dervish of activity. The answer was no. Once he gets going, he can't stop, he won't stop, he doesn't want to stop. I feel that way myself, when I'm on a roll. I just don't usually get on a roll with cleaning.

I realize I've been feeling irritated at everyone that way lately. "Can't you just stop?" I want to plead. For some reason, I need everyone to stop. I need us all to stop rushing around. Obviously, it's really me whom I want to stop. Even when I'm not visibly occupied in a productive task my mind is whirring. I play Sudoku, I read celebrity gossip online. I make lists, I plan, I read, I scribble, I call people, I email. I'm working on two new essays and a play simultaneously. I flip from one project to the next.

What my soul is screaming for me to do is stop and feel. Let myself feel all that's been going on and not do anything about it, just be. Just look at the garden, just sit on the couch. No one is stopping me. C would actually prefer it if I left the house while he cleans and went to a bookstore or took myself to a movie. (Sorry, people, he's taken.)

What's all the activity about anyway? I'm trying to avoid feeling like a Bad person. Bad people are lazy and unproductive. I'm not bad because look at me, I'm working, I'm working. I've been teaching at three different schools for the past few weeks, and while I used to do even more classes than this, I must have gotten old or something because I'm whupped. (I know it's boring to hear a spoled woman with no kids and a man who cleans complain about fatigue, but hey, I have an auto-immune thyroid condition guys. I get some kind of bit of slack for that.)

I was so tired today, teaching at the high school that I looked at the clock and couldn't tell what time it was. The position of the hands on the clock face made no sense to me. "That clock is wrong, right?" I asked the regular teacher. He glanced up. "No, it's right." It could have been the middle of the night for all my weary brain could figure out.

Why do I think I have to prove my worth by being productive? Dumb question: because I'm American, that's why. Because eeveryone feels this way.) I long to just sit and fall deeply into the center of myself, into the center of everything, and to feel all right just sitting there.

Bless me, Readers, for I have lapsed. It has been five days since my last blog post, and so much has been going on. I am just plain tired, that's all, face-plant on the bed, stay in my pajamas all day tired. I keep telling myself that normal people work harder than i do, all the time, year-round, and it doesn't help. Telling myself that, i mean. Because I just have this frayed, frazzled, sensitive low-thyroid poet's body, and I am pooped. The good news is that there's just one more week of it, and then I can recoup. Hopefully.

Yoshi's was packed Tuesday night, for the Carlabration, the benefit for Carla. Everyone very glammed up, little black dresses, high heels, make-up. Wine glasses clinked, people talked, the mood was festive and expectant. First up was a comedian, David Allen Moss who joked, "It's impossible to compete with a dying woman--especially a dying white woman." Then--perhaps not in this order exactly; it's Friday now, and my brain is sawdust--came Kaila Flexer and her musical partner Gari with their duo Teslim. (For more on this or to order their haunting cd, go to Kaila's website: www.kailaflexer.com.)

They played some Eastern music on violin and aud. Kaila's composition for Carla, called Stone's Throw was especially poetic and moving. It had a gentle undercurrent of sadness, as well as light bouncing off the current. I want to hear it again--I want to write poetry while listening to it, and I will.

Then Roy Zimmerman, a wonderful political satirical singer-songwriter, who did a couple of great songs about our current state of social ridiculousness--as he said Bush makes it so easy for satirists, he practically does their work for them. Then Mike Zilber, Carla's ex, presented his settings of some Billy Collins songs. Andy Kirschner, a beautiful baritone, sang them. Those knocked me out. They were beautifully crafted, and the music fit the words perfectly. Kirschner not only had a lovely voice, but he sang as if he understood each word, inside and out. No, better than that, he sang as if he had written the words, was writing them, right then, in front of us. He got so into it that at the end of the song/poem "On Turning Ten," he cried.

Then Carla came on, and did some knock-out duets with Kirschner, with Mike's big band, Carma, backing them up. It was magical. She wore a sleeveless little black
dress and was a total siren, flirtatious and funny, and although she has complained about feeling that she's lost some control of her vocal instrument, I couldn't hear that at all. The notes were true, shaded, lively, lovely, and expressive--she can still flip a song like a hot pancake on a griddle and sing the sizzle out of it. I mean, she swung.

There were lots of ALS jokes, and Mac performed rap as well--it was his birthday, and he was presented with a cake in front of a couple hundred people, not too shabby for a sweet sixteen. It was an emotional evening, as these have all been lately. Every time Carla sings Wonderful World, she melts my New England-bred, Prozac-enhanced stoicism. G was there, wearing a dark suit and a cute black fedora with a red feather in it, and C came with me, and we all sat together, drinking it in.

Wednesday I walked around the lake with my friend Laurie, not once, but twice, (that's seven miles, folks!) talking about the perennial artist's question, "How do I make something approximating a real grown-up living doing this stuff?" It's tantalizing--there's always that carrot on the stick in front of you--this project could pan out, or that one. And the Plan B's and the Plan C's. Like me, Laurie is her own combination of down-to-earth practical and big dreamer--she's figured out a few things that I haven't, and when we put our two heads together we get more wisdom and excitement for this and other topics.

Back home at the ranch, C and I have had some interesting conversations about weight loss, as I recently joined Weight Watchers and then stopped going after two meetings. I'm carrying about twelve or fifteen extra pounds on a five foot nine inch frame--it's not that big a deal, and yet it seems to take a lot of focus to lose it. One thing I have realized from communicating with him about this is that I need to say good-bye to my fat.

Good-bye cuddly protective covering, extra three inches on my tummy, extra oomph on my hips and breasts. I know your intention is to help me survive tough Russian winters and bear healthy children even when food supplies are low. Unfortunately I haven't used you for that latter task, but I do appreciate your durability and life force. Thank you for cushioning my falls, and keeping me warm. It's spring now, and I don't need you, so thanks and good-bye.

Ten women of a certain age--let's say long past high school--in prom dresses, in a black stretch limo, drinking champagne, laughing at the twinkley stars on the ceiling, and the 70's music on the CD player, and at each other. Ten beautiful women, and Carla the most beautiful of all, in her purple dress and flaming hair with not one strand of gray in it, laughing in the back of the limo.

The driver's name was Sam. He was young and handsome and came from Jordan and had no way of knowing the situation. Ten middle-aged women--except for Gina, who, as Molly said, looked younger than springtime and is actually 27, "but I just went through 54 hours of labor which definitely makes me a mature woman, so put that in your juice box and suck on it!" Nursing her new baby daughter Georgia, her husband and Georgia's daddy following patiently behind in their car.

Ten crazy women, goofy with love and grief, getting off at Cafe Gratitude and ordering, "I am Luscious," I am Terrific," "I Am Sensual." Pesto pizza made with sprouts, pad thai with the noodles cut from zucchini shavings, a smoothie with raw cacao and agave nectar. More raucous laughter as we paraded through the restaurant in our finery and heads turned. There were two or three tiaras. There were high heels worn by women who are normally found in sneakers. My borrowed emerald green prom dress with the halter top showed beaucoup decolletage and I looked, well, hot.

We asked Sam to drive us to Treasure Island. The East Bay glittered like a mess of diamonds on one side, San Francisco on the other. We were in-between, suspended between sky and water, landmass and land. It seemed appropriate. More seventies music, and some eighties. Carla wanted to cast something into the ocean. Sam pulled over and we spilled out of the limo. A charter vus full of German tourists was right next to us. They were taking pictures of the beautiful view. We were dancing and laughing and carrying on. Soon they were taking pictures of us.

Carla somehow managed to wriggle through a hole in the fence. Four panicked women piled after her, screaming, "Are you out of your mind?" She wanted to get closer to the waves, so that her offering would not fall on barren rocky ground, but would be borne away by the ocean.

She made it! Four or five women pulled her back under the hole in the railing. Carla was grinning. We took silly pictures. Ten women dancing wildly. A bus full of tourists from Florida pulled up. We are now going to be immortalized in home movies on two continents. "This is what the crazy people of the San Francisco Bay Area look like." Molly and Wendy and a few others ran through the sprinklers on the other side of the road, waving their arms. It was chilly and foggy out but we were warm from dancing and from remembering our crazy times of youth. We put our feet in a circle and photographed our fancy shoes. Piled back in the limo.

More champagne, and saki. Dark chocolate. I spilled champagne on my borrowed emerald green dress. Laughing and talking and singing along with Styx, Boston, The Steve Miller Band. Gina's recent childbirth reminded the other mothers of their own stories. Initiation. Difficult labors, mystical labors, unexpected turns of events. This baby was colicky, that one was quiet and easy and slept through the night right away. How long ago it was. How fast the time went.

Tired feet eased out of high heels. Carla leaned back against Gina's motherly soft shoulder. Sam drove us back to Carla's apartment, where her father greeted us with homemade little photo albums his wife had put together: carla as a child, Carla as a teenager, as a college graduate, as a radiant young mother with baby Mac. We leaned against each other on the couches, on the floor, reluctant to go home. but it was a school night, a work night. We hugged each other and left, exhausted, jubilant, a little teary.

While I was in San Francisco last night, teaching a class in personal essay for Writing Salon, C was cruising around the streets of West Oakland, looking for the father of a kid he's grown close to in Juvenile Hall, a kid who is about to be shipped off to a group home in LA tomorrow.

He had tried calling--repeatedly. The father is a wiry man who talks as if he's just downed twelve lattes, C said, and doesn't answer his phone. C finally got through via the sister. The boy wanted to see his father and say good-bye. For his whole time in the Hall, this kid had been pining for a visit from his dad, who doesn't have a working car, who is a single father of four or five other children and is overwhelmed, who has a job scraping metal against metal, and has constructed a six-point plan to save the world, which he's had privately published via Kinko's.

C listened to all this as he drove the man to the Hall, then waited outside while the father got to go in and say good-bye to his son. C was not allowed in because he's not a direct relative. He doesn't get paid to do this. In fact, he's been reprimanded for caring too much, not spending enough time on his paperwork. But this is the real work, this is where the rubber meets the road. No matter how neglectful or abusive, kids mostly yearn for their parents.

And he's a young-looking small kid. What's going to happen to him down in LA? This kid who's not a fighter, not a criminal mastermind, just an ordinary kid with some bad associations, no mother, low reading skills, and no place to be? C said last night, "Anything could happen. He could pull it together, get his skills up, do well. He could run away. He could end up getting killed or in adult prison. There's no way to know."

These kid's lives are like leaves getting blown along the street. There's no anchor, no ballast. It makes our argument over whether to rent out the in-law right away after our current tenant leaves, or wait a month and repaint and replace the sink seem very petty and unimportant. But after we argued and made up, I went out to my car to drive to class and found a perfect pink rose, stripped of thorns, on the dashboard.

Saturday night we went to see Carla's show at College of Marin, called War and Peacemeal. It was an eclectic mixture of improv, musical theatre, Greek tragedy, spoken word/rap, video, and a bunch of other stuff. Maclen, her fifteen-year-old son, wrote great chunks of the show, memorized every word he wrote, and performed it all with total committment.

I am too close to the drama off-stage to be able to see the drama onstage with a pure vision. In the archetypal hero's journey search for Peace--who is standing right there, embodied in a living statue--I can read Carla's own search for inner peace as she walks through the raging fires of fear and grief. In her including her son so intimately as a collaborator in this process, I can see her teaching him in every way she knows--and being an artist, through art--about that quest for peace, not to give up, and not to forget to look inside, in the simplest, most obvious place, the place we often overlook.

Maclen moved me more than anyone else onstage--his intensity, and also, in his height, his mop of dark curls, and his body language, he reminded me so much of my dead ex-husband Alan. Alan was 23 when I met him, just seven years older than Mac is now, but he retained a boyish quality well into his thirties. Like Mac, and like Carla, and like C, he always threw himself totally into whatever he was doing, balls-out. I am attracted to people like that, full-on, no-holds-barred committed people, even when that committment extracts a difficult energetic price. And I find it impossible not to be moved by Mac, and by his and Carla's connection, so multi-faceted, strong, and vulnerable; mother-son, teacher-student, fellow-artists.

There was also a missing-parent/lost child theme in the piece; there were scenes that took place in Iraq, and a delightful scene of the gods--Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, and Hanuman, playing video games together. Carla being Carla, there were cheeky, outrageous jokes in very bad taste, there was pushing of the envelope, there was beautiful visual poetry anbd a heartbreaking song which she composed and sang (via audiotape) herself, while two of the actors danced a duet.

We were stunned, moved, amused, aroused, disturbed. As she intended. Carla was there, looking beautiful, if a bit tired. Despite all the jokes about having a fatal illness, I still find it impossible to pierce through my shield of denial. She is way too alive to be dying.

Yesterday, was the celebration of our completion of the 24 hour clourse in women's self-defense. We had regular class for four hours, learned some new techniques to deal with extended fights--if we were fighting someone who was on drugs or psychotic, who didn't have a normal pain threshold-- and techniques against oral rape (hint: bite.) Then our loved ones came and watched us go through the line two times, taking turns fighting the mugger on the mat. Marci and Ellen and C all came; all of them cried (although C said he was trying not to, as he feared it would distract me.)

I felt happy and proud and a little anxious. I hoped my loved ones would be alright--it's more difficult to witness this stuff than it is to be in it. I remember that from watching my girlfriend's graduation, long ago. When you are watching, you have all the adrenaline and no place to put it. You just have to sit there while your body is flooded with chemicals, watching your loved one fight.

I feel much more confident about my technique. My last fight especially, I landed my kicks with a lot of power and precision. It only took about five hard strikes to knock the guy out. I ordered the video so I will get to see myself fighting, and I am sure I will see things there that will make me cringe, but that's okay. It's all just learning.

Graduates can take the class over for half price, and there's also a weekend class that deals with multiple assailants and weapons. If my check from MORE comes in time, I will sign up for that. I've already volunteered to be an assistant at the next Basics. They are looking for male instructor/muggers, so if there are any men reading this blog in the Bay Area who would like to volunteer, they should check out the web site at www.impactbayarea.org. (I believe the pay is between 25 and 35 dollars an hour, after you've completed your training, plus 200 volunteer hours.)

I got told several times what a big kid he was.

"And he's only fourteen."

On the maximum security unit at Juvenile Hall. He didn't have any parents or guardians around to sign off on his Individual Educational Plan (IEP) so C asked me if I would act as his educational surrogate and I went. (C could not do it himself as it would have been a conflict of interest.)

When he shambled into the meeting room, I thought, "He's not that big." Maybe six two, something over two hundred pounds. I have a brother who was that big at that age, and grew to be an even larger man. It's hard to be that big as a teenage boy. Men may measure themselves against you, physically, and feel threatened, when you need them to nurture you. Other guys pick fights, because if they can whup you, they look strong. Women may fear you--the combination of teenage testosterone and physical bulk.

The first time we met he barely met my eyes. He seemed to be wincing when he spoke, just monosyllabic grunts as responses to questions. I was referred to as "Miss Luterman," and I let it stand.

This second time, he was more animated. he laughed and joked with his favorite teachers, math and science, who made a point of attending the meeting so they could say good things about him. After the formalities were over, he came to the point. "Got any cookies?"

"After we're done with the meeting," C told him.

We discussed his strengths and goals. He likes cartooning and yoyos. He wants to grow up to be a professional cartoonist and make a story about his life. I thought of Alison Bechdel and Art Spiegelman and R. Crumb. I wonder if he can do it. He's bright. He's quick. And manipulative. While his caseworker was droning on, he took the papers off her desk and read them himself. He frowned at the health report. "Why it say BP here?" What that mean?"

"Blood pressure," C told him. "Your blood pressure was too high."

"Oh," he said, relieved. "I thought it was Bi-polar or something."

He's smarter and quicker than those of us who have never had to survive on the streets could be, and at the same time more naive and ignorant than a child his age with a family would be, because there are so many ordinary experiences he has never had. What would he be like if he had a father who would shoot baskets with him, or a mother who took him to the art museum? His only blood relative can't visit him because of "substantiated allegations of child abuse." I read it in his report. Of course he'd trade a hundred of us well-meaning pink-faced strangers for a glimpse of her.

When the meeting was over, C tossed him a small bag of chocolate chip cookies. he turned to me. "You got anything for me?"

"One per customer," C said. The kid is diabetic--he shouldn't have sweets anyway, but he craves them.

"I wanted to bring you something sugar-free," I said. He wrinkled his nose in disgust.

"Will you be at my next IEP?" he asked me. He is getting released to a group home soon.

"I hope not," I said. "I never want to see you here again." He looked confused. "I mean, I'll be happy to see you again, but I hope you get out and stay out. I hope you do well at your next school." But who will be his guardian, his surrogate, his advocate? Will it be another one-shot deal stranger, like me? Will he ever be able to permanently attach to someone reliable and stable and safe who has his best interests at heart?

Yesterday was the hardest class yet. They introduced choke holds. As soon as I saw the male instructor's elbow going around the female instructor's windpipe and thought "We're going to have to fight to get out of that?" my adrenaline leapt and my heart started racing. It's a good thing to learn, of course (put your hands on either side of the guy's elbow and pull down, taking his weight with you.) But it set the tone for the day: harder, more serious. And I thought we were fighting hard before!

So i fought harder. I landed a great elbow strike into my instructor's solar plexus--he said it would have knocked him out if he weren't wearing his padded suit. I got clear on the physics of the sideways leg kick, how to uncoil the leg using all my thigh muscles and the muscles in my hips and butt for maximum power. There is still--there will always be--an issue with the slowness of my muscles to fire. I am simply not a surgical strike type of mover. if I were a piece of music I would be played legato. I am flowing and continuous, not sharp and staccato. But fighting demands those kinds of abrupt movements so I am learning. Sometimes my body will do them, sometimes it won't.

At least my issue with dropping to the floor, which worried me last week, somehow magically solved itself. When the instructor blew her whistle like a drill seargant, I was on the floor neatly tucked up, foot in position, surprising myself. It made me smile. I would be the one voted least likely to survive five minutes in the military by anyone who knows me, and here I am doing drills! And loving them!

The teachers also invited us to share a new level of emotional vulnerability when we were asked to come up with "custom scripts"--what were we really fighting? What were we most scared of? For some it was a past abusive relationship, or a current one, an ex-over, a husband, a crazy-making job. For some it was the voice in their head that said they would never be good enough. Some of the toughest women revealed the pain behind their armor. I am not a crier, but I cried when I saw the vulnerable girl-children underneath the powerful kicking and striking.

When it was my turn I fought the fear of my loved ones dying. That is my worst fear. Because I have low blood pressure and take lots of naps, I fear I will lumber along until age 99 while all my nearest and dearest drop dead around me. I don't want to live in this world without the presence of those I love most, and although I believe that the spirit world is also real, and the dead are not really gone from us, I prefer my loved ones clothed in flesh and blood where I can hug them, smell them, talk to them, hold their hands.

I don't know how you fight that one. But when i came home, once again there was a hot bath drawn for me. I poured in a little lavendar oil and sank in and babbled about all this to C who sat on the floor next to the tub and loofah-ed my back. Then dinner and a funny movie. I was tired enough to sleep like the dead, but I couldn't sleep. There was still too much adrenaline going through my system. And today I could hardly move. My elbow hurt, my legs hurt, my hips. I took some aspirin and took a long nap instead of showing up at Wing It! practice. This is deep work.

Last night we went to a benefit for No Nude Men Theatre Company, organized by Stuart Bousel and friends. Three new plays were read; one of them was my Paris Hilton/Marie Antoinette play which I'm currently calling "A Night in Jail." (Lame title, I know.)

The reading went well. Big big laughs from the very cheerful and receptive audience, despite a squeaky fan and not enough chairs. Excellent readings by the cast. Stuart is a man of many gifts--he's a great playwright himself, a wonderful director, an actor, and a producer, and he surrounds himself with mega-talented people of all ages. I am so impressed by the community of folks around No Nude Men Theatre--they all have to have day jobs, as NNM doesn't bring in much revenue, but they are completely professional, dedicated and passionate when it comes to their craft.

I was more than pleased with how the play went over, although as usual, being me, I heard some places I wanted to tweak. I don't want the play just to be making fun of Paris Hilton and her ilk, all the spoiled, self-destructive celebrity brats who are melting down before our eyes...that's like shooting fish in a barrel, it's too easy.

I do want to look a little deeper at the culture of celebrity vs. the culture of ordinary people, issues of class, money, sense of importance, entitlement, self-worth. And history. I wonder how people of the future (if there are any) will look back at us in our historical moment now, and the crap we are obsessed with--is it any better or worse, more or less foolish than the things people have historically been obsessed with--witchcraft, royalty, the earth is flat, the end is near--through the ages. Have people always been dumb and wise, are we getting dumber or wiser these days, or perhaps both. Maybe we are getting dumber and wiser at the same time.

Okay, now I have to go back to cleaning out my closet so we can flea-bomb our room. Dede seems to be licking herself less, which is a hopeful sign, maybe the flea meds are working.

I'm sitting here with a box of tissues at my elbows, sucking on a Riccola lozenge. Yes, April is the cruellest month. It's the month when I teach twenty classes a week, which is about ten too many, but makes up for other times in the year when no money at all is coming in. It's the month when the weather is a muggy ninety degrees last Sunday, and then a crisp 55 yesterday. It's the month when our house looks like a tornado hit it, because I have piles of file folders everywhere--and there's often a frantic scramble for the perfect one I need before I go off to teach more classes.

Today, in second grade, a learning-disabled boy who can't write at all, and spent most of the period sitting with his hooded oversized sweatshirt pulled over his head so that he looked like a brown tree stump with the word "GAP" written across him, suddenly announced that he wanted to share like the other kids. He got up in front of the class and said, "I want to be your friend until pigs fly/until the clouds turn into mashmallows/until the end of time." Then he sat down. The other kids applauded.

I have to note here that C had to drag me out of bed this morning, by my ankles--parents reading this blog may be reminded of similar scenes with teenagers. He then made me coffee and breakfast--a couple of turkey meatballs and some soycatash. I got to work ten minutes early despite having to fight the urge to take little mini-naps at the red lights. My schedule is not more challenging than most people, but my body doesn't do well with all this running around.

Bad news from the vet today--Dede seems to havre arthritis. She's been limping more and more, licking her shoulder, and yowling piteously. She's in some pain--how much, we can't know.

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p.s.: Later, after teaching my Writing Salon class tonight, (great class! I'm excited! And exhausted.) I sped home over the bridge to find C knee-deep in cleaning supplies, mopping and vacuuming. Turns out Dede has fleas. As soon as he told me, I bagan to feel itchy. Anyway, this could explain the licking and biting at herself, and the piteous yowling. He went and got $100.00 worth of flea medicine at the vet, and has been fumigating our bed and the whole house. Life in the shtetl...

Today was our second women's self-defence class. It was sweltering hot--"Bikram fighting," one of the other women called it. The other women are becoming familiar to me, not only through their faces and the bits of their stories they share, but also, more intimately, their fighting styles, the strength and quality of the way they shout "no!" the determination with which they meet the attacker.

One woman has a shout that could cut steel. It's so piercing that if she ever is mugged, all she will have to do is yell and the guy will flee, clapping his hands over his ears. Other women's voices come from deep in their bellies. Some are caught in their throats. Some of them are working their way up from a ladylike whisper.

As in the last class, I fought hard; I was passionate, I was determined. I am strong. But my positioning sucks. Turns out there is a yoga to fighting. And just as in real yoga, I am somewhat coordination-challenged. A well-placed kick or blow can knock a guy out. Sloppy technique and the same kick results in a torqued knee for the kicker, or worse.

Today we had to practice dropping to the mat quickly, then rolling on our side and into kicking position. Quickly, that's the key word. I tried to drop and almost broke my own toes in the process. Somehow my feet tangled up under me. By the time I had gotten myself into position, my attacker could have run around the block and gotten a latte, and then jogged back to see how I was doing.

This week I resolve to practice positioning myself, dropping to the floor from each side, over and over and over if that's what it takes. Our instructor can droip like a stone in five seconds flat: whump! Her leg is up and she's ready to strike like a rattlesnake. I want to be able to do that.

The class is six hours an afternoon, for four afternoons. Twenty-four hours total. I'm feeling like I need a hundred hours to get this knowledge into my body. I plan to take this class again, if that's what the teacher recommends, or to move up to the next level. This is a challenge, and I'm loving it, much more than I would have thought., I was the anti-jock of all time as a young person, skipping gym, making fun of athletes. Now I'm working hard to develop a semblance of the reflexes I might have developed back then. And I appreciate them more.

Scuttlebutt in the teacher's room Wednesday: there is a new insult in the third grade. Are you ready? It's "butt-cheese." No adult is exactly sure what it means but it must be something very bad, because the boy who came up with it (after being provoked by another kid) promptly burst into pre-emptive tears because he feared retribution for having uttered such an obscene oath.

I think it ranks up there with Shakespeare's "lily-livered fool."

Also, I am sad to report that the new epithet has taken root and flourished in our household, bringing our relationship down to new, previously unexplored lows of immaturity. C and I are now calling each other "Butt-cheese," over every little thing.

"Who's the butt-cheese that left the half 'n' half out on the counter?"

"It was you, Butt-cheese-head!" Etc. Things can only get worse from here.

I learn so many new things at the elementary school. For instance "heelies": those are the little roller-skate heels embedded in really cool sneakers. And D.S.'s: it's some kind of video game. Even little immigrant children, fresh off the plane from Afghanistan, know that one. And I get to be present at the birth of great lines of poetry in the first grade, like today, when I kid said, "I am a person skateboarding on the rainbow."

But this takes the cake. Butt-cheese. You read it here first.