Birds are scary

I think I might be a little afraid of birds.

It's a new development, really, since I've never really thought about it before last night, when I was on a search for a little carribeener-type thing for Donnie and I really had no idea where to get it. So I went to this hobby store in our weird little Chapel Hill mall and the boy said they didn't have any but that I should go try a pet store; he uses one on the cage for his macaw, and he was pretty sure I could find it there. I was skeptical.

But it turns out that we have a pet store called Dubey's Pet World right in the mall, which perplexes me for a few reasons: old-school malls like this one don't actually have doors, just those grates like a roller shade, but of course they're only lowered at closing. Also, Dubey's has a couple of large tropical birds literally inches from the wide opening where a door should be protecting shoppers from sudden movements.

Last night, I was the kind of jerky shopper that shows up at 8:50 looking for a relatively obscure item. As I browsed the wall of bird items, I noticed a young East Indian couple looking intently at every animal in the place - first at the brightly colored parrot (I'm assuming, since I don't really know how to distinguish it from a macaw), then in the way-too-small glass room filled with tanks of reptiles and amphibians, then into the little glass cat room, where the woman let out a skinny white cat that rubbed all over her legs. Since the man seemed terribly interested in the big red bird, I thought he was the voice of the loud "goodbye" that I was hearing over and over. I thought he was trying to get the bird to repeat him, which seemed pretty irritating, not to mention embarrassing for him. But then I discovered it was, in fact, the bird, and eventually he stopped saying the word and began a slow crescendo of intense squawking, which his counterparts in the store - also just sitting on a branch out there in the open - quickly began mimicking.

Meanwhile, the nice helpful boy working there was digging through a fish bowl he had behind the counter that was filled with random things like opened cat toys and dirty leashes, most of which didn't look saleable to me, along with the occasional pen and paperclip. But at the bottom, he found 2 fasteners for me, so he started to ring me up and all of a sudden I realized I couldn't even hear what he was saying over the din of the squawking. It was ridiculously loud and of the pitch that breaks windows in movies. And I said something like, "Doesn't that make you insane?" He told me that they do this at closing every night. "How do they know what time it is?" I asked. He shrugged.

So I left, but there was a girl trying in vain to sweep off a rug that was underneath a pale yellow squawking bird, and she just stood in the way so I had to get way too close to it. I was pretty nervous, and I realized I was pretty nervous the whole time in the store.

I guess it means I'm scared. And it's not just of the big ones, either. We had this little parakeet named Jordie who would come out of his cage occasionally when some brave person would dare tempt the pecking, and I would generally want to run away from the room he was in. I nearly went crazy if he started to flap around and go up to the ceiling. Birds just seem so unpredictable, like are they going to come land on my head or try and peck my face? It's probably a pretty slim chance, but I prefer them in cages or in trees, high above my head.

Maybe it's more accurate to say that birds make me very uneasy, since I don't have the same kind of psychological and physical reaction as when a mouse or a rat even thinks about being near me. My toes curl up and I can't really breathe. That is what I call fear, and it sometimes causes me to scream loudly in small spaces when everyone else can calmly say, "Someone get a mouse trap." Give me a squawking parrot over that any day.

Thank God for your dirty dishes; at least you have food

In conversation, my friend Abby is all about transition. If someone is talking about, say, the most recent episode of Young and the Restless and how Chris blacked out the other night and may have killed Isabella, Abby might say, "Speaking of forgetting things, the other morning I woke up and realized that I forgot to shut the window of my car all the way so it filled up with water and now it smells like rotten upholstery." Not that Abby ever forgets anything like that; the point is, she can make a transition statement out of anything. (And I may be projecting a little there, since I'm bitter that my car smells like rotten upholstery at the moment.) It's a pretty endearing trait, even if sometimes the transitions are pretty convoluted. So, in honor of Abby, who wasn't at church today because she has left us for greener pastures, as it were, I will attempt to connect the random thoughts in my head in Abby-style.

Speaking of church, the title is from the backlit announcement board outside the Orange Chapel United Methodist Church up the road. Heh.

Speaking of orange and fruit-flavored things, I watched the guy named Steve sitting next to me on the plane last week consume eight pieces of Juicy Fruit in a half an hour, as he told me stories of his brief backup singing career with Stevie Wonder (cut short when Stevie caught him kissing his assistant, also Stevie's girlfriend, it turned out) and his only trip to Utah, during which the most memorable event was an extremely bloody hockey game. He folded them all into little packets before chewing, and he didn't seem to feel at all embarrassed that he was literally eating all that gum. Here's a tip, Steve: try JuJuBe's next time.

Speaking of eating bizarre things, tonight some people from church made dinner and served it to the residents at the Ronald McDonald House in Durham. The girl who orchestrated the event decided that meatloaf was a good idea, and so we all made these rather perverse-looking meatloaves (which, by the way, is a terrible word) and laid them out on this counter to be consumed by people with already too much sadness in their lives. However, one strangish girl, bless her heart, decided to contribute a tuna loaf to the party, so out of a teflon loaf pan plopped this dark brownish gray, burned-yet-soggy pile of what looked like cat food on its worst day. It was horrible. One brave guy ate a piece and came back in the kitchen and said, "Wait, wasn't that salmon? It tasted like salmon." Heaven help his intestines tonight.

Speaking of horrible things, I love the South and all, but with summer come cicadas, and their mating call back and forth is the rhythmic deafening sound of a power line being dragged across the epiglotus of a snoring man. Aside from being hideously ugly and having a revolting life cycle, the noise makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out.

Speaking of needing your eyeballs intact, I watched The Restaurant tonight. It's pretty compelling stuff. It's been a long time since my last celebrity crush (hi, Mulder), and boy howdy, they're milking this beautiful mug for all it's worth. And it's worth a lot.

Speaking of beautiful people, I am so tired. Good night.

Something is seriously wrong with me

Right now I am sitting in my office. Though it is well past 5 pm, I am sitting here still because I am afraid to go home. The reason is not anything horrifying like a mouse infestation (I'm looking at you, Sandy and Park City apartments) or because it's even that messy and I'm avoiding it (owing to approximately 7 straight hours of cleaning the other Saturday).

The real reason is that in the past month I have become something of a disaster-prone girl. It's very bizarre, and I have caused some pretty tragic and expensive destruction at my house lately. I really can't figure it out. When I was complaining about it over chicken tenderloin salad at Saladelia the other night, Heather said, "You're ovulating." Which had been true, but surely wasn't true this morning and on Friday night. There's this one episode of Felicity where Megan puts a clumsy spell on Felicity and I just watched it; maybe I've been vicariously cursed.

Story #1: Dishes broken or maimed

1. Big chip on the side 70s glass cake plate given to me by Steph, given to her by some cheapo at her wedding, as it still had a Kmart old school price tag on it in, back when the K was all slanty and big and back in the day when retailers weren't yet familiar with the bar code.

2. Fabulous square stoneware platter, large chip off side trying to shove it into the cupboard right into, it turned out, the lid to the cake plate. Chip glued on with super glue; looks very bad and is obviously poorly repaired.

3. One of set of 4 pasta bowls with gourds painted on them jumps out of my hand unloading the dishwasher onto the wood floor; shatters into a lot of pieces.

4. Ugly (but sweet) pottery mug given to me by Robbie for Christmas, full of pens, knocked off the counter to the floor while trying to turn up the stereo. Shatters, sends pens flying.

5. One of brand new antique set of 5 milk glass goblets falls out of the shopping bag onto the cement as I'm taking it out of the car; stem breaks off cleanly so I can glue it back together, but glass has a large rough chip which is unfixable.

Story #2: The 2 days of destruction

Sunday morning, 7:55 am, just out of the shower, putting on my robe, flush the toilet, feel my robe hit something on the counter on its way up the arm, wonder if I've maybe knocked something in but decide it's too preposterous. But then the toilet is acting strangely and I look all around the house, in vain, for the small squatty bottle of Sea Spray for the hair. It has been flushed. So I avoid the toilet and vow to call Chris Vickers, the plumber, and negotiate in my head how much I'm willing to pay for him to come and remove the bottle from the curvy part of the porcelain. I decide it's worth $200 at the most so I don't have to tell Murch. I am 20 minutes late for church because I get the bright idea that plunging like mad will make the thing pop out. No luck. Murch comes up later, sticks his hand up the toilet's hole for 5 minutes, and removes the bottle. I'm pretty sure I don't want it, but he doesn't throw it away, so instead it sits on the sink, and Monday morning I decide that since there is no apparent poo residue, it maybe could be used after a good sterilization. It is, after all, a brand new bottle, and it's been discontinued. So I soak it in a sink of blazing hot water and go to get dressed.

Monday, 9:15 am, look at horrible chipping toenails and dash in the bathroom for a quick coat of Vino. It's in the medicine cabinet, a brand new bottle, purchased only weeks ago to replace the one that shattered on the tile floor and dyed the grout around the toilet pink. It was $13. It's my favorite color. Open the medicine cabinet, take out the bottle, watch it jump from my hand, hit the faucet, top breaks off, bottle pours on the white counter, brush does a spinning leap and splatter paints the purple wall, my $9 Wal-Mart jeans, the white bathmat, the tile, and lands choking out 2 more splatters for the brazilian cherry. In my haste to get out the remover, the bottle dumps into the sink, filled with scalding water for the Sea Spray, and dumps in a strange and surreal pattern, like blood. Cleanup is successful on counter and sink, but not on the wall, the rug, or the jeans.

Shall I go to bed and never get out again? This place needs protecting.

But you're not really here - it's just the radio

I'm driving home from Richmond tonight and it's just long enough a road trip that I've gone through all the regular CDs and grown tired of Tori. It's at the point where I start to filter through the stack and find something random and underneath Best of Morrisey I find the mix of Summer 2000. It's schizophrenic and begins with songs I discovered while addicted to Dawson's Creek Season 3: The Joey & Pacey Years, and ends with The Beastie Boys, Billy Joel, and Janet Jackson. So I'm skipping around and stop on Sinead O'Connor's "Jealous" and I don't really even like Sinead and her politics back in the day made me tired but for some reason this tune was the kind that required repeat and I remember driving across the country with Dad and listening to this CD over and over as many times as I could without him noticing, and then when he would go inside to check in the motel for the night I would sit in the Honda and listen to this song - track 12 - as many times as it took for him to come back to the car. And tonight when it starts in the same car I remember the time in Illinois when the air was heavy, heavy with the summer heat of the Mississippi and there were hundreds of crickets and the windows were sweating and tonight I almost can't breathe, remembering.

Because today it's almost three years and a whole lot of living later, but I can still taste and smell and feel how I was so scared to be running away from whatever and was full of surface confidence but not much else. And now it's been three years of just me and complicated and dynamic friendships with girls that aren't a good substitute for where we really want to belong. And it doesn't always feel quite so much like desperation, but tonight, I remember that track 17 is "Round Here," and the first minute can break my heart and so I skip backwards over and over again while eating popcorn as fast as I can to stop myself from crying.

It's not even like I'm really sad, it's just that these songs make me feel like I'm in a movie and it's time to cry and reveal what's really in the heroine's head, down deep. It's like one hour and 20 minutes in and we're ready for the truth to come out and she can admit she loves the boy. It's like how when I'm driving in my car with someone and there's an awkward pause in the conversation, but the radio's on mute, I start to whistle or hum this one bar from some movie - I can't remember which one, even - and I can practically see John Williams raise his baton and start the trumpets and the violins.

I love that about songs. I love how every time I hear "When It's Love" it's the Van Halen summer and I'm in the Buick with the windows down driving down Menlo Avenue to take Erin home and speed back to make curfew.

If this all really were a movie, I like to think George Winston scored it in the form of "The Venice Dreamer, Part II," and around about minute 3:15 it all starts to make sense.

Is it Arbor Day yet?

J'irai par la forêt
J'irai par la montagne
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps
-Victor Hugo

As one who hasn't had much affinity for naturalist writing, I find it confusing and maybe even mawkish of me to write about nature all the time. I can think of a few possible reasons why it always seems relevant to talk about nature. They're not very compelling, but of my family and old friends, I am the only one who has ever lived in this region, and I haven't even been here very long, so certain unique features really never cease to surprise and amaze me.

And though it's hot and humid and I kind of forgot how horrible that is, the fireflies came out, and they are easily second place in my book of nature's greatness (the redbud is still number one). I'm also wont to tell a lot of South-as-myth stories; I suspect because I am still an outsider, my earnest wishes and supposed invitations to the contrary.

All this disclaimer aside, my nature story isn't all that happy today. There are these 2 old ladies - sisters, maybe widows, maybe spinsters - who live nearby and, like many old school Southerners in my neighborhood (such as it is), own lots and lots of land, presumably old farm land that's been in the family for at least a few generations. We live off Crawford Dairy Road, and nearly everyone within a few miles is a Crawford who helps out on the small dairy, works at the body shop, or is a plumber. The rest are Sturdivants, and they own various nearby car repair, towing, and gas station establishments.

Despite Donnie's best efforts, the Heatherly sisters own a whole lot of both sides of Windsor Road, where we live (named after the late husband of our cranky neighbor, Joyce Windsor, who refuses to wave when she passes on the bumpy gravel road in her blue Tercel. Imagine!) at the crux of a sharp curve. About six months ago, they offered to sell him the land, but either thought he was stupid or a sucker, and asked something like three times the tax value. He refused, of course, and plotted ways to make them come down, none of which came to any kind of deal.

The economy being what it is, the Heatherly sisters apparently needed some cash, so about a month ago, large, dirty tractor trailers plopped themselves just around the bend of Windsor, right at our line of vision. And a few days after their definitive arrival, they began to clear-cut the land. Clear-cutting, it turns out, has some tax advantage. On a regular basis, we get unsolicited letters from logging companies wanting to buy our timber, and when I first read one, I thought they came and chopped down a few of the biggest trees on the property, Paul Bunyan-style. It's not really the case. In fact, you have to squint to even locate the men operating the horrible gargantuan dozer that plows the trees down, breaking them just above the ground so they're left with a jagged stump. It's a very messy operation for both the land and the trees, and produces a whole lot of muddy crevices and rejected branches and debris. In the end, Windsor was no longer overgrown forest where a whole lot of deer, rabbits, and even a fox lived, but now looks something like the aftermath of an explosion from beneath that uprooted what remained and left it to die, brand new leaves now brown and crispy.

The truth is, I can't call myself a strict environmentalist or an activist of any kind, because my political views in general aren't cemented on either the right or the left. I tend to be fairly easily swayed in my head by a persuasive argument for or against most issues that don't oppose my core value system; I tend to hear both sides out and then behave essentially status quo. I'm not necessarily proud of this relatively ambivalent state of being, but it's honest from where I sit.

Because of that, I don't feel entitled to be nauseated every time I turn down Windsor Road. But I am. I feel like these trees screamed, cried, and shuddered to a painful death and I had to sit by and witness it with my ears covered and my eyes squeezed shut.

And yet, I am sitting on 1200 square feet of brazilian cherry flooring, in a chair with wooden legs and arms, at a desk made entirely of birch. My (dare I say) outrage extends all the way down Windsor Road and generally subsides about the time I pass the Crawford Plumbing sign, which is why it feels presumptuous of my heart to hurt about these trees. At least 5 people in the last week have said something like, "In twenty years you'll never know it happened," and all I can think is that in about twenty weeks I'll probably have forgotten and that I'm the worst kind of pseudo-reactionary - I care when it feels passionate and painful, and then . . . well, it's back to "what can you do?" and moving on.

I feel kind of dramatic about it, I guess, in part because I've been listening to a lot of opera lately, and it tends to make me swoon and get all caught up in the tragedies of characters like Desdemona and Orpheus. That sentiment personifies those trees a great deal more than even Mother Nature intends for them, since a new version of themselves - especially in the South - can be achieved pretty quickly. The tax break, according to a bona fide Forestry Service employee friend of Ashley's, is because clear-cutting provides something akin to crop rotation, and I guess they'll even help you plant it back.

In my more reasonable moments, I remain somewhere in the middle of people who run slaughterhouses and PETA - a little less frantic, but not a very good activist. I tend to think that moderate and responsible usage of these kinds of renewable resources is a tolerable way to be. But I like to believe that there are more careful ways to do the harvesting and that I'm at least entitled to feel occasionally kind of sad.

The perfect ring

If you're my boyfriend, see below. The band.

Who is cuter than this delicious nephew?

He even has a halo.

Welcome to the world, baby J.

Take these sunken eyes and learn to see

"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." - Harper Lee

I was delighted the other day to discover that the squawking outside my bedroom window was a mockingbird. He (she?) sings this four-bar tune in four keys over and over, and I had begun to be the teensiest bit annoyed by the troubling song until it was a mockingbird. Then I fell in love.

I believe my little bird friend's song had a symbolic message for me, not just because his species is the central literary allusion in a book I adore, but because he belongs mostly to the South, and bizarre though it may be, I feel like he may have officially let me in the South for good.

Back in the day when I discovered it's most cool to hate where you live, I fell in love with the South -- or the movie and literary idea of it, at least. Most of my evidence came from Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes, and especially To Kill a Mockingbird, and a girl trying to rent my friend an apartment in Provo, who said one of its better features was the hallway's "deep drawers" in the deepest Alabama twang. This was all very mythical and romantic, but then that's something about the South I love too: amid its sordid and proud history, there is a deep mythical presence which I've described religiously before, but it also has a whole lot to do with family and manners and land and fried food.

Here people actually remove their hats when someone mentions the name of Robert E. Lee and they call people Miss or Mr. [first name] and thank you, ma'am and sir, and if you don't say it right, you ain't got no manners or background and you might as well be a Yankee. The South defines itself by its regionalness, by the weather, and by the way you treat your neighbors, sometimes with a wary kindness that may very well be covering up a litany of gossip to come, but an absolute duty to help out nonetheless. That's all very intriguing to me, and I think my secret wish to also be a New Yorker or live in San Francisco has made me look at the whole Southern package from an outsider's clinical, bemused place. Like, aren't they charming at the Winn Dixie eating pink hot dogs and fried vegetables.

But I like to think it's possible that Mr. Mockingbird let me in. I'm not sure it's very realistic, given my propensity for loving incorporated towns and calling the states of my past by their rightful names rather than the reductive "out west." Also, I'm just not born and bred, though I like to imagine you can retain your Western or Yankee roots (the former is probably more possible) and be a Southerner by adoption. That's what I thought I heard the mockingbird say, though he could have been singing out of pity for my wandering self.

Middlewoman

At the risk of proving how I am the girl who loves television way too much, I have a new, tv-based theory of my life, though I'm pretty sure that the minute one starts noticing parallels between one's life and the mind-numbing drivel that is Dawson's Creek . . . well, the implications are just too embarrassing to consider.

Disclaimer thusly spoken, humor me for a minute while I give a little backstory. The eponymous Dawson who doesn't own the creek but really thinks he does (along with any person or thing that has ever set an oar into it) is seventeen when my version of the story begins, since I only got sucked in around the middle of Season 3. Romantic tensions had begun to build at Capeside, Mass [really Wilmington, NC] High, when Dawson, in a fit of trademark maddening possessiveness, asked his "best friend" Pacey to "look after" his other "best friend/soulmate" [insert vomiting noises here] Joey when he had an existential crisis and spurned her romantic advances. I repeat, they were not together. It's important to the story. No, really. Quit rolling your eyes and let me continue.

So. Pacey's attempts to do whatever King Dawson asked turned him into something of a puppy, and I'm told that most of Season 3 has Pacey and Joey engaged in non-witty verbal banter until, surprise, he falls in love with her and kisses her one day. (I should insert here that Joey, being a made-up character and all, is possessed of some kind of superpowerful IT over boys. They all canNOT live without her crooked smile.) She spends 2 episodes pretending she doesn't want him and then blah-de-blah they end up together (which, by the way, I loved). But then they break up, because Dawson gets outrageously pissed and spouts off this doo-doo about how she's betrayed their soulmate-ness and suddenly wants Joey now that she's taken.

Joey spends the next 4 episodes trying to be Dawson's friend like she used to be while essentially dumping Pacey and pretending like Dawson's approval is more important than hers and Pacey's attraction. Never mind that Pacey's character is infinitely more interesting and kind and thoughtful and darling, and that the "writers" created as their hero the most self-satisfying jackass on television, but Joey proves to be pretty spineless in the whole scenario, allying herself to the boy who screams the loudest and treats her the worst. Luckily for us all, she chooses Pacey in the season finale and they last for a year, their demise no doubt attributable to dagger eyes and infuriating pouts from Dawson at every opportunity. Gah, I get annoyed just thinking about it.

In last night's episode, 3 years later, Joey tries to broker peace between the two of them by doing the whole clichéd send them both a note to meet her and then not show up. Yeah, so basically, their conversation went like this:
[subtext/]
D: I can never forgive you because I am always right.
P: I am a loser, and therefore can't expect forgiveness, but Joey wants it.
D: Yeah, well, who cares what she wants as long as she's mine.
P: Yeah, she'll never be mine again because I'm such a loser but for some reason I really really want to be your friend so here's a [token which would take too long to explain, and would also be boring]. [/subtext]

Then Pacey really says:
The only thing we have in common anymore is that we're in love with the same woman. It's funny, because all she ever wanted was for us to be friends.

[Okay, exposition over. The fact that I just did that makes me very nervous, but I'll just go on and pretend like analyzing asinine television characters is what normal, well-adjusted people do.]

But today I had my own little Joey moment, when one general contractor and one facilities manager went head to head in what probably ought to have been a literal boxing match, and stuck me right in the middle with their rantings. Neither is as spoiled as Dawson or as darling and self-deprecating as Pacey, but one very much has a sense of entitlement attributable to being tall, in charge, and right (at least about building things) most of the time. The other is ex-military, precise, sensitive and thoughtful, and sometimes woefully misguided -- though earnest -- in his interpretations of others' intentions.

So this morning, in a battle of wills over something pretty insignficant, the two of them were so mad that they both said it was the angriest they'd been in a long time. Some time passed and they got over it, but I sat here in the middle pulling a Joey: trying -- somewhat desperately, I'm afraid -- to make it right, to explain away the various troubles that caused it. Neither of them needed that, and though they were talking to me, they didn't even really need much of a response. I could have merely served as a sounding board with an occasional "uh-huh" thrown in for good measure.

But I can never leave it at that. I have to get all in their faces and go back and forth and try and fix their relationship. The truth is that the work will get done one way or another, the hellfire will melt away, and the tertiary characters in the drama will soon forget it ever happened, if they haven't already. And yet, I am still compelled to do anything, including getting irrationally mad, to make sure that at the end of the fight, they are still friends.

Of course, one of the fundamental differences between our stories (besides, you know, the reality thing) is that Pacey and Dawson were fighting over Joey, and maybe that makes the parallel a bit of a stretch. That said, residual anger is never really about the thing, but more about your inability to let your own grudge go. That holding onto old stuff makes you bitter and despicable never seemed to be a problem for the Dawson's Creek writers; they seemed to let Dawson's years of bitterness be justified by what seemed like the ultimate betrayal. (When they were 17. Please.) I am left to wonder: is anything -- least of all petty male posturing -- worth that kind of inner turmoil?

Sigh. One man and I had a big fighting match in my office that resulted in me crying, partly because I was just that mad, and partly because I was pretty ashamed for letting myself -- even asking to -- be so involved in what really wasn't my drama to begin with. It never really is; I just let myself be put there because "blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit the earth." If only my motivations were that pure. No, that's not the real reason I do it; it's much more primal and instinctive than that. Until I figure out how to stop and just let the people who are in the fight hash it out themselves, even if they do dump it on my head, you'll find me chillin in the middle, though I'm pretty sure if I had my very own script writers I could get it resolved by the series finale.

Prosaic

There's this road near my house that's called Dairyland because, natch, there's this terrific dairy on it. (Be careful of the mooing.) I think it's kind of a charming name for a road, though it causes me troubles each time I come here to write some more drivel from my head; invariably, I type in dairyland and end up nowhere I want to be.

I was thinking about that dairy and their really terrific almond ice cream and it led me to think about my little vanity project today, thinking for sure I should find something to say about something, since it's been awhile, and, frankly, that last entry was pretty boring. There's not much mileage one can get out of boring discussion of a hideously boring project. But I find that I'm distressed when the things in my head I consider writing about have no logical connection: Diet Coke, crying, the war, cold sores, Alzheimer's, flies, weddings, acne, a nice person allegedly getting back together with her not-nice spouse, whom she wisely left 5 months ago. So much of my life lately has been consumed by the business of getting things done, that I don't have time to put those strings together.

The busyness, it turns out, has also turned me into a nightmare co-worker and friend, as I learned this morning. Murch told me today, Friday, that it was the first day I had even been tolerable to be around, an accusation which, though true, made me bawl a little in my office this morning. He said he and Clark decided I need somebody who will "nurture and take care of me," a notion I scoffed at, but . . . well, there's some truth. If said mythical person existed, maybe I'd be sitting here at 3:13 on a Friday afternoon learning how to use Illustrator instead of wishing I hadn't gotten out of bed this morning and faced these men and their construction problems.

Then again, maybe thinking about flies and dairies isn't even poignant in the least, though they are, at least, connected.

Are you my mother?

I was thinking today about my 6th grade history day project. I had moved to Fresno only recently, and my friendship situation was tenuous at best. For some reason, I wasn't partners with my, uh, best friend Brooke (we were really only best friends about 20% of the time that year), and instead did some sort of a tri-fold butcher paper-covered wooden board with Jennifer Shapiro, half of Jennifer and Julie, twins with unruly curly hair and the same sturdy walk.

Our teacher, the cranky and short Mrs. Folcarelli, had two daughters in college, and one came to visit the classroom one day. This happened to be the day that Jennifer and I were trying to think of a topic for some deep, twelve-year old analysis, and were probably considering specific things like "The Civil War: Why did it happen?" and "Slavery: It was bad." Apparently the history day board required a colon in the title, the better to draw in the interested onlooker (read: parent) who would wander into the cafeteria and learn something deep and profound about . . . wait for it . . . history. Maybe of humankind, maybe of America - who really knows. If it was in the past, it was fair game.

So Mrs. Folcarelli's daughter suggested something entirely accessible called Turner's Thesis, a concept which I had to just now Google to even remember what it was about, though I am certain that it reappeared later through the leathered, tobacco-stained lips of Mr. Rumley and was probably an important question on the AP US History test I managed to pass. The thesis, it turns out, is an essay entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," written in 1893 by Frederick Jackson Turner. It is essentially his impassioned claim that Westward expansion was the way for the colonists to truly escape leftover Europeanism, and was the vehicle for the new Americans to be truly free. The theory wasn't altogether well-received at the time and probably has many well-documented inherent flaws I'm not now inclined to analyze.

But when I was twelve, I thought it bold and grownup to title our project "Turner's Thesis: What Went Wrong?" We spent the better part of our time together creating die-cut letters (which, it turned out, didn't fit right on the board and required some creative and hideous diagonal positioning), and, I hate to say it, splatter-painting the whole thing, the worst Pollock impression 1988 saw, blue on the yellow letters, yellow on the blue background. I'm quite sure we had no idea what went wrong or right in that theory; I'm quite sure our research was limited to the encyclopedia and the regurgitation of American Civ 101 Mrs. Folcarelli's daughter dumped on us that day. We didn't win the competition part of History Day, needless to say, and I suspect Mrs. Folcarelli gave us a passing grade only because of pride in her daughter's vast influence.

I tell this long story because I was thinking, gratefully, about how the illusion of authority gets demystified when you become a grownup. I remember how I felt that day, "discussing" such a presumably important and innovative historical topic with this smart college girl, when in fact she probably had about the same amount knowledge of Turner's blasted thesis than I just learned in my 5-minute Google search. I might be inventing history with my cynicism, but I am quite certain a decently experienced student wouldn't inflict that kind of arrogance on 12-year old kids looking for something that looks good with splatter paint on a board. She was, for us, the authority on Turner, and however unoriginal or recycled or incomplete her speech, we believed her to be right.

I certainly don't have issues with authority per se, just the illusory kind, which presumes its subjects dumber and more lowly. I am quite certain we all behave, on occasion, as if we were the supreme possessor of knowledge, but it doesn't mean we're right. And sometimes, despite our knowing this full well, we still get tricked by the fake smarties.

My friend Ashley recently had her résumé redone by a supposed authority - the VP of HR at the now-defunct company for which she worked briefly. It turns out that a terrifically kind man at another company (which should really hire her right now) informed her, in a nice way, that the résumé was a piece of crap, and nobody would hire her based on its rambling, text-heavy mess. These people, in their attempts to be generous and smart, weren't actually that smart after all.

Then again, maybe she should have done a little splatter painting on the thing. I hear it hides those mistakes pretty well.

Bienvenue au printemps

[In which she attempts anything but the war.]

Snow on the mountain--water in
the valley; you beat a mule and
it works hard, Honey.

-William Stafford, from "A Song in the Manner of Flannery O'Connor"

It's no secret that I am always in love with flowers. But I have a special kind of love for the flowering trees that appear, kind of cat-like, when I least expect them. I swear the blooming of this year is the only thing keeping my head from exploding.

So I love to see the flowering pear, with its rotund body coming to a graceful point. It's surely the boldest of the flowerers, coming out with its little puffs of white accompanied by just a smattering of green, smelling to high heaven at first like spring and then vaguely like rotting compost. You want to love it the best, but the green creeps in too quickly, and looks mottled partway through its vanity.

It signals in the forsythia, the most perfect of the ugly bushes: brown unruly sticks for most of the year, boring and oddly-shaped with foliage the rest. But for a lovely few weeks in March, it is covered with bright yellow bursts of seduction, no leaves in sight, screaming to be the loudest of the first bloomers. It sings to me like a siren; I am always lulled into post-winter happiness.

But I love no one so much as the redbud, a tree whose acquaintance I did not have the pleasure of making until my fortuitous move to Chapel Hill, whose planners lined the main of only two roads that connect anything to anything with them. Each day they woo me with their emerging flowers, not red at all, but a rich and understated shade of purple. Their branches aren't pudgy, like the pear's, but long and pointy like a supermodel's fingers holding a delicate glass of crystal; they just barely touch the air. They're marvelous.

Happily, when the redbud starts to wane, out creeps the dogwood, a tree belonging to the South, and aptly so. Its white, perfectly 4-pointed flowers are tricky, appearing first as greenish buds the color of cooked brussels sprouts, giving no indication of the love to come. The branches are nature's ballerina, arms held as if suspended by gossamer strings. Scattered among the deciduous trees just squeezing out their first green buds, the dogwood performs Swan Lake on the decaying underbrush.

I have a love affair with the aesthetics of Spring; the extra minutes of sunshine and sudden green are lovely like my other secret pleasures: Nina Totenburg's fluid voice, the chunky paint on a Van Gogh, the shuffly background noise on public radio's airwaves, the first sip of Diet Coke from a sweaty cold can, the watermelon smell of freshly-cut grass, the abrupt halt of a tuning orchestra when the conductor arrives. Thank heaven above for senses -- they may be the things that keep us sane.

And so it begins

When you buy fast food or Cheetos at a convenience store here, the person waiting on you invariably says, "What else?" Not "Will that be all?" or "Is that everything?" but this "What else?" like there must be something more you want. Though I've heard it countless times since moving here, it nearly always strikes me as just a bit demanding. I know it’s not, but somehow I get caught off-guard and think I should hurry and think of something.

But I was thinking about this phrase – hearing it over and over in my head – in the wake of this war that has begun. I was thinking how since the first mention of a possible war in the United Nations, that’s what everybody has been asking: some form of the question which begs President Bush, the U.N., Saddam Hussein, Peter Jennings, anybody to tell us the next way this monumentally huge thing was going to play out.

I wasn't even remotely aware during the so-called "first" Gulf War. It came and went with great significance, I am sure, though I was regrettably oblivious. I'm sure my parents watched the news reports and worried with the rest of the nation, but I don't remember any disruption or saturation in my world. (So as I write this I wonder if the things that I have found incredulous about this war were, in fact, much the same. I doubt it, and though it is probably presumptuous, I'm going assume the state of things is as new and bizarre as it seems.)

I am overwhelmed that we seem to have so much access to the answers, and yet can't get enough. We have this phenomenon of so-called "embedded" reporters, where civilian journalists have literally joined up with companies of soldiers to be at the front lines firsthand, dressed in thick blue vests that say PRESS on the back, presumably to keep them protected or vulnerable, I'm not sure which. It's like the reality show to end all reality shows; will we really be able to stomach The Bachelorette after this?

It seems to me there are two possible explanations for the American public's veritable invitation to the front lines of this decision and battle. At worst, one could presume that it’s our government’s own form of propaganda: the "if you can’t beat them, join them" theory spun dramatically in their favor. If we give the reporters relatively unfettered access to the inner workings of a war, they will at least subconsciously feel grateful and preach the cause – without bias, of course. It must be said that this theory more accurately reflects my skepticism for theatrical journalism than for the embattled United States government, though I wonder about the tone of the meeting where this permission was granted. It also eerily predicts the confidence with which our government has undertaken this move; the death of hundreds of reporters wouldn't reflect well on presumed victory.

The other is that television and radio news and reporting has become a saturated and competitive market, and as with all things prey to the laws of economics, the ability to be thisclose to the story certainly sells it. Right now I’m listening to Peter Jennings, who I’ve chosen because his voice was the most soothing to me after September 11th. But I have many other options – too many to be logical – each with their own spin on the graphics, titles, scrolling headlines, backdrops, and embedded reporter shirt color.

NBC has CGI images of the military equipment that flash, Playstation-style, on the left two-thirds of the screen, while relevant facts like the number of crew and weapons available appear one by one on the right. Tom Brokaw was telling us about the first casualties – four Marines and twelve British troops at last report – who died when their helicopter crashed, either due to weather or unfriendly fire, cause TBD, and their digital helicopter appeared, obscuring his face entirely. I had, up to this point, been feeling weird since the first bombs last night; I hesitate to say excited, though that’s a little what it felt like. I suspect it’s more like nervous anticipation mixed with brewing horror that it’s actually happening. But right then, when I lost the human face and instead saw a cheesy graphic, I felt detached and sick.

Aaron Brown on CNN just told me there are at least 500 embedded reporters. They are using recording devices which render the images pixellated and jumpy. The conversations between the pretty news anchors in New York and the dirty, wind-blown reporters are punctuated by time-delay pauses in which we watch both people stand motionless for seconds while waiting for the sound to catch up. The anchors here ask unrehearsed question after question like 4-year olds while the embedded one tries to maintain their journalistic decorum and avoid "um" while answering questions like "What does it sound like when the bombs drop?" All the while in nearly every news agency some former or retired military official stands by to lend commentary and credibility to what seems to me like the most unsettling display of voyeurism this country has ever seen. NPR’s Ann Garrels, in particular, betrays their façade; her voice sounds tired and frightened and somewhat awed. I suspect she’s wondering just what in the hell she is doing alone at a hotel in downtown Baghdad.

Still, I am watching. I listened to NPR all afternoon and can’t seem to shut off the television tonight. It feels a little like a Truman Show study of how there's this chunk of the American public that has an insatiable need for "what else?" You would think I could just turn it off, make it stop, but I feel kind of crazy that it’s happening behind the dark screen and I’m missing it. It’s reflective of our frenzied pace, our belief that noise and talking makes the hard things just a little more bearable. It’s the way I keep searching for justification in the words of another commentator, another Iraqi dissenter living and thriving in the United States, another speech from the President, or another photograph of troops fighting in unselfish solidarity. I think that answer can’t really be found, at least not until enough time has passed that the Bush presidents are a memory and our children read about this war concisely in a history book.

The effect of this barrage on me, at least, is quickly becoming numbness, though I wish it weren’t. I can hardly believe that we can watch, in horrifying real-time, bombs exploding on Baghdad. Maybe we are meant to feel empathy for Iraqis, though my fear is probably quite hollow compared to theirs. Perhaps it’s meant to be a way to join hands with our soldiers, carrying a heavy burden right now, who are frightened and brave and patriotic all at once. I applaud the effort, because it speaks to how an American can either be a member of the Armed Forces or a protester on the street. But on the other hand, it's hard to not think the worst; the vantage point of my television provides smoke and explosions, and not many answers.

Still, I am glad this time to be alert and aware. It feels impossible for me to understand the strategy of war, and preliminary images make my inner conflict ripe. Watching the so-called air war, I find myself both very nervous that my country (with its newly-assumed grand burden) is doing it, and very angry at Saddam and his apparent disregard for the destruction going on around him. At this point, is it safe to assume that he is, at best, a very bad leader? I really want to believe that the invasion was a good choice. Though images seem to say otherwise, I want to be supportive and not afraid. I hope the access serves everyone well, though I fear it a little more each day.

Oh, it's pretty bad over here

(. . . in which she talks about how she is gross and mostly about television. Do you see what time it is? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

Yeah, that’s me sucking the third Vanilla Diet Coke of the day through a Red Vine pretending there aren’t at least 745 tissues wadded up on the floor anyplace I’ve lain my snot-filled body this past week. Also I might be eating a Little Debbie Easter Basket (or is it Bonnet?) Cake and using the wrapper as a coaster, looking at the empty package of Easy Mac I ate for dinner. I haven’t brushed my hair in a week (which doesn’t mean I haven’t WASHED it, for the love), and nearly every wearable item of clothing I own is currently on the floor of my bedroom, the pile of which I dig through each morning, shake something out, and put it on. Ugh. I am disgusting.

But that doesn’t even come close to the confession I am about to make. Mmmkay, so maybe I accidentally got addicted to The Bachelorette when it appeared, all sinister, as a marathon this weekend, and I might have clogged up good recording time on the TiVo with, like, I don’t know, 11 hours of said terrible TV show. I'm so ashamed. ABC Family was previously on my hit list for not showing reruns of Alias on Friday nights at 10 like they did last year (yeah, just add that I know Friday night programming to the increasingly long list of why I might forever be the bachelorette myself, only without the fake eyelashes and good skin). That means I never watch the dumb channel, since current programming choices include anything starring or written, produced, and shamelessly hawked by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who were richer than I’ll ever be when they were, like, 3 years old, and The 700 Club. (And this is an entirely appropriate venue for the reruns, since I heard that when this stupid show was on before, loving families gathered around the television en masse to appreciate true love as it happened. Riiiight.)

This time around, we had running commentary hosted by Greenlee, soap star turned B-list talk show host, and some random people who shared, um, insight as we watched the reruns of a show that shouldn’t even exist. And yet, here I was, and though I knew who "won" I even CRIED at the end (even though they both said the word "dream" as metaphor for crazy plans in your head at LEAST 7 times in 2 minutes, which is beyond annoying). It’s all too horrible.

I’m pretty sure even talking about how dumb it is pads the leather swivel chairs of the greedy network suits smiling and counting their fives in a mahogany-lined office and thinking about how I am HAHAHA precisely in the 18-49 demo who feeds their advertisers bling and who watches horrible pointless drivel as a MARATHON ALL DAY when she told at least 5 people that she hates reality television and prefers hers with a whole lotta soapy non-reality, thank you very much. Gah.

Like what kind of a universe do I live in where I watch this woman pretend to be confident and full of substance only to cackle and talk like a 3-year old any time there’s “romance,” and how preposterous is a show in which middle-class people travel exclusively in limousines and have their makeup done by LA’s worst Kevyn Aucoin wannabe, and go on dates in which one must either drink champagne by carefully placed candlelight and say inane things to each other whilst pretending there aren’t thirteen cameras and sparkly-eye lighting all around OR put on a bikini and lounge carefully by a hot tub? There's poetry, if by poetry you mean terrible rhyming verse, inexplicably including the word "plethora." And did I mention the white tiger? Siegfried circa Kindergarten called and wants his drawing back, darling artiste fireman Ryan.

It was all so forced and hokey and falsely romantic and preposterously ceremonial, and I certainly didn’t expect it to be better than my unbrushed hair, but this? I’m pretty sure I don’t know nuthin' about love, but if this is it, burn my copy of Women Who Love Too Much and leave me cynical.

There are two possible explanations to my lunacy. The first is that the mean lady in the teal leather did, in fact, cough her stinky cold germs in my space and I have since been pretty sick. I sound like a sea lion, I daresay I LOOK like a sea lion, and pretty much drink orange juice (okay, or Diet Coke – shhh) and lie on my couch whenever possible. This is called resting.

The other is that I am paralyzed with worry over what other horrible world news tomorrow will bring, and put myself into a non-reality-crazed stupor in lieu of channeling Scully and screaming over and over “This is not happening.”

There are, mentally and physically healthy AND smart and well-adjusted people would say, a number of salves for the craziness that is my psyche, not the least of which is Paxil and/or a little pondering. And, yeah, I know. I’m going to try those next.

But first, ABC, I want my soul back, please.

It's the fall that's gonna kill you

This morning I was served a bagel by a kind-faced woman named Comfort. Almost three hours before that, I watched a man roughly my father's age run through a long-term parking lot with a suitcase on a flimsy cart.

He fell. I didn't actually see the fall, thank goodness, but was alerted to his troubles by the gasping of the couple on the airport shuttle bus.

There are really two kinds of falls -- one is the kind I had on Wednesday, when I was wearing my 3-inch Steve Madden mules, and which, when sweaty, become treacherous. I stepped wrongly on a curb while talking to Ted on the one busy street in downtown Chapel Hill. I didn't get hurt, and was only a little embarrassed, mostly because I work hard to maintain my blow-dried, almost-chic image with the many men who build and fix things every day in my little world.

This fall, however, was the other kind -- the kind we don't laugh at, and which broke my heart a little. I almost cried, even, as he tried to regain his brisk pace and met his wife at the steps of the shuttle to quickly load their multiple pieces of luggage.

He was dressed in what my dad would also consider a traveling outfit: pressed, pleated khakis, a plain tee shirt under a cotton pullover, also ironed, with a collar that would be perfectly at home on a golf course. He wore newer white sneakers, for comfort over fashion, no doubt, as my dad would. His hair was brown and carefully combed, and he wore glasses.

I think, as I saw a black pavement mark on his right shoulder and while he rubbed a scratched hand - an irritatingly painful injury, like hitting a funny bone - that I felt indignant for him. Somehow, a law of physics had failed him, this man focused on a mission in an already stressful time. He was, as my dad would have been, doing all the work of getting the luggage, trying to make it to these infrequent shuttles, (it was, after all, 4:50 am) and helping his wife.

And I think it is still disconcerting because if there was a moment of comfort, I didn't see it; their interactions after it happened were brisk and business, and then they moved to the front of the bus. I wanted to see her sympathetically laugh like a mother does when her 2-year old falls and benignly hits his head. I wanted to see her touch his arm, make the frowning smile face that says, "Poor baby." Instead, the air on the bus felt embarrassed, one of those moments where, even if the audience is full of strangers, you feel as if the accident has shamed your competence permanently.

Maybe when this man gets to his final destination today he will tell the story, laughing. "I mean, here it was 4 in the morning, dark and cold, and I fall . . ." Maybe his wife will laugh, too, as my mom would. Because at least there is an antidote for burning shame; these stories become comical after some time passes.

I hope he laughs today. And I hope the stain will come out of his shirt. And I can go back to concentrating on how to avoid getting sick though I am breathing the air of a cranky-faced woman in a teal(!) leather jacket coughing deeply in my space . . .