Doomsday in the Office

Well today is doomsday for me. I have a meeting at one o'clock where I will supposedly find out what will be happening with the project I've been working on. About two months ago the manager of my department called us to a meeting out of the blue and told us we'd be putting everything on hold for sixty days while they determined what our future would be.

It was one of those moments of exquisite alertness. Prior to the sudden meeting, we had all just read the president's quarterly report. It was full of awful metaphors about the workplace being like a dance and other terrible pop culture references to things like reality shows. On the one side we're congratulated for being so fruitful and making loads of money and meeting goals, and on the other side he slaps us across the face with a 2x4 for not making MORE than the goal.

And then out of nowhere, in this report, he mentions my unit and says there's room for improvement with us.

And so we were all talking about that and fretting sarcastically that we were about to get the axe as we walked to the meeting -- because why would he even mention my unit if it wasn't some kind of corporate foreshadowing? And one person* brought up the incredibly funny stuff from Arrested Development about Black Fridays, and how George Bluth had everyone take their computers out to a moving truck, telling them they were going to be getting new computers, only to close the door of the truck once the old machines were in and tell everyone they're fired. Hilarious.

Office humor is the best, except for when it's your reality. We joked about getting the axe and then the manager of my unit told us, her face grim and unreadable, that they were putting a hold on all new contracts and other stuff. I was listening mostly to my breath and how quiet it was. Noticing how everything froze and instead of feeling upset, I felt this horrifying calm. I was shocked. I've never been so aware of how my chest rises and falls with each breath. I was suddenly aware of the sickening sound of the white noise they pump into the office.

I don't even remember a time when I imagined my life would be part of a corporation. I never did. I never knew what it meant. I never understood that my mom and dad would leave for work and sit in cubicles or offices and tap at keyboards and make up ideas and design things and get paid and get benefits, all to come home at night and feel a measure of security.

It makes sense to think of the farmer out in the fields, tilling and planting and hoeing and harvesting. It makes sense to think of a man herding sheep and tending them for their wool and feeding them grass and hay and caring about the weather because it affects his livelihood in a way much more urgent than whether or not he'll need an umbrella to keep the rain off his business attire. Those things, farming, herding, taking care of animals because you both benefit, those are intrinsic. They've been a part of our identities far longer than the cubicle and concrete.

When man relied on Nature to provide rain for his crops and sunshine and good health for his animals, it inspired reverence in him for the power of the unseen. There was spiritual potential for him because there were forces beyond the realm of man at work. People took part in the role of creation and something spiritual went on.

The office life is dead. We work in cold hard spaces with cold hard machines and it makes us cold and hard inside. Doesn't it feel that way sometimes?

Anyway, I know I'm romanticizing the things of the past. I know there were probably lots of lonely farmers in the world who really wished to buy a suit and go to Wall Street and sell their souls for wealth. I'm just really bitter for feeling like my future is possibly in the hands of someone who doesn't know its worth.



*Me.

Summer Visitors and the Books

Sally and Terry will arrive on Friday night, adding to my list of illustrious visitors this year. Sally and Terry are my parents and if you’re lucky enough to know them, you know what an adventure they can be. I was just telling a co-worker that the difference between my family and Stoker’s family is like that between the Greek family in (yes) My Big Fat Greek Wedding and the family in The Queen (the one about the queen of England), without the cultural differences. My family’s not Greek and Stoker’s family isn’t British aristocracy, but my family is fiery, loud, and opinionated and Stoker’s family is opinionated but pretty calm and quiet. They talk but it never gets heated. In my family dishes will be thrown.

Just kidding. But they will be.

Joking.

Stoker’s parents came for a visit this summer. I have no pictures of any of these visits. I just can’t do it. I forget to take pictures, but when I remember to take them, they always turn out hideous. I don’t have the photographer’s eye. And I can’t suspend my disbelief long enough to take them or have them taken of me. I always feel awkward with a camera in my hand.

When Stoker’s parents came, as a parting gift I gave his mom* a copy of the Annie Dillard book An American Childhood. It’s an excellent book and I know that she’ll identify with the kid in it because his mom was once a pixie, I’m pretty sure. The kid in that book is a pixie, a real doll. Stoker’s mom has never stopped being a doll, if you ask me. She has this girlish quality about her that really catches a heart, and you can’t help but fall in love with her. She radiates energy. She sits on the floor if she wants, with her legs tucked under her like a little kid. And she engages with the world, like she still has so much to learn, like the curiosity in her has never died. I love that about her.

I gave Stoker’s dad this book called The Soul of the Night by Chet Raymo. At first the book sounds like it might be a Harlequin Romance, but then you read it and die. It’s perhaps one of the most poetic books I’ve ever read. (I read it in Chris Cokinos’ class and I only mention him as a kind of nod and thank-you for having introduced that book to me. He deserves the credit for the introduction [which is almost as important as having written it]). The book connects the bigness of the cosmos with the author’s small life on the earth. He quotes poetry and relates it to his perception of the night sky and the place of the earth in the universe. I don’t do it justice.

When I met Stoker and was falling in love with him, I gave him two books to read. The Soul of the Night, which he read quickly and enjoyed, and Crossing to Safety, which he also enjoyed. That sealed the deal.
You just know someone is for you when they can read Crossing to Safety and love it, and read Soul of the Night and get it.

I’m probably a jerk for giving people books. like I’m the dispenser of all good books and beauty (I am), but I can’t help it. If I respect someone and love them, on some level I relate to them by sharing the books I love.

Math Matt stopped by for three days on his way to Atlanta a week or two ago. I met Math Matt at some point during my time in college. He’s my intellectual friend and he’s stayed a friend all this time and now he’s Stoker’s friend. We had a great time with him. He can talk about anything with you. I say something that’s on my mind, like if I said, the movie The Departed was good, Matt has a response to that. Most people just say, “Oh,” and that’s it, unless they agree with you. But Matt’s opinion about The Departed was that it was crap and he’ll explain why. You have no idea how much I appreciate hearing other people’s opinions. I’m so surrounded by my own opinions that sometimes I want to scream I need a fresh view so bad. Stoker and I agree on lots of things, you see. Usually we both hate the same movies and love the same movies. Before Matt left, we gave him a copy of We by Eugeny Zamiatin. It’s a Russian book that Matt hadn’t read (surprisingly), and since I had just read it and loved it, I decided that Matt needs to read it ha ha.

My protégé and younger sister, Cassi, spent the 4th of July with us, and we spent an embarrassing sum of money on fireworks while she was here. At first Cassi was unimpressed because in Utah fireworks are sort of lame. Just fountains that whistle Dixie. In Tennessee you can buy Roman candles and other insane fireworks that shoot into the sky and flower. Once Cassi realized this, she secretly loved the fireworks. I didn’t give Cassi a book because the entire time she was here she played Portal on the Playstation, read Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (again), and then read Interstellar Pig, half the time hiding out in the upstairs guest room. It was a real vacation for her. Before she came there had been lots of talk of all the cool bike rides we’d take and other explorations. None of that happened. It was hot out, I guess.

So, my parents will be here soon and I’m wondering what books I’ll give them.


*Also, I was a horrible daughter/daughter-in-law this year and didn't get anyone Father's Day or Mother's Day presents.

Purchased: Carl Sandburg "Honey and Salt"

Tell me this cover is irresistible and I'll say "I know." Because I know. This cover is a beautiful example of 1960s style. What a gem.

It's an artifact of a time period and I'm in love. The bookstore owner asked me why I didn't get the collected works because it was right there on the shelf next to it and I said because I like this one better. I like the little paperbacks that say things on them like "50¢ slightly higher in Canada." And that feature cutting edge graphic art. Can you see the butterfly in that line drawing? It's too good to be true.

This collection has a poem that goes like this:

"Love is a door we shall open together."
So they told each other under the moon
One evening when the smell of leaf mould
And the beginnings of roses and potatoes
Came on a wind.

Late in the hours of that evening
They looked long at the moon and called it
A silver button, a copper coin, a bronze wafer,
A plaque of gold, a vanished diadem,
A brass hat dripping from deep waters.

"People like us,
us two,
We own the moon."

That poem is called "Moon Rondeau" and it was the first one I read when I found the book on the shelf. I bought it for the poem, which I really enjoyed, but also because the cover is so great. I paid four dollars for it. Can you believe that? I could have saved three-fifty if I'd been alive in the sixties and bought it then. THAT'S why they'll never invent time machines. Because then you can get around inflation and the government won't have anything to do with that.

One more thing. This collection features a poem with these line that I'm sure are famous, somehow:

Love is a deep and a dark and a lonely
and you take it deep take it dark
and take it with a lonely winding.

From the poem "Love Is a Deep and a Dark and a Lonely." Beautiful. For some reason, I think it's true. Love IS a deep and dark and lonely. But not just dark and lonely, A dark and A lonely. They're things that deserve articles because they're not just adjectives here. They're nouns.

Sometimes language baffles me and so I'm not entirely sure that adjectives can't take articles. Usually they don't. Usually articles only go with nouns. I think. Don't quote me on that. This isn't a grammar blog, this is more or less a bull shit blog. As in full of b.s.

So anyway. I really like buying books.



p.s. Not all poems in this collection are love poems. I just happened to find both of them first off because I'm a love magnet.

p.p.s. HEY! When did they take the cents symbol OFF the keyboard? Oh, right, when anything less than a dollar became an artifact of inflation. Or maybe it's never been around on keyboards? I don't remember.

Chekhov

There's something about Chekhov. I remember reading a review or an essay about him in The New Yorker a long time ago, back when I read The New Yorker (I don't anymore, pretentious jerks ha ha ha), and I remember finding it interesting. But I assumed that Chekhov would be a stuffy old bookish writer whose work I would find boring. And then I began reading, recently, some of Anna Karenina. A sort of fever started in me to consume as much Russian literature as possible. So I bought this small used copy of Chekhov's work, the Signet edition, from my favorite used book shop in Nashville (Books). The first story I read was "The Father." I read it quickly and then I read another story, "Peasants," and I was enthralled by his writing and the portrayals of the Russian people. He has such skill with language and my only regret is that I can't read his work in the original Russian.

At the same time I read A Moveable Feast by Hemingway (an amazing book), and I was very pleased to read his impressions of the Russians. He said of Chekhov that people had told him that Katherine Mansfield wrote great short stories, but once he had read Chekhov, Hemingway realized that Mansfield's stories were the equivalent of an old maid's tales (to recall from memory). One man's opinion. I have not read much Mansfield, but I can say that Chekhov is so widely read for a reason. I love his writing and have bought many more collections of his writing since then.

I'm not a huge fan of the short story genre, necessarily. But if you read his work it feels loosely strung together, a vast mural of the late 19th century Russia. It's quite beautiful.

My favorites so far are "Peasants," "He Understood," "The Dance Pianist,"In Exile," and "A Cure for Drinking."


View all my reviews

Cheating in the Olympics

I can't believe the Chinese are cheating at the Olympics. Oh wait, what am I saying? It's "for the good of the country."

At this point it's pretty obvious to everyone watching that the Chinese women's gymnastics team is full of twelve-year olds, and yet, no one seems able to stop them from lying to the entire world and continuing on as though they've done nothing wrong.

Honestly the rest of the Olympic community should have known they weren't ready to host the Olympics. Normally I'd say, "Hey, the fake fireworks display? No big deal. The lip sync fiasco? I mean, yeah, that's pretty insulting and cruel. But I'm over it." However, as I watched the women's meet last night, I realize that all of it matters and I'm NOT over it.

The picture China is painting is, for me at least, one of a nation full of automatons who are stripped of their will and free agency in order to do what is best "for the country." For a minute, I was feeling good will toward China and their efforts to impress the rest of the world. But as the Olympic games continue, I am compelled to no longer overlook the sins of their government. And I can no longer hold my tongue about the pollution in Beijing. From now on, when it's smoggy in Nashville and anywhere else, I'm going to say, "Where are we, Beijing*?"

It's one thing to have a coach who lies to his players (which is also bad, don't get me wrong), but it's another thing to have your government making passports stating you're sixteen when you're really only thirteen.

And it's even another to censor the press. That irks me too.

Am I a sore loser? Yeah. It's disgusting. But listen. How else is China cheating? In what other matters are they lying to us? All of them, probably.

So everyone has complained and complained about how the Tour de France has lost its glamour and appeal because of doping. Same here. It was no fun to watch the other gymnastics teams who were following the age restrictions competing against a team of eight-year olds. It would be the same as pitting a lightweight against a heavyweight. Where's the fun in that? The point of an age restriction is to even the playing field. When the restriction is ignored, the game loses its point.

I'm boycotting the rest of the games until the IOC does something about China's blatant disregard for the rules. I suggest the rest of the world do the same. Come on, now. Do as I say. It's for the good of the country**.



*I was overlooking the pollution in order to be polite.
**In this sense country means world. You'll no doubt agree with me that world wouldn't have had the same sarcastic ring to it as country.



I will probably keep watching the Olympics because I'm spineless.

Summer Is Just Another Word for Torture

The heat is ruining my life. I may have said something similar when I was living in Arizona, but only because it was. And it is now. At least in Arizona we had central air conditioning. Right now we're keeping our house cool with electric window units and fans. It's very ineffective and very trashy. The house we bought was built in the forties and none of the previous owners had felt inspired to get central air. We're inspired to, but first there are other pressing matters, like the roof.

Anyway, the heat is killing me. Each day that brings me both high temperatures and high levels of humidity wipe me out. The only thing I can do is swear, curse Tennessee, long for Utah and sometimes cry in frustration. Not to give you the wrong idea, I don't really cry. We have this air conditioner the previous owners left us and it sucks. Something is broken about it, I'm not sure what, probably the temperature gauge because it fluctuates so drastically, one minute it's 54 degrees and the next it's 83. When it thinks it's 54 it turns off and I swear at it and cut the power to it and then restart it. Stoker thinks it doesn't help, but I know it does.

Another thing that's killing me is the hills of Tennessee. Oft cited as beautiful in song, these hills are a bane and a curse and I curse them. The extreme heat and humidity and the hills have put the brakes on exercise. Last year I could tolerate it because I ran by the river amidst the trees and that lowered the temperature a little. Plus I ran home to the central air conditioner. This summer I run home and never cool down and I want to die. And there's no river and very few trees and everything is a hill. Stoker thinks I overdo it, but I assure you I do not. If you came to my house and we took a run on a day at 92 degrees and 65% humidity, or even 40%, you'd melt with me. And it wouldn't resemble a romantic song. It would be like a house of wax. There would be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And swearing at Tennessee.

Stoker says there are lots of hills in Utah, but there aren't. There are mountains. When there's a sort of hill, it looks like a hill and feels like a hill. In Tennessee, there's some kind of weird optical illusion going on and you can't tell it's a hill with teeth until you're running up it and dying in the extreme humidity and heat.

Long ago my pioneer ancestors tried to settle in Missouri and then Illinois, but things didn't work out. So they moved on and eventually set up camp in the Utah territory. It was hard for them and stuff, but after living in a humid climate and having been to some of the places that didn't work out for them, I thank my lucky stars things didn't workout in the Midwest. The desert is a superior climate. So maybe water was scarce and harder to come by and maybe it was grueling to drag those rocks out of the quarries to build with because there weren't a lot of trees, those things worked out, right? Once you live in a swamp, it's always a swamp and it breeds swamp creatures. The desert breeds hearty stock. Tall, lean, strong people. I can't decide for sure if this holds merit, it's just my perception, I'm sure.

I'm telling you, the heat is killing me. I'm very depressed right now. That's probably not super obvious because I'm being so hilarious at the moment. But I am. I'm wilting like a flower in a damn car out in the sun.

I tried to find scientific proof that extreme temperatures cause depression and other problems in people. I don't have time to rummage through all the studies, so I let the BBC do it for me. They came up with this article on the effects of extreme heat on moods. So I'm right, then. Thanks for playing. Now I'm going to go cry and melt in the pointless heat.



p.s. Recently I read this line from a short story by Chekhov ("He Understood"): "It was a stifling June morning; the air was sultry, the leaves drooped, the dry ground cracked." And I finally understood the power of that word sultry. Sultry only has power if you've been exposed to extreme humidity. I hadn't until Tennessee. Do I obsess? I do, I know I do.

Where I Stand Right This Very Minute on Music: Pierce Brosnan, Babs and "Evergreen," and Celine

Is it so wrong to think that the best song on the new Mamma Mia! movie is the one Pierce Brosnan sings all by himself? I mean, I know that he's no Pavarotti or Bono or Miley Cyrus, and I know that, as Stoker mentioned, his song seems to have had the most digital editing done to it, but still . . . I love it. Why? Why do I love it?

I have no idea. How can I explain it? I can't. But let me say, there's something to be said about the virginal voice. And by virginal voice I mean the young, untrained sound. There's still the capacity for emotion and that's what I must be hearing. And there's the unique phrasing and emphasis that comes from someone who is NOT a singer first and foremost.

And since his days as the one and only Remington Steele, I have been a fan of Pierce Brosnan. And Streep does a great job harmonizing with him. It sounds good. That's all I can say.

And is it so wrong to sometimes just crave some old Barbara Streisand song ("Ahhhh ahhh, ahhhh ahh, loooove soft as an easy chair . . .")? Or some Celine Dion favorite, "A whisper in the moonlight . . ."? No, no, it's not. Occasionally a person just gets tired of all the new crap and the onslaught of new bands and the next fly-by-night sensation and they just want to hear Babs singing, "Like a rose, under the April snow, IIIIIII was always certain love would grow," and stuff. Because it's SO good. You can't deny it. You must relent, Babs' voice is butter and "Evergreen" makes you want to fall in love. It does. Even the most hard-hearted, Harley-riding, hard fightin', hard fartin' man's man's man wants to swoon and fall for someone when he hears Babs belt out the melody of that song.

When Cassi came to visit during the fourth, I was really into listening to these old easy-listening favorites. And I thought it would be really hilarious to have that song or maybe a Conway Twitty song playing when she got into the car at the airport. Stoker agreed. So I had it all cued up on the old Ipod (Stoker: "What I want to know is what the hell these songs are doing on your Ipod?"), and Cas was in the car, trapped in the backseat and as we're exiting the airport, the strains of "Evergreen" come lilting out of the car speakers, "Ahhhh ahh ahhhhh ahhh ahh loooooove soft as an easy chair . . ." Two seconds later, she hadn't even finished the first line, Cassi says, "What the hell are you guys listening to? Is this the radio?"

And I kept a straight face.

"Noooo, it's what we're listening to."
"What?" And what she meant here was something more like, "What's happened to you, Nik? You've gotten OLD or something."

So then we put on Conway Twitty "You've Never Been This Far Before," and we tried to tell her that EVERYONE listens to that kind of music in Nashville. Duh. She didn't buy it. But oh man, we got a kick out of it. Playing up being old (Stoker's only 25) and listening to what she would deem crap, because see, she's at that age where you MUST listen to cool music and go to lots of shows and wear band t-shirts and go to music festivals and your cool capital comes from WHAT you like, not what YOU'RE like.

Personally I think my cool capital comes from being so cool that I don't give a shit if someone thinks I'm cool or not, having the breadth to listen to Conway Twitty and Charlie Rich and Dolly and Porter and Babs, in addition to indie favorites like Devotchka, makes me the coolest. Ha ha ha.

Hemingway and Nashville Local Color

I'm about to finish "A Moveable Feast." It's a great book. I read on Wikipedia that some call it Hemingway's finest writing. I haven't read all of his writing, but I have to agree. Maybe that's because he knew the protagonist so well and he wasn't being deceptive that the protagonist was himself.

I don't know. The thing that bugs me is the critics who say that Hemingway is still being deceptive in his portrayal of himself as the hero. Critics bug me, I even bug myself when I'm being a critic. Sometimes I think, "Poor Stoker, always stuck listening to me being a critic." And then I think, "Poor me, always stuck listening to me being critical." But there's no way to escape that. I'm stuck with me.

At lunch I have to leave my workplace. I have to get away, I have to think that I'm not fixed to this place like some kind of Dickens character. What's his name? The guy who worked for Scrooge who was forever positive and helpful and hopeful? I don't recall. But I'm not him. I like to think I'm not a cog in the machinery and that I could get away from it permanently if I had to.

I could live on the streets like the lady on Demonbreun. Demonbreun is a main road in Nashville. It takes one over to Music Row and it's not pronounced "deman-brewin" like one might think. It's pronounced "de-MON-bri-un." That's not an offical phonetical spelling, so don't check Webster's to see if I did it right. I'll spare you, I didn't.

The lady is a permanent fixture on Demonbreun. She's beautiful. I've never spoken to her, but she's got my heart. She's there in the middle of cold winter days, sitting on her bench in a big coat, and she's there in the swampy hot weather of summer, sitting on her bench under a big sun umbrella. She has Swedish features that have been bronzed to a sort of leathery complexion by the wind and the cold and the sun. Sometimes I'll see her eating a lunch off of one of the brick walls that separate the little shops along Demonbreun, and I've seen her drinking something from a styrofoam cup, with her pinkie in the air like someone with real class.

There are days that I wonder where she goes at night. Does she go to the mission? I look for her when I drive by and if I don't see her, I worry. I worry and wonder if she's safe. I wonder about her choice of "office." There's an abandoned newspaper stand next to her preferred bench. The glass has been broken out and I have noticed that she puts stuff in there, like her dayplanner and maybe a notebook.

She has class. She does. She wears dark velvety jumpsuits, the kind your grandma might wear. I guess they're called leisure suits. They have embroidered designs on them.

The most I've said to her is "hi." And I wave and she waves back. I don't know anything else about her. But I feel a sense of responsibility for her. That probably makes me an ass and if I ever spoke to her and if she found out I had said this or written a word about her, she would probably resent it and think, "How dare you!" She's got class and dignity, you see. She's not a stray cat or something. And I've never given her anything, not even spare change.

It's stupid to say, but I feel like she's given me something.

Talking to Strangers: An Inordinately Long Post (Worth It; Very Entertaining)

I have a stalker.

Ok. I use that term loosely. He’s not one hundred percent bona fide stalker, but he’s around and he’s undesirable and I don’t know how to get rid of him. No, I’m not talking sarcastically about Stoker. Stoker is still one hundred percent desirable and as it stands now, he’s not around near enough.

The stalker doesn’t seem to follow me, per se. And that’s why I use the term loosely. But suddenly, I can’t go anywhere outside my office without running into him. It’s annoying.

Here’s the story. In riding my bike home from work, I was waved over to a parking lot by a guy who was in workout clothes. I thought he was going for an after work run. Or maybe they were playing a pickup game of basketball. I stopped. The dude assured me that all he wanted to know was bike stuff and then he asked me a bunch of questions about my bike. I answered his questions while still being cautious, under the impression that I was speaking with a working professional, which somehow at that time meant to me that he wasn’t creepy. Not one hundred percent creepy, anyway. When the questions got uncomfortable, I started to want to leave, like when he asked if I go for group rides or what. I thought to myself that I didn’t want him knowing whether or not I rode alone. He wanted to know where I rode, I didn’t tell him. I told him I ride with my husband, which is true.

After a few minutes, a woman appeared on the front steps of his office building. She was shouting and waving for him. “His wife,” I thought, even though that didn’t really make sense. He said he had to go and left. So I left too.

Oh, and initially, he mentioned that he was glad I had stopped. He said he had seen me riding my bike by before and he was so glad he caught me. One of the other things he said was that he wanted to get a bike and that at one point he had done triathlons. Which is cool, great for him. Apparently he had been out of the scene for a while. Fine, awesome. Go to it, man.

A few days later, I was out walking on my lunch. I went about a half mile to find a place to eat. As I was returning to my office, I stopped on a street corner while I waited for the light to change. There was a dude in the bike lane and he looked at me. I ignored him. Then he asked, “Are you the bike girl?” And what did I do?

I said yes, because I’m an idiot. Why the hell would I say yes? First of all, why the hell would I talk to a stranger? In the very first place, why would I do that? Why would I not heed my mother’s advice and the advice of the public education system and the advice of all the television commercials during Saturday morning cartoons? Why?

Because I’m an idiot. I am. There’s no way around it. My stupidness surprises even me. So I say yes to the dude’s question, “Are you the bike girl?” I say yes and nod, dumbly, because I’m a little surprised and confused and I respond too quickly, automatically. When I’m taken by surprise I tend to become a deer in the headlights, I’m very shocked that there’s a car, I can’t believe there’s a car, why would there be a car here, why is it speeding into my face? That’s what I do. I get confused. That’s what happens right before you die.*

And the dude thinks it’s divine intervention or something. He’s like, “Wow, I can’t believe it, I can’t believe I’m running into you again. My friends said that you rode by one day when I wasn’t there and there were all, ‘______, she came by again, the Bike Girl. She came by when you weren’t here.’ And now here you are.” And then he showed off the bike he got for $400 off of craigslist.com. He was so thrilled about the bike and I pretended to be impressed because I didn’t give a shit. All I was thinking about was how the hell** to get out of this.

The light changes and the dude rides his bike across the street. I wait for the cars and begin crossing the road. The dude gets to the other side and what does he do? He WAITS for me.

There’s no where for me to go. He’s on a bike and I’m walking and my work is half a mile away. He begins riding his bike real slow next to me and he begins gabbing. He chatters on and on about the bike and how he’s getting a fresh start and how he’s been out of the scene for four years and he just got to Nashville and he’s real excited about everything, to get a fresh start. I’ve got my hand in my bag and I’m texting Stoker to “CALL ME RIGHT NOW.” And I’m not listening real close, but I catch the thing about being gone for four years. So I ask him where he’s been for four years, feeling my blood turning cold.

“Prison. I was locked up for four years. But I’m rehabilitated now and I’ve got a fresh start. I don’t want to freak you out or scare you, I’ve got two sons and everything.”

I play it cool. And what the hell? PRISON? I’m not going to tell you my life story, but what is it with me and ex-cons? I’m not kidding. Somehow I seem to attract them and it’s not like I’m hanging out in bars. They find me in the oddest places. The climbing gym, college, the street. Ok, the street is a weird one. But that’s the first weird one.

At this point, I’m really concerned about how to deter to this guy. Stoker hasn’t called me and I’m getting annoyed about that. I ask the dude why he was in prison, but he pretends not to hear. He tries to tell me his life story, his name, where he’s from, that he has some kids, etc. It turns out that that office is not an office, but is rather a HALFWAY HOUSE. It turns out that that halfway house looks out on my parking lot (he was puzzling over why he keeps running into me in such a fortuitous way). It turns out that there have been a bunch of ex-whatevers oogling me as I ride by on my bicycle.

This stirs a ton of unpleasant realizations in me, as I walk along, thinking of how to get rid of him without being offensive.

And why on earth shouldn’t I be offensive? Why on earth is there a strange man riding beside me, trying to be my friend or something when I’ve already mentioned that I have a husband? Obviously there’s something wrong with him. Something anti-social about him. I hate to be an ass, but sometimes a person needs to get a brain. By person I mean this man, who clearly doesn’t have enough mental power to get out of his own experience and recognize that I’m a girl walking by myself and whether or not he’s harmless, his actions might appear otherwise.

What kills me is that I actually feel like I should try to preserve this guy’s feelings. Why is that? Why should I care? He’s clearly crossing all sorts of lines of decorum. I’m not his friend. Usually I don’t talk to strangers, and there are a lot of seedy guys hanging around Nashville, if you’ve never been here. They love to try to rope girls into conversation. Typically I mutter something unintelligible to them and hurry on. But one time I didn’t do that and it turns out that that one time just happened to introduce me to a guy who has been in PRISON.

I wrap the conversation up with that guy after he asks me my name and where I work and what I do. I tell him something along these lines, “I’m sorry, I have nothing against you, but you’re a stranger and because I hardly know you, I’m not going to tell you my name. I don’t feel comfortable telling you anything about me. But good luck with the bike, bye.”

And he rode off. Since then I have seen him several times. Each time I wish I hadn’t seen him and I worry about my safety. Has he marked me? He’s obviously being monitored to some degree, but what the hell was he in prison for? I have no idea and I didn’t listen well enough to do a search for him and find out what he did. I don’t buy that he’s rehabilitated. I’m the person who thinks that prisons don’t turn prisoners around, they make them worse. Today he rode his bike past me and waved and said in a real aggressive-sounding way, “Hey there!”

I saw him last week and ignored him so I guess that’s why today’s hello sounded like this, “Yeah, I know you’re trying to ignore me. But I don’t care. I’m going to acknowledge the hell out of you.” Which bothers me. What kind of a-hole doesn’t get it?

Oh yeah, and the world? Full of a-holes. Sometimes, and I hate to be a big whiner and complain, but sometimes it really gets me that a large portion of my thinking powers are put to trying to protect myself from men. It bugs me that forever and ever, men will always have the upper hand. I guess someone will always have the upper hand because life really is one big competition, whether or not pacificists and all those people who say to me “it’s not a competition” want to admit it. NEWS FLASH: It is too. Everything is a competition and I’m determined as hell to win it. And if it means carrying pepper spray all the time, I’ll do it. And if it means carrying a concealable bazooka, I’ll do it. I can field strip a bazooka in two minutes and forty-nine seconds. Beat that, a-hole.





*Word to the wise, don’t get confused and you’ll stay alive.
**I swear a lot when I feel like my life is threatened. Just be glad I’m not dropping F-bombs like 99% the bloggers out there.


Some really good men read my blog. Thanks for being good men. I’d make a list of your names, but it would be too long, as my entire fan base is composed almost entirely of men.

Buying Lolita in Nashville (But Really Buying Pnin). Great Cover, Though.

I bought this book today. Notice how big the word Lolita is. That's why I bought it, I thought it was Lolita and I've wanted to read Lolita for a long time. I can't believe I fell for that marketing scheme. It worked! Who would have thought it would work? Especially on someone as brilliant as me. I blame the heat. It was so hot in the bookstore. I was dying. The pants I'm wearing today are this really heavy denim but they may as well be an electric blanket. They're bottling the heat up. And the bookstore is small and it was particularly crowded and there was this man sitting on a chair near me trying to have a conversation with me about the book he was reading and I couldn't understand a word he was saying. Poor guy. He was missing his front teeth. I think the bookstore owner, a part-time criminal justice lawyer, had just switched off the air conditioner. Maybe he was trying to sweat us out. So we were all stuck in there like houseflies in a mason jar, suffocating. I had to make a decision quick. I thought the book was Lolita and I've wanted to read Lolita for a while now, ever since I heard Robert Michael Pyle talk about Nabokov's love for butterflies*. . . . No wait, ever since hearing the Police song about the young teacher, the subject, of schoolgirl fantasy**. And Pyle just fed the fire. So I bought the book (it was ten dollars). I bought Pnin. I meant to buy Lolita.

In case you've never seen this edition of the book, the spine also says Lolita*** in huge letters, before anything else. It says, "By the author of LOLITA." Nevertheless, I'm excited to read Pnin. It's supposed to be great as well.




*If someone loves butterflies that much, they must be beautiful and therefore must write beautifully.

**First heard in junior high, 1991.

***At this point, Lolita is starting to sound like a bunch of nonsense.


I know you find the cover as irresistible as I find it.