 Icy Night - by Alfred Stieglitz, 1893 | He left the note on my beside table, early: |
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December 11/30/00 - An uncertain city to-day, muffled in fog. Have you ever read anything by Charles DeLint? I used to, all the time: I've read everything, I think, except the elusive and out-of-print The Fair at Emain Macha. I find him, these days, frustrating, self-righteous, getting too narrow in his storytelling. None of his recent writings have the same expansiveness, the same mysterious something, of things like Dreams Underfoot. But when I read those older stories, I used to feel that if I were a Charles DeLint character, if I had a life like Jilly's or Sophie's or Geordie's, everything would be all right. Sometimes that feeling still creeps up on me, all unexpected. A surfeit of cheerfulness, lately, has me worried that something may be wrong. I am not inclined naturally toward cheerfulness, toward giddiness and giggling fits, and I feel a little disoriented by it all. I write letters to people that are all giggle, no substance. Where have I gone? And further giddiness: mysterious secret admirer deliveries from not-so-very-secret, but very-very-excellent, people. Not A Pretty Girl: in an Ani DiFranco sort of mood. [Ed. later note: I just investigated The Fair at Emain Macha on Alibris, and discovered that, of the three available copies, the lowest asking price is $81.00. $81.00! Goddamn first editions.] 11/29/00 - Ducks has gone home, two days ago. What a darling duckling, my little brother. Wearying, and expensive, but darling. I spent a moody evening last night, rereading old writings of mine, and the writings of other people, and I wondered how much of what I write is real and how much false. Am I more honest in writing, as I claim to be, or less? And if the latter, what am I hiding, and why? Am I too careful an editor of my life, and what sort of dishonesty is that? And if I have relationships with certain people that are mostly written relationships, what does that mean for them? Do they know me at all, or am I playacting with them? Annie came home and saved me from these dark rings of thought. (Beloved Annie!) Which of our selves is most real? Is the self that drools in its sleep more real than the self that wears lipstick to work each day, or vice versa? I am not dishonest in writing, thinks Annie, who knows me. As to my question about written relationships (the problem is, of course, that I have met in person some of these people with whom I write, and we are much awkwarder and less cohesive in person--does that mean our written bonds are illusory?), Annie points out that I am generally less comfortable and less open with people initially than many others are. I am not the sort of girl who is wont in person to pour out her heart to strangers, the way I sometimes do here, or in letters. I am wary and untrusting in person, and it took a long while for most of my current friends to lull me into confidence with them. It makes sense for me to be less comfortable with my writing-friends in person: in person, they are new and altogether different creatures, not the abstract voices to which I am accustomed. And I am just the same, so they are entitled to their own awkwardnesses, and if we have to spend many days sitting on opposite ends of a couch and watching each other sidelong and carefully until we have adjusted to the novelty, that's okay. It's okay. Does that make sense? They have decorated the lobby of our office building for Christmas, with many extremely ugly trees. Artificial trees, of course, but that is not the first thing one notices: the first thing one notices is the way the trees are decorated, with grotesquely swollen bunches of fake plastic grapes, dusted with fake frost, and pastel silk lilies, with glittery frost, and something brown and seed-pod-like. In between the gaudy trees are arranged giant fake presents, wrapped in crinkly tangerine-colored (!) foil. Strange weather to-day. I woke up to warm dark rain, and peculiar restless currents of wind; on my walk to the Muni station, I saw a hawk overhead balanced motionless on some invisible updraft. A hawk, downtown at 11th and Van Ness, hovering ghostlike above the Bank of America building. I think it was an omen of something. Least-favorite new trend (have I mentioned this before?): Hands-free cell phones. People wearing discreet little headsets, walking around gesturing vigorously and talking to thin air. A city full of schizophrenics. 11/22/00 - Ducks is en route. His little plane icon is lurching slowly across Nevada as I type this. We are going out for Korean food tonight. We are going to have the most fun ever. A kind somebody has thought to send me flowers. Hurrah for flowers! To-day we love: little brothers; flowers; online flight tracking; leaving the office early; Chronicle Books; hot apple cider with caramel in it. What do the gorey fates have in store for you? 11/21/00 - Friday night in Vermont, standing in a snowy field under a billion breathless stars. Meteors chased each other silently across the dark, and an owl called softly and faraway. To-day's small happinesses: Vermont, shooting stars, owlsong, snow, apple cider, cold air, frozen lakes, waterfalls, tawny-and-violet Novembers, red wine, oil paintings, the sounds of a mouse scratching behind the fridge, shaggy-faced cows, the Morgan Horse Farm, empty orchards, late autumn sidelong sunlight, the funniest, sweetest boy in the world. Embarrassed, I go away now to make Thanksgiving preparations. Countdown to the arrival of Ducks: one day and one hour. Also, the Adorable E* left us last night, but not before making the most splendid and enormous dinner ever, accompanied by the cheapest red wine ever. It has been a red wine sort of while. 11/20/00 - Giddy Monday. I am in luv, L - U - V. And I can't stop giggling. 11/16/00 - It's here. Annie sent me this in fond memoriam of the radish people. O, the radish people! Darling Annie. Ducks comes on Wednesday! Choirs of angels sing huzzah. Thanksgiving grocery list: 1 turkey, 12 - 14 lbs.; 1 lb. sausage; 3 cans chicken broth; 2 bunches celery; 1 large bag onions; bread for stuffing; hazelnuts; dried cherries; 1 dozen tart green apples; 1 head of cauliflower; 4 red bell peppers; 1 eggplant; 4 or 5 russet potatoes; fresh chives (2 bunches); 1 head of garlic; 1 lb. sweet butter; whole milk; heavy cream; 4 - 5 oz. chevre; sharp cheddar cheese; cranberry sauce. Also, I need a new baster and a new pastry brush. Beloved Kate is also bringing vegetarian stuffing and a vegan pumpkin-hazelnut cake. There will be enough food to feed the Russian army. The old one. You're all invited. Yes, even you. Really. New favorite party game: Bobbing for cucumbers. 11/15/00 - St. Leopold's Day. Leopold's Day is celebrated generally with feasts of roast goose, and the drinking of new wine. Also, Leopold himself fathered 18 children. Friday is soon. The editor would like to take this opportunity to state that her interest in the Adorable E* is purely scientific, and certainly E* cannot compete with the clever and gifted Delectable M*. "Shampoo is the most coldly rational of all the toiletries." To-day's finest news. 11/14/00 - There is a strange man staying at our house, a high school friend of Mags', who arrived last night unexpected by all of us (yes, including Mags). He biked from Seattle to our house, all weekend: he is a valiant and determined strange unexpected man. I made him tea and sandwiches, and he followed me around the kitchen and talked at me in a vague way about Seattle and France and his work as a carpenter. He's really adorable. I wish I had been warned in advance, though. Adorable men are not allowed to show up unexpected at my house on a Monday night and find me in my pajamas half-asleep on the couch, submerged in a sea of books and notebooks and cats, and then expect me to make them sandwiches and tea and say clever things to them about carpentry. He makes chessboards and speaks Russian. Is that not brilliant? He lives in Seattle. He has curly hair and we will here call him E*. He is adorable. He is all my favorite things. I am trying to overlook the fact that he's adorable. At least until after Friday. Anyway, Mags says sternly: No. Meekly, I retreat. 11/13/00 - Sunday afternoon. Sitting in Mission Grounds, on 16th Street, re-reading lovely Brenda Ueland, facing out the door into a mellow autumn afternoon, watching beautiful people of varied sizes and colors mill on the sidewalk, watching the slow sun gild the leaves of the potted jasmine plants. The blue Mission sky is full of birds, small birds wheeling and tumbling. People smoke luxuriously, a man reads Mad magazine and laughs aloud, a man with a dead car battery stands in the street and skips rope with his jumper cables, waiting for a Samaritan. A beautiful girl tucks her hair into her collar and zips her leather jacket in preparation for mounting her motorcycle. A wild-haired man in shorts and striped socks uses the ATM. The speakers overhead sing "You Can't Always Get What You Want" with Mick Jagger's voice. I am full of crepes and sweet coffee. I am dreaming of Seattle. I am happy. 11/10/00 - Sign #303,721 that I do not belong in a corporate world: My complete inability to sit through any meeting--even a very important meeting, in a very small room, featuring many high-level execs and me; even a meeting in which I am sitting next to the goddamned CEO--without falling asleep. Yes, falling asleep. By junior year of college, I wasn't even falling asleep in classes anymore. But apparently meetings bring out the freshman in me again. Gore has got to concede: that's all there is to it. I know, I know, I can't stand the thought of that smirking illiterate nincompoop from Texas wearing the fancy Presidential Pants for the next four years; I fought tooth and claw to try and pack him back to Kennebunkport with a bootprint on his butt. But at this point, first of all, the U.S. has begun devolving into some kind of slapstick banana republic, or into one of those countries we've been so high-and-mighty at lately. Didn't Serbia just play a game like this? Second, neither of these guys is going to have an easy time in the big white house after all this muddle; the vote is so ludicrously impossibly close that any sense of legitimacy has been whisked entirely away from both men. If Bush gets it, people will spend four years remembering that he lost the popular vote, and only scraped by in the electoral college by 361 piddly votes in a state run by his little brother. If Gore drags this out, in court or otherwise, and eventually gets it, people will remember him as a big spoilsport who just couldn't let go. So it's time for Al to do a Dick (Nixon, that is): bow out, Mr. Gore. Make that concession speech you've had tucked in your breast pocket these last three days, wish Dubya all the luck he deserves (ha!), and retire quietly to Tennessee. And then, four years from now, when the U.S. has had quite its fill of the frat boy, it'll be time to put the Presidential Pants on someone new. And instead of remembering all the mud slung at Al this time round, instead of "no controlling legal authority" and inventing-the-Internet, everyone will remember how Al bowed out, with grace and dignity, and how he played fair and placed the strength and right of the Constitution above personal striving. And so he'll get another chance. I don't know that I'll vote for him if he does (Mr. Bradley, please let us try again!), but I'd respect him a hell of a lot more than I do now. It may be too late anyway. My little brother Ducks is coming here for Thanksgiving, and I Am Glad. 11/07/00 - VOTE 11/04/00 - In the Muni with Annie this morning, on our way to the park. She starts giggling. She doesn't stop. I look at her. She looks back at me, defensively. "I'm an only child! We have to learn to amuse ourselves." Halloween pictures now here: me, as Zelda Fitzgerald, looking sullen. Annie as a mysterious woman from Antiquity. In a very fetching sheet. And Mags as Baby Jessica in the well. Hah! To-day: the Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Blood Sugar Sex Magik." Lord, I feel old. 11/03/00 - Last night, I dreamt about Audrey Hepburn. And liver failure. Liver failure? Again? To-day, we all read: Sex and Single Girls. And then we jump up and down and pop champagne and sing cantos of praise in honor of Annie Koh, everyone's favorite (published! in a book!) writer. 11/02/00 - El Dia de los Muertos: the Day of the Dead. To-day: Blackcurrant tea. Cheri and The Last of Cheri, by Colette. Cashmere sweaters. The poetry of John Hollander. I am practicing Internet abstinence. Not total abstinence, I mean, which I guess makes it not technically abstinence. I am practicing Internet self-restraint. I spend too much of my office time splashing around in these electronic puddles. There must be something better to do with the boring spaces in my day. Oh, Sylvia, my Sylvia. 11/01/00 - All Saint's Day. In honor of yesterday's Halloween festivities, I have come to the office to-day cleverly costumed as Hangover Girl. Last night first, there was a long sad talk with Mags, which has bumped Mags up into the much-coveted position of Favorite Person of the Week. After, there was takeout Chinese and costume assembly and photography (available for viewing later). I had backed out of my original costume plan at the last minute, and so went instead as Zelda Fitzgerald--not very clever, but easy, and a free pass to get very drunk and wicked for the evening. Annie was either Cleopatra or Salome, it was all very unclear. She was lovely, though. And Mags, Mags' costume wins all manner of prizes: Mags went dressed as the well down which Baby Jessica fell. Rave reviews for that one. We trundled out then to the party at Peter's house, where we found Erika, in the evening's second-place winner costume: she went as the Kennedy Curse. Dan was dressed as one of the guys from Devo, which was very good but meant that everywhere we went later, people kept yelling, "Whip it good!" at us. Stenny was a man-eating earthworm. Or else she was Stenny being eaten by a man-eating earthworm. Also unclear, but my judgment had been mildly clouded by that point. Bets was cotton candy, Brian was the cotton candy's sulky costumeless boyfriend (always a hit), Toto had been beaten up. That was her costume, I mean; nobody would actually beat up darling Toto. I am tired tired tired. And now it is November; the darkest time of the year begins. *sigh* To-day I am in love with: Coffee. Coffee coffee coffee. Also, the boy behind the bakery counter at Specialty's, who always gets a cinnamon roll right from the oven for me, and gives it to me half-price. Darling bakery boy. Oh--Annie, am I allowed to have cinnamon rolls? October September August July June |
Everything I remember from my childhood |
