Almost my birthday, and all I want is death

This post is a barely-edited version of an email I sent this morning. It's funny how trains of thought actually seem to create their own tracks and destinations.



Forwarded message to a best friend TEO...


"When bitching about a sweater gets REALLY dup and profiend.

Sometimes, being a writer is weird."


-----Original Message-----
Original email to Mr. X
Sent: Tue, Feb 6, 2018 8:06 am
Subject: Yep nope

The quest for the right wardrobe never seems to end. I bought a sweater maybe three months ago - it was definitely "recent" - but am deciding today, it has got to go. Which is especially irritating, as it's a GAP and I usually have good luck with GAP. (One red/black damask print v-neck has lasted me like six years now, it's woooooonnnderful.) But this simple blue rib knit: I'm not into that whole Marie Kondo thing, but this sweater is NOT GIVING ME JOY.

Which, ugh. This sweater made me use THAT phrase. This sweater sucks.

The thing is - it's really comfortable, it's the length I like, and the color is great on me. It is also pill--tastick (yes, with a K - like your name, it needs the consonantal emphasis), the "inseam" tag sticks out (and no, I don't cut out care tags because lord knows I'll louse up the laundry at some point), and the front hangs really weird at the bottom. Gah.

So, though I've worn this probably not even half a dozen times: I need to get rid of this thing.

Life is too short to wear unflattering (and prematurely RATTY) sweaters.

It's just a shame I happen to be wearing the thing NOW. On my fake-Friday, and family day. And with good jewelry, too! Blah.


Tonight is steak night at mom and Stepdad's. The filets from Christmas, which we didn't eat because everyone came down with the flu.

This'll be the way to spend some family celebration time with Step, but leave Wednesday free for me and mom. He's been in bed a couple days, and says he might not eat with us (he'll almost certainly eat with us, but how he'll be feeling today overall is up in the air). Sigh. Poor S. He just can't seem to die.

Bro and I were talking about him this weekend. He said it was something of a shame we came to love him after he lost his mind - I think there's a feeling akin to guilt, for Bro - but I feel like it's a blessing. We LOVE him. Neither of us felt like that was a possibility twelve years ago, and okay, it took dementia to loosen S up and give him this sense of humor we treasure. But he's loosened up. He is funny. We love him. That is enough of a blessing, and dementia is enough a part of life, I feel like it's worth just being grateful for the love and the blessing.

This is the power of a sense of humor, really. Laughter is so elementally *human*, I think, that the bonds it creates can't be trivialized. I mean: look at the way I talk about your face, broken up with laughter. It's in no way a small thing, the way that is beautiful to me.

It's in no way a small gift: S's immense grace in his sense of humor.

They always say there's no comedy without pain. I'd have to agree; that's fair. S's wit has come at such a price. Life itself, arguably. But his funny-ness has made all our lives just that much more wonderful. And just saying that squeezes my heart, and all but breaks it.

And as much as I am grateful for the incandescence of S's impishness and his smile, G-d I wish it could be taken from us all. I wish he could die. Because as long as we have his brilliance with us, HE has to endure such hideous, unbreakable pain. It is so unjust - and I know life is not fair. But nobody should ever suffer this. I would not even wish this on a Trump.

And even with all that, to feel *guilty* about loving his humor would be to waste it, and to negate the blessing it is. I just have to pray it is some amount of blessing for S. It looks like it is. It looks like, even if only a moment at a time, it takes him out of the pain. Even as selfish as it is: he takes *us* out of it. He invites us out of the reality he can't escape himself.

I've never seen grace quite like that. S is something so special.

22, 222 ... and 20150626

Twos have for whatever reason always dominated my addresses, phones, room or apartment numbers and so on in my life.

Today is the twenty-second anniversary of the day I married Beloved Ex, and he’s been much on my mind of late. We’ve talked a couple times in the past month or so, and I’ll call him tonight to wish him well on our day and reminisce a bit like proper oldsters.

BEx was twenty-two (hah) and I nineteen when he and I first met. He was a would-be rockstar and I was – really quite unformed. I’d been through my little hippie kid phase, and entered into a bit of a groupie rocker chick mode when he and I got into a relationship, but as to who I wanted to me, or was, there were a lot of questions unanswered – indeed, unexamined at all – back then.

We were together six years before we married, and all I knew was that I had a good man and that was valuable enough I couldn’t look beyond that point. I clutched on entirely because he was (and is) a fine person and not half bad looking.

It’s funny, but I never had a thing for blonds nor the Nordic God thing in a man, but the fella I married was all of that. His resemblance to Michael Hurst of Hercules: the Legendary Journeys has always struck me, because – though Hurst appears a good deal shorter than BEx – the humor and goodness in their smiles were alike. But for maximum recognition value: BEx resembles Rutger Hauer to an almost alarming degree – physically. His demeanor is nothing so forbidding (men Diane likes: nerdliness comes first, then good-looking), and BEx is twenty years younger than the Replicant, but feature for feature the similarity may be stronger than Aeolus’s.

A friend of mine during the years I was married to BEx once explained to a table of friends out for a drink and a nosh, about the color of BEx’s eyes. She told the story of how her dad used to take her and her brothers camping. They would climb this beautiful mountain, in fresh air in the sunshine. They would stop at the top to lay out food and eat by a beautiful lake. The water was blue, and so clear you could see to the bottom. Her story went on a good five or ten minutes. And it ended, “And THAT is the color of Diane’s ex’s eyes.”

Gee. And all I ever did was gank from Carla Tortelli, who said, when asked if a handsome man’s eyes were blue, “*Sigh* Like Windex!”

Image: Wikipedia

I Googled him this week – why I don’t recall, but sometimes you Google an ex, and this is one of those “aww – Beloved Ex” weeks. This time, I got one of those ghastly Olan-Mills-for-the-corporate-office type portraits; weirdly taken from a high angle, so he’s looking upward and kind of cheesy, all be-suited and too tidy and slick. His blond-ness has subsided somewhat, but for one of your Nordic types, let it be said he is ageing spectacularly well. Lovely crinkles at the eyes, white teeth he doesn’t have to treat to get that way – that one crooked little incisor I was always a little too much taken with. The overall effect of the corporate pose is a bit “MY NAME IS HERB. TRUST ME!”, but the depth of knowledge if you know BEx lends a “yep, that’s him”-ness that sees that same old smile, the slight nervousness … those eyes.

I never had a thing about blue eyes themselves, but BEx’s blue eyes truly always were beautiful to me. In addition to his Nordic looks, BEx also has a Hungarian strain, and something in the expression of his eyes always spoke of the same melancholy Mikhayil Baryshnikov always had. As bright as he seemed to be, and as slightly silly, BEx houses a melancholy spirit not uncommon in the men I have loved. He and I laughed for years about an article he once read, that men who liked small breasts (I didn’t grow mine until years after our divorce) tended to be “slightly depressed” and men who liked larger chests were into football and less educated. Hooray for reductive stereotypes of men based on reductive stereotypes of women!

So last night, spending time with a nice array of the women on my mother’s side of my family (two aunts, mom, and a cousin), I shared the photo because I knew they would love it. Aunt G. would hardly have recognized the man in the picture, but those eyes were utterly unmistakable. Mom, who always did like BEx, may have suffered some resurgence of the “why the HECK are you not with this man” even as she simultaneously does know and understand. I paint a good picture of BEx and take my responsibility for my fundamental part in our divorce, but let it not be said I see no errors nor shortcomings at all.

The fundamental issue is this – I love BEx and always have and always will. But love is no reason to share your whole LIFE with someone. My life is going reasonably well. Only if, without him, it could not, should I be committed like that to any man, even if I do respect and care for him as much as I do.

There are those for whom in fact that would be more than enough, and compelling and successful. Without regret: I just am not one of those people. What I do regret, as candid as I may be in this blog and with certain people I love, is nobody’s business but mine and BEx’s.

Image: that was me

Twenty-two years ago in the morning, it was quiet in my parents’ home. I hadn’t expected that, somehow; thought I might be the center of attention in a hive of activity. But I had breakfast alone, I think – and had to kind of pull that together catch-as-catch-can. My dress was in the best garment bag ever – my childhood twin fitted Snoopy sheet fit it EXACTLY, and pinned shut to hold it together just right, in nice soft poly-cotton. My dad and mom were not given to maudlin hugs and Very Special Moments, and so at some point I worked my way up to my room and spent a long time getting ready. I put my hair up and did my makeup and put on my mom’s pearl jewelry, and I hope I cleaned my beautiful engagement ring so it would sparkle (my engagement ring is really beautiful, as was BEx’s band; we both still have them, which seems right for us two).

I don’t really recall getting to the church, but once there I have some memory of putting on the girdle and ivory hose and shoes, and then ceremoniously being dressed, for perhaps the only time in my life post-infancy. My dress was a marvelous thing, ill-suited to a Southern summer day (long sleeves and satin, high necked, and close to the body). When we went outside for photos of the bride …. even with dress shields, you cannot stop the river of sweat that will run down your spine on a hot noonday in the windless lee of a tall chapel, wearing so much heavy textile. Even the embroidery lace was thick and substantial. This confection had been hand made for me by a friend whose own anniversary, the day before this wedding, meant she could not be with us on the wedding day.

My dad and I convened in the vestibule of the chapel and there wasn’t a dramatic moment between us. I wanted one, but somehow the business of the pageant took us away, and we walked down the aisle (never knowing a month later he would be undergoing a sextuple bypass after a heart attack).

My grandmother wore magenta.

My mother wore baby pink, and she and my mother-in-law looked so soft and so pretty.

BEx had, at that moment in his life, basically a dutch-boy haircut. After years of long, beautiful curling warm-blond hair, in that period and after what seemed to us a drastic cut, he looked like the guy on the label of Sam Adams bottles. In a tailed and cravatted tux, he just looked handsome. And nervous as hell. I looked – I don’t really know. Manic and rapacious kind of come to mind, but I may have a bias against my old self. Maybe.

Ceremony over, we took more photos and walked to the reception, which I remember mainly for my overly self-conscious feeling I was being SUCH a successful, grown-up polite hostess. I talked with everybody, smiling and unfailingly (my idea of) gracious, which I suspect was a bit on the arch side. What became of my husband, I have no idea; I was doing my duties, which had nothing to do with him.

I changed into my going away dress (a gorgeous cut, but a black dress I now remember as a haunted, bad-omen object) and hat. We drove away in dad’s red Fiat, top down, and NOBODY shaving-creamed the beautiful finish on that car. No shoes or signs either. Just two young people in a great car.

We went back to my folks hosue for a while, where we opened presents. That night, we stayed at the Embassy Suites right in town. Before embarking on what little passed for a honeymoon, we stopped at my cousin’s farm and picked up my brother, for a day at an amusement park – bro along because (a) I rarely saw him, he lived in Hawai’i back then, and (b) he and BEx liked each other, and could ride the rides I’d get sick on. I hardly really remember the day, but I think we had a good time. Then we drove up to DC to stop in what turned out to be the hotel in which Marion Barry had been busted for drugs a few years previously. ROMANCE. It was a room on an alley or some equally ugly outlook, and I ordered ROOM SERVICE as a deranged splurge.

The next morning at breakfast in their restaurant, BEx was away for a moment when someone came to the table, and I self-consciously remember saying the word for the first time: “My husband will be right back.”

We stopped for lunch at my aunt’s house, with her and one of my cousins; a gloriously tasty gorgonzola and walnut salad I still remember to this day amongst our summer treats.

Then, on the road, back to Ohio.

We did have time alone, but our wedding and honeymoon were family-packed; a varied, busy affair indeed.



If self-condemnation is clear and stark in these memories, it’s not out of regret for the marriage nor even living resentments – against myself nor anyone else. Maybe just a way to keep myself honest. But those days themselves – this day, this anniversary (which, from glorious and sunny in 1993, is now a stormy, dark, and muggy affair indeed) … they are almost as fine as the man who gave them to me, shared them with me.

Happy anniversary, Beloved Ex.



And happy anniversary to all those couples who, today, can finally marry one another in every last one of our fifty states. Congratulations, in joy and gladness.

Me, Too

Deaf?  Why yes, thank you.

(You and me both, Mojourner.)  And I went on to marry that 80s hair band musician, too!  Even earplugs could only help me so much, given our family and hearing ...

There are Sad Songs, and Then There are Sad Songs ...

Since the local “we play anything” radio station shifted to the far right side of the dial and doesn’t come in on my wee transistor radio anymore at work, I’ve been forced to listen to the rock station morning show every day (it’s either that or silence, easy listening hell, or KUNTRY).  Fortunately, they don’t have a political agenda, but it tends to be a good three hours of screamy opinions on inconsequential horsefeathers, but oddly enough they do tend to choose pretty good incidental music when they play a tune between blitherings.  Fortunately too, I listen quietly enough that few of the actual words come through my pitiful hearing.

But today there was a moment where the DJ asked his co-host or whatever, “What’s your saddest song?” and went onto a tangent “It’s supposed to make you feel good – but hearing sad songs doesn’t make me feel GOOD, it makes me all blubbery!”

My saddest song was very definitely not written sad in its day, nor is the particular version that makes me weep performed and recorded in a tearjerker style, but the things in life that generate our most powerful emotions are rarely ever those pieces of art and entertainment specifically designed to engender reactions.  Sure, a good tearjerker of a movie gets me gooey, but the emotion tends to be fleeting, gone once I change the channel or go to bed or read something funny or talk to another human being.  It’s real and personal associations, particularly ones of long standing, that “get us.”



When my brother and I were kids, it was a fact that sometimes we found ourselves more enthusiastic about our pillows than our classrooms.  Yes, strange but true.  On such days as he found it difficult to get us out of bed, dad would take out his Switched-On Bach album (then credited to Walter Carlos), put it on the HiFi, and turn up the volume as loud as it would go – playing the Brandenberg Concerto.

Such a rousing piece of music, very much enhanced by the early Moog synthesizer and a liberal, bracing sense of experimentation, was difficult to sleep through.  Challenging, too, for me in partiuclar, was dad’s habit of following this wake-up call by picking up my whole leg by the big toe (for temperature regulation, I used to sleep with one foot or even an entire leg out from under the covers) and SHAKING IT.

“UP AND AT ‘EM!” he’d bluster, sometimes even being so bitterly cruel as to take our covers away.  A terrible thing, just when you’ve got both the protection of a cover and the temperature regulation of the bare leg.  He loused up a delicate balance, mean thing that he was.  And the music was a challenge to ignore, even without the disruptions to bed-snuggling.

Sigh.

Meanwhile, the Moog hurtled through the massive music, shaking the walls, probably alerting every neighbor for a five-house radius that The Major Kids were having a hard time getting out of bed again.  We did like the raucous, rousing music, but not always its timing.


Of course, forty years on, and dad having died nearly twelve years ago now, that recording – those memories and associations – mean something entirely different, and, oddly enough, it’s possible to curl down into the sweeping sound of synthesized Bach in a whole different way.  It’ll never be so soft as to be cozy, but the music and the memory can wrap you up quite completely – and, especially when it gets to that triumphal bombast, the intentionally-emotional part, the mental image of dad WHISTLING this music (a recording my brother and I have only in our heads now) is engulfing and heartbreaking and wonderful all at once.

We miss him so much, yet the gratitude that we got the dad we did is always there.  He could hardly have planned a better remembrance for himself.  Classical music but a modern, almost scientific experimentalism, chest-swelling triumph, and a pair of kids he invested all his heart and mind into raising, loving him and each other and not sunk into mourning.

Sadness done right DOES feel good.  Even when it makes you all blubbery.

More of What It's Like ...

I have this overwhelming urge, when he writes something really good, to squeal at our mom and complain, "He's DOING IT again!!!!"  The crosses we bear.

And yet - you must read it.  Go.  I'll still be here next time you come by.

What It's Really ...

It'd be fun to start a series - "what it's really like" ... to do this, to be that, to have the other.  I'll have to think about that.  But my inspiration is my brother, talking engagingly but simply about ... what it's really like, to be an archaeologist.

This isn't Solomon's treasure, it's not Nazi fighting and snakes - and it's not Lara Croft, not any iteration of her.  It's all the more fascinating for being real, for its tease and its tantalizing clues.  For its path.  Archaeology doesn't stop in one single place, 'history' (nor prehistory, of course).  It follows a line, and tells us about more than one thing at more than one time ...

Wikimedia:  Archaeologists in Iowa

Non Car Park-chaeologist Speaks

Mojourner has some fascinating thoughts on the recent phenomenon of carparcheaology.  Since he's a pro and I'm an enthusiastic total non-historian, let's let him take it away, shall we?  Enjoy.  Some pretty slick thinking on that dirt-diggin' dude, don't you think?  Well, go tell *him* about it - much as I want comments, he's the one doing the heavy lifting here.

For links to the actual articles about carparchaeology, take a look here and here.

Here here here here here here here here and here is the series of posts on Richard III, with links to better articles following the ultimate progress of that find.

Believe it or not, I haven't begun to cover the incidence of carparchaeology in this blog, either.  Pretty sure I don't have the stamina!  Shew.

Teh Funnay on Teh Intarwebs

The Onion does seem to have some enthusiasm for the medieval period - check out "If I could Live in Any Decade, It Would Definitely Be the 960s."  Edgar the Peacable.  It was a simpler time.

And check out, too, the meme that would not conform, man.



(Note - the Onion article does misplace certain fashions by quite the whack of centuries, and perpuetuates the old "everyone was dirty" dirge, but as with my feminism my history-geek-dom allows for a certain amount of WSD for humor.)

Images of Life in Springtime

More photos, this time beauties in the Blue Ridge, at Mojourner Truth.  I thought the magnolia was lovely - but the hawthorn is something even more.

Felt Like Freedom

Mojourner, speaking as someone who *was* a punk - and on the subject of dancing like you don't give a hang who's watching.  Because that is what dancing is for.  I'm struck (not for the first time in his remarkable explorations of the punk scene he let me spectate from time to time) at how clearly, how freshly, I remember some of these faces.  The spiky mullet in front.  The fro to one side.

What he describes comes back, too.  The chicken fights, the on-the-spot made-up dances, the getting on stage.  He hasn't mentioned the time he was one of the "aweem-awep" dudes for a spontaneous rendition of "The Lion Sleeps" - and, in fact, how frequently spontaneous classics like that came up.  Sometimes sped up to 78 (as Mo said recently, an hour or so could hold thirty-eight thousand punk songs - or something far funnier, frankly, but to that effect ...).  Sometimes screamed, sure.  But sometimes, and not infrequently, pretty much in their original arrangement.  The guys on those stages were musicians, after all, as much as rebels.  Sometimes, rebellion could be performed with respect for music unlike their own.  Punk had a lot more taste than exclusively for irony, and it's easy to forget, in the post-'net world which has come to so intensely depend on snark - not everything even the strident anarchist had to say back then was said with a sneer.

Anyway, amazing photos once again, and remarkable memories I am enjoying very much.

(Also of note:  "history, brought to you by women."  In and of itself, a fascinating phenomenon of the dynamics of - at least "our" little corner of - punk.)

Punk Nostalgia

This post is going to be a bit of a bouillabaisse of memories - mostly really my brother's, but he was nice enough to share a bit with me back then.  He and I have been enjoying - of all things ... - "good times" memories of that least of all "aww"-inspiring things, the hardcore punk scene of the early 80s.  And yet, if not "aww" - there are some very good feelings with these memories.  (For me, the surprise and excitement of cool stuff shared with my bro.  For him, a youth not spent wearing alligator shirts and worshiping Reagan.)

Kind of loving my brother's memories.  I won't go back to edit the post about being at White Cross shows, but here is the vid that woke me from the malaise of my illnes:



It'd be impossible for me to go back to that time and place, even as sick as I was on Tuesday, and not feel some resurgence of the energy they held.

The POV of the video camera (I still can't get over someone having such a rare and expensive thing at one of these shows!) is pretty much exactly where I would have been.

Mojourner has more to say about those days here and here.  He also appears in the Mini Mag I linked before, but I ain't sayin' which dude with attitude he was.  Though he does match one of the guys in this vid!  Maybe he collected all his archival fame in one night (apart from that White Cross album cover he was on - I'll tell you this time, he was the guy in the striped shirt).



There was an immense amount of anger at that time, but what people may not understand is that it was not a scene of menace and cruelty.  The anger was a shared thing, binding kids deprived of privilege (and those of us who had a little bit, but hardly lived in Reagan-era Greed-is-Good-ness or Dynasty wealth), expressed in voices raised as loud as those who were socio-politically very very small could be.  But within the scene, there was a lot of laughter, much loyalty and trust.

I showed up at these things wearing what I hoped was ironic and cool - a pink CIA t-shirt given to me by a relative who at that time, oddly enough, was an expert on the Russkies and (though no more on the Blake Carrington level than my brother and I) had a lot more interest in Reagan - and a hippie-ish white flowered prairie skirt, with little black cotton Mary Janes.  Amidst the Marks-A-Lot'ed jean vests and black tees, nobody was mistaking me for one of them - pink and white!? (though, for the record, yeah, it was pretty intentional; apparently my nonconformity among nonconformists began earlier than I've ever really thought about) - but they were nice to me.  The guys there would have protected me from any harm - if it had actually been likely, in the not-so-wilds of our downtown of that era, danger were really likely.  But the circle of punks, spilling out of the bar and up the block to that 7-Eleven, was big enough to contain, and cohesive enough not to break.  Nobody broke inside - nobody wanted to - and in that group it was safe.

I probably learned a lot which still serves me today.  I frequent a very different scene when I get out socially, but the effect is in its way similar.  Outcast and underprivileged people might seem scary on their margins, from the mainstream, but the marginalized keep an eye out for those they claim, and those they welcome.

Sure, the force of a brother who didn't exactly invite violence and violation to his person - nor his sister's - had its power.  But the fact was, the larger dynamic within that angry and alienated world wasn't one of anger nor alienation actually aimed inward.  The anger was never with those sharing it, and so the dynamic was of the adopted-erzats-gang-family variety popularized in everything from The Outsiders to Penelope Spheeris' "Suburbia" (itself a veritable goldmine of who-was-whom and pop-cultural trivia of a remarkable variety).  So that anger, that terrifying rebellion and defiance, was not the attractant - it was the repellant.  Stay away, preppies, stay away, established authority, stay away if this scares you.

But, if you come in, you'll be in for some laughs, the shows, the friends, the people.

Pileup

I'm moving slowly but remembering all these hardcore acts I saw back when my brother let me hang around with him and his friends.  Honor Role, YFA, Graven Image, Pledge Allegiance - even just the local legend, Dirt Woman ... who looks so YOUNG to me now.  Terrifying!  Names of the bars - I love the name Going Bananas.  Need to open a place called Going Bananas and be the old lady everyone finds inexplicable.  Don't I?

No?

Yeah, possibly the illness talking.  Must be time to stop flipping my way down memory lane.  It's already run me into pics of The Exploited (gah) and Henry Rollins.  That cannot be good for my poor brain.

Would it be un-punk to cite issu.com and RVA Mini Mag as sources for this lot of pics?
For the record: INKWELL DESIGN LLC
Howzat for punk, man?

I Have Achieved ... Toast

This morning, I woke with some dizziness, and thought (as I am wont to do), "I will try to sleep this off and go in late."

The luck, it has not been quite so good.  Much of this day, I've spent sleeping the sleep of attempted-escape, but with an unfortunate lack of oblivion.  I used to get this sick in college - labyrinthitis isn't unusual for me or for my mom, but today has been the worst attack I've had in memory.  It's a miserable thing - something like the 24-hour death, but at least without any actual biological eruptions.  Only the hideous spinning and lassitude.

So my point is, it's taking a pretty hefty inspiration for me to get on my laptop at all.  I got on this morning to email my management, when it became clear going in late wasn't an option, and left the thing sleeping most of the day.  But a little while ago - I achieved toast.  Eating is helping more than I would have expected (so now I am irked I didn't try it sooner - but, so it goeth).  I also turned on Netflix, and wouldn't you know my luck - we're up to "Space Seed" on the TOS ep count.  Ahhh, Khan, you are perking me up.

However, that is not enough to make me turn to Blogger and attempt to type (which ain't easy, dear readers - I had to correct three typos in the word "Blogger" alone just now).  No, THAT took the interruption to TOS I found when I opened two emails from my brother.  I won't post the vid unless he gives permission - but, thanks to The Wonders of Teh Intarwebs, he came across the most astounding piece of our history.

My brother was the cool sibling, but for whatever reason (and, what's odd is, I don't know that parental pressure actually played into this) he actually included me sometimes in outings with his friends.

This of course is how I SAW ALL THE COOL CONCERTS.  Including perhaps the White Cross show now archived, and which he found online.  Minor Threat.  The Exploited (not even one iota cool - tools to the last minute of their obnoxiousness, those posers).  Ten Thousand Maniacs (yes, with Natalie Merchant - and the source of my first internet meme, actually, though the worthwhileness of digging through that link is dubious).  Even some arena tours - my very first was The Clash's Combat Rock tour, the same week they appeared on SNL with Little Opie Cunningham (who drank a BEER on live TV!  Woo!) - and second was Bowie.

Granted, that second one was only Serious Moonlight - but kids, I saw Bowie live from the front row of a General Admission show, so shut up until you can outdo me.  (And when you do I will not care, because braggin' rights, as fun as they are, mean remarkably little to me.)

Watching the vid of the White Cross show, I could remember so clearly the space of that little dive.  I never drank, and couldn't even smoke successfully, back then.  My brother was sufficient presence to keep me from misbehaving with boys, not that I had any very great urge to misbehave, as many crushes as I liked to have.  I remember the girls, even when I was only sixteen, asking me how I got so pale.

I wasn't one of them - I was a privileged little girl playing with the cool kids, riding on the coattails of my brother.  But they were sweet.  I remember the Andys.  I remember a girl named Honey.  I remember the night we left a show at one or two in the morning, I had something like 73 punks in the backseat, and maybe three bicycles, I was at the wheel ... and my brother meowed at a police dog in the cruiser next to us.  The officer had just come from a homicide and wasn't finding us hilarious.  But I got no ticket, to go with my healthy dose of Official Sternness.



But watching that clip, it was the SHOWS that came back, so strongly.  Mr. X has, over the ten years of our acquaintance, occasionally "warned" me, of his music, as I came to absorb it, that it might be a little hard or heavy for me.  If he watched that clip it might be clearer - knowing I was consuming this life from the age of sixteen - why I go "aww - that's cute" when he does that.

The music and atmosphere may no more be truly extinct than any of the "why when I was a child" memories any old fart uses to disparage The Present compared to one's own Past.  But punk - that Punk, the actual real stuff - has certainly been beaten to near death, emblem of long dead fashion for so long even the emblematic BS is now out of fashion itself.

Look at the people.  There's one guy with a standup mohawk, and I can tell you he almost certainly didn't wear it twice, or went on to become either goth industrial or (more likely) yuppie.  The people who were THERE, the regulars at shows - you can see them.  Guys in jeans with fairly boring short, or cropped, hair.  Ordinary shirts, or none at all.  Just guys.  Sweating.

The whole POINT of punk - real punk - was to reject fashion and affectation.  These guys couldn't afford leather jeans, and would not have worn 'em.  The one common style was army surplus (REAL - not insanely expensive Doc Martens; which came along to make money well after punk itself was dead) combat boots.  Other than that, jeans.  Torn, not torn, probably blue, maybe written on.  White tees, black tees, button ups, whatever.  A shirt that fits.  Maybe one that doesn't stink.

It'll stink by the time the night is over.

The guys got in the mosh pit.  It wasn't a systematic swirl of violence, particularly.  It was intermittent.  The guys could fight, I'm sure, but I really don't remember it.  The only bloodshed I ever recall at a show was when that utter twit of a lead singer for The Exploited SWUNG HIS MIC (of all disco-tastic, foolish show-boy rockstar idiot-hole flourishes, really) and hit his own bass player in the face with it.  I think the guy lost a tooth.  And the singer was a tool about it.  Jerks.

That bar was used as the location for a polka bar in the Robert Preston film "Finnegan Begin Again."  I remember watching that movie obsessively, dying every time RP and Mary Tyler Moore danced in that brick-lined punk dive.

It eventually became a coffee bar, at least in the 90s.  It may still be one, or may be a cafe' - it may be a dang Starbucks or a McDonald's by now.  But, then, it was the dark place I was exposed to coolness so potent that, almost thirty years on, I can see this post has gone far beyond my ability to really function.

I'ma finish watching the clip.  Finish watching "Space Seed".  And, someday, maybe I'll come back and tell all you kids about when I was not a middle aged cat (and dog) lady.

But first, another little lie-down, becuase hell if staring at this screen isn't killing me.

Today Ta-daa

I got the house clean today, and vacation is coming up. Today I've done 4 loads of laundry, patched two pair of jeans, fixed three in the seams of a good work dress, and then got a beautiful job done on lining the lace of a really pretty work-and-probably-more dress, stitching in a piece of black acetate to mask the lace, and then stitch-witching it to reinforce and finish/trim the job.

Unfortunately, the beautiful job I did on this last piece was only the first half of a two-sided job ... and on side two, I almost immediately MELTED the lace ...

*Bleah*

It's not a disaster; all I really need to do is get some similar lace from the fabric store, then I can reinforce it *before* even re-installing it into the dress. For my sanity, I might even be able to use something more like embroidery lace, which has the advantage of being more refined-looking than the thin poly stuff, but also offers the weight and substance to make it less than an utter and complete nightmare to sew - as the extremely thin, light, and gossamer stuff currently in place would be, either to stitch by hand (I'm a dab hand with a needle, actually, but with my glasses long since broken, and only so much patience for such incredibly fine work, there's a certain amount of commitment involved in thin-lace/acetate (or stretchy knit - augh) sewing) OR with a machine. I may be good, and even patient, with my current issues with close/fine vision - but the more snarling-up extremely thin, slippery, and/or spider-web-weight textiles I can avoid, the better.

So the dress, which I'd wanted to wear this week, is sitting in the sewing pile, one side looking fantastic, and the other quite literally irreparable with existing materials. Le Sigh.



But the real news isn't really my production of wearable clothing, from my own sewing and/or laundry piles. It's the fact that some of my clothing is going in a suitcase, and soon I will be seeing my family again.

My brother made bouef bourginon tonight.

I hate my brother. Because no way that's lasting long enough for me to get some.


(Confidential to him: have ya talked to the folks at that sandwich place about producing one of those unbelievable pot roast sandwiches, during my stay ... ??? Heh.)

Libris ... and Lost

I'm cross-posting this at my own blog and the SBC, from an idea for a thread I had at Historical Fiction Online ...

My brother read a book when he was in college (probably around 1986), "The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks" by Donald Harington. A work of historical fiction, it was also a picaresqe, an episodic series of fables and tall tales, a history of a family, and a history of a wonderful, fictional town in (oddly enough) Arkansas, the town of Stay More. He liked it so muc he wanted to give a copy to me ... but, try as he might, in the late 1980s we didn't have Bibliofind or Teh Intarwebs, and he never could find another. So he wrote the most beautiful note - about that - in it ... and gave me his own copy. Probably the single most meaningful gift book I ever received. And I did hugely enjoy the story; I just loved it.

I read it, and re-read it, I recommended it up down and sideways, I got goopy over it, and always ALWAYS attached to it its significance as a talisman of the love of my brother.

In the fullness of time, the internet DID come to exist, and one day ten years or so after he'd given me the book, I came to be friends with a woman in Arkansas, who actually KNEW Donald Harington, not well, but worked at the same institution he did. The rest can be guessed - she was a sweet soul, and generous, and offered to take my beloved book and have him sign it.

I've never seen it again, a dozen or so years later. *Le Sigh*

The story doesn't quite end there exactly. Nine-ish years ago, I dated a guy for a little while - also a writer, though I can't say a great one - who was from the first instant a bit more "enthusiastic" about our relationship than I ever got to be. Apparently, on our first date, I mentioned TAOTAO (see the title re: the acronym) ... and on our *second* date, this guy had eBayed up a FIRST EDITION copy of the novel. Eep.

It would have been an amazing gift, if it had come from someone I (a) had a relationship with, or (b) at least *eventually* came to really love. As things stood, though, it was just sort of too-much/too-desperate, and after all these years, following the moments I sort of leafed through it in the instant he gave me the gift ... I have never opened it one time. I still have it, but the emotional energy of that book is ambivalence - whereas the emotional power of the one my brother had given me, just a paperback, with bent covers, and filled with both his own note and my own marginalia, was intimately affectionate.

The importance we imbue objects with, it seems to me becomes even more special with books. I once had a terrible scene with someone who'd broken up with me, and from whom I asked for a book back, because it represented to me the essence of that part of myself he was rejecting - and he wanted to keep it, which was almost more insulting than the end itself. Books of my father's still can make me weep - and the bookshelf I built with him is one of my proudest possessions.

Even apart from the loss of our most beloved books, I am fascinated at the ways a bound sheaf of pages ... can become something so much more important ...



Just a few years ago, I actually emailed Donald Harington, after visiting his website. He was working on a new book at that time. It was lovely, and kind of exciting, to speak with the man who created this chain with so many links in my own life - and he was so kind about the story, too.

Clovis Brownie Points and A Heckuva Game of Croquet

My incidental reading today appears to be archaeology themed - and I like it. Long before I ever knew a jenya-wine archaeologist personally (or, at least, before he *became* one professionally), my folks brought us up PBS archeaology shows and National Geographic, right along with Scientific American (so cool) and all the REST of the PBS we slurped up, nerds that my family so blessedly, wonderfully are. I still remember an article in NG, showing the bone of an ancient man, and explaining how it taught us how he had lived, how old he was when he died, how tall he stood, and what diseases he might have had.

Now we have "millet wasn't typical of the local diet, so we got an invader here, son" - which I just think is so incredibly cool. Little creepy - I can admit to slight neuroses going a little beyond the old-fashioned injunction to wear clean underwear in case of an accident (and don't eat anything you'd be ashamed of having found in your gullet after you're DEAD!) - but overall, just kind of cool.

Was this bashed-in collection of skulls an indiction of an ancient battle? Well, we have the non-indigenous diet indicators, no signs of healing on some pretty impressive wounds, and no signs of ritualized burial.

I'm going to say, "Battle, Alex; for two-thousand."



Oh. And I'm also going to say: Clovis points ARE cool. But ... I'll give it to the crescents, yeah.

The Essence of LOOOVE

Bro and I are talking earlier, and I say something about paying off the car making for a happy Valentine's Day. He says, "Because that's what Valentine's Day is all about: owning something you love."

Hee.

Bro is pretty wrong. Wonder where I ever could have come to like that kind of humor so very much?

Oh, Brother ...

That's not an exclamation, that headline - it's a personal address. Hey, bro: I talked to mom, and she definitely remembered the hot jam reference you were talking about, with grandma's marmalade. So you weren't mis-remembering that! Happy-making.

To address the rest of Teh Intarwebs: my brother was telling me how he recently made marmalade (out of blood oranges - oh holy YUM), and he remembered our father's mother making it. When she took some of the jars and stuck a cinnamon stick in, the marmalade magically became hot jam, not just marmalade.

Frankly, either recipe sounds just divine to me, and I am only sorry there are so many miles between me and ANYthing made of blood oranges and cinnamon.

Anyway. That's my random, last, headache-induced wild-hair/hare-brained post for the night.

'Night!

Slack Indeed

I really do like my Slacker Radio station, but today it treated me to the most absurd review ever - and it has some SERIOUSLY flawed reviews on tap.

Mixing heavy metal riffs with punk's fury, Van Halen were onto a whole new sound

Anything more antithetical to punk, than long haired metal men, I can scarcely imagine. Not that I don't love Eddie and - yes - even Diamond Dave. But the punks I knew said, "It's 1983 (or whatever the year) - can't you affor a ****ing haircut!???" as often as they said, "Can I bum a cig?" - so VH was not on anyone's list of must-have punk properties. Metal fans were a joke to the punks I knew. And when I married a hair metal front man - as much as my brother loved my ex husband - don't think I didn't take a few jokes about my thing for Hair Boys along the way (and still do).

For at least twenty years now, I have had to contend with people who think The Clash were punk rock. For fifteen or more, it's been the commoditization of pop as "punk", in everything from the sentiment "I am all about the leopard" to Avril Lavigne to (Lord help me to even say the words) Green Day. I once saw a movie in which Adrien Brody explained to me that The Who were punk.

I once thought that was perhaps the most baffling use of the term I'd ever heard.

This, though, goes right on the shelf beside The Who.


***


Mind you, I love Van Halen, and I love The Who, too.

Mind this, too, though: I am not now, nor ever have I been, a punk. There was punk music I liked, and much I was afraid of, growing up with a real one in the house. For me, punk's anger was manifest regularly, in the person of my brother, whose closed door did nothing to stifle That Noise. At 43 now, noise has a visceral, deep position in my own musical tastes.

But that doesn't make a punk. I never was one. Very, very few people actually have been, if the truth were told. And the label grows emptier and emptier and emptier.

The Who had some anger. They had politics. They had a lot to say, and Daltry could yell it wonderfully. Punk? As much as I.

Van Halen?

That's just BAFFLING. Not to say what I hope some will be thinking, that it's actually laughable.

...

Mixing heavy metal riffs with punk's fury, Van Halen were onto a whole new sound ...

...

Wow. No, it just doesn't get any less brain-twisting, reading it again. But then, I am insufferably narrow in what I allow the label and definition of punk, in my mind. A good ninety-nine percent of what "kids today" think was (or - HAH - is) punk never came even close. The Clash. Good heavens.

I don't even think TSOL is "really" punk - though they've made their share of a living on it, from people who do. What they don't know, and I do, is that TSOL was largely dismissed as kind of Romanti-Goth before the term had been invented. I remember seeing "Suburbia" (AKA "The Wild Side" - and a more suprising Penelope Spheeris joint I can tell you you'll never even imagine), seeing them performing, and having to be embarrassed - as the NOT PUNK girl - for LIKING them, because they were interlopers plopped in the middle of a movie about kids who "should have" hated them.

Even I knew (loving the band as I did) that TSOL wasn't what the punks I knew considered to be "loaded with cred" shall we say. Shoot, I sure knew Jack, with his Billy Idol costume design, was an actor, surrounded by "real" kids. He looked it. And so did TSOL, in a way.



Van Halen and punk's fury.

I have a feeling that one'll keep getting funnier and funnier. Can't wait for my next conversation with my brother. This could be good for a bit of breathless mileage.

Sheesh.

Hear Here

Perhaps my favorite comment on the State of the Union so far.

Nope.

Definitely my favorite.