tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137262062024-03-17T20:02:31.449-07:00Bread and Breadthe intersection of art, life and carbohydratesCherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.comBlogger1226125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-79334526439208765242024-03-04T16:19:00.000-08:002024-03-04T18:02:07.005-08:00is weight loss tv kind of unintentionally radical?<p>Hear me out: I've been watching weight loss shows lately. Things with titles like <i>1,000 Lb Sisters. </i>One of the shows is...<i>1,000 Lb Sisters. </i>The other is <i>1,000 Lb Best Friends. </i></p><p>If you're not familiar with either of these shows, first, congratulations on having good taste and not consuming fat-shaming media. Also, here's my best attempt at a summary: The sisters in question are Amy and Tammy Slaton, who landed a TLC show that first aired in 2020 after their YouTube channel became a hit because they were genuinely funny and raunchy (lots of fart talk) and very fat. The premise of the TV show is that they will try to lose enough weight to qualify for bariatric surgery. </p><p>I assume there are medical reasons that people have to lose weight <i>before </i>they can have a medical procedure that helps them lose weight—to demonstrate that they can make the lifestyle changes that will be necessary after surgery? Because operating on someone with extreme amounts of extra fat is riskier? Nevertheless, it seems fucked up, like asking someone to get rid of at least some of their cancer before starting chemo (I'm not saying fat = cancer, just that patients wouldn't be seeking treatment for something they could handle on their own). I also don't know whether any of the people on these shows would have had access to bariatric surgery if a TV show wasn't footing the bill.</p><p>Insert SNL sketch/Shouts & Murmurs piece about funding basic needs via reality shows.</p><p>Ashely (not Ashley; it took me two seasons to note that sneaky E) on <i>Best Friends </i>is the only person on these shows who definitely has a job, and she had bariatric surgery previously (she's seeking a tuneup after gaining the weight back). I think a couple of Amy and Tammy's other siblings have jobs, and at least one of them had surgery in the past, which leads me to think (some?) insurance will cover it. So, duh, single-payer comprehensive healthcare now, please.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHq-twjvcqguuaEHOcIh_5kZs4AviYwZpZQZqL51tEdKLMpeMx5Lgl1QZ8ynYdbEbN9wCJVDT7hu0WZmPaZNA9Ng9ue6ju0oqtY3yFwPpFbib3LwaAy0ZqI7TcNEooF2w2d6JO_6uDhWERM5ICLYIE9ekT8R2yQPRz_kukkH2HKIbBV_cNLAd0/s1920/ashely.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1920" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHq-twjvcqguuaEHOcIh_5kZs4AviYwZpZQZqL51tEdKLMpeMx5Lgl1QZ8ynYdbEbN9wCJVDT7hu0WZmPaZNA9Ng9ue6ju0oqtY3yFwPpFbib3LwaAy0ZqI7TcNEooF2w2d6JO_6uDhWERM5ICLYIE9ekT8R2yQPRz_kukkH2HKIbBV_cNLAd0/w400-h250/ashely.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p>But back to the world we actually live in. On the first couple of seasons, which I watched during the pandemic for pandemic reasons, Amy is the sister who makes strides. She wants to get married, have a baby, and get her diabetes under control, all of which she does. Meanwhile, Tammy spirals deeper into herself. The more weight she gains, the more house-bound she becomes, and the more closed her face gets. She is a wall of anger and obstinance, sometimes saying she wants the surgery, but also weaponizing the only tools she has to try to keep her family from bossing her around (while being completely reliant on them for care). She ends up in the hospital many times, becomes dependent on a trach and a ventilator, and eventually goes to an in-patient rehab facility.</p><p>I watched the most recent season this past month. I had new reasons, although I suppose they're the reasons most people watch weight loss shows: They need to lose weight themselves, and—somewhere between inspiration and schadenfreude—they want to see that others need to lose even more. </p><p>In June of last year, my A1C inched into the prediabetic range. In December of this year, my liver enzymes were a little high. I went into a full OCD trauma-spiral, as I do, worrying that they were indicative of a cancer recurrence or a new cancer. My annual pancreatic MRI showed no signs of pancreatic cancer, but it did confirm "mild fatty liver." It turns out that occasionally (or not so occasionally) having the eating habits of a paté goose turns my liver into paté. </p><p>Basically, the diagnosis was that I was a middle-aged American. </p><p>I go back and forth when it comes to body image. I don't hate my body, but I do wish I had more style, or the time and/or money for more style. I'm not looking for a bikini bod, although I wouldn't mind it as a side effect. I believe in <a href="https://asdah.org/health-at-every-size-haes-approach/">Healthy at Every Size</a>, but the numbers were telling me that <i>my </i>size wasn't super healthy for <i>me</i>. And if it's possible to nip additional health conditions in the bud, before they become creeping parasitic vines, I would like to. I don't want to feel terrified that every "out of bounds" test result is cancer. I mean, it's good to know there are lots of health issues that aren't (immediately, at least) fatal, but it would be easier if my numbers were just <i>in </i>bounds.</p><p>So I tuned back into <i>1,000 Lb Sisters, </i>not sure whether I would find inspiration or a cautionary tale, but I was there for either. </p><p>Plot twist: Tammy qualifies for surgery and makes an incredible transformation. Not just weight loss, though definitely weight loss. That boost begets more boosts, a reminder that upward spirals are a thing too. The closed-off look on her face vanishes, and a sweetness blooms in its place. She wants to do all the things she couldn't before, from traveling to getting a pedicure. (And she's still fat, which is perhaps proof of HAES.) </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg79eFA1i0rTc_yMtBXiREQpW1sd5kRFwUZRe-cVkEKvVEvfKJslZc09kZf5gdkz4cTJwa2BAQkk2-PS8-_26aJcAyw86YAhSaZy26K2I4W0kBZ7NvbXsq0TlsodOEsTZqYdFyeiBNCqLMAknIutHaU5Ao5ZHI9MgAswzY61_OOjrKIBwCwj7_B/s620/lm-tammy-slaton-body-transformation-COMP.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="413" data-original-width="620" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg79eFA1i0rTc_yMtBXiREQpW1sd5kRFwUZRe-cVkEKvVEvfKJslZc09kZf5gdkz4cTJwa2BAQkk2-PS8-_26aJcAyw86YAhSaZy26K2I4W0kBZ7NvbXsq0TlsodOEsTZqYdFyeiBNCqLMAknIutHaU5Ao5ZHI9MgAswzY61_OOjrKIBwCwj7_B/w400-h266/lm-tammy-slaton-body-transformation-COMP.webp" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>Meanwhile, Amy's marriage falters when her blank-faced husband fails to do any childcare, and Amy becomes as stressed out and overwhelmed as any single mother of a baby and a toddler would be. </p><p>Say what you will about reality TV, but there aren't many opportunities to witness real change in real people over time outside of our own lives. Amy and Tammy's crisscrossing journeys are a reminder that neither failure nor success are guaranteed, or static. And while there's absolutely a modern-sideshow quality to most of TLC's shows (the Tom Thumbs, the fat ladies), the show also reveals, maybe by accident, how obesity isn't just about eating habits.</p><p>When Tammy and Amy's two other sisters and brother join the cast, we see that they're fat too, suggesting that weight has a lot to do with genetics. We also meet their mom, who's mean and unsupportive; crappy childhoods do not often make for great self-care habits. But if the siblings have these marks against them, they also have an asset in each other. It's as heartwarming to see them work together as it is savagely fun to see them bicker.</p><p>Narrative fiction likes an underdog, but it likes that person to fail just once, or if they fail more than once, to have most of the failure happen offscreen prior to the opening credits. <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5302918/">Nyad</a> </i>is exciting because Diana is determined to achieve her Cuba-to-Florida swim record to the point of near-lunacy; she's not just a bad bet, she's starting to be a little...embarrassing? Tammy Slaton fails so consistently that we feel like we're watching her slow death. </p><p>I tend to flail when I can't plug myself into a narrative, whether it's one created by society or in my own head, or some combination. </p><p>So narratives where people struggle multiple times, over the course of years, to get to a goal that they ultimately achieve are nice for us "gotta be perfect outta the gates" types. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjed8GE-4ujgY-7lz2zv2ihLmlNbIJt3NTZYiT_85z1iLILZpJ0elRM4ye-oHw0um_geujqjkj-uUAgCJV4zDqr9JJu8hyphenhyphenef_Z1O_m8Vs-Il21qdDjV3jIs_0u5Uc-NsGuxLsGT2M1-SXfx_EVleu0wnKXUYwxbc6bBUyf7NtwQogrkLUfMwP6H/s1280/board-786119_1280.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="1280" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjed8GE-4ujgY-7lz2zv2ihLmlNbIJt3NTZYiT_85z1iLILZpJ0elRM4ye-oHw0um_geujqjkj-uUAgCJV4zDqr9JJu8hyphenhyphenef_Z1O_m8Vs-Il21qdDjV3jIs_0u5Uc-NsGuxLsGT2M1-SXfx_EVleu0wnKXUYwxbc6bBUyf7NtwQogrkLUfMwP6H/w400-h266/board-786119_1280.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Honestly a little stagnation doesn't sound horrible. Could the world hold still for a minute, please?<br />(photo: Gerd Altmann via Pixabay)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Getting laid off in June was a bigger hit than I acknowledged. I found a good job that I started on the last day of my severance, so what did I have to worry about? But the experience shook my already shaky sense of order and safety. And even though the new good job came with new good health coverage, the process of finding new providers for myself and Dash and Joey was a slog and a half. I signed up with a new pediatrician just to receive a letter that she was leaving the practice, despite what my plan's website said. </p><p>Multiply that times a bunch, and add two cups of medical PTSD. It produced an exhaustion that sometimes seemed vague and silly, and sometimes felt like doom barreling down the tracks. I wasn't my worst between June and January, but I wasn't my best.</p><p>Last month, I made some small steps toward better eating habits and more exercise. This spring, I'm trying for a few more, despite the fact that life has not removed all stressors. So rude of it.</p><p>I just finished a memoir by a Black trans writer who said they wrote their book because it was what they wished they'd had growing up. They wished for role models and looked for them in a few wrong places. I need people who model a growth mindset, because as I've said before, <a href="https://www.muthamagazine.com/2020/09/dispatch-from-kinderzoom-we-do-not-got-this-yet/">I'm so bad at growth mindset</a>! What do my body and my kids and my relationship need? A reminder that change is always happening; learning is always happening. Not every obstacle is surmountable at every moment, but the other extreme isn't true either; no one has their life story written in stone at birth. </p><p>So, I want to conjure a mental image of a person with big dreams and small goals (not just fitness-related, but writing, parenting, all of it), who can see the true loveliness all around them. That person looks a little bit like a lot of people I know, and a little bit like Tammy Slaton, and maybe even a little bit like me.</p>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-62199970659720072942023-12-23T10:35:00.000-08:002023-12-23T11:36:07.980-08:00tops of 2023<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">Recently one of my therapists (plural) told me I talk too much. Well, technically she said that while doing EMDR, she needed to interrupt my highly intellectualized storytelling more, so that we could prioritize reprocessing rather than letting me tip into re-experiencing trauma. And she said it very nicely. But a little part of me heard "You're too much for your therapist, and now you have failed," and of course that kind of thinking is why I'm in therapy.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJoYPvWDDR_4vRllAkw95Q3kXReI1dZIf3zhazHGVVwlPm3QGtQ1l_mHCOWC0jyRtEW8qLI8R6-FIUuU8sHAZ5GKAGRNv2YoqJxcYVmn7jZy3mBLbYi27MKNYAthQieLvzJPBJOmTHJVyg3v5PP0l1ciG0t7OqMSFe5OmIl1OhIAVT9Uv2PQYT/s1600/yousef-family-tents.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJoYPvWDDR_4vRllAkw95Q3kXReI1dZIf3zhazHGVVwlPm3QGtQ1l_mHCOWC0jyRtEW8qLI8R6-FIUuU8sHAZ5GKAGRNv2YoqJxcYVmn7jZy3mBLbYi27MKNYAthQieLvzJPBJOmTHJVyg3v5PP0l1ciG0t7OqMSFe5OmIl1OhIAVT9Uv2PQYT/w400-h225/yousef-family-tents.png" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">Today I listened to <a href="https://www.thisamericanlife.org/819/yousefs-week">this episode</a> of This American Life, in which Yousef (above, with his family), an incredibly determined, kind, and good-humored Palestinian man, talks about how his two-year-old son wants "a thousand kisses" before going to bed. He laughs and says he doesn't mind. In nearly the same breath, he says he regrets having kids, because what's the point of having children if you can't protect them?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br />I wanted to jump through my car radio and hug him, or some other useless action, because I believe so strongly that he is the exact father his children need and deserve, and at the same time, his line of thinking rings so true to me. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br />All of this is to say: 2023 was another year of mental struggle for me, in which I often felt lonely and anxious, two emotions that are deeply tangled for me in some preverbal corner of my brain. Why have a family if I couldn't be mentally and physically present for them? And, if I spent too much time dwelling on this possibility—a possibility that could be more like a probability if I lived in Gaza or <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/nagorno-karabakh-conflict">Nagorno-Karabakh</a> or Ukraine—would they or I some how disappear from each other's lives?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br />I am about to start Exposure Response Prevention therapy, which is the gold standard for OCD and similar anxiety disorders. As best I can understand it, it sounds like I'm supposed to sit there thinking about my worst fears, with no one comforting me or telling me it is very unlikely that I'll get pancreatic cancer anytime soon if at all, while another nice therapist charts my reactions and points to a dot on a graph that represents how fucked up I am. Given that my fears boil down to becoming a nonhuman number that no one wants to help, this all feels VERY MEAN. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwTt-YIGoUIrNHDKZKhfCZE4nNBpn-fC7LnpCx5Xassn43Vn66l3hYsBwD91LLEFjzyC7wf6ZnGApKqAwXASrRZw7W1Nk-ro-aTMHY-KelPM3k64K0-OWr1NO1xAs1IZCK5dGHrGJmh37ZDokpqzE40TxJ0wtddTbGKQ3bHCuEsZor7oMWrbV_/s1000/jerome-aRnuXvdHVzg-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: #666666;"><img border="0" data-original-height="767" data-original-width="1000" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwTt-YIGoUIrNHDKZKhfCZE4nNBpn-fC7LnpCx5Xassn43Vn66l3hYsBwD91LLEFjzyC7wf6ZnGApKqAwXASrRZw7W1Nk-ro-aTMHY-KelPM3k64K0-OWr1NO1xAs1IZCK5dGHrGJmh37ZDokpqzE40TxJ0wtddTbGKQ3bHCuEsZor7oMWrbV_/w320-h245/jerome-aRnuXvdHVzg-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666;">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@jrmswny?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Jerome</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/text-aRnuXvdHVzg?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Unsplash</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">But as I said to my sister the other day, the Klein Family superpower is doing shit we don't want to do. So I am trying to "trust the process" while also not pretending I'm even remotely excited about it. <br />More generously, I think ERP is supposed to help me let go of Big Fears so I can be present in my own life and the lives of people I love. I always thought that I was supposed to set aside small annoyances so I could focus on life's Big Meanings and Big Questions and, yes, sometimes Big Fears. But somehow that manifests as me turning small work mistakes into fears of cancer, and mistaking needing a nap for the end of the world. It makes me throw away small joys as if they're trash, when in fact <i>they might be all we have. </i>Is that the secret mature people have known all along? Is that why adults cry at kids' holiday performances? </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br />It's hard to move forward when I'm not sure what kind of mindset I'm trying to cultivate. This all feels like some very frustrating growth I have to do before I can really be deeply creative again, or even as good at my job as I'd like to be. Making New Year's resolutions seems like hubris when I'm trying to find a new baseline. But if I can do my zillion therapy modalities, step up my mediocre eating and exercise habits, and write write write in the smallest little hen-scratch doses, that will orient me during this disorienting time, I think. I hope.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /><a href="https://reductress.com/post/nice-this-woman-achieved-something-so-now-she-thinks-it-mustve-not-been-hard/">This Reductress headline</a> has my number, so maybe I should note that in 2023, in addition to limping along mentally, I found a new job at a pretty great org one day before my severance ran out, and got to know Joey as Joey (a cuddly, funny, furniture climber) rather than a series of worries and question marks. I wrote a bunch of stuff for <i><a href="https://www.muthamagazine.com/author/cheryl-klein/">MUTHA</a> </i>and <i>Publishers Weekly, </i>and did some really fun book events at <a href="https://breadandbread.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-good-kind-of-magic-onward-and.html">AWP</a>. We visited with Joey's birth family and Dash's birth mom. I enrolled myself and my kids in new health insurance and found us new doctors, which took a thousand circuitous phone calls and made me cry. I did some long-ass solo parenting days so C.C. could get that much closer to getting her MFT. Sometimes we feel like ships passing in the night, but we are ships who still love and like each other.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br />Oh, and I read a fuckload of books, and watched some stuff. Here are some of my favorites.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /><b>Books</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45754981-the-glass-hotel?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=FjFubRcLr9&rank=1">The Glass Hotel</a> </i>by Emily St. John Mandel: </b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">It wouldn't be a huge overstatement to say this is my platonic ideal of a novel. Ghost story, mystery, socially conscious epic spanning years. It's about the characters—complicit, innocent, and in between—who are affected by a Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme. It's also about...life? Everything? Mandel does an amazing job of weaving threads and motifs and callbacks; I kept imagining a giant bulletin board full of cards and thumbtacks, to track it all the way they track crimes on TV. Coincidence drives perhaps too much of the plot (if it was good enough for Dickens...), but it didn't bother me. The way she plays with time—both on the page, as characters slip in and out of memory and alternate universes, and in terms of narrative strategy—is a lesson in technique. (Recommended by C.C.)</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJqFzWC2oCN8ts2F478tqrb8e8CTjtEmilBzgkqZcMds51f5BKPuvG2DCurT1svBaXLvj_S_exbUKOWp8WK1ll2sYNaQ_Y-EPcMHnqbMLMsJ48PRd2MLqR0JwvtI-gqcBV82Cz3uk3eVuC4wBzHgB8nlyCmhBMdLEyBG3QBz2eX3c0lNczVdtf/w265-h400/Carry.jpeg" width="265" /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50640953-carry?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=fu8t2wDB3H&rank=1">Carry</a> </i>by Toni Jensen: </b>Jensen draws connections between interpersonal violence and sociopolitical violence in the most poetic ways, taking my breath away with knife-sharp wordplay and juxtapositions that feel like a form of protest art (because they are).</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">Reading the news from Israel and Palestine recently, and trying to learn what’s mostly not in the news about Armenia and Azerbaijan, I feel like we need better language to talk about violence and stolen land. We need language like Toni Jensen’s, which carries the complexity and the duality and the pain that cuts across generations, and the miracle that people keep loving each other anyway. (Recommended by Debbie)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgomRjgc9THsy0wezZWE8_sbYkNX4hmZg6EPi1jISWDdjeiCBaLdaHqyNNgCT307iP3dysB8cQWyTVU90-jeNaH_U3ZaHZUpXa7nsbfuD4kwILEB1TJxbklk8l4S6eoKlSJJS_9UsJRsqunBL3hpqHk_vC1ltLJ7-mbirnjAnMzOCYrZu5FDudu/s400/Vera.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="258" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgomRjgc9THsy0wezZWE8_sbYkNX4hmZg6EPi1jISWDdjeiCBaLdaHqyNNgCT307iP3dysB8cQWyTVU90-jeNaH_U3ZaHZUpXa7nsbfuD4kwILEB1TJxbklk8l4S6eoKlSJJS_9UsJRsqunBL3hpqHk_vC1ltLJ7-mbirnjAnMzOCYrZu5FDudu/w258-h400/Vera.jpeg" width="258" /></span></a></div><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50970263-vera-kelly-is-not-a-mystery?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=MtYacaYfjS&rank=1">Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery</a> </i>by Rosalie Knecht: </b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">As with the previous Vera Kelly novel, I devoured this book, and maybe loved it even more (I went on to read the final book in the trilogy as well; the second remains my favorite, but I was fascinated by how Knecht uses POV to show her protagonist's evolution). The plot follows Vera's foray into private investigation work, when she's hired to track down the nephew of a couple claiming to be exiles from the post-Trujillo Dominican Republic. As a former lost girl herself, Vera's loyalties are with the boy she's never met, not her clients. In the process, she discovers that the lone-wolf strategies that saved her when she was a teenager and a young CIA agent aren't working so well for her as a self-employed, late-twenties queer woman. The book takes place in 1967, long before the era of Brené Brown, which is perhaps why I found Vera's tentative steps toward vulnerability so moving. The stakes for trusting people in her line of work, in a time when she can be (and is) fired for being gay, are incredibly high. But that makes her leaps of faith that much more necessary.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">Knecht has again written a moody, gorgeously described, character-driven novel with lots of intrigue and a queer couple I'm rooting for. (Recommended by Jennifer)</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/193388249-killers-of-the-flower-moon?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=xAQiCR8Tou&rank=1">Killers of the Flower Moon</a> </i>by David Grann: </b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">Given how dramatic this story is—murderous plots, moonshine, outlaw gangs, deep conspiracies, corrupt cops, cowboys, Indians, and J. Edgar Hoover—it's amazing to me that it isn't taught in every American history class. You could use this book as a tool to talk about the genocide-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts treatment of Native Americans, and about Osage resistance. The book also primes the pump for conversations about law enforcement and jurisdiction, and about our concept of a wild vs. settled West. But the fact that the story was buried for generations—though never forgotten by the Osage—speaks to how we treat much of Indigenous history.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">As a <i>Little House on the Prairie</i> nerd (see below), I was particularly interested in Osage life in Kansas and Oklahoma in the 1920s, having last glimpsed the tribe on the move in 1869-1870, when the Ingalls family makes their homestead on Osage land before learning the territory hasn't been "opened" for settlement yet.</span></span></div><section class="ReviewText" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1.6rem; position: relative; text-align: left;"><section class="ReviewText__content" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="TruncatedContent" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;" tabindex="-1"><div class="TruncatedContent__text TruncatedContent__text--large TruncatedContent__text--expanded" data-testid="contentContainer" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-height: none; overflow: hidden visible; word-break: break-word;" tabindex="-1"><b><i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></b></div><div class="TruncatedContent__text TruncatedContent__text--large TruncatedContent__text--expanded" data-testid="contentContainer" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-height: none; overflow: hidden visible; word-break: break-word;" tabindex="-1"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34725951-city-of-inmates?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=G7WYahdya0&rank=1">City of Inmates</a> </i>by Kelly Lytle Hernández: </b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">This is one of those books that changed my worldview and will stay with me for a long time. Hernández's thesis—that a key facet of settler colonialism in L.A. was/is incarceration, and that both have the end goal of eliminating "undesirable" populations—is devastating and convincing. Mining "rebel archives," she documents key phases of incarceration, beginning with the Spanish conquest of the Tongva. For every injustice, there's a story of an activist or resistor serving as a reminder that those histories have been hidden as well. This book should be required reading (it also happens to be fascinating and pleasurable reading, despite all the horrors) for every Angeleno. (Recommended by Aldo)</span></span></div></div></section></section><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-size: 16px;">Grann's account is seemingly well researched and masterfully told, with a final chapter that follows up on Mollie Burkhart's children and grandchildren and underscores the impact of generational trauma. (Gifted by C.C.)</span></span><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikcQVawMm42PLmjXAAIqxlqGZD7lGyGChIYbwcD8bOU6Us7plZ_v7IuRZtwB4TMspQ_dlTKp-BjtR6Wx8MPjPSto9N6qzHCue7YrxIfCkJD1JLYMDoiw_wKzJO-QE0x0vETddv0EbolyoWDhzI3YTPNfcXE89-7Kztn2Y_fWCxEddbfggZK5WQ/s400/Wom.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="299" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikcQVawMm42PLmjXAAIqxlqGZD7lGyGChIYbwcD8bOU6Us7plZ_v7IuRZtwB4TMspQ_dlTKp-BjtR6Wx8MPjPSto9N6qzHCue7YrxIfCkJD1JLYMDoiw_wKzJO-QE0x0vETddv0EbolyoWDhzI3YTPNfcXE89-7Kztn2Y_fWCxEddbfggZK5WQ/w299-h400/Wom.jpeg" width="299" /></a><br /><br /></span></div><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><b><i><br /><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57771211-worm?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=tF2RmU7wlE&rank=1">Worm</a> </i>by Edel Rodriguez: </b>The scene that stuck with me in this graphic memoir that doubles as a cautionary tale about the creep of totalitarianism in the U.S. comes fairly early on. After much deliberation and considerable risk, Edel's parents have decided to leave Cuba as part of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariel_boatlift">Mariel boat lift</a> in 1980. They live in limbo at a government refugee camp of sorts while they await the green light to leave. When it's finally go time, eight-year-old Edel is like "No, I'm in the middle of a baseball game with my new camp friends." That would 1,000% be Dash. It's moments like this that drive home the extent of global horrors—because the everyday challenges of life and parenting don't really stop. Kids still get bored. People still get on each other's nerves. But the stakes and the mental, physical, and logistical load are multiplied by a million. (ARC)</span><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><b><i><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8021-6050-8">A Man of Two Faces</a> </i>by Viet Thanh Nguyen: </b>Fierce, funny, genre-blending, and unapologetic, this memoir of Vietnamese refugee life in Northern California made a big impression on me (before Nguyen made headlines for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/21/arts/92ny-viet-thanh-nguyen-israel.html">getting weirdly cancelled at the 92Y author series for signing a letter calling for a ceasefire</a>). Nguyen's "two faces" are that of a loyal son who is grateful for the opportunities he's had, and a rebel writer who interrogates privilege, colonialism, and American ideals. He does it all with fresh, savvy language that is a delight to read. (ARC)</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62919844-everything-s-fine?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=1eQDOdRsJq&rank=1">Everything's Fine</a> </i>by Cecilia Rabess: </b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">Much of this story—bookended by the elections of Obama and Trump, respectively—reads like a romantic dramedy. Girl meets boy, girl and boy clash ideologically but slowly fall for each other over the course of careers in the financial industry, girl and boy breakup and reunite. She's Black, liberal, a bit of a party girl, and brilliant at math and puzzles. He's white, a fiscal conservative type, sincere, brilliant at money and making a lot of it. That kind of story (all the will they/won't they back-and-forth) could be a hard sell for me in the wrong hands, but Rabess sells me. Jess and Josh's personalities, communication, and the world around them are as complex as the story is (seemingly) simple. But the very, very end was not what I expected at all, and it turns the entire novel into a giant exercise in foreshadowing, in a way that is sneaky and chilling and brave. (Recommended by Shea)</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-size: 16px;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5BibUie9re1UQoke7TJusYovaZXACfLRh1jRtCVdFJ8eVhO8nQ4CcYgwgUOhW7PlLHJGHXnwdohzEhw-AwGC8Dc1yDyCu43saWd4urHH-3nIuLpKgMgqUQT6qQLJ8Pwfxim53-02EhD70TCsl19GHfnpP_PFob85RMb4rXOg_6bNSqD12u81Y/s1500/Feeding%20Ghosts.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1208" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5BibUie9re1UQoke7TJusYovaZXACfLRh1jRtCVdFJ8eVhO8nQ4CcYgwgUOhW7PlLHJGHXnwdohzEhw-AwGC8Dc1yDyCu43saWd4urHH-3nIuLpKgMgqUQT6qQLJ8Pwfxim53-02EhD70TCsl19GHfnpP_PFob85RMb4rXOg_6bNSqD12u81Y/w323-h400/Feeding%20Ghosts.jpeg" width="323" /></span></a></div><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/127282542-feeding-ghosts?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=sQvXyUqVD7&rank=1">Feeding Ghosts</a> </i>by Tessa Hulls: </b>I'm realizing that at least seven of the books on my list are about generational trauma in some form. Is that my obsession, or is that humanity's legacy? I'm not sure. This beautifully etched graphic memoir tackles the topic most directly, as Hulls—raised in Northern California with her British dad and Hong Kong-born mother—explores her grandmother's harrowing escape from Mao's China, only to succumb to PTSD-induced mental illness. Her mother alternates between cold "ghost face" and the desire to trauma-bond with her daughter, who just wants to run away and become a "cowboy." I told a Chinese-American friend, who has a somewhat tense relationship with her mom, about the book and she said, "Omg, that's my family almost exactly. So much unprocessed trauma." The book unnerved me as I considered the impact of my own mental struggles on my kids, but it also performs healing in the most gorgeous way. (ARC)</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59364173-i-m-glad-my-mom-died?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=vSSTx5nuXo&rank=1">I'm Glad My Mom Died</a> </i>by Jennette McCurdy: </b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">The structure of this memoir is deceptively simple: present tense, linear, lots of "show don't tell." This enables McCurdy to depict her abusive mom—who shoves her into a showbiz career, teaches her anorexia, and allows her no physical boundaries (to the point of sexual-ish abuse)—from the point of view of her childhood self for much of the book. In this way she shows why and how parental abuse is so complicated, because of course she deeply loves her mom and wants to please her. And because she tries so hard to please, she has no sense of who she is or even how to eat what she wants.</span></span></p><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">Later, she finds herself the hard way, by having unhealthy relationships with food, alcohol, and men. Appropriately, she never delves into her mother's backstory (I can't imagine she had an easy life either). A deep empathy dive would fail to serve her personal and narrative goal, which is to center herself and detach from her mother. Yet while her mother is a nightmare, she never seems more than or less than human, which says a lot about McCurdy's storytelling and her twenty-year character study of her mother.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">At one point, McCurdy says that acting always feels like a lie, and writing feels like truth. I hope she'll keep up her funny, candid writing, for herself and for her readers. (I'm not sure how I found this book; kind of just out there in the pop culture zeitgeist?)</span></span><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><b><a href="https://www.muthamagazine.com/2023/07/going-home-again-laura-ingalls-wilder-settler-colonialism-and-the-stories-we-inherit/">The <i>Little House </i>books</a> Laura Ingalls Wilder: </b>This was the year that I reread all nine <i>Little House </i>books, an act that was both deeply comforting and often eye-opening, having last encountered them as a young kid. They're all fascinating portraits of settler colonialism at its most austere and even innocent, or maybe just ignorant. So much both/and in these books, along with the gorgeous descriptions I remembered: maple syrup candy made in the snow, printed name cards that were basically the TikTok of the prairie, the smell of wildflowers, oranges at Christmas, grasshopper plagues, bonnet strings trailing in the wind. (Recommended by Valerie Klein)</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><b>Honorable mention: <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55303944-blow-your-house-down?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=MlOakvaz9N&rank=1">Blow Your House Down</a> </i>by Gina Frangello, </b><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1197158.Whose_Names_Are_Unknown?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=5JR2ZVo2u6&rank=1">Whose Names are Unknown</a> </i>by Sanora Babb, </b><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56854439-family-solstice?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=7eqFsE4eG2&rank=1">Family Solstice</a> </i>by Kate Maruyama, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59577177-also-a-poet?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=mTGios9rHw&rank=1">Also a Poet</a> </i>by Ada Calhoun, </b><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56756215-the-jewish-deli?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=jtxfDAf7Yd&rank=2">The Jewish Deli: An Illustrated Guide to the Chosen Food</a> </i>by Ben Nadler</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">TV</span></b></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLfBwrUY3F1eimFVmMGQiAMV4vGcugSLbC3TWZaX3ZOQVYVPo7wzmzhIXUbp5jPtDMY-2OYUhPDSquQ1QxvYa_gNMRP2YvntIvi45KSl138FTmx_FAyPuptop6SnJfThdC0dNJqhiqQLPbMuHFfv1RZHNCyvurARuNnKc5ljmfWQt9ZJRyZVDc/s259/Derry.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLfBwrUY3F1eimFVmMGQiAMV4vGcugSLbC3TWZaX3ZOQVYVPo7wzmzhIXUbp5jPtDMY-2OYUhPDSquQ1QxvYa_gNMRP2YvntIvi45KSl138FTmx_FAyPuptop6SnJfThdC0dNJqhiqQLPbMuHFfv1RZHNCyvurARuNnKc5ljmfWQt9ZJRyZVDc/w400-h300/Derry.jpeg" width="400" /></span></a></div><b><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b><p></p><p><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><b><i>Derry Girls:</i> </b>I heard it was great, thought the description sounded like a show I'd like, and somehow still waited years to watch it. And then I did and I loved it. There's a dissertation to be written about its parallels with <i>Reservation Dogs—</i>groups of semi-adrift teens on occupied land, whose primary concerns are still deliciously age-appropriate. The entire cast is wonderful, but I especially loved Saoirse-Monica Jackson as the constantly outraged Erin. Something about her face reveals how she is ambitious and righteously angry and completely ridiculous and self-centered all at the same time. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUd8ExQ9aZVf6t3gS9_rG7ULybzlaeOAJDUcdTV6zXkEGS9R5EvaHAl6LKoLFZ4JlCITswllpwUFlSEoNwlRYbdpfDc40q4Y0d85PsJelqS7yvvAthfvlqbRFsjiQPQIqjCZg-VZJBktlTfxoLRS5XPV6tKlqLxUZp5Bh67n7Er6JOpFAc52B4/s1800/Poker%20Face.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1800" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUd8ExQ9aZVf6t3gS9_rG7ULybzlaeOAJDUcdTV6zXkEGS9R5EvaHAl6LKoLFZ4JlCITswllpwUFlSEoNwlRYbdpfDc40q4Y0d85PsJelqS7yvvAthfvlqbRFsjiQPQIqjCZg-VZJBktlTfxoLRS5XPV6tKlqLxUZp5Bh67n7Er6JOpFAc52B4/w400-h266/Poker%20Face.webp" width="400" /></span></a></div><p><b><i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></b></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><b><i>Poker Face:</i> </b>I would watch Natasha Lyonne do anything, but fortunately for me, this year she made an excellent, unusual, and funny anthology of a detective show. It's an homage to <i>Columbo, </i>but Lyonne is an ex-casino worker on the lam from bad guys, so she doesn't have the advantages of a badge. I loved the road trip movie vibes, the shots of Route 66, the sad and weird and glorious lives she encounters on her journey.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /><b><i>Fleishman is in Trouble: </i></b>A smart portrait of the disappointments of adulthood and thwarted ambition, threaded with a clever examination of blame in relationships. The "Fleishman" of the title ultimately refers to both Toby—the almost insufferably "good" doctor protagonist—and his ex-wife Rachel, who disappears one day. Narrator Libby, a magazine writer turned SAHM, is in plenty of trouble too.</span></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjelS_a6e1yR1h9WqYc622ea940qMd1AWSRWOkATpKm9HiQAeOns76dRSoPqqUVTjsp7g6Xq5o42AA0dENAr996Q-pLSYaO2Jnt3jef8gJSWWORmhbduIGjkwCxQxlVZV6UhwEPLjfWwnhw4bwcz3K8eWEtBSvl-T9Ku8ulaLBJL-5VLDRQSzRG/s709/Shauna%20and%20Lottie.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="357" data-original-width="709" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjelS_a6e1yR1h9WqYc622ea940qMd1AWSRWOkATpKm9HiQAeOns76dRSoPqqUVTjsp7g6Xq5o42AA0dENAr996Q-pLSYaO2Jnt3jef8gJSWWORmhbduIGjkwCxQxlVZV6UhwEPLjfWwnhw4bwcz3K8eWEtBSvl-T9Ku8ulaLBJL-5VLDRQSzRG/w400-h201/Shauna%20and%20Lottie.webp" width="400" /></span></a></div><p><b><i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></b></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><b><i>Yellowjackets: </i></b>Season 2 was even more unhinged than Season 1, but it earned every moment of cannibalism. The scene where a postpartum Shauna kicked the living shit out of Lottie (who offered herself as tribute) to the strains of "Lightning Crashes" did me in. I told my EMDR therapist (conveniently a <i>Yellowjackets </i>watcher) that in my most intense moments, I feel like both of them.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /><b>Movies</b></span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmYgxPCjg6cYlTu_tSxYYhKs3thfIagGHsiwTOgkuWACkAIxVEpORe7hY6o4JTqiTHuZcuBbvIavcuf2vj8nMu2oAARGlNpIy2IRPZvb1eYzIXhonv1LJE0Xh8ZPfOlWTcIS7eqJoM_Oyh7wS2EMDzZgAuKJ5nfu-KlkzFeiTS5MpAzDBPG0lf/s2492/How-to-Blow-Up-a-Pipeline.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1402" data-original-width="2492" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmYgxPCjg6cYlTu_tSxYYhKs3thfIagGHsiwTOgkuWACkAIxVEpORe7hY6o4JTqiTHuZcuBbvIavcuf2vj8nMu2oAARGlNpIy2IRPZvb1eYzIXhonv1LJE0Xh8ZPfOlWTcIS7eqJoM_Oyh7wS2EMDzZgAuKJ5nfu-KlkzFeiTS5MpAzDBPG0lf/w400-h225/How-to-Blow-Up-a-Pipeline.jpeg" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><i style="font-weight: bold;"><p><i style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></i></p>How to Blow Up a Pipeline: </i>As a painfully cautious and often lazy person, who nevertheless gives a shit about the fate of the world, I'm always fascinated by how activists are born and/or made. The diverse cast of young people who plot to, yes, blow up a pipeline in this drama have lived environmental injustice, as Big Oil takes their land, their livelihoods, their loved ones, and in the case of a character who has pollution-caused cancer, their actual lives. But they have different personalities and tactics. I appreciated that even the characters who were sort of set up to be narcs are victims of circumstance in their own way, and still do their best for the cause.</span><div><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBLGgFzl2N10Tz50Eaic4PmKz51iyqgGb4HvOtAVYF0a8dZ3tjw7Jfhsp0q8lDn47fhVm30nlxQt2ZtsthNA1wW2Z_N-JFq0WXJ7OXH-Xix_Q_sAfKQUrlvonfVCeEaQARAx7aKvmTJ4uKJ_D2O_D0ozxtzjbSgaj6pGtDzt6S5_7peyV4bAWa/s500/Bottoms.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="500" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBLGgFzl2N10Tz50Eaic4PmKz51iyqgGb4HvOtAVYF0a8dZ3tjw7Jfhsp0q8lDn47fhVm30nlxQt2ZtsthNA1wW2Z_N-JFq0WXJ7OXH-Xix_Q_sAfKQUrlvonfVCeEaQARAx7aKvmTJ4uKJ_D2O_D0ozxtzjbSgaj6pGtDzt6S5_7peyV4bAWa/w400-h225/Bottoms.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><div><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><b><i>Bottoms:</i> </b>The gayest, most insane, genius spoof of high school movies I've ever seen. As queer outsiders who start a fight club to get laid, co-writer Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri (of <i>The Bear, </i>which I probably should have also listed among my TV faves) are refreshingly not morally superior to the popular kids. There are serious statements about gender, race, and sexual assault woven throughout without ever deviating from the comedy. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /><b><i>Barbie: </i></b>As everyone has observed, this movie is funny and feminist, and toes the line between corporate critique and corporate shill. But it's also beautifully existential—it's more about human vs. doll than women vs. men—and fantastically weird. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg32Reg9VnXeqCxY6kgf2BTJCLm7OwUw-hv3ZeYyh1kRteNQHatybTbLHPsoPLtdKmMCVPvlt3aXhFe0CGB1UEqCbLz4oseFuXPyneAitYvqcgVUXP1uEw03yGIX3skWRRiDg2a424WpEUJwcK7FjEJGYeg0J5tN74diC2LI1U9HeKf7PqD7Gtf/s2048/Rustin.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg32Reg9VnXeqCxY6kgf2BTJCLm7OwUw-hv3ZeYyh1kRteNQHatybTbLHPsoPLtdKmMCVPvlt3aXhFe0CGB1UEqCbLz4oseFuXPyneAitYvqcgVUXP1uEw03yGIX3skWRRiDg2a424WpEUJwcK7FjEJGYeg0J5tN74diC2LI1U9HeKf7PqD7Gtf/w400-h266/Rustin.webp" width="400" /></span></a></div><p><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Rustin: </i>This movie <span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">chose a specific story arc and stuck with it—the buildup to the March on Washington, and ways that both politics and friendship are a delicate dance of compromise and stand-taking (biopics sometimes try to squeeze an entire life into one movie, and suffer for lack of thematic coherence). I knew enough about Bayard Rustin going in to make Rustin one of Joey’s middle names, but still not all that much. The movie is a beautiful portrait of what bravery looks </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><a style="cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a></span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">like on a human scale. Not to mention how people organized pre-internet. I need daily reminders of both.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span><i style="font-weight: bold;">Women Talking: </i>Horrifyingly, this story of women serially raped by the men in their Amish-esque religious community, is based on a true story. The movie is, literally, mostly women talking—about who they are, what to do, and whether any of the younger men and boys in their circle can be redeemed—which distinguishes it from most other movies out there.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /><b><i>Leave the World Behind:</i> </b>I don't always love the moody post-apocalypse genre, but this one is really well done. The apparent terrorist acts—an oil tanker running aground, leaflets dropped from the sky by a vague enemy, a pool filling with lost flamingoes—are successfully creepy, but ultimately the source of horror and help lies in humans themselves.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGpDEqJufDbLq6NQkd0PLtTwJAuIhHT9kHJHyqlqEjVNsFtG_qaUBI93cBWpqlZdyPYYZXLZrIBkd_prsi-LbUTC7jc9AM1z6AjhofrbeJYW4RkK72ssi4aWyzhznc4_4Bu5W_5J5yv9pzZiiYwHpi3roNQ_WatW7W7DdtDUx-jRJ00N9-I3fj/s1200/1920.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGpDEqJufDbLq6NQkd0PLtTwJAuIhHT9kHJHyqlqEjVNsFtG_qaUBI93cBWpqlZdyPYYZXLZrIBkd_prsi-LbUTC7jc9AM1z6AjhofrbeJYW4RkK72ssi4aWyzhznc4_4Bu5W_5J5yv9pzZiiYwHpi3roNQ_WatW7W7DdtDUx-jRJ00N9-I3fj/w400-h240/1920.webp" width="400" /></span></a></div><p><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><b><i>The Stroll: </i></b>A documentary by and about Black trans sex workers, directed by Kristen Lovell. I love a peak into the New York City of the recent past, and this one is an excellent portrait of the Meatpacking District, of who and what was lost—to AIDS, cops, and gentrification—but also who very much remains. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /><b><i>Smoke Signals:</i> </b>Um, yeah, so this movie came out in 1998, but somehow I never saw it then. It's a moving Native American buddy/road trip movie and a story of how people can be both villains and heroes in the same lifetime. </span></div></div>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-16151417601226275972023-11-27T09:33:00.000-08:002023-11-27T09:33:40.890-08:00severing<p>Our cat brought in a mouse today. I knew as soon as I heard her huntress meow, but I forgot until I plucked a sheet from the top of a laundry pile, and there it was: onyx-eyed, shell-eared, running for new cover. Except, not running, exactly. Pulling itself along on its front legs only, dragging its pink hind feet behind, the way our baby used to do before he learned to crawl. Except then he learned to crawl, and to walk, and he's nearly running now, whereas the mouse probably took a fang to the spinal cord and was on its way out. </p><p>I say "it" for clarity. I don't know the mouse's gender, and "they" seems precious in this context, or confusing. I'm thinking of all the things I do for my own comfort and clarity. </p><p>I caught the mouse twice; I have a system now, thanks to our cat's prolific haul. I thwap a tupperware container over the creature, then slide a magazine underneath. Sometimes it's <i>The New Yorker. </i>Sometimes it's the nonprofit punk zine I used to write for. They still send me free issues, and I always feel a pang of punk guilt. I tape the container to the magazine with blue painter's tape, and walk with the mouse or lizard or very occasionally bird to the wildest part of the median, the strip across from the overgrown yard with Fuck the Cops scrawled on a piece of wood leaning against the fence.</p><p>If I were braver, I think, I would kill the mouse myself. Or I would make it a mouse wheelchair out of a matchbook. I tell myself all the time that a diminished life does not have to be a bad life. It's the season for thinking about such things. For Russian nesting doll ruminations, for planning a Good Death on one wall of my brain and a Christmas list on the other. </p><p>What if it was me, dragging where I once ran? I wouldn't want to be thrown to the coyotes. And yet: what utility, to know your life fed someone else's. </p><p style="text-align: center;">*</p><p>I want consciousness to last forever. I want to sit on a cloud eating Oreos and watch my loved ones discover and rediscover the world one crunchy fall leaf at a time, and, too, I want to down a bottle of whiskey and pause this consciousness business right now. It's the worst idea, really—the idea of ideas, the knowing and the awareness of the end of knowing.</p><p>The ego <i>would</i> try to keep itself going forever. That's so <i>ego </i>of it. What lasts forever? Only the collective everything, and cancer. Ask Henrietta Lacks' diaspora of cells. Glass tubes that hold our shared shame.</p><p style="text-align: center;">*</p><p>Part of the Palestinian girl's face is obscured by a white bandage, but the untethered thing inside her refuses to be unheard. She screams about her martyred family: her nephew, her brother who just married. She is thirteen, but when you search "thirteen-year-old Palestinian girl yelling at world" so many videos fill the screen. So many girls. One wanted to be a singer. One describes watching her mother die. One had a cat who is still looking for her on the rooftop.</p><p>And so you can return to the scene of the crime only in your mind, the only place you ever are anyway.</p><p>Someone behind the camera asks her for her name. She gives it calmly, the way she might have ordered a soda or answered an attendance call in class. She can be calm, but she shouldn't be. </p><p style="text-align: center;">*</p><p>Happy people are like stopped clocks, correct twice a day.</p><p>The people who love me tell me how to quiet the screaming in my mind, but wouldn't that be convenient for everyone? I can give my name too. I can check into doctor's appointments and show up on time and go quietly into good nights and bad. I probably will, eventually. </p><p>I'm the type to roll over, show my belly, apologize.</p><p>I used to think that if we all wanted God to exist, that was enough to create God; did it matter which came first, the wishing or the deity, the Us or the Him? (Her, Them, It; there is no convenience or clarity) Now I think about how my thinking has failed me, and I don't know if I want wishes to be horses after all. I don't know what I want—or rather, I do, but I don't trust it—and wanting seems so feeble.</p><p>The only real thing, it seems, it to stitch oneself hard to the ancestors and the descendants, feel the needle pierce my skin. Not a denial of the self, but a diaspora. Molly called it the Great Oneness, but she's not around to ask anymore.</p>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-30038097032526045582023-11-16T12:06:00.000-08:002023-11-16T12:06:33.958-08:00ritual for the amelioration of a bad dream<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm_TTjfaEXQqkf6JqFGEGXIoJwd_IsXR8N9ZRcpPkObR7iQP4y9CTvgGd-AxzrLhiI2Q51dO9L6nMAcNM2T8L4u76bT4WWfnRdhblNUBrYuh4dd1w3-dwh_vArrvTV8keCyiKM0iNCrCrHKQeMtgYu-URsO0LBl29OVAuylX5LVXz0BxR_qmPI/s1000/oven-mitts-231960_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="1000" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm_TTjfaEXQqkf6JqFGEGXIoJwd_IsXR8N9ZRcpPkObR7iQP4y9CTvgGd-AxzrLhiI2Q51dO9L6nMAcNM2T8L4u76bT4WWfnRdhblNUBrYuh4dd1w3-dwh_vArrvTV8keCyiKM0iNCrCrHKQeMtgYu-URsO0LBl29OVAuylX5LVXz0BxR_qmPI/w400-h266/oven-mitts-231960_1280.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>An old woman came to our door </div><div>selling potholders she’d woven,</div><div>a little grubby from her grip, </div><div>the wear and tear of having offered herself </div><div>so often</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>You bought two, added them to our drawer,</div><div>saying, “That could be me.”</div><div>My dad earned good money, </div><div>but your own mother had filled a drawer</div><div>with unopened bills</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>You’re twenty years gone</div><div>and I’m pushing your grandson</div><div>in his stroller when a woman on Figueroa</div><div>holds out a stack of potholders,</div><div>a prayer written in yarn</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>No tengo dinero, I say,</div><div>and it’s true, but a block too late</div><div>I realize I could have gotten cash</div><div>and found her again. I could have</div><div>summoned you</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I dream of telling your other grandson</div><div>that I’m dying, trying to be honest </div><div>while softening the blow, as if </div><div>such words could ever be anything</div><div>but an earthquake</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>That could be me: leaving them,</div><div>joining you. To lack the audacity</div><div>of confidence—in clear bloodwork, a steady</div><div>paycheck—is to leave them anyway,</div><div>my head perpetually turned</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Lo siento, lo siento, I say to her</div><div>and you, and your grandsons, </div><div>though forgiveness is a wooden nickel.</div><div>Lo siento translates to</div><div><i>I feel it</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The Jewish prayer books prescribe </div><div>a ritual for bad dreams, says my friend</div><div>who knows about such things. </div><div>Spit three times in four directions,</div><div>tell three witnesses</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Each says, It will be good.</div><div>The group chat says, It will be good.</div><div>And over the roar of my own tears</div><div>and the tears of the whole world,</div><div>bound together with wet yarn,</div><div>I can almost hear you say it too</div>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-83823928656452632642023-08-19T12:27:00.005-07:002023-08-19T12:33:19.329-07:00weathering, or: little house on the prairie fan fiction<p>It was nice to log into Blogspot for the first time in ages and read my happy AWP post from March, just to remember that I haven't <i>consistently </i>been a human dumpster fire for the past one to five years. I am <i>inconsistently </i>a dumpster fire. My current problem is unemployment. I was fortunate to be steadily employed for twenty years(!), weathering the great recession of 2008 and the pandemic. But budget cuts came to 826LA, and my job didn't survive them. I am good at diligently applying for jobs, but so far I haven't actually landed one, and I am bad at dealing with uncertainty. </p><p style="text-align: left;">All of which is to say I have not used this time to make my house fabulous or have a creative renaissance. But I did write one short story, which is basically <i><a href="https://www.muthamagazine.com/category/hold-it-lightly/">Little House on the Prairie</a> </i>fan fiction. I'm posting it here because I don't think there's a huge literary market for <i>Little House </i>fan fiction. </p><p>In one of the books, <i>Little Town on the Prairie, </i>Laura teaches at a tiny country school and stays with a member of the school board and his wife during the week. One night she wakes up and hears the wife threatening her husband with a knife. She is so over frozen prairie life, and so desperate to go home. Naturally I had to write a story from the POV of someone feeling a bit trapped and crazy. </p><p style="text-align: center;">*</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjulh9TEABSjgYyHqCmssdsSM_XHQp476Q9NHDTJD7ukVA56XiJwaeg6Vyp-NOHidlSbDAgOlDDcK6cciOGG_awT6pSY0hF4myKm5e267JfhVCaYVXRjoHLGUp7S6rZpmuJKwSwL1hpNwHZR38-XP3uLbUNIEwiGwk2czg_0jI0pzxNiXSDUnyE/s1000/noah-buscher-L_bIb644eFk-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjulh9TEABSjgYyHqCmssdsSM_XHQp476Q9NHDTJD7ukVA56XiJwaeg6Vyp-NOHidlSbDAgOlDDcK6cciOGG_awT6pSY0hF4myKm5e267JfhVCaYVXRjoHLGUp7S6rZpmuJKwSwL1hpNwHZR38-XP3uLbUNIEwiGwk2czg_0jI0pzxNiXSDUnyE/w400-h400/noah-buscher-L_bIb644eFk-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@noahbuscher?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Noah Buscher</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/L_bIb644eFk?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: center;">Weathering</p><p>Mrs. Brewster is no longer fooled by a blue sky in the middle of a Dakota winter. On clear days, the snow doesn’t cross out everything a person might see or touch. Claim shanties, barns, new small trees, horses, prairie, a body approaching the cabin. The wind doesn’t scream over everything a person might hear. Her son crying, Mr. Brewster’s logical tenor about how the land will be theirs if they can just weather this. A person screaming. On clear days, Mrs. Brewster can sometimes see the moon, a discarded white marble. </p><p>But the temperature is farther below zero than any thermometer can measure. These are the days men venture out, and horses fall in snow-covered sloughs, and she tells Johnny he mustn’t be fooled into playing outside.</p><p>The Ingalls girl has eyes like one of those blue-sky days. She is the same age as Mrs. Brewster’s youngest sister, who will not receive either of the letters she wrote until spring. The first letter spoke of our own little piece of America, as if she were writing an advertisement to sell herself on something she’d already bought. The ink on the second letter is uncertain, jittery from a pen held by frozen fingers. </p><p>The Ingalls girl is quiet and well mannered, but something about her seems ready to burst with chatter. She appears to be waiting for an indulgent smile from Mrs. Brewster, but none is forthcoming.</p><p>Every weekday, the Ingalls girl buttons up her shoes and coat and winds her muffler around her resolute face and heads to the schoolhouse, where Mr. Brewster has built a fire for the students. The girl has a Ma and a Pa at home, and some sisters, and a beau who announces his arrival with sleigh bells each Friday evening. The girl’s Ma knit that muffler with warm hands, and it is as if the girl is held by those hands everywhere she goes. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHHpB2jeVdpKaCHaeGgS1gI9Ay-zWd_saiZnQFPD_dUEmz76e79kG0-zXlqwf2DdSyxI89nERZt0YOr1NQuqH_JmVnLDbYHQz-ONbx6H9E0HlgYmb_B8-yng1--STOeU5OIP7jDBjut9HBKAbN50vGd6Pkh-F7YlQFA5LGaVaBVAyJKi8tnXCL/s1000/scott-ymker-Nkj4xeLclMQ-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHHpB2jeVdpKaCHaeGgS1gI9Ay-zWd_saiZnQFPD_dUEmz76e79kG0-zXlqwf2DdSyxI89nERZt0YOr1NQuqH_JmVnLDbYHQz-ONbx6H9E0HlgYmb_B8-yng1--STOeU5OIP7jDBjut9HBKAbN50vGd6Pkh-F7YlQFA5LGaVaBVAyJKi8tnXCL/w400-h266/scott-ymker-Nkj4xeLclMQ-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Scott Ymker on Unsplash</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>Johnny Brewster’s nose is always running. He’s had three fevers this winter, and by the second, Mrs. Brewster wondered: If he died, would Mr. Brewster relent and take them all home? By the third, Mrs. Brewster knew he would not.</p><p>On the night that Mrs. Brewster brings the kitchen knife to the part of the claim shanty they call bedroom, she knows that the Ingalls girl hears her. All this endless land around them, and only a sheet hung on a wire between them, approximating a world that has forgotten them. Home. Room. What fanciful ideas.</p><p>This is the knife that carved their Christmas goose, shot from the sky as it tried to fly south. This is the knife that she used to cut the calf free, when it got tangled in morning glory vines. Spring and fall are foreign lands now, as far away as the town where her sister lives. She wants to believe the knife contains a kind of magic. It can sever, set free. </p><p>She holds it above her head with both hands. The marble moon watches through the window, giving her just enough light to see Mr. Brewster’s shiny cheeks above the quilts. He works all day in the tiny half-town, thinks he deserves supper and rest when he gets home.</p><p>“You’re not happy here. You can’t be,” she whispers.</p><p>Mr. Brewster stirs. A hand pops above the covers like a gopher from its hole. The hand waves in her direction, shooing her away. She is a fly to him. If she had hoped that she could make him see, the hand corrects her. </p><p>“Take me home.” She isn’t whispering now. Her voice is cold as the clear sky.</p><p>In a fit of movement and recognition, Mr. Brewster is awake, and understands, and doesn’t.</p><p>“Woman, what are you doing? Are you mad?”</p><p>Of course she is mad. She has been for some time now.</p><p>“If you don’t go of your own free will, you’ll go by force,” she says. </p><p>He barks out a laugh. “Are you going to hold that knife to my throat all the way to Wisconsin?”</p><p>“If I have to.”</p><p>“There’s nothing there for us. You going to buy back the old farm? With what money?”</p><p>“We can live with my family. They’ll make room.”</p><p>“Oh, they’d love that. Their daughter’s no-good husband, coming home with his tail between his legs. Put the knife down and go to sleep, woman.”</p><p>A woman is a fly. Flies freeze and die in the winter.</p><p>She hadn’t felt quite like herself when she picked up the knife, and the force that guides her to lower it is equally strange. A thing outside herself. She hears muffled crying and doesn’t know if it’s the Ingalls girl or Johnny or herself. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCJuSvS-6aYsCII2FTX0QSD0a6CDsPXZCufaXZBru7ubNENQ4MX3EOTQBlmj0zs2nAplY3LLQIr_6u5rLfZt7kQhtQiw2Dchqt9WnnzZRZ7C9wR_q3gJEC3schksOjhrclYKCQ_o0AKUixD8rYDFjx7jyVW_6IGPnPrjqfjUtSaFpX7ieubTfa/s1000/brianna-marble-CJYkwXVtBY0-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="560" data-original-width="1000" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCJuSvS-6aYsCII2FTX0QSD0a6CDsPXZCufaXZBru7ubNENQ4MX3EOTQBlmj0zs2nAplY3LLQIr_6u5rLfZt7kQhtQiw2Dchqt9WnnzZRZ7C9wR_q3gJEC3schksOjhrclYKCQ_o0AKUixD8rYDFjx7jyVW_6IGPnPrjqfjUtSaFpX7ieubTfa/w400-h224/brianna-marble-CJYkwXVtBY0-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brianna Marble on Unsplash</td></tr></tbody></table><p>The Indians have lived on this land for longer than any of the white men who rushed the claim office last spring and plowed the sod last summer. How can people who don’t even know how to grow wheat survive these winters? Mr. Brewster said a group of Indians built a bark house near the lake, and pulled fish through holes in the ice. Mrs. Brewster has two thoughts at once. Have they cursed us for taking their land? and Would they take me in if I went to them? But then she would still be here, more or less, and that is the problem.</p><p>She puts the knife back on the high table where she prepares meals, too high for Johnny to reach, although he is taller every day. She wraps it in a checked dish towel. </p><p>Johnny is asleep on his cot by the stove. The red embers tell her there are still many hours until morning. They cast a glow on the half of his face visible above the blankets. He has long dark lashes and pale skin that turns rosy when he’s cold or feverish or excited. Lately he has seemed like one long whine, like the wind itself, and she has snapped at him and spanked him harder than she should, and then scolded herself for her temper. </p><p>If not for Johnny, she might walk out into the snow. She’s heard that people feel warm right before they freeze to death. Maybe that’s what it feels like to be welcomed by angels. But Johnny is a kind of insurance policy for Mr. Brewster, isn’t he? He would be shocked to hear her frame it so coldly, accuse her of being unmotherly. It’s true, though. Johnny keeps her tethered to life like a horse on a picket line. </p><p>She puts her hand to the window. During the summer, they didn’t even have glass. Then Mr. Brewster arrived with two sheets of it for their two windows, and they celebrated this bit of civilization. Her hand melts the condensation, as if she is a living thing, full of heat and life.</p>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-90666086015854608572023-03-11T12:42:00.000-08:002023-03-11T12:42:07.075-08:00the good kind of magic: onward and awpward<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEndagWxllwd4VScSbr3TVwGmpRCaXBzqzawlKNN2Ew-uhpCNQVINQQOQQgBIJnxMJ9RXW7lJtYLlJNt_5qAxqQoPkz8gNrIig3W1jQ-kxbYN-PqpYnaM7yPlxElHiFrTOJzOAkKcKlrcqIEs8_4_mkHBpIHlnx_jPqHk3l1yVPZbVlG1RWQ/s1000/ben-dutton-insv5BSTqv0-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="521" data-original-width="1000" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEndagWxllwd4VScSbr3TVwGmpRCaXBzqzawlKNN2Ew-uhpCNQVINQQOQQgBIJnxMJ9RXW7lJtYLlJNt_5qAxqQoPkz8gNrIig3W1jQ-kxbYN-PqpYnaM7yPlxElHiFrTOJzOAkKcKlrcqIEs8_4_mkHBpIHlnx_jPqHk3l1yVPZbVlG1RWQ/w400-h209/ben-dutton-insv5BSTqv0-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@benjamiindutton?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Ben Dutton</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/insv5BSTqv0?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br />I'm writing this from the lobby of the Seattle Convention Center, which is strangely beautiful for a convention center. Escalators going up to the sky, flanked with warm wooden stair-seats that look out over Downtown Seattle. </p><p>Somehow this is my first post of 2023. Time is a motherfucker.</p><p>I'm here with C.C., Dash, and Joey for four and a half days of the AWP writers' conference, smashed together with a family vacation. I desperately needed a change of scene. I think we all did. My Great Mental Health Relapse of 2022 hitched a ride to 2023, despite nothing bad happening. I'm going to therapy, doing EMDR, taking more Effexor than I was before, but it's been hard to shake the feeling that something terrible is around the corner, and that feeling becomes its own trigger. Am I afraid of doctor appointments, <i>or am I afraid of how afraid I get </i>of doctor appointments? It's like "live in despair for a week" is an item on my to-do list that I have to check off periodically.</p><p style="text-align: center;">*</p><p>Getting out of town has been good medicine for getting out of my own head—not falling into that low hum of depression/anxiety the sight of my own living room for a few days. I feel bad saying that (I am so good at feeling bad) because I love my living room, toy diaspora and all, and I love my life. But constantly looking at it and asking myself "<i>Do </i>I love my life? Are we all okay? Is something terrible about to happen?" is not helpful to anyone.</p><p>So, AWP. Apparently <a href="https://www.brownpaperpress.com/crybaby" target="_blank">my book</a> hasn't been selling like hotcakes or like, I don't know, a more successful book, and it would be very easy to look around this massive building full of writers and feel like a peon. But this is an area where time, that motherfucker, is on my side. In the...17? 18? years since my first AWP, I've found my niche as a writer, published some stuff, and made my peace with humble expectations. It's okay if I never publish with a Big Five publishing house (though I'm not turning one down, either), and it's okay if I don't even attend every panel that sounds interesting.</p><p style="text-align: center;">*</p><p>We're staying at the apartment of C.C.'s friend Meg (not to be confused with my editor friend Meg, whom I got to hang out with here for the first time ever), and I was reading about <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/13/the-dubious-rise-of-impostor-syndrome" target="_blank">the history of imposter syndrome</a> in her copy of the <i>New Yorker. </i>People arrive at imposter syndrome—or imposter phenomenon, as it was initially and more accurately called—in a variety of ways, but one of them is when parents have low expectations for their children, who then go on to be high-achieving, and they struggle with the disconnect they feel. "How can I have achieved ABC when I've always been sure I was a stupid screw-up? The only explanation is that I must be a fraud."</p><p>I've been thinking lately about how my anxiety about Joey's health and development could be really bad for him. I mean, I have a couple of years to work my shit out in therapy—the only option for screwed-up parents who don't want to dump it all on their kids—before he starts to notice that I'm constantly like "Is something wrong with you?" </p><p>I <i>worry </i>something is wrong with him because I suffer from the imposter phenomenon as a mother. Not as Dash's mother—this is all so twisty and deep-rooted, it's hard to explain—so I fear a day when Joey will notice that—that I see Dash as a golden child who validates my desire to be a mother, and I see Joey as some sort of proof of my failings and undeservingness. When—OBVIOUSLY—neither of them is either of those things. They're little kids who deserve the space to be their own people, and loved for whomever they are. </p><p>So, without being too hard on myself—because PTSD is real and our adoption "journey" has been full of potholes and some of those potholes have been more like sinkholes—I want to <i>try </i>to pivot to believing in Joey's ability to learn and grow. Because he's already demonstrated it. Because if he had some sort of dire condition that would render him an infant forever, we would probably already know about it (and I would grieve and try to meet him there and love him anyway, but it would be hard, and I tend to assume the hardest thing is the thing that will happen). Anything milder—small delays or quirks or viruses or needs—that may pop up is probably manageable. I want to have faith in my ability to manage it, and in his ability as well. I want to set the bar high. Not tiger-mom high, but "if you did X, you can do Y, and I will believe in you and help you" high. </p><p style="text-align: center;">*</p><p>On Thursday night, I read at <i><a href="https://literarymama.com/">Literary Mama</a>'</i>s<i> </i>20th anniversary event in the basement of a Capitol Hill bar. <a href="https://www.jodykeisner.com/" target="_blank">Jody Keisner</a> read from an essay about a mom who abandoned her children, whose pursuit of freedom caused her to come utterly undone, and the tradeoffs mothers face when they want to run away from their own lives. I don't think I want to run away from my life, but I related to the essay more than I ever would have when Dash was a baby. I related to this room full of moms talking about what it feels like to lose yourself, and not in a good way. I want to run away from my constant questions about my own life. I want to run away from my own head. The intrusive thoughts, the bracing stomach, the floor-drop feeling that comes all too easily when I consider a new and terrible possibility. </p><p>But I can't leave myself without leaving the earth, which would mean leaving my family, which I have no intention of doing. So I feel trapped. And that makes me want to leave—to leave something—even more. </p><p>Usually that's when I pop half an Ativan and remind myself that the day will end and I can watch some TV. </p><p>I want magical, spiritual, epiphany-style cures, but all I've ever found is short-term bumps and decades of therapy, and a kind of love that is sometimes magical and sometimes the opposite—a thing made of durable fibers and realistic expectations.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqRb35UUcScotpLXYvqLUEXwRTAS04sZZ_EVq38Jm5mfc5__h6cR_s1qwqcTMIId35YwjtwowMwaYyzBbQEAaFmon7yJ2A3k01x90juYb4zTef2EJv6oVg_TVw8TUK1FbJmw86XL-LYBxq4NzV7reo5nef-5FLUG7FxWoT8emNf1sV9RnpPA/s5760/terri-bleeker-MsZJPm2jvl0-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3840" data-original-width="5760" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqRb35UUcScotpLXYvqLUEXwRTAS04sZZ_EVq38Jm5mfc5__h6cR_s1qwqcTMIId35YwjtwowMwaYyzBbQEAaFmon7yJ2A3k01x90juYb4zTef2EJv6oVg_TVw8TUK1FbJmw86XL-LYBxq4NzV7reo5nef-5FLUG7FxWoT8emNf1sV9RnpPA/w400-h266/terri-bleeker-MsZJPm2jvl0-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@terri_bleeker?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Terri Bleeker</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/MsZJPm2jvl0?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>There was a woman in the <i>Literary Mama </i>audience who is on her own adoption journey, already fraught with professionals who haven't delivered on promises. I wanted to hug her. I hoped her story <i>wouldn't </i>be like ours. I scrawled my email address on a bar napkin and told her to reach out any time. I hope she does.</p><p style="text-align: center;">*</p><p>Yesterday I had coffee with Myriam Steinberg, whose graphic memoir <i><a href="https://www.cataloguebabynovel.com/">Catalogue Baby</a>, </i>documents her very long road to motherhood, full of mystical moments and miscarriages. Eventually she got pregnant with twins, but when her son's water broke early, she was on bedrest for four months. Four months! Then her babies were in the NICU for a month and two months respectively. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisx-z9nxMcnVMoOicWWa3pX7a8gdk8M8l05_gLJJE_QPEWpv5pYhtQc-hCG03x87wnHzMLc1DMGOC4V2uv3YUp8Q8D1nfOXRi5jU6BtLlJJg-1owmB7ix4stksgpaezQU_9EAxSDCN5_PnIgPLCoVK_rVLaHB15arTMdzq8hByAw_J6_o_gA/s450/Catalogue%20Baby.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="356" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisx-z9nxMcnVMoOicWWa3pX7a8gdk8M8l05_gLJJE_QPEWpv5pYhtQc-hCG03x87wnHzMLc1DMGOC4V2uv3YUp8Q8D1nfOXRi5jU6BtLlJJg-1owmB7ix4stksgpaezQU_9EAxSDCN5_PnIgPLCoVK_rVLaHB15arTMdzq8hByAw_J6_o_gA/w316-h400/Catalogue%20Baby.jpeg" width="316" /></a></div><br /><p>At many junctures, she said, medical professionals told her about worst-case scenarios, but she stayed true to what she called her "prime directive." I admire and envy the ability to take medical advice with a grain of salt. I have this all-or-nothing thinking that says, "Doctors saved your fucking life, Cheryl. If you want to believe them when they say you <i>don't </i>have cancer, you need to believe everything else they say too." (To be clear, no medical professionals have predicted dire outcomes for Joey; quite the opposite. But I'm always thinking ten steps in the scariest direction.) </p><p>Talking with Myriam gave me some perspective, at least for a moment, and made me see how relatively little we've actually dealt with. She spent 62 days with her babies in the NICU, and I have PTSD from spending four <i>completely uneventful </i>days there with Joey. But again, I'm trying not to beat myself up—I'd dealt with some medical shit before that, and Myriam didn't escape psychologically unscathed any more than I did. </p><p>Also, importantly, her twins are four years old and have Been Through Stuff and are pretty much fine. It's not all or nothing. It almost never is.</p><p>Last night I went to a reading by my old grad school friend, <a href="https://www.miahjeffra.com/" target="_blank">Miah Jeffra</a>, and a diverse handful of queer fiction writers and poets. It was so much fun to hear fiction, my other old friend. A surefire way to escape my head and my life. I hope I can hold onto a little bit of this magic when I get back (the bad magic, the magical thinking, says "Remember how you had a wonderful time at MacDowell in 2012 and came home and immediately got diagnosed with cancer?" so insert all the evil-eye emojis here). I want to read more fiction. Maybe someday I'll even write some again.</p>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-88133816600586962112022-12-27T14:56:00.004-08:002022-12-27T19:43:54.929-08:00tops of 2022<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m starting this post on the first day of winter. It’s 70 degrees outside. I don’t know how to make sense of time any more than my LA body knows how to make sense of weather. This year we trained to become foster parents, endured our <a href="https://www.muthamagazine.com/2022/05/we-met-a-mom-in-reno-just-to-text-and-cry/" target="_blank">fourth disrupted adoption</a>, and then welcomed the closest thing to a <a href="https://www.muthamagazine.com/2022/09/liminal-village-adoption-covid-and-homes-in-the-air/" target="_blank">“surprise baby”</a> that queer adoptive parents can have. I like the baby; I don’t really like surprises, because even good surprises remind me of bad ones (see: four disrupted adoptions). So discovering Joey’s sweet disposition and falling in love with him was threaded with the worst mental health period I’ve had in years. I’m good-enough now, if I get enough sleep and don’t scrutinize anything too closely. That’s why this isn’t a personal 2022 recap—that story is told in all my obtuse angsty poems below this post—but a list of what I read and watched and loved.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-d0c6ac65-7fff-30aa-bce3-41844ac8e73c"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I recently got to interview Adam Bessie, whose graphic memoir </span><a href="https://adambessie.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Going Remote</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">documents the bleak business of teaching community college during quarantine while also undergoing treatment for brain cancer, and he alluded to Susan Sontag’s concept of the Kingdom of the Ill, i.e. the isolation of the margins. Illness can be physical or mental or social or material. It is always lonely. With alllll due respect to chemo, the truest antidotes are community and art.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Books</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2937311626?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Nickel Boys </span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by Colson Whitehead</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Whitehead writes about the worst sins of American history with understated details that shine a light on the horror. In this novel of a corrupt reform school, I was particularly moved by the friendship between A-student and activist Ellwood and street-smart Turner. It made me think of that famous line in Huckleberry Finn, where Tom says he'd go to hell for Jim. Turner actually does go to hell for Ellwood, more or less, giving this friendship between abused Black teens more gravitas. The twist at the end is arguably a cynical one; based on The Intuitionist and other writing, I believe Whitehead is interested in the arbitrary nature of fate. But if Turner's outcome is arbitrary, and his past never entirely escapable, he also merges into the modern world with a combination of his own and Ellwood's best traits. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8RCMOYQqzJbVQCl5sMIlkWIQgMFnG95hik_kyKZDpwSUxfyjiQ1XdbY_iCbTjxi8F99M6e640xPV2LfQtp-wDNJw5TVLg0EUOKN0qmCiCqecvLoFUYpj7IU74gtUns1knA7icAAI-XQ5Q-x3hX0-DjoL-JZjUWJlJOAOOljv4_jX2qTXRng/s500/nickel%20boys.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="318" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8RCMOYQqzJbVQCl5sMIlkWIQgMFnG95hik_kyKZDpwSUxfyjiQ1XdbY_iCbTjxi8F99M6e640xPV2LfQtp-wDNJw5TVLg0EUOKN0qmCiCqecvLoFUYpj7IU74gtUns1knA7icAAI-XQ5Q-x3hX0-DjoL-JZjUWJlJOAOOljv4_jX2qTXRng/w255-h400/nickel%20boys.jpeg" width="255" /></a></div><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4650956692?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">True Biz</span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Sara Novic</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> This is a good companion to </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nickel Boys—</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a story about an institution that is equally insular, but utopic rather than dystopic. Set at a boarding school for Deaf students, Novic's savvy novel is told from multiple points of view, each representing a different segment of the Deaf community: the hearing headmistress raised by Deaf parents; the Deaf student whose shitty cochlear implant and uptight mom have stood between her and learning sign language; the Deaf student with Deaf parents (and grandparents) who is treated as minor royalty. The story is a page-turner, opening when three students go missing and flashing back to the months leading up. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Going in, I wasn’t sure how I felt about cochlear implants, which I know are controversial, but this novel suggests that they’re sort of a red herring, just the latest chapter in a long history of eugenic attitudes toward disabled people. The novel is clear without being didactic that implants aren’t inherently evil, but when used to deny Deaf children access to sign language (and by extension, to language in general), they become a tool of oppression. I particularly liked Novic’s meta-texts about Deaf history and the structural elegance of ASL. Ultimately this is a book about how language and community liberate people.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59892260-fatty-fatty-boom-boom?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=q83YjmItjc&rank=1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fatty Fatty Boom Boom</span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Rabia Chaudry</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: A delightful and mouth-watering memoir of food and culture, this is not a weight loss story or a fat acceptance manifesto. Rather, it’s Chaudry's story of how food is as complicated as family; hers tells her she’s too fat and dark-skinned to find a husband, which leads to an abusive marriage to the first man who proposes. But Chaudry also makes it clear that her family loves her, and that for every disordered eating habit, she also has a deep passion for the recipes of her homeland of Pakistan. The last portion of the book is devoted to recipes, for braver cooks than me.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4364066036?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Grace</span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Natashia Deón</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> This book is ballsy, gut-wrenching, heartbreaking—all those phrases that call up the body. The narrator of the novel, Naomi, is disembodied, a ghost for much of the story, which spans the 1840s to the 1870s in rural Alabama and Georgia. As such, she doesn't have much power, but she has more freedom than when she inhabited an enslaved body, and she's determined to protect her daughter from the horrors that led to her own death. The thematic scope is vast, but the motif of who gets to be a mother hit me especially hard. When I try to imagine Natashia Deón writing this book, I picture a process that must have been meticulous (so many characters, so much jumping around in time) but also intuitive and spiritual. The result is a wonder.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60199553-the-tiger-and-the-cage" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Tiger and the Cage</span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Emma Bolden</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: I love a memoir by a poet; Bolden finds the precise language to capture the equally maddening experiences of multiple chronic illnesses (endometriosis, dysautonomia) and a medical establishment that ranges from dismissive to misogynistic. Despite Bolden’s significant suffering, the book is also a story of self-discovery and self-advocacy.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58739572-wash-day-diaries" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wash Day Diaries </span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: Books and movies that thread together the narratives of an eclectic set of female friends are easy to come by; it’s a genre I’m drawn to and critical of when done poorly. This graphic novel tells the stories of several Black women in New York with exceptional economy and gorgeous details, pivoting around the intimacy of hairstyling rituals while touching upon dating, mental illness, and coming out.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4jDrBB7u74J_2Ga8pOnQ7jSmNALj9OgpNKolGIk55y7wjG_z16SG3G4ki2SxxdCwH7PTP7ZCiBtp-7evpoc_aFG7tz3wOlU_F7tjsyNdQYKvNT2l-E0DEFeP750cGIM-ZV25IsBNY4hupaG_QPYmT4WaaO6Vzql4t841WQwIwWq38ep44xw/s400/Wash%20Day%20Diaries.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="283" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4jDrBB7u74J_2Ga8pOnQ7jSmNALj9OgpNKolGIk55y7wjG_z16SG3G4ki2SxxdCwH7PTP7ZCiBtp-7evpoc_aFG7tz3wOlU_F7tjsyNdQYKvNT2l-E0DEFeP750cGIM-ZV25IsBNY4hupaG_QPYmT4WaaO6Vzql4t841WQwIwWq38ep44xw/w283-h400/Wash%20Day%20Diaries.jpeg" width="283" /></a></div><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59551334-the-year-of-the-horses" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Year of the Horses </span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by Courtney Maum</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: I loved Maum’s voice and related to her ambivalence about having a second child and parenting a toddler. She describes the complex and often vague despair of midlife (or really just life) in sardonic and savvy detail, with lots of interesting horse history thrown in.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/383011383" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Broken Harbor </span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by Tana French</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: I cannot get enough of Tana French. The Likeness is still my favorite in the Dublin Murder Squad series so far, but Broken Harbor did not disappoint in terms of atmospherics (a crumbling, half-sold housing development) or thematics (the ways places haunt us, the lengths we go to to protect troubled loved ones).</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60018573-a-career-in-books" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Career in Books</span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Kate Gavino</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: This graphic novel nails different types of entry-level publishing jobs with cringeworthy accuracy, from the artsy indie press financed by a trust fund to the ruthless market forces that govern larger houses. If it’s righteously cynical about the industry, it’s hopeful about friendship and literature, as the young women in the story find their way in the world and their elderly author neighbor models dignity without notoriety. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixi2QzFteYnhispKPuYocXKRsO-7--sNlQCQpYHSVrzstYaf5mV0ni9f3FQNto6EVLr-YLHj3K-wipG05sJ2zYY1Ii2BlXlMVScSXZmup_dx9KcImqJcNdfl1HbUE16JJo4u6ujPpULuzNuTuTWR8D_PXKId2j48UvYVPOv2a1weOyiHmSWg/s500/A%20Career%20in%20Books.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="405" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixi2QzFteYnhispKPuYocXKRsO-7--sNlQCQpYHSVrzstYaf5mV0ni9f3FQNto6EVLr-YLHj3K-wipG05sJ2zYY1Ii2BlXlMVScSXZmup_dx9KcImqJcNdfl1HbUE16JJo4u6ujPpULuzNuTuTWR8D_PXKId2j48UvYVPOv2a1weOyiHmSWg/w324-h400/A%20Career%20in%20Books.webp" width="324" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Screens</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6710474/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everything Everywhere All at Once</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> This aptly named movie has it all: the multiverse, the meaning of life, the lack thereof, rocks with faces, teenagers, marriage, bagels, an amazing </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ratatouille </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">homage.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghC4TeHNJnHjS9XSU6VzSEPOVX6rpjWugk_tOMBM5HkIE-K89FqLDqOAs9FNEPNmSOboCKNlxfj8lt_3YoFgZcKzA6DInHWa-bKMDAPhPVUcFp_ihoGyH-_ub49gwaCsPPtB4243TwWExvR5rYPjwC7PLSPq5Zd3GsLbEZBH9mPP6pVPrwnQ/s650/everything-everywhere-all-at-once_169.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="364" data-original-width="650" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghC4TeHNJnHjS9XSU6VzSEPOVX6rpjWugk_tOMBM5HkIE-K89FqLDqOAs9FNEPNmSOboCKNlxfj8lt_3YoFgZcKzA6DInHWa-bKMDAPhPVUcFp_ihoGyH-_ub49gwaCsPPtB4243TwWExvR5rYPjwC7PLSPq5Zd3GsLbEZBH9mPP6pVPrwnQ/w400-h224/everything-everywhere-all-at-once_169.png" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/reservation-dogs" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reservation Dogs</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Season 1 topped my list </span><a href="http://breadandbread.blogspot.com/2021/12/tops-of-2021.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">last year</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and season 2 is just as good. I like the slowness, the quirkiness, the way that the sacred and the comic/profane are inextricable from one another. I especially loved an episode in which motivational Native leaders (including an insufferable urban hipster-Indian who has fetishized her own ancestry) speak to the local youth group. The kids are there because they’ve been bribed with gift cards. Just as last season nailed the subculture at the local health clinic, this one nails youth nonprofits and group home life; Marc Maron is perfectly cast as a sober house manager who is caring, weird, genuine, and generally a mixed bag in the kids’ lives. Cheese’s arc as a kid in the system feels all too true.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjofp_11A3j4lTMk8VJgpp8niz8ZlQ4uK019d1_zpCf3k2-Xn8C195Dppm0Soz3mC-jTC49IYFle8hrTBfaNR9D_5PPf7h61HRaePPdt1ywC9cvH__5--E_64Gw3YQAIYjrsZ-K-51ZqsfCQIg5VJWxYChX3txvy4Ec4LffaUv8QILX7GYxYg/s810/Reservation-Dogs-Season-2-But-Why-Tho.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="810" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjofp_11A3j4lTMk8VJgpp8niz8ZlQ4uK019d1_zpCf3k2-Xn8C195Dppm0Soz3mC-jTC49IYFle8hrTBfaNR9D_5PPf7h61HRaePPdt1ywC9cvH__5--E_64Gw3YQAIYjrsZ-K-51ZqsfCQIg5VJWxYChX3txvy4Ec4LffaUv8QILX7GYxYg/w400-h223/Reservation-Dogs-Season-2-But-Why-Tho.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80177342" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Good Girls</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">/</span><a href="https://www.hulu.com/series/claws-3b8c24bb-91fe-4463-9f46-c9105148b22e" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Claws</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I binged all of the former and much of the latter (it lost me a bit after a “you thought he was dead but he’s not!” plot twist). They’re both character-driven dramedies about a group of women who launder money because straight middle class life has either eluded them or failed them. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Good Girls </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is the latter, and whiter, though Retta’s storyline is one of the best and most heart-wrenching. In </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Claws, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Niecy Nash is equal parts funny and world-weary as a former foster kid taking care of her autistic brother and trying to level up her nail salon business. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE3TJYGlbZEEJusCrOA6CzRpApkwk_PTDkCzOJLA3610KW7YO0c2g_Saj9TFSJekYPHX52jDoAzFUCGAG0svKUyoDnaE8RkUGed58gs4tvTMyvTt8ZcLj2lRWYEB4L9khv4F-WjnsPHqDVclqotbZHMF3UekqNQDCDsmsdfJ7Um1o6xC3GvQ/s1284/claws-hulu.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="856" data-original-width="1284" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE3TJYGlbZEEJusCrOA6CzRpApkwk_PTDkCzOJLA3610KW7YO0c2g_Saj9TFSJekYPHX52jDoAzFUCGAG0svKUyoDnaE8RkUGed58gs4tvTMyvTt8ZcLj2lRWYEB4L9khv4F-WjnsPHqDVclqotbZHMF3UekqNQDCDsmsdfJ7Um1o6xC3GvQ/w400-h266/claws-hulu.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.emilythecriminal.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Emily the Criminal</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another story of a woman turning to crime because capitalism and the system have fucked her over. I’m sensing a theme here. Aubrey Plaza plays an artist with $70,000 in student debt and an assault record that keeps her from getting a decent job. Credit card fraud suits her ballsy personality—I liked that her anger is understandable but not always advisable. And her romance with her crime-ring boss is pretty hot.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysterious_Skin" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mysterious Skin</span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I somehow missed this movie when it came out in 2004. It’s squirmy in its depictions of child sexual abuse (not graphic, just lots of icky grooming behavior), but never gratuitous. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character—a reckless queer hustler—is juxtaposed against Brady Corbet’s withdrawn one, who believes he was abducted by aliens. The movie lays out perfectly and poetically how trauma can impact people in radically different ways.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="http://automatmovie.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Automat</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I first heard of the Automat, a New York- and Philadelphia-based chain of restaurants where you could buy hot meals from fancy vending machines, in Sarah Schulman’s novel </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shimmer. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I pictured it as a clean, well-lighted place where people fell in love. And this documentary, which features Mel Brooks as a running commentator, basically confirmed the image in my mind, which in itself is pretty cool. It’s also a feel-good movie for the most part, which is nice in a genre full of debunkings and crime. The Automats were family-run businesses that treated their employees well—though there was one failed attempt to unionize, so I don’t want to idealize too much—and served high quality, affordable food to people from all walks of life. If I could time travel, I would definitely stop at one.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij7udojh9j3uH7h0fvymkbjUT3FZmTWmWgkz5H5E9SlAA2cxDoedq0OrdIp9bZ79otmQXNigbY2n0Pb3U3ZsjcOIKXEtRav9jPkuMuviYI_mcn7BnFtsPnVkUIIMHfxK8cUg4YiUVvoC1ulF6QSxlB_mREk5bxItQ_ZZVOjaeKH2A9Kmk3lQ/s1044/Automat.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="478" data-original-width="1044" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij7udojh9j3uH7h0fvymkbjUT3FZmTWmWgkz5H5E9SlAA2cxDoedq0OrdIp9bZ79otmQXNigbY2n0Pb3U3ZsjcOIKXEtRav9jPkuMuviYI_mcn7BnFtsPnVkUIIMHfxK8cUg4YiUVvoC1ulF6QSxlB_mREk5bxItQ_ZZVOjaeKH2A9Kmk3lQ/w400-h184/Automat.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.hbo.com/the-white-lotus" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The White Lotus</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another second season success. Another great opportunity to watch Aubrey Plaza, who is a pretty versatile actress, even if it initially seems like her main schtick is never smiling. I love the spookiness of this show, the upstairs/downstairs staff/guests storylines, and of course everything about Jennifer Coolidge. The unifying theme this season was the transactional nature of sex and even friendship, from overt sex work to subtler stuff, so it feels of a piece with </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Good Girls </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Claws, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in a way. It’s cynical, but a couple of the least transactional relationships are the ones that survive, even when a whole boatful of characters don’t.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.hbo.com/were-here" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We’re Here</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All the feel-goodness of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Queer Eye, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but instead of making over people’s lives, Eureka, Shangela, and Bob the Drag Queen work with small-town Americans to put on a drag show. Which is at once more realistic and more fun. </span></p><div><span><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDEtDU7tgztPUbn8MhyX_XJ6p0qA_c9qCQH99kzYzXkhyn8Ezo_QowUvBwXOxYB2y_RM1tEP6tILFhP3ttz2Bkue0GciSMpKJIBzdJ5i-b8UzMs9rNOIt46GY_2_2fLhFBY1HPRgkk5HktD79JYPYRKTUQWNbKapx0-zsmIHheq3-TCOY7ig/s1284/were-here-brandon-mikayla.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="856" data-original-width="1284" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDEtDU7tgztPUbn8MhyX_XJ6p0qA_c9qCQH99kzYzXkhyn8Ezo_QowUvBwXOxYB2y_RM1tEP6tILFhP3ttz2Bkue0GciSMpKJIBzdJ5i-b8UzMs9rNOIt46GY_2_2fLhFBY1HPRgkk5HktD79JYPYRKTUQWNbKapx0-zsmIHheq3-TCOY7ig/w400-h266/were-here-brandon-mikayla.webp" width="400" /></a></div><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.peacocktv.com/stream-tv/the-resort" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Resort</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Peacock’s answer to </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">White Lotus, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">set in Mexico, with some mysticism thrown in. I actually tapped out before the last episode—maybe things started to feel too mystical?—but I loved the setting and the mystery and the characters.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.hbo.com/the-vow" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Vow</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As much of a guilty pleasure as any cult documentary (that is, a documentary about a cult, not a documentary with a cult following), but distinct because the members of the self-improvement cult NXIVM and its extra-fucked-up spinoff sex cult, DOS, seem smart and self-aware in a way we like to think cult followers aren’t. The belief that anything wrong in your life is both your fault and therefore possible to fix is very LA, very entertainment industry, and very me, honestly. So yeah, in a parallel universe, I would absolutely be begging Keith Raniere to give me a baby, even though in this one, I can think of few things creepier.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosch_(TV_series)" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bosch</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">C.C. teases me about this one, implying it’s one of those CBS shows like NCIS, but I’m four seasons in and it has the comforts of a procedural with more depth than average and a ton of LA. Echo Park garages dug out of hillsides, Angel’s Flight, the tunnels beneath the Biltmore—they’re all part of the supporting cast.</span></p></span>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-91807269131524538202022-12-25T22:06:00.004-08:002022-12-25T22:13:02.751-08:00god didn’t give her only son because she so loved the world<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeYzmZKpVVDZGTAqn9waps8krlA4O6XQfQmy153dazgyTQpovyyRJVY2UoFGCtQ3xOiOrwrkyqFCdQQ_qaLe4ECJt4mYT_ZWnGDIRQQkk2DGK1qGBEyBT5-uHteCHUd-bbRWNEXME88vNmvvM4udKAIi6B8SOM-xWVLmt_s60Y_00pglkQ2g/s5184/zulmaury-saavedra-j-Jn_xKbjxg-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3456" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeYzmZKpVVDZGTAqn9waps8krlA4O6XQfQmy153dazgyTQpovyyRJVY2UoFGCtQ3xOiOrwrkyqFCdQQ_qaLe4ECJt4mYT_ZWnGDIRQQkk2DGK1qGBEyBT5-uHteCHUd-bbRWNEXME88vNmvvM4udKAIi6B8SOM-xWVLmt_s60Y_00pglkQ2g/w266-h400/zulmaury-saavedra-j-Jn_xKbjxg-unsplash.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@zulmaury?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Zulmaury Saavedra</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/j-Jn_xKbjxg?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />What if we have it all wrong;</span><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">God didn’t give her only son
</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">because she so loved the world
</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">but because her son loved the world
</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">and she loved her son?</span><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-3ed27471-7fff-19de-3cf2-cc2c26d31ace"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The question mark—</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">does love mean holding tight</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or letting go, or that damn serenity prayer?</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If love is knowing the difference,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">if love is knowing, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">even God is agnostic.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">God saw the darkness</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and created light, but with it, shadow.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">God saw war and famine, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">limbs severed for not meeting quotas,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">gaslit lovers and neglected children,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the buzzing thousand paper cuts </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of the internet.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus saw hillsides strewn with poppies,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tide pools bright with sea stars,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">kindness among strangers,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">decades-long marriages, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the daily comfort of a group chat. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">God did not want to be right about this one.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Prove me wrong, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">she prayed—gods pray</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to their own children—</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and show me</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that I haven’t created ruin that will ruin you. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After all of it—the betrayals and the blood,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the cave and the miracle, God’s son comes home,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">though it doesn’t fit like it used to.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus has stubble and scars now, a haunted look.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All God can say is, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m sorry.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus says, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Please, don’t be, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and tells her about the man next to him,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the bad thief, those hot hallucinatory days on the cross.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How they were both alone, and not. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How the thief, too,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">prayed to his mother.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span></div>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-39899203161448429332022-11-16T15:31:00.001-08:002022-11-16T15:35:26.064-08:00out of pocket<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxyILDs6DmFaCEXX13Gbm1iw50mmSw5iRl2zUOvGzPgbrkS8BYwC7_Hpkbj80lclyfT8B9c2jPFuFMxSXIkaLHTZzuE1BNTiDiBxddL8o9p6bH_KUX9DGYeODiE02AxueRmY0JYTLVlBH_kwUla4tEX3ocB6ea5O-L_Vnhg0TA0eScGQDqDQ/s3840/ethan-brooke-0EWD01BhPwE-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2483" data-original-width="3840" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxyILDs6DmFaCEXX13Gbm1iw50mmSw5iRl2zUOvGzPgbrkS8BYwC7_Hpkbj80lclyfT8B9c2jPFuFMxSXIkaLHTZzuE1BNTiDiBxddL8o9p6bH_KUX9DGYeODiE02AxueRmY0JYTLVlBH_kwUla4tEX3ocB6ea5O-L_Vnhg0TA0eScGQDqDQ/w400-h259/ethan-brooke-0EWD01BhPwE-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />You are not from my body,<br />but I gave you my body<br />because it was all I had <br />those lean first months<br />(and by <i>lean</i> I mean<br />I gorged myself late at night<br />when the Bad News Factory<br />had shut down for the day,<br />I hoped; I breathed in<br />quesadillas and breathed out<br />fear).<div><br /></div><div>My mind was stuck<br />in a sandy ditch, somewhere<br />between 2011 and our last<br />failed adoption that spring:<br />We skipped stones in a manmade lake<br />and left Reno without a baby.<br />When you arrived, somehow<br />too early and too late, <br />I was a sad spinning tire,<br />a clock missing half my cogs,<br />but still right twice a day.</div><div><br /></div><div>You: a 32-weeker, a four-pounder,<br />quick to shake off your rocky entry<br />into this world: You arrived breech<br />but righted yourself, right as my world<br />turned upside down, again.<br />I fussed and projected,<br />wondered if I wanted any of this.<br />But your name means baby kangaroo<br />and I pocketed you, like something coveted<br />and stolen. My hold was not sweet,<br />but it was steadfast.</div><div><br /></div><div>When you slept on my chest,<br />our hearts were inches apart.<br />You were a sandbag, a warm cat,<br />not a container for all my worries<br />but something dense and full and now.<br />And just as these moments doubled<br />and doubled again,<br />like a pregnancy proving viable,<br />another era was upon us.<br />The cocoon opened,<br />our musty truths dispersed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now our days begin with a drive<br />to daycare: more kind strangers,<br />like a bookend to the NICU,<br />people who know better than I do.<br />This is the end of the beginning,<br />and did I ever fumble it, <br />sobbing <i>I'm sorry </i>into the folds<br />of your neck instead of watching<br />your eyes turn from rock-blue<br />to cola-brown, a dark sunrise.<br />Now I pick you up after sundown.<p>To say I have regrets<br />implies I could have done it<br />a different way. Or that you could have,<br />or the mother who wanted to hold you<br />forever, but placed you in my shaking arms.<br />To say I have regrets implies I won't have more.<br />This is the beginning of next part,<br />and no one knows how many there will be.<br />For now your body surfs mine<br />and I wrap a blanket around us <br />like a seatbelt.</p><p><br /><br /><br /></p></div>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-30305696268875562392022-08-24T11:46:00.005-07:002022-08-24T11:49:52.940-07:00mucous mother<p>You never told me<br />I was anything but beautiful<br />so this feeling—that maybe I'm made<br />of oil instead of breast milk—<br />is a betrayal of what you gave me.<br /><br />I've been obsessing over the contents<br />of the diaper <br />of the second grandchild<br />you never met:<br />the shit, the lack of it, the holding back<br />of something ugly.<br /><br />Was that slick brown thread<br />mucous, a red flag<br />according to the nice lady<br />on the nurse line?<br /><br />Was it me, a sort of gollum,<br />a mirror in a diaper,<br />a monster, but tiny and powerless?<br /><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJsHzKygX24fu0wsmiBysXdWmLZe_RzER7pvFdVyhbeFog7LK6C4YCwETotPv1G1BYLpSgV0GZbHNRXG7bjxx8t9XaB2KM2PD-QXMRMXR6CkymFZluNgGn98C4XzNSOWPaCBuFvI-5IIbFxh8iKpxP3YMeUAwq3QwNR_G-zh4PEaMKdJT1bA/s6000/mahdi-bafande-m3r14n9ePQc-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="6000" data-original-width="4000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJsHzKygX24fu0wsmiBysXdWmLZe_RzER7pvFdVyhbeFog7LK6C4YCwETotPv1G1BYLpSgV0GZbHNRXG7bjxx8t9XaB2KM2PD-QXMRMXR6CkymFZluNgGn98C4XzNSOWPaCBuFvI-5IIbFxh8iKpxP3YMeUAwq3QwNR_G-zh4PEaMKdJT1bA/w266-h400/mahdi-bafande-m3r14n9ePQc-unsplash.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/es/@mahdibafande?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Mahdi Bafande</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/monster?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br />The second child in our family—<br />my first family, I mean, <i>of origin, </i>as they say—<br />is the only person who holds a mirror<br />up to your ghost, the only person<br />who could say "Oh honey" the way you did.<p></p><p>Her curly hair, her kindness.<br /><br />But I hated her at first. <br /><br />Another firstborn might declare the baby<br />to be the monster, the interloper,<br />but I stepped into that role myself<br />just like I stepped into the baby sweater <br />I'd long outgrown.<br /><br />The yellow acrylic yarn was itchy,<br />yet somehow just right.<br /><br />Made for a creature so, so small.<br /><br />What I deserved.<br /><br />I could do big-girl things and so I did. <br /><br />Later I got good grades,<br />worked myself to the bone,<br />and let you soothe me when I broke;<br />you were the one who told me I wasn't<br />a monster; you were the reason (not your fault)<br />I thought I was.<br /><br />Motherhood poems are all blood and breast milk. <br /><br />I am all surgery and paperwork.<br /><br />I am a trick funded by a bridge called someone's back,<br />bat wings instead of feathers,<br />a slick petty thing in the night,<br />making off with someone else's baby<br />like a fairytale villain.<br /><br />If the stepmom is bad news, what of the<br />woman who bought the baby <br />with her father's money,<br />from another good and devastated woman,<br />who wears her brother's ashes<br />on a chain around her neck?<br /><br />This belief is a chain around my neck;<br />each day that I awake and mix formula,<br />read a book about spiders with my firstborn,<br />who is his first mother's second born,<br />is a captain's log in a parallel universe:<br />We are fine, we are whole, <br />we are planning futures.<br /><br />We are so sorry. <br /><br />We are so monstrous.<br /><br />We cry like babies until our sinuses swell with mucous.<br /><br />We are so functional we sometimes forget to breathe.</p>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-19176519740939301262022-06-07T15:14:00.002-07:002022-06-07T15:14:15.989-07:00the museum of everything<p>Eventually there's only a riddle,<br />the old one about the ax—<br />its head and handle replaced<br />a thousand times.<br />Are you steel, once sharp, now dull?<br />Or are you the thing it splits?<br />Are you the swinging <br />or the replacing?</p><p>What is the trigger and what is the tragedy?<br />What is the doctor visit and what is the disease?<br />Is the fourth baby you almost adopt<br />an echo of the first three<br />or of the two you never birthed,<br />who would be ten and a half now,<br />but who <br />is counting?</p><p>Every sad thing deserves its own museum,<br />but every museum has the same<br />glass case, the same<br />new paint smell, the same<br />paper towel vendor<br />Did 13 people die in a mass shooting<br />or were there 13 mass shootings last year<br />or last weekend?<br /><br />Eventually your body becomes<br />a museum of everything that happened<br />and everything that didn't:<br />the sturdy handle of your spine<br />the ghosts of your ovaries<br />the holes filled<br />the way the ocean consumes volcanoes<br />with flat glittering blue</p><p>Eventually there are no more words<br />or there are only words, <br />it's hard to tell</p>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-52427963156870787292022-05-17T14:50:00.002-07:002022-05-17T14:50:13.352-07:00the identified patient<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Identified Patient</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-44144a21-7fff-4daa-317e-9d8ce25c6a78"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is crying again</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is talking too much</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Made it all about her</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brought up the thing we agreed not to talk about</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is letting her child watch YouTube again</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is letting him see her tired face, shiny with tears</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sent a bitter text and drafted a worse one</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ate all the Cheez-Its and drank your Coke</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is not over it</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is moving on too quickly</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is not taking a break</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is not asking the pregnant woman about her due date</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Does not want to be at this party, and it shows</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Did not keep your work deadlines in mind</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is not getting the right kind of therapy</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is too much like your mother and her own father</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Blogged about it</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Got fat</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Worried and worried and worried</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Flew too close to the sun</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hates fun</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wasted years</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is obsessed with productivity</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Acts like no one suffers but her</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nags too much and not enough</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Can’t win</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Uses annoying phrases like “I can’t win”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Doesn’t see how much she’s won</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is steeped in guilt like water becoming the blackest tea</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is sorry</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Apologizes too much</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wants her child and someone else’s</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wants you</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is mad at you</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is too loud</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Drowns everyone out</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Drowns</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is dragging herself back from the depths</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dripping with sludge, so much and so disgusting,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You never notice how strong her arms are</span></p></span>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-49674817358087443632022-05-07T17:39:00.002-07:002022-05-07T17:39:32.059-07:00other's day"Go big or go home" is a phrase befitting reality shows more than reality. (Prototyping innovations on a small scale and growing gradually usually works better.) But when it comes to adoption, it's fair to say that this year we went big. We signed on with as many attorneys and agencies as we could afford. We had three matches with expectant moms, none of which led to an adoption. <div><br /></div><div>The last disruption, less than two weeks ago, took us to Reno for three days (more about that at some point). And then we went home.<div><br /></div><div>Since our <a href="https://www.muthamagazine.com/2021/11/onesie-never-worn-on-miscarried-adoption-dreams/">disruption in the fall</a>, we've been working toward becoming a licensed resource family in the foster care system. In addition to a hell of a lot of paper work, it's meant asking myself what it will look like to parent a child I probably won't get to keep. It's meant leaning into being Trauma-Informed, a Helpful Member Of My Community, and a bit of a Badass (resource parents: I think of you as badasses). It's meant leaning away from my dream of being the mother of two kids.</div><div><br /></div><div>But we kept the adoption door open because why not. And then it slammed shut. So, back to foster care, right?</div><div><br /></div><div>Not so fast, said our licensing agency. They wanted us to heal. C.C. wanted us to heal. Specifically, she wanted a break from adoption professionals telling us how to talk to expectant moms; telling us our choices were too risky or not risky enough; telling us that if we'd just contract with <i>one more </i>agency, our baby would appear. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLC-UE0ItHyDvLCofZcQWWzGNxZ2MPogXvbfJFucKvyHOQJ3csNWZQQxfhqxSpg9S_yywyQ4YC28Tw7mYut4wv5QZYTVWa-xGPOxLrRs3iJHQLl0GyMF5LtL1WrhMp_j6T0iOXgS49NhCco3vf34oz6qly5AK2tL6vR-AjcZYm24rqs85lVw/s5472/victor-hughes-k9VDr7F3nGU-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="5472" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLC-UE0ItHyDvLCofZcQWWzGNxZ2MPogXvbfJFucKvyHOQJ3csNWZQQxfhqxSpg9S_yywyQ4YC28Tw7mYut4wv5QZYTVWa-xGPOxLrRs3iJHQLl0GyMF5LtL1WrhMp_j6T0iOXgS49NhCco3vf34oz6qly5AK2tL6vR-AjcZYm24rqs85lVw/w400-h266/victor-hughes-k9VDr7F3nGU-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@bigvicmedia?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Victor Hughes</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/reno?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>Both of us felt a bone-deep exhaustion. <i>I'm tired of trying to be perfect all the time, for nothing, </i>we agreed<i>. </i>She felt the first part of the sentence most powerfully. She asked for a summer off from trying to be perfect. I felt the second half of the sentence. I'm always trying to prove myself to the voices in my head anyway; why not just resume our licensing process and get the chance to be in a kid's life? Why not be perfect <i>for</i> <i>something</i>?</div><div><br /></div><div>But I've learned the hard way that pushing too hard, too fast usually gets me the opposite of what I want. So we're taking a break and catching our breath. Irrationally, I feel like I've been put in a time-out for being sad about something that wasn't even my fault, which pushes all my buttons. </div><div><br /></div><div>The button that says <i>You're Not Allowed To Have Big Feelings, </i>the button that says <i>You're Not A Real Mom, </i>the button that says <i>You MIGHT Get To Be A Real Mom IF You Jump Through One More Hoop, In Addition To The 50 That Were Already Mapped Out.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>When well-meaning people assign healing like it's detention, or remind us that the purpose of adoption and foster care is to provide "a family for a child, not a child for a family," I want to scream. I know that the fact of my screaming is just more proof that I need to heal. But other people are allowed to have children <i>and </i>character flaws. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUqWNa-Jotla95vHTlSdjPetrNBAg2VG_GJ6DtwUzcQYAeDFQ_CbyEnwHIMFHW4k4y44FbMHjU05X0fJQ-eN3dj15mSD-XVS23-QL41smpdzJrWrIREYOvmV8Ug4vv2poPKdktrblOQ8Tldfnw-xhm-rqH1FlbpLGJ3QcSQgi9C5kssxyFNA/s7952/andre-hunter-vm2cwMEiUFA-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5304" data-original-width="7952" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUqWNa-Jotla95vHTlSdjPetrNBAg2VG_GJ6DtwUzcQYAeDFQ_CbyEnwHIMFHW4k4y44FbMHjU05X0fJQ-eN3dj15mSD-XVS23-QL41smpdzJrWrIREYOvmV8Ug4vv2poPKdktrblOQ8Tldfnw-xhm-rqH1FlbpLGJ3QcSQgi9C5kssxyFNA/w400-h266/andre-hunter-vm2cwMEiUFA-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@dre0316?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Andre Hunter</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/frown?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>I wonder if this is what systemic injustice feels like. Hearing variations on "Why are you so upset?" after getting the shitty end of the stick time after time. Obviously, there are many protected classes I'm not a member of, but there <i>are</i> systemic problems in adoption, and it's on individual adoptive parents to take the punches. Adoptees and birth parents take punches too. I know theirs are bigger. The system gets to float onward like a sinister ghost.</div><div><br /></div><div>The baby we almost adopted in Reno ended up in foster care because her dad didn't agree to an adoption. We're still in touch with her mom, who sent us pictures of the baby this week. It hurt, but I also felt honored, and sort of peaceful. We got a small taste of what it's like to truly support family reunification. So I get frustrated when someone says, explicitly or implicitly, that we have so much more to learn. I mean, we definitely do have more to learn. But we're also miles past being naive?</div><div><br /></div><div>This clusterfuck of an adoption year has made me more grateful than ever for Dash and for C.C. But I'm an Olympic mental gymnast, and when I think about the four babies we didn't adopt and the two I miscarried—when I spend more energy trying to become a parent again than actually parenting—I feel like Dash must be a fluke, like I don't deserve him. The fact that, during our most recent adoption fail, he spent more time with his iPad and Doritos than ever, and saw me crying and stressing and tapped out, just reinforces my fear that I'm a shit mother.</div><div><br /></div><div>(DCFS, if you're reading this, I am not a shit mother; or at least I'm sub-clinically so.)</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm a tangled mess right now. I'm dumping this all into a blog post for people who know me, only. I'm scared that I seem ragey and pathetic and entitled and ungrateful. I am ragey and a little bit pathetic. I don't think I'm entitled or ungrateful, but maybe I'm those things too. I'm having so many flashbacks to <a href="http://breadandbread.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-am-i-funny-you-should-ask.html">2011</a>, when I believed every person I knew was painting a nursery and humming while rubbing her growing belly, and unbeknownst to me, all I was growing was a tumor. </div><div><br /></div><div>Since 2011, a chunk of those blissed-out pregnant people have gotten divorced or had health scares or lost parents or lost jobs; I'm wise enough to know that most people's lives aren't as perfect as Instagram says. And in a concrete way, most people actually have had more bad shit happen to them by the time they're 45 than when they're 35. And at least as of my last checkup, I was not, as far as medical technology could tell, growing a tumor (knockonwood). If that's what forward momentum looks like—a little wisdom, bad shit happening to other people too, and no tumors—I'll take it.</div><div><br /></div><div>And I'll take this time to try to dust off my self-care practices and spend some quality time with my family. Fine. I'll do it.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxMxnWftudMQEHnWkSEk5kv8T_MwMIZ_DsvI83LGE8lcJ3OBj1MA56A0sYRwpTbDX1l8I01LkJgTY8lsyM7qnaJxxHnudzA3roKG75-2o-yO5G-wWd8-oPYnFoO7g6V0OwmaCeGVw61jGOw46MBZySclZPWGjgxkFNf_ijWKY48ZwIAerY5g/s696/singer-ramona.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="696" height="364" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxMxnWftudMQEHnWkSEk5kv8T_MwMIZ_DsvI83LGE8lcJ3OBj1MA56A0sYRwpTbDX1l8I01LkJgTY8lsyM7qnaJxxHnudzA3roKG75-2o-yO5G-wWd8-oPYnFoO7g6V0OwmaCeGVw61jGOw46MBZySclZPWGjgxkFNf_ijWKY48ZwIAerY5g/w400-h364/singer-ramona.webp" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>I've been watching a lot of <i>Real Housewives of New York. </i>First the recent seasons, when they're all divorced and the show doesn't even try to show much of New York. They just stick the ladies in various vacation homes and let them fight. Then I started watching the older seasons, where they had more highlights and more husbands, fewer probationary rulings against them. I also started watching <i>Better Call Saul. </i>Only content about middle-aged people fucking up their lives for me, please.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ramona is one of two <i>RHONY </i>ladies to appear on all seasons. She's a piece of work. Bug-eyed, blitzed on pinot grigio, a liar who seems to believe her own lies. She has one daughter, Avery, whom she tries to push into acting in the early seasons. In a rare moment of vulnerability, she tells housewife Heather that she thought Avery was born dead, because she was blue and the cord was wrapped around her neck. "That's why I never had another," she says.</div><div><br /></div><div>Granted, she's saying all this to relate to and/or one-up Heather's story about her son's liver transplant, and by the end of the episode, they're accusing each other of being chronic interrupters, shouting over each other to do so.</div><div><br /></div><div>At sixteen, Avery is predictably embarrassed by her mom's sexed-up outfits and spotlight-stealing ways. But when they're out to lunch one day, Avery reads her mom an essay she wrote for school called "My Role Model." It is all about Ramona, who tears up and hugs her daughter.</div><div><br /></div><div>I was thoroughly verklempt. If messy, pushy Ramona, mother of one single child, could be—if not a real housewife (they all work outside the home and half of them aren't married)—a real mom, maybe I could be too.</div><div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div></div>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-4343907421319824322022-03-30T09:18:00.007-07:002022-03-30T09:23:06.869-07:00the berlin zoo<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">The zookeeper’s bathroom becomes a nest: dirt and twigs from sink to toilet, the bathtub a makeshift pond. The shoebill is part cartoon: beady eyes and a loafer for a beak. The zookeeper’s wife becomes a zookeeper, dropping a slice of stale bread into the bird’s smile. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-8488f1a2-7fff-211b-5e42-478dd13e4826"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The zoo tower becomes lookout and barricade. A black gun as long as three men points at the sky, reminding airplanes that they are not birds, or that they are: as easy to down as a duck. The ears of giraffes and antelopes, built to hear lion paws on leaves, hold the sounds of bombs and flak guns. Their bodies tell them to run, but the cage bars say otherwise. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8lqm6NeuceJnYAsdCb55bpKuc20dB3Hke0F1wRzCZIhboZ6h62T6NB7pA-vNq6cZLE2_Xc63Q4HD8IIeDHj1ipcVyJ-IiaNdU94ybOwBeDL7LkIms8EHVcrXR2SfWTiDihJ7VHBZFOkB4qog9prQJ6uqGi4ZDKaJYj8Lhom0fOYtBDrK9kA/s809/shoebill-temporarily-housed-in-his-keepers-home-as-the-red-army-stormed-into-berlin.-reddit.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="809" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8lqm6NeuceJnYAsdCb55bpKuc20dB3Hke0F1wRzCZIhboZ6h62T6NB7pA-vNq6cZLE2_Xc63Q4HD8IIeDHj1ipcVyJ-IiaNdU94ybOwBeDL7LkIms8EHVcrXR2SfWTiDihJ7VHBZFOkB4qog9prQJ6uqGi4ZDKaJYj8Lhom0fOYtBDrK9kA/s320/shoebill-temporarily-housed-in-his-keepers-home-as-the-red-army-stormed-into-berlin.-reddit.jpg" width="237" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p></span></span><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two hippos, a black rhino, a sea elephant, and eight land elephants become meat. People who thought the worst part of their job would be sweeping shit now eat their charges. Now there is more waste than ever to shovel. Now there are not enough dust pans in the world. Now the world becomes a dust pan. Now they must admit: tenderized crocodile tails taste like fatty chicken. Or maybe they taste like shoebill, but no one has eaten one, yet.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Numbers become uncountable. How many times is the zoo hit, in October alone? </span></span></span></p><p></p><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A baby hippo becomes a celebrity, rescued by boys who slip through flames and hustle it to a nearby pond. The pond does its North Atlantic best to become Sub-Saharan. The hippo grows big and shiny as a submarine. After the war, the city becomes a zoo. The wall keeps the creatures in the East contained, but their bodies tell them to run. The hippo sires 35 offspring and dies a year before the wall comes down. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p></span><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A checkpoint becomes a museum: Cultivating memory like a winter crop is what allows the people of the country to become people again. The only surviving elephant is named Siam, after the country that becomes Thailand. He outlives his bombed brothers by only a few years. His keepers say he goes mad. His brothers and sisters in the grasslands can smell an elephant hunter, even at the safe distance of a generation. Every elephant's brain is a map to a lost city. </span></p></span></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-33307324527683586812021-12-26T21:05:00.005-08:002021-12-27T14:39:37.235-08:00tops of 2021<p>I recently learned that the original lyrics to "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" were "Someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow. Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow," not "...hang a shining star upon the highest bough." I'd heard both, but I sort of thought they were different verses of the same version. Apparently the latter replaced the version in <i>Meet Me in St. Louis, </i>which I remember as a bittersweet, kind of weird movie. </p><p>Then I read <a href="https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/occasions/christmas/original-lyrics-have-yourself-a-merry-little-christmas-judy-garland/">this article</a> and found out the first draft of the song was "Have yourself a merry little Christmas. It may be your last." </p><p>Muddling through suddenly seems appealing, and I did plenty of it this year. Things were not too shabby—vaccine, book contract, schools reopening, summer road trip, a <a href="https://www.redfez.net/nonfiction/hummingbird-a-heart-beating-too-fast-980">hummingbird outside our window</a>—until August, when the <a href="http://www.muthamagazine.com/2021/11/onesie-never-worn-on-miscarried-adoption-dreams/">adoption roller coaster</a> chugged anxiously uphill, then plummeted down, and at times I felt like I'd flown off the tracks entirely. I think AK felt I had too, and that wasn't easy on her.</p><p>But we've muddled through, to the point where I'm feeling cautiously excited about the future again (along with a bunch of other negative and positive emotions). This is all preamble to my <a href="http://breadandbread.blogspot.com/search/label/best%20of">annual round-up</a> of books, movies, and TV shows that I loved, and which helped me process, escape, and survive 2021.</p><p><b>Books:</b></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-59463-379-9">The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness</a> </i>by Meghan O'Rourke: </b>This book is incredibly validating for anyone who's chased a diagnosis (and I haven't, knockonwood; my Big Sick was fortunately very straightforward), as well as beautifully written, describing the mindfuck of illness the way only a patient and poet can. It's rigorous and evenhanded about both the accomplishments and failures of Western and holistic medicine, and I think it should be required reading for anyone in medical or nursing school.</p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3819916430?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1">Detransition, Baby</a> </i>by Torrey Peters: </b><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Just a few pages in, I could tell this novel was clever and well-observed, nailing nuances of subculture and zeitgeist with linguistic flair. Sometimes, I felt like the characters talked in essays, but they're good essays, so I didn't really mind. Deeper in, I decided this was an Austen-style novel of manners for the trans community. Finally I decided, as I do about all my favorite books, that it's about everything: love, desire, identity, human frailty. But what I'm most grateful for is specific: the perfectly described longing for motherhood in a queer body that has been told it has no business wanting such things. I'm a cis queer woman who said goodbye to my boobs and ovaries for cancer reasons, and I felt SO much of what Reese feels in being excluded from this particular marker of womanhood. I often wondered if trans people felt like I did, and it was heartening to know that at least a few do.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjn19uND5wdl3GTB8sQjw3wUawoeCQ3Qc-vU70o2srD9oohQQPgRgTU7ifdc2K-jSnTXOmQo1Q4AWn15rp2Dj7m497Kl89vi6V29VAtRlNb0HJN0lLsylkrOgEdfogtulERYkBXIU0gscJtz_6079L3eERP2oIE6p35TytKuwskdxq_6t0eJA=s277" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="277" data-original-width="182" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjn19uND5wdl3GTB8sQjw3wUawoeCQ3Qc-vU70o2srD9oohQQPgRgTU7ifdc2K-jSnTXOmQo1Q4AWn15rp2Dj7m497Kl89vi6V29VAtRlNb0HJN0lLsylkrOgEdfogtulERYkBXIU0gscJtz_6079L3eERP2oIE6p35TytKuwskdxq_6t0eJA=w263-h400" width="263" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><b style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit;"><i><br /><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-524-74806-7">Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness</a> </i>by Kristen Radtke: </b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #181818; font-family: inherit;">Part memoir, part social science survey, part cultural criticism, this graphic nonfiction book is all too timely. Radtke examines the experience of loneliness from an array of angles, through a personal and unexpected lens. Reading it, I felt less lonely.</span></span></p><p><b style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><i><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-271-08806-8">Crude</a> </i>by Pablo Farjado, Sophie Tardy-Joubert, and Damien Roudeau, translated by Hannah Chute: </b><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Chevron fucked over the Indigenous people of Amazonian Ecuador, to put it mildly. One impoverished Ecuadoran worked in the oil fields, witnessed the corporate crimes, and studied to become a lawyer so he could hold them accountable. Farjado's personal story is as inspiring as the oil company's is rage-inducing.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgkEcz6ibfA506mTTJm7MHbj2DwsXjfgn3XEaQmEsrcORYKzP1At9QTqLGpr0oB_RZYVZRhX_8JjeY4u-Ybot4rI7xRPre44XqdFiAOiDwc94cQCmh27v5bwq6N2yf3Si-jrivEuaFATtd6A3uxIg7RbZL2Qo1xbC-2xkRMSLEXef2QDvUwiA=s540" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="396" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgkEcz6ibfA506mTTJm7MHbj2DwsXjfgn3XEaQmEsrcORYKzP1At9QTqLGpr0oB_RZYVZRhX_8JjeY4u-Ybot4rI7xRPre44XqdFiAOiDwc94cQCmh27v5bwq6N2yf3Si-jrivEuaFATtd6A3uxIg7RbZL2Qo1xbC-2xkRMSLEXef2QDvUwiA=w294-h400" width="294" /></a><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3741847128?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1"><i>Something That May Shock and Discredit You</i></a> by Daniel Mallory Ortberg: </b></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">This book takes such an innovative approach to memoir, using bible stories, Greek classics, The Addams Family, and The Golden Girls to describe Lavery's evolving relationship to his gender. His experience was *not* one of always believing he was a boy. How do you describe longing for something you didn't know was possible? How do you know if your feelings of discomfort in your body can be chalked up to a culture of misogyny or to gender dysphoria? These are the questions Lavery tackles with enviable wit and wisdom, and a playful push against all sorts of traditional narratives. Some of the parables he worked from remained opaque to me, but I think most readers will be able to find their way into at least a few.</span></div></span></span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I've read Lavery's work in The Toast and followed his Dear Prudence columns and podcast. This book draws on both those styles, while also employing a more personal and vulnerable approach that I craved even more of. (Although, next time I hear someone talk about wanting to write a memoir but being afraid of over-disclosing, I'll point them to this book, which somehow goes deep without sharing much in the way of family background or life events beyond the one at the story's center.)</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The last chapter is one of the most poignant, and feels like a bit of a cliffhanger for a future memoir (or maybe I just know too much from following Lavery and his wife Grace on Twitter), and I hope he writes it.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><b><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4028907259?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1"><i>The Violence Almanac</i></a> by Miah Jeffra: </b></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: inherit;">Without, IMO, ever glorifying violence or excusing those who commit it, Jeffra spends time in the minds of both perpetrators and victims. Of course, if you aren't deep in denial, you know that most perpetrators are victims in one way or another. When woundedness meets power—in the case of Mr. Huberty, a man who struggles to find work but stockpiles guns in "Eye Wall"—trouble usually lies ahead.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I was particularly moved by the opening story, "Babies," which imagines how Andrea Yates killed her children to save them from the void she felt: "A cutting away, releasing the doubt, to preserve what good they had left in them.... If she kept on to them, held them close in this world, her world, they would all fall into that gaping hole, the one of eternal torment."</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: inherit;">But Jeffra also lets us see, in no uncertain terms, what it feels like to be Yates' terrified child. In these ways, the book is much more painful than the bloodiest movie, despite the fact that there's very little graphic violence.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: inherit;">In "Ain't No Thing," a man tries very hard to be unassailable his whole life. From his father, he learns how to take a beating. Women complain "I want you...to want something from me!" He tries to be even nicer. He tries to hold it together. He tries to follow the rules and bury his hatred for those who don't—specifically, some young men of color on a MUNI bus, carelessly disposing of their trash—because it would be too painful for him to learn what the young men may already know, that Goodness will not save him. It reads like a cautionary tale.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: inherit;">Jeffra's work is so gutsy and imaginative and searing. Somewhere in here is a manual for how to live in this world, and how not to.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: inherit;"><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3852599802?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1">The Low Desert</a></i> by Tod Goldberg: </b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This collection of connected short stories is compelling, masterful, and occasionally heartbreaking. In spare, confident prose, Goldberg writes about people who regularly smash skulls and chop off limbs, but he doesn't seem to take violence lightly. For me the most wrenching story was that of Tania, a cocktail waitress who spends her windfall to adopt a Russian 12-year-old who apparently runs away. As readers, we get a lot more closure than most of the characters ever do, which I suppose is the point of fiction.</span></span></p><p><b style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><i><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-802-12712-9">Last Chance Texaco</a></i> by Ricki Lee Jones: </b><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I only had a vague idea of who Jones was going in, but damn there are a lot of adventures in these pages. Some traumatic, some joyous, many a mix of both. And always music. She writes sentences with as much rhythm and style as her song lyrics, and the book is a sort of non-prescriptive master class in creating an artistic life.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Honorable mention: </b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3902290178?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1">Mexican Gothic</a> </i>by Silvia Moreno-Garica, <i><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-063-00810-6">The Insiders</a> </i>by Mark Oshiro, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4030928267?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1">Trove</a> </i>by Sandra A. Miller</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="background-color: white;"><b>Screens:</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaimKeDcudo">Encanto</a>: </i>In addition to gorgeous animation and addictively good music, it depicts family constellations—how people function, interact, and suffer based on the roles they play in their family—in a way five-year-olds can understand. I mean, the particular five-year-old I saw it with was scared of Bruno's sand cave, and the 6-year-old wanted to play a game on my phone. But the nine- and forty-five-year-olds and I enjoyed it.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="background-color: white;"><b><i><a href="https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/reservation-dogs">Reservation Dogs</a></i></b>: I don't know very much about youth rez culture, but somehow I feel like this show captures it perfectly? That's how convincing it is in its depiction of a culture whose influences are a hybrid of traditional and contemporary, urban and rural, proud and frustrating. Each episode is like a short story. It's funny and sad and delightfully weird. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #181818;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #181818;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi2ueGXy5UXu_s6vlB5M1nXyd5j4BqlPopX3JBNao7l8aGiZjDkwLHciBkZHNHJ_Ipy8K5HcXAE2iSfnlA_uVZUSd5N1Cwd7wo7V5pxlpY1q3MuIFpAjTnC41UTra7uPtx7XiEtnISHcA5g536puPp0Msv5Euf_IM5QPgnjETerKMULcED-eA=s1200" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="1200" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi2ueGXy5UXu_s6vlB5M1nXyd5j4BqlPopX3JBNao7l8aGiZjDkwLHciBkZHNHJ_Ipy8K5HcXAE2iSfnlA_uVZUSd5N1Cwd7wo7V5pxlpY1q3MuIFpAjTnC41UTra7uPtx7XiEtnISHcA5g536puPp0Msv5Euf_IM5QPgnjETerKMULcED-eA=w400-h209" width="400" /></a><br /><br /></span></div><i style="color: #181818;"><b><a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81166770">Maid</a></b>: </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I watched the first episode and had to stop because the main character's life—shitty ex, wild mom, total lack of resources—felt too much like that of April*, the expectant mom who broke our hearts. My therapist even told me, unprovoked, not to watch it. Then, after April broke our hearts, I decided to watch it to remind myself I didn't envy her life. And it's just a really good, gripping series about how class functions in America, and how hard it is to dig yourself out of a bad spot.</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><b><a href="https://www.hbo.com/succession">Succession</a>: </b></i>They're everyone's favorite family to hate, and they're mine too. AK and I got a lot of mileage out of dissecting them. Gerri is my favorite. A cool cucumber model for my middle years (except I will try not to be evil, and I'd never fuck Roman).</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="background-color: white;"><b style="font-style: italic;"><a href="https://www.hbo.com/mare-of-easttown">Mare of Easttown</a>: </b>I mean, it's got mystery and texture and character development and thematic arcs about post-traumatic stress and Kate Winslet. Of course I loved it.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><b><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5439812/">Zola</a>:</b> </i>Sharp, funny, savvy story of sex work and varyingly reliable narrators, based on a twitter thread.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GYXBzZw5-GY53wwEAAAAG">Sort Of</a>: </i>Sabi is a nonbinary Pakistani-Canadian nanny, who is clever and kind but struggles with direction. The dialogue is of the slightly-too-clever genre, but it works, and all the characters are funny and multifaceted. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><b>RuPaul's Drag Race:</b></i> I watched so many old episodes these past few months, in such a dark state, that AK started to resent Mama Ru, which distressed me more than it should have. And my coworker told me RuPaul allows fracking on his land, which is...probably bad. But there's something about seeing fierce queer artists pour their hearts out on stage and in the workroom that I find incredibly life-affirming. I am a late-to-the-game fan of Jinkx Monsoon, Yvie Oddly, Nina West, Sasha Velour, Peppermint, Monique Hart, and Monet X Change.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></p><p></p>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-76499079370422195482021-12-19T12:03:00.001-08:002021-12-19T12:08:36.638-08:00this is how it works<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhINTBxFkgrCtyEhEjQutP57SPyq4S2NtvxG_7OUSOgH7NdniADf-JUSta7anyTnMtBmzQYQ0PKKBjRC61j9xZtZpwfCAKEdXLYwBnDsdr6AWoFAqLlXmM2Y6RnyziQL8xzWzJicZCFw4q3o92I3sAGPGltymxkMO4iSlMnE86FCrAx9YETKw=s4032" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhINTBxFkgrCtyEhEjQutP57SPyq4S2NtvxG_7OUSOgH7NdniADf-JUSta7anyTnMtBmzQYQ0PKKBjRC61j9xZtZpwfCAKEdXLYwBnDsdr6AWoFAqLlXmM2Y6RnyziQL8xzWzJicZCFw4q3o92I3sAGPGltymxkMO4iSlMnE86FCrAx9YETKw=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></div><br />If you think about <a href="https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2021/11/you-just-lost-the-game">the game</a>,<br />you've already lost.<br />That's the whole game.<br />You might approach someone,<br />perhaps at a party—<br />perhaps there is brandied eggnog,<br />or maybe it's a cooler full<br />of beer, juice boxes for the kids,<br />in celebration of the end<br />of soccer season, or a savior's birth,<br />or the strong possibility that soon<br />the days will get longer.<br />You would say, "You've lost the game,"<br />and it would be true<br />because now you've passed the torch<br />of consciousness<br />like a virus<br />to the person closest to you.<p></p><p>There's no winning the game.<br />It was invented by the British,<br />of course. Land of fog <br />and consumptive moors,<br />land farmed to the bone. <br />Maybe this resignation <br />is what happens after you conquer<br />a continent or two, <br />leverage a famine to your advantage, <br />make the locals bring you tea.<br />And still it tastes bitter,<br />and still your wife finds you<br />a bit disgusting <br />and your children grow up<br />and write books<br />about the terrible things you've done<br />leveraging that education you paid for<br />with the spoils of a rigged war.</p><p>Depression is a Russian nesting doll<br />forged in the thinnest winter sunlight:<br />Do you feel like you're dying <br />because the test results aren't back,<br />or is the <i>No new results </i>page screaming at you<br />louder than usual (each time is the worst; this is how it works)<br />because you feel like you're dying?<br />Do you feel like you're dying<br />because of a life that failed to take shape,<br />a miscarriage of sorts, especially in the sense<br />that you folded in on yourself?<br />Do you feel like you're dying <br />because you are, in fact?<br />You want the people you love<br />to win the game, but holding the secret<br />is swallowing a hundred of the tiniest dolls,<br />the ones shaped like pills.<br /><br />And so you spit them out<br />and watch the splatter and wish<br />you could take it back. <br />If there weren't so much love,<br />the game wouldn't be so bad; <br />nothing would <i>be</i>, at all. <br />It's been nine years since you learned<br />about the game, or six, or eighteen,<br />or forty-one, depending how you count.<br />Do you count? <br />Too much—leaves on trees, numbers on a screen.<br />Not enough, though maybe that's a relief,<br />being just one more flimsy leaf<br />red-gold on the driveway.<br />Time is on your side.<br />Time is not on your side.<br />Time is </p>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-22628383704557429012021-09-26T08:17:00.001-07:002021-09-26T08:23:26.103-07:00ode to the end of peach season<p>1.</p><p>The peaches this summer were inexplicably good. The ones from Trader Joe's, I mean. Trader <i>Joe's</i>—known for all those plastic clamshells and sad hard oranges. But there they were, better than we deserved: ombre globes the size of tennis balls, the big soft ones that our son keeps hitting over the fence. Run-down-your-chin juicy, though I always cut them up, because why ruin something exquisite with a sticky face? </p><p>I tried to eat them all. I did. I bought them in cardboard pallets and by the bag. Accuse me of all the contemporary sins: working too much, planning and fretting, checking pandemic stats like the weather. Bending my head toward my phone until my spine is a floor lamp, an inverted J. Despairing because we might not, in fact, upgrade our wonderful lives to extra wonderful in the space of a month. </p><p>But who is here, like a motherfucking Zen master, enjoying seasonal fruit?</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLtDpcm3E6YPvdcPPCBxOsgLvVnq373LtOUyJuSozVyNrBomGbgy2GUpHAulXIs_z9y0ZTMttC9bi21HE9YdKFW_jI9BUqDTLEoItqeyemrXNYJ3G8GDEVXLUVrVxq5LRQUPCJ/s989/vlad-deep-dAjYxJrcdd8-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="963" data-original-width="989" height="390" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLtDpcm3E6YPvdcPPCBxOsgLvVnq373LtOUyJuSozVyNrBomGbgy2GUpHAulXIs_z9y0ZTMttC9bi21HE9YdKFW_jI9BUqDTLEoItqeyemrXNYJ3G8GDEVXLUVrVxq5LRQUPCJ/w400-h390/vlad-deep-dAjYxJrcdd8-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@vladdeep?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Vlad Deep</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/peaches?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p>And now it's almost gone. Now pears are populating the shelves, and I like pears; I get why six of them plus some cheese cost $49.99 from Harry & David. Now I'm bingeing on pizza and cinnamon rolls, Cheez-Its and sour gummies. All the nonperishables in the cupboards. Late at night, when the day's worries are done and we are, for a few hours, untouchable. When texts and emails—the ones we're waiting for and the ones we dread—are silent. Only the bots are up, promising 75% off jeans for the whole family. The jeans are cheaper and better than they should be, too, but not so satisfying when I bite. And I will bite.</p><p>2.</p><p>Each time I open the apps, I hear Mabel King sing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQT-QFy5Nig" target="_blank">"Don't nobody bring me no bad news."</a> She was the witch in <i>The Wiz, </i>you know. A house had flattened her sister, and she would be murdered with mop water by the second act. No wonder she wanted to freeze time and accelerate it, no wonder she hoped her factory twerkers in their bright peach rags would make it all happen while she cowered backstage. Her sweatshop produced only sweat.</p><p>I'm an old witch and I know, now, how the seasons cycle. I know the time of bland bananas, our failed tomato plants, the one year in our old house when we accidentally grew so many watermelons we had to throw a party to eat them all. The chard plant that bolted—I love that word in its defiance, a reminder that rebellion is not just for predatory mega fauna—it <i>bolted, </i>its bright red stalk becoming thick and inedible, its leaves waving at the neighbors and covering the brick patio. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj08yDcrT8piQ3x66RA0sCQB198YQlDqHqfQY_VjlmAyrCdU_9-gEIqqJnm5PxW2o1-sqsQL2cYkcjw0rDDpCl_KdzmnxYWDypAI0X41e0vHaONioTpwvUc6lmJWWDbhEvcVbAb/s340/Evillene_throne.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="250" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj08yDcrT8piQ3x66RA0sCQB198YQlDqHqfQY_VjlmAyrCdU_9-gEIqqJnm5PxW2o1-sqsQL2cYkcjw0rDDpCl_KdzmnxYWDypAI0X41e0vHaONioTpwvUc6lmJWWDbhEvcVbAb/w294-h400/Evillene_throne.jpeg" width="294" /></a></div><p>Sometimes I treat pear season as if it's a thing I can manifest: Follow all the contradictory advice of all the people who earn their living from families who want to grow beyond the limits of their own stale soil, text at the right time, keep my problems folded tight and out of sight. It's horrible, and I'm no farmer. </p><p>Other times I treat it like a storm on the horizon, like the neon orange fire moon that visits us in early fall, reminding us of the flames to the north, the choking sky, the planet burning and drowning simultaneously, a sort of apocalyptic harmony. Look, I know those peaches were picked by workers who earn $14 an hour, or $1.25, depending on who you ask. </p><p>There's nothing I can do to stop the bad news, I tell myself. I can't sustain summer. I'm trying to sustain summer. It's comfort and despair, the stuff that leads to old seasons of <i>RuPaul's Drag Race, </i>downed like shots of whiskey, and actual shots of whiskey. The Jinkx Monsoon is coming.</p><p>3.</p><p>I'm writing this as if I'm trying to stop climate change, but I'm not. I go to the store where you can refill your old shampoo bottles from a shampoo keg, and I vote, but mostly I'm trying to eat all the peaches, to manifest my own little orchard in the shape of the present I love, the present I do and don't deserve. I'm in a kind of upward-mobility paradox: This first season (which followed four and a half years of drought) worked out so well, but we can't string it out forever, we can't stop our son from outgrowing his shoes and learning swear words, and we can't make the next season in its image. It will be its own fruit, <i>if we are lucky, </i>and it might not be at all. </p><p>I repeat the latter, magical thinker that I am, just so you know I know. I'm not a <i>dummy</i>, I'm not some sort of entitled idealist who fails to imagine their demise hourly. God forbid I don't hold unhappiness and guilt like worry stones, one in each pocket. God forbid I don't get a jolt of terror every time an Unknown Number lights up my phone, that trickster brick on the kitchen counter.</p><p>4.</p><p>This year I've seen the evil eye everywhere. Maybe you have too. It looks like the Target symbol in blues: cobalt, black, white, sky, black. Of course, it's not the evil eye at all, but an amulet to ward <i>off </i>the evil eye. A key difference, lost to linguistics. Why does good news feel so much like bad news? The eye stares at me from the bumpers of cars driven by Armenians in our city. They know how bad it can get, or they know secondhand. Trauma fortifies the bones and lights every nerve ending on fire.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6IcuXY5qYYL1yfknBOIiifAf1zfERMQ4FQZTdZcJRdArgqV_5daWqgkvkcLYIW3loL-obnZlO0bYMo0K_cX0PF0pvAQRC9jUaMH1hHJEpnmGYVk9xzY2kh-_YQ-KeLPK5RKqQ/s1000/hulki-okan-tabak-GZI6ZtXpx14-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6IcuXY5qYYL1yfknBOIiifAf1zfERMQ4FQZTdZcJRdArgqV_5daWqgkvkcLYIW3loL-obnZlO0bYMo0K_cX0PF0pvAQRC9jUaMH1hHJEpnmGYVk9xzY2kh-_YQ-KeLPK5RKqQ/w400-h266/hulki-okan-tabak-GZI6ZtXpx14-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@hulkiokantabak?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Hulki Okan Tabak</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/evil-eye?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p>All I'm saying is I want a peach and a pear. I want to eat them even if they are not mine to consume, with you; you are not mine to consume either, though you are as rooted as a tree. All I'm saying is all the things I cannot. Isn't every poem, at a certain point, about the failure of language? Doesn't that mean it's about genocide? Can't I have a peach and a pear, a tree and a blue-black eye watching over us all? </p>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-20460667551476213522021-07-19T12:49:00.003-07:002021-07-19T12:51:32.936-07:00road trip!<p><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cross posted from my <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/ykleinrraroadtrip/?hl=en">daily travel journal on Instagram</a></span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Day 1: </b><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626;">We packed up our car and drove through the desert, where it was 102 degrees in the dark, and landed in Vegas, where we haven’t been in 15 years. “We’ll be creatures of the night,” we decided, as we headed east into a heatwave with an intense year and an intense couple of weeks and dreams of <i>Nomadland</i> in our rear view mirror. Now we are in the sweet AC of our hotel, watching Peppa Pig in the flicker of the strip club next door. </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"><b>Day 2: </b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">We jumped in the pool at 8:30 and then overloaded our senses at the Discovery Children’s Museum (as seen, notably, in a Blippi video). By lunchtime we were wilting. We stopped for gas at a station called Terrible’s that was running out of gas. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNQd53VJH1sNZMJpswWu7nf8nyk4bPupsDefX8E9RfyYe89E-1a-2vNTA0L9zy6ENoPBhCSM3sfVRFghY3XwWa9vCjFFDHgEk054ZO-_unt79R0FVSu0_G5qO-iP_3TwlhTKul/s2048/Vegas.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1539" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNQd53VJH1sNZMJpswWu7nf8nyk4bPupsDefX8E9RfyYe89E-1a-2vNTA0L9zy6ENoPBhCSM3sfVRFghY3XwWa9vCjFFDHgEk054ZO-_unt79R0FVSu0_G5qO-iP_3TwlhTKul/w400-h300/Vegas.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />We hit the road again, and I watched the temperature like it was my own blood pressure, like we were on the precipice of something dangerous. The rocks turned from yellow to red, clouds dumping long fingers of light on the mountains like a prophecy.<p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">We passed Valley of Fire, where I remember my mom taking a picture of me at 12, all Sun-In hair against red rocks, telling me how beautiful I was, as I shrank under her certain lie.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">We stopped for salty Chinese food in a little foothill town called Parowan and the temperature dropped to a forgiving 88.</span></p><p><span style="color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"><b>Day 3: </b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">This morning we were admiring two duck families in the cow pasture next to our cabin in Torrey, UT, when I touched the fence and got zapped with electricity. After telling Dash to learn from my mistake, I mused, “I guess it’s good to know what that’s like. I’ve always wondered what cows deal with.” C.C. looked at me like I was a little crazy and I wondered if that’s my MO—always trying to turn everything into some kind of universal life lesson five seconds after it happens. 🙄</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">At a little shop next to the Wild Rabbit Cafe, I picked up Desert Cabal by Amy Irvine from Torrey House Press, and now I want to be a wilderness writer, except for the living in the wilderness part.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">“I want to ride a horse through these canyons,” C.C. said.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">“I want to write a horse through these canyons,” I said.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">“How do you write a horse?”</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">“I don’t know, but I feel like the canyons would tell me.”</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigzSKRNW6O7772qm1JghnPXoLVCLMFPVoCSZlS_lgJm8W2_IzMXNr87tpBhztNMv0lba_In5TRh7IVMKqQz2Pk8dpITV4EDK4KtVcxwl3x1hCk_uvWxUzjOFh6OIrKfr7Xj4WO/s2048/Apricots.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigzSKRNW6O7772qm1JghnPXoLVCLMFPVoCSZlS_lgJm8W2_IzMXNr87tpBhztNMv0lba_In5TRh7IVMKqQz2Pk8dpITV4EDK4KtVcxwl3x1hCk_uvWxUzjOFh6OIrKfr7Xj4WO/w300-h400/Apricots.JPG" width="300" /></a></span></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"><br />We drove through Capitol Reef National Park (thank you, </span><a class="notranslate" href="https://www.instagram.com/imorianderson/" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" tabindex="0">@imorianderson</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">) with its layer-cake rocks in rainbow shades. I made it an official Klein Family Vacation by dragging my child through the heat to a mineshaft containing mildly hazardous materials.</span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">We picked apricots from trees planted by Mormon settlers and drove to Moab, where I remember getting a killer ear infection when I was ten. Retracing the long straight roads my family drove, I listened to “All at Once,” The Airborne Toxic Event’s song about inheriting the world from our parents and grandparents and being totally unprepared.</span></p><p><span style="color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"><b>Day 4: </b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">Our last stop in Utah was Moab Giants, a “museum” that really loves 3D shit and does not seem to employ any copy writers, educators, or graphic designers. I love a good tourist trap, but, like…the exhibit about prehistoric sea creatures was a lot like Backdraft: The Ride and included mermaids and the Loch Ness Monster?</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">Almost exactly at the Colorado state line, the jagged red rocks and Trump stickers gave way to farmland and dispensaries, and I felt a kind of visceral, bodily relief. Even though Utah was stunning and gorgeous, there’s something about a place telling you “stay away” with its topography and politics (which, of course, are not homogeneous anywhere, but) vs. “come on in and chill.”</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">We’re in Mesa Verde now, staying at the lodge. My dad is too polite to roll his eyes at our bougie ways, but I still feel a little bit of guilt that we’re not camping (it’s drowned out by that sweet AC though). This place completely captivated me as a kid, and I’m so excited to show Dash the cliff dwellings tomorrow. Meanwhile the air smells like mud and fresh grass, and there was a five-minute ice storm.</span></p><p><span style="color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxaI2UE2yYyWWRygc73vO7Pm5CjVVYmahGRAmkEhehQ98Fj2VMmwZ6H2FQZycIn_E5zRrupSx2fcNxnx_2p1Do8mQ6-9htxFoZJ-dkn1bLAdvJKUp5PE_tAynXZRGAMaxZKWZN/s2048/Spruce.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxaI2UE2yYyWWRygc73vO7Pm5CjVVYmahGRAmkEhehQ98Fj2VMmwZ6H2FQZycIn_E5zRrupSx2fcNxnx_2p1Do8mQ6-9htxFoZJ-dkn1bLAdvJKUp5PE_tAynXZRGAMaxZKWZN/w400-h300/Spruce.JPG" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"><b><br />Day 5: </b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">I try not to have big expectations about How A Thing Will Feel, but I guess I had some Mesa Verde expectations, because this morning when C.C. said she felt a cold coming on and could she sit out our first activity, I basically burst into tears, baffling both of us. My sister got it, as she always does—how I can hear my mom’s voice reading aloud all the historical markers, and my dad balking at how much we paid for pizza in the cafe. How you can carry your own ghosts in a place with much older ghosts.</span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">Dash and I ventured out bravely on our own, driving the narrow ridges and carsick curves of Wetherhill Mesa Road until we got to Step House Trail. Step House was stunning—like the coolest clubhouse you could imagine, tucked into a canyon wall.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">When I got back from my first trip to Mesa Verde 35 years 😳 ago, I wrote what can best be described as Anasazi fan fiction and turned it in as my fourth grade report on Native Americans. Everyone else wrote about, like, staple crops.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgncm5xZ4Ue5MRYNfiglVdqmmgnfP71Lq2ytMYzmNvItIf1aWMsRTfjM9dx8Vj4oD1BiwL5UU9dt1SDPDJ5hM_rGUO_eoNXfNbHD5l_TNp90c5WIznn_PElZn2RMllR345xcSf7/s2048/Fan+Fiction.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgncm5xZ4Ue5MRYNfiglVdqmmgnfP71Lq2ytMYzmNvItIf1aWMsRTfjM9dx8Vj4oD1BiwL5UU9dt1SDPDJ5hM_rGUO_eoNXfNbHD5l_TNp90c5WIznn_PElZn2RMllR345xcSf7/w400-h300/Fan+Fiction.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />“Anasazi” has given way to the more accurate term “Ancestral Pueblo People,” whose traditions live on in Hopi, Navajo, and other Pueblo peoples. No one knows for sure why the Ancestral Pueblo People started building their homes in cliff sides, or why they stopped and then started again. It’s good to have some mysteries, I think.<p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">In the afternoon, C.C. rallied and we all drove to the Far View Sites, a set of older mesa-top structures, and Spruce Tree House.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">We got dinner and cocktails at the fancy (and only) restaurant near the lodge, and realized we completely forgot to teach Dash table manners. He was full of squirrely energy, charging up the hill on his way back to our room, through the juniper-scented air, yelling “What the hell hell hell!”</span></p><p><span style="color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"><b>Day 6: </b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">One of the last stops on today’s Mesa Verde bus tour was the Sun Temple, a D-shaped mesa-top building that probably had some kind of astrological significance. Our tour guide said, “There’s not a ton of evidence to support this, but the building was constructed in the last few years before the Ancestral Pueblo people left this area. I think it was a last ditch effort. They were running out of water, and they built this to appeal to the gods.”</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">What I’m saying is that if I write more Anasazi fan fiction, I will call it “Sun Temple Times” and it will of course be an allegory for our times.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyY_lPSYJ3N1Mj0fZfU94TUWrWL-R714Fj-xwxGSfaSKHkoODQf3p761bgJvWvIernBmEFBbEdBPnPsgqBS5cRB3qSYgJCfrFUAS7OOXfC6qmPmhgVTkPi3V-lfmWnb2d2YJWd/s2048/Family+in+MV.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyY_lPSYJ3N1Mj0fZfU94TUWrWL-R714Fj-xwxGSfaSKHkoODQf3p761bgJvWvIernBmEFBbEdBPnPsgqBS5cRB3qSYgJCfrFUAS7OOXfC6qmPmhgVTkPi3V-lfmWnb2d2YJWd/w400-h300/Family+in+MV.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />We left Mesa Verde and drove through Navajo country, where the flat-bottomed clouds and sinking sun conspired to make a vast Golden Hour. There were billboards reminding people to stop COVID by avoiding parties and ceremonies. The only store in Tonalea sold chicken wings and hair clips and laundry detergent and no produce.<p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">Now we’re in Flagstaff for the last leg of our trip. We are road-weary and relaxed. We listened to Paul Simon in the car, and I think there’s reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland.</span></p><p><span style="color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"><b>Day 7: </b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: inherit;">We have reached the “Hey, Dash, want to watch some YouTube while moms answer work emails?” stage of vacation. Other than brunch at the Toasted Owl, we explored very little of what Flagstaff had to offer. Sorry, Flagstaff.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLkC189WQB0IGC4h85YzeqWs0IuNOtYCD5j8TRvJU_QEXnmyCApLs_98MzCytBb1Au5GBVW4aIISIVE2sfkHFAAKKvk2LxcWhEBC-V4h69RRsoqXBCP97eB_uHRiPiuNsvq1_W/s2048/Owls.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLkC189WQB0IGC4h85YzeqWs0IuNOtYCD5j8TRvJU_QEXnmyCApLs_98MzCytBb1Au5GBVW4aIISIVE2sfkHFAAKKvk2LxcWhEBC-V4h69RRsoqXBCP97eB_uHRiPiuNsvq1_W/w300-h400/Owls.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-52511924651957261372021-05-29T10:58:00.001-07:002021-05-29T10:58:25.164-07:00sympathy for the devil and my own dirty hands<p><b>1. skip this part if you don't enjoy white tears</b></p><p>When it comes to acts of individual violence, society has little patience for the perpetrators. Or rather, we try to make up for the failures of courts, the child welfare system, public education, and more with our own swift, harsh judgments. The woman who drowned her children, the man who shot up a McDonald's—why should they get a moment of our time when the people they hurt don't get another moment, period?</p><p>On social media, we tweet hard against the Trumps and Kavanaughs and white women who commit microaggressions. I'm not sure it should be otherwise—a tweet just composed itself in my head: <i>Just realized that you can't spell Kavanaugh without ugh</i>—but the urge to judge is also a deflection from self-judgment. If I can dehumanize Karen, then I must not <i>be </i>Karen, right? Right?</p><p>It's not that I think every villain deserves an origin story, but I do believe every villain has one, whether or not we should tell it or pay money to see it.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqwwyxRgRLXk-fOxGw7yKXOZjU2zE1bUZgCRKDwv3ARZM5NUexuZ6mcpxETQVmGHrsKOI9waIjgy8lHfGyxIoELYYxt85vLFQ5sVV7fegR6EoXdPAt2TrUzvkL0EE5av10IDCB/s780/MCDCRUE_G5009.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="421" data-original-width="780" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqwwyxRgRLXk-fOxGw7yKXOZjU2zE1bUZgCRKDwv3ARZM5NUexuZ6mcpxETQVmGHrsKOI9waIjgy8lHfGyxIoELYYxt85vLFQ5sVV7fegR6EoXdPAt2TrUzvkL0EE5av10IDCB/w400-h216/MCDCRUE_G5009.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After crying my mascara off when someone criticizes me</td></tr></tbody></table><p>I'm thinking about these things because I've been (fruitlessly so far) deep in the adoption world, which—like everything else we touch—is rooted in inequality, capitalism, and racism. I published a poem in which I wrote about some of these factors, and a reader identifying herself as an international adoptee left a very harsh, very accurate comment on it. I want to say she misread things, that she brought her own biases to the poem, but that wouldn't make her comment any less valid. </p><p>If I want to say things in this world, about this world—and I don't seem to be able to stop myself—I have to accept the pushback that comes with the territory. People are allowed to and should fight my speech with speech. </p><p>But damn I feel like a piece of shit. </p><p>And sometimes I envy less self-loathing white liberals, who find ways to mostly opt out of tricky situations where they get their hands visibly dirty. The people who write excellent, finely observed novels featuring a tiny cast of entirely white characters; the people who don't venture into adoption because they have functioning ovaries. They vote for the right people and donate to the right places and just keep quietly educating themselves, and they seem so unassailable. </p><p>I spent a long time in therapy trying to learn that innocence and purity are not actually great life goals. Because I'm only half convinced of it, now, I sort of march forward in agony: trying to do good work (that's also a Fake Email Job and part of the nonprofit industrial complex), be a good neighbor (even though I'm unfairly grouchy at J&J almost every day and I worry that they know; how could they not know?), and accept my own limitations as an individual human. That's what humility is: doing what I can, knowing what's above my pay grade, knowing that being so self-sacrificing as to be miserable would actually be of no service to anyone I love. But damn it's hard.</p><p><b>2. don't skip this part; read this book</b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8_TpZxGwmUHN7EiUHoAqJf04QXjHc_RWVsM0c4ixkIy2nww335mwzztS2tHRj24Um3LjCRYDxtONzZmAOdtAMLIoFOaJiofepZre_hc4esanci-ZusFwTBly0P9sCTYKUrkc9/s1545/Violence+Almanac.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1545" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8_TpZxGwmUHN7EiUHoAqJf04QXjHc_RWVsM0c4ixkIy2nww335mwzztS2tHRj24Um3LjCRYDxtONzZmAOdtAMLIoFOaJiofepZre_hc4esanci-ZusFwTBly0P9sCTYKUrkc9/w259-h400/Violence+Almanac.jpeg" width="259" /></a></div><br />All of the above is also part of why I devoured <i><a href="https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/the-violence-almanac/">The Violence Almanac</a> (</i><a href="https://blacklawrencepress.com/">Black Lawrence Press</a>)<i>, </i>a collection of short, unflinching stories by my friend and fellow CalArtian Miah Jeffra. Fiction is in the business of humanizing, queering, complexifying, and daring to imagine an experience not one's own. That's why I love it.<p></p><p>Without, IMO, ever glorifying violence or excusing those who commit it, Jeffra spends time in the minds of both perpetrators and victims. Of course, if you aren't deep in denial, you know that most perpetrators are victims in one way or another. When woundedness meets power—in the case of Mr. Huberty, a man who struggles to find work but stockpiles guns in "Eye Wall"—trouble usually lies ahead.</p><p>I was particularly moved by the opening story, "Babies," which imagines how Andrea Yates killed her children to save them from the void she felt: "A cutting away, releasing the doubt, to preserve what good they had left in them.... If she kept on to them, held them close in this world, her world, they would all fall into that gaping hole, the one of eternal torment."</p><p>During a week when I've wondered what right I have, if any, to be a parent, I am thinking about how it takes a certain amount of blind self-confidence to parent. You have to shrug and say, "Well, I'm here, I'll do my best. Even though my children will come face to face with the world's cruelty. Even though I'm kind of a piece of shit, I'm the piece of shit my child is stuck with."<br /></p><p>But Jeffra also lets us see, in no uncertain terms, what it feels like to be Yates' terrified child. In these ways, the book is much more painful than the bloodiest movie, despite the fact that there's very little graphic violence. </p><p>In "Gethsemane," a realtor gives a gleefully deranged tour of a house in a gentrifying neighborhood, stuffing the violence of its history into the corners, though it seems to push at the doors of every closet. </p><p>In "Ain't No Thing," a man tries very hard to be unassailable his whole life. From his father, he learns how to take a beating. Women complain "I want you...to <i>want </i>something from me!" He tries to be even nicer. He tries to hold it together. He tries to follow the rules and bury his hatred for those who don't—specifically, some young men of color on a MUNI bus, carelessly disposing of their trash—because it would be too painful for him to learn what the young men may already know, that Goodness will not save him. It reads like a cautionary tale.</p><p>Jeffra's work is so gutsy and imaginative and searing. Somewhere in here is a manual for how to live in this world, and how not to.</p>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-75586275908223645282021-05-26T09:17:00.006-07:002021-05-26T12:27:56.958-07:00shallow but vast<p style="text-align: left;">"What is time, even" is a thing I say a lot lately, but I'm pretty sure all of these things happened since last Wednesday. In chronological order:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>My friend Holly found out she has a brain tumor.</li><li>After a lot of radio silence on the adoption front, followed by a lot of paperwork and fees as we try to crack the silence, an expectant mom in San Diego told an attorney in Temecula that she wanted a same-sex couple from California to adopt her baby. Then she decided she wanted a same-sex <i>male </i>couple to adopt her baby.</li><li>We met Ignacio, new baby of Alberto and Gracia, and he is small and beautiful with a lot of silky dark hair and an elfin nose. </li><li>Dash told me, "It's not fair that J&J are sisters and I don't have no one to play with. That's why I want a baby." (He also told me he has no toys.)</li><li>My Grandma Jac died yesterday at the age of 91, her dog Zoe curled next to her on the bed.</li><li>Roadie brought a baby sparrow into the house and it seemed like we might be able to save it, and we woke to discover that we didn't.</li></ul><div><br />This post is mostly about Grandma Jac, because I need to write to make myself believe that a person I haven't seen in a year is not alive. The parts about Holly and adoption are here, my central narrative, the darkness and the hope swirling around me. There's more cause for hope than not, but sometimes I climb into the pit inside myself, where there are all-caps signs posted on the slimy pit walls announcing that the world is divided into winners and losers and guess which I am, and I must be dragging people I love down here with me. </div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDJGBszKb4ckHQ5LUPt35A3sYYAefuIi5IDlke09uE4mjOOPYM_leqkYnPTDmZTZc3ecxky1dhYPxJO4UxLPpqBm-qY3BsYR43DPXeqZe6YGkB2CxQZVwdkuxqBlZA16ldu6Rq/s2048/sebastian-herrmann-C2gGF9Z0leo-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDJGBszKb4ckHQ5LUPt35A3sYYAefuIi5IDlke09uE4mjOOPYM_leqkYnPTDmZTZc3ecxky1dhYPxJO4UxLPpqBm-qY3BsYR43DPXeqZe6YGkB2CxQZVwdkuxqBlZA16ldu6Rq/w400-h266/sebastian-herrmann-C2gGF9Z0leo-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Just hanging on<br /><a href="https://unsplash.com/@herrherrmann?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Sebastian Herrmann</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/sparrow-juvenile?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a><br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Jac was the subject of the first creative nonfiction I ever wrote. When I was in middle school and high school, we'd periodically be asked to write about our families, and I found my immediate family incredibly boring (they worked so hard to create my boring childhood, and I had no appreciation), but everyone, my parents included, assured me that Jac was The Interesting One.</div><div><br /></div><div>She was born during the Depression, but I think her family did okay. Recently I told my dad that <i>her</i> dad drove a Helms Bakery truck, and he thought he did something else, and now I won't get to ask her. She went to college at Pepperdine, at a time when women usually didn't, and had Black friends at a time when white people usually didn't. She was 19, I think, when she met her husband Gordon. He was older and an archeologist or an anthropologist, something professorial that caused him to fill their house with the artifacts that punctuated my childhood, though I never met Gordon himself. Pottery shards arranged in a mosaic in the kitchen. Animal skulls that made their office feel like a true den. He was an alcoholic and the kind of man who expected his wife to earn money while he got degree after degree, only to look down on her for not being an intellectual. Eventually he moved to the Southwest and became a painter and killed himself late in life. </div><div><br /></div><div>When I came into the story, Jac was married to Al, a big, good-natured man who was missing the tops of his first two fingers. He adored Jac and gave her jewelry at their holiday parties, which my mom always thought was a little showy, but it fit them both. At one point they almost divorced, but then they didn't. He died after a stroke back in the early 2000s and Jac never stopped missing him. </div><div><br /></div><div>Jac lived at the top of a hill in Torrance, at the very southern tip of Crenshaw, nestled between Palos Verdes horse country and the liquor stores of Lomita. It was your basic 1950s tract house, but she painted it a deep olive green and installed a cactus garden years before people talked about drought-resistant landscaping and painted the windows of her enclosed patio to look like Frank Lloyd Wright's stained glass. </div><div><br /></div><div>When I think about Jac, she is as much of a place as a person for me. She filled her house with family, friends, and stray humans every Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Mother's Day, and Father's Day. One day someone told her "You'd celebrate Groundhog's Day if you could," and so she did. Somewhere in the carousels of slides at my dad's house is a picture of a groundhog sculpted out of hamburger meat, with an apple in its mouth.</div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil_R10T1o_rl8WaZiMvXktL0pXKfNMxP34vu9qBX3p3lsFe4lTap4_VpPAlHwkPCK6QSnBLXHY1eGYB1-hCgNpd_DFR56FrukEJaB8y7mWOumg9-klTFt97d2ecyiVNd60Tl1z/s2048/isabelle-sanchez-chapman-zAHy-ZBAMwA-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil_R10T1o_rl8WaZiMvXktL0pXKfNMxP34vu9qBX3p3lsFe4lTap4_VpPAlHwkPCK6QSnBLXHY1eGYB1-hCgNpd_DFR56FrukEJaB8y7mWOumg9-klTFt97d2ecyiVNd60Tl1z/w400-h300/isabelle-sanchez-chapman-zAHy-ZBAMwA-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm always trying to figure out who's the cricket in this story<br /><a href="https://unsplash.com/@isabellybutton?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Isabelle Sanchez-Chapman</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/sparrow?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br />My dad started going up there with his childhood friend <a href="https://breadandbread.blogspot.com/2017/04/were-here-were-queer-were-not-yet-used.html">Bob</a> as a teenager. Bob was an old-school flamboyant gay and so of course he needed an eccentric older woman for a friend. And then my dad brought my mom and they brought me and my sister. All my grandparents were dead by the time I was four, and so even though she was only thirteen years older than my parents, Jac became my grandma. </div><div><br /></div><div>I thought she was my grandma, but later I realized we were strays she'd collected, not so different from the guy from the hardware store she might invite up for Easter. She always told people, "This family is like the mafia. Once you're in, you can't get out." Her daughter's ex-husband had a permanent place at the long stone benches on her back patio, with his second wife and her daughter. But she stopped speaking to her own brother decades before and I never really knew why.</div><div><br /></div><div>She was forgiving and open-hearted and progressive, loving and caring for Bob's friends through AIDS, and also gossipy and judgmental. My mom always joked that she didn't want to be the first to leave one of Jac's gatherings because then everyone would talk about her. My mom and my sister and I were three introverts in the corner, flipping through Jac's issues of <i>The National Enquirer </i>(she subscribed as a joke) and her copies of Dr. Laura's books, which may or may not have been a joke. When I think about what I miss about Jac's, that's half of it. Being in a corner with my mom and sister while my awkward-but-outgoing dad made the rounds in the only real social circle he's ever had.</div><div><br /></div><div>Jac was a bit of a foul-weather friend. If you needed someone to bail you out of jail or pay for an abortion, as my cousin sometimes did, she was your gal. If you wanted her to come to your high school graduation, as my sister did, well, she had a dentist appointment that day.</div><div><br /></div><div>She told a lot of colorful stories about her days as unofficial den mother to all the kids on the hill. She was a bit of a prankster; she once drove to Gordon's house long after their divorce just to show up on his doorstep as a trick-or-treater. I knew her in her storytelling years, not her story-making years. I knew her house as the place of egg hunts and grand buffets spread out on her kitchen counter, cheesy potatoes and green bean casseroles alongside Peruvian recipes and vegetarian dishes made especially for me and my sister. </div><div><br /></div><div>There was a time when I gorged myself on her holiday food, and considered holidays at her house some sort of pinnacle, a chance to show off whatever teenage identity I was trying on—wannabe punk, fag hag, etc.—but later, I think her taste buds failed her and the food started to seem suspect. My tastes changed too. She never really asked me questions about myself; she was too busy bustling about being hostess, and I didn't make an effort to change that dynamic.</div><div><br /></div><div>I called Jac early in lockdown, because we'd been advised to Check On Our Old People, and I told her, just in passing, just quickly, that there had been a baby who'd stayed with us for two weeks before his parents took him back. She said something like "Oh, that's nice," and I chalked it up to her being hard of hearing, but I also wondered if she wasn't listening in a different sense. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, but the fact that it could go either way says something.</div><div><br /></div><div>I worry for my dad, who has never had many friends to spare, and has already <a href="http://breadandbread.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-most-colorful-species.html">lost a few this year</a>. It feels like the end of an era, and that's something to mourn even if I can't quite feel the shape and depth of my personal mourning yet. Maybe it's shallow but vast, a thin membrane spread over everything.</div><div><br /></div><div>Midway through writing this, Dash told me, "I think the bird is alive. I heard a tweet!" </div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh, I think that's coming from outside, but we can look," I said. Looking at a dead bird before heading off to school was some kind of closure, I supposed.</div><div><br /></div><div>We went in the office, where we'd made a nest for the sparrow in the cat carrier of all places. Dash had named the bird Benjamin Kasi, after someone on YouTube and a giraffe we met at the Living Desert Zoo earlier in the year. </div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin Kasi stood there, round and fluffed up, looking at us. Very still, with very open eyes. <i>Probably </i>alive, contrary to AK's early morning report. And then Benjamin Kasi turned his head and let out a chirp. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's not Benjamin Kasi's job to symbolize hope and resurrection—it's his job to heal and eat bugs—but I'll take this narrative and run with it.</div><p></p>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-2370334253365583572021-05-09T09:04:00.005-07:002021-05-09T09:07:46.471-07:00is there any other kind?<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">A couple of years ago, the amazing writer-moms of the IKEA Writers Collective started wishing each other "Happy Fucking Mother's Day" because it's such a strange, fraught holiday (though, really, is there any other kind?). </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">In recent months, we've tried to inject some new strategies into our adoption attempts. So far that's meant a lot of paperwork and frustration. I'm frustrated for many reasons, including old boring feelings of maternal unworthiness, but also because one reason I hesitated about trying to adopt again was that I didn't want to dump all that longing onto the kid I was so, so happy to have. He didn't deserve it. C.C. didn't deserve it. I didn't deserve it.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDJCcKrUDqVsO0VpSoFEGXdG1NAKr_lHyL26HrXwik53w_-USnWB-X8o3y3CRSWDkF9nALo6CkozbOsxO-a_P9Q1M4OoGU4dumqcLY71bjMwXQAOQeo-5dXVrvafrUI5wVs5td/s2048/IMG_5558.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDJCcKrUDqVsO0VpSoFEGXdG1NAKr_lHyL26HrXwik53w_-USnWB-X8o3y3CRSWDkF9nALo6CkozbOsxO-a_P9Q1M4OoGU4dumqcLY71bjMwXQAOQeo-5dXVrvafrUI5wVs5td/w300-h400/IMG_5558.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;">I don't know how to live in the present—a present that, in these sweet, tentatively sunny, vaccinated days, I am grateful for deep in my bones—while still planning for the future. Maybe there is some super balanced Zen person out there who does. But until I become her, I have C.C., Chaos Muppet to my Order Muppet, who reminds me to come up for air (as I remind her to set an alarm if she needs to, you know, get up at a certain time). She just sent me a beautiful Mother's Day post by Emily Simon, about how we all mother ourselves to fill in the gaps left by our mortal mothers. We can fill them with music and art and of course each other.</p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'm glad the zeitgeist has figured out that Mother's Day, like all our faves, Is Problematic, partly because it's fraught with narratives about women who "do it all," when no one does or should. Sometimes I think "Oh shit, I co-edit a magazine called MUTHA when I only have one kid and I'm only one third of his moms, I'm such a fraud," but I guess that's kind of the point. This isn't math. This isn't even fair: so many people mother without being mothers (side note: read Torrey Peters' Detransition, Baby for a savvy, sad, funny take on this theme, and on daring to mother when society tells you you have the wrong body parts for it). Some people are mothers without mothering, and they deserve love and recognition too. </span><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'm grateful to the mothers who haunt my life in the best way: my mom, Dash's birth mom. And to the mothers who are earthbound with me: to my sister and friends who take care of me when I'm exhausted from making mediocre dinners and filling out PDFs. And especially C.C., who does it all, but not in THAT way—not all at once. Happy Fucking Mother's Day.</span></p></div>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-79787628205803705112021-03-15T07:00:00.000-07:002021-03-15T07:20:46.541-07:00news (the good kind)<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbF1WKIr-YjFbsVxYkYum9Of4HfrBQCr1phoJTR18TrotPrAUsppB0WUkDcHP0xqAzd7Wxi3abalShwoO05tkCqnFBXxflf47lC6IC1ujvN346UVHfVaDACiL3tFcmGTIEtHml/s2048/IMG_4317.jpg.HEIC" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1539" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbF1WKIr-YjFbsVxYkYum9Of4HfrBQCr1phoJTR18TrotPrAUsppB0WUkDcHP0xqAzd7Wxi3abalShwoO05tkCqnFBXxflf47lC6IC1ujvN346UVHfVaDACiL3tFcmGTIEtHml/w300-h400/IMG_4317.jpg.HEIC" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No make-up Rainbow Brite glasses selfie as temporary author photo </td></tr></tbody></table><br />I've never fully understood the phrase "No news is good news." I <i>think </i>it means that if you haven't gotten any updates, things are probably proceeding as planned. I was raised to believe in plans and routine and the supremacy of consistency. <p></p><p>But at some point—maybe when I was 14 and didn't see my name on the list of girls chosen for drill team, posted at the entrance to the locker room, maybe when I got my first negative pregnancy test—I started to feel like "All news is bad news." It's silly, because I've actually gotten a lot more good news than bad news in my life, yet every time I'm waiting to hear back about something, even when the possible outcomes are only "good" and "neutral," my stomach twists and the apocalypse twinkles on the horizon. </p><p>I wrote a book about my annoying brain's apocalyptic flirtations, and about some other things: wanting a baby, miscarrying, getting cancer, adopting a kid, the advantages and dangers of the human impulse toward narrative, and crying at Starbucks a lot. </p><p>And now I have some good news about it. A wonderful independent publisher, <a href="https://www.brownpaperpress.com/">Brown Paper Press</a>, will be publishing it in 2022. It's called <i>Crybaby. </i>Because, you know, babies are part of the story, and also because <i>Crying at Starbucks </i>probably raises copyright issues.</p><p>Corresponding and talking with Wendy, BPP's savvy and kind editor, was both buoying and a strange emotional roller coaster. Because news. Because pandemic grind, and all its associated good fortune and constant specter of disaster; a year in which I've been called a poophead and not-enough in both subtle and screamy ways, and it's taken a toll on my self-worth. Because I've been writing this thing for eight years, and I've wondered so many times whether I'd live long enough to see it published. I mean, not to be dramatic about it, but one of my first thoughts after finding a publisher was, <i>Even if I'm diagnosed with metastatic cancer, statistically I'll still make it to 2022. </i></p><p>But hopefully, knockonwood, I'll get to stay healthy <i>and </i>have a book in the world. My therapist has taught me it's okay to want two things. (Actually I want at least one hundred things, starting with A Solution to Climate Change and continuing right on down to Some Candy Right Now.)</p><p>It's weird to put a story about your boobs/lack thereof into the world, but I've been blogging since 2005, so I guess I'll be okay on that front.</p><p>One of the best parts of forthcoming publication is crafting the acknowledgments page in my head. Like a tiny Oscar speech. This is a first draft of that: </p><p>The people who helped me keep living: AK, Cathy, my dad, my mom from deep within my soul. Nicole, Kim M., Joewon, Annette, Amy, Jamie, Keely, Meehan, Kathy, Bronwyn, Pat, Lori, Holly, <a href="https://breadandbread.blogspot.com/2019/03/we-are-coolest.html">Molly</a>. Molly did not get to keep living, and that will never be remotely fair. My online adoption groups. Erica. Dash. Dr. Schmidt, Dr. Hills, Dr. Chung, and Dr. Jasper, who said, in her wonderful Russian accent, "This is not the cancer that kill you."</p><p>The people who helped me keep writing (which is to say, more people who helped me keep living): Aubrey, Debbie, Jennifer, and Shea of the IKEA Writers Collective; my IRL/now-Zoom writing group, Elizabeth, Jane, Joliange, Kate, Kim Y., Sarah; Dan, who told me to just write it in order; Dani, who told me in the kindest, most encouraging way possible that my draft was basically a collection of notes and scenes, and having an eight-week-old child was just the beginning of the stress of being a parent, not the end of all my worries; Meg, the best editor and advocate a writer-mom could ask for; Kerry, who kept trying to sell my novels despite the madness of the publishing industry.</p><p>There are so many more. And, full disclosure, there are a couple of people on my "Hmph, fuck you" list as well. If you want to know who, you can buy the book in mid-2022. </p><p><br /></p>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-73454112096862110082021-03-01T07:36:00.001-08:002021-03-01T07:36:21.130-08:00shadowrise<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7nfKQD7jo_f2vcCrZgO4UCOIW8U1FVp9FYLaO4sDWdu4hxLVnapJLRQEIEdWGG4XOuWUaAhUYV1ShTZq1Kj0-PosSetfqgI5J3Rhn29IrtTu0VWyR_QLZQjDek4kScLd5ttIg/s2048/IMG_4200.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1938" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7nfKQD7jo_f2vcCrZgO4UCOIW8U1FVp9FYLaO4sDWdu4hxLVnapJLRQEIEdWGG4XOuWUaAhUYV1ShTZq1Kj0-PosSetfqgI5J3Rhn29IrtTu0VWyR_QLZQjDek4kScLd5ttIg/s320/IMG_4200.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />As an oversized kitten, he chomped the hand of a friend,<br /><div style="text-align: left;">and we said, <i>I'm sorry, he's still figuring out<br /></i><i>what kind of cat he wants to be. </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i>Which is to say: he is not a metaphor<br />any more than he's a bad omen flitting blackly</div><div style="text-align: left;">across someone's path, but I must tell you this—</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A year ago a new cat moved in;</div><div style="text-align: left;">we brought her here, I held the door </div><div style="text-align: left;">for the invading army, and she marched in</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">On short legs, waving her tortoiseshell tail,</div><div style="text-align: left;">purring and rolling for the humans, </div><div style="text-align: left;">but chasing him down like a tiger</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">He scaled the nearest fence,</div><div style="text-align: left;">a big brother witnessing the horror of an infant,</div><div style="text-align: left;">and disappeared, but he never bit or clawed her.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">He's figured out what kind of cat he wants to be.</div><div style="text-align: left;">We don't see him in the sunlight anymore,</div><div style="text-align: left;">and this is my great failure, among many.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My mother birthed my sister because she loved</div><div style="text-align: left;">having one child so much, she thought why not two;</div><div style="text-align: left;">she ruined my life and created my best friend.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It only took us twenty years to retract our claws.</div><div style="text-align: left;">When I say this has been a nightmare year,</div><div style="text-align: left;">I mean there have been good parts and weird ones</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Too, sudden cameos by elementary school friends</div><div style="text-align: left;">and psychedelic vistas, unearthly Seussian trees.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Each night before bed, we call our black cat.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Each night I take to the sidewalk unmasked,</div><div style="text-align: left;">sometimes unshod, shake a bowl of dry food,</div><div style="text-align: left;">and call his name like a woman who has long ago</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Eschewed sanity. My voice bounces against windows</div><div style="text-align: left;">of lit-up bungalows, their flashing TVs and late dinners.</div><div style="text-align: left;">It is a year of new routines.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I said this sidewalk rosary—Olliebear, Olliecat, Ollie,</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ollie—the night we gave the baby back, the night</div><div style="text-align: left;">I thought we had the virus, the night the vaccine</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Emerged on the horizon, a beacon of hope, sure, and also</div><div style="text-align: left;">something hard and literal: instructions to our bodies</div><div style="text-align: left;">to make a spike that fights an insidious enemy.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">His body grows bigger beneath the streetlights.</div><div style="text-align: left;">He's middle-aged now, has made friends with</div><div style="text-align: left;">the neighbors, who call him Willie and Jack.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">He is all fast feet and qualified forgiveness</div><div style="text-align: left;">and the sight of him is an injection of something.</div><div style="text-align: left;">He smells like a driveway fire pit, or someone's cologne.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">If you told me to start a gratitude journal</div><div style="text-align: left;">I would fight you, but when I plunge my face</div><div style="text-align: left;">into his dark fur, it's a kind of sunrise,</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">One I don't know for sure will happen,</div><div style="text-align: left;">one tainted by my complicity and threaded with shadow,</div><div style="text-align: left;">but true as ink, squirmy as love.</div></div>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-84188096370126883442020-12-31T09:49:00.007-08:002021-01-01T12:04:25.291-08:00tops of 2020<p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;">Seeing year-end round-ups and reflections makes me feel as tired as just about everything else in 2020, but here's mine because hypocrisy, because tradition. No philosophizing, though. I've been scared, exhausted, grateful, irritable, and productive most days this year. My productivity has, at best, kept me sane, hopeful, and employed. At worst, it's contributed to my irritability and made me extremely unpleasant to live with for the two people who cannot escape me (and honestly the neighbor girls aren't big fans of me at this point either)...all while being futile! No baby, no book. Yet? I don't know whether it's optimism, entitlement, or pure Aries stubbornness that keeps me believing a baby and a book could still happen.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;">And there are still six months without school ahead. But maybe "only" three or four without childcare of any sort? </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;">Till then, I will keep my head down and stick with my mantra, which is <i>I need more coffee. </i></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;">With that preamble out of the way, here's a list of the best things I read and watched that helped me escape into other people's problems in 2020. </span></p><p><b><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;">Books:</span></b></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;">(I got ARCs of a few of these, so technically they come out in 2021; others were published in the 1940s. This is a what-I-read list, not a what-was-published list. Also all but one of these books are by women, and 6/10 are by writers of color, which is kind of cool, though maybe I should read more books by men?)</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/186926.The_Street">The Street</a></i> by Ann Petry: </b><span style="color: #181818;">This is a gorgeously written and infuriating account of how poverty and racism grind down a handful of characters in 1940s Harlem. Reading it during the drama of 2020 sustained me, as I thought about all that people have endured throughout history, but it doesn't exactly end on a "they can't crush our spirits" note. Spirits most definitely get crushed.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;">At one point, Lutie Johnson, the beautiful young protagonist who is trying to save her son from the trouble and indignities that await him on the street, traces the cause of all that's befallen her back to a white society that won't pay Black men enough to support their families. (After she took a nannying and housekeeping job, her bored, unemployed husband cheated on her.) I struggled a bit with the gender essentialism of that theory, but, you know, 1940s. Meanwhile, Lutie finds herself a pawn in the schemes of both white and Black men, and Petry paints a perfect, devastating portrait of misogynoir in lush, layered prose.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivCnZe2N0Fyv0B6ucPCL4NOc8iIghdZxnDfxImVK2plaZm7O-ZGIT8RgslEXFrFr-fs-o8zl64ENT2s52rYZLi0Mrur-906uIttkg-YCI4Rq_2SJlYKKWmEwU4End0V6KZc-Fc/s1024/The-Street-by-Ann-Petry-1946.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="604" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivCnZe2N0Fyv0B6ucPCL4NOc8iIghdZxnDfxImVK2plaZm7O-ZGIT8RgslEXFrFr-fs-o8zl64ENT2s52rYZLi0Mrur-906uIttkg-YCI4Rq_2SJlYKKWmEwU4End0V6KZc-Fc/w236-h400/The-Street-by-Ann-Petry-1946.jpg" width="236" /></a></div><b style="font-family: verdana;"><p style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"><b style="font-family: verdana; font-size: small;"><br /></b></p></b><p style="text-align: left;"><b style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-52565-734-7">Speak, Okinawa</a></i> by Elizabeth Miki Brina: </span></b><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;">A stunning and intense braided memoir that combines the history of Okinawa with the author's evolving relationship with her mother, who left her home on the resilient and oft-conquered island to marry Brina's American father. </span><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50253429-rodham"><i>Rodham</i></a> by Curtis Sittenfeld: </b><span style="color: #181818;">Curtis Sittenfeld writes so many tricky things well. On display most prominently in this speculative novel are love (she makes Bill Clinton so likable and then so hatable!) and randomness. People read in part to escape the randomness of real life, but Sittenfeld considers the role that chance plays--in her universe, Donald Trump is as egomaniacal as in this one, yet willing to throw his support by anyone who flatters him, even Crooked Hillary--without depicting life as meaningless. It was wonderful to inhabit this world for a while, and not just for the obvious reasons.</span></span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43317482-in-the-dream-house">In the Dream House</a></i> by Carmen Maria Machado: </b><span style="color: #181818;">Machado writes: "When I was a kid, I learned that you develop immunity when an illness rages through your body. Your body is brilliant, even when you are not.... It learns. It remembers. (All of this, of course, if the virus doesn't kill you first.)"</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This memoir in fragments frames an abusive queer relationship in more than a hundred different ways, capturing the nature of (largely) psychological abuse, which is impossible to legislate and difficult to describe even in traditional prose. Machado frequently references Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature as one way of communicating how societies have told secrets without telling them. And then there's the opposite of taboo: "We think of cliches as boring and predictable, but they are actually one of the most dangerous things in the world.... To describe an abusive situation is...awful and dehumanizing, and yet straight out of central casting." She rescues her story and other women's from central casting, giving it the fierce and honest examination it deserves. This is performative writing as public service; what may have begun as un-tellable has become intensely readable.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5941114-the-likeness">The Likeness</a></i> by Tana French: </b>This book is getting a high ranking not just because I love me some Tana French, but because it might be the book that inspires what might be my next writing project, a maybe-literary-maybe-murder-mystery. Maybe!</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #181818;">This is the third Dublin Murder Squad book I've read, and while I've enjoyed them all, this is my favorite yet, a meditation on the tension between freedom and security with a satisfying mystery at its center and lots of delicious crumbling countryside cottages at the periphery.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><i><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06300-744-4">And Now I Spill the Family Secrets</a></i> by Margaret Kimball: </b>Kimball's debut memoir showcases her technical skill as an illustrator, questions the authority of both memory and "official" documents like marriage and hospital records, and tells a poignant, intergenerational story about mental illness and family relationships. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><i><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-5344-6272-4">The Black Kids</a></i> by Christina Hammonds Reed: </b>Like the protagonist, I was a high school student in an affluent part of Los Angeles when the city erupted following the Rodney King verdict; I found Reed's references and descriptions perfectly attuned. Unlike the protagonist, I was (and am!) white. Reed depicts Ashley's racial awakening over the course of spring 1992 in a way I found believable, complex, and moving.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><i><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-25014-668-7">A Map to the Sun</a></i> by Sloane Leong: </b>Another realistic portrait of high school girlhood, this time contemporary, and following a diverse cluster of Venice Beach basketball players. Leong's sunset-hued illustrations are as gorgeous as her words are poetic. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw0bO2QDBd1_HKrk1KAz74DvufRALdCunNPCNbEbnrz3fRC5zdQHY0kw5c6Fom07I7ZwlvhHBtvgDucXfBdSIjRn3-AbPeEHd5AjJVT8OxFfla-4fzoIMjPMsFcaUBh8ro70pp/s1020/Map.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="723" data-original-width="1020" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw0bO2QDBd1_HKrk1KAz74DvufRALdCunNPCNbEbnrz3fRC5zdQHY0kw5c6Fom07I7ZwlvhHBtvgDucXfBdSIjRn3-AbPeEHd5AjJVT8OxFfla-4fzoIMjPMsFcaUBh8ro70pp/w400-h284/Map.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><i><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bea/article/83409-four-new-graphic-novels-bring-the-buzz.html">The Magic Fish</a></i> by Trung Le Nguyen: </b>The middle school protagonist is a gay boy trying to come out to his mom, a Vietnamese immigrant who loves him deeply. They inhabit different worlds and lack the language to communicate about sexuality, but they connect through both western and Vietnamese fairy tales, which Nguyen illustrates with incredible beauty and research-informed imagination.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40364332-inheritance">Inheritance</a> </i>by Dani Shapiro: </b><span style="color: #181818;">By her own account, Dani Shapiro lives a well examined life--an author of multiple memoirs, a practitioner of mediation. But in her fifties, she gets the surprise of a lifetime when a just-for-fun DNA test reveals that her late, beloved father is not her biological father. What ensues is a love letter to both genetics and upbringing, and the fragile, malleable identities that thread them together. With the possible exception of Dani's narcissistic mother, the story is populated with kind, lovely, functional people; imagine if everyone on one of those Maury Povich paternity-reveal episodes had an advanced degree and a few years of therapy under their belts. Yet there's no shortage of drama and suffering, largely as a result of layers of secrets--because of shame, because of religion, because of sketchy practices in the early days of reproductive medicine. The book inspired me to start listening to Dani Shapiro's Family Secrets podcast, which also unites different kinds of families under the umbrella of secrets that once held them separate.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;">Also, this book inspired me to <a href="http://www.muthamagazine.com/2020/07/tell-it-to-me-straight-an-adoption-story-across-borders/">interview one of AK's family members about her own family secrets</a>, which was one of the most meaningful things I did in this stupid year.</span></p><p><b><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;">Screens:</span></b></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;">(Again, these are not 2020 movies, necessarily. Also, some of them are TV shows. Also, I miss movie theaters so much.)</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><a href="https://thebabushkasofchernobyl.com/"><i>The Babushkas of Chernobyl</i></a>:</b> If you're not foraging for radioactive mushrooms and drinking vodka straight from the bottle, are you even cottage core? This is the perfect movie about survival.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGlTEowcEspBjZn60Q2KNVdM733z8KOTFquYiUZdjUMGLhkgFursKUjufDZmJWTaQIW6VIUf91UQQK4iY5_MI2KVmrT-BK2By3tM0G3rM9t4-FFTGWvbsXoIGHGeWhoyxGt0jt/s315/Babushkas.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="160" data-original-width="315" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGlTEowcEspBjZn60Q2KNVdM733z8KOTFquYiUZdjUMGLhkgFursKUjufDZmJWTaQIW6VIUf91UQQK4iY5_MI2KVmrT-BK2By3tM0G3rM9t4-FFTGWvbsXoIGHGeWhoyxGt0jt/w400-h203/Babushkas.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><i><b><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3281548/">Little Women</a> </b></i>(2019 version): A very different vibe, yet also a movie about survival—for women, for families, during wartime. Jo remains a hero for all writers and baby dykes, but Gerwig elevates Amy and suggests that there are many paths to love and goodness. AK and I also decided that Louis Garrel's Friedrich Bhaer is the definition of spicy-white.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><i><b><a href="https://cripcamp.com/">Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution</a>:</b> </i>When I was a counselor at UniCamp, UCLA's summer camp for kids living below the poverty line, we often talked about "camp magic," the spiritual feeling that came from creating your own world with people you loved. It happened a lot at Homeboy, too. Made by a former camper, this documentary about a hippe-run camp for kids with disabilities—which started with the radical notion that disabled kids were humans who wanted to have agency and do fun things—shows how camp magic shaped the disability rights movement.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM9N6yB6GfQB29A56r29WwYVypQjmdY3fyJAc56bXss0fIQXNwCfZjXhv9tF7ykEihxf3fv8htFuH60UuGrDJS7qK3J17jWQSgZa7JCWwSp71EnzseeorcmZ6cRvPklunw1HC5/s1200/Crip+Camp.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM9N6yB6GfQB29A56r29WwYVypQjmdY3fyJAc56bXss0fIQXNwCfZjXhv9tF7ykEihxf3fv8htFuH60UuGrDJS7qK3J17jWQSgZa7JCWwSp71EnzseeorcmZ6cRvPklunw1HC5/w400-h225/Crip+Camp.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4786824/">The Crown</a></i>:</b> I could not have cared less about the royal family going in, but the family's relationship to duty and show's depiction of it is endlessly fascinating. Probably because of excellent writing and performances, but also because it's helped me understand that my own family's commitment to responsibility-over-joy might be somewhat cultural. (My dad's mom and grandparents moved to the U.S. from England in the early twentieth century. Usually, I just default to "Oh, we're all white, we're just oppressors," but there may be ways in which we're more particular than that.)</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><a href="https://www.netflix.com/watch/81277840?trackId=14277283&tctx=-97%2C-97%2C%2C%2C%2C">"And we could all together/Go out on the ocean" episode of </a><i><a href="https://www.netflix.com/watch/81277840?trackId=14277283&tctx=-97%2C-97%2C%2C%2C%2C">Social Distance</a>: </i></b>Like most anthology shows, <i>Social Distance </i>is hit and miss, and I didn't watch that much of it. But this episode! Starring the wonderful Danielle Brooks, it sums up the harried, multi-tasking, tech-fueled nature of being a working parent during quarantine (she plays a home health aide and single mom who watches her kid via FaceTime while she works), and the notion that your pod might not be like-minded besties so much as a marriage of convenience. It resonated hard, and ends on a transcendent and poetic note.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpiVslG0ZT9X5WedrfzZmnKH6PNtm-OAEVVIZWM_zXbR9nkwS1esN2nxqzyGwHcCPIZfXnx5hpuZ3yPWap71gmZUI5tGtB64lTjL1b5M2jc0kgAZY4-TJjxn9GA4EBOjCl2DUQ/s840/Danielle.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="840" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpiVslG0ZT9X5WedrfzZmnKH6PNtm-OAEVVIZWM_zXbR9nkwS1esN2nxqzyGwHcCPIZfXnx5hpuZ3yPWap71gmZUI5tGtB64lTjL1b5M2jc0kgAZY4-TJjxn9GA4EBOjCl2DUQ/w400-h225/Danielle.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><i><a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81056700">#blackAF</a></i>:</b> I haven't watched <i>Blackish, </i>for no other reason than vague confusion about how to watch network TV now, but this series, based on the show's creator and his family, is what this blog aims to be. If, you know, I was super successful, worked in television, and was a Black man with six kids. It is about a neurotic, self-absorbed artist who cares deeply about culture. Each episode is a witty deep dive into the intersection of art, race, and class. The series makes so many other conversations about these subjects look ham-fisted; Kenya Baris is an embroidery artist who relates to and through culture in a way that resonates with me and AK.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><i><a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80219707">Dead to Me</a></i>:</b> I watched a bunch of episodes of <i>How to Get Away With Murder </i>before I realized that Viola Davis' excellence was distracting me from the fact that the show was so nonsensical as to be completely predictable. Then I found <i>Dead to Me, </i>which has all the suspense and much better writing and character development. Bonus points for an organic BRCA-gene plot line. Thank you, Christina Applegate! </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8772262/">Midsommar</a></i>:</b> The best break-up movie ever, with some good 2020 vibes. But you might want to fast forward through the parts where old people get beaten to death with rocks.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><i><b><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7547410/">Dora and the Lost City of Gold</a>: </b></i>Like the <i>Brady Bunch </i>movies and <i>Mean Girls, </i>this movie plops a perky innocent in the harsh landscape of contemporary high school. But we're firmly on Dora's side, and soon enough, so is everyone. Lots of clever moments, an anti-colonialist message, a great cast, and enough fart jokes to satisfy Dash.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;"><b><i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7562112/">Pose</a></i>: </b>No one will ever accuse Ryan Murphy of being too subtle, but Mj Rodriguez, Indya Moore, and Billy Porter sell every storyline. It's always a good time for a show about chosen family, the cultural impact of marginalized populations, and surviving/dying of a virus, but now is an especially good time. Also dancing and costumes!</span></p><p><br /></p>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726206.post-7865707527046278642020-12-21T09:08:00.000-08:002020-12-21T09:08:15.509-08:00iduna remembered<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqqlyXOdK5ISZxUlrbqoharrGvPnvzLFvUHvJWlQnMgqXbtSeeWuJgDg-Ubq0DETynk2invOWU0JZ7Wb6I6P8psjwyWQ6Q_rub_Rr11tqI61VR6nNvN879kYK7WVgJ5FMNJR-A/s540/Iduna.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqqlyXOdK5ISZxUlrbqoharrGvPnvzLFvUHvJWlQnMgqXbtSeeWuJgDg-Ubq0DETynk2invOWU0JZ7Wb6I6P8psjwyWQ6Q_rub_Rr11tqI61VR6nNvN879kYK7WVgJ5FMNJR-A/s320/Iduna.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />They tried shutting her away:<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">their strange blue-eyed girl<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">who brought ice to life,<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">but they’d read enough fairy tales<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">to know stone towers don’t hold.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Agnarr erred <br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">on the side of concealment.<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">He had a kingdom to consider,<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">not to mention <br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">their younger daughter,<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">not his heir, but always <br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">his favorite.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Iduna remembered<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">the forest of her birth,<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">how the leaves turned<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">plum and rust each fall<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">and the reindeer’s coats <br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">grew thick and musky. <br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">She knew the weight<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">of carrying another world<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">curled inside your cloak.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Their strange girl belonged<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">to neither fjord nor forest,<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">and it frightened them. <br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">How to prepare her<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">to use her own power<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">when Iduna herself<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">scarcely understood it?<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">How to prepare her <br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">for the ways fear could curdle<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">into cruelty?</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">It was dangerous to sail<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">in winter, Agnarr argued.<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">It’s dangerous not to,<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Iduna said. She had a map,<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">a song, a memory<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">of nursing a young man<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">from another land <br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">back to health. <br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">If it was so wrong <br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">to choose the unfamiliar<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">over the soft moss<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">and dense furs <br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">lining her father’s house,<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">would the gods have rewarded<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">her daughter<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">with magic?</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Uncertainty churned in Iduna <br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">like the waves of the Dark Sea.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Their destination remained<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">a riddle, but her resolve<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">ran deep as a glacier; <br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">even when the wind picked up,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">she knew what she’d known<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">since her first daughter’s first breath:<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">there was no turning back.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></div>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554329549665664616noreply@blogger.com0