Bread and Bread

"The kind of woman willing to wait is not the kind you want to find waiting." Recently I was introduced to this group and this prompt , which provided a nice distraction from the current clunky-ness of my YA novel. When I was in college, it dawned on me that some of my favorite musicals ( Rent, Sunday in the Park with George ) featured male artists and female muses. The women were portrayed as human and whole, but it still bugged me. Last week an artist I like asked me to pose for some photos, something that never happened back when I was neither particularly gorgeous nor all Diane Arbus-y. So I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a non-passive muse (this artist sees the process as collaborative, which I like). I think it relates to the dilemma of being a patient—how to be a recipient, how to receive things you wouldn’t choose, how to be active anyway? How to be the painting that that stares down the viewer with the painter’s help? I’m pretty sure it’s...

1. the end of the middle of treatment In a couple of hours, I’ll have my sixth and last (hopefullyforeverknockonwood) chemo session. Before I started, I told people I was thinking of chemo as my four-month vacation from worrying about getting cancer, and it’s pretty much been that. I’ve used that time to work and read and write and do some fun things; also to bitch about people who’ve let me down and stir up small dramas with my family and friends. Because hey, cancer treatment still blows, just not in an anxiety-producing way. I also told people who seemed convinced I’d be more sick than I’ve actually been (knockonwood), “Maybe you’re right. Maybe by the end I’ll be so sick of being sick that I’ll trade it in for good physical health and the return of crippling anxiety.” I’m almost there—it would be nice not to have my feeble exercise routine undermined every three weeks. It would be nice to have hair. And, thanks to Effexor, I’m not totally an anxious mess. I’m just a gi...

Take that, all you uber-healthy wheelchair racer types. A few nights ago, because I still can’t go to sleep without images and voices flashing on a screen, I started watching Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan . I remembered the documentary coming out when I was in college, and it had stuck with me—maybe because in elementary school I’d watched Alex: The Life of a Child a bunch of times. It was a TV movie about a girl who died of cystic fibrosis, the disease Bob Flanagan had, and as a kid I thought, Cool! Bob Flanagan was prodded with needles and choked with mucous from the time he was a few months old. He knew about pain. He knew about not being in control of his body. And so his brain did what funny human brains do, and decided to take control by liking pain. (You can’t fire me, I quit.) He became a masochist, and as the documentary reveals in his interactions with his mistress wife, the bottom is always really the one in control. He became a performance artist, ...

Go toward the fluorescent light. Yesterday I went to Terry Wolverton’s annual Poetry Month workshop (more of a craft talk, actually) and reading at Skylight Books . I feel like I’ve been absent from the literary landscape for a while, and when I think about going to events, I think about seeing a lot of people I know a little bit, and explaining (or not) why I’m bald. Mingling takes energy for me even with hair, even if I have some new publication credit in my pocket. But Skylight and Terry’s crew feel like home, so it was a nice way to get my feet wet. I became a fan of some new poets (Ashaki M. Jackson—and Andrew Wessels, whom I work with three days a week but hadn’t read before), and by the end of the panel, I was jotting notes toward some kind of poem of my own. It’s below, and rough. I had a nice weekend, but it was threaded with thoughts of death, the way even some of my nicest weekends are. I watched an episode of Mad Men , in which a woman diagnosed with terminal c...

1. a child’s garden of viruses I grew up hearing stories of sickly children who’d grown up to be famous writers. Unable to leave the house due to vague and romantic illnesses, they read and reread classic literature, hardbound books strewn about them on fluffy Victorian linens. Perhaps they would pause to gaze out at the lonely moors now and then. I also liked the sick kids in books. I never wanted to be rambunctious Laura Ingalls or frolicking Heidi or sassy Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden . I wanted to be blind, well-behaved Mary Ingalls, or Clara in her antique wheelchair, or pale weak Colin. It’s easy to see why I romanticized illness and disability—these kids got to be mysterious and special, while being forgiven any shortcomings. I actually was like the talkative, mildly troublemaking protagonists—the Lauras and Heidis—who tried adults’ patience with their busy imaginations, and therefore I was totally uninterested in them. They were always picnicking with bread a...

Leafy greens are good for your health. Friday morning I met Kathy and Bronwyn for a writing date at Buster’s while waiting for the chemo hangover to kick in. I caught up on Bronwyn’s new job and Kathy’s lizard adventures at the Natural History Museum and worked on a freewrite about how one of my characters first encountered a frozen rabbit fetus, in order to postpone outlining. When Bronwyn and Kathy left, a guy with dreadlocks approached the table. “Do you mind if I ask you something?” Not to presume what it might be, but let’s see, the last two strangers to strike up a conversation at Buster’s had said, respectively, “You’re so brave!” and “Why you not have hair?” “I couldn’t help but overhear you talking about an oncologist,” he said. “Do you have cancer?” “Yeah, I’m going through cancer treatment,” I said, because the chemo is for hypothetical, microscopic, undetected cancer. The only cancer we knew about for sure is gone, bitches. “Have you tried medical ...

Michael and I both like black cats and fingerless gloves. Here’s what was missing from yesterday’s roundup of March reading, but it deserves its own post anyway. A White Girl Named Shaquanda: A Chomo Allegory and Trewish Story by Myriam Gurba : This little book is staple-bound, loaded with margin scribbles (one page has a fringe of bangs for no particular reason) and available only on Etsy (that I know of). True to its zine-ish appearance, the story is punky and irreverent—in the realm of simile, things are likely to get compared to body parts and fluids—but it is anything but dashed off. For the teen narrator, coming of age on California’s Central Coast means navigating boys’ probing hands, girls’ gossipy accusations, and teachers’ assholery. These more realistic scenes are juxtaposed with snippets of the Michael Jackson child molestation trial, which are written in a more absurd style—and yes, it is possible to amp up the absurdity of Michael Jackson. Together, the two thr...

If this wood paneling could talk.... If I weren’t so beaten down by travel, teaching prep, family events and my Easter candy hangover (which I have all kinds of “sugar and dairy feed tumors”/“do you really want to be bald AND fat?” self-talk about)…I would tell you all about the amazing video art piece I saw at the Menil Collection in Houston. Untitled (Structures) is the story of the Civil Rights Movement as told by decaying buildings, crazy-ass wallpaper, solemn people in gorgeous Mad Men clothing and movement so slow it seems like a still photo (which is the story of all struggle, come to think of it). It’s about juxtaposition and perspective. It’s so pretty I can easily imagine it getting co-opted by a creative director at Urban Outfitters or something. There’s not a lot of video art that really mesmerizes me, but this is a big exception. But I think there’s a connection (so the brain-science-lovin’ folks on NPR keep telling me) between exhaustion and lack of willpower, so ...

I woke up at four a.m. this morning to fly to Houston. In the shower, I realized that the metal ports in my temporary boob implants* would create all sorts of good times at LAX. “Fuck,” I said out loud to the soap. I know that airports are prepared for this kind of things. There are probably all sorts of ADA guidelines in place to minimize my humiliation. But fuck. As I packed my antidepressants and a bag of Lifesavers, I practiced explaining in the simplest way possible. “I’m between reconstructive surgeries for breast cancer, and the temporary implants I have have a metal component.” The good part was that it avoided using the word “breast” except in association with “cancer,” which pretty much de-sex-ifies the word. I could say “breast cancer” to a TSA person, but I would rather not say “breast implant.”** I didn’t like the double “have.” It slowed things down. I also thought that anything short of a body cavity search couldn’t be worse than an average day at t...

1. my best life may or may not contain cheese It’s the first day of spring. I love new beginnings—I love the metaphor of life regenerating after a long hard winter (we had SEVERAL DAYS OF RAIN this year in L.A.). On a less poetic front, I love an excuse to convince myself that starting now, I’m going to do it all right. I know better, and I know the danger of this myth, but the more I see it for what it is, the more pleasure I take in it. This spring, I’m telling myself that I’m going to sidle up to veganism. I’m going to keep eating fish, and I’m not going to check every baked good for eggs, but I’m going to try to eat less dairy. Estrogen-positive breast cancer and all that. Right now I’m at Poquito Mas, where I just ordered beans, hold the cheese. It took more willpower than you can imagine. According to Facebook, my primary news source, it’s also International Happiness Day . Despite my love of new beginnings—or maybe because of my susceptibility to self-improvement na...

At Thursday’s chemo session I grabbed a copy of TLC, a catalog of women’s cancer accessories published by the American Cancer Society. It includes lots of hats like this: Everything's coming up roses...um, I mean, generic flowers. And turbans like this: In this case, "royal" means "Come into my moldering mansion and watch silent films starring meeeee." And wigs like this: The "Amanda" wig. Don't hurt yourself on its pointy ends. Okay, so the American Cancer Society is a nonprofit that does a lot of good work, and I would rather they put their resources into finding a cure for cancer than finding a cure for the humiliation-on-top-of-humiliation that is cancer fashion. But the latter is at least highly treatable, and I’m here to do my part. Tip 1: Own it. In previous posts , I’ve discussed the cringe-y nature of anything that looks like it’s trying to pass. That’s why these models have got to go. I hate it when plus-s...

Even the most bad-ass dinosaurs have a dapper side. Once upon a time my friend Rhonda and I admitted to each other how much we hated that bumper sticker that says: Well-behaved women rarely make history. We sighed. Looks like we’ll never make history . She called me in tears the other night. She’d taken three hundred kids on a field trip to the Natural History Museum. She didn’t have as many chaperones as the museum’s guidelines stipulated, but the administration at her school assured her they never check those things. And her kids were well-behaved, mostly eighteen, and really wanted to see a T-rex or two. Nothing went wrong in any serious way, but some kids wandered too far off grounds for lunch, and others laughed at an elementary school kid who dropped his lunch box, and a girl with mental health issues strayed from the group. Next thing you know the cops have an APB out for the girl, and Rhonda’s school is getting kicked out of the museum. “I try to follow the rules...

Julie's zombie impression. "Too much," grunts R. AK and I celebrated our seventh anniversary (which is actually March 12) yesterday with a pilgrimage to the Flatiron Truck , where I decided that crispy fried broccoli doused with ponzu sauce and flecked with bright pink pickled onions totally still counts as broccoli. Chef Timothy and Heather were celebrating the truck’s second birthday, and their daughter Skylar, who wasn’t even eating solid food the last time I saw her, was running around and demonstrating her arsenal of animal noises. Oh, time. Year seven was hard for me, hard for AK, hard on our relationship, although not always in the ways or at the times you might think. That made food-truck dinner and a movie that much sweeter. Warm Bodies , the movie we saw, was the sweetest I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a perfect date movie, which usually means “action for him! romance for her!”—but I just mean it made you have genuine faith in love without being too...