Amy's way or the highway

trying to figure out what to do with the tini tiny pieces I write while my baby takes incremental naps

Grownups

A lot of people who I grew up with ended up living in Europe. When I think about this, I think about why I didn't. That's the way my brain works. Whether I want it to or not. I think about this as I listen to two women next to me talking about their divorces. One says "I got tired of hearing what people thought about it when i was in the middle of it. I was like 'look, I'm a grownup. I have a right to be happy.'"

Happy--that ever evasive state of being. Happy, that grownup quest that sounds phony when people say it aloud. Maybe cause it usually couples something naughty or miserable when it's being said. Like this is Jim, my lover. He makes me happy. The kids are happy. Why can't I be happy? OR staying in a life that feels like a rehearsal for a better life. "I'm happy" cause nothing horrible is happening.

Recently grownups who got laid off are pursuing what they really wanted to do.

More later-baby woke up

my baby thinks my hiccups are hilerious

permanent pregnancy

I have become so accustomed to being pregnant that it seems odd it is not a permanent condition. I have grown so used to the kicking, my belly will feel dormant without it's beat. Even the drool that now accompanies my naps will make my mouth feel dry and dusty without it. The drool has become an indicator to me that I had a good sleep.
I have grown used to my absurd reflection in windows and mirrors, and the gigantic protrusion that makes it difficult to hug people with any sort of embrace.
I cannot imagine sleeping on my stomach again. I think I will resist sleeping on my stomach because it will be such an enormous reminder that the baby is no longer in my belly and out in the world. It will be like waking up realizing I have finally forgotten an old love who I thought I would never forget, realizing I have spent an entire day without thinking about him once.

But then I see a woman walk past the window in jeans, loose and comfortable around her hips and I think "jeans." I have always loved jeans, probably too much, probably to an absurd degree. But considering hat people pay for jeans I am hardly alone.  The thing is the thought of being able to wear them again, is like a balm on this wound of not being pregnant anymore, once that happens. And then there are spices. How I miss spices and sushi and shell fish and unpasturized cheese. I do not miss deli meat.

But being permanently pregnant would have it's priviledges. People always stepping aside on the sidewalk for me, always parking in the special spot in the mall for Expectant Mothers, getting smiled at all the time. I can wear the same dress day in and say out, since very little of my clothes fit me, and everybody excuses me for being tired or hungry or crazy. The world and it's inhabitants treat me so gently and I am not sure I want to give that up.

On the other hand, my stomach is so heavy, I must flip over every twenty minutes at night to keep my hips from the painful ache of the weighty belly. I have to pee all night long and my the fifth or sixth time, I can no longer fall back asleep because my mind has caught onto some neurosis or another. And it's not easy to stand up everytime to pee. I start to stand and then realize that there is a watermelon wrapped around me.  And even as I walk away from the bathroom, I start to have to pee again.

Sometimes, I am really done being pregnant, but not because I want to wear jeans or pee less, but because I want to meet this peson I have been carrying around with me. What kind of person will he be? What will it be like to have him lying next to me, not within me? What will it be like to touch his little legs and  rub his warm little belly? To be his mommy and Ben to be his daddy? And to think, this is what happens everyday, babies always being born, and this little boy, being only one of them.

I guess there is no hurry for him to come out. He'll come when he's ready, and I will continue to get the house ready for him, this houseguest, who has said he will come to visit, but not clear on the date.

4 walls

Box envy
that's what Ben calls it
walking down the street and looking at other people's boxes
houses
Wow, I wonder what it would be like to live there?
What do you think people do who live there?
In the day time, I watch the people come out, trying to figure out who they are
In the night time, I look into their windows at their paintings and furniture, bookshelves and tv sets.

Recently I was stuck in an elevator, a really big elevator with about forty kids
some in star trek costumes, some as hip hoppers
They were loud and the elevator was glass
One kid started throwing a baseball
I screamed "sit down"
I located the boy with most power, a tall thick meat faced boy wearing his cap sideways
I said "We need to collect everyone's name to make sure everyone is here."
He looked at me suspiciously but told them to sit down
I walked around the room and collected names
The kids seemed to understand whispering their names was best

When we finished, we had a costume contest
The ride took half an hour
I thought about teaching and how school was about to begin and this year and this dream belonged to a first year teacher, like my life hadn't been updated
I now needed a first mothers dream.

home ownership

Everything breaks at once-the airconditioner, the refrigerator, the washer-dryer.

I wax philosophical. This is life. Broken shit. How you deal with broken shit.

My yoga friend tells me it's something about the moon, or the planets. I say "It's not just cause I'm broke and I can't afford to fix it." Maybe, she says.

Regardless, this is life.

Closure

The tectonic plate of emotion shifts once more
The school day stretches out one more day

because of too much snow earlier this year
Precipitous year

First the snow dumps
than the rain comes and comes
I ache for sun to dry my poor wet bones

The natives are restless, all fourth grade of them
No one is safe from the restlessness of the impending summer

Every version of my life changes my view
Every landmark from another height, an alternate angle

I am tired of what I knew last decade

The hallway is all echos of today

All the teachers are tired of the students
All the students are tired of the teachers

I say goodbye seconds after I hang up

The lesson sinks in years after the learning

The drain throws up when it unclogs

I ordered every book of everyone I knew and like words leaking in through some weeping gap,
I wake up literary and dormant

The grapes are growing back, like skin graphs, each time I bite one off

The rain is God saying "can you do all this without sunshine?"

My sister is trying to get me to move to California and I totally will,
Once I rip open my mattress and find millions and millions of little moneys

A student comes up to me and asks what bosom means
when I tell her, she says "Euuu, I'm not reading the rest of the book"

teacher notes

My kid is bored is code for "You're not entertaining my kid."

driving tangents

 

This is what I think on the way to Iowa

Hay bales like winecorks

Empty tall wire caged silos like fishnets stockings, but the light that comes through is like the legs and the stockings torn could really do some damage and the legs could leak out

Shadows can be demure

Casinos are like zoos for old people

Kafka on the Shore

    Before I went to this Kafka on the Shore, I felt the need to check out what people had written about it.  I love Steppenwolf and have been attending plays there for years. Some are old regulars like  The Cherry Orchard or Hedda Gabler, but this year they have become more modern and it is exciting. Sometimes I do read about the play beforehand; sometimes, I don’t even read the program, wanting it to be a surprise. The title intrigued me. Was it a play about Kafka? Was it a play emulating Kafka’s themes?
Kafka was an olds literary friend from my days of philosophy and angst. I first read Franz Kafka in my freshman year in college and I dove into it with epiphany and relief. It is certainly an appropriate age to understand hunger, angst, torture and despair. I was also enjoying Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit and Sartre’s bizarre love triangle with Simone de Beauvoir and  Nelson Algren. I miss the days where I first discovered how connected one could feel to a writer long gone, the days where I was certain the story was looking right at me insisting “This is for you!” I remember thinking that Kakfa had it right-that bureaucracy allowed terrible atrocities to occur. I remember being fascinated by the Hunger Artist and how people paid money to see someone starve to death. I remember thinking that that was so like life.
    The reviews of Kafka on the Shore were mixed. One man said, “Too complicated. It made me angry.” A response to that was “Calm down. It’s just a play.” I understand both perspectives. Sometimes plays make me remarkably angry. I feel imprisoned by the theater, a captive audience. I understand how ridiculous that statement is. I think I actually enjoy the absurdity of the statement.  I sometimes feel tortured by the playwright, by the director, by the actors. Not this time. This time, I embraced the absurdity, the fantasy, the dreamlike, lifelike mingling that danced scene to scene.
    The main character, aptly named Kafka, was in angst indeed. He was a wanderer. His world was filled with uncoincidental coincidences. People who came into his life were absolutely necessary in timing and in meaning. A chance encounter with a librarian find him his long lost mother. All the other characters in the play trust the absurdity of each others odd truths. A truck driver believes an odd little man who is looking for a large white very meaningful rock that separates two worlds. Colonel Sanders (an actual character) is actually a killer of cats who keeps cats heads in his freezer; he is looking for a protégé to finish him off so he can end this meaningless existence. It is a play laden with oddities and assumptions that everything is true and yet everything is untrue. I left wondering what was supposed to be a dream and what was supposed to be real. More importantly, I left with questions, big wonderful questions.

    Before I went to this Kafka on the Shore, I felt the need to check out what people had written about it.  I love Steppenwolf and have been attending plays there for years. Some are old regulars like  The Cherry Orchard or Hedda Gabler, but this year they have become more modern and it is exciting. Sometimes I do read about the play beforehand; sometimes, I don’t even read the program, wanting it to be a surprise. The title intrigued me. Was it a play about Kafka? Was it a play emulating Kafka’s themes?
Kafka was an olds literary friend from my days of philosophy and angst. I first read Franz Kafka in my freshman year in college and I dove into it with epiphany and relief. It is certainly an appropriate age to understand hunger, angst, torture and despair. I was also enjoying Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit and Sartre’s bizarre love triangle with Simone de Beauvoir and  Nelson Algren. I miss the days where I first discovered how connected one could feel to a writer long gone, the days where I was certain the story was looking right at me insisting “This is for you!” I remember thinking that Kakfa had it right-that bureaucracy allowed terrible atrocities to occur. I remember being fascinated by the Hunger Artist and how people paid money to see someone starve to death. I remember thinking that that was so like life.
    The reviews of Kafka on the Shore were mixed. One man said, “Too complicated. It made me angry.” A response to that was “Calm down. It’s just a play.” I understand both perspectives. Sometimes plays make me remarkably angry. I feel imprisoned by the theater, a captive audience. I understand how ridiculous that statement is. I think I actually enjoy the absurdity of the statement.  I sometimes feel tortured by the playwright, by the director, by the actors. Not this time. This time, I embraced the absurdity, the fantasy, the dreamlike, lifelike mingling that danced scene to scene.
    The main character, aptly named Kafka, was in angst indeed. He was a wanderer. His world was filled with uncoincidental coincidences. People who came into his life were absolutely necessary in timing and in meaning. A chance encounter with a librarian find him his long lost mother. All the other characters in the play trust the absurdity of each others odd truths. A truck driver believes an odd little man who is looking for a large white very meaningful rock that separates two worlds. Colonel Sanders (an actual character) is actually a killer of cats who keeps cats heads in his freezer; he is looking for a protégé to finish him off so he can end this meaningless existence. It is a play laden with oddities and assumptions that everything is true and yet everything is untrue. I left wondering what was supposed to be a dream and what was supposed to be real. More importantly, I left with questions, big wonderful questions.

Feng Shui Chicago

So, this is Chicago

You’re new in Chicago. You’re lost. People keep telling you that the Lake is East, that you’re on a grid, that Randolph is Zero hundred, that state or Wabash is zero hundred. You’re on a grid, everyone says, it’s easy. They send you on your way. You’re 200 west, 600 north. But you’re not a compass; you’re from St. Louis.

“What you gotta do,” someone tells you, is take bigger circle walks everyday. Keep adding to your spectrum. Keep making your circle bigger. Pretty day the whole city is yours. “

Problem is, you work. You don’t get off till 630 and it’s dark. Your first big circle walk, someone jams you up against the wall, takes your wallet, asks “What the hell you doing over here?” You think “Over where?”

It’s one big “where the hell am I sort of city.”

The Feng Shui is broken. The feng shui God came to visit and says to Daley “What the frootie pebbles? Who’s your decorator? Where’s the flow?”
Daley’s red faced, of course. He says, “I got tulips. I got glass bricks with people’s faces in them. I got a silver bean so big, you could have silver gas for a frickin frackin lifetime…and pretty soon, I got the 5 circles all wound together.”
Feng Shit God feels very UN feng shui. Daley could make Buddha break into very unbuddhist behavior.
“Aw fuck it,” says the decorator God, I’m outa here.

Daley gets a new therapist. He’s feeling very goddamn insecure, if you must know. The therapist is trying to be professional, but it’s Daley for god’s sake. He’s hilarious. He’s a child.
He’s weeping on the automan. He won’t even sit on the chair.
“Why they gotta pick on my city?”

Therapist needs back up. There's not enough time in the world to turn the baby mayor into a man mayor.

Therapist calls in the witch doctor. 

Therapist says, “This guy needs a vision quest.”

Daley says “Straight up, no ice.”
Witch Doctor turns everything into smoke, mist and eucalyptus scent and off they go. Daley smells his pits. I smell good. I smell like that a tree that was improperly moved from Australia to California and killed all the redwoods. You got this in an after shave?

Witch Doctor thinks Shh and shhh happens.

Neighborhood to neighborhood Daley can’t see nothing at all, but he can hear the accents slightly shift, some with more nasal, some more back of the throat emphasis. Every neighborhood is like a totally different continent. Every time the neighborhood changes, he throws up. No flow from place to place. No transition. Every time the neighborhood shift, it’s so jarring that the witch doctor takes an Advil. Ha ha ha, Daley says, you take Advil like my wife. The witch doctor thinks of all the kinds of rodents he could turn Daley into. They get to the South Loop and Daley can’t feel nothing. No sound, no rhythm. "Holy macaroni, Daley says, this place is no place at all! So that’s why I can’t make this place work.”  Witch Doctor nods. Taylor Street is perfect, but it’s got a wall like Chinas around it and there’s nothing in the hardware store; everyone in the neighborhood has their own goddamn tools. Hyde Park, island. Lincoln Park, nice mall. Lake View, street to street, no bridges. Cicero smells like concrete. It’s too much. Daley’s clicking his heals and yelling “Dorothy, take me home.” Dorothy is in Miami wrapping her thighs around a pole, reading a copy of Innocence Lost, thinking, “I wonder what it would have been like to give Milton a lap Dance.”

Daley’s back in the therapist office. The therapist says “Well?” Daley says, “I think I just need a little tube of glue and I can fix this.” Therapist says, “Why not use a band aid?” Daley says “Lemme try the glue first.” Daley leaves. Therapist starts writing folk music that no one but people who grew up in Greenland would understand. More music is lost. Chicago ticks on, a stranger to itself.

Map Quest and Mr. Mustache

I saw my 6th or was it 7th grade social studies teacher in my coffeeshop the other day. It’s funny seeing teachers now…now that I’m training to join their tribe. Truth be told,. I’d rather join a surfer tribe, but the knees and the back and the fact of sharks and their very big bad teeth shy me away from being a wave glider.

I’ve gotten off track. Okay, Mr. 7th grade social studies teacher liked his lunch. I don’t know if it was because someone else was enjoying his lunch with him and his Magnum P.I. 70s mustache or because he just really liked lunch, but his love of lunch deeply affected by ability to read a map.

Let me interject. There are things that people assume you know. North South East and the other direction. How to see a color-red is red, blue is blue. Common sense is common sense. But let me let you in on a little secret. To me red is orange. Your common sense is my uncommon sense. And if I didn’t remain within three blocks of the Eastern Lake Michigan, I couldn’t find my way out of a paper bag.

Back to 7th grade social studies. Mr. Mustache didn’t let us leave the classroom until we pointed to a state on a map. I attended an affluent highly intellectual prep school, after transferring from a sub-par, always on strike Chicago Public School. All their preppy cultish knowledge, I didn’t know yet. Everything I didn't know would not be repeated. I would watch these 12 year old aptly-dressed over-vocabularied mini-professors jump up and point at Alaska, Montana, Utah, South Carolina, Rhode Island(are you kidding me?), South Dakota, and I sat there hidden in the back, knowing that if I waited long enough that I could just go. Because, like I earlier said, Social Studies came right before Mr. Mustache’s beloved lunch.

I could actually see his eyes start to pick up light as the minute hand edged towards the 12 0’clock. I could see his eyelashes start to twitter a little in anticipation for either a damn good spinach salad or some very hot 1980s Pat Benatar sex.

I waited. He forgot about me. He didn’t notice I couldn’t point at one state on the map, even Illinois. At the end, at 11:59, the class emptied but one, he remembered me. “Okay,” he’d say, “point out a state.” I’d shrug. “They picked all the ones I know.”
“All right,” he’d say. “Get in there next time.” I’d nod, tuck my head between my legs and leave. I’d like to think that a little part of him wasn’t completely satisfied with his lunch.

The language of Acronyms-

I am starting my journey with elementary education. Like any new thing ng, Education has it’s own language.  Of course I don’t know it; I just got here. I’ve got a stainless steel weater bottle to prevent BPI’s and all the illness that comes from drinking out of plastic. I have a money-belt full of tuition. I have a plane ticket that says I can be here. I was checked at security for educational deficiencies. I was two classes short of math. I was told I could fly National Louis if I promised to finish them. I finished them and am now way beyond my first class.
I'm not sure how I'll talk about this new country of Elementary Education. It’s like I woke up in France and I know the word for  practicum, but I do not know how to say “Where is breakfast?” (Ou est…something) Or “My toilet is not running.” I don’t even know if toilets are supposed to run in France. And what if it’s even rude to ask? What if it gets me labeled “Ugly American” Or “entitled student.” That’s how it is to learn the language of a new field, which turns out to be heavy in acronyms. RTI, EPI, ADHD-needless to say, education is an acronym heavy country. I buy a pack of index cards and push on. The journey lays before me like a code to be deciphered.

able was i ere, i ate elba(almost a palindrome)

I ask the waiter what I should order
Ben says “That guy doesn’t even look like you-whose to say you eat the same food.”
Like the waiters an elephant and I’m a kangaroo-like the waiter is a leaf eater and I’m a carnivore.
I say “Listen honey, I used to work in a restaurant 15 thousand years ago and the waiter knows what’s good.”
“That’s ridiculous” my spouse says. “The guy looks like he lives in a bomb shelter and eats spam.”

So I make a concerted effort to give up on waiters-just an experiment-I try on line reviews of strangers-I have no idea whether these people live in basements or penthouses-or what kind of a person is so damn bored that they’re on-line reviewing restaurants-that they even think it matters-
Picture this-
“Hmmmm….what should I do tonight. Finished watching all the tivo shows, cut my toenails….hmmmm…EPIPHANY! LIGHTbulb….I know! I’m going to google Hatza Matza and tell the world what I think of their Swedish meatballs. I’m going to make a goddamn dent in the world today. Today I am going to exist. And I must remember to mention how easy it was to park in that area. Though that waiter was a little ho hum, and the cook did reach back and itch his occipital lobe…

And what is a review. Like for instance, I invite my brother, Gabe, out for dinner. I say “I like this one sushi place.” He texts “k” which takes me a while to decifer. For a while I’m thinking what comes after K? Kazoo. Kangaroo? Then, aha, he means okay, or ok, which I though was about as short as a word could get, but we’re down to letters people. Pretty soon, we’ll speak entirely in acronym.

Regardless, as far as trusting strangers, I googled my fave little Sushi spot and here’s what bunch of faceless strangers who either have too much time on their hands or are ignoring the person sitting next to them said about my restaurant….

"The staff turnover here continues to be horrific and that has affected the food and service. Sushi is smaller and thinner, and the cooked items have double d from chicago, il - June 8, 2007
(UH-oh!)

“Save your money. the terayaki was like beef jerky. and the soup was bland. awful service never again” (Do I trust someone who doesn’t use spellcheck?)

Hatza Matza is run by an elegant hard working individual, "Jimmy". He is frequently there, cleaning tables, picking up plates, watching from the kitchen door, coaching his 'Marina' trained Latino sushi chiefs. He is a delight and is the heart of Tokyo Marina. He cares - about his customers, the food that is served, and the quality of his guest's experience. Is there a lot of fluff? No! Is the food good to excellent? You bet! For more than a decade I have been bringing my children here - helping them to expand their palate and interest in food. And, learning about someone who takes pride in what he does - every day. When my now-in-the US Coast Guard son comes home to visit he knows where he wants to eat to celebrate. It is at Jimmy San's place. Thank you Jimmy!(there ya go-that one says what I want to here….and if that isn’t life, I mean look at the elections, what it…)

buenos gavitias

gravity regurgitated me out of my bed too early

It's time, the voice said. Let's go to your charts and see what's up for today.

It can't be good, I mumbled, not wanting to appear pessimistic, ever, even in a hurricane.

We walked along, me and my shadow, the bags on its eyes, the recipricol of mine.  Meaning, no bags on my shadows eyes at all.

"If only I were a fraction, I'd multiply us by negative one, and you'd be the one with the baggy eyes."

"Excuse me?" My shadow asked.

"I said, if only there will less traction, I could float around in a bird disguise."

"Oh," my shadow said. "I thought you said something about my thunder thighs."

"Please,"I laughed. "You're thunder thighs are my thunder thighs."

Yesterday, when gravity had a tummy ache, I got shooked around some and woke up with all my bones in the wrong place. I'm currently sitting on my elbow, talking to my shadow, vaguely here while my footbone and earbones continue their nap on their pillow. Sure, they'll feel rested for the remainder of the day...but what of my neck and my vocal chords. We're s.o.l/