Egypt: Neotonous

Empty script,

an empty score

the words are licked

till there can’t be more.

Transcendent tasks

constants depart

trials unmask,

breath beats, battles heart.

-

Singing, Dancing, Cross-dressing...

 Big A says:

Who knew cross-dressing was going to be the theme of this weekend.

(We chased Friday’s Twelfth Night with Beethoven’s Fidelio on Sunday.)

Me: (And yes, everything is about me, and I’ve asked some version of this question before. But I think about this a lot as a non U.S. citizen. Especially these days.)

If I were a political prisoner, you'd dress up as a woman to come rescue me, right?

 

Big A: (Knows I know his answer.)

Yes. But let’s make sure you don’t break the law, don’t get framed, and that we use our every penny to hire the best lawyer so you don’t have to go to prison in the first place. 

 

(Fidelio was powerful—dark and bleak, with none of the frilly, frivolousness I usually love about Western opera at all. The level of iconoclastic authority-questioning was particularly surprising—and extra brave given that Beethoven must have depended on royal patronage.)

_

Friday Frenzy

Two departmental meetings at 12:30 and 3:30 interleavened with classes at 12:00 and 2:00. After the meetings end at 5:00, I race home to bake some bean+spinach+chipotle+cheese pastries for the department potluck at 6:00.

Actually manage to get there at 6:30. Realize the cheese was a mistake because vegan colleagues cannot eat them now. By 7:00 the pastries are gone anyway. Stay till 7:30 to talk to various people I don’t get to talk to very much outside of e-mail. Drive the half mile home.

Big A and I have tickets to go see Twelfth Night by Human Race Theater, thanks to a friend. It starts at 8:00. I had promised to be home by 7:00. Big A is mad at me. On the half-hour ride over, it’s very silent in the car. Big A won’t talk because he’s mad. I’m kind of grateful for a silent space.

We get there ten minutes late (parking!) and get seated in the seats of shame (late arrival seats). At some point Big A puts his arm around me because I’m laughing helplessly (there were a lot of extraneous fart jokes). He also smiles at me (yay!). I’m vaguely aware that the rest of our party is making plans, but we split to wind up at our dive-y haunt.

One order of fiery almonds and jo-jo potatoes later, it’s as if happiness balloons around us and the cover band and the crowd just melt away. Actually, that would have been because of the hot toddy. It was good anyway.

_

Princess Bride (Two words I usually abhor)

[This snippet happened a few days ago and proves that I'm horrible. And that although our marriage bed is tiny, just one step up from a the kind they used to give monks, our married home occupies way more space than is necessary--or responsible.]

Anyway. After a big fight where I claimed not to like him at all.

Big A: I know you like me. A lot. [This is the single most irritating thing I've probably heard.]
Don't be mad at me. Can I go take a nap now?

Me: No. I don't want to see you in bed.

Big A: Ok. I'll go live in the basement.

Me: What? No! 

[Pause]

Me: That's where the exercise stuff is. You go live in the play room.

_

A Tight Tuesday

After a relaxing morning of back-to-back classes from 9-noon, my afternoon consisted of a women's studies meeting until 3:55, then a CASA meeting at the Children's Services two towns over at 4:00. Throw in a few kickers e.g. car needs gas, we're out of milk, Baby A needs to be picked up by 5:00, and Li'l A is hanging out at the public library after school but he needs to be picked up at 5:00, and dinner needs to start at 5:00 because it takes my kids forever to eat and they have a playdate starting at 6:00 and another playdate staggered at 6:30.

I got gas and a couple of small servings of milk (Non organic. Yikes.) at the gas station and tossed the milk into the trunk because in this weather that's at least as good as a cooler (right?), left the awesome women's studies students with discussion points at 3:40 (and the responsibility of signing out of my e-mail account--I must really trust them!), drove the 30 mins to the CASA meeting, arriving at 4:10, but not late because--well--it was Children's Services. After discussing the case plan for the CASA kids in question (who it turned out the new caseworker hadn't even met yet) for 30 minutes, segued with the brilliant, fake-smile-y: "speaking of kids, I have to pick up mine!" and did precisely that.

Dinner was dino-shaped chicken nuggets, yogurt, and milk from the car trunk (The yogurt had processed fruit!). My kids ate like champions for once--eating at home, who knew it could be like eating at McDonald's! Then they playdated all the way till bathtime with only brief breaks--once for cashew cookies and chocolate milk and another one for crying (and consequently puking--let the record show it was Baby A and not G.E.R.Dy Li'l A).

Everyone was in bed by 8:30 including me. I woke up at 9:30 to clean up for bed and went right back to the afore-mentioned bed with a short detour to text Big A, who was working the late-night shift, goodnight.

Goodnight.

A Monday (Spring, 2011)

These dreams are like demons

Where ice breeds fibrous

Before you were born

You were an ocean.

Here, everyone is moving

Their apologies like smoke

Still under the new road

An older one flows.

_

Sunday, YSO

This street reaches

all the way to the sun

These neighborhoods

are always memories

These doors half open

are half done grins

Blind, your own fool

and so ready for life

_

Happen

The quad is slippery with yesterday’s snow

His gaze is slippery with diffidence

Do I remember him?

I do! Mike! One of the best students in his class

But it’s another semester

And there’s another Mike in another class

Almost as good, just as loved.

Why do I love them anyway?

These Caitlins (F), Mikes (M), Alexes (F/M)

Love while it lasts, a semester’s worth

I mark them, meaning to mark their minds

_

Fish needs bicycle

Last spring, I taught Transnational Feminisms. Which was *wonderful*--but you know, they were the choir, there was absolutely no need to preach.

This year, I begged to be assigned the introductory Women’s Studies course with some romantic activist notion of grooming forty feminists out of a cohort of “my advisor says I have to take this course to graduate.”

Yeah. You know how this is going already. There were so many assertions of post-feminism and accusations of “reading too much into things.”

Until this: http://twitter.com/rulesforgirls

_

Old friends and older teachers

My high school FB group posted a newspaper article about our old P.E. teacher. And although I used to be terrified of her (mostly because of her somewhat bossy habit of checking if we were indeed wearing regulation bloomers under our Catholic school uniforms), it made me really nostalgic for days when my main fear was about getting picked to shoot hoops.

And on the same FB group page, an appeal for funds for another teacher whose husband has dementia. The end of Goodbye Mr. Chips always made me cry, and this does too.

_

Report

A clue that maybe listening to a lot of classical music

can make you a little too laidback:

"There will be snow tomorrow, mostly between the hours of 2 a.m. and 11 p.m."

Dude. Kind of unhelpful, you know.

Anyway. I’ve always wanted to ice-skate—

and today, I did.

A beautiful, curlicue “q”.

On the way to school/preschool/work,

in our sweet-silly, snub-nosed car.

Baby A squealed;

Li’l A gasped;

I trembled.

Fair to say we were all really surprised

and delighted/ excited /

outright panicked.

_

Questionnaire

Standing in the middle of all time

Ghosts and maharajas stare

We maintain tunes

Cartoons

The midday limbers

Like painted cake

Are you well?

Did you eat?

These twisted bases

are all alike

and all wrong

so I like them all

__

R.O. T. C. / Child

Tell me if we’re bringing you down

Taking back the beautiful invitation

To drop in upon those nations

Class = common noun

_

Read

Falling into holes

to keep on dancing

yes, keep on dancing

 

this common bird

sees love beyond

your ability to love

_

All by myself

My awesome M.I.L. came over to take the kids off to a sleepover at her place. 

I can't imagine that I did, but I must have looked wistful as I tugged mittens over my little kid kittens, because she asked if I was going to be okay. 

That made me break out in a huge smile because--What!? Are you kidding me?! 

But I gave her a big wink and said in my hammiest voice--I'll be ok, I'll find a way to manage.

But just to be sure, I texted Big A who's finishing up his charts at the E.R.:

"Safe to come home. Kids gone."

It's a movie and dive bar kinda night. If. 

IF Big A comes home soon.

_

Living January

Is to dream

of one blade of sea

on the far

side of a sandbox

 

Is to think skin

is no boundary

to waves

volatile as time

 

Is to plant

footprints and undress

prophecies too

delicate to translate

 

 _

New appointee?

 

Big A:  I was going to look at Haitian protest posters to design an introductory diagnostic for the postcolonial course.

Me: Ohh… (wishing I had thought of it first)

And I got my wish, because Big A seems to have some awesome pedagogical ideas--but only in *my* dreams :).

_

Prayer

Raise these ashes of snow.

Pace this abyss,

dismiss.

Ascend.

Upend.

Know,

flow.

_____________

Yet another snow day. White-out appointments and plans. I try to be understanding about the aesthetic-emotional compulsion for a white Christmas. But who needs snow after Dec 25th? Whoever you are, know that you're on my pout list.

_

Touch

 

Gift:

your reaction that continues mine

Sign:

the welcome of vulnerable circles 

 

this shushing of feet

through memories

then letting them go

to land unplanned

 

Letting it all go.

So. I lean forward listening

--alone like a colony--

and I know exactly who you are.

_

We still got it

Big A and I fell in love in New York. And though we’ve hung out with the kids heaps in the city since those early days, there is some lingering sense of surreality about revisiting places which were all about our passionate freefall with two kids, and as more responsible adults. Because, I guess, the “we” that we are in Yellow Springs is irrevocably tied to our personae as parents, but the “we” that started in New York is all us. In my head--at least--the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, Clinton Street Bakery, MOMA, Anthology Film Archives, KGB Room, Penn Station… exist merely as picturesque backdrops and bit players in some grand narrative about us and our self-centered fascination for each other. Barf :).

We drew up a complicated and ambitious list of where we wanted to eat that was typically Balthazar for breakfast, Saravanaa Bhavan for lunch, and Motorino’s for dinner. We skipped Balthazar, but I guess two out of three isn’t at all bad. And the night before that we got a corner booth at the fancy steak place, which meant that the kids could play pirates to their heart’s content and I could get tipsy off of beachy drinks (I didn’t realize until I typed that out that there was an ongoing ocean theme there!). At Saravanaa's my people were talking really loud and at Motorino’s the NYU kids were worse behaved than my own, so we made out ok.

2011: More New York!

_

Sunday, New York

The solstice sleeps

you understand

we may have dedicated

the guitars to silence

while the rocks, the day,

and the house unfold

the stiffening ponds

watch mountains march

and all the suns shine

falling in the snow.

_

On Broadway

Our wonderful dentist

who in a brilliant correspondence

of name and profession

is called Dr. Fang

Told Baby A

at her two-year dental check up

that her teeth were: "Strong!

Like Lion King!"

A whole year later

as we take our seats

in literally the last row

at the Minskoff

The toddler

bares her teeth

in friendly

affinity.

_________

It was a wonderful show. My dream room now has a swirling terrazzo and hovering bird mobiles. And given the seven-year difference between them, I'm constantly grateful for these few years when both Li'l A and Baby A can enjoy the same shows.

-

Out of Ohio

On our way to New York, I'm telling Big A about how the first time I heard John Boehner--just a few months ago--on NPR when he made a speech about his American dream and how I'd interpreted the quaver of tears in his voice as sincerity.

Since then of course I've become more familiar with Boehner's lachrymose tendencies, and increasingly embarrassed because there's no telling when I'll get emotional about a range of stuff from the perfect deep-fried veggie burger to an ad in a magazine I paid five dollars for asking for a two-dollar donation to The Hunger Project.

Me: I'm afraid I'm going to seem as fake as Boehner.

Big A: Nah, Puppy. Your tan is the real thing.

_

Gray Day

Ohio sun rises only for the sky

but sharp, sure stars swagger

about borders on oblate plains

Like people you have set free

who then disappear, unstable

as salt left out in the rains

_

With Plenty of Crybaby Juice

Your pain clears the windows.

Blind, your gaze can skip skies.

Tell me, was it you who visited,

slipped on these words, cried?

__________

Big A's first real day off in 15 days, and both Baby A and I made mad crybaby juice in little-little batches all day. Connection? Coincidence? Hmm.

_

Mornings with Children

The troubled light of December, seven o’ clock

the clucking annoyance of the second hand

These are the stains that describe your breakfast

your mouths are hovering-harmonium-talk

Now that the light is so bitter and literal

we lose one battle; we win other wars

You are made of just ghee and molasses--

and pools of unhurried, inundant memoirs.

_____________

And after all that, Li'l A made off with a medal in the spelling bee today. Perhaps slow and steady does win the race :).

_