The Recent Fuse

Stories sink
numbers
are old

number
than millions
take their toll

_

The Seige of Misrata (Take 2)

(So I went back and read the original post--which I'd made for a dear student from Libya who hasn't been able to speak to her family for over a month. The whole thing felt like the equivalent of a rant. Worse, all the pronouns made it sound like the conflict was all about me. I was trying to express solidarity, but it didn't convey well. So first I took out all the pronouns. But it was still too dense and heavy, so I pared it down further. Better now, but it doesn't say everything I mean it to say.)

The Seige of Misrata (Take 2)

(For Hala M.)

The run can start

the walk has not.

Run, run, and run 

skies never change

the sky is bloody fruit 

newsprint flattens cities

flight falls like attack,

sudden desert nights.

Loud around us 

art is bursting.

Reloading. Pulse. 

Repulse. of news.


_

The Seige of Misrata

(For Hala M.)

For the run has started, the walk has not
run and run till skies never change
the small bloody fruit of the sky weighs
the city at once flatter than newsprint

count among the living
count among the alive

In fates warped and shocked by shells

racked and rocked and fucked by shells

carefully sisters endure, carry each other

one dies today, another in soon days.

flight falls like an attack

like sudden desert nights

so Hillary is a hero and so can spend lives
so destinies are lead, so her voice is silver
for reputations are assembled around our feet
for revolutions rattle in the circles at our feet

For around us art is bursting.
And pulse. repulse. of news.

_

The Day Homework Went Viral

Stuck in a dinky little library study room sans projector or internet with my ESL kids today, I proctored their exam and then wrote their home assignment up on the chalk board. That's as low-tech as teaching gets, right?

Then as they prepared to walk out of class, these awesome students proceeded to pull out their smart phones,  click pictures of the assignment on the chalk board, and forward it to their classmates.

:) !

They're going to inherit the world.

_

Of Fibs, Kids, Pee, and Me

Somedays the kids are all about fibs (about things that don't even matter) and a puddle of pee (a mere, stubborn five inches away from the potty).

Somedays, I prefer my students to my kids. (Less pee.)


_

Swept Away

I think of the journey work 

of each of these rain drops,

how the studious landings burst

on the skin like surprise kisses

waterfalls that drape every stair

and the leaves hiccuping bigger

in quick gulps, swallowing time.

For I don't cry, who would know?

This sky is now world's cage

it dissolves; is strong, is sullen,

threatens in words too primitive

to howl rainbows at them. 

Don't hide your face, my love

--in your safe, plastic landfall

there is also a middle, an end.

We'll win.

_

Selective

For these are the measures of the everyday assassin
wash hands and sanitize.
Moisturize.

Every thing in its place.
Hair. Bullets.

For you will assume news is anachrony.
For you will know anarchy is nothing.

Nothing.
Nothing is nothing.

Below, a window--
To the window.

All is quiet within.
And you are steel.

Smile.

Early Birds, not Love Birds

We're on our way to the opera, but we're listening to hip-hop non stop. Wiz Khalifa is bragging about how his checks look like phone numbers.

Big A: Kinda like you, Puppy--except your checks be looking like just the area codes.

Oooh, burn :)!

The Daughter of the Regiment was the dopiest thing I've seen. Dopey--not dope.

We ditched our passes during intermission to go try out a new tapas bar and get some Thai food. And we were home by 6:45. P.M. That won't make sense until I say our opera tickets are always for the Sunday matinee. One day we'll be seniors and we'll already be champions of the early-bird specials.

_

Sad-U R day

Ha.

We were supposed to hole up last night at a Holiday Inn a few hours from here, so we could arrive at the Miami University Traithlon registration early. (Big A was supposed to triathlete, not me.) Didn't.

We were supposed to go to the YSKP fundraiser this evening--I had the perfect dress with a keyhole neckline and tattoo tights picked out. Three different babysitters bailed on us.

It's as though today were taking lessons in deportment from Baby A, whose favorite response to everything, including suggestions of timeouts is: But I don't want to!

_

Cute! (But where are the girls?)

At the nursery school established by Usha Gehlot in the Indian town of Jhajjar, there are toys, books, brightly-painted walls, and very few little girls. "In last year's intake, of a total of 59 pupils, 43 were boys," said the headteacher, running a pen down a column in the handwritten register book.

Read the rest and weep.

_

And so it starts...

Cuts to education = cuts to the Women's Studies Program at the local state university.

Don't know what it means for the course I'm supposed to be teaching in the fall yet.

 

Budgets

Came back after a mere three hours at work to write checks to S for the weekly deep house cleaning that keeps me sane (four hours @ $20 per hour) and emergency baby sitter L (three hours @ $15 per hour--Baby A is home sick again today; Big A had to go to work).

I literally did not make enough at work today (three hours at something like $30 per hour) to warrant the expense of hiring people.

Weird.

Still: keeping our environment clean, paying an ok wage, protecting the small and vulnerable (the toddler), minding public-health via not spreading viruses at preschool, providing jobs, saving lives via sending Big A to work ;), providing higher education for the next generation via me--the dollar standoff isn't ideal, but I think it's a good use of money.

_

Back

We're back.

Earlier today at 2 a.m. and still in the environs of L.A., came the realization that I had to fly three hours back to Columbus, OH, in our super cramped coach seats, retrieve the car from long-term parking, drive an hour back to Yellow Springs, pick up kids from grandparents, prep them for school, drop them off, and then go teach two classes. This doesn't even include attending to backlogged e-mail, project completion, vacation laundry, rescuing needy dying plants, catching up with school news and notices, or planning dinner. Blah, blah, blah. Gulp.

I passed out after that, getting all the sleep I could; my head resting on folded arms on the tray table like I was praying really hard in a pew.

And then the soft pressure of Big A's head resting on my back. His HEAD not his hand. 

He's totally using me for my body.

Or totally has my back?

_

Lost

Colleagues from two listservs that constantly continue to educate have passed away.

Jessica Nathanson from the women's studies list WMST-L and Sue Darlow from the South Asian literature list (SASIALIT).

They fought the good fight with grace and intelligence.

_

Wilde Žižek

Oh, Oh, Oh.

Žižek on charitable consumerism/Cultural Capitalism now with groovy visual notetaking.

_

True

Big A and I have just dropped off the kids for an extended weekend at their grandparents. I know they’ll have fun and be looked after, and I know that we’ll have fun. Neither generational set—neither parents nor kids... nor grandparents—will miss each other too, too much in the space of three days.

My only fear is that Big A and I’ll die together and leave the kids orphans. And I’m willing to write out something that makes me sound fantastically stupid is because I’m superstitious enough to believe in the fetishistic value of speaking my fears out loud in the hope that those destinies will be foiled.

As we pull away from the driveway, I’m gazing at the window, waiting for the kids to wave goodbye one more time, but they’re already mesmerized by the glow of the television i.e. already having a great time. 

I keep looking back over my shoulder…

Big A : “Those little bastards are going to have a fantastic time, Puppy.

[Pause]

Plus, they don’t care.”

_ 

Morning Recipe

Downstairs, last night's dinner
ghosts in a sea of cinnamon tea

Quiet. Light bubbles, fills up,
curls in my cup--misty as milk

Stir in two children
(I take it sweet.)


_

Tuesday's Change

Sun is ancient
very, very brilliant
and just beginning
like crystal on a string.

Grateful is all destiny 

to be met breathlessly

sweet certitude of soul,
sweeter certitude of y'all.

I can see more now

than I ever did before.

I may be listening now--

have always known how.

_

That Kind of Relationship

First days of the season
and a thousand stories
dance untold

I listen to the rain
it tells of emptiness
in ten thousand tongues

Stings haughty
as thunderstorms,
is clear as nothing

_

Everyone Speaks

Took Li'l A to a showing of The People Speak a documentary/reading/performance based on Howard Zinn's work at The Little Art Theater.

Extreme celebrity kilowattage: Morgan Freeman, Bob Dylan, Matt Damon, Bruce Springsteen, Sean Penn, Run DMC, Don Cheadle and lots of etc., etc.

Li'l A's independent projects this year have centered on the every day life of people in different times and climes and he's been asking questions about how society and government work, so this was a perfect afternoon with him.

It made me want to go on a protest march immediately--and there are plenty of opportunities for that--what with Ohio's Heartbeat Bill and Senate Bill 5.

But also, it made me want to see my dad immediately, because I suddenly realized that Frederick Douglass looks like my dad, from the nose, eyes, chin, up to the serious horizontal furrow between his brows.

_

One Love

I went to hear the awesome Kwame Dawes at UD's Litfest yesterday, and suddenly, I'm cooking dinner for eleven. 


As my old professor and my current academic referee, he tried to make time in his two-day trip to have dinner with us--never mind that that involves my toddler who claims to be married to an elephant, because my extremely polite tween more than made up for it by claiming to remember my mentor's baritone back from when I attended Dawes's class when this child was in utero.


Memories, regrets, gossip, a bottle of rosé, and travel plans. I'd put this evening on repeat for a while if I could.


_

He gets it

"Aliens wake as early as my mom..."

(The first line of the narrative ditty Li'l A composed with his friends to accompany their viewing of the trailer to Skyline last week. So stuck in my head! Now that I've written it, I'm not entirely sure if that line is meant as a compliment--or a complaint.)

"Amma, if I get all A's on my report card this year, will you become a U.S. citizen?"

(Li'l A after witnessing the over-prepped folder of documents I--an alien resident--took to the DMV this morning. He gets a little mutinous when border/airport/transport security quiz me a little too ardently. And I don't think he's forgiven me for reneging on the promise I made Big A in 2008 about applying for U.S. citizenship if Obama were elected.)

_

Surprise Package

Enthusiastic
at the end
of March
is this snow
landing as plastic
and separate

as styrofoam pellets

strewn through
our disbelief
in sheafs
as though grit
from a package
damaged in transit.

Didn't we order Spring?
-

Object blaming

People--or at least my own family--know me as the type to have crushes on older professors. Perhaps one of the unintended consequences of this is that I probably give off dangerously high levels of "I crush on professors" pheromones? Is this why older professors like me?

May be?

Am I blaming myself too much?

Not enough?

The thing is, when an older elderly colleague can't seem to stop stroking my back for a good 20 seconds longer than is collegial, I feel like the dirty one for wondering if it's inappropriate.

And because I find it difficult to draw attention to their inappropriate attention and because I didn't say anything, it then makes them think it's ok to give me photocopies of Mary Mackey's "The Kamasutra of Kindness" poems. Not that there is anything particularly objectionable about the poems themselves. My feeling--that both the poet and my personal donor of these poems are guilty of coasting on referential (orientalist) titillation--are just feelings.

_

Just two girls and an inter-species conversation

Baby A toddles in as I'm prepping for class.

NuNu: My very own husband is making tea for me.

Me: Um. 

Me: Um. What?!?

NuNu: My very own husband. He is waiting for me to finish teaching. He's in my very own house across the street [bedroom across the hallway] with all our animal children.

Me: He sounds nice.

NuNu: He is. He's much nicer than yours. He is an elephant. Your husband is not an elephant. You like elephants, right?

_

Cop... out

It's still cold. But not as cold. There are snowdrops and crocuses and early daffodils all over. The green arrows that will turn into ditches full of tiger lillies are already bolting out of the cold earth in front of the house as a signpost of spring. Boing, boing, boing.

I feel so hopeful.

In any other season, after being pulled over by the sheriff for doing 75 in a 55 zone, I would never have hoped to get away with just a warning. But as I sat there waiting for the cop to come back with my docs, I just knew he wasn't going to give me a ticket. It's spring, suckas. Boing it.


_

Later...

This afternoon, I left my sleeping children and slipped out behind the house.

Through the woods, past the pond, and I am at the nursing home where several women in the community sing every other week to the elderly residents, voices rising and milling like tides. I join them, after more than a year away, and find that the simple melodies wind their way back to me. And I notice that there are several new residents.

One woman is perfect in lipstick, pearls, and shiny ballet flats. She sings along, holds court. I didn't realize she was in a wheelchair until the very end when she asked the ex drummer sitting next to her if he would like to push her. Being the slow-wit that I am, I offered to push her and she laughed and said, "No dearie" and shuffled off by herself.

Like my mom, I don't think I'll ever stop loving jewelery and soft, shiny, fancy clothes. But although I never played with dolls much while I was growing up, I think I might become the woman who had a doll in her lap. The doll was large enough to reach all the way up to the woman's collar bone, sitting snuggled against her human perch, being posed, having her hands clapped, and being told to listen up.

I may already kind of miss my children. Especially my children in their compacter--and more portable--forms.

_

Snap

Once upon a time, earlier today, I taught my family to play Snap. Except in my version, which I remembered from my childhood books, you had to both yell Snap! and grab the cards before the other players did.

It's very grabby. It made me think that all the English children who'd played it in the 1800s were being groomed for something.


_

Radio 2: Become as Before, He Says

Become as before.
Poor prisoner
of his own war.

Unsteady companion
to my winter-again
hands and feet.

It flashes clear
in the jeering
fogged light

This "later."
That Yemeni dictator,
this Ohio weather

Like estranged boyfriends
who keep on promising
(dismissing) change

_

Aim

These are fresh green fires
that burn so badly
that loop--black

Then their furious circlings
are ideas: the this or that
no this / or this

Mornings, I conduct
baroque curlicues.
I fuck it all at night.

_

Balance

Turned in final grades for a course. (Wincing at the number of students who failed.)

Wrote and then rewrote a CASA report. (Recommending the exact opposite of what I had recommended 12 hours earlier--before the domestic violence happened.)

Endured faculty observation of my class. (Cringing when a student asked me when the grades--so horribly delayed-- would be available.)

I'm so relieved I got all of these done in the last 16 hours. (Knowing I really need to be doing so much more.)

_

Circle

Not one but two.
Not two alone--
two pairs.

Eyes, cheeks, hands,
handfuls
of my hair.

Arms-full of this flesh
this food I've fed,
the meaty

sweet
parasites
of blood and tissue

indiscriminate delight
wreckless rapture
more than multiple

no reason, rhyme
nor small symmetry.
Not even the artifice of sanity.

_

An Opening

These things are always sad.
Plans are urban objects.
I direct the day;
It plays its own way.

Childhood could
take another paragraph.
Right now is any other country,
where you are not the world.

_

Prayer

   Love will save me
             Will love save me
  I will love to save me


   Rise to release
          Ripen to fall, all
  Begin, beguile

                                                     Repeat.

_

Outsider

To be as space
to visit home
glorious globe
this home

to be moving
closer smaller
Country state
county street

to becoming bigger
looming larger
too big to swallow
to love

Too, our kind calls
to the slow heaven
of every
where

_

Two

Entire:

Our everyday occasions
arrive without cues
like robins courting
through the afterlight.
Our welcomes ignite,
wave higher than wings.


Desire:

With you
I revel, more than mortal
in my hands, increase.
Master-piece.
Our breath is soon
salt and oceanside
all our sounds
words untried.

_

Anger (Corner of Third and J)

She can get
more money
from dreams
they come
(yes, they do come)
floating in
on hulls of air

backwards bills
she give them back
back to the bank
hunger
take that.
(Yes, you can)
Take that back too

She can have her way
with you and you
and those two.
Mystery, gravity
she hate that.
Floor is sand; what?
Sky is shit.

_

Nightfears (Japan)

words to tunes
dances to kisses
day's light to life

covet: velvet moss
crossed by shadows

for slant are roofs
so to tip and venture

as here are moons
pale with departure

nights are all accidents
before graves awake
and smile, sea to shore

Because the Night

Baby A is better (eating ice cream). In yesterday's panic, we forgot to set the alarm and Li'l A was late for school. Big A is making me a panini with havarti and leftover curried eggplant.

In other Big A news, he's working mostly nights these days (days--heh.). By choice. We decided that given his 10-12 hours shifts, this way he'd be better able to share daily fun times with the kids (dinner, games, lolling evenings) as opposed to working days when he might see them for a brief moment merely to hug and kiss goodbye.

It's also working out great because there's a backup parent in case kids need to be home when they're sick; it works out that I can attend evening events without kids; it works out that I can drag him to as many  parties as I want.

It's working out. Except for all the nights when I can't get to sleep or the times I wake up and instantly know there's no one next to me in our tiny bed.

And oh--he's so very sleepy as he sets off for work.
_

C R Y

Baby A has "a lion-bug-mouse-bug" in her throat. "It growls, then it squeaks. Growl. Squeak. Growl." Also, "I can't breathe very well, Mama."

She's breathing very rapidly. She sounds bad enough to make Big A take a listen.

And it completely panics me when Big A (he of the "Let them take a Tylenol" advice when I take the kids' pains and complaints to him) thinks he should take her to the E.R.

I take Li'l A to school, and set off for work, get all the way to the highway and drive the 15 minutes back to hug her again. And she tries to make me feel happy by gasping out "If you're happy and you know it, do like this [lifting my hair up in the air]."

So I think about that in the car and cry some more on the way to work. And then on the radio, Japan. Libya. Cry some more.

Get to the office, check e-mail read the wonderful, loving comments on my women's studies students' eval forms. Cry even more.

It's 10:00 a.m. I'm exhausted.

_

Ready for climbing into spring

Since it was a high of 38 degrees today, it speaks to either our extreme optimism or market-worthy prescience, that N, L, and I got pedicures. A post birthday celebration of two hours of massages, chatting, (window) shopping, pampering, and--for favors--twinkly toes.

I get massages and facials fairly regularly, but pedicures trigger my latent south asian fear of pollution and disrespect. And although it's been years since I watched a certain SATC episode, it stayed with me.  "The girls" are out for pedicures, and are able to perform that oughties form of consumerist power by way of a bevy of servile and--in the narrative--interchangeable, unspecified, east asian women literally kneeling at the protagonists' feet.

Perhaps things have changed? L's pedicurist had the same name as her and this symmetry illogically made everything seem decent if not downright ethical. The pedicurists we met yesterday were from all over south east asia, predominantly Cambodia and Vietnam (not Korea as was typically the case), N and I even had male pedicurists, which was so unanticipated that it immediately relaxed my political hackles.

Anyway. Onward, purple toes!

_

Little Red Worm

You come
you go

repeat of drum.
Little red shield

and skinny tail
and trailing snout

wending

latchstring.

Fickle as dreams
redeemed in December.

Indistinct as
the faults of spring.

_

B(l)eeping bed

Every night before I go to bed, I pray that no one sends us a fax.

Due to Big A's love for all electronic stuff--no matter how alien and unnecessary it is to our lives-- we are now in proud possession of a fax/scan machine. And because there are no phone jack things in the study, the fax machine sits waiting like an nascent weapon under our bed.

I bet even the President doesn't keep a fax machine that close as he sleeps.

_

Radio

"Live me?"
He asks.

(Or is it
"Leave me"?)

"Army kill me.
Live me, please."

_

Frangipane (Paint)

my eyes sip roses
light lurks lupine

~the contractions
of heart birth~

I throw my furies
to escape me now

~prowl the pretty
places we live~

_

Tired

My leaf self

finds

caterpillar trains.

These gods

tuck 11 maps

to my life

into safe folds

in my brain,

shape it shut

like 

a sand castle
installation.

_

un-koothu

Despite an increasingly adversarial situation in one of my classes that's psychically depleting me, I managed to send off my proposal for a chapter on Mangai this evening. Yay, me.

Mangai expertly uses traditional, low culture forms like koothu to interrogate feminist issues including female infanticide and feticide. Or so I say, and because I was writing about it, I guess my mind had been working hard to process these cruelties and make sense/contain them. And so...

***

Last night, I dreamt that I led my three-year-old daughter  on to a public bus in Tamizh Nadu crowded with standing grownups and gave her instructions on where to sit (in the middle--it's the safest) and where to get off the bus (after two stops).

She said, "ok mama," but bumbled around like the three-year-old she is. The sort of happy, carefree bumbling around that--especially in the mornings when our deadlines are tight as a noose--can make me want to cry and/or laugh helplessly.

The bus conductor was very helpful, promising to help, but as I walked away from the bus, I realized that he was following me around chatting away. And then I realized I'd left my baby on a bus where she didn't know anybody.

Nothing happened. But the possibility of disaster, the sense of menace was huge. I couldn't fall back asleep even after I'd checked that both kids were in their beds. And not on buses.

_

Quiet complaint

We went to see Li'l A's school production of "The Bollywood Jungle Book" today. I really wasn't going to say anything about "Bollywood" or "Jungle Book." Hey, elementary school. The kids just want to have fun. Li'l A didn't get color cast as Mowgli, so that was good and he was the most bored Bollywood dancer I've ever seen :). Then for a grand finale, they decided to dance to "Jai Ho" (from Slumdog Millionaire). Yes.

I like both those stories, I like both those movies, I sing those songs to my kids all the time. But really? A group of educators didn't see anything problematic about sandwiching the pablum of their essentialist Indian experience between the bookends of Kipling and Boyle? There really is no fucking post in postcolonial.

I leaned the back of my head into Big A and muttered a restrained "Eff you" to the ceiling.

******
The rest of the day--as Li'l A likes to say-- was awesome sauce. First was birthday brunch with family and friends (and so many flowers!) where I ended up on the floor with the kids climbing all over and around me, and then my awesome MIL threw a dinner party and baked me the bestest birthday cake :).

_

Post

And after the excesses of my birthday, I was awoken this morning by our itinerant rooster crowing. I ate another cupcake and went back to bed.

Birth! Day!

So far,

I've snuggled with my family (sleepy kids had to be persuaded),

had a Bossa Nova-fueled workout untrammeled by school dropoffs (the university is--so conveniently--on a midterm break), 

had my hair washed by Big A, 

napped,  

had a midday cocktail, 

helped Big A bake my birthday cupcakes (I dropped the paper cups into the cupcake pans),

decided to abandon the Joyce Carol Oates after 20 pages in (NOT birthday reading!),

picked out a color to paint the hallways (which may be revised post cocktail buzz), 

danced,

had a discussion about Mos Def,

can't wait to pick up the kids, 

and get sushi (and maybe sake?).

I haven't even opened presents yet :). The thing is... on any day--and even today--just one of the things on that list would make me as happy as I can get. (Joyce Carol Oates and Mos Def respectfully excepted.)

_

She was there

Today started off fairly normally and then I ended up at dinner with Jennifer Finney Boylan.

Back up: I should say that meeting her wasn't entirely unexpected--I have after all planned to take my class along to hear her talk for, lo, all of two months. Jenny is amazing. She is the author of She's not There Anymore and the forthcoming Stuck in the Middle With You (her schtick--she says, self-deprecatingly ignoring her writing skills and her jaw-dropping experiences --is naming her books after bad pop music).

Trans experience is something that students frequently don't understand; a concept that becomes, and stays, intellectual--and so something that you just get or just can't wrap your head around. My admiration for Boylan has been mostly on a gut level--mostly for her courage and her sense of comedic timing, so I was so happy to see these translated into a great *show*. Jenny worked the audience: making them laugh with her, at her, making jokes about them, getting them to care about her, getting them to extend that interest and affection to all trans people, to all people. It was breathtakingly, heart-achingly beautiful.

She is so articulate about growing up as male and female also, parenting as father--and now--mother, that my question had to be about the way her parenting would differ if she were parenting daughters instead of sons. She knelt beside me in the audience as I put my question out (smirking, "this is just between us") and gave my question way more attention and honesty than it deserved.

So, when I was invited as a last-minute addition to the dinner table, I couldn't wait to accept. My students were all starry-eyed at the end of the talk; I can't wait to debrief with them on Tuesday.

Ananya

Princess NuNu,

thank you for finding every dragon in my bedroom

and telling them all

they couldn't stay.

Thank you for talking to all the snakes

and letting just the nice ones stay.

(But only after you made them promise to behave.)

(But actually, I don't want any of them.)

Thanks for agreeing with me

that you are an amazing, awesome NuNu.

("Yes!" You say, as if, "of course!"--

throwing your arms out to embrace this too.)

And thanks for tucking me in around 6 p.m.

It's cozy in bed.

_

No point

Rushed into shameful big-box store to buy a couple six-packs of Ensure. (Yes, Li'l A is back on the Ensure after I discovered looking for a lost form in his backpack that he hadn't actually been eating the lunches we'd packed for him. I couldn't even be that mad at him, because that's what I used to do, and the reason he does this is probably because my mother used to lament that I'd never understand how much i hurt her until I had a kid who refused to eat. Who knew my mom's curses would work! I drank Complan, my child drinks Ensure.)

But this story isn't about family. Not right away. While ringing up my Ensure, Anne, the cashier asks me my name and tells me that I look old enough to be her granddaughter. The granddaughter is 21. That's when I begin loving Anne ;). Then she asks me if I'm from India, and tells me she knows Hindi and rattles off several words in a flawless accent. I love her more now.

She tells me she's tired of English, and casually throws out--"I already have a couple of degrees in English so I want to learn a different language now." A couple of degrees. Wants to learn another language. Really love.

And that's when--rather symmetrically in our ephemeral relationship--she began to remind me of my Gadadoss grandmother also. The grandmother who didn't have a single college degree.

The grandmother who was tutored at home after menarche, was married at 16, had my mother at 17.

The grandmother who would be reading pulp fiction in English when I dropped in on her after classes at Stella. The grandmother who would then carefully put a bookmark in her book and put away the dictionary she'd been using to help her read. And the notebook that she'd used to log the words she'd looked up in the dictionary.

It feels strange to think that I won't be able to visit her on an India-trip anymore. I don't really even believe it.

_

The Speeches

I cannot
speak about this morning
I could not
speak this morning.

Black with bliss and
alone is early day.
Sky slides to light
after that I cannot talk.

Promises are spatial
words partial, outbid,
like unsexed spittle.
Words dare not bend.

Could I be more surprised
if the faces of my children
had changed at end of night--
I cannot talk.

I cannot.
Some words have wings
monstrous and clamorous,
wild as swans

that alight, fly awry
If I had no need for words
for all words to wait, watch
I would never want at all.
_

Party, Pythons

Partied really late last night. I got a cheek-ache from long stretches of laughing while playing "Dialogue." (Making fantastically fake dialogue to conversations too far away to hear. It's fairly rude, but Big A always does his in a British accent so it sounds posh.)

N drove us home--we should go back and retrieve the Mini from his house on "the only hill in Ohio" sometime today.

Although, there's not much of "today" left; I got out of bed at 2:30. Big A had taken the kids out to breakfast and then haircuts, leaving me free to finish reading my book in bed, take a shower, and yearn for my family. (Usually they're around so much, I never get to yearn.)

I haven't seen Big A since early this morning when we woke up with match-y nightmares. Big A's was about a python that had spawned a baby python on his alarm clock on the nightstand. Mine was about a big, rubbery, lipstick-y mouth called an "a-poco-lips." Get it? Get it? My subconscious makes jokes that are as stoopid as my awake jokes are!

_

Plan B: Use Wills

Did the grown up thing and signed our wills today. Then I was in a bad mood for the rest of the day. All our year-long vacillations on the appropriate/possible/perfect guardians for our kids in case both of us should die together were missing. I already feel the need to rewrite it.

For now we're sticking with Plan A, which is to not die until the kids are old enough. And given how I still need my parents all the time, that could be a long, long time.

In the meantime, Baby A's decided that dinner is Banana Stew and Apple Fries. Li'l A's look of panic (we've been letting Baby A's imagination dictate the form of dinner for a few weeks) will keep me in heart-healthy guffaws for a while and the hippy healthfulness of the menu should only help.
_

Lilt (675 S)

The sun is alone
again, today
but grown warm

Bruised clouds rupture
smiles splinter,
meekly multiply.

No secondhand details today
I owe children memories
of bees, honey, and music
_

Winter Weather Advisory (Part 7)

You call me down

you calm me down

you call me down

I fall down

The weight of nights

the height of days

earth is garden

all warmth migrates

Rain ripens:

material, nonsense.

I catch my breath,

I cut my eyes. Cry.

_

Song Soup

Dinnertime. I have half an hour to make the soup Baby A and I made up in the car this morning in the ten minutes between Mills Lawn Elementary, where we dropped off Li'l A, and Baby A's preschool.

This soup has beans (red and black) and veggies (I used frozen gumbo ingredients) and potato dumplings (I used pillowy gnocchi from a package) and is finished off with the grated manchego from earlier this week and a handful of leftover parsley and oregano (distressed, humiliated, and super stressed from my kids mishandling them).

Everything was going well until Li'l A said with a teasing, big-sibling smirk, that soup would taste better with Melody (Baby A's tattered stuffed mallard) in it. I was so shocked I dropped to my knees in front of Baby A who promptly clutched Melody to her chest and burst into loud and (overly) lavish tears.

To teach Li'l A a lesson, we give Melody a special hug and a treat. Then we snatch up Li'l A's favorite song (The Killers, Human*) out of the air as it plays on Pandora, ball it up, and drop it into the soup pot.

Dinner was delicious.

_

* I love Li'l A's interpretation of the lyrics "Are we human or are we dancer(s)?"--It's a song about Destiny, he told me. "Are we human or do we have to follow a routine like dancers?" (Let the record show that he is a "Bollywood Dancer" in the school production of Jungle Book, and is all too familiar with being expected to follow "the steps.")

(Which reminds me that when my Amma asked Kindergarten me if I knew "my steps" for the Christmas play at schooI, I promptly nodded, fetched my sketchbook and drew her a set of stairs. Also, after that particularly spectacular misunderstanding, I fell asleep on stage and forgot to make my offering--I was a "flowergirl"--to the blessed baby Jesus.)

_

Franzen's Freedom

Over here, we've been reading Jonathan Franzen's latest, Freedom. It's the first novel Big A's read before me (ever). I gave it to him over the new year and have been patiently waiting (because it's the polite thing to do) for him to finish it, because it was, after all, his present. And already, given that it was Jonathan Franzen, there were not a few moments of marital teasing about the self-servingness of this present. Big A even asked if I got him the book merely because there was a bird on the cover, because I do like things with birds on them (kinda like this), although I hadn't (honestly!) noticed this particular one.

It was hard reading the book after Big A. For one thing, I had to stop myself from asking him about the end all the time (and haven't mostly because he works a bunch of nights this week). And also (and this is so embarrassing), I kept getting jealous of all the people in the book. I kept wondering if he found them interesting. Since we met, it's fair to say Big A hasn't spent this much time with people who aren't me, learning really emotional and intimate details about them. In a way, I'm glad he tends to non-fiction for the most part.

And there were all sorts of people who had names of people we knew; this included the names of my step-mom-in-law and Baby A's middle name. And then everyone in the book turned out to be unlikeable. And everything kept getting solved by death. Even the person with Baby A's middle name wiped out in a car accident. And the women were all clingy and weirdly submissive. They really had to be good little Griseldas about waiting, suffering, and repenting.

But Franzen does write efficiently, photographically, in that choosy New Yorker-ish time-and-space specific way. And wonderful too, the flash of recognition coming from a sprawl of words stretching self-indulgently and contemporaneously all the way into Obama-America.

Big Freeze

Today is the kind of day that's wrong and abhorred. Icy cold.  And raining. The nerve of Ohio. At least I didn’t have to carry toddlers and hurry kids into school. (I use the plural although I have only one of each.)

Why is my university working on President’s Day? No idea. It took twenty minutes to separate from my pajama-ed loves and say goodbye this morning.

An extra two minutes to wonder if I could claim President’s Day was a kind of a religious observance for me. Big A helpfully pointed out that I’m not even American.

They’re making Star Wars pancakes. Bums.

_

A tiny slip of a thing

Over brunch this morning with the inlaws, Big A let slip that his dad and step mom talked to him about my weight and “disordered eating.” This isn’t the first time they’ve done that. For the record, I am fine. I hover around the underweight end of the B.M.I. scale, but I’m South Asian, with inadequate/tiny bone structure, so I’m plenty fleshy, and it works out.

While my inlaws looked mortified, I lunged for Big A. I meant to be playful, but I ended up body slamming him too hard. Accident!

But hey, if you’re going to infantilize me, maybe you ought to be prepared to deal with the immature consequences too.

 

Franco-phile

Apropos of not much, I’m getting really fond of James Franco because I hear he’s an English Litt. person. OMG. Why did no one tell me this before!? 

It’s gotten to a point where I’m imputing tongue-in-cheek intentions to many of his less-than-stellar roles. I learned on Terry Gross that he’s on General Hospital?! 

And if you go to the Fresh Air website here, you can read a short story from his upcoming collection Palo Alto. I think it's good, but at this point, there's no telling if that's a professional opinion or a personal one.

-

NuNu

Downstairs

talk turns into tunes

songs ache

words are taken

"Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

I’m so happy!

Happy Holidays!"

(It‘s still February.)

Upstairs, she breathes

me kisses and begs

for “Mental Mints.”

To be the best Mama in the world,

you must be willing to share Altoids.

_

Mothers

Sometimes,

every woman is my mother,

every one of you is my child.

None of the usual explanations

make sense.

Every thing ends.

You grow out of my chest

I live in your womb.

I lie in your blood.

Only stones separate

from rice

at the parting of fingers

The years pass over us.

We are hay

(who were once flowers)

_

Every Thing (another valentine)

Mornings are dishes, dishes,
then decisions.

But one filled-up tank of gas,
these circles of things we say

then the Maharajahs themselves
could not be this happy.

Like squirrels giddy as leaves in a breeze
(So far: We = Pharaohs = squirrels = leaves)

So tracked, there is no fairytale,
just an adventure spun for kids like us

(like ours)

lying thick on shores of lullabies
versed in waves and sighs ellipses.

_

Multipurposing Mozart

My favorite moment was when Li’l A poked around in the program and told me that “Wolf-Gang” would be a terrifying name for a crime syndicate.

And yes, the concert was beautiful. Libby Larsen’s “Parachute Dancers” was menacing fun, and the Mozart (39) was both playful and plaintive. It made me a little teary from happiness that these accidental assemblies of notes exist to revisit.

And yes, dressed up in a blazer and on Tylenol for his neck sprain, Li'l A was the perfect philharmonic companion—the street musician we always pay our respects to (cash, natch) gave him a lift of the eyebrow and called him "Daddy-O" to the amusement of all the older patrons waiting to get into the Schuster Center.

But no, I didn't have an answer for why we paid two dollars to the man outside and hundreds for Neal Gittleman's crew inside. Is it because the musicians inside have to share?

_

Babu Ahtah (Don't Wake Daddy!)

The first time my mom visited me in the U.S. and saw a board game called Don't Wake Daddy at the store, she squealed in disbelieving delight. Her dad who worked late as a telegraph master (Telegrams, remember them? When people counted words before Twitter?) slept late on the weekends. And if she or her four other equally rowdy siblings woke their father, there were threats and thrashings.

Inevitably almost, their reality spawned a game they liked to call Babu Ahtah (the Dad game), which consisted of one of them playing the dad and the others trying to play without waking him, but ended with the "dad" waking up and beating them all up to loud, playacting yelps.

And unfailingly (and somewhat hilariously) meta is the way my mom says that most of these games were so noisy that their dad--their real dad--would wake up to thrash them. Really thrash them.

Li'l A loves to hear that story, now that he's not so freaked out by that little detail about kids getting beaten as he used to be when he first heard it. And I think about my mom and her sibs all of whom in that particular time and and in that particular milieu expected to get beaten for bad behavior. And I choke on the extra love that comes from thinking of my amma as a vulnerable child and knowing how, when she became a young mom, that sad cycle of abuse was broken. 

_

Wake up call

A long time ago, I had a dream.

Li'l A is a toddler crawling through one of those giant mall play tubes. He doesn't walk yet, and he seems to be having a good time. I used to call him "Aachu" back then--a mispronunciation of his name and also a mispronunciation of the Telugu word for love "Aasa." Kind of like how "Holla" is neither "holler" nor "hola"--but actively alludes to both. But, I digress.

It starts to storm, getting both late and dark at the same time; I start to call Aachu, but he doesn't show and I'm immediately scared and frantic. Then in that weird third-person narrativity of dreams, I can see him inside the tube and realize that he's crawling away from the sound of my voice as fast as he can. And not merely to be naughty or prolong playtime but because my voice terrifies him. This was at a time when his GERD-y refusals to eat and my Indian mom instincts to overfeed as much as/whenever possible were at the point of worst conflict.

I cannot begin to describe how sad and disappointing it was to see his fear. And I cannot begin to quantify how much I backed away from my pig-headedness about eating right away.

I think I remembered my dream because I heard Amy Chua (the infamous tiger mom) on the radio this morning and she described how her daughter would yell that she hated her. I'll admit to being the mom who expects all of Li'l A's grades to be As, to asking what happened to the missing two points on a quiz that garnered 98/100.

But I wouldn't be able to deal with my kids not loving me.

_

Dressing in the Dark

One day--like most days--I literally got dressed in the dark; pulling on a pair of black tights that were more like disco tights in their shine value. Yi! Their inappropriateness for standing in front of a class of undergraduates!

The kids overheard me grumbling about it to my MIL and now they love to cock their heads at an assessing angle and ask me if I got dressed in the dark when I come downstairs. The little critics.

But after nearly ten years in this country, I just discovered trouser socks, and my cute shoes are back in winter rotation. Yay! And now I can add that to my list of immigrant discoveries about dressing appropriately for the weather.

Stockings! Yay! Saying no to summer dresses when it's bright and sunny out (but still only about 35 degrees)! Boo! Finding out that I'd need to pick "tan" over "nude" leggings! Yay! Finding out tights snag and run. Boo! Keeping a black Sharpie in my desk drawer to deal with that crisis! Yay!

_

Drama Mama

Despite being the world's most terrible actress, I like to act sometimes.

Big A and Li'l A roll their eyes, my students delight in agreeing with me when I tell them my acting sucks. But Baby A--ah--she can't get enough.

My encore repertoire includes being the Jack in the box who surprises Buddy the Elf (played by Baby A) in the movie Elf, and the Woody who needs rescuing by Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 2. Baby A goes climb, climb, climb and then yells "To himbee and beyond!" and rescues me.

Although much of the gender neutrality above may change. While I made dinner yesterday, she told me: "Now I'm Woody, Mama. He's a cowboy." As the words left her mouth, I could almost see her taste and parse that word. The expected amendment was delivered cheerily: "I'll be Jessie--she's a cowGIRL!"

:'<

_

Gone!

The public radio station, literally down the street, is having an fundraising auction and I wanted to donate

(a) a five-course Indian meal cooked (by me)

and

(b) a poem written (by me) on any thing or person the successful bidder specified.

The station manager suggested that I assign a monetary value that would make it easier for them to advertise the "goods."

The Indian meal was fairly simple to calculate--materials plus time compared to the going rate at a restaurant. I asked Big A for help with figuring out how much the poem would "cost." He thinks the going rate per poem is about a nickel and sometimes a glass of wine and/or applause.

He's probably right.

_

Happy Year of the Rabbit! (Do rabbits sleep a lot?)

Dinner out at the chinese restaurant we usually go to with the grandparents. This time it is a big bunch of neighbors and friends, and it is to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit. My favorite six-year-old tells the server, Gung Hay Fat Choy! He tells her that he's from Dayton, OH. Oh, I am torn.

Because we're cool and stuff and we want to go see more live music and stuff, we'd decided to go check out a band we'd heard about and stuff.

So we dropped off the kids at their grandparents and stuff.

Bored yet? Might as well be. We got home and decided to take a "nap." And didn't wake up until hours after the band went home.

_

Martian sends

My mind clutches a phrase, rubbing it raw in its sweaty fist. I'm awake now and realize that this nugget-- "ColdMartin Locksheen"--is merely an unappetizing and useless amalgam of NPR, Pandora, and Jezebel.com.

Odd the way this mind grabs the surprise appearance of Coldplay, a.k.a. Chris Martin, on the Phoenix station on Pandora, news of tech giant Lockheed Martin's U.S. Army contract, and Charlie (son of Martin) Sheen(anigans) to produce some Palin-esque puffery.

Although this is the closest I've come to deciphering how a poem happens--starting out with a phrase that surely expands through all the hours of rote existence.

_

Co-opt

After watching Exit through the Gift Shop with us, Li'l A turned into a rebel overnight. And now they're offering a class in "Urban Art" (helpfully subtitled "Graffitti") at his elementary school.

And he's taking it.

_

In the hea(r)t of the SnOw-M-G

We have no heat, but we have two Pillow Pets (TM). The bumblebee ("Bumby") and the ladybug ("Lady, I Love You"--yes, Baby A could name horses or ice cream flavors soon.)

Big A thinks we should get the unicorn. He leans across the table to claim in a stage-whisper that we could name it "Horny."

He's not in middle school. Swear.

_

Next Up: Video?

Big A and I talked all weekend long (remainders from my women's studies class) about how how words associated with privilege cannot be used as insults. i.e. women, people of color, poor people can be insulted on the basis of their group membership in a marginalized/minority group e.g.: bitch/W.O.G./cracker, but it is impossible to insult the dominant group on the basis of their group identity. With the notable exception--and I wonder how hoary this tradition is--of "dick." ("Prick" carries with it the implication of not being sufficiently allied with the dominant group--too tiny, not big enough.)

Looks like we're going to have to write that incipient book of feminist philosophy. Because we then decided that "Quit Dicking Around" would be an awesome title.

_