Under the cover of darkness

Poetry reading at PA's Lounge in Somerville.

Good to see you all.

Baby Bites, Mad Jesus' and Small, Good Things

I was raised Mormon in Salt Lake City, Utah. I have not been a practicing Mormon for approximately 24 years. Yet they keep visiting. They keep calling. Yesterday I let two young girls in for approximately 45 minutes as tactics such as rudeness and asking for my name to be removed from their lists, asking them not to call or come by have not worked. I offered them a beverage. They accepted and sat side by side at our dining room table. I smiled and asked a few easy questions about whereabouts and numbers of siblings--5 and 6, respectively. Then I smiled and asked some hard questions about family. They smiled and didn't answer them, except to tell me to visit General Conference, the great meeting of Mormon minds. I smiled and said, "I don't need a bunch of nearly dead white guys telling me what to do." They smiled and asked if they could visit again next week. I said yes.

And then sent them to my best and most beautiful partner in crime's house to do some weed whacking, but with this warning, "Be careful. She might bite." And this might be a good thing for them. A very good thing. Maybe even "A Small, Good Thing" if they're lucky.

Love Conversations

Note to tired readers: This will definitely be my LAST reference to 69 Love Songs for at least a year. O.k, at least a month.

Every so often it happens. I fall completely in love with a song. I wanna make out with this song, get coffee with this song, and do other things with this song.

But it's a song and we can't do these things. So instead I listen. And listen. And listen.

The song I have most recently fallen in love with is "The Book of Love" by The Magnetic Fields. Yeah, I've mentioned them here before and yeah I'm eight years slow to recently acquire the three CD album, so bear with me as my love for this album plays itself out.

I like this song more for what it doesn't say than for what it does say. It starts out, "The book of of love is long and boring/No one can lift the damn thing." I imagine a big, brown, sturdy book with all sorts of dryly inaccessible information, "....charts and facts and figures/and instructions for dancing." But then comes the twist, which is often the case with Stephin Merritt. Interspersed between the description of the book is, "...but I/I love it when you read to me/and you/you can read me anything," this the first place that makes me want to drink red wine and read Creeley with this song. It's slow and sweet the way the words are drawn out to emphasize the beauty of this simple doing.

Then there's the place that makes me want to go out dancing with this song and afterward take it ocean swimming.

And finally the place that makes me want to have a conversation with this song, one that lasts a long, long, long time, maybe forever.

Without getting into a discussion of marriage here because, well, because marriage is hard in theory and in practice, this song makes me think about how some conversations between some people keep going because some conversations can't and won't be finished. Marriage can be this kind of conversation.

I love this song for its ability to make me keep wanting to have ongoing conversations with the people I love. I love this song for its ability to make me remember to fall in love, with a song, again and again and again.

Now please go have a listen. And I promise not to talk about 69 Love Songs ever again.

Domestic Still Life

Monkey

To see the set click here.

Saturday Morning Phone Call

"Is this Jane?"

"Yes. I can't hear you. I'll call you back on the other phone."

"O.k."

Dial. Music through the phone on his end. The music is intelligible. But he's kind of unintelligible.

We talk. About lots of things, death being one of them.

There are a lot of things I could say but I try to change the subject. To music.

I tell him about 69 Love Songs. He already owns it.

He mentions David Byrne, Massive Attack, a few others. He has 300 CDs. His life's worth, he says.

"My crappy t.v., my CD collection, a few other things."

"I'll be pissed," I say. "I'll be pissed if 300 CDs show up at my door. And you're not with them."

What am I supposed to say to him? What is there really to say that hasn't already been said?"

I'm cynical about this now, years of trying to be a saviour and years of it not working. This is the best our relationship has been. And we both know it.

He keeps calling. He keeps living. Barely.

I've decided that it doesn't hurt to keep saying, "I love you." It can't hurt.

I'll say it as many times as I need to. I'll say it and mean it. I'll say it if he's here. And I'll say it if he's not.

Cole

Cole and I have had a rough go of it lately. Crying, both of us. Yelling, both of us. Frustration, both of us. Finally smiling, both of us. Tomorrow is his first day of four-year-old preschool.

The crying and yelling and frustration are all well and good. But I want to remember the smiling. I love this boy. Love. This. Boy.

Here's the Thing (working title)

I have a fancy, new camera and I want to do something with it, though I could do what I want to do without a fancy, new camera. I'm writing what I want to do here because if I don't write it here I won't follow through. Also, I might need a swift boot to the ass if I start whining and acting like I can't finish what I'm about to start. The following is inspired by School House Rock, especially "Three is a Magic Number," the paper crane project, flickr's 365 days, Amanda's letter writing and 69 Love Songs, The Magnetic Fields.

Take at least one photo every day for 365 days.
Post one photo every day to flickr.
For 52 Fridays, print one photo, 4x6, taken during the week.
Choose one person--family, friend, or random--and write a note to this person.
Must be a handwritten note and person must not be expecting the note or picture.
For 52 Saturdays, mail note and picture.
If people want to write a return note they can, but there must be no expectation that they do so.
Cost of project not to exceed $35. Envelopes, notepaper, 52 stamps, 52 prints.
Punishment if I don't finish this project: A hairshirt.

Purpose:

To circulate handwritten mail.
To find cool stamps (I have a thing for stamps).
To make myself finish something that I've started, something long.
To surprise people by sending them unexpected, handwritten mail.
To write to people I want to write to, but for whatever reason, don't.
To make something. Call it art, if you want. Or, call it something else.


Don't forget about the boot in the butt, if I need it. If you know someone who would like a note, please send along their address, but don't forget not to tell them that they'll be receiving a note. Thank you. stewingham@hotmail.com

Relentless

Yesterday I came home to a voice mail message.

"Hi Jane. This is the sister missionaries. We were calling to see if there would be a good time that we could come and see you, um, or give you any kind of service if you need any help around the house or anything. We'd love to come and help you out and to meet you. We'd love to hear back from you.

Our number is xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Do hope you are enjoying this nice warm day (laugh). We hope to hear back from "ya." Have a good day and everyone else. Bye."

I do not feel mean enough tonight to list all of the inappropriate services that could be rendered by the sister missionaries. Two of them. But as I've been going through my day I've been listening to these lyrics by The Magnetic Fields, not to be confused with the Air Supply lyrics of the same title.

Kiss Me Like You Mean It

"He is my lord, He is my saviour and He rewards my good behavior
My secret soul, I know He's seen it He says, come here baby and
kiss me like you mean it He calls me baby, says kiss me like you mean it
He is my life and my salvation He's always right, He's always patient
I pinch myself It's like I'm dreaming it... He is my love, He's always been it..."

The sister missionaries make me think of this song, or vice versa. But I'm afraid to tell them.

Stephin Merritt says, "Of course it's not a gospel song, really, or if it's a gospel song it's--well, I guess it's blasphemy either way. It's more about a B & D relationship."

Either way, what these girls are doing to me, it's relentless and soon, when they call, I'm going to quote Stephin Merritt, the "rabid militant atheist."

Soon girls, very soon.

Think Rattlebrained

This morning I'm up early reading junk e-mail, trying to find the right place to buy my Viagra. How can a person not be intrigued by the following subject line:

"it use turban?"

So I keep reading.

"was so refute decorative pullulate"

I look up the definition of pullulate. It's a verb.

To put forth sprouts or buds; germinate.
To breed rapidly or abundantly.
To teem; swarm: a lagoon that pullulated with tropical fish.

I look up the definition for decorative.

serving or tending to decorate.
Fine Arts. serving only to decorate, in contrast to providing a meaningful experience.

"decorative pullulate"

the abundant breeding of unmeaningful artistic experience?

"Was so refute decorative pullulate"

That's good, right?

But my favorite part is the ending,

"think rattlebrained," it says.

I like that. I'm going to use it as much as possible.

One woman's junk is another woman's treasure.

keeping calm

Dreams

All of us in bed by ten. An early night with the boy to come in first. A bad dream. Then she wakes sneezing, enough to need a sip of Benadryl and a box of tissues. It is after I've moved the boy back to his bed and she's settled that I have the dream. I am wearing yellow rubber gloves, the ones my mother used to wear while cleaning the toilet or the sink. There's a picture on the package of a woman looking pretty and wearing the gloves. I am in our aqua-tiled bathroom and I am not cleaning. I am looking for a shower curtain, a brown and black and white and green one that I bought at the outlets when we pulled the tile. It has been replaced by a white, vinyl shower curtain and I am frantic. I tear at the white curtain with the yellow gloves, but nothing, until I wake him with a cry, the muffled scream that comes through in my dream. "I had a bad dream," I say, and he wants to know what about. I am embarrassed to say that it's about yellow gloves and a white shower curtain. I'm embarrassed that this is what makes a bad dream for me.

I go back to sleep by three and the baby's up at five. Her fever is gone and she eats a banana. There is peace in the early morning darkness. I hear the train against its tracks and I think about dreams, how we can't stop them or change them. I think about what your dreams must be like as you remember things or fear things or want things, as you remember who you've known and what you've lost.

Bedbug Sleep Tight

I get a phone call this morning, one I've been anticipating for three months.

"Calling to tell you and the kids that I love you," he says. "And to follow up on the birthday call. I'm not very good at follow up, but I'm here now."

"I'm glad that you're here now," I say.

Apparently I am the last person to know anything because HE has to tell ME about the bedbugs, summoned between early a.m. film job and late p.m. wait job to fetch ice and move furniture. The headline might read:

Wanted guest brings unwanted guests.

As if she needs another thing to fret about, my sister a single mother of three. The retelling of the story is funny; my brother spins a yarn complete with drama, humour, love, strange things encased in plastic and a high speed chase in her Toyota Rav, blasting "Highway to Hell" along the quiet streets of Salt Lake City, self motivational tape ejected for ACDC, a little sanity.

His stories always come back around to them. How we've changed, how they might have changed, how we might have changed them, when to give up, when to accept, and when to move on.

"She's our sister," he says. "We love her."

"Of course we do," I say. "But what is there to do?"

"I've go an album for you," I say. "Nebraska."

"And I've got one for you," he says. "Hail to the Thief."

We pause briefly, resume talk.

"No! there isn't litigation. Yes, my landlord is crazy. No, you shouldn't worry. Yes, I have a place to live."

"Can you let me know that you're around? More often? A text message--anytime--one word--hello. Because I love you."

"O.K., fine," he says.

And it is fine. This phone call is fine. He's fine. She's fine. They're fine. It's all fine. The Book says that it will be fine, and it will be. It will all be fine.

Finally, it is all fine.