I was moping on the couch, trying to get work done the other day when this email flashes across my screen from the Ogden After Hours – Mary Gauthier is there tonight. The wonder of living here. Flower gets in late, we’ll start her visit with some good music.
Yesterday, I spent all day studying different areas that inform media and I realized how often it is easy to suffer from tunnel vision. I’ve been sitting in the same bath water for so long, it’s gotten polluted. As a fiction writer, I always abided by the notion that all things inform your work – art begets literature begets architecture begets dance begets music begets just about everything – even the food you eat, which by the way I learned in yoga yesterday should be diverse to get all your vitamins – but as you look at an industry trying to understand the moving parts and the players and the directions – you get saddled with what everyone else knows biasing you to look a certain way – if you use a different lens, you see things, different directions, alternative realities and possibilities and suddenly what was dirty water becomes a fecund pond with lily pads and little frogs hopping around. Well, why not frogs?
I had this surreal moment this morning coming out of the park and seeing the mayor of the hood. I remembered a dream he was in last night where we were sitting in his kitchen eating waffles. I was at the corner and the streetcar was coming, and I saw him to the right with his dog, and then a nun appeared out of nowhere and was crossing in front of us. That wasn’t the dream, that was this morning.
I caught up with him and told him about the waffles and he said, funny you should say that, we made fresh homemade waffles this morning for the first time in a long time and even had flax seed oil in them and everything.
For the record, I’m not looking to make Tatjana my fourth husband, in case inquiring minds want to know why I’m obsessed about this Prop 8 nonsense – but I really can’t believe in this day and age that gay people can’t get married. I came across this today and have to say transparency never sounded so good (please also, ahem, note the reference to do onto others):
Barely woke this morning because I felt like my whole body had jet lag and basically have moved through the day in that constant state of feeling peaked, puny, under the weather. I went to yoga to try to shake the feeling, and while it provided a temporary reprieve, I almost felt like crying when I was in downward dog.
I have spent the better part of the afternoon working from the den, and even though it is in the same house, I feel as if I am working remotely and actually have gotten more done in this strange room than I could have up in my office.
A photographer friend of ours came over last night to shoot some pics of T and me. He’s doing a piece on femininity, challenging the notion of what it means. For T and me, it’s uncanny, how our looks betray us – yet it took me world enough and time to come to this realization on my own.
The exhibit will be on display at Swirl, opening the first Friday of December.
We spoke this morning with an attorney who specializes in adoptions, her experience, knowledge and big heart assured us of our next moves. This is my Daily Affirmation:
November 10, 2008
I give thanks for all those who have come before me and brought enlightenment to the world. Their legacy enriches me beyond measure.
Adoption, Stardate 111008. This morning we threw our names to the universe via domestic and international attorneys for a baby, whether that baby be black, yellow, or white, boy or girl, we made no distinction, we just said to the universe and anyone listening that here in our home and hearts, we have all a baby needs to thrive.
Now, we wait for the wonder of what comes next.
When we got to mom’s apartment last night, the men from Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador were sitting around the parking lot with beer and cigarettes. We went up the stairs and found my mom sitting there with candles lit all around her, smoking a cigarette and drinking a bourbon.
I wondered later as I was falling asleep if she takes comfort in the night air there, overhearing the man to man conversations in Spanish, listening to the dogs whimpering in the yard across the fence, if there is something in her that romanticizes this existence over coming over here to the bayou to live with a view of the water, the pelicans, around neighbors and family who would care for her, to be in the familiar that she seems to have been running from all her life.
I rode my bike to the Lakefront this morning. It was the first time I had been on the bike since the MS 150 ride. My playlist was God on Sunday, a tweaked version of a playlist I had made to visit friends years ago in Ponchatoula on Easter Sunday. It’s actually a great compilation – from Why Me Lord, by Kris Kristofferon, to God Makes No Mistakes by Loretta Lynn. The criteria is the singer has to say God once in the lyrics.
As I rode towards the water, I thought about Proposition 8 and the signs I saw people carrying as they picketed the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake (apparently the Mormons were hugely behind the effort to defeat same sex marriages and had marshaled all their troops) – some of the signs said “God is Love” and “I love my Gay Son” and “Love One Another.”
Years ago, my brother, who considers himself a rabbi, even though he should spend more time familiarizing himself with the law rather than religion, told me the story of a Torah student who asked what the Talmud teaches. The rabbi told the student to stand on one foot, to put the Torah on his head, and to rub his stomach at the same time and memorize the following “do onto others as you would have them do unto you.”
In my wanderings away from Judaism, I retained a few ticks and a few keepers. One of the ticks are statues of gods, which always make a me a little uneasy. One of the keepers the do onto others part. Imagine how you would feel if tomorrow you woke up and a group of people decided you were not conforming to a standard that needed to be met for you to marry the one you love, raise a child with your partner, and leave your inheritance to your amor.
Imagine; also on my God playlist.