Last day here
After dozens of car-trips, boxes filled with belongings with ever-decreasing organization;

After finding takers for our couch, our television, our DVD player (kitchen table and chairs still up for grabs. Just come to our curb around three p.m. today);

After borrowing our friends’ van to move three bookshelves, a desk and miscellany lamps;

Now remains only the task of cleaning the place. Last night, our last night there, we marveled at the width and height of the fur/dust bunnies that had made homes behind dressers and bedside tables, but we were tired enough to leave the sweeping till today. We will follow the tumbling clouds of dust around with a broom, picking out the flotsam they carry: pens, a cassette-tape, a hand-crafted birthday card from last year; tossing most away in yet another trash-bag. Our power and heat gets shut off today, so we must be quick and finish before nightfall.

Then we will gather up cat and dog, the odd paperback that fell behind the t.v. stand in September - and we will leave our second and final apartment. Tonight you will sleep with the dog at a friend’s; Cat and I will sleep in a new house. Soon, someone else will rent this apartment, and our only shared space will be what we create between us on visits.

Thankful for the Comp Days
I am grateful – even, yes, thankful for my job, which I managed to score by basically hanging around Small Publication doing anything they wanted, till they hired me.
Still, it’s strange to be here working on a holiday weekend.

I have such strong memories associated with the holidays, all sepia-tinted and smelling like my grandmother and grandfather’s kitchen: like last night’s wine and this morning’s coffee, all mixed together. The floor of their kitchen was vinyl and creaked in a spot right in front of the table. We’d drive up to their house for Thanksgiving sometimes, but always for Christmas.

Aside from the fact that Christmas did indeed equal the big gift binge for us and thus forced Thanksgiving into a sad little supporting role – I think the fact that my grandparents’ big old house in Harrisburg was always the site for Christmas also added to that idea that Thanksgiving was just secondary. We still talk with our cousins, when we see them, about how that house meant Christmas, when the whole family used to spend it together. It meant all of the kids spending the night in one room and staying up late, whispering and daring one another to go check out the loot downstairs.
Before we all splintered off into different families who live on different sections of the map and don't really know one another anymore.


Jesus may love you, but Santa’s totally pissed.
On the Friday after Thanksgiving, my sister and I always used to rush for the newspaper to cut out the Christmas Special television listings and pushpin it to the bulletin board. We’d circle or highlight the good specials - like T’was the Night Before Christmas, and ignore those featuring singing celebrities.

T’was the Night Before Christmas was the cartoon with the catchiest songs of any special ev - er, hands-down. It’s about a young intellectual mouse who denies Santa Claus’s existence, causing Saint Nick to get all pouty and rescind Christmas (Christmas =ing presents, of course) altogether.

This part, I recall, features a montage of weeping children ‘round the globe, including little tykes in hospitals. They don’t show Santa here, but if they had, viewers would see him sequestered in a room in his North Pole cottage, drinking his pain away. He is dressed in an old white wifebeater shirt and the red pants. His beard is stained amber with bourbon. He is mostly nodded off in an easy chair.

T’was the Night… was one of the more Christianity-heavy specials, which was odd since it also equated “no presents from Santa” with “no Christmas.” Maybe that’s why they portrayed such a cold, cold Santa. Or a Santa so fraught with human-frailty, I should say: A St. Nick subject to a mid-life crisis of sorts – set off by a seemingly small comment from one young mouse. Maybe the underlying message is: Jesus would never do that! -right? So don’t put your faith in that violently erratic Santa, young tyke!

Unless Santa is an metaphor for Jesus and it’s all about scaring the youngins into blind faith, lest they piss off the Lord. Well, I just don’t know. It would bear another viewing, which is why it’s good to know T’was the Night… will air here in Atlanta next Wednesday night. Don’t miss it.

Tunnel vision
The huge towers of boxes in our apartment between which we scurry every day only adds to it.

Sorry for the paucity of entries of late. I’m in the middle of moving; Hunter’s in the middle of moving someplace else. Our house is a wreck. I work; I come home; I pack and drive boxes to my new place. I get home, look around the apartment, and it seems as if I have gotten rid of nothing.

Too much stuff.
In more than one sense, of course.

And no break till Christmas when I get two whole days or so to drive to Pittsburgh.

In the meantime I read bad/good sci-fi leant to me from my sister to pretend I’m not here.

Now, more than ever: Desire to hop a plane for Mexico and stay for weeks, maybe forever...
I went backpacking there a few years ago, and now Vicente Fox’s entire nation has become synonymous in my mind with the utmost indolence – where my biggest problems were achy backpack-shoulders and the fact that I smelled from days of not showering and didn't care. Eating fish tacos on the street, dancing like a drunken, stupid turista Americana on tour boats in the Sea of Cortez - and not ever, ever thinking even one day in advance. Sorry, Zapatistas. No disrespect to your fine nation intended.

Hey, hey hey.
Word on the street today in HOT-lanta is that Bill Cosby’s comin’ to town tonight to lay down his message of tough love. Apparently, “Cosby, who has a doctorate in education, has criticized black parents who have NOT taken an active role in their children's upbringing and education.”


And

“The 67-year-old Cosby has criticized the rap music industry for promoting sex and violence and blames consumers for rewarding what he calls the misbehavior by buying the products.”

Well, you know. I can see where he’s coming from. But I can also see why it says, at the end of the article,

“Critics, including many blacks, have criticized Cosby of being out of touch with the people he is criticizing.”

Remember that episode of The Cosby Show where Stevie Wonder’s driver hits Theo’s car – and the whole family ends up jamming with Stevie Wonder in his studio? Remember how toe-curlingly **excited** all the Huxtable children are, at getting to meet Stevie Wonder? Like jumping-up-and-down-and-squealing excited? Including the bohemian-styled oldest daughter? Including the son with sorta-kinda sometimes rebellious-esque tendencies?

Now, come on; you know those kids woulda been listening to some damn Run DMC!

That’s all I’m saying, Dr. Cosby. And that’s not so bad, right?

Happy Things
Nearly two weeks ago, it was Halloween, and we had a great time at a party. I also had the best costume I’ve had in years: Lady Justice, as censored by John Ashcroft. I stayed appropriately modest and used yellow caution tape to cover up the area that so offended Mr. Ashcroft. It was a freaking great costume. Then we all went swimming, because it’s Atlanta and it was 80-degrees on Halloween.

I’m wearing cute shoes that would be the most comfortable ever if they were one size larger. But they’re sure cute.

I had a major thrift-score over the weekend with some cute jobby clothes and some cute miscellany clothes. In fact, I had a really good weekend, period. Hunter and I went out to breakfast on Saturday and romped with Otis in the woods and then I went out to see I Heart Huckabees with a friend o’ mine. It was rillyrilly good. Did anyone else think Jude Law was almost too good? Yikes. Teeth that white give me the jim-jams.

And on Sunday night, I went to this awards ceremony for Hunter whose essay got accepted into a literary journal ‘cause he’s fancy - and on the way home, we sang that Lou Reed “Wake me, shake me, please don’t let me sleep too long,” song in a made-up antiphonal style because we’re musical geniuses, the both of us, when we’re speeding down ‘285.

And lastly, it was good to hang out with my soon-to-be roommates this weekend, getting real angry together and then laughing our asses off.

A Conflation of Life and Politics
Okay, so I’m back.

Back from being glum –and thus, depressing to you, my reader.

Back from wearing black every day.

Back from gazing down at my effortlessly butt-wagging, tongue-dangling, grass munching, tail-chasing dog - and up at the deep, deep blue November sky, wondering how on earth either of these things can be possible.


In other words, back from last Tuesday. I swear it.

My writing here will be easy like Sunday morning. As funny and witty and wry as the Me I was when I still slept. I promise you: No tedium. No hand-wringing.
I will make you laugh, dammit.


I still, however, may have some trouble whenever I hear that voice on the radio news at night. You know the one. Let’s clock whose hand gets to the volume-dial first.

What I hate, now.
To continue to learn still more things about W. and his administration. Lies the cadre is telling or that they’ve told, atrocious actions they’ve taken domestically or internationally. Before, these things were terrible to hear, but they added fuel to my fire, to my proof that this administration was simply Wrong and needed to go - and to my belief that certainly now..or now, and most definitely, Now - others would really hear and see - and start questioning and Not vote for W. on November second.

But now, hearing more from and about this administration just makes me feel powerless, because nothing’s changed. Incapable. Instead of fuel to my fire, it’s like dirt on our collective freaking grave.

I kinda didn't think this would happen.

I mean yes, I was freaking out and have had the giant knot in pit of belly for the last several months or so, but somehow I thought it would work out. I always do.

And when I think about what egregiously bad leaders our president and his collective cadre are, it just strikes me dumbfounded that so many people could vote for him. What is it they say about fascism, though? - It works much, much better when people believe they're making their own choices, right?

So there ya go, I guess. And no, I don't think I'm exagerrating by bringing up the spectre of fascism, not one bit. That's government controlled by corporations, people. Look around.
Okay, I've gotta stop, here.

Last night Hunter and I went to a bar and huddled with other folks around this guy's laptop, while he refreshed a screen of red and blue states.

Then I went home and to bed because I have to get up way early for work. Hunter went to a rock show and told me if the news was good when the show ended, he'd wake me up and we'd do a victory jig in the street at one or two in the morning or whenever.

But I woke up in the middle of the night and Hunter was sleeping beside me. No jig and I had a tough time falling asleep again.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed, though. What else can ya do.

Now I'm hearing on the news right now that Bush is planning announcing his victory, even though we've received no concession from Kerry. What a gent.

Me and the Hippies
I’ve lived in Atlanta for nearly five years. In that time, I’ve gone through about three cycles of meeting friends who then find jobs/schooling elsewhere and move away. Now I’m at another one of those points when it’s up to me, New York, New York, to find more local-style compadres. Here’s the weird thing, though: Every time I try to do this, it seems I end up with a preponderance of interactions with folks a couple generations up from where I want to be, ideally, in my err, friend age-base, let’s say.

That is to say, every outlet I use to try to intentionally make some more freaking friends in this town puts me in contact with, no, not other twenty or thirty-somethings, nor the folks of my parents’ generation, but that generation there in the middle: yuppified Atlantans in their forties and fifties. See following evidence:

#1 I started attending the Unitarian Universalist church in town soon after I moved here. I was born and raised UU and in some ways, the big old UU church here feels like home. Except that while growing up, I had friends my age I ran around with at church. At the Atlanta church, I see maybe three people in their twenties in a full month of attendance. There are a lot of folks in their late thirties with children, and then everyone else is a silver-haired ex-hippie.

#2 I’ve been looking for a new place to live because Hunter’s moving to Wisconsin in January. One idea that seemed sort of “Eureka!”-like was to look at this one intentional community in town. No, not a commune. More like sort of a gated community where all the houses have footpaths between them, where there are community potluck dinners and activities every week. Yes: Madison WI, in miniature.

I really am not a fan of the idea of a gated community in the sense that it shuts out the rest of the world, but I will say I was somewhat seduced by this one, because the whole point seemed to be building community. But then when I went for a visit – I don’t know what I expected, but – the place had a gate with a keypad, just like any other Post Apartment complex in Atlanta.

But then, once inside, it was people gardening! Kids running around wild, playing! People smiling and waving at me! Including the prospective roommate I was visiting who turned out to be, wouldn’t ya know it, a forty-something year-old ex-hippie. As in: Five-million windchimes. As in: black-velvet paintings of Sitting Bull on the walls. As in: drum-circling. (Once a week, in her living room.)

And then, apart from age and personal aesthetics, there was the interesting moment within ten minutes of meeting, when the following interaction took place:

(Let’s just call her) “Stevie”: So, you have a boyfriend. That means you’ll be having…visits, right?
Alice: Visits?
Stevie: Overnight visits.
Alice: Yes. I-
Stevie: -That’s fine. Really, that’s fine. I have a boyfriend, too. But he won’t be spending the night.
Alice:
Stevie: We’ve been seeing each-other for six months. But I won’t sleep with him. Now the power is with me.
Alice: Ah.

So yes: A Rules Girl in a Patchwork Vest.


Another thing though, is that when I asked her casually about the age-range of folks at Intentional Community, she said: Some young parents with babies and kids, and then a whole bunch of forty-and-fifty-somethings like her. (Which I guess means there won’t be any New babies any time soon.)

She thought that maybe there were a couple of people in their twenties, but they were the most transient of residents and she couldn’t remember the names of the current ones.

#3: I just started doing yoga again. The standard in my head when I was looking for a group was my class in college: a diversity of students in a relaxed-yet-challenging atmosphere. I remember our cool-as-ice instructor scowling at the thump-thump-thumping of the step-class next-door and then telling us it was actually the best sort of challenge.
My Internet search gave me a huge range of classes and choices; nothing immediately resembling the group from college. So I called one of the ministers from the UU Church and described what I was looking for. She recommended to me an instructor who leads very small classes in of her house in Stone Mountain – and it was actually in my price range!

So I went and joined a group of - surprise, surprise - five or six 50-and 60-somethings in the instructor’s Klimpt-reproduction and black-velvet-painting (yet again!) -lined living room. There was even dolphin-sounds music. And you know what? It was fine. It really was. For the purposes of yoga, it’s fine.

For the purposes of friend-making though, I still felt at a loss. Yes I know, with five-million yoga classes to choose from in town, I would pick the one with zero young people at all. I’m the one who used the UU Church to find the damn class.

When I told my brother-in-law all this on Saturday, he laughed and said I was a big hippie, anyway. But I’m not! Do you smell patchouli? Do you see a profusion of crystals and/or candles in my house? Do you sense hypochondria, here? A cupboard filled with vitamins and flaxseed oil?

I guess I probably share some of the values of the ol’ aging flower children, but I am also rather opposed to the overwhelming sense of self-centeredness that characterizes that generation. (And yet she writes a blog, ladies and gentlemen. Well, yes.)

I like the odd Allman Brothers tune, but I like punk rock more. I eat tofu, but I also eat steak. I’d like to develop a real community of friends who actually live near my zip code, but I don’t want to have to attend activities like this one.

Damn this transient town.

I was one of those youngsters who got along really well with my parents’ friends. At dinner parties, I was charming. Cute. As I grew into gawky adolescence, the Cute went away; this trait simply morphed into the unmistakable hallmark of geekiness.

How to get by when you’re a geeky young Pittsburgh adolescent:

Impress your mom’s friends by talking about the latest Time magazine cover article.

Get beat up on, on regular basis, by Layla Morelli and her gang of big-haired friends

Read Sassy magazine to feel better.

Let older sister play beautician on your hair, including bleaching platinum

When Layla sneers, “Is that your natural hair color?!” mumble “yes.”

Become a major Billy Joel fan. Listen again and again to “Streetlife Serenader,” seeking the acute meaning that seems to lie just beneath its surface.

Trip and fall onto a manhole-cover on Halloween.
Come to school next day with crutches. Deny rumor that you’re totally faking.

Get mono in April. Miss rest of school-year. Spend your days reading Archie comics given to you by older sister’s friend. Hate Veronica.

Go to Mexico with grandma in the summer. Let it change you so that you return the next year, transformed and worldly.

By the time I hit 15, 16, I’d pretty much grown out of it and spent most of my time packed into a giant diesel station wagon with a hoard of smoking teenagers listening to Morrissey. There is actually a present-day point to my starting off on this, but I don’t have time to get into it now. So that’ll have to wait till my next post.