Crying on the Playground

It has been a while since I have stood in the middle of a playground and cried.

This is a half-truth.

I have stood in the middle of a playground and cried more often in the last 4 years than I did in probably my entire childhood. But it still catches me by surprise almost every time. I have also stood in an auditorium and cried, in a school cafeteria and cried, and in a classroom, and one time in the hallway.

It's embarrassing.

But not really.

I stood on the playground of the monkeys' new school yesterday afternoon in the brilliant, warm autumn sunlight and cried. I was wearing large sunglasses, so my tears were mostly hidden.

I watched 300 little people in lime green shirts walk in circles and I cried.

I cried because all last week I was grumbling about how our state is lame and under-funds our schools; about how the powers that be think that things like art and music and theater and classroom aides and vice principals are luxuries in education and we have to go, hat in hand, to ask for money for our schools several times a year. And yet, on this sunny Wednesday afternoon, dozens of parents took time out of their schedules to count laps, hand out stickers and pretzels and small cups of water, to cheer for little students and to dance to loud music. I cried because people who didn't have to, happily wrote checks to be given to teachers in grubby little crumpled envelopes so my kids could paint pictures and sing songs.

I cried because there were hundreds of kids walking with purpose in laps around the playground, collecting stickers for each lap as if it were the most important thing in the world. I cried because they were laughing and singing and clapping and skipping and happy to do it, full of pride for their school.

I cried because after searching the sea of constant motion, all in matching T-shirts, I saw my jBird. She's a cygnet on her way to a swan. She was walking alone with a goofy grin and an occasional shimmy to the music, her head tilted forward in determination and her little wings flapping. I missed her on her first few laps because I was looking for someone shorter, less mature, closer to the chubbiness of the baby she was than the long and lean and graceful young lady she's becoming. I cried because when she saw me, her pretense melted away and she came clopping over on suddenly larger feet and uneven teeth and breathless and said "I am having so much fun!" Because she asked me to walk with her and was still child enough to proudly hold my hand and giggle at my ridiculous jokes. Because she let go of my hand when I walked too slowly, telling me: "I need to do this."

I cried because my Hooligan cruised up with a friend in tow, their hands full of snacks and water, and told me they had 'Nilla Wafers. Because he is so very much himself, my slow and steady tortoise who stops for snacks whenever they're offered. Because he will happily participate in whatever is there and find a way to make it suit him. Because he is so small, but such a large presence there, whooping and singing and exclaiming about the food. Because he doesn't seem to care about anything but then saves important things up to tell me later. Because he wanted to sit in my lap and show me his stickers, but then realized he had to get up if he wanted to get more. Because he is still so much my baby, but goes mightily about his business.

I cried because while I watched the two of them holding hands and urging each other along, another mother, a stranger, told me they were sweet and I was lucky they were such good friends.

I cried for all of it. For the community and the generosity. For the absurdity and the silliness. For the determination and the spirit. For what is past and what is yet to come. For this fleeting moment on a weekday afternoon where I could be suspended in time for just a little while and watch them walk in circles. For the knowledge that they are really walking onward, heads tilted forward in determination, small wings flapping and growing stronger, ambling and charging and occasionally stopping for snacks.

I stood on the playground and cried.
It's embarrassing.
But not really.

Tangled Fables: The House that Freud Built

Once upon a time there were three roommates. They lived in a damp and cave-like place that was filled with odd bits of furniture and mythical beasts. It was often cramped and chaotic, with dust on the shelves, floors that frequently moved like the deck of a ship at sea and the windows and doors had a habit of relocating unexpectedly. There were brilliant spots of sunlight, though and some pleasant comfy chairs, so they made an uneasy peace with their surroundings.

Ichabod Droolie was immature and whimsical. He wandered about the house, belching and scratching and telling scatological jokes. He shrieked and cackled at his own humor and casually upended trash bins and jewelry boxes and then rolled around in the debris. He was a tiresome roommate, but amusing. He had an odd sweetness about him that made him tolerable at times and was so blessedly naive, that the other two roommates liked to keep him around, in spite of the mess and the appalling behavior.

Egotha was generally easy going, or so she liked to think. She was the middle of this trio and could see things from both sides. She was a little bit messy, herself, but mostly meant well. She just wanted to mind her own business and get along. She liked to laugh, but sometimes would stop short and wonder if it was all right. She craved the sunny spots and soft, comfy chairs, but frequently acquiesced when her other, more vociferous roommates demanded them. She spent a lot of time trying to facilitate disagreements between Ichabod Droolie and her other roommate, who was, oddly enough, also called Egotha.

The other Egotha was ancient, almost primordial, a shriveled old prune and she wasn't much fun. She preferred not to be called Egotha Senior because she was sensitive about such things. "Call me Super Egotha," she insisted. Mostly because she deeply believed in her superiority to these other two slobs with whom she lived. Super Egotha was in a permanent state of aghast. She was fussy and fastidious, overly critical and strict; and although she would never admit it, her roommates thought she was tedious. She spent a lot of time and energy bossing the other two about, demanding they clean up their messes and stop laughing so much. She was a chore, but the other two tolerated her because she did help keep things tidier and they believed that in spite of her methods, she had their best interests at heart.

These three lived in a sort of detente, occupying the same space and trying not to get in each other's ways too much. Every now and then there were golden moments in which they three would catch themselves happily enjoying tea together and laughing like friends. But almost as soon as those moments came, the recognition of them would send them scurrying self-consciously behind their napkins. Except for Ichabod Droolie. He would rip a great billowing fart and laugh until the tears ran down his face, laughing all the harder as the other two gagged and choked on his fumes.

Ichabod's only employment was amusing himself. He played video games, ate cookies and left the crumbs around and even though he was really quite intelligent, he frittered away hours doing things like contemplating light switches and smelling his own armpits. Super Egotha had aspirations so wild they immobilized her. She wanted to save the world, buy them all a Coke and teach them to hold hands and sing. Because she could only fail at the impossible tasks she set for herself, she instead contented herself with endlessly wiping counters, folding clothes and vacuuming the ceiling. All the while, tut-tutting and sighing the deeply passive-aggressive sighs of one who felt so put-upon by her own constructions.

Egotha decided that somebody needed to pay the rent, so she set about to use her skills in a way that both mattered and amused her. She decided she would tell stories about the things that fascinated her and try to see if they fascinated other people. She was unsure about this decision but it had clung to her for so long that she wasn't sure it was wise to ignore it any more. So she set about gathering her tools and making a space in their cramped abode to do this very thing.

She sat down one day in a patch of sunlight and rolled a fresh sheet of paper into her typewriter and started to type. The words danced and splattered onto the page and she was feeling quite satisfied with the clackety ring of the keys and the words. Ichabod wandered in and looked over her shoulder, spilling his beer into her hair as he did so. "Boobies!" he bellowed, "You need to add more boobies! Funny!" Egotha giggled a bit, but shooed him away as he danced and hollered swear words and twisted her train of thought into a bungled heap. Egotha shook her now-sticky hair and began to focus once again. "I will think about funny," she assured Ichabod, "but let me think. Stop shouting in my ear." But alas, as she set to work again, all she could do was hear his ringing shout: "Boobies!" and giggle to herself.

Drawn by the distraction, Super Egotha stormed into the room and clobbered Ichabod with a feather duster, sending him whimpering to his room. She turned her attention to Egotha and started to read over her shoulder. Super Egotha's sighs got louder and louder and were combined with foot tapping and lip smacking until it was deafening. "You're wasting your time," she said. "Just who do you think you are? I just don't see the value in it. Isn't there something more useful you could be doing?" She kept up her nattering until Egotha, deflated and distracted couldn't bear it any more. "This is what I want to do! It isn't entirely useless! I have to at least try!" she shouted. Super Egotha rolled her eyes and huffed around. "Who cares what you want? Why do you inflict yourself on others so?" and then she wandered off to scrub the floor, muttering to herself as she went about starving children and self-indulgence and hand baskets and hell.

Near tears and fed up, Egotha packed away the typewriter for the day and went out for a walk. It was so claustrophobic sometimes, living with these roommates. But she couldn't leave them, not completely. She could only continue to make her peace and try to snatch some moments alone when they were otherwise occupied. Her only hope was to sometimes get in a belching contest with Ichabod and and laugh until it hurt; sometimes help with the cooking and cleaning and the saving of the world so Super Egotha would stop breathing down her neck; and sometimes demand their silence so that she could sit and write their story.

Facing the Music

I'm sure nobody ever does this, but you know how when you stuff the dryer so full of things that all seem to have large metal snaps or buttons? You know how it makes that semi-rhythmic clank, thump, bang, scratch noise? Not quite rhythmic enough to habituate to and tune out, but not quite distressing enough to actually go and do anything about it? Maybe it's just me. Major household appliances and I have very hesitant relationships. We're like the U.S. and China that way. We need each other, depend on each other, but never quite trust each other and find it culturally impossible to see from the other's point of view. I don't want to talk about dryers. Or Sino-American relations, really. That noise, though.

That noise is the closest approximation to what it sounds like most of the time inside my head. There is always a sort of clanking and thumping going on. Sometimes I can go about my business and let it just bang and shudder away in the background and ignore it until the cycle is finished and that loud BUUUUZZZZZZ! echoes all around and lets me know it's time to go write down what I was thinking about or to take care of a certain piece of business, or actively claim a decision I've been working on.

Just like the dryer, I try not to set it to work right before bed, or when it might be left untended and inadvertently set things on fire. I clean out the lint trap according to the manufacturer's instructions.  I try to be as efficient as possible in my use of energy and air dry as much as possible. Sometimes, though, whew. Some days it's just a little too loud. Some days it just thumps and clangs and jumps and seems to never stop. I start to wonder if the heating element is gone and it will never stop. Maybe it has thrown a belt or something. Maybe (and this is the nightmare) it will need to be replaced. Those days I finally throw the door open to make it stop and walk away, but then inevitably I just end up with a pile of damp, mildewy jeans.

I was thinking of this clank-thump-bang phenomenon today as I puttered around my quiet house. It was quiet on the outside anyway, but that Maytag of the mind was working hard to dry what sounded like a load of soggy pygmy goats. I was dreaming up tiny mutton recipes when it hit me. Music. Since we've moved, I haven't set up my stereo. Mostly because it's about ten years old and only half works and we've been discussing replacing it for about five years. I usually attach my iPod to a set of tiny speakers and put them where ever I am, but the speakers met an untimely death involving a Hooligan and a rocking chair and a potty emergency. I don't wear headphones when the kids are home with just me because well, because. The long and the short and the baaa-baaa clank of it is that I have been puttering without music.

Without my friends that live in the speakers who sing and growl and scream and strum and thump their drums or yodel or whatever I feel like listening to, I am stuck with the clamor of my overheated dryer brain stuffed with gravel. When I went to pick up my jBird from her guitar lesson feeling hot and frazzled and unable to express coherent thought, I was met at the door by a wall of sound. Beethoven's 5th on vinyl, blasted through really good speakers. I very nearly wept. It was better than a massage, better than a long nap or a haircut.

It's time for me to face the music. I can't change the way this clunker of a mind works. I can't change this clanking, thumping brain of mine. I can work to use it as efficiently as possible, acknowledge its quirks, take care of it and perform routine maintenance, but I can't trade it in for a new model, and I can't waste a lot of time and energy wishing it were different. It's as inevitable as laundry, it will drive me nuts from time to time. What the guitar teacher and Beethoven reminded me of this week, though, is that I can do like I do on laundry day: turn the music loud and power through the work that needs to be done. 

Unlikely Inspiration

I have had the good fortune over the last few weeks of being really obnoxious and stirring up misunderstandings with several people about whom I care a great deal.

You know how sometimes you're grumpy and you think, "Why is everyone in the whole world so stupid and annoying?!" and then you have a quiet moment to sit and reflect and realize that it can't possibly be everyone in the whole world, so it's probably you? Well, it's been kind of like that.

How can all these people who know I love them take what I say so wrong?! Chances are it's because I'm saying it wrong, or I'm saying things I don't need to, or because I'm running off at the mouth without thinking things all the way through.

I have a host of excuses that come and pat me on the back and cluck their tongues and sympathize with me: You're tired, you poor dear. You didn't really mean that. Everyone has bad days. There were extenuating circumstances. You are a rare and unique snowflake who is frequently misunderstood. You had good intentions. You are only human. And any other number of gentle self-bolstering murmurings. It's not that these things are not true. But what does it matter if my intentions were good when my ill-chosen words (or seriously, complete diatribes) hurt someone else?

You know that feeling of not knowing the snappy comeback and then later you think of all of these marvelously wicked things you could have said? I almost never have that feeling. Not because I am so nice. Because I can almost always think of the snappy comeback. I can flatten someone with words if I feel cornered, insulted, or even just mildly irritated. It is a far worse feeling to have flattened someone than to have stood speechless and blinking. But this is not the sort of thing I'm talking about, really. I don't often get into verbal confrontations like that any more.

No, sadly, I'm talking about the sort of well-reasoned, articulate, contemplated blowing of hot air from atop a self-designed pedestal that deflates people. Not on purpose. But because my purpose was unclear, or because my own ego decided to come and do a little jig in the forefront of my brain, drowning out anything anyone else was saying. Where I allow the part of myself that fears itself and other people to do the talking for me. The kind of thing where I project the nonsense of my own neuroses onto a screen of other people's lives and superimpose my perspective over everything like some kind of grainy, B-grade horror flick. And not the "so bad it's good" kind, not the cult classic. Nope. It's the kind that leaves people groaning and outraged that they've wasted their time with it. The kind that has people looking for their car keys and trying to make a hasty egress halfway through.

You may have spotted up there that I said "good fortune". I was not being sarcastic. This month I am writing about the things that inspire me from day to day. If I am completely honest with myself, a major source of inspiration for me both in life and in writing is to stop and reflect on my own bad behavior. There are things that I struggle with constantly. There are elements of my personality that I detest. I gave up worrying over a less-than-supermodel appearance years ago. When people ask what I would change about myself, I never think of my love handles. I think of my tongue. For every gift, there is a light and a dark side. For everything we do well and naturally, there is an abuse of the talent.

I have been blessed with a certain amount of ability to express myself with words. I can't dance, I don't draw or paint well, I will only ever be a moderate to poor musician, but I can sometimes turn a phrase. I take this for granted. I assume that it comes naturally to other people. It is not usually a difficult or arduous task to sit and think of things to say or write or imagine. I like words, I like to play with them and see what they will do. I live intentionally to try to use those words for building up, drawing closer or describing a common condition. I have my own personalized paving stones in the road to hell in this particular regard. Sometimes, because they flow so easily, because I have practiced commanding them, I get emotionally lazy or careless or just plain arrogant and forget or ignore the effect they can have. Sometimes they tear down, push away, and attempt to define myself outside a certain boundary. This is not a source of pride for me. It is a misuse of ability and really just generally obnoxious and tiresome.

Why is this inspiring to me? Because these brushes with my darker nature, my egregious missteps, these confrontations with the ugly things within me spur me on to do better, to be better, to live better. I compete and contend with these demons every day. It is through this acknowledgement of my own shortcomings that I push myself further to learn how to love better, how to relate better, how to soften the edges and recognize the gaping holes. I'm still learning. Every day I fail at something in one way or another. Sometimes more spectacularly than others. I accept this. I am, after all, only human. But being human does not excuse me from trying to be a better human. This is my inspiration: the gifts of growth, of humbling experiences, the gift of a chance to learn and move onward, upward, outward some more.

My New Japanese Boyfriend

It is amazing the things you discover when you read books.

I always shudder a little bit when people proudly announce "I don't read." Not out of snobbery. I don't really care what you read, it needn't be all high brow and incomprehensible. But reading is just one of those fundamental elements of life. Through reading we learn facts, we see those facts disputed, we learn stories, perspectives. We have windows into lives we would otherwise never witness. Reading develops the part of our brains that ingests and analyzes information. We learn the nutritional information on the backs of cereal boxes, we discover what's on sale at the grocery store, what albums are due for release this month, and what somebody's cute baby said today. We are enveloped in wild romances, other planets, other times, other places. We also find our long lost 13th century Japanese soul mates.

It goes a little something like this: A few weeks ago, we were at some friends' house for lunch. No wait. Back up. Last November, some friends of ours came over to our house. The library copy of Oblivion with which I was in a steel caged grudge match was lying on the end table in our living room. (By end table, I mean steamer trunk, but let's not discuss my decorating tastes here.) Our friend completely surprised the pants off me (not literally. What kind of people do you think we are?!) by picking up the book and saying simply "Consider the lobster." This friend of ours is a very straightforward kind of fellow. An engineer, a little bit shy, logical and straight laced. I didn't doubt that he read books, I just was surprised that his choices would be similar to mine. So we commenced commiserating about David Foster Wallace and then we went out to dinner (wherein my darling jBird announced my various gastric distresses to the table and pretty much all else was forgotten.) We all ended the day seeing each other in a little bit different light. I had this other piece of to the puzzle of my quiet friend, an area of commonality, something new we could talk about when conversation got awkward. And he... well, I don't know what he came away with. Probably some excessively disturbing mental images.

So, a few weeks back, we were at this friend's house and I was pawing through his bookshelf because that is my version of peeking in someone's medicine cabinet. You find out interesting things about your hosts, and generally the things you find out have nothing to do with frightening rashes. After a few minutes of pawing, I had to borrow a sheet of the Hooligan's coloring book and a crayon to scribble down some titles. Don't you just love friends like that? One of the titles I scribbled down was The Art of the Personal Essay and immediately went home and reserved it at the library (along with Eminem's latest album, but I digress.)

To my delight, this weighty tome has come available for me to peruse and probably not finish and then have to consider buying for a reference book because it is so awesome and then copying huge parts of it down in case I can't find it at the used book store and wishing I could highlight a library book and then wondering what good that would do me since I have to return it and then wondering if I should just commit the cardinal library sin and keep it and how bad would it be to have to move to a new city?

In a very heavy paper nutshell, this book is a collection of personal essays from since the beginning of time. It is my own personal version of Disneyland. It is also my Graceland and my Great Smoky Mountains and my Niagara Falls. Last night after the monkeys were in bed and the fire was lit, the Chief Lou and I sat down to read and listen to music and occasionally chat. [This is a large and important aside: When I was 18, a friend of mine was trying to convince me to date him and possibly marry him. I explained that while I loved him dearly, I didn't think we had enough of the right things in common for us to really be compatible. "Like what?" he asked me. "Well, like I like to read and you don't. I like to write poetry and you mock it. Like I don't like professional sports or Republicans." (or something like that.)  He was dismissive of this and said "What is more important to you? That you be with someone who make enough money to support you (my other option at the time was a penniless college student) or that you be with someone who will sit by the fire and read with you and talk about fancy things?" When I chose the latter, he was incredulous and assured me that would never happen and I was being hopelessly romantic. Much to my delight, he was wrong. No hard feelings, though. We remain friends to this day.]

What was I talking about? Oh yes. I was reading with my love when I found my long lost Japanese boyfriend. Kenko lived in thirteenth century Japan. Little is known about him except that he was someone or other in the Imperial court and that he was a bit of a poet. Then he became a Buddhist monk. The best details of his life are learned from his writing, however. He wrote in the style called zuihitzu - which directly translated means "follow the brush". Donald Keene, the translator of Kenko's work, notes:

"This form - or lack of form - was most congenial to Japanese writers, who turned to it perhaps because it was less 'dishonest' than creating fiction. The formlessness ... did not impede enjoyment by readers; indeed, they took pleasure not only moving from one to another of the great variety of subjects but in tracing subtle links joining the successive episodes."

How sweet is that?! I have, at long last, found a name for the kind of writing I do. It's in an anthology. It's medieval. It's valid. So, if I should happen to blurt out to my real estate agent that I write and she should happen to look surprised and ask me what, exactly, do I write, I could happen to respond: zuihitzu. It is a much less ridiculous response than: I don't know. Stuff?


The icing on my merry little Japanese cake of discovery -  the wasabi on my peas, the ikura on my sushi - is this opening written by Kenko himself, to his Essays in Idleness:

What a strange, demented feeling it gives me when I realize I have spent whole days before this inkstone, with nothing better to do, jotting down at random whatever nonsensical thoughts have entered my head.

One of my favorite quotes from the movie Shadowlands is when C.S. Lewis's recalcitrant student tells Lewis: "I read to know I am not alone." Of all the wonderful things we learn from reading, finding that you are not alone is among the most valuable.

To your inkstones, friends!