Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis
“All things change, and we change with them.”Please note that this blog spans a broad period of time. The intervening years have brought many things into my life, including divorce and remarriage. As such, some older posts reference a relationship which is no longer active. In context, however, the portrayal is accurate.
For many reasons, I have chosen to let entries such as this one remain in the overall continuity of the site.
I get up Saturday morning in time to see my cousin Jennifer off to the airport with her husband and baby son. I didn’t spend enough time with her on this trip and I feel it keenly. Although we did talk about writing for a good while last night, which was very nice. She told me about the screenplay she just completed and I showed her my horrible handwriting and a few pictures pasted into the tea kids manuscript-in-progress.
Saying goodbye again, absolutely hate it…
We wander out in the morning to various stores. We’re throwing together a birthday party tonight. The Young Darkness is nine tomorrow and we need some gifts and party favors. So we hit Target for Spongebob hats and plates, crossing over to Barnes and Noble where I paw through their rock climbing section agonizing over whether to go for lots of cool glossy pictures or very good instructions on tying knots. I finally opt for the knots, figuring that he’ll never survive to become one of the climbers in the glossy pictures if he doesn’t learn how to tie a good knot first.
We buy burritos and head back home. Along the way my daughter mentions to me, in an offhand way: “There’s no such thing as you.” But she won’t elaborate further.
After burritos, it’s nap for me and Julia. I have an absolutely terrible dream — full of anxiety and danger and violence — waking up rested but in a dark and nasty mood.
Another trip to the store for the ladies, this time to pick up a cake. The impulse to “throw a little party” for my son has turned into a full-blown effort, apparently. I stay home and check e-mail, trying to shake the feeling that there’s a barbed chain wrapped around my right forearm (psychic residue or phantom memory from my dream).
Saw “The Wolves in the Walls” at the bookstore today and had to resist the urge to buy it, knowing that it was already pre-ordered and waiting for me back at home. I realize that I have read Gaiman’s Blog once while on the trip, so I dial it up and get a little caught up, which helps my mood somewhat.
I sit outside on the patio and read while my daughter hops into and out of and back into the hot tub. I may not exist, but that doesn’t stop me from remembering old old old nightmares about drowned children.
Sally brings me a Mike’s Hard Lemonade (thank you very much, Sally, for everything) and I show her the word under the bottlecaps. Mine is ‘as’ and I joke that it’s a typo (“Left the extra S off…”), she has ‘egg’ and I show her the one I’ve been carrying in my pocket for the past few weeks with ‘will’ on it.
I joke that we could end up like the improbable monkeys typing a probable “Hamlet” if we keep drinking Mike’s all night. But I can’t drink Mike’s all night.
I think it was Stephen King who said that writers are naturally wired for alcoholism. He has the precedent of Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and many more to bolster his claim. I wonder how many of them got to (had to) go to lots of family reunions.
But it’s nice now, being here at my brother’s house. The hospitality he and his wife have shown is wonderful. I can’t believe this is the same person who used to pin me down and drool spit in my face when we were children.
There’s a house full of boys from the neighborhood, more noise and violence and fun, imported special for the party tonight…
Twenty-One Days
Friday started with residual anxiety and stress, fortunately diffused (defused perhaps) by apologies and such from all offended and offensive parties. Which was good.
Driving out to my brother’s house in Martinez, watching the city recede into the background haze. Still a bit disappointed we didn’t make it over for a few hours at least. Perhaps I can weasel a trip sometime next year, maybe in winter, so I can wander the streets in rain and fog. That’d be nice.
On the Richmond Bridge, I believe, driving an SUV and listening to Billy Bragg far louder than my mother probably cared for . . . and Sandberg’s phone rings in the backseat. She says, uncertain: “Sure, he’s here. Hold on…” and hands it up to me. Turns out it’s Steve (one of the fellows who owns the company I work for) to let me know that we got a project that I’d been working on. Which was terrific news.
That evening, I watch my brother make Caesar salad from scratch and mentally make notes on his dressing recipe (anchovies and kosher salt and olive oil, mashed a bit with a fork, and then Dijon mustard and an egg yolk and some Worcestershire sauce, all whisked together briskly . . . um, I think I forgot something…) and then we all sit in the dark outside and eat tri-tip, salmon steaks, salad, asparagus, and I drink too much red wine. Which, ultimately, makes me far to sleepy to enjoy the conversations about the spread of new viruses and the threat they pose to the human race. This naturally leads to discussing AIDS and somehow we end up talking through the ordination of homosexuals (although I don’t quite recall everyone being nearly so polite and gentle with each other about things they obviously feel strongly about — but there have been enough burned bridges this week already…)
At one point Julia decides to pick a fight with one of her cousins, pounding the everloving crap out of him. I suggest that it’s not particularly nice to hit other kids, and certainly not wise to hit kids who are bigger than she is. “So only hit kids who are smaller than you.” I conclude, feeling clever and fatherly . . . although she’ll likely forget it all and one day tell me how boring and uninteresting I am.
My brother has four sons and they fill every space their in with noise and a kind of cheerful violence that only brothers understand. “I don’t need a babysitter,” my brother tells me. “I need a boy wrangler.”
I visualize a newspaper ad: “Wanted – Boy Wrangler” and the audition scene in “Mary Poppins” cast with members of the WWF as the line of nannies and directed by Versace.
I complain, again, about my children and the horrid condition they’re in from enduring six weeks of grandparental love. My most excellent sister-in-law Sally tells me that any behavior or condition can be cured or changed in 21 days.
At one point (blame it on “Stone Cold” Jane Austen) I am challenged by Sandberg to name any female authors I respect, enjoy, and/or admire.
“Sylvia Plath. Dorothy Parker.”
“Don’t you like Virginia Woolf?”
“No, he’s afraid of Virginia Woolf.” My brother tells her. I nearly collapse a lung with laughter, either because he is frequently one of the funniest people I know or because of the red wine. Perhaps both.
Red wine also makes me sleepy, an excellent way to avoid arguments…