the little tree that could

this is one of our country's oldest cities. it's densely populated and the buildings jostle for elbow room. its geography is such that it has been forced to remain *small* -- bound by a narrow but long river, perched on the atlantic's edge and not far from the area's highest mountains. closest to europe, the streets hold similar patterns and skyline retains a modest scale.

like many other eastern cities after the civil war, a great rush came on to develop and design greenways. the industrial revolution was in full gear, and cities were dirty sooty places. the streets were teeming, filthy and fraught with mucky peril for both ankle and boot. parklands were envisioned as egalitarian idylls where the tycoon and the mill worker could stroll and escape the urban press and din. frederick law olmstead gave us the "emerald necklace", a series of interconnecting parks and waterways, spanning 7 miles and 1000 acres. combined with other land, this is a very green city indeed, and considered first in the nation for its committment to open space.

over the centuries, parcels got gobbled up for projects of either benevolence or corruption, so a new park in this old city is rare indeed. my loft looks out onto just such a gem. the weekday cacophony of earthmoving equipment can be nerve-wracking, and of course the project is long past deadline. but at last, the demolished detritus of highway overpass and industrial storage has been carted away, and inch by inch i'm witnessing 40 acres brought back to life. no cows are grazing, but kids and dogs are afoot. the soccer stadium (please, no eye-rolls at the hard irony) is complete and in enthusiastic use. the playgrounds, gazebos and paths all in place. the baseball diamond sketched out and seeded. old-growth trees were worked around and make for a mature nerve-center winding throughout and off to the ocean.

last week mountains of topsoil were dumped and spread. this week, dozens of young trees have been planted. i'm cheered to see the designer didn't default to one urban-hardy species, like ginko or arborvitae. instead we've got much diversity in both the visual and the textural.

when i created gardens in my last home, i was always filled with satisfaction at the freshly turned earth and the promise of future growth and beauty. the little sycamores and willows are putting down roots and starting a new life here, just like me. the trees have been kid-gloved by a glorious indian summer these past weeks. i've had no such gentle treatment, but i'm digging down to dig in too.

ka-boom

in previous posts, i've mentioned that i live right on the edge of a chunk of the hugest public works project in modern history. for now we'll leave aside the scandals and how the sky is falling, and talk about all the holes in the ground.

yesterday, i ran errands in the morning and couldn't help but notice lots of bomb squad guys. and their sniffing dogs. and special trucks. similar severe-faced jack-boots were at my local train stop. maybe i've had this tinfoil hat on too long, but that kinda thing doesn't make me feel *safe*. i never think they're preventing or deterring anything, instead it makes me think there is something potentially awful going on about which i have not been informed.

years ago, my then-backyard abutted that of a bomb squad officer. weekends starting at 8:00 a.m., weather permitting, he played the bagpipes on his back deck for several hours. sure, in abstract that may sound charming, but not so much after only 2 or 3 hours of drunkus-interruptus. (some may call it sleep, but back then it was more of the former...) every now and again, he and a few cop buddies would drink beer and smoke and talk softly late into the night. his house was used as a set for a terrible movie, so i did get to see lloyd bridges, jeff bridges and forest whittaker have a spitting contest off that deck.

back then, bomb threats were rare. the occasional pipe bomb, or some mob guy's cadillac got blown. i think most of us have a very different perspective on possible explosions these days.

"wherever you go...

... there you are."

one of the g.c.'s favorite taglines from "buckaroo bonzai" -- a much under-appreciated cult flick in both of our opinions.

a good part of my early twenties was spent trampsing around, most of my belongings fitted into my mustang. (except for the worldly goods i frankly had no use for, but my mother insisted i keep. so i did. at her house. ;) up and down the eastern seaboard and back and forth to california, as well as points in between a bunch of times. mom had no end of fits that i'd go for months with no fixed address. when needed, apartments and jobs were usually fairly easy to come by for me, but if nothing panned out, i headed elsewhere.

marriage and kids were no priority. i had no intention of grinding myself dry at the profession indicated by my degree. although i knew my making-ends-meet jobs, albeit entertaining and easily transferrable, were dead-end.

in retrospect, i remain glad for the adventure. i learned to quickly assess situations, judge friend or foe in a blink, make nice with the locals and get by with very little. i've also seen far more of this country than most who live here.

i never felt like i was running, but i do think i was searching. was it the cliche of self? or merely some sense of purpose finally not predetermined by others? transience and geographic fluidity made me light and independent. within just a few years, my head was cleared of *shoulds* and i decided my career path -- highly divergent from their expectations, full of heat and hard work, and a decade before food tv and bravo made the restaurant world fashionable.

whenever i travel, i always get that little pang of "what if i lived here?" touching down recently in san francisco, a city i love, and a mere hour's drive from the american mecca of my passion and profession, i asked myself the question again. painted ladies aside, it's still california, and i know i'm not a good fit. i'll never desire idle chit chat with my bagger at ralph's, nor to pay for an egg-white omelette.

but i'm restless. i'm in an especially painful period of transitions and traumas piling on and pressing down hard. no significant other now keeps me here. i have no children for whom to worry an education. my current job is one that provides far more unhappiness than gratification and my paltry income is keeping me only the barest of above water. yet the simple fact is i live in a very limited market for my chosen and much-loved career.

a colleague who moved here from nyc for her husband, recently confessed that it's been 5 years and she's just now making what she used to make there. and she has 4 programs to run vs. one. i trolled craig's list this morning noodling nyc. (i did find it humorous that they refer to them as "open calls" when seeking servers, lol. all those waiters-who-will-never-become-working-actors must feel somehow assuaged ... lol.) even my slim area of expertise offered openings, and i know with a little digging i could land a potentially superlative gig. my experience and connections are excellent. i'd certainly be forced to downgrade from 1100 sq. ft. to likely half that in living space, and i'm not sure i still retain the patience for the poseurs that stick themselves up full of self-importance on nearly every fine-dining seat in that city... or could actual job satisfaction, a decent wage and future potential vault me past that?

but...

i'll still be *there*, won't i?

stay tuned...

lifting an albatross

Ah ! well a-day ! what evil looks
Had I from old and young !
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.

it's a magnificient and wonderous creature. a dynamically effective flyer with a tremendous wingspan -- the largest species can have a stretch of 11 feet tip-to-tip. a proficient hunter/forager that navigates well on land and has an unusually keen sense of smell for a bird. it sleeps on quieter tidal patterns, pair-bonds long-term and lives past 50. although centuries' extinct in my part of the world, and wholly terribly endangered everywhere else, many consider it the most noble of the feathered. (it's too late to indulge in much digression, so we'll not quibble about the american bald eagle or ben's favorite, our native wild turkey, ok?)

was coleridge indeed the first with the metaphor of nearly insurmountable guilt? since his "rime" was woven through with sailors' superstitions i suspect not, but nonetheless he seems credited with the incarnation. was he merely extrapolating the legend of the wandering jew, or truly inventing something new? like folklore, even the word itself - *albatross* - traveled from arabic, to english, to spanish, to portuguese (alcatraz, actually) and back to english.

no amount of grasping seems to clear the etymological fog, nor am i intending to channel attenborough...

it's been a few days short of a year that i've been carrying a tremendously and increasingly burdensome specimen around my thin and tired neck. these last few months have proven particularly harrowing. the chicken littles running around, heads nearly lopped off, smearing the market and scaring off potential buyers with their particular brand of alarmist guano, have rampaged from the ny times to forbes. it's been enough to make me wish one certain dead uncle would ouija board-message me with that contact who would torch a car for a small quiet fee...

in his new-found guise, the gentleman caller might take refuge in *karma* smacking me in the face for presuming to use booty from *that* to fund what *this* was to be. (or maybe my tinfoil hat is just too tight, because he was the architect pulled too early from the plan.) however, i'll leave aside the hoo-doo and the doo-doo flinging and remain quite pragmatic in believing my timing of the market just sucked. i bought high, way back then, and was forced to sell low now. no point crying over the spilled milk of all the crappy advice and passive selling tactics of my broker. let's just hope the deal is at last done.

vulcan mind-meld

when open, and given free range, the heart is a miraculous thing. combine that with a keen and inquiring mind, and all sorts of crazy things become possible.

from quite early on in the relationship, the gentleman caller and i enjoyed an eerie mind meld. if he e-mailed, i was reeled to the computer like a marionette drawn up to its handler in the proscenium's rafters. it made no difference if i was working, gardening or soundly sleeping -- * i knew*. if he arrived at my job unannounced, i would turn to the door, *aware* of him, just when he entered. when sleeping apart, we often had bizzarely overlapping dreams or mental wake-up calls caused by actions of the other. even when in vastly separate time zones, with rem's completely whacked by jet-lag, we still crawled through each other's heads. it gave him further power and control over me, so he encouraged it and used it. i thrived under his thumb, so happily succumbed.

in one of his secret e-mails to me after his marital denunciation, he expressed almost boyish wonder at the nascent connection he was growing with his wife. dormant and hidden by many silent hardened layers of anger for more than a decade, he reminded me that they had once been not just physically, but emotionally, intimate as well. (well, duh.) the tentative renewal filled him with hope. he knew he was still able, because of what he had shared with me.

in other writings he has noted her utter frustration at being unable to directly vent her ire at me. that she holds a deep and black desire to punish me. his emotional and psychological self-flagellations, his anguish, not enough. my broken heart and financial devastation don't equate to her needed pound of flesh.

after my last post about the impossibility of attaining restful sleep, i couldn't help but feel my tinfoil hat tighten yet again. i still dream about him. i know with the certainty of my next breath when he posts on-line. my sexual arousal remains inextricably tied to him and his conditionings. is she forcing her way through to me, through him? after all, he didn't stop loving me, (nor i him, but that counts for naught...) it simply had to be put aside for the greater good. is her anger, her revulsion, her base wish for my ruin now storm-trooping through my aching tired head?

he showed me nearly anything was possible. i've always believed hate can be a more powerful force than love. shame she'll never see the results of her enmity.

clang, clang, clang went the trolley

i grew up in the boonies. couldn't see the neighbors, except for the occasional odd slant of long visual perspective on winter's deadest days. it was preturnaturally quiet, and sound carried quite far. (but, lol, i still remember the strange sound every year in early summer, something from another world apparently hatched and dwelled under the pool cover. although it croaked and shrieked, we never caught it.)

urban dwellers have a certain symbiotic relationship with noise. mostly, we blend it into our daily fabric; it becomes *just* white noise, with no particular value, other than the subconscious effort expended to embed it. we do not expect to hear the sky hum a stardust melody, or frogs sing out to each other through the reeds. there will be no moonlit blanket. mostly we achieve a certain "one-ness" with our immediate and more insistent sounds, and become inured to the constant aural assault.

my condo overlooks and so i overhear a chunk of the biggest public works project in modern history. the subway and airport are right here. yet many friends settled in other states perceive me as living steps from the ocean (well, yes) and a heartbeat and dream-date away from a bucolic life as a lighthouse keeper's wife.

i have never been a solid sleeper.

the train starts its business at 5:30.

even though mandate says 7:00 a.m., dozens of dusty workers are typically at it by 6:00. sometimes, it's as early as 3:30!!! i'm beginning to feel like that *beep*beep*beeping* backing up sound of heavy equipment will be my eternal soundtrack loop in hell, ya know? jackhammering of asphalt, sawing of cement, backhoes tracking gravel, trees and dirt, pile drivers, and assorted trucks and machines and earth-movers all conspire for an onslaught.

recently, i've realized that it's been some weeks since i've slept more than 3 hours straight. i get home late and no matter how much i ache to sleep, the combo of emotional devastation, financial ruin, a 12-hour workday and then the city dweller's equivalent of cocks crowing, it doesn't happen. frankly, i fear i'm beginning to lose my wits. my patience left sometime ago.

my personal jury remains out as to whether it's the noise on the street, or that inside my head keeping me awake.

ruin't

some years back, i had a hectic day ahead of me. although one not so extraordinary in my life, i was well aware it was the type of day few people would ever know. first, an elegant lunch at the ritz with a very famous french winemaker. i was the only woman at the table, so of course was the center of his attention.

then i hurried to a private tasting event at the four seasons. still more precious drops out of baccarat crystal.

from there, to my four-star place of employment to make a spotlight presentation to a bunch of harvard gajillionaires about the wines i'd selected for their menu degustation.

jumped in a cab, raced over the bridge and across the river, to yet another hoity-toity gathering. a small dinner, for a well-respected california female winemaker and her husband; the only guests were the v.p. of the wholesaling company, his mistress, one other buyer and me. i had told them i would be about 30 minutes late, so to please start without me.

the husband asked about my day. his eyes grew wider as i ticked off my list of indulgences. i admitted being spoiled. he finally burst out laughing, and in his texas flatlander drawl said, "girl, from where aah come from we call that ruin't!"

little did they know the excess was not to end with the souflee, because the gentleman caller was waiting for me at home.

from then on, he and i would laugh about my ruination. after he'd pummelled me with his cock and his hands, ridden hard my mind, and again reached still further into my heart; while i lay in his arms, vibrating with devotion, he'd whisper in his proprietary way that i was ruin't.

i flourished under his hand. his savage sexual usage of me actualized me like nothing else had before. his fierce intellect kept me keen. his possession of me as chattel made me free. never had i been so complete and so happy.

we met four years ago today. i am a very changed woman. he shaped and trained me so that he was the ultimate focus of every breath i was allowed. and those i wasn't. he held my very life in his hands, and took my heart. she has forced him to repudiate me and he has done so. what am i now?

ruin't indeed.

in my life

There are places I'll remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends,
I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life, I've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life, I'll love you more

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life, I'll love you more


the beatles were broken up a long time before i had an allowance and could buy records, so i was too little to get into the "who's-cuter-john-or-paul?" fight club. regardless, in my room with my imaginary sister, i predictably fell into the john camp (brains over cutes winning out, while playing the white album for the millionth time in a row...), with a small secondary crush on george. in my personal index , if you can't like "here comes the sun" you have a stone for a heart.

john had not met yoko when he wrote this. yeah, yeah, she broke up the beatles, but can anybody deny that she brought him astonishing inner peace and personal tranquility? "imagine", anybody? yet, life has shown me that it was always within him. he just needed a reason, *the* reason, to find it and express it. to live it. without her, would he have known it?

today i heard a johhny cash version of this song. it was astounding in the resonance of a life lived, and lived so much. it also swiftly brought me to tears reminding me cash died of a broken heart.

moral wiring

unlike dissecting bodies to look for the soul, modern science now has a nifty device for examining the mind without a scalpel: a machine for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri) measures brain activity.

like their philosophical predecessors, these guys from princeton wondered how people solved moral quandaries. one of the more famous queries has always been the "trolley dilemma". an oncoming train is certain to strike down 5 unaware people on the tracks. (forget for a moment the idiocy of why these folks are loitering and oblivious.) you have the proximity and power to flip the switch and send the train down another leg. however, on that leg, is a lone man who then will be killed. so, do you kill 5 or 1? (yeah,the arithmetic struck awfully close to home ) by measuring activity in the ventromedial frontal lobe, the researchers witnessed that what might seem a rational decision guided by common moral principle, was actually ruled by the emotional center of the brain. most test subjects decided fairly quickly that the death of 1 justified saving the 5.

ok, but when are you ever going to be that close to a train switch? would you even know how to work it? (never mind what social darwinism might warrant for all those simpletons just malingering on the rails...)

in my current minefield of damage wrought by sliding scales of personal morality, i can't help but wonder how brains might light up if real-life questions are posed. "would you cheat on your wife?" "would you lie to your friends?" "would you have sex with a married man?" would the spectrum run more red than yellow in the minds of those who'd already crossed the lines?

oh, and no need to point out the irony that the universal symbol equivalent for "stop!" apparently meant "go!" in my own head...

calling dr. freud

he and i were picnicking, in a seemingly managed bit of woodland. it was a fairly open glade, at the bottom of a small slope. it felt discreetly hidden away from the world, with tall, older-growth trees above and around the edge of the space. we had two dogs (mutts, of course) with us, a good-sized male and a smaller female. they were gamboling and rolling around as pups will do when out on a fresh grassy hill. a clear sunny sky, and the day seemed to stretch endless before us. we were laughing and savoring lunch.

i saw a movement and capped my eyes with my hand to look up towards the top of the incline. the image moved closer and i could make out a man in a suit, one much like that buttoned-up tweedy style a 19th-century brit might wear on a highlands hike. when he spotted ours, he let his dog off the lead. as it drew near, its determined gait made me instinctively question its intent. its body was strong and its head the size of a barrel. our two stood up, together, their tails went from happy-wagging to stock-still and bodies alert. the other rounded the crest and came pounding down, picking up speed with the grade.

as these things always seem, in an instant the intruder had steamrolled into the little female and battered her ribcage with its keg of a head. she was airborne and howling in pain. she dropped to the ground in a wailing heap, unable to stand. i heard snarling and gnashing teeth...

i woke unable to breathe, a cry for help caught in my throat. tears burned my face.

ack.