Monthly Archives: June 2018

Our Best Wine Is Clotting

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I’ve been staring at the blank page for some time now. Here, you look at some pancakes:

Ever seen pancakes look hungry?

My pet sourdough starter Frothy, Jr. needs regular feeding. So do chickens. Guess who ate these rhubarb pancakes?

On Friday morning, Anthony Bourdain died by suicide in France, devastating news in many ways. If you’ve ever suffered depression, you know someone else’s suicide can make you think itchy, uncomfortable thoughts. I won’t go into difficult detail, in case you have suffered depression, but please understand: I know. Also: other people know:

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today we explore the righteous anger of Hole’s 1994 album Live Through This.

Oh boy. Live Through This was the soundtrack for my years-long swan dive into the dark. It completely captured my rage, anguish and inability to make sense of my life.

…for Love, who watched grunge break through to the mainstream only to find that the freedom and rebellion it promised was reserved for her male counterparts. In grunge, men could be scruffy and rude and defy gender norms—they could be rawer than the men modeled in synth-pop music videos or hair metal concerts a few years prior. Women, for all the space afforded them in the subculture’s spotlight moment, might as well have been Lilith.

By then, I was already Lilith, flying off the edge of the earth (that link references Enid Dame, whom I knew and loved.)

The album’s pummeling opener “Violet” baits the ear with a jangling guitar tone cut from the same cloth as R.E.M., and then drummer Patty Schemel churns the song into a fury. “Go on, take everything/Take everything/I want you to,” howls Love, her bitterness oxidized into defiance.

In a second profile of Love, published in 1995, Vanity Fair conducted the first-ever interview with the singer’s mother, the therapist Linda Carroll. “Her fame is not about being beautiful and brilliant, which she is,” Carroll said. “It’s about speaking in the voice of the anguish of the world.” That the anguish of the world would have a female voice was an idea new to the music industry. It’s still new. Love makes a bid for universality on Live Through This in that it’s hard not to get swept up in her energy, but she also acknowledges that female pain is marked, that it is compartmentalized and dismissed because it is felt by women, not people.

Siobhan, between jobs briefly and camping on my couch, saw me come home from a terrible job to a failed relationship in a disastrous living situation, howling this song  and remarked, “Oh good, you have an anthem.” Violet was my anthem, but when I lost my home, my memory, my artwork and my man, it didn’t seem incidental that I also lost my singing voice and my ability to write by hand after decades as a prolific journal writer. I lost everything I recognized about me. Essentially, I spent four years in absolute darkness, six years building a new self and a new life, and the last eleven years teaching myself how to learn again, and a new way of living without much of a past.

This morning, I listened to Live Through This to find out how I felt, more than twenty years later. Busy at work, I found there were songs I didn’t remember and songs I wished I’d heard recently. Credit In the Straight World is a fantastic song. I have little idea what the lyrics are about, but I love the jangly, swooping guitar sounds and Love’s voice skimming their surface like a skipping stone. “I don’t really miss God, but I still miss Santa Claus,” from Gutless, for my money, sums up Love’s ambivalence about men and authority figures. God punishes the people He supposedly loves, and giver-of-gifts Santa has no respect for personal boundaries. Either one could have behaved a little better if he tried, but at least Santa leaves presents.

Blind cats rock!

Adorable Wednesday is adorable, but also brilliant and ferocious. And adorable!

Live Through This was released four days after Kurt Cobain’s suicide. On She Walks On Me, Love sings:

Hold you close like we both died
My ever present suicide
My stupid fuck, my blushing bride
Oh tear my heart out, tear my heart out
She walks over me
I don’t know what this song was about, and that never mattered. He was dead and she was absolutely wrecked by his death and everything that followed. You can read about her life anywhere; I don’t have to repeat that for you. This is almost prophesy.
Few people get up in the morning and decide to kill themselves. Most people who commit suicide think about it for a long time, make decisions about how and when and who will find the body. I understand the state of mind of a person who feels he/she cannot live this life anymore and is looking for a way out. I don’t blame them at all. I feel in the lyrics Love wrote before Cobain died that someone was not committed to surviving. Maybe it was her. Maybe him, but he beat her to the finish line.
___________________
I stared at this page, at words, at pictures, for two weeks, not sure what to say. I’m still not sure. Bourdain’s death kicked my ass. After some dark days, he finally seemed to have gotten into shape, come to terms with the failings of the food industry, found the right ferocious woman, mentored the right people, met his heroes, and gone to places that he loved and that needed him. Essentially, he appeared to have gotten his shit together. If you’ve ever been depressed, discovering that wasn’t 100% true was like a shot to the gut. He wasn’t lying. He was just holding it together in a way that was invisible to me, and since we’re now talking about me, I felt deeply shaken by his death. The following Monday, I felt like I’d gone back to work too soon after a death in my family. I can’t explain that.
I’ve been staring at this page for two weeks now. I’m going to hit publish and move on to the next thing. I have to. I’m still speechless, but there are other things we have to talk about, and we have to talk about them now.

The Goat Won’t Stop Shrieking

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They hardly suspect I brought scissors.

A lot of people will tell you carrot greens are not edible. Those people are full of shit. Carrot greens – especially young carrot greens – belong in salads and soups.

I was taking miserably bad pictures of my garden for a few weeks. Why? I don’t know. Inspiration left me and joined the Foreign Legion or something. This morning, I weeded the garden of plants I didn’t remember planting and plants I regretted planting. It was pleasant for me to spend time in my garden on a Monday morning. I suspect the plants on the compost pile might offer a different report.

The garden, as it is currently constituted, is difficult to photograph, by which I mean I suck at photography. The soil is dark and rich. The plants are vibrant shades of green. The chickens are surly and demanding, the neighbors are full of crazy and Andie’s garden cat Kitty refuses to come in the house since it stopped snowing. I go out the back door and have no idea what I’ll find, no matter how many times a day I crack open the door.

 

I cannot overstress how tiny this garden is.

It’s rained every day or every other day for about two weeks. The ground is saturated, the river is high and lettuces laugh maniacally.

Tomorrow is a big day at my job. All Hell is going to break loose and for the next little while – hold onto your hats – I’m going to try staying calm and being reasonable. STOP LAUGHING! I’ve been reasonable once or twice. Probably. I mean, it could happen, or we could have blocks of chocolate delivered to my office, for general gnawing purposes. I guess therapy dogs don’t drive themselves places, but I can’t rule out ordering them from Amazon.