Author Archives: Tata

You Could Move On This Moment

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Part One

Part Two
The Blogosphere’s gone twitchy with this whole who-said/who-didn’t-say thing. It’s spattering everywhere, and it’s going to be a long time before people forgive one another for what they’re saying, if they do. I would have been happy if that woman in Tennessee had simply amended her post and said, “Oops. Sorry. Didn’t realize these words could be viewed that way.” That’s it, done. It’s too late now, and former allies aren’t going to trust one another anymore.

Now might be a good time for everyone to go out for flan and calm down. Go ahead! Don’t worry, I’ll be here when you get back. Go on, take your keys and go have some yummy custardy goodness. Mmmm. I’ll wait.

…tap tap tap…

…feelings…nothing more than feelings….trying to forget my…

Hey! Feeling better? That’s great. I’d like to try something and I hope you’re up for an experiment. Without some shitty team-building retreat that eats your weekend and destroys your personal boundaries, let’s try to trust one another. I’ll go first.

In 1995, an associate professor at the unnamed university where I work asked me to read his book, which I did. It was an arid treatment of Soviet history in Eastern Europe and I struggled to push a bookmark through it until one night I sat up in bed, howling. Morgan thought I was having a seizure because we had a loft bed and it was just fractions of seconds before this moment came to its comedic conclusion: I smacked my head on the ceiling. This did not stop me from reading a passage out loud about The Great Soviet Encyclopedia‘s framing of history. Morgan agreed the words written in anger were accidentally hilarious. The following year of my life was devoted to a giant collaborative art piece called Redshow / Mytholodeon Black Wheel. It almost killed me, but it was good work, totally worth every bit of me – and all of Morgan – I subsequently lost. In writing PIC, I think of bits and pieces of Redshow I’d like to reference but that’d get us nowhere – until now. The people who collaborated on this tiny section have given me permission to print this and Siobhan made a beautiful page. I’m going to trust you now. This tiny section is about history and boredom, and our refusal to bear witness to the things for which we are responsible.

Trials of the Century.

In the stage version, I played FP, and I will never forget the abject despair I felt on my hands and knees, shouting people…people…people…PEOPLE! because that character’s assessment of the situation was beneath notice. If you’re a straight, white male, you should try this sometime: pick any opinion you hold, picture yourself on your hands and knees, and imagine yourself surrounded by people who refuse to hear what you say. That’ll wreck your whole day. Some people are forced into coping mechanisms like Stockholm Syndrome or like battered women come to see themselves as being to blame. Some people remain more emotionally intact, and they fight back. Apprehending this is the beginning of empathy. First, imagine yourself in a situation. Then, imagine people who are not you in that situation. The outcomes won’t be the same. After the pictures of Abu Gharaib were discovered, the most pronounced differences I heard in converation were between people who could imagine captivity and imprisonment and people bone-solid-certain that brutal indignity could not be visited upon them. In all likelihood, the people in those photos probably felt pretty secure right up until they found themselves there. And this opens up a whole new view to what people are, inside.

It couldn’t be simpler, and it couldn’t be more complex. Ah, fuck. It’s human.

It’s worth noting that Mr. Krancberg was an elegant gentleman who had suffered greatly under Soviet occupation. He read an early version of the Redshow script. “It would take,” he said, shaking with rage, “a real writer to do what you’ve undertaken.” He never spoke to me again. I didn’t take it personally and I didn’t blame him. By way of contrast, I recenlty wrote three pieces that felt and continue to feel like solid, beautiful writing for someone who sniffed disdainfully and turned up his nose, as if I’d painted a tryptich and we should argue about brushstrokes. To come to a point – finally – though as an artist I am not my work and my work is not me, when you as a reader reject my work on a personal basis you reject me. That’s just the way it is. This is the paradox of the Blogosphere. Readers, writers and commenters don’t just reject one another’s theses, they grab knives and reach for jugulars, after which a simple edit job doesn’t cut it. What’s happening out there is really personal. And there’s one more thing, also from Redshow: “Feelings are facts, man.”

It doesn’t take a genius to see where we’re headed, or that even the magic words “I’m sorry” uttered by hundreds of people at once will leave hundreds of people watching each for signs of remorse and recidivism. So, I’ve trusted you with a bit of my work. You can trust me, too, you know. I won’t always be right, but we can always get flan.

The Man Inside the Child

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Part One
A certain amount of odd communication is fairly standard.

Sharkey: Our friend Ray’s cover band is playing at the bar tonight and you should leave your house. He is the only straight man who ever wrote a song about me.
Tata: Hilarious. What time?
Sharkey: I’ll find out.
Tata: Huh. I’ll probably go. What’s the name of the band?
Sharkey: RayC/DC.
Tata: This has potential, and by potential I mean I’d be disappointed if we didn’t spit beer a few times.

And:

Daria: Tyler and I are starting NutriSystem and there’s just one thing. I’ve looked all through the information and I don’t see –
Tata: A wine list?

Pretty much anywhere, you can see low-level clashes of language use and expectation. This morning, I got an email ad from my favorite online lingerie store – free shipping! – but the subject line made me flinch – Last chance to order for Father’s Day. Some women are wives; presumably this ad was meant for them and not for incest enthusiasts. But I digress.

There’s an old couples counseling game that involves Spouse 1 making a point and Spouse 2 repeating that point back without acting on homicidal urges. Secretaries do something similar when they take phone numbers and repeat them back to confirm that, yes, what was said was heard because often, let’s face it, what was said wasn’t heard at all. You can observe this phenomenon in your own environment.

You: If you finish your homework, you can join the Foreign Legion before dinner.
Your Kid: MOM! Dad said we’re going out for flan!
Your Wife: You’re right, I should take bossanova lessons…

My life moves at a more leisurely pace than most people’s so I can ignore other people for a good long time before anyone notices.

Person: Didn’t you say you’d meet me at such-and-such place?
Tata: I didn’t. You said I would. I thought your imaginary friend would wear a cute imaginary ensemble and arrive ten minutes late. The real Me would’ve been a third wheel.

Listening is one thing but hearing and understanding are quite another when we can’t agree on what words mean. A month ago, I had a bizarre conversation I didn’t understand until last Tuesday. Yes, I’m a slow learner. Shut up. To sum up: I asked what my friend was doing over and over for several weeks. My friend repeated three magical words, “You’re not listening.” Of course, I was listening. I was listening to every word and understanding less and less as time passed. On Tuesday, I realized the magic words “You’re not listening” actually meant “You’re not obeying me.” Well, I could draw you a diagram of how this communication went awry, but I’d have to start before the beginning, at the unspoken expectation that people know what we want and are simply denying it to us, and it would still end with my blurting, “What the fuck is going on here?” because obedience is not on the list of things friends should expect.

Balancing this brain-rattling confusion is an almost equal confidence in my evidently singular ability to look shit up. It’s not that hard, really. If I don’t know what something means, I open a dictionary. It’s my favorite book and has better character development than the Bible. But even this skill won’t help you understand what’s being said in a time when writers of whatever skill level grind an axe. Perversion of simple word meanings has become a hallmark of our sad age; a shining example: Steve Gilliard was not a bigot, no matter who says so, how often or how loudly. (I won’t link to the accusing douchebag – I trust the meaning of that word is clear. You can Google, if you must.) Let’s open our dictionary, shall we?

Main Entry: big·ot
Pronunciation: ‘bi-g&t
Function: noun
Etymology: French, hypocrite, bigot
: a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance

The devoted to his…opinions aspect of the definition, if it described Steve, is not enough to paint him with this brush. No. It doesn’t work that way. Use of the word includes hatred and intolerance and the racial or ethnic group connotation is not optional. It is intrinsic to the meaning of the word bigot. We can’t from here jete blithely to He couldn’t tolerate my opinion, therefore he was a bigot. I’m sorry, son. Language may be a virus, but few of us are Typhoid Mary. Neither is Jesus’ General a misogynist, and throwing that idea around in a snit is a shitty thing to do and a sign that someone hasn’t opened a dictionary recently.

Could I be a better listener? Certainly. Could I speak more clearly? Not without sodium pentathol, no. I speak and write to be understood – not in code or riddles. It is exhausting to try and quitting is unthinkable. You see my failures to communicate every day.

Part Two

Alive, I Feel the Love

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I was circling the drain – again – when the phone rang.

Auntie InExcelsisDeo: What the hell are you doing?
Tata: Your x-ray vision is singeing my eyebrows. What’s going on here?
Auntie: As you know, I read your blog. What are you doing?
Tata: On the advice of my attorney, I’d like to ask: Um, huh?
Auntie: Are you depressed?
Tata: Now that you mention it, I am feeling a quart low…
Auntie: Eating a lot of sugar? Are you taking vitamins?
Tata: Almost no sugar. I’ve skipped the vitamins recently.
Auntie: I’ve been taking sublingual B-12. It helps my energy level. And you should be taking it too.
Tata: I used to get B-12 shots every week and – Oh. My. God. I’m an idiot!
Auntie: Duh!

Auntie made a shopping list and issued an order: I was going to take care of myself or else! Nobody has a spare hand and everyone gets nervous when someone says the D Word, so I went to the store and bought Calcium/Magnesium, CoQ-10 and B-12. A few days later, which is to say this morning, the sun came out. A choir sang.

Choir: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Tata: Hey, my manicure is great. My hair looks awesome. I am a hot babe! Look at my fabulous apartment! Wuzzah wuzzah wuzzah my little kittens! My friends are sooooo interesting! My toenails are electric blue! My job is better than sliced bread! What nice email people send! Carrot juice is the most luscious thing in history! Thank you, Thighmaster…

In all humility, I almost envy me.

Use My My My Imagination

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I stood for a long time in my kitchen, torn, staring out the window at the small lawn, the parking lot, the trees opposite. Twilight softened the moments between breaths as I tried and failed to think. The kitchen disappeared. My yoga pants and t-shirt that read “I like chicks (with big dicks)” disappeared. Everything fell away. I was dressed in black, wearing a maroon beret and speaking in a voice rough and gravelly like Charles Aznavour, because if you’re going to have a cinematic existential crisis, you’ve still got to rock it so old school you fart Rive Gauche dust.

Tata: Le sigh!

I could only think of one philosopher to quote in my hour of desolation.

Tata: “While a void is expressed in this recipe, I am struck by its inapplicability to the bourgeois lifestyle. How can the eater recognize that the food denied him is a tuna casserole and not some other dish?”

Then, in my torpor, I observed movement on the lawn, which was merely a bourgeois construct and not cool and delicious. I went from Aznavour to Electric Youth in no seconds flat.

Tata: Bunnnnnnnnnnnnnnny!

Genuine lapin.

Like! It’s baby bunny season.

This bunny would fit in my hand, which is half the size of yours.

Le sigh. I look great in a beret and angst.

There’s A Blaze Of Light In Every Word

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Until recently, one moment in Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc made no sense to me. It all happens very fast, as we know it would not in real life, where suffering may seem to have no end. Joan is chained to the stake and the flames are rising. One tongue of flame scorches her face and she wrenches her head aside. In the next moment, she stares Heavenward, accepting, as fire consumes her. Then the girl is gone. Hallelujah.

This evening, a gentle rain falls, whispering and musical. The kittens have chosen windowsills at either end of the apartment, though they have several times switched sills for views and breezes. Whole wheat bread baked with a salt and sage crust, perfuming the living room; now pumkpin custard steams slowly in a bain marie. Last night, I made yogurt, and I have food for the week. On Friday evening, my hairdresser and cousin Carmelo offered glad tidings.

Carmelo: This weekend is the beginning of Gin & Tonic Season. I’ve just bought my bottle of Bombay Sapphire.
Tata: Oooh! You mention this in case I’ve been hunting without a license!

In two hours, Carmelo made that nest atop my head into a streaming vision of blond highlights falling in soft curls, but before we get there, we have to go back in time. Press Play and read on.

After work Friday and before my appointment, I cleaned the cat boxes, tossing the stinky litter into the dumpster, and with the garbage went my keys. I stood there for a minute; I stood there for an hour, wanting someone to fix this for me. When that didn’t happen, I stared at my keys. Then I threw my head back and laughed. The thing was nearly empty. I jumped up, threw a leg over, and dropped inside. Neighbors, standing some yards away and staring, all stopped talking. I threw my keys over the wall to the street. Then I jumped back out, cleaned up and changed clothes, and went to the salon. When told of my adventure, Carmelo smiled but did not laugh. He said, “Thank God you don’t smell.” I looked around but there was no film crew.

That was the day Carl’s father passed away, which shocked me. It didn’t seem right so soon after my father died that anyone else should suffer as we did, though everyone hurts and few of us see it coming. So as bad as I felt Friday, I felt worse Saturday reading that Steve Gilliard was dead. For me, this felt like a last straw, and I stood in my kitchen, sobbing about a person with whom I’d exchanged a few emails, but whose common sense and insight had long felt to me like a smooth worry stone and a bright crystal ball. The long night of pain was over for one starry soul. Hallelujah. Then I set up bread dough, which did not rise.

This morning, I got up early because I don’t sleep anymore and went to Costco. My shelves were little ghost towns, scenes of unchanging emptiness. I walked through the aisles, blank and staring, picking up things I needed and passing others. Something burned out of me and cast itself on the wind. I knew this when I picked up tapenade and heard myself singing Leonard Cohen‘s Hallelujah, a song I didn’t know I knew, out loud in the refrigerator aisle. These lives well-lived, these people fall in light, and out come these words of sorrow and benediction. Hallelujah. I did not fight the sensation of walking through the warehouse store with a spotlight over my newly-blond head, and I sang quietly without a thought to what anyone else might think. It was as if I were the only one there, in this cloud of white light with my grief and loss –

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

– and of course, the tapenade is a little salty.

We’re So Alone And Life Is Brief

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I debated not writing this. Some memories are bitter enough that we hope they disappear with someone else’s death, but they don’t. We reenact them in unnecessary present tenses. Even so, I might not have written this if Mr. DBK had not mentioned Carl’s father died yesterday. Carl and I can’t have a conversation that doesn’t include unprintable terms of little endearment, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy watching him suffer. I don’t. If things were different, we might have a lot to talk about – starting with the crippling polite fiction that we either have simple, loving relationships with our fathers or we are irredeemably fucked-up losers.

Father’s Day approaches. See if you can find a Hallmark Card for your particular dysfunction like, “Hey, glad you quit drinking” or “Thanks, Dad, for spending my college fund at AC” or “Because you’re a liar, I’ll never really trust a man.” Our parents are human, with their own flaws and failures. We smile nervously though backyard barbecues every year and hope nobody tells a true story. Sure, some people have great fathers who read right from the Ward Cleaver script, but to deny our pasts and what we are is to guarantee ourselves more painful futures.

I don’t know what a normal father-daughter relationship is, but I didn’t have one with Dad. Daria didn’t either; that’s a story only she can tell. I can tell you that as little girls in the sixties and early seventies, we were not raised with Barbies, dreaming about our weddings, and our brother Todd was not treated differently because he was a boy. We were simply kids, which is by default loosely male. It was very unusual for the time, and it all came to a crushing halt when Dad left for Europe and didn’t come back. It is not much of a leap from that moment to the one wherein I married the only man who would never have deserted me and I had to leave, because that’s what people do. It was just a little, unconscious hop – just history repeating, that’s all.

Before we arrived in Virginia last March, piles of things had been set out for Dad’s family members on the sun porch. One day, I went out to look at mine and found this. Shit, I was hoping we could just forget all about this crap after the first teary night, when Dad and I said, “It’s all over, and none of that stuff is important anymore.” I don’t remember specifics, except that I sobbed, “I am strong because you made me strong.” What I did not say was that his neglect, his rage, his routine violation of my boundaries and his pencil-thin patience formed me into a person who desperately needed his love and approval but couldn’t be near enough to have it. He loved me. He admired me – so he often said, and I do not doubt it. That night, he said, “You give me too much credit.” No. No, I don’t. I saw this card on the porch and put it away, where no one else would find it. Well, except you.

Because it’s pink, Siobhan will wonder what the hell was wrong with me. The postmark says 24 January, 1991. Just six months later, my marriage would be over, Dara would be born and my grandmother would die. This is a trifold card, and the flower alone should tell you it delivers poison. Leading up to my writing it: some prolonged period of unbearable conflict with Dad over my writing – or something. His temper was too much for me, again. I couldn’t stand it, again. From the time I was 19, he told me, “One day, you will have to tell me to go shit in my hat.” I couldn’t confront him and be crushed again, so I wrote. When one opens this card, one first sees this:

all the male poets write of orpheus
as if they look back & expect
to find me walking patiently
behind them. they claim I fell into hell.
Damn them, I say.
i stand in my own pain
& sing my own song.

– Alta

To assume the voice of Eurydice, I must have been in agony. Opening the other flap, one sees two distinct pages.

“A certain re-writing of another’s writing can be dangerous and go beyond criticism.”

– Anais Nin

Finally, the killer:

I am not a son.

I will not compete with you.

I have my own work to do.

You will have to understand.

Ah, you can’t go wrong with the classics, because of course, I was raised to be a good son. He wrote, I write. He did radio, I have done a lot of radio. He traveled, I’ve traveled and will again. He smoked and drank and lived secret lives; don’t even get me started. I’ve often said that he and I were a fascinating matched set, but that I was the dull one. Shortly after I sent this card, Dad told me he didn’t need me anymore – he had baby Dara. While he meant that his turbulent relationship with his mother had left him with a need for uncritical female devotion I failed to provide, I was devastated by his words, so surgically precise and calculated to wound. No one in his lifetime cheered his successes louder and longer than I did, despite every brutal thing we said and did to one another. As I look at this card now, I think I should give it to Miss Sasha. I could offer her a shortcut to peace and quiet; say: “My darling, one day you will have to tell me to go shit in my hat.”

Right Behind You, I See

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How to flipflop:

How to fall on your face:

ESSEN, Germany, June 1 (Reuters) – President George W. Bush’s plan to combat climate change got a cool reception in Europe on Friday where the European Union’s environment chief dismissed it as unambitious and “the classic U.S. line”.

Bush, under pressure to do more ahead of a summit in Germany next week of the Group of Eight industrial nations, said on Thursday that he would seek a deal among top emitters on long-term cuts in greenhouse gases by the end of 2008. “The declaration by President Bush basically restates the U.S. classic line on climate change — no mandatory reductions, no carbon trading and vaguely expressed objectives,” EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said, according to his spokeswoman.

“The U.S. approach has proven to be ineffective in reducing emissions,” Dimas said.

To either quote or paraphrase Top Secret!: “Times change…hairstyles change…interest rates fluctuate…”

Crossposted at AgitProp.

Friday Cat Blogging: Frothing Green Edition

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The other night, Darla and I were gabbing about something shocking the kittens had done to protect me from the forces of balled yarn. Or something. Darla mentioned a time when she’d put a roll of toilet paper in her office and returned to find Squidge killing it, really hard.

Well, then. I sleep better knowing my indoor predators stand guard against aggressive paper products.

The Line Forms On the Right, Babe

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Could it be our boy’s done something rash?

Audrey and I are always in the same Aquarian boat, and have been since 1991. If I’m at the end of my rope with some man, Audrey’s just put another on the train back to his mama. If her friends are acting crazy, mine play with toy trains on the railroad tracks. If her mother’s speaking in tongues, mine has laryngitis. Yesterday, I was upset and sent her what would otherwise be an unintelligible email.

Tata: In the past two weeks, how many rats have jumped ship?
Audrey: They jumped in the month prior.
Tata: Alone, alone, alone?
Audrey: Yes, yes, yes.

She was right. I’ve been a slow learner. Aquarians of my acquaintance are all close to a breaking point, if they haven’t already broken. A woman in my office has been calling her husband “the Liability” for a couple of months now. A man I see every day grows desperate about his wife’s refusal to treat her depression.

Life is really fucking short. Enough with lovers who don’t have time, can’t be honest, have to play games or only want us on their terms. Let us waste no more time on lament. The trees are a breathtaking green. The sky is a pillowy blue. Every night is filled with starry promise, and Audrey and I are fabulous, brainy babes. Somewhere, there are courageous, lusty hedonists, and let’s not keep them waiting.

One word: NEXT!