Week 4 Tuesday Report

Goal 2
I have not been home enough to make any progress on the apartment this week. In fact, the vacuum is lying on the living room floor where I left it Sunday morning before I went to work at the family store.

To compensate (the point is to make progress, not punish myself) I’ll report again next Tuesday on precisely how humiliating it can be when the vacuum is still there.

Johnny sent me a copy of one of our favorite old Fleetwood Mac CDs, which was exciting. I truly enjoy driving around with the windows open, singing the trumpet parts. DA! DA! DA! TUSK! This came in very handy when Friday, the family migrated north and west to a bed & breakfast on Lake Arcadia. Several people have asked me what town I drove to. I don’t know. Mom sent me directions I didn’t understand and I was loudly not understanding the directions as I walked across my office to John’s desk. At work, John is one of my designated translators and as usual, when I am swearing, John grins ear-to-ear.

Tata: Mom sent me…!
John: Oooh, this is awful. “Go slow or you’ll lose an oil pan. Hey, it happens”? This says there’s another way. Where is it?
Tata: I don’t know.
John: What’s the name of the town?
Tata: I don’t know.
John: The name of the inn?
Tata: I don’t know that either.
John: Are you just going to get on 287 and keep going?
Tata: That’s my plan, yep. Until I stop.
John: Down at the bottom, she hints at the name.
Tata: What?
John: Here, it’s on Google. With directions!
Tata: What?
John: I’ll format and print it for you.
Tata: Get out!
John: I’ll do it in Wingdings so you can’t read it. You’ll feel right at home.
Tata: We are such dorks that font funnies may be the highlight of this vignette.

In a torrential downpour, I packed the car. Then the rain stopped. I took a nap. As soon as I got into the car, the clouds burst, and I drove the length of Easton Avenue in a blinding rainstorm at a crawl as other drivers with sonar passed me. Whatever. I’ve lived along the Raritan long enough to where speeding landed careless persons in the Canal, which is very, very stinky.

An hour later, I’m driving up and down and in and out on steep mountain roads in dewy twilight when I see the sign for the inn. I turn into the driveway and for the next two miles, roll the car slowly over gravel, large rocks and holes. When I finally get to the inn, one of my brothers-in-law helps with the luggage and the wine; I carry everything else. My stepfather Tom greets us at the door.

For five years, my mother has lived in my hometown and Tom has lived during the week at this bed & breakfast, returning to the hometown house on Fridays for the weekend. This has been better for him than driving over an hour, twice a day. We trundle indoors and drop my groceries in the giant kitchen. The voices of my four sisters, their children, two of their husbands, my mother and Tom echo through the cavernous rooms in a huge wooden house that was built on Lake Arcadia four generations ago and is still owned by the same family, which is not our family. Tom has acted as caretaker here during the long winters. Even the windows themselves are odd and oversized, which I notice after I see through them the huge lake in what might otherwise be a backyard the size of half a town. With canoes.

We drop my stuff in a room directly overlooking the lake, which Tom says is his when the inn is unoccupied. I can see why he likes it: the old wood walls, the deep closets, the view that spreads out for miles. Later, he tells me from these windows, he watched the cloud of destruction on September 11th. Tom shows me all the rooms and explains who is sleeping where. The rooms are so big I wish I remembered how to square dance.

Downstairs in the kitchen, everyone’s talking at once. Let me introduce you.

Mom: Lucy is my mother, Daria’s and my brother Todd’s. Todd is not here.
Tom: Father of Anya and Corinne, Mom’s second husband since sometime in the seventies but nobody really knows when because Mom and Tom are way cagey. Tom is a biologist, a Christian and a rational thinker. His dinnertable mantra when we were growing up was, “Cite your source!”

Daria: After me, the oldest of the kids. Followed by a drifting cloud of Jersey Chick hair. Funniest when deeply depressed. She is married to –
Tyler: Former Marine, financial planner, Ann Coulter fan surrounded by tree-huggers. Daria and Tyler have three children –
Tyler Too: Six, and just learning how to mouth off.
Sandro: Three. Smiles as he does exactly what you told him not to.
Fifi: Fifteen months and cute as a button. A happy baby.

Anya: She who has excellent taste in decorative stuff; fights a lot with Daria. Piercing blue eyes. Married to –
Dan: Landscape architect with a marked tendency to snore as soon as his butt his a chair, with good reason. Anya and Dan have two children –
Ezekiel: Three and talks constantly. Sweet like nobody’s business.
Gigi: Eight months, an astute observer, a startlingly pretty thing.

Corinne: Corinne was two when we met her. She does not remember life before she had stepsisters brushing her hair. Often speaks in tongues. Very funny. Separated from the husband I used to call “Goober.” Corinne has two children –
Lois: Resembles Scarlett Johanson. Smart, funny, smiles mysteriously through family dinners. I think she’s collecting blackmail material. She is thirteen.
Tippecanoe: Just turned seven and walks backward toward aunties who wants to kiss him. Energetic. Sweet. Thrilled to see all his cousins.

Dara: Daria’s and my half-sister from Dad’s second marriage. Dara turns fifteen this week. When I saw her in a bikini I was glad my daughter’s married. Dara looks like adorable trouble and she is. Daria, Todd, Anya, Corinne and I have been brother and sisters for over thirty years, so no one bothers with technicalities. Dara is just one of the kids; Dara and Lois are weirdly inseparable, despite living five states apart.

When I walk into the kitchen someone hands me a glass of wine, and it’s a good thing. I spend the vast majority of my time alone. For all this togetherness, it turns out I am over-sober.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be working at the family store for a week while my sisters and their mom take a much-needed break. It’s good news for me, too. The setting is peaceful, the fragrances tranquil, the music ambient; what’s not to love? I have one complaint, though: I’ve listened to all the store CDs, and I haven’t bought many new CDs recently. I’m bored. Help me out!

For the store, my favorite CDs are Cocteau Twins, Sarah MacLachlan, Seal, Dido, Miles Davis,Talk Talk and singers who aren’t singing in English. At home, my tastes are different and they don’t mix well. I found this out when I was gift-wrapping something sharp and Jeff Buckley was wailing about fucking someone and I stabbed myself with someone’s birthday gift when I realized why the customer was staring at me with horror. So. I can pick up three or four CDs. I can pick a lipstick to complement ABBA Gold.

What CDs do you recommend?

Week 3 Friday Morning Report

Goal One
I an down from my original heft in the neighborhood of 1.5-2 lbs. I can’t tell. I am old, the scale is far away, and those little lines are teeny.

Goal Three
Nope. No time for yoga. I exchanged this for a massage. I was having real trouble with my right leg. My friend Beryl is a massage therapist. She and I haven’t seen one another nearly enough so it was a fine chance to get naked in front of my friend and, you know, catch up. The good news is the pain in my right leg has almost completely disappeared.

I am wearing the small pants! This is good and bad news, bad news first: my rump, while smaller, is still more than 20 lbs. above a good weight for me, which has nothing to do with what insurance institutes say is a good weight for my frame. Even anorexic, I couldn’t get within 15 lbs. of those weird estimates. Even an anorexic gets the point sometimes.

The good news is that I’d started noticing my arms floating around, away from my body like I was wearing swimmies all the time. For the first time in my weight yo-yo life, I’d developed chubby arms. Because I’m exercising every day, the fat-muscle conversion is happening – too slowly for my taste, but it’s happening. Earlier this week, I noticed my elbows resting next to my waist. When I walk, my arms feel like their normal selves again. This morning, I changed the department’s water bottle.

My mantra is “The answers are in the body and exercise is always the way there.” I am a genius! I’d taken today off and forgot, so I’m sitting at my desk instead of arguing with Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul. So I’m not a genius. I’ll settle for being a slightly smaller fool.

Just over a week ago, Daria described an impromptu plan.

Daria: I’m packing up my children and we’re going to visit Daddy.
Tata: All three of your children?
Daria: Yup.
Tata: Our Dad?
Daria: He’s the one.
Tata: And when are you leaving?
Daria: Squazzbats.
Tata: You’ll be back by Friday, right?
Daria: Guuuuaaaaaazzzzzz. Eck eck eck.
Tata: Awesome. See you soon!

Okay, I’m lying. I seldom see Daria soon. Since she and Tyler moved the kids out to Flemington there are be long stretches between psychotic breaks where I agree to drive for an hour to chase children and feel sticky – I hate sticky. Also: Daria may have used real words but her cell service hates me in particular. Nobody else tells her she’s speaking the gentle dialect of the air traffic controller, she says. I can’t explain it. Anyway, I can’t call her when she’s not at home because it’s just too hard to memorize a phone number per person anymore and I might need those brain cells for breathing, we don’t know. A week passed. I kept looking around like I’d misplaced my wallet. The phone rang.

Daria: DID YOU MISS ME?
Tata: Fiercely. Where the hell are you?
Daria: EXIT TWO. DID YOU MISS ME?
Tata: Of course. Why are you shouting?
Daria: FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFVVVVVVPP EP EP.
Tata: Ah! I should have known.
Daria: I’ll call you back later so Dara can talk to you.
Tata: Ooooooooooh! Camping trip for her!
Daria: My kids say hello, except for the one that says, “Bah bah bah.”
Tata: I’m hanging up now!
Daria: GAAAAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTT.

Daria, Todd and I, all forty-plus, have a half-sister who is about to turn 15. Dara just came back from a school trip to France with a hickey. I told Dad:

Tata: Listen, it’s a different world. You ran wild in the streets. I ran wild in the streets. It’s not the same anymore. Tell her, “I’ve been keeping this secret: you’re Catholic. I’m locking you in this convent until crossing your knees feels natural.”
Dad: She’s not Catholic.
Tata: Shhhh! It’s supposed to be a secret.
Dad: What about that fire-and-brimstone church she goes to with her mother?
Tata: Snakes got nothing on Dominicans. Shit, they were the Inquisition until the Pope told ’em to tone it down.

So Dad’s miffed, Dara’s staying with Daria for a few weeks and I’m measuring out a good blast buffer distance. This does nothing to prevent the mid-morning phone calls. Daria’s thrilled to wake up in her own house.

Daria: So guess what!
Tata: What?
Daria: My beautiful little daughter – I was changing her diaper and I stepped around the corner for a clean diaper.
Tata: STOP! I KNOW EXACTLY WHERE YOU’RE GOING!
Daria: And Tyler Too said, “Mommy, she pooped.” I said, “No way, buddy. Where could the poop have gone?” And he pointed to a container next to Fifi. So I opened it and –
Tata: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH.
Daria: I had to bleach everything.
Tata: Eck eck eck eck. I’m holding a gabage can. Oops, it’s recycling –
Daria: I couldn’t believe it. She picked up the poop and put it in a container.
Tata: The room is spinning – breakfast won’t be delicious twice –
Daria: Anyway, so what’re ya doing?
Tata: Passing out now –
Daria: Gotta go!

Things are back to wretched normal.

Week 3 Tuesday Report

Forgive me for reporting in late. Busy afternoon! I was waiting for the cable guy. He did exactly what I knew he would: not at all see what I saw. I felt bad about making him crawl around under the building in 100 degree heat. I say we’re even. He left me a piece of paper with a description of what might be wrong so the next guy might have a head start. This kind of thing happens all the time but expecially when my U.N. translator is off having her own life, and because Siobhan is a selfish bitch she was selfishly and bitchily at work, thinking only of herself and her career and paying her bills, as usual nobody else understood a word I said.

I’m used to this. It always makes Siobhan Yosemite-Sam-hoppin’-mad, with steam shooting from each ear – the works! So there is an upside.

This evening, the CD tower I avoided ordering arrived, which is why I didn’t report in this morning. I had a hunch the tower would arrive today. So I assembled it, pulled most of my CDs out of the last cardboard moving box and put them in the tower. The box is empty. It’s a little milestone.

Still lots of work to do. The curtain rods are still on the floor and there’s still a pile of stuff on the credenza, three Rubbermaid containers and two boxes I’ve just remembered two milk crates wedged into small spaces behind things.

Obviously, I can never leave here.

I feel sick thinking about this.

More than twenty years ago, Scout and I were talking about childhood sexual abuse and Scout cited the statistic – relatively new and shocking – that about one in four girls had been sexually assaulted by the time they reached maturity. Scout and I were shocked not by the idea that one in four girls were assaulted but that the ratio was so low. Scout said, “I think it’s the reverse.”

I have always believed her. I know more women who have been sexually assaulted than women who have not. I spent 12 years in therapy dealing with this crap myself, and I am reluctant to talk about this now because it’s not pressing. I don’t think about it much anymore. Then there’s this odious behavior at the G8 Summit, which I was ignoring. Bush is an ill-mannered buffoon – no news there. But putting his hands on German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a gesture that can either be affectionate or dominant but neither consentual nor presidential in a public setting – I can’t express my disgust. This is the precise invasive maneuver that would make me freak, anywhere, anytime, any set of hands.

I’m sitting at my desk, shivering with anger. My back is against a wall, where I like it. In therapy, you learn that what happened wasn’t your fault. You learn to stay present in the non-threatening here-and-now. Aren’t I lucky I know exactly who to blame and how to sashay forward with all the style, grace and focused rage of a registered voter fully capable of locating and using a White House email address?

Last night, just before 10, I was watching the last few riveting minutes of Miss Marple: the Moving Finger, and it was tense because my friend and I had a bet going. He said the doctor killed the gossipy wife and the domestic. I was distracted by the use of Bible pages in poison pen letters and said it might be the vicar’s wife but that in all matters Agatha Christie-related I could never pick the killer and it started to look like he was going to win. This is terrible because if he wins, not only do I not know how the murder was committed – which would bug me – but it was really going to cost me. And winning wouldn’t be much better because he wagered a pound of macaroni made by non-Italians, which would be okay if the non-Italians were Chinese or even French because Heaven knows throughout history European borders have been a little flexible, but then the phone rang! At first, I didn’t recognize the voice.

Some Lady: I know it’s late but I thought you might like to have a chance to…
Tata: I can barely hear you.
Some Lady: I know it’s late. It’s Tom’s birthday and I thought you might want to call him on the other phone.
Tata: MOM?
Mom: Yes?
Tata: What are you saying?
Mom: It’s Tom’s birthday. He’s talking to your sister Corinne right now on the other phone but if you wait a few minutes you can call before the end of the evening.
Tata: What’s today’s date? It was just Bastille Day. That should’ve been my first clue – pretty much every year for the last 30! I just never know what day it is.
Mom: I know. That’s why I called.
Tata: You’re not whispering. Where are you?
Mom: Cape Cod.
Tata: Is he in the same house you are?
Mom: Yes. This morning, we went quahogging and we’re going to watch a movie.
Tata: My jealousy knows no bounds. I was watching Miss Marple and absolutely no one went clamming.

My friend and I both picked the wrong culprits, which may mean meeting in trenchcoats on a bridge between East and West Berlin. I haven’t decided what to forfeit. It has to mean something, and it has to be funny. Is pesto hilarious?

Yesterday, I was walking in a section of the park under what can only be described as aggressive construction, where oversized Tonka trucks sit largely idle and seemingly random trenches have been dug through asphalt and lawn. No plan is evident. In the months I’ve been walking and running in the park, questionable improvements have progressed at a glacial pace. One trench near an old boat launch is filled with fetid water and because it cuts across that whole corner of the park, for me there is no avoiding the trench or the smell. I jump over it. On the other hand, this corner of the park is almost always deserted. Yesterday, as I was avoiding a relatively new obstacle in my path, I saw a kid on a bike skid right up to the trench, the front wheel jerk straight down and the kid fly over the handlebars. This kid either landed head-first and rolled or flipped in the air – I’m not sure what I saw. Anyway, this kid wasn’t dead. You will be pleased to hear I did not even lie down to laugh hard enough.

I picked up the pace, asking, “Are you okay?” and “Are you hurt?” I couldn’t tell if the kid on the ground was a boy or a girl but he or she was almost my size, big-boned, wearing a helmet and with shoulder-length blond hair. I guessed he or she was between 10 and 13, and in that square body stage, back facing me. The kid was gasping for breath and moaning a little, leaning on one hip. I went around to face this kid and still couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl so I didn’t touch. I jumped over the trench. I grabbed the bicycle, which was new, very shiny and bigger than me, and pulled it out of the ditch. I stood it up and pushed down the kickstand with my hand. The bicycle was spattered with foul-smelling mud. Then I turned back to the kid, still on the ground, and jumped back over the trench. There was nothing to do but issue orders. “Try sitting back,” then, “Looks like nothing’s broken. Can you get up?” and “Walk!” From under his t-shirt, I saw the fringe of a prayer shawl. It was a boy, and I was glad I hadn’t touched him. That could have consequences for him because I am a strange woman. Literally.

He got up and walked. “Brush the dirt off your knees so you can see if you have any cuts.” He was very obedient and brushed, then pointed to a small spot where the skin was a little purple. “You need some peroxide. You’re going right home, yes?” He nodded, sort of. He was okay enough to go wherever he was going next without a crutch or overreaction on my part, so I turned to go. I told him to be careful – that ditch was not what it looked like from a distance. I told him to take care and started off. From a distance, he called out, “Thank you!” I called out, “Sure.” He didn’t owe me anything.

I thought about this after I kept walking: where he was, if he’d been injured I would’ve had to leave him alone to get help. I worked out a plan that would’ve caused me to leave the boy alone the least amount of time. It didn’t matter, for three reasons: 1. I was less than an eighth of a mile from my boss Gianna’s house; 2. even if no one at the soccer field had a phone, I could get help in the parking lot; 3. most emergencies are no more than I can handle. This has been true all my life.

I should think about that more.

Yesterday, Dad sent me the crankiest, most hilarious obituary I’ve read in ages. At first, I thought it was a joke. Nobody’s this poised in death without a board up his shirt.

Frederic Arthur (Fred) Clark, who had tired of reading obituaries noting other’s courageous battles with this or that disease, wanted it known that he lost his battle as a result of an automobile accident on June 18, 2006. True to Fred’s personal style, his final hours were spent joking with medical personnel while he whimpered, cussed, begged for narcotics and bargained with God to look over his wife and kids.

Tata: Dad, is this real? His politics are all over the map!
Dad: He was a cantankerous far-righty. And yes, he’s kicked the bucket.

So where’s it land?

Always an interested observer of politics, particularly what the process does to its participants, he was amused by politician’s outrage when we lie to them and amazed at what the voters would tolerate. His final wishes were “throw the bums out and don’t elect lawyers” (though it seems to make little difference). During his life he excelled at mediocrity. He loved to hear and tell jokes, especially short ones due to his limited attention span. He had a life long love affair with bacon, butter, cigars and bourbon. You always knew what Fred was thinking much to the dismay of his friend and family. His sons said of Fred, “he was often wrong, but never in doubt”.

I can’t argue with butter-love and bourbon-amour, can you?

He died at MCV Hospital and sadly was deprived of his final wish which was to be run over by a beer truck on the way to the liquor store to buy booze for a double date to include his wife, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter to crash an ACLU cocktail party. In lieu of flowers, Fred asks that you make a sizable purchase at your local ABC store or Virginia winery (please, nothing French – the censored) and get rip roaring drunk at home with someone you love or hope to make love to. Word of caution though, don’t go out in public to drink because of the alcohol related laws our elected officials have passed due to their inexplicable terror at the sight of a MADD lobbyist and overwhelming compulsion to meddle in our lives.

The old coot wanted Rush to date Ann? Yecch. I have to go bleach my brain after that mental picture but – strangely – I’m with him on those goddamn MADD mothers and their mortal meddling.

Fred’s ashes will be fired from his favorite cannon at a private party on the Great Wicomico River where he had a home for 25 years. Additionally, all of Fred’s friend (sic) will be asked to gather in a phone booth, to be designated in the future, to have a drink and wonder, “Fred who?”

Awesome. I didn’t know you could go out like this.

And speaking of things I didn’t know: things in war zones are worse than my safe-in-Jersey mind can make sense of in any way. What’s happening in Afghanistan was inevitable. Events in Iraq are not just violent, brutal and immoral – no, they are disgusting. The things human beings will do to one another for – as far as I can tell – no reason whatever make me wish I could go live on another planet. Alone. For the rest of my life. And now we have this latest testosterone-driven foolishness between Israel and Hezbollah that results in bombs dropped on the heads of innocent people. It’s disgusting, all this power and so little responsibility.

Look, I’m not an idiot – mostly. At any given moment, there are wars and conflicts going on all over the globe. Someone is always killing thousands of someone else, and the world goes round and round. But something important is different now, and that something is knowledge.

One hundred years ago, we had newspapers and magazines. When something happened, the public in places where there was a press – that’s key – might read accounts and see occasional photographs. In a public information sense, the public might read what amounts to a troubling bedtime story, while in a certain personal sense, people knew what war was like because sometimes it came to the front door with a rifle. In the United States, that doesn’t happen anymore unless you have a tiff with ATF, so we are very much isolated from the reality of war, when we talk about war. No army comes to our front doors to kill us and rape our children so we can talk and talk and talk about war in the most sanitary or savage terms we can find and it’s all meaningless talk. The problem is our meaningless talk kills people, and we bear responsibility for it.

Later in the twentieth century, reporters followed troops through the jungles of Vietnam and for the first time, through the magic of television the American public saw what war looked like. I don’t have to write a history of war journalism for you. If you’ve been paying attention all your life you’ve noticed the little shocks and tremors, you saw the first George Bush say, “Let ‘er rip,” then retire to a back room and watch CNN’s coverage of bombs falling on Baghdad. You noticed that after the bombing of Oklahoma City the American public was considered too fragile to observe its own unsanitized history. Perhaps you even noticed that when the Towers came down the written accounts were so different from the images we were shown that it was as if reporters covered two different disasters. On the one hand, we have the capacity now to see events from around the world as they are transpiring. We cannot pretend we don’t understand what horror we visit on other human beings when we – or anyone, not just us – act thoughtlessly, brutally and without moral courage.

In high school, I was a drama fag with Daniel Drennan, whose book New York Stories made me laugh until I cried. Daniel went to the prom with one of my sisters. I am fond of him. Daniel was born in Lebanon and adopted by an American couple who later raised other children too in the town I grew up in. Daniel lived in Paris for years but living in NYC for many more and during 9/11 was for him as for many people a turning point in his life. He’s moved to Beirut to teach and learn about the people he was born to. His blog is one of great beauty, and raw anger.

I was dreaming this morning and in this dream a wrong number with a wrong name kept asking the wrong recipient who was me, “how do you feel?” and as much as I tried to explain that it was a wrong number the wrong voice kept going: “Yes but how do you feel?”

I woke and could hear the sound of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer, a rhythmic, cadenced call that I find comforting in its daily reminder of one’s humble status, of one’s humanity, of one’s community, to all points compass-wise called out.

And then another sound, of low-flying jets, a roar and a sonic boom that shook the building; and then another sound, an explosion, to the south; I ran to the balcony door, and the neighbors did the same, and lights came on and people stared out into the dark sky now reflecting light from a bomb blast just south in the dahiyeh.

And the noise of the jets forces you to duck your head as if they might graze the top of your very skull, and their sonic booms shock you into the very corners of your apartment though they cause no harm save some broken glass somewhere else, and the dull thud of bombs meeting their targets reveals itself in a viscerally felt pressure wave that is comparatively speaking easier on the ears as though to bely its deadliness.

God damn it.

“My electricity just went out along with the whole city it seems. It seems like they are bombing south of me which would be the southern suburbs, mostly Shi’a Muslim. I can’t believe they can get away with this. This is the fucking capital of a country and they are striking civilian targets. I am sitting in the dark on the floor waiting for it to stop. I’m not freaked out just really fucking angry!”

And my sister called, which amazed me in terms of phone service here; and I kept her on the phone to keep her voice close, the sound of her voice comfort in the dark only I wish she hadn’t heard the bombs drop; I wish she didn’t have to hear the sonic booms ricocheting off the walls and through my head; the pause in our conversation endless as outside the noise screamed and pounded and boomed and silent pink lights rose to meet no target and yellow-orange flames reflected off of the smoke of their own creation.

And then silence. As after a nightmare, the rising sun serves to vanquish evil; a dark plume of smoke rose heavy in the southern sky, accompanied by not a sound, not a siren, not a cry, not a car, not a voice, nothing, no one. So silent, that one might try to sleep, exhausted, as if hearing and seeing were fatiguing activities.

And my parents called, and I prayed that my mother might be spared the sound of the night before, straining my ears for sounds of jets, ready to hang up if necessary to prevent such a transmission; sounds no mother should hear, especially when that noise is directly delivered to other mothers, that noise and the bomb it delivered that mowed down eight children of a mother’s work yesterday in one fatal moment, that noise that haunts mothers’ nightmares throughout this country, that piercing scream of death come quickly.

And for once I was discussing politics with my father and we were agreeing, and for once I realized how often I underestimate their wisdom, my parents; their lives of Depression and World War and living abroad; and we talked about racism and war and destruction; of actions beyond our control and reaction and frustration; of Gaza and Beirut and Iran and of America; and we agreed, and I regret only that we don’t talk more, because talking more might mean agreeing more, and I hung up the phone and let myself cry for the first time since waking up hours before, if only for making them worry for me.

That was yesterday. Today isn’t looking great, either.

…but I find this kind of funny, first of all because I just walked across half the city to get here and second of all because the American Embassy here is completely and totally useless (for the past few days the same email has been sent telling Americans to stay away from street demonstrations of which there are none); the U.S. State Dept. is completely and totally useless (their missive reminds us that evacuation is not free).

Furthermore, the other thing to know is that the dorms at AUB have potable tap water, generator-driven electricity, free Internet access, and a beautiful campus with some of the only greenery in Beirut plus a private beach. Meanwhile, my electricity up in Ras en-Nabaa is being rationed; when the electricity is out I have to walk up 5 flights of stairs and my water pump stops bringing my (for hygiene only) water up to my cistern. I have only a cell phone and no Internet or, needless to say, a private beach. So their whining is really annoying. I do live two blocks from the French Embassy should I need to I will go there instead.

I want to make something clear: I’m not planning on keeping a running journal here; I kind of needed to write out what I did yesterday to just process what is going on. Last night dusk was weird and this morning I awoke with no noise and the sensation that perhaps something had happened that ended it. Unfortunately, it was only a break for Beirut and not the south and not the Bekaa. Now it is 2:00 in the afternoon and they are shelling the suburbs of Beirut again.

Israeli newspapers are reporting that the aim is to “disarm Hezbollah”. I would like someone to tell me now that this wasn’t planned well in advance, and that tacit American approval was not behind it. I’d like to remind everyone that there are 25,000 Americans working in Beirut right now. Not that I think they deserve special privileges, exactly the opposite (although the dorm residents above might beg to differ). I guess I can see the U.S. government cynically hoping for hostage taking and the like in order to give them an excuse to “come clean up”.

In the meantime, I have 100+ students to worry about. Colleagues, friends, and neighbors. I don’t think I can set foot on a war ship if that is how they plan to evacuate people. And I don’t know that I can leave since leaving would probably mean never coming back.

Oh, back to the running journal thing. I don’t want this to any way be fodder for the schadenfreude entertainment mill that is foreign news in the States. I don’t want to make a big drama about me because frankly that is the main sickness of the solipsistic Internet and also because I don’t see myself any different from anyone else here.

The difference is not Daniel, per se. The difference is that because Daniel is real and human and articulate and flesh, Daniel must be seen and heard. This would or will make him very impatient with me some other time, but let’s all suck it up and get to the point, here: dropping bombs is not an abstraction. Real human beings bleed real blood when they are crushed under concrete that used to be their homes, and real human beings melt and burn when bombs fall on them. Real human beings die in agony, and others live on in agony. You cannot pretend it is not happening. It is. And no one can any longer afford to be wrong, but never in doubt because being wrong is tearing the flesh of people whose survivors will have every reason to rise up and come for you.

If only in the interest of your own selfishness, get off your ass and tell your representatives in no uncertain terms this must stop. I’m sorry it’s come to this. The one thing I can’t stop thinking about is a snippet from the Times Magazine more than ten years ago in a story about the Bosnian conflict, after the US intervened. My recollection is hazy; my grasp of that conflict was poor and hindered by my safe-in-Jersey feeling that a thousand-year-old feud was a big waste of – well, everything. How could people be shooting each other in the streets of Sarajevo? They’d just had the Olympics, for Christ’s sake. Yes, anyway: the article. After the US finally did something about the death, the mass raping, the war crimes, there was this one remarkable conversation the reporter had with an uncomfortable person. I don’t know who it was or how it came to happen. The reporter asked if the person was pleased that the US troops had finally stomped out the fires. The person said, slowly, “We kind of hate you.” These words ring in my ears now. I still don’t understand what happened in the Balkans but I do understand that we have the capacity to stop what is happening in Beirut today, right now. And though we can’t undo the tremendous damage we’ve done in Iraq and Afghanistan we have to find a way to stop doing any more.

We are responsible. Us.