Family and Maintenance

Thursday, July 27

Mark, Arthur, Kristina, Melora and I visited Mark's nephew, Kevin, and his son, Stephen (his wife, Jackie, was at work--Even, his four-year-old was at camp).  It was Kevin's birthday, so when we spotted him pushing the pram, we rolled down the windows to the car and sang "Happy Birthday" at him.  Jackie's parents were there, and I think our singing put Kevin into that slightly embarrassed, slightly resigned place that only crazy relatives can put you in.

Their house is compact and very cute, with a basement and a second stories.  Jackie's decorated it in a relaxed "American Family Adage" style, with lots of candles-and-flowers, pictures of their boys, cushions, and little mottoes in stylized typefaces.

Kevin has plans to re-landscape their back yard, with extra decking, and a garden on the south side.

Kevin was focused on his youngest son, Steven, about eight months.  Steven passed out about three-fourths of the way into our visit.

---

Later in the day, Mark and I lopped tree limbs from an as-of-yet-unidentified tree so that they wouldn't trail on his mother's house's roof or take out a gutter in the winter.

Bethesda Terrace

I'm sure that I've seen Bethesda Terrace before, but I must have been in a hurry to see the MET or to meet Mark or it was rainy.




As soon as Mark pointed it out, I was off faster than you can say "F-stop."




We got there fairly early in the morning, and there weren't too many other tourists about.  People kept telling us that it was a lovely day and that we'd just missed the heat wave (I think the New Yorker's cover that week was The Devil driving a Metro Subway out of Hell).




Areas like Bethesda Terrace make me wish Eugene wasn't covered in Brutalist Architecture, Graffiti Murals, and Hippy Sculptures--or to quote Frederic Edwin Church, Eugene's "ideal of architecture is wrapped up in felicitous recollections of a successful brick school house or meeting house or jail."  At least we have the UO Art Museum, Knight Library and Hope Abbey.

First Day in New York

We took a trip to visit Mark's family in New York. (Tuesday, Aug 25)  Our flight left in the early afternoon, served a complimentary meal that was decent, and arrived a little early.  The oddest thing was that all of the seats had little LCD screens on their backs, so everyone was watching a different movie or news show or flight progress.  I wanted to turn my screen off, but--unlike the other screens in front of Mark and The Child--there was no option on my screen to do so.

At JFK, we took various trains and subways to our New York City friend's apartment.  At Jamaica Station we saw a mother raccoon and two babies crawl along the tracks, scale a short wall, and disappear under a metal cap of a building wall.    As a warning that my sense of direction was even more scrambled than it usually is, every train that we took traveled in the opposite direction that I thought it would.

LGL had to work the morning, but he stayed up to greet us and chat a little bit.  We fell asleep to the sounds of traffic.

---

The next day (Wednesday, Aug 26), LGL snuck out to go to work before we were up.  

After a quick breakfast, we walked about four blocks from the apartment to Central Park.  Everyone told us the day was wonderful, as it was (a humid) 78F (previous days, there had been a heat wave).  We wound around a bit on some of the paths, but Mark knew that I'd want to see (and photograph) the Bow Bridge, and the Bethesda Terrace Fountain.

What struck me about Central Park was that it was cleaner than a lot of Eugene Parks.  Along the way we saw lots of granite or marble embedded with mica, and a family of turtles (which I startled) staying out of a bright green algae bloom by sunning on a long rock.

The Bow Bridge (http://www.centralparknyc.org/things-to-see-and-do/attractions/bow-bridge.html) looks like something out of a Disney Movie.  At first I thought it might be Fiberglas, but Mark told me it was cast iron.  Given all the quatrefoils and embossed knot work, that's impressive.

We went on to the Bethesda Terrace Fountain (http://www.centralpark.com/guide/attractions/bethesda-terrace.html) , but more impressive were the carvings in the plaza surrounding it.  As Mark expected, I rushed off to try to digitize every square inch.  I kind of lost track of time....

A Eugene-looking man in paint-splattered overalls stood before the archway and released gigantic bubbles from a bubble-solution soaked string contraption.   A guitarist filled the chamber with music from his six-string.  Painting of the seasons lined the place, but they seemed like faded memories of the seventies; I enjoyed the sculptures and textured stone more.

It was time to go so we could meet LGL for lunch.  We walked --uh, South-- toward the end of the park, stopping for about ten minutes to watch a magic show, wherein one of Mark's twenty dollar bills was made to disappear and then reappear from within an uncut lime.  The magician, dressed in short-sleeves, was very good, making things appear and disappear.  I think his best trick was pointing to his "invisible" wrist watch and making several invisible watch jokes at various intervals, and then pointing to his real watch, which had appeared on his wrist without anyone noticing.

Mark was in charge of navigation, so we detoured through a fancy hotel where you can still sit for tea... which I want to do now (hmm, how to incorporate sitting for tea there with a visit to the MET, which is in the middle of the park...).  We were supposed to meet LGL at a lunch placed called Hamburger Heaven--but it was closed for renovations, so we waited for him at Sach's across the street and looked at expensive jewels.

After a lovely meal at an Irish-ish pub, we walked LGL back to work, and then headed for The Strand Bookstore.  The Strand is sort of like Powell's City of Books, only smaller.  I'd say that the selection of Powell's is larger and includes more titles, but The Strand was less industrial.

I went to their occult section, and saw the usual Wicca 101 books -- I almost got a copy of Penszack's "Gay Witchcraft: Empowering the Tribe" -- and some of the pictures of fit nude men (with ritual items strategically placed) helped me to understand why the Eugene Library can't seem to hang onto a copy... but... it didn't speak to me as much as it would have a me twenty years ago.   I wound up purchasing a book of New York stone sculptures, and Helen Wrecker's "The Golem and the Djinn."   (It turns out that Bethesda Terrace Fountain plays a large part in Helen's book.)

Mark took us to the Village.  I must confess the balls of my feet were bothering me.  There was an uptick in cute guys, and the difference between Washington Square and Central Park was the difference between The Eugene Weekly and The New Yorker.


Oddly, it's pollen season here, too.

Family Time / Writing Time

Thursday afternoon, The Child and I had a discussion about how much time I spend writing.

This was prompted by me growling at him (so much for writing making me a better person...) the other morning when he woke up a little early and started asking me all sorts of questions -- that I was sitting in the Stickley Chair with a manuscript and staring at a screen didn't seem to communicate to him that I was in another world fine-tuning some staging.   

I don't know if this is true for other writers, but when I'm that focused, it feels like I'm being physically yanked out of the world my characters are in and back into a pre-dawn living-room.  It breaks my rhythm and it's irritating.   I retreated to the Writing Closet, the doors of which were assailed a few minutes later with a request for technical assistance printing a job that should have been done the previous evening.  

I felt annoyed at the apparently manufactured interruptions and also guilty for snapping at the child, which by now had pulled me completely out of the story and the rhytm of writing.

During our afternoon discussion, The Child accused me of writing eighty percent of the day.  Ha!  I told him I was sorry that was his perception, but if that were true, I'd be writing at least eighteen hours every day.  The reality is that on a good writing week, I get in fourteen to sixteen hours a week; but it's much more likely to come up to eight.

An item-by-item of my weekly agenda didn't convince him, and we reverted to the old-style "uh-huh!/nuh-uh!" school of debate.  Sigh.

Like Father, Like Son

The other day Mark took a picture of my dad and me.

Here it is.  We both have similar noses and eyebrows.  And shirts. And possibly wrinkles.  Although our hands look similar, I very definitely have my maternal grandmother's hands (as does my cousin, Kevin).  My dad works with his hands more than I do, and subsequently probably has stronger ones.  I'm trying to decide if we have the same shape to our skulls, but I can't tell with all my hair.

What this photo does not show is that we both have similar voices and a similar sense of humor.  When Mark once heard my mom telling a story about one of my dad's joke outfits, he yelled, "Help! It's genetic!"  Oh, yeah; my sister says that after that one Fourth of July, we're not allowed to have drinks and then launch into The DeMolay Routine (which invariably devolves into Monty Python skits...).

Snow Pictures

 West of the pass, we stopped to play in the snow.  This clump of snow reminded me in terns of a bear, a koi, or someone in prayer.







 This was a different snow-clump, that looked like whales.
















One of these days, I need to get a decent zoom lense, then I'll be able to take cool shots of the setting sun lancing through the burnt trunks of trees poking up through the snow.






More ferocious dog-with-snowball shots.

Playing With The Dog

 Over the weekend we played with my folk's dog.  She loves snow.

The Eugene Airport

Apparently, the Eugene airport has a Full Body Scan. I got to stumble through it. I kind of didn't realize that I'd been shunted through it until I was walking under a sign about scanner wavelengths. I actually thought I was walking through a metal detector until I was instructed to rise my hands over my head. Sigh. Alas, you're supposed to hold still, as I was instructed after I started to go-go dance. If we're going to have naked pictures taken of us when we travel, we should be able to be photographed as if we were dance extras from "Laugh-In" or "Barbarella."

I think I would have preferred a pat-down. But I'm willing to try anything once. So I put my feet on the yellow feet marks and played along. The little booth is disconcerting. The rotating clear plexiglas shield is just a little too reminiscent of the Old Trek disintegrator booths. And the yellow feet reminded me of the appartment scanning scene in "The Fifth Element."

My right thigh pocket was folded up oddly, because it showed up on the scan and I got patted by a TSA agent after the scan. (Note to self, don't wear the tan slacks through security.)

Our next leg will be through Salt Lake City. Since our plane got changed several days ago, our seat assignments have become swizzled around. So we are not sure if we will sit together or not.

Coastal Hole

Somewhere between the Sea Lion caves and Yachats there's a beach. We went at low tide a few weeks ago, so we could actually see and walk on the sand. Part of the beach includes some basalt cliffs, where I found this hole. The tide was coming in, and I didn't particularly want to crawl on squishy anemones or scrape myself on sharp barnacles -- so I didn't squirm through it.

 But I wonder what kind of wish I might have had granted if I did.

Sea Lion Cave Snail

This is a snail from the Oregon coast. I'm not kidding: this guy was slithering around about two blocks away from the parking lot for the Sea Lion Caves. You would think that all the salt air would inhibit snails; but no, this snail was about the size of my index finger curled against my thumb. On the other side of its shell, you could see where I'm guessing a crow had dropped it or tried to break open its shell with a rock.

D'you Remember Tom Baker?

Saturday we went to the coast. We saw:

• giant coastal snails
• waterfalls
• mating bald eagles
• agates, jasper, and a tide line of tiny plastic bits
• a raft of sea-lions in the coastal surf
• real fishermen feeding real sea-lions ten feet away from us while we stood on a dock (no, lunging sea-lions never crossed my mind....)
• a harbor seal
• herons
• large crows
• seagulls of assorted sizes and shapes
• historical, two-masted sailboats (by accident)

Because it's the first Spring Visit to the Coast, I got a sunburn on my face and the top of my head. I thought I had packed my hat, and Mark was the only one smart enough to put on sun-screen.

Lately, the leitmotif for Mime has been on my mind. As I was walking around the beach looking for agates, I tried to "recuperate" (as Chris Siosal says) the theme. The ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three-FOUR rhythm of Wagner's pensive tune turned itself to a disco tune; and I wondered if the Muse of the Opera Babes was near-by. Or else Mime's leitmotif wanted to become "Over the River and Through the Woods." I kept picking at the theme and imagining it as a strophe and antistrophe.... and out popped the theme to Doctor Who.

I am not making this up; Mime's theme is quite easy to make into the ground underneath the electronic whistling melody. (Pause to imagine how the opera might have ended if Tom Baker had been the Nibelung blacksmith.)

Blossoms

The spring's cold dawning
Brings no coating snow to paint
camellias white.

It's the time of year when the trees flower.  This tree is not in our yard.  We have a camellia, which is dropping fleshy pink blossoms onto the grass.  Where they rot and turn into a pile of decomposing brown necrotic detritus.  With slugs on them.  Oh wait, that's not quite right; some of them turn brown and rot before they flop off of the camellia bush.

I wouldn't mind so much if the blooms were smaller and white.  The pink makes the blooms look like toiletry items from my grandmother's boudoir. Or body parts. Of course, Mark loves the camellia because it's an evergreen, and says disparaging things about the roses and the irises looking like dead sticks four fifths of the year.

Ah spring.

Happy Spring 2011 Equinox!

At our house, we have some stain glass art pieces crafted by Mark's Mother. Since mid-November, a six-fold snowflake of diamond prisms has hung in our front window.

Today, it's time for the Mackintosh-esque Rose. Our rose is a little less geometrical. I can't decide if I like the red glass in the petals or the green glass in the stem more. The rose will stay up until the Summer Solstice, at which point it will be replaced by the Mermaid.

We might still have snow, though; last year it fell in April.

Observations from Sunday

While were were in Redmond, a fierce windstorm blew into the Willamette Valley. Our first warning came from an IM I got while we were exploring a lava tube cave: one of our friends wanted to know if our house had power.

It was about 3:30 PM. Mark drove. We gassed up the car and began the trek from Redmond, through Sisters, and along Highway 126, the McKenzie Highway, to Springfield and Eugene.

As we approached the Hoodoo Ski area, the driving rain turned to a blizzard. The snow was wet, and we were glad that we had opted not to ski that day, as Saturday's snow had been wet and sticky. This snow would be worse (or better, if one didn't want to wind up skiing too quickly).

As we descended the western slopes of the Cascade Mountain range, the snow turned back to rain. But the tops of the trees were swaying, and every now and then a gust would rush up against the car.

We were about ninety minutes from home. We passed the new Ranger Station, and began to see LTD Bus stop signs. But the farther into the Willamette valley we got, the more we started to notice small branches on the highway. The small branches turned into larger branches. At one point the highway was covered with a dirty white, mashed pulp of pine -- which smelled nice.

We approached Blue River. "Whoo!" Mark said, "Don't touch the car, I think I drove over a power line!"

"What?" I'd been too busy looking at the trees on the side of road.

Then we passed three road flares underneath a line sagging from a leaning power pole. A little farther, a line of brake-lights stopped us. Mark pulled up and stopped the car.

On my side, I watched smoke rising from the chimney of a rural home. Its owner was prominently puttering about his front yard not looking suspiciously at the line of cars.  Mark rolled down his window, and we smelled woodsmoke from the widely spaced houses and cabins lining the highway.

Someone was out of their vehicle and speaking to a red SUV idling in front of us. Words like, "blocked" and "two hours" were all I heard of the snatches of conversation. The SUV made a hard turn and went the other way.

By this time it was around 5:15. We waited for the blockage to clear. Headlights in the distance turned out to be ODOT cars or the occasional fellow traveler turning around. Through the rain streaming down the windshield, I saw a damaged filbert orchard. Snapped limbs littered the field and here and there trees were blown over, their roots pulled out of the water-saturated soil.

Going back up the mountains, a small white car approached; it stopped every few cars. When it reached us, the driver said, "There's been a landslide, it will be a four or five hour wait before they clear the road." Then she drove off (it turned out there were only downed trees and power lines, but it did take about five or so hours to clear the road).  At this point I pulled out my secret stash of chocolate and passed it around.

There was poor to no cell phone coverage where we were. We decided to look for a restaurant. And a place to pee. Mark pulled the car around and we drove back to Blue River. He was able to get some ODOT alerts on his phone, but they were vague, saying only that there was storm damage and that maintenance would cause three hour delays.

I called my Mom -- my folks had been in Redmond also and had been on the road home a little before us. Luckily, the route they took had been clogged and limb-strewn but clear for them to get through (though not without worries over possible punctured tires). We decided not to try to get more ODOT information via Mom-net, and told her we'd call her back later.

Then we tried to find a place to eat. As we left Blue River, I noticed a homeowner had lit two tiki torches outside her home. Then I noticed folks hanging out on their front porches watching the rain and traffic. It wasn't night yet, but the afternoon was grey and I noticed no one appeared to have lights on in their houses.

"I think the power's out," I said. The later it got, the more more apparent it became that all the country stores and taverns, the Pepsi and Coke machines standing outside gas stations were dark.

Mark pointed out blinking LEDs in junction boxes high atop power poles. "I've never noticed them blinking before," he said. We guessed they would help maintenance folks pinpoint a systemic power failure. We drove past the 365 Christmas store -- closed. We drove past a hotel -- closed. The last store for 50 miles -- dark.

At last we gave up and turned back to see if the highway was clear. We drove past a tavern and supply store; it was open -- or at least there were people inside -- but only because someone illuminated the check-out counter with the headlights from their jeep.

We had to detour through Blue River again; ODOT had closed the section of highway were we'd drove over power lines.

The way to Eugene was still blocked.

By now it was 7:15-ish. We had a discussion; it was too late to try to drive back up to the probably-by-now icy pass and then try to sneak past any downed trees my folks had avoided. In the dark. The McKenzie River corridor appeared to be without power, but we had enough snacks so we wouldn't starve. We had enough gas in the tank to not worry too much about running out. Mark knew of a place further up the river that might be open. So we went back up the valley.

Our fourth pass through Blue River, Mark stopped to talk with the flagger, but all she knew was that there was road maintenance. As we continued east, other drivers behaved oddly aggressive, and we surmised they were tired, hungry, and irritated at the blocked road.

Mark drove us into the deepening darkness and rain. Everywhere along the road were empty and shadowy gas stations and cabins with woodsmoke streaming from their chimneys.

At last, we turned down a short, debris-strewn drive. A short dip and rise in the road later and white twinkly lights shone in the rain. A lodge appeared and we parked near the front. When I got out to see if they had any vacancies, the thrum of generators told me where their power came from.

Around 8:00 PM, we secured a room. After I found a place to stand where my cell phone worked, I let my folks know where we were. After a scanty meal of over-priced canned tuna and crackers and other food scavenged from our car, we played in their hot springs, then went to bed.

Around 9:45 the generator's thrum cut out, and the power stayed on. The hush of the McKenzie River lulled us to sleep.


What I get out of all of this is

• Wow; I'm thankful this was just a downed power line and some trees and not a tsunami or a nuclear melt-down;
• We were only twenty miles or so from a major metropolitan area, and still a storm isolated us from good information, food, and shelter;
• Other folks made interesting choices because they were stressed;
• With no information, people made guesses and then passed mis-information along to other drivers who then trusted the information and source;
• I'm glad Mark knew about the lodge; 
• I'm glad we had the means to pay for our lodgings;
• I'm glad we were able to fill up the gas tank in Eastern Oregon; and,
• I'm thankful that the biggest impact this adventure had was to give me some source material for story-crafting

Why John Doesn't Quilt

My sister, Julie, likes to make quilts. Like this one:




She received a brand new sewing machine for her Birthday (today! Happy Birthday!) and offered to make a smaller version of the quilt for me. The pattern is made up of tessellated triangles.




 And because the pattern is a tessellation, I kind of went a little crazy.


The next thing I knew I was making all sorts of solar-theme designs, mostly because it's hard not to make solar-theme designs when working with squares and right-triangles.




I thought maybe if I could work with some of the triangles the top of the quilt could look like frothing water. And then I stepped back.



There's probably waaaaaay too many fish.



Oh well.

Baptism and the Liturgiacl Cycle

My niece was baptized over the weekend. This is the garment she (very briefly) wore. I am unsure of the lineage of the robe -- I believe my father's father wore it, which would make it a christening gown from around 1910. In any case, I wore it to my baptism, as did my sister and numerous cousins.

I'd always assumed that it was completely hand made, but looking at the stitching, some of us are pretty sure that machines were involved at some point.

The baptism presented some challenges for me personally, as October 3, 2010 was not exactly a cheery day in the Episcopal Liturgical Calendar. Specifically, Psalm 137 reads, "Happy shall be he who takes your [the daughter of Babylon's] little ones / and dashes them against a rock." And Luke 17:5-10 has some interesting things to say about salvation and master-slave relations.

However, I was able to overlook two-thousand year old scripture (by repeating "It's a metaphor" to myself between winces) and appreciate a ritual that knits a family together into a community bringing up children well.

And the readings don't come close to the reading a few baptisms back: "Better to throw the child into the Red Sea with a millstone around its neck than bring it up in a wrong relationship to God."

So kids, repeat after me: "God is not a gang-leader with a list of retaliations for previous slights -- and even if He is, it's not okay for you hurt infants and toddlers."

The New Purple Prose

While I was visiting my in-laws, I re-discovered cable TV.

We don't have a TV at our house, much less cable, for the Very Good Reason that we would end up watching things like Star Trek or Bewitched, which were fine shows the first three or five times.

Anyway, one night I amused myself by watching cable television science shows. What I learned:

1. civilizations tend to coalesce along the Earth's fault lines, where natural resources are made easily accessible by earthquakes and volcanoes,
2. scientist hosts are now expected to rock climb or play the violin while they expound scientific hypotheses,
3. producers think tidal waves and The Big Bang are scarier when the film is played at random speeds and directions, and
4. all that playing the film backward-and-forward stuff can inflate a 10 minute lecture to a full 60 minutes (90 with commercials).

I've since been welcomed by my writer friends to the World of High Definition Documentaries, Where We Slow Down Tidal Waves of Lava and Zoom In On Them Not Because It's Cool Or Educational, But Because We Can.

High definition camera work still doesn't explain the paranormal investigator shows, though. I'm sure there's a metaphor in there.

The Only Thing Between Me and the Void

While on vacation, I had the opportunity to visit a water park.

At one point, Cousin D (six-years old) asked me to go with her on the water tube slide. I asked if we could go on the more twisty slide, only to discover that the twistier slide was completely opaque, and thus completely dark dark DARK. By then we had jumped into the fast line.

Over the staccato hiss of the raft delivery system and the shrieks of the riders ahead of us as they plunged into the birth-canal-like opening, I repeated "You can do this," to myself. About a hundred times. I distracted myself with small talk with 6-year-old Cousin D.

And the yawning black mouth to the void grew closer. And closer.

Each step brought me nearer and nearer to a potential Rebirthing Experience.

Then it was our turn and we had to get onto the small three-person life-raft for the ride down.

Hot, humid air blew out of the tube. "Ready?" the attendant asked, and then we were sliding, sliding! down into darkness. My feet disappeared as the light from the entrance dimmed. When I couldn't see D sitting in front of me, we entered a spiral. In the blackness the only indication of motion was the minor whiplash induced by corkscrew turns or my fluttering stomach during an unseen drop. And then a sheen of black plastic heralded the tube's end and we were sliding out in sunlight.

During one of the eight subsequent trips, my sister-in-law, M, rode with us. She walked away at the end opining that I "scream like a girl."

Epiphany Stretches

Happy Epiphany! On this day in 1996, I came out to my parents. I was driving them to the airport. It was kind of like one of those family comedy movies: "So. Um. I'm gay. No joke. Oh, here's your plane; I'll get your bags. Have fun in Mexico. See you next week!"

Probably not the best way to come out... and I'm thankful that my family is loving and supportive.

In other news... my shoulder is "stiffer than it should be." Sigh. I must do my stretches six times a day. I must do my stretches six times a day. I must do my stretches...

New from the Fronts

On the dream front: I was in my regular body, but I was also in high school, too. I think I went to a cast party at somebody's house. The house was on the very top of a very large mountain, and the host's name was "Bear." Bear was a classmate, not a grizzly or other ursine, and I didn't think about his name until after I woke up.

At some point I was trying to leave the party. I pulled out a shiny iPhone (which I don't own in real life) and I couldn't quite remember my (folks') home phone number. I got a lift from someone else, and we started down the mountain when I realized I'd left my phone at Bear's and had to go back.

The party had died down at this point, and lots of snow was falling. The four or five people still in the house were partied-out or sleeping / about to rest.

The mountain was like a world or city unto itself, and I think at some point traveling over its snow covered highways turned into a kind of James Bond movie.


On the shoulder front: My sessions with a physical therapist are almost over. I guess he's done everything that he can, so now I do about four or five stretching exercises three or four times a day and wait for my shoulder to unstick. Oh, and make sure I sleep with about three pillows so I don't wake from fitful sleep with a tension headache.


On the holiday front: They're almost here. After some reflection, I've decided that it's normal not to be wildly excited about Christmas on November 22.


On the writing front: This is the time of year when I need to push myself so that when February roles around and I really have to push myself I don't have any "make-up" work to do. This leads to ...


The job front: I have to start looking for some income (no, we're not in any danger of losing the house, we need more cash fluidity). I'd hoped that between Writers of the Future 2007 and now I'd have sold more short stories; but I haven't. (Insert writers' angst here.) So it's time to polish up the resume.