Hazeldene

There's a place up the road from where I am now- a beautiful land called Hazeldene. I'm assuming it's called Hazeldene because there's a cast iron plaque on the ancient-stone-and-masonry wall that holds the gates that allow you onto the property, and that that plaque is on the set of gates that appears to lead to the drive that takes you to the stables behind the Big House. To be honest I'm not sure it there's a Small House, but the one evident house is large enough to be referred to as the Big House all on its' own. It appears to have gigantism. To be more accurate, it appears to have been built expressly for people who are afflicted with gigantism- from the outside, it looks as if it has only two floors but that these floors were each made twenty feet high.

I keep walking by this thing on my way down to the local village. There's a busy county road that runs right next to the sidewalk outside the semi-ancient stone wall, and should you be willing to risk some light jaywalking (even though I moved from Brooklyn NY to Bumblefuck NJ when I was young, I lived in the city long enough to absorb the lesson that any jaywalking that ended without the need of a tourniquet is much closer in spirit to crossing with the school crossing guard, sissy) you can feast your eyes on the horsies that belong to the possibly humongous owners of Hazeldene. They are pretty, pretty ponies indeed, and their blankets for the winter months are much better than the best comforter in my own house. That's fair, given that I couldn't even recoup the traveling expenses of putting myself out to stud, much less the vet's bills, but still it's the principle of the thing. What thing? I have no idea, but I had to see for myself just what it was like inside this grand mansion of the Fens.

 I made a whopping big casserole dish of my sister's crisp recipe to bring to Hazeldene, because I have yet to meet a person who can't be won over with the right amount of brown sugar. There are some apples here that are just wrong, too-close-to-an-industrial-accident kind of wrong, and with strange lumps that almost cry out for a session with a  master phrenologist ("phren" from the Latin meaning "head-bump"; "-ologist" from the Greek meaning "gasbag.") They are lumpy and frightening and the size of medium cabbages, and they're perfect for a delightful crisp. Only you don't want to call it a crisp, because that says to the British listener that you've just made a delightful potato chip and they become confused when asked if they would like a share of it. One can see the British listener's imagination trying to figure out how they are going to receive some of the potato chip- on a plate? As crumbs, served with a tiny broom so that you can just sweep them into your mouth? One can usually see the British listener's polite refusal already well formed in their eyes before one remembers to call the crisp a crumble. Or at least I do, because I can be slow on the uptake.

So I set off for that glorious one-and-a-half acre estate, muttering "Crumble. Crumble. Apple Crumble" to myself and smiling broadly at anyone I saw walking along the way. I swiveled my head sharply to smile broadly at people if I had to (and I don't mind telling you that I got  even broader smiles in return, and widened eyes that burned with something that probably wasn't fear!) I marched up to the massive front door- I'd been tempted to go around the side and look for the service entrance, but I'm An American, so I wouldn't even know what one looked like if I found it, like are the doors round like Hobbit-house doors- which reminded me that I should ask the person who answered something about Hobbits, because all British people love being compared with them, am I right?- but I marched up to that massive front door, and I rang the bell. I made sure to run right over to the window so that I could witness the butler or goblin or Edwardian ghost answer it. It was hard to stand in the elephantine shrubbery and stand on tiptoe and balance my crisp (sorry: crumble!) but I did it, for I was the intrepid explorer, dammit, and if there was genteel freakishness to be witnessed, I was going to witness it, all right.

She must have come up from the other side of the house or wing or flown to the door on her broomstick or something, because I didn't see the lady of the house open the door- I only became aware of someone making gentle retching noises to my left after a period of about three minutes. I looked: she was amazing, standing there in her regular clothes (jeans even!) as if she hadn't been left at the altar decades earlier and been waiting around for her fiance in her decaying wedding dress ever since. There wasn't even a bonnet, which was a disappointment, but I figured there must be more artifacts in the house. "May I help you?" said the Lady.

"Hey, hi, I'm Jennifer and I'm the American from up the road a ways- your house is really enormous. It's just as enormous as it can be on the outside!" I said the last bit with a Louisiana accent, just to drive home the point that I'm American and that makes me cool, because accents are cool. I knew I wasn't going to get closer to any of the inherent fun-ness of this actual British Lady without providing some weirdness of my own: Louisiana Bayou Talk would be my ticket inside! The Lady just stood there in her not-at-all creepy jeans, squinting lightly at me, smiling lightly too. I noticed that she was large but in a regular way. "Are you-all gonna invite me in or do I haf ta stand here lookin' pathetic until even the mosquitoes don't wanna take a sip of me?" I asked.

The Lady blinked a fair amount during the pause that followed. "...mosquitoes?" she said, and I waltzed past her into the foyer, because that was close enough to an invitation for me....the place was huge, but a huge you could get used to: the ceilings were really high, and must have been made that way during WWII so that the patriotic owner could hide a Spitfire attack plane in it, just in case the countryside needed a Spitfire to roar out of the second-story window during a German raid, scaring the pants off The Fuhrer and smashing all the windows and brickwork. "You had a Spitfire in here. Wow." I said, still looking up.  "...Pardon?" the Lady asked. She was being coy, but I wasn't to be put off. I decided to be un-coy (in retrospect, it's been suggested that what I was being was Rude. I didn't care for the suggestion.) I looked for the giant marble staircase that led to the landing that would naturally have as much floor space as my dining room, to better afford the necessary gawping space for the ancient familial crest that would assuredly be in stained glass above it. There was no such window. I took the still damn big mahogany staircase upstairs, turning to hand over the dessert halfway up.

"This here is a crisp! It's just like a crumble, but it's real easy to say because there's only one syllable. Y'all got too many syllables over here, I'll say that. Darlin'." I said this to the Lady as she took the casserole dish. She surprised me by answering: "I concur." She sounded posh ("posh" is British for Real Fancy-Like.)

"See, now you coulda just said Yeah. Or Ayuh, if the New England thang would feel more comfortable comin' out of your mouth." I was having trouble keeping track of which accent was most effective on her...perspective? Mood? I wasn't sure, but I'd found what I was looking for: A bedroom. A wardrobe- no closet for the Lady, and it made me instantly sad to think of rich people not having a closet. Not even the rich people. In America, rich people had closets as big as a small stable. It was pitiful. The wardrobe did contain a fair amount  of clothes that we could use (my very first job was as a costumer's assistant at a small, threadbare theater, and I learned that one can always find a way to make any kind of fabric into a costume: blazers and ballgowns may be desirable, but no piece of clothing could ever be more glorious than when it transforms into a sequined tunic for Mustardseed's only scene in A Midsummer Night's Dream.) I threw a long dress at the Lady, and tied a ribbon around her torso just beneath the bust.

"There. Now you're Eliza Bennett, before she's met her Darcy. Sorry- I mean y'all are Eliza Bennett." I said, and the Lady was smiling oh so gently now.

"That is a funny accent." she said.

"Thanks- yours is funny, too. It's real funny-like." I replied, and she giggled. "Here." The Lady pulled an aviator's helmet and goggles from the back of her wardrobe. A bit of snow fell out with it, and though my brain screamed with the need to burrow into the back of that wardrobe and bring back a satyr, I stopped myself. Next time. In the meanwhile, the Lady had beckoned me downstairs. We went back down the giant staircase and into the huge living room, and the Lady set up chairs, one right behind another.

"You can be the brash, inexperienced Yankee pilot, and I'll be the long-suffering British co-pilot." she said, and pulled up the dress around her knees as she sat down so that she had room for her invisible machine gun. I clapped my hands.

"You are fun! That's a relief- for a second I thought that you'd want to talk about gardening."

"Isn't it 'y'all are fun'?" she asked. There was mischief in her eyes. It was such a welcoming look that I forgot all about my disappointment at the lack of a house ghost.

"Yes ma'am, it sure is: y'all are real fun." I said, and sat down in the seat she's set for me, prepared to take down as many German planes as a fake Southerner and a Lady in Edwardian costuming could manage.

Curiosity

When I was home visiting a week ago I stayed at a loved one's house, and watched them suffer. There was a lot of time to think: there were treatments, and rides to treatments, and a doctor and many nurses and meals to cook and then ignore. There were pies and cookies and I had a birthday right in the middle of it. So I ate, and I cooked and all that shit, but there was suffering and going to bed. It leaves gaps of time that are perfect for some choice self-recrimination. And boredom. I kept thinking about how I, too, was suffering and then berating myself for many tedious afternoons, tasking myself for being a selfish shit (and I know you can relate: you're human, and you've probably been around/not been around someone whom you love who's having a really hard time, and you've felt like a selfish little shit for thinking about what their suffering means for your general level of satisfaction with things. If you haven't been to that particular road yet, disregard everything I just wrote- no need to get there any sooner than you're called.) I realized that the worst thing that could happen to me through my loved one's suffering is to get so bored that I just slide sideways into the despondency that's outside the rooms with the screens.

Fortunatley, there's television. The walls in the rooms that adjoin the abyss are covered in screens, but as long as you can find something on them that will hold your interest in an amused, possibly even charmed way, you can just stay in the rooms forever. That is the hope. The quality of your distraction has to be just right: intense about the right things (The Practice of Law! The Meaning of Familial Loyalty! Profiting Mightily from Property Re-sales!) but not too intense (lovers can always find other beds, for example.) There are eighty quidrillion choices out there, eighty quidrillion shows; I've seen maybe ten of them. The show that has me moderately curious right now is The Good Wife.

I think you know it. There's a bunch of good actors in it and a handful of mediocre ones (unfortunately, the lead role is occupied by one of the mediocre ones; she does a small amount of emotions well, but other than that, she's kind of blank. The fact that the pivotal performer is just meh is interesting, almost very interesting, to me: how did the producers know that I, in my sniveling angst, needed an untalented lead to bring me back to it, eternally curious about how the good cast members would dance around the bland one, holding my BFA in acting & directing crumpled into a metaphorical ball in my lap and willing the lead to wake the fuck up already...how did they know??) It's like a glass of warm milk, that show. It's so gently comforting that I'll watch three of them in a row when I might be doing all kinds of other things like working on some play or story or even a blog post. I could be out walking. I could be  washing the walls before the wall inspector gets here or whatever it is that compels us to clean walls. Ditto mopping, or just taking care of myself and not getting up too many times to begin a task and then walk away from it for a moment, never to return. I could save myself some really sore hips (moving too much can put some extra funk in my Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction.) But The Good Wife is my friend, and never judges. She does not act (at least, not well) and she does not judge. I can watch as many episodes as I want and I get to stay in a room next to the big pit of boredom-induced self-loathing. I'm not sure what's going to happen when I've watched every episode  available on our Netflix account- I suppose I'll have to find another slightly involving television show to watch. Nothing crazy- I wouldn't be able to take Breaking Bad right now, and I don't have tiny brushes to scrub my eyeballs with after the most violent chapters of that show- but something that arouses a manageable amount of curiosity.

Any suggestions? It could be about anything. I just need a fall-back, now. I just need some unspooling fiction, something with lots of back story, something with a good cast and maybe one or two bad actors, for contrast. I'm petrified that I'm going to have to think hard about what it means that there's a person that I love who's suffering.

A Tricky Place In Which to Dwell

Yea to the National Health Service for their contributions to my well-being! It's working!

England is very concerned about my well-being, though I don't take it personally: they're concerned about everyone's well-being. There are signs- good, strong signs made of something durable and impervious to damp- regarding how many vegetables you eat, and what you should do if you're bullied, and the fact that your food is sourced from a few counties away (I know, it's parishes, not counties. I prefer to think of them as Shires, since everything here is within a Shire- just go ahead and picture the Hobbitses, it's easier than trying to put the Democratic Theology or Theocratic Democracy {plus bonus Royal Persons}in the same bed together.) The UK cares so much about its' subjects' well-being that it uses the word "sourced" in the signs and banners and spots that remind you to feel good about your food, rather than potentially insult your intelligence by using the phrase "comes from." I feel content with my lot in a way that I never did in the US- though that might be the drugs talking.

I'm pretty sure it's the drugs talking. I'd prefer it to be the beer talking, but I don't regularly drink becuase I'm taking drugs for my Chronic Pain Condition, which is from a nail put in my head when I was bullied in High School that's just slowly worked itself into my cranuim, past my Prefrontal Cortex and into the Medulla Oblongata, or "Middle," where it consistently pokes into the area of my brain where I think about High School. That, in a nutshell, is the essence of the pathological chronic pain- your brain refuses to stop thinking about the pain. When I got over here I swore (standing in my first-every backyard, looking at the fence around it. There wasn't a sunset or a raw potato and I wasn't even wearing a Civil War Era dress, but I swore nonetheless,) that I would change medications and I would do so with an eye toward ultimately taking less of them. And I have! I switched one of my anti-depressants for another one!...and I realize that this doesn't sound like progress. It is, it is; it's such dreamy, half-satisfied progress that everything seems livelier, less effortful, and zippy. I dropped another one althogether. I'm so sort of blissed out by the fact that I've done it- I moved here from the US without anyone losing their eyesight from random stress-reflex flailing while I was packing some knives, without sending off four or five copies of any divorce papers to my already-moved spouse, just to make sure he got the point; without losing any teeth from either lack of vitamin C or from just giving up and falling face-forward onto the concrete sidewalk, mouth first. It's hard to sort out which is the greater source of happiness: my survival or my chemical intake. I'm pretty sure it's the chemical intake that's dictating I not worry about it.

I miss people. There: that's the thing, the one thing, that makes my gently muddled mind become uncertain of the justification that I should not worry and also be happy. There are people I miss, and I miss them less than I should. Pills, or just me? Am I completely enslaved by the lovely Seratonin and Melatonin and many other similarly named hormones, and am I then less sympatheric to my beloved's voices and trials and failed attempts than I one was? I though myself a lout many times before, before I came here and met my little navy-blue-and-white encapsulated buddies, for not being a good friend. Self-flagellation about how much less effort you put into your relationships in comparison to, say, Charlotte on Sex in the City is a given for those of us who just cannot put in that much effort. No matter how hard it is to button your shirt and no matter how many extra minutes it takes us to brush our sensitive teeth and touchy gums, those of us who contend with some extra Substance P (which, by the by, is a neurotransmitter that is located in the spinal fluid whose sole joy it is to transmit pain signals to the brain. People with FM have more of it, generally, but the fascinating thing about that to me is that it's named Substance P. Whomever it was that discovered it must have had a busy day, and by the time they got to the naming bit they must have looked at their array of tubes and disposable safety goggles and little puddles of spinal fluid on the laboratory floor that were still left to clean up, and said to their impatient PhD candidate intern, all ready with the pen and official naming paperwork: "You know, it's late; let's just write down...uh...Substance P. Yeah. There's the P for Pain, so that's good enough- the judges at the Nobel Institute don't need a fancy name anyway, right? The important thing is the quality of the work. Now here's the mop,")...those of us who have to contend with perhaps three times more Substance P (also could be the name of a seventies-era laboratory-based street drug) must feel guilt about it. Sorry, but we have to. It's as requisite as acquiring full-time under-eye baggies from the ongoing lack of sleep that usually comes with hurting all the time. And since I miss people, since I'm now really really far away from  them, I feel like I should be really whipping myself for not rallying and swooping into a letter-writing frenzy, complete with country cute stickers that I got at the carbon-neutral Tesco in our next town over and sketches of the house in colored pencil...but I'm not. I feel OK.

I miss people, but not enough. It's the drugs, unless it's not. The tricky part is deciding which of those things is me and which of those things is induced. The not-tricky part, I guess, is conducting my day as I always have and just getting through it, one distraction at a time, one hour-long rest at a time. I apologize, my friends; I might feel differently but it seems that won't make much difference in the amount of chi I can expend. The thing that has become clearer, so clear it's like a beautiful hand-blown glass: the ones who stick with me, who have stuck with me, through my plodding communications over the years are very good people to be friends with. We chronics are lucky that way.

Decisions, Simplified

Yesterday the cat got out of the house. She snuck off, quiet-like, and dropped the story-and-a-half down to the ground so she could see what all the fuss was about. We'd been leaving the house and then coming back and then leaving again for as long as she could remember, and in between these machinations she'd bounce a ball on the wall and wait for it to bounce back, counting the days she'd been cooped up. Naturally the dog would have to chase it and there would be some perfunctory hissing and then he'd give it back and she'd toss it at the wall, counting. She would not have lost her place because she's a cat.

The best part about losing your cat is that everything snaps into action: your vision clears so that you can see the hawks circling, your ears pick up much more sound, including any high-pitched skreeeeeee from the neighbor's mower that could be mistaken for a cat provided said cat were being mangled, your breathing swells to accompany the panic-y thought of finding the animal and the ensuing attempt to pick it up. All this because your eleven-year-old's face is making a frown that will not turn upside-down no matter how many times you jokingly order it to do so. All the regular shit (and the irregular shit when you come right down to it) disappears like lightning and you can see what you have to do: tape flyers on everything. Yeah. Tape Flyers on Everything. You've been waiting. It's such parenting legend, such a milestone, that you can easily bring yourself to near-tears imagining how fucked up your kid is going to be if they don't lose their cat: how will they cope? Where will they learn the valuable life-lesson and current #3 Parenting Buzzword resiliency if they don't lose their/the family's pet? Will your child grow up not knowing the value of Taping Flyers to Everything? My God: what if your genius child goes to college not knowing- what if they start a band?? It'll be too late! No one's gonna teach them now! They'll end up practicing in your conservatory every night until 9:30 and insist that for their birthday you continue their guitar lessons  forever!!

I'm a big fan of anything that will keep me motivated right now. I'm switching medications. The old ones were being rude to me by demanding my liver and kidneys and skin flush them out but they were poor tenants, using up all the hot water and refusing to bring down the tea plates so that mice sniff around (not that I have anything against mice, but I'm writing metaphorically here.) I mean they were the drug lord's cousin, all smiles and yessing but then sitting around drinking all of the Yoo-Hoo and putting wedges under your desk when you go to the bathroom...wait...I mean the drugs were, like, crows and the crows' brothers were elephants (just roll with me) who would be disappointed when the crows wouldn't dance, not even the hustle (see? So worth it!) I'm swimming in this neurochemical pool of mild mood shifting, and when I can look at it straight it feels like I can't decide whether or not to be in a good mood. The new pills are working, and it's making me suspicious. 

Naturally I can't decide what to be suspicious of: am I normally in a good-enough mood and the chemicals are masking that and  forcing this new, complacent fair mood on me? Am I one of those people for whom a good mood is just not really possible without some external support? Is it all a hoax perpetuated on the privileged white woman's health insurance, individual liver function be damned (CUE BIG PHARMA CEO TWIRLING MOUSTACHE, GRINNING EVIL STEEL-TOOTHED SMILE?) I think it's most probable that I've just been experiencing stress. For years. Lots of big, life-threatening, world-shattering, pelvic-floor-weakening, down-the-wrong-neural-path-making, pulling-clothes-out-of-a-sooty-wet-heap-happening, funeral-frequenting, present-forgetting, name-dropping-and-not-in-a-presumptuous-but-more-of-a-forgetting-your-best-friends'-name-way-sort-of-dropping, giant sucking chest would of a life. Not all of the time but...you know...enough. 

There is a plan, though. I have a quest (sadly, there will be no genius illustrator/directors on this quest- but I'll smile if I crass any bridges.) I must teach my girl how to go door-to-door and ask the regular strangers if they've seen the cat, and I'll teach her how to tape flyers to absolutely everything. This is a life skill that she will never need, because of computers and such, but she'll learn it. It will make me feel good to teach it to her, and since we live in a neighborhood full of biddies who haven't had their nephews teach them how to use the internet yet, the quarter-pound of printer paper she used to make up flyers will actually help her get her cat back.

Things They Get Wrong

There is, for some godforsaken reason, a heatwave here. I am in the Fens, which is basically swampland- which is maybe why my partner took a shine to the place: he grew up in Chicago, built on a big swamp (the name "Chicago" is a derivative of the Native American phrase "Chika Chika boom boom", loosely translated to "location location location".) It was hot there, because it's the Midwest; but we Americans insist on settling places that should never be settled. We, as a nation, have the perverse compulsion to develop skyscrapers on extremely windy waterfront property and plop sushi restaurants in deserts. So we suffer the consequences of our decisions, like sweating out months of temperatures so high that the Europeans must translate the temperatures into Celcius just for their own peace of mind.

"I hear in Dallas they get to 50 in the summers, for days on end" they say.

When we moved here I was looking forward to being able to talk about the USA as one speaks of a forty-year-long fever. I'd get to describe the psychadelic dreams I'd had, like the Division of Motor Vehicles and beer that tastes like piss, and then I'd get to shudder and smile because I was free of it now that I'm here, in the glorious UK, where they are unapologetic about thier desire to keep certain people in fabulous jewelry their entire lives in exchange for said people's privacy, and  where the summer temperatures never reach over 75 Fahrenheit. And if they do it's for a day, and the populace wanders around looking at the blue patches up in the air where the clouds have pulled away from the sun as if startled, and they take off their wool shepherd's caps or floor-length aprons to wipe the imperceptible damp from their brows and reminisce about the last time it reached 75, which was invariably during the Second World War. It's stayed warm, though, and I think we'll have to live with that: seems the earth is getting hotter over here, too.

It's not bad, I hear it gets to 50 C in Dallas, so I won't complain about anything other than the bugs. They are all over the house, because the British don't believe in screens. I'm not positive, but I think they don't believe in screens the way I don't believe in Santa. And the house isn't situated in any body's Wood (quick tip: the don't snicker after you say "Wood." It's like they don't know what it means.) There is no thick canopy to protect us from the normally reluctant sun, so it gets warm in the house, which means we are forced to open the  unprotected windows, and within ten minutes the cat and dog are staring at different points in the air just above their heads with great, intent expressions. In the case of the cat the expression says "IwillkillyouIwillkillyouIwillkillyou you insignificant weirdly-legged speck that dares fly in the the no-fly zone above my fiefdom," and in the case of the dog it's "bug! bug! bug!...bug! bug!...uh...bug!" Both pounce; both succeed every third try; both attempt to eat it. There are forty day flies per pet per cubic foot per hour, though, and while it's entertaining to watch them hurtle themselves and discuss the different jump-and-claw-owner's-leg techniques they employ, it ends up being too many bugs and we wake up with their carcasses floating peacefully in all but one of the coffee cups. It gives you the heebie-jeebies.

I've taken to walking to our local village because I like walking and there's a footpath behind some fields that goes right there; I already had a slouchy wide-brimmed straw hat, so I figured why fight it. It's beautiful. Then I get to the village and go to the library or supermarket and cannot find any water fountains. Not even the gym we just joined- called a Leisure Centre here, because why be coy: no one's going to exercise- has any of the obnoxiously frequent water fountains that are all over the YMCA I patronized. The only one I could find was tucked into the locker room's corner, and looked just like a WWII-era sink because it clearly is one. There's a sign that says "public water" just underneath it, located at the very convenient five-inches-above-the-floor level; to get water you have to leeeaaan over and twist another knob and stick your face about six inches into its' well. Eventually water comes out, resenting you for not heating it up and putting tea in it. I'm American, dammit, and I refuse to carry a water bottle! It's slightly annoying, so I wont' do it!

The worst thing is that when you go into a pub and sit down at a table, you have to approach the bar itself to get a beer. Sure, it's tepid beer, kept that way because it's not the frothy urine produced in mind-boggling quantities in America, keeping our keggers affordable . And sure, there's about 5oo beers here that are on tap at every pub and tavern and convenience store, and even the crap beers are still the kind you'd read favorably about in Beer Moustache magazine.  You have to pick your ass up and move it to the bar so that you can purchase your drinks and then go sit back down. At my very first pub I politely asked for a beer from the waitress who came over and asked if she could get anything else from us besides our order; she was young and stood blinking at me for a moment before she said "sure, I'll bring that out." My husband told me that it's just not done. No exceptions, even though every one's thighs are sheathed in a light sweat at all times and we are all leaving damp patches on the bar stools (no, not that kind of damp patch! That is also just not done. I dearly hope.)

It's gotten to the point where I'm almost not enchanted with this country. Stupid heatwave.

The First of Many Trains Back from London

Our first trip to London was a winner. The sky was mostly clear, so it was sunny and hot, if you're a Brit. If you're a Chicagoan it was a bit warm (I'm already preparing the speeches I'll lay on friendly Briton's heads when they innocently engage in conversation with me about the horrid weather. Ahem: "Yeah, it's cold, I know- but I'm from Chicago and every year we have a number of days when the temperature drops, ok? Except in Chicago it drops 40 degrees in twelve hours, whereas you guys get a 40 degree difference over the course of a year, so...this isn't cold." ...I can't wait to make this speech and watch their faces when I'm done, grimacing with the effor of not pointing out that they use Celsius over here.)

 

So. London. The British Museum is so interesting and full of extremely accessible collections that you don't feel like running to the gift shop immediately upon entering the place. Walking- lots of it, sore-leg-making length walks, which I love and my daughter doesn't (yet.) I even had dinner with an old friend, and met my friend's boyfriend (Scottish) and his friend (English. ) I felt like a world traveler- a baby world traveler, but it's progress;  by the end of the summer I intend to be smoking French cigarettes in a t-shirt signed by a Tokyo street artist while waiting in line for the doors to open on day one of Saudi Arabia's LGBT Film Festival. But in the meantime,  there's the train back from London.

 

We got on and faked casually looking for good seats together, an attitude the other day trippers carried with them like reading material.  We sat. It was a slow ride,  but fortunately there was a small group of drunk people right behind us. This being Britain,  the seats were so clean I couldn't work up a good fume. The drunk people talked to everyone, and everyone handled it with calm indulgence, including the equally drunk Italians. There was a minimal amount of gesturing from them; still, neither group wished to give  up on their new drunk friends. This made for a hilarious exchange that went just like this:

English 1:"Ah you need Hamford? Is Hamford-Sawtry this line cuz if not me mates here-"

English 2: "This isn't the Hambourg line! They need lots of tunnel!"

Italian 1: "Your cities have a sign, which is everywhere. I think that England has too many. Friends?"

 

English 1: "What they say is that you're fat, but you're not fat-"

 

English 2: "Not them, the country! Italy is fat right at the top because of bad carbs!"

 

Italian 2: "I do not see planes here. What is this about planes? Shyness makes me mad."

 

English 1: "We're gonna sing. You sing. I heard you, your voice-"

 

English 2:"They weren't being shy, that was maps! I hope they had tunnel maps!"

 

English 1: "Yeah yeah, right, but singing will get them there."

 

Italian 1:"I understand singing. We aren't shy but I don't sing on planes."

 

English 1: "No, this is a train and everybody sings all the time-"

 

English 1: "What a waste! They can't be in two places, and you're makin 'em warble!"

 

Italian 2: "Warble is English for shy. I told you, we don't think shy things are good things."

 

English 2: "Fat cities, too! But you guys are all ok- just: tunnel tunnel tunnel!"

 

I'm confident that my translation is true to the core meaning of the drunk people's conversation, in that it had no core meaning anywhere, unless you count the segment about singing. The singing bit is true. It's a universal fact that if you're on a late train home from a major metropolis, either you will be drunk or the people behind or in front of you will be drunk- and you should remember to bring lozenges, because you will end up in a sing-along. Ours was prototypical: the intoxicated behind us sang loudly and cheerfully, and a few others joined in (maybe they knew what was playing next and were warming up.) Then the loudest behind us (English 1) found a song and shouted loud enough to be heard by the people from another train car who were getting off:

 

"Everybody has to sing to this one!!"

 

It was Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. Everyone smiled at the same time, and everyone became an honorary drunk.

 

"I SEE A LITTLE SILHOUETT-A OF A MAN SCARA MOOSH SCARA MOOSH WILL YOU DO THE FANDANGO!"

 

All the passengers had the same expression between lyrics- there was a great deal of concentrating on what was  sung next, because we all used to sing it in the shower/dorm room/other train when we were in college/high school/prison/indentured servitude as an intern.

 

"MAMA MIA MAMA MIA MAMA MIA LET ME GO BEELZEBUB HAS A DEVIL FOR A SIDECAR ME, WITH ME SAYS MEEEEE!!!!"

 

There is an instant right after that line is sung where there's nothing: a breath I believe it's called in music-learnin', and during the breath everyone looked at each other with a dare in their eyes. Then: guitar. Massive, colossal, fantastic guitar, and as one we passengers picked either head-banging or fist-pumping and did the solo proud. We were in full synchronization in that moment. It was a beautiful moment. I'm sure it was even more beautiful for the drunk people, because you've never heard so much hollering and laughing- it was as if everyone there had won the lottery at the same time.

 

I'm excited about the next trip to London and back. I hope to be a drunk person.  I have the song Come On Eileen all cued up and ready to go.

 

 

 

 

My Enlightenment

I intend to give everything to the Buddha, except that He eschews material possessions. Bastard. He should know that in giving I'm really receiving, and it's in a big way spiritually. So big. I will learn that in foisting off my stained towels and broken crockery on the needy, or the standing still (whichever,) there is liberation and release from the petty materialism and- I dunno- the unseemliness that comes with owning an entire decades' worth of "Best Of Kids Bop (Volumes 1 through XXVVIVILXVVIIIIXLX".) I wait for this slough of unseemliness, despite scripture's completely unclear position of giving unto the poor stuff they could actually use as opposed to giving them my vast collection of identical-yet-unmatchable black socks, or my Garfield vibrating head massager. (Too late, everyone: I gave it gratis to a passing five-year-old at a yard sale; it had attracted many a tester but not one offer.) I think it's all about the interpretation, because what group of broke peoples would reject such splendorous flotsam? Much of it is shiny, for God's sake!

I'll be casually walking down the street and I'll see someone with a shopping bag full of half-spent alkaline batteries, and my soul will get a little lighter knowing that I was the person who half-spent them, removing them from the remote the very second they falter and throwing them into the pile in the back of the fridge (note: that keeps them "fresher." This way, when you're done punishing them, you can take them out, blow on their little ends, and use them again. They learned their lesson.) I'll be eating my Thai food with my daughter at the nearest Thai place that still has lunch specials, and someone at the next table will be wearing the almost-lavender fleece half-zip with the unresolved grease spatter on it and I'll get just a bit closer to understanding the fullness of the universe. When I drive I might go past a person on their own quiet street, rearranging the cannibalized back issues of my favorite feminist magazine in the hopes that they might sell them for a few quarters- and I might rejoice in the weightlessness that comes with the shedding of one's long-held stuff. Finally I'll see, with initial disbelief followed with the appropriate amount of awe, a child with a pot-holder loom and three cloth loops and the long, potentially eye-poking bent rod that comes with it, and Nirvana will open its' doors (or I'll fall into it? Is there a swim involved? No one around here talks about how, exactly, you get into Nirvana. With Heaven there's a door, or gate, or horse jump, I think, and a big Soul that still looks like a person who judges you on the spot. I'll have to research it.)

In Nirvana, I'll walk up a golden flight of water lilies to a giant, happy Buddha with rosy gold cheeks and on one side of his head is a rosy gold lever (I'm at one with the Universe, now, so the lever could be on either side, or every side, or none...I can't wait!) When I grab hold of this lever- and it feels like grabbing hold of stardust or praise- I'll pull it down, and chunk chunk chunk! The Buddha's eyes will roll around and around until they come to a stop: three gold bars will glow contentedly in His three eyes (I know He only has the standard issue amount of eyes on his statues and all, but again: Me + Universe= Understanding. I am so stoked!) So, Big Buddha Head will open it's enormous smiling mouth, and I'll have to step back  and he'll have to say "Oh, sorry, didn't see you there-" before he begins vomiting money at me. I think it'll happen because He knows that I've renounced all my material goods (notwithstanding how good the goods may be) and so I'll be impervious to the power of all that cold cash. He knows I'll take it and won't want to immediately spend it on hair extensions for the cat and rare DVDs of depressing director's cut slaughterhouse documentaries or really nice confetti. I can squat down and rake up all the money pooling at my feet and put it in my shirt-bottom, apron-style, and wink at His Holiness, who will wink back and say "Come again tomorrow." I know he'll mean it, too, because he never invites random people to pull his lever because, on some level, it must hurt.

This will be fantastic. I hear that the outdoor markets in Cambridge are legendary for their assortment of T-shirts in subdued colors with "Cambridge" on them, and crepes because it's practically in France, and something called "bootlegs". I'm not sure what those are, but it won't matter; Buddha and I are buds and he will remind me while I'm negotiating with the nice man in the leather blazer for the Jabba the Hutt cookie jar...he'll let me know that it's OK to be collecting more stuff for my new home, because if I let go of my insignificant household items once, I can do it again.