Nothing but Pleasant

When I wake in the morning the paste on my tongue is powdered sugar and cartoon birds sweep my hair up with delighted claws. I’ve never eaten before. I have no pores. I tinkle lemonade through my belly button.

I am nothing. I am nothing but pleasant.
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Ever been labeled?

The reason why I love my fellow humans is that we are such complex animals. I wrote the following prose for my great-grandpa. And the sweetness that I write with in no way betrays the anger that I lashed out with in my previous entry: I am capable of feeling both tenderhearted and disgusted at my great grandpa, just as he was capable of being both a monster and an innocent. And so, to embrace the wholeness of humanity, the complex landscape of the human heart, I’ll share with you what I wrote:

Lines

When I think of my great grandpa, I see him standing in a glorious garden, ripe and pulsing with life. His skin is the soft palor of beeswax, rife with thick lines that trace the squints and smiles of countless sundrenched summers past. He wears jean overalls, a straw hat, and thick, square glasses. His eyes are green and they look like grandma’s; they look like mine.

“Why there you is True Boo,” he says. His laugh is a fishtail slapping water, a cricket cricking. He lets me pick cherry tomatoes from the vine and when I bite down on them with my baby teeth they are warm and cooked from the sun.

For the longest time, my cousin and I thought his name was “Lines,” perplexed by the Alabaman pronounciation of his name. “It’s not “lines,” it’s Lines,” great-grandma told us. The giddy girls that we were, we wanted this phrase repeated–an endless chant, a brazen billboard: IT’S NOT “LINES,” IT’S LINES!

Later, when a decent grasp on American venacular set in, I understood my great grandpa’s name was Lawrence. But the Michigander sound of the name reverberating from my nasal cavity sounds unfitting, untrue. He is Lines to me.

Lines who eats buttered biscuts and chocolate pudding pie. Lines who wears gray polyester suits to Sunday service. Lines who cans his own fruit, who knows the names of the birds who drink from his feeder.

He is Lines to me.

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When have you reckoned with a particuarly complex relationship?

Fucking Loyalty

When my cell phone rang at work at 3:30 this afternoon and the caller ID said “DAD,” I knew someone had died: my dad and I speak twice annually on a good year. I was right. My great-grandpa died last night. The night I had my first migraine in months. The night I wrote about the girl—the one this great-grandpa had touched—in an exercise we did in our writing class about the themes that motivate us in our lives. Listening to my dad’s voice filtering through the phone, my mind was an emptied wastebasket, ready to be filled with new trash. And filled it was.

Daughter Truly: Oh dad, I am so sorry to hear about your grandpa. I love you.

Confused Truly: Why am I shivering? I can’t stop shivering.

Honest Truly: So, I hear that the child-molesting fuck faced ass hole croaked. Are you going to the funeral?

Secret Truly: Phew—this gets me out of a few unsavory projects at work: bereavement leave to the rescue.

Sympathetic Truly: Grandma, I am so, so, sorry to hear about the loss of you’re dad. You know he was important to all of us.

Pissed Off Truly: Fuck this noise. I’m not changing my plans for this.

Other Daughter Truly: Mom—I know you are in class tonight, but I wanted to let you know that great grandpa finally kicked it. So I’ll be in town tomorrow at one.

I know, my reactions are hideous.

But this loyalty, this fucking loyalty, it really has a way of noshing on the very core of you. My great grandpa prayed to God and went to church and slept in a separate bed room than his wife, desperately trying to conceal the fact that, on at least one occasion, his fingers crept uncleanly over the plump and innocent body of a little girl, and one who has earned my allegiance in earnest. This girl and I are like the sun, the great eye of god, peering relentlessly through his facade. And we see the slimy, lip licking contents of his insides, we smell the brine and the must. And now he is dead. And still we are the only ones who believe what is true. What is not a lie. What has been packaged, sterilized, used to exploit, used to manipulate: the girl and I were a guitar string that was accustomed to playing beautiful music but was tightened, tightened, tightened until it snapped, splitting us in two. No matter how much we try to mend the damage, it will always be there—the horrid results of our manipulation—hovering at the edges of our words, darting between the laughter, seeking endlessly to reconnect in hugs, encouraging words, and funny valentines. We learned exploitation and shame when most kids are learning multiplication tables and typing. And we still don’t fully understand it.

I mentioned that I did a writing exercise about theme in class yesterday. Like in this blog entry, I wrote about Loyalty. This is what I wrote:

A tent that fits over the twin mattress. It is pink, purple, polka-dotted. Lets set it up, shall we? Slipping the bendable poles through nylon sheets, the dome is erected: let the camping begin. We don’t have any marshmallows—no food at all really—so lets eat this bottle of vitamins instead. We suck ice chips and style each other’s hair using roach clips. I’m almost forced to sleep on the floor, with the mouse pellets, with the water bugs, with the creepy crawly thick things that scuttle underfoot like walking mustaches. But I cry. My mouth hinged open, my eyes clamped shut. “Fine,” you sigh and I crawl up in the tent with you, promising not to pee the bed in the night. My footie pajamas are thick, but not thick enough to save us from the hot spring of urine that I inevitably leek late into the night. The piss puddle is cold by the time we wake. You roll onto it sleepily. We both knew this would happen. But we did it anyway.
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Please, no condolences. It will only irritate me.
What is a theme that motivates you?

EDIT: Hey, Check out my new profile pic! It’s another photo of a Jeff Koons sculpture. This one is called Pink Panter and it is on view now at the Museum of Contemporary Art. I love it. You?

These are a Few of My Favorite Things

Shaun and I were on our way to a brunch party at a friends house last weekend and on the way we made a list of places we would include if we wrote a Lonely Planet guide to Chicago. Even though my tastes are, well, mine, I thought I would share it with my fellow Xanginians, in case any of you ever make a pit stop in Chicago and subsequently find yourself wondering why on earth so many people endure such horrible cold weather. For the unenlightened, Chicago is quite the toddlin’ town; although the average person (of which in this essay I am more or less admitting to be) rarely deviates from their regularly scheduled program, the average Chicagoan can easily rattle off quite a lengthy list of favorite spots that they call their own. So read this list of mine and enjoy!

Eye Candy
Entertainment

The Museum of Contemporary Photography
When I used to work at Columbia College, one of my favorite things was to take a lunchtime stroll through this intimate photography museum.

The Art Institute
Don’t spoil a trip here by trying to take it all in. Pick a few galleries and make friends with a few pieces. I like a piece in the Asian ceramics galleries called “Peaches with Bats.” It is a china plate with exactly that on it and I enjoy communing with it whenever I go. Find your muse and visit her often.

The Art Institute Sculpture Garden
Past the lion sculptures guarding the Art Institute entrance, heading north on Michigan Avenue, you will notice a thick wall of hedges. If you look carefully, you will see a clearing that leads into one of the best sanctuaries in the city: the Art Institute Sculpture Garden. Bring your lunch and a book and eat in sweet, green peace. Careful of the birds, though. Twice now I’ve been shat upon in that garden and had to ask Shaun to come out of his office (he works there) with paper towel. But bird shit is supposedly lucky, right?

The Museum of Contemporary Art
If you can, hurry and go now. We have two collection shows up and a graceful Calder exhibition. This is a real treat because the MCA collection is not permanently on display since contemporary art is, well, contemporary. The MCA has exhibitions that constantly change in order to fulfill the mission of showcasing the living artists of our time.

The Native North American galleries in the Field Museum
On the immediate left when you first walk through the doors. The totem poles are astounding. There is no sanctuary like these galleries of artifacts and art. I especially love the Eskimo section. There is nothing more beautiful to me than their woodcarving.

The Man Eaters at the Field Museum
These are the two lions in Africa that ate 150 people trying to build a railroad in the days of British imperialism. Except they are dead and stuffed and behind glass. A movie was made about these lions and it starred Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas. The movie is about two Hollywood heroes who try to off the psycho big cats, and basically the movie sucks except it is fun to root for the lions. So if you are into lions that eat the imperial system, you might get a kick out of it.

The Shed Aquarium CRABS! Exhibition
This exhibition is all about crabs. I loved it more than any other special exhibition that has come to Chicago. CRABS! It had an exclamation point in the title. How could you not like that? Don’t go on a weekend, though. It is heinous with tourists. Try to get a coupon, too. Shaun and I get in free because we work for museums, but if you don’t, it’s a hefty $20 or something like that to get in. The lines are long too. But its so worth it for Crabs!

Graceland Cemetery
This place is extra creepy because all the dead people it contains were the reason why Chicago was a hot bed for the labor movement. Also, a lot of famous architects were buried here. Check it out, its a cemetery for the stars: Potter Palmer, George Pullman, Cyrus Hall McCormick, Marshall Fields, Martin Ryerson, Victor Lawson, Phillip D. Amour, John Root, William Holabird, Louis Sullivan, David Adler, Howard Van Doren Shaw and Mies Van der Rohe. It’s a really beautiful place too.

The Movies (cool stuff showing always at The Century, The Music Box, The Gene Siskal)
One of the best things about Chicago is that those little indie movies that never make their way to the burbs play on the big screen. And for a film fanatic like myself, that is pure heaven.

826 CHI
Do you like Dave Eggers? Me too! What an author! What a literary force! What a cool guy. He has a writing center for kids and teens called 826 CHI on Milwaukee Ave. Sometimes they have lectures and readings for grown ups too. Very cool.

Young Chicago Authors
A writing center for teens to be themselves and become steeped in language. They do a lot of poetry slams in the city. If you are lucky, you will be in town when they host Louder than a Bomb.

The Neo Futurists
30 plays in 60 minutes, you roll a dice to see how much you pay, new material every week: this theater company is innovative, fresh, and very cool. They also offer classes.

Second City
Everyone’s heard of Second City, the academy for SNL superstars, but what you may not know is that their student shows are WAY cheaper than the main stage shows and they aren’t half bad. Plus, I always prefer to see the legends of tomorrow over the established professionals—because both can suck, but at least the newbie’s give you the trill of having tried something new. Once there was this awesome girl at a student performance who sang an improved rap song that I love to sing. Here’s how it goes: “Hey/Yo/What the Shit/French Impressionism is legit/Hey/Look/There’s a faun/Paint it motherfucker/Before its gone.” Great, isn’t it?

Second City also offers writing and acting classes. Shaun has been in the writing program for the last year and 1/2. Although the first class left a bad taste in his mouth, he has said nothing but good things about the past couple courses and met lots of good friends, a challenge to do when you move to the city. Especially if you have the classic, quiet temperament of a writer as he does.

Imrov Olympic
Something about this group strikes me as more cutting edge than Second City, although I can’t put my finger on it. Both rock. Both have classes. I’ve laughed my ass off at both.

Melissa Thodos & Dancers
This is a dance company and school. They have a knack for incorporating sculptural pieces into their performances that really take my breath away.

Aragon Theater
There is something about going to a rock show in a swanky old club that used to frequent by Chicago’s most notorious mobsters. Plus this theater has seats, which I, the girl who passes out with alarming frequency, appreciate.

Naughty Candy
Indie rock with a country edge, this local band is comprised of Shaun’s work friends who are unfailingly nice and funny. Plus their music is fun.

Steppenwolf Theater
Need I say more? Yes. I do. Right now the Steppenwolf is host to the play, After the Quake, penned by one of my favorite authors, Haruki Murakami. A Western play marinated in Kabuki and magical realism, it is one of the most memorable play’s I’ve seen in a while.

The Lake/Lake shore path
This is a daily indulgence for me in the summer. Swimming, rollerblading, biking, walking, running, Frisbee, volleyball, reading, sketching, journaling, hotdog carts. Really. It’s very fun. Strap on a backpack, grab a water bottle and head out for the day. The best beach is the Ohio Street beach because it is actually deep enough to swim and it is not as crowded as the hyper-trendy North Avenue beach.

Millennium Park
Fun interactive public art, green space galore, a bike valet, wintertime ice-skating—what more could you ask from a downtown oasis?

Story Studio
This is the writing center that I take workshop at. Courses in journalism, fiction, and memoir lead by nice writers. Best of all, you get to have other literary minded people read and critique your stuff. It’s intimidating at first, but you get a kick out of it eventually.

Columbia College Chicago’s Story Week
My calendar is already marked for March 12-17. Along with many other writers, Stewart Dybek is coming this year to do readings, lecture, and lead panel conversations on the wonderful world of writing. Last year Sandra Cisneros came to town and I completely wanted to invite her over for dinner. After her reading and Q&A I knew we would have made great friends if only she weren’t a famous writer and I a mere ChicagoArtGirl.

The Lincoln Park Zoo (when the animals there are not dying)
Okay. So this zoo has go a lot of bad press this year. The zookeepers don’t really have mad skills when it comes to keeping the animals here alive. On the other hand, the zoo is free and beautiful and easily accessible. So do I raise my voice with the PETA protesters? Sure. And then I sneak past them to visit the polar bears.

Fem TV Burlesque Show
This feminist-minded vaudevillian burlesque show usually does at least one show a year in Chicago. Last year I got called onstage to help a juggler with his act. He put a garter belt on me onstage and if I were more sober I’m sure I would have been a bit embarrassed.

Kit Kat Club
Drag Queens, Drag Queens, Drag Queens! That’s right, ladies and gents; I love a man who flatters my womanhood enough as to attempt to emulate it. I love the kitsch factor, I love the fun factor, and I love the killer cocktails with umbrellas. Plus, these drag queens are divas. They sing and dance and you would never know that Tina Turner was a man if it weren’t for her see-through dress.

Blow Your Wad
Places to Shop

Morpho Gallery
This art gallery on Damen has a special place in my heart because we stumbled into its opening on accident with our friend Jason when he came to visit us during the first weekend we moved into our current apartment. They were having a photography sale to raise funds and I bought a picture of Indian architecture for my mom and Jason bought Shaun and I a photo to thank us for sheltering him during his stay because he is awesome like that.

Renegade Craft Fair
This fair happens annually and although my friend got heatstroke trying to man her booth at it two years back, I am still a fan of this very cool fair. Young, bohemian hipster types pedal their wares here: where else can you buy a boob cupcake and a plush mustache? I know what other women are talking about when they say certain stores are “dangerous” for them to bring money into. For me, this is the Renegade Craft fair.

Paper Doll
This is a stationary store whose owner lets her pug dog run around and play with customers. The dog and I got quite attached so now I buy many a birthday gift and card from Paper Doll.

The Wooden Spoon
This is a store to buy cooking things. They also offer classes. Shaun and I took a sushi class taught by a German guy. I give it two big thumbs up.

Myopic Books
A maze of a used bookstore with a dog and cat to play with.

Brainstorm
Comic book store and movie rental place. Naturally, lots of our expendable income is directed here. There are no pets to play with wondering around this store, but I like it anyway because the owner is so friendly and a good conversationalist: not your stereotypical gross comic book shop owner at all.

Chicago Comics
If you have a significant other who likes comics and drags you to comic places, this one you won’t mind going to. There are lots of fun toys and books to entertain you while he debates the merits of the latest issue of Hell Raiser with the guy at the counter.

Uncle Fun
My favorite! This store is full of lame toys. Want a thousand miniature plastic porcupines? How about a roll of Alf stickers? A fake mustache kit? Plastic body parts? Mexican wrestling masks? Whatever your fancy, you can find it at Uncle Fun.

Farmer’s Market
Since I work there, naturally I go to the one on the MCA plaza. But Farmers Markets are littered all over the city in the summer and they are all pretty wonderful. I especially like the baked goods from Bleeding Heart Bakery.

Stanley’s
This is a fruit and veggie market run by a nice Mexican family. Whole Foods wished they could have produce even half as nice as Stanley’s. Plus, can you say cheap? Oh, how I love my vegetables.

Munchins
Places to Graze

Benehanna
The upstairs is too expensive. Ditch it. Go to the basement sushi bar. Order the sushi boat. You will LOVE it.

Chicago Subs on Michigan and Madison
The owners of this are the nicest people ever. They are a nice Indian family that talks about anything with you and are always smiling. Plus the subs are fresh and delicious. My favorite lunchtime munch.

Puck’s at the MCA (for my favorite peanut butter cookies)
Lucky for me, any workday of the week that I happen to have money to spare (which lets face it, is almost never) I get to eat at Pucks at the MCA, but even if I could only go there sometimes, I would make the trek for the big, crunchy peanut butter cookies. As big as your face and filled with peanutty goodness, they are sure to satisfy.

Margery’s Candies
This place is an ice cream parlor that hasn’t gotten a decor update since the 1930′s. It’s old school and the ice cream sundaes are HUGE. We took my brothers there when they came to visit us without parents a few summers ago. We were all on a sugar high for hours afterwards.

Inn Joy
A restaurant/bar with relaxing, low-key decor, good music, and chilly air conditioning. I like to go here to escape our hot apartment in the summer. Plus their Ruben is finger-lickin’ good.

Letizias Natural Bakery
Get the Apple Yogurt muffin or the chocolate/peanut butter swirl cookie. You have to go early, though: those two menu items seem to be a city favorite and they go quick.

Alliance
Free wi-fi, fluffy cappuccinos, and loaves of bread good enough to buy to serve for company but so tempting that you eat them all by yourself before anyone actually arrives.

Red Hen Bakery
Once I came when the cookies were just out of the oven. I’m usually more of a peanut butter or oatmeal raisin cookie gal, but these warm, fresh chocolate chip cookies were as close to heaven as I think I’ve ever come. I dig the rye bread too. I like to get it for the red pepper soup that Shaun and I make with Stanley’s veggies.

Piece Brewery
Pizza to die for and the beer is pretty good too.

Gallery Cafe
They are also a micro roaster, so the coffee is supreme. My absolute favorite thing there though, is the steamed egg. They cook it with the cappuccino wand and it is so good that I’d rather eat that than a piece of cake.

Marrakech Espresso and Moroccan Food
The owners are legendary for their kindness and personality. And the food is really, really good. Try the famous Moroccan tea, but don’t blame me if you get diabetes from it.

Garcia’s on Lawrence
We like the waitress/bartender here. She is nice and she always plays Spanish soap operas on the big screen TV instead of sports.

Hop Leaf
The beer menu here is astounding. I hear there is a dining section, but we so seldom have cash to go out to dinner, so Shaun and I just go to nurse one beer each and talk about writing.

The Red Lion
An English-style pub that is rumored to be haunted. The food sucks, but you should order it anyways just to stay long enough to see if something haunted is going to happen.

Duke of Perth
This is a Scottish pub that I sometimes frequent. I like their chilly cider and Roast Vegetable sandwich.

Kopi Cafe
Great everything. Ambiance is excellent. Try the Chi Shake.

Irazu
Coasta Rican food, nice people, excellent price range. Love it.

The Brew & View
Lame movies and bad beer. It is VERY fun. Go!

Charlie’s Ale House
Again, this is a restaurant, but we don’t eat here. We nurse beers at the bar sometimes and talk writing.

Feast
PRICY! But if you are like us, just go for dessert and get the Chocolate Molten Lava Cake. Mmmmm….heaven.

Chicago is full of other good things, too. I hear people enjoy sports here a great deal. Others like blues and others like to hit the clubs. But if you are like me, your perfect day might include any of the above things on this list. And so if you are ever in Chicago, you should do them too.

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What are some of your favorite places where you live?

I’m writing tonight. My mind is buzzing with something but after a hairy day at work I’m feeling less than coherent. Plus I’ve eaten too many snacks. Yuck. My teeth are rotting. Once I brush my chops it will be like the snacks never happened. Bushing gives you a clean slate. But still I implore: why does peach ice cream addict me so? Why do I need the juicy explosion of a Minneola orange segment in order to craft a sentence? Why must I chase that juicy explosion with creamy hot chocolate? Diabetes is settling in: my blood is granulated with sugar.

My deadline for a finished first draft of my short story is Monday night. I am distributing it to my writers group on Tuesday for a critique the following week. For the past few weeks I have been working on it for roughly 10-15 hours a week and I am now nearly 3/4 of the way up the story arch. This little stream of consciousness blog is to let my mind take a break from my writing and stretch a bit. Afterwards I am going to see if I’m limbered up enough to continue on with my real writing.

Read on for an unadulterated glimpse inside my head.

Stream of Consciousness from a Non-Robotic Mind

“Meow, meow, meow,” my boss says instead of “blah, blah, blah.” Her hair is fluffy like a poodle: a fluffy poodle that you want to push your face into its fluff and laugh. I call my cat sweetums when I’m not calling him Giles Alejandro Scimitar. My new friend says it is a name of literary proportions. I think I am falling in love with her. Not love love. But she is not a trial friend. She is not a robot. Or a werewolf. Shaun and I are the only people I know who’ve had the following dream (according to my most recent survey), which proves not only that we are a perfectly matched pair, but it also helps explain why I say that my new friend is not a robot or a werewolf.

Here is the dream.

You are hanging out around the house, doing whatever. If you are Shaun, perhaps you are going into the basement fridge for a coke. If you are me, perhaps you are hunting around the house looking for the scissors that you are chronically loosing in the midst of your art endeavors. But the point is that you are doing something. Something mundane.

You round the corner of a room while doing this mundane thing and you are horrified to see your mom either shifting into a werewolf or with a panel of her open, like a machine, exposing a nest of wiring. She sees you. She knows you know. You are terrified. You peel out of there and run to the neighbors to tell them something horrible has happened. You realize that they are also robots or werewolves. As you run, seeking sanctuary, it dawns on you that everyone in the whole world is a robot or a werewolf except for you.

The physiology of the dream is obvious. But like Shaun, my new friend is not a robot or a werewolf. My faith in the collective consciousness would be complete if we all would have met in one of these dreams prior to meeting in waking life.

We could have hid from the robots and werewolves together and built a fortress out of sarcasm. We would fight werewolves to the death with witty banter and eat egg salad sandwiches, except for Shaun, because he stopped liking eggs after his mom overdosed him on cheesy-eggies when he was five. For Shaun we will acquire ham and cheese sandwiches. When we eventually run out of eggs and ham and cheese, we would find that werewolf meat tastes like chicken. We always knew this would be true.

I had a boss once who I got along with famously. He was a non-robot. Like all non-robots, he was quick to share of himself: he had no secret identities to hide. He would casually bring stories of his life into conversation, none that I can remember the specifics of, but all of which left me with a strong impression of him at every stage of his life that I never knew him in.

I can close my eyes and see him as a seven year-old boy in a olive green ski jacket with a cotton ribbed collar. He is standing on the edge of a dreary city park, exhausted from pulling a sled by himself and dejected to see that after trekking all this way, no one is out playing anyhow. I see him as teenager, in a flannel shirt, stoned and alone in his basement painting model cars. I see him as a young man, scuffing his feet through his first autumn of college, throwing papers on lawns from a blue bike: getting hit by a car. He has a scar. Sometimes you can see it on his neck and it makes you sad but softened to know that he is another human like you.

I’m getting all the details wrong, but I know that accuracy is not what is important. Fidelity to truth is no way to tell a good story. Everything must bend and shift and take a new shape, making life better, transformed, bearable.
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Have you ever had the robot/werewolf dream?

A New Wind Blowin’ My Way

On Thursday nights, with Shaun off at his writing class and nearly a week of honest to goodness hard work behind me, there is nothing I like more to do than to kick back with a frosty mug of peach ice cream, some good music, and my good ‘ole trusty blog. Sure, I have my short story that I should be working on, dishes in the sink, a leak that needs tending to in the bathroom and a presentation to revise, but why make myself wrinkle prematurely? Yes, blog time makes me happy, even when I’m not up for writing anything particularly eloquent, which I’m not. In fact, I think I’m going to produce a mundane “day in the life” entry that I’m sure only those related to me might give two squirts about. With that raving endorsement said and done, lets begin, shall we?

I began the new position that I was promoted to at work on January 30. You must believe me when I assure you that work is nothing but peachy now, but I’ve got to admit, the first week and 1/2 of it was knarly. I’ve never handled stress well. But unless you lived with me, I doubt you’d ever know it. I’m the type to smile publicly about hellish situations; it has been brought to my attention on more than one occasion that I have remarkable grace under pressure. I get things done. I am a problem solver. The trouble is, I internalize the stress to the point that not even I recognize it until hours later when I wake up in the middle of the night in a puddle of my own piss.

“Shaun, you have to wake up. I’m sorry but I pissed the bed.”
I’ve never heard my husband laugh so hard at 3:30 in the morning.
I could have sworn I was on the toilet.

Aside from pissing the bed, I also passed out thrice this week and last, made friends with a rustling little bird that flutters around my ribcage midmorning, and endured four days without a decent shit. But it’s all better now. I swear.

This Tuesday I began to feel the perks of my new position in a tangible, non-stressful way. My new position makes the days fly by. Along with a bunch of other things, my primary responsibility is to act as the liaison between departments for revisions on ad copy that I write and work with the design and editorial department to create. I also play a large role in planning an event that the MCA hosts called First Fridays.

Another sure sign that I am finally adjusting to my job is that my blurry, anxiety ridden nightmare about accidentally calling a museum donor my “homeslice” in an email has been replaced by my usual lucid, beautiful, story-like dreams. Last night I dreamt about one of my best friends in high school, Lindsay York. We were hanging out in a beautiful house in LA. Some of the walls in the house were exposed brick and others were merely cloth, brightly colored reds and purples that flapped about joyously in the desert breeze like a circus tent. Just like old times, we were cuddled up on a beanbag, talking, laughing, drinking chocolate rice milk, and doing impersonations of celebrities. Suddenly, Robert Downing Jr. plopped himself down next to us and joined our conversation. He told us that we were hilarious and he had to make it down to the valley more often for these types of parties. This made Lindsay and I burst out laughing because there was no party—it was only the two of us and Robert Downing Jr. When Robert got sulky because we were laughing at him, we complimented him by saying that we found him attractive because he was the type of man who looked “utterly destroyed by his emotions.” Then we cackled like evil witches. I woke up giggling.

Ideas for my short story have also been stirring around in my brain as of late, which is always a good sign that all is well in my life. I’m writing a thematic piece with a dose of physiological thriller sharpening its edge. I’ll end with an excerpt from that. It’s another dream sequence, because nothing gives me a bigger thrill than dreams—even scary ones.

Excerpt from Mothers Day
By Truly Render

Like every time she closed her eyes, she remembered the dream.

It started simply enough. Julie would be coming home from a day at her job at a weekly entertainment listings rag, eyes burning from copy-editing mindless pieces about Boulder’s hottest holistic day spa, and unlocking the apartment door when music from within would catch her off guard. In the dream, she was convinced that Sam wouldn’t be home for hours, off teaching his night class at Naropa. With her face pressed against the door, the music swelled and revealed itself to be an old spiritual, played on a crackling record player: Soon a we’ll be done a with the troubles of da world/the troubles of da world/the troubles of da world/soon a we’ll be done a with da troubles of the world/I’m GOIN’ to meet mah LORD!

Suddenly, the door pushed forward, and she was inside the apartment that she thought was hers, but was not. Blonde hardwood floors were replaced with a decrepit, pilled green rug tossed over a dirt floor. The ceiling to floor bookcases of the living room had been replaced by rotting planks of soft wood, brandied sunlight and breeze peeking through the cracks. The record had stopped but a woman’s voice murmured the song softly from the kitchen before calling in a gentle southern accent, “I know you is in here.”

In the dream, Julie walks slowly through the living area to the adjoining kitchen. A sinewy Creole woman stands at a wooden counter top rolling out a piecrust. A monstrous wood-burning stove is crouched in the corner, a saucepan simmering atop it.

“Don’t you think you can go sneaking in here with out as much as a hello. I knows your kin and I don’t take too kindly to you actin’ as if you a stranger.”

Julie tried to get a look at the woman’s face, to place the woman, but so hunkered was she over her crust, shaping it to her pan, that it was impossible to see her.

“Where do we know each other from?”
The woman laughed a witchy laugh, “Where do we know each other from? My, my Adele, you certainly outdone yourself this time.”
“But I’m Julie…”

The woman began to ladle the contents of the pot into the pie, “I know you come a long way, so I’m fixing’ you your favorite dish.”
“Oh?”

The woman spun around, her eyes milky and blind and open wide. Julie backed into the corner of the room, aghast. From behind her back, the old woman thrust the uncooked pie forward for Julie to see. From the hatches of the top crust, a lugubrious, menstrual burgundy sauce coated short, bristled strands of hair. A full set of teeth surfaced and the contents of the pie began to thrash about, making low, guttural dog grunts.

“What’s the matter, now?” the woman said, edging the pie closer to Julie’s horrified face, “Can’t recognize your own child when you sees it?”

At that point, Julie would wake sweaty and terrified, the woman’s vacant white eyes, the vicious noise of the pie, chasing her as she leapt out of bed to flick on the light. Julie would stay awake for the rest of the night, too upset over the awful images to sleep. It had been two months since her last full night of sleep, and even more frightening, two months since her last period.
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So, did my story segement freak you out? Also, how do you handle stress? When do you know you are fully acclimated?

Lipids for Life

I used to be in a gang. We were involved in some pretty rough shit: aside from supporting a larger network, we dealt triacylglycerols. Sometimes we dealt in vitamins and hormones, but the demand for triacylglycerols kept us flush, kept us in work. Things got pretty rough the summer of 2000—South Beach was dealing on our turf, wiping us out faster than you can say “Greg Smithy.” South Beach got a taste of their own medicine a few years later, when Atkins came up and took things over. I’m not living the life anymore—I’ve seen too much as it is—but whenever I run into my peeps from the old ‘hood, I can’t help but flash our sign—three fingers held sideways—and give them a shout-out.

“Lipids!”

In case you weren’t a gangbanger like myself, you might not know that Lipids are the biological molecules from which humans and other animals store hormones, vitamins, and most importantly, triacylglycerides (that’s street for “energy reserves,” ladies and gents). Ask any gangsta and they’ll know that triacylglycerides are a bad ass three pronged structure containing fatty acids. True playa’s are down with the fact that these fatty acids do more than make you gyrate like an Easter Jell-O mold when you drop it like its hot to Wrex-n-Effect’s Rumpshaker. Depending on what kind of fatty acid you are dealing with (saturated, non saturated, trans, essential), they can either make your hair shiny and your skin fresher than a Noxima commercial or junk up your arteries with plaque, giving you a coronary. For the nutritionally ignorant, fatty acids can be a mean game of Russian roulette.

And that’s the straight dope.

My fellow ex-banger Brian’s birthday was yesterday. My dogg is 24 now, but I can still remember being a shortie in middle and high school with him, chilling with our homeskillet Lindsay in his parent’s living room. The three of us would devour mini pizza bagels and egg rolls from Wing Lauk while alternately studying biology and watching Jerry McGuire or Evita. Our reward for memorizing a page of notes or for getting through a stack of flashcards was to watch another scene of the movie. And because our study methods were so phat, we rarely abused this reward system by skipping the studying altogether to watch the movie.

Our study sessions were comprised of free style rapping about biology and improvised, biology inspired mini-dramas where we were in gangs like The Lipids. Sometimes we resorted to the tried and true flashcard method, but even that was done in game-show fashion, complete with buzzer sound effects and cheesy voices. If it weren’t for Brian, I might not know how much science rocks. In fact, I might not know that I am actually a smarty pants at all if it weren’t for him—academics were nothing but a snore to me before Brian began hosting our study sessions.

I’ve never had anything less than a riot hanging out with my buddy Brian, even when studying biology. Aside from being a great lab partner, Brian is a truly good soul and a great friend. He gets me. I get him. What more could you ask for in a pal?

So here’s to you, Brian. Or Brain. Or Byron. Or Tinos. Or whatever it is we are calling you these days. May this year of your life bring you more essential fatty acids than trans fatty acids. Omega 3 forever, baby.
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How has a friend impacted your life?