exploiting the kernel of character

Last night, in anticipation of writing one of those complicated many-characters-in-a-room scenes, I decided to deconstruct the entire Messmeir clan. Frances has five siblings, and though I have a rough idea of who they are, I found I couldn't attribute language to them in a way that rendered them concrete, personality-wise. In other words, they all sounded like variations of the same note. A little bit sharper, a little bit flatter. The same note.

Occasionally I've built a character around a phrase. For instance, eavesdropping in a cafe recently, I came across this gem: "I always know when I've eaten too many carbs because all my knives are in the dishwasher." This from a woman who weighed 102 pounds soaking wet. I wrote that phrase down, and just came across it the other day. I decided to base Frances's sister Tess on that overheard tidbit, and loosely on the anorexic woman who uttered it.

The complexity grows when I can imagine how she'd interact with her stoner brother, Morgan (who is loosely based on my ex-husband. Okay, I said loosely--don't want to get sued here). Morgan and Tess are somewhat close in age (37 and 41, respectively), but represent the dyads of the Messmeir clan. Morgan's guile has been puffed out of him, and Tess has an agenda for every single action she commits.

They are an octave apart, these two, and I can't wait to get them in a room together!

the monkey house

Frances, as some of you know, is a research scientist in the field of infertility. She analyzes vaginal swabs taken from female rhesus macaques. Central to the irony here is that Frances:
1. had her tubes tied in her twenties
2. married a man with 3 teenagers (the novel takes place 10 years after that though)
3. has just been willed her cousin's troubled teenage daughter

Frances has, naturally, many issues around maternity. She and her mother have a difficult relationship. As the eldest of six children, she was stuck babysitting a lot. She likes dogs better than children. She likes monkeys way better than children. Yet she writes grants and does research in service to continuing the species. The human species.

One of Frances's sayings is: I much prefer the company of non-human primates.

Luckily for me, one of the most important primate centers in the world in regard to this work is a few miles from my house. Also luckily for me, I met the Director of the primate center when I went down to the Murdock Science Teachers shindig in San Diego last January, and also have a contact who works there full time.

On Friday I got to tour the facility--well, at least the multi-million dollar shelter housing units where the monkeys get it on, present their vaginas for swabbing and pop out little baby macaques that are cuter than anything on the planet.

The monkeys were so cool. I watched one teenage monkey try to snatch a baby from the mom, and get scolded for it (the speculation here was that the teenager was "alo-parenting," as opposed to out-and-out baby-stealing).

And there was plenty of grooming and humping to observe, too. And baby-frolicking, particularly in the two-acre open-air Japanese snow monkey corral. The monkeys had just been fed dry rotini noodles as a treat, and they'd scrambled up to the area where the macaroni was scattered like confetti, and all you could hear was this crunching sound, like crickets or cicadas on a humid night.

My goal here was to fall in love with them. To feel what Frances feels for them. To humanize them, perhaps. I had moments like that, actually, but what I felt wasn't quite love. It was more envy, I think. Like I wanted to be a monkey and live in that primate center and I'd even be okay with having my vagina swabbed from time to time in the name of science. I was especially envious when I found out that old world monkeys reabsorb their menstrual blood. How cool is that?

a vast and sickening place

Nothing screams economic downturn like terminal deferred maintenance. The Seaport Marina Hotel in Long Beach has seen better days. I wonder how the decrepit place fared during today's 5.4 rumbler…? What is so apparent in Long Beach, and still mostly hidden in Portland, is the stark residue of hard times. Anxiety and rage and despond and, at times, resignation. All very obvious in this part of SoCal.

You could see it in the signage. When all else fails, imperatives linger on. The no this, and no that, and the we reserve the right to refuse.

Years ago I wrote and rewrote a story, a long story, called Capturing Pedersen. It was, by and large, an unsuccessful story, but there was one clause in it that continues to bubble to the surface when I'm confronted with large, empty tracts of abandon: The supermarket was a vast and sickening place… a string of words that continues to issue disappointment in its resonance.

In light of the Long Beach scene— the weeds growing up in the cracks in the parking lot behind abandoned cars, the "spa" with no water, the broken ice machines, the sad little hooks in the popcorn ceiling that once held the cord of a swag light but now hold nothing, the three dollar clock radio bolted to the pressboard nightstand, all these sadnesses—I am reminded of the fragility of humanity, and that maybe one really big earthquake could reverse the misfortunes of that falling-down hotel, and from the ashes might come grace.

beach reading

We interrupt this Dragon Boat Festival to offer a glimpse at the diversity of reading materials amongst our traveling crew.

Kirk is reading the Ron Carlson. This is such a lovely grouping of stories, written by one of the nicest writers I've ever met (he was a guest speaker at Antioch when I went there). Full of humanity, warmth, surprises and long sentences (Kirk counted nearly 100 words in one, then springboarded into an excellent story about his favorite high school English teacher, a notorious one-name legend who once declared that the average American sentence was 25 words in length).

Kirk's son Brendan is responsible for Ellis's Psycho, and seems to be poring through it (can one pore through, or is "over" the only preposition paired with that verb?) at breakneck pace. I ripped it open and glanced at a random sentence, noting the qualifier "lasciviously" and dismissed the entire book because I'm an elitist when it comes to adverbial cop-outs. But, in Ellis's (and Brendan's) defense, it's no small feat to write a compelling first person, present tense romp and have it still hold up twenty years hence.

I, the writer of fiction, am reading the Pollan book. It's fascinating and smart and full of humor and subversive tidbits. I have another reason to be digesting this book. I'm working with some folks (in my hired pen day job) who are on a mission to change the entire California food system. Sustainability within one generation. It's a very cool, ambitious ideal, and I'm honored to be wordsmithing for the cause. More about that latah.

So… from the wobbly table of the crappy SeaPort Marina Hotel (this carpet in this room is covered in a patina of grime so gross my feet turned black from the bed to the tiny bathroom where the door clips the toilet upon closing), I am signing off before heading down the water to cheer on the boyz.

dragon boats and other fun stuff

Okay, sooooooooooooo. Monday I moved out of my office. Tuesday, I set up my new, temporary office in my house, Wednesday I caught up on work that got bottom-piled due to Monday and Tuesday. Thursday I worked, sorted, had meetings, worked, and got ready for tomorrow when I dash off to watch those fellows in the picture to the left paddle their hearts out at the Long Beach Dragonboat Festival, before they both board a plane bound for Malaysia for the World Championship Dragon Boat races. Wow, eh?

Next week--I'm gonna write 100 pages of my novel. Yes, yes I am. Hey, stop laughing. I so totally mean it!

heart of darkness

I first laid eyes on Portland 19 years ago and immediately knew I wanted to move here, but didn't exactly know why. Other than it was summer, Mount Hood was breathtaking, and I had a little pile of cash that wouldn't stretch too far in Southern California, where I was living with my two babies.

Over the years, though, I've formed more of a manifesto about why Portland is such a satisfying place to live, and many of the reasons are contradictory. For instance, Portland is a great size, but is constructed in a labyrinth puzzle throughout much of it. It took me five years to fully negotiate all the "can't get there from here," cul de sacs. Portland is an exquisite oxymoron, in so many ways. On the surface the city and its surrounding landscape looks and feels pastoral, easy-going and bucolic. Portland's brand is leftie, alternative, friendly. Polite. Residents are often perceived as flannel-shirted, Birkenstocked, weed-smoking and ungroomed. Life here is just a bowl of herbs and berries. We tend to sit atop high places and gaze out over the horizon. We like the rain. We like home brew. We don't pump our own gas and we ride our bikes everywhere.

But that is not the whole story.

There's a force here, a certain tension. We're younger than our countrymen out here. We churn, create, examine and experiment. And lots of it goes undetected. There are layers, so many layers. Living in Portland is a constant seduction. As earthy and wholesome and outdoorsy as it is, there is an underbelly as well as a desire to reach something higher. This place is so undeniably vertical, but in a smaller, less obvious way than, say, San Francisco or Seattle.

The other day I took a walk in Forest Park with Chelsea Cain and Ketzel Levine, for the purpose of chatting up Chelsea's thriller series, the second book of which, Sweetheart, is due out in a couple of months. Coincidentally, the first house I bought in Portland sits at the edge of the park, and as we walked up the ivy and fir-lined trail, walking past the house and all its familiarity, I tried to conjure the spirit of dark. Of murder and fear and mystery.

The NPR story came out today on Morning Edition, Searching For Bodies In Chelsea Cain's Portland : NPR, and I'm really pleased with the picture that got painted, albeit tongue-and-cheek, of my beloved adopted city. There's a city of disparate writers here. Smart, visceral, playful. Sometimes dark, sometimes lyrical.

I can't see living anywhere else.

eavesdrop of the day

On an elevator downtown, a mature woman of about 60, wearing silver glittered flip-flops, and her male companion.

Woman: (looking out the elevator window) You'd think she'd take better care of her dog. It's so hot and the dog needs water.

Man: she'll give him water, don't worry.

Woman: George, I'm sorry, but she won't. She's homeless, and homeless people don't care about animals. (looking out the window again) George, don't be sad when I die. I'll be happy because I won't have to witness the stupidity and filth of mankind anymore.

Man: Now, dear.

Woman: I'll be in heaven. And once I'm there, I'll be with God and animals that are well taken care of.

writing about fucking without it sucking

Last night I attended a reading called Return of the Booty Call emceed by Kevin Sampsell. It was Portland at its weirdest in a hipster joint where rap music thumped and blared out speakers the size of washing machines. When it was time for the actual reading, Kevin, standing before the crowd sporting unzipped jeans, welcomed all present with the query: Are you ready for some sucking and fucking?

There were lots of stories about sucking and fucking. And fucking and sucking. Sometimes just fucking or sucking. The readers performed and/or read scenes with a variety of sex acts, encounters, anecdotes. In between the readers there were giveaways and booty grind contests and groins rubbing up against the mic.

I guess you had to be there.

Fucking and sucking aside, writing sex is hard (no pun intended). What's most hard about it is delineated aptly by Elizabeth Benedict in her book, The Joy of Writing Sex, where she posits, "When we sit down to write a sex scene, our circuits can jam, our self-consciousness surge, and we might as well be beginning students of English as a second language."

For me, though, it's less about the self-consciousness of untoward content, and more the fear that I'll write something boring or cliché. I mean, in a culture packed with sex, literally with sex dripping off billboards, magazines, television and packaging, is there any new territory here? In workshop, we call the output of well-worn language recycling received text. Received text requires no penetration (no pun intended). This sort of language just slides into a groove, a zeitgeist, a trope with easy familiarity, and satisfies the audience without spectacle. It's like eating a Whopper. You think: Whopper, and your taste buds have already filled in the flame broiled flavoring, the texture of soft bun, wet lettuce and cooked beef patty. No surprise, no disappointment.

I don't want my novel to serve up Whoppers. Especially not in the bedroom. Take Frances and Arthur, my quirky characters, for example. I've been wrestling them into bed for nearly a month. The problem is that it still reads flat. Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce flat. I'm trying to particularize drawing from a limited imagination. And why is this? Simply, because I haven't been sure enough on how Frances feels about her erstwhile husband to make this sex scene lift off the bun (bad pun intended). If, as Benedict would have me do, Frances must enter this scene from an emotionally dangerous place, I have to go back and establish why, exactly, going to bed with Arthur puts her in peril. I've wanted to make this case within this particular chapter (125 pages into the book), and I keep coming up short. When I workshopped this chapter last week, the feedback was all about that—show more ambivalence, more reluctance, more difficulty in the surrender. Bump up the emotion by lingering on a couple of observations I'd blown through quickly while the act was taking place. And by act I mean fucking.

This morning though, something clicked. I realized that the scene was set up to take advantage of something I'd glossed over in the first part of the book, which had to do with a parallel relationship between Ursula and Brandt, two other characters. I went back to the earlier chapter and made that scene more of a reveal to my main character, Frances. By revisiting that earlier scene within the Frances-and-Arthur-having-sex scene I got closer to nailing the heartbreak.

As far as the Return of the Booty Call, I liked it well enough. What's not to like about a hot summer night of scintillating prose? Especially when there's whiskey involved. At the end of the day though, I have a confession to make. I think it's sort of like the act itself. I like writing sex myself more than hearing sex read aloud.

 

tomorrowland is so yesterday

The post-Disneyland votes are in. After FastPasses aplenty, the thrills, chills, spills and breakdowns that are the Disney experience, my nine-year-old's favorite ride was Autopia. You know the one, right? The diesel-stench track at the edge of Tomorrowland where you can pretend to drive an actual car?

How it works is this. Stand in the queue 45 minutes. Receive a card that invites you to drive one of several named cars. "Drive" the car.

My card entitled me to drive Suzy. No shit. A car with my very own name. My sister, nephew, son and I took our places on deck as the attendant ordered the drivers who had just returned to surrender their vehicles to us. I was at the rear, and with an admonishment to "not bump the car ahead of me," I stepped on the gas pedal. With both feet. Seems the Autopia of the future is geared for drivers with quads of steel. I thought my Suzy was broken. Especially when I had trouble catching up to my nine-year-old.

As I pressed my way around the track in a car that more closely resembled a golf cart of old rather than the futuristic, solar-powered vehicle it should have been, I began a litany of critique. It helped my bitch session that it was nearly 9:00 pm, and after a dozen hours in the park, I'd had about four forkfuls of crappy pasta, a hard boiled egg and a dried out baby-sized turkey sandwich, and I was cold because I'd under-dressed, and now a wind had cropped up (disappointing all who had camped out in Main Street for the "Believe" fireworks that were about to be cancelled). The Autopia experience itself was quite similar to the recent rush hour squeeze on the LA freeway we fell into on the way down here. Without the road rage I guess, because, as we'd been reminded by signage, Disneyland is the happiest place on earth.

The Disneyland employees, however, didn't get that memo. From the parking garage attendant who scolded me for not reading his mind to the talkative docent on the Nemo Submarine who felt compelled to reveal the tmi details of his work schedule as we descended the spiral staircase, I found a dearth of happiness. Except, of course, on my little boy's face. Truly, I think he had the absolute best day of his life—and that, my friends, was totally worth our $120 admission.

Oh, and btw, I finally finished that sex scene.

notes from vacation

Day two of our trip to SoCal.

I'm in the passenger seat of my Element and my sister is driving us over the Grapevine. Pretty soon we'll be dropped, as if by miracle, into Los Angeles and its sprawling burbs. Santa Clarita. Glendale. The dreaded City of Angels and its snarl of cars.

I've spent the past hour writing the very first graphic sex scene in my novel whilst passing trucks and the vast expanse of the Diablo Range. Frances and Arthur, doing it, after a prolonged hiatus. It's one of those types of sex scenes that's supposed to evoke the emotional complexity of their relationship, establish empathy for the somewhat unlikeable Arthur, and mitigate my narrator's usual cynical amor.

At the last rest stop a flock of flies entered the car, and between the annoying tickle of these insects and thwack sound of Carson trying to hit them with a ruler, it's been a little hard to, um, concentrate.

Anyway, I've had a few sessions with "The Secret to Love" when my sister takes the wheel, and it's really interesting writing a family narrative while being in a family narrative. My sister and I haven't spent much time together as adults, and certainly not since we've had kids. This long road trip we're on—to visit our mother in San Diego—is unprecedented. Our two little boys are in the backseat, chewing Skittles and reading Bone Books and C.S. Lewis and inquiring, every few miles, about the next stop for provisions.

Patti and I keep each other entertained with random memories of our childhood games which typically involved pretending we were grown ups with little kids.

Last night we stopped in Stockton, ate at a sub-mediocre chain restaurant and then settled at a La Quinta, where our room was a few steps from the pool. At the pool we happened upon a teenage girl with some sort of social disorder. She was robust in her over-sharing and presumptuous in her assumptions that our boys would like her to give them swimming lessons. When she began tickling Carson, and pulling Matthew around the pool with her t-shirt, they sensed the social contract had been violated and managed quite successfully to keep their distance. Patti found the girl to be extremely troubling, and marveled at her parents lack of supervisory presence. She invented end-result scenarios where the girl would stalk us all the way to San Diego to prey on our offspring. Since I'm a writer, of course I was just looking for the takeaway. Which I got. In her quest to offer information on every topic that would set her up as an expert in all things, she informed us that when we get to Disneyland, we shouldn't get our hearts set on It's a Small World. "They're remodeling it," she said. "They have to rebuild the boats because people have gotten too fat to fit in them."

So, we're about to leave the hills of the Grapevine and enter the land of many chains. Maybe we'll eat in one of those beef places where you can get onions deep fried in batter and dip them in sauce. We'll take two. And bring on the beef platters of angus. Don't forget the side of pork. It's a Fat World After All!

show me where it says that

I've had my current Samsung cell phone for nearly 6 months, so naturally, it's broken. Or nearly, anyway. Actually, it's in great shape if I don't want whoever's on the other end to hear what I'm saying. So I did what I always do when one of my family plan cell phones break. I played upgrade leapfrog on my $225 a month AT&T plan which includes my phone number as well as Sam's and Maggie's.

I wanted a BlackBerry. That was my first mistake. Well, no, actually, going to Radio Shack would have been mistake numero uno. "I want to upgrade to a BlackBerry Pearl," I told the customer service man at the RadioShack. Chelsea Cain has a BlackBerry Pearl, and she'd shown me the features and explained how easy the user interface is, and because I have a bit of the dreaded late adopter stupidness going on, easy user interfaces are crucial.

The customer service man was friendly enough. Especially while engrossed in a nonstop conversation with his colleagues who all seemed to be experiencing a lull in their need to provide service. Halfway through his servicing of me, he slid out the most noxious SBD ever. That really grossed me out, especially because at the time I was leaning over the counter to correct the zipcode error he'd affixed to my address.

After 45 minutes or so, my free BlackBerry was ordered, and supposedly I would receive it in one business day. All I had to do was pay a $25 activation fee and sign up for another 2 years with AT&T. I mean Cingular. No, wait, make that AT&T.

A queue of emails awaited me once back at my computer:

1. Congratulations, your new BlackBerry is on its way!
   
2. Here's the tracking info on trackmyphone.com where information on your BlackBerry awaits!
   
3. Aw, too bad, your phone number is not eligible for an upgrade. You get shit.
   

So I studied the paperwork with the guy's sign-in information and noticed that the young man with the horrible gas had pushed the wrong button at the end of our time together and disallowed my eligibility. Perhaps due to my carbon monoxide/methane poisoned state, I hadn't noticed. My next mistake was to try and fix this myself, online. Which I thought I did, because the Congratulations! emails began anew and two days later a FedEx truck pulled up with my brand new BlackBerry inside.

I unpacked the phone, I put in my chip, and, voila, everything worked. I was quite happy. Until I got the $170 bill for my NEW phone service from AT&T. So I called AT&T and asked them who authorized this new service with a 333 prefix sitting benext to the part that said I needed to pay 170 extra dollars, above and beyond my usual family plan of $225. A clusterfuck ensued. It involved a long conversation and a subsequent phone call to the third party "equipment" people at somethingorotherwire.com. That didn't go well either. I felt a tad racist asking the offshore Customer Service guy to repeat his name and the name of his company five times. And even more racist when I asked him to slow down and enunciate.

My friend Laura coined these halls-and-mirrors phone calls "Show me where it says that" calls, after one particular testy bill dispute call with AT&T in which she was asking them to reveal where in the contract it says "only to other AT&T" customers after the "unlimited texting" option she checked off when adding her teenaged son to the plan.

The upshot is this: I have a BlackBerry phone. I have the chip from my regular plan's phone number. I have a plan--my original plan, not stretched into another two years of crappy service. But AT&T is now telling me that I must somehow return the BlackBerry in its original packaging to the third party vendor who was unable, when I called him, to reveal the address to which I was to send said "equipment." I must return the 3^rd party BlackBerry so I can then buy a new BlackBerry from AT&T for $25 (which, they tell me, is a special deal), re-sign up for an extended term on my plan, and then they can set me up with the inflated BlackBerry service on my original plan.

I don't think so. I think I'll keep the phone, and the chip, and the regular already inflated service I have with them. Who needs a phone that issues email, anyway. I really just wanted the cool little tracking ball and a better phone camera. Which I now have. Let them call me if they want something. I'll leave a greeting that says, "If you want to speak to Suzy, please press…" and then not give them the call to action number. Maybe I'll even ask them to take part in a customer service survey after they speak with me, for quality assurance purposes.

sugar high

Okay, I admit it…I'm a closet sweetened condensed milk eater. I'm not so sure I'd call it comfort food. It's more like neurosis food. When I'm super busy and preoccupied and don't breathe right or stay in the moment or inhabit my body as I'm flying through my day, I get a powerful sweet tooth. That fancy cow with the necklace of daisies on the little tin can. That's all I want.

Here's a kickass treat:

Take the leftover coffee from your morning carafe, heat a tablespoon of condensed milk in the microwave for 12 seconds, and then stir it into the coffee. Add three ice cubes—or, better yet, add a heaping scoop (or three) of Sharon's All Natural Coconut Sorbet.

So, so good. Yum!

Can you tell my boyfriend's out of town?

Okay. So tonight I'm going to write the chapter about the rhesus macaques and their mating rituals and somehow metaphorically tie it into Frances's relationship with her philandering feng shui practitioner husband. Or maybe I'll finish that short story that I'm supposed to have sent to Kevin Sampsell already for the Portland Noir anthology.

Maybe I'll pull an all-nighter, like back in my college days.

I need more coffee and condensed milk!

could I be any busier?

Wow, it's been awhile. Here's what I'm up to:

1. Researching the sexual idiosyncrasies of rhesus macaques
   
2. Resisting the next scene in my novel (which will include specs from the above)
   
3. Working in my yard (Chuck reminded me that I've always considered yardwork as 'writing time')
   
4. Fixing up my website (check out the services section of suzy vitello dot com )
   

On the day job front, I'm writing text for a telecom company, an IT company, a salad toppings company, a Friends of the Library org, an environmental trust, a yoga studio, a Pilates studio, as well as occasional editing jobs that have been trickling my way.

Tasks big and small: have a ginormous French drain trench in my back yard with plans to make flagstone-paths over it, tomorrow is the "laurel hedge trim," an annual event with the neighbors that involves shaving three feet off of our zealously fecund dividing bush, Kirk goes to bio camp on the McKenzie tomorrow for two five-day stints, my daughters stolen-recovered car has been fixed and sterilized, my son's oil-burner still sits at the shop unable to start, I have to mow the lawn.

On the physical location front, an extremely cool thing happened yesterday (besides that it happened to be my SO's birthday AND the summer solstice): long-time writing pal and gallery owner Erin Leonard is going to rent me an office in her new gallery in NW Portland! I couldn't have lucked out more, given that Laura is moving out-of-state. We'll be able to continue to base our business in Portland, and I will have access to a very affordable work space and a conference room right down the street from where I currently hang a shingle!

In other news—getting geared up for Bread Loaf in August (okay, okay, shouldn't that mean I'm pumping out pages???), Carson comes back from the desert tomorrow, my sister is coming to visit at the end of the week, we're doing a sibling road trip down to mom's in San Diego (complete with Sea World and Disneyland stops), and Kirk and his son are in the final month of training for the World Championship Dragon Boat races in Malaysia.

Oh, and btw, I just got a BlackBerry and I'm drowning in its learning curve. I thought these phones were supposed to be smart! Is it time for bed yet?

the suicide squeeze of motherhood

This last week has been murder. The best way to describe it is in baseball terms. Kirk explained to me last night what a suicide squeeze is—when a player on third base has to count on his legs, and the perfection of his teammate's sacrifice bunt to get him home. Apparently the Mariners did something like this yesterday in the 10^th inning and it paid off. The thing about a successful suicide squeeze is that is depends largely on factors beyond one's control.

Right now, I feel very much like someone on third base with high stakes and lots riding on my potential sprint towards home. All I want to do is go back to my dugout with a big smile on my face, but there's a lot of screaming and yelling and people counting on me executing my next move flawlessly. Or so I project.

This week both of my kids' cars were involved in some sort of crisis and/or brokenness. My son's car blew a seal inviting oil to coat his engine, while my daughter's car got stolen, inviting a merry band of drug addicts to use it as an ashtray. My phone cuts out for no reason. I think I have a fever. I have a pile of bills a mile high. My business partner is moving away. I think I may have gotten salmonella from the bad tomatoes that found their way to the produce shelves. My little boy has had hiccups all afternoon. Is that something I should be concerned about?

I'm down to one working light bulb in a light fixture I hate. I need a new blade on my lawn mower. My car picked up a screw and a weird light went on on my dash (thank God for Les Schwab). I've been popping ibuprofen all day. Isn't that bad for my liver? I'm supposed to pose in a tank top tomorrow for a summer catalog and it's barely 56 degrees out. My cat is drooling on me. My little boy is playing an annoying game on his DS next to me here in bed. Today was his last day of school. What are the symptoms of salmonella poisoning? I had to take gross junkie paraphernalia out of my daughter's car because she was freaking out. I paid the impound lot $175 to get the stolen, dented, stinky car back. I'm pretty sure I have a fever.

I took my son's car to the guy who fixed it last time, he charged me $257 and then it wouldn't start, so I took my daughter's stinky car with shards of broken cd all around the floorboards back to my home, and then to the other fixit shop this morning, and then I took the bus home. Which was good. Reducing my carbon footprint and all that. I took my son and his friend to the skatepark after school today to celebrate their last day of school. It actually didn't rain until we were done. Another good thing. My daughter came over (on the bus) to forage through some art supplies to try and recreate a project that was stolen along with her car (a list of items that includes her $400 glasses, her team's rugby uniforms and her asthma meds, etc). My little son still has the hiccups. My big son got kicked in the head last weekend in a soccer game and was dizzy for 48 hours. His car is still broken and at the first fixit shop. I'm exhausted.

But. I just sent my manuscript excerpt to Bread Loaf. I'm going to Bread Loaf in August! I hope I'm over my salmonella poisoning by then.

the dangers of working from home

I have now dragged my finger through the frosting of those ginormous, leftover from our Memorial Weekend BBQ, Costco cupcakes three times. I've microwaved the same cup of coffee a half dozen times. I'm still in my bathrobe. It's after 10 in the morning.

A leak in my NW Portland office, and the offending black mold smell that now wafts through it, is keeping me and my laptop at home today. It's not that I'm not productive at home, it's that I'm a different sort of productive. I've back-burnered client work and novel work in favor of, um, this post, and updating my suzyvitello.com website. Not to mention checking in with various online distractions that shall not be named.

But, I did manage to tap out a working synopsis for Secret to Love. I'll slap it up on a further post, after I have another fingerful of icing.

observing our city's bridges on foot

"The Broadway Bridge has the best Suicide Hotline sign. Very readable. Better than, say, the faded Sellwood Bridge sign. It's not as easy to convince yourself to stay alive when you're confronted with a faded pink, barely legible phone number."

Observation by my friend Max, who's been doing a lot of walking of late

eavesdrop of the day: category, chivalry is so dead.

Two young men walking along in NW PDX. One guy says to the other:
"So I go, 'Dude, why don't you come on over,' and she goes, 'Is it public transportational?' Shit man, like we live in the freakin' city, so I go, 'Yeah, we got a bus,' and she goes, 'Will you meet me at the bus stop?' and I'm like, 'fuck that.' "

once a soccer mom...

So yesterday afternoon, in 100 degree weather, I embarked on the 100 mile drive south to U of O to watch my oldest child kick a soccer ball. And, to upgrade his clunker with an older, higher mileage, but safer one. A safer clunker without, I must add, air conditioning.

I had the little guy with me as co-pilot, and after myriad sweaty stoppages in rush hour Friday afternoon I-5 traffic (made worse by the litter of broken down, burnt engine, smoking hood vehicle detritus along the side of the interstate), I arrived at the field in time for the second half of Sam's team's game.

Carson and I lugged the Gatorade-filled cooler to the field and cheered on the Thundercats (a name usurped from the glory days of high school--for a team that included many of the erstwhile team's members--a deeply satisfying terminal soccer mom moment). I missed Sam's first half goals (they won 4-1!), but got there in time to watch him suffer in the heat--squinting, sweating, red-in-the-face. Like many native, or nearly native, Oregonians, Sam's not a big fan of the sun.

We followed the game with a trip to a brew pub for dinner, where I found myself trying to get used to the fact that I have a kid old enough to say, boldly and legally, "I need a beer!"


Watching my two boys side-by-each in the darkened McMenamins tavern it's hard to miss the fraternal look. Both are blond, blue-eyed and fair-skinned. True to phenotype, they both have my half-closed eyes stoner look, but personality-wise they come from opposite poles. Carson ordered a kid's burger with fries (as opposed to tater tots). When his meal came with tots instead he ate half of them, then summoned the waiter, pointed to his plate and said, politely, but firmly, "I think I ordered fries." After which the server scurried off to deliver same.

His make-no-waves elder brother was visibly impressed. Not only would he never have pointed out a mistaken order, he frequently goes out of his way to avoid even the appearance of disappointment. "Dude!" he said to his little brother, and then pirated half the fries.

We finished our repast and then swapped titles, cars, glove box crap (including a pair of rear view mirror breasts), and then I got to fill the old Honda with gas, buy a quart of oil and embark on the 100 miles north. The check engine light went on pretty quick, directly on the heels of the unmistakably foul smell of burning oil. Oh yeah, and the belch of gray smoke coming from the tail pipe. So much for using the air-conditioning I was looking forward to.

I'm not good with stuff like this. I tend to exclaim that I'm freaking out, even though I have a nine-year-old beside me saying, in his best I-statement, "When you say you're freaking out, it makes me feel freaked out."

Visions of the earlier car fire we witnessed filled me with worst-case-scenario dread. I pulled over, bought more oil, and got some attendant guy to muscle off the oil tank cover that was welded on due to excessive heat.

Upon restarting the car there were more smells, more sounds, more plumes of smoke. But no check engine light. We made it back to Portland in tact, and just before midnight.

My fingers still smell like an oil refinery.

It's still really, really hot outside.

I'm so glad I have a brand new Element so when Carson and I go bike-riding and skateboarding and tennis playing later today, we can look forward to interludes of not being freaked out.

Fuckery Fridays

It's a particularly summer-like day in the Pacific Northwest. I suspect it will be hard to focus. I want to play. Laura and I have branded these Fridays "Fuckery Fridays," a sort of nod to Amy Winehouse and her "what kind of fuckery is this" song.

But what we mean by Fuckery Friday is somewhat different than in the done-her-wrong parlance of Ms. Winehouse referencing Her and Mr. Jones. It's not so much, You don't mean dick to me, but more, Let's take a break from the hamster wheel. An invitation to meander over to whatever calls us the loudest. Let's see. I should water the lettuces I planted. And the geraniums, and the hanging basket. And then I should clean the kitchen before it gets too hot. I should take a shower. I should do the crossword puzzle. Oh yeah, and probably, I should WORK!

the curse of context as compensatory device

I have this affliction called alternate extropia. (I have no idea how to spell it, and I'm loath to consult Wikipedia lest I find out stuff I don't want to know.) It boils down to this: I only look out of one eye at a time. Hence, I have zero depth perception. I parallel park by instinct. I have to guess, based on experience of velocity and angle, where the tennis ball is likely to come down.

I remember biology lab, looking at cells through one eye or the other. I never got that 3-D peek at life, up close. The thing that's right in front of me? I'm never sure what it really looks like and where it truly is. But I'm really, really apt at context. Ergo, if you'll take this leap with me, I have a wee bit of trouble staying in the moment. Everything is assessed for its potential for inclusion in the masterpiece, at the expense of its value in and of itself.

This come-to-Jesus weekend I had with Laura…it became clear that we both lament the speed of expectation, the feeling of never being caught up. That to survive, one must multi-task—not just a few things at a time, but everything. One must carry upon oneself, at any point in time, all the things of a given day. A masterpiece on our backs, laden with heavy frame and thick oil paint and the musty odor of the ages. That's the myth, anyway.

I feel as though I have to actively practice an antidote to this madness. Dismiss the intrusion of context. Practice multi-tasking with just two things, instead of seventeen. Sort of like weaning myself off of coffee by mixing in the decaf portion by portion. Like now. I'm writing, listening to Lucinda Williams. Two things. No checking e-mail, no lining up the client work, no mowing the lawn, starting the laundry, scrubbing last night's salsa from the kitchen floor.

Going back to the eye affliction. When I was eight years old, a scary eye doctor made me wear a patch over one eye and look through prisms in an attempt to cure me. He was trying to get my individual eyes to strengthen so they wouldn't take turns checking out when they were part of a team. Alas, it didn't work. But maybe I can revisit that experiment with other parts of me—see if the parts can be strengthened in and of themselves by detaching from context for a while.