Ten Years

I mentioned on twitter recently that my blog was ten years old last month. What I didn't mention is that I started it because my mom had brain cancer and I was sending out mass emailing of status updates on this and my overwhelmed friends urged me to start a blog instead of fill up their inboxes.

This week is another ten year anniversary in that thursday marks ten years since my mom died. She was only sick for about four months. I knew her death was imminent, but was still shocked when it came. Well, not shocked. I'm not sure what I felt aside from overwhelmed.

The anniversary is making me feel kind of fragile this week and I know I've heard other people say the same thing happens to them with anniversaries. But, I mean, I don't get it really. It's been ten years and it's hardly fresh or new and she's not more dead this week than she was last week or will be next week. I guess it's not important why this date matters, since it clearly does.

So I think I should mark it somehow but am not sure what to do. Saint Candles are the obvious choice, but they seem to be an American (read:the continent) thing. I don't know if I could find any in the UK and I don't want to ship them from North America if they will arrive next week or later and have to deal with all of this over again.

A few friends have suggested that I go into a church and light a votive candle there. They're right in that my mom certainly would have appreciated the gesture and my presence in a Catholic church. I think this would just make me angry. Everyone called my mother's mother a saint when she died. She was a larger than life figure in many ways and had admirable principles that she held to. I doubt she saw herself as a saint. My mom was in her mother's shadow for a long time and only outlived her mother by about ten years. I don't know if anyone called my mom a saint. And my mom certainly didn't believe in her own saintedness. She was entirely convinced she was going to hell. During the brief period where she understood she was dying, she was terrified and upset that she would shortly be burning in hell. This is not a way to spend the last few weeks of your life.

The church's actual teaching is that if you're very sorry and repent, you don't have to go to hell. She didn't remember that part. She just remembered the part where she felt horrendously guilty for minor sins and would certainly be punished for eternity. The church did not give my mom peace in her last days. Nor in the days before that.

There was some volunteer who came around for a while to read the bible to her. I don't know who organised this. My mom had trouble speaking because of the cancer but one day managed a 'shut the hell up' and got the volunteer to actually talk to her like a human. That made her feel better.

So I don't want to go into a church, since that will just make me angry. Making people terrified of hell is abusive. That they have an escape cause doesn't help. If it did, it would have helped my mom. All she remembered was the part they went on and on about which was eternal torment.

In any case, I'm not wholly sure that offering eternal bliss is better. Maybe it makes the dying person feel better. I don't know, as it's all so conditional. Why would you offer conditional love to a dying person? What does it cost to assert that they're actually loved?

Priests tell mourners at funerals that it's all temporary and soon we'll all being hanging out together again, so I guess the best they have to offer is denial. I know exactly where my mom is right now and where she's been the last ten years. It's a small plot marked with an ugly headstone.

Which I can't get to because I am thousands of miles away and the UK Border agency still has my passport.

So I'll burn a non-saint candle and wonder why I'm doing mini-grieving this week, feeling sad and angry over again, wondering why round numbers matter. If we used hexadecimal as our standard counting system, it would be another six years. It's all so arbitrary. Every part of it - who gets cancer, who dies, what dates seem important and on what years. And maybe the arbitrariness: from top to bottom, from every angle is what makes it all seem so futile and extra sad. An arbitrary milestone. An arbitrary existence. An arbitrary end.

The Last Days of Dog

When Xena was first diagnosed, I started trying to think of nice things to do with her. We did some of them. I stuffed her into my bike trailer and took her through the canals into Vicky Park. The thing is that she was still seriously unwell, even if she was functional with pain killers. Her favourite activities almost all involved physical activity, which she had trouble with.

We went on some nice walks, but not long ones. Her favourite low impact activity was always going to parties, so we went to parties. Sonia's going away party was large and crowded, with densely packed people, all merrily drinking. Xena weaved among them, charming people and nicking unguarded food. She was a social butterfly. As it got very late, I got worried about her getting tired or trampled, so I took her upstairs to chill out. I was exhausted and wanted to go to sleep, in fact. A lost party guest opened the room door and she darted out and rejoined the stragglers, happy to be in the midst of things.

That was probably her happiest night after being diagnosed and I'm glad she got it.

I found a new flat in time for my eviction. Sonia left the country for the year. Xena slowly, but surely kept declining, with brief rallies. Meanwhile, all the pills she was taking meant she needed frequent walks, during the day. And during the middle of the night. She often seemed at her perkiest, happiest and most mobile at 3 AM.

When I finally moved to a ground floor flat, it seemed to greatly increase her mobility. This week, on Tuesday morning, I took her to the park and she actually ran a bit. Wendyl, my new housemate, took her out for a walk, and Xena excitedly tugged on her lead the whole way.

Wednesday, maybe from overdoing it, maybe from just reaching a threshold, she was much more stiff and limped to the park. On previous days, she would often limber up as she walked, even if she got off to a rough start, but that day her limp just got worse and worse. I gave her pain killers and they didn't help. I accidentally left treats within reach and she left them alone, preferring to lie on the floor. So I called the vet to make an appointment.

Then I fed her every treat in the house whilst waiting for the cab. I knew this would eventually upset her stomach, but I thought she would not actually experience the ill effects of this. But then the vet was running behind and we waited over an hour. She looked miserable from being in the vets' office, from the pain in her leg, and presumably from an upset stomach.

Because the euphemism is "putting her to sleep," I assumed it would resemble sleep in some way, but it did not. She did not tire and relax as much as she crumpled.

Vets say these drugs are humane and painless and kind. Anti-death penalty activists say they're painful and cruel. Somebody here is wrong.

I wish they had sedated her first.

I've never seen anyone die before. The dog I had as a kid apparently got into rat poison and died 10 minutes before I arrived to see him. I was not at the bedside of either of my grandmothers or my cousins. My uncle died in his sleep without warning. When my mum died, I was at opera, seeing Messiaen's St Francis of Assisi, feeling unhappy about how the hugging of the leper was treated. My experience of death is funerals and loss and digging my first dog's grave and fetching my neighbour's drowned cat from the pond. Xena won't have grave, won't have a funeral. The only thing left is to give away all her things.

The vet said I did the right thing. I tried to explain I hadn't just let it go until she was staggering. That she got suddenly worse. That I hadn't carried her because I knew that also hurt her shoulder.

Today, I woke up extremely early and got on a train to Birmingham to sound check for a gig I played in this evening. Because my life goes on, at least, even if hers doesn't.

And when we finished earlier than I expected, I got a train tonight back to London instead of waiting for the morning, as that's easier, so I was feeling kind of good about it and thought I should send a text to … nobody. There's nobody waiting for me. There's nobody who cares if I go back today or tomorrow. I have no particular responsibilities. No job. I am uneeded. I can sleep through the night without having to wake up for a walk. If I reach to my side while I sleep, my bed will be empty and my floor bare. I can go wherever I want and do whatever I want. And if what I want is a walk to the park, I'll go alone.

I killed my dog today

A while ago, I posted that Xena had cancer. The vet sent me home with steroids and tramadol, a pain killer. Gradually, she needed more and more pain killer until today, when something got much worse overnight and she could barely walk at all.

I called the vet to ask how much it would cost to get a housecall and then I started calling for cabs that would take a dog. I wish I could say something nice or reassuring about her death. I showed up at the vet's office and they were running more than an hour behind, so Xena lay in the middle of the waiting room floor and looked around nervously. Then she limped around with me to a back room, where she was frightened and hurting. She lay down on a blanket they put out. The vet shaved a section of her leg to give her a shot. She sniffed my eyes where I was crying as he pushed in the injection and just collapsed her head down and had stopped breathing within a moment.

He said she felt no pain, but how would he know that?

I took her collar off and her head flopped easily in my hands. Her body was still warm, her ears still soft, her eyes still open.

I wish I had done it before she got that bad. I wish I hadn't had to do it at all. It doesn't matter what I wish.

Ian Mackey Newman

My friend Ian died, very recently. I've known him for about 10 years, since he was 16.

When I met him, he was a student at UC Berkeley. I just read that he got admitted at age 14. Obviously, he was incredibly smart. His mom moved to Berkeley with him and lived a few doors down from me in the same building as me.

I'm not sure what to write about him. During his years at Berkeley, I hung around with him and his mom a lot. We went to parties at each other's houses. We had them around for brunch. We went there for dinner. They were the neighbors we were closest with.

I want to talk about how outstanding he was. Brilliant, charming, witty, just a great guy. I had fallen out of contact with him after he and I both stopped living in Berkeley. A couple of years ago, I ran into him in Berkeley and it turned out he was back to study law. We connected on facebook. So last August, I had a pint with him at Saturn and we caught up.

When I had last seen him, he was still kind of a kid, but meeting him again, he was, of course, all grown up. Even more charming. Wearing a fabulous hat. We talked about this and that. Then I heard that he passed the bar.

He was going into disability rights law and he would have been such a fantastic lawyer. People have stereotypes about what disabled people are like and he was none of those things. When he was a kid, he drove his chair like it was a tank. Actually, he drove it at alarming speeds. Whenever I mentioned him to my father, my dad would say, "is that the guy who races down the sidewalk?" He used to bolt a stick on to the side and play street hockey. I was invited to play also, but after watching him and his friends smash into each other, I feared for my safety.

One time, I was talking to him and he was complaining about how, because of Stephen Hawking, everybody thought a really smart guy in a chair must be studying physics and this was really annoying, because he was majoring in the classics. And I felt really bad, because I had been under the impression that he was doing physics. Over the course of the conversation, it turned out that he had started with physics and then changed his major. It was too funny.

A few months before we both left, he rented out the café down the street and had a huge graduation party. It felt like a hundred people came. His mom asked my band to play, but had already booked other bands for the night, so we ended up playing to the cleaning crew. It was out first gig and I blogged about it, back in the day.

It's hard to believe he's gone. I've been trying to think how best to remember him and I don't know, but it's so easy to imagine what he would say in response to some things I've thought about doing. He was just such a great guy.

Uncle Chuck

My uncle died. He was 74. The last time I saw him, in December, he was recovering from a hernia operation and didn't look well. But I'd heard he had made a full recovery and was up and around and doing fine. His death was totally unexpected.

I've been back in California a few days. I thought that I would be helping out with the arrangements, but they were all made by the time I landed. So I've been visiting with my friends. I did, however, email the priest to get in contact with the church pianist for the funeral.

The pianist explained that people usually want sort of upbeat music because they're celebrating the life of the deceased instead of mourning their loss. I wonder if I'm the only person in America who thinks that's insane. I mean, I know there are TV ads for zoloft and whatever that say that a passing blue mood should be medicated away, but have we so rejected sadness that grief is now banished from funerals?

I asked for something in a minor key. He said he would do reflective music.

Ok, I guess Four Walls by John Cage with it's stark depression might be a bit too much. And anyway, I doubt he knows it. I've been thinking for a while, that I should write some funeral music for organ. It's very unusual for a Catholic church to have a piano instead. So I would have been unprepared regardless.

. . .

I wanted to ask my uncle about my great aunt Tessie. All I know about her was that she was a musician and a piano teacher and she never married. Where did she live and who did she live with? There's nobody left alive that knows. My mother's entire side of the family is dead. On my dad's side, there is only my dad. Everybody is gone.

I wanted to talk to my uncle about changing my name. My younger brother has my father's name. I thought maybe my parents would have named a second son from my mother's side. Charles was the first name of my great grandfather and the middle name of my grandfather and the first name of my uncle. And it's better than Otis, which is the other name traversing generations on that side.

When I saw my uncle last time, I was going to bring this up. But he wasn't much of a talker. There was a kind of awkwardness between him and I that started when I was a teenager. I didn't know how to bring it up, so I asked him about the garage that he just built and his test equipment. He was an engineer for HP and had a bunch of old oscilloscopes and oscillators and other testing gear. Then he showed me all of his race cars and talked about how much work he had put into them and how much they were worth. He showed me my mother's bike, which he had repaired and was riding around town for short trips.

then his friend came over and he introduced me as his niece. It was an awkward moment. I had met the friend before. He started at me hard. I did not look or sound like a niece. My dad told me that he had told Chuck about me changing gender, but I don't know how my dad would explain that or what my uncle would have heard. And he was clearly unsteady from having had an operation and so I didn't say anything that would have made him look confused to his friend, nor did I correct him, I just inwardly squirmed.

So I did not talk to my uncle about his name. Nor have I talked to my family about it. I just started using it. I've performed with it twice and I use it with my email account. When I emailed the priest, that's the name he saw for me and when the church pianist called, that's what he called me. I need to say something about this to at least my brother and father before the service.

I feel like I'm doing this wrong.

All of it. I feel like I'm doing the name thing wrong. And I feel like I'm doing the mourning thing wrong. Sad music at the funeral will bum everybody out, since they all want a party or something. And despite my strange demands for somberness, I'm off hanging out with my friends. I spent a couple of nights with Mitch and went to a farmer's market and had coffee with other people and biked from Sunnyvale to Cupertino (twice) and through the Santa Cruz mountains to Saratoga and Los Gatos and back to Sunnyvale and then had a BBQ. And I was thinking I'm using my uncle's death as an excuse for a BBQ, what the fuck is wrong with me. I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

And why the hell didn't I know him better? When I sent to see him in December, I was full of dread because of gender stuff. My dad had to order me to go, because I was so caught up in myself. I didn't want to tell him and I couldn't not tell him. I went and it was ok, but it was awkward and I thought that I would just give it time.

time

My uncle wasn't married and he never talked about his personal life. He talked about cars and computers. For a while, I thought he might be in the closet about something, because that's what we do in the closet. But now I think he wasn't. I think that's just how he was. He made his life more about his activities and his friends than about his family. Which is also a bit like what being queer is about. Chosen family because blood family wouldn't understand this stuff. We surround ourselves with friends who do get what we're about and build stuff around them. And I do that too and that's a good thing to do. I just wish he had reached out more to me and I wish I knew him more. And I wish I had reached out to him. And the obvious lesson from this is that I need tot talk to my family about my life and make sure they're part of it.

I worshipped my uncle when I was a kid. He was a race car driver! And so smart and funny. And then, a distance. And then he's gone.

On Feeling Angry

I walked through downtown Oakland yesterday and it began to rain again even as the sun was peeking through the clouds. I looked up into the sky and saw a triple rainbow, stretching across even the exposed patches of blue sky. It was obscenely lovely and I hated it's beauty, which seemed so inappropriate. The rainbow is God's promise not to drown the world again by flood and it seemed mocking. What's worth saving in this ugly place? I looked at a dog shitting on the sidewalk ahead. A woman next to me noticed the weather and said loudly, "Uhoh, the Devil is whupping his wife again! I wonder what she did this time?" and then asked me for money. I told her she wasn't funny. Not funny at all, but at least her mythology seemed a better fit. And laughing at this kind of misery, well, that has a place in this world. This ugly place, watched over by a worthless creator, simperingly promising not to wash us out, no matter how much we deserve it.

There is a war against women. Not just a metaphorical glass ceiling war, but a war fought with blood and violence. A war winked and nodded at, the subject of panhandling jokes and police inaction. Their is no single front. No tank to stand in front of. No easy target for counter-attack. No obvious action to take. So I simmer in rage and wish God dead.

"The universe tends towards justice" my friends say, but justice is so inadequate. Even vengeance seems empty. Ten of his lives are not worth this one of hers. There is nothing to take from him that comes near what he has taken from us. And to wait for divine retribution from the same gods that let this happen is too little. Everything is too little.

My anger is a single drop of rain in the downpour. A helpless tear. An empty gesture.

Timanna Bennett, R.I.P.

I know, in my life, there have been many people who loved me, but maybe two people who i feel like have ever really understood me. Yesterday was the funeral of one of those people. Timanna's memorial service started with her family speaking, then her best friends and exes. People spoke about how accepting and understanding she was. She would accept one person and simultaneously accept her other friends being judgmental.

T was queer and genderqueer. She could grow a sparse moustache (better than mine), which she often did. For the inauguration, she decided to wear a wig and a muumuu to go to the Parkway Theatre and watch Obama get sworn in. She also would sometimes butch up in a suit or a tux, and cut quite a dashing figure. Several butch women spoke very movingly about how T helped show them that it was ok to be a masculine woman. Alex talked about how she and T used to go to thrift stores and buy old man clothes together.

Other people spoke about T being unconventional and flamboyant. Somebody mentioned getting thrown out of a movie theatre. Nicole told me about a road trip where they had been thrown out of a Denny's (for playing Madonna on a boombox). When I was an undergrad, I had an overdeveloped sense of propriety and T liked to shout "penis!" at the top of her lungs in grocery stores and whatnot when I was with her, just to watch me squirm.

Sophie wrote a eulogy where she shared that when she was a freshwoman and new to Mills, a group of new students had decided to go skinny-dipping in the fountain in the middle of campus, during the night. Timanna grabbed all their clothes and ran off with them.

T was almost larger than life. She was the most creative person I've ever met. Frustratingly, she didn't do that much concrete with it. Her senior art show was really cool and she did an awesome zine. I always hoped she'd have more frequent output. It seemed like she was always helping other people be more creative. When I was a youth and put out my first album with Mp3.com, a vanity label, T bought a copy. I think she's the only one to have bought it. A couple of years ago, she commissioned me to write a short piece. She was one of two people who encouraged me to start blogging.

Somebody said how T seemed to have trouble figuring out her life path. Lately, she had some problems with drugs, but it seemed like she was really sorting herself out. She was trying to quit and was volunteering at a law center to help victims of domestic violence. She had just applied to do a MA program at Mills in public policy. T was an activist, always working for social justice and change. One of her professors from her undergrad days talked about how she had written a recommendation letter for T, how she was going to get into the grad program.

The professor wants to set up an institutional memorial for T at Mills. T has been around Mills for over a decade now, involved in the community. Her mother spoke about how T had never felt she fit in anywhere, until she got to Mills. There was a stirring of recognition in the mourners, many of whom were Mills women (and another Mills man aside from me). I started crying at that moment and haven't stopped much since.

There's so much I want to ask T, about herself and about gender issues - like what it means for me to have felt so strongly validated as a Mills woman then, but a man now? And I just want to talk about Madonna or whatever pop culture thing she was into at that moment.

The last time I saw her, I was home for Christmas and it was a stressful visit. I saw my family for the first time since starting transition and my ex girlfriend for the first time since breaking up and I almost didn't want to be in California at all. Timanna came over and we went to the White Horse, her favorite gay bar, in Oakland. It was karaoke night. I've barely got any control of my voice since it started to change, but the overall quality of singing was on a par with what I could manage. We sang a duet of "I Touch Myself," a song I hadn't even heard in years. If we got any notes right at all, it was by happy accident. But we acted like "horndogs," according to the MC. T didn't even seem embarrassed, even as I was blushing.

I think all the queers and butches and femmes and transfolks and academics and activists and friends packed in the pews of the chapel and standing in the back could tell a story like that, about how T was a bright spot in their life. And at this dark hour in mine, I keep thinking that if I'm in the Bay Area and I'm so sad, I should call her up. It's hard to even conceive of a world without her.

Will be in California . . . for a funeral

Timanna Bennett died. I don't really know what happened. T was a good friend for a long time. I'm flying out tomorrow. T's memorial service is at the Mills chapel on Saturday, 14 February, at 11am. There will be a potluck reception afterwards. As far as I know, T was the first of my Mills friends to die. A lot of people who knew her then seem to be planning on coming. I think some of them fell out of contact since, but T was just such a remarkable person.

I will post more about her later, but right now I just can't. I should be packing to travel anyway or washing some of the many dishes that I shouldn't leave in my sink for two weeks. I'll be in the Bay Area until the 23rd. I hope to be able to see as many friends as possible while I'm back, especially if I haven't seen them for a while. I didn't see too many people when I was home for Christmas, but I did see T, thank gods.

My cell phone number is 917 355 5064. That's a New York number, but it rings in my pocket.

This is all very distressing.

Crap Poetry

The hospice volunteer read from a book of poems about death.

It contained rainbows.
And also wolves, bald eagles, spotted owls, blue whales,
a veritable who's who of the endangered species list.
All of them welcoming a freed spirit

Maybe they didn't know my mom had let her membership to Greenpeace lapse.
Or maybe they did, but also that when that quack came around saying shark cartilage was a magic cure,
I'd said no.
Not just because it wouldn't work
but for the sharks

Or maybe, as the poem implied, they were just overjoyed at the death of a human.
Any human.
Thinking, "Thank gods. If enough of them die, we might get to live after all."

Six Years

Six years ago today, I went to the opera to see Messiaen's St Francis of Assisi, because it was the last night and I had a ticket and all the critics were raving about it.

Some people might think that I'm too willing to sacrifice them for the sake of music. My mother died alone because I was at the opera. And if I'll do that, what could anybody else matter in comparison?

We buried mom with some things of hers. My dad tried to give them to the mortician ahead of time. But he said to bring them back later.

We had a rosary at the funeral home. Her casket was in the room. We said ten Hail Marys and went home.

My dad had in his hands some things of hers to put with her. So the mortician opened up the casket in the front of the room, so Dad could put them in.

My dad who wanted a closed casket. My dad who had to call somebody to take her body away the morning after she went.

He put in there her teddy bear that she'd held for the last few weeks and her volunteer badge for the historical museum and a few other things. I forget what.

One of my mother's friends saw the lid lifted and approached. Wanting to view the corpse. My mom had wished for a closed casket funeral. So her friend was disappointed. Palpably so.

But it didn't matter because none of it could actually possible be happening.

This is not how she would want to be remembered. This isn't the story she would want me to tell. It's what's on my mind, crowding out other memories.

Do unto yourself as you would unto others

One time, I was tooling around Oakland and these two guys jumped on this other guy and started beating on him. They took off and left the other guy lying bloody in the street. This was before everybody had cell phones, but somebody passing by had one and so the cops were soon there. Nobody jumped in the middle heroically or anything, but they did call 911. And if I saw something like that again, I'd be on the phone right away, talking to the cops. For the most part, I'm not fan of the police, but they do have their uses.

And you, if you were someplace and you saw somebody about to kill another person or hurt them, you'd call 911 (or your country's equivalent) too. I mean, even if it was somebody you didn't really like, you might not want to jump in the middle, but you'd make the phone call. It's the right thing to do. And, I mean, it's not so hard to pick up a hone. You don't have to give your name. You just have to say where you're at and that somebody there is in trouble. You would do that, right? It's a moral imperative.

I don't know what it feels like to be in an agitated state. I've been depressed, anxious, closeted, etc, but I've never been bipolar and I hope it stays that way. Agitated states suck. People who are in them feel as crappy and awful and unbelievable deadenedly sad as somebody with bad depression, but with energy. Like how somebody might feel on a day they couldn't get out of bed, but they can get out of bed and move around, because they've got the stamina to do it. Feeling that low and having energy to take action is a dangerous situation. A friend of mine (who I neglected to ask if I could plagiarize) describes it as feeling like you leg was caught in a bear trap. You'd do anything to escape, even gnawing off your own leg.

But if you had a cell phone, you wouldn't gnaw off your own leg, you would call 911. And if you saw somebody so trapped, you'd call for help. And if you saw somebody about to kill somebody else, you'd call for help. And if the guy whose about to get killed is you and the guy whose about to do the killing is you, it's still the same situation. One where you have to call for help.

So I don't know what it's like. I've never been there. But I'm in the arts and so I know a lot of bipolar people. The suicide rates for bipolar folks is alarmingly high. I'm ignorant, but as your friend, I want to remind you to call 911 in an emergency. Even if you're going to do it anyway. Even if you don't like the guy getting killed. Even if you don't want to be saved.

the most futile blog post ever

Ok, so I used to have anxiety and that's mostly vanished, thank gods, (although my first self-inflicted T shot this morning did leave me feeling kind of freaked). It made me really suck at risk assessment. I never knew if I was actually in peril or not. Danger could be lurking around every turn. I might be unprepared!

I got very concerned about being prepared. Not just having an earthquake kit, but also being mentally prepared. In a crisis, you can't sit down and think out carefully what's coming. You have to just react. You need to already know how to respond when something gets thrown at you. So I used to sit and think about things that might happen and how I would deal with them. I would visualize myself taking steps to respond. I practiced it in my head in case I was called to do it in real life.

I don't even remember now what I was worrying about, but if it happened, I bet I would (still?) be on top of it. This isn't a completely crazy idea. It's the whole basis for fire drills. Certain dangers are so unlikely that they're not worth worrying about. But if you live in a tsunami zone, you know the evacuation route. Because when you get the 2 minute's notice that a tsunami has just passed under the Golden Gate Bridge, you don't want to be looking at an elevation map trying to figure out where to go.

I don't want to be presumptuous or anything, but some of you live in tsunami zones or earthquake zones or flood zones. And having a mental drill once in a while might be a reasonable thing to consider doing. Which is to say that if you feel like you're in a bear trap, I don't think you'll be recalling and following along with my moral reasoning about calling for help. But maybe for some of you, occasional mental fire drills make sense?

You folks all have shrinks and meds and people who know way more about stuff than me. I've got virtually nothing to contribute to this conversation. I really hate losing people and I want to feel like there's something that can be done. That I can do. Something to keep the folks that I care about around longer. And it's as futile as demanding that you stop smoking and start eating oat bran. Because that's not up to me and I don't know what I'm talking about.

fucking hell

Memorize This If You Need It

It's easy to remember 1.800.SUICIDE (1.800.784.2433). You folks that need to know it, you know who you are. Program it into your cell phone. Just fucking remember it. And then when you need it, fucking call it.

Sometimes when you look backwards, it looks barren and bleak. And sometimes when you look forwards, the emptiness seems to stretch out forever. It's an illusion. Your life can't seriously be like that, or you wouldn't have made it to adulthood. Children actually raised that way die Of natural causes. By themselves. So if you're old enough to be reading this, you life hasn't actually been like that. Probably, the worst is behind you. If your situation was really so low, you wouldn't have the activity level or agency to do something so drastic. People don't get drastic like that unless they're on the upswing. You've just waited until things have gotten better and now you're thinking of it. Call the fucking hotline number.

You don't get to adulthood without hope. You don't get to adulthood without love. Maybe they didn't love you enough. Maybe they're gone now. But that love was there or you wouldn't be. More people care about you than you think. People love you. People have loved you.

Afterlife

Rapture Ready folks care more about afterlife than life. Other folks are like that too. Is there a heaven? Is there a hell? Do you keep getting reborn until you reach enlightenment? Do you live this life over and over and over again infinitely? Can you come back and chat with the psychic living? Is this all there is?

I don't fucking care about the answers to these questions. There's no verifiable evidence for any of them aside form the "this is it" one. Maybe you've had a person experience with talking to the dead. I've known people who have. But it's not mutually verifiable. The evidence can't be used in a scientific sense. But, seriously, I don't care. I'm just as happy with oblivion as I am with doing this same thing over and over again in the exact way. There are bad times. There are good times. You owe it to yourself and to folks who love you to chase the good. Go out and fucking grab it and hold on. It's an obligation. Hope is a moral obligation.

What brought this on

Polly's boyfriend Paul died. He was a good guy. I knew him, liked him. He read this blog. I hadn't talked to him in a long time, but I cared about him. I don't actually know who all reads this or what they're thinking and maybe I've never met them offline or even online. But some of y'all are happy and some are sad. And if you need to memorize that number, you know it in your heart. So fucking memorize it. And call it when you need it.

I would vote for Hillary Clinton

I know. Just yesterday I said that I wouldn't vote for somebody who thought that s/he should have more rights than me. And I would only vote for a progressive. But those Clintons! They're charismatic! They make you feel all warm and fuzzy when they sign the Defense of Marriage Act and Welfare Reform and NAFTA and the WTO and when they open large pristine tracts of wilderness for oil exploration and they bomb third world countries based on shaky (and ultimately false) "intelligence" reports. Why is it that the left still loves Bill ater he did all those bad things? Why do we love Hillary? Why would I vote for her? It doesn't make any sense. Yet, for some reason, I would. So would a lot of people. If the election were held tomorrow and she was running against Bush, surveys show that she would win. Maybe she could have Kucinich as her running mate.

No More Politics

A band that I like, The Disposable Heros of Hiphoprisy, have a song where the refrain is a guy singing, "All I ever think about is music and politics." This song often gets stuck in my head.

My life

In personal news, um, not much has happened. I had band practice today from 1:00 to 6:30. A couple of songs got cut from our Vegas set list cuz I can't play them. One of them I spent a couple of hours practicing last night. Bleah. It may have the hardest bassline out of all the songs. I still feel sniffly. I read a book about the history of non-synthetic dyes and paints. All those crayola colors make sense now. Sienna was the name of a color manufactured in Sienna, Italy. Burnt Sienna is that same color after heating. Midnight blue used to be called Prussian blue and was invented by some guy in Prussia. Err, you can see that all of the data absorbed into my thick skull and now I can give detailed histories. Or not. It's what comes of reading while sick.

There used to be codes for "first mourning" and "second mourning." All this is myserious to me. People are/were suppossed to refrain from certain activities and wearing certain colors while mourning. This knowledge, tucked among tales about how Britian fought a war to get Belize as a colony so they could use logwood to dye fabrics black, has made me feel defensive. One is probably not suppossed to get married less than year after one's mother passes on. Vince told me that people sepnd up to 75% of their time trying to justify decisions that they've already made. So here is my justification: I've wanted to marry Christi for many years. In 1998, we went to Hawaii right before the November election so we could get married there in case the Hawaiian supreme court overturned gay marriage bans. There was an amendment on the ballot that would undo this court action. So it could have been the case that the supreme court would have legalized gay marriage and then, only a few days later, Hawaiians would have amended their constitioun to make it illegal again. But the people who got married in between would be married. So we went to Hawaii and sat on the beach and got a newspaper every day. The supreme court backed down and the amendment passed and the window of opportunity never opened. But if it had, we would already be married now.

Well, now, five years later, we can get married. We will get married. (Although the location might change if Massachusetts' supreme court rules next tuesday to legalize same sex marriage there. We would be in a better legal position if we get married in a US state.) We've waited a long time.

I used to worry, five years ago, what to say to my grandmother. You're supossed to tell your grandma (obviously) if you get married, but I thought she might not understand. But she died. And my cousin died. And my mom died. and the number of family members to be distressed about this marriage things is constantly declining. I'm digressing.

Now might not be the time to get married and throw a big party. It's past the time I would have picked. Look, I'm about to leave. There's a lot of folks I might not see for a long while. It seems like the right thing to do. But I dunno. Hamlet said something about the funeral meats coldly furnishing the wedding banquet, but that was a dead spouse, not a dead parent. If people weren't so biggotted and stupid, Christi and I could have gotten married in 1998 and my mom could have come to the wedding.

Black dye, Belize, Puritans

Puritans wanted black fabric and were willing to pay for it. But dying things a true black is difficult. The old method was to dye a piece of fabric in many shades , dipping it mutiple times, until it came out black. The it was discovered that logwood, a new world import, made a wonderful back, but it faded unless dyed over indigo. So indigo was imported from south east Asia and logwood came from Central America. For a long time, logwood was illegal in Britian (so was indigo, but that's another story), because the Spanish had a monopoly on it. But then Britian fought a war with the Spanish and got control of Belize (formerly British Honduras). As part of the peace settlements, all the privateers were to stop hassling Spanish trade, so pirates were out of a job. They went to work in the mangrove forests of Belize harvesting logwood and were paid for their effort in rum. so the puritans were financing all sorts of debauchery and things they found morally wrong (like slavery - many current Belizeans are decended from slaves imported to harvest logwood) in order to get acessories to show their piety. America really does still have puritanical culture.

Grad Skool

Well, I've gotten one letter from CalArts saying "yes," and have heard only rumors from other schools. I've heard via a third party that Alvin Lucier thinks I sound "interresting." A certain bitter ex-member of the Mills Community says that their financial sitution makes my acceptance there near certain. Oh, well, gee, uh. I didn't think they took economics into account for admissions, but what do I know. I don't mend benefitting from affirmative action, but I'd prefer it to be the "we need a better male-female balance" kind rather than the "we need more cash" kind. This is because I'm a contrary leftist and nobody on the right is suing to stop the second kind of class-based admission system. And I've heard from another individual that CalArts is not an easy school to get in to and that Mills has already made it's descision and the letter will be mailed shortly.

The more I think about it, the more I just want to move to Seattle and screw grad school. Honestly, it's not like my music career matters. If all 15 people who care about electronic tape music think that I'm cool, well, that's swell, but it's still only 15 people. I think that in the US art is dead. If it's not dead, it's terminal and twitching. In the 80's it was doing that reaching it's arm up towards the light thing and a bunch of folks decided it was about to go for a walk, but nope it was that increased wakefulness before death thing. (I haven't read too many hospice pamphlets, not me.) Give art some more morphine, talk quietly in it's presence, hold it's hand for a moment, hold your breath each time it breathes in, waiting to hear if it will breathe out again.

and then what happened?

Well, then, on the morning of February 14th. christi and I took the train back to Portland. the train was nice and had miles of leg room. We went bowling that night with Renne on account of it being her birthday. All of her Portland dyke friends are kind of good bowlers, which is something to consider when considering the Pacfic Northwest. After bowling, we got fondue. the next day, christi and i went to Powells and got too many books. I still haven't read all the books I got from the visit before that. the music section is too much temptation, but they had no Esperanto books, except one mighty expensive one.

we sat in front of the fireplace and I started writing a symphony. then Matthew returned to Portland, after being expelled from the South Bay. Despite this occurance, he seemed well. Happy, friendly, at ease, (balanced if you will) and otherwise, also balanced. Looking good. It's always good to see Matthew doing well. He's a nifty guy. Also, he seems not to bear a grudge as far as I can tell, and that's also a very good thing. since he's family and all. anyway, I was glad to see him.

And then we came back on Sunday. Yesturday, I started one of the tape and Cello pieces, at least the tape part. I found an old recording I made in March of 2001. I had just gotten a new toy microphone and for some reason, I spent half an hour recording myself talking about my mom. So I'm pulling samples out of it, right now, I'm grabbing out very time I said, "my mom" and am going to loop them, but I'll pull out more stuff too. At some point I was talking about how my family was dying off and how my missed all her dead relatives. (Basically, everyone she remebered from her childhood except her brother died. I can relate to this because, like her, I'm also experiencing a shortage of family members. I thin it might be related.) anyway, there's prolly good samples about that. Also, my grandma was still alive when it was recorded, so there's a section about taking my mom and grandma to see a symphony for mothers day and the kind of music that my mom likes. Christi will write a slurpy, lamenting cello line to go over the tape. I think the human condition is fundamentally sad, because one day everyone you love will die or leave you or you will die or leave them. why people want to increase misery through violence (and pverty, which is also violence), I do not understand. Anyway, it would be cool to do a series of lamentations, drawing a connection between the inevitability of death and the needlessness of war. those things are strongly connected in my mind. Why kill people? They'll all die on their own eventually. The trick is to avoid cliches and lameness. Pauline Oliveros and the Kronos Quartet have both recorded excellent anti-war pieces incorporating sobbing, gunshots, screaming, etc. the trick is to do it well, it would be terrible to take sounds of mourning and put them ina cheap, poorly constructed context. so this project is definitely adequately challenging.

Lou Harrison died last night. He was a wonderful world music and percussion composer. He had a tremendous impact on classical music. He was also, a warm, talkative and friendly person. This is very sad. I'm glad I got to meet him as the OM 8 driver last year. He talked about local architecture and the SF World's Fair, for which the Palace of Fine Arts was built and how he first heard Eastern music there and it made him want to compose. He also spoke some Esperanto with me. He claimed to hardly remember it and then rapid-fired off several sentences. My old housemate was his sign language teacher. It used to be very exciting when he would call. World-famous composer calling for my housemate! Anyway, it's very sad and a big loss for music. He never stopped composing.

A few days of sun and rain and de-snailing and de-fungussing (is there one or two 's'es in fungusing?) improved the state of my xmas tree greatly. It's in the house dropping needles everywhere, even flinging them across the room. The cats keep trying to explore it, but the dog wants to explore them, so they're not interacting with it. They probably think it's a pine scented litterbox. Or is it fir scented? When your father-in-law is a forester, knowing the diference between pine and fir trees can be very important.

I was putting up ornaments yesturday and realized that my mom gave me almost all of them. The last candle that was burning when she was alive burned out yesturday. The holidays suck suck suck. Oh my, do they suck. If you see Santa, please tell him where he can stick his holiday cheer.

I have not posted for a long time. It's because I was bummed. First, there were two news-helicopter situation within blocks of my house in one day. Some folks decided to rob the bank I always use the ATM at. They shot the two folks tring to put money in that self-same ATM and one of them died. And then, in just a few blocks the other direction, a disgruntled ex-employee of some company took hostages and killed himself. These were bad things, but what bummed me out is that nobody called me to see if I was ok. It's not like I require such a call, since I am ok, and when I used to receive them, I found them midly annoying. But now I am mom-less and receive no such calls. That was the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Of course, the holidays are a major bummer too. I've had Thanksgiving with Christi's family for the last few years, but my god-mother invited my nuclear family over and I was going to accept. My dad told my brother and I both not to accept and he went for some undisclosed third option also. I think he may have sat home alone. This also is a large change, because usually my mom would be trying to convince me to have thanksgiving with her instead of far away, which would be mildly annoying. Now I get told to scram.

But all is not doom and gloom. I saw my last living female relative during this just passed weekend. She was my grandmother's first cousin and is a nun. She's elderly and sent some confused communications during my mom's illness, so I was worried that she wouldn't be well, but she was doing much better than I expected. We went to see the movie Adaptation with her. those of you who have seen it may be thinking, "that's not a very nun-friendly movie!" You're right, it's not. There was some confusion because it stars Nicholas Cage and she thought it featured John Cage. So it was not at all what she was expecting and since she's mostly blind, she couldn't see it very well, which is a good thing for her in this case, I think. The convent nurses told me not to take her to see anything that wasn't G or PG rated, but they were kidding. I think.

And we saw Christi's grandpa. Normally, he holds himself ot a very strict schedule, but we threw it all in disarray. Normally he eats a particular TV dinner for each night of the week, but he went out to dinner with us two days in a row, which is unheard of for him. We went to see Christi's cousin in a school play. The cousin played a head in a box on a table. The play was terrible. The kids did the best they could with what they had, but they really did not have much. It was a valliant effort. christi's cousin was the best actor in the play. All of the charecters were highly bizarre, yet somehow the cousin managed to be beleivable as a head on a table, no small feat. I've heard that their school is in dire economic straits and so has to use plays with very very low royalties. someone needs to write low-royalty plays for highschools.

the auditorium has a WPA mural painted in the foyer. It's a very nifty mural and it shows workers and other nifty themes. It's too bad the WPA is over, it was the only time during US history that the government actually supported the arts. This may never happen again.

Christi is reading all of Ned Rorem's diaries. They're amusing because of his terribly pretentious bon-mots. I told Christi that I was going to keep a terribly pretentious journal for when I rise to star-dom as a composer. she encouraged me. Then I could publish my journal under the title Self-portrait of the Composer as a Young Woman or something else equally awful. She suggested maybe I just keep a blog. I may need to start another blog, since this one does not adequaltely come off as a celebration of my genius. Ahem. Nevermind.

I'm answering all of the condolence email I got. Well, at least most of it. If you are expecting an answer and don't receive one, here you go:
Thank you for your email. It means a lot to me.
I hope you are doing well
-- celeste
Just because it's a form letter doesn't mean that your email didn't mean a lot to me. It's all true.

I hardly slept last night. I was worried about oversleeping, so instead I didn't sleep at all. I was eating breakfast when I relaized that it was a friday morning and I had only allocated one hour to reach Cupertino from Berkeley by 10:00 am. What's worse is the carpool lane closes at 10:00. I encouraged the Dentons to hurry. Maybe they did. We left after 9:00. There was a coffee truck overturned on 880. We got to the church at 10:20-something. I was suppossed to be there by 10:10 to be a pallbearer. And Christi took the guest registry-type book home with her to repair a page, so people were signing a photocopied sheet. Most everyone had arrived by the time we put the book in place.

We pulled the casket from the hearst and placed it on a trolley thing, wheeled it to the church vestebule and then places a white sheep called a pall over the top of it. Then we wheeled it inside and sat in the front of church and cried for the whole mass. The cantor sang in te slow pseudo-operatic, wild vibrato style popular among catholic cantors. I was upset with him, but the music selection was good. The organist and I had talked on the phone the night before going back and forth about the music. Most catholic music is not good. But we narrowed it down to Taize. S/he's so good, even protestants use it. Andway, I thought it was good when he sang Ave Maria. But throughout most of the mass, I felt a wild desire to stab him. Christi's boss told me later he thought the cantor was good, so I finally decided that I was just unhappy and so disliking the cantor, but it wasn't his fault.

Monsegnour Milani's sermon talked about mom in vague terms from the notes he had taken from us. He did know my mom from when she lived at home with her parents and he was their pastor. The readings were from the book of wisdom, psalm 23, a letter of Saint Paul to somebody and the beatitudes. At the end, Marilyn Quentin, mom's friend got and spoke about taking piano classes with her at DeAnza Community College and being a docent with her at the museum and about how they used to talk for hours and hours. I was glad she spoke. After the mass, we processed out and then milled around for a while, waiting for the Monsegnour. Shyam Nigrani's wife was there. He was my dad's old coworker and I was friends with their daughter. Also, Autumn, who I worked with at Netscape was there. I need to call both of these people. Beatrice came again. Margie came. Tiffany, Luoi, GI Jen, Brian and Sarah K, Vince and Tammy and Sarah D all came too. There was a good crowd. A bunch of Chuck's friends were there. Many of them read the newspaper announcement, because apparently Chuck didn't tell everyone that he should have. Mary Lou came, as did Hubback. Charles, Christi's boss came. The Bonasiches came. They run the orchard in Hollister. The Vidiviches came. All the CGC people. That's the singles club my parents met at. It's called the Catholic Graduates Club. For Catholics who were out of college, which seems to have meant thirty-something. My dad was still in school when her joined, but he was a resuming student. Anyway, the register thingee plus the photocopied sheet gives us a list.

The fake cops started up their motorbikes and blocked traffic and we got on 280 and went to Gate of Heaven Cemetery in a auto-procession. Apparently, one of the fake cops was almost run over. They looked just like real cops in CHP look-alike uniforms and with look-alike bikes, flashing amber lights instead of blue and red. I think people were fooled. One of them successfully pulled over a semi-truck. There was a short ceremony at the grave site and then another rodent-like mortuary employee thanked everyone for coming and we went to my dad's house.

Alottas Catering did the food. They catered my mom's parents' funerals too. My dad called me a few days ago and asked about vegan food. I told his to just have some salads and maybe a three-bean salad and the vegans would be fine. And then maybe he could get a lasagna too. So when I arrived, there was a lettuce salad, a fruit salad, a three bean salad and a meat lasagna. I can't say my dad doesn't listen to me. Brother bob brought a million desserts, including his great pear tortes. Tammy or Sarah D or somebody brought a quiche. Someone else brought a plat full of cake slices. There was a lot of food. And red and white wine.

I talked to a bunch of people, I think. I sort of floated through it. Near the end, Margaret Schieck, my godmother, pulled me into a another room and said that while my mom was sick and could still talk, she asked Margaret to look after me and she promised she would. And she said she wanted me to consider myself part of her family if I want and Christi too and her kids know about me and Christi and everyone is ok about it and even if my mom hadn't said anything to her, she wtill would have wanted me in her family because she's known me her whole life and she's my god mother. I just kind of cried. Christi has been asking me all day what we talked about and I can't speak it because it makes me cry too much, but i can type it. So now all my blog readers (both of you) know now. The whole time my mom was sick, I kept thinking that Margaret was going to have to assume her duties as a godmother soon. I guess she was thinking the same thing. I didn't know that my mom ever knew she was dying. the time she was still talking was probably when we were still doing radiation treatment. I was annoyed at her negative attitude then, but she must have known better than us. I'm glad she knew. I'm sorry I kept denying that, because I wanted the radiation to help and I wanted her to be more positive about it, because of the mythical mind-body connection.

Christi's mom took all the male Dentons to the airport. After everyone left, she, Christi and I sat and talked to my dad for a while. Christi and her mom disappeared off to Sarah K's house. And when my dad fell asleep in his chair, I snuck off after them. We drank tea and then went back and got some desserts and most of the last of my stuff from my dad. Like oreos and a pomegranite and a pumpkin.

We came back to berkeley and Christi talked me into going for sushi. It was miserable. I kept wanting to cry. I didn't want to go to a restaurant. Tiffany anf Luoi invited us to a party, but I didn't want to go and we ended up not calling them at all. Apparently they told me that Christi wanted to go and Christi that I wanted to go. But we talked to each other and foiled their plans. I don't think my mom would like the idea of me going to a party after her funeral one bit.

Margaret told me that I'm a lot like my mom. Not very long ago, that would have annoyed me, but now I know that my mom was kind and funny and humble and always put other people first and smart and a good friend to people and fun to be around. I was barely old enough to start appreciating my mother. Just ten years ago, I still often saw her as a tyrant trying to ruin my social life. I wish I'd had more time as an adult to know her. Today was the hardest day since she died, maybe since she was sick. While she was sick, I had hope or at least chores. Before the funeral, there was logistics or a sence of relief that she wasn't suffering. But now there's nothing more to do and she's gone forever

So after Tiffany left, later Mitch came over. He was talking a lot about Mozilla. I thought it was a religious discussion, but it turned out he's got some startup idea that's going to use esperanto. I say, "yay." We went out to pizza. We came back and Christi's Mother and Brother arrived. We sat around and talked, then went to bed. (aren't blogs exciting?)

This morning I woke up and Tiffany was back here. yay. I thanked her for doing my half of the chores. Then she left and the Dentons and I drove to San Jose to get Christi's Father from the SJ Airport. We went to my dad's house to change. It's full of flowers. I haven't yet collected cards to write thank you notes. My dad showed up, so we went to Kim's Vietnamese food with him. The organist called my cell phone and I finally gave her the list of hymns. Then we went to the rosary. We only said a decade of the rosary. Monsegnour Milani read a few readings and did a short, vague homily. Then it was over. Bang, bang, done. My mom would have been disappointed. But the crowd was pretty good. Christi made the book thingee. It's beautiful. It's covered with handmade (not by her) paper with rosebuds embedded in it. A lot of people came. The first guy I talked to was upset that we had communicated insufficieantly with him and was mad about it. And then some other guy came by and complained at my dad for being insufficiently sociable. Um yeah. Next time she dies, we'll handle it better. The criticizm was very mild, but when you're already fighting back tears, it stings more than normal.

A certain gentleman who is socially awkward came over to say goodbye. I thanked him for coming, so he said, "well thank you for being born." I replied, "anytime." Brother Bob guffawed. It was the only comic moment. In case I haven't been clear on this, my mom dying sucks. My mom always liked the unnamed gentleman. She was always willing to overlook people's foibles. She would give anybody on earth a second chance. Unless someone hurt someone she cared about. Then she never forgave, ever.

My mother's mother died nine years ago. While she was ill, before her death, she had a nurse named Beatrice. Beatrice read about my mom in the paper and showed up to her rosary. She said my mom was always her friend. So if you helped someone my mom cared about, she didn't forget you then either.

after the mortuary asked us to leave so they could close up, we went to La Teejo de Lusi. We stayed forty minutes past closing, but they never asked us to leave. I think we made tea orders after they closed, and they filled them without saying anything. Only Sarah K clued us in to their closing. They're much nicer than the mortuary. It's too bad they don't do wakes there. The mortician at the rosary looked like he has the ability to turn into a bat. But the mortuary chapel has a huge crucifix, so he must not actually be a vampire. Anyway, we were at Lucy's with the Dentons, the Sarahs, Mitch, Vince and Tammy. Vince and Tammy didn't go to the rosary because Vince's mom told them that Vince's dad needed an emergency angioplasty and was at death's door, but apparently, she overstated the crisis. I'm glad he's ok.

We came home and did trash night things. I lit candle number three. The BVM and John the Baptist already burned out, but they were pretty low when they came here. Aside from the BVM (it seemed right to start with her), all of the remaining candles are ordered by amount of wax left, so all things being equal, they should burn longer and longer with each candle. And I fixed the heater. The fan had been failing to come on when the heater got hot, so instead of being like a regular, mordern heater, it was more like a radiator and utterly innefective at dispersing heat over our upstairs, which has very high ceilings. anyway, I opened the heater cover and switched a button marked "fan" to to "on." I'm leading people to beleive that it was actually a technical repair, so keep this quiet.

It's so weird having family gatherings without my mom. It's not right at all