Red Van, White Trailer.

I'm coming out of the fog I was in. Fog is not really the best image to convey it -- it felt more like having my head encased in a Plexiglas box for 3 weeks. But my sinuses are clear now. I can hear, I can smell, I can breathe through my nose!

On my walk to the bus every morning, I cut through the parking lot of a hotel (we live two blocks from I-35, so our sweet little neighborhood is bordered with a strip of chain hotels and restaurants). One day last week, parked in the lot behind the hotel there was a nondescript white trailer hitched to a maroon van. I saw it from a block away and my eyes widened, my throat thickened, and I could swear I heard a dark heavy chord played on an organ somewhere. Closer, I could see that the trailer wasn't a camper, but some sort of hybrid with a camper-style door on the side and double cargo doors on the back. And the van was more of a Suburban-type vehicle than a regular van. But the colors and proportions and the foggy morning light had created a ghost, and I felt sweetly sad for most of the morning.

The bright red object on top of the van in the picture (above) is a canoe -- click on the pic to make it bigger. Once, during a particularly messy patch in our year and a half on the road, when it felt like our heads and hearts were going to explode, we decided to separate for a week. J and I didn't have any gigs for a spell. I stayed in a campground with the trailer and Christopher Isherwood's My Guru and His Disciple, one of my favorite books. I can't remember where R went, J dropped him off somewhere. And J took the van. I also don't remember where J went for that week, but he came back with a canoe. He bought a pretty red canoe. We used it a few times but eventually decided that lugging it around was more trouble than it was worth.

I apologize to the folks who read my blog and aren't familiar with Y'all and Life in a Box and all the rest. I know my references to those things are cryptic, vague. It's just that my writing here is about the present, and that stuff is the past. Not that the two are ever really separate things, but you know what I mean. Now that I say that, I realize that a good percentage of my blog writing consists of remembered anecdotes, so I'm lying when I say that this is about the present. Okay, here's another excuse: Y'all and Life in a Box are too big, too wide, too deep to summarize here. Here's my favorite review of Life in a Box. I refer people to this review when I'm trying to get out of explaining the film myself. Scroll down to where it says: "My favorite film at this year's PTFF, however, was one that took me by complete surprise."

Teeth.

I love this movie! I don't know if it has been released everywhere yet. J and I saw it at an Austin Film Society pre-release screening last night. It's gorgeous and terrifying and hysterically funny. Jess Weixler is brilliant. Her performance is perfectly calibrated to make the whole thing work. It's just a perfect movie.

One Week In.

Some thoughts on my first week of classes:

My Intro to American Studies professor does this thing with his face -- purses his lips and cocks his head -- exactly like Pee Wee Herman. I noticed it right away but couldn't figure out what it was reminding me of, because, besides being skinny and sort of handsome in a pixie-ish way, he doesn't otherwise resemble Pee Wee, but he did it on Wednesday and suddenly I made the association and I stifled a laugh which came out as just a "huhn!" and a smile.

I've been very lucky in my choice of classes again, or maybe the caliber of faculty at U.T. is just that good. All my professors are good lecturers, engaging, smart, and funny.

I'm going to be reading like a fiend this semester. Besides two pretty dense textbooks for my Geology and History of Texas Government classes, I'll be reading about a dozen books and a stack of about 200 photocopied pages for my two American Studies classes.

I think Spanish will be, if not less challenging, less stressful this semester. The teacher is organized, somewhat strict, and very very patient.

I feel less connected or engaged or something than I did last semester, but I'm blaming it on the cedar fever. I can't for the life of me remember the names of my professors, except my Spanish teacher. I'm sort of in a fog because my nose is constantly running, I have a headache, and I can't breathe through my nose.

Here's What I Think.

The big issue many people have with Barack Obama is that he is unproven, that because his resume is so short there's too much we don't know or can't anticipate about him, that we could elect him and something horrible might happen that we never imagined. Or he could turn out to be another charming politician that we pin all our hopes on and he lets us down, turns out to be incompetent or dishonest. Like Jimmy Carter, like Bill Clinton.

Though I get exasperated with people who say he's all inspiration and no policy when all it takes is a Google search to find reams and reams of policy (try his campaign website for starters -- maybe this stuff is not on CNN, but it's not hard to find), even so, he is young, he is light on government experience. The benefit of the doubt is not something that it is usually wise to give to a politician. I get that.

I like to think that I like him, that I believe in him, because I've done the research, because I'm paying attention, because I'm smart, because I have superior intuition, but I don't discount the possibility that I like him because I have no choice.

I will not vote for Clinton or Edwards. They both voted to authorize the war against Iraq. It's as simple as that for me. They supported an immoral war. They claim they didn't know what they were doing when they cast their votes, that they had no idea Bush was lying. I knew Bush was lying. Millions of people protesting in the streets knew Bush was lying. So, not only did they fall on the wrong side of the question, they did it for cynical, political reasons and then lied about it. I can't vote for somebody who would lie on that scale, about something so big, so important. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Iraq.

Every once in a while I soften on Edwards, because he talks about poverty in a way that no one else will, and we need to have that discussion in order to solve so many of the problems we talk about all the time and can't figure out how to solve: bad health care, racism, obesity, drugs, poor education. But I would not vote for Hillary Clinton, not in a primary, not in a general election, not for president of the P.T.A. My memories of the nineties are too fresh: Don't Ask Don't Tell, the Defense of Marriage Act, NAFTA. I know she's not Bill Clinton, but he'll be right there beside her. They are billing themselves as a team. No thanks.

I'm willing to see if Obama really can change the way we govern ourselves. There's always a chance he'll flop. But I don't see that I have any other choice. If Clinton is the nominee, I will still vote. Voting is an obligation I take seriously. But I'll write somebody in.

Hints.

Yesterday in Spanish class, we were learning a group of verbs that have a similar irregular construction in Spanish (verbs that mean things like, "to like ____," or "to need to ____," or "to be annoyed by _____"). We played a game of bingo where each square contained a sentence and a blank for someone's name, and we had to fill in the name of someone in the class after asking around to see who fit with the sentences. Some of the sentences were "No le interesa ir de compras (He doesn't like to go shopping)", and "Le disgusta el chisme (He is disgusted by gossip)" and "Le conviene ir al dentista (He needs to go to the dentist").

That last one made me uncomfortable to begin with, even if it wasn't directed at me, but when one woman in class walked right up to me and asked "Te conviene ir al dentista?" it felt like a conspiracy.

People are always giving me breath mints. Isn't it obvious how unhelpful that is? First of all, it's tooth decay that's giving me bad breath, so I don't need to be sucking candy all day. Second, it doesn't help. Nasty breath is even nastier combined with the smell of mint. And third, it's annoyingly cryptic. If you want to let somebody know his breath is foul, tell him his breath is foul. And deal with his reaction, because, though it will be useful news, it won't be pleasant news. My reaction now would be "I know," but I imagine most people don't know because their loved ones are afraid to tell them. Bad breath can be a sign of any number of health problems, so do a good deed and tell somebody he has bad breath today.

Halitosis.

For someone for whom social awkwardness is already a problem, a lifelong problem (or, more particularly -- I don't know if this is always the cause of social awkwardness, but it is in my case -- a neurotic fear of having no control over others' impressions of me) bad breath is the worst nightmare, the ultimate test. It's like walking through life with shit smeared on your face, maybe, probably, shit which is only perceptible to other people so you don't know how often it's there or how much, and there's no way for you ever to know.

Day One.

This is completely not what I'm going to write about in this post, but the title puts me in mind of what is probably the thing that bugs me most about Hillary Clinton: more than the fact that every time she says anything you can see how carefully formulated her answer is so that she can deny she said it later if she needs to, or the fact that she avoids the truth as if it were bird flu, even more than the fact that she's married to Bill Clinton, what bugs me more than anything about her is that she uses expressions like "day one." She's always talking about what she's going to do or what she's going to be ready to do on "day one." I hate that.

Today was my first day of classes. (What a nice word "first" is. It looks nice. It sounds nice.) I have a geology class for non-majors called "Earth, Wind, & Fire." It's everyday geology -- what you need to know about Earth to be a responsible citizen of the planet and fascinate people at parties. I like the professor. He's 60-ish, dry scientist/dad sense of humor.

Just before class started he stepped out from behind the lectern and walked across the front of the room and back. His very deliberate way of walking reminded me of a guy I used to work with who had some kind of nerve condition, and the thought came into my head that he had walked across the room just then to get it out of the way, so everyone could see that he had an odd walk and then he wouldn't be as self-conscious about it. Just as he got back behind the podium, a guy sitting next to me said to his friend sitting behind me, "He walks like he has a wedgie," and his friend said, "Yeah. He probably does."

I thought, "How insensitive and immature!" and had a whole conversation in my head, comparing myself to these guys, lamenting how unkind people can be, but eventually forgiving them because they're so young and I'm so old and worldly and of course I would have more compassion because I've seen more suffering, etc. Then it dawned on me how backwards I had it, that the little storyline I made up for the professor was condescending, that I was projecting my discomfort onto him, when in fact he was probably just walking across the room to survey the class, or stretch his legs, or for no reason at all. And he did in fact walk like he had a wedgie.

I think Spanish is going to be less traumatic this semester. The teacher is from Colombia and has lots of teaching experience. She was at ease in front of the class, and had us all speaking on the first day. Ahh. (I recognized her immediately as the voice of the audio portion of our final exam last semester. Obviously they chose her because she speaks so clearly and beautifully.)

And last today was Introduction to American Studies. The "introduction" is more to a way of approaching a subject than to a subject itself. The subject of the course is Texas history and culture, but we'll be using the methods used by American Studies scholars which, from what I understand so far, combine the critical and theoretical tools of English scholars with those of social scientists. We'll see what that's all about. The professor was impressive, engaging speaker, pointy shoes. I didn't know beforehand that it was Texas course, but it works out well because I have a Texas government class too this semester. By May I'll be a Texas expert. (And the Spanish helps too, since so much of Texas history is in Spanish.)

Fear of Drowning.

I had an appointment today at the U.T. student health whatever it's called. I wanted to get my hearing checked out. I have more and more difficulty understanding people when they speak, especially if there's any other sound nearby, which has only become an issue -- an issue for me anyway, I guess it's been an issue for a while now for all the people who have to repeat everything they say to me 3 or 4 times -- since I went back to school. There's so much audio content in college classes these days.

My allergy symptoms have been so severe this week that I wondered if a hearing test would even be accurate, but I went anyway since I've been putting it off for a long time. The hearing test showed that I do not have high frequency hearing loss, the kind of hearing loss that factory workers and musicians get. That's what I assumed I had. Instead, I have loss of the low frequencies, which can be caused by fluid behind the eardrum from sinus congestion. I am, no doubt, congested. So, what I found out today was, not much. The doctor suggested a nasal spray decongestant. No thanks.

I had already decided that I was going to try a Neti pot. J used to have terrible sinus headaches until he started using one. And my sister's husband, who had years of sinus problems, infections, surgery and the whole thing, uses one now and swears by it. The only reason I didn't try it earlier is that the idea of pouring water into my nose scared the hell out of me, but the severity of this cedar pollen reaction convinced me I needed to just get over myself and do it. So I did. About twenty minutes ago. And it felt great. It was actually kind of soothing, warm salt water on my inflamed mucous membranes.

The clinic visit was not a total bust. They irrigated my ears to get the impacted wax out. I usually do that at home once every year or two, but the over-the-counter stuff takes a lot longer to work than whatever they used there.

The last few days I've been carrying a small Tibetan bag which is big enough for my wallet and a couple of handkerchiefs. It elicits a lot of comments from store clerks along the lines of "what a colorful bag!" which always sounds to me like "you're a big fag, aren't you?" but maybe I'm just defensive. The nurse who flushed my ears out said, "That's a colorful bag. Did it come from [some South American country, I can't remember which one she said]?" I told her I bought it from some Tibetan monks. She asked if I had been in the military. I was taking off my shirt at the moment she said it, so I thought she was asking because of my tattoos. I said, "No. Why?" And she said, "I thought maybe that was where you met the Tibetan monks." I told her I met them in Utah, and then I kind of trailed off, leaving her with a "hm" look on her face. I realized that to tell her how I and the monks ended up in Utah was too long a story for ear irrigation chit-chat.

Cedar Fever II.

I can breathe through my nose again today, which is nice. I haven't done that for a couple of days. I try not to slip into a habitual state of whininess, but I get completely preoccupied with my discomfort. It becomes a ball of misery that gets more and more tightly wound. I look for some way to loosen it up, let air in. (I would say that I need some Sudafed for my mind, but the Sudafed hasn't been working, nor has the Claritin or the Benadryl.)

I'm trying to complain less. But I see that mostly what I've been doing is stopping myself from saying out loud things I think and feel, rather than trying to change how I respond to what's happening to me. Maybe it's an improvement for the people around me, but the core of the problem is unchanged.

Another mental game I play with myself is to try to ascertain whether my discomfort is minor (and I'm making a bigger deal of it than is appropriate) or truly exceptional (in which case I would feel justified in my complaining). Am I having a severe allergic reaction to the cedar pollen, or am I being a big baby? I do this by trying to make some distinction between physical and mental, between what my body is doing and how I feel about it. A false distinction. Since I was a teenager, I've had a strange sense that my body is not mine, that I don't understand what's going on with it, or in it.

Health Care.

I went today to apply for an appointment to apply for a program administered by my county health department called MAP (Medical Assistance Program). They way it works is you get a card which says you're poor enough to be eligible for a range of clinics and services for low income people. I need this card before I can make an appointment at the dental clinic. I waited an hour to chat with a receptionist for 2 minutes and set an appointment for February 8, on which date I'll take various proofs of my identity and financial status and meet with a bureaucrat. Then there will be some period of waiting for them to determine my eligibility and issue and send the card. Then I can make the dental appointment, which I imagine will involve another period of waiting.

The office was nice enough, clean and cheerful and crowded, TV not too loud. I watched CNN and chatted with a young black guy and an older white man, cleared up a few myths about Iraq and 9/11 and surprised them both with the knowledge that most scientists believe that humans originated in Africa. (The white guy said, "I don't know -- them Chinese been around a long time," which made the black guy laugh really hard.)

All my experiences with county health services in Austin have been pleasant. I guess I had my trial by fire with low income health care in New York in the eighties when just about every encounter made me want to jump off a tall building or get a real job or something along those lines. The clinics here are luxury day spas compared to the clinics in New York.

Cedar Fever Sucks.

I broke down and started taking Claritin every day. I'd gotten away from drugs for colds and allergies, a decision, like so many in my life, initially forced by poverty but having health, spiritual, political, or environmental benefits (recycling, simplifying my life, reducing consumption, cooking at home, etc.). But my resolve was no match for cedar fever. Even with Claritin, I feel like I have a mild flu. It's the price we pay for 75-degrees and sunny in January.

Here's Where I Am.

Back from 5 days visiting my family in Indiana, feeling fat and weepy. Lots of snow there, very cold and beautiful. 70-some degrees here and sunny this morning.

I have never made new year's resolutions, but I have a to-do list:

#1, get my teeth fixed. (My two youngest nephews, who spent a lot of time on my lap, told me I had stinky breath, which didn't surprise me because a couple of my molars have been hurting for months now, and tooth decay can't smell pretty; but still, ouch. Thank god for little kids who will tell you the truth.) Last year around this time, I went to the dentist down the street; he burned through the $500 I had put aside for my teeth, fixing things that didn't need fixing and nothing that did. Since then, I found out about a low-income dental clinic in Austin with a sliding scale, so I'll check that out. It breaks my heart that my teeth are in such bad shape. I used to take such good care of them.

#2, hook up my new phone. I should do this today! I gave up my cell phone -- I seldom used it away from home and it had been months since I even came close to using my minutes. In general, I avoid the phone. I don't feel comfortable on the phone unless I'm talking to someone I know well (or, more to the point, someone who knows me well). I don't think I communicate effectively on the phone. I'd much rather email. So, I switched to Vonage for $25/month which is half of what I was paying for my cell phone.

#3, meditate. A more traditional resolution. I stopped meditating when school started. I've been a meditator for several years, and there have been periods when I've been less disciplined than others, but I've never taken such a long time off. Now that I'm accustomed to the rhythm of student life, it's time to get back to it. (Though I gave up my daily sitting practice, I continued my lo jong slogan training, which is sort of the heart of my practice.)

#1. Food.

Christmas for me is about food, not just about indulging, but about special food that only appears once a year. My best Christmas memories are associated with food.

That huge white cake our friend Nick in Syracuse made when we celebrated Little Christmas with him and Michael many years back. And Michael's Italian wedding soup with the little meatballs.

Those dry and not very tasty but fascinating and huge ginger cookies with Victorian-looking paper decals of old St. Nick stuck to them, which my grandmother brought with her from her boyfriend's German bakery in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

When I was growing up, I think we usually had turkey and dressing, sweet potatoes, similar to Thanksgiving dinner. In later years, my mother started broiling a loin of beef and serving it with Yorkshire pudding and mashed potatoes. Of course, there was always pumpkin pie and maybe some sort of a cheesecake or other fancy dessert. In the last few years, since my brother and I have started coming for New Year's instead of Christmas, she's done the beef for New Year's dinner, which is very nice. For New Year's Eve last year I made a posole stew with pork and red chili, and I'm going to do that again this year. I like cooking with my mom.

My mother makes about 15 or 20 different kinds of cookies every year. She gives them as gifts and keeps an assortment of them out on a big plate for everyone to nibble on through the day. She started, before I was born, with a few recipes from an old Betty Crocker cookbook: green Christmas tree butter cookies made with a cookie press, little powdered sugar-covered Russian tea cakes, thumbprint cookies rolled in walnuts and filled with chocolate. She still makes those, but over the years she has added and subtracted many others: dark chocolate-dipped macaroons, shortbread, biscotti.

Today J and I are having a small group of friends for dinner, and I'm making carrots roasted with maple, garlic, and thyme, twice-baked potatoes with cheddar and roasted poblano and red bell peppers, sage dressing, and a combination of kale and mustard and turnips green (from the farm) with chipotle. And I'm going to make biscuits.

J made a dark chocolate Southern Comfort pecan pie last night, and someone is bringing an apple pie. I also made little appetizers by stuffing Medjool dates with Parmesan cheese and wrapping them in phyllo pastry, and I'm going to bake them.

I haven't had a chance to make a big holiday meal in years, so I'm very happy and grateful this Christmas Day!

#2. Christmastime in the Trailerpark.

Y'all's finest moment. In a way, though we had many many highs in our 10 years, we were best before we had given it much thought. This recording is from our 1994 CD; we wrote the song for our first Christmas show at Dixon Place in 1992.

"Christmastime in the Trailerpark" was the climactic song of our annual pageant, The Y'all Xmas Xtravaganza, in which we told, year after year, the story of the fateful night the CowGirl Chorus bus crashed in the Forest of Singin' Pine Trees and everyone learned a lesson about the magic of love and absurdity.

Lyrics by J, music by me, backing vocals by the CowGirl Chorus and the Singin' Pine Trees, Cousin Rob on the mandolin, produced by Anthony Erice, and recorded in a cavernous church somewhere in Queens. Christmas alchemy by Y'all.

#3. The Lights.

I love Christmas lights. I didn't start noticing that I loved them until I lived in New York and I would go all soft at the first sighting of a string of colored lights bordering an apartment window.

One of my family's traditions was a Christmas Eve drive around the neighborhood -- after dinner at the local Chinese restaurant, a later tradition, after my grandmother got too old to come to Indiana for Christmas and insist that my mother make oyster stew for my dad on Christmas Eve even though nobody else would eat it -- to gawk at the gaudy light displays. I love the ones that are bright as noon, stuff on the lawn and on the roof, and all twinkling and blinking and chasing.

The season is about the lights, isn't it? Isn't it about light in a long, dark night, about faith that it is as dark as it will get, and now it's going to get lighter?

#4. The Saddest Christmas Song in the World.



Judy Garland met Vincent Minnelli -- her first homosexual husband -- when he directed Meet Me in St. Louis, the movie this song is from. (So you could say that we have this film to thank for Liza Minnelli.)

Apparently the original lyrics were even darker and changes were made to brighten it up a little for the film. But the most egregious change -- "Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow" became "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough" -- was made later, for a Frank Sinatra Christmas album, and now you hardly ever hear the earlier version sung.

The wikipedia entry for the film is worth a read. The very dry plot summary cracked me up. Here's a sample (Tootie is the little girl, played by Margaret O'Brien): "The emotional climax of the movie occurs when Tootie cannot cope with the disruption of her social world, and experiences a violent breakdown in a yard full of snowmen."

#5. It's the Most Wonderful Humbug of the Year.

If you love a good tirade about American Christianity, you can't beat December and you can't beat Christopher Hitchens. He reminds me that I hate what Christmas has become not only because it's evil, but because it's stupid.

I don't agree with a lot of what he writes about other stuff, and, even when he's writing about religion, he tends to overlook the fact that there are some Christians for whom Christ is something other than a passive-aggressive imaginary friend. But, even though I appreciate that there are many people who practice a contemplative Christianity that is worlds different from the born-again shopping mall religion constantly bleating in our faces -- in fact, probably pretty close to my own beliefs and practice -- even those more thoughtful Christians have some explaining to do about that Bible.

Oh, he loves Hanukkah too.

Happy Solstice!