Life for Sale Item #1: Piccolo

I used to be into musical instruments. I played several, some of them well. This was not one of them.

In ninth grade or thereabouts, my parents sprung for a very nice flute, open hole, solid silver head. We found it in the paper and bought it from a guy, who I believe was a professional musician. His wife was pregnant and he needed the extra money, so he offered to throw in this piccolo for just a little more. I liked the idea of piccolo in theory—because it’s one of those instruments that if you’re playing it, everyone knows. But in reality, I was not someone who felt comfortable standing out musically. I coveted the respect and accolades that came with the higher range first chair parts, but I chickened out on the high notes when I realized everyone could hear them. I dreamed of playing cool 12-bar improvisational solos on my saxophone in jazz band, but mostly I froze up and played uninspired riffs I had memorized in advance.

So, I bought the piccolo, and I tried to buy the self-image; unfortunately the personality I needed to rock out as a piccolo player was not something I could buy.

But if you have the personality, I have the piccolo—for just 4 days, 19 hours, and 41minutes more. If you think it's got your name on it you can check it out on eBay

Dynamic Rideshare Update

For those of you who patiently bore my obsessive rants, posts, and questionnaires about dynamic ridesharing...you can see the resulting essay here, attached as a "written statement" to my profile for a contest sponsored by Keen Footwear, who look like a pretty interesting company based in Portland, OR. Winners announced by March 24. A lot of people are doing cooler things than essays--so I'm not considering a grand prize, but have to say I have my fingers crossed for the journalism prize. It can't be helped that some of the funds would go toward relocation--though maybe the couple extra thousand is what will put me in the ballpark for a used hybrid! But I want to also pay myself for a few days of research into who, if anyone, is considering real-time ride-share systems, and what I can do to support those efforts. At the very least I want to check out the Urban Planning and Transport Studies institutions at UCLA and USC and squeak my wheels if no one is considering it as an option.

Da PinkEye and Some Thoughts About That

Friday I woke up with a sticky right eye—my first experience of the dreaded and reported “pink-eye” I have heard about for years. The pink-eye arrived in the wake of a lingering throat malady that had arrived in the wake of a hideous flu/cold that took me by storm. Such everyday illnesses, especially series of them, hold a special terrifying place in my heart. This is because, before my cancer was diagnosed, I had a string of such illnesses, that I had difficulty fighting off, often turning antibiotics. Because I traveled so much by plane, between different climates and time zones, it made that I would be run down. Because I had activities in so many public places, it made sense that I would be exposed to bacteria viruses that would take advantage of that fact.

Yet, when asked about my cancer experience, if I had “symptoms,” it is these daisy-chains of illnesses that I cite as being the real first clue. My body was unable to successfully fight these smaller illnesses because it was carrying a larger burden than anyone realized. I say that looking back I can see it clearly, how exhausted I was most of the time, how flat feeling and depressed. Since the surgery that removed the tumor, my everyday illnesses have been only sporadic, and to my memory I have not taken antibiotics. Yet each time, there is a feeling of panic, and the dilemma about treatments. I think it strengthens my body’s resistance to overcome nasty bugs on it’s own…but it’s also just about boosting my confidence, so I can tell myself that it’s not the same as before, say to myself, “Well I got over that, so everything must be okay—there’s nothing lurking in the shadows.” But if it takes too long for my body to resist, the opposite kind of thinking can occur.

The first call I made on Friday morning was the school health center. I had no doubt that they would give me antibiotics. But at 8:15, no one answered the phone, and I thought, before I drive over, I’ll just call Min—who is my acupuncturist. She was there, and told me to come on over. She treated me with needles, gave me homeopathic eye-drops and medicinal tea. On Saturday, the eye looked much better, but late that night, I could feel my throat pain from the previous week had returned, and Sunday I woke up to find the left eye was infected.

So, here on Monday morning what to do? Do I continue down this alternative road, or, out of fear that something deep-seated will actually irritate my system and weaken it, do I go to the health center? Do I hope for the least powerful antibiotic that will do the trick, or worry that it won’t do the trick, allowing the bacteria to evolve, or do I want something that will knock everything—the eyes, the throat, any residual anything—out in one fell swoop, even if that leaves me a bit more susceptible in the future?

And the real question—since the symptoms themselves are not unbearable, are not what I am reacting to most—how to master my fear? It is likely irrational, I rationalize. I have been traveling, by planes and buses and taxis, to places alternately warmer and rainier and colder and snowier. And, “Everyone is sick.” Paul has had my flu, my roommate in New York came down with the same throat malady, another woman in the English department is reported to have had the pinkeye. These are illnesses that are going around, hardly implications of any life threatening disease. On the other hand, it’s easy to believe you’re a hypochondriac until you’re right.

The test that will guide me, I suppose, that seems logical, is whether I get well, completely well, and then have an extended period of wellness. But the truth is, I can’t know anything, and although a period of wellness is an indicator of balance, nothing is proven about my actual wellbeing; it simply provides a filter between myself and my fears, so I don’t have to face them so directly.

My Life for Sale

All My Life for Sale is a book by John Freyer, who in 2000, on the road back to Iowa after a summer job in New York realized that he was basically returning because of his possessions. He says, "the objects I owned were making decisions for me." Subsequently, he put everything on E-bay and his own website (allmylifeforsale.com), sold much of it, and also traced the trajectory of his items, even going so far as to visit his salt and pepper shakers in their new home. He wrote the book, which has been optioned for a film. I won't be visiting my items, I guess that's been done; but I will be selling them. And it is a little like selling my life I guess. It's letting go of whatever ideas I had about what I would do with some particular item, what it would mean, what it would say about me, what I envisioned my future to be when I acquired that item...or the husband who brought home the item

So to that end, we have arranged the little kitchen area (we never eat in it much anyway) to take photos:
I will not bore you with the multitude of books I will be trying to sell, many of which seem to have sprung from nowhere, but will highlight a few of the other hopefully departing items on this blog...stay tuned.

Things Getting You Down?

I've been a little down lately...maybe a lot down, I won't deny it...but I feel I'm working through it. One nice thing is I do feel I am back to work after all the travel and sickness. It helps that I finally figured out a place to work. I now have what Virginia Woolf, Stephen King and many other writers advocate, a room of my own a door that can shut (and a space heater). It is the third bedroom of our house, which over time has been used as temporary living quarters for a few friends, massage room that never happened, and more recently storage, as can be seen here:

The only problem with cleaning out that room was that the items were relocated to this room (pictured before the transfer).

What Do I Think of This Pink?

Books on nutrition will tell you to shop the periphery of the grocery store, and try to skip the aisles. I must be doing a good job, because somehow I completely missed these Campbell soup cans, first released for Breast Cancer Awareness Month in 2006, and again in 2007. As noted in this press release, they have raised their donation this year from $250,000 to $300,000.

I’ve probably mentioned before that I have ambivalent feelings toward Breast Cancer marketing initiatives, not only because some of them can appear to be self-serving in jumping on the BC bandwagon, as pointed out here, and discussed in a more neutral manner here,

but also because I’m not sure exactly where funds for things like “research and awareness” are going. Who is doing the research? Is my money going to pharmaceuticals companies who will use it to develop new chemo drugs for profit? Or is it going to under-funded studies on things like nutrition, exercise, stress-reduction and the environment? Likewise, of what exactly are we being made aware? Mostly I feel aware that I’m supposed to be aware. I’m also really aware that breast cancer is signified by pink. Occasionally an article (usually in magazine articles which I don’t believe are funded by awareness donations) exhorts me to do self-exams…fine. Sometimes they talk about getting mammograms earlier and more often. I’m not so into that, and urge others out there to consider ultrasound, as discussed in my previous post here, or even digital thermography, (which I am about to try for the first time in a couple of weeks for my annual scans—I’ll give a report). Hardly ever am I made aware of studies on the benefits of walking for survivors of breast cancer—that’s every week, not just at events with custom T-shirts. And I’ve never seen a box of Godiva chocolates (also, I believe owned by Campbells) that said, “Don’t eat me if you have cancer—sugar feeds cancer.”

And on this note, I’ll mention that regardless of my feeling about the pink cans, I can’t eat this Campbells Soup anyway, since I have sworn off the high fructose corn syrup you see in the ingredients.

Trucks and Jesus Fish

The bigger and more colossal the pick-up truck, the more likely it will have one of those fish with the cross for an eye on its bumper. What's the connection do you think? My theory is that the drivers have faith that God will come down with more oil when we've used it all up.

Something Real

Back when I started this blog, I invited people to read it. My mother read it once or twice, and so did my uncle. When I was visiting my parents, I saw an email from my uncle and opened it to see how he was. He thought I was long-winded. My mother responded that she didn't understand why I had to bring up old boyfriends in a public forum (this was regarding a post where I talked about influences on my taste in music). They both agreed I had always been strange. As far as I can tell, neither of them has looked at it since, yet I don't write many posts now without that feeling that they, or someone of their natures, will chance upon it.

To expand upon the dilemma:

On one hand, why would I talk about things of a personal nature in a forum like this? I have plenty of friends to talk to off line if I must be so self revealing, and the school I attend offers up to ten counseling sessions free of charge. Is it just narcissism that would have me offer myself up here?

On the other hand, E.B. White once wrote that "As a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with the safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly or unworldly enchantment, as though I might be personally responsible if even a small one were to be lost."

There are a million witnesses to this world, but I am the only witness to my little one, which might in many of it's aspects be similar to others, or might be different. If my small handful of readers who look me up each day or month, or if someone comes upon it--maybe at some point in the future when I'm no longer here--and finds only pictures and packing lists, that person would have very little idea of what was actually important to me at the moment I was posting. I would be an unreliable witness, recounting only the most surface details and leaving those items of importance without witness, to turn to dust of memory and blow away with no record.

Or I might occasionally post something regardless of the fact that I fear it is mundane or cliche or self-indulgently confessional because it is the closest thing to my heart at the moment I write the words, or even a thing that has occupied my thoughts for some time and it seems like the right thing to offer up to the universe.

I don't know. This is a new form, I'm just one of the folks flailing around, trying to figure it all out.

I hear I should use my blog for self-promotion. Okay. I'm in this new issue of Sycamore Review. Paul, for his second year in a row, is a finalist for the Coca Cola Refreshing Filmmaker Award, with his film Can on the Run.

And we have an appointment for marriage counseling on Monday.

The Things She Carried

Unpacking and re-packing to leave the hotel, I did an itemization.

For one week in New York and surrounds:

11 pairs socks 14 pairs underpants
3 pairs tights 3 skirts
3 pairs pants 2 two pairs sweat pants
1 pair North-face waterproof pants
4 bras 1 top with a built in bra
4 tank tops 3 T-shirts with shortsleeves 5 shirts with long sleeves 3 pull on sweaters 2 cardigans
1 pair shoes-sneakers 1 pair shoes-black
1 pair boots-cute with high heel
1 pair boots- Sorel brand heavy duty duck boots, lined
1 grey wool coat
1 heavy coat
3 scarves,
2 hats
2 pair gloves

Too much?
This might be a little personal, but at home, I can easily wear one bra for a week without noticing. I wear the same sweaters and shoes for days on end. What’s the explanation for the overkill in my duffel? A couple of possibilities:

Reason One:
Packing method, which is to throw things I think I’ll need into the bag in the days preceding the trip. This is can lead to redundancies: I pull some socks, a skirt, a pair of pants from a drawer and throw them in. Then I do a load of laundry and as I am restocking, think, “Did I yet pack pants, a skirt, enough socks?…What the hell, you can never have too many socks.”

Reason Two (possibly with metaphorical connotations):
I don’t like being obligated in the present to say what I will want in the future. It could change. I prefer to decide at the last possible minute—but the consequence is that I am must then carry my choices with me. If you can’t commit, you can’t jettison—and I fear this extra weight slows me down, in my life as well as my travels.

New York--AWP

Only took pictures on one day, and not of things most indicative of the conference, like say, the long lines at the registration desks the first morning, the three floors full of book fair, OUR PANEL--Why Ballet is Good for Football Players: How Screenwriting affects fiction and poetry, the crowded and dimly lit evening soirees at Noo Na and Zanzibar, or me and Ahmad and Barbara talking to the Metro guy for forty minutes while we tried to get back from Brooklyn in the wee hours of the morn.

But I did snap a few shots on Thursday, when I ran into Frank and Professor Kirby at the bookfair, and Roger led me and Katie and Jessica to lunch in Hell's Kitchen, and took us back via Rockafeller Center Plaza. Here they are