Little Story #8

I was raised a Methodist but I lived in a Catholic neighborhood. In the morning I went down the hill to go to school and everyone else went up the hill. They had uniforms. I thought Catholics were so much more interesting. They had special beads when they prayed. And they had nuns. I really wanted to be a nun.
After school we played together. One day a girl told me I was going to hell because I wasn't Catholic. I went home crying. When Grandmom found out why I was crying she grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the little girl's house. I don't remember what she said or what the little girl's mom said back I know it was a scolding. I remember thinking that if I went to hell my Grandmom would come and drag me outta there.
My cousin and I were nervous kids. I'd say he was worse than I was but ... that would be a lie. I just acted like I wasn't nervous. We didn't like scary movies. There was a double feature at the theater up the street. One was a scary movie and one was not. Grandmom called to make sure the not scary was one was playing first and the sent us to the movie. The scary one was first. We tried to be brave but there were really big spiders. He was hiding his eyes. I said - lets get out of here. We went home in tears. Told Grandmom. She grabbed us both and dragged us to the theater where she got our money back.
It wasn't enough for her to scold someone who had done us wrong. It was important that we see her do it.

Little Story #7

The mommie did a lot of dieting when I was growing up. She drank various liquid diet thing like Metrical while the rest of us ate dinner. My grandmother was not feelin it. She thought dieting was unhealthy. On exercise her ideas were very clear. She'd sit up in bed. Do some arm circles. Sort of touch her toes. I think there might have been one more thing. Then she'd say - that's all you need!
Of course we lived in a house that required steps to get into, steps to get to the bathroom, steps to get to the laundry machines. For some time Grandmom didn't have a drier so she hauled laundry up the steps from the basement and then up more steps to the upper back yard where the lines were. She also gardened and cleaned. Her life had natural exercise.
Grandmom had bridge club once a month. I'd walk in from school and the ladies would discuss my weight. They'd squeeze my arm and say - she's big but she's solid. They'd talk about the possible reasons for my weight. I ate too much. It might be my thyroid. I didn't get enough exercise. Grandmom would smile, give me a kiss and say - she's fine.
When I was eleven or twelve I was inspired by Teen magazine to go on my own diet. I put the page of what to eat every day on the refrigerator. The mommie helped me make Jello for my dessert. Grandmom was not happy.
Grandmom and I were at the bakery where we got our bread and occasional dessert. She decide to buy eclairs. I love eclairs but I told her not to buy me one. I reminded her about my diet. She said it wasn't healthy for me to be on a diet and bought me one anyway.
I sat at one end of the table and my Poppop sat at the other. Grandmom was on one side and the mommie was on the other. Grandmom would pour tea, hand me the cup and I'd pass it to the mommie, she'd pass it to Poppop. And then one more from Grandmom to me to the mommie. That night the eclairs were on the table from the beginning. With each cup of tea she pushed my eclair toward me and I'd push it back. With every serving dish she'd push the eclair toward me and I'd push it back. When I was done eating I asked the mommie if I could be excused and she said yes. I carried my dishes into the kitchen. That eclair sat in our kitchen until it rotted. No one else was allowed to eat it.
I've read a few things lately about the shame that fat women feel. Even women with a strong critique of body politics. I felt that shame from time to time but it was a never a default. My grandmother's strong belief in the idea that my body was OK just the way it was lives in me still.
On my maternal side I am a generationally fat woman. The mommie was taller and fatter than her mom and I am taller and fatter than she was.
If I'm in a bakery and see an eclair I usually buy it. But only really good ones. And only ones with custard.

Little Story #6

Michael Pollan has written a book about the use of psychedelics for the treatment of depression, anxiety, end of life and maybe other things. I haven't read it yet but I did listen to him having a very interesting discussion with Ezra Klein on Ezra's podcast. I listened to it twice.
Being a sixties kid I have great affection for psychedelics. I strongly believe in the positive impact they can have on our inner world. I did them in high school and for years after that I tried to make sure I did them once a year to sort of reboot my perseption.
I went to an experimental high school in Maryland. One of my English teachers did a class called LSD Psychotherapy based on the book of the same name. Rumor was that he came to class tripping and it was probably true. He sat in the front of the room staring at us not saying a word. The strangeness of this was augmented by his extremely thick glasses and wandering eyes. And his enigmatic smile. At some point I stopped going to class. He approached me in the hall and asked why. I said - I expect most of these teachers to fuck with me but I didn't expect it from you. I got an A in the class.
I dropped some acid one day before school. A guy walked up. Asked what I was doing. I said I was tripping. He asked where I got the acid. I told him. He said - oh a bunch of people freaked out on that yesterday.
Uhhhhhh.....
It was really strong Acid. The entire trip was me thinking about what it meant to freak out and trying not to, which was actually quite funny.
I never understood people taking psychedelics and going to a party or a concert.I was such an alienated teenager. I thought I would probably freak out in that kind of situation. Tripping wasn't about fun for me. It was serious inner work. Well. Maybe not serious. There was always giggling.
A few years after high school when I was living in Boulder a friend came to visit and brought something. Maybe mushrooms. Probably mushrooms. We decided to have a "straight" person around while we tripped.  We chose my best friend at the time. She was an extremely abstract thinker. That trip was all about the ludicracy of having her as the "straight" person. 
It's interesting to think about another person as the anchor on those trips. Another thing Michael and Ezra talked about was the nature of consciousness and brain science. Michael said that if they could switch consciousnesses for a minute it would be really disorienting. Our sense of ourselves and the world is based on so many things. Where we were raised, our height and weight, our family, so many things. There are obvious commonalities in the human experience but we experience things differently. 
The last time I remember tripping was on mushrooms. I spent most of the trip laying on a bed staring at  picture of my guru. It was ... a trip. It ended with me sitting on the steps of a porch staring at a very tall tree waving in the wind. Something about that calmed me. It's strong memory that I recall in a very physical way. 
I'm a little bit afraid of psychedelics now. I worry about what chaos may exist in me. There's probably way less chaos than there used to be but I know it's there now. I'm not trying to avoid it. I'm just not sure I wast to immerse myself in it. But ... maybe someday.
Heh.

Little Story #5

On the morning I published little story#4 I was feeling bad. I didn't love the post. I felt like it needed something but I couldn't come up with anything. I also couldn't come up with anything else to write. I didn't think I could keep doing the little stories.

And then a friend (you know who you are) said some extremely cool things to me about my writing. It wasn't just the thing they said. It was the feeling of someone getting what I was trying to do with the writing. Not everybody can do that. They may like the writing but can't articulate why. It's such a balm when they can. 

I did four semester workshops and a summer workshop in my MFA program. I hated most of that experience. It made it hard for me to be open to feedback. We brought copies of our writing for every member of the workshop and discussed the feedback in class. 

Allison Krause was one of the people killed at Kent State. She had graduated from the high school I was newly attending. The hippies in the school wanted the flag lowered to half mast for her. The jocks did not. A fight broke out in the yard around the flag pole. I wrote about it for a workshop. I wrote about a back and forth fight in which each sentence ended with the word fuckin. One of my fellow students gave it back to me with the end of each word circled and a g added. I guarantee no one said fucking on that yard that day. 

I wish I could remember who but I remember reading someone talking about writing feedback. They said that most of it was beside the point. 

The best feed back I ever got was about organization. It came from David Meltzer. He was reading something I wrote. He circled things and drew arrows to where he thought they should go and he was right. It changed the way I edited my own work. I asked JoAnne to read a poem of mine once. She said, take out all the ands then put back the ones you really want. 

These little stories are harder to write than anything I've ever written before. I feel flaccid and lackluster.  I don't really understand why. I got the idea because I was telling so many of my stories to a friend. If anyone talks to me long enough I start telling stories. And I want to hear their stories.
I am editing but I'm trying not to edit too much. For now, it only matters that I get something written. The goal is to write one a day for the month of June.
One of the nicest thing a person ever said to me was after reading set of essays I'd written was - if there were more I'd still be reading.  

Little Story#4

Ripped from the headlines.
I was in a play with Roseanne Barr. When you read that you should call up the way Meryl Streep says - I had a farm in Africa - at the beginning of Out of Africa. I always do.
It was decades ago in Colorado. She was just beginning to be known as a comedian in Denver and I had my little rock-n-roll band in Boulder.  A Denver playwrite had a one act she was entering in a contest the title of which was Hey Hey Big Girl. It was about two sisters who owned a dress shop. I was the very fashionable one and Roseanne was the slob. There were three other women in the play but I don't remember their parts. The sisters fought but I don't remember why. I think there were songs. I don't remember much about the play at all except that I thought it was dumb. So did Roseanne.
We performed at the contest and once more at a friend of mine's dance studio. After the studio performance Roseanne over heard the director being asked what it was like to work with fat woman. She said she had lost weight.
Yep.
I loved Roseanne. She was the first fat woman I'd ever met who wasn't ashamed about being fat. She was direct, smart and so much fun.  I haven't met a lot of fat women without that shame. Even in the size acceptance community. I haven't met many fat women with whom I had such a great connection. We were fat. And that wasn't all we were. We were women with dreams and talents and plans.
I saw her twice after the play. We talked about writing our own play. She told me she was leaving for LA to do the Comedy Store but she would be back. I said she was going to get famous really fast. She assured me she'd stay in touch.
She did get famous really fast.
She did not stay in touch.
I watched her career and always felt like I was on a similar path.
I wasn't.
At some point in life I realized that not getting famous was the best thing that could have happened to me. I don't think I would have done well with fame. I think I would have done a lot of drugs and died. The very limited experience I had with a very little bit of being famous was alienating. I just don't think I would have handled it.
If you told me then that Roseanne would say the kinds of things she's been saying I would have thought you were wrong. There was no evidence then of who she became. And ... I kind of don't care why it happened. Did she have some kind of breakdown? Was it drugs? Was it fame? I have no idea and ...again ... I don't care. I don't care because there's no way for me to really know. And it doesn't matter. She's been saying some really crazy stuff for a long time. I kept thinking there was joke that I wasn't getting. Because none of it was funny. I've always been sad about the loss of her friendship and it's clear to me that we would not have been friends for long.
You can say that racism lives dormant or quietly in white people. I wouldn't argue with you. In America we have all been cooked in it. I can say that I have done a lot of work to uncover my own and I feel like I always will need to do that work.
I don't feel bad about what's happening to her. I have a list of people I'd like to see be held similarly accountable.
I lost a friend years ago.
I've been losing her ever since.

Little Story #3

Oregon is the farthest north I've ever lived. The long summer days are even longer here. In late May it's already getting light by 5AM and stays light till 9 or 10.
Because I worked so many breakfast shifts I've always been aware of the lengthening of days. It's nicer to walk to work in the light.
Walking to work in the morning you see joggers, other workers, sometimes in uniform. You see people coming home from a possibly long ribald evening. Makeup has lost its line. Clothing is rumpled. We pass each other. The workers with a day just beginning and the players with a day finally ending.
In New York I walked with my eyes down, careful to step over the streams of urine flowing from a wall to the curb. Broken vials of powder. Still burning stubs of cigarettes. In some parts of San Francisco it's similar. But New York has 24 hour mess and throb. You need to be alert.
I live above a coffee shop in the middle of a small city downtown area. Oak Street is also highway 30. Semis that look like they might be bigger than my condo go by all the time. The mornings start early with delivery trucks, breakfast smells, mufflers grinding. If I wanted to sleep late it might be a drag but I never do. I wake up earlier in the summer.
I always went into work early. I'd set up and then make my own breakfast, drink coffee and smoke some cigs. I miss the coffee and tobacco combo. The still dreamy drifting minutes before the work begins.
People who are outside a lot love long summer days. I'm not outside but I do love having light late into the evening. But I also enjoy the fall. I like things getting darker and colder. I like tucking in. The dark days last longer here too.

Little Story #2

My parents were together for the first three months of my life. They had a dog named Pride. When they were divorced my dad said the only thing he wanted was the dog. Nice thing for a girl to learn about her dad.
Apparently, Pride sat beside my crib, guarding me. The mommie told me different stories about what happened to him. I think she gave him to a family who owned a farm. Maybe she was being vindictive or maybe she thought Pride would be better off with them. Pride jumped over a fence and was hurt badly enough to die. This is the narrative I grew up with and am not at all sure how much of it is true. Except for the part about Pride sitting by my crib. I want that one.
I was afraid of dogs as a kid and am still uneasy around them. I like them very much. I just feel nervous.
When I was very young Grandmom sent me to the store. I must have been old enough to go but I know I was very young. There was a short cut through the streetcar tracks. It wasn't really dangerous because the streetcars didn't go that fast. It was easy to stand on the side when they went by. (Or stand in the middle when two went by and enjoy the thrill. Probably a bit dangerous.) But she told me to go around the long way. I was walking down the street when a small dog came out from behind his house and began to bark.  I stood very still and began to talk to him. I was terrified. I talked. He barked. Eventually he got bored and went back behind his house and I hurried away. The trip took way longer than it should have (despite me taking the short cut home) and Grandmom was worried and mad when I got home.
Years later, I was living in my first tiny studio and going to a community college. I walked to and from school. I was headed to school one morning when a really big German Shepard came running out from behind his house. I thought I'd walk around him and stepped off the curb. The mirror of a truck hit me in the head and I spun around. My right foot went under the back wheel of the truck.
I had a surgery to close the hole on the side of my ankle. I think it was a four hour surgery. Maybe five. I was in the hospital for a month, home with my leg elevated for a month and on crutches for a month. I have a really big scar. It looks like someone has taken a bite out of my ankle.
If my parents had stayed together and I had grown up with Pride I might not have been afraid of dogs. There's really no way to know. But videos of babies and young children with their dogs put a lump in my throat.
As do videos and pictures of dad's with their daughters.