Here is the only Where

After publishing my post, "It's 1969: Do You Know Where Your Mother Is?", it occurred to me that some of my students might just find and read it from my Facebook posting. Not so good. As a (former) teacher, I am/was supposed to be a paragon of virtue, behavior above and beyond reproach, with impeccable manners, if not timing. No runs in the pantyhose. Well, that's not me. Won't do at all. I am simply too complicated. Ergo, no longer a teacher. In public school. In California. Which is a shame, if you know me at all. Or not, if you know me well.
One of my favorite saying is, "You can't get lost if you don't know where you're going." Likewise, "You can't get there from here." That says it all.

I was in Borders looking for, of all things, a book. Seems like Borders has been Walmarted, carrying everything from chocolate and coffee, to pens and wrapping paper. I started looking for the hardware section, but ran out of time. I was also looking for a toolbelt.
The book I needed was for Danno's birthday, a good book on home repairs for his new job as Maintenance at a large apartment complex in Ashland. Large meaning 160 units. Maintenance meaning what they don't do in my apartment complex.
Storming in through the double doors after searching for parking for 10 minutes, after driving for half an hour searching for the right mall in a city apparently composed of malls surrounded by suburbs, the nouveau feudal American landscape, and clearly running out of time to shop in any meaningful way, I accosted the nearest Borders employee from 20 feet away, "Where are your handyman books?"
I had clearly startled her, no doubt. She jumped, and almost took her eyes off her computer monitor. She tipped her head in a very professorial mode and scanned me over her bi-focals. The wind I had created coming in rustled the pages of the magazines at the front of the store, which was deserted at 10 am on Good Friday.
She glanced to the left, and started giving directions, but I was already moving, having quickly located her focal point, and noticing the gigantic signs pinpointing specific genres. I could here her voice over the vague musical background in summation, "...But you can't get there from here."
That caught my attention.
You can't get there from here.
What an interesting notion.
I stopped mid-aisle.
"That's a great title," I called over my shoulder, en route to Home Improvement.
And so it is, if you Google it: books, stories, music, you name it. It clearly has fascinated better minds than mine in the past.
It wasn't until I had passed Western Fiction that it occured to me what a misnomer that statement is. If you can't get there from here, where can you get there from? Obviously you can only get there from here. Here is the only where to get anywhere from. (Grammar police, back off!)
It might not be easy. It might not be efficient. You might have to make a lot of turns. You might even have to back track, or get out a map, or even ask directions. But you certainly can get anywere from here.
No wonder it's such a popular title.

Picture credit: http://www.johnlund.com/images/JL-interchange__2FG.jpg

It's 1969: Do you know where your mother is???

April 13, 2010


Dear Feed Store Zealots,

Today is my son Danno’s 23rd birthday. Yea, I know, huh. Matt is almost 29, with 2 kids, and a mortgage. I suppose having a mortgage is an accomplishment, or at least it used to be. The ‘old’ American Dream and all. Danno and his girl, Cara, are working for their apartment complex up in Ashland. He’s maintenance, she’s office staff. So grown up! Scary. No, I don’t feel old at all. (Sarcasm)

I don’t have a mortgage. I’m still renting. I think I may always be renting. I think that may be ok. I can always paint the walls orange if I want to, and they can just paint over it and take it out of my deposit. A fountain in the yard under a beamed pool house is another matter. I remember the pool house in LA. It was right out of a magazine. Mom was like that, always making things like they were right out of a magazine.

When I turned 15 my parents threw a big party for me and my friends. We were living in a great old house in The Valley. San Fernando, that is. Yep, that’s me: an original Valley Girl and Mall Rat. The party was outside on a warm September night. Mom floated candles in little cups on the surface of the black-bottom pool, and we ate hot dogs and potato salad in the fern-draped pool house, under the 16th century carved lion’s head on the wall. It was really gorgeous, except I never did like potato salad. I don’t know what she was thinking: maybe she was dreaming of an all-American life she had seen in the movies as a kid. We never ate potato salad normally. My friends thought it was totally cool, though. They devoured the potato salad.

The candles looked like giant stars as they whirled on the currents of the pool driven by the automatic filtration system, humming in the background. There was a long table covered with food and sodas. Our favorite rock and roll on the turntable brought outside for the occasion. Boys and girls giggling under the huge sycamore, dangerously dark brick decking that changed elevations twice along the length of the pool. Paper cups and streamers, lights hung from the branches, my parents trying to stay out of the way and chaperone at the same time. I was a goddess for an evening. By Monday I was back to being my same old nerdy self: too smart for my britches, Mom used to say. I never quite figured that out. What does smart have to do with britches?

At 10:30 the boys had to go home, and we girls set sleeping bags out on the floor of the pool house. That’s another thing: the bags were those flimsy cotton jobs sold just for slumber parties. No padding. I can’t sleep on anything harder than a mattress. The night was spent tossing, once we finally did go to bed.

We had been planning on sneaking out for days before the party. What self-respecting 15 year olds wouldn’t have? The boys were staying at one of their houses nearby and we had arranged to slip out the driveway gate around midnight and rendezvous with them down the street. Problem was, the gate had been padlocked by my knowing parents from the other side. I suppose they were inside watching while we gathered at the gate and came up with plan B. How stealth can 6 teenage girls be? Especially after all that soda, and potato salad.

We decided to climb over the back yard wall, 6’ tall and made of concrete bricks. No footholds whatsoever. We managed, giving each other legs up, only to find ourselves in the neighbor’s yard, which, as it turned out, was also locked. Somewhere around 1:30 we gave up and got back to the pool house, hugely disappointed, slightly relieved. All but Cheryl Peterson. She was furious. She was the wild one in the bunch, and my mom did not like me hanging out with her at all. Mom was usually right, but that didn’t make me any happier back then than it does now.

Cheryl and I once hitched from the Valley to the Strip, yea, Sunset Strip, at midnight one summer eve. This would have been in ’69. Can you imagine? What were we thinking? We cruised awhile, avoiding cat calls and whistles. At least I was. Again, Cheryl was disappointed. At that point, I was definitely naïve and not too into ‘getting laid’. Cheryl? Well, she was always up for anything.

Cheryl and I once snuck away from a church group sleep out at San Onofre beach and snuck out to party with a Hell’s Angel bunch camping nearby. She’d met one of the guys at the beach and he had invited us. You betcha. Bowls of pills, plates of powder, dishes filled with doobies. Lots of Jack Daniels. I don’t remember how the hell we got back to the church group. I do remember being woken up just before dawn, having just gotten to sleep, as the entire camp group searched the grounds for my brother Rick, a year younger, who had disappeared sometime in the night. We found him the next morning in his sleeping bag, sound asleep on a cliff ledge about a hundred feet above the ocean. We tried to convince them that he had always been a sleep walker, but no one believed us. I think they thought he was possessed or something. We went on one other trip with the church group, but that turned out to be an utter fiasco.

That time we took a bus out to Park City, Utah for a ski trip. The first day, I slipped off the lift onto the icy run and broke my tailbone. The next morning I struggled to wake from a fever induced nightmare. I had relapsed with the Hong Kong flu and stayed in bed for the next 3 days with 105’ fever living on aspirin. They refused to send me home. I had to bus back, sleeping in the luggage rack because I was too weak to sit up. They were mad at my brother and I, I guess, because we tried to smuggle my boyfriend and his buddy into the motel. He wasn’t in the church group, but had driven his antique black volkswagon bug all the way from California with the intention of staying secretly with my brother and I.

Naturally the church kids were appalled at this plan, and poor Erik and Eddie spent 3 miserable nights in an unheated laundry room about frozen to death. They would come back early from skiing, sneak into my empty room, shower, steal snacks, and dash out before the group got back from their skiing. I can’t believe Eric even speaks to me anymore, after all I put him through.

Mom didn’t let us go on anymore church trips, which was fine, because I couldn’t stand the insipid songs and prayers anyway. I’m not Christian, either, so it really was lame to begin with. We thought the trips would be fun. I guess our idea of ‘trips’ was a bit different from theirs. No kidding.

At any rate, I am happy to be mortgage-free. A pool house would be fun, maybe not as much as when I was a teen, but then what is? I wonder what stories my sons, now adults, have from their teen age years? Matt shared one or two, but not until he was safely relocated 5,000 miles away. Danno? He’s within driving distance. He went through the DARE program, so he was sober until he turned 18. He’s been making up time. We never let them join any church groups, though. Just to be safe. I mean, what would Jesus do… at 15? What would you?

Have fun,

Magpie

The Four Levels of Sadness: Imagination's Junkie

I admit to being a thrift store fanatic. That's not the sad part. The saddest part, and there are more than four when you stop to think, is what and who is to be found there.

The First Level of Sadness
... is when you pull out that little blouse or dress only to shrivel up your nose in disdain. Oh my god, you think, someone actually wore this. Not only that, they bought it new and then wore it. Maybe even with pride at how fabulous it looked, or so they thought.

The Second Level of Sadness
... is when pay perfectly good money for some godawful item to wear to the annual Grossman Easter Party, knowing full well that it is perfectly awful, and that some poor schmuck wore it in good faith before you. It is hideous, and that is precisely the point: it must be hideous to pass muster, or else you would have passed it  by for something judiciously whimsical that actually looks like a fashion statement you, and only you could have pulled off. Or so you'd like to think.

The Third Level of Sadness
... is when, in a moment of true insanity, you buy that eloquent fashion statement, realizing full well that you bought it once before and finally after a single wearing, or perhaps having allowed it to hang relentlessly in your closet, gave it back to the thrift store and were somehow obliged to buy it back. Truly sad. And, of course, you promise yourself to never again, for the second time, buy back a thrift store find you really should not have bought the first time.

The Fourth, and Saddest Level of Sadness
... is the day or so after Christmas when you join the throngs of after-Christmas shoppers who were sorely disappointed by the somehow meaningless gifts from family and so, end up, alone again naturally, combing the racks for that singular item that will assuage that terrible sinking feeling that you are so unloved and fashion-challenged that you are here, once again, searching for the ineffable gift to yourself that will enable you to face the world.

This last, and saddest level, strikes me as the quintessential American disease of "Not Enough". When you have shopped for family and friends, online and up close and personal, for weeks, days, hours before the stores closed on Christmas Eve, yet you return not to 'return', but to buy anew. For you, glorious and loving mother-wife-friend spent more than you should have or wanted to in an attempt to prove your consideration for the loved ones in your life, but ended up feeling somehow empty instead. The emptiness consumes the consummate consumer, forcing your hand to your purse to your plastic personhood to prove your worthiness and power. Yes You, Great American Consumer, must buy to be.

And that is truly sad.

Women shop to experience not so much shopping, but the imagined event of wearing that gorgeous outfit found wanting a warm body to give it meaning. We shop and as we do we imagine ourselves entering the room, looking fabulous, earning the praise and jealousy of the other women in the room, imagining their envious looks and pleasantries in the form of, "Oh, my, where did you get that??" You see yourself not so much in the mirror, as in the mind's eye, glamorous and funky and tasteful and thrifty, appearing as if in a fashion mag, looking years younger (or older) and infinitely enviable.
It is in this imagining that we exist in multiple realities and our existence is thereby magnified, amplified: we live, in our minds, in an alternate reality.

That is why we shop. We don't really need more stuff. We hunger for more experiences. We are imagination's junkies.

Is this sad? Of course not. If it were, television and media in general would not have their appeal. Why do men watch golf? Is it really for the scintillating scrutiny of the hushed voice overs describing in tepid detail the positioning of the club, the flight of the ball, the thud and roll on the green? No. Men, too, like we women, crave the satisfaction of their imaginary realities. Football fans, churning on bar stools like blood-crazed sharks are in fact living the life of Riley, feeling the sink of cleats into muddy fields, the clank of armor-against-armor, the thrill of the victory dance. We are an imaginative people, look you to our cars and cities, whose craving for experience has been mediated to the great benefit of the producer-species, manufacturers.
Why else sell beer with the use of buxom babes bouncing on beaches, bottles in hand?
But who am I to criticize our national pastime? I shop with relish, trained to it from birth. If not, my mind would lie fallow waiting for immeasurable happiness in the form of a sunny day, stormy night, or love's first kiss.

I am not sad. I am happy. Truly. I imagine I am, therefore, I might be.

[Painting:"Retail Therapy" by Des Brophy http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.desbrophy.com]

The Sorcerer's Game

The Dragon rose from the sea, shedding salt water like pearls from a broken necklace across a ballroom floor. She roared with delight, raising steam in great clouds as she went. Freedom, freedom on the wind, scattered sunlight off waves and rippling muscles loosed from the pressure of the deep. How long had she been hidden there? And where was the Sorcerer now?

The sylvan green coastline in the distance marred by high-rise resorts insulted her senses. Had it been so long? The humans had spread even here on this remote island chain. Their smog and noise assaulted her senses. She cast her awareness abroad, seeking the chartreuse glare of the Sorcerer’s energy field.

Ah, there he was. She banked hard to the northeast, rising high above the heat waves of the spewing volcano, calling a greeting to the great goddess Pele. A burst of crimson lava and plumes of acrid sulphur answered. The dragon laughed at the thought of people, once settled like cats before the fire, running in terror.

The Sorcerer’s field shifted from its resting greens to active cerulean blue: he had seen her and was rising to meet her. But where? She cast about with her extraordinary sense of space across the surface of the planet, seeking his exact location. Suddenly she had him: he was aloft! Fool! The skies were her domain. Now, finally, she would put an end to this.

Beneath her, cetaceans rose for air, and dove again, grey backs like seashells in the undulating waves. Their minds sent messages of fear and anger. The humans were interfering with their birthing grounds, pouring their filth into the seas at an ever increasing rate. She sought for their minds’ images and saw huge underwater ships spewing sound waves, disrupting communication throughout the underwater worlds. Her rage rose in her throat, her tail lashing in fury. How dare they, puny worthless beings on two legs! What had the Gods been thinking when they created these vermin? Well, she would tend to that later. For now, she sent her strength.

Suddenly, a twinge of recognition, a memory of a tin pot full of earth and pungent herbs. He was here! But where? There was no land, no ship to carry him this far to sea. And then it came again. She veered left, and dove, but it was too late. The bolt dug into her flank like spurs, sending a cascade of scales steaming into the water below.

The Sorcerer stepped out from behind the clouds, huge in spirit, though small in form. His feathers shone rainbow in the sunlight. He had taken the form of a phoenix! How had he gained such power?

He struck again, with less intensity, and the blow skittered away, harmless. What game is this, she thought, then banked suddenly coming up underneath him, melting the cloud with her fiery breath. His arms raised, he gestured to the sun as if to say, I’ll meet you there, then vanished into the light.

Her wingbeats carried her after him, following his gleaming trail. She laughed out loud to think of how she would embalm him in flame when she caught him, ending this challenge for once and for all.

At once, she realized her mistake. He had been following her, hidden again behind the clouds! Too late, too late, she banked.

His feet came to land on her back, and he reached forward, grasping the tips of her ears like reins.

“Tag! You’re it,” he laughed into the wind, then vanished.

She shrieked with fury, and careened after him into the sky. "Sorcerers!"

The Blue Dragon

Her favorite was the brilliant blue ceramic dragon from China. It sat on the dresser like a sentinel, overseeing the goings on in her room. It had come from an antique store in old town Auburn in the Sierra foothills and cost about $2.

The minute she saw it, the little girl had begun counting her quarters from her allowance to be sure she had enough. Then she cheerfully approached her mother, tugging at her to come look at this new treasure.

Her mother, distracted by a bright copper pillbox hat with sequined netting, was charmed by her daughter’s excitement. For years, the little girl had ignored the frilly girl-things in the stores, the lightly used ‘tween stars’ uniforms, in favor of these Asian artifacts.
She had once begged for a cloth Geisha doll upon a stand that was ridiculously overpriced at $12. Her mother, feeling horrible, on a budget, denied her. Later out of guilt, she had gone back, bought the doll, and placed it prominently on the dresser.
Now, dusting, the mother gently straightened the Geisha’s kimono and adjusted the parasol to a more demure attitude. An old tin pot, filled with flowers made from feathers, sat near a framed photo of her own mother cradling kittens in front of the fireplace.
From what thrift store, on what spending spree, out of what need, had that strange container been paid for with silver from the jar by the door? Next to it was a beautiful, huge conch shell decorated with a carving of a Victorian lady. An old memory rose as a lump in her throat.
They were in Aberdeen Harbor, Hong Kong. It was raining hard off and on, and between downpours, the air was muggy and hot enough to make you feel faint, moving from air conditioned cars and hotels to the overburdened streets. Arab women in long white robes weighed down with jeweled gold clustered under the protection of huge dark-skinned body guards. It was 1973. Her mother, descended from the black Irish, had taught her to walk through the crowds holding a lit cigarette in front of her to shield her from the crowds.
They were walking along gang planks strung between floating junks, while Chinese vendors screamed and gestured their way through hard barters on board. Very few guilo’s dared enter this strange city, but her mother was ferocious in her intent to collect the rarest of seashells for her collection.
Following closely behind her mother, and feeling the omnipotent presence of their 6’4” bodyguard behind her, the girl, 16, noticed an odd-looking dog floating belly-up in the water alongside the boat.
“You know, they don’t bother to teach their daughters to swim…” her mother said over her shoulder, descending a rickety ladder into the belly of a merchant’s ship. The smell of diesel, salt water, rotting flesh and bitter tobacco made the girl faint with nausea.
When they returned, hours later, to the hotel, she had tried to nap but her parents’ voices, arguing forever about money spent that was not yet earned, forced her from her room and down to the lobby. The bartender was happy to bring the girl her usual: Manhattan rocks.

The mother was startled by her daughter’s voice.
“Mom? Are you crying?”
“No, just cleaning up, honey.” Then she hugged her daughter to her like a life jacket, stood, and suggested, “Want to hit the thrift store? I need a hat for Easter.”
Her daughter shrugged. “Sure, mom, if you want.” She moved the blue dragon slightly left of the Geisha and nodded with approval. “Let’s go.”

The Fly Button

Dear Feedstore Zealots,

I couldn't help myself. Lucy followed me into the shower and wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote her story. Once again, I have met the NPR challenge using the same 4 words (see if you can figure out what they are... duh.), referencing the same general setting, and limiting myself to exactly 600 words. This one is a bit more whimsical, but then Lucy is only 9, after all.... Did I mention today is April Fool's Day?



Lucy reached under the ruffled bedspread and pulled out her sewing kit. Inside was a large ziplock bag full of buttons. Lucy loved buttons. She had been collecting them since she was four. Her favorites were always shiny. Today she was planning on sewing her newest, a golden metallic fly with red rhinestone eyes, onto the blue sweater Poppa had brought home yesterday. Soon they were going to the corner diner for pancakes. Poppa always took her to the diner on Saturday mornings for a plate of giant pancakes and a mug of hot chocolate with whipped cream. She loved the whipped cream. The waitress always piled it high above the rim of the white mug. Lucy would watch it melt down into the brown liquid, not touching it with her spoon, just licking a little off the top as she watched. Poppa read the weekly, grunting over the columns like an angry giraffe. He made her laugh. She didn’t understand why he got so mad at the paper. It was just a stupid newspaper with a lot of stuff about politics and government. She liked the ads at the end, though. The ones with all the pretty girls telling you to call them to chat. Poppa said the ads were inappropriate, but that was just a trick of his. He liked to play tricks like that, using words like ‘inappropriate’ or ‘mature’. Sometimes he tricked her into eating things she didn’t like by using words like ‘organic’ or ‘healthy’. He only let her eat the pancakes and hot chocolate so he could grunt over the newspaper.
The blue sweater was really pretty. Poppa said he found it at the little store near his business, Planting the Seeds of Change. She thought the name was pretty funny because there weren’t any plants at all in his office, except the one plastic palm that stood by the front windows to make people think about plants. He called it ‘marketing’. She thought marketing was what you did when you went get groceries.
She pulled a spool of thread from the kit to match the blue of the sweater and drew it through a slender needle. She bent over her work and carefully attached the fly button above the embroidery. She had really been excited when she first saw the sweater. It was decorated all over with leaves and flowers from different plants, just like an Easter bouquet. She thought immediately of the fly button, thinking it would be a good trick to make it look like it was flying just above the plants. It made her laugh. She couldn’t wait.
Her Poppa didn’t even notice. She had come out of her room and twirled around and thrust her little chest out to show off her work, but he had just grunted, as usual, and headed for the door. Lucy sighed. He was so grumpy lately. On the way to the diner he said almost nothing except to watch for the mud in front of Mrs. Simpton’s lawn. She always watered at night, even when it rained, and sometimes mud flooded the sidewalk. Sometimes Lucy would stop to rescue the worms, but today Poppa was in a hurry.
They slid into their usual booth at the diner. Lucy loved the shiny red upholstery that matched the table tops. She thought it looked like a Mickey Mouse diner. That made her laugh. Poppa looked up from his paper and smiled.
“I like the sweater,” he said. “Nice button.”
Lucy grinned. The fly glittered above the plants. It had been a good trick after all.