The Year in Review 2008 [All I Know is That I Should]

Dear Dad,

I’m writing you from the airplane. It’s a really tiny jet, just one seat in my row and two across the aisle. On the right side (I’m on the left) you can see the sun setting across the whole wide world. There’s one solid line of burnt orange, sandwiched by a dark sheath of cloud and the earth below it. It’s pretty beautiful.

I had lunch with your Mom and Dad today. Grandma’s doing well, actually, better than I’d expected, maybe even better than she was a few years ago. Grandpa just sits in his chair, he doesn’t know what’s going on. We were having dinner yesterday, for Christmas – we still do our celebration on the 24th, but now on the 25th I'm flying instead of going to the movies like we used to do together -- and everyone was watching the babies play with their new toys and Grandpa says “Where am I?” and everyone ignored him. It was real quiet and maybe only I heard him. He says stuff like that all the time.

Anyhow we were watching the babies. Carrie and her husband have a boy, Kyle and his wife have a girl. I guess we always knew they’d be the first ones to do that.

Grandpa’s chair has a button on the arm-rest so he can lift himself up almost all the way into a stand. Sometimes you’ll just be sitting there and you’ll hear this buzzing – that’s the sound the chair makes when he’s pressing the button to go up. That’s how you know Grandpa wants to go somewhere.

Everyone helps him get up and then he gets on his walker and walks to the back of the house, then he gets confused and Grandma goes and takes him back to the chair. She takes care of him all the time. It’s something to do.

Anyhow, it was good to see them and see everyone – Mom, and your sisters and my cousins, and to spend time with Lewis. I guess you know what happened with S., I’m sure your sister told you about it, or maybe she didn’t. All the lies he told and what he took from her; his mother. One of the things I learned this year was that that kind of thing actually happens more than people think. You know – people make up lives and stories they like better than their true lives and stories. Sometimes they do it for love or money but usually they don’t even know why they do it, they just do it. Like how I don’t know why I sometimes get swallowed in darkness, it just happens and there I am with my eyes open but nothing around me seems light.

I wish I’d had the time to know you. Maybe what I mean is I wish you'd had the time to know me. I’m obsessed with you.

++

Last night we were talking about Obama and Aunt B said “You know I’d always wondered about your father, you know, like now with Obama -" and I said that I know you would’ve loved him. (Mom said that too, she called me the day after, she wishes you could’ve seen it happen. You know Aunt B went door to door in the whitest whitest parts of plain flat Ohio for Obama? She did that. And you should’ve heard Grandma talking shit about Palin Dad, you would’ve been so proud of your parents. (Grandma told me a story about when they first met my Mom, the first “Jewish person” they’d ever met, and Grandma made these potatoes wrapped in bacon, and Grandma Goldstein went apeshit? Amazing.)

Then Aunt B said, Oh no honey. I mean I wonder if your father would have been in the cabinet. I laughed like we were talking about spaceships or something. He was on track to be an economic advisor for Clinton’s second term, she said then. I probably laughed again. I mean still as I write this I feel like I’m writing lies too.

Uncle T said: At the funeral, strangers came up to me and said losing Vic is not just a loss to the accounting community and to U of Michigan and to Price Waterhouse but losing Vic is a loss to the world economy.

We talked for a little bit about that; you know, how you never told us anything. Top ten accounting researcher in the world, Lewis saying your study was material in an investments class he took in college. You never told us anything besides that your work was boring and we didn’t want to hear about it.

Maybe telling myself you quit while you were ahead was the only thing that got me through, so I’m going to say that I think they were bullshitting about that too. Everyone seems better in retrospect. I mean it’s over Dad so what can anyone really say?

++

Everyone always talks about how you were a genius. Does that mean I’m a genius too? Sometimes I feel really stupid, Dad.

++

Anyhow so I was going to tell you about 2008. It’s probably weird that I’m putting this on my blog. You get it though, you always knew this is what I’d be doing. When you and Mom started having me dictate my diaries to you before I knew how to write? You told me it mattered enough to write it down. Maybe that’s all I needed, maybe that’s why I guess you get this.

I hope so ‘cause everything I do, I do hoping you’d approve. It’s kinda difficult since you’re dead, I have to do a lot of guesswork.

++

Anyhow so 2008 was crazy. 2007 was crazy too but 2008 was a different kind of crazy. You're a good person to talk to about the years because it's your birthday. December 31st. You were born and then the new year started right away.

++

I’ve spent the last two years in other people’s fantasy worlds. I think that says something about my ability to accept the world as it is. It’s just that as it is; the world is sort of ugly and mundane and miracles don't happen every day. In the subway I look around me and see faces like paper plates. It’s just that I died when I was only 14. Fuck. I’m sorry. I mean that you died when I was only 14.

I’m obsessed with you, I like you so much, I talk to everyone but you. I pretend sometimes I couldn’t care less.

I've learned that I don’t have eternal life, that I haven't been chosen by some higher power to change the world, I'm the one with that choice, and speaking of the opposite of that I learned this year that I’m not truly able to jet to Malibu and drink cocktails and read novels by the pool all the time and over-tip and give everything to everyone who ever needs anything. It was fun though to believe those things. It was a time. We laughed and ran, like you did. Always running, laughing, always in the air going places.

I tell you Dad, I loved it. All the places I got to see. I’ll see anything. I feel like everything is interesting! Crossing that bridge at night in Austin, heat like a desert dressed up as an acoustic embrace.

The moment right before Austin I first saw my secret cyber-savior walk up the stairs to my stupid linoleum Harlem place and even though I was so nervous I was already high enough to not know what to say, and stayed nervous for weeks, and then how this year I nearly lost her like I lost you – I mean it Dad -- and how one day when we have that kind of vocabulary Dad? I’ll understand how much it meant that I didn’t. We didn’t lose her. Anyhow I was talking about flying.

The peace of the bed in Miami, alone when they went into town without me. Hiding from the world beneath those sheets, and the silver to eat with. I said, what do you want. I said, I have access to your happiness. I know someone who knows someone. I said I was a superhero. No one is but like I said anyway I was talking about flying. The thing about flying is all you see. You can see for miles, sandwiched in that hot orange place between earth and sky.

I went to a lot of places, which is funny ‘cause in ’07 I never went anywhere at all, just to Philly, and out to the hospital and out to see her family in the suburbs. ’08 is the first time I’ve traveled for the sake of traveling since you died.

Right after you died, we tried to go on vacation without you but it wasn’t the same so we stopped trying at some point. It wasn't anyone's fault, it's just we were reminded. Grandma mentioned Hawaii, she still remembers the food on the airplane. That's the farthest away your parents have ever been from home, because you took them there.

++

In 2008, I tried to fix the biggest hole that’s ever been dug in my heart since you’ve died and for a lot of reasons, I failed. So I just have to let that hole sit there, un-fixed, and do what I can to tread efficiently and productively on the fissures. I am figuring out how to see it and feel it and say: that's okay, I can go on.

I’ve found some wells of happiness. I sometimes sit at the bottom, splashing and happy as a clam.
I mean it. Eyes like saucers, blue and open to anything, even me.

I had a really brilliant June and July. A solid January full of hope. Some of February. Oh ... some of all of it.

I can’t really say anything more about that part of my life because something else I learned this year is that when I write things down, I make them true – permanent at least – so I try not to do that to things that are still happening. I don’t want to fuck with time and space. I mean that I do – I do want to fuck with time and space. What I learned this year is that I actually cannot do that. All I have is this time, my little space. Insert myspace joke here.

I think I’m more confident now than I was, even if I don't deserve to be. Remember how I kept getting fired? I was the worst. Not all of us were put here to work, Eileen Myles says: “Why can’t I just act that way. why can’t I write everything down like my life counts, like I’m the Queen of England or Bobby Vee, and that way I can be safe and not have to wait to die ... why can’t I live right now. Because I am not rich, I am not a saint. But I do know this: not all of us were sent here to work.”

Actually I think we are all sent here to work, it’s just different kinds of work.

Anyway Dad I was talking about flying and in that burnt orange space I need to tell you that anyway I have this hope that people are gonna come to me when they oughtta. I gotta believe that things are gonna work out somehow and that all choices in retrospect become good ones because they are true and if something is true it must be good. Anyway I was saying honesty is a real bitch.

I want to be more self-reliant because when I hand the wheel over to someone else, I’m not even like a backseat driver. I just recline and stare at the stars and wait to become infinite.

Like you; infinite.

++

I have some really good friends you’d really love, I’ve always been blessed with good friends. When I fall to pieces they’re there. When THEY fall to pieces they’re there. Like angels. They aren’t angels because no one is angels but they are very similar. There are some people I love with a deep, radiating love, a love so strong it transcends logic but not in a crazy way, just in a super-love way. Like the way superheroes love other superheroes after they’ve lost their powers.

I have really amazing readers who do crazy things for me! It’s so awesome, I think you’d be kinda proud of me sometimes.

I’m living with someone I love and I love our apartment and being here with her. I get scared just writing that, I always jinx good things.

"Listen, my truest love.
I've tried to clear a late century place for us
in among the shards.
Lie down, tell me what you need.
Here is where loneliness can live
with failure,
and nothing's complete.
I love how we go on."
(Stephen Dunn, “Loves”)
++

So anyhow. I’m still writing and editing videos. Still scraping by. Still have all kinds of debt I know you’d hate. I think you wrote the book on how to avoid that. I still rely too much on substances to make me feel anything other than this. “Not me” is what all those pills and drinks should be called. I’ll just have a “not me on the rocks.” But Dad I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon, so I’m gonna figure out how to better live with it.

I guess that’s the thing – accepting things as they are. Accepting discomfort and making a life anyhow. I want to start my own magazine online so I’m going to do that, alone I guess, starting real soon I hope, I’m getting ready. Or not, I mean. I was talking anyway about flying. One time we went running together, you and me. One time in Orlando she jumped on the grass, one-two-jump-on-three. Everything was beautiful and perfect. It’s just that I rarely let go. I let go a lot last year and this year. I was dropped too, but first I opened up to like ... I dunno. Joy? Comfort? I just always felt like if first I had the help to jump, I could fix something. Just I want to help the world get better. God, I mean, that’s so pretentious. Who am I, no one. But that’s the thing who cares? I’m no one but if everyone is who is no-one wants to help the world get better than surely we’ll all make a difference like by default.

I think I have some things to say and I’m hoping there are people willing to listen. I know the economy has crashed – which probs made your head explode, how avoidable that whole thing was – but we have a new president who you’d like. Hope and that.

I feel optimistic right now, who knows how I’ll feel in five minutes. I feel sad right now, I wish I could die tomorrow and I hate myself for a selfish wish. I feel so happy, I feel so beautiful, I feel ugly, I feel terrific, I feel whatever the fuck ever, who cares. Enough feeling ... I'm hoping to act on that.

I love how we go on.

Anyhow, I just wanted to let you know what’s been going on. I know you’ve been worried. I keep trying.

You two were so close, your Mom said to me. You two were glued together. You were just two peas in a pod.

++
later:

So, you, it’s Christmas. I’m writing you now from my bed, it’s been several hours since I was on the plane. My friend picked me up from the airport, I had champagne and we talked about how things are better in a lot of ways since last year, and how there’s nothing else to do but go up. Okay, so we didn’t say that about going up exactly but that was what was said. We will. What I mean is we try to predict the future, which is boring 'cause it's never true, so in the meantime we can play infinite. Anyway I was talking about flying.

I made some bad choices this year, you know. But I grew and keep on.

My number one feeling is dancing. My number two feeling is:

I love the past, which doesn't exist
until I summon it, or make it up,
and I love how you believe
and certify me by your belief,
whoever you are, a fiction too,
held together by what? Personality?
Voice? I love abstractions. I love
to give them a nouny place to live,
a firm seat in the balcony
of ideas, where music plays.
(Stephen Dunn, Loves)
++

I just want to live like music.

I'm still trying to reach you.


As Ever,
All my Love,
Ree

The Ghosts of Christmas Past

I was writing this blog about Christmas Specials, and how I'd like my life to be like one. But now instead I'm sitting here in my Mom's office/my temporary sleeping quarters comparing my fingerprints to my baby fingerprints, photo-boothing and subsequently photo-shopping/poem-ing important documents, making tea and eating Hanukkah cookies like cookie monster.

I arrived at JFK Airport on Saturday afternoon at 3 P.M. for the 4:10 flight they swore was not delayed. Then they started delaying it. Then they delayed it more. And more ... and more ... I reached this room, my final destination, at about 6AM on Sunday morning. You can imagine how excited I was about this, and furthermore, my Mom let me sleep today unitl 5 P.M. It's like I have jet lag. Also it's embarrassing to say I slept 'til 5 P.M. Like I guess the day is over now, I missed it.

This is what happens to me in a house late at night when there's not a drop to drink and my system has lost track of the hours. I look for things I shouldn't look for and try to find things I shouldn't see. I wanted to find my birth certificate since I need to get a new passport, and my copy's gone, but I couldn't find it. But I did find my father's death certificate. An old passport where my brother looks confused & innocent and my mother looks young and ready for Europe. I don't know where she was actually going, I'm just telling you what she looked ready for.

A letter my grandmother wrote to her son. Handwritten four pages and it could break your heart I swear it.I don't know if she wrote it before or after he died, I really can't tell what the occasion was: Once I lay in labor clutching friendly hands, and breathing deeply and yearning for the end; when the fog lifted, a small form lay in my arms and it was my day. A hundred nights I went to your cradle and touched your warm body. You stood in your crib and reached for a sunbeam.

Anyhow it's this stuff that always makes it hard to be here. Not here -- it's not hard to be here here, in Michigan. I know how to be here and be aware of that stuff at the same time. This is where our lives went on, after all, this is where we continued, afterwards, to live. Ohio is still the place we are connected to through him, and we haven't had enough time practicing how to go on when other things keep happening , too, but i guess that's how time works. Time and families.

But Ohio is where we go from here for Christmas, to see my father's family. It was weird at first to go without my mother, then it was weird to go without my father, then it was weird to go without my father's girlfriend because then we were going just me and lewis, two angry annoying orphans fighting about music in a car not suited for the winter weather.

Because Crystal thought Ohio was actually IN Michigan, let me explain before I venture even further into my holiday stories -- I'm from the state of Michigan, this is where I grew up and it's where my Moms live. My Dad's family is the Quaker side, he's from Ohio a different state, located below Michigan. My Dad didn't ever live there as an adult, he lived in Michigan with us. Lately the routine's been that I go to Michigan from NYC to see my Moms, and then my brother and I drive to Ohio, and then I go back to NYC.

When we were kids, we'd all go down to Ohio together as a four-person family and it was a big deal. I couldn't hardly wait! It's not like that anymore. A lot of things are different now obvs and though the holiday season is allegedly about joy & family & togetherness & consumerism, after this weekend's snowpocalypse and my personal Delta Airlnes trauma I've re-determined that it's actually about Family-Focussed Masochism. Why do we insist upon gathering during this specific December week rather than, say, during a nice temperate week in September or May? 'Cause of Jesus? Obvs I think Jesus was awesome and etc but I feel like if he was still alive, he'd probs be in Zimbabwe feeding the hungry, or in Boca with Mary-Mag eating KFC. Next year in Jerusalem kthx.

Anyhow, though I generally avoid excessive nostalgia for youth & childhood -- though I'm actually petrified of it -- it's infected me every Christmas since '95, in different ways. People age and get sick, people have secrets, people have messed up, people don't show up, and all the trying is hard. Flying is hard, trying is hard. I get sort of tense and moody and closed-off and there's lots of slush and we don't go sledding anymore and I snap at people and wish I could go to the gym and I miss New York. What I'm saying is that it's my fault, but it's hard to figure out how to actively contribute to the positive energy of a situation while simultaneously refusing to reveal your actual self to anyone in the room.

I do love these people. I love them, wholly and completely, and they are my family, and they are the only ones who have been around all this time, though less often now. I love them absolutely and love to see them. But the weight of the holiday and the travel arrangements we must make to make it happen and the money that's to be spent when everyone is short ... I just wish we could have a picnic in June and go boat riding and call it a day, a good family gathering. We do well at weddings. Someone needs to get married again. I vote "not it."

I totes yearn for a time, that long-ago time, when making puffy-painted sweatshirts as gifts, playing an insipid game for bad chocolate with a wooden spin-top, eating lots of potato products, making paper dolls with my cousins and relishing my father's attention during the two weeks he was actually off work and not on a business trip was the cat's meow. And I don't even like cats. So you know I'm serious if I'm bringing up kittens in a positive context.

I have a new idea I'm going to instate next year to bring the spirit of Christmas back into our lives but adult-like. Doing things the same way we used to do them but as adults can be slightly humiliating, like wearing pants that don't fit anymore. I guess the number one "new adult way to celebrate' is "drinking excessively and discussing the calorie content of pumpkin pie." Hm. I like giving gifts though.

Anyhow enough of my rambling. Tomorrow I'll do a proper Sunday Top Ten, all about Christmas Specials. What are your favorites? Let me know!

What I'm digging right now:
The West Wing: In Excelsis Dio, Christmas with Jed Bartlet, Christmas Cards
Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special
My So Called Life Episode 15 - Angels
The Office: Secret Santa Christmas Special , Jim Wraps Dwights Desk in Gift-Wrap
Arrested Development's Afternoon Delight
Charlie Brown Christmas and
of course our favorite A Very Brady Christmas

I want to listen to Ave Maria again and lie down on the couch. It's cold here so I need a lot of layers, I sleep like a marshmallow man. I'm safe underneath all the layers and portable too, and when I close my eyes I can be anywhere.

Sunday Top 10: On Camp

This week's This American Life podcast, 1998's Notes on Camp, "tr[ies] to understand what is the cult-like, mystical connection some people feel with their summer camps." I could cop themes from TAL every week, but I somehow resist that temptation. There's a lot of thematic Top Ten temptations I resist every week, like a cokehead staring down a pure white line of heaven dancing across their desktop: Most Annoying Things Ever, Reasons I'm Too Busy To Call You Back, Things No One Should Ever Wear EVER, Best Blog Entries I've Already Written, Annoying People/Things at the Gym, etc.

But um I could not resist this particular temptation. It's summer! Snort up, kiddos!

If you've given birth to children and they are grown-ups now, perhaps you're sending them to summer camp. Perhaps you yourself went to camp, or perhaps you're a camp counselor, or perhaps you went to Fat Camp, like on the TV show "Fat Camp."

The New York Times Magazine featured ads for the real ritzy Summer Camps, like Camp LaJolla (fat camp) and my fantasy favorite Stagedoor Manor, which looked like a hotel for future Gaby Hoffmans and whomever played Little Orphan Annie.

Perhaps you think camp is for spoiled rich kids and the easily-placated middle class suburban brats. Perhaps it is. I remain undecided.

I attended Jewish Day Camp every summer til I turned 11. I hated it a lot. Then I overnight-camp-hopped for several years, 'cause I'm fast like that. Sometimes, I wished I was fat, so I coulda accomplished something concrete by going to camp.

So, TAL: Ira Glass shared some listener stories, including a Wisconsin woman recounting her Young Zionist Camp experience. I suspected immediately her camp belonged to the Habonim-Dror group, which owned the Zionist camp I attended in Michigan. There can't be that many Zionist camps in the U.S, 'cause there's not a huge market, I imagine, for kids who want to feed animals, paint houses, celebrate Shabbat, learn "Ivrit" and sleep in tents while their rich Jewish friends are chillin' in the Catskills in air conditioned cabins learning digital video editing and trapeze. But anyhow, here's the end of her story:

"....A bunch of us were sitting in the dining hall, and somebody said look out on the lawn! ... there was this large cross burning out on the lawn of the campgrounds, these people came in wearing white sheets and white things over their heads like pillowcases and they made us all go outside. And there was another guy in a white sheet and a white pillowcase riding up and down on a horse and they started to yell at us that they wanted the Jews out of Wisconsin and they didn't want any Jew-camps in Wisconsin, and they kept yelling at us, Don't bother trying to call the authorities 'cause in this neck of the woods we are the authorities, and everyone was just petrified and we all stood around just shakin' in our boots, and all of a sudden one of the counselors said, "I'm an American citizen and you can't treat me like this!" so two of the guys in sheets grabbed him by the arms and marched him away, and another counselor said the same thing ... and pretty soon all the counselors were being marched away and we were left there ... I went "I'm an American Citizen too!' and someone came over in a white sheet and took me down towards the beach and as he was waking me down to the beach and said to me "Edina, couldn't you have kept your big mouth shut?" And It was all a political lesson that we were supposed to be learning."

Then I knew: hands down totes for-sure the same camp I went to, per the re-enacting the fleeing-Germany-before-the-Holocaust story I shared in a previous blog.

Zionists don't mess around.

SUNDAY TOP TEN:
WHAT I LEARNED AT SUMMER CAMP

10.How to do Shakespeare ...
in fifteen minutes ...
on a cart.
You know, like for retarded people w/o taste. JK, I love retarded people, especially if you are retarded and reading this blog. I mean that proverbially. [Is that the right word? Proverbially? I'm retarded.]

Me @ Blue Lake. Yes, that's a chapstick necklace.

Someone's brilliant idea for the summer theater program's "big show" was performing 15-minute audience-participatory "adaptations" of Hamlet and Taming of the Shrew on 12x12 rolling carts, like minstrels at a really annoying fair or amusement park. As Ophelia, I delivered three stunning lines and as Rosencrantz, Gildenstern and I forewent lines in favor of a [we thought] very clever song, to the tune of "It's the Hard-Knock Life" from Annie: It's the hard-knock life for us, it's the hard knock life for us, Pertrucio used to be real nice, 'til he got this Shrewish wife, it's the hard knock life! Now he's bossing us around, kicking [I forget] on the ground, it's a hard knock life!

I can still hear it in my head.

++
9. Camp A----us, 1992
Before you go anywhere overnight and voluntarily sacrifice your rights/privileges to their authority,
get a personal reference. Or something.
Don't just go because it looked OK in the pamphlet.
Even overprotective mothers miss some things.

We're happy in this photo, 'cause we're about to go home.
We woulda gone home sooner, but they wouldn't let us call our parents.

The summer after 6th grade, my BFF Janelle and I, finally permitted by our mothers to attend overnight camp, found the only camp offering week-long sessions and signed up. It was, allegedly, Michigan's oldest bestest all-girls camp, but, upon arrival, things were not quite as advertised.

All that "camp" stuff? Making friends, forming teams, attending structured activities, kindness, etc.? The promised attempts to forge real or imaginary bonds between campers? Nada. It was like showing up at college mid-semester, sans orientation, and told to fend for yourself. Which's fine, but not when you're 11.

Also, speaking of "nada," we realized quickly that 75% of the campers were Mexican girls who stayed all summer, every summer, simply to be somewhere other than Mexico. Nothing against Mexicans, obvs/obvs!, but I mean ... weird, right? Camp A----- shoulda incorporated it into their advertising, like "Diverse Group of Campers!" or "Spanish-Language training!" or "Camp A---us: Better than Mexico City!"

Anyhow, they wouldn't let us call home, and my BFF's younger sister got sick mid-week and her counselor didn't believe her [she had appendicitis]. It got pretty bad. Like a sicko reality TV show. Rained a lot. I made friends and learned dirty sexy Mexican songs to sing to myself in the shower. JK . Not in the shower: I was afraid of it (group shower) and, literally, didn't shower all week. That's disgusting. Seriously, how the F did I get away with that?

The talent show featured almost exclusively cross-dressing kitchen staff lip syncing Englebert Humperdink and stripping. So weird.

Also, they served mystery meat, fo' rizzle, which I'd read about in Ramona Quimby. Obvs, I got sick.

++
8. Not Knowing How to Swim Indicates Deep, Unnerving, Ridicule-worthy Pathos

Swimming is the centerpiece of American camping. Apparently, most children not only enjoy a dip in the lake/pool, but look forward to it. Not only can these mini Summer Sanderses lap swim without drowning, many can perform complicated "dives" and "flips." Personally, I preferred my bathing suit for one location and one location only: the group showers.

[At 18, I took swimming lessons @ Sarah Lawrence. Can swim now. Heart my Speedo, totally no longer afraid of beaches or pools. Well: I am. But for different reasons now, like that there're lots of people there, in little-to-no clothing, enjoying activities that boggle me, like "drinking beer and eating potato chips in the daytime," "tanning," "grillin'"and "apparently absolutely nothing."]

But, camp: all afternoon, our little eyes'd sting from the chlorine, and our skin transformed from puckered to throbby white, then back to pita. At Zionist camp, the bottom of the pool was rough, like sandpaper. That's training for the Israeli army, I think.

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7. Letter-Writing Skills

When mining my storage space in Michigan for memoir-gold, I came upon boxes and boxes of letters, many exchanged w/friends during respective weeks of summer camp. I realized how bizarre it'd be, now, to have no idea what was happening with my friends until I received written notice in the postal mail. Obvs, when I've got no clue what my friends're up to now, it's cause I've failed to call/email/etc., and we're a bit more predictable now. Back then, someone could come back from camp a totally different person and we might not be prepared for such things. I love letters: writing things you're hoping'll stay true for a few days, words you can't ever redact and which you'll not get a response to for a week or more. Like Permanent "Out of Office Reply."

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6. Fleeing Germans for the Land of Milk and Honey is Very "Exhausting."

From my Diary, August 1st, 1994: "They woke us up at 5:15 A.M. to 'Escape Germany and found the state of Israel!' and we didn't get to be allowed to go back to sleep until 9:30. I was exhausted all day."

That "get to be allowed to" is ruining my life, but I can't edit my own pre-adolescent diary entry. So I'll just let it be, like y'all let my stylistic errors be, all the time.

++
5. The "Camp Relationship" Mentality

I never had a Camp Boyfriend.
This photo is of one of many reasons why.

At camp, relationships occur in light-speed. Not that I actually had one, but most of my friends did. It was perfectly acceptable to return from a three-week session w/steamy stories of a super-serious boyfriend/girlfriend you'd acquired on Cedar Lake. The intensity and round-the-clock time together afforded by summer camp provided for this relationship-on-light speed effect, and I still use "Camp Relationship" proverbially -- like how the [redacted] magazine article I was writing during the infancy of TB and I's relationship pushed it all into overdrive. I was like, "It's like we're Camp Girlfriends!" and she was like, "What?" This happens a lot with us, e.g., when I quote anything published after 1939, including teleplays. Or when she quotes anything published before 1925.

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4. I am "a carpenter's dream: flat as a board and never been nailed."

This information was bestowed upon me and my Day Camp BFF Alex by a boy I'll call "Douchebag." Douchebag was fat and mean, but apparently'd received a beejer, which gave him self-bestowed Status to label the ripe young maidens of the lower grades. He got grosser and even less dateable in high school [being Day Camp, all kids were locals]. Alex, however, became smokin' hot, but in that effortless super-sweet faux-hippie FACT-beautiful kind of way. I realize in retrospect I probs had a crush on her, but also: so did everybody, I mean, her girl-clique called themselves "The Rainbow Girls." [Hidden message?] She has no memory of this incident, because she's not crazy. Anyhow, what Douchebag's clever line truly meant was: "You'll both have very perky **** later, and 'nailed' implies a violence uncomely to sexual descriptions."

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3. Liberal Politics=Liberal Policies


Hippie Day at Hippie Camp.

Every camp I attended and all I'd heard of were strict about keeping the boys away from the girls, lest we all get preggers or acquire SARS. Obvs Zionist camp was an exception to this rule, because we were one big family, like a Kibbutz. Boys and girls tents co-existed side by side, and the boys'd often drop their towels on purpose en route to shower, and my Best Friend the Weirdo'd perform ten-minute orgasms after "bed time" 'til all the campers yelled and his counselor threatened to kill him with various sharp objects. We could have boys in our bed, sleepovers, whatevs, though usually Naomi slept in my bed. She had memorable breasts for a 13-year-old. Hmm. Nothing happened. It was just a small bed.

++
2. How to do Something, Right? How to Make Lanyards? Swim?

I must've learned some kind of concrete skill. I learned some Hebrew. I made a Dream Catcher once, at Camp Michigania, according to my diary. Michigania's family camp. I went with someone else's family, and they turned out to be even crazier than mine. Diary: Helen's having a hissy fit at Arts & Crafts 'cause the string on her dream catcher is too thick and she can't fit any beads on it. Her Mom got POed at me for the precious 30 minutes I was holding Helen's things hostage, she had my hat, and I ran out of things, and I was in the bathroom so I told her I was holding her Oxy and Deodorant [sic] hostage. Helen's Mom thought it was rude. The game ended.

Psychos.

++
1. I Am Not Good at Camp

TAL discussed one of the primary strategies of summer camp as a "business": by creating teams, traditions, and complicated systems of rank/seniority/legacies, camps ensure return "customers," a.k.a. campers. I knew that my yearly alienation, as I trekked each summer to a new camp, would never change if I never went anywhere more than once. Day Camp doesn't count, 'cause I was forced to go there.

'Cause as it was, I didn't dig camp so much, though my blind optimism that each year'd bring the boyfriends and memories my friends regaled from their adventures was inspiring. I got homesick fast, then, 'cause I missed my Dad and Kentucky Fried Chicken, which's why I avoided the longer camps, like Interlochen, where I ended up eventually shipping off for year-round school. I wanted the cliquey camaraderie the other girls had, the easy-breezy-beautiful songs and chants and requisite tearful goodbyes. Instead, I mostly just waited for it to be over, like making it to the end was something I needed to prove to myself.

At Blue Lake, the last camp I ever attended, the final night was marked by a four-hour concert dreaded all summer long--a chance to make paper cranes out of programs/enjoy orchestral music--and so my heart skipped all it's beats when, on the night of "The Blue Meanine" or whatevs it was called, on my way to the cafeteria in late summer rain, I spotted my father and brother underneath the awning. Dad was wearing a Bulls hat, I remember ... I actually thought I was hallucinating, which was possible, 'cause I spent more than one day in the infirmary crying about my homesickness at that place, and they kept feeding me Pepto ...

Dad: "Oh! Marie! What a surprise to see you here! We were just passing through ..."

Lewis: [giggle giggle] "Hi Marieeeee!"

Me: [melting, OMG!] "Can you take me off-campus? Now? Before the concert?"

Dad: "Well, we certainly didn't come out here to watch a bunch of amateurs toot their own horns for four hours."

The kids, finally, envied me. I still remember eating the Patty Melt [I don't know if this's a universally consumed heart-attack-on-a-plate or not; it's onions, a hamburger, melted cheese on toast] at Big Boys in Twin Lake. Just like heaven...

I suppose returning to any camp for another year woulda been like that "not joining any clubs that'd have me as a member" thing. Implicit in return was the acknowledgement I'd liked it the first time around, that I had particular expectations and that these expectations were resolutely optimistic, validating that last summer, I musta fit in and made friends.

Funny, then, that I eventually chose year-round "camp" for my last two years of high school [a.k.a. boarding school], though not until many of the causes of my perpetual homesickness were no longer relevant. Like, I think Kentucky Fried Chicken is really gross now.

You're Working on Building a Mystery: The Week "Weird/Of Course" Was Born

So, I'm usually not into things like nature and the solar system, unless it involves making out under the stars, or something. Just kidding. I'm one of those people who would start laughing and ruin the moment. ["Marie, you really have a way of ruining a moment." --Matty, during a beautiful moment that I ruined.], but something is in the fucking stars, people.

You come out at night, that's when the energy comes

Um, but first of all? This's Lo's photo of the sculpture of Britney Spears giving birth, and that's Adam's thumb up Brit's ass. I think this's why I live in Williamsburg, to get a phone call from around the corner: "You've gotta come check this out!"

*
SUPERNOVA LIGHT MY WAY HOME, OR,
THE IDES OF APRIL:

She told him later: Don't call me and ask me to look out the window. That's a little freaky, you know.

But it was the full moon. That does weird things to everyone.

This is It's a Small World, multiplied by Google Plex, complimented by a bit of Crazy.

But I don't have a hold on what is real

I've never googled Ryan before. I'm fairly certain that the skin of his palms composes a significant portion of the surface area preventing my heart from bursting into air, so the idea that he existed in "cyberspace" never really seemed proper. But, at 3 A.M. on Friday, following several hours of google searching for things I actually needed, I was somehow compelled to google him and, surprisingly, found a photo, and then, even odder: five hours later, he emails me.

You strip away the ugliness that surrounds me ...

And then, John, a high school boyf.....


[Who I thought of often recently because I have a new friend Haviland who also acts and also lived in Atlanta and also did theater there......

who, coincidentally, was NYU and post-NYU roommates with another Interlochen grad,
and grew up in the same area as this girl Lucy, who also attended Interlochen,
and last year I ran into Lucy twice within 24 hours ... never before, never again ... which was weird in and of itself, especially since one of those times I was in Sarabeth's, and Natalie and I were hungover and in baseball caps and she was engaged and groomed and wearing pastels.....]

... calls later this same night, after not calling for 6 months.

memory seeps from my veins
let me be empty and weightless and maybe I'll find some peace tonight

Another friend from Atlanta who I haven't spoken to in probably a year IMs me out of the blue while I'm talking to Haviland on IM.

On the subway, Lo and I end up sitting right behind the ass of the most appreciated and worshiped girl at my high school. Kim. She was a senior when we were juniors. We all would've gone gay for her, and some of us did. She often returned the favor.

She was brilliant; writer, artist, singer/songwriter/thing.
I couldn't move really.

and you were so beautiful, with an edge and a charm ...

The day before this, I saw Callie dash into the train, going in the opposite direction--
I see her sit down with her Bluestockings bag.
and the train rolls away before she sees me.

When all we wanted was the dream
to have and to hold that precious little thing

*
Two days ago, Lo did a tap-dance for me to a Sarah McLachlan song, "Witness," and we talked afterwards about how I never really realized that McLachlan intentionally used religious imagery [I remember now though that Ryan and I had discussed it once, on Easter, which I've only really celebrated once, with Ryan.]

Then on AIM today Haviland mentions SarahMcL and how much she likes her, as do I,
after I've spent the whole post-dance day getting back into SaMcL,
and then the iTunes radio station I listen to (which's classic rock mostly),
suddenly busts out into a SaMcL SONG,
after playing two straight hours of nothing but man-anchored classic rock.

Will the change come while we're waiting
or are we still waiting ...
*

Speaking of songs, and of Lo, she started singing this song that we [my father, Lewis and I] used to sing at basketball games, but that my Dad used to sing all the time around the house: "Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey Goodbye," [I don't know where it's from or anything, it is what it is], while I'm on the phone...

with my mother.....

who I only talk to like, once a week at most, so it's not that common,
and Lo has no clue how the song came into her head or why she started singing it.

I told my Mom it was a ghost and she made fun of me and then said: Do you think he is with you?

Yeah, I said. I think he might be here.

i miss the little things
i miss everything
about you
*

But wait. It gets better.

Last night, Haviland and I are walking back from her friend's place in the East Village. I see assorted junk on the ground and I comment: "Haviland, you've gotta stop leaving all your stuff on the street ..." but then we approach the pile and we see ...

A DIONNE WARWICK ALBUM!

"A Night So Long." It's just sitting there on the street. On the street corner. Dionne Warwick, in a fur coat, beckoning us with a night so so soooo long. Really, really, really. In quite mint condition, too.

Yeah, really.

Seriously, like, what?!!

This is especially funny because we'd talked about her in one of our first conversations ever. At which point, I died laughing. LMLO. [laughed my life off]

I believe this is heaven for no one else but me ...