keywords (notes for the future)

torture as inverted mirror
de-bodiment
culture's viscera
intensive capital
the legal person
the future of endless war
persons who do not count as persons
Common Article 3
confiscation of humanity
body warehouse
necropolitics
"jail face"
homoerotic violence
bare life
the decline of the rehabilitative ideal
an excess of law
black sites
Son of Sam laws
the cultural barrier of clothes
grave violations
the captor's desire
architecture of reflection
the exponential freedom to isolate
undead life
military commisions act
the language of permissible treatment
new global gulag
imperial history of incarceration
temporal punishment and war without end
Arizona -- Iraq -- Haiti
secrecy as essence of prisons
de-citizenization
new war prisons
probable felons and the expectation of criminality
WHISC/SOA
life-long detention
the negation of negation
cultural phenomenology and affective engagement

flavor molecules

I just got back from the Reading Terminal Market in Philly, where I was ecstatic to find a fresh juice bar that had a carrot, celery, and beet-combo, as well as some good, cheap hummous, tabouli, and baba ghanoush.

I'm currently in town for the Big Academic Conference that many, many scholars dread because it means 1) being on the job market and having to block out the thousands of neurotic grad students all whipsering to themselves in the corners of hotel lobbies who are rehearsing their interview scripts while, simultaneously, doing it yourself; or, 2) being the person on the other end, watching the endless stream of stressed out job-seekers try to ease their way through what we all know is a very difficult and highly charged 30-minute interview; or, 3 [and the best reason to be here]) to participate in or attend one of the many, many organized panels on cutting-edge work in literary and cultural studies, and to catch up with old friends. That's why I'm here (although I have been made aware of rumors circulating that contradict this truth).

I rode in a car with my folks up from Delran up to my older sister's child-filled house in the big woods in northern NJ for Christmas day, and then took off to NYC where my younger sister lives with her husband in a tiny, little apt. in the West village. It was a busy, two-day period of family overload and couch-surfing, and when Kathy put me on a bus to Philly late this morning, I was grateful to be alone, with my thoughts.

I've arrived ahead of my friend, Gretchen, who will also here for the third reason listed above. She's not in, yet, so I made the executive decision to purchase the $10/day wireless connection in the hotel room.

Where we are staying is, uncannily, *right next door* to the Big Pharma building where my mother worked in a variety of non-pharma-related positions for her entire adult life. During the summers of my junior and senior years of college, I scored a paid internship with a trade publisher at 401 North Broad St., and shared a ride with her. The internship, though, was so tedious that I had to invent ways to keep myself awake and entertained, including the time I called the Clearly Canadian beverage company on the 1-800 number that is listed on the side of the bottle -- the one that the bottles ask you to call if you have Questions? Comments? -- and asked them to account for how a pear-flavored soda in a glass bottle was in any way "all-natural." The answer, and I will never forget this, was that the company "extracted the flavor molecules" from the fruit, and that was why it was natural. O, right -- the flavor molecules . . . On the last day after two summers of paid work, during my exit-interview, the editor-in-charge told me that she was happy to hear I was going to graduate school since I clearly did not belong in the 9-to-5 world.

I'm getting side-tracked, though. I'll see what emerges during the conference and figure out a way to post it in an anonymous way.

statue (climb the tree)

Quickly -- as if no one from my family will be able to see, just by looking at recent history, that I have a blog and write about, well, all sorts of things -- I want to write that I am in Delran and, soon, will meet a couple of my oldest friends. Stephen and Michael (and, I hope, maybe, Tommy) will be up at the Whistler's Inn in Cinnaminson, a local bar on the Rte 130 South, not too far from here. There are rumors that Renee will be there, but I have a feeling she might not be coming.

I met Stephen in Mrs. Klopstein's kindergarten class. A girl named Laura Eberhart and I used to play a game called "statue", in which we would talk about the statue in our kindergarten class and whether or not we thought we saw him move. Stephen, as the statue, would stand or sit perfectly still, not too far from us (hands up, thrust to the side, tongue sticking out, or whatever other kind of contortion he was inspired to express), and then move, just a very little bit, and Laura and I would grab on to each other and laugh and laugh. I don't know what happened to Laura. She was my first girlfriend, and gave me a big rock painted yellow, red, and green wrapped in tissue paper for Valentine's Day that year. I've known Stephen ever since then.

I met Michael when we were both put on the Delran little league, t-ball team. Michael warmed the bench with me while everyone else played the field. He had a pizza sauce stain on his baseball hat and a big smile. It was comforting to know someone nice was on the bench with me. I didn't see him again until we re-met in high school, as nacent punk rock kids who listened to the Dead Milkmen, the Meat Men, Misfits, Circle Jerks, Social Distortion. I once spent a couple of weeks of high school at his house, sleeping on his floor. I had a bad sinus infection, I remember. His dad got me to put on those climbing boots that have spikes in the sides to climb the tree in their back yard that they were cutting down. It was one of those things where I really didn't want to do it, I was scared, but Mike's dad kind of was like, "You'll do this, and then we'll all have done it, and we'll have a bond," and so I put a belt on around my waist, stuck on the boots, and climbed up the tree. It was great.

Can't wait to seem them both.

smile (caught in the machinations of the state)

Last spring, April to be exact, I headed out to the TxDPS on South Gessner to get a new driver's license. My license had expired and, for complex reasons, I could not renew my license on-line, like most people do. I knew that the line at South Gessner would be very, very long, so I packed a stack of student essays and a thermos of coffee, and drove out bright and early, just as the building was opening. I waited in the line to get to the front desk, filled out paper work, sat and graded until my number was called, waited in another line to get my thumbprints and photo taken, was issued my temporary license, and was told my new license would be arriving within four to six weeks. In all, it took about 3 1/2 to 4 hours. But I left relieved, thinking that I would never have to return to the building again.

But I was wrong. Four to six weeks passed, and my license never came. Then my temporary license expired. I was suddenly a driver with no state-issued license to account for my identity. Naturally, I got in my car, and drove, without a license, back to South Gessner. I stood in line for about two hours with everyone else and, when I got up to the counter, I told the woman working that I never received my license. She looked up my case, raised her eyebrows, and disappeared. When she came back, we had this little exchange:

"Did the electricity go out the day you were here?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"No. I mean, it didn't go out while I was in the building . . ."
"Okay -- the day you were here, the electricity went out and our computers went down. That means that your license was never processed. Here -- let me give you another temporary license and you'll get your license in four to six weeks."
"O, well, okay . . ."

I took the temporary license and went home. Four to six weeks passed and I received nothing in the mail. I drove back to the DPS again, this time a little angry.

I stood in line and imagined the speech I was to deliver to the new woman working there: "Look," I would say, "this is my third time here. I have waited, been patient, and waited again. If I don't receive my license today," I would say, thumping on the counter for emphasis, "there are going to be hundreds of activists clamoring for a better-run, full-service, clean TxDPS outside in no time, and the media will be all over it!" This, in my imagination, would guarantee that I would leave that day with my license in hand. When I got to the counter, though, my ferocity dissolved. I felt alone and grew nervous, instead. I simply told the worker that I still hadn't received my license and, um, could she maybe help me get it?

She looked up my file and, without saying a word to me, went over and spoke to a police officer while pointing over at me. The cop nodded and came over and sat down where the worker had been, which made me very anxious. The cop looked at the computer screen (which I couldn't see) and asked me if I had recently moved. I said no. She then told me that Austin had tried to deliver my license and that it was returned by the post office. I said, "None of my other mail has been returned," which is actually a lie, because Hank and I have had several problems with the postal system since we've moved in, but that's a totally different story.

So now I'm lying to the cop, and I also realize that she thinks I am only *pretending* to not have had my license delivered, that I must be involved in a racket in which I get multiple licenses sent to my address and -- I don't know, what? sell them to underaged drinkers? The cop looks at me in the eye and, coldly, tells me I need to go have a conversation with my post office about why they are returning my mail. She starts to get up to leave.

Defeated, I almost turned around and left but, in a moment of desperation, I asked, "So, there's *nothing* I can do, here, now, after waiting all this time, to get a new license?" And she replies, "If you have ten dollars, you can apply for a re-issue for a lost license."

Why didn't she say this to begin with?

"Okay," I said, "great -- here's ten bucks," and I shoved a crumpled ten dollar bill that smelled like the floor of Lola's at her and she gave me paperwork to fill out to get a new license. I then waited, further, for my number to be called to get my photo taken.

And this is where it gets weird. When I got up to the counter to get the photo taken, the woman working (note: no men work at this DPS, that I can tell) pulled up my file, and her face turned a dark shade of red. She started wringing her hands and hissing, "God!! This isn't a re-issue! God! I hate it when people don't do their freakin' job!! Jee-zuss!!" and she disappeared. When she came back, she had more paperwork, and explained to me that this was called a "Dropped Case," and that, rather than re-issue the license, Austin had to process the license by hand, and that it was sitting in a file somewhere, along with a bunch of others that needed tending to. Um, okay . . . I signed a form and asked, "How can I be guaranteed that this will be processed? I've been coming here since April, and no one seems to know what's going on." She told me that she would personally call Austin that day and have the license produced and, in a couple of weeks, I should call her directly and ask if the work went through. She wrote down her name and number. I thanked her and left, a bit mad, but relieved that this was going to finally happen.

But, of course, it doesn't. I think this is what Marxists like to call getting caught in the machinations of the state.

Early September, I dutifully call the DPS and ask for this woman. The reply was very curt: "She don't work here no more." When I tried to explain why I was calling, I was interrupted and asked for my license number. I gave it to the woman, and she looked up my file. "There's no record of your license being sent. You have to come in and have it re-issued." As soon as I started to say, "O no, hold on, you see, I've been coming in since April? and I've been getting the run-around? and I've already been 'in' and it doesn't seem to do any good," I realized it was already too late and there was pretty much nothing at all I could do except, once more, to drive down to South Gessner and wait in line.

So, now it is the fourth time I drive down there, on to 59, South Gessner exit, past the little strip malls, the low-income housing, the school, and into the parking lot. Once again, it is an early Friday morning and I have my coffee and a copy of everything dating back to April. Once again, I stand in line for two hours, like everybody else, waiting just to get to the Information Desk. I get up to the front and explain everything all over again. Once more I am told it is a dropped case. When I ask what happened to the woman who "helped" me last time (who had given me her name and number), I was told she freaked out and quit the week I was there and left all her work undone. I was issued another temporary license and go home, fuming.

One afternoon, a couple of weeks later, I get an envelope in the mail from Austin.

It is from DPS! O, happy day!

Unfortunately, it was just a letter on baby blue paper, telling me that there was a computer error and that the processing of my license malfunctioned and, as a result, I needed to bring the letter with me back to my nearest DPS to get another one re-issued.

Great!

I chose the South Gessner office because, honestly, I was beginning to feel right at home with the grey walls, the dirty floors, the stains on the ceilings, the smell of the bathrooms that comes out into the waiting area, the screaming of children as they run past. I enjoyed the socio-economic puzzle that I pieced together about why everyone else in line was, always, a person of color and I was, each time, the only white person, and why, when white people did come in and see the line, they always, always, always, exclaimed, loudly enough for the entire line to hear: "WHAT?! O, please -- I don't have time for this," and left. I wanted to turn around and say, "Hey, listen, I've been coming since April, the line is *always* this big, the waiting room is always that crowded, and there is no "good" time to come to the DPS building. Jerks!" I felt like an expert. Well-seasoned.

So, this time, the fifth time, I get up to the counter in about an hour and a half, and show my Austin-issued letter. The woman pulls up the case. She frowns and says, "You've been waiting for this since April?" I say yes. She has me fill out the familiar re-issue forms. I sign in all the right places. I say, "You know, since this isn't really an error that *I* have made, maybe it would be okay if I don't have to wait in the waiting room?" And she is nice. And she says, "Of course," and writes "Walk Up" on the top of my form and tells me to go ahead on into the line to get the picture taken. This takes a blessedly short five minutes. But, the woman who is supposed to take my photograph is terrible. She raises her voice at me and tells me if I do not have the appropriate receipt I will have to go home and come back again. Feeling infantilized, and slightly criminalized, and trying not to cry, I pull out all of my papers that I brought with me and simply give her the stack. She fills out a form that says I do not have to pay and shoves overthing back at me. She turns to her computer and flatly commands, "Smile."

And, apparantly, I did. The license came in the mail today -- finally.

The smile is not a very happy one. I look sort of scared. In fact, it looks like I am flinching with my lips. It is an uneven smile, pulled up on my right side, just a bit. But my skin is clear, which is nice, and my hair has been freshly cut, but that smile . . . it looks like it has been waiting around since April, at least.

reading, or studying?

Angela Davis, Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture (2005)
Mark Dow, American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons (2004)
Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1963)
Joseph Hallinan, Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation (2003)
Tara Herivel and Paul Wright, eds., Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor (2003)
Micahel Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750- 1850 (1978)

A friend, excited about books, recently asked me what I have plans to read over the holiday break. I replied, "I don't read books anymore."

Reading? No, not exactly. What I do with books is study them -- and I don't write that to gloat or with sass. I write it with a sense of loss.

I live with someone who reads and reads and reads books. Everything he can get his hands on. (He recently read the biography of Harpo Marx. Ask him about it. He absolutely loved it!) And when he says, "Wow, Chuck, you *really* need to read this book," I think "I would really like to" and then look at the stack of books I've chosen to study and teach for the next couple of months and know that it will not happen any time soon. That's what I mean by "reading," and that's what I mean by "loss." (Which of my classical-realist friends will comment that I *am* reading and the distinction is negligible?)

I know I should "make time" to read for pleasure whenever I can, but I feel obligated to my studies. The works I choose are often difficult, both conceptually and emotionally (see above list). I want to be able to master the material so that when I get into the classroom or sit down to write about it I can feel confident enough to be critical. Delving into prison studies means entering a world of terror, isolation, and helplessness, and I need to be strong enough to do this for the next several months. (And I wonder about the very formulation of these last sentences -- it isn't as if I am inside the prison. What does studying all of this *do* to the reader? I cannot "make time" but I am not "doing time," either. How is a sentence not unlike a "sentence?")

In addition to the theory and history above, I've also been studying Miguel Pinero's play Short Eyes (1975), John Edgar Wideman's Brothers and Keepers (1984), and the collected works in H. Bruce Franklin's Prison Writing in 20th-Century America (1998), which includes pieces by some of the most famous U.S. prison writers like George Jackson, Kathy Boudin, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Assata Shakur, and Iceberg Slim.

If you are a literary and cultural critic, immersed in your studies, you forget that most people will be surprised by what you actually do for a living. They think of professors as wealthy-looking, tweed-jacket-wearing, large-house-dwelling, married white men who mostly help young people realize the true meaning of life or that we are all different in our own special way. Thank you for that, Hollywood. A few years ago, I had a conversation with my mom about my work. It was probably the first time I fully and openly explained what she was reluctant to find out -- that I was doing research and writing on the subject of lynching. I was scouring the NAACP archives looking for materials on the lynching of black soldiers, still in uniform, during the Red Summer of 1919. It was exhausting, depressing work. After a moment she said to me, "Are you ever going to, you know, write about something happy?"

I think of the literary critic Elaine Scarry, who wrote the inimitable book The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (1985), which takes on the subjects of war and torture in devastating (and eye-opening) ways, and who, later in life, wrote a book called On Beauty and Being Just (1999), which, even if many critics thought it was silly, must have been so good for her to work on, for her own sake.

What keeps me going is that I know I am learning -- a lot. And I know I can write about this. The research on lynching led to two, important publications, which is the whole point, after all -- to make public what feels like, right now, is so private: me surrounded by a pile of books and notes, feeling a bit like a lunatic.

sign here

Confronting plagiarists is an act so dreadful that I find myself in a panic, having to take time out to calm myself down through breathing exercises and to rehearse a psychological narration that tells me to take it easy.

Rooted in a not-too-distant history of shocking encounters in which students have flown into an aggressive rage, all directed at me, the confrontation might (if you are me) be likened to early-childhood run-ins with bullies, whose certain postures and words you learn too late to understand as immediate predecesors to the awful swinging of fists.

Childhood traumas aside, the only way to cope, for me, is to calm down -- way down. I must think and perform empathy. I must ease into the whole thing gradually, like this:

"Good morning, _____, how are you? Good to see you. O, before I forget, let's step outside for a minute, there is something I want to run by you. Let's sit. How about on this bench over here? So, _____, you know what plagiarism is, right? MmHm. You know what I'm about to say, don't you? Yeah, I have to have you fill out this paper work . . ."

[Wait for student to deny plagiarism three or four times in a row and ask, helplessly, "How could this be happening?"]

"See here, how I've highlighted the stuff you took from this web site? And now see here where you have the same thing? I know, you must be very, very tired. Listen, go ahead and sign this -- unless you want to arrange a meeting with the Chair and explain this in a different way -- no? Okay, then sign here. Look, since this is an automatic failure, there really is no need to take the final. No need for extra stress, right? Alright, take this copy of the form and go ahead and get yourself some coffee or tea or something. And, promise me you will never, ever do this again? Promise? Good. Take care now, and don't ignore me when you see me in the hallway next semester!"

I had to do this twice today. Both times, it was blessedly easy. No anger, just a little bit of crying and eventual acceptance. In the second case, I was actually thanked.

But it is exhausting. Having always been the kind of student who was in awe of his professors and who would never dream of plagiarizing, much less raising his voice to a professor or verbally attacking any of them, I find it unbelieveable when this happens -- not just to me, but to all of my colleagues as well.

I told myself I would never blog at work, but now look what I've gone ahead and done.

not at all

This will not be one of those posts you see on people's blogs that make you think, "Why is this blogger even bothering?"

This couldn't possibly be the kind of post that sheepishly apologizes for having been so lax on updating the blog, and then muses, in a predictable fashion, about what might be preventing attentiveness to the blog.

Who, I ask, would be banal enough to actually write a tedious explanation about how busy the blogger has been, especially with work, so much so that, when time makes itself available, the last thing the blogger wants to do is natter on about recent surprises, foibles, failures, confusions, ironies, memories, dreams, or confessions?

You will not feel embarrassed for me as I self-consciously describe how the last post, a poem about depression, makes me feel like I must drum up something wickedly funny or artfully observant to clear the blog air.

Really, there will be no need to post a comment that says, "Glad to have you back!" or "Took you long enough . . ." or "That's okay, Chuck, we all get stuck every once in a while."

You will not have to cringe, think I have run out of ideas, hope that I get out of my rut, wonder if I am actually boring, or think ill of me because I have ended the post with the two-word pseudo-sentence "More later."

No, no -- not this post.

plummet

this morning's dark yard. tiny yellow leaves
flutter and drift. like snow. a steel sky.
black wool hangs over downtown's silver buildings.
wind whips. from 70 to 40
in less than an hour. now into 30s.

the last day. bourbon soaked egg
nog on desk in plastic bowl. plastic
ladel and paper cups. workplace holiday party. get buzzed. listen
how the children have a lot of reasons and really
who cares? papers stacked
in corner of office must mean someone is
smart. more egg nog. some crackers.
cheese. now
put self into car.

drive to the cure.
a mixed tape from 1987. it's B-sides.
that song: "man inside my mouth." suddenly high school
and your room in the dark. lying on the floor. wanting to
die. so badly. your plans to run away. how long ago that was. how
important.

how the grey
sky now matches your hair. turn right
into it. a nearly-frozen 35
by midnight.

how are you enjoying the demolition?

The noise of the deconstruction crew tearing down the Westheimer Square apartments has been going since 6a.m. I hear this crashing, slamming, splintering, dragging, motor gunning, and "I'm in reverse" beeping every morning but, usually, by the time I am showered and out the door, I forget all about it. To be home on a day off and have it as a constant sound track is nerve-jangling. Believe it.

Yesterday, when the streets of Montrose were eerily and beautifully deserted, I surveyed the damage. Almost half of the complex is gone, and the other half torn open, waiting for a giant claw to smash it to pieces. Rooms ripped in half. A bathroom with the floor torn out, but the toilet, looking a bit embarrassed, still standing. The wood, metal, plastic, and tile remains of what people called their homes have been neatly pushed into giant piles.

A couple of days ago, as I was walking back from the grocery store, I bumped into our next door neighbor (to the west of us). This is the neighbor who lives right next to the fence that divides the old complex from our dead end street. He and his partner live upstairs in a 1920-era brick duplex, and they run some kind of interior design business downstairs. They also have a gross little ratty-looking grey dog that shits all over our front yard (and they never pick it up) and yelps at the demolition noise. Their house is lovely, I think, but I also think all the 1920s-era buildings on this block are lovely, including the white brick one across the street that resembles a sad face with a black eye.

But I'm getting away from the point, which is this: When I saw the neighbor I asked, "How are you enjoying the demolition?", thinking we'd share some common annoyance about the noise, dirt, and loss of local architecture and community. But his reply was, "I cannot begin to tell you how happy that noise makes me. I'll take it any day over the cha cha music!" Cha cha music? O, of course, you racist white homo, the tejano music that residents of the complex played out of their station wagons in the evening. The music I enjoyed listening to because it went well with the sound of the church bells in the evening, and the smell of coffee that wafted over from Deidrich's coffee shop (now closed). That music.

This guy bothers me for many reasons. Last week, when Hank and I were outside thinking about doing something to cover the cement grates that lead to the crawl space under the apartment, he came over and chatted with us about the building. When we said we wished the landlord would do something about the crawl space, he said something like, "It would be even better if he just tore the whole thing down and built something new," and then he laughed and touched his moustache, nodding as if we were we all in agreement about that.

But I was stunned by this ugly comment. It made me feel bad.

It wasn't until later that night that I mustered up the courage to even tell Hank that the neighbor's words hurt me, and Hank agreed that it was a nasty thing to say. Why? Because it means that he doesn't like what he lives next to. And Hank and I do like living here, even though there are many, many problems that come with the place. It's a class thing: He's a property owner who couldn't be happier that they are about to put up what he called "very high end" condos -- four stories that will tower over our duplex, blocking out some sky. I dread this intrusion because it means that more suburbanites will move into the city, thinking it both "cool" and, now that they have four floors separating themselves from the horrible, horrible street, "safe" to live in Montrose. This guy has dollar signs in his eyes because it means, for him, lots of new business.

(I do enjoy the fussy design queens that work for our neighbor. They come in the morning, dressed in khakis and crisply ironed shirts, and smoke cigarettes out back while gossiping about their friends. They are very sweet to me, waving hello and mugging, as if caught doing something wicked, and then laughing, asking me how everything is going. A couple of them hold their hands limp at the wrist as they move about up and down the driveway. I always appreciate a queer who embodies a stereotype.)

In any case, have you realized that it has been a full year since I helped Cosmo come forth from his mother's womb? It's true. Cosmo is one year old, and Hank and I are about to walk up Hazard for the open house birthday party. Watching him spiral out of his mother and into the hands of the midwife was, perhaps, the most astonishing thing I have ever seen.

justice for janitors (houston)

For those of you not in Houston, you can follow the incredible demonstrations and protests in which activist workers from Houston and around the nation are participating regarding just wages and health care for janitors at http://justiceforjanitors.blogspot.com/. You'll be able to see HPD at its, um, finest.

interesting ingredients (for J.P.)

This is right from the internet, with behavioral recipes added in by me. Recipes for tofurkey, stuffing, and your choice of mushroom gravy or/and mushroom sauce, both of which are delicious. Left over tofurkey, if there is any, is really good sliced up and put on sandwiches with romain or green leaf lettuce and sliced heirloom tomatoes (if you can find and afford them).

Music

Depends on if you cook in the evening or in the morning. In the evening, listen to the righteous stylings of Erykah Badu or the deep roots of Burning Spear. Enjoy a glass of wine or two as you listen. If you cook in the morning, and you've had your coffee, measure, mix, mash, and stir to the beats of the M.I.A. or Handsome Boy Modelling School. Sing out loud and in your head. Defintely dance around the kitchen, occasionally grabbing the dishrag as your dancing partner.

Etiquette

Wash all the dirty dishes you find in the sink before you begin. Check to see if there are any forgotten pots or pans on the stove that also need washing. Might as well sweep, too. Naked cooking is interesting, but you should probably wear clothes. Barefoot is okay, but I always wear socks, no shoes. Try to avoid the phone when it rings, but do answer knocks at the door, and invite whoever has dropped by to come on in. Offer wine or coffee. Only curse when you cut yourself with a knife, accidentally forget something, or realize you used the tablespoon when you really needed the teaspoon. If you have to engage your OCD tendencies by counting every single chop, slice, or mince, go ahead and do it, but don't feel weird about it later.

Food

Tofurkey with Stuffing

Turkey:

5 pounds of firm tofu (use the TastyTofu extra firm from the Fiesta -- it's the best)
1 pound of tofu for the "drumsticks" (optional -- I never do this.)

Stuffing:
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 large onion, chopped fine
1 and 1/3 cup celery, diced (about 4 stalks)
1 cup mushrooms, finely chopped
3 to 4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup sage (may use 1/8)
2 teaspoons marjoram
2 teaspoons thyme
1 teaspoon winter or summer savory
salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon rosemary
2 teaspoons celery seed
1/4 cup soy sauce or tamari
3 cups toasted or stale bread, cubed and herbed (original recipe calls for Pepperidge Farms, but I improvise. You can also search around for other stuffing recipes on-line if this one seems boring, however this turns out great.)

Basting mixture:

1/2 cup toasted sesame oil
1/4 to 1/3 cup soy sauce or tamari
2 tablespoons miso
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 teaspoon vegan mustard of choice
improvise with anything else you think tastes good

Directions:

Mash tofu or mix well with hands. Be sure that all of the lumps are out. Line a 12" colander with wet cheesecloth over lapping the sides. Add the mashed tofu to the cloth covered colander, press down and cover with the overlapping sides. Place the whole thing in a large bowl. Cover the cheesecloth with a plate that fits inside the colander and place a 5 pound weight on the plate. Refrigerate and let sit for 2 to 3 hours.

When time is up, start the stuffing. Saute' the onions, celery and mushrooms in the 2 tablesoons sesame oil. When soft, add the garlic and all the rest of the stuffing ingredients, except stuffing, mixing well. Stir and cook for 5 minutes. Add herb stuffing and mix well.

Remove tofu from fridge and take off weight, plate and top of cheesecloth. Hollow out tofu to within 1 inch of the sides and bottom, placing the tofu in a bowl. Place the stuffing inside the shell and pack in firmly. Cover with the remaining tofu and pat down firmly. Turn stuffed tofu onto a greased baking sheet, flat side down. Gently press on sides of "turkey" to achieve a more oval shape. If desired at this point, you may mold "drumsticks" out of one pound of tofu, and place on each side of the "turkey".

Mix up the basting mixture and baste tofu "turkey" with half of it. Cover the "turkey" with foil, and bake at 400 degrees for about 1 hour.

Remove foil, baste with all the remaining mixture except a few tablespoons and return to oven for 1 hour more, or until the "turkey" is golden. Remove from oven and use rest of basting mix. Using at least 2 large spatulars, move to a large plate. Serve with the gravy of your choice, if you wish, and cranberry sauce.

NOTE: I always grow increasingly alarmed as the tofurkey roasts because the sesame oil cooks really fast and the drizzle run-off is prone to burning on the baking sheet. I worry and worry that it means that the tofurkey is burning, but it never does. Keep an eye on it. I've never seen anyone else write or complain or worry about this on-line, so it might just be me or my oven.

Mushroom Gravy

Ingredients:
1/2 cup dried mushrooms, chopped into small pieces
1 cup strong veggie broth
1 small onion, diced
2 Tbs. flour
1 1/2 Tbs. margarine

Directions:
Hydrate your chopped mushrooms with about 1/2 cup boiling water. Cover and let sit for 10 minutes.

Melt margarine in a small-medium saucepan over medium heat. Sauté the onion lightly. Don't brown too much. Add the flour, and stir constantly with a wooden spoon until frothy. Do not let it burn! Add the mushrooms and their liquid and your vegetable broth. Cook over medium heat to a boil, stirring constantly. After it comes to a boil, turn the heat down a bit and let thicken.

Serves: 6
Preparation time: 10-15

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients:
finely diced onion
clove minced garlic
sliced or chopped mushrooms [any kind you like]
water
arrowroot, kudzu, or cornstarch [dissolved in a little cold water]
shoyu, tamari, or soy sauce
salt and pepper
thyme
vegan white wine or sherry
fresh chopped parsley

Directions:
This recipe is all to taste, and you can make as much or as little as you want, but here's the basic procedure. also, I've made it very simply before, with no wine, thyme, parsley, etc. So if you don't like something, or know of something you'd like better, experiment! In the parentheses are approximate amounts that I used.

Sauté the onion (~2 tbsp) and garlic (1 clove) in olive oil (~1 tbsp) until soft. Add mushrooms (~1/2 cup?) and let it cook until they get "watery". then add water (~1 cup), wine (just a splash for some flavor) and shoyu (to taste). Let this simmer and reduce for a bit, then add the arrowroot slurry (you'll have to experiment with the thickener, depends which one you use and what consistency you like) and thyme (to taste). Simmer/adjust thickener to get desired consistency. at the end add salt and pepper to taste, and sprinkle with parsley (optional).
This is good on just about any ol' thing. Mashed potatoes, rice and tempeh, tofu, lentil loaves... go wild! It's very nice made with crimini or some other heartier mushroom, but also delicious with plain ol' white button mushrooms.

Preparation time: 15-20 minutes

Clean up

If you live alone, you should probably clean everything up right away. That way you don't have to look at it all later and wish that you had a roommate or live-in maid. If you live with another person, you have a couple of options: 1) Leave everything for the other person to clean. This follows the logic that you have labored to cook, so the other person, naturally, must do the dirty work. Plus, you are tired of the kitchen and the other person is not. Drawbacks: The other person might not get around to it for a while, and you might be tempted to go ahead and do it yourself, later. 2) Do it right away by yourself, but make a big deal out of it. Drawbacks: The other person might call you a martyr. 3) Share the clean up with the other person. Drawbacks: If you are a control freak, you might start thinking the person is not washing dishes the right way and this might make you really cranky.

Now you are ready for Thanksgiving.

when the toaster says "ding!" (and i've suddenly written about being a vegetarian)

This morning I have decided that, if I were not an academic, I would have to be a grill cook. It gives me immense satisfaction to a have a spinach and cheddar omelette slowly cooking on one burner, stewed tomatoes on another, soy patties frying on a third, coffee percolating, and some bread toasting all at the same time and when the toaster says "ding!" the whole meal is ready at once and dished out on heavy blue fiesta ware plates. Mm.

That said, I was thinking, as I was unwrapping the above-mentioned "soy patties" (which are really called "veggie sausage"), about fake meats, especially since Thanksgiving is coming up and, also, because I recently rehearsed the fake meats conversation I have about every year or so with a friend who is not a vegetarian. It's one of those things about which, when i first became a vegetarian (fifteen years ago, now), I was confused. If I have decided not to eat meat, then why would I want seitan-shaped and flavored "ham"? Why the "no-chik" chicken tenders? I don't want to think "Wow -- it tastes *just like* real ham/steak/turkey/duck" when I am eating. The whole point is that I *don't* want to taste any of those things.

You know how it happened, right? I was having really awful, recurring dreams about dead animals. Scary. Violent. Bloody and full of gristle. The nightmares stayed with me during my waking hours, and I realized one evening, while eating cheese steaks with my meat-loving family, that I was really not supposed to be eating animals. I remember trying to just get through the meal, make it through without reacting so I could think about it later. I was not able to do it, and I quietly announced that what we were doing seemed wrong to me and maybe we should talk about it. It felt weird, but correct, and I never looked back. Thankfully, I knew vegetarians and vegans who let me in on the secrets of cooking, protein sources, etc., and who also clued me in to the fascinating politics of meat-consumption, which really helped me see the decision I made (which was not, at first, political as much as it was deeply psychological) with new eyes. (It was harder for some members of my family to understand my vegetarianism than it was for them to understand the gay thing or the literary and cultural critic thing or the anarcho-socialist thing. Although, if you were my therapist, you might point out that they're not all that different.)

For a long, long, long time, I've been enjoying lots of legumes, tofu, nuts, cheeses, etc. And every once in a while, I will eat a veggie burger or garden burger. I don't think of a veggie burger as food that tastes just like a hamburger -- clearly, for anyone who has eaten both, there is a difference. But every once in a while, I get bored. And I want something different. And I pass the weird aisle at the Fiesta where there are boxes and boxes of all different kinds of MorningStar Farms fake meats and I think, "I don't want fake chicken or a no-meat corn dog or a veggie salisbury steak, but hey! What about this fakin' bacon? I could eat that." or "Hm -- I am so tired of my avocado and sprout sandwiches. What if I got these tofu pups? These not-dogs? That might make it so that I am not ravenous an hour after I eat." But I want to stress that, while I enjoy these foods, they don't taste like what they resemble, and I don't relish their flavor because I am wishing that it was really an animal's innards that I am eating. It's more that, after fifteen years of strict vegetarianism in the dead cow capital of the U.S., and being friends with many, many, many "vegetarians" who tell me how guilty they feel because they gorged on parts of a dead bird that was probably raised in its own filth trapped in a cage in a factory farm, I'm going to go ahead and put the soyrizo in my basket and crumble it into my chili.

I know, that sounds mean, but I rarely -- if ever -- sound off about such things. You could come over wearing your fur coat, take me to a French restaurant and order the fois gras and I wouldn't say a word. This is because I don't think that guilt should inform food or clothing choices. That can be really damaging (ask me sometime about an animal rights activist with an eating disorder I knew who had a poster of a vivsectioned monkey on her refrigerator and nothing but bottles of water inside -- true story!). Also, notice I am not a vegan. And I often buy my vegetables from the Randall's grocery store close by (which I do not like) that sells me ginger from China, not locally grown organic stuff from the community. I'm not pure (although I am obsessed with the concept, and wrote many chapters of my dissertation about it), but there are weeks that go by where I realize I have been eating vegan, and being conscious about that is important to me. I would rather not smoke corpoprate cigarettes [or any tobacco, for that matter], but I do that, too -- talk about dangerous and bad for you . . . These are things that, if they are going to change, it's not going to happen because someone has made me feel bad. You see what I'm getting at?

That said, if it's in demand, I'll go ahead and make another tofurkey this year -- from scratch. Since Hank and I have moved in together, I've made a couple of them based on a recipe I got from David E. (true veggie-friend who has a tattooed cow on his back -- ask him if you can see it next time you run into him). It's really easy and a lot of fun, and it makes me smile when it comes out just right.

how to spend election day

Forget to tell students to remember to vote. Receive phone call from discourse-obsessed partner reminding you that there will be hours of radio and television to monitor this evening, and that Todd is coming over to listen and watch. Have disheartening discussions with left-wing colleagues about the future of the nation. Ignore Libertarians who hang out and table on bridge near workplace. Notice how many Kinky posters are up on co-workers' doors. Wonder if your precinct's polling station has moved since last year. Look forward to the walk over to the beautiful school. Think about all of the walks you took to cast your ballot over the years. Remember 2000 when you stayed up all night drinking white wine hoping that, for once, the person you voted for would win and how, when he lost, you yelled (rather dramatically [and perhaps a little drunkenly]) the word "NO!!" long and loud at the top of your lungs out the front door and into the wee hours of the Montrose morning. Shudder over all that's happened since then. See a W'04 sticker on an SUV on Allen Parkway and wonder if the driver feels stupid for having it. Consider that this might be what people think about your own SUV=WWIII sticker. Arrive home early to your partner who has realized that he is still registered to vote in the Heights. Give the key to the SUV=WWIII vehicle to partner so he can go vote. Find the mail amazingly free of political flyers or envelopes. Realize you haven't paid Green Mountain in two months. Wander over to the polling place, carefully avoiding those canvassing. Feel self conscious about how you walk. Open the door and see no one waiting in line. Recognize your neighbor, the old woman across the street, who checks your voter's registration card (secretly be pleased that you don't use your, um, driver's license). Remember that she didn't recognize you last year, either. Vote. Come home and snooze for about a half hour. Awaken to your partner cooking tacos. Pay attention to the voice that says you do not want another bean-filled meal. Cook spaghetti and a small salad. Enjoy it. Receive a phone call from your older sister, on her way home from voting in the hills of New Jersey. Discuss politics briefly before inquiring about your nieces and nephew. Laugh about your nephew's reticence, how he only points to communicate. Tell your sister how much you love her. Hang up and wait for the polls to come in. Pop a bottle of wine, as per tradition.

squeeze

I want you to understand,

especially on days when I feel most vulnerably human, and I have been sad since I woke up, and when I know that you do not think or perhaps you do not even believe that I have a life outside the role you see me in, and, since I'm seeing you linger outside the classroom door and you've been there for half the class waiting for me to come over to you, rage and not pity makes my heart skip fast beats in my chest and I really do not want to have to remember that you will believe, for whatever reason, that I am not me but, instead, your parole officer or absent father or jerk older brother or perhaps you have confused me with an interested therapist or forgiving priest or kind reverend or, in its most surreal manifestation, homosocial homeboy;

especially on days when it is all of this combined with the fact that you have suddenly realized with utter shock that, yes: you are going to fail despite the countless times I have stayed after class and spoken with you one-on-one (alternating quiet concern and hopeful enthusiasm or brass tacks honesty) about the critical importance of reading and writing well or, if not this, then at least the importance of shaking bad habits, and despite the time I took to clearly and sensitively make positive suggestions on your essays so much so that I actually got up in the middle of grading one of your papers to move away from it -- I was so pissed that you seemed to have forgotten everything I had taught you in the last two weeks and you reverted to positively annoying text-messaging/email language -- because, deep down, I believe that no one deserves to feel that wrath of misplaced anger (how easy and deliciously cruel it would have been to have crossed it all out and written in crazed capital letters in your too-big margins ARE YOU A COMPLETE MORON??) and because I need to teach and not be angry at you;

especially when you start to tell me I have done you wrong or tricked you or lied or ruined your life or your chance at success in the world, and when you begin to cry and tell me how hard you have tried, that you have quote not even gone to church on sundays just so you could work on this unquote, it is so hard not to listen to a tiny voice that says, "I saw this coming on the first day of class," and then hear how quickly the second voice says "Don't think that -- what good does it do?"; but I still remain with you and allow you to project all of your hatred onto me for a full twenty-minutes because, I am telling myself, you need to do this and it doesn't really matter if it stings a little bit, after all, in another hour I'll be sitting in a meeting discussing something administrative and this whole thing will be another part of a longer day that, surely, will not prevent me from sleeping or from cursing someone like Rod Paige or the increasingly popular (and totally iditotic) idea that active learning in the writing classroom means giving students something called "clickers" with which they can play a kind of video game to answer questions about grammar when the whole point, in my estimation, is to tear students away from point-and-click reward systems and have them think out loud, discuss, write, and revise their ideas with a circle of people that, eventually, become part of their intellectual community;

that I am on your side, and that I am working my best to figure out how to do this without either of us getting crushed in the squeeze.

deadly scribes

who knows what's nesting?

I remember this past summer when Melanie, Hank, and I were traveling in upstate New York, and the sky was the color of Scope, and the day was full of cool air, and I felt so lucky to be out of the scorched dirt of Houston. Today, however, is miraculous -- about 65-70 degrees during the day, with that big, blue Texas sky. It could trick you into thinking the city has no pollution problems whatsoever.

At noon, I took the elevator ten floors down and stepped out of the university with four colleagues to get lunch. On the university's deck, looking out over the Bayou and the edge of downtown, watching the waters from the recent rains rush past, I could do nothing but stretch my hands in the air and try to grab the sky. The day felt huge, the city -- smart and clean. We descended the long, winding concrete staircase that leads from the deck to the Bayou, followed a little path, and crossed the bridge into downtown, admiring the workers who were putting the new, huge lettering on the side of the building. We turned right and ducked into the Vietnamese cafe right there on the edge of Market Square, ordered our $2.00 tofu sandwiches, and chatted in the sunlight as students, lawyers, theater folks, columnists, waitstaff, and businessmen stood in twos and threes, decked out in sunglasses and carrying the local free city rag.

This evening, I'm thinking about Westheimer Square, the huge, affordable apartment complex whose parking lot borders the gated and locked dead-end of our street. Much to my surprise, a sign went up a couple of months ago claiming that it was going to be knocked down to build some -- surprise! -- pre-fab highrises that no one I know could afford (Well, maybe I can think of one person. Or two.).

The apartments have been vacated, and it looks like they've already begun the process of ripping some of it apart. I've known a few people who've lived there over the years, mostly working class queers and Mexican families inhabited the place. We used to squeeze through the gate when we first moved in here to go swimming in one of its many pools, get some sun when it wasn't too hot outside. In addition, it was really easy to sneak in with a couple of pairs of jeans and secretly thrown them in the washing machines, which only charged .75 as opposed to the $1.50 the local laundrymat charges per load.

My other worry (sorry . . .) is about what will happen to all of the vermin that live over there once the wrecking ball starts to swing. When I lived over on West Alabama, a mostly empty four-plex about three lots down from where I lived was knocked down one summer. That night, while sitting out on the porch drinking beer with my friends Walter and Rebecca, a massive carpet of roaches suddenly and grotesquely swarmed over the front wall of my apartment and began to dive-bomb us. I remember Rebecca, who has very beautiful, long, thick, curly hair, yelling "They're in my hair!! They're in my ha-a-a-air!!!" as we ran down the staircase and out onto the sidewalk. It was awful, even as it was funny, but the roaches were thick that summer, and I was told that it was the result of the knocking down of the building. The place just west of us is not just a building, it is a huge, sprawling complex. Who knows what's nesting over there . . .

Tomorrow there are free films showing on the lawn of the Menil made by or about Paul Klee. We're hoping our friends join us with picnic baskets and coolers and blankets to check it out around 7pm. (If the rain stays away.)

deluge

Houston's tropical weather has kept a massive storm right on top of the city, with rain pouring straight down for the past two days. We tried to keep the windows open to let some of the air in (thinking rain = cool air), but finally the humidity was too much, leaving every surface slightly damp, so we shut the windows and turned on the A/C. All day yesterday, into the evening, the darkest hours of the night, the twilight of dawn under cloud, the rain just kept on coming. A real deluge.

When I woke up this morning at 6am, I had a feeling the university would be closed since its location (right where two major bayous meet before they head out to the Gulf) makes it succeptible to flooding. Sure enough, the web page had a sign telling us to stay home and, soon after, the chair of the department kindly called with a message to stay put. For sure, tomorrow there will be at least a dozen long and pointless phone messages from students on their cell-phones who want to thrill me with stories about how they got into their cars, got on the highway, got stuck in traffic, cannot see, want to turn around and go home, and how I have to call them back as soon as I get this message. Hm, sure, I'll make it my top priority . . .

Meanwhile, I actually drifted back to sleep while listening to weather reports and the latest from NPR. I got up and listened to Democracy Now! and heard Amy Goodman's interview with the civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart, which left me feeling so sad and anxious to hear how the judge will rule. (see full story here: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/16/143257).

The rest of the day will be a chance to play catch-up with grading and preparing for classes, reading the blogs of friends and total strangers. My seniors finish Go Tell It on the Mountain this week and start with Giovanni's Room, so I should have something smart to say about the two, together.

telescope, or kaleidoscope?

It is literally the middle of the semester, and this past week has been filled with not only trying to meet the deadlines I have imposed for all of my students (which means the stack of papers and one stack of exams were, at one point, up to the ceiling), but also my own struggle to meet the ones of the university and the its committees. Everything needs to be in by mid-October so that something can be done with it before the semester ends.

People zoom from floor to floor, elevator to elevator, room to room, building to building with their own stacks of paper, clipboards, handouts, and a wild sense of how important it is to accomplish something. I enter classrooms with dry-erase markers and a sense of daring, demanding that we try something new, shake things up, learn differently. I experience a dream-like sense of time that telescopes into and out of itself, making Monday mornings through Thursday afternoons one, long complicated day. Friday seems like its own day, as do the days of the weekend, but the rest of the week becomes a kaleidoscope of hundreds of different human encounters that turn in my head, in the evenings, for my contemplation:

We sat in a circle of thirty-five.
The flourescent light danced on his balding scalp.
I smelled beer on her breath.
He puzzled over the color scarlet.
He talked on his cell phone in a bathroom stall.
I asked too many questions.
She cried because she failed.
There was silence in the room and I had to remember not to fill it.
I knocked on his door but he wasn't in.
We discussed the difference between guilt and shame.
She grabbed a set of keys and unlocked the door of an office I had never seen before.
He left because the film was too upsetting.
She slipped a demanding note under my door.
She rushed past my office and yelled, "Go home, Chuck! It's late!"

Different people and different rooms and different times of day. I am impressed with the quotidian and banal because both seem to be freakishly human.

tak.a.boost (drink.a.toast)

Tak.a.boost (which you can also call Drink.a.Toast, and both names appear on the bottle) is exactly like flat Pepsi or Coke. You know it if you grew up in South Jersey, across from Philadelphia, by the Delware River: Riverside, Delran, Palmyra, Rancocas Woods, Cinnaminson, Burlington. Although I haven't had it since my early-teenaged years, I can still remember it as a powerfully sweet and licoricey beverage. Usually poured on ice and served to you at the day care in the bowling alley, in the municipal building where your Mom went to vote, or handed to you as you finished something like the Crop Walk, it was supposed to give you sugar and coat your stomach. I really did not like it. How many times did I eagerly approach a collapsable table thinking paper cups of Coke were sitting ready for my consumption, only to realize, too late, that the unfizzy Boost was all there was. I would rather have had Orange Drink, which seems to be the equivalent elsewhere in the country. (Note: Delran, the name of the township [not even a town] where I grew up, is not Del Ran, but Delran, a condensation of the Delaware River and Rancocas Creek, between which it lies, trying desperately not to produce the next spate of white high school shooters.)

Didn't Boost come in a weird shaped bottle, almost like a jug of moonshine, with large bottom and a tiny little neck, and a spout the size of a half-dollar? Am I remembering that right? My family never kept a bottle of it around, so maybe that's why I never developed a taste for it. Legend was that it was a sure thing for a hangover.

home, sweet home

http://www.answers.com/topic/takaboost

thirty-five

1. Grey
2. Right knee pop
3. Softening middle
4. Publication frenzy
5. Dog dreams
6. Miso
7. Blog
8. Spider painting
9. DVD player
10. Children's laughter
11. Plants
12. Compost
13. Patience and kindness, together
14. Nose hairs
15. Kale cravings
16. New flatware
17. Workplace elations
18. Openings
19. Quality of light
20. Wide sense of time
21. Compulsive knuckle cracking
22. Birth
23. Mother's milk
24. Interconsciousness
25. Extimacy
26. Lung capacity
27. Muscle strength
28. Whole days
29. Words as things
30. Eye hugs
31. Persistent fear of death
32. Memory hangovers
33. Voyeurism
34. Joy in faces
35. Spirals and axes

do colds move? (and is it gross to describe it?)

Since forever, I've known colds to be different from allergies because they move. The one I have right now started as a scorching hot pain in my throat (mixed with sheer physical exhaustion), but has subsided to a weird itchy thing that nearly chokes me when it is in my throat, and causes convulsive sneezes when it travels to my nose, all the way out to the tip. I sense that it travels back and forth between my throat and my nose throughout the day, and into the night.

Do others sense that colds move? I know that when I was a freshman in college, and taking the worst care of myself ever, I had colds that started in my sinuses and went deep into my lungs, where they settled until I needed antibiotics. Allergies stay exactly where they begin (usually in the nose). Is this true of everyone? Instead of google the answer, I thought I'd let experience speak itself as truth, if anyone cares to respond.

The reason I ask is because I swear this is one of those things I've described to friends (or maybe it was a family member) before, only to be met with one of those really jarring "O, Chuck, you and your ideas! No, Mr. Ph.D., colds don't 'move'!!" responses to which I am particularly sensitive.

Relatedly, I feel better, although I am not yet where I want to be (as my mother always says, pouring herself a fourth cup of coffee). I need another good night's rest.

In any case, my colds move. Do yours?

symptoms

When was the last time you slept all day? For me, it was today.

I've got a bad cold, and it has left me absolutely drained. It came down on me late-Saturday night and when I woke up Sunday morning, I was feeling miserable. Last night was painful (throat, sinuses), and I woke up, covered in drool, this morning at 6am to email work to let them know I wouldn't be in. I figured, since I was up, I'd be reading, grading papers, catching up on some things. But instead, I immediately fell back asleep, only to wake up five hours later, have some soup (thanks, Antonio and Melanie), and go back to sleep until just now. I bet if I went back into the bedroom I'd be out like a light.

And this gorgeous day outside has been feeling all mixed-up. The sounds of the school children gathering for morning announcements, followed by the crackle of car or bike tires on fallen pecans, long breezes drifting into the room, the sun moving, so slowly, all day, a cat meowing upstairs, the school children being let out of class, the sound of a coach's football whistle, a person walking by on a cell phone . . . time is passing in a very strange way, and I really, really miss my partner.

solitude (done up right)

When I lived by myself, one thing I loved to do on the weekend was spend an entire evening watching a film, allowing for multiple disruptions by nosy neighbors, drop-in visits from friends on bikes, long-distance phone calls, smoke breaks, and sudden moments of such clarity about my life and my work that I just had to grab my journal and scribble down my stunning insights. It might sound a little mundane, but I enjoyed the leisurely way the night proceeded and how deeply into my own head I allowed myself to go. There were many nights like this that started around 8pm and the film finished up in the early hours of the morning. I'd stop the film, turn on the lights, and shove the twelve books of cultural theory, the many articles I suddenly realized I needed to look at, my journal with its madly scribbled notes, and the empty bottle of wine out of the way and head off to bed, feeling thoroughly done.

While one cool thing about living with Hank is that the conversations I used to have in my head are now very much externalized, there is a part of me that romanticizes the solitude of my twenties, what I felt was a complete withdrawl from the realm of the social in which I did not have to interact with anyone if I so chose. I feel lucky to live with someone who understands the importance of solitary reading and writing, but it is rare that I find myself truly alone these days. There are at least some hours every day, sure. And there are the days I travel back to see family in the north-east, or when I spend a night or two at a hotel while out of town for a conference, but that is not really the kind of "alone" time I'm remembering. For someone who used to really relish his solitude for so many years, I have been remarkably not-alone for about two and a half years. That's a long time, my friends . . .

The reason I'm bringing all of this up is because Hank is out in east Texas this week, working on Broke. He's been gone since Tuesday, and returns this coming Tuesday. It's the first time I've had more than a couple of hours to myself since we've moved in together, and so I am really enjoying it. (Actually, the first Christmas after we moved in together, Hank spent a couple of days with his family, and so those count as alone days, but it was really very brief, and plus, even though I convinced myself that I was looking forward to weathering the holiday alone, I totally broke down and wept Christmas morning.) I have no plans this weekend, really, except to pick up a film or two for this evening and see what transpires.

(My friend Andrew points out that he has seen all of this in a comic strip somewhere, which is exactly right!)

Updates:

1) The pomegranate has been picked and is sitting in our fruit bowl. I kind of want to wait to open it until Hank returns, but I don't want it to rot. My friend Kayte took a photo of it with her digital camera, so I should be posting that soon.

2) So far, no rat. Hank bleached out the area under the sink and stuffed the holes around the pipes with steel wool. There are boxes of poison distributed throughout the apartment and little baggies in the crawl spaces under the building (but these are not in any place that little green-parented children can get into, I promise!). My trench-composting in the backyard has come to a screeching halt until I can deal with it again and maybe find a way to do it that does not attract vermin. Other than that, I am, sort of unbelievably, suffering from a form of post-traumatic stress disorder since I hallucinate the rat at least once a day, and I have to steel myself before I go into the kitchen and use it like a normal person. Also, I have told every person I know the rat story, and have heard dozens of frightening stories concerning rats in apartments that I did not need to hear. Isn't that terrible?

3) This morning, I found out that a short piece I wrote about Courtney Love is going to be published in special issue of a really kick-ass film studies journal on divas. Applause!!

o, rats!

It had been a full Sunday just with the grading of papers and the preparations for class. I kept changing locations so that a fresh environment would keep me on my toes and hard at work. After coming back from Deidrich's on Westheimer, where I finished grading, I heated up some leftovers, and plunked myself down on the futon in front of the TV, hoping the new seasons of cartoons would be on and i would have a good hour or so of time off for my teaching brain.

What I remember most is that I was coming into the kitchen to deposit my dishes in the sink, put away the tupperware containers of leftovers, and possibly even open a bottle of wine to go with the animation.

Suddenly, a RAT was -- what? hopping? leaping? from the back room (the sun room, the gentleman's retreat, if you will) into the kitchen and, my first reaction was to let out a startled yelp and call out for Hank. At this point I named what I thought I saw ("A mouse!!") until it dawned on me that, actually, it was much bigger, and much scarier looking than a mouse ("No -- a rat!!!") and as I yelled this and backed away it, the rat, zoomed into the kitchen and, without looking to see where it was going, I turned and ran screaming from the room.

Maybe its because he didn't actually have the pleasure of seeing the rat, or maybe because he grew up visiting families that lived on East Texas farms, or maybe because he labored at Deep Springs, or maybe because, simply, he is far more butch when it comes to confronting small vermin than I could ever hope to be -- but whatever the reason, Hank grabbed the nearest weapon (in this case, the extra dowel that we bought with the intention of hanging clothes from it in the closet) and a bucket, ready to trap, bash, or chase out the rat and restore order to the domestic sphere.

Not following the rat with my eyes was a bad idea, though, since I could not answer Hank's practical question, "Where did it go?". When Hank asked me to help him get a flashlight, I sort of turned into Barbara from Night of the Living Dead, because all I could manage to do was stare off into space and kind of poke around in a daze, watching while Hank went in and out of drawers, and gathered some other items that might help at least chase the rat out of doors for the time being.

After about a half an hour, however, the rat was clearly not coming back, and I was beginning to calm down. I asked Hank a lot of inane questions (Do you think it's gone? Do you think it'll come back? Do you think it has a family?), and finally decided, along with Hank, that the rat was probably more afraid of me than I was of it, and that my presence alone was enough to make it run for the hills (or at least the compost heap). I called the landlord who promised to send an expterminator the next morning and then, for some reason, compared having a rat in the apartment to being raped. Um, sorry, what did you say? I think he must have immediately regretted this comparison, because the tone of his voice changed immediately and he talked on an on about the importance of cats and did we want to adopt one?

Having finally found some closure, and since the Simpsons was about to come on, I decided to make the best of a bad situation. I grabbed the bottle of wine and the opener and headed back to the kitchen for a wine glass. The nightmare returned. The rat came right out from under the stove and zig-zagged all over the kitchen floor, looking for an exit. Once again, I turned and ran, letting out another long, terrified yell that combined vowels with a cry for help. Hank came bounding in from the living room, but by this time the rat had disappeared under the dishwasher. This was a breaking point.

What were we going to do?

My intial thought was to leave. Call a friend and stay somewhere else. Hank suggested going out, getting traps or poison ourselves, and trying to kill the rat on our own. Neither sounded good to both of us. In a moment of total frustration, Hank grabbed our bar stool, his dowel, a hammer, and the bucket, set up a post by the kitchen table, and claimed that he would stand guard and kill the rat himself. Suddenly, I envisioned a screeching, half-dead rat that hissed, bit, and fought tooth and nail with Hank on the kitchen floor; then I pictured brains, blood, and a carcass (um, not Hank's). It was too much for me. I didn't want to see it.

I then got the bright idea that, even though we didn't have a cat, perhaps our friend Laura would bring over her two dogs, both Springer Spaniels, and they would flush the rat from our kitchen, like a duck from a bush. I called Laura and she kindly agreed to bring them over, although she did express a concern that the rat might be rabid and in attack mode but I, somehow, strong-armed her into not worrying too much about that, and she was over within minutes. The dogs came in and were told to "get the squirrel" and then, when that had them looking at the ceiling, to "get the kitty." They made a good attempt to find something, but came up with zero. (I should note that Edison, the more autistic of the two dogs, did try to chase the shadows on the kitchen floor, and Clarabelle, the more vocal of the two, barked at us in confusion.)

After packing a small bag, I announced that I was not staying the night, simply because I did not want to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom or get some water and have another shocking scream-fest that might wake everyone up. Plus, I really did not want to see the rat again. Hank, however, was brave, and stayed put.

Yesterday evening, Hank, after a day of dropping off the first installment of his serialized fiction (titled Broke and available at all Houston hotspots -- get one now and collect all nine!! Ask for an autograph!!), picked me up at work and we went out to eat (note: El Tiempo on Washington is a terrible place to get Mexican food. Expensive, bad service, and bad food.). We got home just before President Coo Coo Bananas (as Homer would say) made his September 11th speech. I drifted off into a pretty good sleep, and woke up refreshed.

The house has been, as far as I have seen, rat free. The landlord actually did not hire an exterminator, but came over himself and put rat poison in the openings under the duplex, under our sink, in the a/c closet, in the water-heater closet, and in the closet of the front toom. I hope it works.

Even though I have lived in places where I could hear rats in the walls (Berthea Apartments) and where I saw rats every single day in the courtyard or trees surrounding my apartment (Jack Street, West Alabama), I have not yet, as far as I have known, had one in my kitchen. Apparantly, the poison is a strong dose of vitamin K that causes extreme thirst and, the theory goes, the rats will leave the building and look for water outside, and then die the thirstiest death of all. My friend Gretchen points out that the whole "then they leave the building and die elsewhere" is a bit of a myth, since many have reported having to deal with them once they die in crawl spaces or attics.

I want to believe the myth, and I never want to see one inside, again.

do you swear to tell the truth?

This morning, I learned that the state of Texas is the only state left in the U.S. that will allow traffic offenses to have a juried trial. Sitting in the Jury Assembly Room on Lubbock St., a judge who looked exactly like Kathy Bates told us this, and cautioned that, far from being a waste of time, such trials are an essential part of democracy here in Texas.

I have a really full history of being called for Jury Duty. I get called at least twice a year (last year I was called to serve on my birthday!), and I have yet to actually be selected. Today I found out that one of the reasons this might be is that I have one name on my driver's license and another on my voter registration (the first one does not include the III part of my name, and the second one does). No one really likes jury duty, and I always feel especially put upon when I am called since, for me, to miss work means I have to cancel class, and if I actually got picked to serve, who knows how much class would be missed? The whole semester could be de-railed. I have written countless letters asking judges to be excused from jury duty service, always careful to close by declaring that, surely, I am more of a service to the state of Texas by teaching poverty-level and working class students how to write and think than as a juror. So far, this has only gotten my dates postponed.

About two years ago, I was at the voir dire for a capital murder case. The defendent was seventeen years old. The lawyers kept making informative statements followed by questions like, "In the state of Texas, at the age of seventeen, you can be tried as an adult -- does anyone here find that problematic?" and "In the state of Texas, you do not have to have DNA evidence in order to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt -- does anyone here find that problematic?" Since I found both problematic, I raised my hand high and spoke at length about the cultural relativity of age, the ethics of human storage, the crowding of death row, innocent men being killed by the state, etc. The woman sitting next to me heaved a big, irritated sigh through her nose and, finally, the judge interrupted me, told me to stop talking, and explained to the jury pool that if life was like television, and forensic evidence needed to be supplied, the whole system would get clogged and nothing would ever get accomplished. After the next question, which had to do with opposing the death penalty for religious or political reasons, I raised my hand again and the judge told me not to raise my hand or speak again since it was already clear that I would not be selected for service.

Today was much less exciting. I sat in the jury room for about two hours before being called to voir dire, and it was explained to all of us that, if we did not make it to the jury, we had to report back to the assembly room and we'd get cycled through again until 5pm. So, unlike the times I have been let go for being a loud mouth, this time I would have to stay, regardless. At 11.30am, we were called into a trial for a man who ran a red light and wanted a jury to deem him innocent or guilty. He was up against a police officer, the ticket-writer. The woman representing the state asked if any of us had ever run a red light and been given a ticket and, this time, I raised my hand but had very little to say about it. In fact, I agreed that it did not affect my ability to fairly decide innocence or guilt. (Although I did have a minor anxiety attack over the fact that I could not remember, after I claimed that it happened, if it was indeed a red light or a stop sign that I ran several years ago. I had, after all, pledged to tell the truth.) The man who was contesting his ticket was being represented by a very young-looking lawyer who made this joke: "Now, I assume we all know what a traffic light looks like, right?" But, for some reason, I am the only one who laughed. The rest of the crew were solemnly nodding their heads, as if to show the austerity of intersections and red light-green light. He explained to us that the man was innocent until proven guilty, and asked if we all understand that it was the burden of the state to prove it to us. More solemn head-nodding. After this, the jury was picked, and I did not make the cut.

We were given an hour to have lunch and get back to the assembly room, and so I walked to a place called the Avenue Grill, which was kind of like Treebeard's, only greasier (and dirtier). The other option was to go to the police station and eat in their cafeteria. (Um, no thanks . . .) On the way to the grill, five women in their fifties befriended me, and we all sat together and ate our okra and tomatoes, mashed potatoes, and rolls. They all had iced tea and diet coke. I drank water. We gossiped about the other people in the assembly room. We guessed the age of the young lawyer. We wondered how the selection of jurors for each trial was determined. Randomness was dismissed. Someone suggested it was done by zip code. The women and I agreed that this must be the case, since we were all from different zip codes. This was also the moment when I learned that if my driver's license and my voter registration had different names on them, I would be more likely to be called. The women were very interested to know that I lived in Montrose and that I was not, as they suspected, a student, but a professor. One woman argued that teachers of any kind should not have to serve on jury duty because of missed class time. I agreed whole-heartedly.

About an hour later, we were back in the assembly room, reading, stretching, waiting, going to the bathroom, talking on cell phones, chit-chatting. There was one very talkative woman who was fully prepared with a book of crossword puzzles, little baggies of chex-mix, apple slices, water bottle, and dum-dums lollipops ("for blood sugar!"). She explained to anyone who would listen that she got called for jury duty every August, like clock-work, and had written all the dates as far back as 1992 on the envelope in which her summons arrived as proof. Slowly, the next jury pool was called for voir dire and, once more, I did not make the cut. More reading and sitting around. Finally, one of the women from lunch, Tama, struck up a conversation with me. She wanted to know what kind of literature I taught. When I told her it was African American literature, she looked very surprised, and was then full of questions. What did I teach? I showed her the book I was reading, Native Son (Richard Wright, 1940), and explained that I was teaching his work along with James Baldwin this semester to a group of seniors. She had never heard of the book or the author. For the next hour, I held this woman captive by describing the entire plot of Native Son. She was a great audience. She even took a bathroom break and then returned, full of questions: How did Bigger get caught? Why did he kill his girlfriend? How does it end? Tama told me she was an English major many years ago at University of St. Thomas, and that she was a life-long reader. The book she had with her was by Deepak Chopra and I cannot recall exactly the title, but it had something to do with peace. She had me read the first paragraph, and then gave me this knowing look, like, "Right on!"

Finally, around 3:45, it was revealed to us that no more trials were to be held today, and everyone applauded and jumped for joy and went up to collect their six dollars cash. As each person turned to leave, each shared a huge smile of sheer satisfaction. Afterwards, I said goodbye to my new friend, Tama, and she told me she'd be seeing me around.

Not such a bad thing, afterall. I came home and took a much-needed nap.

could you use it in a sentence?

My sister Mary Anne sent me an email today that paused, before it asked its question, to let me know that, as she typed her greeting to me, she suddenly remembered being a small girl and finally learning how to spell my name; and that since, for her, it was a difficult name to spell (CHARLES), she felt like it was a real accomplishment.

The simple act of sending an email (this one was asking for recommendations on the kind of yoga she should take up) suddenly, without warning, transports her all the way back to the age of -- what? -- five? six? and its attendant spelling challenges. The past is vivified. She must remember how to spell her brother's name, and then does. I imagine her, back then, so skinny and pale, roller skating on the driveway in her poncho, and the way she, and everyone else I knew, said my name. It was pronounced with two syllables, "Char-rulls," and so I believe she thought it was spelled like this: CHARELS.

(FYI -- We also pronounced my younger sister Kathleen's name with three syllables: Kath-a-leen.)

I was quick to learn how to spell, and knew how to read and write before I entered Mrs. Klopstein's kindergarten class, where we were subjected to daily spelling drills in which dim students did their best to carefully sound out the letters of each word. To me, it was agony. One afternoon, bored stiff, I decided to pretend to be stumped by the word I was given (could it have been the word "THAT"?) and then I mimicked one of the slower students whose voice started to spell in a barely audible articulation, but then grew in volume until he finally blurted out the right letter with a question mark in his voice (like this: "Dog. Um. Okay: dddddDDDDDDDD!??!?! oooooOOOOOO!??!!?! ggggggggGGGGGGG!!?!?!). Funny, though, I don't recollect Mrs. Klopstein's reaction to my performance, just the sensation of doing it and wondering if it would work.

What else could I have done?

rose, plasma, and ruby

The first two weeks of school have me wearing rose-colored glasses.

This means that I cannot help but see my students (all 105 of them!) as sheer promise and possibility, my classrooms as charmingly too warm and overcrowded, and the buildings where I teach as importantly urban and impressively unique. I cherish this, because I know that, in about four weeks, things will be drastically different, and by the time the end of the semester rolls around, I will have had just about enough.

It's hard to not write about work. A friend recently suggested that, even as it is now, perhaps this blog is too public. I have a lot of stories to tell about the students I teach, as well as thoughts on working in the university. I spend an amazing amount of time reflecting on the millions of things I say out loud in class, the back and forth I have with the kids (although they are hardly "kids," and the ages range from 18 to 65), the things they ask, the interruptions that anger me, the posturing of the perpetually thugged or goth-ed out, the inspired imitations I do of characters or events in the fiction we read, how I can make some students laugh to the point where they cannot stop. I don't want this blog to be about work, in that way, although I wonder what would happen if I decided to write a running, public critique of the institution, a la www.michaelberube.com?

A couple of notes on fruit: 1) The pomegranate is slowly but surely ripening! It has darkened to an interesting plasma-red, with just a portion at the top that has yet to turn color. 2) A correction: apparantly, my friend Kayte was the first to notice and identify the pomegranate at the very beginning of the summer. 3) I had a dream last week that there were pomegranate trees up and down Hawthorne street, all with ripening fruit. In the dream, I stepped outside and visted each one. I marveled over how gorgeous they were, and as I made my way toward the last tree at the end of the street, I noticed that the pomegranate fruits were steadily becoming more and more ripe. When I got to the last tree, I looked up and saw a pomegranate fruit that looked more like a plush children's toy than any sort of vegetation. I was absolutely stunned. It was ruby red, soft and fluffy, and I knew in my mind it was the ripest one of all.

self as cartoon (with red head)

There is an excellent representation of the apartment on 1738 West Alabama I described a while back. Go ahead and check out the latest post by Cake on her blog http://whistlingleafblower.blogspot.com. As a line drawing, I think I look pretty good.

found journal entry (april 25, 1992)

(on a ferry from Ireland to France)

All this water -- it makes me nervous. The way we move is like being sick. It's like reading a boring book. I look at the words and read them without understanding until at least the third or fourth time; my eyes drift, make circles, get tired. I squint.

Allow the major portion of your attention to sail through the waters of all sensory perception while existing as the same body in time and space, but you will not be easily located unless you understand the map.

It's not like traveling on a train or bus because there is no solid ground on which the vehicle moves. Water is soft and confuses its vesel, which tries to read it as solid ground. Here, we are cutting into that space which cannot be claimed because it is soft. Sort of like air, but with boats.

There is more of an attempt at an illusion. Your mind tries to convince you of the sureness of the body of water. Air does not offer that illusion.

Dizzy feelings are fun when you are a child because they are a new way of perceiving things. Later in life, you learn how to get sick off of this alteration in perception because it interferes with what you have established as normal. You can no longer enjoy the sensations because you've moved past the stage of fascination.

A straight line is no longer a straight line.

i think of persephone (don't you?)

There's a pomegranate tree in the back yard, bearing fruit.

What a huge surprise to look up and see something hanging, like an apple, from a tangled mess of what has looked like, for the past two years, knotted vines and trash trees. Melanie is the one who identified it as a pomegranate and, since then, Hank has clipped the vines away from the tree, and now we can see it in all of its glory. The fruit has only partially ripened, with ruby red stripes running from its base toward about half-way up the fruit, and we wonder if it might not ever come to edible fruition. But everytime I see it, I feel, what? -- interested. And as a result I've become more interested in all of the plant life in the back, including the potted citranella, the jade plant, the carribean hot pepper plant (off of which I recently picked and cooked one of its firey fruits), and the other weird looking plants that I cannot identify, but which are definitely in conversation with one another.

Out back, there is a garage with a wooden garage apartment above it where our neighbor, a poet named Eddie, lives. To the right, there is a fenced off area that the original owners used to keep their dogs in, and now is a small, heavily shaded plot of dirt. I've been using the back corner of the area as a composting site for all of the vegetable waste I generate (which is lots, when you're a vegetarian who actually eats vegetables), but nothing grows in this weird little rectangle of earth, most likely because it is surrounded by pecan trees that drop their inedible nuts all over the place.

Two of the trees that throw shade in the back are in love with each other. I noticed it right away, when we first looked at the apartment before we moved in. They lean into each other, as if the one tree came up behind the other and gave him a hug, or caught him in his arms as he was about to fall backwards. They seem very happy, although I wonder if they might not be jealous of the two other trees, also in love (although not as noticeable to the untrained eye), who have given each other lots of space, but stretch upwards together in a magnificent way, touching only at the top.

The duplex we live in has all kinds of vines on the property, including the scary looking ones that choke the trees and grow along the neighbor's short fence on the east side of the house, as well as the ones I really like -- the fine-looking skinny ones that make a soft lace over the windows out front. In the morning, the sun comes through these vines, bathing the room in a sleepy spring green, and at night, when cars turn around at our dead end, their headlights catch the vines and make the most incredible shadows on the wall. (I know, vines are bad for buildings, but remember we rent, not own, this place.)

When Hank cut down the ropy vine from the east side of the property, he discovered some thriving garlic that out old neighbors must have planted, and I snipped their spicy sprouts and chopped them into the marinade I made for last night's tofu and broccoli stir-fry. Hank broke off a large lavender and pink flower and its circular jade green petals from the cluster of wild looking overgrowth near the pomegranate tree. It looks really groovy in this brown glass vase I have.

I recently explained to a new mother that I believed that when plants feel threatened, they grow fruit as one last ditch effort to somehow survive, which, to my mind, would explain the pomegranate -- the vine was choking it so the tree had to make fruit before it went to seed. I thought this was common knowledge (and I don't know if it really is true), but the new mother seemed surprised, and then took a long look at her beautiful baby girl.

Johnny, that's no way to write a blog entry

No longer a K*mart, the building behind which a crew of like-minded outcasts and I spent the marjority of our pre-teen and early-teenage years is now a Target. Nearby, there's now a Wal*mart. Gone is the Shop Rite where I bagged groceries, cleaned the tops of refrigerators, shoveled congealing garbage from the loading docks, and put away the produce as a teenager. Delran has supersized its strip malls.

And that's okay, as long as, down the highway, the trucker motels still advertise mirrored ceilings and waterbeds. Although, as my younger sister pointed out, they are less the destination for adolescent deflowerings and more locations to house wards of the state.

Because Renee asked: In the early-1980s, when my grandfather moved in with my family, my parents decided to convert half of our garage into a little room where my Poppop lived (I'm tired of writing "my grandfather" -- I'll call him by which I knew him, although I think it smacks of Northeast Philly shanty Irish). My parents realized that Poppop, in his early-80s, was done with apartment living when some peculiar behavior (his percolating coffee maker melted onto the electric burner, some car crashes) indicated that it might be a good idea for alternate arrangements.

I was ten when Poppop moved in, and he consistently called me "Johnny," which is the name of his son, my uncle. It was the kind of thing I really didn't know how to begin to correct. I think there were a few attempts to remind him that I was going by Charles (my mother: "No, Dad, that's your Grandson, Charles!"), and he occasionally remembered ("J--, J--, Charles . . .") but, in the end, Johnny it was. He was, after all, a man in his eighties.

So, like this: "Oh, hey! Good morning, Johnny!" "Johnny, did you take out the garbage?" "Johnny, I'll be at Grandparents Day tomorrow at your school." "Johnny, turn down the radio." "Johnny, have you seen my teeth?"

Get it?

I'm not sure about everyone else's grandfather, but mine was an aging, drinking man who smoked a lot of cigars. I felt a sense of awe around him, but never that cuddly grandfather feeling that gets described in Hallmark cards, although I loved him, dearly. Poppop was also a die-hard Irish Catholic. Both my parents were working, and when my sisters and I would get home from Saint Charles Borromeo grade school, we'd find Poppop smoking a cigar, praying the rosary, gazing out our front window: "Oh, hello, Johnny. How was school?" He dressed in a button up shirt, bow tie, slacks, and a jacket every day of his life, even when it was a sweltering summer Sunday. Going to mass was very imporant for him. (I'm sure he must have been proud of my stint as an altar boy.)

There were these Sundays when he'd get up at 5am for mass at 11:15am, and prepare for services. At 6am he'd start to call out for my mother, asking if it wasn't true that we'd be late for church, and how much longer we'd be. (Perhaps this explains my mother's own reaction formation, perpetual late-comer she has always been.) Coming into the kitchen, where we'd find a fully clothed cane-tapping man with an annoyed look on his face, we'd ask Poppop if he had at least had any breakfast? some cereal? toast? orange juice -- anything? His reply was always the same: "I'll be fine. I had a nice glass of tepid water about an hour ago."

The Glass of Tepid Water remark was great for a number of reasons: it signified an everyday belief in the practice of Catholic martyrdom on a local level (no, really, I'll be just fine, here, suffering) and it resonates along the generations of my grandfather's children (in terms of what is now called passive-aggressive behavior) and a postmodern twist in its final incarnation of what my siblings and I understand as communication along the lines of sly, hyper-aware meta-commentary that restores folkloric value to what might be seen as quotidian teasing.

Or so I'd like to believe.

first ghost (and granny creeps)

I dreamed last night that Stephen Beard (pronounced "Bay-yurd") came into my grandfather's room. The dream was short. Nothing happened, he just stood there and looked at me. Stephen was the boy who lived across the street who had orange hair and freckles. He was enormous (not fat, but what you might call big-boned -- much larger than the other kids, and held back a few times in grade school). The neighborhood girls called him Moose. I was afraid of him and tried to walk in the opposite direction or not go outside when I'd see him. He shot himself, and died, in the garage behind his house when we were teenagers.

I know, morbid.

The other thing is that there is that there is this doll in my grandfather's room.

My grandfather (a master story-teller) made up stories for my mother and her siblings when they were kids and later, when my sisters and my cousins and I were kids, told them to us. The characters were named Blackie and Whitey, taken from the black and white dogs that appeared on the label of a brand of Scotch he was (quite) fond of drinking. Blackie and Whitey (in my mind they were fully racialized) spent a lot of time running from a character named Granny Creeps, an old woman who lived in the woods. She caged and tortured children for a living. I remember being on long car rides with my grandfather, and he'd point out the window to some dense trees: "Back in there -- that's where she lives, kids."

At some point, my Great Uncle Tom (my grandfather's brother) made a Granny Creeps doll. When I hold her to her full height, she reaches the bottom of my rib cage, which makes her about five and a half feet in length. She is stuffed, like a huge sock doll, but built to realistic little-old-lady proportions. Her head is weird, thin and flat, about the size of a medium pizza, but more football-shaped. It's made out of some kind of plaster that is painted pink and white, but it has cracked and faded over the years, so the wrinkles around her eyes, mouth, and chin appear even more exaggerated. Her face is painted on, and she has heavily lidded eyes and a mole on her left cheek. There is grey and black yarn that has been glued to the head, which is tied in the back into a bun. One of the strands of yarn has detached, and hangs like a dreadlock to her shoulder. There is a bobby-pin that pretends to hold back one side of the hair. Two gold hoops hang from either side of the head, even there are no ears. She wears muslin [sp?] bloomers, and a greenish-black dress decorated with tiny gold flowers, topped with ancient-looking lace at the neck, and held in place by an amber brooch. Her hands are cartoonish, like pink mittens. Her legs are covered by a dark plaid hose, and her feet are black pointed cloth boots with three white buttons on each one. The dress comes down to about her knees. She can sit upright, cross her legs, and fold her arms. As I write this, she is sitting next to me.

I should get a digital camera.

there's a ghost in (that) home (watching you without me)

I'm headed back to the house on Borton Mill Court for the weekend. Off the Route 130, a couple of blocks back from the K*Mart, the Arby's, the McDonald's, the Taco Bell, and the high school I attended in Delran, New Jersey, where I spent my formative years. My father turns 60 soon (the same age, weirdly, to me, as the recently deceased Syd Barrett and our, unfortunately, very much alive asshole of a president).

This will be a small family reunion and gathering that culminates in my father's wish to go with all of us (my sisters, my mom, my nieces) to the Philadelphia Zoo on Saturday. The excursion is a nostalgic reenactment of the time, when I was in the fourth grade, that my dad took my sisters and me out of school and into Philly for the day to battle a severe case of what he called his Spring Fever.

I will be staying, for the first two nights, in the room where my grandfather lived (and died) in the 1980s. (The room I grew up in, alas, was long ago transformed, first, into a storage room, and now serves as a kind of "office". But still, on the wall next to where my bed used to be, I will find the small message: "Why, God?" I carved it there in a moment of adolescent fright.)

Every time I sleep in my grandfather's old bed, I dream about ghosts. I'm ready.