n-judah love song

cuteness therapy

In an effort to move the melodrama down the page a bit, (and to recover from having read the New York Times today, which, really, just…don’t) I bring you...cute overload. If you haven't seen it yet, be prepared to be tortured...by KITTENS. And puppies, and iguanas...

TAKE THAT! And THAT!

Seriously, the first genetic engineer who figures out the Permanent Kitten is going to win a Nobel Prize.

mothers/daughters

from 45 Mercy Street, by Anne Sexton:

"I open my pocketbook,
as women do,
and fish swim back and forth
between the dollars and the lipstick.
I pick them out,
one by one
and throw them at the street signs,
and shoot my pocketbook
into the Charles River.
Next I pull the dream off
and slam into the cement wall
of the clumsy calendar
I live in,
my life,
and its hauled up
notebooks."

from Searching for Mercy Street, by her daughter Linda Gray Sexton:

"Without knowing it, Mother passes out to me her powers of observation. She shows me how to watch, how to see, how to record what transpires in the world around me. This is how I inherit her greatest gift..."

These two women, mother and daughter, wonderful writers both, express in a few elegant phrases what I wish I was concise enough to say. Anne being among the first of many "confessional" writers, to whom many a blogger owes a debt of gratitude that borders on plagiarism. Linda explores instead what it's like to grow up with a mother whose brilliance is often blinding.

I've always referred to my own mother jokingly as "superlady", a woman who not only has worked nearly her whole life at things she excels at, but is getting a PhD in her field, holding a full-time job, and is also a wife and mother of nearly 30 years. A woman who can, in a blink, be both sarcastically sharp and self-deprecatingly funny. She's toughed through some life dramas I wouldn't wish on anyone. She's my opposite in so many ways, and yet, as daughters will, I always strive to be like her, albeit in my own way. She taught me to guard my independence with a fierceness, while cherishing my family and friends. To joke into submission whatever problems come about. That "life ain't fair, kid. Get used to it".

When I found out a few weeks ago that she had a tumor removed, and would have to go through preventative chemo, whole worlds shifted, quick as an earthquake.

I don't want to sound melodramatic, after all, that's one of the worst mistakes one can commit in her book. "Oh, it's not that bad," I can hear her saying, "after all, they've gotten it all, and here I am, losing weight!" (Losing weight having often been a point of pride in our family.)

Mom has never been one I worried about. After all, she's a runner, a skinless chicken-eater, violently allergic to drugs as mild as pot and sudafed, never smoked, can't look at a screwdriver without going cross-eyed.

She's about to face, today, what I wish no one had to. Chemo calls back a time when doctors were barbers. The fact that we can't come up with something better than an atom bomb to the body just makes me angry.

I cut my hair the other week partly in solidarity. I mean, I didn't shave my head or anything, after all, I love her, but I'm still vain as hell. She'd do the exactly the same for me. Alike and different.

She's a tough woman, this mama of mine. She's spare with outward emotional shows, while my father and I carry our hearts on our sleeves and prefer to pour out our emotions on you, our unsuspecting victims. My mom prefers to be the watcher, removed, to find that emotional release in reading books or listening to music. So, when she tells you something true, it's special, because you know she means what she says. One book of poetry I've had for years has her scrawl inside: "For my daughter, who has always spoken in poetry and prose."  The fact of her writing it for me, and the honest emotion, lets me know what a strong, lovely mother she is.  She loves the fact that her child is an oddity to her, and loves me in spite, or maybe even because of it. Instructive in these small movements, she shows that's what real love is: you accept who those you love the most really are. Despite if you really understand them.

Poetry and prose aside, Lady, as you would say, "Katy bar the door!" against all these things, and go kick some cancer ass.

I love you -
Kid

links for 2006-03-29

• William Orbit - Hello Waveforms
  my latest review for SF Station
  (tags: music writing)
• big companies buy small brands with big values
  tom's of maine and the body shop bought by mega-companies
  (tags: finance activism)
• My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
  nifty website for the reissue of eno/byrne's seminal work
  (tags: mp3 music art remix)

punishment suits the crime?

Dr. Salvatore J. Culosi, better known in my hometown area as Sal, was swarmed by a SWAT team while they tried to serve a petty gambling warrant. The person who shot and accidentally killed him is a 17-year vet of the police force, and by all accounts should not have had his finger on the trigger during the arrest of an unarmed suspect - yet no charges are being pressed.  His family has started a blog dedicated to getting Sal justice here.

Sal seems to me to be any of the guys I grew up with - affable, good job, little house, close circle of friends - when circumstances went horribly wrong. Anyone who has known an ACTUAL bookie knows the difference between a pro and someone making a sports bet. Necessitating a SWAT team? And the immediate use of deadly force on an unarmed citizen?  This smacks of unaccountability to me, and of a general sense of "protect your own" among a police force who should rather live by the motto "protect and serve". Something just smells wrong.