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Sunday, March 25, 2012

 

Why Isn't Everyone Talking About Kevin?


I can't stop thinking about the film We Need to Talk About Kevin. I had seen the trailer long before the Oscar picks came out, and had mourned its lack of recognition, even before seeing the movie (which was only just released in Bellingham this weekend). The film was a work of art, to say the least, with perfectly paced parallel story lines, rich metaphor, and stunning use of shape, color, and texture to create maximum visual impact (I don't want to say too much here, but you'll see what I mean when you see it for yourself), including a scene I can't forget where Tilda Swinton's character is forced to hide in a grocery store, and the camera captures her standing for several seconds against a wall of perfectly lined rows of tomato soup cans. And that's just the start of it. Swinton is a complete knockout. There are stories about parents with deeply troubled children that fall into the trap of cliche, focusing too much on the question of nature vs. nurture, but Swinton's character, a mother wrestling (sometimes literally) with a badmouthed, all around dark and disturbed child, surprised me up until the very last scene. John C. Reilly is always a favorite, especially in his serious roles (which seem to be rare these days)—think his unforgettable performance in Magnolia—and the trio of young actors who depict Kevin throughout various seasons of life are all mesmerizing and downright creepy (in a good way). Most of all, the final scene had me challenging myself with questions of grace and redemption, questions I thought I had answers to, and I'm still thinking about it, and I'm still bothered, and that's got to be a mighty good sign.
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Saturday, March 24, 2012



 

Charles In Charge

It's a long story, but about two years ago, my husband met a guy named Charles who had started his own organic catering business, just in time to cater our wedding reception. Charles was a one man show for our wedding that September, putting everything together and taking it all down, in an old venue that didn't even have a kitchen. He cut our wedding cake and served it to our guests, mastered as bartender for the beer, wine and champagne fountain, and provided an Italian spread for lunch (including appetizer plates) to feed over fifty at a price so cheap I won't even reveal it because there's no way you're even going to believe me.

After our wedding, we never heard another word about his organic catering company, and we didn't run into Charles and his wife at art walks on Friday nights like we used to, and it almost felt like he had descended from heaven to feed our wedding guests and had vanished afterward in a poof. And then, one blessed Saturday a few months ago, we found ourselves in Village Books, desperately wanting coffee and heading to the fiction section anyway, and suddenly, the coffee shop on the top level that we hadn't gone to in years, had been transformed into a hot-spot for Fairhaven-dwellers, tourists, college students, and the Bellingham elite, with a hip new food menu and a bearded man whose impeccable taste didn't take long to recognize, casting his charm from behind the counter, running the entire show. We had finally found him, and he was absolutely thriving. Ever since, we have made a practice of visiting Charles, the owner at the Book Fare Cafe (http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/88/816105/restaurant/Book-Fare-Cafe-Bellingham), for coffee on Saturday afternoons, because it's so damn good, and so is Charles.



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Monday, March 19, 2012




March 19, 2012 - The Third Anniversary of My Grandmother’s Departure

My maternal grandmother bought me a manicure kit when I was ten years old to try and get me to stop biting my fingernails. Her nails were perfect and long and she had pale skin and freckled hands, hands she would always say looked old, but they never looked old to me. I would watch her file her nails, then paint them, as we sat together on her bright orange floral davenport (as she would call it) in her duplex in Alameda.
            She had three children and five grandchildren, two sisters, Gertrude and Helen, and a brother, Al, who died tragically in an accident when they were both teenagers. Al had gone on a motorcycle ride with a friend, and he had invited my grandmother to go with them, and she had said no, and when the two young men arrived on the scene (a field or wherever it was), there was an accident with a gun (they were to go shooting), and when the gun went off, Al got shot. She kept his dark flannel shirt in her dresser drawer (the dresser that now holds my clothes and my husband’s clothes), and she would take it out and show me the bullet hole in the shirt, the hole that had killed him, and I would place my finger over it, and I would miss him, although I had never met him.
Aunt Gert and Aunt Helen came to visit for my grandmother’s 80th birthday some years ago (my grandmother was the middle daughter, the other two sisters are still alive), and one afternoon during their stay, we had gathered at my parents’ house and I sat on the bed in the guest room off the garage, where they kept the piano (that has since been sold), listening as my grandmother and her sisters played songs from the hymnal my mother kept there, so sure of themselves and the harmonies they belted that it seemed nothing in our lives could ever change.
Back in California, when I was young, I would sit alone in the front row of First Baptist Church and listen to her sing in the choir. She would hand me a sandwich baggie filled with marshmallows and chocolate chips and tell me to sit quietly while she sang, and that she would come for me soon. There were so many people in the choir, so many faces, wearing robes that rippled with every movement of the arm, like the current of a wave when they turned the pages of their hymnals, my grandmother casting a look of love out to me, a young girl dangling her legs from a long wooden pew, waiting to see what was next.


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Wednesday, March 14, 2012


Pedestrianism

                    I have never had a driver’s license. When I was in high school, I passed driver’s education, and I’m pretty sure my parents would have gotten me a car (it's what all the kids wait for, right?), but I had no desire to drive. I took the class because everyone was taking the class and I thought it was what I was supposed to do, what I needed to do in order to become a proper adult. I held my breath and tried not to think while driving the freeway, I studied the book from cover to cover (like a good student should) and took the written tests, but I told my parents soon after taking driver's education that I thought driving was crazy, and I couldn’t believe everyone wanted to do it. It seemed like such an insane thing to want, to be given that much power, you could run over a curb and into a tree, or over an animal in the road, or you could even kill a human being, and the fact that kids were signing up for this, the fact that they were jumping up and down in anticipation of this, was nuts.
                    I have since driven on a couple of occasions. The first being sometime in college when I was in my brother’s truck and he pulled over because he thought he had popped his knee out of joint. I drove us home because he was in pain, and the entire time he was yelling because I was all over the road. The other happened several summers ago in Idaho when my husband tried to teach me how to drive. I drove quite a bit that summer and even got close to taking the driving test, but talked myself out of it not long after getting pulled over by a cop for turning the wrong way down a one-way street (without a driver’s license). The cop told me I was worse than a drunk driver on the road.
                    There is something to be said for being a pedestrian. I don’t do it for noble reasons (although wouldn’t it be nice if I did?), but out of my unshakable fear of doing this normal thing that every other adult in society does without thinking, and although I’m not the slightest bit proud of my fear (I'm embarrassed), it’s worth noting that this state of pedestrianism has taken me to a place I never would have found if I had gone and driven a car like everyone else. I like walking down the street to the drugstore to get what I need, slow enough to see what’s for sale at the sporting goods store on the corner, to wonder, like I always do, why the bakery across the street uses florescent lighting and how the people inside can stand it, slow enough to stop at the burger joint no one ever goes to and get a soft serve ice cream for a dollar, to see who happens to be working at the 7-11 (the old guy or the young guy), and to notice what’s growing in the vegetable garden three houses down on my way back home. Maybe I’m a grandmother and should be living in a different time, but the bus is just fine with me, the train is a nice ride, and there is something perfectly sturdy about my own two feet.



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Monday, March 12, 2012



     

304 S. Van Buren

     There was this little studio apartment in the upstairs portion of a two story house, and from the reading chair in the corner, you could look out the window every morning and see squirrels running on the roof. You lived across the street from an old brick Presbyterian Church that had rummage sales on occasion, and since you loved rummage sales, you would watch from the window to see when the Oldsmobiles pulled up so you could beat the old ladies for the steals. The church had weddings too, weddings on sunny days, and you could watch bridal parties gather on the lawn.
            
     You think about this studio, like you think about the people you love. It had a small bathroom upon entering, and when you first moved there, you and your best friend (who helped you move, but left shortly thereafter for France) dumped your combined makeup in the sink and spread all of your clothes on the bed and took Polaroids of yourselves in matching outfits, smoking your shared pack of Camels, when you went out to explore the town. This studio, your studio, had a seemingly enormous kitchen with tall ceilings and an olive green stove and you couldn’t even count the number of dance parties you had there. The kitchen opened to a small room where you kept your bed, the daybed from your childhood (that you sold to a used furniture store for twenty bucks when you left ), your grandfather’s typewriter, and a small closet for your clothes. In this studio, you had everything you needed. You drank red wine from your grandmother’s Lenox china cups because you couldn’t keep them packed in boxes any longer, and you sat on the stool at the kitchen table and tried to write something, and you made friends with the fat neighbor cat, the only cat you ever liked, and took tequila shots one night, the last time you ever drank that much, and awoke the next morning in your bathrobe with your head in a garbage basket. This place knew the things you kept quietly to yourself, the things you believed to be true, the things you most wanted, and for three years of your life, this place held you.

Photo: sitting on the porch, October 2008.

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Sunday, March 11, 2012



30’s

            My husband turned 33 on Friday. We celebrated by going for pizza and having my parents and brother and sister-in-law over to our house for an ice cream party. I bought crazy yellow paper napkins that said “Happy Birthday” on them. We made our own sundaes with hot fudge and caramel and whipped cream and cherries, and made a mess of the kitchen. We sat around the living room and ate while he ripped open his gifts and the wrapping paper piled on the floor. We presented him with funny cards. We listened to Tears for Fears on the record player. It doesn’t really feel like we’re getting any older.
            I turned 30 last July, and before approaching the monumental date, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it. I didn’t really know what to think. Everyone tiptoes around the big 30th birthday, like it’s this evil thing that comes for each and every one of us, whether we like it or not, to rob us of our youth. I hear so many people say things like, “By the time I’m 30, I want to…” or “When I’m 30 I want to be established…” or “30’s too old for…” I just sort of jumped into the fire and hoped for the best. What else can you do? You can’t stop it. It’s going to come for you. So it came. And this is what I’ve found to be true:
            I feel really good. I’m a lot more sure of my purpose as a human being on this earth than I was five years ago. I was stumbling around in my 20’s, and I did a lot of embarrassing things. I said a lot of stupid stuff to the boys I liked, and I wore a lot of wild outfits, I let my friend pierce my nose with a gun meant for piercing ears, and I got a tramp-stamp. I am permanently marked by my 20’s. I went to graduate school because I wanted to become a writer and I accumulated a lot of debt. I was trying to figure out who I wanted to read, and how I wanted to write.
It’s a lot of work figuring out how you’d like to present yourself to the world and what you’d like to invest in, so you’ve got to try some things out and do a little investigating around. I think I’ve finally come to a place in my life where I’m happy with the person I am and proud of the things I’ve done, and I know a thing or two about what I’d like to do next. Also, I don’t think there’s an appropriate time, an appropriate age, for getting married or for having a baby, or the next baby, or for going to graduate school. I like to rest in this knowledge. The bottom line is, I don’t want to be 21 again, and as time continues its perpetual march, I’m going to take it as it comes, one day at a time, exactly where I am.

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Tuesday, March 6, 2012






Le Chat Noir

Le Chat Noir, otherwise known as The Black Cat, is the coziest spot for a happy hour date in all of Bellingham. It’s in Fairhaven, in the Marketplace building, red brick and up flights and flights of stairs, and if you sit by the window you can see a great view of Fairhaven, and if you’re lucky, like tonight, you might even see a sunset. The happy hour special I like best is a bottle of wine and cheese fondue for two for twenty bucks. Twenty bucks! So you can sit there for a couple of hours and eat and drink (where else can you get fondue in town?) and talk, and if you happen to be with a good friend, like I was tonight, there is pretty much nothing better in the world.
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Sunday, March 4, 2012



Haircuts

                    Have you ever cut your own hair (other than that time when you were a kid and stole the scissors from the drawer in the kitchen when your mom wasn’t looking and snipped a chunk out of your bangs)? I haven’t been to a proper salon in six years. I have messed my hair up a lot (and vowed never to touch another person’s head as long as I live, due to the fact that two boys and a girl were forced to shave their heads after my work was done, one of the boys being my husband during the 2008 presidential election when the footage was streaming on the television and I was so nervous and wanting Obama to win so bad that my hands wouldn't stop shaking), but something about cutting my own hair feels so good. I have heard people make drastic changes to their hair when they are about to experience a big life change, or if they go through a breakup, or if they’re depressed. I like to cut my hair off because it makes me feel powerful. If you can cut your hair, you can do anything. Give it a try.

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Why The Descendants Doesn’t Work

                    The movie is intriguing to me because I enjoy George Clooney and believe he is more than capable of delivering beautiful performances (The Ides of March, for instance, was a beauty). His performance in The Descendants, however, was not his finest. Don’t continue reading this post unless you’ve seen the movie or don’t care (I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to resist giving plot points away), and please keep in mind that my comments stem from a love for George Clooney, the knowledge that he has done and will continue to do things much greater than this (Good Night and Good Luck!), and the conviction that the Academy made a poor choice in nominating Clooney for Best Actor this season (thankfully, he didn't win). The truth is, it could have been just beautiful. The film was set in Hawaii, and the plot involved ripe father/daughter tensions, which I am always a sucker for, yet the dialogue felt hollow and unbelievable (note Clooney’s middle of the night heart to heart with the dude his oldest daughter brings along on their quest to find his wife’s lover). Somehow, the biggest, most transformative moments in the movie that should have felt most gut-wrenching, felt surprisingly empty. For instance, at the end of the movie when his wife is about to get taken off life support (after being in a coma throughout the entirety of the film), George Clooney’s character says goodbye to her at her bedside and completely breaks down, recalling all the ways their marriage has changed his life, and normally in this sort of moment at the end of a movie, after the hours of emotional investment in the characters, particularly moments like these of life or death, I find myself completely lost in the world of whatever they happen to be feeling, in this case, their deep sorrow. In this movie, the goodbye-to-the-wife-in-a-coma-on-her-death-bed moment felt almost comedic because Clooney ends up blubbering something like, “My life! My love! My joy! My pain!” and when you don’t care about the characters, it just doesn’t matter, and George Clooney suddenly looks ridiculous and so does the woman with all the makeup lying in the hospital bed. The Descendants somehow managed to birth a fascinating familial predicament in an absolutely beautiful place and take the heart right out of it. Sorry, George, not even you could save this movie from itself. 
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Winona Forever?

                    There was a time when Winona Ryder was so hip, it was almost painful. She was everywhere and she was in everything, and we were all in love with her. She had impeccable intuition for choosing roles that were just right, and for a time, it seemed every single one of her performances made history. Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands was a raving cult classic that belonged to an entire generation. Heathers broke through as something so dark and creepy and unlike anything we’d ever seen and we just couldn’t stop talking about it. Reality Bites was a love letter to the 1990’s. Her incredible performances in The Crucible and Girl, Interrupted furthered our devotion (those doe eyes!), and that haircut, that pixie haircut absolutely changed the world. We were all so nuts over Winona that we all might as well have had Johnny Depp’s famous tattoo burned into our flesh. And then, suddenly, she was gone.
                    Why, I ask? I mean, we all know of the shoplifting incident (big deal) and, well, that happened a long time ago, and does anyone even care? Do we really care? As a collective, we are willing to forgive worlds of sins, and celebrities, like all of us, have their “issues.” They get checked in and out of rehab, they drink and get D.U.I.’s, they spend the night in jail, they make sex tapes, they’ve got their drug addictions and their breakdowns, but hey, we forgave Robert Downey, Jr. and invited him back into our world like nothing happened, so what’s this deal with Winona Ryder? Yes, she was in Black Swan last year for about two seconds, and yes, she was wonderful, but where was she before and where has she been since and why isn’t she cast in lead roles and why don’t we love her anymore? I really want to know. This has been bothering me for years.
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Amtrak

                    Each year as winter fades and spring begins to show her face (slowly but surely here in the state of Washington) I get this crazy itch to ride a train. There is nothing like a train ride. Traveling across the country by train, in this fast paced world of airplanes, automatically has the power to transport you back to a different time, a slower time, a time where you can actually feel the motion of the tracks and the beat of your own heart. These days, I take Amtrak every now and then on weekends from Bellingham to Seattle and back for a shopping trip or to visit friends, but it’s just not enough. A few years back, when I was a student and had a lot more freedom and extended breaks (oh, how I miss them), I took Amtrak’s Empire builder alone from Spokane, Washington to Memphis, Tennessee. I had an extended stop in Chicago and some books on tape (I wish I’d written down which), and nothing but time and space for days. I never knew Montana was such a big state, but I saw every bit of it.
                    I met a retired Methodist minister on the train. I can’t remember his name, but I do remember he had a bright white magnificent head of hair and an exceptionally friendly spirit. He was riding the train for the first time since his wife’s death. He talked to me about his wife, about how much he loved her, how they had done everything together, and how it was so strange being in the world without her. He talked about how much they had loved their Amtrak trips and how the train had been their thing. I felt like a terrible person because I was trying very hard to read my book, and this old guy kept talking to me, and he kept talking, and there was nothing but time and space on this train and nowhere to escape. I felt bad because I knew I was a good faker, that there was no way he could tell, no indication by my face or the questions I was asking him about his life, but I am a selfish person and not so kind, and I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to be in my own world on this train, not with him or with anyone else. I wanted to be quiet and to escape in my books and my thoughts, like I had planned.
                    When it came time to make reservations for dinner in the dining car, I was starving. I was always starving on the train. Meals on the Empire Builder happen like this: one of the dining staff walks around and asks if you want to eat, and if so, you pick a time and they take your reservation. The dining car experience is one of my favorite parts of riding the train. The food isn’t anything great, but the food doesn’t matter so much as the experience of using heavy silver and crisp white table linens, drinking your wine or a coke or whatever you happen to drink, while rolling past everything in sight.
                    On my journey south and back, I typically ate alone, or at a table with a group of people traveling together who talked amongst themselves, but that day, the retired Methodist minister asked me to be his dinner date. I was humbled by the invitation. I put my book away and I didn’t pick it up again. We walked together to the dining car and he bought me a cheeseburger. We went through a dark tunnel and I can’t remember where we were, or what state we were in, but I do know that the sun was just beginning to set when we came out on the other side, and the light that fell over us was beautiful enough to make me cry.

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Why Jesus Would Dig Karaoke Bars

            I’ve always had this dream that I would find a place and love it and it would love me back. Last summer I stumbled upon my place, almost by accident, a hidden gem in a rotting shopping center across the street from the house we had just moved into on Tulip Road. The bar is called Ye Old Village Inn Pub and Eatery. This place, this pub, continues to exceed my hopes of being known and loved and it’s mine every Friday night.
            On Fridays at The Village, they have karaoke. After a long week at work in an office, there’s nothing I like more than a liberating walk across the street for a glass of wine ($4) or a PBR ($2), and a night of song and dance with others in my ‘hood. The karaoke is run by a guy who refers to himself as Rocky the Italian Stallion (imagine a bald head, Aviators, butt tight jeans and some kind of sparkly bedazzled t-shirt on a man giving all he’s got to making love to the microphone stand, and you’ve got it). 
            The bartenders are always the same, and they often forget to add drinks to our tab. They know what we like and we tip them well. I am told there is a chalkboard in the men’s restroom (someone actually took a photo of it on my birthday last summer) and a couple of weeks ago, it was reported that someone had written “Rocky likes cock.”
            There is a lot to love about the place, but I live for the regulars. There are many middle agers, but Bellingham is a college town, so you’ve got youngsters too. It’s a rare blend of the two. You’ve got Justin who constantly goes outside to smoke pot and usually sings angry songs by Disturbed, but one time, for whatever reason, he belted out Seal’s Kiss from a Rose. There’s the loud guy who always wears a Warren Moon jersey, there’s the chick who sings that one country song and nails it every time, there’s this guy named JB who works at the liquor store down the road and, one night, sang the most beautiful rendition of Dock on the Bay that I’ve ever heard, a guy who sings Elton John ballads and looks an awful lot like Zach Galifianakis, and, our favorite, Papa James, a big guy with a greasy ponytail, who got up on stage in sweatpants and a windbreaker one night and absolutely stunned us all by how much he sounded like Cat Stevens.
            The regulars in this bar gladly accept each other’s song and openly respond to the music. There is no judgment. It isn’t rare to witness dance parties break out between the tables. It isn’t rare to witness the old and the young twirling each other or forming a long human train around the bar. The regulars applaud and whoop and scream and encourage the singer at the microphone, and always make a huge to-do about the performance at the end of each song, whether it happens to be Papa James singing or someone who totally stinks. I can’t help but think that Jesus might dig this scene, these strangers loving each other so willingly, and that heaven might be something like this karaoke bar, a collection of tired misfits at the end of the week, singing and dancing with all our might.
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Pinterest-ing

            I hate myself for being so Pinterest-ed. I worry that Oprah likes it. I don’t actually want to like it. I struggle with my addiction because I don’t want to be trendy (it’s actually my worst nightmare), I don’t want to spend the time staring at the screen (there are things to see and places to go!) , I don’t have an I-pad (or even know how to spell it), I don’t want to buy a freaking Kindle (in the lunchroom at work, a software company mind you, I was reading a 500 page biography and couldn’t get anything read because I was told time and again, by every person who walked through, how I needed a Kindle), and I don’t like a lot of stuff other women like (let’s be honest, this site is for chicks). There are so many reasons not to be on Pinterest, but at the top of the list is this: I don’t want to see stuff for babies and wedding crap.
It all started when I heard some mention of it at work, a friend of mine telling me how much his wife loves it, and the very next day a friend of mine (who has good taste and owns a darling shop just south of here) invited me to join. Since I had just heard about it the day before from a friend whose wife is trustworthy and then again from another trustworthy source, I thought Pinterest and I must be fated. So I told this shop owning friend of mine I’d join up, under the condition that she’d help with any and all technological questions I came across in the process (or moments of just not “getting it”). She promised, so I started on my Pinterest journey, and while I occasionally cringe when I realize what I’m actually doing, I’ve learned some important things along the way.
            I’ve learned that a person can spend hours at the computer looking at pretty pictures and lose all conception of time and space. It’s true, and it’s wonderful. It feels satisfyingly voyeuristic to spy on your friends and their boards and see what they like, almost as satisfying as finding and reading their top secret diaries. Except somehow, their stuff isn’t top secret, and you get to spy all you want (you can take your time!). When I started on Pinterest, I wasn’t sure I’d like many pins (baby stuff and wedding crap), but I’ve been humbled by the gorgeous black and white photo of Vivien Leigh in that excessive dress, that Punch Drunk Love movie poster I’d never seen with the crazy bright illustrations, and that magnificent blue wallpaper I’d love to replicate the moment I become a homeowner. I still think it might be better use of my time to read a book, or fold the laundry, or talk to my husband, but what I’ve learned from Pinterest is that it’s a great big world out there, that I’m hungry, and sometimes a girl just can’t help herself.
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