Pre-prelabor day fourteen

The other night I was laying in bed, firmly cocooned in my pillow fort (that's three on the headboard, one under my hip, one behind my back, one between my legs, and a giant body pillow between Paul and I). Waves of pain were emanating from what I'm guessing is my cervix. In between chanting my new relaxation mantra--ow, ow, ouch, ow--I said to Paul, I've gone through my whole life without ever really feeling pain. This made him laugh, which validated my sense of comic timing (you have to cling to your meager, intermittent successes when you look like a giant pear and feel like there's a metal rod shoved through your back).

It's also true. When I was five I broke my arm. That must have hurt but I remember the cool cast more than the pain. I had cramps when I was a teenager, but good-old BCP took care of that for many years. So I'm studying all these unusual pains--the aches, the stabs, the discomforts. This is what I wanted: to go through labor without medication so I could feel the full experience. What a dork. And we haven't even started yet.

I often think about that scene in Lawrence of Arabia in which O'Toole holds his hand over the match to show off his super-human pain tolerance (which must have seemed shocking in the pre-Fear Factor, pre-Eastern-philosophy-saturated 1960s American culture), then invites another guy to try it.

William Potter: Ooh! It damn well 'urts!
T.E. Lawrence: Certainly it hurts.
Officer: What's the trick then?
T.E. Lawrence: The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.

I've been trying to find this in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom but it appears this sum-up is the invention of a screenwriter who wanted to encapsulate Lawrence's various thoughts on pain into one pithy line.

Paul has been excellent at keeping my spirits up. Last Friday, we took a trip to Costco, usually a source of distress, which surprisingly yielded two happy pills: 1) I got to drive a handi-cart (sitting on your ass the whole time substantially improves the Costco experience, trust me); 2) We bought Guitar Hero II which allows me to realize my dreams of being a rock star momma, with the guitar controller resting comfortably on my poochy belly as I clunk through the color-coded notes. My band, Procreat, is now on tour and rockin' Providence. (The downside? You do get songs like "Cherry Pie" and "Carry on Our Wayward Son" stuck in your head for days.)

No news on the baby front. I've had various signs of labor, all of which mean that he could be born today or in two days or in two weeks. So I'm also studying patience and finding that, while I ask a lot of questions (the triage nurse knows me by first name now), I am a willing and curious student. Is there any other time in my life that I will get to sit on the couch for hours starting at my books, staring at the baby toys, staring at my toes? When I say hours, I'm not exaggerating. The trick is not minding that you're wasting time.

Pre-prelabor day four

The small soldier came up to Gros-Louis waving a newspaper.

"It's peace!"

Gros-Louis set down his bucket. "What did you say, my boy?"

"I said it's peace."

Gros-Louis looked at him dubiously.

"Peace? But there hasn't been war."

After three days of painful, then nonpainful, then intermittent contractions (which, oddly, I keep calling "transactions"), I have no contractions, productive or otherwise.

I feel like the characters from The Reprieve, Sartre's novel about Parisians frantically gearing up for war in 1938 only to wake up one morning and find out that Daladier had signed the Munich agreement (the "peace" in which he agreed to cede part of France to the Sudeten Germans).

Of course, instead of enlisting, confessing secrets, or drinking ourselves blind we were timing contractions, writing a birth plan, and setting up the co-sleeper. But, we're ready now, by god.

A country road. A tree. Evening.

Mr. Godot told me to tell you that he won't come this evening but surely to-morrow.

Today I stopped taking the nifedipine (that blood pressure medicine that's been keeping my smooth muscles quiet ... i.e., stopping those daily contractions I've been having from really going anywhere.)

I'm not sure if I'm Didi and Paul's Gogo, or the other way around. I'm here and he's out, so I'm my own sidekick tonight. No contractions now. Just waiting.

Oh, Inverted Belly

Some mornings I wake up and say, he grew last night. Mostly it's a guess, I feel slightly stretched on one side or the other. This morning, though, I stumbled into the shower and ran the soap over my belly and my belly button, which has been slowly disappearing over the past few weeks, is gone. Or, I should say, inverted. I didn't realize how much I liked my belly button, or playing with my belly button, until it was gone. This is all temporary, of course. In the shower, I started reciting that bit from Bill Cosby's "Kindergarten" about the navel game:

"I was playing with my navel ([deep voice] oh, navel, navel). My mother said, 'Alright, keep playing with your navel, pretty soon you're gonna break it wide open the air's gonna come right out of your body and you'll fly around the room backwards for 30 seconds, land and you'll be flat as a piece of paper with just your little eyes buggin out.' I used to carry band-aids around with me in case I had an accident."

I've hit my limit of technical expertise (or Blogger's, depending on how you look at it) and can't offer you a quick link to it. But you can get a download here for only 32 cents.

If I find a site where I can upload the mp3, I'll post it. Or you can come to our house and we'll play it for you. Idiot mittens. Luke warm, curdly milk. Good stuff.

Video-ette Party

New video by my friend Ilana in NY (who decided we were soul mates after she saw my copy of The Trials of Lenny Bruce and well-worn Fame VHS tape).

Vera! (or why you should come to Seattle Center today)

If Staley could have foreseen his final resting place, he might have thought twice about his little habit.








But look at his view...



Today kicks off the big opening party of the brand-spankin-new music and gallery space for The Vera Project, the nonprofit darling of twenty- and thirty-something, music-worshipping Seattlites. You remember Drink for the Kids, right? That's Vera.



One nice thing about working at the Center is that you can wander by the Vera space every few days or so and see the progress. These pictures are actually from late January (taken by my talented friend Linda).








Last week, Vera looked more like this.

It's hard to walk by the pristine space and not feel ambivalent about the future of Seattle music. Imagine AiC or Soundgarden or even DCFC emerging from this "state-of-the-art facility." But who can crush the dream: music for the kids. MUSIC FOR THE KIDS! CREATIVE EXPRESSION! SAFE, EASILY ACCESSIBLE PARKING. This is all part of the big new plan to make Seattle Center hip (charette, anyone?). I'm making fun but I'm there every day, watching the progress. Dorks like me who moved to Seattle for the music have to be there, secretly watching the progress. Secretly loathing it. Loving it. How can you not love the art kids?

The Ver(a)rt Gallery Opening, "Don't Let the GermBots Bite" by OneSevenNine (with music and snacks, of course), starts at 6 pm. If you want to publicly confess your extreme music dorkitude, stop by at 3 pm when Mayor Nickels cuts the ribbon on Seattle's first city-sanctioned all ages club. And tell yourself it's just a cleaner version of the Off Ramp.

If you listen closely, you may even hear Staley's transcendent, mono-moan screech,

Down in a hole

Feeling so small

Conversation overheard at local spa (it was a Christmas present, ok)

The Relaxation Facilitator prepares the client-in-white-robe’s feet for the soaking bowl.

RF: I’m Audra. Let me know if you need anything else.

CIWR: Audra. That’s a pretty name.

RF: I renamed myself, actually. My original name was Cassandra.

CIWR: That’s nice, too.

RF: Well, I’m a singer so I wanted something different. And Audrey Hepburn is my favorite actress.

CIWR: So it’s a stage name?

RF: No, I actually legally changed my name.

CIWR: That’s so funny. I legally changed my name, just a couple of weeks ago.

RF: What to?

CIWR: My whole life I’ve been Jill. But I’ve been getting into writing lately, so I thought Isabel.

RF: That’s so perfect.

CIWR: Yeah, thanks. I’m totally excited about it.

I sing the body inflated

I have two chicken pox scars on my belly. I've had them since I was five, about two inches to the left of my belly button (my left). They're an inch and a half apart. Well, they were. Now they're four and a half inches apart.

We don't have any naked mirrors in our house, so I hadn't really looked at it. But we were in Vail this weekend and everyone was out skiing, so I got to hang out in the condo by myself and walk around naked. And I finally got a good look. The belly. The distension. Distensibility. It's amazing: the network of blue veins from my neck to my hips, the nearly translucent skin, the taut oval more bulgy at the bottom than at the top, sort of like a Weeble.

On Monday we went for a swim. They had a pool there the size of a giant bathtub. I mean, they had a bathtub the size of a pool. They had a pool. It was very warm. So I wore the only swimsuit I have, a bikini (courtesy of Amy, my neighbor and personal maternity clothier). Even Paul had to agree that the belly was pretty exciting. I said, my belly never looked this good in a bikini, and he said, I don't think I've seen your belly in a bikini. He has a habit of forgetting the things I need him to. He is the perfect mate.

Baby H is moving around a lot these days. We have little games. I discovered this one in the tub: If he kicks, I poke my belly, and he kicks again. He seems to follow my pokes. (He just kicked now.) Some days it works, and some days it doesn't. Mostly, I think he's playing me, the hopeful mother already trying too hard to connect with her son.

I did figure out a way to get him to move. For some reason, he enjoys hanging out low in the torso, which I'll tell you now is pretty uncomfortable. Imagine a pair of 3cm-long feet kicking around in your bladder and cervix area. Ech. But I was lying in bed the other night and figured out that if I put my hand (it has to be warm) closer to my ribs, he will move up under my hand. When he does that I like to sing to him, unless Paul's trying to sleep next to me. We have a couple of songs so far. I try to sing the same ones, so he'll recognize them when he comes out, and enjoy them until he's a preteen and figures out they're stupid songs.

I've definitely hit the phase people kept talking about. The one in which you finally have energy and can stomach at least a few cooking smells and feel ok about everyone wanting to take care of you and weep whenever you fold the tiny tees that people have already started to give him. On Saturday, naked day, I thought that I might want to stay pregnant forever. Well, talk to me in about a month.

More books than you can possibly read in a lifetime

Paul and I were sitting around one night, talking about moving the furniture around, which always brings up the topics of The Books. Paul tried to get me to admit that I have more books than I can possibly read in my lifetime. This is not something you ever want to hear, right, because it's a naggy little reminder about how short your life really is. Plus, you know you've built up this library because you are constantly coming across new recommendations and offshoots and influences of the things that you have read and what about all those books you won't get to read in addition to the books that are already in your house that you haven't read. (This is where I have to breathe.)

So, I'm starting the MBTYCPRIAL (mab-tic-prial?) project. I came up with a dorky die rolling system to choose the next book. Whatever book I end up with, I have to deal with it. I can read (or re-read, as the case may be, although this seems at odds with my goal... what is my goal?). I can also choose to sell the book. Or give it away. If you see a book on my MB-PRIAL list that you really want, give me a shout.

My hope is that I can get through everything in less than five years (I have a little over 1,000 books and have read about 400 of them start to finish, so that leaves 600 or 120 a year). My first roll: 3-1-4-5. The Bostonians by Henry James. I bought this book in 2004 after reading Colm Toibin's The Master and was prepping for my Henry James phase, which was interrupted, most likely, by my Martha Gellhorn phase.

As a kickoff celebration, I found this Italian DVD cover for James Ivory's film version. Enjoy. Henry and I are off to a dinner party with someone named Olive.

To begin with, I’m pretty darn fat…

and whenever I say that, people say to me, “you’re not fat” or “it’s not really fat.” A reflex, no doubt. Of course, when I say “I’m so fat,” I mean, isn’t it hilarious that I have this baby crawling around inside my body, and there’s this big belly, and isn’t it great and weird? My nephew gets it. He’s three. We were out to dinner and I proclaimed my intention to order the peppermint ice cream. “You can’t have ice cream. You’re too fat.” And this makes a cute three-year-old story but I guess it also makes him sound a bit size-ist. He’s thin and tall and he knows a lot about sharks. And he’s excited about his pending boy cousin.

We’re at week 24: the baby is about 12 to 13 inches tall and weighs 1.5 lbs. He has all his muscles but no fat on his body yet.

It’s hard to know what to say about being pregnant that hasn’t been said. Or is it? On the one hand, the CDC reported 4,163,000 live births between May 2005 and April 2006 in the U.S. So, that’s about four times the size of Seattle and about 2,175 times the number of people in my hometown, where women regularly have four to eight kids. But this is one kid, and the nine-month combo of the two of us is unique. More unique than anything I could write. Unlike a story idea that revealed itself magically at 3:25 am (voila! out of the collective unconscious), and that I might have worked on for months then abandoned, I won’t see it on HBO or in The Believer in two years and think, well, I could have done that. I did do that. Nearly. And (best part) there are no critiques: “She doesn’t have quite the irritability that we expect in these sort of collaborations, but we’ve definitely seen that waddle before.” I guess there'll be plenty of criticism after he comes, but for now I'm on my own.

So far, everything has been completely normal: the sickness (months 2 to 4), the exhaustion (better now, but still a factor), and the belly rubbing (I never saw myself as a belly rubber, but it feels pretty good — highly recommended). It’s nice to be able to eat doughnuts and sit on the couch watching movies for four or more hours a day.

It is strange to be walking around with a big poochy belly — conspicuous and then quickly invisible. People notice, obviously (except the people on my crowded morning bus, who pretend to look away as I’m trying to steady myself in the aisle while they relish their seatdom). In my neighborhood, the quick response is a vague non-response, a sorting out that may go something like this: Girl. Lady. Pregnant lady. Um, what’s in The Stranger this week? I can remember sorting in this way, hungover, on a Friday morning. One of us, not one of us.

The Center House is full of birds this morning and I can’t decide if that’s cute or really gross. It’s hard to imagine the SC food court being any grosser but there it is. Guano. GUANO. (No, I didn’t see guano. It’s the thought.)

And I sort them out, too. Converse, cords, hoodie. Yup. That was me. Now it’s not. My hoodies are too tight. Then something else happens, especially with boys: Boy. Really young boy. Son. Son? Hmmm. Where did that come from?

A woman just came and sat down at a table near me. She’s meeting a man here. He pulls out some photocopies, which seem to be galleys. “I don’t want a bunch of title shit on there,” she says. “I’ll take it off,” he says. “Dang it.”

I was walking to yoga Saturday and this harlequinesque goth kid, 19ish, passed me near SCCC. He did the quick look. Then he kept staring as we passed each other. This I’m not used to. I spent the rest of the three blocks trying to figure out what it all meant: he hates breeders, he loves bellies, he hates mommies, he hates his own mommy, he wants to kiss me, he wants to stab me, he's hungover and hates the idea of a vaguely rotund, chipper mama bouncing off to morning yoga class, readying for her unapologetic contribution to the too fat belly of the earth.

The Bus is Back

The Poetry Bus is back! Actually, despite Paul's and my fantasy about the bus pulling up to the Space Needle fresh from the road and full of unshowered and bewildered poets, they actually came back yesterday. The final pobus reading is tonight, though, at 8pm on the Skyline level of the Space Needle. The lineup is astounding, plus, you get to go up the Needle for only $5. I know I'll be there. I'll probably be gagging from the buffet, but I'll be there.

And, yes, I've been back for almost a month and not writing. This has to do with the new job and The Sickness, which keeps me on the couch crocheting and watching ET (Want details about the big Tomkat wedding? I've got it all!). My friend Jen has encouraged me to share details about what Paul is now calling "the miracle of life" and "my journey to the center of womanhood," so that will all be coming soon. Meantime, the "blossom of my future happiness" has me in a stranglehold. Unfortunately, even thinking that word pops the song into my head. Now it's like a tiny Ted Nugent, fierce from a diet of fresh blood, is stabbing my uterus with its widdy-biddy hunting knife. Yogurt smoothie? Unh-uh. Vomit that, bee-atch.

Where did you sleep last night?

I slept here. It’s my last night on the bus. I’m still here on the floor of the service stop (using the only outlet in the place… my battery is shot), and am finally caught up (!). In five minutes, we drive to New York City.

Providence is...

Lovely. You'll have to take my word for it, because I have no photos. I was too distracted by the fact that I walked around for two hours (Brown, RISD, historic settlement houses), in pain, looking for a public (or any) restroom. As a bonus, I did find the Roger Williams memorial park, where he used to gather the settlers, and I remember that I had a little crush on him in elementary school. Oh, those 17th-century, colonial crusaders for religious freedom and church/state separation.

Battle in Boston: Typewriters v. Johnsons (Thursday)

This week we’ve been listening to Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour. On the drive into Buffalo, we heard the show on weather. On the way to Boston, we heard a show on dads (when he said happy Father’s Day, I panicked before I remembered it was September, and a Thursday.) Driving through bucolic central MA, we heard songs about weddings. When Bill was maneuvering through the Harvard campus and Somerville, MA at the height of rush hour, we heard the divorce show, and about Bill’s divorce. He’s got a rough job.

During the intermission, a twitchy guy in his late 40s/early 50s came up to the table demanding to know who was in charge. His band was coming on at 10:00 (it is now 8:15) and we “need to get that shit off the stage so they can load in.” (“That shit” was the set and props for The Typing Explosion.) A guy asked about his band, who they are. “We’re a cover band,” he said, “The Swinging Johnsons. We play here Thursdays.”

Eight of us slept in a giant loft in Southie with Michael Brodeur and his neighbor with the repeating car alarm.

Life on the Bus

What do we do on the bus?
Talk about poetry.
Laugh at Bob Dylan on XM Radio.
Sleep.
Write poems together.
Eat trail mix and apples from the snack coffin.
Drink Jack Daniels and/or VO from giant bottles.
Hug bus friend (see photo, left).
Sleep.
Read.
Update our blogs.
Talk about how great/strange the reading was last night.
Stare out the window.
Sleep.

Two days in Western Mass (Emily, the Girls, and Three Little Boys)

Smith College
Walking around Smith is like walking into a campus melodrama from the 1950s. If it weren’t for the day-glo green and orange triangle furniture in the seven sisters’ equivalent of a student union, it could just as easily be 1925.

Quick Tour: Mt. Holyoke, Hampshire College, Amherst Commons, UMass
At each location, the poets read outside the bus with a portable PA. At Hampshire (Joshua Beckman’s alma mater), we weren’t authorized to come on campus. Bill drove us through the grounds, while Joshua shouted through a bullhorn, “Students of Hampshire College, come and listen to the poets.” By the third curve, campus security was already on us. Joshua got off the bus to talk to them and we were all laughing about how we were busted, but the officer said, “We have a place for you, follow us” and they led us to the middle of the lawn. We’re pretty subversive.

Emily’s Room
I hate it when people refer to great literary figures, who happen to be women, by their first names (Hemingway, Proust, Shakespeare… Emily), but it’s common with ED, and generally from the mouths of women. I caught myself doing it. The bus parked in Amherst five minutes from her house, and I said, “I’m going down to Emily’s house.”

I had this fantasy about standing in her room: how I’d be paralyzed with inspiration, how I’d look out the same window she did, how I’d weep from the tragic, claustrophobic isolation. Like many author houses, you have to take a tour to see The Room. I just missed the 2:30 30-minute tour and spent 25 minutes trying to convince the docents at the Dickinson Homestead that I needed to see The Room.

I studied her in grad school.
I know all about the fascicles and variants.
I’m here with the poetry bus.
I’m only in Amherst for 30 minutes.

The first docent explained that I could look at “these three rooms,” which consisted of a display about publication history (which was really just pictures of her literary executors), pictures of life in the kitchen, and a gift shop. She pointed me to the window so I could see The Room from outside.

The 90-minute tour guide, a patient woman with a slight English accent, agreed that I could just go on the first part of her tour, the main house, but that would be 50 minutes. I asked if she could just tell me a little about The Room. She pointed me to the window so I could see it from outside. Then she spent three minutes telling me the real estate history of the house. I am now glad I don’t have time for the tour. It reminds me of when I volunteered for the Hemingway Museum and Birthplace Home in Oak Park, IL, where many of the docents were retired moms who spent most of the tour talking about Hem’s poor, maligned mother.

This is as close as I got to Emily’s room.



When I got back to the bus, no one was there, so I wandered down to the cemetery.


I came back to the bus again and no one was there. I made the bank deposit and handed out a bunch of stickers and tattoos to the youth punks hanging out in the park. One of them informed me that “poetry is cool.”



At the UMass quick stop, two boys, Matt and Jimmy, showed off their tattos.

I stayed in historic Turners Falls for two nights with Janelle, the Eastern Wave Books version of me. We ate here and found this poem

Montreal, Too Quickly (Monday)

My favorite stop and, sadly, I have to make it quick to keep up.

As usual, we are starving when we arrive.

bon jour, un cream of broccoli soup si vous plait

Matthew found a teahouse with wifi, so I camped out there for about two hours. If you got an email from me a few days ago, that's where I was.

(Montreal walk-ups)

Our local helper (awesome poet/organizer Kate Hall), arranged for me to stay with her friend Fiona on the French side of the city, by the old Olympic stadium, built in 1976, which the city is still paying for. All cities really are the same.


In the morning, Fiona and Leroy walked me to the Metro station. We ran into Fiona's neighbor, who told us a lively story in French about Janet Jackson. Apparently she was dancing on the Oprah show. "Oh, that crazy family," she said in English.

On the rush hour green line, I rode seven (or so) stops to Place-des-Arts, and got a two-second look at the contemporary art museum and theater district before I had to hop in a cab to get back to the bus.

le bus, le autobus, ici ici

Travis recapped our border adventures nicely on the pobus blog.

Oh, Canada; Oh, Blurry Pictures (Sunday)

In Ottawa, the poets read across from the glowing House of Parliament at sunset. Between the load-in and everyone clamoring to buy our fabulous books and t-shirts, this is the best photo I got.


(Linus interviewing Joshua for the pobus film)

Toronto’s New Bohemians (Saturday)

One of the guests at the pre-reading bbq told us this is a working class neighborhood. I believed it at first: the rows of old houses, kids and old people in the yards, the apparent lack of an ATM that works.

Our reading was at Stones Place, a Rolling Stones theme bar with the requisite collection of Mick posters, signed copies of Sticky Fingers, and paintings of Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan (?).
One of our local helpers told us Keith Richards painted them, and all became clear.

We parallel parked and slept in front of Damien Rogers’ house on the bus. I woke up every couple of hours (because I had to pee) and saw a red light glowing from a white building at the end of the block. In the morning, I walked down to see what this spectacle was all about. This wasn’t a bar, or a brothel, it was a condo building in progress. Watch out, Meritage.

Enjoy the fine copy:
Anchoring the west end of Toronto's hippest strip comes a condominium so stylish and cool, it promises to redefine the way this city's hipsters live. Join the ambassadors of hip on Queen Street West at Gladstone, renowned for the famous Drake Hotel and home of the soon-to-be equally eminent Bohemian Embassy. … the ultimate place for culture-loving urbanites to BE.

Obviously, a very close replica of the original Bohemian Embassy, a coffee shop from the 1960s where Margaret Atwood used to hang out and where some Beat-ish people had a Dada-style happening in 1963.

Come on Back to Me 22 (Saturday, September 23)

Tired of Vegas?? Try Niagara! The Canada side, that is.

Monica F.'s really nice Georgia mom treated us to lunch at the Fallsview Casino Resort Grand Buffet. I had a cheese omelet, potsticker, creme puff dipped in chocolate fondue, small salad, an apple danish, and veggie lasagna.