And another... more reading!

I found this reading challenge--What's in a Name--via the nyrb books blog. Just what I need, another diversion. And yet, another diversion! And it helps me with my goal of actually reading the books I have in my house.

Here are my books (with the # of years owned + not read):
1. Color - Purple America, Rick Moody (11 years)
2. Animal - Who Will Run the Frog Hospital, Lorrie Moore (4 years)
3. First name - The Dick Gibson Show, Stanley Elkin (3 years)
4. Place - Europe Central, William Vollman (2 years)
5. Weather Event - Snow, Orhan Pamuk (3 years)
6. Plant - In the Beauty of the Lillies, John Updike (13 years)

Yet another diversion...SET is online

One of my favorite games is now a puzzle online. As if I don't already waste enough time with puzzles and online miscellany. When I first discovered it this morning, I thought it was faulty because the cards didn't change out. But (read the rules, duh) they switch out every day and you can re-use cards to find 4 (beginner) or 6 (advanced) sets--keep looking.

On the verge of...

I'm cleaning out my files as part of the big transfer to the new macbook(!) and I found this folder under "essays" and "mine." Wow. It's difficult to imagine the kind of fabulousness I have forgone by not saving anything in the folder of greatness since February 4, 2005.

P.S. Regarding my last post: Ignore me. I know nothing. Your vote counts! Go to the caucus! Go!

Happy Super (you live in WA and yer vote don't count) Tuesday!

TNR's latest issue has a feature of "eggheads and eminences" talking about who they are voting for. Poet C.K. Williams is voting for Obama, and adds:

I have to say that, as a spectator, I'm much more fascinated by the Republicans. Watching those shifty, devious, unscrupulous creatures clawing at each other in spasms of demagoguery and pander is like beholding the whole vile, fear-driven history of humanity.

And, if you're a Hillary hold-over like me, you might enjoy Erica Jong's not-surprisingly feminist statement, even if the last sentence is a little old school, in an over-the-top, yep, my-mom-would-say-that sort of way. I wish it were more hopeful, but then I could say the same for the H.C. campaign.

Whatever gets you through the blog

Let's see. What's the laziest way for me to post? 

Link to something I already wrote. 

About Silas. 

About Elizabeth Hardwick's Sleepless Nights. 

And add this ambiguous picture of something I am currently writing about. Everyone wants to get to the water first, or, well, eventually.  

When all my five and country senses see...and type

I see that it has been almost a month since I last posted, but I have an excuse (well, many excuses, like "I am a liar who does not keep promises.")

Nanowrimo wrapped last Friday night and I finished (i.e., submitted 50,046 words) at 11:09 pm. My goal initially was to write 1,500 or so words per day. This would solidify my daily writing practice. Ha.

By November 25, I had only typed 13,000 words. It became Heidi's Nanowriwe--a frantic race of typing and no sleep. The goal changed to typing as fast as possible to see what would come out. Surrealist automatic writing experiment, or insane compulsion?

The really important thing is that I am a winner (along with 15,333 others). And I now have 80 pages of Wordspew, 5 or 6 new characters (depending on whether one is dead), a ranch and a bar (do I ever come up with new settings?) and a bunch of writing about Seattle that I might be able to use.

Silas is waking up so I have to wrap this up. But I wanted to at least keep the promise to myself (amidst my meandering, obsessive reading of Elizabeth Hardwick today) of posting.

Norman Mailer and the Gilmores

I feel sad and disjointed today knowing that there won't be any more new work from Norman Mailer. I love his writing the way I love Hemingway, the way I love Didion. He was able to bring out the truth and beauty in a simple story without gussying it up. And he was truly connected to his time--his best work forms a chronicle of the last half of the 20th Century in America.

I particularly have a soft spot for Norman Mailer because he appeared on Gilmore Girls and spoke of the show so kindly in this interview:

...for some reason I find Gilmore Girls kind of agreeable. The character Lorelai reminds me very much of my second-oldest daughter, Danielle—both of them are like beautiful hummingbirds, constantly talking and adjusting what they say, quick to the breeze.

He also wrote this book--one of my top 5, for sure--which I carried around Chicago with me for three months in the winter of 2002. I love it because it is Utah and my childhood. And, truly, anyone who can make Gary Gilmore beautiful is an amazing writer.

I've been scanning it for 20 minutes trying to find a representative quote, but it doesn't lend itself to easy excerpting because it is built with a mound of facts and quotes. Luckily, the L.A. Times has already done it, and I'll just crib from them (they get paid for this, after all):

Nielsen had his secretary bring a cup of coffee. Then he said, "Lieutenant Skinner is going to sign a complaint charging you with the homicide of Max Jensen." After a short pause, Gary said, "Hey, I really feel bad about those two guys. I read one of their obituaries in the paper last night. He was a young man and had a kid and he was a missionary. Makes me really feel bad."

"Gary, I feel bad too. I can't understand taking a life for the amount of money you got."

Gary replied, "I don't know how much I got. What was there?"

Nielsen said, "It was $125, and in Provo, approximately the same amount." Gary began to cry. He didn't weep with any noise but there were tears in his eyes. He said, "I hope they execute me for it. I ought to die for what I did."

Which one of us was knocked up?

Since Paul and I recently watched Knocked Up (come on, you don't need a link to that), I've been trying to think of any big comedy (or small comedy, for that matter) with the event of childbirth written from the woman's perspective.

Think about the movies with childbirth scenes that you can remember: There's that lame movie from the 80s about the commitmentphobe who struggles with the idea that his wife is pregnant. And that lame movie from the 90s about the commitmentphobe who struggles with the idea that his girlfriend is pregnant.

The first childbirth scene I remember seeing in a movie was from Paternity, that movie with Burt Reynolds. I thought this was the lame 70s movie about the commitmentphobe, etc., but remember now that he was a bachelor looking for a woman to have his baby (and it was 1981, which is sort of like the 70s).

In every case, the former lout undergoes a magical transformation upon the event of childbirth in which he falls hopelessly in love with the baby/babymama/idea of fatherhood right around the time that the woman is being wheeled into delivery (note: women are not wheeled into delivery any more, in case you don't know this already).

Tina Fey to the rescue, possibly. While it is more a movie about an adoption than a childbirth, I have high hopes that Baby Mama (set to release in April 2008), breaks this trend, Fey being a writer and a mother and funny, generally. While it does have the cliche of a single career gal who desperately wants a baby, and the cliche of the working-class gal who finds herself pregnant, it does bring them together to muddle through the pregnancy together, which sounds new. AICN had a quick review of a screening in NYC (which says almost as much about the venue as about the film). Sounds potentially promising.

And, then, of course, mommied as I am, I'm several months late in finding out about Juno (releasing this December, trailer here). It's directed by the Thank You for Smoking guy and was written by Diablo Cody, a girl, so maybe it more than pretends to be from the teenage girl's perspective. And it co-stars Michael Cera, who like collective-crush objects Seth Rogan and, formerly, Burt Reynolds, will likely make it worthwhile.

Silas indulges Mama on her birthday

Who was your college roommate?

So, L. Craig was my dad's fraternity brother and roommate. Paul has advised me not to post any more about this, so you'll have to get the (very brief) story in person.

I listened to the interrogation tape at the Spokesman Review site and tried to imagine this defender of marriage and NRA board member at the old D Chi house chugging a Thunderbird. (The tape is actually more fascinating than you would expect, not that it's unfamiliar to listen to a Republican sidestepping a series of difficult questions).

But L.C. was Student Body President of U of I, described by his friends as "studious" and "awkward with women" in the Idaho Statesman's ridiculously detailed account of his history, in which he consistently replies to reporters: "jiminy!" and "I don't pick up men."

Jiminy. Go Vandals.

omg (lower case, shame)... my blog sucks

First of all, I have to apologize for the AndyRooneyishness of my last post (I've noticed all the cranes lately and I've been wondering, Who is this Paul Allen fellow anyway?) I sound like one of those people who hangs out in Irish bars in Wallingford in my black leather jacket crying into my red hook about that lifechanging Nirvana concert in 1992. STFU!

I really hesitated about starting a blog because I was afraid that it would be too difficult to execute and sustain (says the grant writer!) without having a distinct reason for being. Being right about that does not make me feel better about the fact that it sucks. But does it really suffer from lack of concept?

Funnily (a funny word I've stolen from Paul), I was sure that my ideas about needing a solid conceptual base came from one of my best professors--best because he's one of those people who's in my head all the time (he would hate this blog, and he should, it sucks)--so I googled in search of a quote, and this is what I found (from an interview I did, which makes me a pretty big dork for linking to it, but this post needs a g.d. link):

I'd like to see students get more comfortable with the idea that art needn't serve some a priori identifiable function. Too many students feel a need to justify their work in advance of making it. ... They'd be better off trusting that real innovations create their own, unforeseen function. The idea that you can pre-ordain your work's function often means you want it to function in a therapeutic way: "doing good," correcting some abstract social inequity, etc. Not all art should be about expressing earnest hope for the improvement of the species, though. Ask Baudelaire. Ask Wilde. Anyway, in general I'd say students should concentrate on making real behavioral innovations. Let the audience decide their importance.

David Robbins saves my lazy ass again.

Now that I'm headfirst into this thing without a purpose (and sleeping through most of it... you should read the daily blog in my 4:15am head... fabo!), I will try to concentrate on the very simple behavior of posting every day. Some of it will suck (just warning you all). Otherwise I have to delete the whole g.d. thing and as those of you who know me know, I don't like to throw anything away.

All the kids go to Sharon's (at some point)

Last Saturday, we met friends at the Georgetown Artopia and carnival, where we enjoyed the power tool races (shown here) and other exciting oddities and bands with hairy teenagers.

How do they do it? Somehow Georgetown seems to remain in a perpetual state of just-before-coolness. You know, Bumbershoot in the early 90s cool, when you could see bands all day long for six bucks and you didn't have to wait two hours in every line. So many things go the way of Bumbershoot (and the Gorge, where we are going next week to see Willie!)--overly commercial, overly crowded, overly coifed--to the point that it almost makes you not want to leave the house for another g.d. festival. Georgetown is different. I won't rave about it too much and spoil your fun, but they do have another festival coming up next weekend (a garden walk, sadly, not a carnival).

Among the many attractions we enjoyed was something that wasn't even part of the festival: a WWII-era airplane that flew over throughout the day. As we were walking back to our car after the day's festivities--dinner at Stellar, performance art on the sidewalk, and a quick stop at Belle and Whistle--we saw a thirty-something woman on the corner looking up. When we asked her about the airlanes, she got very excited. "You can pay to go in them," she told us. When we asked how much it cost: "I don't know, but I bet it's a bundle. Some rich person must be doing that."

Some rich person is doing that. I was driving this morning and heard one of those NPR adlets for Paul Allen's Flying Heritage Collection. Last weekend, and this weekend too, they are featuring the P51-D "Mustang."

Weirdly, this reminds me of Sharon, the town babysitter in Malad. We didn't have anything like licensed daycare there, because most moms didn't work. Those moms that did work took their kids to Sharon's. Sharon's was awesome: she had a basement full of toys and a mini-playground in the backyard, and when you went to Sharon's she would just turn you loose with about 40-50 other kids from age 3 to 12. The only rule was that you had to share. I don't even think we had to clean up after ourselves.

And that's Paul Allen, Seattle's town babysitter. He's building us a giant playground (have you driven down Denny lately?), he lets us into his geek basement, and we can play with his toys. It costs a bundle, but if you're willing to give up a few bucks and your lingering sense of nostalgia for the days when Seattle actually had diners, quirky festivals that aren't overrun by tourists, and one-story buildings, you get to hang out at Sharon's, Seattle-style. Or you can move to Portland (doesn't he own the Trailblazers, too?). You could also move to Yakima, or Malad. I'm pretty sure he doesn't own anything there.

"You've been in labor for nine weeks..."

My friend Jen reminded me recently that I was still on prelabor day 14. (Hi, Jen... thanks for continuing your efforts to read my poor, dormant rodney.)

Baboos is now with Paul. I've asked for my own D&D night (i.e., a night away as a trade for his regular Wednesday game). I was about to start my excursion to the front room (this is where I write, in theory... it's really where I pet the cats and wander around in a book-induced haze trying to figure out what I could be reading). I was about to settle in when he started crying (Silas, not Paul). I went to the kitchen to see what was wrong. Paul had him. I went back to the front room. I couldn't work. I couldn't putter around in the front room. My right boob hurt. I went back to the kitchen. I tried to take him away from Paul. Paul told me to get out of the house.

I'm at Top Pot. Silas is sleeping. Or he's crying. Paul has him. I have nine minutes left of my D&D night.

Apparently, if I start laughing right now, Silas will receive a significant health benefit (or at least be less likely to be itchy...thanks, Jill, for the tip!). If I were a good mom, I would laugh right now. Laugh, damn it. I have three minutes left.

Here's my baboos:

Paul just called. The baby is stirring.

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.