rebeccakuder

Gogol Bordello (Do your thing!)

My, oh my, I saw Gogol Bordello last night.  Excellent Brazilian expatriates Forro in the Dark opened.  Though I didn’t say for the whole GB show (being a tired parent, too far from home for a late night drive), all that I saw and felt was incendiary.  See them if you can.

There is something about being with people who are doing their thing.  Clearly, these folks were at it.  I remember a boy in high school who threw discus for the track team.  There was a photograph of him with discus in the yearbook: elemental, he was doing his thing.  My high school boyfriend had the same look when he was playing his guitar.

My husband looks that way when he reads his fiction aloud.  It’s hypnotic.

My daughter is part of a Montessori toddler preschool.  They sing a song that goes through all the kids by turns, “Go on Merida, do your thing, do your thing, do your thing, go on Merida, do your thing, do your thing and stop.”  At home, she sings through all the children’s names.  They take turns.

Last night was Gogol Bordello’s turn.

The planet needs more people out, doing their thing.  It will make us all happier.  We can take turns.

I’m going to go back to doing my thing and write this novel now.

rebeccakuder

Life is good. (What about death?)

You’ve probably seen those “Life is good” tee-shirts.  Maybe some of you own one.  A dear friend of mine abhors them, and I think her abhorrence has to do with 1) the ridiculously overly simplified message 2) the faded, pseudo “weathered” quality and bad cut of the tee-shirt, and 3) the bad font and design used.  (I’ll add the evidence to my left as an exhibit for the prosecution.)

But let’s stick with the watered down and nearly meaningless phrase, “Life is good” for a moment longer.  Most people I know would say that Life is a lot of things.  Kind of like soul, perhaps?   George Clinton knew how complicated soul was, when he wrote,  “What is soul?  I don’t know.  Soul is a  ham hock in your corn flakes.” Soul is a lot of things, apparently, some unexpected, perhaps tasty, and surely poetic.

And now let us turn in our dusty lunatics hymnal to John Dee Graham, another musical scholar, about another related overused and vapid expression (“It’s all good”).  John Dee Graham says, “Anyone who tells you that it’s all good is either an idiot or a liar. Because it’s not all good.” (John Dee Graham is the lovable crank who ad libs, in a live performance of a song of his that was used for that firefighter movie with John Travolta, “Cheer up Travolta!”  But that recording was before Travolta’s son died, so I don’t know if JDG would say the same thing so glibly today.  Still, I doubt he’d say, “Life is good.”)

Life is complicated.  Even that is an empty platitude, because now the word “complicated” has been simplified and watered down by that other phrase that’s all over the fracking place, “It’s complicated.” I see it most often posted under relationship status on Facebook.  Yeah, life is complicated.  Relationships are complicated.  Sudoku puzzles (for me) are complicated.  Folding an origami crane is complicated.

But for fun, let’s presume for a moment that Life is good.  Does that mean that Death is bad?  (Is death the opposite of life?)  Isn’t it all really a big circle, a wheel, or something round, that continues, like Ouroboros (I had to do a google search for that name), the snake eating its own tail, forever and ever?  When we can unattach enough to be detached, isn’t that a more complicated and also more accurate way of looking at it all?

To quote another musician on possibly related topics, or at least the recycling of carbon (and life):

“Come down from the cross, we can use the wood.”

“We’re all gonna be just dirt in the ground.”

I’ve been around a lot of death this year.  I don’t know the answer to these questions.  I know about the deer body we saw decomposing across the street in the Clifton Gorge park.  It melted pretty fast.  The other day, I wondered if my precious Houdini, who we buried in 2007, is more than bones now.

What about death?   I want a tee-shirt.

rebeccakuder

I believe

Oh, novel.  I’m to page 182, near the end, surely, and sure, and not sure, how it ends.  Looking into the less cloudy abyss. How not to rush, how to give it the time it needs? Stevie Wonder sings, in cafe background, “I believe (when I fall in love it will be forever)…” How many times does he repeat that line, I can’t count, but enough times until I start to believe in its incantation, and the love becomes the writing…and then…

rebeccakuder

Swashbuckling, parkour, or something else?

"Peter sometimes came and played his pipes" from J.M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy, illustration by Mabel Lucie Attwell

Several weeks ago, I asked my daughter, who is almost three, if she would like to dress up for Halloween.  She said yes, that she wants to be a pirate.  (I think she was inspired by the Charley character in Lucy Cousins’ Maisy books, because several of the books feature him dressed as a pirate.)  I don’t think we’ll go pillaging for candy anywhere, unless it’s early enough to be before her bedtime, but I do think we’ll dress up and go out walking in our small town.  (Last year, she had a lovely time at pizza dinner with a dear old friend and her daughter–the daughter is a year older than mine, and was dressed as Sleeping Beauty, in gorgeous shiny regalia.  My daughter’s all purple ensemble: eggplant hat, fuzzy purple coat, shirt, pants, and purple Robeeze boots were cute but as a costume, it was a little abstract.  I admit to putting very little thought into it.  She was two!)  But this year, pirate.

How to build a pirate costume for a toddler?  I’m not going to rush out and buy a bunch of junk.  We’ll use stuff from home: bandana, some shirt and pants, boots, jewelry, and a stuffed parrot from the toy box.  I have no idea what a pirate mama should wear, but in my last-minute urge to be creative, I recalled a dream I had earlier this week.

So indulge me writing about a dream again.  (It’s my blog!)

I was at a writing convention, in a big hotel, or maybe it was a cruise liner.  Someone I used to work with at a regional theatre ages ago (who is not a writer) was there, and there was some craziness about him throwing a party that he invited me to but I didn’t have time to see the invitation, being too busy taking care of a sick toddler, but then later I saw him and some other men from his hallway dressed as women.  (If you knew the man I’m talking about, this would be a very amusing sight.  So we have a Halloween theme begun…)  Later in the dream, I was delightedly climbing, scaling really, the outside of what had now become a beautiful, very old, stone building (apparently now not a cruise liner, but still the writing convention).  Climbing the stone was exhilarating and effortless.  I was the opposite of afraid.  It was maybe as good a feeling as dreams of flying.  Someone inside the building asked what I was doing.  “SWASHBUCKLING!” I yelled.  It was how I imagine those parkour people feel when they are doing their amazing yet completely natural movements.

And then (just now) I remembered Peter Pan and the pirates in Neverland, Smee  and Hook and the gang.  I’ve long been obsessed with those characters, so took a nostalgic stroll through the images I used in grad school for a seminar on J.M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, where I found the image above.  (Not Disney.  No.  No.  Read Peter and Wendy.  Even if you are a grownup with no kids.  It’s beautiful.  If you have the time or money, look at the edition with illustrations by Mabel Lucie Attwell.  They are transcendent.)

So yeah, I am going to be a pirate this year.

rebeccakuder

Song for my new year

Yesterday, I listened to Dead Can Dance “Toward the Within” because, happily, it’s Dead Can Dance season again, and their music always helps me into the right moody mood for autumn.  This song, “Cantara,” struck me as the proper anthem for my new year.    The sort of warrior voice that echoes through this song, in Lisa Gerrard’s language, seem just what I need.  I don’t usually choose battle metaphors, but this notion, the idea of preparing for battle, seems right for some reason.   (Contradictory for a Libra, maybe.)

At the end of the video, Lisa Gerrard mentions her child’s pre-verbal state, and how the child sings, unfettered by the bounds of language.  Maybe my war is with language, and I need to sing without words.

And I’ve been fascinated with death lately, fascinated with the full process that it is, and all that it implies.  After listening to Gerrard and Brendan Perry, it seems like this song is my right anthem for now.

rebeccakuder

More trees dying for nothing (waste of a Waste Management, or get Uncle Junior in here!)

I usually love living in the “sticks,” but the other day, Waste Management left a message telling me they no longer provide curbside recycling at my home.  They said they would be picking up the red bin within five business days and could I please leave it by the curb.

There’s no place for them to take and dump the recycling anymore, apparently.  Yeah, in 2010.  It’s got my blood pressure up!  Especially after spending many minutes today on hold because I wanted to find out WHY, and being subjected to their creepy propaganda recordings (in a smooth, perhaps even comforting female voice) about all the great things Waste Management does for the environment.  I wish I had had a tape recorder.  The recording said that if I was looking for something to do while I was on hold, I should go to a website called “Think Green From Home.”  (I can THINK about recycling, apparently, but can’t actually DO it.)  One line was something like, “Recycling has always been a noble idea, but do you know how many trees blah blah blah Waste Management saved last year? Blah blah blah, So take a deep breath and RECYCLE!”  It actually said that.  You can’t make this stuff up.  Reminded me of that ridiculous dismissal so many years ago, you know, back when we could have actually halted the hell we’re headed into with our current environmental situation, Dick Cheney talking about how sure, it could be considered “virtuous” to conserve fuel, but Americans need to drive their cars.  (Caveat: I have a sedan, and yes, I drive it.)

When I was waiting on hold to find out why the bleep they don’t provide curbside recycling in my area anymore.  The phone rep. said, “This is the first I’m hearing about it…”

To quote Miss Clavel, “Something is not right!”  I want to call Uncle Joon.  I’m sure he or Tony or one of the boys could do something, no?  Does anyone have Junior’s phone number?

rebeccakuder

Twist ties

After decades of having plenty, and thinking I’d never run out, and probably even moving them from midwest to west coast and back again, there are only six twist ties in my kitchen drawer.  Six twist ties will last awhile in our house, maybe even weeks.  But what happens when there are no more?  Where did they all come from in the first place?  Boxes of trash bags past, but have you noticed that plastic trash bags are smarter these days–they all seem to tie themselves?  It’s been awhile since I opened a box and found those flat armies of twist ties, little perforated demonstrators of solidarity, shoulder to shoulder like soccer players waiting for a free kick.  (But also not like soccer players waiting for a free kick, that is: if the twist ties have delicate anatomy to protect, it is not evident in their posture.)

Counting those six twist ties in the kitchen drawer made me think about all the tiny things I take for granted, like elastic, glue, tape, thread.  Buttons.  Things that keep stuff together.  Thinking about the dwindling twist ties also made me think of all stuff, piles and boxes and bins and closets and storage containers and generations of stuff that is passed down (at least in my family) and by its mere presence, is somehow important.  Given the free time and the right ruthless mood, I can sort through my own bins of minutiae and get rid of things, but the jar of inherited buttons, pins, and brassiere clasps (might be useful someday, she thought) from my grandmother’s things is impervious to editing by  me.  I’m sure it has to do with my attaching sacred status to the things she touched and kept, as if by keeping these things, I will have tactile and magical understanding of the intangibles she found important.

For many years, I’ve been working against my also-inherited tendency to collect and pack rat.  Now I have a really vivid reason to dejunk: I don’t want to leave my daughter with boxes and bins and junk to sort through after I pass.  I’ll leave her with plenty fun stuff, surely, but I hope none of it will be a chore.

At least she won’t have to worry about the twist ties.

rebeccakuder

The river of lost words

Trying to recreate words lost in the recent death of my hard drive (and overly old backup files).  Writers beware: back up your data.  (Or risk having to recreate.  I think the following might be better than what I had, but there was too much angst in the process of loss.)

Years before, opportunity had stolen most of the trees.  Bend, snap, cut went the rhythm of thieves.  Wood mill.  Trees sometimes fall naturally into water, storms come and leave their messes behind, but these logs were felled too fast, unnatural, and shipped down the river, money to be made.  They’d grow back, some said, but forgot to plant seedlings, no thought beyond the next greed-meal.  Just along the river, a few bushes remained in the thin trickle of lush.

rebeccakuder

Dreams of box #628

(Disclaimer: If hearing others recount dreams annoys you, stop reading now.)

When I was at Earlham College, my mail was delivered to box #628.  In the decades since graduation, I’ve had occasional dreams, variations of something like this:  I’m on campus, having forgotten to pick up my mail for days, or even weeks.  I go to the basement of the student union, find box #628, and try to recall the combination of letters (I think it was letters and not numbers) that open the sweet, old-fashioned window-door and release letters and postcards.  In some dreams, I get the combination quickly, when I let my hands (and not my brain) do the work of remembering, of unlocking, and then I find what awaits.

These dreams have ranged from nostalgic to mildly anxious-making, depending on whether I can remember the combination, and how long it’s been since I checked.  Sometimes I have a vague nag of expecting something important that might be lost.  Often, I’m semi-lucid in the dream, my waking mind wondering how that could still possibly be my mailbox, and what mail I might have received in the long interim between 1988 and the present.

(And peripheral questions tap at my door:  Have they changed the combination?  Have they renovated the entire place?  Is box#628 even still there?)

Last night, I had that dream again.  I found box #628 at the end of all the boxes, which, in dream logic, made sense: either there were only 628 students on campus, or they rearranged the boxes so that mine–which had been held the longest, because surely the rest were all reserved for current students–was moved to the end of the line.  I had a certain amount of pride as I went to my decades-old mail drop, aware in the dream of my current age, old enough to be mother to the other students.

Then when I woke, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be fun to write a letter to the current inhabitant of box #628?  Would she or he write back?”  So here’s what I’m going to send.

Dear Earlham Student who gets mail at box #628,

My name is Rebecca and I graduated in 1988.  When I was at Earlham, I got mail at box #628.  It’s probably impossible for you to imagine or understand this, but ever since college, I’ve occasionally had dreams about going back to get my mail again from box #628.  I’d love to know who currently inhabits that mailbox.  I’m sure you’re very busy with college life, doughnut runs, theatre productions, humanities classes, and much more interesting diversions and political action than a graduate from the 1980s can fathom, but if you have time, I’d love to hear who you are, where you’re from, what you’re studying, anything else you’d like to tell me.  You can email me if that’s easier than writing a real letter.  With your permission, I could even post your message on my blog at http://www.rebeccakuder.com.  You could be famous!  If nothing else, and you have neither the interest nor time to respond, you should know that there’s someone out here in the world who thinks about box #628 in some of the same ways that you might, as a useful place in the world, and remembers it very fondly, back through the years.

If I’d gotten a letter like this when I was using box #628, would I have written back?  Would I have been creeped out by the image of a forty-something stalker who hadn’t moved on from her golden days?  I like to think I’d be amused, and might humor the old person.  Send a postcard.

For me, now, it would not be the same to pick up this fictional postcard from my current mailbox as from box #628.  But somehow it would make a line into a circle.