Surreality calls

When Jay and I met, it was Christmas and it happened because he was home from California for Christmas, and my then-boyfriend Sean wanted to see his old high school buddy.
Sean called this morning while Jay and I were laying on the couch, and listening to Sean ask about me what um, sort of surreal.
"How long was Mars out there?" he asked.
"Oh, she's still here," Jay said. "We're finishing brunch, laying on the couch."
Silence. Then, "so did you see the new posting on urbandictionary.com?"
I talked to Sean the day before I left, and when he asked me how long I'd be out here, I said, "oh, 'bout a week." I didn't want to tell him how long I'd be out there, why was it any business of his? More than it not being his business, it's just me feeling sort of strange about being somewhere in between these two now, even if they both act like I'm not, really. The whole thing felt weird to me then, when I talked to Sean, but laying on Jay's lap and listening to them talk about me was a moment of surreality unlike any other.

Bernie

I am falling in love with this dog.
He's got this great, bigger-than-life personality, which, for a dog, means that he says things to me just by shooting me a look.
Like last night.
I was trying to get him to scoot over on the couch, and I told him to move his ass, because "that's my spot, buddy." He looked at me, the pink of his eyelid standing out soft and bright against the dark brown smudge shadowing his right eye.
"Your spot? Buddy? This is my house. My couch," he seemed to say back, squinting at me in a vicious stare-down.

With Jay at work all day, Bern and I have had some good bonding moments too, and I'm pretty sure we're going to get in a run at the dog park today, green squeaky ball and snacks in tow. I'm also pretty amazed at myself, how much I don't mind this routine, this new sense of responsibility. God, is this what happy parents feel like?
Sure, letting him out at midnight because Jay's fast asleep sort of sucks, and I didn't like seeing him hunker down on someone's lawn this morning, after I conveniently forgot a bag at home, but there's some sort of silent thing between a dog and a dog-lover that makes it real easy for me to adapt to him, even if he's not my dog. It's the way he lays down sort of behind me, sort of on me, when I'm watching TV, curling his neck around my ass so he can look up at me over it. Or the way he has to sleep on top of me, now, at night.
And perhaps scariest of all, the way he hovers around me in the kitchen, snaking between my legs while I'm mixing up a marinade for ribs or sitting on my feet while I'm shredding cheese. Yeah, yeah, I know, he just wants the food. Of course.
But this is the most endearing thing to me, I think, because it reminds me of being little and hanging out with my mom in the kitchen. I'm sure that my constant afootness was irritating, as it is with Bernie and I, but it's also so damn cute and erm...heartwarming.
Fuck. Did I really just say that?

This is my job

I am incredibly lucky.
For the past eight months, I've worked in my pjs, on my couch, in bed; coffee shops have been my office outside my home and business meetings have been conducted on the phone, never in person with anyone.
I am incredibly lucky, and it took a soft beam of early California sunlight for me to see this.
I'm in Cali on a whim, f'chrissake. Working. At my leisure. I have taken advantage of this situation as fully as possible, yes, but I have Taken Advantage of it.
When I started this project, this book, this healing, I meant to work on it for at least 5 hours a day.
"Even if I delete everything I write today in six months, I told myself, "I've got to treat this as a job. Write something for this book every day."
And for a while, when it was new and glamorous and exciting, I did. I even put in a few eight-hour days at the beginning.
But then I got comfortable and six months of time between me and my goal felt like such a long time. So I dicked around with my goal, barely meeting it. And maybe not meeting it at all, if you count the fact that I still have interviews and such to do. But whatever.
The point is, I realized this morning that my next goal is quickly approaching, even if September feels like a long ways off.
I've promised myself that by September I will have the interviews transcribed, stored, analyzed and integrated into the content of my story. I have no idea how that will come together or the formatting for it, but I have the commitment to it.
I think.
And that's why, dressed (no, not in my pjs!) and still focused on the sunny day outside, I'm devoting this day to really knocking out some usable, revised content. If this is my job, and I've only got until September to do it, I better get after it, because who knows what kind of work I'll have to do then.

Early thoughts

The warm breeze blows the soft fragrance of the flowers against us as we walk in the night’s calm, and I imagine the scent as a shimmering, silk scarf, wrapped around us as abstractly as moonbeams.
The small, white flowers dot dark bushes along the sidewalk, and if I can smell them this strongly, I know Bernie is positively swimming in scent.
Not that he minds.
After a rainy day, he loves burying his nose in the warm, damp grass, pulling out myriad smells and tastes from it. You can feel his curiosity and memory working to digest those flavors, feel it as he inhales and expands his rib cage and lets out his recognition or confusion in great, shuddering sighs. He’s a pretty amazing dog, and I’m sort of surprised that I even care this much.
That sense of care is the whole reason its 2 am and I’m smelling these flowers and feeling the midnight breezes of Long Beach in the first place- his incessant whining began about the time my head had comfortably fallen into the sleepy spot on the pillow, and I knew that Jay wasn’t going to wake up and take his dog outside.
So Bernie and I are walking together in the quiet, his toenails clicking along rhythmically with my padded soles. We’re in step with each other.
As I was laying in bed wondering why he wouldn’t just shut up already, I kept telling myself this was the exact reason I can’t have kids. They cry out in the night, whine, complain, want to crawl into bed with you, and unless you have the strength to tell them now and let them cry, you end up with a bed full of squirmy child. Or in this case, dog.
But now, after a half hour of this nonsense, now that we’re up and outside and his bladders is all empty, I’m happy to be out here. It’s so calm, such a good atmosphere for mulling over my thoughts. And I’ve been having some pretty serious ones.
Jay and I went to the Farmer’s Market this weekend, picked out a bunch of stuff and spent the next couple of days cooking it up together. I made potato soup when we got home that night, we had the beets yesterday; blackberry crepes sound heavenly for tomorrow. I love doing this sort of thing.
While he was at work yesterday I went to the store and got ribs and greens and stuff for cornbread and dirty rice; I hope I can time it with his return from work tonight. I love doing this sort of thing too. what concerns me about these feelings is that they’re just not quite at the right place, or with the right person. If they are stirred up in me, fine, I can deal with that.
Sure, I could see myself settling down into a life like this- cook, run with the dog in the am., write for the afternoon, greet the honey after work, have dinner before a walk with Bern. It sounds so nice, so… comfortable.
But it’s so unexpected. I haven’t been seeking this sort of comfort, have I? I know that I want it, eventually, like a cushy teaching job at a university, but not right now. So what’s it mean, that I’m going through it right now?
I wouldn’t be staring at the moon and wondering that, right now, if it felt like the real deal and not just a shell of it, right?

This means something

When I was little, life's beauty was in the small surprises. An afternoon tangerine split open and shared with my mom became something special when we found a baby tangerine growing inside the juicy, golden flesh of the fruit. An egg cracked for a birthday cake became a conundrum when two yolks slid like bright golden suns into the yellow bowl we always used for cake batter. Had we just doubled the egg content somehow, with nature's twist, or would it matter that there were two yolks?

Mom and I have never been close, at least not in my memory, although I'm sure she could tell you of a time as an infant when I enjoyed her company. As a psychologist, she's given me enough unwanted advice over the years for me to edit the DSM-IV, and I always feel like she just wants to be my friend, until I tell her the graphic details of my life that I'd share with a friend. Then she's my counselor again.

Funny, I can take that from my friends, who try to help me figure shit out, but not her. Another one of nature's great mysteries.

Anyway, today as I was dicing an onion and a red pepper for some pineapple salsa, I came across something that totally reminded me of her. And it wasn't onion tears.

My red pepper, when split in two, had a little baby green pepper nestled up inside the humped crest of its top, right near the stem. It's not unususal to find this sort of "mutant" fruit in nature, and like I said, it always makes me smile and think of my mom in a good way when I do. Mutants= mom thoughts maybe not the nicest of ideas, but that's not quite the correlation.

So I finish seeding the pepper, separate the stem, and pull off the little nubby of green pepper poking out from under the crisp red flesh. Lo and behold... there's a YELLOW pepper growing around the little green bit of pepper. This thing just keeps getting better and better. And the best thing of all... the symmetry of it. Each side of the red pepper had this sort of genetic extra growing on it.

When I was little, a dumb six-year-old, you know, mom would tell me that there was some special meaning in this additional fruit or egg yolk or whatever, and I'd believe her.

Now, I'm hardly a dumb child anymore, but when I find this sort of thing on my own as an adult, I think of those special rare moments with my mom, and today, finding this trio of peppers in part of my dinner made me smile. I took pictures (obviously) of the thing, and then yes, I ate the little guys.

Those cakes never differed with an extra yolk, and the tangerines were never sweeter, but as we ate the cake later on, it was like we had a little shared secret tucked inside only for us to know. Today's yellow pepper was sweet ( yellow peppers are my favorite anyway) and the red was yummy too, but the green one, smallest of the three, was a touch bitter.Still though, that didn't matter, because as I crunched on them, I could feel the bright colors of the peppers and the bond with my mom secretly tucked away in me somewhere.

Tickets on the Radio

I have never won anything by participating in a radio-call in. That's probably in part because I hardly ever call in to radio stations, and that's because there are hardly any good ones to call into. But I am all about college radio, and WLUW 88.7 fm outta Evanston, IL kinda rocks my socks.
And I won some tickets from them today. So woo-hoo for me and college radio!
Actually, I don't know if I won them, per se, but since I was up at 7am and listening to the radio, I ended up with them. And that means that on Thursday night I'll be rockin' out to the Von Bondies at Subterranean.

Seizure news

Seizures are symptoms of a brain problem. They happen because of sudden, abnormal electrical activity in the brain. When people think of seizures, they often think of convulsions in which a person's body shakes rapidly and uncontrollably. Not all seizures cause convulsions. There are many types of seizures and some have mild symptoms. Seizures fall into two main groups. Focal seizures, also called partial seizures, happen in just one part of the brain. Generalized seizures are a result of abnormal activity on both sides of the brain. - National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

It begins with my head.

Soft and warm and frayed, like an old electrical cord that’s been plugged in for too long, the sensation moves under my scalp like a magnetic liquid. It dances down into my face, fills the elastic fabric of tissueswith its activity and moves into my arms and torso. At some point it shows up in my eyes and causes flashbulbs of red and yellow to go off in the dead space where I no longer see. It’s actually still just buzzing in my brain, not sparking in the orbs of flesh capped with brown corneas, but because my eyes get weird during the seizure, it feels like there's something going on in my eyes, too. Running in rivulets of electrical currents along the scar tissue where parts of my brain were clipped out, the seizure happens because of misfiring neurons, internal communications gone awry along my optic nerve, damaged and dead.

Most seizures last just a few seconds, without much harm done to the body. But anything that goes on for longer than 5 minutes is considered a "medical emergency" and should be treated.

It took me almost two years and the concern of a friend to consider my random electric activity a "medical emergency," but once I finally admitted to myself that something else might be wrong with my brain, the presence of seizures in my life became even less of a medical concern than it had before.
I went through the testing, the ups and downs of chemical effects on my brain and body from new medications, and finally in January, my body and I reached an agreement about meds.

When I left the hospital after brain surgery nearly four years ago, I vowed to remain "drug-free," meaning no synthetic substances. I didn't want to ingest a pill (or pills) on a daily basis, and the thought of some external influence controlling or affecting my life was not in the plans. But then again, neither was brain bleed and stroke that had put me in the hospital in the first place, but seizure is common after this. So In January, having found a neurologist and a plan that fit into my twenty-something lifestyle, I hopped on the medication bandwagon again, and have been rolling with it since.
I'm lucky, in that my seizures are only "partial," meaning that I don't convulse, fall, etc. With more than 3 million seizure patients in the US alone, there are so many sterotypes of the "typical" seizure patient out there, and one of the best things about sharing this information with people for the first time is the look they give me when I explain that my little yellow pill controls my seizures. I don't like being on meds, but at least they work for me.

In the May issue of Molecular Pharmacology.
The World Bank report "Investing in Health" (1993) states that, in 1990 epilepsy accounted for nearly 1% of the world's disease burden. Epilepsy commonly affects young people in the most productive years of their lives, often leading to avoidable unemployment. - World Health Organization


Click here for information on finding a doctor who can help you or a loved one (or a not-so-loved one, I don't care), or Here, for my own doc.

So graphic

"That sounds like a Vivid production," he says after I tell him about the storyline. "The plot.... is it Vivid?"
I can't help but laugh out loud. Jay is the closest thing I have to a boyfriend (maybe he is my boyfriend?), and I'm telling him about the bit of adult entertainment I recently watched and reviewed. Our talk of moving me to California has got me concentrated on finding work in LA or the surrounding area, and even though I've been saying this since last year, the next job I have is going to be a journalism job. I've been ready to leave Chicago since October, but have put it off and put it off, because while there's nothing keeping me here, there's also nothing anywhere else that makes me want to leave.
Except now, maybe him.
Either way, I'm ready to get back into the newsroom, and if that means southern California, fine. We've already made plans for me to whip up some articles while I'm back in Long Beach next week, and I'm working on a cover letter for an unnamed business, one that is in the "adult entertainment" industry, on the media side of things. And I don't mean like raucous newsroom sex scenes. Although that might be a pretty rockin' beat (Time for some research).
Thus the porn review.
I'd say I'm more knowledgeable than many when it comes to the history of adult entertainment industry, because I find it so interesting, and because I'm a staunch advocate of First Amendment rights and a student of journalism law ( ex: miller v. california). These are two areas in which the adult entertainment industry and my industry have come together (love it when that happens) to defend each other. And if I can get a job working in one to learn about and report on the other, that sounds like a great opportunity to me.

So the porn review.
With the advent of online journalism and new media as the media these days, many adult websites have set up user review sites so that "people like you" can write, comment and critique the subject matter they know so well. It's the same thing as the news revolution we've seen over the past few years. Who needs a journalist unfamiliar with a neighborhood to come in and report on it when the residents themselves can provide better coverage? The premise of these websites and reviews is the same.
So I've signed up for a site and am now a bonafide video reviewer. It's a new process, but thus far, a fun one. And having support from others is always nice, no matter what I'm writing about.
Jay and I have been able to talk about anything since we met, and when I tell him about the reviews I'm writing, he's excited for me and happy that I'm doing something proactive for my career. And happy, of course, when I ask him to "research" with me.
And then when I tell him about "Pretty Girl" and he can tell it's a Vivid production, I laugh even harder. It's like we're playing "Name that Tune" or something. I'd like to think it's my stellar description that clued him into the production company, but no, he just knows his um, production companies that well. Sounds like I'm got a great research assistant on my hands.

Truthiness, Pt. I

So how fictitious does a story need to be in order to be a work of fiction? How much truth must be present in it to give one pause? When is the "This work is a work of fiction and all names, characters and places are unrelated to persons living or dead" sentence necessary, and when is it a load of bullshit? Do we ever really know when fact ceases to exist and something just is? Do we ever really know?

The whole thing would be perfect she decided, if a few things were different. If there were fewer drugs, or at least more clarity on the ones that were there, and where exactly, it was that they were, and hell, what they were. It would be perfect if it there was less procrastination and more dedication and yet, somehow those things didn't matter, not really, because they hadn't yet affected her. But they probably would, at some point down the road, at some point when it mattered and was too late and she had already fallen too hard to get back up again without help.
The whole thing would be perfect if it was easier, but these things never are, and she didn't really want it to be easier anyway, not really. It already felt good and right, and really, if it were any different, then it would be something else, and not this amazing, crazy and wild adventure that it was becoming.
And isn't that exactly what she had been looking for? An adventure? A story? Isn't that what she was always looking for?

She met Jake at a Christmas party. He was wearing jeans and a blue sweater and when they hugged at the end of the night, she could feel the muscles in his back through the soft, worn fabric. Stephan, the host of the party, her boyfriend, and the person responsible for the introduction, didn't have muscles in his back. Or anywhere, really. Later that night, she would think about those muscles as she was hoping that Stephan would come, already, and pass out, so she could just finish herself off and go to sleep too. She would think about those muscles and Jake and that cold night for a few days after the fact, but then, like the alcohol and the year, and the relationship with Stephan, it would all fade into the background.

She had fallen for Stephan out of the blue, against her will even, because of his wit and intelligence. She had known him through a work project and didn't like him when they first met, but he wooed her with poetry and she gave it a shot. Even then though, things had always been "off" between the two of them, and for all the attention she paid to his career and his interests, only a understanding the poetry and cooking she enjoyed was ever mentioned, and then, just barely. So when Stephan had introduced her to Jake and left to get them drinks, it only mildly surprised her that they had been childhood friends. It was the same reason, Stephan had told her, he wanted to date her. Jake was fun and laid back and made those around him feel good. Everyone needed a guy like that in his life. Jake shook things up, and did so with an alarmingly easy smile and sense of humor about it all.

"And by the time the Dutch border guard, the one in charge, came and stopped the interrogation, they had already cut through my passport and lifted up the picture. I guess they thought I was someone else."
Jake was telling a story of daring and intrigue about his European travels, and Mila was hanging on every word, stunned. The man was gorgeous and funny, and he knew how to tell a story. It made her feel warm inside, drunk on the idea of a man with such stories and how to get them all out of him, preferably as his only audience. And in the dark. If he knew how to tell stories like this, already, well then, that meant that he knew how to live life and find the stories worth telling now and in the future. And he knew how to share them with others. Perhaps it meant that there would be room in his life for more, and possibly for a companion storyteller to work with. That was one thing she had room in her life for and would happily accommodate.

"Oh, the old border-crossing story again?" asked Stephan, approaching on quiet, oiled steps. It was his tactless manner of attack in turning the focus back to himself. He was awkward in some social situations, namely the ones in which Mila found herself entertained by other men while he floated off and played diplomat. Seeing her interest in Jake (was the internal blush spreading through her body beaming on the outside too?), he produced a cranberry vodka drink with a smile, like a five-year-old bearing fruits of scribbled crayon labor.
"He's told that story over and over since it happened. Years ago." His shoulders held upright, tight and square, Stephan seemed stiff and out of place next to the two new friends conversing in the corner. Mila eyed him, wary of the meaning bound up in that, weary of trying to see through the self-deprecating humor and trial balloons floated to save face.
"Well, I've never heard it. And I like hearing stories like this. It makes my life seem less crazy." She stood up for Jake as she would have anyone else that Stephan shot down, but while looking at Jake, she delivered a clincher reserved for those she truly wanted to pull away and save for herself.
"It makes my life seem less crazy," she said, lowering mouth to drink and eyes to floor before peeling them across Jake's body, " but no no less interesting or unique."
The look could melt ice through a coating of the finest Scotch from a room away, and if the recipient could meet it, she knew she'd found a worthy opponent.
She almost never got the look back.
"Unique, huh?" asked Jake, brown eyes flashing soft and gold in the haze of the bar. "Seems like you've got a pretty interesting life. You should tell me more about it sometime." He held her gaze just long enough to secure a silent confirmation, then turned to Stephan, pulled him to the bar for more drinks and the chat they hadn't had since arriving to the bar.

Mila had grown up on the road, and it made for an interesting life to say the least. Her father's job as a bounty hunter had taken the family all over the world, and she had cultivated her sense of freedom and spontaneity under her father's watchful and encouraging eye. Her mother, a fiery Chilean, had fallen for her dad as a student protester picketing labor rights (or lack thereof) in the 70s, and Mila was the product of a long-distance love realized and given time to flourish.
Summers in Chile, midnight sunrises along the Alaskan coast, deep-sea diving along the Yucatan Peninsula had cut her teeth for travel at a young age, and now, as an adult, she found it hard to stay in one place for very long. She was always happier when she was somewhere else, and existing as part of the mainstream bored her to no end. Growing up as she had ruined her for "real life," and at 28 she had refused to settle in to the monochrome permanence of white picket fences and matching silver napkin rings her friends had fallen into. Her mother encouraged her to find a nice boy and settle down; "I pray for you, Mila, that he is the best man for your children and the best man for you," she said when they spoke on the phone. "You will find him, ojala, when the time is right. But I pray this for you everyday."
Her mom had settled down in Montana with her gringo husband before having Mila as the 70s drew to a close, and now, during those same phone calls, she would remind Mila that the "craziness" of her life had passed, as it would for Mila someday too. She would smile quietly, thankful her mom couldn't see her, and nod her head, knowing that the "craziness" would always be a part of her life. It defined her, more than any job or title or man or inflammatory gaze. Those prayer, thus far unanswered, were always in the back of Mila's mind as she went out on dates, slept with new men (always in their beds, never hers, Never.), and looked in other places for who she was. She felt no need to settle down, or simply settle, just yet, but she found that as her friends did so and she remained free and open to life, her stories meant less to those who no longer understood them or had room to understand them. She wanted someone to share her life with (who doesn't?), but she had yet to find the person who could match her, word for word in action and intensity. If craziness defined her and was her story, more than anything else, she knew she needed to find someone as alive with it as she was. In a word, Mila was picky.

Stephan laughed loud and deeply from the bar, rousing her attention and making her smile. It was true that she enjoyed his company and his wit, but she knew that long-term, it would never work between them. He didn't understand her as person on a fundamental level, and because of that, more than anything else, she had considered breaking things off in November, after her hometown dentist advised her against any and all dealings with the government.
Doc Capshaw was a big bear of a man, an old militiaman from year back, and as he delicately cleaned her teeth with this fence post fingers, she thought about his words and their sincerity.
"You say you can't trust this guy. I've never met a bureaucrat I could trust, and I think you already know in your heart how this will end."
Her issue with trusting him was not disapproving of things he had done before her, or would continue to do while with her, it was that he just boxed up his feelings and didn't tell her when he was going to do something he thought she'd disapprove of.
"Have some balls and just tell me the eyeliner stick I found belonged to someone who was here while I was home, not that you found it in the kitchen drawer when looking for a pen... I'm not a fuckin' fool," she had said to him one morning upon snapping a wooden, brown eyeliner pencil with her heel. "I don't use brown eyeliner."
She had returned to Pittsburg's bleak winter landscape with a sinking, metallic feeling in her stomach, knowing that she couldn't trust Stephan, and this had happened, so she was done already by Christmas. But he kept telling her how much he was looking forward to his birthday and having her there, adding each time how miserable last year's birthday had been.
"Twenty-nine was terrible, so 30 can't be much worse, even if it is 30," he'd say. "Not as long as I have you." The guilt hung over her in frosty layers like pale, flavorless ribbons of confectionery.

The birthday came and went, and had been miserable for Mila, but good for him. One taken for the team, as they say. But now, with Jake's electric presence humming around her, she understood why it had all happened as it did. Stephan, without knowing it, had repaid the favor of birthday happiness with the best present yet. That of his friend Jake.
She didn't know it then, when they met, or a week later, as the calendar ended and took her 28th year with it, but meeting Jake was a story all it's own. Bold, underlined, italicized. (more to come, this isn't the end)