Everybody Has a Swimming-Pool Story

As the weather heats up my mind turns to pools....not just pools of sweat, given that it so DANG HOT in Florida during these summer months, and we still try to turn on our A/C only when we really *need* to (it's off right now, despite it being 90+ today), but also to that quintessential summer place - the community public swimming pool.

You know, the place you went on hot summer days as a kid. The one to which you maybe now take your own children.

That place featured so vividly in the wonderful book & movie "Little Children" - where wordless seduction happened and the neighborhood pedophile showed up and scared everyone off (you know what I mean if you've read/seen it)...I'm telling you, this can be a dangerous place ya'll.

Even without the pale skinny guy in mask & flippers - who really wasn't menacing anyone at that moment - showing up & then later getting out of the now-emptied pool. "I was only trying to cool off!" he exclaims, upon exiting under the watchful eyes of the police. It's a great scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKRb2AeHyZA

I have this one specific childhood memory/story of being at a public swimming pool in Los Angeles (where my father grew up), 'round the tender age of 7 or 8. We were waiting to use the high-diving board and there was probably some kid-jostling and whatnot but at some point it apparently got ugly.

A tough little dark-haired boy I can still see in my mind's eye got angry for some inexplicable reason, and then said something like "you want me to show you my dick?! You wanna see my dick? I'll do it right now!" He seemed to be reaching into his swimming trunks and I was so confused & terrified...what the hell?! I definitely did NOT want to see his dick - I just wanted to use the high-dive!

Some other boy stepped between me and this angry little boy - I will never forget it - and I felt protected, grateful, safer. This other nicer boy subdued the rude boy, I guess, and that's where it ended.

At the time, I had no idea what the f--- was happening but now, all I can see is that in that bright L.A. sunshiny pool-day suddenly someone was angry, turning it all awful & using their genitals as some kind of weapon. As a young innocent girl I had to look away, and be afraid & protected by another boy. That really sucks, when I think about it. I wish I had just had the "balls" to put that little shit in his place myself. Chances are he's still an asshole. And today, I would tell him so.

David has his own story: he doesn't remember how it happened or what happened next, he just has this poignant image of a little girl - also 7 or 8 years old - whose bikini top strap had broken and she was crying because of it. He felt so BAD for her but also had NO idea what to do, and probably rightly intuiting that if he had tried doing anything to make it better he just would have made it worse (can you picture THAT scene? he would have gotten blamed for sure), he did nothing. But he remembers that little girl crying forlornly, with her bikini top held up against her chest with her little arms and no one coming to help her, to this day.

And don't get me started on WHY she was crying - maybe it was simply because she thought she'd get in trouble with her parents cuz of torn bathing suit OK, maybe, sure, but if it was because of some breasts she hadn't even begun to grow yet and certainly shouldn't have been ashamed to show, then just - wow - how messed up is that?!

Either way, these twin stories intrigue me, if only for how they dovetail so nicely. Two little girls being somehow shamed and afraid, at such a young age! about bodies that God made for us to use & enjoy. For me personally, I could easily turn my story into "boys-men are evil" - it certainly *felt* like that, at the time, just scary and icky.

If not for my knowledge since then, about such good good men that I love on this planet. If not for David, my sweet husband, who was a "sensitive guy" even back then by his own swimming pool story, even if he couldn't act on his convictions, and his sympathies.

I like to believe that he would have been that other boy standing up for me, in the line for the diving board, if he had been there in L.A. instead of growing up in Milwaukee (and also truthfully, if he hadn't been um, about 18 years old when I was 8). :)

I still believe in the good in people despite the shit we sometimes do to each other. So, I have to put it out to the general public - what's your swimming pool story? Share! And believe in the redemption of kind people and of summer, in all its glory.

Black Swan & B-fast Club: Popular Girls & Perfectionism

I believe in peace/I believe in peace bitch/I believe in peace
~ Tori Amos "Waitress"

"Why didn't he just make one? Another angel. I mean, he's GOD after all, why didn't he just MAKE another angel?!" ~ Nicole Kidman in the movie "Rabbit Hole"

God sometimes you just don't come through/God sometimes you just don't come through/Do you need a woman to look after you?
~ Tori Amos "God"

"I just want to be perfect." ~ Natalie Portman in the movie "Black Swan"

I remember yes/in my peach party dress/no one dared/no one cared to tell me/where the pretty girls are/those demi-gods/with their nine inch nails and little fascist panties stuck inside the heart of every nice girl
~ Tori Amos "Precious Things"

I'll never forget the group of "popular girls" at my grade school. Ask any grown woman about this type of thing and - where ever she fell in the social rankings, part of this coveted group, on the fringes, or so far out of range it was just never-gonna-happen - you are bound to get an earful. They weren't always the prettiest, the skinniest, the richest or the smartest (though they often were all this & more), but they had something (charisma? being like-minded? just knew the fucking secret hand-shake?), that set them apart and got them entrance to this world that seemed so very desirable to me, at one time. That was the age (8-12 maybe?) when I pretty much would have sold my soul if I could have just somehow been one of them.

I was a fringer...sort of acceptable in certain ways (I played soccer with them, would help them with their math), but ultimately a little bit too weird to be fully let in. I was the girl who got invited to spend the night with one or two of them...but then I must have done or said something wrong, or perhaps we just didn't "click"? Because I never got asked back a second time.

This was actually EXTREMELY painful for me back then, but you can't really MAKE someone want to be your friend, as my mother probably tried to explain. I remember her telling me that even though I thought they and their lives were perfect, they still had problems and worries, just like anyone else. A pretty astute comment and absolutely dead on, I realize now of course, but sadly I don't think it helped a ton at the time. A friend's mother took a little bit of a lower road by telling her daughter something like "all those popular girls from when I was your age are fat & ugly now so don't worry you'll get the last laugh."

And this was just GRADE SCHOOL - for some I think it only got worse in later years. It's all right there in "The Breakfast Club" when Molly Ringwald's character basically says that she & Andrew (the wrestler) couldn't acknowledge the others when back at school next week, because the fallout from their group of friends would be cataclysmic. And that for Brian (the brain), for instance, he of course would want to acknowledge her & Andrew because well, they're in the popular group, everyone wants to be them! The brain (sweet Anthony Michael Hall) says something like "God Claire you're so conceited!" but she had a valid point he couldn't deny.

Man that movie is full of great quotes! I found three whole separate websites where they're compiled for the viewing pleasure of all us children of the 80s -
http://www.liquidice.co.uk/quotes/breakfastclubq.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088847/quotes
http://www.retrojunk.com/movie/quotes/7-the-breakfast-club/

And later on Claire says: "I hate it! I hate having to go along with everything my friends say!" John Bender (the exquisite Judd Nelson) has some choice words for her on this topic also, but I won't go into it - you can click on hyperlinks above if you want that trip down memory lane.

For me personally, by high school I had somehow managed to embrace my weirdness and gone off in other directions (not all of which were good - see the "dangerous boys" blog post from a couple years ago), where those "popular girls" sort of no longer existed (starting public school after 8 years of catholic was a big part of this). But I guess I thought of them again recently while watching "Black Swan" because, man, those ballerinas could be some serious bitches!! Is that how some people really are?!

Silly question, I know they are, I'm just lucky enough to not be around women like that much at all these days. (Although there was one piece-of-work I encountered in Milwaukee, I will never forget her, she taught me some great life lessons!) And also fortunate to not be in such a cut-throat competitive profession. I wonder if it's just part of that world and maybe similar to what it's like for actresses and other types of performers? But for ballerinas in particular, the drive for perfection seems inherent - I'll never forget how the main character in that book all us girls read back then, The Best Little Girl in the World was a ballerina, starving herself & throwing up just like Natalie Portman did, and also striving for the impossible.

For it is impossible really - perfection, so it's kinda silly to even try for it, I am starting to think. Only GOD is perfect after all, even if he does seem to make some questionable decisions that make us pretty angry (as depicted in the movie "Rabbit Hole").

What a gift to let go and just do your best. This is especially true for me lately with trying to write better & better software requirements in my now 1-year old "new" job. If those damn requirements could have been perfect by now through sheer effort, believe me they would be! And anyway, I'd really rather be writing blog posts (or my new idea: writing for T.V.! hellooooo Grey's Anatomy) or anything else more interesting.

I gotta admit there is a catty part of me that wonders if any of those "popular girls" are fat & ugly now (I did see one of them later on in high school and was a little, um, surprised by where she was going with her look). Or at least I just wonder in general, "where they are now" - those little "demi-gods," especially the ones who weren't particularly nice to me (for they weren't all evil, truthfully).

But the further truth is, removed from that cut-throat-girlhood world (NOT all sweetness & light, as some might think, obviously), they are probably just regular women these days, no longer the "anointed" like they seemed to me, way back then. Just women taking care of their families, working in offices, sleeping, loving & grumbling, growing older, and making the best decisions they can for their lives now. Normal women muddling through, just like me & just like you.

My Friends, by Dar Williams

I really love this song. Especially "She's found a common balance/Where you do your work, and you do your love/And they pay you, and praise your many talents." AND "She says 'You know I think you remember every part of me.'" Enjoy!

My Friends
~ Dar Williams

"He's a quiet man," that's all she said
And he's a thoughtful man
It's just he likes to keep his thoughts up in his head
And we finally meet, and she tries to draw him out a bit
She says "He's writing something,
Hey now, why don't you talk about it?"
And he doesn't make a sound
He's just staring at his coffee
And I know there's all this beauty
And this greatness she'll defend
But I think it's in my friend
I have a friend in a bright and distant town
She's found a common balance
Where you do your work, and you do your love
And they pay you, and praise your many talents
Well I'm passing through, and we know we won't sleep
She laughs, puts up the tea
She says "You know I think you remember every part of me."
And the water starts to boil
And if I had a camera
Showing all the light we give
And showing where the light extends
I'd give it to my friends
Sometimes I see myself fine, sometimes I need a witness
And I like the whole truth
But there are nights I only need forgiveness
Sometimes they say "I don't know who you are
But let me walk with you some"
And I say "I am alone, that's all
You can't save me from all the wrong I've done."
But they're waiting just the same
With their flashlights and their semaphores
And I'll act like I have faith and like that faith never ends
But I really just have friends

Grief and Grey's Anatomy AGAIN

Grey's Anatomy inspires me to write on this subject again.

It was another powerful season-ending finale and I had a lot of feelings while watching it, but interestingly one of them was ANGER. I couldn't help but flash back to when I found out about the sudden death of my father, years ago (for details read http://yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2009/07/day-music-died-part-one.html).

There was no staff of concerned-looking doctors (and they are all so attractive aren't they, so pretty, it's amazing!) ready to take me to a "grief room" to break the news gently, there was no world-renowned grief counselor on hand to help me, there was no other people in a waiting room to share the experience with, there was no free coffee!!

So, not entirely sure what THAT is about except maybe after recently posting my "Daddy" poems I'm still processing some level of grief, and still mad at him for dying or just how it happened. Whatever, I'll get over it but I had to share cuz it was that powerful.

Still I loved this episode, the moment when the woman stands up to her husband urging her to leave & says "I would like to stay." And the moment when the distraught woman with the daughter in surgery says "that's incredible" about the people who stayed in the waiting room to pull for her daughter, the one survivor, the "unaccompanied minor" from the plane crash.
http://www.greyswriters.com/2011/05/debora-cahn-on-unaccompanied-minor.html

What some humans will do for another person, it's as beautiful as the shiny shiny people who are the doctors on this show.

And I loved when Meredith says "I am going to get it together and we are gonna figure it out" - her bravery in the face of being alone with her new baby for the first time, being totally responsible for Zola all by herself, just wow. (I'd be completely terrified.)

And what he says to her about being a bad mother - frickin Derek, what the hell?! The writers have to do it for drama, I get that, but what she did is no reason to leave her like that.

I would love to write for Grey's Anatomy but have no idea what I would invent for these characters. Better just to watch and feel whatever feelings I have, I guess. :)

Breathe & Live Wide ~ inspired by Erica Jong

For Claudia, Against Narrowness
From Loveroot
Narrowing life because of the fears,

narrowing it between the dust motes,

narrowing the pink baby

between the green-limbed monsters,

& the drooling idiots,

& the ghosts of the Thalidomide infants,

narrowing hope,

always narrowing hope.

Mother sits on one shoulder hissing:

Life is dangerous.

Father sits on the other sighing:

Lucky you.

Grandmother, grandfather, big sister:

You'll die if you leave us,

you'll die if you ever leave us.

Sweetheart, baby sister,

you'll die anyway

& so will I.

Even if you walk the wide greensward,

even if you

& your beautiful big belly

embrace the world of men & trees,

even if you moan with pleasure,

& smoke the sweet grass

& feast on strawberries in bed,

you'll die anyway--

wide or narrow, 

you're going to die.

As long as you're at it,

die wide.

Follow your belly to the green pasture.

Lie down in the sun's dapple.

Life is not as dangerous
as mother said.

It is more dangerous,

more wide.
© Erica Mann Jong

Breathe & Live Wide
I have always wanted to
"live wide" and be free
to breathe

but

the world is so dangerous

and it only seems to get
more so as I age
inevitably

for it's a thin and narrow life
that finds me going from
home-to-work to-grocery-store

for beer & cigarettes, back to this balcony
where I'm putting the damage on
and don't breathe, at all, or just barely

it's a thin and narrow line
I walk, from here to the
fear, guilt & shame I feel, almost daily

that my mother
taught me, so eloquently
my father too

they sat there saying
"we can't control you"
but what did they try to do?

my 21 year old boyfriend
when I was 16, was only going to
help me live more wide (I thought)

they tried the priest, one time
but he didn't know what to do, or understand
a teenage girl and her parents begging for help

and then, when I confessed
to my mother that
I was having sex

she merely said
"you're going to do what you want
but I can't condone it"

my father just raged
and felt helpless
as fathers do

but if he had only looked me
in the eyes and said
Sweetheart, baby girl

that I love - I can't stand to see you hurting yourself

I'm so worried about you

maybe I could have come
to my senses, made different choices and
not be where I am now

but that's all in the past and
I'll die anyway, as we all do
I never did get pregnant, as they probably feared

I went to college, kept playing soccer somehow
was a "good girl" and graduated, so they did a
"good job" and everything is fine

actually, now

it's just that I'm going to die
much faster, with more fear, guilt & shame
and way less "wide" than I could do
otherwise

My Own "Daddy"

Best read alongside Syliva Plath's original, which I tried to model, rather strenuously at times!
http://www.internal.org/Sylvia_Plath/Daddy

My Own "Daddy"

You do not do, you do not see through
any more, black goo
in which I have lived like a shrew
for thirty years, over-educated and white,
barely daring to contradict or say this will not do!

Daddy, I have had to learn to hate you
You died before I got there
Coffin full of bear and bluster
Ghastly monument with makeup made you unrecognizable
But still big as a mountain

And a head yet stuck in socialism
Where countries you admired fell into chaos and ruin
In the waters off beautiful coastal Africa
I used to pray to be as interesting to you
Damn you.

In the 50s language, in the LA landscape
Scraped flat by the roller
of movies, movies, movies.
But the name of sad need is common
My Marilyn Monroe

Says there are many orphans.
So I never could tell for sure where you
Came from, no solid root
I never could ask you
The thought stuck in my mind.

It stuck in celluloid snare and wine&beer
Rage, rage, rage, rage
I could barely speak in my own house
I thought every authority-figure was you
And the language was fear

A power, a power
Taking me off like a Gypsy
A Gypsy to a concentration camp
I began to talk like a displaced person before I ever ran away from you
I think I may well be a Gypsy too.

The palm trees of Sepulveda Blvd, the stars of Hollywood
are not what they seem, are not what they do
With my bastard inheritance and my good luck
And all my new age leanings
I may be a bit of a Gypsy-Jew.

I have always been scared of you
With your belt, your fist on the wall
And your black beard
And your squinty dark eyes
Nightmare-Man, how you held us in thrall

Not God but close enough
So fire&brimstone that no dis-obediance could slip through
Every woman marries her father
And gets the boot on her chin, gets controlled again
Booted heart of a brute like you.

You stand beyond the mountains, daddy
that you died on, in the photo I have of you
A dent in your forehead instead of your backpack
But no less the fool for that fall, no not
Any less the hurried man who

Bit my pretty little life in two.
I was twenty-four when they buried you.
At fifteen I tried to die with alcohol
And get your attention back, and get back to you
I thought even a boyfriend 5 years older would do

But they pulled me on to a bright future
And they stuck me together with SATs and college glue
And then I knew I had to go to graduate school
I met&married a man, on model of you
A man in bad clothes with a grumpy look

And a love of the lawyerly argument and the kinky screw.
And I said I will, I admit, I do.
So daddy, I'm now through.
The computer's completely shut down,
The FaceBook-photo memories can't feed through.

If I've killed one illusion of love - I've killed two
The dream of love who said he was you
And took my energy for a year, or two,
Eleven years, if you want to understand.
(But that was a long time ago.)
Daddy, I'm safe, you can rest now.

There's a flower on your grave
And the world respects you.
They are still giving awards in your name to honor you.
They always knew you were a good man.
Daddy, daddy, you asshole, I love you.

Battle of the Body

"Nothing tastes as good as thin feels" ~ source unknown

When I was 9 or 10 - I can't remember exactly how old but I'm pretty sure it was well before my teenage years, in other words much too young - I marched down the stairs on a weekend morning and announced importantly to my parents that I was going on a diet. My grand plan? I was only going to eat carrots.

I can't recall how they reacted but I do remember my Dad saying something like "I guess you won't be wanting any of these delicious pancakes I'm making then." And I - flush with my new commitment to what I perceived as a much-needed weight loss - merely hesitated for one moment and then plopped down in a chair at the table to dig in. "Oh well, I'll start eating carrots tomorrow."

And so began a life-long ambivalence towards dieting - something I've not been much good at. Though I've never been a "skinny minny" as I like to say, I was lucky enough that I didn't really have to worry about my weight for many years of my life.

Playing soccer from a young age all the way through college, I was always very active and therefore able to eat pretty much whatever I wanted without undue consequence. And, whatever issues my parents saddled me with that I have to take responsibility for and deal with now, a problem with food or full-blown eating disorder is, fortunately, not one of them. In fact, I hated the way women seemed so preoccupied with weight and found it tiresome, trite & boring.

In my early days of awakening to the injustices of socialization I basically took it on as a feminist issue and tried to get my friends to realize that dieting was a form of sexist oppression. I still remember hanging out in the hallways of our freshman(woman!) dorm one evening and my friends engaging in that particularly female routine ritual of communal self-loathing which consisted of picking apart every self-perceived imperfection possible.

And me exclaiming in sudden frustration "Let's talk about what we like about our bodies for a change. For instance, I just love this little freckle on my right thigh, it's so dang cute!" The silence was probably deafening but I only remember feeling how certain I was that we were not meant to hate ourselves like that, and wanting them to understand that it was possible to feel better.

Yet I was obviously under the influence of some degree of "body dysmorphia" that as a pre-adolescent I was convinced that there was something about my body that was wrong and needed fixing -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_dysmorphic_disorder

I look at photos of me from that time and laugh at the notion that I needed to lose weight back then - especially now that I've gone through several rounds of gaining and losing weight since.

Because, fast forward a couple decades and given many a year since college logged at sedentary desk jobs, like most people, I found myself needing to lose weight for real. And to "just eat carrots" was not a sane, healthy or realistic option. So, the first time in my life that I actually lost weight I did it with lots of exercise and cutting back on calories.

Real simple. And, as I recall, not all that hard. But I was in my 20s yet and had a worthy goal: my "carrot on a stick" - yes, pun intended - was my 5 year college reunion, back in Spring of 1998. It was great and I felt powerful: it was the first time in my life I had gone on a diet plan and it had worked!

But it didn't last - fast forward to 2006, past buying a house, getting married and even more years spent at a desk, I had even more weight to lose. 60 pounds in fact, and that time I did it with Weight Watchers. Slow and steady and harder than the first time but I did it, again. (Meanwhile my husband David was effortlessly losing weight by doing something called The Paleolithic Diet, but that's his story to tell, not mine. But link included for those who want to know - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet)

After that I gained some back, lost it again with Weight Watchers and almost got back to what I weighed when I was 18 years old going off to college (back when I, despite my feminist aspirations, still thought I was probably a little bit "fat"). Then we turned our lives upside down & moved to Florida and before I knew it I was back AGAIN well beyond the healthy range of the BMI calculators you can easily find on the internet. How I hate them, even when I think I'm good I always end up too heavy to qualify as "normal" - ugh
http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

It's all so tedious and I find me boring myself with my own blog post. But I have to admit that my most recent weight gain coupled with impatience and some amount of desperation (I just couldn't stand to do Weight Watchers again!) and the testimony of several people I know convinced me to embark on the HCG diet plan which I've been doing now for 24 straight days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chorionic_gonadotropin
http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/diet-fitness/weight-loss/hcg-diet.htm

It's been hard but I've been determined and it has worked, I almost immediately lost about 14 pounds. More than that, I've been eating way more fruit than ever before, getting tons more sleep, going to the gym regularly and David tells me I've been much happier since I started so....

But I've plateaued big time since my initial weight loss and been frustrated in the last couple weeks so tonight I snapped & splurged on fried fish&chips and beer. Maybe I'll get back on tomorrow but either way, the battle of the body, which I so reluctantly participate in, continues despite my best intentions, aged feminist convictions and inherent intelligence....

I have one more month before we go to the island of St.Martin (our first real vacation since 2009!) and maybe at some point I'll "just eat carrots" if that's what it takes to feel good in that mythical bikini on the beach. :)

Adrenal gland poem

Turns out

It was my ADRENAL GLAND all along

That FEAR spot, somewhere near my stomach

pumping too much

FIGHT or FLIGHT problem-juice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenal_gland

I've had all my life

this problem

I'd like to blame my parents but they are gone
and empty

so it doesn't matter anymore
it's still this problem

I have to solve

I'm too excited (FEAR) about
life and find myself killing it
on a daily basis because

it's also LIFE that I find so hard
to take, find it hard to live
I guess

it's an old slow way to DIE
that many have done before me
family members included

*sigh*

but I may be quicker
because I do it more intensely
and there is this known fact about how
women metabolize alcohol differently

I used to think that was about me
being bleery-eyed at midnight and others still
standing
but now as I get older I think

it could be about long-term effects
and how we handle it in
our bodies

Oh God, I'm so afraid
I just want peace and safety
and to be home finally

New Idea For a New Year - Feeling Goood

Nina Simone - all hats off!

Birds flying high you know how I feel
Sun in the sky you know how I feel
Breeze driftin' on by you know how I feel

It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good

Fish in the sea you know how I feel
River running free you know how I feel
Blossom on the tree you know how I feel

It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good

Dragonfly out in the sun you know what I mean, don't you know
Butterflies all havin' fun you know what I mean

Sleep in peace when day is done
That's what I mean
And this old world is a new world
And a bold world
For me

Stars when you shine you know how I feel
Scent of the pine you know how I feel
Oh freedom is mine
And I know how I feel

It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good

I'm feeling good

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8tuTSi6Sck

New Idea For a New Year

God, thank you
for this
amazing life
and please
forgive me when
I fail to be completely
grateful for it.

For acoustic version, click on this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPlgf6GqLQ4