Author Archives: janaremy@gmail.com

random (happy) thoughts for a sunny Sunday afternoon

Some things that are making me smile today:

  • Ellycat napping in the warm laundry
  • Using the Matrix to book an upcoming flight to Europe (still can’t make up my mind whether to fly to Rome, Paris or Brussels, though)
  • Spending a few moments in a train station bright and early this morning.
  • A smooth brew from my new coffeemaker
  • The pleasure of reading a great novel, each paragraph a delight.
  • Huge fresh scallops lightly seared on each side on the grill, each one a mouthful of Cape Cod memories
  • Finishing up that one last dissertation chapter(!)
  • Fixing my son’s bike, and taking it for a spin (it’s been way too long since I’ve been on two wheels)
  • Getting Things Done (I do so love checking things off of my to-do list!)
  • This one will be hard to explain to anyone who doesn’t understand the mechanics of my right leg’s socket suspension: but today I got a new liner in the style that I used to wear–with one wide seal rather than a row of four small ones.  Putting it on was comfortable like slippers.  And then realizing that the other style was probably contributing to so much of my discomfort for the past few years, especially my inability to hold suction when riding a bicycle–it’s hard for me to explain how much small changes in my leg affect my level of comfort.  It’s sort of like the princess who couldn’t sleep well when there was a pea under her mattress–any little change in my leg makes everything else either more challenging or much less comfortable.  And given how reliant I am on my mobility, it’s quite satisfying to get a fix that makes things feel ‘right’ again.
  • Sunshine on the couch, sunshine on the porch, sunshine on my bare shoulders, sunshine so bright that it makes me eyes water.  🙂

we write…(and I call it breathing)

We write to heighten our own awareness of life.

We write to lure and enchant and console others.

We write to serenade our lovers.

We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.

We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal.

We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it.

We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth.

We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely.

We write as the birds sing, as the primitives dance their rituals.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.

When I don’t write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color.

It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.

February 1954, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5

mad world (or, songs in the big chair)


My thoughts for this post have been germinating for awhile, so when I learned of Heather’s separation yesterday, it seemed time to tell the story (or at least, part of it)…

The four of us sat around the kitchen table sharing peppermint tea and scones, like we had so many times before.  Of course this felt both familiar and odd because it was the middle of the day and both Mom and Dad were home from work.  John sat at one end of the table, me on the other, and the kids on opposite sides between us.  At some point John told us that he had something to share and we all reached for each others’ hands to sit in silence as he prepared himself for what he had to say.

How funny, I remember thinking in that moment, that our family was so close and so functional that it made even a horrible discussion a thing of beauty.  There was no yelling and no anger, just him explaining to the kids that he’d made some choices that meant that he was leaving our marriage.  Watching the shock pass across the kids’ faces is something I won’t forget, and even thinking about it now brings tears to my eyes.

After his explanation and some questions from the children, I told him that it was time for him to leave our home.  I saw him to the door.  I think I might have hugged him, but I don’t remember for sure if I did then, or even when we last touched.

Something beautiful and holy happened in those moments after he walked out the door.  The kids and I formed a circle of arms and held on and cried, and I remember thinking that now….finally…my family could be what I wanted it to be, because for so long I’d just given up on things because I was so tired of the silence and closed doors.

We didn’t do much at all for the next few hours, just curled up in the huge oversized chair in our living room and held on.  Gameboy went to his room to be alone for a bit and Catgirl stayed with me there.  I stroked her hair, as I had so many times when she was little.  Neither of us could talk much so I shared with her the playlist of songs that I’d made to get me through the days leading up to telling them about the divorce.  First up was Alex Parks’ version “Mad World,” and we ended up listening to that song over and over again that day.

Back in the mid-80s when I was diagnosed with cancer and the world seemed so arbitrary and cruel, I would listen to the Tears for Fears version of “Mad World” and it helped me to remember that awful things just happened sometimes and that it wasn’t my fault.  And I knew that if I kept listening, kept singing…I didn’t have to make sense of what was happening to me.  I could just know that life was just that…mad and painful and tough-as-nails.

For long after that day, the kids and I had tea when I walked in the door from work in the early evening–to share stories from our days and to reconnect with each other.  Occasionally I would set out four teacups instead of three, but I made that mistake less and less over time.

that was just yesterday

Yesterday I visited a former teacher.  Over ten years ago, it was the first day of her “Journey Narratives” class (a lit class–we were reading The Odyssey and Gilgamesh and the like) that she looked out at the sea of students and asked us if we thought we were on a journey ourselves.   I think it was my hand that went up into the air first, and I spoke of the journey narratives that imbued my formative years–the LDS Saints’ westward trek in the nineteenth century, the wilderness wanderings of the Book of Mormon, etc.  And I said that I thought I was a pilgrim of sorts, on a spiritual journey to find something sacred inside of myself.  That conversation soon birthed this blog and not too long after led me to graduate school.

As we sat in her living room, she reminded me of the first time I visited her office hours.  Catgirl was a wee 3 year-old and had sat on my shoulders playing with my hair as I chatted with my professor.  She remembered that Catgirl admired her necklace because it had hand-blown glass beads that looked like candy.  As a bit of a distraction so we could discuss some questions that I had about the course materials, my teacher took off her necklace and let my daughter hold it (at the time, I thought it particularly generous gesture because it was obviously an expensive piece of jewelry).

Yesterday she gave Catgirl that beaded necklace as a “good luck” talisman for her plan to attend school in Europe next year.  Words can’t express how exciting it is to see my daughter taking her first steps on her own path.  And I still marvel at the generosity and support of a teacher who started me out on my own…

 

Upcoming events

Two upcoming events that might be of interest to my followers in SoCal:

1) The Past Tense seminar at the Huntington Library with Peter Stallybrass.  Always a delight to listen to (such as in this podcast of his plenary at the Past’s Digital Presence conference), Stallybrass will be speaking on “What is a Book?  And how do we write about it?”  At noon in the Munger Building on January 20th.  RSVP to reserve a box lunch and to receive a copy of the pre-reading for the event.

2) Novice Open House for the IMUA outrigger paddling team.  Everyone is welcome to join us and try their hand at this sport. January 29th, 9-11am at NorthStar Beach (next to Newport Aquatic Center), Newport Beach.
SD Mission Bay race

escape

There have been a number of hard things happen this week.  One of which is that Vasia-kitty* has a large open sore on his back–so large and deep that you can see his spine fairly clearly.  On top of that he appears to have a type of cancer that’s causing bony growths on his spine (this still needs confirmation with a biopsy, but it’s fairly clear that’s what’s occurring).  So I’m dealing with this wound and remembering so many of my own.  I find bone cancer fascinating–the eruptions of tissue gone mad that build channels of bone into places where they shouldn’t be.  But even while it’s scientifically intriguing to care for Vasia’s wound, I also can’t help but feel sick to the pit of my stomach as I see and feel what’s happening to his body and compare it to my own experience with bone cancer, and remember the time I spent tracing the unusual tumor-contours of my right knee before my leg was amputated.

As I contemplated the emotional drain that it’s been to deal with his ailment (added to these other personal stresses that include fighting the flu all week long), I realized just how badly I wanted to get away for awhile (again).  I found myself reviewing my calendar for the next few weeks and strategizing a way to squeeze in a roadtrip.  I then started thinking of friends that I could visit on the way and began to make a mental list of people to email to see if they were around…Within a few minutes of thinking along those lines, I had a fairly well-developed plan.

But then I remembered my commitment to slow down a bit this year.  To not be so eager to throw a bag in the car and hit the road.  I want to do that, but there’s just something about traveling that clears my head and renews my spirit…when things are hard, I just want to go.

I’m going to try to stay put for awhile instead, but something tells me that I’ll probably be behind the wheel and squinting into the sun over the dashboard soon enough.

*Vasia isn’t my cat–I’ve been caring for him while his owner gets settled into a new home overseas.  He’ll be winging his way to the UK within a few days, so I won’t be involved in his ongoing treatment.
IMG_5734

comfort food

Somehow I managed to not just catch the cough-flu that’s been going around, but I got the stomach-flu at the same time (a double-bonus, I suppose), so the past few days it’s been really tough to find anything to eat.  Tea, broth, a bit of palak paneer, and a few spoonfuls of farmer’s cheese are all that have sounded good to me.

Added to my under-the-weather feelings, my two foster cats haven’t been feeling well either.  Vasia, the crazy English shorthair with the wicked yellow eyes has been particularly ill, and the news I received at the vet today was not positive.  Right now he’s recovering from a nasty flesh wound and an infection, but it also looks as though he has an aggressive form of cancer.

Ugh.  A day full of sick for as I’ve been trying to keep Vasia’s wound clean in between bouts of nap for me.  I don’t know if I’m more physically or emotionally exhausted at the moment.  Both, probably.

After thinking about every possible combination of food that might possibly sound good to eat, I settled on an old favorite: peaches and cornbread (sans ice cream this time–there’s no way that I could stomach that level of richness right now).  So I ran a quick errand to the market to buy the makings of that meal.  While there I also picked up a head of broccoli.  Because it just looked good to me, too.

It wasn’t until after I got home and was unloading the groceries that a memory surfaced from more than 25 years ago.  When I was a cancer patient and had those nausea-chemo days when nothing sounded or smelled tasty (at all), my uncle would blend up either a concoction of fresh peaches (from his garden!) with semolina or a mixture of broccoli with cheese, and bring them to the hospital for me.  I never grew tired of either of those, and they added a lot of calories to my diet when I most needed them–back in those days when I weighed 70 lbs and was so thin that even sitting in a chair was too painful on my spine and tailbone (because there was no padding between skin and bone).

The cornbread is cooking in the oven right now and smells wonderful…*

*update: it smelled better than it tasted to me, but I was able to eat a serving.  Now, back to napping…

caught

Yesterday morning as I got out of bed, the world started spinning.  I curled back into the feather comforter and tried again a few minutes later with the same result.  Eventually, I peeled myself out of bed and got off to work, but throughout the day I had more and more moments where I could tell that something was off-kilter.  And by last night, as my throat got sore and the glands in my neck started swelling…I knew that I’d caught something, probably one of the various viruses going around my office right now.

So today will be blankets and hot broth and cat-naps, instead of outrigger paddling and errands and getting-things-done.

Sometimes that just happens, doesn’t it?
Photo above of last night’s pho noodles, which felt so good on my sore throat…