How Lady Gaga Saved My Life

Well, that may be a slight overstatement, but it is what popped into my head this morning as I pounded away in spinning class.

Two months ago, I had trouble walking more than a half-mile on flat ground. A good night’s sleep was a distant memory, and the pain in my knees and legs was more than occasionally overwhelming. Almost three years of inept “treatment” of a work-related injury had left me depressed and angry. In spite of doing all the right things–dropping a significant chunk of weight, exercising, eating right–my mobility was becoming increasingly constrained.

Then, my third WC attorney negotiated a settlement, and I was freed of quack doctors and bogus “therapy.” I immediately joined the local gym and started taking spinning classes.

For many years I had been a serious cyclist. I had tried spinning once before, but found it frankly annoying and cheesy. This time, however, with the right instructor, the right music, and an intuitive need to get back on some sort of bike, it clicked. The first day pointed out weaknesses I did not know I had, and a brief kick-ass session with my instructor taught me what I needed to do to compensate. His affirmation that I was stronger than I thought was just what I needed to push through my initial pain and frustration.

So now, six weeks later, I relish the sweat, the push, the drive of my mornings in class. I am reconnecting with something very primal in me that I allowed to be buried by bad circumstances and worse people. In those classes, which are choreographed to music that three months ago I would never have considered listening to, I am hearing not only the beat, but words that I need to hear. I was “born this way,” and I need to accept the discomfort of not quite fitting, of always questioning, of being restless and sometimes even a little aggressive, as a part of who and what I am, not as something that needs to be fixed or that should conform to others expectations.

It is incredibly liberating to be on the road to reclaiming my body, which through sheer dint of will, will become once again an instrument of pleasure rather than pain. It is even more liberating to be finding the courage to unlock the parts of me that were almost lost in the chaos of the last ten years. I can even say that it feels like redemption.

Baby, I was…

Born this Way

It doesn’t matter if you love him, or capital H-I-M
Just put your paws up
‘Cause you were born this way, baby

My mama told me when I was young
We’re all born superstars
She rolled my hair, put my lipstick on
In the glass of her boudoir

“There’s nothin’ wrong with lovin’ who you are”
She said, “‘Cause He made you perfect, babe”
“So hold your head up, girl and you’ll go far,
Listen to me when I say”

I’m beautiful in my way,
‘Cause God makes no mistakes
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way

Don’t hide yourself in regret,
Just love yourself and you’re set
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way

Ooo, there ain’t no other way
Baby, I was born this way
Baby, I was born this way
Ooo, there ain’t other way
Baby, I was born this way
Right track, baby
I was born this way

Don’t be a drag, just be a queen
Don’t be a drag, just be a queen
Don’t be a drag, just be a queen
Don’t be!

Give yourself prudence and love your friends
Subway kid, rejoice the truth
In the religion of the insecure
I must be myself, respect my youth

A different lover is not a sin
Believe capital H-I-M
I love my life, I love this record and
Mi amore vole fe yah

I’m beautiful in my way,
‘Cause God makes no mistakes
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way

Don’t hide yourself in regret,
Just love yourself and you’re set
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way

Ooo, there ain’t no other way

Baby, I was born this way
Baby, I was born this way
Ooo, there ain’t other way
Baby, I was born way
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way

Don’t be a drag, just be a queen
Whether you’re broke or evergreen
You’re black, white, beige, chola descent
You’re lebanese, you’re orient
Whether life’s disabilities
Left you outcast, bullied or teased
Rejoice and love yourself today
‘Cause baby, you were born this way

No matter gay, straight or bi
lesbian, transgendered life
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born to survive
No matter black, white or beige
chola or orient made
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born to be brave

I’m beautiful in my way
‘Cause God makes no mistakes
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way

Don’t hide yourself in regret,
Just love yourself and you’re set
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way, yeah!

Ooo, there ain’t no other way
Baby, I was born this way
Baby, I was born this way
Ooo, there ain’t other way
Baby, I was born this way
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way

I was born this way, hey!
I was born this way, hey!
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way, hey!

Memento Mori

Six years ago today my father died, leaving me as the reluctant head of my small family. Although he was physically failing, his mind remained acute, his humor sharp, and I could not imagine him as being anything other always there. Any one of several maladies could have rung his death knell, but he chose–for I do believe that many people chose the hour of their death (and I speak not of suicides)–to allow a fall that left him looking like a goalie who got on the wrong side of a slapshot to usher him out of this world. The morning after his fall, as I was headed to work I got the call to come to the hospital NOW (and I wonder now, six years later, why the hell did I think it was a good idea to go to work at all; what was I thinking?!), and in spite of valiantly battling traffic, I arrived at his side five minutes after his death. He knew I was on my way, indeed, knew I was almost there as the nurse attending him kept calling to check on my progress. But desiring to avoid the drama of a tearful farewell, he released himself as I entered the parking lot. I guess he wanted our last words to be “I love you–see you tomorrow.”

The previous night when I called him after getting home from the hospital, he told me he was a little frightened, and if I had not been tired and so sure I would have him another day, another week, and that I would be able to bring him home to recover with me, I would have gone back to the hospital. Screw work, screw Harvard, screw my insane boss. I went to work the day after his death, and the day after that, and didn’t take bereavement leave–aside from the day of his funeral–for several weeks, and even then it wasn’t to be bereaved but rather to attend to the house and the modest estate and the funeral arrangements. As I try to remember it now, so much is a blur. I remember identifying his body at the mortuary before cremation, writing the obituary, meeting with the priest, writing and delivering the eulogy, somehow procuring the bottle of Irish whisky for the toast. But the lines that should connect those dots are strangely vague. As his only child, I had to do it all–and I did–but the doing left little room for being, for feeling the feelings that even now cause my heart to contract.

And today, I realized anew that I never really grieved him. Six years and I can still hear his resonant voice. Six years and I still dream of him, and in that liminal state before full awakening still feel his presence, still feel that I should call, should visit.

I live with the guilt of allowing him to die without me by his side, with the guilt of being too tired and too busy to visit or call as often as I should have. I live with the memories of my impatience, my failure to let him know how much I loved and admired him. I look in the mirror and I see his face; I put on a blazer and remember the way he had to have his suits tailored to accommodate his shoulders–not the broadest, but thick and strong across his back; I think of him and wonder if I was ever anything other than a disappointment.

I do not believe I will see my father again after I die, although I might wish I would so I could tell him all the things I withheld because of my own misplaced shame about the tender feelings I had for him. But I do believe that in some inexplicable way he is with me. The way he reared me gave me the strength to deal with a series of family crises that pushed me to the brink of my endurance. I have asked for his guidance, and in doing so called forth the best that is in me, the imprint of his care for me that overcame the deep–albeit often foolish–conflicts that were too much a part of our relationship.

I am his daughter, heir to his Irish temper, his fierce devotion to his offspring, his humor, his talent for doggerel, his artist’s eye with a camera, his respectful treatment of waitstaff, his mechanical aptitude, and his aquiline nose. As I think of all he gave me, I can only hope that I can impart some of his goodness to my daughter and granddaughter (although they, alas, have not the nose), and that when I die, they will continue to honor the memory of the man who was my father.

Brain Jam

Over the course of the past week, I have had more ideas for posts than I could manage. And therein lies the problem that has always plagued my writing; it is not a dearth, but rather a glut of ideas that makes it difficult–sometimes impossible–for me to write. It is a physical sensation of data becoming jammed in my brain, like a rapid, viscous flow backing up when it encounters a too-small pipeline.

I have a long list of post-bits vying for attention in my save drafts bucket. I have ideas for posts–indeed, whole articles–zipping around in the gray matter like charmed particles, each leaving a tracer that I hurry to mark before it fades. I don’t know how to do justice to these thoughts, so with a certain degree of mental exhaustion, I do nothing which frustrates me and creates an even deeper swamp of jam through which I need to wade in order simply to write just one damn little thing!

As I write this, however, I realize this is merely an excuse–and a pompous one at that–for not striking the keys. Too many ideas to write–what horse shit! I’m just too damn scared that what I write will be controversial, or risky, or worse, not good enough to satisfy the absurdly high standards I have set for myself, standards that protect against failure, but at the brutal cost of doing–nothing.

It is, I believe, time for a new set of standards–and some Goo-B-Gone, Brain Jam formula!

It’s Not My Fault!!!!

No, I am not sinless/blameless/pure as the driven. But dagnabit, this is one thing for which I will not take the blame. It is, unequivocally, Pangaea’s and Laurasia’s fault.

I grew up on shaky ground–both literally and figuratively–in southeastern Massachusetts, an area of high seismic activity where earthquakes do not fall into the neat(er) patterns of California temblors (a word borrowed from Spanish that sounds ever so much less threatening that “earthquake”). Plates frequently rattled, sometimes because of the flyboys at the nearby Naval Air Station, sometimes because the earth moved under our feet. These tremors paled, however, against the monsters that hit the West coast.

I remember the apocalyptic images of the 1964 Good Friday quake in Anchorage, the most powerful seismic event ever recorded in North America to date, and the harrowing stories of the tsunamis it spawned. And I admit that  even at a tender age I found this event–like all elemental, beyond human control earth/air/fire/water action–at once compelling and terrifying. I imagined what it might be like to live through such interminable (this quake lasted five minutes, which is extremely rare) roiling. The rent earth, the roar of rock against rock, the heedless violence; these are the images recalled that kick my adrenalin into high gear each time the earth’s crust shrugs.

Since I have lived in SoCal, I have felt four temblors, two that swayed the floor while I soaked in a warm bath (which gave me some pause, especially considering the state of the termite-riddled floor), and one that yanked me out of a 4:00a.m. sleep like a freight train roaring through the living room. I assumed, however, that the mere fact this rattletrap 1920-ish stucco apartment still stood was witness much more to Glendale’s distance from the notorious San Andreas and Northridge faults than to the soundness of the building.

Today, however, the two small temblors that hit Santa Monica piqued my curiosity, and I decided to research faultlines. To my chagrin, I learned that I live on a fault that has been shifting an ominous 0.8 millimeters per year. It has been quiet, but at any moment the ridge could shift, and the odds of that happening are much greater than coastal California crumbling into the sea if the whole of the San Andreas decided it was time to re-draw the shoreline.

If this happens before I relocate–and the ancient gas pipes don’t turn the apartment into instant crematorium–I will grab the computer, the cats and a couple of pairs of underwear and blamelessly point my car east, leaving California to Panga and Laura’s tectonic mischief.

Life Would be Perfect if I Hadn’t Lost the House Pt. 1

First, a disclaimer. I have NOT read all of Meghan Daum’s book, “Life Would be Perfect if I Lived in That House.” I read the New York Times’ glowing review, gagged my way through about three pages of the accompanying excerpt, had my teeth set on edge by her whinging voice oozing from Public (where else??) radio, and almost had to dash for the necessary when I read this modest claim.

I thought she was thirty-two, tops, and was pained to learn she is actually forty. Smarmy, self-referential, and trite are the words that came to mind after my aborted reading of her domicile opus. So, in the interest of fairness and under the free admission that I can be a judgmental and dismissive snob, I read a hefty sampling of her Los Angeles Times columns. As a sidebar. let me state that the LA Times has barely enough substance to qualify it as birdcage liner. I know this because my friends with three birds line their cage with the local rag, and there is often seepage. So weak is the reporting that I frequently learn of California news first through my daily perusal of the on-line edition of The Boston Globe, which itself is on shaky journalistic ground.

But I digress…

Daum’s columns are indeed worthy of the LA Times, being barely more than hack opinion pieces that rather than inflame or inspire, merely annoy. She makes Maureen Dowd sound brilliant.

Now, back to houses.

Like Daum, I had a conventional thirty-year mortgage. Unlike Daum, I had a steady income. Like Daum, I did not over-buy. Unlike Daum, I was responsible for a family. Like Daum, I sunk pretty much all I had into my modest property. But unlike Daum, the trajectory of my life had rendered me a very bad credit risk and seriously encumbered with debt, so my mortgage terms sucked.

Enter a Realtor, a mortgage broker, the blood-sucking entity known as Countrywide, and the gut-wrenching shame of foreclosure.

More of this sordid tale anon.

Limits of Tolerance

I spend a lot of time pondering ethical questions. I believe that there are indeed moral absolutes, although the nature of those absolutes has changed (I would like to think “evolved,” but I won’t give myself that much credit) over the years.

There are, however, a few constants on my “absolutely unacceptable” list; abuse and exploitation of the innocent and vulnerable, and violence of any sort that tries to hide behind religious and/or cultural belief or norms.

The world is too small, the stakes too high, to allow any latitude for practices such as FGM, sexual trafficking, child marriage, the notion that sex with a virgin female will cure HIV infection, the terrorizing of girls who only wish to receive and education, and barbaric beliefs such as those held by Helen Ukpabio, the Nigerian “preacher” who has anointed herself deliverer of “witch children.”

To speak out against any such practice entails a risk of being labeled intolerant or worse, “culturally insensitive.”

To this I say, bluntly, bullshit.

I know that not everyone can devote their life to direct activism, but it is essential to speak out against these abuses, to pay attention, to rise in protest against the granting of visas to people such as Helen Okpabio, to find ways to support individuals and organizations that work on the ragged front lines.

These are difficult, ugly subjects. No one who cares about human dignity can, however, afford the luxury of being squeamish.

Why Use Free Software?

Bloated code. Security. Cost. Poor performance. User-hostile interfaces. Access. These are a few of the basic reasons to use free software. For educational institutions, non-profits. and low-income users, free software doesn’t merely make sense, it is the most responsible option, stretching IT budgets and allowing an organization to get new life out of aging equipment.

Even if you are not ready to make the leap yourself, your support of the Free Software Foundation will help make free software more accessible, and will move everyone one step closer to true freedom of choice.
Break away from shrink-wrapped hegemony; join the Free Software Foundation today!

Mid-afternoon Thoughts on “House”

I could so easily be Gregory House, M.D. The arrogance, the fascination with the grotesque and unusual, the ability to parse disparate bits of information into a solid conclusion, the over-focus, the living with crippling leg pain (for better or worse, a bad allergy spares me the Vicodin addiction), the hardened heart, the misanthropy that hides a profound desire for intimacy–but only with a specific person who remains (for House, until the close of Season 6) unattainable.

For most viewers, I suspect House is an infuriating, compelling–sometimes repellent–mythical character. For me, watching him is like watching myself in high relief, almost but not quite a caricature. And as riveting as his professional interactions and diagnostic leaps of insight may be, it is his just beneath the surface struggle with himself, his deep desire for love and intimacy, the inner battle between his cynicism–forged from experience and reality–with his tragically romantic need for the one person who fits within his jagged edges, that makes the show almost too painful for me to watch.

“Love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.”

Yes, indeed it is. And brilliance, material success, friendship, status–even a fast motorcycle–will never fill that void.

The Couch

My daughter is coming to California tomorrow, which provided inspiration for tackling a number of long-deferred, onerous tasks. For me, tasks tend to beget tasks, which is one of the reasons I tend to put them off; I know there is no such thing as “a” task.

Today’s goal was to clear out and organize the kitchen closet, a black hole of crap. Most of the crap belongs to my ex-”husband”–a title which he never deserved but which the law, alas, conferred–a fact did not make facing the mountain of stuff more appealing.

But I did it, and among the detritus I found three new cushion covers for the hideous ark of a couch that dominates my living room. So, I said to myself, swapping out the greasy, battered covers could only improve the beast, right? I did not, however, fully account for the effort, the crumbled foam bits, or the welling anger that would rise as I stripped fouled cloth from foam.

Relationships of all kinds are often symbolized by items that serve as icons or talisman. My misbegotten marriage is burdened with these items, but the couch holds a special place. It is a symbol of sloth, inertia, drunkenness, disregard. I cannot even sit in the place he used to occupy, so deep is my loathing of the man. Because this man, the one who swore he “wasn’t like the others,” who knew the deep and ragged scars of betrayal that I carried on my psyche, indeed turned out not to be like the others. He was–and is–so much worse that when I think about what transpired in the relationship I can scarce believe it. And perhaps the worst part of it is that the betrayal and harm fell not only upon me, but upon my family as well as those he seeks to feed the sick beast of his perversion.

As I stuffed the crumbling cushions into their new shells, I thought of all this–again–and realized that no longer can I in good conscience be silent.

Incoming

California state, county, and municipal governments are all teetering on the brink, and yet almost every night–sometimes for hours–police helicopters fly their grid over my neighborhood.

As a life-long New Englander (until this misbegotten sojourn to SoCal), when I hear a helicopter I think of two things; mosquito control or escaped convicts. So when I first heard them flying too low and too often over the house, I naturally assumed that this was a dangerous neighborhood, a hot-bed of gang activity, prison breaks, and other mayhem.

Not true.

In the infinite wisdom of California law enforcement, helicopter searches are dictated for pretty much any transgression save jay-walking and overdue library books (although I made sure to return mine after a particularly long foray that seemed focused on my block…). Like the fish that perceives not the water in which it swims, the local constabularies don’t seem to grasp what a profligate waste of time, money, and petroleum are these endless flights. And given the population density, frequency, and low altitude these “searches” take, it is likely only a matter of time before there is a tragedy.

Before that unfortunate day, I sincerely hope this cash-strapped state turns a critical eye toward this absurd practice.