Just this.

 

I hope when SF State gives Nicole her MA today, she grabs that diploma and then does the It's Ciggie Time dance.

On Death, TV and Death on TV and a bunch of other things

When learning a new language, each word is only understood with its counterpart in your own native tongue. “Amor” can’t be “love” until you are told what it means and your brain turns it over - LOVE is AMOR.  After studying some, you get the hang of the language, some words even make their way into the part of your brain that just knows and requires no translation.  "Amor" no longer sounds foreign and two lovers kissing at sunset under a tree in a park is no less love when it's called amor.  The two step process that was once necessary is replaced by understanding.  And you really know it when you start to dream in the language.  French was like that for me.  I struggled to learn abstract words and conjugations.  It was only when my parents sent me abroad (am I allowed to link to my last post?  Is there a blogosphere rule against that? Fuck it.)  for an intensive immersion course that the language started to make sense; the kind of sense where you don’t hesitate, where you are able to laugh in that new language, understand nuance and eventually, if you are lucky, fit in.

Attempt at understanding Spain, one tapa at a time.

Culture can be a lot like that.  You can learn about Spain by watching Bunuel films, reading Lorca, and eating gambas a la plancha, but you won’t truly understand why the Basque kids run around in kefiyahs and set trash cans on fire until you understand the why of their protest.  You can watch a Michele Haneke film and believe you understand why there are riots in the Parisian banlieues, but you really wont get it, truly get it, until you are getting punched in the face on Bastille Day by a gang of Algerian hoodlums angry at something much bigger than you.  (That actually happened to me.)  To immerse yourself in a culture, and to let it all in, good or bad, is the only way you gain an understanding that reaches the level where you stop the translating and start really understanding.

Growing up in the US, you think you understand the UK.  In school you read Wuthering Heights, memorize Keats, and act in shitty renditions of King Lear.  After school you played Morrissey on your cassette player and loved every new James Bond flick.  In politics, you heard about America’s great friendship with the UK and attempted to understand the parliamentary system.  You never did get it, but you still felt some sort of kinship with the British.  If you’ve never been to England,  you might think hoity toity-ness and royal pomp and circumstance permeate every nook and cranny, like melting butter on an English muffin.  Its all wedgewood china and sliver platters and la dee dah.  Even if you visit for a week, on spring break, you might not rid yourself of these delusions.  

And then you meet Jade Goody. 

Boobs with my morning coffee

The day I met Jade was the day I finally started really, truly, understanding England.  In a way that stopped me dead in my tracks, because with Jade, there was no translation.  I'd read about her in the papers, the kind with topless ladies on page three.  I’d heard about her antics from the season she spent in the  Big Brother house, that was about it.  But then I had my first conversation with her and my mind was blown.  All of the sudden I UNDERSTOOD. Here is England and that’s entertainment.  In an updated version of that Paul Weller song, he might mournfully mention Jade, her miserable childhood, her rise to fame and her made for tv dying days.  A new England, a new brand of entertainment.

 if you like this stuff you are probably homeless

But I wasn't looking for new England.... I was working, out of a talent agency,  as a personal assistant to a maniac.  In that office alone, every faction of English society reported for duty, from the iconoclast agency owner, to his array of agents.  The receptionist was this crazy fucker from Leeds who was a cross between Pee-Wee Herman and Alice Cooper.  The accountant was  a weed smoking pervert with tourettes and a tendency towards spiraling depression.  The publicist, as sweet as she seemed, was an obsessive compulsive snake charmer with a thin smile.  And then there was the client list.  Along with various colorful reality television personalities was Jade Goody.

She was a real money maker and as silly as she was, she had an ignorant-charming thing the English public ate up.  But it all came undone when Jade re-entered the Big Brother house, this time as a celebrity.  She called one of the other "contestants" -the Bollywood actress, Shilpa Shetty - "Shilpa Poppadom" and made further statements that can only be described as thick-as-fuck.  Although it seemed benign at the time,  it was easy to intuit that Jade had just messed up.  It wasn’t just the story you saw on the surface…Reality-Star-Says-Something-Stupidly-Racist.  It was so much more than that.  All that context, from Jade's own history to the history of the English Empire, had to be taken into account.  That shit ran deep.

Soon after all this transpired, Jade with the help of the agency, went on publicity overdrive.  She gushed apologies and worked to save her career. She even went to India to atone.  Gordon Brown apologized to Indian parliment on behalf of England for her deeds.  Needless to say, it was a big deal.

In the midst of all this, I went to a client's wrap party at the BBC TV Centre in White City.  It was for a shitty talk show and Jade had been a guest that evening.  Sitting with Jade, you couldn’t help but notice how much softer she looked in person. All the tabloids that had branded her as "piggy" were so entirely off the mark.  She was almost pretty.  Dimples appeared when she smiled, her eyes bright, her lips full. She was very slim and dressed conservatively.  She could have fit in anywhere, that is until she opened her mouth.  She leaned over to me and said in the cockneyest of cockney, “oi, look over there”, following her pointing finger with my eyes, I found two women heavily making out.  We watched them for a minute and when it started to get really hot, like hands errr'where, Jade squealed with glee.   She then said words that forever will ring in my ears...till the day I die, I think.  "Can you believe it? Feeding the goat at the BBC." 

"Get it?", she asked, "Feeding the goat." What the fuck does that mean?  I didn't know.  And then she sort of mimicked feeding a goat - cupped hands, in the vicinity of her nether regions. "Oh, of course", I said. And then she laughed and laughed and laughed.  And repeated it with disbelief about a dozen times.  At the end of the evening, I walked down the halls looking for my ride. I was weighed down with gifts and random shit.  I put down some gifted bottles of red wine, wrapped in wrapping paper, and went to fetch more things in another room.  When I came back, they were gone. A PA, passing by, told me she'd just seen Jade walk by carrying them.  I found her in the lobby, waiting for her car with her twinkish boyfriend, Jack Tweed.  I pointed at the still wrapped bottles in her arms and told her they were mine. "Why'd you take them?" I asked.  She just laughed and said "I can't help it, its in my blood."  Her driver called for her and with that she left, no further explanation given.  With the bottles of wine.  In that moment I was aware that I had gained insight on not only Jade, but the entirety of England.  I had cracked the code. That maybe, just maybe, I was one step further than understanding...I was actually fitting in. 

perplexed & drinking beer on Brick Lane

But I wasn't.  

Almost 4 years I lived in that country and never once did I fit in.  Met some great people, but let's just say I never really dreamed in British.  A few years after I moved back home, news of Jade's death trickled over.  She had cameras following her while she battled cervical cancer.  And had cameras on her when she found out she was terminal.  I am not sure the cameras were there when she actually died. Possibly. She wasn't the equivalent of Paris Hilton or Anna Nicole Smith or Snookie; the media here, not really knowing how to translate her to 'merican, kinda reported it wrong and inadequately.

God knows why I'm thinking of Jade Goody today and really it may be this incessant rain that's getting me all morbid, but I've been thinking about death a lot lately.  And with all of that, I've been thinking about the things that make us different, including language, culture, taste and the lack thereof. And chief among those differences - the amount of money in our wallets.  All depresso, I realize more and more that it's impossible to ever truly understand one another.   

But you know what?  Not everyone will speak Cantonese, and not everyone understands Cockney, but everyone understands Brown Bread. That's Cockney for 'dead'.  We'll walk through that exit door sooner or later and everyone understands that language.  And I guess we also all come through the same entrance, so to speak.  It's all that stuff in the middle that fucks us up.  If we just sort of remember that everyone shares those two things, that we were all born and we will all die, and its all so fucking precious, at least we'll have that.  And some shared humanity in a place we can all fit in.  

And Jade - if you can see this not-so-pithy blog up in reality TV heaven...I can't believe you stole my wine.  I mean even after I TOLD you it was mine.  Just walked out laughing.

Sheesh.

My Sumer with Bin Laden

Osama Kill Shot. Artist rendering by Yours Truly.

Not the Bin Laden, but a Bin Laden.  Her name was Thoria, she was 13 and had those same doe-y eyes that the Bin Laden had.  Had. He’s dead now, shot through the eye.  The media gave us that detail because, us Americans, we like detail. 

doesn't even capture, like, a 1/10 of how pretty it is

In 1992 I was 15 and formulating big plans for the future.  Thoria’s Uncle Osama, as it turns out, was somewhere in The Sudan probably doing the same thing.  But we weren’t worried about all that yet.  Not quite yet.  Thoria and I were both attending the same summer school, Le Vieux Chalet, high up in the stupidly gorgeous Swiss Alps, and as idyllic as that may sound in your head…I want you to multiply it by 10 cos you think you know but you have no idea.  We’d spend mornings learning French -poorly in my case - and afternoons hiking and playing tennis, among other outdoorsy type activities.  Each night ended with a hearty meal in the dining room, followed by shared clean up duties.  It was odd to know that the girl sweeping dinner detritus into my dustpan was a billionaire.  Odder still to think it was probably her first time touching a broom ever.  I only knew Thoria was so wealthy because there were whispers…mostly from the Spanish girls as they were very concerned with things of that nature.  (A side note: The Italians weren’t so interested with any of it.  At every break from French class you could find them in their Kappa sweat pants practicing choreographed dance moves to Rhythm is a Dancer.  That is all they cared about.) 

This was the school.

There was some cultural tension from the get go, but generally, everyone got along.  One day, though,  when Paula Skirt (there were three Paula’s, this one always wore a skirt) had 500 Swiss Francs stolen from her room, suspicion was cast far and wide and landed on the Saudi girls.  Not one in particular, but one of any of them.  Now I’m not an idiot, I know that some rich people steal money…to be honest, that may be how most of them get that way…but these girls weren’t thieves.  Forgetful maybe.  Bad at sweeping definitely, but not thieves.  I knew that intuitively.  But I sat back and watched this weird thing happen in my little idyllic summer school.  The Spanish girls retreated. Dug their trenches.  Stopped inviting everyone to their afternoon bike rides to Gstaad for celebrity spotting.   At dinner they sat on one side of the room, their clique casting sidelong glances across the room. The Saudi girls sat on the other side of the room…not sure who to trust and not sure who trusted them.  I sat somewhere in the middle, trying to avoid the Italian girls who desperately wanted me to join their dance troupe.  It went like this for days until finally, a confrontation went down on the clay tennis court.  Each of the girls denied theft of course, then the Saudi girls retreated, their dignity bruised.  The Spanish girls were indignant and held their ground.

Back then, the US was still used as an “honest broker” in diplomatic matters.  Me, in my white gym socks along with  my egalitarian sensibilities, looked and acted the part.  Thoria Bin Laden approached me and calmly said, “call the Spanish girls to our room tonight, we want to show them something.”

Uh-oh.  Ambush.

And it was an ambush of sorts.  That evening, after I cleaned the dinning room while the Italians did the running man to Eros Ramazotti around me, we all met in Thoria’s room.  All 7 of the Saudi girls were there, in their abayas and hijabs…like shadows, all in black.  Everyone was quiet, not knowing what to expect.  And then the presentation started. They introduced us to Islam, told us what it was like to live in Jeddah, what it meant to them to be an Arab.  They showed us their prayer rugs. They pulled out the Koran, read passages to us.  Taught us some bad words in Arabic.  We were riveted.  Mesmerized by what they were saying and their composure.

Paula Skirt was there that night, too.  Quiet for the most part, she was the first to ask if she could try on the abaya.  Pretty soon we were all wearing the abayas and swearing in Arabic.  We ended the evening laughing and singing songs, giggling the way teenage girls annoyingly tend to do.  No one mentioned the 500 Swiss Francs that night, and when Paula found the misplaced money in her suitcase the next day, no one said anything then either. The apology was implicit and organic and not necessary.  I think back on that one night often, when a bunch of girls saw the way shit was going and decided that instead of turning bitter and resenting a bunch of assholes who didn’t understand them, they took the time to make them understand.  The Saudi girls said, look, here is why we are different.  It’s such a minor fucking detail though.  Let’s laugh about it and then go ski on a glacier. (You can do that in the summer in Switzerland, btdubs.)

6 years later, Osama Bin Laden declared a fatwa on the US.  Then the bombing at the barracks in Saudi Arabia. Then Kenya and Tanzania. Then the USS Cole.  And of course 9/11.

Can you believe this shit?

And as much money as she had, not for any of it, would I have wanted that last name.  I think of Thoria often, remember her eyes and that soft, slow smile.  She’s all grown up now…probably fitted out in Gucci, in the back of a gold plated, chauffeur driven limo in the South of France.  Traveling between her yacht and her fancier yacht.  Maybe she’s married and she’s gotten rid of that name.  Hopefully, she has.  But I wonder if she thinks of those days before her legacy shifted irrevocably, when we were all just silly kids trying to learn French, moaning about hiking uphill and complaining about all that fresh air and gorgeous scenery.  I’m sure she does.  I know I do.

I'm also pretty fucking sure she’s never touched a broom again.

Always remember, never forget. 

Eros...play me off.

A funny thing happened on the way to the G train this morning.

But first this: I was 16 on my own, on a train in Italy, listening to an eclectic mix of music on my walkman.  Appropriate to the time, the mix included Nirvana, and inappropriate to my age it also included Pavarotti.  As the initial swells of the tenor's Nessun Dorma played I looked out the window...I felt so alone. So in love with being alone. With the tumult of  adolescent thoughts swirling within, I looked out at Italy rolling by and saw a sign, it read: Modena.

I did not take this. But it's pretty, no?

Pavarotti's birthplace.

A sledgehammer couldn't  have put it more succinctly: Helen, you are exactly where you should be.

I felt that same rush of realization at 19, reading Howard's End when I, again on a train, rolled into Waterloo Station just as I read that the character, Margaret, was doing the same.

Later in life I met a quirky guy who told me not to ignore such things. That to celebrate these coincidences, revel in them, write about them, read into them, is to live your life like a poet.  An echo to an earlier lesson that being beats doing. Being beats doing. (An ethos that to this day has ruined me as a writer, prolific in the blankness of my pages.) Being a poet, beats writing the poems.

I did take this. Somewhere by Harris Ranch on the 5.

Driving up the 5 freeway - LA to San Francisco - one brutal summer day, I had a thought and with it, a crushing feeling.  Preceding the road trip,  I had engaged in lots of asshole behavior...I'd hurt people who didn't deserve it and on the road, I had hours to think about the ruin I had wrought.  The San Joaquin Valley - the fecund agricultural heartland of California - was brown, bone dry...like my little dust bowl heart, the stupid poet in me said. Cracked. Unforgiven. Woe is motherfucking me. And through tears I fancied myself this lonely romantic...I am that horned beast leonard cohen sang about.  That's me.  And as if the universe needed to put a finer point on the matter,  an 18 wheeler truck flew by hauling what this all actually was.  You are not dirt, Helen, you are not good enough for dirt.  You, Helen, are a wrecking ball, capable of knocking down buildings, you stupid stupid girl. Havoc, is a euphemism for what you do.  Look at this wrecking ball. Reflect. 

As a poet one has no choice but to accept these judgments.

The universe can be vague at times, but not on that day. No, on that day she was one blunt bitch, all up in my grill.  And I cried four more hours until I arrived in San Francisco and rested/wrested my sorrows into a glass of whiskey.

But getting back to the original point - the universe was telling me something else that day, aside from the pity party I was all wrapped up in, the universe chimed in with a sign. That wrecking ball on the back of that flat bed truck was telling me... Helen, you are exactly where you are and maybe even need to be, but this is where you are. Deal with it.  So I did.

Whoa. I digressed there a little bit. 

The G train is exactly a 10 minute walk from my house.  I make it longer because I tend to walk while reading a book or magazine or listening to podcasts.  I do it to block out the madness of all the construction going on around me.  The Atlantic Yards was a disused train depot but is now fast on the way to becoming a basketball arena and I have to cross it daily.  Its hard to block out a basketball arena being built in your eyeline...but I try.

I'm 3 months away from being 35.  Lost are the romantic notions of being and doing and looking through the rosy tint of poet spectacles.  Long settled are my wrecking ball ways.  A stasis of comfortable living and pay checks and summer holidays cloud the yearning for these things.
Everything is sort of alright.  But this morning, as I ambled toward the train that would take me to my desk job, I was reminded of my former life of 'being a poet'.  Stevie Wonders's Golden Lady shuffled onto my ipod and I looked up, smiling, because how could that song not make you smile...and I looked into the store front I was passing. A book caught my eye...Little Stevie Wonder.

And I thought about all those little moments...growing up into me, when I let it all in and how I was shocked by the coincidences and how I felt like I was living in the verses of a poem.  And I was reminded that if I kept my eyes open, I was still right there in the rhyme and meter of it all.

Anyway, I was late to work.  But fuck it. I'm a poet.