Words for a moment when there simply are none.
For there is nothing heavier than compassion.
Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone,
a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes. ~ Milan Kundera
There are some things that are so horrible and awful and terrible, that they don’t ever seem real. Until they are real. And even now when they are real, I find myself continuously being drawn back to a place of suspended animation and disbelief. That this reality cannot actually be real. But it is real. And it is horrible and awful and there are simply no words in any language that can impart the kind of raw, visceral sadness I am speaking of.
I woke up today for the third time since a permanent shift occurred in the reality I inhabit. And the cats wanted food, and the sun came up, and the people went to work, me among them. As I sat on the train, knowing I would soon be riding the same train back to the City with 50 tenth graders, I read the news. I wanted to read about news really far away from me. From places where terrible, awful things happen all the time and so they don’t seem like such incomprehensible aberrations. And the first thing I read was about how this month is National Stalking Awareness Day. I am fairly certain in this context the focus is on internet stalking, but the connection between cyber-stalking and real stalking is too real for me. Especially now.
There are a litany of self-aggrandizing idiots on the internet who consider themselves “internet-famous” (a euphemism for being NOT famous…) and as such are constantly blubbering on and on about how they are “stalked.” These people post photos of their boobs all over the interwebs, try desperately hard to be titillating… and then cry, “Oh my! That person thinks I want to talk sexy with them!” Or, “God, that person is so obsessed with me!” In light of what it really means to be stalked, and what is on my mind today, these sad little people only add insult to the injury I am feeling right now. The things that lead a person to stalk another are probably impossible to be understood by any other, but when the outcome leads to tragedy, it points to a whole host of problems that have far-reaching effects. And when the tragedy touches you in a deeply personal way, you find yourself trying to make sense of things that make no sense and becoming enraged about pitiful people you don’t know or care about on the internet while you ride the train to work because to think about the pain that is really weighing on your heart and soul is so awful you cannot even breathe when it enters your mind.
I need to breathe.
We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who’s right and who’s wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us and we do it with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don’t like about our associates or our society. It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blame others… Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground.”
~Pema Chödrön
Looking for explanations for the inexplicable is probably a road straight to insanity, but it is something I keep coming back to. It also leads to assigning false causality to minutia, and to conjecture, and to blame. I wanted to place this overwhelming grief onto someone else for the simple relief that anger might offer. For a moment I felt better.
But the relief was short-lived.
The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive. ~John Greene
The events that transpired in my hometown on Sunday afternoon, to people who I have known and loved for so many years, have left me and this small town adrift. That a family who I hold so dear in my heart and who have had a tremendous influence on my life are going through something so horrible is unconscionable. It is unfair. It is enough to engender feelings of anger that I was unprepared to deal with. But the worse I was feeling, and the more wound up in anger I became, I realized I was only adding to the horror of this situation. And compassion and forgiveness might be the only way I can regain some sort of balance in my mind. I do not have to forgive an individual who I have always struggled with for being who they were, but perhaps as the only way to quell the negativity within my mind, I would have to forgive them for this final act, if only as a small act of compassion towards such an injured person. This forgiveness actually felt quite selfish. I was doing it only for myself and simultaneously felt wracked with guilt for attempting to forgive.
But I kept thinking about it. In forgiving one person, I was not minimizing the other. Nor was I excusing the behavior of that individual, in recent times or further back. What I was trying to do was realign my energy to focus on the people for whom I am intensely grieving. And then, strangely, I started to feel a bit better.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle. ~ Plato
As I look back on the life of my friend who has been taken away, the interconnectedness of all of us becomes so painfully clear, and not just because we come from a small town, but because the lives we live have far-reaching effects in wonderfully positive ways, as well as some that are terribly tragic. To try to understand why things happen after the fact is futile. There is no way to truly understand what you watch from any sort of distance, really you would be lucky to have a clear understanding of things you directly experience.
There are no words I can offer right now to a family I wish nothing more for than relief and peace. A family that has always welcomed me, and remembered me, and supported me no matter what. And to the friends I have on all sides of this tragedy, I feel equally helpless. Perhaps for these reasons I find myself here, writing in vagaries and tangents. Though it is little compensation I am sure, I turn now to another great mind:
To know even one life as breathed easier because you have lived… this is to have succeeded. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Please give if you can: Conover & Sullivan Childeren
*photo: Curtis Stankalis
Back to the Future – or something.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I spent the night in a room I had not slept in since 1989, and not regularly inhabited since 1986. When I got up and walked out through the living room to the kitchen, my parents were sitting there chatting quietly. There was even a calico cat on one of the chairs. I was waiting for a phone call to formulate a plan to go meet a friend and did not feel especially garrulous, or even loquacious.
I looked around.
Maybe this was 1986.
No, the grey hair and improved vocabulary were both clear indicators that I was not re-inhabiting my teenage self – but little else seemed awry in this intensely personal Back to the Future moment. Somehow, I had gone home again.
It was a trip.
It is a pretty great house, in a pretty great neighborhood, in a town I swore I’d never go back to again. But, truth be told, most people agree it is a pretty great town. In fact, most of the folks that left, not wanting to be those people who never left Petaluma - you know – those people, are shaking their fists in the face of the Great Unfairness as it has now become pretty hard to get back. With kids, a sluggish economy and a no low growth community, the town holds quite a bit of appeal. Even when I go back now, I look at through a [mostly] different lens.
And through this rather altered state I headed out of the house (on foot) to go visit some friends I have known longer than my conscious memory serves. I was amazed at how quick the walk was – I swear it used to be longer; I am sure I would have never insisted my mom drive me such a short distance all those years. Would I have?
I went back again last night. It is a bit more settled-in, in terms of looking like a house my family would occupy, rather than a place they might just be passing through.
It was still a total trip.
I woke up and walked down to the corner where one of my regular mini-markets used to be which now sells gourmet wine, chocolate, cappuccino, and meats. Luckily they also still sell milk, because I definitely needed to tip Clo through my two lips with my morning coffee. Back at the house it was kind of a standard Sonoma County winter morning: cold, clear… retro.
I was in full retro-mode myself.
After years of being no closer than two hours (by air) from my family, it has taken no less than a month to revert right back to the old ways. Suddenly when I find myself with my parents after a 40-minute drive the urgency of milking every minute that I didn’t want to miss when I was staring down the belly of a 14-hour flight disappears. Though the old rotary dial phone has been replaced by the iPhone, I still catch myself tuning out of the parental orbit and trying to catch up with what Everyone else is doing. [I spent years in Petaluma keeping up with Everyone, it was an endless job, that Everyone is a busy dude.] But somehow, there is a kind of visceral comfort that I get just from being there – I guess it is the same comfort that I always got as a teenager who had the privilege of attentive parents I could ignore. Sometimes it takes 25 years to recognize that kind of privilege.
I decided I would head downtown to do a little Christmas shopping, or something. It seemed like the right thing to do. As I walked out of the house my mom said I looked like I was meant for somewhere bigger than Petaluma.
It is what I had always thought about Petaluma, too.
It was just one more irony making me feel right at home on this morning of Christmas Eve Eve. I walked down the street and felt completely at home at out of place simultaneously, and really, if I haven’t already defined what coming of age in Petaluma was like for me – this was it.
And so, what to do… I suddenly was facing a bit of pressure to be home at a certain time [awkward] and so my options were limited. I called MPFW. She was at our old 7-11. It seemed beyond coincidental. She picked me up, like it was 1986. We had a couple of things to do – different only in detail from the things we would have had to do in exchange for being out with the car 25 years ago. Then what? Coffee? Yeah, okay, that sounded good.
Or we could have a cocktail…
Yeah, we could, couldn’t we?
Yes. Yes, we could.
So, we did.
Just like we did back in 198- err…. nevermind.
Heading back to my house without even needing to ask where we were going, MPFW took out some gum.
Oh, yeah. Gum. Better get some of that before we get home… you know, because the grown-ups are there. Just like 1986.
And who doesn’t love a little anachronism for the holidays?
It is Petaluma. Do you know what year you’re in?
Color association…
When I think of him, I think of the color yellow. Not just because that was the color of his hair, or because it was the color I wore to the dance we went to together, or because it was the color of the reptile that for some strange reason I think I remember he had in – was it the coffee table in his family home? – or because it was the dominant color of the insane Hawaiian shirt he is wearing in a an old Polaroid photo I have of the two of us at some silly Hawaiian themed dance at PHS, or because yellow is just so ridiculously sunshiny and bright like he always was, but I suppose because of all of these things.
I wonder if sometimes the people who are so bright and vivid are the ones who suffer the most from the dark.
I have not seen him in several years. The last time was undoubtedly at some Petaluma event where cheery greetings and hugs were exchanged, careful to maintain levity in order to ensure that we were all living up to our Facebook statuses.
When I look at pictures now being posted around and I see how he had changed, like we all do, I still see a bright yellow (dare I say… aura?) glow around his wide, genuine and open smile.
Always smiling.
But all the bright colors in the universe cannot cover up the darkness that can sometimes befall a person, who is just a person on their own, making their way as best a they can. The effort to do so would be futile at best, patronizing at worst. Since I heard the news and I consider the deep sadness that became too much for him to handle and I think of all that darkness, I still see the brightness.
I wish he could have.
Rest in Peace T.B., you always made me smile and will be dearly missed.
I read the news today, oh boy . . .
About a lucky man who made the grade;
And though the news was rather sad,
Well, I just had to laugh—
* The Memorial for Todd Baldwin is Wednesday July 13th at 3pm at Penngrove Park*
Petaluma 2.0
They say you can never step in the same river twice. This is probably true. Not sure you would want to anyhow, or at least I wouldn’t, because standing water was one of the early additions to the lengthy list of ways one can meet a terrible end, or at least a very unpleasant pit stop on the way to the end, according to my step dad – a very wise and generally bacteria free individual. It is interesting to consider that the most common alternative to perpetual change is stagnation though. With only those two choices it is no wonder people freak out about change and hold on to, well… to shit, I guess.
This morning I was waiting for my cappuccino in Peet’s Coffee on Petaluma Boulevard (and this should get its own caveat whereby someone who knows something – anything – about Petaluma, goes: “Peet’s? In Petaluma? No.Way.”) and this woman was asking where Trader Joe’s was (repeat caveat articulated above wrt T.J.’s) and I jokingly said, “Ugh… it’s on the Eastside…”
Deconstructing my California mythology
I am back in my hometown, or at least the town that was my home for more years than most other places, and during those dangerously formative years. It is pretty cool to be here: everyone can do with a soft landing spot. And now I am looking around and comparing the apparent reality to the mythology I have been carrying around with me as an expat these past few years. Everyone has a million opinions, suggestions and warnings for the expat who chooses to repatriate. The information varies wildly depending on who is offering it (what their state of mind is, where they are, when they left home, why they are in the places they are… your basic 5 W’s of life.) I have heard that there is some sort of expat re-entry shock. 48 hours in I am not feeling it. Some of my expat friends chalk this up to the fact that I always said I would come back to California, but I am not sure. It could just be that California is a nice place to re-enter. I have also heard that people who go domestic after an extended international foray find the life they left far more provincial than they remember. Fortunately (I guess?) I was always snobby enough about Petaluma that I am well familiar with its provincial nature.
I have held a lot of ideas in my head about the America I would return to. I certainly knew it was not the easiest time to come back, but sometimes you just have to jump. For a good amount of time I have been listening to people say “all Americans are fat,” “all Americans are dumb,” “all Americans are racist,” “all Americans are lazy,” “all Americans are exploitative imperialist bastards…” Of course, anyone who starts a sentence “all…” has issues (which in this case is a euphemism for being an idiot) and so there is really no reason to rebut them or engage in any way, because they are not going to hear you. But for my friends who are interested in conversations about why I would want to come back to the US, I have always been willing to share. I want to live in a place where I am not surrounded by smokers, I really, really loathe cigarettes. I want to live in a place with clean air. I want to be closer to my family. I want to live somewhere I can date. Yeah, I said it, and Imma cop to it.
Leaving my Heart [and Finding my Brain] in the USA, Chapter 5: THE BAY AREA
Remember wealth is not always measured by how much money you have. You are a very rich person! ~ Ed Nowak
Thinking that things might slow down a little bit for the final week of my trip home, I headed to the most beautiful place on Earth. [That, by the way, is Northern California.] Blue skies, golden hills, the clean side of the Pacific, SF, Berkeley, Bodega, Petaluma, Forestville, Sebastopol, Woodside, Foothill Avenue in Oakland… err, well, okay they aren’t all spectacular in the same way, but now I know exactly where Sonny Barger used to hang out, and how many Crips you can find on a single street corner at 3 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon… and you know how I love to gather info.
My mom and I arrived in Oakland early (you go Southwest!) and were picked up by Mara at which point I was absolutely stunned at the amount of luggage that a Prius can accommodate. Very impressive. In no time we were river-side in Petaluma enjoying Red Rooster Ale at Dempsey’s with Dee and a bunch of flies. (I really do love Petaluma.) It is so fun to see people you have known forever and know that whenever you do see them it will be exactly as it has always been. I suppose that is the measure of true friends… low maintenance, high value, huge appreciation. The girls told me all about their kids, and as I tend to do when this subject comes up, I listened with amazement. They have all done so much, and so well, it makes me weary to contemplate. Then it was off to Bodega and Grandma Mollie’s for walks on the beach and tea time. Nice.
The week reminded me of the Beatles song Eight Days a Week… Eight days a week, Is not enough to show I care. And that is for sure.
Not Deep Thoughts
Today I am not.
In keeping with a Friday Five tradition (an excuse for list making, I know…) I felt like articulating the things that are occupying my frontal lobe today.
Feel free to offer hypotheses as to the connections.
1) Where I can wear my new blue dress
2) Bertrand Russell
3) Petaluma, Australia – as in Petaluma that is located IN Australia, not Petaluma and Australia.
4) Creepy dudes, like why are you so creepy
5) Bangkok
6) Empiricism
7) How much coffee is too much coffee
8 ) Eustace Conway
9) Wu Tang Clan
10) Burning Man
11) New shoes
12) Vitamin D
13) The tropical monsoon
14) Jerry Garcia
15) College essays, sadly – not my own…
Common People.
She came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge,
she studied sculpture at Saint Martin’s College,
that’s where I,
caught her eye.
She told me that her Dad was loaded,
I said “In that case I’ll have a rum and coca-cola.”
She said “Fine.”
and in thirty seconds time she said,
“I want to live like common people,
I want to do whatever common people do,
I want to sleep with common people,
I want to sleep with common people,
like you.”
The first time I saw the film Breaking Away I was eight years old and I realized that I had a problem. I had a townie problem. It only got worse when I moved to San Diego in the very early Eighties and was sent to school in Logan Heights surrounded by fascinating cholos. Then I moved back to Petaluma and saw The Outsiders and it got even worse.
By the time I was in high school and had the world’s hugest crush on Joe Flynn, I was a goner. As my mom said: “You are a Thug Magnet.”
None of it seemed to align with my roots… pretty standard fair, white middle class post hippie stuff. Or maybe it did in that whole Rebel Without a Cause kind of way. In any case, the situation remained. I wanted to be the Princess with the Thug. And let’s face it, this is not a new prototype, no unheard of fetish or original sin.
But why? Why does this standard deviation prevail?
He’s got his arms around every man’s dream
And crumbs in his beard from the seafood special
I have a new theory. It has dawned on me that perhaps it is a passive aggressive way to assert my latent princess-ness. I mean, think about it this way, I do not have to actually act like a princess, I can just appear to be one when I am standing next to my biker. [And then, really, you are just waiting for someone to deliver the next lyric anyhow...]
Oh can’t you see my world is falling apart
Baby please leave the biker
Leave the biker, break his heart
Baby please leave the biker
Leave the biker, break his heart
There has always been something attractive about the deviant and the one time I tried, I mean really tried to make a go of it with Mr. Normal Dude it was a miserable failure.
I imagine everyone has their own version of this Peggy Sue Got Married/Peggy-O/Westside Story kind of story and probably not everyone likes their dirty little secrets to be so dirty as mine [Captain Jack, Benicio DT, Lord Aragorn, Rick Danko, Han Solo... you see my problem] but still, the question is on everyone’s lips, in the words of old Joe Jackson:
“Is she really going out with him?”
And this is not about looks [necessarily.] I have two very good friends, both of whose opinions I respect implicitly. They both told me I needed to date a suit. I chose a junkie…
“‘Cause if my eyes don’t deceive me there’s something going wrong around here…”
…and obviously that didn’t go so well. Maybe the thing is the implied freedom, or the vacation from our real lives. Or maybe it is just wanting to find someone who is simultaneously not completely uptight and not completely fucked up. But really, I know it all has to do with the fact that in the end… checking out the way the other half lives – whether it’s the half above you or the half below – when you know you can make a call and end it all is an interesting way to see the world… plus, it is fun to play like a princess… and we all know that which seems so common rarely is.
Well what else could I do -
I said “I’ll see what I can do.”
I took her to a supermarket,
I don’t know why but I had to start it somewhere,
so it started there.
I said pretend you’ve got no money,
she just laughed and said,
“Oh you’re so funny.”
I said “yeah?
Well I can’t see anyone else smiling in here.
Are you sure you want to live like common people,
you want to see whatever common people see,
you want to sleep with common people,
you want to sleep with common people,
like me.”
But she didn’t understand,
she just smiled and held my hand.
Rent a flat above a shop,
cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool,
pretend you never went to school.
But still you’ll never get it right,
cos when you’re laid in bed at night,
watching roaches climb the wall,
if you call your Dad he could stop it all.
You’ll never live like common people,
you’ll never do what common people do,
you’ll never fail like common people,
you’ll never watch your life slide out of view,
and dance and drink and screw,
because there’s nothing else to do.
My Youth. Today.
This summer when I go home to visit for my paltry two weeks (where have all the vacations gone??) I will be doing all the regular stuff… in addition to attending my 20 Year High School Reunion. My feelings about this event have vacillated between excitement, morbid curiosity, dread, fear, embarrassment, pride… the list goes on. But the most significant side-effect of the build-up to the reunion has been the recollecting and reconnecting that has emerged from the preparations on behalf of both the dedicated reunion planners and myself.
Suddenly, I find myself talking to people I have known my entire life, but not been in touch with for – yeah, twenty years. I am looking at pictures of people with their partners, their children, their new homes, their work… hearing about what people have done – traveled, married, divorced, re-married, built businesses, built things, gone grey, gained weight, lost weight… and I feel strangely connected to the whole thing.
I have been thinking back on people, places and things that I have not in ages.
Today I am thinking about Tom Gaffey and The Phoenix where I spent more hours than I can count pretending I was not in love with the eclectic mix of kids that joined me in growing up there. I had not even heard of Greenday when I saw them play there. Or Primus. I was sure The Victim’s Family would be the next big thing if it wasn’t Chomphard. I got Johnny Ramone’s guitar pick after the show and I met my first boyfriend there (can I get a shout out to Anthony S.)
I am also thinking back on all the people I knew and didn’t know in the hallowed halls of PHS. It seemed like I knew everyone, but now I wonder if I knew anyone? The list of names from my class contains more names than I can count that sound familiar.. but not quite. And as I think of one person I think of another and the dominoes start to fall tkaing me back to random memories tucked way far away… sitting in the street talking to Shane Santos until 2 am. Hanging out with Matt English – a freshman! Going to soccer games because it was ‘alternative.’ Driving nowhere for hours with Mara. Jason. Always Jason lurking behind every memory good and bad. And me, always looking for the next great thing.
I wonder if ultimately, that is what has got me here. The search for the next great thing. I don’t know if it makes me perpetually unsatisfied or if it offers me the chance to see and do so many things. Or maybe both and I guess that is okay.
I have not had the most conventional life, certainly not what I would have expected (or at least not what I consciously expected) and I don’t have a lot to show for my twenty years post high school that is really tangible, but I am hoping that I bring something less tangible to the table, in exchange . Maybe a softer self, a nicer person, someone a little less caught up in insecure judgement of myself and others.
And at the end of the evening I hope I can still throw back a few shots and remember that who I was has made me who I am – and I still have just a few more inappropriate things to say….
P-H-S-T-R-O-J-A-N-S, Yes oh yes oh yes we are the best….
Amanda
