Are there Macbook fairies out there that can come fix the thing for me ?

It’s gone.
And I don’t have the money for a new one. Three kids are speaking next to me but not to me in in loud unison.

This time last week I was on vacation. I was walking over to the Graceland Mansion from the Heartbreak Hotel. I’d just finished two Elvis movies and would have done a third but we needed to get out and see what we came to see. Queue up for the shuttle over to America’s Mecca. We have no unified religion. But even if we don’t like Elvis we are unified in his path. The road we all wish we had the nerve to go down.

The audacity to want to hear yourself on the radio. Commit your voice to vinyl. Make it big.

Don’t die in the 1970s cause they’ll preserve your house in the tackiness it was set in. The jungle room didn’t bug me like people said it would. It was the carpet in the kitchen. The inability of Elvis to come in contact with anything that wasn’t synthetic. Like a wood floor maybe. A wide open window.

This is where you get to. Paranoid. Bars on windows.

I love Elvis. There I said it. Not in the I ‘heart’ Elvis way either.

He didn’t have the road map. There were no Behind the Music festivals on Vh-1 for him to stare at and say fuck maybe I shouldn’t do that. He only had Judy Garland.

More to come.

Gotta run interference with three kids. But I wish I was walking the grounds of Graceland among the bluehaired old ladies and the Japanese. All that is right with us. All that is wrong with us. All in the same place: Memphis, TN.

Oregon Notes

Observations from the interstate 5.

A plethora of signs exclaiming adult shops. Honestly there seems to be as many signs and road side ‘adult shops’ long the 5 in Oregon as there are Quincenera shops on Whittier Boulevard or fast food chicken restaurants on Inglewood. What have I not been told by the guidebooks about the good people of rural Oregon?

Dude, you can’t pump your own gas in Oregon. Forgot about that. Could not figure out what to do with myself at an Oregon gas station. And it wasn’t like Japan where 10 attendants come out and do what amounts to a ‘welcome customer--you are here for honorable gas ‘ dance. It was just one scrawny young white guy with a pimple problem.

Diego thought Portland looked like Venice, CA without the sun.

Road Trippin'

Ingredients: 1 family of four. 1 Prius that while comfortable and economical takes on the characteristics of a clown car when 4 people and some luggage gets thrown in back. A few destinations ending in Washington state---or as Paloma calls it George Washington state.

Day 1
Friday afternoon. After a morning of Internet teaching and farming the kids off to Consuelo while we packed the car--we take off and head towards Chico and the Avis rent a car in the Chico Mall.

Never ever go to Avis Rent a Car in the Chico Mall (inside the Sears Auto Center) in Chico. The worst customer service ever. After reserving a car three weeks ago no car was available and the upgrade was a car that looked like it would fall apart in 5 minutes with bald tires. I tried to pay for an upgrade to something that might run and was told I couldn’t. Meanwhile the clerk manager kept saying ‘ma’am that is life; take the car.’ I did tell him I thought whomever taught him these set phrases in English did him a great disservice. And he said they had the worst customer service ratings ever. And I said yeah , no kidding. We left in our Prius instead. Will rent a car from Enterprise for the LA trip later this summer.

Passed the giant metal cow and giant metal dragon on the way to the border of California/Oregon. My passengers were lousy. They were all sleeping and making me sleepy and complaining about my musical preferences. Dude, if you ain’t going to help keep the driver awake you have NO RIGHTS on the radio. That’s all I’m saying. Keep the driver awake and you can do anything you want.

We made it to Ashland. Everyone had to pee. Introduced the kids to Indian Food. Taj Cuisine in Ashland. Paloma liked raita , nan, chicken korma. Diego was into the basmati rice and the lassis.

We walked around and window shopped. I hadn’t been there since 1999. Ten years. Geez.

Sheets of rain and a serious lack of any sort of lines on the road had us thinking that maybe a Prius sandwiched between semi trucks wasn’t such a hot idea. Found a Comfort Inn in Medford or outside of it. Nice . Clean. First floor. 2 Queen size beds and kids willing to sleep in one of them without bothering us. Late night baths. Checked back in with my classes. Fell asleep at the computer again. I think motels need to come with complimentary foot massages.

Day 2 to come........

Now is the part where

The pacing
The get up to get the coffee
first fresh
then reheated in the microwave
three times
not finished
not done

a host of little
pleasant distractions
a few bills
a deposit to make

the mind not at rest
though i am humming along
to something i don’t recognize.

did they like it?
will they call me?
will they have talked
me into
and divided me down
common denominator style
do they like my work?
my offerings?


years will go and come
and i will wince at the name
of this book
i will hide when the telling gets told
i will run from the start of the conversation
remember that time when you.....
no. do something else.

clean the toilet
polish silver
eat lunch
think of you
the next full moon
anything to not be like this

Into the Arms

It was one of those mountain days
when you stand on the porch
and your skirt billows
and the sky is blue
and you squint at the sun
hand to your eyebrows
and think
yes. here. yes.
nowhere else.

you linger outside
after a hike
after a walk
a talk
the buying of something brief
coffee perhaps

you try not to think of
distances between you
not to think of miles
becoming years
not to think of lives
that are possible with
different destinations

i think of a dinner and a drink
i will not have
and where it will not lead

perhaps i should take
another walk in the sun
and the wind
the brightness
of dull quiet choices

A Love Affair Not Ended

I go to the city three ways now: with children, with husband, or with both. It is rare that I go alone. Yet twice this year I have managed to be alone in the city.
It’s a very different place when you are alone with her.

I cross over the bridge
my sinuses clear
the weather like my love for her
cold wet and fresh as a polluted bay

it’s not the mountains
there are no deafening sounds of 9 bird calls
at once
i hear nothing on the approach to the city
nothing. not the prius. perhaps the dull sound of engines.
slight.

my mind never blanks here
it is always crowded
in instantly miss my family and for a moment
can’t remember why it was they could not be with me
i discover as i turn up ninth off of the bridge
that i am in love

with my husband
why this occurs as a round the ‘end up ‘ bar
i leave to speculation
but the husband
the triptych of him
father, lover, antagonist
the house
the daughter
the son
the constant questions and hugs
the idea of somewhere to belong to
a place where one should be

the single people i know say i take
too much of this stuff for granted
to be sure
my early morning is a sleep deprived
sex deprived and full rolls of middle aged
complete

if the book gets published
if oprah picks it
i pay off the house , the student loan
and go under the knife like the
californian i am
but everything else is obtained is it not?
i am shapeless
muscle less
a drudgery of daily details

sometimes i feel myself in a corner
a small quaint sexy invisible
the kind that gets introduced to parents
and other friends and other parties
there is no straight line on my body
it misshapes clothes and intentions

my back bends forward
my head feel comfortable only in a tilt
to the left
i feel comfortable only in black
or naked on my back
or driving through her up over the hills
hoping she has coffee waiting for me
something strong

as i am now
i revisit her
i revisit me
i was smaller
the city was larger
i didn’t try to hold on to her
i didn’t try to keep her
come to think of it
it may have been me who left her

but now as i finish my silent drive
over the curves of her
i want to be here and nowhere else
and i think for a moment
not of the house
not of the family
but of a smaller time
when i could crawl in bed
with a big city and wake up
rested
full
ready

When I see you
though I saw you
moments before
there is a good chance
that you

are not full of kisses
that your hands will be folded across
your chest and your snot nose
twitching and smeared

i don’t think i want you
anymore she says

if i was young
if she was a man
i might downward spiral
into the linoleum floor
melt through to the foundation
and bellow into a bottle
what’s wrong with me?

but i have an old
calloused heart and
i hear this ten times a day

you aren’t my favorite mommy
like mommies are stuffed animals
that can be carried around in a
hello kitty back pack and discarded
at day care

i tried why
what’s wrong
what are you thinking
what’s going on with you

and none of the textbook answers
make a bit of a dent

we don’t have to love each
other every moment of the day
we can be like her father and i

full of the spent smell of afternoon
when someone gets up to shower

massaging past irritations into the scalp
with the shampoo
stand in the towel in the doorway
with the incredulous look of the
duped and the damned

don’t touch me I’m through
a force field around the skin

that’s the look she gives me
i thought of all the ways i
hate you her look says
as i was in the bath