It's four-thirty Wednesday

Just between afternoon and evening when you're not quite sure how to address the next stranger fate or the current or your job throws you against. Reading for the second time (first, as a senior in high school) Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Now there's a woman who can write. A good story read washes away any electronic distractions and entertainment. I also, this morning, it being my day off and all and I feeling a little under the weather, watched the movie Everything is Illuminated. Not bad. I enjoyed it and it made me think afterwards about my Meme and how I hardly know her anymore. Maybe not at all. We are coincidentally related. She's my mom's mom. I used to write her letters frequently as a child, wrote her about what an amazing woman she is, how much I admire her and how I want to grow up to be like her. Then one day, during a scaffuffle of family fights and counselling, I realized she didn't love my mother the way she should have. She didn't defend my mother against her good loyal husband's greatest weakness, his brutal words. And that was the turning point. I haven't written her a letter since even though she always and always will send me birthday and christmas cards with a check inside and a nice, longish letter telling me about her birds and squirrels and the goings-on of her tiny corner of Peoria, Illinois.

I feel sick to my stomach when I realize what role I haven't played in her life. I don't know why I stopped being her grandchild, the way I used to. I guess I made a decision one day and then promptly forgot about that decision and continued on with my life. Every once in a while I think about how I don't take the time with her, but then I stuff it back under a pile of old journals that I only read but once in every three years.

She just turned 96, I believe, or is it 97. I'm not quite sure. I remember at fifteen years of age, she could do pushups and I couldn't. I think she may not be driving anymore, but that changed only in the last year, year and a half, since my older sister moved in with her. They had a pretty heavy tiff when Meme, that's what we call her, realized that her oldest grandchild was no longer a Christian, nay-an atheist! All her dreams of her remembered moments with SJ, serious prayer and Bible-reading contentment over the coziest kitchen table you've ever sat at or the breeziest freshest card table under the most familiar maple tree you've ever drunk tea at, drained slowly through the muck of wet spring mud, down her narrow driveway and into the gutter marking the end of her lawn and the beginning of the street, guarded by her ever-busy, ever-worn out mailbox. That was a hard moment for both of them. They've adjusted, I think, over the months and appreciate each others' company in other, more subtle ways.

I don't call her on the phone anymore because her hearing is nearly gone. She's had hearing aids since she was forty. When she takes them out, these days, she's quite deaf as a log. She started getting real nervous on the phone and spouted quickly a list of greetings and best-wishes and then passed the phone off to my sister. So I stopped calling her. She's a beautiful woman, with skin softer than the softest comparison anyone can make, softer than the down on the underside of a dove's wing, well softer than a baby's bottom. She's got pure white hair, thin by now. She's always taken care of her looks. She dresses with class and taste, matching accessories. I'd be proud to still dress as she does when I reach her age. She's got a house that connects all the way around, in a circle, all the rooms together, you never have to backtrack. And in the winter, when she can't realistically make it outside to take her daily walks, she does her rounds, keeping her limbs as strong and nimble as her age will allow. I have a feeling and a deep hope that she passes on in her sleep. The Jugo culture says the best people pass on in their sleep, if they make it to old age. She's got some physical health problems but nothing major. She's had arthritis as long as I've known her. Her feet have always been sharply angled, gnarled in pain that she never ever utters. She never complains.

She grew up, first generation Swedish imigrant, working like a healthy ox on a farm in South Dakota with her other six brothers and sisters (one died at birth). Almost two years ago, in one week of days, she said goodbye to the last three remaining sibblings alive. We all wondered if she might join them in their restful journey beyond. But she stayed on. I'm not sure why.

She lives in silence, for the most part. And she's let her bodily controls go with the time. She has no issue, nor barely notices, farts and burps that have grown deeper with a large man's tenor. She is one of the strongest women I know. And I have abandonned her. I think Ive told myself that my sister lives with her and that's good enough. That's SJ's doing the job for the rest of the grandkids, that she'll know vicariously that we love her through SJ.

I wonder what passes through the mind of a 97-year-old woman who was born before the normal telephone (when anyone who wanted some gossip could just pick up the receiver and listen to the neighbors talk and, if they got really into it, might add their own two cents to the surprise of the talkers), before cars were common. She lived through both world wars, the second of which her husband fought in and had a bomb blow up in his ear, nearly litterally. She cooked, during the wartime for that famous bakery family, I forget their names. She met Pawpaw (that's her husband) when he was on leave and on a whim, had a double wedding with her cousin a few weeks later. She's lived in one house her whole married life. She's generous to a fault. She's one of the best cooks I ever met, too. You ain't never tasted a roast like Meme's, she's famous for it among our friends and strangers that happen on her doorstep. Her baking's the best too--chocolate chip cookies, brownies she's famous for over in Africa, cinamon cake, peanut butter chocolate bars, lemon cake, cinnamon rolls (one of my very favorite, directly out the oven, steaming hot with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter dripping lustily between my fingers, but that not for long), apple crisp, apple pie and on and on and on.

I don't know what to do. I keep saying I'll do something and then the nagging fear bites my behind like a beesting, that she doesn't have too many days left and the longer I wait, the shorter is my chance of making things right, of not abandonning the strong, beautiful, woman who made it possible for me to be alive and who loved me very very well.

Florence Quimby. She keeps a journal, and has for the last forty years at least, and records every day the passage of time. I believe it is more of a list of thises and thats and whos than whys and feels, which is what I would rather know. But still, one day, when she finally kisses this world goodbye and sleeps, I will read all of them, and then maybe learn something more about her, about this stranger that I should know and love deeply but uncertain about for lack of memories and proximity and now, the mystery and limitations of old age in communication.

Guh is what I feel in my belly and my heart. I think I'll write her a letter, like I should have done years and years ago.

Why the hell not?

It's friday afternoon right about now. I'm supposed to be editing right now but taking my time, eh. Just finished Snow Falling on Cedars. I like the book. The author clearly (it seemed to me) enjoyed describing the physical setting, the smells and feels of nature and the particulars and quirks of island life, but still doesn't compare to Steinbeck in his descriptive ability. Who cares. I enjoyed reading it and it was interesting in a minor way to read about one aspect during one world era on one island of the Japanese and Japanese-American culture since I'm flailing about at work trying o get Japanese culture, trying to grasp and understand so's I can communicate better and close sales with his most loyal clientelle. yo.

Today is grey and rainy; heavy atmospheric pressure muffles the normally sharp sunny noises of traffic and colored voices that bounce about happily. Today is a day makes my feet want to wander. My mind floats down the Waikiki boulevards out to the shoreline and hovers over quietly lapping water I imagine is empty of people; the ocean void of color flashes silvers and whites and greys under the low-riding clouds, too bright under the sun's determined blare, but successful in blocking color. It's the kind of day I love to be alone near the ocean and feel all the melancholic, sadder feelings of living. I wish I were on the Big Island right now, out at my spot on the tidal pools at dusk where the colors were relentlessly the same every evening, light pinks, blues, oranges, pale colors, pastel colors against an endless purple sky who backdropped the volatile tides, the dull flashes of tropical fish visible in the final glints of sun just on the horizon caught in between black porous lava rocks when the tide is low or flitting about busily before night time when the tide is up. The staccato rhythm of palms dancing in the bare breeze on the shore behind me. I used to frequent these rocks every night. Pick my way carefully out as far as I could go without I might get caught in a quickly rising tide. This is where I first learned of Hawaii, quietly and completely alone. Sad and afraid and lonely and naiive to the next phase of my life. But completely alone

And that's what I wish I had today. Me and the ocean and my thoughts and maybe a book or a journal (and my smokes, but that for less than one more month and then pao).

One foreigner told me today that a view like the one he had at the moment is "top of the notch."

Give Picasso the Glory

"Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleaure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors."

Picasso said that. Kind of agree. Just finished work; have tomorrow off. But can't take tomorrow off, have to work. After August, things won't be so hectic.

Have you ever noticed a can of tictacs on your table (wouldn't it be cool if tictacs came in a can, but I mean a little container-thingy of tictacs, that plastic kine) and been bothered by it? I bought tictacs at Walmart a month ago and B told me they made your breath smell worse so I shouldn't eat them. B and I haven't seen each other much lately, except at night in bed when he's usually already asleep, and last night, when I got home around 9:45, I noticed the tictacs on the table instead of on the shelf where they'd been more or less forgotten about for three and a half weeks. That bothered me. B doesn't like tictacs or mints or gum. So why are they here instead of there? And what change happened while I was away?

Dammit.

I still haven't finished a sale on my own. Shared one. The month is a third over and there's no way i'm making commission. Some days I think that I am doing fine, biding my time patiently while I get the hang of the business and the information and studying how to sell. Soon enough I'll be a star. But other days, I just want to stay outside and smoke, even though I never finish a cig because I feel nervous to go back inside and try to sell. It's crazy. I don't know. The artist came by today. He owns the whole company but doesn't deal directly with the staff, obviously. He walked into the back room where my coworker had been showing some paintings to a family who spent $4.5 Gs today. She had left paintings strewn across the floor and the couches. I knew Lassen didn't like his work on the floor so I had piled them all on the couch. Anyway, he goes back there and calls the GM on Maui to tell him he's unhappy with the state of affairs with us in Waikiki. Three minutes later, the GM on Maui calls us to tell us what Lassen saw and wants. The thing is, Lassen is standing right in front of us in the gallery while we're on the phone with GM in Maui. Why didn't he tell us himself? I'm not quite sure. But it must be a good thing that we have nothing to do with the artist. Perhaps a bit less dramatic. Also made me feel a bit stupid, though, and uncared for by the owner of the company. Not that that's his job, but still, I appreciate a company where all levels are at least amicable.

Whatev. I must go do laundry. Bloodied my sheets last night. Ha.

job update

I miss hanging with ya'll but when it rains, it pours, and it is really pouring this summer.

So, I took the job...the art sales job, full time. And I took the other job...the university copyediting/proofreading job, about 15-20 hours/week. And I still have my other client and her dissertation (and proposals and whatever other documents she brings up). And, on top off all that, B's mother came into town for ten days to visit and a few weeks later, my bro is coming into town to visit and possibly in between, another friend will be here as well for a week with his daughter, staying at our halfstudio/halfonebed apt. So there goes any time to think and write about globalization and optimism (both conversations I very much wanted to join).

Something strange and wonderful happened to me in the months prior to taking these jobs. I don't know when or how it happened, or even why exactly. But I finally don't give a flying fatootle about what others think about me, especially those that I'm in contact with daily. This sounds silly, I know, but it really did happen. And how! Up until this newest job, in my life, I've always worried about doing the best thing for my bosses, my companies, my coworkers, working as hard as I could, offering to do things I wouldn't normally want to do to fill in gaps that they couldn't fill in the moment, keeping my mouth shut when I should've said something just to keep peace, you know, I guess sucking up. These are the first days that I know what it feels like to keep my head up, care about my life and those in it in a much more balanced way, and say what I need to say. I've been floored by my actions a couple times. Weeeeee..... And I feel a ton more relaxed everyday.

So anyway, I took two jobs with one on the side (not constant). I'm working full time gallery sales. And then come home and fill in my free gaps with editing a Univ. Hawaii department manuscript. The second isn't as exciting as some of my other freelance jobs have been and doesn't pay nearly as well, but it's a foot in the door at the Uni on a more official level and it will look great on my resume, plus it's getting me a different longish term job--working with a foreign language professor and editing all his or her manuscripts for this coming year.

So I've been scarce on blogspot these days because I don't feel interesting. I don't have time to put thought into soulandmeat questions nor time to be creative on my own. I still keep up and read what's going on everyday though.

Speaking of work, I'd better get back to it. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
P.S. This one's for you, tcd. It felt good to be asked. Good luck on your job search....