On a few words I like

People who know me well know that I love words; those who know me even better know that I hate words; and those who know me best of all know that I love words.

Here is a handful of words that I enjoy.

Procedural (as a noun). I do not watch police procedurals on television-- I never have. But I love the use of the word "procedural" as a noun. I am moved by the concept that there can be beauty and substance in a procedure rather in just what the procedure effects. It also has such an air of movement about it, in that something proceeds, but also something grave and timeless and cyclical. The procedure-- and the exploration of it, the procedural-- remains even after and through an iteration.

Apoptosome. Aside from being pronounceable in seemingly dozens of different ways, all of which are so fun (and one of which sounds like "hippopotamus"), this word ought to be known by the general public if only for use in metaphors. The apoptosome is a bunch of cytochrome c and APAF-1 glommed together with 7-fold symmetry. This huge complex forms in response to a cell death stimulus, and activates pro-caspase 9. The cell undergoes apoptosis (it DIES). I can't get enough of apoptosomes, and no, I don't even feel "nerdy" about that. I just feel happy.

Gone/Done. These are words so basic to the language that I'm sure they've been around since time immemorial (much longer than 'procedural' or 'apoptosome,' at least). I don't think that the essential words get enough credit for their own beauty. Onomatopoeic words are easy to love, and I extend my definition of onomatopoeia to include what I may also call "psychonomatopoiea." That is, words that somehow sound like the concept they mean to communicate. I particularly appreciate 'gone' and 'done' for their versatility. They can sound so absolute, so final; and yet, since they end with an 'n,' there is some ambiguity to them... they can kind of resonate and then leave a trail as they disappear. They can be so cold and hollow with their central "o"-- or they can be almost tender with a warmer "ah" or "uh." They can be plaintive or relieved. These are truly pillars in great-word-dom.

Enlightenment. This word has so many syllables for what it's trying to say, and it kind of (to me) undermines the point. But that's why I like it. We use this word as a translation of words which in other languages are so simple and straightforward-- they don't have all these little prefixes and suffixes, trying to aggregate meaning from other parts. But I love that we're trying. And I love the irony that it infuses into our understanding of "enlightenment" as a concept, especially as we complicate matters with the term "The Enlightenment." What a clumsy word it is; and yet it is so pretty to look at. And how much we yearn for it.

Seemingly. I challenge you to incorporate this into your speech. If you do, no explanation on my part will be necessary. Use it to begin thoughts. Use it to end thoughts. Use it in the middle of thoughts-- before adjectives, verbs, wherever. Then graduate to using it all by its wonderful self, as a jewel of an answer to many a question. You will be seemingly hyperarticulate.

On Having Survived To Celebrate The Second Anniversary Of My Death

--"All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death"-- T.S. Eliot


I died two years ago today. I didn't mean to do it, it just happened and I couldn't do anything to stop it because I wasn't wise enough to know that I was dying until I was already dead

The events of that day summoned forth the figure of death that had been lurking in the shadows. Not recognizing him in his disguise, I sealed his entrance across my threshold with a final kiss.

Today could not have been any more different. I woke up at 6 a.m., put on a gray skirt and wooly black pea coat, hopped into my trusty old truck and drove across the Bay to Hayward. All day long I jumped up and sat and moved and waved my hands and in the evening came home from the acting school called Moreau Catholic High School and made tacos and wassail and hosted a small dinner party at my home. Now at 11:04 p.m. I type on this blog and listen to KT's Christmas CD on the MacBook.

I could not have done these things two years ago, nor a year ago. Only now do I remember what it is to be alive.

The ironic thing is that I didn't recognize life quite so clearly before I had encountered death. Like Eliot, I had "seen birth and death, but had thought they were different." Only in experiencing my own death and rebirth have I come to understand that they are the same. The compassion, the empathy, that I can feel now was born only out of the ashes-- the hard, the bitter agony-- of the death I experienced on a chilling day two years ago.

I think Eliot has it right-- that an essence of Christianity is that ONLY through death, ONLY by taking upon ourselves the weakness of mortality can we experience eternal the birth that never ends in death, even ETERNAL LIFE-- this through the suffering and Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ who, born a wee babe in Bethlehem, laid down his life so that we could overcome the bonds of both physical and spiritual death.

And so on this, the anniversary of my death, I testify of the resurrection of the body and the spirit-- of life, of goodness, of truth-- of the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. May the hope of the birth AND the death of the Babe of Bethlehem bring you joy this Christmas season.

On Opposable Digits

A big innovation in the history of evolution was the opposable thumb.

Little did nature know what a big deal this would be. Today the thumb is perhaps the most important feature of the human body. It can hold pencils. It can open doors and can and jars. It can play the bassoon. But most importantly, the thumb can press buttons on a cellular phone!

Ah yes! The thumb is by far the most important tool in modern communication.

Faced with possible imminent failure of my SIM card, I spent parts of today and yesterday transferring all the names and phone numbers in my cell phone on to a Google spreadsheet so that in the chance of a true SIM card death, I won't have to send out one of those dreadful "I lost my phone in a public subway toilet!" emails or form my own Facebook group. As I went through and typed each number in by hand, it also allowed me the opportunity to edit a phonebook that had been accumulating, but not purging, for at least my last three years of my life. So who, you may ask, was important enough to stay? Well I'll tell you:

A hit man in the Korean mafia in Salt Lake

My ex-boyfriend's sister who I met once for lunch

Two blind dates from Ohio, one of whom is engaged

No less than five currently engaged men, not counting the Ohioan blind date

Marlene, the widowed mother of my best friend from college

A gay man at Harvard

The passcode to the Cell Science Imaging Facility

All those, among others, were deemed worthy to stay. But alas, not all were so lucky. Among those deleted forever from my cell phone and my spreadsheet (and thus my memory) were:

My brother-in-law

An Olympic volleyball player

A former blind date from MIT who now consults for McKinsey

My second prom date

My roommate of two years

and Everyone named Rachel

I feel much better after deleting these people from my phone book.

The truth is that I could resurrect any of these numbers fairly easily. I'm probably still friends with all of them on Facebook, and if I'm not, I will be eventually. So why let their numbers needlessly clutter up my phone? As I've been reading this week in Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat, globalization 3.0 means not having store everything in my house and home when it can all be stored on a server by someone else virtually!

Taking this to heart, I used my most advanced technology-- my thumb-- to delete all those extra numbers from my phone. Turns out these opposable digits come in handy in dealing with disposable digits all these millions of years later.

On Night Terrors, The Malleable Play-Dough Engram, and Being Bent the Wrong Way

I have been sick for the past few days, and when I get sick, I dream terrible, Raskolnikov dreams. The past two nights the same night terror has recurred, and it has kept me up for what has seemed to be hours in strange, feverish worry.

This dream is particularly eerie because it plays in a loop, over and over, and because it does not present itself in fluorescent colors or MTV editing. Instead, it is a mundane replay of just a few minutes on Sunday night. It seems utterly real in that it simply reads the script of the life I lived just a day or two previous.

I had been at a friend's house with a small group of intimates. We were sitting around her kitchen table, enjoying Play-Dough. In turns, we would present a category-- favorite food, dream job, etc.-- and each person would try to represent their answer in the clay. For the question "if you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?"-- I chose to represent Northern California, or, just to make it simple, San Francisco. After attempting a model of the Golden Gate Bridge, I retrenched my efforts and instead chose to create a flat State of California with a little red "X" at San Francisco. My comrades guessed pretty quickly-- after trying to think of some islands shaped like that, one said, "but it looks like California," and there you have it.

The dream is pretty much just that, looking out of my own eyes. Yet in the dream, the white clay does not look like California. It is bent the wrong way. The Southern half veers out to the west as it goes south, rather than to the east. I watch myself make California wrong again and again, and again, and again, an infernal loop. Over and over. And each time I don't know that I'm making California bend the wrong way, and my friends gaze at it and humor me. And then I startle awake, after repetition upon repetition, but the dream does not leave me. I keep playing it, for now I am convinced that it is real-- why did I make California bend the wrong way? And why did my friends humor me? And what do they think of me now?

I pray for sleep to return, but I fidget, I squirm, I fret. Should I bring it up when I see them next, and make excuses? Sorry, I've been sick, things have not been right, I'm going mad, you saw evidence: Reverse-California. Bring me chicken soup. ~ I know it was wrong, it was to throw you off, haha, aren't I tricky? ~ I was making a mirror image so that when I flipped it, the surface would be smooth and pretty, but I forgot to flip it. Oops. But I always return to the same idea: just avoid those friends. Forever. Cut the losses. They will never respect my intelligence again. It is the only way to overcome.

In the morning, I realize that it was just a dream. How could I have bent California wrong? It is impossible. All the dream is is a sad statement of my egoism; that my terror should be some trivial moment where I fail to realize a stupid mistake. The hours I spend in half-waking worry are symptom of my needing to be loved for my ability to be right. In the daytime, I vow to cleanse myself of these vain, arrogant insecurities and build a normal soul, whose night terrors may be psychedelic clowns and sudden volcanoes.

But the dream wears the clothes of memory. I see my hands working the clay through my own eye sockets. The dialogue is dull, and it never changes. I see the little shards of hardened red Play-Dough. There is no lurking detail, no strange furniture, no out-of-context faces to label it a dream. I feel my own ignorance-- or, that is, I fail to see truth-- as I form the lopsided figure: the terror comes when I awake to replay it not as dream but as memory, and in my feverish, sleepy stupor, interpret it and feel. I cannot anymore picture my white clay California except for it being utterly backward. The night terror has re-written my memory.







Or maybe I bent California wrong.

On It Being A Hard Knock Life

For my fourth birthday I received my very own cabbage patch doll. She was no ordinary doll, oh no! She was a one of a kind, hot off the press, premier edition: never been done before, never to be repeated, and made by my own sweet mother.

She was my mother's very first cabbage patch doll and mine. She had tight orange-red yarn curls and big blue eyes painted on her face with fabric paint and even tiny embroidered freckles and puckers in the bottom folds of her cheeks for dimples. I named her Annie.

Annie was just like me-- down to the dimples-- except for one big difference: Annie was fat. Eager in making her very first doll, Mom had stuffed Annie a little past chubby and into the chunky category. Annie's large-sized doll wardrobe barely snapped shut over her thickly padded arms and waist. At four years old, I was not a midget but I certainly wasn't fat and perhaps was the smallest of the four girls in the family. Although Annie was the first, my mother soon made cabbage patch dolls for my three sisters, and she compensated for Annie's fatness by understuffing Alice and Tina and even Sally. And so, ironically, Annie got the flack at doll tea parties for always being so fat while I avoided the same pressure in real life that haunted some of my other siblings.

Yes, Annie was the one with the fattest pinafore and the fattest pantaloons, which bulged out over her chubby knees, bringing extra flounce to her skirts. Annie's XL clothing drowned the other dolls and I always felt jealous when Alice could wear Sally's jackets but poor Annie had only her own clothes to wear.

Today at school we had pre-Halloween and I dressed up as Little Orphan Annie, complete with a red curly wig (which was actually quite redundant since I have red curly hair). The costume was a grand success. Everyone laughed and smiled and clapped their hands. Even my students got into the costume. At the end of the day Father Tito came in and took my picture for the yearbook.

It was quite possibly the most darling picture you have ever seen in your whole life of someone in an Annie costume. Not only am I curtesying, but my face just carries enough of the mix of impish charm and childlike innocence to convince the viewer that I'm precocious and lovable even to a grumpy bald millionaire.

The only difference between me in the picture and the Little Orphan Annie we all know and love from the movies is that.... I'm fat.

Yes.

It's true.

In the picture, I look horribly, hopelessly fat. I'm wearing this white bow right across the middle of my dress and it looks like a whole bedsheet had to be used to girdle my waist. I'm almost spilling into the sides of my curtsy. I realize, to my horror, that in dressing up like Little Orphan Annie I have realized the fate predestined to me from childhood:

I have become my doll Annie.

Oh yes! I still have a mass of red curls, freckles on my face, and funny side dimples. But what I have now that I didn't have at four is about ninety extra pounds that have added padding to my knees and toes and elbows, all the spots where Annie is bulgiest I suddenly feel bulgy now too. If it weren't for the Annie costume, I may never have noticed.

When I finally got home from school, I hurriedly pulled off my wig, red dress, and (poofy) bloomers, slapped on some tennis shoes and went for a run. Maybe when I'm back at school tomorrow dressed just like myself the illusion will go away.

On Lon Chaney

I am reflecting on our cultural debt to Lon Chaney, Sr.

Leonidas Chaney was born on April Fools' Day, 1883, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His parents were both deaf-mute; his father, a barber, was well-loved for his ability to transcend communication barriers and amuse his patrons with his excellent comedic timing. Lon was a native speaker of pantomime, a natural artist in physical and facial communication. Before immersing himself in Vaudeville at age 19, Lon trained in wallpaper, drapery, and carpet installation and worked as a tour guide at Pikes Peak.

Lon Chaney did not consider himself primarily an actor. Instead, he considered his entertainment art to be disguise through makeup. All his appearances are dual performances-- he designed his own makeup, costumes, and contortion equipment The genius of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera are his; and, interestingly, so were their pains. The hunchback's hump weighed in excess of fifty pounds, designed by Lon himself to inspire a tortured performance. In The Penalty, he tied his legs behind his back and used prosthetics below the knee. "The Man With a Thousand Faces," though evidently in favor of a broader approach to representation than simple disguise, was widely recognized as a world expert on makeup; the Encyclopaedia Brittanica reportedly invited him to write its (uncredited and since revised) article on the subject. Such was his reputation for disguise that a friend quipped at a dinner party: "don't step on that spider, it may be Lon Chaney."

As Hollywood transitioned to talkies, Lon mused that his voice was ill-suited to the medium. It may have been false modesty or reflective of an insecurity with voice in general, as he is said to have had a delightful rich baritone, and was known as a Vaudevillian for his singing, dancing, and comedic timing. He starred in only one talkie, but it is tantalizing to think that that it is his voice work in that film which is so notable. Later, he signed a statement saying that he did indeed provide the voices of five characters: a ventriloquist and his dummy, an old woman, a girl, and a parrot. The performances were convincing enough, I suppose, to warrant the affidavit.

I find it ironic that he died of a throat hemorrhage just months after the release of that film. His voice was apparently an untapped treasure itself; a voice he did not get to show off in his childhood or in his career.

Lon Chaney, my friends.
Celebrate him this Halloween.
I also suggest naming a son Leonidas.

On Having Acquired a Hopelessly Bourgeoise Aesthetic

I live in Palo Alto, California, home of the hyper-educated, hyper-successful Stanford graduate BMW lover. When I first moved to Palo Alto, I was convinced that I died and been transported to Paradise. Three years later, I still think it's a distinct possibility after moving into a mansion in an older, sophisticated part of town and starting to eat organic produce from Whole Foods. Surely heaven on a glorified, populated Earth will involve sidewalk cafes and Italian hot chocolate.

Today, however, I found myself in a very NON heavenly setting near Palo Alto: Walmart. Walmart is so opposite of everything that Palo Alto holds near and dear that the Palo Alto city line is drawn just north of the Walmart parking lot. Palo Alto may miss out on the Walmart sales tax revenue, but it's a small price to pay for keeping their white-gloved fingers clean from Walmart's coinage of exploitation.

Speaking of white gloves: I was at the Walmart for the purpose of purchasing white knee socks and white underwear. The knee socks are for my Little Orphan Annie costume and the underwear... well. Turns out everyone needs socks and underwear. That's the thing about Walmart, it has things that everyone needs regardless of race or class or origin. It's a great equalizer, although I know for a fact that Stanford sorority girls don't wear Walmart underwear. They wear lacy nothings that they find at Neiman Marcus, and when they are much older they swap the brightly colored underthings for Jennifer Lopez-hued velour suits from Juicy Couture.

I poked around as briefly as possible and finally grabbed a five pack of white Hanes trouser socks. I wanted my sock things to be a little more substantial, but socks are always sold in "fits sizes 4-10" and having size 4 feet this always results in having bulgy heels poking up over the top of my shoes. Trouser socks, without a built-in heel, are a suitable compromise. I snatched a packet of briefs and a yellow box of Milk Duds and then read the tabloid headlines about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie while I waited in another never-ending Walmart line. When I got to the counter, the checker had to stop and change the roll of paper in her receipt machine. She apologized for the wait, but having long ago accepted the burden of patience necessary as a Walmart shopper I shifted my feet and smiled at her to tell her she could take her time. I couldn't wait to leave but I'd broken out in hives in Walmart before and knew they would heal, in time.

On my way home from Walmart I stopped at The Milk Pail located in the opposite corner of the contiguous parking lot. Nothing could be more Palo Alto than The Milk Pail, except that in x-ing out Walmart, The Milk Pail ended up in Mountain View. Stocked full of firm organic fruits and vegetables, cheeses, and fresh baked crusty European style breads, The Milk Pail is a virtual celebration of the value the elite find in the rustic. Although packed and with equally unwieldy lines as its behemoth neighbor, the tiny Milk Pail exudes a charm that brings shoppers flocking back not for low prices but for tangy crumbs of apricot cheese and the crisp snap of gigantic sugar peas. I bought two small loves of herb rosemary bread, dried Turkish apricots, Wisconsin gouda, French Port Salut, and a bundle of asparagus although I've never purchased asparagus before and took them home in a recyclable plastic bag.

Arriving back at the Melville mansh in the Professorville neighborhood of Palo Alto, I was greeted by my roommates bearing cup containers of fresh organic frozen yogurt with strawberries and kiwis. We all bundled together on my queen size bed in The Nook (that's code for my bedroom) and savored the subtle cream sliding down our throats. I pulled my white comforter up over my toes.

It occurs to me that perhaps Walmart might be a staple of someone else's heaven-- a place where warm and adequate clothing and packaged foods may be bought at affordable prices. But even in this relatively open-minded state of consciousness I find myself hoping that heaven then might be tailorable and that I can stay in my little Nook in my Palo Alto paradise. As KT would say, will I someday be able to let go of Jerusalem for the Promised Land? What if I think the Promised Land contains nothing but Walmarts? I think I'm beginning to trade in my soul for a slice of that French Port Salut.

On The Microtragedy of Baked Goods With Insufficient Salt

It is perhaps strange for my inaugural blog post to be about something so drearily commonplace as undersalted baked goods. But I suppose it is as introductory as anything to say what I am thinking about at this the inaugural moment.

It is a small tragedy when otherwise delightful and well-constructed baked goods contain insufficient salt. Some time ago I was eating pumpkin bread of a gorgeous russet color and tender, rich crumb. The bread, while spiced well and baked to perfection, was a total waste. The flavor was bland and indistinct, the sweetness unchecked. The spices I saw suspended in the matrix registered only fleetingly and furtively, incapable of acting to half their potential. The loaf probably had inherent in it a great depth of flavor which I could not access for the lack of salt.

In elementary school, I was assigned to participate in "Junior Great Books," a sort of excuse for a gifted-and-talented program. One selection was a working of a fairy tale. It involved a king who, in a fit of unchecked narcissism, asked his daughters how much they loved him. Each answered in turn: "more than all the jewels in the world," "more than life itself," and the like, until it was the youngest's turn; this wise lass replied: "I love you more than meat loves salt." The fair ingenue is banished to work in a distant kingdom as a scullery maid.* Eventually she is brought to the castle on the night of a feast to help with the cooking, and, no longer 'artless,' ensures that all the food lacks salt. The king, repulsed by the disingenuous blandness of the splendorous feast, realizes his great wickedness and sends for his ever-loving daughter. They are reunited, and l.h.e.a.

The third-grade discussion was respectable, but even then I looked around the group with meta-eyes. Of course the children hated the story. Here they were made to read an over-long recitation of a stuffy, obscure fairy tale which relied on geriatric, questionable-at-best metaphors. My classmates did say appropriately insightful things, like "it's not just the taste thing, yuck, but, like they didn't have fridges, and meat would rot and stuff." But ultimately we were just saying what we knew we had to before we could be dismissed. In my own corner of the third-grade circle, I saw the discussion as another application of the story's metaphor; we knew there must be something to the tale, else why was it a "Great Book"?, but we didn't care, so we were instead cynical of it and banished it from our fondnesses. But what is meat without a little salt, and life without some thoughtful metaphors and far-fetched storytalk?

Our meat no longer rots without salt (props to Alexander Twining), and I don't think our pumpkin bread is endangered by maggots anyway. But it is this sense of half-capacity that I get from the loaf, the squandered opportunity, the ingredients that were used but not quite utilized-- that is the micro-tragedy. It is microtragic, too, that there are bakers out there who otherwise perfect their craft and never venture to give another shake from the shaker. Were I to love somebody "as [meat] loves salt," I would speak of their ability to make me live and feel to capacity, their way of making the flavors sometimes dormant in my character shine. And that would be a true love.


*I've loved the term "scullery maid" ever since, and use it as a mental self-descriptor when doing roommates' dishes sans charitable intent.

Salt shaker painting from jeffhayesfineart.blogspot.com-- the man creates a painting every day. I respect that.