My galactic hair

George Malcolm: half white, half black, with messy tousled hair, rumpled and tugged between kind of curly and extremely curly. Once, a year or so before, he'd been at our house and he'd pulled out a lock of his hair and used it to teach me about eddies and helixes. It's a circular current into a central station, he'd explained, giving me one to hold. I pulled on the spring. Nature is full of the same shapes, he said, taking me to the bathroom sink and spinning on the tap and pointing out the way the water swirled down the drain. Taking me to the bookshelf and flipping open a book on weather and showing me a cyclone, then a spiral galaxy. Pulling me back to the bathroom sink, to my glass jar of collected seashells, and pointing out the same curl in a minature conch. See? he said, holding the seashell up to his hair. Yes! I clapped. His eyes were warm with teaching pleasure. It's galactic hair, he said, smiling.

From The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
By Aimee Bender

Photo: Wikipedia

The fan and the snob

My brother Pedro was the first to show interest in futbol. He is 8 years younger than me, so for a long while I was a part of what is likely the only family not at all interested in a sport that is a passion in Mexico. 



Then, I met my husband Luca. Very early on he explained he was from Milan, and that Milan had two teams: Inter, and AC Milan. He was a fan of Inter. He showed me the logo. He narrated a brief history of how both teams were constituted. I nodded.

Inspired, I told him it might be fun for me to be a fan of AC Milan, figuring it could make for a more interesting family dynamic. He looked at me silently for a while, with one of the most solemn expressions he has ever mustered. “If you did that” he finally replied “you’d be going against three generations of Penati tradition.”

“Forza Inter”, I said.



Once that had been established, I dedicated considerable effort to finding this sport interesting. I have failed over and over again.

Imagine, I tell Luca, the degree of evolution required to take a piece of wood, transform it into a violin and have that somehow become a Bach concerto. Or contemplate the imagination implicit in going from a coffee bean on a tree, to harvesting, toasting, grinding, adding boiling water, straining, and arriving at the heady, sensual drink we all know and love. I mean, who conceives these things?

So all things considered, I explain, having 11 sweaty men follow a ball, kick it around, and sometimes head bump it is kind of.... well, Neanderthal –ish.

Far from seeing it my way, Luca hurls the only insult he’s ever directed at me. “Dushka. You are such a snob”. 



Since then, my only brief but promising flicker of interest in the game happened at the Milan airport, where running down a staircase I caught out of the corner of my eye the Dolce Gabbana ad where players were photographed in their underwear. Who knew soccer required such stringent physical conditioning.

On Saturday, May 22, 2010 Inter played against Bayern Munich in Madrid. The winner would win the Champions League, the most prestigious trophy for clubs. We all got together at Luca’s parents’ house in Milan. I stared at the screen, determined to show an ability to follow this obsession that consumes the man I love. I fixed my eyes on the ball. Players ran to the left. Players ran to the right. Players ran to the left. I fell asleep.

During my nap, I jumped up twice to screeching screams of GOOOOOOOL! My husband went to the Duomo to celebrate Inter’s victory (along with 100,000 other people), the first such event in 45 years.

The next day, he bought Inter t-shirts, flags, socks, sweatshirts and a scarf. I encouraged the shopping spree, looking on adoringly.

Alas. The bottom line is that soccer is the place where I will always in the sidelines. Or, will I?

Luca watches games from the sofa in our living room. I tell him I will go into the kitchen to prepare something for him to snack on while he inhabits this mysterious, far away place.

“No, bring a book and come sit by me” he says. “You bring me luck”.

Photo: Luca's grandmother. Photo taken on her 100th birthday, the day Inter won the Champion's League.

A long life

I’ve always associated longevity with good fortune. It’s what I wish on those I love and the reason I do my best to live a healthy life (OK. Besides vanity.)

My husband’s grandmother turned 100 years old this week. And I can tell you, she’s had it. She has seen all her friends (and their children) and most of her family (parents, brothers, sisters, cousins) die. She is a widow who misses her husband terribly, and who lately curses him for leaving her here alone.

Her age has become a sentence. She lives in a world she no longer understands, one that has left her behind. Everyone she loves has built a life that (she feels) only includes her out of a sense of duty.

She is a woman of great dignity, slender and silent, who would rather eat alone than “invade” her son’s life (and she did indeed eat lunch alone at her dinner table, day after day, despite her son begging her to come upstairs, for almost 20 years.)

She was completely independent up until recently. She lived alone until she was 98, going to the store and cooking for herself until she showed signs of short term memory loss that led her son and daughter in law to fear she might wander off or leave the stove on.

She now lives in a home where she is the oldest. She is the only one who still takes the two flights of stairs that lead to her room and who refuses to go to the doctor. She shuns all forms of medication, even vitamins. She drinks no water, only a glass of red wine with meals. Of all her traits, my favorite is her lack of interest in being tactful. A few years back, her grandson told her she looked beautiful. His tone, although completely void of cruelty, was flip. The immediacy of her razor sharp response (along the lines of “go to hell”) left him reeling.

I love life. Sounding negative about having more of it feels counterintuitive and not very gracious. But I wonder how much of what I now consider crucial to my well being I would still have 60 years from now. I wonder if I wouldn’t be feeling more of an ever-present sense of loss than any feeling of gratitude or triumph.

The fun principle

I can't tell you how many times I've heard "I'll quit the day it stops being fun". Or "it just wasn't fun anymore, you know?"

For a long time this made sense, but upon further examination I’ve decided I don’t buy the fun principle. While I do consider the pursuit of happiness should be central to everybody’s life, I believe true happiness is a thing with substance.

The false sense that you “deserve better” (“deserve” – such a dangerous word!), that life is supposed to be a great big party, leaves me wanting.

More importantly, I believe that if I expected it to be that way I would set myself up to be regularly disappointed.

What I want, a lot more than laughs, to be amused or to be playful, is to live in a place (within myself) where I’m always learning. Where the fear of failing at something is never what is guiding my decision to get involved in it or not. Where I have people to love. Even to be surrounded by things – simple, useful things – that I consider beautiful.

That seems worth sticking around for.

Photo:www.dropshiptoys.com

Possibilities

I love this poem by Wislawa Szymborska. It invites me to make my own list of preferences.

Possibilities

I prefer movies.

I prefer cats.

I prefer the oaks along the river.

I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.

I prefer myself liking people

to myself loving mankind.

I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.

I prefer the color green.

I prefer not to maintain

that reason is to blame for everything.

I prefer exceptions.

I prefer to leave early.

I prefer talking to doctors about something else.

I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.

I prefer the absurdity of writing poems

to the absurdity of not writing poems.

I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries

that can be celebrated every day.

I prefer moralists

who promise me nothing.

I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.

I prefer the earth in civvies.

I prefer conquered to conquering countries.

I prefer having some reservations.

I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.

I prefer Grimm’s' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.

I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.

I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.

I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.

I prefer desk drawers.

I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here

to many things I've also left unsaid.

I prefer zeroes on the loose

to those lined up behind a cipher.

I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.

I prefer to knock on wood.

I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.

I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility

that existence has its own reason for being.

Wislawa Szymborska

(Nothing Twice, trans. by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh)

Photo: www.realsimple.com

Oh, mom.

You probably don't remember.

You watched "The Changeling", that movie where Angelina Jolie loses her child. He's replaced by another she does not know and told it is her son. No one believes her when she says it isn't. She is thrown into an insane asylum.

You call to tell me you loved the movie, to which I reply I thought it was beautiful but too terrible for words. You say, perplexed "what in the world did you find so terrible about it?" I summarize the plot. "Oh." You respond. "I only remember the incredible photography."

My husband posted a video of me trying out working in the rice fields in Vietnam. It shows Vietnamese workers in their cone shaped hats teaching me how to soften the hard earth, quickly losing their patience at my incompetence and unceremoniously waving me off the field. It's aptly titled "Dushka gets fired in Vietnam".

Your comment to the video is "She will try anything. If you leave her there 10 minutes longer she'll be in charge and showing the Vietnamese women how to do it."

We all need a dose of this gift of yours to block what you don't want to see. Everyone should be lucky enough to be mistaken for someone far better than they really are. I don't know what I will do when I lose the only person in the world who think I am invincible.

Infidelity is not a tornado

I fear this post is the unfortunate consequence of me reading one People Magazine article too many. But I am so fed up with how infidelity is referred to.

The most common declaration made after the spouse is caught is "I made a mistake". Infidelity isn't like tripping. It's extremely deliberate. It's not a result of "poor judgment" - a good example of poor judgment would be driving too fast. Being unfaithful involves a thousand small decisions: twelve subtle looks + a tentative, grazing touch + active pursuit + a rendezvous you connive to keep a secret + taking off all your clothes. If someone's penis ends up in someone's vagina it can't be talked about like you forgot to mention to your barista that you like sugar in your coffee.

Next is "I swear it didn't mean anything". Well, if it meant enough for you to put what you had at risk, that doesn't speak very highly of the value you placed on your relationship, does it?

Then there is the contrite spouse in question, red faced, wet eyed, saying "I hope my family finds it in their heart to forgive me". You didn't find it in your heart to honor your vows, so why are you putting all the weight of responsibility of what happens next in those you just hurt, who at the moment can't even see straight?

And let's not forget "I can't believe one single mistake puts our whole relationship at risk". That is a risk you take when you cheat, not a decision the spouse makes when she/he is too twisted up inside to know what the heck to do next.


I'm also so very tired of celebrities responding by "getting treatment". I respect addictions and their healing process. But I can't help but feel the person is actively relinquishing accountability. To put it in other words: if you're man enough to not be able to keep your dick in your pants, be a man and stand up for what you did. Proud of your prowess, deception proficiency and extra-marital dexterity? Then don't act like you are the perplexed, helpless victim of "a disease".


Despite what this sounds like, I want to point out how through this post I am refraining from judging the act itself. I am not saying infidelity is (or isn't) a terrible thing or that whoever commits it will inevitably arrive at a day of reckoning. What people do (or forgive) is their business.


What I'm tired of is how cheaters handle themselves after the fact, how they look upon the mess they've made as if it was a tornado (a huge, inescapable, swirling, destructive force coming out of nowhere from far, far away) that caused it.

What I'm tired of is the lack of variety, the offensive absence of creativity, the same worn out scenario playing out an infinite number of times. How sad it is to see love, that most sacred of things, reduce itself to a cliché, wasted over and over and over again.

Photo: www.realsimple.com