A Brief Discourse on the Importance of Etymology in Tomorrow's Election

How is everyone tonight?

That’s wonderful. I’m doing well. I have alcohol. I have an excuse to wear a nice dress. The worries I have about what tomorrow will bring are…manageable. Some dear friends of mine, however, are encased in a kind of…heinous bubble of rage and fear that formed sometime in January and has been growing smaller and smaller and smaller, culminating in tonight’s denseness, when the stress has collapsed in on itself and become a black hole for many Americans like you and me, who dread the questions that will be answered tomorrow with the kind of anxiety usually reserved for the apocalypse.

And if you feel that way there’s only so much you can do to combat that. Vote. If you’ve never voted before, start. Drink. If you don’t drink, start. If neither of these options are available to you, and I am of course speaking to the underage alcoholics in the room, then I offer a third source of comfort: a brief discourse on the importance of etymology in tomorrow’s election.

I find tremendous comfort in word roots. This may seem like a small thing, a tremendously nerdy thing, but I find that when you break down some of the words that have been frequently abused in this election, and understand just what they mean, and just how much power they have, these words stop sounding like an attack against which we cannot fight, and begin sounding like our secret allies.

For instance. ‘Senator’ comes from the Latin root ‘sen,’ which means ‘old man.’ That’s not threatening. That’s someone who smells like baby hair and sweaters, and falls asleep during ‘Wheel of Fortune.’ We have nothing to fear from old men, senators, or old-man-senators. They just want to be invited to dinner every week, and for the pie to be served the way they like it: right in front of them where they can pretend they still see clearly. Dementia’s a bitch, and we should be more understanding towards those in this election who are obviously suffering from it.

‘Ballot.’ From the Italian ‘ballotta,’ which means ‘little ball’ and refers specifically to little balls made of stone or metal. So, when you cast your ballot tomorrow, imagine that you are chucking a marble right into the eye of the candidate you don’t want. That’s fun. That’s like middle school.

‘Socialist.’ This is a fun one. Latin. ‘Socio.’ ‘Companion.’ A socialist, in the truest sense of the word, is a person that enjoys people. Which is why I a bit thrown yesterday, when I was canvassing for Obama in Indiana, by the genuine concern shown by a man on a motorcycle rode by and commented on my sticker by shouting, “Y’all aren’t spreading socialism, are you?” I like to think that in general I spread only tolerance and good feeling for all my fellow humans, but that’s a goddamned lie. I am not pleasant enough to be a socialist. So I answered him truthfully. I said, “No. Not socialism. Just change.”

Sen. Ballotta. Socio. Breathe deeply and repeat.

And this word-root meditation technique extends to the names of the candidates themselves. A lot of vicious fun was had with Obama’s last name being one letter away from ‘Osama,’ but that’s really just coincidence and has nothing to do with the meaning of the names. Spelling is for children, and Republicans. Etymology is about what things stand for. So let’s look at the Republican candidates names.

It’s interesting that few have pointed out that McCain means ‘son of Cain,’ and that Cain was the first murderer, which all the Christians in real America should know. I am also surprised that the Obama campaign has not pointed out that Palin comes from a Dutch word that means ‘evil cunt.’

That’s not true. There are actually three possible origins for the name ‘Palin.’ In French it’s ‘unexplained.’ In Old English it’s ‘follower.’ And in Welsh it’s ‘to serve at table.’ Combine the three and ‘unexplained follower brought to the table’ gives us a more complete picture of Palin’s origins.

Tomorrow we elect a president, a figure traditionally thought of as the most powerful person on Earth. This is a gross misconception that was beaten into us for the last eight years. President. It comes from two Latin roots. ‘Sedere’ which means ‘to sit.’ And ‘prae’ which means ‘before.’ The president is an individual that sits before us, representative of us, but not in control of us. The last eight years were not heinous because George W. Bush is an evil man who entered into a position of leadership with the intent of harming this country. The last eight years were shameful because George W. Bush is a stupid man that was not elected, and we allowed him and his supporters to bulldoze us into handing off the office of presidency as though anyone could do it. The last eight years are our fault, not because of what George W. Bush did, but because of what he was allowed to do without consequences. That’s on us, and we fucked it up. To think, what could have been avoided, if more people took Latin.

And as long as we remember this, as long as we have learned our lesson, whoever is elected tomorrow will find that we are watching them like hawks. The president sits before us, not the other way around, and ‘impeach’ comes from the French word ‘empecher,’ which means ‘to prevent.’

And Change, the oldest English there is, which means ‘balance returned when something is paid for.’ We have paid dearly. Balance is coming.

And then there’s Hope, which possibly comes from lower German, ‘hop,’ ‘leaping in expectation’.

I’m sure this little speech has done little to help those of you that feel the apocalypse encroaching. But, for the record, ‘apocalypse’ means ‘to bring out of hiding,’ so the apocalypse coming tomorrow is nothing more and nothing less than the true face of America being revealed, and no matter what we see, at least we’ll know where we’re going. Either way, one side will feel as though catastrophe has struck.

But all catastrophe means is ‘inundated with change,’ and, personally, that sounds like what we want, what we need, what we deserve. Tomorrow will be our finest catastrophe.

Dear John

Ladies and Gents, a guest blog by Miss Erica. DO enjoy.


Allow me to be blunt: Sarah Palin's similarities to Hillary Clinton start somewhere below their necks and cut off just above their knees.

Last night, the DNC convention ended with a spectacular finish and a truly unified Democratic party. I'm not just talking about the magnificent speech, but the final conclusion of the primary business, and the end of the Clinton/Obama drama. The party has its nominee, and he has the full support of every single one of his primary opponents.

Barack Obama won this nomination, but Hillary Clinton lost absolutely nothing this week - in fact, she was better than ever, reminding us that she didn't need to be President to remain a powerful and inspiring voice for women- women who can now allow themselves to support a historical, all male Democratic ticket. Right? We're over it, and we're proud to be over it. Suck on that, media narrative!

Wait, what's that? John McCain has an announcement? He picked a lady running mate?? How enlightened of him! And shrewd- now he can finally cement the coveted PUMA vote. Congratulations to John McCain on picking up an extra hundred votes or so.

This maverick choice shows that, unlike that arrogant sexist Obama, John McCain believes that we are ready for a female President. But more than that! He believes we're ready for ANY female President! Wow. How magnanimous. How very forward-thinking. Bravo.

Who cares about her enthusiasm for oil drilling in the Alaskan Wilderness? Or about her positions on science and evolution (not so much)? And who cares about her hard-core anti-choice abortion stance that makes no exception for rape or incest? Sure, it's sounds anti-feminist, but it's probably just the PMS talking. Am I right, ladies? Cramps are the worst! Finally, a candidate who feels my pain - where it hurts the most.

I should be careful with my sarcastic derision of Sarah Palin, I know. Just like Joe Biden should be very careful not to destroy her in a debate, because that would make him a big bad bully. When we speak of our Republican opponants, we Democrats should praise "Govener Palin's courageous female-ness" to the respectful "Senator McCain's heroic service to this country" routine. I know we should take a page from Barack's playbook, and refrain from personal attacks.

I know that. But you know what? I really feel like making some personal attacks right now. Maybe just this once, before I start my period, and the cramps cause me to identify with her too much.

Sarah Palin is not SMART enough to be Vice-President. She is not EDUCATED enough to be Vice-President. She is not EXPERIENCED enough to be Vice-President. She has in no way WORKED HARD enough to be Vice-President. She is in NO WAY QUALIFIED to lead this country as President, in the likely event that her spry 73 year old running mate were to leave the job in her hands.

(By the way, anyone reading this who honestly believes you could say the exact same things about Barack Obama should probably delete me as a friend, because I think you're an idiot.)

She has a BA in journalism and no higher degree. She was the mayor of a town with the population of my neighborhood. For only two years she's been the Governor of fewer people than live in Chicago proper. She's the least qualified of any presidential or vice presidential candidate in modern political history. She has a baby with Down's Syndrome and four more children to raise. And we're expected to believe that she can bring all of that to the table, kick ass at the job, and manage to look good doing it! Women can do anything we put our minds to - we're just so magical.

My (female) friends, John McCain believes that you are stupid enough to vote for him, just for the warm fuzzy feeling of voting for a woman. He thinks you will ignore his recurrent displays of contempt towards women. He expects you to validate this decision, in the name of sisterhood. He has shown the depths of his contempt for women by appointing the least impressive among them to be his running mate.

In other words, ladies: John McCain just called you a cunt.

Floridian Evolution

I grew up in a town called Atlantic Beach, FL, outside Jacksonville. Right next door is a mall that demands it receive township recognition, and goes by the name Orange Park. Below there's a nice link to give you a picture of what the intellectual climate's like. It's a dandy article in the New York Times concerning the fact that Florida has just now implemented evolution as part of its curriculum.

In any event, this is essentially the attitude towards science with which I grew up in the Duval County public school system. Granted, I went to an arts high school, so my science teachers had the leeway to pepper their lessons with unconventional approaches to the universe and its myriad quandaries.

For instance, on the first day of my junior year of high school I entered the world of physics, accompanied by a cranky Santa Claus lookin' mother named Mr. Bartolett. At the start of class he walrused his way to the front, clutching a single red brick in his hand. Holding it aloft, he waited in bitter silence for many calculated moments before letting the brick fall to the hard floor with a resounding BAM. He pointed to it and stared up at us.

"Gravity," he said. "I hope you enjoyed your lab for the year. Take out your notebooks."

I seem to recall that his first name was Frank.

Florida is not, as my friend Erica would have you believe, one of the ten worst US states. True, it might be one of the fifteen worst US states, but I believe it easily outclasses Indiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Utah, and Ohio simply by virtue of its coastline. I am biased, having experienced a magically-realistic childhood in its swamps and on its shore, and part of me still misses a life dictated by storms. But also understand that I fled at age eighteen and never looked back.

Part of the reason I knew I could never be a Floridian amphibian was the requirement that residents exist both in the hippy water and on the Christian shore, one of the rocky Baptist variety. Jacksonville has a long and proud history of religious intolerance, my two favorite examples of which are the lighthouse structure in downtown J-Ville that shines its holy light on the nearby sinners (inner city black neighborhoods) and an incident after 9/11 when the minister of First Baptist Church, a young man named Jerry Vines, called Mohammed, the founder of Islam, a demon possessed pedophile.

I simply lacked the lungs for breathing bullshit. There's a rigidity to religious belief to which I cannot adapt. I think the human experience is too fluid to be governed by any one power or school of thought, particularly one that negates human instinct as sin and the scientific process as atheistic spite.

The main complaint of Christian students being taught evolution is that they certainly didn't come from apes. I don't understand the idea that descent from apes is somehow an insult, that to consider the possibility is to somehow remove grace from humanity. Are apes so unsavory? As a linguist I've always admired them. Koko managed to communicate on our terms, in a form of English. How many humans can communicate on hers? Isn't transcending language barriers a sign of grace if a condemnation and punishment from God was the splitting of Babel? Or is it simply a move towards a displeasing Unity in the eyes of God? After all, He found a single form of communication the height of threatening behavior.

Speaking of unity, and those struggling to find a common language, Michelle Obama opened the Democratic National Convention with a lovely speech. Perhaps she hit a few points too heavily for my taste (You love America? No shit.), but one thing she mentioned struck me. She discussed how often those who make it out of a forsaken community so rarely return to improve it. When I've thought about living in Florida full time, which has not been often, I've usually dismissed the idea with a full body shudder and the better part of a bottle of Makers. Aside from the personal gripes I have against my home state, even now, in a climate of Barack Obama, I remember the sheer shame of Florida's part in the 2000 election, and I have a hard time defending its place out of the US's bottom ten. Florida, the lovely, tan drunk driver that made George W. Bush's presidency possible, your sins are far greater than being a bedrock for the spiritually smug. But progress is a process, and the challenging of creationism is a good step.

I can only hope the students benefitting from this development internalize their education's evolution. Painful as it may be, they are witnessing the Florida public school system growing an opposable thumb, one that may point up at God or down at the facts, one capable of the noblest of actions: grasping.

I'd just love to feel at home there again. For once.

Book in Progress II

CHAPTER TWO – The Napthalis
The best laid schemes o’ mice and men
Gang aft a-gley;
And leave us naught but grief and pain
For promised joy.
Robert Burns

At this point it is important to know that there was a second family living behind the walls of Gwylan’s home, one that was small, and made entirely of mice. It was comprised of a mother and two sons, and had made its way from India after a monsoon (which is a fierce rainy season) in a sturdy and gargantuan breadbox (acting as a raft) with a large supply of Naan (which is bread), landing finally in a new, fair country on a frosty St. Patrick’s Day. The town that received them took the sort-of holiday seriously, and had dyed the bay green. Snow banks on either side recreated the world as a piece of spearmint candy, which was a family favorite of theirs. So it was that three shipwrecked mice fell in love with America at first sight.
Their last name was Napthali, and they spoke a beautiful marigold-smelling language that fell somewhere between Hindi and English. It’s hard to explain exactly where it fell. Call it Hinglish or Endi, or Shine or Hiding, if you like, but giving it a name won’t help you to understand how lovely it is. I will call it Hiding-Shine from now on, just for myself. Hiding-Shine has almost all the letters of “Hindi” and “English” combined, except for “L”. I’ll do something nice for “L” later to make up for it. Also, don’t worry who I am yet. Not yet.
The mother was Ayan, and the sons were Patil and Parva. When their Naan-box hit the shore and they scampered out to feel the gift of solid land, they found that the white ground was cold and hurt their feet. Ayan, Patil, and Parva ran to the nearest house, which happened to be Sofia and Gwylan’s. It was black, shingled, and had a roof that was often mistaken for a widow’s walk, for you could usually spot a severe, quiet young woman sitting or standing on top, staring out at the great expanse of dark water.
The Napthalis had now been there, making a new home behind the walls on every floor, for two years. But, in all this time they had never really introduced themselves to the human occupants. For two years Gwylan and Sofia had bumped them awake and creaked them to sleep, left the house free for foraging and cut excursions short unexpectedly, dictating the Napthalis’ lives without being aware that such a thing as the Napthali mouse family existed.
Not that Ayan was complaining. She was happy to live in secrecy with her prized boys, bothering no one and sleeping well, trusting that she, Patil, and Parva were safe. She remembered the long months tossed by waves with only rainwater to drink and crumbling Naan to eat, huddling beneath a woman’s swept-off sari Patil had clutched as they flooded out of the city of Chennai, in the state of Tamil Nadu. Ayan believed that their new candy country was not to be risked at any cost. She made her boys wait to run out for food until they were sure the big ladies were asleep, and only then if they were all together. She dreamed often of a world in which she was alone, and woke crying quietly, remembering only that in the dream she had had to cross an unending bridge that began to rise and break, sending her falling into green water. She hated the sound of the ocean, and lived in fear of rain, since she had received no promise from God that He would never again destroy her world with a flood.
Parva, for the most part, loved his mother and was fine with an arrangement that demanded he stay confined. He was the younger of the two sons, and felt very small. Although he wished, sometimes, to go outside once more and see if the land still looked sweet and crisp, he thought he could trust that it was good and not worry his mother with the request to leave. He contented himself with covert walks at night on the second floor. There were many small holes that aided the Napthali’s passage through the building, and one could be found under Gwylan’s bed. Parva liked to sit just inside it and listen to the little girl breathing above him as she slept. She gasped lightly breathing in and hummed breathing out. It was soothing, like a warm wind after thunder. Once he had even ventured out to the rug and peered up towards the sound. He could just see the fingertips of her left hand thrown over the side, hanging towards him. Her nails were bitten, and the fingers were long and thin. He watched for many minutes, but then something she was dreaming took her body’s focus and she turned over, removing her hand from his range of observation. He had gone home to Ayan after that, but thought often of how Gwylan’s hand had moved with her breathing, and wondered if her hand would move to hold or hit him if given the chance. It seemed, as it dangled, that it had beckoned to him. The thought of this silent conversation between his eyes and her sleeping hand occupied his mind for most of the day, and after that he returned every night in the hopes that her hand would be waiting for his company. The world inside his own mind seemed a brighter thing than the one outside, and the more he imagined conversations between himself and Gwylan the more he became convinced of it.
Patil was a different story altogether. Patil had a plan for his life, and in his opinion his own story had been dealt an inexcusable detour. When the monsoon hit he had seen it as a difficult but necessary first step in a grand adventure. It had all started with the German in Chennai.
In Chennai they’d resided in the home of a linguist and scholar. She often hosted visitors, and they varied greatly in their language and musicality. Some spoke in dark jangles with the weight of wood smoke. Many had clipping, metallic car words. But there was one visitor that Patil had overheard on a Monday that rang in his ears still, a young man with blonde hair who spoke in lengthy sugar-water gushes. It was the most wonderful sound he had ever heard a voice make, and he haunted the corners and bookcases the entire day the young man had been there, happy just to listen. Later he was able to put a name to the language when the linguist referred to the boy as German, being from Germany. Patil had an unrelenting sweet tooth, and considered the sound that poured from between the young German’s perfect teeth sweeter even than the spearmint bites he stole from the linguist’s bronze candy dish. When the German left and never returned Patil was heartbroken. He decided that one day he would find the country, and then the young man, and taste a life beyond his own knowledge.
I will, he often thought, devour it whole.
When his family was swept from their native land Patil had been the one to hold his weeping mother and to still his shaking brother. Ayan and Parva hid their faces and blocked their ears in terror and grief, but Patil had endeavored to see and hear. He saw great walls of water and stared as their small shelter slid down the waves, splashing to inexplicable safety. Patil had long since decided to trust the chaos of the world, and was thrilled to watch it in action, if only it would let him find that chiming voice he longed for both day and night.
If only he could get out of the house! If only he did not see walls wherever he looked! If only his mother did not still cling to him when it rained and make him promise to save them when the next flood came. If only Parva seemed capable of more than nocturnal wanderings and silent wonderings. Until Ayan was happy, and Parva more of a help, Patil was stuck, and an ocean apart from the place he wanted to call home.
Change comes to mice as surely as it comes to us, with strong hands and a sense of purpose.
On the Thursday in question (which we already know something about from being introduced to Gwylan), the Napthalis were resting after a long night’s search for food. They slept in a hollow behind one of the attic’s walls, surrounded by bits of found cloth and old hair. As we first met Gwylan sitting on the roof and painting birds, Ayan slept fitfully, flicking her nervous tail back and forth, as if in her sleep she was using it to swim. Parva was lying with his head against the floor, waiting for Gwylan to come in for lunch so he could feel the vibrations of her steps run through his tiny body. Patil was pacing back and forth, his tiny toe nails scraping on the old wood.
“Shh,” Parva said, “I cannot hear. Stop moving.”
“Ah!” Patil came back, “I cannot breathe. I’m not allowed to walk as well?”
“Please,” sighed Parva, “Please, Patil. Gwylan will come in soon. Then you can move.”
“Gwylan will come in soon,” sneered Patil, “Wait for her in the attic? Ask to join her?”
Parva ignored his brother. The rain had started and he heard the attic window close. Gwylan was inside again. He pressed full against the floor and held his breath. He wondered why he couldn’t feel her movement. This was because she was still staring out the window at her forgotten paint set. Finally he felt the boards tingling with her walk and he closed his eyes.
When she comes back, he thought, I will wait for her. I will ask.
He knew these were more imaginings. Regardless, he allowed himself the pleasant distraction and thought about an entire afternoon spent outside with the quiet, dark haired girl.
Patil waited until Gwylan’s steps receded from hearing and resumed pacing. He knew it was only a matter of time until the rain woke Ayan, and then he would have to comfort her until the downpour had ceased. After almost a minute the drizzle became a full shower and Ayan screamed herself awake. She dissolved into tears.
“Patil?” she whimpered, breathing thickly and blinking around.
“Here, Ma,” he said, and sat next to her. He wrapped his tail around her back and rocked Ayan back and forth. He dreamed every second of departure, but Patil loved his mother and knew that she loved him. He would not leave until he knew he could. He would do his best.
“Patil, I dreamed. I dreamed of bridges falling and no one could hear,” Ayan trembled next to her son but her sobbing was turning gentle and preparing to stop.
“There are no bridges, Ma. There is no falling. And even if there were both, I would hear you. Parva would hear you. We are all here.”
“Shh,” said Parva, again. “Something is happening.”
Some dull but resonant sounds were coming from downstairs and the Napthalis all paused in their lives to listen. There was a crash, like a person being hurled across a room, and then silence. Then, from two stories down, Gwylan’s voice.
“Out! Get out of my house!”
Parva stood and ran to one of their passage holes. He knew only that he had to see what was happening to Gwylan. He went without turning to look at his family, and he went with tremendous speed. It took him a scant five seconds to cross the floor and disappear into the hole beside a vent.
Patil at first felt only bewilderment, and then anger that Parva would leave him alone with Ayan during a thunderstorm.
“Parva? Parva! Come back!” Patil yelled. Ayan stared at the hole that Parva had gone through and then broke from Patil’s side. She gave Patil not one word of warning. Parva had never gone out into the house alone during the day, Ayan had forbidden it. But in a split second two years’ rules and routine had been broken. Ayan sprinted after her younger son. She was tangled in Patil’s tail and pulled him with her for a few steps, then threw him off and ran into the darkness that Parva had left behind. Like Parva, she did not look back. Patil was alone for the first time in weeks.
Patil sat for many seconds. He was certain Parva was being a fool and that Ayan was worried over nothing. He was bewildered that they had left without thinking of him. Did they not remember who took care of them? Did they not remember that his advice protected and comforted them? He walked slowly towards the hole they had used to exit, telling himself that he would not run. He would take his time and find the other two thirds of his family shivering and silly in the middle of the attic’s floor. Ayan would be rapping Parva hard on the head for scaring her, and Parva would be taking it in silence. Then they would all go back behind the wall to sleep. But, when Patil entered the attic almost a minute later, that was not what he saw.
Parva stood on all four legs, his face pointed straight out. Ayan clutched him from behind. They were both perfectly still and low to the ground. The storm flew against the house and echoed within. Something was wrong.
Patil smelled something unfamiliar and warm in the attic. There was strange blood on the floor, he was sure of that. It reeked rich and wrong like bad bread. The scent was now so strong he recoiled to his tail. But he saw no stains on the ground. He whispered, to see if Parva and Ayan knew.
“Blood?” Patil breathed across the room to his mother and brother. Ayan gasped a little, but didn’t answer. Parva’s voice shook with anger as he answered Patil.
“Look,” Parva seethed. Gwylan’s foot could just barely be seen between several boxes; if you were any higher than a mouse’s view you wouldn’t notice. Parva had seen her dive for cover. He had noticed, because he always looked to her lithe fingers, that her left wrist hung sad and grating. He knew by the way she had held it that it was snapped, ruined. Parva stared at Gwylan’s poor foot as it rose and fell with her punching breaths. He felt Ayan’s nails raking into his fur and listened to Patil mumbling under his breath. Patil mumbled in German whenever he was confused. At the moment he was mindlessly running through a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. Patil had just reached the final line, Ich glaube an Nachte, when he sucked his Ich back through his teeth. There were soft, soft footsteps in the attic. They were silken, and barely lifted into the air, but they moved forward rapidly. Gwylan didn’t notice them, but their minute bendings of the floor were like slaps to the Napthalis, who all pivoted their heads back towards the broken ladder entrance but saw nothing and no one. Ayan wept silently and begged Parva with her eyes to return with her behind the wall, away from sounds without sources and broken little girls, away from unknown dangers. Patil watched, interested now in what was unfolding before him. Parva waited for who or whatever had broken Gwylan’s wrist. He wanted to see something’s face so he could memorize it, ink it onto his brain, and then find a way to shatter it. He had never shattered a face, but he resolved to do so when he encountered the face that belonged to the Wrist Breaker.
Then they heard a single, polite clink, much the same as the sound a finger would make tapping on the globe of an old lamp. Parva saw Gwylan’s foot freeze as her breath decided to stay inside her body.
“I’m sorry about your wrist and the threat of choking, Gwylan. Rest assured it’s all in your best interest. Where in this low-roofed, narrow-middled room can you be?”
Parva’s teeth were now bared in the dark room. This was the voice of Gwylan’s assailant, and he would tear out its throat when the chance presented itself.
“I wonder,” the Wrist Breaker continued, “whether I can shed a little light on the situation.” The clink disappeared, only to be replaced by the znick of Gwylan’s favorite lamp’s brass cord being pulled down against its will.
The lamp burned gorgeous waxy light for a moment, then fluttered and burst, cracking the glass and sending off four sparks. We have already discussed the importance of the various sparks. The sudden flash startled the Napthalis’ eyes and Ayan screamed in the new blindness. Parva barely heard her; his ears went to Gwylan’s singed cough. His eyes came back to him in time to see Gwylan’s break for the circular window.
Later on, long after this moment, the remaining Napthalis would rage within themselves. Change came, and took with it a member of their family’s trinity.
In the instant that Gwylan made for the roof, Parva darted forward in the hopes that he could go with her, help her, do something, but he found himself stopped by Ayan’s body. She’d thrown her weight down when she felt him leaving her, and bound hard to his back. Without thinking, focusing only on what he must do, which was to help a running girl, he twisted around to his mother and bit her on the face.
Patil saw all of this as though a reddening glare. He felt a tremendous pricking behind his eyes, and a thickening ache in his head. He ran for his brother, ready to correct and punish Parva for the bite. The two young mice erupted in a fight, and did not notice the unusually close bolt of lightning that scorched Gwylan from the roof and started a brand new story far, far away from their home. They did not notice the creature with strange blood return from outside. Only when the vibrations of his steps shook the floorboards did the Napthalis feel a deadbolt of instinct, a tiny scream for them to crouch close to a corner, for the middle of a floor is no place for those who hide to live.
Patil shoved his younger brother back towards the wall. Parva turned back to bid Patil to follow when something invisible fell upon Patil, about the size of a man’s foot, and smashed him into the ground.
Parva saw his brother’s complete flattening. It was quite different from watching someone be crushed by a rock or a piano, or anything visible. When that happens you see the object fall into the place your loved one happens to be, and then the object is there instead of them. They’re there, of course, but underneath the object. When Patil was pulped from above there was no visible object to take the place of his agony in Parva’s eye. It seemed to happen very slowly to Parva, as he watched his older brother become flatter and softer, become blood covered and eye popped.
It is a blessing that the blood in her eyes and fur blocked Ayan’s view. When she finally cleared her vision she saw Parva sitting next to what used to be Patil. She went to them.
Ayan lay hard and flat, speaking quietly in Patil’s ear, telling stories of Princes and journeys, of fresh mango and spearmint, of strife turned to gold. Patil’s eyes roamed around the attic without fixing on any one point. It was as though the object of their search was hidden across an ocean. Parva sat and wept.
After a bit the rain went home, and the only sound in the attic was Ayan’s voice recited an unending story for her eldest, and the hitching breath of her children. She reached a point in her story when a whale had emerged from an unknowable deep to save a young man lost at sea.
“He felt the sea reach up to cup him in its hand…” Ayan whispered, and then paused. Patil was still beneath her and his eyes had ceased searching. Ayan lapsed into silence and curled her tail around Patil’s face. Parva’s head fell to the floor. Only miserable sounds came from him now.
“I’m sorry, Ma,” he moaned, staring at the wood next to his head. Ayan ignored him, and began her story again.
“He felt the sea reach up to cup him in its hand, and then he saw it was a whale’s skin upon which he rested. He lay in the sun. He was returning to shore at great speed.”
So died Patil Napthali, brother and son.

Inevitability: John McCain, Hurricanes, & Rape

It's August in America, during an election year, which for a homegrown Southerner brings to mind hurricane season and old white men helming their mastery of the universe with the confidence that comes only to those whose supremacy has never been challenged. The only difference this year being that the old white man at the forefront of public thought, John McCain, has been treated widely as an afterthought by the bulk of voters in this country, far more interested in seeing who would come out on top between a white woman and a black man. The weather persists in normalcy, however, with hurricane Fay about to boomerang and bitch slap Northeast Florida, where my family resides. In other fun news, honor killings in the middle east, murdering a raped female family member for having dishonored her kin, are all the rage, if they ever went out of style in the first place. Honor killings are a little like Chanel No. 5, good for parties with a certain dress code and able to lend said party with a sense of occasion. Timeless.

But we've forgotten about poor John McCain again, and he's having a rough summer. Barack Obama got to go on a big trip, and John only got to go to Pennsylvania, which may be the keystone state, but it still isn't as cool as having an "Ich ben Berliner" redux moment in front of thousands of Europeans who are screaming at you because they're happy to see you. He also had to admit that he didn't know how to use email, which, in this day and age, 'nuff said. My blind, incontinent shar-pei knows how to use email. In fact, I think she has a blogspot.

But perhaps the lamest moment came back in June he had to cancel a fundraiser that was being held for him by a supportive Texan named Clayton Williams after a soundbite came to light from 1990, in which Williams joked that rape was like bad weather, saying "as long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it." In a time when a growing number of people find rape jokes tasteless, this did not go over well, and being the brilliant surveyor of a national room's temperature, McCain postponed receiving money from Williams publicly and had his spokesman Brian Rogers condemn the joke as being "incredibly offensive."

Well done, John! When I think of the forerunners of women's rights, I think of you. When I read reports that you once blew up at your wife, who teased you in front of a reporter, and said "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt," I think, that's the man I want in charge of my abortion policies, a profane grand-toddler with a short fuse.

But, you did react appropriately with the Clayton Williams situation, so perhaps you do have a sense of what women do and do not deserve. Perhaps that's why, in 1986 during a run for Senate, you made a little joke to win us over to your side:
"Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?'"

It's like you've been reading my diary, John. Or maybe you just enjoy the imagery of a silverback screwing a blond. How much younger is Cindy, John?

John, John, John. I don't mean to judge. If I claimed to have never cracked a rape joke I'd be a filthy liar. I know I've said more than a few times, "Rape is not funny, unless you're raping a clown," and God knows I'm a fan of clergy-molestation humor. But here's the thing John, no one is committing honor killings against raped white men from Arizona, who, indeed, have a low incidence of being raped by human or gorilla. Unless there's something that happened when you were a POW that you don't feel like sharing, I'd maybe back off on a subject where you really have no currency.

I sympathize with John McCain, as I sympathize with all dementia stricken seniors, those left in the wake of a natural disaster, or someone violated against their will. And perhaps it feels as though he is currently in the eye of a generational, national hurri-rape. The old white man, for the first time in US history, is not the given choice in an election, nor seen as the voice of reason by the majority. This must feel to John McCain as though the natural order of things, as it walks home in the rain, has been pulled into an alley only to be nailed against a dumpster. It must feel like everything he knows to be good and true is being violently split and spit on. It must be a terror he may never get over, at least not for years and years, and he'll probably die in the next few, spending them ensconced in a house with boarded up windows as he listens to the storm of change outside.

Well, John, as long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Book In Progress

I am writing a children's book. Here is chapter one. I would enjoy feedback.

CHAPTER ONE – Sea Girl
“Thursday’s Child has far to go.”
Nursery Rhyme

This is how the apocalypse came, and how god awful gorgeous it was.
Gwylan was visible only from the air. If you looked from the street, below the brick staircase to her house, you would see only as high as the shingles on the second story. The two neighboring houses were much shorter than hers, and would not help you even at their very top. The sun revealed her presence on the roof, but only after 10 a.m. and before 6 p.m., (and the times changed with daylight savings and weather). The moon noticed her during certain times of the month. The gulls knew she was there.
As usual, she had gone up there to read and paint the seagulls that flew into her town from across the Atlantic Ocean. They almost always found their way to the house sitting by itself topped by a little girl with severely cut black hair and a small collection of watercolors. She was still, and no longer threw rocks or screamed at them. Over several years they had built up a trust, so now the gulls and the girl understood each other, and frequently shared company.
Gwylan counted them among her better friends.
On this particular Thursday Gwylan had stayed home from school. She was not sick. It was not a holiday. She had simply not wanted to go. Once her grandmother had been assured that Gwylan’s grades were doing well and that she had no outstanding school projects due that morning the two of them declared it a mental health day and went out to breakfast. Gwylan’s grandmother, whose name was Sofia, didn’t have a high opinion of their state’s educational system, so she could often be persuaded to let Gwylan take the day off for reading, walking, or whatever else she could find to do.
There was a damp, cool wind bringing in the birds, and in their tiny eyes Gwylan could see storm warnings. She glanced up with her black eyes at the sky and decided to go in before lightning made her high perch on the roof unadvisable.
Although, she thought to herself, Just once I’d like to get hit by lightning if I knew it wouldn’t kill me.
As she stood up the twelve or thirteen gulls that had been sitting with her nodded and watched her before flying off to their own shelters. As she stepped through the circular window that led into the attic she could just feel the beginnings of rain on the back of her left leg. She closed it behind her and looked back to see the rain collapse onto her small paint set. She watched the storm bleed her colors pale and then decided to ask Sofia what she wanted for lunch.
None of this was unusual for Gwylan’s life. Keeping company with gulls, deciding whether or not school was the order of the day, eating with her grandmother, and attending to the weather before the weather attended to her were simply the ways she passed the time. She did not expect much to change for her. Not any time soon.
But, the secret with change is this: Change is always there, watching us from just behind our shoulders, ready to reach out and grab us. Sometimes it is very patient, slowly pushing us into being new people. Sometimes it is all at once, like being picked off your feet as you walk and then dropped from the sky into the middle of the dark oceans to the North. It’s the second kind of change, the all-at-once kind that scares people. Imagine, please, falling from hundreds or thousands of feet up in the air down into water so deep cold that you went frozen and blind. It’s breathing and choking in pain without being able to see a thing around you. It’s a horrible thought. It’s how we feel when we lose that which is most important to us with no warning or way to stop it. It’s terror.
How you react to all-at-once change is important.
Reaction Number One: You become completely overwhelmed by the shock and drown, unable to even think of saving yourself. Maybe as you drift to the black bottom you have time to hate who or whatever tossed you down. Maybe you’d have time to think that before you sank like a self-pitying stone.
Reaction Number Two: You get to the surface as quickly as humanly possible. You take a breath and try to figure out exactly how to get out of the middle of a gigantic ocean. You can sometimes find ways back to shore, for you have some common sense and are not without bravery. But even after you are safe and back home you will shake. You will tell others never to trust in anything, for at any moment someone could pick you up and drop you in the ocean.
Reaction Number Three: You ask good questions. Even after being hurled into strange events with a crush, you take a moment to look around and ask, “Do I fight this? Do I make the most of it? Will it turn out to be more interesting than what I’ve known until now?” You swim around something new and begin the process of learning how to breathe water. It hurts like a knife in the lungs. You breathe in once, twice and so on and so forth until one day you realize it doesn’t hurt any more. You look down and discover you’ve slowly evolved and grown gills. Now you can dive deep and swim far, live in water or on land. You are a person about whom stories are written.
Gwylan walked in her bare feet through the attic with rain coming down hard over her head and echoing on the ceiling beams. Below her she heard old, keening music of Sofia’s playing.
“Now here’s the story about Minnie the Moocher…”
She walked in the dark. She knew where everything was, having spent many hours exploring the attic and trying to find a ghost to talk to, so there was no reason to turn on a light and waste electricity. Besides, turning on one of the lamps rusted by the salt air, during a storm, might blow out the whole house’s power. And also, the only lamp in the attic she liked was ancient, with frosted glass lanterns over the bare bulbs, and it risked a final, unforgiving blow out with every pull of the copper cord. Gwylan knew that Sofia would throw it out when it finally died, and that was the last thing she wanted. It seemed a little lost in time, and very elegant.
It was, Gwylan thought, aging with grace and deserving of respect.
As she passed it she traced the pull cord with a finger and left it swinging, adding its rhythmic swish to the sound of rain, which was coming down in torrents.
Although, she thought, there’s something to be said for going out with a bang.
She made her way to the broken ladder that led out of the attic and climbed down. It could barely hold her weight, and she knew that one day it wouldn’t. But, until it snapped completely she was happy it allowed her into the attic and no one else. Closing it carefully with the handle of a broomstick that stayed in the hall, she brushed the last bit of rain off her leg and thought about soups, teas, and other warm things that are best to eat on stormy days. It is at this point that Change picks Gwylan up and throws her with all its might into the story of what her life has to become.
Gwylan knew every inch of the building she had called home for most of her fourteen years, to the point that she often walked around the house with closed eyes for fun. I have already told you a bit concerning the roof and attic. The attic was essentially a third story, but it was so low that it was more like the second and a half story. Below it was a tall story calling itself “The Second.” On this floor you could find two bedrooms, one facing West and the town (Gwylan’s) and one facing East and the ocean (Sofia’s). There was a library and staircase to the South and a row of windows along the North side, as well as a bathroom dominated by an old claw foot tub with incorrect plumbing. The hot faucet poured cold water and the cold faucet gave you hot, but that was easy enough to negotiate, which is why Sofia never had it fixed. The walls were dark, salt blasted wood, and the doors only had handles on the inside. This made it seem from the hallway that there were no doors at all, only smooth planks that sounded hollow if you tapped them. Doors were left open during the day, as were all the windows so the breeze could sweep out the quiet hours and dust. Sometimes the wind would blow a door shut and Gwylan would open it by sticking a straightened coat hanger through the keyhole to jimmy the lock.
The first floor was a flowing, open place, comprised of doors to a porch and a kitchen that appeared from nowhere and then backed out of your awareness politely. The doors were glass and looked to the beach. It was clean, and soft, and filled with the sun and air. The wood was blonde and the living room held large chairs and a fireplace. There was a copy of Vermeer’s The Girl with a Pearl Earring hanging over Sofia’s corner desk where she wrote letters to friends who were far away. These are the rooms to which Gwylan was used, and she fully expected that when she reached them Sofia would be sitting at her desk with a green pen and four different kinds of stationary, trying to decide what recipient should be awarded which paper and envelope.
The music went on.
“A hidehidehideho (hidehidehideho)…”
Gwylan knew something was wrong when she reached the top of the stairs and saw Sofia thrown into one of the glass doors to the porch. Glass went into Sofia’s hands, back, legs, and head, as well as onto the floor. And then Sofia rose into the air with nothing holding her.
It’s funny, what the brain chooses to notice or ignore when it has to deal with the unfamiliar and heart stopping. For instance, as Gwylan watched her grandmother being beaten and tossed from walls to doors to floors, she found that what struck her the most was the fact that whoever was doing it seemed to be invisible. Odd, isn’t it? Your brain should be screaming at you to run, or fight, or do something productive, but all it wants to do is attend to impractical details.
How can nothing pick Sofia up? thought Gwylan. That’s just strange.
It seemed for several moments that there were two Gwylans. The first was a useless and unmoored fourteen year-old girl. But the second was curious. The second watched something pick Sofia up again and shift her in its clutches so the blood dripping out of her broken nose ran into her hair instead of onto the floor. Then it held her still, as if it was deciding what to do next. Sofia was still, in the middle of the air, and nothing without wings or rockets can do that.
So, thought Gwylan, there is something, and not nothing. I can’t stop nothing, but I can stop something.
Sofia opened her eyes. She hadn’t screamed or spoken the whole time. Maybe the breath had been knocked out of her, or maybe she kept silent for a reason. We don’t know what happened before Gwylan came downstairs, so we shall wonder. However, as soon as she saw her grandchild watching from the landing with bare feet and damp hair, she managed enough air for a whisper.
“Far away,” she gulped out of her cracking throat. That’s what Gwylan thought she said. Gwylan couldn’t really hear. Gwylan was unaware of anything except the horrible picture of her floating, bleeding grandmother.
As soon as Sofia spoke, the something keeping her off the ground threw her hard into the fireplace. A great burst of soot spat all over the rug and darkened the room even more than the storm had done. More importantly, as the burnt dirt fell over the scene a fine outline of ash settled in ridges here and there for almost six feet above the ground where nothing visible stood, and formed the outline of a man. The something with the outline of a man twitched near the top and Gwylan realized from the film of used fires that he was smiling at her through the grit. That was when sound returned.
“Out!” she screamed as she crossed the distance to the filthy grin. “Get out of my house!” She picked up a shard from the broken glass door and sliced the air in front of her. But as soon as she reached the something he was somewhere else, and she spun, trying to find the dark outline of moving ash in the fading light. Then she felt something twist her wrist that held the shoddy weapon, and fell to her knees from the pain as she heard the bones snap cleanly. A light, strange voice came into her ear.
“Gwylan.”
Something else inside her snapped and she felt only terror. That was when she ran. She wrenched from the grip that squeezed her broken wrist and found the stairs again, sailing past the carved out waves in the front planks, along the dark brown hallway with secret doors and windows framing the storm from the Northeast. She jumped and reached with her good arm for the string that brought down the broken attic ladder, thinking only that she had to go where nothing else could follow.
On the second try she snagged the cord and brought down the tired ladder. Scrambling up with her feet and right hand she heard some sounds making their way through the cracks of her panic. There were two sliding wisps on wood: the footsteps of something light, taking its time, and crossing the distance to where she climbed. Finally, in agony, she pulled herself into the pitch-black attic. Just as she took her own weight off the top step she felt something else put his weight on the bottom. The ladder bent, but did not break. She looked back and saw nothing but the swinging wood. Then she felt a grip on her left foot.
“Your leg’s wet. Did you have an accident?” something called up to her. Gwylan kicked back hard and caught something on a pointy bit of cartilage. Her foot crunched it to the left and something hot and thick that she could not see gushed onto her toes. Something fell back and landed on the hallway floor with light thud, hissing as he went.
“Oh, you bitch! I’m going to hold you up to a mirror so you can watch while I choke you!” came a scalding voice from below, but Gwylan was already halfway through the attic and pushing down between a pair of boxes filled with old clothes. She lay in the dark, listening for more. The ladder was silent, and no light was coming from the downstairs hallway. Then she heard a single, polite clink, much the same as the sound a finger would make tapping on the globe of an old lamp.
How did it get up here? thought Gwylan. It must weigh nothing.
“I’m sorry about your wrist and the threat of choking, Gwylan. Rest assured it’s all in your best interest. Where in this low-roofed, narrow-middled room can you be?” came the voice again, and Gwylan resolved to stop breathing until it was safe to do so.
“I wonder,” he continued, “whether I can shed a little light on the situation.” The clink disappeared, only to be replaced by the znick of Gwylan’s favorite lamp’s brass cord being pulled down against its will.
The lamp burned gorgeous waxy light for a moment, then fluttered and burst, cracking the glass and sending off four sparks. One died in midair, almost as soon as it was born. The second fell almost all the way to the floor before extinguishing. The third found the room’s hardwood bottom and branded a tiny, black circle into a plank as a reminder of its existence. The fourth is the one that mattered, for it had a purpose. The fourth spark went directly into Gwylan’s mouth and she sucked in before she could help it. That fourth grain of heat went like an arrow to the back of her throat and she coughed.
The air moved in the room as though the something had snapped his head towards the sound of Gwylan bringing the spark violently out of her throat. Gwylan knew enough to move immediately and break for the circular window that led to the roof, still suffering under the downpour. Gwylan pushed it open and fell into the rain as she felt something touch her hair and graze down her neck. He felt like dirty fog and moss. She was immediately glad for the rain hitting her, for the thing’s touch required a bath afterwards. She sprinted to the edge of the roof and turned, a little sickened at the drop that faced her. She stared down to catch her breath and saw her paintbrushes, soaked and forgotten.
She turned, trying to judge if she could make it to a neighbor’s house by jumping, but Sofia’s home was thin and kept to itself. As she tried to plan she saw the rain parting and coming slowly towards her from the house. It dripped and chased down the figure of what was now clearly a young man, but one who had gone beyond regular sight. He moved, he had a face and a grown body, but he was wrong. He was something fast and cold and cruel. He walked towards Gwylan without hurrying. There was no need for him to hurry.
“Do you know me, Gwylan?” he screamed through the rain. “Do you remember how much fun we used to have?”
Gwylan knew it meant her harm so there was no reason to be polite.
“I do NOT know you. I do not WANT to know you. You have no right to be here!” Gwylan’s voice broke from her frozen throat and she felt anger returning, sweet and fine like warm honey. This thing had come into her home. This thing had hurt Sofia and snapped her writing wrist. This thing meant to do worse.
And, thought Gwylan, that is unacceptable. She picked up her metal paintbrush, the only possible weapon within reach, and held it in front of her, blinking. She was glad her hair was short; it was better to see what was coming.
“Gwylan,” he said, laughing, “Did Sofia ever tell you about mom and dad?”
And now her anger wrapped her in its arms and whispered to her to stop the thing’s mouth. Her black eyes caught the sky and reflected the storm’s fury in purple and grey.
“What’s your name?” she asked. “Tell me so I know.”
He started laughing a high, wild shriek.
“She didn’t! She never told you! Oh, fantastic!” he kept laughing, but took a breath to say, “I’ll tell you my name. I’ll whisper it to you.” She backed up a step to the very edge.
“Careful,” she heard him call, closer than before. “Don’t fall on account of poor, pale Howell. Give me your hand.” It reached out and caught the rain on its arm. She thought, Howell.
“You don’t get to touch me again, Howell!” she yelled above the storm.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do, Gwylan!” he yelled back, and started to run towards her.
Gwylan raised her paintbrush, the better to bring it down with force and stab through the thing’s body, but then there was a symphony of thunder, and a piece of lightning ran down to grab the rod in her hand. There was a brutal flash of fiery green. Howell bent his head and jumped back for a moment, then stared at the point where Gwylan had stood. She was gone. He ran to the edge of the roof and peered over. Gwylan was not on the roof and she was not on the ground. He sighed.
He said nothing, and walked back to the window. The rain parted for the something, called Howell, and then resumed its even, heavy fall.
And the music goes on.
“Poor Min, poor Min…”

Memoryplay I: The First Drunk

The first time I got drunk it was a Tuesday. I was a senior in high school.

My morning routine from the time I was eleven until I left for DePaul University consisted of a 5:30 a.m. wake up call, breakfast on the run, and a sometimes hours long bus or car ride to the magnet schools in downtown Jacksonville that had sucked all the strong students out of their neighborhood schools in the mid-nineties.

I had no alarm clock. Each day my mother would creep in a little before or after dawn, depending on the time of year, and rouse me with a head scratch and her adorable persistence that yes, I had to get up now, and no, I could not take a mental holiday. I never stopped asking, and she rarely gave in. I miss that now, the gentle waking of adolescence, when I hear my insistent alarm screaming at 7:00.

This Tuesday was very usual. I woke in the dark, joked with my mother, showered and consumed a breakfast of chocolate milk and a bagel. My father was up and out of the house early, well before dawn, to catch a flight somewhere, some work related trip, one in a long line from my childhood. I drove to the arts school that hid me from normal kids for four years and went to my first period film studies class after stopping for a large coffee and pastry from Panera. The class consisted of watching movies that our ex-priest (and, I suspect, gay) teacher, and all around badass, Mr. Price selected from his personal collection, strung along with loose, wonderfully superfluous lessons, the only necessary one being that there were more films to watch then the hetero-normative bullshit shuttled to the boonies' local AMC. I suspect that Stephen Price's triumph was training Southerners to embrace the subtitle. It was a tremendous class. They fired him a few years later for assigning a book in an English class that pissed off some Baptists. Another good teacher bites the dust.

Between the early morning movie watching and excess coffee and bread, senior year was when I gained my freshman fifteen, carrying them with me to Chicago when I left Florida in August 2002. I don't remember what we were watching that day. Honestly, I may have slept through it. I was stage managing the school musical from 3-6 everyday, and going to rehearsal for a local production of Hamlet from 7-10 before the long drive home. I was walking scenery. After a few weeks of that schedule I was also the walking dead. And pissed. My family was going to a wine tasting at our friends' restaurant that night. I was going to miss it.

I didn't really care about missing the alcohol. I'd never really seen the appeal, but getting to the food at Sliders was worth killing a transient. A feisty one, even. There would be gumbo, god damn it. Gumbo.

I roused at the bell ring. The more I think about it, the surer I am that I slept through class that morning. I tried to only sleep through the movies I'd already seen, so I'm going to hope I didn't miss anything. I grabbed my shit and walked out the building to my next class, hearing a snatch of conversation on the way out about something something New York.

I met my best friend Brad next to the obligatory high school portables, and we made our way to Acting A. As seniors, we were allowed to supervise the freshman acting class for a grade. It sounds like more of a gimme than it was. The head of the department taught the class and she rarely had the time or inclination to care about the newbies, electing to direct the fall musical and smoke endless Virginia Slims while sitting in her Audi with the door open so lackies could hand her coffee unimpeded and teach her curriculum. She wasn't in her automotive alley throne as Brad and I passed by, so we held out hope that perhaps she would be running class today and we wouldn't have to make something up or play theater games with fourteen year-olds. There are only so many times you can watch children mime making a milkshake and care.

As we walked into the black box an automatic wave of pissyness washed over me. The kids were sitting around watching TV instead of warming up. I readied for a solid rant along the lines of, "When I was in acting A, I was always fucking warmed up!" when I noticed that they were preternaturally quiet and staring at the image of a skyscraper on CNN.

And then the first tower collapsed.

The rest of the day is a blur. Desperately trying to find out what flight my dad had taken out of Jacksonville. Was he anywhere near New York? No, he'd missed the flight by five minutes. Not being allowed to leave school. Watching the news in Government & Economics. Leaving school without permission when the banner at the bottom of Fox News announced that all the malls in Duval County had closed and a girl next to me yelled, "God damn it! I wanted to buy a dress!" Informing both plays that I would not be attending rehearsal. It was not to be. Crying listening to NPR on the way home in my '88 Volvo Station Wagon. Crying with my family while we watched Tony Blair's masterful sound bite that today we were all Americans. Crying without memorable surroundings.

The enormity of that day. So large that we use numbers to name it instead of words. 9/11. The ten between them left out because we may still fall through the zero's hole and perish. Reaching out and feeling in the dark for the tenuous connections we'd believed sound the day before. Everyone at their worst. Everyone at their best. Dickens, you magnificent bastard.

The community in Atlantic Beach, FL, seemingly so far removed from the attack, responded in the Southern way. Those of us that had intended to attend the wine tasting at Sliders would still go. The dinner would not die. I would get to go. I wish I'd had no reason to skip rehearsal.

And that night, regardless of the fact that I did not like alcohol, did not like wine, I sat with my family and neighbors and drank like a unrepentant whore. I drained my mother's glass when she wasn't looking. We tossed back wine like it was an apocalyptic Seder, while no planes passed over in the sky.

At one point, reeling and ill, I fell out of the restaurant and into the parking lot, heroically making my way to our car. I lay on the roof and stared at the sky drained of mechanisms and harmlessness. It had never seemed so close. I took note of how it felt to be drunk, thick and separate, held apart from the world by warm fog. I would have no idea, the second time I drank, why I burst out sobbing after the first shot. Only later would I realize that I associated the taste of booze with those hard, tall numbers, themselves reminiscent of buildings.

I rarely drink these days.

The Legend of Chug

Summer, 2007. I have been out of college for a year and a half. Since graduating with a nigh useless fine arts degree (but no student loan debt, Caitlin: 1 World:0), I have held a number of jobs. There was the obligatory stint as a barista, a pre-dawn to early afternoon routine at a family run hippy den with pot breaks and free food between lattes and 97 cent tips. Then, moving up in the world, I became a caregiver to stroke victims and dementia patients. Decoder of gibberish, wiper of faces, handmaiden of death: I was scrub-clad ghettofabulous. Added to this, at the same time that I was making friends in the 90+ age range, I took another part-time job as a wake attendant at a funeral home. It's a logical step, really.

And then, finally, the first job that lasted a year: teaching K-4th grade, literacy and storytelling.

Kids! Telling stories to kids! I thought it would be great. I'd read "Watership Down" out loud to them. They'd thrill to the anti-mitilaristic themes and rabbit drama. Kids love anti-mitilaristic themes! And rabbits! Especially in West Rogers Park. They would be calling me Miss Caitlin, not Ms. Parrish. They'd respect me, but we'd be buds. I was psyched. I was psyched in a preadolescent "Dead Poets Society" way. This was going to be tight ("Like a five year old," says the Satan on my right shoulder, listening to the Diamond Dogs album and smoking a cigarillo).

No, no. Not so much with the Carpe Diem. More Carpe the six year-old choking his classmate to death in the hallway.

Miss Caitlin: "Josh! We do not choke other people!"

David (Josh's cousin): "Man! Josh, you can't be puling that shit at school. You got to make your moms proud!"

Miss Caitlin: "David, we don't use language like that at school."

David: "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Miss Caitlin. Josh, you can't be pulling that S-H-I-T at school. You got to make your moms proud."

Miss Caitlin: "...thank you, David."

And so on. My preconceived notions died a slow death, like another stroke victim certain that today is the day their family will come to visit them. Each day was the day I was going to make a difference. I had no illusions that I wanted to be a teacher for the rest of my life, but I want to put in a year, and make some kids love stories. By the end I was calling them perpetually sticky compulsive liars and contemplating how much it would hurt to rip out my uterus during the middle of class and throw it at the second graders, screaming, "YOU DID THIS TO ME!"

In any event, back to the summer of 2007. I had put in a final session to make some cash before starting an out of state gig I had landed in Florida. Comprised of field trips and in-school video screenings (we had some fun with "The Witches" and "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"), the last weeks of my tenure as Miss Caitlin seemed like a fading cakewalk, something I'd occasionally recount over overpriced Canadian beer whenever another regrettable first date came along.

And then it happened. The day that cemented my fate, my story, my name.

Janette Hernandez was a rising third grader with brown hair down to her ass, a beautiful face, and the charm of Donald Rumsfeld. A despot in waiting, she had been one of the banes of my existence over the course of the year, and I looked forward to never seeing her again.

It was early. Everyone was still a little passed out, shoveling free breakfast into our craws without thought or care, assured that the pop tarts would give us the sugar high we needed to make it to second activity. I had coffee. I never walked into that place without consuming enough caffeine to kill a small horse. Because we don't choke other people at school, and I had to set an example for the kids.

I saw her bounding by her table, pop tart eaten and sugar threading to her fingers. She saw me. I froze like a deer. She ran in my direction. I prayed she'd run past me to Miss Kristin, the music teacher. Miss Kristin still liked the students.

No such luck.

Janette: "Miss Caitlin! Miss Caitlin! Guess what?! This weekend! My mom? We got a dog!"

Miss Caitlin: "That's great, Janette."

Janette: "And it's half chihuahua! And half pug! And it's soooooo cute."

Miss Caitlin: "That's great, Janette." ("So what is that? A chug? That's a fugly-ass dog," said the Satan on my right shoulder, snorting coke off a hooker's ass, dressed only in a pink bathrobe and Ugg boots.)

Janette: "And I'm gonna feed it! And bathe it! And take care of it!"

Miss Caitlin: "That's great, Janette. Having a dog is a big responsibility." (A brief and melancholy smile from the angel on my left shoulder at my attempt to impart a lesson of some kind. Then he went back to bed, half-cashed joint in hand.)

Janette: "BUT MISS CAITLIN! Guess what?!"

Miss Caitlin: "...what, Janette?"

Janette: "My mom? She asked me if I had thoughts of any names? And I said, 'Miss Caitlin.'"

Miss Kristin (from two tables over): unintelligible sound resembling a half-laugh half-gut punch.

Miss Caitlin: "...thank you, Janette."

Janette: "YOU'RE WELCOME!"

Now, I truly believe this was intended to be an honor and a loving tribute from Janette to a teacher that had been trying for twelve months to make her a better reader, a better writer, a better young woman. And sometimes when I think about it, I'm very touched, and I look back on my tenure as a teacher with something unlike regret. The angel on my left shoulder gazes back at Janette and thinks to himself, "She's gonna be a great landlord someday."

But most of the time I just think that somewhere in west Rogers Park there is a fugly ass dog with my name on it getting whapped with a rolled up newspaper because it pissed on the couch.

"No! Bad Miss Caitlin!"

And the Satan on my right shoulder laughs, and laughs, and laughs...

As did, and do, my friends, who tell this story to people I don't even know, when I'm not even there.

So now I tell it to you, as a prelude of sorts. 'Cause here's what Miss Caitlin really thinks.

The world is an inhospitable place for smart women trying to make a difference. They end up disillusioned, with only a bitch bearing their name to show for it. They get chugged by life. Not me. I embrace the chug. I embrace the grotesque hybrid that being a smart woman in America can sometimes feel like. I intend to piss on the couch of absurdity, and then give it that black eyed stare that says, "What're you gonna do about it? I'm too freakin' cute to hate."

Let the stories and the rants fly. Let the blog bandwagon move upon which I have jumped move speedily. Let the angel on my left and the Satan on my right hang out once in a while and commiserate over sushi.

I am Miss Caitlin. Hear me yap.