Exit Signs

It strikes me that EXIT signs would look to a native speaker of Latin like red-lit signs that say "HE LEAVES".

David Foster Wallace
Infinite Jest

Lapel

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go."

Maya Angelou

Just thinking about people who single-handedly

do so much for changing perceptions.

1. Eddie Izzard

2. Roscoe Lee Browne

Who springs to your mind?

The World According To Mork

"Sometimes you’ve got to specifically go out of your way to get into trouble. It’s called fun."

-Robin Williams

Happy Birthday Mr Plog

If I ever give you the impression that Mr P is anything less than perfect, it's because well he is. Who isn't? But he is a mensch-and-a-half, and that, my friends (and internet strangers), is all that matters when it comes down to it. We bitch and moan, kvetch and stir, niggle and nudge (not you, Mz. K), but transcending everything is a set of shared values and beliefs, a consensus about the world, and an appreciation of each other that will set us in good stead for, at the very least, forever (one should hope given all the zillions people are shelling out for the Wedding Of the Year TM at the end of the year TM.)

Happy Birthday, my love. I am sorry if my rejection of the cultural script makes me seem like an ungrateful bitch at times. I am sorry that I am a bitch at times. But I love you and I'm so glad neither of us are passive aggressive birthday monsters! (Click the link for a WTF?!)

Dr P xxx

Happy Birthday Dad

You would have been 63 today.
Correction: You should have been 63 today.

I love you so much.

The hole in my heart is fixed, unyielding.

This will never be ok.

xxx

Farewell To A Father

Thinking today of my friend, A, whose father just passed away after a long illness. I never met him but he was by all accounts a wonderful character, a wise, twinkling, gregarious, Greek (there is a scene in her wedding video that contains the most vibrant, riotous version of the "Zorba the Greek" dance with him at the centre!), kind, warm mensch of a man.

His funeral tomorrow morning will be the first I am attending since my own dad's in October 2006, so I am having the requisite bad dreams and sudden, sinking, sickly day sweats. I am remembering the feelings that A must be feeling: that unreality, heavy waking nightmarishness of going through the motions, accepting condolences, smiling wanly at the platitudes ("No, it's not a relief!"; "No, he's not better off now he's not in pain, he would be a lot fucking happier being alive and in pain with ME!!!"*), the realisation that nothing will ever be the same again, never would I feel as complete again, never would I be loved so thoroughly, so unconditionally ever again. That even happy times, from this day until the day I die, would be tempered with sadness, fracturedness. Maybe that's part of why I rail against the Wedding Industrial Complex to the rabid degree I do - as much as I love Mr. Plog - and by Jove, I do! - it won't be the goddamned Happiest Day Of My LifeTM (C) The Walt Disney Corporation 1956 because my. dad. is. dead.

Apologies to A. This was meant to be a missive of healing, of solidarity. Look, it does get better - it has to. The vomit-inducing cliches are the truest: Time Heals, Life Goes On. Those initial days, months - that unreality, those Moments of Magical Thinking** (mine involved me getting upset each week that passed after he died, because the longer time went on, the less likely it was that I'd get a call saying it was all a mistake - even though I had literally watched him die) - seem like semi-distant memories mostly. But today, this minute, I am reliving them, and the rawness feels stinging, searing.

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*Which in hindsight and with reflection is sadly probably not true (I mean he joked constantly about wanting to make an appointment with his "good friend, Dr Kevorkian" -- but hey, I guess it proves we all see what we want to see, especially when it comes to our parents ...)

**Please read Joan Didion's The Year Of Magical Thinking if you haven't, especially if you are grieving. I bought it at Hong Kong airport on my way back to London after my dad's funeral and was so captivated that I read the whole thing before landing despite the cocktail of Mogadon, Xanax and Nytol I'd taken to cope with the solo 22 hour journey in that frame of mind.

***Please note that the image of woodworking tools is a tribute to one of my dad's greatest passions, not a lazy shorthand equating masculinity with hardware. As if I wood do that!

Doctor D

Dr D, unlike your erstwhile Dr P, was a real doctor. A medical one, with the knowledge of the uppermost consultant and the heart of a saint, the bedside manner of a goddess, the integrity of nobody you will ever meet. She was an angel. She was too good to be true. And some days, it's hard to believe she ever was ...

She was born on this day in 1974. She was killed in a stupid car accident in 2004. She was the worst person to die, worst as far as confirming to an already cynical mind that there is no rhyme nor reason, no method to the madness, no steadying hand helping us along in a pretty, karmic fair-balanced way. There is no Grand Narrative justifying everything. That she died disproved everything faith-related. (My grandfather's Auschwitz days helped along in that regard, but, then again, that didn't happen directly to me. The ego is a powerful thing.)

I have suffered a few episodes of depression, of varying degrees of awfulness. (I am good now, and have been for several years.) But in those bleak times I did think at times, Why her? Why her and not me, when I am concealing myself behind curtained doonas and Xanax fogs, and she would be out there engaging, enjoying, doing, helping, being? It scares me writing this, it's not something I've ever articulated. But it feels safe to recall publicly with regard to her memory.

She was sooooooo amazing - to which all her many, many friends would attest. I wish beyond wishing that I was calling her now to wish her "Happy, happy, happy birthday, my beautiful, darling D!" instead of writing this horrible eulogy. I will never stop loving her and I continue to take inspiration from her life.


xxx

I Am Dr Tiller

This tribute to the abortion doctor murdered last week - as he sat in church* -is so moving and so vital, and perhaps the only response I can posit at the moment given the absolute lunacy involved.

Thank you, Hortense, Jezebel's wonderful weekend warrior, for the link.

And Land Of Meg for the lesson in embedding. Seems you can teach an old doc new tricks.

x

*They say the difference between Islamic terrorists and anti-abortion activists is that the terrorists would have the decency to wait until the target had left the mosque...

Required Reading For All Ages And Genders

Who in their right mind could ever argue with that?!?

Thanks to Nancy R. Smith, JT Bunnell & Irit Reinheimer for the words and Laura Newburn for the art.

Friday Night With ... Mr Sheen

I really like Martin Sheen (born Ramón Gerardo Antonio Estévez, but more on that later). Tonight he ROCKED (yes, I am almost middle-aged and oh-so-fricking SAD) on Jonathan Ross. (I like the J.Ro even if I am slightly suspect of his politics/ feminism ... although his wife seems pretty cool.) Anyway, back to Charlie & Emilio's Dad ... I love people who integrate their identities with their politics, ie, those whose philosophies are indivisible from their most authentic selves, their most fundamental principles. I don't just mean hard-core ideologues: not necessarily tent-dwelling, gender non-specific, vegan, freegan, anti-globalisation, pro-choicey, pacifistic, post-colonial, deconstructionist hermits. Just people whose politics (translation: caring about the world, community, society, how people think/ act/ are, what ideals are promoted over which ones that should be) are part of them, rather than a separate entity: a self-conscious, artificial "accessory" adopted for social reasons or in order to maintain "polite fictions". I know that I can be annoying with my Feminist, Anti-Racist, Anti-Heterosexist rhetoric. But you know what? In the scheme of things, I'd prefer to be mildly (even majorly) annoying if it means I were even marginally proactive, useful.

Just like Martin Sheen.

Mr Plog And The Feminist Coffee Table

This photo was not staged! I just liked the juxtaposition of my partner and my politics.

Who was it who wanted to publish a coffee table book on coffee tables? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?*

*I know it wasn't Bueller, I was just asking Ferris if he knew ...