Dream

I had a dream that I was camping in the Sierras with a bunch of mates from graduate school. We drove down into the Valley on our way home and stopped at my grandparents' house. Of course, there is no grandparents house anymore. But in my dream my grandparents were up and about partying with the young people. The is only the most recent in a series of dreams that take place in the context of house parties. Usually, I move through the parties dazed and confused, as though I'm trying to figure out why these people from different parts of my life are in the same place. As though I'm an alien in my own life.

Space frenzies

We had over a dozen five year olds at our "at-home" party, meaning that we didn't have it offsite at a rented or reserved location. It was a lot of work, but worth it. It was particularly good because BB has a whole new set of friends from the neighborhood in his kindergarten class and we got to meet them and most of their parents. It is a good group of kids. The weather was hot and gorgeous, which is unusual for BB's birthday.

Best moment: watching AO leading all the kids in imaginary visits to each planet, which essentially amounted to a modern dance dedicated to each planet - heavy on Jupiter, cold on Neptune, and so on. One kid yelled "and a tornado" for every planet.
Worst moment: watching a huge bunch of silver "happy birthday" balloons take flight after being set free by an errant kid. A great wail came from BB.
Most affecting: seeing BB hand out space mission stickers to each child.
Most intense: cramming 15 kids and their parents into a 100 square foot space with noise makers while waiting for the cake. There is an air conditioner in there, but it quickly became overwhelming hot.
Most dear: seeing LB, at all of 14 months, trying to hit the pinata with a big bat after all the candy had been scooped up.

The secret to a good kids party is moving from one controlled frenzy to another. Thanks to my very creative partner we had a great day.

Hooverphonic

Today is birthday party day, which is overenrolled. 15 kids are supposed to show up. Too many in my opinion. So I need something ethereal and otherworldly on the playlist.

Trip hop beats and dreamy textures from Hooverphonic. A flight attendant is the perfect symbol of nostalgia for the future.

BB turns six

BB turned six years old.  Although the real party is tomorrow, he had a school celebration and then we took him out for dinner.

On the menu: mini cheeseburgers, cupcakes at school (with soccer rings embedded)
Drink: Island Paradise
Dessert: chocolate nachos with a train of clapping wait staff
Presents: space shuttle launch gear, Roman playmobil characters
Now wearing: his new football jersey
Got off the bus with: a golden crown on his head

Shame

So I have some blood pressure problems. It's been creeping up over the past year. Clearly, I'm worried about it, but it hasn't been such a big deal.  I started with some low doses of a hypertension medication that have stabilized my pressure levels without any notable side effects. But I had to go back to the dentist today. The dentist, since they take my blood pressure every time I go in, essentially convinced me to seek out a doctor's advice. I'm self-conscious about this viewing of my vital signs--literally the internal me--and I wanted to be sure they wouldn't get their "aha" moment again with yet another high reading.

So I called in the heavy hitter to keep the pressure down.  I took a beta blocker.  My doctor gave me this as a backup, something that will provide more blanket protection in cases of high stress and hypertension.   I don't like going to the dentist and having to admit teeth brushing faults is only compounded by the potential failure of keeping my blood pressure down.

I'm at the dentist for a routine cleaning and I tell them about my new medication, but I don't admit to taking the beta blocker that morning.  Why should I muddy the waters, admit to CARING about what they see in me?  In the midst of this exercise it comes out that it would be different if I were taking beta blockers, which are contraindicated for local anesthesia.  At this point, I continue to say nothing about the beta blocker in my system.

It's decided that they have time to fill in a small filling that recently came loose, but it's likely to require only a topical anesthetic, not something like lidocaine.  And again, I rationalize a way to say nothing about the beta blocker.

I'm surprised that the first thing the dentist does is pull out the big needle of Lidocaine.  At this point, I really should be saying something about the beta blocker.  I now know it is contraindicated for the very thing she is about to do.  But I'm silent.  As she numbs my gum, I assess my state of health.  Am I having any trouble breathing, is that a burning sensation moving up my chest?  Still, I'm now too ashamed to say anything.  Not only do I have the original shame of the fact that I took the damn stuff to begin with, but now I'm shamed that I haven't said anything until now.   I'm in the room alone for the next 10 minutes wondering whether I can squeeze out a yell as I go into cardiac arrest.

In any case, all is routine, but I do learn later, via google, that there are real risks to this combination of drugs, life-threatening risks. What can I say? That I've kept my pride somehow? Avoided being publicly shamed?  It all seems pretty pitiful now.  But who can ever be completely honest with a doctor and their nosy assistants?

Rebirth of cool

"Mad Men" (an AMC series!) is all AO and I have recently been watching on television. It's about the venal, corrupt world of 1960 New York, where men boose up all day in their offices and sleep with their secretaries. It captures a world when advertising became the real king of the market. There is even a growing subplot of creating Nixon's advertising in his failed race against Kennedy; it's clear that they are being beaten by Kennedy's people.

The series is great on the gender politics of this world, the assumptions that drive them, and the ambivalent divide between the wives and the working women. But, I think, the series is really about class. The main character, Don, is the creative director at the agency. He passes in a world dominated by the East Coast establishment, but his lower class origins haunt him and keep him subtly separate from the entitled, fraternity types around him. He has married into the establishment as well, using war-time heroism to transform himself into an upper middle-class man. But we keep seeing flashbacks to a depression-era childhood dominated by poverty, shame, dislocation, and abuse (like Nixon?). He is clearly terrified that this past will be exposed. He pays off a younger step brother (who is working as a janitor) to disappear from his life. He seeks his revenge by sleeping with women who share his own vexed relationship to the world, first a Village beat and then a second-generation Jewish-American department store owner. He sleeps with the latter only after learning about her father's modest origins. His class mobility mirrors not only their own journeys through the class system, but also their goal of being different kind of women, something other than child-like homemakers or subordinate helpmates in the workplace.

The creator of the series was an important executive in the Sopranos franchise, and he's created a world, when one thinks about it, that is much more evil than Tony Soprano and his mates could ever be. These 1960s types weren't at all marginalized; they were the future, the "rebirth of cool."

Living at the mall

I just came across a story about a group of artists who created a living space at a shopping mall, in an empty alcove. They've apparently occupied it for four years, but when security saw one of them leaving recently the whole thing came to light. Their intention was to experiment with what shopping, lifestyle, and domesticity mean. I love this quote from their website today: "It was an endless source of fascination for us that all the mundane details of our domestic dwelling were about as normal as they could be - but in the context they were in, they became suspenseful." I don't think I could have dealt with the paranoia of wondering when I was going to be found out. I remember something about a group doing this in an art museum, living between some walls. But a mall is much, much creepier.

Proofreading

I'm scanning the proofs of an article I have coming out (the co-written one) and this task has fallen to me. I've been through it once very carefully and found only three errors. Now I think I should do another cursory scan, but I'm putting it off. The problem is that the task puts me to sleep, making my already weird relation to my own work even worse. Whenever I read over what I've written there is always more to do or things to change, but now that it's in proofs there isn't anything more I can do. It's a scary feeling to have it immutably cast in print, like making a final decision about a relationship. I want to let it go.

Today's poem

TOURISM

Geographical obsession might
finally take me to the other side,
urgent flights across poles,
continents, sub or otherwise.
I want to avert my eyes
from the mobius wink
of the void, step over the
unseen menace, finally avoid
the pitfalls of the generalist
that needs the opposite and
equal force of the unspeakable.

The unknown shall become like church
bells heard by the unbeliever,
like the rustic squeak of hide,
like the language of Babel
surrounded with a smile,
like melodies you can see,
like the end of irony.

Pole dance

One more post on March Fourth Marching Band. The ensemble included some pre-War style, show-girl burlesque. Clearly, someone had seen some European circus action. My favorite moment was their interpretation of the pole dance. A mohawked man on stilts came out with a long pole, held it upright in front of himself, and the showgirl proceeded to do acrobatics on the pole. It looked like a trapeze act, but on a girly show pole - with stilts! The guys on stilts also did duty as go-go dancers. Fun, fun.