The Four Humours

While in the throes of something like a high fever, an attack of nausea, food poisoning or in labor, it's not a good idea to ask me questions. I don't understand the things I do when I am about to vomit, and no one should even try.
Just back away and let me crawl up the wall, and don't panic.
Rest assured, it's mostly the demons acting themselves out. Haitians are fortunate to have voodoo ceremonies, as few religions or cultures provide a comparable release. In my experience, becoming violently ill is sometimes all you've got. I don't look forward to these events, by any means. Like having a sebaceous cyst lanced, it's necessary and intense.
A vicious stomach bug which I recently contracted (just 2 days after the exciting Obama victory) got me thinking about the 4 humours: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. No, I'm not going to get that specific. Suffice it to say I spent several hours with my head in a garbage pail while seated on the can. Lots of humours...
Having known each other for close to 20 years, Bisq has stuck with me through a lot of grizzly events - not the least of which was watching our son being "sectioned" out of me while I flailed around on the operating table with a case of the DTs (Delirium Tremens) from the epidural. Puking into the wind on numerous occasions, making an emergency #2 on the side of the road, and howling next to his SUV after ingesting 'shrooms in the 100+ degree heat in Utah back in 1996 may fill the pages of his memoirs.
This particular bug kicked in on Thursday night around 6:30 PM, just after I had made myself a chicken burger with broccoli. The nausea was immediately relentless. My face was going numb, and my breathing became coarse. My complexion was turning from peach to lime sherbet. During this obeah transformation, I began to pace in order to regulate my breathing. Meanwhile, Zev was begging me to draw strawberries for him on his etch-a-sketch pad. I panted a cryptic message to my neighbor's voicemail, breathily urging her to come over and deal with Zev so that I could convulse in privacy. I just needed someone to give me permission to temporarily leave this world. Minutes later, Bisq called. He was about an hour away in Northridge. I must have sounded like Linda Blair in The Exorcist (if you need to refresh, have a quick look). I really wasn't in any shape to be giving a status report, but the 911 call was entirely unnecessary. Bisq didn't want to take any chances, so in about 8 minutes, the guys in uniform appeared. They saw that I was in distress and began running tests on me - blood pressure, blood sugar. I knew that puking was in my future, which would probably resolve the demonic episode. However, the cluster of people in my living room only served as an obstacle to me getting a hold of my garbage bucket. Wrath was released in the form of vomit everywhere and covered everyone involved. Sorry guys. I told y'all that I could do this on my own.
It got me thinking about my dear old family members in their finest hours. My mom always knew how to puke quietly...and for that matter, how to get back to whatever it was she was drinking. She puked a lot when I was growing up: as a means to keep her weight down and in keeping with her philosophy: "Better Out Than In." She managed to keep the toilet bowl clean of all residue and burned incense when necessary. It didn't really bother anyone.
My dad was/is an ugly sight when sick. I've only seen him "ralph" few times. But, like myself, he shouts while vomiting. I think we also have "nose vomiting" in common. He's rarely ill, but I vaguely remember a few periods of weakness/shame while recovering from 3 of his 5 significant surgeries: vasectomy, hemorrhoid, and gum surgery. After the hemorrhoidectomy, doctors had ordered him to stay in the prone position for a number of days post-surgery. Watching Tom and Jerry on the television in my parents' bed next to an ass is not something that's easily forgettable. Non-scalpel vasectomies had not yet become available in the late 1970s. My dad always had been on the cutting edge (no pun intended) of surgery. He got hair plugs right around the same time which left crusty bloody dots all over his scalp. He bled a lot, for a man. In his drawer, a reminder of his vasectomy remained for years and years: a pair of hospital-issued undies, fashioned from netting. But, live long enough and spend a night or two in the hospital, and ye shall have a pair of your own. The vasectomy worked, as far as I know.
One of my earliest memories from childhood was when my parents were trying to force an enema on my brother after they had mistakenly given him penicillin, to which they remembered he was deathly allergic. It was my medication that had accidentally been given to him. I wasn't allowed in the bathroom, but I kept my ear to the door. Out of habit, I suppose, my mom had the bathwater running. It sounded like they were in Niagara Falls and very stressed out. I'm not sure whatever resulted or which orifice the tube went up or down. But, Augie survived and has continued a penicillin-free life. Now he struggles with low-back pain and frequent colds. Nothing worth pressing your ear against a door.

The morning after I spent puking all night, it was the inevitable trip to the laundromat to throw the pukey rug into an industrial machine which brought me back into the real world (the world where oozing goes on behind closed doors). I'm lucky it didn't last long and I'm lucky enough to have shed 3 pounds the old fashioned way. Bonus! I was due for the exorcism, as it had been quite a few years since my last gastrointestinal emergency. How many more times will it get ugly? Who's to say?
You may or may not agree with my hypothesis here, but, in some weird way, it's a privilege to bear witness to healing crises.
Gross, yes. Still, it's reassuring to know that there's still a voodoo exorcism brimming in us all. How else are you going to release all that trauma? Just be prepared to clean up afterwards.
PS: those are really discarded Cheetos (uneaten) in the toilet.

Arizona--FireWorld

I've moved four times since I was 18. Big Deal.
I've had friends who have relocated three times as much in half the time, so I don't consider myself overly-nomadic.
Nevertheless, I still get the same question when I show up in a new place: "Why are you here?"
I never have a good answer. Twice the answer has been "school." That works. Once it was "for the money." Anyone who has ever lived in Atlanta should have the same answer, even if they're in denial.
This last move was "just because I wanted to." Admittedly, I do feel like a smart-ass if I give that response. So I usually say something like, "a lot of my family is here." Or, "a lot of my friends are here." Though these statements are true, they just don't seem to legitimize my presence. I was thinking about making my new answer 100% weather-related. That one seems to sit well with people; folks can relate.

This entry is about how a little thing like weather prevented me from loving and living in Arizona back in July of 2000 when we found ourselves contemplating yet another move. I have a feeling that you readers will deduce that I have an aggravating need to question the obvious.
I had recently completed my graduate program and knew that remaining in Santa Fe and practicing acupuncture there was unacceptable. I felt that way based on the advice of former graduates from the program who had stayed and were working multiple jobs in order to make ends meet. The area was crawling with these acupuncturists and herbalists, and I needed to strike out on my own into a new territory.
Bisq and I had grown very comfortable in the desert Southwest. We liked the weather: dry, bright, cool in the mornings and evenings, heart-breaking sunsets, double-rainbows, good weed. It never got too hot up there at 7,000 feet in Santa Fe. Maybe Arizona would be a place we'd like... I had an old friend who loved living in Tuscon when she went to U. of Arizona. Another friend raved about Flagstaff. Plus, there were supposedly great business opportunities there in the alternative medicine field. Lots of rich old white people like John McCain!

Arizona was, in our minds, the next best thing to New Mexico, so we set out to spend a week there in July. "Might as well see it at it's worst" was our philosophy, so that we don't fall in love with it's abnormal season. Just to reiterate, I know that it gets hotter there than anywhere in the country, but I thought that 22 years in the Deep South would've prepared me. But, Arizona is a different type of place.
The drive was endless. We were in Bisq's 4Runner, "Heather," crossing the desert at a conservative pace. We stopped at the Cracker Barrel in order to check out a few books-on-tape. We scored with Jackie Collins' American Star. Our first night en route to AZ was spent in Silver City, NM, which is fairly funky. It's a desert college town that is surprisingly full of trees and shady areas. We were in good humor and still hadn't gotten overheated.
The next day, we headed towards Tucson. The landscape was something out of a Road-Runner cartoon - the combination of a blistering hot bright day, no trees and saguaro cactus along the I-10. The AC in Heather roared to keep up with the demand. It was quickly turning into a Peak Oil nightmare, as we realized that we had arrived in FireWorld.

Tuscon, when you get off of the busy traffic-filled boulevards, is a cute college town. It's just a shame that one couldn't casually step outside of one's air-conditioned car to experience it. Everything is done in haste when it is 120 degrees. We checked into a neat hotel, the Smuggler's Inn, which had a pirate/hacienda theme going on. It was kept nice and dark and, most importantly, cool. It really felt like a safe-haven from the colorless fire that loomed on the other side of the windows. We managed to make it outdoors once the sun went down and the cement cooled to about 100 degrees. We purchased sandwiches at a world class kosher deli called Feig's and sped back to the hotel. We ate the sandwiches (in haste) in our underwear, in the dark, next to the AC unit in our hotel room. With the absence of the sunlight, our heads cleared, the panic retreated and we concluded that the week in which we had intended on spending between Arizona's 2 major cities of Tuscon and Phoenix was going to be greatly abbreviated. Afterwards, we had plans to check out Prescott and Sedona in the north.
We didn't see the point in singeing the soles of our shoes, guzzling gas, and putting ourselves in danger of sizzling to death. How in the hell was I going to have an acupuncture practice in this town when I was afraid to get out of my car? We knew that Phoenix was supposedly hotter than Tuscon and way less charming, so we decided that we'd quickly drive there, not get out of the car and - mission accomplished! - we'd been to Phoenix. With Jackie Collins' help, we drove through FireWorld along the I-10. From the sky above, we must have looked like an ant crawling in the desert sand - like that cartoon strip B.C.
Phoenix, Tempe and Scottsdale turned out to be a three-headed, soul-less desert mega-city peppered with golf courses. We nearly tried to enjoy some of its culture by attending a tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright House (Taliesin West) in Scottsdale. However, when we arrived, we were told that the tour would begin in an hour, and we couldn't bear the idea of waiting in the car - or anywhere that wasn't a dark freezer - for 60 minutes. We'd have to check out Frank Lloyd Wright's places outside of FireWorld. What was Frank doing there, anyway?

And so, we steered Heather north and stopped in Prescott. The temperature became civilized, and we slowly regained our sanity. Prescott was a nice town to ride bikes and see other white people (many of whom are pleased to grow old in an R-V.) I think that Prescott might also be famous for it's candied apples.
Then, we headed to an old favorite spot of ours: Sedona. We had visited and camped there the previous year and had good memories of the crystal cool waters of the Oak Creek, which flows down from the Grand Canyon. As had become a tradition, we found ourselves at Sedona's Center For the New Age. The previous year, we had our astrological charts read there, as well as our auras photographed. In 1999, Bisq's aura was in big trouble: Note the black hole at 1:00. Several sessions of art therapy and playing bass in Santa Fe's most famous reggae band, I-Life, must have remedied the situation. How else can this Irie aura featured from trip #2 to Sedona be explained?
We arrived back in New Mexico realizing how scary life could be in Arizona. We never again took air conditioning for granted, though we still don't have it and lust after it during the summer months. "How did y'all like Arizona?" friends inquired after we arrived home several days earlier than projected. "Oh, it was too hot." That response never failed me. People would nod once in agreement and move on to the next topic. They were kind enough never to chide me for doing such an obviously stupid thing.
So, revisiting the old question as to why I am here - my answer is: the weather is usually pleasant.

On To Oregon - The 50 States Series

The one and only time that I've been to Oregon was on a road trip that Bisque and I took back in 1996. Yes, this was the trip where we got busted at the Canadian border. That's another story for another blog. As we made our way down the coast from Vancouver, we decided to check out a few places in Oregon. We took in lots of nature, slept in a yurt, hiked Crater Lake.

One of the main reasons for us to spend time in Oregon was a man by the name of Liebler. Another ex-friend of my dad's, Liebler used to live in New Orleans. I met him around my senior year of high school when he and my dad were practically inseparable. He had moved to New Orleans in the late 1980s to work for an AM radio station called WSMB. Liebler was an older beatnik, I guess you'd say. I guess you're old, by virtue of being a beatnik, right? Long white hair, a New Yorker from way back, a pothead...but now, a pothead with a raging hiatal hernia.
Sometime around the mid '90s, Liebler had high-tailed it to a tiny town near Ashland, Oregon, when he found out that he had a son there. Okay, let me clarify: apparently, Liebler had been sleeping with a woman who turned out to be a born-again Christian, who later shunned him and denounced him as a heathen. BUT - she had a baby in Oregon whom she claimed that Liebler had sired. However, she refused to let him do the blood tests. Liebler took her word for it, and moved to Oregon to provide this 5 year old boy named Leon with a Dad - a Dad who was not full of fire and brimstone. One who liked to hang out by the creek, carving wooden statues of a vaginal nature. Liebler wanted this kid to have a fighting chance.
When we showed up to stay at Liebler's place , we immediately noticed his issue with the hiatal hernia. He couldn't get too many words out without burping. Funny at first, but really like a speech impediment. The marijuana he smoked continuously throughout the day was medicinal and served to relax his esophageal sphincter. The other thing that made a big difference in his condition was the Lithium spring-fed water fountain in the town of Ashland, just 20 miles away. Shortly after arriving, we had to cruise out there in his white Chrysler LeBaron convertible. People swear by the healing powers of the Lithium springs...it made a huge difference for him. The results lasted about an hour or two, and then he'd have to smoke, since it was a bit of a trek. Unfortunately, the Lithium water, once bottled, lost its powers.

I can't remember how we spent our first night there, but we spent the next day with his 5 year- old son, Leon, on the property/farm adjacent to a creek. Liebler, as I mentioned, busied himself with whittling & sculpting. His son was great with numbers and negotiating, so Monopoly was the natural choice for the day's events. It didn't seem impossible that Leon was Liebler's son, but it wasn't perfectly obvious either. A request was made for me to return to the house to get the game board as well as some other supplies. When I came back to join the others by the creek, I innocently put my hand on a gate that had previously been propped open.
Doesn't everyone need to be shocked by an electric fence just once in their lives?? Apparently, I let out a shrill scream and wound up on my back - Monopoly pieces, get out of jail free cards, Marvin Gardens - all of it whirled around. I recovered quickly and played badminton afterwards.

We traveled to Ashland each day we were there for Lithium water as well as entertainment. On that trip, we saw 2 horrible movies: Striptease with Demi Moore and Independence Day (which we actually watched on Independence Day). On the way home, our host mentioned that his botanist son had left him with some opium poppies which he had stashed in the trunk of his LeBaron the entire time! It was a miracle we were never pulled over, since Liebler drives
like a maniac...a burping maniac, at that. We requested that he remove the contraband from the vehicle, since we were trying not to get arrested that week. The three of us contemplated trying the opium, but somehow never got around to it.

The kicker is that Leon is not Liebler's son. A DNA test proved that there was not a drop of Jewish hippie blood in that cute little blond boy. It was just a coincidence that he was great at Monopoly. I would imagine that he and Liebler grew very close during the years that he spent in that remote area of eastern Oregon. I have no idea if they're still in touch.

I just spoke with Liebler back in September. He's living on the Oregon coast, in some tiny town up north. He was still burping throughout the entire conversation, but it seemed better. He is still sculpting spread-eagle women and had a mixed media installation at a gallery in his town. The state is paying him to live in the house he bought, since it's an historical marker. He's in the process of restoring it and living off of the mammoth vegetables he grows, since he says he has practically no money.
He told me that he is still searching for the potion to cure him of his hiatal hernia.
In the meantime, he is sticking to his vigorous daily regimen of lunges, squats and chin-ups that he does to a Fleetwood Mac mix-tape that I gifted to him after our visit.
I hope that little Leon, who would now be 17, remembers his few years with the dad who really wasn't his dad. I've managed to stay away from electric fences since that time in Oregon, but I'd like to go back and check out Liebler's new digs and meet any new possible offspring of his.

Florida - The 50 State Series

Serious case of writer's block, folks. Maybe you've enjoyed the 2 months or so without having to endure these weekly rants. Well, I'm back on purpose. I'm going to take a stab at patriotism by kicking off the 50 States Series. I will attempt to write about some of the states I've been to or about people from particular states. I may not cover all of them...in fact, I know that I will not. But, it is a topic to help grease the wheels, so to speak. Here goes Florida.

I wish I knew exactly how many times I've been to Florida over the course of my 34 years. I've covered the Gulf side, Atlantic side, inland (though not too much)...never been to Tallahassee or as far north as Jacksonville, though.

The trips to the land of Ponce de Leon started pretty early on. My paternal grandparents, Izzy and Chickee, moved to a retirement community in Margate (near Fort Lauderdale) in the late 1970s. We went there very few times back when we were a family unit. My dad wasn't a big fan of visiting his own parents. Out of guilt, I still head to Margate every few years to put in a lunch visit with my grandfather, Izzy, who is 93.

I think of my last trip to see Izzy back on my 32nd birthday. Bisq and I were staying with Uncle Beast at his condo in DelRay Beach, about an hour away from Margate. Over that weekend, we had many unexpected encounters with parrots, which we take as a great omen. Even cruising on the interstate, Bisq spotted a blue and gold macaw in the passenger seat of a passing car. Come to think of it, my bird, Raj, comes from a breeder near Jacksonville. It's no stretch to say that parrot owners, much like old people, flock to Florida.

A dear friend of ours, Don B., lives in West Palm Beach. He is a yacht broker who used to own dry cleaners in his former life before Florida [BF]. He still loves his ciggies, his rum and coke for breakfast, and blow-dries what's left of his hair, making sure that the area that grazes his collar is curled under and not too frizzy looking - a fairly tall order when you live in Florida. Like us, Don hails from Metairie, LA. Don used to sail with my dad (see The Family Gun, for more details) before they had a huge falling-out in the late 1980s. I couldn't bear to give up my relationship with Don, so I secretly visit him when I'm on the Atlantic Florida coast.

I've definitely spent some time on the Florida Panhandle. People in the know call that region the Redneck Riviera. I feel like I know every inch of the Gulf Coast, and I can easily say that I don't miss it very much. I am sad to see that the changing weather patterns are doing away with this region a little faster than the rest of the country. I have some almost trashy, almost sweet memories of the Panhandle.
For some reason I am remembering a trip to Gulf Shores, Alabama (which is spitting distance from Pensacola, FL) that I took as a teenage babysitter along with another family who had two very young kids. The main attraction, besides the beach, is the mammoth wave pool where the undertow is so deadly that girls' ponytails are tragically snapped off each day. I've had some unpleasant encounters with the treacherous metal grating on the side of the pool that sucks everything from hair to jelly-shoes off of the typical buck-toothed southerner on vacation in Gulf Shores. While on that trip, I pilfered a joint off of the cool mom, Elaine, who made the mistake of carelessly leaving it on the counter in the bathroom. What a score. I carefully guarded that joint in the pocket of my white perma-press tennis shorts for the entire week, just waiting for the perfect Florida moment. I walked along the beach with it to a bar that straddled the Alabama/Florida border: the Florabama Bar. I thought for sure that I would meet the right people with whom I could whip out this bit of contraband and have a legendary time. At 14, looking more like 12, standing at about 4'8"- it's a good thing I was widely ignored at the Florabama Bar. That very joint of Elaine's came home with me to New Orleans and stayed in my jewelery box for years un-smoked, but quite kinked from the journey it had made in my shorts all the way from Florida.

I journeyed back to the Panhandle around Easter 2002. We traveled there with some of our Atlanta friends and stayed with Jeanne (whom we lovingly refer to as "the Coach") at her beach house which they called Puckered Out. A team of heavily drunk and twasted lesbians and gay dudes were also guests at Puckered Out that weekend. A key player during this Easter beach trip was the frozen toddy machine set up to make super-sweet margaritas and rum-runners round the clock. As you can imagine, the scene got ugly fast. It all culminated around midnight when Coach's ex, the Roach, was wasted in the kitchen making pancakes with a six year old girl (the unfortunate daughter of a visiting neighbor in this beach community). One of Roach's eyes was crossed and the other closed. With spatula in hand, she was cursing under her breath, "alright, you little shit - one more pancake." Roach was particularly ornery because it was obvious that the Coach was hooking back up with her Florida girlfriend, right there in front of Roach's drunken eyes. That poor little six year old would have to experience the wrath.
On that same expedition, Brian, a.k.a., "the Brain," broke his toe while we walking to the beach to watch fireworks. We heard it break, and I think someone in the group re-set it for him back in the living room at Puckered Out. While inebriated, he proceeded to give us a lecture where he emphatically repeated the phrase, "I LOVE MY SIBLINGS!" Bisk and I did our best to escape all of the wasted guests who were up to no good and trapping us in their drunken tirades. On that particular weekend, it was unsafe to swim in the Gulf due to an algae that was spotted via satellite. As Brain put it (way too many times): "Thi-entists (scientists with a lisp, in case you couldn't catch it) are baffled!!" After spending 2 frightening nights with the tireless toddy machine, Bisq and I decided to head back up the I-85 to our apartment in Atlanta.

Leaving the pan-handle and heading southeast, you get to the Tampa/St.Pete region.
I attended practice management seminars which were based out of Clearwater, FL. The last one I went to was in early September 2005. My friend, Leena, and I stayed with a pretty offbeat (to put it kindly) married couple, Bob and Marion, who I'd met several times through these seminars targeted toward Acupuncturists and Chiropractors. We stayed with them at their house for one night in Dade City, so that we could avoid paying for a hotel room in Clearwater. I probably need an entire blog to describe these people, but here are some keywords: rat-tail, ex-Parrot owners, 50-ish, ex-coke-heads, swingers, overweight, acupuncturists, vocal sex enthusiasts. They took us by their impressive acupuncture clinic in Dade City where Bob (husband with rat-tail) prescribed me some kind of female topical sex enhancement cream (unsolicited, by the way). He and Marion spent the better part of the night begging us to smoke a joint with them and trying to coax us into their indoor swimming pool for a nighttime dip. They couldn't have barked up a wronger tree. Gotta love Floridians...

You really want to love Key West, especially after reading Hemingway's Islands in the Stream and short stories by Bob Shacochis (a literary find by Bisq). It's pretty laughable that I wanted to move there, sight-unseen back when I was 22. The shame about Key West is that it pretty much sucks. It's way more Florida than it is Cuba, to say the least. Hemingway knew a much different place than the one that's there now. Bisq, Zulie and I visited back in 1997 and stayed pretty wasted drinking at a variety of shitty tourist bars that have you seated on white plastic lawn furniture. At least in New Orleans, they try to give you some sort of unique experience. Over there it's all go-cups and mid-westerners with fat pink legs. We actually managed to have a great trip - the alcohol helped tremendously. We kept ourselves entertained by falling into the hot tub fully clothed and getting into fights with people at the B&B where we stayed.

Like I said before, I can't even remember all of the times I've been to "Flower-da," as my great-grandmother called it. These are just some vague memories of a state where I've worn a lot of bad French-cut bathing suits, drunk a lot of red, blue and green beverages, been scared as hell of its inhabitants and witnessed some twasted behavior.

Stay tuned for Oregon.

Goodbye Amma

I returned today from Amma's funeral. Amma was my 87 year old grandmother. I wrote a eulogy replete with jokes and sweet memories of all of our years with her. I salted a few members of the audience so that my jokes wouldn't fall flat. This was the first time I had ever delivered a eulogy. I was sort of nervous and worried that my voice would quiver and that I'd be a puddle by the end of the first page. Things went surprisingly well. I have a Southwest Airlines flight attendant to thank for some coaching. I met this particular flight attendant on the flight from Phoenix to New Orleans. He appeared too old and well-spoken for the job. Turns out he was a rabbi in a Reformed congregation in Phoenix for 30 years before he fulfilled his lifelong dream of becoming a flight attendant. He informed me that his salary is the same (low triple-digits, in case you're curious). It's just that now he doesn't have to deal with Jews complaining about his sermons for a living. He cracks dumb jokes in front of the cockpit and pours diet cokes. Look for a balding man with the last name Pinkwasser the next time you're on Southwest.

I'm feeling good about the send-off we gave Amma. It was a simple grave-side funeral. The young rabbi, Uri, who presided had all of us shoveling dirt over her grave. I've never seen Augie (my brother)do that much physical labor. My uncle, Norman, was clutching his chest after 4 feet of earth covered her pine coffin. Amma would've said, "Isn't this what we paid the funeral home for? "The rabbi did the symbolic tearing of our clothing; for the ladies, it was a ribbon pinned to our lapels. We cried when my mom yelled "Goodbye Mom," down into the grave. All of our speeches included imitations of Amma's high-pitched thick southern accent.
Augie's speech involved a prop: an oatmeal cookie. Light rain fell as we walked away from the grave. God's tears, according to Uri.
I've said goodbye to a lot of loved ones over the past few years. This whole cycle of life thing is proving to be true. I guess I'm not getting out of here alive either. But in the meantime -
happy Halloween, keep in touch, and make your friendship with me a huge priority.

The Harvest On Its Way: A Birthday Dedication

It's with a heavy heart that I am in L.A. right now and NOT attending Blake's 35th birthday
in his backyard in San Francisco. I've got a valid excuse and it weighs about 21 lbs and crawls real fast.
I was along, via cell phone, for all of the decisions and hardships that came before this blessed event, so it's just not right that I'm AWOL. It sucks, and I spent all of today in a cranky mood.
For his birthday, Blake orchestrated a way for all of his friends who aren't afraid to get dirty and can handle a shovel to plant him a garden of his own replete with fruits, veggies and herbs. A chef should have his own artichokes, tomatoes and squash, right? Having friends with "agricultural"operations up in Mendocino County and lots of friends who know lots about landscaping, he should have it made. That, and a spit-roasted lamb - what more can someone with a belly want for?
Tonight's waxing crescent moon will glow over his new garden in his backyard. I look forward to the meals we will share over the next 35 years. Happy Birthday, saster.

Playing Swanee

You'd never know it now, but I spent ten years of my life taking weekly piano lessons. That's roughly 520 lessons! Put me in front of a piano now and I might play the same dirge that I was working on back when I stopped taking lessons at age 15. Or, I might piddle around and play a little part of Swanee by George Gershwin - lately, I find myself tapping it out on my son's Fisher-Price alligator xylophone. It needs some work...to say the least.

Over the years, I had four different piano teachers. The first was an older, bearded gentleman (at that time late 30's seemed "older") named Greg. He came to the house to teach me. We played a few songs that involved middle C. One song was called Halloween:

C-D-E, C-D-E, E-D-C, E-D-C: Halloween, Halloween, let's have fun, let's have fun

Bust that out at a holiday party. I accused Greg of stinking once. He never came back to the house after that. I was 5 years old. Years later, I realized that it wasn't him, but rather broccoli steaming. My mom was a vegetarian at the time.
Ava Rosenberg was next. She taught lessons to me and my brother out of a small studio at my school. She was sweet and had a dyed blond fuzzy mustache. I'll bet by now she's discovered wax is better than bleach for that kind of thing. She taught my brother how to play Saucer Man.

Then came Mrs. Phillips, who I studied under for the longest stretch of my career as a piano student. She worked at our synagogue and had actually given my parents lessons when they were newlyweds. She was a classic mean old lady who wore too much rose-scented perfume (luckily, she was never in the same room with Greg! Broccoli + Rose= ?). For years, she scolded me while I played, struck my hand with a pencil when it stumbled over the wrong notes and screamed, "that's an E, honey!" She entered me into recitals and forced me to play a duet with her on stage. These were my first episodes of anxiety that I can remember. I would get up on the stage, forget to say my name and what I would be performing, and do something really awkward like lick my lips in a circular motion. I must have looked quite psychotic. While on stage I would often blank-out on what piece I was playing - it was as if I had left my body there on the stage to fend for itself. I wonder if Mrs.Phillips is still kicking?

The last teacher I had, Tim Davis, is someone who keeps coming back to my thoughts. He died shortly after I quit taking lessons from him. Tim really wasn't a piano teacher by trade. He was, however, an excellent self-taught pianist and entertainer. My parents discovered and befriended him at a fancy party where he was performing. He was pretty stunning to behold: skin the color of caramel, a well-designed handlebar mustache and a body rippled with muscles that he didn't have to work for. He was a complete clown and really wasn't effective at teaching me piano. It probably had more to do with me and my programming. After years of traditional and classical instruction, I couldn't learn piano the groovy way. Playing by ear was out of the question. I needed to slave over sheet music, and I had no jazzy inclinations. Mrs. Phillips had ruined me.

Still, my parents payed Tim to come over every week. That's when I began working on Swanee by George Gershwin. Tim took away the sheet music and tried to teach me to feel the music. It's a project that was never completed. Perhaps my cousin, Jason, can sit me down and show me how it's done. We spent most of the lessons goofing off. Tim liked to imitate me, and I couldn't get enough of him. He made me laugh at myself and my mechanical approach to the keys. Sometimes we'd shout to each other during the entire lesson, as a means for more effective communication. He had nicknames for my different wardrobe ensembles. At that time, I was in a preppy, girly phase involving sweaters with hearts and tightly closed collars. He called my look "very puppy."
Tim and his wife, JoAnn, partied with my parents. Often, they would join us on our boat during the weekends. Tim was a one-man-party. They were guests at one of the rowdiest Thanksgivings that my house ever witnessed. Tim showed up at this jeans and tee-shirt event wearing a white tuxedo.
According to Tim, his mother was one of the vocalists from the original The Lion Sleeps Tonight - you know that backup melody? It was probably a lie, but I still think of Tim whenever I hear that ubiquitous tune.

Well, here's the heartbreaking part of this whole story. Apparently, Tim had a drug problem: crack, to be more specific. I never witnessed it, but JoAnn confessed the problem to my dad, who mentioned it blithely to me, as if a 15 year-old could handle that news. I became hysterical when I found out. I had only heard about people doing crack, and I never imagined that I actually knew one of these people. And, of all people, Tim! Things kind of fell apart for Tim; Jo Ann and her daughter kicked him out, and he stopped coming over to give me the lessons. My parents gave me the green light to abandon the piano, though I would, on very rare occasion, sit down and try to figure out the rest of Swanee. My dad still communicated with Tim, who was living in a rough part of town. He had become skinny and hollowed-out, but still maintained his handlebar mustache. I can't remember the last time that I saw Tim, but he didn't seem to have any special affection toward me at that point. Maybe he had left his body behind to fend for itself, like I did during those recitals. When you're a starry-eyed 15 year old, it's hard not to take things personally.

It's fun to think back and remember Tim and how he would croon along with my mechanical piano playing. I'm looking to get back into playing a musical instrument. Something where I can let go of my inner robot. It might not be the piano though. My dad, at 67, still takes piano lessons sporadically. He, too, plays like a robot, but one who's low on batteries. Next to him, I'm Ray Charles. My step-mother winces when he sits down to tickle the ivories. If Tim were around, he'd be marching alongside Dad at the piano like a member of the Korean People's Army with crossed eyes and his tongue wagging. Where did that Tim go?