faulty vision

There are some nice things about The Cow, besides the nice people, that is. It turns out that the smell really does eventually grow on one, just as the nice people said, so much so that after a sojourn in The Cow, one eventually starts to bring a little of it back home with one, noticeable when one turns one’s head suddenly at odd moments. The other nice thing is that, by some unexpected interruption in the normal laws of physics, I’m lighter in The Cow.

Five pounds lighter, in fact. The Cow Clinic has scales in every room, certified correct by some Cow Clinic Weights and Measures thing.

“It’s because you’re closer to the equator,” the Guy told me wisely over dinner. “You’re further away from the center of the earth because it bulges a little in the middle, so gravity doesn’t matter as much.”

It occurs to me that if we ever get married and have children, the Guy will not be taking an active role in their education.

Today will consist of talk about my mother.

This is my mother.

Admittedly, this is a picture of her when she was young and nubile. Now, I may be biased, but I’ve always been somewhat of the opinion that my mom was a bit of a babe, back in the day. As it happened, my sister’s first serious boyfriend thought the same thing.

“Your mom’s a total babe,” he enthused regularly.

When he said it, he always used the present tense. This used to disturb my sister a lot more than it did me. They eventually broke up. It wasn’t over said boyfriend’s adoration of my mother, but I can’t imagine that that helped.

Mom, being a violin teacher with a limited but creative grasp of English and its subtleties, has often found unique ways of communicating with her students. It inevitably takes a month or two for new students — new, non-Japanese-speaking students — to adjust to Japlish, a fact that is mostly lost on my mother. I’ve occasionally walked in on interviews for new students and surprised expressions of intense concentration on the new parents’ faces, as they attempted to weed through Mom’s Dadaist reconstructions of tenses and sentence structure.

She’s not unaware of her deficiencies in the language, mind you. Periodically, she’ll pick up a word out of the blue and attempt to fit it into conversation until it finds some meaning mutually acceptable to both listener and speaker. One month, the word “luxury,” (rephrased in turn as “luxuriated,” “luxurying,” “luxuriate,” and “luxuriatous,”) made its appearance as a catch-all adjective, adverb, and noun meaning anything from “lavish” to “book.”

Over the course of her career in teaching, each successive wave of new students has been comforted by the more experienced ones. I’ve caught several of them at it. “Don’t worry,” they say. “In a month or two you’ll know exactly what she’s saying.”

Part of the problem is that she mixes Japanese words with English ones, interspersing one in the other without realizing that she’s done anything of the sort. In the normal course of things this is enough to throw any right-minded English speaker, whose ears are programmed to trigger synapses at certain patterns of sound. Given a Japanese word in the middle of a mostly recognizable English phrase, and most American brains will replace it with a sizzle of static.

“What?”

Worst of all is when a Japanese word sounds very much like an English one.

At one point, Mom had a new young student — a cute little blond girl of about 7 or 8 — that she was teaching to shift. If you’ve ever played a string instrument, you’ll know what shifting is; it’s basically sliding your fingers up the fingerboard (that’s the long, nobbly part) towards you. “UP” is towards your chin, closer to the body of the violin. “DOWN” is away.

The piece that this child was learning involved quick shifting. It’s not an easy skill for a beginner, so Mom was working on it with her. “Shift up! Shift down! Shift up! Shift down! good! Good!” As in all the lessons my mom teaches, at least until a certain age level is reached, the child’s mother was sitting on our sad excuse for a sofa, busily taking notes of everything.

After a while, when Mom was satisfied that her student understood about shifting and how to do it and where it came into the piece, she suggested that they actually try that passage. She carefully arranged her student’s fingers on the fingerboard in the first, “down” position, from which the passage would start. Midway through the passage, the student would have to shift “up.”

“Understanding?” she asked. Her student nodded solemnly.

“Oh-kay. Ready? Hai!”

In Japanese, the word ‘hai’ can be used to mean a number of things. Most commonly, it’s used as ‘yes.’ In the context of that particular phrase, it meant ‘Go.’ My mother’s student, being an English-speaker, translated ‘hai’ as ‘high.’ She promptly shifted up.

Mom laughed kindly. “No no,” she remonstrated, and rearranged her student’s fingers back in the down position. “We start here, and then we play la la la la, and then shift, neh?”

Her student nodded solemnly again.

“Oh-kay. Ready? Hai!”

The student obediently shifted.

Mom laughed again. Funny, stubborn little girl. Must be gentle. “Oh-kay. Is very good shifting, but too soon, too soon. We play la la la la, oh-kay? And then shifting.” She rearranged the student’s fingers. “Ready?” The student nodded. “Hai!”

The student shifted.

Mom looked baffled.

The student’s mother, seated on our sofa, scribbled away busily.

Things I learned while driving in New York.

1. Lanes are for pussies.

2. Sidewalks are not obstructions. They’re opportunities.

3. It’s only red if it’s not about to turn green.

4. Your horn isn’t an accessory. It’s an appendage.

5. The more languages you can speak, the better you can swear.

6. Potholes are the 51st state in the Union.

7. Just because you see someone leaving a parking spot, doesn’t mean it’s a parking spot. It just means he wasn’t caught.

8. The shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line.

9. There are only two seasons. Winter, and Construction.

10. Your belief in reincarnation is directly proportional to your skill in driving.

There’ve been plenty of things to write about in the last two months, which hasn’t stopped me from ignoring them altogether. Milestone moments are so much more interesting when you’re experiencing them than writing about them. I’ll write about the baby at another time, maybe.

Today, I want to talk about my sister.

There’s a cornucopia of stories about my sister that I have never shared, just as there are bushels of strange little tales about my mother that I’ve never shared. To be honest, I can’t remember all the stories I’ve already told, though I’m inclined to think they weren’t too many. I tend to talk about them when they’ve either figured largely in my life lately, or they’ve done something to tick me off. My mother falls into the latter category more than my sister.

On the other hand, my sister has had her own share of ulcer-inducing moments. For instance, there was the time — stop me if you’ve heard this one — when we went out for dinner to a nice restaurant with a special guest. His name was Martin Beaver, and he was passing through town to teach a masterclass. He was the son-in-law of a family friend, Hiroko Primrose, now sadly lost to cancer; Hiroko, for those musician geeks out there, was the widow of the violist, William Primrose.

Musicians like to wrap all celebrations around food and applause, in both cases considering quantity more important than quality. This is not unreasonable, given that most musicians are at any given moment A) hungry; and B) desperate for attention. Having given Martin the latter already, we moved on to taking care of the former. With Dr. Yuko Honda, another friend of my mother’s, and a few other musicians, we went out for Japanese food, at a restaurant that we knew would provide both quality and quantity.

The food was, of course, outstanding. At the end of the meal there’d be the inevitable tussle between Dr. Honda and my mother about who would get to pay the bill; Martin, not being a bloody-minded little Japanese woman, wouldn’t get to play that game, being hopelessly outmatched. That, however, would be later.

My sister and I kept our heads down and our mouths full. The world of high-caliber musical politics was not something we were old enough to get involved in, though we listened — well, I listened — avidly to stories about famous musicians and people I knew only through other stories. The conversation ran the gamut, from concerts that had been flopped, to pieces that were being practiced, to students that needed encouragement, and instruments that had been played.

When I say ‘gamut,’ I meant the musical gamut, of course. The classical musical gamut.

Eventually, the subject of exercise came up. Well, why not? A musician who spends four to six exhausting hours practicing every day and spends the hours in between teaching, touring, or performing, can often find it difficult to engage in any meaningful athletics. For that matter, simply being a musician can eliminate a much of the available options in sports. Weight-lifting, for instance, can ruin the flexibility of fingers, wrists, arms, and shoulders. Volleyball can lead to damaged fingertips and joints. Tennis, racquetball, and badminton can lead to elbow and forearm injuries. Soccer can lead to falling down and breaking open your head.

“…I try and exercise as much as I can,” Martin said almost apologetically. “Swimming’s good exercise.”

Mom and Dr. Honda listened politely. Being small, active little Japanese women, they had the metabolisms of hummingbirds and didn’t quite comprehend activity for the sake of activity. It must be a white person’s thing.

“I jump,” offered my sister, suddenly entering the conversation.

“Jumprope?” asked Martin.

“No, jump.” Masako mimed taking a dive off of something with her hand. “Off of things.”

I blinked. My mother blinked. “Eh?” I said.

“What sorts of things?” Martin asked curiously.

My sister’s eyes slid off my blank face towards the wall, and grew suspiciously unfocused. “Oh, stuff,” she said, vaguely. “Buildings, bridges, that sort of thing….”

I blinked again. So did Martin. So did Dr. Honda. My mother’s pleasant smile started to congeal. “Buildings and … bridges?” someone said, I’m not sure who.

“Into water,” my sister assured the wall. “It’s perfectly safe.”

“How … high do you jump from?”

“Mm. Just a few stories.”

“Into water.”

“Mm hm.”

“How do you know it’s safe?” I demanded, my voice rising. Mom was looking decidedly frozen behind that determined smile.

Masako blinked and refocused just long enough to look reassuring. “Oh, someone jumps first, to make sure the water’s deep enough. And it isn’t like anybody’s ever died doing it.” And then she suddenly looked doubtful, which wasn’t lost on me or my mother. “On purpose,” she amended.

It might have been lost on Martin, however, who was starting to look like he’d hurt something if he didn’t let himself laugh. “And, er, where does the exercise part come in?” he asked, still perfectly polite. “You swim to get out?”

My sister glanced at him, pleased to find a sympathetic spirit. “No, we jump pretty close to shore. The exercise,” she explained, “is when you run to get away from the police chasing you.”

There was a small silence. Martin quivered. Dr. Honda looked baffled. Mom turned white. Out of deference to her feelings, Martin hastily changed the subject.

Heading back to the parking lot with me later, in the middle of a conversation about Beethoven, Mr. Beaver broke off and whispered, “You have to admire your sister.”

“For jumping off of buildings?” I asked a little incredulously.

Martin’s teeth flashed white in the dark. “For telling your mom in front of guests so she couldn’t kill her,” he explained and sounded, indeed, almost reverent.

Of course, he had a Japanese mother-in-law, so he knew.

It’s a word I made up by myself. Don’t bother looking it up. It has no origin in logic; I wanted a word that meant ‘overview’ without any of the responsibility of thoroughness. My defective brain came up with two words, ‘catalog’ and ’survey,’ tossed in the word ‘prologue,’ and came up with ’scatopy.’ I’d claim it was Latin, if it weren’t for the fact that the Flamingo knows better, so I’ll pretend it has Greek origins and move on from there.

I’ve lost the knack of writing. The inclination, too, but that’s secondary; I used to be able to vomit words on a page and have them read back as something approximating my speaking voice. They still do that, more or less, but either my speaking voice has gotten awfully stilted, or I’ve pretty much lost any remnant of the sense of humor that used to be. Or, maybe, I’m reading back over my stuff and realizing that I never wrote very well to begin with. Screw it.

It’s been long enough since I maintained this journal that there’re more things to talk about than there’s energy in me to write. To sum up the last few months in one simple summation:

Tara got married. Changed her name. Bought her a boat. Bought sister a kayak. Climbed a wall. Fell in love. Quirk died. Was a bridesmaid. Bought clothes. Norwegian moved. Started Aikido. Work out daily. Run a mile. Missed Bay to Breakers. Lost mind. Was acting manager at work. Found mind again. Got tax refund. Paid off credit cards. Rode a motorbike. Going to Ashland. Bought TV and DVD player. Traded turtles. Bought Palm Pilot. Practiced rollerblading. Bought bike. Got contacts. Need new shoes. Tripped a lot. Gained weight. Made friends. Kayaked. Didn’t fall in. Quit school. Watched movies. Spent money. Bought checks.

And now, if I find myself in need of material to write up, I can just refer back to that list of the last four months and pick out choice morsels to scribble about. Half the year is gone already, and four entries have made their way to the page; I find it highly doubtful that I’ll be any more successful about ‘catching up’ in this year than I was in any previous year. I suppose it doesn’t hurt to be optimistic.

There are new characters in my life, a couple of them just barely believable, and one of them utterly unlikely. I won’t bother introducing them, exactly; they’ll just creep into conversation from time to time, and I can leave it up to the imagination of the reader to create real names and faces for them. Imaginary people are rarely the equal of real people, but there’s something to be said for exercising the mind. Nobody is quite the way that they are.

That’s enough scatopy for now. We’ll move on. I’m bored with it…

The Guy, — notice how sneakily I introduce a new character? — came yesterday with a new Pocket PC that he had gotten from work, complete with free e-books of some of my favorite classics. The Innocence of Father Brown, for one; I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed reading G.K. Chesterton, a staunch Catholic in all his ways, not utterly bereft of a sense of humor. In addition, however, he also had installed a copy of Kai Lung’s Golden Hours, an old classic that I once read because its quotes were being constantly tossed back and forth between Peter Wimsey and Helen Vine. I formed an intention of getting a copy of the book, back in those days, and never did. Now, it seems, I can’t get one. Amazon has failed me; a complete set of the Kai Lung volumes is no longer in existence, at least that I can purchase. This is what comes of postponing until tomorrow what one can delegate today.

We went to Indian buffet today for lunch. I’m constitutionally incapable of going through a meal at this restaurant without spilling something on my white, (always white!) shirt. Turmeric has a vengeful temperament.

Back a bit, to the hasty overview of the last four months. Somewhere in there, I mentioned that Quirk had died. He did, back in …. I don’t remember when, exactly. It must have been February, or thereabouts; he was old already, and so it was hardly a surprise. At the time, the journal was winding to a hiatus state, so I didn’t bother to put it in.

My new apartment ostensibly didn’t allow pets — turtles don’t count as pets, precisely; they’re more like bric-a-brac — so I had to farm out Quirk to some kind-hearted person who was able to supply a temporary haven for displaced dwarf hamsters.

I found the perfect location and hostess in Vak, the slightly hyperactive tech writer I’m friends with over in Operations. I told the gathered tech writers that it was the perfect metaphor in terms of gifts, for all the world as though I’d planned the entire thing.

“The hamster has a little wheel in there, you see. You can run and run and run on that thing and never get anywhere.”

Several days later, still enamoured of the bright-eyed little brown thing that had landed in their midst, a few of the writers came drifting by to tell me that Quirk never used his wheel. “All he does is sleep and eat,” they informed me, worried. “Is he okay?”

“He’s just lazy.” He was. In terms of intellectually stimulating pets, he was probably down by paramecium and chia pets.

This didn’t stop the tech writing team from lavishing love on his unworthy little head. Each of them renamed him to suit their own preferences. During the course of a day, he would be identified as ‘Munchie,’ ‘Squish,’ ‘Fang,’ or ‘Brown Thing.’ All of them showered him with seeds and toys; he graciously accepted them all, hid the seeds, chewed ruminatively on the toys, and rewarded his worshippers with sniffles and blank stares. A dwarf hamster is not really the most fulfilling animal in the world when it comes to reciprocal affection; I’m in a position to know, having been on the receiving end of several thousand puzzled dwarf hamster stares. A dwarf hamster grows to recognize certain things: the hand reaching down means danger, and a tub of seeds hovering overhead means food.

On the other hand, the owner of the hand and the owner of the seeds meets with a total lack of recognition. After three years, this gets to be a little irritating. Not that one really expects a whole lot from a dwarf hamster anyway, but for pity’s sake. Is it too much to ask that after three years of constant care and attention, a dwarf hamster should be able to recognize me?

I’m not bitter. I’m not. (Stupid cat toy.)

When Quirk finally died, a month or two later, Vak came by to fetch me. “I didn’t know what to do with his body,” she sniffled, and trailed me back to her cube.

“I’ll take care of it.” It was, after all, my responsibility, ultimately.

“Are you going to bury him? Maybe outside under the roses?”

Um….yeah.

While nobody was looking, I emptied his cage into the garbage can, and cleaned the pan thoroughly. The new Program Coordinator came trickling out of the office just in time to catch the tail end of this performance.

“Aww, poor Nibbles,” she sympathized. “Did you bury him?”

“Um….”

I glanced guiltily at the garbage can. She followed my gaze.

“You buried him in the garbage can?”

“I didn’t have a shovel.”

She squeaked wordlessly for a minute, then accused: “You heartless bitch.”

That’s me, yo. The Teflon Tyrant.

I offered to buy the tech writing team a replacement pet, perhaps something in the snake department. I personally want a gekko, just for the hell of it. Of course, I buried my last pet in the garbage can, which is — I’m told — symptomatic of an emotional eunuch.

“Can we feed people to it?” they wanted to know. “Could you get us an anaconda?”