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“fertility, or lack of it”

I have thought about this all day. No, actually, I’ve been apoplectic about it all weekend. Be honest, Trace. I didn’t want it to come to this, but something so egregious was said in the comment thread of this tiny post, that I couldn’t let it go unchecked. My response in that thread has so far gone unnoticed by the perpetrator, maybe because the post is so minor, it’s not something people check back on. Or maybe because the person has no idea what he said, has no twinge of conscience about it, which is deeply disturbing to me. So I’m linking to that post because I need to take a stand. There’s only so much a girl can take — on her own blog, no less.

Please know that I have no intention of making this a regular blog feature — calling attention to a particular comment thread and a particular person simply because I’m imploding about something. But to leave this hanging means this kind of treatment wins and it’s already defeated too much of me for too long. This is too personal and too painful and no matter how long I live, it will never not be painful to me. That’s the way it is when you struggle with infertility. It razes the most cherished assumptions about your life, forever flattens your vision, and abandons you shaking and scrambling to build a new house of assumptions from the rubble where you stand. Sure, you live your life, you rebuild, sorta, blah blah, but the rubble looms on the perimeter and you never know when you will stumble on it all over again. Sometimes you feel insane, mourning something you never even had. It’s not as if you mourn an actual person, yet you mourn nonetheless. You grieve what never was, what will never be, what other people have, so quickly or easily or abundantly. Society with its cozy families spins on its axis as you float nearby in some lonely surreal satellite, visible and separate in an oooh-so-titillating way.

And Christians, with their untamed tongues and gossipy agendas and barely hidden delight in having something you can’t — it’s sick. Sick. The callousness of the body of Christ on this issue. The judgment. The contempt. It’s sick and I WANT IT TO STOP. I’m railing here, hopefully not too nonsensically, but damn. Damn it all to hell. I have to say it: The fertile contingent of the church needs to stop being such irredeemable asses to the infertile contingent. Because you hurt us. You demean us. You give us numb sleepless nights and piercing hopeless days. You make us want to die. I’m not kidding. I will never be the same because of this chapter in my life and because of too many things said that, sadly, I could never just once grab from the ether and shove back down the speaker’s throat. Too many times, too many careless silky words sinking deep into me like a knife.

Well, not this time. I’m pulling the knife out of my chest and saying, “No, not on my blog.”

I realize I might sound completely nutso right now, but I can only hope that readers who have been with me for a while will understand this moment I’m having. This reaction. Over the last few years, they’ve heard me talk about how I’ve lost things in the struggle — dear things, treasured things, things I cannot ever get back — at the hands of the body of Christ.

Christ’s hands.

The church is the body of Christ. We are Christ’s hands on earth — he willingly risks his reputation, takes the great cosmic gamble to indwell us, his dumbass believers — and still, we treat each other like this or this or this. And I’m not even done telling my stories about this, for GOD’S SAKE.

So no. No. I don’t take that comment lying down. I won’t lie down for any similar comments in the future. I realize if this person ever reads this — and my comment in the thread there — I will win the world record for fastest deletion from a blogroll. So be it. Seriously. Write me off however you need to: Crazed, delusional, hypersensitive. Whatever you need to tell yourself so that you can feel good and justified about what you said — and, frankly, your overall vexing tone, especially in the two posts below. I don’t care if you want to label it “offhand.” Then that’s precisely the problem.

I’m just sick of the callousness from the people who bear Christ’s name. My heart has been ripped up enough.

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a random list of what i’m not wearing

To the fellow who made a comment — which went into moderation because I’ve never heard from you before — demanding to know “So are you or are you not wearing makeup in those photos?”:

First, wow. Whoa. Just wowie zowie wow WOW. Kind of an odd and strangely hostile query.

Second, uhm, no. No, I’m not. Really, I don’t generally get myself all gussied up for a date with my cell phone camera. I am not a Real Housewife of the OC.

And how wrong of me not to engage in full disclosure with you, a total stranger.

Seriously, I cannot fathom why you would ask that. It’s either, Uh, you look okay without makeup or Girrl, you need to slap on some Lancome, and whichever one it is, it is completely bizarre to me. On top of that, to demand to know and say nothing else? To have that be your first attempt at a comment? Just a tad icky and — well, off — for my taste.

But to spare you from asking any further questions or making any further demands — and to mend my horrible, withholding ways, here’s a list of some other things — albeit woefully incomplete and off the top of my currently very grumpy head — that I am also NOT wearing in the aforementioned photos, ‘mkay, lambchop?

~ okay, so makeup

~ shoes

~ socks

~ earrings

~ toe rings

~ a watch

~ a red Kablahblah bracelet

~ a kerchief

~ a cod piece

~ a snood

~ a frock

~ a dickey

~ a cravat

~ a petticoat

~ a corset

~ a jerkin

~ a merkin

~ “spurs that jingle jangle jingle”

~ a girdle

~ Dr. Scholl’s inserts

~ corn pads

~ an ‘Ove Glove

~ a zoot suit

~ a union suit

~ warm woolen mittens

~ a lightning scar because I am not Harry Potter

~ Crest White Strips

~ blue suede shoes

~ “an itsy-bitsy teeny-weenie yellow polka-dot bikini”

~ a dress made of credit cards

~ a rose tattoo

~ Sarah Palin glasses because I am not Sarah Palin

~ an Oscar Mayer wiener whistle

~ day of the week underwear

~ scissorhands

~ beef grinds

~ “vomit on my sweater already, mom’s spaghetti”

~ an eye patch, tho’ that would have been very cool

~ a raspberry beret

~ a coat of many colors

~ anything with kitties

~ fishnet stockings

~ fish

~ a swastika on my forehead because I am not Charles Manson

~ my heart on my sleeve

~ an Easter bonnet with all the frills upon it

~ a chastity belt

~ pasties

~ anything that’s been “Bedazzled”

~ Pull-ups

~ a TV box with my phone number painted on it because I only have to do freshman initiation once, thank you

~ Grandpa Walton denim overalls

~ coke spoon fingernails

~ a Nana

~ a toilet paper mummy costume

~ a bullet bra

~ parachute pants

~ “rings on my fingers and bells on my toes”

~ a skater onesie

~ a Speedo because I am not Michael Phelps or a 1970s oily Arnold Schwarzenegger

~ a Girl scout vest

~ a latex ape chest

~ a poodle skirt

~ a Schnoodle skirt

~ a Magnadoodle skirt

~ a fake arrow through the head

~ for that matter, a live chicken in my underwear

~ for that matter, cruel shoes

~ Scarlett O’Hara’s green velvet curtain gown that she wore to convince an imprisoned Rhett to give her the $300 to pay the taxes on Tara

~ Ingrid Bergman’s hat from the end of Casablanca when Rick gives her the maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life speech

~ the red shoes from The Red Shoes

~ ruby slippers

~ blue velvet

~ a yellow ribbon because I am not an oak tree

~ a tricorn hat

~ platform shoes with an aquarium heel

~ a burqa

~ a creepy, inappropriate, and vaguely threatening curiosity about total strangers

… yeeeah ….. okay …. mama’s tired of listing ……

All righty. There you go, stranger. An incomplete list of other things I’m also not wearing in the aforementioned photos. I know it doesn’t cover everything — how could it — but I tried. I did. I really tried to put to rest at least some of the other niggling questions that may be tormenting you. My dear readers can help me add to the list, if they like — only in the spirit of the existing list, of course.

Mama’s tired and grumpy now and even makeup would not help me.

So, yeah.

Yeaaah …..

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things are getting hairy

I am officially a mop. A Sasquatch. Cousin Itt.

S’true. S’not attractive either.

But you know what? I figure in these dicey uncertain times, more and more people will follow my lead and choose to appear dangerous and feral as a form of self-defense. I mean, who’s gonna try to grab you and eat you if you look like a mangy demented troll? So, it’s the smart choice, the forward-thinking choice. In other words, it’s all good, as the kind of people I can’t stand always say.

Please allow me to document my complete break with the grooming norms of modern society with my uber-cruppy cell phone which apparently takes only one size of photo: unnervingly large. So if gigantic images of wild woolly mammoths unhinge or demoralize you, well, you’ve been warned.

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I, uhm … feel a little lost …. maybe a little vulnerable …. about my encroaching Cousin Itt-ness. I mean, it’s deforestation in rapid reverse. (So then, would that be “reforestation,” Trace?) As a matter of fact, The Hundred Acre Wood atop my head has been officially declared “environmentally friendly” by the EPA, The Sierra Club, and Leonardo Di Caprio. While I could not give one tiny rat’s bottom what the EPA and The Sierra Club think of me and my home-grown nature preserve, Leo’s good opinion means a lot to me. It does. He’s the king of the world, you know, and that must always give a girl pause. And, now that I think of it, Obama, I think I deserve some kind of tax rebate for growing my Sherwood Forest thusly and decreasing my carbon footprint and saving the planet and blahdie blahdie blah.

Or you may send me a puppy.

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The dementia of the Sasquatch.

“Well, helloo, Clarice.”

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Oh, you poor hairy girl. I know what you’re trying to do here — trying to cover up what’s really going on. It goes way beyond the whole Forbidden Forest dealio you’ve got going on atop thee olde noggin. What you and I both know, little yeti, is that you made a horrifying attempt at deforestation the other day and chopped your bangs to smithereens and you now look like it’s picture day at Sasquatch Elementary. It’s bad. Your very own Beloved has been reduced to nervously and repeatedly uttering, “ohh, you’re … darling” — most likely to keep himself from swooning with laughter and you from slitting your remarkably hairless wrists. All too soon, he will start gently reminding you, “Heey …. don’t you like hats?” and you will fall dead on the spot. So go ahead. Smush those reckless tangles around your head all you want. I see what’s really poking out there. Foghorn Leghorn. Tsk, tsk, I say, I say.

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The smushy cover-up continues, unabated and embarrassing. This is even worse. Scraps of bangs shoot straight out of my head whilst I try to look coy. Gah. What a wiener. I am a’quiver with self-loathing.

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See? See?? The little tuft of banglet to the right?? Dangling like a loose shingle several feet above my eyebrow?? I did that. I DID that. AGGHHHH!!! The massive hair carnage lying limp on my bathroom counter could have combed-over many a naked skull, but, no, I threw it away. Selfish Sasquatch.

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Losing touch with reality. Hair tightening its hairy grip. Calling to me. Becoming one with hair. Becoming nothing but hair. I am lost to me.

Farewell, polite society …….

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the banshee sleeps, sorta

Recently The Banshee’s mom took her girls on a trip to visit their great grandma in Arizona. Because of space issues, Banshee and her mom slept in the same bed. Turns out, The Banshee talks in her sleep. Sometimes loudly. And most of the night.

At one point, in the dead of night, she yelled out, “I DON’T WANNNT THAT MUFFIN!! BIBBETY-BOBBITY-BOOOOO!!!”

Okay. So I see she is exactly the same unconscious as she is conscious.

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out and about

~ Coming home from the grocery store, I saw a little boy plopped in a plastic chair on the sidewalk, apple in his hand, swinging tennis shoe feet that didn’t touch the ground. Yesterday was summer-hot in San Diego, but there he was, in the glaring bright sun. Next to him in another chair, was a small cardboard box propped on its side with an action figure leaning against one cardboard wall. A diorama of sorts. I wanted to see more of this little scene, but traffic started pushing through the light and I was forced to join in the fray. As I drove past, I could see some large crooked little-boy writing in the bottom of the box, the upstage wall, if you will. The action figure was placed carefully to the side of this writing, so I sensed it was some kind of ad, something meant to draw passersby to the little boy with his apple and his box and his action figure. Because it was Sunday and the Farmer’s Market swarmed nearby, there was no way to drive around again to see what, exactly, the little boy was doing on the sidewalk there. Maybe he was selling the action figure. Maybe he was engaging in some action figure street theater. I won’t ever know for sure. Whatever it was, I drove away smiling and rooting for the little boy and his box in the hot baking sun.

~ Several times a week, MB and I see them. Our neighborhood’s wandering elderly couple. They look like Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy and they are everywhere, all the time. We can be in the car, running a single errand, and see them more than once, such is the scope of their roaming. They wear khaki pants and white turtlenecks. Tennis shoes. Baseball caps. Her angel white hair sticks out from under her cap in a lump. This is their uniform, every time we see them. It makes me hot to look at them. I feel sweaty just thinking about them. Initially, we thought they had to be homeless because, literally, their clothing never changes. Her khaki pants are sort of graduated in color, grubbier and grubbier past the knee, as if she’s slogged through mud. He, on the other hand, seems quite neat, quite aware of the striking look of his tidy monochromatic attire.

After a couple of days of seeing them, we decided that they were working out. Power walking, I guess, based on the bend and movement in their arms. Or else perpetually late for the bus. Hume, I’ve noticed, always strides several paces ahead of Jessica, forcing her to trot and skip to catch up to him. He seems utterly focused on some imaginary journey in his head, obsessed with staying the course. Whatever this journey is, poor Jessica seems completely in the dark as she patters forever behind him. Just the rhythm of her steps seems to say wait for me wait for me wait for me. I’ve seen them so often I now have anxiety for her, for her balance, for her well-being. I watch her feet, hidden under the darkening khaki swell of her pants, move much faster than his and yet always always steps behind. He will never slow down and she will never catch up and I will have to accept that. Whenever I see them, I can hear that dreary Frau Schmidt from The Sound of Music drone inside my head, “The Von Trapp children don’t play. They march.” It feels a bit like that, like Hume is enforcing this eternal khaki march. I don’t know where they’re headed but, wherever it is, they are never there. I find myself wondering if they’re an old married couple. Or if they’re just friends. I wonder if he’s her personal geriatric trainer constantly pushing her harder and harder and harder. I wonder if she begs him to slow down and he simply can’t hear her. I wonder if he’s just a jerk. I wonder why his whites are so white and hers are so dingy. Some day, I’m afraid — because I occasionally have impulse control issues — I will roll the car window down and cry out from the depths of my well-intentioned buttinsky soul, “Slow down, Hume! You are marching poor Jessica to death! Slow DOWNNN, for the love of God!”

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football sunday

ME: I think we play the Chiefs this week.

HE: Didn’t we play them last week?

(pause)

ME: Well, if you want to get technical about it.

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the letter sisters: beatrice

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This is Beatrice, the second of The Letter Sisters. In naming her Beatrice, I decided to make Scrumptious Jayne’s adorable but erroneous-at-the-time assumption that “Letter Sisters” meant “letters of the alphabet” somewhat true now. There are no letters of the alphabet in the sketches, but I think I’ll name the girls alphabetically. The first sister was Ada and now we have Beatrice. I’m going with more old-fashioned names because I think the girls have an old-fashioned feel to them.

Beatrice, sadly, did not scan all that well. Or the shrunken-down version I’m forced to use on the blog became pixellated in translation. Or I’m a goober. Poor Beatrice.

Each of these sketches is a jumping-off point for things I have in mind for them later — once I’ve, oh, taught myself Photoshop, which I’m getting — installing — downloading — whatever — this weekend. I’ve taught myself a graphics program before, one that is now obsolete, just by flipping through the manual and playing around, so I don’t really have any fear of Photoshop. I completely realize how arrogant and puffed-up that sounds, but please do not say anything to de-poof me or make me a’feared. The few times in my life when I’ve stormed into a situation with blind ignorant confidence it has worked out really well for me. Do not open my eyes in any way, shape, or form. I must sally forth undeterred and undisturbed in my ignorance. It’s really for the best. Thank you.

Oh, and yeah, Beatrice ain’t got no legs either. This was purposeful. I mean, sister Ada is legless, so it didn’t seem right to give Beatrice legs and start a whole sibling leg rivalry or be accused of favoritism or cause the dread sin of covetousness. I mean, I don’t need my sketches turning into high-maintenance divas. I’m the boss, girls. I decide if and when you get legs. And if you’re not nice, I will give you cankles.

Don’t think I won’t.


(image copyright Tracey/BTP 2008 — do NOT copy)

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finally ….. i saw him do it

Yep. After all these eons of spying and waiting and frustrating my inner Gladys Kravitz.

I finally saw our neighbor, Australian Episcopalian priest Father Tony or “Tawny” or Jibbly, dump his trash in someone else’s trash can.

He didn’t see me sitting in my car, but I saw him.

Oh, yes, I did, Father.

I saw you …. yes, I did …. I saw it with my own two eyes …. So you can wipe off the grin …. I know where you’ve been ….. It’s all been a pack of lies

(All together now ….)

And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
I can feel it in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord
And I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life, oh Lord, oh Lord

Oh Lord, indeed.

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hamlet-ophelia-mucha

Sheila has a post up with a vast gorgeous array of images of Ophelia through the ages. Etchings, drawings, paintings, photographs of actresses who’ve played Ophelia. It’s a smorgasbord of beauty.

Her post made me remember a piece from one of my all-time favorite artists, Alphonse Mucha, so I thought I’d make my minor contribution to the idea here. It’s one of his Sarah Bernhardt paintings/posters for which he become famous: Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, actually, and even though Hamlet dominates the frame here, if you look closely, underneath Hamlet, you’ll see Mucha included an image of Ophelia, in the chill of death, clutching her flowers.

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I love contemplating what Mucha intended with the composition — Ophelia boxed in a kind of pretty casket at the bottom, Hamlet’s dark foot breaking the frame — doing what? acknowledging her? reaching to her? oppressing her? what? To me, it’s not accidental that the foot is outside the frame. She is literally under his foot here. It’s not like I picture Mucha having composition issues and being forced to paint the foot out of frame or not giving his subject’s legs and whatnot, like some people I know. Maybe it’s only interesting to me. A roomful of people could go round and round discussing the relationship between these two and, at the end of it, come to a roomful of different conclusions about it. And the views on their relationship shift with the times and the culture. This is a lithograph from 1899, late Victorian era, to give it a context, and based on the feel of the piece, I thought it would be interesting to include a couple of contradictory quotes on the Hamlet/Ophelia relationship from two prominent Victorian women.

The first, from writer Anna Brownell Jameson fromShakespeare’s Heroines: Characteristics of Women:

I have even heard it denied that Hamlet did love Ophelia. The author of the finest remarks I have yet seen on the play and the character of Hamlet, leans to this opinion… I do think, with submission, that the love of Hamlet for Ophelia is deep, is real, and is precisely the kind of love which such a man as Hamlet would feel for such a woman as Ophelia.

~ Anna Brownell Murphy Jameson, Shakespeare’s Heroines:Characteristics of Women.

The second, from a well-known Victorian actress who played Ophelia, Helena Faucit:

I cannot, therefore, think that Hamlet comes out well in his relations with Ophelia. I do not forget what he says at her grave: But I weigh his actions against his words, and find them here of little worth. The very language of his letter to Ophelia, which Polonius reads to the king and queen, has not the true ring in it. It comes from the head, and not from the heart – it is a string of euphemisms, which almost justifies Laertes’ warning to his sister, that the “trifling of Hamlet’s favour” is but “the perfume and suppliance of a minute.” Hamlet loves, I have always felt, only in a dreamy, imaginative way, with a love as deep, perhaps, as can be known by a nature fuller of thought and contemplation than of sympathy and passion.

~ Helena Faucit, Lady Martin, On Some of Shakespeare’s Female Characters (1888).

I, for one, although I like how Brownell states her point, tend a bit towards Faucit’s interpretation. The composition and the general feel of Mucha’s piece makes me wonder if he did, too. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but, let’s face it, my entire life is based on reading too much into everything.