cowgirls

My ears are ringing, I have a sunburn, and I just came back from my first country western concert. My girlfriend and I went to a local vineyard, and sat in the hot sun until dusk waiting for the concert. I now have a list of things to take the next time, and it reads in my head: binoculars, some beef jerky, chapstick and small chairs with backs. I did have a good time, even though I don't drive a pick up or even own boots. And here's the gig, I have an irrational desire now to go shopping for some cowgirl things. I mean really, I should get over myself, and have more fun. It is apparent that I need to get out more, and I am looking forward to this summer with a promise of fishing, more music and having a larger life than cleaning, grading, and being solitary. I definitely want to re examine any sentence that I place myself into : " I don't do that, never tried, it, etc, etc, "These people were having fun! En route to the vineyard, we stopped at Target, I needed a shirt that was going to be cooler, and also got some sunglasses...but we mosied along and got there in time to wait one hour in line. I was fascinated with the folks, the young kid in front of us with a folder labeled "concert tickets" was going into the Air Force in six weeks. I began to watch the women, and realize I need a bustier,which ties in the front, some more jeans, and not to worry the size, I was right in there, some fancier sandals or cowboy boots, and more dangly jewelry, sequins and shiny things. Push up bra and a pointy hat that looks like it has been tortured. These gals were having fun too. And the men weren't bad either. Long drinks of bourbon to admire, with tight ass jeans, tight shirts, some with the sleeves ripped off and again the tortured hats. My goodness, not a school marm in sight, and where had I been all these years? There is a particularly mincing walk you get when trying to walk with wedge sandals or boots on gravel or over grass, and the gals swayed by me followed by pec boys. when the music started some of the girls, for better or worse, hopped up on the men's shoulders and began waving. A few tank tops came off. One bra, apparently, as the lead guitarist speared it with the end of his mike. Belt buckles the sixe of small salad plates, clevage to tuck a wanted poster into, and lots and lots of eyeliner. I was there, and it was a lot of fun. Felt dull. However by the time three hours had gone along, was having a good time swaying and dancing a bit; longing for a dance partner. The wine was awful, one glass and that was it, the glass was the size of a tasting glass. Lots of these gals were underage, but in the dark and in the crowd, all were drinking...good reason for me not to. Yet, they were living large, cowgirls up, one woman had a shirt that read, "save a horse, ride a tractor. " It was a complete scene from the Willie Nelson warm up on the sound system up to the Johnny Cash homage closing. We all wandered off to the cars, I passed one woman sitting on the tailgate of the Ford, waiting for the guy. My little Subaru was tucked in between a few trucks with serious chrome and bumpers. Not about food, not about the music even, but a slice of life I was not used to and had fun dropping in on. Must certainly wear more bling. Jazz will be another story for sure. Off to bed, ears are still ringing.

steak

Steak. Manly food. But, let's get real, it is great for women. I have a lot of associations with steak all of them good. In a hypocritical way, if I had had a personal name basis relationship with the steers outside my classroom window, that would not be true. I wouldn't want to eat Tom, Dick, or Harry. However, I have no problem with a piece of Texas prime, slabbed across my plate. Especially in the morning when I need to regain my strength. None of this frou-frou lightweight breakfast stuff. I am not, and never have been, one to swoon over a cinnamon bun, brioche, or puffy thing for breakfast. Nix the sticky jam, the butter which has to be disrobed of the aluminum wrapper, and for sure the eggs. I really do not like eggs and have had to make them all week. As a child, I was reduced to tears watching my 'Humpty Dumpty eggs" congeal on the plate, I could not leave until I ate them. ruined eggs for life. This week I have been cooking breakfast at an inn, and it is a cultural take on breakfast foods. Yeah, yeah, I know that it is a combination of English beef-busting nutrition to fuel the workers plus a sense of home economics that convinced Americans to eat eggs, sausage, and pastry for breakfast in the last century. I have made scones, passed out jams and several fluffy omlettes, frittatas, and other multi syllable breakfast items that are like their names, fluffy, not stuffy. Steak, now there is a one syllable event. However, I often feel in many events that I am a changling, not only not of this country, an ex-pat in my own world, but also switched at birth with someone from the Middle East. For me, a plate of tomatoes and olives would do much better than limpid soggy cornflakes, an egg that looks back at me, and sappy waffles. But I still lie. I want meat. I want a plate of bacon but would drop dead with a coronary. I love corn beef hash and usually get it when out at a Sunday breakfast. I used to order grilled chicken livers with green onions, ginger, and lots of soy sauce in Ashland when traveling. But steak does it all. It is exactly what I need, flavor, protein, and sexy. Yes, sexy. Steak is a morning pick me up after the pick up. It is a reminder of flesh, of strength and muscle, of Texas cowboys with rippling pecs, of American know-how. Get on little dogies, ride them cowboy. Slap them on the grill, slap them on the bed, same thing. Truly, I could by extension, gague the degree of a relationship by the breakfast food. In the same inn where I am cooking those waffles, sunny side up eyes, and flaccid bacon, the chef was bemoning that one of his past girlfriends didn't like steak. I made my observation that they probably hadn't , you know, had, you know....either. He looked at me with a bemused expression and said, "you got it. " So vegetarians...think they get off on a slab of tofu? Or, tempeh...yeah, tempeh is sexy indeed, and not. Or, portobellos, surely a large irradiated fungus that takes over Chicago is the equivalent of a t-bone. I think not. So steak it is, run through the range, rode hard, put down wet, and waiting on the plate to replenish corpuscles and muscle, salt and sinew, a direct transfusion of energy. Woman food. Tabasco, lots of coffee, and starched white tablecloth underneath the sheets of this breakfast....sooooo much better than a cinnabon.

love me tender

So, this is not about food, Turkey, or moving in.

I have been thinking a lot recently, in an amorphous way about men and women. Not huge archetypal images, no Mars, no Venus. But, can men be tender, and If I don't think so, what does that say about my views of men? Or how have I allowed myself to be taught? Images of dad, conflicting, raging, and at the same time one of the most sentimental man I knew.
As a species, I expect that the female is tougher. I would absolutely kill to preserve my child, and think every woman feels the same way. In nature documentaries, the arbiter of maternal instinct, no males of the pride surround the female giving birth. Nope, in our culture in America it was only the early sixties perhaps when men were allowed in the delivery room, and to hear some tell it, that was just dandy for them.
What is this resurgence of male tenderness? I want to believe it is true, and I want to believe that men are protectors, they do the tough stuff.
But sometimes, I think that it is all a culturally learned behavior, generations of chick flicks have taught men that a hand to a face, a gesture of simplicity in all its earnestness, will win the gal over. Can they be truly tender to their children, to their partner? Often I think not. I wonder why. Because I was not shown it, and actually I often would not let it in. I think really, this is my own issue, one of trust and being able to relinquish those walls which I have so carefully built around me for protection. And, I wonder what was learned behavior as a kid. However, this is not the place for Freud, Colette, or even the Kinsey report.
Nope, is is the post feminist-rule-of-guy review. I just spent some time with a huge variety of men, professional and personal. Gay, straight, lots of experience, and very little. Worldly, and more straight common sense than some of the twits I have worked with. And, I am beginning to challenge my carefully held beliefs. There is no question that men, as Dads, can care for their children and defend to the death. But what I am talking about here is just what constitutes tenderness in this culture in a way, in mine. Is it chocolate or fixing something? It is the willingness to really listen and attend, and be gentlemanly? This last effect is a diminishing capacity in our culture. My emphasis is on the Middle East and I have friends who rail about the isolation of women, the pedestal aspect of the veil, the seclusion and the harem. I am beginning to think that we sometimes have lost by chipping away not at a pedestal but at the virtues that do indeed make us different. I have had to do it so much alone, that last year when finally driven by so much heart-stopping stress, it was so evident to my family that they needed to come help all of us. We were at a Rubicon and needed to move forth. It wasn't the women at this time who stepped in, it was the men. And they helped but I had to be "guy like" to get through it. Afterwards, I was absolutely, flat out spent and exhausted and it has taken the better part of the year to get better. I still am learning to slow down, because inaction led to introspection. I wanted a hug, some tenderness. My Turkish friends are appalled that so many people live alone in America, especially women. My daughter "should have moved home". It is unacceptable that I live alone. "Who will find me if I fall down? " That is sometimes certainly the question, who will? I imagine myself alone, with no one to know, no one to help when a wrenching headache hits. Of course that isn't true, I have experienced it every day, but it is the awareness, and the recognition that has to come from me not the outside. Back to tenderness. Tenderness is the right soap, the holding of a hand for balance, and the chance to say "just sit, let me take care of you." I won't let you down. I realise that tenderness is not weak, it is strength and I have confused the two. I applaud women's rights. I would not live in a culture without them, and at the same time I think we as a culture are often diminished by this forceful need to do it on our own, to be strong, to be tough, to fix things ourselves. I love to cook for someone, to nourish them when I think they have had a rough time, and when I think we both would like some company. I also joke that I am post feminist, that a guy can do this, do that, are stronger, know more in some areas, and for God's sake know to hold my hand, to clasp my head when a kiss, and to shut me up. Forceful tenderness drops me to my knees. I have put my back out carrying things too heavy, wrenched my wrist in repairs, and cannot, cannot do it all. I am confronted by this daily, that doing it all myself is isolating, people want to help. And maybe Hollywood is right, men can be tender, they want to do the soft thing, the respectful chivalric code and value the woman. And maybe it is not only right, it is about time. Maybe girls, women, by valuing men, and allowing ourselves to BE valued, we allow the men gain their own sense of place in the universe, the tool box, the seat at the table, and the place in the bed. My gay men friends do not have this discussion, there is no "girl's role" boy's roll..there just is. I cannot speak to the women. But of my men friends who are gay, I trust them implicitly, would travel with them anywhere, and there is no charge to be or not be "girly." I can ask for help without a sense of repayment or reprisal. So what does that mean then? It means for me to let the defenses down, to come back to my picture of the woman supported and enfolded because it takes a duality to ascend. And while living alone keeps us in this culture apart, it need not divide us in half. Love me tender, love me true indeed, water wears down rocks and the desert winds soften any sandstone bluff. I need lots of things fixed around here that I need help on, and first I must fix my stubborn self to let tenderness in.

clothes optional with mirrors

Summer is officially in session, but you wouldn't know that up here in the clouds. I finished work mid June and the intervening days have been jam packed. I have had business meetings, conference calls, dinners, a movie, visits from my daughter and an old long-lost now retrived friend, and several Encounters of the Close Kind in all venues. Since then I have also had a lot of calls with girlfriends, a sister in law with California women in tow, my daughter and her friends up to visit, and visits from a best friend and her mom. Girl time, women time. One of our conversations revolved around dress. Whatto where, when to wear it, and how to wear it. City clothes, camping clothes, walking around the town clothes, and just how dressed up to be. Eugene is particularly casual, and after the country fair, the dress is even more un-scale. I am packing to leave in 3 days for a high class city, Toronto, and so have washed everything, and figuring out how to upclass myself. So, this may be why I am sitting here not wearing any clothes, it is too much trouble right now. I am washing everything, and with the execption of carrying my basket outside to my condo laundry, I am figuring what the hell, who is going to see me? Or, if the did it certainly would not be in the context of doing laundry, and that dear readers is another topic. I am at the top of a hill, windows face a hill and although at night unless I pull the drapes you can see right in, I really don't care. This is a hidden advantage of living alone, or being alone some time:" Clothes are NOT NEEDED." No tight bra, no panty lines, no why don't I lose some weight pants, no wrinkles, spots, ironing, plackets, pleats, buttons or buttonholes, belts....nothing. What to wear? only when cooking, frying bacon in the nude is not recommended. Martha Graham said one time that she would not choreograph nude dancing, like the musical Hair because, ".. parts of the human anatomy do not stop moving when I desire them to." I get that. But I am not choreographing myself, I just am enjoying not getting dressed. Of course, in a partnership clothing optional is also nice, but when children are around, or they might burst into the house as young adults, one needs must wear clothes. So it is with a certain amount of enjoying "being bad" that I am finding I just don't bother often. And, when using tanning lotion which must dry before wearing clothing, it just makes sense. And, it means getting used to seeing yourslef, a revelation...a good idea. I have full on mirrors on my closets, and while somewhat startling, I think that this feedback I have been getting is sinking in, and I no longer avert my eyes at myself...another revelation. Mirror mirror on the wall, I even have some which face the wall; traditional Turkish ones which are wedding mirrors, and meant to face the wall until used to avoid vanity. It makes sense in a former veiled culture if you are un veiled, then the mirrors are put away. Not for Translylvania where no image in a mirror is vampyric, or for cheap movies when they are on the ceiling, but for here, mirrors bounce light, open space, and give me my own reflecting pond. Narcissus like, I look, and check, and appreciate, so it is worth it.

Glass ceilings

I have an upstairs neighbor, a new concept: actuality and sometimes a despair. Nice person, but walks with a heavy tread; or the condo is lightly built with skimpy structure and widely spaced stringers. I have not had upstairs neighbors for over 30 years, and sometimes feel that I have moved back into an apartment. I love my place, it is easy access and in the forest improbably in the middle of the settled hills in my city. It has light, trees, deer, and is 6 minutes from dining.

But it has an upstairs, and there she goes again, walking, sliding the doors, flushing, bathing, showering.... Tromp, tromp, I can see her walking overhead in the glass ceiling of my mind. Whenever I see her in public, she is wearing Dansk clogs, and I don't think she takes them off. Clomp clomp, right now she is walking into the kitchen.

I don't know if she hears me walk. When she complained about the dogs two weeks ago, I slammed, and walked and played music loud. Maybe she does. Maybe she hears me in my bedroom also. Thumps, slides, radio, shower and everything else.

But this is about my glass ceiling. Hitchcock pioneered the stage where in one scene, the protagonist of the suspense movie imagines he hears the murderer overhead. The glass ceiling he contrived had the character look up and actually seem to SEE the man walking, pacing, contemplating homicide. Heavy oxfords, the bottom of furniture legs, he showed it as a literal metaphor of the character's increasing paranoia of his homicidal neighbor.

I sometimes feel that way, and then think in reverse. What if there was a glass floor? What if she could look down on me? Not wearing clothes as I check my mail at 3 am for insomnia reasons? In the shower. Eating, trudging around the vacuum, entertaining publicly and privately? How would that be?

This leads me to think of other glass ceilings and floors. The bottom of a glass boat, showing in the increasing depths, the inhabitants of the ocean. Dark shapes, the deeper the more mysterious, and devoid of color. How am I a floor in a glass boat? I am one sometimes, in my mind, or my past, as I skim over the surface of my placid day today. My own denizens lie below, with distance and time the colors fade. Or, the reverse, under the water, looking up at the boat of my last year, lures dangling over for me to grab. Lines thrown out by competitors as a feint for friendship, shiny attractive bait for engagement which I ignored. Fish like, I swam through and under that lake, and came back onto land, my terra of choice; I really do not like water.

Glass, I have been told, is actually a non-solid state in physics. Measurements of the thickness of cathedral glass several hundred years old shows a thickening at the bottom as the glass molecules ooze to the bottom of the window. I kind of like that, imagining the cathedral windows subtly shifting as theology and culture moves along. Or, the great pyramid of light by architect IM Pei smack in the center of the Louvre courtyard. Perched like a beached pyramid, its transparency hints at social currents, art, and the whole history of French art under the revolutionary bloodstained cobblestones of it's doomed palace.

In the 60's or 70's, I don't know when it was forged, the term glass ceiling meant the transparent barrier that stopped women from moving up into being masculine success figures, the CEO's and leaders of industry. The implication was it was only a ceiling, glass is breakable, and women were to burst forward through that ceiling to success, like the pyramid in the Louvre. Impaled upon some of those shards as they tried, many women sank back below those depths under the ceiling, under the boat.

I have melted glass, fused it in kilns, slumped it into molds, and cut it to make stained glass windows. I am more anxious around glass than I am my chef knives, plasma torches, or welding. I have cast bronze, done blacksmithing, and many things with fire melting and forming metal. But glass is an amoeba, a dangerous shape-shifter of my past and certainly future. I am more careful around something that will hurt me when it is not made to, shards are of something broken, my knives are supposed to cut. Shark-like, spears of glass in my ceiling, in my floor, and on my walls have no conscience, they hover in my consciousness just out of sight like the sharks circling in the aquarium at the beach. And those also swim under a glass floor that gives me the creeps to walk upon. Give me sand, give me ice, but not glass to walk on.

So, at night the world can look into the large windows where I sit at my keyboard. Unless I pull the drapes, which is not often, approachers, strangers and friends alike, can see into my home. My life is not that transparent, or is it? I keep some things close to my heart, but there are a few recently who have pointed out what parts of my life I wear on my sleeve, on my ceiling, and on my floor. As the saying goes, people who live in glass houses shouldn't cast stones, so I don't to my walls. But, I wish that some sort of net, some curtain, could shield me from the overhead noise and feeling that Hitchcock was on to something.

My own glass ceiling of recticence, of holding back, is breaking. This is good, it is dangerous, and it is shape-shifting. But, it is not transparent.

belly dancing and raki

I was quite focused on anger and irritation on my last post. (see on your own) and so here tonight, I am sitting with Turkish music, a glass of raki, and the sunset. Flowers are throughout the house, some from my old yard, picked when I picked up my dog kids. Some are from friend, some I bought myself, and two dozen yellow ones are from a young woman student. I am blessed.

It is dusk and I am completely enjoying the Turkish music, It is current Euro pop and I find myself moving in tune to the music, hearing snippets of Turkish I understand, and longing for another trip to Turkey. I was there three years ago, and came home to incipient disintegration of my marriage. The last week I was in Istanbul was not good, I was isolated in Sulthanamet on my own, the EU congress was going on and the city was blockaded. I was not able to visit the bazaar, closed by NATO so Bush and all the EU leaders could shop. So I visited the pudding person each day, bought figs and tomatoes to eat in my room at night and found an English used bookstore to buy whatever I could; reading a book a night.

Fast forward three years, my daughter is graduated, I am on my own, and longing to revisit Turkey and have a much better time. I have learned more about traveling on my own, and not worrying in a pr- cognizant way what is happening back home. It all happened while I was gone...and this time I wouldn't have to have that sense in the middle of the night, the gut dropping paranoia that something was ending.

Nope, this time it is belly dancing, lots of raki, shores of the Med, and enjoying looking at the waiters with my dear friend. When I get there; for first my daughter will graduate, and I want to take her someplace exotic and a trip with her. Istanbul is not on her radar, perhaps Paris...assuming I am a little more solvent.

But right now, I know all these songs and am enjoying them. They sing of love, of eyes soulful, hips gyrating, shoulders shaking and a sway unique to belly dancing.

When we were in Pamukale, at a spa, I was wandering around exploring. Out the window we could see the endless pool, and on the postcard racks were the pictures of the tiered white cotton castle, (the name Pamuk is cotton, kale is castle) encropments of natural limestone and azure pools. Two little girls werre playing to the music, and where American little kids might do the twist, these sloe eyed children, were shymmying, arms raised like little gypsies. Fingers snapping, heads dipping, they were kicking in the belly dancing instinct at age five.

My dear Turkish male friend can do the top shake as he dances, very sexy. Moving only from the waist, bottom feet almost still, the men dance in the villages with arm and shoulder shakes. Only the men dance at the weddings, women dance separately in these still almost medieval towns.

At the resorts though, the city kids practically strip down. There is no Islamic modesty here, skin tight jeans and tight tops, mimicking the Russian tourists and British shop girls catching the early rates. Black black hair, the men are gorgeous, the women Turkish sirens, gold jewelry against tan skin and hennaed hair. The discoes blare and hyps gyrate, women neck outside with a date; the prostitutes lurked, speaking in sybalant East European accents. I was stunned at the difference and felt matronly, threatened, and dying to go dance.

So now, here I am, typing in my own hip dance, moving from the waist up, sipping raki as I recal and project my last, and next, trip.

Belly dancing pictures are in my past; a favorite was in LIFE magazine. My parents were featured in an article about troops overseas. The dancer is sliding up to my dad, he is natty in two tone bucks, and a great fifties modern bowling shirt. Mom, with pursed lips, ( I have them too, darn it) is looking askance, body language leaning back as this hefty woman sidles up to my dad. My lips do not match my spirit.

My favorite Turkish doll was a belly dancer, with a large round tummy. A pencil line emphasized the circular mound. And they are, none of those too-thin women, they are zaftig, they have weight, movement, and bellies. Good for them, and I am thinking about taking a class just to move to this music. Not the fake gypsy stuff that all the shiksas take, not the cartoon borrow-a-culture class, I really feel drawn to the music.

And the eyebrows. The women on this CD have eyebrows to die for, in a culture that used to be veiled the eye was all. A flick of the eyebrow, an arch of the look, a drop of the eyelid conveyed for Islamic men what a glimpse of a wrist did for the Victorians. I will take the eyebrow, the Orientalist sheik and the nuanced eye.

So, as my school year winds down, I am drawn to a re-do of a trip. I felt incomplete when I left last time, I have lost touch with my Turkish family. I have friends arriving soon from Turkey and I want one big huge party with them. I want raki, lamb, Turkish music, soul shimmying hip grinding music, and fun. I want to go back, I want to evoke Istanbul here, and it is time to have a dance. You do not get do overs in life, but I would like to try.

sturm und drang fire and ice

I have been working my ass off for about two weeks straight, with 18 hour days, night classes and grading. I had a student tell me to my face in class that he didn;t like me and I had to take it and not tell him what a sorry spoiled brat he was. I am ready for summer. I am ready to sleep in and at the same time have taken on a job three or so days a week cheffing from 6 am to noon. I need the company, the experience, and the money. And right now this blog is not helping, it doesn't format into paragraphs, so this will be one full-on vent. I like fire, I really do, even though I am challenged to make one. I have been so wrought up lately over work, over life good and bad that fire is very appealing. To that end, I have also taken to playing Leonard Cohen's music of anger and aggression very loud. I have a thin ceiling and my upstairs neighbor walks with a heavy tread. My two Russells are barkers, and I am trying ot get them civilized; they are here every other week. So last night, when I came home dragging papers, and prepared to cook 70 crepes for a self-created Senior Girl's tea there was a note telling me to "please address your dogs." Hell. double damn, I am working and I am sorry she is home all day and I do want to be a responsible neighbor, pet owner, world citizen and cure ill. But God Damn it, I was tired, and this was all I needed. I felt alone, I was pissed off that I was living in a condo where I must keep in mind neighbors and be good. I am tired of being good. I want fire, I want smoke, I want to rage, to rave, and to throw small things off my balcony. Lots of them. So, I played Leonard VERY LOUD, banged around lots of pots, slammed the cupboards and generally made a nuisance of myself. And, I called my last husband who offered to get the dogs for a night as I had to leave so early with the crepes and god forbid I have them bark. It was a great offer, and he came, they went, and I cried. I played the music louder, to the song of Bernadette and felt like an isolate saint, who sees visions no one believes. From frustration, from irritation, from lonlieness. And played music again, with company as I cooked. Back to fire, new paragraph. Fire is cleansing, and immolating, and I want to be immolated. I want the flesh off my bones of irritation, I want to step like Joan of Arc into the embrace of purity and anger. I need to get this off my chest, and I want to be surrounded with actions that destroy me, that destroy the quiet part, and release the openness and anger, and from that the creativity that has been locked up on the pyre of my good girlness. To hell with that sometime; I have always been the good wife, the good mother, none of those things I regret. I am both, and do it well. I try very hard to be good, to do right, and right now the meek do not inherit the earth, they get the goddamn condo, not the man. But, good girls don't ride harleys, get tattoes, and enjoy flesh stripping sex for the sheer creativity of it. I used to do those things as an art student, but as Thoreau said, " the greatest tragedy is what dies within a man while he lives." I have died, and Joan is right. Leonard sings about her stepping into fire's fiery embrace, and I want those wings of smoke around me. Anf if those who read this blog worry, not to, I am not suicidal, but my life is and was and needs to change, and be changed. Throw it out there, be a bad chapter in a Nora Roberts bodice buster, a good line in a song, an isolate in a sea of idiots. I am tired of being careful, I am tired. This sound and fury and sturm und drang will pass, but I still like fire. I want to melt the steel into the furnice like I did in welding. I want hot spices, rich wine, red meat, to be taken charge of with hands and authority upon me, the ability to speak my mind and not worry about my job, my relationships, my acceptability. I want it all, and in 24 hours another part of me will die until I get angry again.