t h e b e e b o x

Real Simple

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In an attempt to organize my life yet again, in what is surely the umpteenth time, I browsed the great Internet for clues. Hours of browsing helpful how-tos, bright ideas, tips and tricks, left me with no idea where to start. Everything flew by me, nothing stuck.

What became clear though, was that the amount of stuff accumulating in my house, my work, my thoughts, my days, my life—is getting to be overwhelming.

Accumulation requires very little effort. It’s so easy to satiate hunger—both the physical and the spiritual—with all sorts of things. With stuff. With fluff. You can rush to the nearest mall and let loose on the stores, grab things off the shelves and schlep them back home, marveling at the speed with which you can decimate a month’s hard-earned pay. Get it on, pile it up, shove it down, take it all in. Who cares about rent and bills and milk and diapers and flu shots when you can have the pretty green shoes? And look, I can even run in them!

I excelled at accumulation. I would eat sugary goods the equivalent of my righteous anger in one sitting, washing them all down with tepid green tea in an attempt at control. I would watch movies indiscriminately, one after the other, not pausing to think, skipping the intro, skipping the credits, skipping analysis. I would let the images come at me fast and furious: the ugly, the unbearably beautiful, the bleak, the bloody, the sublime. I let them all come, my eyes raw and red, my head throbbing, my mind turning into a palsy that would not let me sleep, would not let me sink into quiet. I have read a book unto its death, not stopping for hours, worming my way into the words, reading right into the dark of night, the only one awake, the breaking light outside the window falling gray as I turn the last page. Sometimes I would think of getting on a bus at the stroke of midnight, just speed across the blackness into nothing, not stopping, not slowing down, not changing direction, hoping only that the ceaseless moving through time, surely, please God, would be enough.

I have a friend, we all used to be condescendingly amused by him, he was the type who got lost in the details, plodding through life at what we thought was a pitifully slow pace. He could sit engrossed for hours looking at how light causes leaves to show the tracery of their veins, could be held captive for an impolite length of time by the shell curve of a woman’s ear, could spend days beating an idea to death, one insight at a time. He couldn’t get to the big picture fast enough for us, he was bogged down by how it was all pieced together.

The fine irony of that little story is that only now, years later, do I understand how that feels, to be burdened by all the smallest things. By all the stuff we surround ourselves with. All that we ingest, all that we take in, all that we chase after. Soon enough everything adds up, swells to a burgeoning that fills one to the point of bursting.

That friend, I visited him in L.A. last year, and he seemed distracted by the temp job, the many plans to be upwardly mobile, the travails of getting it on in the big city. We filled the hours with catching up, taking great care to get the details of our stories exactly right. For all that it mattered, what I took away from that visit was a moment that was unadorned and still achingly clear: he and I, we held hands the entire time we walked that long strip of shops in Pasadena, in those last few moments at sundown, the sky above us violently saturated orange and indigo.

It was simply that, and not much more.

The Last Stand

It’s a Friday night, I am tired from a hellish work week, I am almost cross-eyed from staring at the monitor. I know  I need some distraction. So as I close up shop (desk, actually) and look to the weekend, I will start de-stressing by grabbing me some buttered popcorn and plopping my aching backside into a cool chair, and tuning out the world.

It’s The  Last Stand. XXX!

Out Of Cold Mountain

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A few weeks ago, I was able to finish an entire book. That I am even marking the act of being able to finish a book as an event tells how derailed I have been from the life I envisioned for myself. I used to think that at this point in my career, I should have more time for books, less time for meetings, to dos, and plans of action.

Alas, that is not to be. But I am not one dwell on the derailment, what I do is steal time away from the everyday to sneak in some reading. When a book turned up on my shelf a few weeks ago, I half resented, half appreciated its coming. Resented because it was one more reminder of my life not turning out the way I wanted it to. Appreciated, because well, a book is passage to another world, away from this one, as long as the pages are open, other worlds are open to me.

Cold Mountain is a strange series of journeys, moving through a war, conventions of the times, moving out of the self, moving towards another person. I learned new things from the book, a few almanac-style facts that I think would be useful to add to one’s skill sets: how to survive in the wilderness. I haven’t seen the film, so it’s good exercise to be able to form images without benefit of celluloid suggestion, to form scenes not colored by cinematic lighting. It is a cruel landscape and time that unfolds in Cold Mountain. It made me realize how, shaped by the elements, what we know in one culture shifts radically in another, owing in no small way to geography. What I know of winter is that it is cold and bleak. But the winter described by the book is much harsher, a season tempered by a gnawing hunger in the stomach and in the soul.

It made me think of journeys, the kind that take you out of yourself and what you know, into landscapes that are vaster, altered, alien. To be made aware of how much we can change as we move through time and through worlds imagined and real, that for me is the gentle nudge the book gives. Not everything that is still remains in place, and all that moving doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to get somewhere. But the journeying, sometimes, is all that matters.

A Shell That Sang

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And just because I can, I unleash before you a beach poem by e. e. cummings, one that has stayed with me over the years. It lives in my inner ear, has stayed there for so long its rhythmic flow has become an underlying heart beat.

“maggy and milly and molly and may”
e. e. cummings

maggy and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

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Bite That Apple

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I haven’t really felt the need to justify my love for Macs—yes, those gorgeous wonders of technology that just keep getting better and better with each new product. I just love ‘em, and I don’t pay much attention to those who attempt to argue the merits of one over the other.

I don’t bite, even when PC users heckle me about buying technology that seems to them, “way too fancy.”  I just smile while they agonize over crappy file structure, virus infections, and system crashes. I know how it is, I use PCs in the office because I have no choice. And then I go home to my Mac.

Now, the Apple guys have unleashed a whole new ad campaign that places Macs alongside PCs. It encapsulates all the things I’ve long been wanting to say to PC users, especially those who jostle my elbow as they sneak a look at the screen of my little ibook. The six commercials unfurl a blow-by-blow comparison that just leaves the competition, well, wanting.

Wanting a Mac, I bet.

Beach Bumming

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A hop, a skip, and a jump later, we arrive in lovely Bantayan Island. I squint under the bright sun and maneuver the strap of my one small bag over my shoulder.  Stepping gaily off the little port that extends a long arm into an impossibly blue sea, we flag down local transportation and begin the search for a place to stay.

Owing to impulse and a sketchy plan, we soon find ourselves traipsing one length of the island, trying to secure a roof over our heads before sunset. Small as it is, Bantayan that weekend was swamped with visitors—folks like us who were escaping everyday toil and taking advantage of a long weekend. The more astute booked accommodations way ahead. My friend and I however, were equal parts deranged, so we did not. We chose to leave our fate to the fish.

But the island gods (and the fish) were kind, and after a few dusty spins across the short resort row, our trusty ’sikad driver Orlando led us to a little place tucked away in the farmost corner of the beach. They had one—just one—cottage vacant. We grabbed it, of course. And so there we were:

We settled into a comfy round cottage with birds, foliage, and gauzy curtained windows that opened out into the beach.

   

After that, everything else took on a vague light for me. I remember there was soft, powdery sand between my toes. There was the heady smell of the sea, the hot summer sun on my skin. I think my feet automatically assumed this pair of slippers.

There were lounge chairs that let us look out on water that changed from clear to foamy emerald, to indigo blue, and maybe a few more colors as it spilled over the horizon. There was an expanse of azure sky that stretched for miles, pouf clouds that seemed to drift purposely, towards us.

 

Plopped down on the lounge chair in my lurid, fuschia sarong, I empty my mind of all worries, and just let the scene take over. When I look up, I see that the canopy of coconut trees have transformed themselves into green, swaying umbrellas.

There were no crowds, no itinerant souvenir merchants, no vexing videoke music, no garbage on the shore, no traffic, no beach volleyball tournaments. We lost track of time, marking the hours only by the change in the tides and the dictates of our appetites.

I remember eating this, for breakfast.

We did nothing but laze under the sun, plunge into the cool water, read salt-encrusted old magazines, sip cold beer, talk about random things, and stare out into the endless blue of sea and sky. At night, it seemed as though it was entirely possible for our sun-browned hands to touch the stars.

The trek to Bantayan Island was a loafing that was truly restorative, a balm to soothe the senses, a gentle way to jumpstart mind and heart. Sometimes, the best experiences open themselves up to us at the spur of the moment, become the sudden turn that diverts us from our usual path and into the realm of the unplanned. 

It felt great to just pack up and leave, to disconnect, even just for a little while. It was worth it, and yes, just on the brink of summer’s end, I managed to acquire for myself a marvelous tan.
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Love's Labor = Loaf?

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If all goes according to our sketchy plan, a friend and I might just be sipping some liquid similar to this a few hours from now. At a pretty little strip of beach. Can’t wait to squish some warm sand between my toes.

I might bring back a few pictures. Maybe a tan? Some strange souvenir? A few stories? Perhaps, if I am so inclined.

We love, we labor, we lose, and then sometimes, when we’re lucky—we loaf.

See ya all when I get back!

Missing Girl

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And all the people that you know
Will turn their heads as you go by
But you'll be hard to recognize
With the top down and the wind blowing, blowing

 You’re Not The Girl You Think You Are
- Neil Finn/Crowded House
from The Recurring Dream collection

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As I lay in bed last night, unable to sleep, one of those wee hours, substance-fueled (just caffeine, mind you) realizations hit me. It felt like a blow to the solar plexus, it knocked the wind out of me. I realized, bluntly, that I miss my old life. That life eight or so years ago, the years before the aggregate add-ons of marriage, kids, and general gravity had set in like barnacles.

I miss being single. I long for the driftless, purposeless, aimless ambling I used to be able to do. I did all that very well.

Eight years ago, I was living on my own, I had a job I was obsessed with and was very good at. I had a rowdy, amorphous set of friends that did nothing to keep me away from all sorts of mischief. I could go out with whomever I wanted, could stay up all hours, or not come home at all. For months. Each year I would go off on a two-week vacation, away from it all, without answering to anyone. Or not caring who asked. I plunged my face into warm seawater and did not come up, it seemed, for days. I lazed about in the sun and read trash ’til my brains were fried. I had no tan lines.

I drank like a fish, smoked like a chimney. I shaped clay with my hands. I wove baskets. I spent the better part of two weeks in a small town shouting out crisp directions to grown men with the aid of a megaphone. I helped maneuver a ten-wheeler truck out a shipyard in the midst of a union strike.

I turned my back to a boy, remorselessly. I wrote long, intimately unfolding letters, shamelessly. I said yes, often unexpectedly and even before being asked. I may have said no inappropriately, but I did not regret it. I have slept under the open sky, cold and alone, but not unhappy.

I was brash, sharp-witted, righteously indignant, tough as nails, quick to hate, but just as quick to love. I could hike over mountains, swim naked in the moonlight, wrap my slim legs around a man’s hips, absolutely. I could look God in the eye and grin.

I was the first to leave, sometimes the least to care. I could slam a car door and step out onto traffic, magnificently angry, and undeniably right.

I was fierce, I could flirt unmercifully and unequivocally, I was fearless.  Yes, I was all that and shades more, eight years ago. And I miss the girl that I once was.

Last night, the past crept into my bed in a cold hush, murmuring softly like a spurned lover, still hopeful.

This is in the life that I have now, I realize that and I own up to it. Certainly, I’m not knocking motherhood and the brief attempt at marriage. Or even the job that’s had me (dis)placed just so. It’s a life that, for the most part, I deliberately set out to define. I realize that it’s not ideal, but then neither is it undesired.

I just miss being someone else, is all.
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All Together Now, Ambiguously

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Send someone to love me
I need to rest in arms
Keep me safe from harm
In pouring rain

Give me endless summer
Lord I fear the cold
Feel I'm getting old
Before my time 

Better Man, Robbie Williams
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The universe is sending me mysterious signals, and it’s using a Brit pop star to channel in. This is today’s surprise endless loop on iTunes.

A boy song. Or could be a girl song, just as well. Gimme endless summer, yes gimme! The pic above is from the William’s Intensive Care album, which features  tarot cards designed by comic book creators Grant Morrison (Animal Man, Doom Patrol, The Invisibles) and Frank Quitely (Sandman: Endless Nights, New X-Men, We3). Instant hipness, uhuh. Lots of italics.

By the way, that Robbie, when he’s not warbling about not wanting to “Rock, DJ” or some such inanity—why, the boy can actually sing.

Look Out, Headbutt!

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Romping with my boys this weekend took up all my energies. We wreaked havoc on the beddings and most of the furniture. It was more demanding than a 3-hour session at the gym! They squealed and shrieked and pounced on me. I was a goner, no match for their lithe limbs.

During a particularly vigorous tickle and tumble, Jethro bent from the torso and gave me (albeit not purposely) a backward headbutt—right on the nose bridge. Awww.  I saw black, I saw stars. An ice pack was called into duty. My nose swelled. Good thing I’ve never had rhinoplasty or else my nose would have migrated sideways, or worse, to my forehead.

Throughout all this, Jethro didn’t even blink, he just kept on playing. Literally, a hardheaded little kid. Well, he’s not my son for nothing.