the spirit of the staircase.

John and I are leaving for our little four-day (and a night) vacation tomorrow after I get off work. We're meeting my parents in Williams, AZ, and then riding a train to the Grand Canyon. We'll be heading home on Wednesday.

I'm really excited, even though getting ready for such a short trip has been considerably more stressful than I would have ever imagined. Not to mention that when we get back, summer will officially be over. No one else is going to come to visit until October.

I got an incredible sunburn on Monday, at Bolsa Chica State Beach. We were there during a red tide...so that was a little weird. I'm peeling now. It's disgusting, but at least it doesn't hurt to move anymore.

If you have a minute, check this out. You'll like it. Really.

i'll try again later.

It's been dark in the mornings this week. It looks like it would be raining. Yesterday, still in bed, I heard the water of John's shower and saw black tree trunks and shaking wet leaves on the backs of my own eyelids.

On days like this, when I can't justify the darkness of the blinds to the quietness of the inevitable sunshine, I grow fitful and restless. I pick at books like a child would pick at a scab. What's that? What's going on? It's starting to bleed... Cover it up, ignore it, do something else.

For a few moments earlier, I was reading Moon Tide, bought at something like 50 or 70 per cent off in hardcover from a bookstore downtown that's going out of business (no matter how I look at it, not a happy purchase--like taking flowers off a grave, then realizing they were fake anyway). It's not the fault of the book, of course, and I feel like I should nourish it, caress it, apologize to my new ward, rescued from certain doom: by me. And it wasn't the only one. (I haven't read the others yet either. They're stacked up on my coffee table, at attention, waiting for direction.)

I think I read three pages. Last night I read an entire chapter of Seeking Rapture, which I found to be both enthralling, because Kathryn Harrison writes like she's twisting a poem around her finger, and too adult, too boring for me to want to touch it again this morning. But an entire chapter, nonetheless. Moon Tide didn't seem to have much of a chance, pitted against my desire to open my mouth wide under a rainshower (complete with thunder, please) and my confusion as to why "sunshine" has an automatic positive connotation. How do I say "sunshine" and make it mean "relentless"? Dawn Clifton Tripp, whose book bled a little on me this morning, I've decided, had no other choice but to write books. And stacks of them. She went to Harvard! Her name--just look at it! She has Lucille Clifton and Valerie Tripp right there in her name. Dawn. Relentless. Searing the horizon. Dawn. No, I can't do it with "dawn," either.

It was happening in Massachusetts, what little I read, and the descriptions really did remind me of New England. Sometimes I forget that all my memories of New England are wrapped up in one vacation. It seems like an expanse of time. Boston! Maine! They stand out so differently than European countries that bleed into each other in my mind, probably because I saw them when I was in such desperate need of just one more hour of sleep.

My most vivid memory is the mosquitoes. Large, imposing, greedy bugs. My neck would itch and I would absent-mindedly scratch, bursting their bodies and finding blood on my fingertips and under my nails. Disgusting.

I remember a pool in Canada. I only know it wasn't raining because I am in the pool, looking out at my aunt, swatting at mosquitoes and looking like a Scottish dancer. But somehow I remember it with rain hovering somewhere in the background.

Maybe it rained the next day.

it really is a train wreck.

So, today, I got the worst. Haircut. Ever.

Here I am in a bad movie with Christina Ricci



It was really traumatic. Really. I came home crying. I almost cried in front of the lady that cut it. I didn't though.

On the plus side, if Sharon and Susan want a third, I'm their girl!




I called my mom, on the way to work (on my day off because I can't say no when someone asks me to do them a favor), and complained the whole way there. She couldn't even see it...and my sister called me tonight. She'd heard. Okay. Drumroll, please.



I could still cry.

I went out with the girls from work tonight to this awesome Italian restaurant. Dakota Fanning was there. And I had bad hair.

eighties flashback.

I just watched Dirty Dancing. I think that's only the second time I've ever seen it all the way through.

The first time was on a bus during my junior year of high school on the way to the Cincinnati Zoo. I remember being really upset that we couldn't find the only sleeping bag my family ever owned on the one occasion I actually needed it...because my biology class was spending the night. In the zoo. I took a garbage bag full of blankets and what my dad, trying to make it sound like a good idea, called "carpet remnants" (you know, instead of "hunks of carpet I found in the basement that never made it to being part of the living room floor"). My biggest worry was that I would look ridiculous showing up with my garbage bag and reject carpet. To my surprise (and utter joy), basically no one in Houston County, least of all high school girls, owns sleeping bags. It was very out of character for me to be so embarrassed. Even now, I can't work out what it was that I was so worried about.

And then, when I was there...I ended up finding out that my best friend had recently lost her virginity. In the back of a pick-up truck. And I was worried about some carpet scraps.

What a weird and horrible experience that turned out to be. The zoo was really nice though.

In 1984 or '85, I think, my sister took baton lessons. I was amazingly jealous. It's possible I haven't been that jealous since then. Of course, I was about four years old at the time and I could really only feel one emotion at a time (like Tinker Bell) so I guess they all felt stronger then. At any rate, Amy learned to do these amazing things....well...it seemed that way. Really all she learned how to do was twirl a stick in one hand. But it was a really cool stick!

When I was a little older, I got cheap batons at toy stores, but they never had enough weight at the ends to work right. I'd just end up hitting myself. Usually on the side of my head.

Another part of this class resulted in her learning how to dance with a streamer. Or is it called a ribbon? It was gold on one side and silver on the other, which I always associated with the friends song I'd heard my sister's Girl Scout troop sing, "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other's gold." I'm not sure how, probably pity, but I ended up with a streamer, too. Only mine was red and silver and was taped directly to a wooden stick, whereas my sisters was fastened to a plastic stick with a little chain so that it could move around easier. I was so proud of that thing.

Then, in 1987, when Dirty Dancing came out, my sister bought the soundtrack. That was the year I started kindergarten. She was in sixth grade...and seemed, to me, oddly fascinated with mix tapes. In reality, I doubt she even made two. I was just amazed at this, another Cool Thing my sister could do.

Me? I was dancing with my red streamer to Mickey and Sylvia singing "Love Is Strange." "Baybayy Ohoh Baayybbayy...Myy Sweeet Baybay...You're the one." Strange, tortured guitar chords and pluckings ensue. It's amazing to me how much that one tape plays as the background to my entire childhood.

I remember my sister saying that her friend Heather liked "She's Like the Wind." I just found out Patrick Swayze sang that song. He sings?!

Feel her breath on my face
Her body close to me
Can't look in her eyes
She's out of my league
Just a fool to believe
I have anything she needs
She's like the wind.

I watched the movie tonight and it was very strange for me. When I saw it last, I was about the same age Jennifer Grey is in the movie. When Baby finds out what sordid things are going on behind her perfect world, I was sitting next to the friend that had told almost everyone else about her "experience." Except me. She was afraid I would judge her, our families not so different from those who would've gone to Kellerman in the summer of '63. And yet, she wanted everyone else to know that the self-proclaimed wallflower she used to be had died and they could now accept her. Only they didn't.

The music still strikes me as being at some moments magical and at others mysterious. It will be impossible for me to outgrow Patrick Swayze. Impossible. And yet, the setting doesn't fit the music. The early 60's to the soundtrack of twenty years later? And for that music to win an Oscar? Really?

That's not to say that the movie isn't good. It is. And I feel strangely disobedient watching it. One of Amy's friends had a sleepover and that's where Amy saw it. The friend's mom talked to my mom. This was a big deal. I was wildly curious. What could possibly happen to the girl in the pink dress on the cover of the tape I listened to on repeat? What was it? What had she seen that I hadn't?

That night at the zoo, cuddled up in carpet and picnic blankets, the same questions floated through my head.

I never did learn how to twirl a baton properly.

love letter.

I just made reservations for our Christmas trip. We're flying to Nashville on December 26th and back to Burbank on January 3rd. We've officially purchased the tickets. We're going to do it. I'm not totally sure if doing it five months in advance was particularly necessary...but I'd rather have them now and not have to worry about it later.

John criss-crossed all over "the Southland," as the newspeople call it, today, stock-piling work for his two jobs. Both of which require, essentially, that he handcuff himself to our kitchen table and draw and shade until his calloused hands wear away to nothingness.

On the plus side, the lady he's worked for the longest lent him an electric pencil sharpener! Jackpot! All our sharpening needs have fallen by the wayside!

Anyway, I was home all day. And I cleaned. I've cooked lately. And now I've cleaned. I'm either becoming domesticated (sounds like a pet, doesn't it?) or my willpower is improving.

When I'm alone, especially for hours at a time, my mind sort of flows as a narrative. I think things in full sentences, which I don't usually do. I mean, usually I don't have to. But sometimes my mind spits things out in paragraphs, like I'm writing the story of my day. Or my whole life. For some reason, I find it to be somewhat disconcerting.

Technically, it's already tomorrow. That is, it's still Monday night for me, even though it's Tuesday. But, tomorrow, Tuesday, I'll be thinking about my sister a lot. Her oldest son's sixth birthday would have been tomorrow (today), Aug 2. Her youngest just turned two on Saturday and Colton starts Kindergarten this month. Colton will turn five in September. He can already read. I have no idea what Charlie can do... I'm missing all of that.

I like to think about Calvin, the nephew I never really had, sometimes. For years, I would think his name and just start crying. And sometimes, even now, when I think about having my own kids, I think of him and how scared I am of the same thing happening to my someday baby and to John and I. But mostly I just think of his sweet face and how I think he probably knows everyone in the family better than anyone else. He can curl up in his Grandma Penny's lap whenever she's upset about all the weird and uncomfortable things that are going on in her life...and just be with her. And maybe she won't know it, but I think that helps her. He can help Charlie keep his balance and help Colton know what to say. He can go to my mom's Sunday school class or sit with her on the nights she's home alone, wishing that silly daughter of hers would come home from California. He can ride along with my dad all over the country and in my brother-in-law's cop car, late at night on lonely country roads. He can watch my sister laugh with his brothers and take her beautiful smile with him always.

I don't necessarily believe in angels. And I don't have any clear or strong convictions about heaven. I know, to an extent, any discussion or speculation about what our loved ones are doing now that they're no longer living is going to be contrived and cliched.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how going to church is such an important thing for me. I've always gone. It's one of the only ways now where I can see a piece of home. And I see more and more that not many people I meet in LA go to church or are even spiritual at all, whatever the persuasion. It just seems like all the people I was close to back home, if they doubted organized religion or just didn't believe in God, they were still spiritual people aligned with the idea of Something Bigger (many times criticizing Christianity for trying to explain or limit that force). That doesn't strike me as being the case here. And maybe it's just that I grew up in the Bible Belt. Or maybe it's just the particular selection of people I know in LA. At any rate, I feel the need to cling to my faith. I'm not an evangelical. I don't go around preaching the gospel or even really mentioning it. I despise the viewpoints of the fundamentalist religious right in this country. And yet, I'm growing increasingly aware of being almost embarrased to say that, yes, I do believe in God and, yes, I do believe the part about Jesus and heaven and living forever. It never occured to me not to believe. I've only ever questioned myself and the church and my country and society. I'm still full of questions. But I don't want to be embarrassed. Especially on a day like today. Without spirituality in some form, I honestly don't think I'd be able to cope.

I don't have to understand it. I just know there are times when Calvin comes to see me, too. When I miss the rain or the humidity or the trees of home and want to cry and don't...someone is always holding my hand.