WORK MAKES ME LOOK GOOD

It occurred to me today (not for the first time) that my relative socioeconomic poverty status is tied up with a lot of emotional and attitudinal shit. So what?

I just got back from work – cookies all day. I thanked the plants growing here around me for their lovely presence. I think they received my thanks. I’m so grateful!

Endlessness played out with words. I’m so excited!

So I hope I can work this out – earning money, taking care of myself.

In my imagination I see myself looking like a chicken – a really strange chicken – knees and elbows all out. Anyway – how thankful I am for them – my limbs.

And yes, there are some things I would not mind having – mainly clothes. But no – more than that – what? It’s like I want love but I want more than just love. I want total beyond everything amazement – and someone to keep me company.

I can’t think of what else to do but work – work is my best asset – work makes me look good – as if work is going to get me what I want. It isn’t, is it? Maybe drugs.

(Drawing: "We Work and We Wish" by Rachel Perrine)

WHEN A FANTASY GOES WRONG

For a while I was the assistant to my boss at the Institute
for Physical and Mental Well Being –
where I worked for a couple years –
in New Mexico.

My boss was one of several co-founders –
we called him Max – his boxing name –
Maximally –
his real name was Leonard. Anyway.

I was in charge of arranging all of his appointments –
Max made sure everyone meditated
ate their vegetarian meals
and walked or swam once a day.

Most people really loved Max.

Well I got to spend a lot of time with Max.
I was falling in love with Max –
I guess –
even though he was married – with kids – and grandkids!

I felt pretty damn certain he was in love with me too – his gaze –
his responsiveness –
all the mutual everything.

At one point – what the hell – I was so pumped by all this love –
vibrating – I went to the store
and bought a pack of condoms.

Yeah.

But the weirdest thing– in the midst of my love –
when I tried to picture sex with him –
which I really wanted –
I thought –
I kept visualizing a brutal thing–
my legs held apart and–
him –
is this what you want? – over and over –
is this what you want? is this what you want? –
not waiting for an answer –
not kind – and I couldn’t answer – stunned and silent.
Is this what you want?

(Photo by Alison Bank)

EATING MAKES ME HAPPY

I really can't eat a dessert a day and not gain weight -- not possible -- and unfortunate! In the bakery, we make so many delicious pastries and pies and creams and parfaits with berries and tarts with berries and kiwis and mangoes and meringues with hazelnuts and custards with champagne and cobblers with bright red fruit. AND we layer cakes with berries and walnuts and ganache and make cheesecakes with ginger and praline and sorbets from cantaloupe and watermelon and honeydew with Calvados or vodka or cherry sorbet with Kirchwasser. We also make huge pans of tiramisu with lots of booze and macadamia or pine nut tarts with marzipan and caramel oh my it goes on and on . . . pistachio phillo this or banana apricot that and pecan-chocolate this and . . . oh my I have to stop.

Yesterday my boss, Michelle, made cannoli -- whew -- guess how many I ate before she stopped me -- five -- whew! The incredible thing about her cannoli is how light they seem -- it's the ricotta. Still, after five cannoli I did not need to eat anything else for the rest of the day .

Nothing like weight gain to remember the pains of the teenager inside. I don't know about you but as soon as I turned fifteen -- the time I left home -- I gained like 30 pounds. It was crazy. I went from being a stick to having very round buns.

Of course being out of the house I was free -- free! -- to eat whatever I wanted. Oreos -- oh boy do I love Oreos. French fries -- oh boy do I love french fries!

I remember a month or so before leaving, I came home with a bag of fries and sat in the kitchen with my salty greasy treat and my mom comes in. "Your hips are spreading from those fries" and pokes her sharp finger into my side. Was that all she said? It doesn't seem all that bad, but wow -- those fries stopped tasting very good. For a little while.

Not that food is my only vice -- alas no. But there are times when it feels so right to just eat and eat.


(Drawing credit: "Obesity" by Rachel Perrine)

CHEWING GUM

Nothing says goodness and light like chewing gum. It's cheap. It's fat free -- heck -- it's sugar free. What is it then? Never mind.

I chew a lot of gum -- buy it in bulk -- keep packs all over the room. I often have chewed gum in little wads of paper just waiting to get thrown away in my purse. In fact, one of those little wads fell out of my purse -- or pocket -- and somehow got smeared onto the floor.

It just so happens that I have a decent set of tools -- I'm very do-it-yourself-if-at-all-possible. So I have a flat scraper and it was the perfect tool for the gum.

Chewing gum tastes good. I like the fruity flavors. It makes a good dessert. It cleans your teeth.

O and according to the link above (click title), chewing gum reduces stress and increases alertness.

Chewing gum, I love you.

RED SATIN SHEETS

This bakery where I work is attached to the back of a restaurant, so we not only cook and sell our baked goods to people on the streets, but we also sell our desserts to the people eating in the restaurant. I’ve met all the line cooks and all the prep cooks from the restaurant. They come through the bakery on their way outside for a break. One guy, John – a line cook – is pretty handsome and very flirtatious. He has invited me over several times to play cards and hang out at his house. So last night I go – what the hell.

He gives me a beer and we hang out with his roommate and some other people who are there – I’m pretty sure we didn’t get introduced –but that's beside the point. We don’t play cards, actually. We just drink beer and hang out. I honestly don’t remember a thing we talked about – probably because I didn’t say a word.

Later he invites me into his room and I go in. I see he has – I’m telling you the truth – a water bed with red satin sheets. I sit on the edge and wait for him to come out of the bathroom. He comes over and we kiss. I feel nothing but don’t stop. We get in bed. Then -- guess what. Apparently he feels nothing either. We roll apart – as much as anyone can roll away from anyone in a waterbed – and pretend to sleep.

Next morning I reach my hand out and he slaps it away – like OW! Ok! I get up and dressed and leave. As I start my car, his roommate is standing in the door staring out at me. I feel like I must have missed something. I have no idea what happened. He was not at all interested in being with me – so what's up with the flirting and why did he invite me over and -- you know -- I also wonder if his roommate might have been his boyfriend. Was he? Why didn’t he tell me? Did he think he was interested but then he realized he wasn’t?

Me? I don’t have a clue. I mostly felt his lack of interest. Maybe we needed to get to know each other better – really I thought that didn’t matter.

STUPID THINGS

There’s something you would need to know about me – if we were to hang out – it might happen that you’d come to my door and even though I was home, I wouldn’t answer.

I sit every day – that means I meditate -- sometimes several times a day. If I’m going out at night, I’ll sit before I go out. It really helps. So if you come to my door – how unlikely right? – but anyway I would keep sitting. I don’t know a lot of people – so my social life is kind of solo. I go out, but alone – so hard! Sitting helps me get it together – and keep it together.

Like the other night I was listening to these beautiful Flamenco guitar players in the lobby / bar of a nearby hotel. They were so passionate. I was standing by myself in the back – leaning against a kind of rail – by myself but there were others in a small group next to me – all older though. I had on a short green dress and black tights – not risqué at all – but cute! This guy – chubby – drunk – tries to convince me to come to his hotel room. And remember, I have like ONE friend in town and I am perpetually lonely so I totally WANT company. But no way am I going to this guy’s room. I mean come on.

So I am friendly and smile because I don’t want this guy to get upset – drunk people get upset so easily – the worst! And the problem is he’s not getting the message – what with me smiling so much I’m sure – I really smile too much. Finally he drops it and leaves. And then I realize that the waiters have been watching this whole event. Were they watching in a protective way? I have no idea. They’ve never bothered to smile or introduce themselves to me. Whatever.

The point is I sit before I go out so I don’t do something really stupid like go to a stranger’s room just because I’m lonely. I have all these experiences, but I don’t forget how to watch out for myself.

Not that I haven’t done stupid things. Sheesh. I have. Soon grasshopper. Soon.

CROWS

One time I was driving with a guy I was seeing – should I give him a name? . . . Nah. We were on the back roads bumping along – it wasn’t paved and his shocks were useless. It was February and there was nothing growing and the sky and every shrub and stubble of plant fiber on the ground was grey.

In the fields around us were hundreds – maybe thousands – of crows. Crows on the ground and in the air – crows flying back and forth in overlapping black lines – a layer of crow hovering 100 feet above the ground. It was a convergence of what seemed like every crow in the four surrounding states. Cawing.

We were riding along in his Chevy Nova – also black – he had spray painted it to cover the brightly colored hippy drawings the previous owner had painted on it.

In the road I could see the swollen corpse of a possum – a big one – maybe 14 pounds. We’re not driving very fast so we could have avoided it. But ex-boyfriend drives us directly over the rotten body. It is unbelievably disgusting and he – him – this guy is laughing and mocking my disgust – eeeeeeewwwww, that’s soooooooo groooooooossss – as if the smell doesn’t bother him at all. We get out and possum flesh – which is mostly liquid and jelly at this point – is smeared all over the fender around the front tire. His laughter goes on and on while I ask him a hundred times over, what did you do that for? And what the hell is so damn funny?

I once had a friend who decided to move to Arizona because she saw two crows cut a sharp left turn in the sky and head in that direction.

IT HELPS TO WRITE ABOUT IT

Again with the headache. It started at the bakery -- the new job is going great -- where they had me make 55 little ramekins of flan. I love flan. It has this borderline burned flavor from the sugar -- not your usual desert. As you know, flan is baked in a water bath which makes it all muy tranquilo for the flan. But the little ramekins are so shallow and the pans we use for the water bath are also shallow -- the whole thing jiggling and slopping like crazy putting it into the oven -- well the water evaporates pretty quickly and if you don't put more water in the water bath then not so tranquilo for the flan. Honestly I don't know what would actually happen if we just let the things bake without water.

So I'm standing over the open oven with an 8 cup pitcher of boiling water which I have to carefully pour into the water bath pan without getting any into the flan cups and I'm sweating bullets. Nevermind that it is still winter. It is probably close to 200 degrees standing over that open oven -- OPEN OVEN! -- with boiling water -- you get the picture.

Ordinarily I really like to sweat -- I think it is very cleansing -- and one of my Korean acupuncture Buddhist healer friends told me sweating is good for the liver -- but this kind of sweating gave me a migraine. I know -- dehydration. Whatever. I was drinking tons of water. And yes peeing too. Clear and copious. But still this headache got so big I couldn't see. My peripheral vision turned all white. I had to lie down in the manager's office with a cold washcloth over my eyes. That helped for as long as no one walked into the office.

Later at home I called Sunny to come over to help me. First thing she says when I pull the towel off my eyes -- I'm lying in bed in the dark and still need a towel over my eyes -- "your head has gotten bigger!" Which is exactly what it felt like.

This was yesterday. I still kind of have the ambiance of a headache. What the hell is going on? I probably have a brain tumor.

NOTE FROM ELEANOR

I'm trying to delay posting anything right now because I am hoping to see the fruits of a new collaboration. The artist Rachel Perrine has agreed to work with me to supply some visual work as an accompaniment to the blog. I have supplied her with some words from upcoming posts:

spill
tossing bread into a snowy field
flamenco

and I forget the other. But this should be tremendous. She is supremely talented and her work is exciting and just great great great. I can't wait to share it with you in the Search for Red Tea Pot.

Best,
Eleanor

TOSSING BREAD INTO A SNOWY FIELD

One time I baked three loaves of bread. This was a long time ago, before I had heard about this baking job (starts tomorrow!) I wrapped one loaf up and took it over to Thom's house. He didn't ask me in even though that's what I really wanted. I gave him the bread and left.

Later he told me that he had chucked the bread into the snowy field behind his house. He also said that he didn't have much food and kind of regretted tossing the bread.

I remember how moody he was, but I also thought that it was something that I had done. At the time, it had to do with getting to know some friends of his and getting along with them pretty well. I thought he was unhappy about that.

Later in our friendship, after I left New Mexico and we would write letters he was more consistently loving. And this would never cease to surprise me. Even at the end, a week or so before he died, he said to me, "you are my prize."

RAY AND LIZZY

Sunny sometimes watches her neighbor's kids Ray -- 5 -- and Lizzy -- 7. Today Lizzy was puking and so Sunny called me to hang with Ray while she dealt with Lizzy.

I set Ray up with some paints and a carboard box on Sunny's floor.

"Don't get any paint on Miss Sunny's carpet, OK?"

Five minutes later: "Red, I got paint on the carpet."

"Oh no, Ray. What am I going to tell Miss Sunny?"

Moment of Silence.

"Tell her I'm an idiot."

WHERE DO I COME FROM?

Hey check it out. I've been through a few hells lately. Man it's so exciting when they're finally over. Next week I see a woman about a job in a restaurant -- baking -- sweet! I mean where do these changes come from? So cool.

It's weird to have a future. Baking -- with a woman -- and others. Not real. Therefore, I'll do it!

I've been doing pretty much nothing lately. I do have another job but it's not enough -- cooking and making beds at a B + B twice a week. Still behind on some bills -- don't worry the room is covered. But there's no money for aquarium supplies. I changed the water and things seem to be stabilizing. The fish are swimming faster. That's good. But only three left. Actually four.

It's all completely perfect. Stuck in my miserable petty little self. Then transcend -- new job.

I feel like a fart in paradise.