Savannah Lee

Okay, so I was watching an episode of HouseHunters on the website.

And it was about a couple just a few years out of college, one of whom was studying to get into grad school...who had decided to BUY A DESIGNER HOUSE IN SCOTTSDALE FOR $300,000.

Their wish list: three bedrooms, two bathrooms, space for their dog, space for the guy to pursue his metalworking hobby, some "antique touches," a big kitchen, and a pool.

OK, I realize this is a rant, but won't you please walk back with me to 1991. That was the year I entered grad school.

Here's the number of my fellow grad students who lived in big houses: One. She was a 40-year-old mother of two kids in junior high school whose husband was a manager.

Here's the number of my fellow grad students who lived in ANY kind of house: One. She was a 40-year-old mother of a toddler who had purchased a small house with her husband years before when she was working as a city bus driver, for $40K.

Here's where the rest of us lived: In often-direly-crappy 700- to 800-square-foot apartments.

Why?

BECAUSE WE WERE YOUNG AND JUST STARTING OUT!!!

I think there's a lot to be said for starting out small and cozy. My husband had a model railroading hobby when we lived in a 760-square-foot apartment; it would never have occurred to us to claim we needed a bonus room or oversized garage to accommodate it. He cultivated a tiny N-scale layout on a typing desk, which was next to the computer desk, which was next to our table. That was one half of our living area. The other wall had our couch and bookcases. When his layout got too big for that, he built a new one in our bedroom, snaking around the bed, the exercise bike, and the boxes. When you're 21 and 22 (our ages when we moved in), what more do you need?

But today, it seems that only a palace will do. I have seen so many couples on HouseHunters complaining bitterly that their thousand-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath apartments are just not big enough for them. We're talking about two people here. They claim they need a bigger office, a bigger bedroom, more space for their hobbies, a better laundry area, more counter space in the kitchen so they can really cook, space to entertain, a big enough wall to mount their plasma. Seriously, who do these people think they are? The royal couple of some modern kingdom, burdened with appearances and affairs of state?

I'm sorry to be so grouchy. But I think that expectations have gone way out of control in this country. Do we have to do it all, and do it all right now?

I grew up on the words of a fictionalized Che Guevara to a fictionalized Evita:

A shame you did it all at twenty-six

There are no mysteries now

Nothing can thrill you, no one fulfill you

If we are to believe his suicide note, that's exactly why Kurt Cobain (27) killed himself.

#

I'm probably just being a killjoy. I grew up with a major killjoy, someone whose idea of dinner conversation was to rant about Sri Lanka or Rwanda or Somalia or just plain death in general. I can be just like them sometimes.

So I'm probably just channeling my gloomy, angry relative. If you can buy a $300K house with a pool, why the hell not? Well...there are a lot of reasons, actually, but whatever.

I guess what I'd like to suggest is that there are also reasons to go the other way...to cozy up in a little place hardly bigger than the dorm rooms where you and your sweetie started out (if that is your story), to have the 'workshop' five inches from the 'office' right next to the 'dining area' one foot across from the 'family room.' To start off in a cocoon.

It's said that that's how some species grow their wings.

--The swelling on my finger is going down. (I banged it in the door yesterday.)
--I just heard about an upcoming lecture on the Sanskrit names of yoga asanas.
--My yoga teacher will be teaching on the 4th of July. ("It will be an explosive class," he promised.)
--My daughter just got her ears pierced.
--So far, it hasn't been beastly hot yet around here.
--My relatives are doing well.

I was never really a Michael Jackson fan. Like everyone under thirty in the early 1980s, I was awed by "Thriller," but I never developed a serious fan thing for him. I preferred Eurythmics and Prince; Culture Club and the Police; artists who aimed towards the edge of the mainstream cultural barn rather than the dead middle.

(And of course Def Leppard, just for the sheer awesome CRUNCH of "Too Late for Love" and "Rock of Ages.")

Anyhow, so I never really paid very much attention to Michael Jackson...except when "Man in the Mirror" came on. Can I tell you something? I HATE "Man in the Mirror." Hate it, hate it, hate it. But Jackson sang it so compellingly that, goddamn it, I listened every time. "They follow each other on the wind, you see, 'cause they've got no place to be--that's why I'm starting with me." He infused those banal words with such meaning and emotion that...well.

Same thing with "Dirty Diana." HATED that song. Stupidest song in the world. But... "I said un-lock the door, 'cause I for-got the key, she said it's not comin' back, because you're stickin' with me..." The urgency, the tension, the tragedy in his delivery, Jesus, he had to be one of the absolutely greatest song interpreters of all time.

Moving right along! I never really paid very much attention to Michael Jackson, except when his native genius was forcing me to listen to songs I hated.

And then my daughter became a dance student.

Over the past five years, I have watched a LOT of dance. Dance on DVD. Dance on stage. Dance in the classroom. Dance, dance, dance. I have witnessed many impromptu tutorials from dance teachers for the benefit of the parents. ("This is me pointing...this is me ON point.") I have developed the rudiments of an ability to assess dance from a technical standpoint.

And I can say that Michael Jackson was literally inhuman in his physical abilities and should be remembered as absolutely one of the greatest dancers of all time.

That he was able to dance like he did, with that degree of speed, precision and articulation married to that degree of fluidity and grandeur, and to do it WHILE HE WAS SINGING--and singing really well--is beyond unbelievable.

Yet in the assessments of his career, all I have seen is a load of pretentious garbage about how he was black and white, woman and man, blah blah blah. People, save all that for Prince. Remember Michael Jackson as one of the absolutely greatest dancers of ALL FREAKING TIME.

Because he was.

ED.: Upon rereading this entry--after I published it, of course--I saw a degree of repetitive phraseology that made me nearly faint with shame. Though I blog more or less off the cuff, I do try to make a nod to decent editing. Today, I did not get the job done (or maybe I just noticed that I did not get the job done). I make no excuses. Sorry.

...Caring for my sick relative, I mean.

Take, for example, the fact that it was another relative who turned out to need most of the attention.

OTHER RELATIVE (Returning home from the library): I almost passed out this morning.

ME: Are you okay? Did you call your doctor?

O.R.: No.

ME: We'd better call him!

O.R.: It's nothing.

ME: Where's your home blood pressure cuff? Take your blood pressure.

O.R. (Triumphantly): 100/55!

ME: Uh....that's kind of low.

O.R.: No it's not.

ME: Yeeees it is. I'm calling your doctor.

O.R.: No need to be hasty! I know what's causing it. I'll just start cutting my pill in half.

ME: Um, people aren't supposed to adjust their own medications...

O.R.: Yes they are.

ME (Calling pharmacist): Are people supposed to adjust their own blood pressure medicine?

PHARMACIST: Absolutely positively not.

ME (To relative): "Absolutely positively not."

O.R.: Well, that may be true for other people, but not for me.

ME: CALL! YOUR! DOCTOR!

O.R.: I know what I'll do, I'll write him a note.

ME: Hold still while I kill you.

RELATIVE WHO IS ACTUALLY SICK: Can I have some lunch?

All I can say is, it's a good thing I meditate.

(And I did say it. A lot.)

Hey guys--

This morning I found out about an illness in the family. The person in question should be fine, but they need help right now, and I'm going out to be with them.

The day has been spent in last-minute preparations, by which I mean me running around yelling "Where's my travel toothbrush?" and "Why aren't my clothes dry? I stuck them in the dryer two hours ago!" (It wasn't even a big load, either. I'm pissed.)

I am not sure when I'll get back. This is one of those "life really interrupts blogging, and everything else" scenarios. Especially since I don't have internet access where I'm going. When I can, I'll call my husband and dictate something for him to post.

("Where is she going that she doesn't have internet access? Outer Mongolia?" you are asking. "A long-abandoned room carved out of tunnels beneath Des Moines, Iowa? A lonely campsite in the Tetons?" I will leave you to ponder such mysteries as you may.)

Until then...

When I visited home recently, I found the skirt I wore to Catholic high school in the attic. And: it fit. The waist was a little tight, but doable.

I have to say, I cracked up laughing. "Hey Mom, look! I have hit the Female Jackpot. I can fit into clothes I wore in high school."

"There is clearly nothing else to which to aspire," she agreed with an air of utmost solemnity.

"Yes, I'm done. We should pickle me or preserve me in amber."

#

When I informed my husband, however, that I could still wear my Catholic schoolgirl skirt, he didn't seem to see the humor. In fact, there was an odd silence on the other end of the phone.

He eventually replied, "Can you."

His voice sounded funny too. Why, you'd almost think...

.....OHHHHH.

Before that, I had only been focused on the ridiculous surprise of being roughly the same size as I was twenty-five years ago.

(And I do mean "roughly." That waistband is snug. It doesn't dig in, but it doesn't give me any wiggle room either. No longer could I tuck a turtleneck and button-down in there, the way I used to. On the other hand, my current stomach has actual muscle tone, something completely foreign to the decadently soft, clammy flesh under my fingers every morning as I yanked my layers down.)

But anyhow, like most women on the North American continent, I had been solely obsessed with what this meant about my physical dimensions, not what it meant about the male imagination. To which I promptly turned my attention, as the souls of the more rigid type of feminist shrieked and groaned in agony.

"I'll bring it home," I promised my sweetie.

"Ngh," he replied.

#

Actually I ended up having to mail it, because I'd packed too small a bag to fit the skirt in. So it just arrived the other day.

The exact nanosecond that our daughter left for a sleepover at a friend's house, my husband very very casually mentioned, "So let's see the skirt."

I opened the box and brought it out.

He frowned. "It's...it's not NAUGHTY. It's not a naughty LENGTH."

"Honey," I said, "this is an actual Catholic girl's school uniform."

"Right. Right."

"Besides," I said. "If those movies knew what they were doing, they'd use actual uniforms, and at the right length. Look." I put on the skirt. "See how the pleats open over the thighs? We always centered the skirt just so, so our thighs would kick them out." I showed him what this looked like when we walked. The skirt was alive, constantly falling back as we moved. Highlighting us.

"Let's have sex," he said.

#

This has been a public service announcement to all families who are considering putting their daughters in Catholic school on the grounds that it will make them less attractive to guys. To wit: dream on, folks.

It's not the divorce. It's the worldview.

There I was, innocently avoiding work. ("It won't hurt if I make the call ten minutes from now...ten more minutes...ten more minutes after that...tomorrow..."--the worst part about all this being the fact that it was absolutely true.)

Anyhow, there I was, innocently avoiding work by reading "Broadsheet" on Salon, when lo and behold, here was an essay about an essay about divorce. On the grounds, apparently, that the writer's marriage had grown too boring.

"In the cluttered forest of my 40s"

(a sweet phrase btw)

"what I can't authentically reconjure is the ancient dream of brides...Given my staggering working mother's to-do list, I cannot take on another arduous home-and-self-improvement project, that of rekindling our romance."

So she apparently went out and got another one. Romance, that is.

Okay, see...I have no problem with this author having an affair and/or ditching her life partner. It happens. Life is like that.

My problem is with this idea that someone "in the cluttered forest of my 40s" (I love that phrase) COULD or SHOULD or would even WANT to "reconjure the ancient dream of brides," which is a whole different enchilada.

Say it with me. Life...has seasons. And by the time you're in your mid to late forties, you may well have the body of a twenty-year-old, but god help you if you have the soul of one.

Feeling can creep up on us at any time and unravel everything we thought we knew.

But romance, the dream of brides, that special light in a young woman's eyes yada yada yada, that belongs to a specific period of life which (mercifully, in my opinion) passes away and never returns except through helping one's daughter arrange her corsage. Or, when she's older, meeting for lunch to clink your distant memories of dark eyes and urban adventure against her fresh ones.

"No doubt," writes Amy Benfer, "some will blame [this woman] for not trying hard enough [to save her marriage]."

I don't. Not at all. It's her marriage and she can do what she wants with it.

I do, however, blame her and absolutely everybody else for going on like idiots about "the ancient dream of brides" when they're nearly fifty. This is one of the most ridiculous things about American culture, the idea that everyone should be "Forever 21." The idea that everyone is permanently entitled and in fact REQUIRED to feel like a debutante swept trembling into purple shadows. The idea that that's the model of excitement and joy. That something's wrong if that feeling isn't there, and you should "work" to "rekindle" it, or get it through a new relationship if necessary.

There are other possibilities. There are other tastes of love and other colors of fire.

If this essay writer is going to experience a burst of sundering passion, can't she be more autumnal about it? At the very least?

You remember autumn. Don't you? It's slipping away now, but it used to be a very distinct time of year in the states above the Mason-Dixon. Blazing colors, stinging frost, wine-like apples. Cutting rain. Through the afternoons, a regretful and benevolent sun waved goodbye. Evenings came on eager and conspiratorial.

This was the season of dying--leaves, crops, the calendar year, everything. But it felt like a beginning every time.

Whenever I read anything written by writers about writing, it always amazes me how little they talk about how FUN it is to MAKE SHIT UP. In what other field do you get to sit down in the morning (or at 3am, whatever) and say "Once upon a time there was.....

A woman with glistening wet hair whispering out onto a motel-style balcony.

She's wearing a butterfly robe and carrying a cup of peppermint tea. The...the air around her feels tropical. Her eyes are steady and her mouth's a little sad.

Her skin is cinnamon; maybe she belongs to the invisible tribe of the multi-ethnic. They know each other but are known by no one else. Those around them just lump them into whatever race they seem to fit into least badly.

She is...she's a flight attendant in Waikiki. This slender metal-and-concrete balcony is her yard. When she steps onto it, she...oh, she sees the whole Pacific. Just a hundred yards away. She owns beachfront property, apparently. How on earth did she manage that? Well, let's look inside. Ah. I see a 400-square-foot studio which must have been gutted to the studs when she bought it, because it doesn't have a floor just yet. The 75 square foot kitchen (including a half-fridge and an over-under washer-dryer unit) is up and running, and the not-much-bigger bathroom is coping too, but her bed and armoire stand on concrete.

Here goes a sip of her tea while she eyes the vast pale sea. Has she gotten used to it, the ocean, or does it stun her every time?

I know she's not local (i.e. born and raised in Hawaii). She'd never live in Waikiki if she were. Not voluntarily anyhow.

I also know that, when she's home, she likes to sit out here in the ocean breeze for as long as she can.

But today, I see her turning back already and going inside. Today must be different. Today, she must have something to do. Maybe she has to...

#

I can waste entire weeks like that. I don't even care about what happens next; I'll let the flight attendant slip away and turn to look at her cousin in Boston, slapping her shoulders against the bite of November as she waits to pick up her kindergartner and worries about the twenty pounds she didn't lose last summer. She's biting her lip. Oh, and then over here is a woman from Tucson who's born again and goes to a storefront church. She hates Boston. A lot. That's why she's clenching her eating-disorder-thin hands, because she's trying so hard to love the damn place in the name of Jesus that she's in physical pain. Meanwhile the Pilates teacher five paces over is staring at the born-again woman and thinking "It has been literally three years since I have seen that much tension in one body," and besides anorexia, she's thinking trauma. But these words obscure as much as they reveal. Maybe she'll meet someone today who will tell her that. If she does, will she listen? Will she hear?

#

And this is just people. How about entire societies? I love making up entire societies. It's like decorating a house. I get to make them just the way I want them to be. I choose the hue of the shadows and where to put them. I choose the mood of the light and where it pools. Speaking of pools, I think this world will have public baths. Why not? It can be cold where they are, so, long ago, they built tunnels to the hot springs. That's where they bathe. Or did they invent saunas? Practical things, saunas. Ask the Suomalainen. (I'm pretty sure that's "Finns," in Finnish. At least I hope so.)

The limitlessness of the universe is never more clear.

Last June, I started doing yoga.

One of the first things I learned was a psoas exercise. It involved five reps on each side, the last one held for a count of five.

I had never worked any deep core muscles before. Doing this thing wiped me out. I would instantly be apocalyptically thirsty and fatigued. For at least three hours afterwards, I would crave sleep. Crave. I would also be very cranky and unpleasant to be around.

When we went on vacation, I had to drop this exercise from my daily practice, because I knew there was no way I could go on to spend three hours at a major historical site in the pounding sun if I did that sucker.

#

Twelve months later, it takes a two-hour advanced class with inversions to get me like that.

Progress. I didn't used to believe in it.

In between flogging myself through Down Dogs and standing psoas stretches, going down to the basement to start Phase 2 of Operation Get That Stain Off That Shirt, and oh yes taking a shower...wait, was I supposed to eat somewhere in there?...Clif Bar!...

Anyhow, in and around my typically highly organized and focused morning, I was letting the internet lead me where it would.

Thus I ended up reading Roger Ebert's review of the Ethan Hawke-directed 2001 movie "Chelsea Walls."

It is about the famed Chelsea Hotel (as in Leonard Cohen's "I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel," but oddly enough, Ebert doesn't mention that particular doomed pair).

Ebert is sympathetic enough to the film, but not really in the right frame of mind.

"[The movie] celebrates characters who think it is noble to live in extravagant poverty while creating Art and leading untidy sex lives."

You can hear the weariness, with just a hint of sneer.

"Has time passed these people by? Very likely... [The movie's characters] stay in the Chelsea because they are surrounded by others who understand the statements they are making with their lives. In a society where the average college freshman has already targeted his entry-level position in the economy, it's a little lonely to embrace unemployment and the aura of genius."

Bear in mind that this review was written in 2001.

I wonder what Ebert would say now.

Seriously--Ethan Hawke, like most artists, was just ahead of his moment. He saw the holes in the American fabric and peered through.

Now, we're living in those holes.

And also--what's wrong with choosing to be "surrounded by others who understand the statements [we] are making with [our] lives"? Why is that somehow pathetic when engaged in by gypsy-hearted dreamers at the Chelsea, but totally normal for upwardly mobile families in Grosse Pointe?

If there are any left, now.