Pro-Choice

Q: "Have you ever fallen in love?"
A: "No, but I've stepped in it a couple of times."

It's an old joke, I'll grant you. But the idea that love is either a big, black chasm into which you fall haplessly, or something that needs to be scraped off of your shoe, is really how we tend to think. Either way, it's nothing we can control, we're sure. It is something that happens to us, like a chin pimple or the measles, rather than something we choose, like a vacation trip or acquiring a puppy.

What does that say about us and the way we see love? This isn't a lecture here. The question isn't rhetorical. I'm serious. Why are most of my friends so very lousy at love? (Sorry, you guys -- you know I love you, but you suck at it, as do I.) I'm thinking the whole "falling in love" thing might have something to do with it. Some of my most controlling, anal-retentive friends suddenly become mere flotsam and jetsom in the Sea of Love, tossed about on the waves, washing in and out with the tide, with no ability at self-propulsion whatsoever.

Why am I divorced? How is it, after waiting so long to find someone I thought I could marry -- could be married to -- it turns out I was so terribly wrong? He was a good guy, to be sure. He's a good father. But he wasn't a good husband -- at least not for me. Much of my hesitance in getting involved again is that I'm afraid that I'll end up in the same predicament, until I figure out how this whole thing works.

How can I play "the game" when I know neither the rules nor the object? It isn't to live happily ever after. We know that. There is no such thing. And I've heard all the stuff about being "friends" so that when love fades, you have something to fall back on. But I have friends. Good friends. Friends who've already lived through the worst of my life with me (and me of theirs). They've "done the time," as it were. Do I need another friend? Maybe it's a different kind of friendship.

Maybe there are no rules. Maybe there is no object. Someone said recently that, when you think about it, love never lasts forever. Either you die before you break up, or you break up before you die. So the first step in all of this is to realize that it's okay to only love a little while. Maybe each relationship has it's own half-life, and we should just sort of simmer in it until it's done, then move on. Seems like an awful lot of trouble for something so temporal, if you ask me. I have friendships that have lasted for 26 years. And I don't have to worry about them hogging the covers or leaving hairs in the sink.

Still, there is the "warm-fuzzy" aspect. It's been a very long time since I've felt truly good about caring for someone. I can't even remember what it feels like. I stick to school-girl style crushes that require no energy or effort. Part of it is time -- I still haven't figured out how to create the 48-hour day. Part of it is fear -- the fear of picking wrong again. The fear that I seem to be drawn to semi-neurotic, somewhat depressed artist/writer types. I suppose the semi-neurotic and somewhat depressed need love, too. And who better to love them than someone who knows them so well, and appreciates them in all of their mentally unbalanced glory.

I don't know. I'm open to suggestions. I do know this. I'd rather believe on any day of the week that love, whether it's good or bad, healthy or dysfunctional, happy or sad, is a choice that we make, rather than something that happens to us by accident -- or worse still, that we need to scrape off onto the nearest concrete curb, lest we stink up the car. I'd like to think that if I ever get this figured out - this whole love thing - that I can make a conscious choice to do it.

I have hope. No clue, but hope. That's something anyway.

XOXO

~C~

To Tide You Over

I've resurfaced for a moment to rest my brain. I finally finished my 100 Things, and posted it on the Naked Voodoo Chicken Dances blog. You can study up on me, while I'm studying up on the psychology of women through film and literature, and lyric and narrative in mixed-genre creative non-fiction.

There may be a quiz!

XOXO

~C~

Gone Fishin'

I'm taking some time off, and I'm staying away from the computer. I have two ten-page papers due in the next couple of weeks, and I've no time to play in the sandbox of Blog.

Please feel free to leave comments, as long as they relate specifically to lyric and narrative in mixed genre creative non-fiction, or on the messages regarding women, psychiatry and perceived female "madness," as illustrated in the 1984 Jessica Lange film, Frances. (Hey, I could use all the help I can get.)

Have a good Memorial Day weekend, and beeee-haaaave!

XOXO

~C~

A Bit of Romance

Update.... Oh, you guys all guessed sooo well. "Chili Supper for Satan" was my second favorite. I loved all of those titles. But my absolute favorite was the one I thought was most perverse...

"This Book Costs More In Canada"

Thanks for playing.

~C~

Somebody shared it with me, so I'm sharing it with you. This website is just good (mostly) clean fun.

Anyone who guesses which cover is my personal fave gets a front page nod on the Chron on Monday. (Of course, she who did the original sharing of the site is ineligible as a guesser, because I already told her, but she has already earned a front-page mention Monday, just for knowing what's funny, by gosh.)

But it's all really just for laughs... because between a missing $8.8 billion dollars and more news of prisoner torture in Iraq, I figure we could just use the opportunity to sit back and laugh a bit before the weekend.

Enjoy, and have a lovely weekend. (Did I mention the temperature is supposed to be in the triple digits here in SoCal?)

XOXO

~C~

It's Destiny, Damn You!

I was just innocently blogging my way through life at work (as usual), when I happened across MemeGen.net. I was intrigued by one quiz entitled "Which Stupid Celebrity are You Destined to Kill?" I figured I could use the results as a perfect debut post for the Chron's sister site (uglier, pudgier, less intelligent sister, of course), Naked Voodoo Chicken Dance.

Imagine my surprise when I found out the answer to the question. Sure, it's controversial. But I'm all about controversy. Kate and will be having a catfight any day now....

Brang it on, sistuh....

XOXO

~C~

Courageous Republicans, Part 1

Whether there are any other installments of the Courageous Republicans series remains to be seen. But when a Republican bucks the current administration openly and expresses his views without flinching (though we know behind closed doors, there'll be hell to pay), I like to acknowledge them. John Danforth almost got a nod for his NY Times op-ed piece about about the mingling of Christianity and the Republican party. But then, I was hit by a blinding white light and it all came back to me. Danforth played no small part in Clarence Thomas' successful confirmation to the Supreme Court. Danforth's banned for life for that one.

Today's tribute goes to Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) who spoke openly against nominee for the UN ambassador position, John Bolton. He referred to Bolton as "the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be... We have sought to appoint an Ambassador to the United Nations who himself has been accused of being arrogant, of not listening to his friends, of acting unilaterally, and of bullying those who do not have ability to properly defend themselves." Though Voinovich did vote to allow the nomination to go to the full Senate, he stated point blank that he would be voting "no" in that vote.

The Bolton nomination will arrive before the Senate with no committee endorsement. According to the mass e-mail I received from Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), it's only the sixth time in 20 years that a majority party couldn't secure a positive endorsement before sending a nominee to a Senate vote.

If the fight in the Senate is tough for Bolton (think back to the lovely, golden moments we had with Robert Bork, won't you), then Voinovich is liable to take some heat from the GOP for not providing the President's nominee with a ringing endorsement. No matter -- he gets my little vote for being a courageous Republican in this one instance.

I'm hoping where there is one, there are many more in hiding. This is, after all, the party of Lincoln, of Teddy Roosevelt, of great men with with great hearts who wanted to see America thrive, spiritually and fiscally. Surely there are other Republicans who won't be cowed by this White House. Aren't there?

We'll see. Until then....

XOXO

~C~

Things One Overhears

Overheard in my cubicle today:

"Did I ever show you a picture of my cousin John. He was my favorite cousin. Also my first boyfriend." (Oooo... five yard penalty... oversharing....)

"I'm bringing in the Lusty Hermaphrodite." (This came from the Clearance Dept. -- Lord knows what they were talking about. Hopefully, they were clearing a pub name for use in a movie, but you never know. Best not to ask, I find.)

"There comes a time in every woman's life when she just has to reboot and start over." (Amen, sister.)

My sister called today and said she's not dating the doctor after all. Apparently, though the first date was promising, successive meetings have proven... well... not so much so.... BUT... she has decided to return to school and pursue a nursing career. She wants to be a pediatric nurse. I think she'd be good at that. We Sowards women are always better with little tiny babies if we can hand them back to their mothers in the end. Why do you think we tend to have only one? Just enough to keep the mitochondrial DNA kicking, then... that's it... we're done.

I have to start on my final papers for my two Lit classes this weekend, since my Memorial Day weekend will be spent in Ohio, celebrating Kim's birthday. The big FIVE... OH... Yeah, you heard me... she's gonna be 50. And you know what... she be lookin' GOOOOD!

I say, if you look like that at 50, flaunt it, sistuh.

So, now I am supposed to do one paper outlining the themes (as it relates to "Women and Madness") in the movie Frances, with Jessica Lange. And I have to figure out what my specific topic is for my Michael Ondaatje paper in the other class. I can't even clarify the question, let alone answer it.... it comes out something like.... "uhhhh... how Ondaatje takes real-life characters like Billy the Kid and Buddy 'King' Bolden... and... uh... builds... them into... like... uhhh... mythical... uhhh...."

Oh, just fucking shoot me now and put me out of my misery, for God's sake!!!

So, that's where it stands. The good news is that I get to start reading Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye again. God I love Toni Morrison. If I could pick any writer to be when writing creative non-fiction, it would be Anne Lamott. But if I were to pick any novelist, it would be Toni Morrison. She is the queen bee.

Anyway, I have to finish eating lunch and get back to work.

XOXO

~C~

Party on my Tongue

I'm staring at four of the prettiest little chicken taquitos you've ever seen. Much like the mythical salad I described last week, you'll just have to take my word for it. They are exquisite. Crisp, yet not overcooked, smothered in fresh salsa and guacamole, dusted with a touch of queso. Yum.

However, I cannot eat these scrumptious little cylinders of chickeny goodness. And do you know why? Because, as I write this, vegetables are having a party on my tongue. The little chunks of roasted summer squash and zucchini that came as a side dish to the taquitos have caught my eye, and I am driven to consume them. First, before the chickeny cylinders. Before the guacamole. Before the salsa. Before the Spanish rice.

How did this happen? Perhaps those people who think that gastric bypass is medically sanctioned maiming are right. I've deformed myself. I've turned myself into someone who... oh, God, it hurts to even type it... makes smart food choices. I make salads for dinner. My protein is mostly derived from grilled white meat chicken and fish and sometimes... wait for it... tofu. You're hearing this from a woman who wouldn't eat vegetables before because they were grown in dirt, and how could that be sanitary?

My taste buds have become my worst enemy. They're the ones who make me turn my nose up at the Panda Express chow mein, in favor of the steamed vegetables, and make me take the spicy garlic shrimp over the deep-fried orange chicken. They are the hosts of this tongue party, I realize. They are making me do horrible, nasty things these days. Remind me to tell you about last week's foray into lightly steamed broccoli, grilled chicken and brown rice. I can't talk about it now -- I'm still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Meanwhile, the taquitos have gone cold, and are looking decidedly less appetizing. To make matters worse, I have a stomach the size of an orange, which is now full of roasted zucchini, squash and fresh salsa, and has no room for taquitos. There are starving children in South America who would love to have taquitos like this, and I've just wasted them. Taquitos don't reheat well. Damn.

I have to get back to work now, in spite of the festivities on my tongue. Lord knows how I'm going to be able to concentrate with... is that a... do I hear... a mariachi band?

XOXO

~C~

Mothers' Day Break.

I'm exercising my prerogative to be a lazy butt this Mother's Day weekend. But in honor of the holiday, I'd like to draw your attention to a lovely little blog entitled Do They Have Salsa in China? Mary-Mia (or M3, as she is otherwise known in the comments section) and her husband Ron, the self-described "laid-back tuba-player from Texas) are awaiting their "fly-date" to adopt a daughter from China.

M3 is good about keeping us updated, and she's been sharing the process step-by-step, which is interesting for me because I have mulled over the idea of adopting a baby from China -- every now and again (when I forget that babies turn into teenagers*). But even if you aren't considering this process, read the blog anyway. Mary-Mia and Rod are both funny people who are wading through red tape and adversity with a sense of humor and perspective. Hey, he's a tuba-playing Texan, she's an antsy California girl -- what more do you need to know, people? If you need more enticement, I offer you the first line of M3's latest post -- "Does anyone know how to write 'Where can I get a taco?' in Chinese?"

This ain't your momma's international adoption information blog, baby. Go. Read. Laugh. That's an order.

Happy Mother's Day -- to the current mothers, the past mothers and the mothers (like M3) who are "in waiting."

XOXO

~C~

*This specific memory loss has a name -- it's called momnesia.

Permission

In his book (due out next week), First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan, retired CIA operative Gary Schroen revealed that he and his six-man team -- some of the first to land in Afghanistan following the attacks -- were given the following directive about their mission: to bring back the head of Osama Bin Laden on ice. So, basically, these guys were charged with finding bin Laden, killing him, decapitating him, and bringing his head back in a box of dry ice.

I'm not making this up. Schroen recalls his superior at the CIA, Cofer Black, using these words: "I would like to see the head of bin Laden delivered back to me in a heavy cardboard box filled with dry ice, and I will take that down and show the President. And the rest of the [al Qaeda] lieutenants, you can put their heads on pikes."

Of course, immediately, Schroen backpedals, saying, "I don't believe he meant that in detail."

Gee, Gar... I don't know... "head of bin Laden... heavy cardboard box... dry ice... lieutenants' heads on pikes." That's pretty gosh darned detailed. There's really only one thing left to ask after that kind of order.

"Would you like fries with that?"

In the days and weeks following September 11, 2001, something amazing happened to the American people. We were a little nicer to each other, a little more unified, a little more spiritual. At the same time, something terrible and frightening happened as well. We were a little more xenophobic, a little less tolerant, a little more openly bigoted and prejudiced. We experienced collective fear. Our response to that fear was that we gave ourselves permission. Permission to hate foreigners. Permission to rape the First Amendment. Permission to indulge ourselves in a quagmire of ugly, useless emotionalism and rhetoric. Permission to allow our leaders to do whatever they wanted to do, just so long as it made us feel safe again. No holds barred.

Fear is a powerful driver, especially in a people who are not accustomed to being afraid. We've won all our wars. (Well, okay, there was that Viet Nam thing, but technically, we never declared war there, so it doesn't really count, right? Viet What?) But the question that I have to ask is, how far are we really willing to go to make that fear manageable? When did we give ourselves permission to stop being human beings? At the end of the day, if you walk away from your humanity, what do you have left? It's not as though, when you become a mean-ass son of a bitch, you suddenly turn invulnerable. Terrorists can still kill your sorry behind. You just die with less of your spirit intact.

When did we as a people make the tacit agreement to sacrifice our decency in a quest for safety? Did I miss that vote? Because, really, I'd like a recount. I'm all for safety, if it's possible, but I have news for you. It's not possible. In a free society, there's always danger. Danger from terrorists, danger from outlandish opinions, danger from criminals. We don't arrest people for crimes they haven't committed, and when we do arrest them, we have certain procedures that we follow to see that justice is done. We read people their rights. We don't beat them while in custody. We don't get to torture or maim them. We don't get to decapitate them and put their heads in cardboard boxes full of dry ice, so we can show the President what good little boys we were in Afghanistan. (And, by the way, how long do you think Bush could keep his lunch down in the presence of a decapitated head -- even bin Laden's. I'm betting about 45 seconds before he yaks, then goes cryin' to his momma.)

We did make an agreement on how we were going to behave, regardless of whether the rest of the world followed suit. We did it on another September day -- the 17th, to be exact -- in 1787. We called it the United States Constitution. People who came before us, people who had survived war and oppression and invasion, and knew a little something about fear, drafted this document and signed it, adopting it as the code by which we would live.

I'm not sure where we gave ourselves permission to live otherwise, but I hereby revoke said permission forthwith. There will be no decapitation and dry ice packing of heads on my watch. There will be no sacrificing of our humanity and spirit simply for the sake of feeling a safety that was never reasonable or real.

Permission denied.

XOXO

~C~

I'm no angel, but...

... I did decide to go with HaloScan commenting today. A couple of really petty, nasty comments made me realize it's good to have easy access to hit that "delete" button when necessary.

Unfortunately, it also means I've lost the witty, wonderful contributions I've gotten from the smart people so far. Bummer, because you guys are really funny and you said nice things about me. I like funny people who say nice things about me.

Anyway, starting on a "going forward" basis (as we say in the legal biz)...

Do more of that "funny and saying nice things" thing. I liked that.

XOXO

~C~

Oxymorons... "Morons" Being the Operative Word

Jumbo shrimp...

Military intelligence...

Peace-keeping force....

And today's featured oxymoron:

Kansas Board of Education.

And to think, I actually went to Kansas twenty years ago to go to school.

XOXO

~C~

Voicing Needs

My father taught me to sing. People used to assume that I got my voice from my mother, the actress. But it isn't true. The truth was that, though my mother was musical and had a fine appreciation for music, she really had no instrument for singing. Some do, some don't. She didn't. It was my father who had the voice (and still does, even at 76). He is a natural musician, who taught himself how to play the guitar and had (has?) a lilting, unstrained tenor that filled the house with snippets of Fats Waller, Puccini and Gershwin when I was young. I'm the only one of his three children to have inherited, if not the voice, then at least the desire to sing. Desire? No. Need to sing. For it is a necessity, like breathing and sleeping. I don't remember not needing to do it.

Somewhere in the cavernous, gelatinous confusion that is my father's house, there exists an old tape -- a reel-to-reel type -- that has me singing the first two songs I ever learned -- the ones he taught me. One was California, Here I Come. The other was Hava Nagila. We are not Jewish. We are as white Anglo-Saxon Protestant as they come. But my father thought that was funny, to have the little schiksa girl singing in Hebrew. I refer you to the Sowards family motto -- "If it gets a laugh, it's not in bad taste." It got laughs, too. I was freakin' adorable. We have the pictures -- and the tape -- to prove it. I still remember most of the words.

From there, it only got worse. Entire Broadway shows were staged in my bedroom, courtesy of the record collection that my mother amassed from her days of being a New York actress. She bought the original cast album of every musical that she saw. So, not only did I have the good fortune of memorizing The Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, but I was privileged to have committed slightly less appropriate fare, like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Irma La Douce, to memory as well.

Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon came later, and Heart and Pat Benatar later still. By age 21, I'd decided that it was time to actually push my voice to see how far it could go. It was a big voice -- wild and untamed. As a child, I had vibrato, a la Andrea McArdle from Annie. But this was before Annie, when children weren't supposed to sound like little adults when they sang. Vibrato in a child was considered unseemly. My voice had potential, or so they told me. Still, it was all over the map, and big chunks were missing. This is hard to explain to people who haven't studied the soprano voice, but well-trained, it stretches from head to chest voice, and uses a whole bunch of different muscles in the process.

What training does is build a voice from the outside inward. The top gets stronger, the bottom gets stronger, and sometime around the one-year mark, the two come together. A diligent soprano who works hard to bring both voices together and stitch them together can find her reward, after months of tedious effort with seemingly precious little reward, in one lesson. That's how it happens, usually -- just a regular lesson. One ordinary Wednesday. At around 2 o'clock. While singing (for the seventy-fifth time, mind you) Adieu, Notre Petite Table from Massenet's Manon. You're standing in your teacher's living room, after having vocalized for twenty minutes, so now you're "ready to sing," whatever the hell that means, because this stuff is still a mystery to you, really. And the accompaniment starts, and you open your mouth, and....

And....

There's this voice. Who the hell is making that sound? you think as you keep singing. And that's not easy, either, because that sound is damned distracting. Where is that incredible sound coming from? Because it can't be you, right? You can't sing opera. In French, no less. You sing showtunes. You sing Linda Ronstadt. Other people sing opera. But there you are, singing opera. In French. (Bad French, admittedly, but that's a job for another kind of teacher.) And it occurs to you that this is how it happens, not just for you, but for everyone. One day, they're singing Italian pop songs. And then after singing O Mio Bamino Caro for the four hundred and eleventh time, they're singing it at La Scala, in a gorgeous dress with some wicked-fine lighting.

Oh, I get it, you tell yourself. It's a job.

Because it is a job, like any other. Just like streetsweeping, and basketweaving, and open heart surgery. It is a job that requires diligence, patience, fortitude and tenacity to learn and to perfect.

All of this, I bring up because, after years of abandoning my voice -- that voice -- the one that showed up for Massenet so long ago -- for nearly ten years, I'm working on classical music again. Someone has asked me to prepare Glitter and Be Gay from Bernstein's Candide. For those of you who don't know the music, Dick Cavett used it as his theme song on his PBS series. (And the first person under 40 who asks who Dick Cavett is gets a serious whomping, so stop yourselves now!) Suffice it to say the piece is, for me anyway, very challenging. Forget that I've never been confident at coloratura (the "running up and down the scales" type of singing that sopranos are so smug and self-congratulatory about); I seem to have misplaced my D above high C. I had it here a while ago. Yes, yes... I remember quite specifically. It was 1996. I had that D, and it was my D and it belonged to me. Then I set it down somewhere and walked away, and when I came back to get it, it was gone. Ds above high C are like that -- very capricious and impatient. They don't like to be ignored. They're liable to leave you in search of a soprano who appreciates them and treats them tenderly. The irony is, while my D is missing in action, my coloratura technique seems to be coming out of hiding for the first time in my life.

I called my former voice teacher (also my very dear friend), Kim, who promptly reminded me that the D hadn't really gone anywhere. Since teaching me voice, Kim has earned her doctorate in music. She's a doctor. We can trust her when she tells us that there's a D in there somewhere. "It's not like it just got up and walked away on its own," you can almost hear your mother saying. "It's probably right where you left it. Just retrace your steps." Retrace my steps. Remember to vocalize the way I was taught the first time. And one day, I'll be standing in another voice teacher's living room (Note to self: Call Billy for voice lesson ASAP), and it will all come back again, by surprise, as it did before. It's all about punching the clock. Clock in. Do the work. Clock out. Come back tomorrow and do it all over again.

Got it. Done it. Can do it again.

I have until the fall to pull it all together, so I'll be punching the clock for the next several months. Meanwhile, if you happen to see an errant D out there, running around without a collar or tags, it's probably mine.

XOXO

~C~

Ten Things that Went Right Today

1. My alarm went off.
2. It's a good hair day.
3. I had the most amazing salad for lunch: baby greens, candied walnuts, grilled chicken, bleu cheese, tomatoes, peaches and a delightfully sassy balsamic vinaigrette.
4. My sister called to tell me she's dating a doctor.
5. I worked with one of my favorite editors on a short story I wrote last year -- and he liked it, he really like it.
6. I realized I'm "crushing" on someone (I'll never tell, so don't even bother to ask.)
7. Did I mention the salad? Oy… (It was so good, it deserves a second mention!)
8. I discovered that my daughter's broken cellphone is insured.
9. A package I mailed last Thursday arrived at its destination today.
10. My apartment was clean when I left it this morning.

We take our victories when and where we can.

Did I mention that salad? I did. Good. Okay. Moving on….

XOXO

~C~