a little love affair.

I took the time to sketch, take pictures, and read some poetry. I fell in love with the author, Sherman Alexie. The wikipedia photo isn't flattering, but his gift of language coupled with an honest, funny, and vulnerable sensibility captivates me. It's times like this when I feel I need an artist.

Read this poem, if you've got the time.
(I'd love to read it to you out loud if I could.)

"Song"

Brown-skinned women
I dreamed of you
long before
any of you decided
to dream about me.
I slept on the top bunk
of my U.S. Army Surplus bed

and pretended one of you was asleep on the bottom bunk
beneath me. Too young to fully understand what that physical
presence would've meant, I still knew it was what I needed. But
like anything believed too hard, those dreams always failed me. I
remember all your names, Indian girls I loved, Dawn, Loretta,
Michelle, Jana, Go-Go, LuLu, all of you Spokane Indian princesses
who never asked me to slow dance

to the music
that always found its way
into the Tribal School
and it wasn't only drums
we heard, you know?
The reservation has a symphony
complicated as any
and we all practiced
the fingering
on the piano, on the pine trees
on the secondhand trumpets

but I was always sat outside the chords, just a little too short
for the melody, and too skinny for the tempo. Oh, I loved it all from a
distance, from inches and miles away, from a generation removed
it seemed. And I loved you all, crazy and brave, in your young
Indian arrogance

and I love you still
when I see any of you
all these years later
often broken
and defeated by this reservation
by alcohol
and your own failed dreams.
I love you
still

when I see you in the bars, your faces scarred and scared.
Sometimes, I think I love you because your failures validate mine
and because my successes move me beyond the same boundaries
that stop you. I can be as selfish as any white or Indian man.
Sometimes, I think I love you because you all still slow dance with
the next Indian man who might save you. I can hear your bar
voice crack into questions: What tribe are you? Are you married?
How long have you been sober/drunk? Sometimes, I think I love
you

because it's always easiest
to love the unloved
to dream
about the dreamless
to watch an Indian woman
just this side
of beautiful
slow dance
to a sad song
and never have to worry
about making her any promises

because this distance I've created is perfect. I can never be hurt.
Don't you see? I am afraid; I am not afraid. Don't you understand?
I know some of you will die in car wrecks. I know some of you
will die of cirrhosis. I know some of you will die of a broken
heart. But more than that, I know some of you will live, will learn
how to breathe this twentieth century oxygen

and learn how
to dance a new dance
with the rhythm
only Indians possess
with the rhythm
innate
practiced
beautiful

and I can hope you'll find your new warriors. Believe me, the
Indian men are rising from the alleys and doorways, rising from self-hatred and self-pity, rising up on horses of their own making.
Believe me, the warriors are coming back
to take their place beside you
rising
beyond the "just surviving"
singing
those new songs
that sound
exactly
like the old ones.








I discovered that Sherman Alexie published his first book of poems when he was my age. I yearn to be a writer.

new glasses.

Meri said they're too dorky. I think I like them.

waiting for hell to freeze over.

All my mom wanted to do for her birthday was walk.
"You know...like we did in Brooklyn just getting around."

Within the first few days of landing on Utah soil, my allergies flared up. Not only was I congested, but little spots on my hands and face and feet broke into hives. I couldn't sleep all of the way through the night because my glands were swollen and breathing was only possible sitting up. I felt in part that my body was rejecting an abrupt transition to this arid desert climate and the types of vegetation that thrive in it. I doubled up on my routine dose of antihistamine and I couldn't tell the difference.

My mom requested that we drive somewhere, away from the fields surrounding the house so I wouldn't have to breathe the pollen in. She pointed at the parking lot of American Fork High School as we approached.
"Let's just park here."
We started walking north; then uphill to the east; toward the temple. We took a steady, relaxed pace and walked side by side in silence unless my mom saw a flower or shrub notable enough to draw my attention in. We circled around outside the gate and then entered the grounds and circled again. We saw a hummingbird and admired more flowers.
"Look; Snap Dragons..."

I saw a doctor at the student clinic. He prescribed a nose spray.
"Isn't this a temporary solution?", I asked.
"Of course. Anything I can prescribe now will be temporary. You just need to make it until the first heavy frost."

I believe that despite advanced theories and technologies, the most valuable and penetrating solutions are acts of God. In the meantime, all we can do is cope the best we know how.

time grows short.

A catastrophe occurred this summer. Although I wasn't there to witness it, my soul exists very near its epicenter.

It's been interesting to observe my reaction. I've felt stripped down to the skeleton of my character and belief. I've made snap judgements based on intuition alone. It's exposed what I'm made of.

It's awakened an urgent yearning to be with all the ones I love, no matter where they are or where they've been. It's made me feel like growing up, like having babies; like living a life that recognizes above all else that we exist to learn to love others.

I feel like life is short; I must do the most important things first to pack them all in while I am still breathing.

Yes, I will be ok. The world will be ok. But this stuff really does change you.

hard times.

Believe it or not, but Google told me to take the wrong train last Friday morning. I was supposed to get off at "9th St." from the R and got off at "9th Ave" from the D instead (both were two stops down on their respective lines.) When I finally recognized my mistake, I was 50 minutes away from my destination and already 15 minutes late for a meeting with a freelance client who's number I didn't have. It started raining and I also didn't have my umbrella.

When I finally arrived an hour and a half late, completely soaked, the client was gone. His wife greeted me at the door with a smile and let me in. She'd been feeding the most beautiful, smiling, dark-haired baby. On the sofa sat two soft and lazy cats. She gave me the files I needed and wished me well.

I can never feel too sorry for myself in New York. And I've had some bad times here. There is so much life going on around me that causes me to see outside myself.

I lost my way to the subway station after getting the files and the rain escalated to a downpour. I watched homeless men, asian tourists, muslim women, art students, and small families all rush to find shelter.

money.

I witnessed disorienting amounts of wealth over the weekend. I didn't know it really existed. The puzzle pieces I'd formed of reality and media and fantasy couldn't jam together hard enough to fit altogether in my head. I grew sheepish as I recognized the lack of any personal reference point in the face of it.

Part of the vision of this wealth took place in a massive outdoor tent, perching on stilts so that it stood level although it sat halfway up a luscious green hill. Inside, there were hundreds of people all dancing and drinking under lights and vines and feasting at immaculate place settings; all wearing the most beautiful pressed and tailored and exotic clothing I'd ever seen people actually wear. I sat on the perimeter and watched for hours. It was beautiful despite its foreign flavors.

As I walked away, the lights spilling from the tent cast my silhouette, making my legs look unrealistically long and feminine like an anime characters'. The stars that I'd missed in the city twinkled over me and a lightning bolt in the distance sporadically created an exciting monstrous glow.

I remembered some Joni Mitchell lyrics and sang them to myself out loud:

All the people at this party, they've got a lot of style
they've got stamps from many countries
they've got passport smiles
some are friendly
some are cutting
some are watching it from the wings
some are standin' in the center,
giving to get something

I retreated to a tiny rental car; identical to the one I owned before it was smashed in an accident last December. It felt like home. I opened the book my mother lent me about Hmong immigrants living in Merced, "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down." The humbling chapter I chose provided the leveling I sought. I cried under the yellow dome light at the tenderness of two human beings who reach beyond blame, resentment, and vast cultural differences to provide comfort to one another in the face of tragedy.

Then, like any child suffering overstimulation, I slept deeply in that car seat until it was time to leave.

elvis.

Between me and Elvis, I've always had the upper hand. The legendary being who pop culture itself was invented for and around could always be diminished with two great family legends. I used them to introduce myself on the first day of class in Jr. High a few times:

"My name is Laura Barlow and my biggest claim to fame is that Elvis taught my uncle how to ride a bike," or
"I am Laura Barlow. Elvis asked my aunt out on a date. But she rejected him."

Most of the time the teachers would exaggerate an gaped-mouth response; maybe they thought I was lying; but both accounts are, in fact, true.

My mother was born in Memphis and lived in the same trailer park that he moved to when he was thirteen.

The only qualifier I ever heard was that my aunt, Patsy, had actually been friends with Elvis's sister and that he only flirted with Pat when she was sleeping over at his house as a guest of his sister's. But even in the wake of the exaggerated truth of that story still stood the factor that won me the upper hand:
"But Pat never liked him. . . said he seemed slimy." My mom lapses into the southern accent of her youth as she says it.

In part, it was easy to minimize the real Elvis all of these years because I didn't know who he was. Yes, I'd heard a few songs here or there on Back to the Future and from the toy speakers of the red, velvet, Valentine's Day chocolate box my Dad bought for my mother one year; but beyond that; I never even thought to care.

My oldest brother, Tom, once caught a lizard in the desert that he named Elvis. Even as I type the name now, it reminds me more of a brown lizard who lived in a glass tank with sand and rocks; who died when my little brother, James, tried too hard to catch him when he once got out.

A friend put the song "Blue Moon" on a mix for me and I listened to it for the first time at two o'clock in the morning on a 2 train headed to Flatbush from 96th Street through my yellow, skull-candy headphones last night. My entire countenance awoke and hung on every note. I was dazzled, starstruck, and pinched both of my arms to check if I really was the living niece of these living people who'd interacted with living man who produced these living sounds. I put the song on repeat until I got home.

I wish I'd asked Uncle Ted what it was like to to ride bikes with Elvis before either of them died.