Fragile Industries

Robert A. Heinlein Was A Sick Fuck

I just finished re-reading Robert A. Heinlein's Time Enough For Love, my first revisit to Heinlein's writing since my teens (nearly 40 years ago).

As a kid, I first was hooked by RAH's juveniles, progressed to Stranger In A Strange Land, and had a dim memory of TEFL as a truly evolved work on that level.

Boy, was I disappointed. And disenchanted.  And finally, disturbed.

TEFL was a fascinating premise -- 2000 years of the life of the virtually immortal Lazarus Long, through all sorts of space cowboy settings -- but fails as a novel for several reasons, most notably in structure. It is huge and gassy with extended, self-indulgent musings on any number of RAH's own interests, mostly voiced by Lazarus Long, clearly a RAH alter ego. It's as if he strung together a collection of Lazarus Long short stories and decided it would be more commercial if it was a novel.  It's not.  That was disappointing.

The sexual content -- which forms the majority of the discursions and is the prime motivator of what plot exists in the book -- was at best somewhat distasteful. Into that category I put his treatment of women in general. While the juveniles portrayed women as ethical and intelligent (often smarter and more accomplished in academics and their careers than the men), they still remain very much male fantasies. This does not change in his adult books. In TEFL, he champions a type of female sexuality that is essentially male, or what a male would hope female sexuality should be. Every woman wants to be a baby factory, is constantly begging for male servicing, and will behave in a coy, childish way to get it, even resorting to trickery and blackmail. While in the 50's and pre-sexual-revolution '60's, this was a rare view of the power of female sexuality, on current reading, it seems hopelessly anachronistic. I suppose it wouldn't bother me if RAH didn't dwell on it so much, and in such a self-congratulatory way. "Look, Ma, I'm being modern!"

Then there are the young, twin female clones of Lazarus.  They are explicitly males in female bodies. When Lazarus is "seduced" by them (a pedophile's dream!) it is a queasy mix of incest, pedophilia, and narcissism. But it's all so good and healthy, RAH reminds us, again and again and again. Defensively, it seems to me.

The polyamory reflected in the books is equally fantasized. He simply posits that humans evolved past petty jealousies and that's all that holds back group marriages or free love as an ideal. If only human love and bonding and psychology were that simplistic! There's nothing immoral or disturbing about polyamory, it's just not explored with any insight or realism.

The most disturbing aspects of the book are the constant refrains of incest and adult-child sexuality. RAH fills the pages with a bombastic, drumbeat repetition of that theme, to the point that I felt I was reading a pedophile's apologia. What seemed so daring when I first read this and other of his later works, on re-reading felt sordid because of this emphasis.

Oh, and he had some really regressive ideas about homosexuality, too. As a bisexual woman, and one who has seen the incredible damage incest and pedophilia has done in the lives of friends and loved ones, I was, finally, offended. 

I mean no disrespect to RAH's legacy as a brilliant fantasist, or how he brought science fiction out of the pulp ghetto. Yet the later works insist on portraying indefensible treatment of women and children -- while stating explicitly in TEFL that "women and children first" was the basis for all successful human enterprise.  The time of RAH's writing of his so-called mature works, unfortunately, gave him license to reveal what was really an obsession with some very adolescent, geeky, psychologically immature and even disturbing themes.

To put it in a nutshell, he was a sick fuck.  So much for adolescent heroes.

My Name Is "Bastard"

When I was 20, and home from college, my mother was planning a reunion of a theater company she and my father had belonged to in the years around the time of my birth. I was in another room when she got a telephone call from a woman accepting the invitation to the reunion. It was the first time my mother and she had been in contact since that time. I overheard my mother’s responses to the usual “where are you now” questions. As a former actress, my mother’s voice carries, and I will admit to eavesdropping, because that time of my parent’s lives was and remains intensely glamorous and nostalgic to me.

Then my mother’s voice and responses became tense and guarded. I heard the following: “How did you know that? I didn’t know you knew that.” “Yes, of course, she’s fine, she’s wonderful, she‘s doing well in college.” “No, no, no … he‘s been a perfect father to her. She adores Tony [my father‘s name] and he adores her.” “No, he’s never treated her any differently and she believes he’s her father.” “Please, please don’t say anything about that to anyone. That would break a lot of hearts if that got out.” Then the conversation turned back to the caller’s life.

You know the expression, “my blood ran cold”? It’s not just a saying. Sitting in the next room, I was frozen. I left the house and walked for hours, sobbing hysterically, and mentally replaying the one side of the conversation over and over. That’s why I can, 33 years later, still repeat it word for word. There was no way to interpret my mother’s words in any benign way: My father was not my father.

I returned home and dinner was about to be served, some stepsiblings were visiting. I pulled my mom into the bathroom and confronted her. She wept as I did, and denied everything, finally saying that my conception was due to early, primitive fertility treatments, insemination, but with my father’s sperm. The first “test tube baby” had been born by then, and my mother said she didn’t want me to feel like a “test tube baby,” that I might feel strange that it wasn’t in the usual way. I didn’t believe her. She asked me to smile in the mirror and said, “You have your father’s smile.” That may be true, but otherwise I look exactly like my mother. It proved nothing to me. I could tell she was even more upset than I was, so I pretended to agree with her. I didn’t raise the subject again.

For the next five years I knew part of the truth but not all. Had my mother, unlikely as it seemed, had an affair? By then, donor insemination was performed openly, but what about the 50’s? Would there be any records? I tried to get my birth records, they revealed nothing, a normal birth. I could not obtain my mother’s pre-natal records, though I did find out that she switched OB/GYN’s in mid pregnancy. I even asked my godfather, a close family friend and an emotional second father to me, with no children of his own, whether he was my biological father. Bless him, he claimed ignorance of the whole thing and said, “I’m not, honey, but I wish I was.” If my dad wasn’t my biological parent, I wish he was too.

Finally, a friend’s mother who had been a nurse since the 40’s, and who knew of my mother’s first OB/GYN, yielded to my questions. She had heard rumors that this doctor would sometimes do favors for infertile couples. However, in the 1950’s, it was worth his license if the facts came out, and he would never admit anything to me. He was long retired and had moved, anyway. I was certain I was donor-conceived, the only question was whether my parents knew the donor.

When I was 25, by this time married and in law school, I confronted my mother again late one night. She denied, denied, wept and denied. I asked the ultimate question of my mother, a deeply spiritual woman: “On your soul, Mom? On your SOUL, who is my father?” It was dirty pool and I knew it, but I wanted the truth from her, and it worked. The doctor had indeed done a favor. She told me the few facts she knew, the donor was a medical student, married, with a healthy child or children. Mom had wanted a donor of Italian heritage, to match my father most closely, but the best the doctor could come up with was a brown-eyed, brown-haired man of French ancestry. Because of health issues in my mother’s family, he had no known diabetes in his family. That’s the sum knowledge she had, and that I have to this day.

My first reaction, at 20, was total, utter confusion and dismay. I felt like everything I knew about myself and my parents was wrong. I felt betrayed. My initial confrontation with my mother marked the first time I knew she lied to me about something important. It put a real distance between us, at least to my mind, but I hid that for five years. I felt like a spy, trying to root out the truth during those years.

Very, very quickly, I knew that I could not ask my father anything. What if my mother had an affair and he didn't know? And if he did know, and had been such a wonderful father, a proud and supportive and protective presence, I loved him all the more for never raising the issue or distancing himself from me, the bastard. I never told him I knew.

One of the most moving things my mother told me was that once my mother confirmed her pregnancy, my father never mentioned the circumstances again, even during the divorce when he could have challenged my paternity and avoided child support payments. (That would have been possible at the time.  The law has changed -- a child of a marriage is presumptively the husband's.)  My mother and I believe that he effectively forgot it. He was (he died in 2000) my rock, never wavering in his love. The gods gave me a fabulous father.

My mother's shame -- and that's what it was -- rubbed off on me. My husband knew, close friends at the time knew of my search for the truth. I can't say that I thought negatively about myself because of it, but I was so close to my mother and she was so obviously horrified that I felt, at best, very different. A little freaky.

Since her admission, I've had a great deal of healing. I am intensely grateful to the doctor, the donor, and my parents for coming together and making my very existence possible. It feels, still, a little strange to be the result of a community effort like that, but as the donor-conception experience becomes more common, I feel more like the outcome of a pioneer experiment than a back-room shameful after-effect. I wish my mother knew how proud I am of her and Daddy, of all involved, for going so far to have me. I feel an extra obligation to them because of it.

Currently, I am caregiver to my mother, who at 78 has COPD and pulmonary fibrosis, is oxygen-dependent 24/7 and is nearly home-bound. I realize that I am, in her mind, her "creature" -- her solo creation. She fully expects me to be her carbon copy. This has led to some tension and misunderstanding when she confronts our differences. We are much more similar than we are different, but we are not twins, I am not her clone.

I had a huge insight, quite belatedly, a few months ago. I was thinking about where we differ. I am much more analytical, process-oriented, decisive and proactive than she. Even though I went to law school, I have a fascination with areas of medicine and have read extensively on infectious diseases, genetics and neurology. I seem to have an affinity and sympathy for those on the autism spectrum and am very close to several friends with Asberger's Syndrome -- their differences don't seem alien to me, and it seems they can relate to me better than other non-spectrum people. I do not have Asberger's, but their mental processing makes sense to me somehow. A dear friend has two grandchildren on the spectrum and those boys mean the world to me.

I put that together and realized that it may just be the genetic gift of my biological father, the medical student. Perhaps he had Asberger's, perhaps he studied it. That may be fantasy, but still, it comforts me. It gives me a sense of being true to something unfamiliar in my family, but a heritage nonetheless.

I floated this theory to my mother. We hardly ever talk about "the donor" but I thought this idea would help her too, help her deal with my differences. It seems to have worked, it clicked with both of us.

Adoptive children are usually told early, these days, as are donor-conceived children.  I've always wanted to know what the late discoverers feel.  Did you want to know more about your biological parent(s) and how did you react on your discovery?  Do you ever, as I do sometimes, wish you had never learned?  Do you sometimes instead find comfort in your difference?

Creative Impulses and Opportunities

A few days ago, I wrote my first poem in two years.  I did everything I thought I could do for it for the first day, now it's aging in my .docs files until I'm ready for it again in a week or so.  Then I let the critic loose for fine tuning.

My initial impression is that it's not very good, but it's a start.

Today, I got a commission inquiry (that looks very promising) for a new wedding book from my fairly inactive art website.  It's a very interesting project and would be a blast to make.  These people get the "participatory" aspect of what I do and would add their own custom touches once they get it.  It's a replacement for the pillow held by the ringbearer, with little niches and drawers for the rings.  This, above and below from my gallery, was their inspiration:

http://fragileindustries.com/galleryalteredbooksmysterybook.html

 

 

I finished a book about 6 months ago that was a bit of a new direction and challenge, a working of a poem that is deeply powerful to me, NOT my own -- Jane Hirschfield's "The Weighing."  Here's some pictures (bad and out of focus) that haven't made it to the Fragile Industries Studios website yet until I can clean them up.

 

 

Fragile Bon Jovi

My imaginary misspent youth.

I have posts half-written about Sarah Palin and the English language among other time-sensitive issues, but this is more fun.

A "Nice" Legal Question

The image to the left, she said proudly, is my own creation on the fun site http://obamiconme.pastemagazine.com/entries/by_style?style=obamicon and you can vote up the image for cultural relevancy or something, here:

http://obamiconme.pastemagazine.com/profiles/lisaventura

 

Back to our program: I can't resist an opportunity to impersonate a lawyer, though I gave it up for the greater good years ago.

My last post ridiculed the "Birther" conspiracy wacko fruitcake theory.  Hoping to bring a note of sanity into the discussion, I'm sure, LwC asked why all the noise in the first place because the child of a US citizen (only one of the two parents is required) is a US citizen no matter where born, right?  Yes.  But.

When she raises that point, she brings up the nice legal question of "citizen" vs. "born citizen" vs, "natural born citizen" and it is the latter requirement specified in the Constitution, if we're going to get nice about it.  (In legalspeak, a "nice" legal question is one of those "angels dancing on the head of a pin" kind of argument that only theologians or lawyers find even remotely entertaining, and is equally likely to result in a completely counter-intuitive answer.)  The Wikipedia entry above has a great deal to say about that too, and I will not repeat it here but only leave you with the link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_born_citizen

 

For my Devoted Readers not ready to wade through 200-year-old legal opinions, in plain English, yes, both McCain and Obama are not only citizens but they are also "born citizens" as contrasted with a "naturalized citizen."  Perhaps, however, neither is "natural born," under current law.  It is tres murky.  

Resume-enhancing self-referential part: This is the sort of murkiness that I used to identify for a living when I worked for the Supremes.  Where there existed murkiness AND there was a current need for clarity, I recommended the Court accept the case. Were I working now for the US Supremes, however, I would be unlikely to be faced with this question, because of the notion of "standing."  It is equally unclear whether ANYONE can challenge an elected President on this basis in the courts.  Lower courts have dismissed all suits on the ground that the person bringing the challenge lacks a legal basis to complain, or "standing."  Aha, the question gets nicer.

That is the objective legal standard, absent my need to shout out "But this is crazy!"

Still, you can see all the points in this that provide paranoid conspiracy fodder.  I say, go watch "V For Vendetta" and tell me whether Bush/Cheney or Obama reminds you more of the Evil Overlords.

In related news, Congress today affirmed that Obama is validly President (really! it came to a floor vote!), but if that affirmation is contrary to the Real Constitutional Meaning of that off-hand phrase of "natural born citizen," the Constitution trumps Congress.  Nicer and nicer.

If nothing else, it's reassuring to note that the vote was unanimous, so apparently our representatives on The Hill know better than to officially buy into the lunacy.

My considered legal advice:

DON'T ...

DRINK ...

THE KOOL-AID!

Attention Birthers: Now it can be told ...

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last few weeks, you may have heard of the "birthers."  Perhaps not under that name.  Still, it probably has penetrated your consciousness that there are, in these United States, individuals who believe, with all the fervor of belief in, say, the flatness of the planet, or in Santa Claus, or in the existence of drooling gnomes who hide under street gratings who wait to pull you down into Middle Earth (oh, wait, I believe that) ...

Anyway, they belive that our president, Barack Obama, is not a native-born American.  That he was actually born in Kenya, or Neverland, or the "dark" side of the moon.  The logic of this is sketchy, not to say nonexistent, but apparently the suspicion is that Obama's mom and dad ran away from Hawaii, where they met and married, to, let's say Mombassa, rather like the voyage of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, just so they could have their child overseas.  Then they planted items in the local Honolulu newspapers announcing the birth in a hospital in that city. Hawaii had been an American state for over 2 years at the time. 

The spycraft involved is amazing, but it doesn't stop there.  THEN, Mr. and Mrs. Obama managed to infiltrate the public records office in Hawaii, and plant a birth certificate, complete with seal and signature, claiming that their son was born in a Honolulu hospital, delivered by a verifiable OB-GYN of that hospital, and drew his first, crucial breath on American turf.

This, apparently (and here I must admit I am trying to fill in the gaps of the "birther" quasi-logic) was for The Express Purpose of infiltrating their son into the American mainstream as a citizen, like a sleeper in a spy cell, who could then become President of Our Nation and lead us into ... whatever.  Fill in your favorite paranoid blank.  Muslin supremacy.  Socialism.  Gun control.  Tax relief for the middle class (that swine!).

Despite the easily obtainable and viewable birth certificate, despite the newspaper birth announcements, there are wingnut loons individuals who disrupt town hall meetings, lobby their representatives and more than anything else, spread their lunacy theories online.

Now, it can be told.  It is true that the last election was the first since in years when a candidate was not born on constitutionally American soil.  (I mean, Thomas Jefferson may have written the Declaration of Independence, but he was REALLY born in Virginia, a British colony... same for George Washington ... I could go on.)  No, lets give the birthers some credit here.  We were confronted with a major party candidate born outside of the 50 states, much less the lower 48.  

Yes, John McCain.  His father, sneaky GI that he was, spirited his wife out of our nation to an army base hospital in... PANAMA ... to have their son.  Panama.  Home of Manuel "Pineapple Face" Noriega.  Scary stuff, no?

Regarding people born at U.S. military bases in foreign countries, current U.S. State Department policy (as codified in the department's Foreign Affairs Manual) reads:

Despite widespread popular belief, U.S. military installations abroad and U.S. diplomatic or consular facilities are not part of the United States within the meaning of the 14th Amendment. A child born on the premises of such a facility is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and does not acquire U.S. citizenship by reason of birth."^[

In fact, Wikipedia describes the kerfluffle over McCain's eligibility as follows:

• John McCain (born 1936), who ran for the Republican party nomination in 2000 and was the Republican nominee in 2008, was born of two U.S. citizen parents at the Submarine Base Hospital of the Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone.^[32] The former unincorporated territory Panama Canal Zone and its military facilities were not regarded as United States territory.^[33] In March 2008 McCain was held eligible for Presidency in an opinion paper by former Solicitor General Ted Olson and Harvard Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe.^[34] In April 2008 the U.S. Senate approved a non-binding resolution recognizing McCain's status as a natural born citizen.^[35] In September 2008 U.S. District Judge William Alsup stated obiter in his ruling that it is "highly probable" that McCain is a natural born citizen, although he acknowledged the possibility that the applicable laws had been enacted after the fact and applied only retroactively.^[36] These views have been criticized by Gabriel J. Chin, Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, who argues that McCain was at birth a citizen of Panama and was only retroactively declared a born citizen under 8 U.S.C. § 1403, because at the time of his birth and with regard to the Canal Zone the Supreme Court's Insular Cases overruled the Naturalization Act of 1795, which would otherwise have declared McCain a U.S. citizen immediately at birth.^[37] Although the US Foreign Affairs Manual states that children born in the Panama Canal Zone at one point only became U.S. nationals,^[38] it also states in general that "it has never been determined definitively by a court whether a person who acquired U.S. citizenship by birth abroad to U.S. citizens is a natural born citizen […]".^[39] In Rogers v. Bellei the Supreme Court only ruled that "children born abroad of Americans are not citizens within the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment", and didn't elaborate on the natural born status.^[40][41]

So we dodged a real bullet there in that last election.  One might ask the birthers, in light of this revelation, who should be president, since both candidates might be viewed as unnatural born citizens.  Joe Biden?  Sarah Palin (but was she born after Alaska was a state, and if so, LONG enough afterwards to escape the possibility of Siberian infiltration)?  Curiouser and curiouser.

OK, now I get to stop breathing the helium and speak in my real voice.  I am big-D Delighted that this fuss is going on, and, apparently, is capturing the attention and respect of actual Republicans on Capitol Hill.  First teabagging, now this.  The weirder and fringier the Republican party becomes, the more non-certifiable Republican voters will draw away from the party in disgust.  To switch to the Democrats?  I don't really care.  But there will be an increased tendency for those with a brain in ANY party to examine what that party stands for.  Let's see, championing rallies waving teabags, or championing health reform?  Urging voters to focus on the President's middle name, or urging focus on the deregulation of the marketplace?  I could go on. 

Now It Can Be Told: I, Fragile Industries, secretly became a Soviet citizen before I was actually born, and gave birth to John McCain in 1936 in the Ukraine.  I sent him to train with his father, Boris Badenov, with the KGB  from the age of 2.  He was so cute when he banged his little shoe on the podium in Red Square!  THEN, fast forward, I traveled to Africa and fell in with black Muslim extremists.  At the age of six years old, I gave birth to .... aaaak!  The Secret Service have invaded my home and I can say no more ......

   

Schaudenfreude Is:

Getting a big, fat, scary envelope from the IRS ...

...

wait for it

...

addressed to your ex-husband.

OK, that's the funniest thing that has happened all week.

News From Grey Gardens -- The Revolutionary Costume For Today

On Monday, Grey Gardens (aka: the home I share with my mother) was blessed with mobility -- for Mom.  The chair/stair lift was installed, and it's so much fun I may sell tickets.  It's at least as cool, and less dangerous, than the Disneyland Monorail.  Two separate lifts for two separate spiral staircases, requiring custom builds and engineering and enormous stacks of money.  But Mom loves her master suite on the top floor, sunwashed and breezy, so this allows her to stay there. If anyone ever needs a stair lift or other disability tools around the house in Southern California, I can recommend these guys, a small local company with integrity and heart.

Unfortunately, for the last week, Mom still can't get downstairs (despite chair lift) with O2 because ... well, it's a long story and I'm working on fixing it.  But she's been increasingly limited and inactive for longer than that.  Things she used to do for herself, defiantly, jealously preserved as her turf, have been slipping.

I had a moment of shock on Monday when she appeared in front of the workmen for the lift in a stained housedress. My mother wasn't ever a shopaholic (in fact the reverse) but always looked her best, justly proud of her appearance, the elegance of her surprisingly small (but perfect) wardrobe.  In the last few years, the selection has shifted to comfort wear, flowy house dresses and the like, but still chic.  It turns out she hasn't done laundry (or asked for help) for about a month.  She always insisted on doing her own, pride, consideration for the ick factor, stubborn self-reliance, I don't know.  Every month or so for the last few years, I'd ask to do it, she'd refuse.

So this morning, I just packed it all up, toted it downstairs and did it without asking permission.  Looking at it as I loaded the machine I noticed that everything she wears is ... well, shabby and worn.  Worthy of throwing out, not washing.  She hates clothes shopping and hasn't been able to do it even if she wanted to for over a year.  She's been making do with rags and I never thought to step in.

I left one load in washer and one in dryer, and on my round of errands today, stopped by the mall and bought her a new wardrobe.  Really.  New underwear (lots), 2 new nightgowns, 2 new house dresses, 4 new blouses and  2 pair of trousers.  All on sale, this isn't a manic episode, it was well made but reasonably priced.  And it only took about half an hour, one stop. (OK, it was JC Penney's.)

I had a blast, thinking of what colors she likes, making matches, just pulling stuff off racks in her size and not overthinking.  I mean, it was really fun, a wonderful channel for my love for her, my impeccable beautiful mother, to help her look good (which helps her feel good).  Unlike a lot of mother-daughter relationships, I would not have PRESUMED to shop for her before.  Every clothes gift I've ever given her years ago (before I swore Never Again) remained unworn.  She had some inscrutable process of discernment of what suited her and what didn't.  This time I let go of that and thought, "Fuck it, she has no choice but me, and it's all returnable."

When I got back, Mom was so happy she actually cried.  She insisted on trying on two or three things and paraded grandly (well, she stood up) before she ran out of air, loved them all.  She said, "You love me more than I love myself."  Wow.  I know depression and I hear it.  Poor baby.  I'm throwing out all the old sad clothes from the laundry. 

Devoted Reader, when speaking of my mother, you only hear the bitching and ranting.  This is the stuff that makes it worthwhile, and I need to remember that.

PS: If you're a Grey Garden fanatic, and recognize the above brooch from Little Edie's favorite accessory to her revolutionary costume for every single today, you too can have that claustrophobic yet chic je ne sai quois for yourself, http://www.thegreygardensbrooch.com./

I Can Tell It's Summer Because ...

1. More people are Hiking The Appalachian Trail. 

2. More state governors are facing retirement, voluntarily or not.

3. Some people have accomplished #1 and #2 (above) at the same time.

4. In California, school's out.  Including summer school.  4 Evah, possibly.

5. Time to switch to bloom fertilizer.

6. I'm in my second month of radical dentistry.  Ow. Yesterday AND today. Owwww.

7.  My mother, who claims to favor bland nursery food, just made a dinner request of chili cheese dogs with onions and corn on the cob.  (I might be able to gum the cheese, but I'm sticking to liquids.)

Summertime!  Fish are jumping (out of Governor Palin's waders) and Fragile Industries is high (do megadoses of Alleve and Ovaltine count?)  ...

Bee-Bop-A-Ree-Bop Rhubarb Pie: A Reflection on Minnesota and Life

A couple of weeks ago, I returned from a more complete tour of Mee-neh-soh-tah than I ever expected to undertake.  And still, I'm not done.  I have unrealized dreams for this intensely American, Northern, reluctant and quiet state. 

I want to spend more time at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, of course, which is not only a blinding bright light in its field, but darn nice and eager to embrace the ignorant new student, you betcha -- unlike some of the similar institutions on the left and right coasts that are so eager to remind you that you are ignorant and new.  I may never be a native (that takes generations) but I am included in that hospitable embrace.

"Minnesota is a place where if you ask the audience to sing with you, they will.  They've been brought up to.  In the key of G.  Singing a song brings us together -- we are a union."--Garrison Keillior

I also have been flattered by the kindness and respect of some local folks who told me (no doubt to make me feel special, a Minnesota talent) that I should return to talk about, or teach a class, on book arts, or paper arts, or whatever it is I do.  I have no expectation that these blandishments will materialize, but it is a dream to do someday, somewhere.  Until a few years ago, an unrealized dream I never expected to achieve was to sell something I made with my own hands.  I've done that.  Another was to win a prize for same, and I've done that, too.  So maybe someday, I can try to share my excitement and bottomless fascination for the secrets and participation possible with the book form, broadly defined.  It might happen.  I'd like it to happen first in Minnesota, which is, oddly, counterintuitively, open to the arts and the strange creative urges of the restless.

"Lake Wobegon was founded by missionaries trying to convert the Ojibwa Indians by the art of interpretive dance." -- Garrison Keillor

In California, when I was barely 13, through the active conspiracy of grown-ups who knew one or both of us, I was introduced to My First True Love, a 14-year old boy named Joel.  It shouldn't have happened, in the normal course of things.  It was highly manipulated, this meeting.  But despite the artificial machinations, they were right.  We were both intensely geeky, four-eyed, bookworms, never been kissed, smarter than the average bear and socially retarded.  Our first conversation was about Ray Bradbury, and moved on to Kurt Vonnegut.  We were hopelessly in love just about right away.  I don't know whether it was simple psychological imprinting, like the little ducks that follow the first thing they see after hatching, or a true intervention of the goddess Venus, but it has lasted all our lives.  Sure, as kids we drifted apart after a year or so.  We were geographically distant and reliant on the driving of parents to get together.  I think it just became too difficult.  We touched base a few times over the next ten years, sometimes meaningfully.  By age 22 or so, we separated for many years.  But in my brain, as well as his, my icon of love has always worn his face, and his, mine.  Mostly on the back burner.  In the deep subconscious.  This year, for the first time in all those years, we have come together again as free adults.  It is huge, it is healing, and I am deeply grateful for this moment.

"The age I am now, I'm not that interested in the adult stuff.  I want to go back to ... that loose dreamy feeling you had when you were 12 or 13 years old.  We saw the real clear truth when we were children and we spend the rest of our lives trying to remember what we saw." -- Garrison Keillor

So a few weeks ago, I spent a week in Minnesota with Joel.  We went from the Minneapolis airport to the far upper right corner of the state, the North Shore.  It held unearthly beauty, misty, moon-filled, lapping lake waves a counterpoint to the fireplace in the room, to our tentative blood-deep familiarity with one another.  Then a long drive to the far lower left corner to Joel's farm, green, intensely fertile, full of chickens and a cow and two dogs, two cats, five kittens and eight or nine hens.  And one man's vision of a life, with his past peeking around all the corners.  And mine.

Another reason to go back: I'm told that the world's largest ball of twine resides somewhere in Minnesota.  My life will be without meaning if I miss that. http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2128

"We live in our own time, and we also live in the past. That's the only healthy way to live.  We get to the past by singing old songs.  Then we go home .. as we drive over the hills to the grain elevator ... was that all real?  What we think happened in the past?" -- Garrison Keillor

Up until about six years ago, I never thought I'd go to Minnesota.  Why go?  I was a hot city chick, either LA or San Francisco, slick and cool, and felt like I'd seen America through a single trip in a camper in the '70s with my dad and stepmom when I was 16.  That was enough.  We drove from LA to Kansas City, Missouri and then on to Kenosha, Wisconsin to visit their respective families of origin.  It was not quite a trip to Mars, but close.  I needed to decompress afterward with the realization that I had relations living such an alien life. 

(Fortunately, for a kid of showbiz parents, we wrapped up the trip in Las Vegas, where Goldie Hawn's first and then husband, Gus Trikonis, a member of my dad's posse, was directing Goldie in her Hilton headliner show.  We spent the night in the Hilton penthouse, former Elvis headquarters, phones in all six bathrooms,.  With Goldie, we watched her new dachshund puppy chase the crickets.  Little known fact: That uber-headliner residence is incurably riddled with chirpy insects because the huge neon lights just below the penthouse lure these poor deluded bugs from all over Nevada, no matter how stellar the human residents.  It was the kind of bizarre environment that made total sense to me at 16, much more than Kenosha or Lake Wobegon.)

"I moved back to Minnesota from New York when my wife and I had a little girl and decided she deserved to be brought up in Minnesota." -- Garrison Keillor 

In the intervening years, while I married, moved to San Francisco, divorced, practiced law and remarried, my First True Love had several children in California, when I wasn't looking.  His mother's home state was Minnesota.  A while after his mother moved back, he decided to do the same, admiring the small-town values that he thought could benefit his kids.  So in the mid-80's, he bought a farm in the southwestern corner of the state and went on to raise those kids, endure hard winters and worse betrayals, periods of short days and great darkness, beautiful fertile summers, final insults and a divorce, a personal rediscovery and a remarriage.  Joel continued his journey as an artist, a teacher, a four-eyed geek, but always stayed true to the kids and always to the soil of his farm, the rocks, the weeds, the karst underlying the corn. 

In the early '80's, my mother found this crazy little radio show, and shared it with me.  We've been listening ever since, off and on, to this big four-eyed geek, Garrison Keillor, as he told us about his home town, about bachelor Norwegian farmers, the joys of rhubarb pie, and a land where all the children are above average.  It might as well have been Oz, to me, but it sounded, faintly, like home, the soft round home you see in Grant Wood landscapes, or the tempera on the refrigerator, with lollipop trees and the spiral of smoke from the chimney under the smiley-face sun we all drew in kindergarten, even those of us who grew up with palm trees and electric fireplaces. 

Keillor is parodied and belittled and a tourist attraction for the Twin Cities, but he is a unique American artist. Somehow he took the Southern Gothic tradition, of Faulkner or O'Connor, of total sense of place (in a more flamboyant culture) and did the same thing with the quiet private spaces of Northern Middle America.  And on radio, yet!  I admire him enormously.  About 10 years ago he wrote an article about poetry (and he is not a poet) that was enormously insightful about the 98% crap that is modern poetry and what sets the other 2% apart.  Because of this I knew what poetry of mine was good and why what I try to write now is crap.  I'm grateful I can make that distinction instead of having the painful experience of having it pointed out to me.

"It's not a great moment when you turn 65, let me tell you, it's like walking into a brick wall.  You're faced with regrets for all the things you wish you could have done differently ... and then you see your child and realize you can't possibly regret anything in the great chain of events that brought you here." -- Garrison Keillor

In San Francisco, slick, hip and cool, and suddenly middle-aged, in 2003, I was at a dead end in my life. A few months before, I had talked to one of the adults that had brought me together with My First True Love.  I asked her about Joel, it had been over 20 years and I was still intensely curious.  She was dismissive -- he'd moved to Minnesota and become a farmer, and she, an interesting 83-year old, couldn't care less.  For some reason, I was furious with her.  I burned, resenting her attitude, for days.  On a foggy afternoon, I Googled his name and found him.  He wasn't "just" a farmer, he was a college professor of art.  I sent an email: do you remember?  The response was immediate.  The message line said: "Wow."  The reconnection was as innocent, as dumbfounding, as our original selves.

My beloved cousin-sister Ginny gave this interesting metaphor for the next few years.  "It's like the first time you see a turtleneck sweater, you first put your head through this sleeve and that, you put it on inside out, you find all the ways it doesn't fit.  And then it does."

Whatever else we did wrong, we knew that there was a fragile but deep and lifelong bond.  We didn't know where to put it, how to act on it, what mold it fit in, and ultimately decided there was no roadmap or mold.  It was what it was.  In 2007, I went to the wilds of Minnesota for the first time.  I enjoyed a book arts tutorial at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and a few days with Joel and his wife, Ruth, downstate on the farm.  I loved him, loved her, loved the beautiful and terrifying and unforgiving landscape that in May is a Sunday-school vision of heaven.  We stayed close by email and the ether and occasional visits back and forth.  Through horrible times for us both, and ultimately, a superlatively awful time for him when in the course of 8 months he lost to death both his youngest son and Ruth, his generous, brilliant, deep-down decent partner and wife.  We had nothing to give each other but kindness.

"Their hearts went out to the lonely, to the grieving.  They did not let their shyness stand in the way of kindness and charity, because that was how they were raised.  Kindness is a constant presence in America.  In the same spirit I walk around St. Paul and think... this a great country, and it wasn't made by angry people.  I love this country and that's the kind of dumb discovery you make when you're older." -- Garrison Keillor

So I went to Minnesota, to be with Joel to explore what it was like to be with the lifelong icon of love, free and adult, a novelty for us.  It was perfectly imperfect.  The bond is there.  It can't be more than it is but it will never be less.  We have tentative plans for him to return to California in August, which will be the 40th anniversary of our first meeting, on the very same California beachside soil.  A bit of Minnesota will follow with him, though, a bit of San Francisco with me, our whole separate history will of course be present. 

I hope to go back to Minnesota again, too.  Maybe there will be a cover story through book arts, teaching or learning, but it will be about Joel.  Still, there is another dream.   I hope to time it so that we can spend a night in Mee-nee-ap-oh-lis and we can catch Prairie Home Companion in person.  During all those years apart I feel I was preparing, all unaware, for my visits to Minnesota through Keillor's voice, his messages from another planet.  I had no idea I would ever have a Minnesota link. 

I'm going through a periodic affair of the heart with Garrison Keillor, it happens semi-annually.  Actually, when I hear Joel talk, his pauses, his thoughtfulness in what he says, I hear Keillor.  Or vice versa.  And now I have a tiny sense of home when I hear about Lake Wobegon.  Who knew.  It's wonderful and karmic and totally in keeping with the weird and wonderful reconnection and the circle of life.

Actually, I just love old geeks.

"I was afraid of living an ordinary life and I realize that's what we all get.  We all live an ordinary life and it's good enough." -- Garrison Keillor

As we say in Lake Wobegon, it could have been worse.