… Two nights in a row now I’ve had a dream where I try to stick a huge disk-shaped thing in my eye. I’m bent over a sink struggling — it goes on and on and on — to put a giant frisbee in my eye like a contact.

The first night the contact was gray and opaque like the Dish Network dish. Last night it was clear with pointy things on one side and in last night’s dream there was a subplot. G.’s friend’s mom was at the door asking to take G. to a fair … ponies, rides, cotton candy. A. answered the door, said “Sure,” and sent G. right out. There was a table of people he was busy with in the kitchen, so he was brisk about it, to get back to them.

I was in a back room with the giant contact and could hear what was going on but couldn’t move until I got the contact in. I was trying desperately to force it in my eye so I could run out and fix everything because I was upset A. didn’t give the friend’s mom five dollars. (It was very specifically five). I considered it a grave faux pas, so when I did get the pointy contact in I ran after her (stopping first to glare at A.) and gave her five dollars.

I think it’s the carpet.

Jung would have said I’m having a conflict with A. However A. was not in the first dream and that doesn’t explain the recurring contact lens. Perhaps I’m having a conflict with my eye. I do get tired of sticking something in it each day, I do.

Freud would say the big contact was my vagina and that the eye represents my desire to see my vagina and that the vagina is big because it looms large in my eye. Which does not explain the $5 or who all those people were in the kitchen with A.

My friend Eric would say, “You gotta make a big effort to get out and do shit or you’ll start to hole up in your cabin and get all wiggly. I know you.” And I’d say, “awwwww … he knows me.”

I was thinking about that today, I know you … aren’t those three of the sweetest words in a row? Three of the sweetest words you can say to someone, I think … I know you. Maybe that’s what I was trying to say about Bill.

It’s normal to be freaked out by a new house, so I’m not worried about it. I’m very calmly letting the things freak me out. Like the air, for instance. The air is dry, and hot or cold, and brittle. It isn’t comfortable; it’s uncomfortable air. In the summer it will be fine. The carpet is still a problem and will continue to be until it’s burned down to the ground into small flakes of ash.

The bed that felt fine in the old house is uncomfortable here and the dining room table is too big. It swallows the room, making the bordering rooms look lost. But mostly, I think, it’s the carpet. And the kitchen. Oh, and I’m pretty sure someone’s lurking around outside in the back with a large scythe. I see the shadow.

Unrelated: Tomorrow is G.’s Christmas program, she’s an angel. No speaking lines, just songs. And my Christmas letter is all done, send me SASEs. You can also order archived copies here, way back to 2000. (If you act now I’ll send you the uncensored version ’06, with the line about dinner plates.)

Happy Wednesday.

I saw the first bug today. I thought it would be later, in the Spring. Not technically the first, there are the small black flies still — fresh dead piles of them every day — but this was the first meaty one. It had long skinny legs, and wings, I think … hard to tell, I was running.

I’m having problems, too, with the carpet. I see little people in it, crawling around. It follows me, the carpet; outside, around the yard, today clear to Dundee before I was rid of it. But the shower is nice, the kitchen is fine. The carpet temporary … my sanity intermittent, carpet or not.

No school for G. today and she won’t stop harrassing until I play Candyland. Which is no fun because she’s marked all the candy cards and I don’t like to play that way, I just don’t.

I haven’t got one bit of work done since God knows when, not one bit. Have the manuscript printed and neatly bound (a different one, Good Wife is on hold), but can’t carve out the time to make it sing. Have rewritten it 20 times in my head. I talk to myself when I drive, mouth the words. If the kids aren’t with me (I pretend some semblance of normalcy when they’re around) I read what’s in my head right out loud.

“Get off the chair,” she said. “Now.” The man got off the chair and began to circle the room in an unsettling manner.

You know, stuff like that. Have ordered Hell, Purgatory, Paradise [Dante's Divine Comedy: Great Courses on Tape] for a project, and also with always an eye toward the memoir the children will write. Since order and discipline will be absent (at least from my chapters) I’m aiming for eccentric genius ala Dierdre Burroughs (as played by Ms. Bening):

“While my school friends popped their bubble gum to Milkshake, my mother blasted the Great Courses from my cotton candy-colored tape player. It was the formidable Neitschze I bonded to in my tender years, my mother swooping down with grand gestures over each point, rather than that precocious little bilingual cookie Dora.“

Okay, Candyland. I’m blue. More to come. (This was hastily pecked out, will make better efforts in future. Julie Nipp folds her clothes.)

Famous men, yes. First, A. — Let’s have a nice round of applause for the new GM of Gidgets and Gadgets. (Note: made-up name, don’t send the flowers there). That’s right, GM. Vice President and General Manager to be exact. Hear, hear! (Sound of two hands clapping.)

Then Gore Vidal, why not? He’s 80, he’s written a trillion words (if I had a dollar for every one I could buy a war!) and he has a crusty new memoir out. You’re more than welcome to buy it for me for Christmas. Really. Buy it now. Hey, buy me Palimpset, too; save on shipping!

Anyway, the new one is Point to Point Navigation, and it covers the past 40 years. 40 years … that’s a fun stroll isn’t it? … Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Orson Welles … Fellini, Garbo, Eleanor Roosevelt; they’re all here. Yes, fun. One review notes Gore favors the performers over fellow writers (big surprise).

“Writers just talk about themselves. Their selves are not terribly interesting and they’ve already written about themselves. Actors, although they’re supposed to be vain and self-centered, remember to entertain.” Yes, entertain.

Take heed this season, kids. Go to your corporate Christmas gigs, your school plays, the neighbors’ open houses, throw back a neat scotch and then for crying out loud entertain! We’ll all be better for it. While I tell you all about me.

Cheers.

Three things happened this weekend, and this will seem like a sad post but it’s not. And the order of the three is not particular, except that I did save the best man for last.

First, Bill, my parents’ neighbor for 30 years (and mine for some) fell off his ladder. He fell off Tuesday, I think, and they flew him here right away; it was a bad fall. He’s 92, he was cleaning his gutters.  Yes.  92.

Anyway, we went to see him tonight, and … you couldn’t hear that, but I just took a very, very long pause. Very. Because I was hoping my thing I was thinking would come to me in articulate form, which I could then type. That particular feeling you get when you see someone in hospital — not young people with silly kneecaps, but people there for good reason like Bill.

I wanted to figure out a way to say that it was a really good feeling I had when I left, not a sad one. Selfish, sort of. For one thing it was probably the longest I’d ever talked to Bill in our 30-years, or not really, but the most substance. Remember when George went to his girlfriend’s uncle’s funeral on Seinfeld, and Kramer said it bumped him up, like 10 dates?

Well it was a little like that, and that sounds silly, but you meet so many people, and you know them, and then you say “Hi!” a million times and linger there at that second date forever, for the rest of your lives sometimes and that just feels bleh.

So this felt good, I guess, because Bill didn’t seem uncomfortable or self-conscious, and because the nurse said “here’s your family!” and those moments like that, they’re rare but what else is it? They’re intimate, familiar, personal … and because of that a privilege, I guess. Yes, maybe that’s what it was, I felt privileged … that he let me in, that he invited me into that, with no fanfare at all, that it was a given that I would be there. Rats, I wanted to say it all better; bungled it.

Second was Ed Bradley. The 60 Minutes guys paid tribute tonight. It was Brandford Marsalis, though, who got me. He said (I’m paraphrasing) “Ed wouldn’t want us crying, we talked about funerals once. He said he liked how they do them in New Orleans to music, with one sad line, and then a tambourine in the next.” And then Branford closed the piece with the most beautiful, simple, pure trumpet medley. Just him, no mutes no mikes no display. Shoot, I think I bungled that, too, but if you’re looking for a common thread so far, I think it’s sincerity, which is a gem.

Third, A.’s uncle Benny. He passed away late August and friends and family flew to Melbourne, Florida this Saturday for his memorial. Florida because he retired there a few years ago, but his soul most certainly rests in New York.

I don’t dare try to capture him. In his great, vivid life I knew him for barely a whisper; enough to tell you he had the charm of a movie star, the finesse of a diplomat, the heart of a lion. He commanded a room even when he was completely focused on one person in the corner, making them think they had the most interesting thing to say … others will have to do that now.

From the Italians: Quest la vita e qui il gioire, un’ ora di abbrezzo e poi moire. (“This is life and this is joy: an hour of embracing and then to die.”)

Okay, here’s something completely unrelated from my cousin Judy. A song. Click right here.

Chris Wallace has his panties in a bunch. Robert Iger bunched them.

… I’m reading Proust, and that’s how far I’ve gotten, the first line. A character in my book tackles Proust in a sort of nerdy angry haze, so I thought I’d give it a try. Hmph.

On another note, I had my great friend Jane here last week and she reminded me how goofy and creative we used to be when we were young and stark mad from the overarching themes of small towns. We filmed a series of videos for our communications class in 7th grade and one was a cooking show where we did everything with our feet. I was Julia Child. We made a smelly sardine meringue and broke eggs with our toes; brilliant. Let’s hope La Grande Middle School recognized genius when they saw it and the footage is still in the archives.

It’s rainy here and I listened to my favorite local radio station all day and they played a Duke Ellington tune called “Warm Valley.” The radio guy said D.E. wrote it after driving through the Columbia Gorge once on his way to Portland for a gig. Where the hell was he coming from is what I want to know. That I-84 loop is a sight, sure, but once you pass the windsurfing kids at Hood River, you see like three cars until Boise; vice versa coming the other way. Good Lord, where had they booked poor Duke? Boardman? Hey, that reminds me of when Mickey Rooney did his schtick for Elgin. (Click on the link, if only for that wonderful picture Janis Bozarth snapped!)

I just reserved Real Genius at the library because I had dinner Saturday with my cousin Jerry and his beautiful wife Judy and their charming children and they are all four of them total film geeks, I love it! We were talking about Napoleon Dynamite and Jerry is the only adult I know who can rattle off Uncle Rico’s lesser known films. Real Genius is actually a Val Kilmer flick, but Uncle Rico has a great supporting role, apparently; Jerry says it’s good, so I’m on it.

[Oh, by the way, Jerry, Junior found Ben's white little stick thing that goes to his video game. Send me your address, I'll drop it in the mail.]

Speaking of movies, A. O. Scott gave Little Children such a compelling review, that now I’m dying to see it. Since I won’t (I don’t get out) I went to Amazon and “Surprise Me!” read the book, which is not the worst way to read a book, actually. It’s sort of fun. But then I wanted it, too, really bad, so we ran out and got it tonight, dropped everything; my children are so tolerant. It’s got a lovely first paragraph, one I wish I could steal.

“The young mothers were telling each other how tired they were. This was one of their favorite topics, along with the eating, sleeping and defecating habits of their offspring, the merits of certain local nursery schools, and the difficulty of sticking to an excercise routine. Smiling politely to mask a familiar feeling of desperation, Sarah reminded herself to think like an anthropologist. I’m a researcher studying the behavior of boring suburban women. I am not a boring suburban woman myself.”

Anyway, like Junior told me tonight, “it’s okay to take ideas from books, Mom, but you can’t just copy the words,” so I’ll take some ideas. It is Saul Bellow (Herzog), though, and Richard Yates who are getting me along — My pitch-line for when the Hollywood agents come call is: “It’s Revolutionary Road with sight gags.” Ba-dum ching. Ho hum.

Okay nothing to see here, let’s wrap it up. Che traffico! C’e non male. Do good work.

… Is there anyone cooler than Susan Sontag? She makes me wish I smoked. Or had smoked. Or at least had a black and white photo in my past, one where I looked even half this self-possessed and demure and too smart for my shirt, as she does here at her sex symposium. Maybe I’d just settle for a photo of me at a sex symposium. Though I’d likely have a goofy grin and be holding a big pink foam penis from the concession stand. Maybe cool can’t be learned.

Her diaries are in the Sunday NYTimes Magazine and they are spellbinding. I don’t know how that works, diaries and reading them. Seems odd to be reading hers, she seems still so present. But they’re there and I read them, and she seems to be all for it anyway; says the whole purpose of diaries is to be read. This as she is justifying snooping in her lover’s journal where she found an unflattering portrait of herself.

… Do I feel guiltly about reading what was not intended for my eyes? No. One of the main (social) functions of a journal or diary is precisely to be read furtively by other people …

Heheh, I assume she would have included email had she been writing today and then I would say “See, A.? The main function of your email is to be read furtively by me. I told you!”

Have you ever had people snoop through your private notes? Have you ever snooped in someone else’s and seen something they wrote about you? My mom read my diary in 4th grade when I wrote that I hated her. She wasn’t happy and I stopped writing. I didn’t know, then, that they’re supposed to be read. And then I had an unfortunate roommate incident once … very dramatic. Sigh. Diaries, shmiaries. Read Sontag’s.

A boy I knew once let me pour an entire beer over his head in a fight. An entire, full, cold beer. And he still stayed sweet as Cherry-Vanilla Coke. If you’re out there, Mr. Jones, I’m listening to old 70′s songs, and this one’s for you:

Well I keep on thinkin ’bout you, Mister Golden Hair Surprise
And I just can’t live without you can’t you read it in my lines
I’ve been one poor correspondent, and you’ve been too, too hard to find
But it doesn’t mean you ain’t been on my mind

Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me in the air?
Will you write me just a little, just enough to show you care?
Well I tried to fake it, I don’t mind sayin’, I just can’t make it

neer, neer, neer-neer-neer-neeeer (guitar sounds)
neer, neer, neer-neer-neer-neeeer ….

My best to Bruno and Chiclets … have a good summer!

- T