Three-Quarters of a Century? What the hell?

 After weathering the vast shock of turning forty-five, a process made easy by moving to Bangkok where I instantly reverted to the status of a clueless four-year-old, I've been skipping heedlessly through the following years without paying attention to the increasing numbers.  Not even hearing a tactless little brat who passed me on a stairway in Hong Kong and announced in horrified tones, "Mommy! She's so old!" made me stop and ponder where my latest birthday had taken me. Wrinkles? So what. A vanishing waistline? That was part of the American Way of Eating, regardless of age. Lost hair color? Grey was fine with me. 

Not even the inertia of the Covid years made me pay attention to entering a new decade. Seventy felt no different from sixty--until I reached the halfway point of my septuagenarian years. 

This birthday was different. Two months earlier my youngest sister died, swiftly and unexpectedly. Soon after this, I tripped over an errant rolling duffle bag, broke a little bone in one hand, and had cuts and bruises on my face for three weeks afterward. Two days after I turned seventy-five, I went in to have a cataract removed and observed all the strictures involved with that procedure for much too long. Suddenly aging and mortality weren't just staring me in the face, they were in my face, or to be more precise, on it. A healthy crop of freshly developed lines had come to stay and with my newly improved eyesight, I couldn't ignore them. Perhaps they'd been there all along, I realized with a surge of horror, and I simply had been too vision-impaired to notice them.

Today, after brushing my teeth, as I assessed my face's creases and crevices under the unforgiving light of my bathroom, another thought burst into life. The toddlers I once babysat when I was thirteen are now preparing to enjoy the blessings of Social Security and Medicare. We're almost contemporaries at this point, all of us receiving sales pitches from AARP.  There's nothing comforting about this at all. Nor am I soothed in any way by the knowledge that my oldest son will be getting those same missives in two more years and in that same time period his younger brother will hit the half-century mark. If they are approaching the dubious privilege of senior citizen discounts, then I must be perilously close to being ancient.

In years past, any time I felt as though age was catching up with me, I packed a suitcase and grabbed my passport. In the beginning of this coming year, I'm going to do this again. I'm hoping that a transpacific flight will work its usual alchemy and I'll return with a mindset that has no time to dwell on birthdays and their advances. God, I hope so. I really don't want to let the truth that next year I'll be closer to eighty than seventy get in my way of having a good time with the rest of my life.

Feeling Old in a City of Swifties

 Taylor Swift came to town and for two days the streets were full of young women and little girls. They flashed through downtown like butterflies, some still young enough to need a middle-aged mother in attendance, others striding in pairs like half of the leading characters in Sex and the City. Seattle's notorious dowdiness was suddenly perked up with bras and Stetsons and skirts that resembled band-aids,satin and tulle, sequins and cowboy boots. Among this, I felt as though I was wandering through a series of TikTok reels.

Suddenly I was in a city inhabited by avatars, shining and confident and somewhat terrifying, all young enough that they’ve never inhabited their lives without ever-present screens and cameras. They’ve been stars of their own private video worlds ever since they were old enough to hold a phone and they have an eerie physical presence in which every motion contains a pose.

Almost all of them were white. Many were blonde with bodies that looked as if they’d been manufactured by Mattel. Every last one of them had access to the financial comfort that could purchase a Taylor Swift ticket and the chutzpah to put together the sort of outfit that defied any concept of 20th Century style.

These are not the girls and women I usually see on the streets of downtown and that truth comforts me. There are young female people in the world today who are imperfectly human and unaware of their beauty and power, “same as it ever was.” But in their innermost selves, do they yearn to be one of the Swifties? Or have they turned their backs on that form of gender?

Taylor Swift is popular enough that she drew her audience from all over the Pacific Northwest. From Vancouver B.C. to Idaho, her followers descended upon Seattle in outfits they had probably agonized over for months. I need to remind myself that they aren’t a new species, just a transformed version of cheerleader and sorority girl. 

I’ve seen their kind before but they were in Bangkok, impossibly glamorous in full drag or dancing on the stage of a transgender cabaret. 

Was this weekend a watered-down version of a celebrity red carpet or a Pride Parade for straight girls? I’m too old to know the answer to that but I’m quite happy that my grandchild was at the Seattle Center, wearing everyday clothing in full sunlight, dancing and probably sweating to the music of Sir Mix-a-lot, for free.

Death by Tomato Plant

 For the past three weeks my hands have felt as though they’ve been bitten by mosquitos, although I haven’t seen any. The bites are swollen and itch like crazy, emerging every time I come back inside from my porch. 

I began to remember the invisible and voracious gnats that adored me the last time I was in Tucson, but I’d never encountered them in Seattle before. Besides, those little Southwest devils were averse to wind while my recent bites have shown up even when my porch is ruffled by a stiff breeze.

The bites seemed to become more annoying as the summer took on some heat but I could never find an area on my hands that looked like an insect had feasted there. The swelling and itching came within a few minutes after I came indoors and disappeared after an hour of annoyance with no visible scars. This wasn’t like insects I’d known in the past--and believe me, there have been many. Wherever I go in the world, the word is out. “Hey. Janet’s in town. Let’s eat.”

The source of the bites became my little mystery. Were they coming from the drain that lay just outside of my fence? Did my next-door neighbor have an open container of water within his lush garden where gnats had formed a summer home? Why did these creatures never attack me in the morning when the air is cool and my windows are wide open? And why did the bites show up every time I watered the massive tomato plant that my neighbor had given me a few weeks ago? Was there such a thing as tomato mites?

Last night after dowsing what’s become a tomato tree complete with yellow blossoms and miniscule green globes of fruit, I settled in with a magazine and a particularly virulent itching on my right hand, the one in which I hold my watering can. As the swelling fattened, my concentration went straight to hell and I grabbed my ipad.

“Itching” “Swelling” “Tomato plants”-- within a second google obligingly provided the answer. Tomato plants, with their abundance of pollen, are the bane of allergy sufferers. Itching and swelling are the least of their hazards to those with “sensitivity.” Some people go into anaphylactic shock after being in contact with tomato plants.

This apparently is a fact well known to gardeners and is the reason why tomatoes were considered poisonous for centuries. 

Good old Deadly Nightshade came by its name honestly. Some people can’t even eat a fresh tomato without lapsing into an allergic reaction and many gardeners only approach their tomato plants while wearing dishwashing gloves.

Today is the Fourth of July when most stores are closed. In preparation for the holiday, I stocked up on coffee and cat food. Who knew that my most essential need would be latex hand protection? It seems that my best avenue of defense is to wash my hands the second I come back inside and if that doesn’t work, resort to antihistamines. 

I’ve been so proud of the way my tomato plant has flourished--watering it twice a day, propping up its drooping branches with little sticks, pruning unnecessary branches, and taking deep breaths of its distinctive scent. And this is how it repays me?

Next year I’m going to sprinkle my porch with an assortment of artificial plants that provide greenery without danger. Or perhaps a cactus garden--all thorns, no pollen, no gloves necessary. 

Nature, I’m breaking up with you. It’s all over between us.

Getting the Bends

 Since I don’t know how to swim, Caisson’s Disease, or decompression sickness, has never been a problem that preyed on my mind--until yesterday when I got the bends. This usually only happens to scuba divers when they rise too quickly from the aquatic depths to the water’s surface. The rapid change of pressure produces nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream and in addition to physical pain, causes dizziness and confusion. Who would think this could ever strike on dry land?

Like most of us, I sank into the darkness of  isolation and fear in 2020 and have slowly risen above it in the years that followed. My social life remained cautious and my interactions scanty until this week when that all burst into blossom. For the first time in ages, I had four different occasions marked on my calendar, where usually there’s only one a week. First I was dazzled and then I became dazed. 

In the middle of time spent with one of my dearest friends and her husband, I began to pay for a bottle of wine and suddenly realized my debit card wasn’t there. Neither were an assortment of other crucial items, ranging from a credit card to my passport. 

Luckily I was close to home so I could race back to search for these things. Unluckily I live in a heavily touristed neighborhood with narrow streets filled with crowds of pedestrians. When the little clutch purse where my essential items live didn’t appear in my apartment, I became certain that they had either fallen from an unzipped compartment in my handbag or they were stolen by a pickpocket. 

I immediately canceled my bank cards. Two hours later as I struggled to make an online report of a lost passport, I got up to find something in a pile of papers that I’d moved from the table minutes before my friend arrived. Within them was a weight that was definitely not paper--and there were my missing essential items.

As I mentally retraced my steps that led to this act of stupidity, I remembered that in the middle of preparation for a visit that I’d longed for, I bought fruit at a stand in the crowded public market--mangosteen that both my friend and I had loved when we lived in Southeast Asia. I came home and removed the receipt for this purchase and then left the little purse on top of some papers. Then I received a text message about a job I was involved in, answered it, and began to make changes in the task when another text came saying my friend had arrived. I put what I was working on at the top of the pile of papers and moved it all to another spot. As soon as I saw my friend for the first time in over a year, everything else left my mind, consumed by joy. 

Some may unkindly chalk this up to impending senility. I prefer to think of it as a surfeit of happiness crammed into one week after years of not having this happen at all. Bubbles of effervescence in my veins stalled my brain and the result wasn’t pretty. 

The lesson learned? Slow the hell down as I make my way out of the depths.

Death and Life Downtown

 

Beginning a rainy morning with a funeral march isn’t going to brighten the rest of the day. Perhaps the best part of yesterday was meeting a Rottweiler puppy. The worst part was marching in the company of signs made by a man who comes to every protest, Seattle’s Republican co-opter: Support Small Businesses. Although the march was prompted by the murder of a small business owner, this seemed remarkably dissonant. 

The drumming that led us back to my neighborhood was appropriately somber and set a tone of grief for the dead woman, her unborn baby, and the husband and child who live without her. A senseless crime committed by a madman who heard directions coming from an invisible car was punctuated by a statement from a policeman. We knew who he was. 

There’s now a taskforce of fifty police spread over most of this sprawling city: Aurora, the CD, South Seattle, Downtown. That’s twelve police for each area. More lip service from a city that specializes in this.

On the way to the march, I passed a building where a window washer was poised halfway up a glass wall. Below him was a makeshift shelter constructed of motley objects with its inhabitant under an improvised tent made from a blue tarp and blankets. What insanity is brewing within it? Who would be able to stay sane under those conditions?

Later I went to PCC to get a magazine and ice cream that might pierce through the inner and outer darkness. What gave me a little jolt of joy was seeing a long line outside Ludi’s which is open at last. Nobody waiting outside looked like a tech worker and everybody was happy. When I walked back home a few minutes later, a sign on the door announced that they were closed for the day--sold out. By this time today, they will have been open for five minutes and I would bet there’s already a throng behind the waiting line rope.

This is the third business to open downtown in the past six months--Uniqlo, Ben Bridges, and Ludi’s. Because of its history, Ludi’s arrival makes me happiest. Across from the Market for decades as the Turf, a working-class diner and bar, it became Ludi’s when the owner bequeathed it to a Filipino employee. It was displaced for a parking garage and finally found its new home a block away from me, just down the street from the Thompson Hotel, the Moore Coffee Shop, and a building that has become low-income housing. This is what downtown should look like.

So as a vicious tragedy strikes one business, another one opens. This couldn’t have happened at a better time for the residents of downtown who fear that their neighborhood will die from gentrification as much as from crime..

I can’t wait to have a BLT and a beer at Ludi’s.

Starving the Algorithm

 I've deactivated my Facebook account, which I should have done long ago. Every day I woke up to memes and jokes from people I’d never met and probably never would. My recent “restriction--only you can see your page”--with no recourse provided when I clicked the buttons that supposedly would give me a chance to get out of what we’ve come to call Facebook Jail, made me realize how absurd and conditional this medium is. That it grudgingly gave me snippets of my past every day in the form of “memories” no longer seemed acceptable and I felt disgusted that I’d given it intimate access to my life from 2008 until now.

I moved all of my photos from Facebook to Google Docs--and please, don’t point out the shaky logic behind that. There’s no escaping The Cloud, now that cameras have all become digital. Facebook invited me to move all of my posts and notes too, but I don’t have that kind of time. It took almost five hours for the photo extraction to finish its odyssey and during that time I had to be close by to hit refresh when my wifi timed out. Moving my words would have taken days-and none of them are deathless enough to warrant that.

Next I went through my list of friends and trimmed it ruthlessly. What remained when I finished the triage were family and close friends who don’t have another presence on Instagram that posts everything they put on Facebook. This was a surprisingly meager list. Now that Instagram has become Facebook’s less obnoxious twin, there’s a large degree of duplication. 

I decided I’d deactivate for the first week before I pulled the plug for good on my old account so I could still use the Messenger accessory that’s attached to it. Once I delete that account, I can no longer use that particular part of Messenger. So until I had notified people that I had moved, I wanted to keep that option. 

Then came the shocker. I can’t issue friend requests to people who apparently no longer have Facebook in their countries, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Thailand. Luckily some of them are on Instagram and all of them use gmail. 

I feel lighter this morning. Pressing the delete button and removing fifteen years of my life from Facebook, plus pictures and memories from times before that, will happen today after I’ve sent my last message informing people of this change. Once I’ve done that, I will have come a long way toward reclaiming the word “friend.” 

Perhaps this is my first step to truly leaving Facebook. My new account is infinitely different from the one I had for a decade and a half. The algorithm is in free fall with no data yet to feed on and it’s not a pretty sight. I’m getting a flood of posts that tell me how to roast cauliflower to where I can find a good auto mechanic in Arkansas. My option for removing them is “snooze for thirty days.” 

The “story” invitation is prominently displayed and it’s repulsively easy to wander into the realm of video clips by mistake. When I investigated my settings, there were huge numbers that I turned off. “Push?” What the hell is that? I hope I never find out. What I do know is that before I denied Facebook that power, my gmail account and my SMS were flooded with notifications. 

The beast is changing and feeding it may well be something I decide I’m not going to do anymore. Right now I’m enjoying the sight of it floundering, unsure of what to do with “Mulrooney Brown.” Bite me, Facebook.

Move On. Nothing to See Here

 Lunch with my son yesterday was shattered when he said,”In Mexico they have newspapers that show all the blood. What would happen if we did that here? Look, this is what an AK-47 does to a six-year-old?” 

Kids at his school were out at recess when they saw “a suspicious-looking man.” They reported him to a teacher and he turned out to be a parent who had come to pick up his kindergartner. 

Those kids were at recess. They should have been playing. Instead they’re monitoring their school grounds for potential danger. And we think it’s covid that’s affecting their mental health. 

If people formed human shields around schools every day at every school, would that only accentuate the children’s fear? "Why are those people here every day? Is someone coming to hurt us?"

If the Parkland students didn’t sway politicians from the gun lobby, what will? Maybe the pictures of bodies torn to bits? What paper or television station would have the courage to show that? 

But that’s what stopped the war in Vietnam--dead bodies shown on prime-time TV every night. Coverage of the civil rights struggle brought hate and courage into living rooms everywhere. Now we get our news from social media and watered down newspaper coverage. We don’t even have to change the channel. Click the image of a weeping face and move on.

We are a country who has decided murdered children are an acceptable fact of our national landscape. Some of us believe that Sandy Hook was a hoax and some of us have learned not to think about it at all. 

This is what democracy looks like.

Let Them Eat Cake

 Back in the ‘70s, one of the Andrews who wrote for New York magazine (Tobias? Solomon?) wrote a piece advising people of a certain income level that it would be better for them to shove a case of canned tuna under their bed than to put money in a savings account. Now the cost of that case of tuna is beyond the means of quite a few and a savings account is as useful as a piggy bank.

When our current century was still young and not yet covered in battle scars, I bought a case of Mama noodles to put under my bed. I think I could still afford that investment but I know my blood pressure would rebel. The flood of palm oil and all the delicious additives that make Mama the world’s easiest comfort food also make it one of the least healthy staples. 

For a person who is indifferent to grocery shopping, I still spend far too much of my monthly Social Security check on food, a fact that’s belied by the contents of my refrigerator. I blame this on my homestead upbringing and the food that nourished me when I was a child. All of the economical measures that determined what went on my plate every day--50 pounds of potatoes in a burlap bag, cases of canned green beans, corn, and peas, Crisco in cans so large that they often served as seating for guests at the supper table, enough sugar and flour to last through the winter--kill my appetite with the mere memory of them. They turned me into a person who only stocks up on condiments and a bag of rice to accompany whatever I decide to eat that day. Even if I could afford the financial outlay required by a case of tuna fish, the obligatory nature of it lurking under my bed would deter me from eating it--which I suppose is the point. Survival rations rarely inspire a bout of binge eating.

Then there’s the matter of canned tuna fish itself in this era. Cleverly, manufacturers have abolished the need for a can opener, giving most canned tuna a top that resembles what's found on canned cat food. The resemblance doesn’t end there. Is it a health measure or an economic one that has packed that tuna in water instead of olive oil? No matter which, the result is the same--a dismal lack of flavor that makes a can of Fancy Feast seem almost succulent. That case of tuna has become the nightmare that used to prey upon single women, the one in which they were old, alone, and living on cat food.

Occasionally I’m given a magazine from the days of my childhood and as I study the advertisements, my personal nightmare reawakens. 

Remember casseroles? Remember when a can of Campbell’s soup was the only flavoring agent and garlic powder was an exotic ingredient? If your memory flags, go to an old school NYC outer borough diner where salt, pepper, and a dash or two of Tabasco sauce are the only condiments in the kitchen or on the table. No wonder cocktail hour was a staple in many middle class homes in mid-Century America. To face the dinner table, fortification was essential.

The pendulum made its customary swing and suddenly Julia Child replaced Peg Bracken. The housewives who, in Ms. Bracken’s words, “would rather wrap their hands around a dry martini than a wet flounder” began to labor over recipes that had them tottering by the end of the day, perhaps because of frequent sips of the wine that went into those complicated and exhausting meals. No wonder American women were always on a diet. They were simply too tired to pick up a fork.

God knows what's going on in this country’s kitchens now. What I find telling is that Gourmet and Bon Appetit have disappeared from magazine displays--and so have Woman’s Day and Family Circle. When I make my annual purchase of Real Simple, I’m always dazzled by the preponderance of recipes for pasta and the lack of ones for desserts. There’s a clue, I suppose. Unfortunately the food photography is always more tempting than the recipes; although I may tear out a page for future inspiration, it always ends up in the recycling bag.

Instead I spend a generous portion of my food budget on condiments. A case of fish sauce under the bed? Now we’re talking…

Goodbye, Momo

 As the last trace of Momo disappears, my thoughts have the same tinge of sadness as the weather. I’ve finally reached the point where I can walk past the corner it filled for ten years and am able to look at the shop that replaced it without feeling mournful. Today on the second day of its final sale, I think of going down to say goodbye but I’m not sure I have the strength to do that. 

When Momo first opened, its windows bright and colorful with the sort of clothes that had never before been sold in the CID, I felt a bit outraged. When I first walked in and found it carried $200 jeans, I was horrified. Where did this shop think it was, anyway? But as I continued my exploration, I understood; Momo was like a neighborhood candy store that offered Faberge eggs filled with the best Swiss chocolates--and lollipops too. All the things it held were carefully and democratically chosen to make every shopper at every economic level leave with a purchase that made them happy.

It was a revolutionary approach to retail, made even more iconoclastic by the welcome it extended to anyone who walked in. Lei Ann Shiramizu and the people who worked for her quickly made Momo an unofficial neighborhood community center. Whether someone popped in to buy a greeting card or just to say hi, there was always a spot of chat. Tourists were lured in by the enticing windows and left with recommendations for neighborhood restaurants. Momo's customers were often introduced to people they’d passed on the street for ages without ever saying hello, let alone knowing their names. Lei Ann was not only a “connector,” she was the world’s best hostess who made every day at Momo feel like a cocktail party, no alcohol necessary. 

I lived around on the same block as Momo for years and when I needed a small present, the perfect snarky card, a bar of bourbon-vanilla soap, or a bit of cheerful conversation, that was where I went. “Retail therapy” has become as big a lie as “customer service” but at Momo I always found both--and so much more. I found a friend. 

Well actually I found two. Years after it opened I walked in and behind the counter was a woman as prickly as she was beautiful. We clashed until we discovered we read the same kind of books. Now in spite of the cavernous age gap that yawns between us, I love Angela with all my wizened heart. She is a gift from Momo, in the same way that Lei Ann is its greatest treasure.

It’s a grey and gloomy day and all I want to do is go to Momo. I want to be in the place where everything it contains goes beyond “sparking joy,” it lights a goddamned bonfire of delight. 

Not only did I always find the perfect present when occasions warranted it, Lei Ann publicized my book readings on the blackboard that was at eye level just behind the counter. She sold my last book and gave it precious window space. She--and Angela too--trimmed ragged portions of my self-inflicted haircuts when I rushed in for approval. She was there when my mother died, when a sister and I were bitterly estranged, when the man I loved lost his battle against cancer on another continent, and when my apartment was sold, forcing my departure from the neighborhood.

Momo was Lei Ann’s art installation and she made it a destination point for people all over this city. When I think of  everyone it embraced and welcomed, and of everyone who now passes its corner without ever knowing it had once been there, I feel tears at the back of my nose and the beginning of a lump at the back of my throat. At the same time, I feel deep gratitude for all those years when Momo was in place. Thank you, Lei Ann. Goodbye, Momo.

The Slow Traveler--That's Me.

Veggies? No, Thank You.

 I thought about Kitchen & Market briefly as I wondered if a prospective visitor puts milk in his coffee. Suddenly I realized that place is a bougie corner store and then I recoiled. I loathe the word “bougie” as much as I do “veggie,” which is one I’ve never uttered. 

I think it’s the “ie” ending that makes my brain flinch. It makes those words feel like adult baby talk, like cray-cray and jelly. Jelly doesn’t even make sense since it has the same number of syllables as jealous. That has to be a text abbreviation like Imma and gonna. A Hong Kong friend has even shortened don’t to dun.

I can understand the text-spawned words. Phone keyboards are a pain in the neck to use and the fewer characters involved, the better. Blessedly that new language doesn’t seep into spoken words. But veggie has been around for half a century, spoken by people who certainly have the capacity to utter that extra syllable in vegetable. And bougie is just plain idiotic--bring back the old mispronunciation, bushwa, if the original French is too affected to survive in this century. 

Hoi polloi is another annoying term because nobody knows what it means. It’s the rabble, for god’s sake, not the moneyed class. Namesake annoys me too, since it originally referred to a person named after another, not a person whose name was given to someone younger.

We live in the era of Humpty Dumpty. “When I use a word it means what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.” Slang used to revitalize the language, not infantilize it. 

Dr. Oz was pilloried for referring to a selection of raw, bite-sized vegetables as crudités, instead of a veggie plate. It may be the only thing about that fraud that I can understand--if I had to choose between the two names, I’d call it crudités too. But I wouldn’t choose. I’d learned to call it vegetables many years ago.

The one time I ordered crudités from a menu, it was in Fairbanks,Alaska,  back in the day when quiche hadn’t yet become a cliché. The waitress, a sweet woman from the Kenai Peninsula, repeated my order as crudite with a long i in its last syllable. After that I just ordered a plate of raw vegetables and we remained friends. But there was no way in hell that I’d order veggies. I’d rather have crudite, even though the mispronunciation makes it sound like something that could kill Superman.

What all this means is I’m growing old. Nobody says “it used to be” or “back in the day” unless they’re doddering. No matter that I hated “veggie” when I was a mere slip of a girl at thirty. Some people are born old while others are Noam Chomsky. Prescriptive? Descriptive? I’ll take a helping of both, but for god’s sake, don’t offer me baby talk.

Wishing for a DMZ

 When I spent six months in Tucson, I became friends with a couple of dogs who obviously weren’t meant to be friendly. They were a pair of boxers with menacing barks but after a couple of weeks they stopped barking at me. They lived within a fenced yard with a sign that told passersby to beware of them and their personal style indicated that this was a fine idea. However they seemed to like being talked to and after a brief initiation period, they began to come as close to me as they could get, leaning against the substantial chain links of the fence. 

I never touched them because of a chat I had one day with their owner. “I don’t want them to be friendly,” he told me, but he told me their names, Chacha and Chipilone. With this crucial piece of information, my brief encounters with the dogs became more intimate and they seemed to like the increased recognition.

I also picked up a bit of Spanish vocabulary that has no single word equivalent in English. The youngest dog was named Chipilone because he was like a child who demanded every scrap of his mother’s attention for himself--and sure enough, the youngest of the boxers jammed between the older dog and me as thoroughly as the fence would allow. 

I now live in a household with two chipilones.

When I brought Mr. Fritz home to be a companion for Mulrooney. I’d been told that this tiny little cat was deferential to other felines and at first that seemed to be true. But as soon as he gained enough confidence to venture out from under the bed, he gradually began to take over, inserting himself between Mulrooney and me, Mulrooney and the food bowls, Mulrooney and the cat treats. He observed where Mulrooney liked to sleep at night and did his best to take that over too.

In spite of there being two of almost every cat essential in this very small apartment, Mr, Fritz wants it all. Annoyingly, Mulrooney has spent the last three weeks in a state of abdication, with all of his hostilities directed toward me. Any attention paid to Mr. Fritz, even the uttering of his name, depletes the supply of affection that Mulrooney knows is his. 

Mr. Fritz seems more than willing to confirm this theory. He took over the fleece jacket that’s been Mulrooney’s security blanket for the past couple of years. He’s done his level best to monopolize the bed once I’m in it. He likes nothing better than to gobble his portion of Fancy Feast and then turn toward Mulrooney’s. The one thing he hasn’t assumed possession of is Mulrooney’s little cat cave and that’s been the saving grace of this situation, if there can be any at all.

Last night Mulrooney asserted his right to the bed and Mr. Fritz disputed this for a couple of fun-filled hours. It’s like living with the Jets and the Sharks in feline form and it’s eroding my nervous fiber.

I’ve been told to separate them. Put Mr. Fritz in the bathroom and close the door. This would work wonderfully well if I had more than one bathroom or if Mr. Fritz hadn’t rejected that plan from his first minutes in this apartment. Instead he and Mulrooney have chosen their own spaces, one under the bed, one in his cat cave. There are hours in the day when anybody walking into this place would swear that no cats lived here. There are hours when I wish that were true.

The part that bothers me most about this is the look in Mulrooney’s eyes. He’s a very expressive cat with an eloquent scowl when life doesn’t go in the way he wants it to. He’s not scowling now. He has the feline version of the thousand-mile stare, something I’ve never seen before, and I have an impressive number of scratches on both forearms.

Since the afternoon of February 28th, I’ve been hyperventilating, my life consumed by nonstop turf wars. For the first time ever I’ve considered asking my doctor for Xanax and when a friend bought me a couple of cocktails the other day, a life of heavy drinking began to seem like a fine idea indeed.

The truth is there’s a battle for dominance going on here and it’s not pretty. I have the flesh wounds to prove it. 

They’ll work it out, I’ve been told--but will I survive the process?

Slowly I’m beginning to believe this place just isn’t big enough for all of us.

Getting Over It

 My mother once told me her 70s were her favorite decade as she grew older and I never expected mine to be anything other than an extension of what I felt was late middle age. Then covid came along and slapped me upside the head, giving me a foretaste of how it would be to grow very, very old. 

I was luckier than many. I didn’t lose any of my senses except for my sense of adventure. For thirteen days all I wanted to do was sleep or sit. A trip down the hall to the garbage chute felt like climbing Mount Everest, an exercise in brute physical endurance. Worst of all, for almost two weeks I “lost my invaluable curiosity.”

This phrase comes from a sentence in Tove Jansson’s Fair Play. A man who is 92 tells a woman who has just turned seventy, “Do not tire, never lose interest, never grow indifferent--lose your invaluable curiosity and you let yourself die. It’s as simple as that.”

I first read this around the same time of year that I’m remembering it now,back in 2013, and I recognized its truth immediately. Curiosity and interest have been the underpinning of my life from the time I was very small right up until I took to my bed and my armchair last year. 

I had never before been so thoroughly immobile for such a long time. Even when the fateful T-line refused to show up on my test strip, it took much longer for my physical energy to come back. When it did, it returned in inches. My body had learned the principle of inertia and it was reluctant to launch itself into motion again.

There seems to be a link between physical and mental energy because when my body wanted to remain still, my mind followed that example. “Why bother?” was its response to any idea that occurred to me. All through a glorious summer, “between the motion and the act fell the shadow,” and the shadow was cast by fear.

Except for a fear of swimming and another of wild monkeys, there are few things that have frightened me enough to keep me from doing them. For most of my life if I ever felt apprehensive, that feeling vanished when I confronted it. However the post-covid me became almost paralyzed when compared to my pre-covid self. Inactivity, I thought, might keep me from ever getting the virus again. Instead it steeped me in I hated most about covid: indifference, lack of interest, and torpor.

I’m three months away from my covid anniversary. I still have to force myself to take a walk and when I do, it’s half the length of the ones I took before the end of May in 2022. My mind reflects that abbreviated activity, with writing that barely extends to the length of a decent blog post. I still wear a mask in an unmasked world and even if I could afford a flight to places I yearn to see, I’d have to do a spot of self-hypnosis to make myself sit on a plane for fifteen hours. 

Only recently, as I reread random pieces of writing that I’d done since the beginning of 2020, have I realized that I, as well as the world around me, am recovering from years of trauma that extend beyond the advent of covid. My life has been dominated by uneasiness since the election of Trump. In the beginning of 2017, I was in Shenzhen reading about the ban against Muslim travelers entering the U.S. I read reports of our President’s words in the South China Morning Post and cringed in a mixture of embarrassment and revulsion that would last for four years.

The George Floyd Uprising deepened the dystopian world around all of us, with the police and National Guard attacking protesters with tear gas, flash-bangs, and the LRAD “sound cannons” that induce pain and nausea. By then I was so accustomed to the lock-down form of house arrest that I didn't join the marchers and will always regret that. The storming of the Capitol Building was a horror beyond all imagining. Then came the vaccines that were almost impossible to get--I only received mine because a grandchild drove me to a small town that was hours away. The surreal quality of life has left its scars and because I’ve always been an emotional lightning rod, mine go deep and refuse to go away.

What is prudent? What is madness? How to embrace being alive in the way I always have? Maybe by jettisoning my mask and making myself walk with a sense of adventure again. Maybe by trusting the doses of vaccine that have been pumped into me and kept me from hospitalization a year ago. Maybe by choosing life and once again reclaiming my “invaluable curiosity.” 

Me Too

 Dance and music are waiting on a day that begins with fog but became light before 7:30--only several weeks ago it was still dark when my alarm went off. It's a milky light that woke me this morning and almost makes me grateful for the illuminated crane. So much for red skies at night, although perhaps pink doesn’t count. 

Last evening brought a pink so vibrant it should qualify, with a pale pink that colored the underbellies of clouds. I snapped and snapped but none of the colors came true to what I saw. Still I had to keep trying to catch them so I could show the radiance and beauty of what I saw, online.

Devices prove that photography is an art that requires precise instruments and painstaking technique. Having an eye for it is only the beginning. The rest is work. But we live in an age when we all are artists, if we choose. And choose we do, over and over again, swamping the internet with our exercises in creativity--paintings, photographs, pieces of writing. 

This should be a fine thing, and just might be in theory. The screen and keyboard have been transformed into tiny computers that accompany us wherever we go with larger ones dominating our time when we’re at home. We all have the same instruments that lets us make what we think of as art and we all exhibit it on our own private galleries through social media. The process is effortless and there’s the problem. The old cliche, “This could have been done by my four-year-old” is true now. Most of the pieces seen online are instinctive and reflexive--think it, see it, brush it and there it is--instant art.

Because this is what we see every time we go online, we become used to a standard of work that relies solely on a quick inspiration. Swamped with unedited writing, hastily snapped shots, smeared daubs of color, we’ve created a kind of artistic democracy where everything is “liked.” It’s the equivalent of a doting parent saying “Good job.”

Unfortunately we’re losing the ability to recognize art that’s been accomplished with craftsmanship and care. Any old sentence will do, just slap it out and carry on. Any image captured by a convenient camera is good enough--it’s pretty, isn’t it? And if Rothko could become renowned for painting squares of color, why can't we?

Art was never fostered by democratic principles. It’s grounded upon education of both the artist and the audience--not with MFAs but through the knowledge that comes from being surrounded by work that's burnished and thoughtful. 

I’ve been reading Geoff Dyer’s latest book, The Last Days of Roger Federer, a collection of his pandemic writing. Like many books that have been published lately, this is a kind of journal, and like many books written by Geoff Dyer, it seems to meander while always making provocative observations and solid points. What separates this from other pandemic-spawned volumes is the depth of Dyer’s well-furnished mind and the disciplined theme that runs through his essays. These pieces aren’t blog posts, a matter of whatever was on his mind that he tossed out while having his morning coffee. Although he encompasses subjects as disparate as Nietzche and Burning Man, he focuses his thoughts on a single topic, one he examines with the brilliance and rapid turns of thought that come from a kaleidoscopic intellect. His writing is based on a lifetime of reading and learning, not from an hour of putting unconsidered sentences on a page. 

The extension of “Anyone’s an artist” leads to “No one is an artist.” Doing things for pleasure without effort isn’t art. It’s therapy.

Free? Gee, No Thanks--I'll Pass.

 I was given an electric grill on a Buy Nothing site and had a few misgivings even while I was carrying it home. It was too big to fit in my canvas bag and it was rather heavy. 

It had seemed as though it was a good idea when I’d seen its photograph online. Even in my old apartment, using the stove in summer had guaranteed a poor night’s sleep. In this one with its windows trapping the rays of the sun right up until it disappears, roasting and broiling would probably cause heat prostration. 

I felt a bit of excitement when I thought of making grilled chicken, Thai style, and when I went to buy groceries the idea of a hamburger refused to go away. I found brioche rolls, some Tillamook cheddar, and then I approached the meat counter.

Since I buy my food at Trader Joe’s, I haven’t glanced at a butcher’s department in over a year. I had no idea that this was where dreams go to die. This particular one was within PCC, a grocery store not noted for its low prices, but as I looked, my sticker shock was almost comic. Why this spot wasn’t under armed guard was beyond my comprehension--even the small packs of ground beef hovered around ten dollars while the steaks and roasts might as well have been covered in platinum.

I quickly assessed the cost of my prospective hamburger as coming in at $25.99, which made the $17.00 hamburgers in my neighborhood seem downright cheap, especially since they were a matter of immediate gratification with no clean-up afterward. Staggering a bit under this moment of reality therapy, I put the brioche rolls back on the shelf and came home with bread and cheese instead. A grilled cheese sandwich would soothe my rumpled ambitions and I made one in my cast iron skillet, for comparison purposes. Later I planned to do the same thing on the electric grill.

This project was a challenge from the minute I walked into my kitchen with an appliance that, unopened, was almost as big as the top of my apartment-sized range. The only visible small feature was the length of its electrical cord which extended as far as my electric kettle--about 12 inches. Since I have only one outlet in my miniscule kitchen and that is positioned squarely above the sink, even my morning coffee required a spot of logistical planning before I could heat the water. Coincidentally both the kettle and the grill are made by Hamilton Beach, a manufacturer venerable enough to be aware of this design flaw. However judging by the hundreds of reviews that complain about it, they simply don’t give a jolly damn.

The only way I could plug my new acquisition into a power source was by putting it on a large cutting board and positioning it over the sink. This was a solution that gave me a few qualms but it seemed stable and secure, so I plugged in the grill. A light went on in a cheery manner but I was surprised that there was no power switch. I put my hand above the grill and sure enough, it was getting warm.

There was a nice little knob to control the temperature that had the same range as my oven, and a light that was still dark said it was “preheat.” I pushed at it optimistically but it wasn’t a button. Not until after I made my way through a thicket of product reviews did I discover that “preheat” only went on after the grill reached its desired temperature. Clearly whoever designed this had a shaky command of the English language.

I turned the grill up to 450 and plopped in my sandwich, feeling puzzled that the lid refused to shut completely. When I checked it five minutes later, one side was nicely toasted while the other was lukewarm. I flipped it over with a tinge of annoyance and left it to its own devices. 

Suddenly a cloud began to hover in the kitchen and I rushed over to investigate. Nothing was in flame. What had drawn my attention seemed to be steam, issuing from the incompletely closed lid. I opened it and saw a little river of melted cheese coming from a sandwich that resembled a pancake. One side was a trifle singed while the other was still slightly pallid. The cheese on the grill rapidly congealed and was easy to remove but other than that I could see no advantage to using this behemoth to make one of my primary comfort foods. My cast iron skillet definitely did this better.

I unplugged the grill and left it to cool, a matter that took more time than I thought was necessary. But then the only lightweight part of this thing was the little drip tray that rested under the cooking element, a miniscule pan made from a flimsy plastic.

It was all however clean in a matter of seconds, which may be its only advantage that I could see. If I lowered the lid, anything I grilled would be flattened. If I left it open, the grill would take longer to heat and to cook, while releasing heat that would probably be almost as warm as my oven. Plus there was the sad truth that if the lid was open, this appliance would be much larger than the cutting board I had placed it upon.

I ate my squished sandwich that would have tasted a whole lot better if it had been acquainted with olive oil and read reviews to get some information about the giant in my kitchen. Apparently I’d been wise not to use oil; there were reports of kitchen fires that had been ignited while grilling chicken. The weight of the lid not only flattened--it extracted all the juices from any piece of meat that rested beneath it--and the tiny drip pan cracked under pressure. People who used their grill to fry bacon often found grease all over their kitchen counter. Suddenly I understood why the woman who gave this to me said she had rarely used it.

I thought of leaving this in the free basket where people in my apartment pick up unwanted items but the fire hazard component worried me. This clearly wasn’t an item that could be plugged in and ignored, what with the flaming chicken and potential for grease fires. What posed as a household convenience was actually a weapon of mass destruction that probably shouldn’t be in the hands of old and forgetful people. 

I decided I’ll keep the damned thing but I’ll save it for the height of summer’s heat. By that time I’ll have at least one table on my terrace where I’ll be able to put this, tethered with a long extension cord. In the open air, any odors that escape from the insufficiently closed lid will dissipate quickly and the heat will just float off into the blazing sunlight. As for potential fires, I’ll just have to keep a box of baking soda close at hand and be certain that I stay nearby myself. And if what issues from it is as unpalatable as my grilled cheese sandwich, this monster will go down the garbage chute, in a bag that will keep any curious sightseer from picking it up and starting a conflagration in our building.

“Free is always good,” a Malaysian woman told me once and even at the time I silently disagreed. Now after three unsuccessful Buy Nothing attempts, I’m ready to give up. Free is turning out to be a massive pain in the neck.

Not Much. How About You?

 Few questions annoy me more than “What have you been up to lately?” and “Have any plans for the day?” Because I’m a woman who embraces spontaneity, any plans I make are whatever appeals most at the moment and can change in the middle of a single step. As for what I’ve been up to, I’d love for my answer to be “No good,” but the truth is much less interesting and I hate to be a bore.

I read, I write, I walk in a dying portion of the city. Without travel, most of my life is interior and I wonder if that’s the way it will be forever. I’ve become that person I loathe, a woman without stories, which is probably why queries about what I’ve been doing or what I will do flick me on the raw. And yet everyone seems to feel this is an appropriate conversation opener, from bank tellers to baristas to members of my own family.

When I was a bookseller, the question I was asked most frequently was “What have you been reading lately?” It was one that turned me mute, as my brain shuffled through all the books I’d made my way through in the past week or so. They blurred into the books I’d handled, the ones I’d recommended to customers, the ones I’d chosen for the store’s newsletter and made me want to reply, “The National Inquirer.” Eventually I’d choose one title from the literary mush that clogged my mind and stammer out a brief sentence or two about it. But that was a problem of abundance. Now whatever I have to serve up is embarrassingly meager and often repetitive. 

It’s a pre-covid custom that deserves to die and hangs on only because “How are you?” or “How have you been?” dabble in matters that nobody wants to discuss. Health may become the latest conversational taboo, replacing sex, religion, and politics. It might lead to a mention of death and there’s a topic nobody wants to touch upon. 

I’ve never been adept at small talk, which might be the reason why for years I cut my own hair. The stream of pleasant, inconsequential conversation that’s essential at parties and dinner tables is a skill I’ve never acquired. Since there have been few meals and other gatherings with strangers in the past three years, I’ve lost any pretense I might have had of “working a room.” But the mental paralysis I faced in those past situations has infiltrated daily life in this persistent and annoying form of interrogation. I’d gladly return to “Read any good books lately?”

Better yet, why not ask “What’s been on your mind lately?” Perhaps not posed by those amiable bank tellers but it wouldn’t go amiss when used in conversation with family and friends. Replies could range from “Why is it so difficult to find a good lipstick without paying a fortune?” to “What in the hell can be done about the opioid use on our streets?” Who knows? When we talk about what we think, this may just lead to what we’ve done. Want to try it?

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Seattle?

Unearthing a time capsule isn’t always delightful. When I was given two fashion tabloids that had been supplements to the Seattle Weekly, one from fall of 1998 and one from spring of 1999, I was eager to pore over them. Two women whom I knew, one of whom has become a close friend, had feature pieces in both and I’m always curious about other people’s writing. This curiosity held more than my average avidity. I didn’t meet the writer who’s now my friend until much later, after she had become one of Seattle’s fashion doyennes, and I was eager to discover another one of her facets. I quickly found that her writing sparkled with the same panache that she brings to everything she does, while the other writer labored under heavy metaphors, linking Nordstrom’s newly-opened flagship store to Moby-Dick. 

After reading these pieces, I leafed through the remaining pages and began to feel the same heaviness that hits me when I listen to a eulogy. These supplements were printed during the time that I bounced between Seattle and Bangkok. When I had returned in 1998 for a year, one of my sons told me that if he dropped me blindfolded into many parts of downtown, when I was finally allowed to see, I wouldn’t know where I was. That was true. In the time I’d been gone, downtown Seattle had woken up.

Although in 1998, Bellevue Square and University Village shopping malls still dominated fashion advertising, the editorial pages showed Prada and Versace from Barney’s New York, a store called Fast Forward, Nordstrom, and Mario’s. Only the last two are still alive. But what struck me hardest were the ads for small shops that could be found on downtown streets: Betty David who sold “hand-painted lamb shearling coats” on South Main Street, Moda Xpress and Dansko in Belltown, FABU in Sodo, Design Products Clothing, “Established in 1973 by Vicki Tsuchida, a woman who wanted you to look good,” in Pioneer Square,  Carroll’s Fine Jewelry, “Seattle’s Oldest Jeweler,” was on 1427 Fourth Avenue, where it would die ten years later and L/T /Denny, ‘Diamond Importers and Fine Jewelers” were open “by appointment only” in the Florentine Building on Occidental Avenue. Nordstrom’s takeover of Frederick & Nelson’s former dominance of Fifth Avenue rated a feature article but of the downtown heavy-hitters, only Westlake Center placed an ad. They didn’t have to. Although both I. Magnin’s and Frederick & Nelson had disappeared, Nordstrom and the Bon Marche were legendary magnets that regularly drew shoppers downtown, and Pacific Place, called Catalog Corners by two contemptuous Pine Street store owners, was ready to open, bringing Barney’s and Tiffany’s close to Nordstrom. 

By 1998, Ardour and Ped competed on First Avenue, selling shoes and accessories in what the Weekly called SOMA (“the retail flurry south of the Pike Place Market.” David Lawrence sold designer clothes on Fourth Avenue, closing in 2010 for a move to Bellevue. San Marco sold Shoes, Clothing & Accessories” on 6th Avenue, “across from Pacific Place,” while StellaBeam offered style on Stewart Street near the market. Pacific Place was doing its best to lure mall shoppers from Bellevue with Barney’s, Max Mara, Bebe, and Helly Hanson, with Sephora down the street. But although its success drew other national retailers--and a sprinkling of international ones too--small shops began to lose their customers.

Who cared? Downtown glittered with names like Gucci at Fifth and Union and more accessible ones like Ann Taylor and The Gap. Local designer Luly Yang and classic boutique Nina McLemore nestled in the shadow of the Olympic Hotel and there were rumors that a Ritz-Carlton was eyeing a location next to the subterranean shopping of Rainier Square. A children’s shop from the Netherlands called Oililly might soon appear in Pacific Place, going up against Flora and Henri on First Avenue where a local designer made French-inspired clothing  for the very young. 

Although it was always under attack from the malls that drew shoppers far from the downtown core, the heart of Seattle was a place of possibility at the end of the 20th Century and into the 21st. Even with the strong hit it took during the financial debacle of 2008, it still had the feel of a real city right up until the dawn of 2020. Office workers, tourists, and local shoppers made the streets vibrant and bustling before Covid shut the city down in March of that year. Now three years later, that scene is almost unimaginable. 

Will Seattle’s downtown ever come back to what it was? Considering that far-flung Seattle clings stubbornly to its neighborhoods, I don’t think it will. It was never really a place that the city’s residents thought was essential. They didn’t want New York. They wanted coziness and they found it in shops and restaurants near their homes, turning neighborhoods into little villages. It was the tech business that grew and nourished Seattle’s core and when the city decided to tax it heavily, those businesses created their own company town in South Lake Union. Even before Covid, online shopping and restaurants that catered to people whose salaries soared far above Seattle’s average were draining the life from what used to be the central business district. 

These two fashion supplements provide testimony to that prediction. Almost every downtown store mentioned in their pages have gone, some of them having sunk without even an online trace. Fast Forward? StellaBeam? Gone, baby, gone while the stores that once filled Westlake Center and Pacific Place are distant memories in what amounts to a retail ghost town. 

I wish I’d never stepped back into what used to be. The memories of what was in place thirty years ago are still too close for me to examine them with the perspective of a social historian. What threatens to replace that lush brightness and promise of the past is a tourist mecca, linking the Pike Place Market, the waterfront, and the cruise ship terminal, with everything else existing as a sideshow. When I look at the sadness I feel about this new city, I realize I’m getting old.

“It is Margaret you mourn for.” Damn straight, Gerard Manley Hopkins.