Cockney Pride Begins in the 'Ome

Arabis has been "helping" me with my materials for the cockney class I've begun teaching to performers in preparation for the Great Dickens Christmas Fair. I've been doing quite a bit of reading aloud which I didn't think anything about until today, when she asked for a banana (!) and replied with "Fank you" after being handed one.

And earlier she broke a crayon while coloring and exclaimed, "Bugger all!"

I'm doomed.

Ramblings on Motherhood Written by a Brain of Little Sleep

I am spent. Utterly exhausted. While talking with Surrey after teaching our last class yesterday, I realized that in this one weekend I have spoken and interacted with more people than I have the entire year. It is a little overwhelming, but my brain is starved for the intellectual stimulation.

I love being my daughter's mother, but there are so many identity issues around becoming one. The transition into motherhood causes one to explore and question identity. Especially if, like me, you come to it unexpectedly and rather late in life.

I have done so many things with my life, worn so many monikers, swirled them about me like Salome's veils and shed them when they were no longer apt or when I could no longer support their weight. Artist, writer, actor, dancer, fight choreographer, educator, athlete, director...and now mother. In some ways, each built on the other, skill enhancing skill, art strengthening art. And because I've had such a full life already, in a simpler world it would seem the transition to motherhood would build on all the others.

If you buy that, I've also got a bridge in Brooklyn that you might be interested in.

These last three years have been a struggle and internal chaos in the presence of the most immense love and perfection I have ever known. The conflict is intense. Arabis is my joy. I had almost given up on ever having a child. It certainly was no longer in my mind after my divorce. And the moment I felt her growing inside me, I felt the fiercest and strongest emotions I will ever know. But she grew in the midst of so much turmoil, my own brain having long been known as my own worst enemy.

When I held my daughter for the first time, whispered her secret name in her ear and spoke to her softly in Armenian, being a mother was enough. There was nothing else.

It is who I am: Arabis' mother, but it is not ALL that I am. All that came before, all that I have done, all the people I have loved that make me who I am contribute to it. I am mother and so much more.

But when all your time is spent with a small child, the rest can fade to the background and seem like another world. There is a mourning for the past as well as a joy in the present and I wonder that more women don't speak of this for fear of seeming unloving or ungrateful of just purely unnatural.

I remind myself daily that she is only small once and that this time is so precious and so fleeting. Watching her and learning the world anew through her is a joy like nothing I have ever experienced. But I feel my life on hold, while I give her as much of me as I can, *while* I can, to help her walk strong and confident in the world.

I am finding myself anew while she is discovering who she is. Perhaps it is a parallel process. The thing I am learning not to do, trying not do, and it is the hardest for me, is mourn the past, mourn who I was. Pregnancy wrecked havoc on my body and I have still not recovered. I still carry much of the baby weight, exacerbating my old dance injuries. I will never be the athlete I was before.

A chrysalis phase? Metamorphosis. As long as I don't end up a cockroach at the end of the journey, I think I'm doing okay.

Content

A long, exhausting and fulfilling weekend is past. I have taught, I have played, I have rehearsed. I have reconnected with people from almost 30 years past, met knew ones and relaxed into the embrace of those that have been there all along.

What a crazy life I've led. If I stop to think of all the things I've done, it almost makes my head spin.

I'm talked out. I've got nothing left even for introspection right now. Mostly I just sit here in the glow of the screen, one cat draped across my shoulders and another perched, gargoyle-like, on the monitor before me. There is the soft, indecipherable hum of the television from the other room and I suspect that if I venture in, Mojo will have fallen fast asleep in front of it.

And really, sleep is where I should be. The allure is undeniable. Time to get flat.

I've Been Remiss

So here it is, the eighth day of November and I've not "officially" announced my participation in this year's NaBloPoMo. Although I'm sure that you, my two astute readers, will have figured out by now that I am participating.

This will be my third year in a row and I promised myself more actual writing would get done; something humorous, a little witty, maybe some thought provoking prose and possibly even an attempt to wring a tear or two from your jaded eyes.

So what have the last eight days found me doing? Running through my crazy days after my three year old and finally collapsing around 11 at night only to realize mere minutes from the clock tolling away the last hour of the day that "OhmygodIhaven'tpostedyet!!!!!!" Thus begins the mad dash to the computer, my eyes bleary and tired, staring at the blank screen, trying to pull something remotely interesting from a brain whose synapses no longer even spark let alone fire.

Today I am starting a little earlier, but I indulged in a bout of insomnia last night that left me with only three and a half hours of sleep. And then a full seven hours of workshops and rehearsals in preparation for the 30th Dickens Christmas Fair have left me giddy and almost falling asleep on my keyboard.

This is the best I can do for now. So let me ask a boon of you, anonymous reader. I know I have a few regulars. Leave a comment. Say hello. Tell me how you found my and why the heck you come back to read my sporadic and often sparse ramblings. Indulge my curiosity.

Just for the hell of it.

Crazy

Much running around today with little accomplished. So this is my sorry excuse for a post.

Thought for the Day

"All revelations are personal. That's why all revelations are suspect."

~ Neil Gaiman, from American Gods

Bonfire Night

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,

The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

I can think of no reason

Why the Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent

To blow up the King and Parli'ment.

Three-score barrels of powder below

To prove old England's overthrow;

By God's providence he was catch'd

With a dark lantern and burning match.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

"Feel the Power of Your Vote!"

There is a poll worker in my precinct who has been a volunteer for at least as long as I have lived here (eight and a half years). He is an older black man, with a shock of white hair and a ready smile. Mojo likens him to an economics professor for some reason.

When Mojo got to the polls at our local fire station at 7:00 AM, the man was there, greeting everyone and keeping the mood upbeat and jocular during the hour that Mojo had to wait. Twelve and a half hours later, when I went to cast my vote, he was still there, standing outside and greeting people, finishing the last of his cigarette.

"Are you here to feel the power of your vote?" he asked as we approached the door. Mojo and Arabis talked to him while I registered and went in with my ballot to make history.

As I filled out my form, I could hear Mojo talking to a female fire fighter and her asking Arabis if she'd like to see the engines. From there they disappeared down a hallway while I finished up.

"This is the part that you've got to love, girl," the man told me as I took my ballot to him. "You hold on to that and get ready to cast your ballot. Are you ready to feel the power of your vote?"

I felt like I was at a revival or old time rally like you see in black and white movies.

"I am," I told him.

"Hold on to that with both hands and feed it right in here and FEEL THE POWER OF YOUR VOTE!"

Afterward I wandered into the garage portion of the fire station where an EMT/firefighter named Linda was helping Arabis climb behind the wheel of a fire truck. We talked for a while, I mentioned that I had a friend who was a firefighter in Piedmont (Hey, Dave: Linda in West Oakland says "hi" and that you're awesome!). Arabis wanted to climb up the big ladder on the other truck, and Linda said if we wanted to come back one day that she could climb across it as it lay flat (so it looks like we have a day trip planned sometime soon).

Everyone was happy and laughing and filled with hope. I live in a low-income, predominantly African-American neighborhood with a historically disappointing voter turn out. I over heard the poll workers talking, saying there were only about 350 registered in my precinct and they had already seen over 300 people today. This is unprecedented. The fact that Mojo had to wait an hour this morning is unheard of. That even I, less than an hour before the polls closed, entered to a full house and more people still coming in, gave me hope.

That is what I am struck by. A sense of hope that we have not felt for so many years. I am optimistic and tried to instill some of my excitement in Arabis as we sat watching the returns later that evening.

"We're electing a new president. We're making history."

The Mother, the Maiden and the "Other One"

We're not even dressed up for Halloween, just carrying on the family business: my daughter, my mother and me.

Dia de los Muertos

This is always a bittersweet post for me and I've sat reminiscing before the blank screen now for longer than I care to admit. Last year many in my circles bemoaned the loss of more friends and relatives than we were prepared for (not that one really can prepare for death, despite its inevitability). We cursed 2007 and boasted that 2008 could never be as bad.

It wasn't. It was worse. Too many gone.

I know I've inadvertently omitted names, but I'm lost in the flood of memories.


Rose Rushdoony Deovlet (Grandma Rosie)
Phil Deovlet (Grandpa)
Robert H. Deovlet (Uncle Bob)
Rose (Vartoohi) Mahdesian Deovlet (Grandma Darling)
Benjamin Deovlet (Grandpa Darling)
Richard Deovlet -(Uncle Ricky)
Rose (Vartanoush) Rushdoony (Grandma Rushdoony)
Y.K. Rushdoony (Grandpa Rushdoony)
Mary Movsesian (Auntie Mim)
Spurgeon Avakian (Uncle Sparky)
Ruth Avakian (Auntie Ruthie)
Evelyn Cooper Smith (Grandma Evelyn)
Haywood Smith (Grandpa Haywood)
Joy Deane Wagner
Auntie Margie
Bob Thomas
Dave Ricker
Robin Wadsworth
Michael Hefflin
Maxina Danner (Snookie)
Jennifer Lee
Patrick Lee
Mace Hanley
Shelly Munge
Dan O'Brien
Ricky Paul
Barbara Rose
Ronnie Geoffrion
Dave Coker
Don Mills
Wally Lockwood
Sally Schneider
Linda Underhill
Manny Suarez
Mary Jo Goss
Andrew Small
Phil Robledo
Amethyst Mariani
Theryl O'Ryan
Timur Otus
Brian Dall'Armi
Auntie Posie
Sully (Gordon Sullivan)
Ruth Leggett
Jorge Luis Farias-Martinez
Bill Harris

Not not known personally by me, but deaths that affected me nonetheless:

Tasha Tudor
U. Utah Phillips
Maila Nurmi (aka "Vampira")
Benazir Bhutto


"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due."

~ Neil Gaiman

Perspective

Arabis sings to herself, her voice clear and strong, in rhythm with the creak of the swing chain:

"I'm smiling,
And swinging,
And laughing at the clouds!"

A Quote for the Quiet Time of the Morning

I shot an arrow blindly and hit forgiveness.

~ Sherman Alexie, from "Last Will and Testament" in Summer of Black Widows

Four Years

Maxina Danner

Born: 25 March 1987
Murdered: 27 September 2004

You are loved and missed, Snookie. You are forever in our hearts.
You are remembered.

Arabis and I are meeting Lee at the cemetery to visit Maxie and spend the afternoon. The day is lovely and warm, bittersweet and beautiful.

In Lieu of a Real Post - MEME!

Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair... just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.

Conversations With My Daughter

ME: "What do you want to be for Halloween this year?"

HER: "Six."


Surrealism, thy name is Toddler.

Quote of the Day

when they ask you
why is your mama so funny
say
she is a poet
she don't have no sense

Lucille Clifton, from Admonitions

The Last Few Days

I have passed a few really lovely days.



On Saturday, Arabis and I went to Children's Fairyland with my friend Lisa and her son, Blue. Arabis and Blue have known each other for over two years and it is adorable to watch the two of them together. He is enamored of her and she being the strong-willed creature she is, gladly tugged him along after her. If anyone is interested, the full set of photos is here. For contrast, check out Blue and Arabis on their first trip to Fairyland together, almost two years earlier.

On Sunday, Mojo and I went to Forbidden Island to hear Meshugga Beach Party, a mock-Hassidic surf band while my mother agreed to spend the afternoon and evening with Arabis. Mojo and I got three and a half hours of alone time together, something we haven't had for far too long. After two sips of my first fruity rum drink my head began to spin and I remembered that the last meal I'd had was breakfast, having forgotten to eat lunch. Oops. We ordered food, had drinks and I got delightfully tipsy. We flirted and joked and managed to not talk about either kid for almost an hour and a half.

After Meshugga had packed up this woman came up to Mojo and I and handed me a flier for her book, Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe. We started talking and after a while she said, "You are Jewish, aren't you?"

I laughed, "No. I'm Armenian, but I get that all the time."

"Wow. I totally thought you were a member of the Tribe. That's okay. Do you still want the flier?"

I told her I did and would pass it on to a friend in Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, Arabis was at home with Grandma having a tea party. As Mojo and I were walking out the door I realized I had forgotten my phone and ran back in to get it. Arabis was sitting very primly at her little table while grandma sat on the sofa at the other side. She was holding out a demitasse cup and saucer to my mother and saying very properly in a mock British accent, "Would you like a cup of tea?" I melted just a little bit.

Yesterday was relatively mellow at home, culminated by two hours in the community garden. Some other tenants were there as well, and as the sun set my neighbor Brad blew bubbles for Arabis which she danced in and then gleefully popped. The two of them were laughing hysterically and I found myself sitting back in the twilight, watching and smiling and daring to think that life was actually pretty good.

I took a few 30 second videos but unfortunately cannot download them since Arabis spilled yogurt on the USB connector cable for my camera and it is dead. If anyone has a spare Sony VMC-MD1 Multi-Use Terminal Cable for Cyber-Shot cameras, I'd be eternally in your debt! I'll have to wait until the first of the month to order a new one.

Today, we got up early and made pancakes, Arabis helping me in the kitchen. I had her stir the batter and she started singing the Mexican Chocolate Song at the same time, while shaking her little hips back and forth:

"Bate, bate, chocolate
Tu nariz de cacahuate
Uno, dos, tres, CHO!
Uno, dos, tres, CO!
Uno, dos, tres, LA!
Uno, dos, tres, TE!
Chocolate, chocolate!
Bate, bate, chocolate!
Bate, bate, bate, bate,
Bate, bate, CHOCOLATE!"

I had to call her padrino (godfather), Tio Riqui, and held the phone near her so he could hear her singing in Spanish. Hopefully she's going to have a good grasp of both Spanish and Armenian as well as English.

I think today we may head up to Lake Anza and go swimming. She has been asking for it since we woke up and I'm feeling pretty good right now.

Oh, before I forget, I had the oddest dream this morning. What I remember of it is this:

Robin and I are going to Cat and Peter's house for some unknown reason and we are standing at the front door ringing the bell. Only it is not their house, but a house across the street with the last two numbers reversed (this actually happened. To my mortification, I transposed the numbers of their address one night and spent 20 minutes outside the wrong house waiting for them. In my exhaustion and distraction, I was convinced that they had given me the wrong address and admonished Peter for it. But it was my fault all along). So Robin and I are standing on the porch of this yellow house, ringing and ringing the bell and finally the door answers and there they are, still in their pajamas. Cat is wearing a loose fitting, light-colored, pajama top and bottom set with white bunny slippers and Peter is clad in a pink bunny suit with attached feet that zips up the front (like the sort kids wear, only much bigger). Robin and I ask why they aren't ready and they tell us that daylight savings time has ended and it is an hour earlier than we think it is. Embarassed we apologize and offer to go have coffee on Castro Street while they get dressed. Peter is laughing at us and then I woke up.

Very strange place to live, my brain. Hope you all have a magical day. We're going swimming!

The State of the Brain

Yesterday I was making lunch for Monkey Boi (my not-a-step-son who is here for the summer) and Arabis. Grilled cheese sandwiches with fruit was the order of the day. I made Arabis' first so it had time to cool a bit, carefully trimmed the crusts and cut it into four pieces. No problem.

Next comes the sandwich for Monkey Boi, which I grilled to a lovely tan color and set proudly on the table, retreating back into the kitchen area to make my own.

From the table I hear his tentative voice, "Um...do you know there is no cheese in this sandwich?"

That's right, folks. I forgot to put the cheese in his grilled cheese sandwich.

He was very good-natured about it and ate the toasted bread while I made him a new sandwich, and I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.

I think I need a vacation. Calgon couldn't even begin to take me far enough away!

Brian Dall'Armi

I wanted to get out a public post for any of our lost and scattered Tribe who may google Brian's name in search of information.

Photo by Peter Overstreet of Brian and Cat Taylor, February 2007

Brian Dall'Armi
5 August 1946 - 9 August 2008

Brian died last night a few minutes before midnight. Nell was at his side.

I spoke to Nell for almost an hour today and here is what she wanted me to tell all of you:

"Brian got away in time to make the 12 o'clock show. There won't be any arguing over who will drive (the band) because Ricker will take over as he always did, and Bob Thomas and Brian will be goofing off in the background. Most likely, they'll both be kicked off the stage at some point.

I can hear Ricker yelling at them now: 'No Middle Eastern hootchie-coo on my stage!'

Bob and Brian will sneak off to the coffee house in the sky and sit around the table telling stories and laughing. No one else will be able to get a word in edgewise!"


The Brian Dall'Armi Memorial Tour will include stops in Vallejo, the Northern California Renaissance Faire at Casa de Fruta and the Great Dickens Christmas Fair. Exact dates have not been set at this time, but expect the Vallejo memorial to be anywhere from two to four weeks away, perhaps the beginning of September. Once plans have been solidified, I will update everyone.

Nell thanks you all for the visits and the emails she has received. She read the emails aloud to Brian in batches and is awed and blessed by the love that is coming from our community, our family. Many stories made her cry, more made her laugh and a few she hadn't even heard before.

She also wants to thank everyone for their offers of help. She has more than enough food in the refrigerator and even more in the freezer, and asks that everyone save their food and beer offerings for the memorial. She did mention most emphatically: NO CASSEROLES!

Please feel free to contact Nell by email but to refrain from calling as she still has many details to iron out and needs to keep the phone relatively open. If anyone would like her email, please comment here with an address I can reach you at privately and I will send you that information.

I was able to spend the afternoon with Brian and Nell yesterday. Many of the Brunos and other friends have been coming by in the last five days to sit by Brian's side and play music for him.

Brian was loved and respected for his many talents and he will be sorely missed. Another fiddler has joined that amazing band in the afterworld.

"This Is Now"

Tonight I finished reading "Little House in the Big Woods" to Arabis as she fell asleep. When I was a child, Laura Ingalls Wilder's tales of her girlhood were favorite books. So much so that my mother still laughs at the memory of me being offended when the televised series came out. Oh, I watched every episode and afterward would indignantly rip them to shreds, to my mother's glee (keep in mind that the series premiered just a month prior to my ninth birthday. I was {and still am} very protective of my literary loves).

My friends and I used to play a game based on the little house books which we called "Pioneers." We would take our little red wagons and stand an empty cardboard box in the back. Then we would put our dolls, our mess kits, apples, bread, cheese, a washboard, anything we had that was "old-timey" and go out into the fields to play (this was when we lived in Marin, before it was the overgrown yuppie-ville it is today).

My childhood friend Jenny's dad (who is an artist) made her a covered wagon frame that slid onto the rails of her Radio Flyer. We marched in the Fourth of July parade with it one year, all dressed up in our costumes. I'll have to post some photos (now that we finally got the scanner hooked up).

I haven't read these books since I was young, but found a complete series in a used bookstore about a year ago and promptly snatched them up. In reading to Arabis, I take myself back in time and so many things become clear to me.

My father always said that he was born a hundred years too late. I think that trait was passed on to me. I learned to spin and dye when I was nine years old from a woman named Ida Grae (who wrote the definitive book on natural dying, "Nature's Colors"). I used to do my homework on my old-fashioned desk by the light of a New England oil lamp. The first major purchase I ever made with my own money came at age 14 when I bought my Ashford spinning wheel (which I still have - along with the original receipt!). I collected the Foxfire books and learned crafts from my father (carving, shooting) when we were together. I devoured history, my own and anything else I could get my hands on. I sat at the feet of my great-grandparents and aunts and uncles, listening raptly while they told of their lives in the old country and here. Tales of what was. Of how things were.

Arabis had fallen asleep a few pages from the end, but I continued reading aloud:

"What are the days of auld lang syne, Pa?"

"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now."

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the fire-light gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, "This is now."

She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

That final passage just struck me hard. It was so poignant and real to me, living in the moment, in the now, with my daughter's head cradled in my arm and her breathe moist on my skin. One of those beautiful, transcendent moments that I wanted to cherish forever.