Monday, December 27, 2010

MONSTER STUFFED INSIDE A TEACUP EATING A TREMENDOUS PLATE OF MONGOLIAN BEEF

My New Year's resolution is to use more pictures in my blog posts.

773 732 5425 - HOW IS MY PICTURE POSTING?

I would like to talk about some things I have eaten/drunk over the past week.

KA'ICK. For Christmas, I made these Lebanese cookies that have a terribly unappetizing name: Ka'ick. My grandma used to make them every Easter (and Xmas sometimes).

I think they're traditionally an Easter thing, but don't hold me to that. Don't hold me to the fact that they're cookies either. Maybe they're more of an anise bread.

You can shape them into diferent shapes like snails or braids or you can make them like dumplings and stuff them with dates or walnuts and then dip them in rosewater syrup. They're the kind of cookies that taste stale three minutes after they come out of the oven and that only adds to their complex deliciousness. I like unfurling the snail ones and eating them as one long stale snake.

I tried to find a picture to show you the magic that is Ka'ick, but none of the images from Google images looked exactly like the Easter cookies--at least not the ones my grandma used to make:




LAO SZE CHUAN. We ate at LSC after driving home from Indiana after Christmas. LSC is my favorite Chinese restaurant and, hands down, my favorite strip mall restaurant. I was never so happy to see Chicago, and so I made my husband stop in Chinatown so we could detox from being surrounded by familial/familiar people by surrounding ourselves with non-familial/unfamiliar ones.

I was nearly euphoric sitting in Lao Sze Chuan's ridiculously itty bitty transparent chairs, looking out its windows, all fogged up from piping plates of food just on the edible side of spicy.

But why did Lao Sze Chuan replace its normal chairs with those baby chairs?

I'm a little person and I'm complaining. If you are a big(ger) person, it will not be easy for you to stay very long at LSC without your chair possibly ending up inside of your body.

My husband is a big guy. We live in Chicago so he actually gets called "big guy" approximately 180 times each year, as in: "AY DAIR BIG GUY, IS DA JEWELS DOWN BY TURDY TURD STILL OPEN?"

At LSC my husband always looks like a monster stuffed inside a teacup eating a tremendous plate of Mongolian beef.

Perhaps the smaller chairs were a part of LSC's strategy to speed up customer turnover? Good idea, LSC.

MARSHMALLOW EATING REVELATION. I always think, "Oh, look, it's a marshmallow. Cute. I am totally going to eat you." I must have done it 20 times over Christmas.

But why? I really hate marshmallows. I have never eaten one marshmallow that I liked--not even the homemade ones so don't suggest it--and I have decided, as of 15 hours ago, I am never ever again eating another marshmallow. You cannot make me.

Know this: If you sneak up on me as a green coconut-haired monster, I will avert my eyes from yours.


I KNOW WHO I AM AND WHO I AM DOES NOT INVOLVE EATING MARSHMALLOWS! SINK YOUR FANGS INTO SOMEONE ELSE.

POTATO CHIP EATING REVELATION. Same for potato chips.

THE VIOLENT ROOM. I always call the Violet Hour either The Violet Room or the Violent Hour or the Violent Room. I always get names wrong. I hate it but that's the way I am and I have come to know and accept myself. See above paragraph about marshmallows. I went to the VH with my friends K and L last night. The VH is too cool to have a sign. In fact, it is too cool to have a door. The outside looks like a giant block-long building-tall piece of kindling.




To get in, you have to walk up and down the block and keep pushing on various parts of the kindling until you feel "give" and once you do, you have to push harder and finally, a secret door will open--thus granting you entry.

Once you are inside, your problems aren't entirely solved, considering you're immediately thrust into the vast darkness of the snooty cave that is the VH's foyer.

If you walk with your hands in front of you, sleepwalker style, your hands may eventually grace a velvet curtain that weighs 200 pounds. If you hang on the curtain and pull back on it with all your weight, it may part--at which point, you will enter a room only slightly more lit than the black entryway you just came out of.

A VH host will be on your right and she will glance up at you like, "What the fuck do you want?" Then you will say, "Hi!" and wave frantically. To which she will respond flatly: "Yes? [eye roll]" At which point you will think, "Now we're cooking!" [Wild internal clapping.]

After some time, you will be seated in a triangular configuration so close to the people you're with, your knees will touch theirs, and then you will order one drink. The waitress will look at you with her stone face and say with no humor: "That will be 15 to 20 minutes."

Then she will turn away and disappear into the darkness without a word more. She will communicate your order to the mixologist. She will come back in 15-20 minutes. Even if she could come back sooner with your drink, she won't. It's the principle of the matter and the VH is all about upholding principles.

I sort of HATE the VH--like an opium addict hates an opium den.




The VH looks like this, if everyone was cleared out and the candles were replaced with floodlights:



This is actually about how dark it is:


THE PARAMOUNT ROOM. After the VH, L and I went to the Paramount Room, which is--just like the sign says--HOME OF THE NINE DOLLAR KOBE BURGER. I like to eat what restaurants are known for, and so I ordered the $9 Kobe burger.

The waitress asked me, "And what kind of cheese do you want? Cheddar, Gorgonzola, American, or Brie?"

"Brie," I said. Doesn't that sound good? Brie on top of a $9 Kobe burger? I thought so.

And she was like, "We don't have Brie."

"Oh, okay," I said. "Cheddar I guess."

Then she walked away and L was like, "Then why'd she say brie? She totally said brie."

I said, "I know, I thought she said Brie, too, that's why I said Brie. I wouldn't have said brie otherwise I don't think."

And L was like, "NO, SHE DEFINITELY SAID IT. SHE SAID BRIE. IT WAS THE LAST ONE SHE SAID."

I love L and this is why we are friends, and I will go as far to say that this is why we, all of us, HAVE friends. That cluster-f of a Brie situation right there.

L didn't have the $9 Kobe burger. It generally really annoys me when people get anything other than what is clearly communicated to be the house specialty, but it didn't annoy me because

1. L had eaten a burger for lunch.
2. L is very loveable in general.

Instead, she had The Cuban. The sandwich was obscene. It was the size of a small dog.

She ate two bites.

During our dinner, we sat at this very booth.




I said something like, "L, you know something, I love your poems, and in fact, that's why we're sitting here right now. Because I Internet-stalked you."

And she said, "I know. I loved it."

CM DINER. Now I am getting ready to eat at the hospital diner at Children's Memorial. It is criminally cheap--especially if you are breastfeeding because the CM diner gives breastfeeders a discount. You don't have to prove it or anything. You just say "I am breastfeeding" and they give it to you.

I am not breastfeeding so I can't get the discount, and anyway, it's not that much of a discount from what I remember, but I suppose it's a nice gesture, better than a punch in the mouth.

One good thing about the CM diner? It sells these giant individual bags of caramel/cheese/butter trio-bundled popcorn made by this tiny Chicago popcorn manufacturer. I'm pretty sure the popcorn by this particular company has been listed by Oprah as one of her Favorite Things.

If the general public knew about this popcorn, they WOULD be hard-core rushing the CM diner. Fortunately for me, the CM diner is a closed club, housed in the basement of the hospital. I am one of the elite and thus, have all-day access to those amazing bags of corn. Even Oprah cannot get into the CM diner. The security here is unmatched. Fame, money, and influence mean nothing to these people. They alone grant access to the CM diner. They alone are the holders of the paper access tags with metal pant clips--only distributed to parents and legitimate and verified visitors. Unless you have a deathly ill kid in your arms, you are not getting anywhere near that popcorn. Go cry your crocodile tears to someone who cares.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

WILLY WONKA SHOWS US HOW IT'S DONE

Okay I had a previous post that mentioned sex, and even though I am not obsessed with sex, I am going to write about sex again. I hope you don’t mind.

I will put out the disclaimer like the one that they always read on This American Life, like: “This story does not describe the details of actual sex but it does acknowledge that sex exists in the world.”

That’s not exactly it but something like that.

Why am I up so early? It’s 5:49 now but I’ve been up since 2:30. Funny you should ask.

I just had a sex dream. It was so real. No, it was actually hyperreal. It was MORE real than very real and conscious sex.

You may imagine that this would be good but it wasn’t exactly.

It wasn’t bad either—well, not totally bad, because it’s always fun to feel real things, even bad things—but it WAS kind of like when I was pregnant and I would be all, “I cannot come to work today because I cannot possibly ride the train and smell people, like people’s hair or whatever. I DO NOT WANT TO SMELL THE SMELL OF PEOPLE, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? So I’ll be working from home.”

It was like that.

Here’s an aside: I have supersonic smelling powers. I was happy during my pregnancy, the pg hormones did positive things for me, but they made me smell everything SO MUCH. I get these powers when I’m really depressed too. I can practically hear the smell of things. It makes me want to jump off a bridge.

I’m pretty sure it’s a psychotic symptom as a result of the chemical disaster that can periodically be my brain.

St. Christina the Astonishing (coincidentally my confirmation saint namesake) was said to crawl up into trees to avoid the smell of people. One day she stood in a lake for three days to show God how much she loved Him. It must have worked because she became a saint. Now scholars think she was probably not that saintly, just psychotic, but sometimes that’s the way it goes with saints.

Religious fervor or insanity? It is a fine line.

Maybe less like a “line” and more like a “spectrum.”

I can’t stand when people do that, put everything on a spectrum. Note to spectrum lovers everywhere: These are pieces of candy. Candy is not crying out for a spectrum.

My sister has this too, this smelling ailment. She says people are jealous but what they don’t realize is how many things in the world smell like shit.

Sometimes when I was gone at my grandma’s as a kid, my sister would have a friend stay the night and they would sleep in our bed—yes, my sister and I shared a bed, all through high school, people did that in Michigan City, Indiana—and when I came back home from my grandma’s, I would be like, "Oh, god, did X stay the night?"

Let me tell you, my sister’s friend X smelled SO HUMAN, and not like body odor. Comparatively speaking, that would have been great. More like faint shit and stomach secretions and a pile of human hair.

It’s not just me. I mentioned this a few years ago to my sister and she was like, “Oh god, yeah, that girl did smell really weird.”

My friend Kathleen told me maybe I should join the carnival and instead of guessing weights or telling fortunes, I can tell people their smells and write them up on index cards. I think this is a great idea, and I am saving it for “retirement.” Other people have 401Ks and pensions but that's because they're boring.

Oh, another smell aside, one time when I worked at J.Crew this woman walked in and she was like this cute little waify blonde type with a pixie haircut and I was following her around and helping her, as was my job, and finally I asked her, “Hey, do you know Laura Such and Such?” And she smiles and looks at me all quizzically, like, “Yeah, she’s actually my twin sister. Why?”

And I looked at her stunned, because a) I worked with Laura at J.Crew and I had no idea that she even had a twin and b) because they truly looked nothing alike, like Laura was super curvy with dark long hair and olive skin. And I was thinking, “Uh, should I tell her why?” I decided to because I have terrible judgment and so I was like: BECAUSE YOU SMELL JUST LIKE HER.

The waif's face was ashen. She stepped back from me like I was breathing fire or had just ripped open my shirt, revealing my full-body dragon scales.

Anyway, back to sex. Usually when I have sex dreams they are with an invisible sex entity. Some faceless sexer. Like some abstraction is generating sex feelings and putting them inside my sleeping mind. Sort of like a Mystical and Majikal Secret Sex Santa.

This hypersex dream was with a real person, which, of course, makes sense, considering it seemed super real, and I don’t generally don’t have sex with abstractions in my waking life.

But I had this experience once that was rather mindblowing involving a sex dream with nobody. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was a full-on wet dream.

Can girls have wet dreams? I just checked and Alice says they can. I believe her.

The story of my life-changing dream goes:

I was just out of high school and it was summer, and I had gone up to Mackinaw (sp?) Island with my high school man at the time. The whole time I was there, I was miserable because I tend to feel encroached upon by nature and get very cranky when I am around a lot of it, and also, I have terrible allergies, so to stay alive on “The Island,” I had to take handfuls of Benadryl all week, which of course, made me so exhausted, I stayed in bed all day and slept while everybody else swam in ponds with snakes in them, and then a week later, we left.

Riding home in the car, I was sleeping in the backseat and I had the most phenomenal sex dream ever!

It started out like usual, with some kind of non-specified human or thing--like it was just happening, who or what the sex was with was not a consideration. And as I was having sex, I was floating up this tunnel. Again, logistics were not worked out--e.g., how one might float upward while having sex with nobody.

Actually, the tunnel was a little similar to that candy chamber in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Remember when Charlie and his grandpa drink that bubbly stuff but they’re not supposed to and then they start floating dangerously toward the glass ceiling with the fans waiting to cut them into shreds?

Just like that.

Except there were no ceiling fans in my dream, and, as you probably remember, in the movie Charlie and his grandpa don’t have sex while floating up the shaft of the candy chamber.

Anyway, I was floating up and up and up toward this glass ceiling and finally, there was this incredible SMASH and I smashed (painlessly) through the glass ceiling, just exploded through it—again, kind of like when Charlie and his grandpa were in the glass elevator at the end of the movie and the elevator smashes through the glass and is hurtled into the sky and floats above the city?

The sound of the smashing was really really loud, like “tinkle tinkle tinkle” but a million tinkles blasted through an amplifier, and then there was this--POOF--huge flash of white light like somebody was taking a picture with one of those old-timey cameras.

Then I woke up.

AND MY NOSE WAS BLEEDING!

Thursday, December 16, 2010

THE LAST-AND SADLY MOST OBSCURE-POEM BY ISSA

Poor friend.

My friend's book got busted up in a review. I feel bad for my friend. I almost felt like the reviewer was busting up my book, the one I don't have yet.

Of course I never like it when friends of mine get bad reviews but it especially annoys me when reviewers come in with a pre-fab agenda of what a book should do and then are all disappointed when it doesn't do those things.

It irritates me even more when you get the sense that a reviewer has barely read the book, and they certainly didn't read anything else by or about that author nor did they do any thinking about how this author's writing relates to other writing that has been written or is being written today.

For instance, in the research-y section of the review, the reviewer quoted Wikipedia--to talk about a poetry movement that almost everybody agrees was never a movement--and therefore nobody can sufficiently describe or associate anyone with it.

It was like he was the drunken 17-year old-narrator in THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES, in a bar, talking about Visceral Realism and the Visceral Realists.

Get to a meeting.

I'm not perfect by such a long stretch. But I have a few things I do before I interview people, which I find helpful.

Interviews, I admit, aren't the same as reviews, but still, they share some common ground and so maybe some of this process applies:

a. Read other reviews of that work

b. Read interviews that the author has done about that work and his or her previous works
c. Read previous books by that author

d. Read several different author bios

e. Don't quote from Wikipedia (?)

BAM. You were thinking it.

And, most importantly,

f. Read the book.

If I am interviewing someone about poetry, I read the book once to myself, once outloud. I'm not saying everybody has to be crazy like that but it does seem like you should keep reading a book until you can complete this sentence:

1. It seems like the author of this book is attempting to [insert thoughts].

You'll note that I did not say you should read until you can complete these sentences:

2. You know what I hate? I really hate when people write poems and they [insert opinions].

3. God, you know what's the best? I love it when people write poems and they [insert opinions].

Reviewers,

We don't care what you hate in poetry.

We don't care what you like in poetry.

We don't even care what you don't care about either way in poetry.

You aren't the boss of Poems.

Reviewer: Who's Your Daddy?

Poetry: Not you.

You are a reader of poems (hopefully). That is who you are. So be that person.

Yrs,

Review Readers

Once you have read the book and you feel like you can answer Question 1, I say to you: Rip that book down to its royal underwear. What do I care?

I actually do care. I hate writing negative reviews, it makes me feel bad, like I'm spitting on a bouquet of pansies because I just so happen to like Black-eyed Susans a little better.

Black-eyed Susan, also known as Rudbeckia hirta, Brown-eyed Susan, Blackiehead, Brown Betty, Brown Daisy (Rudbeckia triloba), Gloriosa Daisy, Golden Jerusalem, Poorland Daisy, Yellow Daisy, and Yellow Ox-eye Daisy.

BAM.

I respect critical reviews--I really do.

But ask yourself this before you fire off a reveiw without necessary prework:

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO RIP UP A STUFFED BUNNY WHEN YOU THINK YOU ARE RIPPING UP A PUFFY TOILET SEAT?

What I don't respect is a critical review that's rattled off half-cocked. Why the half-cockedness? Because the reviewer isn't getting paid? Secret number 1: Nobody is.

Or maybe because the reviewer is thinking, "Well, whatever, this ain't the NYTBR." Secret number 2: No kidding. Secret number 3: Thank god.

Or maybe the reviewer is thinking, "Oooh, goody [hand rubbing], another review of mine, written in three minutes. Published. Booyah!"

Not booyah. Just boo. Boo on review grubbers. Boo on mofo lazy.

Also boo on poor writing and no editing.

I want to understand exactly what a reviewer is criticizing, but I cannot do this when I do not understand what I am reading. I can only say to myself: "I consider myself a creative person, and yet, I can't think of any context in which these words in this order might make a kind of sense."

[reread sentence]

"l still don't get this. It seems like an interesting thought that I would like to think about in relation to Poet's poems. Could this thought be explained more clearly? I want to think yes."

In the nicer parts of the review, the reviewer kept using the word "banal" but not pejoratively. Except, as I understand it at least, the connotation of banal is pejorative.

Maybe he means "ordinary" or "everyday"? An editor could tell us this. Maybe he's writing "banal" but he means "anal"?

I am so confused.

I think the poet Issa explained it best in his last (and sadly most obscure) poem:

THE DEFINITION OF BANAL

So banal--
another
poem
about
anal
holes--
unoriginal,
trite,
hackneyed,
lacking
force and
originality,
and what
is more,
completely
devoid of
freshness!

Happy holidays.

And thank you for listening and thank you Reviewers for your reviews, even the wobbly wonky ones that will surely improve in the coming new year.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

FACE RELATIONS AND FREE WILLIE

Discussion of race in literature has come up a lot in the past couple of weeks on the For the Most Part Smugly Ironic and Flatly Affected Indie Literature News Show called HTML Giant. This statement was made by a certain somebody I feel slightly embarrased about even mentioning because maybe I should just call my blog All My Thoughts Lately Are Formed As a Result of Something Roxane Gay Said. Like this:

"If you write about people of color, some editors want you to write about people of color in very specific and stereotypical ways because they’re simply not interested in those stories that diverge from the cultural narratives most publishers are comfortable with."

This made me think of a story about my friend Chuck. My friend
Chuck Walker is a painter. Chuck's white but his "godson" (who has lived with him since he's been three and is now a senior in high school) is black. Chuck told me he had an art dealer who constantly harassed him, "What's with all the black people? What am I supposed to do with these paintings?"

Needless to say, he is not repped by this guy anymore. Last year Chuck had a 30-year retrospective at the Chicago's Hyde Park Art Center--so clearly SOMEBODY knew what to do with the paintings, even though some of the paintings had pesky black people in them.

It is sad and it is crossgenre, this assumption that people (of all races) will only be interested in white subjects doing white things. Or, if there are black subjects, they better well be smoking crack or killing somebody--don't come to me with your little paintings of black kids sleeping or dancing or doing homework for god's sake.

Publishers and reps: We thank you for doing us the favor of proactively weeding out all the stuff you know we "won't like" so we never have to read or see it.

In addition to being sad, it's insulting because it takes choice away--which means that the majority of people never realize that there IS choice. Most people just assume that there aren't many minority artists and writers or if there are, most of them aren't any good because a) nobody knows about them or b) because they all seem to be making/writing the same thing.

I know, I know, we only look at quality---and quality looks like white people. That's the breaks. Try harder.

On a related note, I showed my friend Jim Henry's
picture of a very toothy guy to my daughter Zara and this conversation came about

Z: "Ewww. Look at him."

L: "What?"

Z: "Well I bet you wouldn't want to marry him, would you?"

L: "Probably not. I'm obsessed with healthy teeth, so I don't think so. How about you? Would you want to marry him?"

Z: "No way."

L: "Really? [smiling] Why not?"

Z: Because he's black. AND I DON'T LIKE BLACK PEOPLE."

I thought she was going to say:

a. because he is missing a great number of teeth OR

b. because he's too old OR

c. because he doesn't have a shirt on.

Because he's BLACK? If it wasn't so horrifying, I would have laughed outloud.

L: "ZARA!? Why would you say that?"

Z: "All people are born but all people don't like each other."

L: "What's that supposed to mean?"

Then she just shrugged and said quietly, "I just don't like black people."

I shook my head. I figured I'd talk to her more about it later. If I push stuff with her, she locks down and then there is no talking to her.

But that's the second time she's said something like that. For instance, we had this conversation a couple of months ago:

L: "Look at that girl [on tv]! Isn't she so cute?"

Z: "No."

L: "Why would you say that?"

Z: "Because her skin is black and disgusting."

OMG. It's horrible to hear. I couldn't even think of how to respond at first.

Finally, I said, "Well what if she said that you weren't cute because your skin is white and disgusting?" And my daughter looked all baffled and said, "But white skin *isn't* disgusting."


My friend Lisa was interviewing nannies and after one of the interview candidates left, she asked her boys (who are Latino) "Well, what did you think of her?" and they were like, "We didn't really like her."

Lisa asked, "Really, why's that?" and basically, after some prodding, it came down to, We'd like somebody who has skin a little more like yours and hair a little more like yours too.

It's innate. Our brains are programmed not to like things that are not like us because those things seem unsafe. Like being afraid of tigers. And because we are programmed this way, we have to work all our lives to deprogram ourselves.

It's not just some people's brains. It's EVERYBODY. I bet black kids prefer black faces too if they have black parents and they spent the majority of their time (while their brain was forming critical pathways) staring up into two black faces.

Anyway, later that day I tried to talk to my daughter more about this and she got really uncomfortable. Here's how it went:

Z: "Well, right now, I'm trying to make a sculpture, and so i'd really like to stop talking about this!"

L: "Well, we'll only talk for a minute. I just want to know, did someone tell you they didn't like black people? Are you hearing this stuff and repeating it?"

She tried to dodge around it, pretending she didn't mean what she said earlier.

Z: "The man in the picture isn't even black, he's brown, and I said 'I don't like black people,' and there ARE no black people. At least I have never seen one, have you?"

L: "It makes me really uncomfortable you saying you don't like somebody because of the color of their skin. Wouldn't you be sad if someone said, I don't like her because of her skin? Because what could you do about it? Nothing. You can't change that."

Z: "People can't change their ways either."

L: "No, people CAN change their ways and they can change their ideas, too."

Z: "Also their hair color. For example, I saw green hair on TV once and it was terrible, but I saw pink hair and it was wonderful.

L: True. People can change their hair.

Z: Okay, I'm doing my sculpture now so we should stop talking."

I just looked for research, because I know I had read something like this before, about race preference. Here's a really interesting
study.

To summarize, this study has provided the first direct evidence in support of an ethnically unspecified face processing system at birth, which can become tuned to certain facial dimensions that specify race within the first 3 months of life. We believe that preference for own-race faces observed in 3-month-olds represents the perceptual beginnings of categorization based on ethnic differences and may provide a basis for the ‘other-race effect’.

In other words, at 0 months your brain has no racial preferences. But by the time you're three months old, you prefer own-race faces. The "other-race effect" is thinking that everybody of one race looks like everybody else of that race.


I have other-race effect. I feel racist because of it but I do.

Hee Soon, my Korean roommate in grad school, would show me pictures of her friends and family and this is how our interaction would go:

[first picture]

L: "Aww! Is that you?"

HS: No.

L: Really?

HS: Yeah, that's my brother.

L: Oh. [awkward pause] You guys look alike.

HS: Really?

[next picture]

L: Aw, cute. Is that you?

HS: No, that's my dad.

L: Oh. Does everybody say you look just like him?

HS: No.

So embarrasing.

Speaking of, I have a story about thinking everybody looks like everybody and possibly being racist.

One time I was driving to work for the night shift when I worked at The News-Dispatch in Michigan City, Indiana, and I was driving through this really bad neighborhood and because I have no regard for safety, I didn't have my car doors locked.

Anyway, when I was at a stopsign, the passenger door just opened up and all of a sudden, this guy was sitting in my car in the passenger seat.

I was all sputtering, like, "What the hell are you doing?" and he was all slurry like, "Mufflff, ruffl, bffll, rffl. Kyle's Liquor Store!"

And I was, like, "No! Get out."

And he just kept sitting there, and then he repeated, "Mufflff, ruffl, bffll. Kyle's Liquor Store!"

I was thinking, no way am I taking you, who just carjacked me, to Kyle's Liquor Store. It is not happening, dude. And also I was really annoyed because I had to go to work and I was gonna be late, so I said, "Forget it, you can have my stupid car. Goodbye."

And I left the keys in the car with it running and got out and started walking down the street to work, and then I looked back and he got out of the passenger side, all stumbly, "Mufflff, ruffl, bffll." And then staggered away.

When he was gone, I walked back and got into my car and instead of driving to work, I drove to the police station. This is how that went. P is for Police Officers.

P1: Yeah, what can we do for you?

L: Yeah. Okay, well, this guy just jumped in my car when I was stopped at a stop sign. On 11th and Wabash."

P2: Oh. Did he take it? Did he take your car?

L: No. He just sat in the seat next to me and then I got out and told him he could just have my car, I was leaving, but I don't think he wanted my car.

P2: Oh.

P1: What'd he want?"

L: Pretty sure he wanted me to take him to Kyle's Liquor Store."

P2: Did you?

L: I'm sorry.

P2: Did you take him to Kyle's?

L: No. Why would I take him to Kyle's?

P1: Probably good you didn't.

L: [pause] Yeah . . .

P1: Well, what'd he look like?

L: Look like?

P1: Yeah, what'd he look like?

At this point I'm thinking, no way am I going to say what I should say, which is: an exact description of what the carjacker looks like. They will think I'm so racist, like the only way I can describe a black guy is to compare him to somebody famous. But then I was like, well, what the hell, they're cops, I'm sure they're not so judgmental of racists so I said.

L: He looked just like James Brown. That's what he looked like. Exactly.

And they were like,

P1: Oh, yeah, that's Willie.

P2: Yeah, that's Willie. He does that to everybody.

P1: Yeah, he's harmless.

L: Oh.

P2: Okay, have a good night.

L: Um. Alright. Bye.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

SAVAGELY OLD, DEPRESSED, AND UNDEREXPOSED. AREN'T WE ALL?



GENERATION OLD AND CRANKY I love Zadie Smith, all three pages I have read by her. She's a genius. This "Generation Why?" essay is incredible.

I hate Facebook and I am on it, and every day, I have to will myself to check it. "Just check it already," I whisper. "Just check it and 'like' a few things and then you're done."

I actually cancelled my account once, but then got back on because I felt stodgy and self-righteous, not having an account. Both of which I am. But still, not everybody on Facebook needs to know that.

This is an especially good part of the essay:

When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way it’s a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears. It reminds me that those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don’t look more free, they just look more owned.

[...]

I’ve noticed—and been ashamed of noticing—that when a teenager is murdered, at least in Britain, her Facebook wall will often fill with messages that seem to not quite comprehend the gravity of what has occurred. You know the type of thing: Sorry babes! Missin’ you!!! Hopin’ u iz with the Angles. I remember the jokes we used to have LOL! PEACE XXXXX

When I read something like that, I have a little argument with myself: “It’s only poor education. They feel the same way as anyone would, they just don’t have the language to express it.” But another part of me has a darker, more frightening thought. Do they genuinely believe, because the girl’s wall is still up, that she is still, in some sense, alive? What’s the difference, after all, if all your contact was virtual?


I noticed the same thing when Brittany Murphy died and her ex-boyfriend Ashton Kutcher tweeted "u will be missed." Or something of the like. And I was thinking, Can you not be bothered to use standard English in your electronic sympathy note, you illiterate jackhole.

"no, I cn't!!!! bc u c *im* not dead--i got sht 2 do like mk mooVs, k?"

As you can probably tell, like ZS (and sadly this is the only way in which we are alike), I don't speak Tweety.

GET YOUR PEANUTS! I really like the art/word postcard micropress Abe's Penny. My friend Jim Henry and I were in an issue together way back in the day, as in two years ago. If you sign up, you get beautiful postcards once week and they're connected, so each month, you get four different postcards which make up a complete story or poem. Now they've started Abe's Peanut for kids. I sound like an advertisement, and I swear Abe's Penny is not paying me out of their fat bankroll, but my husband noted and I think he's right: "This would be a great thing to buy somebody as a gift." He's an artist so he appreciates things you can actually hold and turn around and put up close to your eyeball.


JIM HENRY IS GOING TO GET HIS PROPERS ONE DAY WHEN I AM IN CHARGE OF EARTH. Speaking of Jim Henry? Jim Henry is honestly, seriously, no kidding, the best writer EVER. He is astounding. You will read his stories and you will laugh and laugh. You will also feel terribly sad and at times you will cringe and feel implicated, and finally, when you shut the book, you will weep a little for yourself, and when you pull yourself together, it is possible you will mutter, as I did, "I am not really very talented, am I? But that's okay. I am probably other things."

Sure, Jim is my friend, but Ann Beattie feels the same way, it's not just me. He won the Iowa prize in fiction and she's the one who chose his book THANK YOU FOR BEING CONCERNED AND SENSITIVE.

Unfortunately he says he doesn't write anymore. He is not a writer. He teaches in the Middle East and travels and takes pictures.

He's such a liar, I'm sure next year he'll publish 10 books he's been sitting on for the last decade.

In any case, this book is a treasure that too few people know about. Jim Henry is woefully underexposed.

I was typing some parts in for my friend the other day because you can't find the stories online.

Here's an excerpt from his short story "The Main Event":

Right around the Fourth my Uncle Len, who had just moved in with us, started having his murder dream. Then my girlfriend Lola, told me she was pregnant ...[...]

Uncle Len is my mother's brother and he came to live with us when his third wife committed suicide, just like his first had. My mother said he was thinking there was something wrong with him and she asked him to come live with us for a while. She told us she wanted him to see what a real family was like. She thought his wives had all been trashy women. [...]

Uncle Len found both his dead wives and caught Irene in bed with her boyfriend. My father told me all those things, the details. He said Len was a clod and told me that a man who marries floozies deserves what he gets.

"A wife isn't for fun," he told me. "We aren't here to have fun."

In Uncle Len's murder dream he wakes up from sleeping (in the dream) and thinks he's just woken up from a bad dream. Then he goes and gets a butcher knife from the kitchen and kills us all, one at a time. He carves us up "like turkeys, starting with James." I heard him one night telling my parents this. He was sweating with fear after waking up screaming. I was listening from the upstairs banister.

It chilled me that he started his massacre with me and I wondered what Freud would think of this dream. [...]

My mother is a firm believer in chores and one of mine is to feed the chinchillas that live in the basement. My mother was raising chinchillas to sell for their fur in tiny chicken wire cages all over the basement. They were loud and obnoxious and smelled awful, but she thought someday they would put us on Easy Street. Which, she said, was "farther than your father will ever get us." She thought my father didn't work hard enough and didn't exert himself. They argued about it all the time. "You've got to put yourself out there," she'd say, holding open a paperback "How To" book at her hip as proof that she knew what she was talking about. She was always reading books about succeeding in the business world. My father never read them and this was a source of a lot of fights. "How can you just turn your back on Easy Street?" she would cry. "What kind of a man are you?" Things like that. If nothing else, these fights proved what my father said, you don't get married for fun.

My mother told me not to get too attached to the chinchillas because soon they would be goners but there was no problem there. I hated those damn animals with their buckteeth and smelly racks of pellets. I wouldn't have cared if the house caught on fire and they burned alive.

The day Lola told me she thought she was pregnant, I went down there like always and fed the damn things out of the big feed bags my mother bought and I noticed one of them was having babies. Not an uncommon event, but still, like a lot of things, it made me mad at God. There's a lot I don't understand, even Claude the Genius' whisperings and I've decided that the reason I don't understand them is that God doesn't want me to. The world could have been created to be understood, but it wasn't. And that, it seems to me, is pure maliciousness--on God's part. Take for instance the dinosaurs, or why the universe is so big and Earth such a tiny speck of nothingness. You would think there is some kind of a reason for everything, and if there is, why were there dinosaurs on Earth so long before men? What were they doing here? Why didn't Creation just start with us? Were the dinosaurs just a practice run for the main event, or is there some reason behind their multimillion-year reign? Claude the Genius tells me in my sleep that they were here because they were an important part of the food chain that today has turned into oil and coal and God wanted us to have oil and coal so we could drive Toyotas and have stereos. But if that's true, then it's possible that we aren't even the main event. Maybe the point is for us to destroy ourselves so the reason the universe was created can get started. Maybe God is up there twiddling his thumbs and yawning. Meanwhile, we think he's watching all the sparrows fall.

So I watched the chinchilla squirting out another half-dozen or so smelly fur coats and I looked up at God, although all I saw was heating ducts, and I said, in as sarcastic a voice as possible, "Oh, I suppose there's a message here for me, eh?" I thought this because, obviously, I had abortions on my mind. Lola would have to get one. I was not going to be a father at fifteen. Period. Thank you very much. So then I get a nature film in living color about the glory of reproduction. Ha-ha, God, good one.

A dinner that night Uncle Len said he thought maybe he would check himself into a looney bin. My mother said that nobody was checking into any loony bin because nobody was looney. Then Uncle Len said, "I'd just hate to wake up one morning and find you all dead and cut up."

"So would we, Len," my dad cheered, his mouth full of creamed broccoli, "so would we."

He was trying to be funny, which I thought was really his only option, but my mother just glared at him.

"One of the chinchillas had six babies today," I announced, my voice echoing in my own head in a strange way, like it wasn't even me talking.

"Hello, Easy Street!" my mother said, her fork raised high in victory.

Uncle Len wasn't working and rather than spend his days getting out of the way of my mother's vacuuming, he drank coffee at the Starlight Diner and read the paper. I saw him in there a lot and usually pretended I hadn't. But that day I went in and joined him at his booth. "Hi'ya kiddo," he said uneasily. He hadn't shaved and I thought he looked like the kind of guy you see on the news for stabbing a family to death for no reason. "That girl of yours is something." He whistled to show me how much he thought of her. "Kids today are so lucky. The only way I'll ever get in the pants of a fifteen year old is to get a Bangkok whore. Enjoy it," he grinned, "life does nothing but get weirder."

There was a chance Uncle Len was going insane but I thought he'd led an interesting life and was probably the type of guy who knew about things like abortions. So as I sipped my coffee I told him the whole story and asked his advice. He smoked with squinted eyes as I finished and then he leaned forward and told me this was the oldest trick in the book. He said that Lola was trapping me into marrying her. He said he knew this because no pregnant woman would say what she said to me about not using a rubber. "A pregnant woman is not a regular woman," he said. "Their brains go to mush and they don't think about sex like that. They've already got some damn thing growing down there and they don't want men showering it with their stuff." He said she wanted to have sex with me without a rubber so she would get pregnant and then she would make me marry her so I'd have to support her for the rest of her life.

"But she has a trust fund, Uncle Len," I told him. "She's already got more money than I'll ever have."

"Oh yeah," he said. "I forgot she was a Dickens."

We sat there for a while in silence and I felt kind of sorry for him. He'd been so excited when he was warning me about Lola's conspiracy, and now I'd robbed him of that. "Damn!" he said finally. "That body and a trust fund. You should pretend to get pregnant."

[...] We didn't shoot the senator, but we did have rubberless sex in her old bed surrounded by all her old dolls. Afterward, when we were lying in bed I played with the dolls. I noticed that if you held them upside down their eyelids closed with a whispering click. As I held one, I decided to tell Lola about Claude the Genius and his nighttime visits to me. I'd never mentioned him to anyone before, but I thought since she told me she would maybe like to kill someone, I owed her a secret. Claude the Genius was the only one I had. I told her the story of how a voice whispers to me in my sleep, how he told me his name was Claude and that he was a genius from another dimension that couldn't be described in any way that would mean anything to me, and how he tries to explain the mysteries of the universe. "But even with his help, I still don't get it," I told her. She held me tight and started into my eyes with wonder.

"You are chosen," she said, "chosen." And then she climbed on top of me and we rubbed our sweat-soaked bodies together, staring into each other's eyes in absolute silence.

From his story "Observer Status":

My sister continues. "I think I would like to be artificially inseminated by a Nobel laureate." My sister stands and takes a deep breath. "I know this is difficult to comprehend from within the cultural morass, so if you could please just take a second and try to free yourself from the stifling limits of this idiotic society with its servile, unimaginative mores, I think you may find my reasoning sound."

[,,,]

My sister sighs, arms folded, and she half turns away. "I can see you two are having trouble freeing yourself from the confines of this idiotic cultural..."

"Don't tell me about culture, young lady," Mom warns, wagging a spoonful of herring in the air. "Cultural abstractions have no place at this table."

"Oh! Is that so? Well let me tell you something, cultural abstractions abound! To label them ubiquitous would be a comic understatement. They are at the heart of all morality, all judgment--everything!"

"Well, yes," Mom says, leaning forward in battle, "but only as abstractions. Abstractions are meaningless when applied to individuals--you know that."

"So are you really going to stand there and acknowledge the existence of a stifling cultural narrative and then insist that it has no impact on the individual--in this conversation, that would be you two?"

[...]

"So if you can't rip yourselves away from the illusion of normalcy you're wallowing in, and you're against it, just say so and I'll wait."

"We're against it," Mom says, lifting a spoonful of herring to her mouth. "We are definitely against it."

My sister shrugs and jams her open palms onto her hips. She looks the two of them in the face and shakes her head in disappointment and says, "At what age should I expect everything to take on such dramatic meaning?" She leaves, however, before either can answer, humming.

From his story "Mouthfeel":

"It's a waste of life. The earth just spins and spins," she went on, shaking her head, rolling it back and forth in the dirt. Miles noticed an old dead branch had gotten stuck in her ponytail. "So anyway, I was leading this discussion--about mouthfeel--when this very dark, black woman who I had never seen before came in carrying this enormous tray of cold cuts. It was huge, the size of a good-sized kitchen table top, far larger than ours, anyway. And she moved with such grace and precision that she captivated my attention. Here is a woman, I thought, here is a real person, doing real work in the real world. She is setting out a tray of cold cuts. I envied her like you cannot believe, Miles. I wished to God I was a black servant woman."

Jenny was still lying on he ground. A long one or two minutes of absolute silence passed. "I am a foods scientist, Miles." Another pause. "I say the word mouthfeel dozens of times every week." Longer pause. "My car cost thirty five thousand dollars." She went on, and on.

Jim's photography is not too shabby either. The captions are especially entertaining. Smile and Monkey for instance.

YOU KNOW WHAT'S *REALLY* HILARIOUS? DEPRESSION. It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini . . . it really is kind of a funny story. I read it the day after Thanksgiving. It is a book about depression that is not depressing, just like its blurb says. The protag in IKOAFS is a high school freshman named Craig who is clinically depressed and planning on jumping off a bridge. I like mentally ill protags, as previously mentioned--or if not explicitly mentioned, then strongly implied. In other words, I am the target audience for this book and Ted Vizzini hit that target. I would have loved this book in high school, but I like it now, too.

Ned Vizzini, I like your book. Quite honestly, though, I probably won't see the movie. Even when I want to feel excited during movies, I don't. Then I feel uncomfortable and unexcited all at once. But my sister saw it and said It's Kind of a Funny Movie. I do want to see stills of what Nia looks like in the movie though. I hope she has black circles on her cheeks!

I AM SAVAGELY LATE TO THE 2007 PARTY AT WHICH EVERYONE WAS DIGGING ON THIS BOOK. I also am savagely obsessed with Roberto Bolano. I don't know how to make a tilde online but whatever, you know who I'm talking about, the author of THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES

I just read the book out of order---the first section, then the end, then the middle--so now I have to read it through again in sequence. My friend recommended it to me and I wrote him half way through to thank him and noted:

"It's like ON THE ROAD--if ON THE ROAD were beautifully written and hilarious and international and not gay."

This review and this review are interesting. (The first review more than the second, I think). In the first review, I liked this part:

It’s something close to a miracle that Bolaño can produce such intense narrative interest in a book made up of centrifugal monologues spinning away from two absentee main characters, and the diary entries of its most peripheral figure. And yet, in spite of the book’s apparent (and often real) formlessness, a large part of its distinction is its virtually unprecedented achievement in multiply-voiced narration.

Above all, Bolaño overcomes the problem of getting so many voices to comment on the same events, or sing to the same music, by letting each voice persist in its natural egocentricity. True, the reader is liable to protest, somewhere before page 200, that this book isn’t about anything. Later on, it’s possible to recognise, with admiration, that Bolaño has found a way to keep the novel alive and freshly growing in the Sonora of modern scepticism – our scepticism, that is, as to what can finally be known or said of any life, and whose life is worth being represented, or considered representative, in the first place.

I think the most interesting thing about this book is how it keeps being interesting--despite its structure (or lack thereof). Why should this be interesting? I kept asking myself. If you took this book to an MFA workshop, people would tell you

a) this is not about anything
b) this is not how you write a story

It is NOT how you write a story, and yet, it's so continually engaging and authentic.

Bolano presents 38 different narrators in the middle section of the book. They are being interviewed about Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, the founders of Visceral Realism (a literary movement that's never defined, even the founders and its members seem uncertain about its definition). The best part is Bolano doesn't even attempt to create a hierarchy of narrators or give narrators equal face time or focus on dialect or even keep the narrators focused on the subject of the interview. Some of the narrators' stories don't even mention Lima and Belano. Other than the fact that it's beautifully written (though in plain language) it doesn't really do anything a good book is supposed to do--which may be why it is so staggeringly great.

Two questions:

1. Who's the interviewer in the second section?
2. Are the symbols at the end [insert idea] devices, or are they poems? Or both? Or neither?

Friday, December 3, 2010

POEMS: BLUESTEM and REVISTA CONSENSO and BONE BOUQUET

I have four poems from my manuscript THE EFFECT OF SMALL ANIMALS in the first online issue of BLUESTEM.

The "Retard" poem is an English-to-English translation of Matthew Lippman's "Retards" poem at FROM THE FISHHOUSE.

BLUESTEM, formerly KARAMU, has been published since 1966 and is produced by the English Department at Eastern Illinois University. Thanks, BLUESTEM!

I also have five translations in REVISTA CONSENSO which is produced by the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Northeastern Illinois University. These poems are from a collection of poems COSES PETITES (LITTLE THINGS) by Anna Aguilar-Amat and Francesc Parcerisas. With the authors, I translated them from Catalan to English. Thank you, REVISTA CONSENSO!

In related translation news, the translations were also recently published in BONE BOUQUET's second issue, and I'm going to be reading with Anna in Brooklyn in January as a part of a BONE BOUQUET reading. Thanks, BONE BOUQUET!

A little about the authors:

Anna Aguilar-Amat was recently awarded three prizes for Catalan poetry: the Jocs Florals of the city of Barcelona for PetrolierI Teatre (Oil and Theater); the Carles Riba award for Trànsit entre dos vols (Transit between two flights); and the Màrius Torres award for La música I L’escorbut (Music and Scurvy). Her fourth book of poems is Jocs d’loca (The Goose Game). Aguilar-Amat is president of QUARKpoesia (Aula de Poesia de la Universitat Autònoma) with the aim to promote poetry translation of less translated languages. In 2006 she started the poetry imprint Refractions (Refraccions) with the aim to publish mostly bilingual or trilingual poetry books. She has a Ph.D. from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona where she now teaches Terminology as a faculty member in the Translation department.

Most importantly, Anna is, as they say in Catalan, amazeballs.

Francesc Parcerisas is a poet, translator and critic. Since his first book, Vint poemes civils (Twenty Civil Poems, 1966), he has published a number of collections of poetry and literary criticism and has regularly contributed to Catalan newspapers and magazines. His collected poems, Triomf del present (Triumph of the Present), includes his poetry up until 1992. Natura Norta amb Nens (Still Life with Children, 2000) is his latest collection. Parcerisas has worked as Director of the Institute of Catalan Literature at the Catalan Ministry of Culture in Barcelona since 1998. He has also translated a number of works from Spanish, Italian, and English into Catalan, including El Senyor dels Anells (The Lord of the Rings) by J.R.R. Tolkien.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS? You can be impressed now, it's okay.



Thursday, December 2, 2010

IN THE MOOD FOR RECKLESSNESS IN NON-SPACE

IN THE MOOD Not that I'm pimping my exceptional instructional design skills but. . .I am? I suggested that my friend Kathleen Rooney have her students create poetry moodboards.

She did and they did and look at these things of beauty">!

The moodboards really FEEL like those poems/books, don't they?

The moodboard representing Elisa Gabbert's THE FRENCH EXIT literally brought tears to my eyes. I don't usually get tears in my eyes over sad or happy things--I just cry in those instances.

But I often get tears in my eyes when I read or see or hear something especially "right." When I feel like "this is exactly how/where/what something should be." Olfactory stuff does not trigger tears for me. Neither does touching stuff. I wish they did.

TOWARD A GENERAL RECKLESSNESS I was reading THE ART OF RECKLESSNESS by Dean Young and that was happening constantly--Tears In Eyes. So many right things in one place.

Dean Young is having heart problems right now, and he needs a transplant. You should give some money to him, even if you don't have any. Medical bills are the worst. Believe me, I know. And still, there's something really nice about trying to help someone else pay theirs, instead of worrying about yours. Helping other people is exciting. Helping yourself is stressful.

I don't know Dean Young but I've heard nothing but great things about him--both as a teacher and a friend. And of course, I know his poems.

Dean Young, I hope your heart comes in soon and that it fits and makes you feel good and works perfectly and lasts a very long time.

THINKING ABOUT THINKING VERY SPECIFICALLY ABOUT SEX The feeling of "so many right things in one place" and "this is exactly how/where/what it should be" makes me think about thinking about sex. I was thinking about sex the other day, and I hope this isn't too much information, but of course, some people think any information about sex is too much information, and I'm not speaking to those people.

Anyway, I was trying to think about and then articulate what emotional desire feels like for a man during sex, but, after a while, I gave up. I couldn't figure it out. I guess because I've never had a penis, and therefore, I have never had sex with a woman with my own penis.

So then I tried to articulate the emotional desire of sex for women. I'm not even sure how to describe what I mean by "the emotional desire of sex" except to say "the thing that you're thinking/feeling in your mind during sex that makes it sexy?"

In any case, in trying to articulate this sexy thought, I kept thinking of this one movie. I can't remember the name and I have no idea what it was about. It was terrible and unmemorable, and it was supposed to be a comedy. In the movie, during a sex scene (and there are several and they're the same every time), this lady keeps saying to the guy on top of her: "Fill me up! Oooh, fill me up, Baby!"

Ick.

BRIEF DETOUR Okay, detour, my friend Kathleen reminds me that the movie is ELECTION. She thought it was great and hilarious, and apparently so did everybody in the world but me. This always happens to me.

The same thing happened with THE ROYAL TENNENBAUMS. I saw it and my friend was with me and she was like, "What did you think?" and I said, "Well. I didn't really like it. I didn't think it was funny. I thought it was kind of boring." And my friend was like, "Well it's not supposed to be ha ha funny! But that was a great movie." And I was like, "Oh. Okay."

Same thing with AMERICAN BEAUTY. I didn't like it. I thought it was dumb. I thought Kevin Spacey was creepy and disgusting, and his wife, and his wife's boyfriend, and K Spacey's daughter, and the daughter's friend.

I know their characters are creepy and disgusting on purpose, but I don't care. I don't want to watch movie characters who are revolting in that particular way. Also, I was annoyed by the ending--the part where Kevin Spacey breaks down the meaning of life in his paper voice. I was like: Boo. I've had more than one person become irritated when I said I did not like anything about that movie.

Also, A BEAUTIFUL MIND. With its swelling music to helpfully signal--THIS IS POIGNANT YOU SEE. And then whenever John Nash would have a brilliant thought, the lights would get really bright. Like, LIGHTS SYMBOLIZE BRILLIANT THOUGHTS.

Also, when they showed John Nash having that one intellectual breakthrough, like he's figuring out some theory or whatever and they represented it as numbers flashing on a screen, I burst out laughing. What the hell does that mean, some random flashing numbers? That movie made me want to die.

The best part of that movie is that it's based on John Nash and I have a real-life story related to John Nash.

My friend John (not John Nash) used to work in a bar and John Nash and his wife and son used to come into the bar sometimes, so my friend knew what they looked like. Well, one day my friend John was in MacDonald's and he got up to get napkins and John Nash's son (who is a little unstable according to my friend) came over and tried to eat my friend John's hamburger.

So my friend John yelled across McDonald's at John Nash's son, "Hey, you. Get away from there! That's MY hamburger!"

I was like, "John, why didn't you let the dude just have your hamburger?"

And John was like, "Because I was hungry. That's why I bought it. I don't care if he IS John Nash's son."

I said, "Well I doubt he cares that he's John Nash's son either."

Now every time somebody brings up that movie, I don't reveal that I don't like it. I just tell the McDonald's story so I don't get hassled about my terrible taste in movies.

BACK TO BUSINESS Anyway, back to the character who kept saying "FILL ME UP." I thought about that and then I thought, "Well, maybe the "fill me up" lady has a point. Is that it? Is that what "the sexy thought" is? The thought of someone filling you up? Maybe the sexy thought has to do with temporary emptiness with promise, like "I am empty but I have the potential for fullness and that fullness has to do with you."

"A little," I thought, "but that's not exactly right."

Then I thought, "Maybe the sexy thought is more like, 'I am completely open.'"

But that's not really it either. That's imprecise, because sex is not open, it's contained within a body, and also, how does "I am open" account for the other person, like, what is the other person's contribution to openness?

So then I thought, "Well, if the sexy thought is not 'being filled' or 'being open,' what is it?" And what I concluded is, in English we don't have a word for the feeling/thought that I am trying to describe.

To me, the sexy thought is something more along the lines of "having room" or "having space." I'm still not describing this well.

I don't mean just having room in general, like "Guess what, your penis fits into my vagina, I never thought it would, this is sexy," and I don't mean it like, "I am negative space and, look, you happen to be my positive space, this is sexy."

I mean more like, "I have a space inside me, but to you, it will be something else, it will be non-space, this is how you will perceive this space, and this is very sexy."

Then I thought, "Yes, that's right: I have non-space--as you and only you can see--so come get it." This is the sexy thought. Having exclusive non-space is the sexy thought.

But then I thought about it more, and I thought, "What the fuck does that even mean? Non-space? What is non-space?"

So then I Googled "non-space," and what do you know, I came across this blog called Multiplication by Infinity: Steven Colyer's Musings in Mathematical Physics and Its Effects on Humanity and Other Life Forms

Non-space exists it seems. Or so says Steven Colyer's blog. I'm not really sure it clears things up for me on the sex front but here is how he explains non-space.

So what is "non-space?"

Before anyone submits the lame joke "non-sense," please hear me out.

I submit there are three kinds of space, the first of which we have never observed, and one I personally reject:

1) NEGATIVE SPACE - In such a space, if you took one step forward, you would end up one step back. This has never been observed outside of the U.S. Senate and the European Parliament, but those are macro-sized objects where quantum effects average out in the aggregate, so they don't count.

2) POSITIVE SPACE - This is the space we are all used to.

3) NON-SPACE - Alleged to exist within a wormhole, if you enter a non-space you appear instantaneously on the other side. It is as if space didn't exist! You are not traveling faster than the speed of light and thus breaking causality because the "space" you are going through doesn't exist! It's not even a "bubble" because "bubble" implies there is something inside.

I hope Steven Colyer doesn't see this and get mad about me for taking his post in this direction but what I want to know is:

Is there a non-space existing inside my wormhole?

If you enter my non-space, is it possible you will appear instantaneously on "the other side"?

I don't have the answers to these questions.

I have no idea how to transition out of this.

Goodbye.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

THE NON-COMPLIANCE MANUAL

I am not blogging as much as I like. I would like to blog about writing--or anything really--at least once a week, but alas, I can only blog about how I have no mental space to blog once a week.

You see, like so many people, I am busy fighting with the Chicago Public Schools [CPS] this past month.

Why can't we all get along?

Why, CPS, do you require me to be a 20-page-letter-writing lunatic so my daughters can learn things?

Why, CPS, must you make things harder than they already are?

Not like life is so hard for me, like, SO HARD.

Having a kid with disabilities is not all so hard. Don't get me wrong.

Don't get me wrong. It's not all so easy either.

You will never hear me say, "God gave me an impaired child to teach me a lesson about life, so praise be to Him."

Neither will you ever hear me say, "Everything, in the end, is a blessing."

He didn't. It's not.

Everything does not happen for a reason. I feel pretty sure that life is a collection of random--sometimes unfortunate, sometimes fortunate--events.

Still, despite even wanting to really, a person does learn things from less-than-ideal circumstances. And learning things, at least for me, makes me like my life and myself better. So having a disabled kid has taught me things and I will go out on a limb and say I suppose I'm better off for that. Here are some examples.

1. I used to be afraid having a disabled child and disabled people in general.

Now I'm not afraid because I have given birth to a disabled person and I live with her, and I realize nothing horrible is going to happen. She is not going to attack me with her faulty limbs and she is not going to rub her retarded germs on me and she is not going to make me feel full of despair and dread and pity every day of my life--at least not any more than I already did feel despair and dread and pity.

Everyone is supposed to say that diversity is cherished and wonderful and makes the world go round, and there is nothing to be afraid of, but of course everyone is afraid because there's absolutely something to be afraid of.

The person in front of you is talking like they have a mouthful of marbles and jelly. The person in front of you is walking like they're on the surface of the moon and drunk as a bastard. They look like . . . Something.

Something is scary. When you see Something of this type, you have to question, even when you don't want to:

1. What exactly is *this* that I am seeing?
2. What exactly caused *this* that I am seeing?

In other words, in essence, you must question:

1. Am I like *this*? [Answer: No, definitely not.]
2. Is it possible I could become *this*? [Answer: No, definitely not. It is not in my genes. It would have happened by now if it was going to happen, or if that's not true, it's impossible because it is not in my nature to do things that might make myself into *this.* I shop at Whole Foods and I have never had metal fillings.]
3. Is it possible that I could bear a child like *this*? Answer: No, impossible. See Answer 2 and replace "my" with "my child's."]

There are people who DO ask these questions outright and outloud:

What's wrong with her?
What's wrong with you?
What's wrong with him?
Why does she walk like that?
Why do you talk like that?
Why does he act like that?

And then they say this:

It is not normal in case you didn't know.

These people are generally clincially socially impaired or they are five years old or they are tremendous dicks. In any case, because this demographic tends not to spread the word, they are the only people who have the inside scoop.

It's too bad really. For this reason, everybody else just keeps not understanding, and because we don't understand, we keep being terrified that we may wake up one day--for reasons unknown to us--having a retarded baby or having turned retarded or having realized that we've always been retarded.

It's been known to happen. Or if it hasn't, it seems like it could have.

2. I am less afraid of the unspecified terrible thing that will befall me at some point in the future.

Raising a disabled kid is interesting. It can be fun, like unwrapping a present can be fun. Regular kids have progress charts. They progress according to expectation. They learn *this* by X time, and *that* by Y time. But kids with special needs--some of them at least--have no set trajectory for learning. So they can learn anything. They can learn nothing. They can learn a little--but not the thing that you thought they would. They can learn something, but in a different way than you thought humans were capable of.

I have always liked surprises. I don't care much about predicting the future. That is not my style. Neither is it my husband's, thankfully. Given our situation: Yay us.

But still, I have always had an unreasonable undercurrent of fear that one day the future would hold something terrible for me and that I would never get over whatever that terribleness might bring. To prepare for this thing, sometimes I wouldn't move my legs so I could practice being paralyzed. Sometimes I would blindfold myself and walk around the house and bump into things.

I don't do this sort of thing anymore. I don't have to. I have the experience to know that once I am paralyzed, I'll sit down, as I'll already be sitting down, and I'll figure out how to proceed. Once I go blind, I will pay someone to go online for me, and I will look up how blind people cook and walk across the street and then I'll do what those people have been doing.

3. One more thing. I pity myself less now.

I used to think my life was so sad. I was so sad for myself and my life. I didn't like my job because it was kind of boring, and also, I had to work 30 hours a week. Furthermore, sometimes I wasn't inspired to write poems. Sometimes I was really inspired and so I wrote poems but then I didn't like them and I felt embarrassed. It was so stressful, all of it.

It sounds like I'm being sarcastic, and I am, but it really was so stressful. It felt awful. Me and my life were too much.

Sometimes I feel jealous of myself back then because I had nothing real to worry about, but of course, there's nothing to be jealous of because I was completely unaware of the ease that was my life, and for this very reason, my life was not easy.

Now, because I spend a lot of time in hospitals and doctor's offices, I see people who have enormous challenges--bigger than I could ever imagine--and every day they show up. Hello. We are here for the life show.

I wish I had been able to watch more of these life show people at work in their lives 20 years ago, back when my life was so complex with nothing in it. But where would I have seen them? I was sitting on the floor of St. Mark's Bookstore reading Agni's Take 3 issue, asking, "Will this be me? Hmm. Hope so." And they were sitting in a hospital, saying, "Is this who we are now? Hmm. Guess so."

The biggest difficulty for us in our present lives is Compliance. My daughter is not a huge fan of the C word. "Adult-directed activities" and "non-preferred tasks" are not so much her thing.

I hear you saying, "This is the way for all kids, though."

And of course it is. But with (some) disabled kids, it is entirely another degree of non-compliance.

Non-compliance is their religion. Non-compliance is their God. They bow down and kiss the feet of the deity called No Way Am I Doing That, You'll Have To Kill Me First, and Where Will That Get You?

To give you some background, our daughter has cerebral palsy (CP). As far as we know, she is not straight-up autistic but her presentation is nearly identical to autism. She's nonverbal, she can't make eye contact, she does all kinds of "stimming" activities [spitting, rubbing, biting], she has a multitude of sensory issues, can't deal with transitions or new environments, is not interested in socially interacting with people she doesn't know, etc. etc. It's just that, unlike autism, the cause of these symptoms is primarily physical.

In other words, saying my daughter is not autistic is like someone who has a kid with cortical blindness saying, "My daughter isn't "technically" blind--she just can't see anything."

One way in which my daughter differs from typical autistic kids (we're told) is she's empathic.

She smiles when we smiles. She laughs when we laugh. She gets really sad when we're sad--so sad tears literally roll down and drip off her cheeks. She also gets really sad when we're mad at her too.

She tries to comfort us by sticking her hand under or down our shirts and patting our skin. If we scream NO!, she makes kissing sounds our way to tell us "Please be quiet. This kiss is to tell you I'm really sorry I've just upset you so."

(Now that I think about it, maybe this kiss is saying, "There there, don't be upset by my action because your crying is very upsetting to me and also, you see, I would like to continue on with what I was doing.")

The problem is--as I assume is the problem with most kids with autism--there is no way to overcome non-compliance when a child is not motivated by adult praise or adult punishment.

Self-help books are always like, "You have to do things for yourself! You can't do things to gain the love of others or because you're afraid they won't like you!" But of course that's stupid. Because only people with some critical social piece missing from their brain do things without any hope that they will be loved more and hated less.

Like I said, my daughter becomes happy as a result of us, but there is nothing inside her that wants to make us happy. She comforts us if we're sad or mad about her actions, but there's nothing inside her that WANTS to make us "not mad" or "not sad" proactively--by not doing those actions in the first place.

"All we need is love." That's what somebody said. "All we need is what I want. Love, shmove." That's what my daughter said. She's actually similar to a sociopath. An adorably cute sociopath.

Granted, she's doesn't want to rob us or kill us and eat us. But if you told her, "Please do not spit on the floor or I will come in and rob your parents and then kill them and eat them," she would look at you, and then she would think, "I would really like to spit on the floor" and then she would spit on the floor.

People throw all kinds of advice our way to help us inspire her to comply with our wishes:

"Tell her you'll give her candy!"
"Tell her you'll take away her toys!"
"Tell her you love her and show her how much!"

Or like my mom said this weekend:

"Slap her and put her in a closet."

To which I said:

"Uh, I'm sorry, grandma? What's that?"

To which my mom said:

"I didn't mean 'closet.' I would never want you to put her in a closet. I just meant 'slap her.'"

My mom is hilarious--in an autistic way. [As an aside, one time I emailed my mom a picture of one of my literary idols with the text: "She's my idol!" and my mom emailed back: "Your idol has a long face. What size underwear does Zazi wear, I am going to Meier now."]

Anyway, these hopeful people refuse to believe--as we once did--that begging or bribing or hitting or kissing or truckloads of candy are useless.

Sometimes I actually find myself admiring my daughter's absolute unwillingness to compromise and consider other points of view.

"Damn, I wish I could be like that," I think.

Hmm.

Everything to a point, I suppose. Is Everything to a Point a "saying"? If it is, does it make sense to you in this context? I'm terrible at sayings. Remembering them and using them right. Are all poets? Sometimes I say, "Throwing bad money after bad money." My friend says, "I don't think that's right--bad money after bad money." But it sure feels right. Because the money was bad the first time, even if you didn't know it. If you don't know that an apple is an apple until you eat it, was it not an apple before you ate it?

I'm not even sure what I'm saying with this entry.

I don't want this to be strictly a disability blog, I will say that. I hope it's not. I don't think it is. My poetry manuscript The Effect of Small Animals is about my daughter, though. ABOUT is not completely accurate. But the poems definitely come out of a collection of concerns" or "a collection of bewilderments" that relate to her.

That's how Marie Howe described where poems come from, a collection of bewilderments. Read this
interview.

I am obsessed with Marie Howe right now. I am obsessed with disability too, I suppose.

Oh, yes, CPS, where were we?

It is a machine.

It is an animal, a hungry one that doesn't run too well.

"Feed me so I can continue running!" the animal says. "You see those $5.238 billion dollar bills? If you stick those in my mouth, I will run like shit for another year. Just for you."

Annual Operating Budget: 5.238 BILLION.

BILLION.

BILLION.

For the past 30 years, about half of all CPS students have failed to graduate from high school.

I don't want to move to the suburbs but when I ask people, people who should know, people who have disabled kids, people who are disabled, people who are heads of organizations that advocate for disabled people, "What should I do?" they say

1. Move to Skokie.
2. Move to Hinsdale.
3. Move to Highland Park.

In other words, move to a school district with a lot of money.

5.238 billion dollars doesn't buy what it used to.

Here are my letters to CPS. They are boring and you should skip them BUT if you are fighting with the Chicago Public Schools, they may hold some interest for you.


THIS IS MY EMAIL TO THE IEP TEAM ABOUT MY DAUGHTER:

Dear MD, Ms. CK, and Dr. MK,

I wanted to thank you for meeting with me, David, and my friend JE yesterday about A. My husband and I appreciate all the time and effort put into the meeting by all the people who help my daughter at L2. We also appreciate that rather than rushing her placement, an additional meeting has been set in order to ensure that it receives the necessary time and due deliberation. As I'm sure you've gathered, the education and care of our daughter is of utmost importance to our family and we are truly grateful for the heartfelt efforts of the majority of those who work with A, as well as for the courteous and professional assistance you all provide.

However, I do want to say that I'm somewhat shaken by the IEP meeting on Tuesday and the input received from DC, in particular. To get right to the point, it's my feeling that DC, the speech therapist, was overly and inappropriately aggressive, combative, argumentative, and at points, insulting regarding our daughter, her abilities, and her educational plan. For the reasons discussed below, my husband and I would prefer that she does not attend our meeting on November 23rd and would like to formally request that another speech therapist be found for A for the remainder of her time at L2.

During the meeting yesterday, DC made many inappropriate comments that indicate an attitude towards our daughter that is not conducive towards a proper learning environment; i.e. one that will assist A to improve her functional performance to the maximum extent possible. For instance, when she said the equivalent of, "Well, you can teach a . . . you can teach anybody to press buttons." My husband later said, "She was going to say 'monkey.' She almost compared A to a monkey." Or when my friend asked for a clarification of how the educational classifications work. My friend J commented later to me, "I'm not sure I needed the speech therapist's piece of commentary about DD being 'just a dumping ground.' As in a place where you put trash.
Can we keep it professional? After all, this meeting is only two hours long." DC' comments lead me to conclude that she does not have the basic level of respect for our daughter to properly engage and help her speech to progress.

Additionally, I was concerned that the dialog regarding A's educational classification, to my mind, devolved into an overly academic debate--a show of content knowledge puffery--that sadly misdirected the conversation almost solely to DC's ideas and "expertise," and away from our collective purpose, i.e., to collaboratively brainstorm to find the best services for A so she can learn and develop.

Last year, two parents in Z's class (B's father and AG's mother) voiced complaints about Ms. C's comments about their children in their IEP meetings. Specifically, they were hurt by her unwillingness to consider other opinions/solutions/suggestions and they were disappointed by the way in which she minimized their children's progress and accomplishments. I understand it is natural, after many years of working in special ed, to become defensive when there are times you come into contact with parents who are in denial about the severity of their children's disabilities. But I don't think I delude myself about A's abilities--or her deficits. Or at least I try not to, for her sake.

Both David and I are well aware of A's many challenges both now and in the future--which is why we've sought out specialists in far places like Missouri and Alabama. It is also why we sat in the room with you for two hours yesterday. However, while it is completely appropriate for me to report what three different people have witnessed at home, or what I have heard from her regular speech therapist--who has worked with A since she's been born and has done quantitative testing--DC's reaction to this information was flippant at best, disdainful at worst, and further indicates a predisposition towards our daughter, which is not conducive to maximizing A's potential.

The fact is (which would comic if this wasn't such a serious matter) DC probably works with A less than most people in that room. KB works with A [DC just signs off on her speech therapy work and does the final assessments]. And despite requests for information and better communication, not once in four years have I ever received any piece of communication from KB or DC about what they are doing with A and why. DC almost out of hand dismissed Dr. K's assessment of A, although I've spent much more time discussing A with Dr. K for the assessment than I ever have with DC outside of an IEP meeting.

In any case, I felt strongly that DC came to the room with a pre-conceived agenda in mind for A (i.e., no diagnosis of autism, no diagnosis of Developmental Delay), despite the fact that she's never developed a close relationship with A and A has never responded well to her, which I believe compromises her ability to properly assess A.

DC's negative comments did not conclude when the meeting ended. I overheard her continuing to make negative remarks, as she didn't wait for me to even leave the room and only ceased when you, MD, gestured at me to show her I was still in the room, and thus, she should probably stop talking about us.

All of this in mind, as stated earlier, I would prefer if DC does not attend the meeting when we reconvene. I have heard enough of her thoughts. I feel like I get the gist of what she feels about A by now (see trash and monkey allusions earlier). Also, I would prefer her to have absolutely no contact with A in the future, and if I have to sign something that indicates that, I'm glad to.

As mentioned above, I would like to formally request that another speech therapist be found for A for the remainder of her time at L2. Please let me know if we need to do anything additional to ensure that alternative arrangements are created. I would have copied the principal directly on this email but her email address is not available on the L2 website. However, I will be sending a hardcopy of this email to her.

When we reconvene, I will bring A's outside speech therapist who has worked with her more extensively than DC, and can provide information on A's progress and potential and then, as a team, we can decide on the best placement for A. Thanks again for all of your time and your courteous assistance, we truly appreciate all the hard work everyone does to make sure A does the best she can to progress in her education.
Elizabeth Hildreth, mother of A Abed

THIS IS MY EMAIL FROM THE CASE MANAGER, RESPONDING TO ME:

To all concerned:

I am very sorry to get this letter and to hear about all of your concerns. I want to assure you that A is our first priority, and we will continue to do all that we can to provide for her needs while finishing her time with us this year. I want to apologize for anything that was said or miscommunicated at the meeting. I know we all strive to find the best possible fitting for A as she moves forward for next year and I thank you for being willing to reconvene on the 23rd. I will look into having another Speech Therapist join us for the meeting, and I believe that KB can continue to work with A for the remainder of the year (although Ms. DC may need to "sign off" on progress reports and such). I have also secured the attendance of our SSA (Specialized Services Administrator) for the meeting on the 23rd.

I appreciate you taking the time to put all of your thoughts and concerns and sending them to us. Feedback is important and this will not be overlooked. Please let me know if there is anything further that I can assist you with.

Sincerely,
MD, Case Manager of LS2


THIS IS THE EMAIL FROM THE PRINCIPAL RESPONDING TO ME:

Dear Ms. Hildreth,

I have read your letter and I want to thank you for sharing your concerns in regard A’s recent IEP meeting. I have spoken with M regarding your request and we are working on a solution that would be both beneficial for A and meets your needs as well. M will be in contact with you. Please contact me if you have any additional questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Mrs. VS, Principal of LS2

THIS IS MY EMAIL TO MY MOM IN THE INTERIM:

DAMN STRAIGHT I SAID IT. THAT LADY PISSED ME OFF. I HOPE SHE GETS FIRED.

THIS IS MY EMAIL BACK TO THE IEP TEAM:

MD [CASE WORKER],

I appreciate your kind response and understanding. As a parent, IEP meetings are really difficult. Even when information is presented carefully and neutrally, it's still painful because there's so much detail. Even when you know everything already, to hear it aloud and see it on paper . . . it's not easy. But when it's presented in an aggressive, insensitive way, it's nearly unbearable.

I will call the speech lead today. Honestly, I have not had much contact with KB [A’s regular therapist; the therapist DC just signs off on her work], but, because this is all coming to surface, I will say this. The one day I was in A's class and observed her working in there, three things struck me.

1. A girl I comes up when KB is working with my daughter A and KB looks at her and sighs and says to I, "Jealous, jealous I." Then turns to me, and explains something like, "She's so jealous of A, she has be be right next to us when we're working." I was like, "it's fine. She can stand there, I don't care." I didn't. Why would I? Such a bizarre thing to say to a child.

2. She was working with a little girl D, maybe 3 with Down's, at the sandbox, and this girl was so sick with a cold, that her nose was literally running into her mouth, and finally I couldn't take it anymore, I got up and wiped the girl's nose. And she's says something to the equivalent of, "Wow, I can tell you are a mother, I could never wipe somebody else's nose...so gross..." or something like that. And I was thinking, 1) Even if you could technically argue that wiping noses not a part of a speech therapist's job, considering you teach kids with special needs who can't wipe their own noses, it actually IS part of your job. and

2) Is it less gross to watch snot run into this poor girl's mouth for 30 minutes? Who does that?

3. When she was working with the little girl D, she said, something like "You are so stubborn." She looked at me, and explained, "It's the Down's. I was taken aback. I asked, "Is it?" She said, "Well, I don't know." I was thinking, Aren't all kids stubborn, but especially those who have had tons of painful medical intervention? Just for their own survival, it probably pays to be "stubborn." It seemed like such a deeply ignorant thing to say, I almost laughed. Coincidentally, the week before I heard KB say this, I had gone to Starbucks with LG and during our conversation, she told me that DC [lead speech therapist] had called her son AG "stubborn" and had said the very same words, exact phrasing: "It's the Down's." Which is why my ears really perked up when I heard KB say that. LG was beside herself, like, "He doesn't even understand cause and effect, it is NOT the Down's."

So, there it is. I have never been confident in KB's dedication to her job and boundless love for children--based on the hour I was with her in class. Anybody can have an off day at work, I understand, so it may be unfair of me to judge, but that's my general feeling. She seems careless at best, neglectful at worse, and considering I've asked her to be in contact with me and I've never heard a word from her (especially after hearing Ms. DC claim that A in four years has made very little progress), I'm not thrilled with the speech team to say the least. I have no idea why I wouldn't have been contacted if they were continually seeing so little progress? But that's neither here nor there. Nothing to be done about it now. Also, based on KB repeating the "It's the Down's" comment, I don't consider her separate from Ms. DC--but more of a henchman. And I'm definitely not comfortable with Ms. DC signing off on A's reports--or anything where she has final approval of something as it relates to my daughter. David, especially, is not comfortable with this arrangement.

I feel the need to explain that I didn't complain about what I saw with KB in Ms. G's [A’s first year teacher] class because 1) It's not like her behavior was abusive, just sort of mean-spirited and inappropriate 2) It was A's first year and I'm sure some parents complain about every little thing, and I did not (still don't) want to be one of those parents. 3) Other than speech, I actually have been extremely pleased with the services A's received at L2 and A gets outside speech therapy anyway. Maybe I should have said something. I don't know. Anyway, in an extremely circuitous way, what I'm saying is: If I have a choice, KB wouldn't be it.

I thank you for putting me in touch with the speech lead. I'll be in touch. And I promise not to write any more 7-page emails. :) A has surgery today to remove an abscessed tooth, but if I can, I will try to call you sometime later today, M.

Elizabeth Hildreth, mother of A abed

THIS IS MY EMAIL TO MY OTHER DAUGHTER's CASE MANAGER:

Dear Ms. L,

I am asking that my child, Z Abed, be observed and tested to receive services for special education. This morning I asked MD, the case manager at Z’s former school L2, to send over Z's latest IEP and she says she has emailed you to get your permission. MD has also said she will give me a hard copy and I can share it with you.
To give you a little of Z's health and academic history, Z is a fraternal twin (her sister Amira goes to LaSalle II). She was born at 28 weeks, weighing 1 lb, 14 oz. She suffered a Grade 3 bilateral brain hemorrhage at birth, which eventually resolved. She was intubated and on a ventilator for the first couple of weeks after being born. She remained in the hospital from mid-October to mid-January. After she was dismissed from the hospital, she received speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy through state early intervention.

Z went straight into Pre-K at from early intervention and remained in Pre-K for 3 years. She attended AA, which is now called L2.

The first year in school, Z spoke only one word at a time, e.g., "daddy" or "home" and was extremely shy and attached to her teachers. Because of these language/social delays, she received speech services (as well as nursing services for a nut allergy). Her second year in Pre-K, she spoke in two- or three-word sentences or requests and showed some independence--progress from the year before. Her last year in Pre-K, she showed great gains in terms of her autonomy, social interactions, and language--at this point, she started speaking fluently in full sentences. Given her big strides in her last year at school, it was determined that she no longer needed services and would be seen only for speech consultation. At her final IEP review meeting, it was determined that she would not qualify for special education services, based on testing, observation, and reports from teachers and her speech therapist.

This year, however, with the increased academic demands being made on her, I am watching Z struggle with work at home. Although the issues are most transparent when she's doing her reading and writing work, the problems seem to be of a general cognitive nature involving 1) memory 2) sequence and 3) application.

1. For instance, in memory games, it's difficult for Z to remember placement of images on cards, even when cards are limited in number, as few as three cards.

2. In terms of sequence, if you ask Z to draw a picture illustrating the story of Snow White, she might draw a poison apple on the first card. I'm not sure if this is just placing the most "important" event first, but even when I ask her to tell me the story of Snow White over and over, it is always out of sequence, e.g., the prince kissed her, and then the witch got killed, etc.

3. Even though she knows her letters and knows all the sounds associated with those letters, she cannot figure out how to sound out words. She has trouble with words as small as "in." Also, given a list of 8 spelling words, if we go over that list ten times, she still can't remember the first word on the list, which seems (to me at least) to indicate some sort of memory problem.

Also, when we work with her on her school work, she doesn't seem to be learning and applying it. Each time she comes to a new page, it's like she's seeing it for the first time. And so, homework, for us, is just her father and I repeating the answers over and over to her. I should note that she does not seem to have this problem with addition. She seems to have mastered addition just fine. She also seems to have a great memory for visual objects that are placed in context (like the make of her aunt's car, for instance) and she seems to have a good spatial memory (e.g., explaining directions to a park or to the train station).

Given my observations of her struggling (and her teacher's observations), I would like to get her evaluated to see if she might qualify for services at school.

In the interim, I am more than happy to meet with school personnel to discuss options for helping her along with her work.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. I look forward to hearing from you soon and to working together with school personnel to provide an optimum learning environment for Z.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Hildreth


HERE IS THE SPEC ED CASE MANAGER'S RESPONSE TO ME

Hello Mrs. Hildreth,

Thank you for taking the time to update me with your concerns; i will take the steps needed to address your concerns. CPS requires that any student struggling at school should go through Response to Intervention first before we consider special education services. I will talk to the classroom teacher to see what interventions he is putting in place and what else can we do to help before we consider Special Education services.

Thank you, Mrs L

HERE IS MY RESPONSE TO HER

Ms. L,

A couple questions...

What does Response to Intervention mean specifically? What types of interventions are offered? How long does she need to have RTI before she can be formally evaluated to see if she qualifies for special services?

Liz

HERE IS HER RESPONSE TO ME

Response to Intervention are interventions that the classroom teacher put in place for an specific student to address academic, social, or behavior needs. It takes about 6 weeks, after that he has to meet with other teachers and get some more suggestions to interventions to put in place and then after another 6 weeks it nothing works then a referral is done to request an evaluation.

HERE IS MY RESPONSE TO HER

Ms. L,

I would prefer not to wait 12 weeks for an evaluation, given Z's extensive medical history and the fact that she has already had an IEP in place for 3 years. Please let me know what I can do to get things expedited. I have copied the following clauses directly from the Special Education Eligibility Considerations from the Illinois Board of Education:

Special Education Eligibility Considerations: Illinois State Board of Education

1. It is also important to note that a parent may request a special education evaluation at any point during the intervention process. The use of the RtI process cannot delay the evaluation, if needed. The district must fully consider the parents’ request and decide whether or not to conduct the evaluation. The district must then notify the parents in writing of its decision and the reasons for that decision.

2. If you believe that your child is in need of special education services, you have the legal right to ask that the school evaluate your child to determine whether he or she is eligible to receive special education services. You can ask the school to evaluate your child at any time, regardless of where your child is at in the RtI process.

3. The “date of referral” is the date of written parental consent for an evaluation. Screening procedures shall not be considered an evaluation.

4. Within 14 school days after receiving the written request, the district will decide whether to evaluate the child or not. If the district determines an evaluation is warranted, then the district must provide the parents with the paperwork to provide formal written consent. If the district determines that the evaluation is not necessary, it must notify the parent in writing of the decision not to evaluate and the reasons for the decision.

5. The district must advise the parents of their right to request a due process hearing to challenge its decision. Parents need to submit a request for evaluation to have their child considered to be eligible for special education services.

As referenced in this email thread, I placed a written request for evaluation on Nov. 9th. It is now the Nov. 23rd, and according to Illinois Board of Education materials and Illinois law, the district must decide whether or not to evaluate Z no later than the 29th--which will have been 14 school days since my written request. If I need to speak to someone at the Office of Specialized Services about this evaluation, please let me know. Thanks.

Elizabeth Hildreth, mother of Z Abed