The Holidays

Growing up, the weeks leading up to Christmas meant a clean house, an air of anticipation and hope, good food, music, friends, magic, wonders from around the world displayed on table tops and tree, and a happy mom.
Until recently I clung to those happy memories and always felt so down after Christmas because I was so connected to that earlier life and After Christmas meant again the descent into chaos, lack and neglect. As an adult, I hated taking the tree down, hated having to wait another whole year before I could again have those thrills of pre-Christmas perfection.
But this year is different. The summer's work of un-charging the sting of the past, cutting the cords of emotional connection I still had to my childhood is evident in my feelings now that Christmas is over. I'm not sad, let-down, and worried about having missed some chance at joy. This year I am taking down the tree now, throwing out the garlands with a month of dust on them, and replacing my table decorations with a sparkling bowl of fruit, white candles and empty space....room for the new of the new year.
No need to hang on to the old anymore. Lots more happiness and joy on the way! No need to worry about a descent into hardship, I have faith in myself that all will be good even without the reassurance of red and green.

the scene

If I could paint this is what I would paint in a Persepolis-graphic novel mode (with some inspiration also from Kahlo): a woman stands in a chador, all you see are her heavily made-up dark eyes which are alluring and sex-kitten-like. if you look closely at the layers of paint that make up her chador, you can barely detect that she is wearing red sexy lingerie and has voluptuous figure. she is standing in a room, seen in a skewered, three-dimensional way. there are many walls between her and the outside world. the only link she has to the outside from this prison-like room is a phone cord, that curls around her like a growing vine and trails out the window and over to the other half of the painting.
in this second half, a white woman is curled up in a corner of a room. she has long elegant legs that are curled up gracefully around her, her hair is long and blonde and swirls around her naked breasts. you see a glimpse of her eyes peaking through the hair and arms wrapped around her upper body. they are clear and blue and are outlined by the remains of smeared mascara.
there is an emaciated man lying sprawled as if on a cross on a bed in the room as well. he is asleep but also looks like he could be dead. he is so thin you can see his hip-bones and ribs. he has the eyes of a sad persian poet. a swath of cloth hides his sex. the cloth is decorated with the words: "lies create grief, hidden love creates chaos, secrets create distance, deception creates walls and pain" over and over in tiny print on the cloth. the phone cord has crawled into this room via the back pocket of a pair of discarded jeans that lie on the floor and leads to a cell phone that the man clutches. the phone is in the shape of a heart and is broken and smashed. the walls are plastered with calendars, starting with February 2007, and going until August 2008. there are numbers marked in red on each day in a violent hand.
there is a sense because of the angle of the lay-out that the man on the bed is closer in space to the woman in the chador than to the woman in the same room as him.
in the frame of the room, so close you can barely make out what the fuzzy image is, a brown girl with curly hair sits absorbed in a book, her eyes are glued to the page, she is hunched over in self-protection. the book is entitled: "no father."

six

she is six. she stands in the small kitchen, the formica spotless and foreign. she can't swallow. the Roman Meal bread has formed a doughy throat-plug. the woman is standing nearby drinking a cup of Sanka. it is early morning. she refuses to cry, doesn't feel safe, doesn't want pity. the woman is a stranger. she can offer no comfort.

where was mommie? why didn't she pick her up from kindergarten yesterday? why did this stranger take her home instead? where is kitty and bruce, the dog? are they at a stranger's house too? can they swallow their food?

she wanted her mommie and her favorite blanket and her bed and her toys and everything to be normal and ok.

she had waited and waited for mommie to come and pick her up. she was playing and noticed that she was the only child left at school and the sun was setting and she was there still! where was mommie so she could give her one of her running tackle hugs that knocked mommie over on the floor and then they laughed and hugged? and then on the ride home they could make up silly songs about the bad cafeteria food at mommie's work.

instead she walked through the empty parking lot with the woman to the woman's car and tried not to cry and clutched her coat and wondered if the woman knew where her mommie was.

she is six and now she is sitting in a bedroom of another little girl. this other little girl's mother agreed to take her and keep her until mommie gets out of the hospital. mommie is sick. it is a different kind of sick than a body sickness. it is not a cold, or a stomach ache or something like that, she has been told. mommie has some problems with the way she thinks about things and needs some help from the doctors in the hospital to get better. mommie will be away for a few months. she does not know where her dad is or why she has not seen him. she does not know this mom and daughter she is with very well, but the other little girl has lots of barbies and the mom lets them eat candy and dessert and ice cream. so that is good. it is summer soon, so they play together all day and it is kind of like having a sister, except that she misses her mommie all the time and feels sad a lot. she doesn't talk about it. she has a little framed photo of her mommie by her bed and at night she always says goodnight to the photo and kisses it.

she is six and she is going to see her mommie at the hospital! She is better enough to see her! it is a big big building but she doesn't have to go inside. instead, she sits with mommie under a big tree on the grass and mommie gives her some paper dolls that she cut out for her with happy faces drawn on and little dresses in different prints drawn on. mommie kind of feels like a stranger...it has been so long since she saw her. and then she has to say good-bye and leave her there and go back to her other home with the mom and daughter.

she wonders: what did i do that was bad that made mommie sick? what did i do that made me left alone? how was i not good enough? why did everyone leave me here alone? where is dad? where is grandpa and grandma? where is aunt c? why am i alone? i must not be important to them. i must not be loved. i must not be loveable.



she is forty-one. she is curled up in the fetal position in bed. she washed down her "happy pill" with vodka tonight so she could stop feeling the pain. her ten-year-old daughter is restless in the next room, the glass doors between the two rooms allow the sound of the woman's crying to bother the girl. the ten-year-old asks the forty-one-year old if she will please tell her what is troubling her in the morning: "promise you will tell me?" how can she? what can she tell her daughter? that she hates herself? that she sees her life as a failure and has lost all hope in a better life? that what she learned at six has been confirmed over and over: no one loves her enough to stick around...she is not important enough, not valuable enough. this is not a legacy she wants to give her daughter. she wants her daughter to be strong and confident and know she can achieve whatever she wants to in life. she wants her daughter to be able to swallow her food without that old constriction in her throat blocking the goodness from coming.

she is not loveable. she is alone. she is poor. she has not accomplished anything with her life except be a "great mother" as all her friends say. she does not think she has been a great mother because her daughter is burdened by her sorrow. she is married but her husband cannot stand to be with her. like her mother, he has such a problem with his emotions and his mental state that he must be apart. everyone leaves her. she somehow drives everyone away- drives everyone crazy. she is unloveable and unimportant. her daughter loves her, but she is poisoning that love with her grief and sorrow this summer. as her daughter grows older, it is harder to hide the pain. or maybe that is just a lie and her daughter has known of her mother's pain all along. and then she will leave too. and she will have no one and nothing.



she is ten. she is so angry at her mom for not being "normal" and safe. she is so angry at the blame she feels levelled at her that her mom's pain and anguish are somehow caused by her. she stands up to her mom and tells her: "stop being crazy and be a good mom!" this is too much for her mother. her mother says she can't go on, that life is too much, that she can't hold it together any more. she grabs her car keys and tells the girl she is going to go drive into a brick wall and end it. She slams the door, gets in her car, rev's the engine and drives away. it is sunset time. the girl cries and sobs so hard and so long that she has a migraine headache. she has cried so long that the sun has gone down and the house is dark. she is afraid, alone, her head is pierced with pain. she walks into the living room and turns on the tv and flips on a light. it is past dinner time. she thinks of who she could call. she is afraid to call. she sits in front of the tv with her head resting on her bony knees, her toes digging into the shag carpet. she kind of knows mom will come home and kind of worries that this time she actually meant it and she will be alone. she thinks about getting the forbidden ice cream out of the freezer and eating it but her head hurts too much. Pa on Little House is chuckling at his "half pint." mom comes home.

May 6th Rambles

I am definitely highly intuitive. Tonight, I sat down with my laptop after a 14 hour day and as I flipped it open, I thought to myself, "I haven't heard from C in so long. He didn't even send me a birthday greeting. I bet he's given up on me because I haven't been writing....I've let him down." And there was an email from C, telling me not to respond to his email, but to blog instead. So here it is, C, for you (I know, for Me).

I started a new full-time job this spring and have been so worn out by it and by life that at the end of the day, I just want to veg. Veging has taken the form of reading, movies from Netflix, and, embarrassed as I am to say it, online games like MahJong and Solitaire. I love the emptiness of mind I get when I am playing these games, I am only focusing on the tiles, and all worries about Finances and Immigration Hassles and Loneliness are absent. I realized recently it is a form of meditation, the chicken-shit version; when you can't actually stomach the idea of sitting in silence and letting all your thoughts swirl and then settle, (having been burned by one too many wanna-be monks to be whole-heartedly ready to try it again), MahJongg or Solitaire makes an excellent escape. It's different than the mind-numbing you get from TV, because sitcoms, no matter how devoid they are of substance or nutrients, or perhaps because they are so lo-cal, allow the mind to wander all over, to connect the dots way too many ways to the events and caricatures portrayed for any true silence to mature. Movies too: you may forget your own worries for the two hours during the film but instead you worry for the artistic man who needs a good mate, or the family surrounded by hatred - again, not true emptiness or stillness.

I know what C would tell me, what others have told me, what I know myself and have refused for some self-defeating reason to listen to: writing is so incredibly cathartic, an half-an-hour of writing can calm me, cleanse me, cheer me. Better to spend your precious time writing. Life is short, don't waste it with silly games.
The computerized clicking of the Mah-Jongg tiles has been my choice these last months because why? Because I am afraid what will come out if I began to click instead at the keys of my laptop.

One of the things I dislike most about my mom is that she has always set up so many obstacles between herself and doing what she loves:creating art. I think now I am beginning to understand how and perhaps why that has happened. It does definitely take a degree of courage to attempt to do what you love if you have any vague ideas of it becoming more than just a past-time, an end-of-the-day hobby that takes place after the "true" work of the day is done. What if you fail! I seem to deal in absolutisms often, so for me, to fail once is to fail always, and if I were to fail as a writer, what would I have to dream of?
What big carrot would be left dangling before me to lighten my daily tasks and keep my eye keen on "that magic future date when I will have the perfect time to write" ?
Then there is the terrible agony of having once opened the cupboard and invited the words to start jumping down off the shelves, they do NOT want to stop, and keep tumbling down, sometimes at very Inopportune moments, like driving to work, or trying to get to sleep at night. The frustration is incredible. I am angered that I don't have hours ahead of me to just dive into the luscious sea of words I have released.
A very poor and sorry excuse I know. I know and repeat to myself as a form of cheerleading that many well-known writers wrote while a whole lot of other stuff was going on in their lives. Full-time jobs and motherhood did not stand in THEIR way, so it shouldn't in mine either.

So C, here is what I have to say for myself. Thank you for the nudge. Your timing was perfect.

P.S.
A phras related to our near-poverty that I wanted to write down weeks ago:

The frig is so bare you can see its ribs.

I liked that - (the phrase, not the emptiness).

Three Stories of Paris

These three little stories are from my experiences as a fashion model in Paris in the late eighties-early nineties.  

Story One

I had bought nine hundred franc shoes and six hundred franc shirts and dined out every night while the money poured in and the work was plentiful.  Then the work stopped coming.  It was between seasons in Paris and the work was elsewhere...Milan, Hamburg, Madrid, or London, but I didn't go.  I stayed and starved in my chic clothes and thought about George Orwell and what he would do.  Getting skinnier was never a bad thing so it was ok to live on bread and tea.  Only, it got to a point where I didn't even have the 2 francs to buy a loaf of bread.  

I had noticed the baskets of stately baguettes sitting pertly outside of the cafés each morning in my neighborhood.  I had always wondered what kept people from nabbing one?  The French Bread Honor Code?  In the spirit of living down and out in Paris, and also because, at 19, I felt I could get away with anything, I decided to take a loaf from a cafe doorway one morning.

I planned out my great theft.  I would wear a large coat, the better with which to hide my crime.   I wore shoes I knew I could make time in, (not the prized ones that could have bought me an endless supply of bread), and I went out very early, before the morning rush to the Metro station had begun. 

My stomach did flips as I neared the café.  I chose an upscale bistro, the one with the oyster shucker on duty outside at his well-stocked station in the evenings, deciding it wasn't fair to pick on the working-man's spot down the corner that had hard boiled eggs displayed on the counter in metal racks and a tobacconist in the corner.

There was no one else on the street.  It was a beautiful morning, crisp-cold and gleaming.  I quickly slid a baguette out of the basket, bent it in half, and stuck it under my coat.  I looked around.  No one.  I walked the two blocks quickly to my building, took the old rickety elevator up to the 5th floor, and as soon as I was in, raced to the balcony to see if anyone had followed me, if anyone stood looking up at my building trying to find the thief, the breaker of the Honor Code.  No one was on the sidewalk, just the early beginning sprinkling of cars in the intersection of Boulevard Berthier and Rue de Courcelles.  I was alone with my baguette.  

It tasted delicious with the salted butter from Bretagne that my friends had brought me.  

A few months later, when I had been engaged as a house model for Lanvin and was making a steady income, I went by the bistro early one morning and left the coins under the delivery basket for the baguette.  

Story Two

My typical outfit for go-sees was a black mini-skirt, low-heeled shoes, a tight-fitting black top, and my leather jacket.  I would sling a large black bag over my shoulder, equipped with a bottle of water and my portfolio, and begin my trek through Paris, Metro guide and appointment book in hand.  I usually went on six to twelve go-sees a day and they were often scattered all over Paris, from cheap garrisons of up-and-coming designers, to the plush palaces of world-famous names.   You could always tell you were getting close to the destination because you would begin to see tall women in tight clothes more frequently.  The amount of models in Paris always astounded me.  Several hundred would always arrive for the auditions, all mind-boggling beautiful.  How did the bookers ever choose?  

This day, I was meeting with a fairly obscure photographer who was trying to get-in-good with my agency and was offering to do a shoot for my portfolio for free.  I was to meet with him and discuss wardrobe and location ideas.   My agent wanted to change my look a bit, Euro me up as they thought my book was too American and I needed some edgier, harder looks to broaden my appeal.  

It was chilly and I had worn black tights under my mini.  Unfortunately, the slippery-ness of the stockings and the knit skirt created an annoying rise with every step I took.  If unchecked, my skirt would end up above my thighs, so every five steps or so, I had to grab the hem and pull it down.  I was nearing the photographer's studio when I noticed two young guys were walking behind me.  I didn't want to adjust my skirt in front of them, but they kept on behind me and I knew if I didn't pull it down soon, they would have a lovely view of my ass through the sheer hose.  I adjusted my skirt and heard a mumbling and I knew they were discussing me.  I crossed the street, the boys did too, and again had to pull down my skirt.  This time, the boys were closer behind me and they called out laughing, "C'est ne pas la paine."  My french was good, but I hadn't heard the expression before and had no idea what they were saying, only that I was embarrassed and mad at myself for wearing the damn hose.

I asked the photographer what it meant, and when he told me, I couldn't figure out if they meant, "don't bother, we want to see your ass," or "don't bother, it's just going to slip up again."

That silly encounter bugged me for weeks.  I wanted to know what they meant.  Though I was inviting the male gaze, actually trying to make a living off of it, I felt shamed by being leered at in the street.  The street was not business- the street symbolized danger.  I courted being looked at and was afraid of it at the same time.  The hypocrisy was beyond my understanding at that time, but somehow those boys and their comment stayed with me and symbolized my twisted relationship with the gaze.

Story Three

As I walked into my agency, Yvette's forehead crinkled up into a scowl as she glared at me.  I was perhaps 10 feet away from her, as she began her tirade: "You have a pimple! You cannot go out to auditions like that!  What are we going to do with you?"  The other models milling about turned to look at me and my pimple.  The shame burned in my cheeks.  I came and stood before Yvette, looking at her skin as she looked at mine.  It was thin and dry from her constant smoking, but she wasn't the one trying to make a living from her face, she was making a living from my face.  She jotted down a phone number and address and told me to make an appointment at a salon for a facial.  Meanwhile, I was to drink many liters of water and stay away from chocolate and frites, which I had been already doing.  

I had never had beautiful skin.  I couldn't understand how some girls ate just like me, washed just like me, and I ended up with eruptions and they did not.  I was always so afraid of breaking out.  I think partly my nervousness about acne caused the acne to happen.    

The salon was in a very upscale neighborhood by the Seine and I wondered how much would be deducted from my next paycheck for this visit.  The treatment included a burning hot mustard peel and then some terrible work with a steel implement that squeezed all impurities out of my face, pore by pore.  I left red and tender and wondered how I would be able to cover it up for the show I was booked for that night.  I went home to my apartment I shared with Odile and applied teabags to my face, hoping it would help soothe and calm my poor skin.  

I could tell the client could see my redness when I reported that evening for the show, but I lucked out and the make-up artist was an angel and after 45 minutes and an inch of make-up, I looked like a knock-out.

It was one of the first shows I had been booked for and I felt I couldn't say no to the work, but I didn't want to do it for ethical reasons.  It was for a famous furrier and I was a staunch vegetarian at the time.  I wanted to be like Carrie Otis and refuse to do cigarette and fur commercials.  I loved the idea of standing by your ideals no matter what, even if it endangered your career, but when it came down to it, I wanted the work, I wanted the career, and I said not a peep about not doing furs.

The furs were gorgeous, and the feeling of them sliding off my shoulder and down my arm, down to the floor where I dragged them behind me was sensual, powerful and that quintessential runway moment.  

After the show, the models were to hang around in their outfits, sip champagne and pose for the press with clients and the designer.  I felt so utterly alien.  I had no idea how to behave, what to say, how to stand.  I was hungry, my eyes burning from hairspray and makeup, the feeling of power and seduction I had felt on the runway had not lasted and I felt like a skinny girl from Stockton, California amongst the Crème de la Crème of Parisian society.  I'm sure I smiled too much, the insecure, "what do I do with my face" smile of a newcomer.  I watched the more experienced girls, but was not a quick study in this world.   

I didn't think I fit in, I didn't know how to succeed, but I wanted to keep trying, I wanted more. I wanted to drag more furs on the ground and pout like the rest of them.

Afterthoughts:

I never walked on an actual catwalk in Paris.  I did small, in-house shows, magazine shoots, three large, staged shows in Pakistan for Pierre Cardin, and some television work.  I worked for Valentino, Givenchy, Lanvin (Claude Montana), a Parisian furrier, Marie-Claire, and a handful of small designers.  I wore pants decorated with  hundreds of bird feathers carefully hand-sewn on, thigh-high red leather boots with a matching cape, evening gowns and suits for lunching in.  I danced the lambada with an upper official at the Prime Minister's house in Pakistan, had champagne with the admiral of the French Navy, spent two weeks on a yacht with one of the richest men in the world, and watched the fireworks over L'Arc de Triumphe on Bastille Day from the home of Arielle Dombasle.  I was invited to the South of France with the owner of the biggest radio station in Paris, dated the Armani model of the moment, and saw Marcel Marceau and Jane Berkin perform live (not together!).  I ate at four star restaurants, flew on private jets, and had paparazzi flashing photos of the entourage I was in and bodyguards taking out the film from those same paparazzi's cameras. 

Yet, I never actually made-it in Paris.  It was possible to rub elbows with this much stardom and cultural power and yet still be a nobody.  There were thousands of nobodies, young, skinny, willing girls like me in Paris, all having their moments of near-fame, all disappearing, to be replaced by the next airplane's load from Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Spain, and California.  I made a living now and then, and tasted enough of this life of "glamour" to know it was not for me.  I left Paris wanting to be an organic farmer.  Afterwards, sometimes I wondered if I had chosen correctly.  What if I had used the tactics of my room-mate, a beautiful Spanish girl with a mile-long name who was attempting to sleep her way to the top.  If I had accepted more of the invitations, schmoozed more with the big-wigs, been more calculating and bitchy, more demanding at my agency, studied the business and made it mine, could I have garnered some enjoyment out of it?  Instead, I felt its victim, constantly afraid of the rejection, of the scrutiny, always feeling like I didn't measure up and caring not enough to seriously attempt to conquer that world, but enough to be hurt by its rejection.    I was too wrapped up in my romantic life, and my dreamy desire for a fulfillment I had no idea how to achieve.  

I had come almost directly from Maui to Paris.  On Maui, I lived in a bathing suit, pareo,and flip-flops.  I didn't own underwear.  Never wore make-up.  I was a quasi-hippie (meaning I shaved).  After a few months in San Francisco, I found myself in Ibiza on a "photo shoot" for my portfolio that amounted to my agency having booked a half dozen eye-candy for the agency owner's personal friend to have around for a couple of weeks.  

I have chewed and sucked on these memories for almost two decades now, trying to figure out what it was all about.  I still sting from some of the moments, from my poorly made choices made from a  chronic hunger for love.  Having been an ugly duckling growing up, the too-skinny girl with greasy hair, glasses, braces, pimples, cheap clothes and a mother that abandoned me, I thought I had found a way to rewrite my life and prove to the world (of course,  to myself, though I didn't know it then), that I was beautiful and therefore worthy.  

One of my biggest regrets of that time is that I didn't write, did not chronicle my daily experiences.  I am able to still feel, smell, taste, and see my surroundings, but I wish I had more of the dialog and verbal snapshots to assist in writing.

San Francisco: Masonic and Fell 8:25AM

She was one step ahead of the small one as they crossed the 6 lane intersection.  He wore a winter jacket that fell below his knees, making him look even smaller than he was.  He dragged behind him a limp looking mini-suitcase on wheels with a built-in handle.  The case looked empty but I could imagine it had a white bread and bologna sandwich and some Oreos inside for his lunch.  It made a plastic-on-asphalt scratching sound I could hear over the rush-hour noise of cars as he dragged it along behind him.  The case lurched and swerved behind him, tottering over as he stepped onto the curve.  She was on her cell phone, clutching it close so she could hear over the traffic.  They waited for the light to turn green to cross over Fell, and as she stood there, she nervously slid one foot to rest on its outer edge, a turning in on herself, an unconfident, small gesture of discomfort.  A car was waiting to turn right onto Fell from Masonic.  The boy saw the car and motioned for it to go ahead and turn.  Somehow, despite his dumpy little suitcase and his oversized jacket, he had a feeling of power. . .he could direct traffic from his small spot in the world.  The driver of the car felt his power and responded, began to make the turn.  But just then the light turned green, the mom straightened her feet and started off for the crosswalk.  Noticing her son was hesitating, (he had given permission to the car to turn and was waiting for his order to be executed), she yelled at him, grabbing his arm and the two crossed the street and continued on their way, the cell phone still close to her ear.

She had not seen her son's gesture of power to the waiting car.  I wondered what else was not seen.