March 19, Whitesboro, Texas (81 miles, Whitesboro High School parking lot.)
Thursday, March 27, 2008
No show.
March 18, Rhoyse City.
Shows were cancelled today as it didn't take very long for nature to catch up with the circus, exactly two days. Strong winds, torrential rains prevented the crew from putting up the tent; they halted after only a few attempts. It was doubtful anyone would have showed up in this weather anyway, as flooding and the occasional tornado warning must have kept most people in.
An this: almost all circus vehicles bogged down in mud last night following severe storms, the atmosphere turning muggy and unseasonably warm. The circus was parked in a grassy field outside an elementary school, and everybody knew what was coming, just not how messy and complete it would turn out. As for us we felt so snug in our confidence that the truck's four by four abilities would get us out without so much as a thought that we didn't see it coming at all.
So here we were, at 10 PM, ready to go; the circus was going to move out of the field and into a parking lot nearby after the show since the managers probably figured that if they were going to spend several hours pulling people out of their muddy holes they'd rather not waste precious hours of work during the day doing it; here we were and Fridman telling Dylan to wait for him as he was going to hitch the trailer then come back and pick him up so that he could ride with him in the truck, and out he goes and time goes by and soon Dylan is like a lion in a cage, he paces up and down the trailer doing his truck engine noise followed by "Papa" over and over and over again, circling the small space and getting more and more agitated until finally he gave up and snuggled up beside me, and soon asked to go to bed.
What happened was this: the trailer's front jacks broke; when Fridman was finished with the business of raising the trailer with the help of Sarah and others and started the truck he realized that the four by four didn't work anymore and got stuck in the mud trying to back up anyway. By the time he came back into the trailer Dylan was long asleep. We fell asleep too, Fridman on the couch and I on top of the bed with my clothes on, waiting for the crew to pull us out; they were doing the same with every trailer but one, that of Julio Rosales' family (their truck is a four by four and one that works, apparently,) and so by the time the voices outside woke me up and I looked out the window to see Sarah's trailer moving away it was two in the morning. The scene outside was eerie, trailers here or there on the field like beached whales, the beams of the flashlights and of the forklift in the engulfing darkness, the voices of the men shouting, and the deep gouges in the black earth, like battle scars. When they came for us I got back in the trailer to be with the babies should they wake up. As it began to move slowly, lurching forward a few feet only to slow down again and become still, the frame creaking and swaying like an old ship, it reminded me of a poem by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud called Le Bateau Ivre: my trailer "the drunken boat," indignant in its sudden infirmity.
Shows were cancelled today as it didn't take very long for nature to catch up with the circus, exactly two days. Strong winds, torrential rains prevented the crew from putting up the tent; they halted after only a few attempts. It was doubtful anyone would have showed up in this weather anyway, as flooding and the occasional tornado warning must have kept most people in.
An this: almost all circus vehicles bogged down in mud last night following severe storms, the atmosphere turning muggy and unseasonably warm. The circus was parked in a grassy field outside an elementary school, and everybody knew what was coming, just not how messy and complete it would turn out. As for us we felt so snug in our confidence that the truck's four by four abilities would get us out without so much as a thought that we didn't see it coming at all.
So here we were, at 10 PM, ready to go; the circus was going to move out of the field and into a parking lot nearby after the show since the managers probably figured that if they were going to spend several hours pulling people out of their muddy holes they'd rather not waste precious hours of work during the day doing it; here we were and Fridman telling Dylan to wait for him as he was going to hitch the trailer then come back and pick him up so that he could ride with him in the truck, and out he goes and time goes by and soon Dylan is like a lion in a cage, he paces up and down the trailer doing his truck engine noise followed by "Papa" over and over and over again, circling the small space and getting more and more agitated until finally he gave up and snuggled up beside me, and soon asked to go to bed.
What happened was this: the trailer's front jacks broke; when Fridman was finished with the business of raising the trailer with the help of Sarah and others and started the truck he realized that the four by four didn't work anymore and got stuck in the mud trying to back up anyway. By the time he came back into the trailer Dylan was long asleep. We fell asleep too, Fridman on the couch and I on top of the bed with my clothes on, waiting for the crew to pull us out; they were doing the same with every trailer but one, that of Julio Rosales' family (their truck is a four by four and one that works, apparently,) and so by the time the voices outside woke me up and I looked out the window to see Sarah's trailer moving away it was two in the morning. The scene outside was eerie, trailers here or there on the field like beached whales, the beams of the flashlights and of the forklift in the engulfing darkness, the voices of the men shouting, and the deep gouges in the black earth, like battle scars. When they came for us I got back in the trailer to be with the babies should they wake up. As it began to move slowly, lurching forward a few feet only to slow down again and become still, the frame creaking and swaying like an old ship, it reminded me of a poem by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud called Le Bateau Ivre: my trailer "the drunken boat," indignant in its sudden infirmity.
A trailer with a view.
March 18, Rhoyse City, Texas (50 miles, Rhoyse City Middle School parking lot.)
No news, literally.
March 17, Honey Grove.
Honey grove is a hamlet west of Paris, population 1,746. Again I want to to know how it is it came to be called Honey Grove, were they, are there bees being harvested here and why here? was it someone prominent in town when it was founded that was a bee keeper and thus gave the town its name?
We have no internet connection so there is no way for me to dig into all this; I am writing in a void, well into connection-less space, far away even from any connection to National Public Radio, my lifeline. It is the one thing that is going to be hard with this circus, the feeling of disconnect, the way it creeps up after a few days when I cannot listen to NPR; softly the feeling of being left behind from the rest of the world, of being lost, almost literally, and of drifting even farther away from myself than I normally would, being in the circus and not among my fellow journalists, drifting from the news addict, my ever curious self, needing to learn, yearning for hard news and features and everything in between, small-town stories and international news, financial news and science articles, and the arts and the books and the movies, all the news and the knowledge that's fit to read and listen to and think about - and then more. There aren't any newspapers worth reading either in much of the country we'll cross, and most likely nowhere to grab a copy of The New York Times, or that other addiction of mine, The New Yorker.
The road ahead may bear the silence of words.
Honey grove is a hamlet west of Paris, population 1,746. Again I want to to know how it is it came to be called Honey Grove, were they, are there bees being harvested here and why here? was it someone prominent in town when it was founded that was a bee keeper and thus gave the town its name?
We have no internet connection so there is no way for me to dig into all this; I am writing in a void, well into connection-less space, far away even from any connection to National Public Radio, my lifeline. It is the one thing that is going to be hard with this circus, the feeling of disconnect, the way it creeps up after a few days when I cannot listen to NPR; softly the feeling of being left behind from the rest of the world, of being lost, almost literally, and of drifting even farther away from myself than I normally would, being in the circus and not among my fellow journalists, drifting from the news addict, my ever curious self, needing to learn, yearning for hard news and features and everything in between, small-town stories and international news, financial news and science articles, and the arts and the books and the movies, all the news and the knowledge that's fit to read and listen to and think about - and then more. There aren't any newspapers worth reading either in much of the country we'll cross, and most likely nowhere to grab a copy of The New York Times, or that other addiction of mine, The New Yorker.
The road ahead may bear the silence of words.
A trailer with a view.
March 17, Honey Grove.
Not in the habit of the daily move yet so yesterday I forgot, but here's the view from the trailer today.
Paris, Texas.
March 17, Honey Grove.
Paris, the only address worth having in Texas.
Paris, Texas, the French cult of Wim Wenders' movie and a heart full of memories, circa 1983. Paris, Texas, maybe because it was my father's favorite movie and because I miss him; maybe because my friends are in Paris, France; or just because you never got to see Paris, Texas, after all, in the movie. Paris, Texas, seeing it for the first time, barely eighteen, and not getting it at all; seeing it again two years later, stepping out of the theater and into the daytime street bustle of Paris, France, oh so far away from Los Angeles, and bursting into tears, overwhelmed by an emotion I still cannot understand some twenty years later but felt then raw and primal.
My mother and I stayed at the Holiday Inn in Paris, Texas, when I was pregnant with Dylan and relocating to Savannah, Georgia. I've never had the opportunity to take a good picture of the place, one that imagine would be banal and would remind me forever of that buried sorrow.
Paris, the only address worth having in Texas.
Paris, Texas, the French cult of Wim Wenders' movie and a heart full of memories, circa 1983. Paris, Texas, maybe because it was my father's favorite movie and because I miss him; maybe because my friends are in Paris, France; or just because you never got to see Paris, Texas, after all, in the movie. Paris, Texas, seeing it for the first time, barely eighteen, and not getting it at all; seeing it again two years later, stepping out of the theater and into the daytime street bustle of Paris, France, oh so far away from Los Angeles, and bursting into tears, overwhelmed by an emotion I still cannot understand some twenty years later but felt then raw and primal.
My mother and I stayed at the Holiday Inn in Paris, Texas, when I was pregnant with Dylan and relocating to Savannah, Georgia. I've never had the opportunity to take a good picture of the place, one that imagine would be banal and would remind me forever of that buried sorrow.
More glitches.
March 17, Honey Grove, Texas (73 miles.)
More circus fare: a motor-home slid off the road in a town called Blossom, on highway 82 in Texas, on the drive over this morning, and several other drivers, including Fridman, stopped to help pulling it up. There were three cows grazing in a field next to my truck as I waited, feeding Dylan the crumbs of a gas station muffin and later nursing Nicolas when he woke up. It was sunny but a fleet of low-lying clouds was racing across the sky under a stratus of other clouds much higher up that looked completely still.
Ironically crossing the border into Texas almost felt like coming home. Too many movies or just Thelma and Louise, and I kept thinking about how someone fleeing the law would feverishly run to the border, say, to escape Texas deputies. Speaking of, if you were ever in need of a gun in a small town called Detroit, Texas, the Red Oak Gun Shop sits in a shady grove a few miles outside of town; the surprising beauty of a short, single strip of downtown facades in Detroit, the faded hues of the mismatched, forlorn brick fronts, all the more beautiful for their decaying descent into the slow oblivion of rural America, beautiful the way I imagine Havana, Cuba, to be beautiful, its appeal exacerbated by its very shabbiness, at least for those of us lucky enough not to be scrapping a living there. And there is something about highway 82 and airplanes; outside of Blossom, on the left side of the road, the nose of an airplane in the dust of a yard, and later on, west of Paris, in a place called Toco (Toco?) an entire aircraft sitting there pointing at the road as if the crew were waiting for us to board; it is old and rusty but above all incongruously big; I had seen it before on the way to Hugo from Dallas over the years.
More circus fare: a motor-home slid off the road in a town called Blossom, on highway 82 in Texas, on the drive over this morning, and several other drivers, including Fridman, stopped to help pulling it up. There were three cows grazing in a field next to my truck as I waited, feeding Dylan the crumbs of a gas station muffin and later nursing Nicolas when he woke up. It was sunny but a fleet of low-lying clouds was racing across the sky under a stratus of other clouds much higher up that looked completely still.
Ironically crossing the border into Texas almost felt like coming home. Too many movies or just Thelma and Louise, and I kept thinking about how someone fleeing the law would feverishly run to the border, say, to escape Texas deputies. Speaking of, if you were ever in need of a gun in a small town called Detroit, Texas, the Red Oak Gun Shop sits in a shady grove a few miles outside of town; the surprising beauty of a short, single strip of downtown facades in Detroit, the faded hues of the mismatched, forlorn brick fronts, all the more beautiful for their decaying descent into the slow oblivion of rural America, beautiful the way I imagine Havana, Cuba, to be beautiful, its appeal exacerbated by its very shabbiness, at least for those of us lucky enough not to be scrapping a living there. And there is something about highway 82 and airplanes; outside of Blossom, on the left side of the road, the nose of an airplane in the dust of a yard, and later on, west of Paris, in a place called Toco (Toco?) an entire aircraft sitting there pointing at the road as if the crew were waiting for us to board; it is old and rusty but above all incongruously big; I had seen it before on the way to Hugo from Dallas over the years.
We're off.
March 16, Idabel, Oklahoma (44 miles, rodeo grounds.)
Opening day was yesterday; I wanted to see the show but couldn't, stuck in the trailer with three babies; Sarah leaves Gigi with me when she goes to work.
Short of people Jim asked Fridman if he could drive a truck over to the next location after finishing the second show and helping to take down the tent. He said yes. I felt him slide into bed some time after two in the morning, We woke up at five thirty to drive to the next town, Idabel, fifty miles away, the first in a long list of travels: the Kelly Miller Circus travels each and every day during the eight months it is on the road. It reminds Fridman, and me with him, of the first circus he worked at in the United States, Carson and Barnes, the circus in which we met when it stopped in Jacksonville, Illinois, and which also moved every day. The one good thing is that they travel in the morning, not at night like Circus Chimera; seeing the sun rise every morning I couldn't be happier, and then there is getting to see the country as we travel across states all the way to the east coast and back, I can't wait, I feel like a kid in a candy store.
It was pitch black still when we started out today but we had to wait a long time for Fridman's truck to be ready and when we drove into town the reddish pink arc of the sun was appearing above the tree-lined horizon in front of us. Highway 70 east was a straight shot through the southern Oklahoma countryside, pine trees towering along the road a little before Valliant, a small town dominated by a paper mill, smaller towns yet, lopsided houses, a run-down gas station and a brand new corrugated metal church building, long horns sitting in the grass, and then Idabel, "dogwood capital of Oklahoma." Why this obsession with being the capital of something in all these small towns? To make up for all that's not there? Lucky this was not dogwood capital of the world; Gilroy, now a suburb south of San Jose, California, bills itself "the world's capital of garlic" (and what of baseball's World Series, for a sport that is by and large restricted to an American public.)
Same two shows again today, and again the call for help to drive a truck over to the next town down the road.
Finally, the first trip already brought a serving of circus fare: Sarah got stuck in the soggy terrain leaving the lot in Hugo, and had to be towed by one of the tractor trailers, only to get stuck once again upon entering the fairgrounds here.
Opening day was yesterday; I wanted to see the show but couldn't, stuck in the trailer with three babies; Sarah leaves Gigi with me when she goes to work.
Short of people Jim asked Fridman if he could drive a truck over to the next location after finishing the second show and helping to take down the tent. He said yes. I felt him slide into bed some time after two in the morning, We woke up at five thirty to drive to the next town, Idabel, fifty miles away, the first in a long list of travels: the Kelly Miller Circus travels each and every day during the eight months it is on the road. It reminds Fridman, and me with him, of the first circus he worked at in the United States, Carson and Barnes, the circus in which we met when it stopped in Jacksonville, Illinois, and which also moved every day. The one good thing is that they travel in the morning, not at night like Circus Chimera; seeing the sun rise every morning I couldn't be happier, and then there is getting to see the country as we travel across states all the way to the east coast and back, I can't wait, I feel like a kid in a candy store.
It was pitch black still when we started out today but we had to wait a long time for Fridman's truck to be ready and when we drove into town the reddish pink arc of the sun was appearing above the tree-lined horizon in front of us. Highway 70 east was a straight shot through the southern Oklahoma countryside, pine trees towering along the road a little before Valliant, a small town dominated by a paper mill, smaller towns yet, lopsided houses, a run-down gas station and a brand new corrugated metal church building, long horns sitting in the grass, and then Idabel, "dogwood capital of Oklahoma." Why this obsession with being the capital of something in all these small towns? To make up for all that's not there? Lucky this was not dogwood capital of the world; Gilroy, now a suburb south of San Jose, California, bills itself "the world's capital of garlic" (and what of baseball's World Series, for a sport that is by and large restricted to an American public.)
Same two shows again today, and again the call for help to drive a truck over to the next town down the road.
Finally, the first trip already brought a serving of circus fare: Sarah got stuck in the soggy terrain leaving the lot in Hugo, and had to be towed by one of the tractor trailers, only to get stuck once again upon entering the fairgrounds here.
Rehearsal.
March 14, Hugo.
A day before the opening, finally, rehearsals all day, chaotic, long, hot. It reached 80 degrees today in Hugo, barely a week after a snow storm.
A day before the opening, finally, rehearsals all day, chaotic, long, hot. It reached 80 degrees today in Hugo, barely a week after a snow storm.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Fears past.
March 13, Hugo.
There was to be a rehearsal this afternoon but it was canceled, the rigging still being performed because of the slim tent crew. Fridman has been off at the circus all day, nevertheless, setting up his equipment - and this and that, as always. My circus life has begun again.
A nasty wind which started early in the afternoon and looked like it was going to bring a storm then died off in a disappointing drizzle. I am reminded of the avalanche of storms and hurricanes that fell on Dallas last year as I was pregnant with Nicolas then nursing him through his first days of life, leaving my Mom in horror of the area and me in primal fear of a repeat of the same now that we are to travel with the circus, in our little toy houses, with nowhere to hide - at the raw mercy of nature's wrath.
There was to be a rehearsal this afternoon but it was canceled, the rigging still being performed because of the slim tent crew. Fridman has been off at the circus all day, nevertheless, setting up his equipment - and this and that, as always. My circus life has begun again.
A nasty wind which started early in the afternoon and looked like it was going to bring a storm then died off in a disappointing drizzle. I am reminded of the avalanche of storms and hurricanes that fell on Dallas last year as I was pregnant with Nicolas then nursing him through his first days of life, leaving my Mom in horror of the area and me in primal fear of a repeat of the same now that we are to travel with the circus, in our little toy houses, with nowhere to hide - at the raw mercy of nature's wrath.
Perfection is hard to get (the Nicolas factor.)
March 13, Hugo.
Some nights are perfect. Last night was Night Three of trying to get Nicolas accustomed to sleeping by himself as opposed to falling asleep on the breast and he went without a cry. And Dylan - Dylan brushed his teeth and let me finish the job, washed his hands and did not run the water forever leading to my frustrated yanking the soap and turning off the faucet, and when I asked him what it was that he did when it was ten thirty at night, he tilted his head and put his hand over his cheek while making a sweet " f' hoof" sound, Dylanese for "sleep," and there he went, off to bed with a kiss.
Did I say perfect? Only it got trickier at about four in the morning, when Nicolas woke up and tested our ears in Day Two of trying to get him accustomed to sleeping though the night without nursing; I am hoping this will be achieved before we start traveling, for we'll need all our hours of sleep intact then. Dylan never even woke up. Did I say perfect?
Some nights are perfect. Last night was Night Three of trying to get Nicolas accustomed to sleeping by himself as opposed to falling asleep on the breast and he went without a cry. And Dylan - Dylan brushed his teeth and let me finish the job, washed his hands and did not run the water forever leading to my frustrated yanking the soap and turning off the faucet, and when I asked him what it was that he did when it was ten thirty at night, he tilted his head and put his hand over his cheek while making a sweet " f' hoof" sound, Dylanese for "sleep," and there he went, off to bed with a kiss.
Did I say perfect? Only it got trickier at about four in the morning, when Nicolas woke up and tested our ears in Day Two of trying to get him accustomed to sleeping though the night without nursing; I am hoping this will be achieved before we start traveling, for we'll need all our hours of sleep intact then. Dylan never even woke up. Did I say perfect?
The first move of the season, down the street.
March 12, Hugo.
The circus moved to its first locale of the season, right here in Hugo, a mere few blocks away from the winter quarters, to set up the tent and prepare for the debut, on Saturday. The location is the Choctaw County Agriplex, which, the signs says at the entrance, is also the Hugo Fairgrounds and the OSU Extension. There is a ballpark, a roller-skaters' ring, and a sprawling building. There was a team of all white boys practicing when we drove in this afternoon, in black and white uniforms. We, along with Reina and Sarah and a few others, decided to stay in the winter quarters, where there is light all night long and no mud. We're enjoying the last days of sedentary life, its amenities soon a memory to be cherished and depended on for circus life longings.
The set up was not as scheduled: a third of the tent crew is missing due to some mix-up at the border. Jim called onto the artists to help, and so Fridman went; they will continue to do so until the crew is complete, sometime in April. The season has not begun yet but the first glitches have appeared - on cue, true to circus life.
The circus moved to its first locale of the season, right here in Hugo, a mere few blocks away from the winter quarters, to set up the tent and prepare for the debut, on Saturday. The location is the Choctaw County Agriplex, which, the signs says at the entrance, is also the Hugo Fairgrounds and the OSU Extension. There is a ballpark, a roller-skaters' ring, and a sprawling building. There was a team of all white boys practicing when we drove in this afternoon, in black and white uniforms. We, along with Reina and Sarah and a few others, decided to stay in the winter quarters, where there is light all night long and no mud. We're enjoying the last days of sedentary life, its amenities soon a memory to be cherished and depended on for circus life longings.
The set up was not as scheduled: a third of the tent crew is missing due to some mix-up at the border. Jim called onto the artists to help, and so Fridman went; they will continue to do so until the crew is complete, sometime in April. The season has not begun yet but the first glitches have appeared - on cue, true to circus life.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Gigi.
March 10, Hugo.
The Kelly Miller Circus lot is next to where Circus Chimera's was, in Hugo, on the street where the Carson and Barnes Circus also has its winter quarters, the biggest of all three. The Kelly Miller's lot is beautiful, gently wooded and well-kept and quiet, and it has the look of a full-timers' RV park, if only for the bright red fleet of trucks lined up near the entrance, and the big sign over it. Kelly Miller is an old, small but well-established circus that two years ago was bought by one of the Ringling Brothers heirs, John Ringling North II, and revamped. Last season was its first as the new Kelly Miller and by all appearances it went rather well.
I met "Lucky Eddy" this morning, walking with Dylan and Nicolas out to see the horses and the camel and the donkeys. I play the drums, he said, and here's the rest of the orchestra, pointing to a computer he was carrying. He is maybe in his early sixties, tall and thin, with light grey hair and a Buffalo Bill mustache, an easy manner and an air of mischief.
He is the first person I met at the circus other than people we already knew: Jim Royal, of course, the general manager, who was a ringmaster at the Carson and Barnes Circus when Fridman was working there, and that's how they met; John Moss' wife, Reina, and their two sons, Johnny, nine, and Nathan, five; John Moss, who is not here right now, is the circus' ringmaster and artistic director; he worked with Jim Royal at The Big Apple Circus, and before that at the Carson and Barnes Circus too, where Fridman met him; and Sarah, whose last name I never knew, as with most people in the circus, and whom we remember from Circus Chimera, where, the first year Fridman worked there, she was the girlfriend of Martin, the tent manager and pony-ride guy, and helped taking care of the ponies; she left the year after that. She's now performing a trapeze act and has a baby girl, ten-month-old Grania, "a souvenir from Australia."
I am looking forward to Nicolas growing up hand in hand with Gigi, as Grania is called.
More of the same.
March 7, Hugo.
The snow melted fast but not before I showed Dylan how to make his first snow ball. We had a snow fight; I made an easy target, watched every second of him and even forgot to take pictures.
The snow melted fast but not before I showed Dylan how to make his first snow ball. We had a snow fight; I made an easy target, watched every second of him and even forgot to take pictures.
Snow.
March 6, Hugo, Oklahoma.
At my insistence we left early this morning for Hugo, where the Kelly Miller Circus, Fridman's employer this year, is based. An hour after we arrived it started snowing and soon the snow flakes were billowing out and everything turned beautiful, but also treacherous. I'm glad we made it before it started.
It's been snowing all afternoon. I love it, Fridman does not. I took Dylan out to walk in the snow. He liked the look of our traces.
At my insistence we left early this morning for Hugo, where the Kelly Miller Circus, Fridman's employer this year, is based. An hour after we arrived it started snowing and soon the snow flakes were billowing out and everything turned beautiful, but also treacherous. I'm glad we made it before it started.
It's been snowing all afternoon. I love it, Fridman does not. I took Dylan out to walk in the snow. He liked the look of our traces.
Fresh memories.
March 3, Dallas.
Ten days in New York, staying at my friend's Kristine in Jersey City to be exact, revisiting nostalgia, the suburbs where her parents live, and where I lived with them for some time over a decade ago, filled with longing in every imaginable form; the diner where we ate, Kris and I, during those months, she at her first job out of college at a company that, she just happened to be commenting with her parents over dinner the Sunday after I arrived this time around, no longer exist in the building I remember, and might not be existing at all anymore, that part of the conversation seems to have been lost in my memory; the route that we took, commercial and sometimes sordid and then vital and always busy as ever, the motley streets of Jersey City, which I remember cold and gray and still were because I always manage to visit in the dead of winter; the train ride into the city.
The ride was an altogether new experience for there was Nicolas, a few days shy of eleven months old, not walking yet, opening his eyes onto the great urb from the enviable vantage point of a stroller. For us it meant cumbersome folding and unfolding of the aforementioned stroller, up and down stairs not meant for anyone other than the fashionable and fast and lithe. The trips were framed by Nicolas' naps, and short. A much-anticipated trip to the Jersey shore felt like little more than driving there, walking down a hundred yards of boardwalk (exactly where, I discovered to my delight afterwards, watching the DVD, the dream episode in the fourth season of The Sopranos was shot,) practically running back to the car the wind was so cold, and driving back.
Short but good, invigorating and fulfilling, as I'd hoped it would be. This was my "vacation" from the 24-hour job of taking care of Dylan and Nicolas, and it had everything I'd wished for: the destination of my dreams, good friends, lots of time to read, see, think. Kris and I have known each other since her junior year at the University of Georgia in Athens, where she was majoring in art history and I an exchange student in the French department teaching beginning French. This was 1989; we've been friends ever since in spite of distances and time and the different worlds we live in.
Earlier today Nicolas and I flew back to Dallas, and left sunny skies and warm temperatures for rain and sleet and a damp cold. Fridman picked us up in one of don Sandro's typical cars, a 1995 Jaguar that has seen better days, and in this case lacks heater and defogger, leaving us to drive through the highways of the city at peak traffic hours as through a fogged-up water mask. This was the second time in his life that I left Dylan, the first only for two days when I had to go to Paris to pick up my visa at the American embassy; he was 13 months old. It was hard leaving him this time around; the trip almost got canceled. At the airport when I came back he saw me and froze, seemingly unsure what to do, then he started to smile, but it was the shadow of a smile, a smile of disbelief, and all my pent-up guilt over leaving him rushed back and slapped me. It lasted forever, that shy impression of a smile. When I finally took him up in my arms he held me tight, hard. These are all my own feelings; his I will never know, the guarded secrets of childhood. I cannot fathom now ever having left him.
Ten days in New York, staying at my friend's Kristine in Jersey City to be exact, revisiting nostalgia, the suburbs where her parents live, and where I lived with them for some time over a decade ago, filled with longing in every imaginable form; the diner where we ate, Kris and I, during those months, she at her first job out of college at a company that, she just happened to be commenting with her parents over dinner the Sunday after I arrived this time around, no longer exist in the building I remember, and might not be existing at all anymore, that part of the conversation seems to have been lost in my memory; the route that we took, commercial and sometimes sordid and then vital and always busy as ever, the motley streets of Jersey City, which I remember cold and gray and still were because I always manage to visit in the dead of winter; the train ride into the city.
The ride was an altogether new experience for there was Nicolas, a few days shy of eleven months old, not walking yet, opening his eyes onto the great urb from the enviable vantage point of a stroller. For us it meant cumbersome folding and unfolding of the aforementioned stroller, up and down stairs not meant for anyone other than the fashionable and fast and lithe. The trips were framed by Nicolas' naps, and short. A much-anticipated trip to the Jersey shore felt like little more than driving there, walking down a hundred yards of boardwalk (exactly where, I discovered to my delight afterwards, watching the DVD, the dream episode in the fourth season of The Sopranos was shot,) practically running back to the car the wind was so cold, and driving back.
Short but good, invigorating and fulfilling, as I'd hoped it would be. This was my "vacation" from the 24-hour job of taking care of Dylan and Nicolas, and it had everything I'd wished for: the destination of my dreams, good friends, lots of time to read, see, think. Kris and I have known each other since her junior year at the University of Georgia in Athens, where she was majoring in art history and I an exchange student in the French department teaching beginning French. This was 1989; we've been friends ever since in spite of distances and time and the different worlds we live in.
Earlier today Nicolas and I flew back to Dallas, and left sunny skies and warm temperatures for rain and sleet and a damp cold. Fridman picked us up in one of don Sandro's typical cars, a 1995 Jaguar that has seen better days, and in this case lacks heater and defogger, leaving us to drive through the highways of the city at peak traffic hours as through a fogged-up water mask. This was the second time in his life that I left Dylan, the first only for two days when I had to go to Paris to pick up my visa at the American embassy; he was 13 months old. It was hard leaving him this time around; the trip almost got canceled. At the airport when I came back he saw me and froze, seemingly unsure what to do, then he started to smile, but it was the shadow of a smile, a smile of disbelief, and all my pent-up guilt over leaving him rushed back and slapped me. It lasted forever, that shy impression of a smile. When I finally took him up in my arms he held me tight, hard. These are all my own feelings; his I will never know, the guarded secrets of childhood. I cannot fathom now ever having left him.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Back at the junkyard.
Feb. 2, 2008, Dallas.
We're back at the family junkyard, don Sandro's house in the fast becoming Latino, formerly Black barrio of West Dallas. It makes for a good trailer with a view, and you can't beat the free rent - and the lively family.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
San Francisco.
Jan. 27, Dallas, Texas.
To the friends we left in the Bay Area: Beverly and Bob, always there with something for the kids, garage sales fanatics, Beverly with the quick wit behind her good humor ("Have you met a terrorist lately?" ,) just seeing them drive in made me happy, Margaret and her big heart, Richard and Frank and Tim, their hospitality, Natalie and Marc, friends of the spirit, always.
This is what we left.
San Francisco, Nov. 21, 2007.
To Hugo.
Jan. 20, Hugo, Oklahoma.
It took us a week to come from northern California. A week to enter another world altogether, a week of bitter cold nights, strange bedfellows and a sordid motel.
We left El Cerrito on Monday, almost six months to the day after Circus Chimera closed unexpectedly in early July. It was six months of paradise suspended, perfect weather and enchanted places, the Metro Hotel in Petaluma with Paris the cat where my mother and her friend Margaret stayed, a ride through postcard dairy country along the highway to Bodega Bay and the chowder at the seaside cafe, strolling through the "historic downtown," shopping at a posh of malls (complete with valet parking) in Marin county just a few blocks from the trailer park we had moved to, looking for Christmas presents with my mother after Margaret left and Fridman went to Texas, then to Vegas, leaving us to ourselves and the babies, and time disappeared from under us as it does and the month and a half of her visit was up and we took her to the airport in San Francisco and Dylan started crying when she stepped into the security area and he could not follow.
It took us a week to travel from northern California.
It became cold when we were in Las vegas, sleeping in the trailer parked on the street at a friend's house one night. We bundled up, the four of us arranged like dominoes in the full-size bed, head to toes and the babies in between, sweat-pants and socks, extra layers under the triple blankets, and Dylan being Dylan keeps throwing off the covers, the cold wind blowing in from the head of the bed, it is open because Fridman never finished the job of reconstructing the wall and there is a gap two inches wide where the air comes through, so out he goes in the night with duck tape the next day at an RV park lost in the desert dust somewhere in Kingman, Arizona, to try and close the gap, and it works, it is less cold in the bedroom, but it is colder the day after in Albuquerque, and the heaters fail to warm us up as we eat dinner in the trailer after a day's drive across two states, and a water drop which failed to fall at the tap instead has turned into ice, and it is cold, cold, cold when we go to bed, not warmed up by the food but chilled, still, and daylight brings only the illusion of relief as we embark onto another day on the road, dreaming maybe it could be the last? the babies are quiet and let us drive hours at a time, not a 12-hour stretch as I used to do driving across the country by myself but still, but then the truck stalls a few feet from the gas pump in Amarillo and we're stuck sideways at the entrance to the gas station, powerless to move, and a good samaritan appears and rescues us and we crawl on til we can't.
It is the last night on road, if our luck holds, and I'm tired just contemplating another night of bone chilling trailer so I beg Fridman to stop at a motel for one night, just tonight, I dream of a warm shower - no bath in days, the pipes are still frozen in the trailer - the bliss of a warm shower and a warm bed, the simple comfort of warmth; Fridman is reluctant, finally he passes all the national brand ones with the promise of reasonably clean sheets in a town called Childress in the Texas panhandle and stops at a motel with an empty parking lot called Budget Inn which advertises clean rooms on an electronic panel above the door to the office, and there is only one car parked in front of one of the rooms, I should have known, and the windows of the rooms are small and high, like prison windows I think as I'm waiting, half asleep, for Fridman to check us in, the real window must give out onto the back is what comes through my mind, and then I go in and stand in the most sordid room I have ever seen in so many years of road trips on a shoestring budget: there is no window in the back, only an old AC unit mounted onto the wall blasting warmish air into a room with no lights at the beds, and I don't know which one is worse, the pee-stained bathroom door or the amount of dirt and trash under the beds as we move them close together so the babies won't fall during the night, or the crumbling bathroom rack, or the peeking scotch-taped tissue holder with no tissues, or that the room reeks and makes me feel as if I have fallen at the bottom of an endless well where exhaustion and my own disgust don't matter anymore. I am exhausted but I cannot sleep. In the morning, still, I showered. The hot water felt good when I closed my eyes, breathing in deeply; there was only a small towel and it was badly frayed, worn to the thread, with more than the tinge of a large red stain on it.
Later that day we drove the last leg of the trip, up to Hugo, Oklahoma, Fridman and I taking a memory ride on a road we traveled together before, highway 70 in Oklahoma, a road cutting through the rolling hills of the southernmost part of the state along the Red River that makes up the border with Texas, we pass the Shamrock gas station where we stopped two years ago for lunch, it has the look of another era, we pass the small towns, we pass through Durant, where the Peruvian family Cavallini played a few dusty, empty-house dates before closing, the year before Dylan was born, itself a ghost of a circus, and we arrive in Hugo and the first stop is at the Wal-mart, what else, and a surprise, our friend Marcos there and I've never been happier to see him and his house and the junk in his yard makes me feel happy too, I'm somewhere nearing home, I'm forty-one years old, I have two babies, I'm on the move, but I have arrived for now.
Budget Inn, Childress, Texas.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
A tooth at the Halloween party.
October 21, El Cerrito.
A whirlwind of a day, a big milestone and a disturbing discovery, and Dylan falls asleep by himself on the couch next to me at 8:30 PM.
Today I decided to switch back to the cloth diapers I had left behind after Dylan became Mr. Wigglish. I had used them again for a time after Nicolas was born and before I joined the circus, but ended up capitulating, vaguely ashamed of myself; two babies, no washer and dryer and nowhere to hang clothes to dry, water a scarce and precious commodity were too much to handle.
And then today I read a disturbing article on all the chemicals we come in contact with in our every day life and the efforts of the U.S. administration to derail legislation by the European Union to ban most of them and tightly control the others. The article opened with a list of the chemicals used in baby stuff, from bottles to diapers. I think I must have blanched, sitting there in the trendy bookstore cafe sipping my hot chocolate for what I thought would be a peaceful reprieve from the usual hustle of the day. The article, by Mark Shapiro, is in this week's Harper's magazine; it is vastly scarier than the worst Halloween movie Hollywood could ever conjure up.
There was a Halloween party tonight at Playland, so I dressed Peanut up in his pumpkin baby suit, Dylan in his skeleton sweater, put on my flamingo outfit (all thanks to Beverly, but more on that story later) and out we trotted across the parking lot. It was there that I discovered Nicolas' first tooth.
A whirlwind of a day, a big milestone and a disturbing discovery, and Dylan falls asleep by himself on the couch next to me at 8:30 PM.
Today I decided to switch back to the cloth diapers I had left behind after Dylan became Mr. Wigglish. I had used them again for a time after Nicolas was born and before I joined the circus, but ended up capitulating, vaguely ashamed of myself; two babies, no washer and dryer and nowhere to hang clothes to dry, water a scarce and precious commodity were too much to handle.
And then today I read a disturbing article on all the chemicals we come in contact with in our every day life and the efforts of the U.S. administration to derail legislation by the European Union to ban most of them and tightly control the others. The article opened with a list of the chemicals used in baby stuff, from bottles to diapers. I think I must have blanched, sitting there in the trendy bookstore cafe sipping my hot chocolate for what I thought would be a peaceful reprieve from the usual hustle of the day. The article, by Mark Shapiro, is in this week's Harper's magazine; it is vastly scarier than the worst Halloween movie Hollywood could ever conjure up.
There was a Halloween party tonight at Playland, so I dressed Peanut up in his pumpkin baby suit, Dylan in his skeleton sweater, put on my flamingo outfit (all thanks to Beverly, but more on that story later) and out we trotted across the parking lot. It was there that I discovered Nicolas' first tooth.
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