XO Morning After--by Martin

Here it is, folks--the last Boston e-mail, but only the bit Martin actually wrote before leaving Boston. It's a fragment of his amazing three days, which included spits stuck through succulent sides of roasted meat, dim sum for breakfast, and sushi. Oh, yes, and the XO thing, which you can tell from the pictures was absolutely spectacular. All photos are by Daniel Van Ackere--click on his name for his fantastic site. And the remarkably handsome guy--BESIDES Martin of course, is Kurt.


When I woke this morning the gulls were circling outside the studio's big windows, and the sun we've had the last two days was replaced by a kind of sunless bright, sky like a cotton ball. I thought I'd slept until 10, but it was only 8am--I'm still not able to sleep in, which is probably a good thing, given my short stay here and return to routine Tuesday. And the couch may be taking its toll on me: When I sat up from sleep and looked around, I had a crick in the right side of my neck that prevented me from turning more than 30 degrees; I'll be fine today as long as I don't have to cross any busy streets (can't swivel head to watch for traffic) or say "no" non-verbally.

X/O is over. Kurt and I spent the morning talking, and already the whole event felt distant, like it happened last week, or last year. I liken it to our wedding, in this respect: I was so in the action of what happened that I sort of missed what happened. I've felt the same way at other readings I've given--where after it's over, I've got great recall of someone who read before me, or someone who read after, but little memory of my own contribution. And maybe that's because I'm trying to be fully present, in the moment, so that in experiencing it, I later cannot objectify it. Normally, I'm sort of like Merry--watching things happen, internalizing them, feeling slightly peripheral.

I mean, walking to dinner last night after X/O, we passed this birthday party taking place in a rented storefront, and it was like something out of a movie--there was an mc, a stocked bar, and a dance floor chocked full of hip looking men and women dressed in fashion magazine clothes. You could see all this from the sidewalk. And I thought to myself, a) I can't think of any place I'd less like to be; and b) if I were there, I would not be able to enter the fun--I'd be clinging to the wall for safety, paying attention, not really unhappy, not resentful--just not "in." Last night, I was "in." I didn't spend much time imagining how things would be during the show, and now that it's done, I don't think I'll do much second-guessing.

& don't forget to check out more about XO on Kurt's website HERE.

More Mischief

This morning Mom and I were enjoying the last of the coffee; we knew that Bea was awake and that Elspeth was in her room, giggling with her. We took our sweet time.

This is what we did not know:
Elspeth, with the orange oil pastel, in the baby's room. Guilty. Oh, so guilty.

Performance art? Does the definition of an installation include lots and loads of clean-up?

Everybody and everything was painted. Each rail of the crib, each face of animal and child. Not even the two Meow-Meows escaped decoration.

Two News Flashes

Salad greens are rolling in: here, Martin adores five different types of leaves, including arugula and young beet tops.

We ate them tonight with a little balsamic vinegar, a hot French beef stew, and toasted bread. And a pinot. O, man. Wish you could have been there.

And the second news flash: Beatrix is following in her sister's footsteps. The other day I heard a clatter from the kitchen--with Merry, our oldest, I would have hurried down to see what was going on, but now, with the third, I've become rather lackadaisical. So by the time I mosied down to the kitchen, Bea had spent a lovely long time eating chocolate, including our dark chocolate-covered almonds. I found her before she ate the tea-bag.

Don't fall off! I called, and like a truly voyeuristic parent, recorded the moments of independence. Bea was pleased as a little duck. She'd pushed the chair across the floor, positioned it just so, and scaled the back of the chair to find a happy spot on the counter.

No one ever said the Cockroft girls aren't independent. And thanks to heaven, all still alive.

warmth in soil

Now I am bewildered and a bit mind-tossed by the tenuous lives of others whom I love, and underneath the realization that all our lives are just as alterable. So I am not writing good blog posts. Add to this the joy of my mother's visit and endless everyday things: stinky bathrooms and dirty floors and dandelions and children's heavy clothes needing to be swapped for summer tanks and shorts. . .and a short story that needs ever more editing, a computer cord missing so I cannot upload pictures as I planned, keys misplaced and found in a retired winter coat, airports, little girls dancing, macaroni and cheese pans. . .the rolling waters and brisk winds that fill our lives.

I was browsing some Word documents when I came across this bit of a letter I wrote a friend not long ago, so I'd thought I'd let it speak for me tonight:

Often too I wonder when God will "pull out the rug" from underneath me--all the good things I have and the comforts I find in each one--but that is a view to be despised as well. Better, I suppose, to give thanks daily for the good and ache about the bad. All through bad news runs a sense of powerlessness and a certain sense of being out of control, which is appropriate I suppose, considering the state of things. I feel like a mole sometimes, burrowing blindly through a nonsensical tunnel, trying to find light. But underneath, in the darkness, even, there is great comfort, a warmth in the soil, a sense that the light exists even if I can't see it every moment.

Dandelions as Countless As

It's raining again. The blossoms of our trees have given way to tentative leaves; our old uncle the maple is beginning to tuft. Now I'm waiting to see which of our new crabs and redbuds from last year will be late leafers, and which are dead and will have to be ripped out and tossed on the scrap pile. Dandelions bloom with abandon, and if they didn't have such a bad reputation I'd think the lawn was resplendent with them.

Yesterday afternoon--finally in a desperate bid to save face in the neighborhood I borrowed a friend's lawnmower and tackled the three-inch grass. My visiting father took over for a while, swerving around new trees and stumps and the fire-hydrant (which the mower finally hit with a great noise, retch, and sudden silence).

"Now," I said to our neat, very kind friend as I almost broke his gate to pieces trying to wheel his mower back into his yard, "If you hear a little rattle, don't worry! It's probably a loose screw! Ha, ha! Martin will be sure to come round and fix it!" And then I mowed his tiny back yard in payment, and it was such an easy, straight-forward task after the disaster that is our yard--tiny toys hidden, cords that pop out of nowhere, shrubs that masquerade as twigs. It's hard to see them under the sea of grass.

Dad left this afternoon for meetings in Baltimore and Mom drove off to pluck Martin from the airport curb, so it's relatively quiet around here, quiet enough to write about nothing when there are so many heavy, complex things that I won't or can't write about. . .Instead I count the white crowns of dandelions out of my window, and it is like counting the stars, there are so many. One week of classes left, one week of exams, and then the summer stretches in front of us, days full of garden and fresh herbs chopped over tomatoes and the smells of sunscreen and sweat and blooming flowers.

Martin's X/O Art Installation (from Boston!) Letter II

from Martin's latest e-mail:

I woke today hoarse as ever to what sounded like a giant having a BM. Not pleasant. Kurt assures me it was only dumsters being emptied, but he wasn't awake then, so can't verify completely.

I've had tea--Kurt bought some at a local convenience store, which, like another one we dropped by yesterday, sells higher end products: Pirate's Booty instead of pork rinds, bottles of wine, not cases of Bud, and, as it turns out, a sampler box of "premium" black teas--tea which is causing my empty stomach a bit of upset. I'll be lucky if I don't come from Boston sounding like that giant I mentioned; my diet is all screwed up. I'm now on the Eidsvig diet: eat nothing but a dried fruit and nut mix all day, then chase it down at 11pm with "pizza pie."

Actually, I can't handle the Eidsvig diet, so while Kurt took care of some business at Boston University yesterday, I walked across the street and bought myself a plate of ka prao to go. What is ka prao? I know from consulting recipes that it's Thai chicken and basil, though that wasn't explained on the marquee menu on the wall. This was a place that catered almost exclusively to BU students, and when I stepped in, the line was almost out the door. I figured--correctly--things would move pretty quickly, but I felt off-footed the whole time, on a campus (if you can call it that; BU is like Pitt, in the city, and runs for blocks and blocks along the Charles River) I don't know, among hundreds of people I don't know, looking--I imagine--every bit the bumpkin I feel.

Boston is in bloom. We've driven through areas like The Back Bay and Beacon St. that are full of flowering trees--redbuds, crabapples, cherry trees, maybe even crapes--and four-story, 19th century townhouses, and down one street that's divided into two one-ways with a miles-long park ("the mall," Kurt says) between--like the common parks [there in our PA town], only 10 times as long. I took my lunch sitting on a granite planter under a lovely pink-flowering tree, alternately warmed and chilled, the wind playing havoc with the pages of the The New Yorker I tried to read. . .

So maybe it's not the Eidsvig diet but hot, hot ka prao at lunch and leftovers for dinner, followed by 11pm pizza and morning-after English breakfast tea, minus the breakfast. I'm still waking at 7-something, even though I could probably sleep till ten if I wanted. I don't want, not really, but these nights that go through early morning are killing my usual circadian rhythms. Not that I'm not having fun doing so. . .

Sound artist--his preferred title, from what I can gather--Brendan Murray, the third collaborator, joined us most of the day as we figured out where people would sit, where readers will stand, where paintings will hang, and so on. We spent an hour working with a faulty projector--there's a film/sound installation that will be shown on one wall. . .

By 7:30, most of the readers had come for the informal rehearsal, and one poor sap from Sharon, MA, had biked in for the show, thinking it would be held last night. We invited him in to listen, which I'm sure was delightful for him: everything still a wreck, paintings hung, half-hung, ro just idly leaned against a post, readers trying out poems aloud for the first time--they're reading my poems and Kurt's, not their own--stumbling over phrasing and vocabulary. It's strange hearing my O/X: Boxes series, six prose poems written for this occasion, read by mouths other than my own--at once remarkable and painful. I tried to walk a balance between giving notes on how to read and not overstepping like I might, nitpicking everything. When I read the poems--poems I wrote--I've got total control as writer and reader. But now I'm having to let go, and while it's thrilling seeing the poems come to life like this, and the readers are well-spoken and energetic, the whole thing makes me fidgety--and know now it's not just the readers or lack of control, but my own uncertainty about the poems themselves. That old ragtime self-doubt!

We hung art until midnight. . .a tedious operation, but one with tangible rewards, then headed back Kurt's studio to talk and read our own poetry collaboration, the one called "Equations" that's to close the event. I haven't shown you that one yet, since it wasn't done and I didn't want to let any air out. Before we crossed Summer St. (Kurt's place is literally across the street from the studio we're occupying for X/O), we paused a moment and took in the exhibition from curbside, looking back into the artspace we'd just left and locked. It really looked amazing, Xs and Ox everywhere, on walls, on columns, lots of color and line, a pleasing symmetry. Kurt says a photographer friend will be there, so I should have evidence at some point that this all actually happened.

Kurt said this morning, you know, it feels like three days since I last saw you, and it's been five years. I felt the same way; with some friends, not matter how long it's been, you just pick up wherever you left off.

A Bit from Martin's Boston E-mail (where our friend Kurt and the X/O Art Installation Is)

Kim,

The trip to Boston was--was is it people always say about flights? Uneventful?--short; it's 1:15 minutes tops from gate to gate. I was looking forward to 7C, my carefully picked aisle seat (close to the front, but not too close, 7--the lucky number), but when I reached the row, alas!, all seats were occupied. There was some sort of confusion: A guy in 7C--my seat!--was telling a woman across the hall in 7B that she was in his seat, and her companion in 7A was saying, Yes, yes, we're in the wrong seats--Sorry--but they showed NO SIGNS of moving, so I just said, "Where's your seat supposed to be?": and they pointed to window seat 6A, next to this enormous fellow with a Boston accent, and I said, "Ok, I'll just sit there."

This guy looked like Kurt--same hair type and color--if he were ten years older and had been inflated like a balloon. As I pulled out my water bottle (the one like yours that my mom got us, with the insulated sleeve), he said, "Hey that's nice, my daughter's always bustin' my balls about gettin' one of those," and then--seriously--we both uncorked our water bottles (his was plastic, disposable, Poland Springs), lifted them to our lips, drank, and set them down again, at the same time--like syncronized drinking. He actually looked at me for a second like I'd copied him, but we were tight the whole time.

. . .The bones of [Kurt's] apartment are stunningly beautiful, like something out of a decorating magazine: about twice as wide as deep, on maybe the third floor corner of a building rented and owned entirely by artists (the walk to his studio from the elevator is lined with all sorts of visual art, including a large one of Kurt's that's more abstract than most of what he's done recently. . .The walls that meet at the outside corner are all exposed brick, the walls and ceiling maybe twenty feet high, with seven pairs of nearly floor to ceiling windows, five sets of them--on the long side facing the street--arched at the top cathedral-style. Wood floor, of course, and then you bend around this bulward which turns out to be the closet, walk up ladder stairs, and meet a narrow plank with a bookcase and, at the left end, Kurt's bed, resting atop the roof of the closet. It looks like if he rolled off, he'd drop, oh, about 15 feet.

Paintings everywhere--big X/O cowboy painting you might have seen on his website, catalog girls, something modeled off Lichtenstein, etc. Furnishings by IKEA--coffee table, kitchen cabinets and sinks (three of them, one just for paint), bookshelves, etc. A TV the size of a pickup bed hanging on the wall. (OK, not that big, but literally the dimensions of the kids' kitchen work table.)

Kurt has in his refrigerator: Two bottles of juice we bought last night; two slices of leftover pizza (we ate last night); salsa; two 2-liters of Coke; a bottle of flavored water; an empty sack. In his freezer, only mint chocolate chip ice cream and a jar of black-eyed peas his mother made him. He has a sleek red teapot from IKEA--no tea.
* * *
find poet and artist
Kurt Cole Eidsvig's Website HERE.

Bits and P

Martin is off to Boston. I dropped him off at the little local airport, where he caught the shuttle to Pittsburgh, where he will catch the plane to Boston and to our good friend, Kurt. They're doing some kind of wild, groovy art installation with actors and 'soundscapes' and poems. . .and I'm not entirely sure what else.

Here the light is creamy over our redbuds' furry branches, which are so laden this year they look like hot-pink boas.

I'm rather tired so I am having trouble writing properly. The two little ones are in the bath giving themselves bubble beards. Merry is reading her homework out loud. Tonight we had a special picnic with friends at the park, which meant I packed the whole pot of lentil soup which we dipped into and then hunched over our steaming bowls while the rain beat against our backs. The girls scrambled down every now and then to go and dance in the drops and by the time we left, Bea was covered in wet grass.

This morning when I looked outside to find Martin and Merry at the bus-stop corner, I noticed there was a dark fog filling half of the sky. Then I heard the wail of firetruck sirens. When I dropped off recycling this morning, the street was blocked and rivers of water streamed down the street. Then as we drove by the building this afternoon on the way to drop Martin at the shuttle, the windows of the apartment building, whose residents were all elderly, gaped at us; the whole place had been gutted by flames, except for one window in the bottom left, where pristine white lace curtains still hung. Our town with its old buildings seems prone to bad fires. Merry tells me that she heard a couple people died in this one. I am very sorry.

Oh, sigh, as my Dad used to say when there was little left to be said.

Well, late tonight my parents come in and the party can start. I have two more discs of The Gilmore Girls (my mother and I gorge on this series, much to the chagrin of Martin--but he's not here!) and a box of Crunch 'n Munch. And I DID clean the house--fairly well, I might add. There's still horse manure in the driveway, but what do they expect from Wazoo Farm?

Yelps from the bathroom. Better go!

lots of lilac walks

Before I begin my rant, I must say: Hail to the Quaking Aspen, which Martin and I both agree is the most perfect of all trees.

And I must add that apparently around our neighborhood, there is a pack of boys who spend their days in heated speculation about what is in our shed. What do YOU think is in our spectacular shed?

If I were to tell, the boys would most likely be terribly disappointed, so I will not breathe a word of what DWELLS in our shed. Hoo-haa-haa-haa.

The garden is already growing out of control. There are a couple weeks before the end of classes when everything gets rather hairy: the lawn grows unbelievably long, much to the chagrin of our neat neighbors (and this year the lawn mower is broken), the house gets a worn, fuzzy appearance; the children are lucky if their hair is brushed and their toenails clipped. Martin and I begin substituting high-fives or groans for real conversation, and we begin eating from troughs instead of from plates with silverware. Instead of "Pass the buTTer please," we grunt or slam the table for emphasis. No need to articulate words, no need in these packed days with not enough moments for civilized behavior.

Of course our "packed days" are relatively calm compared to the days of city-dwellers with multiple jobs; but we are who we are, and our house is always filled with people who are family though not related to us by blood, and therefore our lives are busy in different ways--suppers need cooking for more than our own mouths; Merry's homework needs to be done though I am the only parent present two nights this week; the beds need weeding, our children and other people's children need love, the house is in great need of a vacuum, I need to edit and send off a story; and Martin has hit the inevitable crunch-time at the end of school.

Meanwhile the lilacs are blooming. It is an absolutely perfect day outside--65 degrees and sunny, with no wind. I feel pressed by this perfection to throw off the responsibilities of being an adult who lives in this messy house and go for walks with Bea, who longs for the outdoors. And so I shall.
Hoo-haa-haa-haa!

Especially Nice April

Ho! To the Especially Nice April I yell HO, there! Fine job this year!


There are people I wish to see in the yellow rocking chair, sipping a cup of our lovely Kenyan tea and smelling the lilacs. Hody you, there, Kara! Come and sit a spell!

The tulips, lipstick-red. HO to the tulips! To the fading daffs! To the gorgeous finery of April!

Karibou to spring.

Today at Naptime

Elspeth has a colossal cough--Martin and I had the same one and it lasted for two months. And then one day it slipped away. So I guess we were hoping the same thing would happen for Elspeth. I finally gave in today and told Martin to call and set up an appointment at the doctor's, so Elspeth is going in on Monday and still I'm hoping it will up, pack, and leave before dawn so we won't have to give her rounds of antibiotics.

We've been pinning poor Beatrix down now twice daily for the past week for eye drops. I have no idea where she picked up her nasty eye infection, but giving drops to a two-year old is no picnic. We have to clamp every appendage down while Martin tries to pry her eyelids open as she screams. She's a slick little seal under our fingers and even slicker when she's covered in eye drops that haven't made it into her eyes. Childhood is full of illnesses and I thank God for every illness that has an end in health. One walk through our neighborhood graveyard--a favorite of ours for good walks since it is on a ridge over town--and I am always struck by the number of tiny gravestones. I have heard that in some places with historically low child-survival rates, parents didn't even bother naming their children until they were a certain age. Certainly this can't be true!

Elspeth was heaving with another cough in the middle of her sleep this afternoon when her eyes suddenly popped open and she reached two arms around my neck and said, "I love you!" Finally I eased her into sleep by wrapping myself around her little body so her arms and legs could relax and she finally surrendered; the coughing subsided a bit; and she is sleeping.

Outside the sky is darkening to coal-black, the leaves are celery-green, and Merry is home, so I'd better sign off.

Elspeth Strikes Again

Guess who got her grubby little fingers on the camera again?

Even though the handling of sparse and expensive technology by four-year olds is frowned upon at Wazoo Farm, I can't help but enjoy Elspeth's peculiar way of seeing the world.
The dog is not our dog but belongs to my brother, Kenton, and his long-time partner, Leah. The dog is not an angel-dog, despite Elspeth's rendering here. It is very cute, though.


A reward to the person who can figure out what these two objects are. A reward only if you have not been to our house--otherwise only a little peck on the cheek. (I don't know what that makes the reward. Something unconnected to kissing. A slice of birthday cake--I've been baking tons of them lately).

Angel-dog's tail.

Our terribly ugly ceiling fan in our library--necessary in the summers here, since we don't have central air in our old house, but man, nothing is as ugly as a ceiling fan, unless maybe it's a big, heavy light fixture from the 70's. Note I unscrewed all the light bulbs. I loathe overhead light. In the living room I hid the light switch behind an Indian wall hanging. I feel immediately depressed when someone finds it and switches those sad bulbs on. When overhead light-lovers DO find the switch in the library, they get so excited, and then they flip the switch and nothing happens. I feign silly confusion, perhaps, but inside I am all triumph. Saved from bad lighting again!

My mother brought this fern and her ficus tree to me from Baltimore before she and my father took off to Washington State. They left behind my father's big TV so they could bring me plants. Priorities: absolutely straight. I am a terrible mother to all my plants, but I do love them so. I suppose this applies sometimes to my children as well. None have died on my watch though occasionally they are dreadfully in need of watering.

This one is my favorite: tulip stems against the blue of the entryway wall.

odd

Merry started doing this funny thing lately--while the younger two girls are in the bath she sits on the closed toilet, or drags my wicker bedroom chair onto the bathroom rug and cracks open an old decorating magazine. Then she proceeds to flip through and read every single advertisement she can. Occasionally she reads the advertisement copy out loud and snorts. "What does that mean?" she asks, after reading a statement about beauty supplies or hair cream or medicine. When Merry reads the copy in her measured style, every syllable pronounced meticulously in the way of an early reader, the messages we skim over and absorb so thoughtlessly suddenly sound utterly ridiculous.

The other day Merry nabbed Elspeth's new "slate" as she calls it--(her write-and-wipe board), and began scrawling advertisements. It turned into a sort of impromptu performance art. Seeing Merry, who is absolutely baffled but amused by the messages in the ads, beside the bare words of the advertisements unaccompanied by images, was striking. At least Martin and I found it so.

Do you recognize any of the copy?


PS. Here's a little party I'm going to throw for myself: I've had two acceptances from literary journals this week, so that now I have forthcoming work in three different genres: poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Thanks to those of you who silently and not-so-silently root for me--and I know you're there, because when I checked my 'sitemeter' today, I found there's been almost 27,000 visits to Wazoo Farm's blog since I began it. So thanks for sharing my life in this way.

Forsythia Fern Cockroft

As a child I dreamed of Eugene Field's Sugarplum Tree ("tis a marvel of great renown," after all) in the Garden of Shut-Eye Town. As an old 32-year old, I have shaken off the Sugarplum Tree in favor of Forsythia, Plums, Crabapples, Eastern Redbuds. The real blossoms of spring are always so unbelievably wonderful that I am woozy with delight. Because of the Big Snow, spring is especially glorious here, the blooms various and rich. The forsythia is a million golden exclamation marks along our side yard, where Martin planted ten more bushes.

In a moment of prenatal fancy, I wanted to name our smallest child Beatrix Fern Forsythia Cockroft, since she was born at the height of the forsythia two years ago, but Martin told me I would be sorry. Would I have been sorry? I don't think so. Maybe she would have been. So I've been slipping in the name Forsythia where I can. I even have a LL Bean catalog that comes to Forsythia Cockroft, and it is a name that should have been, my dears.

Beatrix turned two on the same day I turned thirty years more than she; so we celebrated all week with good people--here, handsome Roberto. Beatrix has learned what candles are for; she pointed to hers and said, "I want Happy-Day!" She celebrated by running around outside for days, coming indoors only to get somewhat clean and to sleep.Friend Sally baked me a fantastic meringue torte and took my children most of the day. What a gal, Sal. Since I thought I was thirty-two all of last year, I don't feel much older.

Only now with three delights, I feel full of energy when I am not exhausted, ready for excitement when I am not content to fall asleep at 10:30, and generally happier than could possibly be deserved.