The UnTexan

BEING AND NOTHINGNESS AND SOMETHING ELSE

I have never met Alicia Parlette but I have been very fond of her since June 2005. I do not email her and almost surely will never talk to her on the telephone. I am not even sure what I would say. But my fondness for her persists.

I know Alicia only from a distance, but I suppose that is not unusual in the age of the Internet/Web pages/email. I once maintained an email friendship that lasted several years and ran to thousands of emails with a woman in Kentucky who came to refer to herself jokingly as my “virtual wife.” I am not sure my un-virtual wife was ever comfortable with that notion, but she knew she had nothing to worry about. It was mostly an email relationship, but I talked to the Kentuckian on the phone a few times; she even talked on the phone to my wife (my un-virtual one-and-only), probably because she liked both of us (I was always emailing her things about my wife) and was intrigued by the strength of our marriage. Her own relationships tended to be lurches in various directions and my wife and I often find ourselves of great interest to those who lurch about. But I never met the “virtual wife” face-to-face, just as I will never meet Alicia.

Perhaps I grew fond of Alicia because she was a copy editor and she was 23 years old when I read the first piece she wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle. I put in some time being a copy editor at just about that age. Perhaps it is the fact that when I was 23 years old I was full of romantic fantasies about not living until I was 30. For Alicia Parlette, death before 30 is not a romantic fantasy. It is a very real possibility. And perhaps it is because I knew from the first that she was not so sure she wanted to be a copy editor. She wanted to write. I knew those feelings too. But when I was 23 I did not have a clue what to write about. Alicia had her subject handed to her.

Alicia writes about cancer. And it is her cancer. And the doctor called her at work to tell her about it in March 2005. “I wondered why he was calling. Bad news didn’t even occur to me. I was too busy for bad news. And bad news doesn’t come when you’re at work.” It was a tough kind of cancer. The bad news came in March and Alicia was writing about it by June, an act that in itself seemed tougher than cancer. And if tough writing could beat cancer, she would have done it by now.

Nearly two years have passed and Alicia's cancer led her finally to replace interferon with chemo, and now the chemo is failing. Her cancer has grown in some places and refused to shrink in others. She has had to quit her job. She has given up writing her story for the Chronicle, but she is still writing. “Obsessing wasn’t getting any writing done,” she wrote in her first blog entry. (Alicia understands the difference between obsessing and writing. Gushy girlies who blog can’t seem to figure it out). Alicia Parlette is no gushy girlie. She writes, “And, just two hours ago, I found out the chemo did nothing.” But still she is capable of writing this: “I am shut off, and shut down; my emotions aren’t fully registering what’s happened, and the renewed hope I had found during chemo feels distant and naïve.” It is tough and honest writing. But there is beauty in it too. Especially when Alicia writes, “So that’s where we’re at: from hope to disappointment, where my worthy battle scars have become pointless wounds.” It is a sentence to move a stranger to tears.

She writes. And where there are good sentences, all is not lost. I believe that. And I think Alicia Parlette must too. I want her to believe it. I want her to keep writing. I do not want her to stop.

IN THE CORRIDOR OF ART

There is a pedestrian tunnel under the street between the deck where I park and the office building where I work. It is not a short tunnel; it passes under a four-lane street with sidewalks on each side. It is about 12-feet wide and the ceiling is probably about 8-feet high. The lighting is indirect. But that doesn't help much. It looks like a tunnel and it feels like a tunnel, but it is called the Corridor of Art.

Oil painting groups, watercolor groups, collage makers, all kinds of people who make what they believe is art and want to hang it on a wall get their chance in the Corridor. Few of them are artists, but there is a lot of wall space. Right now the walls of the corridor are being attacked by the pastel people. One side of the tunnel is devoted to landscapes, the other side to portraiture. If this were a contest, neither side would be winning. That is the way things usually go in the Corridor of Art: There is nothing much that would make me stop for a second look. Let’s just say a little self-expression goes a long way in the tunnel under the street.

So, this morning I stepped off the parking deck elevator and turned left up the corridor. There was a guy ahead of me, almost at the other end of the tunnel. He slowed down and drifted to his right, toward the landscapes. He even stopped in front of one of the pastels. Then he leaned in close. I had never seen anyone lean in that close for a look at anything in the Corridor of Art before and I thought that perhaps I had missed something. As I approached, I noticed he was in front of a garden scene, but I had no idea what the man found so interesting about it. I was drifting in to try to see what he was looking at when he pulled a comb from his back pocket with his right hand and ran it through his hair, combing the front over just so, then patted things into place with his other hand, tilting and ducking the way people do in front of a mirror. He was staring at his reflection in the glass of the picture frame. He never saw the artist’s garden scene at all. He had no interest in the art; his interest was only in the glass and his hair. He looked at his reflection one more time then walked toward the escalator, slipping his comb in his back pocket.

When I stopped in front of the picture, I saw my reflection smiling back at me. That man with his comb put the whole Corridor of Art in perspective. Hell, maybe he put a lot more art than that in perspective. It’s too bad the artist missed it.

STEPHANIE KLEIN UN-HILTONED

I saw a nifty new verb in something I read recently. I think it was in a response to a story somewhere about the ongoing travails of Britney Spears. Or was it the ongoing death of Anna Nicole Smith? It was something about one of those lightweights the media overburdens us with. The writer suggested the the media "Hilton" both Spears and Smith. After a bit of checking around, I understood what the writer meant: "forget about them." Thus, the verb is: to Hilton: a conscious decision not to write about certain people (in this case Paris Hilton) for doing nothing. This seems to have grown out of an Associated Press decision not to write something about Hilton for a week. And lickety-split, a new verb was born before anybody could say Tori Spelling. I think we should lowercase hilton and welcome it to our ever-evolving English language. To hilton. Ain't language a wonderful thing?

Which brings me to bloggerina Stephanie Klein (not that she does anything particularly wonderful for the language or for evolution either). A while back, after writing several pieces about Klein and her flock of Me-Gulls (her prattling legion of sycophants),  I lost interest and moved on to writing about things like Britney Spears, love, death, dreams. Stephanie had her book, her pregnancy, her marriage, her preemies (and her ongoing whining and complaining). The Me-Gulls keep on clucking, no matter what anybody says. So, I hiltoned Stephanie Klein.

But I have decided to un-hilton her.

Why? Well, I noticed an uptick in the number of people reading my pieces on Klein. There have always been a few readers a day from here, there and everywhere, but in the past 10 days or so their numbers have increased from a few to a few hundred. They came searching the Net, typing in "hate Stephanie Klein" or "Stephanie Klein hate" or "anti Stephanie Klein," etc. Now, I don't hate Stephanie Klein, but I was certainly curious about what triggered it all.

So, I clicked on Greek Tragedy, Klein's blog, and found out that she had published two pieces within nine days about people who are critical of her, etc., etc. And how she always takes the high road etc., etc. when it comes to her critics (not entirely true in my experience). How can this woman contrive to sound smug, arrogant, superior, self-righteous, self-indulgent AND whiney all at the same time? And, of course, her Me-Gulls were flocking around and clucking reassurances all over the comment section. Stephanie's husband Phil does not always take the high road in responding to Steph's critics; I know that from experience too; he loves to talk about other people's "small lives" and once asked me somewhat puzzlingly if I "had a mirror in my home." Well, Phil chimed in again yesterday to tell the world what a wonderful person Steph is and blah, blah, blah, and how she tries to "live like God is in the room." If that is true, when Stephanie engages in her various sexual forays, she must assume God likes to watch. But then that's the point isn't it? Stephanie Klein assumes everybody likes to watch. So, why not God, the father, son and holy voyeur? The problem is that Stephanie has a really hard time when people don't like what they see.

Why did I un-hilton Stephanie Klein? Not because I hate Stephanie Klein. I don't. I simply think she is dishonest. She is a self-righteous, manipulative, hate-baiter, tossing out her why-do-they-hate-me-aren't-I-wonderful-for-taking-the-high-road tidbits like breadcrumbs to her hungry flock. And they take the hate-bait along with all the other bait she shovels their way. They always take the bait because they actually believe she is being honest with them (and that is the most dishonest part). "Poor Steph," they say. "Oh, yay," they say. And they gather round to stroke her ego. Stephanie Klein gulls her gulls and they love her for it. Sometimes they even pay her to do it. What are they thinking? Not much. And Stephanie Klein knows it. She doesn't miss a trick. She already has her inner fat girl that she is getting ready to pimp out in her next book.

I bet the Gulls will love it.

LOVE AND THY NAHA NEIGHBORS

I want to give the NAHA and Renters Association a poke in their rulebook with a sharp stick (actually, I simply want them to read what I have written about them both recently and in the past. I figure that should do the trick). However, I can’t send them my blog’s URL. My wife’s email address is the email of record for our NAHA etc. membership and their email account will not allow me to send anything to them because it does not recognize me as a certified member/sender of email (these are clearly people who fear outsiders whether they are real yard-parking yahoos or only virtual yahoos like me). And my wife won’t send it along either. She accuses me of simply trying to provoke these NAHA etc. people. It’s true. And I don’t see anything wrong with it. I have spent a great deal of my life provoking people in one way or another, and if anybody needs provoking, this bunch of rule-flinging hypocrites does. And a poke in the rules is what some people need. My wife believes we should take a more constructive approach to our philosophical differences with the NAHA and Renters Association’s car-parking notions and obsessions (and their notions of email democracy), and that my blog entry might compromise that possibility (she likes constructive solutions; I prefer, shall we say, a less constructive approach). She thinks we should go to some NAHA meetings and maybe suggest something other than parking that these people might want to get worked up about. She thinks we have to participate before we can be critical. She is making a list to take to the meeting. I think she believes these NAHA etc. people actually give a damn about this stuff. And she does not want me alienating the neighborhood before she gets the chance to find out. I don’t think it matters whether I alienate them or not (I am not a love-thy-neighbor sort of guy anyway). The NAHA and Renters Association people aren’t going to change; they don’t care about anything but rules and more rules and picking out who they want to enforce them against next (Wide Lawns and Narrow Minds understands what I am talking about). So why not at least make them uncomfortable in their intransigence? I want to goad, poke, prod and jab the NAHA and Renters Association. And I want them to get the point. But my wife clearly isn’t very comfortable with that idea. So, the NAHA and Renters Association will never know I have had them on my mind lately unless one of them stumbles across my blog. It’s frustrating. But I will not push the issue. I might not love my neighbor (ambivalent is about the best I can do with that), but I really love my wife (and she knows it and loves me back). So, the way I figure it, this sort of feels like censorship, but it must be love. The NAHA meeting is next week.