Meeting Asimov

Free-falling through time takes practice if you want to avoid crashing smack into your own self as you have been and not change the fabric of your consciousness forever. Fall like a feather rather than a brick.

I've told the story of how I met Isaac Asimov many times. I know it was real, yet these memories are like mind candy- too interesting to have been real, too succulent with detail to stand the acid test of fact checking. The evening stands as one of those strange happy accidents of life that happen only to those completely open to adventure.

I was twenty two and working as a costume designer with my partner Autumn. As it turned out we were less business partners than I thought, but it hardly matters. We all (meaning our posse of fashionable and morally squidgy friends) wanted to go see the latest period gangster flick in San Francisco and (obviously) we all dressed up in our 1930's best evening wear for the matinee.

Included in the party was my ex-boyfriend Michael with whom I had agreed to remain good friends, something I generally don't believe in doing with exes. We broke up because he was afraid that my innocent and unwitting ass was going to fall in love with his heart breaker self. I tried to tell him that for the first time in my life I just wanted to date and have a good time and not worry about where the relationship was going because in my experience men didn't want relationships with me as much as they just wanted to mess with what they perceived as my naive view of the world.

Which has always mystified me. Me: the girl with the scars on her arms, the very dark and twisted sense of humor, and the vast experience with life disappointments and betrayal. I never saw myself in this naive maiden light that others have.

I later came to realize that it was more a question of chastity and man's irrepressible desire to break through it that gives them the satisfying illusion of naivete than actual naivete. I wasn't a virgin when I was twenty two, in case you were wondering. But I had been so underwhelmed by sex the first time that I didn't really see why I should let myself become so vulnerable to another person again for so paltry a temptation as sex. So I wasn't a slut. Men love that until they have it.

Dammit. I'm sounding uncharitable to men and I don't mean to.

I really liked Michael, even though it freaked me out to date a person with the same name as my dad. He was a fencer which accounted for quite a lot of my attraction to him because he wasn't a man of classic good looks. However, he cleaned up nice, had fabulous posture (unlike myself), and there was something wonderfully old fashioned about him. He was chivalrous and I love chivalry in men. It's a lost art: how to show respectful reverence for women without belittling them. Put a man like that in a 1930's suit and you want to go out with them if for no other reason than the pleasure of being treated like a lady.

So a group of us saw a movie in 1930's evening wear. Afterwards we went to the little restaurant near Polk Street that is an old train car. Every city has one, don't they?

You see how Asimov is an afterthought in this free-falling memory?

None of us wanted to go straight home since we were ready for drinks so Michael suggested we go to the club where he sometimes worked that would just be opening up. It was located South of Mission and was that typical modern, clean, industrial space you expected to find in every hip place in the early 90's. We got to go in, in spite of the fact that they were going to be hosting parties from the book fair held earlier in the day. Private parties. But we knew Michael.

See what I mean? He was the kind of guy that could get you in to an exclusive club catering to private book parties.

Our party was alone for a while and Michael cued up some Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong with gins and tonics. It was a lovely lazy late afternoon loll. We glittered in our evening gear. My gown was one I made myself of velveteen and tulle, spiced with beading and clinging to my (then) lovely slim shapely shape. It was my one and only homage to my 1930's heroines and has since burnt to a black melty crisp in our attic fire of 2003. Sometimes I wish I could pull it out of its old trunk and touch it.

As the light outside reluctantly slid into its sheath of evening, people began to populate our exclusive club. An older couple sat down at our table when the rest of the tables were full. A familiar face.

I suppose this is as good a moment as any to say that I have spent a lot of time with fantasy/science fiction books. Happy time that has felt a little like finding my own kind. I was especially fond of Andre Norton novels. I also loved Anne McCaffrey, Mary Stewart, and T. H. White. One author I have not been particularly fond of is Isaac Asimov.

Which is why it was so disconcerting to find him sitting at a table with me over drinks in a club in San Francisco. With his wife. Wearing name tags that said something like "Mr. Smith" or "Dogbert Dogbody" or something equally unlikely. They were incognito. Except that you can't be incognito if you are a well known science fiction author sitting at a table full of ex-nerds. We had such a lovely time talking about ordinary things. They were so pleasant and all of us wore the glow of a famous evening long before we dragged ourselves home.

I know I wrote about the evening shortly after it happened and if I were to sift through my old diaries I might find some good details there that I've since forgotten. But I'm not sure that those details matter. I sat at a table with Isaac Asimov shortly before his death and talked about ordinary things and was enchanted.

Not too long afterwards, my ex-boyfriend would find himself someone important to marry and we would cease to be "friends". He never did break my heart as he feared he would. I can never decide whether I prefer to remain indignant that he was so sure of his masculine charms or whether I should just be glad that some man out there thought of me as being delicate enough to be breakable, a rather novel experience for me.

It really doesn't matter now.

I ended up taking fencing myself and I suspect that if Michael ever knew it he would assume I did so in a fit of love for him.

I am a pacifist in my heart. Yet it cannot be denied that there is a beauty and an elegance to the art of fighting honorably: hand to hand. Fencing allows you to release the warrior in a safe and gorgeous manner. I am not so different from my son after all. I fight, I just expect to do it to the first pink, not to the death. A pacifist warrior. How many of us are there? Where do we fit in?

I am not grace. I seek it.

I wonder who Asimov's widow is voting for this year?

In this cyclical manner I keep thinking, dreaming, and remembering.

A whole lotta nothin'

This is a macro view of the fabric I used for one of the Valentine's Day aprons I posted a couple of posts ago. You couldn't see it in the other picture. I just love it. Even though it has not only hearts, but hearts tied together with bows, but not only are they tied with sweet little bows, they are surrounded by bows! Normally this is the kind of sweet thing that makes me want to impale myself with whatever mechanical pencils are at hand that the dog hasn't already chewed up and spit out. Yet, I'm here to tell you that I love this fabric. I would wear this fabric if it wouldn't make me look like a broad-backed sunburnt demon from the underworld of the broken hearted.

My order for "Smart Women" products came and I love them! I love the colors, the graphics, and the messages. We got coasters, glasses, mugs, paper napkins, magnets, and dish towels.

The store is slowly filling up.

I couldn't resist the lip gloss. They are discontinuing it which kind of breaks my heart, but I'm sure I'll get over it in time.

We got more books and stationery too. This is a book I wanted to order, but decided not to. I guess I just had to have it because I accidentally wrote its ISBN number on the order and got four of them. I think it's fabulous. Hopefully other people will too.

This is a Forest Whimsy Fairy Crown. Eventually I will have more of them in my shop. They are really amazing and reasonably priced at $20 each. Lucille makes them by hand. If you haven't already checked out her website you really should. (Her website is on the side bar.)

This is one of Philip's "Prayer Machines". No, it's not actually a device for literally praying through or anything like that. I mean, if God answers your call with this piece, it's all your own equipment taking the call. "Prayer Machines" is just the name of this particular series of his work. I know you're all desperate to buy this baby, but it's NFS. Because this one's mine. There are more in the store that are for sale. Maybe I'll post a few of those pieces soon. I just wanted to share one of my all time favorite pieces that Philip has done.

I love the drying and dried up red inks which are so stark against the white background.

I love the bone. This piece reminds me of the inexorable march that life makes towards death. It makes me think of buzzards in the desert picking bones dry and how in their own way they are beautiful creatures who serve a purpose, unlike mosquitoes. From the day we're born we are headed in the fifth direction. No amount of botox or surgery is going to postpone the inevitable. Maybe healthier living will buy you a little time. Maybe it won't. I like how death is not a racist, a xenophobe, or concerned about how old you are, how fat you are, how much you've loved or hated, how much you've taken or given. It comes to us all.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly looking forward to it. Sometimes it scares me. But I find comfort in accepting the inevitable. There is almost nothing else in life we can be one hundred percent sure of, except that we will eventually die. That's what is so attractive about suicide to people who feel hopeless. It's amazing to me what you can fit in between those two margins of absolute truths. If you accept the inevitability of death, then you can get on with the business of living with a much freer heart.

Today has been one of those useless days with a mounting sense of doom and frustration at not being able to get a single thing accomplished. Well, I got one single thing accomplished: I made my hotel reservation for Seattle. I leave the day after tomorrow. Today I was going to do laundry, cook food, organize my trade papers for registering with the trade show, and clean the house at least a little.

The dog's needs got in the way. We can't let her outside now except to go to the bathroom because our stupid animal fencing is flexible enough for her to worm her way under it. We have to section off part of the yard with sturdy Chick-proof fencing. I don't know how many of you out there have built your own fences before, but it takes time. We don't have time. Philip is vehemently against paying someone to do it. Because he knows we can do it ourselves. I'm all on board this whole idea of doing things for ourselves, yeah, I mean I like being self sufficient and all, but there are times when it is just stupid to expect yourself to accomplish something when you are already aching with the stress of trying to accomplish five hundred other things.

Today I thought I'd just grab the bull by the horns, just build a damn fence. Why? Because the dog won't stop whining to go outside, and four seconds after she's outside she's in the front yard headed for the street. It has become very stressful around here dealing with the dog. I'm not even going to go into it right now, but Philip and I don't speak the same language most of the time, and we don't operate the same way. I wanted to just whip something functional together, to fix our dog problem fast. Philip wants everything done perfectly the first time and has been known to spend weeks on drawings for a chicken coop which I ended up building without plans or sketches, just some tools and materials. He hates that.

Anyway, I ended up going to the shop because he was so stressed out about the fence being done unattractively. Jesus, this is exactly what we don't have time for. So I have relinquished the job to him. In the mean time, our kid is permanently fused to the joystick (are they still calling them that these days?) of the evil PlayStation and I'm sure some parents around here have their fingers on the dial to child protective services, no home cooked food has been made, no laundry has been done, and now it's the evening and I'm tired.

One nice thing is that Lisa, who came to borrow my canner today, got her elbows dirty with my living room and transformed it from a horrible pit of dirty boys clothes and adult socks and half chewed dog rawhide into a livable space that doesn't repel me. Thank you Lisa!

Since Philip must do this fence thing himself, I will be in the shop tomorrow too. So nothing will be cooked or cleaned or organized for my trip tomorrow either. Because Philip doesn't multi-task.

What I keep telling myself though, is that Friday morning I will get a ride into Portland to the train station with my friend Dominique, and I will be gone for three nights. That's three nights of no one pushing me to the edge of the bed and denying it ever happens. No worrying about how everything is working out. I will get a ton of walking done because I'm a little reluctant to take buses in a city I'm unfamiliar with, or to take taxis anywhere ever. (The taxi thing is a fear of not knowing the right protocol, how much to tip is a constant worry for me. Plus getting in a cab with someone creepy has actually happened to me.) I love walking everywhere around cities.

I will get to watch television until my eyes dry open forever. I will get to go to a trade show for two whole days. I will get to take my time checking the vendors out, hopefully placing some orders, and scoping out which reps I will hunt down contact when I am ready to find one to sell my wholesale goods. I will get to listen to my headphones, eat when I feel like it, and not know a soul in sight. I LOVE travelling by myself.

Some women claim that they can't enjoy leaving their family for a few days because they worry the whole time about how everything is going, worrying if the man is burning down the house, losing the children by the river in the middle of the night, worrying that they are all starving to death huddled by the radiator, and that they just love their kids so much they hate being away. While this is totally sweet of them to say, and I'm sure that many moms out there would be shaking their heads in total agreement with this sentiment if they happened to be reading my blog, I am not such a mom.

No one even needs to reassure me that it's OK for me to not ache with terrible pain when the shiny apple of my eye and I are apart. I feel completely fine about it. I feel like I spend almost everyday tending to the needs of my family, and I generally do it with love, satisfaction, and even enjoyment. I just don't get that whole womanly gig of being so selfless that she thinks she doesn't deserve time away, or so egocentric that she's convinced the whole family will fall apart without her, or so family oriented that it never occurs to her that if she went away for a brief alone spell she might recharge her driving light, have more to offer her children and husband, and that maybe, just maybe, she'll find that she still has it in her to listen to herself for once.

I don't go in for that whole thing. I will confess to missing my boys. But not until I have tucked myself into my hotel room and I wish I was snuggled up to my squirmy delicious little boy. The feeling passes pretty quickly as I enjoy watching trashy television which I only get to do when I travel since we don't have cable of any kind (and get no stations without it). I enjoy the quiet in my head. I enjoy not being at the beck and call of others. I like the stillness. It makes me feel like a new woman. You won't find me feeling guilty about it either because enjoying being away from your children or spouse is not a measure of how much less you love them than you should, it's a measure of how much you retain autonomy of spirit. I am a mom, a wife, a dog owner, a poultry raiser, a cook, a storekeeper, a crafts person, a cleaner, a writer, a seamstress, and a gardener.

But before all of that, before everything else that I am; I am a woman.

If you really need a soundtrack to this touching moment, may I suggest Helen Reddy with "I am WOMAN, hear me roar"? (But the one I hear in my head is "That's Alright" by Fleetwood Mac.)

Needing space, demanding space, or brief spells alone is a measure of how strong you are as a woman. How capable you are of making sure there are pockets in your life devoted to cleaning out your own heart, your brain, and taking yourself. You put your own oxygen mask on first, then you help your family. Without oxygen, you will die, and if you die then you have nothing to give anyone. Wow, I'm back to the macabre again. How do I do it?

So, while I am abundantly stressed out right now (getting calmer by the minute, but still harboring some negative thoughts about the way this day has turned out), I am thinking about the break I am about to have. It's a terrible time for me to take a trip, but for some reason they just don't plan these trade shows around my convenience. There's nothing I can do about the timing. I've had to call in some pretty heavy favors from my friend Lisa and Dominique to do this trip and keep the store open. (We cannot afford any kind of day care). I really need to do this trip for the sake of the store, and the perk is that I will be able to rest my nerves.

The other thing I keep trying to remind myself is that no matter how urgent anything seems to me right now, that enormous list of things I have still only barely made a dent in, the dog problem, the challenge of arranging a trip, all of that....in the big scope of life, these are very small issues. If we don't take every step we need to take to make the store successful, because there just isn't enough time or money, then what? What's the worst? We start over. If we're lucky enough to live a long life, all of this will seem so small when we're old. If we don't live a long life, then why on earth should we spend every day tangled in a giant web of stress?

So hopefully I will let go of all the stress and secretly hope that all these people who believe in miracles are right and that laundry really can do itself.