Smells Like Happy

Seven Things

You know what happens when you're away for a long time? Either you return with a lot to say, or you return with nothing to say. And yet again I flout convention by having a lot to say about nothing.

1. I've been busy reading. Thanks a million to everyone for your book suggestions. I haven't read any of your books yet but I now have a few in my possession. I took CrystalMK's suggestion and picked up Outlander; I also took Librarian Girl's suggestion and bought The Well and the Mine. Some I had already read (loved The Awakening, Katie), and I'll come back to the other suggestions eventually.

2. Oh, wait. I was about to tell you what I've been reading. A couple of weeks ago, I finished one of the best books I've read this year: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. You know how sometimes you just can't say anything about a book because your adjectives will somehow cheapen its beauty? Right-o. Anyway, I'm now reading The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. I'm not emotionally involved with it yet, but he's always a showstopper, that Chabon. Every few pages, my eyes screech to a halt and backtrack a few lines to savor a particularly good sentence.

3. I have something else to say about books. I love the smell of a new book, the feel of smooth, unread pages. And when I'm done reading them, I love the sight of books on my shelves, each one full of adopted memories. But mostly I buy books new because it is very hard to write a book, and I want authors to get a few well-deserved pennies from my purchases.

4. I went to Tim Russert's wake today. What you didn't see on the television was the man with his guitar, sitting just to the side of the casket. And if I could pretend that the whole thing was mundane before I stepped into the refectory -- photographers and reporters everywhere, policemen directing traffic, heels killing my feet -- when I stepped inside it was all stripped away by the softness of the guitar. It was terribly, terribly sad. For a small time, I had no introversion, only a longing for human company. I had no individuality, only a desire for the commonality of human experience. All of us perfect strangers, linked together by another perfect stranger. But somehow it works. Nevertheless, I resisted giving in to the experience entirely -- I would have felt so foolish greeting his wife and son with tears on my face while they flashed smiles and made pleasant, kind conversation so gracefully. And that is the origin of this hole in my lip, the creation of which is the only thing that enabled me to shake their hands and say, "thank you for doing this," like a normal, dry-faced stranger. Russert went to the bat for the public every day, and his family was incredibly gracious to give the public a chance to say thanks when so much private grieving awaits them.

5. So Obama got the nomination. And now that I say that here, I realize how incongruous this blog is with my everyday life, with how I spend my time and where I direct my thoughts. I'm a total political junkie, but I haven't really cultivated on my blog the kind of audience that will be interested in reading about that. Unfortunately, very few people in my life are as interested in politics as I am, and that's maybe not a good thing. I have only one friend who absorbs -- for better or for worse -- as much political news as I do. And that is why we send each other 30 emails a day, some of which are one-word exclamations of "YESSSS!!!!" and "NOOOOOO!" and require no further explanation. The election process this spring has been taking up a lot of my attention, and maybe that's why I haven't been blogging. I've had much to say, but to whom shall I say it? Other than the TV, I mean. And other than my cab drivers, I mean.

6. I am doing a lot of work, so much work, and some of it is even for me. Some of it is for a dear friend. More and more of it is for pure enjoyment. And while the economy is in the crapper and Midwestern rivers are swelling to Biblical proportions, I feel quite lucky indeed to be doing work that I love in a clean, well-lighted office. An office that has a stuffed money hanging from the doorknob. Stop hatin'.

7. What is your summer going to be about? I toyed with the idea of my summer being about gratitude, but that feels too accepting. Too content. Then I considered making my summer all about STRAWBERRIES!, but I can never eat them all before they start growing hairy. Which means I would totally fail at my summer on, like, day three. That's why "integration" is my watchword. My summer is going to be about better integration of my daily life with my goals and my values. I think the Oprah-esque way to describe this concept is "authentic," but Oprah isn't my style. "Integration" has a geeky, wonky edge that I can jive with. So what's your watchword? Anybody going with "bacon" this summer?

That's Democrazy, Yo.

So here we are. April 15. Have you paid your taxes? Oh, GOOD. Because now the country can pay for a bunch of stuff, like infrastructure and social services. And even though you probably don't feel like you authorized those expenditures, you sort of did. You elected the people who authorized them. And in our representative government, that's the way it works. Yay democracy!

Except here. In Washington, D.C., the city that perhaps represents better than any other city all that this nation stands for, we have no representative government. And BOY, did I pay some taxes, yo. Yay democracy!

Oh. Wait.

We have no senators. We have no voting congressional representatives at all. We have Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is allowed to sit at the table with the big kids and raise her hand when she has something polite to say. But when it comes to voting and actually, you know, mattering, she has to keep her hands firmly in her lap.

Did you know this? You probably did, even if you didn't realize it. That's what happened to me when we were considering moving here. "One hundred senators, two for each state, but D.C. isn't a state, so... oh. OH."

If you care, you can read a little more about it here. And if it really gets your undies in a bundle and you happen to live in one of the states whose senators are using all kinds of funny filibustering hijinks (silly boys!) to block legislation that would give li'l D.C. voting representation, you can maybe call those senators. Tell them to quit playing games or you'll go to the press with proof of their, uh, mafia ties? Indecent liaisons with high-priced hookers? Undocumented lawn care specialists? Indecent liaisons with low-priced hookers? Third nipple? Just keep shouting them out until you hit a nerve.

(No. Don't do that. That's blackmail! Blackmail is not nice. But effective. But not nice! Try threatening to TP their houses with that super-cheap, one-ply crap from Costco the night before a good rain. NOT SO FUNNY NOW, IS IT, SENATOR.)

Who Are These People?

I know I'm not the only one receiving a flood of spam allegedly from Russian girls who want to have my baby.

"I Think that there has come time when each person in this world reflects to create happy family for a birth in the future of remarkable children which will be surrounded with caress and care of parents."

It goes on, and it's signed "Russian girl IRINA." The suspicious JPEG pinned neatly to the top of the email suggests that IRINA wants to show me her ample bosoms and maybe eyeliner application skills. But I know that she, who probably isn't even a she, really just wants to hijack my computer. The goal is probably to slow things down and cause me mild inconvenience until I do a system restore.

If you're trying to bring down the financial institutions of the Western world or steal my credit card number, I see how that can be accomplished with nefarious programming. I get it. You're really into jihad, or you really want a new big-screen TV. But who spends days programming viruses that mildly inconvenience a few people?

I've been saying that a lot lately, in various situations: Who are these people?

My parents visited this past weekend, fluffy white dogs in tow. And during our visit to Mount Vernon, some woman beckoned a security officer and told him that one of our dogs had pooed on the presidential lawn and that we had not cleaned up. The dog had not pooed anywhere. At all. And I had to fight the urge to track down this lying woman and command both dogs to poo on her face. I successfully fought the urge, because I am not one of those people. But she, apparently, is.

Who makes up shit about dog shit?

Last week, we watched the 4.5-hour mindfuck that is "Bush's War," a PBS documentary about the run-up to and execution of the Iraq War. The documentary is brilliant and shocking and deeply reported; it's the facts that pour into your ears and mix into a combustible solution of lies and then explode your head into a billion pieces all over the living room couch. I'm one of those annoying People Who Do Not Allow Talking during certain programs, but again, I couldn't stop asking The Mouse: Who are these people? These people who run our government and hijack our government and send boys to die in a hot, dry, sandy hell for the privilege of escorting a private contractor's load of supplies?

"Nightmare at Guantanamo Bay" on 60 Minutes pushed me past my limit.

I know that a lot of people have outrage overload, which is why we don't act all that outraged. Once you hit overload, you acclimate. If the madness of the world won't go away, your brain has to somehow make that madness normal. And normal isn't so bad, right? It's just the way things are.

But when a little computer programming mischief makes me question human nature, I think that's a sign that I've gone beyond outrage overload. I've reached outrage fatigue.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to an acquaintance about how The Mouse and I eloped. She asked why, I glossed over the religion thing, and she pressed for more. I groaned inwardly, because -- although I don't know her well -- I know that she is an avid church goer.

"Why wouldn't you get baptized?"

"Because I don't believe in it."

"Well, what are you?"

"Atheist."

"Oh...... Really?"

She spent the next few minutes attempting to uncover the rotten root of my godlessness somewhere deep in my past. I spent the next few minutes doing everything I could to tiptoe around the issue. I do not debate the merits and demerits of religion with strangers, rarely even with people I know. It's a one-way street to a flooded cul-de-sac. But the result this time was that I tiptoed too lightly, was overly deferential, and she interpreted my views as things that I resent, things that hold me back, things that make me sad. She looked at me sorrowfully, as one might look at a heartbroken child, and told me that her god would give me blessings.

I despise feeling misunderstood, but I let it go. It wasn't her fault.

Today, I was telling a good friend that I sometimes feel that transcendent happiness may be more accessible to people like that acquaintance -- people who believe in a god or a divine purpose or an afterlife. I do not want blind faith, I find it dangerous and counterintuitive. But I do admit that blind faith in some omniscient, omnipotent divine being might be quite handy in the battle against outrage. Why be outraged if everything has a purpose that we can't know?

That's overly simplified, of course. Most of my religious friends will say they are also outraged at the world because they believe in free will, and the world is full of assholes who exercise free will in a most despicable manner.

Which puts us all, once again, in the same pitching boat. A boat that has been commandeered by a gang of people we don't know, don't recognize. Who are these people?

I give my time and my money to causes I believe in. But even those efforts can feel hollow. And I don't know what to do about that. Sometimes I long to see outrage on the faces of others. I ache to hear it in their voices and feel it in their words. There's nothing so unifying or comforting among humans as a shared extreme emotion.

So if you want to come over, we can take the elevator to the roof. We can scream angry, improvised poetry through the night air. We'll be able to see the White House and the Capitol Building and the monuments to the people who died for purposes both right and wrong, but our words will likely reach only the next block where the same homeless man sleeps on the same park bench every night. We can scream at them, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE, WHO ARE YOU, and no one will answer. We won't have changed anything, least of all the propensity for bored, pimply-faced teenaged boys to write silly email viruses. People will still lie about dog shit and weapons of mass destruction, and then volunteer the idealists to take the bullet. In the shadowy corners of our government, people will still be tortured and denied due process and sometimes killed.

But maybe we will feel better for having screamed side by side. For having defied the isolation that comes from watching 30-second clips of enraging news stories that are bookended by commercials for cars and bacon burgers and shampoo. For having connected in an honest, feeling way that seems increasingly infrequent but is as important as ever.

I don't know about you, but I really need that.

Tenuous Lifeline

I returned to the States to this news on Saturday night. The article from The Independent says that 38,000 people have signed the petition to urge the UK Foreign Office to pressure the Afghan government to prevent the execution of the Afghan journalism student who was sentenced to death for downloading and distributing material on women's rights (which an Islamic court deemed blasphemous). A more recent number is in the box to the right of the article: 48,000.

If you added your name, thanks. If you haven't, please do. Thanks to international pressure for justice -- of which this petition was a part -- Pervez Kambaksh now has the opportunity to appeal his case. But that doesn't mean the appeal will necessarily result in a sentence commutation or pardon, or that he or his family are safe.

Keep the pressure on. With the assassination of Bhutto and the resurgence of the Taliban, Central Asia is an increasingly unstable region. It would be a tragedy for this case to be lost among the chaos.

Barrels of Fun. Teeny, Tiny Barrels.

I was dreading Christmas. It was going to be strange and sad. I imagined us all gathered around the living room distractedly conversing about anything other than the thing that we were all thinking about.

Instead, it was the most comforting environment I've been in since the night of my sister-in-law's memorial service. There was certainly sadness; it wasn't easy to watch my youngest nephew light the candle in memorial of his mother. And we were all thinking about it, no doubt. But Christmas in our house is all about kids, and kids are full of contagious resilience. Some of the little cousins who had been shaken by my sister-in-law's death -- how shocking it must have seemed to them that mothers can die -- were exhibiting all the signs of normalcy. Shouting, tackling, making younger siblings cry by threatening to punch Santa's big white face as soon as it appeared in the fireplace. Their raucousness and their jubilation was enough to remind me that life stops for no tragedy. Sometimes, that seems unfair. That night, it was awesome.

Christmas at home gave me a bit of closure on the early part of the grieving process. The anger and the loneliness have begun to subside since then, and the episodes of numbness are fewer and further between. The sadness is still sharp at times, and I often find myself tangled in the morbid thoughts of a person who has forgotten how to be carefree.

Do I have his laugh on videotape?

How many mornings do we have together?

What if... stop it.

Barrels of fun, I am!

Before leaving town for the Christmas holiday, I had jumped at the chance to spend New Year's Eve at the embassy of a lovely country. I am not the New Year's Eve type, you should know. In the last several years, the closest we have come to doing anything for New Year's Eve was going to a movie -- for which we purchased tickets that went unused at the last minute because I could not stop crying over my recently deceased cat.

Barrels, I tell you. Barrels.

But this year, when someone dangled formal wear and wine and opera and chocolate and a string quartet in front of my eyes, I pounced. For about 30 minutes -- just long enough to get the tickets and make the commitment -- I was certain that an evening of extravagant distraction was exactly what I needed. Now that I've come down with a cold and leveled off from my manic depressive emotional funfest, I'm not so sure.

But we're going, god damn it, because it's paid for. And because my sister-in-law would feel unbearably guilty if everybody were to sit at home and mope.

Because I think she would have enjoyed such an evening.

Because I want to make happy memories with my husband.

Because I cut off my hair and I need someplace to wear my new 'do.

Because life is for living. And if putting on a fancy dress and going somewhere on the arm of a super-hot man isn't living, then I don't know what is.

(Besides, people, there will be a giant table of international chocolates. Do you know the difference between Argentinean chocolate and Australian chocolate? NEITHER DO I. But I am going to find out.)

How you're doing

For a week or so after you return, you're grateful that you work from home. That's the only way you could fly back at a moment's notice, on a one-way ticket, and spend three weeks in the warm nest of your family. It's the only way you could come back home when it's all over and spend a week choosing pajama pants over jeans, scruffy ponytails over a hairbrush, sitting behind closed curtains. Remaining exempt from the awkwardly doled-out sympathy of colleagues and from your own awkward reactions to the people who offer none.

Eventually, though, you realize that this "working from home" thing is morphing into a "sitting at home" thing, and it's neither therapeutic nor enjoyable. And this is the point at which things get really complicated because you will find, to your great dismay, that you have neither the energy nor the desire to do anything different.

And that? Well, that pisses you off. Because the numbness is gone and now you are angry. Oh, you are angry. You can't really place the cause of your anger, because -- although it seems to stem from the source of your sadness -- it can be set off by something as disconnected as the way your husband is chewing his gum. (And believe me, your husband wishes I were joking. He told me so.)

What's the deal? It's not like you didn't know that life can end so goddamned miserably, so goddamned early -- don't you read the news? haven't you read Hemingway?? But it's one thing to know that life can end miserably and early, and it's another thing entirely to experience that fact. To participate in it. To provide the "comfort measures" that say, Yes, death, you win. You win and we concede. We'll stand out of the way. Now would you just take it easy, for christ's sake?

You feel an indescribable hatred of cynicism because it seems so safe. If somebody is a cynical asshole, he obviously doesn't remotely understand what you and your family just went through, surely has never gone through hospice, and feeling misunderstood makes you angry. But cynicism, like anger, is a perfectly legitimate response to the grimmer facts of life. So maybe you're just a little jealous, maybe you'd sometimes like to be the kind of person who could say, "Oh my god, you mean to tell me that people DIE? NO SHIT?" and then go about your day. Your angry self thinks that must be a decent enough armor.

You get so tired from being angry -- which is different from getting tired of being angry -- that your muscles finally have no choice but to release their tension.

You sleep until 11 a.m.

For a while, you want nothing more than to be back there, in the middle of that lost city of meaning. Because when someone is going to die imminently

we give her a day or two

likely tomorrow

has to be tomorrow

well, she keeps surprising us, but surely today or tomorrow

hours

every minute is filled with meaning. When you spend those minutes counting short, sparse breaths, wondering whether each will be the last

how many respirations?

ten

eight

ten

oh my god six

every second is filled with purpose.

Far too much purpose.

And it's the kind of purpose that starkly contrasts with the normal purpose that awaits you in normal life. The purpose that says you must floss your teeth to avoid cavities and buy food at the grocery store to feed yourself when you are hungry. The purpose that says you should leave the house because that's what healthy people do.

It's true -- healthy people leave the house pretty much every day, you know. Why, look our your window! Don't you see those healthy people down there? That one is walking home from the train. He works in an office, and he got a truly awful Secret Santa gift today. That one in the sparkly coat is going out to dinner with her friends, and she's carrying a new bag. She got a great deal on that bag, and she totally loves it. That lady walking her dog -- all those people down there are living, because living is what living people are supposed to do.

And suddenly, it all makes sense! You need a new bag. You need dinner with friends. And you wouldn't want to go back to that nightmare, are you crazy? In fact, you want to board a plane right now, alone, and fly to... Santa Fe. Nobody knows you in Santa Fe, right? Nobody is going to screw up their face into a pitiful frown and say, how you feelin' today, huh? You OK? They won't say anything to remind you of November or take you back to that epicenter of hurt in Illinois because they won't even know that it exists! They will only smile at you, take your order, give you directions, tell you that's a nice bag. And you will grin and say thanks, I totally got the best deal on it.

But it's Christmas. And that means there's no avoiding, no pretending, no forgetting. It means Family Minus One. And in a lot ways, it's going to suck.

But in another way, maybe it's just what you need. Just what you all need. You're all different now, and when you're together, you don't have to explain that you're different or how you're different. You just... are. And until you can properly balance life's tedium with its meaning -- which will happen, it just takes time, you're completely normal, blah blah blah -- the less you have to explain, the better.

Besides, no one moment accurately defines the sum of how you're doing. Not even this post, which you're writing in a fog. Just last week, you went to Petsmart and held the littlest, warmest kitten in your hands for 20 minutes as she dozed and purred on your arm, her eyes squinted into tiny, contended slits -- could barely hand her back after that -- and you felt happy, calm. Relieved. This morning you did a little yoga and when you moved into that stretch -- that one stretch, whatever it's called -- you were consumed by how alive and lucky and aware your body felt. In a few minutes, you're going to turn on the TV and fire up some dinner, maybe a noodle dish with peanut sauce. Your husband will be home shortly, and you might sit on the couch with him, read your book. Maybe you won't even yell at the poor guy for no good reason.

And right now, that sounds... nice. For tonight, that sounds like a modest return to living.

Loss

After a nearly two-year battle with cancer, my sister-in-law died on Friday.

The last three weeks in particular have been a disorienting blur for everyone in my family. We are a small clan; when something like this happens, it leaves a sizeable black hole in our familial universe. We had the forewarning that many people don't -- two precious weeks to talk and laugh and cry and say goodbye. But when death comes speeding at you head-on like a runaway truck, no amount of preparation will cushion its impact. We have been existing in one long moment of impending death, the death of someone too young to die. And my heartache -- no matter how big and sharp and real it is -- can be nothing compared to the heartache of her children, who are far too young to face such a loss.

This story is only partly mine. It belongs mostly to the people whose lives it will affect the most. So after I thank you profoundly for all of the kind emails and comments you have sent me, I will ask that you direct some more warm thoughts to my beautiful niece and her siblings. Their courage astounds me.

Pause

I won't be posting around here for a while due to a family emergency. Sorry to be so vague; I'll share more later.

Unfortunately, I don't know when "later" will be. It could be a day or a week or a month. If you want me to send you an email notification when I return, send an email to smellslikehappy at gmail dot com with the word "notify" in the subject line. I promise to let you know.

Suck it, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences

When Kathy Griffin accepted her Emmy award on Saturday, she said this:

"A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. Suck it, Jesus! This award is my god now."

And yesterday, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced that Griffin's remarks would be cut from the pre-recorded broadcast of the show.

And do you know why? Because, in an unprecedented (and surely unintentional) display of irony that comedians such as Griffin surely must appreciate, the misnamed Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights demanded it.

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights demanded that Griffin be censored for her remarks about Jesus.

And I am way beyond fired up about it.

Kathy Griffin is a comedian. And comedians, lest the ATAS which rewards them does not realize, make money for themselves and for television networks and for Emmy awards shows by saying provocative things in ways they deem to be humorous. And humor is subjective. I don't think Kathy Griffin is particularly funny; I find her rather grating. But she is an American born with the right to say whatever she wants about Jesus or Mohammed or Allah or you or me. (Of course, she could arguably be convicted of slandering or libeling you or me if she said just the right thing, but I'm pretty sure Jesus won't be filing a libel claim against Griffin anytime soon. Anyway, in this case, he'd lose.)

The Catholic League has classified Griffin's remarks as "hate speech," which is terribly amusing. What if Kelly Clarkson, upon winning her next award, says, "A lot of people come up here and thank Clive Davis for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Clive Davis. Suck it, Clive Davis! This award is my record producer now"?

Either the Catholic League does not employ lawyers, or the lawyers it employs slept in on the one precious morning their schools taught the First Amendment. Sure, they have a right to try to censor Griffin, just as I have a right to go to small claims court and try to file a suit against you for looking at me cross-eyed.

As a rational, thinking human being, I fervently believe that nothing -- nothing -- should be forcefully exempted from scrutiny. If you choose not to scrutinize the Bible and its many stories, great! Super! You can go to church every Sunday. You can walk around all day expounding your beliefs. You can even install yourself on a corner of your local park, dress yourself in pro-Jesus sandwich boards, and shout that I and my kind will feel the flames of hell lick at our flesh for all eternity if we don't repent and accept Jesus into our cold, withering hearts. But you cannot -- you absolutely cannot, even if you are a lobbying group with millions of dollars and politically powerful clergy behind you -- force another person to cease scrutinizing religion in the most private of inner thoughts or the most public of television acceptance speeches.

You might say, "sure she thinks that -- she's an atheist." And you'd be partly right. I am an atheist, and I am painfully aware of the fact that vocal atheists have precious few kindred spirits in the world of pop culture, the most visible of which -- hi, Lisa Simpson! -- is a cartoon character. I am painfully aware of the fact that I belong to the most feared, distrusted, hated and misunderstood group of people in America today. I am painfully aware that I would never stand a chance as a political candidate.

But this isn't about me or atheism. It's about all of us. And regardless of your personal beliefs, you should share in every ounce of my outrage that our culture abandons scrutiny to kneel at the foot of powerful politicoreligious organizations. Because the political bed you rest in today might feel just right -- not too hard, not too soft. But Goldilocks, you'd be foolish to assume that the bears won't eventually come home.

Oh, Veronica.

Forget Jordin. Forget Blake. I don't care who wins; one has a tremendous voice but is too young to make a truly original and wise record, while the other has merely a decent voice but could probably make a sufficiently original track that I might consider purchasing for $0.99. Forget the whole American Idol hoopla. My TV viewing time tonight will be consumed by what will likely be the last new Veronica Mars episodes to ever air.

Oh, Veronica!

To all of you people who have heard me (and the critics!) rave about this series for the last three years, I'm pretty sure this is your fault. You didn't truly listen to me about how smart and witty and dark and funny and darkly funny this show is. You didn't pay any attention when I told you about the constant tension between Veronica and Logan and the explosion of total TV love drama when their lips first met! The race and class issues! The mysteries and snarky banter! The revelation of who killed Lilly! (Oh, Lilly.) Of who caused the bus crash!

You didn't listen. While I gathered myself and my blanket and my ice cream in front of the television set every Tuesday night to slip into this deliciously noir world, you were doing something as useless and selfish as volunteering at the shelter or eating dinner with your parents or working at your job. Frankly, you disgust me. And that is why I may have to dislike you from now on.

We had a good run, you and I. Not as good as Veronica and Logan's run, perhaps. But it's because of you that I will tonight be watching a program that was likely filmed as a season finale, not a series finale. And when Logan and Veronica are going their separate ways with very new and questionably stable relationships, how will I ever find real, true closure? What will happen to Veronica at the FBI? Is Weevil going to get his life together and realize his potential? I just don't know, and that's because you couldn't find the time to watch BRILLIANCE.

Pathetic.

And so tonight, as the credits roll and my heart sinks to my stomach to soak in its acidic bitterness, I will hold you responsible for my misery.

Of course, there may be something you can do to begin to make it up to me.

• Go rent season 1.
• Watch it.
• Tell me I was right.

I can't guarantee that this course of action will mend things between us. But it's a step in the right direction.