Erin asked me to put the following article on her page:

A HOMAGE TO AGE AND FEMININITY
by ANNE LAMOTT (from O magazine)

I was at a wedding Saturday with a lot of women in their 20s and 30s in
sexy dresses, their youthful skin aglow. And even though I was 30 or 40
years older, a little worse for wear, a little tired and overwhelmed by the
loud music, I was smiling. I smiled with a secret Cheshire-cat smile of
pleasure and relief in being older. I would not give you back a year of
life lived.

Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life - it gave me me.
It provided the time and experience and failures and triumphs and friends
who helped me step into the shape that had been waiting for me all my life.

I fit into me now - mostly. I have an organic life finally, not the one
people imagined for me or tried to get me to have or the life someone else
might celebrate as a successful one - I have the life I dreamed of. I have
become the woman I hardly dared imagine I could be.

There are parts I don't love - until a few years ago, I had no idea that
you could get cellulite on your stomach - but I not only get along with me
most of the time now, I am militantly and maternally on my own side.

Left to my own devices, would I trade this for firm thighs, fewer
wrinkles, a better memory? On some days. That's why it's such a blessing
I'm not left to my own devices. Because the truth is I have amazing friends
to whom I can turn. I have a cool kid, a sweet boyfriend, darling pets.
I've learned to pay attention to life, and to listen.

I'd give up all this for a flatter belly? Are you crazy?

I still have terrible moments when I despair about my body. But they are
just moments - I used to have years when I believed I would be more
beautiful if I jiggled less; if all parts of my body stopped moving when I
did. But I believe two things now that I didn't at 30. When we get to
heaven, we will discover that the appearance of our butts and skin was
127th on the list of what mattered on this earth.

And I know the truth that l am not going to live forever, and this has set
me free. Eleven years ago, when my friend Pammy was dying at the age of 37
we went shopping at Macy's. She was in a wheelchair, with a wig and three
weeks to live. I tried on a short dress and came out to model it for Pammy.
I asked if she thought it made me look big in the thighs, and she said, So
kindly, "Annie? You just don't have that kind of time." I live by this story.

I am thrilled-ish for every gray hair and achy muscle, because of all the
friends who didn't make it, who died too young of AIDS and breast cancer.
And much of the stuff I used to worry about has subsided -what other people
think of me and how l am living my life. I give these things the big shrug.
Mostly. Or at least eventually. It's a huge relief.

I became more successful in my mid-40s, but this pales compared to the
other gifts of this decade - how kind to myself I have become, what a
wonderful, tender wife I am to myself, what a loving companion. I get
myself tubs of hot salty water at the end of the day in which to soak my
tired feet. I run interference for myself when I am working, like the wife
of a great artist would: "No, I'm sorry, she can't come. She's working hard
these days and needs a lot of downtime." I live by the truth that "No" is a
complete sentence.

I rest as a spiritual act.

I have grown up enough to develop radical acceptance. I insist on the
right to swim in warm water at every opportunity, no matter how cold, no
matter how young and gorgeous the other people on the beach are. I don't
think that if I live to be 80 I'll wish I'd spent more hours in the gym or
kept my house a lot cleaner. I think I'm going to wish I had swum more
unashamedly, made more mistakes, spaced out more, rested. On the day I die,
I want to have had dessert. So this informs how l live now.

I have survived so much loss, as all of us have by now - my parents,
dear friends, my pets. Rubble is the ground on which our deepest
friendships are built. If you haven't already, you will lose someone you
can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken; and the bad news is
that you never completely get over the loss of a beloved person.

But this is also the good news. They live forever, in your broken heart
that doesn't seal back up. And you come through. It's like having a leg
that never heals perfectly - that still hurts when the weather is cold - but
you learn to dance with the limp. You dance to the absurdities of life;
you dance to the minuet of old friendships. I danced alone for a couple of
years, and came to believe I might not ever have a passionate romantic
relationship - might end up alone! I'd been so terrified of this my whole
life. But I'd rather never be in a couple or never get laid again than to be
in a toxic relationship. I spent a few years celibate. It was lovely, and
it was sometimes lonely. I had surrendered; I'd run out of bullets.

But I learned to be the person I wished I'd meet - at which point I found
a kind, artistic, handsome man. We have been together 20 months now. When
we get out of bed, we hold our lower backs, like Walter Brennan, and we smile.

Younger women worry that their memories will begin to go. And you know
what? They will. Menopause has not increased my focus and retention as much
I as I'd been hoping. But a lot is better off missed. A lot is better not
gotten around to. I know many of the women at the wedding fear getting
older, and I wish I could gather them together again and give them my word
of honor that every one of my friends loves being older, loves being in her
50s, 60s, 70s. My Aunt Gertrude is 85 and leaves us behind in the dust when
we hike.

Look, my feet hurt some mornings, and my body is less forgiving when I
exercise more than I'm used to. But I love my life more, and me more. I'm
so much juicier. And, like that old saying goes, it's not that I think less
of myself, but that I think of myself less often. And that feels like
heaven to me.

 

 

 

GIVE THIS November 10, 2003

“A homeless person gave me a dollar.”

She said it matter-of-factly, true to standard Melissa form, sitting there on her Mission District stoop, smoking a cigarette. I’d dropped by tonight to catch up with my friend over a glass of wine, after a sorely needed massage and chiropractic adjustment combo.

“I don’t know what to do with it; obviously I can’t spend it. I tried not to take it, but she insisted. I haven’t seen her again to give it back.”

She gazed off toward the residence hotel next door and inhaled her smoke.

“I have a dish full of stuff people give me that I don’t know what to do with. A shell pin. A rock. There was one kid who gave me all his glass. You know,” — here she gestured with her non-cigarette hand, sort of the international symbol for money — “Sea glass. I mean, a lot of sea glass. I don’t know what to do with it.” She took another drag.

She waved her cigarette hand, as if waving off all offers of all future stuff, dismissing it all out of hand. “I don’t need it.”

Then she went inside and came right back out, and handed me this, a little almost-3”x5” piece of paper. Folded, ripped against a straight-edge out of a photocopied sheet. In somebody’s tiny printed hand, it reads:

GIVE THIS
To someone. Tell them what
You think of it. Tell them
what kind of person you think
wrote it. Notice the way they
stand while they listen to you.
What are their hands doing?
Tell them what you would
change about the world if
you could. Tell them why you
can’t. Tell them that they
can. Kiss, pat, hug or smack
them. Tell them to start
at the top and send them
on their way.
-AD.

“Somebody gave this to me.”

“What do you think of it?” I asked. I wanted this to go as planned.

“I don’t know.” Puff. She doesn’t seem affected by this, neither by what she was given nor her lack of response to it.

“What kind of person do you think wrote it?” I looked again at the note, following the script.

She changed the subject, distracted by her neighbor, the crank junkie who screams at her boyfriend all night, between bouts of vomiting.

I wondered, if she told me who she thinks wrote the gift note, how I might be standing, and what my hands would be doing. I wondered what she would change about the world if she could.

I wondered what I would change.

* * *

Today my mom told me about a party she went to on Saturday night. She told me she was talking to someone she used to be friends with and they had a nice conversation about alternative housing, and how she was so passionately interested in it, from humanitarian and environmental perspectives. She told me how sad it is that it’s so hard for a young couple to buy a house AND raise a family these days, and how she had all kinds of ideas about how to make it better, but didn’t know how to get those ideas off the ground. I did not know this about my mom.

Today I told my mom about my experience over the weekend at the Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk. I told her how I’d talked with an 86-year-old woman who had flown out from Philadelphia to visit her daughter, who told her that there was a fundraising walk to benefit breast cancer research, and because this 86-year-old woman was a breast cancer survivor, of course she wanted to do the walk. So this 86-year-old woman had just flown in from Philadelphia, and she and her fiftysomething-year-old daughter decided to walk 60 miles for three days, in the name of a cure, just like that. I told my mom how impressed I was with the porta-potties at this event.

Then my mom drove me into the city, but got in a closed lane at the toll bridge and had to merge into another lane. The nice people in the car next to us let us in without a hassle, and my mom paid their toll. Out of the ten-dollar bill I handed her for bridge toll. So, after the nice people in that car crossed the toll plaza behind us, they smiled and waved and mouthed “thank you” as they passed us. And we felt like the world got a little cozier.

* * *

So I walked the Breast Cancer 3-Day last weekend. Sixty miles over three days. Raised upwards of four thousand dollars for the cause. I saw a lot of stuff to prove to me that this human race ain’t all bad. And I saw a lot of stuff that just amused me. I’m not sure those two things are so different.

Big motorcycle people dressed in silly costumes and waited at busy intersections for walkers to arrive, so they could stop traffic and escort us across the street, we with our little day-packs and water bottles following like ducklings to safety.

Themed pit stops every two or three miles offered porta-potties, snacks, water and Gatorade refills. Pit Stop #4 had a Las Vegas theme, where showgirls greeted walkers and the signs on porta-potty doors bore the names of different casinos. The lids of the toilets inside each had pictures of Elvis.

Tables bearing boxes filled with single-serving packets of antiseptic wipes waited outside rows of porta-potties.

San Jose Bicycle Policemen (and one Policewoman) accompanied walkers along the entire route, just because the walkers are (apparently) motivated by visions of rock-hard glutes and calves.

Volunteers called “Tent Angels” helped pitch tents the first night of camp, when it was pouring down rain. When the rain had stopped and the Tent Angels moved onto other duties, newly-tented walkers offered to help pitch the tents of those who’d just arrived at camp.

Hundreds of people stood shivering under an overhang outside classrooms at the Daly City school at the end of Day Two’s route, in the pouring-down rain, waiting more than two hours for the buses that would take us to our indoor camp for the night. Volunteers distributed mylar “blankets” to keep our body heat from escaping. When the mylar ran out, those that had been waiting under cover offered up their blankets to those who were still hobbling into the finish line, drenched.

An unmanned ice chest in front of a house on Portola, before we dropped into the Castro, sat at the sidewalk, open, filled with different flavors of VitaminWater™ and a Magic Markered sign reading, “Please Take One.”

Hundreds of people who had already completed the sixty miles stood for hours while the rest trickled in, cheering and applauding and looking each one in the eye as she arrived, extending a hand for a high-five or arms for a big hug, shouting, “Great job!” and “Congratulations!” or just “WOO HOO!!!”

Walking sixty miles in itself isn’t particularly difficult. Walking in, and waiting in the rain doesn’t even amount to a life-threatening or even a death-defying situation; it doesn’t call for superhuman strength. Sure, I shared my toothpaste with my neighbor at the porta-sinks at camp and I gave up my mylar blanket, and neither of those things removed skin from my nose.

Each of these things individually are small, maybe even odd things. These things whose photos I’ve taken will be the reminders of and the punchlines to the stories I’ll tell of this experience. They are the kinds of random human interest items news programs tack onto the end of the hour, after all the horrific goings-on across the globe are reported, before they sign off for the night and leave you to fall asleep... Perhaps if they end with one last heartwarming notable, you’ll sleep easier than if they hadn’t.

In sum, these things add up to 1,405 walkers, 315 crew members, goodness-knows-how-many volunteers, four million dollars, sixty miles, and three days of all-positive attitude, energy and effort. Even with rain.

I don’t have breast cancer, but now I know scores of people who have beaten it. People came together for a single cause, caring and working together to expend constructive effort toward one goal, sharing and helping and looking out for each other along the way. And I witnessed it.

Is it only news if it’s bad news? Is it only destruction that gets ratings? Would you be disappointed with a forecast of rain if the rest of the hour were spent learning about all the GOOD things happening out there?

* * *

I don’t know, either, what kind of a person wrote that gift note. I want to believe it was someone who thought bigger than themselves, someone who can conceive of a world where one person’s ideas or questions can touch a stranger, whose small personal effort creates thought or consideration in another. I want to think that there are people out there who extend little fingers of positive energy. Nothing big, it doesn’t have to be grandiose — or even monetary — to make a difference. Tiny, easy things: a smile, a kind word, a question that doesn’t need an answer.

A shell pin. Some beach glass. A provocative note. Things nobody expects, and all one can do is tell someone about it, pass it on, and cause more wonder.

Something people can take with them to put in their dishes of things people give them that they don’t know what to do with.

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So Long, 2002 December 31, 2002

“You should be very proud of yourself,” he said, the new boy I'm dating, after hearing the short version of my answer to his year-end get-to-know-me question:

WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU'VE ACCOMPLISHED THIS YEAR?

And I am proud of myself, for I've made an impressive leap since this time last year.

But one doesn't just make impressive leaps out of what starts as a really good place; one has to be at a pretty low starting point to have an amazing recovery.

I've simply gained back some ground I'd lost, and made some small changes for the better, with the aid and support of people who love me, and bookended by these milestones we use to gauge accomplishments: the turning of the year.

~

When I was in high school — or maybe junior high — my family started spending New Year's Eves making “Want Lists.” Each of us would make a list of things we wanted: to obtain, to accomplish, to achieve. Anything from a new car to losing 15 pounds to greater patience with the neighbor kid. Sock away more in the savings account, go skydiving, write every day.

The idea is that, “if you put it out to the universe, the universe will provide.”

So we'd look back at our lists from the previous year, and see how abundant our lives are – even if it didn't feel like it, even if it felt like we were still scraping by, still carrying those unwanted pounds, still not disciplined enough to write every day. The universe has provided, often in unexpected and fabulous ways: winning lottery tickets, strangers appearing to give a book review that leads to a book purchase that leads to a healthy diet... it could be anything, and sometimes it's weird and wonderful.

So we write our Want List in anticipation of revisiting it in a year and remembering that our lives are richer in broad scope than they often appear through the microscope of the day-to-day.

~

“To understand how far I've come this year, I'd have to make you understand where I was a year ago,” I told him, though doing so seemed risky on a third date. Oversharing. TMI.

I was on my way back home from my big, ballsy move to New York City 21 months prior, a move for which I'd given up my comfy life in San Francisco: a job with security and (as it turned out) seniority; a one-month-new, wonderful boyfriend; all of my family and friends (and that's a whole lot); and my car, Hank, my 1997 dark blue Kia Sportage. I'd said I wanted to write.

And I did write, but I also had to pay the rent. The really really high rent, the 250%-higher-than-I-was-used-to-paying-in-SF-even-in-the-dot-com-boom-heyday rent.

So I took a job that sapped me of my self-worth. (My bad.)

That new wonderful boyfriend broke up with me three weeks after I moved, because he didn't see the point in carrying on a long-distance relationship (“2,917 miles,” he reminded me) with someone who couldn't really articulate the reason for her move. (And that's fair.)

So I eventually became reacquainted with another romantic interest, also long-distance. (Here's where I get to say that I moved to New York, but left my heart in San Francisco.) It was another arrangement, in retrospect, that sapped me of my self-worth.

Then we lost those two tall buildings, and everyone in them, in lower Manhattan, right out from under my nose, before my eyes, which got a load of it all through the windows of the 7th floor Chelsea building where I worked.

It wasn't just that, it was everything, cumulatively: I'd lost me, too.

So last year at this time, I was lost but coming home.

I moved back in with my parents in business park suburbia, broke and broken. I wanted to recuperate, but worried too much about money.

I took a good-enough–paying contract job at a leading web development software company, reporting to the man I was still dysfunctionally seeing. (Mixed blessing.)

I didn't have a car, my own place or space, the independence I'd had for the past twelve years I'd lived on my own, or an inkling of what I was supposed to do with myself.

~

What I did have — DO have — is a wonderful community of family and friends who supported me in ways I didn't even know I needed at the time.

Mom and Dad, who let me move back home at age 30 and fed me and let me recuperate and didn't pressure me to so much as clean the bathroom until I was good and ready.

Bryan, Joyce, Joan, Melissa, Sheila, Shannon Roy, Eden and Ken, who gave me opportunities to house-sit and make like I had my own space, if only for a long weekend at a time. (And the loans of the cars that lived at those houses were invaluable.)

My beautiful friend Diane, who was experiencing a parallel career-change and -search (a career switch & bait?) on the east coast, and acted as my coach, my confidate and my personal knitter during this trying time.

The unexpected, unfolding world of Shannon Roy, my benevolent moving-away friend, who (with the help of her man Kevin) created a beautiful apartment and a challenging, perfect-for-me job, both of which were left for me when they up and moved to New York. (Quel coinkydink!)

Paul, who had my musical self pegged from the moment we met 3.5 years ago and continues to remind me just who I think I am (whether he knows that's what he's doing or not), always in the form of an ever-fresher compilation CD, and always with the most endearing wordplay.

My roommate Catherine “Diva” Batacan, who keeps me laughing, honest, fed, and anchors to home and history while encouraging exploration (so I keep bringing home new stories, no doubt).

My writing group — Caitlin, Tad and Kristen, mainly — who support, critique and mentor my development as a non-professional writer.

My Optician Friend Joe™ & Barry, who have opened up a vision of my future that is exciting, humbling and filled with so much potential it makes me cry.

My new used car, the unnamed 1995 dark blue (Hank-colored!) Honda Civic LX commuter car that gets me an hour each way to my job, to my sister in Portland, and to wine tasting near the old college stomping grounds (so to speak).

My college radio family, who did a lot of growing this year themselves, with two new babies (shout out to Hank Banchieri & Nugget Larsen!) and the happy, strategic alliance of Monica & Kristy's brother Eric.

My real family, all of us going through trying times with Grandma & Grandpa Dalton's horrible car accident, Grandma Saul passing on, Mom becoming unemployed, illness for the Uncles Tafel... all of us still hanging together and being there, in our various ways.

My new friends Grace and Manley, whom I adore from afar and who have provided encouragement and stability, respectively. Respectfully.

~

Mom used to say that things have to get worse before they can get better. 2002 was the getting-better year.

Sometimes it just looks like I've pulled myself out of a deep hole I dug to New York, with some minor improvements upon my last incarnation in the Bay Area... but with a lot more experience and wisdom (I hope).

But I am proud of how far I've come this year, and I cannot take full credit for it all. I've learned some lessons, and I thank those who have helped and listened with love and without judgment along the way.

Here's to 2003! - clink! -

(Want List forthcoming. I still haven't been skydiving...)

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When do I cry about Grandma? November 27, 2002

The first things people want to know about a grandparent who just passed on are, was she sick a long time? how old was she?

As if the fact that my paternal grandmother was 92 years old, and we all saw this coming, makes it any less valid to grieve.

She was 92.
She had emphysema.
She had been on an oxygen tube for the last few years.
She was pretty much wheelchair-bound, and needed a sidecar for the oxygen tank.
She smoked all her life, or at least all of mine.
She was a good, steady drinker, too, but I never noticed it until I was old enough to drink, too.
She was in a convalescent care facility for the last few (three?) years, and they thought she wouldn't make it more than six months when she moved in.
She was going to outlive us all.

She was 92 and had emphysema; am I still allowed to be upset? To cry, to be sad, to grieve?
To wonder at the horror of death and the sadness of loss without someone telling me
She's in a better place, a happier place, a healthier, more peaceful place?
Without someone telling me I was blessed to know her?
Without someone telling me it's what she would have wanted, all her children and grandchildren scattered around the country at their own respective other-family Thanksgiving gatherings? That she wouldn't want them to worry?

Of course she'd've wanted us to worry, to care, to be concerned that our beloved, saucy, frustrating matriarch was finally giving up, letting go in a convalescent home in southern California, while the rest of us were out laughing and loving and eating and enjoying... and caring enough to call Grandma Saul to tell her we love her.

She was 92 and had emphysema and spunk, too.
She was a longtime member of the Barry Manilow International Fan Club.
She was a rabid Anaheim Angels fan.
She was an active member of the Swedenborgian Church.
She was a skilled crochet-er.
She loved the beach.
She was a chronic dieter, fruitlessly so.
She was an evangelist for homeopathic medicine.
She made a mean batch of orange-flavored Christmas cookies, always sent in shoeboxes lined with paper towels, and always arriving broken.

She was a million things to my cousins and aunt and uncles, to all her friends and family I never knew,
She was a million things I hope to hear stories about. Legends.

Some say she hung in until the Angels won the Series.

She died on Monday morning.

You will always be with us, Grandma Saul.

Mareta Poole Saul
4/6/1910 - 11/27/2002

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Knitting vs. Hockey May, 2002

Saturday I went to a beginning knitting class,
and learned how to knit. It was frustrating to
get the hang of, at first, but then when my
sample started to resemble something familiar,
it was exhilarating.

I don’t really have the money to be buying needles
and yarn and embarking on a brand new project (there
are so many old ones I haven’t finished), but I
didn’t want to forget how to knit. I know me, and
I knew that if I just walked away and waited until
I had some money, by that time I’d forget.

So there, I did it: I succumbed to the hook. I bought
a pair of size 10-1/2 bamboo knitting needles and
two balls of Grover-blue irregular-width (nubbly-like)
cotton yarn.

“Is this yarn gonna be too hard for a beginner to
work with?” I asked.
“Well… it’s kind of irregular, which is okay,
but you won’t be able to see how regular your
stitches are.”
“But it’ll hide my irregularity.”
“That’s true. You could just get some acrylic yarn.”
“That’ll be scratchy, for a scarf,” my neck already
felt itchy, just thinking about it.
“You wouldn’t want to wear it! Just do some
samples and practice with it.”
"I don't think you understand."

All of a sudden, it became very important to MAKE
something. I was going to make a scarf, a Grover-blue
irregular scarf, and it would be my practice scarf.
If it turned out looking like a big fuzzy irregular
Grover hanging around my neck, so be it. It would be
MY scarf, a thing I made: I would practice while
being productive.

Why wasn’t it this clear before? I’ve been unemployed
for five months. I’m accustomed to being productive.
It is my nature. That crossing-things-off-the-list
adrenaline-rush feeling-like-I’m-contributing part of me
that NEEDS to be productive. This is what I needed:
Something to do, to produce.

I knitted on the train, and I knitted while waiting
for Bryan to pick me up. He took me to the BBQ/movie
night at his live/work loft in Santa Cruz. About 20
people convened for charred meat and The Matrix. A
good half of those were people on his hockey team.
Bryan’s in a co-ed adult hockey league in San Jose.
It was the first time I’ve been social in a large group
since Tim’s holiday party, maybe, and I had fun talking
to people I didn't already know...

“Wow, you rock, Michelle! You play hockey! That's so cool.”
“Yeah… how do you know Bryan? Do you play hockey?”
“No, but I learned how to knit today!”
I live for the juxtaposition.

On the way back to the train station the next day,
Bryan was explaining the team’s goals. “We lost pretty
bad yesterday, but not as bad as we lost a while back.
We had to have the conversation about why we were here.
Did we want to play hockey for fun? Or did we want to
win? Either way is fine, y’know, but it’s good for the
whole team to have the same goal, or at least know where
everyone’s at. Regardless, we WILL get better by the
end of the season.”

I thought knitting was a lot like hockey in that way:

Do I want to knit for fun, or just to make things?
Maybe both, or just one; either way is fine, y'know.
Regardless, I’ll get better by the end of the scarf.

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San Francisco January 30, 2002

Today I went to San Francisco, kicked leisurely around Fillmore Street, fulfilling personal appointments all conviently located on one shopping-district strip. I was productive, and leisurely; enough productivity, but not too much.

It was a beautiful day: sunny, clear, bright, not too cold. Made me smiley, thinking about the contrast to a New York City January day (admittedly, I didn't check the 10015 weather today, but I understand it's warmish there). I am beamingly grateful to be back in California, where the world smiles daily.

I also took my first bus ride in San Francisco, since I've been back.
What, from New York City, was laughable public transit, just broke me up today. The sun shining in the windows, the bus rolling up and down over the city's swelling hills, allowing snippets of views down cross streets opening out toward the Bay, people boarding, all kinds of people, dressed in all kinds of endearing ways... it was all too beautiful.

It made me cry.

I cried, right there on the bus, all by myself, chin quivering and everything. Deliriously happy.

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Ode to Caffeine August 1, 2003

“Write about a Tool,” Margie's exercise-a-day book says. “Ode to Caffeine,” is what I say. I notice a distinct abuse of Diet Coke in the workplace, but not the caffeine-free kind, but who am I to say, me, who lauds the silos of Peet's in the cafeteria, four large stainless steel vessels of strong black caffeine, like Margie likes her man, like I remember being a little too harsh for me in my own days of Davis dating, Caffé Roma and Rich with his cigarette-and-coffee diet, his own tools to get him through his liberal arts education and keep his weight down. It didn't work like that in New York City, coffee carts cropped up on corners, appearing like magic overnight, peddling bagels and donuts and “regular” coffees – short blue paper cups with cream and two shovelsfull of sugar, filled the rest of the way with some weak brown crap – just enough of a hit of caffeine (but you have to rely on the sugar high, really) to gain power over the sandman on the walk from the subway to the office. I gave up on that pretty quick, once Peet's entered my upper-upper-west-side apartment, imported from the Bay Area. Fuck Starbucks, weak brown crap or sorry burnt espresso, although it was a stronger, safer bet than the corner coffee peddlers, poor dawn-blooming breed endangered by corporate coffee. Starbuckses on every corner, more: two, three to a short city block as they take over the little guys, while Duane Reades crop up where once were perfectly fine independent pharmacies, while east coasters who think they know from good cooffee swarm in droves to their Dunkin Donutses, also dwindling to extinction... Why does nobody here understand good coffee? Why does everyone walk around weilding these wimpy tools? I invest in an unassuming travel cup and try to blend in, they don't know I've got a fresh brew of power tool, Major Dickason's Blend or Ethiopian Fancy, which kicks in at the first sip, envelops me in warm glow and zips straight to my head, I forget I was sleepy, I forget I was asleep, I forget everything before that moment, I'm here, now, on the subway, on my way to work, all these bleary-eyed late-night city-that-never-sleeps people with their lame little blue paper cups filled with sugar and cream – Like a little coffee with your refined granular calcium fat paste? – thinking they're waking up. I'm up, way higher up than they know how to be – but then cocaine might still be a pretty ubiquitous drug in this city, I wouldn't know. I've got caffeine, west coast caffeine, and I don't need their blow. My high is cleaner, my tool is less expensive ($10.95/lb. + shipping, but houseguests bring it as a gift) and that makes me a better person, cooler somehow, and longing for my California. I move home and convert my parents, wean them off the Starbucks, teach them to use Peet's responsibly. I work at Peet's and hate it but not the coffee. And here I am now, Peet's in the house and Peet's at work, and I am invincible. A tool to knock the cobwebs out of my head and the sleep out of my eyes, a tool to keep me alert and productive, a tool that pairs nicely with a 3pm peanut butter granola bar snack as well as a decadent restaurant dessert, something to get me through a work day and a late rock and roll show, a tool to strip my stomach lining and rob me of a sleep pattern... this is my ode to caffeine.

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