Ode to My Husband's Ex-Wife

"There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you." --Sylvia Plath

What happened to you
between birth and thirty-two
that made you chew
him up like beef stew
then sit back, shine your tooth?

Your chubby bottom trimmed by a yoga guru;
your crocodile tears, your reptile tears, poor you.
Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, you needed a new hair-do,
a fresh bank account, a beachside house in Malibu.
True, true.

But if you sat on your yoga mat and thought it through--
of all he had done, would do--for you--
of the life you'd have lived--trips to Xanadu--
the love full of heat and baby-coos--
then how could you? And for who?

A man with a heart like an igloo
and the rest of him a slack, limp pool cue.
A man who reeks of honey and cat poo
who, in ten years, will only be denture glue.
He's the one for you.

I can't say I'd disagree with you--
who else could equal a shrew like you?--
Your crude fingers dripping with witch's brew,
your body bright as vomit spew:
they should lock you up and stick you in a zoo.

You run like a bad tattoo
but you keep showing up like a nasty bruise:
everything you touch turns black and blue--
complimentary colors, your favorite hue--
even your ocean-view can't stand you.

You make me sick--you know it's true--
with your slim new ass and your Jimmy Choos,
your honey-poo man, your yeasty juju.
The whole world rues you--true, true.
But not as much as I do.

Boo.

Funnyface: Part Two

Funnyface doesn't have leukemia or HIV! Yea!

The vet called a few hours after that last journal entry, and when I heard it was the actual doctor on the line, I thought surely she was calling to give me bad news. But no!

This means that Vern and I can now commence giving Funnyface treatment for her fungal infection, which will improve her quality of life and maybe make it so she doesn't have to struggle to breathe. She may be able to take a deep breath in a month!

I love it when God smiles down on us, even if it is just in helping a small kitty. It gives me hope that all of us might meet with that kind of compassion someday, when we most need it and least expect it.

I am thankful.

Funnyface: Part One

From my journal entry this morning:

Today, perhaps, is a day of doom. Having not the capacity for detachment that most people manage to possess, I have taken it into my head to save a sickly stray cat. This kitty, whom Vern and I call Funnyface, is a lovely, furry, skinny gray tabby. And her poor little nose and throat are so congested that she labors to breathe.

We took her to the vet yesterday--I knew she would need flea mendicine and the insides of her ears were very dirty, so I knew they needed to be cleaned and disinfected. And I hoped that they might just say she had a terrible cold. Unfortunately, they took a slide of her mucus and found that she had "cryptoccocosis" (I don't have the inclination currently to look up whether or not I have spelled that word correctly)--a fungus that attacks cats' nasal passages, lungs and can even move into their central nervous system. The vet related it to cancer in humans, in the sense that it may or may not get better with treatment. She told us of some medicine that we can use to possibly and hopefully get rid of it, but there is, of course, no guarantee. That is sad, but the possibility of hope--that it could make her better--is enough to convince me to try it.

However, the dark fear that is sitting in my mind is this: cats who get this fungal infection are generally in possession of a compromised immune system. They took blood to see whether she has feline leukemia or feline HIV. They are supposed to call us with the results today. If she has either of these, there is not much hope that the crypto fungus will get better. Also, feline leukemia is passed through casual contact, so we can't let her around Billy--and we can't even really let her outside--she could infect other cats with it.

Perhaps I shouldn't worry about any of this because we don't know the results of that test yet. But I have an awful feeling. And that means what? That we might have to put this sweet, unassuming, love-starved cat to sleep? She trusted us! I was trying to help her, to make her better! Not to get her killed. I just pray that my feeling is wrong--that she doesn't have those illnesses and has a chance at a better life, with her respiratory problems medicated and hopefully cured. I want this cat to be okay. To live. Please God. Let her live.

NO on 8!...and some inspiration

My new Ma and Pa-in-law were on NPR today speaking out as Mormons to vote NO on Proposition 8. They make me feel like there are still some good people left in the world. I'm sure the podcast will become available later today if you'd like to hear it. It was on http://www.scpr.org/ under the segment "Day to Day."

In honor of these wonderful people and their wonderful cause, I'd like to share these quotes with you:

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." --Theodore Roosevelt (Paris speech at the Sorbonne, 1910)

Or this one:

"Thomas Merton wrote, "There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues." There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won't have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus." --Annie Dillard, from "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"

Or this one:

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion....
It is harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." --Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

Or how about these?:

"Ever since there have been men, man has given himself over to too little joy. That alone, my brothers, is our original sin. I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance." --Henri Matisse

"Come now!...Were everything clear, all would seem to you vain. Your boredom would populate a shadowless universe with an impassive life made up of unleavened souls. But a measure of disquiet is a divine gift. The hope which, in your eyes, shines on a dark threshold does not have its basis in an overly certain world. --Marcel Proust, "By Way of Sainte-Beuve"

And lastly:

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing."
--Edmund Burke

Gay Rights

Civil and political rights
A class of rights ensuring things such as the protection of peoples' physical integrity; procedural fairness in law; protection from discrimination based on gender, religion, race, etc; individual freedom of belief, speech, association, and the press; and political participation.

Before 1860--

Social reformer Jeremy Bentham wrote the first known argument for homosexual law reform in England around 1785, at a time when the legal penalty for "buggery" was death by hanging.[6] However, he feared reprisal, and his powerful essay was not published until 1978.

In 1791 France became the first nation to decriminalize homosexuality, probably thanks in part to the homosexual Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès who was one of the authors of the Napoleonic code.

In 1833, an anonymous English-language writer wrote a poetic defense of Captain Nicholas Nicholls, who had been sentenced to death in London for sodomy:

Whence spring these inclinations, rank and strong?
And harming no one, wherefore call them wrong?

Three years later in Switzerland, Heinrich Hoessli published the first volume of Eros: Die Männerliebe der Griechen ("Eros: The Male-love of the Greeks"), another defense of same-sex love.

Contrary to stereotypes, the traditionally Catholic and conservative Poland never criminalized homosexuality. The 18th century Poland was marked by the Enlightenment-driven relaxed attitude towards all sexuality, with public figures reported to involve in homosexual or transvestite activities. Such "scandalous" events drew public attention, but did not result in prosecution. Only when subsequently to partitions of Poland Polish territories came under control of the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia, did the law imposed by the occupying powers make homosexual acts illegal. Still, prominent figures were known to form homosexual relationships, such as Narcyza Zmichowska (1819-1876), a writer and founder of the Polish feminist movement, who used her private experiences in her writing.

1860-1944--

In Europe and America, a broader movement of "free love" was also emerging from the 1860s among first-wave feminists and radicals of the libertarian left. They critiqued Victorian sexual morality and the traditional institutions of family and marriage that were seen to enslave women. Some advocates of free love in the early 20th century, including Russian anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman, also spoke in defense of same-sex love and challenged repressive legislation.

1945-1968--

Immediately following World War II, a number of homosexual rights groups came into being or were revived across the Western world, in Britain, France, Germany, Holland, the Scandinavian countries and the United States. These groups usually preferred the term homophile to "homosexual", emphasizing love over sex. The homophile movement began in the late 1940s with groups in the Netherlands and Denmark, and continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s with groups in Sweden, Norway, the United States, France, Britain and elsewhere.

1969-1974--

The new social movements of the sixties, such as the Black Power and anti-Vietnam war movements in the U.S, the May 1968 insurrection in France, and Women's Liberation throughout the Western world, inspired some LGBT activists to become more radical,[15] and the Gay Liberation Movement emerged towards the end of the decade. This new radicalism is often attributed to the Stonewall riots of 1969, when a group of transgender, lesbian and gay male patrons at a bar in New York resisted a police raid. Although Gay Liberation was already underway, Stonewall certainly provided a rallying point for the fledgling movement.

1975-1986--

From the anarchistic Gay Liberation Movement of the early 1970s arose a more reformist and single-issue "Gay Rights Movement", which portrayed gays and lesbians as a minority group and used the language of civil rights — in many respects continuing the work of the homophile period.

In 1977, a former Miss America contestant and orange juice spokesperson, Anita Bryant, began a campaign "Save Our Children", in Dade County, Florida (greater Miami), which proved to be a major set-back in the Gay Liberation movement. Essentially, she established an organization which put forth an amendment to the laws of the county which resulted in the firing of many public school teachers on the suspicion that they were homosexual.

During this period, the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) was formed in Coventry, England (1978). It continues to campaign for lesbian and gay human rights with the United Nations and individual national governments.

Mark Segal, an early member of Gay Liberation has continued to pave the road of gay equality. Many refer to Mark Segal as the dean of American gay journalism. As a pioneer of the local gay press movement, he was one of the founders and former president of both The National Gay Press Association and the National Gay Newspaper Guild. He also is the founder and publisher of the award winning Philadelphia Gay News which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. As a young gay activist, Segal understood the power of media. In 1973 Segal disrupted the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite, an event covered in newspapers across the country and viewed by 60% of American households, many seeing or hearing about homosexuality for the first time. Before the networks agreed to put a stop to censorship and bias in the news division, Segal went on to disrupt The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and Barbara Walters on The Today Show. The trade newspaper Variety claimed that Segal had cost the industry $750,000 in production, tape delays and lost advertising revenue. On a recent anniversary of PGN an editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer stated "Segal and PGN continue to step up admirably to the challenge set for newspapers by H.L. Menchen. "To afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted."

1987-present--

Some historians consider that a new era of the gay rights movement began in the 1980s with the emergence of AIDS, which decimated the leadership and shifted the focus for many. This era saw a resurgence of militancy with direct action groups like ACT UP (formed in 1987), and its offshoots Queer Nation (1990) and the Lesbian Avengers (1992). Some younger activists, seeing "gay and lesbian" as increasingly normative and politically conservative, began using the word queer as a defiant statement of all sexual minorities and gender variant people — just as the earlier liberationists had done with the word "gay". Less confrontational terms that attempt to reunite the interests of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transpeople also became prominent, including various acronyms like LGBT, LGBTQ, and LGBTI. As of 2006, these acronyms have become commonplace descriptors used by organizations that once described themselves as "gay rights" groups.

Opposition--

LGBT movements are opposed by a variety of individuals and organizations. They may have a personal, moral, political or religious objection to gay rights, homosexual relations or gay people. People have said same-sex relationships are not marriages, that legalization of same-sex marriage will open the door for the legalization of polygamy, that it is unnatural and that it encourages unhealthy behavior. Supporters of the traditional marriage movement believe that all sexual relationships with people other than an opposite-sex spouse undermines the traditional family and that children should be reared in homes with both a father and a mother. There is also concern that gay rights may conflict with individuals' freedom of speech, religious freedoms in the workplace, and the ability to run churches, charitable organizations and other religious organizations in accordance with one's religious views. There is also concern that the acceptance of homosexual relationships by religious organizations might be forced through threatening to remove the tax-exempt status of churches whose views don't align with those of the government.

There are also people who are homophobic and do not like gay men and lesbians. Studies have consistently shown that people with negative attitudes towards lesbians and gays are more likely to be male, older, religious, politically conservative, and have little close personal contact with openly gay individuals, as well as supporting traditional gender roles.

Hasn't it been long enough? This is a civil rights issue. Do the right thing: vote NO on Prop 8.

(all info from wikipedia.org)

Little Details

This weekend, Vern and I did all sorts of things wedding-related. We dropped my dress off at his mom's, and she is going to add some buttons to the sleeves (the previous buttons have disappeared in the last 37 years). It is so wonderful for her to help me with that! Then, after dropping off the dress, Vern and I toodled on over to Aardvark's in Pasadena. For those of you who don't know, Aardvark's is a vintage-y thrift store. They are more expensive than a regular thrift store but generally cheaper than a department store--and they have clothing with more character. Anyway, we were looking for a suit for Vern--he had a back-up one, but was hoping to find something different--and we found one! It looks absolutely amazing on him, too!

Now we're pretty much in the last stage of all the planning--we've chosen our songs for the quartet to play, but we have to choose them in order of what we like best (just in case they run out of time and can't play them all). We've paid the photographer and we've paid for the linens and tables and chairs. My dad made reservations at Fargo's, this really cool pizza place that's kind of turn-of-the-century and kitschy, for the dinner the night before the wedding. We have gotten all of the RSVP's. We have an officiant. But we have to choose some readings for the ceremony still. Anyway, you get the picture--we've got a lot done and just a little more to go.

Because I've been keeping such a good count, I thought I'd update you and let you know that it is, as of today, 5 days until Vern and I leave for Colorado and 12 days until we are married! I'm kind of nervous to have all those people staring at me. I know I'm an actress and I should be used to it, but this is different. And I know that it's all my family and friends, but it's still sort of weird to be the center of everyone's focus. But luckily, I have seen Vern in his suit, and I am quite certain he will help ease that focus, because he looks absolutely amazing in that suit. Like something out of a magazine. I told him if computers ever go the way of the record player, he could certainly pay the bills with his looks. He's stunning. But you all already knew that.

Love,

Clare

RSVP

Last night, when I got home, there were a lot of RSVP's for the wedding! And some of them were quite surprising! I sent a wedding invitation to my dad's transplant family (the parents of the boy who died and saved my dad's life by donating his heart). I wanted them to come, but at the same time I sort of assumed that they may not. I just wanted to extend the offer. And they replied with a yes! And there will be four of them! It's so exciting, because my parents and sister were able to go meet the transplant family back in April, but I wasn't able to afford the trip out there. So this will be the first time I meet them! I can't wait!

Vern and I are hittin' the road and headin' out to Colorado in 23 days. We are getting married in 30! I'm afraid I've always been impatient, so I can hardly wait. I count days to calm myself down.

I'm a happy girl....

Love, Clare

Short and Sweet

I love Vern!

The end.

Love,
Clare

Wedding, part deux

Today, it is 25 days until Vern and I leave for Colorado! The wedding is in 32 days! Eek! I'm so excited!

Tonight, we are hoping to choose music for the string quartet to play. We already have some sure things, but we have to pick some more that we like and then we'll just tell them to play whatever they like for the rest of the time. It's a string quartet, so I'm sure whatever they play will be beautiful.

My parents contacted some Catholic priests in Colorado Springs to check with them about doing the ceremony--they were "order" priests, meaning that they live in an order with other priests, similar to monks. However, my dad found out that they will not marry us unless we have one year of marriage classes, due to the high level of divorces now-a-days. Also, in order (pardon the pun) for them to do a ceremony outdoors, we would have to get a special dispensation from the Bishop, which could take who knows how long. So that's a dead end.

My parents are now going to try some retired priests, in the hopes that they may be a little more lenient in terms of the outdoors and whether or not we have classes. So we'll see how that goes. Otherwise, we may check with some friends of my parents who have a [protestant] minister friend who might do it. And from there, we'll likely go to a justice of the peace, or else I will ask my friend Simone to do it. We'll see what happens.

I am really looking forward to being married. I am excited for that chapter of my life to begin. But I am also enjoying the journey.

Love,
Clare

Operation Wedding

So, Vern and I finally sent out the wedding invitations! We sent them on Saturday, so people should probably be receiving them in the very near future.

We also registered this weekend at Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond. That was pretty fun, although to register at Bed, Bath & Beyond you practically have to promise them your firstborn. We had to sit at a table and be pelted with questions like "how did you two meet?" To which I replied...."Um.....he was a friend of a girl in my theatre company." The lady also asked how many people we were having to the wedding, where it was going to be, and when I got my first period. Not really, but you get the idea. Now imagine this all said through the voice of a cartoon character and you can maybe imagine what Vern and I looked like: deer in the headlights. Controlled breathing. Then she proceeded to ask me what we were thinking about in regards to flatware and dishes, to which I replied "we're already set with all that." And with all the listening skills of a rock, she plopped down two enormous binders of FLATWARE AND DISHES for us to look through. Anyway, finally we got the little scanner thingie from her hot little hands and got to escape into the store.

We went to Target the next day. Vern had signed up online the night before. We walked in and the lady gave us the scanner. The end. Target is glorious.

I got my wedding shoes on Saturday, too. I had forgotten I needed them until I walked by these white flats at DSW and saw my wedding shoes--they are flat, white, with the same kind of lace that is on my dress! They're perfect.

Yesterday, Vern and I took Dana for a walk. She was in doggy heaven. Billy was jealous.

That was pretty much the weekend. They certainly don't last long enough. Especially when I have someone like Vern.

Love,
Clare

Engagement Photos

Vern and I went to Colorado this past Thursday and had our engagement portrait session. It was really fun and our photographers are amazing! You can check out their website at http://www.realphotography.com/ and if you look under "blog" you will see a sneak peek of some of our photos! They turned out really well! And they're shooting our wedding as well, so I can't wait to see those photos in the future.

We had a great time in Colorado with my family--they loved Vern. My sister, of course, knows him better than my parents (she's seen him more often), but my parents absolutely loved him! It was a really great time, and my dad, Vern and I even had time to see Garden of the Gods! When we're back in September, I'm hoping to take Vern and his sisters up to the top of Pikes Peak. Yep, 14,000 feet!

It's 48 days until our wedding, and we'll be out there the week before, so it's about 41 days till we're out in Colorado again for the big day! It's probably annoying that I keep counting, but I'm so excited I can't help it!

Love,
Clare

53 days

In 53 days, Vern and I will be married! I can't wait!

Love,

Clare

Martyr

I was thinking the other day--about a lot of things that have been happening in my life--and it got me to thinking about blame.

I remember once, in a religion class in high school, the teacher mentioned that true maturity only exists once you take the blame when you've done something wrong. When I was younger, I hardly ever accepted blame--I always thought I was right.

I have matured. I now take the blame for things that I feel are my fault. I acknowledge. I say I'm sorry now. Being right is not important. Being good is. Acting justly is.

Perhaps I am still naive, but I find it shocking when people don't own up to their mistakes now. We are in (or nearing) our thirties. We are supposed to be learning from our mistakes. How can you learn from a mistake if you never think you make one?

I am an advocate of justice. When I analyze the things that I get angry about, it almost always breaks down to being angry at injustice. I despise racism, sexism, nepotism, favoritism, misogyny, dishonesty, cruelty, passivity, judgment, scapegoating.

And these things happen all the time. Every day. The last two have happened to me recently. I'm no martyr. But I don't know any either....

Advice to the Published Poet

In reading "The Best American Poetry"
(the 2007 edition),
I am struck, in awe and envious of the poets
who show presence through omission.

Occasionally, as I peruse,
a poem hits me on a bruise!--
but then some word I don't use
makes me grab the dictionary.

That's plain scary.

Because now there's a poem
with a whole dictionary in the middle--
an 'elephant-in-the-room' riddle--
telling me, I suppose,
what I ought to know,

and maybe--if I was fifty--
what I would already know (if I was thrifty).
But I still have baby-fat
in my face, on my tummy--

I'm no dummy,
but I'm young.

All of the other baby-fat people I know,
they don't read poems at all, not one.
They don't know Donne

or Li-Young Lee;
they don't take baths with Plath
or, with Dickinson, take a tea.
They think Bishop is a church office
(while thinking me quite a novice)
and believe Whitman is a sample sweet,
so there's no use in mentioning Keats.

I once had a friend who read Sexton
and boy, did it vex him.
He said "What's all this about abortion?"
And I said "Oh, I don't know. A lesson?"

I often long for the days
when people stood on streets in queues
to get their hands on the next Millay,
instead of Grand Theft Auto II.

So listen close, all you poets
with your prizes and your Pushcarts:
I don't know the definitiion of "meretricious,"
but I'm where your poems should start.

-Clare Brewer 5/14/08

Sestina

So, this is a sestina I wrote. For more information on the rules that apply to sestinas, go to this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sestina

Sestina

Seven years ago, there was a marriage:
in the backyard he held her soft white hand.
They bought a house and she painted the walls
a buttery yellow. They saved their dimes
for a someday baby. She wore his ring.
She laughed often, her mouth turned toward his kiss.

Gradually, after each soft white kiss,
she began to curse her vows, her marriage.
Resentment, like a worm--ring upon ring--
grew, until it diseased her heart and hand.
He gave her dollar bills but got back dimes.
(She fooled him by painting those yellow walls.)

She deceived him outside those guilty walls,
laid with other men, took another's kiss.
Her husband, at home, still saved up his dimes,
holding sacred the vows of his marriage.
In bed, at night, he kissed her soft white hand,
not knowing that she had tarnished that ring.

Though she wore it, she did not love her ring.
She loved the house and she hated its walls.
Her ring she thought too cheap for her soft hand.
In her guilt, she shrank from her husband's kiss,
remembering the day of their marriage.
So she divorced him and claimed half his dimes.

With no baby and his diminished dimes,
with no wife and a meaningless gold ring,
with a broken heart and dissolved marriage,
he cried soft, white tears on the yellow walls.
Like Jesus, he was betrayed by a kiss
in that backyard, holding her fickle hand.

He stopped crying then, and lifting his hand,
brushed away his soft tears. They shined like dimes.
He wiped his mouth clean of that Judas' kiss,
and in his desk drawer he placed his gold ring.
Only love, he said, will live within these walls.
And that thought restored his faith in marriage.

True marriage relies on a faithful hand;
his faith grows like ivy on walls, shines like dimes,
rings true, like bells do, for an eternal kiss.

-Clare Brewer 3/26/08

Today, Vern's family came to visit the Natural History Museum, where I work. It was a lot of fun! They toured around the Mammal halls, the Gem and Mineral Hall, the Bird Hall and the Insect Zoo, and then we met up at noon for lunch. Sabrina and Joey are in town from Las Vegas, and it was nice to see them again. Their kids are adorable and entirely entertaining.

It got me thinking about family, being around such a great family. I miss my family so much. I love them so much. Now I feel as if Vern's family is becoming mine, too. They are so warm and they are obviously such great people. No wonder Vern is as amazing as he is! I have never had two families--I have only ever had the one I was born with. But things are changing. I will gain a new family, and I am so excited for that.

Every day, I am the happiest I have ever been. I have been blessed, no doubt about it.

Love,

Clare

Time. And again.

How is it that life passes by so quickly? Every day full of little odds and ends and errands, and suddenly, seven days have gone by. Or seven months. Or seven years.

Sometimes, we are able to escape from the fast blur of days long enough to do something wonderful, or meaningful, or powerful. And in those moments, we feel like all of our hard work was for a reason, and we are able to sit within time for a small moment and soak up the worth of who we are as human beings, of our purpose.

And then, of course, time starts up again. And we go to work and eat and go to sleep and go to work. We wash, rinse, repeat. But always, there is that waiting--the holding of breath--waiting for the next time when time will slow down long enough for us to enjoy it.

Well. I've gotta get back to work.

Books I've Read in the Last Year

1) The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
2) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon
3) A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter
4) Desperate Characters by Paula Fox
5) Wrecks and Other Plays by Neil Labute
5) Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
6) Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
7) Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
8) New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
9) Savage Beauty (the biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay) by Nancy Milford
10) Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
11) Eclipse (currently reading) by Stephenie Meyer

If I just had one more, I would have read the equivalent of a book a month. Humph.

-clare

A Poem

At Work With My Father


I’m not old enough to go to school,
So my father takes me to work with him.
Sputtering down the road in a borrowed orange Rabbit,
I peer over the dashboard, bounce in my seat,
Press my face onto the window till the warm seeps into my cheeks.

My dad’s left arm is darkly tanned,
It always hangs, dancer-like, out of the window
With a cigarette gently balanced between his brown fingers.
I love to look at the thick skin on his knuckles,
The creases transfixing me, blurring under my stare like a candle flame.

Daddy does drywall, a real man’s man Mama says. A beautiful blue-collar man.
He has a soft spot for me, his sidekick—
Gives me a board and a bucket of nails,
Lets me hammer away—
“Hold it like ‘at. Then tap, tap, and hit the nail home.”

He is ten feet tall, my dad, in worn Levi’s and scuffed boots.
Shirtless, his muscles are lean as he lifts that drywall to the sun,
Hangs that sheetrock as if building an altar, a bright white heavenly altar.
I sit in the shade, eating cheese crackers in the back of a dusty truck,
Legs swinging in time to the echo of my father’s hammer.

At the end of the day, at the end of the sawdust and the sun and the blisters,
At the end of the sandwiches with mustard and the cigarettes in the gravel—
My father drives us home.
He smiles over at me, tells me I’m magic with a hammer and nail.
Beaming, I grab his hand—it is cut now, a deep wound, the blood drying on his thumb.

At home, at the supper table, I run and get a washcloth.
Clean off his thumb, put on five band-aids just to be safe.
He winks at me, says he’s much better now.
Pulls me up onto his lap and I fall asleep there
To the smell of beer. Sawdust. My breath on his sun-browned neck.




Clare Brewer
10/12/05

My Father

Last month was the 14th anniversary of my dad's heart transplant. Our family is going to take a trip this Spring to meet the donor family. My dad told me about 8 years ago that the doctors estimate he'll live 15 years after the transplant. So if they're right, that gives us a year. Then, on Sunday, I was talking to him on the phone. He said he got a Christmas letter from his donor family, and they mentioned that he is the last living transplant recipient (their 19 year old son died and saved 6 people by donating his organs--my father included). And I am so glad that my dad's alive! But I am so afraid to let him go! It will be one of the great tragedies of my life, watching my father leave this world. But I will watch it. He is my greatest hero.

Love, Clare

P.S. If you're not already signed up to donate your organs, please consider it. You can't possibly imagine how much good you can do. And saving lives? Not a bad way to go....

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Written on a napkin, while Edna waited for her lover to return to the table:

"Let us be fools and love forever!
There was a woman, if tales be true,
who shattered Troy for a shepherd boy
less beautiful than you."

If only we could all write like that--on pages or cocktail napkins. She was a genius, that's all there is to it.

-clare