around the corner

I wonder which is harder – to work afresh after having already worked earlier in the day, or to work at your second job on week-ends. Perhaps it’s the latter: you feel like you have given up any scrap of being free. You belong to somebody else every single day of the year. Except for Christmas and Thanksgiving.

It was only my second day lighting that moon of extra work (at a shop not too far from where I live). I still dressed with care – in the way that you do the first day of school and maybe the second, but not thereafter.

It struck me how lucky I am to have been interviewed by a gutsy hiring person with a sharp sense of the world out there. When the corporate office questioned picking a law prof for the job, unconvinced that I should want their small dollars, she did a masterful job sticking with my application. Such a good break for me, especially since I have as much experience doing this line of work as I had cooking professionally when I was hired (also by a gutsy woman with a sharp sense of the world out there) a decade ago to moonlight at l’Etoile.

Learning to function in new worlds is probably (after the dollars earned) the most gratifying part of taking a second job. I am reminded of first meeting Ed some years ago. He introduced me (at least tangentially) to the world of machines and engineering tricks and mechanical solutions to common problems I thought how cool it is to explore places where what you say or write matters less than what you think and do. Very quickly, Ed became my traveling companion, even in months that we stayed in Madison.

And I like this, too, about working now beyond Bascom Mall: the clock moves in a different way at hourly jobs. The goal is not to get something done, but to stay focused on continued action, but only for your set of hours – nothing more, nothing less. And after you punch out, no one cares where you head and what you do next. You’re out the door. Good bye until you punch in again.

We’re a small set, over at the place where I do my extra hours. Women, all women (how different than in a professional kitchen!), three, like me, filling in the gaping holes of underemployment, or as in my case perhaps -- overreaching (chasing goals that are just a little beyond the doable). None of us fit the mold of “woman picking up extra cash now that kids are older and she can get away more.” Indeed, I think I’m the only one who even has children.

There are never more than two of us at a time and at some point, I know I will be alone in the shop – opening it and closing, like the mother in the Umbrellas of Cherbourg movie, dusting off shelves in the quieter minutes. I like that image.

It’s cool outside now. An evening chill that warns of an unusually cold set of summer days ahead. I don’t mind. It’s warm in the little shop on the corner. And the smell right now is of fresh lemons.

rules of your game

As I shift between work spaces and I learn the new rules that are my framework at the new place, I think how tricky it is to float from one set of regs to another and make it appear that this and only this is your real way of being.

Many (young) people think that as you get older you gain freedom of being. In the simple refrain of the book, when I am an old woman, I shall wear purple. But I think the opposite is true: as you add new orbits (and you must, because more years almost inevitably puts you into more spaces) you must learn to navigate them differently and attentively or you’ll be seen as one of those loopy people about whom one says – oh, she must have just given up!

So I am one way at my moonlighting job and I am a different way at my primary job. And I am one way with this friend and a different way with another. And I was one way with my now ex-spouse and I am another way with an occasional traveling companion.

Okay. Nothing exceptional about that.

But then it struck me that once you are one way, a revolution must happen for you to become another way. Otherwise there’s no going back. Only a complete contextual flip will cause you to flip as well and even then, it’s not guaranteed.


At midday, Ed and I walk down to the Hilldale market. I am a stranger there and the vendors may as well be from another state – I recognize hardly any. We buy veggies – similar, of course, to the ones I see now at the Saturday Westside Community Farmers Market, but the context is so different that I resist purchasing. Only the thought of a veggie-less dinner makes me break down. Okay. Garlic. Tomatoes. A few potatoes. Okay. That’ll do.





We admire the potted perennials...





… Ed looks over at a table with baked goods. As he reaches for a bag of oatmeal raisin cookies, I’m thinking how he and I very quickly formulated rules of being toward the other. Little has changed since we first met nearly four years ago. From day one, we behaved in a certain way. And it is how we are today.

As we walk up the hill, away from the Hilldale market, feeling like strangers there but certainly not toward each other, I wonder if we will always be operating in the same way, or whether at some point, the context will change, a revolution will happen and one of us or both of us will be different.

celebrate

Bastille day. I adopted this holiday as one to take note of, way back when. Some thirty years ago, I did what I thought was the full French deal: I’d buy an American French baguette and a cheap Brie and a bottle of bubbly (of the alcoholic kind) and I would think – life is good.

Of course I liked Bastille Day. It was, for me, the default holiday. The Polish July 22nd was nothing to be proud of, the American July 4th wasn’t yet part of my identity. The French national day was a wonderful compromise. Smack between the two.

And now? Well, I’m American. July 4th is no longer someone else’s barbeque. Still, I have a weak spot for France’s big day. Does this translate to a celebration? On the one hand, I worried about food. I made a point of stopping by the Fabian’s team on my way home. They were in town to peddle the fish and shellfish they’d hauled up, fresh from the Gulf.





I consider it. Really I do. But I let the fish go. I can’t quite work up French enthusiasm for a fresh and honest dinner for one, and I’m eating alone tonight.

I buy some shellfish and freeze it.

The day pulls toward early evening. I’m to meet a friend for coffee. Except we don’t have coffee.






Things are looking pink now. Allons enfants de la patire…

At home, I put on a French movie. The DVD is warped. I turn to the Tour de France. No baguette, no cheese. But still, I have a little boxed rose left from Paris.

Le jour de gloire est arrive…


It’s not my holiday. I just don’t think I was meant to embrace a July holiday. They’re for people who have a blood commitment to their land. Me, I’m a floater. Commitment to people? Yes. To land? Not so much.

secret places

It’s such a nice idea – to be able to escape for a few minutes to a secret corner. It has to be lush of course. And hidden. A misfit in a brutal environment of urban concrete.





I had such a place in Warsaw: behind the park, a shaded alley with small homes. So unlike the apartment blocks in the city center! I don’t think many people knew about it. And of course, I kept the place to myself. I went there “to escape,” because adolescent girls often think they need to “escape” whatever uncomfortable realty is nipping at them.


And when you're past the angst of growing up? It's still there: the desire for a spot of heaven. Close to home.

It's a challenge to find such a place. I’m surrounded by the essentials: grocery stores, bookstores, movie houses, pubs, sushi bars – great, but that’s a different kind of escape. What’s my secret destination when I want to exhale after a tortured day of reading heavy, heavy cases?

This.





Hidden. Yet, just a few minutes stroll from my front door.





Lush now, in midsummer.





A garden. All it needs is a stone wall and a secret gate.

Eh, let’s not be greedy.

summer clouds

And we know all too well that, no matter how simple we want a day to be, how uncomplicated and straightforward, it’s really not up to us, is it?

I gave it a good effort, I think. Straightforward things: I scrubbed the condo clean. That’s a Sunday ritual. All dust and lime deposits removed. Done.

Then what? Typically, this will be a moonlighting day, but I’m not on a regular schedule yet. And so it turned into a biking day.





We pedaled over to our favorite café to make sure my photos were hanging straight. They were. And then? Well, I lost myself in a series of phone calls, each building on the previous one. And I thought – how much influence do we really have in the life of another? In the course of a lifetime – maybe. In the course of a day – not much.

And so the day dripped on.

At Ed’s farmette, I fought off mosquitoes and surveyed the fate of the various flowers I’d planted in better bug-less days.

I admired the work of the farmers in the plots next to his.





When the light began to fade (ever so slowly), I said – let’s go home.

The clouds were funny tonight. On the bike ride home, it's almost as if they were trying to make a statement. But what?

possible

A commenter wrote that you tend to get more work done when there is more work to do.

Yes, you're right about that.


Saturday: up at 6 for an hour of reading (news, blogs, the usual morning fare). Down to the gym for the next hour. I try to read a book while on the machines, but I’m distracted by the Today show on TV – the story is about moonlighting. Not surprisingly, a growing number of workers are looking for that second job. Suddenly I am immensely grateful that I found one in a place that is so incredibly unobjectionable.

By 8, I shake a groggy Ed and we go to the Westside Community Farmers Market. Quickly. Efficiently.





















Grilled foods tonight. Good. Got them now. And fruits for breakfast. Shopping done.





A shower, with time for the hair to dry. And time for the most important morning ritual – breakfast on my small condo terrace. This part calls for a leisurely mindset. It’s no good otherwise. An espresso on the run just hasn’t the power to coax me into a proper mood.

By 9:30, I’m dressed and ready to head out for work.





We open the place up, the manager and I. And we talk. About her move here when the store opened, about life, families, the sales approach, the product.

Strands of conversation, cut short when the door opens and a customer comes in. It’s a beautiful day outside and so there aren’t many here, shopping, but there are some. The undecided ones. The young girls who have absolutely no intention of buying anything. The ones who know what they want because they once had it and they sure would love to have it again (even if the memory is a little fuzzy about the what and when of the purchase).

The sun moves across the floor and I am so glad that the place has windows where you can see that. None of this sequestered mall stuff so that when you go out you notice with shock that the day has changed and you have not witnessed the moment of transformation.

And then I am done. For now. And I think how mellow this is – this morning at…. my place of additional work. How lucky that it should be this way.

I walk back slowly. On another day I would rush. Maybe. I would still have energy to write. Maybe. There it is – cautious optimism!

I call Ed. I’m done! We walk over to Border’s where I sip a coffee and look at Maile Meloy’s wonderful new book of short stories. Ed buys it for me. As a present.

Back home, I heat up the grill and get the market veggies out. The Tour de France is on. I think about someday hiking the Pyrenees. Maybe. Someday.

the writing on the wall

I’ve only told a handful about the exact nature of my additional (week-end) employment. Their reactions have been, I suppose, in character. My mother, struggling to maintain tact within her usual frank approach to family and life in general, asked – but, didn’t they think you’re too old for this job? Don’t they want to place out front someone who looks, well, you know, better? Not that you don’t look well. For your age. (I assured her that the company maintained nondiscriminatory practices.)

Ed’s reaction has been a continued preoccupation with melting metals, or whatever else he may be reading at the moment:





When I nudge him to take note of this significant change, he remains unfazed -- Oh, pick you up after work then?

I want to say (and I do say it) – no, you will not. I will no longer have time for what you do so well (which is a moment-based existence that adds on bits of life incrementally – sort of like a domino chain: you can’t tell what the next piece will be, except that it will somehow relate to the previous one).

Ed is very adept at blocking the subtle differences between the schedule of a person with two jobs and a person with no job at all (he retired early).

I am mostly surprised, however, at my own reaction to this slight twist to my life henceforth. It seems like a major admission of failure. And this is something so new to me, that I almost cannot continue the conversation with myself about what comes next. It’s too distressing. Upbeat people are not good at acting out distressing turns in the road.

Of course, the failure that I now suddenly recognize, as vividly as I recognize that my right hip is lower than my left (once I was told of this, I see it so plainly, even though for years this had completely escaped my notice) – is the failure of fitting in what I thought for so many decades I was slated to do: the writing of the goddamn book that we all probably think we have within us, except that I thought it especially strongly.

Perhaps more perceptive souls saw this coming. It could be argued that I have had plenty of months to do well by my ambitious leanings. People who want to finish manuscripts don’t cross oceans the minute school’s out. They don’t kayak down the Wisconsin River just because the weatherman notes the absence of thundershowers in the forecast. They don’t wait for the writer's shack to be finished because, really it may not be the next domino piece, or the one after, and even though Virginia Woolf insisted on a better writing environment for herself, she could afford to be fussy: she was already an accomplished person before she said (or rather Nicole Kidman said, but I imagine she got it right) -- I need to return to London.

On the upside, I still wake up each day making up sentences in my head. My groggy senses haven’t caught up with the suddenly distressingly real possibility that I may never get them on paper. In the gray light of the pre-morning sky, I am still working on my unfinished manuscript.

this moment

In a touching NYT essay about her mother who slowly is losing her memory to Alzheimer’s, Elizabeth Kadetsky notes how forgetfulness does allow you to dissociate from history, all history, painful and pleasant, so that you come to appreciate only the moment, nothing that came before it, nothing that would perhaps disturb the pleasure of experiencing whatever touches you now.

I am, as everyone else is, attached to memory. If I do not have a daughter at my side, I at least have the recollection of our most recent conversation, and of our time together, and of her (their) entire childhood.

On the other hand, if I were not burdened by the memory of yesterday’s coldness, I would believe, just based on what I am experiencing at the moment, that we are having a pleasant as pie summer season.


I bike to campus today and urge Ed to bike with me. Being more “in the moment” than perhaps anyone I know, he agrees. Why not…

And it is a lovely little ride.





The lake is pretty, yes, totally pretty (forgetting the ice that covers it for so many winter months... long winter months), sailboats and other floating devices bounce around in playful summer winds (and children bounce with them…)





…(and some bounce too much so that the boat topples over…)





…really, it is quite a perfect little day.


Bascom Hill is empty now. Mostly empty. In any case, there are no Badger red sweatshirts on this warm (enough) day. The only red on the hill is the red of the old brick Science Hall. Oh, and of the young woman, turning ever so slightly pink. In her red bikini.





I take Ed down to the food huts on Library Mall. This is my stomping ground, not his, I know my way around: I know that lattes are on sale on Thursdays at the bookstore, for instance. I know all that. But he, too, has memories here. Distant ones, but memories nonetheless. The juice guy is an old buddy, and the fruit vendor was in his housing coop.





I say to Ed – and I come down here nearly every day, no matter how cold… But he’s not listening. He sees the burrito stand. At the moment, he wants nothing more than a double burrito. With hot sauce.


We bike back the long way – via the Southwest path. And this is the way I bike when I meet a friend on Monroe Street or have dinner on Chapman. Ed’s grinning. Really? It’s pretty here in the summer, he tells me.

skip the robin

A friend of mine wrote that her mother, who winters in Florida and spends the summer in the Michigan family home, is considering cutting out early and returning to Florida in a couple of weeks. The cold Midwestern summer is dragging her down.

I’m with her on that one. There’s something terribly wrong about a July that offers up both a high of only 65, at the same time that it thrusts upon us the usual swarms of mosquitoes and over-air conditioned interiors. Life is brutal this year in the Midwest.

It is not surprising, therefore, that I stayed at my home desk (response to commenter question: the writer’s shed is taking the path of all great cathedrals of Europe: it is turning into a multi-stage project, with each phase taking years and epochs to complete).

Here are some more depressing notes:

I cooked broccoli soup for supper. How “winter” is that!

My movement was of the indoor kind – in the gym.

I skipped the Wednesday market around the corner. Too cold. Never mind that vendors were equally cold, and for a significant number of morning hours.

I watched the Tour de France because the race was along the Mediterranean and I was jealous. Of the Tour de France. That's beyond insane.



I have a photo for you – it is of a robin. I post pics of robins in March to remind myself (and you) that spring is about to happen. Let me not post it. Too sad to resurrect themes from March.

small dog

Oh, such a beautiful moon there, somewhere behind the clouds! Full moon, the one over a river, moon river, river made beautiful by the moon. Time to chase it once again.

And I don’t mean time to leave, time to go anywhere at all. Quite the contrary – time to stay put and puff up the reserves a bit. Time to moonlight.

I applied for week-end and evening work and today I was called back with an offer. In the days of a tough economy, of furloughs and pay cuts, I am grateful that the place I chose to put down my application said – start anytime.

Although I don’t hide here that I am a law prof, neither do I write about my work at the university. So much do I avoid it that I sometimes think Ocean makes me look like I do not have a job (if you write about a glorious moment on the lake and that becomes the post for the day, doesn’t it seem as if that’s all there was to that day?).

With my moonlighting, I decided to take the opposite approach. I will not mention the place of work (at least for now), but I wont be so reluctant to mention my hours there. (Within limits: I mean to keep my bread well buttered.)

I’ll say this: I chose a place that sells something I like.

I’ll be the little dog there – the new hire, the lowest rung on the ladder.





And that’s a good thing. Every once in a while, it’s useful to take some of the loftiness out of your own environment. To scrub a few floors that are not your own.

So, sweet moon, thank you for this offer of work. So long as I have the energy to do it all, I’ll try to do it all.

stuff to do

Ed has “stuff to do” in Lake Mills today. If you’re not a Wisconsin reader, then you probably don’t know Lake Mills: about 20 miles east of Madison, it’s a sweet little Victorian town (or at least parts of it can be called that), clustered expansively around a small but quite beautiful lake.

I have “stuff to do” as well, but my stuff is highly transportable. You want to bike over with me? – he asks. Oh, so much…

That’s how I find myself doing “stuff” (for me – reading cases) on a bench on the village green of Lake Mills, as Ed does his “stuff” (playing tennis with his buddies) a small distance away.


Let me put in a plug for the Glacial Drumlin State Trail from Madison (or, more accurately, from its eastern out post – Cottage Grove) to Lake Mills (and beyond), especially for those who love bucolic scenery, a flat ride, and limestone pebbles under their tires.










I have to say, with a beautiful, mostly sunny sky, it is a heavenly spin. The reward is, in part, in the destination. The lake is the real spirit here– choppy and wavy today due to the wind, but serene nonetheless.










I had wanted to take my “stuff” to a café, but nothing resembling a café is open and so I pick a bench on the green facing this important storefront.





Every once in a while, I look up to do some significant people watching. My Styrofoam cup of bad coffee from an eatery on Main Street is perhaps not a highlight, but everything else is so supremely pleasant that I do not mind.





Toward evening, the men finish their game and Ed and I bike home.

You could not have a better day of summer stuff.

catching up, at home

My big walk for the day? Around the block. On this most beautiful summer afternoon!

Eh, others are taking it easy as well.











At least I left my computer behind. This time.

from the Wisconsin River: paddling toward the Mississippi, day 5

The morning river fog lifts. A few clouds drift in. The sand is warm, the tent is warm. Even the river bathing routine today is not unpleasant. The sand island is like a stage, but there is no one watching as I scrub my scalp with a combination of soap, water and whatever else the river bed throws in. (True, at night we had visitors – we see fresh deer tracks come up from the river and then retreat back again. But now, there are only birds and most are hiding in trees across the water.)

A summer shadow on the beach is like a Matisse sketch of a person with strong limbs. Or at least made stronger this year by so much carrying, climbing and rowing. Bird tracks cross the sand (and the shadow) in all directions.





We head out for a day of nonstop paddling. The Mississippi is still almost 20 miles away and after that, we have to navigate the great American river to get to the take out landing.

It’s a warm day. The thermometer would probably show 70s, but it feels warmer than that. Initially, there is plenty of sun and we’re careful to avoid burning. I study Ed in his former girlfriend’s father’s shirt and an old hat he found on the roadside. From one angle he looks to me like a Sicilian padrone – a good soul, kind to animals and dragonflies…





From another, he is Huck Finn with years added (though not to his soul – Ed is so very much a Huck, at least if we read Huck to be the compassionate adventure-seeking runaway, the kid who would like the river more than what town life had to offer).





And here we are, still on the Wisconsin River, still watching turtles plop and herons take flight…










And, maybe because it’s America’s holiday, we get treated to a return of the bald headed eagle…






As for people? No, not really. We pass only the occasional Alumacraft Jon boat with two, maybe three fishing men and women (everyone in these parts uses the Alumacraft).





Good catch today? Nah. Three nibbles. But we’re having such fun.

And we are too. More relaxed now, even as I’m paddling nonstop – dip one end, dip the other. My vest is loosely on a shoulder (for an idle moment of sinful pleasure… well, not too sinful: my inflatable is one hell of a steady tub and the current here is laboriously slow), my feet are dangling in the water. Ed asks for a song and I oblige with some Simon and Garfunkel. Life on the river can be very slow and beautiful.





The sand bars still trap us occasionally, but Ed can heave his way out with his powerful arms. Mine can’t reach that low. Nor are they nearly as strong. (For instance – I count that he paddles once for my four strokes and still he is faster.) I climb out, pushing the boat to deeper waters, picking up the current again.

And finally, we come to the last road bridge over the Wisconsin. High up, spanning the river. A tribute to the automobile traffic that roars across it.





…while the railcars stand to the side, waiting for their moment. With a half hope that they, too, are part of our American way of life.






And three miles later, we are on the Mississippi.

They say that approaching the joining of the two rivers is a grand event. I’m expecting a choking moment of accomplishment, with a twinge of wonder at the splendidness of it all.

I get, instead, a slap in the face. Or, rather, on the side, with waves. One after another. Rolling from the river to the shore.

We are on the first day of a long holiday week-end and America has taken to the river. We’re not talking paddles and canoes. We’re talking power boats. And picnics and cold cases of beer. And children jumping into the water and young adults pushing the bikini line way low and older adults too, having that I don’t care, I’m here to have fun attitude that makes this indeed one big party scene.





The Mississippi, festooned with Americans celebrating freedom in a big way.





I find the land celebrations to be loud, but rather endearing. The power boats are another matter. Let me put it mildly: I don’t much care for the motor boats, nor their effect on the river.

Noise, there’s the motor noise. Echoing across the waters, it is tenfold louder than what you hear on the highway.

Then there are the waves. Ed and I are fighting to keep our boats on course. We are mere smudges of dirt on this speed track. There are times when I am sure they are coming straight at us, even as we hug the shore line.





It is a dreadful way to experience the Mississippi.

(Lest you think it's all on the Wisconsin side -- no indeed. Iowa has its own contingency lined up on the shore.)





I shout out to Ed – why don’t they just go down the river once and come back when the trip’s over? Why this back and forth stuff?

Why indeed. Because it’s fun to race crazily between point A and B and back again. And to be faster than your buddy in the other boat. (I’m guessing here; it all seems a bit insane to me.)

Once we are a couple of miles away from the initial batch of boat fiends, we experience, briefly, a true Mississippi moment: a tug is pushing barges – two across and five deep. The front ones are empty, Ed tells me. See how they rise above the water?





We watch, mesmerized by the enormousness of this transport method. The barges command the river. All else (even the power boats) falls by the wayside.


And now, finally, we pull up to the county park beach. The car is there, waiting for the boats, for us. Ed folds up my inflatable as I watch the beach scene. Unlike the river noise, I find this more intimate and welcoming. Groups of young men, groups of children, banding together to have fun on this warm holiday afternoon.





If I want to think back fondly to the Mississippi, I’ll bring up these images – of families unloading the cooler, of friends cooling off in her waters, soda (or beer) in hand, of children dashing in to get the sand off.










I’m grinning as we head back east. Happy Fourth of July week-end indeed.



As we approach our starting point, where we left the other car, we pause at Culver’s. What’s your special today? Mint explosion. Hmmm. Like a fireworks of mint. No, forget that. We’ll share a vanilla. Small please.





And so on the Fourth of July we are not on the Wisconsin, and not even on the Mississippi. We’re back home, in Madison – doing what one does here on this day: going to my local and very endearing Westside Community Market…













…Picking up vegetables and flowers (yes, lovely flowers this week!) with notes of red and white and purple – will you settle for purple?









We’ll throw charcoal on the new grill out on the balcony (cheapest one on the market!) and roast and toast and maybe, if I haven’t fallen asleep by then, I’ll go out on the roof and watch the fireworks all around town.