How Jackson Got His Many Names

Babies spit up two kinds of milk: one that's still fresh, and one that's been in the stomach long enough to look like cottage cheese. As soon as we learned this, Jack and I began saying, "I've been cheesed!" when the baby spit up on us. As cheese went from noun to adjective to verb in our house, all sorts of phrases sprung up, such as "Don't jiggle Jackson too much or he'll cheese you!" and "You're looking particularly cheesy this evening" and "Hand me that cloth, I have to decheesify someone here." And of course it led to an evolving series of nicknames for the baby (Mr. Cheese, Monsieur Fromage, Signor Formaggio) leading to the current favorite: Senor Queso.

His other nickname is The Nut, which stems from the beginning of my pregnancy when I started consulting a little growth chart to see how much the fetus weighed each week. Somewhere around 9 weeks I determined that s/he was as big as a peanut, so that's what Jack and I started calling the little beast (handy when we were still debating names). For a long time s/he was going to be named Pablo Ali (or Kate), but serious dissention from Jack's mom led us to settle on Jackson.

Five Months

Today is Jackson's five-month birthday, so we celebrated by sleeping in until 6:30 and then watching Sesame Street with a cappucino. Actually, I had the cappucino while Jackson chewed on the remote.

I am happy to report that it IS okay to eat something that's been in the refrigerator for nine days, but you might not actually enjoy it. I had exactly two bites of some aged osso buco and then threw it out. Which reminds me of the time I had dinner down on Chrystie Street at Sammy's Roumanian Restaurant with Mark and Bill. This is the place where they put syrup containers full of chicken fat on the table. So I order veal and the waiter says, Oh, I thought you'd be too liberal to order the veal.

Leftovers

Is it okay to eat something that's been in the refrigerator for nine days?

Hardware

I was in Restoration Hardware the other day looking for knobs to put on the cabinet underneath the bathroom sink. Restoration Hardware has the best knobs. They have knobs in the shape of garden tools, leaves, letters of the alphabet, you name it. Brass, copper, glass, enamel. My husband was looking for a knob to use as a pull for the glove compartment on his '57 Ford flatbed truck. The glove doesn't lock or anything, it just has a spring action to keep it open or shut. He found a little hammer-shaped knob. It's perfect for a work truck.

All this reminds me of a poem by Wallace Stevens.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be the finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once,
and spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Blue

Depressed about the whole joblessness thing. I mean, I really hated that job, but I didn't want to get fired. Editing jobs are impossible to find around here, so I might have to switch fields. God help me if I have to go back to working in a bookstore, the pay won't even cover childcare. I might as well stay home and raise goats. My landlady would love that. Then I'd be homeless, too!

This is my favorite poem by LeRoi Jones.

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
(For Kellie Jones, born 16 May 1959)

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
the ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus . . .

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night, I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there . . .
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands.

Chinese lantern

There's a quote from Lincoln Steffens, "I have seen the future and it works." He said it after a visit to Russia in 1919. Steffens' enthusiasm for the Soviet form of government did not last, however, and by the time he wrote his memoirs ten years later he was disillusioned with communism.

Anyway, I was walking around in the back yard this morning, a nice thing to do around 8:30 when my son gets fussy but isn't quite convinced that it's time to take a nap, and I noticed this big bush with little red flowers hanging off of it. It looked like fuschia that hadn't quite bloomed yet, and I was reminded of a line from a poem by James Merrill. I went to see him read in a community center in Connecticut about fifteen years ago. He was a dapper man and very eloquent, and he read one poem (I haven't been able to find it, but I'm still looking) and he gets to this line where he describes someone looking out at a garden and the person says, "I have seen the fuschia, and it works."

I e-mailed my landlady (who lives right downstairs, I love e-mailing people who are, like, ten feet away) and she said she thought the bush was Chinese lantern.

Fire

Well, I certainly was the arrogant one, I knew some people were going to get fired but I didn't think one of them would be me.

I don't remember where I read it but apparently the origin of the term "to get fired" came from a charming ancient tradition wherein if the people of a town/village/collection of huts didn't like one of their neighbors, they'd set the person's house on fire. Guess you'd be traveling light after that, if you weren't burnt to a crisp. I certainly was burnt out at my job (these fire metaphors are fascinating) but I was scared to death of quitting. Now I'm on the dole, getting paid to babysit, basically.

This poem is by Howard Nemerov.

Style

Flaubert wanted to write a novel
about nothing. It was to have no subject
And be sustained upon style alone,
Like the Holy Ghost cruising above
The abyss, or like the little animals
In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch
That breaks, but do not fall
Till they look down. He never wrote that novel,
And neither did he write another one
That would have been called La Spirale,
Wherein the hero's fortunes were to rise
In dreams, while his waking life disintegrated.

Even so, for these two books
We thank the master. They can be read,
With difficulty, in the spirit alone,
Are not so wholly lost as certain works
Burned at Alexandria, flooded at Florence,
And are never taught at universities.
Moreover, they are not deformed by style,
That fire that eats what it illuminates.

Work

People are getting laid off left and right all over the country. The magazine I work for was just sold to a businessman from Baltimore, so by this time next week some of the people I work with will no longer be there. I work at home, so that I can take care of my four-month-old son, so I don't see much of the old gang anyway. Growth can be painful.

Here's a poem by Philip Levine.

What Work Is

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is -- if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it's someone else's brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad clouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, "No,
we're not hiring today," for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who's not beside you or behind or
ahead because he's home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long as it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You've never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you're too young or too dumb,
not because you're jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don't know what work is.