In Twilight Regalia

What is it with Asians and Bob Dylan. I do not get it.
Is it that microtonality is not lost on them?
Is it that he’s an icon from the past and they’re just lagging by 5 decades?
Do they know that ain’t isn’t a actually a word?
Do they know that “ain’t” doesn’t “come natural” to a Jewish boy named Zimmerman?
Is it that his lyrics are simple to decode and tell poetic stories?
Is the poetry even evident to them once it’s transliterated?
Is it that you never have to tune your guitar to anything different?
Or maybe go without tuning it entirely?
Is it that he sings about American places and things?
Do they sound like real places? Because they aren’t here anymore.
Is it that so many college age Asian kids own acoustic guitars and his work is facile to play?
Is it that they Actually think they can attempt singing his stuff?
With no Rs?
Do they just think harmonicas sound interesting??? American?
Or maybe,

Just maybe,

It’s that he was an arrogant new rebellion art-fop sonovabitch who didn’t give a flying fuck what anyone else thought.
And they,
in their little tightclamped officedrone England’s-quiet-desperation-ain’t-got-nothing-on-us bow and don’t speak and squirrel it away until your manga lets it out or you commit some horrific murder kind of lives,
would DIE to be someone like that.

But really, folks,
I am so DONE with this. It’s been happening since I was gaining on my blistered fingerpads.
Little Japanese school girls idolizing my Martin and asking me if I can sing his tunes for them.
Dorky Chinese exchange students listing him as their all-time FAY-BO-rite.
Enduring kumbaya renditions of him by teenagers who can’t sing by the ocean around campfires,
or was it the mountains, I can’t remember,
or was it the drunk guy on that other trip?
Was it me? Did they get me drunk?
or with that stupid math guy that always shows up with the seriously messed up guitar.
He messed it up on purpose like that.
Moms who tell me he well HE’s the EXCEPTION, I mean, of course we like Bobby…..
Bob Dylan playing underneath extraneous Korean soap dramas in the middle of fights between mother-in-laws.
Bob Dylan being whispered by French recordings in shops in Kyoto.
Bob Dylan as Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan as Kimiko as Bob Dylan
AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

My husband downloads music from various msnbc surreptiously-Disney-owned WB fluff hardrock chart related multiconglomerate trashbin sites and never remembers what it is that he’s downloaded for free, it’s just new fodder for him to bounce around in his absent-minded musical rummage sale space. The last one is a compilation of every second-rate singer on the planet doing covers of Bob Dylan tunes (no it’s not from the movie I’m Not There) and as I’m listening to Sunny Goodge Street for the hundredth bazillionth time it just gives me a sharp jab in the cerebrum to recall the opportunities I had to say,
NO, I don’t care if you call me back
when I won’t give up my friends for you,
and I can’t understand what you just said,
can you please put a verb in it,
and there is no container on the planet that will contain the smell of kimchee
and I know it, but I’m going to kill you if you don’t find a new place for that shit while I’m eating chocolate cake,

and IF YOU MAKE THAT SNORKING NOISE IN THE BATHROOM AGAIN I’M BUYING A GUN.
SERIOUSLY.
AND TURN THAT SHIT OFF.

1)
Place: Bus Stop in Front of a museum.
Time: Saturday night around 1:00 a.m.
Siting: Obviously homeless person, drunk Mexican guy, Blonde Hilton Clone, Masai Chieftan in full tribal plaid wrap with circular bone in nose, and two Korean students. Just… waiting for the bus.

2)
Place: Starbucks Brentwood
Time: Saturday around 10:00a.m.
Siting: Val Kilmer and 13 year old son Jack. Just ordering.

3)
Place: Office Lobby near DSW Shoes
Time: 2:30 pm
Siting: The best 20 foot square painting by Laddie John Dill ever, that no one ever really sees much, since it’s just on their way to work.

4)
Place: Beverly Hills at Wilshire
Time: 7:30p.m. on a Friday
Siting: Opening on the sidewalk amid flashes and paparazzi of The Posh Puppy pet store, sporting an enormous photo in the window of a maltese wearing a rhinestone crown.

5)
Place: Ethiopian Restaurant
Time: 12:30pm on a Wednesday
Siting: Irishman and Obviously Iranian Guy sharing a business lunch. Irish guy was SO NOT EATING THE FOOD. Were they just mapping out gun running?

6)
Place: Sunset & Ivar
Time: 9pm on a Sunday
Siting: Burly guy in a yellow tutu and sneakers. No purse.

7)
Place: Beverly Hills at Wilshire
Time: 10:00 am or so on a Saturday two weeks after number 4.
Siting: Real Estate Sign in window of empty Posh Puppy store. Busted for using puppy mill dogs.
Place: Nordstrom’s
Time: Saturday afternoon
Siting: Three beautiful women’s faces engulfed by muslim burquas peering in the Nike display window.

9)
Place: Physical Therapy office
Time: Wednesday, 4:00p.m.
Siting: I meet a physical therapist who not only is the son of a Soviet rocket fuel scientist, but also just happens to be the brother in law of Alien Sex Fiend’s Nick Fiend. How far removed is That?.

10)
Place: Office
Time: Wednesday morning
Siting: General Counsel of Giant International Company I Can’t Disclose on his knees under a desk. Earthquake!

A wonderful moment came in the midst of a uselessly harried day.

We have a yearly “Bring Your Child to Work” day which has been dubbed unofficially “Rugrat Day”, since it seemed at one time, all the progeny from our floormates used to be 9-month blobs. This made the day more of a presentation ooh-and-awww day rather than anything beneficial for the children. They were all roaming on a blanket in the library one year, and the next, the older kids either stood behind their mothers’ skirts or took over the candybowls on the sly. It’s been a loose-cannonball kind of day, traditionally.

I was gearing up for a mad day just concerning my own work early this morning, too bothered and worried and hurried to even dress well today (unwashed restyled hair, no earrings, all black, lucky that I threw on a necklace). In among the stressed out crisis phone call conversations of my two bosses, people talking amongst themselves going up and down the aisle discussing deals and financials, and intermittant airplane-simulator white noise from our printer, I noticed Attorney E’s daughter was emerging from her cocoon of unaware kid mania into real childhood. Standing like a new little person.

There she was, the little nymphet in place of what used to be a rampant smudgy four year old. I was shocked to see how her height even at not-quite-6 is now towering over other children (her dad and mom are both over 6 feet). Her hair had grown princess-long, and her attitude was now shy and eye-wide under her sandy bangs.

I watched as Mom and Dad packed her into a jeans jacket to take her outside to be with the other kids of that age for a courtyard lunch, and everything fell away beside them. It became a silent, perfect place, unnoticed by the flotsam and storm of business activity. The three hardly spoke, having already talked over Dad’s shoulder while watching him working in his office. Mom was quietly smiling, buttoning her up, Dad in back of her was lifting and smoothing out her hair, just tenderly… they moved together in familiar rhythm, in such a small circle of repeated everyday assurance that harmony and warmth just seemed to pulse off the three of them in waves. It was a pausing, taking time to perfectly love, a pearl moment.

Dad in his blue shirt, one in a sea of blue shirts here, so standard, snappy, efficient, seemed softened in an instant; daughter and Mom were dressed in warm and patterned reds, pinks, blues; a colliding carnival of color against the beige box of our daily containment. They were rosy cheer personified.

How I envied them that moment. This is a little family who knows how to grab happiness, even if it’s in snippets. They do it amid two dogs and a number of other exuberant chaotic factors at home like a side-business for Mom, nieghbors, mothers-in-law, serendipity barely clinging to sanity. But they still make time for their daughter to have a kiss from her daddy after school, a kiss which they do by “drive-by.” The drill is: Mom calls from her cell in the car while driving daughter home in the afternoon; finds out if Dad’s available, and if so, stops by in the parking lot to have him come down from his tower of steel and glass just to have a few minutes of What Did You Do Today? and a hug. This is a very valuable thing, since Dad travels more than anyone in our department.

And of course I know that this kind of moment doesn’t last, that it bursts into tears later over something stupid like a toy or candy or a skinned knee, or icky food, or a mean playmate, or a brother, and I know that those clothes don’t come cheap and Mom woke up early and Dad doesn’t get enough time with them in order to keep them in their nice house, but they HAVE these moments. They’re there.

Here before me I see that those two parents know that. They absolutely know. They grab this little moment and it glows in their hands like a firefly.

I want mine too.
How on earth do I get it from where I am, I don’t know.
I had always expected to be a mother, a grandmother, something.
Though I don’t have it; I am almost sure I deserve it. Somehow. In some miniature, bright way.
I’ll just keep looking for it, walking around and around through all these rooms of existence, back to the center.