Alright, so I'm back in school.

I have to say, I'm enthused. My schedule quite reflects my warring left and right brains -- English for Brainiacs and Math for Dummies.

In my Math for Dummies class I am peopled with a group of individuals from all over the globe -- Brazil, Peru, Yemin, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Norway, The Bronx. None of these people are stupid, they just don't understand numbers. Like me. I should have paid more attention when The Count was painting numbers on umbrellas on Sesame Street.

So, I'm getting a pretty cool submersion in graphing trinomials and world cultures all at once. We're even studying together, this group and I.

Now, call me crazy but, what are the chances I might not understand their language? We have to provide an extra hour of group study time just to make sure we're hearing each other correctly. Because in Brazil, math operations are performed exactly opposite of how they're performed here. Norway ... hmmm... ya ... Yemin - reads right to left ...

This brings me to my English for Brainiacs class. The professor seems a bit... ambivalent. To his surprise, he was teaching World Lit not American Lit. So he failed to show for the second class meeting, but sent someone in his stead to put in the video and have us take "serious notes for discussion" during next class period. The video was an ancient Dutch film full of gloom and doom and lots of fretful women with tears (and fire) in their eyes. But no subtitles. That's right folks -- nary a language on the screen but for the scroll of original language ala circa 1623 in the very beginning that no one in the class knew how to decipher.

But for the young blonde sitting next to me who said, "For some reason I can understand what they're saying."

All the tharn-eyed deer turned her way.

"I don't know *how* I am understanding them, but...strangely... I can."

She needs to come with me to my psycho 101 class where THAT teacher promises to use the Tarot on us by the end of the course. I really *really* want to put the two of them together and see what happens.

If nothing else, I have learned that I can no longer afford to be monolingual. I need to pick up Spanish out of necessity for the community I live in is fast becoming predominantly Latin American. French is a must in order to understand the natives when I venture over the great big pond between us. And Tarot is necessary to better understand the lessons nature sends each of us, sometimes in the form of psychic premonition, sometimes in the form of seemingly thoughtless academics.

Thursday conversation in zippy's world...

me: Honey, do you think we should have a fight a day to improve our marriage?

him: NO!!!!

me: Man, you NEVER agree with me!!!!

Home of the Brave.


I've jumped out of an airplane at three miles high. I've climbed a 14,000 ft. mountain in Colorado and stood at its summit on the 4th of July. I slid down a New Mexico mountainside with nothing but my tennis shoes to break my fall into the cold, cold Red River. I've been in waist deep water in the Gulf of Mexico as a shark scoped out its meal advantage, circling … circling (he didn't think I was worthy, thankfully). I have been legally blind. I stood in front of on-coming traffic just to see the headlights coming my way. I've taught young men and women who might have knifed me on the street but in my classroom, some of them paid attention. I've been in the Navy, in the theater, and unemployed. I've dated convenience store clerks, pathologically. I've crossed this country by myself from the East Coast to the West and back again more times than I can remember, once on a Greyhound bus with a bottle of Southern Comfort and a kissing companion I wouldn’t have met had I not sat next to him. I’ve chased a would-be rapist down ten flights of stairs only to lose him in the traffic of a busy city sidewalk. I held my mother’s hand and told her when it was time for her to let go of life and wept as she said "I love you my baby" for the last time. I have stood on the bathroom scale every morning for the last fifteen years. I have tried on every shade of red professed to not be my color. As my dear, dear friend tried to kill herself for the umpteenth time, I advised her "You need to cut this shit out or get better at it ‘cause I can’t take it anymore."

And yet I do not find myself a particularly brave person for I have also said "no" to the entire sea going fleet of single sailors but said "yes" to one married man. I’ve worn men’s clothes because I was terrified of being pretty. I claimed I was asexual because I was terrified of being loved. I never spoke of my dad to anyone, ever. I spit on my grandmother’s grave. I am an active participant in my own creativity only after much kicking and screaming. I changed addresses every eight months for close to twenty years before I finally changed my name and settled down. I sought answers from my brother, newly released from prison, knowing he was mentally ill. I looked to him and asked "WHY?? Why am I so fucked up?" and he said "I don’t know darlin’. You’re the one that holds the rest of us together. I thought you were here to help me."

Monday conversation in zippy's world:


"So, what are you hoping to do with your degree?"

"Ideally, I'll get a job as a dramaturg, teaching somewhere."

"Dramaturg?"

"Sort of a theater historian, and educator."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah. Wouldn't it'd be really cool sitting around talking about Checkov all the time?"

"Checkov? I know Checkov! He's the guy on Star Trek, right?"


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

There's a new link to the left under "introducing" -- as I have a new friend in Paris with a virtual memorial she developed to honor her Jewish relatives who fell victims of the "Holocaust" or, as I have recently learned, "Shoah." For those inquiring minds (not unlike my own), "holocaust" means "sacrifice," but "Shoah" means "catastrophe" which seems infinitely more appropriate.

-- this was moved from zippy's gene pool as it was there by mistake... whoops... please, no one tell my boss.



Two nights ago, mr. zippy and I were watching something utterly forgettable on tv and it prompted a conversation about who to notify in case one of us dies. Who to notify in case of his death isn't such a hard thing - I can count on one hand, maybe part of the second hand, how many calls that will take. But he's going to have his work cut out for him in case I go first.

"You know you'll have to email everyone in my address book," I said.

"I'll just tell Gary."

"I know a lot more people than he's aware of."

See, should I die before him, mr. zippy is depending on Gary to tell those to whom I'm closest. I think he thinks this will free him up to be miserable. But it's not very fair to expect one's friend to tell the world of your wife's demise, now is it? Besides, Gary might get all the folks we went to college with, but what about my doctor friend in Philly? or my student friend at Cambridge? or my writer friends in the UK? or the sci fi bloke Down Under? or the Belgian pen pal I've had since I was 12 years old who doesn't use email? how will they know to stop sending post cards?

Will he think to tell my estranged stepparents in Florida? They may not want to talk to me, but I'm sure they'd want to know it was time to throw a DING! DONG! THE WITCH IS DEAD! party. Hell, it's five o'clock somewhere, they could get started early!

And he'll be saddled with the calls to the siblings. Sorry, love, truly. They'll both come unglued. Jimmy's already rocked me in wailing sorrow twice in my lifetime when he thought I was going to die. Huggy's just not got the capacity to carry the load.

Then, of course, he'll have to flip through my actual address book and find all those people I keep in touch with only via telephone and snail mail. Boy, no wonder he wants Gary to take care of it! Sounds like a lot of work already! I'm exhausted just writing about it! Poor fella.

But, thankfully, I thought about it and at least 150 people will be notified via email in one click of the mouse. The rest will just have to make due with the "I'm terribly sorry..." response to their Christmas cards or odd phone call after they've not heard from me in a while.

So, if one day you happen to receive an email from zippy sent to a group known as "DEATH NOTICE" ... be forgiving of mr. zippy and send out to the universe your prayers and positive thoughts for him, as his wife will already be embarked on the greater cosmic experience.