Life Cycles, pt. II: Human kickstand
 When I was 9 I found my kickstand rotting off; it seemed to have crept under my bicycle. I asked my brother John to fix it.
"There's two types of people in the world, Mart," he said, using an abbreviation of my name that means shop or store. "People who need kickstands and people who don't."
I didn't know what he meant, but he fixed my kickstand anyway. I rode away wondering which group Judas Priest belonged to, not knowing at the time that Judas Priest was already a group.
John is no longer around for me to ask, but it occurred to me at the time that he might have thought less of the people who needed kickstands, and therefore me.
Over the years I have determined that the world isn't so easily divided and, while it might be polite to not argue when someone says Democrat or Republican, fried or flame-broiled, Rob Halford or Ronnie James Dio, sometimes the only thing you can drink while listening to "Mob Rules" is a Pepsi, not a Coke.
"But there aren't just two kinds of people in the world, John," I might say.
"Really?" he'd reply. "You're alive and I'm not. You use a kickstand and I don't. Q.E.motherscratching D."
"But you're dead. You don't need a kickstand."
"Exactly."
Three weeks ago, the kickstand on my 11-year-old bicycle fell off in the middle of Wilshire Blvd. For a moment I experienced a feeling of otherworldliness, as if I were passing from this realm to another.
"You won't need that kickstand anymore, Marty Barrett," Our Lord Jesus Christ said.
I thought of the inspirational poster Footprints, in which a man's life was represented by two sets of footprints on the sand, one his, and one Our Lord's. In the difficult times, the man noticed that there was only one set of footprints.
"What's up with that?" the man said to The Lord.
Thinking fast, The Lord said, "It's because I was carrying you."
Because of the Inspirational Poster Spatial Limitation Act of 1977, it is not widely known that the man didn't believe The Lord's answer for a second, noting that the footprints were clearly left by the man's shoes, not The Lord's sandals, and that the man weighed at least 220 lbs. during the time of his diabetic coma, and had Our Lord been carrying him, the footprints would have been indented farther into the sand.
"Fine," The Lord said. "I abandoned you for someone who ate right. You going to go be Jewish now?"
I thought briefly that my brother might have meant that losing one's kickstand means that one is not truly alive. If this is true, I have been traveling through the realm of the undead since July.
In the first summer I had my bicycle I traveled to Martha's Vineyard with my friend Todd. We stayed at a hostel run by a nice Bavarian couple.
"The showers are open until 1 a.m.," the wife said, handing us towels, "and the kitchen is open at 5. We just had the showers redone so the water pressure is better than a hotel."
"I don't like it when German people tell me how good the showers are," Todd, who happened to be Jewish, said.
Come to think of it, I, who happen to be Irish, have never ordered potato latkes from a British deli. Why should I pay for what thieving absentee landlords stole from my ancestors?
What I'm saying is that to make choices is to be alive.
The upside of being no longer alive and riding a bike is that my calves are huge. The two types of people in this world are people who get calf implants, and people who don't.Labels: footprints, life cycles, los angeles, martha'svineyard, personal history
Predictable drinker, perennial favorite
 Once I directed a pub crawl version of Sean O'Casey's "The Plough And the Stars" in Boston. Plays performed in bars are an Irish tradition, and the scene from O'Casey's play about the 1916 Easter Rising was even more appropriate because it took place in a bar while the uprising commenced outside.
Anyway, I cast an elderly gentleman for the role of Peter, an ineffectual loudmouth and "lemon-whiskered oul' swine". He was about 70. I don't know why he wanted to schlep all around the city doing plays in bars for not much money, but it might have had something to do with the fact that there were four or five 22-year-old women in the cast playing spirited agitators, bar wenches, and prostitutes. He must have thought, "Good odds."
One night as reheasal was breaking up he tried to get the young ladies to go home with him. They politely declined, and he said:
"I have alcohol."
...and they politely declined again. I filed the exchange away. Did he think that alcohol would tip the scales?
The other night I had my annual Los Angeles birthday dinner at the Irish bar Tom Bergin's in Los Angeles. One by one, my friends came bearing gifts of alcohol, particularly Jagermeister. I got three bottles of Jager, which is my biggest birthday haul of the substance to date.
"I thought, 'I could be original or I could get you something you'd use'," one friend said. Indeed, we killed two of the bottles right there at the table as the long-suffering waitstaff rejoiced that it would be a year before they saw me again. (We tipped the living shit out of them.)
I also had Jagermeister at my 20th birthday on Martha's Vineyard. A lot of it. I threw up most of it. But I was poorer then and I was drinking it without any food. The other night we were able to drink it with dinner, and I didn't have a hangover the next day. In this world the poor are even denied vices.
Here is my friend Gabriela with the evening's take, which included a bottle of wine in a Chinese suit. I consider myself lucky because I think my friends and family would have shown up even if there had been no alcohol.
(I could be wrong about this - I'm no longer a 22-year-old woman.)
See also: Full. Metal. JagermeisterLabels: alcohol, boston, food, los angeles, martha'svineyard, performance, personal history
Yeats to glade: "I changed my goddamn mind."
 Partially because of the faerie problem, and partially because I have been coveting Martha's Vineyard real estate (it's the type of coveting free of the ability to procure it), I have been thinking about a particular phrase of William Butler Yeats in his description of his intended digs on Innisfree.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core. Through the guy living in my office building's garage, I was able to contact W.B. Yeats and ask a few questions.
MB: How would you describe the noise in your glade, Mr. Yeats?
WBY: Oh, it's bee-loud.
MB: Does that mean the noise in your glade is made by bees, and that they are loud?
WBY: Yes.
MB: Does it ever bother you, the bee-loudness?
WBY: Aye.
MB: What, you're a pirate now?
Because the directory was already open to that page, psychically, I then contacted W.B. Mason for some mailing labels.
In terms of glades, their usability decreases in inverse proportion to the number of bees in them. If I were to own property with a glade, I would put a barbecue and hammock in it. And if my enemies came over, I would suggest they try out the hammock, and then put the barbecue under it, thus burning my enemies to death, as the guy in my garage suggested.
Were I to have a glade, there are only a few types of sound I would allow, lest my property value decrease:
- donkey-loud
- poltergeist-loud
- one-legged Thai mail-order bride-loud
- Weber Grill-loud
- cash-loud
- Jagermeister Tap Machine-loud
- potato salad-loud
- Jaws-loud
- Not your mother-loud
- thong-loud
See also: William Butler Yeats, Martha's Vineyard Real EstateLabels: martha'svineyard, poetry
Leaving Woods Hole
The last time I took this ferry was three years ago today. TAARG was pregnant but she didn't know it (though she had thrown up in Burlington the day before, we paid it no mind because that's one of the things people do in Burlington).Labels: martha'svineyard
Aquinnah
 Greetings from the island of Mothra's Vineyard. The last two weeks have been a crazy joyride of Singapore performances, visiting friends and family, eating and drinking, traveling to places with great sentimental value, and not seeing any snow.Labels: martha'svineyard, travel
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