Seriously. No, really.
I can't sleep. I can't eat. It's just hot coffee simmered and sloshed on top of panic. Apparently I don't have the emotional bootstraps to talk myself out of how seriously shitty this month has been for me financially. I am at the end of my rope. Like, hanging from one ply of a frayed bit. And it's not like I'm sad because I spent too much money on Christmas (I can't), and it's not like I'm sad because I CAN'T spend money on Christmas because I'm honestly not materialistic like that and neither are my kids. It's not about a heap of presents. It's not about STUFF I can't buy, it's about basic needs. Like really really basic. Like shelter basic.
I'm sure once I'm done being such a busted sissy about it I will reach some clarity. I don't expect anyone to do it for me or give me a hand out. I just want a hand UP.
After a two year stint being unemployed and thinking there would be a Job out there for me and without any start up cash, no degree or $3000 certification, I'm making a career for myself as a Professional Organizer. It is an entirely trust based gig. Organizing isn't new to me, in fact it comes so naturally to me that I overlooked it as a marketable skill. But the business aspect is still pretty new for me, so there's still a lot of refining and tweaking and learning along the way. Sometimes I feel trapped by the stupid money part of it. I've been accused of poaching by others who charge three times my fee but I've also seen the furrowed brow of the interested but cash poor. I think I'm priced pretty fairly for the client, but certainly lower than I'd like to be. I've had to learn how to not give it away for free (cuz, uhm, hey guys? I really like you but this is my only source of income and I like feeding my kids and having heat and car insurance and a roof over my head.)
Organizing is a lot more work than just clearing off a shelf and putting stuff on it. I can organize the crap out of any room, but to give those efforts a chance to stick I have to tailor the process to the individual and I have to teach them the skills they need to manage on their own. I have to ask a million questions about intent and personal goals in order to help them make all the decisions that go along with keeping, donating, prioritizing, and accessibility of Important Stuff. Along the way I learn an awful lot about the people. It's pretty inexpensive therapy.
I absolutely love what I do. For real, for the first time in my long career of serving the pubic I've discovered that what I am truly best at is serving the individual, in their own space. It's exhausting and dusty and sometimes full of set backs, but I was made for this. I have other interests too, of course. I still write (but so far mostly for fun and not profit) and I still make stuff (also for fun and not profit). But in terms of nailing down what I can do for an honest, actual living, I've found it. I actually love my work. That's a rare and beautiful thing.
The problem is that on a good day a prospective client might look around and think, dang. I need help. Where do I start? So they call me ready to rock. I try to nail down an appointment date as close to that initial contact as possible but far too often the client finds themselves unable to imagine tackling something they clearly dislike doing on the actual day they chose in advance. They wake up with low energy and a headache and they cancel on me at the last minute. Or they have a financial panic and just can't move forward. Or they have some other legitimate sounding reason It's Just Not Going to Work Out Today, Sorry, Don't Be Mad. So, suddenly, on a day I've set aside just for them, I find myself without work. Without any pay at all. I know cancellations are par for the course, I get that. And they wouldn't sting quite so much if I had a stream of clients beating a path to my door, but I'm just not that well known yet. This month I've had five cancellations, some of them from long time clients, some from people who responded to a Craigslist ad and seemed really serious until the morning of.
This month I have made a grand total of $460, which is already gone. Not on frivolous things like lattes and Christmas presents and toilet paper, but to things like The Glorious Utility Bills. My tiny money pool also stars Minimum Credit Card Payments for the Gas and Food Costs of Months Long Past. You know, those basic things a person really needs to have, so I buy them on loan thinking next month will surely be better and I can pay for it then, but it isn't, so I can't.
BLARGUM FRICKETY FUCK
I already bawled my eyes out. Now I go pick the kids up from school and pretend I don't have a crushing elephant of financial responsibility trumpeting away on my chest.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
Glass shelf for bricks
It's nearly Christmas and it's complicated. I am a whirled up mix of insanely busy and paralyzed financial WTF. Delighted to decorate and make good foods and tell the people I love that I love them, and also sad about the people I can't tell (even though I am supposed to) because I don't. Namely my parents. I would prefer the kind of parents that are lovable, but I did not get that kind. And this time of year there are so many simple questions to dodge. So many well intentioned references to Christmas as a season of warm loving forgiveness. I am supposed to love my parents. And not loving them comes with the burden of feeling kicked in the stomach and the head, all for the crime of not doing it right, and also for being born at all. Intellectually I know those things are stupid, I didn't do anything wrong by being born and that at this point it's my choice how I process the experiences I had. I have proven I can love and be loved. I have a great relationship with my children. I have extraordinary friends. I have an honest, healthy, delightful, strong relationship with a man who loves me completely, exactly as I am. So it's not like I wallow around in self pity, and I'm not broken. I totally get the spirit behind those well meaning phrases that pop up all over Christmas but I don't want to shit on someone else's Season of Love parade so I dodge and weave. I re-direct. I think some people think I'm an orphan. The truth is, I made my own family. I found really lovely, seriously lovely people to share my holidays and regular days with. I finally (finally) have what I always wanted, a real family full of people I love and who love me back. It's literally awesome, as in, I look at it like a natural wonder that blows me away with gratitude so big I can't even express it properly. I love it like the sky, to the moon and back. It IS the best gift ever. Some would say I got my happily ever after but that's true but also silly, time is a loop. A big glorious circle. I get a lot of love. I also get a lot of alone time, which is probably the exact combination I needed even though sometimes the alone part can suck a bug.
Somewhere in this god damned sentence I'm trying to formulate are my parents. In a tiny slum apartment. And who knows what the hell they do. They will likely spend it alone, together (at least they have that), but outside of their tobacco stained walls, and across the broken bottle field, in another house not really that far away, I will be laughing and having a great time with the love of my life, and the family of my dreams, and they will be... what? Passed out drunk? Eating a can of beans? Pretending they are orphans? Do they still have a maze of hoarded spoils? How many Pringles cans has my mother collected by now? Did she ever figure out what she wanted to do with them? Does my mother know about the internet? Did they ever manage to say yes to the universe? Did my mom start crapping in a bucket once Black Out Drunk + Stairs became an obvious recurring problem? If it's come to that I am sure my Dad has some kind of diplomatic way of handling the shit bucket, he's the master at making my mom look more together than she actually is.
I've hovered over the keyboard a million times without producing anything helpful or resolving about my parents. I've drifted over to thoughts of them just before falling asleep, which results in that jagged precipice of panic where I talk myself off the ledge, alone in my room, on a mattress that seriously needs to be replaced, staring down 4 am with eyes that hate open and shut, weary and full of Why? And Please? And Bad memories and guilt, please fuck off. I float down panic river until I talk myself back up onto the shore. I do a lot of this talking myself into and down from and out of. I am self parented. It's a skill I'm glad to have, even if I had to get it the hard way. For a smart kid, Growing Up Extra Shitty can come with it's advantages. I am aware there is a silver lining in all this. That's another skill I've picked up.
I chose to make myself unavailable to them. I did it on purpose because having them as free roaming force that could just pop up and fuck me over emotionally at any time was seriously unhealthy. It took a long time for me to cut them off. It was not at all an easy decision. It involved years of constant uncertainty and self-abasement, overwhelming shame for being alive, panic attacks and gut spilled tear stained janky one more chance declarations.
This time all these feelings came up because someone who doesn't really know me that well told me that my mother must be so proud. She isn't, trust me. But I just smiled and said Thank You. And I mean it, I appreciate the sentiment, there's no way the person who said it could possibly know it would hit me like a sucker punch and I know they intended something else entirely. But it also kind of sucks. I still wish it were true and it hurts that it isn't. My inner five year old still wants a gold fucking star, or a hug, or just to be told, “I'm glad I didn't abort you after all.” Wanting that makes me mad. Knowing I have a choice to let it go but I choose to go down It Still Bugs Me Lane makes me mad. My mother will never apologize for calling me a stupid fatass or frequently announcing how grateful I should have been that she didn't beat me. And that makes me mad.
I am not without compassion for my own mother. I know the shit she had to live through. She didn't deserve the things that happened to her any more than I did. She was hammered by a mish mash of negative feelings about sex, love and family. She was regularly hurt, betrayed by her own mother and beaten by her father. She chose to be better than that, and in some ways she did succeed. I'm grateful I didn't grow up in a world of angry lashing belt buckles that licked around my body to slam into my jaw when I didn't eat up all my leathery chicken liver at dinner. I am glad I was not taught an angry Baptist vision of what it means to be alive. Because she lived through that and was smart enough to identify that those things sucked, she tried very hard to avoid passing them down to us. I appreciate that I grew up in a house without beatings or an angry god. I really do. Sometimes I'm filled with intense empathy for her. How dare I acknowledge how great it is that I wasn't screwed over with cobbled crazy god talk and not be thankful every second of my life! Who am I to say, Hey Mom, I really appreciate that you didn't hit me with stuff but it would have been WAY MORE AWESOME if you'd also chosen to spare the psychological beat downs, constant uprooting of our lives, spectacularly loud smash-ups, horrible stories about my unfortunate birth and really creepy messages about sex because those are the things that kinda still freak my shit out.
I know that we all have to deal with where we came from. And I know I'm not alone. I know people who have honest, loving relationships with their parents. And I know some who have strained plodding obligatory relationships with their parents. And I know some who have no relationship at all because the whole thing just snapped in half and that's that. I know people who have lost their parents and now re-examine every conversation, every lesson, every dream and half memory just to be near them again.
Those things are all legitimate and raw, the strength or weakness of those relationships is up to the people in them. My relationship with my mother just straight up sucks. It always has. She has let me know that “reconciliation” would be based on me acknowledging my own essential wrongness without “bringing up stuff from the past”, a real bargain. Were I to ever accept those terms our future relationship would consist of a wimpy loser visiting the hovel of a bitter old woman out of pity and obligation. At best I can just accept the fact that she was still a little kid when I was born and she blamed me for wrecking her life (no really, she used these exact words as well as some others that were even worse but amount to the same thing). As a 35 year old woman with two kids of my own, I can recognize how absurd and dysfunctional that is. But still, for people who love their parents, even when it's difficult, me not loving mine comes off as petty and selfish. There's “Oh, EVERYONE has weird parents, you just gotta love 'em anyway!” and “It's never too late to say sorry!” and my personal favorite, delivered with a side of tisking pity sauce, “You never know how much time you'll have to fix things.” Trust me, if it were fixable I would have fucking fixed it. I spent my entire childhood trying to fix it. There's just no way to argue your worth to someone who seriously resents having you in the first place. I started to realize trying so hard was destructive to me. I got myself in a lot of relationships that also sucked because they started with me being whatever the other person wanted instead of my actual self, partly for the safety of not being rejected, and partly because I had no idea who that self was. It took me a really long time to get my own shit together. I had to learn to tell people to fuck off when they were being destructive. I had to learn to open my heart without fear, to tell people I loved them and believe them when they said they loved me.
The fact is, I found a new Mom. She's real and she's a delight to converse with and she accepts me exactly as I am. Her house feels like home. I can walk through her front door any time without knocking, and I never have to pause to intuit the mood so I know who to be. And when I get in there is hugging, and genuine smiling and we drink coffee or beer and eat delicious things and play board games and talk about religion and politics and family history. And when I look across the dining room table at the family she made, I love all of them too. It's exactly that hearth and home kind of feeling I've always suspected was possible and now I have it.
So when the well meaning lady told me my Mom must be so proud it caught me off guard. Actual Mom no, Real Mom, yes. I just smiled and nodded. It's complicated.
Somewhere in this god damned sentence I'm trying to formulate are my parents. In a tiny slum apartment. And who knows what the hell they do. They will likely spend it alone, together (at least they have that), but outside of their tobacco stained walls, and across the broken bottle field, in another house not really that far away, I will be laughing and having a great time with the love of my life, and the family of my dreams, and they will be... what? Passed out drunk? Eating a can of beans? Pretending they are orphans? Do they still have a maze of hoarded spoils? How many Pringles cans has my mother collected by now? Did she ever figure out what she wanted to do with them? Does my mother know about the internet? Did they ever manage to say yes to the universe? Did my mom start crapping in a bucket once Black Out Drunk + Stairs became an obvious recurring problem? If it's come to that I am sure my Dad has some kind of diplomatic way of handling the shit bucket, he's the master at making my mom look more together than she actually is.
I've hovered over the keyboard a million times without producing anything helpful or resolving about my parents. I've drifted over to thoughts of them just before falling asleep, which results in that jagged precipice of panic where I talk myself off the ledge, alone in my room, on a mattress that seriously needs to be replaced, staring down 4 am with eyes that hate open and shut, weary and full of Why? And Please? And Bad memories and guilt, please fuck off. I float down panic river until I talk myself back up onto the shore. I do a lot of this talking myself into and down from and out of. I am self parented. It's a skill I'm glad to have, even if I had to get it the hard way. For a smart kid, Growing Up Extra Shitty can come with it's advantages. I am aware there is a silver lining in all this. That's another skill I've picked up.
I chose to make myself unavailable to them. I did it on purpose because having them as free roaming force that could just pop up and fuck me over emotionally at any time was seriously unhealthy. It took a long time for me to cut them off. It was not at all an easy decision. It involved years of constant uncertainty and self-abasement, overwhelming shame for being alive, panic attacks and gut spilled tear stained janky one more chance declarations.
This time all these feelings came up because someone who doesn't really know me that well told me that my mother must be so proud. She isn't, trust me. But I just smiled and said Thank You. And I mean it, I appreciate the sentiment, there's no way the person who said it could possibly know it would hit me like a sucker punch and I know they intended something else entirely. But it also kind of sucks. I still wish it were true and it hurts that it isn't. My inner five year old still wants a gold fucking star, or a hug, or just to be told, “I'm glad I didn't abort you after all.” Wanting that makes me mad. Knowing I have a choice to let it go but I choose to go down It Still Bugs Me Lane makes me mad. My mother will never apologize for calling me a stupid fatass or frequently announcing how grateful I should have been that she didn't beat me. And that makes me mad.
I am not without compassion for my own mother. I know the shit she had to live through. She didn't deserve the things that happened to her any more than I did. She was hammered by a mish mash of negative feelings about sex, love and family. She was regularly hurt, betrayed by her own mother and beaten by her father. She chose to be better than that, and in some ways she did succeed. I'm grateful I didn't grow up in a world of angry lashing belt buckles that licked around my body to slam into my jaw when I didn't eat up all my leathery chicken liver at dinner. I am glad I was not taught an angry Baptist vision of what it means to be alive. Because she lived through that and was smart enough to identify that those things sucked, she tried very hard to avoid passing them down to us. I appreciate that I grew up in a house without beatings or an angry god. I really do. Sometimes I'm filled with intense empathy for her. How dare I acknowledge how great it is that I wasn't screwed over with cobbled crazy god talk and not be thankful every second of my life! Who am I to say, Hey Mom, I really appreciate that you didn't hit me with stuff but it would have been WAY MORE AWESOME if you'd also chosen to spare the psychological beat downs, constant uprooting of our lives, spectacularly loud smash-ups, horrible stories about my unfortunate birth and really creepy messages about sex because those are the things that kinda still freak my shit out.
I know that we all have to deal with where we came from. And I know I'm not alone. I know people who have honest, loving relationships with their parents. And I know some who have strained plodding obligatory relationships with their parents. And I know some who have no relationship at all because the whole thing just snapped in half and that's that. I know people who have lost their parents and now re-examine every conversation, every lesson, every dream and half memory just to be near them again.
Those things are all legitimate and raw, the strength or weakness of those relationships is up to the people in them. My relationship with my mother just straight up sucks. It always has. She has let me know that “reconciliation” would be based on me acknowledging my own essential wrongness without “bringing up stuff from the past”, a real bargain. Were I to ever accept those terms our future relationship would consist of a wimpy loser visiting the hovel of a bitter old woman out of pity and obligation. At best I can just accept the fact that she was still a little kid when I was born and she blamed me for wrecking her life (no really, she used these exact words as well as some others that were even worse but amount to the same thing). As a 35 year old woman with two kids of my own, I can recognize how absurd and dysfunctional that is. But still, for people who love their parents, even when it's difficult, me not loving mine comes off as petty and selfish. There's “Oh, EVERYONE has weird parents, you just gotta love 'em anyway!” and “It's never too late to say sorry!” and my personal favorite, delivered with a side of tisking pity sauce, “You never know how much time you'll have to fix things.” Trust me, if it were fixable I would have fucking fixed it. I spent my entire childhood trying to fix it. There's just no way to argue your worth to someone who seriously resents having you in the first place. I started to realize trying so hard was destructive to me. I got myself in a lot of relationships that also sucked because they started with me being whatever the other person wanted instead of my actual self, partly for the safety of not being rejected, and partly because I had no idea who that self was. It took me a really long time to get my own shit together. I had to learn to tell people to fuck off when they were being destructive. I had to learn to open my heart without fear, to tell people I loved them and believe them when they said they loved me.
The fact is, I found a new Mom. She's real and she's a delight to converse with and she accepts me exactly as I am. Her house feels like home. I can walk through her front door any time without knocking, and I never have to pause to intuit the mood so I know who to be. And when I get in there is hugging, and genuine smiling and we drink coffee or beer and eat delicious things and play board games and talk about religion and politics and family history. And when I look across the dining room table at the family she made, I love all of them too. It's exactly that hearth and home kind of feeling I've always suspected was possible and now I have it.
So when the well meaning lady told me my Mom must be so proud it caught me off guard. Actual Mom no, Real Mom, yes. I just smiled and nodded. It's complicated.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Dear Housebeasts, Sorry there's a no-no place
The cats were going crazy from all the birdsong in the middle of this day, which was weirdly sunny for November in Ohio, and that gentle temperature where sun and shade are a complimentary kind of lovely. Not that my poor kitties have ever felt the outside parts of shade and sun, just the stuff that comes through the windows. I am still trying to keep it secret that those are lesser versions. That outdoors would blow their tiny minds with actual bugthings and up close birdthings and treethings to scratch and climb on. Keeping them indoors is meant to protect them, but sometimes I wonder if it's mean of me to put them in a house and make it their entire environment. It's already kind of odd for them to have been chosen by a human for co-habitation. That some giant personthing came by and took them off (how could they know it was a rescue?). I just plucked them up and now I wonder if they have even the the smallest dream memory of their birth garages or being curled in heaps with their feral mamas. I recently had some full force pondering about the fairness of their cat lives when I had to open the door to the other side of the attic to put something away. Jasper had never seen that part of the house before (with good reason, it's full of insulation and he eats all sorts of weird things). His eyes got huge and he was twitching to get in there, flummoxed that I could so nonchalantly open a no-no portal in his universe then shoo him away. What a bitch goddess I am.
I couldn't make their physical world any bigger but I remembered a bag of catnip in the freezer. I refreshed the catnip mice and left a small pile of nip on the floor. Jasper made a snuflly pig of himself, sneezing along flat on the carpet, his two front paws stretched outward, MINE MINE MINE SNEEZE NOM NOM. His paws are huge with coral pink beefy paw pads that actually slap the floor when he runs into a room. He is very loud with his body. Especially when he is lording over a pile of nip, nails plucking and thwacking his haunches against the floor after each roll.
Oddly, neither of my cats are talkers. Gracie only meows to tell me stuff, like FINE I'LL JUST POOP ON THE FLOOR or HEY STUPID I LIKE WATER, which means she barely ever makes a peep but when she does I follow her around until she shows me what she's going on about. Jasper makes squeaks when I give them the human gets me blues and scoop him up for some harassment. I don't try that with Gracie because she's too dignified and really one of the easiest cats in the world until someone tries to pick her up. Then she turns psychotic. Jasper is a bit of a nutcase all the time, jumping out at people or chasing my pant legs all the way up the steps. He's a biter, but he's also such a charming shithead that he kind of invites a noogie every now and then. I just make sure I'm in long sleeves. I know his lion seed tricks.
Sometimes if I pick Jasper up he'll flip onto his back and sit there, calmly, with his giant mouth open and his teeth waiting, just looking totally ridiculous. He has a basket full of stuffed babies he snags with his nail and flings in the air, catching them with his teeth and throwing his paws around their vulnerable stuffed necks, squeezing and raking with his mammoth hind claws. This is how he turned one toy into two, creating a headless bunny body and a bodyless bunny head with bursting yarn eye. He's a fierce little big thing. He leaves the bunny head on my pillow.
I couldn't make their physical world any bigger but I remembered a bag of catnip in the freezer. I refreshed the catnip mice and left a small pile of nip on the floor. Jasper made a snuflly pig of himself, sneezing along flat on the carpet, his two front paws stretched outward, MINE MINE MINE SNEEZE NOM NOM. His paws are huge with coral pink beefy paw pads that actually slap the floor when he runs into a room. He is very loud with his body. Especially when he is lording over a pile of nip, nails plucking and thwacking his haunches against the floor after each roll.
Oddly, neither of my cats are talkers. Gracie only meows to tell me stuff, like FINE I'LL JUST POOP ON THE FLOOR or HEY STUPID I LIKE WATER, which means she barely ever makes a peep but when she does I follow her around until she shows me what she's going on about. Jasper makes squeaks when I give them the human gets me blues and scoop him up for some harassment. I don't try that with Gracie because she's too dignified and really one of the easiest cats in the world until someone tries to pick her up. Then she turns psychotic. Jasper is a bit of a nutcase all the time, jumping out at people or chasing my pant legs all the way up the steps. He's a biter, but he's also such a charming shithead that he kind of invites a noogie every now and then. I just make sure I'm in long sleeves. I know his lion seed tricks.
Sometimes if I pick Jasper up he'll flip onto his back and sit there, calmly, with his giant mouth open and his teeth waiting, just looking totally ridiculous. He has a basket full of stuffed babies he snags with his nail and flings in the air, catching them with his teeth and throwing his paws around their vulnerable stuffed necks, squeezing and raking with his mammoth hind claws. This is how he turned one toy into two, creating a headless bunny body and a bodyless bunny head with bursting yarn eye. He's a fierce little big thing. He leaves the bunny head on my pillow.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Throwing Muses - Fish
This is the song I credit for taking me as a young 12 year old and turning me into a full on music nerd.
I had never heard of Throwing Muses before, and back in the day I used to listen to WHFR which was (and still is) a pretty sweet college radio station based out of Dearborn, MI. I would listen and tape everything, then have to decide if I liked it or not and hope I had time to go back, erase the crap and find the exact end of the last song so I could continue with my mix tape. It was a high art, requiring total concentration and a lot of patience and tapes.
The exact moment this song came on my body freaked out. I felt like my heart went crazy and I might throw up. Like my brain was crawling with all kinds of new passageways. I had no idea who the band was because I never taped the talking parts. I listened to this song over and over. It was so ripe and juicy I could almost eat it. It was pretty, ugly and uncivilized, music with rooms in it. A new door opened up every time. It never felt like the same song twice. She used her voice like an instrument and seemed totally unconcerned about making it pretty. The sound made physical things happen to me, like weird swirling sensations, and scalp tingling and all the tiny hairs on my neck and arms stood up. Discovering that music could do that was like finding the best drug ever. They were teenagers when they made this song. It blew my mind.
I had taped it on a crappy Scotch brand cassette and finally, rather tragically, it broke. I spent a lot of time trolling music stores looking for this elusive band whose name I did not know. One day I went in and said Look, all I can remember is 'Lonely is as lonely is as lonely does, lonely is an eyesore, the feeling describes itself' and finally an uber cool and annoyed looking clerk pointed me to the white section board with Throwing Muses scrawled on it. I scrutinized the cassettes (how old school is that shit!), still not convinced this was what I was actually looking for. My babysitting money was pretty tight and I was very nervous I might spend it all on the wrong band. I bought House Tornado and flipped out on the entire walk home about how awesome it might be. It was a lot of flipping out, it's a three mile walk. I swear to god, I just google mapped it.
I got home to discover that I had indeed found the right band. This was long before the internet would come along to rock the world of music lovers everywhere, and most other 12 year olds had no idea who the hell I was talking about, so it was some fairly isolated detective work. In fact, the very first time I had access to the internet, the first thing I looked up was Throwing Muses.
But, even after years of searching, I could not find that particular version of Fish, until one day I discovered it was on a compilation (Lonely is an Eyesore ). Seventeen years after I sobbed bitter tears in my room because my drug busted and the tape guts spilled out, it finally arrived in the mail, just as I was leaving the house to go dancing with my ladies. It did not make it home until 4am, but the first thing I did when I got in the door was pop that thing in the CD player. The second I heard it I knew it was the right version and just started laughing and crying and smiling. It was like witnessing a private miracle. Like something got fixed. The notes got in my ears and traveled down my spine and swept out the cobwebs and fixed all kinds of broken things.
I had never heard of Throwing Muses before, and back in the day I used to listen to WHFR which was (and still is) a pretty sweet college radio station based out of Dearborn, MI. I would listen and tape everything, then have to decide if I liked it or not and hope I had time to go back, erase the crap and find the exact end of the last song so I could continue with my mix tape. It was a high art, requiring total concentration and a lot of patience and tapes.
The exact moment this song came on my body freaked out. I felt like my heart went crazy and I might throw up. Like my brain was crawling with all kinds of new passageways. I had no idea who the band was because I never taped the talking parts. I listened to this song over and over. It was so ripe and juicy I could almost eat it. It was pretty, ugly and uncivilized, music with rooms in it. A new door opened up every time. It never felt like the same song twice. She used her voice like an instrument and seemed totally unconcerned about making it pretty. The sound made physical things happen to me, like weird swirling sensations, and scalp tingling and all the tiny hairs on my neck and arms stood up. Discovering that music could do that was like finding the best drug ever. They were teenagers when they made this song. It blew my mind.
I had taped it on a crappy Scotch brand cassette and finally, rather tragically, it broke. I spent a lot of time trolling music stores looking for this elusive band whose name I did not know. One day I went in and said Look, all I can remember is 'Lonely is as lonely is as lonely does, lonely is an eyesore, the feeling describes itself' and finally an uber cool and annoyed looking clerk pointed me to the white section board with Throwing Muses scrawled on it. I scrutinized the cassettes (how old school is that shit!), still not convinced this was what I was actually looking for. My babysitting money was pretty tight and I was very nervous I might spend it all on the wrong band. I bought House Tornado and flipped out on the entire walk home about how awesome it might be. It was a lot of flipping out, it's a three mile walk. I swear to god, I just google mapped it.
I got home to discover that I had indeed found the right band. This was long before the internet would come along to rock the world of music lovers everywhere, and most other 12 year olds had no idea who the hell I was talking about, so it was some fairly isolated detective work. In fact, the very first time I had access to the internet, the first thing I looked up was Throwing Muses.
But, even after years of searching, I could not find that particular version of Fish, until one day I discovered it was on a compilation (Lonely is an Eyesore ). Seventeen years after I sobbed bitter tears in my room because my drug busted and the tape guts spilled out, it finally arrived in the mail, just as I was leaving the house to go dancing with my ladies. It did not make it home until 4am, but the first thing I did when I got in the door was pop that thing in the CD player. The second I heard it I knew it was the right version and just started laughing and crying and smiling. It was like witnessing a private miracle. Like something got fixed. The notes got in my ears and traveled down my spine and swept out the cobwebs and fixed all kinds of broken things.
Fake nails still freak me out
When I was in 6th grade I read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH for a book report. I loved it very much.
I wrote a lot (in BIG loooooopy handwriting with heart dots for I's), how much I JUST LOVED IT, and how she should read it because it's the best book ever and she will also love it!! I turned in my report and waited for Mrs. K to clasp it to her chest and beam at me, telling me with breathy dramatic gratitude how much her life had changed since I recommended it to her and then do that A+++++++ thing all across the chalkboard.
Instead she handed my paper back to me with an E on it. I was horrified. I waited after class and asked her why, barely able to look at the bitter lines on her face, instead focusing on her
fingernails; long and fakey thick, bright red and squared off, drumming the paper.
"Did you even read this book?"
I was stunned. I think I cried a little.
"YES! I read it and I loved it!"
"It looks like you just read the blurb on the back. You haven't put in anything about the plot at all."
I know by then I did cry. Right in front of the dragon lady. That pinchy gulpy kind where trying to stuff it back in just makes it worse.
"I didn't want to spoil it for you in case you haven't read it yet!"
Then the Dragon Lady actually smiled. I turned in my report the next day. I got a B+ because it was late.
I wrote a lot (in BIG loooooopy handwriting with heart dots for I's), how much I JUST LOVED IT, and how she should read it because it's the best book ever and she will also love it!! I turned in my report and waited for Mrs. K to clasp it to her chest and beam at me, telling me with breathy dramatic gratitude how much her life had changed since I recommended it to her and then do that A+++++++ thing all across the chalkboard.
Instead she handed my paper back to me with an E on it. I was horrified. I waited after class and asked her why, barely able to look at the bitter lines on her face, instead focusing on her
fingernails; long and fakey thick, bright red and squared off, drumming the paper.
"Did you even read this book?"
I was stunned. I think I cried a little.
"YES! I read it and I loved it!"
"It looks like you just read the blurb on the back. You haven't put in anything about the plot at all."
I know by then I did cry. Right in front of the dragon lady. That pinchy gulpy kind where trying to stuff it back in just makes it worse.
"I didn't want to spoil it for you in case you haven't read it yet!"
Then the Dragon Lady actually smiled. I turned in my report the next day. I got a B+ because it was late.
PJ Harvey gets a smackdown from my dad
My father HATED PJ Harvey's 4 track demos.
I was in my room once and he knocked on the door during Rub Til It Bleeds. When I answered he just stood there looking angry and confused and asked me if I was OK. I said yes but he kept standing there.
Finally he said, "I just figured you must have fallen down and hit your head or something, because otherwise, why would this just keep playing?"
He also really hated the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
I was in my room once and he knocked on the door during Rub Til It Bleeds. When I answered he just stood there looking angry and confused and asked me if I was OK. I said yes but he kept standing there.
Finally he said, "I just figured you must have fallen down and hit your head or something, because otherwise, why would this just keep playing?"
He also really hated the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Best compliment ever
I was in the grocery store. There was a cart ahead of me with a seriously charming wide-eyed toddler in it. I looked over at her and smiled, because I always smile at well behaved children.
Each time I looked up she was staring at me, if I moved she would crane her neck to see me. We moved on to the next aisle. This time the little girl and her mother were coming the opposite way. We were gliding past each other when I heard the little girl say, breathlessly, earnestly, in a half whisper, as though I were a princess, “Mommy… she is beeeyoooootiful.” My heart nearly burst.
Each time I looked up she was staring at me, if I moved she would crane her neck to see me. We moved on to the next aisle. This time the little girl and her mother were coming the opposite way. We were gliding past each other when I heard the little girl say, breathlessly, earnestly, in a half whisper, as though I were a princess, “Mommy… she is beeeyoooootiful.” My heart nearly burst.
6th grade Maude with a cinch waist tarp on
I was pretty tall in 6th grade. I had been compared to Bea Authur because of my voice and my "oldness". Once my grandma took me shopping at Rave, the mall mecca of girlie cheap teen fashion, and I found this gray denim skirt that was tight around the hips and waist, ending at about the top of the first rib, while also being ridiculously full and long. I came with a really wide black belt. There were freakin YARDS to that skirt, like a tarp. I wore it exactly once and was mocked with a mocking that lasted longer than one day. Some people still mention the skirt, even though it was 23 fuckin' years ago.
But once upon a time I was 6th grade Maude with a cinch waist tarp on.
But once upon a time I was 6th grade Maude with a cinch waist tarp on.
Message to my future biographer
My older Ink Era journals are a great source of personal amusement. I used to be very dramatic.
I wrote in great detail about things that were going on for me that I felt certain would remain as important as they day they were written. I was pretty sure writing them down was even kind of silly because it was a rich emotional history, so cleverly worded and only mine, how could I forget it? I am pretty sure what made me forge ahead was a sense of duty to my biographer.
I was actually writing for people I had not met (ghosts too, but that is another thing). From the age of fourteen to about twenty one I felt like I was going to be pretty famous and my journal would be a rich goldmine for anyone researching me.
Although I decided to remain humble about it, I could not shake the idea that I was crafting a crucial tool for future archivists who would chuckle and make notes and add things to their research timeline. I was pretty sure a future team of psychologists, soothsayers and philosophers would weave the ends into something hilarious and poignant while I was still alive and lounging with a glass of wine, soaking up the sunset in a moment of great calm, in a gently rocking chair, on a porch jutting out of the mountainside, in early autumn, with my tremendously long supple legs peeking out of my silk robe.
I expected to be adored in my lifetime. I expected to have “hot legs”. Ya know?
I wrote in great detail about things that were going on for me that I felt certain would remain as important as they day they were written. I was pretty sure writing them down was even kind of silly because it was a rich emotional history, so cleverly worded and only mine, how could I forget it? I am pretty sure what made me forge ahead was a sense of duty to my biographer.
I was actually writing for people I had not met (ghosts too, but that is another thing). From the age of fourteen to about twenty one I felt like I was going to be pretty famous and my journal would be a rich goldmine for anyone researching me.
Although I decided to remain humble about it, I could not shake the idea that I was crafting a crucial tool for future archivists who would chuckle and make notes and add things to their research timeline. I was pretty sure a future team of psychologists, soothsayers and philosophers would weave the ends into something hilarious and poignant while I was still alive and lounging with a glass of wine, soaking up the sunset in a moment of great calm, in a gently rocking chair, on a porch jutting out of the mountainside, in early autumn, with my tremendously long supple legs peeking out of my silk robe.
I expected to be adored in my lifetime. I expected to have “hot legs”. Ya know?
Love Sarah. I said so.
My mother had an old friend who sent me a gift when I was about six or seven. My mom wanted me to send her a thank you note, which was no problem until I got the end and did not know how to finish it. My mom said, just put “Love, Sarah” but I said I did not want to put that and it turned into an argument. My mom was convinced that I was being selfish, but it wasn't that. It was that to me, LOVE SARAH sounded like a command, a statement with no comma. Like I was telling some random grown up to love me. I couldn't explain it. I finally did what she said just so I could get it over with, but by then I had angered my mother and I could not express my own position on the matter. I stormed off to my room and curled up on the bed in a hot heap of sad because my mother called me a little snot and I knew that in her mind it was true.
I did not have words to explain that I did not want to tell anyone else what to do, that it was too bold of me to tell my mom's friend to love me. It wouldn't have worked.
Shortly after this we were told in school to write letters to our mothers. I struggled with that so hard. I couldn't think of anything to write that wouldn't offend her.
Eventually I wrote: Dear Mom, You are a very good person. Love, Sarah.
I ran across that letter recently. I have it. It is on this pulpy paper with a pink background, with dotted and straight lines, and a giraffe on one side, peeking over my lie. I have it because my mom gave it back to me when I was still a teenager. It hurt her feelings and she did not want it anymore.
I did not have words to explain that I did not want to tell anyone else what to do, that it was too bold of me to tell my mom's friend to love me. It wouldn't have worked.
Shortly after this we were told in school to write letters to our mothers. I struggled with that so hard. I couldn't think of anything to write that wouldn't offend her.
Eventually I wrote: Dear Mom, You are a very good person. Love, Sarah.
I ran across that letter recently. I have it. It is on this pulpy paper with a pink background, with dotted and straight lines, and a giraffe on one side, peeking over my lie. I have it because my mom gave it back to me when I was still a teenager. It hurt her feelings and she did not want it anymore.
The day my arm died
I think I was about six. I slept funny, face down with my arm bent across my chest. When I woke up my arm was dead.
IT WAS DEAD AND WOULD NOT MOVE AND IT WAS HORRIFYING.
I couldn't make a fist. I couldn't feel anything. My arm had turned into this silly, floppy flesh stick. I started screaming high pitched panic screams. My mom came running into my room.
My mom: WHAT'S WRONG? WHAT HAPPENED?
Me: MY ARM IS DEAD! IT'S DEAD DEAD DEAD!
And then I flung my arm around, trying to get it to respond. It wasn't working anymore. I would have to live the rest of my life with a dead arm. I thought it might need to be chopped off.
My mom grabbed me and started rubbing my arm and then I got another weird sensation.
Me: IT'S BURNING! IT'S BURNING!
I thrashed my small self around some more, making frantic herky jerky motions and repeating myself until I noticed I could wiggle my fingers. My mom said it was just asleep. I thought that was ridiculous. Usually all of me woke up at the same time.
I tried sleeping funny on purpose after that but it never happened again.
IT WAS DEAD AND WOULD NOT MOVE AND IT WAS HORRIFYING.
I couldn't make a fist. I couldn't feel anything. My arm had turned into this silly, floppy flesh stick. I started screaming high pitched panic screams. My mom came running into my room.
My mom: WHAT'S WRONG? WHAT HAPPENED?
Me: MY ARM IS DEAD! IT'S DEAD DEAD DEAD!
And then I flung my arm around, trying to get it to respond. It wasn't working anymore. I would have to live the rest of my life with a dead arm. I thought it might need to be chopped off.
My mom grabbed me and started rubbing my arm and then I got another weird sensation.
Me: IT'S BURNING! IT'S BURNING!
I thrashed my small self around some more, making frantic herky jerky motions and repeating myself until I noticed I could wiggle my fingers. My mom said it was just asleep. I thought that was ridiculous. Usually all of me woke up at the same time.
I tried sleeping funny on purpose after that but it never happened again.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Really girlie stuff
Last night my daughter had a sleepover. It was a first time event with this particular friend, and I am pretty sure that kid thinks I am awesome because I made spaghetti. There is something so sweet about twelve year old girls. They are so interested and easy to impress. They were all aflutter about a 6th grade dance that's coming up. Katie wants to try mascara but her eyelashes are already so long we will have to go lightly so it doesn't look like stage make-up. It's weird to have a kid who wants to wear make-up already. And she also joined Facebook. I knew it was coming, she asked me about it months ago. She insisted she did not want to do it because she's not thirteen and was worried she would get in trouble. I am not sure where her deep fear of The Man came from, but she hates to break the rules. She was also worried it might be "too addictive", but by now she has friends on it, and it's a good way for her to keep in touch with her far flung family. They spent much of the night friending and tagging and tweaking privacy settings. We had to have that speech about how if you can't say it to someone's face you can't put it on the internet and how nothing online is truly private. Sometimes it feels like we went straight from Sesame Street to cramps and pimples. She is already so much more confident and grounded than I was.
I'd had a link to this blog on my own FB page, back when I had no real content or idea what I was going to do with it. And then the words got more intense, and then BAM, my daughter has a page and is commenting on all my pictures and looking very closely at everything. I don't have anything to hide, but imagining her as my "audience" here made me freak out a little, so I took the link off. She has a vague idea about some of the things I have been through, and what my own childhood was like, but I have spared her the worst of it. Now no one will find my blog. Dang.
*****
I decided to switch from chemical hair dye to henna, which I'd had great success with in the past, but that was a long time ago. I'm pretty much all about being a redhead. My real color is a dusty gray blonde and I was never very fond of it. I knew henna was a messy process, and I read all the directions and decided last night was the perfect time to get to it. I sat around with goop head for three hours, then spent almost an hour getting it out of my hair and just went to bed. This morning it's shiny but the color enhancement was almost too subtle to be worth all the effort, and I realized the instructions lied to me. I added olive oil, but no lemon juice and I had no idea I needed to allow the color to develop once it was mixed. I just mixed it up and put it on.
I just made another batch with lemon and will try again tomorrow. Hopefully the applied hair color will be perfect by next Thursday because that's when I get to see my sweetie and we fly out to DC for the Rally to Restore Sanity. I want gorgeous hair for that. I really really do, I don't have many indulgences in the uber girlie realm, but my hair is certainly one of them.
I told Mike once that I take my hair very seriously and he laughed his ass off, because that sounds pretty stupid. But it's true. My hair is a big deal. I just want it red and shiny. I take care of it all by myself, I can count on two hands the number of times I have ever let anyone else even cut it. I can count on two fingers the number of times another person cut my hair without making me cry once I got home and looked at it. I am really bad at letting someone else take control like that. Come at my hair with some scissors and I'll have an instant panic attack.
I am kind of funny about my nails too. I work with my hands a lot, and I have this stupid finger picking compulsion that gets really bad when I'm stressed out and the weather is cold. If I keep my nails buffed and shiny I don't pick at my nails because I don't want to ruin them. If they already look like shit I bite them and dig at the cuticles and sometimes the sides of my thumbs bleed. My thumbs are a sign for my mental state, if they are ragged and bleeding it means I'm having a pretty shitty time of it. I don't paint my fingernails often because it's not practical, but I always buff and paint my toenails. I like the nail to be very smooth and shiny and I am partial to deep bloody reds. Even in the winter I have goth toes. No one but Mike ever sees them, but it's not about that anyway. It's a girlie indulgence that makes me feel human.
I don't wear make-up as much as I used to, but because I wear glasses and they make my eyes look small, I do like mascara and eyeliner. Also eyebrow pencil so they match my hair. Other than that, I can take or leave other girlie stuff. I hardly ever wear earrings, or lipstick or perfume. But I always put moisturizer on my face when I get out of the shower. I brush my teeth with baking soda once a month to get the stains off because I like wine and coffee and blueberries and I smoke. And while I have the baking soda out I shine up all my silver jewelry. I wear the same jewelry every day, I have been wearing the same necklace for seven years. I sleep and shower in it. Why? I have no idea. I like it. I like shiny basics.
I'd had a link to this blog on my own FB page, back when I had no real content or idea what I was going to do with it. And then the words got more intense, and then BAM, my daughter has a page and is commenting on all my pictures and looking very closely at everything. I don't have anything to hide, but imagining her as my "audience" here made me freak out a little, so I took the link off. She has a vague idea about some of the things I have been through, and what my own childhood was like, but I have spared her the worst of it. Now no one will find my blog. Dang.
*****
I decided to switch from chemical hair dye to henna, which I'd had great success with in the past, but that was a long time ago. I'm pretty much all about being a redhead. My real color is a dusty gray blonde and I was never very fond of it. I knew henna was a messy process, and I read all the directions and decided last night was the perfect time to get to it. I sat around with goop head for three hours, then spent almost an hour getting it out of my hair and just went to bed. This morning it's shiny but the color enhancement was almost too subtle to be worth all the effort, and I realized the instructions lied to me. I added olive oil, but no lemon juice and I had no idea I needed to allow the color to develop once it was mixed. I just mixed it up and put it on.
I just made another batch with lemon and will try again tomorrow. Hopefully the applied hair color will be perfect by next Thursday because that's when I get to see my sweetie and we fly out to DC for the Rally to Restore Sanity. I want gorgeous hair for that. I really really do, I don't have many indulgences in the uber girlie realm, but my hair is certainly one of them.
I told Mike once that I take my hair very seriously and he laughed his ass off, because that sounds pretty stupid. But it's true. My hair is a big deal. I just want it red and shiny. I take care of it all by myself, I can count on two hands the number of times I have ever let anyone else even cut it. I can count on two fingers the number of times another person cut my hair without making me cry once I got home and looked at it. I am really bad at letting someone else take control like that. Come at my hair with some scissors and I'll have an instant panic attack.
I am kind of funny about my nails too. I work with my hands a lot, and I have this stupid finger picking compulsion that gets really bad when I'm stressed out and the weather is cold. If I keep my nails buffed and shiny I don't pick at my nails because I don't want to ruin them. If they already look like shit I bite them and dig at the cuticles and sometimes the sides of my thumbs bleed. My thumbs are a sign for my mental state, if they are ragged and bleeding it means I'm having a pretty shitty time of it. I don't paint my fingernails often because it's not practical, but I always buff and paint my toenails. I like the nail to be very smooth and shiny and I am partial to deep bloody reds. Even in the winter I have goth toes. No one but Mike ever sees them, but it's not about that anyway. It's a girlie indulgence that makes me feel human.
I don't wear make-up as much as I used to, but because I wear glasses and they make my eyes look small, I do like mascara and eyeliner. Also eyebrow pencil so they match my hair. Other than that, I can take or leave other girlie stuff. I hardly ever wear earrings, or lipstick or perfume. But I always put moisturizer on my face when I get out of the shower. I brush my teeth with baking soda once a month to get the stains off because I like wine and coffee and blueberries and I smoke. And while I have the baking soda out I shine up all my silver jewelry. I wear the same jewelry every day, I have been wearing the same necklace for seven years. I sleep and shower in it. Why? I have no idea. I like it. I like shiny basics.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
That cloud stomps around my house, does whatever it pleases
I was all set to write every day. I didn't declare that I would because I thought I would just do it, but then I was derailed by a deep unexpected sadness.
I have been making tons of jewelry, partly because that's what I do when I am alone, which I often am at night. I make stuff. So this time I hauled out all my jewelry bits spread them out all over my desk and in little clear cases on the floor. When everything is spread out it's a constant battle with the cat. I spend a lot of time screaming at Jasper, “Get off the desk you turd monkey!”, while he lords over the pile, trying to eat wire because his brain is the size of a raisin, with only slightly more computational power. If I am not careful he'll make off with half-finished necklaces, dragging them down the hallway while I am in the bathroom or getting more coffee. Then I have to find all the beads and restring everything and he just looks at me like I'm a crazy loud bag of wind, “What's HER problem?”
While I am doing all this deconstruction and reconstruction of failed projects and busted bits, I am listening to music or This American Life or The Moth. Or I watch documentaries (there is such a marvel of free documentaries online.) Sometimes, if the work part is going very well, I am just looking for filler. Just a stupid crap show I don't have to pay very close attention to. This is how I ended up watching "Jersey Shore" (sweet jeebus, what a sadly compelling pile of horseshit). This is how it is that I sometimes watch an entire series while cutting fabric or paper. I watched all of Peepshow (if I had three thumbs that show would get a three thumbs up). I watched a totally boring documentary called "Salesman" which seemed like it could be interesting, I wanted it to be interesting, because the idea of real footage from some bible salesmen in the 50's sounds like it should be interesting. Except it wasn't at all. It was like being stuck in a hotel room with a bunch of really boring dudes who were sad about their bible selling stats and blew off steam by making fun of the Irish.
What I am getting at is that sometimes I am not too picky about the media I land on. Sometimes there is much to be learned by just watching things that kinda suck, as a writer and teller of stories it's helpful to see the breakdown points. I get a kick out of playing Where's Plothole. When I have a long night of Making Stuff ahead of me I just go to Hulu and pick something without any real expectations. Sometimes though, it's so compelling I end up doing more watching than working. Abel Raises Cain, was so fantastic I didn't get much work done. Or “Last Tango in Paris”, my god, that movie. I saw it ages ago with my friend Matt, who invited me over to watch it in his father's psychiatry office in the basement. I was 16. I had a fierce crush on Matthew that never even resulted in a make-out session, so that combined with the content of the movie and location where we viewed it already made it pretty weird. His dad came home and came up behind us, asking what we were watching. He then announced what a great movie it was, put his hands on our shoulders and kind of pushed us together on the couch. Then told us he was going to go upstairs and leave us to it. So the butter scene glowed extra absurd for me. Watching it again nearly 20 yeas later, it still strikes me how strange it was for Matt's dad to nod in approval. (As an aside, don't watch this on Hulu. They chopped off the last twenty minutes of the movie in a cruel act of fuckery.)
And then, even though some part of my brain knew better, I decided to watch When a Man Loves a Woman. It pretty much knocked me over and ran me down. I bawled like a busted sissy at least four times during that movie, and then went to bed in a weepy heap and slept for twelve hours. I woke up pissed off. I put on my glasses and found the insides covered in tear droplets, as though my eyes had just shot out a mist of cloudy private swamp. I spent the day like a hermit, crying for no reason at all. I didn't talk to anyone. I didn't write. I just made jewelry. And I thought, I should be writing, I should be punching something, I should be more and do more. I should stop failing. I should be eliminating things off my giant list of things to do. I should be steam cleaning something. I should be accepting that lovely invitation to sit around a fire with my friends. But, as much as I wanted to go out and be personable, and enjoy one of those rare, crisp Autumn evenings where I come home smelling like a bonfire, I just couldn't trust that I would keep my emotions in check. I don't mind expressing myself, it's just when everything is that close to the surface I worry that I might barf up a torrent of sadness, and I'm pretty sure the hostess wasn't planning on that. I couldn't show up like, "Hi. I am a sad failure, may I drink your wine? Let's make your party all about me. How 'bout a hug?"
When I hit play, I took up my pliers and beads, intent on making. But almost immediately I was struck by a sinking sensation in the shape of my mother. I had always found Meg Ryan kind of bleh, she's cute in a way that was perfect for "When Harry Met Sally", which is a mildly entertaining fluff movie, which is what I thought I was getting myself into. I just wanted a stupid romantic comedy that would give me plenty of room to look away often and contemplate shapes and the way light passes through glass. What I was not looking for was a full on hijacking of my emotional core. It hit me immediately that Meg Ryan reminded me of my mother. And then it hit me even harder. That movie gave me an uncomfortably familiar memory of BEING that eight year old daughter with sad old eyes and a younger sibling to protect. It was me all over again, trying very hard to stay small and perfect, to straddle that line of being a kid when that was expected of me, and being a responsible clean-up crew without taking any credit for it because that would mean saying out loud that often, my mother was not in her body and needed to be protected from knowing that. My mother was interesting, sometimes pretty, adventurous and smart and then, very dramatically drunk, mean, emotionally retarded, scary, intense, volatile, selfish, hungover, incapable and unsafe. And, as a movie, as intense and believable as the shittiest shit parts were, it was still a best case scenario. A woman has a sweet husband, two bright and adorable kids, a good job. A nice house. She gets help, she gets clean, she re-connects with her herself and her family. How nice for these fictitious people.
My mother was pregnant at 17, married at 18 and divorced in her mid twenties. She had two kids, lived on welfare and the charity of friends and various men and lived by making herself into whatever a man wanted in exchange for a few months of lodging. And while HER story is deeply sad and compelling, it bleeds all over MY story. What her choices meant for my sister and me was a whole lot of chaos and moving. Constant. Moving. It meant going to three different schools per grade for most of elementary school. It meant always being the new kid. It meant I did a lot of reading and hung out by myself making silly noises and drawing and being deeply nerdy and watching out for my sister. It meant living with strange men, in their strange man apartments with their man strange stuff. It meant keeping my possessions packable. I am really fucking good at packing. I trained for it like it might one day be an Olympic fucking event. In fact, my mom once moved us into a boyfriend's house where my sister and I were granted night time access to the strange man's weight room, and I got to sleep for a few weeks on a weight bench. Try THAT for balance, here I come Olympics!
I know what it's like the be the punk kid of a mom in detox. I know what it's like to see your drunk mother, crazed and angry, slamming a cast iron pan into a sink full of dirty dishes with a sound that punches you in the heart, hurts your brain and fucks your sunshine. I have watched my mother destroy everything in a room, slamming an electric guitar through the glass of the television, pulling things off the wall and smashing them. I sat through two speeches, once when I was five and again when I was twelve, that started like this, “Your mother tried to kill herself. She's in the hospital.” Unlike a movie, there was no sweet, stabilizing daddy figure who could step in for me and let me vent by smashing my mother's vodka bottles in the trashcan. No adult scooped me up and told me things would be OK. When I visited my mother in the crazy ward there were no swans and wide green expanses. There were other crazy people, and my mother. My mother did not go to AA and come out stronger and more understanding. My mother went when she was forced to go, and she called it a meat market and she hated every second of it. So, watching a movie that took much of the emotional fuckery of life with a raging alcoholic, only to stomp around my memories and make it tidy kind of pissed me off. I realize no one wants to see a movie where things go from terrible to worse and stay unresolved for thirty years, but that's kind of what my movie would look like. Which is why it's hard for me to even write about it. I assume someone is reading this, and if it's really depressing I apologize. I am sorry my movie sucks. You can have your money back.
I clearly have some things to work out. My heart has a basement and it's crammed with shit I don't need anymore.
I have been making tons of jewelry, partly because that's what I do when I am alone, which I often am at night. I make stuff. So this time I hauled out all my jewelry bits spread them out all over my desk and in little clear cases on the floor. When everything is spread out it's a constant battle with the cat. I spend a lot of time screaming at Jasper, “Get off the desk you turd monkey!”, while he lords over the pile, trying to eat wire because his brain is the size of a raisin, with only slightly more computational power. If I am not careful he'll make off with half-finished necklaces, dragging them down the hallway while I am in the bathroom or getting more coffee. Then I have to find all the beads and restring everything and he just looks at me like I'm a crazy loud bag of wind, “What's HER problem?”
While I am doing all this deconstruction and reconstruction of failed projects and busted bits, I am listening to music or This American Life or The Moth. Or I watch documentaries (there is such a marvel of free documentaries online.) Sometimes, if the work part is going very well, I am just looking for filler. Just a stupid crap show I don't have to pay very close attention to. This is how I ended up watching "Jersey Shore" (sweet jeebus, what a sadly compelling pile of horseshit). This is how it is that I sometimes watch an entire series while cutting fabric or paper. I watched all of Peepshow (if I had three thumbs that show would get a three thumbs up). I watched a totally boring documentary called "Salesman" which seemed like it could be interesting, I wanted it to be interesting, because the idea of real footage from some bible salesmen in the 50's sounds like it should be interesting. Except it wasn't at all. It was like being stuck in a hotel room with a bunch of really boring dudes who were sad about their bible selling stats and blew off steam by making fun of the Irish.
What I am getting at is that sometimes I am not too picky about the media I land on. Sometimes there is much to be learned by just watching things that kinda suck, as a writer and teller of stories it's helpful to see the breakdown points. I get a kick out of playing Where's Plothole. When I have a long night of Making Stuff ahead of me I just go to Hulu and pick something without any real expectations. Sometimes though, it's so compelling I end up doing more watching than working. Abel Raises Cain, was so fantastic I didn't get much work done. Or “Last Tango in Paris”, my god, that movie. I saw it ages ago with my friend Matt, who invited me over to watch it in his father's psychiatry office in the basement. I was 16. I had a fierce crush on Matthew that never even resulted in a make-out session, so that combined with the content of the movie and location where we viewed it already made it pretty weird. His dad came home and came up behind us, asking what we were watching. He then announced what a great movie it was, put his hands on our shoulders and kind of pushed us together on the couch. Then told us he was going to go upstairs and leave us to it. So the butter scene glowed extra absurd for me. Watching it again nearly 20 yeas later, it still strikes me how strange it was for Matt's dad to nod in approval. (As an aside, don't watch this on Hulu. They chopped off the last twenty minutes of the movie in a cruel act of fuckery.)
And then, even though some part of my brain knew better, I decided to watch When a Man Loves a Woman. It pretty much knocked me over and ran me down. I bawled like a busted sissy at least four times during that movie, and then went to bed in a weepy heap and slept for twelve hours. I woke up pissed off. I put on my glasses and found the insides covered in tear droplets, as though my eyes had just shot out a mist of cloudy private swamp. I spent the day like a hermit, crying for no reason at all. I didn't talk to anyone. I didn't write. I just made jewelry. And I thought, I should be writing, I should be punching something, I should be more and do more. I should stop failing. I should be eliminating things off my giant list of things to do. I should be steam cleaning something. I should be accepting that lovely invitation to sit around a fire with my friends. But, as much as I wanted to go out and be personable, and enjoy one of those rare, crisp Autumn evenings where I come home smelling like a bonfire, I just couldn't trust that I would keep my emotions in check. I don't mind expressing myself, it's just when everything is that close to the surface I worry that I might barf up a torrent of sadness, and I'm pretty sure the hostess wasn't planning on that. I couldn't show up like, "Hi. I am a sad failure, may I drink your wine? Let's make your party all about me. How 'bout a hug?"
When I hit play, I took up my pliers and beads, intent on making. But almost immediately I was struck by a sinking sensation in the shape of my mother. I had always found Meg Ryan kind of bleh, she's cute in a way that was perfect for "When Harry Met Sally", which is a mildly entertaining fluff movie, which is what I thought I was getting myself into. I just wanted a stupid romantic comedy that would give me plenty of room to look away often and contemplate shapes and the way light passes through glass. What I was not looking for was a full on hijacking of my emotional core. It hit me immediately that Meg Ryan reminded me of my mother. And then it hit me even harder. That movie gave me an uncomfortably familiar memory of BEING that eight year old daughter with sad old eyes and a younger sibling to protect. It was me all over again, trying very hard to stay small and perfect, to straddle that line of being a kid when that was expected of me, and being a responsible clean-up crew without taking any credit for it because that would mean saying out loud that often, my mother was not in her body and needed to be protected from knowing that. My mother was interesting, sometimes pretty, adventurous and smart and then, very dramatically drunk, mean, emotionally retarded, scary, intense, volatile, selfish, hungover, incapable and unsafe. And, as a movie, as intense and believable as the shittiest shit parts were, it was still a best case scenario. A woman has a sweet husband, two bright and adorable kids, a good job. A nice house. She gets help, she gets clean, she re-connects with her herself and her family. How nice for these fictitious people.
My mother was pregnant at 17, married at 18 and divorced in her mid twenties. She had two kids, lived on welfare and the charity of friends and various men and lived by making herself into whatever a man wanted in exchange for a few months of lodging. And while HER story is deeply sad and compelling, it bleeds all over MY story. What her choices meant for my sister and me was a whole lot of chaos and moving. Constant. Moving. It meant going to three different schools per grade for most of elementary school. It meant always being the new kid. It meant I did a lot of reading and hung out by myself making silly noises and drawing and being deeply nerdy and watching out for my sister. It meant living with strange men, in their strange man apartments with their man strange stuff. It meant keeping my possessions packable. I am really fucking good at packing. I trained for it like it might one day be an Olympic fucking event. In fact, my mom once moved us into a boyfriend's house where my sister and I were granted night time access to the strange man's weight room, and I got to sleep for a few weeks on a weight bench. Try THAT for balance, here I come Olympics!
I know what it's like the be the punk kid of a mom in detox. I know what it's like to see your drunk mother, crazed and angry, slamming a cast iron pan into a sink full of dirty dishes with a sound that punches you in the heart, hurts your brain and fucks your sunshine. I have watched my mother destroy everything in a room, slamming an electric guitar through the glass of the television, pulling things off the wall and smashing them. I sat through two speeches, once when I was five and again when I was twelve, that started like this, “Your mother tried to kill herself. She's in the hospital.” Unlike a movie, there was no sweet, stabilizing daddy figure who could step in for me and let me vent by smashing my mother's vodka bottles in the trashcan. No adult scooped me up and told me things would be OK. When I visited my mother in the crazy ward there were no swans and wide green expanses. There were other crazy people, and my mother. My mother did not go to AA and come out stronger and more understanding. My mother went when she was forced to go, and she called it a meat market and she hated every second of it. So, watching a movie that took much of the emotional fuckery of life with a raging alcoholic, only to stomp around my memories and make it tidy kind of pissed me off. I realize no one wants to see a movie where things go from terrible to worse and stay unresolved for thirty years, but that's kind of what my movie would look like. Which is why it's hard for me to even write about it. I assume someone is reading this, and if it's really depressing I apologize. I am sorry my movie sucks. You can have your money back.
I clearly have some things to work out. My heart has a basement and it's crammed with shit I don't need anymore.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Getting the mulch off the dinosaur
Tonight it was just Miles and me. He's a great kid. So smart and sweet and funny, with his freckles and his mop hair and utterly earnest conversation. I took the air-conditioner out of his room, making him hold onto Jasper while I set it in the unfinished half of the attic. I don't want the cat back there because he's not the brightest crayon in the box and that side is full of insulation. Also, he could just climb the wall and be in the other side of the duplex, where my landlords and their baby live. With their dog. It would be very bad for Jasper, but he is simple and does not know that. Until tonight I am pretty sure he had no idea there even was a door leading to another place in the house. He was meowing and writhing, tail twitching, just wanting to leap, but my son kept him in check. I had a one minute window before the AC was set down and the door closed again. In the meantime Jasper got very mad. When Miles set him down he lunged and snapped his jaws and actually made a short barking sound. It was kind of funny so we laughed at him. He thinks he is a giant fearsome beast, but actually, we can roll him up in a rug just like an angry cat burrito.
After that I plunked down on my son's bed, scoping out all the weird angles in his room. Taking in what he sees, the angles of his private thoughts. He started going through his stuffed animals. Organizing. Just like his mama. About a week ago we had jumped in the car to check out a post I found on Craigslist where someone was giving away the rest of an estate sale in a decent neighborhood. I had never just jumped into my car for something like that, but I was looking for two kitchen chairs. I found them. They once belonged to an elderly Jewish woman named Roberta. I know because I picked up a paperback copy of Flowers for Algernon, and her name was inside the cover. I also got some sewing stuff, a few large jars with lids, a pair of shredding scissors, a screwdriver set and a saw. I also found a picture I framed and put in my kitchen and a M.A.S.H mug from the 80's. Miles found a glass cork top jar to put his marbles in, a tie rack and a big basket that looks exactly like it should have a snake in it.
And that's what he was doing, as I was draped on his bed with our ridiculous barking cat, looking at the angles. He was searching his toy box for his three wooden snakes and his two bean bag snakes, so he could put them in the basket. He told me the story of almost every stuffed animal. Sometimes with a voice like, "This used to me very important to me. Oh, long ago, you are so far away..." Which is funny to me, because he is ten. But his ten-ness feels different to him than it feels to me. In another ten he will be twenty. I have a concept of twenty, but he does not. I know, when he is twenty, he will have very different things in his box. But to him, there is no other box. Not yet.
Instead, in this box, there is a pale green dinosaur. He pulled it out and looked at it and told me in a very sad voice, "I took this to school for show and tell, and then I took it outside for recess, and some kids offered to babysit all the stuffed animals but they accidentally dropped mine in the mulch a few times." His voice was sad. And what made me sad was this thought, "I don't know this dinosaur." I had never seen it before. Or at least, never really noticed it. It was important to my son, important enough to take to school, but not important enough for me to find it on the couch, or move it around the house, or leave it on the steps for Miles to take up to his room. So I offered to vacuum it up. I took it downstairs and tried to suck the tiny mulch bits out of the fur, which was difficult because they were pretty stuck. Mostly I picked them off with my fingernails. It took half an hour. And while I was cleaning up the dinosaur I was thinking, damn, my son is closer to the age where he will no longer care about keeping stuffed animals than he is to the age when I used to scoop him up and nurse him. I cleaned that dinosaur like crazy. I noticed the hell out of it.
After that I plunked down on my son's bed, scoping out all the weird angles in his room. Taking in what he sees, the angles of his private thoughts. He started going through his stuffed animals. Organizing. Just like his mama. About a week ago we had jumped in the car to check out a post I found on Craigslist where someone was giving away the rest of an estate sale in a decent neighborhood. I had never just jumped into my car for something like that, but I was looking for two kitchen chairs. I found them. They once belonged to an elderly Jewish woman named Roberta. I know because I picked up a paperback copy of Flowers for Algernon, and her name was inside the cover. I also got some sewing stuff, a few large jars with lids, a pair of shredding scissors, a screwdriver set and a saw. I also found a picture I framed and put in my kitchen and a M.A.S.H mug from the 80's. Miles found a glass cork top jar to put his marbles in, a tie rack and a big basket that looks exactly like it should have a snake in it.
And that's what he was doing, as I was draped on his bed with our ridiculous barking cat, looking at the angles. He was searching his toy box for his three wooden snakes and his two bean bag snakes, so he could put them in the basket. He told me the story of almost every stuffed animal. Sometimes with a voice like, "This used to me very important to me. Oh, long ago, you are so far away..." Which is funny to me, because he is ten. But his ten-ness feels different to him than it feels to me. In another ten he will be twenty. I have a concept of twenty, but he does not. I know, when he is twenty, he will have very different things in his box. But to him, there is no other box. Not yet.
Instead, in this box, there is a pale green dinosaur. He pulled it out and looked at it and told me in a very sad voice, "I took this to school for show and tell, and then I took it outside for recess, and some kids offered to babysit all the stuffed animals but they accidentally dropped mine in the mulch a few times." His voice was sad. And what made me sad was this thought, "I don't know this dinosaur." I had never seen it before. Or at least, never really noticed it. It was important to my son, important enough to take to school, but not important enough for me to find it on the couch, or move it around the house, or leave it on the steps for Miles to take up to his room. So I offered to vacuum it up. I took it downstairs and tried to suck the tiny mulch bits out of the fur, which was difficult because they were pretty stuck. Mostly I picked them off with my fingernails. It took half an hour. And while I was cleaning up the dinosaur I was thinking, damn, my son is closer to the age where he will no longer care about keeping stuffed animals than he is to the age when I used to scoop him up and nurse him. I cleaned that dinosaur like crazy. I noticed the hell out of it.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Life's mangled butterflies
For quite some time now I have thought to myself, "Self. You should have a blog." Then I got all wrapped up in the plan part. Like, there should be a clear cut REASON, right? There should be some kinda over-arching thing I am trying to do or say or sell, or something, and it shouldn't be self-referential (which is quite frankly, all I've got.) Well I still haven't figured that out but here I am doing it anyway, so if you're here, looking for me to Be Interesting, sorry. Mileage may vary.
I have already spent too much time trying to nail down my own intentions. When it comes to writing I love/hate so hard on the planning part that I burn myself out before I get to the doing part. I write my witty bits in notebooks, concentrated little things that are really only for me. I start wee documents with notes about stuff that interests me, or stupid shit that happens, or ideas for things I want to make. But again, these are just for me so I don't jump in a worry hole when it comes to spelling or intent. I don't need a big shiny point for my private stuff. I'm not trying to follow my own narrative. I'm just catching some of the butterflies for later. With the understanding that not everyone gives a shit about my butterfly collection, and those who do shouldn't be subjected to the wing smashing mangle parts. I have been hoarding words without a plan for offloading them. I have always entertained the compulsion to save thoughts for later, but so far I lack the discipline to make something substantial and interesting out of all the scraps. They aren't even organized. I am annoyed at myself for already being 35, self-identified as a lifelong writer and collector of stories, whose only claim to fame is a few plays, a stack of journals, a few pieces on a dusty old website and the occasional ability to be really fucking funny at parties. So see, right there I could back away from the keyboard and sulk off to the kitchen to stew in my own mediocrity, where I have vodka and dishes to do and a chair I want to paint. But I won't. Maybe after this.
The act of sharing my reality also trips me up. This is not my first go around the Internet. I remember what happened the last time I wrote in public. I found an audience. That was emotionally and intellectually thrilling at first. Then, usually with awesome or sexy results, some of the people stepped into my real life. Then more people. Then that thing happened. That moment when our Best Selves stepped aside to reveal velvety smooth or pockmaggoty underbellies. That moment was either a big fat trans-formative YAY or it sucked the suck that can't unsuck itself. Sometimes, Real People snap you right in half. Twang! And that's an audience.
I also worry about hurting someone's feelings. Do I include or not include? What about being called out on a mis-memory? What if I reveal that some of the things that have been said or done were actually much worse for me than I let on. It's hard to be busting with stories and words but also worried about feelings. It's also kind of dumb to use that as an excuse not to write. I'm calling myself out on that in my sassiest Inner Mama voice. I can always sleep later, I plead to the gods of a five day writing jag...
I have already spent too much time trying to nail down my own intentions. When it comes to writing I love/hate so hard on the planning part that I burn myself out before I get to the doing part. I write my witty bits in notebooks, concentrated little things that are really only for me. I start wee documents with notes about stuff that interests me, or stupid shit that happens, or ideas for things I want to make. But again, these are just for me so I don't jump in a worry hole when it comes to spelling or intent. I don't need a big shiny point for my private stuff. I'm not trying to follow my own narrative. I'm just catching some of the butterflies for later. With the understanding that not everyone gives a shit about my butterfly collection, and those who do shouldn't be subjected to the wing smashing mangle parts. I have been hoarding words without a plan for offloading them. I have always entertained the compulsion to save thoughts for later, but so far I lack the discipline to make something substantial and interesting out of all the scraps. They aren't even organized. I am annoyed at myself for already being 35, self-identified as a lifelong writer and collector of stories, whose only claim to fame is a few plays, a stack of journals, a few pieces on a dusty old website and the occasional ability to be really fucking funny at parties. So see, right there I could back away from the keyboard and sulk off to the kitchen to stew in my own mediocrity, where I have vodka and dishes to do and a chair I want to paint. But I won't. Maybe after this.
The act of sharing my reality also trips me up. This is not my first go around the Internet. I remember what happened the last time I wrote in public. I found an audience. That was emotionally and intellectually thrilling at first. Then, usually with awesome or sexy results, some of the people stepped into my real life. Then more people. Then that thing happened. That moment when our Best Selves stepped aside to reveal velvety smooth or pockmaggoty underbellies. That moment was either a big fat trans-formative YAY or it sucked the suck that can't unsuck itself. Sometimes, Real People snap you right in half. Twang! And that's an audience.
I also worry about hurting someone's feelings. Do I include or not include? What about being called out on a mis-memory? What if I reveal that some of the things that have been said or done were actually much worse for me than I let on. It's hard to be busting with stories and words but also worried about feelings. It's also kind of dumb to use that as an excuse not to write. I'm calling myself out on that in my sassiest Inner Mama voice. I can always sleep later, I plead to the gods of a five day writing jag...
Friday, June 4, 2010
Open letter to America
If this land truly is my land and your land, then we have to be good stewards. It is our home. We live here. We all need it to remain viable. Unless there is some kind of top secret awesome escape plan we will probably need clean food and water and air and stuff like that. There are a great many livelihoods to be made in stewardship of our land, our people and our resources, as well as in education, food, music, preventative health, art and culture. Those are the things that contribute the most to a truly sustainable, quality life.
Let's not turn it all into a giant oil-stained strip of chain stores and mega-malls. Let's not forget in our exuberant ME ME ME stage to pick up after ourselves, to put in some infrastructure, you know, make it a place where people can still live.
And we are always going to have neighbors and we should probably try a little harder to get along with them. Pointing guns at the neighbors is generally a bad place to start. Unless you want to have one of those, “You put the gun down, no YOU” moments it's best to try talking first. With a translator. And some research. This self-centered attitude that we are so awesome we don't even have consider, learn about or understand anyone who isn't from here is getting pretty tiresome.
If we want to maintain and truly enjoy our "freedoms" we have to pay attention to and discuss the laws that affect us. For instance, The Patriot Act (drafted a mere 44 days after 9/11) is made of pure bullshit. It sits OK with those who don't care to ponder too hard by invoking a few words that go like this: "Well if you have nothing to hide you should have nothing to worry about." As if that makes it OK for the government to tap phones, search your library history and Internet browsing habits, any communications you have made as well as your private property. Probable cause? Not so necessary. And without having to tell you about it unless it brings up anything exciting. Because you are not a terrorist, right? But what if the definitions change a little? What if your information is gathered for one purpose and used for another? By the government. For the good of the people (who have not been investigated yet). To weed out the bad apples, ("bad" to be determined by the government, in a closed session, at an undisclosed location, based on secret, indisputable evidence, because government is allowed all the secrets they want but citizens may not have any and they don't want to talk about it anymore now go to bed).
Catastrophe allows our government to capitalize on fear, giving them unchecked moments in which to squeeze in changes of dubious benefit to a select few. It gives the government a temporary power boost, in which crazy amounts of paperwork and legislation are suddenly possible. I am pretty sure legislative assistants glow orange immediately following a catastrophe and are able to type, speak and get along in hyper-mode. It took 6 weeks to draft the most sweeping Freedom squelching law we've ever lived under. That's less time than a stint on The Apprentice. And it happened while we were grieving.
The election process is jacked up, so running to the polls is essentially a meaningless exercise that allows some to feel like they did their part and that's it. This country is really run by corporations, and they are neither elected nor impeachable. They are allowed to carve up our common resources and sell them back to us, and when they fail we give them even more of our money. So it's great that we marched down to the polls and picked one of the two main choices on offer, thinking we had the winning ticket to awesome town. All pumped up on Change or Values. Nice sticker though.
In the mean time there is this endless stupid debate about how far other people lean and in which direction, and all the screaming drowns out the middle, where most of the people are. There are those of us who would like to see honest, well reasoned, up-to-date discussions that are logical, compassionate, and sustainable without including bullshit labels like "Democrat" and "Republican", which are meaningless words that only serve to divide people into smug, useless, self-satisfied clubs. Either one of them could change their name to The Club That is Totally Right All The Time I Mean It and get a frothy hell yeah from the base. Seriously, aligning to a word that has no real meaning is like saying, "I only vote for people named Ed.”
I don't want to move. I still love my country, most of my favorite people are here. I am just really annoyed by our raging adolescence. I just want to be proud to live here on purpose.
Let's not turn it all into a giant oil-stained strip of chain stores and mega-malls. Let's not forget in our exuberant ME ME ME stage to pick up after ourselves, to put in some infrastructure, you know, make it a place where people can still live.
And we are always going to have neighbors and we should probably try a little harder to get along with them. Pointing guns at the neighbors is generally a bad place to start. Unless you want to have one of those, “You put the gun down, no YOU” moments it's best to try talking first. With a translator. And some research. This self-centered attitude that we are so awesome we don't even have consider, learn about or understand anyone who isn't from here is getting pretty tiresome.
If we want to maintain and truly enjoy our "freedoms" we have to pay attention to and discuss the laws that affect us. For instance, The Patriot Act (drafted a mere 44 days after 9/11) is made of pure bullshit. It sits OK with those who don't care to ponder too hard by invoking a few words that go like this: "Well if you have nothing to hide you should have nothing to worry about." As if that makes it OK for the government to tap phones, search your library history and Internet browsing habits, any communications you have made as well as your private property. Probable cause? Not so necessary. And without having to tell you about it unless it brings up anything exciting. Because you are not a terrorist, right? But what if the definitions change a little? What if your information is gathered for one purpose and used for another? By the government. For the good of the people (who have not been investigated yet). To weed out the bad apples, ("bad" to be determined by the government, in a closed session, at an undisclosed location, based on secret, indisputable evidence, because government is allowed all the secrets they want but citizens may not have any and they don't want to talk about it anymore now go to bed).
Catastrophe allows our government to capitalize on fear, giving them unchecked moments in which to squeeze in changes of dubious benefit to a select few. It gives the government a temporary power boost, in which crazy amounts of paperwork and legislation are suddenly possible. I am pretty sure legislative assistants glow orange immediately following a catastrophe and are able to type, speak and get along in hyper-mode. It took 6 weeks to draft the most sweeping Freedom squelching law we've ever lived under. That's less time than a stint on The Apprentice. And it happened while we were grieving.
The election process is jacked up, so running to the polls is essentially a meaningless exercise that allows some to feel like they did their part and that's it. This country is really run by corporations, and they are neither elected nor impeachable. They are allowed to carve up our common resources and sell them back to us, and when they fail we give them even more of our money. So it's great that we marched down to the polls and picked one of the two main choices on offer, thinking we had the winning ticket to awesome town. All pumped up on Change or Values. Nice sticker though.
In the mean time there is this endless stupid debate about how far other people lean and in which direction, and all the screaming drowns out the middle, where most of the people are. There are those of us who would like to see honest, well reasoned, up-to-date discussions that are logical, compassionate, and sustainable without including bullshit labels like "Democrat" and "Republican", which are meaningless words that only serve to divide people into smug, useless, self-satisfied clubs. Either one of them could change their name to The Club That is Totally Right All The Time I Mean It and get a frothy hell yeah from the base. Seriously, aligning to a word that has no real meaning is like saying, "I only vote for people named Ed.”
I don't want to move. I still love my country, most of my favorite people are here. I am just really annoyed by our raging adolescence. I just want to be proud to live here on purpose.
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