Ergo Another Epiphany

Never be afraid to tell the truth.  But what is it?  Is what is true Right/Good, and what’s not true Wrong/Bad?  Does truth have a moral value, and if so, on what do we base our understanding?  Is truth a feeling?  Does it have physical properties, practical applications; can we use truth to obtain or attain something greater than truth?  Can the truth really set us free?  If so, free from what?  What binds us, holds us captive, prisoner, and how did we end up this way?  Where does the truth come from?  Who holds the market share?  If I know the truth, if I’m finally free, will it make me happy?  Will others be happy too?

There’s a line from Tennessee William’s Cat on A Hot Tin Roof I’ve quoted to the point of embarrassing myself since the day I saw the play when I was 17.

Didn’t you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room?…There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity…

Lies and liars.  We believe in them.  But decent, honest, honorable people?  Folk that want nothing more than the best for everyone, who try to do the right thing based on what they believe in, know as true and good?  Do we believe in them?  Can you tell the good guys from the bad guys?  What do you need to know about a person to know what “side” they’re on, what their intentions for your world, your way of life, your wee bit of existing in the universe are?  Nationality?  Political affiliation?  Religion? Sexual Orientation?  Race?  Gender?  Stance on abortion?  Gun control?  The environment?  What’s on your checklist?  What TRUE/FALSE answer pushes a person from one side of the chessboard to the other?  How do you decide who gets to stay and who has to go?  (If you were in control, of course, and could “weed-out the undesirables”.)  Are we so intuitive, so in touch with who we are, where we’re going, and what we believe in, that we’re comfortable deciding who’s wrong?

We LOVE to tell the truth.  We can’t wait to educate one another on the numerous errors of our wicked ways.  It’s cathartic.  It makes us feel like we’re doing something to “make a difference.”  There’s just one little thing about the truth that makes me uncomfortable.  We don’t know a damn thing about each other.  Let me give you an example:

Women are raped all the time.  Men are raped too, although it’s not as common, and rarely talked about.  Women, however, have been taught to talk about it.  I remember watching an After School Special on child molestation with a friend when I was 11.  She said, “If that ever happened to me, I’d tell someone.”  I remember thinking No, you wouldn’t.  Yeah, I’m one of them.  Yawn, right?  Like who the fuck hasn’t been molested or raped?  Toss a stone into a crowded room and chances are you’re going to hit a woman who’s experienced some form of sexual violence.  Think of how many women you know who told you they were raped.

Now, think of how many men you know who told you they raped someone.  Let’s throw the same stone into the same crowd and see how many rapists we hit.  These women aren’t being raped by one man.  And considering the number of rapes that go unreported, perpetrators that go unpunished, there has to be one or two rapists in the crowd, right?  This is when women are told to shut up.  Because the truth is that the men who do this sit next to us in the movie theater with their wife and kids.  And who the hell wants to know that?  The man who raped me as a child has children, and I’d never tell those kids what their father did.  Why fuck up innocent lives for pointless truth?  So he doesn’t do it to them?  Preventing crime is the responsibility of the police and the justice system - not me, the child, the victim.  They had their chance to put him in jail.  They passed.

So what’s true?  Democrats are good?  Republicans are bad?  Christians are going to heaven and it’s to hell for the rest of us?  God is on America’s side and on the side of anyone who sides with us up until the point that they become our enemy, at which point they are no longer on God’s side but against him/her/it?  Plain MnM’s are better than Peanut?  If you’re allergic to peanuts, this is certainly true.

I learned love, patience, understanding, and acceptance from a bunch of football-loving, flag-waving, beer-drinking Republicans who were pretty certain I was going to be a wacko-crazy-liberal-Californian before they met me, yet never once treated me with anything but respect.  My “everyone is equal, love-your-brother” hippie father told me all Republicans are inherently EVIL.  Guess that includes them.  If I based my life on that kind of template, one in which I could accept or dismiss people as mindlessly as TRUE/FALSE, LOVE/HATE, (Republican/Democrat), without having to look into or beyond what’s right in front of me, think of how much I might have missed?  Some of the best moments of my life.

The “truth” is, we don’t know anything about the people around us, good or bad.  It would be nice if folk wore good-guy/bad-guy costumes; we wouldn’t have to go through the trouble and potential pain of getting to know one another, but life isn’t neat and convenient.  We can pretend it is.  We can join a club, pick a religion, believe what we’re told, or believe what we believe.  The trick is unlearning everything you think you know every time you meet someone new.  Let people be who they are, give them a chance to surprise and delight you…or piss you off and make you call the police.  No one is anyone else.  And people change.  If you behave as if the person in front of is someone you know as intimately as you do yourself, don’t bother with them - you’re wasting their time - let them be and become, or let them go.  The only life you know anything about is yours.

Tom Wait’s Make it Rain

What I heard:

She took all my money
And my best pen

What Tom Waits sang/wrote:

She took all my money
and my best friend

When a simple misunderstanding reveals more about me than I ever (willing) would, I am amused.

Posting here is like visiting my old high school or hanging out with a co-worker on the weekend. I’m a little uncomfortable, edgy, unnecessarily cautious, and suspicious of my own motivations. I keep changing the site’s theme, renaming categories, editing posts, deleting some, rewriting others, and filling up my “drafts” folder so that now its count is higher than what’s published. I can compare what I’m doing best to a comment made regarding my step-mother’s redecoration of the family home. “It feels over-decorated and under-lived in.” In other words, a whole lot of neurotic with a dash of creepy.

I’ve been busy doing things I don’t like to talk about, which is unacceptable, as it breaks one of my own (un)tarnished Golden Rule(s).  They’re pretty basic: Don’t do anything I’m ashamed of, anything that will later require an apology, or anything that’ll cost me a little time in jail. Oh, and avoid liars, asshats, lunatics, motherfuckers, bastards, the vindictive, and the mean.  Sounds easy enough, eh?

I’m remembering what I forgot to remind myself to remember.  (This sentence is more painful to think than read, I assure you.)

I miss this space.  I forgot what it meant to me.  I allowed myself to be distracted by things unworthy of my time.  Shit happens.  I’m over it.  As I’ve said once or twice…this pointless space is mine.  I’m okay being a little uncomfortable until I get used to it again.  Because, ultimately, I live a life I don’t mind talking about.

It’s 4 am and Enimen’s losing himself on my iTunes shuffle. I’m tired. I want to go back to bed, go to sleep, dream about being someplace I want to be so I know where it is. In the morning I’ll buy a map, steal a car, possibly rob a bank, get there as soon as I fucking can, because today I’m tired and I don’t want to be tired anymore.

For the record, because ALL good songs you hear other people sing were written by either Bob Dylan or Tom Waits, this one is on Tom.

Tori Amos Strange Little Girls

Tom Waits Rain Dogs

The Glitter and Doom Tour

I really shouldn’t tell anyone this because I don’t have tickets yet but Tom Waits is going on tour. As asshats like to brag about seeing people who never go on tour, I, asshat that I am, get to brag about seeing him in L.A. in 2000. (Oh…did I mention I saw Leonard Cohen in 1993? I bet you’re so fucking jealous you’re pissing green.)

Oh yeah… Leonard Cohen is on tour right now. Did I mention I don’t have tickets to see him either? Of course…he’s not coming to the U.S. anytime soon…if at all.

The good news is all shows aren’t sold out. If you want to buy me tickets to see Cohen, just toss in a couple of tickets to Germany, Italy, or the UK (because you know how dangerous it is to hitchhike these days!).

Seriously. Tom and Leonard are on tour this summer?! Hell froze over an no one told me.

The sad truth is hell didn’t freeze over…  It opened its gates and flooded our streets.  Wanna know why Leonard is on a World Tour at age 73?  His long-time manager, Kelley Lynch, whom he considered a friend, robbed him.  He’s one of those poor rich people now.

People suck in ways I don’t like.

Leonard Cohen, The Letters

No, I don’t suppose I’ll be stealing cars or robbing banks.   I’ll get some sleep, pray to the Gods of music a few pairs of tickets to see Leonard and Tom will magically appear in my inbox, as well as airfare to get to the cities they’re playing in, and buy an extra map or two because they’re handy.  This notion that there is a place to be or go, somewhere I belong, where I can settle down (inside) and feel at home, is a distraction.  And that just won’t do.  And though it provides no more sense of security, integrity, or greater meaning in the grand scheme of things, “success is my only motherfucking option.”  If only as the more palatable option to its alternative…

…because asshats need practice, too

Came across your site. I remember Jr High. I looked forward to dodge ball.You were the one in the corner, that just stood there looking at me, hoping i would spare you.How did the blindside shot to your head feel? I tried not to laugh.nice article…look forward to more.
DC

For future reference, Mr. C., to “blindside” an opponent means to attack or hit on or from the blind side; to catch or take unawares. This is impossible to do if I am “the one in the corner, that just stood there looking at [you], hoping [you] will spare [me.]” And, though your fond recollection of a perceived preternatural ability to sense or instill fear in the heart of fellow prepubescent dodge ballers is mildly disturbing, aside from defining blindside, suppressing the urge to fix minor capitalization typos, your dubious comment inspired only one other thought: A quote from the film, The Witches of Eastwick.

Alexandra Medford: You’re not even interesting enough to make me sick.

There are many things about the universe I’ll never understand.  This is not pessimism but wishful thinking.  A prayer.  A “if everything works according to plan”.  For all my curious creature ways, certain mysteries and unknowables should be left alone; or at the very least should leave me alone.  If something smells terrible, tastes awful, permanently ruins your impression of something previously palatable or pleasant, don’t offer to share it with me.  I’ll take your word for it, believe it’s as bad as you say, avoid the video of that kid who accidentally staked himself at Halloween during an unfortunate costume malfunction, skip archival footage of the misguided decision by Oregon’s Department of Transportation to remove the decaying carcass of a beached whale by blowing it up, and every incarnation of the “Star Wars Kid” whose video created so much trouble for him he had to switch schools.  No one told him the 3 rules essential to living well:

1. Hide under a rock until you’re safely out of Junior High School.
2. Don’t film yourself if you’re pretending to be a Jedi.
3. Star Wars is dead.  We’ll still dress up in the gold bikini, let you collar and leash us, but it’s time to let all the other fantasies die.  Stop trying to use the force, Luke. 

Fortunately the ratio of people who own equipment capable of documenting their most humiliating moments skyrockets after age 14.  The pool of “Star Wars Kid” videos is so vast, the likelihood yours will be ridiculed by millions, and then picked up by creative-types with “mad programming skills” seeking to redeem you and their own inner “Star Wars Kid” decreases considerably.  However, YouTube with caution - This does not mean your friends won’t save it for an explosive, potentially marriage-annulling montage to be screened at your wedding.

The moral of the story is STAY BEHIND THE CAMERA.  Or avoid doing anything stupid for the rest of your life.

That’s easy enough. 

Where was I?

Oh, what stinks about being the ant.

Feeling a little stupid myself during a recent conversation with a friend I said, “Is this a joke?  And am I not getting it?”  He said, “Isn’t that a question you should be saving to ask God?”

Which brings me back to my original statement about our universe and things you know you can keep to yourself.  I’m pretty sure, if Gods do exist, I’m not getting the joke.  There’s lots to laugh about, yet we seem to have entered an age when we’re so intellectually bankrupt, all we come up with is the “kick each other in the crotch and watch each other cry” gag.  I tried to woo a boy this way when I was 9 and may have permanently ruined his desire for children because he’s pushing 40, hasn’t married, and is competing with friends to see who can hold out the longest.  I can’t really blame him.  Unless that’s what you’re into, a kick in the crotch is no way to say “I love you.”  There are hundreds of fascinating people in the world whose life’s work gets passed over and ignored so we can watch videos of a child who wants nothing more than to be left alone, forgotten about, allowed to be a child during the blink of an eye that is childhood.

You see, I know something about this…what it’s like to be a child one day, and something else entirely unidentifiable, (but clearly no longer a child) the next.  Regardless of whether the attention received is a result of their own actions or something forced upon them, children should not be subjected to our lackbrain boredom, pushed further into a spotlight they can’t navigate or comprehend, because we’ve run out of things to talk about.  If we’re so incapable of enjoying what’s already out there that we’ve resorted to humiliating children for entertainment, maybe we ought to go back to blowing up beached whales, watching tourists ditch BBQ equipment and dive behind cars to avoid chunks of blubber raining down on them like Styrofoam boulders on a movie set, as stunned reporters, duped by engineers into believing local wildlife would carry off whatever remained of the whale after the explosion exclaim, “The seagulls were nowhere in sight!”  I can just imagine a seagull swooping in immediately after half a ton of dynamite roasts their morning meal to perfection, and hauling off 25lb chunks to enjoy at their leisure - in their seagull Winnebago?

(Okay, maybe the whale video is pretty funny.)

It’s your thing, your life, but here’s something to consider…

If you find yourself watching something and the words, “Man, that’s fucked up” are said by you and your companions more than once - stop watching.  Instead of burning us ants, you’d be better off using your magnifying glass to examine the sun.  (Obligatory disclaimer: DON’T DO THIS ASSHATS!).  I guarantee you there’s not a funny fucking thing about being that kid.

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The bitch left me.  She actually got on the plane and went home.

I’m so depressed.

She could have postponed her departure a 3rd time if she really loved me.  The neighbor’s mom would.  Probably.

I guess I know where I rank.  Beneath Stink(er), the dog.  But why?  I’m sweet, and nice, and good to cats.  Whose idea do you think it was to name her other dog “Kitty”?

Meow.

Oh, my poor Mom.

Yes, I’ve always been this fun to own.

She learned the hard way not to read what I write without permission after a quick peek into my journal in junior high:

“The only reason my mother had children was so she’d have someone to do the dishes for her.”

Um.  Ouch.

Poor Mom knew her blond little angel was going to be everything but during our first (possibly last) mom/daughter shopping trip to buy clothes for the start of Kindergarten.  She picked an outfit she claims looked adorable but when I emerged from the dressing room I clearly did not agree.  Grabbing fistfuls of pant leg fabric and, for dramatic effect, holding it out I exclaimed, “I’m not wearing this.  This makes me look like a clown!”  I imagine my entire teenage life passed before my mother’s eyes at that moment, with her a pale, fragile figure somewhere off in the fashion distance, watching as I pranced around town in the best clothes my family couldn’t afford.  Oh, she wishes.  She got part of the fashion nightmare right, only the prancing turned out to be more like a disaffected trot, and the best they couldn’t afford became the best the local thrift stores stuffed in a bargain bin - the shit even poor people refuse to wear.  Hell, I may be the only American who voluntarily marched through Europe in the 1990s in combat boots without a weapon.  You know those fucking soles have nails in them?  Why or how they worked their way into the inside of my boot, then into my foot, is a question I’m saving for someone who answers stupid rhetorical questions.

Back to torturing my mother.

Her birthday is next week.  [This paragraph, sadly, had to be removed so as not to offend every person on the planet, with the exception of my mother, who would love it, because I'm her kid, and not the dog.]

Seriously.  I miss you.

Bitch.

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Have you ever been the victim of an afterthought; a random act of second degree social misconduct tacked on at day’s end that feels less malicious and more like, “I’m bored, why not?” One in which the misdeed is unpremeditated by the unprovoked perpetrator, yet at the moment of commission, takes on the likeness of something stupidly uncontrollable like a belch or fart. And you, on your way to wherever, cross paths at the wrong time, invading the space they’d escaped to to avoid embarrassing themselves.

Here’s a tip: Skip excuse me and fuck polite. You’re wasting your time. You know the score. One wrong turn and it’s, “Tag, you’re shit.” Pretend you don’t notice and walk away. Let them stink up every corner they can crawl to. You’ve got better things to do with your time than be offended.

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It takes the fuss out of lying to you.

I’m apple-bobbing for reasons why I haven’t/don’t want to post.  Hating the overall look of this site sounded good for 30 minutes.  3 hours and a new theme later, visions of tossing journals and notebooks into the fire as I toasted Mr. Buffet and wondered about my new tattoo too, play like late-night reruns one step up from watching leftover take-out ferment.    21 is on my list of ages I’m happy to never be again.

The universe is trying to tell me something, I’m certain.  I may have to start answering the phone again.  Don’t bother coming over.  I still refuse to answer the door.  It’s not that I’m not eager to know; only cognizant of the possibility that this particular universal 411 could turn out to be SPAM.  And there’s nothing worse than getting excited over hearing a message from the Gods left on everyone’s machine.

Focus.  Failure to stay on topic, or remain interested in one subject for the time necessary to put my impressions down on paper, is possibly, probably, a cause.  Stress affects focus, although I can’t pinpoint the specific effect, be it a constant stream of ideas moving at a rate impossible to follow, or a decrease in appetite for such fanciful fare, life living life living the living.  I forget and remember, only to forget again - I think.  It’s a dream, or I am, and none of it means anything because I’m tired, don’t eat enough, and know one has something to do with the other but how did either find me in the first place?

The next planet was inhabited by a tippler. This was a very short visit, but it plunged the little prince into deep dejection.
“What are you doing there?” he said to the tippler, whom he found settled down in silence before a collection of empty bottles and also a collection of full bottles.
“I am drinking,” replied the tippler, with a lugubrious air.
“Why are you drinking?” demanded the little prince.
“So that I may forget,” replied the tippler.
“Forget what?” inquired the little prince, who already was sorry for him.
“Forget that I am ashamed,” the tippler confessed, hanging his head.
“Ashamed of what?” insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him.
“Ashamed of drinking!” The tipler brought his speech to an end, and shut himself up in an impregnable silence.

from Chapter 12 of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Not-so-much the cupcake filler of joy I was hoping for…  In truth, I don’t have much to complain about.  I’m tired, that’s all.  And worried about family and friends.  Me too.

I can fight what I can see.  Fix things I can control.  Sleep.  I can do that.  I can tell you who I am.

My nose turns red when I’m cold. I sing when I’m in the shower, talk to and for the cats, hide Oatmeal cookies in my closet.  I’ve been waking up laughing, not certain what the dream is, only that I was writing something funny.  I’ve been known to skip.  I talk to myself because I’m alone a lot and forget to stop when I’m around people.  Sometimes it feels like people are eavesdropping - yes, absurd thought, I know.  Lately, I’ve been asking for help - or trying to learn how.  I’m only 32.  Is that some kind of record?  I don’t like salad dressing.  I own the world’s creepiest doll.

Few would find this sort of thing interesting.  And then only for reasons that have little to do with the list or me.

I suppose it’s the fewer I write for.  The ones “who don’t even care”.

I’d rather be the one who loves
than to be loved and never even know.
                                            ~Josh Ritter

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I’m moving again. I loathe the smell of packing tape glue and cardboard, cringe each time I hear the swish of an opening trash bag, see the wrist-whipped air balloon fill and collapse, a parachute aborted at birth. I think, “There’s still so much to go through, remember, and then throw away.” Gone, the romantic notion of finding my way by tossing a dart at the map, or the map at a dart. Maybe true from the beginning, co-conspirators or one and the same, the dart and map are now after me. I keep moving to stay one step ahead of everything I own that owns me; I’m getting slower by a second each time the ball drops on Time Square. Soon my lampshades and flowerpots will know what I know. And then it’s to heaven or hell, or wherever they send the undecided. I’m thinking Pittsburgh or New Jersey, maybe Indianapolis. Miami for those who sunburn easily.

A friend said of this site, “…in a year and a half, you’ve managed to leave out almost everything.” Tattletale.

On a pair of napkins tucked between the pages of a paperback book, Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, I wrote the following (year unknown, although best guess is 1999 - 2000):

” Today, as I was ordering a Happy Meal at McDonald’s, the man behind the counter asked, “Would you like a toy for a boy or girl?” Confused, I asked him to repeat himself. Again he said, “Would you like a toy for a boy or girl?” I answered “boy”, and when I sat down at a table to eat my mass-manufactured food, I found in my bag a little Matchbox car. A girl next to me, no more than 8 I’d say, had a miniature Barbie. I suppose she answered, “Girl.”

Polishing off my fries, I opened the first of 2 bottles of medications I take for depression. As I swallowed the first pill, I looked up and locked eyes with a boy who smiled at me, then looked down at his companion, an elderly black man confined to a wheelchair whose lap was filled with bags of food the two would soon eat. When my eyes returned to the boy, he was walking away, and painted in bright red on his black t-shirt was the message, “Don’t Trust Anyone.”

Sitting in McDonald’s, San Francisco, CA, USA…deciding my “chosen” gender, swallowing pills, being told by a child not to trust, listening to my favorite band on the overhead radio, I decided everything was common. Even defeat. There are no more corners for me to hide in. Not in McDonald’s, not in little pills, not in youth, not in music, not in gender, not in me.

I’m as common as the wind.”

After transcribing this I folded the napkins and returned them to where they were found. I doubt I’ll keep the book. It’ll end up on some thrift store shelf, and someone, someday will find my lunchtime ramblings, undated and unsigned, maybe even read them. As I sort through the past, 20 plus years of napkin poems, post-it epiphanies, crayon ramblings, journal entries written on any scrap of paper or porous dry surface I could find, I think about this future stranger, wonder what they’re doing now, what they’ll wear the day they go to the thrift store and find my napkin notes in an old paperback. Are they like me? Will they come home and write in their journal, “found written on a napkin in a book purchased in a thrift store” as I did more than once over the years?

I said to myself, as I sat in the living room surrounded by a dozen boxes of photographs and notebooks, “Hell, if my friends stood still long enough, I would’ve written on them.”

And then I thought about my friend, who encapsulated in a single sentence all I’ve been trying to say without saying it, and smiled. The only way to see what’s not there is to know what’s supposed to be there. My friend is covered in ink. As am I.

Ah, how sweet and naive, little ol’ me can be.

He said, “You look different.”

Well, I guess.

Perhaps I should ease back into posting on a lighter note?  Talk about my failure as a Guitar Hero?  The joys of mint tea?  My football obsession, superstitions, and weekly rituals?  Bill’s obsession with Rachael Ray? (I didn’t know who she was until he began pointing her out, and I still couldn’t pick her out of a line up.)  Epiphanies regarding one’s own doughnut hole existence, musings on the free speech debate (which I intentionally left out big name users, abusers, and cases, to avoid ending up on some watch group’s phish list), or my pop warner psychoanalysis of Lily’s latest bad dream don’t create that gooey cream filled center feeling I hope to inspire.

No?  Not buying that?

Okay.

Maybe I’m not interested in making people feel like pastries.  It’s also not my intention to recreate that feeling you had after eating mystery left overs.

It’s been pointed out I repeated or, as I explained to the friend who pointed it out, unnecessarily reiterated how assbackwards it feels to have those I care about read me to understand me, when for so long this avenue wasn’t available.  It’s akin to having a pre-scripted conversation in which you get my lines, but I don’t get yours, just tomorrow’s reviews and notes detailing areas needing improvement and things I can do to tweak my technique.  Yes, I’ve mentioned this in previous posts.  And no, I’m not blind to my hypocrisy - I use this space to scold (communicate) with others for using this space to listen (communicate) - or foolish enough to deny I’m easier to read than talk to.  All my thoughts, ideas and sentences are finished, as complete as I’m going to get them at the time I click publish.  You don’t have to watch me think.  You don’t have to wait while I choose my words, or look for them in my scattered brain.  You don’t have to deal with my physical presence, nor I yours.  Few people put me at ease.  Most of you make me tense.  People who put me at ease don’t like me when I’m around people who make me tense. 

So…  While you don’t get the whole picture, or specific details, when you read my posts, typically I write them when I’m alone, comfortable, in control of my universe.  At ease.  It’s harder to hold up the wall when I’m laughing.  If I’m repeating myself, saying “don’t look for me here”, I’m “protest[ing] too much” methinks.  It’s possible I started this page to hide, got lonely and tossed out a few bread crumbs so my friends would find me.  They found me, responded to Lily the writer in ways they never did Lily the person, so I stopped posting.  [insert huh?]  I found a better way to communicate with people I care about and stopped?  Why the leap from logic?  Because Lily the person is a mess, lacks an on-board spell checker, and endless supply of sexy fonts to parade around in, each day a new set of curves, angles, peaks - yet always the same, stable, strong character.  I don’t get to publish edits in real life, don’t get to go back, erase everyone’s memory, and say the right thing, the funny, witty, charming, helpful, not-so-bitchy, less destructive thing.  I have to live in my body, deal with its weaknesses and limitations, its history and dreams.  You’ll never see a single word I write, then erase.  If I speak it, if you hear it, you own it.  Not as much fun.  But more honest.

I’d rather be the woman I write about.  Or one of my characters.  Let me be someone I make up - for a day or forever - and all this business of worrying about who reads and writes between the lines won’t matter.  If I get to live as Lily the writer, I’ll simply write unsympathetic antagonists out of the story.  But, I do that now, don’t I?

Anxiety over why I do what I do is the cornerstone of my character.  I need a new cornerstone, methinks.

I really suck at Guitar Hero.  Who knew that was possible.  I’m not as bad as I was, but did you know you can actually fail the tutorial?  It’s true.

The name of my band?

Oops

Keep on rockin’ in the free world.

I’ve got more to say about the doughnut hole thing.  But another day.

Being from Earth as you are,
and using as little of your brain as you do…

…your life is devoted to dealing with fear.

Daniel

It has?

Bob Diamond

Everybody on Earth deals with fear.
That’s what Little Brains do.

Daniel

What are “Little Brains”?

Bob Diamond

That’s what we call you folks behind your back.
_________________

Daniel

What are you eating?

Bob Diamond

You wouldn’t like this.

Daniel

What does it taste like?

Bob Diamond

You’re curious, aren’t you? I like that.

Want to try?

Daniel

Yeah. Looks so weird.

Oh, my God!

Bob Diamond

Like horseshit, huh?

As you get smarter, you manipulate your senses.

This tastes different to me than to you.

Daniel

This is what smart people eat?

Bob Diamond

So talk to me. Tell me about your life.

from Defending Your Life
Written and Directed by Albert Brooks

Have you ever felt like you were part of something wonderful only to discover you were unnecessary?  Like watching a sunset or meteor shower; for a time you feel connected, whole, real, alive, full of invincible dreams.  And then it’s over.  You go back inside, blink to adjust your eyes to the harsh artificial light, and remember. This is what you have, who you are, where you belong.  Everything special about your experience only happened for you - the universe’s light show is public art, an A-ticket ride for everyone.  It doesn’t mean the moment is meaningless, only that your ability to recognize beauty doesn’t mean you’re a part of it - the sun will rise and set without you.  Your one great contribution to that which we call existence is to live the gift.
 
That’s how I’ve been, where I’m at, how I am.  I laugh more than I smile, get angry for people instead of with them, at them, and keep to myself as much as possible.  It sounds bad, when in reality it’s just reality, life catching up with art, or art catching up with life.  Me noticing time again, or it noticing me…something simple, mundane, ordinary like disliking pancakes or war.  Stupid, human things we feel and do, believe we know why, when it’s all a matter of preference, personal choice.  Certain species eat their young, we eat pancakes.  Some people are good, others - not so much.  I think I know what motivates me, why my choices are right for me, but I only have today’s knowledge to base my judgments on - maybe tomorrow I’ll know more, be closer to being part of something.  However, if there is an evolutionary benefit to self-destructive tendencies like infanticide, homicide, or genocide, I’ll never understand them.  I’m a “little brain”.  I don’t eat what smart people eat.  Manipulating my senses to make horseshit taste like something other than horseshit doesn’t make it so.

So much happens without me, yet I get praised or blamed as if I had something to do with it. Does the sun feel this way? Tired of being inspiring? Tired of being an annoying reminder that it’s time to get up and go to work? I’ve discovered it’s possible to feel like I’m part of something wonderful when I’m not. I’ve also discovered it’s possible to be that wonderful or awful others feel part of, when I’m not.  It’s hard to understand how a dedicated recluse like myself factors or matters in any way, yet somehow simply because I exist, I find I’m credited or accused of things I couldn’t possibly be involved in.  I haven’t responded to an email I received weeks ago because I’m not sure I know how.  On the surface it’s purely complimentary; thank you for writing something that reminded me of something, etcetera.  If I accept his thanks, does that also mean in the future I must accept responsibility when things don’t go well for him, when I fail to do whatever I did before?  The question is not about him, or me, but where we draw the line of responsibility as writers, artists, religions, nations.  Most of what I write feels fairly benign, harmless, pointless.  But what of the girl whose parents say she suicided because someone wrote something bad about her on the Internet?  Kids gossip about each other all the time.  If we criminalize writing bitchy opinions about one another, why stop there?  Why not criminalize saying bitchy things? Where do we draw the line between people who are simply mean and those whose written and spoken machinations are intended to inflict emotional or physical harm?  How do we determine which personal opinions are expressed with criminal intent?  Who will judge the gray areas, what we deem good or bad things to say, good or bad opinions to have specific to regional class, religious, or social standards?  Saying something is queer means different things to different people.  There are people who teach “Queer theory” in San Francisco.  This is difficult to explain to someone who lives in NH.  It’s an old argument in a new medium.  What’s the difference between free speech and directive or suggestive speech, i.e., things said intended to influence behavior.  Law books are filled with cases arguing for and against people who are accused of inspiring others to do bad things.

(For the record: be nice to persons, places, and things.  Mean people really fucking suck.)

Hop, skip, jump.

There are some who know me that have decided to gauge my mental and emotional status based not only on what I write for this site, but what I don’t - if I don’t post for a while, something is wrong.  (The definition of absurd is in constant flux.)  I didn’t share my writing with anyone until the age of 31.  This space began as experiment and few in my life know it exists even now.  I’m an intensely private person, and although this seems like a very public thing to do, I could print this out, toss copies out my window, and more people would read it.  In a way it’s more of the same - a great way to pretend I’m being brave when really I’m hiding in the crowd.  This is not my journal.  Although I understand why it’s easier to find me here than reach me on the telephone, anyone who reads this shit and thinks they know how I’m doing, doesn’t know me as well as they think they do.

However…

…None of this is why I haven’t been posting.  I’ve been gone because of a dream.  A bad one.

A few weeks ago I had a nightmare. Not unusual, I’ve had them regularly since early childhood. I usually forget them by my second cup of coffee, but this one’s haunted me.

We were driving on a highway in a convertible, I in the passenger seat. Apartment buildings with balconies lined both sides of the road, and as far as I could see, tall buildings with similar balconies covered the hills. Something terrible happened but we didn’t know what. TV and radio stations were down. We kept the radio off and waited. It was eerily quiet. The sky was the color of rust. We hadn’t seen anything for miles. Then a man walked out onto his balcony, picked up a chair and used it to smash railing, (the balconies were made of glass), and jumped onto the road in front of us. A car hit him. And suddenly everyone was on their balcony, whole families jumping in unison, some hesitating, but most jumping without stopping to break the glass - they ran through it. I closed my eyes, not wanting blood splattered on the windshield to get in them, then opened them, and watched in shocked silence. People everywhere, in a panic, silently jumped to their death. I looked at the radio, turned to my companions and said, “Whatever we hear, no matter what they say, or how bad it is, we have to survive. We have to find a way to live.”

I woke up after this.  I never heard the news so terrible it drove people to suicide en masse.  Around this time I discovered I’m probably allergic to chocolate (I told you the gods hate me), so more than likely a precipitating factor of my post apocalyptic vision was indigestion.  The other stuff…well, methinks it’s pretty obvious - In an end-of-the world scenario, I’m a passenger in a car with people I can’t identify driving aimlessly into the unknown.  I feel like everyone around me is giving up while I struggle to survive, like I’m always waiting to hear and preparing for bad news, and even though I’m terrified, I try to encourage the people with me because…  I don’t know why.  I’d like to say I do it because I don’t want to survive alone, but that isn’t it.  Freud-Lily needs to go back to the drawing board with this tasty subconscious treat.  Maybe it’s easier to focus on the fear of others rather than my own.  I don’t know.  I do know that I haven’t been able to forget the dream, haven’t been able to write without writing about it, and haven’t wanted to write about it because I always end up writing this dumb fucking paragraph.  There.  It’s done.  Tormented inner self - you win.

What’s next for me?  Another sunrise.  Another sunset.

Here’s a bit of sapient advice too big to fit on a Snapple bottle cap but important nonetheless:

If you’re asked what your ultimate fear in life is, and you spend less than 15 seconds contemplating a response, do not answer.  Find a way to swallow your tongue if you have to, fart, make fun of the way they walk, bark like a dog, anything, but whatever you do, keep that shit to yourself, because what you say isn’t as important as why the person is asking the question.  Any answer, be it “I fear the sound of a flushing toilet” or “My greatest fear in life is being forced to watch George Bush answer questions from the press 24 hours a day”, your fear is as open to interpretation as what you see in an ink blot.  Suzy sees big breasts.  Jim sees a gigantic talking cock.  I see myself banging my head against a wall for being the kind of person who answers this question on instinct without hesitating because I fear living in a world of lies more than I fear what I fear most.  (And really the flushing toilet and George Bush thing are almost one and the same.)

But what is truth if you can’t trust your own feelings, when you question your “motivations as a character”, when you’re filled with self-doubt?  When you feel batshit crazy, upside down, yourself only thinner and more insane.  Lately, every time my brain takes a turn in one direction, I open my mouth and begin babbling in a completely different direction, miles away from where the gray matter intended to go.  I can’t give myself a break.  It’s like steering a car with a broken axle or being held captive by the ghost in the machine.  It doesn’t matter how deftly I handle the wheel in my mind, my mouth is against me, the HAL 9000 of my soul.  Sure, HAL’s polite, he’ll say good morning, how ya feeling, and all that, but he’s still going to try to kill me in the end.  Somehow everything good and sensible gets lost in translation, and I end up saying all those things that make you wince when you’re lying in bed at night, reviewing the follies of your day.

Moments like these make me feel like my life is a blooper and I’m the idiot who’s always getting kicked in the crotch.  It makes me wonder who’s in control?  Who’s driving the bus?  My thoughts, memories, instincts, or current emotional status?  How I feel influences how I see and react, how I think, and even what I remember.  We call it perspective, hindsight, the knowledge our future selves possess about us we wish we had now, knowledge we have now we wish we had then.  But hindsight is a myth.  We don’t understand who we were in the past any better than we know who we’ll be in the future.  Life is always happening now, no matter what we fear, or why.  At the end of the day, while reviewing the gag reel that is your life, I think minimizing the potential damage we can do to one another is more important than figuring out why or what if.  Which means I’ve got to get this runaway mouth thing under control.

And I need to eat more because sitting on a bony ass is no damn fun.  It’s no wonder skinny chicks always look so grumpy.  (So far I’d say I’m a bit off course with the mouth thing.)

  

There’s nothing like completely pointless posting at 1am.  Ah, the joy of wasting digital space.

For years my great grandfather got headaches on Sunday. A farmer from the age of 7, he worked like Midwestern farmers born at the turn of the century worked: sunup to sundown Monday through Saturday all year-round. On Sunday, as the good book told him he should, he rested. Which is a fancy way of saying it’s the day he had to go to church. All the chores he did Monday through Saturday still had to be done, only quicker, and without mussing up his hair. He was a Christian but I’m not sure he liked church; mostly because he came to associate his Sunday headaches with Sunday worship. He held this belief well into his 70s, until we came up with the crazy notion that everything we eat, drink, and smoke might not be good for us. I had the pleasure of meeting my great grandfather on several occasions but by then, he was an old man; his speech was difficult to understand, he was hard of hearing, and almost completely blind. I’m told, however, that he had a wonderful sense of humor, and a hearty laugh. When I have days like today, when my insides hurt for no identifiable reason, I think of my great grandfather and the sound of his laughter on the day someone told him he might be getting headaches on Sundays, not because he’s allergic to church, but because it is the only day of the week he doesn’t drink coffee.

                        FIT THE EIGHTH
                        THE VANISHING

9
    In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
        In the midst of his laughter and glee,
    He had softly and suddenly vanished away -
        For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

from THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK
by Lewis Carroll

A few days ago I woke up laughing.  How fucking fabulous is that?

In my dream, an old high school friend and I squabbled with a few other women over a manipulative man.  (This would never happen in real life.)  At some point I abandoned the repotting of a plant to join the group discussing said man’s general overall unworthiness, and we quickly agreed to go our separate ways without inflicting irreparable emotional or bodily harm.  With nothing more to say, the majority of the women left, however my old friend and I remained seated, and watched as the women made their way out of the cold, dark building.  (We were in an ice skating rink - pray you never find yourself trapped in a world designed by my subconscious mind.)  I noticed we were all wearing lovely embroidered silk dresses and said somewhat stupidly, “We’re all wearing silk.”  My friend (a Goth in high school and a devoted wearer of anything black until she became pregnant in her mid-twenties) replied, “Like a witches’ coven.”  I said, “We’re a little old for a witches’ coven, don’t you think?  Our witchy get-togethers would probably turn into a book club.”  She said, “We’d have a bowling league, of course.”  Snickering, I said, “Would we wear our matching league jerseys over the sexy silk dresses?”  She said “Of course”, and smiled a bright teenage smile that no longer exists for either of us.

My brother, also in an unnaturally good mood, was, by midday, listening to Mexican gangster rap (loud enough for me to revise this sentence and say “we were listening to”), and interrupted the writing of this…whatever…to show me clothing he purchased to re-enter the dating scene.  He’s 3 1/2 years older than I (he bitches if I say 4), youthfully handsome, but self-conscious about gray hair he earned the last week of his senior year in college.  

He’s a dedicated procrastinator, like his sister.  At the festival screening the film their graduation depended on, the head of the department congratulated his class for their hard work, and jokingly made reference to “some” students who were still at it.  The audience guffawed; who’d still be working on their film during the festival?  My family crowed the loudest, beaming with pride - we claim our own no matter what.  My brother finished the final edit of the film that held the key to his golden future minutes before its premiere.

To the girl whose film caught fire midway through, the fact that my brother’s film was a hit, may have seemed a bit unfair.  But as far as luck evening out in life, I’d say the Blake kids are due some - a crispy reel of celluloid wouldn’t have noticeably budged the scale.

…so good luck with that dating thing, big brother.

I’ve been told more than once to “update your damn site.”

The stories are there.  I’ve been writing.  Nothing that’s fit for print.  Lately I can’t read or write a goddamn thing that doesn’t bitch slap me or make me want to bitch slap you.  There’s nothing “nice” to say, nothing good to report.  I’m in a dark place and, while I’ll occasionally send up flares to let people know I’m here (except y’all apparently), I save most missives for the few who’ve been down here themselves.  It’s not that I don’t want to be a burden - I don’t want to be a stain.

As much as we like to believe the people who love us enjoy the smell of our shit, they really don’t.  They’re as uncomfortable with our troubles as we are with theirs.  This doesn’t make their desire to listen and help any less sincere.  Few possess the necessary stamina and fortitude to be that kind of friend, the one who’s always there, whether we need them or not.  Life’s hard enough without tackling somebody else’s hard life, and good intentions don’t come equipped with ability, knowledge, and skill.  We do our best, but sometimes coming up short for someone does more damage than not being there at all.

Some say hibernating is selfish, that I do my friends a disservice by not giving them the opportunity to try and help, that I myself wouldn’t let them do this.  I’ve been me for a very long time.  And there are things I know about the world and people I’d rather not.  You never get to unsee the things you’ve seen, any more than you can unknow the things you’ve learned.  “Being there” means seeing and knowing.  And remembering.  What you learn about the people you love changes how you see them, how you see yourself, and sometimes knowing makes the world a little smaller, darker, a bad place to be when the lights go out.  In the end all you’ve done is added another bad memory to their collection, and it didn’t even happen to them.

    “and I lift my glass to the Awful Truth
     which you can’t reveal to the Ears of Youth
     except to say it isn’t worth a dime”
      
                                                    from Closing Time
                                                    by Leonard Cohen

After a book signing in a store I worked at an eon ago, the author and I had a little chat.  I told him I enjoyed his new book, an autobiography, as well as his novels.  One of his novels had recently been made into a very successful film.  Hype from that success helped him get the LAPD interested in the decades-old investigation into the murder of his mother.  The unsuccessful search for her killer was the primary focus of his tell-too-much tell-all.  I think I was 22 or 23 at the time, not an eye sore, and a blond.  When he asked me to join him for dinner I almost swallowed my tongue.  I felt like saying, “Dude, I read your autobiography.  I, like, know stuff about you I don’t want to.  This whole obsession with blonds and your mother?  Not taking the bullet train with you and Dr. Freud, there, buddy.  Not tonight or any night.”  I politely declined, and, as you might’ve guessed, have kicked myself in the ass every day since.  Who cares if he has an obsession with his dead mother?  The guy’s a frickin’ fabulous, successful writer.  He asked me to dinner, not for a kidney.  What the fuck was I thinking?!

Ah, the fucking hubris of youth.

I’m getting older.  And maybe I’m beating the curve because I’m getting wiser to too.  There’s no safe place to be sad, no way I’ll be able to do this without freaking out a few of my friends, or hurting the people I love.  That doesn’t mean I say everything I want to say, or let everyone read everything I write, because sometimes the truth isn’t as important as common decency.  Maybe that’s why I’ve been so angry lately.  So many things I’ve read seem to miss this point.  What’s the virtue in being right if you just end up looking like the prick you’re contradicting?  People are always going to follow charismatic monsters.  There will always be a full house at the coliseum when the Romans feed the Christians to the lions.  There will always be Christians huddled around the pyre to watch them burn the witches.  Gathered together en masse we’re a wretched species.

It’s what we do one on one that matters.  It’s every letter I received asking me if I’m okay, if I’m still alive, letting me know that, as meaningless as this site is, I’m not meaningless.  We may be incapable of seeing one another step by step through the dark tunnel; it doesn’t mean we can’t help each other along the way.

…but beware the Boojum.

I know lots of smart, insightful, worldly shit.  I just don’t find tearing people down valuable, though I’m no less skilled in the craft.  Indeed, isn’t that how wisdom bests knowledge?  Knowing when and how to stop?

The other day I woke up laughing because I learned how and when to stop fighting.

I type but don’t write. I speak but say nothing. My heart begins to pound loudly in my ears and I feel faint, dizzy, sick. I think, “Panic attack?” No. I’m just holding my breath again; waiting for something to happen that’s never going to happen because I’m not really waiting for anything. Throughout my day I have to remind myself to breathe, inhale great gulps of air into my lungs, unclench my teeth, loosen my jaw, relax the muscles in my face, try to remember something funny enough to inspire a smile. My entire body is tense, my neck and shoulders ache from the strain of holding everything inside, and I feel tired at odd times, but never when I’m sleepy. I forget to breathe, I forget to eat. I forget to call my family members, forget to take out the trash, or send someone a draft of something I’m working on I promised them I’d send weeks ago. It’s always tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll remember but I can’t remember today. I’ll breathe, eat, sleep, relax, write and speak, think clearly tomorrow. There are reasons why my mind is a chaotic mess, normal everyday reasons that put me to sleep when I think too much about them, and then there are the other reasons - I don’t talk about those either. You get this impression, nothing more, a lipstick smudge from a kiss on a passenger train window meant to tease the handsome man on the platform whose name I’ll never need or want to know. Something of me, maybe a little, maybe nothing, but a taste of the woman in the picture that no one knows and few see.

My Amnesiac God got me thinking about writing again - my purpose and point - and I’ve begun to question my place in the noise.

No, I don’t suppose I’m ready to think about that yet.

I’ve been away but not gone. There’s too much to say and it’s getting harder to hide behind words. You don’t want to know me any more than you yourself want to be known by me. Every so often I lose my ability to filter. I say what I want to say and to hell with the consequences. I used to live this way. I don’t recommend it. We all say some pretty stupid shit from time to time.

[edit]

The good news is I’m still crazy. Or I’m still the girl I was to the people who knew me when. As hard as I try, I can’t help but fall into the role of her:that cynical, angry, edgy, and profane grrrl who spends too much time listening and looking, and too little time interacting with people. I’ve discovered my secret weapon is to say just enough to keep people away from me. “Fuck off, I’m busy dissecting you from my armchair laboratory. So be a good little rat, scurry back and play with the other vermin. I want to study you in your natural habitat.” It’s all a load of crap. People terrify me. They’re weird, unpredictable, and too emotional. One second it’s hugs and the next it’s flying bottles and fists. I don’t understand them at all. They think I’m nuts because I quote poetry and talk about this or that historical figure. (And I occasionally break out into a little “I’m so flippin’ freakin’ cold” dance in the early morning hours… But one or two people on the planet have actually been forced to witness this.) Maybe we’re all fucking crazy.

I’m tired. There’s no continuity to my thoughts or this post. I took the photos of me with my webcam around 2am this morning. I have a cold. My eyes are bloodshot and my lips are chapped from continuously licking them. Don’t ask why I was taking photos of myself at 2am in the morning and I won’t ask why you’re interested. Deal?

I never think I look like me… Of all these pictures, the one in the middle probably reflects my mood most accurately.

I’ll edit this tomorrow.

I don’t like my cats anymore.  I used to love my cats but now I can’t stand having them near me.  And they’re not really mine.  When I left California, they were among my many treasures I had to leave with my brother, because my then soon-to-be husband was allergic.  In New Hampshire I missed them so badly I used to dream they could talk.  Jack, the EVIL cat, was my favorite, and in my dreams we’d travel the railroad tracks together, always headed to someplace green with a big blue sky.  I don’t recall what he said but doubt it was anything profound.  It is, after all, my subconscious mind, and not the cat’s.

I’m sure Jack the EVIL cat, were he able, would have much to say.  Lately, he’d probably bitch about me, and tell everyone within purring distance that I’m no longer his affectionate pal.  I’m grateful he can’t tattle on me for my recent chill, and that I don’t have to explain it (to him or anyone else), because the truth isn’t something I like to admit to myself between the hours of awake and dreamland.  When sleep gets the better of me, and Jack the EVIL cat and I hit the road again, one of these days he’s going to ask and I’m going to have to tell him the truth.

“I’ve already left you once and I know I’m going to be leaving you again, soon.  I don’t want to grow attached because I remember what it was like the last time.  Getting over you sucked, fur ball.”

To this he would respond with a sound similar to a harrumph.  (Give one to the governor!)

I’ve unpacked but I’ve never moved in.  I exist here but I wouldn’t call it living.  The other day a man offered to pay me for sex.  He assumed, because I’m poor and he’s rich, that I’d take his money and fuck him with a smile on my face and dollar signs in my eyes.  He assumed, because I’m a woman and he’s a man, because I have a cunt and he has a cock, that I’d understand the logic of his reasonable proposition.  He probably thought he was doing me a favor, his offer altruistic.  Helping someone onto the slippery side that spirals down into the hell of their own making doesn’t look as bad if you shove a few bucks into their pocket.  I’m rolling pennies and nickels, quarters and dimes, and I have everything I’ll ever need.  And the fucker who offered money to fuck me can jackoff to his bank statement.

This isn’t my home.  What I don’t understand about the people here, I don’t need or want to learn.  I came back to help my brother purge this house of all the shit left by everyone who’s lived here over the last 13 years.  I never imagined it would be this difficult.  I don’t want to do anything that might tie me here, anything to prevent or cause me to hesitate when I get an opportunity to escape.  I don’t belong here.  Everyone is insane.

If this were my garden, my home, my city, if I were free to love my pets, and not worry about leaving them again, knowing I’d hear stories about how they slept under the covers for months after I’d gone, maybe I wouldn’t feel so cold inside.  Maybe I wouldn’t be as angry as I am at this moment.  But this is not my garden.  Right now the only safe place I’m free to love anyone is in my dreams.

It’s 4:30am and, once again, I can’t sleep.  My mind is busy processing today’s intake; forgetting phone numbers and names, remembering completely useless, random things I’ll later quote in a conversation I kill by doing so, repressing, compartmentalizing, whipping up reasonable denial, more efficient ways to entertain myself, making reminder lists which include primarily reminders about needing to make lists, remembering what I forgot to do today that I’ll forget to do tomorrow, and wondering if everyone has as much fun thinking their thoughts as I do.

I can’t sleep but I don’t need to be fixed.  Everyone I know is an insomniac yet none report psychotic breaks brought on by sleep deprivation.  Being an insomniac isn’t as bad as the pharmaceutical companies would like us to believe.

Oh, I know…  To live the “good life” you need to drink lots of water (but if you live in San Francisco, don’t drink it out of a plastic bottle!), get plenty of exercise, eat whatever they’re saying is healthy this week, sleep 8 hours a day, be nice to children, puppies, dolphins, recycle, and don’t question your government.  Oh, and hate yourself.  Hate everything about your life.  Feel inadequate, less than whole.  Buy into the obsessive need to “improve” the mass of imperfection that is you.  Get stronger, smarter, thinner, fatter, taller, shorter, buy a bigger house, buy a smaller house, consume more, don’t consume as much, fix your nose, get bigger breasts, buy a better car, get better looking children (’cause apparently this new crop of kids are just too damn fat), run more, be good to your knees, pray, kill your television, get a brighter smile, get a bigger cock, beware of the Internet!, be afraid, don’t trust your neighbors, research on line to see if you have the disorder mentioned in the drug commercial because you too suffer from thinking, dreaming, and believing in yourself, and Goddamn it, that shit just ain’t right.  Hate yourself.  You’re not good enough.  Get a life coach, get a pet psychiatrist, go to AA meetings even if you don’t drink - you could be an “emotional” alcoholic - find something wrong with yourself, and if you can’t then go buy a magazine, turn on your TV, talk to a friend…they’ll help you!  Everyone has an opinion about who you are and what you should be.  AND YOU AREN’T IT.  FIX YOURSELF.  BECAUSE YOU SUCK.  And if you think you don’t, you’re deluding yourself, which is okay, because we have books about that too.  And things to buy.  And drugs to fix it.

Medical research discloses
that everyone is going to die
of something.

                ~Franz Wright from the poem TO JOHN WIENERS: ELEGY & RESPONSE
                    from WALKING TO MARTHA’S VINEYARD

If we got over the absurd notion that it’s possible for everyone to like everyone, stopped this endless obsession with “self-improvement”, we could work on finding a way to co-exist without killing each other.  We talk about tolerance and acceptance, yet spend an enormous amount of money trying to find ways to cure that which we “tolerate” and “accept”.  “You’re okay just as you are, or until I find a way to fix you.”

I think I’ll file these thoughts under “shit that irritates me”.

I can’t sleep.  But I don’t need advice on how to improve my sleep habits.  I don’t need to stop drinking coffee or start taking drugs.  We don’t share a fence.  How you fix you is your business.  What goes on in my yard is mine.

“305 The love of absurdity and the paradox is the animal happiness of the sad. As the normal man might talk nonsense or slap others on the back out of vitality and good humour, those incapable of enthusiasm and happiness do somersaults in their minds and, in their own (cold) way, perform the (warm) gestures of life.”

Fernando Pessoa from The Book of Disquietude

I love my life. I’m grateful for every miserable second of it. And the good parts are okay too. I’ve never lived “traditionally”, never taken the easy path (not that I wouldn’t have had I known where it was), asked for help when I needed it, or looked to my friends for solace and comfort. I don’t want to bug them. They’ve got their own lives, and anyway, I hate that cross-eyed stare I get every time I talk about what’s bothering me. I’m okay with this, too. I’m only lonely when I have someone to miss.

I’m a little lonely today.

For the most part, I keep to myself. I don’t talk to hear myself speak or contribute to a conversation when I have nothing of value to add. A handful of people know me as I am. That’s true for most people, I think, even though we were invited to “come as [we] are.” I accept that my lack of active participation leaves the field open for “radical interpretation of the text”. I don’t confirm or deny what people assume. Don’t chase them down to force revisions of or addendums to unauthorized biographies whispered by gossips and contemplated by fools. I don’t think people put that much thought into who I am. I like it that way. It’s why I keep to myself.

But I really fucking hate it when I feel like I should play dumb for someone who wants me to pretend I didn’t notice and accept their gross underestimation of who I am without comment. Normally I don’t care. I used to but I couldn’t break myself into enough parts to fit into the mold. This is different. I reached my hand out in friendship and got patted on the head like a puppy. I’m pissed off and confused. Nothing comes easy, especially worthwhile friendship, and it’s true there were things left unsaid (for a reason), although God-Unit #2 wins the grand prize for audacity. If I didn’t think he actually believed his assumptions, the whole thing would’ve made me laugh, because I really like arrogant megalomaniacs with god-complexes. Not everyone wants to play chess with God - but I do. I’m not a god groupie, I’m a god collector, and he’d fit nicely in my pantheon.

I don’t like conflict. In the past, anytime I felt things weren’t going well, or I couldn’t be the friend I thought my friend deserved, I walked away. (Fucked up, I know.) I’m not like that anymore, and I have the Amnesiac God to thank for it, because no other deity could test a woman’s patience like him. He exists in a world that makes sense. He doesn’t pretend to know the answers or the way. He’s the kind of God that empowers you to figure it out for yourself and helps you believe it’s worth once you get it. His friendship is precious to me.

So I no longer walk away. I wait and see what happens.

Like I did with my friend “The Prick”.

I’ll let you all in on a little secret. I’m a geek. Shocking, stunning revelation, I know…but it gets worse. Off and on for the last 6 or 7 years I’ve played numerous on line video games with my brother. I usually play a gnome or an ogre. Trolls are good too. If you play a female character, especially one with a “pretty” avatar, “boys” (typically men ages 25 to 40) like to flirt. They never flirt with me when I play a male troll or ogre. I’ve always wondered how many women gamers play ugly male characters to avoid the “pick up”; I can’t imagine many women willing to run around as a goddamn wood elf in a g-strong with Band-Aids over her nipples. But, I digress…

Back to my friend, “The Prick”. The other day I logged on to my on line video game of choice (not telling, don’t ask) to discover a creature I needed to kill for a quest standing in front of me. Yeah, me! So I kill said creature just as a group of “people” show up. As I’m looting the corpse (yes, a corpse) for the item I need, I notice the members of the group are giving me the finger, and shouting out not-so-nice things about me to the entire “zone”. This confuses me. I contact the shouter in a private channel to ask him what his problem is. Apparently, they’d been telling everyone in the “zone” they needed this creature for the same quest, and asked anyone who saw it to please not kill it. Oops. After 10 minutes of volleying creative insults at one another in which we suggested various things the other could do to improve themselves as a human being, I realized I didn’t want the conversation to end, because I kind of liked the guy. He was articulate, funny, could type fast and spell, and kept up with me jab-for-jab, which isn’t easy to do when I’m on a roll. I said, “You know, if you weren’t such a prick, I’d actually like you.” This must be the gaming equivalent of calling a truce because after one or two weak jabs, he told me he’d had a bad day at work, and “need[ed] someone to take it out on and [I was] convenient.” Up to this point, I hadn’t apologized or even bothered explaining why I killed the creature because he we wanted to fight and I knew whatever I said wouldn’t penetrate. I said, “Please tell the members of your group I apologize. Had I been on when you said you needed [insert creature's name here], I wouldn’t have killed it. Not my style.” We talked for an hour, mostly joking about the nature of our “relationship”, and how it would consist mainly of creatively insulting each other. In the end, we thanked one another for the “pleasant conversation”, and went our separate ways. But we say “hello” from time-to-time. Had I not told him the truth, “You suck, but I still like you,” the outcome would have been very different. I’d have an enemy instead of friend.

I’ve learned the hard way how to choose my words carefully; something for which I will forever be grateful to Bill. The most important aspect of this lesson, of course, is knowing when not to say anything at all. Unfortunately, it’s become my default response, and I’ve been told my silences…are difficult to endure. My Amnesiac God went silent once. If I knew their numbers, I would call everyone I’ve ever known, and apologize.

I don’t often leave my cave. This is as close as most people will ever get, because I know my strengths (and weaknesses), and slapping others on the back with enthusiasm is not one of them. I’m better at performing, in my “own (cold) way, the (warm) gestures of life”. I may not get it right the first time, or be happy with the results, but I live my life deliberately. When I seek out friendship, I’m not asking for a mirror, I’m looking for a window.

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

• fuck (3x)
• piss (2x)
• bastard (1x)

A rating I’m not ashamed to tell my parents about.  I can’t tell you how disturbing it was to learn I’d been rated G.  And this is AFTER writing about nipple torturing winters and the benefits of fluctuating gravity for those suffering from erectile dysfunction.  What the hell does a girl have to do to get rated PG 13 around here?

Or not.

Occasionally (every 10 minutes) I ask myself, “What the fuck?”  “What were you thinking?”  “Are you insane?”

Wisely, I stopped answering years ago.

And kept doing and being what I do and who I am - because who really cares?  Who’s keeping score?  Who but me gets to dream my dreams, or has live my nightmares?  Who remembers what I remember or forgets what I forget?  Who is going to fall, laugh, jump, wave, drive, and sing in the shower for me?  No one.

In every 80’s teen movie somebody asked the question, “What are you waiting for?”

Nothing.  Not a damn thing.

Life is happening now.  Every stupid thing I do and say is my life, how I’m living it, what I do with my time on this rock.  Sometimes I do and say some pretty weird shit.  And it’s fucking fabulous.  I mean every word and believe none of it.   I’ll always be wrong.  I’m always going to select the door with the duck behind it.  Or pick the empty hand.  And then one day I’ll win the grand prize, a “major award“, and it’ll fuck up my bad luck theory, which will reinforce my “I’m always wrong” theory, which, in a way, means I’m always right.  Fabulous.

But really…what the fuck was I thinking?

“Oh, shut up,” I say to myself, as I look at the clock, and wonder why I’m not sleeping.

You know why.

I feel distracted, upside down, wired, exhausted.

Around 4:30am I fell asleep and dreamt of you.  Stranger than fiction.  No more than 15 minutes into the dream, a siren woke me, followed by a cop directing someone to park in an empty space across the street.

Could you double the fine for waking me and fucking up my dream?

Didn’t think so.

Today a power line fell down on the playground at the corner.  (Nobody was in the park at the time.)  They cordoned off the area, and for a few hours it was almost peaceful; minus the police cars, firetruck, electric company truck, various miscellaneous city personnel, and your standard throng of hangers-on and gawkers.  If I could nap I betcha I would’ve slept like an old person.  (I don’t have children but the expression “slept like a baby”, when applied to my nephews and niece, is something I never want to do.)  Now old people…folks in their mid-70s, early 80s…they know how to nap.

Speaking of working toward old age.  In exactly 2 weeks I’ll be 32.  I don’t know what 32 is supposed to feel like but this is definitely not what I expected.  Maybe I don’t own enough stuff to feel like a grownup.  I also thought I’d be taller.

See what I mean about being distracted?  Zoot is skipping multiple grooves tonight.

Completely pointless.  And exactly what I needed.

I suppose I have good reasons for being distracted.  Rat Bastard’s in Florida eating all my shrimp and tattooing someone else’s name on his forearm, I get idiot-happy anytime my amnesiac God burns a bush or sends me an email, then sad because I realize how little it takes to make me happy, and wish he’d pass along the secret.  The Swedish Fish is livin’ large with the dog who’s afraid of the furniture, and I if I go back I’m not sure my presence will be any less haunting.  And then there’s the calls I’m not making and the letters I’m not writing.  The Gambler just popped into my head.  Perhaps Fiery Bra Lover, The Itching Gnome of the Sea will take pity on me and convince his government to let me stay for a while.

Yes, definitely time to try sleeping again.

Writing about nothing feels good though.

(In case you’re curious…a pirate.)

From the journal I kept during my trip to Europe with a friend.  I was 18.

September 22, 1993 - London

THOUGHT:
    I once said I love the city.  I take it back.  I love being lost in the moments of big cities.  I love the burst of energy you get from all the rushing cars you have to dodge.  I DO NOT, HOWEVER, enjoy the panic and constant fear I feel when I walk anywhere in the city.  I do not like the rude shoving and casual snarling.  I WANT TO BE THE SPECTATOR.  Participating means I must get sick with these people, eat, sleep, and bathe with these people.  I HAVE TO PARTICIPATE TO BE A SPECTATOR.  That isn’t fun at all.  For the first time in my life I long to see familiar faces.  To engage in familiar conversation.  I want to be home in my bed, getting over this cold, not in some stuffy café I can’t breathe in.  I want a lover.  A confidant.  A close and familiar friend.  One I know…  Someone who knows me.

My video card is toast, it’s temporary replacement made around the time Kurt Cobain was still alive, but everything else in my computer survived yesterday’s crash landing.  Including Jack the cat, whose odds of continuing to exist on this planet fluctuated throughout the day.

Thanks for the prayers and kind words.  Maybe your Gods talked to the ones that I piss off and got them to back down.  Whatever works…

…with the Gods, make sure you can afford to lose, and back up anything worth keeping.

The fucking cosmic prankster’s been at me again. I beat him at chess (sore loser), so he decided to possess my cat, hop on my rolling computer chair, and surfer-cat it into a head on collision with my computer. The end result?

Cosmic Prankster: 1
Broken computer on the floor: 0
Possessed cat: current whereabouts unknown

All week long I’ve been thinking, “It’s back up time again.”  I don’t believe I’m psychic or because I’m a woman, writer, or I like shell fish. (All of these sound like reasonable explanations for ability.) However, I try to trust my instincts in the same way I trust my senses. If something smells bad, I don’t eat it. If something is too hot, I don’t put my hand on it. If something wrong, an alley way, an interview, the way a man keeps watching me as I walk through a parking lot, I trust that my body or subconscious mind senses something about the person and/or situation that I might not be able to immediately identify. Like a certain spice I don’t like in a flavorful dish; the other flavors might overwhelm my mind’s ability to pick it out and name it, but my taste buds know it’s there. For whatever reason, I sensed it was time to up my shit and I didn’t.

I started to. I copied all my music, photographs, word documents, etcetera to my second hard drive, but for lack of funding, failed to burn them to disc. I was going to this weekend after I sold a few things. I’ve started selling my stuff again (oh, so reminiscent of the days I used to spend my paychecks on books, read them, then sell them to pay for utilities, rent, and food). I put the nagging back up your novel feeling in the same compartment where I house other irritating thoughts such as:

”Don’t bother with caller ID. You know it’s him. Your blood pressure’s gone up for no reason. Of course it’s him. You can hear the bad news later. (Someone I love dearly only calls if someone is dead, dying, or I’ve done something wrong.)”

”Write. You’re not writing. You’ve already read this book. Twice. You didn’t like it the first time. Write.”

”Why haven’t you written your friends yet? You promised them you’d write when you got to California. HELLO. Welcome to California. The Terminator is your governor. Your healthcare system is ranked 2nd to last in the nation. According to the National Center For Missing & Exploited Children, there are currently 317 missing or abducted children in/from the state of California. The state you left to come here? New Hampshire lists 5 - 3 of whom have been missing since the early 1980s. It’s not like you don’t have a lot to write about!”

Until I find a computer I can use to test the hard drives, the question if whether or not the novel I’ve been working on for 5 years still exists, is making me a wee bit tense. Everything the numerous outlines, character biographies, notes, research, ramblings, discarded plots, the original screenplay version I abandoned, and accompanying screenplay crap is on those hard drives. I know there are ways to recover data even when it appears a hard drive has been. Hell, I’ve done it. But that’s when I didn’t give a shit about what I was looking for. If I found anything at all, I’d be happy because it was the process of finding the unfindable, retrieving the irretrievable that excited me. Fuck the data.

I don’t want to fuck the data now. But I will be truly fucked if I can’t get it back.

I’m writing this on a friend’s computer. There may be salvageable parts of my computer but who knows.

Round Two is going to be interesting. If this pansy ass prankster God thinks I’m backing down he can suck my…[edited for television/grandma].

His girlfriend beat him. I knew this before he told me his name. You’d have to look at his shoes to avoid seeing the bruises, broken nose, and stitched cuts. High, crazy, or just a bitch - who cares why? - her unpredictable temper sent him to the ER more than once. He could’ve overpowered her or fought back, but to my knowledge he never touched her. His physical strength was no match for her financial power, and she wielded it like a bat. He’d hit a bump on life’s highway; unemployed, chronic illness. She was all he had. So she beat him and he let her because she paid the rent, utilities, bought the groceries, and kept him off the street.

After one particularly nasty fight, he left (she was arrested for domestic violence and the police locked him out of the apartment). He lived in a shelter until they kicked to the curb when he failed to get a job. He watched New England’s foliage change from forest green to brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows through the mesh door of his tent pitched in a wooded area close enough to the city so he could walk to the food pantry and eat. I didn’t see him again until late December. He was living with the girlfriend again. When I gave him a look that conveyed my not-so-high opinion of his significant other he shrugged and said, “She’s warmer than the New England woods in winter.” I said, “Tell her to keep her boxing gloves in the closet.”

The perception is this situation is the exclusive domain of women. Equality between the sexes! Here at last! We’re damn good at abusing each other. Poverty has no respect for popularized gender roles. Money is power everywhere. And no one wants to freeze to death. So his woman beats him… At least he has a roof over his head, right?

And wouldn’t all my pragmatism go straight to hell if the bitch kills him the next time she’s in “one of her moods”?

Well I live here with a woman and a child,
The situation makes me kind of nervous.
Yes, I rise up from her arms, she says, “I guess you call this love;
I call it service.”

~Leonard Cohen from There is A War

I was 18, he was 23.  We’d had sex before but this was the first night we “slept” together, actually spent the entire night in the same bed.  We rented a room in a cheap motel near the ocean, picnicked on the twisted bed linens with provisions purchased at 7/11 - cheap wine, French bread and kiwi.  The sex was terrible, something I blamed on the alcohol and marijuana, but later realized was just the man’s lack of interest in his partner’s pleasure.  He really was a selfish prick.  In the middle of the night, in my sleep, I (apparently) began rubbing his back, my subconscious self reaching out to affectionately pet my lover.  He has a deep, dominating voice - excellent for theatre - and if his abrupt movements hadn’t woken me, the tone of that deep voice would have.  He said, “If you touch me one more fucking time I’m going to cut your hand off.”  Startled awake, not fully aware of what I’d done to make him so angry, I said nothing.  I lie there naked, barely older than a child, too terrified to move or take too deep a breath lest I disturb him again, until the sun came came up.

We didn’t talk about what he said or why he said it.  I wasn’t going to leave him because he was my ticket out of that shitty little town.  I needed someone to run away with and he didn’t mind that I was I little “mad, north-northwest”.  However, until that night, I was “in love”.  Afterward, I knew whatever I did with him was an exchange for services rendered.  I used to refer to our sex life as “performance art”.  In a poem about him I wrote, “I will not walk barefoot on the coals of your black heart”.  He read it and in the margin wrote, “What will you do for what?”  Essentially asked, “How much to suck my cock?”

Oh, not much mister.  Just help me get out here…

In her piece whore, paisley at ……why paisley???? answers the question “What will you do for what?” with eloquent honesty.  She also tells us why.

because,, i still have the mind and soul of a whore.. hes got what i want,, this house,, and if i have to “dance between the rain drops” to get it, as my one time pimp, so aptly put it.. then that is what i gotta do.

I wonder how many people go to work each day feeling like a whore?

The life of my emotions moved early on to the chambers of thought, and that’s where I’ve most fully lived my emotional experience of life.

~Fernando Pessoa from The Book of Disquietude

I’ve been avoiding you.  Hiding from me.  Thinking as little as possible about my life, my family, my friends (sorry life, family & friends).  I’m overwhelmed, drowning, exhausted all the time, depressed.  When I said I don’t belong in California, what I meant is I don’t belong in the city, surrounded by people whose way I’m in, whose life would be better if I simply shoved off, hurried the fuck up, went someplace else to buy my toothpaste.  The other day I found myself swearing a symphony of expletives at some dipshit swerving in and out of traffic so he could get 15 feet ahead of whoever he cut off and nearly killed to get there.  I wasn’t conscious of my raving until I got a glimpse of myself in the rear-view mirror and noticed my flushed cheeks.  If it weren’t completely insane, I’d start a log of my blood pressure before I went out and when I got home; this nonstop insidious hostility is slowly killing me, I’m certain.  On this occasion my colorful profane rant gave me away but usually I come and go without so much as a ripple on the surface.

My friend Doug says I lack “affect” (an old therapist agreed with him - the bitch).  I can talk about almost anything without becoming emotional.  It’s great if you’re a writer.  It sucks if you have to interact with people.  Typically, when you’re in a conflict with someone and they’re visibly upset, they expect you to also be visibly upset.  If you’re not, they believe 1 or all of 3 things; you’re not taking them seriously, the problem seriously, or you simply don’t care.  When your natural defense mechanism is to become calm and unemotional, finding yourself ranting at a complete stranger in the privacy of your automobile is unsettling.  Who am I becoming to survive here?  And what’s next?  Will I start knocking over displays to create diversions and kicking people in the shins to be next in line at the checkout stand?

No, nothing so dramatic.  Not my style.  What will happen is what’s happening.  I grow quiet and calm on the surface, hibernate; wait to live until I get out of here the way all city dwellers wait to live until they’re on vacation.  I become intensely focused on my distractability, aware I am forgetting important things but losing that part of myself that cares.  It’s this goddamn house.  I escaped with a nickel’s worth of sanity in the tank when I left California 6 years ago and now I’m back, dipping into my reserves just to get through the day, to get through the grocery store without being assaulted for not moving fast enough.

The quantity and quality of loss and pseudo-loss over the last year is weighing me down with unresolvable grief and pent up, pointless anger.   And I’m not alone.  Shortly after I got an F in marriage, my brother’s 9 year relationship ended and someone who I considered family is now a stranger.  I know it doesn’t have to be that way - that’s how she wants it.  It’s like she gave us the Godfather’s “You broke my heart, Fredo” kiss and now we’re dead to her.  You can’t mourn the loss of someone who’s still alive; especially if your feelings for that person are muddled.  She hurt my brother.  Fuck with me but never fuck with my family.  I don’t know how to reconcile the part of me that misses her with this new self that hates her for hurting him.

And then there’s me.  I miss my ex-husband’s parents so much I don’t like to think about them at all.  I miss the feeling I’d get when I’d enter their house and see them standing in the kitchen waiting to greet us.  They worried about my coat.  Was it warm enough?  Do I have good gloves?  Be careful, it gets awfully icy out there.  California girls are not used to slipping on ice and bruising their behinds, so I took their advice to heart.  I swear Bill’s father stayed up nights thinking of things to tease me about.  His mother is an angel.  She always cooks more than anyone can eat, makes sure everyone has their favorite whatever, and worries about you even when you tell her everything is wonderful (because she knows you’re lying).

The day before I left New Hampshire I went to their house to say goodbye.  I hadn’t seen them for almost a year, and unemotional me immediately began to cry when I walked into the kitchen and found them standing there as always.  Bill’s mother pulled me into her arms and held onto me as if I were her own child.  I said, “I’m so sorry.  I’m sorry I couldn’t make it work.”  She said, “I feel like I failed you as a mother-in-law.  I should have been there for you.  I’m sorry.”  My niece, Bill’s sister’s daughter, was there