How is it that some folks can have their cake and eat it too? While others are scrambling for a piece of dried-out melba toast?
I am off all week. I don't have the funds or the motivation to do something with myself, so I have been living rather like the college student I used to be--sleeping a lot, eating lots of cookies, and enjoying lots of television and movies accompanied by a bottle of red. I was asked today by three different people how I am doing with my week off. My response is that I absolutely love it.
Sure, I am rather lonely sometimes. But I am lonely when I have 84,000 things to do, places to go, people to be. So no great revelation there. There are several things I should be accomplishing this week around the house, but I just am not in the mood. I am enjoying he hell out of doing very little, answering to no one, and just doing my thing which is apparently a whole lot of nothing.
I never wanted a career in the post-feminist sense. I wanted to be an actress, not work nine to fine five days a week doing what the rest of the working world did. But my kind of actressing has yet to pay a single bill, so it's off to work I go.
I have had jobs since I was twelve years old. Babysitting year-round (I started at $2 an hour.) My cousin and I ran a snack bar at the pool the summers we were newly minted teenagers. I started working as a page at the public library the day after I turned 16 and I held that job through most of college. I worked in retail a lot. I waitressed. I temped. I spent seven years in a common-law marriage with an evil bloodsucking corporation. I ended up back at my first post-college gig, in a college library, which is why I have the glorious gift of spending the week between Christmas and New Year's on a mini-break from life as I know it.
I went to college because it was expected of me, because I loved learning, because I wanted to study shoes and ships and sealing wax and speak of cabbages and kings. It was a glorious four years. But as my best friend and I would half-joke at that time, we really went to college to get a husband. Like it was finishing school. And we were living fifty years earlier than we actually were. We didn't want careers, really, though we were certainly awfully bright and we were hard workers. We didn't expect things handed to us. But we assumed that since we hadn't found the one in high school, we would in college.
She actually did. She also went on to be the breadwinner in her household, and her one is now the stay-at-home dad to their two amazing kiddos. That's how it worked out. That is what happened to feminism.
I found the one, too, but he ended up being the one who got away. So post-graduation off I went, not so gently, into that good night of going to bed early to wake up and take that morning train.
The past weeks I have been obsessed with Mad Men. This is the most perfect show I have ever seen on television. Not one episode has let me down. And there is so much going on the world of those Sterling Cooperites, the one they inhabit by day and the one they inhabit by night and the one that turns on its axis 24-7 all around them.
Women living in this man's world had few choices. Abortion was illegal. Adultery was commonplace. Polio was still having its way with their kids. Ladies were expected to attend secreterial school and then type up memos and land a husband, or go off to a woman's college and get married after a brief stint as an artist or a model or an actress. Clothing was restrictive and uncomfortable but it made you look good. You got a wash and set once a week. Your lips were the rubiest of reds. And every night you had a rump roast and a cold beer set up at the dinette for your man, after spending the day in suburban banality tending children, ironing laundry, picking up dry cleaning, and firing your maid.
Then the sixties really got started. And some women yearned for more. They fought hard battles to get more. They burned their cone-shaped bras and wore their hair long and started running their own ships rather than acting as deckhand for one captained by a man. Sex and drugs and rock and roll reigned. Home and hearth, not so much.
Fast forward to the new millenium. We are gender-bending more than ever in terms of choices, what we are capable of, what we want, what we need, what we do. And it's all very confusing. Because with this Ms. title comes a lot of loss. Manners, etiquette, elegance. It is looked down on to not want a career, to want to build a home without simultaneously building your own corporate empire. Your daddy isn't footing the bills one day and your husband the next. And it is interesting because the feminine mystique was never supposed to be about women having to work--feminism is about choices. To be able to choose to be the woman you wanted to be. One who climbs that corporate ladder. One who sleeps with whomever she wants whenever she wants. One who wants five children and one who wants none. One who chooses to live as an artist, a mom, a wife, a best friend, a girl Friday, a presidential candidate. We don't need to stand by our man. We don't need a man at all. And we need to be all of this, all of the time. We are supposed to have it all, but who has it all? Not one person I know in either sex. And why should they? If we have it all, we wouldn't have dreams.
Life for the ladies has always been rough. But the more separate but equal we become, in myriad ways the harder it becomes to be a woman. I relish these days we live in, the opportunities available to me whether I take them or not. Vaccines, and thongs, and not a single white glove in sight. Civil "rights." Equal pay for equal work (which I do not think I have actually ever experienced, but it's a swell theory.) But a week spent home alone, and I fantasize that I could probably live quite cheerfully in a garter belt and Pucci shift planning meals, and redecorating the living room, and dining out in the city to charm the senior partners once a month, and doing some docent work one morning a week at the museum, and having a couple of kids and a doting bankrolling husband and a white picket fence to hide all my racy longings behind.
Mad (wo)men, indeed.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
It's a little bit funny
Credit. I have bad credit, financially speaking. I wasn't raised to be fiscally responsible, largely because when I was eight years old my dad quit his high-profile and I presume well-paying job as the PR man for a big NFL team and was subsequently out of work for three years. In this time he made an excellent Mr. Mom, was written about in Sports Illustrated, and almost went on tour with the Jackson Five but declined so as to not leave us alone all summer, which was a good decision as that was the summer my sister broke her little arm.
These lean years were the kindling upon which my deep-seated hatred of numbers were built. I began keeping a diary at some point and remember writing entries in all caps screaming "I HATE MONEY!" from my bedroom while below my parents were loudly arguing over same, or the lack thereof. The financial crisis my parents found themselves in at this time changed immeasurably most things that I took for granted as our lifestyle. Gone were the company cars and the vacations and the Sundays dressed in full green regalia. My mother had to unwillingly return to the workforce she had happily stopped being a part of after I was born, taking a series of shitty retail jobs before landing a long-term gig as a secretary for the local college. My dad eventually found a new position which did not fulfill him but did start paying the bills. Obviously at age eight through eleven I didn't know the details of how things were, but I heard things that stuck with me, which may or may not be true thirty years later. That this one event created a chain reaction heard 'round the walls of our home--that there was no planned-for and much-wanted third child, that my parents almost separated either to save money or because being together without any was that bad, that big trips and the best schools and piano and ballet lessons and annually replenished back-to-school wardrobes were but dreams of the past.
I know that somehow deep down by eight I had expectations for my future. Certainly my mother instilled in me a sense of being upper middle class rather than blue collar once removed by way of Irish Catholic neighborhoods. And it isn't that I was an unhappy child, far from it. I was a kid growing up in the late seventies and early eighties--we made a lot of our own fun. And it's not like I wasn't amply provided for in terms of food, clothing, fun, and affection--I was. But the unhappiness of my parents regarding their financial situation was a constant presence in our lives. The year Cabbage Patch kids were the it gift of the century, we didn't them for no reason as would have been the case in the pre-struggling to stay solvent days. We got them for Christmas, which was the best. Until I heard a snippet on the radio about knock-off dolls that were highly flammable, and I was convinced that my poor parents had probably purchased that version of the coveted dolls and I felt terrible that not only did we have dangerous Preemies but that my hardworking parents had been so duped simply because they lacked enough money to go around. Our dolls were the real thing, but I worried for weeks that they weren't. Not that I ever said anything. But I examined my precious present over and over again for signs of inauthenticity until Easter.
As I grew older and entered high school, I was suddenly confronted with lots more people in the world who had lots more money than us. And ironically, I didn't even go to the private school I always assumed I would go to which was a far richer place because the tuition was too high. I went to the parochial school instead, which was immense and full of kids from wealthier areas whose fathers were doctors and lawyers and chemists and who always had the latest everything--things I didn't even know existed, and things that bought you entrance into the cool crowd. I didn't care about being cool. I didn't care about having things. What I did care about was being myself, and that self need different things in order to flourish. Things that cost money. I don't recall being denied very specific items--and again, my parents did the best they could by me and for that I am very grateful. But the inner child of my teenage self always felt it was sort of second-best, and not what anyone had led me to expect, or what my mom had told me I could be. And always the shadow of the poorhouse hung over us like a phantom menace.
College came and things got even worse on many fronts. Once again, it wasn't about what I wanted and worked to get, it was about the best that could be afforded. And once again, I was confronted with even more kids who had even more diverse backgrounds of wealth and privilege. I got into almost $1000 worth of debt the very first day of school on my brand-new and wildly ill-advised credit card, paying for a phone hookup and books and renting a fridge. I don't know who my parents thought would pay the bill since a 17-year old full-time college freshman with no job and no way to get to one was likely to be making monthly payments, but that is how it happened. And as I needed more and more things that my peers seemed to have the means for--late-night pizzas, a school wardrobe that twelve years of uniforms didn't prepare me for, the occasional dinner out and birthday presents and trips into the city to shows and museums and art galleries--I just used my crazy-high limit credit cards to pay for them because no one else was going to.
Very unhealthy, fiscally speaking, Suze Orman would have a field day with this tale. It's not one of irony and pity, it's one of ignorance and timidity. Being raised in the solid white suburbs of the middle class, what else could have happened? I worked every summer. I had two scholarships to school and still needed to take out insane amounts of money on student loans for an education that prepared me to do very little that would entail prompt and easy payback. I spent so much of high school in a dream world of my own making about what would happen after graduation that I found myself wholly unprepared to have to choose outfits to wear to class every day and attend frat parties with $5 keg cups and go on spring breaks and plan to study abroad. I was taught to be scared of everything and everyone even though I had been half-raised in the city and had street smarts instilled in me from birth, so it never seemed possible that I could get a job off-campus, or better jobs in the summers, or just sit down and try to reason with my increasingly unreasonable parents about the realities of being a college girl in the early nineties. Once again, not a top shelf time. I rebelled later than most teenagers and took matters into my own hands at some point, and did the best I could with the best I had going for me, and I didn't get to go abroad or do three-quarters of what I really always wanted to do in college. And it was fine. College was amazing for me nevertheless. And I was very, very lucky to have been able to go and have the fun I did, get the education I wanted. I was very, very stupid to graduate in heaps of debt with no job recruiters in sight, no friends to room with in new places, and a home life that was completely wasted.
And on it went. At some point it isn't anyone else's fault, but at some point it become impossible to shoulder the blame squarely on one's own shoulders. And the mountain of debt grows ever higher until it is less a mountain than a volcano of ashes.
The point of this tale was less about the money though, than about the pay-it-forward-ness of credit in life. Because it occurs to me that I think I have been pretty generous with my love and my time and my affection to a fair number of people I have been blessed to know in my lthirty-odd years. Family, friends, lovers. My loving people well, if not always wisely, has a credit limit never maxed and always increasing. And the APR is locked down at a crazy-low rate. But the return on my investments is suddenly looking like it's at an all-time low. I swipe my debit card over and over and wipe out my account again and again only to realize that it isn't being replenished really. And like an eight-year old with what was probably an unhealthy sense of dreamy entitlement, taht just doesn't seem fair.
These lean years were the kindling upon which my deep-seated hatred of numbers were built. I began keeping a diary at some point and remember writing entries in all caps screaming "I HATE MONEY!" from my bedroom while below my parents were loudly arguing over same, or the lack thereof. The financial crisis my parents found themselves in at this time changed immeasurably most things that I took for granted as our lifestyle. Gone were the company cars and the vacations and the Sundays dressed in full green regalia. My mother had to unwillingly return to the workforce she had happily stopped being a part of after I was born, taking a series of shitty retail jobs before landing a long-term gig as a secretary for the local college. My dad eventually found a new position which did not fulfill him but did start paying the bills. Obviously at age eight through eleven I didn't know the details of how things were, but I heard things that stuck with me, which may or may not be true thirty years later. That this one event created a chain reaction heard 'round the walls of our home--that there was no planned-for and much-wanted third child, that my parents almost separated either to save money or because being together without any was that bad, that big trips and the best schools and piano and ballet lessons and annually replenished back-to-school wardrobes were but dreams of the past.
I know that somehow deep down by eight I had expectations for my future. Certainly my mother instilled in me a sense of being upper middle class rather than blue collar once removed by way of Irish Catholic neighborhoods. And it isn't that I was an unhappy child, far from it. I was a kid growing up in the late seventies and early eighties--we made a lot of our own fun. And it's not like I wasn't amply provided for in terms of food, clothing, fun, and affection--I was. But the unhappiness of my parents regarding their financial situation was a constant presence in our lives. The year Cabbage Patch kids were the it gift of the century, we didn't them for no reason as would have been the case in the pre-struggling to stay solvent days. We got them for Christmas, which was the best. Until I heard a snippet on the radio about knock-off dolls that were highly flammable, and I was convinced that my poor parents had probably purchased that version of the coveted dolls and I felt terrible that not only did we have dangerous Preemies but that my hardworking parents had been so duped simply because they lacked enough money to go around. Our dolls were the real thing, but I worried for weeks that they weren't. Not that I ever said anything. But I examined my precious present over and over again for signs of inauthenticity until Easter.
As I grew older and entered high school, I was suddenly confronted with lots more people in the world who had lots more money than us. And ironically, I didn't even go to the private school I always assumed I would go to which was a far richer place because the tuition was too high. I went to the parochial school instead, which was immense and full of kids from wealthier areas whose fathers were doctors and lawyers and chemists and who always had the latest everything--things I didn't even know existed, and things that bought you entrance into the cool crowd. I didn't care about being cool. I didn't care about having things. What I did care about was being myself, and that self need different things in order to flourish. Things that cost money. I don't recall being denied very specific items--and again, my parents did the best they could by me and for that I am very grateful. But the inner child of my teenage self always felt it was sort of second-best, and not what anyone had led me to expect, or what my mom had told me I could be. And always the shadow of the poorhouse hung over us like a phantom menace.
College came and things got even worse on many fronts. Once again, it wasn't about what I wanted and worked to get, it was about the best that could be afforded. And once again, I was confronted with even more kids who had even more diverse backgrounds of wealth and privilege. I got into almost $1000 worth of debt the very first day of school on my brand-new and wildly ill-advised credit card, paying for a phone hookup and books and renting a fridge. I don't know who my parents thought would pay the bill since a 17-year old full-time college freshman with no job and no way to get to one was likely to be making monthly payments, but that is how it happened. And as I needed more and more things that my peers seemed to have the means for--late-night pizzas, a school wardrobe that twelve years of uniforms didn't prepare me for, the occasional dinner out and birthday presents and trips into the city to shows and museums and art galleries--I just used my crazy-high limit credit cards to pay for them because no one else was going to.
Very unhealthy, fiscally speaking, Suze Orman would have a field day with this tale. It's not one of irony and pity, it's one of ignorance and timidity. Being raised in the solid white suburbs of the middle class, what else could have happened? I worked every summer. I had two scholarships to school and still needed to take out insane amounts of money on student loans for an education that prepared me to do very little that would entail prompt and easy payback. I spent so much of high school in a dream world of my own making about what would happen after graduation that I found myself wholly unprepared to have to choose outfits to wear to class every day and attend frat parties with $5 keg cups and go on spring breaks and plan to study abroad. I was taught to be scared of everything and everyone even though I had been half-raised in the city and had street smarts instilled in me from birth, so it never seemed possible that I could get a job off-campus, or better jobs in the summers, or just sit down and try to reason with my increasingly unreasonable parents about the realities of being a college girl in the early nineties. Once again, not a top shelf time. I rebelled later than most teenagers and took matters into my own hands at some point, and did the best I could with the best I had going for me, and I didn't get to go abroad or do three-quarters of what I really always wanted to do in college. And it was fine. College was amazing for me nevertheless. And I was very, very lucky to have been able to go and have the fun I did, get the education I wanted. I was very, very stupid to graduate in heaps of debt with no job recruiters in sight, no friends to room with in new places, and a home life that was completely wasted.
And on it went. At some point it isn't anyone else's fault, but at some point it become impossible to shoulder the blame squarely on one's own shoulders. And the mountain of debt grows ever higher until it is less a mountain than a volcano of ashes.
The point of this tale was less about the money though, than about the pay-it-forward-ness of credit in life. Because it occurs to me that I think I have been pretty generous with my love and my time and my affection to a fair number of people I have been blessed to know in my lthirty-odd years. Family, friends, lovers. My loving people well, if not always wisely, has a credit limit never maxed and always increasing. And the APR is locked down at a crazy-low rate. But the return on my investments is suddenly looking like it's at an all-time low. I swipe my debit card over and over and wipe out my account again and again only to realize that it isn't being replenished really. And like an eight-year old with what was probably an unhealthy sense of dreamy entitlement, taht just doesn't seem fair.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Boxing Day
Strange items of cheap clothing that make me wonder how it is possible I am so little-known by those who made me, check. Snoopy calendar with over 200 stickers, check. Love Actually and a bottle of red on Xmas Eve and no actual love present and accounted for, check. Dogs dressed in reindeer antlers and a Santa suit, respectively, check. Nice dinner with the immediate family, first with an official brother-in-law, check. Mass texts of holiday wishes, check. Personalized message of cheer from ex-boyfriend in lieu of Christmas beers, check. Thoughtfulness paid forward with little return on the investment, check. A blizzard on its way and no milk or eggs or bread in the house, check. A nice and uneventful holiday, check. Nothing good on television, check. Bored now. Check.
Friday, December 24, 2010
And so this is Christmas (Eve)
And so here I go again on my own. The downstairs is decorated in what I feel is a festive manner. Thanks to my best friends' help carrying and drilling the shit out of its trunk I have a tree now adorned with pretty things and lights that makes me happy.
I attempted to shop starting yesterday and overspent on the first gifts I got, then got screwed by a bank error so not in my favor, so had to screw others over on the gifting. I have decided to make myself alfredo from scratch for dinner and am worried it will not turn out which may result in me eating spaghettios for dinner. I also am so wildly unmotivated to begin to cook that I am worried I will be eating spaghettios cold straight from the can for dinner. What the hell happened to me? This is so not me! I bumped my head last week--did I give myself amnesia from festivating?
As I combed many stores today and yesterday trying to find good thoughtful awesome gifts at reasonable prices, it occurred to me that there are quite a lot of things I would like to have and cannot afford to purchase. There are also many things I wish others to have through my intercession and this also I cannot afford. I am tired of being poor. I would like to be rich. Not for material gains so much as just less worry, less ridiculousness going on at every turn.
Once I spent Christmas in a dingy motel somewhere in Texas where it was freezing and my boyfriend, my sole companion, was in a foul mood all eve and day and night. It didn't feel like Christmas at all, like it just never happened that year, because there were no family, friends, church, stockings, presents, Santa, dinner. It was interesting to experience.
Once was enough to experience the Christmas that wasn't, I have always felt. Fool me once....yeah yeah. Happy hols.
I attempted to shop starting yesterday and overspent on the first gifts I got, then got screwed by a bank error so not in my favor, so had to screw others over on the gifting. I have decided to make myself alfredo from scratch for dinner and am worried it will not turn out which may result in me eating spaghettios for dinner. I also am so wildly unmotivated to begin to cook that I am worried I will be eating spaghettios cold straight from the can for dinner. What the hell happened to me? This is so not me! I bumped my head last week--did I give myself amnesia from festivating?
As I combed many stores today and yesterday trying to find good thoughtful awesome gifts at reasonable prices, it occurred to me that there are quite a lot of things I would like to have and cannot afford to purchase. There are also many things I wish others to have through my intercession and this also I cannot afford. I am tired of being poor. I would like to be rich. Not for material gains so much as just less worry, less ridiculousness going on at every turn.
Once I spent Christmas in a dingy motel somewhere in Texas where it was freezing and my boyfriend, my sole companion, was in a foul mood all eve and day and night. It didn't feel like Christmas at all, like it just never happened that year, because there were no family, friends, church, stockings, presents, Santa, dinner. It was interesting to experience.
Once was enough to experience the Christmas that wasn't, I have always felt. Fool me once....yeah yeah. Happy hols.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Holidaze
Most Decembers I am involved in a show that begins at the start of the month and races through three weekends until suddenly I find myself at Christmas, for which I have become increasingly woefully unprepared.
This year is no exception. I am in a play--a play which coincidentally is pretty much about Christmas--and we close tonight, exactly one week before Christmas. As I have spent the past two months running around at rehearsals and costume shopping and memorizing lines on top of a full-time job and rehearsing for my next outing onstage, my house looks like a clothing/junk mail/wig/fish tank/shoe bomb exploded, my cupboards are bare, and I have little hope that Saint Nicholas soon will be there since I haven't hauled out a single stocking.
I am hoping that once the curtain drops on this particular run, I will be better able to wrap my home and subsequently myself in the joys of the season. But I have my doubts. I've lost that festive feeling.
For about seven years now I have lived on my own for Christmas. And in that time I have discovered that one really does have a blue Christmas without you--whoever "you" are.
Christmas is, of course, first and foremost a religious occasion celebrating the birth of Christianity. It was designed by wise old men afeared that their new cult wouldn't get off the ground if they didn't throw the pagans a bone for winter festival rituals. So, to begin with, if you aren't into organized religion, which I am not, there is something lacking in your Xmas factor.
Christmas is also a highly profitable enterprise. What was crass and commercial in Charlie Brown's day is now quaint and retro. Christmas is even more so all about getting the right gift and stuffing those stockings, big red bows on shiny new cars in snow-driven drives, the latest in Apple products, new wardrobes, cool toys. But if you aren't topping anyone's list, regardless of how naughty or nice you've been all year, there is something missing from the proceedings. Ditto if you have checked your list and realize that while there are several gifts to be got for all your fellow elves, you haven't much in the way of feliz navidad dinero to grace others with much more than your presence in lieu of actual presents--you are missing out--remember that Mrs. Claus and Santa are kind of a package deal.
Christmas is often a great day for kiddos. This goes with the corporate culture of it, but it's grand to hear the oohs and aahs as the little nutcrackers see all the shiny new things awaiting them beneath the tannenbaum's lovely old branches. It's fun to dress 'em up too with red velvet bows and candy cane ties to parade them around the local church, which fulfills the obligations to the oh holy night-ness part of the holiday. So if you don't have children in your family tree, which I do not, you are without that certain something that makes all your Christmases bright.
Now with these three kings of Orient being in place, I could surmise that when one lacks religion, money, a partner, and children, the holidays are somewhat lukewarm. Then there are the traditions and the notion that we all live on a movie set full of rambling old houses covered in snow and aglow with lights and holly and bickering relatives. Most of us just get the bickering relatives part. Getting colder.
Even the songs are designed to take the wind right out of your seasonal sails when you're a singleton. If all I want for Christmas is "you" and I'm not getting it, how can Santa Claus come to town and take us on a sleigh ride filled with jingle bells to a destination where chestnuts are roasting on an open fire, the halls are decked with boughs of holly, and oh ho the misteltoe will trap me in cause baby it's so cold outside and the next thing we know it's baby's first Christmas away in a manger and we'll meet forever in an auld lang syne? Frozen.
I have my own Christmas traditions. They involve gifting as many of those that I can with things I hope they will love, playing Harry Connick Jr.'s Christmas albums, making ravioli for one on Christmas Eve, trimming a tree whose firry goodness will make me happy until Epiphany. I usually see my immediate family and we do presents and maybe share a meal at some point. Sometimes I even get to play with my friends late on Christmas night, or go see a movie. I dress my dog up as Santa Paws. I relax in my cheerfully decorated house and watch my favorite holiday movies and drink spiced apple wine. I hostess a New Year's Eve get-togther for those I love most dear and friends new and old. I keep Christmas with me in my own way. And it's always worked out. I end up having myself a merry little Christmas.
But this year I just feel spent over the whole ordeal, and it hasn't even begun yet. I don't feel Yulish. I feel worried about the path I am on as we flow into a new year. I feel annoyed that for seven years I have awoken with no excited anticipation of the coming celebrations. I feel sad that I view Christmas as a time of stress and fear regarding my family. I feel like I am somehow missing the whole point, and I dislike not being in the know. I'm not depressed--but I am starting to feel like some of my lights have gone out. I've got the peace and love and goodwill, but the joy has yet to surface. And maybe making the best of how things are for so long has grown staler than a dried-up fruitcake from last year. And through all my musings, I know that so many people out there have it way worse than I do this time of year--and I am grateful for what I do have and sorry for those that have less. But for the me I have to live with, I just wish this year it will be different.
Here's to hoping for a Christmas miracle.
This year is no exception. I am in a play--a play which coincidentally is pretty much about Christmas--and we close tonight, exactly one week before Christmas. As I have spent the past two months running around at rehearsals and costume shopping and memorizing lines on top of a full-time job and rehearsing for my next outing onstage, my house looks like a clothing/junk mail/wig/fish tank/shoe bomb exploded, my cupboards are bare, and I have little hope that Saint Nicholas soon will be there since I haven't hauled out a single stocking.
I am hoping that once the curtain drops on this particular run, I will be better able to wrap my home and subsequently myself in the joys of the season. But I have my doubts. I've lost that festive feeling.
For about seven years now I have lived on my own for Christmas. And in that time I have discovered that one really does have a blue Christmas without you--whoever "you" are.
Christmas is, of course, first and foremost a religious occasion celebrating the birth of Christianity. It was designed by wise old men afeared that their new cult wouldn't get off the ground if they didn't throw the pagans a bone for winter festival rituals. So, to begin with, if you aren't into organized religion, which I am not, there is something lacking in your Xmas factor.
Christmas is also a highly profitable enterprise. What was crass and commercial in Charlie Brown's day is now quaint and retro. Christmas is even more so all about getting the right gift and stuffing those stockings, big red bows on shiny new cars in snow-driven drives, the latest in Apple products, new wardrobes, cool toys. But if you aren't topping anyone's list, regardless of how naughty or nice you've been all year, there is something missing from the proceedings. Ditto if you have checked your list and realize that while there are several gifts to be got for all your fellow elves, you haven't much in the way of feliz navidad dinero to grace others with much more than your presence in lieu of actual presents--you are missing out--remember that Mrs. Claus and Santa are kind of a package deal.
Christmas is often a great day for kiddos. This goes with the corporate culture of it, but it's grand to hear the oohs and aahs as the little nutcrackers see all the shiny new things awaiting them beneath the tannenbaum's lovely old branches. It's fun to dress 'em up too with red velvet bows and candy cane ties to parade them around the local church, which fulfills the obligations to the oh holy night-ness part of the holiday. So if you don't have children in your family tree, which I do not, you are without that certain something that makes all your Christmases bright.
Now with these three kings of Orient being in place, I could surmise that when one lacks religion, money, a partner, and children, the holidays are somewhat lukewarm. Then there are the traditions and the notion that we all live on a movie set full of rambling old houses covered in snow and aglow with lights and holly and bickering relatives. Most of us just get the bickering relatives part. Getting colder.
Even the songs are designed to take the wind right out of your seasonal sails when you're a singleton. If all I want for Christmas is "you" and I'm not getting it, how can Santa Claus come to town and take us on a sleigh ride filled with jingle bells to a destination where chestnuts are roasting on an open fire, the halls are decked with boughs of holly, and oh ho the misteltoe will trap me in cause baby it's so cold outside and the next thing we know it's baby's first Christmas away in a manger and we'll meet forever in an auld lang syne? Frozen.
I have my own Christmas traditions. They involve gifting as many of those that I can with things I hope they will love, playing Harry Connick Jr.'s Christmas albums, making ravioli for one on Christmas Eve, trimming a tree whose firry goodness will make me happy until Epiphany. I usually see my immediate family and we do presents and maybe share a meal at some point. Sometimes I even get to play with my friends late on Christmas night, or go see a movie. I dress my dog up as Santa Paws. I relax in my cheerfully decorated house and watch my favorite holiday movies and drink spiced apple wine. I hostess a New Year's Eve get-togther for those I love most dear and friends new and old. I keep Christmas with me in my own way. And it's always worked out. I end up having myself a merry little Christmas.
But this year I just feel spent over the whole ordeal, and it hasn't even begun yet. I don't feel Yulish. I feel worried about the path I am on as we flow into a new year. I feel annoyed that for seven years I have awoken with no excited anticipation of the coming celebrations. I feel sad that I view Christmas as a time of stress and fear regarding my family. I feel like I am somehow missing the whole point, and I dislike not being in the know. I'm not depressed--but I am starting to feel like some of my lights have gone out. I've got the peace and love and goodwill, but the joy has yet to surface. And maybe making the best of how things are for so long has grown staler than a dried-up fruitcake from last year. And through all my musings, I know that so many people out there have it way worse than I do this time of year--and I am grateful for what I do have and sorry for those that have less. But for the me I have to live with, I just wish this year it will be different.
Here's to hoping for a Christmas miracle.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Family Matters
So, I am in a play. An amazingly crafted comedy called Reckless by the playwright Craig Lucas. This play features a strong ensemble cast, good direction, and swell sounds of the season. It is being produced by the company I have made my home in for all of its seventeen years of existence, and I have worked hard behind the scenes to promote what we do--which is bring some of the best theater this side of the Mason-Dixon Line to anyone smart enough to support the arts.
Alas and alack, crowds have not been flocking to this piece. There are, I am certain, several things which prevent patrons from, well, patronizing us. Perhaps the ticket prices are a bit steep for folks in a poor economy during a holiday season whose commercialism somehow continues to grow. Perhaps our small budget and smaller staff did not allow us to promote things with enough aplomb. Perhaps people in these parts just prefer their live holiday performances to feature men in tights, maids a'milking, chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Perhaps plays, especially ones that do not offer immediate name recognition, are just not as easy to draw attendees as big brash musicals. Perhaps people are just too busy or lazy or stupid. Perhaps it is for each individual out there one or two or three of these things.
I am proud of my work in this show as well as that of its standout stars. I would like that work to be appreciated by more people. The feedback has been unanimously positive. We have three great reviews published in various places. We have been getting genuine compliments from the small crowds who have seen us. This is awesome and I am fully appreciative of it.
But theater is not meant to be performed without a live studio audience. That is what rehearsals are for. Once the lights are hung up above with care, our hopes are that the sell-out crowd soon will be there. The jolly ho-ho-hos from a responsive audience are what fuels a comedy. We all study hard and put a lot of thought and time and effort into setting the stage, and designing the sets and lights and sounds and costumes, and memorizing lines and blocking and creating three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood characters from some words printed on a page. It's meant to be seen and heard and enjoyed, and it is a unique experience every night, and the audience is part of that whole experience. Yes we are here to entertain you--but we simply cannot entertain anyone if you aren't there.
This is the second weekend of our run. We have four performances under our belts. And I feel like I directly up to this point have been responsible for four patrons in that time, and really could easily cut that down to two if I consider friends whose only real reason for coming to see this show is to support me. There are more performances to go, and I expect more people will check this out not because they love plays or the arts or live theater but because they love me. And that is awesome.
But you know who will not be there? Anyone actually related to me. And every time there is a production that I am in, I observe the crowds of relatives who come out, often multiple times during a run, to support their son, daughter, brother, sister, father, mother, cousin, grandkids, nieces, nephews. These relatives often strong arm their own sets of friends and extended families to come with them to see little Johnny act his little heart out.
I have a long-standing policy with my immediate family as regards their attendance at my shows. I do not ask them to attend or tell them flat-out not to attend shows I do not thing they will enjoy, because I do not have the kind of family who thinks everything I do is worthy of their support or attention. They will not enjoy seeing me running around in my bra as Janet in The Rocky Horror Show whilst a Sweet Transvestite tramps it up in drag next to me. So, I advise them to skip this one. They will like a more traditional musical in which I knock everyone's socks off singing one of the fastest songs ever written while dressed as a bride as Amy in Company. So, I tell them they would be likely to enjoy this one and it would be swell if they attend. And so they do. Or rather, did. I have been in what feels like 84,000 productions since that one, which was in 2005. And eventually I gave up the dream that even my selective encouragement and discouragement motto, designed to keep all parties comfortable, was even worth chasing anymore.
And every single time a show roles around for me, I think I am over it. I am doing what I want to do the way I want to do it. I am not doing all of this for my parents or sister or cousins or aunts and uncles and grandparents. I am not doing any of it for any of them. And I daresay that they have events which would not be my cup of tea. So we're even Steven. I would prefer they not have to spend money and sit through something that will bore or offend them, only to leave at intermission (as my parents did during my final college show [read: kinda big deal] which was that crazy old Shakespeare romp The Winter's Tale [read I was so shocked that they were not there afterwards that I rushed back to my dorm to call them frantic because I thought something had happened. nope, they thought my character was done for the show and so they didn't want to stick around. Other people's parents actually brought me flowers the following weekend. Nice, but embarrassing.]) or tell me in the lobby afterwards that it was "cute" (standard praise from my mother no matter what tragedy she has just witnessed.) It became at some point just easier to not even play that game. Apparently that point was five years ago.
And yet every single time a show roles around for me, I witness the scads of supporters--willing or not--that show up for their person at a production. For the daughter with no lines, the straight son kissing another man, the sister stealing scenes in a supporting role, the nephew with the lead. And it bothers me in a way where I begin to feel like there is something wrong with me. That I maybe am embarrassing to them as a performer. That these productions I am involved in (the quality of which I strive to be very fair-minded and realistic about) actually are like a visit to the dentist for those who share my gene pool. And when the crowds in general aren't packing in the seats--despite the numerous family members who have attended en masse for at least one cast member every night--I feel terrible, like I am not doing my bit because my family isn't doing theirs. And I really do question everything--my talent, my worth, the way I present myself and my work, all I hold dear as the essence of who I am. It kind of sucks.
I don't even think I am Ms. Thang in this play, either. Again, the years lacking in what I perceive to be familial support of me and the art I do have me fairly solid in my convictions despite the nagging doubts. This is not a must-see for me.
But I think it probably should be, because this is what I do and therefore this is me, and it would be nice to experience the people I come from--who are why I can do what it is I do to begin with--being proud that I am theirs even if they don't agree with it or have passion for it or even get it. It's not going to happen, and given all the above frankly I don't even want it to happen because it's just not how we do.
But I guess it still sucks.
Alas and alack, crowds have not been flocking to this piece. There are, I am certain, several things which prevent patrons from, well, patronizing us. Perhaps the ticket prices are a bit steep for folks in a poor economy during a holiday season whose commercialism somehow continues to grow. Perhaps our small budget and smaller staff did not allow us to promote things with enough aplomb. Perhaps people in these parts just prefer their live holiday performances to feature men in tights, maids a'milking, chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Perhaps plays, especially ones that do not offer immediate name recognition, are just not as easy to draw attendees as big brash musicals. Perhaps people are just too busy or lazy or stupid. Perhaps it is for each individual out there one or two or three of these things.
I am proud of my work in this show as well as that of its standout stars. I would like that work to be appreciated by more people. The feedback has been unanimously positive. We have three great reviews published in various places. We have been getting genuine compliments from the small crowds who have seen us. This is awesome and I am fully appreciative of it.
But theater is not meant to be performed without a live studio audience. That is what rehearsals are for. Once the lights are hung up above with care, our hopes are that the sell-out crowd soon will be there. The jolly ho-ho-hos from a responsive audience are what fuels a comedy. We all study hard and put a lot of thought and time and effort into setting the stage, and designing the sets and lights and sounds and costumes, and memorizing lines and blocking and creating three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood characters from some words printed on a page. It's meant to be seen and heard and enjoyed, and it is a unique experience every night, and the audience is part of that whole experience. Yes we are here to entertain you--but we simply cannot entertain anyone if you aren't there.
This is the second weekend of our run. We have four performances under our belts. And I feel like I directly up to this point have been responsible for four patrons in that time, and really could easily cut that down to two if I consider friends whose only real reason for coming to see this show is to support me. There are more performances to go, and I expect more people will check this out not because they love plays or the arts or live theater but because they love me. And that is awesome.
But you know who will not be there? Anyone actually related to me. And every time there is a production that I am in, I observe the crowds of relatives who come out, often multiple times during a run, to support their son, daughter, brother, sister, father, mother, cousin, grandkids, nieces, nephews. These relatives often strong arm their own sets of friends and extended families to come with them to see little Johnny act his little heart out.
I have a long-standing policy with my immediate family as regards their attendance at my shows. I do not ask them to attend or tell them flat-out not to attend shows I do not thing they will enjoy, because I do not have the kind of family who thinks everything I do is worthy of their support or attention. They will not enjoy seeing me running around in my bra as Janet in The Rocky Horror Show whilst a Sweet Transvestite tramps it up in drag next to me. So, I advise them to skip this one. They will like a more traditional musical in which I knock everyone's socks off singing one of the fastest songs ever written while dressed as a bride as Amy in Company. So, I tell them they would be likely to enjoy this one and it would be swell if they attend. And so they do. Or rather, did. I have been in what feels like 84,000 productions since that one, which was in 2005. And eventually I gave up the dream that even my selective encouragement and discouragement motto, designed to keep all parties comfortable, was even worth chasing anymore.
And every single time a show roles around for me, I think I am over it. I am doing what I want to do the way I want to do it. I am not doing all of this for my parents or sister or cousins or aunts and uncles and grandparents. I am not doing any of it for any of them. And I daresay that they have events which would not be my cup of tea. So we're even Steven. I would prefer they not have to spend money and sit through something that will bore or offend them, only to leave at intermission (as my parents did during my final college show [read: kinda big deal] which was that crazy old Shakespeare romp The Winter's Tale [read I was so shocked that they were not there afterwards that I rushed back to my dorm to call them frantic because I thought something had happened. nope, they thought my character was done for the show and so they didn't want to stick around. Other people's parents actually brought me flowers the following weekend. Nice, but embarrassing.]) or tell me in the lobby afterwards that it was "cute" (standard praise from my mother no matter what tragedy she has just witnessed.) It became at some point just easier to not even play that game. Apparently that point was five years ago.
And yet every single time a show roles around for me, I witness the scads of supporters--willing or not--that show up for their person at a production. For the daughter with no lines, the straight son kissing another man, the sister stealing scenes in a supporting role, the nephew with the lead. And it bothers me in a way where I begin to feel like there is something wrong with me. That I maybe am embarrassing to them as a performer. That these productions I am involved in (the quality of which I strive to be very fair-minded and realistic about) actually are like a visit to the dentist for those who share my gene pool. And when the crowds in general aren't packing in the seats--despite the numerous family members who have attended en masse for at least one cast member every night--I feel terrible, like I am not doing my bit because my family isn't doing theirs. And I really do question everything--my talent, my worth, the way I present myself and my work, all I hold dear as the essence of who I am. It kind of sucks.
I don't even think I am Ms. Thang in this play, either. Again, the years lacking in what I perceive to be familial support of me and the art I do have me fairly solid in my convictions despite the nagging doubts. This is not a must-see for me.
But I think it probably should be, because this is what I do and therefore this is me, and it would be nice to experience the people I come from--who are why I can do what it is I do to begin with--being proud that I am theirs even if they don't agree with it or have passion for it or even get it. It's not going to happen, and given all the above frankly I don't even want it to happen because it's just not how we do.
But I guess it still sucks.
Friday, December 10, 2010
I am because my little dog knew me
The exquisite pain.
Once upon a time, I was home sick with a bad cold. I was sitting on my living room floor, chatting by phone with my friend, waiting for my beloved to come home from work. It was cold out--December—-a few weeks before Christmas. The door opened and in came D. Something--or someone--was peeking out of his work jacket. I looked. I stared. I started being giddy and nonsensical. Phone forgotten, hacking cough and stuffed-up nose a dream, I melted into a puddle of supreme joy, joy most-high. I think I felt what we hope the resurrection day is like.
A tiny puppy. A tiny little guy with a perfectly temperatured, cuddly and curious body. A black and brown and white puppy who climbed into my lap and made me happier than I have ever been before or since, really. I knew in an instant, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was my beagle and this was true love at first sight.
I have had a lot of happiness in my life. I hope to have a great deal more before this mortal coil ends. But this puppy brought me an ecstasy of loving I have never known before or since. I never knew it was possible to love that much. I adored this dog without question, without reservation, without limits, from the moment I laid eyes on his tiny head with its big nose. I thought about him incessantly. In those first days—months—years--I was terrified of how much I loved him--so much that I would probably die instantly if anything happened to him. I couldn’t imagine life without him—how had there been one? How would there ever be a suitable one again? I thought I could probably never have a baby, because I would probably always love this dog more than any human child—or that I would love a human child more, and could not handle that notion on either end!
So here he was, my guy—our guy back then--and he was here to stay. We debated what to name him for days. We agreed that we were not the sort of folk who went in for names like Spot or Socks or the dreaded Fido. We also felt compelled to make a nod to his AKC-registered parents with their long-ass bizarre names. We finally decided on Charles BeGaulle, a French-inspired moniker that befitted a noble canine with a
blue-blooded lineage such as himself. But we came up with that one based on his true name, the one that he would have been called no matter where he hung his hat, because it just was his name—we called him Charlie.
Those first few months were a blur, at least so they seem now. I do remember feeling every day like it was Christmas morning and I was 7 years old and Santa was bringing me a bike--every morning when I woke up I was that excited to see him. Even if he had kept us awake half the night with lots of crying because he hated—HATED—being in his crate.
Ah the crate days. We did everything you were supposed to do according to the beagle book. But this guy wanted no parts of his crate. No matter what tasty morsels went in as a reward, no matter what cozy blankets we piled within, no matter how den-like we tried to make it, Charlie would have none of it. When as exasperated as two first-time beagle parents can be brought this up to the vet, he laughed and said “he just wants to be with you all of the time.”
What a concept. And how true it was. This was a beagle after all—knowers of the breed understand that these pups are rarely the loyal “I can’t go anywhere alone” types like a retriever, say. But he did want to be where we were all the time, pretty much. We were his people, he was as sure of that from his crated puppy days to his last one, and he did not care to be left out of the fun. He didn’t like to eat alone, be in the yard alone, be downstairs in a crate at night alone. He was a strict lover of the three’s-a-crowd axiom. But to him, that seemed paradise.
Little he realized, he was always with me. I carried his picture around in my waitressing book and somehow the sight if his big expectant eyes and jaunty ears made it a breeze to deal with cranky elderly ladies who insisted on grilled cheeses (which were not on the menu) and ill-behaved monsters-cum-children who threw crayons (and up their dinners) at me and dirtballs who left pennies on the table (by generous way of supplementing my $2.05/hour salary.) At night if the weather was bad, D. would come to pick me up because I hated driving in any kind of snow, and the sight of that boy and our beagle in the window made me out of my mind with a feeling of being all-good, all-adored and adoring, utterly beloved.
Charlie was one smart guy. He learned to ring a bell on the back door whenever he needed to go outside to take care of bizness. After a short time, he realized that if he rang the bell we would help out a brother who lacked opposable thumbs. A fact he used to his advantage when we would go out and open the door, and instead of bounding out into the evening, he would look up at us and with as much dignity as a floppy-eared sir could, walk evenly around us and over to his kibble so he could dine with a companion.
But that was his dog-food mode. His people-food mode was sorely lacking in dignity. At parties, he was not known for couth. Charming anecdotes include the time he sprung five feet in the air to snatch an entire Buffalo chicken wing from the mouth-bound hand of a guest, the growling and snapping when he determined that a bit of nacho chip (or floor fuzz) on the floor was his birthright, and the time he neatly reared his head, shark-like, at the dining room table and snatched and subsequently gobbled a slice of pizza—despite the fact that he was very ill that time and not one with much of an appetite.
There were foods he did not find interesting enough to eat. Desserts, soups, pastas usually could be shared without a peep from him. One evening I was settled in with a slice of cake and a tall glass of milk, Charlie uninterested soldered to my side. I ate the cake and took one sip of the milk and then ran upstairs to get something. When I came down 30 seconds later, there was a very guilty-looking beagle refusing to catch my eye. I looked around to see what he could have done, and saw no evidence of anything bad. I ventured into the kitchen as well—all was in apple pie order. I even asked him “what did you do?” But he wouldn’t tell me. I assumed it was some odd quirk and sat back down again and reached for my milk, to discover that he had neatly drunk it all, from the glass, without spilling a drop. He was no dummy, after back surgery the year prior he knew that strong bones were essential to the life of Riley. And boy oh boy, did he have that life.
By day, he slept, presumably. Sometimes, especially when winter came, he would need to be roused from his doggie dreams when we came home from work. Sometimes, we had to actually find him, since Charlie’s idea of napping nirvana was to build a fort of pillows and blankets and pretend to be hibernating for the winter. He never minded being awoken for us though, and would wind his way out from the tangle of blankets and even sometimes ending with an undignified drop to the floor would simply bound back up, tail wagging at the speed of light, ready to give hugs and accept kisses and pats on the head and gamely suffer our witty “so what did you do all day” comments.
Other days he was on the alert at the 6 o’clock hour, waiting like a little sentry by the window or atop the back of the couch. These reunions were as joyous as if we were all prodigals returned home. If there were fatted calfs lying about Charlie would have slain them all just for us. As is the case with many dogs, he knew what time we came home nightly, and recognized the sound of the cars from what had to be a few miles away even if we were off our schedule.
He had a kissing spot above each ear. He did not like to swim but he liked snowdrifts and to play a game we liked to call "mountain dogs." He was the most faithful friend imaginable. Today is Charlie's birthday, he would be 10 years old if he had lived past the too-young age of seven. He was the best friend a girl like me could have. It is not an exaggeration to say that without him I would not have survived the worst year of my life--I simply would not have. He was the greatest gift ever. He died five years ago and mine was the last face he ever saw. He knew he had to go, and with dignity he settled his affairs. He said his goodbyes to his favorite people in the world. And suddenly he was just gone, and my heart broke into so many pieces that some of them are still scattered to the winds.
I am eternally grateful to have known that guy. He made me a better person than I ever thought I could be. His short happy life gave mine more meaning than words could ever express, and I miss him more than words could ever say.
Once upon a time, I was home sick with a bad cold. I was sitting on my living room floor, chatting by phone with my friend, waiting for my beloved to come home from work. It was cold out--December—-a few weeks before Christmas. The door opened and in came D. Something--or someone--was peeking out of his work jacket. I looked. I stared. I started being giddy and nonsensical. Phone forgotten, hacking cough and stuffed-up nose a dream, I melted into a puddle of supreme joy, joy most-high. I think I felt what we hope the resurrection day is like.
A tiny puppy. A tiny little guy with a perfectly temperatured, cuddly and curious body. A black and brown and white puppy who climbed into my lap and made me happier than I have ever been before or since, really. I knew in an instant, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was my beagle and this was true love at first sight.
I have had a lot of happiness in my life. I hope to have a great deal more before this mortal coil ends. But this puppy brought me an ecstasy of loving I have never known before or since. I never knew it was possible to love that much. I adored this dog without question, without reservation, without limits, from the moment I laid eyes on his tiny head with its big nose. I thought about him incessantly. In those first days—months—years--I was terrified of how much I loved him--so much that I would probably die instantly if anything happened to him. I couldn’t imagine life without him—how had there been one? How would there ever be a suitable one again? I thought I could probably never have a baby, because I would probably always love this dog more than any human child—or that I would love a human child more, and could not handle that notion on either end!
So here he was, my guy—our guy back then--and he was here to stay. We debated what to name him for days. We agreed that we were not the sort of folk who went in for names like Spot or Socks or the dreaded Fido. We also felt compelled to make a nod to his AKC-registered parents with their long-ass bizarre names. We finally decided on Charles BeGaulle, a French-inspired moniker that befitted a noble canine with a
blue-blooded lineage such as himself. But we came up with that one based on his true name, the one that he would have been called no matter where he hung his hat, because it just was his name—we called him Charlie.
Those first few months were a blur, at least so they seem now. I do remember feeling every day like it was Christmas morning and I was 7 years old and Santa was bringing me a bike--every morning when I woke up I was that excited to see him. Even if he had kept us awake half the night with lots of crying because he hated—HATED—being in his crate.
Ah the crate days. We did everything you were supposed to do according to the beagle book. But this guy wanted no parts of his crate. No matter what tasty morsels went in as a reward, no matter what cozy blankets we piled within, no matter how den-like we tried to make it, Charlie would have none of it. When as exasperated as two first-time beagle parents can be brought this up to the vet, he laughed and said “he just wants to be with you all of the time.”
What a concept. And how true it was. This was a beagle after all—knowers of the breed understand that these pups are rarely the loyal “I can’t go anywhere alone” types like a retriever, say. But he did want to be where we were all the time, pretty much. We were his people, he was as sure of that from his crated puppy days to his last one, and he did not care to be left out of the fun. He didn’t like to eat alone, be in the yard alone, be downstairs in a crate at night alone. He was a strict lover of the three’s-a-crowd axiom. But to him, that seemed paradise.
Little he realized, he was always with me. I carried his picture around in my waitressing book and somehow the sight if his big expectant eyes and jaunty ears made it a breeze to deal with cranky elderly ladies who insisted on grilled cheeses (which were not on the menu) and ill-behaved monsters-cum-children who threw crayons (and up their dinners) at me and dirtballs who left pennies on the table (by generous way of supplementing my $2.05/hour salary.) At night if the weather was bad, D. would come to pick me up because I hated driving in any kind of snow, and the sight of that boy and our beagle in the window made me out of my mind with a feeling of being all-good, all-adored and adoring, utterly beloved.
Charlie was one smart guy. He learned to ring a bell on the back door whenever he needed to go outside to take care of bizness. After a short time, he realized that if he rang the bell we would help out a brother who lacked opposable thumbs. A fact he used to his advantage when we would go out and open the door, and instead of bounding out into the evening, he would look up at us and with as much dignity as a floppy-eared sir could, walk evenly around us and over to his kibble so he could dine with a companion.
But that was his dog-food mode. His people-food mode was sorely lacking in dignity. At parties, he was not known for couth. Charming anecdotes include the time he sprung five feet in the air to snatch an entire Buffalo chicken wing from the mouth-bound hand of a guest, the growling and snapping when he determined that a bit of nacho chip (or floor fuzz) on the floor was his birthright, and the time he neatly reared his head, shark-like, at the dining room table and snatched and subsequently gobbled a slice of pizza—despite the fact that he was very ill that time and not one with much of an appetite.
There were foods he did not find interesting enough to eat. Desserts, soups, pastas usually could be shared without a peep from him. One evening I was settled in with a slice of cake and a tall glass of milk, Charlie uninterested soldered to my side. I ate the cake and took one sip of the milk and then ran upstairs to get something. When I came down 30 seconds later, there was a very guilty-looking beagle refusing to catch my eye. I looked around to see what he could have done, and saw no evidence of anything bad. I ventured into the kitchen as well—all was in apple pie order. I even asked him “what did you do?” But he wouldn’t tell me. I assumed it was some odd quirk and sat back down again and reached for my milk, to discover that he had neatly drunk it all, from the glass, without spilling a drop. He was no dummy, after back surgery the year prior he knew that strong bones were essential to the life of Riley. And boy oh boy, did he have that life.
By day, he slept, presumably. Sometimes, especially when winter came, he would need to be roused from his doggie dreams when we came home from work. Sometimes, we had to actually find him, since Charlie’s idea of napping nirvana was to build a fort of pillows and blankets and pretend to be hibernating for the winter. He never minded being awoken for us though, and would wind his way out from the tangle of blankets and even sometimes ending with an undignified drop to the floor would simply bound back up, tail wagging at the speed of light, ready to give hugs and accept kisses and pats on the head and gamely suffer our witty “so what did you do all day” comments.
Other days he was on the alert at the 6 o’clock hour, waiting like a little sentry by the window or atop the back of the couch. These reunions were as joyous as if we were all prodigals returned home. If there were fatted calfs lying about Charlie would have slain them all just for us. As is the case with many dogs, he knew what time we came home nightly, and recognized the sound of the cars from what had to be a few miles away even if we were off our schedule.
He had a kissing spot above each ear. He did not like to swim but he liked snowdrifts and to play a game we liked to call "mountain dogs." He was the most faithful friend imaginable. Today is Charlie's birthday, he would be 10 years old if he had lived past the too-young age of seven. He was the best friend a girl like me could have. It is not an exaggeration to say that without him I would not have survived the worst year of my life--I simply would not have. He was the greatest gift ever. He died five years ago and mine was the last face he ever saw. He knew he had to go, and with dignity he settled his affairs. He said his goodbyes to his favorite people in the world. And suddenly he was just gone, and my heart broke into so many pieces that some of them are still scattered to the winds.
I am eternally grateful to have known that guy. He made me a better person than I ever thought I could be. His short happy life gave mine more meaning than words could ever express, and I miss him more than words could ever say.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Merci merci me
It is right to give you thanks and praise--all of you lovely people I know and have known and will know in the days and weeks and hours and years, GW, to come. So, thanks for that.
My fingers hover over the keys like the marker on a Ouija Board, hoping they will fly unbidden over the letters and numbers and answer the questions I pose. Give us a little sugar to sweeten the prosaic, spice up the blandness of uncertainty, show us the way and the hope and the light. Preferable outcomes to unleashing the hounds of hell as the door between worlds is carelessly left open. Not sure though how this will all pan out, which I suppose is the point.
This holiday once meant Pilgrims and placecards, unzipping fine china and pouring ice water into clean clear goblets, seeing for believing that Santa Claus had come to town. Safe as houses, surrounded en famille, and ah, the desserts.
Then there was the Thanksgiving I ran away from home after the wine had turned the proceedings sour, the year that in all probability changed how everything was from that moment forward. A small act of rebellion to be sure. How grateful I was for it. How silly to think how terrible it was looked upon at the time. How funny to skip ahead a few years and recall the ultimate in pretense, surrounded by those who had loved me since I entered this world but knew next to nothing about my plans. Awkward.
Different tables, different faces, different brands of dinner rolls would follow. A curious lack of recall shadows some of these events. Last year there was no table and it wasn't the worst. It just....was.
I am not old but I am not young. I am not presiding over a polished board of fare but I am not seated at the kiddie table in the scullery either. I am not ungrateful but I am not overbrimming with thankfulness.
What I am is hungry. Grazie.
My fingers hover over the keys like the marker on a Ouija Board, hoping they will fly unbidden over the letters and numbers and answer the questions I pose. Give us a little sugar to sweeten the prosaic, spice up the blandness of uncertainty, show us the way and the hope and the light. Preferable outcomes to unleashing the hounds of hell as the door between worlds is carelessly left open. Not sure though how this will all pan out, which I suppose is the point.
This holiday once meant Pilgrims and placecards, unzipping fine china and pouring ice water into clean clear goblets, seeing for believing that Santa Claus had come to town. Safe as houses, surrounded en famille, and ah, the desserts.
Then there was the Thanksgiving I ran away from home after the wine had turned the proceedings sour, the year that in all probability changed how everything was from that moment forward. A small act of rebellion to be sure. How grateful I was for it. How silly to think how terrible it was looked upon at the time. How funny to skip ahead a few years and recall the ultimate in pretense, surrounded by those who had loved me since I entered this world but knew next to nothing about my plans. Awkward.
Different tables, different faces, different brands of dinner rolls would follow. A curious lack of recall shadows some of these events. Last year there was no table and it wasn't the worst. It just....was.
I am not old but I am not young. I am not presiding over a polished board of fare but I am not seated at the kiddie table in the scullery either. I am not ungrateful but I am not overbrimming with thankfulness.
What I am is hungry. Grazie.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Gift of the Magi
"If you want to be an actor, act."
This sage advice was given me when I was about 22 or 23, and I adopted it as my mantra thereafter. It was in response to me dithering over going to graduate school to study theater, a choice I deliberately did not make right out of undergrad because I didn't have the money, I didn't have the encouragement, and I didn't want to be in school anymore for a while, and it justified my path. I needed a break, I thought; I planned to take a year or two to work and that thereafter I would return to the world of scholarly pursuits.That year or two stretched into years three to eight post-grad, which is when I decided that I was being ridiculous and that it was high time to get back to doing what I did best by going to school for a master's and then having the skills and qualifications on paper and in deed in order to make a go of life in a permanently creative way. So I got off my corporate America arse and found a program that was right for me at that time, did all the testing and applying and auditioning, and was rewarded with a full scholarship. Somewhere between applying and the free ride offer, life as I knew it fell apart and I eventually decided that despite the years of procrastinating and planning and productive making this finally happen, I was no longer in a position emotionally or financially ior physically to sail into that brave new world, so I turned it down.
Fast-forward to another almost-eighth year after that last major decision and I find myself very ill-at-ease with the one thing I have always known about myself--that acting is what I do, first and foremost, everything and sometimes nearly everyone else be damned.
"Why not the path to acting."
More sage advice that has always stuck with me, this piece offered while I was still an undergrad student, dithering about what I was meant to do in life post-B.A. degree because I liked so many things, I was good at a fair number of them, and I was having an existential crisis of faith to boot. It was the first time I ever felt fully encouraged to do what it was I had always felt I was meant to do because it was the first time anyone put it to me that this was a calling and thus carried with it all the solemnity and holiness as a religious experience would. This was who I was and all the twisting and turning and trying to fashion myself into someone else just to please any given person at any given time wasn't going to change that.
Fifteen years after that and I find myself wondering if the struggle I am undergoing has less to do with the wisdom of this path I have indeed chosen and more to do with the reality of choosing a path in the first place. It isn't supposed to be easy to live by the courage of one's convictions; faith is one thing that is hard to believe in.
"You are quite good. You should be doing this stuff all over the place."
I think of myself twenty years ago, a very busy high school student who would spend hours of free time poring over plays and memorizing parts from the canon of American playwrights. I was patient; I never had a doubt that eventually I would play the ever-growing list of parts I was keeping in my bedside drawer, even though I had never really acted in anything. And it was one of the first days of my sophomore year in high school that I found my first mentor, the first person who didn't laugh at my ambitions, someone who simply accepted that I was talented and ought to be in pictures, so to speak. This encouragement fed me like manna from the heavens. I read more, memorized more, took silly small parts in overblown high school productions, and longed for college when I could do whatever I wanted free from the constraints of home.
So where is that passion now? Lately I feel very badly about what I always thought I did best. Suddenly there are roadblocks all over the path--and I didn't put them all there. And I am very very very scared that what nourishes me has destroyed me, and that it didn't really nourish me very well to begin with for such an end. I hope it is just a phase. But currently I feel lost and confused and just sad about it--that I am washed up or over or simply stayed down too long in certain circles and have lost my edge, my sparkle, my ME. And I worry that the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrhh annointed to me by the three wise men above have been squandered unwittingly.
This sage advice was given me when I was about 22 or 23, and I adopted it as my mantra thereafter. It was in response to me dithering over going to graduate school to study theater, a choice I deliberately did not make right out of undergrad because I didn't have the money, I didn't have the encouragement, and I didn't want to be in school anymore for a while, and it justified my path. I needed a break, I thought; I planned to take a year or two to work and that thereafter I would return to the world of scholarly pursuits.That year or two stretched into years three to eight post-grad, which is when I decided that I was being ridiculous and that it was high time to get back to doing what I did best by going to school for a master's and then having the skills and qualifications on paper and in deed in order to make a go of life in a permanently creative way. So I got off my corporate America arse and found a program that was right for me at that time, did all the testing and applying and auditioning, and was rewarded with a full scholarship. Somewhere between applying and the free ride offer, life as I knew it fell apart and I eventually decided that despite the years of procrastinating and planning and productive making this finally happen, I was no longer in a position emotionally or financially ior physically to sail into that brave new world, so I turned it down.
Fast-forward to another almost-eighth year after that last major decision and I find myself very ill-at-ease with the one thing I have always known about myself--that acting is what I do, first and foremost, everything and sometimes nearly everyone else be damned.
"Why not the path to acting."
More sage advice that has always stuck with me, this piece offered while I was still an undergrad student, dithering about what I was meant to do in life post-B.A. degree because I liked so many things, I was good at a fair number of them, and I was having an existential crisis of faith to boot. It was the first time I ever felt fully encouraged to do what it was I had always felt I was meant to do because it was the first time anyone put it to me that this was a calling and thus carried with it all the solemnity and holiness as a religious experience would. This was who I was and all the twisting and turning and trying to fashion myself into someone else just to please any given person at any given time wasn't going to change that.
Fifteen years after that and I find myself wondering if the struggle I am undergoing has less to do with the wisdom of this path I have indeed chosen and more to do with the reality of choosing a path in the first place. It isn't supposed to be easy to live by the courage of one's convictions; faith is one thing that is hard to believe in.
"You are quite good. You should be doing this stuff all over the place."
I think of myself twenty years ago, a very busy high school student who would spend hours of free time poring over plays and memorizing parts from the canon of American playwrights. I was patient; I never had a doubt that eventually I would play the ever-growing list of parts I was keeping in my bedside drawer, even though I had never really acted in anything. And it was one of the first days of my sophomore year in high school that I found my first mentor, the first person who didn't laugh at my ambitions, someone who simply accepted that I was talented and ought to be in pictures, so to speak. This encouragement fed me like manna from the heavens. I read more, memorized more, took silly small parts in overblown high school productions, and longed for college when I could do whatever I wanted free from the constraints of home.
So where is that passion now? Lately I feel very badly about what I always thought I did best. Suddenly there are roadblocks all over the path--and I didn't put them all there. And I am very very very scared that what nourishes me has destroyed me, and that it didn't really nourish me very well to begin with for such an end. I hope it is just a phase. But currently I feel lost and confused and just sad about it--that I am washed up or over or simply stayed down too long in certain circles and have lost my edge, my sparkle, my ME. And I worry that the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrhh annointed to me by the three wise men above have been squandered unwittingly.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Only the Lonely
To paraphrase the old saying, some are born lonely, others achieve loneliness, and some have loneliness thrust upon them.
When you are single, especially single and of a certain age, you spend a great deal of time by yourself. When you are single and of a certain age and live on your own, you have little choice but to be your own best friend--or worst enemy.
Last year I read a novel that passes for modern literature. It didn't pass my standards for a good read (which are actually quite low, as it happens) so whilst I did read it all, I can't recall the title or the characters' names or where it was set or most of what happened in it. What I do remember is that one character, possibly the heroine, was a single white female who resided in a doorman building in some Gotham-like city. And she observed more than once (this may have had something to with the tome's so-called theme) as she got in the elevator to reach her bachelorette pad after the usual 9 to 5 way to make a living, that the doorman's voice was the last she would be hearing until the morrow (when inevitably his would be the first she would hear in the morning.) It struck me as poignant at the time I read it, and has stuck with me though the rest of the plot hasn't. And I wonder if the notion of a relative stranger being the last person you interact with on a nightly basis is actually poignant, or just what we latter-day noncommittal career girls and boys inherited from our bra-burning foremothers and burned-out bacon-bringer-homer papas?
The concept is relatively simple to imagine. If you don't cohabitate with some significant other, it seems inevitable that most nights it will be someone not necessarily close to you whose dulcet voice will be the last you hear upon retiring. Even if you live at the Playboy Mansion with a bevy of buxom beauties just as blonde as you, or split the rent for a 2BR with some equally poor platonic pal, or are taking advantage of how "well" you get on with your parents by freeloading their basement apartment--unless you are suitably shacked up with some kind of lover, it will doubtless be the China King delivery boy or the hippie chick who sings for change on your corner who will serve as your final dose of human interaction whence the day is done. If you are lucky, it'll be a good friend who got you drunk then helped pour you into bed, or a nice crew of dog parents you encountered when out for the evening's final pee walk. But even luck runs out and if you live sans a partner in crime, you are likely to be lonesome tonight, and the next night, and the night after that.
Is that sad? I don't know, honestly. Sometimes it seems so to me. When I think of all the singletons in my vicinity, all of us feathered in our little nests night after night--making nutritionless meals for one, settling before the telly with a cold beer or with the papers and a cuppa, eventually climbing into bed and drifting off to dreamland--all within the sounds of silence. Even if you choose to live alone, even if you love your unfettered lifestyle, even if you'd rather be on your own for the right reasons than with someone for the wrong ones--there is something just......not, I think, how we are meant to unfurl this mortal coil. No man is an island sayeth the poet. And perhaps this endeth the lesson.
When you are single, especially single and of a certain age, you spend a great deal of time by yourself. When you are single and of a certain age and live on your own, you have little choice but to be your own best friend--or worst enemy.
Last year I read a novel that passes for modern literature. It didn't pass my standards for a good read (which are actually quite low, as it happens) so whilst I did read it all, I can't recall the title or the characters' names or where it was set or most of what happened in it. What I do remember is that one character, possibly the heroine, was a single white female who resided in a doorman building in some Gotham-like city. And she observed more than once (this may have had something to with the tome's so-called theme) as she got in the elevator to reach her bachelorette pad after the usual 9 to 5 way to make a living, that the doorman's voice was the last she would be hearing until the morrow (when inevitably his would be the first she would hear in the morning.) It struck me as poignant at the time I read it, and has stuck with me though the rest of the plot hasn't. And I wonder if the notion of a relative stranger being the last person you interact with on a nightly basis is actually poignant, or just what we latter-day noncommittal career girls and boys inherited from our bra-burning foremothers and burned-out bacon-bringer-homer papas?
The concept is relatively simple to imagine. If you don't cohabitate with some significant other, it seems inevitable that most nights it will be someone not necessarily close to you whose dulcet voice will be the last you hear upon retiring. Even if you live at the Playboy Mansion with a bevy of buxom beauties just as blonde as you, or split the rent for a 2BR with some equally poor platonic pal, or are taking advantage of how "well" you get on with your parents by freeloading their basement apartment--unless you are suitably shacked up with some kind of lover, it will doubtless be the China King delivery boy or the hippie chick who sings for change on your corner who will serve as your final dose of human interaction whence the day is done. If you are lucky, it'll be a good friend who got you drunk then helped pour you into bed, or a nice crew of dog parents you encountered when out for the evening's final pee walk. But even luck runs out and if you live sans a partner in crime, you are likely to be lonesome tonight, and the next night, and the night after that.
Is that sad? I don't know, honestly. Sometimes it seems so to me. When I think of all the singletons in my vicinity, all of us feathered in our little nests night after night--making nutritionless meals for one, settling before the telly with a cold beer or with the papers and a cuppa, eventually climbing into bed and drifting off to dreamland--all within the sounds of silence. Even if you choose to live alone, even if you love your unfettered lifestyle, even if you'd rather be on your own for the right reasons than with someone for the wrong ones--there is something just......not, I think, how we are meant to unfurl this mortal coil. No man is an island sayeth the poet. And perhaps this endeth the lesson.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Baby You Can Drive My Car
This morning my car wouldn't start.
This was not a good way to start the day--or not start it, as it happened.
I am already in the land of bad car-ma, given that I have a copious leak in my power steering hose and four bald tires and I am sure in need of new brakes and rotors and lots of other expensive things. A new battery? Sure, add it to the list.
I have heard a theory that once one pays off a car, the money that had previously gone toward paying that bill every month now goes into maintenance. Since I couldn't really afford the bill each month as it was--and my credit is so poor that this is likely the last big ticket item I will ever be approved to purchase--there is no consolation in the fact that this, the first month out after finally paying off my sweet ride, I now need to find upwards of 1K in order to keep Esme running.
A problem inherent with this need of triple 0s is that the electric slide extends to my apartment, and a power bill largely left over from the cold winter months, a bill immense enough that the power company has informed me I gots to pay up or start living by candlelight. Tomorrow, as it happens. No current in the car, no current in the house, because I can't keep current on the monies. See how that works?
Another issue is that how can Phoebe and I move to my car a la Jewel circa the early '90s--since we are now officially one month behind in rent, this seem likely--if the car itself won't work? Can you park pretend SUVs in mobile home lots and build a porch off them? And if you can and you are me, who is footing that bill?
Every day since I paid off my car, I have fantasies when I drive by a used car lot about walking in and signing it over and exiting with some cold hard cash. Of course it wouldn't be enough cash to solve my world's problems, but for a minute it might be nice. But then I would have to walk home, and then quit my job since I wouldn't be able to get to work, and as aformentioned would face even more (if possible) certain eviction so really this is not a bright idea at the present moment.
So to conclude, in order to keep my decent job, the decent roof over my head, and the decent car to get me between these two places, I need to but immediately find a minimum of 1K. My last blog spoke of love and money. I feel in light of current (no pun intended) events, it bears pointing out that my car was named for one of my favorite stories--"For Esme With Love and Squalor."
Beep beep, beep beep, yeah.
This was not a good way to start the day--or not start it, as it happened.
I am already in the land of bad car-ma, given that I have a copious leak in my power steering hose and four bald tires and I am sure in need of new brakes and rotors and lots of other expensive things. A new battery? Sure, add it to the list.
I have heard a theory that once one pays off a car, the money that had previously gone toward paying that bill every month now goes into maintenance. Since I couldn't really afford the bill each month as it was--and my credit is so poor that this is likely the last big ticket item I will ever be approved to purchase--there is no consolation in the fact that this, the first month out after finally paying off my sweet ride, I now need to find upwards of 1K in order to keep Esme running.
A problem inherent with this need of triple 0s is that the electric slide extends to my apartment, and a power bill largely left over from the cold winter months, a bill immense enough that the power company has informed me I gots to pay up or start living by candlelight. Tomorrow, as it happens. No current in the car, no current in the house, because I can't keep current on the monies. See how that works?
Another issue is that how can Phoebe and I move to my car a la Jewel circa the early '90s--since we are now officially one month behind in rent, this seem likely--if the car itself won't work? Can you park pretend SUVs in mobile home lots and build a porch off them? And if you can and you are me, who is footing that bill?
Every day since I paid off my car, I have fantasies when I drive by a used car lot about walking in and signing it over and exiting with some cold hard cash. Of course it wouldn't be enough cash to solve my world's problems, but for a minute it might be nice. But then I would have to walk home, and then quit my job since I wouldn't be able to get to work, and as aformentioned would face even more (if possible) certain eviction so really this is not a bright idea at the present moment.
So to conclude, in order to keep my decent job, the decent roof over my head, and the decent car to get me between these two places, I need to but immediately find a minimum of 1K. My last blog spoke of love and money. I feel in light of current (no pun intended) events, it bears pointing out that my car was named for one of my favorite stories--"For Esme With Love and Squalor."
Beep beep, beep beep, yeah.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Love & Money
I am reading a terrible book called Love & Money. I began it on the beach and didn't like it. I came back from the beach and kept reading it even though I increasingly liked it less. I woke up today and gave it another go and my dislike almost turned into hatred. I am bored so silly by it that I am skipping pages just to get to the end. And I wonder when did I get so slammed by restless ennui that I cannot even put down a terrible book and say "hey you needn't finish this you know, it sucks and is an unproductive way to spend a gorgeous day." Nope, I just keep reading, hoping, waiting, for something interesting to happen to a crew of wholly unlikeable characters talking non-stop about legal issues that have to do with, you guessed it, love and money. Or at least this jaded author's view of same.
This book is so amoral--and not in a fun dishy way--that it leads me to reflect on topics better left unaddressed, such as what passes for "literature" these days, how hard is it be to write a novel and get it published, what kind of climate is this book reflecting? Thinking if art imitates life, and this is how Americans with love and money are living, maybe I am glad that I am poor in all respects.
As this endless summer draws to its unofficial close, I realize that I am very uneasy with myself. Not quite uncomfortable, but slightly apprehensive, faintly bewildered, a wee bit scared. Curious as to what happened to the goalposts one uses to define one's limits, to point out when we've gone from playing the field to sitting in the stands, to hiding under them, to standing entirely apart from them. I know that I haven't quite lost sight of the stadium yet, but I may be unwillingly travelling further away from it than I intended to. I am not even sure that this is true. Perhaps it is all a matter of perspective.
I am not unhappy. I am tired. Tired of filling in the gaps in my information with flowery prose, designed to conceal my ignorance of cold hard facts. My pencil is worn down and the eraser is a mere nub, but the blue book is unfinished and the bell hasn't rung yet, so I must keep on writing the essay. Again hoping, hoping for that bolt from the blue, for inspiration to strike, for the muse to take pity on my disorganized thoughts and translate them into a coherent tale of derring-do, to get me that much-needed A to send my GPA to its all-time high.
It worries me that maybe I don't even know what it is I want from myself, hence the ever-shifting goalposts that make it difficult to ascertain whether I am spectator or player, sidelines or halftime show. Lately I feel like I am in pieces rather than the whole. Here I am fine, today I am motivated, tomorrow I will accomplish this, last week I did that, and five years ago I was, if not quite whole, wholly different.
One of my cast-in-iron goalposts has always been these mile markers. To breathe deep, to take stock, to reflect on the good and the bad and the ugly. Not to wallow in remembrance but to energize for the days to come. Sometimes these anniversaries equal all or nothing at all. I have met them with laughter and with tears and with a casual shrug. This particular epoch seems very strange by comparison to the hundreds upon hundreds I have been know to observe, if only with my own private rituals.
Because, different I can handle. Better I certainly wish for. Worse bites the big one. But half a decade to show for all my efforts, and I find today, in an ironical twist, that I sit here in the sad quiet forcing myself to read an epoynomous tome that defines for me without a doubt that was then, this is now. And yet I have to hang in there to see hw it all turns out.
Off to finish this piece of crap.
This book is so amoral--and not in a fun dishy way--that it leads me to reflect on topics better left unaddressed, such as what passes for "literature" these days, how hard is it be to write a novel and get it published, what kind of climate is this book reflecting? Thinking if art imitates life, and this is how Americans with love and money are living, maybe I am glad that I am poor in all respects.
As this endless summer draws to its unofficial close, I realize that I am very uneasy with myself. Not quite uncomfortable, but slightly apprehensive, faintly bewildered, a wee bit scared. Curious as to what happened to the goalposts one uses to define one's limits, to point out when we've gone from playing the field to sitting in the stands, to hiding under them, to standing entirely apart from them. I know that I haven't quite lost sight of the stadium yet, but I may be unwillingly travelling further away from it than I intended to. I am not even sure that this is true. Perhaps it is all a matter of perspective.
I am not unhappy. I am tired. Tired of filling in the gaps in my information with flowery prose, designed to conceal my ignorance of cold hard facts. My pencil is worn down and the eraser is a mere nub, but the blue book is unfinished and the bell hasn't rung yet, so I must keep on writing the essay. Again hoping, hoping for that bolt from the blue, for inspiration to strike, for the muse to take pity on my disorganized thoughts and translate them into a coherent tale of derring-do, to get me that much-needed A to send my GPA to its all-time high.
It worries me that maybe I don't even know what it is I want from myself, hence the ever-shifting goalposts that make it difficult to ascertain whether I am spectator or player, sidelines or halftime show. Lately I feel like I am in pieces rather than the whole. Here I am fine, today I am motivated, tomorrow I will accomplish this, last week I did that, and five years ago I was, if not quite whole, wholly different.
One of my cast-in-iron goalposts has always been these mile markers. To breathe deep, to take stock, to reflect on the good and the bad and the ugly. Not to wallow in remembrance but to energize for the days to come. Sometimes these anniversaries equal all or nothing at all. I have met them with laughter and with tears and with a casual shrug. This particular epoch seems very strange by comparison to the hundreds upon hundreds I have been know to observe, if only with my own private rituals.
Because, different I can handle. Better I certainly wish for. Worse bites the big one. But half a decade to show for all my efforts, and I find today, in an ironical twist, that I sit here in the sad quiet forcing myself to read an epoynomous tome that defines for me without a doubt that was then, this is now. And yet I have to hang in there to see hw it all turns out.
Off to finish this piece of crap.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
The Girlie Show
Quite a few years back, there was this crazy sensation called "The Rules" which was based on a book penned by two lollipop heads who assumed that all other women wanted in life was to marry rich. It was touted that Carolyn Bessette followed the basic tenets of these restrictions in order to land JFK Jr.--not returning his calls, being unavailable more than available, becoming the Bergdorfiest of the Bergdorf blondes. The book so far as I recall offered no advice on what to do once you had your white wedding, or how to be "unavailable" after the fact to paparazzo, or how to refuse when your hobbling hubby insisted on flying you and yours around in his Cessna sans flight plan. Things worked out pretty bad for Carolyn in the end, just like they did in Camelot. I don't think there has been a where-are-they-now special about the other case studies, those ladies who fervently followed the rules and found their prince only to find out he actually was a frog of the toadiest proportions.
"The Rules" have fallen out of favor by 2010, and with good reason. Bridget Jones helped, as did the Ya-Ya Sisterhood--disguised as chick-lit, these books let a woman know that it was okay to want to be coupled but to fail at every turn toward matrimony simply by being herself. That good friends and a bottle of wine sometimes were better than fourth-finger, left-hand committment. That being a thoroughly modern Millie meant belonging to an ancient tribe of goddesses who didn't need men to fulfill her--but who definitely wanted gents around whenever the mood struck. But never to the exclusion of her own sex.
I would like to pen a book for women that assumes that women want less to land a man than to win and keep a top place within the sisterhood. If half of all marriages end in divorce, what are the stats on break-ups between two gal pals? And how can we prevent the ladies who love to lunch together from throwing tables at each other and telling tales out of school to irreparable damage? The fairer sex have enough problems to contend with than to create drama within their own ranks, and yet we do it all the time. In my innocence I imagine this has everything to do with never being taught the real rules, the ones that those lucky enough to be born with a vagina ought to have been schooled in since birth. So, let me impart some laws to live by for the ladies, in no particular order.
RULE #1. Distrust the chick who boasts that she gets along better with men than women. This femme fatale has zero understanding of herself and even less for you, her lady-in-waiting. One gravitates toward certain people in life, and their sex has little or nothing to do with it. Being the cool girl that all the dudes like and all the girls allegedly despise makes you public enemy number one to the sisterhood. It's 2010 for crissake, we live in a world populated by gay marriage and drag queens and Brandi Chastain. Tomboys don't have to grow up to be bull dykes or transform into swans in high school. You can join a hen party knitting circle on Sundays and spend Fridays drinking ballers under the table. You needn't eschew the company of women because you just get along better with boys, whther it is because you think you are drama-free, or grew up in a house full of brothers, or don't wear makeup. You can actually make nice with members of both sexes and be quite happy and fulfilled. Stick with just the one and you run the risk of waking up one day in need of tea and sympathy and finding only dirty socks and empty pizza boxes--or the other way around. It's no way to live. Enjoy your girlfriends, and their quirks. Trust them with your secrets and listen in turn to theirs.
RULE #2. Boyfriends come and go, but friends are forever. Oddly enough it seems there are actually women out there who never heard this old axiom, or who like to pretend they haven't. We all hope we'll settle down with our best friend, and if we are straight females we suppose this will be a human of the male persuasion. But whoever this buddy-boy ends up being, he will never take the place of your best gal pal. So here's a little bit of sisterly advice. Do not engage in relations of any sort with someone your friend has been involved with. Ever. No ifs, and, or buts; no refunds; no change of heart. Unless she rents an airplane and skywrites for all the world to see that she is a-ok with you shagging her ex, she isn't. And she is way more important to you in the long run than he will ever be. Because it isn't just her friendship you will be ruining--it is any friendships you have going forward that will be dead in the water before you leave the harbor on the Sloop Jane B. Even with express permission to rekindle her old flame with your own matches, be careful. It tends to be in poor taste, if nothing else. I would suggest if you do gain her blessing have it signed, sealed and delivered in menstrual blood. It is a big world out there, surely you can find someone to bed who hasn't previously been inside your girl. Even the casual hookup can have its ramifications here. It is far easier than to turn off your siren song when in the vicinity of her ex-whatever than to deal with the record screeching to a halt when the two of you enter the room in defiance of this very important rule. Class goes a long way in the sisterhood.
RULE #3. Should you choose to break RULE #2, accept the consequences; meaning, get out of Dodge. Not on a mini-break, but on a permamenent relocation. Once you have chosen a guy over your girl, you live there now. You no longer should show your face in her town. Go live your life and be as happy as presumably you set out to be when betraying your friend, just do it far far away from her and hers. This is the price you pay for laughably following your heart. Don't expect forgiveness and don't expect forgiveness to mean you may remain in the fold. You wanted to lay down with lions, you no longer can be trusted with the lambs. Hurting someone may be inevitable in life, humilating them is a choice. Don't make that choice to a sister.
RULE #4. Put as much time into maintaining your female friendships as you do your family's. Just like sometimes you can't have a headache in bed for the fourth time that week, you can't ignore a request to hang out and listen to a friend's whining over a lost boy, a lost job, a lost opportunity. And take the time to express your own fears and gossip and happiness. We put so much emphasis on couples. There are scores of self-help books dealing with relationships--how to find lasting ones, and how to maintain them, and how to keep love alive, and how to stay united with our significant others in the face of everything that comes down the pike. But unless we look to fiction, there are few tomes on keeping your friendships not just intact but in full bloom. Heads up, it takes work girls, just as much work if not more than running your household or parenting your kids or making sure you have date nights with your menfolk. You don't presumably, especially after a certain age, share a home with your girlfriends. You aren't responsible for each other's well-being or bank accounts. You do not have the recognition of church and state that binds you together in the eyes of the world. You do, however, have a bond that goes way back to primordial waters and deserves to be cherished 'til death do you part. Stay in touch. Have fun. Make the effort. Take the call. And do not assume that just because you know you have done nothing active to hurt your friendship, that it can't be hurt just as much by passivity. Be actually there for your girls, not just in passing thought but in waking deed. You know how every time you have a night out with a pal, or all the girls, everyone exclaims "it has been too long!" and "this was so much fun!" and "let's not wait so long until we do it again!" and then, you don't see hide nor hair of each other for a long stretch afterwards? Don't wait. Do hang.
RULE #5. Learn when to tell her she looks fat and when not to. For example, that dress she wants to wear to a big event that will have 200+ people staring at her rolls? She needs to know it is empire-waist time. That bikini she somehow pulls off even though she looks nothing like Gisele? She needs to know she is woman enough to wear it proud. Because you are proud of her. This is actually a very important rule. Friends don't let friends look bad. Friends do think their posse is the best-looking one around. Friends know when to find that balance.
At my beautiful flesh-and-blood sister's wedding, I gave a toast that quoted the lines from "Sisters", our favorite "White Christmas" song. It was especially apt for me and my little bit, whom I have known and adored her whole life. It is also the soundtrack to these rules, for the sisters who share DNA as well as those who chose to pledge each other's sorority in childhood, in high school and college, in their 20s and their 30s and whenever the mood strikes. Those who see us know that not a thing can come between us.
'Cause with a little help from your friends, and these rules, the sisterhood simply rocks.
"The Rules" have fallen out of favor by 2010, and with good reason. Bridget Jones helped, as did the Ya-Ya Sisterhood--disguised as chick-lit, these books let a woman know that it was okay to want to be coupled but to fail at every turn toward matrimony simply by being herself. That good friends and a bottle of wine sometimes were better than fourth-finger, left-hand committment. That being a thoroughly modern Millie meant belonging to an ancient tribe of goddesses who didn't need men to fulfill her--but who definitely wanted gents around whenever the mood struck. But never to the exclusion of her own sex.
I would like to pen a book for women that assumes that women want less to land a man than to win and keep a top place within the sisterhood. If half of all marriages end in divorce, what are the stats on break-ups between two gal pals? And how can we prevent the ladies who love to lunch together from throwing tables at each other and telling tales out of school to irreparable damage? The fairer sex have enough problems to contend with than to create drama within their own ranks, and yet we do it all the time. In my innocence I imagine this has everything to do with never being taught the real rules, the ones that those lucky enough to be born with a vagina ought to have been schooled in since birth. So, let me impart some laws to live by for the ladies, in no particular order.
RULE #1. Distrust the chick who boasts that she gets along better with men than women. This femme fatale has zero understanding of herself and even less for you, her lady-in-waiting. One gravitates toward certain people in life, and their sex has little or nothing to do with it. Being the cool girl that all the dudes like and all the girls allegedly despise makes you public enemy number one to the sisterhood. It's 2010 for crissake, we live in a world populated by gay marriage and drag queens and Brandi Chastain. Tomboys don't have to grow up to be bull dykes or transform into swans in high school. You can join a hen party knitting circle on Sundays and spend Fridays drinking ballers under the table. You needn't eschew the company of women because you just get along better with boys, whther it is because you think you are drama-free, or grew up in a house full of brothers, or don't wear makeup. You can actually make nice with members of both sexes and be quite happy and fulfilled. Stick with just the one and you run the risk of waking up one day in need of tea and sympathy and finding only dirty socks and empty pizza boxes--or the other way around. It's no way to live. Enjoy your girlfriends, and their quirks. Trust them with your secrets and listen in turn to theirs.
RULE #2. Boyfriends come and go, but friends are forever. Oddly enough it seems there are actually women out there who never heard this old axiom, or who like to pretend they haven't. We all hope we'll settle down with our best friend, and if we are straight females we suppose this will be a human of the male persuasion. But whoever this buddy-boy ends up being, he will never take the place of your best gal pal. So here's a little bit of sisterly advice. Do not engage in relations of any sort with someone your friend has been involved with. Ever. No ifs, and, or buts; no refunds; no change of heart. Unless she rents an airplane and skywrites for all the world to see that she is a-ok with you shagging her ex, she isn't. And she is way more important to you in the long run than he will ever be. Because it isn't just her friendship you will be ruining--it is any friendships you have going forward that will be dead in the water before you leave the harbor on the Sloop Jane B. Even with express permission to rekindle her old flame with your own matches, be careful. It tends to be in poor taste, if nothing else. I would suggest if you do gain her blessing have it signed, sealed and delivered in menstrual blood. It is a big world out there, surely you can find someone to bed who hasn't previously been inside your girl. Even the casual hookup can have its ramifications here. It is far easier than to turn off your siren song when in the vicinity of her ex-whatever than to deal with the record screeching to a halt when the two of you enter the room in defiance of this very important rule. Class goes a long way in the sisterhood.
RULE #3. Should you choose to break RULE #2, accept the consequences; meaning, get out of Dodge. Not on a mini-break, but on a permamenent relocation. Once you have chosen a guy over your girl, you live there now. You no longer should show your face in her town. Go live your life and be as happy as presumably you set out to be when betraying your friend, just do it far far away from her and hers. This is the price you pay for laughably following your heart. Don't expect forgiveness and don't expect forgiveness to mean you may remain in the fold. You wanted to lay down with lions, you no longer can be trusted with the lambs. Hurting someone may be inevitable in life, humilating them is a choice. Don't make that choice to a sister.
RULE #4. Put as much time into maintaining your female friendships as you do your family's. Just like sometimes you can't have a headache in bed for the fourth time that week, you can't ignore a request to hang out and listen to a friend's whining over a lost boy, a lost job, a lost opportunity. And take the time to express your own fears and gossip and happiness. We put so much emphasis on couples. There are scores of self-help books dealing with relationships--how to find lasting ones, and how to maintain them, and how to keep love alive, and how to stay united with our significant others in the face of everything that comes down the pike. But unless we look to fiction, there are few tomes on keeping your friendships not just intact but in full bloom. Heads up, it takes work girls, just as much work if not more than running your household or parenting your kids or making sure you have date nights with your menfolk. You don't presumably, especially after a certain age, share a home with your girlfriends. You aren't responsible for each other's well-being or bank accounts. You do not have the recognition of church and state that binds you together in the eyes of the world. You do, however, have a bond that goes way back to primordial waters and deserves to be cherished 'til death do you part. Stay in touch. Have fun. Make the effort. Take the call. And do not assume that just because you know you have done nothing active to hurt your friendship, that it can't be hurt just as much by passivity. Be actually there for your girls, not just in passing thought but in waking deed. You know how every time you have a night out with a pal, or all the girls, everyone exclaims "it has been too long!" and "this was so much fun!" and "let's not wait so long until we do it again!" and then, you don't see hide nor hair of each other for a long stretch afterwards? Don't wait. Do hang.
RULE #5. Learn when to tell her she looks fat and when not to. For example, that dress she wants to wear to a big event that will have 200+ people staring at her rolls? She needs to know it is empire-waist time. That bikini she somehow pulls off even though she looks nothing like Gisele? She needs to know she is woman enough to wear it proud. Because you are proud of her. This is actually a very important rule. Friends don't let friends look bad. Friends do think their posse is the best-looking one around. Friends know when to find that balance.
At my beautiful flesh-and-blood sister's wedding, I gave a toast that quoted the lines from "Sisters", our favorite "White Christmas" song. It was especially apt for me and my little bit, whom I have known and adored her whole life. It is also the soundtrack to these rules, for the sisters who share DNA as well as those who chose to pledge each other's sorority in childhood, in high school and college, in their 20s and their 30s and whenever the mood strikes. Those who see us know that not a thing can come between us.
'Cause with a little help from your friends, and these rules, the sisterhood simply rocks.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Fences
Here's what's up in the days of the moon half-full, mind half-gone. It occurred to me this morning that I have spent a lifetime pretending everything was alright. It occurred to me because I got sucked into (and yes I blush) an episode of "If You Really Knew Me" on MTV yesterday. In this show, it seems a team of 20-something do-gooder enthusiasts show up at a typical crappy American high school and force various stereotypical groups to interact with each other through games and sharing so that each self-absorbed teen can see that everyone has problems, and so we should all love each other, and be friends. It is edited so that there isn't a dry eye in the house as kids admit to being bullied and knocked-up and pushed around. And at its conclusion there is more empathy for one's fellow pupils and the hope that this kind of radical outside-the-box thinking will endure and this generation (Z, is it already? how time does fly) will change the world.
Now since I do not have the benefit of just starting out in the world of the nearly-grown-up and being forced to hang out in the school gym all day telling my innermost secrets to frenemies, I merely reflect on myself and how right at this moment I done made a real mess of things, and yet I continue to give the complete wrong impression to everyone and my mother that this is so.
It is said that ACOAs have no idea what normal is. I will counter that in this day and age especially, it is difficult if not impossible to define "normal." There is no one way to lead a life. Even in the subset of certain definitive lifestyles there are different ways of going about one's bizness; however, I think what is meant by the 12-steppers is that when you grow up in an addicted household you are really living on the edge of having not one fucking clue what is ever going to happen and you don't even have any precepts of what oughta be happening, and growth of a personal nature is generally not an option since you haven't that luxury. You have to roll with the punches, and follow rules that most kids wouldn't know existed, and above all keep up the pretense of living a life worth living when you are not within the walls of your domicile. And sometimes, perhaps incurring even worse damage, when you are in the bosom of your family. There is much to be gained from such adaptability, such self-reliance. It's your story and you are sticking to it.
The big problems arise when you are old enough to vote, and realize that you must mimic what those around you do in order to fit in at college or a job. You don't show up in college with a definitive sense of self because you were never allowed to develop one, so you observe the behaviors of those around you and in a typically hideous Frankenstein's monster way, stitch up some of their behaviors with your own fight-or-flight responses and the gut instincts you always knew existed beneath the daily crazy you endured. Again you exhibit typical ACOA behavior by trying to please all of the people all of the time, and watching your few acts of rebellion bring crushing punishments down upon you.
And then for better or worse, off you go then into a lifetime of confusion and misunderstandings. Who cares, so what? It doesn't mean you can't be happy and successful and fulfilled, that you won't eventually figure out actual likes and dislikes and rights from wrongs. But the tricky part is the self-doubt that all of it is just an act. That without meaning to you have created this persona who is not the person you are, nor the one you set out to be, and when the chips start to fall you are quite possibly totally fucked because you have gotten so good at looking well-adjusted, or crazy-overdramatic, or in love with misery, or a busy bee, or whoever you have been when relating to a certain group at a certain time. And really that helps nobody, least of all yourself.
Interesting to me at least. And to be clear not in a pity party way, in a holy shit this all sucks right now way.
Maybe VH-1 can make a show for 30something me-s who nobody knows.
Now since I do not have the benefit of just starting out in the world of the nearly-grown-up and being forced to hang out in the school gym all day telling my innermost secrets to frenemies, I merely reflect on myself and how right at this moment I done made a real mess of things, and yet I continue to give the complete wrong impression to everyone and my mother that this is so.
It is said that ACOAs have no idea what normal is. I will counter that in this day and age especially, it is difficult if not impossible to define "normal." There is no one way to lead a life. Even in the subset of certain definitive lifestyles there are different ways of going about one's bizness; however, I think what is meant by the 12-steppers is that when you grow up in an addicted household you are really living on the edge of having not one fucking clue what is ever going to happen and you don't even have any precepts of what oughta be happening, and growth of a personal nature is generally not an option since you haven't that luxury. You have to roll with the punches, and follow rules that most kids wouldn't know existed, and above all keep up the pretense of living a life worth living when you are not within the walls of your domicile. And sometimes, perhaps incurring even worse damage, when you are in the bosom of your family. There is much to be gained from such adaptability, such self-reliance. It's your story and you are sticking to it.
The big problems arise when you are old enough to vote, and realize that you must mimic what those around you do in order to fit in at college or a job. You don't show up in college with a definitive sense of self because you were never allowed to develop one, so you observe the behaviors of those around you and in a typically hideous Frankenstein's monster way, stitch up some of their behaviors with your own fight-or-flight responses and the gut instincts you always knew existed beneath the daily crazy you endured. Again you exhibit typical ACOA behavior by trying to please all of the people all of the time, and watching your few acts of rebellion bring crushing punishments down upon you.
And then for better or worse, off you go then into a lifetime of confusion and misunderstandings. Who cares, so what? It doesn't mean you can't be happy and successful and fulfilled, that you won't eventually figure out actual likes and dislikes and rights from wrongs. But the tricky part is the self-doubt that all of it is just an act. That without meaning to you have created this persona who is not the person you are, nor the one you set out to be, and when the chips start to fall you are quite possibly totally fucked because you have gotten so good at looking well-adjusted, or crazy-overdramatic, or in love with misery, or a busy bee, or whoever you have been when relating to a certain group at a certain time. And really that helps nobody, least of all yourself.
Interesting to me at least. And to be clear not in a pity party way, in a holy shit this all sucks right now way.
Maybe VH-1 can make a show for 30something me-s who nobody knows.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Bugsy
As ever I wonder, why? Why would one deliberately hurt someone else, someone you profess to love and care about? It is not that hard to be happy, sure. It is more dramatic to be sad so I get that; however, it is even less hard to not fuck over others. There is drama there as well, but the kind that leaves you feeling in need of a shower. And in this case, cleanliness is not next to godliness. So when you do something that is forbidden, is it just because the thrill of maybe getting caught pumps up the volume of an otherwise muted relationship? And if that isn't all there is and a bag of chips, if the balance is so perfected and the scales are weighted so that the loss is worth the gain, then why lie about it? And a lie of omission is just as shitty as an out-and-out falsehood. Possibly worse.
This goes back to why I don't mess around with people I know in the end I won't care about. And maybe I am alone in this. But I like this part of me, who has weathered many storms and yet still hasn't forgotten how it feels to be the only person left on the strip during the hurricane. Don't help me batten down my hatches only to tear through yourself and leave water and mold and total destruction in your wake. And don't come back through town when the sun is shining and even the ruins look fab.
Words are not said to speak as loud as actions. Guess that is a cliche that rings true. I am certain I am not the only one who gets it. But this time, it odesn't matter, because no one else is here.
Why don't you run outside and jerk yourself a soda.
This goes back to why I don't mess around with people I know in the end I won't care about. And maybe I am alone in this. But I like this part of me, who has weathered many storms and yet still hasn't forgotten how it feels to be the only person left on the strip during the hurricane. Don't help me batten down my hatches only to tear through yourself and leave water and mold and total destruction in your wake. And don't come back through town when the sun is shining and even the ruins look fab.
Words are not said to speak as loud as actions. Guess that is a cliche that rings true. I am certain I am not the only one who gets it. But this time, it odesn't matter, because no one else is here.
Why don't you run outside and jerk yourself a soda.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
How will I know?
Is someone always someone else's one?
Sometimes I wonder who wrote the book of love, or lust, or one-night stands. That anoynomous author is one twisted sister, whoever she is, but we all keep reading--the lonely, the lovelorn, the beloved.
In this day and age we have therapists and self-help books and The Real Housewives of New Jersey to guide us through the rocky terrain of relationships. For better or worse. We see all sorts of crazytown marriages and hook-ups and all that comes of this overexposure to how the othe halves live is that we are all too smart for our own good when it comes to choosing a someone to watch over us. And we are all too dumb to say what we mean and mean what we say when exchanging three little words. So mass hysteria ensues. And most troubling of all, we know damn well that relationships are hard work--but we miss the point that really they are kind of easy.
No man is an island. You didn't come into this world on your own steam. The second you popped out of the womb at least one other person was in the room with you. Is that what the Oedipus and Electra complexes are all about, not so much sicko Hamlet-style confusion but this innate need to immediately connect with a hand, a breast, a mouth? To find anew the very reason for your existence and drift into a dream, safe and warm and fed, to the strains of a dixie lullaby?
I have a sneaking suspicion that like in an arranged marriage, one can find a kind of contentment with just about anyone else. There are of course mitigating factors. Don't get with someone who beats you or shoots up in the baby's room or is butt-ugly and unemployed. But in reality, everyone has to adjust to being a two where there was once just a one. And is it really all that difficult to do so with someone you chose to get caught up with in the first place, rather than just spin around the barn in some insane square dance of podner-switching? Is it really of utmost importance to always look like Goldilocks for the porridge that is just right?
It's tricky. When someone professes undying love for you and you don't share or appreciate the sacrifice, does that make that person wrong? Or are you the one who failed the class? How far is too far to go? We all make the same mistakes. We confuse wanting to jump someone's bones with eternal devotion. We turn our noses up at a perfectly good match because we don't feel weak in the knees every second of every day and later regret it when said mate belongs to someone else, and is happy. We bail on partnerships of long-standing because we think we need to know what love is in order to do it better. We are too young to settle down and we got together when we were too immature and we realized what we truly wanted during a mid-life crisis and we didn't think about the ever after that comes after happy. So divorce rates are high--but still we keep taking the plunge.
And what happens when you find youself head over heels for a certain someone who isn't returning your calls? What is the difference between knowing why the caged bird sings and turning yourself into stalker jailbait? How the hell do two people ever manage to be in sync long enough to say I do? That is the B-side that never made it on the airwaves.
In relationships, is every man out for himself? Do the women and children always come first? How the hell does it all work. It says so in this book of love, or lust, or one-night stands that ours is a love that's true. But are we reading the same edition?
Sometimes I wonder who wrote the book of love, or lust, or one-night stands. That anoynomous author is one twisted sister, whoever she is, but we all keep reading--the lonely, the lovelorn, the beloved.
In this day and age we have therapists and self-help books and The Real Housewives of New Jersey to guide us through the rocky terrain of relationships. For better or worse. We see all sorts of crazytown marriages and hook-ups and all that comes of this overexposure to how the othe halves live is that we are all too smart for our own good when it comes to choosing a someone to watch over us. And we are all too dumb to say what we mean and mean what we say when exchanging three little words. So mass hysteria ensues. And most troubling of all, we know damn well that relationships are hard work--but we miss the point that really they are kind of easy.
No man is an island. You didn't come into this world on your own steam. The second you popped out of the womb at least one other person was in the room with you. Is that what the Oedipus and Electra complexes are all about, not so much sicko Hamlet-style confusion but this innate need to immediately connect with a hand, a breast, a mouth? To find anew the very reason for your existence and drift into a dream, safe and warm and fed, to the strains of a dixie lullaby?
I have a sneaking suspicion that like in an arranged marriage, one can find a kind of contentment with just about anyone else. There are of course mitigating factors. Don't get with someone who beats you or shoots up in the baby's room or is butt-ugly and unemployed. But in reality, everyone has to adjust to being a two where there was once just a one. And is it really all that difficult to do so with someone you chose to get caught up with in the first place, rather than just spin around the barn in some insane square dance of podner-switching? Is it really of utmost importance to always look like Goldilocks for the porridge that is just right?
It's tricky. When someone professes undying love for you and you don't share or appreciate the sacrifice, does that make that person wrong? Or are you the one who failed the class? How far is too far to go? We all make the same mistakes. We confuse wanting to jump someone's bones with eternal devotion. We turn our noses up at a perfectly good match because we don't feel weak in the knees every second of every day and later regret it when said mate belongs to someone else, and is happy. We bail on partnerships of long-standing because we think we need to know what love is in order to do it better. We are too young to settle down and we got together when we were too immature and we realized what we truly wanted during a mid-life crisis and we didn't think about the ever after that comes after happy. So divorce rates are high--but still we keep taking the plunge.
And what happens when you find youself head over heels for a certain someone who isn't returning your calls? What is the difference between knowing why the caged bird sings and turning yourself into stalker jailbait? How the hell do two people ever manage to be in sync long enough to say I do? That is the B-side that never made it on the airwaves.
In relationships, is every man out for himself? Do the women and children always come first? How the hell does it all work. It says so in this book of love, or lust, or one-night stands that ours is a love that's true. But are we reading the same edition?
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
anything's possible
When the mountain wouldn't come to Muhammed, Muhammed is said to have gone to the mountain. This was, of course, back in the day when it was probably easier for M-Diddy to hit the road. He wouldn't have needed a passport, and terrorism hadn't been invented yet, and no one thought twice about walking 500 miles (and 500 more) just to be the prophet who showed up at your door. Kicking it old school, and to boot this is a guy who had 13 wives. So maybe there is something to be said for this approach.
Nowadays, being a traveling wo-man is a lot more complicated, and a lot more expensive. One has to decide if one is Muhammed or the mountain. Do you leave Mecca for some funky cold Medina, or do you wait for the divine messenger to hike on over to you? Tough call.
Why in this modern age, can't I just hop aboard a magic carpet ride, to float me off for 1001 nights with my own personal sheik of Araby? But instead of divine intervention, all I have are wishful thoughts that want to bridge the Gulf of Araby--between what is, what is, what is--and what can never be? Truly there is nothing we wouldn't give to cross this great divide.
Please can I get an a-men?
Nowadays, being a traveling wo-man is a lot more complicated, and a lot more expensive. One has to decide if one is Muhammed or the mountain. Do you leave Mecca for some funky cold Medina, or do you wait for the divine messenger to hike on over to you? Tough call.
Why in this modern age, can't I just hop aboard a magic carpet ride, to float me off for 1001 nights with my own personal sheik of Araby? But instead of divine intervention, all I have are wishful thoughts that want to bridge the Gulf of Araby--between what is, what is, what is--and what can never be? Truly there is nothing we wouldn't give to cross this great divide.
Please can I get an a-men?
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Saturday, August 7, 2010
we're heading for a wedding
Another summer Saturday aches on, to be culminated with some more wedded bliss between two very awesome people. It is my second solo wedding appearance of 2010 and while I do not imagine it will have the same funny and fucked-up outcome of the last, it hopefully will be a fine time had by all.
I have come to wonder of late if I may ever have a wedding of my own, be it a quickie Vegas drive-thru chapel deal or somber city hall affair or a big white church event with all the trimmings. I took for granted all my life that I would walk down some sort of aisle at some point and say I do and embark upon a bicycle built for two for all the days of my life.
Of late it occurs to me that this may just not happen. Ever.
Not everyone gets married. And hell, I know more than most that happily ever after is hard to come by. I just never fully realized that it would be this damn hard. Relationships are tricky things. I have gone into them thoughtlessly, I have gone into them thoughtfully--but in the end it doesn't matter which door I use, because the mere fact that I am starting up a something with a someone defines a natural disaster waiting to happen.
Because the fault lines and mass destruction and rebuilding that follow the earthquakes that are break-ups change you infinitely. Your heart does go on but it's not the same heart. You suddenly have hairline cracks on the surface, and deep fissures beneath, and strata upon strata of mess to climb over when you meet someone new. And the more your being feels the tremors that may or may not send you sliding into the sea, the more you wonder is it even worth it to fight Mother Nature.
When my faux-marriage ended, I clawed for air against the inevitable in large part because I didn't want to not be me anymore. Didn't want to lose not so much the trappings of a comfily coupled existence but the deep-rooted layers of my whole being. I didn't want the shift in plates that would inevitably follow the cracking open of my little eath-self. I knew a change was gonna come and I was pissed off because I liked me just fine the way I was, and I just didn't want to have to deal with it all and become a different version of myself.
And in the end that is exactly what happened, of course. I was just....different. Some of my buildings had withstood the quake, some were destroyed beyond repair, some bigger and better and stronger ones were erected out of the smoldering ruins. And when the next one hit I knew, at least, how it would go down though I couldn't predict when. Compared to the big one the next registered smaller on the surface scale, but bigger in internal Richter. Because I knew from experience how tough it was to sift through the ashes and reconstruct myself out of the rubble.
So when I am faced with more matrimony that is so not mine, I reflect that maybe I should move away from myself, to this non-volcanic place where there are people willing to stand together before their gods and their families and their friends and commit to living in a land where there is less chance of seismic waves exploding beneath their feet. But you can't get there from here, and wherever you go there you are, so the aftershocks keep on reverberating through me no matter how far from the ring of fire I wander.
I have come to wonder of late if I may ever have a wedding of my own, be it a quickie Vegas drive-thru chapel deal or somber city hall affair or a big white church event with all the trimmings. I took for granted all my life that I would walk down some sort of aisle at some point and say I do and embark upon a bicycle built for two for all the days of my life.
Of late it occurs to me that this may just not happen. Ever.
Not everyone gets married. And hell, I know more than most that happily ever after is hard to come by. I just never fully realized that it would be this damn hard. Relationships are tricky things. I have gone into them thoughtlessly, I have gone into them thoughtfully--but in the end it doesn't matter which door I use, because the mere fact that I am starting up a something with a someone defines a natural disaster waiting to happen.
Because the fault lines and mass destruction and rebuilding that follow the earthquakes that are break-ups change you infinitely. Your heart does go on but it's not the same heart. You suddenly have hairline cracks on the surface, and deep fissures beneath, and strata upon strata of mess to climb over when you meet someone new. And the more your being feels the tremors that may or may not send you sliding into the sea, the more you wonder is it even worth it to fight Mother Nature.
When my faux-marriage ended, I clawed for air against the inevitable in large part because I didn't want to not be me anymore. Didn't want to lose not so much the trappings of a comfily coupled existence but the deep-rooted layers of my whole being. I didn't want the shift in plates that would inevitably follow the cracking open of my little eath-self. I knew a change was gonna come and I was pissed off because I liked me just fine the way I was, and I just didn't want to have to deal with it all and become a different version of myself.
And in the end that is exactly what happened, of course. I was just....different. Some of my buildings had withstood the quake, some were destroyed beyond repair, some bigger and better and stronger ones were erected out of the smoldering ruins. And when the next one hit I knew, at least, how it would go down though I couldn't predict when. Compared to the big one the next registered smaller on the surface scale, but bigger in internal Richter. Because I knew from experience how tough it was to sift through the ashes and reconstruct myself out of the rubble.
So when I am faced with more matrimony that is so not mine, I reflect that maybe I should move away from myself, to this non-volcanic place where there are people willing to stand together before their gods and their families and their friends and commit to living in a land where there is less chance of seismic waves exploding beneath their feet. But you can't get there from here, and wherever you go there you are, so the aftershocks keep on reverberating through me no matter how far from the ring of fire I wander.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Tell me everything's gonna be alright
What, exactly, is success? And how are Gen Xers supposed to achieve it even after they define it? These are some questions I am musing upon as I read up on old writings and consider my current affairs. I equate success with happiness. For me that sort of genuine happiness is best whipped up as a trifecta: when I am doing good work, when I am not broke and scared, and when I am in a sweet, sassy, sexy sort of partnership with someone who believes in me as well as in himself.
But I done lost my joie de vivre, and now I am not so sure that money can't buy me love, or as my mother so eloquently put it to me my entire broke-ass life "it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is a poor one."
Let's examine that little nugget of solid motherly advice for a sec. I don't think it is too easy to fall in love, period, and finances have never really entered into it for me anyway. Besides, when you are not to the manor born but rather to the South Philly born, that does tend to level the playing field a bit. The gap grows wider as you cruise through life based on your looks and your religious and ethnic backgrounds, your interests and activities and schooling and career choices. And suddenly you may just find yourself (don't tell mama) single, and trying on all fronts (art, ducats, menfolk), but not actually finding what you would define as success. The days are long but the nights are longer and you start to see, sorta kinda, why people settle. And you wonder if you ought to.
When I was in high school I was asked to do an exercise on "Happiness." The class was asked to take ten minutes and journal what we thought happiness was. Mine read "Happiness is me, some towheaded kids, some dogs, a big white house with a picket fence, and John F. Kenndy Jr, who is my husband." I cracked myself up with that one. And fact was, I kinda sorta meant it at the time, I was offended that the inimitably hot Father Bond had one word for me upon reading this little masterpiece, accompanied with a sexy sneer: "Shallow." In my defense I think it was the week he both stopped smoking and was told by the administration that he had to actually give us tests and grade them, but still. I wasn't shallow. I was hopeful. Which is a worse curse than the hex of being an artist.
(Not much) later in life, with things with John-John not quite working out as we had all hoped, I changed tack and decided that what I needed was a nice Jewish boy. Growing up I was pretty sure I actually was Jewish, especially the strange period where I looked like a blonde Anne Frank (followed by my many appearances as Gwyneth Paltrow's ugly kid sister) so it seemed a logical leap. At any rate, less than twenty-four hours upon my arrival at college, wearing my kinda sorta shiksa appeal on my sleeve, I fell truly madly deeply in love with one. My father's quote, delivered with a shake of his head, was "We send her to Catholic school for 15 years....so she can meet the one Jewish boy who attends her Jesuit school." (I believe I should have just capped the "J" words in that sentence for emphasis.) In my defense this mad college crush has developed into one of the best relationships I have ever had, though sadly it led to no glass-breaking under the huppah. No Hebrew school carpool for me or kugel by the dozen. Sigh. In the boy's defense he wasn't nor was his family actually practicing any kind of formal worship so those things probably wouldn't have happened anyway. And we would have killed each other anyway if the first four years of our on again/off again relationship was any indication, and now he is happily married to some other shiksa and they have a happy little dude out of the union. Mazel all around, really.
My next move was to play opposites attract. I think we are safe in blaming Paula Abdul for this one. I met a friend of my best friend one night and was hooked. He was so different from me. He didn't finish college. He was a master skateboarder and used to ride me around town on the pegs of his bike. He wore cute skate clothes and he was excited about everything (except when he smokem peace pipem) and he was a tall drink of water. Plus, he fucking adored me. He had decidedly working class origins. Being working class once removed myself, I figured I could hang. So I did hang--for about a decade. Which really had never been the plan, it just kind of happened. Though the years brought many quotes of varying hilarity from my parents, I think the sk8r boi himself gets the honors for this paragraph. "It's like I'm a hick dating a supermodel." Though he was actually a suburban kid and I am barely 5'5", we really couldn't ever get past this pronouncement. I also learned that like any good supermodel, I could effortlessly develop an eating disorder in the year that followed our nasty breakup. So, moving on.
For my next act, being an actor, I decided to go for one of the same. Talent begets talent and onstage things seemed pretty fireworky. Offstage they were damn pleasant. I wasn't looking to commit, I was actually having fun. All fun all the time. I felt like I had awoken from a nightmare only to find oh, that was just a bad dream, your real life actually isn't like that, so get out there and play ball! This is when I discovered that I like to have fun, and that my earlier affairs had perhaps lacked that crucial element all too often--being drenched as they were with pesky little buckets of teenage angst and playing house. So I was a little piqued that out of nowhere, the fun was done, and the teenage angst and playing house I thought I had left behind with my 20s was in fact how this little liasion was going to go down. I don't have a good quote for this section because by then I learned to keep my mouth shut to my adagey parents about my personal affairs, and the boy in question is a quiet type. We are still one of the best couples I know to date. Except we are not actually a couple. Sometimes I think that is very sad, and sometimes I think that is very good, and in general I think it is very incomprehensible. Not even in a bad heartbroken way, just in a strange confusing way that in the end brings us neither love nor money, and screwed up some career stuff along the way. It is what it is.
Which brings us to the summer of love, in which we don't know much but we do know "it is of the utmost important to lead off with a bang. And a grand finale later." We have delivered on the first. Fairly spactacularly on many levels, I might add. Let the good times roll! But then the temps climbed and rains came and the fireworks fizzled. So now we are eagerly awaiting the big finish. And looking back at the past has cleared up the settling issue. Since I am not on the Oregon Trail it is unlikely to happen. Cause even though we ain't got money, this Gen X girl believes that (somehow!) everything will bring a chain of love.
But I done lost my joie de vivre, and now I am not so sure that money can't buy me love, or as my mother so eloquently put it to me my entire broke-ass life "it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is a poor one."
Let's examine that little nugget of solid motherly advice for a sec. I don't think it is too easy to fall in love, period, and finances have never really entered into it for me anyway. Besides, when you are not to the manor born but rather to the South Philly born, that does tend to level the playing field a bit. The gap grows wider as you cruise through life based on your looks and your religious and ethnic backgrounds, your interests and activities and schooling and career choices. And suddenly you may just find yourself (don't tell mama) single, and trying on all fronts (art, ducats, menfolk), but not actually finding what you would define as success. The days are long but the nights are longer and you start to see, sorta kinda, why people settle. And you wonder if you ought to.
When I was in high school I was asked to do an exercise on "Happiness." The class was asked to take ten minutes and journal what we thought happiness was. Mine read "Happiness is me, some towheaded kids, some dogs, a big white house with a picket fence, and John F. Kenndy Jr, who is my husband." I cracked myself up with that one. And fact was, I kinda sorta meant it at the time, I was offended that the inimitably hot Father Bond had one word for me upon reading this little masterpiece, accompanied with a sexy sneer: "Shallow." In my defense I think it was the week he both stopped smoking and was told by the administration that he had to actually give us tests and grade them, but still. I wasn't shallow. I was hopeful. Which is a worse curse than the hex of being an artist.
(Not much) later in life, with things with John-John not quite working out as we had all hoped, I changed tack and decided that what I needed was a nice Jewish boy. Growing up I was pretty sure I actually was Jewish, especially the strange period where I looked like a blonde Anne Frank (followed by my many appearances as Gwyneth Paltrow's ugly kid sister) so it seemed a logical leap. At any rate, less than twenty-four hours upon my arrival at college, wearing my kinda sorta shiksa appeal on my sleeve, I fell truly madly deeply in love with one. My father's quote, delivered with a shake of his head, was "We send her to Catholic school for 15 years....so she can meet the one Jewish boy who attends her Jesuit school." (I believe I should have just capped the "J" words in that sentence for emphasis.) In my defense this mad college crush has developed into one of the best relationships I have ever had, though sadly it led to no glass-breaking under the huppah. No Hebrew school carpool for me or kugel by the dozen. Sigh. In the boy's defense he wasn't nor was his family actually practicing any kind of formal worship so those things probably wouldn't have happened anyway. And we would have killed each other anyway if the first four years of our on again/off again relationship was any indication, and now he is happily married to some other shiksa and they have a happy little dude out of the union. Mazel all around, really.
My next move was to play opposites attract. I think we are safe in blaming Paula Abdul for this one. I met a friend of my best friend one night and was hooked. He was so different from me. He didn't finish college. He was a master skateboarder and used to ride me around town on the pegs of his bike. He wore cute skate clothes and he was excited about everything (except when he smokem peace pipem) and he was a tall drink of water. Plus, he fucking adored me. He had decidedly working class origins. Being working class once removed myself, I figured I could hang. So I did hang--for about a decade. Which really had never been the plan, it just kind of happened. Though the years brought many quotes of varying hilarity from my parents, I think the sk8r boi himself gets the honors for this paragraph. "It's like I'm a hick dating a supermodel." Though he was actually a suburban kid and I am barely 5'5", we really couldn't ever get past this pronouncement. I also learned that like any good supermodel, I could effortlessly develop an eating disorder in the year that followed our nasty breakup. So, moving on.
For my next act, being an actor, I decided to go for one of the same. Talent begets talent and onstage things seemed pretty fireworky. Offstage they were damn pleasant. I wasn't looking to commit, I was actually having fun. All fun all the time. I felt like I had awoken from a nightmare only to find oh, that was just a bad dream, your real life actually isn't like that, so get out there and play ball! This is when I discovered that I like to have fun, and that my earlier affairs had perhaps lacked that crucial element all too often--being drenched as they were with pesky little buckets of teenage angst and playing house. So I was a little piqued that out of nowhere, the fun was done, and the teenage angst and playing house I thought I had left behind with my 20s was in fact how this little liasion was going to go down. I don't have a good quote for this section because by then I learned to keep my mouth shut to my adagey parents about my personal affairs, and the boy in question is a quiet type. We are still one of the best couples I know to date. Except we are not actually a couple. Sometimes I think that is very sad, and sometimes I think that is very good, and in general I think it is very incomprehensible. Not even in a bad heartbroken way, just in a strange confusing way that in the end brings us neither love nor money, and screwed up some career stuff along the way. It is what it is.
Which brings us to the summer of love, in which we don't know much but we do know "it is of the utmost important to lead off with a bang. And a grand finale later." We have delivered on the first. Fairly spactacularly on many levels, I might add. Let the good times roll! But then the temps climbed and rains came and the fireworks fizzled. So now we are eagerly awaiting the big finish. And looking back at the past has cleared up the settling issue. Since I am not on the Oregon Trail it is unlikely to happen. Cause even though we ain't got money, this Gen X girl believes that (somehow!) everything will bring a chain of love.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
All Shook Up
On Sunday, I rested. After two activity-filled days, I found myself sleeping way in this morning (until afternoon in fact) and then puttering around all day bored silly by life. I made breakfast and walked dogs and attempted the Sunday crossword and watched my boys bring home a win phinally and now am taking up this fog blog. Becvause I am bored silly. This seems to be the pattern of my summer. I am either flying high or crashing low, and I dislike this state of going to extremes.
I am a curious conundrum of lone wolf and social butterfly. I prefer the socialing to be on my terms and am not so desparate for companionship that I wish to waste my time with anyone I am just not that into. I would rather go it alone if it comes to that. But I find that of late, my need for solo downtime is fulfilled within an hour or two. Then I am raring to go onto the next thing, I want someone to play with.
I hate Sundays. Always have. The day before one has to return to the dread work week. Even when Sundays are good days there is still a pall over the proceedings, the shadow of what will come at the stroke of midnight. I feel like I have spent too many Sundays of late mucking around my house and making myself crazy with the heat. Left to my own devices, I am a pretty poor excuse for a grown-up. All I wanna do is have some fun, and when the fun is done I am displeased with myself.
Cranky, cranky. I have spoken to no human today. I feel sticky and useless and disgusted with my lot in life. Blah blah blah.
I am a curious conundrum of lone wolf and social butterfly. I prefer the socialing to be on my terms and am not so desparate for companionship that I wish to waste my time with anyone I am just not that into. I would rather go it alone if it comes to that. But I find that of late, my need for solo downtime is fulfilled within an hour or two. Then I am raring to go onto the next thing, I want someone to play with.
I hate Sundays. Always have. The day before one has to return to the dread work week. Even when Sundays are good days there is still a pall over the proceedings, the shadow of what will come at the stroke of midnight. I feel like I have spent too many Sundays of late mucking around my house and making myself crazy with the heat. Left to my own devices, I am a pretty poor excuse for a grown-up. All I wanna do is have some fun, and when the fun is done I am displeased with myself.
Cranky, cranky. I have spoken to no human today. I feel sticky and useless and disgusted with my lot in life. Blah blah blah.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Meanwhile
I learned some stuff over the past 48 hours.
I am actually blessed with the best neighbors anyone could have.
Genocide is an incomprehensible thing.
Ball games that suck suck less when accompanied by overpriced beers and swell friends.
Fame is fleeting, but being a nice costumer helps you make friends and influence people for half-price deals.
It's been way too long since I patronized Tattoo Mom's.
Both sides of the Potomac look the same by night, except they are in different states.
Me and J and South Street--never not a party.
My dogs are adorable when they are hot.
Might as well have a good time--better shake your pretty booty baby--there might not be a next time.
I am actually blessed with the best neighbors anyone could have.
Genocide is an incomprehensible thing.
Ball games that suck suck less when accompanied by overpriced beers and swell friends.
Fame is fleeting, but being a nice costumer helps you make friends and influence people for half-price deals.
It's been way too long since I patronized Tattoo Mom's.
Both sides of the Potomac look the same by night, except they are in different states.
Me and J and South Street--never not a party.
My dogs are adorable when they are hot.
Might as well have a good time--better shake your pretty booty baby--there might not be a next time.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
And all that jazz
It is time to sing, sing, sing. Make melodies that are intricate and soft and tear-stained. Harmonize with the laughter of 76 trombones or a piccolo or a pot and a wooden spoon. March in time to the beat of the drums that thud in your heart. Thrill to the sounds of your scatting soul. Note that most men go to the grave with the song still in them. I got the music in me. We can only dream a tune like this....if music be the food of love, play on.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The one-hundred belle towers, a cautionary tale
As they say, "on n'apprend pas aux vieux singes à faire des grimaces." Loosely translated this means "you cannot teach old monkeys to make faces." As often is the case this sounds more amusing in English and less snotty than it does in French but the meaning is clear in any language.
The so-called summer of love rages on, but as the days grow shorter I find the motto flipped from the days of our hippie forefathers; meaning, I am increasingly making not sweet love but bloody war. The guns are going off and the daisies are exploding into ash. And the crux of this unfortunate situation is that everything old is not new again. I have long held a theory that people tend to freeze-frame when it comes to intimate relationships, especially if something traumatic occurred to one regarding a relationship--especially at a tender age--and ever after one is emotionally stuck at that age of innocence. It isn't necessarily unhealthy. It is just a part of who you are as a person. Maybe time, experience, and a healthy dose of cognitive therapy can shock it out of you--but I personally have my doubts, and further doubts that you should want that seminal part of you gone.
I do not fall in love too easily. I fare no better with lust. I fare worst of all with like. These qualities are inherent in me, or at least were fused to my spine at puberty. I generally know who it is I want, and I have never not known who it is I most definitely do not want. On good days I and those like myself call this being choosy, refusing to settle, being smart and self-aware. All this is true. On bad days, we refer to it as too picky and kind of freaky. The older I get, the more this is true also.
I have friends who are happily married. They have the luxury of crowing about this, using hackneyed phrases like "When you know, you know." Well guess what bitches, I have known before too and I have never been happily married. Does that make me wrong or you lucky? Time will tell.
I have friends who are serial monogamists and have never to my knowledge been alone, listening to the sounds of silence. I have friends who are looking for perfection and friends who will bed anyone and friends who categorically date just about anyone so long as the relationships don't go longer than a season, max. To each his and her own.
The Americans say "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." And how. More prosaically, this is known as once a cheater, always a cheater....once bitten, twice shy.....and my personal fave, once an asshole, never not an asshole. I don't know where I got freeze-framed but as I grown ancient in dog years I find my old tricks as reliable as ever when it comes to knowing who I am in terms of intimacy.
Dating is a fascinating thing to me. Being a girl with an inquiring mind, I want to know why in the world people do it. I fundamentally understand the concept: boy meets girl, boy and girl get to know each other over a series of shared activities, boy and girl live happily ever after or go their separate ways. The latter may be easy like Sunday morning, an amicable you gotta go your own way situation; it may be fraught with tension and drama and lock-changing; it may just be sad and a shame for all parties and involve playing Lisa Loeb's '90s hits on a loop. And yes I am definitely preaching to the over 30 set here, with few exceptions--but how do you need X amount of "dates" to "get to know someone." Unless we are talking total strangers here, but even then I don't know that it takes more than two outings or chats to recognize a kindred spirit, or ID a clever knock-off.
I don't think I am that much smarter than the average bear. But no offense, I already know in like 10 minutes if I like you or not. I also have a pretty high success rate regarding you liking me. As in the actual me, even if you just met me I can tell whether or not, upon getting to know me better, you will like me for me and not the me you think you see. I don't mean we are going to be the next (less doomed of course) Antony and Cleopatra. Maybe we will maybe we won't. I do mean, if I am going to share my secrets, physical and otherwise with you, I better like you. If I do not, I am not about to get your sad little hopes up and risk the chaos that is sure to succeed my breaking-my-own-rules attempts to not be too picky or ridiculous and give you a chance to hit me with your best shot. Because your best shot will always, always, always be off the mark.
The Chinese say "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Recently I met up with a friendly acquaintance for dinner. Thirty seconds into the evening I realized I was on a date, and how. I never wanted anything to do with this man in the few years I have known him beyond be friendly and work together. This fauxmance evening I was trapped into did nothing to change my mind. In fact it infuriated me, up to and including the fine moment when had to call on my Bella-Swan-being-rudely-kissed-by-Jacob powers to turn as stony as any Cullen could. (Thank god reading that crap was good for something.)
It also made me reflect sadly that things in this summer of love have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous in far too short a time span. For the record, I would just like to say a few more words, the first being I am always always always right somehow about this shit. I know me and I know you and I know that this is worth our time or it is not. You are not god's gift to women. I am no one's sexy beast. I am not on your list of promising young things to do. I am not going to plead singlehood for life and console myself with a committed drunk shag with you once a year. You did not come on too strong, you came on too wrong.
I am going to hold fast and firm to the belief, however, that I am awesome and amazing. A girl's gotta have something to hold onto.
The so-called summer of love rages on, but as the days grow shorter I find the motto flipped from the days of our hippie forefathers; meaning, I am increasingly making not sweet love but bloody war. The guns are going off and the daisies are exploding into ash. And the crux of this unfortunate situation is that everything old is not new again. I have long held a theory that people tend to freeze-frame when it comes to intimate relationships, especially if something traumatic occurred to one regarding a relationship--especially at a tender age--and ever after one is emotionally stuck at that age of innocence. It isn't necessarily unhealthy. It is just a part of who you are as a person. Maybe time, experience, and a healthy dose of cognitive therapy can shock it out of you--but I personally have my doubts, and further doubts that you should want that seminal part of you gone.
I do not fall in love too easily. I fare no better with lust. I fare worst of all with like. These qualities are inherent in me, or at least were fused to my spine at puberty. I generally know who it is I want, and I have never not known who it is I most definitely do not want. On good days I and those like myself call this being choosy, refusing to settle, being smart and self-aware. All this is true. On bad days, we refer to it as too picky and kind of freaky. The older I get, the more this is true also.
I have friends who are happily married. They have the luxury of crowing about this, using hackneyed phrases like "When you know, you know." Well guess what bitches, I have known before too and I have never been happily married. Does that make me wrong or you lucky? Time will tell.
I have friends who are serial monogamists and have never to my knowledge been alone, listening to the sounds of silence. I have friends who are looking for perfection and friends who will bed anyone and friends who categorically date just about anyone so long as the relationships don't go longer than a season, max. To each his and her own.
The Americans say "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." And how. More prosaically, this is known as once a cheater, always a cheater....once bitten, twice shy.....and my personal fave, once an asshole, never not an asshole. I don't know where I got freeze-framed but as I grown ancient in dog years I find my old tricks as reliable as ever when it comes to knowing who I am in terms of intimacy.
Dating is a fascinating thing to me. Being a girl with an inquiring mind, I want to know why in the world people do it. I fundamentally understand the concept: boy meets girl, boy and girl get to know each other over a series of shared activities, boy and girl live happily ever after or go their separate ways. The latter may be easy like Sunday morning, an amicable you gotta go your own way situation; it may be fraught with tension and drama and lock-changing; it may just be sad and a shame for all parties and involve playing Lisa Loeb's '90s hits on a loop. And yes I am definitely preaching to the over 30 set here, with few exceptions--but how do you need X amount of "dates" to "get to know someone." Unless we are talking total strangers here, but even then I don't know that it takes more than two outings or chats to recognize a kindred spirit, or ID a clever knock-off.
I don't think I am that much smarter than the average bear. But no offense, I already know in like 10 minutes if I like you or not. I also have a pretty high success rate regarding you liking me. As in the actual me, even if you just met me I can tell whether or not, upon getting to know me better, you will like me for me and not the me you think you see. I don't mean we are going to be the next (less doomed of course) Antony and Cleopatra. Maybe we will maybe we won't. I do mean, if I am going to share my secrets, physical and otherwise with you, I better like you. If I do not, I am not about to get your sad little hopes up and risk the chaos that is sure to succeed my breaking-my-own-rules attempts to not be too picky or ridiculous and give you a chance to hit me with your best shot. Because your best shot will always, always, always be off the mark.
The Chinese say "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Recently I met up with a friendly acquaintance for dinner. Thirty seconds into the evening I realized I was on a date, and how. I never wanted anything to do with this man in the few years I have known him beyond be friendly and work together. This fauxmance evening I was trapped into did nothing to change my mind. In fact it infuriated me, up to and including the fine moment when had to call on my Bella-Swan-being-rudely-kissed-by-Jacob powers to turn as stony as any Cullen could. (Thank god reading that crap was good for something.)
It also made me reflect sadly that things in this summer of love have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous in far too short a time span. For the record, I would just like to say a few more words, the first being I am always always always right somehow about this shit. I know me and I know you and I know that this is worth our time or it is not. You are not god's gift to women. I am no one's sexy beast. I am not on your list of promising young things to do. I am not going to plead singlehood for life and console myself with a committed drunk shag with you once a year. You did not come on too strong, you came on too wrong.
I am going to hold fast and firm to the belief, however, that I am awesome and amazing. A girl's gotta have something to hold onto.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
It's raining, it's pouring
A few hours ago I had an interestingly upsetting revelation. As I cursed the heat and my kid fears and low bank account, I looked around my apartment with its tumbleweed dust bunnies mocking the Swiffer I had yet to wield, at the costume pieces and scripts that have littered my dining room table for two months, at the fridge stocked with a lone Victory beer and some locatelli--and felt like I was going to actually. lose. my. shit.
Because I think sometimes I have been losing said shit for going on five years now, and then it occurred to me that while pretty much everyone else I know spent their twenties being twenty-something, I did not. I thought how at 25 I was running a pretty sweet household where there was dinner cooked every night and things were fairly neat and clean and orderly, I took care of my mans and my dog the best I could. I waitressed and I temped and I wrote and I acted. I was poor but I was still pretty responsible--had no debt save student loans--and while I was in a low-rent situation and had the support of a partner, we were still way too young to play house like that. But it's what we did and we did it pretty well, all things considered, and we were the only people we knew who were that kind of grown up. I don't think I regret it. I do regret where it ended up, in tears and recriminations and very, very little to show for all the joy and pain, sunshine and rain.
I thought how it wasn't the plan, to buy a house and be quite so......mature. I wanted a one-bedroom apartment that was close to the bar and would be decorated with hits and misses, arguments and kisses. I wanted to pay too much for a tiny space, and hit up the laundromat, and drink wine in bed. I wanted to be in my early twenties, and happy with my boyfriend, and starting out. Instead I got pushed into a common law marriage I never wanted to be in. I fought against being in it. But the practicality of being committed at such a tender age (lower rent! more stuff! washer and dryer! getting a dog!) won the day, so off we went into domestic unbliss, and there we stayed for many years.
In the meantime, the rest of my friends lived at home and saved up money, or went to Europe, or went back to school. Had sweet little studios like the one I gave up for love. They went to grad school. They got entry-level jobs and got promoted and started making money. They went to New York and LA and Chicago and San Fran. They had one-night stands and short-term parking and slowly but surely began to settle into being adult, if that is what is meant by having big expensive weddings and bigger pricier divorces and babies and houses and cars. They switched careers and found themselves in the maddening crowd. They found happiness and lost it and found it again, seemingly picking up again from where they left off.
Me in my twenties, I kept on acting, kept on working, tried to be a good live-in girlfriend and thought a lot in the back of my mind whether or not I wanted to keep on growing up with this guy I met when I was barely 21 and only looking for fun. I knew that this life worked well for me. It embraced my inherent loyalties, it was a safe haven for the uncertainty of a career in theater, the price was low, the sex was good, the love was most definitely there.
Until suddenly and without any great neon flashing signs of warning, it wasn't.
And so I thought long and hard about what to do, clinically reviewed what I had, let myself feel crazy emotions I had never once allowed enter my conscious self, and decided I would fight to not escape even though the exit signs were clearly lit. I stayed, and I tried, and I spent money I had no business spending on making this relationship, the most consistent thing I had ever had in my life, work. The gambit failed and in the end, even though I still had a full drink, the lights came on and I didn't have to go home but I couldn't stay there.
So I went, and stood not upon the order of my going. I tried again to be smart about my choices, to work out what would be best right then for my heart and my head. I turned down a full scholarship to grad school because practically I couldn't afford to live and attend school full time, and because mentally I was barely capable of getting up in the morning let alone throwing myself body and soul into the study of my art. I did what I had to do, I chose my choice, and I spent the next year plus lying in a pile of my own emotional vomit.
And I cleaned up my act, once more with feeling. I did new things and rediscovered old things and while my life was not better nor worse than it had ever been it was different. Battle-scarred but alive. And so it goes. I savored being alive. I still do.
But in the process I now find myself once again at a crossroads. Only this time I don't see two paths laid clearly out for me. Less road less travelled than stopping by the woods on a snowy evening. And I marvel at how much I used to accomplish this time a decade ago compared to how little I am able to manage now. I am eking out an existence that doesn't not work for me, but it is nowhere near enough. I am ignoring things that will not be ignored. I am tired and poor and a huddled mass, yearning to be free. And it occurs to me that I am not that old but am far too old to be such a wanker about how I live. But I haven't the foggiest notion of how to make any of it better. I can't even bring myself to plug in the vacuum.
I am sick of rules. I am sick of having settle for second best. I am sick of knowing myself like crazy while still always leaving room for improvement and knowledge and discovery and power and yet still find myself stuck in an eddy of my own frustration. I worry a lot--that I am moving backward, not forward. That while everyone else was figuring it out, I thought without even realizing what I was getting into that I had it figured out enough--and now I can't imagine what it was all for. That is what is disturbing me. I am too rational at heart to not look for reasons and patterns and room for improvement. But right this second, it is like I audited life classes for over a decade and graduated with no degree. I worked since I was 12 and have nothing saved up for a rainy day like today. I have nothing to show and tell right now. I know this attitude is incredibly immature and silly. I know it is past time to get back in the saddle again and just ride--but I know I never really got off the horse. I am just motion-sick of riding toward no destination.
Self-absorbed nonsense. I know that everyone is plagued by self-doubt and worry. We all have good days and bad days. There are far worse problems than mine. Blah blah blah. My whole being is screaming at me about exactly which path I should choose right now, but I cannot seem to set foot on it. Is it a matter of not being able to take responsibility for myself? I truly don't think it is. But I feel like 90% of the time I am doing what I have to do and not what I want to do--to the point where I do not even know what it is I want to do anymore, so daunting is it to push this stone up the mountain again and again and no one is waiting at the top for more than a few hours.
Show me the way, indeed.
Because I think sometimes I have been losing said shit for going on five years now, and then it occurred to me that while pretty much everyone else I know spent their twenties being twenty-something, I did not. I thought how at 25 I was running a pretty sweet household where there was dinner cooked every night and things were fairly neat and clean and orderly, I took care of my mans and my dog the best I could. I waitressed and I temped and I wrote and I acted. I was poor but I was still pretty responsible--had no debt save student loans--and while I was in a low-rent situation and had the support of a partner, we were still way too young to play house like that. But it's what we did and we did it pretty well, all things considered, and we were the only people we knew who were that kind of grown up. I don't think I regret it. I do regret where it ended up, in tears and recriminations and very, very little to show for all the joy and pain, sunshine and rain.
I thought how it wasn't the plan, to buy a house and be quite so......mature. I wanted a one-bedroom apartment that was close to the bar and would be decorated with hits and misses, arguments and kisses. I wanted to pay too much for a tiny space, and hit up the laundromat, and drink wine in bed. I wanted to be in my early twenties, and happy with my boyfriend, and starting out. Instead I got pushed into a common law marriage I never wanted to be in. I fought against being in it. But the practicality of being committed at such a tender age (lower rent! more stuff! washer and dryer! getting a dog!) won the day, so off we went into domestic unbliss, and there we stayed for many years.
In the meantime, the rest of my friends lived at home and saved up money, or went to Europe, or went back to school. Had sweet little studios like the one I gave up for love. They went to grad school. They got entry-level jobs and got promoted and started making money. They went to New York and LA and Chicago and San Fran. They had one-night stands and short-term parking and slowly but surely began to settle into being adult, if that is what is meant by having big expensive weddings and bigger pricier divorces and babies and houses and cars. They switched careers and found themselves in the maddening crowd. They found happiness and lost it and found it again, seemingly picking up again from where they left off.
Me in my twenties, I kept on acting, kept on working, tried to be a good live-in girlfriend and thought a lot in the back of my mind whether or not I wanted to keep on growing up with this guy I met when I was barely 21 and only looking for fun. I knew that this life worked well for me. It embraced my inherent loyalties, it was a safe haven for the uncertainty of a career in theater, the price was low, the sex was good, the love was most definitely there.
Until suddenly and without any great neon flashing signs of warning, it wasn't.
And so I thought long and hard about what to do, clinically reviewed what I had, let myself feel crazy emotions I had never once allowed enter my conscious self, and decided I would fight to not escape even though the exit signs were clearly lit. I stayed, and I tried, and I spent money I had no business spending on making this relationship, the most consistent thing I had ever had in my life, work. The gambit failed and in the end, even though I still had a full drink, the lights came on and I didn't have to go home but I couldn't stay there.
So I went, and stood not upon the order of my going. I tried again to be smart about my choices, to work out what would be best right then for my heart and my head. I turned down a full scholarship to grad school because practically I couldn't afford to live and attend school full time, and because mentally I was barely capable of getting up in the morning let alone throwing myself body and soul into the study of my art. I did what I had to do, I chose my choice, and I spent the next year plus lying in a pile of my own emotional vomit.
And I cleaned up my act, once more with feeling. I did new things and rediscovered old things and while my life was not better nor worse than it had ever been it was different. Battle-scarred but alive. And so it goes. I savored being alive. I still do.
But in the process I now find myself once again at a crossroads. Only this time I don't see two paths laid clearly out for me. Less road less travelled than stopping by the woods on a snowy evening. And I marvel at how much I used to accomplish this time a decade ago compared to how little I am able to manage now. I am eking out an existence that doesn't not work for me, but it is nowhere near enough. I am ignoring things that will not be ignored. I am tired and poor and a huddled mass, yearning to be free. And it occurs to me that I am not that old but am far too old to be such a wanker about how I live. But I haven't the foggiest notion of how to make any of it better. I can't even bring myself to plug in the vacuum.
I am sick of rules. I am sick of having settle for second best. I am sick of knowing myself like crazy while still always leaving room for improvement and knowledge and discovery and power and yet still find myself stuck in an eddy of my own frustration. I worry a lot--that I am moving backward, not forward. That while everyone else was figuring it out, I thought without even realizing what I was getting into that I had it figured out enough--and now I can't imagine what it was all for. That is what is disturbing me. I am too rational at heart to not look for reasons and patterns and room for improvement. But right this second, it is like I audited life classes for over a decade and graduated with no degree. I worked since I was 12 and have nothing saved up for a rainy day like today. I have nothing to show and tell right now. I know this attitude is incredibly immature and silly. I know it is past time to get back in the saddle again and just ride--but I know I never really got off the horse. I am just motion-sick of riding toward no destination.
Self-absorbed nonsense. I know that everyone is plagued by self-doubt and worry. We all have good days and bad days. There are far worse problems than mine. Blah blah blah. My whole being is screaming at me about exactly which path I should choose right now, but I cannot seem to set foot on it. Is it a matter of not being able to take responsibility for myself? I truly don't think it is. But I feel like 90% of the time I am doing what I have to do and not what I want to do--to the point where I do not even know what it is I want to do anymore, so daunting is it to push this stone up the mountain again and again and no one is waiting at the top for more than a few hours.
Show me the way, indeed.
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