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.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
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.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Yearning
It is 84,000 degrees out. It has been a disco inferno almost all of July. I prefer sweltering to shivering but this is getting ridiculous. The swampy outside is making my mind a barren smoking wasteland whether I am in or out of doors. Too hot to think, too hot to write, too hot to do anything but drink mint juleps and have sex but I haven't the ingredients for either of those on hand, so I guess I will just be thirsty.
There is a haze over everything right now. I long to break on through to the other side, to dive cleanly into shocking cold waters, to neatly break the surface with an elegant splash, touch the bottom, and swim to the top. Emerging for air not sputtering but with a kind of clear, wet grace.
I spend too much time alone, methinks. I miss the company of others. I miss the tangled web we weave when we climb into a relationship. I know the threads are slender and sticky and sometimes invisible, but I want to crawl into the middle anyway and sigh just enough to breathe. Don't want entrapment, don't want to be blinded by a coocoon. Want to use my legs and my arms and my mouth to devour in a perfect dance where we are both at once prey and predator. Want to give as good as I get.
I used to know that I was a lover and a fighter. I used to be goddamned if I would let them take that away from me. Now I am not so sure. I am ex-patriot living in a foreign country on my own, where rain makes the pavement shine like silver and all the lights are misty in the river. My mind plays tricks on me. It records moments and presses play unbidden at the strangest moments. Hidden camera shit because at the time it rolls I don't realize I am being taped. And then the reels are revealed, the colors restored, the archives updated with a kind of permanence that gives one pause as to whether some things are just meant to disappear and remain a perfect memory.
Sense memory? I do not know. Maybe I don't care to know. But I push it away, I try to eject but I cannot look away because it is happening to me, body and soul. Feed the one to nourish the other but I suspect all that is happening is that what I need is what destroys me.
I long to belong. And for the aforementioned mint juleps, served bedside with a twist.
There is a haze over everything right now. I long to break on through to the other side, to dive cleanly into shocking cold waters, to neatly break the surface with an elegant splash, touch the bottom, and swim to the top. Emerging for air not sputtering but with a kind of clear, wet grace.
I spend too much time alone, methinks. I miss the company of others. I miss the tangled web we weave when we climb into a relationship. I know the threads are slender and sticky and sometimes invisible, but I want to crawl into the middle anyway and sigh just enough to breathe. Don't want entrapment, don't want to be blinded by a coocoon. Want to use my legs and my arms and my mouth to devour in a perfect dance where we are both at once prey and predator. Want to give as good as I get.
I used to know that I was a lover and a fighter. I used to be goddamned if I would let them take that away from me. Now I am not so sure. I am ex-patriot living in a foreign country on my own, where rain makes the pavement shine like silver and all the lights are misty in the river. My mind plays tricks on me. It records moments and presses play unbidden at the strangest moments. Hidden camera shit because at the time it rolls I don't realize I am being taped. And then the reels are revealed, the colors restored, the archives updated with a kind of permanence that gives one pause as to whether some things are just meant to disappear and remain a perfect memory.
Sense memory? I do not know. Maybe I don't care to know. But I push it away, I try to eject but I cannot look away because it is happening to me, body and soul. Feed the one to nourish the other but I suspect all that is happening is that what I need is what destroys me.
I long to belong. And for the aforementioned mint juleps, served bedside with a twist.
Friday, July 23, 2010
In the good old summertime
Being allegedly grown-up is less fun than it was made out to be when you had dreams of getting out of your parents' house and doing whatever you damn well wanted. Especially in summer. Sure, now we have cocktails, pets, families, friends. No one is ostracizing you because you are in the band or your mom refused you to buy you a Frankie Goes to Hollywood shirt or you wrote a report on your favorite song and chose not Hungry Like The Wolf but Wake Up Little Susie.......by Simon and Garfunkel. But I digress because really those were not things that happened in summer.
In summer, you woke up early and read. Sometimes you woke up too early and read books that featured subject matters too advanced for your tender years, resulting in uncomfortable "ask your mother" answers from your dad as he left for work and frightening visions of becoming a woman and needing to wear belted sanitary pads. (I'm talking to you, Margaret.) But mostly you just hung with your pals getting Great Brained and Anne of Green Gabled which caused no problems for anyone. Then maybe you whipped out the biggin's Crayola 64 or the ginormo one with the sharpener in the back and colored your Barbie coloring book like it was a Bennetton ad (Burnt Sienna? Mahoghany? Flesh?) Then of course, time to redecorate the dollhouse with filched pieces of wallpaper from Hechinger's and self-crocheted rugs. You made wicked potholders on your awesome loom and then forced every neighbor and relative you came across to use them. You watched 84,000 episodes of Little House on the Prairie and 84,000 MTV vids and ate eggs and bacon or cocoa puffs or golden grahams for breakfast.
Tough morning--but then you dealt with the biggest decision of the day. How would you spend the afternoon? Would you spend it at the pool, pretending to be a mermaid (the pre-Disney kind) until that dreaded of all half-hour periods, the adult swim, at which point you would go and pump scary-higher than anyone else on the swings and maybe grab up some Fun Dip? Would you cruise the hood on your bike, gathering buddies and then playing such inventive and brilliant games as "Orphans of the Wind" or "Children of the Mafia" until someone cried and you got in trouble for your overactive imagination? Would you go to the $1 movies and see some gem like The Money Pit? Would you start a Monopoly game on the dining room table that would last for days as you tried (unsuccessfully) to hone your wheeling and dealing real estate skills? Would you build a fort? Run through the sheets hanging on the line cause it was washday? Go to the mall and cruise and get pizza and some purple eyeshadow at Canary and the Elephant or stickers for one of your four albums from Puff n Stuff? Would you go to the park and play whiffleball, or your cousins' and while your moms chatted and cocktailed you would run like a little urchin through the streets, kicking cans and climbing fences and roller skating? Would you be banished to the coolness of the basement that always smelled and play dress-up with your mom's awesome 70s tea gowns and granny boots? Or would you just lay in the sunshiny sweet grass somewhere and star up at the sky and dream about when this boring endless summer would end and the fall of your life would start?
So many possibilities, and every day the same but different, and every day good. Now every day is the same and not so different and not so good. But you can't discredit the booze.......being all growed-up does have some perks. Let me know if you want to come over and play spin the bottle.
In summer, you woke up early and read. Sometimes you woke up too early and read books that featured subject matters too advanced for your tender years, resulting in uncomfortable "ask your mother" answers from your dad as he left for work and frightening visions of becoming a woman and needing to wear belted sanitary pads. (I'm talking to you, Margaret.) But mostly you just hung with your pals getting Great Brained and Anne of Green Gabled which caused no problems for anyone. Then maybe you whipped out the biggin's Crayola 64 or the ginormo one with the sharpener in the back and colored your Barbie coloring book like it was a Bennetton ad (Burnt Sienna? Mahoghany? Flesh?) Then of course, time to redecorate the dollhouse with filched pieces of wallpaper from Hechinger's and self-crocheted rugs. You made wicked potholders on your awesome loom and then forced every neighbor and relative you came across to use them. You watched 84,000 episodes of Little House on the Prairie and 84,000 MTV vids and ate eggs and bacon or cocoa puffs or golden grahams for breakfast.
Tough morning--but then you dealt with the biggest decision of the day. How would you spend the afternoon? Would you spend it at the pool, pretending to be a mermaid (the pre-Disney kind) until that dreaded of all half-hour periods, the adult swim, at which point you would go and pump scary-higher than anyone else on the swings and maybe grab up some Fun Dip? Would you cruise the hood on your bike, gathering buddies and then playing such inventive and brilliant games as "Orphans of the Wind" or "Children of the Mafia" until someone cried and you got in trouble for your overactive imagination? Would you go to the $1 movies and see some gem like The Money Pit? Would you start a Monopoly game on the dining room table that would last for days as you tried (unsuccessfully) to hone your wheeling and dealing real estate skills? Would you build a fort? Run through the sheets hanging on the line cause it was washday? Go to the mall and cruise and get pizza and some purple eyeshadow at Canary and the Elephant or stickers for one of your four albums from Puff n Stuff? Would you go to the park and play whiffleball, or your cousins' and while your moms chatted and cocktailed you would run like a little urchin through the streets, kicking cans and climbing fences and roller skating? Would you be banished to the coolness of the basement that always smelled and play dress-up with your mom's awesome 70s tea gowns and granny boots? Or would you just lay in the sunshiny sweet grass somewhere and star up at the sky and dream about when this boring endless summer would end and the fall of your life would start?
So many possibilities, and every day the same but different, and every day good. Now every day is the same and not so different and not so good. But you can't discredit the booze.......being all growed-up does have some perks. Let me know if you want to come over and play spin the bottle.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Becoming
"Change one thing." That is the back-to-basics and admittedly sound advice I was given recently by a learned buddy. Being me, while I know full well which changes need to be made and pronto, I still a) cannot quite decide what to switch up first or at all, and b) remain unconvinced that bigger and better things will happen as a result of said swap.
Why? Well, because it is bigger and better things we are going for. This is a self-absorbed blog devoted almost entirely to my angst-ridden search for myself. Which is an exercise in futility of course because I am now and always have been painfully self-aware. I know my dark corners and I know my light ones. I am always learning more. Excited to learn more. Ever-hopeful there is more. But I rarely surprise myself and not because I don't embrace change. I have a love-hate relationship with change. But I know all things must change, to something new, to something strange.
I know how to mix it up. I have done nothing but for years. Not because I am miz courageous. Not because I don't have a comfort zone. But because it doesn't stop. It never stops. Artistically I am fine with that. Life-living I am fine with that. But the minutiae, the day to day, the hand to mouth, the paycheck to paycheck--the dull business of being able to survive--these are the ties that bind, these are the forests I cannot see for the trees as I try to be the glorious-est me. And so it's obvious that to this mind-meld-mess must come the changes. But first there come the questions.
Do you think I chose to be like this? I am queen of the adapters. Plug me in to any socket and I will at least spark up a little something. I learned how to test the temperature of a room when I left the womb and it is a dubiously crippling talent. I work against it in fact because otherwise it would be too much to leave the house, I think. It comes in handy at other times. And I hope it makes me careful with people's hearts if nothing else. It definitely keeps me honest. But the problem with being sure of yourself is that you may just be the only one. And alone gets you nowhere. And being an artist, you have to be constantly balancing on a thin red line between self-love and self-hate. Otherwise you are just a good mimic.
Do you have any idea how lonely it is? How dangerous? If you have the artistic tendencies, you do. It is stupifyingly lonely to be an actor, a musician, a dancer, a painter, a writer, and so on. Anyone who inhabits the workaday world out of necessity but comes alive in the realms of the imagination knows this.
If you are lucky you make friends but truly it is every man, woman, child for themselves in the end and in the beginning and an awful lot of time in between. When the dance is over, the song is sung, the last notes played, the canvas dried, and the curtain dropped all that is left is you and your art. And it is very very very hard to shake that this is how it must be if you have a dream of living your art. Fucking scary.
And yet, I have to save the world. From myself. Again. No friends, no weapons, no hope. But you know what is left?
Me.
Why? Well, because it is bigger and better things we are going for. This is a self-absorbed blog devoted almost entirely to my angst-ridden search for myself. Which is an exercise in futility of course because I am now and always have been painfully self-aware. I know my dark corners and I know my light ones. I am always learning more. Excited to learn more. Ever-hopeful there is more. But I rarely surprise myself and not because I don't embrace change. I have a love-hate relationship with change. But I know all things must change, to something new, to something strange.
I know how to mix it up. I have done nothing but for years. Not because I am miz courageous. Not because I don't have a comfort zone. But because it doesn't stop. It never stops. Artistically I am fine with that. Life-living I am fine with that. But the minutiae, the day to day, the hand to mouth, the paycheck to paycheck--the dull business of being able to survive--these are the ties that bind, these are the forests I cannot see for the trees as I try to be the glorious-est me. And so it's obvious that to this mind-meld-mess must come the changes. But first there come the questions.
Do you think I chose to be like this? I am queen of the adapters. Plug me in to any socket and I will at least spark up a little something. I learned how to test the temperature of a room when I left the womb and it is a dubiously crippling talent. I work against it in fact because otherwise it would be too much to leave the house, I think. It comes in handy at other times. And I hope it makes me careful with people's hearts if nothing else. It definitely keeps me honest. But the problem with being sure of yourself is that you may just be the only one. And alone gets you nowhere. And being an artist, you have to be constantly balancing on a thin red line between self-love and self-hate. Otherwise you are just a good mimic.
Do you have any idea how lonely it is? How dangerous? If you have the artistic tendencies, you do. It is stupifyingly lonely to be an actor, a musician, a dancer, a painter, a writer, and so on. Anyone who inhabits the workaday world out of necessity but comes alive in the realms of the imagination knows this.
If you are lucky you make friends but truly it is every man, woman, child for themselves in the end and in the beginning and an awful lot of time in between. When the dance is over, the song is sung, the last notes played, the canvas dried, and the curtain dropped all that is left is you and your art. And it is very very very hard to shake that this is how it must be if you have a dream of living your art. Fucking scary.
And yet, I have to save the world. From myself. Again. No friends, no weapons, no hope. But you know what is left?
Me.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Hot and Bothered
It is so hazy outside that I am hazy inside. I don't really know what to do with myself. There are about 84,000 things I should be doing but I am too hot and too lazy and too uninspired and too sad.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Don't ask, don't tell
"How are you?" Loaded question. I never know what people wish to hear. In my all too literal world if I inquire the how of you, I actually wish to know the truth. Lay down the tracks of your tears or confess a delightful story of debauchery or just give me the skinny on whatever feelings you are experiencing right this second. I want the lowdown even if it becomes a smackdown.
I suspect that in this, as in most things, most folks are not like me. Como talle vous has become the new hey, yo, 'sup, hiya, silent nod. A response is required as it is a question, but the correct answer is fine, good, swell, great, never been better. Which is cool if those things are true. But when they are not I, for one, feel cheated.
And I feel like I am cheating when I simply say "Great!" if I am not in fact anything of the sort. But is that what you want to hear? I don't mean that I would emotionally vomit all over you when I am all too aware that your inquiring mind probably doesn't really want to know "how" I am, that responses like pissed on and pissed off or horny and hungry or thrilled to the gills with the business of livin' or broke as a joke are not going to go over too well.
Because then we would need to have the dreaded "conversation" and thus be forced for a time--a few minutes, an hour, a lifetime--to pretend that we are people who give a crap about each other and in this workaday world who has time for that? This is why some genius invented Twitter, so that one needn't practice the art of conversation. No more tea and sympathy or great big laughs together--just you making a statement to cyberland that no one has to address.
Lucky for me, I rarely tweet and instead use my PC time to compose erratic and increasingly silly blogs to blather about my so-called life, thus allowing me to answer my own how are you for myself. Right now, how I am is kicked in the head with a bad headache. I am mystified and not a little put out that I rather tanked an audition and was not given a chance to redeem myself when tanking aside I was still probably better than anyone else in the room. I am annoyed that I knew the latter was a likely outcome of going on said audition and so also knew I should have stayed the hell home in the first place. I am restless in the night and I am restless in the day and I find myself overwhelmed by how dire my circumstances are at present. I am not scared. I am vaguely and constantly terrified. I am missing certain someones more than I can even say and I am not even sure why it is I miss them all so. I am curious as to where all my friends are at the moment. I am wasting time writing this moronic story when I should be cleaning my slovenly hovel. I am kind of slutty. I am very very very very tired of being right about the things I am right about. I am quite dry-eyed. I am dehydrated. I am bored.
And so after all that purging--thus now I see why no one ever really wants a true answer to the social nicety we throw out there as casually as we do everything else nowadays. The weight of the world is enough to bear on one's own. So let's just keep how I am right this second between us. Not that anyone is asking to know.
:)
I suspect that in this, as in most things, most folks are not like me. Como talle vous has become the new hey, yo, 'sup, hiya, silent nod. A response is required as it is a question, but the correct answer is fine, good, swell, great, never been better. Which is cool if those things are true. But when they are not I, for one, feel cheated.
And I feel like I am cheating when I simply say "Great!" if I am not in fact anything of the sort. But is that what you want to hear? I don't mean that I would emotionally vomit all over you when I am all too aware that your inquiring mind probably doesn't really want to know "how" I am, that responses like pissed on and pissed off or horny and hungry or thrilled to the gills with the business of livin' or broke as a joke are not going to go over too well.
Because then we would need to have the dreaded "conversation" and thus be forced for a time--a few minutes, an hour, a lifetime--to pretend that we are people who give a crap about each other and in this workaday world who has time for that? This is why some genius invented Twitter, so that one needn't practice the art of conversation. No more tea and sympathy or great big laughs together--just you making a statement to cyberland that no one has to address.
Lucky for me, I rarely tweet and instead use my PC time to compose erratic and increasingly silly blogs to blather about my so-called life, thus allowing me to answer my own how are you for myself. Right now, how I am is kicked in the head with a bad headache. I am mystified and not a little put out that I rather tanked an audition and was not given a chance to redeem myself when tanking aside I was still probably better than anyone else in the room. I am annoyed that I knew the latter was a likely outcome of going on said audition and so also knew I should have stayed the hell home in the first place. I am restless in the night and I am restless in the day and I find myself overwhelmed by how dire my circumstances are at present. I am not scared. I am vaguely and constantly terrified. I am missing certain someones more than I can even say and I am not even sure why it is I miss them all so. I am curious as to where all my friends are at the moment. I am wasting time writing this moronic story when I should be cleaning my slovenly hovel. I am kind of slutty. I am very very very very tired of being right about the things I am right about. I am quite dry-eyed. I am dehydrated. I am bored.
And so after all that purging--thus now I see why no one ever really wants a true answer to the social nicety we throw out there as casually as we do everything else nowadays. The weight of the world is enough to bear on one's own. So let's just keep how I am right this second between us. Not that anyone is asking to know.
:)
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Lie to me
Brain be quiet, heart be quieter. So many thoughts and feelings skeetering around me like mice in a Nutcracker ballet and it is just too damn loud for this tiny dancer. Also--not winter. It's summertime and the livin' should be easy. And it is! It is warm and delicious. Except where it is cold and crappy. And wrong. Or maybe it is just me who is wrong. Difficult to tell.
"People are always saying you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster. Like you know what it is even. But every so often I'll have, like, a moment, where just being myself in my life right where I am is, like, enough."
I have never been able to accept the notion of being unhappy in life, even when I have been deeply unhappy. I worry a lot and with good cause but I am also insanely hopeful all the fucking time that things will improve. I believe in joy, in myself as a creature of same. But the negativity all around me swells and crashes and pulls me under far too often and it is hard to be glad about anything when you are sputtering for breath, salt blinds your eyes, and seaweed clings to you with slimy fingers.
To thine own self be true--above all things indeed. But if no one else wishes to be true to you how in the universe do you keep it real?
I wonder about honesty. About how we often never say what we want to say out of fear, and we don't do things we long to do out of fear, and everyone just lies and pretends the most important things are not. We blow off love and commitment and first times and second chances with the breezy arrogance of the beautiful and the damned, and for what? To slog along alone and lonely, taking for granted that the heart is an organ of fire and will keep you warm, like bread in a toaster, even if you don't pull the lever?
Just curious.
"People are always saying you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster. Like you know what it is even. But every so often I'll have, like, a moment, where just being myself in my life right where I am is, like, enough."
I have never been able to accept the notion of being unhappy in life, even when I have been deeply unhappy. I worry a lot and with good cause but I am also insanely hopeful all the fucking time that things will improve. I believe in joy, in myself as a creature of same. But the negativity all around me swells and crashes and pulls me under far too often and it is hard to be glad about anything when you are sputtering for breath, salt blinds your eyes, and seaweed clings to you with slimy fingers.
To thine own self be true--above all things indeed. But if no one else wishes to be true to you how in the universe do you keep it real?
I wonder about honesty. About how we often never say what we want to say out of fear, and we don't do things we long to do out of fear, and everyone just lies and pretends the most important things are not. We blow off love and commitment and first times and second chances with the breezy arrogance of the beautiful and the damned, and for what? To slog along alone and lonely, taking for granted that the heart is an organ of fire and will keep you warm, like bread in a toaster, even if you don't pull the lever?
Just curious.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Cross my palm with silver
I am past mistress at the art of illusion. Everything is made up and false and even though I know at times I do it very well--it sometimes still amazes how few people can tell the difference, can see where the makeup line extends below the jaw, slightly unblended and garish in the bright lights, but we go on as though we don't notice the demarcation. And possibly nine out of ten observers simply do not notice that it is there.
Made-up things. Perhaps that is all there is--this is maybe the greatest show on earth. So why not step right up to the big tent and see what awaits.
A three-ring circus unfolds. Lions and tigers and elephants all in a row. Spangles and sparkles and whips and chains, a master of ceremonies in a dashing top hat, clowns whizzing by on bicycles built for twos. And the smoke and mirrors create a spectacle of dreams that are at once real and imagined.
I fly through the air with the greatest of ease, but the work that goes into climbing that ladder and grabbing hold of that bar, who can know? All that matters is the performance. Draw the oohs and the aahs with grace and aplomb. Keep them wanting more. Knees up, hands off, let go.
And all around the blaze of colored lights and the calliope music and the neverending crush of bodies in a maelstrom of sight and sound and smell and it's a rush of supreme sensory overload but you cannot walk away--when after all it was you who ran away to join the circus.
It is at times so incredibly fucked up. It is at times horrifyingly disturbing to be the puppet master and the puppet, to know the intricacies and the inner workings, the blood and guts kept contained by a gossamer tether that must remain altogether unseen. The flip side, another world, what lies beneath that candy shell. A kind of magic.
And today I simply can't decide if it is better to bewitch or be bewitched by the constant clamor of glamour. Because I have been in a migraine-induced stupor made worse by great fears and nasties and things that go bump in the night. Long-leggedy beasties crawling around in my brain and my heart that tell me all this is for naught and the big top is about to catch on fire and a stampede is evident and we may not all make it out alive. Even as I dreadfully mix up the metaphors that is how it is.
When you know what it is you want and who it is you want and what is best for you--your stark cold lovely reality--why is the brass ring always just out of reach, when only a little more height or a little slower the carousel your fingertips could easily grasp it and not just graze it? The fun lies in the motion and the music surely. But it would be nice to just stop for a second, or a lifetime perhaps, and get to enjoy the ride rather than searching endlessly for the right route to the destination.
Crazy old carnival.
Made-up things. Perhaps that is all there is--this is maybe the greatest show on earth. So why not step right up to the big tent and see what awaits.
A three-ring circus unfolds. Lions and tigers and elephants all in a row. Spangles and sparkles and whips and chains, a master of ceremonies in a dashing top hat, clowns whizzing by on bicycles built for twos. And the smoke and mirrors create a spectacle of dreams that are at once real and imagined.
I fly through the air with the greatest of ease, but the work that goes into climbing that ladder and grabbing hold of that bar, who can know? All that matters is the performance. Draw the oohs and the aahs with grace and aplomb. Keep them wanting more. Knees up, hands off, let go.
And all around the blaze of colored lights and the calliope music and the neverending crush of bodies in a maelstrom of sight and sound and smell and it's a rush of supreme sensory overload but you cannot walk away--when after all it was you who ran away to join the circus.
It is at times so incredibly fucked up. It is at times horrifyingly disturbing to be the puppet master and the puppet, to know the intricacies and the inner workings, the blood and guts kept contained by a gossamer tether that must remain altogether unseen. The flip side, another world, what lies beneath that candy shell. A kind of magic.
And today I simply can't decide if it is better to bewitch or be bewitched by the constant clamor of glamour. Because I have been in a migraine-induced stupor made worse by great fears and nasties and things that go bump in the night. Long-leggedy beasties crawling around in my brain and my heart that tell me all this is for naught and the big top is about to catch on fire and a stampede is evident and we may not all make it out alive. Even as I dreadfully mix up the metaphors that is how it is.
When you know what it is you want and who it is you want and what is best for you--your stark cold lovely reality--why is the brass ring always just out of reach, when only a little more height or a little slower the carousel your fingertips could easily grasp it and not just graze it? The fun lies in the motion and the music surely. But it would be nice to just stop for a second, or a lifetime perhaps, and get to enjoy the ride rather than searching endlessly for the right route to the destination.
Crazy old carnival.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Our Lady of Lunatics
Trying to figure out so many things and in the process seem to be figuring out nothing. I know that I need money, filthy lucre. I am not afraid to work hard for my money but I cannot sit in a drone office center surrounded by safety glass and bunch of fat cats and average Joes and be misunderstood at every turn. I did that for years. The corporate ladder may be climbed without me, I will be climbing mountains and not even caring that I may never make it to the peak. But still I have to live, so where is that balance and I why do I find it so difficult to locate?
I am inspired by people at every turn. I am their muse in exchange. But when it comes to being my own muse, of late, I am artless.
And now I am stifling, I am drowning in my own hot blood and crawling out of my tanned hide and longing, longing, longing--something wants to be born, but I am not sure what.
I am inspired by people at every turn. I am their muse in exchange. But when it comes to being my own muse, of late, I am artless.
And now I am stifling, I am drowning in my own hot blood and crawling out of my tanned hide and longing, longing, longing--something wants to be born, but I am not sure what.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Atonement
is one my favorite movies and one of my favorite books and has one of my favorite lines which is whispered and secret and true and I am adopting it today for my mantra and thus on the lookout for a slinky green dress and a private library where my own true love will find me. Because if you are going to spend a lifetime drowning in misconceptions and missed connections you may as well look hot while doing so. And what you hear in your ear is yours forever.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Ch-ch-changes
I had a brilliant weekend with generous and amazing people at the beautiful beach. I needed it. I almost didn't go on said brilliant weekend because I am so shitass poor and worried that it was that dreaded of all crimes--IRRESPONSIBLE--but I did and I was heart-glad and chillaxed until this morning when I realized that I inadvertently spent my last $20 at said weekend (IRRESPONSIBLE) and had a wee bit less in my savings than I thought I did (meaning not over $5 and also IRRESPONSIBLE) and a smidge less gas in my car than I thought I had (meaning the light in on which is also IRRESPONSIBLE) and that I also only have at home the kind of food I may not starve on but don't especially want to eat (bag of cheese popcorn circa April? a jar of pesto? teabags? IRRESPONSIBLE)
So being an industrious and eternally hopeful kind of girl, I have spent past hour plus combing my house for spare change (or elusive forgotten twenties.....or ones.) And have yet to make myself $5. Which is nuts because I am working hard, and in this heat too, and obviously my business sense is as cockeyed as my financial sense and aforementioned optimisim since I just realized I am not even paying myself minimum wage. When I run for Supreme Court you just know this incident will be the one that bites me in the ass (IRRESPONSIBLE.)
Back in the day I could buy entire meals for me and a beloved or bestie based on the change I found in cushions and under car seats and rummaging through winter coat pockets. You and me and $5 = joy. But while reality continues to bite, circa 2010 inflation is happening at an alarming rate in my domicile, and I am one defeated and unhappy little match girl now. I will never even be abl eto afford application fees for law school now so there goes the whole SC nod anyway, which I guess is a bright side, and I am sporting a sweet-arse child-sized hemp beach bracelet that was a bargain/reward for my winnings at 84,000 skee ball games.....
And of course upside, after I send myself to bed without supper (crime: IRRESPONSIBLE) when I awake the countdown will be only 8 days 'til payday! I love being a jet-setting starving artist who likes to pretend she eats. I should have gone the partner route instead. I kind of suck.
So being an industrious and eternally hopeful kind of girl, I have spent past hour plus combing my house for spare change (or elusive forgotten twenties.....or ones.) And have yet to make myself $5. Which is nuts because I am working hard, and in this heat too, and obviously my business sense is as cockeyed as my financial sense and aforementioned optimisim since I just realized I am not even paying myself minimum wage. When I run for Supreme Court you just know this incident will be the one that bites me in the ass (IRRESPONSIBLE.)
Back in the day I could buy entire meals for me and a beloved or bestie based on the change I found in cushions and under car seats and rummaging through winter coat pockets. You and me and $5 = joy. But while reality continues to bite, circa 2010 inflation is happening at an alarming rate in my domicile, and I am one defeated and unhappy little match girl now. I will never even be abl eto afford application fees for law school now so there goes the whole SC nod anyway, which I guess is a bright side, and I am sporting a sweet-arse child-sized hemp beach bracelet that was a bargain/reward for my winnings at 84,000 skee ball games.....
And of course upside, after I send myself to bed without supper (crime: IRRESPONSIBLE) when I awake the countdown will be only 8 days 'til payday! I love being a jet-setting starving artist who likes to pretend she eats. I should have gone the partner route instead. I kind of suck.
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