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.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
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
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