happy new year kids. tomorrow will hail in my 10 year high school anniversary year. crazy crazy. where will you be ten years from now? i probably thought married with kids doing some service style work somewhere in a third world country. ha. well, I tell you what. I'm going to be drinking a little plum brandy tonight with my luver and some kind-of friends. Ok, fine, friends I'm disappointed in/angry at (they hurt my pride, come on...). Don't know if I'll get drunk or not. Don't care. Am not really expecting nothing.
Review of 2007: January started off with an attack of disgusting facial skin disease...at home in bed with my Boj to welcome in the year. February my face skin only got worse and I put myself through a difficult physical regimen (which included intense strict diet, enemas, salt baths and sauna, veggy juice and water fasts, daily exertion, and liver and colon flushes) to try to rid my body of this mthfckg disease. March I gave up on the diet after my first liver flush nearly pushed me off the deepend and my face started to calm down. April my Boj and I moved into our own apartment (we'd been sharing with another married couple for almost 2 years) and I began looking more seriously for employment as my face was no longer so shameful (even started receiving comments from my grocer and tobacco seller that my face had improved and random strangers stopped suggesting that I try pro-active). May started editing. Weee. Thought I might go freelance. And I think that's when I started blogging with my blog friends too... June took a job, a real job after 7 months unemployed and forgot sometimes that I had a face problem and also vowed to quit smoking on my birthday. July, Boj's mother and my brother visited. August, quit smoking. September my sister visited and Bojan and I attended our first horse races in San Diego (Del Mar). October nothing happened. November Boj's friends visited and we went home to ATL for thanksgiving. I also stopped in Chicago and saw wyd for a few beautiful days. December is now; spent most of the month alone and it was good and now I'm back with my Boj (and I don't feel so much fear about cockroaches in my house anymore) and that's it.
Hm.
So anyway. Happy tonight and tomorrow. Enjoy.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Waikiki Wanderings, Christmas Season 2007
12/22/07 Saturday
Back to work tomorrow. At my fave Starbucks these days. The one I try not to frequent too frequently so I don’t outstay my welcome, which, seems to me, has happened at nearly every other coffee shop I’ve frequented.
* * *
That’s the second time now, I’ve been sitting at this window and a petite little old white-haired lady walked by with her fluffer nugget feathery white pup on a leash. Each time she passes, she studies the flower beds along the base of the window like a mad scientist studies his bubbling beakers. The first time by, a few days ago, she took a dead leaf from below one of the flowers. This time she just glared at the beds with the glare of pride of ownership.
* * *
There’s a crazy woman sitting at the table next to mine. I’ve got St. Germain pounding in my ears so I can’t hear what it is she comments on but periodically she lifts her head and shouts things to the baristas. The girl sitting on the other side of her never flinches; can it be that she doesn't notice? The crazy woman is taking pills out of her bag now. She’s got one of those mini sample cups in front of her with stains of neon pink lipstick on its rim which also happens to be smeared at the edges of her lipless mouth where only two very large teeth protrude and retract with a will of their own on the left side of her lower jaw like puppets. She’s got short blond, greasy hair, boy cut, obviously combed frequently. Grey-blond. She hasn’t stopped shuffling through her three bags since I’ve been watching her. She has no clue that I’m staring at her even though we're facing each other. Her raisin-like skin hangs off the corners of her body in mini folds even though she’s tiny. Her face is creased and crossed by hundreds of thin deep wrinkles. She was beautiful once, I think, or at least cute. She just pulled a small neon green noise-maker out of her bag. She’s now focused on it, shaking it intently back and forth. Clap clap clap clap…
She just took out her comb—Ah hah!—and combed one strand of hair on the back of her head and then put it away again. I wonder if she has a shadow self, like Jennifer Egan talks about in Look at Me. If she did, would her shadow be sane? I can hear her now through my music. Beatles' Yellow Submarine is playing over Starbucks’ radio, she’s singing along loudly only she’s singing a completely different Beatles' song.
She doesn’t have any nasty facial expressions. Her face is in constant motion as she talks silently to herself, I imagine, but the only expressions that surface are confusion, oblivion, worry—narcissism, that’s it! Oblivious and un-malicious and aware of the existence of absolutely no one else.
* * *
You know, if I didn’t have the buffer a boyfriend provides—you know on the general public scene—I’d probably be classified as weird: shy always—almost, sitting up very very straight at all times, alone often, always walking fast usually with my eyes cast downward and often conscious of my shaking cheeks (something I've always been embarrassed about) which then causes me to try to suck in my cheeks, dressed up more than the occasion usually, and that, these days, matching.
I don’t feel like I need people for the most part—apart from the ones I already “have”. But then also I feel I have a long way to go before I understand myself well enough to make a sweeping comment like that one which carries so much consequence.
* * *
The longer I keep my gaze fixed behind me, over my left shoulder, the more I understand about my post-high school post-Abidjan decisions. At some point during the first year or two of college, I took a knife and sliced right through the vein that attached all conscious memories before college to my brain. I then promptly forgot that I’d done this. So as the wound scabbed over and then developed a bulbous scar, I cried for my loss and wondered who I might blame for my lost childhood and why they would do such a horrible thing to me.
To fit in in a new country and new subcultures, to move on, to grow up, to find myself (the irony); I disjoined my past from my present and my future. Traded in my memories for a new outfit and a little make-up…a mail order brand-shiny-new Anna. I was ashamed, I think, at so many levels of who I was, what I’d done, and what I had represented that it was easier to throw it all out than to face it and own it
12/23/2007 Sunday
Bojan is in Atlanta now. It feels good. To have him closer. Two more days.
Full moon: 99% full. First of two nights of full moon. Just took a 3-mile walk, along Ala Wai Canal out to Ala Moana Boulevard, along the ocean to Kalakaua and all the way down it to Kapahulu, through hoards of people, then up toward the canal again and back down Kuhio Avenue till I reached my Towers Starbucks where I got a small double-shot latte. There’s been a moonbow around the moon for the last two hours.
“Peel all your layers off I want to each your artichoke heart. No more leaky holes in your brain and no more false starts.”
I have a belly ache from popcorn. If I sit up really straight, the gas in my belly depressurizes.
HEY! There’s that crazy lady from the other Starbucks. Across the street. There’s a bar, Tsunamis’, where they’re having some Sexy Santa’s Elves party with half a dozen half-naked girls and lotsa guys. There’s a crowd milling out front, smoking, staring, yelling, and there she is standing right in the middle of them, galloping in circles to the Bouncy Banjo music wafting out from inside. I mean all out as though she were fifteen and full of energy—wow—ope and there she’s off again. I guess that was that.
* * *
Japanese women, it seems, are skinnier after their second baby than most pre-pubescent white American girls. Sometimes I’ll pass a couple who, from far away, seem totally average (albeit Asian which should be a sign) and then, when I get up close, neither of them—the tops of their heads—reach over my shoulders. It isn’t rare, either, for some of the women to be shorter than my breastes (which don’t hang much because of their size). In Honolulu I have been a giant.
* * *
There’s a girl standing two doors down from Tsunami’s in front of XXXDVD store. She’s got lovely, long, luscious, and bared legs. She’s wearing 6-inch plastic clear heels, a black bra that can barely contain her enormous jugs (bulging out on all sides) and barely visible pink panties hiked up her A-hole. Oh, and a bodyguard in jeans in a black button-up long-sleeved shirt, buttoned all the way up. I wonder if she and he are porn stars. I think yes.
At my other video store, Diamond Head Video that is a 24-hour half normal (with an excellent selection of indy and foreign films), half-porn/sex-toys shop, they had a “Meet the Porn Star, Jennifer Juicy Lips, Night.”
She does have a good body, but she keeps shifty from foot to foot; makes her look, from here, like a toddler who has to pee. I think she’s just nervous.
Oh. That bodyguard man is wearing white slip-on loafers. He must be a porn star. Nailed him. Ha.
***
That's all. Merry Christmas everyone and a happy new year.
Back to work tomorrow. At my fave Starbucks these days. The one I try not to frequent too frequently so I don’t outstay my welcome, which, seems to me, has happened at nearly every other coffee shop I’ve frequented.
* * *
That’s the second time now, I’ve been sitting at this window and a petite little old white-haired lady walked by with her fluffer nugget feathery white pup on a leash. Each time she passes, she studies the flower beds along the base of the window like a mad scientist studies his bubbling beakers. The first time by, a few days ago, she took a dead leaf from below one of the flowers. This time she just glared at the beds with the glare of pride of ownership.
* * *
There’s a crazy woman sitting at the table next to mine. I’ve got St. Germain pounding in my ears so I can’t hear what it is she comments on but periodically she lifts her head and shouts things to the baristas. The girl sitting on the other side of her never flinches; can it be that she doesn't notice? The crazy woman is taking pills out of her bag now. She’s got one of those mini sample cups in front of her with stains of neon pink lipstick on its rim which also happens to be smeared at the edges of her lipless mouth where only two very large teeth protrude and retract with a will of their own on the left side of her lower jaw like puppets. She’s got short blond, greasy hair, boy cut, obviously combed frequently. Grey-blond. She hasn’t stopped shuffling through her three bags since I’ve been watching her. She has no clue that I’m staring at her even though we're facing each other. Her raisin-like skin hangs off the corners of her body in mini folds even though she’s tiny. Her face is creased and crossed by hundreds of thin deep wrinkles. She was beautiful once, I think, or at least cute. She just pulled a small neon green noise-maker out of her bag. She’s now focused on it, shaking it intently back and forth. Clap clap clap clap…
She just took out her comb—Ah hah!—and combed one strand of hair on the back of her head and then put it away again. I wonder if she has a shadow self, like Jennifer Egan talks about in Look at Me. If she did, would her shadow be sane? I can hear her now through my music. Beatles' Yellow Submarine is playing over Starbucks’ radio, she’s singing along loudly only she’s singing a completely different Beatles' song.
She doesn’t have any nasty facial expressions. Her face is in constant motion as she talks silently to herself, I imagine, but the only expressions that surface are confusion, oblivion, worry—narcissism, that’s it! Oblivious and un-malicious and aware of the existence of absolutely no one else.
* * *
You know, if I didn’t have the buffer a boyfriend provides—you know on the general public scene—I’d probably be classified as weird: shy always—almost, sitting up very very straight at all times, alone often, always walking fast usually with my eyes cast downward and often conscious of my shaking cheeks (something I've always been embarrassed about) which then causes me to try to suck in my cheeks, dressed up more than the occasion usually, and that, these days, matching.
I don’t feel like I need people for the most part—apart from the ones I already “have”. But then also I feel I have a long way to go before I understand myself well enough to make a sweeping comment like that one which carries so much consequence.
* * *
The longer I keep my gaze fixed behind me, over my left shoulder, the more I understand about my post-high school post-Abidjan decisions. At some point during the first year or two of college, I took a knife and sliced right through the vein that attached all conscious memories before college to my brain. I then promptly forgot that I’d done this. So as the wound scabbed over and then developed a bulbous scar, I cried for my loss and wondered who I might blame for my lost childhood and why they would do such a horrible thing to me.
To fit in in a new country and new subcultures, to move on, to grow up, to find myself (the irony); I disjoined my past from my present and my future. Traded in my memories for a new outfit and a little make-up…a mail order brand-shiny-new Anna. I was ashamed, I think, at so many levels of who I was, what I’d done, and what I had represented that it was easier to throw it all out than to face it and own it
12/23/2007 Sunday
Bojan is in Atlanta now. It feels good. To have him closer. Two more days.
Full moon: 99% full. First of two nights of full moon. Just took a 3-mile walk, along Ala Wai Canal out to Ala Moana Boulevard, along the ocean to Kalakaua and all the way down it to Kapahulu, through hoards of people, then up toward the canal again and back down Kuhio Avenue till I reached my Towers Starbucks where I got a small double-shot latte. There’s been a moonbow around the moon for the last two hours.
“Peel all your layers off I want to each your artichoke heart. No more leaky holes in your brain and no more false starts.”
I have a belly ache from popcorn. If I sit up really straight, the gas in my belly depressurizes.
HEY! There’s that crazy lady from the other Starbucks. Across the street. There’s a bar, Tsunamis’, where they’re having some Sexy Santa’s Elves party with half a dozen half-naked girls and lotsa guys. There’s a crowd milling out front, smoking, staring, yelling, and there she is standing right in the middle of them, galloping in circles to the Bouncy Banjo music wafting out from inside. I mean all out as though she were fifteen and full of energy—wow—ope and there she’s off again. I guess that was that.
* * *
Japanese women, it seems, are skinnier after their second baby than most pre-pubescent white American girls. Sometimes I’ll pass a couple who, from far away, seem totally average (albeit Asian which should be a sign) and then, when I get up close, neither of them—the tops of their heads—reach over my shoulders. It isn’t rare, either, for some of the women to be shorter than my breastes (which don’t hang much because of their size). In Honolulu I have been a giant.
* * *
There’s a girl standing two doors down from Tsunami’s in front of XXXDVD store. She’s got lovely, long, luscious, and bared legs. She’s wearing 6-inch plastic clear heels, a black bra that can barely contain her enormous jugs (bulging out on all sides) and barely visible pink panties hiked up her A-hole. Oh, and a bodyguard in jeans in a black button-up long-sleeved shirt, buttoned all the way up. I wonder if she and he are porn stars. I think yes.
At my other video store, Diamond Head Video that is a 24-hour half normal (with an excellent selection of indy and foreign films), half-porn/sex-toys shop, they had a “Meet the Porn Star, Jennifer Juicy Lips, Night.”
She does have a good body, but she keeps shifty from foot to foot; makes her look, from here, like a toddler who has to pee. I think she’s just nervous.
Oh. That bodyguard man is wearing white slip-on loafers. He must be a porn star. Nailed him. Ha.
***
That's all. Merry Christmas everyone and a happy new year.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Mickey Mouse
How can you stay down for long in weather like this--a battle between the sun, brisk winds, highly flying rain clouds that spit on you a chill mist every other block, and everywhere else, poking his infinite nose into the pedestrian-filled sidewalks, the infinite blue expanse of sky. And on my table as I write, sun dancing shadows of leaves high above thrown across my notebook, scooting and jiving to St Germain pounding nervously in my ears. Everyone outside my window, windblown and sun-dappled.
A man just walked by me. I was looking past the world at nothing, enjoying the sensations and stimuli, thoughtless when slowly, in the way your mind processes almost slow-motino when you're not exactly in control, his image impressed itself onto me. He was an older Asian man, probably Japanese, maybe in his sixties with paranoid eyes and a down-cast upper body, like he was sneaking, trying to be inconspicuous. He had on eighties-style white-washed jeans. That's what caught my eye first, because right above the knee on each thigh were loud black and red Mickey Mouse heads, two on each leg. Sleepy-eyed and still not that interested, I half-watched him cross the street towards me. When he was about halfway across I realized that he had a t-shirt on with a HUGE Mickey face on it. I began to feel an interest popping...what else, man? Just as he was about to pass out of my sight, I saw that his overshirt, a button-up, was a black and white camouflage of Mickey faces. My last look of him as he passed my window and out of sight: he looked so serious, so intent on getting to where he was going without a misstep.
A man just walked by me. I was looking past the world at nothing, enjoying the sensations and stimuli, thoughtless when slowly, in the way your mind processes almost slow-motino when you're not exactly in control, his image impressed itself onto me. He was an older Asian man, probably Japanese, maybe in his sixties with paranoid eyes and a down-cast upper body, like he was sneaking, trying to be inconspicuous. He had on eighties-style white-washed jeans. That's what caught my eye first, because right above the knee on each thigh were loud black and red Mickey Mouse heads, two on each leg. Sleepy-eyed and still not that interested, I half-watched him cross the street towards me. When he was about halfway across I realized that he had a t-shirt on with a HUGE Mickey face on it. I began to feel an interest popping...what else, man? Just as he was about to pass out of my sight, I saw that his overshirt, a button-up, was a black and white camouflage of Mickey faces. My last look of him as he passed my window and out of sight: he looked so serious, so intent on getting to where he was going without a misstep.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Anyway
It's never been this important to figure out who I am. I don't know that I know. She asked me "who are you in relation to who you were as a kid?" and I started to cry. And then I didn't stop for the rest of the hour. I turned to look at my childhood and as I turned, my should jammed hard into this flat white almost opaque sheet. It had a clammy sheen to it and as my shoulder made contact, it was actually dry, it gave a little and then threw me back away from it like a vertical white trampoline. I couldn't look back there to who I was. I guess I felt sad about that. Last night I dreamed that one of my classmates from my small high school class died. She was a great person, back in high school, and a bunch of us who knew her, even a girl I hadn't seen since sixth grade, got together to mourn and one of my classmates who I had always been intimidated by hugged me for a long time. It felt good to be hugged.
When I turned 27 I dedicated this year to growing up. I quit smoking and started exercising a little more. And then I made an appointment with a shrink. She's cool. We get a long well. I think if she were my age, we could have been friends in another life. We have a lot of the same interests. She's half French. Roots in a town about 20 minutes from where I lived in France for a few years. Which doesn't really matter, but feels like another coincidence connection that made me think I could trust her a little more. Studied literature in college; finds dreams interesting. She lets me do all the talking, which I guess is the point, to let me hash out my life in a way I can't with anyone else because it's probably more boring than anything. She asks a few questions here and there.
Anyway, so I'm trying to figure out who I am apart from anyone else, even my B and my sisters and my parents and his family and....its not so easy to pull yourself out of the present and look at you like you were looking in a mirror. But I guess for some reason its important to me right now to chase this, even if it is a chasing after the wind.
I'm finding a current under my fields of sadness that I didn't really know was there. I spend a lot of time with my lady feeling sad. But I think that's human. I think to love and to feel sadness are two of the most human emotions. When I love or I feel sad, those are the times when I can be quiet or jump for joy inside of this bigger feeling that encompasses more than just the people in my little world.
Anyway.
I dunno.
When I turned 27 I dedicated this year to growing up. I quit smoking and started exercising a little more. And then I made an appointment with a shrink. She's cool. We get a long well. I think if she were my age, we could have been friends in another life. We have a lot of the same interests. She's half French. Roots in a town about 20 minutes from where I lived in France for a few years. Which doesn't really matter, but feels like another coincidence connection that made me think I could trust her a little more. Studied literature in college; finds dreams interesting. She lets me do all the talking, which I guess is the point, to let me hash out my life in a way I can't with anyone else because it's probably more boring than anything. She asks a few questions here and there.
Anyway, so I'm trying to figure out who I am apart from anyone else, even my B and my sisters and my parents and his family and....its not so easy to pull yourself out of the present and look at you like you were looking in a mirror. But I guess for some reason its important to me right now to chase this, even if it is a chasing after the wind.
I'm finding a current under my fields of sadness that I didn't really know was there. I spend a lot of time with my lady feeling sad. But I think that's human. I think to love and to feel sadness are two of the most human emotions. When I love or I feel sad, those are the times when I can be quiet or jump for joy inside of this bigger feeling that encompasses more than just the people in my little world.
Anyway.
I dunno.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
What is art?
Is art something that is pretty? inherently? or is it something to communicate with? I mean, I know these questions sound silly, but its kind of what I work with here. The artist I sell for is incredibly skilled. Technically. But would I call his work art? Only if art can be defined in terms of something that is obviously, and without any effort on the viewers part to find or understand, pretty. Otherwise, the art of the artist I work for says nothing except for, "I am an incredibly talented artist."
I keep tossing around my job, trying to find out where I can settle, how I can settle into the sales part of it and get selling. I don't want to limit myself to a box and say, "I'm a bad sales person." Or "I'm not good at sales." Because I know that's not true for everything. I'm just not a natural bullshitter. Never was. Like, say, my brother is. And I know I was conditioned, as a child, to appreciate and make decisions based on intellect and ideas. And those together make me a piss-poor CRL sales person. I don't like his work, I think it's overpriced, when I'm shopping I don't like to be bothered too much and so I treat people in the gallery that way, I don't like to push people, and I am not exceptionally experienced. I also am realizing about myself that I'd rather do things I enjoy...I guess we all would, right? Like I'd rather work on an hourly salary or even base + commission at a gallery that sells art work I appreciate, even if on the whole it's ugly or takes a lot of time/commitment to "get" evne if that means I have a much smaller potential client base.
I dunno. Can I just say it? I don't like to work as a sales person? I don't. Simple. I'll take that into consideration next time I look for a job. But you can't really get away from that either, can you? Well....fart.
I keep tossing around my job, trying to find out where I can settle, how I can settle into the sales part of it and get selling. I don't want to limit myself to a box and say, "I'm a bad sales person." Or "I'm not good at sales." Because I know that's not true for everything. I'm just not a natural bullshitter. Never was. Like, say, my brother is. And I know I was conditioned, as a child, to appreciate and make decisions based on intellect and ideas. And those together make me a piss-poor CRL sales person. I don't like his work, I think it's overpriced, when I'm shopping I don't like to be bothered too much and so I treat people in the gallery that way, I don't like to push people, and I am not exceptionally experienced. I also am realizing about myself that I'd rather do things I enjoy...I guess we all would, right? Like I'd rather work on an hourly salary or even base + commission at a gallery that sells art work I appreciate, even if on the whole it's ugly or takes a lot of time/commitment to "get" evne if that means I have a much smaller potential client base.
I dunno. Can I just say it? I don't like to work as a sales person? I don't. Simple. I'll take that into consideration next time I look for a job. But you can't really get away from that either, can you? Well....fart.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
What the-
I just ran upstairs next door to use the potty. I'm here at work and I usually have to lock up when I'm on my own (has absolutely no relevance to this story). So, anyway, I just ran upstairs next door to use the potty and on my way up the escalator I said hi to our cleaning guy (the building's). He's great. I've never met such a positive old guy who's career is cleaning toilets and escalator handles. So I always smile when I run into him even though's he's a bit of an odd bloke. He's from some SouthEast Asian place, I think. He almost has an aboriginal look to him. Old, like maybe in his 60s or a worn out 50s. He always says some words to me but I rarely understand them. A mix of immigrant English and whatever language from wherever he's from. But he's a good guy. So today I say hi as usual on my way up the escalator. When I turn to run into the toilets room, there's a cleaning cart out front and the door's propped open. Huh. Interesting, this means they must have hired somebody new to help out, because I've never seen anyone but him cleaning the toilets. so, I run back downstairs and smile again at my guy and work for another ten minutes. But believe me, I had to pee bad. So as soon as I could get rid of my clients, I ran upstairs again. Still, my guy was cleaning the escalators. I yell, "I'm trying again" to him as I run. When I get to the corner, there he is! What the. The same guy, standing inside the men's door. He says "Hello" as usual. And I respond in kind.
So, but his is a bit unsettling. That means my cleaning guy is actually my cleaning guys and that, in fact, they are twins!
Hahahahahaha. Yay.
So, but his is a bit unsettling. That means my cleaning guy is actually my cleaning guys and that, in fact, they are twins!
Hahahahahaha. Yay.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Maybe
that treasure thing feeling was just the urge to talk again. I'm coming to visit wyd at the end of the month for a few days. I can't wait. I think its going to be really good to reconnect, even if its only for minutes in between her study sessions.
I just scattered yummy crumbs all over the floor behind our desk. Hahaha.
Change is in the air. I've set it there. A big blinking neon sign that keeps me awake at night and follows me like a storm cloud in a cartoon. People stop and stare of course, but I pretend like its not there. I should probably just laugh about it. Sometimes the sign sneaks close to me, until in a moment of white shock, it burns the back of my neck or the skin on the outside of my arm. Lucky for me it didn't catch my hair on fire yet.
The process of Change is grinding, at times, isn't it. And there are way too many mirrors in this hall. Mirrors that catch my image and hold it just where I don't necessarily want to see it, especially right in that moment. Curses.
But then you come out on the other side of Change and you've blossomed. At least you feel like you have. The buds have bloomed into a mess of lilac purples and smells you want to sink into for an hour. And that's you. And that's why. But who said the goal is not the goal?
Anyway, there are days too when I wonder if I should just unplug the sign and put it back in the closet and forget the whole deal. It doesn't necessarily feel right to be focused so much on that. On me. Sometimes it feels way forced, other times self-centered, and sometimes just prolonging the drama that doesn't have to be there in the first place. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just playing the baby and making excuses and if I just decide to do it and then do it and shut up, then I'll be myself, I'll know myself, and I def won't be wallowing.
Well, there's that.
I just scattered yummy crumbs all over the floor behind our desk. Hahaha.
Change is in the air. I've set it there. A big blinking neon sign that keeps me awake at night and follows me like a storm cloud in a cartoon. People stop and stare of course, but I pretend like its not there. I should probably just laugh about it. Sometimes the sign sneaks close to me, until in a moment of white shock, it burns the back of my neck or the skin on the outside of my arm. Lucky for me it didn't catch my hair on fire yet.
The process of Change is grinding, at times, isn't it. And there are way too many mirrors in this hall. Mirrors that catch my image and hold it just where I don't necessarily want to see it, especially right in that moment. Curses.
But then you come out on the other side of Change and you've blossomed. At least you feel like you have. The buds have bloomed into a mess of lilac purples and smells you want to sink into for an hour. And that's you. And that's why. But who said the goal is not the goal?
Anyway, there are days too when I wonder if I should just unplug the sign and put it back in the closet and forget the whole deal. It doesn't necessarily feel right to be focused so much on that. On me. Sometimes it feels way forced, other times self-centered, and sometimes just prolonging the drama that doesn't have to be there in the first place. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just playing the baby and making excuses and if I just decide to do it and then do it and shut up, then I'll be myself, I'll know myself, and I def won't be wallowing.
Well, there's that.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
It's been about a month
since I posted my last blog. Gooolllee. November already! Can you believe how fast time is flying. We're about to pass into the year 2008. I gragitated from high school in 1998. Where will you be 10 years from now? Remember that question? Yikes.
Today we have flash flood watches and high surf warnings. It's been dumping buckets since 1o oclock last night. Cozy for sleep, I tell you whatwow. But made for a damp trek to work and earlier departure than normal. Higher maintenance, wrapping everything in my backpack in plastic bags and my sandwich, and packing my work clothes and wearing other clothes. It's windy here too, so my little baby blue umbrella wanted to fly away from me a couple times but I didn't let it.
These days, maybe these last three days, I have this feeling, overrides most others, that special things, treasure-like things, are in constant motion floating all around me and that some of these things are falling on me, even as we speak, as they must and I get to keep them and experience them.
Something to do with acquiring something new and with open creativity. Maybe through creativity I will make something beautiful and cool tha tI get to keep. Kind of feels like having a fridge full of exciting yummy things like ham and butter and fresh baked warm bread and chocolate and milk and yogurt and sprouts and mayo and tuna and honey and peanut butter and buttered popcorn, etc.
And warm coffee too.
Today we have flash flood watches and high surf warnings. It's been dumping buckets since 1o oclock last night. Cozy for sleep, I tell you whatwow. But made for a damp trek to work and earlier departure than normal. Higher maintenance, wrapping everything in my backpack in plastic bags and my sandwich, and packing my work clothes and wearing other clothes. It's windy here too, so my little baby blue umbrella wanted to fly away from me a couple times but I didn't let it.
These days, maybe these last three days, I have this feeling, overrides most others, that special things, treasure-like things, are in constant motion floating all around me and that some of these things are falling on me, even as we speak, as they must and I get to keep them and experience them.
Something to do with acquiring something new and with open creativity. Maybe through creativity I will make something beautiful and cool tha tI get to keep. Kind of feels like having a fridge full of exciting yummy things like ham and butter and fresh baked warm bread and chocolate and milk and yogurt and sprouts and mayo and tuna and honey and peanut butter and buttered popcorn, etc.
And warm coffee too.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
October and The Fall
How I miss the fall some days. Today, actually, isn't one of them, but I thought I'd throw it out anyway. WYD, do you remember at TU that one pick-a-date where I so desperately wanted to go with...oh shit, I can't even say his name because I have my blog listed on facebook and you never know. Anyway, we all went on a hay ride. I think you went with my brother that time...It was fun. I do love the feeling of just cold where you nose starts to turn pink everytime you go outside and a jacket becomes necessary and you just start having the excuse to clean out your fireplace and start chopping wood in the backyard. Eh. However, I noticed that in CT for one it's not that cold yet even though Halloween is quickly charging us.
Monday, October 1, 2007
This doesn't have to say anything
I just need to get my blog blood flowing. It's always so disappointing to me when other bloggers with whom I am in conversation, let their blogs go to the flies.
My little sis, Lyds, is in town. Yayaya. Two and a half weeks. And she's seriously considering making the next phase of her life out here, somewheres. Nice.
I'm going through my drop after coffee and lunch. All my blood's in my belly helping my food to digest and my eyes are droopy droopy droopy. Plus I've been missing sleep for the past three nights. Curses.
My little sis, Lyds, is in town. Yayaya. Two and a half weeks. And she's seriously considering making the next phase of her life out here, somewheres. Nice.
I'm going through my drop after coffee and lunch. All my blood's in my belly helping my food to digest and my eyes are droopy droopy droopy. Plus I've been missing sleep for the past three nights. Curses.
Monday, August 27, 2007
namesake
So it's past midnight and i'm not sleeping, only this time it is the rare coin in the purse. I've been going to bed eaaarly these past few weeks, but today I'm waaaay behind on my editing, like I can feel my body off balance, my head heavy falling behind me and my neck straining to bring it upright again or else my neck my keep growing and growing and growing, with the rubbery texture of playdough until, oops, it just rolls right off my body. So, anyway, I need to catch up now. Even so, I will sleep now and continue working tomorrow and the next day and the next. The day after those, though, B and I are finally taking a bit of time off the islands. Hurray. We're going to Del Mar for the final weekend of horserace season. I guess B's part (ticket and hotel) are a bonus from his boss who's into the race scene (hobby) and so we're all going down together to paaaarty. That'll will be a much-needed hop and skip off HI.
My body loves that I quit. My head sometimes still beats me with a death stick, tempting me to light it before I turn into a bloody pulp from the beating. But I say NOOOO! Ha.
My body loves that I quit. My head sometimes still beats me with a death stick, tempting me to light it before I turn into a bloody pulp from the beating. But I say NOOOO! Ha.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
sales update
I'm now at $10,000 ish for the month (one cannot take commission till you top $30,000 in sales). That other woman I spoke of is at $75,000 for the month. Apparently last August, she topped $300,000!!! AHAHAHAHAHA. She's been working here 11 years and she speaks Japanese but common! Give me a motha-fking break! Yipes.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
winds of change...
...27 years and kicking...
...quit smoking on Monday, feel fine most moments, occasionally want to kick someone in the groin, mostly my withdrawals happen at night in the form of repeated sudden jolts of wide-awakeness, a grab at air like I might be drowning, and a piss before wafting back down into my slumber...
...switched my nicotine craving focus to a caffeine focus; once I get the former under control, I'll kick the latter as well...
...sold $2,000 worth of art so far this month as compared to our top saleswoman at $55,000 and running...
...find I have much more energy than before and maybe my brain is playing tricks on me but i think i can smell better too...
...miss our discussions on soulandmeat, maybe we should make them less formal, less formidable; i know unless i feel well read on a subject, i won't venture an opinion, so maybe we should broaden the subjects and let them flow where they will through our discussions, dunno...
...the summer is still high and flying, crystal blue sky waters green and aqua with bright yellow and orange fish with black stripes, sunspots filtered on cobbled streets, and happy jabber and tinkling laughter everywhere you look; weeeeeeee...
...quit smoking on Monday, feel fine most moments, occasionally want to kick someone in the groin, mostly my withdrawals happen at night in the form of repeated sudden jolts of wide-awakeness, a grab at air like I might be drowning, and a piss before wafting back down into my slumber...
...switched my nicotine craving focus to a caffeine focus; once I get the former under control, I'll kick the latter as well...
...sold $2,000 worth of art so far this month as compared to our top saleswoman at $55,000 and running...
...find I have much more energy than before and maybe my brain is playing tricks on me but i think i can smell better too...
...miss our discussions on soulandmeat, maybe we should make them less formal, less formidable; i know unless i feel well read on a subject, i won't venture an opinion, so maybe we should broaden the subjects and let them flow where they will through our discussions, dunno...
...the summer is still high and flying, crystal blue sky waters green and aqua with bright yellow and orange fish with black stripes, sunspots filtered on cobbled streets, and happy jabber and tinkling laughter everywhere you look; weeeeeeee...
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Sundays in the summer
Today is a good day. I feel it mixed in with all my other sloppy hungover emotions. Drank last night with the boys, B's boys. It's always fun, a gaggle of jugo men, drinking, smoking, laughing, and I, sitting there, trying to catch a thread of the conversation or begging someone or other to translate when they laugh particularly hard or when i think the gossip might be juicy. Drinking and smoking. And good god....cold turkey and mayo sandwich coming right uppo.
Sunday at work, august five. B's home or swimming or shopping or sleeping or who knows whatwhere. And I'm sitting here, strangely upbeat for the hangover and ominous cloud hanging over my tomorrows. Excited and anticipating another phase.
Hmmm...
Sunday at work, august five. B's home or swimming or shopping or sleeping or who knows whatwhere. And I'm sitting here, strangely upbeat for the hangover and ominous cloud hanging over my tomorrows. Excited and anticipating another phase.
Hmmm...
Friday, August 3, 2007
I've got blueberries
and peaches and papayas and cabbage and veganaise and tuna and smoked turkey and chicken and onions and garlic and tomatoes and so much good food. it is a marvelous feeling playing house sometimes (long as you don't look at the receipts).
i'm quitting smokes in two days. oh me. and I don't want to gain any weight. and i want to exchange my passionate enjoyment of tobacco for a rekindled passionate enjoyment for exercise--running early early in the morning is the best. that means sleep early too. i've been nervous off and on but millions and millions of people have done it before me, some stronger some weaker. anyway, fuck comparisons, it's me whos doing it. Sunday's it for life. goooooolllee.
so I wrote. actually i typed meme a letter. large print, seven pages long, with a map of hawaii and quotes and all. she's 95 years old. she wrote me back, probably the day i wrote her and said we should be writing partners. she said, this whole time she thought she was the only letter writer in the family. well well. here we are another one, eh. so be it. i have found my new writing buddy. i've been looking for one for so long. why is it we always look in the wrong places for things we need. like the alchemist kid.
i think i'll have a smoke. hold on while i grap my ashtray. i'll be right back.
so i'm up to my neck in the drama of my company. drama here and there and everywhere. a few days after i joined the least teamy team out there eight administrators in the company were let go. boss man, the artist himself, doesn't know much about business, apparently, and figured that the best way to trim some co. fat was to remove the entire hierarchy of infrastructure. some of the guys he let off have been wiht the company over ten years. how's the for thanks for your loyalty and we appreciate all you've done for us. so these last few weeks have been random people stepping up to the plate, trying to salvage their jobs, trying to knock some business sense into bossman. lucky me, ive got a new boss now who dosn't know how to use excell or make a schedule or attach to an email. so i am now necessary even though my sales records for the month, which should have averaged at $10,000 were only $2,000. we'll see what the future holds. it's kind of entertaining, in a way. i guess because i have zero loyalty to the company or the people in it, or even my eight dollar an hour job. whatev.
life is good, though, on the whole. i'm living with the most beautiful boy i've ever met and he loves me and i love him and we're are quite fully ourselves with each other and we're saving, thanks to him, and a few months from now i'll be tobacco free (and urge-freeish). and i love my house and i love the weather here and i love the wind and i'm turning 27 in a few days. whoooeee. i think 27 is a good year. especially when it falls in the year 2007. i love a balanced number. i think 27 will be a year for me like 23 was. it just felt significant going into it and indeed that was a massive turner in my life.
i've got to get editing. its been a while. and i've got to call Mr. Kimo (who needs a salesperson). and i've been ordered to go to the sauna. so i've got a full plate today and its already noon.
cheers.
i'm quitting smokes in two days. oh me. and I don't want to gain any weight. and i want to exchange my passionate enjoyment of tobacco for a rekindled passionate enjoyment for exercise--running early early in the morning is the best. that means sleep early too. i've been nervous off and on but millions and millions of people have done it before me, some stronger some weaker. anyway, fuck comparisons, it's me whos doing it. Sunday's it for life. goooooolllee.
so I wrote. actually i typed meme a letter. large print, seven pages long, with a map of hawaii and quotes and all. she's 95 years old. she wrote me back, probably the day i wrote her and said we should be writing partners. she said, this whole time she thought she was the only letter writer in the family. well well. here we are another one, eh. so be it. i have found my new writing buddy. i've been looking for one for so long. why is it we always look in the wrong places for things we need. like the alchemist kid.
i think i'll have a smoke. hold on while i grap my ashtray. i'll be right back.
so i'm up to my neck in the drama of my company. drama here and there and everywhere. a few days after i joined the least teamy team out there eight administrators in the company were let go. boss man, the artist himself, doesn't know much about business, apparently, and figured that the best way to trim some co. fat was to remove the entire hierarchy of infrastructure. some of the guys he let off have been wiht the company over ten years. how's the for thanks for your loyalty and we appreciate all you've done for us. so these last few weeks have been random people stepping up to the plate, trying to salvage their jobs, trying to knock some business sense into bossman. lucky me, ive got a new boss now who dosn't know how to use excell or make a schedule or attach to an email. so i am now necessary even though my sales records for the month, which should have averaged at $10,000 were only $2,000. we'll see what the future holds. it's kind of entertaining, in a way. i guess because i have zero loyalty to the company or the people in it, or even my eight dollar an hour job. whatev.
life is good, though, on the whole. i'm living with the most beautiful boy i've ever met and he loves me and i love him and we're are quite fully ourselves with each other and we're saving, thanks to him, and a few months from now i'll be tobacco free (and urge-freeish). and i love my house and i love the weather here and i love the wind and i'm turning 27 in a few days. whoooeee. i think 27 is a good year. especially when it falls in the year 2007. i love a balanced number. i think 27 will be a year for me like 23 was. it just felt significant going into it and indeed that was a massive turner in my life.
i've got to get editing. its been a while. and i've got to call Mr. Kimo (who needs a salesperson). and i've been ordered to go to the sauna. so i've got a full plate today and its already noon.
cheers.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
It's four-thirty Wednesday
Just between afternoon and evening when you're not quite sure how to address the next stranger fate or the current or your job throws you against. Reading for the second time (first, as a senior in high school) Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Now there's a woman who can write. A good story read washes away any electronic distractions and entertainment. I also, this morning, it being my day off and all and I feeling a little under the weather, watched the movie Everything is Illuminated. Not bad. I enjoyed it and it made me think afterwards about my Meme and how I hardly know her anymore. Maybe not at all. We are coincidentally related. She's my mom's mom. I used to write her letters frequently as a child, wrote her about what an amazing woman she is, how much I admire her and how I want to grow up to be like her. Then one day, during a scaffuffle of family fights and counselling, I realized she didn't love my mother the way she should have. She didn't defend my mother against her good loyal husband's greatest weakness, his brutal words. And that was the turning point. I haven't written her a letter since even though she always and always will send me birthday and christmas cards with a check inside and a nice, longish letter telling me about her birds and squirrels and the goings-on of her tiny corner of Peoria, Illinois.
I feel sick to my stomach when I realize what role I haven't played in her life. I don't know why I stopped being her grandchild, the way I used to. I guess I made a decision one day and then promptly forgot about that decision and continued on with my life. Every once in a while I think about how I don't take the time with her, but then I stuff it back under a pile of old journals that I only read but once in every three years.
She just turned 96, I believe, or is it 97. I'm not quite sure. I remember at fifteen years of age, she could do pushups and I couldn't. I think she may not be driving anymore, but that changed only in the last year, year and a half, since my older sister moved in with her. They had a pretty heavy tiff when Meme, that's what we call her, realized that her oldest grandchild was no longer a Christian, nay-an atheist! All her dreams of her remembered moments with SJ, serious prayer and Bible-reading contentment over the coziest kitchen table you've ever sat at or the breeziest freshest card table under the most familiar maple tree you've ever drunk tea at, drained slowly through the muck of wet spring mud, down her narrow driveway and into the gutter marking the end of her lawn and the beginning of the street, guarded by her ever-busy, ever-worn out mailbox. That was a hard moment for both of them. They've adjusted, I think, over the months and appreciate each others' company in other, more subtle ways.
I don't call her on the phone anymore because her hearing is nearly gone. She's had hearing aids since she was forty. When she takes them out, these days, she's quite deaf as a log. She started getting real nervous on the phone and spouted quickly a list of greetings and best-wishes and then passed the phone off to my sister. So I stopped calling her. She's a beautiful woman, with skin softer than the softest comparison anyone can make, softer than the down on the underside of a dove's wing, well softer than a baby's bottom. She's got pure white hair, thin by now. She's always taken care of her looks. She dresses with class and taste, matching accessories. I'd be proud to still dress as she does when I reach her age. She's got a house that connects all the way around, in a circle, all the rooms together, you never have to backtrack. And in the winter, when she can't realistically make it outside to take her daily walks, she does her rounds, keeping her limbs as strong and nimble as her age will allow. I have a feeling and a deep hope that she passes on in her sleep. The Jugo culture says the best people pass on in their sleep, if they make it to old age. She's got some physical health problems but nothing major. She's had arthritis as long as I've known her. Her feet have always been sharply angled, gnarled in pain that she never ever utters. She never complains.
She grew up, first generation Swedish imigrant, working like a healthy ox on a farm in South Dakota with her other six brothers and sisters (one died at birth). Almost two years ago, in one week of days, she said goodbye to the last three remaining sibblings alive. We all wondered if she might join them in their restful journey beyond. But she stayed on. I'm not sure why.
She lives in silence, for the most part. And she's let her bodily controls go with the time. She has no issue, nor barely notices, farts and burps that have grown deeper with a large man's tenor. She is one of the strongest women I know. And I have abandonned her. I think Ive told myself that my sister lives with her and that's good enough. That's SJ's doing the job for the rest of the grandkids, that she'll know vicariously that we love her through SJ.
I wonder what passes through the mind of a 97-year-old woman who was born before the normal telephone (when anyone who wanted some gossip could just pick up the receiver and listen to the neighbors talk and, if they got really into it, might add their own two cents to the surprise of the talkers), before cars were common. She lived through both world wars, the second of which her husband fought in and had a bomb blow up in his ear, nearly litterally. She cooked, during the wartime for that famous bakery family, I forget their names. She met Pawpaw (that's her husband) when he was on leave and on a whim, had a double wedding with her cousin a few weeks later. She's lived in one house her whole married life. She's generous to a fault. She's one of the best cooks I ever met, too. You ain't never tasted a roast like Meme's, she's famous for it among our friends and strangers that happen on her doorstep. Her baking's the best too--chocolate chip cookies, brownies she's famous for over in Africa, cinamon cake, peanut butter chocolate bars, lemon cake, cinnamon rolls (one of my very favorite, directly out the oven, steaming hot with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter dripping lustily between my fingers, but that not for long), apple crisp, apple pie and on and on and on.
I don't know what to do. I keep saying I'll do something and then the nagging fear bites my behind like a beesting, that she doesn't have too many days left and the longer I wait, the shorter is my chance of making things right, of not abandonning the strong, beautiful, woman who made it possible for me to be alive and who loved me very very well.
Florence Quimby. She keeps a journal, and has for the last forty years at least, and records every day the passage of time. I believe it is more of a list of thises and thats and whos than whys and feels, which is what I would rather know. But still, one day, when she finally kisses this world goodbye and sleeps, I will read all of them, and then maybe learn something more about her, about this stranger that I should know and love deeply but uncertain about for lack of memories and proximity and now, the mystery and limitations of old age in communication.
Guh is what I feel in my belly and my heart. I think I'll write her a letter, like I should have done years and years ago.
I feel sick to my stomach when I realize what role I haven't played in her life. I don't know why I stopped being her grandchild, the way I used to. I guess I made a decision one day and then promptly forgot about that decision and continued on with my life. Every once in a while I think about how I don't take the time with her, but then I stuff it back under a pile of old journals that I only read but once in every three years.
She just turned 96, I believe, or is it 97. I'm not quite sure. I remember at fifteen years of age, she could do pushups and I couldn't. I think she may not be driving anymore, but that changed only in the last year, year and a half, since my older sister moved in with her. They had a pretty heavy tiff when Meme, that's what we call her, realized that her oldest grandchild was no longer a Christian, nay-an atheist! All her dreams of her remembered moments with SJ, serious prayer and Bible-reading contentment over the coziest kitchen table you've ever sat at or the breeziest freshest card table under the most familiar maple tree you've ever drunk tea at, drained slowly through the muck of wet spring mud, down her narrow driveway and into the gutter marking the end of her lawn and the beginning of the street, guarded by her ever-busy, ever-worn out mailbox. That was a hard moment for both of them. They've adjusted, I think, over the months and appreciate each others' company in other, more subtle ways.
I don't call her on the phone anymore because her hearing is nearly gone. She's had hearing aids since she was forty. When she takes them out, these days, she's quite deaf as a log. She started getting real nervous on the phone and spouted quickly a list of greetings and best-wishes and then passed the phone off to my sister. So I stopped calling her. She's a beautiful woman, with skin softer than the softest comparison anyone can make, softer than the down on the underside of a dove's wing, well softer than a baby's bottom. She's got pure white hair, thin by now. She's always taken care of her looks. She dresses with class and taste, matching accessories. I'd be proud to still dress as she does when I reach her age. She's got a house that connects all the way around, in a circle, all the rooms together, you never have to backtrack. And in the winter, when she can't realistically make it outside to take her daily walks, she does her rounds, keeping her limbs as strong and nimble as her age will allow. I have a feeling and a deep hope that she passes on in her sleep. The Jugo culture says the best people pass on in their sleep, if they make it to old age. She's got some physical health problems but nothing major. She's had arthritis as long as I've known her. Her feet have always been sharply angled, gnarled in pain that she never ever utters. She never complains.
She grew up, first generation Swedish imigrant, working like a healthy ox on a farm in South Dakota with her other six brothers and sisters (one died at birth). Almost two years ago, in one week of days, she said goodbye to the last three remaining sibblings alive. We all wondered if she might join them in their restful journey beyond. But she stayed on. I'm not sure why.
She lives in silence, for the most part. And she's let her bodily controls go with the time. She has no issue, nor barely notices, farts and burps that have grown deeper with a large man's tenor. She is one of the strongest women I know. And I have abandonned her. I think Ive told myself that my sister lives with her and that's good enough. That's SJ's doing the job for the rest of the grandkids, that she'll know vicariously that we love her through SJ.
I wonder what passes through the mind of a 97-year-old woman who was born before the normal telephone (when anyone who wanted some gossip could just pick up the receiver and listen to the neighbors talk and, if they got really into it, might add their own two cents to the surprise of the talkers), before cars were common. She lived through both world wars, the second of which her husband fought in and had a bomb blow up in his ear, nearly litterally. She cooked, during the wartime for that famous bakery family, I forget their names. She met Pawpaw (that's her husband) when he was on leave and on a whim, had a double wedding with her cousin a few weeks later. She's lived in one house her whole married life. She's generous to a fault. She's one of the best cooks I ever met, too. You ain't never tasted a roast like Meme's, she's famous for it among our friends and strangers that happen on her doorstep. Her baking's the best too--chocolate chip cookies, brownies she's famous for over in Africa, cinamon cake, peanut butter chocolate bars, lemon cake, cinnamon rolls (one of my very favorite, directly out the oven, steaming hot with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter dripping lustily between my fingers, but that not for long), apple crisp, apple pie and on and on and on.
I don't know what to do. I keep saying I'll do something and then the nagging fear bites my behind like a beesting, that she doesn't have too many days left and the longer I wait, the shorter is my chance of making things right, of not abandonning the strong, beautiful, woman who made it possible for me to be alive and who loved me very very well.
Florence Quimby. She keeps a journal, and has for the last forty years at least, and records every day the passage of time. I believe it is more of a list of thises and thats and whos than whys and feels, which is what I would rather know. But still, one day, when she finally kisses this world goodbye and sleeps, I will read all of them, and then maybe learn something more about her, about this stranger that I should know and love deeply but uncertain about for lack of memories and proximity and now, the mystery and limitations of old age in communication.
Guh is what I feel in my belly and my heart. I think I'll write her a letter, like I should have done years and years ago.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Why the hell not?
It's friday afternoon right about now. I'm supposed to be editing right now but taking my time, eh. Just finished Snow Falling on Cedars. I like the book. The author clearly (it seemed to me) enjoyed describing the physical setting, the smells and feels of nature and the particulars and quirks of island life, but still doesn't compare to Steinbeck in his descriptive ability. Who cares. I enjoyed reading it and it was interesting in a minor way to read about one aspect during one world era on one island of the Japanese and Japanese-American culture since I'm flailing about at work trying o get Japanese culture, trying to grasp and understand so's I can communicate better and close sales with his most loyal clientelle. yo.
Today is grey and rainy; heavy atmospheric pressure muffles the normally sharp sunny noises of traffic and colored voices that bounce about happily. Today is a day makes my feet want to wander. My mind floats down the Waikiki boulevards out to the shoreline and hovers over quietly lapping water I imagine is empty of people; the ocean void of color flashes silvers and whites and greys under the low-riding clouds, too bright under the sun's determined blare, but successful in blocking color. It's the kind of day I love to be alone near the ocean and feel all the melancholic, sadder feelings of living. I wish I were on the Big Island right now, out at my spot on the tidal pools at dusk where the colors were relentlessly the same every evening, light pinks, blues, oranges, pale colors, pastel colors against an endless purple sky who backdropped the volatile tides, the dull flashes of tropical fish visible in the final glints of sun just on the horizon caught in between black porous lava rocks when the tide is low or flitting about busily before night time when the tide is up. The staccato rhythm of palms dancing in the bare breeze on the shore behind me. I used to frequent these rocks every night. Pick my way carefully out as far as I could go without I might get caught in a quickly rising tide. This is where I first learned of Hawaii, quietly and completely alone. Sad and afraid and lonely and naiive to the next phase of my life. But completely alone
And that's what I wish I had today. Me and the ocean and my thoughts and maybe a book or a journal (and my smokes, but that for less than one more month and then pao).
One foreigner told me today that a view like the one he had at the moment is "top of the notch."
Today is grey and rainy; heavy atmospheric pressure muffles the normally sharp sunny noises of traffic and colored voices that bounce about happily. Today is a day makes my feet want to wander. My mind floats down the Waikiki boulevards out to the shoreline and hovers over quietly lapping water I imagine is empty of people; the ocean void of color flashes silvers and whites and greys under the low-riding clouds, too bright under the sun's determined blare, but successful in blocking color. It's the kind of day I love to be alone near the ocean and feel all the melancholic, sadder feelings of living. I wish I were on the Big Island right now, out at my spot on the tidal pools at dusk where the colors were relentlessly the same every evening, light pinks, blues, oranges, pale colors, pastel colors against an endless purple sky who backdropped the volatile tides, the dull flashes of tropical fish visible in the final glints of sun just on the horizon caught in between black porous lava rocks when the tide is low or flitting about busily before night time when the tide is up. The staccato rhythm of palms dancing in the bare breeze on the shore behind me. I used to frequent these rocks every night. Pick my way carefully out as far as I could go without I might get caught in a quickly rising tide. This is where I first learned of Hawaii, quietly and completely alone. Sad and afraid and lonely and naiive to the next phase of my life. But completely alone
And that's what I wish I had today. Me and the ocean and my thoughts and maybe a book or a journal (and my smokes, but that for less than one more month and then pao).
One foreigner told me today that a view like the one he had at the moment is "top of the notch."
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Give Picasso the Glory
"Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleaure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors."
Picasso said that. Kind of agree. Just finished work; have tomorrow off. But can't take tomorrow off, have to work. After August, things won't be so hectic.
Have you ever noticed a can of tictacs on your table (wouldn't it be cool if tictacs came in a can, but I mean a little container-thingy of tictacs, that plastic kine) and been bothered by it? I bought tictacs at Walmart a month ago and B told me they made your breath smell worse so I shouldn't eat them. B and I haven't seen each other much lately, except at night in bed when he's usually already asleep, and last night, when I got home around 9:45, I noticed the tictacs on the table instead of on the shelf where they'd been more or less forgotten about for three and a half weeks. That bothered me. B doesn't like tictacs or mints or gum. So why are they here instead of there? And what change happened while I was away?
Dammit.
I still haven't finished a sale on my own. Shared one. The month is a third over and there's no way i'm making commission. Some days I think that I am doing fine, biding my time patiently while I get the hang of the business and the information and studying how to sell. Soon enough I'll be a star. But other days, I just want to stay outside and smoke, even though I never finish a cig because I feel nervous to go back inside and try to sell. It's crazy. I don't know. The artist came by today. He owns the whole company but doesn't deal directly with the staff, obviously. He walked into the back room where my coworker had been showing some paintings to a family who spent $4.5 Gs today. She had left paintings strewn across the floor and the couches. I knew Lassen didn't like his work on the floor so I had piled them all on the couch. Anyway, he goes back there and calls the GM on Maui to tell him he's unhappy with the state of affairs with us in Waikiki. Three minutes later, the GM on Maui calls us to tell us what Lassen saw and wants. The thing is, Lassen is standing right in front of us in the gallery while we're on the phone with GM in Maui. Why didn't he tell us himself? I'm not quite sure. But it must be a good thing that we have nothing to do with the artist. Perhaps a bit less dramatic. Also made me feel a bit stupid, though, and uncared for by the owner of the company. Not that that's his job, but still, I appreciate a company where all levels are at least amicable.
Whatev. I must go do laundry. Bloodied my sheets last night. Ha.
Friday, July 6, 2007
job update
I miss hanging with ya'll but when it rains, it pours, and it is really pouring this summer.
So, I took the job...the art sales job, full time. And I took the other job...the university copyediting/proofreading job, about 15-20 hours/week. And I still have my other client and her dissertation (and proposals and whatever other documents she brings up). And, on top off all that, B's mother came into town for ten days to visit and a few weeks later, my bro is coming into town to visit and possibly in between, another friend will be here as well for a week with his daughter, staying at our halfstudio/halfonebed apt. So there goes any time to think and write about globalization and optimism (both conversations I very much wanted to join).
Something strange and wonderful happened to me in the months prior to taking these jobs. I don't know when or how it happened, or even why exactly. But I finally don't give a flying fatootle about what others think about me, especially those that I'm in contact with daily. This sounds silly, I know, but it really did happen. And how! Up until this newest job, in my life, I've always worried about doing the best thing for my bosses, my companies, my coworkers, working as hard as I could, offering to do things I wouldn't normally want to do to fill in gaps that they couldn't fill in the moment, keeping my mouth shut when I should've said something just to keep peace, you know, I guess sucking up. These are the first days that I know what it feels like to keep my head up, care about my life and those in it in a much more balanced way, and say what I need to say. I've been floored by my actions a couple times. Weeeeee..... And I feel a ton more relaxed everyday.
So anyway, I took two jobs with one on the side (not constant). I'm working full time gallery sales. And then come home and fill in my free gaps with editing a Univ. Hawaii department manuscript. The second isn't as exciting as some of my other freelance jobs have been and doesn't pay nearly as well, but it's a foot in the door at the Uni on a more official level and it will look great on my resume, plus it's getting me a different longish term job--working with a foreign language professor and editing all his or her manuscripts for this coming year.
So I've been scarce on blogspot these days because I don't feel interesting. I don't have time to put thought into soulandmeat questions nor time to be creative on my own. I still keep up and read what's going on everyday though.
Speaking of work, I'd better get back to it. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
P.S. This one's for you, tcd. It felt good to be asked. Good luck on your job search....
So, I took the job...the art sales job, full time. And I took the other job...the university copyediting/proofreading job, about 15-20 hours/week. And I still have my other client and her dissertation (and proposals and whatever other documents she brings up). And, on top off all that, B's mother came into town for ten days to visit and a few weeks later, my bro is coming into town to visit and possibly in between, another friend will be here as well for a week with his daughter, staying at our halfstudio/halfonebed apt. So there goes any time to think and write about globalization and optimism (both conversations I very much wanted to join).
Something strange and wonderful happened to me in the months prior to taking these jobs. I don't know when or how it happened, or even why exactly. But I finally don't give a flying fatootle about what others think about me, especially those that I'm in contact with daily. This sounds silly, I know, but it really did happen. And how! Up until this newest job, in my life, I've always worried about doing the best thing for my bosses, my companies, my coworkers, working as hard as I could, offering to do things I wouldn't normally want to do to fill in gaps that they couldn't fill in the moment, keeping my mouth shut when I should've said something just to keep peace, you know, I guess sucking up. These are the first days that I know what it feels like to keep my head up, care about my life and those in it in a much more balanced way, and say what I need to say. I've been floored by my actions a couple times. Weeeeee..... And I feel a ton more relaxed everyday.
So anyway, I took two jobs with one on the side (not constant). I'm working full time gallery sales. And then come home and fill in my free gaps with editing a Univ. Hawaii department manuscript. The second isn't as exciting as some of my other freelance jobs have been and doesn't pay nearly as well, but it's a foot in the door at the Uni on a more official level and it will look great on my resume, plus it's getting me a different longish term job--working with a foreign language professor and editing all his or her manuscripts for this coming year.
So I've been scarce on blogspot these days because I don't feel interesting. I don't have time to put thought into soulandmeat questions nor time to be creative on my own. I still keep up and read what's going on everyday though.
Speaking of work, I'd better get back to it. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
P.S. This one's for you, tcd. It felt good to be asked. Good luck on your job search....
Monday, June 25, 2007
I go back to work tomorrow...
...after seven months of roller coaster freedom. The time has finally come.
I met with Dr. Yee today to see about an editing job. She'll call me back at the end of the week and let me know if she chooses me. I've got no positive intuitions about it. From the way we said goodbye, I have a feeling I may not be chosen. But that's all out of my hands now. So we'll see.
In the meantime, I'm selling art, or at least training to again ($8/hr training--bullocks). If you want to see what kind of art, go to www.lassenmaui.com, and you'll see how very exciting it is indeed. There are actually a few I like, so that's good. I'll always think about those when I'm selling his other work.
I've decided to work on changing my "personality." I'm going to challenge myself to get rid of that shy/timid gig and look everyone in the eyes always. And take what I need when I need it and if I'm not getting it, ask. And what I want too. I think I was a bit walked over in my last job but I never really did anything about it. I'm going to try to focus on what I want and what I need too. And I won't be submissive around my bosses just because they are my bosses. I've spent way too much of my life being submissive. I've spent way too much of my life looking out for everyone around me, in some ways, making sure there's peace. I don't want peace anymore, I don't think. I'm going to figure out once and hopefully for all just how to take care of myself in a public/social setting. And I'm going to become a killer sales person. And never lie. If that's possible. Because this time my paycheck is dependent one-hundred percent on me. So if I want to get paid, I've got to sell. I guess I'll learn the ups system, which we never had at our old gallery. I'm going to have lots of energy and be very animated. So there.
I guess I'm saying goodbye to one period of my life and welcoming in another. Change is good but it ain't easy. I've been dragging my feet trying to accustom myself to the idea of going back to the daily grind. I've had it pretty easy I guess, these past days. I'm going to miss all the time I've had to play on the Internet, reconnect with friends and shits. I guess it's all good. For sure it is.
I met with Dr. Yee today to see about an editing job. She'll call me back at the end of the week and let me know if she chooses me. I've got no positive intuitions about it. From the way we said goodbye, I have a feeling I may not be chosen. But that's all out of my hands now. So we'll see.
In the meantime, I'm selling art, or at least training to again ($8/hr training--bullocks). If you want to see what kind of art, go to www.lassenmaui.com, and you'll see how very exciting it is indeed. There are actually a few I like, so that's good. I'll always think about those when I'm selling his other work.
I've decided to work on changing my "personality." I'm going to challenge myself to get rid of that shy/timid gig and look everyone in the eyes always. And take what I need when I need it and if I'm not getting it, ask. And what I want too. I think I was a bit walked over in my last job but I never really did anything about it. I'm going to try to focus on what I want and what I need too. And I won't be submissive around my bosses just because they are my bosses. I've spent way too much of my life being submissive. I've spent way too much of my life looking out for everyone around me, in some ways, making sure there's peace. I don't want peace anymore, I don't think. I'm going to figure out once and hopefully for all just how to take care of myself in a public/social setting. And I'm going to become a killer sales person. And never lie. If that's possible. Because this time my paycheck is dependent one-hundred percent on me. So if I want to get paid, I've got to sell. I guess I'll learn the ups system, which we never had at our old gallery. I'm going to have lots of energy and be very animated. So there.
I guess I'm saying goodbye to one period of my life and welcoming in another. Change is good but it ain't easy. I've been dragging my feet trying to accustom myself to the idea of going back to the daily grind. I've had it pretty easy I guess, these past days. I'm going to miss all the time I've had to play on the Internet, reconnect with friends and shits. I guess it's all good. For sure it is.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
You want city strange?
These nights on Oahu (March '07) are windy and cool and often starless. When rain clouds hang so low over street lamps that they collect on them a dirty mud color at night, this feels like City. Cities aren’t bad, are they. Half of the world’s population lives in cities, it seems. City is where history is often decided, which Whats will take place and Where and When. Cities are full of the forgotten. Of the tiny people, the poor, the Black, the Mexican, the Chinese, the Pilipino, the underdogs, the Mutts and Mixes, the immigrants. Crowds, hoards, masses piled like an 1800s hairdo miles up and miles out, rat nested and chemically sprayed for a full-bodied appearance, the outside layer combed smoothly and perfectly into place for social status. I love crowds—colorful, opaque, writhing.
The best parts of the city are the crowds because they offer something the villages, the countryside, even the suburbs don’t; that is, “centrality…privacy…the satisfaction of being a fly in the ointment” (Franzen, “First City,” pp. 193-4). In his How to Be Alone, Franzen quoted Jane Jacobs from her In Death and Life who quoted Paul Tillich “who believed that the city, by its very nature, ‘provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.’”
You want some City strange?
A month ago, dressed to impress in all black and heels for an interview with a company I never did impress, I was waiting at a bus stop on Kapiolani Blvd., for #3, headed home. There were a handful of city lifers hanging around, a bit greyer for the daily wear of concrete and exhaust, but generally normal. There was an Asian businessman, professional and shiny-shoed, sitting straight-backed on the bench; there was a king-sized local woman with her five bags and her child, as an afterthought; a bent, tiny, squinty Pilipino grandma stood next to the pole, vying for first dibs in bus chairs. And, there was a bum who frequents this particular stop. All of us were waiting (minus the bum) and all of us were unaware of what, I assume, none of us expected then but probably won’t ever forget.
Take my point of view, for instance: I’m standing back a bit from the bench to smoke and rifle through my bag for two bucks bus fare. I look up and notice the bum, with his back to me, holding a bottle down there, you know where. Looked an awful lot like he was taking piss, and OK, I’ve seen a man doing it before, but sad and slightly inappropriate, and certainly, sir, you should go find a tree, I thought. But too busy looking for my dollars, Ah hah! and doh-the wind plucks a buck right out of my hand. And here’s me—should I go grab it? It’s still flipping along; how would I look chasing a one dollar bill, tripping over my heels? Is that greedy and unsophisticated? Or just normal? But then, swoosh, the dollar flings out into six lanes of traffic and that’s that. I still have two more, anyway, so no worries.
I look up to find a trash bin for my smoke and again I notice something different about the bum. He’s facing me this time, with both his hands behind him, holding a plastic bag to his rump. It can’t be. I look around and see the same horror dawning on all the other faces. Definitely is. Slowly we all step back and back and back, inch away, while the poor Asian businessman, with his back to the bum, must have caught wind of the bag’s contents a foot from his head by a breezy whiff. He stood up stiffly and left the block altogether as swift as his shiny shoes could carry him.
That’s one of the stranges City has to offer. You probably won’t see that anywhere else. The City’s strange is also unique in that you share the strange with others but the others remain silent and irrelevant to you; you don’t talk to strangers, you just coexist and go about minding your own business, everyone else is a threat or a nuisance. So you get no closure to such encounters. In the countryside, I’m sure we’d all be laughing together on the bus. In the suburbs, we’d all be calling the police and feeling highly offended. But in the City, we quietly go our own way; some of us pretend it didn’t happen; others go home and recount what a strange thing happened to them today.
The best parts of the city are the crowds because they offer something the villages, the countryside, even the suburbs don’t; that is, “centrality…privacy…the satisfaction of being a fly in the ointment” (Franzen, “First City,” pp. 193-4). In his How to Be Alone, Franzen quoted Jane Jacobs from her In Death and Life who quoted Paul Tillich “who believed that the city, by its very nature, ‘provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.’”
You want some City strange?
A month ago, dressed to impress in all black and heels for an interview with a company I never did impress, I was waiting at a bus stop on Kapiolani Blvd., for #3, headed home. There were a handful of city lifers hanging around, a bit greyer for the daily wear of concrete and exhaust, but generally normal. There was an Asian businessman, professional and shiny-shoed, sitting straight-backed on the bench; there was a king-sized local woman with her five bags and her child, as an afterthought; a bent, tiny, squinty Pilipino grandma stood next to the pole, vying for first dibs in bus chairs. And, there was a bum who frequents this particular stop. All of us were waiting (minus the bum) and all of us were unaware of what, I assume, none of us expected then but probably won’t ever forget.
Take my point of view, for instance: I’m standing back a bit from the bench to smoke and rifle through my bag for two bucks bus fare. I look up and notice the bum, with his back to me, holding a bottle down there, you know where. Looked an awful lot like he was taking piss, and OK, I’ve seen a man doing it before, but sad and slightly inappropriate, and certainly, sir, you should go find a tree, I thought. But too busy looking for my dollars, Ah hah! and doh-the wind plucks a buck right out of my hand. And here’s me—should I go grab it? It’s still flipping along; how would I look chasing a one dollar bill, tripping over my heels? Is that greedy and unsophisticated? Or just normal? But then, swoosh, the dollar flings out into six lanes of traffic and that’s that. I still have two more, anyway, so no worries.
I look up to find a trash bin for my smoke and again I notice something different about the bum. He’s facing me this time, with both his hands behind him, holding a plastic bag to his rump. It can’t be. I look around and see the same horror dawning on all the other faces. Definitely is. Slowly we all step back and back and back, inch away, while the poor Asian businessman, with his back to the bum, must have caught wind of the bag’s contents a foot from his head by a breezy whiff. He stood up stiffly and left the block altogether as swift as his shiny shoes could carry him.
That’s one of the stranges City has to offer. You probably won’t see that anywhere else. The City’s strange is also unique in that you share the strange with others but the others remain silent and irrelevant to you; you don’t talk to strangers, you just coexist and go about minding your own business, everyone else is a threat or a nuisance. So you get no closure to such encounters. In the countryside, I’m sure we’d all be laughing together on the bus. In the suburbs, we’d all be calling the police and feeling highly offended. But in the City, we quietly go our own way; some of us pretend it didn’t happen; others go home and recount what a strange thing happened to them today.
Friday, June 22, 2007
shaking in my boots
I'm sitting at my table with the computer stuck in front of my face or my face stuck in front of the computer. My hands glued to the keyboard. My ass glued to the cushioned wooden chair. Any part of me possible glued down as much as possible because I'm shaking in my boots, if I had boots on, seriously. My insides are jiggling around trying to fall out and I have to hold them in. Like when you have to squeeze in a terd. So I'm gluing myself down.
The reason? I took a job today. The one I wrote about yesterday. Art sales. After seven fucking months, I've got a job. Hurray, right? Doesn't sound half bad, either. I bet I could make pretty good money. Big Bossman X said he expects his sales people to take home at least a couple G's every two weeks. $3000-$4000/mo ain't half bad, right? But I said yes, and I have to start monday or tuesday.
De ting is, I'm also in conversation with a woman who could potentially give me a job that would further my career dream. An editing/proofreading job. She told me today, when I begged her to and after I took the job and started immediately to regret it and feel an ominous cloud with an angry stormy personality inch its way overtop of me who, I know, is going to start raining on me alone whenever i move, like in the cartoons. Oh yeah, she told me today she could make a space to interview me early next week.
But Bossman X told me he needed me to start asap because he's already under heat from the artist for being understaffed. This job I just took is all about the money. Three times in our conversation he told me how important money is to this corporation... "As long as you make money, then I make money. That makes everyone happy..." and "I hope we can make this a financially viable relationship" and "As long as you're making money, it's all good." God. Why the focus on making money. But the artist who's work I will be selling was called, by my interviewer, "a commecial artist" as opposed to a fine artist. So I guess it's all about the money. And whatever. Isn't that why we all work, ultimately? Ok, but still, I hope Dr. Editing Lady writes me back soon so I can call my Money Mongers back and tell them to either postpone my work start date or goodbye.
Because...guh.
I'm drinking coffee which doesn't help. I want to scream which would probably help but my neighbors might be put out. I better stop writing, it's making me even more nervous.
The reason? I took a job today. The one I wrote about yesterday. Art sales. After seven fucking months, I've got a job. Hurray, right? Doesn't sound half bad, either. I bet I could make pretty good money. Big Bossman X said he expects his sales people to take home at least a couple G's every two weeks. $3000-$4000/mo ain't half bad, right? But I said yes, and I have to start monday or tuesday.
De ting is, I'm also in conversation with a woman who could potentially give me a job that would further my career dream. An editing/proofreading job. She told me today, when I begged her to and after I took the job and started immediately to regret it and feel an ominous cloud with an angry stormy personality inch its way overtop of me who, I know, is going to start raining on me alone whenever i move, like in the cartoons. Oh yeah, she told me today she could make a space to interview me early next week.
But Bossman X told me he needed me to start asap because he's already under heat from the artist for being understaffed. This job I just took is all about the money. Three times in our conversation he told me how important money is to this corporation... "As long as you make money, then I make money. That makes everyone happy..." and "I hope we can make this a financially viable relationship" and "As long as you're making money, it's all good." God. Why the focus on making money. But the artist who's work I will be selling was called, by my interviewer, "a commecial artist" as opposed to a fine artist. So I guess it's all about the money. And whatever. Isn't that why we all work, ultimately? Ok, but still, I hope Dr. Editing Lady writes me back soon so I can call my Money Mongers back and tell them to either postpone my work start date or goodbye.
Because...guh.
I'm drinking coffee which doesn't help. I want to scream which would probably help but my neighbors might be put out. I better stop writing, it's making me even more nervous.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
oh what a beautiful morning
oh what a beautiful day. i got this beautiful feeeeling. everything's going my way. hurray.
Woke up this morning reeling with dizzy from a goodbye party we went to last night and too much house wine. Knocked a brand new toilet paper role into pee water, dammit, and couldn't quite figure out how to cut a papaya in half. After B left for work, I sat on a chair and read one woman's entire "life story." I found it on Sam's blog, one of the Other Cool People who Blog (mostly on Blogger) links "a very funny Brooklyn blogger who I randomly discovered one day." It was excellent and took me two and a half hours to read start to finish.
All morning, a little sugar ant was gnawing the back of my brain--I had this interview hanging over my head. Strangely, when Bruce of Lassen galleries called me yesterday, he told me to come over any time between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., just call ahead. I had a good feeling from our conversation on the phone and have never had an interview set up that way where I wander in at my leisure, which is a good thing. After I finished La Ketch's story, I pulled myself together a little, took a shower, ignored the mess in the house, put on some mascara and a polite interview outfit and called Bruce. He said come over in the next thirty minutes. Great.
Grabbed my purse. Made sure keys and phone were inside. Always. How many times I've locked my keys in the wrong place. Grabbed our smelly soggy garbage bag and started down the stairs. Half way down, I realized that I had no clue where I was supposed to be going and the info was still in my other bag in the house, so, still slightly dizzy and a hair slower than normal, I climbed back up the stairs. Left the garbage on the stairwell, though. Sorry neighbor. And even though I'm not superstitious, I like to play along with some of the Jugo superstitions I've been introduced to. One of them is: never go back in the house once you've left. It's bad luck. And if you absolutely have to, sit down for a spell, trick the house into thinking that you already came home. So here I am, suffering back up the stairs mumbling to myself it doesn't matter. i'm not superstitious anyway. fuck it.
I started to unzip my purse to grab my keys but wait! I saw that lo and behold I had left the door unlatched. I had left my door wide open. What good luck to have forgotten something! as it turns out. I guess the house was calling me back and wouldn't fuck with me today, right. So I grabbed the address and the garbage bag and started making my way to the Waikiki Shopping Plaza on Kalakaua and Seaside (which is great because it's right next to starbucks, and I wanted to buy a coffee afterwards, and it's right next to my bank, and I needed to deposit a check for B).
Today is glorious, as the days often are here in the summer. High blue sky fly shimmering greens and yellows with pink and white flowers petals fluttering down on top of pedestrians walking, wandering, shopping, lost in an out of shades and shadows playing games with light, sunny warm hot but windy, hair flinging to the left and the right. Altogether exhilerating weather. Made me think of the song. Oh what a beautiful morning, Oh what a beautiful day. (Or is it wonderful, anyway, that's neither here nor there, because it could only be beautiful today and that's what I was singing, out loud which I don't do often, but who can help it).
'
Usually I'm nervous walking into interviews. But I've had so many rejections in the last seven months that I've finally realized it's not personal. Whether I get the job or not. And I'm not a screw up because I can't find a job, I just haven't found a niche yet, right? I think, in the end, what it comes down to, is a first-impressions sort of vibe the interviewer and the interviewee beef up in the five to thirty minute session they have together. So, for some reason, maybe the rejections thing, or maybe because Bruce sounded so kind and laid back over the phone yesterday, I wasn't nervous on my way over and I wasn't nervous when I walked in. I made sure I removed my $3 sunglasses before stepping in and I remembered to smile and look him squarely in the eye as I introduced myself. But I said I was looking for Steve. It rushed out of my mouth before I had a chance to remind myself it was Bruce, not Steve, that I needed to meet. But anyway, Bruce and I awkwardly laughed together about it. Then I sat on a couch and waited while he finished up some emails.
He asked me a few questions. Let me know that he knew where Ivory Coast was, which surprised me for a moment and I didn't have a proper response. Not that he knew where the Ivory Coast was, but that that was the first thing he chose to say to me. After about four minutes, he said, "I don't make the final decisions around here, but I go by my gut, my intuition when I make a decision." (Pause. And there's me with expectant eyes, knowing what's coming next and hoping I'm as smart as that.) "I like you." Uhh...smile...feign surprise. "thanks," humbly. "And I'm going to tell Bossman X of this and recommend you to him." From there, the rest of the interview proceeded as though I were already "a part of the family" he termed it. He even had me pretend to sell to him, as though he were a client and I the salesperson. That was a mistake on his part. Way to shatter your first impression of me. How I flopped that one. See, it's not that I'm a terrible sales person or that I hate to talk in front of people. It's just this habit of fear in front of bosses and a strange paralysis I feel when I'm put on the spot. It was all I could do to clamp my mouth shut for a few deep breaths so I wouldn't spew out excuses as to why I would not do this for him and then to actually convince myself that, yes, I needed to try to pretend to sell this painting to him, so do it, dammit, Anna, speak and sell. Unfortunately, he definitely got the other side of me impression, the natural timid/fear side.
So the interview ended after he showed me around a little and he again said he'd recommend me and I left. That was that. I went to the bank and got a coffee. And I feel grand. I think it would be cool. In the end, it doens't matter so much what you are doing, as long as there is daily challenge involved and mostly, you gotta get a long with and actually like your coworkers and bosses. This seems like its a potential. Plus, I'm gonna have to learn japanese. Apparently Lassen is a rock star in Japan.
I'm not really happy with this post, but I'm not going to erase it. Fuck it.
Woke up this morning reeling with dizzy from a goodbye party we went to last night and too much house wine. Knocked a brand new toilet paper role into pee water, dammit, and couldn't quite figure out how to cut a papaya in half. After B left for work, I sat on a chair and read one woman's entire "life story." I found it on Sam's blog, one of the Other Cool People who Blog (mostly on Blogger) links "a very funny Brooklyn blogger who I randomly discovered one day." It was excellent and took me two and a half hours to read start to finish.
All morning, a little sugar ant was gnawing the back of my brain--I had this interview hanging over my head. Strangely, when Bruce of Lassen galleries called me yesterday, he told me to come over any time between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., just call ahead. I had a good feeling from our conversation on the phone and have never had an interview set up that way where I wander in at my leisure, which is a good thing. After I finished La Ketch's story, I pulled myself together a little, took a shower, ignored the mess in the house, put on some mascara and a polite interview outfit and called Bruce. He said come over in the next thirty minutes. Great.
Grabbed my purse. Made sure keys and phone were inside. Always. How many times I've locked my keys in the wrong place. Grabbed our smelly soggy garbage bag and started down the stairs. Half way down, I realized that I had no clue where I was supposed to be going and the info was still in my other bag in the house, so, still slightly dizzy and a hair slower than normal, I climbed back up the stairs. Left the garbage on the stairwell, though. Sorry neighbor. And even though I'm not superstitious, I like to play along with some of the Jugo superstitions I've been introduced to. One of them is: never go back in the house once you've left. It's bad luck. And if you absolutely have to, sit down for a spell, trick the house into thinking that you already came home. So here I am, suffering back up the stairs mumbling to myself it doesn't matter. i'm not superstitious anyway. fuck it.
I started to unzip my purse to grab my keys but wait! I saw that lo and behold I had left the door unlatched. I had left my door wide open. What good luck to have forgotten something! as it turns out. I guess the house was calling me back and wouldn't fuck with me today, right. So I grabbed the address and the garbage bag and started making my way to the Waikiki Shopping Plaza on Kalakaua and Seaside (which is great because it's right next to starbucks, and I wanted to buy a coffee afterwards, and it's right next to my bank, and I needed to deposit a check for B).
Today is glorious, as the days often are here in the summer. High blue sky fly shimmering greens and yellows with pink and white flowers petals fluttering down on top of pedestrians walking, wandering, shopping, lost in an out of shades and shadows playing games with light, sunny warm hot but windy, hair flinging to the left and the right. Altogether exhilerating weather. Made me think of the song. Oh what a beautiful morning, Oh what a beautiful day. (Or is it wonderful, anyway, that's neither here nor there, because it could only be beautiful today and that's what I was singing, out loud which I don't do often, but who can help it).
'
Usually I'm nervous walking into interviews. But I've had so many rejections in the last seven months that I've finally realized it's not personal. Whether I get the job or not. And I'm not a screw up because I can't find a job, I just haven't found a niche yet, right? I think, in the end, what it comes down to, is a first-impressions sort of vibe the interviewer and the interviewee beef up in the five to thirty minute session they have together. So, for some reason, maybe the rejections thing, or maybe because Bruce sounded so kind and laid back over the phone yesterday, I wasn't nervous on my way over and I wasn't nervous when I walked in. I made sure I removed my $3 sunglasses before stepping in and I remembered to smile and look him squarely in the eye as I introduced myself. But I said I was looking for Steve. It rushed out of my mouth before I had a chance to remind myself it was Bruce, not Steve, that I needed to meet. But anyway, Bruce and I awkwardly laughed together about it. Then I sat on a couch and waited while he finished up some emails.
He asked me a few questions. Let me know that he knew where Ivory Coast was, which surprised me for a moment and I didn't have a proper response. Not that he knew where the Ivory Coast was, but that that was the first thing he chose to say to me. After about four minutes, he said, "I don't make the final decisions around here, but I go by my gut, my intuition when I make a decision." (Pause. And there's me with expectant eyes, knowing what's coming next and hoping I'm as smart as that.) "I like you." Uhh...smile...feign surprise. "thanks," humbly. "And I'm going to tell Bossman X of this and recommend you to him." From there, the rest of the interview proceeded as though I were already "a part of the family" he termed it. He even had me pretend to sell to him, as though he were a client and I the salesperson. That was a mistake on his part. Way to shatter your first impression of me. How I flopped that one. See, it's not that I'm a terrible sales person or that I hate to talk in front of people. It's just this habit of fear in front of bosses and a strange paralysis I feel when I'm put on the spot. It was all I could do to clamp my mouth shut for a few deep breaths so I wouldn't spew out excuses as to why I would not do this for him and then to actually convince myself that, yes, I needed to try to pretend to sell this painting to him, so do it, dammit, Anna, speak and sell. Unfortunately, he definitely got the other side of me impression, the natural timid/fear side.
So the interview ended after he showed me around a little and he again said he'd recommend me and I left. That was that. I went to the bank and got a coffee. And I feel grand. I think it would be cool. In the end, it doens't matter so much what you are doing, as long as there is daily challenge involved and mostly, you gotta get a long with and actually like your coworkers and bosses. This seems like its a potential. Plus, I'm gonna have to learn japanese. Apparently Lassen is a rock star in Japan.
I'm not really happy with this post, but I'm not going to erase it. Fuck it.
Monday, June 18, 2007
life is as simple as you make it
Just finished reading i heard the owl call my name, a book by Margaret Craven published in 1973, $2.25. The idea of the story reminds me a lot of Siddhartha (even though the last time I read that book was 11 or 12 years ago) even though the stories are not really alike at all. The book, in the form of a story, answered a few questions I've been pushing around a pan of butter lately without lighting the stove. The simplest answer is: Life is as simple or as complicated as you make it. And the less complicated you make life, the more deeply and fully you will live it and experience the lives of others around you.
That's what I aim for myself, I think.
That's what I aim for myself, I think.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
brush away the cobwebs
It's 10:04 Saturday morning. An exhilerating kind of day outside, a bit windy, a bit stormy, and a bit high blue sunny sky-y. Came back from the farmer's market about an hour ago. It's one of our highlights of the week. We stop at starbucks on the way and buy a coffee, then we hustle over there, the top of diamond head, the top of this side of Oahu. It's always sunny above diamond head, no matter the weather down below by the sea or up above in the higher mountains. We go and mingle with other locals, push and shove our way through long lines (cut sometimes...uh oh), we buy fresh, steamy bread from Baile (a local Asian patisserie chain on the island) and fresh tomatoes from a tomato farm and papayas and green onions and alfalfa sprouts and baby spinach and zuchini, or patlijan. Bojan rushed off to work after I made him a lunchy and I cleaned the house. It feels good to straighten clutter, make the bed, dust the teli and tables. It feels good to brush out the cobwebs, feels like I brushed out the cobwebs from my head and my chest and my gut (from my attics and my basements and from my living room). Now I'm sitting on our La-Z-Boy in front of my communication box wondering how to fill the rest of my day. Walk, cook? Yes cook. Find some nice recipe. That's what I'll do next. Did I tell you I'm quitting smoking. On my birthday. Happy 27th, Anna. I heard, four or five years ago, that a woman is at her physical peak at the age of 27, at least she can be. And what am I doing, smoking, killing myself. Eh. I can't wait to get past the hump of it and really really be smoke free. But for the next month, at least, I'm gonna enjoyyy my smokes. This will be the first, and I think last, time that I ever quit smoking.
Happy Saturday.
Happy Saturday.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
reevaluating
a few blogs ago I rambled on and on about arguments and words and misdirection. But, I haven't read any of the books some of the recent blogversations were addressing. I'm reading a book on philosophy right now, Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaardder and I just read an article linked to Sweet Jane's most recent blog written by Aronson (published in The Nation). Altogether, I'm starting to feel like some of the safe, quiet categories i've set up and been living within in order to make my life most peaceful on the spiritual/philosophical front are being shaken just a bit.
The book I'm reading has given an incredibly brief and shallow overview of the history of philosophy, starting with ancient myths, moving on to the natural philosophers, to Socrates/Plato/Aristotle, to the Christian era, to the middle ages, to the renaissance, the reformation, the baroque period, and so on. The thing that's good about the book is the feeling it offers from seeing so much history in a few pages, in a few pictures. Most of the food of philosophy, I imagine, is left out, but the view of history it has given me makes me wonder where we're at in the philosophical movement, now. What part is our generation playing? We're an in-between generation, aren't we? Our parents are the last-ish of the baby boomers, on the edge of the World-War influenced mind set. We were born right around the same time as the computer; we've grown up with the Internet, with increasing globalization. Our world has become significantly smaller than it was when our parents were growing up. Our grandparents didn't even have personal telephones, per se. Or easy access to cars, or televisions when they were young. Now we carry around these tiny little phone thingies that connect us to most of the world in a split second. I think we're right in the middle of a transition era. Where ideas are bubbling and brewing but nothing, as of yet, no new thoughts on how to view the world, or philosophies, have been established or agreed on. (But maybe that's every generation....I bet.)
Somewhere swishing around my brain is an identity crisis (to use a dramatic term) I can't pinpoint or define. This global world, this over-done and overwhelming amount of information constantly bombarding us, this incredibly easy access to communication and loss of the personal (email, fax, automation recordings) has helped me paint a world in which I'm finding it hard to fit in. I can't help feeling, every once in the blink-of-an-eye like a pawn, like I'm just another reactionary product of my generation.
So I have decided to begin educating myself. So I can seriously join conversation. I'm wondering if anyone has any good suggestions of books. I started reading The End of Faith this Christmas and I'm going to finish that first, but after that, if anyone has any recommendations, please pass them on.
Sweet Jane quoted Aronson's last argument in her most recent blog "Readers Poll" and I'll write it again here: "And--I save for last the touchiest question of all--shouldn't all Americans be instructed in the great religious and secular traditions, as well as their greatest books? After all, achieving literacy in both religion and secularism might allow us to discuss them more intelligently." I have chosen up to now, probably partly as a knee-jerk reaction to how I lived previously, a mode of ignorant quiet. But I do love information and I don't want to argue based only on emotion forever. I want to know what and why (and it's been a long time since I've said that...eh).
The book I'm reading has given an incredibly brief and shallow overview of the history of philosophy, starting with ancient myths, moving on to the natural philosophers, to Socrates/Plato/Aristotle, to the Christian era, to the middle ages, to the renaissance, the reformation, the baroque period, and so on. The thing that's good about the book is the feeling it offers from seeing so much history in a few pages, in a few pictures. Most of the food of philosophy, I imagine, is left out, but the view of history it has given me makes me wonder where we're at in the philosophical movement, now. What part is our generation playing? We're an in-between generation, aren't we? Our parents are the last-ish of the baby boomers, on the edge of the World-War influenced mind set. We were born right around the same time as the computer; we've grown up with the Internet, with increasing globalization. Our world has become significantly smaller than it was when our parents were growing up. Our grandparents didn't even have personal telephones, per se. Or easy access to cars, or televisions when they were young. Now we carry around these tiny little phone thingies that connect us to most of the world in a split second. I think we're right in the middle of a transition era. Where ideas are bubbling and brewing but nothing, as of yet, no new thoughts on how to view the world, or philosophies, have been established or agreed on. (But maybe that's every generation....I bet.)
Somewhere swishing around my brain is an identity crisis (to use a dramatic term) I can't pinpoint or define. This global world, this over-done and overwhelming amount of information constantly bombarding us, this incredibly easy access to communication and loss of the personal (email, fax, automation recordings) has helped me paint a world in which I'm finding it hard to fit in. I can't help feeling, every once in the blink-of-an-eye like a pawn, like I'm just another reactionary product of my generation.
So I have decided to begin educating myself. So I can seriously join conversation. I'm wondering if anyone has any good suggestions of books. I started reading The End of Faith this Christmas and I'm going to finish that first, but after that, if anyone has any recommendations, please pass them on.
Sweet Jane quoted Aronson's last argument in her most recent blog "Readers Poll" and I'll write it again here: "And--I save for last the touchiest question of all--shouldn't all Americans be instructed in the great religious and secular traditions, as well as their greatest books? After all, achieving literacy in both religion and secularism might allow us to discuss them more intelligently." I have chosen up to now, probably partly as a knee-jerk reaction to how I lived previously, a mode of ignorant quiet. But I do love information and I don't want to argue based only on emotion forever. I want to know what and why (and it's been a long time since I've said that...eh).
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Intro to Forrest, Part II
This is not part of Soul and Meat, but aren’t there days when you feel like trying to define yourself. It’s fun to find out what comes out of your brain. I usually get the urge right around my birthday time every year. This year, it’s been kicked into gear a little early because of our Soul and Meat assignment.
- I had, relatively recently, an attack of cystic acne out of nowhere that I know of. The guy whose book I read about changing my skin suggested taking pictures of my face every week from the same angle. I did for a long time. I erased most of them. They are not very nice to look at and most pictures showed only the downward spiral. If the moon looked in the mirror, she might have seen a face very similar to mine, only less pink, green, yellow, and red. A few weeks into this experience, when my acne was probably at its worst most infected peak (in January), I was too embarrassed to come out of my bedroom and face my roommates of two years; it took me about two months to feel comfortable going out of the house by myself shopping or just walking without the protective distraction of another person’s presence. I never wore my hair down before this attack of the acne bacteria, now I never wear my hear up (which, incidentally, from far away must make me look like a porn star potential or something because the hoots and howls from cars that I secretly longed for in moments of self doubt or jealousy during my life pop up on me pretty often now—luscious long blond hair must mean luscious lips, both up above and down below the skirts. Eh). It’s been a strange experience, I guess, these few months of incredibly distracting and massive acne—severely painful and itchy. I put myself through all sorts of physical cleanses—fasts and liver flushes and enemas and salt baths. I’m done with most of that now, but I certainly pulled some understanding and some grounding out of it all. I’m left with acne worse than pre-cyst but much better than my cyst days. I’m left with scars all over my face that will probably take years and several operations to fix. But I got ah-hah on a lot of ideas I’d only ever preached before. So that’s good. Experience teaches better than any words ever will.
- Love hurts. A friend of mine once sent me a CD in which was a song in which the singer mentioned that in catholic school a nun told him, “fear is the heart of love.” He turned and never went back to that school. But the statement irks me. Fear is the duality of love. Without love there is no fear, without fear there is no love. That, I think, may be true. I’ve found that the deeper is my love for an individual (family first, lovers too and friends) the more their pain hurts me, the more I am afraid of failing them, of not being there when I need to be there, of hurting them because I am weak, or even worse, selfish. It sounds ridick and head-in-the-clouds, but it’s how I feel especially at night lying in bed on a nervous end-of-day or in especially quiet times when I’ve been alone for too long or when someone I love tells me of something they don’t understand and that hurts and I have no words of response, no quick fixes or relevant advice, when I know their itch, know that I feel some of the same shit and haven’t fixed it in me, but I know, at least, that I’m ok with it, that I’ve figured out how to live with it, even if I haven’t figured out how to change it in me. God, how love hurts some days. And makes me feel deep fear. But then, if you don’t live inside of life’s duality, maybe you jip yourself. Right?
- Lover love is like flying to the moon and back in a space shuttle and floating in zero gravity out there, it’s like traveling around the world having the best craziest adventures and meeting the coolest people on every continent in every country, it’s like an incredibly good book that only comes around once or twice in ten years, it’s like helping someone without motive and making them feel like a hundred bucks, it’s like eating your favorite food—a whole table-full of it—and not being physically affected, it’s like finding intimacy or forgiveness with those you can’t seem to breach that emotion with in real life or reach that point with, it’s like standing on the edge of a cliff on the edge of the world with the wind whipping your hair and a blue sunny could-flecked sky above you, its’ like the first smell of fall, it’s like the height of fall in all its full-leaved golden-crimson-opal-evergreened New England rolling hills glory with the smell of apple cider and crackling fires warming hearths wafting on the evening breeze while you sit outside on the stoop alone and exhilarated and just then a bald eagle flies over head of you and you just catch a clear glimpse of it through the earthy trees as a squirrel throws an acorn on your head and a bear rumbles by in the brush and your kitty sits at your ankles talking love talk and giving you sweet eyes. Lover love is actually better than any of that. It can’t be compared, can it.
- Good music comes pretty close, and especially enjoying it with someone who can explain it to you, describe the details of the musician(s)’s life, tell you exactly why it should be enjoyed and how, even though, of course, you will enjoy it only how you will enjoy it. Doing something that makes you feel good about yourself also comes close, like doing the laundry when you don’t feel like or making a kick-ass dinner of baked garlic chicken that your lover loves even though you think you’re a shitty cook, especially when he tells you you’re not, and you believe him because he’s the most honest person you’ve ever met. But then, that’s cheating because your lover is involved in the comparison and it can’t count.
- I keep smoking because I’m afraid if I quit I’ll gain weight. I’m ashamed of it but wish I wouldn’t feel that way or worry so much about my body.
- The best feelings in the world: completely forgetting yourself in a moment; dancing without fear; great sex; a cigarette after a couple beers; flying in your dreams when it’s just for fun; swimming in perfectly clear and very deep water (pool or ocean); stepping out of a sauna or hot tub into cool fall-fresh air; looking out the window in the morning from a warm cozy winter house after a big snow fall; the physical let down after very difficult and constant physical exertion; the thrill of a violent destructive storm; being lost in a crowd at a concert when the music steals the room and the band is good people; a gentle bear hug when you’re sad; seeing a momma or a dad taking care of their child gently and with love when they think no one is watching; witnessing integrity; climbing a really steep mountain all the way to the top and then seeing the view; lying under the Christmas tree watching the rainbow tree lights and the flickering lights of candles throw their dances on the white walls feeling family around you listening to Mrs. G’s Christmas story and then listening to the Drummer Boy song; being taken care of when you can’t take care of yourself; taking care of someone you love when they can’t take care of themselves; knowing you are not alone; the rare vista of this life you have when you know very simply and completely that you love yourself.
Anyway, I'm getting tired. It's nearly midnight and I'm nearly done with my hormone balancing tea. I must sleep.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Intro to Forrest
- My name is Anna, but Forrest is good
- I live in Waikik with my B and every night around 10 o'clock trolley-loads of Japanese kids drive through our neighborhood screaming and honking and I don't understand
- I grew my hair out and am blond again
- My parents are missionaries (I spent the first halfish of my life in Abidjan). I used to be embarrassed about that, now I'm proud of them
- I know wyd and tcd from college (wyd and I were roommates for two years. The second year we had an apt together where the three of us sat around watching wyd play cool video games for hours on end)
- I'm about to turn 27, which I think is a good age to be
- I'm in love with my B; have been with him for 3 years and 3 months (our anniversary is wyd's birthday, eh); three days after we met I felt like I'd known him always (maybe in a past life) and he's the most beautiful man I've ever met. He makes me want to be a better person
- I'm more or less unemployed. I'm in between here and there these days, have a lot of extra time on my hands trying to start my own thing, which makes me feel like a blog stalker sometimes
- I want to be a freelance editor and writer
- I'm nervous to share my opinion around so many smart, intellectual, well-read, rational, witty, cool, funny people
- I love to cry; I cry to deal with a lot of things, even good things, and that's embarrassing sometimes
- I have no local friends this summer that are my own (not counting B, obviously)
- I don't think about labels too often, that was one thing I shrugged off with the baby that drained away in the bath. But if I had to label me...um...I can't. I don't think most days that I believe in god, or at least not the God I grew up with. I pray once a year to god or the universe. Sometimes I find it interesting to think about reincarnation and other lives. I don't like being told my future, but i'm very curious when someone says they know something and so I ask anyway. I'm not superstitious but its fun playing superstition games in my daily life. I don't really know. I read once about a desert father, I think, who's goal was to sit and let anyone with any story, any kind of person, come to him and be and fill up from his attentive, calm, loving presence. I wanted to be like that for a long time; not sit on a pile of sand and wait for people to come, but be a person anyone can come to for refreshment or advice. I still don't want to ever judge someone again for what they believe (I know I can't help it, but I can work on it)
- I don't believe too much in politics. I think its a game the very rich people play and there's not much I can do about it. Better to live my daily life and exist within that which is relevant to me and those in my world.
- I smoke like a fish. Crap.
- I love to go on long walks and walk very fast
I guess that's all for now.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
happiness
Earlier today I walked down to Starbucks on Kuhio Ave.--recommended for my sanity. I took a coffee and the paper to do my crosswords/sudoku/astrology and sat outside on the patio. At one point I was staring off into space, in a good way, thinking good thoughts and a man drove up to the front door in his motorized wheelchair. He was an older Black man, maybe in his fifties, and we made eyecontact for a split second. I glanced at the door to see if it was wheelchair friendly and it wasn't so I stood up to open it for him. He smiled real big and jolly-like and gave me the knuckle fist and said thanks.
I've been thinking lately, being relatively unemployed and all, about developing a "happy system" or program. A way, or a list of things I can do, to keep me positive about life. Because when I'm positive, I'm more productive, and I'm a much better housewoman for my man. I've started depending on him, when he walks in the door after a heavy day of physical labor, to bring me out of my funk. That's not fair. For all I know he's gonna start dreading coming home. That would really really suck. So here I am stirring up my brain, throwing in different ingredients, trying to find the exact right recipe to be happy, and a man, by no means past the prime of his life, stuck with unworking legs, so happy to be alive made me happier to be alive.
That's pretty cool. Makes me realize how little I understand, yet, of this life.
I've been thinking lately, being relatively unemployed and all, about developing a "happy system" or program. A way, or a list of things I can do, to keep me positive about life. Because when I'm positive, I'm more productive, and I'm a much better housewoman for my man. I've started depending on him, when he walks in the door after a heavy day of physical labor, to bring me out of my funk. That's not fair. For all I know he's gonna start dreading coming home. That would really really suck. So here I am stirring up my brain, throwing in different ingredients, trying to find the exact right recipe to be happy, and a man, by no means past the prime of his life, stuck with unworking legs, so happy to be alive made me happier to be alive.
That's pretty cool. Makes me realize how little I understand, yet, of this life.
Somebody help
I'm blog illiterate and i have tried and tried to figure out how to set up links to other blogsites on my blog page. It's irritating to have to continuously type in everybody's url's everytime I want to check out your blogs. So, how do I do it?
Monday, June 4, 2007
Just reread Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Amazing. I cried at the end. Again. I didn't remember most of the story. Hm.
Friday, June 1, 2007
Browsing--Religion as...uh
(1:38 am). I've been browsing back along some of your blogsies. I see what you're saying about the "flurry" of conversations that have fluttered about lately. A lot of them surrounding religion and atheism, god and self, Sam Harris and moderates, etc....
After I left. Well, I don't remember everything. I don't remember much, actually, of the inbetween times. Whatyoudream and thecrazydreamer may vaguely remember my breakup right around that time (the email, even though he lived 30 minutes away, saying in so many words that he didn't want to "get in the way of Jesus" in my life, that I had too many serious questions, and that he should probably abandon me in order to show me his God's love bestlike, and then the subsequent horrid car accident). That's just about the time, less than a month later, that I deconverted myself. (It was gradual too. The deconversion itself was immediate and final and took place within a few minutes. But I didn't immediately become an atheist. In fact, I will absolutely stand by not being one now either. I won't take on any more labels. I left all of that in the trash and it's most likely completely decomposed by now or at least carried away and transformed into nourishment in chubby little ants, rats, and cockroaches, may death be persistent in their search and destruction.)
I don't remember a lot of the details afterward. I don't remember what thought processes I went through. It was me against way too many people at that point. I kept it quieter even though I didn't hide it from anyone (except maybe boyfriend because he wasn't even wor--well hell, I guess I still have some issues around him.) Whatyoudream, i think, was running pretty spiritually parallel to me at the time which was a godsend (pun intendeded), but three sisters and a brother weren't, dad and mom weren't, boyfriend ditched me because i didn't pray with him (or something), profs weren't, most of my friends at school or home weren't. I remember early on feeling grief at the great loss, loss of so many years, loss of so much potential education, loss of my entire life as I knew it, loss of most of my cognitive definitions of the world in which I lived, loss of that intriguing supernatural otherworld that I'd spent so much time pondering and fearing, loss of my family, loss of my family, loss of my family. I remember not understanding anymore how to perceive the world. Where did the color go. Everything became black and white, literally. Beats me if I could pick out color or beauty. Life everlasting, or loss thereof, bothered me a bit. But not too much.
I spent the summer right after that in Connecticut with my family. That was a summer full of open depression--just finished college, ex didn't want me back (a different one), had no religion, read Love in the Time of Cholera (what was i thinking) and White Hotel (I hid that one under my mattress and I swear it disappeared one day before I got to finish it. I have no idea who stole it...was it another sneaky sibbling or mom or dad still trying to protect me. oh horror such literature), and family was smack dab in the middle of excruciating counselling sessions... plus we were house sitting for a relative of Otto Preminger and the house was filled with sexual books, art and objects, lamps formed like a human body with the light swith where the penis should be which my mother very consideratly draped with a small cloth, penile paintings glaring over the dining room table, sketch books by famous artists of whores and rape and pedophilia. Anyway, those were dark days. Couldn't find meaning in anything, not books, not literature, not art, not music, not religion or non-religion, not even love and family and intimacy. I wrote a lot though.
I ended up taking off for Hawaii to get away from the glaring eyes of all my Christian ex-friends or readjusting friends in CT. That's the hub of my parent's ministry in the US. The church that first sent my dad and us off to the mission field. That's where all our old "friends" live and where we always came back to over the years. We had all the connections there, free doctors, free dentists, free vacation cabins, free vehicles (mostly large, ugly, obnoxious vans without ac or heat-what the), cheap rent, and so on, all because of my parent's job. So that's where the not being a Christian hurt the worst. Even though I said nothing to anyone but my parents and closest friends, within a month most everyone in all my parents' closest circles knew confidentially, which meant most everyone within each of their closest circles knew confidentially, of course, which meant everyone that knew me or knew of me, knew. God.
Hawaii was an intentional departure from anything that reeked of Christianity or of previous acquaintanceship with Anna (except my childhood friend, K, who also had recently deconverted). I got what I wished for too. I ran into every off-the-grid religion you can imagine, but no one talked about Christianity. Not even to curse it or offer it as a measure for something else. Very quickly my thoughts and arguments and bitternesses and hatreds for my experiences surrounding my previous faith faded away. I don't know that I spoke about Christianity more than 7 times in 7 months. And that, only when someone wanted a real answer to the question what is it my parents do.
I met my boy there, too. His parents are nominally Orthodox. Liberal orthodox, if you want to place them, or maybe world-religioners. And not very outspoken about it. In fact, not a bit outspoken. No secrets or stifled stories. Just simply something very private. If you want to ask Muslim priests in Iraq to pray for you and yours, that's fine. If you want to ask you friend to have a buddhist pray over you and yours, that's fine too. But keep it to yourself, it is a personal and private matter. I've become very quiet about it all, around my boy and his. Even around my family. We're outspoken who can speak louder than the other happy go lucky fucks. But still I don't like too much anymore to talk about it all. (Or maybe I just think that because I've sure been wordy these last few blogs. Hmm. Ok, I know what it is.) I don't mind talking about a person's personal experience of religion or non-religion, or a discussion of philosophies behind where we are now or how we got here. But I don't remotely like the I'm right/you're wrong discussions. They don't make sense to me.
I learned, throughout my life, that people are people. Bottom line. How good you are or how bad you are has nothing to do with what you say you believe or what you can convince people of and everything to do with what you hold and know inside you. How happy and fulfilled you are has nothing to do with how much other people agree with you (except maybe a certain few...but even better than agreeing is a trust that comes with knowing that she will take your words and sift out the good, throw away the bad, at all times, trust you and you trust her). There is a point where it feels necessary to validate a point, to seek affirmation or just have a good old discussion, to play devil's advocate for the sake of it, or do it because you sincerely disagree with your mate, but when those discussions become personal, that's when it all goes to pot. When rationalism and sanity fly right out the window with whatever warm snuggle energy might have been left in the room. When I hear in a voice a desperate need to convince, then I think they are still afraid.
So anyway, I know I started the whole thing with commenting on the blogversations that have been going on. And I directly don't compare them to what I just talked about. I have personal, family-related experiences that occastionally cause a strong reaction in me. But, i guess what I'm saying is...there is a taste of it there, within the words. Of wordiness or unnecessary or off-focus. (And I hope I don't offend anyone.) I mean, what's the point, now, of rehashing the bad stuff from before, of defining just why we are now so right. And who's to say tomorrow I don't become completely and seemingly irreversibly convinced by another way of thinking. I mean, I really was convinced. I think we all were. By Christianity. From the last nerve in my left pinky toe, to the last blackhead on my forehead, to my beating heart convinced. And now, I am convinced that I will never think so narrowly again. But I don't know... it's all confusing to me. In some ways. And just quiet in others.
After I left. Well, I don't remember everything. I don't remember much, actually, of the inbetween times. Whatyoudream and thecrazydreamer may vaguely remember my breakup right around that time (the email, even though he lived 30 minutes away, saying in so many words that he didn't want to "get in the way of Jesus" in my life, that I had too many serious questions, and that he should probably abandon me in order to show me his God's love bestlike, and then the subsequent horrid car accident). That's just about the time, less than a month later, that I deconverted myself. (It was gradual too. The deconversion itself was immediate and final and took place within a few minutes. But I didn't immediately become an atheist. In fact, I will absolutely stand by not being one now either. I won't take on any more labels. I left all of that in the trash and it's most likely completely decomposed by now or at least carried away and transformed into nourishment in chubby little ants, rats, and cockroaches, may death be persistent in their search and destruction.)
I don't remember a lot of the details afterward. I don't remember what thought processes I went through. It was me against way too many people at that point. I kept it quieter even though I didn't hide it from anyone (except maybe boyfriend because he wasn't even wor--well hell, I guess I still have some issues around him.) Whatyoudream, i think, was running pretty spiritually parallel to me at the time which was a godsend (pun intendeded), but three sisters and a brother weren't, dad and mom weren't, boyfriend ditched me because i didn't pray with him (or something), profs weren't, most of my friends at school or home weren't. I remember early on feeling grief at the great loss, loss of so many years, loss of so much potential education, loss of my entire life as I knew it, loss of most of my cognitive definitions of the world in which I lived, loss of that intriguing supernatural otherworld that I'd spent so much time pondering and fearing, loss of my family, loss of my family, loss of my family. I remember not understanding anymore how to perceive the world. Where did the color go. Everything became black and white, literally. Beats me if I could pick out color or beauty. Life everlasting, or loss thereof, bothered me a bit. But not too much.
I spent the summer right after that in Connecticut with my family. That was a summer full of open depression--just finished college, ex didn't want me back (a different one), had no religion, read Love in the Time of Cholera (what was i thinking) and White Hotel (I hid that one under my mattress and I swear it disappeared one day before I got to finish it. I have no idea who stole it...was it another sneaky sibbling or mom or dad still trying to protect me. oh horror such literature), and family was smack dab in the middle of excruciating counselling sessions... plus we were house sitting for a relative of Otto Preminger and the house was filled with sexual books, art and objects, lamps formed like a human body with the light swith where the penis should be which my mother very consideratly draped with a small cloth, penile paintings glaring over the dining room table, sketch books by famous artists of whores and rape and pedophilia. Anyway, those were dark days. Couldn't find meaning in anything, not books, not literature, not art, not music, not religion or non-religion, not even love and family and intimacy. I wrote a lot though.
I ended up taking off for Hawaii to get away from the glaring eyes of all my Christian ex-friends or readjusting friends in CT. That's the hub of my parent's ministry in the US. The church that first sent my dad and us off to the mission field. That's where all our old "friends" live and where we always came back to over the years. We had all the connections there, free doctors, free dentists, free vacation cabins, free vehicles (mostly large, ugly, obnoxious vans without ac or heat-what the), cheap rent, and so on, all because of my parent's job. So that's where the not being a Christian hurt the worst. Even though I said nothing to anyone but my parents and closest friends, within a month most everyone in all my parents' closest circles knew confidentially, which meant most everyone within each of their closest circles knew confidentially, of course, which meant everyone that knew me or knew of me, knew. God.
Hawaii was an intentional departure from anything that reeked of Christianity or of previous acquaintanceship with Anna (except my childhood friend, K, who also had recently deconverted). I got what I wished for too. I ran into every off-the-grid religion you can imagine, but no one talked about Christianity. Not even to curse it or offer it as a measure for something else. Very quickly my thoughts and arguments and bitternesses and hatreds for my experiences surrounding my previous faith faded away. I don't know that I spoke about Christianity more than 7 times in 7 months. And that, only when someone wanted a real answer to the question what is it my parents do.
I met my boy there, too. His parents are nominally Orthodox. Liberal orthodox, if you want to place them, or maybe world-religioners. And not very outspoken about it. In fact, not a bit outspoken. No secrets or stifled stories. Just simply something very private. If you want to ask Muslim priests in Iraq to pray for you and yours, that's fine. If you want to ask you friend to have a buddhist pray over you and yours, that's fine too. But keep it to yourself, it is a personal and private matter. I've become very quiet about it all, around my boy and his. Even around my family. We're outspoken who can speak louder than the other happy go lucky fucks. But still I don't like too much anymore to talk about it all. (Or maybe I just think that because I've sure been wordy these last few blogs. Hmm. Ok, I know what it is.) I don't mind talking about a person's personal experience of religion or non-religion, or a discussion of philosophies behind where we are now or how we got here. But I don't remotely like the I'm right/you're wrong discussions. They don't make sense to me.
I learned, throughout my life, that people are people. Bottom line. How good you are or how bad you are has nothing to do with what you say you believe or what you can convince people of and everything to do with what you hold and know inside you. How happy and fulfilled you are has nothing to do with how much other people agree with you (except maybe a certain few...but even better than agreeing is a trust that comes with knowing that she will take your words and sift out the good, throw away the bad, at all times, trust you and you trust her). There is a point where it feels necessary to validate a point, to seek affirmation or just have a good old discussion, to play devil's advocate for the sake of it, or do it because you sincerely disagree with your mate, but when those discussions become personal, that's when it all goes to pot. When rationalism and sanity fly right out the window with whatever warm snuggle energy might have been left in the room. When I hear in a voice a desperate need to convince, then I think they are still afraid.
So anyway, I know I started the whole thing with commenting on the blogversations that have been going on. And I directly don't compare them to what I just talked about. I have personal, family-related experiences that occastionally cause a strong reaction in me. But, i guess what I'm saying is...there is a taste of it there, within the words. Of wordiness or unnecessary or off-focus. (And I hope I don't offend anyone.) I mean, what's the point, now, of rehashing the bad stuff from before, of defining just why we are now so right. And who's to say tomorrow I don't become completely and seemingly irreversibly convinced by another way of thinking. I mean, I really was convinced. I think we all were. By Christianity. From the last nerve in my left pinky toe, to the last blackhead on my forehead, to my beating heart convinced. And now, I am convinced that I will never think so narrowly again. But I don't know... it's all confusing to me. In some ways. And just quiet in others.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
pan-blog #1 Jacob Wrestles with God
Describe your most formative religious experience. I am assuming that most of us are, or have been, some form of a Christian (probably born-again), so what I have in mind is that sort of testimonial-type of event in your past that led you to, or closer to, God. If you are no longer a Christian, describe how you feel about that experience now.
Names have been omitted to protect identities.
Jacob Wrestles with God: Was it Jacob? It's been so long, I barely remember the details of Bible stories anymore.... Details are faaading....
We were out on our Tuesday date. I think it was Tuesday. We loved going out on Tuesday nights. She'd drive, I'd ride, bound inside our bodies and out by the conversationlessness of incredible music through the backroad cornfield country; darkness heavy as ink except for an occasional yellow lace-framed window streaming by or a flashing red light signalling a dangerous obsolete intersection. On our way to Muncie. Muncie was the closest thing we had to a city without we had to drive all the way into Indy. When we did Indy, it was an event. Fancy clothes tossed piles in the bedroom makeup scattered on sinks, anticipation and excitement brewing for the Big City. Muncie was our regular city. Walmart, restaurants that weren't cheap or small or sameold or Ivanhoes or Chinese buffets, parks bigger than backyards, people that weren't necessarily of the homogeneous make-up of our school, upper middle class midwestern.
When we made it out to Tuesdays in Muncie, we always did only two things. We stopped first at the Salvation Army thrift store and played our hands through forgotten, found, once-loved, worn, mildewy household items and clothes in search of treasures. And, after satisfying our thing lusts, we ate. We crossed the parking lot to Stake 'n Shake, where we both always got the same thing: Frisco Melts, fries, soda. Every time the same. Frisco melts top the list of foods I enjoyed most during my years at TU. But the best part of it all was our conversation. We always talked deep into the marrows of our lives. The heavy stuff, the deep stuff, the best stuff. She was the first person I told a lot of embarrassing things to. Things I thought maybe I should be ashamed of but wasn't sure. Things I feared, things I loved and things I hated about myself. And we always talked religion and spirituality. Religion had been the most important, the center, the beating heart, the fulcrum on which my life teetered for as long as I could think.
One Tuesday, I remember her telling me something that was painful for her but I don't remember details anymore (not that I'd tell you). Something heavy with sadness. I remember a moment, I was staring right into her soult. That's what it felt like. It was a quiet moment, like that exhausted staring into space effortless comfortable when you know there are people trying to communicate around you, but you can't bring yourself to focus your eyes or come forward into the present to acknowledge them and you don't care. In that moment, I heard words coming out of her chest that weren't the same as the ones coming out of her mouth. They sounded desperate; like they were asking for help. To God. To me to god. Or something. It wasn't rational or normal, I couldn't sort it out or explain it really. Intense and surreal. I don't know what I said back to her, but for the rest of our evening, I was quiet and brooding. And I knew what I had to do.
We got back to our dorms and I immediately ran up to my room and put on eleven more layers of clothes. It was probably February. Definitely winter, with snow on the ground, in Indiana, which, if you haven't experienced it, is frigid, icy, wet ripping through all your layers, unforgiving, windy. Plus it was already late at night. Maybe ten or eleven oclock by the time we got home and I was ready.
This was my first senior year. I still lived in the dorm. At this point in my spiritual journey, I was a desperately clinging but dedicated born-again. I spent hours alone every morning in the cafeteria, at a quiet sunlit table near the windows facing T Lake, praying and reading the Bible and searching for clues, calling for Jesus to show me himself. I spent several evenings a week with my liberal cohorts, trying to call on tongues or at least little shivers, maybe? I searched for the extra super natural in my daily life. I longed for the God and the Jesus and the Holy Spirit I thought I had known in my youth. I made a lot of A's in my classes, writing and presenting topics on the Holy Spirit that year. I understood exactly who he should be to me but never found him. The harder I looked, the less satisfied I became. So this evening, this night, maybe, was a big test, I think. I was going to go all out. Maybe what I saw in her was my own reflection.
So, that night, I went down to T. Lake with my Bible in hand, wrapped in many s-waddling clothes, with the intention of staying up all night and calling on God and wrestling demons for my friend. I would change her life by the skin of my teeth that night. I honestly believed, on my walk through the thin, crunchy snow, that I would face the devil in the next six or seven hours.
I sat by a dimly lit shed and cursed the busy-ness of this newmoon night. Apparently two or three other students had had the same idea, I couldn't believe it. I wanted to be alone in this battle. I sang hymns but couldn't remember very many. I tried to make up my own but they didn't sound very eloquent or meaningful, not like David's lyrics or Solomon's. I read passages I thought were appropriate over and over but couldn't hold the water. I begged God to come to me or at least open my eyes to the spiritual war going on around me and this whole university, the war I knew about from everything I had learned, good angels and God and saved people fighting demons, demons demons demons. I prayed and prayed. I tried to force emotion and maybe catch the window to the spiritual that way, I tried to cry but I couldn't so I forced out strange sounds from my throat. I hoped the cold would at least make me go a little insane, so I froze my ass for as long as I could stand it. Around three or four, I was finally alone. And fully miserable. I'd seen no angels, no demons, hadn't felt Jesus, hadn't felt God. Hadn't heard anything or sensed anything. Was being a failure at everything I tried. I was a failure. This was stupid.
What the hell was I doing? What a f%$ing stupid idea? Who the hell am I to think I can save someone. I hate this place. I hate this religion. I don't hate God but I sure as hell feel hatred. I hate. And then, silently, a little black and white kitten snuggled up against my limp cold hand. Of all the animals in the world, to me there is none as special as a cat. Kittens, we don't even have to talk about kittens. (Growing up, with the everyday confusions of living in a foreign country and in a big, passionate family, our cats were always our emotional bean bags or blankies or shag rugs, the animals on whom we relied for unconditional love. We also found so so so much humor in their shenanigans and personalities. We found much relief in the connecting place of laughter as a family.)
So, little oreo-kitty and I hung out. I got up and wandered around. Paced. I walked half the perimeter of the lake and came back. I walked in circles in the little woods. I made my way to the prayer deck where I didn't pray. And, if you were standing on the hill above the lake and there was even a sliver of a moon, you would have seen a tiny black and white shadow following me, leading me, asking me to rescue it when it climbed too high. Dancing around me. Bringing me solace and distraction and a jab of happy. We hung out for the next few hours together, me and oreo-kitty. I gave her a name but don't remember it anymore. We eventually settled back by the shed. I really wanted something spiritual to come of this. I really wanted it.
Kitty eventually fell asleep in my lap, snuggling her teeny paws slightly shivering between my belly and my jacket. I was much warmer now. This was probably around five thirty in the morning by now. I couldn't do it, though. I couldn't stay awake any longer. I had to go to bed. I had to go get warm. Dammit, dammit dammit. Why didn't you let me do what I came to do, God? Why didn't you let me wrestle you? I want to help. I want to truly, wholly be a follower. I'm willing. Where the hell are you? My eyes got sleepy. I had to go in.
Then, I saw a man sitting in front of me, as if in a dream. His profile facing me. Detailless. Just the shape of a man. And I heard distinctly in my brain, "This is not yours to carry. Let it go. I will take care of her. I love her. She is mine."
************
That was Jesus. I knew it. Beyond the shadow of a doubt. A test, maybe, for me. I never really placed it. Because it wasn't long after, a few months, a year at the most, that I walked away from the religion and from the Trinity as I'd understood it for good. But on my way out, I told him something like this, "I'm not throwing you away because of hurt or pain or confusion, not entirely anyway. I'm just done with what I've been doing. It's not working for me. I can't chase after you because I've never truly felt you on the other side. I've felt sad and inadequate and not enough for as long as I can remember and it's all tied in to my identity which has till now been all tied in to the religious aspects of being Christian. It feels so completely confining to me right now. And I feel inauthentic too often to speak. And I hate that feeling. So here I go, off to find out who I am outside of this frame. If you want me, if you are everything so many people tell me you are, then you will come and take me, hold me in your arms so tight that even if I fight and scream and swear, you won't let go and eventually I'll fall asleep, exhausted, and I will be yours. If not, that's okay."
That was a really intense night. That was the most intense searching I ever did, completely alone, with no goal of an audience or a story (teehee). I thought that I needed to fight with the supernatural world. And I suppose I did.
One thing I know, four years and going since I posted my challenge to the heavens, I don't really regret my days as a born-again Christian. They helped me to value my spiritual journey, to hear smaller voices. Anyway, they made me who I am. Christianity provided a very distinct frame for my childhood and my relationships and my youth, up to the age of 22. Christianity, in some form, is a deep part of my roots and my inheritance. I'm glad for all I went through. I came out a bit off-balance with some embarrassing habits, damaged a few friendships along the way (inside or out) but I might have done that anyway. But I'm more often than not at peace with it all these days. (Still see red sometimes, though, but I think that might last the rest of this life.)
Names have been omitted to protect identities.
Jacob Wrestles with God: Was it Jacob? It's been so long, I barely remember the details of Bible stories anymore.... Details are faaading....
We were out on our Tuesday date. I think it was Tuesday. We loved going out on Tuesday nights. She'd drive, I'd ride, bound inside our bodies and out by the conversationlessness of incredible music through the backroad cornfield country; darkness heavy as ink except for an occasional yellow lace-framed window streaming by or a flashing red light signalling a dangerous obsolete intersection. On our way to Muncie. Muncie was the closest thing we had to a city without we had to drive all the way into Indy. When we did Indy, it was an event. Fancy clothes tossed piles in the bedroom makeup scattered on sinks, anticipation and excitement brewing for the Big City. Muncie was our regular city. Walmart, restaurants that weren't cheap or small or sameold or Ivanhoes or Chinese buffets, parks bigger than backyards, people that weren't necessarily of the homogeneous make-up of our school, upper middle class midwestern.
When we made it out to Tuesdays in Muncie, we always did only two things. We stopped first at the Salvation Army thrift store and played our hands through forgotten, found, once-loved, worn, mildewy household items and clothes in search of treasures. And, after satisfying our thing lusts, we ate. We crossed the parking lot to Stake 'n Shake, where we both always got the same thing: Frisco Melts, fries, soda. Every time the same. Frisco melts top the list of foods I enjoyed most during my years at TU. But the best part of it all was our conversation. We always talked deep into the marrows of our lives. The heavy stuff, the deep stuff, the best stuff. She was the first person I told a lot of embarrassing things to. Things I thought maybe I should be ashamed of but wasn't sure. Things I feared, things I loved and things I hated about myself. And we always talked religion and spirituality. Religion had been the most important, the center, the beating heart, the fulcrum on which my life teetered for as long as I could think.
One Tuesday, I remember her telling me something that was painful for her but I don't remember details anymore (not that I'd tell you). Something heavy with sadness. I remember a moment, I was staring right into her soult. That's what it felt like. It was a quiet moment, like that exhausted staring into space effortless comfortable when you know there are people trying to communicate around you, but you can't bring yourself to focus your eyes or come forward into the present to acknowledge them and you don't care. In that moment, I heard words coming out of her chest that weren't the same as the ones coming out of her mouth. They sounded desperate; like they were asking for help. To God. To me to god. Or something. It wasn't rational or normal, I couldn't sort it out or explain it really. Intense and surreal. I don't know what I said back to her, but for the rest of our evening, I was quiet and brooding. And I knew what I had to do.
We got back to our dorms and I immediately ran up to my room and put on eleven more layers of clothes. It was probably February. Definitely winter, with snow on the ground, in Indiana, which, if you haven't experienced it, is frigid, icy, wet ripping through all your layers, unforgiving, windy. Plus it was already late at night. Maybe ten or eleven oclock by the time we got home and I was ready.
This was my first senior year. I still lived in the dorm. At this point in my spiritual journey, I was a desperately clinging but dedicated born-again. I spent hours alone every morning in the cafeteria, at a quiet sunlit table near the windows facing T Lake, praying and reading the Bible and searching for clues, calling for Jesus to show me himself. I spent several evenings a week with my liberal cohorts, trying to call on tongues or at least little shivers, maybe? I searched for the extra super natural in my daily life. I longed for the God and the Jesus and the Holy Spirit I thought I had known in my youth. I made a lot of A's in my classes, writing and presenting topics on the Holy Spirit that year. I understood exactly who he should be to me but never found him. The harder I looked, the less satisfied I became. So this evening, this night, maybe, was a big test, I think. I was going to go all out. Maybe what I saw in her was my own reflection.
So, that night, I went down to T. Lake with my Bible in hand, wrapped in many s-waddling clothes, with the intention of staying up all night and calling on God and wrestling demons for my friend. I would change her life by the skin of my teeth that night. I honestly believed, on my walk through the thin, crunchy snow, that I would face the devil in the next six or seven hours.
I sat by a dimly lit shed and cursed the busy-ness of this newmoon night. Apparently two or three other students had had the same idea, I couldn't believe it. I wanted to be alone in this battle. I sang hymns but couldn't remember very many. I tried to make up my own but they didn't sound very eloquent or meaningful, not like David's lyrics or Solomon's. I read passages I thought were appropriate over and over but couldn't hold the water. I begged God to come to me or at least open my eyes to the spiritual war going on around me and this whole university, the war I knew about from everything I had learned, good angels and God and saved people fighting demons, demons demons demons. I prayed and prayed. I tried to force emotion and maybe catch the window to the spiritual that way, I tried to cry but I couldn't so I forced out strange sounds from my throat. I hoped the cold would at least make me go a little insane, so I froze my ass for as long as I could stand it. Around three or four, I was finally alone. And fully miserable. I'd seen no angels, no demons, hadn't felt Jesus, hadn't felt God. Hadn't heard anything or sensed anything. Was being a failure at everything I tried. I was a failure. This was stupid.
What the hell was I doing? What a f%$ing stupid idea? Who the hell am I to think I can save someone. I hate this place. I hate this religion. I don't hate God but I sure as hell feel hatred. I hate. And then, silently, a little black and white kitten snuggled up against my limp cold hand. Of all the animals in the world, to me there is none as special as a cat. Kittens, we don't even have to talk about kittens. (Growing up, with the everyday confusions of living in a foreign country and in a big, passionate family, our cats were always our emotional bean bags or blankies or shag rugs, the animals on whom we relied for unconditional love. We also found so so so much humor in their shenanigans and personalities. We found much relief in the connecting place of laughter as a family.)
So, little oreo-kitty and I hung out. I got up and wandered around. Paced. I walked half the perimeter of the lake and came back. I walked in circles in the little woods. I made my way to the prayer deck where I didn't pray. And, if you were standing on the hill above the lake and there was even a sliver of a moon, you would have seen a tiny black and white shadow following me, leading me, asking me to rescue it when it climbed too high. Dancing around me. Bringing me solace and distraction and a jab of happy. We hung out for the next few hours together, me and oreo-kitty. I gave her a name but don't remember it anymore. We eventually settled back by the shed. I really wanted something spiritual to come of this. I really wanted it.
Kitty eventually fell asleep in my lap, snuggling her teeny paws slightly shivering between my belly and my jacket. I was much warmer now. This was probably around five thirty in the morning by now. I couldn't do it, though. I couldn't stay awake any longer. I had to go to bed. I had to go get warm. Dammit, dammit dammit. Why didn't you let me do what I came to do, God? Why didn't you let me wrestle you? I want to help. I want to truly, wholly be a follower. I'm willing. Where the hell are you? My eyes got sleepy. I had to go in.
Then, I saw a man sitting in front of me, as if in a dream. His profile facing me. Detailless. Just the shape of a man. And I heard distinctly in my brain, "This is not yours to carry. Let it go. I will take care of her. I love her. She is mine."
************
That was Jesus. I knew it. Beyond the shadow of a doubt. A test, maybe, for me. I never really placed it. Because it wasn't long after, a few months, a year at the most, that I walked away from the religion and from the Trinity as I'd understood it for good. But on my way out, I told him something like this, "I'm not throwing you away because of hurt or pain or confusion, not entirely anyway. I'm just done with what I've been doing. It's not working for me. I can't chase after you because I've never truly felt you on the other side. I've felt sad and inadequate and not enough for as long as I can remember and it's all tied in to my identity which has till now been all tied in to the religious aspects of being Christian. It feels so completely confining to me right now. And I feel inauthentic too often to speak. And I hate that feeling. So here I go, off to find out who I am outside of this frame. If you want me, if you are everything so many people tell me you are, then you will come and take me, hold me in your arms so tight that even if I fight and scream and swear, you won't let go and eventually I'll fall asleep, exhausted, and I will be yours. If not, that's okay."
That was a really intense night. That was the most intense searching I ever did, completely alone, with no goal of an audience or a story (teehee). I thought that I needed to fight with the supernatural world. And I suppose I did.
One thing I know, four years and going since I posted my challenge to the heavens, I don't really regret my days as a born-again Christian. They helped me to value my spiritual journey, to hear smaller voices. Anyway, they made me who I am. Christianity provided a very distinct frame for my childhood and my relationships and my youth, up to the age of 22. Christianity, in some form, is a deep part of my roots and my inheritance. I'm glad for all I went through. I came out a bit off-balance with some embarrassing habits, damaged a few friendships along the way (inside or out) but I might have done that anyway. But I'm more often than not at peace with it all these days. (Still see red sometimes, though, but I think that might last the rest of this life.)
Saturday, May 26, 2007
what do you say
they will see us waving from such great heights, come down now they'll say, but everything looks perfect from far away, come down now, but we'll stay...
Today is glorious. I have my window open to the island behind me. Clear blue skies, perfectly sunny, wind washing through my apartment, gently, peacefully blowing our floor-to-ceiling beige-white curtains in and out. Sweet Jane just made me laugh and I'm feeling exhilarated because life can be so good. Sometimes so good. I feel like that song. The bouncing intense driven positive energy. 123scum, what's our first project? tell me. What say you? Give me the word, and I'm off.
I'm working on a name and logo for my new business. I'm feeling a bit blank and nervous. its funny, when I'm not feeling sad or depressed or confused or lonely or, it's harder to create.
hmm.
well, I hope we are all jumping up and down and singing and spinning and falling and diving and breathing and happy and screaming and happy.
Today is glorious. I have my window open to the island behind me. Clear blue skies, perfectly sunny, wind washing through my apartment, gently, peacefully blowing our floor-to-ceiling beige-white curtains in and out. Sweet Jane just made me laugh and I'm feeling exhilarated because life can be so good. Sometimes so good. I feel like that song. The bouncing intense driven positive energy. 123scum, what's our first project? tell me. What say you? Give me the word, and I'm off.
I'm working on a name and logo for my new business. I'm feeling a bit blank and nervous. its funny, when I'm not feeling sad or depressed or confused or lonely or, it's harder to create.
hmm.
well, I hope we are all jumping up and down and singing and spinning and falling and diving and breathing and happy and screaming and happy.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
yesterday's bitches
Wednesday May 23, 2007
Just finished Beautiful Girls. B shared it with me. It was great! We laughed a lot; I felt nervous, awkward, embarrassed with them. It’s a pretty funny idea. Plus I really love the Factotum guy, what’s his name, Matt Dillon. But, it left an unpeeled-banana-in-my-belly-heavier-than-a-soggy-wool-blanket feeling afterward. Brooding. I can’t put my finger on why exactly. I like the experience of watching movies or reading books that have absolutely zero physical contact or apparent connection with my own life but leave me in an altered emotional state.
A cup of warm tea at night is nice. Warm tea that I know is regulating my hormones so that three or four or five or six months from now, if I keep drinking my cozy warm tea every day, my face will clear up. That's the hope. Hormones are a long-time family excuse. For physical discomforts and mostly fights and bitchiness and out-of-control psychotic episodes. Obviously of the female orientation. Most of us spend 25% of our young lives, at least, on some emotional acid trip. No wonder women are strong. I tell you what, but sometimes I can be a bitch. I watch myself acting like a child feeling powerless, throwing a tantrum and don’t stop myself. And then, when the person on the other end reacts to me in kind, I go off and cry by myself. What the f%@#. This charlie foxtrot squeezing your brain all up in this small birthday package wrapped in swear words and maybe cunt and angry bees and a soft red velvet ribbon. It’s embarrassing and also there's something of value in it all. Something I'm still puzzling out.
Just finished Beautiful Girls. B shared it with me. It was great! We laughed a lot; I felt nervous, awkward, embarrassed with them. It’s a pretty funny idea. Plus I really love the Factotum guy, what’s his name, Matt Dillon. But, it left an unpeeled-banana-in-my-belly-heavier-than-a-soggy-wool-blanket feeling afterward. Brooding. I can’t put my finger on why exactly. I like the experience of watching movies or reading books that have absolutely zero physical contact or apparent connection with my own life but leave me in an altered emotional state.
*******
A cup of warm tea at night is nice. Warm tea that I know is regulating my hormones so that three or four or five or six months from now, if I keep drinking my cozy warm tea every day, my face will clear up. That's the hope. Hormones are a long-time family excuse. For physical discomforts and mostly fights and bitchiness and out-of-control psychotic episodes. Obviously of the female orientation. Most of us spend 25% of our young lives, at least, on some emotional acid trip. No wonder women are strong. I tell you what, but sometimes I can be a bitch. I watch myself acting like a child feeling powerless, throwing a tantrum and don’t stop myself. And then, when the person on the other end reacts to me in kind, I go off and cry by myself. What the f%@#. This charlie foxtrot squeezing your brain all up in this small birthday package wrapped in swear words and maybe cunt and angry bees and a soft red velvet ribbon. It’s embarrassing and also there's something of value in it all. Something I'm still puzzling out.
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