Unsayable

Requiem

2006-08-12T01:17:00.000-04:00

Well, this blog has had about a one year shelf life, and it's time to say good-bye. I will be setting up shop elsewhere, and if I want you to know my new location, you will get a private invite. To the rest of you, as John Garfield said as he got on the train, "So long suckers!"

The light always burns the brightest in the core of a flame: Grant McLennan

2006-07-12T01:38:00.000-04:00

This is long overdue, and harder to write because of how much I miss you. I will never forget the night at Fez, where I stood a few feet away from the stage, taking pictures of you and Robert. One of those photos survives in the biography of your stellar band, the go-betweens. I am sorry that it outlives you. Goodbye Grant. I will "dive for your memory..."

Seems you were gone before... Goodbye Syd Barrett

2006-07-12T01:30:00.000-04:00

No Exit Mr. Sartre?

2006-07-06T17:21:00.000-04:00

image by Blair Black

2006-07-05T07:28:00.000-04:00

"I drank to drown my pain, but the damned pain learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good behavior." - Frida Kahlo

An American Independent

2006-07-04T00:48:00.000-04:00

Father's day aftermath

2006-06-19T21:00:00.000-04:00

"Stuff it!" he barked "Just stuff it!" as he waved his hand dismissive near my face as if to shut me up., as I chauffeured him in my car.

"Yea, I have been stuffing it all my life, that's why I'm so angry" I replied soberly. ("...and so fat" I thought to myself, all that rage pushed down with food so that I wouldn't end up on the front page of Newsday for killing him one day).

Dad, I am angry with you for things you will never understand, never admit, never acknowledge. I am angry at you for the last three days when you hijacked my life and ejected me from it, as you often do, putting your needs first and making me a servant to them. I am angry that you can't even fathom why I am angry. I am angry that you have made me into your caretaker and surrogate wife. I am angry that on a Saturday night I was out to dinner with you, instead of hanging out with my friends or staying home doing whatever I wanted to, like most adults. I am angry that you made me take you to a warehouse club store on a Saturday afternoon when it is mobbed, and when I'd avoid it like the plague even if I'd needed something from there.

Then, you race all over the store sitting comfortably in a motorized wheelchair, while I have to go in circles around the warehouse five times looking for you, and exhausting myself. I am expended on you, all the time. There is never anything left for myself. I want to run away and never come back. I don't even care anymore that no one else will take care of you, because you are killing me. You didn't earn this either. You never took care of me when I was growing up, all you did was scream, and yell, and abuse me and the entire family. You abused my mother and my brother so much that they warped into extensions of you who abused me too.

I am angry that you have crossed way over the line into emotional incest, inappropriateness verbally, touching and grabbing at me in the past, and that the wound opened again recently when I saw a scribbled note in your handwriting with "girls gone wild" and the 800 number on it. It makes me sick that you are almost 75 years old, and would want to see something so exploitive of college girls, the same age I was when you started abusing me in earnest. It makes me angry and disgusted that you cannot and will not change or evict than demon from inside you.

I cringe every time you talk about God and the Bible, and give me unsolicited spiritual advice about my life. You are no one to talk. I hate you. I want to be far away from you. You make my skin crawl. You make me want to scream or slice into my arms with a knife till I bleed and can cry and cry and bleed you out. If only I could get you out from underneath my skin, maybe I could take the first fucking free breath of my life.

I miss...

2006-06-12T23:59:00.000-04:00

being able to come here and feel safe. I feel like I have lost something that, while not vitally important to my life, still held some significance. I suppose that will teach me to be a little more paranoid and cover my tracks better. I knew I should have erased my URL history from his computer. There was a voice telling me to do it, and I ignored it, wanting to trust that it wouldn't be necessary. I was wrong about that, and about a lot of other things as well it seems. *sigh*

For You

2006-06-09T02:32:00.000-04:00

You know I love you & I miss you & that I wish it did not have to be this way.

I wish there were other choices. Options. Alternatives. A box labeled "Other" that I could check. A freezer where I could store my heart until I needed it to feel again. To stop the inconvenient beating, and the tears, all the tears it sends through my eyes out onto my cheeks.

I knew the phone wasn't going to ring tonight, and I realized it would be the first night in about four months that I would not be talking to you. It was hard to bear knowing that it will be that way every night from now on. (It doesn't matter that we might speak again as friends, it will never be the same).

I guess I will have to get used to your absence.

I have no idea how though.

This will probably be my last post here for a while, since you have found this place, and I can't just spill my thoughts here anymore.

Please take care of yourself.

Back Home

2006-06-07T02:46:00.000-04:00

Back from my trip to the rolling green mountains of Pennsylvania. I am readjusting to New York. It's quite different there. I liked it a lot though. D.'s apartment is steps away from the Ohio river. There is a bench there where we sat the first day and I looked over the bridge and the flowing water. It was so peaceful as night fell. Little did we know what calamities would befall us in the hours to come when my rental car was found to be dead, and the key got stuck in the lock from some asinine anti-theft device. So much for what I had thought of Saturns. Never again I say. This began a night long fiasco, that did not resolve till the next day after noon. This was a harbinger of things to come.

We had a mixed bag visit to say the least. Very intense, unsettling at times, fun at other times. He is a handful. We had a long talk tonight about all of this, and we are going to take some time this week to think and pray and figure out where we go from here. I love him dearly, but he has some serious issues he needs to work out before we can have a truly healthy viable relationship. So, I am not sure how this will pan out. Maybe since we are geographically separated it won't mean breaking up, but rather refocusing on ourselves now that the first flush of the relationship has opened up to deeper aspects within each of us that need to be tended to. We both have a lot of work to do on ourselves individually. Some of his issues are crippling when it comes to being in a relationship though, so what happens with him will be more crucial to the survival or demise of our union.

As for me, my issues are more things that effect me, and things I need to work on for myself, and for the betterment of my own life. However, of course as I get better, it can't help but have a positive effect on how I relate to him, and others in my life. I am doing my best. That's all I can do. That seems bland and generic, and maybe it is, but that feels like where I am right now. Trying to do my best, and be my best, and build a life for myself.

I am still losing weight, and that is very important to me. It is just but one aspect of self-improvement, but I know it will have a trickle down effect on other parts of my life, especially my health and self-esteem. I am 23 pounds down now, and I am pleased, and confident that I will continue this, slowly but steadily until I arrive at the place I feel comfortable with myself, and healthier. I won't lie, I'll be happier with the way I look too I'm sure. I already see some difference in my appearance but it's not dramatic since I still have a long way to go. My face definitely seems to look better, less puffy, more defined, and I have gone down a whole size. Yipee.

I have some more settling in to do this week, unpacking and getting back into my life here. It's good to be home, in my over-stuffed apartment with my beloved black cat, but despite what a royal pain in the ass he can be, I miss my D. He's a wonder, a freak, and sometimes a colossal mess, but I love him still. This is the deepest love of my life, and also the most troubling. He is a good man, but he has a lot of inner pain and suffering and it bleeds out onto me, since I am closest to him, despite him not wanting to cause me any pain. I told him all of how I felt tonight though, and he has agreed to get some help. I hope he does, for his sake, before mine. Whether we work out or not, I want to see him get better. I hate to see him suffer. It breaks my heart. Never have I wanted so much to take someone's pain away, and never have I wanted so much for someone to stop causing me pain. I told him tonight that it is up to him, he can stay the way he is and be alone, or he can try to get better and I will be with him all the way. The choice is his alone. I have informed him that I am not self-destructive and that I will have no choice but to walk away if he chooses not to get help. So, I have made my parameters absolutely clear. I love him dearly, but I will not let him drag me down. I will hold his hand if he is prepared to make his way up, but I will not pull him up, nor do the hard work for him. I will be a companion, and a catalyst, but not a caretaker. I have had too many sick people of all stripes around me, and it's time for me to take care of myself now. I have to. This is my one and only life, and I'm not prepared to piss it away on pain that is not even my own. God, I sound so much less romantic than I used to be. I guess this is me as an adult. Hmm. Well, it had to happen sometime folks. I'm just a late bloomer. Uh huh, yea, that's the ticket... (Sorry, old SNL Jon Lovitz moment) "My wife....Morgan Fairchild...yea...that's the ticket"

Weddings Make Me Nauseous & My Busy Week(s)

2006-05-25T23:09:00.000-04:00

Busy doesn't even begin to cover it. I have been at my max lately. I've had a long to-do list to get done. I'm almost there. I'm leaving to visit D. for a week on Sunday morning. I would have left a lot sooner to take advantage of the three day weekend when he's off work, but a friend of mine decided to schedule her wedding for smack dab in the middle of the Memorial Day weekend -- Saturday, May 27th. Thanks, no really, thanks a lot.

I won't even go into how painful it has been to endure the land of the fembots when it came to the Bridal shower. Mercifully, I skipped the bachlorette party tonight. I just had to. I am exhausted from running errands, and I couldn't bear another night of normal people's idea of revelry. In the course of all the wedding brouhaha, I have come to realize that this lovely young woman may very well be my most conventional friend. Thank God I don't have too many of them, as this sort of thing really makes me ill. One of the fembots in her wedding party is already crowing about how she can't wait for the baby shower. Oh please shoot me now. I had to make wedding favors with this twit all night. She regaled me with tales of her happy family, and her plans for her own wedding and subsequent pregnancy (mind you, the girl is only 21, is dumb as a doornail, and doesn't have a damn thing to offer a kid). Not to mention, she's not even engaged yet. The poor guy, he'll never see it coming. He's got no more chance than a rabbit bludgeoned with a rock in the middle of the night while it sleeps. She's been with the same guy since they were 15 years old, and she's probably been wearing him down erosion style, chipping away at him, little by little so that he doesn't even notice until one day, he wakes up without balls. She's one of those girls that has her whole happy little Norman Rockwell life all planned out for herself, and everyone else will just function as props to bring her dreams into being. How sad for them all.

Yes, I know you think I am crusty, bitter curmudgeon, and heck, you might be partly right, but currently, I'm in love with a great guy that I'd love to spend the rest of my life with, but I'm not planning my wedding in my head. I know I may be odd, but I'm actually investing in the relationship with him as a person, and not using him as the means to try to have some fairy tale event which will be meaningless to the rest of our lives or making a marriage work. I would love to end up with him, because he's freaking awesome and I am very happy with him, but one day at a time, ya know. Also, I'm not preparing the baby shute for assembly line operation. The way this girl talked I thought she'd have been much better off getting an easy bake oven, and popping out some mini-muffins instead. Oh right, they wouldn't look like her, hence depriving her of her infantile narcissistic thrill, silly me. Yes, this sort of invective is what results from having to listen to swill like hers until three in the morning while I'm bleary-eyed from making cutesy favors for a wedding. Something snaps in my mind, and this is what comes out later to purge me of it.

Anyway, on a wholly bileless note, I can't wait to see my boyfriend again. We'll get to spend a whole week together. It will be so nice. Plus, after all the work I've had to do the last few weeks to keep many things in my life running (including my health insurance and my car -- 2 biggies) it will be lovely to simply relax and have no chores, errands or stress for one week, and be with my wonderful beau just enjoying life together. See, I am a closet sap when it comes right down to it, I'm just in it for the love, not the societal trappings. I dearly hope I will be married someday (and I really hope it will be to him) but I want that for every single day I will get to spend with him after the one day of ceremony, which I will want to get through so I can get to the good part: sharing my life with the one I love. That and all the kinky sex. Heck yea people, I've got my priorities straight!

A City Works its Magic: New York

2006-05-19T02:10:00.000-04:00

As always, click the picture for larger size image. This one has some minute details, and small lettering, so you might need to view larger.

Tagged

2006-05-18T17:36:00.000-04:00

Slideways

2006-05-16T04:16:00.000-04:00

The Fronts: The backs: Some are meant to be pins,

some pendants and some are both

(thanks to dual pin/hoop backing).

a recent collage of mine

2006-05-14T01:53:00.000-04:00

on the mend

2006-05-12T06:25:00.000-04:00

Just in case I worried any of my readers, i.e. my friends (although perhaps there are some lurking strangers reading as well) I just wanted to say that the medicine kicked in today (well, Thursday, but I'm posting this late at night) and I am feeling like some kind of organism resembling a human being. I mean that in a good way. Heh.

Having a spate of insomnia this week, but besides that, I'm doing better.

A soothing heartfelt talk with my D. did wonders to lift my spirits even beyond where they were at the end of a pretty good day. I cherish him. As cheesy as that sounds. I just appreciate him for who he is so much. I don't for a second take him for granted. His love for me is astonishing. I am still in awe of his heart, and how he makes me feel. I am so blessed.

(un)holy moodswing batgirl!

2006-05-10T04:55:00.000-04:00

I feel so fucking alone, and I don't even know why. I know that maybe it's the fact that I ran out of one of my meds, and thus was off it for 3 days. I know that when I start to get weepy, and desolate feeling, it could mean I'm crashing. I'm just never sure, and my mind plays tricks on me. Starts to tell me I'm too fucked up and will never be okay. That all the love in the world can't fix my scars (nor do I expect it to, because I know this reckoning is something apart from that). If anything I have become convinced that real love reveals myself to be exactly what I am; all of who I am is thrown into sharp relief. Real love is a mirror. I see much of what I am, and much of what I lack, and many of my scars raised to the surface. I see my strength, my weakness, my tenderness, my pain, my core. I know for sure that this relationship is my teacher, but perhaps not my healer. Although I do think that there is some healing to be had with each other, the ultimate healing comes from God, and takes place within both of us. Our love can only be a catalyst, a conveyence, a spark, a channel, an initiator, and a docking station to rest between our bouts with ourselves and with the world.

As for other forms of healing, I know for sure that none of the so-called "mental health" treatment I'm getting is helping. My recent foray into therapy has paired me with a well-meaning girl who is far younger than me, and also has very little clue of what would actually help me, and is into things like treatment plans with external objective goals, like doing things that are productive and positive, and while that is all very well and good, and I am doing the things I need to do, I am still feeling shitty a lot of the time despite having my dishes done or some shit. What I need is someone who will challenge the hell out of me, and call me on my shit, and delve into the raw places where my myriad forms of pain are still running the show. I need someone to get into my nerve center and facilitate me changing my operating systems. I had a good psychiatrist at least, but after three visits, she left the clinic, and I was given a total bozo who I met with today for the first time. I left with less than zero confidence in his ability to help me. To say that he was inappropriate, unprofessional and incompetent is just the tip of the dickwad iceberg.

D. called tonight when he got home from work (like he does every night) and he was very tired because it had been a very long day for him, he got up early to do errands, and then worked his 3-Midnight shift, so by 1am, he was crashing, and while I didn't take it personally when he needed to go to bed early tonight, I did feel like I didn't quite connect with him like I usually do, and that began the alone feeling that built up through the night. Now it's 5am, and I haven't been doing the vampire hours thing for a while now, and so, it's significant. I know something is "off" with me. It may just pass when I get my dosage of the one antidepressant I missed back up to the right level in my system, but for right now, I feel so deep within myself that I could be at the bottom of a well. I'm alone with myself, and although I am used to that, this time the echo in the emptiness is louder than before. I know that even the emptiness is made up of something, perhaps something I need to embrace, or recognize. I know that even nothingness can be a teacher. I just don't know what the lesson is yet.

(addendum: I followed a link on Post Secret and ended up on the depression and suicide prevention page and was reading their list of symptoms of depression, and persistent feelings of emptiness was one of them, so, maybe trying to be philosophical about how bad I feel is not the way to go. I just keep trying to see some point to my existence, and try to believe I can gain something through facing my feelings, and trying to learn from even unpleasant emotions, but perhaps some of this stuff just plain sucks, and there is no point to it. Sometimes I wish all the commercials for anti-depressants were true, where smiling, happy people "get back to their lives" after taking these miraculous little pills - but it hasn't happened for me yet, and I've been on all kinds of this shit since I was 23. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever feel okay).

Idle workshop, devil's hands

2006-05-04T04:15:00.000-04:00

I am almost convinced that God is punishing me for some wrongdoing. Why do I say this you ask? (OK, I pretend that you ask, I mean, heck, I pretend you care, tra la la) Well, here is my cross to bear -- I have had three odious songs stuck in my head for the entire day, on and off.

1. "Isn't it Ironic?" by Alanis Morissette, wherein she proves that she did not even look up "Ironic" in the dictionary. This maddening piece of drivel has tormented me all day and all night; intermittently anyway (thank God for small mercies).
2. "Start me up" by The Rolling Stones. I almost don't have to comment. I can't even find the words. Revile is not a strong enough word to even approximate what I feel regarding this song, and by extension, the stones over all. I can barely stand to listen to some of their slightly better songs, but this one is beneath the bottom of the barrel, it's more like the crap encrusted dirt underneath the barrel.
3. There was another tune of torment which I have mercilessly forgotten. I know it was some schmaltzy middle of the road A.O.R. love song. Bleech!
___________________________________________

In other news: what a train wreck of a week. My family was in rare form. Considering they are certifiably insane on a good day, this is saying something.

For those just joining us out there in TVland, a recap -- my Mother, a tortured soul with her own story (which will not be recounted at this time) is no longer of this earth, as of 1998. My Father is 74 years old and it would be kind to say the man is eccentric, unfortunately, due to lack of business savvy, yet an abundance of design genius, his work is revered by those in the know, but he is too poor to be deemed eccentric, and is just a consumate weirdo. Though, I have to say, he does rise above the garden variety whackjob. In insanity, he makes up in originality what he lacks in funds. I give the old man credit where credit is due.

Now, onto my brother - where does one begin? Hairtrigger temper, extreme O.C.D., controlling doesn't even begin to cover it, has the constitution of a finch on crack. Verbally and emotionally abusive to everyone who tries to love him, and even those who have given up on trying anymore. Don't get too close, he will peck your eyes out with his sharp merciless beak if you are not careful.

I am often dragged, kicking and screaming, in between these two overgrown boys and their pissing contest. Lucky me. As logic would dictate, this means I get pissed on quite a lot, despite my best attempts to stay under my little black umbrella, very quietly not bothering anyone. This week, I was their urinal.

Add to this cast of characters the fact that my 5 year old niece was in the hospital this week with dehydration, after a stomach virus that took too much of a toll on her. My 3 year old niece was hysterical seeing her sister getting hurt by the hospital staff attempting to insert a line for an IV nine times (completely unsuccessfully) and the 5 year old screaming bloody murder and crying too. Oy. Poor girls. Their mother is sick too. Their father is my brother the finch. Lucky them. Forget savings bonds or a college fund, I really need to start saving up for therapy gift certificates for their eighteenth birthdays.

Then...it gets better - my dad calls me and leaves chicken little type messages of urgency on my answering machine. When I finally see him in person as he begs me to do, nothing out of the ordinary is wrong with him. He has had yet another fight with my brother and wishes to bitch about to me. Fer crying out loud! Have you ever heard of the boy who cried wolf dad? Please, look it up. My shredding sanity thanks you in advance.

Then, as my luck would have it, being that I am the poster child for Murphy's law, I go to the local Target to pick up my perscription for 800 mg. Motrin, which I'm supposed to start taking three times a day for my pain, and whilst in the lobby perusing the circular on the wall display, who comes up to me but mon frere. My brother is there to get something the girls need. He proceeds to commence his rant about my dad (mind you I just got done being subjected to my dad's rant about him). [Yea, I know, I have a gift - for the absurd, improbable, and un-fucking-lucky, but still, a gift]. I tell my bro that my back is out, can we at least sit down in the Starbucks in Target so I can get off my feet. No, he assures me he will just be a minute more, and there I stand for over a half an hour, on my feet, leaning on the cart, because my back can't take anymore. Next time, I will say "Hey, if you want to talk to me, I'm going to the cafe to get a cup of coffee and sit down, you can talk till you're blue in the face as long as my ass is cradled lovingly in a psuedo-arty StarFucks chair".

Then, the next day, another lovely message from the pater familias waiting for me when I wake: "I've had a heart attack...I didn't go to the hospital or call the ambulance, I just sat here very quietly and prayed...I'm weak as a puppy...please call me as soon as possible when you get this message". Now, I'm all for the power of prayer folks, but not as a sole course of action when you may need to be somewhere that life-saving measures can be performed. Why did he not go to the hospital I asked? - "Oh, I didn't feel like sitting in the emergency room for five hours". Wow, the logic is astonishing. Why else didn't he go I inquired? - "I only have Medicare, I let my supplemental insurance lapse, and it would cost me thousands of dollars out of pocket". Why did you let your insurance lapse dad? No answer given.

Into every life some rain must fall, in my case, it's acid rain.

I want to move far away. Out of state. Out of range. Out of my cage.

I am so tired of all of the drama queening, grandstanding, vicious cycles they self-perpetuate, and most of all, the acute need they seem to have to drag me into their colossal messes every single time they make them, like children proud of their shit painting on a white wall, who call the family in to admire their masterpiece.
_____________________________________________

Some good news for the weary reader: I have lost 17 pounds. I am going to visit my boyfriend D. at the end of May-through the beginning of June. I will be with him for a week. Wonderful bliss, and a much needed escape from ma famille at just the right time.

Other good news: I've been fairly creative lately. Have worked on some art, finished a knitting project, and made some jewelry.

I have also been organizing and implementing new storage areas for all my stuff to maximize my space, and have things in places where they can be accessed more easily. The biggest thing I did in this regard was take all my books off a bookshelf that was tucked away too far into a corner to allow easy access to my books, and transfer them to a cool set of black wire linked cubes in my living room. Now they line a wall right next to my couch and I can see everything and take books off the shelf and reshelve them with ease. I now have at my fingertips a lot of my books on all kinds of mixed media art creation, and altered art forms. I also have many artists books/artists journals/mixed media art books to inspire me. I also have a cube for my DVD's, one for my magazines, with a pull out bin, and one cube for yarn, with a purple fabric drawer, so I can get to my good yarn readily. My B grade stash can stay elsewhere. I will just keep my current yarns and projects on hand in the living room.

I know this sounds strange, but all this really satisfies me. I am making a home for myself. I am teaching myself much needed lessons in getting my shit together, be it via interior design, or interior self-transformation. I'm breaking old patterns and bad habits. I am becoming someone else besides my Father's daughter, my Mother's martyr, and my Brother's punching bag. I am becoming exactly who I really am. And nothing and no one can stop me, or thwart my destiny, because I am determined to be the one who breaks the cycle, the black sheep that becomes a black stallion, the one who gets away, the one who rises above, the phoenix.

Bad Blogger, Bad Bad!

2006-05-03T17:28:00.000-04:00

OK, I know. I have been incommunicado.

So, who wants to spank me?

(Note: rolled up newspaper not preferred implement of contrition).

In my secret place...

2006-04-17T23:59:00.000-04:00

Love

2006-04-15T02:25:00.000-04:00

Love came in an unlikely guise. Wrapped in torn paper, half-broken and scarred, but alive.

It took my hand and we danced, and fell down, and crawled on our bellies, and rose up like mighty waves and crashed against the rocky shore, and then drifted out to sea in bliss.

Spent

2006-04-14T01:17:00.000-04:00

I am too tired to recount the fine details of the end of my visit with D., but I can say it went far better than I expected. Today was a very good day for us, despite having to begin the temporary separation. Our last day was spent in a breakthrough to a new level of emotional intimacy. That sounds cheesy, but it's true. This is real. I don't think I've felt anything realer. It's been a very long time since there has been real honest love in my life. It's scary. And beautiful. And transformative beyond belief.

In a bathroom stall at the Port Authority bus station, some woman had written on the wall: "Please remember how beautiful you really are". I wished I had a sharpie pen so I could write back, and say, even if she never sees it: "Thank you".

As I walked through the Times Square subway station from 8th ave. to 7th ave. to go uptown and see my best friend L. I read the words of an art installation: "So tired" Yes I am. "Why the pain?" Yes, why indeed?

I looked up at the wall, and in the mosaic tiles were the letters TS -- for Times Square, but I saw my initials too. Everything was speaking to me. Everything was a sign. Had a voice. A meaning. A presence. The faces of strangers potent with experience. I wondered who they all were. I saw a young tawny man on the subway platform, with a tanned neck, and rough ranch hand clothes, dirt on his hands -- he could have been a country hick out of his depth in the big city, or have just come from shooting a bareback gay porn movie in some warehouse or loft in the meat packing district (no pun intended). Anyone can be anyone here. Nothing is as it seems. We're all down the rabbithole. I saw too much on all the faces.

On the train ride home D. called me. He missed me already. He listened to our CD on the bus and thought of me, and then he said again what he'd told me the for the first time this morning: "I love you" :::pause::: "I really mean that". "I love you too" I said "...I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it". So new to hear that, to say it, to feel it, and know that I can truly believe it.

I am fully spent. But not at all empty.

Sadness, Beauty, Pathos

2006-04-13T01:42:00.000-04:00

I will make a more complete post later, but for now, a hint as to the way things went with my day.

Wonderful lunch at my favorite Indian resturant of course. We both enjoyed it immensely.

Phone call from Dad at the end of meal -- Danger Will Robinson. He pressured me into stopping by at his office for him to meet D. Nerves were wracked. My brother showed up at the same moment we arrived. Family contact marred the day and set my emotions on edge. Bad omen.

Went to the bookstore. They were closed. The door was locked. It was dark. I saw the owner who I have known since I was a little girl pacing the back room on the phone. A sign in the window pierced me "...after 35 years...regretfully...retiring...it's been wonderful" etc. I almost started to cry. The death of another independent bookstore. The death of the past. The past being created with this store receeding from the present like a faint ghost who cannot stay being called away to another plane. I stood there stunned. Crushed. D. told me it was okay, but it wasn't. Not for me.

Somewhere along the line, tears came. We went to my secret place and sat on the bench and looked at the ducks, and swans, and I dried my eyes. Peace came to me.

We went to El Gordo chain bookstore and cafe. Making the selling of books like all things Amerikkkan: overpriced, overblown, corporate. Yay rah. Yee Haw.

Frozen cafe drinks were had. D. bought a Nick Cave CD we both wanted to hear, and he bought me an art magazine I wanted. We came home, tired, world-weary, and put on our CD and took to the couch entwined. Listened to this haunting music with D. wrapped around me, and me around him, seamlessly. It was beautiful and sad, like my life, like me and D., as I thought of him leaving tomorrow, and how fragile we both are, and how fragile this thing we have is. If we even have it. Maybe it has us. Maybe it will slip away like everything else I've ever held in my hands for a moment. More tears, during a sad song called "Love Letter". Longing in his voice, and in my heart, with this fresh raw boy in my arms. We both like two wounds bleeding in time, and then like two pillows resting softly against each other. Injury. Comfort. Beautiful sadness. Bittersweet beauty. Moment. Ephemeral and I knew it. Knew it as it was happening, and as it was passing from me. Knew that this would be a memory. A perfection in the past. Soon. Soon it was coming. Would be part of my past. Like the heady scent of an aging book I will never be able to take off the shelf in that bookstore ever again.

Safe Landing

2006-04-12T11:02:00.000-04:00

He's here and everything is good. He's in the shower now. We're getting along great, and we do get along as well as we did on the phone. There are just a lot more hugs now, which is really nice.

After I take my shower and get ready, we are going to the Indian buffet for lunch. Yum. Then we're gonna go to Port Jeff and explore my favorite used and antiquarian bookstore. Then perhaps pop into Tiger Lily cafe and have something to drink and snack on while looking at our books (no doubt we will both find something we want).

After that I may take him walking to this special place I love to go. It's my secret spot since childhood. It will mean a lot to me to share it with him. Sharing everything with him makes me happy. I haven't been with someone like this in so long that the newness of having someone that cares about me, and is interested in things that I am, as well as open to trying and doing new things that I like to do, is going to take a little getting used to. I can't complain about this new trend though!

Thanks for the well wishes M. & Meena :-)

& now a lovesick pause to make ya'all queasy

2006-04-10T22:28:00.000-04:00

D. arrives in NYC tomorrow to visit me. Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

File under: beside myself.

This first meeting will be a three to four day visit. He's not sure whether he's going back to Philie on Thurday night or Friday morning. He's going to spend some time with his folks for Easter. I'm cool with whenever he leaves, but I hope he can stay till Friday so we have a little more time together.

I don't think I have ever been so excited and so nervous to meet someone in my entire life. I have had industrial strength robotic butterflies in my stomach for the whole week. He is a nervous wreck. We are both fluttering around like two hummingbirds on speed.

This is a scary feeling. Feeling like this person could be important to the rest of my life. There is so much more gravity to this meeting than a casual toss off coffee date or something. I love his soul and his mind already so much. I have a lump in my throat wondering whether I will love all of him in person.

I feel like I have nothing but falling in love cliches, except, I am finding out that they are all true, so perhaps they are not as much cliches as universal truths that many people have experienced while falling (and being) in love. I had really completely forgotten what this felt like. I have experienced lust in the past year or more, but I haven't felt real love for anyone in over nine years or so. So, these symptoms are all a shock to me. Sleeping and eating is challenging at times. I am distracted, prone to my mind wandering to thoughts of him, clumsy, accident-prone, nervous, high-strung, antsy, restless, anxious, sick to my stomach. I wish this churning and these steroidal Eastern Bloc butterflies would take their show on the road, because I'm getting nauseous.

I have it bad. Heaven help me.

Despite all the heebie jeebies, and days of being a nervous wreck whilst preparing my apartment for his visit, I am looking forward to meeting him.

In the next twelve hours I expect the anxiety to move from my apartment onto my personal appearance. Hoo boy. Showering, shaving, make-up, clothes, etc.

Despite the fact that I know full well, he will barely register my apartment visually when with me in person for the first time, and would like me even if I arrived to collect him at the station while donned in a burlap sack, I still have these insane personal standards for myself. I have to be comfortable with how my place is, and how I look; but it is good to know that he accepts me and my abode as is.

Now, back to cleaning, obssessing, and onto grooming in a while...

Oh, and all during this, I am trying to keep my equilibrium, and tell myself I won't be crushed if this isn't all I think it will be. I am determined to be okay within myself whether alone, or with a partner. In fact, I was dead set against a relationship when I became closer to him. This took me by surprise. So far I'm not sorry though. I just want to make sure that I will be all right no matter what the outcome. I am readying my core of steel, just in case. Nevertheless, my heart is still very tender and exposed. Let's hope it will be cradled and treated with great tenderness and care. I am not about to allow or settle for anything less.

Monday Update

2006-04-03T00:23:00.000-04:00

As of today I have lost 15 pounds. :-D And it's only been three weeks! I rule.

I have been listening to "The Art of Breaking" by Thousand Foot Krutch at least once a day, often more.

I have been repeatedly listening to "Whatever they say I am, that's what I'm not" by Arctic Monkeys

I am thrilled that "Show Your Bones" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs finally came out. That has been in heavy rotation as well.

Right now, I am listening to the untitled debut album by the band "She Wants Revenge". I love this CD. This is my first full listen, and I am pleased. I have a bunch of candles lit, it's past Midnight, and this is perfect music for right now.

I have a CD I need to listen to soon -- I bought "Dying to say this to you" by The Sounds

I also have 4 CD's that D. burned for me. I listened to the Nick Cave compilation he made me, that was great. I have to hear it again. He also gave me "My Mother's Hymn Book" by Johnny Cash, I know I will like that, because I like any & all Man in Black. The CD I had a tough time getting into was The Mars Volta, it's a bit jarring, but I'll give it another try. The last CD in the bunch is a cool mix CD of odd cover tunes, like Tori Amos doing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" that sort of thing.

Speaking of D., he will be here in 8 days! Hard to believe. I am sure things will go well between us, but still it makes me a tad nervous meeting him in person. I have known him since November, and it will be an adjustment to be together in person, but it is time for it to happen. I don't want either of us dwelling in the land of imagination about each other. We need to meet the real person, not hold an image of each other in our minds. That can lead to a lot of trouble. We are friends with potential, but we are both hoping that maybe it will become more. We shall see. Either way, we are good friends, and I'm sure we'll have fun.

& That's my news for today.

w00t!

2006-03-31T10:21:00.000-05:00

As of this morning I am down 13.4 pounds bitches. :-D

Metamorphosis

2006-03-29T01:42:00.000-05:00

As of Wednesday morning: 11.2 pounds gone. Freeing, Incredulous, Empowered all spring to mind.

I am sitting here sipping a bit of apricot brandy and wondering what to write about. So much is changing so fast that I'm not even sure how to account for all of it, or for that matter, recount of all it. A lot seems to be happening inside me. Deep level changes. The bedrock is shifting, but I feel more secure than ever. I am living in the knowing place: knowing who I am, who my God is, knowing I am here on purpose, knowing I am enough, and that my life can be a magnificent adventure whether I get one particular man to share it with or not. I like the feeling of having a man to share with, and the nice feeling of warmth that comes from really liking him genuinely for all of who he is, but I also know that if D. is not "The One" that there is someone even better for me. I am not stressing over it anymore. I am more concerned with becoming "The One" myself. Neo reference not intentional, but it's an apt appropriation. I am becoming my own hero.

Besides the desire for a husband who would be my best friend and lover, I am also slowly letting go of the issue of my waning fertility and accepting that motherhood may not even be in the cards for me, and I've also begun to consider that it may be for the best if no children come through me. I am still growing up. I still have a bunch of re-parenting of myself to do. I have a lot of lost years to make up for. I want adventures, travel, reaching heights never before scaled. I don't know if the ride of my life is gonna be child-friendly or not. The freedom and flexibility I need would not be conducive to responsible nurturing parenting, and I won't do it half-assed. I know too much what it's like to be raised by people who should have never been parents to do that to a child. That's just child abuse. There are already too many people who parent for selfish and narcissistic reasons. I won't be one of them.

At least I have two munchkins I adore -- my nieces, and I think it's a good deal cos I get to give them back at the end of the day (it'd be even better if my O.C.D. rageaholic brother and his bitter harebrained wife would actually let me see my nieces more than every few months, but I digress...) I am a great Auntie Mame character when permitted; my 5 year old niece already wants to be like me and have a nose ring to the dismay of her mother. Score -- Auntie: One. Shrewish Mother: Zero. I intend to sow as much riot grrrl into them as I can manage. So they will want more than their mother did, which was just to marry my brother and have babies. Now, there is nothing wrong with wanting that, but she wanted it so much she blinded herself to my brother's very real problems, and now she is suffering the consequences. He is verbally and emotionally abusive to her, and she confessed that if not for the girls, she'd leave him. The cycle repeats...for my brother...and unfortunately for his wife, and for his innocent children, who don't deserve to have the sins of their father visited upon them; and I have to stand by and watch helplessly because unfortunately being a bad parent and a wretched human being is not against the law.

I'm where the cycle breaks. The generational curse stops here. No matter what happens from here on in my life, I know that I will live it on purpose. That is my promise, my pledge and my creed to myself. No more drifting, no more inertia, no more sleepwalking fog, no more slipping into the abyss, no more self-destruction, no more slow suicide. I am moving on. New lands are in my vision. I become myself.

Less of me...

2006-03-28T02:57:00.000-05:00

For those of you playing along at home, Scribe is minus 8 pounds after two weeks in weight watchers. w00t!

Update as of Tuesday morning:
Make that Ten Pounds Lighter! \m/ \m/ I *So* Rawk!

New Chapter already in progress...

2006-03-26T18:21:00.000-05:00

I am so hopeful right now. Turned a corner in my life, and I'm going to keep walking. It feels pretty damn good.

Quarter to Three

2006-03-25T02:43:00.000-05:00

What am I waiting up for? Or who? No one is coming, that's for sure. I'm alone in the night, as always. Floating on a wave of cloud looking to fall against a bank of stars. I need cradling.

Oh, I know who I was waiting for, and he has arrived...Morpheus, my old friend, has caused my eyes to begin closing...followed by my Lethe with his attendent charms.

Death Knell b.1996-d.2006

2006-03-18T23:59:00.000-05:00

It's hard to sleep with this knife sticking out of my back.

An old evil came to roost tonight. The truth will out. Black hearts don't show themselves in the dark, but shine the light, and there they are. Like black magik. Voila!

The parchment skin of dead babies, and the bones of the forgotten and sacrificed, ground into powder and snorted like a drug. Your elixir is evil, and you will wallow in it intoxicated until the day it takes your body, as it already has claimed your soul. Your religion is rage. Your devotion is hatred. Your worship is the oblivion of substances. Your god is yourself. You'll sacrifice anyone on the altar of self. No one is worth anything to you unless they are of use.

All I can spare for you now is nothing. Not even my pity. You have leeched from me all that was able to forgive you and show you mercy. This time, you have gone too far, and there is no coming back.

I'm pulling your knife out of my back. I am hurling it to the bottom of the sea. The blood will wash away, and the salt will erase my tears. Tonight was the last time you will ever make me cry. From now on, it's your turn.

Babel Babble

2006-03-17T00:01:00.001-05:00

(This was written last night, I wasn't able to publish on blogger til today)

Too much. Wish I could focus on one thing. I have free time tonight. I don't know what to do first, or second, etc. Write? Journal? Altered Art? Make jewelry? Do more dishes? De-clutter? Why does my brain have so many channels and they are all on at once, competing. It's like one of those walls covered in TV's and they are all on a different station and playing all at once.I could wish for a less complicated mind, but then I wouldn't have so many creative ideas, so I can't part with my particular psyche (even if it were possible). I need a vast filing system, a dewey decimal system for my mind. Sometimes I just feel like it's all too much, and so I just paralyze. Sometimes it's easier to do nothing than decide on something. I don't want to succumb to that too often though.

:::

Other than that, there are some good things. I joined Weight Watchers. Today is my third day. I am determined. I am settling in for the battle.

:::

I have been talking to a man in PA. I originally met him in November 2005. We became friends, but I was wary of the long distance, and did not want to get emotionally attached to someone who did not live close-by, and I ended up dating an inferior guy who wasn't even a Christian. Talk about a mistake.

My PA friend and I started talking again after I recovered from that crash & burn that ended in December. Having just gotten hurt, I swore I would not get into anything with anyone, this was going to be alone time, but it just happened. We are "just friends" but with feelings for each other. Taking it slow. Very slow. I am still center stage in my own life, and it shall remain that way.

I suspect if this is substantial that the cliche may be correct: that when you stop looking and even stop wanting to be in a relationship, someone comes along who is impossible to ignore. I tried to get rid of him once, because I was scared of there being any complications in my life resulting from being anything more than friends, which only resulted in us both crying on the phone. I think I may be stuck with this one.

For my nosy friends (if I have such?)

His Stats:

Age: 29 {yea, anyone who knows me, knows this is a plus, no fogey for this young spirited one here}
Name: Let's call him D.
Locale: Near Pittsburgh, PA (originally from Phillie, and maybe moving back there soon, which would put him 1.5 hours from Manhattan, which would be really good for "us" if there ends up being an us).
Faith: Christian -- check.
Mental: Smart, intellectual, warped humor -- check.
Eros: Open-minded -- check.
Culture: Reads good books, has great taste in music -- check.
Gormand: Loves exotic food like I do -- check
Ethnicity: Caucasian Euro mutt
Looks: Average face, average build -- 5'10, suedehead, goatee, glasses (mmm, I love me a man in glasses -- geek fetish)

I could list more things, but I will just say he is a sweet, funny man who likes me a lot. We talk and talk and never run out of things to say. It's just easy and good. It's just unavoidable too. We are just connected. If this doesn't become a real world romance, it will remain a real friendship. So, it is a no lose situation (I hope so anyway, full up on past heartbreak).

To omit this would be dishonest: he does have an anxiety disorder. He works and takes care of himself, but he can't drive because he tends to have panic by feeling closed in, and needs open space. It's difficult for me, and it's one reason I tried to cut him off, but I like him too much. I have my problems and issues too, so, I just have to see how this factors in and hope it doesn't cause us problems that are too big to live with.

At the end of the day I have a whip smart Christian friend who is askew like I am. That helps. My life feels less like solo anomaly now. I have someone to talk to about God in an alternative way to the church, and I have someone to laugh with, and share ideas. This seems good to me.

:::

Health: still problematic. I need X-Ray's for the ankle and leg injury. That errant rollergirl falling on me is worse than I thought. File under: this could only happen to me. I went to my Dr. yesterday, so I have a slip for an ortho consult, X-Ray's, and a vicodin script. Good Times. (sigh).

:::

In other news: my friend B. came over yesterday. I taught her to make earrings and we had a lovely Indian lunch (in which I used half of my weight watchers bonus points for the week; hey, it was worth it, it was amazing). After she left I faux finished an antique dining table given to me by my friend J. The table was a hideous yellow with painted flowers, and the base and legs of the table are a kind of vintage pale green. I left the base as is for now, and the table top is now black and silver mixed and then patterned into swirls to look like brushed steel.

:::

My life feels very busy and full these days. I am coming out of hibernation. I'm starting to think that my life is pretty damn good, all things considered. The only fly in the oinment is dealing with my family. That will lessen the more independent I become as I get well, cos the less money my dad lends me, the less say he has over my life. As of right now, he doesn't control me, but he calls a zillion times a day. I think he's lonely, and he needs an ally, and my older brother doesn't fit the bill. he wants me to come work with him p/t too *cue psycho shower scene soundtrack*. I may be obligated, because I want to earn the money, not borrow it, or take it. So...for the time being, it might be my best option.

***However, have I mentioned lately that my entire family is apeshit fucking nuts? They put the Oy in the Vey.

It's time for a "help me Jesus" on that score.

Imaginary fortune teller: "I see grey hair & ulcers in your future..."

:::

I'm strong enough for all of this. I'm strong enough for all of this. I'm strong. I am enough.

I'll tell myself that until I believe it, and become it.

Things are changing...

2006-03-15T00:32:00.000-05:00

Rapidly.

Details to follow shortly.

As soon as I can process it all and write about it.

I confess...

2006-03-11T02:42:00.000-05:00

It is this time at night that I feel most lonely. Yet I'm not even sure I want to talk to anyone even if there was someone I could call at this hour of the night. My eyes are weary and tearing from sleepiness, yet a part of me is still feebly resisting it. I don't go into my bedroom until I am exhausted, because I want to fall right asleep and not think about the fact that I'm alone, or worse yet, the nights I wasn't.

Ah well, at least my black cat sleeps on my bed and exudes sweetness.

:::

This week has been some kind of spiritual obstacle course that I've run as night is falling. How can I get there if I can't see where I am going?

2:45 am

Invisible Changes

2006-03-07T00:29:00.000-05:00

Shifting beneath the surface. Slow, like the plates of the earth separating.

I am becoming something else, not sure who or how. It just is. I just am.

I feel a monumental swell right beneath my breast bone. It rises, falls; heaves like the sea. It pounds the shore, rushes up, recedes. The undertow is so strong. So, I just hold on to whatever I can. Each day the configuration of the shoreline changes. Tomorrow the place where I stand will be washed away. But there will be a new place to stand.

I may be unsteady, my feet sinking into the sand, there's nowhere solid to land. I practice balancing. I fall to my knees. I grab at seaweed and rocks just to have something in my hands, something to stop me from slipping.

At twilight I thank all that I can't name. I catch my tears in silver thimbles. I tell myself I can go on, even if I don't know where I'm going.

7 Things... (*newly updated as of this evening)

2006-03-02T06:41:00.000-05:00

Rarely do I engage in such things, but since it was my friend Marcheline of "Mental Meatloaf" who tagged me, I shall reluctantly submit.

Seven things to do:
1) Go to bed already! (It’s 6:33am) [I finally did go to bed, at around 8 am]
2) Go to meet my new Psychiatrist tomorrow (well, today) at 4:30pm [snow storm here, I couldn't get there, I have to reschedule it].
3) Reach the person I’ve been playing phone tag with since last Friday [I finally reached her!]
4) Finish the blanket I'm knitting for my niece
5) Wash the Dishes
6) Get my blood tests done
7) Give S & S their present before the baby is born

Seven things I can’t do:
1) Look Martha Stewart directly in the eyes
2) Vote Republican
3) Live without Indian food
4) Go to bed early
5) See Rachael Ray without wanting to bitch-slap the cute outta her
6) Get to the Post Office before 5
7) Drive a stick shift

Seven things that attract me to my ~~mate~~ sex toys:
1) Always in the mood
2) Won’t stop until I'm done
3) Versatile; never the same twice
4) Let’s me think about whoever or whatever I want during sex
5) I can call it ‘Daddy" or the name of an ex-lover without hurting its feelings
6) Doesn’t make me sleep on the wet spot
7) Is totally devoted to my pleasure

Seven books I love:
1) The Bible
2) Tess of the D’Ubervilles - Thomas Hardy
3) Bad Behavior - Mary Gaitskill
4) Strangers in Paradise (graphic novel series) - Terry Moore
5) She’s Come Undone - Wally Lamb
6) Season in Hell - Arthur Rimbaud
7) Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman

Seven things I say:
1) Dorkus Maximus
2) & the cherry on the shit sundae was...
3) (He/she) has more issues than Reader’s Digest...
4) Fark it
5) Bastards!
6) Shite
7) Merde

Seven movies I’ve loved:
1) Trust/Simple Men/The Girl from Monday (Hal Hartley 3-way tie)
2) Night On Earth/Down by Law/Stranger than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch 3-way tie)
3) I Heart Huckabees
4) The Matrix (original)
5) The Unbearable Lightness of Being
6) Crash (the film by David Crohenberg)
7) Secretary
Bonus: American Splendor [just can't leave this one out].
People to Tag:
I'm not pushy, basically, anyone from my blog list that wants to answer.

Ultra Violet Light

2006-02-26T02:29:00.000-05:00

Brief thoughts before I tumble into bed at two-thirty:

I will always be disappointed if I seek in someone else, that which I think I do not possess.

When I emerge from disappointment I realize I have what I wanted all along, and they have nothing that I need.

I lack nothing.

I am whole.

There is no missing puzzle piece.

There is no alchemical Other.

I'm it Bebe.

The whole enchilada.

What I seek after fruitlessly, I already contain in abundance.

I can befriend myself. I am stronger than anyone realizes (anyone includes me, when I slip into unconsciousness).

Last thoughts before sleeping are always true. I'm telling The Truth now; to myself, and to you -- whoever You are.

Why can't I live in this place all the time? This clarity and completion. Perhaps I'm moving in. Settling in. Learning how to live here. In a place beyond illusion.
In a place where Truth bathes the walls in full spectrum color. And the lights are always on when I come home.

2006-02-21T23:09:00.000-05:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

El Genius

2006-02-21T20:48:00.000-05:00

Well, brain trust here wanted to play with some of the other templates, and I accidentally erased all my customizations, so I lost all the comments from haloscan. :-( So, we will start over mon amies. However, it's kinda sad. I liked having your comments saved.

Update:
As you can see, my comments have been resurrected -- all right!

Inside me

2006-02-21T05:15:00.000-05:00

Breathing in within silence, recognizing that there is a still strong core beneath all fear, all doubt, all wavering, that exists in quiet dignity.

OW!!!

2006-02-19T22:51:00.000-05:00

So it looks like this bad ass wannabe is a wimp. I did indeed go to the "Bloody Valentine" bout last night. Well, I didn't just watch roller derby, I experienced it. I have the swollen ankle and messed up right leg to show for it. I was sitting cross-legged right on the edge of the rink, pretty close I guess, too close obviously. I was accidentally body slammed by a roller girl. They were racing 'round the track fast, and someone pushed her, or tripped her, it happened so fast it was hard to say. All I know is suddenly someone was hurtling through the air toward me, and then before I even had a chance to move I had wheels slam down on my ankle and shin, and an excruciating pain shot through my body. Cartoon tweety birds were circling my shocked noggin I'm sure. I was stunned by the enormity of the pain for a few minutes, then I asked my friends to help me up. I went to go try to walk off the pain. I went to the women's room, and put the lid down and sat down to catch my breath. I put on some make-up, looking better always helps everything ;-> I hobbled around, the night wound down, and then my friends and I went to a diner. It was 15 degrees out, and the wind was whipping frigid.

I went home, and took it easy. It's a bit worse today. Tomorrow I may need X-Rays. Well, I guess that means I'm not trying out anytime soon. I'll go back, but with a spectator chair, and sit a safe distance away. Glad she didn't land on both my legs, or I wouldn't have even been able to walk around today, and I had a lot to do. In fact, I won't cover my day today, because it was just too busy, and I'm too tired for the recounting.

So, here I'll be, vegging out, putting up my achy swollen ankle, and my poor leg. Heh. Yea, I'm such a tough bitch. I should stick to contact sports involving nerf toys. :-)

no clever heading

2006-02-18T02:05:00.000-05:00

This is not going to be a momentous post. I can feel that already. Why am I even bothering? Well, perhaps just to say that I'm still here. This was a busy week. A week of some deep change on the inside. A week of pursuing concrete change on the outside.

& after all of that seriousness, I have the perfect antidote: I'm going to All-girl Roller Derby tomorrow night. I'm psyched.

This is the first ever real bout on Long Island since 1973 when the men's leagues had their last bouts. This nation-wide and local roller derby renaissance is all female, and infused by the punk and riot grrl attitude and aesthetics so it's a different world even than the 70's rollergirls who were more often than not sexy disco dollies in satin hot pants. These girls are punk bruisers. They are bad ass and take no prisoners.

I have recently begun daydreaming about becoming a rollergirl. I used to roller skate at least once a week (usually more) when I was growing up. I started in elementary school, and continued into junior high and part of high school. I can't even say why I ever stopped, just one of those things that faded away as I got older. When I was actively skating though, I was so into it that after a time I no longer rented skates at the rink. I bought my own pair, they were white (I was pissed that the girls skates didn't come in black) then, as was the fashion, I added these pink and white snoball looking fuzzy pom poms that had a bell in the center to the laces. I even knew how to skate backward. Those were the days. The DJ would play, and I'd skate round and round the track, and then after a while, go to the snackbar for a break. The hardest part was using the girls room while on my skates. Then I'd skate some more, till the session was over. Taking off the skates was always kinda sad. I'd step down on the ground for the first time wearing shoes and feel like I'd just touched down from orbit.

I think at some point, I just have to get back on skates and try it. It's gonna happen after I start losing weight though. One encouraging factor, there are some big girls who do it, and they are actually prized as blockers. So, I wouldn't have to be thin, I'd just have to be fit enough and skate well. Right now it's just a dream, but hey, I can dream. Of course, basic health and fitness will come before that, but it's fun to think about. For now I can be a fan and get inspired. I saw these girls on the Rollergirl TV show on Bravo who stand on the sidelines and shake black pom-poms, Rollergirl Cheerleaders -- I could do that! :-D

In the non-dreamworld AKA reality, the only thing that would be a drawback is that I'm already concerned that spending time on art, knitting and crafts will cause my writing to suffer. I have to be be really careful with the "Jill of all trades, Mistress of none" syndrome that I am all too prone to. I am interested in so many things that I can spread myself too thin, and never excel at any of my dabblings. For example, mixed media has a strong draw for me, but my writing is my vocation. I have to see writing as my destiny, and art as a hobby if I'm gonna make it. I have to strike the crucial balance. Hard to know where to draw the lines, and how to reign myself in and be creatively disciplined. I'll figure it out though, because I have to. Sometimes I wish I had one life for each thing I'd love to be. I suppose I'll just have to do the best I can with the one I've got.

Fall Out

2006-02-08T23:37:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I just really don't want to post because I don't want to share what I'm thinking and feeling. It's not all good. It's often confused and jumbled. I'm working through some things that are central in my life. They just don't seem like blog fodder. I've lost trust in my two pastors for one thing. It's complicated, because it's not like they are evil, or bad people, and it's not like they have done something "wrong" per se, there just are deep difference in personal philosophy and opinions between us right now. I had a private meeting with the senior pastor at her office on Tuesday, and it left me with a really bad aftertaste. I don't know that this can be resolved. It seems like the choices before me are to suck up a bunch of bullshit and play along, or just split.

So, I may be leaving the church I have been a part of for almost four years. The problem with leaving is that there are things I will miss, there will be losses. I will also be leaving behind many of my friends, who are family to me. It's not that I won't be able to keep in touch with them, but it will be different. I don't have much in common with most of them outside of church, and I know we'll drift apart. The person I have the most in common with lives far away. The other person I'm friendly with, I may be able to hang out with sometimes, but it's still unlikely to be often. I just know there are a lot of people who will fade out of my life completely if I leave.

More importantly, the style of worship and ministry time/prayer we do is not found elsewhere easily. So, I will be missing out on spiritual things, which is more significant than anything else. I'm wondering how to live my life as a person of faith. I am wondering how to live my life period. I'm mostly internal right now; slightly sad, but mostly just serious.

I guess I'm changing. I'm just hoping it's not for the worse. I'm hoping that I'm right. If I'm wrong, and my pastor is right, then I'm gonna end up in a worse place if I leave. It's tough to know because a lot of this is based on personal hurts and ways I feel they've really let me down, so I don't know if I'm seeing it all clearly. I know I have to forgive, but I don't know if that means I'll ever be able to agree with what they believe and how they have handled things.

There is a bottom line however, I feel like there are distinct things they have both done and said that have been shaming, and I know it's not healthy for me to be close to people who are treating me in ways that shame me. In that respect, my mind may already be made up to withdraw from this environment and these people. I am tired of feeling like the Black Sheep, as I've already been playing that role all my life, in my family and in many other areas in my life. I know I don't always "fit in," which is perfectly okay as I don't have to be the same as other people, as long as I don't occupy a leper status for my difference.

My pastor suggested if I made services every Sunday without fail, and mid-week Kinships every week (despite the fact that I no longer like going to kinship) and if I take on some church jobs, that people will begin to regard me differently, and I'll lose my leper status. As if I didn't do that for at least two years before there were reasons I pulled away, and stopped being around all the time. I've done my time, and I have shown people who I am, I am not going to start being there on some kind of trial status. I'm tired of being made to feel I have something to prove. I'm not going to work my way into their acceptance, not after four bloody years. Especially not when the Grace of God has already proclaimed me redeemed. If I am worthy in His eyes, I certainly don't need to earn acceptance in their eyes. In fact, that's not only offensive, but it's Un-Biblical and Non-Christian. Sadly ironic coming from my pastors. When I think of it, I just feel disgusted, and angry. Maybe the best thing I can do is just cut my ties and hit the road. Maybe I will actually start to feel better about who I am without the input of these people.

If there was nothing nourishing about my congregation it would be so easy to say syonara. This is a baby & bathwater situation; in order to divest myself of the disagreement with my pastor(s), I have to leave my entire church behind. I feel like in order to protect myself, I have to lose people and spiritual experiences that I want to keep. Like a lot of things in this life, that just doesn't seem fair...because it's not. That's why this sucks so much.

Age & Other Beasts

2006-02-04T05:36:00.000-05:00

So much in my head and on my mind. It gets so impossible to contain or describe it all because there is so much and it moves fast, flits and disappears; my mind is the ultimate in ephemeral. I’ve been thinking about age. About "coolness" and relevancy. About how to change what needs changing in me and how to retain what works. How to hold onto what is me, at my core, the things that aren’t temporal, but how to let other parts of me evolve into what is "age appropriate," to use that painfully dry term. I’m at mid-life (OK, if I don’t live past 76 that is) and wondering about a lot of these things.

I am on myspace, which makes age a very strange slippery slope. I look very young for my age and although I feel like my body is a train wreck (though I’m well-aware that many men and women who like my type would disagree) I still attract attention. I have a face and a presence that intrigues and clearly attracts men and women, but of course I only get that sort of mail from men, you know the kind of mail I mean. The messages range from polite to lewd. I get quite a few from young guys who are between 18-25 and who are well aware of my age. I mean, hey I’m flattered, but it’s just strange for me. Especially when they relate to me as a "older woman," and they plaintively inquire if I like younger men, and if so would I please consider...etc. followed by their contact info. I never write back.

Stranger still is seeing boys and girls of those ages re-interpreting the new wave styles I grew up wearing. The fact is, they make me wistful. They seem so free. They have so many peers who understand where they are coming from. I didn’t. I mean, I did have friends in those years, but until I hit the clubs and then college, it wasn’t like I was surrounded with people who understood my taste in music, or my wardrobe. I was one of my high school’s few freaks.

On myspace, besides all the nouveau new wave indie kids, there are so many cute girls who look like boys, some who identify as bois, and few cute bio-boys who look like dykes. Scrolling through friends of friends, doing the myspace hop, I found myself smitten with a 19 year old myspacer who I thought was a really cute andro boi or a FTM tranny, but it turned out he was really a cute andro boy. He had a link to his facebook. It was filled with his delicious narcissistic self-portraits. There were also many pictures of his new college friends. They were all young, cool, and fluid. Pictures of parties with girls making out with girls, and then with boys, and then two boys making out with a girl and each other in three way kisses. No set couples, just a lot of friends having a drunken make out party. I couldn’t figure out if it was pathetic or hot. Maybe both. I also couldn’t figure out if they were freer than I used to be at that age, or if they were lost in a sea of free-floating ambiguous desire that left them confused and spun the next day.

I was consciously bisexual by the time I was 17, but no one else around me was. Well, at least not girls. I was the primary fag hag to a the only out gay boy in my high school, before I even knew what a hag was. However, the only girl I knew who was even close to queer was post-bisexual. She was Italian, from Milan, and bucking all my current tastes, she was a blonde, and I was still drawn to her. Draped with European sophistication which showed up as a worldly knowing boredom, she explained to me that she had been with girls already, and was over it. It was a phase for her. She actually had a crush on my boy nemesis, this bully who used to antagonize me. She, however, was still very content to toy with me for her own amusement (and well, she wasn't totally heartless, she did tell me she loved me). She used to pick me up from my French class and kiss me in the hallway, right on the mouth. I never stopped her. We didn’t make out, but they were real kisses not pecks. The first time she did it, I thought, everyone who sees us is going to think I am lesbian, that thought was quickly followed by, who the hell cares, she’s kissing me! She would take my hand after that, and would walk me to lunch. After eating, we’d go outside to the courtyard, and she’d play her acoustic guitar, and sing. She liked folk music. Joan Biaz. Yea, and she claimed not to be a dyke, that takes cajones, er, not an apt descriptive there, but anyway, I’ll let it be. I liked Joni Mitchell, but I’m not sure I admitted it to her. I wasn’t about to lose my punk rock cred. She hated my music. It didn’t matter much. I just liked to sit there and look at her. At the moment I have no idea what it was about her that captivated me, as she really wasn’t my type in any way. It was just one of those inexplicable things. My last memory of her was the day she left. I was at her host family’s house, I stood in the street waving goodbye, and she waved back and looked at me through the back windshield as they drove away. That was the last time I ever saw her, and unlike me and my Japanese exchange student star-crossed lovebird slip of a girl (that’s a whole ‘nother story) Sabrina and I never kept in touch via airmail. She did tell me to read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, which I did that summer on the beach in Saint Martin listening to The Smiths and Japan on my walkman (remember walkmans? remember cassette tapes? yea, I am old). There’s much more to the story, but later. I am trying to think of what my point is. Oh yea, age. Being young, then and now, and the differences (and perhaps similarities which I’ve not yet discovered).

Perhaps most of my epiphanies are so indescribable that I can only feel them in completeness within myself. I feel their shapes and they are whole. I can hold them for moments alone. Their forms are not attached to words, or if there are any words they slip away before they can be captured. I feel so frustrated with my mind sometimes. This is one of those times. Sometimes it seems I’m so close to the meaning I can fairly brush it with my fingertips, and then the set dresser of my play moves the tree away, by increments so small, so slowly, so I keep coming at it, keep thinking I stand a chance at capturing it. I plead and make balesome entreaties. I promise I won’t put it in a cage. I just want to hold onto it for a moment before it flies away. I long and hunger and ache. It keeps me awake at night. The wanting to understand. The desire to make sense of the mess of my past. I don’t know how I am supposed to contain all this and go forward. I hear all the pep talks, all the positive pieces of advice that make perfect sense, but still, I can’t quite follow where they lead. I'm still damaged. I’m still bewildered and broken. I want to move on, but perhaps I’m afraid of leaving myself behind. Or maybe I’m afraid I won’t be honoring her, to stop being a monument to her pain. If I walk on, will I be leaving her behind in her closet? My closet. The place I went, not to feel safe, but to try to find the child’s version of invisible. There was nowhere else to go. Let me blend into the walls, and disappear. You don’t see me. You forgot I was there. Your screaming penetrated my closet, but your eyes were amnesiac. The walls in the kitchen dripping blood, the world caving in. Nothing making sense. And forever. Moments stretching into eternity, wondering when it will end. Hugging my pillow, my stuffed animals, my knees. My blanket stretched underneath me. Dark, cool and hidden, how I still like to be. My world is a long sleepless night, a big closet I live inside. Do you see me now Mama, from your home in the skies? Do you forgive me for existing yet?

I must be regressing...

2006-01-29T04:34:00.000-05:00

because this song was playing in my mind tonight.

Unlovable By The Smiths

I know I'm unlovable
You don't have to tell me
I don't have much in my life
But take it - it's yours
I don't have much in my life
But take it - it's yours

I know I'm unlovable
You don't have to tell me
Oh, message received Loud and clear
Loud and clear
I don't have much in my life
But take it - it's yours

I know I'm unlovable
You don't have to tell me
For message received Loud and clear
Loud and clear Message received
I don't have much in my life
But take it - it's yours

I wear Black on the outside
'Cause Black is how I feel on the inside
I wear Black on the outside
'Cause Black is how I feel on the inside

And if I seem a little strange
Well, that's because I am
If I seem a little strange
That's because I am

But I know that you would like me
If only you could see me
If only you could meet me

I don't have much in my life
But take it - it's yours
I don't have much in my life
But take it - it's yours

Oracles

2006-01-23T05:14:00.000-05:00

Dead singer sings about 'them bones' and he’s long gone. I try to learn from saints sinners troubadours madmen and liars. Throw the cards down and toss back a drink and it will be used up, enough enough it spills over the top, and Lilac in seasons bloom like the dark of night and young Orchids that dream in darkness waiting to bloom...and death becomes you, you become death, all do, what are we doing here and for how long will we will be doing it?

Geniuses have to teach themselves when there is no one left to learn from, when the old forms don’t work, when nothing in the usual shape fits anymore, nothing works for me because I’m not meant to work they way they do, I jump out of my skin trying to remember my dreams, urgency pants, deep beneath my skin, its own breath in my ears. I can hear the blood pumping, rising in my ears, it says listen listen listen: I AM HERE.

::::

Pop Pop Pop Muzik...makes sense of it all, listen to signs between the lines...
_________________________________________

My clove candle burns through the night and the world is piped in through satellite, it’s all here, without end, every era, again and again. New fads, and old friends, I hear you again. I do the dishes and dance and dance in slippers in my living room, looking ridiculous without a care, I’m almost all myself again, almost forget that you’re not there. Let me return to myself, my bachelor happiness. I am blessed. A mess. I like it when nothing makes sense. But I sense around the edges all the wisdom waiting to be grabbed, if I can think fast enough, write fast enough, type fast enough I might be able to capture some of it before it flits and I am left at my wits end again. My seams bursting at their ends. Charmingly careless. I wish I cared less about you. You were like a counterfeit five hundred dollar bill not worth the paper you were printed on, but while I held you in my hands I felt like I was the richest girl in the world. I went to the corner store to cash you in for a piece of bubble gum, but I had to count my own pennies instead. Everything I have is mine.

I’m not a superhero, not yet anyway, but I’ll be damned if I let it stop me. I’ll come to my own window and let down my hair and rescue me. I’m my knight in shining armor and I’m free.

The Momentous Return to My Blog! -- I know you've all been waiting, all 2.5 of you

2006-01-21T11:44:00.000-05:00

Okay. I suck at blogging. It's clear. I went to read my friend's blog and was utterly humiliated (thanks a freaking lot Marcheline ;-)http://mrssplapthing.blogspot.com/) So, now I have to get off my ass and write something, er, I mean sit on my ass and write something. But I really just don't feel like revealing my secrets, for one thing they're probably too sordid, and for another thing, they are probably rather pathetic. Hmm, what to do? what to do...?

I could always bore people to tears and write about how I need to do laundry today, and try to clean my apartment. I am currently suffering from a bad case of C.H.A.O.S. -- Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome (yes, I made that up, aren't I such a little pointdexter?). So, my job is to bring order to chaos, which is tough for a grrl with anarchist tendencies. I'm much more inclined to want to run around the backyard waving a butterfly net in the middle of winter for no damn reason whatsoever. Maybe this indicates a pressing need to join one of those wacky cacophony societies. Wait, who am I kidding? I'm a one woman cacophony society. There goes that idea. I guess that means I have to do my laundry after all. Damn.

Oh well, at least I can score some more Homies series 8 from the gumball machines at the Laundromat. I could also have a nostalgic Good Humor ice cream cone from the vending machine, but I'm trying to eat better, and the sole disparate item I allowed myself from my recent healthy shopping trip was Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream (it was 50% off, how can a mere mortal resist such things?). Um, yea, and it's keeping with my no deprivation philosophy...I can eat a teaspoon a week, and then walk around the block 17 times. Yea, more like, I promised myself I would not eat it from the pint container with a soup spoon. I have told myself I will put it in a little bowl, and put the pint back in the freezer, otherwise I swear it's like the crack of all dairy products. One minute yer watching TV and delicately skimming off the top frosty layer of chocolate neatly and the next, your spoon is hitting cardboard -- "Wait a minute! How did that happen? Gah!"

In other news, I think it's time to make some coffee, and do something, instead of just writing about doing something. Bleh. Do I hafta? *pout*

This just in...

2005-12-14T01:24:00.000-05:00

In an unprecedented turn of events: I am happy.

This doesn't happen often folks. Though I have a sense of humor, laugh often, and have a sense of Puckish mischief that keeps me from caving in, I have a deep melancholic streak that runs right through my core. I've seen a lot of horror in my life, of all varieties, and it's left me rather scarred. Sometimes I have thought that I was too broken to ever be repaired. I've hobbled through life like a wounded animal lost in a dark forest. The darkness now seems to be lifting. I have this glimmer of hope that I am cradling. I am holding on to it gently and breathing more life into it every day. I bless all the available light I possess, and all the illumination God floods into my life. Let it increase. That is my prayer.

Poof! Now they appear!?!

2005-12-09T01:20:00.000-05:00

OK, now my posts are showing up. This is so odd.

WTF?

2005-12-07T22:04:00.000-05:00

My posts aren't showing up. Is this a hint?

Virtue Real vs. Virtual

2005-12-06T23:18:00.000-05:00

The more interested I become in life, the less interested I am in writing about it online. I guess this is because I am feeling so much better, and now is the time to catch up on the business of living.

I may only drop by here on occasion when I feel I have something to say which burns within my chest. If I'm not thus compelled, I'll probably be quiet for a little while.

{Not sure why this didn't show up on my blog when I first wrote it? I hope it shows up now...}

Things Are Good

2005-11-26T01:58:00.000-05:00

I find myself moving incrementally toward greater and greater peace. I don't know quite how or why. I accept it as a mysterious gift left on the doorstep of my existence. I say "Thank You" to Whoever was thinking of me so tenderly, as I pad off softly to my rest beneath cozy blankets.

Posting this so I will remember

2005-11-22T03:53:00.000-05:00

For we are like a sweet-smelling incense offered by Christ to God, which spreads among those who are being saved and those who are being lost.

For those who are being lost, it is a deadly stench that kills; but for those who are being saved, it is a fragrance that brings life. Who, then, is capable for such a task?

We are not like so many others, who handle God's message as if it were cheap merchandise; but because God has sent us, we speak with sincerity in His presence, as servants of Christ.

2 Corinthians 15-17

Metamorphosis

2005-11-14T07:53:00.000-05:00

I'm changing, right before my eyes. Will I be a peacock, a raven, a hawk or an eagle? Will I be a phoenix rising up from the ashes of my own existence? Who will I be when the transformation is complete? Is it ever complete? Flux. Resistance. Shift. Fall. Resume. Unbind. Reconsider.

Faith crisis. The Chinese character for crisis also means: opportunity. What is my opportunity? What do I stand to learn, to gain, to lose? A divine invitation. Handshake. Back slap. An arm outstretched to meet me, but I'm across town drinking too much coffee, staying up late and sleeping all day. Tapping out the moments of my life like Morse code, but I don't know the translation. It's a secret I keep from myself.

Something is happening. In my chest cavity. In the grey labyrinth of my skull. In the snug cavern of my womb lit with blood. In my hands, reaching back for something.

New Feeling

2005-11-07T02:00:00.000-05:00

I
have
Hope.

I close my eyes, breathe it in...

H O P E

mute

2005-10-30T07:15:00.000-05:00

I have so much to say, but I don't think the words I need have been invented yet.

Diagnosis

2005-10-27T23:05:00.000-04:00

Well, it's official. I got the results of my sleep study, and I have Obstructive Sleep Apnea.

I have suspected that I have had sleep apnea, ever since I found out that this disorder existed, and recognized how many of my sleep problems match it precisely. However, I didn't know the finer points, or that there were different forms of apnea. The next step now that I'm diagnosed is going in for a second sleep study, this time with a CPAP machine so they can find out what level of oxygen I'll need in order to prescribe the setting I will need for the machine I will get to use at home.

This could be the beginning of a new chapter for me, as my sleep disorders have been ruining my life. I am usually awake all night and asleep all day. I sleep through multiple alarm clocks, and I have problems staying awake if I manage to get up too early. I also have low energy, and many other symptoms from the apnea. It causes confusion, fogginess, memory loss, irritability, depression, high blood pressure, and more. It's a really nasty deceptive disorder. I believe I have had it for years, based on my snoring, and people around me who have heard me stop breathing during the night. At long last, I am finally going to be getting treatment. I think this is going to be a major positive change in my life! I can't wait, really. Yay Rah!

I Resign As My Father's Keeper: Effective Immediately

2005-10-27T17:45:00.000-04:00

Rage. Pure rage.

I can't even find the words for what is pouring off my skin.

I called my father. He said things that were so frustrating, then when I got exasperated he told me to calm down. I told him I can't, so he hung up on me. He just doesn't understand how he pushes people to the brink and then when they react, he sits there calmly and acts like it's you that is insane. He thinks it's just this one phone call, just this exchange that I am reacting to?! It's my whole life, it's everything he has ever done. I have tried to forgive him. I have taken care of him. I have made huge sacrifices and suffered on his behalf. I have tried to help him. I have been his parent to no avail. I have tried to give him good counsel and steer him in the right directions, only to have him ignore my advice, make awful decisions which I then end up paying for dearly, right alongside of him. Yet he wonders why I am upset. He wonders why my patience for him has shortened considerably.

I want a paternal divorce. I want him out of my life. I don't want my fate linked to his anymore. I only want to suffer for my own mistakes, not his. I want to breathe. I want to feel possibility, freedom, AIR.

My father is choking the life out of me. I can't deal with it anymore. I don't know how to get free, but I will, I have to.

All of my anger, all of my unweildy feelings have been turning inward and killing me through depression. It's time for that to stop. It's time for me to take a stand for myself and say NO! No No No!!! No I will not be swallowed whole. No I will not pay for your sins. No I will not grease the wheel. No I will not be sacrificed on your altar anymore. No I won't be your surrogate wife. No I won't be your companion. No I am not on this earth to take care of you until my best years have been spent and my life is over. No I am not here to be your confidant, to chase your loneliness away, to substitute for friends your own age, to be everything my mother wasn't. NO.

Reasons to be cheerful: part zero

2005-10-24T23:30:00.000-04:00

I wish I could think of one good reason to be alive. I'm really searching for one right now.

I know I suffered a trauma recently. One I don't even want to talk about here. Is that why? I don't know.

My one best friend tells me to find a therapist. The drugs don't work anymore. My simpleton shrink recommended I be industrious (as if I haven't been working hard enough just to fucking survive). Yes, I shall become a Captian of Industry; because we all know that's the cure for everything.

I can't find any redemption in reality. Nothing appeals to me. Except being left the fuck alone. Yes, I have a bad attitude. What's new pussycat?

The things I have to face next are no more appealing than what has gone before.

I'm sick of wasting my life stuck in this life.

I exist on a short tether, which is getting shorter by the day.

I don't know why my parents had children when they should have had indentured servants. My father has already told me what I'm going to do next, but he never asked.

I wish I could disappear. If only I could commit a crime, or get see some deed committed that would get me put into the witness protection program, and none of my family would ever find me and fuck up my life again. Hell, I've already lost 37 years, I think I should be entitled to the next 37 on my own terms.

If I can't get away from them, living like this will surely make me want to die.

perspective

2005-10-24T22:16:00.000-04:00

This is how I know it really doesn't matter. This little faux loss. This theatre. It's small in the midst of life, the things truly on my mind: death, destruction, God, money, body, loss, madness...other things I won't name.

I'm detached. I can forget that he even exists. I spent hours without even thinking of him. I am self-contained. I have been hurt too many times to even love someone. It's not real. I thought I cared. I probably don't. I can't anyway. Because I only love the wrong people. If it's even love. How the fuck would I even know at this point. I don't even trust what I feel.

I want to cry and curl up somewhere in a bed in a fetal position and not come out. I want the world to go away and leave me here, forget me, please, everyone that has every known me, forget. Let me go.

list

2005-10-24T22:01:00.000-04:00

There are only a few things I like without reservation:

The rain falling against the side of a house or a window, making its sound
A cool dark room
Soft covers against my bare skin - blankets, or throws
Good food
Art that brings me to tears - a film, a book, a poem, a painting, music
Something visually arresting - the curve of a spine, a piece of clothing, an arrangement of objects on a table, a building, or room that sings to me
Autumn
Night time
The Moon

hesitation

2005-10-23T10:08:00.000-04:00

My stomach was in knots all evening. I was going to call him and tell him that I thought we had some fundemental differences that we might not be able to overcome. I was dreading it. I kept putting it off, almost not calling him at all. I finally called him at 2am. I couldn't say anything because we started talking and laughing and he was nothing but the man I have come to so adore. I'm torn.

I didn't want to be rid of him. Not at all.

He teases me like he's known me forever. We banter. We laugh. I enjoy him so thoroughly. I can't quite reconcile the darkness to his goofy lovability. But I understand. I have both sides too.

What to do? what to do?
______________________________________________________

I know something else too. I know that the truth of he and I is somewhere in between the gothic romance and the legacy of damage. The truth is, he's not as evil as I've painted him, and I'm hardly as good as I make myself out to be. We're just two lost souls searching for a home. We've found a place within each other that feels soft, warm, and comforting. It feels more like home than the place I had in others, even after years of being by their sides. I have known him less than a week. That seems impossible, unfathomable. He's reached deeper into me than boyfriends I've had for years. Ones that I tried to make myself known to, who never understood me after years by my side. Just this knowing he has of me can be frightening on its own; because just as I spent years trying to be known, I've spent many more hiding.

It is a terrible and beautiful thing to be known, utterly intuitively known, without having to speak a word. No explanations, no defenses, just pure being, moment after moment. This feeling is a happiness I cannot explain. It is part of what makes me want to hold on. It is something so rare that it is difficult to give it up for any reason. I don't know how to let go of the one I have searched my entire life to find.

And finally, I don't know what the ultimate truth is. Is it what I feel in my heart, my soul, and every cell in my body throbbing, or is it what I know in my head - in logos, reason, prior knowledge, or is it what I sense only in my spirit? What is the highest compass for this decision? How can I know which part of me is right?

Off the Map: the b-side of the story

2005-10-23T06:20:00.000-04:00

Now for the harsh cruel slap of reality version of the prior post:

I'll strip off the romantized gothic bullshit and the fantasy, and I'll tell the sad, evil, and ugly truth beneath all the delerious scenarios we've created.

I met someone. Someone who felt (feels?) so close to me, understands so much of me. I recognize him. He recognizes me. We found each other out of a sea of people. We were looking for a familiar. We are both fucked up, yet strong in our own ways. We are both survivors. We are both victims of child sexual abuse. We've had unspeakable things done to us. We have become unspeakable people deep down inside. We need things other people don't need. Things that are wrong, things that are perverse, that hurt, that break every taboo, that go to a realm beyond a place most people could even conjure in their mind.

There is a difference between he and I though: he feels no guilt. He has gone to a place where there is no such thing as sexual immorality really. In that regard he's ammoral. Probably a sociopath, or on some borderline thereof. I don't know if it's all his fault. The things he has been through would turn a lesser man insane. He holds down a decent job, has goals for the future, and is going back to school. He still has so much love in his heart, is so tender, and caring. He loves cats. He loves making me laugh. He wants to be with me. We've talked about getting married, about having children, becoming a family. The words forever have been used. The "I love you's" have been said, and meant, on both of our parts. But he scares me so deeply. He would lead me to do all the things that I don't let myself do. I keep my demons on a short leash. He lets his run wild.

He's Catholic. He goes to Mass once in a while. Volunteers at the old age home. He reads his Bible. Maybe he prays sometimes. He told me he hasn't gone to confession in a long time because he's not sorry for what he's done. He says he will go one day again. He seems to think that being absolved from a man called Father will clean his slate. so he can say his hail Mary's or do his acts of contrition, and then go do more of the same. I can't do that. My God is in my heart. I am always conscious of my sin. No one can take it from me but The One who made me.

He says he wants to free me. He believes I will free him. But the freedom he offers me would most likely make me nothing more than a dog returning to my own vomit. I can't free him, because he doesn't want freedom, he wants debasement. He wants to be pulled further down and succumb to the abyss. He thinks this will be our freedom. That we will become a couple that can do anything we want, indulge any fantasy, make anything happen that we want, no matter how perverse, and that we can call it Love. We will use other people as props to fullfill us, and then discard them as if they were just scenery in our play; well, they would be. Men, women, or male dogs -- it's all the same to him. He feels no shame. He has no limitations. He's the unbridled Id. He is a monster, created by the 19 year old babysitter who used him at age 5, and the next one, the suburban wife and mother with the dog who warped him even more at age 12. He's turned his damage into an orientation to survive; better to be turned on by all the abuse you've suffered than to mourn it, than to feel the weight of its tragedy shadow you through days and nights, and so he's let it warp him, he turns it into fantasy fodder, and he survives. But he is Not Free.

And what about me? I know that I still have a chance. I still feel guilt and shame. I still believe that there are things that are fundementally wrong. I believe in Good & Evil. I believe in answering to my God outside of any church, or any religious framework. I know what is right in my heart of hearts. I know that I can never ever be with this person. I know that my love is not enough to save him. I know that he will drag me down more than I will be able to pull him up. I know that he will lead me into unspeakable darkness because he is my shadow side. He is the side of myself that I repress, supress, beat into submission, pray to be delivered from. He's the devil in the flesh, and I've been an angel falling...

I must stop here, before I fall any further.

Off the Map

2005-10-23T05:13:00.000-04:00

That's where I've been.

But I know that I can't go where I've been going.

"Ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?"

To be seduced by a Vampire...

To feel the werewolf at my throat...we're in the forest with the full moon shining through the trees, the sound of rustling branches, and leaves crackling under foot as he comes up behind me...I feel his breath on my neck...I feel his claws raking my sides...I've waited for him for so long, and finally...finally he is here, claiming me bestially, and I am feral and completely myself.

To be swallowed whole by the night and claimed by my dark Master...

Flirting with disaster.

This could be the end of me.

Maybe I want it to be.

:::

Yet there is a frail pitiful lamb bleating beneath the din: "no...no...no..." She cries. "Run away, run now, before it is too late...please listen to me..."

And the part of me that knows begins to cry, for I can never have what I want. Never.

Zing Boom!

2005-10-20T05:20:00.000-04:00

it's oh so quiet

it's oh so quiet
it's oh so still
you're all alone and so peaceful until...
you fall in love
zing boom!
the sky up above
zing boom!
is caving in
wow bam!
you've never been so nuts about a guy
you wanna laugh you wanna cry
you cross your heart and hope to die
'til it's over and then it's nice and quiet
but soon again starts another big riot
you blow a fuse
zing boom!
the devil cuts loose
zing boom!
so what's the use
wow bam!
of falling in love?

it's oh so quiet
it's oh so still
you're all alone and so peaceful until...
you ring the bell
bim bam!
you shout and you yell
hi ho ho!
you broke the spell
gee, this is swell
you almost have a fit
this guy is 'gorge' and I got hit
there's no mistake this is it!!!

'til it's over and then
it's nice and quiet
but soon again
starts another big riot
you blow a fuse
zing boom!
the devil cuts loose
zing boom!
what's the use
wow bam!
of falling in love?

the sky caves in
the devil cuts loose
you blow blow blow blow blow your fuse
when you've fallen in love

ssshhhhhh...

-Betty Hutton (& a swell cover by Bjork)

"Janine I drink you up
Janine I drink you up
If you were the Baltic sea
and I were a cup, uh huh..."

-soul coughing

Just when I least expected it. Possibility. So unstoppable that it scares me. I laugh at all of his banter because I can't help it. I am charmed though I want to be immune. I go soft when he is supple. I go light into his darkness, he goes light into mine. He's my shadow and my beacon. He's my other and my twin. He is smart and silly. He is passion and intensity. He wants to be my best friend, my lover, my Daddy, my boy, my confidante, my cradle, my hope, my home. I want to doubt him, but he seems to have enough love for the both of us. Maybe I should just say YES.

pointless

2005-10-11T22:09:00.000-04:00

I'm really thinking of trashing this blog. I mean fuck it, no one is reading this anymore. I might as well be working on writing my book.

Syonara.

The Shaking

2005-10-09T06:02:00.000-04:00

No one can tell me this world isn't changing. Look at the signs. These are the birth pangs.

It has just begun.

Hold On.

...and another thing...

2005-10-07T03:21:00.000-04:00

I'm currently reading James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces" which I wanted to read before it was picked for Oprah's book club. God love her and all, but everything loses some coolness points once it becomes a selection. Anyway, I was going to read it when I saw Frey on the cover of Poets & Writers magazine and read the story on him. My thing is memoirs, personal essays, creative non-fiction, etc. so I am always interested to see what other people are up to in this regard. Plus, I honestly like reading memoir, as well as attempting to write it.

So anyway, here is my assessment: at times his style is utterly maddening. I really don't like his whole -- "I walked in, and pulled out a chair and then I sat down in the chair. He walked in and he pulled out his chair, and he sat down in it. yadda yadda" That is fucking annoying. That is not a direct Frey quote, but a stab at his style. However...the other stuff, when he's not writing like that, is powerful, raw and honest.

I came to a serious conclusion about myself while reading it too. This conclusion is not one I haven't come to before, but it's one that is prickly to put it mildly, and often likes to make it's way under the carpet with some help from me, kicking and shoving it into the darkness where it can no longer be seen. I'm even drawing out this explanation. I'm stalling. Avoiding. Of course. The fact is: I am an addict. I don't know how long I've been an addict, but more than half my life for sure. I have been addicted to different things like Frey is addicted to alcohol and drugs. I've been addicted to food, to sex, to s/m, to a particular person, at times, when I let myself, it was easy for me to start becoming addicted to substances, but I always cut those off when I felt them pulling on me, as if food is better, when it's ruined my life just as much. I've suffered horrible consequences from some of the other addictions as well, things I can't even bear to speak of. They have all been self-destructive, just not in that searing, obvious way of alcoholism and drug addiction. I have sometimes wished my demons were closer to the surface, so well-meaning friends would put their hands on my shoulders and say the stock phrases: "Will you please get yourself some help?" So they'd look at me with doe-eyed concern and sympathy, stage last ditch interventions on my behalf. Instead, I walk the world with hidden pain, killing me slowing and secretly, but still, killing me.

Frey describes some of his time in rehab without drugs and alcohol and how he turned to overeating, just to be full, to fill up the emptiness, to abuse something, to make himself sick, and I saw myself. I thought about it tonight when I sat on my couch itching with a nameless need for something. Anything. But I wasn't hungry. Not physically anyway. I decided to wait until I got hungry so I could have something. I'm not even sure I even made it to hungry before I thought of something good to make. I cooked and ate the whole box of what I made. I thought maybe I'd leave some for leftovers, but it tasted too good, and besides, part of the point is to do it till it's no longer right, no longer normal or okay. Afterwards I felt full. I felt silenced. The gnawing dread was gone, replaced by shame, disgust and sadness. I'm not sure if I made it to regret, well aware that somehow I need this to dull the pain right now. This is why I never got truly addicted to alcohol or weed, because both are depressants, and with my depression, they only make me feel worse before too long, whereas food soothes me, calms me down, comforts me. Yet at the same time, I know when I overeat, there is a side of me that is using it to punish myself. I remember what I confessed to the best therapist I ever had, a number of years ago, I told her that if I made too much food for myself, and I got full before it was done, I'd force myself to finish it, even if it became very physically painful...it was like I was intent on punishing myself for the hunger, or the initial impulse to eat emotionally, and I was determined to make myself pay for it. I know somehow, in some way, this relates to the child rape and psychological abuse I endured from my perp, but I can't delve anymore, because when I get to this door, I just want to stop, turn, and run away, and I do, and I am.

My life is brutal

2005-10-07T02:53:00.000-04:00

I'm getting tired. I hope I can make it through this time, and come out the other side. The entire summer was fraught with bad news, hard times, loss & tragedy (and I'm only talking about my own life, let alone what was happening to people all over, as it has certainly been a dark time for folks across the country as well, and in far more immediately life threatening ways).

I was looking forward to Fall (my favorite season) to bring some relief, but things kept going awry. September was lost in a blur of troubles, and was an Indian Summer, so it didn't even feel like Autumn had arrived yet, just an extension of the muggy New York summer. In temperature and tone. More of the same. The poisonous, tragic, stifling same.

Tonight I sat on my couch and wondered: "Do I have a second act in me?"

I know if I keep existing this way, it will be a continual living death for me. Something has to change, or my life will kill me before my body gives up the ghost, because I know my consciousness can't bear much more of this. If I have to keep going this way, I will probably end my life at some point, rather than have to endure the rest of it. I've died inside so many times already and I can't keep mustering the will to come back. One day, I'm afraid I'll just let myself slip away. I've lost so much of my "fight". I guess that happens when you keep trying to get better and move forward and life keeps kicking you in the teeth. It's difficult to keep my resolve, and find any strength left in my inner reservoirs. I've been a survivor all of my life; I'd like to finally move on to doing better than just surviving. I'm getting so exhausted from holding onto my life by my fingernails. I'm also starting to wonder what the point of hanging on is...

fable

2005-10-03T02:25:00.000-04:00

Sleeping princess, pricked my finger on a spinning wheel, fell into a stupor for years...years gone and wasted, while I dreamt and had nightmares, and generated long grey hairs... I woke up with silvery hair at my knees, cobwebs on my face...my eyes had to learn to open...my limbs numb and silent, my bones brittle. I taught my limbs to feel so I could move to try to pull off my spiderweb shroud. I tried to use the hands I couldn't feel to rip through the thick layers that had formed around me like twisted tapestry. My nails so long they curled and could not help me tear through. Trapped inside but still alive I waited...for strength to return to me, so I could get up and run away.

Up from the Ashes

2005-09-29T17:41:00.000-04:00

I took a shower. I feel semi-human again.

In the shower I thought about all the people that had to overcome worse adversity than mine. I asked myself what the second act of my life was going to be like. I decided it'd be better to be happy, healthy and fit at 40, than never. It may take a while, but I can come out of this pit. It's easy to be glib and cynical when it comes to "inspirational" stories. They just don't fit the hipster paradigm. However, I don't care about cool anymore. I'd rather be content than cool any day. So, I will think about people who have come back from a devastating illness or accident, or achieved a remarkable life despite a serious "disability," or tragic beginnings in life.

I still have all my limbs, all my senses, and most of my wits about me. That's more than many other heroes and heroines started out with. I need to use what I have to my best advantage; to keep looking at what I do have, rather than what I lack.

I don't know why it is that I need to go down into the pit and hit bottom before coming back up, but it is my way when things reach a point of unbearable pain. Perhaps I can improve my turn around time in the future. I'm coming out of it now though, and for the moment, that's all that matters.

Clean

2005-09-29T15:41:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'm not completely done, but I can see the bottom of my sink. All pots and pans have been washed, as well as all dishes, a lotta cups and some silverware. The drainer is full, so by the time they dry, and I put them away, I'll be up to another round of washing.

While I did the dishes, I listened to this song, and it rang so true:

Your Misfortune

When your faith in life is gone
Come and speak to me
When you're down and all messed up
Seek my sympathy
When everybody says no, no, no
Well it's
Your misfortune and none of my own
Wrong, wrong, wrong
Well it's your misfortune that sweetens my song

I can be the friend you want
I can be your confidante
I can be the right reminder at the right time
Throwing out the lifeline
When your face is caked with mud
Come and speak to me
When the chill creeps in your blood
Seek my sympathy

I can be the air you drink
Every single thought you think
I can be the right notion in the meantime
Warm you like the sunshine
Stand in the light. Stand in the light. Stand in the light.

-- Mike Doughty

petite progress

2005-09-29T13:20:00.000-04:00

I'm awake. I got up at 1pm. This would be late for anyone with a normal sleeping pattern, but for me this is an acheivement. This whole week, I woke up at 5pm, or later. I've been awake nights and asleep during the day. I have an appointment tomorrow for the sleep clinic. It's not a moment too soon. It's primarily for my untreated sleep apnea, but I plan to tell them about all the other sleep problems I've been having as well.

I tried to sleep last night. I got in bed around 3ish, and tried to read until I felt drowsy; the problem was, I never got sleepy. So, I got up and got online. Talked to a friend of mine, and fellow insomniac. Then I wrote. I finally went to bed at 9am. So, I only got 4 hours of sleep, but I gotta stay up, so I can begin to break the nocturnal cycle.

I need to get some coffee in me and take my meds. I feel pretty lousy physically. Ugh.

Thus begins my tale...

2005-09-29T07:11:00.000-04:00

“Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul”. - Job 7:10

At the moment, this is a thankless story: thankless characters, thankless days and nights, thankless families. A story about a thirteen year old car with over 100,000 miles on it. A story that features a beloved eleven year old black cat who unfortunately vomits on the carpet all the damn time. A story which stars an overweight, chronically ill, severely depressed, insomniac woman in her late 30's who lives alone, hasn't left her apartment in three days, and hasn't showered in four or five, she can't quite remember. I'll tell ya, it's a blast, this yarn. Aren't you, dear reader, excited to see what comes next? I'll bet you are!

Why do I have to be the one to tell this story? I ask myself.

Because it's mine.

My truth is ugly. Occasionally beautiful too, but that's been harder to see lately. This story insists on being written, burns like a fever in my chest, gripping me when I should be sleeping, dogging my footsteps like a mangy cur that's trying to attach itself to me on a dead end street.

I don't even know where to start. So, I start here, where I am. In medias res.

I haven't spoken to my father in three days. I can't. Something he said spiraled me into such depression that I haven't left the house since. I don't want to see a living soul. I especially don't want to see my landlord's elderly parents, who are staying downstairs, in his part of the house. I cannot wait for them to go back to Florida. Of course, they live in Florida, it's in the handbook: New York Jews of a certain age are practically required to retire to Florida. They return once a year to Long Island on pilgrimage, driving impossibly big boat-like grandpa cars twenty miles below the speed limit. My landlord's parents watch my comings and goings. And when there are no "goings," I worry what they are thinking of me. I worry that they are going to tell their son all about me, that they'll tell him the results of their spying: that I am a weird tenant he should get rid of because they know I haven't been out in days, and my mail is piling up too.

My dishes are piled high in my sink, and on the surrounding counter. There are pots and pans on the stovetop from things I cooked days ago. My laundry is in a pile on the bathroom floor. I can't find a very important set of papers; the last required section of my social security disability application. I forgot to pay my car insurance on the due date, I'm hoping my policy is not revoked. Today I set my alarm for 2pm. It seemed reasonable. It was about 7am when I got in bed. I overslept, and woke up at 5pm, but there must have been hours when I was churning in the half-sleeping state hitting a snooze alarm every nine minutes. As I groggily made my way out of bed, a thought occurred to me: "Did I have an appointment with my shrink today?" I ran to my little pocket calendar, and sure enough, there it was in black & white: Kevin, 4:30pm. This already was the re-scheduled appointment, because I missed last weeks also. Shit. Damn. Fuck. Shit. The frustration with myself gathered itself up and spewed out in torrents. I went to the bathroom, still furious with myself. I came out and called the clinic. My shrink had already left and wouldn't be back till Monday. Swell. At least I had enough meds to get me through Sunday. I'd have to call him Monday and ask him to phone in my scripts to the pharmacy.

Then I looked at my answering machine, no messages. Good. It means my father did not call me, which he did twice on Monday and I think once on Tuesday. In his messages, he spoke normally, as if nothing whatsoever had happened on Sunday. He didn't say he was sorry. He didn't try to suck it up, and wheedle his way back into my life, no; he simply acted as if it hadn't happened. An event that triggered me to recall tragic past events and sent me crashing hopelessly into dark alleys in my consciousness, words that caused the darkest waves to rise up and crash inside me, and to him, it was something he was planning to ease past, gloss over, and sweep under the rug. I didn't return his phone calls.

And I won't. I wish I would never have to deal with him again, but the day will come soon when it will be unavoidable. How I dread that day. I will put it off as long as possible. Maybe I can avert it somehow? Maybe I can fall on the cold mercies of the social services department instead. Convince them of the dire need for an emergency grant, or something. The only thing that ties me to my father besides blood right now is money. The only thing that will enable me not to have to have contact with him is money.

I still have some things at his house, but they can be packed without any real conversations between us. He doesn't understand, doesn't begin to understand this soul murder he does to me. My soul has far more than nine lives. A body only dies once, mercifully, but a soul can die a million times, and still be raised up again, only to be murdered again. I feel each death as if it were the first one. There is no fading with time.I am never inured to the pain, vacant or absent when the strike hits me. It doesn't get any easier, and I'm never more used to it than before. I never am able to expect it, because nothing happens before hand that would allow me to predict that danger is coming, get out of the way. It's like a tornado suddenly striking on a sunny day. By the time you see it coming towards you, it's already too late.

There are so many things I didn't learn in time to save myself. I never cared about money when I was younger. I was utterly steeped in romanticism, and possessed few realistic notions. This suited my mother very well. She had long cultivated me to be dependent, and to have no survival instinct whatsoever. The outcome was flawless. She told me that everything common was beneath me. I was going to be a prodigy. A writer, an artist. I was special. Talented. I had an abnormally high IQ. I was called into the principal's office and told this in elementary school: "Great things are expected of you." This sent me into a tailspin of pressure and anxiety. My report cards often read: "Tess is smart, but is not working up to her potential" "Tess often daydreams and does not pay attention in class".

Later on, other normal kids had paper routes or did odd jobs. I was encouraged not to work crummy jobs. My mother told me they were a waste of my intellect and creativity. Read some more books instead, go to your easel in the basement and paint some more. So I did. I listened to lots of music, and burned a lot of candles and incense. I wrote in journal books of various sizes and shapes. I practiced calligraphy. I went to the opera with my father, and symphonies with the whole family. I masturbated compulsively two or three times a day, wracked with guilt, tears and prayers for forgiveness. I prayed to God for forgiveness every time, but invariably failed the next night. I stayed up late, reading. I read Shakespeare and psychology textbooks about drugs, because I was curious about the mind, and I decided after reading about all of the big guns, that I was a Rogerian, with perhaps a pinch of Jung on the side. I also read the psych texts because wanted to know what illegal drugs did to a person. I also read "Go Ask Alice" and wished I had been around in the sixties, it sounded so much better than the seventies I was living in. I also read illicitly acquired copies of "A Secret Garden," and the "dirtier" Judy Blume books that now seem as tame as oatmeal on a winter morning. I never wanted to go to school, and I hated waking up early in the morning. I almost always missed my bus. I almost always missed it on purpose so I wouldn't have to face the teasing. My mother frequently drove me to school. Often I'd be seized with sharp stomach pains as soon as we'd pull into the driveway of my school. I was often doubled over, and could not go inside. I'd often beg and plead to go home, until she'd finally turn the car around. Sometimes she'd say no, and I'd hobble in. A few class periods would go by, and I was calling for her to come get me. I had wretched stomach problems. I now know it was anxiety. Extreme anxiety.

I wasn't thinking about the future. About good test scores. About college. I was thinking about how to get through the day without coming apart at the seams. There were reasons I was in such sad shape. Reasons I'm not ready to talk about yet. I'd have to go to that place, that place that holds a dungeon of locked up nightmares that are always trying to break down the door and invade my life. Tonight is not the night to let them out. I'll keep the chains on the monsters a little bit longer.

To my suffering friend...

2005-09-28T18:26:00.000-04:00

I feel your pain alongside my own. We suffer for different reasons, but we suffer. I can't say exactly why, and I won't render up the stock answers. They are not enough to staunch the pain raging through your blood, or mine, anyway. For the moment, there is but one answer. To weep with those who weep, mourn with those who mourn. So I weep. For you. For me.

As much as it feels the farthest moment away, I know one thing -- in days to come, at a moment when we least expect it, we will laugh again, and life will flood back in.

Little triggers pull big guns...

2005-09-26T02:24:00.000-04:00

I was writing a disturbing post about something my father said and did yesterday that prompted old issues to rear their ugly head, when the lights in my apartment flickered on and off, the computer restarted itself, and I lost the post. I shall take it as a sign. I won't re-write it. Maybe somethings are better left unsaid, even in unsayable.

* "How am I not myself?"

2005-09-23T06:11:00.000-04:00

"We are all freeloaders under God" - Nanny in "Vanya on 42nd st." http://imdb.com/title/tt0111590/

There is so much unrest. Anything I write will only skim the service. People are suffering. I can feel it in the air. It feels odd to know I'm safe when people in other parts of the country are fighting for their lives. I feel lucky, blessed, but unworthy, and somewhat guilty. It's like survivor's guilt, even though I'm not in the path of the latest hurricane.

Stranger still is that I feel like I'm fighting for my life on the inside, and it seems to me to be a luxury others don't have. Well, it's my health too, my sickness that may be causing the other problems, because would I be as angst-ridden if I wasn't in pain, could function and live the way I want to? It would, I think, decrease my existential churning. I feel like an overactive mind trapped in a broken down body. Thus, I feel continual frustration, and the tension of those oppposites. I seem to be trapped in an endless cycle of chaos & entropy, and am not sure how to halt it's daily advance.

There is more, always more, but I am tired.

"We go from pure being, to suffering and human drama..." "It is inevitable to be drawn back into human drama".
Caterine Vauban quotes from "I Heart Huckabees" http://imdb.com/title/tt0356721/

*subject heading is also from the huckabees film.

home fires

2005-09-14T23:40:00.000-04:00

My cat & I are both home, and both very tired. She's doing much better thank God. That's all for tonight. I'm gonna go crash.

For want of her form curled on the floor

2005-09-13T06:25:00.000-04:00

My cat is in the animal hospital tonight. There was just a noise in the stairwell. For a moment I forgot and I turned my head, thought it was her. My apartment is so quiet without her. I can't sleep. I'm watching the clock as hours slip by. My body aches. Sadness. Touch. Emptiness. Skin so forgotten, but my hands remember silken fur. She's my hug, my cuddle, my shadow. She's a persistent muse. A demanding diva. A finicky fickle princess in want of favorite foods. I'm just her chef, waiter, butler. I do the chores. She runs the house. Sits where she wants. Goes where she's not supposed to. Drives me nuts. Exasperates me with her willfulness. Is immune to training, discipline, or any sort of behavioral deterrents or reinforcements. I throw up my hands, ah well, she's just like me, what else can I expect?

Memento Mori

2005-09-11T04:19:00.000-04:00

I don't have anything profound to say about 9/11. Not now. Maybe I never will. I have to acknowledge it though. I have to remember it, because for some people that live in my area, their lives will never be the same. Whether they are survivors, who got out somehow, or weren't at work that day, or family and friends that lost loved ones, there are lives that will be indelibly inked with that day as if tattooed. Then there are all the dead -- gone, and by most people, forgotten. The individual lives faded into a mass of collective loss. The individuals are mostly remembered only by those whose lives they touched. Their names were read today at least.

I will never forget that day. I was driving to work. I got a phone call from out of state. I couldn't fumble with the cell while I was driving, so I let it go to voicemail. I checked the voicemail when I pulled into the parking lot, and it was a friend of mine saying she was watching TV, and there were planes flying into the World Trade Center. I called her back: "WHAT?" She started to explain. I walked into work, people were shell-shocked, somber, panicked, upset, the entire range of emotions. People were phoning their spouses who worked in the city. I raced into my cubicle and called my two best friends in New York city. My friend L. already knew because she smelled the smoke and saw the ash and darkness in the air, heard the sirens, and she was on the Upper West Side, miles away from ground zero. She had the TV on and was watching what was going on. I called my other close friend J. in the Bronx and told him not to get on the subway, not to go into Manhattan (which I feared he might because of going to his grad school there). He was still asleep when I rang him, we spoke, he was groggy and safe. I was relieved about them both being safe. However, I still paced the office, and looked out the windows. It seemed inconceivable to me that this was happening because as I looked out the windows it was the most beautiful, picture postcard perfect Autumn day; the sun was shining, the sky was blue and nearly cloudless, and the trees were green and lush, and blowing in a slight breeze. Yet I knew that less than 45 minutes west of this idyll, something catastrophic was happening, of which I didn't even know the proportions. We weren't allowed internet access, so we couldn't get on CNN.com or anything. There were no TV's, and only a few people in the office had radios. We were all trying to find out what was happening.

We were sent home early at 3pm. All major roadways were closed and I had to take back roads home. A less than half an hour drive took me over two hours, due to the route and abnormally heavy traffic. I was exhausted, and frayed when I arrived. My stomach had been sick all day.

When I got home I crawled into bed and turned on the TV. I watched coverage for about seven hours straight trying to get my head around it. Little did I know, that intense saturation with the horrific images and stories would give me many weeks of nightmares. I just felt like I needed to watch it till I could snap out of shock, till it could seem real. But it was unreal.

I wanted to hop a train and go into the city and help, do something, but my best friend assured me I would not be able to cope with the air quality with my asthma. Everyone was walking around wearing masks. There was building rubble and ash, and human remains floating in the air. L. said the smell permeated the air, even in her neighborhood so far from the trade center.

I cried a lot. I hated that people were adopting a "business as usual" attitude at my office. I felt like life as we all knew it was over. Then the anthrax scares started. The company I was working for got some hoax mail with some fake powder in it, and then we had to go through this seminar on biochemical weapons, terrorism, and all sorts of safety stuff that made me feel like I was in some kind of bad dream. I worked in IT and I was getting some weird de-briefing on what to do in case of biological weaponry?

At Thanksgiving dinner with my extended family I found out that a sorta step-"cousin" of mine, the son of my uncle's second wife, had been in the second tower and got out. He ignored the overhead announcement that said tower one was on fire, but stay put. His officemates all acted tough and decided to stay. They all died. My "cousin" quit his job in finance and took his girlfriend on a sailing trip that lasted months. Somewhere on the open waters he proposed to her. They got married, and I don't know what they're up to now because I'm not very close to my uncle and his blended family anymore.

The bottom line is, I didn't lose anyone I knew. I was one of the lucky ones. Some little towns near me lost twenty-five people, and those twenty-five may have been connected to hundreds of others lives in that town. The ripple effect of all these losses was staggering. So many people here commute to the city for work, so many local people were devastated by losses. We also have firefighters and cops who work in the city as well. The sadness was in the air for so long. I went into the city for the first time a few months later and the shrines in front of firehouses, and down in the subways, and on the streets were still there. Missing persons photos and flyers were still up. I was with a friend from California, and was showing her around, and we both got teary-eyed at times.

This year, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 remembrances took on a different meaning, knowing that so many people are presently suffering. The hearts, minds and charity of many New Yorkers goes out to the displaced, missing and departed ones from the storm. Yet, there are still people grieving for their dead after four years, because the pain of losing loved ones never goes away; even more so in so many deaths that had no closure, no body, and certainly no last goodbye.

New York will never be the same, and really, it shouldn't be.

This is mostly true

2005-09-10T23:47:00.000-04:00

My Bloginality is INTP.

You are an INTP

As an INTP, you are Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceiving.This makes your primary focus on Introverted Thinking with an Extraverted Intution.

This is defined as a NT personality, which is part of Carl Jung's Rational (Knowledge Seeking) type, and more specifically the Architect or Thinker.

As a weblogger, you might not be as concerned about popularity, but more with the ideas and theories that you strive to understand. Because routines aren't your strong point, you might be more likely to work on the concept of how to do a blog, but not be as excited to keep it up.

INTP Links:
http://www.typelogic.com/intp.html
http://www.personalitypage.com/INTP.html
http://www.haleonline.com/psych/intp.htm
http://www.personalitytype.com/types/intp.html

Search for more INTP information

Broken Nocturne

2005-09-10T06:14:00.000-04:00

In the wee hours of the morning, always a reckoning. The weight of my existence comes down over me like a heavy veil of suffocating shadows. A life wasted, day after day. Or is it? Just trying to do better. Hiding? Trying to make every day count. But I didn't leave the house today. Trying to do better. God, did I live this day as if it were my last? Urgency. Need to do better, do more, be more. Why? Time is short. I don't know what this life would amount to on paper, on a headstone or eulogized. A waste? A near miss? An almost made it? Underachieving and side lined, sick, years upon years of sick. Wasted years of nothing. Trying to get up off the ground with a boot on the back of my neck. The same story. The same day over and over again. A synthetic existence where only the location changes slightly and shifts like a shadow on the wall. It's the same bed, the same dream, the same nightmare. What am I doing with this life? I feel stuck in quicksand. Everything moves so slowly, and my limbs are heavy.

Every dawn comes and I sleep. Every night comes and I'm wide awake moving in an opposite rhythm from the rest of the world. I live at night. It's my default setting, though I try so hard to fight it. It's like my body has a built in mechanism to sequester me from the rest of the world. Asleep while others bustle, awake while others rest. Reality is different here on the other side of the moon. Late at night everything takes on extra weight. Tragedies are more tragic. Sad films are devastating. Serious books become more somber. Regrets more bitter. Losses more grievous. Music has more pathos. My memories, my past and present seem undeniably fraught. My future, so uncertain.

If only I knew how much time I have left, and how to make it count. How can I change things? Not waste my days? I do the dishes. I feed the cat. I clean her litter. I knit. I putter around online. I watch TV. Another day passes where I make no mark on the world, where I don't go downstairs and get my mail, where I don't see another living soul (where I prefer not to in some ways). My friends phone in. My friends email. It's a wonder I have friends at all considering my constitution. I'm a hermit. At least a part-time one. I went to my knitting group last night. It was fun and breezily social as usual. I received many compliments on my new hair style. Much laughter and talking. The air is so much sweeter, until I leave, and the shine dulls.

Then I went to the 24 hour Laundromat. There were televisions mounted into the walls every few feet above the dryers, all on different channels, some in Spanish. Some with the sound on, and some mute with closed captioning. Televisions too high up to reach, or change the channel, to lower or raise the volume, to mute, to un-mute. I was detached from it, yet observing the hell we've created. This is people's idea of ideal. A tower of Babel made of TV screens. All sound and fury signifying nothing. At least there was an ice cream machine. I ate an old fashioned sugar cone, the one with the vanilla ice cream, chocolate coating and nuts, and it reminded me of childhood, when the ice cream man came around the block, and I ran to the street with coins, or the dollar my Mother gave me. I remember the time I thought I snuck a dollar from my Mom's purse, only to find it was a Twenty when I handed it to the ice cream man. He tried to spare my ass by asking me if I was sure I wanted to use this bill, and was it really mine? but there's no saving a young masochist with a guilty conscience, so I went ahead and paid with the Twenty with the lump in my throat; now I'd have to confess, and I knew I'd deserve everything I got afterward.

::::

P.S. Don't watch "The House of Sand and Fog" after 4am if you're an insomniac empath. I cried my eyes out. Saddest movie I've seen in a long time. It's probably responsible for part of my mood above.

Requiem for the Discarded

2005-09-09T05:01:00.000-04:00

It's 5am in New York, it's far too late to write a coherent entry, but I need to say something -- to begin.

I think in the beginning I hid. I left the news off. I refused to click on the links. Then I finally did, and I knew all too well why I'd been avoiding it. The overwhelming enormity of the tragedy. The senseless suffering after the natural disaster had passed, when it became a hell crafted with human hands. Babies being raped. Children being raped. People of all ages being shot. Bodies lying where they died, stripped of even their final human dignity. Total darkness. Lack of food and water. Savagery without limit ruling over frail decency. All of this and far more, I had tried to forestall absorbing. I had to face it though. The tremors were already rattling in my spirit anyway. I felt the shockwaves of human agony reach me long before I turned on the TV.

Who will speak for us? Who will tell our stories? Did we die in vain? Justice, Lord, we want Justice! I didn't die in the waters Lord, I died because no one came to save me...I died because they had guns and rage and I had my baby on my lap, and nothing to eat and it was so dark...Oh Lord, the smell of death...all around...the crying and howling in the night...and in the darkest days...the angel of death came and I was ready to leave...so weary...so thirsty...I just wanted to lay down in peace somewhere...I just wanted You to carry me Home...

"I'm just a boy with a new haircut & that's a pretty nice haircut"

2005-09-03T04:05:00.000-04:00

I heat up slowly, simmering for long stretches of time, and then suddenly: I boil! I'll think about doing something forever, but then, in one impulsive moment, in one fell swoop, I suddenly do something drastic and radical!

I have had long hair down to my waist for years (and lately, it was getting even lower). I have been thinking about cutting it for years. I have not been able to go near a hairdresser because they always mess my hair up, which may be part of why I've been so afraid to get it cut, and avoid hairstylists like the plague.

However, lately, my hair has been getting to me, and I've been getting more motivated to cut it. It's heavy, thick, curly and wavy. My scalp hurts when I put it in a bun cos there's too much hair. My head hurts when I have a ponytail in too long. It gets tangled. I would look like a bogus whitey rastafarian after a few days if I don't attend to the knots and how my hair wants to twist up and weave itself into dreads of it's own volition. Not to mention how damn hot my hair has been all summer long. I really should have gotten it cut at the first sign of summer. But I balked.

So, lately, to try to ease myself into the hairdressers chair, I've been trimming my hair. I got rid of some scraggly ends last week, and then tonight, I decided to do another trim. But something happened.

I kept cutting...& cutting...& cutting...

My hair is A LOT shorter now. I wish I had known I was going to lop off so much, I would have been able to give to locks of love, which I really wanted to do. I cut it too gradually though. This was like the snowball version of the haircut. It gathered steam and kept going once it started! My hair is very subtly layered, and curly now, and falls to the middle of my back. I cut about a foot of hair off!

I do have to say one thing, I looked in the mirror afterwards and I said to my reflection: "You're a genius!"

Yes, I know, it may seem hyperbolic, but I kid you not, I'm freaking foxy right now. I mean, really, I'm so damn cute! This is Ms. Low Self-Esteem talking, so, really, it's a miracle. w00t!

I keep running my hands through it because it feels like silk, and flipping my hair back and forth, because it's so light now.

I went out after I was done with my hair to buy some milk for my morning coffee tomorrow, and to pick up something to eat at a drive-thru, and the proof is in the pudding -- I got called "Miss"! Fucking A! I always hate it when they call me "M'aam" and I think my hair must have made me look older, despite that people I meet always guess my age to be ten years younger. It's the shopkeepers and such with the "M'aam" stuff that was killing me, so, yea, I must have some vanity because I was pysched to go back to "Miss". I drove away while doing the arm pump thing with a fist in the air saying: "YES!" out loud to no one in my car by myself. Yep, I'm a dork.

My exterior is the least of it, this isn't just an outer transformation; I feel like I broke with the past tonight. I am ready to start a new chapter. The title is "Lightening Up". I cleaned up and dealt with clutter in my apartment today (it's not done but progress was made) then I cut my hair, and the thing I want to try tackling next is losing weight. I feel like something is propelling me forward. A sense of urgency. No time to waste. It may be the state of the world, but it's moreso the state of my life, which needs to move on to a higher level. It's time for me to dump any excess baggage so I can sail forth into my future unencumbered. I've been carrying so much, in so many senses, and it's just time to lighten my load, and get rid of the burdens that cause me so much pain, and limit me in so many ways. I don't feel like I just cut my hair, I feel like I am declaring a statement to myself that says: "New days are here, new times are coming, new experiences, new phases, new levels, new chapters, and you are no longer the same person you were, the time has come to become who you were always meant to be, and in order to do so, you've gotta shed some skin".

Wave Hello, Say Goodbye

Bedbugs & Ballyhoo

2005-09-01T03:38:00.000-04:00

So, I switched back to the old computer, because I was starting to feel cut off from the world. That's a sad commentary on my current state of connectedness, but such is my life. I haven't been outside for two days because I've been sick. An odd kind of sick. Not something dramatic, and focused, but rather a crushing weight that's spread out over my entire self. It feels like the first days of when I had mono, or the first time I had a full blown episode of Epstein-Barr virus when my titers were really high. I'd call this another thing I've had before: chronic fatigue immunodeficiancy syndrome, but I hate that, because it's too long. OK, the abbreviation is CFIDS. How can they expect tired people to type out the whole name anyway, really now.

Anyway, I'm just really fatigued and low energy, and my body aches a lot all over. I guess this could be a particularly bad bout of my Fibromyalgia as well. Could be. Whatever it is, it sucks. I don't have the strength to take out the garbage, or lug my laundry to the Laundromat. I have dishes piled up in the sink, because I can only wash a few at a time. On top of which, I have spent the last few days fighting the war of me vs. the fleas. So far, it looks like I'm winning. However, I can't afford to get cocky and lay down on the job, cos them bloodsuckers are tenacious.

I have watched "American Splendor" over 5 times in the last two weeks. If you haven't seen it, I recommend you watch it once, for starters. Harvey Pekar is my new anti-hero. I love an underdog. The movie also whet my appetite for more blues and some obscure scratchy moody jazz.

Thematically speaking, it also got me thinking...how will I make my mark? This was one of Mr. Pekar's worries -- that his whole life would be eaten up by penny ante shit, and that as a working class stiff, he'd never even leave a mark behind. I've come up one side of the hill, and I'm standing on top looking down. I can look back at where I came from, and figure out how many wrong ways I went, how many detours I took, how many cul-du-sacs and dead ends I ended up in, and the few right roads I took to get me up the hill. I look down the other side, and I wonder what I'm going to do from here on in. Depending on my mood, state of mind, and health each day the perceptions of what might be change. One day I'm expansive and the possibilities seem limitless; I wonder just how I will choose from the vast options before me, after all, I can do anything! Another day, I wonder how I'm going to survive, and not end up on the street. It's a coin toss. Harvey understands.

But as I fall asleep, my soul cries "thank you God," and tears welled up at the corners of my eyes. I remember that even if I have nothing else in this life, I have The Truth and A Promise. This is more than what millions of people rushing headlong to nowhere have. No matter what happens, I'm safe. I have something priceless that didn't cost me a dime, and when I think of it, I am transported to a state of awe, and I rest there, in suspension. I wouldn't be surprised if I opened my eyes, and found myself floating above my bed, except that the air around me is thick with angels, and I lie heavy with lead of the Holy Spirit on my chest and the weight of His goodness.

Craptastic

2005-08-31T23:52:00.000-04:00

My laptop's keyboard is fuct, so I can mostly just cut & paste :-(

So, I'll just share some wisdom from one of my fave sites: http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/

Hobo: Look at you on your cell phone talking all about yo' business. I don't want to hear yo' business. You keep that private shit to yo'self. All cell phones should be put on the moon.

--53rd & Lexington

All I can say is -- word Hobo man, word.

mute

2005-08-26T06:06:00.000-04:00

Some things there just are no words for.

"...but it's calm under the waves, in the blue of my oblivion..."

the aching

2005-08-24T23:57:00.000-04:00

These are difficult days. Understatement.

Some days I think they are the most difficult days I've ever had in my life. Hyperbole?

I wonder if I'm up to it. If my mettle will hold. Every fiber in my body aches. I kept pushing through the pain, until today when it stopped me. I sat on the couch and was unable to move. I couldn't even imagine getting up. When I finally moved, it was slowly, with the greatest effort.

As S. prayed over me last night, his hand on my head -- He petitioned God to give me deliverance. He asked God to show me how to trust His promises, No Matter How It Looks. That returns to me again and again -- the challenge to see beyond the circumstances. I must look through them like a smokescreen and see what is on the other side. I remind myself again and again not to care what it looks like, to not cave in. I will call those things which are not as if they are.

It is apt that those words were prayed last night, as my father called me today with more bad news. Everyday this saga gets worse. The brutality increases. I do not have the physical strength to hold back the barbarism that has invaded.

So, I will fight in the spirit instead. It is all I have. It is the place where I am as weak as I am in body, but where He is strong. I cried out to God, and He heard my desperate pleas. I sat on the couch and prayed, as the tears rolled down my face. I am learning what it means to trust Him, to have the kind of faith that will move this mountain. Justice belongs to Him. He alone can deliver us out of this snare that has been set by the wicked. The people who are set against us have declared war on almighty God, they just don't know it yet. The irony is that they claim to be Christians. Well, that should be ironic. These days, it's to be expected. How sad. I won't even begin to voice my disgust at the latest incident in which a televangelist shot his mouth off like a cretin. It's so revoltingly predictable as to hardly be worthy of mention.

I praise God that I'm broken, that I don't sit in lofty places, that I'm not blessed and comfortable. It has made me humble. It has taught me never to judge. It is perfecting His strength through my weakness. If I had the world at my command, if I was smug, self-satisfied, and flush, would I see Him the way that I do? I can rejoice that if I ever become successful, safe, and financially self-sufficient, I will remember who brought me up out of ruin, and I will not be callous and cold. No matter how much money I have, I want to always remember my poverty of the spirit. I want to always know my state of need before God, my unrighteousness, my flawed human heart.

I want to have more money in the future, so I can give more of it away. I would like to spend less time worrying about money, and more time helping people. When I read about what is going on in our country and all over the world, I wish I was a billionaire. I never cared much about money when I was little, because I didn't know what it could do. I only wanted to be an artist in a Paris garret. I was a punk, a poet, a romantic bohemian. I wasn't prepared for the real world. I didn't know the depths of its sorrows, nor how it chews up the poor and spits them out. I didn't know I'd find myself a victim of the lack of money. I didn't know I'd be overeducated and underpaid. I didn't know I'd become too ill to work, and need to navigate the governmental systems.

I hardly have any money in the bank, but I hope that a little girl in The Gambia is doing better because my father and I are sponsoring her. I have her picture on my refrigerator. She's not smiling. I hope she smiles sometimes now. I hope that now at least she knows that someone cares about what happens to her and her family. I donated to the Niger famine crisis through two different organizations. I feel like it's a drop of water going into an empty bucket, not enough to even give someone who is thristy a mouthful to drink; I can only hope that combined with other drops of water, it will shower the dry and weary land, and feed the children that suffer so. I don't mention this to pat myself on the back and to assuage white liberal guilt, I write about it because I realize that I am poor and want to give it all away, and that there are rich people like the televangelists who just keep lining their coffers with monies wrested from those they dupe. I want to see them help someone for once, and then, let them talk. Their day of judgment will come. I know one thing, on Judgment Day I'd rather be a repented killer, than be a Fallwell, a Robertson, a Swaggart, or any of the hundreds of others who are so boldly self-righteous.

It reminds me of this passage in the Bible:

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

Luke 18: 9-14

9 Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ 13 And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Just thinking about that unknown humble man brings tears to my eyes. Oh, that we would all be so broken. Dear God, that is my prayer, that I would be ever broken before you.

demolition

2005-08-22T03:57:00.000-04:00

The days get harder, the skull gets softer. Bony fingers poking through layers of yielding brain mass, probing into grey matter. What matters? What's the matter? Twists and turns and labyrinthine knots of pathways folding back in on themselves. I could get lost in here. Adult supervision required. Not recommended for children under age four. Four. When we moved to the house, I was four. For so long, I was there, forlorn, and for so long, I've been leaving.

Behind closed doors lie ruined cities of squalor. A private shame that the neighborhood knows all about. Despite my hiding place in the closet where they forgot all about me, I could still be seen by others. If I left the closet, I lost my powers of invisibility. People saw. People could see. They knew. They all knew. Loud voices bellowing and screeching from the windows and doors announced the fissures within to the world.

I dreamt of ruin, destruction, divorce. These things sugared my dreams when all else laid bitter upon my tongue. Someone please come and tear this house down. Burn it to the ground. Sweep away the ashes and cinder till there is only dry ground...dry ground. Mark this place off for the barrenness of burial ground. Do not place living things here again to die.

Baptismal Self

2005-08-21T02:15:00.000-04:00

Picture postcard blue sky, white clouds -- seen while floating in an inner tube, my head resting on it as a pillow, lying on my back, drifting...from shallow to deep end and back, while my people laughed and talked on the patio. The pool was empty, all mine. I thought back to two Augusts ago when I was baptized in this same pool, and the freedom I felt as I floated afterward, newly reborn. Today I've let down roots into that freedom and I live there now. It's not easy, it's not free of trial, it's still a life on this fallen planet, but I am not dragging all the ghost chains behind me now.

The day of my Baptism, I went to church all dressed in black and wore a tie with a picture of a skull on it. I was mock flinty and sounded like Clint Eastwood, when I professed my new motto: "It's a good day to die". Despite my comic delivery, I meant it. I was attending my own funeral, and I'd never been so happy. I was about to drown my old self by intention. The unwelcome uninvited spirit guests that dogged me went down into the water too and didn't come back up with me. When I came out of the water, I put on a white dress; the outward symbol of an inner transformation. I was a new creation, and I was determined to start a chapter of new depth, new freedom, new power.

Today I have my memories, my pain, my losses, my longings, but I walk in the knowledge of who I am, and more importantly, whose I am. This is more than enough. No matter what else happens.

small improvements

2005-08-20T04:30:00.000-04:00

Well, today was decidedly better, though I don't have the desire to enumerate yesterday's tragedies, nor today's remedies. I will just say that the complete disaster of my Father's house sale is slowly working out. We have ten days to get everything out of there. It's going to be a challenge. It will get done somehow though. I just hope I don't have a nervous breakdown first. No, why waste a good nervous breakdown on this? Best wait till the move is done, then retire to my cave and write. Oh, who am I kidding, I can't afford the luxury of a self-indulgent nervous breakdown any more, I have to whip my life into shape. Besides, don't I have better things to do?

I have stayed up way too late futzing around on the computer. I got back from my Father's house after Midnight though and it always takes me a while to decompress. It's after 4AM now. I have to be up by 9AM to go to church. My friend B. is getting baptized after church. I can't wait for that. After that, I get to go in the pool and the jacuzzi. I can't wait. I've been a Mermaid with very dry scales all summer long. Imagine I'm on a freaking island surrounded by water and I haven't been able to go to the beach. Let alone a swimming pool. This will be my day to remedy that, and stay in the water till I go pruney.

In the midst of all this, I have health stuff that needs attending to, and things to do in order to complete my social security disability application. These days there's just no time to get everything done. Tomorrow night after church and after the baptism and pool party, I need to sit down and fill out some of those S.S.D. forms. Queer as Folk isn't on anymore *sob* so I'll have time. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and Desperate Housewives are all repeats. The L Word is done for the season, and in repeats as well. "Weeds" is on, and so far that's pretty good. But my Sunday night, which was my big TV night of the week is no more for the time being. So, those freaking forms need to get done and I have no excuses (I need to remind myself to read this tomorrow night, when I may be trying to procrastinate).

Speaking of procrastinating, I learned from the best. Tonight my Dad convinced me that we needed a break and we watched an insane Norweigen film "Elling" (it was subtitled). The Europeans really know how to do a film with humor and pathos. Americans don't really make films like that. Some indie films get more at that, but there is still some quality that Foreign films have that ours don't. I think they're just more mature, coming from older countries with far more comfort about the full spectrum of human nature. This is overly generalizing, but I'm too tired to be more articulate about this at the moment. Anyway, this film was side splittingly funny, and yet filled with intense emotions, nuance, and pathos. My cheeks hurt from laughing and smiling afterwards, yet I was also touched by the totally unsentimentalized humanity of the story.

This was a largely pointless entry devoid of fizz, but I am trying to make myself write here every single day, if only as an exercise in self-discipline. I'm having fond wistful longing thoughts about an unknown disciplinarian now, but I'm not thinking about writing anymore. But you knew that.

2005-08-19T08:25:00.000-04:00

This was the kind of day which might have been better if it had never appeared on the calendar.

Comme ci, Comme ca

2005-08-19T05:45:00.000-04:00

I had a mixed bag of a day. I found out my cat still has fleas. Grrr. I declared war on the bloodsucking fiends and kicked ass, only to find them back again. I loathe fleas. Just knowing they are around makes me creepy crawly, and anything that brushes past my skin makes me think that one of them is on me. I must win this war at all costs. If I have to bring in the big guns, I will get those nasty chemical foggers and go stay at my Dad's house for a bit while it bombs my apartment. I suppose I'll have to bring the princess kitty with me too, but somehow I have to make sure she has no more fleas or eggs on her, otherwise she'll infest my dad's house, and re-infest the apartment when I bring her back. This really sucks. No pun intended.

Other than that, I went to knitting group, and that is always a blast. I knit with some crazy chicas. I love it. It's the highlight of my week. I got to chatting with some new girls that have been coming for a few weeks, and I found out about a spinning group -- Oooo! I am going to have to go to the next one. I know someone who hand spins, and her yarns are gorgeous but cost a fortune. Now I'll be able to make my own if I can get the hang of it. We shall see. That would be so rad though, because I could create my own color combinations, and really customize and be creative with it.

I finished the scarf I was knitting for the girl who works at the cafe where we meet. She requested one after she got to know me a bit, as I'm there every week. I gave it to her tonight. She loved it. I got free frosty caramel cappuccino, and a discount on bread that my dad wanted me to pick up for him. Wheeeee. Knitting for people has it's perks.

I came home and watched Discovery Health channel. This has become my thing this week. I am watching all these shows about weight loss surgery, and follow-up plastic surgeries needed. They also had a show on tonight about people who became super obese and could no longer care for themselves. I'm asking myself why the morbid fascination with these shows lately, especially since some of them show graphic stomach-turning operations. Am I trying to dissuade myself from considering weight loss surgery? Am I trying to encourage myself to try again to lose weight naturally? Am I trying to look at people far worse off than me and delude myself into thinking that my weight isn't as serious of an issue as theirs is? Or maybe it's just the novelty of finally seeing fat people on TV. Of course, as usual, they are only depicted as living less than full lives, and being on the brink of total health collapse. On the other hand, there was a "Miss Fat" pageant on TV recently, which was a freaking scream. The girl who won was what normal folks would probably consider average, or at the most "thick," but hey, that's okay, because she was the prettiest, and she could sing like a diva. There were much fatter chicks on the show though, and they all were treated equally and depicted as women with real lives, not just medical oddities. So, I suppose we might be getting somewhere.

Don't even get me started on the Dove ad campaign for "real beauty" -- I mean, nice try boys, but none of those women is remotely fat. That's part of the problem with our country; that seeing normal women with average-sized bodies is painted as some kind of bold, risky innovation for marketing. Yea, so what, corporate Amerikkka has finally figured out that the majority of women in this country are curvy girls who spend money too, and they want it to be spent on their products. Wow, Big Fat Fucking Deal. All that amounts to is the repackaging of greed. There is nothing new about that. To impress me, they're gonna have to do a lot better than that. Yawn.

It's in the blood

2005-08-18T08:00:00.000-04:00

I woke up at 4PM. I did nothing today except wash some dishes, drink iced coffee, knit, watch TV, talk on the phone and snuggle with my mush cat who kept jumping on me and velcro-ing herself to me all day and night. I didn't leave my apartment once, not even to get the mail. I'm feeling overwhelmed. I stay put when I feel like this. My body also aches a lot and I have no energy to deal with anything I want to get done. I have a host of chronic health problems, and depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder...You name it, I probably have it. I can flip through the DSM-IV and find more numbers to put after my name. I did that once, but I got tired. There were too many possible numbers.

I had good intentions for today, even given how late I got up, but then I had four conversations back and forth with my Father on the complete disaster that has become of the house sale. After hearing more bad news, I was feeling quite dismayed, and lost the bulk of my resolve for the day. The family home has been sold but there are issues... Aren't there always? My father has untreated OCD. He is a compulsive hoarder. We have owned this house for 33 years. Use your imagination. Then multiply your worst vision by a hundred and you may have some idea. It gets worse though -- my Father is 74 and is unable to do any of his own packing, purging or cleaning. My older brother, the only sibling I have, will not help. Guess who that leaves? Oh yes grasshopper, it leaves me, number one daughter, responsible. My Mother passed away in 1998. I seem to have been passed her mantle of responsibility, albeit with none of the say-so that comes with being the matriarch.

Half of the things my Dad has done since she has been gone he would have never gotten away with when she was alive. Yes, they had an awful marriage, but somehow in it's own sick, insane, abusive way it worked to keep his disease in check somewhat, because he knew she'd give him hell if he crossed certain unspoken lines. My pleas, threats, and desperate entreaties do not have the same effect that her abuse did. Oh don't misread this, he abused her plenty, and sometimes far worse, but as the years warped their way along, she became just as twisted, perhaps by maintaining her proximity to him, and continuing their sick dance till death did they part.

I feel like I've been left holding the bag of all of the cumulative madness of my family.

I also must humble myself and admit that I have the same disorder my Dad has. I'm not quite as bad and far gone as he is (thank God) but I do have a problem. I have clutter. I have organization problems. I tend to acquire things, and then not know how to manage those items. I buy things even when I'm broke. I get free things from various places. It's a disease. I am overwhelmed by the flow of paper: magazines, circulars, mail, newspapers, junk mail, catalogs, etc. I get crippled and paralyzed when it comes to dealing with these issues. I try very hard, but I get overwhelmed and shut down. I am determined not to end up like my Dad though. I have a tangible, living example of what happens if you let yourself spin completely out of control. I feel this when I look at his physical condition with regard to his size too. He's in really bad shape healthwise, partially because he hasn't taken care of himself for much of his adult life. He's fat. I'm fat. I don't want to end up like him. He has a collection of different canes. We bought him a walker recently. When I take him shopping, he usually rides in those motorized carts at the stores that provide them. He can't drive himself around most days because his knee and hip hurts too much to work the clutch on his manual transmission van.

Well, I suppose that's more than enough information for now, besides which, it's 5AM, and it might be a good idea to get some sleep. This is certainly not an edifying post. However, my cat just jumped on me, and she's purring. Thank you God for black cats.

In the presence of the saints

2005-08-17T05:25:00.000-04:00

Tonight I went to a potluck for my friend E. who is leaving New York to go back to Indiana after working a summer job here. She started coming to my church in April, and she was pretty endearing right away. Everyone fell in love with her. The word "radiant" was used to describe her multiple times this evening, as we were all saying our goodbyes.

Although saying goodbye was hard, tonight was amazing. The night was hosted at the home of my friends S. & A., a young married couple. Last week in church, S. had a prophetic word concerning a bell. The image was of a very old heavy bell, perhaps the kind in a church tower, and this bell was covered in dust, but on one section, the dust had been wiped away. The word was that the rest of this bell was soon going to be dusted off, and the bell would be put to use again. S. strongly got that the interpretation of the prophecy was that it was symbolic of someone who had moved in a spiritual gift, particularly prophecy, and at some point, for whatever reason, had stopped operating in this gift, and that God was saying it was time to start again. Well, sitting there, I knew without a doubt that it was about me.

About two years ago, I started getting prophecies from God both for individuals and for the church as a whole. Then somewhere along the way, something must have happened, and I shut down on that. I am not even sure when it happened, but it dried up and went away. It went so far that I was even scared to pray for people directly, meaning laying my hands on them and praying out loud. I could pray for someone quietly and on my own, but I started to be afraid that I'd have nothing to say when I started to pray for them aloud; that God would not speak to them through me. I stopped praying for people in mid-week Kinships or at Sunday services altogether.

When S. gave the bell prophecy, I thought I should go to him, claim it, and ask him to pray for me. Then I saw my friend B., and I knew I wasn't afraid to pray for her, because we're close, and I'm at ease and less worried about screwing up, so I said to myself "OK, time to start dusting off the rest of the bell" and went over and prayed for her. Lo and behold, God showed me things on her behalf, gave me words to say, and told me what I needed to pray about, and how to share what He was showing me with her.

So tonight, we were all praying for E. as a group, before sending her off, and I was sitting on the couch and was softly praying in the spirit for a while (i.e. praying in tongues) and then I was just quiet for a while, and suddenly I saw a vision in my mind, and tears rolled down my eyes, but I wasn't sad. I remembered other times when prophecies came to me in the past, I would cry, and to me it was almost as if God is so big, and so impossible to contain, that even when you get a little bit of Him flowing through you, that it's too much for a human being to hold, and all you can do is cry, because there is an overwhelming sense of awe that comes with His presence. I stood up, and walked over to E. and told her what I saw. It rang true to her situation and who she is.

Then later, it happened again, I saw something clearly for my friend B. and shared it with her. She started to cry then laugh as I told her. When she recovered, she explained to all of us that this tied in to an image she has been seeing in her mind for a long time, and with a movie she saw last night that spoke to her about some situations currently in her life. She said how spooky this place was (meaning our church) but I thought to myself, no that's not us, that's just God. He tends to do stuff like that, but it never ceases to amaze me. I mean, he gives me clear cut visual, and verbal prophecy for someone, and it's dead on to their life in ways I could have never known before hand! So, the high point of my night was operating in the spiritual gifts that God had once bestowed upon me, that I somehow lost touch with over time. The bell is finally sounding again.

Our culture is fascinated with the spiritual -- people flock to psychics and those who claim to be able to contact the dead, but they're missing the whole point. That's all counterfeit. It's a pale shadow of what God does. That is the insidiousness of all of the spiritual realm that occurs apart from God The Father, Jesus The Son, and The Holy Spirit -- it's an imitation that passes for the real. Some women in my knitting group were discussing J.'s trip to a psychic. J. admitted that a lot of the stuff that the psychic said was general, and based on fishing for information, but that some of it was stuff he never could have known about her beforehand or otherwise. What struck me as so boneheaded about it was not that she believed that he had told her something valid, but that she didn't even bother to question how someone could have that "gift," or where the ability to know secret information about her comes from. In the case of a psychic, that gift does not come from God. Oh, it's true that perhaps this person would have the gift of prophecy or of discernment if they were a follower of Christ, but in the absence of a relationship with God, that sort of propensity or "talent" is easily manipulated and counterfeited by satan. Oh yes, I'm sure I won't win any fans on this one -- so few people believe in satan anymore, much less know how he operates. The mention of satan being behind anything at all is for religious wackos, Bible-Thumpers, fundamentalist bigots, etc. I'm none of the above, but I know that satan exists just as much as I know that God exists.

I also know that people are hungry for spiritual experience. The new age movement shows that people are so hungry for spirituality that they think it can be bought with large sums of money. The growth of Wicca, and other forms of neo-paganism are on the rise because church has become irrelevant, and so much of organized religion is filled with hypocrisy and worse. Not to even mention the growth of people practicing the more spiritual of the yoga disciplines, Buddhism, and the Kabbalah trend. Islam is also growing around the world, despite their semi-bad rep. The Catholic church is riddled with corruption and sexual abuse scandal. The mainline protestant denominations and much of evangelical Christianity has become so culturally irrelevant that people have left in mass exoduses. I agree that "The Church" is in crisis. However, God is the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow. He is my only hope. Not Christianity, not "The Church".

However, I am blessed to be part of a great church. There are no false pieties among us. We are as real as real gets. I'm one of the few lucky ones that is doing church, not playing church. But far too often, this is not the case. I spent my entire life as a Christian, and it's only been in the last three years that I have found a place that is real. People who are not holier than thou, legalistic, squeaky clean. People sometimes curse, and no one drops dead over it. At the yearly church BBQ, you'll find beer in our coolers. I wear black a lot, have a nose ring, and sometimes dye strips of manic panic colors into my hair -- my pastor was the biggest fan of all the hair color changes.

However, the outward stuff is the least of it. Yes, I grew up a punk, new wave and goth chick, but that's hardly the most incendiary identity in my arsenal. Though I'm going to oversimplify here, the eighties were the time I formed my musical identities, and the nineties were when I formed my sexual identities, as identity politics was in full swing on college campuses and in other sectors of society. The lesbian sex wars happened. The schism between radical feminists like Dworkin, and lesbian feminists like the crew of the lesbian sex magazine "On Our Backs" run by Susie Bright and her ilk was in progress, and the debates were often very heated. Even further afield was Pat Califia and the s/m dykes of the "Coming to Power" anthology. I read the radical feminist diatribe "Against Sadomasochism" at the same time I was totally fascinated by my reading of "Coming to Power". I'm politically moderate, but left-leaning. I come from a radical left background of student activism. I was the chair of our campus Center for Womyn's Concerns. Yes, we did spell women with a y. We spent a lot of time talking about how to convince more women to join, and to banish the notions that we were all a bunch of dykes. We'd hold these meetings and they consisted of three lesbian couples, including me and my then partner, L. The funny thing is, we were a bunch of dykes. I remember chastising one of the couples when they didn't show up for an important meeting, or forgot to Xerox the latest flyers; I turned to one of them and barked: "Well, if you could get your face out of her cunt once in a while, maybe we could get some work done!" Oh yes, I took my activism damn seriously!

I'm bisexual, though currently abstinent on all fronts for faith reasons (I won't lie, sometimes that really sucks). I have a background where I was very involved in the leather communities, i.e. S/m, D/s, and all the other letters. On the spiritual front I used to be what is now regretfully dubbed "Christo-pagan" (the term makes me cringe). I had a lot of pagan friends. I was the only Christian who hung out in the coven made up of my friends. My one friend Pooh came up with a title for me, he called me "a pagan for Jesus". The contradiction in terms inherent in that moniker was evident to me then, but I was dualistic. I read tarot cards for people and was eerily accurate. I read rune stones. I played with just about every divinatory system available. I was into astrology. I took Reiki I and II. I went to an all women's full moon circle once. I participated in a few of the covens rituals and holidays. The summer when I first started my relationship with L. I was 21, and I studied "The Spiral Dance" by Starhawk more than I read the Bible. Over the years I bought so many books on all kinds of non-Christian spiritual topics that when I decided to discard or burn all my pagan holdings a few years ago I was shocked at how huge my library of metaphysical, and pagan books was. I also had so many tarot decks, plus Celtic book of the dead cards, a few sets of runes, etc. It took a bonfire and lots of garbage bags.

Back to the present day, and my church: My pastor is a woman. I belong to the first Vineyard church to have a female pastor. She has paved the way for others now in our consortium of fellowships. The Vineyard is most a group of churches with similar philosophical beliefs rather than what I'd call a denomination. Nevertheless it is only since finding the Vineyard movement that I have found what it means to have freedom in Christ. The prior 33 years of being a Christian were sheer misery. So much so, that I completely walked away from the church for years at a time. But that is a story for another time. The prodigal years. I learned a lot. Experienced a lot. Got the shit kicked out of me a lot.

I finally reached the end of that though a few years ago. I walked in to the Vineyard, or rather crawled in, because I'd hit total bottom, and I stayed. I'm not sorry. It's a decision I will never regret, no matter how hard it's been or how much of my old life had to die. Just as there are birth pangs, there are death pangs too. The old self tries to hold on for all its worth. It's hard to let go, sometimes your scars are all you think you have, and you mistake your own damage for a personality. So healing can actually feel like dying, but all that is dying is that which is already dead. So I have been learning to let go of all the dead parts of me, even when they try to dig themselves up like the persistent zombies they are. They try to convince me I need them to go on, that they are the best parts of me, the parts that make me who I am, the facets that make me most interesting. Sometimes I almost believe them, until the stench of their putrifying flesh begins invading my nostrils, and then I send them back to the pit where they came from.

Spamming the Lamb

2005-08-16T19:15:00.000-04:00

You know what boils my blood? OK, I know you didn't ask but I'm going to tell you anyway. What irks me is that on my first ever little post, I got spam, and out of that spam, two comments were "Christian" spam. I am already a Christian, and do not need to be evangelized. If Jesus was here today, I think he'd chastize those who spam in his name just as much as he threw out the money changers from the temple. Isn't hawking religious T-Shirts pretty much the same as selling in the temple? It's just as odious. It's just as non-Christian. It's just as offensive. And if it offends me, and I'm a follower of Christ, how much more does it offend non-believers? -- the intended audience for these spam messages. I have said it before and I will say it again, these kind of "Christians" are the worst P.R. reps Jesus ever had. I think Jesus, the reputation of Christians, and Christianity as a whole would do a lot better without these sorts of people.

Postscript: I'll update this to say that these people are the ones I most need to forgive. Despite how I feel about what they do, I am still commanded to forgive. This is excruciatingly difficult for me. Unlike far too many so-called Christians, I have no problem with society's outcasts, freaks, weirdos, disenfranchised, broken and bereft people. My heart goes out to any sort of underdog, because that is my tribe. Hey, it was Jesus' tribe too, but too many people have conveniently chosen to forget that, erasing all the dirt smudges from their Bibles in favor of a clean-cut All-American sanitized man made religion built by white men's hands. I can't forgive George W. Bush. I can't forgive Jerry Fallwell, or Pat Robertson. I can forgive any sinner on a street corner though. The problem I've realized though, is that these pharisees are the biggest sinners of them all, and so, I am called all the more to forgive them. Bummer. I will be working on it. All I can say is, I'll try. I'll attempt to be willing to have God supply forgiveness in my heart for these people. The larger and louder part of me just wants to brand them as betrayers of the faith, and call them to repent. Then I remember that God is their judge. God and God alone. Justice is His. Justice will be done. My job is not to try to do God's job of judging. Besides which, I will be judged with the measure that I judge, so unless I want God to get out a magnifying glass and scrutinize my flaws, I have to lay off on doing so to others. Sometimes being a real Christian sucks. "God, do I really hafta forgive Dubya?" :::shudder::: "OK, OK, I'll think about it...I'll try..." *sigh*

I'm here

2005-08-15T06:57:00.000-04:00

I have arrived, and after sorting through all the names I couldn't have, I finally have came up with something that no one else had claimed yet. After all that, I'm too tired to write a real post.

I promise, all my future posts will not be this scintillating, because I care about the well-being of your heart, and I don't want to over-excite anyone or cause undue stress. I'm concerned for the state of strangers like that. Yes, just call me Miss Empathy.

Unsayable

Requiem

The light always burns the brightest in the core of a flame: Grant McLennan

Seems you were gone before... Goodbye Syd Barrett

No Exit Mr. Sartre?

An American Independent

Father's day aftermath

I miss...

For You

Back Home

Weddings Make Me Nauseous & My Busy Week(s)

A City Works its Magic: New York

Tagged

Slideways

a recent collage of mine

on the mend

(un)holy moodswing batgirl!

Idle workshop, devil's hands

Bad Blogger, Bad Bad!

In my secret place...

Love

Spent

Sadness, Beauty, Pathos

Safe Landing

& now a lovesick pause to make ya'all queasy

Monday Update

w00t!

Metamorphosis

Less of me...

New Chapter already in progress...

Quarter to Three

Death Knell b.1996-d.2006

Babel Babble

Things are changing...

I confess...

Invisible Changes

7 Things... (*newly updated as of this evening)

Ultra Violet Light

El Genius

Inside me

*OW*!!!

no clever heading

Fall Out

Age & Other Beasts

I must be regressing...

Oracles

The Momentous Return to My Blog! -- I know you've all been waiting, all 2.5 of you

This just in...

*Poof*! Now they appear!?!

WTF?

Virtue Real vs. Virtual

Things Are Good

Posting this so I will remember

Metamorphosis

New Feeling

mute

Diagnosis

I Resign As My Father's Keeper: Effective Immediately

Reasons to be cheerful: part zero

perspective

list

hesitation

Off the Map: the b-side of the story

Off the Map

Zing Boom!

pointless

The Shaking

...and another thing...

My life is brutal

fable

Up from the Ashes

Clean

petite progress

Thus begins my tale...

To my suffering friend...

Little triggers pull big guns...

* "How am I not myself?"

home fires

For want of her form curled on the floor

Memento Mori

OW!!!

Poof! Now they appear!?!