Category: verbal

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litany of plaint

typically, I am a bear when sick, and this week is no exception. poor chris. who has been sick all week, too, and who has been unerringly thoughtful and generous. which only makes me feel like a bigger craphound to complain. but it is 3 a.m., I’m feeling evil, and the only thing for it is to make a whingeing list until I’m all whinged out.

bloody mother of holy… this thing has gone into my ears now. I mean, crshdafugodblessit. this is only the weekend of my single favorite event all year, camping at janet and eliot’s farm for their green barn square dance party– and this year I actually have my own take-along partner and was dead set on dancing myself silly not to mention baking a fresh peach pie and swimming in the pond and listening to all the wonderful musicians and strolling in the sun and chatting with all the delightful creative people, especially the hosts themselves– but NOW– well, cf note about my being a bear when sick = no way I’m likely to enjoy myself as typhoid mary let alone sleeping on the ground with an ear infection and deep cough. so freakin’ cross THAT one off the list. muggafuggashgrr.

oh, but that’s only the cherry on top– ho, I’m only getting started here– also I’m out of freakin’ sick days at work– hahahahahahahahahaha– which says something, or probably several somethings that I can’t begin to contemplate just now– and my bank balance is hovering over kerplunk and my car insurance is due and my cell phone bill overdue and my city sticker expired and the move looming and packing/purging 100% unbegun and the cats neglected in my pretty much abandoned apartment because I just don’t have enough energy to spend time everywhere. and the cats. well, the cats are going to live with my sister’s family, which couldn’t be a happier solution to the dreadful dilemma all around, but still it sucks and still I’m worrying that it won’t go okay, for my sister, or her kids, or the cats themselves, or her husband, yadda yadda yadda. but it’s a solution, so I’ll drive them out there, yowling the entire way over the 4th of july weekend. and doubtless it will all work out, and my sister is a saint, but I feel like a hag and I miss them already. and I miss george and still have terrible flashbacks of that one awful day– listen, if your dog ever gets bloat,  just euthanize. don’t wait. just do it. seriously, do it fast. don’t go through it, and don’t put your dog through it. don’t rack up the emergency vet bills. don’t drive your dog across town in traffic in the back of a taxi on a stretcher, getting all tangled up in and biting at the straps, though heavily sedated, trying to bite you, whom he adores, your dog, the angel, because he’s in such awful pain. just don’t. end it. right away. it will be the kindest thing all around.

don’t get me wrong, universe– I’m seriously grateful. you’ve given me truly stunning love– he and I, we have an incredibly rich and companionable and creative and challenging and gorgeous horizon before us– we have sweetness and hilarity and grit and volume and complexity– but right now just sucks. I’m cranky and horrible and feeling ever so sorry for myself. oh, I know I’ve got it so good, really I do, so many blessings it’s just obscene really. and I see the less fortunate every day, wandering the streets around here, arguing with themselves, gesticulating, boxing with demons I can’t even begin to fathom– I see the minimum wage moms struggling so hard, crossing the street little hands in hand, working the long hours, up early up late– and this is even the first world– I don’t begin to know want or pain or hunger or desperation or anguish… yeah, there’s a crapload of guilt on top of and all around this entire thing– but still. I’m sick of being sick. I’m tired of running so hard and being too dumb to get ahead financially. my damn ear and throat hurt. and my gas tank’s on E. so ppppppphhhhhhhhhhtt. so there.

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tag, I’m it again

meme-tagged by miz bodibound…

The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

What were you doing 10 years ago?

I had *just* moved to iowa from north carolina and was waiting out the summer for the workshop to begin. living in a rented apartment in a house with other people for the first time in years– the dogs would bark, nervous from the move and new circumstances and sounds, and the neighbors would call the landlord, who would call me. it became quickly evident that it was an unworkable situation, and I was shopping for a house. here, let’s let my former self speak for me, care of the wayback machine:

6/21.
out in the yard just after dark the fireflies are starting up their unintelligible shouting morse. I’ve gone the long road of fraught words to arrive at a horizon of silence. All the lights chatter at me in lost arabic and cyrillic– flashes of syntax and abandoned vowels, consonants turning one another inside out, tuning my ear to emptiness. Here is the fragile flying pattern of non-nonsense– sense to be divined only from the raptures of dream. Surely the bats can read this cursive on the air as they duck and dive in feast– but I, enormous, ponderous and loud, can’t learn the vocabulary fast enough– interloper in the language garden. The daylilies shut themselves under the moon– upside-down pendulums, counting the breeze out in minutes. Such a slippery business, to sift for language– wishing it to ripen in my palm– quixotic fruit that shies out of the light– but such a plum on the tongue when it’s found– such a round sweetness held between the lips. When I close my eyes I see brickwork– stacked patterns verifying the geometry of man– I would escape this willful stronghold, fly into the shapelessness of night, the fold of darkness, real things on the wing. I would throw aside my insistent trowel and the mortar that lodges in my mouth, sticking to my teeth while I sleep. I dream of pulling it off in enormous puttylike stretches, evil tasteless taffy that chokes.

Francis said to Hildegard, There’s a midget in my pocket that does the tango after midnight. Hildegard said, Frank, stand aside, you ruffian– you’re blocking the sundial once again, and it’s nearly time for tea. There’s an ostrich in the garden, and the crocuses are sprouting in autumn– we’ve five times sixpence, and the landlord’s on his route. Hildie, girl, you’re marvelous, cried Frank, the red-lipped rogue, my suspenders fall off sideways, and there’s butter on the backside of my toast. Once I rowed you ’round the Sea of Norway in a copper kettle full of smoke. I’ve livery for Tuesday, but I’ll wait on better weather and my pardon in the post. Frank, my dear and only one, forgive me if I’m shrill, but you’ve emptied all the olives, not a pimento in the house– we’ll have to make Manhattans now and pass out crackers in a dish and hope that Uncle Carlisle will honor us with cheese. Oh, you know I like to bicycle in the middle afternoon– how could you ask the vicar to tea? I’ve lard in my nightcap, the dogs all bark at noon, there are pickets round the garden, and, Hildegard, my dear one, the ostriches you mentioned will keep till New Year’s day.

What are 5 things on your To-Do list for today?

  1. go by the apartment and feed/attend to the cats
  2. baby presents!! can’t believe I’ve left it this long… then again, I totally can believe it.
  3. drive to iowa
  4. have coffee with mickie
  5. help karen prepare for jen & adi’s twins shower

Snacks you enjoy?

mmm, snaaaaaaacks… popcorn, breakfast cereal, chocolate pudding, cottage cheese and crackers/chips, carrot sticks, wednesdays (melted chocolate chips and peanut butter– my sister and a friend invented it while they were babysitting years and years ago)

Things you would do if you were a billionaire?

aw man. bodibound’s list is so generous it puts me a bit to shame. I’m a greedy, selfish girl. first thing I’d do is hire my brother in law to manage my money. have him put me on an allowance. then I’d pay off all our various debt. buy a new laptop, as this one’s dying under my fingers, cursor jumping all around the page, screen flickering. buy an iphone. pick up and travel with chris: europe (france, italy, greece, maybe pick one) for now, first off, then later asia and south america. pick a place for artfarm and build it. make a list of folks to invite. set up our studio. set up a business plan. have a baby.

Places you have lived?

  1. Hometown
  2. Lakeville, CT
  3. Ann Arbor, MI
  4. Mountain View, CA
  5. San Francisco, CA
  6. Cartersville, GA
  7. Durham, NC
  8. Beckley, WV
  9. Durham, NC
  10. Iowa City, IA
  11. Chicago, IL

Jobs you have had?

Babysitter, gopher for automobile parts design firm, various food service positions (short order, baking, pantry, barista, banquet waitress ohso briefly– the hairnet), various temp office crap, various admin support positions, video production assistant, software technical support, client services rep, technical writer, greenhouse worker, writing and literature instructor, web developer, project manager for a wallpaper company

Folks you’re tagging for this meme?

Chris, een, LOM, mickie, paul

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self portraiture

it's a somewhat perplexing preoccupation– and, I would imagine, easy to misconstrue. someone who simply glimpsed my compulsive webcam workday diary could hardly be blamed for at least a mild suspicion of narcissism or self-obsession– and, in all honesty, these things are true of me, though not exactly in the way they sound– it's not that I'm so in love with the way I look, it's more like a cipher to me– something I have to keep revisiting over and over again because I can't quite come to terms with it.

I live so very much of my life on the inside of my head– my capacities for interiority are seriously galactic– so the self-portraiture I've engaged in throughout my life very much seems to be an ongoing effort to reconcile the shock of having, of being primarily in the world and to others' perceptions, an external persona: a person who looks like x, y, and z, and that looking-like having far more impact on my relations with other people than any interior selfscape I might experience.
 
I am a girl– ergo, sometimes, probably far more frequently than is optimal, I seriously dislike my own appearance– never satisfied, really, with the way clothing fits, etcetera– all too typical, I expect. I have my self-conscious points about my own physical features, and snapshots I see of me inevitably make me cringe– as if, ogod, is that what I look like to people?? maybe this is vanity, but it seems more to me to be a form of cognitive dissonance.

please please please don't respond to this post with comments about my looks– that is so not what this thing is about. what I wanted to explore here a bit was that phenomenon of self-portraiture– which has been around for ages– we are, if not our own first subjects, close to it. just who the hell is that person in the mirror? there is a disconnect between the physical self and the self who is and speaks and feels and acts. or at least to me there is.

some parts of life bring these two pieces a bit closer together, for instance intimacy– when you are intensively engaged in exploring and experiencing another's interior and exterior selves and vice versa, the two seem to move closer to one another. this is a real gift to experience.

but generally, I don't know exactly, we're more like mental beings, mare's nests of our own histories and preoccupations and predilections, wandering around the world, and making some effort to interact with it through our physical manifestations– which sometimes get wildly misjudged or misinterpreted.

I've represented my "self" in all sorts of media: pastels, oil paints, photographic film, photographic pixels– these are the imagistic counterparts to the words, stories, poems. why must the self become such a compulsive subject? well, I've learned a lot about the cycle of narcissism in recent years– and without going too much into who's done what in my personal history, let me say that I've learned that narcissistic relations are powerfully effecting and play out down the road in all sorts of ways– one might, in response, become themselves a full-blown narcissist, unable to see others really at all– or one might become someone who gravitates toward such people, who tends to render themselves relationally invisible, claiming a persistent supporting role, a kind of hiding-out in the greater glare of another. I've tended to follow the latter pattern, drawn to big personalities and so-called sublimating myself. whatever, it's all a little warped and bent– and much of the effort I make in my ongoing life is to reclaim my own self from these dysfunctional scenarios and to reinvest it more equitably and consciously and responsibly.

okay. I'm not quite sure how to close such a post. lettin' it all hang out, as it were. que sera. who I am is to some extent made day-to-day– this is one of the main ways I track it.

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after tumble, realignment

lately I've been zooming– exhilaration and also no slow quiet time to meander among the various threads of vox posts and comments, to catch up with the 'hood (which has been feeling a little too big actually lately–not that I really want to cut anyone, just feeling that difficulty keeping up), to read and ponder and perhaps a little bit vegetate.

last night I had an evening at home by myself– went grocery shopping, took a bath, threw on slouchy cotton clothes, and did nothing in particular other than refilling the well of quiet and stillness. took george for a walk and savored one especially crystalline moment in the mild night air, gazing up through the pattern of tree branches at the sky. munched on baby carrots and good tortilla chips. watched dumb tv on the web. gloried in the nothing-particular of it.

often there's been too much of this in my life, the alone, nothing-particular time– but fill it up, even with most delicious delights, and I begin to feel like a piece of flimsy fabric, whipping in the wind– and must retreat and recharge. the most literal definition of an introvert, I suppose. also just preternaturally dependent on pockets of clear air for reflecting and mulling– brings me back to a sense of center.

as I stood beneath that tree, I stretched my neck and back and felt a number of soft pops and shifts– literally my spine realigning– and was reminded of the last visit to a chiropractor and the x-rays that showed developing scoliosis in two places– there is a literal emblem in this moment of realignment.

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dating: I feel ill

so. I have not always selected my romantic partners with the utmost care– hell, I don’t know that I’ve actually so much selected them at all– more like closed my eyes and tumbled into whatever was right before me.

I’ve gone in for the headlong plunge time and again. and ended up involved with some guys whose priorities were way off from my own. so this time I’m trying to go about it differently. coached by my counsellor, I’ve recognized and owned that what I want, the bottom line, is a partner. and I posted a pretty comprehensive personals ad to this effect on craigslist (it was a good one, if I do say so myself) and have spent the last week fielding responses and meeting a couple of people. that is, two exactly. got several responses, immediately deleted several, did a couple of exchanges with a handful of others, and at this point two have materialized to the point of going out, one of them twice. these two are pretty great dating prospects, I think– our priorities are way more aligned than I’ve experienced in a really long time, heck maybe ever. I like both of these guys right off the bat quite a lot– and now I feel utterly sick about this whole process: dating, choosing.

I know I shouldn’t feel sick about this, it makes no logical sense– but I do, literally. evidently I’m having a really hard time making the process of getting romantically and physically involved more conscious and mindful. evidently I’m a bit of a junkie to the eyes-closed-forward-plunge approach. instead, now, this way, I have to be more present for and accountable to my decisions. it’s all much more substantively real as a consequence, the stakes higher.

truth be told, the collapse of my marriage eons and eons ago still somewhat plagues me. I do not ever ever ever want to find myself so utterly lost inside of a relationship, so confused and unrecognizable to myself and damaging to someone I love. taking the steps actually, actively, consciously to seek out a partner is terrifying to me.

ohmygod, I’m being very dramatickal and annoying, I know. I’m kind of embarrassed to write about this at all, but I need to process this. it’s cuckoo.

I owe myself the opportunity to be selective. I owe myself the time to gauge how I feel about a person before getting involved physically and having my judgment inevitably swayed by all the complicating that involvement sets in motion. I deserve to seek out the very best alignment of people that is available– and the other person deserves this, too– a sarah who is fully present and engaged and standing open-eyed with her decisions. this should not be something that makes me feel ill.

if you have some thoughts about why in the world this would feel so wrong and crazy-making, I would love to hear them.

possibly it’s a cognitive behavioral thing simply, breaking from the comfortable course of habit to a more difficult unaccustomed way of proceeding, that creates this feeling of “wrongness”.

it’s really kind of awful, though. these are lovely people. and conceivably there are even more lovely people sitting in my email inbox, and I’ve simply hit a point of overwhelm and can’t bear to pursue any more if two is already too many. I don’t trust my judgment, apparently– I question the validity of finding two people so appealing right off the bat– like, maybe I’m not being selective enough. at the same time, I don’t want to not choose either of these people, really dislike the thought of dismissing someone– I know this may sound greedy and gross– what it is is I struggle with boundaries, with saying “no” to people, with disappointing them.

jesus, I feel like a certifiable mess. but I swear– I don’t want to be alone forever, lord help me.

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hooray for friday!

it’s been a heckuva week. I feel like I need to sleep for about a day– but there’s funstuff planned, which also makes me very happy. just get me through today, please– fridays at my place of work can on occasion be racheted-up anxiety fests. I’m keeping my expectations low: somewhat peace and getting a bit of work taken care of. wish me luck. and then weekend.

incidentally, there’s this funny thing about friday night– it always seems like there should be extra hours in it because, yknow, it’s the weekend— but then you get to it and find that it’s pretty much just like any other evening of the week– the sun goes down at about the same time, etcetera. it’s a bit of a mindjam.

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baby needed a nap

sometimes I am pretty much just a complainer complaining. I’m now having poster’s remorse over last, as feeling it’s a misrepresentation of the internal landscape– truth is, I really enjoyed this trip, despite haze of sleep deprivation– i like that I am fairly competent at the work I do and that I can be called upon in these ways, professionally. I like having responsibilities– I guess the lurking truth here is that I’m craving a higher professional profile, and the back seat is simply a metaphor. but I’m still earning my moments at the wheel in this case.

I also want to provide a coda about where the sathead is right now: happyplace. last week this time I was struggling just to tread water– but worked the multi-tiered approach to pulling up one’s own socks– a piece here, a piece there: a good long dogwalk into previously unexplored territory, paying of a couple of bills, some situps, some reaching out to people network, a bit of tinkering at the play table– and wah-la, last night therapy was basically a brag session about how hard I rock.

it’s a rolly rolly rollercoaster, yknow? whiz bang. the view right now has some sunshine and a whiff of spring.

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the tuesday that wouldn’t quit

whew. hello, wednesday, old buddy old pal.

yesterday was one looooooooooo-oooooooooo-ooooooooooong day. and I didn’t even move house or go to court or wait while a loved one had surgery or anything major. it was Just Plain Long. went like this:

1. alarm 4:45 a.m. ouch.– no, wait– this ouch is also contingent on the going out the night before, drinking, staying up too late– yeah, weird for a monday, but they happen. so, yeah, 4:45 a.m. was painful.

2. stumble around getting dressed, etcetera, which process involved accidentally throwing my laptop on the floor. fortunately, my hand was not actually that far from the ground, and it landed on the throw rug screen side down and, thank deities, did not die. I already had enough adrenalin going at that point to jumpstart a groggy elephant.

3. arrive at work building at 5:30 for agreed-upon 5:30 start time– and sit in the cold and dark for colleagues to arrive and do various things inside the building– depart at 6:00. small gr.


4. drive three hours for a business meeting in another state (meanwhile, have I mentioned that I punch a time clock? oh, don’t get me started). got to move out of the back seat and drive for a delightful hour or so– I tend to get carsick– not actually hurling, just green and evil-feeling. car companions work– they talk about work things, they talk to people on their blackberries (once a descent hour arrives), they send email messages on their blackberries– they work. and I? mainly I exist, just shy of evil-feeling.

5. have very good meeting, which involved the need for me to be quite on and lucid and sharp– was not nearly at the top of my game, but managed it, in the main.

6. receive multiple facility tours– which would have been honestly fascinating (working in manufacturing is this incredible new learning process to me), if only I hadn’t felt like the bottom of the cat box. ooh and aah and manage note to run into any machinery and cause a whole rube goldberg type disaster.

7. return to car and ride three hours return in back seat while colleagues mainly continue to talk on and type into blackberries.

8. did I mention the daylong headache?

9. nausea.

10. arrive back at work parking lot just prior to closing time– don’t even step inside, just get in car, drive home, planning to nap.

11. get in bed, in utter delight– and then lie there, unable to sleep because I am actually too tired, for an hour or so.

12. get up and walk the poor desperate dog.

13. return– do various unuseful things in a fugue state, still unable to sleep.

14. start watching grey’s anatomy episodes on dvd and become unable to quit clicking forward to the next one as each ends. those cliffhangers! they getcha. finally, in exhausted self-disgust, eject the disk in the middle of an episode– at 1:30 in the morning.

15. go to sleep.

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I think

vanilla sky was a good moment for tom cruise. when he was with penelope cruz on the world promotional circuit for the film. when it was cruise and cruz. when he was pre-really-super-crazy. just flirting with it.