Showing posts with label Detritus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Detritus. Show all posts
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Monsoon Sonata
There will be rain at last. The parched desert floor and my sinuses are grateful. I am battling my lack of energy by engaging myself in more projects, both at work and outside of it. Hoping my life will get more well organized as a side effect. Some of it has to do with missing my father and grandfather, I think. They were undeniably smart and undeniably ethical and had character. Somewhere inside me I have that too, I am still that 19 year old would-be agitator, reading "I Rigoberta Menchu" and hanging out with radicals in the PCC basement cafeteria. I still believe there are differences to be made and battles worth fighting. But if I'm going to fight them, I'd just as soon do it in a monsoon downpour.
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Indie Proverbs
Saw "A Serious Man" about a month ago and "The Box" last night. The gist of both stories being, basically, humans are fallible but Karma will still get us in the end...heavy underlying religious themes in both. What is with the sudden rash of indie film moral quandry mongering? Actually really enjoyed both films. When I saw "A Serious Man," it was in a theater and the audience erupted in nervous laughter at the ending. It was much like that line in "A Day In the Life." A crowd of people turned away...
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Back on the horse again, but will likely fall off of said horse as per usual...
So, I signed up for WRT 102 for the third time in my life. Such damned irony. I was at one point going to be an English major and get a PHD and all of these grandiose stupid plans. I was going to be a writer. But my writer’s block always got in the way of the writing aspirations. Because fate has a sarcastic sense of humour.
WRT 102 attempt number one: Fall 1992. I actually aced the class this time. Loved the class. The teacher was, how shall we put it, colorful. She put a very multicultural, anti-colonialist spin on traditional American literature, I recall. I dominated many a heated debate in class. My letter grades were A’s. All was well.
But in order to get credit for the class, she required that our journal be 100% complete and there was, I think, one essay or so that I never quite got off the ground and I turned the thing in anyway. So she gave me an incomplete. and proceeded to go on a two year long sabbatical. I was told I could not get a complete in the class until the instructor provided requirements for changing my status. No one had an answer for what to do since the instructor was unavailable.
I gave up and singed up to retake the class in the Summer Session, but ended up dropping it to take something else, don’t recall my reasoning at the time.
Retook it in earnest in Spring of 1994. Honors level, this time, and again I was doing well. Then got a nasty bout of the flu and was out of school for two weeks straight and ended up dropping most of my classes, including that one. After that, I moved out of the house and out on my own and tried working full time while going to school, but could never quite get the hang of that.
The list of my dropped and incomplete coursework is about 36 credit hours long. I still don’t understand how I can have been so bright and so good at the college courses I actually manged to finish and yet so quick to give up entirely. I have about half of the credits I would need for a philosophy degree wit a minor in humanities, but still need a math, a science and stupid writing 102 to even get an official associate’s degree.
A fine representative of gifted education am I – one of the best educated Community College dropouts you will ever meet.
Now a year and a day after my father died, I am taking the stupid class again and trying to go back to school a tiny bit at a time. Trying to get my money under control, and keep my household managed and my children well parented. Trying to be a force of unification and responsibility at work. But I look at my college transcript online or the years old neglected debts in my mailbox, or my messed up teeth in the bathroom mirror and I wonder what the hell makes me think this time is going to be any different?
I am, by nature, a bit of a fuckup. Everything that I touch I am either effortlessly brilliant at or hopelessly faltering, and with a lot of effort I can pass for normal and average and well balanced, but my nature is that I am uneven. Clever, but sloppy. Well intentioned, but chronically behind schedule. Clumsy and susceptible to bruises and spills and the accidental breaking of things I didn’t quite know how to operate. Maybe I can’t help this and my efforts are heroic. Or maybe I just don’t try hard enough.
And the thing is, it FEELS like I’m trying. It feels like I’m trying so hard. But my Dad would sit me down for a lecture every couple of years about how irresponsible he thought I was. Not out of malice – I really think he thought it would help – but all it ever did was make me feel more helpless and failed. And now he’s gone, so matter if I ever finally graduate or get my affairs in order, so to speak, I suspect he left this world (even though we were on good terms) thinking I could do better and not knowing if I ever would.
And yesterday, on the fucking anniversary of his death, my significant other of 5 years spits out an angry diatribe about how I “always let him down” because I had spazzed a couple of things he had asked me to do for him. Pretty much gave me a lecture that echoed word for word a thousand verbal battles with my father when I was in high school/junior high and early college. And even though I think he was just irritated and prone to exaggeration, I thought to myself “See? I’m just like this. I can’t reliably live with other human beings unless I gave birth to them. ” and since then I’ve been curled up into a ball of exhausted despair.
My kids are gone for the weekend, so it is safe to go catatonic. I can’t talk to L. without bursting into angry tears. My mom wants to meet me for dinner, but I don’t know whether to tell her what a mess I am, although my face is all puffy and red and it’s obvious. Probably 90% of this is hormones and stress, lack of sleep, time delayed grief and simply not having had a weekend to myself in over a month.
The other 10% is seeing my damned transcript in black and white – a testament to my terminal lack of discipline and drive spanning the course of many years. I should be happy – most of my credits still count, some of them over 19 years old.
WRT 102 attempt number one: Fall 1992. I actually aced the class this time. Loved the class. The teacher was, how shall we put it, colorful. She put a very multicultural, anti-colonialist spin on traditional American literature, I recall. I dominated many a heated debate in class. My letter grades were A’s. All was well.
But in order to get credit for the class, she required that our journal be 100% complete and there was, I think, one essay or so that I never quite got off the ground and I turned the thing in anyway. So she gave me an incomplete. and proceeded to go on a two year long sabbatical. I was told I could not get a complete in the class until the instructor provided requirements for changing my status. No one had an answer for what to do since the instructor was unavailable.
I gave up and singed up to retake the class in the Summer Session, but ended up dropping it to take something else, don’t recall my reasoning at the time.
Retook it in earnest in Spring of 1994. Honors level, this time, and again I was doing well. Then got a nasty bout of the flu and was out of school for two weeks straight and ended up dropping most of my classes, including that one. After that, I moved out of the house and out on my own and tried working full time while going to school, but could never quite get the hang of that.
The list of my dropped and incomplete coursework is about 36 credit hours long. I still don’t understand how I can have been so bright and so good at the college courses I actually manged to finish and yet so quick to give up entirely. I have about half of the credits I would need for a philosophy degree wit a minor in humanities, but still need a math, a science and stupid writing 102 to even get an official associate’s degree.
A fine representative of gifted education am I – one of the best educated Community College dropouts you will ever meet.
Now a year and a day after my father died, I am taking the stupid class again and trying to go back to school a tiny bit at a time. Trying to get my money under control, and keep my household managed and my children well parented. Trying to be a force of unification and responsibility at work. But I look at my college transcript online or the years old neglected debts in my mailbox, or my messed up teeth in the bathroom mirror and I wonder what the hell makes me think this time is going to be any different?
I am, by nature, a bit of a fuckup. Everything that I touch I am either effortlessly brilliant at or hopelessly faltering, and with a lot of effort I can pass for normal and average and well balanced, but my nature is that I am uneven. Clever, but sloppy. Well intentioned, but chronically behind schedule. Clumsy and susceptible to bruises and spills and the accidental breaking of things I didn’t quite know how to operate. Maybe I can’t help this and my efforts are heroic. Or maybe I just don’t try hard enough.
And the thing is, it FEELS like I’m trying. It feels like I’m trying so hard. But my Dad would sit me down for a lecture every couple of years about how irresponsible he thought I was. Not out of malice – I really think he thought it would help – but all it ever did was make me feel more helpless and failed. And now he’s gone, so matter if I ever finally graduate or get my affairs in order, so to speak, I suspect he left this world (even though we were on good terms) thinking I could do better and not knowing if I ever would.
And yesterday, on the fucking anniversary of his death, my significant other of 5 years spits out an angry diatribe about how I “always let him down” because I had spazzed a couple of things he had asked me to do for him. Pretty much gave me a lecture that echoed word for word a thousand verbal battles with my father when I was in high school/junior high and early college. And even though I think he was just irritated and prone to exaggeration, I thought to myself “See? I’m just like this. I can’t reliably live with other human beings unless I gave birth to them. ” and since then I’ve been curled up into a ball of exhausted despair.
My kids are gone for the weekend, so it is safe to go catatonic. I can’t talk to L. without bursting into angry tears. My mom wants to meet me for dinner, but I don’t know whether to tell her what a mess I am, although my face is all puffy and red and it’s obvious. Probably 90% of this is hormones and stress, lack of sleep, time delayed grief and simply not having had a weekend to myself in over a month.
The other 10% is seeing my damned transcript in black and white – a testament to my terminal lack of discipline and drive spanning the course of many years. I should be happy – most of my credits still count, some of them over 19 years old.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
el día siguiente
Current mood: 
contemplative
New Year's Eve...somehow hadn't got the spine for it this year.
I stepped into the cold parking lot of the neighborhood Denny's for takeout hamburgers at 7pm in my leather jacket and plum Converse One Stars under an unexpected full moon. Spend most of the night curled up on the couch reading a book on my Android phone. At midnight, we watched Squidbillies and I drank a lonely glass of Bushmills Irish Whiskey and stepped outside to watch the neighborhood fireworks. New Year's Eve, I was inexplicably melancholy and chilled to the core and felt like the world might end around me with its proverbial whisper. Could only think that next year would be better. Don't know what it was. Well that's not true. It was a lot of things. It was a REALLY LONG year. A quiet year. A year for loss and subtle change and disappearing by degrees.
This year is a year for building things and changing things and turning appropriate molehills into mountains. A year for not saying "no" just because it's easy. A year for being, not simply observing...
contemplativeNew Year's Eve...somehow hadn't got the spine for it this year.
I stepped into the cold parking lot of the neighborhood Denny's for takeout hamburgers at 7pm in my leather jacket and plum Converse One Stars under an unexpected full moon. Spend most of the night curled up on the couch reading a book on my Android phone. At midnight, we watched Squidbillies and I drank a lonely glass of Bushmills Irish Whiskey and stepped outside to watch the neighborhood fireworks. New Year's Eve, I was inexplicably melancholy and chilled to the core and felt like the world might end around me with its proverbial whisper. Could only think that next year would be better. Don't know what it was. Well that's not true. It was a lot of things. It was a REALLY LONG year. A quiet year. A year for loss and subtle change and disappearing by degrees.
This year is a year for building things and changing things and turning appropriate molehills into mountains. A year for not saying "no" just because it's easy. A year for being, not simply observing...
Sunday, August 30, 2009
It's 10:45, I'm still alive, I'm still alive...
Haven't posted much recently. Low energy mainly has caused me to lurk and be generally low outut. Apparently there was an internal cause that I missed - for all this. Low calcium (dangerously low) and then low potassium. Ended up in the hospital - same one I spent my 16th summer in (PTSD Details to be hashed out later) and barely avoided a heart attack or coma. Must take better care of myself, obviously. Want to be alive and productive and all that shite...Finally have internet at the hospital - yay! Want out of here ASAP! Vibes for calcium levels are cordially requested :)
Love a very pale and weary but determined Corbid.
Love a very pale and weary but determined Corbid.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Of Sunday breakfast, Hackintosh Envy and Ian Svenonius
I wake on a Sunday and my small children brag about how many bowls of cereal they can eat in one sitting. Apple Jacks. We went to the regular grocery store for a change, instead of the socially responsible grocery store. My vehicle is out of commission and beggars can't be choosers. Listening to Rasputina on Rhapsody and wishing I had more money. I have been coveting a $399 Dell Mini "Hackintosh" netbook that keeps popping up on eBay - like I'm not using enough operating systems as it is. I am a Geek of all trades, master of none, and a fickle one at that. Egg salad on rye toast with licorice tea for my breakfast. Reading "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell." Finally getting around to watching "Heroes" on Netflix. Maybe going to see Ian Svenonius's new band "Chain and the Gang" on Wednesday, if I can hitch a ride with someone or other. I love the crap out of Ian Svenonius. Saw his last band "Weird War" a couple years back at Solar Culture and no one would go with me, therefore none but I witnessed the amazingness that was a Weird War live show. One of the best Tucson live music experiences I've had of the last few years, I shite you not. I realize that all of this was very very boring, but I have to get back in the habit of writing before by brain dries up in my ripe Gen X old age. I can't afford, like, basic transportation expenses, but somehow have stumbled into all of this technology on the cheap. I am spoiled by secondhand capitalism. Grateful, but spoiled and tethered to the house like one of the Lotophagi from the Odyssey. I need to get out and live a little before my skeleton completely fails on me and my taste atrophies from neglect.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
At the Safeway Deli, where choice is not king...
Me: I want a two piece chicken with potato salad for one of my sides and...
Safeway Clerk: No! You can only get the sides that go with the chicken!
Me: Ok, which sides go with the chicken then?
Safeway Clerk:You can only have the JoJo potatoes
Me: Then why does it say I have a "choice" of two sides?
Safeway Clerk: (Stares Blankly)
Me: Well, those don't look very good. Could I get just the chicken?
Safeway Clerk: You could get an 8 piece of just chicken for $6.99
Me: No thanks. Um, can I have one of the "meals to go" maybe? The pot roast looks good.
Safeway Clerk: Those are cold, though, ma'am.
Me: Um, anyway you can heat them?
Safeway Clerk #2:I think we could use the microwave...
Safeway Clerk #!: No, those are supposed to be cold.
Safeway Clerk #2: You could always have the chicken meal, it's hot and it's really good. It comes with the JoJo potatoes.
Me: Never mind...
Safeway Clerk: No! You can only get the sides that go with the chicken!
Me: Ok, which sides go with the chicken then?
Safeway Clerk:You can only have the JoJo potatoes
Me: Then why does it say I have a "choice" of two sides?
Safeway Clerk: (Stares Blankly)
Me: Well, those don't look very good. Could I get just the chicken?
Safeway Clerk: You could get an 8 piece of just chicken for $6.99
Me: No thanks. Um, can I have one of the "meals to go" maybe? The pot roast looks good.
Safeway Clerk: Those are cold, though, ma'am.
Me: Um, anyway you can heat them?
Safeway Clerk #2:I think we could use the microwave...
Safeway Clerk #!: No, those are supposed to be cold.
Safeway Clerk #2: You could always have the chicken meal, it's hot and it's really good. It comes with the JoJo potatoes.
Me: Never mind...
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Gwenhwyfar lived to be old, Elaine did not...
...and the girls we once were float down the River to time and go under. Drowned, we all assume.
But then again...lots of unexplained, feminine looking, sword brandishing hands emerging from the misty waters in these stories...had to have come from somewhere, originally...it's not as though they ever found the bodies...dead is not always so very dead in faery tales...
Strange dreams and disrupted R.E.M. Sleep as a direct result of bizarre Jungian reading material...
Found a copy of a book I read when I was 17 or thereabouts. I remember the gist of it, but none of the actual story.
Forgot what an esoteric MythoLiterary Geek I used to be...
I asked for an Oxford Unabridged dictionary for Christmas when I was 15 and improvised a TV Tray podium for it and the purloined single volume patent leather bound Complete Works of Shakespeare that I had snuck off the family reference shelf to read for fun in moments of idle brooding.
I used to keep a photocopied black and white portrait of Percy Shelley in my notebook the way most teenage girls pin up bubblegum idols. Ask Lizzie. Lizzie was way more Lord Byron. Coincidentally, or maybe notsomuch, Bowie around that time did a short film for the "Blue Jean" extended video in which he played a character called "Screaming Lord Byron."
The fish ate Shelley's face. That's how he died, or rather he drowned in Italy, but by the time they found his body the fish had eaten his face. It seemed important to us at the time, but of course by then he'd have been long dead anyway...
But then again...lots of unexplained, feminine looking, sword brandishing hands emerging from the misty waters in these stories...had to have come from somewhere, originally...it's not as though they ever found the bodies...dead is not always so very dead in faery tales...
Strange dreams and disrupted R.E.M. Sleep as a direct result of bizarre Jungian reading material...
Found a copy of a book I read when I was 17 or thereabouts. I remember the gist of it, but none of the actual story.
Forgot what an esoteric MythoLiterary Geek I used to be...
I asked for an Oxford Unabridged dictionary for Christmas when I was 15 and improvised a TV Tray podium for it and the purloined single volume patent leather bound Complete Works of Shakespeare that I had snuck off the family reference shelf to read for fun in moments of idle brooding.
I used to keep a photocopied black and white portrait of Percy Shelley in my notebook the way most teenage girls pin up bubblegum idols. Ask Lizzie. Lizzie was way more Lord Byron. Coincidentally, or maybe notsomuch, Bowie around that time did a short film for the "Blue Jean" extended video in which he played a character called "Screaming Lord Byron."
The fish ate Shelley's face. That's how he died, or rather he drowned in Italy, but by the time they found his body the fish had eaten his face. It seemed important to us at the time, but of course by then he'd have been long dead anyway...
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Gratefulness: 7 things on a Sunday Morning
1)Listening to our local "pirate" radio station run by baby Anarchists:www.freeradiochukshon.org2)Breakfast is hostess cupcakes and mexican dark coffee with cream on the porch with candles and incense and the Sunday paper. Dishes can wait...
3)We won, we won, we fucking won...I volunteered my time and $5 I couldn't afford to a candidate that actually won! I kind of feel like a Timequake has occurred (apologies to K. Vonnegut) and the spiritual resurgence of Clinton era ideals actually makes me 19 again somehow. I feel like it's finally safe to start my life over again and do things right this time.
4)Time is tight and money's even tighter, but I am getting more resourceful by the minute. This morning, for instance, I have thrown a pot of beef stew in the oven for lunch,simultaneously lowering our heating bill and preventing wasteful takeout food spending. If it ever came down to it, I know how to make vinegar out of raw apple cider, for fuck's sake, I got pioneer survival skills, I can certainly live without ordering pizza on a Friday night or two...
5)Spent this Friday night watching Jimmy Stewart movies with my 6 year old and eating white cheddar popcorn and leftover Halloween candy while my 11 year old wrote "littlest pet shop" screenplays in MS Notepad to be acted out with her sister later.
6)Got enough sleep for a change. I could have slept for years. I love it when the seasons change because in summer the daylight and the heat start seeping in early in the morning on weekends and you can never get back to sleep. The downside of our Arizona existence.
7)The depression I didn't know I was in is slowly lifting. My mind is not blocked and I can write again. I feel like I can stand the company of other people again. My thoughts have time to drift again and it feels like the world will not suffer and drown for their drifting.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Election MySpace digest...
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
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Monday, November 03, 2008
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Wednesday, October 15, 2008
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luminous
anxious
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Contents Under Pressure May Explode...
Inarticulation has reached critical mass. I have always been so good at holding things together even when I don't hold things together. Pathologically even tempered. Lately though I feel like I am on 24 hour permanent on call status for everyone. I have so much I am responsible for everywhere that I cannot get anything done anywhere. I have reached the proverbial breaking point. One thing on the pile too many. I am a raw and aching nerve. I am irrationally, inexpressably angry and anxious and unable to cope. I know a lot of this is hormone related. The timing is not coincidental - I a bleeding and raging and I am a pathetic disintegrative mess. I think I used to feel this way more often, it's just foreign to me know and I can't process the anger that comes with it, other than to hole up in my room or in a corner and neglect everything I should be doing rather than risk snapping at someone or something. My house is a wreck. There are no clean dishes left. I have to work tomorrow. I can't sleep. My escape the house for the evening plans got cancelled at the last minute. I want to scream and break things or just give up but Ibut I know this will all seem trite and silly in the morning or in a day or whenever it stops.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Saturday, May 05, 2007 Lead will never be gold it is just lead...
Lead will never be gold it is just lead... I am leaden footedly sad. Irrationally, hormonally, moodily, chemically, embedded in my cells depressed. I have gradually holed myself up and lost touch with my friends and family, even more so since the fire. I never go out anymore. I am feeling alone and obsolete. I have a partner who loves me, but he is a stoic German and a social recluse by nature and not really a big help in this instance, no offense. I feel like I am being absorbed into myself. Like I am disappearing and being replaced by something quite like me but more functional and devoid of a soul. This is no one's fault but my own.
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depressed
 | shane  |
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Sunday, April 02, 2006
Thursday, October 20, 2005
That which cannot be competed with...
Fine leathers, triumphs against adversity, and dead ex-girlfriends.
"Good manners and bad breath will bet you nowhere..."
-Elvis Costello
"Good manners and bad breath will bet you nowhere..."
-Elvis Costello
Monday, October 03, 2005
Lazarus Girl Is...
...back from the dead again. For as much as it counts. Thinking it'll be different this time. This carrot will be different. Thinking that life will be good and recognition will be earned and trust will be rewarded. Love's no different whether you go looking for it or it blindsides you. Fairness will always elude the mankind. Intelligence is the curse that it ever was. But here I still am. Buttering my fucking carrots. Hoping the end will be just a little bit better. All that keeps any of us living, realy. The hope that each ending will be a little bit better than the last. The hope that Karmic Justice will prevail but that god will forgive us all the same. Another season. Another chance. Let us wish ourselves well, hope for the best, serve up a nice wedge of carrot cake and dream that things will get better, by and by. I always loved carrots anyhow.
Sunday, December 12, 2004
First the bad news...
I spun my car tonight. Avoiding the same sort of traffic scenario that
nearly did me in the first time. Something inside me snapped and I decided
"This car will NOT hit me!" and as it failed to yield and left turned
almost into me I decided to drive around it. And somehow I did even though
it kept coming, except that at that point "going around it" consisted of
ending up spinning sickeningly out of control and facing the wrong
direction in the fast lane on Kolb, but everyone was able to avoid me and
I was able to stop in time and avoid any damage to my car or anyone
else's. No verdict yet on whether I damaged ME because I discover new
aches and pains hourly, but it may just be initial tension and shock.
Anyway, I faced my demon and lived, right? But for a minute I was sure I
was seconds away from death in the form of twisted metal and broken glass
and the fate once avoided that can never be fully escaped....But the good
news is that 21 year old boys worry enough to call me if I don't show up
at the bar on a Saturday night which is absolutely touching and sweet in a
way that made me kind of forget I was suppsed to be having a panic attack.
But that's never going to be as sweet as someone who brings you a
hamburger without asking because they know you really,really need
it...Holy shite, I could've been killed or something, couldn't I? I just
realized. Fuck. But I wasn't. I'm still here, just a couple of aches and
bruises worse for the wear.
nearly did me in the first time. Something inside me snapped and I decided
"This car will NOT hit me!" and as it failed to yield and left turned
almost into me I decided to drive around it. And somehow I did even though
it kept coming, except that at that point "going around it" consisted of
ending up spinning sickeningly out of control and facing the wrong
direction in the fast lane on Kolb, but everyone was able to avoid me and
I was able to stop in time and avoid any damage to my car or anyone
else's. No verdict yet on whether I damaged ME because I discover new
aches and pains hourly, but it may just be initial tension and shock.
Anyway, I faced my demon and lived, right? But for a minute I was sure I
was seconds away from death in the form of twisted metal and broken glass
and the fate once avoided that can never be fully escaped....But the good
news is that 21 year old boys worry enough to call me if I don't show up
at the bar on a Saturday night which is absolutely touching and sweet in a
way that made me kind of forget I was suppsed to be having a panic attack.
But that's never going to be as sweet as someone who brings you a
hamburger without asking because they know you really,really need
it...Holy shite, I could've been killed or something, couldn't I? I just
realized. Fuck. But I wasn't. I'm still here, just a couple of aches and
bruises worse for the wear.
Friday, December 03, 2004
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Ahhh!!! Shite!!!
Whence hath come this grotesque monstrosity of a pimple upon my chin???
Does drinking give you pimples? I've been laying off the candy, what the fuck???
Does drinking give you pimples? I've been laying off the candy, what the fuck???
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
jealousy
When I was young I thought I knew what jealousy was and I thought that it could be conquered. Jealousy was the scary incongrous thing that showed up every three years or so to make false accusations and leave me curled up in a ball on the floor crying and pleading my absolute innocence. It was a small price to pay, I thought, for what appeared to be unconditional love and acceptance. It didn't happen that often. Everybody's a little carzy, right? So why should I expect the person I loved to be 100% sane? I went along with it. I rolled with the punches. I was a good sport. Then my life grew dimmer and lonelier and I began to realize I was damaged goods, slightly flawed merchandise that was available at a discount. That I was not loved perfectly, nor respected at all. I'd been settled for. And I met Wallace at my little inventory job. We'd ride up to Denver or down to Pueblo or La Junta with about a dozen other people, squished into the van like sardines. We'd spend a good few hours a week in transit and several performing acts of unspeakable data entry and almost immediately we bonded to the point of near inseperability. We got each other's twisted senses of humour. We recognized in each other the grim smile that is only worn by the serially depressed. We instinctively knew it was safe to bitch to each other about our respective relationships and our fucked up childhoods and the fact that we had a nowhere job in a nowhere town where they consistently shorted our paychecks. There was definitely an underlying attraction. The air was heavy with the prospect of uncommitted crimes. The points at which our bodies touched in those crowded van seats were warm and dangerous. If we accidentally touched it felt like an electric shock or a scorpion bite. And we alternately flirted and barraged each other with insult humour and teased each other that we'd say offensive things to each other's spouse and/or fiancee, respectively. And then Wallace disappeared one day and came back ten days later with the news that his girlfriend had dumped and moved back to Seattle to be with her kids. And then things changed. Mostly we'd still laugh and talk and even flirt a little, but there was a bitter edge to everything he said to me. A lot of conversations ended with statements like "guess you better go home to your husband and kids now." Or "You can just get your own damned ladder. Why? Because you're married." I suppose a lot of it was the depression talking (yet again I ask you: why do I find depressed men so alluring?) and some of it was just that I reminded him of his ex. And I was probably a bit of a bitch to deal with myself at the time, having just plunged into the psychic aftermath of a halfhearted but neccessary abortion. After a few months Wallace announced he'd gotten another job and we spent the last three days he was there laughing and talking and even touching knees a little. He gave me his inventory vest when he left and it smelled like him. He hugged me and told me my "quasar" colored Doc Martens looked like someone had thrown up a Crayola 64 pack on them. Three months later, just after I had tended my own resignation, I showed up at work to the familiar presence of a leather jacketed fake blonde boy enveloped in a cloud of Marlborough smoke. He was standing with his back to the wall in a pair of sunglasses, looking like John Lennon in those old Astrid Kurcher Hamburg photos. For one tiny moment I was literally breathless. And then I was a joyously caffeinated little chatterbox for the next two days, until it was time to part once more. We never exchanged numbers and we completely lost touch thereafter. And though we never said anything about it the underlying reason was that even though nothing untoward ever happened we were definitely guilty of something. Thought crime in the first degree. And for the first time in my life I knew what it was to suffer the lash of jealousy and deserve every welt of it. I felt the guilt of the truly guilty. I felt as if I'd committed a grievous sin, atheist that I was. I crucified myself over it for a good many months and behaved as though I'd done something to deserve the worst of punishments. But I never let him touch me and he never even tried.
I used to be good and I used to be loyal. I think I lost my conscience somewhere around the time I lost my hope for a better future. Another day came and another person came along that seemed to know and want and understand me. And this time I was too sad and too tired to fight it and it wasn't what sunk the ship so much as it was the destruction of the remaining lifeboats. And now Jealousy is one of my most constant companions. Jealousy follows my car around and spams up my voicemail on weekends. Jealousy calls up my friends and whines about me when it doesn't have the guts. Jealousy embarrassed me at the bar the other night and shouted at screamed and called me a whore. Accused me of being loved, which is a most horrible crime indeed. With some men if you exhibit the slightest bit of attention and another girl is present, then you end up in Hell where you can't even go to the fucking bar without getting followed into the bathroom and accused of devious machinations and verbally assualted in front of the jukebox by angry vicious women when you just want to play some Nirvana tunes and finish your goddamn Guinness in peace and hope that someone else you know will come in and rescue you if only to prove to the now gathering audience that possibly you might have some acquaintances that are not psychotic. And all of this over a man who doesn't claim to love either one of us and, at least on my end, is not being asked to. I don't want to love him and I don't want him to love me and I certainly don't want to be punished over something as stupid and imaginary as that. She kept shouting things like "You can just have him, then!" like she owns the title and is willing to sign it over to me and he has no say in the matter, or "I guess you two are in Love" like love is some sort of resinous goo that we've stepped into a puddle of and splashed all over us and we'll never be able to wash off of our clothes. The stains will never come out. Even ultra strength Tide won't get the love out of your laundry...Also she said we "deserve each other." Probably she was right with that one. Probably we do deserve each other. We deserve a lot of things, not all of them nice, and "each other" is probably one of them. But I don't want to love or be loved anymore, regardless of who it's with and in what esteem I hold them. Love is just an excuse to take people hostage. Love is a justification for irrational anger. Love is a little box we feel justified in shoving other people into. Love is an act of devouring limitation. Love is an excuse to command and torture. The only relevance love has for me anymore is that it means I'm not allowed to talk to my friends when I most want to. Either a significant other is home and must be paid rapt attention to or a jealous ex husband is set off by god knows what or an ex-girlfriend demands a 24 hour lockdown in exchange for beer and cigarettes. See what I know? I give beer and cigarettes away for free. Apparently I'm not charging enough.
Perhaps I am a simple bitch. Perhaps I am a whore. All I know is that the clock is ticking and the rope is growing thin. I can make allowances for friends who have baggage and needy acquaintances. I've been in my own pair of those shoes and I hated how they fit and I don't envy that at all. Fighting over a guy in a bar, though, smacks too much of a relationship and I'd rather gnaw my own leg off slowly over the course of a fortnight than ever have to fight over someone or endure someone's jealousy or be anyone's prized possession ever again. Apparently I've placed too many of my eggs in one basket. Apparently it's time to diversify. There's got to be more than one man in the world who's intelligent and cute and would rather talk about books with me than invite his bitter ex over for weekly multihour drunken torture sessions. So what if said person doesn't accept me or understand me unconditionally. Maybe it should just be about fucking. If it's just about fucking it'll probably never come to blows, right? Know any cute brainiacs with envious literary taste and no desire for longterm stability? Bonus points if they're depressives of Celtic and/or Viking extraction. Because we all know my proclivities.I judge prospective lovers these days by the cadence of their voices the quickness of their laughter and the size, quality, and content of their bookcases. My ex didn't read anymore and ultimately I think that's what doomed us. He didn't read. I slept with somebody that did. Maybe it's as simple as that. I am a bookslut indeed. Will whore for works of relevant fiction. I am the Harlot who haunts the Borders. Fear me. Ha!
I used to be good and I used to be loyal. I think I lost my conscience somewhere around the time I lost my hope for a better future. Another day came and another person came along that seemed to know and want and understand me. And this time I was too sad and too tired to fight it and it wasn't what sunk the ship so much as it was the destruction of the remaining lifeboats. And now Jealousy is one of my most constant companions. Jealousy follows my car around and spams up my voicemail on weekends. Jealousy calls up my friends and whines about me when it doesn't have the guts. Jealousy embarrassed me at the bar the other night and shouted at screamed and called me a whore. Accused me of being loved, which is a most horrible crime indeed. With some men if you exhibit the slightest bit of attention and another girl is present, then you end up in Hell where you can't even go to the fucking bar without getting followed into the bathroom and accused of devious machinations and verbally assualted in front of the jukebox by angry vicious women when you just want to play some Nirvana tunes and finish your goddamn Guinness in peace and hope that someone else you know will come in and rescue you if only to prove to the now gathering audience that possibly you might have some acquaintances that are not psychotic. And all of this over a man who doesn't claim to love either one of us and, at least on my end, is not being asked to. I don't want to love him and I don't want him to love me and I certainly don't want to be punished over something as stupid and imaginary as that. She kept shouting things like "You can just have him, then!" like she owns the title and is willing to sign it over to me and he has no say in the matter, or "I guess you two are in Love" like love is some sort of resinous goo that we've stepped into a puddle of and splashed all over us and we'll never be able to wash off of our clothes. The stains will never come out. Even ultra strength Tide won't get the love out of your laundry...Also she said we "deserve each other." Probably she was right with that one. Probably we do deserve each other. We deserve a lot of things, not all of them nice, and "each other" is probably one of them. But I don't want to love or be loved anymore, regardless of who it's with and in what esteem I hold them. Love is just an excuse to take people hostage. Love is a justification for irrational anger. Love is a little box we feel justified in shoving other people into. Love is an act of devouring limitation. Love is an excuse to command and torture. The only relevance love has for me anymore is that it means I'm not allowed to talk to my friends when I most want to. Either a significant other is home and must be paid rapt attention to or a jealous ex husband is set off by god knows what or an ex-girlfriend demands a 24 hour lockdown in exchange for beer and cigarettes. See what I know? I give beer and cigarettes away for free. Apparently I'm not charging enough.
Perhaps I am a simple bitch. Perhaps I am a whore. All I know is that the clock is ticking and the rope is growing thin. I can make allowances for friends who have baggage and needy acquaintances. I've been in my own pair of those shoes and I hated how they fit and I don't envy that at all. Fighting over a guy in a bar, though, smacks too much of a relationship and I'd rather gnaw my own leg off slowly over the course of a fortnight than ever have to fight over someone or endure someone's jealousy or be anyone's prized possession ever again. Apparently I've placed too many of my eggs in one basket. Apparently it's time to diversify. There's got to be more than one man in the world who's intelligent and cute and would rather talk about books with me than invite his bitter ex over for weekly multihour drunken torture sessions. So what if said person doesn't accept me or understand me unconditionally. Maybe it should just be about fucking. If it's just about fucking it'll probably never come to blows, right? Know any cute brainiacs with envious literary taste and no desire for longterm stability? Bonus points if they're depressives of Celtic and/or Viking extraction. Because we all know my proclivities.I judge prospective lovers these days by the cadence of their voices the quickness of their laughter and the size, quality, and content of their bookcases. My ex didn't read anymore and ultimately I think that's what doomed us. He didn't read. I slept with somebody that did. Maybe it's as simple as that. I am a bookslut indeed. Will whore for works of relevant fiction. I am the Harlot who haunts the Borders. Fear me. Ha!
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated...
I've been feeling somewhat rather like shite on and off and things suck no less than usual, for the most part, but I am in fact still breathing for those of you who may have expressed concern. Love and lollipops from the Corbidful One who does not die no matter what they do to her.
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