Friday, December 14, 2007
“What do you write?” My coworker asked at the register as when I told her I had come to buy the notebook to fulfill my yen to write.
“Uh, selfish, self-serving, self-interested prose.” I tell her. She replies with something snappy, but it would be out of character for me to remember what it was.
The yen to write was more a yen to write here at work; to write in public. This, I have always loved, a combination of my two passions—writing, and appearing deeper than I really am. It’s been said of me, when I am writing, that I have a certain aura, that I am different and special and everyone notices—said, of course, by only one person, and only one time, but as it confirmed a secret lifelong suspicion of mine, I will presume he was saying what everyone else was thinking. Ah, the clarity of drunkenness.
So I wanted not just to write, but to be seen writing. To spark the curiosity of others, be on their minds. When I write, I glow. I am focused and intense. I am mysterious and beautiful. I am literate and captivating and ten pounds thinner. Truly, this is the real me.
Thusly, it’s been so disconcerting that I haven’t written in months. This had occurred to me recently, at first with no real concern to it, but increasingly, I realized the urge to write was as absent as the words themselves. This had me feeling, sometimes palpably, nervous. I did not want to write—had my many flighty ambitions spread me so thin that I had finally abandoned the one thing I’d remained true to for years? The one thing that had outlasted every fleeting phase and get-rich-quick scheme, trumped my overdeveloped need for instance gratification and, largely unintentionally, developed over the years into the acutely honed skill that it is, so evidently, today.
Despite this fear, it’s not really accurate to say that the dormant lust for narrative had suddenly awakened within me. Indeed, with very occasional exception, there are only three great motivators in my life: self-loathing, avoidance, and the desire to eliminate split-ends.
In truth, I had gone shopping after work, for lack of reason to go home, and I’d picked out several pairs of size ten pants to try on. Old Navy would have you believe that you are one of three types of woman-- a diva, a flirt,or a sweetheart—and that this classification is in direct correlation with the placed you prefer your pants to rest on your hips. More accurately in correlation to that preference, to my mind, is your ability to accept your actual pant size: you may, in personality, be a diva, but if you are a size ten who fancies herself a size eight, you will not be leaving the store with low-rise jeans. As for myself, in size tens that would have confirmed my status as a mid-rise flirt, a daunting and important decision made through the process of elimination, I looked like the half-stuffed sausage that the butcher forgot. It would seem that in the months of lethargy that have crept slowly in between me and my former, fitness-driven self, I have slipped past my last-chance-for-self-acceptance size of ten. All evidence seems to indicate that I am now a size…oh, I can’t even say it. But it rhymes with "shame."
Faced with a dilemna such as this, a wise woman corrects herself, asks the clerk for the next size up, buys the pants that flatter her body for what it is, and revels in the self-confidence of a real woman. Without that wisdom, a rookie mistake is made: she buys the too-small pants anyway, having no doubt in her naïve mind that within a month or two, she will work down to her preferred size. And the new pants will act as incentive!
How many times have I made that mistake? But no more! I bought a shirt.
The newfound knowledge of my increasingly “real” body instilled in my a great motivation, through the aforementioned self-loathing, to exercise. This quickly gave way to a greater motivation to avoid exercising. And what a great time it was to start writing again.
My hand has gotten sore, I’m clearly no longer acclimated to this kind of work, and I find myself frequently distracted by my hair as it falls to frame the view of my promising notebook. I stop to examine the split ends, one by one, wishing that I could afford some revolutionary therapy whereby a specialist would strengthen my hair by criticizing it’s weakness. This prolonged and obvious contemplation of my own hair portrays, perhaps, the exact opposite image than that of the deep and mysterious literate that I so vie for. I get embarrassed when I am caught doing it, and this has happened once too often, lately. So I am writing here, at work, in public, to dispel this heinous misconception.
My hair looks great when I write.
On with it.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Update 11/02/07:
Since I was all clearly on the warpath there, I thought this update deserved to be right in with this same post.
Today, literally as I was typing in a complaint to the better business bureau, I got a call from Sean (I think his name was) down at Key bank, who read my letter today and went ahead and reversed all my overdraft fees-- including $99 dollars worth that went through today.
I maintain that the business practices of Key, in general, are bad, and that you probably belong at a Credit Union, but this is totally redeeming for the branch in Brunswick, Maine.
Local customer service beats out corporate evil. Good headline.
---
The quick overview of my trouble is this: They claim that four transactions processed on October 26th brought be below Zero-- that is, four transactions each resulted in me having a negative balance.
Aside from the fact that Zack and I checked our balance very carefully before and during our recent trip to Montréal and there was never any indication whatsoever that we might go negative until well after it happened, you can see here that those charges that supposedly brought us negative were processed the same day that both of our Direct Deposits would have more than redeemed them. Anyone with direct deposit will tell you that those deposits go through first thing, 12am or 12:01am, to be specific, and I verified this with our employers. There's no way those other transactions should have gone through first-- even if they, for some reason did, it seems like a heinous misuse of the overdraft fee policy. Overdraft fees are supposed to protect all involve from irresponsible spending. They are not supposed to punish bank users for depending on their bank's accounting or not being able to predict when transactions are going to clear-- it's clear that the money is there to cover the transactions. Processing them in a way that brought the account negative only served to enrich the bank. A total of 99 dollars of overdraft fees that was processed on the 29th.
So, I wrote the bank a letter which I'll have to link to here later-- I'm running out of time before work. In this letter, I requested that they remove the fees, making the same points I did above. Their apparent reaction to this letter was to go back, check the accounting, and realize that they had only processed three overdraft fees instead of four.
As an aside, we checked our balance last night at 11pm to see if the payment for our hotel had gone through yet. We saw that it, and several other transactions, had gone through all at once and it brought our account's projected balance down to 18 cents. The plan was for me to go and deposit some money first thing this morning-- whatever we had around the house, about fifty bucks are so, enough to keep it from going negative until Zack's paid again, tomorrow.
Low and behold, when I got up this morning, they had processed the fourth overdraft charge, which brought the account negative. Then the processed an overdraft charge for the overdraft charge. Then they processed a third overdraft charge for that overdraft charge. Ninety-nine more dollars enriching the bank for no reason, and now I don't have enough on me to bring the balance up above zero.
I'm going to link as many angry, anti-key comments as I possibly can at this point, and they aren't hard to find. If I have time later, I'll classify these a little better. For the time being, enjoy.
Since I was all clearly on the warpath there, I thought this update deserved to be right in with this same post.
Today, literally as I was typing in a complaint to the better business bureau, I got a call from Sean (I think his name was) down at Key bank, who read my letter today and went ahead and reversed all my overdraft fees-- including $99 dollars worth that went through today.
I maintain that the business practices of Key, in general, are bad, and that you probably belong at a Credit Union, but this is totally redeeming for the branch in Brunswick, Maine.
Local customer service beats out corporate evil. Good headline.
---
Time for the battered consumer to fight back. I'm entirely too angry, right now, to back down. Not gonna happen.
This is the beginning of my war against Key Bank.
Eventually, I'm sure it will be a war against every large, impersonal bank that charges exorbinant fees for the purpose of enriching shareholders. The problem here is that it's illegal for a corporation to not act in the best interest of their shareholders, even when it negatively effects their customers or their community (The exception to that being stakeholder corporations, who accept and act upon the responsibility they have to everyone who has a stake in their business, including employees, customers, the community and the environment. L.L. Bean is a good example of this.)
This is the beginning of my war against Key Bank.
Eventually, I'm sure it will be a war against every large, impersonal bank that charges exorbinant fees for the purpose of enriching shareholders. The problem here is that it's illegal for a corporation to not act in the best interest of their shareholders, even when it negatively effects their customers or their community (The exception to that being stakeholder corporations, who accept and act upon the responsibility they have to everyone who has a stake in their business, including employees, customers, the community and the environment. L.L. Bean is a good example of this.)
My job here, our job here, as consumers, is to make sure that it benefits the shareholders for the company to do what benefits us. This generally means that we must throw a screaming, crying fit everytime we get screwed-- enough of one to ultimately effect the stockholder's pocket. Not an easy thing to do in any age, but the power of the internet, of angry, vocal bloggers and forum users makes it easier. So. Let's get started.
First of all, I should point out I had very, very similar problems with T.D. Banknorth, going back to when it was just Banknorth, even. The point ultimately here is this: My money belongs in a credit union. If you are Joe Everyman, your money belongs in a credit union. If you are twentysomething, thirtysomething, struggling to make it, barely making ends meet, you need a credit union. If every time you start to get ahead something happens, if you've ever seen those overdraft fees pile up in and endless cycle that's impossible to catch up with, you need a credit union. Keep in mind that credit unions are member-owned, not stockholder owned. This is George Bailey versus Potter, on the grand scale. Their responsibility is ultimately to those community members who put their money in them. Let that be you.
I know I will, as soon as I get this debaucle cleaned up.
So, why am I starting with Key? Key's the one who is currently screwing me. And while it's policy on a corporate level that is robbing me blind, it's customer service on a branch level that has the power to give me that money back. So my trouble today is very specifically with the Key Bank on Maine Street in Brunswick Maine.
The quick overview of my trouble is this: They claim that four transactions processed on October 26th brought be below Zero-- that is, four transactions each resulted in me having a negative balance.
Aside from the fact that Zack and I checked our balance very carefully before and during our recent trip to Montréal and there was never any indication whatsoever that we might go negative until well after it happened, you can see here that those charges that supposedly brought us negative were processed the same day that both of our Direct Deposits would have more than redeemed them. Anyone with direct deposit will tell you that those deposits go through first thing, 12am or 12:01am, to be specific, and I verified this with our employers. There's no way those other transactions should have gone through first-- even if they, for some reason did, it seems like a heinous misuse of the overdraft fee policy. Overdraft fees are supposed to protect all involve from irresponsible spending. They are not supposed to punish bank users for depending on their bank's accounting or not being able to predict when transactions are going to clear-- it's clear that the money is there to cover the transactions. Processing them in a way that brought the account negative only served to enrich the bank. A total of 99 dollars of overdraft fees that was processed on the 29th. So, I wrote the bank a letter which I'll have to link to here later-- I'm running out of time before work. In this letter, I requested that they remove the fees, making the same points I did above. Their apparent reaction to this letter was to go back, check the accounting, and realize that they had only processed three overdraft fees instead of four.
As an aside, we checked our balance last night at 11pm to see if the payment for our hotel had gone through yet. We saw that it, and several other transactions, had gone through all at once and it brought our account's projected balance down to 18 cents. The plan was for me to go and deposit some money first thing this morning-- whatever we had around the house, about fifty bucks are so, enough to keep it from going negative until Zack's paid again, tomorrow.
Low and behold, when I got up this morning, they had processed the fourth overdraft charge, which brought the account negative. Then the processed an overdraft charge for the overdraft charge. Then they processed a third overdraft charge for that overdraft charge. Ninety-nine more dollars enriching the bank for no reason, and now I don't have enough on me to bring the balance up above zero.
So. The next step, evidentally, is that I will be charged three more overdraft fees for transactions that were below zero because of those three overdraft fees-- transactions that would not have been, were it not for those overdraft fees, and then more for the overdraft fees themselves, until Zack gets paid tomorrow. Ultimately, that will just barely bring us above Zero, even though it's five hundred dollars.
Yeah, I'm not letting this happen.
So, let's cause some dissent here. If Key ignored my letter, and actually used it as fodder to charge me another fee, than I obviously can't use my loyalty as a bargaining chip. The plan right now is to get as many people as possible-- especially people in the Brunswick area-- to read this, and it's eventual predecessors.
I'm going to link as many angry, anti-key comments as I possibly can at this point, and they aren't hard to find. If I have time later, I'll classify these a little better. For the time being, enjoy.
http://www.i8u.org/blog/?p=563
http://www.judysbook.com/cities/cleveland-oh/Banks/12514131/p1/t2/Keybank.htm
http://everydayfeminism.blogspot.com/2006_01_01_archive.html
http://everydayfeminism.blogspot.com/2006_01_01_archive.html
More later, along with helpful quotes.
I think we all know that I could link all day, but I have other, more important phases of this plan to implement. And I have to take a shower, and go to work, to earn more money for key to steal. We will meet again, angry consumers. I promise you that.
On with it.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
"It's not a trick, your senses all deceiving.
A fitful dream, the morning will exhaust.
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra, lost."
"Alexandra Leaving". A Leonard Cohen song-- Leonard Cohen, as in "Hallelujah"-- that I got into several years ago, right around the time I found out that the Shrek soundtrack's version was not, by a longshot, the first version of Hallelujah. The timing was good, for my discovering it. A song about a woman having an affair, falling in love with a man and about to leave her husband, all except more about it from the husband's point of view-- his somber, somewhat self-deprecating inner voice, perhaps-- I first heard it when I was falling in love with Chad, despite Jeff. It went right into a playllist labelled "infidelity" on my MP3 player, along with Robbie Williams "If It's Hurting You" and "Le Tango De Roxanne" from Moulin Rouge.
In those days, I used the music to crystallize the feelings. Basted myself in them. I don't know why I thought this would help, but I got a lot more writing done than I have lately. Easier then, I suppose, to let myself sit in the things I felt-- passing teenaged drama, and I must have always known that in one way or another.
I used to see movies where the female lead was some love-scorned survivor who no longer possessed the ability to open up, who had to be slowly won over by the hero of the film, patiently and strongly. Saccharin shit, like a Backstreet Boys song. I used to think how stupid it was, didn't believe it. I guess I was judging every woman by my own experience, thinking "What woman would fight falling in love?"
Answer: Any woman that has before. That's what I didn't get.
I was open to love, always, consistently, because I never was. I was open to love because I'd never been in love before, and I'd never been in love before because I never really was open to love, if you can see the tainted logic.
There's something I want to say here, about self-sabotage and self-esteem. About one cause creating one effect through two means. About choosing to be with people I loved very much, but also people I knew weren't going to be too sought after. Did I hone the skill to see positive aspects of someone's personality that other people would look over so that I'd never be forced to doubt myself? Or am I lying to myself to think that I ever chose at all? Is the question what would I have done if someone who was competed for by the opposite sex showed interest in me, or is the question about why they did not?
It's very hard to say all this without feeling like I'm insulting my exes, so I almost offer my apologies. But I'm sick of this shit-- not writing because of people's feelings, not writing because of people's perceptions of me, not writing because of my fucking inlaws. I'm getting pretty close cracking on all of those issues, and I care about fewer people every day. Those of you I love, you should know that. Those of you who I don't love, well, I think I've made that pretty clear, too.
I guess it's not really insulting to just those people I used to be with. I wonder, fairly often, how much of my love for Zack is influenced by the lack of deal-breakers. From Feast of Love (Slow, indie-movie fare, by the way. Wait for it to come to video, unless that's really you're thing.), "A lack of disqualifiers is a rare and beautiful thing." People ask me how I knew I was in love with him, from time to time, and I think my most common answer is that with everyone else I'd ever been with, and just even just people I'd spent a lot of time with, there was always, eventually, some action, some behavior that I knew I couldn't stand for the rest of my life; there was never anything like that with him. Maybe love, "true love", is something that starts happening when you meet someone, anyone, and keeps going until it hits something that stops it. Maybe kismet is just not ever finding something about someone else that makes your skin crawl.
"Amie", by Damien Rice, is playing now-- the playlist is just the twelve or so songs I actually payed for on iTunes. The strings in this song are amazing, I always hoped Casey would listen to it. Certain people almost never take my music suggestions. Seriously, anyway. Now, it's an episode of House. Paid for three of those. I'm skipping back to "Alexandra Leaving" so I can find some charming way to wrap this up, all neat and tidy, in a way that's satisfying to the reader. Always thinking of you, I am.
I was thinking earlier that it doesn't have to be a song about infidelity. I mean, it does, but if you're exceptionally good at being obsessively self-centered-- and I am-- you can find another intepretation. It can be a song about losing yourself. I guess every song about infidelity is, though. It's interesting, how, so often, it's something you get involved with in order to find yourself. How so often, it's not until you've gotten really determined to find the parts of you that you feel are gone that you do the thing that really causes loss.
For me, anything close to infidelity-- and I won't say there's nothing close to it-- is about finding my sexuality. Making sure it's still there. Five years of associating sexual encounters with my husband with pain and more pain, five years of wanting and disappointment...it's just easier not to want, I guess. It's really easy to believe that I'm frigid-- a word I too often hear echoing at me now, a word I hate. There are people who remind me that's it's just a word.
"Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving."
I'd been spending some time with one of them lately, and more time thinking about him. Enough time, in fact, that when he wasn't available for a few weeks and I found myself treking up to Orono to see the other one, I had the ironic thought that I was cheating on him. I'm not past the guilt about Zack, but I manage it with a very precise and respected line and excessive, almost cruel amounts of honesty. I tell him everything I have the slightest inclination to, and he's aware that he has the option to know more, know everything. He knows the reality of the situation, or what I've accepted as the reality: that I'm falling. That I'm grasping at what I can.
My day in Orono was nice-- I got treated to a wonderful meal at a fancy restaurant in Old Town with a gorgeous view of the river that served bread with this incredible butter-- but far too appropriate for my wanting. Still, going up to Orono with the goal in mind that, just for one moment, I'd feel that tangible reminder of the girl I was when I liked who I was-- or was closer to being able to fake it-- I couldn't help but shake the feeling that being with one of the men who serve as means to such an end was betraying the other. That if I was with him again, he'd know...I don't know, something damaging to his ego. And I think I believe his ego is the only reason he hangs out with me, anyway.
I guess it came true, without it having any reason to-- Haven't heard from the other guy since, though. Guess I'll have to live out my days getting my thrills from good bread with expensive butter. Say goodbye to Alexandra, lost.
On with it.
A fitful dream, the morning will exhaust.
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra, lost."
"Alexandra Leaving". A Leonard Cohen song-- Leonard Cohen, as in "Hallelujah"-- that I got into several years ago, right around the time I found out that the Shrek soundtrack's version was not, by a longshot, the first version of Hallelujah. The timing was good, for my discovering it. A song about a woman having an affair, falling in love with a man and about to leave her husband, all except more about it from the husband's point of view-- his somber, somewhat self-deprecating inner voice, perhaps-- I first heard it when I was falling in love with Chad, despite Jeff. It went right into a playllist labelled "infidelity" on my MP3 player, along with Robbie Williams "If It's Hurting You" and "Le Tango De Roxanne" from Moulin Rouge.
In those days, I used the music to crystallize the feelings. Basted myself in them. I don't know why I thought this would help, but I got a lot more writing done than I have lately. Easier then, I suppose, to let myself sit in the things I felt-- passing teenaged drama, and I must have always known that in one way or another.
I used to see movies where the female lead was some love-scorned survivor who no longer possessed the ability to open up, who had to be slowly won over by the hero of the film, patiently and strongly. Saccharin shit, like a Backstreet Boys song. I used to think how stupid it was, didn't believe it. I guess I was judging every woman by my own experience, thinking "What woman would fight falling in love?"
Answer: Any woman that has before. That's what I didn't get.
I was open to love, always, consistently, because I never was. I was open to love because I'd never been in love before, and I'd never been in love before because I never really was open to love, if you can see the tainted logic.
There's something I want to say here, about self-sabotage and self-esteem. About one cause creating one effect through two means. About choosing to be with people I loved very much, but also people I knew weren't going to be too sought after. Did I hone the skill to see positive aspects of someone's personality that other people would look over so that I'd never be forced to doubt myself? Or am I lying to myself to think that I ever chose at all? Is the question what would I have done if someone who was competed for by the opposite sex showed interest in me, or is the question about why they did not?
It's very hard to say all this without feeling like I'm insulting my exes, so I almost offer my apologies. But I'm sick of this shit-- not writing because of people's feelings, not writing because of people's perceptions of me, not writing because of my fucking inlaws. I'm getting pretty close cracking on all of those issues, and I care about fewer people every day. Those of you I love, you should know that. Those of you who I don't love, well, I think I've made that pretty clear, too.
I guess it's not really insulting to just those people I used to be with. I wonder, fairly often, how much of my love for Zack is influenced by the lack of deal-breakers. From Feast of Love (Slow, indie-movie fare, by the way. Wait for it to come to video, unless that's really you're thing.), "A lack of disqualifiers is a rare and beautiful thing." People ask me how I knew I was in love with him, from time to time, and I think my most common answer is that with everyone else I'd ever been with, and just even just people I'd spent a lot of time with, there was always, eventually, some action, some behavior that I knew I couldn't stand for the rest of my life; there was never anything like that with him. Maybe love, "true love", is something that starts happening when you meet someone, anyone, and keeps going until it hits something that stops it. Maybe kismet is just not ever finding something about someone else that makes your skin crawl.
"Amie", by Damien Rice, is playing now-- the playlist is just the twelve or so songs I actually payed for on iTunes. The strings in this song are amazing, I always hoped Casey would listen to it. Certain people almost never take my music suggestions. Seriously, anyway. Now, it's an episode of House. Paid for three of those. I'm skipping back to "Alexandra Leaving" so I can find some charming way to wrap this up, all neat and tidy, in a way that's satisfying to the reader. Always thinking of you, I am.
I was thinking earlier that it doesn't have to be a song about infidelity. I mean, it does, but if you're exceptionally good at being obsessively self-centered-- and I am-- you can find another intepretation. It can be a song about losing yourself. I guess every song about infidelity is, though. It's interesting, how, so often, it's something you get involved with in order to find yourself. How so often, it's not until you've gotten really determined to find the parts of you that you feel are gone that you do the thing that really causes loss.
For me, anything close to infidelity-- and I won't say there's nothing close to it-- is about finding my sexuality. Making sure it's still there. Five years of associating sexual encounters with my husband with pain and more pain, five years of wanting and disappointment...it's just easier not to want, I guess. It's really easy to believe that I'm frigid-- a word I too often hear echoing at me now, a word I hate. There are people who remind me that's it's just a word.
"Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving."
I'd been spending some time with one of them lately, and more time thinking about him. Enough time, in fact, that when he wasn't available for a few weeks and I found myself treking up to Orono to see the other one, I had the ironic thought that I was cheating on him. I'm not past the guilt about Zack, but I manage it with a very precise and respected line and excessive, almost cruel amounts of honesty. I tell him everything I have the slightest inclination to, and he's aware that he has the option to know more, know everything. He knows the reality of the situation, or what I've accepted as the reality: that I'm falling. That I'm grasping at what I can.
My day in Orono was nice-- I got treated to a wonderful meal at a fancy restaurant in Old Town with a gorgeous view of the river that served bread with this incredible butter-- but far too appropriate for my wanting. Still, going up to Orono with the goal in mind that, just for one moment, I'd feel that tangible reminder of the girl I was when I liked who I was-- or was closer to being able to fake it-- I couldn't help but shake the feeling that being with one of the men who serve as means to such an end was betraying the other. That if I was with him again, he'd know...I don't know, something damaging to his ego. And I think I believe his ego is the only reason he hangs out with me, anyway.
I guess it came true, without it having any reason to-- Haven't heard from the other guy since, though. Guess I'll have to live out my days getting my thrills from good bread with expensive butter. Say goodbye to Alexandra, lost.
On with it.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
I always thought that if you were to set out to make the most depressing mix CD in the universe, a project I've been interested in for quite some time now, it would, definitively, have to end in Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World." The idea, originally, was to make a CD that would make everyone in the world cry-- somehow, I see this being the part where everyone cracks. Something about it, I don't know. Maybe pure irony. Maybe the terrible pulse of hope. Sometimes, that really is the worst pain of all.
I guess it wouldn't work, a CD to make everyone cry, because in all the forums I've read where people list the most depressing song in the world, I can't help but think of how wrong they are. I downloaded a bunch of them off of one forum at once, I remember. Savage Garden's "Two Bed and a Coffee Machine", certainly a poignant narrative, but somehow not melodic enough to earn the title. AFI's "God Called in Sick Today", well, you'd have to be a very specific kind of fifteen-year-old and deeply affected by sub-par guitar rifts. John Lennon's "Working Class Hero" could do the trick if you were slumped over kitchen table with a bottle in your hand, thinking of how inevitable it is that your life is going nowhere, but it solicits just a bit too much anger to appeal to a purist like myself. And Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again, Naturally" juxtaposition pleasant, tinny melody and simple, devastating lyrics is just slightly too ironic, if you can believe that anything could ever be too ironic, for me.
My own choices have changed over the years as well, obviously. Where once ballads of unreqouited love topped the list (Linda Rondstadt's version of "Long, Long Time", and even- forgive me-- Brandi's "Have You Ever"), my tastes changed as love's pain became more about the fear of loss, rather than the sting of rejection. Today, the muted horns of the Judy Garland's rendition of "The Man That Got Away" serve to usher me hopelessly forward into a chilling vision of the possible future, and more often than not, I'll be teary-eyed by the time I'm belting out the epic final lines right in sync with her shaky, desperate voice: "Ever since this world began there's nothing sadder than a one-man woman looking for the man that got away." Same theme goes for Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do" and Harvey Danger's "Problems and Bigger Ones", and props to Elorza for having me download "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" years before I could ever appreciate it. Are these ex-love solos a little too lonesome for you? How about a duet about a bitterly failing marriage, a la Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand? "I learned how to laugh and I learned how to cry, I learned how to love and I learned how to lie. So you'd think I could learn how to tell you goodbye."
Failed love-- past present or future-- not your cup of tea? The loss of Chad's grandfather this past month has me listening to Harvey Danger's "Jack the Lion" quite a bit. For me, nothing says death of a grandparent like the Mariah Carey's version of "Without You", which would fit better into the previous category, were it not for the vivid memory I have of it playing in the car during the funeral procession of my father's mother. I have surprisingly few actual death songs on my computer right now-- the ever tragic "Tears in Heaven", always poignant in the moment but a bit too clichéd for me, "Paint it Black" is great, but again, not purist, maybe because I'd heard it about sixty times before I knew exactly what it was about. Check out "Give Back Yourself" by the Gufs (featuring Rob Thomas) for one you probably haven't heard. Unconventional death songs...Ben Fold's Five "Brick" is a great abortion song, should you ever have the need. My personal favorite suicide song would have to be "Camera One" by the Josh Joplin Group-- Bright Eyes' "No Lies, Just Love" would beat it out, were it not for the rather hopeful ending, and Blink 182's "Adam's Song" deserves an honorable mention, if only for the line that speaks so clearly to anyone who's ever considered suicide before-- "Please tell Mom this is not her fault." "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" is, of course, incomparable, but I prefer not to think of this as a suicide song.
Okay, this has become more of a list than anything else, but bare with me, I think I'm almost done.
Let's see, miscellaneous depressing. Obviously, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", with some personal preference to the Rufus Wainwright version, and hey, while we're on it, let's give some props to all the Shrek soundtracks, all of which really set the bar for incredible variety of theme-- Tom Waits, on a kid's movie soundtrack? Brilliant. (Points taken away, however, for forcing a peppy song out of masters of depressing music, Counting Crows.)
The two Fray hits. Ani's "Untouchable Face", or "Sorry I Am", or others that I am forgetting. "Blood And Roses" by the Smithereens. "Older Chests" or "Cheers Darlin'" by Damien Rice. "My Immortal" by Evanescence. Martin Sexton's "Can't Stop Thinking About You". Joan Armatrading's "The Weakness in Me". "I'm Movin' On" by the Rascall Flatts. Maybe "Heather Nights" by Buck 65. Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now". Janis Ian, "At Seventeen."
Ahh, I could go on way too long. I'll enable comments-- must go to bed.
On with it.
I guess it wouldn't work, a CD to make everyone cry, because in all the forums I've read where people list the most depressing song in the world, I can't help but think of how wrong they are. I downloaded a bunch of them off of one forum at once, I remember. Savage Garden's "Two Bed and a Coffee Machine", certainly a poignant narrative, but somehow not melodic enough to earn the title. AFI's "God Called in Sick Today", well, you'd have to be a very specific kind of fifteen-year-old and deeply affected by sub-par guitar rifts. John Lennon's "Working Class Hero" could do the trick if you were slumped over kitchen table with a bottle in your hand, thinking of how inevitable it is that your life is going nowhere, but it solicits just a bit too much anger to appeal to a purist like myself. And Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again, Naturally" juxtaposition pleasant, tinny melody and simple, devastating lyrics is just slightly too ironic, if you can believe that anything could ever be too ironic, for me.
My own choices have changed over the years as well, obviously. Where once ballads of unreqouited love topped the list (Linda Rondstadt's version of "Long, Long Time", and even- forgive me-- Brandi's "Have You Ever"), my tastes changed as love's pain became more about the fear of loss, rather than the sting of rejection. Today, the muted horns of the Judy Garland's rendition of "The Man That Got Away" serve to usher me hopelessly forward into a chilling vision of the possible future, and more often than not, I'll be teary-eyed by the time I'm belting out the epic final lines right in sync with her shaky, desperate voice: "Ever since this world began there's nothing sadder than a one-man woman looking for the man that got away." Same theme goes for Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do" and Harvey Danger's "Problems and Bigger Ones", and props to Elorza for having me download "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" years before I could ever appreciate it. Are these ex-love solos a little too lonesome for you? How about a duet about a bitterly failing marriage, a la Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand? "I learned how to laugh and I learned how to cry, I learned how to love and I learned how to lie. So you'd think I could learn how to tell you goodbye."
Failed love-- past present or future-- not your cup of tea? The loss of Chad's grandfather this past month has me listening to Harvey Danger's "Jack the Lion" quite a bit. For me, nothing says death of a grandparent like the Mariah Carey's version of "Without You", which would fit better into the previous category, were it not for the vivid memory I have of it playing in the car during the funeral procession of my father's mother. I have surprisingly few actual death songs on my computer right now-- the ever tragic "Tears in Heaven", always poignant in the moment but a bit too clichéd for me, "Paint it Black" is great, but again, not purist, maybe because I'd heard it about sixty times before I knew exactly what it was about. Check out "Give Back Yourself" by the Gufs (featuring Rob Thomas) for one you probably haven't heard. Unconventional death songs...Ben Fold's Five "Brick" is a great abortion song, should you ever have the need. My personal favorite suicide song would have to be "Camera One" by the Josh Joplin Group-- Bright Eyes' "No Lies, Just Love" would beat it out, were it not for the rather hopeful ending, and Blink 182's "Adam's Song" deserves an honorable mention, if only for the line that speaks so clearly to anyone who's ever considered suicide before-- "Please tell Mom this is not her fault." "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" is, of course, incomparable, but I prefer not to think of this as a suicide song.
Okay, this has become more of a list than anything else, but bare with me, I think I'm almost done.
Let's see, miscellaneous depressing. Obviously, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", with some personal preference to the Rufus Wainwright version, and hey, while we're on it, let's give some props to all the Shrek soundtracks, all of which really set the bar for incredible variety of theme-- Tom Waits, on a kid's movie soundtrack? Brilliant. (Points taken away, however, for forcing a peppy song out of masters of depressing music, Counting Crows.)
The two Fray hits. Ani's "Untouchable Face", or "Sorry I Am", or others that I am forgetting. "Blood And Roses" by the Smithereens. "Older Chests" or "Cheers Darlin'" by Damien Rice. "My Immortal" by Evanescence. Martin Sexton's "Can't Stop Thinking About You". Joan Armatrading's "The Weakness in Me". "I'm Movin' On" by the Rascall Flatts. Maybe "Heather Nights" by Buck 65. Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now". Janis Ian, "At Seventeen."
Ahh, I could go on way too long. I'll enable comments-- must go to bed.
On with it.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
"All the things I deserve,
For being such a good girl, honey."
Deserve. That's such an interesting word, it's tied to such an interesting concept. Mr. Leighton used to be hooked on a blog called "What I Deserve". What a perfectly ambiguous title. I didn't appreciate it amply at the time.
I was dancing with Chad at his prom, our senior year. This was the song. I'm sure I've told the story here a dozen times before; it doesn't matter. I can't hardly write on this thing anymore. Redundant might be better than silent. Then again, it might not.
I was dancing and this was the song. He was holding me tightly, I believe, or just tightly enough-- who remembers these details? What I do remember was the comforting warmth of his size, what some might call slightly overweight, and a bit taller than me. Maybe it's not so much that I even remember it, exactly, but if I close my eyes and breath in slowly threw my nose as I picture it, my body seems to know how to go back to that moment instinctively, I feel the reaction, I smile.
At one point, he pulled back just enough to look at me, straight in the eye, and he said "I enjoy spending time with you more than anybody else, I think." And it was perfect-- there's very little I like better than that kind of specific sincerity. It felt so much more genuine than those other words he could have said. What I found out later is that, beyond the superior specificity, it didn't quite translate on some more fundamental levels. But it was perfect, right then.
I'm listening to this song, I don't know. Because I've been spending a lot of time talking to Chad lately, seen him a few times. Because the feelings that I never got over with him, well, they've turned more or less comfortable and dependable, in relative terms.
Because, a few moments ago, I knew Zack would be walking through the door at any moment. When I left him in the living room to come in here, I left him in the knowledge that something was wrong, but not what. I was staring at a picture of Chad and I taken on that very night, and I was listening to the other song I associated with him during those key few months of our relationship-- "Standing Still" by Jewel. The plan, more or less, was that Zack would come in and see me looking at this picture of Chad, and he'd figure that was the basis of the problem I couldn't talk about.
Some guy I never got over. Someone I'll always be a little bit in love with. That's nothing we haven't dealt with a hundred times before.
Zack being who he is, he would have just gone to bed, put it out of his mind. Never suspecting the problem that lies deeper. The realization I just came to. The chilling truth I've just now verbalized, that every decent fiber of my being wants him never to have to bear the truth of.
If he's curious enough even to check this, and I doubt that he is, he'll see a few paragraphs about Chad and feel, I don't know. A relief in the familiarity of it all. Never get this far into the post. And you thought your relationship was dysfunctional.
"Foolish Games" by Jewel. That's what I'm listening to now.
When it all came down to it, I didn't have the will to lie in any capacity, it seems. Minimized the picture as he walked through the door. Told him I'd be to bed in a few minutes, when he asked. Kissed him goodnight. Stayed aloof in that telltale way. It won't come to anything, but I shouldn't take the chance that he'll be curious tomorrow. That if he asks what this is all about, I'll tell him.
The bitch of writing a post based around a song is that you have to listen to the song about a hundred times to get through the whole thing. I'm back to "Underneath your Clothes", by Shakira, in case you didn't recognize the quote in the beginning.
When Chad eventually answered the question that Jewel had posed for me-- "Do you want me like I want you? Or am I standing still?"-- and told me that, our fling being what it was (an infidelity), he was back with his ex-girlfriend, I couldn't escape the irony of Shakira's lyrics everytime I heard it. "Underneath your clothes, there's an endless story. There's the man I chose. There's my territory. And all the things I deserve, for being such a good girl, honey."
The last therapist I saw for vaginismus made a breakthrough with me, and whether or not it was a particularly helpful one, well, I never did go back. He woke me up to the buried belief I have, something I've managed to keep on the downlow, even from myself: that I believe I deserve the vaginismus. That I feel I am being, rightly, punished for something else, something that I did. More likely, something that was done to me before I was old enough to realize that I was the victim.
Whatever the reason, it seems the facts are the same: all this time that I've been thinking the critically low self esteem was caused by the vaginismus, I really had it all backwards. Don't that beat all.
Underneath my clothes, there's an endless story. Of all the things I deserve.
Like I said. It's an interesting word.
On with it.
For being such a good girl, honey."
Deserve. That's such an interesting word, it's tied to such an interesting concept. Mr. Leighton used to be hooked on a blog called "What I Deserve". What a perfectly ambiguous title. I didn't appreciate it amply at the time.
I was dancing with Chad at his prom, our senior year. This was the song. I'm sure I've told the story here a dozen times before; it doesn't matter. I can't hardly write on this thing anymore. Redundant might be better than silent. Then again, it might not.
I was dancing and this was the song. He was holding me tightly, I believe, or just tightly enough-- who remembers these details? What I do remember was the comforting warmth of his size, what some might call slightly overweight, and a bit taller than me. Maybe it's not so much that I even remember it, exactly, but if I close my eyes and breath in slowly threw my nose as I picture it, my body seems to know how to go back to that moment instinctively, I feel the reaction, I smile.
At one point, he pulled back just enough to look at me, straight in the eye, and he said "I enjoy spending time with you more than anybody else, I think." And it was perfect-- there's very little I like better than that kind of specific sincerity. It felt so much more genuine than those other words he could have said. What I found out later is that, beyond the superior specificity, it didn't quite translate on some more fundamental levels. But it was perfect, right then.
I'm listening to this song, I don't know. Because I've been spending a lot of time talking to Chad lately, seen him a few times. Because the feelings that I never got over with him, well, they've turned more or less comfortable and dependable, in relative terms.
Because, a few moments ago, I knew Zack would be walking through the door at any moment. When I left him in the living room to come in here, I left him in the knowledge that something was wrong, but not what. I was staring at a picture of Chad and I taken on that very night, and I was listening to the other song I associated with him during those key few months of our relationship-- "Standing Still" by Jewel. The plan, more or less, was that Zack would come in and see me looking at this picture of Chad, and he'd figure that was the basis of the problem I couldn't talk about.
Some guy I never got over. Someone I'll always be a little bit in love with. That's nothing we haven't dealt with a hundred times before.
Zack being who he is, he would have just gone to bed, put it out of his mind. Never suspecting the problem that lies deeper. The realization I just came to. The chilling truth I've just now verbalized, that every decent fiber of my being wants him never to have to bear the truth of.
If he's curious enough even to check this, and I doubt that he is, he'll see a few paragraphs about Chad and feel, I don't know. A relief in the familiarity of it all. Never get this far into the post. And you thought your relationship was dysfunctional.
"Foolish Games" by Jewel. That's what I'm listening to now.
When it all came down to it, I didn't have the will to lie in any capacity, it seems. Minimized the picture as he walked through the door. Told him I'd be to bed in a few minutes, when he asked. Kissed him goodnight. Stayed aloof in that telltale way. It won't come to anything, but I shouldn't take the chance that he'll be curious tomorrow. That if he asks what this is all about, I'll tell him.
The bitch of writing a post based around a song is that you have to listen to the song about a hundred times to get through the whole thing. I'm back to "Underneath your Clothes", by Shakira, in case you didn't recognize the quote in the beginning.
When Chad eventually answered the question that Jewel had posed for me-- "Do you want me like I want you? Or am I standing still?"-- and told me that, our fling being what it was (an infidelity), he was back with his ex-girlfriend, I couldn't escape the irony of Shakira's lyrics everytime I heard it. "Underneath your clothes, there's an endless story. There's the man I chose. There's my territory. And all the things I deserve, for being such a good girl, honey."
The last therapist I saw for vaginismus made a breakthrough with me, and whether or not it was a particularly helpful one, well, I never did go back. He woke me up to the buried belief I have, something I've managed to keep on the downlow, even from myself: that I believe I deserve the vaginismus. That I feel I am being, rightly, punished for something else, something that I did. More likely, something that was done to me before I was old enough to realize that I was the victim.
Whatever the reason, it seems the facts are the same: all this time that I've been thinking the critically low self esteem was caused by the vaginismus, I really had it all backwards. Don't that beat all.
Underneath my clothes, there's an endless story. Of all the things I deserve.
Like I said. It's an interesting word.
On with it.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Why have I been less compelled to post here lately? There's so many possible explanations.
I've been very busy.
And I haven't wanted to go completely public with the things I've been busy with.
Because I'm afraid of failure, it seems-- of people asking me how something's going, and my waffling around my own way of saying it's not, not anymore. Anything big I plan to accomplish, I try to keep it a secret. Except that nearly everyone I talk to anymore already knows about this.
But what about the people I hope still read this, whom I don't talk to anymore?
And are they the reason I don't post at all? Because I have too much pride to admit any secret pain, in case they are reading? Or, more likely, because I'm too afraid that if I go out on a limb to put it out there, they'll never read it.
Maybe I'm not sad enough lately-- no pained inspiration.
Or maybe I'm so sad, so lonely and hopeless and spent that I can't even bare to think about it. This seems to hit home. There's a visual in my mind of the sand rushing through an hour glass, except how it looks from the top, falling through a hole you can't even see until the chamber is nearly empty.
I miss a lot of people. I don't have the strength to hide their names with clever references or hard-to-follow descriptions. I don't have the vanity anymore to pretend that anyone out there is piecing the puzzles together, trying to figure out who's who. But I still have too much pride to call them by their names. Trying so hard to play hard-to-get. Having become convinced that it's my eagerness to be with other people that makes them so disinterested in being with me, like a song that played at the concert Zack and I went to tonight. "You were looking for your distance and sensing my resistance."
It was Indigo Girls with Brandi Carlile, part of the L.L. Bean free concert series. One song was introduced as being "From Emily", and I was thinking that might have been the name of it instead of just who it was from-- didn't know, as I'm not more than a passing fan-- that Emily is the name of one of the two of them. Anyway, figuring that if it was called "From Emily", Emily would know that, I called her number and just held the cell phone up for a few minutes, hoping she'd hear it and piece it together that I was thinking of her. In reality, it probably just came off as really, really annoying. This is life.
Another song in the earlier evening caught my attention, and brought my thoughts to another person. Brandi Carlile, opening, ended her set with Hallelujah, and a ridiculously beautiful rendtion at that. I couldn't help but be effected, and though about dialing another familiar number, but there was no way to ask for Zack's phone with any amount of tact. He sensed the change in my atmosphere, though, and asked if I was okay. "It's our song." I told him. Then looked up, "Not ours."
"I know." He told me.
"I'm sorry."
"Why?"
"Do you know whose song it is?" I asked.
"I don't want to know." He said, keeping it simple, and light. Had this been a test, and it might have been, scores like these would have me convinced that this particular pupil was an emotional genius. Then other times, when he comes to class with his homework carved into his arm, I have to rethink.
He doesn't read this, not much, not unless I ask him to. I guess that could be a lie, but I don't think it is-- the way I figure it, reading this makes him feel the way reading his poetry makes me feel: when you read the work of someone this close to you, you never know what you're going to find out about yourself, whether it's there in the words, or, more often, in your own reaction to them.
When I heard Brandi Carlile's single, "The Story", the first time on the episode of Grey's Anatomy that launched it like "Chasing Cars" and "How to Save a Life" before it, the jury was really out for me about whether or not I liked her-- something about her look, as if it's relevant, and her voice. Something strange. It only took her one song tonight to convert me.
On another music-and-people note, they've been playing a bad Dean Martin version of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" at work a lot lately. Clearly, there's no escaping your past.
As if the dreams I have once a week or so that everything was alright again with that particular memory weren't enough to prove that.
In my dreams, he shows up out of nowhere, and we fall into each other's arms without hesitation, and instantly, all is forgiven. All that was his fault, all that was mine. This is the reunion my subconscious wants for me, this pure, generous, unselfish forgiveness. This "love means never having to say your sorry" cliché.
Because, it occurs to me, that's what the most fundamental part of me feels should be, in situation like ours, with a friendship like ours. Was.
Ah, but it's cold outside.
On with it.
I've been very busy.
And I haven't wanted to go completely public with the things I've been busy with.
Because I'm afraid of failure, it seems-- of people asking me how something's going, and my waffling around my own way of saying it's not, not anymore. Anything big I plan to accomplish, I try to keep it a secret. Except that nearly everyone I talk to anymore already knows about this.
But what about the people I hope still read this, whom I don't talk to anymore?
And are they the reason I don't post at all? Because I have too much pride to admit any secret pain, in case they are reading? Or, more likely, because I'm too afraid that if I go out on a limb to put it out there, they'll never read it.
Maybe I'm not sad enough lately-- no pained inspiration.
Or maybe I'm so sad, so lonely and hopeless and spent that I can't even bare to think about it. This seems to hit home. There's a visual in my mind of the sand rushing through an hour glass, except how it looks from the top, falling through a hole you can't even see until the chamber is nearly empty.
I miss a lot of people. I don't have the strength to hide their names with clever references or hard-to-follow descriptions. I don't have the vanity anymore to pretend that anyone out there is piecing the puzzles together, trying to figure out who's who. But I still have too much pride to call them by their names. Trying so hard to play hard-to-get. Having become convinced that it's my eagerness to be with other people that makes them so disinterested in being with me, like a song that played at the concert Zack and I went to tonight. "You were looking for your distance and sensing my resistance."
It was Indigo Girls with Brandi Carlile, part of the L.L. Bean free concert series. One song was introduced as being "From Emily", and I was thinking that might have been the name of it instead of just who it was from-- didn't know, as I'm not more than a passing fan-- that Emily is the name of one of the two of them. Anyway, figuring that if it was called "From Emily", Emily would know that, I called her number and just held the cell phone up for a few minutes, hoping she'd hear it and piece it together that I was thinking of her. In reality, it probably just came off as really, really annoying. This is life.
Another song in the earlier evening caught my attention, and brought my thoughts to another person. Brandi Carlile, opening, ended her set with Hallelujah, and a ridiculously beautiful rendtion at that. I couldn't help but be effected, and though about dialing another familiar number, but there was no way to ask for Zack's phone with any amount of tact. He sensed the change in my atmosphere, though, and asked if I was okay. "It's our song." I told him. Then looked up, "Not ours."
"I know." He told me.
"I'm sorry."
"Why?"
"Do you know whose song it is?" I asked.
"I don't want to know." He said, keeping it simple, and light. Had this been a test, and it might have been, scores like these would have me convinced that this particular pupil was an emotional genius. Then other times, when he comes to class with his homework carved into his arm, I have to rethink.
He doesn't read this, not much, not unless I ask him to. I guess that could be a lie, but I don't think it is-- the way I figure it, reading this makes him feel the way reading his poetry makes me feel: when you read the work of someone this close to you, you never know what you're going to find out about yourself, whether it's there in the words, or, more often, in your own reaction to them.
When I heard Brandi Carlile's single, "The Story", the first time on the episode of Grey's Anatomy that launched it like "Chasing Cars" and "How to Save a Life" before it, the jury was really out for me about whether or not I liked her-- something about her look, as if it's relevant, and her voice. Something strange. It only took her one song tonight to convert me.
On another music-and-people note, they've been playing a bad Dean Martin version of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" at work a lot lately. Clearly, there's no escaping your past.
As if the dreams I have once a week or so that everything was alright again with that particular memory weren't enough to prove that.
In my dreams, he shows up out of nowhere, and we fall into each other's arms without hesitation, and instantly, all is forgiven. All that was his fault, all that was mine. This is the reunion my subconscious wants for me, this pure, generous, unselfish forgiveness. This "love means never having to say your sorry" cliché.
Because, it occurs to me, that's what the most fundamental part of me feels should be, in situation like ours, with a friendship like ours. Was.
Ah, but it's cold outside.
On with it.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
About a half-hour after I posted that last thing which, unfornately, was less than flattering to my dearest Emily, she posted something on her livejournal about how she has very few friends and doesn't feel close to them. Coincidence? I don't know. Either way, Emily deserves her list, if only for the very reasons she was talking about: It's hard to make quality friends, and infinitely important to keep up with the ones you have.
So. Great things about Emily. Let's go with 50.
1. She makes a point of making time for me when we're in the same state.
2. She understands the value of being able to lie on sun-warmed pavement at night, and look at the stars.
3. Although a lesbian, she can appreciate the value of Shepherd Men.
4. She's always up for a late-night trip to Floyd's house.
5. Her sense of nostalgia is incredible, and warm.
6. She's loyal.
7. She understands the basic rules of friendship when it comes to supportive conversation.
8. She's verbally appreciative of you when you give her what she needs.
9. She has beautiful eyes.
10. And beautiful hands.
11. And beautiful lips.
12. And beautiful hair.
13. She has excellent taste in music.
14. And she knows the value of driving in the dark, with a mix-tape in the cassette player, and going no where in particular.
15. She appreciates that funky bridge on the way to Land's End, even if it's a bitch to drive over.
16. She's always striving to do better, be better, achieve more.
17. She has courage in saying what she feels.
18. She makes a point of checking for alternative viewpoints when arguing, especially with people who can't do it for themselves.
19. She's tolerant.
20. She sends the best greeting cards.
21. Her livejournal is consistently interesting.
22. She never posts annoying bulletins on MySpace.
23. She's got all the good, moral qualities of a good Christian girl...
24. But she's quiet and personal about her faith, and never offends anyone with it.
25. She's practical with money.
26. She's verbally accurate.
27. She always smells good.
28. She is rightfully annoyed by people who complain about gas prices.
29. She reads modern, artsy, feminine books.
30. She wants to live in Stars Hollow.
31. Okay, I apologize to certain individuals, but it has to be said: Best. Kisser. Ever.
32. Extremely sexually talented in general, to be fair.
33. She's an Abby-ist. Or, uhm. I think I might have gotten the wrong name there.
34. She's faces her fears.
35. She writes letters.
36. She has great penmanship.
37. She has sentimental Screennames.
38. There's a clear limit to how melodramatic she'll let herself get.
39. She can spell the word "definitely" correctly.
40. She balances her checkbook.
41. She loves her mom.
42. She's going to be an awesome mom, herself, when the time comes.
43. She plays a mean game of "spin the cellphone".
44. She's very organized.
45. It's ridiculously adorable that she likes to cross things off list.
46. She's okay with the fact that I use the word "republican" and "evil" interchangeably.
47. She has admittedly been involved with dates that include "sex, and whatever facilitates sex."
48. She's honest to authority figures when I really want her not to be, but in an endearing way.
49. She makes the effort with people who don't always make the effort with her.
50. She's not materialistic, but she puts real value into the things she owns that mean something to her.
Now that I'm done, I'm wishing I left space in the fifty, because more keep coming to mind. Her love for Maine, and Mainers, the fact that she's outright fun, amused by all the right things. Her name! Her name is beautiful!
It's 3AM though. Perhaps I should stop.
I love you, Dulcinea.
On with it.
So. Great things about Emily. Let's go with 50.
1. She makes a point of making time for me when we're in the same state.
2. She understands the value of being able to lie on sun-warmed pavement at night, and look at the stars.
3. Although a lesbian, she can appreciate the value of Shepherd Men.
4. She's always up for a late-night trip to Floyd's house.
5. Her sense of nostalgia is incredible, and warm.
6. She's loyal.
7. She understands the basic rules of friendship when it comes to supportive conversation.
8. She's verbally appreciative of you when you give her what she needs.
9. She has beautiful eyes.
10. And beautiful hands.
11. And beautiful lips.
12. And beautiful hair.
13. She has excellent taste in music.
14. And she knows the value of driving in the dark, with a mix-tape in the cassette player, and going no where in particular.
15. She appreciates that funky bridge on the way to Land's End, even if it's a bitch to drive over.
16. She's always striving to do better, be better, achieve more.
17. She has courage in saying what she feels.
18. She makes a point of checking for alternative viewpoints when arguing, especially with people who can't do it for themselves.
19. She's tolerant.
20. She sends the best greeting cards.
21. Her livejournal is consistently interesting.
22. She never posts annoying bulletins on MySpace.
23. She's got all the good, moral qualities of a good Christian girl...
24. But she's quiet and personal about her faith, and never offends anyone with it.
25. She's practical with money.
26. She's verbally accurate.
27. She always smells good.
28. She is rightfully annoyed by people who complain about gas prices.
29. She reads modern, artsy, feminine books.
30. She wants to live in Stars Hollow.
31. Okay, I apologize to certain individuals, but it has to be said: Best. Kisser. Ever.
32. Extremely sexually talented in general, to be fair.
33. She's an Abby-ist. Or, uhm. I think I might have gotten the wrong name there.
34. She's faces her fears.
35. She writes letters.
36. She has great penmanship.
37. She has sentimental Screennames.
38. There's a clear limit to how melodramatic she'll let herself get.
39. She can spell the word "definitely" correctly.
40. She balances her checkbook.
41. She loves her mom.
42. She's going to be an awesome mom, herself, when the time comes.
43. She plays a mean game of "spin the cellphone".
44. She's very organized.
45. It's ridiculously adorable that she likes to cross things off list.
46. She's okay with the fact that I use the word "republican" and "evil" interchangeably.
47. She has admittedly been involved with dates that include "sex, and whatever facilitates sex."
48. She's honest to authority figures when I really want her not to be, but in an endearing way.
49. She makes the effort with people who don't always make the effort with her.
50. She's not materialistic, but she puts real value into the things she owns that mean something to her.
Now that I'm done, I'm wishing I left space in the fifty, because more keep coming to mind. Her love for Maine, and Mainers, the fact that she's outright fun, amused by all the right things. Her name! Her name is beautiful!
It's 3AM though. Perhaps I should stop.
I love you, Dulcinea.
On with it.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Obviously, it's been a while.
If I had to wait for the urge to strike to write, it would be a while more.
So here's a post I like to call "all the drafts that I started writing and never finished over the past year."
So, here they are. Completely unedited since their Original date of almost-publishing. Most of them, stopping mid-sentence. All never posted for various reasons. Most recent first, going backwards, just like the blog itself.
Have fun.
June 14th, 2007
"Tonight, I tried to write an e-mail I've been putting off writing for months. Didn't work.
I tried to tell him, the person I owed the e-mail to, that mistakes were made, and that I didn't think we could come back from them. That I was sad our friendship at was at an end, but not ambiguous about it. Had it been true, I might have been able to finish.
I tried to tell him that I didn't expect him to forgive me for my mistakes; that I hadn't forgiven him for his. I tried to tell him that my mistake was that I couldn't do for him what I'd done for my other friends: accept his faults, and love him despite them.
Then I stopped and took stock of what I was saying-- I've been doing a lot of that lately, especially when it comes to this particular subject, this particular fight. I thought of the friends I've had in the long term, the real ones, and whether or not I accept their faults. I thought of the people whose friendships go back longer than mine and his; then I realized that there are precious few.
Elorza, well, he's a belligerent ass when he's drunk, which is a whole lot of the time, or when he's sober and just feeling the urge to be a belligerent ass, which is a whole lot of the remaining time. He spouts these crazy ideals and then criticizes you for not living up to them, but it's all talk, and he knows it, and he does nothing to live up to it.
But he looks you straight in the eye when he's talking about something important, and when he's laughing or crying, my god, he's the most beautiful man in the world. He's funny and charismatic and brings life to any gathering of people. When you're nervous just before you see him for the first time in three years about whether or not you should hug him when you see him, he walks right up to you, puts down his backpack, and wraps his arms around you with incredible strength and sincerity. He's put up with so much of my crazy ass bullshit over the years, and recognizes and appreciates how much of his I've put up with. And while he can't say it nearly as often as I've wanted to hear it, he's somehow communicated his love for me in a way that makes me believe it-- and tolerated my selfish and psychotic obsession with the related language at every turn.
Emily has a tone about her when she's in a mood that makes you feel small; or wrong, even if you're talking about something you truly know more about than her. Her availability is strict; she's never been the person I'd feel comfortable calling in the middle of the night, if I needed to." (Quick note: The fact that I never got to writing the "But" section on Emily makes me hesitant to post this, but I really need to work on regaining my confidence as to posting what I feel, which has severely lacked lately. This being said, Emily should know she's incredible. Perhaps my first post coming back from my dry spell should be a tribute to her.)
June 10th, 2007
"A few quick notes, for everyone's benefit:
-Residents of Cumberland and York County of Maine: Want to learn a language? Heard Rosetta Stone is the way to go, but hesitant to pay the multiple hundreds of dollars it costs? Did you know that you're eligible for a Portland Public library card, and, further, that that card makes you eligible to use Rosetta Stone online from your home, free of charge? Okay, so phrasing it like a question makes it come out all infomercial-y, but I'm seriously very excited about this cool service, so I thought I'd share. This service is actually available through all kinds of libraries throughout the country, so people not living in these areas can probably find a library that offers this service in their area-- if not, consider purchasing a non-resident card: Portland Public Library's non-resident cards cost $20 a year, for instance, versus $159.95 for a six-month subscription to Rosetta Stone online.
-"
April 4th, 2007
"I can't remember the context. Maybe on the train, maybe in the kitchen. But there was him, looking at me with those slightly wet eyes, telling me, slightly drunken, but fiercely sincere, that I was so much stronger than him. Had it been the first time I head it from someone I loved and trusted, I would have written it off. But it wasn't.
Months earlier, maybe even almost a year, and there I was, in a familiar basement, on a familiar couch, draped, crying, across the lap of someone I felt a familiar love for. I told him that soon I'd have had enough-- I was so weak, so strung out, and I was so convinced I only had one last thread to cling to. If it happens, it happens, I told him. If it wants to snap, I will let it go.
Then, in that voice that I had such divine trust for, and still have-- to this day-- incredible respect for, he told me, "I always thought you were stronger than that."
This entry was supposed to go a different way-- about how I wondered if people saw me that way, strong, wondered how they could. It was supposed to be full of self-questioning, but, ultimately, it was suppose to square off at the end, and be a neat little package, a testament to, well, if not to confidence, then at least to possibility. "
January 16th, 2007
"Probably, my biggest problem as a writer is that I'm not an expert on anything: in this blog, I have free reign to write about my own life, experiences, and feelings, but during periods when that well starts to run dry, or fails to get the attention I crave, I have nothing to talk about. Casey's doing this the right way, majoring in Political Science with a minor in journalism-- he'll never run out of subject matter, just so long as the government keeps on running it's tragically hysterical show. I fancy myself as being, perhaps, a Carrie Bradshaw in the making, but I feel unqualified as a sex expert until I, you know, can actually have sex. I commented to Casey, once, that my niche as a writer would be very similar to Nick Hornby's, writing as a single thirty-something male, except that I'm a married, twenty-something female.
This is probably a big part as to why I've longed so badly for David Sedaris-style fame, and go so far as to hail myself as "Sedaris-esque" in synapses of this website that I put on others: here is a man who rhapsodizes about everyday absurdity, tiny seeds of humor in every day life, nurtured by his somewhat neurotic genius. Two of his most consistent inspirations are his family and the horrible jobs he's endured throughout the years; sadly, it may just be that my family, while plenty dysfunctional in most of my memories, the teary-teenaged girl, distant daddy thing might be just a bit too cookie-cutter to be a bestseller. "
December 19th, 2006
"My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency Presents:
SuedeCaramel's thoughts on Music em>Dirty thoughts on music:
If I had to wait for the urge to strike to write, it would be a while more.
So here's a post I like to call "all the drafts that I started writing and never finished over the past year."
So, here they are. Completely unedited since their Original date of almost-publishing. Most of them, stopping mid-sentence. All never posted for various reasons. Most recent first, going backwards, just like the blog itself.
Have fun.
June 14th, 2007
"Tonight, I tried to write an e-mail I've been putting off writing for months. Didn't work.
I tried to tell him, the person I owed the e-mail to, that mistakes were made, and that I didn't think we could come back from them. That I was sad our friendship at was at an end, but not ambiguous about it. Had it been true, I might have been able to finish.
I tried to tell him that I didn't expect him to forgive me for my mistakes; that I hadn't forgiven him for his. I tried to tell him that my mistake was that I couldn't do for him what I'd done for my other friends: accept his faults, and love him despite them.
Then I stopped and took stock of what I was saying-- I've been doing a lot of that lately, especially when it comes to this particular subject, this particular fight. I thought of the friends I've had in the long term, the real ones, and whether or not I accept their faults. I thought of the people whose friendships go back longer than mine and his; then I realized that there are precious few.
Elorza, well, he's a belligerent ass when he's drunk, which is a whole lot of the time, or when he's sober and just feeling the urge to be a belligerent ass, which is a whole lot of the remaining time. He spouts these crazy ideals and then criticizes you for not living up to them, but it's all talk, and he knows it, and he does nothing to live up to it.
But he looks you straight in the eye when he's talking about something important, and when he's laughing or crying, my god, he's the most beautiful man in the world. He's funny and charismatic and brings life to any gathering of people. When you're nervous just before you see him for the first time in three years about whether or not you should hug him when you see him, he walks right up to you, puts down his backpack, and wraps his arms around you with incredible strength and sincerity. He's put up with so much of my crazy ass bullshit over the years, and recognizes and appreciates how much of his I've put up with. And while he can't say it nearly as often as I've wanted to hear it, he's somehow communicated his love for me in a way that makes me believe it-- and tolerated my selfish and psychotic obsession with the related language at every turn.
Emily has a tone about her when she's in a mood that makes you feel small; or wrong, even if you're talking about something you truly know more about than her. Her availability is strict; she's never been the person I'd feel comfortable calling in the middle of the night, if I needed to." (Quick note: The fact that I never got to writing the "But" section on Emily makes me hesitant to post this, but I really need to work on regaining my confidence as to posting what I feel, which has severely lacked lately. This being said, Emily should know she's incredible. Perhaps my first post coming back from my dry spell should be a tribute to her.)
June 10th, 2007
"A few quick notes, for everyone's benefit:
-Residents of Cumberland and York County of Maine: Want to learn a language? Heard Rosetta Stone is the way to go, but hesitant to pay the multiple hundreds of dollars it costs? Did you know that you're eligible for a Portland Public library card, and, further, that that card makes you eligible to use Rosetta Stone online from your home, free of charge? Okay, so phrasing it like a question makes it come out all infomercial-y, but I'm seriously very excited about this cool service, so I thought I'd share. This service is actually available through all kinds of libraries throughout the country, so people not living in these areas can probably find a library that offers this service in their area-- if not, consider purchasing a non-resident card: Portland Public Library's non-resident cards cost $20 a year, for instance, versus $159.95 for a six-month subscription to Rosetta Stone online.
-"
April 4th, 2007
"I can't remember the context. Maybe on the train, maybe in the kitchen. But there was him, looking at me with those slightly wet eyes, telling me, slightly drunken, but fiercely sincere, that I was so much stronger than him. Had it been the first time I head it from someone I loved and trusted, I would have written it off. But it wasn't.
Months earlier, maybe even almost a year, and there I was, in a familiar basement, on a familiar couch, draped, crying, across the lap of someone I felt a familiar love for. I told him that soon I'd have had enough-- I was so weak, so strung out, and I was so convinced I only had one last thread to cling to. If it happens, it happens, I told him. If it wants to snap, I will let it go.
Then, in that voice that I had such divine trust for, and still have-- to this day-- incredible respect for, he told me, "I always thought you were stronger than that."
This entry was supposed to go a different way-- about how I wondered if people saw me that way, strong, wondered how they could. It was supposed to be full of self-questioning, but, ultimately, it was suppose to square off at the end, and be a neat little package, a testament to, well, if not to confidence, then at least to possibility. "
January 16th, 2007
"Probably, my biggest problem as a writer is that I'm not an expert on anything: in this blog, I have free reign to write about my own life, experiences, and feelings, but during periods when that well starts to run dry, or fails to get the attention I crave, I have nothing to talk about. Casey's doing this the right way, majoring in Political Science with a minor in journalism-- he'll never run out of subject matter, just so long as the government keeps on running it's tragically hysterical show. I fancy myself as being, perhaps, a Carrie Bradshaw in the making, but I feel unqualified as a sex expert until I, you know, can actually have sex. I commented to Casey, once, that my niche as a writer would be very similar to Nick Hornby's, writing as a single thirty-something male, except that I'm a married, twenty-something female.
This is probably a big part as to why I've longed so badly for David Sedaris-style fame, and go so far as to hail myself as "Sedaris-esque" in synapses of this website that I put on others: here is a man who rhapsodizes about everyday absurdity, tiny seeds of humor in every day life, nurtured by his somewhat neurotic genius. Two of his most consistent inspirations are his family and the horrible jobs he's endured throughout the years; sadly, it may just be that my family, while plenty dysfunctional in most of my memories, the teary-teenaged girl, distant daddy thing might be just a bit too cookie-cutter to be a bestseller. "
December 19th, 2006
"My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency Presents:
SuedeCaramel's thoughts on Music em>Dirty thoughts on music:
- I've discovered that the only acceptable way to dance to the guitar solo in Smooth is to pretend that Santana is using your clitoris for his guitar strings, and react accordingly.
- My last major success in writing poetry was a poem that equated sex to music, so I've decided now to write a song equating sex to currency. I have no choice but to go somewhat hip-hop style, because I can't sing, and I'm too self-interested to let anyone else get famous off of my song. Let's see what happens with this.
"
December 13, 2006
"Borders Rewards sends me e-mails saying that I've earned $18.19 in my Holiday Savings Rewards program, which is a 5% back incentive program. What it means is that I've spent over $360 dollars in the past two months on books and hot cocoa. I haven't earned a dime of that $18.19.
That's the problem nowadays. Big chain stores and credit card companies have us thinking that spending is earning."
Novermber 29th, 2006""O ailing Love, compose your struggling wing!
Confess you mortal; be content to die.
How better dead, than be this awkward thing
Dragging in dust its feathers of the sky"
In the episode of The Gilmore Girls right after Rory and Dean break up, Lorelai spends most of the episode trying to convince her stubborn daughter that what she needs most is to wallow. She says that what is needed is buckets of ice cream and a sob movie, and to spend the whole day in bed eating and watching and having herself "a good cry", explaining to Rory, in her infinite wisdom, that wallowing is part of the process of getting over a break up.
I've never been in love before, not the way I am now, and I'm learning a few things about bein hurt by someone else that I really don't have a clue about. Who am I to fight the advice of a pro?
There's no food or good sob movies in my house, so in the wake of the news that I have been lied to, yet again, I find myself travelling to work. It's no news to me"
November 18th, 2006
"The store is now open, shifts are now normal, and the trainers have left. I remain with the memories of the fourteen hour days spent building something I believed in, the three nights spent socially with my colleagues, the two songs I sang in a Kareoke bar as the trainers cheered me on, and a sense that things were better.
I can't tell now if they are.
I still enjoy my job and love my store, but when I leave it at the end of the day, I don't find myself anywhere worth being. I carved a comfortable little niche as the party girl with the false confidence and perverted wit, but when I shed that at the end of the night, I lay and bed with no better sense that the real me is someone worth being.
I regret now that, upon seperation from them, I gave most of them both my personal e-mail and the address of this site: the forces within me that vie, on a deep, impractical level, for ultimate acceptance from those I care about often usurps the more pramagtic side that wants to get through the day with the actual roots"
November 1st, 2006
"As people more politically informed than I am have known for weeks, a new player has joined the hypothetical race for the 2008 presidential election: Barack Obama, a well-spoken democrat who's just published a best-selling book and is hugely popular with the mainstream media right now.
Also, he's black. Or, at least, black-ish.
I've told many people over the last year and a half or so that I'll be voting to break the glass ceiling this time around, meaning I had every intention of voting Hillary, and re-registering as a democrat (currently an independent) so I could do so in the primary. My reasoning is simple: barring any insane standpoints, or political deal-breakers for me (IE, wanting to overturn abortion, not supporting gay rights), I'm looking at this opportunity to have something other than a white, christian male in office and I'm realizing that it's the first real opportunity we've had, and maybe the only we'll see for a while, and I'm thinking one way or another this is the time to make that all-important progress.
Then the black man gets into my clear thinking and muddies it all up.
Now I have to think about who to vote for in the primaries-- the white woman or the black man? I think my loyalties stay with Hillary, who probably has a better overall chance and"
How great was that? Don't worry much, those of you who still poke around here. Just seeing the inside of this blog for the first time in months has put the itch in me. I'll be back with you before the end of the week.
On with it.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
While I sympathize with the Doctor in this article, who diagnosed himself with a case of "Wiitis" after suffering from pain related to long hours of playing with his new Wii, I find myself a bit frustrated with the tone of the article. It's subtle, certainly not hostile towards the tendency of this new system to work your muscles unexpectedly. But where, I ask, is the outpouring of support towards this wonderful development. Imagine, a video game that keeps you fit. Nay, an entire system!
DDR certainly was groundbreaking in creating a way to motivate certain...unmotivateables to moving around, developing real skill, real reflexes. What's surprising is that, in next gen systems, Nintendo was the only company to follow suit and take it up a notch, revolutionizing on the magic of kinetic energy. Finding increased graphical power and larger gaming worlds being, ultimately, too predictable, I got bored with the Xbox 360 we bought this christmas quickly, and loudly wondered why I layed down $400 (for the system alone) for games that are just slightly more aesthetically pleasing than the ones I used with the original Xbox, and certainly not more playable. The Wii we bought this weekend has been a nice reprieve from this, though, like the sore Doctor Bonis, I am still recovering from a few hours of rigorous boxing and tennis on Thursday. My recommendation: Buy a Wii. Celebrate it's revolutionary thinking! It's healthfulness! It's price tag (the cheapest of the three next gens, by far)! But stretch first.
Speaking of celebration where celebration's due, anyone seen that clip of Ernie "E.J." Sierra on the "So, you think you can Dance" auditions? Here's the deal: This guy, an overweight hairstylist who's very, well, gay, is up for his audition. Starts out on this way feminine-- and yes, a little too feminine for my tastes-- dance routine that starts out with sort of a touching swiping his hands over himself rather suggestives, but ends with fucking fantastic ballet, I mean, ballet that, really, you do not expect a guy like this to be able to do-- this kind of stuff would be a challenge for a 98 pound girl, but this guy lifts himself five feet off the stage one of those acrobatic split-jump thingies at at least 350 pounds. Now, you know the network let him into the auditions for a funny "look at the acrobatic fat guy" clip, but he really wins the audience over, and why shouldn't he? He finishes to thunderous applause which one of the dickhead judges, Nigel "I'm a clone of Simon from American Idol" Lythgoe quickly interrupts, explaining, quite harshly, to E.J., that "they are applauding you because you are fat." He goes on about how he's offended over this "patrozing" applause, and is just, completely awful about it, like he and all the other snide reality TV roaches are commisioned-based salesmen with a briefcase full of bastard. The other two judges really don't play much of a good cop to his bad, giving him their version of constructive criticism? Where's the appropriate reaction of "My god, how do you do that?" Where's the obvious point that if this guy has trained as much for this show as he obviously has, there's no way that his weight problem could be based on common lethargy, and must be a symptom of a larger health problem?
My guess is on the Ernie Sierra fan sites that I'm hoping will be springing up any day now, much as they did for the good natured William Hung-- and why did people love him? Certainly not because of any genuine talent, and probably not even as much about his willingness to put himself out there, for better or for worse. More, I'm thinking, that as much as America has a love/hate relationship with the asshole judges who say what we're all thinking, there's a growing amount of us who don't want to give in to the fad of overblown bullies, who don't want to see ridiculous cruelty as the latest form of entertainment. William Hung was the starkest contrast possible to Simon Cowell-- our love for one was just the inverse of our hatred for the other.
It should happen more often that it does, but 200,000 sold albums later, Hung could tell you that it pays to be the good guy in a world of bad ones, sometimes.
By the way, don't think I fucking watch "So, you think you can Dance". I saw a recap on E's "The Soup". I owe you more on my why-reality-TV-shows-on-Fox-are-ruining-life-as-we-know-it-(R.I.P. Drive) rant at some point.
On with it.
DDR certainly was groundbreaking in creating a way to motivate certain...unmotivateables to moving around, developing real skill, real reflexes. What's surprising is that, in next gen systems, Nintendo was the only company to follow suit and take it up a notch, revolutionizing on the magic of kinetic energy. Finding increased graphical power and larger gaming worlds being, ultimately, too predictable, I got bored with the Xbox 360 we bought this christmas quickly, and loudly wondered why I layed down $400 (for the system alone) for games that are just slightly more aesthetically pleasing than the ones I used with the original Xbox, and certainly not more playable. The Wii we bought this weekend has been a nice reprieve from this, though, like the sore Doctor Bonis, I am still recovering from a few hours of rigorous boxing and tennis on Thursday. My recommendation: Buy a Wii. Celebrate it's revolutionary thinking! It's healthfulness! It's price tag (the cheapest of the three next gens, by far)! But stretch first.
Speaking of celebration where celebration's due, anyone seen that clip of Ernie "E.J." Sierra on the "So, you think you can Dance" auditions? Here's the deal: This guy, an overweight hairstylist who's very, well, gay, is up for his audition. Starts out on this way feminine-- and yes, a little too feminine for my tastes-- dance routine that starts out with sort of a touching swiping his hands over himself rather suggestives, but ends with fucking fantastic ballet, I mean, ballet that, really, you do not expect a guy like this to be able to do-- this kind of stuff would be a challenge for a 98 pound girl, but this guy lifts himself five feet off the stage one of those acrobatic split-jump thingies at at least 350 pounds. Now, you know the network let him into the auditions for a funny "look at the acrobatic fat guy" clip, but he really wins the audience over, and why shouldn't he? He finishes to thunderous applause which one of the dickhead judges, Nigel "I'm a clone of Simon from American Idol" Lythgoe quickly interrupts, explaining, quite harshly, to E.J., that "they are applauding you because you are fat." He goes on about how he's offended over this "patrozing" applause, and is just, completely awful about it, like he and all the other snide reality TV roaches are commisioned-based salesmen with a briefcase full of bastard. The other two judges really don't play much of a good cop to his bad, giving him their version of constructive criticism? Where's the appropriate reaction of "My god, how do you do that?" Where's the obvious point that if this guy has trained as much for this show as he obviously has, there's no way that his weight problem could be based on common lethargy, and must be a symptom of a larger health problem?
My guess is on the Ernie Sierra fan sites that I'm hoping will be springing up any day now, much as they did for the good natured William Hung-- and why did people love him? Certainly not because of any genuine talent, and probably not even as much about his willingness to put himself out there, for better or for worse. More, I'm thinking, that as much as America has a love/hate relationship with the asshole judges who say what we're all thinking, there's a growing amount of us who don't want to give in to the fad of overblown bullies, who don't want to see ridiculous cruelty as the latest form of entertainment. William Hung was the starkest contrast possible to Simon Cowell-- our love for one was just the inverse of our hatred for the other.
It should happen more often that it does, but 200,000 sold albums later, Hung could tell you that it pays to be the good guy in a world of bad ones, sometimes.
By the way, don't think I fucking watch "So, you think you can Dance". I saw a recap on E's "The Soup". I owe you more on my why-reality-TV-shows-on-Fox-are-ruining-life-as-we-know-it-(R.I.P. Drive) rant at some point.
On with it.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
My toenails have grown long. They tend to. I don't take very good care of them, or my fingernails. I say it's because of the time that my sister was cutting my fingernails for me and made a mistake, cutting into my skin. More likely than not, it's only because I'm lazy when it comes to matters of hygiene, but, hell, I can get away with blaming it on my sister. Nobody ever calls me on it.
This all has very little to do with why I can't sleep. But whatever comes out, I guess. Better than nothing.
Four years, four months, as we go into may. That's how long this damn disease has lasted. I know it's not a disease. But "disorder" makes it sound so...benign. Disorder. The lack of order. The opposite of order.
The natural order of life. Man and woman, together. Birth, then maturity, then love, then sex, then birth. Order.
Man and woman, falling apart. Birth, then maturity, then love, then pain, then confusion, then clarity. Then hope, then determination. Then pain. Then disappointment, then willfulness, then pain. Then desperation, then doubt, then pain. Then frigidity, then rejection, then pain. Then hopelessness, then hate, then pain.
Disorder. Yeah, I guess that covers it.
This is the fifth month of 2007, the year I said I would overcome. The year I said there were no other options, none but one, and I put it out there, I pushed on with that unfailing tenacity, refused to let myself become what I knew it would kill me to be. Asked for your support. Maybe even got it. Who knows?
Determination, then relapse, then pain.
Stand, then fall, then pain.
I was putting a lot of eggs in the EFT basket, EFT being a therapy that's so new age and ridiculous that I was too embarassed to even mention it here. Everyone I explained it to was skeptical, but me, I couldn't afford to be. It was my last hope.
Is my last hope. And I don't have the strength to hope for it, really. This ridiculous, hookah-lighting, meridian-groping, touchy-feely west-coast voodoo. "Your subconscious is your soul, you understand." Said the man who's time I rented to the tune of $125 dollars and hour, and what insurance company is going to pay for this stoner-scented sermon? "Everything is an energy field, there is no solid matter."
"Oh, I understand." I heard myself say. I heard myself say this, because I have to buy whatever this hippie has to sell. He's the only one left who claims to have an answer.
"You say you never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He ain't selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And says 'Do you wanna make a deal?'
How does it feel?"
~Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone
This whole last ditch effort is based on an effort on my part to believe. That I can still be helped. That there is still a way. That there is still hope. If only in attached to some naturopathic nonsense that the girl I was raised to be would laugh her ass off. I'm not going to go anywhere with it if I can't have a little faith, and so I'm crossing my fingers, aligning my chakras, watching out for black cats and praying to the heavens, swearing, promising, pledging to believe. It's about faith, pure and simple. Faith, that most gracious of virtues. Faith, the willingness to put your whole self into something that can't be proven, can't be touched. There's only one problem.
I
HAVE
NO
FAITH.
I'm a catholic girl who grew up to realize that, no matter how they wanted me to believe, none of what they were saying it made sense. I'm a coward who would love nothing more than to believe that an afterlife is waiting out there, like an eternal safety net, but it just seems so goddamned implausible. I'm a hopeless romantic that wants to believe that, against all odds, my husband really is the one person on Earth who I'm the most compatible with, and somehow, somehow we were meant to be, willed to be. But I can't, for the life of me, figure who it could have been that was willing it.
And yeah, I can consider the possibility that a mind-body connection that western medicine can't explain is out there. Maybe meridians and pressure points and the fucking tooth fairy all have great potential. But not for me. And I lose a little bit of the self that I lived most of my life being every time I try to convince myself otherwise.
And for what? So I can become more and more then person who believes, truly believes, that my marriage was the will of the heavens, that stars aligned, that we'll make it to forever, one way or another. So I can become more and more the person who's going to turn out fucking wrong.
"Why are you scared to believe in god
When it's salvation that you want?"
~Bright Eyes, We are Nowhere, and it's Now
It doesn't help that, when I have lost track of whatever faith I had for myself, and need it, I turn to the people who are supposed to carry an endless supply for me, just in case, and find out they've dropped the ball. Asking "Will I make it through this?" I get back equal parts apathy and indignation.
This angers me, because throughout all my shit, I never stopped believing in these people. The people I love, they are the only alter that I pray at. No matter what mistakes they've made, I believe in the worth and potential of these people. And if something means something to them, is to them what overcoming vaginismus would be to me, I would never fucking dream of letting them question whether or not they'll make it there, not if there was anything I could do to stop it. If their life depended on having faith in something, I'd give it to them when they had none of their own, I just would, I'd just have to. It angers me that they don't know to do the same for me.
But it's downright satisfying to know that I'll have my revenge, when there's no one left to believe in them the way I needed them to believe in me.
"For all you know, this could be
The difference between what you need
And what you want to be."
~Matchbox Twenty, The Difference
Friendship, then love, then reciprocity, then disappointment, then pain. That's pretty much the order I'm used to.
Maybe I make up too many rules for my friendships, I've noticed myself doing this a lot lately. Thou shalt have faith in me commensurate to that which I have in you. Thou shalt recognize and celebrate my pain. Thou shalt not recognize and celebrate your own.
It was working pretty well, till someone called me on it. I owe him an e-mail.
On with it.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
When I was young, I didn't believe in wearing makeup, not for myself. I told people that it didn't make sense, because if someone called you beautiful, they'd really only be saying that the makeup was beautiful. It spoke to my what I now feel is one of the most fundamental truths about me: if someone tells me I am beautiful, I want it to be for real.
Lately, the desire to feel attractive has gone beyond this stipulation. Perhaps it's out of desperation, or perhaps the motivation has merely shifted. Once wanted, ever so badly, to find the person who would see beyond the clumsy stringy awkwardness that was the whole of my youth to the beauty that after school specials assured me was waiting inside. Now that I have that, what I'm looking for, perhaps, is the reassurance that I am desirable; or, rather, that I possess the lures to convince people to desire me.
Where once I longed to be thought of as beautiful, it seems now that I am driven to by the desire to seem, well, fuckable. Ironically enough.
Whatever the reason for this shift, my actions tell me things have changed. I still don't wear makeup; lip gloss, occasionally, and, mascara very rarely and, sometimes-- for pictures-- eye liner. In my day to day to day life, I wear no makeup, that hasn't changed. But I have been, as of late, more hesitant to show what I am made up of: vaginismus.
For a woman who has very negative feelings about the contents of her heart and soul (in my case, black and absent, respectively.), having passable feelings about her body, if only from time to time, may be what she falls back on. As I've mentioned before here, the probable cause for my preference of males as friends probably comes from the feeling that, all else failing, I'd have one last thing I could offer them, from a biological standpoint. For a woman who has critically low self-esteem, sex, or at least the promise and implication of sex, feels like a bargaining chip.
For a woman who has critically low self-esteem and vaginismus, well, it gets a little tricky from there. But somewhere down the line it ends up with her, sitting in a bedroom next to a beautiful, desirable man who finds her attractive on one level and, more importantly, loves her on a different level, wondering why they can't seem to avoid the inevitable biological draw that is fucking up their friendship, and hearing the sentence come out of her mouth: "I understand why I'm attracted to you, but why do you keep falling into this? All I am is the possibility of a blow job. That's my worth as a person."
And then realizing that she believes it.
It's a rather growthful turn of events, it seems, that my latest male friend is not someone I will likely ever be alone in a bedroom with. 42 and married, with one kid out and another on the way, he is, I hope, a silent partner in the agreement that while the occasional flirtation might get us through the day, our loyalties lie strictly elsewhere. Still, my desire to be desirable to him-- if even in a purely hypothetical way-- caused me to hold out far longer than normal with the information that even if he could have me, he couldn't have me.
Still, though, talking about vaginismus is too important to hold out on forever, and as our relationship slowly moved from conquest to caring, I was more compelled to tell him the truth. I told him today.
It was the standard converstaion, I guess. Answering the questions, clarifying the confusion. I took him from the beginning to the end, highlighting all the anguish and frustration with a professional, rehearsed detachment. At one point I thought of the words I was saying and smiled, saying to him, "I've gotten pretty good at discussing all of this kind of stuff easily."
"I guess so." He said. "I probably feel a lot more awkward than you do right now."
I smiled, thinking, Well, duh. I didn't point out the obvious, which was that he was a grown man listening to a girl young enough to be his daughter-- with whom he has no intimate connection and who is, like him, married to someone else-- talk about the process of learning, through trial and error, that her vagina was unable of accepting penetration. Me, I said the sentence "Even in high school, when I'd first try to insert tampons, it would upset me so much that I felt as though I was raping myself." as if I was talking about a problem with my carburetor. He's a first-timer who's probably never had any reason to be more than loosely aware of the concept of female sexual dysfunction. Me?
Among my friends, my vagina is just as often a punchline as it is a source of supportive conversation: did you see that episode of Arrested Development? Silas was painted up bluer than your husband's balls! I blog weekly about every aspect of my sex life, not because I am, as I have said, an emotional exhibitionist, but because I feel it's my duty to spread the knowledge of the condition, and it's just as important for people not to underestimate the riptide effect it has on every aspect of a woman's life as it is for them to just know of it's existence. I've lain, bottomless, on the examination tables of a family practitioner, a gynecologist, and a physical therapist-- all seperately-- and willed myself to stay calm as long as I could stand it, until, all at once, I've errupted in tears and begged them to please, please please please stop it, please god, stop touching me. I've given a presentation on vaginismus to over twenty students in my public speaking class and the male professor , fielding questions about my personal experiences and leading a round of applause in honor of my patient, virgin husband. I dream of writing or editing a book about it, and, more recently, writing and appearing in a documentary with interviews of myself and others and-- so people understand the intensity of the reaction-- a segment wherein I try to succumb to penetration until I can no longer stand it; albeit, with the camera recording only my face.
I loved the way he listened. Quiet, interested. Feeling, as he said, a bit awkward, but not giving me the impression that I should stop or feel embarrassed. He offered some unique feedback that, while not entirely helpful, was far from the parade of stupid that I regularly encounter.
I kept it factual, distant. After it was over, I felt the need to take him further-- I'd told him the facts, but had I impressed upon him the feelings, the impact? He'd seen the girl without the makeup, but been spared the one with mascara streaming down her face.
I survived showing him that I am not, in actuality, fuckable. Now I wanted to bear it all, and take my shot that he might find it beautiful.
That's just a gut reaction, I guess. The young me, coming through. In reality, that would be too much of a connection for our purposes, or, at the very least, too fast. Still, I'm glad I told him what I told him. That I'm not the nymphomaniac I seem to be. That my sex life, is, at best, flawed. That I have a weakness, a problem, a roadblock. That I am human.
And that I'm really, really good at giving head.
"Well," He said, nodding. "That's certainly something, on it's own."
On with it.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
That last post was number 666. Interesting.
Number 667 will be a survey in which you can only post one word in answer to questions, taken from Emily's myspace blog. I kinda like the way it turned out, and since I've been lacking appropriate, non-incriminating subject matter for this fine site, I thought I'd use it here. Because, really, how much trouble can I possibly get myself in one word at a time?
One-word answer: Lots.
--
1. Where is your cell phone? Somewhere.
2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend? Husband.
3. Your hair? Poof.
4. Your grandpa? Dead.
5. Your father? Guitarist.
6. Your favorite item? Vibrator.
7. Your dream last night?
8. Your favorite drink? Tequila.
9. Your dream car? Scion.
10. The room you are in? Bedroom.
11. Your ex? Missed.
12. Your fear? Abandonment.
13. What do you want to be in 10 years? Better.
14. Who did you hang out with last night? Scott.
15. What you're not? Satisfied.
16. Muffin? Blueberry.
17: One of your wish list items? MacBook.
19. The last thing you did? Tae Bo.
20. What are you wearing? Sneakers.
22. Your favorite book? Jurassic.
23. The last thing you ate? Food.
24. Your life? Sexless.
25. Your mood? Eh.
26. Your friends? Distant.
27. What are you thinking about right now? Fourteen.
28. Your car? Focus.
29. What are you doing at the moment? This.
30. Last summer? Sam.
31. Your relationship status? Sexless.
32. What is on your tv? Oblongs.
33. When is the last time you laughed? Moons.
34. Reason you last cried? Sexless.
35. Last song you danced to? Jeff.
--
I guess it'd be cheating if I qualified any of those answers, however, I do have to credit Emily with her #26.
I'm listening, right now, to Lisa Loeb's Sandalwood, as featured on a CD burned for number 30 himself. The last time I saw him, we realized that the CD no longer worked, which was a bit heartbreaking. That CD, our CD, was burned as a tribute to everything we were, weren't, could and couldn't have been. I told him he must not have valued it very much to let it get scratched up like that.
He said it got ruined because he played it over and over again. He always did know the right thing to say.
"Your hand, so hot, burns a hole in my hand.
I wanted to show you."
I told him I'd burn him another one. That I didn't have a copy, per se, but that I did have a playlist of it. I'm listening to it now. Robbie Williams' If it's Hurting You.
Great song. Jenn went to England one year, one of those years where she left me all alone for Christmas break, and came back obsessed with Robbie Williams. She identified this song as being one of those that is perfect for driving down a dark road at night, and she was right, perfectly right. Now I can't hear it without picturing the exact road we were driving down when she said that; or, some road I was driving down alone when I remembered her saying that. Who knows anymore?
That summer, the song was on a playlist I had loaded onto my old MP3 player called "Infidelity", created so I, the eternal Emo, could purify and intensify the conflicted feelings I was having over cheating on Jeff with Chad. The week I was in Gloucester with Jeff and Jenn for the Saint Peter's fiesta-- and the last week of my life in which I was still immune to and unaware of the fear of having your heartbroken-- I would lay awake at night and listen the playlist, and sometimes that song over and over again.
The next one that is cued up-- randomly, not in the order the CD was actually in-- is Matchbox Twenty's Disease, which I sang last night at Karaoke. I try to skip past and, for some reason, the goddamn randomizer on WinAmp fails to work-- number 17, baby, I'll take a computer that works over this "compatibility" bullshit anyday-- so I close my eyes and click. "Name" by the Goo Goo Dolls.
This song is special to me-- there is something in the arrangement, the resonance that speaks to a part of me that other songs I love don't; the only other one that does that I can think of is Push, by Matchbox Twenty. Maybe it comes from the memories I've associated with it, listening to it over and over again in the middle of the night as Elorza and I stayed up way past our bed times for each other-- back before I knew his name was Elorza, and that was part of the reason it was special to me. "Push" was my favorite song, originally, because I associated it so completely with my favorite person, Jeremey, and as I moved away from him, the song moved with me, and became about myself. Still, if I had to pick one other person that "Push" is about for me, it's him, and if I had to pick one other person that "Name" is about, it's Elorza.
Jeremey and Elorza have proven to be the only two men in my life who have that kind of tenure, that unconditional feeling. And "Name" and "Push" are the only songs that I feel in the back of my neck when I breathe; I feel them in the notes, perhaps. I listen, misty-eyed, to our history, which is not made up of reruns as the song says.
"A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio,
And I won't no one your name.
And I won't tell them your name."
I can't write an entry about, or partially about, our CD without mentioning our song, that sacred hymn that we-- Sam and I-- listen to in silence, listen to with a reverent wordlessness meant to express everything in the world that we are when alone and lonely, everything we can't be when we are together, and together. The room, the space, the cab of his truck are silent, the holy dark was moving, too, and every breath we drew...
"It's not a cry you can hear at night,
It's not somebody whose seen the light.
It's a cold, and it's a broken hallelujah."
One of these days, I'm going to have to stop and count the alternate realities I spend the better part of my day in. One of these days, I'm going to have to commit some more time to this one, that anchors me.
On with it.
Number 667 will be a survey in which you can only post one word in answer to questions, taken from Emily's myspace blog. I kinda like the way it turned out, and since I've been lacking appropriate, non-incriminating subject matter for this fine site, I thought I'd use it here. Because, really, how much trouble can I possibly get myself in one word at a time?
One-word answer: Lots.
--
1. Where is your cell phone? Somewhere.
2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend? Husband.
3. Your hair? Poof.
4. Your grandpa? Dead.
5. Your father? Guitarist.
6. Your favorite item? Vibrator.
7. Your dream last night?
8. Your favorite drink? Tequila.
9. Your dream car? Scion.
10. The room you are in? Bedroom.
11. Your ex? Missed.
12. Your fear? Abandonment.
13. What do you want to be in 10 years? Better.
14. Who did you hang out with last night? Scott.
15. What you're not? Satisfied.
16. Muffin? Blueberry.
17: One of your wish list items? MacBook.
19. The last thing you did? Tae Bo.
20. What are you wearing? Sneakers.
22. Your favorite book? Jurassic.
23. The last thing you ate? Food.
24. Your life? Sexless.
25. Your mood? Eh.
26. Your friends? Distant.
27. What are you thinking about right now? Fourteen.
28. Your car? Focus.
29. What are you doing at the moment? This.
30. Last summer? Sam.
31. Your relationship status? Sexless.
32. What is on your tv? Oblongs.
33. When is the last time you laughed? Moons.
34. Reason you last cried? Sexless.
35. Last song you danced to? Jeff.
--
I guess it'd be cheating if I qualified any of those answers, however, I do have to credit Emily with her #26.
I'm listening, right now, to Lisa Loeb's Sandalwood, as featured on a CD burned for number 30 himself. The last time I saw him, we realized that the CD no longer worked, which was a bit heartbreaking. That CD, our CD, was burned as a tribute to everything we were, weren't, could and couldn't have been. I told him he must not have valued it very much to let it get scratched up like that.
He said it got ruined because he played it over and over again. He always did know the right thing to say.
"Your hand, so hot, burns a hole in my hand.
I wanted to show you."
I told him I'd burn him another one. That I didn't have a copy, per se, but that I did have a playlist of it. I'm listening to it now. Robbie Williams' If it's Hurting You.
Great song. Jenn went to England one year, one of those years where she left me all alone for Christmas break, and came back obsessed with Robbie Williams. She identified this song as being one of those that is perfect for driving down a dark road at night, and she was right, perfectly right. Now I can't hear it without picturing the exact road we were driving down when she said that; or, some road I was driving down alone when I remembered her saying that. Who knows anymore?
That summer, the song was on a playlist I had loaded onto my old MP3 player called "Infidelity", created so I, the eternal Emo, could purify and intensify the conflicted feelings I was having over cheating on Jeff with Chad. The week I was in Gloucester with Jeff and Jenn for the Saint Peter's fiesta-- and the last week of my life in which I was still immune to and unaware of the fear of having your heartbroken-- I would lay awake at night and listen the playlist, and sometimes that song over and over again.
The next one that is cued up-- randomly, not in the order the CD was actually in-- is Matchbox Twenty's Disease, which I sang last night at Karaoke. I try to skip past and, for some reason, the goddamn randomizer on WinAmp fails to work-- number 17, baby, I'll take a computer that works over this "compatibility" bullshit anyday-- so I close my eyes and click. "Name" by the Goo Goo Dolls.
This song is special to me-- there is something in the arrangement, the resonance that speaks to a part of me that other songs I love don't; the only other one that does that I can think of is Push, by Matchbox Twenty. Maybe it comes from the memories I've associated with it, listening to it over and over again in the middle of the night as Elorza and I stayed up way past our bed times for each other-- back before I knew his name was Elorza, and that was part of the reason it was special to me. "Push" was my favorite song, originally, because I associated it so completely with my favorite person, Jeremey, and as I moved away from him, the song moved with me, and became about myself. Still, if I had to pick one other person that "Push" is about for me, it's him, and if I had to pick one other person that "Name" is about, it's Elorza.
Jeremey and Elorza have proven to be the only two men in my life who have that kind of tenure, that unconditional feeling. And "Name" and "Push" are the only songs that I feel in the back of my neck when I breathe; I feel them in the notes, perhaps. I listen, misty-eyed, to our history, which is not made up of reruns as the song says.
"A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio,
And I won't no one your name.
And I won't tell them your name."
I can't write an entry about, or partially about, our CD without mentioning our song, that sacred hymn that we-- Sam and I-- listen to in silence, listen to with a reverent wordlessness meant to express everything in the world that we are when alone and lonely, everything we can't be when we are together, and together. The room, the space, the cab of his truck are silent, the holy dark was moving, too, and every breath we drew...
"It's not a cry you can hear at night,
It's not somebody whose seen the light.
It's a cold, and it's a broken hallelujah."
One of these days, I'm going to have to stop and count the alternate realities I spend the better part of my day in. One of these days, I'm going to have to commit some more time to this one, that anchors me.
On with it.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
I know his job is such that now and then, he has an unannounced late night. That when these things happen, he has no real way of contacting me and letting me know. I know these nights happen periodically, and I even know that he mentioned the other day that they'd been doing some work lately that might involve one of these nights. I know this. I know this.
But the reality in my mind, as it gets farther and farther past the time he would normally get out, is not that he is at work. It was at first, then slowly the doubts crept in. A doubt at first, then a suspiscion. Eventually, a worry. Soon enough, a complete distraction.
Now, it barely even seems like a possibility that he is at work, and not banging the blonde from his past in some alleyway, thinking "god, is this what I've been missing. Now, it barely even seems like a possibility that he is not 5,000 miles away, having jumped on the private jet of his rich mistress earlier today, now lounging on a beach on some remote island in the south pacific, batting her two-inch-long labia with his tongue as she crouches over his face-- he never knew he was into freakishly disproportionate female genetalia until he met her.
Now, it seems the best I can really hope for is that, maybe, just maybe he was in a horrible car accident and has left me a rich widow. Though, it was probably on the way back from getting a blow job from a Belgium Supermodel who would weighs only 82 pounds if it weren't for her six ample breasts.
The phone rings. I answer.
"Hello!" He says."You coming home?" I ask.
"Yep."
"Where were you?" Can't help. Have to ask.
A slight pause-- though, not so much a "formulating my answer" kind of pause, more of an "isn't it obvious?" kind. Cocky. "At work." He says. Then, jokingly, "Where were you?"
"Here.""Suuure. I'll see you soon?"
"Yep. Better wipe the lipstick off your collar, first." I tell him, my voice all casual, self-assured.
"Mmm-hmmm. Bye."
I hope I pulled off the confident, trusting wife persona. I hope I meant some fraction of it came from somewhere genuine. I hope I really do have that woman somewhere inside me, the one that thinks of myself as too smart, beautiful and funny for him to really consider cheating on, and if does, so what, there are others waiting in line, maybe hundreds.
I hope her fifth nipple poked him in the eye. On with it.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
When I was very young, my father sat me down and explained to me the best he could.
"Son," He said. "There's a secret that adults hide from kids. Always have, always will. They hide it from them because they think it's protecting them, keeping them happy. But I don't think that's true, I think it does more harm than good. So I'm going to tell you."
I leaned forward, with wide, curious eyes.
"Life is unfair." He told me. I was disappointed, because I'd heard this before, from a snarky cousin, or from a frustrated adult. He saw that I looked let down, and went on. "I know people have told you that before, and most of the time, they don't say it right. They say it like they're scolding you for being angry when something unfair happens to you, right?" I nodded. "Well, they shouldn't say it like that, but what I'm telling you isn't me scolding you. This is an important lesson, and I'll explain why. Okay?"
"Okay." I told him.
"Life is unfair. Good things happen to bad people. A person can spend their whole life doing great things, and then suddenly get very hurt or die for no good reason. And that's very sad. And it is unfair. And when anything unfair happens, little or big, it's okay to have some feelings about it, but it's also important not to let those feelings get out of control, and stop you from going on with your life. It's important that you understand, right from the start, that no matter what bad things might happen to you, no matter whose fault they are, it's your responsibility to keep trying, to keep living your life the way you want to live it, or as close to it as you can get. Because of all the bad things that can happen to person, one of the worst is to become someone who is angry at the things that are unfair, and who lets that get in the way of their life."
I nodded. I didn't quite understand, but I could tell that one day I would.
"Bad things do happen to people, but there are people who live their whole life like they're waiting for an apology from the world. And you know what? If they ever did get one, they'd find out they were no better off. Get it?"
"Sort of." I told him.
"As long as you're listening. You'll get it one day." He told me. He sighed for a minute, looking thoughtful, then looked down at me again. "I don't mean to say that you can't fight against injustice. Some injustice, you're supposed to fight against. Sometimes, when things are unfair, it's your duty to try and make them as fair as possible. But sometimes-- most of the time, even-- you have to make the decision that something that's only a little unfair isn't worth the fight. And some of the things that are the most unfair of all simply aren't guided by rules of any kind. They just happen. Those things, you just have to accept, and keep going."
"Oh." I said.
I never did thank him.
---
On with it.
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