"So I will find my fears and face them,Or I will cower like a dog.
I will kick and scream or kneel and plead.
I fight like hell
To hide that I've given up."
~Bright Eyes, "Another Travelling Song"

The first post of a new year. 2007. A little nervous, a little unprepared, maybe, but I'm pretty fucking happy to be out of 2006.

2006 was a year of great music. If I had to pick one artist to sum it up, I'd say Bright Eyes. Songs like "Waste of Paint" and "Take is Easy (Love Nothing)" brought me into a closer understanding of my weaknesses, and the weaknesses of those around me, and I reacted with venom that might have poisoned more than it was supposed to. Songs like "Going for the Gold" and "No Lies, Just Love" reacquainted me with the kind of hopeless pain that only a shaky voice can iterate. And I let the album "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning", with it's sentimental push towards a brighter dawn wrap up my year. Here is an album everyone should run out and buy. Here is a song that haunts you, a rhythym that drives you, a question that haunts you: "Why are you scared to dream of god// When it's salvation that you want?"

The last couple of months have slowed with the melody of "Lua", marched with the beat of "Road to Joy", and come to the realization, "We are nowhere, and it's Now."

Bright Eyes can do the music of mourning better than anyone. Bright Eyes remembers the rhythym of regret. There's poetry in pain, singing strains of sadness and sorrow. Bright Eyes is the kind of music you need, if you're about to have a year like I just had.

It was a year of great music. But it wasn't a great year.


I am making a conscious switch this year. This year, I will rise from the minor chords. I'm coming up, scratching out, fighting back. This year, I will overcome. Or it will be my last.


I am waiting for this song to come to an end. Then I will press "stop."


The music of 2007 will be provided Ani DiFranco, with maybe a little Etheridge or some classic Joni. The music of this year will be all about energy and determination, strength that only women can understand, the kind that resides, often latent, within long, lean, unassuming muscles. This is the kind of restrained power that only springs forth when cornered; a woman is a fighter of nessecity where a man is a fighter of pride.

I haven't always owned up to being a woman, but that is what I am. And that is how I will overcome.


I stumbled upon an old Ani CD that I hadn't listened to in ages the other day, put it in, and I remembered what it feels like to listen to her-- not just the slow stuff that has been in my stock of MP3's the whole time, but her spunky stuff, the gumption, the moxie; the politics and the anger, the love and the indignation. I had forgotten.

This is the year I will end my own personal battle with Vaginismus. And when that's done, or concurrently, I will fight on the front of every other woman's battle with it. This year, I will not take "no" for answer. This year, I will not let myself give it.

"My thigh have been involved in many accidents,
And now I can't get insured,
And I don't need to be lured by you.
My cunt is built like a wound that won't heal,
And now you don't have to ask,
'Cause you know how I feel."
~Out of Habit

There's a lot to say about things lately, more than I have time for. People and places. Resolutions and reservation. Music and memories; a moment, a week ago, in the cab of a truck with someone that I cared about in 2006, and the things between us that pushed us apart, us so like magnets forced to either repel or attract. The dichotomy of roles between us; two people who see the best in each other, want the best for each other, are their best when with each other, on one end. On the other, two people who can't seem to help but act in such a way that totally undermines their mutual respect. I suppose this could mean a lot of things, but for me, the only thing that resonates is a moment alone with him, listening to a song in the dark, leaning on him; his earnest request that I not avoid-- abandon, more accurately-- him in the future, and the way it looked as a I watched a single tear fall from my eye and soak into the fabric of his shirt as I apologized, promised him that I wouldn't do it again.


The way it felt, several hours later, when, with a quiet acknowledgement of the hours in between, we both knew I couldn't keep that promise.

Loving people, it's a bitch.


It was a male singer, the song we were listening to in the truck. You ever notice how women will listen to, and love, music by artists of either gender, but men almost never listen to female artists? Kudos to the Chicago Jew for loving Ani.

So, now to dive, headlong into 2007. Wish me luck.


On with it.


"Everything I do is judged,
And they mostly get it wrong, but oh well.
'Cause the bathroom mirror has not budged,
And the woman who lives there can tell
The truth from the stuff that they say.
She looks me in the eye
And says 'Would you prefer the easy way?
No? Well, okay then. Don't cry.'"
~Joyful Girl

It's December 27th. Two days after christmas. Five and a half months or so after I made a deal with myself, this summer. Gave myself a deadline. A deadline of six months.


2006 has arguably been the worst year of my life, with special emphasis on the late spring through summer. This was a time when Zack and I, buckling under the pressures of the problems our life together has fostered, took turns hurting each other. I've realized, recently, that I can't regret any of the things that I did to him on their own; that I have to regret the entire era of our relationship, as a whole. (I feel, as I write this, a hint of deja vu, so please forgive if I am being repetitive.) I've realized that my actions weren't those of a good person or a bad person, a promiscuous person or a faithful person, a person in love or a person in a bad relationship. My actions, in a way, weren't actions at all, but reactions. In a way, this can be said, too, of the things Zack did to me. In a way, we can blame each other infinitely, and everyone else, and everything else.

And at some point, though, we both have to take ownership of the ways we hurt each other. Under different circumstances, this concept-- that we both did what we did, and for whatever reason, we had control of ourselves going in, so ultimately the responsibility lies with us-- might have caused either of us to be unable to forgive the other. But we've accepted each other's failings, the moment when each of us fell from grace, because we both know what we tripped on.

Vaginismus.

Five and a half months ago, I gave myself a deadline. I realized that the vitality of my marriage, which once seemed so terribly immortal, hinged upon my ability to give Zack what he needs: sex. I realized, further, that of all the many things I've wanted to be in my life, and there have been many, the one I want know more than all the others combined is to be his, and no matter how I negotiate it with myself, I'm fairly sure that I don't want to be anything else at all if I can't be that. And I realized that while I've been making an effort all of this time, there was a nagging little seed of avoidance with in me, rooted more intricately than I knew, that kept causing me to put it off, the way I put off everything of importance. I let myself believe that I had all the time in the world to make this problem better, and I let the disease that this truly is take that time to make itself worse.

Now, I cannot function half as well as I once could. Now, I have built up so much baggage surrounding anything sexual, and I do mean much more than even those who have met me could possibly understand, that I have simply made it a non-issue in my life. Like someone who is afraid of bridges, I take alternate routes. I deal with the needs of others as nessecary, but ignore my own, or address them with machines designed to make intimacy obsolete. When I am not near a bed, or a partner, I feel the desperate need to relearn the art of pleasure; when pleasure is a possibility, I sabotage myself.


Listening to the hypnosis MP3, I have learned that if I am ever to cross the moat of frigity to slay the dragon of vaginismus, I must first defeat the castle guard that is my own cynicism. I've spoken of him here before as my inner critic, addressing him in terms of self-esteem and calling him "Jiminy Critic." I've given him a voice and told you all exactly what he has to say. And while my awareness of the destructive things he has to say about me was peaked, I did not realize that this self-worth-attacker by day was moonlighting as the soulmate of my sexual dysfunction.

He's telling me now that this personifying thing has gone too far. That I've used cast one too many metaphors, and I must reel them back in. He's not half bad to have around, when I write.

But when I'm listening to this MP3 that's instructing me to relax, and he's relentlessly mocking every word that's supposed to lull me into a state of suggestibility, he's not so helpful.

"Your muscles are melting like butter-- there's some imagery I've never heard before. She must have learned that in Hypnotherapy Clichés 101."

He disagrees with her when she tells me my stresses are melting away. Points out when the things she says come off of condescending. And just laughs when she gets too sacharin.


It occurs to me that he does not sound totally unlike my father, who taught my whole family to make cynical jokes out of anything that hits too close for comfort. The feeling I get as Jiminy battles my whispering voice that pleads with me to just let go, it seems, is somewhat similar to one I experienced on Christmas day: I forced my family, finally, to watch Love Actually with me, at long last. During one scene where one character is discovering her husband's affair, my father pseudo-jokingly criticizes the wife for snooping, and the husband's carelessness in leaving evidence to be discovered. Every time the couple graces the screen, his chiding gets louder, more forced, and it occurs to all of us that he is not really joking, just hiding his discomfort at the idea. My sister starts making comments back at him, sharp barbs amid the guise of laughter, that she'd always assumed he had experience with the topic. I try to ignore the truth behind it all-- watching my mother and father interact, seeing her forced strength when it comes to issues of philandering and loyalty, it's clear to see that somewhere in their 30-plus years together, some infidelity has occurred. I know this about my father, and accept it. I see the tolerance in my mother, and envy and pity it all at once. But as Cathy makes another "Joking" comment, and my mother joins in, I tune it out. Acknowledgement of this issue isn't the kind of family activity I had planned for this Christmas.


Believing, really believing, that eventually husbands cheat, eventually wives must turn a blind eye, or forgive, or cease to be wives-- this doesn't help the vaginismus. I don't know how much of it is fueled by what any more, but it never escapes my attention when I see or hear something that I can't help but believe is making it worse.

I'm thinking about yoga-- finding my inner self, forcing myself to practice at quiet, at acquiescence, at acceptance and moving on with the flow. I want to shut up Jiminy; slay the guard and start working on crossing the goddamned moat.

But it occurs to me that part of me doesn't want him gone. It's not just the part of me that wants to keep me safe from penetration-- or perhaps it is; there's more than one way to be penetrated, after all. Beyond the defensive reasons, though, I hear myself thinking that perhaps my outspoken little critic is the most interesting part of me, and he eagerly confirms the suspicion. We East-coasters wear our cynicism like a badge. We consider it a habit of intellectuals to congratulate ourselves on our free-thinking anger, to find our daily pride in moments when our comebacks are particularly brutal. We are warriors with minds faster than bullets, pens mightier than swords. This is the kind of cruel detachment that builds empires, makes millions, writes sitcoms. Careers have been built this way, and, furthermore, this is the way I've always wanted to build mine.

I don't hate Jiminy; I embrace him. I laugh along with him, because he's so undeniably a part of me. He is my father's voice, and also, perhaps, the thing I've always loved best about my father.


I fantasize that there's something like an on/off switch to be found; that I'll be able to listen to him when I want him, and tune him out when I don't. I suspect, however, that it doesn't work this way. That there's a choice to be made: that I need to be either in or out.

"No." Corrects Jiminy. "You need to put out and take it in."


To take a line from Sin City, I can't bring myself to tell him to shut up. Maybe he's just a part of my psyche. Maybe he's just a product of a guarded, sarcastic upbringing. Maybe he's just a figment of my imagination.

None of this stops the bastard from being absolutely right.


On with it.

My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency presents: Best and Worst Commercials, 2006 Holiday Edition.

Worst: Started airing a few years ago, but I'd happilly forgotten it until now: A series a of beautiful people, in beautiful places, with beautiful wind making their beautiful clothing whip around all their shapeliness look into the camera and send you a deep message for the holidays: It's not your clothes, it's not your music, it's not where you live and it's not how you dress that tells the most about who you really are.

It's your watch.

This christmas season, Seiko wants you to cast off your old concepts of vanity and self-importance...and adopt some newer, more expensive ones. This commercial, sadly, isn't online, but you can get a pretty good overview of what I'm taking about with their website's flash presentation.

Casey's reaction tends to make me think that I'm possibly the only person in the world who finds it so damn amusing, but hey, there it is.



Best: As much as I haven't always loved the Mad TV Cast's Sierra Mist commercials, I must say that I found this year's Commercial for Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash, featuring the Holiday Hawk, to be quite unexpectedly enjoyable. Check it out here.

On that note, YouTube is, one of these days, gonna go ahead and make my commercial-describing skills completely obsolete. How will I keep my place, gently embedded in the hearts of minds of my beloved readers?

Why bringing you news of ingenious internet advertising campaigns, like this one for the Philips Bodygroom, first! Don't miss the music video, or the description of "Where to Shave", both located in the main menu.


And since it seems the internet has made my job a great deal easier this year, I will sign off for now, wishing you a Merry Christmas, and reminding you, this Holiday season, to keep the spirit of joy in your heart, to give freely to others, to love, and to give every person, rich and poor alike, the same treatment, no matter their manner or apparel.

Unless they're not wearing a watch.


On with it.

I check my mail today and find the current e-mail in my inbox:

To: Suedecaramel@gmail.com
From: 66anonymous66@hotmail.com
Date: Saturday, December 9, 2006 8:55 PM
Subject: Hey Operation Suporvisor

The shit is about to hit the fan

Consider yourself warned

This seriously freaks me out. I have no idea what this could possibly be about, or who it could be from. It obviously has something to do with work, because "Operation Suporvisor" (sic) is my title. But I sat here for an hour trying to think of any thing that I've done wrong that could possibly "hit the fan", and I can't come up with a single goddamned thing. I've been working my ass off. I love my bosses and they like me, I think. And I love that store. I want nothing more than to see it's success, and I feel like I've made that clear. I've been nice to everybody, which is easy-- Iike almost everyone there. I am wracking my brain for anything I've said that could be considered offensive, and just can't come up with anything. I honestly have nothing to worry about.

But I'm really worried. I love this job.

I hope this figures itself out sooner than later.



On with it.

I finish my book today, close it, and find myself still at work three and a half hours after I should have left. It is a rare thing for me to finish a book, though I probably read more than the average person. Most of the novels I endeavor to start reading just don't make it across my finish line, the most recent being Dave Barry's Tricky Business and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. There is no pattern here.

I am wandering around the store, half looking for a replacement for the force that has just come and filled my life then left me standing in a void, half simply having no reason to go home. Bill, who I am drawn to, is rearranging the iPod accessories section. I strike up a conversation which, since it is not directly about work, makes me instantly self-conscious about what I have to say. When I was in elementary school, this kind of discomfort might have caused me to lash out, picking a fight with the object of my interest. I am an adult now, though, so instead, I just pick a fight with an object.

"These organic yoga mats annoy me." I say in his general direction, and he cocks his head. I pick one out of it's display and examin it's grainy brown color, a condescending hue if I ever saw one. "Was there really a need for this? Were we clear-cutting a forest of yoga mat trees?" I am miserably aware of the fact that there was a much more suave and intelligent way to say this, and I try to ignore that, only to find myself hoping that he doesn't pick up on the larger flaw, which is, of course, that if yoga mats were really made from yoga mat trees, than they'd already be organic. When he's still said nothing in reply, I tell him, more quietly, "Sometimes, I go on rants. You'll find that out about me."

"Okay. But they are a good development." He picks one up and reads the label. "These are made out of 100% Pico Plant fiber."

"Are you implying that we're running out of vinyl?"

"No, but these will decompose in a landfill." He says earnestly. Bill is one of those people that is so nice, it's impossible; so non-judgemental, you end up judging yourself in his presence just to make up for the deficit. "They create less waste."

"Thank god," I say, sarcastically. "I always say, the biggest challenge our environment faces right now is all the unrecycled yoga mats that pollute our air and water." In truth, I simply hadn't thought about it from this angle. But I wasn't to give up my armor of cynicism.

"Well, it's a start." He says, pleasantly, and goes back to his work. I turn my back to him and straighten a few books, wanting to rant on about how there might be more global good accomplished if people learned to be fiscally responsible with, say, the thirty dollar difference between the price of the organic yoga mat and it's cheaper synthetic cousin, or even sent that money off to Greenpeace, if that floats their boat. I wanted to point out that they could use that money to buy organic snacks for a rally against the excessive burning of fossil fuels or the tiny little cages they put those bleeding heart chickens into before they become McNuggets. I wanted to ask him to be my friend.

Instead, I say, "Great. Let's give those yoga people one more thing to feel self-righteous about."

He turned to look at me again. "You are on a rant, aren't you?"



On the ride home, I wonder if my bitterness was fueled, in part, by a yoga person I know who, at that exact moment, was neglecting to get back to me about tentative plans we had made, and it strikes me that it's always the decent people who motivate me to act like an asshole. I turn on the radio to washout this thought; 94.9, in it's all-holiday-music mode, is playing "Let There be Peace on Earth" performed by some country singer with a twangy voice. I listen, and am brightened, if just for a moment, by the simple words, and that special, subtle effect Christmas can have on you, to make you enjoy something you'd despise eleven months out of the year. Then, in the next verse, the country singer's voice is replaced by the voice of a young boy. It's meant to illicit feelings of innocence and nostalgia, carefully chosen to sound immature and somewhat nasal; suddenly, all I can think of is some far more talented child who auditioned, getting passed over because some record exec. with an eye on the bottom line said, not to the boy's face, "Nah, this kid's too good. We need to a kid that sounds like a kid. A common denominator." All I can think of is that kid not getting a callback, and wondering why. Hearing the song on the radio and being bitter, knowing he's better than Nosey McCan'tSing, but secretly wondering if maybe he really isn't.

I don't think I quite fit into the target demographic, here. Clearly, I am not the common denominator, either.

I pull into my drive way, and check my cell: still no text message from the yoga girl. I think about landfills, and how dishonest they are: let's take all this trash that we can't get rid of, trash that'll never be anything but trash, and bury it. Wait for some green grass to grow back, it'll look nice. We're making our own geography here. The rolling hills of Scotland, almost. Why not just a warehouse, I wonder. And where were the yoga people when that decision was being made?

A big pile of trash covered by a thin layer of soil and grass; it's not much of a disguise, but, then, neither is picking a fight with a yoga mat. I can't help but wonder who came up with this concept, and why.


On with it.

I feel, lately, the need to be fake. Things that are going on in my head, I feel like I can't write them here, for the first time. The guy I can't allow myself to expose my continued vulnerability to, anymore. The girl who I have no let understand how badly I want to get to know her. Problems with Zack's family that are not mine to publicize.

At night, I lay in bed and these things swirl through my mind, and I feel the need to commit them to paper, or the modern day equivalent. The process I've developed to deal with my day-to-day problems involves a detailed equation, reconciled only when I've put it into words precise and rhythmic enough to be worthy of an audience, then shared. In the end, the sum of my circumstances and neuroses is humanity, the story of my character, and if it's written well enough, than people will love me for the confession, no matter how heinous the crime.


Part of the situation that I am not at liberty to publicize in this manner winded up bringing me, today, somewhere I did not comfortably fit in, a place where the reality is harsh and uncomfortable, so much that going there was not only a physical journey, but a leap forward, too, in time: most often, we age at a regular pace, maybe different for all of us, but pretty constant throughout any one life. Every so often, though, things happen that push you forward at a dizzying speed, and you stumble forward, haphazardly maturing out of nessecity. To get through these things, you understand, you have to be a little bit more of an adult than you ever planned on being.

Without giving away too much detail, I hope, I found myself waiting with Zack and his brother in St. Mary's, just outside the psych ward, just after the elevators and before the locking doors. We layed on the stairs and listened to MP3's on Ian's cell phone, and I stared up at the concrete bricks painted with that institulional paint, a beige so bland that it hardly even qualifies as a color, and suddenly I was overcome with a sense of familiarity.

"This feels like high school." I said. Zack and Ian acknowledged me, but then moved on with the conversation, leaving me to decipher the deeper implications.


I'm reading Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper right now, a recommendation from Barb, a teacher at Andover who I miss since I've stopped going. It's excellent; I don't feel qualified to give a full-blown recommendation until I finish it, but, unlike with most books, I have no doubt that I will. The book is dramatic, sad and complex, with a new tragic revelation, like a punch to your gut, ever third page or so (but not in a bullshit, unbelievable, Forged by Fire kinda way. Moreover, it's a way that feels familiar to anyone who's ever gotten the sense that life really does love to kick you when you're down.) In the midst of all this tradgedy, though, the author's wit comes through in a real way, and, in spite of it all, you find yourself wanting to laugh just as often as you want to to cry.

You should go to Border's Brunswick and pick it up. I hear they have a great selection, there.



On with it.

The problem, as I see it, is ambiguoity: for any given situation, the answer is different. There is no hard-and-fast rule whether virtue is to be found in letting go of what hurts or fighting for what doesn't. Romantic movies spout different morals to this end: The Mexican's somewhat famous morale is that, between two people who love each other, you never reach the point of "enough is enough", but you get the sense in the movie that they just might reach that point anyway. In Casablanca, she turns and leaves the man she loves for a more promising future, but you can't help but think she should have stayed. Romeo and Juliet stay together forever through all costs, but the costs are high. More and more, romantic comedies are featuring a new kind of love story: the kind where a couple loves, changes each others lives in a meaningful way, then parts amicably; these stories, The Breakup and Prime to name a couple off of the top of my head, end on a new kind of resolution, where there's a scene at the end where they see each other and smile, pleasantly, acknowledging their mutual past and bearing no ill will. It's not exactly happily ever after, but it's all some of us dare to dream of, anymore.

In California, we had a "talking circle" every day before massage class began, where we sat and shared whatever was on our mind; things of significance, things of insignificane; a lot of west-coast touchy-feely crap, really, but when in Mariposa. There was a somewhat creepy older man there, Chuck was his name, I believe, and no one really liked partnering up with him very much, touching and being touched by his leathery, backwoods skin, but in a group we managed to get along with him pretty well, poking well-meaning fun at the weird things he said, and he learned to take it in stride. One day in the circle though, he said something that didn't sit well with a lot of the people there: he began telling the story, very casually, of a woman he had loved years ago, a relationship which had ended badly, and how he'd spent every year since then, twenty or thirty or so in all, trying to get her to just talk to him. It was clear that, for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what made this strange, or why she'd stopped accepting his calls. The reaction of this was something of an uproar; a lot of people had a lot of opinions. One woman, Pauline, started lecturing him in the all-knowing way she must have used on her kids about how desperately important it was for him to let go. I didn't like Pauline particularly before that, and I especially didn't like what she had to say. My anger came out, at first, in twisting hands and stifled grunts, and as the people to either side of me tried to offer their support and quiet me, I couldn't take it any longer. I got up and walked away, breaking the circle, and the unspoken rule not to walk away when someone else was speaking.

What I couldn't put into words them was not that I agreed with Chuck, in particular, that he was doing the right thing in clinging to the love of this woman, but that Pauline had no basis in which to assert he was wrong. No one in that room had the right or the knowledge to say whether what he was doing was foolish or wise, whether it would end badly; whether it would be worth it if it did. Despite the way it looked on the surface, I sided slightly with him, for my own reasons: this was during the longest fight that Jeremey and I had ever had, the one that lasted more than a year. I had gotten use to people telling me that I needed to let go of my love for him, gotten used to my own, steadfast reply: Jeremey and I, we could last through anything. Maybe he wouldn't take my calls, maybe I'd shed enough tears over him to drown an ocean. But Jeremey and I, I were sure, would be the truest kind of friends, forever.


Tonight, he was the one I called when I learned that once again I'd been lied to by the person I hate being lied to the most. I wasn't wrong in hanging on to my love for Jeremey, and it's good that I wasn't: there are friends I tend to give to and friends I tend to take from. Jeremey is one of the latter, but in a situation where I know I'm going to fall apart, I tend to choose to take from the givee's: if you're going to be humiliated by your tearful vulnerability, it's preferrable that it be with someone who's own tearful vulnerability you know well. While I was on the phone with Jeremey, the subject of our discussion beeped on the other line, and asked me to meet him for dinner.


Ambigouity is one problem, maybe even the problem, but credibility, or lack thereof, is another: when lying becomes a pattern, the truth becomes this distant...I don't know. I don't know. But the reason I don't know is because of the sheer distance of the truth. What I do know is this: those cartoons where the character in the dessert sees a mirage and begins to shovel the sand into their mouth because they believe it's water, that's credible. One might wonder why the brain lets the heart believe it's drinking. The reason of course is this: the brain knows that when survival is nearly impossible, and the priority is keeping things as painless as possible, hope is more important than water.


Standing in front of my mirage, I resolved myself to swallowing the grainy liquid he offered up, knowing that once he drove away, I'd be coughing up dust. The thing is, it's no longer even really a quesiton of whether or not he is lying to me. It's a question of whether or not I can bring myself to believe him.

Whatever the truth is, it may be too distant to matter anymore. Ambigouity is taking hold, and I don't know whether to fight for the truth or for what I want to be true, to give up entirely or to just try and believe. I know, for sure, two things: I'm tired of writing this, and I need a drink.

On with it.

"If there's no one beside you,
when your soul embarks,
Then I will follow you into the dark."

This song has been stuck in my head today. At our morning meeting at work, the question of the day was "What is your favorite song?" These questions are meant to help us get to know each other, an old work orientation cliche, but this time, with new prospects: More than ever, those I've held dearest are absent my life, spread far and wide throughout the state and country. In past, my transient group of friends, as opposed to the longer-lasting varierty, has revolved around my current job, generally taking a good six to seven months to kick in. Hearing, every day, one more tidbit of what I have in common with people helps me to draw my hypothetical social cirlces in my mind-- a drawing that I must keep in mind will be wiped clean in a couple of days when the trainers-- who I tend to get along the best with-- leave, and I'm forced to resume the more authorative stance of working above someone more than I currently work alongside them.

Whenever I ask, in my personal life, the "favorite song" question, I am disappointed to find that 98% of people's immediate response is "Oh, I have a lot of favorites, I can't pick one." This saddens me, as, being one of the few who has a definitive favorite song, I understand that there is something about having one song that is just you, and only one. The lift you feel when you hear it is maybe a little different than the more common "Oh, I love this song"; It's a moment that feels as though it's just for you, and when you are surrounded by others who let the moment pass by without stopping to feel it, then it helps remind you of yourself, your individuality. There are things that are only for you, and here, this is one of them.

Today Zac S.-- not to be confused with Zack S. (husband)-- named Death Cab for Cutie's "I Will Follow You into the Dark", one of my recent favorites, getting it stuck in my head in a solemn joy that lasted most of the morning, and came back again that night. I found myself transported into other times in which I heard it playing: Once, in an apartment, on an ironic night, hearing it once and then again. Two distinct times that sandwiched a defining moment, and perhaps a moment that defined me as something I'd prefer not to be. The first time I heard it that night, it left me feeling determined. The second, it left me feeling...immeasurably sad, a failure, someone who's actions were inevitably guided by a deep, archaic force that leaves willpower looking like a crushed can in a gutter.


More recently, I remember laying in bed with Zack, our heads on pillows, lying on our sides and looking at each other. For some reason, I had asked him to sing to me, and he did, some song he knew, something to make me smile. Somewhere in our ensuing conversation, I was reminded of the song, and the night, and I explained to him that I could no longer listen to it without crying. He asked why and I explained it, in more detail than you're entitled to here (or rather, details that he is entitled to have fairly exclusively, details that I leave out, not out of lack of esteem for you, but for attempted respect for him.). I could see, having explained the context, that he understood, but not completely, not knowing the song the way I did, and so I sang it to him, in my broken, shaky voice, with tears streaming down my face.

"Love of mine,
Someday you will die,
But I'll be close behind;
I'll follow you into the dark.
No blinding light,
Or tunnels to gates of white,
Just our hands clasped so tight,
Waiting for the hint of a spark.

If heaven and hell decide,
That they are satisfied.
Illuminate the No's,
On their vacancy signs.
If there's no one beside you,
When your soul embarks,
Then I will follow you into the dark."


It's a simple song, with a simple melody, and a simple theme: unconditional love. What I've learned about unconditional love is this: It exists, but don't get it mixed up with the kind of love that changes as your relationship with a person does, which is more common. In my experience, these things are layered: The top layer is a blanket of ambulatory love, which changes with the seasons, running thick and thin. When thick, it's fascinating and powerful; you could swear you'd do anything for a person, move mountains, walk through fire, all the standby clichés. When thin, it's maybe more comfortable; if too thin, it may not feel like love at all, maybe more like anger or disdain. Circumstances come and go, times change, and so does this vagabond devotion-- this changing tide is, more often than not, what leaves people feeling cynical about love itself.

What people don't understand, perhaps, is that under all this pulsing instability, most often, is a foundation. Hard, unmoving, steadfast and true, that rare love that truly is unconditional. So low-laying, you may not even know it's there when you've run out of the stuff up top. But, if you're lucky enough to feel it, and have it felt for you, you'll find again and again that it's the stuff that lasts, and that it can be rebuilt upon as many times as your heart can stand it. Which is a suprisingly large number.


What I believe about mine and Zack's relationship-- the husband, not the coworker-- is that we're built on a slightly thicker foundation. Maybe thing I've done, maybe things he's done, maybe things we've both done have rocked it, but the tears we've shed in our regret haven't made their way to any cracks yet, so I'll go on, unafraid to cry as I look in his eyes and sing that I will follow him into the dark.


On with it.

So I generally like to avoid the kind of "personal update" posts like the one I'm about to embark on, but firstly, I'm crazy busy lately, meaning almost no one who might regularly have some contact with me has any idea of where I am and what's happened to me, and secondly, I hate that the most recent post on the site (which I've just spent the past few months working on driving new people to) is a link to a questionable rough draft of a really creepy story I wrote in the middle of the night. I do like the story, which has as a working title of "Andrew" (no relation, honestly, to any Andrew I've ever met), but, judging from the lukewarm reception from those who have read it, I think it has a face only a mother could love.

The other story, "The Best Man", opened to much better reviews, despite the sore need for improvements which have been racing to my mind. The day after I churned it out, I was completely excited to get busy editing, but the next night, I wrote "Andrew", and soon after started in at Border's where, as we prepare to open on November 16th, my hours have been much longer than anyone could have expected.

So, some quick, and relevant updates.

• The job is good. I'm happy-ish with my pay, relieved to be working so close to home, thrilled to be working in a bookstore, and challenged by and respected for the work I do. I have an office. People suck up to me (I control their paychecks.) My boss is impressed by how quickly I'm catching on to the work, as am I: you never think you're capable of doing things until you have to, it seems. I'm considering making moving up in this company my practical career goal, settling on this for my main source of income. It's hard to tell whether or not I'd be happy for life in a place like this, having only been there about a week now, but I can see it happening, and that, well, that's a first. Plus, it would be nice to stop worrying about where I want to be in the future, and start focusing on what I want to accomplish in the future, in terms of, for instance, my impractical career goals, among other things.
• The dog got neutered on halloween and, in my opinion, his behavior has already improved. There's a post waiting to be written about the events leading up to this finally being pushed through the financial red tape (with shocking photos!) Hopefully, I get to this in the near future, being that I have some time off this weekend (Sunday's off, and only eight or nine hours tomorrow!)
• The latest few e-mails I've sent out have gone yet unanswered, which leaves me wondering about my status with the people I sent them to. I thought I'd give this a bullet, just in case it might speed up the process of finding out where I stand.
• I need to talk to my mom to find out if she can help me pay to get my hormones tested and buy a custom hypnotherapy CD. I've stopped seeing my therapist, who was supposed to be helping me with the vaginismus, for a variety of reasons-- the biggest of which involving her extremely inconvenient location, but before I did, she suggested that balancing my potential overload of estrogen might ease the pain I feel with arousal. As for the hypnosis, Border's will let me play CD's in my office (did I mention I have an office?), and I'm thinking about taking the audio from a hypnosis CD and layering it behind some musical tracks with an audio editor like nero or something, to achieve a subliminal effect. I hope to give me, and everyone who comes into my office with a direct deposit form, a better chance of getting laid in the near future. sex is good. sex is natural.

I guess the point of this post is to let you know that I haven't abandon you, whether you're a new reader who's starved and confused without your daily serving of Me (An average of 65 grams* of goodness in every post!), or someone who has the misfortune of knowing me in real life. I will emerge soon, squinting, into the light of real life.

If you need me before then, I'll be in my office.

On with it.


*Daily value not established.

Thursday, playing DDR, I started thinking about a stripper playing it, and from there, I ended up writing a 3335 word rough draft in a little under five hours. Needs editing, and I mean a lot of editing, but those of you who have read it so far have given me some pretty positive feedback.

Tonight, I was laying in bed, unable to get to sleep, I started thinking about naked lego people. And from there, I came up with this.

4,289 words of the most twisted shit that's ever come out of me, I kid you not. Less than three hours. Again, a very rough draft. Again, I haven't reread it-- would probably give me nightmares if I tried to do that now. And do not read that if you have a weak...anything.


Prolific? Maybe. Disturbed? Definitely.


On with it.