I am in my grandmother's house.  It's the weekend of the yearly St. Peter's Fiesta, and Zack and I are spending the night here before tomorrow, the day when everything happens.  In the morning there is a mass, which I never go to, then the "parade", which is actually a religious procession, and all the floats are heavily Catholic-themed.  The statue of St. Peter is walked in front of every Catholic church in town, and at the end it culminates in front of the St. Peter's club in one of my favorite moments of the fiesta each year.

It's hard to describe-- The statues of Peter and Mary, who sits atop a gorgeous dome of roses, are set facing the St. Peter's club.  One or two of the marching bands crowds in, and the streets are lined with children who are holding up ornamental oars with the names of boats in the Gloucester fleet.  The street is crowded and everyone is waiting, and there's a growing tension as the people in charge of holding the nets corraling hundreds of red, green, and white balloons (and one net of red, white, and blue, for good measure) situate themselves.  As the drummers in the bands lead into-- I believe-- the star-spangled banner, the men who have carried the heavy statues on their platforms hoist them up again, and everyone sings.  At the end of the song, the balloons are released into the air as confetti rains down on the crowd from the top of the St. Peter's club.  Then the statue is marched around the corner and returned to the Altar at the carnival on the pier for another twelve hours before he will be returned to his year-long resting place at the St. Peter's club at midnight-- my other favorite part of the fiesta, but that's another story.

I should say that I have a sentimental longing for this moment to take place in it's old location, on the other side of the building.  The whole ceremony shifted a few years back when, I think, the St. Peter's Club downsized to operate out of the basement.  I could be wrong about the specifics of that; nevertheless, my heart aches for the change.  There's more to describe about the fiesta-- the Seine Boat races, the greasy pole competition, the fireworks that night followed by the raucous walk around the fort in which St. Peter's statue takes a circuitous, mile-long hike followed by however many screaming followers can stay awake for it-- and it's important: this weekend, this tradition which is so defining to me, which I'm now realizing many of my friends don't understand.  But the reason for this entry is not to describe it all, but instead, lies in those poignant words: my heart aches for the change.

I am in my grandmother's house; it's the weekend of the fiesta.  I am here with my husband.  Upstairs, my uncle is asleep beside a woman who is nearly a stranger to me.  And no one else is here.

It doesn't feel too long ago that there was a time when my family had to make sleeping arrangements for the fiesta a month in advance-- either me or my sister, whoever was in high school, would bring a friend nearly every year.  My parents would be here, my uncle would be here, and, at least every alternate year, one of my cousins, one of Rosalie's sons, would be occupying the room in the basement, between lucrative jobs or relationships or whatever else.  And, of course, my Grandmother.

This is the first fiesta since my grandmother died.  I remember her telling me that she was in attendance at the very first one, marching in the parade. In the last few years, my grandmother wasn't well enough to attend at all, but I would see her every time I came, and I always came.  I hope that I always do.

Towards the end, when she was too home-ridden and nearly blind to see it herself, she would ask me about the altar.  It's a giant wood edifice, made to look, more or less, like the facade of some gaudy church, something that might host eloping couples in vegas.  It looks right at home with the carnival to one side of it and the fishing boats docked in Gloucester Harbor the other.  I actually haven't seen it yet this year, what, with no grandmother to see it vicariously for.

Except, that now it's even more important than it ever has been, to see it vicariously for her.  So where are the other witnesses?

My sister has recently moved to Virginia, out of comfortable driving distance from Gloucester, which may be her favorite town in the world-- I gather she'd be here if she could, but her life was often too busy and complicated to make the pilgrimage even before, when she lived in Rhode Island, or back in Maine.  Her children, who have been in attendance in many years previous, are actually in Maine, staying for a few weeks with my parents, but my father is unable to get away, and my mother sees little point in driving the two boys down without his assitance-- the carnival has some appeal, but other aspects of the fiesta are for slightly more adult tastes, with the exception of the greasy pole.  A competition where men in ridiuclous costumes injure themselves by trying to walk across a 15-foot, grease-covered pole suspended above the water is tailor-made for the violent sense of humor of young boys, but as the median age of the Frontiero clan participating has risen, and the number of boats in the harbor during the spectacle has increased, my uncle Michael has stopped shuttling us out to watch the competition from the harbor.  While still enjoyable from the beach, the crowds make it, perhaps, not worth a particularly long drive.

I invited Elorza to attend this year with Zack and I, as he did two years ago, resulting in an especially memorable weekend.  He cancelled only a few weeks in advance, which wasn't enough forewarning for my friend Jeff, a two-year fiesta veteran, to get the time off.

So Zack and I are here, in an uncharacterisically quiet house, because my sense of tradition is so stubbornly unshakeable.  Still, I question if this is really a good thing.

A therapist I was seeing briefly at the beginning of this year implied that I was the victim, at a very young age, of a moment wherein I lost control, where I was forced into a premature acknowledgement of chaos and unpredictability and all the terror that goes with it, and that that it why I suffer from this pathological need to control things.  Her example, at the time, was my stubborness surrounding food.  I couldn't be forced to eat anything I didn't like and I still can't, and perhaps that's really about the scared little girl who was trying to prove to herself and the world that she was powerful, that she could fight, that nothing had to happen to her that she didn't consent to.

I should say, the moment in question, while still shrouded with a fog of repression, was not the therapist's revelation at all, as it has more or less been accepted by myself and any professional I've met with, on the basis of various symptoms and snippets of memory and instinct I cling to.  But the connection to my absolute refusal to be forced to eat, then and now-- that was a bit of an "aha" for me.

It doesn't stop at food. I feel the compulsive need to control, or try to control, so much around me.

A post about that could have me writing until St. Peter is back safely in the window of his club downtown, but what comes up today is my stubborn, clinging, yelping, screaming need to maintain a connection to the past.

My past, specifically-- I've never been more than passingly drawn in by lineage or history.  While I mourn the loss of a generation of my family, I am really mourning the link to my childhood.  Tonight, after Zack fell alseep on the couch, I walked around, stymied by this house and unpresent ghosts of the people who lived here.  I studied the garish curtains in the living room, the criss-crossing beams on the ceiling-- my sister told me the other day that she'd never realized that they were cosmetic, and I thought of whether I'd ever thought to wonder. I looked at the bell on the wall that has no reason to be there and wanted to pull the rope and ring it and remember the way the sound used to delight me.  I opened the drawer in the short dresser, the bottom one that held the many scarves my grandmother owned that we used to dress up with-- there are still a few in there, and a fur hat that I was too young to be morally conflicted with at the time.  I wrapped a scarf around my head and  looked at myself in the mirror above the silver serving set, stared at myself, and thought how I look nothing at all like a child.  Then I walked into the quiet, dark kitchen and looked at the time-varnished white of the cabinets, the collection of almost random belongings on the walls and tucked onto decorative shelves, and I realized it's only a matter of moments until my memory is so faded that I struggle to form all but the most fleeting, teasing memory this place.  I sat down at the table and pictured myself an old woman who has almost no memory left of another old woman, the old woman who belonged in that kitchen, and I cried.

I am in a room, now, which has become the computer room.  Before her death in January, this room was being used as a bedroom for my grandmother, who could no longer manage to use the stairs.  Before that, it was occupied by both her and my grandfather, back when she was still mobile enough to make the daily ascent, but he was withering away from Lou Gehrig's disease, and could not.  I believe he died when I was 14.  That would make it thirteen years ago, nearly.

Before that, this room was the TV room-- there never used to be a set in the living room, when I was a kid. I remember the recliner near the window and I can't picture it there without picturing my grandfather in it, but that was after the ALS diagnosis.  Before that...there were couches.  Two, I think.  One was a sort of awkward tweed, and it pulled out into a mattress, though I'm not sure I ever saw that.  The other, if I remember correctly-- and I didn't remember at all before an hour ago, before concentrating on it until I was absolutely sure I'd forgotten it and then, suddenly-- a leathery black with squarish cushions, I think.  It must have been a love seat, I think now as I peer around to see how small this room really is.  A very small loveseat.  There was a big, boxy TV straight out of the 60's, with crazy-looking knobs, I think, and a cable box on top that would be vintage today, in it's own right.  And one of those very simple, very small black rectangle remotes.  And a thick rug, that I think was....green.

I struggle to form all but the most fleeting, teasing memory of this room...this room I'm in right now.  And maybe one day, maybe not too long from now, I won't be allowed back in this house at all.

I feel this reflex, when I think of that, to deny that, to tell myself that I won't-- I can't let this happen.  I must keep this house in the family just like I must buy and move into my parents house, despite being too large to be practical for the future that Zack and I envision.  I think of these things like my duties, my job, the most important job that I have.  I must control my future to protect my link to the past.

Why?

I get that this kind of thing is hard for everyone, but why does it instill such panic in me that I can't consider relaxing around the idea that this might not be something I can do, might not be something I have the means to do.  I feel like I'm bound to creat the conditions in my life that will keep my childhood safe; ironically, it seems that somehow, that's because it wasn't safe in the first place.  Does my subconscious sense that I have something yet to resolve in that time?  Will I one day face that un-unpresent ghost, and move on?  Or am I just too stubborn and afraid to grow up?

For now, this place still smells like my grandmother.  Tomorrow, I intend to visit her grave.  I guess the idea of a grave is to give someone like me a new place to associate with a person-- someplace they will stay into perpetuity, when their home has changed hands and all the objects associated with them have been scattered into new places.

Tomorrow, I will see the altar for this year's fiesta.  I will see the first St. Peter's Fiesta "parade" that has ever drummed the pavements of this town while my grandmother did not live in it.  I will get to the end of it and try to embrace the spot where the culmination happens now, one street down from where it used to be, and try to accept that I had nothing to do with that decision-- could have nothing to do with that decision-- and that the fiesta, as it is now, lives on, with all that really matters still in tact.

I will see the oars raised high and think of my grandfather, the fisherman. I will listen to the band and think of the song they play, the notes of which will be unchanged even when the brass of the instruments has been melted down for some irrelevant future machine. I will watch the confetti fall and the balloons rise up to a heaven that maybe, in that moment, I will try to believe in.  That place, that realm of pure energy and love, which unifies all that did happen and all that will happen, those who did live to those who will live.  Heaven, that belief which makes it alright to let go and give in to the will of the universe.  Knowing.

All that really matters, still in tact.

And tomorrow night, I will walk around the fort and shout at the top of my lungs to hail St. Peter, the man who guards the gates.


On with it.

Okay, I know it's been a while. Let's see if I still know how to do this.


Love and Grossology

A few minutes ago, Zack is bringing the dog inside and I'm at the oven, trying to down my daily dose of water with psyllium husks mixed in, part of a high-fiber diet I'm trying out. Zack looks up at me as a dry patch of husks hits my throat and triggers gag reflex, and, standing straight up, I vomit up all the fibrous water I've just taken in into my hand and onto the floor. Embarrassed, I go to clean up the mess while he holds the dog back the dog from coming to eagerly assist.

"I'm sorry if that was abundantly disgusting." I tell him.

"That's okay," He says. "I've seen you puke up worse."

Zack and I have been together seven and a half years now, and I can honestly say the romance isn't gone. Sure, there are enormous stretches of time where our life together seems so desperately, depressingly formulaic that I want to drill a hole in my head just for the tingling sensation. But I'm nevertheless shocked by how often I look at his face and just know that it is right, that it is real, that if anyone is going to make me want to drill a hole in my head, it will be him, and no one else.

There is this wisdom about marriage that the key is to find the meaning in moments like these; the simple, every day sweetness of "I've seen you puke up worse." I could agree with arguments for and against this logic, but I'll settle to say that it's an important balance-- for every flower, some flatulence. Or, vice versa, I guess.

But it goes farther than marriage, I think. Yes, Zack may be the only person who knows all my really disgusting habits, and I'm not ready to change that. But there is love and vomit in the history of many of my important relationships.

There's a boy I love who, after a night, drinking in his brother's apartment, laid on a bed with me talking through the night, until the conversation was interrupted by his throwing up into a blanket beside him. When he was done, I rubbed his back, and took the blanket, bundling it around the vomit and deposited into a bucket that I had earlier used for transporting liquor bottles, and left the bucket in the bathroom. We went to sleep and left in the morning, but the next day, I thought better of it and went to retrieve the bucket. His brother strongly suggested I throw out the blanket, which was white and now thoroughly soaked through, but it seemed, to me, old enough to be sentimental, like it must have been kicking around since the boy's...uh, boyhood. So I took the bucket home in my trunk, shook the blanket out from my porch-- I'll spare you the details of the smell-- and put the blanket through several wash cycles.

I returned it to the boy-- he didn't say much, but I expect he was more grateful than he expressed, and more than little embarrassed. All in all, it wasn't his reaction that mattered. There was something that the experience had instilled in me-- something that started as I watched him get sick beside me, as I handed him a tissue and took the soiled blanket, as I fought off the urge to let the contents of my stomach join his on my lawn the next day. Something, something special, that was fully realized when I took the clean blanket from the dryer, good as new (or, as old): I didn't love him any less. I'd seen this truly unglamorous act and been the one to clean it up, somewhat thanklessly, and it hadn't changed anything I felt. It just felt good to take care of him. It just felt good to see him as a fuller human-- not just the blush of the blood in his cheeks, but the blackened bile of his gut-- and to love him with all the more depth.

That boy and I, we've been through...periods of thick and thin, now. Right now, it's thin. We don't seem to be talking.

Jeremey, who is someone that I've also seen good and bad sides of, to say the least, told me that I should be rid of this absent, thoughtless boy and the damage he's done to me of late. "Cut the cord on that guy. And the next guy who is exactly like him."

"I didn't cut it on you. You grew out of it, eventually." I tell him. He tells me that no one ever said that it was a good decision.

He's right about that-- everyone, everyone had told me it was a very bad one, in fact. Many of you who will read this will have some first-person memory of at least one of the times in my life when Jeremey was treating me very badly and I, in turn, treated myself very badly in my refusal to give up on him, on us. I told them all, Jeremey and I were special. We went back so far, and, yeah, he could be a jerk. But our relationship, it wasn't going anywhere.

I look back now, and I know that it's true because I made it true. Jeremey and I, and a lot of other close friendships that could have ended badly if I'd been an easier cowgirl to buck, they paid off in the end...or, they've paid off so far, and I guess we're not really anywhere near the end. I pointed out to him that it was because of that perseverance that I have more close friendships than anyone else I know. I made the point that it wasn't really a choice about giving up on him-- that loving him, now and then, was fundamental to who I am. I realized, as I talked the situation through with him, that I'd already made my decision not to give up on this boy, and, more to the point, not to give up on the way I give my love to people.

This boy, I'm seeing the unglamorous side now, and it's worse than puke on a blanket. But the exercise from years earlier, when he seemed callous to my effort in cleaning and returning it, comes in handy. Sometimes, I've learned, you have to let the love you have for someone else be it's own reward.

Jeremey isn't the only one who has voiced concern about my devotion to people who treat me badly; Scarlet, a girl I've just recently started talking to, has already told me several times that it worries her. Scarlet's younger than I am, and I find her input almost cute: everyone else in my life has seen me be self-destructive in so many ways that my minor aching over the boy's latest absence would hardly even register; Jeremey, by now, is likely to have forgotten about the situation entirely. Scarlet picks up on the repetitive theme in our conversations and says that she's worried that I'm "obsessing."

I tell her that it's not like it seems; in reality, my thoughts are largely elsewhere. "I've been eating a lot of fiber lately, as part of this new diet I'm on, so most of the time, I'm just thinking about my bowel movements. But I didn't think we were really at the 'bowel movement discussion' point in our friendship, so I worked with what I had."

The beautiful thing is, there are people in my life that I'm past the "bowel movement discussion" point with-- people that I've been past the "bowel movement discussion" point for years. There's only way to get there. It takes a lot of time, a lot of patience, and a lot of forgiveness. It's not always smooth and it seldom smells of roses; sometimes, you just got to bear down grunt it out.

You know who you are, and you know I still love you, shithead.

On with it.

There are several e-mails that I meant to write today. One, I didn't end up writing because I realized that the recipient was very unlikely to bother writing back. Somehow, without my having been aware of it, I have grown past the maturity level where I am willing to put myself into a situation where I'm assured to feel annoyed and ultimately rejected. So I plan to leave him a voicemail tomorrow, or maybe, -gasp- have a telephone conversation. Damn, it's been a long time.

The other I had partially written in my head was to a friend I've been on complicated terms with for a few weeks. Every couple of days, I get the sense that I should e-mail her, and, while I'm not around a computer, I start to piece it together in my mind. But when I start to write it, I feel overwhelmed with this moody misanthopy that's been pervading my life lately, and I don't feel like spilling my guts about all the thoughts that have been on my mind lately-- when I examine it closely, I suppose that I'm bitter and hurt over everything that has been happening between us, how I've been left second-guessing the importance of our friendship, how there have been walls built in terms of our communication. I don't know if I'm currently "allowed" to see her, and, what bothers me most, I don't know if our relationship will ever be back to normal. Even the decisions she's made which I logically respect I can't help but be bitter and insecure over-- by their very nature, they leave me unable to know what the likelihood of things being normal in our future is.

It's bothersome that I have to be cryptic about these things, but, as I said earlier, I've matured a bit. I'm sick of the backlash this blog brings. That's why I haven't written. But I realized tonight, gradually, that this is what I needed. Needed to write out my thoughts-- those of them that can be shared-- but not to someone who won't respond or to someone who can't return my degree of openness. Just to the world. Just for myself. For the sake of being a writer, or because I am.

Things with another friend have compounded my insecurities relating to the first. (Second, I suppose, if you count the guy who wouldn't have e-mailed me back.) I'm sick of the confusion here, and I think I can safely say that this one is Jeremey. Jeremey's always been a core person to me. He's always been one of the people that I love, and that I know I always will love and, with whom, I feel like my relationship is non-negotiable. (The other core people, in terms of friends, are Elorza, Jeff, and Emily, to be clear.) I get the sense, however, that Jeremey isn't really in on the mutuality of this the way the others are-- Elorza, Jeff and Emily, I feel like they know that this is the status of things whether or not we're talking regularly, whether or not I've seen them, whether or not we are, in any given month, a vital part of that person's "right now" life. They don't require a lot of upkeep, and they know that they can find me when they need me, or want me-- I expect that they understand that things between us are fairly unconditional, in the long run. But I don't get that sense with Jeremey. I feel like Jeremey sees me as a coming and going friend, more or less-- he has referred to me as one of his oldest friends, so I get that he gets the sense of continuity, but I feel like, in the days and weeks and months that we go without being a day-to-day part of each other's lives, I'm just not that important to him, and I expect he assumes that, in those times, he's not that important to me.

He hasn't said anything to that effect recently, but he has in the past. It leaves me insecure and wondering.

Earlier, when I was at work, I was thinking that I needed to make a list of my goals, and then devise a system to make sure that I work on them all, a little bit at a time, on a weekly basis. My idea was evolving from the earliest point of making a list of, I dunno, five or so activities with corresponding timeframes of anywhere between 10-30 minutes, and then charting to make sure I did at least three of them a day, at least five days a week. The early idea was that those things should be exercise, meditation, french practice, art, and then something else...maybe writing, maybe music, something like that. But as I thought about it, the system became more and more complicated. It came to involve things that i should do but not necessarily on the same vein of personal enrichment-- cleaning, budgeting-- and then there's this whole question of sex-- is it on the list? Do I mandate how many times a week it happens, or should I be mandating how many times a week I'm working towards better sex in some way? Then there was the question of whether I should be tallying these things per day, as I first mentioned, or if there should be, instead, a minimum amount of time spent on each activity per week. (The thing about that last arrangement that I don't like is that it hypothetically allows me to do things like write, exercise and practice french only once a week for a long period of time, which is not particularly conducive to progress, nor does it lend itself to habit-forming.)

Then I started to think about categories, perhaps. Maybe "Creative", "Exercise", "Obligatory" and "Sexual", and I have to do a minimum of two hours per week on each, or something along those lines? Maybe Sex and Exercise should be combined into one category called "Body"...or maybe creative should be divided down into "Music", "Writing" and "Art." Maybe from there it becomes a matter of subcategories, and I can't totally avoid any one subcategory for more than two weeks....

See, I'm desperately over-thinking what was supposed to be a fairly simple system for spending more time doing self-improving things, as opposed to sitting around in boredom, hating myself for al the things that I did not accomplish that day. One thing is for sure-- I need to break down my aspirations into achievable little chunks, so that, even if I am not in the mood to exercise, learn a language or fine-tune my drawing skills, I feel like it's possible to just "get it over with" so that I can go back to wasting my life. Whether or not I go back wasting my life after I start one of these activities is entirely the business of my future self.

On with it.

Okay, so, I wish those widgets weren't stacked on top of each other like that, but my desire for justice and equality is very slightly stronger than my desire for neat and tidy presentation. So, those are the links to sign the petitions for the mentioned LGBT issues, but on each of them, I would also strongly suggest you send an e-mail of your own to your representatives. With DOMA, which I think may be the most important issue on the list, I would suggest visiting RepealDomaNow.org to do so, they have a lovely convio-powered form that will allow you to automatically send your message to the relevant parties. This is a little trickier with the fight to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell-- the only site I found with a convio-powered form to do that is that of the Log Cabin Republicans. Don't be scared off by the name, my liberal friends-- the log cabin republicans are a group of republicans that lobby just on behalf of LGBT issues, and filling out the form will not send a letter with any secret conservative agenda-- it's just a very simple way to get in contact with the correct people about Don't Ask, Don't tell. The HRC has apparently also started PassENDANow.org, which I have just now discovered-- again, convenient, convio-powered for telling your representatives that you'd like to see legislation pass which would prevent people across the USA from being fired because they're gay.

Not a lot of time to write, and not feeling particularly motivated to, but I have to say that I was very moved by the president's speech to the HRC tonight. I know a lot of people out there in the gay community think that it was all just beautiful speech with no action-- I gotta tell you, I think they're underestimating the importance and power of beautiful speech. I'm proud to have a president who is willing to get up and say unequivocally how he thinks the LGBT community is equal and should be treated as such, and this kind of verbal leadership rallies the masses-- those of you out there complaining about his lack of action, take a note from another beautiful speaker and ask what you can do for your country. Many of you have already taken action, but can you do more?

On top of which, the president made some very valid points about how the issues he is working on every day are issues that pertain to all Americans, including the LGBT community. Okay, yes, I know that this probably seemed to the wary listening like he was just putting off the needs of the community, but he wasn't vague or indecisive about his intent to undo Don't Ask, Don't Tell, his support of efforts to repeal DOMA, his desire to see ENDA signed into law. Let's keep in mind, most of these are things that the president, himself, cannot actually do-- these are things that he can work with congress on, that he can voice his support of, that he can make priorities. But we have three branches of this government for a reason, and that makes it impossible for him to right all the wrongs with one swift movement. Congress has to be involved, and that means we have to get involved.

Send the letters. Sign the petitions. Tell your friends and families to do the same-- if you're like me (and married), you just sign all these things twice-- once with your own name, once with your spouse's. (No, I'm not trying to disenfranchise my husband. They're plenty of things we disagree on politically, but he's given me a blanket permission slip to act as him in LGBT issues.)

Anyway. Maybe take a moment to let the man's beautiful words sink in, to be motivated, and to do what this very small series of things, potentially to make a very big difference. Maybe take a moment to breath, remember that thi isn't the Bush administration anymore, count your blessings, and give the man with the silver tongue some trust, at least until he's given you a real reason not to. If he's working a little too slowly for some of your tastes, well, I'd rather see him blossom slowly than completely fuck it up, and then be defeated by a Republican in the next election. This upcoming decade is way too important for that.

Okay, maybe I was *a little* inclined to write. On with it.

or, Create a Petition

Change.org

or, Create a Petition

Change.org

For posterity, and for those of you who don't know, I will preface this post by saying that I have now officially started attending classes full-time at Southern Maine Community College, working towards an associate degree in liberal arts, with a concentration in arts. This decision regarding my field of study was motivated by my strong desire to one day illustrate my own children's books , as well as by my lifelong interest in art and all things creative. So far, I am enjoying the experience-- I love the campus, and I like the challenge. The very, very real challenge.

Tonight, my assignment-- should I say, one of my many, many assignments-- is to do four cut-paper compositons focusing on line; diagonal, horizontal/vertical, curved/organic, and mixed. Black on white. And maybe that's the root of my problem.

Black and white are not colors I'm used to-- that stark contrast of one idea against another, of, let's face it, wrong against right. Maybe it's in my nature to strive for the familiar ambiguouty of grayscale; maybe it is through a psychological compulsion towards things that are hopelessly complicated that I find myself accidentally fraying the edges of the black paper against the white, creating the illusion of gray. I rub the dry rubber cement peaking out from under the sides of what should be neat-and-tidy edges, balling it up for easy removal and creating ugly little messes that I hate, but can never seem to clear away completely, no matter how furtively I try. Maybe I don't believe the art I create deserves to be free of them. Maybe I don't consider myself above this moral haze.

For those of you paying strict attention, yes, I am making a metaphor about my life out of my art homework. This is why I'm not an english major-- I don't need any more help with that bullshit.


Have you ever found yourself in a situation where no one involved is really right, no one is the good guy? Everyone could be considered a villain in some capacity, but there's no hero to be found? The situation I've found myself in, there are no truly sympathetic characters, just a lot of people who are in constant flux, gaining and losing sympathy for each other in their oddly parallel weaknesses. I've aligned myself with the character who is, perhaps, the least sympathetic of all involved, and find myself almost violently defensive of his basic and inalienable goodness, despite the story building around him, determined to cast him as the weakest link in a paper chain. Defensive of him to the extent that it's put strain on relationships that should be absolutely uninvolved, maybe ended one. Depending on the point of view, I could easily be getting the silver medal insofar as blame and immorality, despite my efforts to hold onto the ever-vindicating (ha!) virtue of honesty, or at least, honesty in amounts directly proportionate to the sum of my affection and respect for the recipient. Coming in third-- again, depending on viewpoint-- is a woman I don't want to expound on, really. A woman who I doubt I could speak about with any modicum of impartialness, a woman I did not know at all outside the influence of this sphere of insanity which we've, all three, been sucked into.

I mean, some with a little bit more emphasis on insanity than others, but I digress.


What is, of course, compelling about this situation, wrought with vice, is that it does not exist but for the one perfect virtue. Love, the greatest motivator of our strengths, so often the backdrop to our most hurtful mistakes. Love, in it's brightest, burning red can't help but reduce the blacks and whites of this world to nearly indiscernible shades of gray. I don't go to or remain loyally and defensively at his side without it, nor is he compelled to mine, nor is she pushed or pulled by either of us. Nor are the bounds of our own quiet consciences violently tested without it, nor are any of us kept awake at night, nor are any of us compelled to wake in the morning. Nor are families built without it, tested without it, wrecked without it; rebuilt, retried, continued on without it.

Nor, it seems, are words written without it-- and not just by me, right now. Love, the great muse. Reading the words of my mirror, I am challenged to keep this ode to love so reverent, challenged once more to strive towards grace, challenged, as ever, to wipe desperately away at the mess to see what lies, and is beautiful, beneath.


On with it.

With very little else I feel like sharing with the world at large (or, plenty that I'd be willing to share with a group of total strangers, but that simply is not the group I'm offered, lately), let's do this meme again. Here are the rules:

Put your music player (iTunes, WinAmp, Windows Media Player, etc.) on Shuffle or Random mode, press Play, and list your favorite line or verse from the first 10 songs that it plays. Then get your friends to guess the artist and song title of each lyric. Fun! (You can skip instrumental-only songs, but no skipping of the embarrassing songs!)

Did this one last, on this site, on February 7th, 2008, then again on livejournal for Emily, who did not get enough of the answers the first time around. (I'm reading through some of the livejournal entries, which are all these quiz thingies, and thinking that my most eager vistor as of late is going to have a ball with them. Over and over again, I talk about how my biggest weakness is falling in love with people. One random question/Answer: "17. When do you know it's love? Too often. That's when.")

Anyway. On with the music quiz thingy (I keep wanting to call it a meme, but I've come to believe that's not actually what these things are. I guess that's one of those new-fangled words I just don't understand), since my collection has expanded greatly in the past year (to be something I'm really, really proud of. I really enjoy my diverse taste in music.) If I come up against a song that I honestly can't pick a good line out of, I'll skip it, but I'll tell y'all what it is I'm skipping. Also, I feel no reason to keep it to one line, if it turns out that the part I like best is really a few. It's my quiz thingy.

1. "Now that money comes and goes a bit faster than my confidence grows. Everybody knows there ain't nothing new about money woes."

I have to skip this song, "Theme From Pinata", by Bright Eyes. It's from one of the Bright Eyes CDs I kinda forgot I owned, and so I never added it to my iPod until recently. Thusly, I think this is probably only the third or so time I've heard it. It's a shame, though, it seems to have a lot of great lines.

2. "And why'd ya sing Hallelujah if it means nothing to ya? Why'd you sing with me at all?"
(I have to try to remember that this is the one of the songs that references 'Hallelujah' that I definitely want to include on the future Mix CD I've promised for Sam. That is, once I've written the song I've promised, to close it with.

Skipping "Time Won't Let Me" by The Smithereens. Great band, not their best song, no lyrical gems.

3. "Wears high heels when she exercises. Ain't that beautiful?"
(Grew to love that line when I was on my original "dance hour" kick, and I, too, would exercise in high heels. I also like "Her confidence is tragic, but her intuition, magic.")

4. "It's cloud illusions I recall. I really don't know clouds at all."
(I feel a little cheap; that's obviously the most quoted line from that song. But it's definitely the best. Maybe I could have gone with "Tears and fears and feeling proud, to say 'I love you' right out loud." Man, this is just a great song.)

Skipping "These Things" by She Wants Revenge. This song just freaks me out, as do a lot of the songs by She Wants Revenge. I've tried to make peace with that weird part of myself that they alarm, but it's just not worth it anymore. I'll keep "Tear You Apart" and take the rest of the iPod. I need the space, anyway.

5. "I catch the bad guys, well, most of the time. So it's a good life, a perfectly good life. Not exactly sublime."

6. "So take it off, like you home alone, you know, dance in front your mirror while your on the phone. Checking your reflection and tellin' your best friend, like 'Girl, I think my butt gettin' big.'"

7. "Now I do as I please, and lie through my teeth. Someone might get hurt, but it won't be me. I should probably feel cheap, but I just feel free, and a little bit empty."

8. "Your face like a vision straight out of Holly Hobbie. Late light drizzling through your hair. Your eyes, twin volcanoes."

Skipping "Stayin' Alive" by the BeeGees, because I can't come up with a line that I've ever actually bothered listening to other than the first, which would be a dead giveaway.

9."I do anything for you. Beat someone black and blue. Black and blue, and I'd do it for you."
(Never actually took the time to listen to the lyrics of the verses of that song before. Enlightening.)

Skipping "November 22, 1963" from the Assassins soundtrack, because, as moving as it is (I would have shot JFK with that kind of peer pressure going on.), it's not actually a song. And an instrumental version of "All The Pretty Little Horses".

Skipping "Simply Kind of Life" by No Doubt because I want to link to this entry that I wrote which featured it, but that'll ruin your chance to guess. Skipping Lit's "My Own Worst Enemy", because the song went all the way through while I was looking for the link to that last post, and then this next song came up, and I really love this next one, so it's more appropriate to end with.

10. "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."


If you don't feel like guessing on that last one, and you happen to love my archives as much as I, sadly, do, read this post, the first in 2007. It's very musical.


I'm opening comments, if you'd like to take your guesses. On with it.

"And check out my hair. It's so unstyled, it's like a pile of stand."
~Casey J.

Looking through my archives, I find a link to Casey's old livejournal site and go. His last post to that site was in 2007, which would have been a year that I had very little to do with him.

I was about to write this whole post about how clear to me it was, while I was reading that, why I was crazy about him-- how smart he is, how funny, what a great writer. And there's something so sexy about his cockiness, and his dismissal. You know that cliché that women go crazy over the bad boys who act like they don't even like them? Casey is, like, the geeky journalist version of that.

But as I'm about to start writing this thing about how great his post was, about how his post made me feel, I realized that I didn't even read the whole fucking thing. That I couldn't bring myself to read it. There's a possibility that this somehow indicates that he's not as interesting as I'm giving him credit for-- more likely, it means that I'm still smarting from the way our friendship (essentially) ended, by the way it left me feeling utterly inferior to him.

I gotta get my shit together and learn things. Start reading Newsweek, listen to more NPR than I already do. Get some strong backing for my opinion on universal health care, and all of the other political issues. And other shit that would make me interesting to him again. Spend more time playing video games. Spend more time climbing fences. Start a fight club. Go seduce some more women. Write about fucking anything other than myself (and him. And other people in my life who I have all these bullshit "feelings" about.)


Maybe the coolest I've ever been in my life was when Casey Labrack still thought I was cool. Probably the least cool I've ever been was as I was typing that sentence.


This is not the way back to win back his respect, his attention, or his "ineffable fondness." Writing about vague ambitions to be better, do better, know more, but never really do anything about them. Just the fact that these ambitions are more about getting him back than they are about being a intellectually curious person, well, that sort of poisons anything I could accomplish. But he doesn't have to know that-- that is, if I could shut up about it for even a second.

I tell myself, don't be so hard on myself. One week from today (technically yesterday, since it's after midnight), I am going back to school, and this time, I'm going to go learn things that I want to know. I'm not being so career-minded, I'm not clawing and scratching my way out of a crappy job and a going-nowhere life...I mean, I am, but not quite as desperately, and with enough patience to make it more about the journey than the destination. This first semester, I registered for four art-related classes and, with a great deal of anxiety, music chorale. I just decided it was time to be brave-- time to ignore the people over the years (my sister) who have repeatedly told me that I can't sing at all, and just learn what I can, and be the best I can be at it, whatever level of skill that may be, because, frankly, I love singing. I always have. So it's time to just do it, incredibly scary as it might be.

That's kind of cool, right?


Maybe, one day, soon, I'll be publishing the children's books I've written and illustrated. Maybe I'll dedicate one to him-- or, better yet, I'll dedicate one to me, a little parable for the kids in the audience about being yourself, about not trying too hard to impress someone else. About having self-respect, about loving whatever it is about yourself that makes you special. And it'll sell a million copies, be an instant classic, and I'll be beloved, and successful, and I'll make millions of dollars.

Then I'll buy him a vintage El Camino, so he'll have to be my friend.


On with it.

I haven't wanted to write in this for a few days, due to various circumstances that need not be discussed in a public forum. But a few things are backing up, just some little bits and pieces that probably don't make up a full post anyway, so let's let them out:

-Tomorrow, I get to go see Mr. L and have a head-on conversation about his advice that I sleep with another man-- which I didn't take. Which I'm not going to take. I'm going to ask him exactly what the fuck he was thinking, I'm going to write it down, if I can remember, that early in the morning, to take a pen and notepad. I'm going to explain to him all the various consequences of his just giving the advice, let alone what would have happened if I had taken it. And I'm going to find out, once and for all, what the old hippy thinks of marriage, and decide whether or not he's the appropriate man to be seeing in an attempt to rescue mine.

If he doesn't piss me off too damn much, and he might, then I'll schedule an appointment for Zack and I to attend together. Won't this be fun?


-My ideal form of celebrity: to be one of these hot, B-listy celebrities that gets to be on the cover of playboy without having to actually show anything on the inside. Last month, Olivia Munn was rocking the cover, but the one picture of her on the inside featured her in panties that she was sort of vaguely pulling down (but she hadn't revealed anything), with her nipples safely under her hair. This month, Heidi Montag from the hills looks so fucking hot on the cover, it makes me want to go out and shoot that douche Spencer (with the creepy, flesh-colored beard, if you follow the soup) more than I usually do, but her photoshoot on the inside is completely tame, there's only one photo showing crack, every other major hotspot is totally covered. These are the the kind of photoshoots you expect in Maxim, not playboy.

If I got the choice of which magazine to be in, and I mean, I never will, but if I did, I'd pick playboy over Maxim, but just barely. The bunny is what puts it over the top. Gotta love an iconic rodent.


-And now for a few public letters:


Dear Rachel Maddow:

I know you're supposedly very happy with your life partner, but if that ever changes, I'd like to go ahead and put my name on the list, or whatever. Somehow, I definitely think you're the sexiest woman in the public eye-- you've knocked Angelina Jolie, Eva Mendes, and Scarlett Johanson right down the list.

If the people's veto goes through, I'll move to Massachussetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, wherever. Say the word and I'll leave Zack, Rachel. Anything for you.

With Love,
Linda H.



-And, to Cosmo.

Dear Cosmopolitan Magazine:
What the fuck? On the cover of the August Issue (with the Katy Perry Cover), you tooted to have an article inside about "The Orgasm Whisperer", and how "every woman needs one." I spent a long month wondering precisely what that article could be about, fascinated by all the different possibilities--- could it be a hypnotherapist who rents out their craft to orgasm-lacking women everywhere? Instructions for chanting yourself into a tantric state of bliss? Some kind of bizarre audio device? What, what what?

I finally checked out the article today. It was about lube. Personal Lubricant. It claimed I could make my man into an "orgasm whisperer" by just using lube.

WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM, COSMO? GO TO HELL!

Bullshit false advertising. Fuck you.

Sincerely,
Linda H.


I've always hated all the assumptions that Cosmo magazine makes about it's readers. If you've picked up a copy, you must be a 110-pound career-oriented CEO who pulls in 250k a year, with fucking spectacular sex life and great fashion sense. How many women out there like that actually read Cosmo? I'm guessing two. And I hate them both. I hope they and there slimy orgasm whispering boyfriends fuck themseves off a cliff.



Hmmm. I may be bitter tonight. Towards everyone but my Rachel.


Kinda a wasted post, but it's a matter of staying in practice. See you soon, maybe even with something relevant to say. On with it!

"Picture this, we were both buck naked, banging on the bathroom floor."

Man, I haven't heard this song in a long time. Totally had it stuck in my head the other day for...uh, no apparent reason. Right.

In attempts to get the information from my old computer onto the new computer, I'm finding a lot of old files that had somehow gotten lost. Lot of songs I haven't heard for a while. Maybe songs that it didn't occur to me I'd actually miss...actually, the evidence suggests that they were songs that I didn't, in fact, miss.

Talking to James, who I've previously spoken of as the benefactor who bought SuedeCaramel.com for me. As truly grateful as I am to him or that, it didn't occur to me that his generosity isn't without some, uh, provisos? See, while he has always made it so SuedeCaramel.com and, for the matter, LindaHild----.com come directly here, he never actually gave me control of the two addresses.

James: Well, I could do anything. For example i could point your name to midget goat porn.


Oh....oh yeah. I guess he could.

I oddly thought James was a fan of the site, from the way he will occasionally harass me when I don't update. Turns out, about two or three times a year, he'll come, read every post on the page, and leave.

Well, I'll take it.

James: have you thought about the next step after blogging?
Linda: is there a step you have in mind?
James: lifecasting
Linda: hahahahaa
Linda: what the fuck is lifecasting?
James: you setup a webcam, it runs 24/7
James: It's put somewhere like a livingr oom or central area where people are clothed
James: and you spend time with the lovely people of the internet when your online.
Linda: I don't think it's quite the obvious progression that you make it out to be. I'm a writer.
James: Right, but it allows interactivity with the world i guess?
Linda: well, no. Interacting with the world allows interactivity with the world.
James: Not nessisarially.

I know he doesn't come off as the smartest guy in the world in that conversation, but don't judge too harshly-- if you look closely, you'll see that spelling of necessarily works, phonetically.


So, thinking about LindaHil-----.com, I was compelled to type my nameinto google to see what comes up. Surprisingly, it's pretty hard to find this site by doing that, which is odd-- it wasn't hard, say, two or three months ago. What did come up were a couple of posts from the weekend of my wedding-- not on this site, but Emily's old diaryland page. This one was written the day of, this one, which talks about the wedding decidedly more, was written the day after.

Emily was possibly not as charming talking about my wedding as I tried to be when I wrote about hers-- oh? Jenn looked gorgeous? Great. Thanks. The bride is only mentioned as being "awkward" and "mildly obnoxious", but Jenn looks gorgeous-- but I'll try not to be bitter. The blushing bride that was me was not in the same league as the blushing bride that was Emily.

I guess, with things the way they are now, I'm a little sensitive to the fact that Emily kept describing the whole thing as being not real to her-- oddly, it kind of reminds me of those idiotic Birthers who think Obama is not the real president because "he was secretly born in Kenya." Wanting the story from a different source, I went to see what it was I thought to write about my wedding day.

Hmmm. Nothing.

The last post before my wedding was a lovely, Edna St. Vincent Millay-style sonnet that I wrote presumably because I did something horrible. The next was written in January, and it covers the wedding a little bit tersely. So, I guess Emily, in all her incredulousness, covered the day better than I bothered to. It's a real shame. I could really benefit from crawling back inside the mind of that girl, that girl who wanted him so badly, that girl who wore that dress, who walked that aisle.

Jenn wants me plan a do-over, which is what I've wanted since day one. I wish I'd gone ahead and planned it for our fifth anniversary-- it's a good, round number, and it fell on a Saturday. Seems weird to do it on the sixth or the seventh, weirder still to do it on a day that's not an anniversary at all, though mid-October isn't necessarily ideal for the location I, at long last, decided on: Salem Willows, the beautiful park on the water in Salem, Massachusetts. I look forward to going there every year with Zack during the summer, to feed the squirrels and pigeons. There's a place where we buy popcorn (delicious popcorn) and bags of roasted nuts for them. There's an amphitheater we could have the ceremony in, covered picnic structures for the reception, a carousel we could possibly rent. If the weather in October wasn't just slightly too cold, well, maybe I'd start planning something, maybe for the tenth.

Except, at this point, who knows for sure whether my marriage will make it to be six. Nobody whose been paying attention, that's for sure.

The shame of it is, if I ever got divorced, well, okay, I might one day get the benefit of a second wedding one day, maybe, but I couldn't do it there. I'd have to come up with a whole new perfect location. Salem Willows is our place.

Those are our squirrels, our pigeons. Our bags of peanuts twisted close at the top, our delicious popcorn. Our sun-covered days by the sea; everyone else there, they're just props. It's our tradition, our bliss, something I'd never do again, without him beside my side.

I can't think about it.

On with it. I hope.

Harry: What does this song mean? For my whole life I don't know what this song means. I mean, 'Should old acquaintance be forgot". Does that mean we should forget old acquaintances or does it mean if we happen to forget them we should remember them, which is not possible because we already forgot them!?

Sally: Well may be it just means that we should remember that we forgot them, or something.

~Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, When Harry Met Sally

No, Meg Ryan. That's a bad idea. It's a horrible feeling. Remembering that you forgot.

"There's only one moment I need to write....I shouldn't write it at all. I should delete this e-mail once it's sent. I should forget, so I won't have the burden of remembering and knowing I said nothing. But what if I do forget?"

That one's me. The beginning and ending of an e-mail I sent to Emily on July 19th, 2009. I took at least part of my own advice, that night-- I had to search the trash folder of my gmail account to get that quote. And honestly, tonight, I'm glad that I wrote it all out. I'm glad I have the e-mail that I wrote with the sweat of that moment still fresh on my brow. I'm glad I have this black-and-white reminder that I am not black-and-white, that there are things and me that are blazing red. Right now, I am colorblind.

I won't say the old man was right, but he sounds distinctly less crazy when I get to that point where I'm just angry at the idea that I don't get to have what other people have. Angry when I think of the fact that sex is life-affirming, and angry when I get to that point where I can't even imagine how it could be. Angry when I see that episode of Scrubs where sex makes everything better in the end. Angry when people make suggestive jokes about what Zack and I must be doing tonight. Angry when I think of the entanglements that have built up, angry when I think of that one, thin gold necklace I owned that got into so many little knots that it was rendered useless, and I had to throw it out-- it was gold for christ's sake.

Angry when I think about how much I still love my husband, how attracted to him I still am on so many levels. Angry when I think that, maybe, they aren't the levels that matter.

Angry when I hear Mr. L's voice in my head, telling me that I "come alive" when I talk about my sexually charged encounters with other men. Angry when I think that he is the man that I feel has a chance to save my relationship, maybe the only person who can untangle the kinks in the chain, and he doesn't seem to respect marriage. I don't know that I ever realized before, but he's got to be...almost sixty if not, and he's single, and he's dating women much younger than him, always has been by the reports I've been getting. I know I mentioned this briefly in the last post, but I'll expound upon it here. I know he has kids, so he's probably divorced-- I have no idea why I've never just asked him this, I guess my fear is that, with the "daddy issues" he's eminantly aware of, he'd be concerned that I had those feelings for him. At any rate, I've been trying to justify the fact that he told me to sleep with someone else by the fact that he must want what's best for me. He says I'm co-dependent (I don't think he's wrong, but I've always been too scared to look up what that really means), and he thinks my relationship is doomed (we have been struggling since day one), and he wants to stop me before I go down with the ship, I guess. Surely, it's not that he doesn't respect marriage, it's just my marriage that he feels has run it's course.

Except the guy he told me to sleep with? He's married too.


I keep telling Zack just slightly too much truth about the things Mr. L says, making Zack incredibly angry at him. He has violent fantasies, and I can't, frankly, blame him. Problem, though: my only real shot at making this work, one thinks, is couples therapy, which is a service I frankly don't trust. But I know from one pseudo-session that Mr. L can get Zack to talk, and he already has -so much- of my backstory; this could work. Except I, being an idiot, (That would be a great new title for the blog, if I were looking to change it again. "I, being an idiot...") had to go and give Zack all the reason in the world to distrust and feel betrayed by this man. Super.

Linda: He asked which one of you I think would perform better cunnilingus.
Zack: What? Why??? What the hell kind of a question is that???

Yeah...what the hell kind of a question is that?


But, like I said, it's hard to blame him when I feel like I do today-- frigid, broken, useless. Someone who'd better find some satisfying cause in life, because she's never going to find any satisfaction anywhere else. Someone who, like so many retirees, might as well close up shop down south and come north for the summer--that comparison, howevever, would have worked so much better if retirees came north in the winter as opposed to be the summer, because my life is shaping up to be one long winter, as it were. What's that crocus poem by Jean Little in "Hey World, Here I Am?"

Surprise

I feel like the ground in winter,
Hard, cold, dark, dead, unyielding.

Then hope pokes through me
Like a crocus.

The crocus, that's what I remember that I forgot. The crocus that poked through me on the night of my twenty-fifth birthday. I know that it was there, I can visualize the-- jesus christ, I use metaphors too much-- beautiful petals, imagine the sweet scent. But I can't remember how it felt to have that crocus pierce through my frozen soil, a harbinger of new life to come, of the hopeful days of spring, of the sweltering heat of summer. A theoretical harbinger, at any rate, since the summer never came. Just more winter.

"In winter time, the roses died.
Her blood ran cold, and then she said
'I want to love, but it comes out wrong.'"
~The Smithereens, Blood and Roses

Also, I have no idea what a crocus even looks like, in real life. Time for a google image search.

Oooo, pretty.



On with it.