quietgirl talking loudly

Maybe

2011-03-08T20:41:00.002-05:00

Spring is very nearly here.

These are things that today contained:

Cake (and very good with custard in the middle) from a retirement party
Spreadsheets (excel documents with rainbow colors)
Sunshine
A few tears
One blog post

...While I write so little, there is so much I want to. So much more than this. There are also books I want to write, businesses I want to run, children I want to chuck lovingly into the world. Man, and the research. The research still unpublished, unfinished, models unfolding in my mind that I will never get to run, and never put out there. Man that kills me.

But tonight, I will write just 1 (exactly one) blog post, before stepping back into the world of tasks aplenty. And maybe this blog post will remind me how close I am. That I actually am that close to all those things. Cause, like really, I am mighty close aren't I?

And just like magic my blog will have put a little smile on me.

Just a little one.

Maybe.

:)

glamour-free

2010-09-26T11:23:00.004-04:00

It's a cool Sunday morning, what with Autumn already begun. It is also slightly rainy, which I don't notice until I'm already outside with my dog. I cover my head with my hand, in the hopes of not getting another cold.

Where have I been babies? Just surviving. Exhausting day after day surviving. It's not glamorous, nor am I.

I wonder sometimes if perhaps we are to play a role in some future important things. In some future Nostradamus-vaguely-predicted showdown where we will make some epic contribution that we never could have done if not for being in training thru years of bastard hardship. Far more likely, it is just that I get to play witness to life the unfair, and hopefully, to channel it into my work on these things.

I am an analyst. A social scientist. Nothing big, but occasionally I wear a suit, and when I write things, it has a shred of credibility. And rarely do we get the ranks of the desperate in any position of anything.

And this is sort of what I study, by choice of course. Which is stressful. It would be far kinder to myself if I choose to research unicorns, and their role in human culture, or the what the queers are doing to the soil (chill dude- it's a dead milkmen song- lay off). But what would be the point. What's my motivation? Lest we forget, I have never been a hard worker for it's own sake. I am an 80's kid, and while we may stay busy, it is a crazy ADD affair of flickering screens and unfocused multi-tasking that leads nowhere.

Tho I don't get to work on this enough, as I am always engaged in the real deal. It's always a fight for time.

So here we have it. Proud and grateful to still be in the game. But no glamor here. Not a glimmer.

Here's hoping next week doesn't suck as much as last week, but bracing for it regardless.

Namaste babies.

hmmm

2009-06-02T21:40:00.002-04:00

I haven't had time to blog.
Also, I need to decide the best way to proceed given that I have now like TWO institutions and/or professional identities to protect, and which I've already been flirting with offending. Eh.
I'll figure it out, like everything else in my life, eventually.

Good news though in the progress toward finishing in school, my research, and also our personal struggle for ~~medical~~ our own answers.

All in good time babies.

Gangsta Boogie

2009-05-02T12:04:00.002-04:00

Don't dare call it a comeback. (New post here.)

Happy Spring

2009-04-17T19:15:00.008-04:00

I never get a chance to blog.

Do you know when you have to piss soooooo bad and you've had to wait so long that when you finally get to sit down to let it go it can't. Like if you let it go your bladder might be lashed by the force of it and so your body clenches tight.

That's my blogging status currently. I cannot blog. And were I to unleash now all that is within me you would all be blown to bits and so would I.

I cannot unleash such a force.

GawdDAMN blogging is fun.

How I miss you.

Work sucked this week kind of but not and life is so much better than it was but still rather a stressride, but tis as well, I've realized because it seems at this juncture that I'm far better adapted to the ship-wreck than the fun-cruise as that is what I know, and tis as well.

Tis as well, I realize. But life, it is getting better, and I praise the lovely setting Sun to my left for that.

I came home early today. Everyone spent the day in the office antsy like kids on the last day of school before the summer. After flirting with Spring at last it was outside our window and we could. not. be contained.

Could not be contained.

By three I couldn't do it, I was done. By five I left and pushed along the beltway against traffic, all of us eager to start the spring weekend, horses chomping at the bit of our traffic angst. But it yielded, it did, and here I am.

I even had a drink. Eight cool ounces of Smirnoff Ice and gosh aren't my fingers running without a second thought. Perhaps I will flirt with the drinks some summer afternoons, as I am thirty and it is legal after all, unlike the things I enjoy more. Although Obama might change that soon 'nuff. And I say, OH CAPTAIN MY CAPTAIN.

But I digress.

I think this post must be long as my fingers have been typing as fast as they could stumble, and the sun, that glorious Full Spring Sun is finally setting behind the trees and another apartment building.

But I am lovely. I've received compliments at work from co-workers. Really good happy ones. Hugs and smiles. And I've received strange hand-written notes from strung-too-tight bosses who despite my efforts insist on being SO TENSE. Fuck it.

Fuck it. I am unconcerned.

I love you dear blogtopia. I have begun carrying my little music-thing to record errant bloggy thoughts as they may occur on the beltway as per PF's suggestion. I am trying. And I miss you.

And if I could live constant moments within my life in front of the post-window charging my fingers like I was playing whack-a-mole on the keys and fuzzy from malt liqour and sunshine and joy, well then I would. I SO would.

But at least I am here now sweethearts. At least I am here NOW.

Smooches and smiles sweet blogosphere friends. Happy Spring Happy Spring Happy Spring. :D

Estah

2009-04-12T11:42:00.004-04:00

It is Easter Sunday, but a quiet day here as usual.
Yesterday somebody's health was rougher than expected and I struggled to stay above the waves. Later he suggested I sit on the patio, and he was so right. I needed the air, the light, the openness.
I bought egg dye yesterday on a whim for the memories of sitting at my Grandmother's table, with the smell of vinegar and cups of color. But I most likely won't get around to using it. Before making a mess, I should be cleaning messes, and I'm reconciling myself to the fact that I will not, can not, do too much today.

Despite feeling always buried by a mountain of desperate to-do's that I can only hold up but not chip away, I do-slowly.

These are the exciting new things I've accomplished.

1) I know have a car that is legally registered in my state of residence. Particularly fabulous since the registration in our prior state ended months ago. I can now drive with confidence, knowing there is nothing I'm doing that the 4-0 will care about. I never thought I'd be happier to see my new license plates.

I keep the bar set nice and low huh?

and 2) I finally have ordered, received, and cleaned the new bamboo fence that will make our patio a nice, private, space, as we are NOT public people. It leans against the railing now, and once it is water-sealed it will be lashed on securely. This little fence is the key to facilitating a lot of sunshine in my life, and it also tickles me truly to see.

As for all the other shit to do, it's gonna have to wait. Well I still need to do laundry and cleaning and cooking and, you know, the usual shit. But lookie here- I sat and blogged! Woot. So maybe that's number 3).

Happy Easter Darlings. Happy Easter.

Baby Blog getting Big Girl Pants

2009-04-05T10:13:00.004-04:00

Where has the time gone?

My facebook friends, who also happen to be mothers, often comment how quickly their children have grown- how could they be so old already!

Well, I am not yet a mother, but my baby-blog turned 2 on Friday.

Could it be? So soon?

But while two years seems long (my blog will be wearing some big girl pants soon!), so very much has happened in the past two years, that it also seems strangely encapsulated that so much pain and change and upheaval could fit so tidily into two years.

And I'm happy that I didn't pull the plug on this. :)

Happy Birthday dearest blog. I totally heart you.

The making of the card

2009-04-05T09:19:00.025-04:00

This is the making of AE's wedding card.

First one night while in the D.C. area for a conference, she sat in my car and sketched the picture in her head.

I spent lots of time then playing with clipart to figure out how to do the image. AE & B gave me feedback to guide me, including this image of a fossilized shell to make a super cool sun.

After A LOT of fussing about (as I do) I finally came up with a draft of the card including their new dog and ~~four~~ three cats.

Now it was time to carve the stamp. This part is both tedious and potentially painful if you gouge yourself which I invariably do if I don't wear gloves.

And once the stamp was carved- the fun part! AE came over one weekend to make the cards with me, choosing the colors and application.

My favorite part is seeing them toward the end, all together. My little 5-year-old heart swells at the beauty. The soft colors swirling together in perfect little images.

They looked even nicer once she added the internal text, and slid them into their lovely green envelopes. I'm afraid these photos still don't do them justice really. Imagine soft lights and fairy dust, sunlight glinting off the gold outline of the image, radiating love. That's how they look up close in person- to me anyway.

I believe I have some other photos of them laid out side by side, but that's on another undeveloped roll of film, which also contains cherry blossoms in an overcast sky. This film-camera thing really is a bummer. I realize by the time I develop the film, it costs enough I really should save that money to buy a digital camera. In time.

But that's the story of the card, for my posterity and hers, and a window into how I do this thing I do that makes me so happy.

Congratulations Rel & B! Can't wait to stand there with you and celebrate your beautiful union. :)

Whitman channeling Kwan Yin channeling Me

2009-04-04T13:41:00.005-04:00

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

what dreams may come

2009-04-04T11:28:00.007-04:00

I just woke from a long convoluted dream that spanned hours (Saturday=sleeping in opportunity) wherein I was in a hotel, far from anywhere I'd call home, needing to get years worth of shit (that I don't even know how I got there and barely remembered owning years prior) somewhere safe when my car was far too small, and I had too little, time, energy, and resources. Also the staff thought I was suspicious and not like others who stay there (so what if I make the hall smell funny sometimes- does that make me so horrible) and wanted to kick me out. My sleep-in-Saturday became a Saturday morning stress-a-thon.

But it's okay. I can handle a dream by this time for chrissake. I can handle a hell of a lot more of that, given a few moments to "gather" myself, center myself, or remember who "I" really am.

Part I of the dream (before my dog woke me to make me take her out), I was walking through this same building, where a coworker was looking to buy a condo. Because my coworkers at work can afford to buy condos, houses, etc and discuss it in front of me. And I just watched this loveliness they were about to acquire.

So of course Part II is where the eternal (internal) homeless me can't get a break and is made to feel horrible.

Made to?

In real life I get to choose how I feel. And I am awake now. And I am awesome again.

Happy Saturday. Have a day the way you believe it is, and believe something good. And I'll try to keep doing the same, for life is not smooth-sailing my friend.

But we can handle the waves. Because (remember!) WE are awesome.

Bless y'all. ;)

What the stork bringth

2009-03-30T06:35:00.005-04:00

Right about now a little baby named Cecelia is about to be born.

I gave her momma a card and she framed it on her wall "forever more".

Ain't that sweet?

Everybody wish them luck on her big day!

Supersonic

2009-03-25T07:25:00.006-04:00

I spent too much time on facebook again this morning. I had 4 hours of sleep and it's hard to get moving without some *play* time over yogurt and coffee after making a big ass pot of soup for my man.

Once again, not only am I out of time, but I'm taking the time to write about being out of time. Is that special or what.

Present fantasy: The scene from the Futurama episode where Fry drinks a hundred cups of coffee, and as he hits 100 he goes supersonic (the "S" is for supa and the "U" is for unique) and begins speeding around the room 50 times faster than anyone so he is only a big blur for a while putting out fires and coming out looking good.

That's my fantasy, but I'd replace him with me of course, and maybe 100 cups of coffee with something like, say a tasty donut, and I would not only be on time to work today, but I would have written a sonnet while on the way.

But no, I'm just late :)

Over coffee, while I should be getting ready for work

2009-03-24T06:53:00.005-04:00

I tried to blog yesterday as I had an unusual window to do so- home from work waiting for maintenance to remedy my broken refrigerator situation.

And I did write.

But it all came out like "blah blah blah....I'm incredibly boring.....I like data....blah blah blah...sorry for being boring....blah blah blah....even more boring"

Eh, how disappointing. Apparently I was not in the right state of mind, and being a half hour from when I'm supposed to leave for work (suppossed too) odds are I won't do much better.

But hello :)

This weekend the refrigerator died, I learned I cannot spell refridgerator, my favorite person in the world was feeling like hell which always sucks, and I was too overwhelmed to even attempt to make the one plan I had tried to make in forever: lunch in the city with work friends.

It would have been lovely. But in the city.... That takes time, and I do not have that kind of time. So suck it, guess I'm boring.

But what I did get to do which was especially awesome was have an art buddy sort of to make cards with me. My husband shares many interests with me, but card-making and craftiness does nothing for him. But Abandoning Eden, who just so happens to be one of my *Real Life* friends, and not only online, or imaginary, or the guy I buy cigarettes from named Tika who's from Nepal and speaks 6 languages... but a Real Friend. The kind you can spit and drool around and talk some shit and they just laugh along with you. Good times.

We made some fun wedding cards we'd been planning for her and it was a good time. My wont is to get more and more detailed, to go off in umpteen time-consuming directions as I see better ways to do things in a most obsessive sort of perfectionist manner (sounds like my dissertation, with more glitter), so she was very helpful in keeping me on track and finally FINISHING these bad boys. Yay!

I took many pictures, but they are on something called F*I*L*M that has to be taken (physically!) to the CVS so they can turn it into pictures and also the digital files I hanker for. This won't be for days at best, but AE posted one card here. I'll post more when I've got em.

So that's the update from my off life here snuggled in a little room outside our nation's capital.

I now have a refrigerator that gets cold.
We finished the wedding cards and I got to scratch that off my list (that's always growing).
And didn't lose my mind too much.
Yay!

I swear I do think to blog throughout the day, when random colorful and so-dumn-I-have-to-share-them thoughts hit me, but at these times I am driving, at work, walking the dog, and generally in a hurry. It ain't easy Inter-Friends. But what I tell you is this. It is good. We will persevere. And not only I but you too are awesome my inter-friends. You are super rad. And I love you like little fuzzy easter bunnies.

So don't give up on me inter-friends. This blog lull cannot possibly last forever. And I totally heart you I swear!

Have a fuzzy warm day, or whatever else does it for you. :)

This runs through my head lately.

2009-03-13T14:46:00.004-04:00

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come....

(Wordsworth, "Intimations of Immortality")

Field Notes

2009-03-13T14:13:00.004-04:00

I won a poetry contest at work. There are 6,000 people in our headquarters building, and I feel like a celebrity now in our little ecosystem there.

Plus our group for meditation and Pranyama breathing and whatnot now has it's own informational type blog and also- in my lovely cubicle- a lending library of 50 books on meditation and Buddhism and Alan Watts and whatnot.

I am pushing the limits and growing bold, and I rather like to feel safe, but I am facilitating a little positive quantum leap in the building. A raising of spirit. It has already begun, and is growing of it's own force now. And it is lovely.

When I drive to work, on gray or cloudy days, I remind myself that I only must bring the sunshine myself. And I imagine that spark shining out of me in yellow rays, and damn if it doesn't seem to do the job. I live without fear (often), with intention, with awareness from moment to moment. This long road has changed me. It has changed me.

And things
are getting
Better.

Yes, they have improved in small but infinitely significant ways. And I am fanning that spark and using the networks of spirit I have woven to raise us all up together. Where the connections between us are threads in a web, a net, a tent, that we then must ready.

And then raise.
And then rise.
Together.

To another type of life altogether. A life less painful. More gainful. More pure. With a well of agape that flows not from but through my widened heart, I love others because I have experienced our unity in transcendent moments, and I have learned how to make the world better. It is bold to say out loud isn't it? But it has become dishonest not to. When people tell me I have made the place better than before I came, it's seems dishonest not to confess that it was my intention. And damn if it didn't work. And damn if I'm not better for it too. And how awesome is that. Very very awesome my friend. My dear friend.

And when life is painful, when it grows too heavy, when you are ready to fling the window wide and pretend you can fly though you know you cannot, there is a place for you to go. The place in your heart where we all intersect. And it begins with love for yourself, then expands outward to those around you in great waves.

These are my observations anyway. Notes from the field.

Namaste :)

Thank You Snow Day

2009-03-02T17:29:00.005-05:00

It's Monday and yet I'm home. I was ready to go, truly and walked outside to see the snow had been falling continuously since walking the dog. My lovely mary-jane docs were quickly sucking in snow- however powdery and lovely it may have been. And my car was still deeper.

I surveyed the parking lot. Hmmm, I'm leaving late, and the parking lot is still full. People ain't going to work today. I hate to use the last of my annual leave hours but damn. I don't feel like digging things out, not while the snow is still falling. And I sure don't have no shovel.

So I called the boss's line. No answer- she could be in a meeting though. So I called the branch line twice, and then her's again. No answer. So I left a rambling message about snow and shovels that ended with me concluding, "so I guess this is a snow day for me".

So here I am.

Which is a lovely blessing as even with three days off this weekend, I only dented my list. And just prayed for another day to whack this pile. Catch up with things. Vacuuming maybe? Dishes? Laundry? And don't get me started on all the projects in "the office"- the sweet space I made in the breakfast nook that I would take of a picture of if my digital camera hadn't died. I have so much to sort thru and deal with it truly is ridiculous. And yes I think maybe you understand why I don't blog as much very lately.

So here I am. And the carpets are almost mostly vacuumed. And the afternoon sun glowing golden reflecting off the snow and on to slatted streaks across this mostly-clean carpet make my heart feel warm.

It really was a beautiful beautiful day. The dog cried and cried till I finally took her out to race manic happy snow-circles around me. Catching snowballs and eating them. Racing till I couldn't keep up, and slid on my butt in the powdery snow.

Thanks snow day. Thank you golden sun.

stars in the sky

2009-02-25T19:25:00.004-05:00

I walk the dog, breathing freely for once, and realize the blessings that surround me.

I look up and see a sky filled with stars.

How long have you been reading? Do you realize how far I have come from my urban inferno- how very lucky I am?

I have love in my heart. I have a home that is warm.

I have stars in my sky.

And I am so truly grateful for all of it.

coming out of the closet

2009-02-24T06:54:00.005-05:00

I apologize to my parents for never calling, and I feel I must now apologize to you dear blog for never writing. I don't love you any less.

I am busy of course this is always true. If I were working from home I could steal a break to blog, but from work it's not a good idea. And thus life speeds past me.

These are the salient details to keep you updated in a minimalist sort of way.

1) Progress has been made (finally) on the health front. Not a solution mind you, but progress and progress is key.

2) I have finally been able to face the other menacing threat- the dark minion. I've finally made some moves, talked to some people, and realize now that it will be okay. My credit, not so much. But me, I'll be just fine.

and

3) I'm totally coming out of the closet here. I'm religious.

Not in the sense of any one religion exactly, although you know, I'll be converting to Judaism and do so happily. But truly, sort of meta-religious. I see God everywhere now, and truly that is the reason that both number 1 and number 2 happened. (I know this is just asking for a scatological joke... number 1... number 2.... have at it)

But that's what got me there. You don't have to believe me. It doesn't matter really. We each get our own personal faith based on our own experiences, and so long as it's doing right, I don't think it's wrong.

My mom tells me she always believed in God when I was growing up. But because Dad was such an enthusiastic iconoclast, she just kept it mostly to herself. Interesting. Well I'm not hiding it anymore. For better or worse, call it Allah, God, nature, or by whatever shape it has made itself known to you. But it is the reason that my heart doesn't hurt (literally) and the storm has subsided. I trusted in God.

Kind of radical, for my family.

*Don't tell my Dad*. Aw screw it, tell him. I am what I am, eh?

Have a beautiful day y'all! If the sun isn't shining when you leave the house today, make your own sunshine. :)

cause my load is too heavy

2009-02-17T13:20:00.002-05:00

Right now I believe God is holding me up, and I feel it when I ask. I believe what James said. Make of it what you will.

bedtime wishes

2009-02-17T01:00:00.003-05:00

Goodnight sweet world. The silver moon lights the cold night and I am grateful for the warm place I have.

Sleep well world. May you all sleep safe and warm.

Smooches.

don’t let your hearts be troubled, and don’t be afraid

2009-02-16T14:25:00.005-05:00

Twice I cried this Tuesday. Or was it Thursday. Days run together and drip off the edges of my mind.

Calling in late to work, after have been coming in late or not at all lately due to the various crushing things in my life, I find that my boss's voice is clearly one only of concern for me and my well-being. Sincere concern, and she thanks me for calling her.

I cried all the way to work for her kindness, for the kindness of those people in the world that help support my pain after so many years of feeling the desperate opposite.

Then coming in to work, I pass my favorite security guard. Of all the men at work to stand at the door and check our badges, James has the most love in his heart. He is also the one who pays enough attention to notice last week when I was in late and haggard.

Where have you been? he asks.
Life is hard, I tell him. I head upstairs to my desk.

At the end of the day, I come down to leave and of course he is still there. Still cheerful with love beaming out even at the end of his long shift. I have something for you he says.

He gives me two pieces of paper he has written on. One says "My Proof". He has me write the year of my earliest crisis and the year of my latest crisis. This is your proof he says. That you have made it through from this to that time, is your proof that God has been with you to keep you alive. I didn't find this compelling. I think this would be nice, but these years have been excruciating, and by many signs I've endured by my own growing and incredible strength.

But also, by the grace of you- my blog-friends, my rl friends, all the people of the world who's pain and heart I can connect into, and that support me like a great gleaming net of collective strength. It is me plugging into the collective strength that makes me strong.

Now I wasn't trying to disprove him mind you. At the outset I told him I wasn't Christian, just pre-Jewish, and he said that was great and fine. But I'm open-minded these days you understand and truly I am grateful for the kindness of strangers these days. And this man before me I knew was strong and was wise, because only they can work their long days and difficult lives and still have love shining in their face as he does. I do know that. On the second piece of paper he gave me three verses and told me to look them up. I will, I told him. Seriously, I will.

And he told me about his life. At a young age his mother had died. His life had been difficult. He had been to Woodstock and certainly partied in all ways out there. But, he says, it was only God that allowed him to be strong. God forgives his mistakes, and he continues to live for and by God. And that gives him God's strength. It was probably by this time I started crying. He goes on- Because our problems are too big for us to handle them alone. *more tears*. So we tell God and we let him help us. I pray all day long, just talking to God like he were here. And God gives me the strength, and I use that to pass on strength to others.

It was here that the tears got harder. Because this is what I try to do too, though I don't call it "God" in most company, but something far more cerebral like the Gestalt, the collective, or that shining intersection where we all are one and the same. I try to plug in to receive it's strength, then pass it on to those around me, thus creating even greater strength and goodness. That's my chosen meaning.

And he told me it was like Esther. Yes, I do know her story I told him. How she set her people free. It's like that he tells me. You are here to do great things. Cue another spasm of crying here. Because the harder life gets, and the stronger it makes me, I can only feel that I am being prepared for my work to come. The work I am here to do.

Thank you I told him. I mean it.

And I cried my way out the door and onto the beltway.

This is the thing. I do think there's a whole lot of names for God. A whole lot of paths to enlightenment. Individually differing as uniquely as we each are unique in so many fascinating ways. And wisdom is wisdom. And love is love. And I'm far more concerned about what we have in common, as people and as religions, than what we differ over.

So call me meta-religious I guess. Though a future MOT. Namaste.

Of course, here are the verses he gave me.

John 14:14
If you ask me for anything in my name, I will do it.
John 14:27
I am leaving you at peace. I am giving you my own peace. I am not giving it to you as the world gives. So don’t let your hearts be troubled, and don’t be afraid.
Hebrews 13:5
[Let your] conversation [be] without covetousness; [and be] content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

It's all love right? I can see the wisdom in these words. Maybe even meditate on them. James gave me these words with love to give me strength. Personally, I don't think anyone has to be any particular religion. Just don't be a hater. That's what I think. It's all about the love man. Live with love in your heart and pass it on.

The new Smack

2009-02-16T07:42:00.007-05:00

1) You have that passion for chocolate that transcends mere appetite
2) You have a similarly compelling donut obsession

and

3) You eat when you're stressed

Do not buy these.
I repeat, even if they are on sale for $2.00 ($2!!!) don't buy them. They will be inside your thighs in 24 hours. 24 delicious hours.

I bought two!

You've been warned. :)

blog burp

2009-02-15T17:47:00.001-05:00

I've been hearing this in my head lately.

Then somehow the flap of an insect’s wings, that echoed and grew to a mighty wind -it swept me out of the deep blue waves. The lord sent an angel to me.

Perhaps this was chance- and maybe perhaps, there isn’t a god who sends down his wrath. And maybe the angel that night on the waves was just random wind blowing randomly. Or maybe it was that I had to learn- that people that creep into Hell get burned. There wasn’t a chance out there on the waves that my pains would let me go free.

Our soul doesn’t live in the ground or the cave. I’ve learned not to wander too close to the grave. And love doesn’t live out there on the waves. I’ve learned not to go where souls shouldn’t be. And maybe there's some other place I could find where winds blow soft and the people are kind. I sure won’t find it out there at the grave. Don’t look for your life in the sea.

Cause sometimes there’s things that you just don’t see. Good lord won’t you swing me around, around? Don’t look for your life underneath the ground. Don’t look for your life in the sea.

on the panic, the fear, the wave that knocks you down

2009-02-08T18:17:00.003-05:00

It is only when we struggle with‚ or run away from our anxieties‚ that they gain momentum. We can only be victims of fear if we allow ourselves to be.

“Do the thing you are afraid to do and the death of fear is certain.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

We have spoken on this web site about panic attacks in detail now I want to tackle the side–effects of panic attacks. Most people who experience frequent panic attacks describe a lingering background generalized anxiety that stays with them long after the panic attack is over. Panic attacks are not spontaneous‚ random experiences. They are rooted in an underlying general anxiety that acts as the feeding ground for them to occur.

I didn't realize this. I didn't understand. It's good to have names for things. It's good not to feel so alone.

Symptoms of the Panic Attack

2009-02-08T18:10:00.008-05:00

The most common symptoms of anxiety attacks are:

* Palpitations
* Pounding heart‚ or an accelerated heart rate
* Sweating
* Trembling or shaking
* Shortness of breath A choking sensation
* Chest pain or discomfort
* Nausea or stomach cramps
* A feeling of being dizzy
* Unsteadiness
* Lightheadedness or feeling faint
* Derealization (a feeling of unreality)
* Depersonalization (a feeling of being detached from oneself)
* Fear of losing control or going crazy
* Fear of dying Numbness or a tingling sensation
* Chills or hot flashes

I've been scoring 8 12 of these for a while now. I didn't realize that's what this was. The nausea now just gripped me to the point where I wanted to pass out.

Fabulous.

1.5 mg of xanax later (that's not a little!) I can sit, I can move, without the dizzyness. Without passing passing back out on the ground. Oh and totally just vomited my guts out.

I am facing some stressful things right now. I can't run away anymore. And it terrifies me in a way that is just beyond archetypal, planted in infancy, and rooted in social conditioning. I am freaking the fuck out.

I am breathing. I am fighting with enormous difficulty. God this is hard.

together

2009-01-31T12:54:00.005-05:00

I cannot possibly write for I have too much to say. Far too much, and perhaps things one should keep to themselves.

I am a ship out on distant high seas, riding the waves with dignity. With grace.

I continue to find strength in the things I have discovered during and through this blog.

The group at work where we meditate and Pranayama-breathe on lunch breaks is really growing into something. I have been planting seeds at work and they are growing into something beautiful. To the right, to the left, wherever I step. I plant the seeds that I have discovered.

And I am sailing the cold waves. Not that they don't batter me. But I batter them back.

And maintain a peace within the storm (that is our existence here in our lives, this world, our world of so much potential).

And I breath in deeply, then hold a moment, then release slowly. Slowly.

And a room full of co-workers hum OHMMM in a room that only an hour ago housed a meeting. And now here I am, breathing, smiling, encouraging the roomfull (that encourages me back) that this is how we counter pain, sadness, and all of life's tests.

We breathe.
Together.

surrounded by fifty million strong

2009-01-24T09:06:00.005-05:00

Thank you to Ms. Moon, who angelically sent me a magazine & cd's with some of the best shit ever.

p.s. Sunshine of Your Love by Ella made me miss my exit off the beltway, which I have correctly made approximately 300 times before. Amazing. Thank you.

Sick Today

2009-01-17T10:52:00.002-05:00

And yesterday. Sick. Ugh. Sux. Just thought I'd share that.

But yeah it totally sucks.

I'm TRYING to just lay off my expectations of all the shit I should be getting done around me. I am finally at a day job that doesn't mind if I take a sick day, but my life still will not tolerate it. And yet I must. Relax. Anyway.

It's pretty damn hard. In soooo many ways. Impossible sort of. But I have to do the best... I ... can.... anyway.....

eh.

that diamond that shines in the dark

2009-01-16T09:21:00.004-05:00

I just came back from the psychiatrist/psychotherapist I recently hooked up with. After a few appointments, I am still struggling to catch her up so to speak with my story. For instance, going inpatient never came up until this session.

But what she's still trying to wrap her head around is how I am so happy so often given my life circumstances. She still does not get it, we're not yet on the same page.

I realize, driving home, that there are many ways things happen. And my being helped by her has to do with 1) the pills, 2) the insights she can suggest once she understands my life better, and 3) the insights I realize from trying to explain myself to her.

Of course that's part of it. I had forgotten for a moment. That there's different ways therapy can work. To have an empathetic witness can be very cathartic. To have a cognitive reframing of unfounded beliefs also a major mental shift. But also, simply the process of trying to explain your life to someone else forces you to figure it out yourself as you hear yourself talk.

Which is the very same reason, in many ways, that the blog can be a tool for survival, and for growth. It can be the process wherein we realize our own path, and our way out of the woods, as we try to understand these crazy lives we're in and what the hell is going on in our own selves.

But I also realize that my challenge in getting her to understand why I am still happy despite it all, is the same challenge with all the people at work. In lives far less emotionally traumatic, they are more often unhappy. And I once was too.

So how do you make somebody understand, who has not themself been through HELL, that the greatest joy lies on the other side of despair. In that place the colors are brighter than in "normal" life. Not a lot, but a little. There is a different kind of joy for something when you have had to fight for it, when you know at every moment how ephemeral and precious it is.

But also, having been forced to deal with more than I could handle, I had to change. I had to find places and methods and meanings that no sane stranger would take the trouble to find through those dark and mucky depths. Desperation is a strange thing. Hardship too. If you survive, if you can keep on fighting, you will hope to find that rare diamond. It is strange. I do not recommend you induce it. But maybe some of you can understand what others do not.

There is a diamond in the dark if you are brave enough to keep on fighting.

Maybe someone out there can also understand?

How come?

2009-01-15T20:21:00.006-05:00

I just finished watching, god willing, the last major speech I will ever see "Dubya" do.

He could not contain the glee on his face. He was elated. In his mind was this:

And I thought I heard some jam in my head about bitches and hoes.

Tonight dubya is gonna be doing lines off a stripper's ass. In fact, I bet you a fiver he already is. Did you see how quick he took off from the podium?

"Bye ya'lls". *off to do the line he already has cut in the limo, engine running* "Peace bitches!"

Good bye Dubya. It was really something.

How about a graph to celebrate where this country has gone:

At this rate baby, all you gotta do is "not worse". Cause the trend up there is a gaping growing income inequality. Why are people so poor- can't get their medicine?

I can show you why. This is publicly available statistics. Readily available. Does it make your jaw drop too?

Comments?

My hope lies in Obama. I am not naive, but I am optimistic. Because I chose to face the terrible things of this world with hope, that perhaps things might get better and not worse.

If anyone would like any more Youssou, here's another:

I recommend this music for driving in morning rush hours and still staying mellow and not hating the world.

"You want peace, I'm bringing Assalamu Alaikum..."

Peace bitches :)

the Tell-Tale To-Do

2009-01-11T11:02:00.010-05:00

There's a clock that's always ticking
and it's rarely very kind
And my list is always growing
and it's always on my mind

And when I wake
I shake
to know
It's another day for my list to grow

As I try
as I may
to fight each day
to chip away
through this
cold mine

there is a light and it never goes out

2009-01-06T22:41:00.005-05:00

My time is shorter these days. I am sorry I write infrequently. But I am on my feet. And my arms are swinging and I'm singing a tune.

The visit with my mom was the raddest ever. At times I was tested. I struggled. I recalled the days of my youth in a way that inspired a drink and I did have a sip or two. Yes I did. But I did it damn well. And it was the best ever. I have never seen my mother's face as beautiful or as beaming, as when receiving my love and respect and encouragement. It feels foolish to love so completely. Foolish and also slightly frightening.

****

The Heart gives love, but it also receives love by allowing others to enter its most private territories, which is the greatest act of faith a human can perform. In our Heart centers, others have the power, not only to heal us with their love, but also to destroy us if they should deny or abuse that love. In this way, the Heart is our most vulnerable organ: It must be open in order to receive what it needs, yet its openness contains the seeds of despair. It is a paradox that terrifies all who honestly consider it, and which prevents many people from accepting the love they crave.

-Reichstein "wood becomes water: Chinese Medicine in Everyday Life"

****

I realize it scares me to open my heart this wide because she hurt me once without even realizing it long ago in a childhood far away. And I realize this is the first "break-up" in our lives. The first real heartbreak: not between love-struck teenagers, but between parent and child. And as the first thorn thrust, it hurts in a way that seems natural. Normal. And that keeps us apart from one another.

So I decide to forgive her for all the little pains and neuroses and failings. I have changed. I have realized how to do things differently. And I connect with her in a way I have not since I was cherubically young. And it gives me a joy that reaches all the way back to that 5 year old super-star.

And I reach out my hand and we are both Awesome. Both shining stars with nothing in our way. It is strange, so strange to forgive the old wounds. For that 5 year old to re-emerge as 30+, with the same flame I knew so long ago. So many years ago.

How strange. How odd indeed. And how frightening...

p.s. sorry no, it was not my birthday. the cost of my comfortably cryptic tendencies is the confusion it causes. but I think it is a fine happy un-birthday to us both. A fine un-birthday indeed to you all.

so bright, and so pure pure**

2009-01-01T10:05:00.009-05:00

10:00 and I need to get cleaning.

Moms is coming in 3,2,1.

For 72 hours we'll be together in this little apartment.

I am spraying the place down with tranquility and calm, so it will not be a powder keg of anxiety.

Damping the old fuses, so they will not blow before I even see to blow them out.

Because I have gotten good at seeing them, because I am trying to be calm to respond well. I am hosing them down now. I am breathing deeply now. I am building my reserve now.

I will need it.

Three days, with my Mom. Lord give us strength not to fall into that emotional hole we existed in when I was 16 and we were both losing our minds in intertwined ways.

I have found my way out of that. And I have laid a trail of breadcrumbs for her to find (my mother also loves pastry a little too much!). And I will show her the lights that lead out of the forest of darkness that we were once lost in.

The fears. The great ghosts of fear that used to make us so insecure and spiraling in desperate circles down.

I know the way up mom. Follow me. (I know you will). We are going someplace beautiful.

And I love you. For the years you live on this earth you will know my love.

We will relax together and feel okay. Because I have carried your crosses I know the splinters (those thorns !)* you carry. And I have learned, since that tender age of 16, how to get them out. I have learned things. And you, I see, are ready to learn them too.

I must stay calm. I must stay plugged in to my reserve, return to myself to refocus and recenter throughout the days as winds try to buffet me off course. And I can do it, not perfect, but better than I ever have.

With love there are possibilities. With love we can build bridges. Those four miserly letters that so utterly fail at the concept and experience we are trying to evoke when we say them. Why it all sounds to trite and facile. And why the word "God" has seemed so ridiculously odd for all these years. It is- as a word and one often used in bad ways- a miserly name for something so vast, and so grand. So at once complex and simple. So not that. But nothing else either but something that perfect sounding. Something that truly amazing. Something so luminous and so lovely.

*******************************************************************

* damn I love when things suddenly come fully circle like that. I sure didn't see that coming either

** yes I just combined together recklessly a deepest of deep thought/revelation with a reference to the dirty dirty south. Just like in my post on a semi-academic blog where I had a single sentence that obliquely referenced both a T.S. Eliot line and cocaine use. (Not that I do that per se, but a sister's been around ya know). Cause I'm cool like that! See man if only my first chair adviser saw how cool I was instead of my third chair! If only the world noticed how awesome I was, wouldn't that be great.

******

When I was 5 years old I thought I truly was the shizznitz. I would write my name in my baby book (MY book) over and over with the picture of a cake in magic marker and a big letter 5 and I wrote, probably, my first real lines...

They went something like this:

(quietgirl) rock,
(quietgirl) rock,
(quietgirl) rock,
FIIIIVE!!!

I think this song was a bit dervative of "jingle-bell rock", but nonetheless a very cool derivative. I sang that over and over in my head while I browsed and drew in these pages. I had no doubt of the greatness that burned within me. I was a mountain. I was a flame.

Apparently by six something had happened to shake that confidence. The outside world with its attendant fears began to creep into my little world of purity.

But I remember that world. It has taken 25 years, but by golly I have stopped and I have remembered.

And that lovely world still is there. I do still rock. I rock six times harder. I can't believe I forgot.

Man I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached!

quietgirl rock, quietgirl rock, quietgirl rock 30

:)

what i say

2008-12-30T22:06:00.008-05:00

Realized yesterday, driving home, that still small space was gone.

When I meditate, I fill a reservoir of calm in my heart. A spaciousness that cushions the hard spots in life.

I realized that my chest only hurt. Aha no wonder I feel so bad. See how I must meditate.

It's like filling a bicycle tire. You need to keep it full or the road will sure hurt and you won't get very far and it will wear you the fuck out.

You need to fill you reserve. That plugging into calm, giving yourself that permission, letting you off the hook for that imagined original sin tucked away somewhere. You can drop the bullshit, and the chasing thoughts and circles and just be. Just be.

So this morning I meditated. I breathed slowly into the reservoir. And see I have not lost it. It has only dried up a bit. But the place I have cultivated is still waiting for me where I left it.

I just have to remember.

That I left it.

To remember.

(before the next bullshit begins)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Stated otherwise, the Nepalese man at work (one of the 2 men who lead us in Pranyama breathing which, turns out, that besides being silly is also kind of rad. in a snot-filled sort of way. bring a kleenex.) says that what his old-ass living-in-a-village-kicking-it-old-school Uncle says is that meditation does not keep you from getting upset. It allows you to respond best when it happens.

That's what I'm saying man. That's what I'm saying. It's kind of awesome.

P.S. I realize, btw, that my upbringing was 1) crazy and 2) kind of sort of explains a lot about me. Not that I don't want to take credit for every iota of my goddamn kookiness. But this was the church, the only church they ever bothered to go to. But that my father briefly became a hippie minister in. Rock ya'll. Rock. Anyhow yeah, this was the church I grew up in.

Sound familiar? Shit don't fall far from the tree. But also, I'm starting to think the more I run away, the more I come back home where I started.

I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to quote T.S. Eliot because I'm certain, just certain that my quoting-that-T.S.Eliot-line allowance is used up. I put it in my 2nd year paper for Chrissakes. Although the only person I'm confident ever actually read it was my therapist.

Anywho, I'm going to quote it anyway. I'm just going to do it. But see I'm gonna give you all the good stuff.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the appletree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, halfheard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always-
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are infolded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Have a goodnight. I can even forgive Eliot for being a prick with those poems he wrote. Tonight feel forgiven too. Let yourself be at peace, even if for a moment. That's what I say anyway

life

2008-12-27T10:00:00.002-05:00

Of course couldn't pull of cards this year for the holiday. Although as of incredibly recently (these past quiet weeks) I reinstalled my pegboard vertically in a little corner of the bedroom. Turned a shelf into a little drying rack. Got myself a nice efficient little work station again. It is simply lovely. Our space is so small, and I'm slowly building in little pieces of functionality into it.

I've finally begun to organize the "office"- the bit of space between the door and kitchen we use for a desk and printer. I installed wall shelves like a champ all by myself. Power drill, level, anchors, and didn't even f them up. I'm not done yet, but strange how these things can change a chaotic and awful space into something that helps your soul to lighten again.

And the craft space not only allows me to make cards more efficiently, faster, but also much nicer it seems. It raises the quality by allowing me to do them more smoothly and in larger batches. It's the iteration that brings refinement. So while neither Christmas cards or Hanukkah cards will go out this year, I'm contemplating a New Years card instead.

And of course, then I need to fast-track my work for dear AE, who has a wedding dress but no wedding invitations. I was off my game in all ways these past few weeks, but also I was psyched out that I couldn't match the vision in her head. But then I realized, in the way that I always try to realize, I simply need to step back and reframe my thinking and how I'm approaching a task.

One of the things I love most about the challenge is when you are able to see it not as an antagonist, but as a moment for brain-storming, refocusing, and re-centering. Then seeing the adaptation that turns a challenge not to a hurdle, but an interesting bend in a river. The very thing that makes life so precious.

I see this in making cards, in the projects at work, in social dynamics.

Frankl said by choosing to find a meaning in life we could face the insufferable. He did not mention that it was something valuable in itself, beyond the point of keeping you alive or sane or whatever. But it is. It seems it is more than a life-raft, but perhaps something greater.

My meaning is to apply all the things I have learned to making the world a little more positive instead of a little more negative. This applies to "problems" and to people. I can only do this when I am stable, but it also helps me return to stability. Understanding human pain, I understand it's healing more now too. Every person my path intersects with I try to make a positive contact instead of a negative default. I talk to strangers waiting for their prescriptions at CVS, feeling overwhelmed by their health problems. I talk to the man waiting in the line at Burger King about life and hardship, reflecting back at him the smile that shines in his face when he talks of the satisfaction of seeing his kids happy on Christmas, even when that means no gifts for him. I smile at the woman walking by, intercepting her scowl with something much more pleasant to take away with her.

And all I can tell you is I believe in human good, even if we have to coax it out. Let's be that.

The best example I saw/heard this year of Christmas, my dear secular Christmas, which is not about baby Jesus but simply human warmth and love between people, was on the history channel- a show called Christmas Truce. Wiki tells of multiple Christmas Truces. Where instead of fighting, young men on the front lines instead choose to acknowledge each other's humanity, and spread greetings and warmth. I find this compelling. This is the Christmas I embrace.

So with this and Citalopram I march onward to a new year with the vision of all the beauty I hope to cultivate within it. Namaste Y'alls.

This little light of mine

2008-12-26T19:22:00.004-05:00

Twenty days since I last posted.

Been out deep surfing the big waves, so to speak. Which leaves me triumphant tho tattered. Because I can ride the waves. Because the people at work feel bad for me, when I do not. Because they cannot see the lights that I see. The vision tinged with electricity of hope, of seeing potential within the world in heavenly sparks that mere mortals cannot see.

And of course you realize losing your mind is quite interesting. I can see myself from a third person stance and find the patterns quite interesting. The building tension. The emotional charges. The rumble. The crumble. The instability I descend to before regaining my footing. Coming out of it. Finding the light again that keeps me moving upward and onward no matter.

I wonder sometimes shouldn't they envy me, instead of feeling sorry. Wouldn't they be jealous if the knew what they are missing. Or am I deceiving myself? Would life be full of unimaginable happiness were it not for my specific life trials? Perhaps I simply do not know what I'm missing.

But they do not seem happier. Indeed they are ruffled easier, many of them.

But I digress. Life is hard, yet blissful. Desperate yet lovely. Not full so much of life but full of love. A warm love that warms the home. That softens the air and makes colors soft. That makes the world okay even when it isn't. And that makes me fulfilled in a way indescribable. Though the winds may blow. Tho the winds may blow and blow.

Hope your holiday time was full of love. And hope your new year has even more.

I love field trips

2008-12-06T20:37:00.005-05:00

It is snowing again. Finally where it sticks on the ground a little- not like the last brief shower. I drove home in them, lightly fluttering about, wetting the road that held the drivers frantic from the holiday anxiety back in the shopping center.

I got to go "in the field" today. To see the survey in action. Grand conclusion, it's really hard to get people who are home, available, and willing to take a survey. How else shall we estimate poverty, disability, or any other problem? How else do we gather national data about these things without you telling us. We have to ask you. But people are suspicious, as would I be.

Take home point. If a fed employee one day shows up at your door and tells you that you're part of a probability sample that needs to be fulfilled if we are to tell you anything about the people of America, please do help them out. We're out there. Seriously, where do you think this information comes from? You know how people say that there's a small group of people out there who have been examined by aliens in strange and probing ways to understand humanity. Well a small sample of America also gets surveys. And we too are probing and invasive, but we won't hurt you. And it's important for you, too. It's important for all of us. How else are we to know?

But do you think that could discourage me. Hah you would be mistaken. It was a lovely experience and gave us both ideas on how we could improve the process and it was completely interesting and worthwhile. A new thing I never thought I would/could do/perform/be. Which is nice. Which isn't half bad really.

And sometimes it's not

2008-12-05T13:02:00.006-05:00

What happens when there is never enough. The gap between what you need to live and what you actually have is threatening to swallow you.

What happens if you ran out of gas miles ago, and your running on fumes till you stall on the tracks.

What happens if the patience, the strength, the health, and the psychological endurance you need run out.

Do I internalize. Shall I return to ideations, giving up on my life.
Do I externalize. Do I lash out at the things around me?

It seems to be one or the other. Right now I'm on the latter, but I tend to alternate between the two.

The things I need are so vast, so far, and so out of our reach. What do you do if you are out of fuel? What if your hopes are just mirages? What if you look again and you were fooling yourself. What if things never get better? What if I haven't it in me to keep on trying? What if I'm drowning in it all. What if we're getting farther from our target and not closer. Do you realize how many people are suffering out there without resource, explanation, or resolution? Do you realize how likely it is that we will suffer the same fate. Do you understand how very tapped out I am?

What if the dam breaks. What if I can no longer function or fight, but only drown in the chaos around me. What if I crack. What if I can no longer compensate? What if I envision setting my house on fire, ramming people on the interstate or with my shopping cart in the store? What if I cannot handle this anymore? How the hell is this going to end?

What if I just gave it a good try, and that is all I have.

Monday: Xanax. It's not a solution, but it's comforting. What I really need is a big fucking miracle. A BIG FUCKING MIRACLE. Do you hear me god? You're losing me fast. A Big Fucking Miracle. Or I'm toast. Seriously. Long term goal- peace and relief. Short term goal- comfortably numb.

..........

Don't worry, I've already stabilized. Till the next time! Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, life goes on. We just gotta keep life going on!

American Life

2008-12-05T08:49:00.006-05:00

Apparently my rear is not sufficiently padded to endure the 9.5 hours a day I sit on it. Okay counting driving, it's 11.5 hours. Although I do spend a good portion of my day moving about between the bathroom, the kitchenette, friends cubicles, a meeting or two, I sit quite a lot. Of the adaptive biology in the human body, perhaps we are only designed to sit maybe a few hours a day and not the long stretch that I do. But my ass hurts. Seriously.

I suspect this is also strongly associated with our "couch". Our "couch" is the cheapest futon Ikea sells, purchased 4 years ago. Now as we are avid sitters, the boards in this couch began to yield years ago, eventually culminating in my husband being able to sit on the couch and on the floor at the same time. It was like the couch was trying to eat us, and largely succeeding.

Not having the dough to replace this rapidly failing piece of furniture, I fixed it last weekend (or the weekend prior, time is sort of a hole to me) with pieces of plywood between the broken boards and the meager cushion. So much better. But maybe a little tough on the tush.

In addition to this pain in the ass, I think my massive consumption of fast food in lieu of real food is taking a toll. I feel like shit. Sort of like a big heap of shit.

Reading about Ample's raw diet purges sounds so good. But I know it is all I can do to do what little I do, and I haven't the time to keep up with the investment required for proper consumption. So I'll do what I can.

This morning I ate an apple. That was the single healthy food item available in the house. I need to go grocery shopping, as well as clean intensively, and catch up with every other little thing which I will not succeed in catching up with. All I can do is little pieces. Thus my mantra "no good is wasted". I have to believe all the little bitty things I do add up, or else it would be too discouraging, and I would stop even trying. Would have stopped long ago.

However, I do have an appointment with the magical pill doctor on Monday to dispense her magical mood pills to me. Perhaps she has some for my ass as well?

Cause sometimes it's okay

2008-12-01T22:58:00.006-05:00

When I'm not agitated and ranty, and partly to not be agitated and ranty, I make these. I make them slowly, with time here and there. Slowly.

I'm supposed to make (or jointly-make, however it plays out) wedding invites for AE's wedding. I think that is the raddest thing, and I hope that I will find the time to make them so super awesome that even I will actually cease fixating on flaws and just be able to enjoy them in their purity. The loveliness I am chasing. The state of softness, and magic, and celebration.

In other news, cavebear is finally out of HEAT and will stop driving me crazy. Until she goes into pseudo-pregnancy that is. We've got 2 months people. Figures my dog would also be hormonal and crazy. Rock.

And last but not least I will end the post with the way the day ends here. Although normally, I see it through my window at work, a good hour at least before it's time to go. The skies turn a panorama of pink, with the Washington monument way off in the distance. It celebrates that the day is almost over, another good day because I'm still standing. And it is lovely.

Goodnight. And may you have a beautiful tomorrow.

Red Friday

2008-11-30T11:24:00.004-05:00

Thank you AE for showing me "Buy Nothing Day". Let's pass that on eh? Next year anyone?

Add It Up; the externalities of enterprise

2008-11-29T09:35:00.022-05:00

Because economists seem to believe that anything in existence can be distilled down to a dollar value- with all sorts of discounting rates based on the dollar value we'd place on having something today vs. the amount we'd place on having it 3 months from now, and with great confidence and precision, well, they think they can add it up.

Additionally, economists seem to me the most bold in presumption of the complete model. The closed box in which all factors are identified and put into the equation. Not coincidentally, they look for parsimonious models with few vectors to consider, that happens to make for cleaner math. And they function the hell out of those vectors with new and innovative formulas that magically produce more than the sum of their parts, although they can not seem to get it through my head why this method magically surmounts problems of the model and the assumptions we are relying on. If you can't explain it to me, eventually I might not believe what you're saying.

And although microeconomists generally assume that all human decisions are made with incomplete/imperfect information, they seem to forget that theirs are too. There are many economists who are bad ass bitches. But of course I'm talking about the field generally. This seems to be the weakness of the field generally. And at a formal meeting, the numbers they spit out of their models are treated like pure gold and with far greater accuracy and power, for a variety of reasons, than keen analysts know they have.

Now economists talk about "externalities" too. Externalities are the outside effects of your behavior. So, if I think it's a fine time to make some money by fucking up the environment, screwing my workers, and trying to tighten the system to maximize my increase at their expense, the externalities are pervasive pollution that will make us all sick (correction, is already beginning to make us sick), an increase in human misery, and a model of human organization that is corrosive and time-limiting (i.e. not sustainable). And this toll I'm taking on people outside myself are the negative externalities of my operation.

So I'm a bit confused at how this is missed. The selective sight of the bed-fellows of business who continually refuse to acknowledge that business is not just business but has social impacts. It is not just a lovey dovey bleeding heart thing (whatever that is) to want to bring this shit back in the model. It's responsibility. The responsibility the republicans talked about over and over. Personal responsibility has to extend into business in a very real way if we are to allow it to have so much power to shape the world by its great corporate collective. We have to be accountable for our actions, at least after a point. That's why we are capable of thought, of observation, of foresight and hindsight. So we can use it. We need to use it.

For many years (since the end of WWII) our country has boomed deliciously on insatiable consumption. Before the war had even ended, popular magazines were showing us the great new goods that would be available to us soon, now that we had WON. Rubber for new tires on new cars from their expanded factories, and shining kitchen appliances to make your life easier. These were grand and wonderful things. But they were not, as we eventually took for granted, everything. Yet they became within the population- psychologically- our prize, our relief, our solace, and our right.

A system of insatiable consumption is not sustainable. And it does damage to the social system. It corrodes our culture, our values, the reasons we live and die that make us strong and worthwhile. Moses despaired of the effect slavery had had on the Jews (I believe), and when they couldn't chill the fuck out for forty days without worshiping a Golden Calf while he went for a little convo with the Lord, he was ready to kick them to the curb. Cause you can't be a society without the integrity, the values, the sociocultural strength to act constructively and intelligently, rather than for fleeting material pleasure. If a people are to act civilly, to not be barbarians, and to survive times of hardship (i.e. life) without falling apart, we must have a strong core of values and constructive culture.

Since being a t.v.-taught tot in the 80's, I have been suckled by corporate America. We put on some 80's commercials the other day on youtube, and realized we found them more endearing than many of the shows, singing them by heart like the national anthem. And strangely, I do not despise this.

I do despise the way, over so many years, that advertising has keyed up. The products have keyed up. Products are more high tech and expensive, more stimulating and preoccupying. The volume on commercials is way louder than the program, and tells you and your children that what will make you happy is this new thing. Now this. Now this. Raising the bar, and raising the bar, with no end in sight.

And the kids believe it. And we are becoming a society of consumer whores.

And the corporates get wealthier, and the top quintile of the population gets way more rich in relation to the rest of us. Medical costs go up, since they're corporations too, so we need medical insurance just for BASIC health care, but the cost of that is going up because they are run by corporations too. And there's no warm beating heart anywhere to be seen in their plans or priorities, as they mar the landscape of our world with industrial-sized gashes.

When I was still back in retail (5 or 6 years ago), each Christmas was a major push to keep making INCREASING profits despite a softening economy. A significant portion of their annual income was made during the Christmas holiday, and every year the mandate was not too sustain the level of that income, but to raise it. They marketed their ass off and tighted the machinery of the stores, of us, so that we just ran faster and were more unhappy, under-resourced, and the emotional-toll of working there became increasingly more than they were paying us.

And of course, they all used "DOOR-BUSTERS" of special prices to get people lined up and frothing on black friday. Five dollar toasters. Fifty dollar tv's. Stacked up on pallets to lure them in.

I worked (among other places) in housewares, where distant-eyed mothers searched the aisles daily for something to make their home warmer, more comfortable, happier. The ad imagery they got the most mileage out of was of people with their families sharing a special moment at home. They would sell these illusions, but the moments never happened. They were selling ghosts of satisfaction to a confused and longing people. Not knowing any more what they were even missing. And surely not knowing they were looking in the wrong places to find it.

This Christmas, in our new depression, stores have started the holiday earlier, opened the stores earlier, and made the door-busters even bigger, crazier, and surely in more limited numbers (get here early!!!) to get people in the door despite the fact that people are broke and laid off. Despite the fact that economic pundits*tisk*tisk* about why we've become a nation who can't save money like the generation before us. Despite the talk of irresponsible debt and spending according above one's means. They bait the hook harder and tug even more to get the people wanting to come in and spend. The people of the country are scared right now, and a little unstable, unable to face their own fate in a diminishing economy. Their misdirected emotional-consumption urge is rising like an addict needing another hit.

And at a small Long Island Wal-mart the mob intensity of the writhing, desperate, and confused masses broke down a door (finally a true Door-Buster, bravo), and pushed through. Failing to notice that they, in the process, trampled to death a 34 year old over-night holiday-temp stock person. “When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” Ms. Cribbs told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.”

Detective Lt. Michael Fleming, who is in charge of the investigation for the Nassau police, said the store lacked adequate security. He called the scene “utter chaos” and said the “crowd was out of control.” As for those who had run over the victim, criminal charges were possible, the lieutenant said. “I’ve heard other people call this an accident, but it is not,” he said. “Certainly it was a foreseeable act.”

I am sure they, like all big stores, put a lot of time into thinking of how to reduce the costs of their labor, increase the demand of their customers, and how to make the most possible profit this year. Clearly they left a few things out of the equation. And business, collectively, has left a throbbing mass of externalities out of their accounting.

We need to look this in the eye. We need to seriously reconsider the fundamental notions that out legislation and lack of legislation is based on. Profit can no longer be king. Not in health care. Not in big pharmacy. Not in insurance. Not in education or prisons. Because we allow the pursuit of profit amongst the moneyed class to act unfettered by consideration of whether this will have negative externalities. If we are going to add it up, we need to add it ALL up. But better yet, we need to recognize that the most precious things in life, the things worth wandering through the desert for, cannot be converted into cash. And business should exist for the support and benefit of society, not VICE VERSA.

Am I speaking loud enough?

NOT VICE VERSA.

One last thing: If the stores are working harder and harder now that their profits are tanking to keep us spending perilously despite us not having the money for their shiny plastic shit, what does this mean for the health care industry? Please think about this very hard. Watch the ads you see around you for meds, for hospitals, for cancer care. Let's think very hard about this, PLEASE.

Dow Jones Industry Tracker: Healthcare (5 years)

See that line drop over the past year after the ridiculously big ol' (oh-that's-why-Rx-meds-have-gotten-so-expensive) increase? Someone's losing money, and someone is going to want to get it back. And they can do it in all sorts of quiet insidious ways that don't look all that bad on the surface and are a lot like what they've been doing already. Let's be a strong people. Let's take care of our population. Let's not get sick at other's profit. Do you hear me?

Thankful

2008-11-27T19:42:00.003-05:00

I was thinking of posting a list of things I was thankful for. There surely are things I have. But I did not feel inspired.

I just took out the dog. At the base of the stairs she barked at a tree and the man about 20 yards away who stood behind it.

Good girl, I told her. Though these are no longer the mean streets of Kiladelphia, I heard several months ago someone was jacked nearby, and I have not forgotten caution.

But I wasn't scared. Kids go in the woods often to smoke weed, or laborers during a break in their day. People walking dogs once in a while, or someone pacing engaged in serious cell phone conversation. But this man looked different. He looked older. He walked away slowly and weary, like he wasn't going anywhere.

I only realized as he was almost out of sight that he probably had nowhere to go. Where should somebody without a home go? Shouldn't they try to seek any warmth, any safety. Should I despise him for coming too near my home. Granted I don't want a break-in, but that's what a 75lb bulldog is for after all. I know homelessness has always been present. I know it rose perilously during the depression, and I know it has been rising now. Where all they all do go? Shall they walk about in the cold forever?

I am Grateful for what I have, which is a warm home with a man and dog whom I love dearly. We want for many things, but between us we never want for love. And I love that I have somewhere to go. To be safe, so be warm, to not be despised for vagrancy. For unwantedness. And my wish this Thanksgiving (new tradition, whatever) is for us all to have a warm place to land and be safe. May we all have a home, however small.

Thank you.

Tricks in the Desert, the Old Man, and Me

2008-11-27T13:17:00.007-05:00

I'm startled.

For a second, sitting in the sun outside because I need the anti-SADDifying effect desperately right now despite the whole it's-thirty-degrees-thing..... I thought I saw a flicker.

It could have been a mirage, like dusty dying men see in the desert on their final steps.

Or it could have been real.

I thought I saw a flicker. The kind that comes from the end of a tunnel. If it was not a trick of the light, then it sure was distant. Distant like across-both-space-and-time-and-a-worm-hole-to-boot distant.
It was faint as the flicker a pregnant woman sees of her coming children. ;)
It may have been true....

A light at the end of a decade long tunnel. And there is no good news provoking this. There is no reason for it, besides perhaps the cracks that have broken and shattered both me and the world I liv in has revealed to me through some crevice, lying dusty upon the floor, a flicker of light from OUTSIDE. The big Outside. The place where the sun shines and you shine back.

The waves are so high above my head it almost blocks out the sun. But I will dream of the spark, and cling to it like it was the first rope that got me this far. I will try to hold on with these spasming hands. Like Hemingway's old man, who's hands cramped up, clenched about the rope with which he was clinging to his irridescent fish.

And maybe the galanos will not come. Maybe the waves will not swallow me completely. Maybe I will someday, again, shine back the way I could. The way I am already shining already somewhere distant, through space and time deep within myself. That someday I will meet, and smile at myself and shake my own hand in congratulations that I made it. That I had been waiting for me for so long. And what a pleasure it is to finally be here.

And the smile that is shared between the lights in our eyes will rebound between us until it is the strength of a laser and together, we will finally jump up.

We will jump our shell together. Another shell, another level, an altogether different world. And the world we see can change, for we know surely the world is colored by our eyes and not some creationist crayola. We are the ones who make the picture. This life that contains us is contested terrain, and we can name it just as surely as any scientist could. We choose our path. And we choose what we will accept from the world around us. And I am sounding my barbaric yalp across this mother fucking cyber net and I just might make it out alive still.

And I may yet someday be a photon rising. A spark, that became a light, that became a laser.

too much too much and not enough

2008-11-24T14:43:00.002-05:00

Thank you for all the support that I so desperately need.

I know a cluster of things came together to trigger this, including that my Belmont anniversary is around this time. I can't think about holidays this year, without remember the deferred holiday last year coming out of our respective hospitals.

This weekend was very bad. I sobbed for hours like a dying animal. The muscles across my heart and most of my chest are sore. I could feel my heart beating itself senseless. And the tears just don't stop. They are always waiting, ready to go. It's just too much for too long and there is a cumulative price to that.

I am surviving. Difficult as it was, I let my man know how serious this is, and he is looking out for me as best he can. I took a sick day. And I'm trying to get into the pill shrink ASAP. Fortunately I've learned that lexapro is in generic, so I'll actually be able to afford it. So that's where I stand.

But really, things need to get better. And I know I should believe that they can. But it's hard.

It's very very hard.

Thank you blog world. You helped me so much this time last year, and once again I thank you.

never enough

2008-11-22T17:20:00.004-05:00

So you know how I was way overwhelmed before introducing the dissertation effort back in?

Yeah I am totally freaking out again. What the fuck was I thinking. Can I just fucking stabilize myself first before adding shit back on. Can I for once not constantly have too much on my shoulders. Now I'm getting the nasty little ideations again. Picturing the terrible things I could do to myself to stop this constant exhausted anxiety.

Okay I'm just going to admit it. I'm not capable of handling this stress.

I'm not.

Okay?

The UN-thwarted dream and snow on the beltway

2008-11-21T19:49:00.008-05:00

So kind AE, who is so successfully flying through her grad school progress and I am so jealous of it, reminded me, correctly and as she has many times now, that with the dissertation it is better to be DONE than be GOOD.

Don't care too much, or you'll never finish.

Despite it sounding soooo grand:

"DISSERTATION"

it will go in a drawer and nobody cares unless you publish it anyway. Your advisers don't, I suppose I could add to that.
And she's right. And I hate it. And I'm totally depressed.

Okay so I have to do this like it's my job.

Cause I do my job.

Because it's my job.

So I do it even when it's boring and hard and annoying. I adapt, and restrategize, I ask people, and I do it more or less. And I keep my boss satisfied which if far more than I can say of my advisers.

In fact, everybody I WORKED for in grad school said I did a great job. But my advisers are still watching tumbleweeds, hearing crickets, and writing me off as a drifter.

The correlation here is not merely a product of timing. Partly by space/location, since I dissertate at home and work mainly off-site (but not always!). But mostly it is what, I realize, it is. My success is differential based on type of task. I put in the hours! Though I never felt it was enough, I spent hour upon hour pouring over the draft, the literature, the data. Truly. But there it lies in a heap as soft and pink as it was a million hours of work ago.

Sure the dissertation is more ungrounded. More independent. More unstructured. But mine was particularly so because I almost never talked to my advisers. Because I was always behind and it sucked and I felt like a big fat loser. Loser! Man the self-loathing my dissertation inspires.

But it is hard, really just so hard. The stress in my life, but what's the point of saying it all out where everyone has to hear again. Yes we know my life is difficult. But now I have internet, and sometimes the floors are actually clean once in a while, and I can't stop here. I can't ever stop, really. I don't think I'll get to.

So the thrust is this. 1) I finish my dissertation or 2) I don't. Now if it's my choice to make, I do. There are to be factors, to be honest, that could stop me beyond my control. For instance, funding. This could still be a hurdle.

But my choice, if I am able to make it, is certainly to finish. I do want very much to finish this.

SO, the only logical conclusion then is to treat it for the life of me like my job.

Shit, I'll even track my hours. And I'll plan my attack, and I'll talk to people like my good friend AE and coworkers. I'll set up a series of sub-tasks to build toward the bigger tasks, a predetermined schedule with a predetermined amount of flexibility build in, and opportunities to reassess and readjust my aim/focus. That's kind of, actually, how I got into grad school in the first place. And I'll do it like it's my job.

Maybe I'll even ADMIT my progress in detail, with all the pissing around and sucking. I do have a freakin dissertation blog after all, and if that's what it's not meant for then I'll be a monkey butler (you WISH I was a monkey butler).

But no I'm just a social monkey. A social monkey who's been under a lot of pressure, and who sees in her blog a reflection of the failure that she is afraid she contains. And the same self-sabotage that helped ensure my father would not see his genius blossom until- possibly- now. (Speaking of which I just saw my father got a play on a University of Scranton radio play list. Strangely, three lines beneath his song is an album titled "my father the pop singer". This is where I stop to make sure I'm not hallucinating and seeing things).

Anyhow, if my father can put his poems to music, and get played on Scranton radio, I can damn well write this silly little dissertation. Yes I can. Clearly that was what Obama was talking about right? My dissertation? Self-absorbed? Maybe. Neurotic? Definitely.

Dude I can fucking do this. I swear.

Like it's my fucking job. If it's just me stopping me, then I'll make it my goddamn job.

Yay Scranton Radio! Yay my awesome Dad. Yay Padre Yama! Yay for me- for doing it even though you're scared in 5 different ways at once. (God I'm scared. Really scared.)

Realism vs Dream and Idealism??? Let's seek balance I guess. Let's do it like it's my job, metered and effective, with lots of spreadsheets.

Let's do it. Let's not be scared. (You can keep telling me that okay). I'll feel much better when this is over. It CAN someday be over- I have to remember. And regardless, I surely won't die from this.

Which reminds me (sort of... awkward segue... whatever), we finally got our first proper snowfall, while I was driving home on the beltway. Flakes in the headlights, hypnotic streaks of light zinging this way and that as the wind shifted. Hypnotic. Beautiful. Slightly scary.

Shabbat Shalom Yall.

Pre-Dissertating

2008-11-21T07:03:00.002-05:00

New post HERE.

Have a lovely Friday. I am hoping for a day that just speeds by, leaving me energized for the rest of my Shabbat evening with my husband. You?

I should not be typing

2008-11-19T07:10:00.002-05:00

I leave for work early, driving for up to an hour to arrive. After 9.5 hours I get back in my car for a dark drive back on the beltway. I get home in time to start all over again more or less.

I should not be typing. I should be running around getting ready. Tripping over the dog and assessing just how dirty my hair is. So that I can sit at my desk and argue with the lobbyist's fiance about how the world really "should" be, and moan over how chaotic the dataset is. Then watch the sun go down from my desk hours before it is time to leave.

All I'm saying is, I should not be typing.

aiyaiyai

2008-11-16T15:58:00.004-05:00

I live in a sea of anxiety. Overwhelmed continually. Unable to move when I need to be free.

I would literally pay you 50 dollars for a xanax right now. Okay so maybe I don't have 50 dollars. I would pay you like 50 cents and a greeting card. That would be awesome.

When I sit down to meditate so often now, one (or all) of three things happens. 1) I succeed in pushing aside my thoughts until the glowing hub of existence that is nothing and everything reveals itself, and glows within my heart. 2) More often, I do not succeed in barely slowing the flight of thoughts like bats that beat around within my head but it is okay for I have still gotten closer, and it all adds up.... or 3) I cry. A lot.

Meditation, I realize, has come to overlap with principles of therapy- as I declare them brazenly sans training- for I know "my mom was a therapist" doesn't mean that I get to inherit the title and claim to know the science, but well, I do. But really I should have a certificate or something by now for the hours of psychological consideration I've laid down. Really, like Tiresias who had the double sight of having lived both man and woman, I have lived on both sides of the river Styx. I've logged some real mental hours. Whatever.

So I know, from the intersection of realizations, readings, and all the other things life has thrown at me, that we must face our fears. Must face what is bothering us. Particularly, I should say, when it is "the uncomfortable emotions". Pain. Sorrow. Loss. Despair. Guilt. All of these we would rather flee from. Distract ourselves. And do if we can, generally without realizing it. That neurotic spin that keeps you so occupied you won't feel the stab of what you're feeling.

But what happens when there is so much of it you can't run anymore? When every side you turn to is another demon swinging down? What if you are out of options, of places to hide from the full brunt of the pain.

You start to take it. You let it process finally through you. That is the only way out of the dungeon of despair. You take that sadness for a waltz, weeping softly as you do. There is no other way to do it. That is the ONLY way out alive.

The meditation practice is a time to set aside the thoughts neurotically careening around your head. The anxious flittings and bashing of thoughts that slam about like drunken gorillas. (really it's awful). And you make space for your mind to be, as it is. Not trying to change the moments, but rather accepting them as they are, with compassion. And in that space something may well up from within.

You face what is there to face. Sometimes it is the glowing gestalt of an expansive heart. Or, perhaps more often, you come face to face with the pain you've sucked up for so many days or years and are forced to let it run out free like a river. To let it pass through your heart and out, so you won't drown in it. So this is what I try to do at least.

Surely if there were a crying credential, I would also have that by now. Certificate in sorrow. Good lord I feel old.

........

I am slightly calmer at this moment. Is it because the gray outside my window has been interrupted by the warm rays of the setting sun, it's final reminder of beauty before leaving us to wait until dawn for a return of it's radiance. Perhaps. Or perhaps it is this post. Perhaps I am finally relaxing. Relaxing. Relaxing into this thing again. I would very much like to live a life that isn't overwhelming and terrifying. Seriously, if any roving gods or wish-granting genies are swinging by overhead- I am asking nicely. Pulease!!!

just a little lex

2008-11-15T18:22:00.006-05:00

So I went to the doctor the other day. It was to be (euphemization for scraping my cervix) a "well-woman" visit so I can get another year's scrip for anti-baby pills (as sis used to call them). My bad timing made it just a visit, which is just something I never do. I've been too busy surviving you see to worry about little old me.

I explained to her (my new awesome doctor) that 1) I had no health issues but 2) I had other life issues that caused me to be a walking testament to survival (I may have actually used those words)- that life was in the recent present a struggle to endure each moment.

So funny it surprised me: My blood pressure has risen. Oops. But I never have high blood pressure. And also, my pulse is "a little fast". A little, meaning 120 beats per minute fast. At a point where I felt like "I was handling things pretty well", and indeed I was considering.

So there we have the evidence. I freely tell even bosses, coworkers, and friends that by the way- I am completely just on the edge of mental survival, fighting the frontier of what a human being can do. I mean I wouldn't make much sense if they didn't know that. Basic context, I have to explain. But why is it a biometric somehow makes it more solid? (God exactly the medical bias I hate!) But there you have it.

Even in the states that I have cultivated as peace within the storm despite my dreams of sitting in bathtubs with hurricanes outside the door, I am still taking a physical toll. My doing "good" is still the kind of state that will take 20 years off your life.

How indulgent to care. Truly. How very new.

Besides I must be able to lose it on the people that I live with, and I'm sure they're tired of seeing me melt down. So I think I may go back on lexapro after all. It's a better option than something specifically (DELICIOUSLY) aimed at anxiety like Xanax. Just a little lex, as I had before without side-effects or tummy aches, to calm the anxiety. Maybe just a little medication on top of the meditation, to tackle the tachycardia. Although is that in generic yet, because my insurance costs for brand name just jumped the fuck up (can I get an amen, I know I can). But I'll sort this out. With my awesome new doctor. Amen. Amen to us all...

a million years ago in a ghetto far away

2008-11-15T17:32:00.002-05:00

So I re-read April - June 2007 earlier today. As these the earliest posts, I'd already re-read them many times, as I used to do when I "just" journaled back in ancient pre-blogging days.

These posts recalled the lighter days of Spring in Philly. When Spring jumped in over the dreary ghetto-in-winter and made me suddenly want to believe in gods and miracles. I was so bright-eyed and completely unsure of myself. So timid. That quavering voice. Nervousness at "publish post". Insecure. (God if I was so insecure in my self writing, how insecure must I have been in life. Wow, I have changed.)

That was when I remembered (duh!) how much I loved to write. Anything, for the joy of writing it. Giddy like gulls riding the wind. And how, just as journaling, the blog was a helpful process for my jangled mind. In the end of a post I would walk away enlightened. The play of my writing would give form to what I had only half understood previously. I began to rely on it to help me know how to survive.

My favorite posts from the time (we can totally have favorites. you know you do.) were My Ballad, setting the stage for my journey. Shipwrecked (sorry BHJ), and seeking source. I didn't know what to write so I tried to write a poem like I would back as a kid, and ended up getting swept up in those waves right with the poem.

My weirdo family believed in supernatural things like "automatic writing", such that my sister even did it recklessly at slumber parties with apparent success. But writing from our own wellspring of unconscious is almost as wild sometimes. If you can just write and write letting the pen do it's bidding. I remember back when I did scratch pen on paper back in middle school writing "now my empty page awaits; it only wishes it's blankness filled; for secrets that my head can keep my pencil often spills". I may be bending it to my wishes, remembering 'head' instead of 'mouth' but whatever. It's still funny to run into ourselves again years later, saying "jinx".

The other posts I particularly liked were, Pink Apologetics, The Spaces Between, Am I a Spoiled Girl, No Thank You, and all of my Spring and Summer afternoons smitten with Philly.

I was a little girl, half-way through school who still couldn't ever believe I would have the job I do now. Hallelujah (may I never ever ever lose it please god u.s. gov't I love you knock on wood). And it was awfully sad. The problems were beginning to crescendo. It was to be a very difficult summer slide into a bed-of-nails November. God hasn't this all been a ball!

But one thing I surely realized then- after first becoming sad- is I am not that person anymore.

That's really the point isn't it? I've changed. Duh. (You have too haven't you?) Then truly it is good that peering back upon recent past me I find her soft and sad and not at all me. It is not sad, but happy, knowing that is the past and different from the present. It is as a lifetime between them. Whether that is because of the hardship of the past year, or the "effect" of the blog upon my psychological development I will leave open. Both surely.

So here we have it: more than ever I have outgrown this blog. This "quietgirl". The question is what name have I become? I admit I am at a loss. Surely I must know deep down?

A force uncontrollable

2008-11-15T10:21:00.002-05:00

So I'm gearing up this thing again. After an absence, one does become blog shy. But also, I don't want to do this badly.

You see I haven't given up. This blog is heading somewhere, just as my life is, in the most painful, bumpy, and convoluted way- you know the only way to get somewhere. Life. God what I have learned. The things that don't have words. That you can only say with your eyes, with your heart. Sweeties, there's so much more out there to understand than I ever imagined as a young girl. This suffering (which does continue, of course) has not been for naught.

That's the thing. If I made it this far, why should I ever give up trying? Why should I bother to think anything is impossible? Any project, groundwork, dreaming mere wasted efforts?

I believe I will go back, as I decided some time ago, to reread and re-index my old posts. To do an informal meta-analysis on my blog, and like in that Vonnegut novel, more fully understand who I am, where I have been, and where I am heading.

For this is reaching it's natural culmination. (And then I will blog reincarnate.) When the time is right. When it happens. It will take a little time no doubt. We only get to head in what we sense is the right direction. How and when things will emerge is far bigger than I. And I, clearly, cannot control the pace of my progress in my life, my dissertation, my struggle to survive- so certainly not in my blog. But I don't need to control it now do I? No, no I do not.

Are you there God, it’s me Margaret; The Collective Miasma

2008-11-11T20:40:00.009-05:00

(thoughts written at work in a breaking moment to ride out the crisis, to take it to where it might lead; 9/16/08)

Indeed it is only through desperation that I would contemplate a personal god, per se, but these are those thoughts.

See I have always rejected as naïve the image of god in man’s image. Of a God who hears my voice, who floats enthroned in a heavenly palace, or sent his son to the cross and all of the Judeo-Christian cloaking. No, I do not suddenly decide to embrace the old story for the comfort of the concrete.

And surely, this continued crisis has not made my head suddenly soft.

Yet, I would proffer there is an alternative to the chaos, generally speaking.

And in the final scene of Pi, when the protagonist is finally able to look at the branches of the tree, and see the beauty and simplicity of seeing simply the branches of that tree, and not each minute atom buzzing within it which must be at once comprehended and called by name (the true value of pi) well I don’t think that implied vacuity. I think there is peace, somewhere within us, that doesn’t require surrender.

And I believe now, there is always, a third door. A third scenario. Neither thesis, or antithesis, but synthesis (thank you Marian for teaching me Hegel back in junior year of physics class). Or a supersynthesis.

There is another door.

So do not misapprehend, dear reader, that I am sliding into a senility of sadness, where suddenly my critical mind gives way to simple platitudes and enfeebled fall-back concepts out of that simplest desperation. It may only be that the third door I am walking through may not be apparent to the viewer. Or to the observer, seeing that man at the final scene of Pi, looking at the branches.

What I am getting at is contemplation of a god that exists, perhaps, in the personal sense as well as the buzzing collective.

I have found, rather recently, the role of the collective in a multitude of ways. And I’ve been converted to the idea, as I delineate it and not derived merely from some ancient text of dubious authorship, or the words falling from a sweating man on stage purporting to speak the truth, that there is a collective entity.

And that at this moment, that I am part of it. And at this moment, tuned into it with varying degrees of intensity, you all are too. This is something I can often feel, and it has rendered me stronger than I ever anticipated. This has become part of my armor as I fight the battle that has anointed me. (For when you are tossed on the field of battle, you cannot ask questions when it is time to dodge bullets.)

Only recently, being pushed to another level (another level) of desperation, I contemplated, out of desire (I will be honest) whether there could be a deity to which I might personally call onto, an arm of this collective who could reach out, specifically, protectively, toward me.

Could that be the case? This does not mean the man in robes. Not ol’ fiery. This would be an arm of the collective ooze that is extended toward me in an instinctive way. A sub-division of the collective, that does know my name.

For all that we know, and all that the skeptics are sure we don’t know, and all that those in the defiance of their existential rebellion may smugly argue, we do not know what we do not know.

The nature of individual and collective reality is still a concept we are emergently and inadequately aware of.

There exists a cellular slime-mold, a “social amoebae”, the dictyostelids, that exists as single cells, until a point where food becomes scarce (they say). At this point they communicate with each other, they come together, and bond into a single creature. It is the slime mold version of the japanimation megalo-fill-in-the-blank. Where at a critical moment, the separate fighters join into their megalo body to be a stronger creature. They are drawn together through a pheromone signal. They are many, and then they are one. A one composed of the many.

I remember watching, lonely, at 14, the drops of water left over from a rainfall, as they slowly slid down the incline of a playground slide. (I was a small lonely thing then, who would sit in melancholy watching the world as something painfully separate from me. No understanding of the source of my sadness, my solitude) As I watched, one droplet of water moved a bit. A second later, another moved a bit. But then, they seemed to move toward each other. Drawn together, as they slowly moved down the slide, aggregating together. What drew them together? I wondered and wondered. Small scale gravity? Innate Hydrophilic love?

I do not understand these things. I only know that those around me don’t either. And I am not dissuaded from considering these matters, as if indeed there were no conceptual authorities, masters of the universe, old men with yardsticks who knew the true reality of things above my own observation.

What I tell you is that maybe the great slime-mold of humanity not only is real, but extends its stalk, its collective arm to me. Maybe it can know my name.

Or maybe it is I that extend to it. As I send my taproot down toward source, toward meaning, deeper and deeper for that wellspring of strength. Maybe my taproot is actually the arm of god. Either way, a connection, a conduit, a true and personal connection, does not seem completely impossible.

And occasionally these days, only these past few days, I ask of “god” to help me. For we do not receive help if we do not ask for it, or if we are not willing to receive it. And I’ve needed it. So I’ve asked.

Do not think I am naïve. Nor am I wilting under the desert sun. I am tapping in deeper, looking farther beyond the bounds of our proscribed understanding.

And as I’m looking, I’m wondering if something out there sees “me”. Knows my name. And has a hand to cup me, now and again, in safety. An arm to extend to me. For I did not realize there was a collective dimension at all until recently. So what might that mean? What else may be true?

Many things. Many things.

“ The role of darkness is not to be seen as, or equated with, Ignorance, but
with the unknown, and the mysteries of the unseen. ”

(thoughts newly expunged, the young woman returns to her work, load lightened)

disappoint

2008-10-27T20:55:00.002-04:00

Sorry to disappoint. The gist is this. Life isn't having it. I still don't have the internet, but. Well I'm just too deep in the shit right now. I am shattered and hollow. Hope is leaving me hanging. And, well that's just all.

love

2008-09-28T00:52:00.005-04:00

My eyes are swollen from too many tears
steeped in sorrow
full of fears

Watching worlds crumble, both big and small
with you in my arms
I can suffer the fall

What am I doing these days? Surviving.

filling the spaces, perhaps

2008-09-14T04:29:00.014-04:00

I'm waiting for blood results to confirm my childlessness. But my body is no longer swollen, or longing. And the tanned and cold doctor who made me wait too long in an empty room, so that she might charge me ridiculous sums of money (or my insurance at least, god bless it) for a few moments of her council, says that the pill can lighten your flow, yada, yada, and she doesn't think I'm preggers. And I'm good with that.

I used to wonder that if I ever found zen, the answer- wouldn't I then be awfully bored. I think now, what a naive fear that was. For every problem that arises in my life, and every answer that arises in response- every insight I find from it, there will be always arise on its tail another question to answer, springing from that original issue, each with a new coping strategy required.

And the progress is all cumulative. Which means, I'm moving forward all the time along life's great stream. But that stream will keep moving, and I will keep adapting to move around the rocks and whatnot. The skills I learn build upon each other. But they must keep building to adapt to new currents. But I will never become "bored". There will always be a tragic riddle begging my attention, calling for my desperate attention. And I guess I'm good with that too.

I'm not okay with Peggy Hill for president, as I see none of you are either. But I'll leave that for another day.

And of course the politicians are all crooked anyway, even the ones I'm rooting for. They all live in the heart of darkness. (Oh the horror!) But I will vote, and I think I even managed to register for it somehow, which really is phenomenal considering how behind I am in all the little essential details of my life.

In the meantime, I've begun contemplating Viktor Frankl. Here's a little nut-shelling; a few quotes:

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

"Nietzsche's words, 'He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how."

And also, this:

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

Reminds me suddely of another post from another day, while contemplating T.S. Eliot, as he contemplated the despair that he felt life to be, and that I also once felt it as.

Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

The spaces between. This is the positive of the negative space I was contemplating over a year ago, in this little blog. This is what I have been building toward. We can fall through the gap, or we can use the space to propel us onward.

It is sometimes suffering, Frankl says, the unavoidable suffering, that forces us to find meaning in our lives. Only when we are knocked to our knees, must we make the choice to transcend the existential crisis. It was in the death camps he discovered tragic optimism. And the power to survive the insufferable. A bit of an aha, no? Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.

peeing on sticks

2008-09-07T20:11:00.003-04:00

I know, what a cliff-hanger. I'm not playing coy, it's just the usual lack of internets preventing follow-ups.

So the latest is as follows:

Every preggy test in the world says no, no baby. I'm going to have to accept that it's right very soon. And I figure I'll try to see a doc the next chance I get- which would be Friday. If I am preggy, it may well be a lost little egg in the woods, trying to make a home in my tubes. Which would suck. But why worry?

It could be a fire drill. For I no longer feel her hovering about me. Perhaps it's because her little soul has dove into those lost little eggs, or perhaps she has gone back to her ether land to wait a little longer.

At minimum, if this is all just funny body stuff with no baby outcomes, I realized I really want a baby, and I want it sooon. Also, well it showed hubs that in a way that he could swallow. (Bless your heart baby doll I love you). Perhaps she was just tapping us on the shoulder...

But like I said, doctor, Friday, hopefully, and
as always
life will take it's course.
Right?

I just need to manage the ride.

Which I am.

Thank you everyone :)

I want you. So bad.

2008-09-01T17:41:00.006-04:00

Were I not so quiet I would tell you I am late. And though the 5 piss-sticks on top of the toilet say quiet no's (is that just a hint of a line? A little one?), my awesome swollen breasts, and wild emotions seem to belie this conclusion. I started crying on the way home last week because AE was emotionally estranged from her father. This was out of nowhere. Seriously.

I need to know if she is finally here. And at first I was terrified. But now I just want her desperately. The one who came to me in my dreams. First when I was 16, then twice at the end of my year of therapy. The one I had to wish good-bye years ago, when it was just too soon. The one who forgave me, and said she'd return. I want her. I want her now.

And isn't this just a completely unfit time. My husband is still ill, with no "real" cure in sight besides my own grand visions and the words whispered to me from her, that no it would be okay. He is not ready. We are not ready. But I'm crazy enough not to care anymore.

So I have to stifle my sobs, over and over now, because I'm in an internet cafe. You're not supposed to tell people these things I recall, surely not via the public blog. But isn't that all we do here? Isn't it?

And lord wouldn't my hubs just die to know I was blogging this "out loud". But how else have I survived this so far, and how else could I still without this big cave to yell into, to hear my words bounce back larger than life. To know I am not alone.

I want her. I want her. I want you darling. So very bad.

Please let this all be okay.

cake

2008-09-01T08:06:00.004-04:00

So here I am! Look I'm online! Whoo!

Long term readers may recall this is not my first time without the sweet sweet internets. This time is a bit tougher, since instead of a(n inner) city high rise, I now live in a suburban apartment complex, and thus stealing neighboring signals is not so easy as it twas. But I persevere anyway of course. And I will keep on blogging, and when we get the real deal inside our apartment, then I can once again blog with appropriate regularity. Just letting you know....

And the thing that sux about this, is when I finally get online, it's like pressure to perform. Poof- come up with something that isn't just pure unstructured rambling. And that's a tough one.

So here I go......

......

Soooo...

So I'm doing well actually. As previously mentioned, Mums came up and played a lovely supporting role to steadify my chaos, which helped tremendously. More so because she was not always so fabulous, and we did not always get along so swimmingly. And our new harmony has everything to do with my first year in therapy like 4 years ago, and self-work since, that does eventually add up nicely. New mantra: "No Good is Wasted." It all goes somewhere.

Work- I love my job. I mean there's no unicorns, or foot-rubs. The hours are long (well not really), but the commutes are looong. But that said, I've had lots of jobs over the years. I was trying to remember them the other day in response to a coworker who never had a real (shitty) job. So my list goes something like this:

Winn-Dixie (grocery store)
Kash-N-Karry (grocery store)
Some conveyor-belt job that lasted 1.5 weeks before I started actively hallucinating and left.
Camelot music (best thing about working at a music store is it's a potential dance party all day).
A summer in a law office sorting records.
A Smoothie Shop
A cafe in a book store (met awesomehubs here)
Kash-N-Karry liquor store (arguably the most interesting job)
Perkins (hostess- I didn't have what it took to waitress, sadly)
Target (my back-up career option)
CVS (okay for a month or less though)
multiple Research Assistant gigs
and.....

...finally my sweet new job. And recalling this progression, yes I do, absofreakinglutely, love my job. I get autonomy, respect, flexible hours, cake, respect (did I say respect), and for many other reasons, thank god I made it here babies. And thank you for cheering me on along the way.

Of course other stuff sucks seriously, notably money and the distinct lack of it, but I have better things to talk about don't I? Sure I do. And, of course, through commitment to cause I choose every moment in peace and tranquility to persevere. I choose to stay calm, to do whatever it takes, to stay calm. Even if shit sucks, I cannot function if I cannot retain my calm for once in my crisis-ridden life.

So I have been staying calm. I can take deeper breaths than ever before in my life, and it feels like heaven to do so. I am positive, motivated, and optimistic about our ongoing health crisis. The apartment is become less of a hole. Plus I'm not in New Orleans right now, and I'm wondering if it will become the new Pompeii.

I am so OVER the election bullshit, but I'll tell you one single detail about that. I'm sick of them all. But I'm scared of the conservatism of McCain. Forget Roe v. Wade. What I'm scared about is health care, which is already shit (have I mentioned that? Oh yes just 50 billion times). But some people, the people whose lives have never sucked, seem to think things are better at "the bottom" than they are. That things aren't so godawful awful for those poorer folks. And I want to (um figuratively?) strangle those people.

Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

Once again, I ask the universe, must people actually be dragged through the gutter themselves, before they discover that other people are? Must they have the fetid wounds on their own skin to believe the disease is out there?

Income inequality is growing. Undeniably, and most notably among the top 10th percentile, producing a modern aristocracy and an attendant "Let them eat cake" detachment from the realities below.

DANGEROUS! Seriously dangerous my friend.

Anywho. I miss you guys. My blog-world. I miss you terribly :)

Guess what?

2008-08-24T00:46:00.002-04:00

I'm actually not freaking out right now.

And I'm actually feeling like things are going to be okay.

And my mom and her husband are in town, and I am actually, totally having a great time with these people.

And I have better relationships with these people than I ever have.

Because I invested in them, in people, in life, in all that stuff.

No good is wasted. No no no.

Things can be better.

Things are feeling better.

I'm not shouting the same words in the same fucking hole.

And I am still fighting for the team. And it feels damn good.

Team Gash Muthafucka!

....Oh and by the way, the last post's title was a song. I'm not actually a satanist so much. Although my brother in law is in a big-hair metal band. But really, he's more pagan than satanist. So um, yeah, rambling. I really need a little practice getting back into this blog thing. I feel all wobbly like I need my training wheels.

satan is my motor

2008-08-18T20:15:00.005-04:00

But it is meditation right now that fuels me. It is a piece of paper I'm carrying and carrying around, and meditation over every breathe I stop, to remember, to breathe.

To breathe. To allow myself the luxury of breathing. Of remembering I must breathe.

These are the words that are driving me, this is the mantra in my pocket:

Through commitment to cause I choose every moment in clarity and peace to persevere.

Through love and commitment to my husband, I choose to manage my stress with peace and trust in our strength, knowing that it is together we will overcome.

I choose to spend every moment treating my husband with the love and respect he so deeply deserves always.

And I choose to remain focused on preserving my clarity, clearing my mind of rogue chatter and rumination, and to build my connection to the universe at large, that I may have the unlimited strength to persevere for our cause.

Through commitment to cause we will all overcome.

I will return everyday, through out the day to these words. I will stop to clear my mind again and again, and in this practice, I will be strong.

Through commitment

To self

To life

To family

To most precious soul mate and partner, and

To the universe which created me,

I will overcome.

Through these words and these acts, I will overcome.

As I walk I recite the first line in my head whenever I think to. And I breathe...

I expect the mantra will change soon, but that's it now. And it might sound all hoodoo guru silly to you, but you would not laugh if you saw the demon's face. You would not laugh my friend.

That's my inner xanax right there, for the past 36 hours!

Not that I need it, but I'll take all the cheering on I can get right now :)

raddest of rad, she's super bad

2008-08-18T20:02:00.004-04:00

I love my cousin Ample. She was always my model of coolness growing up. Me and my sister would fight over pictures of her. Every year she'd come to visit for Christmas and they were the best holidays ever. Such great times! And yet, cool as she was, every year she gets cooler! She's going to shoot into hyper-cool any second and break time and space to form another dimension of coolness.

This is my Ample's poem to me! Girl we are like this baby! We are so e-jiving! :)

AAAAAAHHHHHRRRRRGGGGG!!!!!
a growl within I hear a stirring,
a fierceness resides inside her eyes,
she knows the time has come upon her,
to stand with passion and lift the skies.

the dark minyan

2008-08-18T02:13:00.006-04:00

There is a dark minyan of creditors currently trying to dash me into dust. They gather in shadowy woods and simmer their plot in an iron cauldron. They chant as they sing around the stew. Oh how shall we destroy her? I take one arm, you take another. How shall we destroy her? I've the head, but you get the eyes.

They are vultures my friend, and they are after me.

This is how I avoided another deep fall today. You know, those desperate times I've oh-so-depressingly limned out for you over these dark weeks.

This is what I realized.

It's either up or down from here. There's no in between. Either I completely shatter and destroy myself in my fear, or I face the moments of my life with a greater strength from this moment forward.

And it all crystallized for me, while so deeply desperate, smoking too many Newports outside on the patio (cause dude we do have a lovely little patio) and sitting blank-eyed and falling into myself in the tub.

There's only one way to go my friend.

And I AM Gash, fighting for the team.

I am Claymore, finally forced by battle and an ever stronger foe to release her latent powers and cross the line, transforming forever into an awakened being.

Dude seriously, the series is awesome, that's all I have to say. I am grown unnaturally powerful, like a Claymore breaking free to win the battle.

Today, sitting in the bath, I was forced to see my crisis as a call to action. Apparently I was not put on this earth for an easy good fun-time. The best things come from dire necessity. And it appears that I am to do powerful things in life. Or why else would I have been forced to become so strong.

The man from Rwanda tells me I am amazing. The man from fucking Rwanda.

All I'm saying, is I have become glorious in my battle, torn to shreds and dismembered, arms cleaved in single blows.

But I grow stronger motherfuckers.

What ever doesn't kill me does not only make me stronger.

It makes me stronger than I ever dreamt.

It is a searing transformation. It is an act of courage and declaration of both war and peace.

I will not be afraid of you.

Fuck this, I will not fall, no! I am not giving up! You will not take me so easy!

the dreamtime demon

2008-08-11T14:10:00.000-04:00

This morning I had to call in to work for a sick day. This comes after taking Friday off with short notice so I could get some things done I desperately needed to. But it feels like it’s never enough. I’m still sliding down that slope.

I went back to sleep and dreamt we’d moved into a big house with a powerful and terrible haunting. The details are fading as dreams do, and it took the laptop so goddamn long to boot while these details kept fading in my head.

The house was spacious (seeming at first like a windfall), but the spirit was increasingly malicious. I must leave I said, but where? I looked at other rental listings, certain the spirit was over my shoulder, noting my efforts to flee. But of course there was no where we could go. The only thing cheaper was barely cheaper, and was in fact a tiny trailer. WTF, how are things so expensive?! With our dog already so cooped up I said, that would never work. (Our dog is distinctly cooped up in our actual smaller apartment here.)

Toward the end of the dream, for some reason there was multiple people (friendish) somehow doing something in the house with electricity, explosions, fired bullets, I don’t know- I only remember the flashes of electricity like bad special effects of the old episode of Star Trek they keep playing on the broadcast tv here. (They take their syndicated shows here and play each episode over and over and over ad nauseum. Of course we don’t yet have better tv, or that oh so necessary internet.) I realized, as the spirit had a riotous time, that the spirit lived off of electricity, and that must be why our electricity bill in the house was so high…. (I just got our lecky bill in the apartment- like $300 bucks. What?! I can’t pay this every month! How many little bills want to jump on top of this dogpile to crush me more surely?)

And we fled. He drove off in some topless vehicle, and I could see the spirit following on our tail angrilily as I held tightly to my husband’s torso. We ended up at a hotel, (why we had a hotel room I don’t know), and a nice woman who remembered us (oh for the mercy of strangers) let us in our room though I lost our keys while fleeing the house. (I lost my keys for a long time in the mess of this apartment too). Could have been peaceful, but then some men in suits came in to tell us we must sign me up for some additional course for work that would cost a buttload of money. They delivered it with a casual laugh, like the cost was an insignificant afterthought. So many things this could be, but it is most certainly the fucking tuition bill that will be coming soon( to keep me on dissertation status long enough to finish my degree) and which I have no way to pay. Fuck me eh ?

I woke up then to see it was noon (that I’d set the alarm wrong) and the day that I needed to get more things done to get us more safely on track was already half over.

Well shit I thought, guess I’ll write this damn dream down. Maybe it will give me some goddamn clarity. Or help expunge the demon of it from lingering in my membrane. Or at the very least I can blog it (when I get online again), to burn it away with the exposure of more eyes in daylight, from people safely removed from the spirit.

That surely would be comforting…

And now I must go run around and wrestle the anxiety again of the things I cannot possibly handle, but must do anyway. My fucking god. I am such a spent fucking shell. I know we’re getting closer supposedly, but nonetheless, I am still decidedly drowning in the pieces that are not falling in place the way I need them too. Drowning. Mental health way past the red. I don’t even want to tell you how bad. Frighteningly bad.

Good lord will we ever outrun this demon? Will I ever get away?!

Not Today (selective Namaste)

2008-08-09T14:05:00.004-04:00

The problem is this. There is pain in the world. There are problems. Hardship, injustice, and cold empty bellies with concrete pillows.

But perhaps what hurts the most is cruelty of others in the context of another’s struggle. And the assumption, so easily made, that they would do better. The assumption of another’s personal failure, despite the fact of exogenous and varying obstacles that each one of us is given to so individually bare. To fight against.

There are assumptions that ride the lips devilishly as they curl so lightly in smug satisfaction. Doing the mental write-off. Thinking how they might talk about you once you leave.

What’s their problem!

Said as a statement- a statement and not a question. For the assumption is it is them, and not their problem, which has put them in a position where you may laugh a little, eyes glinting with that ignorant cruelty, feeling good about how much better you seem in comparison. (Hint: they can see that glint) For the other’s pain has grown so great that now they could no longer clothe it in clean and respectable threads. They haven’t these grand walls to hide their weakness behind. And they ain’t got that cashmoney. And you label them as trouble, a problem, stick that bright scarlet denunciation straight on their skin. That’s how I felt today.

Fools these people are. Sweet damnable fools who do not see their sin, no matter how much damage it does. And these people are weak. Terribly weak. For they “struggle” with splinters, and have been spoiled enough to not even intimate how deep some wounds can be issued. To not know that they are the lucky ones, the soft ones, the ones who wouldn’t last a day if real trouble came knocking on their door instead of the neighbors’s… What is their problem!

They might then be forced to ask me how to handle it. How to wrestle Cerubus to the ground, to get back out of Hades with your ass blazing, to do it all.

I don’t know if I would tell them. I don’t think I would.

It would be tough not to get them back that same sadistic smile and glint.

For I do love the world. And through the practice of meditation my heart has grown expansive in strange and exquisite ways. And I know there is a place, for I have felt it, where the veil that separates us into distinct souls drops to reveal in fact we all are part of a grand togetherness- that we are one and the same. People tell me (one’s who don’t read this blog), that I am unusually kind, unusually loving. I cultivate smiles in the world as much as I can. And when you shoot that agape-love laser at them straight from the heart, it triggers it to shoot back. And it’s indescribable. (See that’ s how it works, I’ve been realizing more & more….)

But today, no. Today I cannot do it. Today I damn you to hell as if the bell did not also toll for me. For my bell has been pealing out for a long time now. And the eyes do not soften too often my friend. They reach out, far too often, not to help but to block you from ever getting your footing back. And then wonder why it is you are falling.

Dear friends, is this what humankind is? I knew we were genocidal beasties. And yet I’m still surprised, today at least, how heartless and sinful people can be in their souls and yet reap the benefits of this world as long as they breathe.

I hope we aren’t wiped out from this earth again. Tho, perhaps the Puritan’s fiery god wasn’t so far off the mark. Maybe that’s not so bad after all. Could the white-haired fiery god show up one fine night to singe away the sinners, the stone-throwers, the destructively smug with a true and just hand unblinded by prejudice, well I would surely be relieved. I would step outside my door the morning after with a truly lighter breath. My lungs would open large, being freed from the burden of those awful ones who ruled the world so self-indulgently.

Perhaps the singed trees though might be a touch disturbing. The bushes that burned and were consumed. The smoking shoes left about here and there. Although they would probably be nice, so hey… free shoes. But, no I’d rather go barefoot. Well unless the ground was still hot. The wretched are supposed to inherit the earth, right? Bequeathed pumps…?

But would I care?

Not today my friend.

Not Today.

Please tend the spaces between us, as you tend your own soul. Please don’t be one of them. Nothing you have is guaranteed. Life can take it from you as it took it from me. Just know how lucky you may be. And look at those who are struggling with respect in your eyes. Believe in your soul that the wretched deserve better.

The selfsame moment I could pray and from my next so free, the albatross fell off and sank like led into the sea…

.....!

It just might keep you in your shoes, if Ol’ Fiery comes around. Totally just kidding about that. It doesn’t count unless you do it to do it, and not to save your own hide.

We’re never gonna make it to Zion people if people don’t chill with the violence.

That’s part of the answer. The answer to the question. The question: how do you survive. Partly you have to survive by becoming a better person. So what would be the point of even telling them?

No, not today.

*Selective Namaste*

crying in cubicles

2008-08-04T19:44:00.005-04:00

Cause life is hard, and even my C-spot friend from Rwanda tells me it is all for a purpose, and will get better when it is time. He knows what sometimes in April are like, so he should know right?
But what do you do?
I've gone from crying on corners to crying in cubicles. It's a work joke now- hey look I'm crying again. Silly me and the crying.
I have a fantastic new eye twitch, that an emotional melt-down helped a bit to mitigate this weekend. But the fibers of my body can't hold all the stress so there goes the twitch. It dances on my face to remind me I can't hold it all. And I go to the bathroom when it gets to bad to cry in the stall instead. A non-specific crying of just too damn much for too damn long.

Back to meditation. Back to meditation. Back to meditation. And finding the connection to the 10 thousand and the gestalt cause yes yes yes I NEED it.

Breathe
Breathe
Breathe
*twitch*
Breathe

cubicle life

2008-08-03T20:04:00.003-04:00

In response to a reader's comments:

Tell me what cubicle life is like, I'm going to be moving into one soon for the first time in my life. Will I have to get headphones to use when I play my radio? If someone in the next cubicle farts, do you hear it? Smell it? What is the proper etiquette for walking into someone's cube and discovering they're playing solitaire or looking at porn? Things like that!

Headphones totally requisite. Keep them handy at all times in the top drawer.
Yes these bodily things will be shared, but I have had good luck so far. Perhaps because we all go to the restroom so often for little breaks. I swear there should be a little disco ball in the ladies bathroom. Not that we dance there (yet), but it is a social hub.
I haven't seen co-workers porn yet, probably because we all know big brother is watching us. But gaming does happen, and I simply don't make them feel bad, so they won't do the same to me when I'm doing the same.
I like cubicle life just fine, given good co-workers to holler at. It breaks up the day to have the social interruptions.
So yeah...
Any more?

Hushem

2008-08-01T19:41:00.001-04:00

Though still off the web, and bloggidy shy- totally not going away. (And I’ve just made the top art for quietgirl part deux even.)

But this is what I do now.

I talk to co-workers. Colleagues. (That’s what you say when you want to sound important on the phone.) And one of them I car-pool with (which means she drives everyday so far cause I am of unsound license and mechanical integrity, and then I’ll owe her rides for…ever) and we have grown increasingly candid, laughing more freely each day- sharing visions and memories till they weave their own themes, referring back to other mornings, traffic-jams, and half-asleep mornings and afternoons, till it all becomes occasional hilarity at times, especially on Fridays heading home.

Dear reader, it may also shock you as it shocks me but I have… joined the world. Crawled out of my apartment like a pair of ragged claws and managed to work my way into some steadier state of social being.

Instead of working out new insights on here, I do them currently in those carpool conversations. Or the triangulation of multiple co-workers, moving to meet in the middle of our pod, to weigh in on just what’s what. We talk a lot, and we laugh a lot, and we are inordinately fond of cake. And the death or cake bit is a favorite of the guy who sits next to me too. Though he looks confused when I refer to the transvestif professional bit…

Turns out if I had gone into the other branch, the more starkly quantitative branch, I would have been in social hell. And instead I chose the branch so perfect for me it was as if it had been written in the stars. Where I feel increasingly at home in my cube, and even at some peace. Some. But some is new…

This is where all the weirdo’s go. Too nerdy to walk the streets? Bring your bad-ass bow-tied self here. Socially akward? Semi-autistic? Unable to speak and make eye-contact at the same time? 30 year old virgin? It’s all cool here. Cause that’s the kind of people that tend to get good at numbers. And we, dear friend, are here to enumerate. And that’s just fantastic.

But that doesn’t necessarily make for good co-workers, good cooperation and communication, not to mention good vibes and shared cake. Which is why it is so damn perfect where I landed. My branch is more topical than others that are more quantitative or involving programming (since our surveys now are not paper things on wooden clip-boards, but actually computer applications that we must test continually just to build a better beta. And if they don’t do right, well then you might dump billions to gather data that aren’t right. Oops. It’s my job to try to keep that from happening, and to figure out the ways it could have happened in the past. Dear reader I get to run my fingers through our national surveys. Ahhh. )… And my boss is cool and she has shaped a cool branch of people under her- set a good tone, a good culture. People feel good here.

But among my co-workers I have found friends. Funny, good, real, people. Who get along. Don’t have crippling personality issues, and have good hearts.

This is where I have nested. It is still a job. But what a feeling. Seeing’s believing….

this is better

2008-07-30T19:35:00.000-04:00

In the place I have chosen to go (and succeeded desperately), people work 40 hours because they want still a few hours to breathe. This is where I am. Of course with travel time, call it 50 hours. Unless you want to live where instead of birds, it’s bullets that fly.

We have beautiful birds outside our apartment. Cardinals even. Beautiful birds that sing so they weave their song through this patch of forest we’ve managed to rent. The treetops are tall, and dance gently in the wind. As the wind tickles the leaves they play with sunlight, and I lose myself to the beauty. I breathe deep for a moment, without having to remind myself to do so.

There are trade-ins. Of course- although I’d somehow not anticipated this.

There is poison ivy amidst the lush woods. And a rogue herd of semi-domestic cats. And litter strewn (from raccoons?), and dead birds from those awful cats. And my dog is crazy to mark her territory anew in an impossibly vast new environment.

And of course, omitting detail, we still struggle with the same ropes that have us bound. Fighting the eight ball. Half-terrified half of the time.

But that is better, isn’t it. Still hard. Life is still hard.

But this is better.

On lunch breaks at work there is free tai chi, meditation, and for fee, a gym. We live just outside the city, so dress is casual, and the building is new and sparkling, and blue skies and green grass encase it.

And I have gravitated to a new boss who is totally and completely compatible for me. Who I could shoot the shit with riotously sometimes. Who sings in an (awful she says) Jewish choir. And who really cares about poverty and health, the subjects it is our job to try to measure. And the two bosses above her are both laid back and kind men. This sets the tone for my branch of maybe 10 people total, who ate ice cream cake with me last week to celebrate my birthday. They are all bright, and we work together for a group effort, instead of separately, for our own advancement.

This is better. This is so much better.

This new nexus; seeking orbit

2008-07-30T19:34:00.001-04:00

Because here I am

Not who I was

But who this place

Has molded me to be

Because here I am

In silence without

The mouth of the cave

Which I may shout my cries into,

hearing more than my cries come back.

Because in this new nexus

I have been newly molded

Shaped

Fitting in to that which is demanded

And trying hard to be what I must be

Softening the slur, the speech, the glare

Using my hands lightly now

Trading in my dirty hoodie and old sneakers for

Khakis and coordinating belts and shoes

And long days with long commutes

Who is this woman now

Who works her weeks and

yells her black snake moan now

Only on weekends

Into closets or pillows

Fitting in

Seemingly promising relief

Soon…..

This space I am floating in

Is Dante’s limbo

Between quietgirl and new

Bobbing absently about

and wondering just who

Who

It is I am now

For I am not myself

And I have not looked in to

The blogging glass for a while now

To study my reflection

Our reflection

Where have I gone?

Ground control to major Tom…..

Things that will no longer matter

2008-07-30T19:32:00.002-04:00

This is the deal. There is a point wherein the human head and it's rational resources can no longer shoulder the stress. Rationality goes for a smoke. And you're stuck with rash impulses. I am learning how to handle this better, as I also work to make it so the stress fades. In the mean time, given those moments, well this is how it feels:

Things that will no longer matter:

The ringing phone. The chiming door.

Life is a simple matter.

If you choose to leave, you are no more.

All the pounding chatter-

The waves that hit the ragged shore-

Will cease their painful clatter.

Nothing will matter no more.

Not rhyme or reason. Tide or season.

Debt and despair and disease, no more.

And all the pains, that bring the rains,

Will finally wash me through death’s door.

Shy again

2008-07-23T01:08:00.004-04:00

Here's the thing: I've gotten a few minutes online, and not at work, and I even have a couple docs in a folder on my desktop named "for to blog" ready to upload with their respective dates written, but I'm blog-shy. It's been so long. Your blogs, and you, have all transformed (boldly) in these weeks I've been stranded on no internet island, and so in fact have I in a less bold way.
I am now a person that works in a cubicle. Her cubicle, although I haven't been able to bring in photos yet to decorate. I manage to have a functional persona there, to do the job.

But now for bloggy-time, I am the five year old girl standing behind her mom's improbably tall panty-hosed legs, clutching them for safety. Sorry, you'll have to wait. Hope it's worth it ;) I'm too tired to make promises tonight. :)

So far away...

2008-07-10T19:31:00.000-04:00

So far away; still without interweb access

It is not only that I am not writing

It is not only that I do not hear your voices either

I have stopped blogging in my head

I tried the other day to think of it as a fast

A healthy flush of the blog habit

Maybe to realign something, I don’t know

But it’s not true

I have also disconnected from a piece of myself…

(as a dirty old country ballad, sung on a sooty wood porch)

I left my heart on the interweb

between blog number 1 and blog number 2

I need to get back on that interweb

Or this blogging heart will break in two

Yay Rel!

2008-06-26T21:01:00.002-04:00

Everybody, my awesome friend just defended her dissertation proposal! Just fucking rad! Props to Rel!!!!!!

I miss da blogs!!!

2008-06-26T20:43:00.008-04:00

I just want to say I miss every one of you and my absence is purely due to 1) day job plus 1 hour commute either way equals no time and 2) no wi-fi!!!!!!!! Still!!!!!

I am currently sitting my ass on a SIDEWALK to ride a neighbors connection a few buildings away.
Glamorous, yes it is.

And trust I will not be doing any recreational online stuff from work as the C-spot records our keystrokes and that's just not comfy.

BUT the good news is I have the best job ever. I think. I definitely have a freaking cool job. And you will hear more about it.... soon I hope.

I am gonna light up that place! With vibes that is. I've got some positive voodoo social powers and seriously, from now on I only accept high fives from co-workers. Or dances in the hallways. Big smiles to/from everyone. Oh and yoga breaks.

Did I mention I seem to have landed a SWEET FUCKING AWESOME JOB?! I know you know what a relief this is. LIFE-SAVER in an all too literal way. And it is just getting better everyday.

I've got to admit it's getting better, a little better all the time...

BUT I miss ya'll beautiful people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So damn much!!!

piddling psi

2008-06-21T14:56:00.001-04:00

The thing about hope is you have to reach out to it. And you have to embrace change especially when it looks like it’s offering a little relief. But it will never be quite as much as you were hoping for.

One of the tires on the car got a hole a few years ago. The plug holds, with a very slow leakage only. Occasionally I fill the thing up again, from its piddling psi. It hasn’t occurred to me once over these years to replace the tire.

Before moving, now that things would be changing, I talked about getting a new set from Ezra downstairs. But of course there was not enough time, or anything else for that matter.

Like the plugged tire, I need some fucking air. But I guess, when it’s time to kneel down and put your 3 quarters in the machine (man I remember when it was free) to fill er up again, there’s gonna be some air lost before you can seat the widget on the tire stem just right. Maybe this is just the air hissing out, in prelude to the real, um, improvement. Any metaphor will do- I’m grasping for straws here folks. I was thinking this was the part where things would feel much easier. And you know what, that’s the thing is it is better here. But of course the big problems traveled faithfully with us. It’s just….. hard.

Fuck, you know?

That old ideation; one way doors

2008-06-21T13:38:00.003-04:00

I dream of her

Shiny, silver, small enough to palm

Her elegance suggests velvet lined boxes in heavy drawers

But small enough, faithful enough

To be carried in pockets on hot sidewalks

To be grasped when tired, curled tightly on cold floors

Just big enough for one bullet

For one temple

For one forehead kissed,

Goodnight

It is not depression. I am often happy. It is exhaustion. It is despair overflowed. Sometimes I dream of her. When I am weary, she is the lusty vision of an angel, offering relief through a one-way door like the subway’s stubborn rotating fingers. Shiny and metal, like the angel I can never reach out to. I must never EVER reach out to.

I am reachable here. But after Eurydice’s fatal sting, not even Orpheus could bring her home again. Not even sweet Orpheus.

alphabits

2008-06-21T13:22:00.001-04:00

A is for anyone willing to fight

B is for battle, struggle by night

C is for caretaker

D is for doom

E is for everyone still in the room

F is for finding that

G is for gloom

H is for healing but

T is for tomb

Pulled ever round between hope and despair

It’s truly a wonder I’m still here to care

merely an update

2008-06-19T15:34:00.008-04:00

Fear not gentle reader, you have not lost me. I am merely tripping on boxes, and trying to get oriented. Alas, the wifi connection promised to us in the "cyber cafe" at this complex is not actually working. Don't be mislead, our complex is not so posh that it naturally harbors such things as cyber cafes. It is trying to pass as a little nicer than it is (aren't we all), which is why said cyber cafe is jacked, the door broken into, the connection mysteriously down.

And that is why I am sitting under a tree right now, having hunted down an unguarded netgear signal, like a modern day Alice of some sort.

I haven't much time to write before my battery sighs softly (there is no lecky outlet in the tree I sit under, merely enough shade to make my laptop screen barely visible.) And I'm certain the ants are setting a course for my ass with some biting on their mind, and whether or not that is the case, believing makes it so. So, instead of seeking some words I haven't the time to find, here are some images of the past 6 or so days I have been silent.

dunkin donuts drive-thru

some bridge, some leg of some trip

Moving is scary for a bear.

2 AM; Maryland travel stop; awesome stranger offers to take my picture with big boi :)

whos got da keys to ma beamer?

2008-06-13T11:50:00.016-04:00

The blog (writing the blog, and I suggest you all do it- you do not need to be a "writer") invites self-reflection. Encourages you to pull up a seat and have a nice little conversation with yourself, fireside. Exchanging the daytime shoes for some fuzzy slippers, and slowly sipping your words for the pleasure it gives you.

Then we pull in some pictures, to show more than those words might say. Or the added associations a pic or lyric two will bring to the party. To show what your eyes see when those unseen eyebeams shoot out of your head.

And you talk to yourself, reflect, counter-reflect... to deeply observe. And as you do, others read your words, setting ideas flying in their own heads like billiard balls- breaking. Odds are it will remind them of something they have been thinking, being that so often we recently read their last blog entry, before sitting down to write our own.

And a third person reads our blog. Another blog friend. And they sort of think about this, because that's what our heads do if you don't stop 'em. And maybe they post a synthesis. A melding of that into their own experiences.

Are you picking up what I'm putting down?

This is powerful people. This is crazy powerful. And we must use our power for good. :)

In my third year of undergrad I finally got to take a course I'd been waiting for them to offer, since I first saw it in the catalog freshman year. "The Physics of Photography."

Now, as I have mentioned, I was raised by a wacky wacky and wonderful man who fed me bits and pieces of the ideas as I sat beside him at the kitchen table. He would talk to a child with the same or more respect he would give an adult. And he would tell me (again, dad I forgot, tell me again) how to set the aperture of his old trusty SLR, and the shutter speed, and which was which. And he would send us off to use his own prized piece of equipment however we wanted, just because he was that damn encouraging.

My little cousin, or my sister, depending on the day, would run around the woods of our apartment, taking pictures where we posed like pixies, waded in "do not wade" drainage lakes (much to the dismay of the management), or center ourselves against palm leaves so the spikes framed our faces like a Zora Neale Hurston madonna.

My little cousin has had a difficult life, but has grown into a beautiful, strong woman I am awfully proud of, and quite the photographer to boot :)

Her composition and her timing just seem to flow naturally from her. She's fantastic.

Anyhow, thank my father's encouragement for at least 80% of the "creativeness" or whatever it is we seem to have spurting off in some natural abundance.

Naturally.

We are all so deeply shaped by our relationships with others.

None of the good we do is wasted. None of it. Every smile I give to random a passerby on the sidewalk is one more smile that person gets in their day, and trust me honey, there aren't enough down here.

My father would also tell us (as tweens) about Heisenberg and atomic shells, as he was transfixed by The Tao of Physics for a few years there. The point is, being his kid, you know I jumped on that physics of photography class like it was some pure sweet crack.

The physics professor was old, and his voice would crack and falter suddenly, where you thought perhaps his throat might simply fall out of his body out of pure age. He was sage, rosemary, and thyme all in one. He was the shit.

He told me that laser is an acronmyn like scuba. Did anyone catch the family ties episode where Mallory has to remember that scuba stands for self-contained under-water breathing apparatus? (see tv is educational!)

Turned out, laser stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. He explained that the particles/waves of light are reflected back and forth faster and faster, back and forth in a sealed chamber. All that back and forth, that reflection, would intensify and intensify as it kept going. And then when the aperture was opened, all the intensity of that light moving around in there would shoot out as a laser. A fucking laser!

We, my dear blogosphere, have that same bouncing back and forth, that same growing power. Do you feel it too? I read you and you read me, and we read she, and readership is growing, networking, automatically feeding into our inboxes so quickly and again, bouncing back.

This blog has changed me in so many ways. Dear reader Heisenberg was right- you cannot observe me (nor could I it seems...) without in fact changing that very phenomenon being observed.

But are we also building to something... sort of collectively it seems. A change bigger than little ol grover, or little ol me? It feels a little scary, and a little exciting. Like a plane at liftoff, rumbling, intensity increasing at an increasing rate.

All of those single smiles are turning into two thousand and maybe someday infinity and beyond, you know?

Do right my dear blogosphere. Let's do right!

Be as vulgar as you please, for life is made up after all of shit and piss and all those things we are so afraid to talk about. But strive for right relationships. Treat both yourselves and each other like hard times never happened. Try to get us all to a better place. I think maybe we can get there together :)

Are we building our own strange amplification?

In case any lasers start randomly shooting out of our ass or our ears, we can at least know in advance where to aim.

Dear reader, what are we?

And where shall we go?

ten things

2008-06-12T15:43:00.004-04:00

Okay so my best friend from when I was, like, 16 sent me a "tag, you're it" survey thing a bit ago. Normally I would be like whatever- next but she said it was "important" that I do it. Now I know this may have been said jokingly, but you know what, I want to do it for her. Our worlds don't intersect nearly enough.

But I am stubborn enough to nix the "rules".

I just read a post by dear Aunt Becky, where she similarly edited a meme to her tastes. I think that's just fine. (Only we can make sure punk's not dead eh? Listen to ~~smokey the bear~~ shavey the punk. Only you can prevent punk from dying. Rattle the bars babies, rattle the bars.)

The Rules:
~~Once you have been tagged,~~ write a blog with ten strange/ random facts or habits about you. ~~When you are done, pick ten people to be tagged. List their names and why you tagged them. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they are tagged and to read your latest blog....~~

Random/Strange Facts about me:

1. I was brought up vegetarian, back when veggie-burgers could only be had by going to the little mom and pop health food stores, and when being a "what-is-it-called-again" was great fodder for grade-school teasing.

2. Once, outside one of those specialty food stores, I tried to climb a tree and ended up minorly impaling my thigh on a metal fence. Strangely, it did not hurt.

3. My mom reassured me I was actually healthier for not eating meat. She clearly did not witness the latch-key potluck I trough-fed on everyday after school, involving dill pickle slices by the jar (drinking the juice afterwards, like a chaser), Little Debra zebra snackcakes, and cans of Campbell's cheese soup eaten in their zestful entirety as a nacho dip. It was disgusting and delicious, and I recall it fondly.

4. After my mom finally divorced my vigilantly vegetarian dad, her new husband believed in eating meat, and she promptly changed her party line regarding the evil empire of meat. In my 5th grade school pictures I am even whiter than usual. I must have been anemic. Maybe that explains the lethargy....

5. Sometime in 3rd grade I remember "coming to". It was a psycho-social surfacing, where I suddenly (dude I swear I was like shadow-autistic) realized that I was a person who was painfully placed in a world of people and things that I was completely subject to. I remember looking at myself, looking at the people standing near me in the classroom, looking back at myself again. Shit! It was pretty upsetting I tell you what. I tried my best to climb back inside my head so completely again, but you can never close these boxes again can you?

6. My god, I'm only on number 6.

7. I've watched Dressed to Kill more times than I can possibly remember.

8. You really should get a little more of that. Double dip baby! Double dippin!

9. I've made it to number nine. Oh no, it's almost time for the monster at the end of this meme!

10. Oh, no it was just dear quietgirl! I was the monster?! Oh well that's just fine now! That's just fine. :)

Anyone else want to take this meme? I don't want to tag. I'm just not that gangsta today.

playing the home game

2008-06-12T14:39:00.008-04:00

Another wee point to my last medical rant that I'd like to make painfully clear (sorry), and that's who visits who.

Yes I know doctor's "offices" have all sort of fancy equipment (although I don't need it most of the time), and are "controlled" environments (how do they not see how funny they are?) which is somehow supposed to be better even though they are more replete with the spectrum of bacteria in unusual abundance than a whorehouse, not to mention incredibly stressful experiences for truly ill individuals.

But then despite that, do they not understand how IMPOSSIBLE it is to travel when you're always sick?! Clearly they do not understand. Or they would not keep repeating that one should simply do what one simply cannot. That does not help me, and it so often delivered with a comfortable smugness that's just asking for a whacking. (Not that I'd do it. That's what we have karma for.)

Well okay, okay, so it's messed up and yes of course I'm frustrated, but we're in the system and we have to live with it. Well, that's great but it doesn't make my problem go away. We're still begging the universe for air. Get?

So yes of course I'm angry. And I apologized sincerely to my doctor just the other day, and explained that even when I am angry at her sometimes, it is ultimately my frustration being felt, for I knew she cares deeply about us, and I know she has tried so hard for us over the years. And we will always be indebted and we will always feel lovingly and warmly toward her in return.

It is simply that sometimes she gets to act in life as my 8-ball. The one blocking the shot; pinching the cord and keeping us from that sweet relief. It is no fun to be made a beggar of. We should not have to beg.

I should not have to rant right now.

This is not directed at my doctor. I am shouting at the sky. Right now I'm shaking my fist at the universe like an absurd Vonnegut character- quaking in his impotency, his frustration, his fury.

So, how bout this. We'll be fair about it. From now on, for our doctor's "visits", how about whoever is the well-est gets to come to the other's place. (See how we live maybe. It might be hard to see.) It might remind them we're people too, struggling mightily and fighting the good fight- and not just a set of (idiotically discrete) organs walking through their door.

It would be hard to be condescending when you were standing in the patient's own living room. Were it my home game, and not theirs. But more importantly, the people too sick and spent and miserable from protracted illness to travel would still get medical care. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Sounds like a fucking dream.

It will work too out for all those overworked doctors who have to work lots of the time when they're sick (from being over-worked right?). I have great faith in the adaptability and ingenuity of our systems. We could totally pull this off- given the motivation that is.

If only enough people got sick :(

Is that what it's gonna take for the system to adopt a little compassion in it's workings? That's problematic, at best.

The system is broken, and every time I try to rattle the bars, I get told that that's just how things are.

Well they don't fucking have to be. And change only happens when you make it.

It is they who are absurd.

on peril and survival

2008-06-12T11:14:00.007-04:00

So an old friend just commented on one of the (myspace) photos I took while driving. Her comment was "please don't do that, it's not safe :=)"..... I totally deleted it. It really bothered me.

I know I know she only cares about me. But a childish part of me is annoyed by multiple things, all of which are fairly irrational.

1) How dare she not first comment on the fine art that is my photography. Right so I know they're all blurry- although to be fair they're mostly taken without my barely looking (you know,the whole driving thing). But I heart my pictures. I got some cool pics. And of course any photos of myself while driving are not posed like a zexy myspace pic, but only snapped incidentally to document my state. I'm a naturalist eh.

2) If she really cared about me she'd read my blog.......... I know, I know, that's total bollocks. The fact is people who have not been initiated to my golden e-words do not know how riveting they are (totally not riveting). But some people aren't online a lot. Some people don't get the blog thing. And not everybody that *loves* me is going to start reading my blog, and I have to accept that. That includes my only sister. That includes the my best friend from high school. That includes a lot of people.

3) Of all the ways I've endangered myself on the road over the past years, the camera thing is really pretty low on the list. And the ways that my life has endangered me, also way more intense than my little Canon point'N'shoot.

But I think why it bothers me most is because I know she's right, and I know she cares, and I know I need to start living a little less on the edge. Life's beginning to ease up on me (or so it will, or whatever... it's coming I think) and I need to act accordingly. With the reduction in crazy fucking duress in my life, I'm able to act less insanely, less self-destructively, all of that.

By the way I tried to drive down to work on Monday with no sleep, a true and deep lack of health and well-being, and a spectacular mental health break down to boot.

You know how at the end of the fireworks display- that's when the real shit comes out. The big rockets- Bam! Bam! Bam! Well if my 20's were a fireworks display, Monday was the crescendo- the grand finale. I got in the car even when I was in no state to do so, I attempted (blindly, foolishly, stubbornly- all of the things that have actually gotten me through my 20's) and very nearly crashed like 6 times until I finally pulled off the road and accepted what had to be accepted.

I drove to MD again in the middle of the night last night, for another run of moving things. This was safer (way way safe), as there was less traffic, and went swimmingly. But getting on the road- this time quite sane- I realized that I was in the habit of driving on a very reckless autopilot. Yes I knew this, but well, I had other shit to worry about than that. My life has been full of trauma, crisis, and desperation, and a little laissez-faire driving was the least of my worries.

Last night (well this morning, after the trip), I dreamt I crashed.

In the dream I looked up to see I couldn't stop in time - I was speeding toward somebody's bumper. In my dream, I was able to snap into a last minute clarity, and realized there was no stopping it- and that what I needed to do now was 1) make sure my face didn't at least start out too close to the steering wheel, tho it would surely end up there, 2) relax my body as much as possible so the impact could be received like the reed that does not break, and 3) HOPE that I survived this one.

In the dream I survived with only minor bruising. In real life I would have been either jacked or straight up dead.

I promise, to myself, and to all of you out there, that wonder woman knows her flying days are over. It's time to take off the cape (although not the sweet boots and whatnot).

I have most of my things in the new place. I have a great new job that I will actually enjoy going to and am very very excited, and that is on top of the (thank you god thank you god) paycheck that will follow.

And it's time to take care of myself like a normal human being. It's time to find out what that feels like. I think it's gonna feel pretty good. And I think I can get away with it.

I think life is giving me clemency. I passed. We've survived a situation that should have been impossible.

And I survived the waves. Every time they knocked me in rolling circles, filling my lungs with seawater, and hurling me perilously toward the rocky bottom- well, freaking awesome me, I survived it. I tucked and rolled. Went with the waves, rode them out, and survived.

I think the storm is over.

I think the storm might be over.

I'm going to get a floaty raft with a cup-holder, and I'm seriously gonna consider now a little vaca on these suddenly more placid waters. Figuratively speaking, that is :)

It feels an awful lot like the rainbow after the flood. That's what it feels like.

Thank you, whoever walked along side me, both seen and unseen.

Thank you to myself for being one hardcore bitch.

And finally, thank you to the universe that pushed me to the very edge, and then suddenly shook my hand.

cleaning out the dregs

2008-06-11T17:20:00.012-04:00

I got a few pics in my camera and some crazy tales under my belt, but this is only a brief "moving break" so you get none of it. None.

I am sitting in a near empty room, in a near empty apartment (although not nearly enough), simply glad that it is cooled off a bit.

Did I mention I am now starting work in 2 weeks instead of 3 days ago? The absence of health and well-being forced me to start a little later, and since orientation only comes around twice monthly at the C-spot, I now have a week and a half to do a lot of stuff that needs to get done, and a little that simply entertains me. So rest assured once we somehow manage to get all the shit out of this apartment, I'll have more quality blogging time. And I'm sure it will be sweet.

In the meantime, how the fuck did we get so much shit?

Four years ago we drove up to Philly with everything we owned stuffed in our van, including 1 American Bulldog (only a year and half and still a crazy little monkey) and 5 parakeets. We hadn't slept of course, cause that's how we roll. We set out in the middle of the night and it was bloody fucking madness.

One van (and by van I mean household van- although slightly pimp with the backseat folding into a bed, and cool lights rimming the ceiling- and not a moving van) does not fit really any furniture. It took us months to get things like a bed, and on hardwood floors that's not a happy situation. I would wake up feeling like the bones of my pelvis were collapsing in on themselves. Awful.

Before finally leaving our old place, we had two weekends of insane yard-sale, in which I sold my shit car as-is for like a few hundred bucks, and another car for $100 with the condition that the purchaser towed it away. Also our van wouldn't start like the day before we were gonna leave, but my awesome hubs was able to troubleshoot the situation, decided it needed a new starter, and found somebody that would come out to our place, bring and install a new starter for a nice low price, and even buy the tow away car while he was at it. Whew.

We took like what felt like 9/10 of our precious precious library to the used book store and actually made a nice bit of cash on that. But it was slightly tragic at the yard-sale, when I watched as a young man bought my old TS Eliot book. The one I carried everyday with me in high school, with random illustrations I'd add if I felt so inspired. I sold a lot of shit I would have rather kept and have spent 4 years saying things like, man I could really dig on some Jesus Christ Superstar right about now (what's the buzz, tell me what's happening) if I hadn't SOLD it for like 50 cents.

......This is really nice though..... Just as my apartment is empty, so too is my blogging agenda. Setting out with no fun theme sort of frees the opportunity to let it be simply that running of the fingers through your thoughts that first hooked me on blogging.

It doesn't always have to be funny, witty, entertaining, whatever. The people who are my close blog friends want the real me, and I don't always have to be "on". (Wait I wasn't "on"?!)

Anyhow, given our Beverly-hillbillies style move, it is thus rather shocking to discover that in 4 years of relative poverty we have somehow managed to acquire an enormous mountain of shit.

Maybe it's because we're wired slightly like the old man in Maus, who couldn't pass a piece of string without stopping to pick it up, deciding what use he could devise for it. And perhaps that is because we were both very close to grandparents (one of whom was a holocaust survivor) and who were born dangerously far from the post-WWII prosperity in this here country.

Moms (who has been fabulously awesome) told me randomly the other day that back during the second war, when rubber was being reserved for war uses and it was tough to get a car, grandpa used to ride around on a motorcycle with grandma sitting in a SIDECAR. I am so vastly entertained by the vision of this that I just keep picturing it over and over.

Anyhow, that's it. We are dealing with the final dregs of moving now. Soon we will be in our new little apartment. And then- as promised, but in it's own sweet time- this blog will endeavor to transmogrify into it's new incarnation.

And, I do believe, that's that.
:)

pushing the needle to far

2008-06-10T14:15:00.015-04:00

Well, I am in recovery right now from a major shitstorm (as Mr. Lahey would call it), so catching up blogwise with the past few days would be impossible at the moment.

The short and comfortably cryptic story is I was trying to do more than was possible. I was indeed pushing the needle too far. Super woman couldn't fly anymore, and nearly crashed. And I had to let up a little, and it looks like the universe is okay with that.
And I will surely (surely- how could I not) fill this story in more later.

In the meantime I offer you these tidbits of musical kookiness:
1)
Apparently Black Star took the pill that makes you more like Radiohead, for a little while at least. By way of explanation, this is their first album:

Mos Mos Mos Definitely. Love that Mos.
BUT apparently, this is a new one???

Black Star – Schizofrenia

I burned a couple free songs (here) and played them on a chaotic last minute cd to listen to between MD and PA, (and PA to MD, and MD to PA, ad nauseaum) and was so very confused as to what on the cd could possibly be BlackStar. If someone can explain this musical transition to me, I'd be fascinated as to how the hell this came about.

2)
Galileo's head was on the block, and back in 1993 the Indigo Girl's green-gray oversized T-shirt was on my back. I love the womens, and I will always remember the ecstasy that was a concert hall full singing along to "How long till my soul gets it right".

Which is why it pained me to see this- which in my sad state I thought was real.

I'm just a tad embarrassed but come on. All celebrities seem to go nutty by the second half of their career lately. Observe Will Smith becoming a scientologist, the Coreys, John Travolta. It's like it's just a matter of time before every one goes loco these days.

my kingdom for albuterol

2008-06-06T20:40:00.008-04:00

I haven't the energy to rant. The energy spilled out in exhausted tears over my steering wheel. I just need to point out that we need a Martin Luther style turn-around regarding medicine. I want direct access to my god (why should somebody get to be the middle man between me and my god), and I want direct access to my medicine.

It does not take a doctor to prevent me from killing myself on albuterol- you could kill yourself on it but it would be a pretty inefficient way to snuff yourself. But it does take a doctor to get me the albuterol, that is required for those higher order values... you know the luxurious stuff like BREATHING. And seeing a doctor takes time, money, access, and a constellation of other factors that should not be required to breathe. Factors that are not just difficult (and particularly difficult for those already playing a shitty hand), but sometimes they are just impossible. You dig? Am I too demanding?

I am tired of the bullshit. I know I'm in a system, in which I must conform to a certain minimal degree. And the system has a lot of dumb rules like we are subjugated by a paternalistic medical industry that controls our access to a number of medications that in fact don't need to be so controlled. But it works for the doctors. It keeps people coming through the doors for what comes off their medical pad. And they get to charge us lots of money for those little scrips, for that time we wasted sitting in their waiting rooms for 40 minutes (although don't be late or you lose your appointment...) But it's not working for me. And I'm not the only one.

And I'm thinking of going down to Kinko's and printing up some tracts and finding me some church doors. In this case though I guess it would be the doctor's doors. And it will tell them I'm not happy. They've got me caged and I'm banging at the bars. I'm banging at the bars baby.

But the bars are wet now from my tears and I'm sliding down now to the floor of that cage, where I distractedly fiddle with the empty peanut shells. I am just so tired. So so tired. I am not an outlier. I am not the exception. I am just, perhaps, the loudest exception. But it still is lonely. And it still is exhausting. It's hard spending all day behind a big fucking 8-ball.

So tired. But at least it's nice and easy to go down to the corner to get my smokes, and even a 12-pack if I wanted, to forget the pain. There's guns shooting off in dirty dirty play from the streets. Babies are crying for formula and pampers, and men are trotting the hustle just to buy that shit. And they all got asthma. And they mostly got diabetes. Where's the doctors? They're not here honey. It's just streetcorner medicine here.

I'm glad the medical system is making sure I don't accidentally off myself with albuterol, as even a butter knife could stab you if you pushed hard enough. And I'm glad that the pharmacists are making sure to read "vague" prescriptions in a way that underdoses me, so that it now falls on me to get back in touch with the doctor and try to get some sense out of this. Thanks for that. Thanks for being my 8 ball. Have a good night.

a love note to the man

2008-06-05T12:07:00.005-04:00

So I looked at my little site meter thing and saw a visitor from our nation's capital. In the event that it is the man, my future boss(es), or anybody else who has oh-so-much power over my little life, let me be absolutely clear about this:

I am gonna work my butt off for that paycheck, and I am gonna be damn worth it! Feisty as I have become, I am not just desperate but also desperately loyal. And seriously I am going to be the best damn worker you ever got. Although please stop reading my blog, cause it's no fun having to take it into private mode. But seriously, no worries okay? You are gonna just LOVE me. You ain't never seen nothing like me, and I am gonna be your (civil) SERVANT. For reals. Seriously. I clean up real real good. And I'll even speak proper English for you too! That's how much I love you right now. Seriously. Seriously.

You are just gonna love me.

ash

2008-06-05T01:28:00.003-04:00

Okay this is just sad.
I accidentally just put my cigarette out in my coffee.
Sadder?
Totally decided to drink it anyway.

Agh. The next 72 hours are going to be interesting. And by interesting I mean crazy hectic with too much driving and too little sleep.

Yes, I will drive careful :)

Whoa…oh…oh…oh… Sally- that girl.

2008-06-03T12:12:00.012-04:00

So let's say there's this chick, named Sally, who just got the mail today and realized her tax payment check to the IRS bounced. Now should Sally feel worse that 1) she bounced a check, 2) that it was to the federal government, who we have sworn allegiance to in classrooms for years growing up, and who, coincidently, is also my future employer- and as such- my joy and my salvation. Or 3) should Sally feel worse that she did not realize till that moment that a check of that rather significant amount had even bounced- like a month ago? And here's another question. How will Sally proceed to now pay in a non-bouncing manner that amount? Well she won't for a while, that's for damn sure. Whoa, Sally! (That girl!)

hot & bothered

2008-06-03T11:24:00.011-04:00

Summer's coming with it's dastardly evil humid nastiness that makes me just so tired, so frustrated, so aggro. I nearly initiated, then just barely defused, a nice new spousal argument to ruin the morning. This would have been an awful shame.

You'd think after growing up in Florida I might have gotten the hang of this heat thing, but no. The good news is in a week we should have central air conditioning again (i.e. like the Flo Flo's do it) and I'll be a little less testy.

Today I need need need to nail down a mover, a date, the freight elevator, and a variety of other very time-sensitive stressful sorts of things that I don't want to do. For one this requires me to talk to the rent office again, who I have still not given official notice to that I'm leaving nor that it will be in a week. Punk's not dead ya'll. That's the best I can say about that.

And there's lots of other stressful stuff, but it's kind of household bullshit that doesn't need to make it on this great public billboard so I'll end there. Although I can tell you I've been channeling my stress into really crazy eating. The way the tv-bulemia-special teenage girls tear into a gyro like they're a wild animal, before puking it up again. But I keep it down babies. I can hold my Pop-Tarts. And much like this beautiful universe that holds us, I too am expanding. Although the universe doesn't have to fit it's ass in blue jeans, and I do.

But make note, I am less than a week out from my new job, several states away. In a week I'll be in nice shoes filling out paperwork and assimilating into the government hive. That hive will have it's own gym, as will my new apartment.

I know, eat up, right?! That's totally what I'm thinking.

Regarding my future assimilation, so far I've noticed very efficient phone conversations from this great government organ. Don't try to linger on the phone for an extra hearty "well ya'll a great weekend now, you hear", cause they've already mentally moved on to the next task and will give you merely a bewildered/annoyed sloughing off in return. But it's all good cause about 2 weeks after my first day, will follow my first PAYCHECK. I don't think there's a word finer out there.

Stay cool babies :)

you want to read this

2008-06-02T19:26:00.002-04:00

This chick (who wrote this funny book) said to read this dude and she was totally right and you should just go for it. Just go for it. He is only like 10 posts in and he's already making me laugh out loud, sigh, get a little sad, then laugh again and force my husband to sit through me reading him a post, and he even laughs despite his original reluctance. Real good shit :) This is it.

sharing rules

2008-06-01T13:56:00.008-04:00

Sharing rules. Sharing chocolate. Sharing smokes. On the first day of kindergarten I remember walking in so scared. And I sat down and a little black boy looked at me and smiled and handed me his puzzle of a momma and baby elephant. Right there he made everything okay. I don't think I'll ever forget him.

This guy here shares awesome old archivey illustrations, and I think I love it.

Tell me you don't have a comment to go with that first one, and I don't know why you bother to hang around me :D

So props to this guy- check it out his blog has some really cool links of interesting stuff too. If I gave out ratings, I'd give it 3.5 monkeys, the highest honor of 4 monkeys being being exclusively reserved for our dear departed Vonnegut! Gold star baby :)

p.s. His June podcast was some good quality stuff. Perfect for playing on a mellow Sunday around the house.

a great hell of a time

2008-06-01T12:35:00.013-04:00

Last night I went out to a social gathering for like a full 4 hours. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the first gathering I've made it to since October. Whooo! And I got sufficiently messed up to make walking the block home a real physical exertion. I had to swing my legs and arms hard, to ride the momentum.

The gathering was an AWESOME BBQ by AE, with just the right crowd in size and composition. The party, like a good club, consisted of multiple zones each with their own varying mood and yummy things to consume and you could move about as the drunken whim moved you.

I decided before hand I would have 2 (two) alcoholic beverages to sip at the party, which I did. It was the crazy alcohols with guarana stuff in them, which I quite enjoyed :) Why have 1 buzz when you can have 2 simultaneously? Adds texture to the experience. Fleshes it out.

Nobody knows this better than my girl. That's right- taught her well I did. With her tough bulldog jaw she derives unusual pleasure from chewing sticks. So too has she found a great rapture in rolling on her back when she gets a patch of sunshine just right. But of course, both at the same time, is the always the best way to go.

That's my girl! Sometimes I just watch her sleep, getting the pleasure of seeing one's child safe, warm, and happy. She dreams, and I like to watch her play in her sleep :)

But anyhow back to the BBQ, which portion I actually missed as I am fashionably late plus 1 hour 15 minutes to find my shoes, walk the dog, make a pitcher of iced tea cause I'm thirsty, find my shoes again, take the elevator down and realize I forgot something absolutely essential... you get the idea.

The BBQ was great, but best of all it was AE's 26th birthday AND her cohabitation party, and I say "here here!" to new rituals, rites of passage, and personalized transitions to adulthood in all their glory! Which is especially important since her parents are still not celebrating them with her! Silly OJ's- can't look outside of the box!

Plus she made a cake with a picture of a house and little stick drawings of a man and woman and their three cats. So cute, and being lemony with a chocolate ganache frosting, completely delicious! A picture of the perfectly perfect cake can be seen here!

I had a ridiculous good time, and was quite candid and, so I was told, not deer-like at all.

So I guess it's a very good thing this blog will be transforming soon. For it is getting to be something of a joke to call myself a quietgirl.

And this blog, begun a year and change ago, named by random whim, has proven perhaps prophetic. I have become a little more than loud. It's a hell of a time :)

processing?

2008-05-31T11:58:00.014-04:00

MYS observed that I was using my blog as a photo album to archive my memories, since real photo albums were now old-school (non-digital). True indeed (I enjoy your insights into my life once again) but there is surely also more to it.
I'm also processing. Singing my paean to that which I am giving up, and my intrepid excitement at this quantum leap I'm presuming to make.
Processing.
And of course you all are helping me do so, giving priceless witness, and singing your chorus alongside mine.
And thinking about it further (MYS), I think I may be that tree, outside your window ~~(a post alas I cannot link to as the downside of a private blog)~~. And I am observing and loving and remembering each leaf in turn, before letting it drop to the ground, to make room for the new growth. The new view.

driven

2008-05-28T20:03:00.016-04:00

So in the past 48 hours I've driven to Maryland and back twice, and with 2 hours of sleep in between.

That sounds really impressive to say in my head, because I'm from that little peninsula down south (that Homer Simpson referred to as America's dong) where not only does it take a good day to drive from one end of the state to the other, but the next state you have to go through takes approximately 48,000 hours to drive. Growing up, we had an international airport, yet to drive anywhere past Georgia took far too long to make it ever actually worth doing.

Thus I don't think I actually used to know that there even existed a tiny state of Delaware, that had no significance other than it being some sort of tax-shelter heaven of the many lenders that would come to own so many of us in the country with their sub-prime solicitations, as well as one of the states between grad-school home and new-job home.

So yeah.

I have logged enough road hours that I am beginning to actually feel like a damn good driver. Added to the fact that I've been driving the anarchic avenues of West Philly, frequently somewhat less than lucid, and I'm starting to get the feel for the steer, the slump, the whole coordinated movement thing. I drive through narrow car-lined streets now with unexpected pedestrians and double-parkers hither and thither, with far more confidence than I would have if I paused to see how close I actually was to the cars, how I almost veered into another car, or whatever. Which reminds me. Before I move I need to replace the worn brake pads, and the worn tires. So there you go.

This is all a good thing because very soon I will probably have a long ass commute to the sweet space we've finally found for us to live in so very soon.

The three(!) scouting trips were totally worth it.

It is a little apartment, rather than the house proper I dream of. Thus it has no backyard in which a bouncehouse or cowboy monkeys could fill. But it has magic. Pictures will follow. It is, in fact, my place of fairydust. My new home :)

Race, Religion, and Take-Out

2008-05-27T09:34:00.012-04:00

Memorial day was sunny and all that one could ask for, while walking to get lunch at the delicious Halal place again.

In West Philly apparently everybody and their brother's friend's cousin gets together on the sidewalk or stoop outside their place and lights the barbecue. It's really rather nice. I left my bedroom window open, and by evening time the room was perfumed with the faint smell of charcoal smoke, which is a lovely contrast to the usual smoke.

At the halal place, there was one table of immigrant (for lack of a better word) Muslims, and one table of local west Philly men who appeared to be ranting about the (white) man, but my desperate attempts to eavesdrop were completely unsuccessful. Damn it.

My husband and I spent yesterday watching endless videos on youtube on the debates between Israel and Palestine, the Muslims and the Jews, Obama's angry pastor and non-angry non-blacks, and so much more. Fascinating stuff, this human quagmire. It's all rather heavy, unlike this one, which I laugh at every time I watch.

But what was most lovely, was before leaving with the take-out I slid in my Assalamu 'Alaikum (that I'd been practicing saying). It was a huge hit. Their faces just beamed and it totally made my day! And of course, the food was way awesome.

But today, today I get to drive into Maryland again so hopefully, when it's time to start working, I'm actually living somewhere in driving distance from that job. That would be helpful.

So maybe I should stop blogging and get back to what it is I'm supposed to be doing. Eh.

Picture Post

2008-05-26T00:47:00.023-04:00

I enjoy getting out to do errands, not that you can tell from the scowl I wear. Brow furrowed.

The Italian market in South Philly is buzzing on Sundays, although the neighborhood it is more Mexican in recent years than Italian.

This is 52nd Avenue, "West Philadelphia's Main Street" on Market street, under the El.

The Long John Silver's/KFC here has thick plexiglass that you have to shout through, and several pass-through's for the food. The people were extremely nice though. "You have to buy something before they'll buzz you into the bathroom", said the man in line in front of me who was doing the pee-pee dance. He was very nice and called me Honey without hitting on me, which I do appreciate.

Halal for the many W. Philly muslims. I just think, god that burka must be hot in the sun.

This is the fruit truck. I'm friends with the owner, a long-time resident of the neighborhood, and also Solomon, the Eritrean man who works in it. Also very very nice. Big smile. It used to be a buck for most things for the several years I'd lived here. But of course lately prices have gone up everywhere. The food inflation turned my dollar bananas to dollar-fifty bananas, and my man's $3.50 cheeseburger at the 24-hour South Philly (cheese)steakshop to $4.00.

Also, this is the card for my man's 30th birthday (last week), from a stamp I carved (a few months ago). You dig? I think it's rad ass.

On the topic of birthdays, which leads me to the topic of food, and specifically to Carvel ice cream cakes:
Apparently so enamored was I with standard cake (cake!) that I never truly discovered the heaven that is the ice cream cake. Ah delicious discovery. The cake is down to the last few pieces. But don't worry, my birthday's in July. It's the chocolate crunchy bits in the middle that make it so damn good.

Goodbyes

2008-05-25T23:28:00.005-04:00

Babygirl's last time at her favorite vet!

She is just full of love :)

Doubt

2008-05-22T20:29:00.009-04:00

Well right off the bat I see my blog was both about personal doubt, and of course baby imagery. Yay babies! When I was a youngin' I read a book called "Baby Island" where a shipwreck happened and the only people that survived were a group of pre-teen friends and a slew of, what else, babies. This seemed plausible at the time. I remember this colorful cover of babies crawling in the brush of the handy dandy deserted island they'd washed up so safely on. I believe I begin to salivate ever so slightly at the memory.

It's quite freeing now to be able to admit this weirdo woman tendency to obsess over soft-skinned little cherubs now that I know there are so many mommy bloggers out there (which doesn't, alas, include me) who would understand. Even my friend Rel has been struck with mommy fever and you can't deny it! I totally saw you nesting when B moved in. I know what it looks like- and you were soooo doing it. You got baby fever baby!

Anyhow, as I know the other non-baby theme (ie personal doubt) has been an ongoing topic in this here blog, I've decided to post a lovely awful poem I wrote as an undergrad. It is about doubt, and ends shockingly, in baby imagery. And I bet you might even read it! Ha ha!

It was meant to be read breathlessly in one long sentence, sort of like the bitch is whipping you onward...

I always liked writing. However this is my only creative writing class ever, and I didn't even realize things were supposed to be revised until sometime in grad school, so this poem is an as-is sort of deal. Wow, it actually sorts of hurts to read. God bless revision.

And yeah, I'm surprised I said 'ass' too. Guess I shouldn't be by now.