Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Hallo,

It has been many days since our last communique. I'm soaking my feet in cold water to lower my core temperature. Necessary things without a/c. I did get a free sb drink today. They're card machine/reader was malfunctioning- maybe melting because of the heat. And so not only do i still have my freedrink on the card but my venti soy extra shot latte was on them. Total score. Jesus must love me sort of moment. I can't say I managed anything else today but yard work for Marge my preschool teacher and I did superglue the stone on my ring and set about to watering everything. Weeping obviously at the abysmal state of the garden.

I am obsessed with things like, where do I put the book case? Do I mask the nook or set the bookcase back- oh ok and I did spend a soul sucking hour at home depot buying paint and bits- and that leads to more questions like well do I want a 2nd drape set or maybe I just go with blinds and take back the cafĂ© curtain rods. I'm sure if people whoever they are go back to read this - or any of a stack of missives, they might draw a knife or a gun at themselves at the mundanity of it all- but they'll know the minutia and then it'll be up to 'them' to draw the broader stroke of singleness, life with cats, the obsessive way she writes about home renovation must have something behind it. And why over the last 9 years of blogging has she brought up missing cabinet doors and why did she paint her living room like a cave? Possibly, probably no one will care. And someone will chuck everything into a dumpster as some ironic turn and insult to my entire life. Not sure why i'm thinking of these things. I was dismantling some of my albums-- making chaos, decluttering in order to make streamlined memory remembered. Which strikes me as pointless and a little sad, these batches of life photographed and how lots of them just pass from existence. Although I went to a wedding shower on sunday and I was around a handful of people I've known off and on for 18 years because of the co-op. You never know what you do or learn or love or obsess over or grieve will crop back up into your life. Not unlike pending 20 year reunions.

As I was writing this I received your letter. And then I had a video chat with jeju sarah. And so let it rest.

The day started with my senile marley yowling into the echoing hall, and the dawn breaking over the mountains and clouds coming from the north east to an overcast morning. To my indulgence of two English muffins with all their nooks, crannies, butter and fruitspread, plus 1 egg. Salt and peppered.

Last night I watched this documentary called girl27. Sort of horrifying. And had some annoying unresolved story threads- but it was good. It was about this girl that was raped at an MGM function back in 1937 and the lengths that they went to cover it up-- the mother bought off, the witness bought off (his kids traumatized because of it), the doctor, the lawyer!, the DA!. And besides that yes, some vindication65 years later, but really, the power unforgiveness and unacknowledged trauma- what it can do to a person- how it didn't just devastate their lives and rob them of their gifts and dreams, but the culture of secrets and pain pervaded and infected their kids too- and their kids kids. Yikes. And the documentarian though he brought those things up didn't want to comment further but let it lie. A good/bad thing. For instance this crazy fact- Clarke Gable had an affair with one of his leading ladies. She was catholic and deeply shamed I suppose. She hid herself away until she gave birth, gave her baby UP for 18months!!!! into an orphanage!!! and then adopted her back! And would not relent about this secret everyone knew about until much past her daughters wedding- AND actually went so far as to ask that her daughter tell her granddaughter she was adopted! THE HELL! Talk about bondage.

Anyway the trash people came and though the automated arm slowed considerably, the 100+ carpet is out of our lives for good. Just like secrets if you give them up and over. They're not lying their stinking and getting eaten by moths and then soaked by sprinkler runoff and let to mildew in a driveway for 2 weeks. There you have it.

Now back to antiques roadshow and mustering the strength to finish medieval forest.



 

Monday, August 26, 2013

hi from a late-hour

Here my brain is, rattling around. Wondering among too many other things where podcasts have been all my life. Answer: I never had patience for them, never really "got" them, could not wrap my brain around the auditory factor of them, but now all of a sudden. Introduce me to PopCultureHappyHour and I'm hooked in for life. So novel, the idea of ingesting brainfood into one's ears rather than solely one's eyes while reading, or eyes and ears both while watching a show. Imagine. I mean, people have only been listening to talk radio for decades now, but whatever... #latetotheparty

Also, my vehicle (whose official name is the Lo.Co.Motive, in case that's been not-yet-mentioned) is often empty of late, leaving me with full control of the iPod and more mental space to ponder the different things I pick up on every single day along the same route. Not new things, but new-to-me things. Like that old rail car next to a church, right next to their playground, maybe it's a playhouse, too? Neat. And the other church whose signs are definitely posted by someone different lately. Someone dumber. You know your signs are dumb and lacking inspiration when the Seventh-Day Adventist signs are connecting more with the crowd. Really. And spider webs spanning power lines, tons of them catching morning light. And let's not forget Nurse Carla Espinoza, still hanging out on the truck outside the scrubs-shop - What up, Nurse Carla! I say in my head. Every time.

And after a mere 1-2 weeks of school, we all have some dumb cold that's going around, already. Already! Unfair.

So today I'm simply drained, more so than the new-normal drained. I spent four hours today dragging some things back into my classroom and attempting not to spaz out at the sheer excess - there is just too. much. crap. There are things we have to have and things we can rotate out and things I've brought in, but for the most part - omg, begone with the ratty plastic ponies and the creepers oversized stuffed carnival prize. I literally dragged in the biggest box I had and assigned it the job of holding Things That Are Currently Making Me Hostile. Some might be allowed out of the box again, now or maybe later, or in the case of those ponies maybe never. It was the only way I could deal with the rest of the room. And tomorrow is going to make me feel simultaneously more and less crazy, because I will have some help arranging, cleaning, etc. So while my mind craves sorting through it all and mentally cataloging where everything needs to live in a solitary manner, I have to accept this help. Because it will never get done otherwise. And then the whole teamwork thing. Bah! I get it, I embrace it, but then. At a root level, I reject it entirely. And it's a mindful conversation that must continually take place, talking my misanthropic nature back from the ledge.

Finally I delved into Call the Midwife and um yes it's fabulous.

I'm sure I ought to write more but for now my aforementioned rattling brain calls for tylenol and a long sleep.
love to you across the land
oh and! I heard some commercial this morning saying that RDU offers nonstops to LAX now, 7 days a week. must investigate. because that's kind of a big deal, no? although probably costs a million dollars.



Friday, August 16, 2013

Sorry I wrote you hate letters Mom,

We don't have to wait till mother's day to appreciate our moms. Having me for a kid I am sure prepared her for all the vitriol and animus that she was to encounter in her life, my kind souled mother. However, as a child I obviously did not take "because I told you so" as an answer for anything in my life and not even to strangers. I had, still have, a sort of abnormal barometer for truth and needing to see the reason or story behind things. As my mother said, when I cut my foot and she took me to the doctor, he was saying something about the fact that he was Santa Claus and I started to cry for being a liar. I was 3 or 4? I'm not exactly sure of the details anymore. But take an absolute knowledge of truth and a very angry child and you get letters that are more than a little like murder weapons and less  like the aw, kids. Aren't they funny. And more like the um, right. Yikes. I will forever recall being sent to the principals office to be paddled because I looked at my teacher funny. The look was probably akin to absolute indictment or probably contempt. I was 8. The pamphlet below, excerpted was stapled together on construction paper and written when I was 11.
 
There are the usual peculiarities of being highly verbal- using the word ridiculous and spelling it correctly. But of course lacking the ability for more complex sentence structures it gets a bit unhinged as I sloppily site my brother's treatment of the cat, (not pictured here), but seem to capture how demeaned and condescended I felt. Just yesterday I was about to start gnawing on a table leg in regards to arguments about whether or not I could or should get cut stone for the bathroom- because of how it won't work- and this from the people who didn't get drywall thick enough to be flush with the door jamb. Who are we kidding here people? The "right" way of doing things? The "proper" thing? I don't think so. And and, and there my mom is petting my arm like calming an angry cat. It was hilarious. Also, she was always insisting I smile. It sometimes worked but I mostly fought it, which is probably why my default smile is a left cornered wry smile and not a fully committed one. Amused but holding back.
 
Now the pitchforked mom with the horns is more typical of childhood I think- though the 'kill, kill' part i'm a bit circumspect about. If it were just the picture with "I hate you" I would say adorable but it's all the other furious rantings, and the of course the coup de grace below which seems a very adult and venomous thing to say at 11, which of course I saved till the very end.




As it is I've come along way from being that angry. Thankfully. And have forgiven mom for all sorts of things children like me carry along with them. I think even into high school it was hard to find a place for feelings as strong as these- and kids have them- I remember being utterly relieved when a teacher I had said it was ok to hate my father. Because that's where I was at. And the absolute tension and torture I felt at not honoring my father and mother dissipated to a place of being able to say, ok, this is where I am. I have somewhere to go now. It's not just this pent up thing in my heart.

Anyway thanks for loving me mom and holding me dear. Glad it all turned out ok in the end. But ps. I burnt the letter. No need to keep the bodies lying around. Time to tidy up. Bury the hatchet and all that. Maybe you can write about it in your memoirs of me instead. And as a narcissist you know that's just the sort of thing I would love. Mothers are narrators to their childrens lives- and the stories they tell go really far in cementing reality - spiritually, emotionally- the things they chose to keep and tell. Looking forward to more.

m.

 

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Penelope.

Hello, from across the continent. I'm listening to Bon Iver and Param is by my feet. And I'm up past my usual bed time of 10pm at least this last week. I can feel the rhythms evening out as each thing is accomplished, and hammering asphalt intermittently during the day as my upperbody building exercises is enough to make my eyes lightly mist up in encouragement that even that - this measurable output 1/3 done- Sure even as I sat and sighed deeply in satisfaction at 2/5 gardenias planted I noted that they're being attacked by something and that the 2/3 is long as the day is hot in August. But still. We do what we can. We do it where we're at and we don't wait to be anywhere else. To suddenly have money. For pigs to fly. For things to alter themselves when they have always been the way they are.

Mom said that painting the bathroom was not akin to climbing Everest and I quipped and she hurumphed. But each room I think is a mental and emotional battle against my own internal grudges. Deep-seated. Grooves that go really far down into my own heart of darkness. Grooves that have me loosing my shit over craptastic drywall work- lines everywhere, lines cracking through the primer, drywall not flush to the door jamb, weird fucking wonky not perfect shit. I look at the spider like smash I made in the enamel of the bathtub- 3+ years ago by now and I think I made that. I was tired. I swung and I missed and I knew I had to put the sledge hammer down. But this drywall business is just half-assery. I get it. I'm guilty of it, like the floor- there's lines aren't there. But this guy they hired and my dad know better. They aren't novice hacks. I don't know why it enrages me so. Maybe because I feel i'm doing this by myself against the stream of fuckall. I had worship music going for a good while just to push through the inevitably toxic mental churning.

Still it didn't stop me having to scream at someone (poor mom) of the shit job- surely someone has to know. Someone else besides me in my own head all by myself, as I spend each day fighting the gremlins from room to room. And then of course somehow got into a fight with Amber where she was prompted to hold against me all the things she's done for me that I thought were generous of her but apparently not, so of course I should do just this thing out of 'you owe me'. Don't you? And I was reminded of the MM part where he talks about how we economize relationships- and I thought ok i'm not going to do that. I won't tit-for-tat this. But then it led me to wonder what other resentments other people were stacking against me. It goes to what we can possibly repay. We can't. I'm in enough debt as it is- I simply can't keep account to balance out friends- but it's a new way. A new groove. To burn the ledger- and how to love through and in that space. I can't say I know what that looks like.

It's control too and the perfection you know time and money can execute for you. To just have it done. To not labor. As if nothing is learned, gathered or built in the doing of things. Are they really time stealers- or are they like washing the whiteboards or waxing the car- the discipline of carrying through and doing and being mundane creation and maintaining- and how we behave in those spaces and the decisions we make to keep going- hacking at the asphalt, letting the lines lie- weeping, gnashing and then rubbing the imbedded gravel out of our knees and we keep going- to find peace in an imperfect space. To find peace in ourselves.

And then in those meditative spaces I think- God, you must not care about me as I sit here in this imperfect mess and you don't deliver me from it with bags of money or a husband or a friend who won't inevitably hold it against me if I ask for help. And then I hear, it's not important. But I think that's me thinking what God would say, and then I argue back but it's important to me. But then I think what's the aim and the aim isn't perfection, and I think God would agree with me on that. And then what it is - relationship- in those spaces with God and myself in the concrete, and in those spaces in my heart that all of these things trigger. Pondering the verses below as things fly through my head, as I shrug my shoulders from the tension and crack my wrists from the overwork. It would be better if Jesus be my arbiter- against accusations of who I am in the world and to others. It will never be enough without him. So the power of such things must be to walk in faith through them- the small that would make us small- to define myself not by the cracked lines of an atom among many, but by him, who makes me heir and calls me daughter. I have to believe I'll be the better for it.

2cor10:3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Long time,

strangely enough this is now a lost blog. It was called "In the Void" so I suppose now appropriate that it's lost. But it wouldn't publish it and I tried and then something I thought was good wasn't and so then there it went. Probably the narrative is better for it. I'll list what I can in no particular order.

What is God saying to you in the dark places?
What is, what are the answers ?
I can't help but ask.
And to not have them. We keep going. We keep.
Ancient animals = bender, marley
10 years since becoming a page- am going to visit the lot with visitor sarah from Jeju. Think a page reunion is totally in order. Am excited to wander around the lot..
My preschool BF found me. Last contact pre-FB was 8th grade. Eating spaghetti. She'd had her wisdom teeth out. I'm going to give her the colonial grandmother clock I can't come to peace with. Not going to hold onto it because it's worth something. Bondage to all manner of things. This imaginary worth. Which led me to say hello to Brenda who gave me the clock in the first place who didn't want it as I don't want it- something about it- we say automatically we don't have the room for it.
What else- 2 necklaces finished, painting finished.
Mom moved out and the room floor needs to be done.
Chipping up asphalt to make way for plants
Lists
Curtain rods
Toast and only 1 egg. Why 2? Try 1.
Walking around the block victory.
Fasting after 630- as we thirst and hunger for righteousness- August.
1/2 way through parade's end
2 chapters shy of finishing the Meaning of Marriage
Good good conversations have abounded because
Roving conflicts with losangeles cats, coming together again
2 new dresses. Rather adult in their dark colors.

And now the day awaits.

Monday, August 5, 2013

somethings

as they come to me, so no particular order ~

Bender is old. Bender has lumps. Bender has what I'm nearly certain is skin cancer on her belly. I google-imaged to be sure, but quickly wanted to barf (don't ever, ever google-image that term, I mean it). And it breaks my heart, but brings me immediately back to the first point and the way all old dogs break all our hearts.

Every day the old Bender and the Sophie puppy chase tennis balls and run together and I adore the way their soft-black-ears flop in tandem.

It's a day early, but I've surreptitiously acquired The New Album from The Contentious Band (the one connected with that a-mazing continent quote I sent you last week), and so my brief-ish road trip down the what lately is becoming a very-well-traveled road will be a better one. Although I do wish it were a better destination this time than lying in a brain-scanning claustrophobic tunnel for 12 minutes, but maybe that will lead to some answers about my scattered-ness, or not.

I've never loved summer, as the blog-audience surely well knows, and again it occurred to me that it's another thing rooted in control. I can't control being too effing hot, to the point of stifle. I can't control the outcome of the garden, whether it will be high-yield or lagging, whether the tomatoes will like the way we tied and staked them (this year, not so much - #pinterestfail). And I especially can't control the insane weed-growth taking over the flower beds. I mean I could, if I had enough funds and/or stamina to haul in 2 tons of mulch redo the whole thing. Which will in fact happen at some point I imagine, but not anytime soon? And so that continues to vex me as I throw the ball and adore the floppy ears. Adore-seethe, adore-seethe, is how it goes.

The preschool room will be painted Pineapple Delight, which isn't nearly as manic as it sounds, and even though it was my third choice color (the other two were blues and greens and so much calmer...), at least it was a choice of mine? I mean, let it go Penelope. How many people get to all but dictate the entire look of their classrooms from the start? My lovely third choice is better than like, Schoolbus Spectacular, or some other imagined horror.

We finished Orange is the New Black (SO. good. brills.) and also through some luck reinstated direcTV - something about, well, football is starting, and we have a credit, and oh now there's another ginormous credit through the referral program. Like we won't even have to pay for it all for 2 more months? I waffle on the "need" for any extra forms of entertainment - it's not a need at all, what am I saying - but as far as luxuries go. We by no means have the Cadillac package, more like the Ford Focus. And now I can still watch Survivor.

Well anyway, my love - it's time to go. adieu adieu, til next time.
p.s. did we both order ravioli then? Because I seem to distinctly remember also having that. And, we were not given a very good table. By the wall, definitively out of the action, all but squirreled away. I expect the shoe baron to land us a better spot, to see and be seen, dammit! when the day comes.
xoxox



Dear Bruckner,

It's true I don't know if I copyrighted any of this, but you better give us some hefty checks whenever you make good on fame and stardom. Or treat us to lunch at the Ivy in some fitfully ironic turn of fate. We'll grimly order whatever we want. It will however, be delicious. You'll have the generous demeanor of a shoe baron sitting at court. I will not feed you grapes, but look at you wryly across the table plotting revenge in a startling loss of faith. That will be your next greatest work. Time, then will rip past and i'll have died. But you'll still go on occasion to sit there and drink wine and think of us and the blog and the time when the words just one day stopped or Bl/gSp/t closed for business or it all changed- but it was something possibly insignificant seeming but earthshattering all the same. By then you'll be legend. It will be your one dark day that will be little discussed but cryptically referred to by your biographer. There will be rumors and we will merely be a small and obscure footnote on your lengthy wikipage.

How far we wandered from that place. When we sat there- I think I had ravioli. A rockstar passed with his baby in a stroller. We went to the LaBrea Tarpits. We climbed that Hollywood Hill, literally and pondered and walked way past the batman cave entrance.

And today? I had a typically LA. LA lunch off Franklin across from the sci-ti celebritycentre. The server came out and said my friend's hair was glowing and radiating like the sun. A guy came to sit near us with his greyhound rescue. The bartender having heard my friend only wanted 1 shot in her bloodymary thought it was "adorable" and then came outside to hit on her and give her a t-shirt because she was a fellow traveler and though he was American, spoke with a convoluted british accent. When I told the manager I was sad not to have a tshirt she said, I didn't get one because she could tell I was a local. Or she confused me with someone who went there a lot or had in fact remembered that I frequented the place a lot-- 8 years ago. 2 girls walked by us with no bras on, and i'm sure someone famous and not clean shaven walked by. My friend said, it is totally different than SF isn't it. I said oh, yes. It is.

I went back to church to get more organic fair-trade coffee and talk about God.

But besides that, what else.

My mom moved out.