Matt: "Christmas is so weird... It's just like a prelude to New Year's"
Me: "Um, you forgot about the sacrificial lamb who died for all mankind"
Matt: "Yeah, you forgot about New Year's Resolutions."
....
Matt: "I got sooo drunk last New Year's."
Me: "That reminds me, I'm going to make like ten resolutions, and stick to them."
*
Hi Folks.
Last night was yet another long dark night of the soul. I started to feel lighter around my dad, and even stepmother; she gave me a squeeze on the arm on the way into the chinese buffet, where I ate sensibly and well, all things considered, and later that evening I was very tired, with burning behind my eyes, and fading in and out of existence, and I was waiting with the old anxiety for a short phone call between the hours of 9 and 10 pm eastern time. At 9:40 I got some text from anonymous@something net, that "people were going to bed, and I am too," which didn't make sense to me because it seems easier to just make a phone call as opposed to sign onto some fancy anonymous texting website I didn't think individual-in-question knew a thing about, so that he had worked hard to avoid speaking to me but also somehow meet the Great Expectation, and I began to lose a lot of hope, and though this is pretty tedious, I considered taking down the abstract colored pencil art which I've mounted on the shelf next to the bed as a symbol of love and commitment. (I prevailed against the urge)
I was, again, fuming (like last night), and, again, though I thought many times I was beyond it, coursing with agitation and indignation literally in the bloodstream. I started to get nervous even before this; I was chatting on facebook with a girl from high school and I said (being an excellent conversationalist), "Who do you think the cutest boy in our grade was?" And she said, "Your bf, and J. -" and I was jolted with pain, because, on some level I don't think I really believe that he is in anyway my anything.*
And I have bigger fish to fry, I suppose, but also: the way out is through. (Who said it, who said it?) And, as my dear departed grandmother (she was once my best friend, I lived with her the year I was seven, she was my babysitter, taught me solitaire and gave me saltines with cheese melted in her old gas oven) used to always say: "This too, shall pass." (overdue for a tattoo?) I read somewhere on the internet- not the first encounter with this idea- about "controlled grieving," wherein you write in a journal about the thing for say 20 minutes a day, as this supposedly helps reduce walking around like a human zombie all the time in mad despondency.
*Why not be an anthropologist? My dad thinks it's morally wrong but he is referring to a certain secular bias, not the field in its essence, I think. My dad, my dad: oh my! Last night he had a fit of Salvador Dali, I was sitting upstairs and he was still going: "There's a phonograph in that piano... That violin is the body... There are only so many shapes- a violin and a body, that's a reasonable comparison! And all the background stuff, you can't keep track of it... you could spend hours..." And they say, my stepmother and stepsister, that I am a regular chip off the old block, and they are a family, though nothing is perfect, there is real tenderness here, and inside jokes...
Apparently my dad has given up on being an artist, saying that there will always be others to do it, and he just can't find the time. He is in no way a lazy person, but has he limited himself in this? A little less chatting mister; you don't need a movie everynight. But here is a man with a family, and his own business, and I ought not speak of what I don't know. But I, I still want to be an artist! No matter how bad I am, no matter how petty my perspective and how hard it is to expand it one little centimeter, and no matter how many times me ego is crushed under the wagon wheels of cute boys and other impossible combinations.
Salvador Dali, by the way, known for his melting clocks and his composing human beings of objects, who my stepmother felt lukewarm at best for, and called something with a hole in its swelling belly a "pregnancy," and I worried vaguely talk of abortion was around the corner, (and I'm starting to be afflicted with certain feelings), but anyway, Salvador Dali said the following, which made me laugh with glee:
"Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy - the joy of being Salvador Dalí - and I ask myself in rapture, 'What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí is going to accomplish today?'"
Not that I think the Answer is becoming re-romanticized with myself. But there is a point to which we need to be truly ecstatic to be who we are, with out unique gifts, I think. I am intimidated by beauty, particularly this one young man- and not everyone sees it in him, which almost makes it scarier to me - but why? Why should I see someone beautiful and think I should claim them as my own? Do I look out at the mountains outside my window here, the snow on the ground and the crisscrossed dark branches in the misty gloom, and say, That is mine! I own it!
Another thing: why not be an anthropologist and a psychologist? Why must it all be pain pain pain? Why not detach, and learn? A lot can be learned from a difficult love, and I ought to embrace that suffering. I also can learn a lot from my dad and stepfamily, with an anthropological attitude that does not necessarily have to be cold and clinical and condescending... but can be one of open wonder. I don't know. What the hell was in the bag from the movie store? I went to look at the movie and my stepmom panicked and grabbed it and gave me just the movie. I'm sure it wasn't a Christmas present. So what was it? What are you hiding, people?
And it's none of my business.
Last night I tried to sleep for a couple hours, because I so needed it. Around midnight I went downstairs and my father was at the dining room table reading the bible (this morning I was on the phone and walked into the living room, where my stepmother was reading the bible and she moved to go upstairs, she with her talk of women and multitasking, and her effing displays of -false? who can know the hearts of men?- deference / get a grip, self, I was like, Oh, sorry, I'll go and she's like Oh, I'll go; a lighter manifestation: my stepsister, whom I wholeheartedly - mostly - love, and I were both like, you go first, and I made a game of it, coming into the house last night from the Chinest buffet, we were both sort of shuffling offering the other to go first and I said, let's do the polite dance) and anyway, my dad, midnight, he was like, oh you're up or something and I said, just like a pouty child, "I don't think I'll be sleeping tonight." And he sort of frowned (you Capricorns! don't be the death of me, I beseech you!) and was like, "Is your heart rate okay?" And I was like, "Well yeah," and he was like, "Oh, you'll be fine," and I went to bed and cried (muffling my sobs because the three bedrooms are all right next to each other), like I hadn't for a long time, I felt the old old child-feeling, but not the good Christmas-stockingy kind, rocking myself in the bed, and praying earnestly for death, why I couldn't say, because no matter what happened, I was a bottomless well of sadness, and it wasn't even a chemical problem, just a bottomless one, and everything was so, so sad, despite our best intentions, and why did my life have to include someone who was so beautiful and difficult and rejecting that it tortured me? And why didn't I have the strength or peace of mind to know what to do, and all this time while I fumed, I got rejected so many times. And would it really be up to me, at some point, to decide for myself what to do? Or would I just be scratching my head in the dust of (mocassin? is that what he wears?) leavetaking no. 613, and is writing things like this bad?
*
And last Christmas it was unseasonably warm, in Augusta Maine, I recall. I stolidly did nothing, as usual - (what the frig does "intrepid" mean, again? I should know, whatever that means, but don't. I have a whole slew of words to look up. Perhaps I'll do the fun elementary school thing where I look up the words, I found them in Dostoevsky: phalanstery, asserverate, brigan, mountebank: and then use them on a sentence, but obviously I'd do it on my blog.)
May start posting the blogs in Myspace as well, miss my audience a tad--but I've been being more personal on here, if that is possible. I've heard it's all a false veneer of openness anyway, these things that I do. I think I'm going to try to be more disciplined in what I write about. Maybe I'll choose little themes, but at any rate I can't talk so much about the one person, it isn't healthy. There's a time and a season but it can't be continuous/perpetual.
Last Christmas, actually, I did nothing, but not quite. I donned an aquamarine prom dress with a lot of back exposure, it was like criss crossed and long, and thinking about it now I sort of long for it. I'd like to wear a very pretty dress, as I feel a bit drab and the sun is nowhere to be seen. Before the fancy-wearing session, I walked slowly to Cumberland Farm's, bought a people magazine, and read it on a rock. I can't remember if I had coffee.
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New Year's Resolutions. Rough Draft Version.
"At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since." - Salvador Dali
1. Write 3 hours every single effing day. I have NEVER ever done this, but it is BEYOND possible.
2. Start a small cleaning business. This is vague.
3. Stop cursing frequently and drop only the occasional swear word for good effect. I'm not sure why I would put this on here but it occurs to me that it is not really hip for me to pottymouth and just makes me seem like I'm trying to be tough or something. Better to just be sincere. That would be very refreshing.
4. Read the Bible every single day. Not sure how much.
5. Don't scream at people.
6. Don't call anyone more then once in a row, esp. if their phone is on, and esp. if it is not in anyway an emergency (subjective "emergencies" do not count, and should be addressed elsewhere in the resolutions)
7. Study Latin and Spanish. Not sure what form this will take.
8. Apply to Omega and Americorps Vista.
*
Haha, now I can read about the Ennegram for hours, since it's not the New Year yet! I ought to enjoy it while it lasts.
*
Oh, speaking of taking things by force: my stepsister has a friend in the nursing home next door. Do you know how they became friends? The woman, Rose, who is about 90, was walking by the house, saw my stepsister in the window, and started yelling up at her, and hollered for her to come down. ("I think giving and receiving presents is Rose's love language." - "Oh I'll say.") There is a lot more I could say about Rose, who I met yesterday, but I'll save it for another time.
*
Peace on earth, goodwill to men. Amen.
