The programs director at the jail, who, traditionally, sometimes does not reply to my emails regarding scheduling for weeks at at time, emailed me this today: "Hi Emily. Did I hear right that you're pregnant?"
No need to be defensive. It is what it is.
Introduction to a Food Diary
February 5, 2010
5 am. a handful of dry Kashi Golean, 2 squares sugared ginger
9:15 am. bowl of Golean with about a cup of 2% milk
10:30 am. cup of Cumby's dark roast coffee with 2 tbsps cream, 1 tsp sugar
12:15 pm 2/3 can tuna with 2 tbsps mayo & chopped yellow onion on 13 or so garden herb triscuits with 2 oz. monterey jack cheese, melted. A couple handfuls Lay's potato chips. 1 large piece of pepperidge farm frozen chocolate frosted cake, 1 cup vanilla frozen yogurt, 5 sl. dried mango, 8 squares sugared ginger
5 pm. 2 bowls of casserole made of whole grain Kraft cheesy mac, fried ground turkey w/ bread cumbs and sauteed onions, oiled & salted baked sweet potato chunks, nutritional yeast. Buttercrunch chocolate donut hole. Trix yogurt, 2 squares sugared ginger.
11 pm. Hardboiled egg with salt & cayenne. 2 large bowls of Golean, Cheerios, & Wheat Chex with a cup or two 2% milk. Large apple. Large orange. 2 or 3 oz. of baked chicken thigh. 3 squares sugared ginger.
February 6
4 am. Handful dry Kashi Golean
[Dream of secret lover, feeding nutritional bars in lieu of food to a young handicapped boy, but he was neglecting him, we were this close to kissing the whole time; I was so high on marijuana my tongue could not move in my head and I thought to myself in a flash, I am just like my mother, and then I thought, and my child will be just like me, and it was frightening but also, somehow, relieving]
8 am. Handful dry Kashi Golean.
10:15 am. 1 cup Dark roast Cumby's coffee, cr. & sug
[absolute fit because future-babydaddy was lovingly creating himself a breakfast sandwich. Tupperware smashed. after a couple false starts, fut-bd left in a huff, leaving me two steaming plates of food.]
12:15 pm. 3 slices bacon, 1 scrambled egg, 1 chicken thigh [this mixing of adult & fetus ought to be unkosher] w/ skin mostly extricated, 1 cup of a brown rice/black bean/onion/canola oil/cayenne, garlic powder cumin etc. spiced stir fry. 1/2 buttered whole grain bagel. 1 large slice Pepperidge farm frozen chocolate cake, [cell phone stopped working & many attempts amidst frantic eating hovering on the stool were made to remove battery with pair of tweezers], 1 large scoop or maybe 3 of vanilla frozen yogurt/ice cream Edy's blend [which tastes like chemicals and not in a good way]
3 pm. 4 garden herb triscuits with 2 TBSPS tuna salad (tuna, mayo, cayenne, paprika, diced yellow onion)
5:40 pm. [Free supper at St. Mark's. My placemat was dirty and there was a bottle of dish soap on the table. The preemy looking guy at the table next to mine and sitting directly next to me but with a small gap between us because of the different table thing, spilled flamboyantly his coffee. I was getting fed up with all this, and the butter swiped while I was still eating a roll, until I was given, free of charge, a large container of frozen homemade chicken soup, 12 Dannon strawberry banana yogurts and an excellent loaf of Hannaford whole wheat bread, as well as kifed 5 or 6 sticky homemade fudge brownies from the tables] Shepheard's pie with round beef green peas & white potato. 1 roll with TBSP butter. 1 large brownie, 1/2 strawberry banana yogurt [split it].
6:15 pm ish. 1 lg apple, 3 sugared ginger squares.
9:30 pm. 1 garden herb triscuit with large scoop tuna salad [previously described] "pizza" flavoried veggie burger with ketchup and 3 bread & butter pickles, several bowls of popcorn with salt, melted butter, a dash of cayenne, and shittons of nutritional yeast. Sugared ginger square.
11 pm. Greasiness, a couple slices of bacon and a scrambled egg. 1/2 buttered bagel. Hardboiled egg with salt and cayenne. Bowl of vanilla frozen yogurt.
11:35 pm. [at Walmart] 8 Crybaby candies. [I did not like them]
February 7
7 am. Handful dry Golean Kashi.
10:30 am. Large bowl of Cheerios, Golean, & wheat Chex with a cup or two of 2% milk.
1:30 pm. [with Eli] Small plate of white spaghetti, mix of thin (spaghettini, is it?) and regualar with oregano, a bit of corn oil, salt & pepper and onion powder; Ragu's premade sauce and several tbsps parmesan cheese. Orange and delicious; memories of childhood.
5:50 pm. [Listening to NPR on the small cassette player] 1 cup of brown rice stirfried in oil with black beans, onions, the usual spices. 1 large plate of deep fried Chinese "orange chicken, a couple cups of pork fried rice, 1/2 an egg role, 1/2 cup steamed chopped broccoli (rather bland). The Chinese food was from Water Street and the tiny restaraunt was all smoky with some vent problem and the door propped open when I got there; everything except the egg roll was made without MSG. Though I ate the food compulsively and as though it were a guilty pleasure indeed, it tasted rather off. The chicken was for the most part stringy and tough (even now, however, I fantasize about it).
6:30 pm. 1 large red apple. 1 piece of Pepperidge farm chocolate cake, 1 large brownie left over from the dinner, cup of vanilla frozen yogurt.
11 pm. 1 bowl of Oatmeal ("Quick" kind) w. 1/2 a red apple, chopped, a lil brown sugar and butter. 1/2 an orange, a Trix yogurt.
TODAY
4 am handful Golean Kashi
10:30 am 2 bowls Cheerios & Golean Kashi with a cup or two 2% milk.
11 am 1 cup Cumby's dark roast coffee with cream and sugar.
12:30 pm. 2/3 cup of stir fried brown rice with black beans oils onions bla bla etc. A couple pieces of the infamous and dreaded pollo anaranjada. another "pizza"-flavored veggie burger, rather gross really. 1/2 a red apple.
4 pm 2 trix yogurt
[hour long walk in the cold. a glimpse of the one-time lover from the bar, the tall heavyset aspiring skinhead. wandering around eco Hannaford for nearly an hour]
6 pm. Large plate of salad: red leaf lettuce, baby carrots, cucumber, italian croutons, and red onion with creamy parm dressing. 1 bowl of the chicken soup (chicken, red potato, carrot, onion, spinach] from the folks at St. Mark's, grilled cheese (monterey jack & cheddar) with bacon on whole wheat Hannaford bread fried in butter, with garlic powder. 1 large slice of the same old cake, 1 large brownie, 2/3 cup of neopolitan Hannaford Ice cream, a bunch of whipped cream, a red apple, several squares of sugared ginger... It was very delicious, with NPR on in the back ground.. but the red onion was so pungent it burned and is still affecting my mouth...
& there will be more eating tonight, of course
Monday, February 8, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
"Any questions?" "Yeah, how do you spell 'boner'?"
I'm pretty sure no one reads this and I suppose it's a good season for talking to the wall. I've been unable to get along with anyone but strangers & acquaintances and ... I don't know. The internet is my friend. If I'm going to be a loner I ought to do something amazing. I keep going back and forth... looking at adoption sites, then I behold the little one wriggling and pulsating on the screen, receive most of the babygear I need without the humiliations of a "shower," and I'm like, oh, yes really is someone brewing in there, and I forgot, for a moment, my concerns.
Yesterday was a blessed day and today I dressed up and looked decent for the first time in awhile (until I had an absolute fit and smeared the mascara per usual) smart curve hugging clothes - I'm not showing yet of course this being my first, though I've gained around five pounds, which I could spare and I certainly have warranted with massive binges and still I am not so happy about it - metal drop earrings and make up that sort of distracted from the many eruptions of my face.
Yesterday I read and walked and ate well (and started a food journal, for a variety of reasons, not least to establish a habit for breastfeeding to track if something in particular upsets the baby). I volunteered at the foodbank with the Boys and Girls Club and it was delightful to be physical, to take items off shelves, wipe the shelves, and return the items in greater order. To put on gloves and bag up frozen cherries, to help some of the slower kids participate.
After a break for dinner and internet, I went to the jail for almost four hours. I presented and facilitated discussion of part of Ginsberg's "America" last night with the female and male inmate groups (&, as I've been doing, created impromptu pregnancy support forum with the participants, almost all of whom are parents, & if not perhaps the ultimate role models, I still appreciate the stories they have to tell).
The guard in the female block objected to someone reading "Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb," though this is what it said. Then I asked participants to write their own poem/ letter to America.
Here are some excerpts, with slight edits, & permission (except from Ginsberg):
America by Allen Ginsberg (first part)
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia....
"America Thank you for the beautiful girls we're given,
Though in other countries there's the same variety of women
To all my soldiers in county jail, I salute you
Why can't we be united like we used to?
We move things around like heroine and crack
You're worried about that, when there's terrorist acts?
Why do you act like problems solve themselves?
In an 8 by 12 cell, the equation is hell
If I was in the army I could kill and fight
But civilian kill civilian and they'd give me life...."
- J. Choate
"....
February 5 2010
The country's as fucked up
As it's ever been
Will we turn around
And do it again
Trillions of dollars
Will we ever be out of debt
Probably not
That's what I bet
Sold out to China
Too many like their food
We love their fortune cookies
But that isn't good
Telescopes hunting
For other planets that live
Another disaster
Borrow some money to give
Americans taking babies
But leaving the sick
Distracting with one hand
While the other does tricks
We'll show the world
Who has the biggest dick
Don't so no to war
Let's get into it thick
Put all the drug users
Into our jails
Until we go broke
And our system then fails
....
What will we do
When the Chinamen come
When we sell them our homes
That won't be any fun
Or maybe the Iranians
Will put us in our place
We should sell them Iraq
Reunite Persia to save face
-D. Mallett
*
Jail Anthem
I Hate Being told what to do
When to shit and how to move
What time we eat and all the food
I hate being broke as ah fucking joke
Money on the books but I can't buy smokes
Can't drive a car or even a boat
I'm sick of hearing the word Nope
I hate waking up to the bad days
Lookin around at the possible gays
Me and my duaghter can't even play
I hate that I'm back here in jail
Stuck here without any bail
Everyday they holding my mail
Rehab's nothin but a fairy tale
-J. Howard
My free write on it was much less encompassing but a little more aligned with Ginsberg's tone:
America you gave me all the cans of cubed
fruit and kidney beans a girl could
want
You measured and dated baby after
baby and said, You do whatever you want
You said, The third time's the charm
America you made me feel like a feisty piece of
shit in my 1994 Oldsmobile, your drive thrus taunting
I navigated front seat electronic window stuck at 2" open
America you've been screaming at me to "Lose the baby weight" since
I was a baby, weighing your values in the
express lane. You told me to be young and vibrant, to
focus on a career. You told me seek first the kingdom of
individuality, then effortless love would be
added unto it. I tried to
interpret my dreams they became thick with gunsmoke,
the foreign accent of Grand Theft Auto sex gods, America
you left my faither to raise us on hardtack and Genesis and
whatever he picked up at those single parent support groups.
The new wife of my father made chop suey and
eventually, whole grains. Her well behaved daughters placed the
ground wheat berries and everything else, the same amount everytime,
in a bread maching.
The old wife of my father (the dark one who lived to lose her tooth,
drunk on the pavement, weak from hepatitis), used to knead with her
dusty knuckles, measured nothing.
America I have lost all sense of proportion. I don't
know the first thing about politics. I voted for Nader the year I was 18,
and America, I hardly ever wear my seatbelt. I fantasize about dying
every day and take fish oil, valerian, probiotics.
I made a pair of mittens on a sewing machine with lots of supervision, I
was hoping to woo him slow and sweet, to turn back
time, I dragged myself antsy through the stitchy process, listening to
Miley Cyrus, who said, "If you text it, I'll delete it," among
other things.
The Greyhound bus could not make it up the snowy hill so I
walked down it with the mittens, smoking my last Pall Mall for a
very long time because despite the reinvented
argyle sweater I was
already
knocked up.
*
"America why do you have to put people in jail like Dean Mallett who needs to get out to take care of his twenty cats." - Charlie
"Do you want me to make a loud sound when the two minutes are up?" - the guy who keeps farting extremely loudly during our writing times.
"No thanks, you've contributed plenty tonight."
"She's a douchebag. I want to punch her in the face then have sex with her." - the farting guy.
"You are a misogynist. While I appreciate the comedy, I hope you never date anyone again."
*
"Don't waste your time with that Castenada stuff... It's interesting, I know, all the teleporting... I wasted a lot of time with it, but..."
"I know, it's not Gospel Truth."
Yesterday was a blessed day and today I dressed up and looked decent for the first time in awhile (until I had an absolute fit and smeared the mascara per usual) smart curve hugging clothes - I'm not showing yet of course this being my first, though I've gained around five pounds, which I could spare and I certainly have warranted with massive binges and still I am not so happy about it - metal drop earrings and make up that sort of distracted from the many eruptions of my face.
Yesterday I read and walked and ate well (and started a food journal, for a variety of reasons, not least to establish a habit for breastfeeding to track if something in particular upsets the baby). I volunteered at the foodbank with the Boys and Girls Club and it was delightful to be physical, to take items off shelves, wipe the shelves, and return the items in greater order. To put on gloves and bag up frozen cherries, to help some of the slower kids participate.
After a break for dinner and internet, I went to the jail for almost four hours. I presented and facilitated discussion of part of Ginsberg's "America" last night with the female and male inmate groups (&, as I've been doing, created impromptu pregnancy support forum with the participants, almost all of whom are parents, & if not perhaps the ultimate role models, I still appreciate the stories they have to tell).
The guard in the female block objected to someone reading "Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb," though this is what it said. Then I asked participants to write their own poem/ letter to America.
Here are some excerpts, with slight edits, & permission (except from Ginsberg):
America by Allen Ginsberg (first part)
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia....
"America Thank you for the beautiful girls we're given,
Though in other countries there's the same variety of women
To all my soldiers in county jail, I salute you
Why can't we be united like we used to?
We move things around like heroine and crack
You're worried about that, when there's terrorist acts?
Why do you act like problems solve themselves?
In an 8 by 12 cell, the equation is hell
If I was in the army I could kill and fight
But civilian kill civilian and they'd give me life...."
- J. Choate
"....
February 5 2010
The country's as fucked up
As it's ever been
Will we turn around
And do it again
Trillions of dollars
Will we ever be out of debt
Probably not
That's what I bet
Sold out to China
Too many like their food
We love their fortune cookies
But that isn't good
Telescopes hunting
For other planets that live
Another disaster
Borrow some money to give
Americans taking babies
But leaving the sick
Distracting with one hand
While the other does tricks
We'll show the world
Who has the biggest dick
Don't so no to war
Let's get into it thick
Put all the drug users
Into our jails
Until we go broke
And our system then fails
....
What will we do
When the Chinamen come
When we sell them our homes
That won't be any fun
Or maybe the Iranians
Will put us in our place
We should sell them Iraq
Reunite Persia to save face
-D. Mallett
*
Jail Anthem
I Hate Being told what to do
When to shit and how to move
What time we eat and all the food
I hate being broke as ah fucking joke
Money on the books but I can't buy smokes
Can't drive a car or even a boat
I'm sick of hearing the word Nope
I hate waking up to the bad days
Lookin around at the possible gays
Me and my duaghter can't even play
I hate that I'm back here in jail
Stuck here without any bail
Everyday they holding my mail
Rehab's nothin but a fairy tale
-J. Howard
My free write on it was much less encompassing but a little more aligned with Ginsberg's tone:
America you gave me all the cans of cubed
fruit and kidney beans a girl could
want
You measured and dated baby after
baby and said, You do whatever you want
You said, The third time's the charm
America you made me feel like a feisty piece of
shit in my 1994 Oldsmobile, your drive thrus taunting
I navigated front seat electronic window stuck at 2" open
America you've been screaming at me to "Lose the baby weight" since
I was a baby, weighing your values in the
express lane. You told me to be young and vibrant, to
focus on a career. You told me seek first the kingdom of
individuality, then effortless love would be
added unto it. I tried to
interpret my dreams they became thick with gunsmoke,
the foreign accent of Grand Theft Auto sex gods, America
you left my faither to raise us on hardtack and Genesis and
whatever he picked up at those single parent support groups.
The new wife of my father made chop suey and
eventually, whole grains. Her well behaved daughters placed the
ground wheat berries and everything else, the same amount everytime,
in a bread maching.
The old wife of my father (the dark one who lived to lose her tooth,
drunk on the pavement, weak from hepatitis), used to knead with her
dusty knuckles, measured nothing.
America I have lost all sense of proportion. I don't
know the first thing about politics. I voted for Nader the year I was 18,
and America, I hardly ever wear my seatbelt. I fantasize about dying
every day and take fish oil, valerian, probiotics.
I made a pair of mittens on a sewing machine with lots of supervision, I
was hoping to woo him slow and sweet, to turn back
time, I dragged myself antsy through the stitchy process, listening to
Miley Cyrus, who said, "If you text it, I'll delete it," among
other things.
The Greyhound bus could not make it up the snowy hill so I
walked down it with the mittens, smoking my last Pall Mall for a
very long time because despite the reinvented
argyle sweater I was
already
knocked up.
*
"America why do you have to put people in jail like Dean Mallett who needs to get out to take care of his twenty cats." - Charlie
"Do you want me to make a loud sound when the two minutes are up?" - the guy who keeps farting extremely loudly during our writing times.
"No thanks, you've contributed plenty tonight."
"She's a douchebag. I want to punch her in the face then have sex with her." - the farting guy.
"You are a misogynist. While I appreciate the comedy, I hope you never date anyone again."
*
"Don't waste your time with that Castenada stuff... It's interesting, I know, all the teleporting... I wasted a lot of time with it, but..."
"I know, it's not Gospel Truth."
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
What is a mortal sin?
"I think she'll be a girl, and I think she'll be handicapped."*
Geez.
I'm sluggish from dinner two hours ago, and slumping over in bed with "A Guide to Rational Living" in the too hot apartment. I have to move in under two months, which will definitely rain on the sloth-party. The keyboard isn't working as well as it used to and certain keys aren't sticking.
I'm trying to focus on gratitude instead of wishing things were different but it's a constant battle. My eyes are burning a bit from the heat and the tiredness. Last night I dreamt I gave birth to sextuplets. The sensation was more strange than painful (one after another). Two died in the womb and I was going to need a D & C (dilation & cutterage, a surgery that is considered fairly safe unless it's for an elective abortion). I remember being overwhelmed at the prospect of a parade of Virgos more than anything else (at one time I was sitting at a booth with the two girls and the boy who lived and they were quite grown up and though I loved them I was sort of like, man, you kids are a bit dull) Of the four I gave birth to, there were two boys and two girls. The boys were seriously handicapped and the girls were fine. One boy was almost like a corndog on a stick, which explains nothing I realize. He perished almost immediately. The other boy was severely disabled mentally and physically which ended up being somehow a beautiful experience and though it's terrible lazy for me to just drop that like a stone, I can't imagine how to convey it.
My professor Jill Rubinson (I dream of her often) was around, and I gave her a very graceful hug which is something I'm not really good at it and I always jump a bit when I do it. (I tend to be more comfortable in sexual embraces. Physical displays of platonic affection elude me). I said something about wanting to go to grad school and she very tactfully changed the focus to a sixth grade teaching job which I later realized, sadly, was because I was saddled with all the children.
Fatalism is the enemy of rationalism and I wonder what I'm doing because I don't fully expect it to improve the quality of my life but more so to bring shame and stress. I feel compelled to do it so I might as well embrace it. There are plenty of appealing notions regarding having a child and I mainly only regret the mate I chose. I keep having awful and also condescending thoughts about how it's not all about me, and perhaps it is my mission to help him and improve the quality of his life and it doesn't matter if I'm happy with him.** The last time I clearly thought this, that someone was potentially gaining far more out of the relationship than I was, was with DH, who in a matter of a few short months, shot me with a rifle.
I made good on that experience by celebrating my individuality and pursuing pleasure as I always have. I love to eat and also drink and smoke, and after the initial shock, and hospitalization, and horrid days deprived even of eating because of huge doses of anesthesia (one surgery was nine hours, which is still nothing compared to some) I settled quite comfortably into several new routines. I lived with my brother in Whitefield in a lofty three room apartment in Richmond. The room I slept in used to be the Orthodox church sanctuary when the Russians first settled there. At night he lit a candle in the ikon, which at first bothered me, but was nothing compared to the brightness of the Boston hospital.
After four months with my brother in which we bickered (once he said, "Everyone's crazy, but you're a little more crazy than everyone else" and I slapped him in the face. Now he is practically begging me to move to Kentucky to be cared for by he & his soon to be wife. He has a dazzling faith, a child like optimism which never flogs for long) , I cooked strange dinners, I went by wheelchair and then crutches to the general store a couple blocks away and lingered there for inordinate amounts of time, leaving with a banana, two sweet potatos, who now can say? After this, he decided to go to a monastery, and El had been patiently courting me for some time, beginning in the hospital during which he slept on an incredibly uncomfortable padded surface in front of the window, bummed pain medication off me (I rarely ate even half of what they administered; with the exception of one notable weekend in ICU), took my money and bought me chicken caesar salad from the cafeteria every night and shared my overflowing trays of food. We watched a lot of bad movies.
He drove out to Richmond with increasing frequency and I kept saying I'm not going to date you, I'm not going to date you, and he would say I know, that's not why I do this. And one night we went to Augusta and drank rather heavily with FP and perhaps some others in the same building where I was shot, only a different apartment, and I was going to sleep on the spare bed in his basement bedroom at his parent's house, and it was something like 3 am, and he turned off the lights, and I jumped into his bed, and he said, You're going to hurt me, and I said, Yeah, that's probably true, and we were up long after the sun rose.
And so when my brother went to the monastery I moved into an apartment with El, and though we fought miserably- I was whacking him with crutches, the computer went flying, we made ourselves hoarse... I had my own mattress which shamed him, I wanted to sleep alone, I was always on my way out, and awful, I had bangs and we made a home movie in which I berate him and bask in his attraction to me and though it is funny on some level and on an even distanter plain slightly endearing, it is shocking cruel - I remember many good things, the dinners he made me, the way the leaves looked in the sunshine like a canopy out the slanting third story windows.
I left that apartment in a whirlwind. I was hospitalized immediately after a debaucherous Thanksgiving for an infection (my foot was huge and puffy and red, streaks were going up my leg, and I remember thinking, which: emergency room, or Karaoke Night at Bridge Street Tavern?) in which I sent El away from the hospital because D, on a whim I imagine, deigned to visit me there, and I told El this over the phone on a quadruple dose of intravaneous benadryl, because I'd started to swell in the throat from a certain antibiotic, and had hopped into the hall screaming for help when no one answered the nurse call bell. And El was hysterical, cursing me, who knows, and I fell asleep under the spell of legal narcotics.
I'd been plotting my escape with the Family Violence Project Homeless Shelter for some time... what an experience, I'm too lazy to continue. I was there for four months. I hope someday I really want to write, though it all slips away so fast. I think more than anything else, being in the shelter made me want to have children because I saw how they could be a joy under even dire circumstances.
I'd rather talk about those things which are impossible to explain, like how it's much harder to be kind to someone with whom you're very familiar, & utterly entrenched in a dynamic of petty disputes, to rise above this is nothing like rejecting a person's attempt at being cruel. The way I eat all kinds of rich things, and always have, but genuinely love hardboiled eggs, mashed up with salt and cayenne, and whatever else is on the table (bits of french fry, nutritional yeast, Annie's macaroni and cheese, whatever).
*This was a superstition/fear left over/inherited from the great electrical shock of the pregnancy of spicy shalom in the year of our Lord 2010.
**There is nothing, ever, to regret in kindness. What I do, however, is never consistent. I am kind and patient for awhile, cooking food, dispensing reminders, covering costs and (now) giving rides. Then I explode in rage and criticism because I don't see my efforts rewarded. Disinterested kindness is never as investment though.
And I miss other boys who waited on me in such obvious ways. This one is a good lover and very smart but very, very stuck and ineffective. He articulated his background in a way I'd never heard him do tonight, after an unusually relaxed dinner. (I don't consider us "back together," but I am straining, nearly popping at certain times, to try to hear what he has to say. It is worth a fucking shot...as long as the hands aren't for hitting.) He said his parents are trapped in a marriage in which they both resent the other, and it keeps them from getting anywhere. His dad recents his mother for coming from snobby intellectuals, for getting a free college education at Columbia, for believing her to be a workaholic who is overly success oriented. His mother resents his father for, I'm not actually sure, but if I were her I'd resent him for not doing his share (he doesn't work, he doesn't cook nearly as much, he doesn't attend church or drive their nine year old around nearly as much), and for regularly insulting her in front of people.
The more time passes the more I realize that it is not jealousy that I feel for this family but a sort of fascination with the stuck-ness, with the potential for beauty. D. has a certain flair and I've always hunted for its origin. I keep thinking about legacy, and who can escape it? I don't know where the deeper lesson is. In sticking it out and being kind and generous, or kicking someone who doesn't do their part to the curb. I think that when I'm purely rational about it, I realize that either way is okay. It's fatalism to believe I'm cursed to a certain path that doesn't aid me (that I've gone the wrong way), as though there were one correct way to live.
There are other men, if need be. I'm as guilty as everyone else of giving D mixed messages. Sometimes I tell him he must change, he must be responsible, what is wrong with him, everyone else does it. Other times I tell him I believe he can't. It's this age old sort of unspoken debate about the difference between one who can't and one who won't. As I wrote I think only a few posts ago, it does seem that if someone won't, they can't.
My mother is not one of those people who says she's an alcoholic because she sometimes drinks too much and it's an elegant or appealing notion in many circles. My mother is a black out, fall down, front-tooth losing, seizuring, failing-liver spectacle. I have honestly never seen anything like it. When I was a kid she used to drink twenty four packs. She's 5'6" and hovers around 115 when she's eating. She says the years when my brother and I were babies were the happiest of her life and the photographic evidence heavily supports this claim. She is an amazing cook. Her homemade bread, her challah, her pie crusts and the little cinnamon rolls she makes from the scraps make me cry.
She was so afraid of me getting my period. She used to nervously broach the topic whenever I was home from school. She used to always say that when it happened to her she had no idea, that she was so scared. My mom never had a mother. She lost her in infancy to breast cancer. My father lost his own father before his first year to a heart attack. In a way it's a miracle that my brother and I are (except for perhaps me), really okay. People can rise above practically anything.
When I finally got it (my period, of course), after my first school dance in sixth grade, she was nowhere to be found.
I had forgotten how truly angry her departure when I was ten (no contact for over a year while she worked in a gift shop and got drunk in a tiny, roach-inhabited apartment in Daytona Beach with her boyfriend, whose connection to our family is one of astounding irony as he was an old high school friend of my father's who resurfaced three years before the affair when he- my father - was suicidal over his own violence and failure and in this opportune environment, he, the soon-to-be boyfriend of my mother, converted my father to fundamentalist Christianity; he, the new-boyfriend, also had the same full name as my brother's then-best friend) made me until a few days ago when we had a spat regarding whether or not she would offer me support in terms of childcare. She was rather evasive, kept saying, I'll do what I can. When I asked her to please be more specific to help me plan the best course of action, she was unusually hostile. She said, What do you want me to do? Move in with you? Take care of your child all the time because you don't want to? I said, You're a bitch, and hung up the phone.
This was three days ago or so. She's been sober for months because she has hepatitis and could easily die if she's not. She is a great mystery to me and someone I'm inclined to avoid even when I give her accolades from afar and fantasize about her split pea soup with the stringy pieces of ham.
I haven't felt like writing any of this. I think I'm going to do some planning. I don't know if I want to write about my own life or not. It is simply the most accessible and the most potentially authentic, but it's growing rather boring to me.
Geez.
I'm sluggish from dinner two hours ago, and slumping over in bed with "A Guide to Rational Living" in the too hot apartment. I have to move in under two months, which will definitely rain on the sloth-party. The keyboard isn't working as well as it used to and certain keys aren't sticking.
I'm trying to focus on gratitude instead of wishing things were different but it's a constant battle. My eyes are burning a bit from the heat and the tiredness. Last night I dreamt I gave birth to sextuplets. The sensation was more strange than painful (one after another). Two died in the womb and I was going to need a D & C (dilation & cutterage, a surgery that is considered fairly safe unless it's for an elective abortion). I remember being overwhelmed at the prospect of a parade of Virgos more than anything else (at one time I was sitting at a booth with the two girls and the boy who lived and they were quite grown up and though I loved them I was sort of like, man, you kids are a bit dull) Of the four I gave birth to, there were two boys and two girls. The boys were seriously handicapped and the girls were fine. One boy was almost like a corndog on a stick, which explains nothing I realize. He perished almost immediately. The other boy was severely disabled mentally and physically which ended up being somehow a beautiful experience and though it's terrible lazy for me to just drop that like a stone, I can't imagine how to convey it.
My professor Jill Rubinson (I dream of her often) was around, and I gave her a very graceful hug which is something I'm not really good at it and I always jump a bit when I do it. (I tend to be more comfortable in sexual embraces. Physical displays of platonic affection elude me). I said something about wanting to go to grad school and she very tactfully changed the focus to a sixth grade teaching job which I later realized, sadly, was because I was saddled with all the children.
Fatalism is the enemy of rationalism and I wonder what I'm doing because I don't fully expect it to improve the quality of my life but more so to bring shame and stress. I feel compelled to do it so I might as well embrace it. There are plenty of appealing notions regarding having a child and I mainly only regret the mate I chose. I keep having awful and also condescending thoughts about how it's not all about me, and perhaps it is my mission to help him and improve the quality of his life and it doesn't matter if I'm happy with him.** The last time I clearly thought this, that someone was potentially gaining far more out of the relationship than I was, was with DH, who in a matter of a few short months, shot me with a rifle.
I made good on that experience by celebrating my individuality and pursuing pleasure as I always have. I love to eat and also drink and smoke, and after the initial shock, and hospitalization, and horrid days deprived even of eating because of huge doses of anesthesia (one surgery was nine hours, which is still nothing compared to some) I settled quite comfortably into several new routines. I lived with my brother in Whitefield in a lofty three room apartment in Richmond. The room I slept in used to be the Orthodox church sanctuary when the Russians first settled there. At night he lit a candle in the ikon, which at first bothered me, but was nothing compared to the brightness of the Boston hospital.
After four months with my brother in which we bickered (once he said, "Everyone's crazy, but you're a little more crazy than everyone else" and I slapped him in the face. Now he is practically begging me to move to Kentucky to be cared for by he & his soon to be wife. He has a dazzling faith, a child like optimism which never flogs for long) , I cooked strange dinners, I went by wheelchair and then crutches to the general store a couple blocks away and lingered there for inordinate amounts of time, leaving with a banana, two sweet potatos, who now can say? After this, he decided to go to a monastery, and El had been patiently courting me for some time, beginning in the hospital during which he slept on an incredibly uncomfortable padded surface in front of the window, bummed pain medication off me (I rarely ate even half of what they administered; with the exception of one notable weekend in ICU), took my money and bought me chicken caesar salad from the cafeteria every night and shared my overflowing trays of food. We watched a lot of bad movies.
He drove out to Richmond with increasing frequency and I kept saying I'm not going to date you, I'm not going to date you, and he would say I know, that's not why I do this. And one night we went to Augusta and drank rather heavily with FP and perhaps some others in the same building where I was shot, only a different apartment, and I was going to sleep on the spare bed in his basement bedroom at his parent's house, and it was something like 3 am, and he turned off the lights, and I jumped into his bed, and he said, You're going to hurt me, and I said, Yeah, that's probably true, and we were up long after the sun rose.
And so when my brother went to the monastery I moved into an apartment with El, and though we fought miserably- I was whacking him with crutches, the computer went flying, we made ourselves hoarse... I had my own mattress which shamed him, I wanted to sleep alone, I was always on my way out, and awful, I had bangs and we made a home movie in which I berate him and bask in his attraction to me and though it is funny on some level and on an even distanter plain slightly endearing, it is shocking cruel - I remember many good things, the dinners he made me, the way the leaves looked in the sunshine like a canopy out the slanting third story windows.
I left that apartment in a whirlwind. I was hospitalized immediately after a debaucherous Thanksgiving for an infection (my foot was huge and puffy and red, streaks were going up my leg, and I remember thinking, which: emergency room, or Karaoke Night at Bridge Street Tavern?) in which I sent El away from the hospital because D, on a whim I imagine, deigned to visit me there, and I told El this over the phone on a quadruple dose of intravaneous benadryl, because I'd started to swell in the throat from a certain antibiotic, and had hopped into the hall screaming for help when no one answered the nurse call bell. And El was hysterical, cursing me, who knows, and I fell asleep under the spell of legal narcotics.
I'd been plotting my escape with the Family Violence Project Homeless Shelter for some time... what an experience, I'm too lazy to continue. I was there for four months. I hope someday I really want to write, though it all slips away so fast. I think more than anything else, being in the shelter made me want to have children because I saw how they could be a joy under even dire circumstances.
I'd rather talk about those things which are impossible to explain, like how it's much harder to be kind to someone with whom you're very familiar, & utterly entrenched in a dynamic of petty disputes, to rise above this is nothing like rejecting a person's attempt at being cruel. The way I eat all kinds of rich things, and always have, but genuinely love hardboiled eggs, mashed up with salt and cayenne, and whatever else is on the table (bits of french fry, nutritional yeast, Annie's macaroni and cheese, whatever).
*This was a superstition/fear left over/inherited from the great electrical shock of the pregnancy of spicy shalom in the year of our Lord 2010.
**There is nothing, ever, to regret in kindness. What I do, however, is never consistent. I am kind and patient for awhile, cooking food, dispensing reminders, covering costs and (now) giving rides. Then I explode in rage and criticism because I don't see my efforts rewarded. Disinterested kindness is never as investment though.
And I miss other boys who waited on me in such obvious ways. This one is a good lover and very smart but very, very stuck and ineffective. He articulated his background in a way I'd never heard him do tonight, after an unusually relaxed dinner. (I don't consider us "back together," but I am straining, nearly popping at certain times, to try to hear what he has to say. It is worth a fucking shot...as long as the hands aren't for hitting.) He said his parents are trapped in a marriage in which they both resent the other, and it keeps them from getting anywhere. His dad recents his mother for coming from snobby intellectuals, for getting a free college education at Columbia, for believing her to be a workaholic who is overly success oriented. His mother resents his father for, I'm not actually sure, but if I were her I'd resent him for not doing his share (he doesn't work, he doesn't cook nearly as much, he doesn't attend church or drive their nine year old around nearly as much), and for regularly insulting her in front of people.
The more time passes the more I realize that it is not jealousy that I feel for this family but a sort of fascination with the stuck-ness, with the potential for beauty. D. has a certain flair and I've always hunted for its origin. I keep thinking about legacy, and who can escape it? I don't know where the deeper lesson is. In sticking it out and being kind and generous, or kicking someone who doesn't do their part to the curb. I think that when I'm purely rational about it, I realize that either way is okay. It's fatalism to believe I'm cursed to a certain path that doesn't aid me (that I've gone the wrong way), as though there were one correct way to live.
There are other men, if need be. I'm as guilty as everyone else of giving D mixed messages. Sometimes I tell him he must change, he must be responsible, what is wrong with him, everyone else does it. Other times I tell him I believe he can't. It's this age old sort of unspoken debate about the difference between one who can't and one who won't. As I wrote I think only a few posts ago, it does seem that if someone won't, they can't.
My mother is not one of those people who says she's an alcoholic because she sometimes drinks too much and it's an elegant or appealing notion in many circles. My mother is a black out, fall down, front-tooth losing, seizuring, failing-liver spectacle. I have honestly never seen anything like it. When I was a kid she used to drink twenty four packs. She's 5'6" and hovers around 115 when she's eating. She says the years when my brother and I were babies were the happiest of her life and the photographic evidence heavily supports this claim. She is an amazing cook. Her homemade bread, her challah, her pie crusts and the little cinnamon rolls she makes from the scraps make me cry.
She was so afraid of me getting my period. She used to nervously broach the topic whenever I was home from school. She used to always say that when it happened to her she had no idea, that she was so scared. My mom never had a mother. She lost her in infancy to breast cancer. My father lost his own father before his first year to a heart attack. In a way it's a miracle that my brother and I are (except for perhaps me), really okay. People can rise above practically anything.
When I finally got it (my period, of course), after my first school dance in sixth grade, she was nowhere to be found.
I had forgotten how truly angry her departure when I was ten (no contact for over a year while she worked in a gift shop and got drunk in a tiny, roach-inhabited apartment in Daytona Beach with her boyfriend, whose connection to our family is one of astounding irony as he was an old high school friend of my father's who resurfaced three years before the affair when he- my father - was suicidal over his own violence and failure and in this opportune environment, he, the soon-to-be boyfriend of my mother, converted my father to fundamentalist Christianity; he, the new-boyfriend, also had the same full name as my brother's then-best friend) made me until a few days ago when we had a spat regarding whether or not she would offer me support in terms of childcare. She was rather evasive, kept saying, I'll do what I can. When I asked her to please be more specific to help me plan the best course of action, she was unusually hostile. She said, What do you want me to do? Move in with you? Take care of your child all the time because you don't want to? I said, You're a bitch, and hung up the phone.
This was three days ago or so. She's been sober for months because she has hepatitis and could easily die if she's not. She is a great mystery to me and someone I'm inclined to avoid even when I give her accolades from afar and fantasize about her split pea soup with the stringy pieces of ham.
I haven't felt like writing any of this. I think I'm going to do some planning. I don't know if I want to write about my own life or not. It is simply the most accessible and the most potentially authentic, but it's growing rather boring to me.
Monday, February 1, 2010
shit
For a long time I have wondered how big of a crisis it will require to make me take the Kingdom by force. To make me love God above all others. I thought the gunshot, that gasping and soaked-sweating on the threshold of two rooms, beggint to live, would transform my character in remarkable ways but it did not. As I've noted elsewhere (Myspace, for example), it merely reinforced certain character traits I was already aware of. That I generally will endure anything, but I do it partly by making the people around me utterly miserable, bitching the whole way through; crying through the finish line. Or walking through it.
I do, generally, finish what I truly set out to do, and rather well, but I don't enjoy the process. I am certainly "neurotic" but in some ways the type that has a very hard time but presses on. Does this make me superior to those who give up in their frustration? Not at all, considering the hell I put the people who try to care for me through on a regular basis.
You see, I don't mean to. I never set out to hurt anyone. I don't think anyone did, except for perhaps after a certain point. How to reconcile this innocence of intention with original sin is a question for the philosophers and theologians but I don't think intention and nature are one in the same. We intend to be better than our nature, I think. Sometimes we succeed, and it's beautiful.
So much pain could have been spared, so many trials avoided. I never had to have this pregnancy under these circumstances. I never had to be hanging around with that guy who shot me. There were warning signs galore in these and many other of the situations I complain about and even garner sympathy for; plenty of opportunities to flee, and genuine rallying of the soul, to do so.
As the the leaders of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy teach, however, one bad choice does not doom one to keep making them. No situation utterly compels anyone to be miserable. For sure, many parts of life are unpleasant and annoying. They concede that when faced with the death of a loved one, there are no thoughts which can stop the grief process, and that this is part of our biology and what helps us survive. At the same time, we tend to react with our physiological alarms to trifles as though they were tragedies.
My current situation is perhaps in between (a trife and a tragedy), in transition?
I'm a little distracted because I lent my car, not that it's of great worth, but it's all I have, to someone without a license. That someone is my (again, my what? I can't call him my boyfriend, my fiance, or anything. Or I don't care to, at this point) he's my... co-producer in this freakshow, so to speak, and he's been rather awful these past few weeks, and then, so have I. But I'll be damned if I don't try to be civil.
So after several apologies from him, and several days without speaking, and a scenario yesterday in which I scored tons of free baby gear from his friend RF (which surprised me deeply; I honestly thought he wouldn't give it up, out of arbitrary spite. And then he did; he and his child's mother saved me -us? I'll say me, for now- hours and hours of hunting at the least and perhaps up to a thousand dollars). I got a state of the art crib, two strollers, a high chair, a changing table, a swing. It restored my faith in this process not a little. I will be honest in saying that I resent having to spend tons of money on a creature that cannot even socialize with me. I know some would condemn me for such an attitude. But sometimes I think these feelings are better expressed (in an appropriate context, not to the child or anywhere they will unearth... or maybe, I don't know; Anne Lammott wrote vividly in her best-selling memoir of single-parenting an infant of her homicidal fantasies in that postpartum haze, and many from those trenches - i.e., other parents- were relieved more than disgusted) then repressed.
My original point being that I am trying to be civil to the father of my child, and give him a thorough benefit of the doubt. On Thursday we had an awful scene and he snapped his cell phone in frustration and proclaimed, "Now I really won't be getting any jobs," or something of that manner.
He hasn't had a phone since, so I did something that is not in the vein of tough love. But he had given me a small amount of money, so I picked him up from his friend R's, where he and his younger brother C were painting (C for money, he for effing guitar pedals; that is another haunting tale) the kitchen. I brought him bologna and cheddar on a buttered and toasted sesame bagel and two plump donut holes, and I bought him a cordless phone and an answering machine, since the house he lives in co-owned by his father (and two uncles, inherited from his late grandmother) has phone service. That way he can use that line for jobs, and not pay for a cell if he doesn't.
He seems attached to the cell, I don't know why, but at least he has a more practical option now. I also let him drive. But than I let him take the car to get me a sundae by himself and he has been gone over half an hour and I am quite upset.
to be continued
I do, generally, finish what I truly set out to do, and rather well, but I don't enjoy the process. I am certainly "neurotic" but in some ways the type that has a very hard time but presses on. Does this make me superior to those who give up in their frustration? Not at all, considering the hell I put the people who try to care for me through on a regular basis.
You see, I don't mean to. I never set out to hurt anyone. I don't think anyone did, except for perhaps after a certain point. How to reconcile this innocence of intention with original sin is a question for the philosophers and theologians but I don't think intention and nature are one in the same. We intend to be better than our nature, I think. Sometimes we succeed, and it's beautiful.
So much pain could have been spared, so many trials avoided. I never had to have this pregnancy under these circumstances. I never had to be hanging around with that guy who shot me. There were warning signs galore in these and many other of the situations I complain about and even garner sympathy for; plenty of opportunities to flee, and genuine rallying of the soul, to do so.
As the the leaders of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy teach, however, one bad choice does not doom one to keep making them. No situation utterly compels anyone to be miserable. For sure, many parts of life are unpleasant and annoying. They concede that when faced with the death of a loved one, there are no thoughts which can stop the grief process, and that this is part of our biology and what helps us survive. At the same time, we tend to react with our physiological alarms to trifles as though they were tragedies.
My current situation is perhaps in between (a trife and a tragedy), in transition?
I'm a little distracted because I lent my car, not that it's of great worth, but it's all I have, to someone without a license. That someone is my (again, my what? I can't call him my boyfriend, my fiance, or anything. Or I don't care to, at this point) he's my... co-producer in this freakshow, so to speak, and he's been rather awful these past few weeks, and then, so have I. But I'll be damned if I don't try to be civil.
So after several apologies from him, and several days without speaking, and a scenario yesterday in which I scored tons of free baby gear from his friend RF (which surprised me deeply; I honestly thought he wouldn't give it up, out of arbitrary spite. And then he did; he and his child's mother saved me -us? I'll say me, for now- hours and hours of hunting at the least and perhaps up to a thousand dollars). I got a state of the art crib, two strollers, a high chair, a changing table, a swing. It restored my faith in this process not a little. I will be honest in saying that I resent having to spend tons of money on a creature that cannot even socialize with me. I know some would condemn me for such an attitude. But sometimes I think these feelings are better expressed (in an appropriate context, not to the child or anywhere they will unearth... or maybe, I don't know; Anne Lammott wrote vividly in her best-selling memoir of single-parenting an infant of her homicidal fantasies in that postpartum haze, and many from those trenches - i.e., other parents- were relieved more than disgusted) then repressed.
My original point being that I am trying to be civil to the father of my child, and give him a thorough benefit of the doubt. On Thursday we had an awful scene and he snapped his cell phone in frustration and proclaimed, "Now I really won't be getting any jobs," or something of that manner.
He hasn't had a phone since, so I did something that is not in the vein of tough love. But he had given me a small amount of money, so I picked him up from his friend R's, where he and his younger brother C were painting (C for money, he for effing guitar pedals; that is another haunting tale) the kitchen. I brought him bologna and cheddar on a buttered and toasted sesame bagel and two plump donut holes, and I bought him a cordless phone and an answering machine, since the house he lives in co-owned by his father (and two uncles, inherited from his late grandmother) has phone service. That way he can use that line for jobs, and not pay for a cell if he doesn't.
He seems attached to the cell, I don't know why, but at least he has a more practical option now. I also let him drive. But than I let him take the car to get me a sundae by himself and he has been gone over half an hour and I am quite upset.
to be continued
Saturday, January 30, 2010
And nobody ever thanked me for teaching them the art of love
As always, I am kidding. (And pay steeply for my jokes)
It's the full moon, the time of my period, is this phantom PMS I feel?
Like J, I've been (albeit, very noncommittally/pessimistically ) trying to think of a way to make money writing. I have this idea that I could be rather original. I have a desire to be able to stay home with the baby. (I do want to keep the baby, I just don't know, how to stop repeating myself.) Vague ideas regarding sending poems to magazines. I did enter a magazine essay contest once. For Real & Simple, $3000 cash prize. The topic was to describe the most important day of your life, and I alluded to my gunshot injury in the most discursive, rambling, and anticlimactic fashion possible. I wrote until I reached 1500 words, and stopped. I think I've lost it in the shuffle.
The blogosphere seems beyond my comprehension, and I'm too stubborn to honor themes. I feel like if I'm freelancing on assigned topics, it's not really writing, but perhaps that is a symptom of immaturity. Of course if I actually found a way to make money, I'd probably feel different. The truth is that focus can sharpen and enhance the process of writing; I found a certain energy in writing literary analysis. Narrowing my approach to the defense of a thesis actually seemed to make me more creative, because I have a tendency to string words together rather thoughtlessly, to write as though (I always use this unremarkable metaphor) paddling idly in a canoe. (Do I need a sugar-daddy to support my child's need for recreation, for the great outdoors?)
I've never been so pregnant before, and it's barely started. The past couple weeks have been an astounding exercise in isolation, mostly because I push people away, as the saying goes. I haven't conversed with anyone in my family or had any social interactions except poor El, with whom I'm keeping it clean and honestly have no romantic interest in. What his motives are, only God can say- but he is engaging and sympathetic company. I haven't talked to D in a few days, though I received a very apologetic email (which I wrote back to as diplomatically as possible; I see the benefit in leaving the lines open) and a couple phone calls. He gives up so easily though, and I need my space. Yes, I secretly wish he would fight to “win” my affection back, but I know the way he is, and the way we've been, and those are the fantasies of a young girl, and I have bigger fish to fry.
(I wasn't the first and I won't be the last, but at the end of the day I'm alone. / It might have been curse or a veritable blast, if I'dve just let it grown.)
The high points in my week were- besides eating, of course- babysitting a ten year old and visiting my mentee at the Boys and Girl's Club. I had a couple appointments in the morning which knocked me out for the rest of the day-- I've been sleeping 10 + hours a night -- reduced me in fatigue to a screaming, sobbing toddler. As I contemplate the last few days, my eyes get wet.
And sometimes the only thing that makes it feel better is realizing that it's not really a big deal. Instead of touting a ruined life like a mantra, realize that there are many paths. You took a certain path, big deal. It is never too late to be forgiven by God, to become enlightened, and to act responsibly. And though no power on earth, no brush with death or fantastic heartbreak, has ever shaped me up, that too- that being inured to change*- is a common enough plight. Nothing is new under the sun, and no mistake I'm making has not been made, and anything can happen. What I fear most of all is my aversion to social contact, when I need it the most. I already feel heavy and awkward. The dragging laziness of a day in which I force myself to go for a brief walk to get a little sunshine and exercise, only to obliterate any benefit with huge meals and laying in bed the rest of the day, and to wash the dishes, looking upon the dirty walls and dirty floor and really cursing the day I was born; where was I?
As if this is redeemed or transformed by communicating. This isn't communicating/ the story has no moral. I am no victim.
And life comes from the wretchedest places, slips through the booze shaped cracks, and mean people spring the loveliest faces, Don't turn back & just relax.
The writing, well, that's another story. I just want to be not depressed and not a fucking bitch.
(*A single mother I admire listed as one of her interests on her Myspace profile "being forced into change kicking and screaming." She is one of many young mothers with little support who thrives despite not being particularly maternal, not being totally overjoyed at motherhood. You don't have to feel it's the best thing to ever happen to you to do a good job, it's okay even to think you should have waited. You just protect your child from these feelings as is age appropriate, and are committed and loving, and grow into your role. <- Best case scenario. I'm very afraid)
We'd do anything to laugh, man. The father of my child, the father of my child, is not meek or kind or wild, The father of my child, the father of my child … Someday I will write a babydaddy poem.
It's 7:40 and I'm boiling eggs. I will eat several of them with multiple bowls of cereal, keefer, and hopefully not too much else. I have been ravenous, the old wives' tales point to a boy. I'm almost at the point where I think if it's a boy I'll have it put up for adoption. I know that's flippant and evil but where are all those babydaddies? Sure, the tide is shifting, incrementally, but seriously, where are all the baby daddies? Why do we blame the women? (Do you think your the fucking prime minister, you shoot out a wad of embargo. / The priests tell you fornication is sinister, but women they carry the cargo. )
Although in many ways I am grateful to be in America and am almost positive I will be fed and sheltered, I am angry at this culture for contributing to my impulsivity and isolation. While in the final count, my blame rests on me, our society is hysterical, the fucking tabloids man, the baby mania and the in vitro and the push-pull of finding a man or saving yourself. Sometimes it really is better to be alone, I've never felt more certain. Anyway, someday I will tell you all my opinions about how we attract people who seem like tyrants for good reason, how none of us are more wrong than anyone else, etc. But I walk in a fog of hunger. The only thing that seems pegged down is when I am perched on my stool (I've developed an aversion to the chair I usually sit in) hovered over a plate of food, devouring it without the interruption of silverware or other human beings.
(Nobody once asked me, would you like to be born. / There was no invitation*, no allegiance was sworn. )
*Or was there?
The "Scarlett Letter" stood for Adultery. A. Abortion. Adoption. And and and and and
It's the full moon, the time of my period, is this phantom PMS I feel?
Like J, I've been (albeit, very noncommittally/pessimistically ) trying to think of a way to make money writing. I have this idea that I could be rather original. I have a desire to be able to stay home with the baby. (I do want to keep the baby, I just don't know, how to stop repeating myself.) Vague ideas regarding sending poems to magazines. I did enter a magazine essay contest once. For Real & Simple, $3000 cash prize. The topic was to describe the most important day of your life, and I alluded to my gunshot injury in the most discursive, rambling, and anticlimactic fashion possible. I wrote until I reached 1500 words, and stopped. I think I've lost it in the shuffle.
The blogosphere seems beyond my comprehension, and I'm too stubborn to honor themes. I feel like if I'm freelancing on assigned topics, it's not really writing, but perhaps that is a symptom of immaturity. Of course if I actually found a way to make money, I'd probably feel different. The truth is that focus can sharpen and enhance the process of writing; I found a certain energy in writing literary analysis. Narrowing my approach to the defense of a thesis actually seemed to make me more creative, because I have a tendency to string words together rather thoughtlessly, to write as though (I always use this unremarkable metaphor) paddling idly in a canoe. (Do I need a sugar-daddy to support my child's need for recreation, for the great outdoors?)
I've never been so pregnant before, and it's barely started. The past couple weeks have been an astounding exercise in isolation, mostly because I push people away, as the saying goes. I haven't conversed with anyone in my family or had any social interactions except poor El, with whom I'm keeping it clean and honestly have no romantic interest in. What his motives are, only God can say- but he is engaging and sympathetic company. I haven't talked to D in a few days, though I received a very apologetic email (which I wrote back to as diplomatically as possible; I see the benefit in leaving the lines open) and a couple phone calls. He gives up so easily though, and I need my space. Yes, I secretly wish he would fight to “win” my affection back, but I know the way he is, and the way we've been, and those are the fantasies of a young girl, and I have bigger fish to fry.
(I wasn't the first and I won't be the last, but at the end of the day I'm alone. / It might have been curse or a veritable blast, if I'dve just let it grown.)
The high points in my week were- besides eating, of course- babysitting a ten year old and visiting my mentee at the Boys and Girl's Club. I had a couple appointments in the morning which knocked me out for the rest of the day-- I've been sleeping 10 + hours a night -- reduced me in fatigue to a screaming, sobbing toddler. As I contemplate the last few days, my eyes get wet.
And sometimes the only thing that makes it feel better is realizing that it's not really a big deal. Instead of touting a ruined life like a mantra, realize that there are many paths. You took a certain path, big deal. It is never too late to be forgiven by God, to become enlightened, and to act responsibly. And though no power on earth, no brush with death or fantastic heartbreak, has ever shaped me up, that too- that being inured to change*- is a common enough plight. Nothing is new under the sun, and no mistake I'm making has not been made, and anything can happen. What I fear most of all is my aversion to social contact, when I need it the most. I already feel heavy and awkward. The dragging laziness of a day in which I force myself to go for a brief walk to get a little sunshine and exercise, only to obliterate any benefit with huge meals and laying in bed the rest of the day, and to wash the dishes, looking upon the dirty walls and dirty floor and really cursing the day I was born; where was I?
As if this is redeemed or transformed by communicating. This isn't communicating/ the story has no moral. I am no victim.
And life comes from the wretchedest places, slips through the booze shaped cracks, and mean people spring the loveliest faces, Don't turn back & just relax.
The writing, well, that's another story. I just want to be not depressed and not a fucking bitch.
(*A single mother I admire listed as one of her interests on her Myspace profile "being forced into change kicking and screaming." She is one of many young mothers with little support who thrives despite not being particularly maternal, not being totally overjoyed at motherhood. You don't have to feel it's the best thing to ever happen to you to do a good job, it's okay even to think you should have waited. You just protect your child from these feelings as is age appropriate, and are committed and loving, and grow into your role. <- Best case scenario. I'm very afraid)
We'd do anything to laugh, man. The father of my child, the father of my child, is not meek or kind or wild, The father of my child, the father of my child … Someday I will write a babydaddy poem.
It's 7:40 and I'm boiling eggs. I will eat several of them with multiple bowls of cereal, keefer, and hopefully not too much else. I have been ravenous, the old wives' tales point to a boy. I'm almost at the point where I think if it's a boy I'll have it put up for adoption. I know that's flippant and evil but where are all those babydaddies? Sure, the tide is shifting, incrementally, but seriously, where are all the baby daddies? Why do we blame the women? (Do you think your the fucking prime minister, you shoot out a wad of embargo. / The priests tell you fornication is sinister, but women they carry the cargo. )
Although in many ways I am grateful to be in America and am almost positive I will be fed and sheltered, I am angry at this culture for contributing to my impulsivity and isolation. While in the final count, my blame rests on me, our society is hysterical, the fucking tabloids man, the baby mania and the in vitro and the push-pull of finding a man or saving yourself. Sometimes it really is better to be alone, I've never felt more certain. Anyway, someday I will tell you all my opinions about how we attract people who seem like tyrants for good reason, how none of us are more wrong than anyone else, etc. But I walk in a fog of hunger. The only thing that seems pegged down is when I am perched on my stool (I've developed an aversion to the chair I usually sit in) hovered over a plate of food, devouring it without the interruption of silverware or other human beings.
(Nobody once asked me, would you like to be born. / There was no invitation*, no allegiance was sworn. )
*Or was there?
The "Scarlett Letter" stood for Adultery. A. Abortion. Adoption. And and and and and
Friday, January 29, 2010
I've replaced coffee with keefer
What was once a disgrace becomes a point of pride, reverse shot, and so on. Dream of heavy chocolate presence, liquid form, the analogy of the Holy Trinity as water- whether steam, liquid, or ice: all is water/only the form changes-- more disturbing images, too: the Mormon's belief that God is a man about 6 feet tall, living on a planet near such and such planet, who had sex with Mary, and the fact that Egyptian religions had the same story of a Savior (Horus, I believe it was) walking on water, healing people, killed, resurrected after three days found by two women and "oh yeah, he had twelve disciples."
The old excitement I feel before each meal, the plotting, the strange punctuation in the days which are otherwise dragging through. The heavy let-down of afterwards, the desire to doze through life and only wake up for meals. Nobody has to work, nobody has to live, nobody has to do a damn thing. That is what I must keep reminding myself again and again, as I choose to do this or that small thing which feels so monumental in my tiny perspective. I remembered in my heaving sobs and animal cries that it's not work which overwhelms me. Or ever has. I've always been a heavy sobber, a damsel in distress (though never strikingly beautiful, only such a girl in my hysteria with charm peeping through, and it's sick to say such things, and I took a picture of myself on my cell phone after I was shot with a rifle, after the secret shames; I wasn't going to waste those special tears). I think about pizza and remember that I've cried in the same way and for the same vague reasons since I was five if not earlier: it's a feeling of exclusion, a feeling of not being loved, not being graceful with other people. Blocked in turns by too-rabid need and self-loathing which oozes out to others. I ponder facebook photos with jealousy that drops in the gut. People buying houses, having careers, and announcing pregnancies with unadulterated joy. Today I stand near a boy I used to crush for, hard, drinking PBR and listening to his "beats," and I choke down the change, the outrageous demarcation of my impulse: how I cannot now- or for a long time, or so I've framed it- hunt the way I've amorously hunted, for years. Today I saw someone's gut and almost blanched with disgust. May I pay dearly for such bullshit.
And, now, I drive around, in my extremely cheap car, I visit my mentee and almost give up on him when he yells at some younger kids for eating chips which were put there for everyone, and he senses how I recoil, and grows very manic and even misty-eyed and talks about how everyone at the Club makes such a difference in everyone's life, and I'm preoccupied with an orange, I try to cut corners, my waist must now disappear however, I so long for a tabloid; and when you're on a path... I miss having my period, I miss it very much. I get flickers of longing for the violent sexuality of just a couple months ago. I sustain myself less with faith, I'm sorry to say, and more with curiosity. I remind myself that I always valued, at least ideologically, richness (whatever that means) more than comfort.
And how I love to sleep, and sleep, and sleep. At least the father of the child to be, at least he knew how to touch me in a way I loved. At least we made the child doing something I think he was very, very good at. And his entire life so far reserved for me. I don't hate him, I don't hate him at all. I suppose if there is a God in Heaven - that's not me doubting by the way, I don't know, "Doubt, that's what I'm selling" - He knows what I need. I may need this. I thought I'd gone long enough feeling miserable and isolated, that I'd already passed through the vision M. had of me lying on my back screaming in such misery that he felt the strong urge to look away even from his (presumably nebulous) palm-reading vision. The other part of the "reading" was this: that some day I would help people. Whatever that means, I hope it is true. It seems so very distant, right now, my little efforts obviously perfunctory mockeries to love
And what do I have to give you, baby?
The old excitement I feel before each meal, the plotting, the strange punctuation in the days which are otherwise dragging through. The heavy let-down of afterwards, the desire to doze through life and only wake up for meals. Nobody has to work, nobody has to live, nobody has to do a damn thing. That is what I must keep reminding myself again and again, as I choose to do this or that small thing which feels so monumental in my tiny perspective. I remembered in my heaving sobs and animal cries that it's not work which overwhelms me. Or ever has. I've always been a heavy sobber, a damsel in distress (though never strikingly beautiful, only such a girl in my hysteria with charm peeping through, and it's sick to say such things, and I took a picture of myself on my cell phone after I was shot with a rifle, after the secret shames; I wasn't going to waste those special tears). I think about pizza and remember that I've cried in the same way and for the same vague reasons since I was five if not earlier: it's a feeling of exclusion, a feeling of not being loved, not being graceful with other people. Blocked in turns by too-rabid need and self-loathing which oozes out to others. I ponder facebook photos with jealousy that drops in the gut. People buying houses, having careers, and announcing pregnancies with unadulterated joy. Today I stand near a boy I used to crush for, hard, drinking PBR and listening to his "beats," and I choke down the change, the outrageous demarcation of my impulse: how I cannot now- or for a long time, or so I've framed it- hunt the way I've amorously hunted, for years. Today I saw someone's gut and almost blanched with disgust. May I pay dearly for such bullshit.
And, now, I drive around, in my extremely cheap car, I visit my mentee and almost give up on him when he yells at some younger kids for eating chips which were put there for everyone, and he senses how I recoil, and grows very manic and even misty-eyed and talks about how everyone at the Club makes such a difference in everyone's life, and I'm preoccupied with an orange, I try to cut corners, my waist must now disappear however, I so long for a tabloid; and when you're on a path... I miss having my period, I miss it very much. I get flickers of longing for the violent sexuality of just a couple months ago. I sustain myself less with faith, I'm sorry to say, and more with curiosity. I remind myself that I always valued, at least ideologically, richness (whatever that means) more than comfort.
And how I love to sleep, and sleep, and sleep. At least the father of the child to be, at least he knew how to touch me in a way I loved. At least we made the child doing something I think he was very, very good at. And his entire life so far reserved for me. I don't hate him, I don't hate him at all. I suppose if there is a God in Heaven - that's not me doubting by the way, I don't know, "Doubt, that's what I'm selling" - He knows what I need. I may need this. I thought I'd gone long enough feeling miserable and isolated, that I'd already passed through the vision M. had of me lying on my back screaming in such misery that he felt the strong urge to look away even from his (presumably nebulous) palm-reading vision. The other part of the "reading" was this: that some day I would help people. Whatever that means, I hope it is true. It seems so very distant, right now, my little efforts obviously perfunctory mockeries to love
And what do I have to give you, baby?
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Open Letter to the IRS
Just Kidding, of course
if you need your money you can have it. i'm not trying to punish or starve you. neither of us is seeing the others perspective with much empathy or logic. so many things go through my head... i don't ever know how "tough" to be. before picking you up at uma, i thought about getting a breakfast sandwich for myself at bagelmainea than thought well, that's mean...he's probably starving... then i thought about getting you one. then i thought maybe we could eat at my house since you'd brought food over. rejecting eating with me is rejecting me, and a chance at a family. it doesn't solve anything from my perspective, but i guess closure must be your biggest priority. that's fine; i can't say i blame you but it's a big step & perhaps only because of this impulsive and still-foolish (i think i at least can possibly make it something better, with a great deal of faith and determination) pregnancy.
food is not my religion though it is a preoccupation, and a damn healthy one in a lot of ways. in some ways, not so much but at least i'm trying to choose something that doesn't drag me all the way down. (but i am dragged down, i am floundering, and it is not a game) sometimes i think drugs - including coffee - are yours. i can tear anyone apart in my mind, or put them on a pedestal. it's all mostly illusion, a certain arrangement of facts & impressions. another cell phone lost in the shuffle... and who knows when we pass the line of no turning back.
what i'm complaining about in terms of what you are or aren't doing is in some ways no different than the alcoholic who claims they have a disease. it's not like any of this just happened to either of us. we are responsible-- but also helpless, because we are diseased, because we are fallen. it's sad though common and i can see surprisingly, without doing anything about, the lockdown we are in, how the other seems positively evil... also, how dedicated we are to this misery, since either one of us making a step towards kindness or vulnerability is consistently rebuffed. i understand you struggle but i also think you're deeply, deeply selfish- in a way that goes much farther than frosting.
that comment about how i divide dessert as a way of proving my stinginess seemed really stupid to me, btw. you know what i've given you, and what you've given me-- and my eating tics are no worse than yours: you who says like a broken record you can do nothing/have no drive, but are always heating up your food so it's just right, drinking another cup of coffee; buying for yourself and hunting a buzz, regardless of your debts. nobody can make you feel guilty. legitimate guilt is objective, either you are or you aren't. there is a baby on the way and you think everything will be fine, today you said people are raised in all kinds of situations. but i promise you, anytime a baby is raised there is ALWAYS someone who considers a baby someone worth being very concerned about, that it's a very urgent matter. i don't think that will be you, and i'm sure in the grand scheme, for the baby at least, it's mostly okay. while at the same time, completely unacceptable. i'm sorry i said you were going to hell. i have no idea. i don't even know what that means, but I believe God reigns over the wicked and the just. I don't know which you are, and contemplating it brings only further suffering. but i've had enough of your foolish ultimatums. you don't know what you're talking about, you don't know how to thrive, so stop lecturing me & telling me i'm a mess, when you positively revel in being a nonentity
if you need your money you can have it. i'm not trying to punish or starve you. neither of us is seeing the others perspective with much empathy or logic. so many things go through my head... i don't ever know how "tough" to be. before picking you up at uma, i thought about getting a breakfast sandwich for myself at bagelmainea than thought well, that's mean...he's probably starving... then i thought about getting you one. then i thought maybe we could eat at my house since you'd brought food over. rejecting eating with me is rejecting me, and a chance at a family. it doesn't solve anything from my perspective, but i guess closure must be your biggest priority. that's fine; i can't say i blame you but it's a big step & perhaps only because of this impulsive and still-foolish (i think i at least can possibly make it something better, with a great deal of faith and determination) pregnancy.
food is not my religion though it is a preoccupation, and a damn healthy one in a lot of ways. in some ways, not so much but at least i'm trying to choose something that doesn't drag me all the way down. (but i am dragged down, i am floundering, and it is not a game) sometimes i think drugs - including coffee - are yours. i can tear anyone apart in my mind, or put them on a pedestal. it's all mostly illusion, a certain arrangement of facts & impressions. another cell phone lost in the shuffle... and who knows when we pass the line of no turning back.
what i'm complaining about in terms of what you are or aren't doing is in some ways no different than the alcoholic who claims they have a disease. it's not like any of this just happened to either of us. we are responsible-- but also helpless, because we are diseased, because we are fallen. it's sad though common and i can see surprisingly, without doing anything about, the lockdown we are in, how the other seems positively evil... also, how dedicated we are to this misery, since either one of us making a step towards kindness or vulnerability is consistently rebuffed. i understand you struggle but i also think you're deeply, deeply selfish- in a way that goes much farther than frosting.
that comment about how i divide dessert as a way of proving my stinginess seemed really stupid to me, btw. you know what i've given you, and what you've given me-- and my eating tics are no worse than yours: you who says like a broken record you can do nothing/have no drive, but are always heating up your food so it's just right, drinking another cup of coffee; buying for yourself and hunting a buzz, regardless of your debts. nobody can make you feel guilty. legitimate guilt is objective, either you are or you aren't. there is a baby on the way and you think everything will be fine, today you said people are raised in all kinds of situations. but i promise you, anytime a baby is raised there is ALWAYS someone who considers a baby someone worth being very concerned about, that it's a very urgent matter. i don't think that will be you, and i'm sure in the grand scheme, for the baby at least, it's mostly okay. while at the same time, completely unacceptable. i'm sorry i said you were going to hell. i have no idea. i don't even know what that means, but I believe God reigns over the wicked and the just. I don't know which you are, and contemplating it brings only further suffering. but i've had enough of your foolish ultimatums. you don't know what you're talking about, you don't know how to thrive, so stop lecturing me & telling me i'm a mess, when you positively revel in being a nonentity
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
these figurative bullets, like the (also figurative, but much more evocative) ones hurled in grand theft auto
may be unnecessary.
- I broke up with my boyfriend tonight. Implications or permanency of this decision to be announced. For now I feel calm. He displayed violence again, not direct, but he had a zoney zombie look in his eyes and spent yet another day doing nothing tangible or goal oriented while I scrambled. I don't have the energy to frame this more compassionately.
- The priorities of a single woman determined to taste fleeting nectars, and destroy herself, temporarily, with lust, are quite different from a woman already thinking of being a mother.
- On one website for low income/ teenage/ whatever mothers (I consider myself to have some things in common with teenage mothers, particularly in light of major demographic shifts) I was perusing weeks ago, I read that one of the best coping mechanisms a pregnant woman could learn was to stop relying on a disinterested boyfriend for support. This stuck with me.
- I started a lucrative, and convenient, nannying job today with a ten year old boy I used to baby sit five years ago. He's very special and musical and rowdy. He has a motorbike that he loves and made sauteed mushrooms with teryaki sauce AND oregano. In the throes of the first trimester, I feel almost murdered by that combination, but I like his spirit. He's a tough guy but leaned on my shoulder a little when I read out loud to him.
- I bought a car today for only $800, and six months worth of insurance. It has some issues (the driver's seat window is stuck in the partly open position, but that's easily fixed, I hear, with an easy-to-install motor; the radio stopped working but El suspects it's the fuse) but it runs great, and no payments.
- I had an OB consult yesterday morning. "Is the father in the picture?" "Not really, but he contributed some good genetics, I think." Need blood work done, see the doctor on Monday, and a dreaded pap smear. But if I can't handle that... it's gonna be rough. (Caeserean! Caeserean! But no...)
- I got offered an interesting job that I applied for - direct support, in-home and giving rides/ going for outings with individuals with mental retardation or mental health "issues"- for a decent wage and lots of hours but they can't guarantee I wouldn't be exposed to heavy tobacco smoke, so I probably can't take it. I may just try it out, see whether this happens, and quit immediately if it does, even though that's a dishonest approach.
- Although I'm sort of taking care of business, it all falls rather flat in the face of remembering what is about to go down.
- I LOVE cereal. With sliced banana. I've been eating such rich nonsense, I forgot how good the plain and subtly sweet can be.
- I broke up with my boyfriend tonight. Implications or permanency of this decision to be announced. For now I feel calm. He displayed violence again, not direct, but he had a zoney zombie look in his eyes and spent yet another day doing nothing tangible or goal oriented while I scrambled. I don't have the energy to frame this more compassionately.
- The priorities of a single woman determined to taste fleeting nectars, and destroy herself, temporarily, with lust, are quite different from a woman already thinking of being a mother.
- On one website for low income/ teenage/ whatever mothers (I consider myself to have some things in common with teenage mothers, particularly in light of major demographic shifts) I was perusing weeks ago, I read that one of the best coping mechanisms a pregnant woman could learn was to stop relying on a disinterested boyfriend for support. This stuck with me.
- I started a lucrative, and convenient, nannying job today with a ten year old boy I used to baby sit five years ago. He's very special and musical and rowdy. He has a motorbike that he loves and made sauteed mushrooms with teryaki sauce AND oregano. In the throes of the first trimester, I feel almost murdered by that combination, but I like his spirit. He's a tough guy but leaned on my shoulder a little when I read out loud to him.
- I bought a car today for only $800, and six months worth of insurance. It has some issues (the driver's seat window is stuck in the partly open position, but that's easily fixed, I hear, with an easy-to-install motor; the radio stopped working but El suspects it's the fuse) but it runs great, and no payments.
- I had an OB consult yesterday morning. "Is the father in the picture?" "Not really, but he contributed some good genetics, I think." Need blood work done, see the doctor on Monday, and a dreaded pap smear. But if I can't handle that... it's gonna be rough. (Caeserean! Caeserean! But no...)
- I got offered an interesting job that I applied for - direct support, in-home and giving rides/ going for outings with individuals with mental retardation or mental health "issues"- for a decent wage and lots of hours but they can't guarantee I wouldn't be exposed to heavy tobacco smoke, so I probably can't take it. I may just try it out, see whether this happens, and quit immediately if it does, even though that's a dishonest approach.
- Although I'm sort of taking care of business, it all falls rather flat in the face of remembering what is about to go down.
- I LOVE cereal. With sliced banana. I've been eating such rich nonsense, I forgot how good the plain and subtly sweet can be.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Gonna head down south to the Bible belt, gonna find a man who makes money from pelts
"Never again will their rage be starved whacking absorbs to no end. When they say blow all of your defensive cooldown, they mean it!"
*
One of my favorite street-lurking lunatics (and I, have been one, this is for certain), who used to wear a purple afro-wig everywhere, and is terribly moody, to the point of making me draw back, wounded, from his buffs after pleasantries just days before, was wearing a hard hat by Kennebec Market at the bottom of Sand Hill a couple days ago, a little before noon, in the sunshine. I asked, "Are you wearing the hard hat to protect you from icicles?" "I make believe there's a war going on," he said. "I make believe there's bombs going off. It makes me feel better." "Cool," I said.
*
I never believed it would happen, but pregnancy really can destroy sex drive, create the most consuming aversion towards the one who helped you get there in the first place. I don't really want to dwell on it, it's just incredible how different I feel and, from a spiritual standpoint, probably a gift. It's like a disease, this hyperconsciousness of annoyance... how he putzes around the kitchen, frets about warming his berries, the texture of his oatmeal, and than says he can't taste anything, that he doesn't want to celebrate food, that people who call it "luscious" and "savory" annoy him.
We argue about the strangest things. I tell him I dream I go on horseback to a stream to harvest honey and he says dreams like this, with very obvious symbols, represent archetypes and thus have universal meaning. Though I believe in archetypes, I reject any objective interpretation imposed on my dream. (Though at another point I might feel exactly the opposite, because I easily identify with those who bemoan people who let their "feelings" be moral guides, and disregard the idea of a stable, external reality. astro.com says my inner nature is one of reason. What a shame, those other parts. The trouble I'm in, my god. And so pedestrian, and I don't want to tell my father!)
I don't think there's any way we can be happy together. I always thought that was such a stupid thing for people to say, that any two could make it work and just wouldn't, and I'm having to swallow so many prideful, ignorant words. Here's the thing, though. Maybe we could make it work. But neither of us will make even the smallest concessions. Why is a mystery. Clearly we are not full of the spirit of God, not even remotely enlightened... and perhaps our souls are saving us for something better, too. But, here: If we won't get along, we can't get along. It's like that with anything. Again, the Pastor at Kennebec Valley Assembley of God told D. it's not God's Will for D. to not do anything with his life, to refuse to pick a path, have direction, etc. And I think, in retrospect, that God's Will is what happens, that we are arrogant to assume we are entitled to the grace essential to rising above our selfish brain, our deranged hearts, our ever-present longing for inertia.
*
At the food bank a couple days ago, my old acquaintance Tom, who always says he owes me many "bucks," though he does not, I give him a couple bucks here and there, over the years, which he spends on booze, but where there's a will there's a way, and actually, codependence is stronger when you're trying to PREVENT the alcoholic from drinking, rather than helping them indirectly, I've gathered. Anyway, he's wonderful and humble, and it's more for me than for him that I quickly and almost with an air of embarrassment grab a few dollars and thrust them in his hand, he said to me once, he stopped me on the corner of State and Bridge and said, "You used to work down at Hannaford. You were always working so hard. I admire a work ethic. I don't work myself, but I admire a strong work ethic." Once he brought in empty bottles in a cat carrying case and almost broke down in tears over losing his cat when he went to Riverview. He brought up the cat again at the food bank. He asked me if his smell bothered me, said loudly- he says everything loudly, but not offensively- that he was incontinent. In trying to describe him to D. before we both were at the foodbank, I'd described him as handsome and clean-cut, both things which are, technically, not true, but I was misled by his halo of kindness. I'm not doing him justice at all. No one likes to sit by him at the soup kitchen because he sneezes and coughs all over his plate. When he stopped me on the street years ago he said, "I saw you a year and a half ago. You looked sad."
*
"The first of this type is a gem indeed. They have long since acquiesed to the grand design of Blizzard and accepted the sacred bond of warrior and healer. They realized long ago that behind every great warrior is a dedicated and tough as bricks healer who through their symbiotic relationship is able to accomplish his calling in life as well... which is to piss people the hell off."
*
Usually I meet the male inmates for creative writing in the huge upstairs library and there's no guard but this week we were on the first floor in the denser "classroom" space, with computers, and a big desk, and there was a guard. At first I thought I'd be too inhibited, but it ended up being quite wonderful, because when the men got laughing, the guard laughed too, and I felt a fleeting camaradie that I was grateful to have the smallest connection to. (I brought in a poem by Jack Prelutsky, a children's poet in the vein of Shel Silverstein, who wrote What if Your Nose Wasn't on Your Face, or something, and this cocky white MC type, who raps on the "outside," said he could write something just like it, than burst forth with verses about What if Your Penis Wasn't on Your Waist... it was pretty good.)
This older man, Peter, was snarling back and forth with the hugely obese, strangely lecherous seeming man with pretty eyes, who says his ex-wife is a Doctor and he lives off her support, that they're "best friends," etc., whatever- I couldn't tell if they were joking or not. Peter, who's been coming to group a lot and is getting out on Tuesday, broke down crying after an exercise to write his life in six words and cried, in outrage, "My life can't be summed up in six words!" And said that he was tired of missing his daughters, that he'd missed the birth of one of his grandchildren. And the big guy said, "It's okay Peter, you're getting out Tuesday, you can tell us all about it." And than Peter seemed to instantly start joking and bantering and talking over people so that I was very confused and he struck me as rather unstable and I was almost angry for the compassion I felt.
Dean, on the other hand, is always calm. Dean, who sits to my right, and is bipolar, and has a plate in his head, and had something like sixteen kitties at the time of his incarceration, and mourns constantly for their soft skin and purring more than any human person, and is learning the Muslim religion, while not abandoning the other. Sweet Dean!
("To me you seem precious and rare / Next to you I feel complete / Without you, feelings of despair / And life doesn't seem so sweet. I've sunk into a depression / You instill in me a certain lust / Without you there's no expression / Ashes to ashes and dust to dust . . . Over me you have control / To this I do agree / To you I'd give my body and soul / You quiet the beast in me. I've developed an attachment / An adherence you could say / But I'm just a beggar / So for you I'll pray")
Sweet, two-timing Dean, writing love letters to Martha, though not in lofty verse, but more like "I'm horny, ha, ha." A chameleon, shifting for his audience (though she dismissed him in gales of laughter as a douchebag, and I for my part don't see him as any less steadfast for hid du-multi?-plicity...)
*
I've been dreaming of the boy I often dream about but in real life could not easily be with. We were on top of a very tall cliff and I handed him a coy, almost a love note (and thought to myself, I always do that, I'll never change), and began to scale down it, very scared. He said to just go with the pattern of the rocks, to step with the groove, or something. Last night he was there again and all his fingers were cut off. I dreamt that Gilmore was acting horrible and drawing out a scene with a rifle. First he shot himself. Finally, he shot D in the head. I just ran and ran and ran for it, on some level grateful for the finality of such an evil scene. I keep having to escape in these dreams.
I dreamt I was at the Doctor's office, having some horrible, boring drawn out conversation with D. when I saw a boy I used to date when I was 18, a tall Leo, a fan of graphic design, Tool; who I didn't really jive with, but he had a certain force I liked, and this is what he did: I hadn't seen him (in real life, in the dream) for years, and he sort of jumped on me, and hung up the cell phone I was on. I shrieked with joy. I appreciated such masculinity! I dreamt of pepperoni pizza, and popcorn, an outdoor swimming pool and a nice deck, like being a teenager again with the parents not home, but you can't go back silly, and I dreamt of a saying and a big poster: "Big Eyes and Radiant Happiness Can Make Any Face Beautiful," and there was a photo of Audrey Hepburn only the bottom of her face was completely deformed.
But, I, have neither big eyes nor radiant happiness.
And there's more to people than beauty.
*
One of my favorite street-lurking lunatics (and I, have been one, this is for certain), who used to wear a purple afro-wig everywhere, and is terribly moody, to the point of making me draw back, wounded, from his buffs after pleasantries just days before, was wearing a hard hat by Kennebec Market at the bottom of Sand Hill a couple days ago, a little before noon, in the sunshine. I asked, "Are you wearing the hard hat to protect you from icicles?" "I make believe there's a war going on," he said. "I make believe there's bombs going off. It makes me feel better." "Cool," I said.
*
I never believed it would happen, but pregnancy really can destroy sex drive, create the most consuming aversion towards the one who helped you get there in the first place. I don't really want to dwell on it, it's just incredible how different I feel and, from a spiritual standpoint, probably a gift. It's like a disease, this hyperconsciousness of annoyance... how he putzes around the kitchen, frets about warming his berries, the texture of his oatmeal, and than says he can't taste anything, that he doesn't want to celebrate food, that people who call it "luscious" and "savory" annoy him.
We argue about the strangest things. I tell him I dream I go on horseback to a stream to harvest honey and he says dreams like this, with very obvious symbols, represent archetypes and thus have universal meaning. Though I believe in archetypes, I reject any objective interpretation imposed on my dream. (Though at another point I might feel exactly the opposite, because I easily identify with those who bemoan people who let their "feelings" be moral guides, and disregard the idea of a stable, external reality. astro.com says my inner nature is one of reason. What a shame, those other parts. The trouble I'm in, my god. And so pedestrian, and I don't want to tell my father!)
I don't think there's any way we can be happy together. I always thought that was such a stupid thing for people to say, that any two could make it work and just wouldn't, and I'm having to swallow so many prideful, ignorant words. Here's the thing, though. Maybe we could make it work. But neither of us will make even the smallest concessions. Why is a mystery. Clearly we are not full of the spirit of God, not even remotely enlightened... and perhaps our souls are saving us for something better, too. But, here: If we won't get along, we can't get along. It's like that with anything. Again, the Pastor at Kennebec Valley Assembley of God told D. it's not God's Will for D. to not do anything with his life, to refuse to pick a path, have direction, etc. And I think, in retrospect, that God's Will is what happens, that we are arrogant to assume we are entitled to the grace essential to rising above our selfish brain, our deranged hearts, our ever-present longing for inertia.
*
At the food bank a couple days ago, my old acquaintance Tom, who always says he owes me many "bucks," though he does not, I give him a couple bucks here and there, over the years, which he spends on booze, but where there's a will there's a way, and actually, codependence is stronger when you're trying to PREVENT the alcoholic from drinking, rather than helping them indirectly, I've gathered. Anyway, he's wonderful and humble, and it's more for me than for him that I quickly and almost with an air of embarrassment grab a few dollars and thrust them in his hand, he said to me once, he stopped me on the corner of State and Bridge and said, "You used to work down at Hannaford. You were always working so hard. I admire a work ethic. I don't work myself, but I admire a strong work ethic." Once he brought in empty bottles in a cat carrying case and almost broke down in tears over losing his cat when he went to Riverview. He brought up the cat again at the food bank. He asked me if his smell bothered me, said loudly- he says everything loudly, but not offensively- that he was incontinent. In trying to describe him to D. before we both were at the foodbank, I'd described him as handsome and clean-cut, both things which are, technically, not true, but I was misled by his halo of kindness. I'm not doing him justice at all. No one likes to sit by him at the soup kitchen because he sneezes and coughs all over his plate. When he stopped me on the street years ago he said, "I saw you a year and a half ago. You looked sad."
*
"The first of this type is a gem indeed. They have long since acquiesed to the grand design of Blizzard and accepted the sacred bond of warrior and healer. They realized long ago that behind every great warrior is a dedicated and tough as bricks healer who through their symbiotic relationship is able to accomplish his calling in life as well... which is to piss people the hell off."
*
Usually I meet the male inmates for creative writing in the huge upstairs library and there's no guard but this week we were on the first floor in the denser "classroom" space, with computers, and a big desk, and there was a guard. At first I thought I'd be too inhibited, but it ended up being quite wonderful, because when the men got laughing, the guard laughed too, and I felt a fleeting camaradie that I was grateful to have the smallest connection to. (I brought in a poem by Jack Prelutsky, a children's poet in the vein of Shel Silverstein, who wrote What if Your Nose Wasn't on Your Face, or something, and this cocky white MC type, who raps on the "outside," said he could write something just like it, than burst forth with verses about What if Your Penis Wasn't on Your Waist... it was pretty good.)
This older man, Peter, was snarling back and forth with the hugely obese, strangely lecherous seeming man with pretty eyes, who says his ex-wife is a Doctor and he lives off her support, that they're "best friends," etc., whatever- I couldn't tell if they were joking or not. Peter, who's been coming to group a lot and is getting out on Tuesday, broke down crying after an exercise to write his life in six words and cried, in outrage, "My life can't be summed up in six words!" And said that he was tired of missing his daughters, that he'd missed the birth of one of his grandchildren. And the big guy said, "It's okay Peter, you're getting out Tuesday, you can tell us all about it." And than Peter seemed to instantly start joking and bantering and talking over people so that I was very confused and he struck me as rather unstable and I was almost angry for the compassion I felt.
Dean, on the other hand, is always calm. Dean, who sits to my right, and is bipolar, and has a plate in his head, and had something like sixteen kitties at the time of his incarceration, and mourns constantly for their soft skin and purring more than any human person, and is learning the Muslim religion, while not abandoning the other. Sweet Dean!
("To me you seem precious and rare / Next to you I feel complete / Without you, feelings of despair / And life doesn't seem so sweet. I've sunk into a depression / You instill in me a certain lust / Without you there's no expression / Ashes to ashes and dust to dust . . . Over me you have control / To this I do agree / To you I'd give my body and soul / You quiet the beast in me. I've developed an attachment / An adherence you could say / But I'm just a beggar / So for you I'll pray")
Sweet, two-timing Dean, writing love letters to Martha, though not in lofty verse, but more like "I'm horny, ha, ha." A chameleon, shifting for his audience (though she dismissed him in gales of laughter as a douchebag, and I for my part don't see him as any less steadfast for hid du-multi?-plicity...)
*
I've been dreaming of the boy I often dream about but in real life could not easily be with. We were on top of a very tall cliff and I handed him a coy, almost a love note (and thought to myself, I always do that, I'll never change), and began to scale down it, very scared. He said to just go with the pattern of the rocks, to step with the groove, or something. Last night he was there again and all his fingers were cut off. I dreamt that Gilmore was acting horrible and drawing out a scene with a rifle. First he shot himself. Finally, he shot D in the head. I just ran and ran and ran for it, on some level grateful for the finality of such an evil scene. I keep having to escape in these dreams.
I dreamt I was at the Doctor's office, having some horrible, boring drawn out conversation with D. when I saw a boy I used to date when I was 18, a tall Leo, a fan of graphic design, Tool; who I didn't really jive with, but he had a certain force I liked, and this is what he did: I hadn't seen him (in real life, in the dream) for years, and he sort of jumped on me, and hung up the cell phone I was on. I shrieked with joy. I appreciated such masculinity! I dreamt of pepperoni pizza, and popcorn, an outdoor swimming pool and a nice deck, like being a teenager again with the parents not home, but you can't go back silly, and I dreamt of a saying and a big poster: "Big Eyes and Radiant Happiness Can Make Any Face Beautiful," and there was a photo of Audrey Hepburn only the bottom of her face was completely deformed.
But, I, have neither big eyes nor radiant happiness.
And there's more to people than beauty.
Monday, January 18, 2010
One morning streaked with sunshine I was chatting through the long ambulance ride to Portland and asked the attendant from my stretcher,
What is the worst pain you ever experienced?
Dried apricots lodged into a scone can make one so very sad, if there was a teenage time when one used to sit with a plastic tin of them and eat and eat, squishing the little misshapen fruit coins between the fingers.
I'm worried that some of you are missing the nuances of Augusta. Inside your cars you may not understand the people sitting in front of Kennebec Market at the bottom of Sand Hill, a Ma & Pa store with cheap Pall Malls and suspicious owners. I'm not trying to be critical. I'm just worried.
That microwaved 4 o clock veggie burger barely registed a dent. At 12:45, I had two scrambled eggs and lots of baked beans, half a buttered onion bagel, half a PayDay, half a Nutrageous. I'm dreaming of some Cheeseburger Helper (Hamburger Helper's deranged twin brother, according to "Family Guy") concoction for dinner. I've been reading blogs for hours, mostly "mommy blogs," and wondering what I have to add to any of it.
I keep dreaming of other men, and last night there was some sort of scandalous threesome - or more - immediately after I received all kinds of free "health" bars, but they were the type full of sugar alcohol, and those always fill me with gas. Anyway, these sexual exploits took place out by some car seemingly in the snow. On the brink of climax, I thought of the article about the three gay men in the basement, one of them shooting the other in the head with a gun the shooter claims he didn't know was loaded. Stepping into one world from another, but eros has a sort of recklessness, and the fear didn't catch. I slept for 12 hours, woke up with my head pounding, looked at my phone which had no new messages or calls, and felt a very old blankness, a descent into something awful.
Still I'm worried & indeed, sorrowful almost unto death, about losing luminosity in motherhood (old ideas from certain toltec traditions, particularly whatever Castenada was espousing), though I see compelling alternatives. There is strength in weakness and humility. Lust is thinking about what you can get, and love about what you can give. I would do well to serve the latter. I've demonstrated some creativity but being all wrapped up in myself has drained me so that there's not actually much time or energy available for artistic or helping endeavors. I think it's entirely possible that giving birth, if approached selflessly and courageously, could open new channels - whatever that means. Second chakra issues embraced/transformed, the need for the energy of decisive, initiating Aries. My mother and I are having one of our things ("That's character assassination!" she cried when I suggested she was more interested in scones and exercise routines than the most cursory investigation into what would actually be helpful for me), she's the shadowy figure bearing all kinds of my south node (Libra) energy, and I may not be able to stay close to her. How ridiculous is that? And do I really need to strike out on my own? And who can I trust? Having a child can be very isolating and in no way guarantees that the much needed "village" will open its arms. And do "daddy" (!) and I have to separate, for purposes of actualization? Sometimes it seems heartlessly inevitable. On the other hand, who knows? Who knows what is inevitable or even what the time frame is. Perhaps one of us will die sooner than expected, whatever that means (he's older than me and we think I'll die first and I've sometimes thought, I never got anytime here [by which I mean, on earth] to myself!])
R. said that J. realized she'd entered into an "unhealthy situation" after a comment was made about this being someone's support network. That was it. That pissed me off, and made me content not to grovel, not that I'd planned on it anyway. I was like, "Yeah, women supporting each other is so unhealthy." And he said, "It's not that, but you guys didn't support her." Oh, okay. I remember immersing myself in a 200 page or something novel, being complimentary, alert and interested. You know what I think is unhealthy? Somebody's boyfriend getting involved in relationships with female friends. When a young woman tells me she wants to be friends and than her partner starts bombarding me with texts about why she doesn't. Get some boundaries, people. And don't rejoice in having something else to stew over, it's bad for digestion.
*
Also, if it was such a bad move to have children, why would so many people do it? It's like I have to convince myself of something, and it's very sad. I've always romanticized having a little one, but on some level I can relate to someone who said, "I'm at the point where I'd just like to see what they look like, and then send them back." It's not that I'm planning on being negligent or that I'm uninterested in the rearing and education of a human being. But I do wonder day in and day out what I possibly have to offer, when I don't get along with many people and sometimes struggle with the smallest tasks, like taking a shower (and this sluggishness is certainly compounded by the fatigue and nausea of the first trimester). Some people make everything look easy. Others have killed themselves over far, far less. I don't consider suicide an acceptable option because of religious beliefs which I'm sorry to say are not all Judeo Christian. I've also cluttered my astral body with many tenets from spiritualism, or whatever, and think that trying to escape through "checking out" early can only exacerbate the pain we are here to embrace. And after all the time imagining I was probably an old soul, according to some I'm the youngest kind, due to a whole life straining towards that Aries (first sign of the Zodiac) north node.
At any rate, when the going gets real tough, I play strange tricks on myself. I pretend I have only six months to live, for example. I'm not trying to be crude or awful. Certainly being mindful of death (and I may have only six minutes to live, who knows?) puts everything in perspective and sometimes it's good to play it in such a way that things can only look up.
Dried apricots lodged into a scone can make one so very sad, if there was a teenage time when one used to sit with a plastic tin of them and eat and eat, squishing the little misshapen fruit coins between the fingers.
I'm worried that some of you are missing the nuances of Augusta. Inside your cars you may not understand the people sitting in front of Kennebec Market at the bottom of Sand Hill, a Ma & Pa store with cheap Pall Malls and suspicious owners. I'm not trying to be critical. I'm just worried.
That microwaved 4 o clock veggie burger barely registed a dent. At 12:45, I had two scrambled eggs and lots of baked beans, half a buttered onion bagel, half a PayDay, half a Nutrageous. I'm dreaming of some Cheeseburger Helper (Hamburger Helper's deranged twin brother, according to "Family Guy") concoction for dinner. I've been reading blogs for hours, mostly "mommy blogs," and wondering what I have to add to any of it.
I keep dreaming of other men, and last night there was some sort of scandalous threesome - or more - immediately after I received all kinds of free "health" bars, but they were the type full of sugar alcohol, and those always fill me with gas. Anyway, these sexual exploits took place out by some car seemingly in the snow. On the brink of climax, I thought of the article about the three gay men in the basement, one of them shooting the other in the head with a gun the shooter claims he didn't know was loaded. Stepping into one world from another, but eros has a sort of recklessness, and the fear didn't catch. I slept for 12 hours, woke up with my head pounding, looked at my phone which had no new messages or calls, and felt a very old blankness, a descent into something awful.
Still I'm worried & indeed, sorrowful almost unto death, about losing luminosity in motherhood (old ideas from certain toltec traditions, particularly whatever Castenada was espousing), though I see compelling alternatives. There is strength in weakness and humility. Lust is thinking about what you can get, and love about what you can give. I would do well to serve the latter. I've demonstrated some creativity but being all wrapped up in myself has drained me so that there's not actually much time or energy available for artistic or helping endeavors. I think it's entirely possible that giving birth, if approached selflessly and courageously, could open new channels - whatever that means. Second chakra issues embraced/transformed, the need for the energy of decisive, initiating Aries. My mother and I are having one of our things ("That's character assassination!" she cried when I suggested she was more interested in scones and exercise routines than the most cursory investigation into what would actually be helpful for me), she's the shadowy figure bearing all kinds of my south node (Libra) energy, and I may not be able to stay close to her. How ridiculous is that? And do I really need to strike out on my own? And who can I trust? Having a child can be very isolating and in no way guarantees that the much needed "village" will open its arms. And do "daddy" (!) and I have to separate, for purposes of actualization? Sometimes it seems heartlessly inevitable. On the other hand, who knows? Who knows what is inevitable or even what the time frame is. Perhaps one of us will die sooner than expected, whatever that means (he's older than me and we think I'll die first and I've sometimes thought, I never got anytime here [by which I mean, on earth] to myself!])
R. said that J. realized she'd entered into an "unhealthy situation" after a comment was made about this being someone's support network. That was it. That pissed me off, and made me content not to grovel, not that I'd planned on it anyway. I was like, "Yeah, women supporting each other is so unhealthy." And he said, "It's not that, but you guys didn't support her." Oh, okay. I remember immersing myself in a 200 page or something novel, being complimentary, alert and interested. You know what I think is unhealthy? Somebody's boyfriend getting involved in relationships with female friends. When a young woman tells me she wants to be friends and than her partner starts bombarding me with texts about why she doesn't. Get some boundaries, people. And don't rejoice in having something else to stew over, it's bad for digestion.
*
Also, if it was such a bad move to have children, why would so many people do it? It's like I have to convince myself of something, and it's very sad. I've always romanticized having a little one, but on some level I can relate to someone who said, "I'm at the point where I'd just like to see what they look like, and then send them back." It's not that I'm planning on being negligent or that I'm uninterested in the rearing and education of a human being. But I do wonder day in and day out what I possibly have to offer, when I don't get along with many people and sometimes struggle with the smallest tasks, like taking a shower (and this sluggishness is certainly compounded by the fatigue and nausea of the first trimester). Some people make everything look easy. Others have killed themselves over far, far less. I don't consider suicide an acceptable option because of religious beliefs which I'm sorry to say are not all Judeo Christian. I've also cluttered my astral body with many tenets from spiritualism, or whatever, and think that trying to escape through "checking out" early can only exacerbate the pain we are here to embrace. And after all the time imagining I was probably an old soul, according to some I'm the youngest kind, due to a whole life straining towards that Aries (first sign of the Zodiac) north node.
At any rate, when the going gets real tough, I play strange tricks on myself. I pretend I have only six months to live, for example. I'm not trying to be crude or awful. Certainly being mindful of death (and I may have only six minutes to live, who knows?) puts everything in perspective and sometimes it's good to play it in such a way that things can only look up.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
C'mon America, Let's Eat!
What is this about loyalty and not all people deserving the same level of kindness? And Jesus said he came to divide mother and father, and child and parent, because... we must lose our lives to find them. We're all blinded by our attachments, our idiosyncratic preferences. And I don't know when or if we should rely on our "feelings," for moral compass. Just saying I don't know, is all. And what is this about "knowing," who is right, and who is wrong? Rumi said beyond the two there is a field I'll meet you there. I'm interested in that field.
*
"World's Smallest mother to give birth for the third time" at:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1226443/Worlds-smallest-mother-risk-giving-birth-time.html
Her first child inherited her condition (which is difficult to describe, but is very small) which outraged many respondents while others lept to her defense and argued that disability does not automatically decrease an individual's chances of a fulfilling life.
*
Living in America I often feel oppressed by abstractions like the status of my education, my parenting "philosophy," how I stand on this or that issue; what I want to pursue for a career path. Meanwhile, I'm living the good life, feasting day in, day out.
So I've decided maybe I'll focus on food, for awhile, and maybe I'll go back to Myspace. I certainly don't feel punished, though**... But I think I'll write about food. I was perusing several of the "ED" blogs, with their vivid photos of foods, and it's rather a vital, if overcrowded, niche. I've always had a hearty appetite, my own bout with disordered eating, and a life-long love. (I will say that many of the girls I wondered what they meant by "recovery," when they still appeared frankly emaciated, but we come in all kindsa packages ayuh, and perhaps I'm just preemptively bitter re some big stretchin 'bout to go down)
I don't know if this is because of the hormones coursing through my body, preparing for significantly increased blood volume, the secret and illustrious production of a human being, etc, etc: but eating has never been so blissful for me. **I'm sad about recent events, the swift downfall of our little blogging threesome, I'm hopeful for its restitution or something to take its place. Last night I actually dreamt of salad, not the snobby kind I usually gravitate towards with spring mix and seasoned almonds and feta, but good old iceberg, red onions, shredded carrot cucumber and a zesty italian. Cool.
I slept until 11, the sleep of forgetting, and roused myself for immediate consumption of something high protein: left- over pork chop, and a couple spoonfuls of peas with curry and tandoori. I lounged around net-surfing, on the quest to sate myself with opinions, the ambivalence of others, and myriad horror stories related to my current, surprisingly common, condition.
After a small cup of dark roast coffee with cream and one sugar around 12:45, a big meal at 1:30: two and a half more pork chops (I slowly pan fried them around 9:30 pm last night in their own fat and salt and pepper and garlic salt: what a savory aroma!), left over canned maple syrup & bacon baked beans sauteed in the crisp pieces of half a yellow onion, a bit of well-done brown rice with salted butter, half a garlic bagel with more butter, a small piece of soft apricot scone baked by my mother who appears not to be speaking to me, and half a dark chocolate truffle (the other I handed to D, who had gone home, than come back, and was doing the dishes and probably not expecting me to share dessert).
I spent the entire day reading pregnancy journals and info about labor, watched some terrifying videos of deliveries on youtube, which really made me consider caeserean, than walked for an hour to the Cure, my old route. To find myself dancing a bit was to unbury my old self and to climb to the top of the city, passing the beautiful Catholic steeple of stone and bats, is reliably expansive.
This is not my best blog, but I feel the desire to read everything in the world.
So, for dinner (6:30) I had a veggie burger with lots of gooey, melted cheddar cheese, and about four bowls of popcorn popped in a pan on the stove in oil, doused in melted butter, salt, and parmesan cheese. What ecstasy! What a trance! And a bit of left over Amy's soup, Coconut Thai, a murky grayish orange - a base of coconut milk and sweet potato - with bits of tofu, shitake mushroom, rings of carrot, and onion. And then I devoured a Nutrageous bar (4 for $1 at Bell's, a liquidation discount food store I frequented for the first time Friday). I still have what is usually the grandest feast of the day, Dinner Number 2, to look forward to.
This week I'm volunteering at the soup kitchen with the Boys and Girls Club on Tuesday afternoon, going to a women's basketball game with them Thursday evening, and facilitating the writing groups at the jail. I'm probably going to buy a car because I'm worried about all this time in my own head and in my apartment. I'm considering applying to a certain scandalous Coffee Shop ("all shapes and sizes welcome to apply"), but we'll see. Perhaps I'm just being subversive.
*
"World's Smallest mother to give birth for the third time" at:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1226443/Worlds-smallest-mother-risk-giving-birth-time.html
Her first child inherited her condition (which is difficult to describe, but is very small) which outraged many respondents while others lept to her defense and argued that disability does not automatically decrease an individual's chances of a fulfilling life.
*
Living in America I often feel oppressed by abstractions like the status of my education, my parenting "philosophy," how I stand on this or that issue; what I want to pursue for a career path. Meanwhile, I'm living the good life, feasting day in, day out.
So I've decided maybe I'll focus on food, for awhile, and maybe I'll go back to Myspace. I certainly don't feel punished, though**... But I think I'll write about food. I was perusing several of the "ED" blogs, with their vivid photos of foods, and it's rather a vital, if overcrowded, niche. I've always had a hearty appetite, my own bout with disordered eating, and a life-long love. (I will say that many of the girls I wondered what they meant by "recovery," when they still appeared frankly emaciated, but we come in all kindsa packages ayuh, and perhaps I'm just preemptively bitter re some big stretchin 'bout to go down)
I don't know if this is because of the hormones coursing through my body, preparing for significantly increased blood volume, the secret and illustrious production of a human being, etc, etc: but eating has never been so blissful for me. **I'm sad about recent events, the swift downfall of our little blogging threesome, I'm hopeful for its restitution or something to take its place. Last night I actually dreamt of salad, not the snobby kind I usually gravitate towards with spring mix and seasoned almonds and feta, but good old iceberg, red onions, shredded carrot cucumber and a zesty italian. Cool.
I slept until 11, the sleep of forgetting, and roused myself for immediate consumption of something high protein: left- over pork chop, and a couple spoonfuls of peas with curry and tandoori. I lounged around net-surfing, on the quest to sate myself with opinions, the ambivalence of others, and myriad horror stories related to my current, surprisingly common, condition.
After a small cup of dark roast coffee with cream and one sugar around 12:45, a big meal at 1:30: two and a half more pork chops (I slowly pan fried them around 9:30 pm last night in their own fat and salt and pepper and garlic salt: what a savory aroma!), left over canned maple syrup & bacon baked beans sauteed in the crisp pieces of half a yellow onion, a bit of well-done brown rice with salted butter, half a garlic bagel with more butter, a small piece of soft apricot scone baked by my mother who appears not to be speaking to me, and half a dark chocolate truffle (the other I handed to D, who had gone home, than come back, and was doing the dishes and probably not expecting me to share dessert).
I spent the entire day reading pregnancy journals and info about labor, watched some terrifying videos of deliveries on youtube, which really made me consider caeserean, than walked for an hour to the Cure, my old route. To find myself dancing a bit was to unbury my old self and to climb to the top of the city, passing the beautiful Catholic steeple of stone and bats, is reliably expansive.
This is not my best blog, but I feel the desire to read everything in the world.
So, for dinner (6:30) I had a veggie burger with lots of gooey, melted cheddar cheese, and about four bowls of popcorn popped in a pan on the stove in oil, doused in melted butter, salt, and parmesan cheese. What ecstasy! What a trance! And a bit of left over Amy's soup, Coconut Thai, a murky grayish orange - a base of coconut milk and sweet potato - with bits of tofu, shitake mushroom, rings of carrot, and onion. And then I devoured a Nutrageous bar (4 for $1 at Bell's, a liquidation discount food store I frequented for the first time Friday). I still have what is usually the grandest feast of the day, Dinner Number 2, to look forward to.
This week I'm volunteering at the soup kitchen with the Boys and Girls Club on Tuesday afternoon, going to a women's basketball game with them Thursday evening, and facilitating the writing groups at the jail. I'm probably going to buy a car because I'm worried about all this time in my own head and in my apartment. I'm considering applying to a certain scandalous Coffee Shop ("all shapes and sizes welcome to apply"), but we'll see. Perhaps I'm just being subversive.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
the many colors of gratitude: return to vagueness
I'm (perhaps surprisingly) unrebuked by certain recent comments. I have my own version of what went down and I don't stew in it, I don't write banned for life lists, and I certainly - certainly - don't plot. But I strongly believe I wasn't dealing primarily with disinterested friendship, though I was dealing with an interesting sense of humor that mostly fed off making fun of other people. I'm just a different kind of bird. I'm not so interested in the family of origin or the chosen clan as people who deserve a totally elevated treatment. I'm not so interested in decided my significant other and I are the champions of the world. Far from it. Perhaps that's why I'm often miserable; sometimes I wish I was dead, but I hear a lot of us have feelings like that, from time to time. Other times I'm quite happy. So.
I'm supposed to let sleeping dogs lie but I was inspired by another blogger who chose this particular time to write a stirring essay on all the reasons she couldn't bear - no pun intended- to have children at this point. Sure, why not? It had nothing to do with me, and I did not take it personally, even when it was painful to read because at this point I'm assaulted by, obviously, many of the same doubts about my fitness, desire for autonomy, etc. I think my decision was codependent and largely unhealthy but it's rooted in many other decisions by loads of people, though, again, in the final call: there are no other people, and no other decisions.
I kinda thought this forum was for girl's talk, but of course the very same people who see themselves as having the monopoly on "healthy relationship" don't always fully distinguish themselves as individuals so that an invitation to do something with one means the other is coming too, if they feel like it. Heads ups are mere formalities, and you can't get there from here. Nothing I can relate to. My boyfriend, soon to be ex perhaps, is someone I painted into a corner and now, perhaps, I will join him. It doesn't bother me when the implications are heavy but, as a matter, of formality, I question why anyone would conclude something as incidental as a "blog," (it's not actually, according to some, writing, anyway) refers to them when there's nothing specific to support that assumption. I mostly just felt like, Well, this was bound to happen: and it's ultimately not going to change anything very much.
To me integrity is about speaking one's truth and full participation in chosen forums. I enjoy reading on here and the occasional sense of community. I noticed again and again that J's blogs centered on work ethic - its pains and pleasures- and believed this was a place where I could express my opinions, just as she expressed her opinions about how much she doesn't want kids immediately after I announced my pregnancy. I didn't take it as an attack since a lot of people are having kids young, just like a lot of men don't work.
I've kept a great deal of my personal history silent out of respect and will continue to do so. As for guilt trips (and I only call it such because it was followed up by, 'you really hurt my feelings,' otherwise I consider it simply - & profoundly- another interesting voice/perspective in the conversations here, though an unusual one) in response to a blogspot.com posting which never breaches the self-imposed law of abstractions, I won't receive it.
I'm supposed to let sleeping dogs lie but I was inspired by another blogger who chose this particular time to write a stirring essay on all the reasons she couldn't bear - no pun intended- to have children at this point. Sure, why not? It had nothing to do with me, and I did not take it personally, even when it was painful to read because at this point I'm assaulted by, obviously, many of the same doubts about my fitness, desire for autonomy, etc. I think my decision was codependent and largely unhealthy but it's rooted in many other decisions by loads of people, though, again, in the final call: there are no other people, and no other decisions.
I kinda thought this forum was for girl's talk, but of course the very same people who see themselves as having the monopoly on "healthy relationship" don't always fully distinguish themselves as individuals so that an invitation to do something with one means the other is coming too, if they feel like it. Heads ups are mere formalities, and you can't get there from here. Nothing I can relate to. My boyfriend, soon to be ex perhaps, is someone I painted into a corner and now, perhaps, I will join him. It doesn't bother me when the implications are heavy but, as a matter, of formality, I question why anyone would conclude something as incidental as a "blog," (it's not actually, according to some, writing, anyway) refers to them when there's nothing specific to support that assumption. I mostly just felt like, Well, this was bound to happen: and it's ultimately not going to change anything very much.
To me integrity is about speaking one's truth and full participation in chosen forums. I enjoy reading on here and the occasional sense of community. I noticed again and again that J's blogs centered on work ethic - its pains and pleasures- and believed this was a place where I could express my opinions, just as she expressed her opinions about how much she doesn't want kids immediately after I announced my pregnancy. I didn't take it as an attack since a lot of people are having kids young, just like a lot of men don't work.
I've kept a great deal of my personal history silent out of respect and will continue to do so. As for guilt trips (and I only call it such because it was followed up by, 'you really hurt my feelings,' otherwise I consider it simply - & profoundly- another interesting voice/perspective in the conversations here, though an unusual one) in response to a blogspot.com posting which never breaches the self-imposed law of abstractions, I won't receive it.
Friday, January 15, 2010
The smell of woodsmoke on the littered avenue, not a trace of sunshine
I dreamt I was eating cake that can't even belong in this dimension. I was incarcerated but it was worth it. The frosting was thick and sparkly and the bulk of it was a texture which I'm not sure has ever manifested. Tiramisu might be the closest equivalent, but no funny business in the flavor. Very soft, very pure.
I'm rolling in nausea and contemplating a cup of coffee. I ought to knock that off, revise the order of operations. This will be fairly quick. I dreamt I was at a big sprawling concert, and I had to read aloud something about the dimensions of the King's purple garment (which was way too short), and I almost lost my voice, kept tripping over words. I'm going back to the jail tonight and not feeling it. I might just start crying and run out of the room, for all I care. My mom, who looks anorexic, is too busy to visit because of her new exercise routine. Ah, people and their own restrictions, their crazy compulsions and "needs," and the belief that they are doing the right thing. Who can know? Who can know?
It occurs to me people give what is easy for them to give. Some people seem very generous but most stay within the comfort zone designed by their contexts and instincts. I've had beaus make outrageous presents to me: my 17 year old bf, from wealthy parents, earned his own money working as a minimal wage laborer for a stone mason all summer and then wrote me a check for $1000 to get me a headstart. E. moved into my hospital room. I constantly get checks for various thousands, and I've become slightly inured, though obviously I shake a bit when informed of large settlements. Our hearts are greedy and I've felt guys try to appropriate me with presents. Very little comes from disinterested generosity; that is the precious thing, the missing link. I can't say I'm capable of it myself.
D. provides little materially as of the past year, but when he's had positive momentum in the past he willingly pays more than his share. I question his ambition but he has a new idea about entering the medical field, first as a CNA, then maybe an x-ray tech or an EMT. Let's hope he does something like that, he's gonna have a baby! I support his musical interests but the job market for music teachers is not flourishing and he doesn't necessarily have the crazy drive to pursue something so precarious, to insist on having a job that's hard to get, letting the chips fall where they may. The older he gets, the more behind he falls, so he willfully falls farther and farther behind. It's a common enough cycle, and I can't convince him in any lasting way that the whole jig can be turned around in a matter of days, with recommitting to a new lifestyle of hardwork every day. He thinks things take too long, and might not work anyway. They say a child makes many men grow up fast and I know he hates himself for the way he putzes around cluelessly, and I'm glad he at least admits that he's wasting a great deal of energy. Anyway, enough. What the hell am I going to do? That depends very much on my support system, which is a work of art like any other. My mom aggravates me but she could be an asset and hopefully I could be to her, as well. Though I perhaps shouldn't assume it's a little girl, I'm nearly positive, and if so we are three generations of women. At first I wanted a boy and now I can't imagine that, though I know males much better than females and seem to resonate with them.
I can't afford to worry too much about D's career (or lack thereof), or mine, or this or that gender, right now as other things take precedence.
D. can be cruel with his words, he has strange outbursts that come from a place of feeling trapped for huge parts of his life, from parents who were wildly inconsistent, sometimes encouraging him to follow his quote dreams end quote (yes, I ripped steez from a King, a late King: don't we all from time to time?), pointing to musical talent in his lineage (his great grandmother was a concert pianist, his grandmother was the organist for the Spiritualist church in Augusta for many years), other times discouraging him; when he liked computers, his dad told him there would be no jobs in computers in a few years, and at other times he said he had to learn a trade, that music was merely a hobby, of course. D's dad has not worked for nearly twenty years, and rather hates himself, himself. My very own mom hasn't ever had a job that was very fulfilling, though she's enjoyed this and that: a short cleaning business stint (whatever happened to that? well, E., dangled this super good deal of a car in front of my face for the last few weeks, bullied me into thinking if I didn't take it I was making a huge mistake, and obviously he knows a lot more about vehicles than me but I know how to spot a shittalker and I'm pretty annoyed, though I don't have the fury for a typical protest plus there's nothing I can do with bitching to manifest the car, ready to go, in front of me: must either move, or press, on), baking, working in a health food store, painting under the table just a few years ago. She's not an inherently lazy woman, I don't think, doesn't flinch from hard work, but doesn't see the point in working for little pay and though this has driven me to rage near distraction in the past, I bet a lot of people feel like that.
My jury's out on this. Hard work is good, sure, but not when it becomes a point of pride or elevating yourself above others. Judgment is the worst, and it would be difficult for me to follow my thoughts here without being judgmental. [Time to go eat, though I've been up less than an hour. Some habits have to change, can't play blood sugar games at a time like this. Left over, sort of burnt, whole grain berry pancake crumbles with lots of butter and cottage cheese; not everything is perfect. And a couple pieces of dark chocolate with pareils (sp.?), those little candy dots. Whoa, reflux, and moving right along.]
It's something like this. I don't mind if people don't want to compete in this difficult economy for paid work, if they don't have to. If someone offered me a lifelong trust fund, I wouldn't think twice. What is difficult for me to understand, however, are scenarios such as couples in which the woman works hard, maybe even over time, all the time, and the man doesn't work at all. This is the case for D's parents. When the couple has no children, it's even harder for me to understand how and from where the female draws her acceptance and even admiration, especially if working hard is a big part of the woman's identity. This is old school and for many obsolete, but in the Book of Genesis two curses are bestowed based on gender. Man is to toil by the sweat of his brow, and woman is to bear children in pain. Perhaps that sounds offensive and outrageous to some, and certainly not all women have children and I would never argue that all should. But for women, having the ability to carry a child is both a burden and a joy. Menstruation, though I am of course a fan and already miss it terribly, is no cake walk. Worrying about pregnancy if it's not what you want, or even if it is, isn't either. Making a decision about when or if to host a growing life, is increasingly complicated. Yes, men take part in parenting, but the process is not the same. What is their burden? They should work. (Yeah, fleshed that out well.)
I had my own romantic experience in which I was rendered the villain, with a guy who didn't work and no one thought twice about it. (I did. His brother did.) Since I was physically handicapped and ceased, temporarily, financially needing to work I've consistently done shitloads of community service. This is a personal choice which is probably as much/much more about my self-esteem and sanity than any truly noble impulses (who has them? who has them, really?) But anyway, I really don't have much sympathy for grown, able-bodied men who can't work because they go to school. Especially when they're well into their mid-twenties, and not pursuing a rigorous or compressed curriculum. I think if an individual has the energy to stay up late playing video games, going out to eat several times a week, etc. etc. than some of the original reasons why work was difficult have dissipated, and a person has become complacent, self-satisfied in their position. If they don't have a need for money - though saving for greater independence benefits most - they should do community service, not in a few years, but asap. What makes the scenario even more frustrating for me is when an individual who scarcely applies themselves to anything but classes - which really, in my opinion, is a small and shallow slice of life - is constantly judgmental about other people sucking at life, whatever that means. When there is an inner circle, a convincing product of insecurity in which anyone who has not landed in the inner circle (selection criterion has to do with, largely, among other assuredly admirable qualities, the inner circle member's ability to wholeheartedly and unquestionably accept the individual in question, stroke their ego, and support their actually faulty ideas, implied or otherwise, about their superiority) is automatically suspect. Just because you're sober and have a select circle of friends does not mean you are thriving or doing wonderful things for our planet. Superiority based on what? A quick wit? An ability to lash others on the spur of a moment?
These things grow moldier and moldier. More and more hard work and integrity loom large in my tortured brain. I don't even care how you (general you, this is all general despite associations) got in your fucked up, seemingly irredeemable situation. All I care about is an earnest effort to, from here on out, make the most of a confirmed mess. And compassion: I make no claim to it if I'm condemning others for not having it. What is that saying, you can't destroy the master's house with his tools. There is no master, anyway. Just certain unchallenged assumptions which have been sneaking under my skin.
I'm rolling in nausea and contemplating a cup of coffee. I ought to knock that off, revise the order of operations. This will be fairly quick. I dreamt I was at a big sprawling concert, and I had to read aloud something about the dimensions of the King's purple garment (which was way too short), and I almost lost my voice, kept tripping over words. I'm going back to the jail tonight and not feeling it. I might just start crying and run out of the room, for all I care. My mom, who looks anorexic, is too busy to visit because of her new exercise routine. Ah, people and their own restrictions, their crazy compulsions and "needs," and the belief that they are doing the right thing. Who can know? Who can know?
It occurs to me people give what is easy for them to give. Some people seem very generous but most stay within the comfort zone designed by their contexts and instincts. I've had beaus make outrageous presents to me: my 17 year old bf, from wealthy parents, earned his own money working as a minimal wage laborer for a stone mason all summer and then wrote me a check for $1000 to get me a headstart. E. moved into my hospital room. I constantly get checks for various thousands, and I've become slightly inured, though obviously I shake a bit when informed of large settlements. Our hearts are greedy and I've felt guys try to appropriate me with presents. Very little comes from disinterested generosity; that is the precious thing, the missing link. I can't say I'm capable of it myself.
D. provides little materially as of the past year, but when he's had positive momentum in the past he willingly pays more than his share. I question his ambition but he has a new idea about entering the medical field, first as a CNA, then maybe an x-ray tech or an EMT. Let's hope he does something like that, he's gonna have a baby! I support his musical interests but the job market for music teachers is not flourishing and he doesn't necessarily have the crazy drive to pursue something so precarious, to insist on having a job that's hard to get, letting the chips fall where they may. The older he gets, the more behind he falls, so he willfully falls farther and farther behind. It's a common enough cycle, and I can't convince him in any lasting way that the whole jig can be turned around in a matter of days, with recommitting to a new lifestyle of hardwork every day. He thinks things take too long, and might not work anyway. They say a child makes many men grow up fast and I know he hates himself for the way he putzes around cluelessly, and I'm glad he at least admits that he's wasting a great deal of energy. Anyway, enough. What the hell am I going to do? That depends very much on my support system, which is a work of art like any other. My mom aggravates me but she could be an asset and hopefully I could be to her, as well. Though I perhaps shouldn't assume it's a little girl, I'm nearly positive, and if so we are three generations of women. At first I wanted a boy and now I can't imagine that, though I know males much better than females and seem to resonate with them.
I can't afford to worry too much about D's career (or lack thereof), or mine, or this or that gender, right now as other things take precedence.
D. can be cruel with his words, he has strange outbursts that come from a place of feeling trapped for huge parts of his life, from parents who were wildly inconsistent, sometimes encouraging him to follow his quote dreams end quote (yes, I ripped steez from a King, a late King: don't we all from time to time?), pointing to musical talent in his lineage (his great grandmother was a concert pianist, his grandmother was the organist for the Spiritualist church in Augusta for many years), other times discouraging him; when he liked computers, his dad told him there would be no jobs in computers in a few years, and at other times he said he had to learn a trade, that music was merely a hobby, of course. D's dad has not worked for nearly twenty years, and rather hates himself, himself. My very own mom hasn't ever had a job that was very fulfilling, though she's enjoyed this and that: a short cleaning business stint (whatever happened to that? well, E., dangled this super good deal of a car in front of my face for the last few weeks, bullied me into thinking if I didn't take it I was making a huge mistake, and obviously he knows a lot more about vehicles than me but I know how to spot a shittalker and I'm pretty annoyed, though I don't have the fury for a typical protest plus there's nothing I can do with bitching to manifest the car, ready to go, in front of me: must either move, or press, on), baking, working in a health food store, painting under the table just a few years ago. She's not an inherently lazy woman, I don't think, doesn't flinch from hard work, but doesn't see the point in working for little pay and though this has driven me to rage near distraction in the past, I bet a lot of people feel like that.
My jury's out on this. Hard work is good, sure, but not when it becomes a point of pride or elevating yourself above others. Judgment is the worst, and it would be difficult for me to follow my thoughts here without being judgmental. [Time to go eat, though I've been up less than an hour. Some habits have to change, can't play blood sugar games at a time like this. Left over, sort of burnt, whole grain berry pancake crumbles with lots of butter and cottage cheese; not everything is perfect. And a couple pieces of dark chocolate with pareils (sp.?), those little candy dots. Whoa, reflux, and moving right along.]
It's something like this. I don't mind if people don't want to compete in this difficult economy for paid work, if they don't have to. If someone offered me a lifelong trust fund, I wouldn't think twice. What is difficult for me to understand, however, are scenarios such as couples in which the woman works hard, maybe even over time, all the time, and the man doesn't work at all. This is the case for D's parents. When the couple has no children, it's even harder for me to understand how and from where the female draws her acceptance and even admiration, especially if working hard is a big part of the woman's identity. This is old school and for many obsolete, but in the Book of Genesis two curses are bestowed based on gender. Man is to toil by the sweat of his brow, and woman is to bear children in pain. Perhaps that sounds offensive and outrageous to some, and certainly not all women have children and I would never argue that all should. But for women, having the ability to carry a child is both a burden and a joy. Menstruation, though I am of course a fan and already miss it terribly, is no cake walk. Worrying about pregnancy if it's not what you want, or even if it is, isn't either. Making a decision about when or if to host a growing life, is increasingly complicated. Yes, men take part in parenting, but the process is not the same. What is their burden? They should work. (Yeah, fleshed that out well.)
I had my own romantic experience in which I was rendered the villain, with a guy who didn't work and no one thought twice about it. (I did. His brother did.) Since I was physically handicapped and ceased, temporarily, financially needing to work I've consistently done shitloads of community service. This is a personal choice which is probably as much/much more about my self-esteem and sanity than any truly noble impulses (who has them? who has them, really?) But anyway, I really don't have much sympathy for grown, able-bodied men who can't work because they go to school. Especially when they're well into their mid-twenties, and not pursuing a rigorous or compressed curriculum. I think if an individual has the energy to stay up late playing video games, going out to eat several times a week, etc. etc. than some of the original reasons why work was difficult have dissipated, and a person has become complacent, self-satisfied in their position. If they don't have a need for money - though saving for greater independence benefits most - they should do community service, not in a few years, but asap. What makes the scenario even more frustrating for me is when an individual who scarcely applies themselves to anything but classes - which really, in my opinion, is a small and shallow slice of life - is constantly judgmental about other people sucking at life, whatever that means. When there is an inner circle, a convincing product of insecurity in which anyone who has not landed in the inner circle (selection criterion has to do with, largely, among other assuredly admirable qualities, the inner circle member's ability to wholeheartedly and unquestionably accept the individual in question, stroke their ego, and support their actually faulty ideas, implied or otherwise, about their superiority) is automatically suspect. Just because you're sober and have a select circle of friends does not mean you are thriving or doing wonderful things for our planet. Superiority based on what? A quick wit? An ability to lash others on the spur of a moment?
These things grow moldier and moldier. More and more hard work and integrity loom large in my tortured brain. I don't even care how you (general you, this is all general despite associations) got in your fucked up, seemingly irredeemable situation. All I care about is an earnest effort to, from here on out, make the most of a confirmed mess. And compassion: I make no claim to it if I'm condemning others for not having it. What is that saying, you can't destroy the master's house with his tools. There is no master, anyway. Just certain unchallenged assumptions which have been sneaking under my skin.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Happy is he who doesn't need drugs to know: Water is sooo good.
In my wrecked universe I take delight in the littlest things which seem to be the biggest. Icicles hanging off the flat mop head lit with sunshine leaning against the side of the deck. Cottage cheese with strings of honey-swirl. Oatmeal pancakes with fat bursts of berry and tangy butter and syrup. The wet folds and rough patches in crispy curls of bacon. My huge halo of genetic curls on the day of a washing, a colony of strands left to its own device: more buoyant than I ever remembered, in spite of my drawn face. My increasingly ability to sit in one place, covered in blankets, and stare out the window though raging inside--the sweet external meditative trance of despair and not knowing, at all, what to do.
I dream I eat a whole loaf of bread and grow panicked but there is nothing to do but wait. I start to bleed in a locker room at a place like the YMCA, but it's not a miscarriage. Later the baby comes and I leave it for a whole 24 hours, rushing around, trying to get what I need, perhaps I forgot or someone else didn't pull through. When I come back, there is diaper after diaper and each has a faint spot of blood, and I am crushed to the core. Is this a rejection of what I'm claiming to embrace? Or a deep indentification, since both of us bled? I am a woman who ended two pregnancies and now insists that this one I must carry. I'm not the first, at all, to make this transition: though it's difficult to trust myself as a mother, whether I'm only a "birthmom," or I have forever, a gooey little curly-haired friend. I romanticize. I intellectualize. I don't know.
Some things shouldn't be shared. I do not believe dreams are, inevitably, prophecy. I dream I am with my father and we are going to do something that is a mix of gentle downhill skiing, like gradual slopes (I'm no skiier, but who doesn't love gliding effortlessly down powder?) and horse-back riding. The activity exists in an attic and I grow woozy with claustrophobia. I can't fit into the narrow stairs, which seems a metaphor for his "path," on reflection. I don't think narrowness always causes righteousness, though there's a correlation, perhaps.
I dream I'm traveling with two other women. We are going from one beautiful empty house to another. They seem to have innumerable, winding stairways and passageways. I take food from the fridge, the more I take the more there seems to be: bread, American cheese, a small apple, a yogurt. I try to make it look like I haven't taken but it's too hard so I take more. I think I leave a note, and I think it will be fine, though I am desperate not to be caught, my heart racing and looking back.
When I was young my dad used to call me a primadonna. I became condescending at a young age. Once, when I was five or six, sitting in the backseat listening to my parents' typical stream of bicker, I announced, "God told me He wants you to stop fighting." Well, I'm sure He did, but I certainly was no prophetess. My parents responded to this with awe, as they often did when they weren't wondering out loud how I turned into such a hateful and unimaginably innovatively insulting individual. (Both have asked me, "How did you become so mean?" And it's true. I was mean. Today I went to counseling with D and the Pastor could not seem to fathom him being violent. He said it struck him as utterly uncharacteristic. That was the only point in which I almost lost my patience and I said I didn't think it married how people seemed because people are rarely what they appear and we all over-estimate our "discernment" in deciding who has character or does not based on our instincts and whims which are probably largely the work of idiosyncratic associations from youth that we can't even penetrate. I told the pastor that many people can't imagine that I am mean, yet I am often very, very mean.)
D and I are both leaning towards it won't work. It's funny and I cling and he's coming back after having a dinner with his friend R which I declined, respectfully, to participate in. He's coming back but we don't think it will work. It never has, why should it now? It's so very sad because in many ways we bound ourselves to each other through fear or rejection, and in our shared climate of desperation and indecision made a desperate indecisive leap which resonates into eternity with finality. It's ironic. Drunken one-night stand conceptions make me question the value of intention when they are just as likely to render a soul beautiful and majestic as the most planned into the rubble progenic masterpiece of the most compassionate and committed couple in the universe. I like to let my mind wander and make my rather careless combination of words. It anchors me, and you know, I've thought about this a lot, and I'm starting to think I don't really need a lot of time to do what I do. I don't think I, like a lot of people, would necessarily benefit or take off from having a life which supported many, many hours of uninterrupted writing. I write in snatches and jolts and always have. On the other hand: perhaps this is why I've never done anything significant or meaningful, why I only write about myself, because isn't that laziness? I don't know. It's in vogue, though of course with a jist and a shape in a way I've never managed. I have a certain something, but is it enough? I will say I'm more scared of losing whatever that tiny spark is then I am of losing my relationship with anyone but God, and before I would never admit it.
I convinced myself I needed D more than anything; I reveled, not in humility (which cleanses and perfects the soul), but degradation--and he is right in all those times he insisted that the obsession was about myself and not him. I do think he is a beautiful man, though obviously his beauty is more eccentric than conventional and requires a very patient, loving eye to reveal itself. We do have a physical chemistry that is staggering to the point of inducing terror and even sobs in me, and sometimes making my stomach rise up for days after an encounter. Sometimes I express myself best when tears are welling in my eyes, and sometimes I don't, but I will say (why do I always write, "I will say," before I say / it's like "I myself," and yet I don't stop myself, or I myself, I should say; inside jokes with, and loving, myself: and on and on, to infinity) this: sex is nothing to build a relationship on, and as I read on some online discussion forum somewhere, and is probably an idea in wide circulation: in a way it is a shame that babies come from sex, or something like that. That love and sex are supposed to come together, or something. Well, there are many sayings about how wisdom always comes when it is too late to apply it. My ravaged lust seems a million miles away (though I'm sure it is dormant and not extinct), that part of me that will seize anything, as though it is my God-given right to have whatever impulse I desire, and the way I've left others, well-meaning, in a lurch is enough to convince me that far from not deserving my current situation, whatever that means: I deserve far, far worse. And we probably all do. I'm all for loving ourselves and forgiving ourselves but we live in a culture that seems to glorify "self-esteem" at no expense.
I'm all over the place and probably making little sense but I do believe in original sin and I do believe that I came to a desperate place because I wanted to, I had to, and it's just my life and my karma and perhaps, even, something for a miracle to be made of. Or not. Who knows? If I choose to mother, and I will probably be a single parent, I trust myself to provide materially for my child and in the basic, emotional ways which are mostly instinctive and almost always attained through a bit of education and determination. Otherwise, I am lost.
I fear there are already attitudes and emotions being transmitted in the womb that will make life difficult. The child will probably have a temperament that will be, from the outset, challenging. I know that my own parents, in spite of admirable intentions, deeply scarred me with constant fighting, hysterics over this thing or that thing, drunkenness, and a sort of masochism, a reveling in rejection (my dad with my mom after she left him, his refusal to let go, his reduction to a puddle of tears and always singing the blues, zoned out, on his acoustic--though in other areas, like providing and intellectual stimulation, he worked so gorgeously hard; my mom with her going back, again and again, to her second husband who beat her almost to her death, and actually a photo of her wasted blackened swelling face was used as a warning against domestic violence, and he did unspeakable things to her, and even, a little, to me) and I find myself pursuing my own masochistic/sadistic cravings in my own life. So that there is, truly, a legacy that I believe is both genetic and environmental. Some would argue that I should not have reproduced because of my mental illnesses. I would argue that everyone has challenges and that the father and I have many things going for us (above average intelligence and physical health, to put it simply), and our illnesses are not debilitating, even when they subjectively seem so.
Some might argue that I could reduce the environmental dregs by adopting out, but then a cycle remains suspended and a child is deprived of their heritage which teaches us so, so much about our being and soul, even when it wounds us almost to paralysis, and hugely influences (but never guarantees, of course) shitty ass choices like most of the ones I've made and how to be gentle and how to trust God I don't know and I don't know if I'll ever know but I certainly think that if I know how to love, if I really learn, I'm all set: and if I don't love, I'm fucked. So who cares if I took a big, foolish bite of the pie? Many people in worse circumstances have done it, and now I'm intellectualizing again: because there's no pie, and in a certain, very charged and relevant sense, there are no other people, at least not in this context: there is only me and only my choice. And in another sense that is preposterous, and as the Orthodox faith look to the Saints for guidance and wisdom, and read the stories of their lives, we all have people whose examples we cling to, as that hipmother (one of like 8000, what narcissistic times, and who can escape zeitgeist? Not, really, a one, and how lame of me to drop that word, here) website put it, we cherish the good work of others in triumphing adversity, and hold them as proof and come back to them again and again like prayers.
(I wanted so badly to name the baby Fiona, thinking it unique and utterly precious, but I look up some projection research that - I don't know how they do this, but they have a good track record- puts it in the top 20 for girls by 2015. Names circulate through the upper classes the reserachers say and somehow, mysteriously, trickle down to the common and poor. Like, well, me. What can I do to escape these trends? I could make up a new word, as many have done before, but what do I prove by attaining a unique label, or, more broadly, by fighting the tide? Why not embrace it..)
But I don't know. I forget what this was supposed to be about.
I dream I eat a whole loaf of bread and grow panicked but there is nothing to do but wait. I start to bleed in a locker room at a place like the YMCA, but it's not a miscarriage. Later the baby comes and I leave it for a whole 24 hours, rushing around, trying to get what I need, perhaps I forgot or someone else didn't pull through. When I come back, there is diaper after diaper and each has a faint spot of blood, and I am crushed to the core. Is this a rejection of what I'm claiming to embrace? Or a deep indentification, since both of us bled? I am a woman who ended two pregnancies and now insists that this one I must carry. I'm not the first, at all, to make this transition: though it's difficult to trust myself as a mother, whether I'm only a "birthmom," or I have forever, a gooey little curly-haired friend. I romanticize. I intellectualize. I don't know.
Some things shouldn't be shared. I do not believe dreams are, inevitably, prophecy. I dream I am with my father and we are going to do something that is a mix of gentle downhill skiing, like gradual slopes (I'm no skiier, but who doesn't love gliding effortlessly down powder?) and horse-back riding. The activity exists in an attic and I grow woozy with claustrophobia. I can't fit into the narrow stairs, which seems a metaphor for his "path," on reflection. I don't think narrowness always causes righteousness, though there's a correlation, perhaps.
I dream I'm traveling with two other women. We are going from one beautiful empty house to another. They seem to have innumerable, winding stairways and passageways. I take food from the fridge, the more I take the more there seems to be: bread, American cheese, a small apple, a yogurt. I try to make it look like I haven't taken but it's too hard so I take more. I think I leave a note, and I think it will be fine, though I am desperate not to be caught, my heart racing and looking back.
When I was young my dad used to call me a primadonna. I became condescending at a young age. Once, when I was five or six, sitting in the backseat listening to my parents' typical stream of bicker, I announced, "God told me He wants you to stop fighting." Well, I'm sure He did, but I certainly was no prophetess. My parents responded to this with awe, as they often did when they weren't wondering out loud how I turned into such a hateful and unimaginably innovatively insulting individual. (Both have asked me, "How did you become so mean?" And it's true. I was mean. Today I went to counseling with D and the Pastor could not seem to fathom him being violent. He said it struck him as utterly uncharacteristic. That was the only point in which I almost lost my patience and I said I didn't think it married how people seemed because people are rarely what they appear and we all over-estimate our "discernment" in deciding who has character or does not based on our instincts and whims which are probably largely the work of idiosyncratic associations from youth that we can't even penetrate. I told the pastor that many people can't imagine that I am mean, yet I am often very, very mean.)
D and I are both leaning towards it won't work. It's funny and I cling and he's coming back after having a dinner with his friend R which I declined, respectfully, to participate in. He's coming back but we don't think it will work. It never has, why should it now? It's so very sad because in many ways we bound ourselves to each other through fear or rejection, and in our shared climate of desperation and indecision made a desperate indecisive leap which resonates into eternity with finality. It's ironic. Drunken one-night stand conceptions make me question the value of intention when they are just as likely to render a soul beautiful and majestic as the most planned into the rubble progenic masterpiece of the most compassionate and committed couple in the universe. I like to let my mind wander and make my rather careless combination of words. It anchors me, and you know, I've thought about this a lot, and I'm starting to think I don't really need a lot of time to do what I do. I don't think I, like a lot of people, would necessarily benefit or take off from having a life which supported many, many hours of uninterrupted writing. I write in snatches and jolts and always have. On the other hand: perhaps this is why I've never done anything significant or meaningful, why I only write about myself, because isn't that laziness? I don't know. It's in vogue, though of course with a jist and a shape in a way I've never managed. I have a certain something, but is it enough? I will say I'm more scared of losing whatever that tiny spark is then I am of losing my relationship with anyone but God, and before I would never admit it.
I convinced myself I needed D more than anything; I reveled, not in humility (which cleanses and perfects the soul), but degradation--and he is right in all those times he insisted that the obsession was about myself and not him. I do think he is a beautiful man, though obviously his beauty is more eccentric than conventional and requires a very patient, loving eye to reveal itself. We do have a physical chemistry that is staggering to the point of inducing terror and even sobs in me, and sometimes making my stomach rise up for days after an encounter. Sometimes I express myself best when tears are welling in my eyes, and sometimes I don't, but I will say (why do I always write, "I will say," before I say / it's like "I myself," and yet I don't stop myself, or I myself, I should say; inside jokes with, and loving, myself: and on and on, to infinity) this: sex is nothing to build a relationship on, and as I read on some online discussion forum somewhere, and is probably an idea in wide circulation: in a way it is a shame that babies come from sex, or something like that. That love and sex are supposed to come together, or something. Well, there are many sayings about how wisdom always comes when it is too late to apply it. My ravaged lust seems a million miles away (though I'm sure it is dormant and not extinct), that part of me that will seize anything, as though it is my God-given right to have whatever impulse I desire, and the way I've left others, well-meaning, in a lurch is enough to convince me that far from not deserving my current situation, whatever that means: I deserve far, far worse. And we probably all do. I'm all for loving ourselves and forgiving ourselves but we live in a culture that seems to glorify "self-esteem" at no expense.
I'm all over the place and probably making little sense but I do believe in original sin and I do believe that I came to a desperate place because I wanted to, I had to, and it's just my life and my karma and perhaps, even, something for a miracle to be made of. Or not. Who knows? If I choose to mother, and I will probably be a single parent, I trust myself to provide materially for my child and in the basic, emotional ways which are mostly instinctive and almost always attained through a bit of education and determination. Otherwise, I am lost.
I fear there are already attitudes and emotions being transmitted in the womb that will make life difficult. The child will probably have a temperament that will be, from the outset, challenging. I know that my own parents, in spite of admirable intentions, deeply scarred me with constant fighting, hysterics over this thing or that thing, drunkenness, and a sort of masochism, a reveling in rejection (my dad with my mom after she left him, his refusal to let go, his reduction to a puddle of tears and always singing the blues, zoned out, on his acoustic--though in other areas, like providing and intellectual stimulation, he worked so gorgeously hard; my mom with her going back, again and again, to her second husband who beat her almost to her death, and actually a photo of her wasted blackened swelling face was used as a warning against domestic violence, and he did unspeakable things to her, and even, a little, to me) and I find myself pursuing my own masochistic/sadistic cravings in my own life. So that there is, truly, a legacy that I believe is both genetic and environmental. Some would argue that I should not have reproduced because of my mental illnesses. I would argue that everyone has challenges and that the father and I have many things going for us (above average intelligence and physical health, to put it simply), and our illnesses are not debilitating, even when they subjectively seem so.
Some might argue that I could reduce the environmental dregs by adopting out, but then a cycle remains suspended and a child is deprived of their heritage which teaches us so, so much about our being and soul, even when it wounds us almost to paralysis, and hugely influences (but never guarantees, of course) shitty ass choices like most of the ones I've made and how to be gentle and how to trust God I don't know and I don't know if I'll ever know but I certainly think that if I know how to love, if I really learn, I'm all set: and if I don't love, I'm fucked. So who cares if I took a big, foolish bite of the pie? Many people in worse circumstances have done it, and now I'm intellectualizing again: because there's no pie, and in a certain, very charged and relevant sense, there are no other people, at least not in this context: there is only me and only my choice. And in another sense that is preposterous, and as the Orthodox faith look to the Saints for guidance and wisdom, and read the stories of their lives, we all have people whose examples we cling to, as that hipmother (one of like 8000, what narcissistic times, and who can escape zeitgeist? Not, really, a one, and how lame of me to drop that word, here) website put it, we cherish the good work of others in triumphing adversity, and hold them as proof and come back to them again and again like prayers.
(I wanted so badly to name the baby Fiona, thinking it unique and utterly precious, but I look up some projection research that - I don't know how they do this, but they have a good track record- puts it in the top 20 for girls by 2015. Names circulate through the upper classes the reserachers say and somehow, mysteriously, trickle down to the common and poor. Like, well, me. What can I do to escape these trends? I could make up a new word, as many have done before, but what do I prove by attaining a unique label, or, more broadly, by fighting the tide? Why not embrace it..)
But I don't know. I forget what this was supposed to be about.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
unimmaculate conceptions, receptions, and projections
My 6'5", Italian, ex-boyfriend Dyami was reared by a lesbian, who apparently had sex with a man one time in her illustrious life. That man pulled out. She turned her potential cautionary tale, and an obvious reason for a liberal, pro-choicer to bud-nip, into one of the greatest pieces of art in her life's work. Dyami's in Washington, working for Conservation Corps and brewing beer. I asked (playfully) on Facebook if he had kids. Maybe when I'm 35, he said. (And who knows what tugged on his mother's heart, who gave him a rich and playful, rather migrant life?)
A beautiful girl I vaguely know, B., got pregnant, three years ago & in her teens, by my friend L. at a time when she said she was on the Depo shot (and it's possible she was). L. told me a wonderful, haunting story about making love to her in a cabin in the woods. It was pouring rain and after they finished she ran outside and started puking violently. He said at that point he knew but didn't admit it to himself. I remember seeing her weeks before she gave birth. She looked haggard in mesh shorts and a hooded sweatshirt. I remember wondering whether or not she was fat, since her limbs were thin but there was an indeterminate bulk to her. I decided she was just out of shape, as she smoked a cigarette outside looking exhausted. Apparently she told no one - not even her sister or mother whom she lived with- drove herself to the Lewiston hospital (good call, the Augusta hospital is a disturbing mess) when labor started, went at it completely alone, then called her mother and said she was coming home with the baby. For some reason Gilmore and I were among the first to know about this and that L. was the father. I remember we told L. at the apartment we (Gilmore & I) were tragically sharing: it was tense and strange and exciting and even slightly funny (one can't deny that these difficult situations are rife with humor, the reminder of how little we're in control, or how easily we lose the little bit we have). L. had meanwhile impregnated his new girlfriend, since B. had left him heartbroken. A few months later, and right before I was shot, I ended up living with L. for a time in a huge apartment on Sand Hill. At this point he started sleeping with a tiny gangster-ish, yet undeniably gorgeous girl named Rita. F. used to always sing, "You say your name's Rita / but it sounded sweeta / the night before," or however it goes, which was a great source of fun for us (we also bonded trying to push F's car out of the sloped driveway next to the laundromat on a very regular basis. I kicked L. out for bad living and not paying rent, had Hale move in, and it was only a few weeks of him mostly sleeping all day, playing video games, smoking in his room, and dying his hair before we all moved out after he crippled me with that rifle, which is nothing compared to a tale I'm leading up to.)
*
My stepmother used to know when she was ovulating and avoid intercourse on those days. She forgot to factor in the way sperm live on and lurk, waiting for the egg (we've all heard, and sometimes witnessed, how biology strains towards life), plus her periods were irregular, not so good for cycle-charting. She went for medical treatment for the irregular periods when her first pregnancy was discovered. The 18 year old father split and she found sub-ideal shelter in her ex-boyfriend, who left college to come home to her, and could possibly have been the father (he wasn't, though.) She went on to have a second daughter with this man, whom she married at like 19; he started to cheat on her, she left him (she described watching their obvious discomfort when they were together, she was a woman from work, he denied it), but the first girl grew up believing he was her biological father and he had partial custody.
When this first daughter, J, was twelve my stepmother married my father and became convicted about the lie she was living. A DNA test was performed and J's father, miraculously, stepped up to the plate, and wanted to be a huge- and quite delightful - part of J.'s life. In this sense, she says she got two fathers the year she turned twelve: my father and her biological father, who now stays the night at my dad and stepmother's home in PA when he brings J home from visits in Maine, and goes to church with the family. She plans to have them both walk her down the aisle. Lest it seem too Kodak-sational, bio-Dad (I hate how flippant that sounds, but it's clear enough) still chain smokes, and his great passion is a DVD collection. But man is J his spitting image! And boy do those two get on. They didn't skip a beat.
It's no secret that women often sleep with more than one man during a given cycle. One of my mom and dad's friends from the days when everyone partied at the camp in Hartland, a run down little shack with a wood stove and a dusty, mothy loft on Moose Pond (not Moosehead Lake) with a few motor boats and a hoop nailed onto a tree with a fishing net attached on which the adults and older children used to play "HORSE" for many accumulating boozy hours with deflated beach balls, the place where I spent an entire summer in my youth (I remember being woken up once at midnight to go cat-fishing) when my mom was in rehab, I think the woman was one of my dad's cousins, but anyway: she wasn't sure if the baby would be black or not. In interest of loyalty (to her boyfriend), not at all racist missions, just the pragmatism of loving who you're "with," she hoped it wouldn't be, and it wasn't.
My dad's mother had a son named Dan Bigley, named after his father, possibly conceived in Alaska. My aunt and uncle say Dan Bigley Sr. is a mystery. It's unclear whether they were ever married and my grandmother (a conservative Catholic with not a little liquor-drinking, chain-smoking, solitaire playing flair) never spoke of him. She was wild about her late husband James "Jim" Johnson, however, a fairly handsome man with a glass eye. I forget what he did, but Dan Jr. was entering his teens when they commenced having four kids, one right after another. My dad was born when my grandmother was 42 and may not have been the last except my grandfather died of a heart attack in his sleep before his first birthday. The oldest of the four kids, my Uncle Joe, walked in right after he died. According to his mystical Rasti friend Matal, whom he works with at the post office, in a certain parallel universe, Joe walked in during the heart attack, but in this version, he didn't want things to be so difficult for his six year old self (he had different, perhaps gentler lessons to learn, I suppose?) so he entered after. Matal also knew about Joe and Robin's eight week miscarriage, Sarah, and drew a picture of her, and said her spirit remained in the house. I'd love to tell my dad that these card-carrying (an asinine qualifier? well, perhaps in this case, I doubt that it's true) Episcopalians go to table tippings, but it would stir unnecessary drama. My grandmother worked full time, stayed in that house on Royal Street in Winthrop until she died at 86, and never remarried. She was blessed with visits from relatives her entire life, and towards the end ate little but Saltines and corn flakes. I lived with her the year I was seven and was very close to her, though she confused me by speaking ill of my parent's relationship and particularly- though very delicately- my mother. When I was six my family and I lived in Woodstock, New York and Grammy and I used to write letters back and forth. Once she wrote “Because you love to read, you'll never be lonely.” Not an original, but it's always original how an idea is transmitted from one generation to another.
*
Gilmore's parents were 17 (Julie) and 16 (Aaron) when they conceived him. She had been diagnosed with endometriosis and told she would be unable to have children. As a treatment she took birth control pills. Aaron's stepmother gave them to her than told her to stop taking them. Apparently in a woman with endometriosis this starting then stopping triggers fertility like nothing else. She scheduled an appointment to "take care of it," but that never took place, for whatever reason. Some women just can't do it, I think is how she explained it to me. Aaron's parents were devastated by the pregnancy and his mom lured him into taking a lucrative, exciting sailing job when Gilmore was six months old. Left alone, Julie cursed him every day (and though they are still together, and rather happy, still doesn't let him forget this), and got pregnant with someone else, who Aaron has raised as his own his whole life; paternity was "discussed" in family counseling years later, but seems to have little bad effect on Gilmore's little brother, who is temperamental sun to Gilmore's, well, whatever.
Julie is an only child. Her mother, S., a 400 pound, diabetic, Communist, time-bank activist psychic, conceived her as a love child with someone who had witnessed some gnarly conspiracy goings - down, but shortly after Julie was born, S. came to the apartment to find her lover in bed with a man. He split.
*
RF was with his much older girlfriend for awhile, had gotten into an altercation with her 13 or 14 year old son, with cops visiting, and he believed they had nothing in common (he likes Noam Chomsky, or pretends to; she's all about People magazine, and, in her mid-thirties, has worked retail her whole life). He'd moved into his grandparents' house and essentially cut off contact when she called him one day and said, "I'm three months pregnant." He said he'd call her back, got a six or a twelve pack (I forget which), drank it, and called her back. His French, Catholic grandparents told him to do the right thing, which in this case meant moving in with her and being a stay-at-home Dad for a long time. His life seemed to take a pleasant shape in some ways, with lucrative work, a house with the down payment made by those grandparents, and the grandparents paying his tuition for his librarian degree, almost complete. I can't say he seems particularly transformed, though.
*
And now, since life is not only about being born but dying, I stumble across something very dark in today's newspaper, which exacerbates my nausea and makes me want to retreat from existing. The Kennebec Journal, A6: “Testimony begins in sex-and-guns death trial.” I suppose there's no point in rewriting the whole article, but it involved three men who had been “having sex and taking drugs for nearly 12 hours in [a] basement.” They regularly transformed this home basement into a “so-called 'dungeon,'” “a fantasy world filled with sex toys and videos that gave the men an escape from their everyday lives, jobs and … HIV,” which infected all of them. In the confusion and haze and dark lust of this, and many hard drugs, one of them put a gun up to another one's head for heightened eroticism, thinking it wasn't loaded. “In an instant, the party ended.”
It's not about me, it's about them, but reading this article my arms feel weak and I grow woozy. I can't quite connect with the part of me that ought to be grateful to have avoided such a dark place, and I am not condemning anyone's sexual practices, or even the sadism or masochism that lives in all of us. I just think it's horrible that this happened on this Earth, like many things that happen here, and it makes me sad just to share the soil with such tragedy, and seemingly preventable (we see dimly, and don't really understand cause and effect in the larger sphere) evil.
I think it's very possible that the man did not consciously think the gun was loaded. I also think that there are subconscious forces, which perhaps have little to do with the judicial system, but play out in spiritual law, whatever that means. My boyfriend confessed he consulted tarot.com and it drained him of all hope so he intends to avoid it. The eery part he said was that it was kind of accurate, which I think W. & I relate to. Oh, well. I think even when divination tools (or psychic mediums) ring accurate the conclusions are largely projections, reflections of our own hopes and fears. And not, as my former flame and I used to say, irredeemable.
Tarot.com said what surrounded D's current situation was mostly negligence, and negligence is a lesser-known form of evil. And I think of another gun-that-was-loaded, the one that landed all hot and bursting, in me: though it was much, much less dark a situation than the instant death of Fred Wilson in South Portland on April 18, 2009. (Although it is impossible to say. Perhaps Wilson was spared, and perhaps I've been reserved for unimaginable sufferings, either in terms of absorbing and/or inflicting them. But why think like that? I swear my imagination is distorted and assuredly afflicted; “To be hyperconscious is a disease,” declares the narrator of Dostoevsky's “Notes from the Underground.”)
I remember what D. said, a couple months ago (who can say exactly when, though I'm sure there is a record of it somewhere), as we sat stoned across the Kennebec from the crumbling mills, beyond the little park at the bottom of Sand Hill (a park never used except for when the carnival comes once a year in the summer: I swear it was more whimsical as an empty lot; my family and I used to live in Augusta and wander around like hipster pioneers, all too conscience of the joke in our “outing,” our contrived making-of-lemonade). It was a starry night and there was a couple sitting in a car in the parking lot above us. We were right by the water, and he said, with unusual force, about Hale shooting me, “The reason that happened is because he wasn't awake.” I got a jolt in my chest when he said that, and reading this article, again, steals my prana.** It is stepping into another world, it is tasting Hell on Earth. It's just insane how thin the veils can be, when one is reckless. The defense argues that the man who asked for the trigger to be pulled was the only one who could have loaded the gun; the man up for manslaughter checked it three times, then went to the bathroom. Either way, argues the prosecution, it is a reckless act. Who can peg the force of energy, and what it manifests, on any one person? (My beloved, fundamentalist father asked a few times with some concern what I actually meant by “energy”; I reduced it to subtle body language cues, tried to euphemize - not a verb according to spell check - with the formerly hip slang of “vibes,” the universally relate-able “wavelength.”)
Life is incredibly fragile, and who knows what it's for? I don't know what to do about my weird, lanky, self-absorbed, morose mate,:but at least I don't think any guns are going to be pointed at each others heads, and I ought not to ashamed of him I chose, especially since he consistently warned me he was unable to care even for himself. So, now, though we made a choice that lacked good sense from many angles, we must make the best of it, and I for one grow giddy imagining the uteral (not an adjective according to spell check) kicks, and wrapping the baby into a bundle for warmth and comfort; hooded blankets and sponge baths and the onset of language. Where I should be and who I should be with, during this, is a mystery. It could be mostly immaturity and/or denial, but I long to give birth and spend the early stage(s) in the south. Though I love central Maine, I feel constricted by it in this context and limited by many people I know. I'd like to complement the journey with a literal shape and it seems likely, though that's an intuition figure.
One time my mom, quite drunk, told me as though it were a confession that when I was very little she left me in the care of her good friend Mary Hobson (my mom was lucky and had many lovely and artsy friends with kids when my brother and I are were little), who had also just given birth. Mary had plenty of milk and so nursed me. My mom giggled like a child caught in mischief, but in some places this is very common—wet-nurse used to be a legitimate occupation for poor women, though I can't quite understand the logistics, only that rich women considered nursing beneath them (the outcome for the children of the wet-nurses seems potentially sad.) And there. Not artful, but nonetheless swinging from tragic to light and back again. Imitating life, poorly.
** “life force”
A beautiful girl I vaguely know, B., got pregnant, three years ago & in her teens, by my friend L. at a time when she said she was on the Depo shot (and it's possible she was). L. told me a wonderful, haunting story about making love to her in a cabin in the woods. It was pouring rain and after they finished she ran outside and started puking violently. He said at that point he knew but didn't admit it to himself. I remember seeing her weeks before she gave birth. She looked haggard in mesh shorts and a hooded sweatshirt. I remember wondering whether or not she was fat, since her limbs were thin but there was an indeterminate bulk to her. I decided she was just out of shape, as she smoked a cigarette outside looking exhausted. Apparently she told no one - not even her sister or mother whom she lived with- drove herself to the Lewiston hospital (good call, the Augusta hospital is a disturbing mess) when labor started, went at it completely alone, then called her mother and said she was coming home with the baby. For some reason Gilmore and I were among the first to know about this and that L. was the father. I remember we told L. at the apartment we (Gilmore & I) were tragically sharing: it was tense and strange and exciting and even slightly funny (one can't deny that these difficult situations are rife with humor, the reminder of how little we're in control, or how easily we lose the little bit we have). L. had meanwhile impregnated his new girlfriend, since B. had left him heartbroken. A few months later, and right before I was shot, I ended up living with L. for a time in a huge apartment on Sand Hill. At this point he started sleeping with a tiny gangster-ish, yet undeniably gorgeous girl named Rita. F. used to always sing, "You say your name's Rita / but it sounded sweeta / the night before," or however it goes, which was a great source of fun for us (we also bonded trying to push F's car out of the sloped driveway next to the laundromat on a very regular basis. I kicked L. out for bad living and not paying rent, had Hale move in, and it was only a few weeks of him mostly sleeping all day, playing video games, smoking in his room, and dying his hair before we all moved out after he crippled me with that rifle, which is nothing compared to a tale I'm leading up to.)
*
My stepmother used to know when she was ovulating and avoid intercourse on those days. She forgot to factor in the way sperm live on and lurk, waiting for the egg (we've all heard, and sometimes witnessed, how biology strains towards life), plus her periods were irregular, not so good for cycle-charting. She went for medical treatment for the irregular periods when her first pregnancy was discovered. The 18 year old father split and she found sub-ideal shelter in her ex-boyfriend, who left college to come home to her, and could possibly have been the father (he wasn't, though.) She went on to have a second daughter with this man, whom she married at like 19; he started to cheat on her, she left him (she described watching their obvious discomfort when they were together, she was a woman from work, he denied it), but the first girl grew up believing he was her biological father and he had partial custody.
When this first daughter, J, was twelve my stepmother married my father and became convicted about the lie she was living. A DNA test was performed and J's father, miraculously, stepped up to the plate, and wanted to be a huge- and quite delightful - part of J.'s life. In this sense, she says she got two fathers the year she turned twelve: my father and her biological father, who now stays the night at my dad and stepmother's home in PA when he brings J home from visits in Maine, and goes to church with the family. She plans to have them both walk her down the aisle. Lest it seem too Kodak-sational, bio-Dad (I hate how flippant that sounds, but it's clear enough) still chain smokes, and his great passion is a DVD collection. But man is J his spitting image! And boy do those two get on. They didn't skip a beat.
It's no secret that women often sleep with more than one man during a given cycle. One of my mom and dad's friends from the days when everyone partied at the camp in Hartland, a run down little shack with a wood stove and a dusty, mothy loft on Moose Pond (not Moosehead Lake) with a few motor boats and a hoop nailed onto a tree with a fishing net attached on which the adults and older children used to play "HORSE" for many accumulating boozy hours with deflated beach balls, the place where I spent an entire summer in my youth (I remember being woken up once at midnight to go cat-fishing) when my mom was in rehab, I think the woman was one of my dad's cousins, but anyway: she wasn't sure if the baby would be black or not. In interest of loyalty (to her boyfriend), not at all racist missions, just the pragmatism of loving who you're "with," she hoped it wouldn't be, and it wasn't.
My dad's mother had a son named Dan Bigley, named after his father, possibly conceived in Alaska. My aunt and uncle say Dan Bigley Sr. is a mystery. It's unclear whether they were ever married and my grandmother (a conservative Catholic with not a little liquor-drinking, chain-smoking, solitaire playing flair) never spoke of him. She was wild about her late husband James "Jim" Johnson, however, a fairly handsome man with a glass eye. I forget what he did, but Dan Jr. was entering his teens when they commenced having four kids, one right after another. My dad was born when my grandmother was 42 and may not have been the last except my grandfather died of a heart attack in his sleep before his first birthday. The oldest of the four kids, my Uncle Joe, walked in right after he died. According to his mystical Rasti friend Matal, whom he works with at the post office, in a certain parallel universe, Joe walked in during the heart attack, but in this version, he didn't want things to be so difficult for his six year old self (he had different, perhaps gentler lessons to learn, I suppose?) so he entered after. Matal also knew about Joe and Robin's eight week miscarriage, Sarah, and drew a picture of her, and said her spirit remained in the house. I'd love to tell my dad that these card-carrying (an asinine qualifier? well, perhaps in this case, I doubt that it's true) Episcopalians go to table tippings, but it would stir unnecessary drama. My grandmother worked full time, stayed in that house on Royal Street in Winthrop until she died at 86, and never remarried. She was blessed with visits from relatives her entire life, and towards the end ate little but Saltines and corn flakes. I lived with her the year I was seven and was very close to her, though she confused me by speaking ill of my parent's relationship and particularly- though very delicately- my mother. When I was six my family and I lived in Woodstock, New York and Grammy and I used to write letters back and forth. Once she wrote “Because you love to read, you'll never be lonely.” Not an original, but it's always original how an idea is transmitted from one generation to another.
*
Gilmore's parents were 17 (Julie) and 16 (Aaron) when they conceived him. She had been diagnosed with endometriosis and told she would be unable to have children. As a treatment she took birth control pills. Aaron's stepmother gave them to her than told her to stop taking them. Apparently in a woman with endometriosis this starting then stopping triggers fertility like nothing else. She scheduled an appointment to "take care of it," but that never took place, for whatever reason. Some women just can't do it, I think is how she explained it to me. Aaron's parents were devastated by the pregnancy and his mom lured him into taking a lucrative, exciting sailing job when Gilmore was six months old. Left alone, Julie cursed him every day (and though they are still together, and rather happy, still doesn't let him forget this), and got pregnant with someone else, who Aaron has raised as his own his whole life; paternity was "discussed" in family counseling years later, but seems to have little bad effect on Gilmore's little brother, who is temperamental sun to Gilmore's, well, whatever.
Julie is an only child. Her mother, S., a 400 pound, diabetic, Communist, time-bank activist psychic, conceived her as a love child with someone who had witnessed some gnarly conspiracy goings - down, but shortly after Julie was born, S. came to the apartment to find her lover in bed with a man. He split.
*
RF was with his much older girlfriend for awhile, had gotten into an altercation with her 13 or 14 year old son, with cops visiting, and he believed they had nothing in common (he likes Noam Chomsky, or pretends to; she's all about People magazine, and, in her mid-thirties, has worked retail her whole life). He'd moved into his grandparents' house and essentially cut off contact when she called him one day and said, "I'm three months pregnant." He said he'd call her back, got a six or a twelve pack (I forget which), drank it, and called her back. His French, Catholic grandparents told him to do the right thing, which in this case meant moving in with her and being a stay-at-home Dad for a long time. His life seemed to take a pleasant shape in some ways, with lucrative work, a house with the down payment made by those grandparents, and the grandparents paying his tuition for his librarian degree, almost complete. I can't say he seems particularly transformed, though.
*
And now, since life is not only about being born but dying, I stumble across something very dark in today's newspaper, which exacerbates my nausea and makes me want to retreat from existing. The Kennebec Journal, A6: “Testimony begins in sex-and-guns death trial.” I suppose there's no point in rewriting the whole article, but it involved three men who had been “having sex and taking drugs for nearly 12 hours in [a] basement.” They regularly transformed this home basement into a “so-called 'dungeon,'” “a fantasy world filled with sex toys and videos that gave the men an escape from their everyday lives, jobs and … HIV,” which infected all of them. In the confusion and haze and dark lust of this, and many hard drugs, one of them put a gun up to another one's head for heightened eroticism, thinking it wasn't loaded. “In an instant, the party ended.”
It's not about me, it's about them, but reading this article my arms feel weak and I grow woozy. I can't quite connect with the part of me that ought to be grateful to have avoided such a dark place, and I am not condemning anyone's sexual practices, or even the sadism or masochism that lives in all of us. I just think it's horrible that this happened on this Earth, like many things that happen here, and it makes me sad just to share the soil with such tragedy, and seemingly preventable (we see dimly, and don't really understand cause and effect in the larger sphere) evil.
I think it's very possible that the man did not consciously think the gun was loaded. I also think that there are subconscious forces, which perhaps have little to do with the judicial system, but play out in spiritual law, whatever that means. My boyfriend confessed he consulted tarot.com and it drained him of all hope so he intends to avoid it. The eery part he said was that it was kind of accurate, which I think W. & I relate to. Oh, well. I think even when divination tools (or psychic mediums) ring accurate the conclusions are largely projections, reflections of our own hopes and fears. And not, as my former flame and I used to say, irredeemable.
Tarot.com said what surrounded D's current situation was mostly negligence, and negligence is a lesser-known form of evil. And I think of another gun-that-was-loaded, the one that landed all hot and bursting, in me: though it was much, much less dark a situation than the instant death of Fred Wilson in South Portland on April 18, 2009. (Although it is impossible to say. Perhaps Wilson was spared, and perhaps I've been reserved for unimaginable sufferings, either in terms of absorbing and/or inflicting them. But why think like that? I swear my imagination is distorted and assuredly afflicted; “To be hyperconscious is a disease,” declares the narrator of Dostoevsky's “Notes from the Underground.”)
I remember what D. said, a couple months ago (who can say exactly when, though I'm sure there is a record of it somewhere), as we sat stoned across the Kennebec from the crumbling mills, beyond the little park at the bottom of Sand Hill (a park never used except for when the carnival comes once a year in the summer: I swear it was more whimsical as an empty lot; my family and I used to live in Augusta and wander around like hipster pioneers, all too conscience of the joke in our “outing,” our contrived making-of-lemonade). It was a starry night and there was a couple sitting in a car in the parking lot above us. We were right by the water, and he said, with unusual force, about Hale shooting me, “The reason that happened is because he wasn't awake.” I got a jolt in my chest when he said that, and reading this article, again, steals my prana.** It is stepping into another world, it is tasting Hell on Earth. It's just insane how thin the veils can be, when one is reckless. The defense argues that the man who asked for the trigger to be pulled was the only one who could have loaded the gun; the man up for manslaughter checked it three times, then went to the bathroom. Either way, argues the prosecution, it is a reckless act. Who can peg the force of energy, and what it manifests, on any one person? (My beloved, fundamentalist father asked a few times with some concern what I actually meant by “energy”; I reduced it to subtle body language cues, tried to euphemize - not a verb according to spell check - with the formerly hip slang of “vibes,” the universally relate-able “wavelength.”)
Life is incredibly fragile, and who knows what it's for? I don't know what to do about my weird, lanky, self-absorbed, morose mate,:but at least I don't think any guns are going to be pointed at each others heads, and I ought not to ashamed of him I chose, especially since he consistently warned me he was unable to care even for himself. So, now, though we made a choice that lacked good sense from many angles, we must make the best of it, and I for one grow giddy imagining the uteral (not an adjective according to spell check) kicks, and wrapping the baby into a bundle for warmth and comfort; hooded blankets and sponge baths and the onset of language. Where I should be and who I should be with, during this, is a mystery. It could be mostly immaturity and/or denial, but I long to give birth and spend the early stage(s) in the south. Though I love central Maine, I feel constricted by it in this context and limited by many people I know. I'd like to complement the journey with a literal shape and it seems likely, though that's an intuition figure.
One time my mom, quite drunk, told me as though it were a confession that when I was very little she left me in the care of her good friend Mary Hobson (my mom was lucky and had many lovely and artsy friends with kids when my brother and I are were little), who had also just given birth. Mary had plenty of milk and so nursed me. My mom giggled like a child caught in mischief, but in some places this is very common—wet-nurse used to be a legitimate occupation for poor women, though I can't quite understand the logistics, only that rich women considered nursing beneath them (the outcome for the children of the wet-nurses seems potentially sad.) And there. Not artful, but nonetheless swinging from tragic to light and back again. Imitating life, poorly.
** “life force”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)