End the ultimatums!

No more ultimatums!  Ever!  Or else!

very sad, but calm day today

I'm taking this class called The Execptional Person.  It's so awful.  "The Exceptional Person" is the new euphemism for weirdos and j.d.'s and gimps and simps and 'tards.  Of course, we can't use any of those words, anymore, because we're so fucking thoughtful and sensitive.  We wouldn't want to use any words that would make the troublesome little fuckers feel bad about themselves.  

Please understand, this animosity is directed towards the smug, sanctimonious people who decide who is the exception and what we're all going to do about it, not the victims.  I'm having a really hard time with the last few chapters, because we're discussing the kinds of processing problems that I had as a kid, that made my life torture.  Things that it was adamantly denied I had.  There was nothing wrong with me, nosirree-Bob, that a little trying harder wouldn't help.  Even now my parents deny that I'm anything but exceptionally bright.  And a little, "awkward."

They think they're helping me.  Don't want me to get a label that would make people treat me differently.  No, it's just my personality/most intimate self that makes people run screaming for the hills.  

And then my teacher says, "Let me describe to you how a kid like this would look to a teacher or schoolmate..." and describes me at age 5 or age ten or age 15.  She sounds like she's quoting from letters my teachers sent home.  I cry and cry when I'm reading the chapter, and then I sit through the lecture and pretend I'm fine.  Wouldn't want to do anything exceptional.

Today was a really hard lecture.  I felt totally vulnerable and exposed, and the whole discussion was like, "Why are these people so weird?  Why don't they just do what everybody else does?  That sounds crazy and dangerous.  I wouldn't want to be around that person."  I really wanted to tell them, but I was so emotional I knew I was going to seem crazy and dangerous if I tried to explain.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I didn't feel understood and supported, and I didn't want to be there.  Maybe I just have a persecution complex, but I didn't feel that today's topic was being discussed with the same kind of sympathy that the discussions on other exeptionalities included.  It's probable that I'm just much too sensitive, and overtired, but I felt that a class which had heretofore been painfully aware of everyone's viewpoint turned into a mildly malicious gossip session about someone absent.  

The best I can do is to say this.  I seem to make a lot of people uncomfortable.  If you are one of these people, I am sorry, and I think I can explain why it is.  I perceive life a lot differently than you do.  Nobody knows why.  There are hundreds of reasons, from genetics to environment to brain lesions, and almost everyone has an opninion.  But perceive it differently I do, and part of that makes me into a really intense mirror.  Another part of it lets me see a lot more of the silly arbitrariness of life than most people usually do, or maybe it just makes it bother me more. 

People are basically just perceiving machines, pattern recognizing machines.  My machine just works a little different.  Like, I bought mine in Europe.  It pretty much does what yours does, but it's geared a little differently, and you have to work on it with a different kind of screwdriver.  It's missing a couple of functions yours has, but it can do these other things.  Maybe the other things are more important to me than whatever yours can do that is really important to you but that I just don't care about.

I really want to explain this lucidly and the part of my brain that knows how to do that feels like it's packed with broken glass and barbed wire.  I just can't do it.  

I'll stop trying for a moment and leave you with this final thought:

Jesus, why can't you just be like everybody else?  Would it kill you to go along to get along?

What, if everybody jumped off a cliff you would too?  Be your own person!

-took a nap, other side of brain had this for me when I woke up:

(There's a reason I'm fucked up, and it's called Human Culture.  It causes people to do crazy things and then rationalize them much more virulently than I ever thought about.  In its highly concentrated form it is poisonous, and if I make you very uncomfortable, I can be reasonably sure you are so contaminated with it as to be a danger to me, and cause you to avoid me by being rude and unkind to you.)

Thank you, other side of brain.  Sometimes you scare me, but I like your confidence!

 

wonderful words by someone else but me

I've been having a wonderful/terrible time lately with motivation and creativity.  I mean, up until about 6 months ago it was just a terrible time, so that's better.  It's just now I kind of still feel that icky feeling a lot of the time, but I find it hopelessly funny.  What?  I'll never amount to anything?  I'm a terrible artist/writer/person/friend/daughter/pet owner?  Everyone has these feelings and they never go away, no matter how hard you try to do better or ignore them?  Then I roll out of my chair in genuine, life-affirming laughter.  Which usually pisses me off.

Why?  Because I'm special.  Special as a stomach pump.  Just like everybody else.  The wonderful blogger Finslippy is special as a mysterious foreign postcard in the mail, and she has these feelings, too.  Except her can talken more betterer then mine.  Seems like everyone I know is having a hard time with the creative product coming out of their head, not just me, lately.  Read it up, and if you don't believe me or her, listen to Ira Glass.  That guy really fucken knows what he's talking about.

hey, kids! it's the usage nazi!

Dear The Internet,

Discreet and discrete are two different words. They mean two different things. Please stop using them interchangeably, especially in personal ads. "Seeking clean, discrete kinky person, no fatties." Doesn't make any sense. Discrete means, "constituting a separate entity : individually distinct."  

Maybe it's your really deep way of saying you want to be with somebody who can be their own person, who doesn't need to be with someone to feel like themselves. But I don't think so. I think the word you want is discreet, which means, "having or showing discernment or good judgment in conduct and especially in speech : prudent ; especially : capable of preserving prudent silence." "You told my wife we're fucking?! Are you insane? You agreed to be discreet." "No, I agreed to be discrete. And I wanted to tell her. That's just how I roll."

Considering how many other rules of grammar and usage (and spelling, and punctuation) I just ignore, this post might seem a little silly. Especially seeing that I (surprisingly) came down on the side of the them/they solution to the he-or-she/his-or-hers controversy. (That's right, there's trouble over it in the grammar world, and I'm playing fast and loose on the wrong side of town.) But if you're thinking that, you're probably the kind of person who misuses their and they're or hear and here. And jerks off to pictures of Ryan Seacrest holding a puppy. With your mom in the room.

why I love cell phones

I decide to go to the grocery store, right?  And it's, like, 9:30 at night on a Thursday.  I so have this, right?  It's gonna be dead, walk in and right out with the milk and butter and shit.  Then I get there and all my dreams are dead, because every single person that goes to UT is in the goddam H.E.B.  Swerving all over the aisles and being bitches.  And then there's the girls.

I keep running into this Larry the Cable Guy clone, except skinny.  You know, like "How did you know I do meth?" skinny.  He's not got a basket, he seems to just be talking on his cellphone while "I don't just live in a trailer, I manage the park!" Lady next to him is steadily packing WIC-approved items in a buggy.  I'm getting annoyed with seeing them everywhere in the store.  Larry is really clueless, and keeps standing between me and whatever I need to grab, endlessly explaining some random story on the phone.

Then it happens, the magic.  I'm leaning around the dude (again) to get the milk, when he says (clear as day), "Well, I don't know, Mama.  I guess they thought I was all cuffed up and couldn't reach it."

God Bless America, people.  Fuck you if you don't like cell phones.  When I ran into him again in the meat market, he was saying, "Well, hell, I used it to beat the shit out of the back of his car, whadda you think I did?!"   

back from a long stay in the igloo

When I was taking my year of training classes for initiation into  the Ol' Funky Order of the Sibylline Wicca they gave us all a guided meditation meant for the purpose of giving us access to the Akashic Records and some kind of wisdom shaman vision stuff.  Yeah, I was pretty painfully sincere about it back then, but that was around the time I started to realize I'm allergic to religion.  I'm also allergic to polyester and nickel.  My brain wants it to make a pattern, but I'm afraid of what it might mean if it did.

Anyway.  We go into the wonderful, transcendent world of the Akashic Records and can access any information we want about anything we need to know, and the more we practice the more wise and transformed we can become, then we come out of our meditation and have to tell everybody what our vision was.  And everybody goes around and tells and they saw beautiful guides and strong animal totems and flowing rivers and all that happy leprechaun shit, and it was so meaningful and wise and wonderful.  And here's my vision:

I'm walking in this place that isn't a place, it's all black everywhere like it's dark, but it's not dark, there's just no color anywhere.  And these two people come up to me, but (you guessed it) they're not people.  I mean...you know...they look like people but they're kind of squirmy around the edges and you know  that they are something else when they're not here, that it's just convenient for them to look like people right now.   They tell me something, whatever, I couldn't remember it as soon as I left the meditation.  One of those, "It was clear as day, it told me to..." and you never remember.  And we all go in this big room, and it looks like some kid's science fair project of what the inside of the International Space Station looks like, all made out of old plumbing parts from his dad's business.  Except, you know, it looks really, really real, and instead of looking out on space, it looks out into this huge library in a gigantic underground cavern,  and there's thousands of people in there looking at books, and this mean little girl in the control room/space station won't let me go in there.  

you know how people look at you when they all suddenly realize you're a lot weirder than they thought you were?  Like, I think a lot of people get the wrong end of the stick when they first meet me, and think I'm a harmlessly eccentric lovable nutjob, and that couldn't be farther from the truth.  I've come to the conclusion that I'm a sort of half-feral throwback to the days before anyone ever thought about manners or protocol.  Sometimes I think I just fell through the cracks of culture.  Somehow I got this weird swerve in me where I just don't understand some of ya'lls weird customs, like eating in groups, and your strange tribal dancing.  Eye contact, and letting people touch you just because they want to.  You know. 

The thing is, I am pretty much harmless (I think) but I generally prefer my way to whatever crazy shit you people come up with and put on MTV or whatever is cool now, educatin' the sheep.  YouTube.  I'm terribly curious about it, but in most cases, I do not want to play.  I'm not even sure I want a ticket.  I'll just watch through the fence for a minute.  Oh, gosh, I forgot an appointment, but the Slushee was very good, and I think I learned a lot.  Thank you.

It's not that I'm necessarily hostile to anything I don't understand, but I get so goddamned tired of being attacked for not wanting the same exact thing as the rest of the pods.  Like, if I don't want it, how can I understand how weird you feel it is that I don't want it?  If I thought and reacted and felt as you feel, and could comprehend how fuckin' weird it all is, we wouldn't be having this conversation, dude.  We'd just wander around the mall together, not saying a word and just, you know, groovin'.   I actually feel pretty normal.  I feel like me.  I want what I want, and think how I think, and a lot of the stuff that you do everyday seems pretty crazy and scary and weird and creepy to me, sometimes too.  That part, I understand how you feel.  

Stop telling me to be myself.  I'm being myself.  If you don't like it, there's nothing I can do about it.  These people, and the, "You'd be so pretty if you'd just" people.  Wear makeup.  Smile more often.  Shave.  I like to make sure I see all these people again right after I shave my head.  Oh, you meant my legs and pits?  Sorry, these things happen.  Once I shave the noggin, I tend to stop feeling I have to shave my legs and feel more free to wear my pretty dresses.  

Jesus, I'm such a child.  Why not just be goth?  Because goths are just a bunch of monkey-see, monkey-do posers.  I just randomly do the exact opposite of what anyone (including me sometimes) expects me to do, so nobody but me gets to possess me  by being able to know or appreciate me very well.  This is MY precious.  Mine!  And you can't have it, and if you want it I'm going to make you not want it, because it's mine.  All, all mine.

And all of it leads to my special unique specialness being as totally generic as everyone elses'.  Like, I guess the bald-headed chick in odd footgear and bag-sale clothes and weird jewelry and attitude on a vintage bike isn't as widespread a type as the frat dude or the rainbow person, but I'm not the only one in my zip code.  Shit, I'm not even the only one named Kelly(e) in my zip code.  And even if anyone ever was going to find a way to rebel and be unique in some way that wasn't old and busted when Plato wrote The Cave, a bunch of loser airheads would just copy it, and then you'd have to see it at Target and in the Dollar store and shit.  Nine-year-olds sportin' it.  All cheap and knock-off.  In outlet malls and chain eateries.  Wearin' it with those Ugg boots.  And then you'd have to kill yourself.

Hey kids, don't try to be special!  You're just fooling yourself.  What a wonderful sentiment.  I should put that on a greeting card.  With a little pop-up.  Of a noose.  (I'm totally going to do this.  Maybe it could be a graduation card.  It would go perfectly with the valentine's card with the popup of the handgun.)   

Anyway, despite all appearances this is actually a happy post.  Hence the morbid humour, only one of the handy and simple things you can note to give you absolutely not any idea at all what is going on in my head, ever.  

I'm a very calm lady today.  I dug a hole this week, for our new flower garden by the fence.  I'm very happy when I have holes to dig.  I think I shall dig some more!  I have a feeling our house will be surrounded by plants by the spring.  People who know where I live should come by and look at my dug-up flower bed.  It is very impressive (especially when you remember that my center of gravity is 8 inches above the ground and I have the upper body strength of a T-Rex), and my entire body hurts, so admire and compliment it, please.

My bike got stolen, but I think I was burning off some bad karma, and I can't wish evil on somebody having such a bad night they have to sink to stealing bicycles.  I mean, my personal moral compass of terrible things to do, from worst to least worst, is kind of like, Murder/Torture, Rape, Stealing Bicycles, Arson, General Greediness, Theivery, Gossip, Looking at Me Funny.  So how much does your life have to suck before you do like the third worst thing ever?  Pretty fucking bad.  Way worse than whatever bad day I had.  Go with God, ride it in good health.  I hope it's the thing that changes your life and you never have to steal again, or want for anything you need.  My new bike is neat, neat, neat.  It's fast as a rocket, and wonderful to look at, and I'm totally in love.  

Is that weird? Being in love with a bike?  Oh, well, like I give a fuck.  Have a great day!

Words I love

I've been working on this list for a long time now, maybe 6 months.  I know I'm the only one who cares about it, but these are some fucking awesome words.  All the entries are glossed from the dictionary, maybe paraphrased but any errors are mine.  I know I already use too many big words, but you can kind of understand why when you see how many great words there are.

It makes kind of a weird list, because my brain likes words for weird reasons.  I should write a little story that has all of them in it.  There are a couple for each letter of the alphabet (even x and z!) and sometimes the list of synonyms is better than the actual word.  I also really like word origins, so pretend you're interested.  

ab.ne.ga.tion, n,: the act of renouncing or rejecting something : self-denial, abjuration, surrender, relinquishment, abstemiousness, continence, asceticism, temperance, austerity

a.lac.ri.ty, n.:  brisk and cheerful readiness, from Latin "brisk"  "My major attraction to the local peep-show is the good-natured alacrity exhibited by the performers."

back.hand.ed, adj.: gesture made with the back of the hand facing the direction of movement; figurative use as of something indirect, ambiguous or insincere; a backhanded compliment delivered as teasing.

be.at.i.tude, n.:  supreme blessedness; benediction, grace, bliss, rapture, saintliness;  also a proper noun indicating the blessings listed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, or a title given to patriarchs in the Orthodox Church

ca.tarrh, n.:  excessive discharge or buildup of mucus in the nose or throat, associated with inflammation of the mucous membranes;  from Greek "down-flow"

cre.pus.cu.lar, adj.:  of, resembling, or relating to twilight, an animal appearing or active in twilight;  from Latin crepusculum, "twilight"

de.fen.es.tra.tion, n.:  the action of throwing someone or something out of a window;  early 17th cent., from modern Latin de="down from" fenestra="window"

du.ra ma.ter, n.:  the tough outermost membrane enveloping the brain and spinal cord, from medieval Latin "hard mother" or Arabic "coarse mother"

e.bul.li.ent, adj.:  cheerful and full of energy, buoyant, merry, jaunty, elated, animated, sparkly, vivacious, perky, chirpy, bouncy, peppy;  from Latin "boiling up" or out, to boil, as a boiling pot or a boiling sea

e.pis.te.mol.o.gy, n.:  the theory of knowlege, esp. with regard to its methods, validity, and scope.  Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.  from Greek, "know, know how to do"

fra.cas, n.:  a noisy disturbance or quarrel, from Italian fracassare, "make an uproar"; brawl, melee, rumpus, skirmish, struggle, scuffle, scrum, clash, fisticuffs, scrap, dust-up, set-to, donnybrook

fa.ce.tious, adj.: treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humor; flippant, glib, sardonic, jocular, sportive

gib.bous, adj.:  having the observable illuminated part greater than a semicircle and less than a circle, as of the moon; convex or protuberant, as of an eye.  from latin gibbus, "hump"

gad.a.bout, n.: a habitual wandering pleasure-seeker

hie, v.: go quickly, with haste, from Middle English for "strive or pant"

hack.neyed, adj.: of a phrase or idea, lacking significance through having been overused; unoriginal and trite, vapid, stale, tired, banal, hoary, boilerplate, old hat, cheesy, played out

in.fin.i.tesi.mal, adv.:  an indefinitely small quantity; a value approaching zero.  minute, imperceptible, teeny

i.sin.glass, n.: a kind of gelatin obtained from fish, esp. sturgeon, and used in making jellies, glue, etc., and for clarifying ale; from obsolete Dutch "sturgeon's bladder"; or mica or a similar mineral in thin transparent sheets, often used as fireproof windows in lanterns and stoves

je.june, adj.: naive, simplistic and superficial; (of ideas or writings) dry and uninteresting;  from Latin "fasting, barren" denoting "not (intellectually) nourishing"

join.er.y, n.: the wooden components of a building, such as stairs, door and door and window frames, viewed collectively

ken, n.: one's range of knowledge or sight; v.: to know, recognize, identify or be acquainted with

ki.bosh, n.: put an end to, dispose of decisively, halt, quash, block, cancel, scotch, thwart, prevent, supress, stymie, scuttle

lach.ry.mal, adj.: poetic/literary, connected with weeping or tears; Physiology/Anatomy (lacrimal) concerned with the secretion of tears;  n.: Anatomy, a small bone forming part of the eye socket, or n. archaic, a vial to hold the tears of mourners at a funeral

las.civ.i.ous, adj.: (of a person, manner or gesture) feeling or revealing an overt, confident sexual desire; lustful, wonton, salacious, lewd, smutty, naughty, licentious, concupiscent, ribald, blue, indecent, lubricious, purient, dirty

Ma.cas.sar, n.:  a kind of oil formerly used, esp. by men, to make one's hair shine and lie flat.  Also spelled Makassar, the oil was originally marketed as consisting of ingredients from Makassar; consider the "anti-macassar" doilies popular at same time to protect the backs of chairs and sofas from staining with this ubiquitous hair dressing

mus.te.lid, n.:  Zoology, a mammal of the weasel family (Mustelidae), distinguished by having a long body, short legs, and musky scent glands under the tail, from Latin "weasel"

nai.ad, n.:  a water nymph said to inhabit a river, spring or waterfall; the aquatic larva or nymph of a dragonfly, mayfly or stonefly; a submerged aquatic plant with narrow leaves and minute flowers, from Greek naein, "to flow"

nar.whal, n.: a small Arctic whale, all males and some females of which have one or two long forward-pointing spirally twisted tusks developed from one or two teeth; from the Old Norse word for "corpse" referencing the mottled grey skin color. 

oar.lock, n.: a fitting on the gunwale of a boat that serves as a fulcrum for an oar and keeps it in place

ou.bli.ette, n.: a secret dungeon with access only through a trapdoor in its ceiling, from the French word for "forget," 'oublier.'  With the diminuitive 'ette', literally a "little forgetter"

pa.ho.e.ho.e, n.: Geology, basaltic lava forming smooth undulating or ropy masses; contrasted with 'aa,' basaltic lava forming very rough jagged masses with a light frothy texture; both from contemporary Hawaiian

per.e.gri.nate, v.: travel or wander around from place to place; globe-trot, voyage, journey, treck, adventure

quin.cunx, n.:  an arrangement of five objects with four at the corners of a square or rectangle and the fifth at its center, as on the five of a die or playing cards, or in planting trees; in Astrology, an aspect of 150 degrees, equivalent to five zodiacal signs; from the Latin words for "five twelfths"

quo.tid.i.an, adj.:  occurring daily, ordinary, diurnal, average, standard, common,mainstream, unremarkable, workaday, daily, run-of-the-mill, mundane, nothing to write home about, conventional, a dime a dozen, middle of the road, unexeceptional; medical usage denoting the malignant form of malaria. 

ran.cour, n.:  bitterness or resentfulness, esp. when long-standing.  origin middle english : via Old French from the Latin words for "rank or bitter, stinking grudge."

ru.fous, adj.:reddish brown in color, used esp. in Ornithology i.e. 'rufous tit'

sa.lu.bri.ous, adj.:producing good effects, beneficial, health-giving, advantageous, productive, worthwile, timely, profitable, cushy, wholesome

syz.y.gy, n.: in Astronomy, a conjunction or opposition, esp. of the moon and sun; a pair of connected or corresponding things; via Latin from the Greek words for "paired or yoked together"

ta.lus, n: in Anatomy, the large bone in the ankle that articulates with the tibia of the leg and the calcaneum and navicular bone of the foot, also called astragalus, from the Latin words for "ankle-heel"; or a sloping mass of rock fragments at the foot of a cliff or the slopingside of an earthwork or wall that tapers to the top

ty.ro, n.:  a beginner or novice, from the Latin word for, "recruit"; neophyte, initiate, fledgling, apprentice, greenhorn, tenderfoot, rookie

u.ki.yo-e, n.: a school of Japanese art depicting subjects from everyday life, dominiant in the 17-19th centuries, from Japanese words for "fleeting world-picture"

u.vu.la, n.: a fleshy extension at the back of the soft palate that hangs above the throat, or a similar hanging structure in any organ of the body, particularly at the opening of the bladder; from the Latin word for "grape"

vac.il.late, v.:  alternate or waver between different opinions or actions; be indecisive.  from the latin word for "swayed."  dither, hesitate, blow hot and cold, fluctuate, hem and haw, shilly-shally, flip-flop

vul.pine, adj.:  of or relating to a fox or foxes; crafty and cunning, from the Latin word for "fox" or "fox-like"

wale, n.:  a ridge on a textured woven fabric such as corduroy; a plank running along the side of a wooden ship, thicker than the usual planking, and strengthening and protecting the hull; or a horizontal band around a woven basket

whore.son, n.:  archaic, an unpleasant or greatly disliked person, construction suggested by Anglo-norman French "fiz a putain," literally "son of a whore"

xan.tho.phyll, n.: a yellow or brown carotenoid plant pigment that is revealed in autumn colors of leaves when the green of chlorophyll ceases to mask it; from the Greek words for "yellow" and "leaf"

xiph.oid process, n.:  the cartilaginous section at the lower end of the sternum, which is not attached to any ribs and gradually ossifies during adult life, from the Greek word for "sword"

yawp, n.: a harsh or hoarse cry or yelp; foolish or noisy talk; v.: to make such a cry or talk

yoke, n.:  a wooden crosspiece fastened over the necks of two animals and attached to a plow or cart they are to pull in tandem, a pair of animals coupled in such a way, or achaically, the amount of land a pair so yoked could plow in a day;  a similar frame fitting over the neck and shoulders of a person to carry pails; part of a garment that fits over the shoulders, to which the main fabric of the garment is attached (the yoke of a western shirt); a crossbar at the head of a rudder, a control lever in an aircraft, a bar of soft iron between the poles of an electromagnet; in ancient Rome an arch of three spears under which a defeated army was made to march.  

zeug.ma, n.: a figure of speech in which a word applies to two others in different senses ("She checked the date on the milk, unaware that she would tragically expire before it did.") or to two others of which it semantically suits only one ("With weeping wounds and hearts they retreated.")

zo.e.trope, n.:  a 19th century optical toy consisting of a cylinder with a series of pictures on the inner surface that, when viewed from outside through slits with the cylinder rotating, give an impression of continuous motion, from the Greek words for "turning life"

oooookayyyy

school is doing well-ends thursday-and I should make a's in both classes

still don't like it much, but maybe I could learn

going to see my brother next tuesday for a couple weeks

back in time for summer session, might even go

Run! It's a poem!

Here's a poem.  I'm not saying it's good.  I'm not even saying I like it, it's just a poem I wrote.  I backdated it to when I wrote it, rather than today's date.  Enjoy.

Her Safeword is "Awesome!"

Compassion was trained into her like a Pavlovian response.

She can taste it, salivary and immediate on exposure to suffering.

It's just that she doesn't care anymore.

Her heart feels like a dry socket in a crumbling jaw,

a holy relic of her belief in the golden rule.

She's the precise opposite of a bigot;

She only hates people exactly like herself.

The weak, the selfish, the manipulative,

the broken and the timid incur her wrath:

their only offense, reflection.

you must watch Bearforce 1

Dutch man-bears dance and sing boy-band-style. "Ooooooooooo, it's so goood, it's so good, It's sooooo gooooooooooood." They're so cute. I'm not even attracted to hairy men and I can't decide if the pink one or the yellow one is hotter. (No, I'm not talking about a caucasian and a regular asian. Just watch the video.) They're so simultaneously serious and winking you have to get up and dance, too. I love these boys, boys, boys.

My letter to the New Mexico Tourism Board:

Dear Sir or Madam:
I'm from New Mexico and still have family there, though I now live in Texas. I'm always encouraging my friends to travel in New Mexico and telling them about all the wonderful things to see, do and eat there, but every once in a while I have a problem.
I'll be talking up everything in my home state when suddenly my friend or acquaintance will get a funny look on their face and say, "Yeah, but I don't have a passport!" or "What do you do about the water, or are you immune from being from there?" So I say, "It's a state. In the United States of America. It's called _New_ Mexico. They have modern sanitation. It's between Texas and Arizona. Colorado and Utah are just above it. The US-Mexico border is just below it. And below that is Mexico. Old Mexico. The country. Which is no longer any relation to New Mexico, because it's a US state. I was born there. As an American Citizen."
And they say, "Wow, no wonder your English is amazing!" I'm tired of explaining this to otherwise intelligent people. Someone today just asked me about how I feel about having to get a passport to go visit my folks after so long of having an open border. I know the tourism board wouldn't endorse my screaming and hitting these people, but what _should_ I do?

we are very small

Neato! Watch this! It pays to spend all morning looking at Defective Yeti after all!

new favorite song

This is so amazingly wrong and right at the same time. I love it so much I can't hardly bear it. Can't wait till I end up singing it somewhere innapropriate..."It puts the lotion in the fucking basket...bitch...in the basket...oooooohhhoooooo...sorry officer."

Thanks to the internet...

suddenly I don't feel so alone.

(Earlier tonite I felt like it might be one of those nights, but it turned out I just needed to be alone, and once I let that be okay with me, I feel fine. Ish. Or whatever. Anyway, it was a melodramatic thought I had about the kind of night I thought I was going to have, and it turned out to be a funny google, so whatever. Love you.)

people smarter than me

I was noodling around the ol' internet this morning, thinking about writing a nice, long blog post about some of the intense thinking I've been doing about the news lately. You know:

Anna Nicole Breaking News: She's Still Dead!

Don Imus Controversy: Everybody Who Ever Heard His Show Totally Unsurprised, Celebrities With Apparently Nothing Else to Do Shocked, Outraged. (The uproar somehow kept the focus from the way the actual Rutger's women were a total class act throughout, behaving with respect, poise and self-possession at every turn and making all the "outraged" people look shrill and selfish.)

Virginia Tech Tragedy: Continuing Insensitive Saturation-Coverage of Horrifying Tragedy Causes International Non-Partisan Sympathetic Vomiting

It's possible that somewhere in me I have an entry about the media behavior on that last one, but not right now. My point is, before sitting down to write, I looked around at some of my favorite sites and found that my much more intelligent and talented male doppleganger from another universe had already written a much cleverer post expressing most of my salient views, probably more germanely and coherently than I would have. (Oh, look how she uses the vocabulary words to protect her from feeling intellectually inferior! Why did I let her buy that Mensa book?)

further postiness

Ah, the reason I hate putting things off: I never get around to them. And here I am again blogging while doing laundry and willing the sun to come out. My brain does not toggle cold/hot easily enough for me to be living in a non-tropical area. Seasons just exhaust me.

Don't misunderstand me, I don't think that all the people I wanted to mention don't now deserve mention now that I've put it off so long. I've just made myself so neurotic about the risk of leaving out someone who has meant the world to me (yet again) in the last few weeks, and have panicked so about what to say about these people (these people who make my sanity and marginal pleasantness, if not my life, possible) in a format where they, and everyone will see my remarks and praises, that I'm sort of sparing you all the tortured excercise I forsee it being.

Besides. You know who you are. Your ears are still ringing with the constant refrain of my journey-bleating when I begin the serenity-croaking. You listen to me when I need to be listened to, and you tell me to shut the fuck up when I need that. You laugh delightedly and tell me how happy you are for me when I am amazed to be doing well. You defend me and succor me when I'm dissapointed to be doing poorly. You wrap your arms around me at the slightest opportunity and help me find the heart to love me, too. And you trust me to do the same for you, in the way of friends. No list of names and why-I-love-thems, this far after the impulse to share it, will be adequate, so just keep in mind I'll be looking for ways to appreciate you practically, since you know you're on the list.

birthday

My birthday: fun, quiet, personal, intimate, gentle. I loved it. I loved the wonderful conversations, in person and on the phone. I loved the simple meetings and the soft words. As always, I appreciated the triage, again on the phone or in person. I got so many lovely gifts and so much lovely love. Thank you, each and every person I love, for helping me celebrate my continued exhistence. You made my day!

other people even besides me

You can't belive what kind of wonderful people I know. Well, if you're reading this, you're probably one of them, or someone who knows one of them, so I guess that's a patently false statement. All I know for sure is that this whole weird ride would be a hell of a lot less interesting and more painful if the people who love me didn't love me, or even tolerate me. Suffice it to say, if you've passed more than three words with me in the last week, you are on my all-time list of People I Could Do Without But I Wouldn't Like it One Bit and I'd be a Lot Worse Off.

Soon, when I'm not blogging while doing laundry and willing the sun to come out, there will be further postiness here about who I love and why

a story

It is summer. She is eleven years old. Her birthday fell on Easter, this year. The cake was a bunny; her mother outdid herself. She, her mother, and her baby brother have arrived at the town pool. They do this every day that the pool is open for the entire summer. No one thought to teach her to swim until she almost drowned when she was five. Then there was a flurry of lessons and caution that gently dropped into near-total amphibianism. Her mother will leave her here when the baby gets tired and pick her up before dinner. On lucky days, she might get to spend four or six hours in the water.

She had to stop taking swimming lessons two years ago because everyone watching her swim was making her very nervous. Really, anyone looking at her for any reason makes her nervous. Now that she's older it isn't cute to hide behind doors, in closets, under tables or in cabinets. Sometimes when she tries, now, she gets stuck. Then everyone has to look at you even harder while they try to help you get out. She doesn't understand why they won't just close the door and let her stay there until everyone leaves. She could get out if she was alone.

Lately she has discovered that if she corralls some of the younger children, or runs errands, or gets the grownups refreshments everyone will ignore her, as if she wasn't even there. As if she wasn't something to stare at. Being helpful and useful makes you invisible, and safe. She doesn't hear the words in her head, but there is a sensation like a tiny click as she realizes it in much broader terms. Now she thinks she'll get out and run around to the deep end and do about 98 dives and cannonballs, then go play with her brother.

She's thinking about this as she climbs the ladder, so it's a shock when she looks down for the next rung and sees her body for what feels like the first time ever. Her legs, which she's been looking at for her entire life as various people dressed and washed them, and then as she learned to do the same, look like part of an alien species that she's encountering for the first time. Here in her head, there has never been a judgement on a particular body part. This is how they sounded in her head before: leg, arm, hand, head, torso, foot. Now, somehow, since she heard that click, they sound like this: fat, weak, ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly. The way her hand-me-down black Speedo one-peice is cutting into the dimpled fat over her hip is making her seriously feel like vomiting.

She is paralysed on the ladder, and when she can finally climb out she wraps her towel around herself. It won't go all the way around, and her eyes dart around to see if anyone is laughing or pointing. Retching. All she sees is regular, happy people. They don't seem to be paying any attention to her, so she sits down on the side and covers as much of her body as she can with the tiny towel.

Sometimes things get very weird when you're a kid. Some mornings she wakes up and the whole world except for her is in super-slo-mo mode. It feels like it takes her mother an hour and a half to say, "It's time to go to school." Even swinging in the hammock is so incredibly slow that she can't stand it. Sometimes if she reads and pays attention to nothing else, it will speed up enough so she won't scream. Sometimes it just starts in the middle of the day, too, and those days she sometimes will scream.

Words have been bothering her lately, too. The word "crotch" has become unbearably dirty to her ears and eyes. Not only can't she stand the written or spoken word, but she has an aversion to most things which could be described by the word. Strangely, the crotch of her panties doesn't bother her (except at the laundromat, when so many panties in the basket make the crotchiness of them shoutingly obvious), nor does her own crotch. However, the crotch of a pair of tights has made her hysterical and her mother has bought all new knee-socks to spare them all the drama. And the crotches of tree limbs make her so uncomfortable she has had to stop climbing trees altogether, though if you'd asked her before this she'd have described tree-climbing as, "my favorite outdoor activity which doesn't include immersion in water."

All of a sudden, she wants to leave. If she tells her mother she doesn't feel well, they will go home and she can lie in bed under the covers. She stands up, shading her eyes with one hand and trying to obscure at least her bottom with the towel, looks for her mother and brother. Mom, tanned and lithe in her bikini, holds the baby over her head, then swoops him around in the air over the shallow end, just skimming his baby belly and legs through the water, then claps him to her body for a big hug. He's laughing hysterically as drops of water shimmer in the hot air all around them. "Mom!" She can hear her voice in her head, but it isn't coming out of her mouth. "Mom, I feel sick, I need to go home!" She's afraid they're having so much fun they'll be mad about having to leave. She can't ask them to, but she can't be here anymore.

Her voice still won't come out of her mouth, but it starts talking in her head again. "You can't make them leave. Just go hide in the shower, or the locker room. Come out in a little while when you're more calm, and buy some candy, then sit and eat it in the truck and a few minutes later you can all go home." This is reassuring. Her voice won't come out and tell people what she wants, but it will tell her, secretly in her head, now to make them give it to her anyway. This might be okay. Her voice says, "You're too ugly and fat, so no one will ever love you or want you for anything. Go hide in the shower so no one has to look at you and you don't cry or make a scene or everyone will know how pathetic you are." So she did.

the end

a letter

Dear Kellye,

We are trying so hard to be there for each other and support each other and love each other that it is hard for me to criticize you or ask you to change your behavior. I don't want to inhibit or discourage you. I know how fragile you are under the mask, and that the tiniest nay, once said, can make you want to hide for days, to retreat to that safe, dry place where you don't have to try, or care, or engage ever again. I know that when you're scared and hurting all you can think about is how to make it stop, and how to keep it secret, and how to protect anyone else you care about from being exposed to it. I'm asking you to listen to me with the thought in mind that I love you very much and I wouldn't ask if I didn't need it.

I know you're stronger than you think you are, and more useful, too. I know you have a lot of room to improve in almost every area of your life, but where that makes you queasily suicidal or autistically depressed, I think it could be exciting if you'd embrace it. Also, embrace your fears. It's time. You know they're most of them not real, and you know you can beat them. You're scared of dancing and love and sharks in the same way you were scared of the 183 flyover, which you tricked yourself into not caring about one way or the other as you drive over it three times a week. So what if you're scared of looking stupid? So what if you're scared of being vulnerable or dissapointing or laughable or getting hurt or being rejected. Being so careful that none of those things ever happen to you hurts just as much if not more. And it's so much lonlier. Watching you be this lonely and scared and sad is breaking me.

Here's the thing, darling: I want to help. Everyone that loves you wants to help. And we can. None of us could do it alone, not even me, but if you can stretch yourself out to be just a little more vulnerable, to be a little more patient, a little kinder, a little safer in your own skin. Then everyone who wants to help you would find it so much easier, and you'd be better able to be there for them. Things wouldn't be so scary if you'd at least try to believe that you're really a cherished part of a huge, loving, wonderful family of people who only stand as far off as you make them.
love, -kel

Liking myself

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about my life and my actions and decisions and responsibilities lately, as you know if you've listened to me at all lately. I say, "listened to me" because no one has had much of a chance to do anything else with me lately. I never thought it would happen (and I bet you didn't either) but I'm actually sick of the sound of my own voice. I'm actually consiously trying to not talk and to listen more, which used to not be a chore or anything I even had to think about until I decided not to have my Saturn Return after all and just turned into a tantrum throwing, taco hurling, whining, "that's-not-fair"-ing little baby for two years.

I think last night I had a breakthrough. Not sure. It doesn't seem to have miraculously changed my life and made me a better happier person, overnight. Which was part of the breakthrough, actually. Accepting that it's just hard and that knowing more about why doesn't really help make it easier. Just easier to take. Accepting that the work is the reason. It's hard, and you have to start over every day, and you have to do all the work yourself. And the reason why you have to do it is because it's there to do. Not work, as in "career" but work as in "travail." But another part of the revelation to myself was that it can't really be explained or talked about substantively because the realization happens to you and you can't even really explain it to yourself. Another significant part was the idea that being a happy and successful adult is largely impulse control, which I'm pretty sure I learned from Clarice Starling, years ago, but which really hit me during this whole "sense of significance" experience I'm talking about. That maturity and responsibility aren't magical keys that you find at a pre-arranged point in the video game. That taking control of your life isn't anything anyone else can help you do, by definition. That you get out of life what you put in, and that every moment is simultaneously important, precious, insignificant, and fleeting. That our behavior is a contract we write with the world, determining every effect of our experience. The killer part is that I already knew all these things. I've said them to numerous people. Ad nauseam. I even believed some of them to be true, but last night it was as if I had been describing giraffes to everyone from a third-hand description of one and then woke up to one in my room. Again I can't really explain how or why.

Not that any of it will mean anything to anyone but me, since we are talking about chemical fires inside my own uniquely coiled head-meat, but what the hell. I need to spitball about it a little so I won't monologue and short-circuit my growth by being forced to cut out my own tongue. Besides, noboby reads this blog anymore because I never post, so it's almost like those things we used to have way back when. You know...it's like a book...but with no words in it...and you put words...a diary! I tried to keep a diary for years but I just wasn't getting enough attention. God bless pornography for inventing the internet.

Anyway, so I'll be working on that. I fucked up my timesheets at work and won't get a check for a month, because the one for the next two weeks will come out with the one I get after that. Assuming I don't fuck up those timesheets. I finally got my drivers' license renewed/replaced and changed my address on it. I finally went down to the courthouse to show them my insurance papers (which they wouldn't accept without my DL) and get the deferment so I only have to pay half of that ticket, so I only owe the city another $250 or so. I'm thinking about looking for another job. I feel pretty. I need to gut this blog and make it nice again, and decide what to do about the "two blogs" issue. Not enough time or energy to write unique posts for both, not really enough time or energy to duplicate posts. Hmmmm. Don't know. (Actually I have four blogs, but I never post on the other two. I just needed them, back when I got the blogging bug.

The thing that made me think what I felt last night was a real breakthrough in my thinking, that it honestly meant something, is that I've had momentary glimpses of the feeling it gave me, throughout my life. It felt kind of...I can't explain it. But it never felt like it had as much content as it felt it had this time. Like I was knowing something deep for the first time. Or the latest time, however you want to view it. Sci-fi author Connie Willis, in her excellent book Passage, writes something along the lines of, "just because you really, really want something to be true, that doesn't make it true. But just because you really, really want something to be true, doesn't make it not possible." I really, really want to believe that I'll give myself this feeling more often. That I'll learn to carry carefully this precious thing inside my chest and live a life that honors it. That I'll teach myself to live fully and with zest, full of awe and love.

I love when things just come together.

I can't remember what exactly I wanted to write about tonight, but it had to do with W.H. Auden, whom I've been reading lately. For about the last 4 years. On and off. And I've barely made it through about twenty of his poems in one book of his collected stuff. But I think I'm getting it.

I, of course, got interested in him in high school. When I first saw Four Weddings and a Funeral and heard John Hannah give the devastating recital of "Funeral Blues" at Gareth's funeral. Years later I finally bought a book of his poetry and started trying to really understand every line. So far I get "Funeral Blues" and parts of "Song For St. Cecelia's Day" and "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" (strangely enough) and "The Quest." I think.

Anyway, I wanted to write something about something I read tonight and I got online to IMDb to look up the movie to find a link to the poem and found all kinds of wonderful information that is super-exessively linked above. And when I happened to casually click on the "reccomendations" link (which I almost never do) I discovered a revelation about how I feel about romance and love, divulged in the fickle heart of "user ratings" I'm not sure exactly what it means, but I'm working on it.

Then, looking for a few stray links I wanted to include but couldn't find, I stumbled upon this article about this poem of his. And I feel like I understand several things now that I didn't before. Which I hope you do now also.