Tuesday 25 September 2007

Last night ramblings and other things

Here are some other things:

Inspired by Jenny's blog, I would like to add the following things: hibiscus, peanut butter, photocopiers, double Mondays on Tuesday (I've been walking into everything today), sleeping kittens, long evening phone calls.

I have a new friend. 3 new friends in 4 months. I feel very odd about this. not the person, mind, Just the whole thing where I'm meeting people and then they are my friends - I take a while, I always have - it just doesn't happen that quickly - Ula and I sniffed around each other for like 6 months before we got comfortable - is anyone else having the most deeply layered deja vu ever in the history of ever? Or is that just me. Yeah, this train of thought is annoying me. I have a new friend. It is happy-making, not the kind of thing that should be weird-making.

Sounds like I get to go see King Lear this week. Woot. I lurv Shakespeare performed. Even if it's performed badly - there is nothing to beat live entertainment. 'specially when it's in a cemetery.

Have begun the habit of words again. Enjoying the dopamine rush after writing. I am truly upset about the reality of the idea that it is difficult to create anything worthwhile in a time of happiness. Although, as was once pointed out to me by someone else, I am fueled by angst. my angst tends to be of the shallow variety - while being very sweetly kissed in my dream by a married man (inaccessible and Not In My Goddamn Space All the Time are simply not the same thing. for one, it is much easier to yell the latter and the former is too associated with personal problems.) I suffer because I want to say spam. Yes. Yes. Although it's better than the half-awake rage fueled by the thought of "you fucked her IN MY BED!!!!" stupid half-awake rage. Odd way to begin the day. And I got sleep and everything (whine whine whine).


There is much to be thought about and experienced and spoken of, but for now, these are the ramblings:

I am remembering. I remember now. The stillness of mind, the feel of the pen in my hand, the rhythms of words sprung with an energy that never fails to catch me off my guard and shock me to my core months and years later.
I remember thinking and seeing at once, as if the acts were never separated or unbalanced. The leaves on the tree in the yard out font. The storm whose beginning was the single crack of thunder from somewhere just above my head. The slow smile of acknowledgment - the rain begins.
I remember now that staring at one rain-soaked leaf for 10 seconds becomes an eternity of sound, color, movement, with me, the observer, the speaker, the seer, watching it all - the drops of water leaving themselves spread ever thinner on the veined bit of growth; the gold of the street light and the silver of the lightning; the fine lines of tiny raindrops heavier than mist; and the wind, the blessed wind again, calling me, bending the cobwebs and blowing the dust further away from the bits that once knew this path well. Gears of a sort, levers and firing mechanisms and something like a quiet pulsing metronome that had studied and understood the inherent value of variation.
I remember the language I never fully spoke, never wanted to claim as my own. A language trapped in words, fed in sound, sight, touch, taste, smell.
I remember a walk with a poet. On the way to lunch, across a street and a hole in the sidewalk surrounded by orange cones and yellow tape, guarded by a machine with a name.
"There's a poem right there," he said.
It is that poem. That is what I remember now.

Sunday 23 September 2007

Weekend in the country

The morning glories, the gorgeous little blooms of solid pink or purple or white that have resisted blooming all summer long from their perch wrapped about the cottonwood tree which grows so close to the patio outside the back door of my parents' house, have finally decided to show off.

Junior, one of the feral cats that got fixed and gets fed by my mother, is still not quite certain what to do with me. She crouches low and watched with sea-green eyes, careful lest I get too close to my mother, her source of love and affection and lap and food. The three cats who spend much time around the house range all around the out buildings and walk long yards to the patio for food every day.

The wind is blowing like mad today, sending the sunlight scattering all over the blue walls of the living room where I slept, curled up in my father's chair, for most of the early afternoon, done in by a good book.

I slept well when I slept. Dreamt of an orange carpet found under layers and layers of gray disgusting foot traffic.

I have burnt my bagel bites, but my mother is taking me in to town to shop for groceries for the week. There must be milk. And meat. And cereal. And cheese. It is what must happen for life to continue and to grow and to become something other than what it is now. Patience is not my strong suit, but I will get over it and remember that after 34 years of life, I do have the ability to see things from something like a rational perspective.

Saturday 22 September 2007

The obligatory blog about cats

Since I live in a house with five cats, it had to happen at some point. Words must be written about them. Here it is:

Day before yesterday, I walked into my room to see Street curled up on my bed. It is not unusual for there to be a cat curled up on my bed, but things have been odd lately and the adult cats have been avoiding me, so seeing one of them making herself comfortable in my room was a nice surprise. I turned on the light and realized why she was there.

The look of death on her face should have been enough, but then I saw her tail. Still wet from the flea dip. And the giggling started. She was not pleased with me and trounced out of the room throwing me a nasty glare over her shoulder as if to say that she was not speaking at me anymore ever. The insult was somewhat mitigated by the presence of Ethel crashed out on the blue down throw, looking for all the world like a very fuzzy dead weevil larva (of the rhinocilus persuasion)(which are just cute) and snoring. She snores. At three months.

I went down to the kitchen to find some high calorie gut-fill and found Street on the bottom step, watching me very carefully. I know that it's been some months since her dad had to bathe her to get all of the alley grease off of her loveliness and fur, and I think she was hoping she could forget it forever. I picked her up and we sat down and she chirped and balanced on her paws, refusing to get comfortable and shaking. She left my lap shortly thereafter and I suggested that she go pout somewhere else. (We haven't spoken much since then. Some quick morning rubs, but nothing lasting.)

Ethel sleeps like the dead and takes very long naps. With my food in hand, I shut my bedroom door, turned off the lights and prepared to commit to my daily afternoon rest period (still a must-do after everything. not so bad, but somewhat annoying). She rolled around some, stopped snoring for a minute, sort of opened her eyes and then burrowed back down, nose in paws, back feet curled, tail all kinds of everywhere, giving off the faint odor of flea dip.

I ate and snuggled into my sheets for my nap when there came the sound of someone else snuggling in somewhere. Looking over at the source of the sound, I noticed a bulge in the blanket that is draped over the folding chair in the corner. The bulge was on the floor and very small and moving slightly. My eyesight likes to make things move when they oughtn't, but not that much, so I investigated and found a damp, sleeping Novice.

Novice doesn't sleep as long or as hard as Ethel does, so her time on the blue down blanket was restful, but hardly the repose her sibling got. She slept nearer to my knees and watched every movement Ethey made as she snored and rolled and stretched and dreamt and snored some more. Novice and I are finally developing a relationship with purring, so I tend to leave her be mostly and let her come to me as she is comfortable (not including the requisite kitten-grabbing attacks, of course).

By the time it was time to go out that evening, they were both sound asleep, Novice in a gray and white ball of mostly dry fluff, Ethel under the throw, front leg stretched out, holding the blanket to her.

I caught sight of Wigs on Anne's bed, licking at her tail. I didn't see Boris at all until last night. I have decided to call him Boris. Now he is called Booger, so I don't think it will be all that difficult a transition for him as he likely reacts mostly to the "b" sound. He didn't seem all that affected by the bathing process, but if you had your own balls to lick all day long, would you?

Thursday 20 September 2007

Ah, the joys of being on campus

Got to go to a lecture yesterday. One of those pesky revisionist type things. You know the ones. The kind where some hotshot University Professor thinks that doing research based on historical record is going to give a more accurate picture of the past than Hollywood movies or newspapers or dime novels. Who the hell do these people think that they are anyway?

The Oregon Trail. Dooom Doooom.

Not the site of so many massacres that no movie studio could ever keep up with it. At least not between 1840 and 1869. Do tell. Well, apparently, the two Big massacres that have been passed down from generation to generation where big bad Indians killed frail helpless white settlers by the hundreds - the Doniphan and Almo Massacres, if you're keeping track - were made up. Fabricated. Invented. To sell papers in the former case and to increase tourism in the latter.

Seriously. He said so. And he wrote a book about it, and other human interest concerns (trading, medicine, starvation, people shooting themselves in the face accidentally because guns were designed less with safety in mind back then). And the book won him an award. And I believe him. Why? Not because of any particular guilt I have left over, but because the story that he tells makes more sense. Living on the plains now is difficult enough. It is important to know who your neighbors are and how to live in the winter and such and such. Can you imagine what it was before all of that? There were guide books to the Trail, but still. Human interaction works best when it is not defined by conflict (trust me on this one, I know of what I speak). So why turn the prairie into a place of perpetual warfare? I know, I know, that's what it became, and this is dealing with a very specific place (the Oregon Trail) during a very specific time frame (1840-1869). That is important to remember.

People are stupid. We are born stupid. We die stupid. We can learn to be not so stupid, but it is very easy to go back to stupid ways. All we need are enough drink, drugs, sex or sensationalism and boom, the brain is gone.

So the newspapers sold stories. Stories of vicious attacks by savage people. They got folk to leave their homes and head West, looking to kill injuns or have the grand adventure on the high plains, since going by sea would have defeated the whole purpose.

Go back to Little House on the Prairie or Caddie Woodlawn. Tell me what you find and then look at what the adults buy and tell me we deserve to maintain as a species.

Also there was some very bad art hanging on the walls, and some woman asked if I had anything hanging there and then proceeded to talk at me about the colors in an odious landscape.

Can someone please explain to me what exactly is the value of dropping my "get the fuck away from me" vibe if it's just going to encourage bad conversation? Ug.

Wednesday 19 September 2007

"Act your age"

I find that statement problematic. I do not deny that part of the problem lies in my own desire not to be categorized or put in a pigeon-hole. But the big question that I've always had, ever since the first time I heard someone (likely my parents, not their fault) say that to me, is: "What does that mean?" "How do I find out what that means?" "Who decides if I am or am not 'acting my age' according to whose definition?"

Is there some behavioral rubric that is used to determine specific age-related personality traits? Am I just supposed to look around at all of the other schlebs in my age range and compare? Do I get to include life experience in with age range? And who does decide, anyway? Why should it not be me? What is so wrong with not acting like a cynical 30-something on the other side of her first mid-life crisis? Is it so wrong that I have no desire to pretend that I am comfortable with the behavior patterns of many people who are 5-10 years younger than me?

Many many questions which will stop now as they become whiny and self-serving or bitchy after a while, and I have better things to do today.

Yesterday morning as I was waiting in the drips coming from windblown leaves by my bus stop, I watched the pups in the yard at hand and wanted nothing more than to go to them and rub my hands and face in their rain covered fur. The smell of wet dog would have stayed all day long, calming me out of my anger and rage and sense of displacement. Taken me back to my childhood and the heavy smell of the large red dog without whom I have no memory before the age of 15. Reminded me of where it is safe, where it is always warm, even under the sheets of rain that came down last night and threatened to drown me walking from the backdoor to the driveway. They sat there, the pups, wagging their tails, ears down, noses pointed in my direction as if smelling my desire to walk over and scratch their backs, and their thick ears, rub their faces and get fur down my sleeves.

I waited. And stood. And, eventually, the bus came.

Monday 17 September 2007

New Normal Afternoon

I am writing while waiting for the other computer to decide to function and produce the information I require. It is a day of prisoner references. So I get to be that much more aware of my heartbreak. Oh, the joy of melodrama. The ear plugs only block out so much.


It is a lovely gray day and I am pleased that I have brought my bright blue rain poncho. Its presence makes it that much more difficult for people to believe that I have crossed the 30 year mark.

There are windows in my office that show me students lined up like so much cattle waiting for buses and cars and friends. I see the clouds over campus. I love days like this. It is a bit too warm for the weather, but I don't really care. Makes the chore of walking that much less awful.

Transparency is a highly under-rated virtue. No one believes it anyway. My ulterior motives are blindingly obvious, if you know what to look for. And if you bother to listen. It all breaks down very clearly.

Reminds me that there is no such thing as an underground anymore - we keep allowing the media to dredge it to the surface.

Lots of random thoughts today. Trying to get organized, I have a letter to write this evening. This will help me focus.


Well, the other computer is done, so I will get started.

Wednesday 12 September 2007

I always forget until I am reminded

"mouth-breather"

It's one of those unspoken universal "things" that mark a person as a complete fool, unable to commit the most basic of unconscious activities without mucking it up. I love this insult

not as much as 'goat-fucker' though.

I had a whole long essay-type thing about bodily functions, but the meds have kicked in, so you all are just going to have to wait in suspense.

The kitten crashed with me last night. I felt special.

Tuesday 11 September 2007

I have had to quit smoking

and I don't know when I'll be able to go back to it. It upsets my stomach too much. I am sad. I miss it.

The nurse at my surgeon's office (her name is Colleen) tells me that it could be up to a year before my body is done recovering from the anesthetic and the surgery, assuming I quit pushing it too far.

Taking things slowly is something which is an ideal for me, rarely realized as my own impatience has been conditioned by years of discomfort at intensity or building tension (yes, I am blaming my ex's, I learned it from them and their inability to function around me)(also, yes, I do get that I am the only common denominator in all of my relationships, that does not make it my fault that most of the men in my life have had no ability to let a moment happen or be without fucking it up or making a joke or breaking the tension and then apologizing lamely). It's a Pavlovian response and will take time to be unlearned.

It's funny, when I got the call that Joe was in jail and began the single oddest and most fucked up summer of my life, I knew that things were different, but I had no idea how different they really were, how much went away that night, how easily lost everything was. And I was nuts, drinking whiskey, sleeping with boys who had girlfriends, not sleeping at all, wearing really odd clothing and hanging out with some of the most disrespectful unethical people (okay, person) I have ever met. (I blame the whisky myself. tequila leaves my discriminating tastes in tact.) I don't hang out with her anymore.

Point is, it took a while for me to realize that I was nuts and why.

This time it's a little less difficult to follow given the straight line leading 3 1/2 inches down from my belly button.

Everything is different. It's just that way. There's nothing I can do about it. My body needs to recover from the sickness from before surgery and then the surgery and the anesthetic and the drugs after the anesthetic and the antibiotics and probably the world's worst cottage cheese, as well.

I am separated from the two people I love most in the world (outside of my parents, of course) because I have no idea "where I'm at" and will likely not have a clue for quite some time. which wouldn't be that big of a deal except that we live in the same house. It is too much to listen to the constant whining of a reformed martyr.

I know to walk. To get into the sun. To eat. To rest. To sleep. To not lift anything for a while (ug). To pet the kitten (I adopted one, she is called Ethel Katherine Humphries. I call her Ethey). To read. To make lists. To learn. To work at my jobs to the best of my abilities. To do some dishes when I can. To clean the litter boxes at least once a week.

"Master, how do I follow The Way?"
"Did you have breakfast this morning?"
"Yes."
"Did you wash your bowl when you were done eating?"
"Yes."
"Well, then."