March 20, 2008
This is Right and True
Development of Habit. Proper Perspective. These things change us. They have changed me.
T’was a time when all was habitually perceived as bleak. On more than a few occasions this is still true. However, on the whole, this is no longer the case. The more time passes, I see the balance shift in favor of positivity and good habits. Most of the time- and this is a reminder to self- I feel ALIVE and abuzz with endless possibilities. All throughout the day, I am writing and typing and actually working on ideas. It feels wonderful. The way I think life is supposed to feel. Like an expansive candy store. But more than that, too. In those times of feeling like a repository for genius plans, I also feel something unifying that connects me and everything else. The Blanket Thing, as I Heart Huckabees phrased it. Isn’t that interesting? And encouraging? In the recently read Deathhunter, the main character spoke of feeling an “oceanic unity” when he almost drowned as a child. The phrase was repeated throughout the story, and has stuck with me. It was a bliss not known in normal life; one that hinted at the perfection that lay just ahead. I wonder if humans experience these feelings of oneness when they are on the trail of something absolutely right and true. Hah, another phrase I have taken to using a lot lately. I tell Sean, “It may seen indulgent, but I am positive that those mountain of cookies we just ate were right and true so I regret nothing.” My, but that sounds far out of context. It just means A #1 appropriate truth that couldn’t be any other way.
And so today I celebrate having a brain that works so fervently to push boundaries and create things that are authentic. I can scarcely begin a sliver of the projects that I imagine, but that’s what all the years ahead of me are for. Chip away every day: this is my newly discovered joy.
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March 15, 2008
Can I Adopt an Old Person?
Sometimes it’s almost like a movie how my consciousness zooms back for a wide shot and gets a glance at the Big Picture. But it goes fuzzy fast. Realizations lose their magnitude in the face of daily realities. They face off with other realizations, testing one another’s mettle.
I’m playing solitaire this Saturday morning in an obvious attempt to stay at the outskirts of genuine thought. It’s been a laughable morning of trying to stay off the Internet, clicking a few things and getting searches lined up for when this period of quasi-reflection is over. It never ceases to amaze me how much modern life (aka: how shit be) stifles that necessary skill and need of quiet evaluation. When was the last time any of us took 30 minutes to just be still and listen?
Oh irony, I’ve won a game. I rarely win anymore now that I’m about 4 years out of practice from 8 hour days of playing it in an office environment. Solitaire probably saved me from slitting throats. And years before that, hours of majong made the “making ugly shit on an old mac” portion of my Graphic Design training bearable. Well, I did make that talking donut graphic…
So sometimes I see glimpses of answers that touch everything. They are brief and brilliant and inspiring and scary and sometimes feel that they truly do touch every molecule of existence. They come more frequently the older I get (although I’m quite aware that it could be a, well, awareness thing versus just time passing) and that makes me wonder how older people handle their realizations. Truths like there are no 2nd hand revelations, some people must make their own mistakes, and you can’t substitute anything for age and experience… these make me wonder if many older people (what exactly “older” is, I haven’t decided today, but I’m picturing rest homes) are sitting on their realizations for those very reasons. Youth can not become wise without traveling the road themselves, therefore we elders must unfortunately watch them make their ‘glorious mistakes’. Is this it? Are adults that have learned their arse from their elbow actually chock-full of solutions that they believe youth would not be ready for? *shakes head violently* Surely people are learning truths that could “fix it all up there”, right? Oh, I must believe that age can bring wisdom otherwise my career as a misanthrope will continue forever. And yet, if our elders do have some answers, and yet do not share, do not commit themselves to imparting what they can on us stupid youngins, then… Well, first what can we do to change that, and second, why does everything I contemplate end in me hating everyone and everything? Anger seems to be at the root of everything that I do, I am ashamed to say. And yet I commit it to writing because I hope that improvement will follow confession. Oh, my head and heart are heavy today.
I wonder, but don’t think long enough, about what makes me leave certain entries pubic versus password protected. I will get an answer today before I publish this. It feels important not to keep this one squirreled away with my rants and tears.
The habit of journaling was just that, years ago. It started in childhood when I was sent to my room (which felt like all the time), and really blossomed in junior and high school, as I wrote instead of speaking with my peers. In 7th grade, during a sad “computer class” with monochrome macs, I vividly remember writing a letter to Jesus because the other kids seemed to be one big clique that wouldn’t include the weird homeschooled girl. I’d never written to him before, but it was all I could think of doing as I died a bit inside. Sitting alone, silently and with nothing to do because I always finished my work quickly (unhampered by conversation), I heard them start to whisper about me. I flipped over the red worksheet that I had been given and started “Dear J.C.” and basically tried to pray/write my way through their alienating comments for the rest of the period. It was easy. It flowed. In 12th grade, (when I was in remedial everything because of Michigan-to-California graduation requirement differences, thanks for fucking nothing Michigan) the case was repeated again. I’d already spent 2 years hiding my way through high school in Michigan, writing stories and journal entries during all that “downtime” in class where the popular kids sat behind me and talked about getting fucked up and fucking each other. It was automatic. My hand finishes writing the assignment, it begins writing in my spiral bound journal. They whisper about me, and I write faster, harder. With all those freshman and “fellow” remedial students, it was always a zoo. Their words were even farther removed, and I felt like an entirely different species. I suppose many teenagers feel that way. At any rate, this is where my journaling habit began and died.
In 1999 I had a website on gurlpages.com where I began journaling again. Truthfully, the habit only withered slowly in-between graduation in 1997 and today. I was just leaving a horrible relationship and we had just moved cross-country and didn’t know anybody, compounded by the fact that I had learned no positive coping skills besides writing. All I knew was anger and violence, or withdrawal and journaling. After we screamed at each other, we journaled. If we could stand the reflection. When the Internet presented itself as a new journaling medium (and Ultimate Distraction), I think I mostly gave up paper and pen. It’s been downhill from there.
One way of looking at my journaling had been through a lens of disdain for the weakness and femininity of it. Introspection seemed a flimsy and stereotypical way of dealing, of growing. After all, it produced no visible or tangible change. It was part of an outpouring that occurred when I learned to “toughen up” and put up a wall to try and hide my weaknesses. (And oh, how I sobbed listening to The Wall over and over, wondering how Roger Waters could have survived and yet had not reached sainthood for such poetry. Remembering too, how my copy of the double CD had been so cleverly stolen from Target by my sister. Memory truly is a web.)
The years are all so hazy. What was once crystal clear in it’s pain has tried very hard to shuffle it’s way out of my long-term memory. I’m not sure when these phases occurred, but I can now recognize that I have existed as an open and closed person. That lifelong obsession with finding my other, my doppleganger, lost twin, soul mate, WTFE… it kept my heart open until perhaps I was about 20. Ironic, as that is when I was married, supposedly to the one that I had been searching for. Up until that point, I sometimes related very well with the intense emotional states of a Scorpio or Cancer. I wanted the mutually beneficial, vice-like grip of that relationship: scorpion and crab, embracing forever, and standing united against all else. The theme of people being afraid to love, of intimacy, seemed to be the movie of the week. It was everywhere, and I laughed at it! “How boring’, I though, “what a waste of time to live without finding and having a partner”. With stoicism, I said “tis better to have loved and lost then never loved at all”. And in true adolescent fashion, I headed down that road without even knowing it. It was in those early Internet years that I remember writing in my online journal about toughening my skin. Having my heart broken but soldiering on more safely. In addition to everything else going on, perhaps the final shove into terrified hard-heartedness was a girl who slandered me on her website when I was 20-ish. Everyday it seemed like a new fight with her, and that taught me to further examine each and every word that I say. It took the fun out of journaling to hear my words thrown back at me, no longer sounding like me at all. It wasn’t her. It was a lot of things piling up on top of one another, with her sitting very near the apex. Sometimes I want to hug that girl, after all the time that has passed. But sometimes I still want to rip her apart with my bare hands. My growth is slow.
I suppose what disturbs me most right now is the stark contrast between the young person who actually believed in an ideal mate, and the person that I have become who is equally convinced that I am meant to be alone. It’s as though my very core has been replaced. As an imaginative child, not only did I know that my other half existed, I was convinced that I had an entire family out there who I had to find. As an adult, logic and experience have smashed down that idea. In it’s place is the near certainty that I was created to be single. Oh God. It was like a knife to my heart to type that. For all its glory, being alone is not what I truly want. It is what I will settle for because being in a poorly paired relationship is, to me, settling even lower.
This hand of solitaire is starting out very well.
I don’t believe that God plans crap for anybody. Lessons, some of them very painful, we can call down on ourselves, but His plan is never for “kinda OK” or “good enough”. I guess deep inside I still feel that God must have someone waiting for me. If I let my vision go soft, I can see my twin living in some jungle waiting for me to complete her. Whether that’s a foolish dream or a true vision, I do not yet know. But I do know that I am not interested in paring with anybody less than literally made for me. The lesson that I think I am meant to understand (among so many) is that no human can actually complete me, and that I must learn to feel loved and fulfilled even if it’s just me hiding alone in a jungle and having a relationship with God only. Maybe He won’t give me my twin until I know that heart and soul. Maybe I will see that I have already found that person, but that we are simply broken humans. Dunno yet. All those youthful dreams of becoming a contemplative nun (despite not being Catholic)… were they escapism to preserve my wounded heart, or a whisper from God about where I will someday be ready to exist? Ditto with the dreams of a long lost twin.
The reason I am publishing this is the same reason that I have an affinity for closet exhibitionism. It allows me to honestly scrutinize and express and be myself, and yet have the buffer of anonymity. Nobody in the building up the block or on the Internet actually knows me. I can expose myself in front of strangers as long as I don’t have to be aware of their responses or have any interaction with them. It’s a go-nowhere feedback loop, but a rather comforting one.
That feels like “all” I have to say this morning. I have no answers, but my questions and theories have been better examined. I feel a bit lighter. I should go create something. And probably have another good cry before this time of quiet is broken.
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March 9, 2008
Rice Dream Moca Pies FTW!
4/2/08 Update: Did I say something…? “George” from Hain-Celestial sent me a canned snail mail in response to the e-mail below. Totally expected. But inside were 3 coupons… for .55 off… of a specialty Rice Dream product line that I have never seen in stores. And I have several super-hippie-vegan stores in my area. If that’s not a backhanded “take your free pies and shove em’”, I don’t know what is. Anybody want a whopping .55 off your next purchase of Rice Dream Supreme (which may or may not actually exist IRL)? As Geoffrey Jellineck’s landlord would say, while doing thusly to yonder useless coupons, “crumple, crumple, crumple”.
Time for a positive letter to a company. One that I love for this particular product…
Hello Imagine/Hain-Celestial, Inc… I wanted to tell you how much that I and my partner love your Rice Dream Mocha Pies. (We have the mint flavor sometimes, too.) They are everything that we dream of in a dessert; delicious, vegan, low GI sweetened, very affordable, and mocha flavor is amazing, too. An expansion in the use of organic ingredients would be wonderful. An organic mocha pie would probably be heaven. I would seriously buy stock in your company. (Not sure if that’s even possible…) Anyway, those pies have brought us both a bit of happiness and we wanted to say thanks. So… thanks!
Please don’t ever change. Well, I’m sure you’ll find ways to improve, but please keep Rice Dream Mocha Pies the same forever and ever. They are PERFECT. And in the words of David Cross, “In closing, please send as many free products as possible”. Hah hah. (But that would be OK.)
I signed off “Your Biggest Pie Fans”. lawls!!1 Sometimes I do OK stuff.
So uh… are you feeling inspired to write to anyone now?
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March 7, 2008
Protected: Themes
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