Keel the Bool

There’s a perhaps mildly racist parable in the How to Get out of Debt… book which recounts the following paraphrased story.

A boy in assumedly South America or Mexico has a bull. This bull is his best friend. His father, however, cannot afford to buy food or shelter for himself and his son for much longer. He tells his son that he needs to sell the boy’s beloved bull in order to buy the things they family needs. The son pleads, saying this is his only friend. His father tells him that with the money from the sale, they could afford things that can’t now – like school and new shoes and supplies. The boy thinks on this, and replies, “Keel the Bool.”

The intention of this story is to illustrate that there may be things that we are holding on to out of pride or vanity or stubbornness. And, that if we are in tried financial straits, it is time to Keel the Bool.

I have brought to the local bookstores my supply of “B” books. Books that I wouldn’t miss if they were gone, and I have sold a handful over the last few months. This morning, I began, in my morning pages, to write a list of all the things that I could sell at a yard sale that I am now planning to have on Saturday. There were things that were obvious that I could part with, things that wouldn’t be missed, or wouldn’t hamper my quality of life. There are those which would be missed, but an acceptable loss. And then there are those that I’m not sure I have the audacity to sell yet.

I made the decision earlier this week to sell the electric guitar and amp that I’ve carried around since my friend gave them to me about 4 or 5 years ago when he was moving. I have liked having them around. Being able to use the electric unplugged when it’s late but I still want to play and not disturb the neighbors. But for all intents and purposes, I have rarely used it, and even more rarely as it’s supposed to be used – as an electric guitar.

So, I have little problem getting rid of it, except that my ego has enjoyed knowing that I have it, and feel “cool” having it.

But this morning, writing all these out, figuring I better just bring this equipment to the music store that buys things, and see if I can sell them there, well, I wrote down if I could sell my acoustic guitar.

I have had this – nice – guitar since I was 17. It was my high school graduation present from my parents. It’s not top of the line, but it wasn’t cheap either. But, like it’s electric cousin, I rarely use it.

I do use it though. I probably pick it up at least once a month, and if I’m on an “I’m really going to learn how to play this damn thing” kick, then more often than that. When I had been taking guitar lessons about 3 years ago, I was playing it almost daily for about 6 weeks. Then my funds ran short, and lessons got cut. I don’t know that I could sell it, though, out of sentimentality rather than future visions of Clapton-like skill.

So, I moved on through my apartment, back to my book shelf. And now, stacked on my desk, ready to be taken to the bookstore today to see what they might take and pay me for in return … are “A” books. Books, surely, that I could get from the library. But there’s something you should know about me – I hardly ever buy books. Ever. Avid reader and writer that I am, I was raised going to the library. There were lots of books coming in and out of my house as I grew up, we were a reading bunch, but there were surely less than 100 books for the entire household, including cookbooks (well, maybe not including cookbooks – my mom had a little bit of an addiction thing).

Point being, any book that I now own is owned because I bought it. Some are ones I bought for undergrad or grad school and decided to keep because of their literary value to me; some, I bought because there was a very rare occasion when I wanted to own that book – knew that I’d wanted to read it repeatedly, which, to me, is the only reason to buy a book. 

So, a select stack of these now sit on my desk. Joyce, Dickinson, Winterson, Ensler, Steve Martin, even (Pure Drivel – if you haven’t read it, there is an incredible short story/vignette about a shortage of punctuation marks, and he is therefore allowed to use only ONE period in the entire story. It is beyond brilliant). Faulkner. I’m going to sell back a Faulkner. It’s like slicing off a chunk of skin.

There are a few that I will not sell. But I admit that that choice was made more because of the condition of the book and the unlikelihood that they’ll be bought back. Most of my treasures are on the to-be-sold pile on my desk.

Yes, come tomorrow morning, I will have either accepted the receptionist job I’ve been offered, or I will be finally chosen for the marketing position I want. So, yes, I will have a job, and will know which one it is in approximately 12 hours, following my Google Hangout interview. But, a job doesn’t equal a paycheck until about two weeks into the gig, if not more, as they get you on the payroll.

So, I have money for September rent, and about $30 left over. For food, for transportation to whichever job it is. But, mostly, for food.

I am willing to sell back these treasures, assuming, of course, that the wary and selective eyes of the bookstore even wants them. I am willing to sell them back to feed myself, and my cat.

I am willing to sell a musical instrument I don’t use. I’m not willing to sell the acoustic, because I don’t think, yet, that I’ll have to. But I am also willing to put a lot of junk and not-so-junk on sale at a yard sale on Saturday.

So, if you’re in the Oakland Piedmont Ave neighborhood on Saturday between 10 and 3, please come by the “Help me feed myself and my cat, Stella” sale.

Lastly, I’ll just note, that, yes, all of these things are just things. Not nearly as important as housing and feeding myself. And further, once I do have a job and a paycheck, anything that I sorely regret, I can replace or buy back again.

And “A” books as these may be, I can get them all at the library. Just don’t judge my worldliness by the emptiness of my bookshelf.

Firm & Consistent Progress.

A friend of mine recently moved into a 3 bedroom house that she’s renting with her boyfriend up in the Berkeley Hills.

The process for her of finding this house was not easy. She looked for over a year for the right place, staying as she was in the rental house in East Oakland, where her car got broken into twice, and her home once. They looked and looked. They raised their price point to see if maybe that would bring something in. They looked still.

At one point, she tells me, she broke down to her boyfriend in despair, saying that nothing was happening, that they’re right were they were a year earlier.

He said to her, No. We’re making firm and consistent progress.

She felt calmed. “Firm and consistent progress.” Not, “going nowhere,” “nothing changing,” but “Firm and consistent progress.” Alright. She could get behind that.

Not long afterward, they found this house, which fit into their original, lower price range. And it’s gorgeous; and she’s happy.

I remembered this story this morning, because I became aware of something. I’ve spoken a lot here about my reluctance to take on responsibility, that responsibility for me had meant more than I was developmentally able to do when I was young, and so I have a “thing” about shirking it.

But what I realized, is that it’s not necessarily responsibility that I avoid, it’s consistency.

I am not a very consistent, or reliable person in many ways. I have felt too flighty, too magpie – ooh shiny! – to stay in one spot, or one job for too long. Even this blog has been difficult for me to maintain on a daily basis.

One of the positions that I’m in the running for, I was reflecting this morning, will demand that I hone and discover the quality of consistency. Because of the nature of the work, I would have to be “on top of” several things, repeatedly, and consistently, in order to garner the kind of support and engagement the job expects.

Oy. This is not an ingrained skill in me. Or, at least, I haven’t seen it as one. When I’d considered my dislike of responsibility, and recognized its effect on my professional and personal life, it made sense as a reflection of how I grew up. When I look at consistency and how that might have been a quality that was skipped in my development, I can plainly see why as well.

There were the days, or even hours, when things were good. And others were showing up for me, and I was showing up. And then, things would turn, and it was “abandon ship.” This cycle of calm and storm was so … consistent in itself, that that kind of existence became the norm for me.

There’s always been a period of calm, and a period of storm in my life. Sometimes, perhaps even most or all of the time, I’ve been the impetus of that storm. Don’t get too comfortable where you are – things are about to shift.

Oh yes, I feel that. It’s why I’ve moved so much; it’s why my friendships ebb and flow; it’s why my relationships always dissolve – or erupt – after a few weeks or months.

I have no experience with “firm and consistent progress.” I have experience with one step forward and two steps back. I have experience with, as my college roommate told me, being “always one step behind where [I] want to be.”

Consistency. What is that like??

And, moreover, consistently showing up to my responsibilities, for my friends, for *gasp* relationships?

I honestly have no idea. I have switched jobs every two years or fewer since I was 16. I have moved every two years or fewer since I was 18.

The moving thing is occurring more to me now. In my first month of college, each year beginning in a new room or house, I would have rather bad insomnia. After the first two years, though, alcohol helped that. When I moved to Korea, the day I landed, we went out to the bar and got shitfaced. The night I moved to San Francisco, I insisted that we stop in all the bars we could as my friend/acquaintance and I walked down Divisidero.

When I moved, sober, into a new place within San Francisco, I had anxiety flutters the whole time I was moving. And now, I’ve been having trouble sleeping for 3 nights in a row. Which is rare for me.

Except during these times of actual change. It’s like a switch gets thrown, and all my fight or flight instincts get kicked up, even though there’s nothing to fight or flee.

Faced with the opportunity, no matter how this job thing comes down, that come Monday morning, I am sure to have a new job, I’m a little fucked up.

I know that either will give me the opportunity to be consistent, but one demands it more directly in its job responsibilities. Consistent outreach, consistent updates, consistent ensurance that the company name and mission get out there in several ways, on a regular basis.

On a regular basis. What on earth does regularity mean? I haven’t learned that in my bones yet. My bones are still primed for don’t you fucking trust a damn thing to remain as it is. What an exhausting way to live life? I’ve perpetuated the story. I’ve made decisions that would give me new evidence that things in life are not to be trusted or relied upon.

I’ve made decisions that would inform others that I’m not to be relied upon. And so they don’t. They expect me to flake. To be engaged for a period of time, and then withdraw. To be totally around and happy to be there, and then to be removed and distant.

I have learned that to be engaged is a temporary thing. I have learned and honed my skill of doing the same thing I learned from others – to allow others to depend on me, and then to pull the rug out. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I guess, I’m looking forward to trying out this thing called “consistency.” To attempt, however falteringly and humanly, to show up engaged on a regular basis. I also imagine that I’ll have internal reactionary moments, of This is too scary, This can’t go on being good. I may have more moments of self-sabotage. But, perhaps, on the road to learning how to be a responsible and consistent woman, I can be comforted by knowing I’m making “Firm and Consistent Progress.”

Remember What The Redwood Told You.

So, my writing group approves of the poems I want to read at next Thursday’s poetry reading (event found here!). Yes, explicit, they said, but that’s not the focus or the point of it. Precisely.

So, I guess I’m going to be reading these poems! I shared with them my fear of reading these, and then coming to sit down back with everyone else, feeling hella awkward, but, in another way too, it’s just my art. It’s not necessarily “who I am,” it’s just how I chose to express myself. I don’t have to be as tied into its reception.

Speaking of “reception,” I’ve been offered a receptionist position. Now, before we go peeing ourselves with glee, I’m going on my 2^nd interview this morning for a job I really do want, rather than the receptionist, which, I will, potentially/likely take, should this job not come through. But, I don’t … well, I don’t really want it. I suppose at this point “any” job is worth doing and having, but … man, my poor ego.

And more than that, my poor wallet. There’s a marked difference in pay between these two positions. I also have an interview on Friday morning with an SF museum, but it’s for a short-term gig for less than the receptionist pay. So, although, for the love of Jehovah, I’d LOVE to work at this SF museum … it’s not quite right either. I don’t want to come up in 9 months, and be right back here again, having already had to live meagerly for 9 months – and there’s no guarantee that I’d be shifted to another position within the company.

So – PRAY FOR ME, to get this job this morning that I want. *and would be good at*

I’ll still be meeting this afternoon with the receptionist place, to talk about start date, salary, benefits. I mean, those words alone make me tingly inside. But I also know the kind of internal work that I’ve been doing to bust out of this job bracket – and it feels a little – a lot – like moving backward. Receptionist.

I did ask them if there was room for growth in this position, and he said, well, honestly, it’s limited, but there could be. Farkle.

I’m not making any hard and fast commitments for or against anything. I’m too atwitter with excitement about the job interview this morning, and already feeling a time crunch to get ready and get out the door.

But, some morning pages, though I admit, not the full ones, and some blogging, though perhaps not the full thousand or so words.

I couldn’t fall asleep well last night either. I couldn’t tell if it was nerves or the green tea I had in the afternoon.

What I can tell you is that after I went to my writing group, I came home and started to work on a broadside of one of my poems. A broadside is basically like a print of a poem, large, like a small poster of it. It’s artistic, and has maybe some colors or images. I don’t have a printing press, so I had to figure it all out by hand, and I loved it. I had to count the lines in my poem, divide it into the space on the paper I had, line the paper in the infinitesmal increments for spacing, and then write the whole thing in. But, I like it.

It’s a first/rough draft. I want to use different paint, as the paper I have isn’t that great, but I don’t want to buy more. I intend to try to sell some of them at next week’s reading.

But, I’ll tell you. I had a great time with it. Counting the number of letters in the longest lines of my poem to figure out how wide the lettering should be. Practicing the handwriting. And, in the end, seeing that it sort of does just look like a homemade project ;) But, I intend to do a little better job on the next ones, practicing the painting part, so they don’t obscure the writing.

Anyway, I’ve got to run, wish me luck of the Irish!

p.s., I found 26cents yesterday ;) 

Pennies from Heaven.

Well, whether it was my colorful display of language that did it or not, yesterday I applied to a job, and later that afternoon, got an email to schedule an interview for it.

How ‘bout them apples?

It reminds me of my friend and his parking mantra. When looking for parking, he repeats a mantra (which, I found out later was, in fact, an actual Buddhist mantra: Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, but as I heard it, it was Nam, Yo, Orengie, Kyo). He repeats this mantra, and insists that it works in helping him to find parking.

In my own experience, I think the way it “works” is that you say the mantra until you have found parking, and Miraculous! the mantra “worked.” It also is really great at keeping your mind focused on something other than, damnit there’s no parking. So, it serves a purpose at least.

Whatever the spiritual or magical effects of the mantra, I think it’s sort of the same with this job interview on Friday. I cursed at G-d, then applied for a job, then I got an interview. Did the cursing at G-d “help?” Would “G-d” be motivated to act by my refusal to accept the anguish of my situation? Dunno. Maybe not. But, maybe so.

I was writing about it this morning, asking why it’s taken so long for anything like this job, and the one I have a 2^nd interview for tomorrow, to come through. It was “indicated” that it was simply because these jobs weren’t available yet.

Guffaw. Come on, Master of the Universe – there were no other jobs that would have been as acceptable as these over the last three months? I find that hard to believe. So, then, what “lessons” was I, or am I still, supposed to be learning from this protracted period of panic, anxiety, and desperation?

A simple and easy answer is: Patience and Persistence.

Farkle. Who wants to learn that?? Have I learned it? Well, in spurts. There have been periods during this time when I’ve cursed myself into exhaustion, and “surrendered,” and came to believe that perhaps, just maybe I had a “higher power” that really did have my best interest in mind. I have come to a place where, over these months, and through other work I’ve been doing, I’ve come to introduce myself to a very new Higher Power, one that perhaps, maybe, I might actually trust.

Because I’ve done so much work on this front, this particular path of getting closer to spirituality, I’d thought, come on, of course, I believe that my Higher Power has my best interest in mind. Of course I trust it. But, strikingly, in this new round of work I’m doing, I put it down on paper, and, in fact, I still have my default G-d. The one that is untrustworthy, inconsistent, and unreliable.

And so, I’ve been hiring a new one that embodies the opposite of these qualities.

I’ve imagined this new Higher Power as a Rookie from the bush leagues, coming up into the Majors. I am the coach or manager. This new Higher Power is stoked to finally be on deck. Finally to be able to prove what skills and moves and plans he has. “Put me in, coach! Put me in!,” he tells me eagerly.

And, so I started to. I began small. Because this is a new entity, and I’m not sure I entirely trust it; and, very much, trust is an earned emotion. Like any relationship, this is a trial, a getting to know you period. So, I decided to put my new Higher Power in for a few innings. I started to say, let’s see how you do for these next few hours, and we’ll revisit if you’ll be on for the next few.

And I did that, for probably a week or two. Okay, things have gone well these few hours, let’s see what game plan you might have for the next few.

And on it went. Until, not long ago, I decided to put this new player on the team’s official roster. To invite him on, perhaps, permanently.

So. If I’ve begun to form a relationship of trust with a “Power greater than myself,” can I trust, therefore, that all this mishigas is actually for my benefit?

Well, there’s the rub. Where the rubber meets the road. A trust and a faith that works in rough going. Do I have it?

Yikes. Well, what I have is a more firm belief that there is the option for me now of something/someone I trust more than I have before. I do feel, honestly, that I’ve established a layer, even a foundation, of trust with this entity. When I close my eyes in meditation, I can see the eager young ball player, I can see that he only wants to show me what grand things he can do and wants to do, if he’s only given the chance.

I can see that this is not a flighty entity.

Therefore, if, as in math, a = b, then b = a. I trust that this power wants my life to work. Therefore my life is being guided by a force I can trust.

There’s not really a way around that, unless I question “a”: that I trust this Power.

So, how does this play out in my everyday life then? Well, I can remember this equation. I can remember that I have decided to trust this power based on evidence that I’m not dead, crazy, or in danger. That’s pretty big evidence. I can continue to gather it on the smaller things too, which is where, for me, the “real” evidence is – “Okay, you got the big stuff, but what about this smaller shit – LIKE MY JOB??”

Well, the week that I was putting my HP in the game for a few innings at a time, I started to find pennies on the ground. Call it whatever you might, but I considered them “Pennies from Heaven,” and to me, they were like little winks from the Universe that, yes, I am being taken care of. That I am and was on the right path.

So, is it a parking mantra? Is this conversation with a new higher power just something to hold my attention and faith as I go forward with my job search, never knowing if such a power exists? Maybe. I’ll never know, will I.

Do I feel better when I think about that Rookie and his toothy grin, tapping the side of his wooden bat against his cleats, excited to prove himself to me? You. Bet.

"We're not gonna take it..."

So, I’m having a bit of a cout d’etat with my Higher Power.

Yesterday, after having spent the day unenthusiastically clicking on administrative job listings, too disenchanted and lethargic to actually apply to any, I took out the Jerrold Mundis book How to Get out of Debt, Stay out of Debt, and Live Prosperously. I’ve been reading it through at various intervals over the last few months, having been hanging out with a group of folks who practice the kind of actions and principles he suggests for about a year now.

I sat with my dinner, started to read, and here was his suggestion. At the top of a piece of paper write, If I could have, do, or be anything, it would be… and then he listed several categories of our lives, like Work/Career, Relationships, etc. As soon as I read the prompt, I started to well up. A bit surprisingly to me, having done a lot of similar work through the Artist's Way before.

As I wrote "Work/Career" at the top of a page, I came to the end of my first sentence: “I work with a group of creative people to …” I had no idea what came next. I don’t know what, in my grandest or meekest dreams, the end of that sentence is. And I started to cry. I sobbed at having no clue what I wanted to do with my life, or even presently, which I believe has made it that much harder for the “Universe” to provide it for me. “What happens in Vagueness, stays in Vagueness.”

So, I took out another sheet of paper to try an exercise that my friend said she did before moving out to SF a year or so ago. She wrote down all the areas that interested her, careers, in bubble circles on a page. Then she held her hand over each, and imagined to feel what it would really feel like to her to do that work. So, I did that. I wrote down “Admin” in one bubble, because I was curious, and because it’s my fallback. And I held my hand on that part of the page, and started to cry again. None of the things on the page actually spoke to me, except one.

And it just feels so “stupid” to even admit it. I shared it last night with a group of folks who work on the specific debting issue of “underearning,” and it was hard for me to admit it there, in a safe group – but out loud. And because as soon as I even try to think about it, all these attendant flashes -- “That’s so unrealistic” “That’s not sustainable” “No one makes that a full-time job” "You need training" "You need money for classes" "It takes years" -- came up even as I sat in my kitchen, soggy eyed, and circled it over and over. Actress.

See, you pulled back, didn’t you? “Actress, really?” No one makes a full-time job out of that. Or, as I’ve heard so often about my Poetry degree, “Glad you studied something lucrative!” FUCK ALL YOU STUPID VOICES.

You all suck. Not, “you,” reader you. Just “you,” stupid voices and nay-sayers and assholes, who live in and outside my head.

I don’t even want to talk too much about it. It feels so vulnerable. And open to attack.

And yet, unless I actually share this interest with people, I won’t be able to get ideas on how to make a viable path and eventual living at it.

Most people actually do know that I’m interested in performance. It’s been something that I’ve talked about and been engaged in for years. But I guess I never really let people know that it’s really something that I want to do. As in really. There are just so many messages to contradict it that it’s so hard to even let myself hold the idea in my own kitchen!.

Any and all of that said, I need to be earning money now, in a stable job that will enable me that stability and the room to goddamned breathe in order to pursue anything in that vein. I’m not an idiot. I know it’s going to take a lot of work, and in order to get to a place where I can do and engage and even pay for that work, I’ve got to get a fucking job.

So, the cout d’etat. My morning pages this morning looked like the transcript of Southie dock-workers. Or the script from an episode of Deadwood. “Motherfucking” and “G-ddamned” being the most common.

I’m tired, people. I feel like I’ve been struggling against this underearning stuff for … ever. The fall-back on mindless, absolutely mindless work, because I don’t have the balls to really try for something better, something that might actually use the braincells G-d put in my head to do more than alphabetize a stack of invoices.

So, I told my HP this morning, that either something changes, or I’m out. You!, Miracle Maker – make some fucking miracles then.

The irony of long-term job search is that the longer you are at it, for me, the less enthused or motivated I become. Which, is completely counter-productive. At the times when I need to remain as vigilant and productive, I become lethargic and desperate.

Honestly, if I hear one more person suggest something, I’m going to stab them in the eye with a fork. Don’t you THINK I’ve been doing that??? I want to scream at these poor, innocent, just-want-to-help friends and acquaintances.

I am where I am right now. I am angry, frustrated, desperate, and sad. I’m working on stuff around relationships that is making me even more techy and vulnerable. And I’m stretched as far as I can go. I told my HP this morning that if he/she/it/they wants me to continue on this, then you’ve gotta fucking throw me a bone here. You have to make me able to support myself if you want me to do the work that I actually believe I’m here to do – to get me there, you have to help me here.

I am tapped out and exhausted. I have no room for patience at the moment. September is arriving, and I have just enough to cover rent. That’s it. I am undergirded by a thrashing river of anxiety over money and how to feed myself and my cat. I am tired. And if my Higher Power does indeed want the best for me, and wants me to be “happy, joyous, and free,” then It better do something quick, because I’m fucking over it. 

Wrestling with Appropriateness

A friend asked me an interesting question yesterday. I was telling her that I wasn’t sure about reading some of my poetry at the reading, wondering if it was appropriate, or what my motivations were, if it was the right forum for it. Not wanting to titillate; not wanting to overexpose. And, frankly, not wanting to be hella uncomfortable afterward.

She asked me if reading these poems would bring me closer to the woman I wanted to be, or farther away from her?

I couldn’t answer her. It was a good question.

I get tired of people assuming that I’m an impervious, white-bre(a)d suburbanite. I get tired of people assuming that I have my shit together. Or that I haven’t been through anything hard because I am white and straight. That I am worth overlooking in the world because of stereotypes and assumptions.

So, part of the work that I do is to completely turn that on its head and say, Here motherf*ckers, see this here scar, see this wound, see this pain, see this triumph or redemption or trauma – now don’t you tell me that I don’t belong here, that what I have to say isn’t valid.

Don’t you shove me off into a corner because you think that I’m not like you. And, please, ultimately, don’t assume that you and I have nothing in common, and moreso, please don’t assume that I don’t need you because of an assumption that I have my shit together.

I’ve had several people tell me in recent months that they’re actually “glad” to see that I haven’t got my shit together. That I’ve been humanized when I share things that are actually going on.

Now, part of this is them, and their own assumptions and even selective hearing, but part of it, too, is me, and keeping myself to myself. There is a time and a place, and the right people, to share things with, and I know and have learned that lesson painfully when putting my trust in the wrong people. But also, people want in, and I want out. I want out from behind the wall of, Everything is fine.

Everything is not fine. Or at least, everything isn't all the time.

This isn’t to say that things aren’t good or even great. It’s just to say that I’m fucking human too, and I’d kindly ask you to stop placing your readings and interpretations of me as “different” aside.

So that’s part of what the poetry is about. It’s to say very clearly and succinctly that I don’t have it all together. That I’m as human as anyone. But, too, my work goes a little, or a lot farther beyond that sometimes, in a way that can be alienating in the opposite way.

Now you know I’m so fucked up, or have had so many problems or experiences, you can’t relate to me. Now I do seem tainted or scarred, and now you’re not sure how to relate to me, yet again. Stepping down from a microphone at which I’ve revealed stuff about mental institutions, incarcerations, or back-alley sex … are we now going to talk about the latest Steve Carell movie?

Maybe. I mean, it IS art. It’s a magnification of things. It’s deep exploration of things. It’s not normal conversation.

But, I don’t know. I can hear my friend’s question about whether this is bringing me closer or further from who I want to be, and I don’t know.

I do know that I need to write what I need to write. No matter what, it’s what I do, and what I’ll continue to do. But. Do I need to read it in front of a group of my friends and peers? Do I need to throw it out like a vat of squirming insides for you to see and perhaps recoil?

And, again, do I need to throw it out there too like some sort of membership card of artists or fucked up people? Of people who’ve “really been there, man”?

Is it enough to know within myself that I am not a cookie cutter white suburban flake with aspirations of account management?

Is it enough to know, that being said, that I still value and idealize all of that suburban fantasy? That I do now see all the advantages of the place, if not the way, I was brought up?

There are experiences in my life which were painful. Most people have those. I write about them, and have been writing about them with more specificity and honesty than ever. Where is the place for that writing?

I’ve decided that I’m going to bring the work I was intending on reading to my writing group on Thursday, and ask them their opinions. They’ll get my hesitation, and they get my writing, however raw it can be.

There’s something here about balance, I think, that I haven’t quite grasped. A balance between needing and wanting to prove to you that I’m not some porcelain doll easily managing the chaos and serenity of life. And not throwing that information at you like a spiteful attack.

Underneath them both, I suppose, is my own desire to be seen fully and in a whole way. My desire to allow myself to be seen fully and in a whole way, without protection that perhaps my poised demeanor may give, and without the protection that your “back away slowly” provides.

I’m not sure how to do that yet.

Because the reality is that I am all of it. I am both the poised person who is articulate and brave. And I am the wounded teenager with scars of emotional self-cutting who wants to hide or repulse.

In the end, though, I suppose, it’s largely about self-validation. That as I begin to absorb and own the disparate parts of myself, others will be more able to see them.

Most people who meet me at first would never imagine I were funny. I appear too erect to be something as bawdy as funny. Nor would most people imagine that I were walking with the shadow of a past that was insane.

But, I know I’m funny. I know I’d like to be more open about it. I know that my past was fucked up and my ideas still need help. And I’d like to be more open about that.

I’m not sure. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the poems I’ve got. But whatever happens, I have a date with a mic in two weeks, and some of myself will be spoken there. 

Musings, Revelations, and Art

Yesterday, I went dancing with girlfriends. I prised myself off my couch and away from the gathering winds of chaos of the 2^nd half of Harry Potter’s final book, and actually put on make-up.

The thing about being unemployed, not having requirements on my time is that I’m free to walk around make-up free and sneaker-clad for as many days in a row as I’d like. But, I’ll admit. This gets boring. It was fun to get dressed up, try on different heels, put in some gel inserts so as to soothe what would be rioting feet, and hop in the car.

I could see from my place on the couch what my evening would be like if I didn’t go out – if I did as I usually do, and flake out. It would consist of a Saturday night with me, my cat, and a book. Not a bad evening, but not a social, outward, expansive one either. Even from my lethargic vegetative state, I could see that should I go out, I knew I’d smile. I knew that likely, I’d smile like a grinning fool the entire time. And what do you know? I did.

There’s a funny thing that happens when girls go out dancing, and especially when they aren’t drinking. We all tend to dance in a circle. Some brave guy will take this as an invitation to step into the middle and dance his peacock dance, and we’ll all dance a little “ha ha, very funny” and smile, and eventually, the guy will realize that none of us are stepping forward to grind with him, and he’ll leave. Looking a little chagrined, but also a little cocky at having been in the middle of a circle of attractive, gyrating women.

This is no knock on men. It’s more just a show of why we women go out dancing in the first place. Sure, it used to be, years ago, about grinding, and finding someone to go home with, but that’s just not what it’s about anymore. It’s much more fun, and much more engaging and community-making.

I was dancing with women who were all older than me, but could cut a rug eagerly and enthusiastically. The great thing about dancing with other women, is that you get to observe the moves they do, subtly copy them, incorporating their moves into your own repertoire as you see how they fit on you. It becomes an interplay. A collaborative dance, in a way, as each of us watch the other, copy sometimes funny flailing, sometimes a specific arm wave.

I love it. I love to dance. My hips and back and neck are feeling it today, but, my feet are not(!).

The t.v. screens all showed the videos of the songs the dj was playing, and they were weird. Weird motherf’in videos. Having fallen out of the tech generation without a television, cable, or even the ability to watch shows on my laptop, now that everything else has been upgraded and my laptop can’t sync with it, I said to my friend as I watched the screens showing strippers, animatronics, and a rather weird video where men realize there’s another human male head at their crotch, that it’s like a revelation: “Images!” I yelled. Moving images. It’s honestly something I rarely see anymore, and these were such unusual ones that for minutes at a time, half the dance floor would stop dancing, just to watch the extreme oddity of whatever was happening on the screen. It was weird. Things change.

I won’t tell you that I’m not a little trepidatious about what I wrote yesterday about sex and whatnot. That I feel a little wide-eyed at the fact that I wrote so honestly. But, also, I realize that this is why I write here, to put down things that will help me in the rest of my life, as a record, or a guide. Because of having written what I did yesterday, I feel it’ll be easier to say these things out loud when I read in a few weeks.

When I was taking a poetry class at school, a teacher said to me, if you’re writing about a blow job, then write about a blow job, don’t talk around it in obscure or flowery language. I was aghast, and taken aback, and more than a bit hurt. But his criticism helped to change the face of my writing immensely. In vehement "I'll show you" reaction to his feedback, which included the words sentimental and cliché, I started to write starkly, unemotionally. The emotion in it certainly conveyed, but not because I told you “how I feel.” It changed the shape of my writing.

As I was thinking about it this morning, in reaction to him also, I wrote a poem called “Titillation and Censorship,” which wrote closer to what I was talking about. It's title also brings up one of my fears about writing about this stuff -- it’s not intended to titillate. It’s not intended to be erotica. It verges on that. It may indeed titillate you, and that’s a perfectly fine and welcome reaction, but that’s not its point. And so, as I think about reading this stuff to an audience, I imagine some uncomfortable squirms in chairs, or maybe an unconscious adjusting of a crotch here and there, some pink-cheeked flushes of embarrassment. Will that happen? I don’t know.

But as I begin to write or am writing more specifically about my thoughts and experience about sex than I ever have, I’m writing words that I’ve likely never said out loud except maybe to a lover. And that’s another part of the liberation of these poems.

I will rarely tell you what it is that I’m wanting or needing in bed. I close down, and I feel too shy or ashamed to tell you what I want. In the times when I feel I have expressed it, I’ve felt disappointed, and so conclude to continue remaining silent. In fact, I had one lover who I told what I needed, and who actually said, “Too bad.”

Writing poems that include language that you might find in a smut magazine or an erotic story means that I have to say these words out loud. Not yet able to say them in my intimate life, I am forcing myself to say them in my poetic life, to become comfortable saying them – or at least not mute.

Does it still scare me, thrill me, and sure, even turn me on a little to write and read these poems? Yes. Am I going to do it anyway? Apparently. 

Sex and Pie.

Apparently a lot happened yesterday. I found out a friend had died from cancer, and I found out another is pregnant.

The balance there seems rather cosmic in timing.

To be perfectly honest, though, when I got the news that my friend had died, I didn’t really react. Not out of numbness, but out of emotional tapped-out-ness. Really, there’s only so much a person can handle, before the rest just starts to feel like water off a duck's back. I wonder if that’s a mere inkling of what happens to nurses and doctors in hospitals and hospice centers.

I don’t mean to be callous. I did find myself thinking about this person as I fell asleep last night, remembering how he’d been a member of my circle of friends when I moved to SF and started to make friends. We were never close though. He was just sort of around, a jovial presence. But, I’m tapped out.

I’ll call my friend back who called to tell me so in a voicemail, and I’ll look online at the details on the service, and I’ll probably even go. But, I just don’t have the grief to spare at the moment.

I continued on with my day after I had listened to the message. I read my Harry Potter (my friend wasn’t able to get the final book on tape, but luckily I bought it hard copy the first time I was reading the series and was much too impatient to wait for it to come back at the library). I made the dinner of salmon and whole wheat pasta and spinach that I’d intended to cook all week. I talked with another friend about plans for today.

I. just couldn’t. I hope you know what I mean. After the already shock of earlier this week finding out a friend of mine had used again, and the awful dream that brought my friend Aaron’s death back front and center – there’s only so much. And there are others who can carry the burden, or the blessing, of remembering this latest friend who passed away. Right now, I need to refill the well, not tap it further. There’s not really much left.

In that same vein, I’ve been asked/volunteered to read at a poetry/creative writing reading at the end of this month. And I’m not sure what I’ll be writing about. I have one piece that I think I’ll read, and another that I’ve written which I’ll have to check out – both deal with the same subject, and I don’t want to overdo it. They’re both about sex without intimacy basically. And it’s what I’m working on in my “internal” life now, and so, it’s what I’m writing about.

It’s a little exposing (says the woman who read next-to-naked on a stage earlier this year) to read this stuff out loud – particularly to a group of friends and acquaintances with whom you’ll have to chat and make small talk after you’ve just read a poem about how BDSM worked where nothing else did.

Not like any of those experiences are current. I haven’t had sex in a year, now. And stayed rather close to first and second base since then.

Part, I think, of my writing is about exorcising things past. Or excavating them. When I wrote my thesis, none of that stuff was current information or experience. It was all ages ago, and in writing it, although it was evocative of emotions – sometimes too many emotions – I knew that it wasn’t current emotions.

It’s the same, I think, with this new set of work. Indeed, it dovetails with some of the thesis work, which wove three strands of my experience – sex, addiction, and family chaos. The same thread of experience, interpretation, and thought around sex are being picked up here. As if there’s still more to say, or explain, or release, or validate.

The way that I’d held sex and intimacy before were not, and still aren’t quite, healthy. But that doesn’t make them wrong or bad. It just means, for me, that I still have feelings about how I misused the power of it. That I still want to parse it out, explore it, and release it. It’s very much the same way that I felt about the work in my thesis – knowing it wasn’t current, but knowing that it was sitting like a fetid lake inside a light-devoid cave.

The act, for me, of writing about it, is an act of siphoning off the poison. About exposing light to these places, and helping them out, so that I don’t feel infected by them, but rather simply accepting of, and perhaps even compassionate toward, them.

Most of the work I’m doing now is around relationships and sex. The same isolation and retreat that happens for me around this subject, I believe, is the same thing that keeps me from doing work I enjoy or valuing the work I do and what I can offer. It’s all back to the lovely same swamp of low self-esteem; and cliché and junior high as that may seem, even to me, it’s got to be cleared, however “lame” it seems.

So, I guess I do know, really, what I’ll be reading about in a few weeks. I’m not totally stoked on exposing it, but I know, too, that I’m not ever going to be the only person to have experienced the feelings behind the behaviors, if not the actual behaviors themselves. I know that in sharing myself honestly, I’m cracking fissures in the sides of that cave. I know that I’m moving myself out of shame and into simple acceptance.

A friend of mine says often, that the work we do on this planet is not about self-improvement, but about self-acceptance. And I agree with her. I don’t need to be “better,” I need to be myself. I need to begin to understand that there’s something to value in that self, and as I’ve begun to say here, I’m beginning to see that there is.

The metaphor I’ve been using recently has been thus: If I were a pie or a pie chart, up until now, I’ve seen only a tiny slice of myself. This tiny sliver of who I think I am or know myself to be. But, there is, I’m only beginning to see now, an entire fucking pie. For all of my life, I’ve seen the sliver of myself, and thought and believed that that was all there absolutely was about myself. Now, I have no idea, yet, what the rest of the pie of myself contains, but the miracle is that I finally see that there is, indeed, a rest of the pie. 

Change your Mazal

Despite my best efforts to find work in the art world – gallery, museums, auction houses – I’m currently in the process of interviewing with two different Jewish organizations. This, was not on purpose. But I suppose I feel a mite lucky to have the instant niche market to appeal to, as a member of the tribe myself.

It’s funny to me, because this all happened once before. In 2009, I’d quit my job at a property management firm, in order to pursue something “more creative.” As this was at the heart/beginning of the recession, jobs in the arts were hard to find, and even harder as I wasn’t really sure what I meant by that: “a job in the arts.” After several months of Desperately Seeking Sus—I mean Work, I woke up one morning, and asked myself what else I might be interested in.

The sentence came back to me, Well, I like being Jewish. 

… And so I went onto Google, typed in “Jewish San Francisco,” and applied to every job that was listed. And in fact, I wasn’t chosen for the job to which I applied and was interviewed for at what would become my new employer – the hiring manager passed my resume along to someone else in the organization, and I got that job instead.

I was thinking this morning about how it would have been, perhaps, if I’d stayed with that “Jewish job,” as it was being cut to half-time around the time I got into school. What it would have been like to stay in my apartment in San Francisco, commute in my not-to-be-stolen car, and maintain that job.

And I realized that my whole life changed when I moved to the East Bay. Something, I, of anyone, could not have planned or foresaw.

By being here, I immediately eliminated my number one complaint about San Francisco – the weather. For anyone who doesn’t know, summer as we might know it elsewhere (perhaps in places that are now melting in the heat) is not what it is in San Francisco. And being a hardened NY/NJ girl, I’d become accustomed to a certain predictable amount of thawing period before moving back into cooler months. The East Bay, though foggy in the earlier morning, still, is much warmer than San Francisco, and my poorly heated body is much more relaxed.

For another, by moving here, I’ve been able to form friendships with people I never would have met, and become closer to those I met at school. By being here, I’ve had to reach out to folks in a way I didn’t have to in San Francisco, because I’d established friendships already – who needed more.

That mentality came to bite me after a while in Oakland, when I really wasn’t reaching out to new friends, but was no longer going back across the bridge to visit old friends. Something had to change – and, as always, it was me.

By being here, I got to meet folks who I would host at the art show I held last summer. By being here, I get to participate in more, though still infrequent, poetry readings of friends. And, by being here, I’ve had to come to the other side of this school adventure without a secure job, and start again.

I watch as I struggle with my ego against applying for jobs that I would have been a shoo-in for about 10 or even 5 years ago, but which now feel so draggy, and … “beneath me.” Surely, there’s a lot to learn about humility here, and yet, I also feel more than ever that I have something more to offer than I had felt before.

There is a significant amount changing, and it’s not just external, of course. What sort of tipped me into this course of thought this morning was what a Jewish friend said to me once, that when you move, you change your Mazal.

I had no idea what she meant. I’d only ever heard the word “Mazal” connected with “Tov,” and assumed it just simply meant “Congratulations,” or “Good Luck.” But, she told me, that Mazal meant more like Fate or Spirit. That by changing where you live, you change your fate. (“Tov,” by the way, does mean “good.”)

I am not getting interviews for jobs within the art world now. But I’m not so worried about it. I’m still applying to them pell mell, willing perhaps to do more grunt work in that realm than I would in any other, but, as I’ve had the experience of learning, perhaps there’s a better plan for me. And maybe that work is not right now, or not in this way.

When my friend suggested I try to hold the job search more lightly, she equated it to dating. You go on a date with someone, you are curious, interested to see if this is a good fit, but you don’t throw yourself off the Golden Gate if an okCupid date doesn’t come off as a match. I was, however, ready to do so with the job application roller coaster.

What I thought this morning, though, was that perhaps job interviewing for me isn’t like dating, but could be more like how I held the auditioning for plays that I’d done in December and January. When I was going out for these auditions, I was thrilled just to go and have the fun of it. It really didn’t matter to me whether I got the part, I was happy just to try; to see the people, to see how this worked, to put my best effort out there, and really really let go of the results, because I honestly wasn’t so interested in the results. I was interested in the process.

Observing this about myself was a stroke of interesting in itself, as someone who often has cared and markedly noted what you thought of me. Noting that I wasn’t actually concerned when I bombed terribly, which I assure you I did at least once – there’s a tape of it, and if I ever become a politician or famous, you’ll see it(!) – but that I was more intrigued by the process.

Now, sure, it might be a pretty marked leap to apply the same thrill of interest to the job hunt, but there are a lot of the markers that are the same. I have something to offer, whether it’s a good fit or not, I have no idea. I can show up prepared to the best of my ability, and I can let it go when I’ve done my piece, as there’s nothing more that I can do, except continue moving forward, whatever their decision may be.

And as to, “changing the course of my life” by moving? I think it really did. I think it shook me out of the grooves I was in, and demanded that I make and find new ones. It was not a comfortable transition, and it wasn’t a quick one either. But, the reality is that subtly, perhaps, my trajectory has changed. I am not precisely the person I was when I moved to the East Bay. For one, I’m warmer. 

Literature(?)

I’ve been listening to the Harry Potter books on tape. I love it. They're read by this award-winning British guy, with a thousand character voices. I’d listened to the first three when one of my best friends from the east coast sent me a thumb drive with the audio books and photos from when she came to visit me a year ago. I didn’t begin to listen to the next several until recently.

Mostly, it’s because that’s when people start to die, and although reading some of the more gruesome or shocking parts is hard of itself, somehow I couldn’t quite bring myself to listen to them happening. Indeed, now that I have begun to listen to the last several, it’s quite possible for me to sometimes stop in the middle of walking and stare wide-eyed and transfixed as a particular bit of action or revelation is happening on my iPod.

I had to stop listening last night before bed, as I knew what the next chapter would be, and I couldn’t hang with hearing it so close to dream time.

When I went on one of my last dates, I was asked what books I read or what are my favorites. And sad(?) to say, the Harry Potter series is what came to mind. I was a hold-out. I wasn’t one of those who stood outside of bookstores at midnight waiting for the next edition, though, surely, had I begun reading when they had, maybe I would have.

But I have this thing that tells me that anything that a watershed amount of people like can’t be good. That people are sheep, and whatever they’re into can’t possibly be any good at all, and they have poor taste that tells them that cotton candy is a delicacy.

Attitude problem.

The HP books were the second thing I’d scoffed virulently and vehemently before giving way, and reading the first one about 4 or 5 years ago. I can’t even remember how or why. But it was certainly after all of them came out, so once I did crack that first one… I had full access to dive-bomb read through all of them in a row. I’m pretty sure that I read the entire series in the course of a week. – They are fat books. And I got little sleep. *so worth it*

The first thing that I scoffed at, I’m still too embarrassed to admit here. It was a band that got popular when I was in high school, and as all the popular kids began to wear the t-shirts and talk about the shows, I thought, loftily, how stupid they were just to jump on the bandwagon that everyone else had – that if it weren’t popular, they wouldn’t like the band. So it was several years, too, before I gave that band a listen, and in fact, fell in love with it – and it remains one of my closet favorites of all time.

The thing about the Harry Potter series is that I now dive-bomb through them, I realize, at particularly intense or stressful times in my life. I last read the whole series about a year and a half ago, when I was on a break from school, and I just wanted to retreat from the whole damn world.

People often say how reading was their first addiction, and I can fall into that category as well. The great thing about the HP series is that it’s transportive, relatable, and well-written.

When I had the Twilight book forced upon me by a friend, giving her the same reluctant, "You of all people can’t be one of the sheep, can you?" look, I read it. And then I read the rest. But, this was a different kind of read than the HPs. This, was not good writing. Sure, it was/is addictive writing; it’s over-emotional, and relatable to that angsty teen love thing – she captures that really well. But, are the sentences well written? I don’t think so. Is it a book that will be called a masterpiece? Probably not. Did I read them all through with fervor just the same? Well, yes.

I suppose there’s two points here then. One, is that I can be a stubborn and lofty fool. Dismissing things others suggest, feeling that I know better. And this is a streak that is NOT just around books, but around most everything. I think I know the best way, and I will be damned to take suggestions from you, whoever you are – what do you know. Luckily, or painfully, I get a lot of chances to see where my ideas only get me so far, and then, fortunately, I do have others’ wisdom and suggestions to pull on. But it often takes me a long large time to get to the point when I’m willing to listen and then to actually put those suggestions to action.

The second point is that, yes, indeed, I am escaping into these books right now. I am feeling stressed by the realities of life, and yes, I would like a little magic, if you don’t mind. Sure, there are a thousand other books to read, as my date readily pointed out – sounding a little doubtful that I actually have degrees in English. But, I don’t, right now, want something that, as my friend put it recently, will subtly shift my soul; I do want cotton candy. I know what it is. I know its caloric value. But, it’s what the feverish part of my worried brain needs to soothe it.

I just went through a whole series of memoirs, mostly of people who were fucked up, and maybe now are less fucked up. Redemption stories are great; but struggle against self and others is what I have in my waking life – I’m a little over it in my “hobby” life.

So, as I listen to the last half of the 6^th Harry Potter book, knowing as I do, that it’s about to turn devilishly dark for the next while, I’m not sure what I’ll do. But, like Pringles, once you pop … and maybe I’ll pick up something lighter for counterbalance. 

On the Whole.

I was sitting out front my apartment building yesterday in the afternoon sun, waiting for my friend to pick me up. My property manager drove up the driveway, rolled down his window and called jovially, “Contemplating the nature of life? It’s a good art!,” smiled, waved, and drove away.

It was amusing to me because lately, I have been contemplating the nature of life. I’ve been thinking about the importance of it all. How important are our lives, humans, as we struggle with what and who we’ll be, going through manias, depressions, family events – what real impact or point is there?

I don’t want to seem like I’m all nihilistic or depressed; that’s not it – it’s just why is it important? We didn’t really do much to evolve to be here -- it was sheer luck and Nature that we are, and what difference does it make? How meaningful is it?

We are creatures who make meaning from things. It’s in our nature and wiring to create connections between things in order to survive – but, on the grand scale, 1 out of 8 billion, or even in fact our whole 8 billion – why? Who cares? So, there’s life, we got some, other souls didn’t.

Animals got some – are their lives “significant?” Does it matter to them that they are alive, but to procreate? Does it matter if we do? Now going against the one purpose of our destiny and make-up?

Does it matter if I date or not? If I am happy or not? If I enjoy my life while I’m here and have it, or not? Well, certainly it matters to me; certainly I want to live in this world reasonably happy, as do you, but in the end, the final make up – does it matter?

Sure, it’s great and I want to help others be reasonably happy in this life and share mine with them, but, on the whole, does it matter? There really isn’t a great “why are we here?” We just happened to make it. We get tools and an environment to rub up against that will shape us, as all homo sapiens before us. But.

When the planet is finally rid of us, through global warming, disease, or the eventual demise of the sun, did it matter that I paid 59cents for organic carrots instead of 69cents? Will it have mattered who the 2012 election went to? Or even, the 2004?

Does this make my life and lifetime more or less precious to me? Neither. That’s not really my question. I don’t want to diminish or elevate the grand fact of being alive, and certainly in light of recent human events, I’ve been reminded how tenuous and sinewy my/our lives are. I’m certainly glad to have this life. That’s not what I’m questioning.

I’m questioning, not on the small scale of “does it matter to my friends and family that I exist,” which I believe it does, as do they to me – but rather, What is the worth of all the chaos, all the hype, all the struggling – or conversely, all of the joy?

I am a believer in the sentiment that, When the light is turned on in one person, the whole world is illuminated. I do believe our joy or sorrow or anger has a marked effect on the world around us. But. Does it matter?

I watched a squirrel this morning dig in the garden to bury or unbury something. In 3 years, he’ll be dead. Will it have mattered?

It’s hard to talk about this without alarming people, or getting their hackles up in defense. But really, Does it matter that you have a Lexus or Prius or Bus Pass? Does it matter that Snookie is pregnant when countless women are infertile? Will it have mattered that your life was spent homeless, hungry and angry, or that mine was spent sheltered, clothed, and educated? Will it have mattered that you loved or broke hearts or isolated? On the whole scale?

If I believe the world is illuminated by one happiness, then yes, it matters to us.

But still. ?

Sustaining the Jing

I suppose another reason for discontinuing the blog for so long is that when you’re unemployed, and on the job search, there’s not much to report. Not that when you’re employed, all there is to talk about is work, but being on the job hunt, it tends to become the primary focus of thought and not of much interest to others.

A psychological hurdle I did get past during this several month job hunt was to get past my attachment to every job I applied for. I came to see it as this steep and time-collapsed manic-depressive wave – get SUPER excited and apply for a job-that-is-everything-I-could-ever-want; either don’t hear back from them, or hear back and find out, in fact, it is not everything-I-could-ever-want, and plunge into the depths of despair.

Not pleasant to report from there, and not pleasant to experience day in and out. Finally, after really recognizing that as I hadn’t heard from one company within a day and watched my mood plummet as though it were a Looney Tunes anvil, I found myself tearing on the phone to a friend that I just couldn’t go through this emotional roller coaster all the time, or any more.

She suggested that I try to hold the search with more curiosity rather than attachment. "Hmm, this sounds like an interesting position, I’ll be interested to see what happens."

This, has helped immensely. But, it’s also taken a lot of the drama out of daily living! To the positive and negative ends of that. Lack of drama can equal less exhaustion, but the ho-hum answer to “So what have you been up to?” as, “Just applying for jobs, interviews, and whatnot,” not the fodder for the great American blog.

That said, back to what I said a few days ago, about trying to inject a little levity into the daily slog, I have been managing to have a bit of fun and adventure.

I was able to finally use the VIP ticket my former employer gave me to go see the Gaultier exhibit at the DeYoung on a weekday when it was less but still crowded. However, getting through two of the five jaw-dropping rooms at my minutiae-examining pace meant that after an hour and a half, I had to leave to eat something or risk fainting on the motorized runway of mannequins. An extensive and gawk/awe-inspiring exhibit, I highly recommend to those of you in the Bay to see it this closing week.

Today, also, I will finally be able to use my ticket to the Legion of Honor my friend Corinne left to me when she moved back to Chicago last month. So situated that it’s hard to get to without a car, I’m cat-sitting for a friend of mine today through Thursday, and will therefore have her car… and access to the Man Ray exhibit. I love him, and all those Surrealist and Dadaist weirdos.  

I remember taking early American experimental film in college, walking in late usually, and reeking mightily of pot, and taking my seat to watch a Bunuel or Maya Deren, or Dali and his awful cloud cutting across the moon like an eyeball whereupon he substituted a goat’s eye and really sliced it, pouring out the guts of it. – Very good stuff to watch stoned. ...

In any case, I’m excited to see this exhibit today, plus the Legion of Honor is one of my favorite museums in the Bay Area, with their Spanish Moor ceilinged room and the French Baroque one, its ornately inlaid everything.

I also went to karaoke this weekend. I was reminded feverishly of the time I was at a karaoke room in Korea and I became such an enthusiastic (and drunk) tambouriner, that I awoke the next morning with a wicked 6 inch bruise all up the side of my thigh from where I'd banged it repeatedly – I was a very good tambouriner. I got to demonstrate my skills again this weekend. A friend of mine was celebrating her birthday, and being the only one besides her husband who really gets into that kind of thing, we all play along well because we love her and it is a laugh. The company is really what makes it though.

Still on the docket, before it runs out in September, is my flight lesson. I bought one of those LivingSocial deals last year for a two-hour flight lesson. But the airfield is down in Hayward and hard to get to without a car – and as it occurs to me now, I will have one for the next few days. I will call them today. I have loved flying in planes since the first time I was on one. There’s a feeling of the suspended nature of everything. Any thing I might have been worried about even minutes before is now literally hundreds of miles away. There isn’t any thing that I have to do at that moment besides enjoy the ride – I can’t control anything when I’m a passenger in a plane. There’s nothing I should try to control. It’s the most tangible manifestation of surrender of perceived control that I know. And I love it.

Sure, your tuchus will get sore or tired after long enough, but the sense of anticipation for wherever it is I’m going. I could be landing in Cleveland, and I’d still get the butterflies of anticipation. I love flying. I feel like I've been up in the kind of plane I’ll be learning on once or twice when I was young, perhaps on a family trip to Cape Cod, but I asked my dad, and he doesn’t seem to remember that. So, maybe I made it up, just salivating with the dream and thought of it.

Lastly, despite the failure of the caffeine-reduction experiment, I’m getting all this new information from a friend of mine who is way into herbalist nutrition, having given me a shake comprised of the contents of a compost bin. Not really, but really, one of the herbs translates as “Mr. Ho’s Hair Turned Black,” as the herb is purported to reverse signs of aging. More importantly to me, however, is that she’s helping me to moderate the signs of adrenal fatigue, which is this lovely thing I’ve been diagnosed with which says “Sorry Lady, you blew your store of adrenaline too early in life, now we’re creeping along on fumes,” and means that lately I’ve been getting dizzy when I stand up, among other things. So, unless I restore my adrenal levels – and as my herbalist friend tells me, my Jing levels – I’ll be crap out of luck in maintaining energy throughout the days.

So, I suppose there is enough going on without work to consider. I’ll be certainly glad to not have that gnawing impending doom feeling once I have steady work again, but I also do know that it’s not what makes or keeps me happy. It’s all these other ways that I’m supporting myself with culture, adventure, and forays into the mystic realms of herbs I can’t pronounce. 

Beyond the Veil.

I dreamt in the minutes between snooze-button pushes this morning. I dreamt a friend of mine had used again, and for some reason my dad and brother were there to clear his house. As my brother questioned whether they should remove his name from the gun and case and cleaning kit, my father said no, and looked sternly at my friend, as if to convey he’d better have learned his lesson.

This skips to me in bed with my friend who really had used again some months ago and overdosed and died. His back to me, both warm with that early morning light flush, that gently pulsing intimacy between two people in bed. I peek over his shoulder at his half-hidden face, just seeing the ragged scraps of unkempt sideburns and light stubble. And I repeat to him, "Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead." Over and over, pleading with him. He then turns his head to me suddenly, but in a twisted unnatural way, so that it looks as though he is turning on a broken neck, and says, “No one is ever really dead, are they?”

And I jump up and run away through the house, admonishing myself to “Snap out of it, snap out of it!,” and I wake up.

Why tell you this? Knowing so well that listening to another’s dream is so rarely engaging. Well, yesterday, I did find out that a friend of mine had used again. Heroin. I was talking to someone very close to him. He’s alive, and apparently back on the road of recovery, but … She said in a thick voice, People die from shooting heroin. And well I, and many folks I know, know.

I believe, were I to analyze my own dream, that finding this out yesterday, about someone who had been so strong in recovery for about as long as me, that it struck me again about my friend Aaron's death. Sometimes I think about it, and get all mad at the universe again. Sometimes I think about it, and just get sad. I think the gun that my friend in the dream was being allowed to keep is the same gun all of us hold who are abstaining daily from using again. We all have the option to pick that up again. No stern admonishments or reality checks will take that option away. But, for me, I think that’s precisely what this dream was to me too – a reality check, and a warning. Just a reminder, more like. To stick close to the things that work; closer to the people whom I love.

Part of what has occurred as the result of all my job searching is that I’ve come to realize that I really do want to return to the East Coast. My family all lives there, and I’ve arrived, finally, at a place where I feel able to have emotional distance or boundaries with my family, without needing to have the physical distance.

Coming to realize that to the best of their ability, my family is just who they are. For better or worse, for whatever the past held, they are my family, and wacked as sometimes the demonstrations are, they love me.

A friend chided when I said I was thinking of moving back east, There are SO many better places than New Jersey! And while that may be true, it’s the place that is closest to my family. Though my dad and his fiancé will move to Florida within the year. My brother likely to move to Baltimore with his girlfriend, and my Mom in manhattan. Worried as she is about early-onset Alzheimer’s that likely her stringent diet of neurosis and anxiety will keep firmly locked out, a coat of armor that nothing can penetrate, the truth is too that she is getting older and there are things that I’d still like to share with her.

I called her about a month ago, upset about the lack of progress in securing myself a job, and she began to list to me resources and things I should look into, websites, and this and that. And, before she could get too far into a monologue of “not what I called you about,” I was able to stop her. I said that I knew how to search for a job, that I was calling her not for advice, but for comfort.

To her credit, she was able to hear me; she paused, said of course, and began to simply give me words of comfort and support and encouragement. To both of our credit, we are forging a new relationship in which being able to ask for what I need is becoming easier, and she’s getting better at hearing me and offering it.

I haven’t lived near my family since I graduated college (a year late) in 2004. I moved to Korea for two years to teach English, and upon returning home, near-immediately moved to San Francisco.

I’ve run from them for a long time. I’ve done a lot of work since I’ve been here, and there is forming a desire to be closer to them as they are, not as who I wish they were. They’ll always be who they are, crazy-making at times, disappointing or hurtful at times, certifiably unhinged at times. But I’m feeling more ready to be there for that too, because of the rest of the benefits of who they are.

Something that yesterday’s information underlined was the tenuous nature of life. Another friend of mine, her mother had a stroke during their family reunion last week, which my friend had refused to attend out of resentment against her mother. Ironically(?), due to this emergency, she had to go to Michigan, and join her family. To be with them. I don’t want that. I don’t want the occasions when I see my family to be as infrequent as they are. Or based on emergency.

So, with today’s reminder of the thin veil between here and not, the memory so strong of my friend who died, and the intention to secure employment so that I might save enough to move home, I’ll go out from here today, and try, however falteringly, to be open to the love that remains from both sides of that veil. 

Cave Dweller

Let’s see if I still remember how to do this.

By the decree of some friends of mine last week, I’ve been ordered to get back to blogging. Whether it be daily or not, will remain to be seen, so for today, I will blog.

This decree came from two women I met with on Wednesday about financial stuff, but more about how else I’m supporting myself emotionally and spiritually during this slog through. Part of balancing the idea that I’m “slogging” is to see what else I can do to add in some fun, or creativity. I told them I got this “fortune” tag in my Yogi tea recently that read, “A relaxed mind is a creative mind.” and therefore, of course I haven’t felt much creative lately. How, I asked them, do I, or do they, find the time to be creative, or the room, rather, to be creative?

There’s plenty of time. But the time seems to be filled with the white noise of unemployment and impending bills. So, how do I split those curtains of thought, like on a stage, and let them move to the wings for even a little while so I can breathe properly?

Part of it, they suggested, was to get back to this blog. They also suggested that I make a commitment to spend 10 minutes a day at the piano. I don’t have a real one, but a USB cord-plug in one that connects to Garageband, and it works. I told them, as we met, that every time I pass a piano, I have to tinker on it. Even for a minute. This piano playing was part of my “mandatory” spiritual practice earlier this year, when I was still going to school, and there was a piano in the chapel there.

Recently, I went on a job interview at my school, and as I was early, and feeling desperate, I went into the chapel, and played for about 20 minutes. It was heaven. It always is. I’ve heard it said that we can be “the kind of people who find something that works, and stop doing it.” I certainly fall into that category.

So, here I am, back to the blog. Part of the reason I stopped – well, there were many parts. As some of you who were reading around that time know, I was starting to look at some patterns around relationships, to look at my behavior around men, and particularly my avoidance of intimacy. The very day after I stopped blogging, I had a very strong PTSD/panic reaction – and I sort of knew something like that was brewing -- so how, or why, to tell you about it.

After arriving at my temp gig that day in tears and going back home to curl into a fetal position and bawl for an afternoon, the next few days were not so easy. Part of not writing is that it’s not easy to talk about drowning when you are drowning, and part of it is that I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about how black and dark I was feeling.

A friend told me when I shared this with her several weeks later that perhaps you would want to match your own dark or hard parts of yourselves with my own, and that it could have been a service to share it. But I wasn’t able to then, so I glancingly mention it now, still not willing to talk completely into it, and not sure where the "appropriateness" line is – or if it’s just a continuation of my fear of intimacy.

Any of that said, I got better. I was able to stand at the bus stop with less of a striking sense of EVERYONE IS STANDING ToO FUCKING CLOSE TO ME – BACK.THE.FUCK.UP. Which is basically what my PTSD says. It says you are not safe, I am not safe to be around you, and I have to retreat into myself or into my cave. Part of the problem with this now is that I am at a point where I am tired of retreating. So, I’m standing at a place where I’m frightened to let myself be present with you, and I’m exhausted by refusing to. How do I let myself be in the world, then?

A friend sent me a worksheet on tips for PTSD reaction response. I’ve talked about it with appropriate people. I remind myself to breathe – often. And I take it easy on myself.

I’m not surprised all of this is coming about. As I’ve begun to dig deeper into how my continued financial crises keep me from fully engaging in life, and have started, however slowly, to find relief or at least tools around this, I realize that parallel and beneath it is the same sense of rejection of responsibility regarding intimacy and relationships. Hide. Don’t be seen. Don’t be bigger than you are. It’s not safe. The same underlying motivations that have kept me in “underearning” have kept me serially single. I’m not able to be responsible for myself. To be responsible for myself, for my dreams and desires is to necessitate coming out of the cave.

Well, fuck. No wonder I had a mini-breakdown.

To stave your fears, I am better. And, I am glad to finally be working on all of this stuff at a deeper level. I’ve finally come to the conclusion that I cannot think myself out of this. I have to have help. Left to my own devices, I would be pushing a shopping cart. Or, as I am now, left to my own devices, I would be habitually broke and habitually single. I don’t, really, want to be either. And this means work on helping myself to get out of the cave.

The cave was an appropriate place to be for many years, many years ago. It’s outlived it’s usefulness, and I don’t want to be stuck there any more. This means doing things that are counter-habitual, counter-default, counter to ways I’ve been for a long time. It means being a person who continues healthy habits that work, like playing the piano, or blogging and letting you know what’s going on with me. It means doing my damn dishes so that I don’t have to wince every time I walk in my kitchen. It means getting out of pajamas and into the world, if even for an hour at a time. It means reminding myself to breathe.

It means reminding myself that I am meant to be something more than small and isolated. That I have things to offer to the world, even if I feel vague on what those are sometimes. Getting out of my smallness, my fear, my deprivation on levels physical spiritual emotional and romantic will mean doing things differently, and trusting that they will produce different results.

I won’t guarantee that tomorrow I will write to you again. But, I guarantee that I will try.

Welcome back.