Caterwauling

Today is one of those days that the lights are off, literally. It scares people, I think, when I isolate myself in the dark. But what I hope they come to understand is that I am still approachable — I promise, I won’t bite (unless they’re into that sort of thing! LOL) or swear (out loud, anyway!).

DARKNESS HELPS THE LIGHT BECOME OBVIOUS
For me, lights-out time, even if only for an hour, is like a vacation or a sick day — it’s time I am spending letting my tightly wound thoughts, well, unwind. It takes a lot to work me up into a frothy fit, but it only takes moments to blow it off and move on.

In any event, while I’m decompressing, I might as well let out the rant of the day, right?

Y’all know that my friends are few, but I’d walk through fire for them. One often wonders if they’d do the same (if they can possibly fit it into their schedules, she says sarcastically, noting however that she’s having a hard time getting back to people as well and, often, just not making the time), but that’s a whole ‘nother shitload of topics.

HOPE ALONE
My point (if I haven’t lost you to boredom or suicide yet!) is that I wonder if we and our friends do a disservice or a favor to each other by being hopeful or encouraging during strange situations.

Don’t get me wrong — this is under the assumption that we all have each other’s best interests at heart — but sometimes I wonder when it’s right to encourage someone in their pursuits and when to give them a cold, hard reality check.

I am often the voice of reason that everybody dreads, and by the time they come to me to ask advice, they know I am going to paint the picture with a red pen before I will pull out the watercolor brushes. But after people come to you again and again with the same concern, I find that I will start blurring the edges off what I’ve originally said, because they are clearly seeking approval and not a realisitc portrait.

Nothing wrong with that, of course — we realists do have a flair for the macabre sometimes.

And that “I told you so” rush (even though we’re classy enough to NEVER say it) keeps us confident that we are Smart and Omniscient.

Now comes the conundrum. Hope and I have had quite the adversarial relationship during the past year. It avoided me like the plague and when it did drop in for a visit, it got crowded out by Fear and Desperation — the party-crashers. And Hope has a gentle nature, as do I, and doesn’t feel welcome in a mosh pit.

ADD SOME INSPIRATION TO THE MIX
But Hope and I have been fraternizing again. Like, we’re sharing a cup of coffee with the Muse a few times a week, even. And Hope has been filling my head with all kinds of crazy ideas, which the Muse likes to serve up at odd moments throughout the day and night.

And this shit? Scares me. Because I am never sure what’s one of my Allison DuBois-inspired psychic flashes and what’s simply a sugar-plum dream.

So, once in a blue moon, I turn to a real person for help in sorting out the messages. And maybe I’m the hard-ass in the group, but I get lots of encouragement — that anything I want can come true and all I have to do is believe in it and believe in my own power to will things into existence.

And sometimes I do get caught up in that kind of Tinkerbell-inspired fairy dust. But I don’t want to slip on it and lose my balance, either.

FAIRY DUST
There are ways I used to feel and things I used to believe, and about half of them are still with me and the other half have evaporated due to time, circumstance or experience. I don’t marry myself to an idea or to an ideal, for that matter. And maybe the epiphany I pull out of this is that friends have an easier time being hopeful for each other but can’t see good things for ourselves if we trip over them with our very own feet.

But I found myself at an odd crossroads recently (even if only in my own mind), where I would swear that I saw something good within my line of vision and decided that I really would like to see it come to fruition. And this kind of jarred me a bit — because I am the world’s most proficient procrastinator and often resolve my own personal dilemmas by doing not a goddamned thing about them. Therefore, the decisions ultimately resolve themselves — Inertia wins, and the world keeps turning. Things clearly weren’t meant to be, then, in my rationale.

Yet my friend Shan, who DOES give me the occasional kick in the ass surprised me and said, “Go for it. Work it out. Figure it out. GET IT. And give me every juicy detail when you’re done!”

And I am not sure whether to thank her or go kick HER ass for giving me the permission I needed (albeit, from myself) to dream BIGGER. To question, to challenge, to run ahead and apologize to no one. To work on creating a fabulous story to tell someday.

To, if I’m going to have regret, then revel in the fact that I DID something and that I didn’t let something PASS ME BY.

LIGHTS A-FLICKERING
I’ve changed for the better in a lot of ways in a very short time. But with that came the sacrifice of letting go of some of the qualities about myself that I used to love, and that included a love affair with the “so-the-hell-what.”

Mom always says, “Do something, even if it’s wrong.” And who’s to say that anything we are thinking/wanting is wrong? It’s all a means to an end, in any event.

Our best memories aren’t of times when we did the “proper” thing and played life as safely as possible — we remember when we did something wild and wonderful and maybe even out of character. We didn’t ask permission and we certainly weren’t planning our apologies before we dived headfist into our mischief.

And, no matter what the result, we grew. We stretched ourselves, our capabilities, our emotions, our knowledge, our expectations. We rocked.

The bottom line is that I don’t know what it is that I’m going to do with all this excess energy, but I’ve got to do SOMETHING other than NOTHING.

And I can’t wait to tell everyone all about it, whatever it ends up being. 😉

On iTunes: Vanessa Daou, “How Far”

I turn my back on one little e-mail account for FOUR days (one account out of seven!), and this is what I see:

I’m sorry — I’m trying to wade my way through all of this! Happy birthday, summer solstice or whatever life event I’ve missed! Sheesh.

Do me a favor — bloggers, please provide an RSS or Atom feed for me. And if you do, be sure to select “show entire entry” instead of just showing a title and a snippet. I would be LOST without my newsreader, and you’d be helping a crazy-busy (well, “crazy” anyway!) gal to keep up with your life. For those of you who provide feeds (and full ones, at that), well, I love you. *mwah*

On iTunes: Eels, “Fresh Feeling”

The word “Iraq” is like presidential Viagra — if the Shrub weren’t packing a pimento, I am certain his hard-on would have bopped the microphone off the podium tonight during his brag-fest from, appropriately enough, Fort Bragg, N.C.

I just wanted to slap that smirk off his face as he continued to tap-dance around a justification for our continued presence in Vietnam. I mean, Iraq. Whichever.

On iTunes: Lou Rawls, “You’ll Never Find”

Reader Poll Monday. Or whatever the hell day, right?

And, no, the title doesn’t refer to Tom Cruise on “Oprah.” 😉 I’m talking about being swathed in a fleece blanket with arm restraints and the place where all the voices in your head know your name.

The Abyss
I’ve spent the last nine months not smoking in a near-daze. Life changes on a dime, and when you get a second chance and it ends up being about a million times better than the first, you find yourself on edge, waiting for something, anything to prove that your perceived happiness was simply an illusion and that you really didn’t deserve for things to get better.

Yes, welcome to the dark side. You must be THIS tall to ride enter the abyss. Welcome aboard the crazy couch.

I think we all take a certain amount of comfort in our misery. Not that we choose it — nor would we — but there’s a certain comfort in the gutter. Nobody notices you there — and you realize that when you drop off the earth, few people if any actually took note that you were gone. Or did they see you AFTER you dusted yourself off and muse that there’s something different about you but they simply couldn’t put their finger on it?

Shell shock
I feel like I’ve been walking around shell-shocked for quite some time. (Oh, excuse me, it’s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I should know better by now.)

Anyway, I know I have my idiosyncrasies and have panic attacks over stupid things like trying to step onto a “down” escalator (I can’t — I seriouisly cannot do it. I am a wuss and I own my neurosis!) I have a distinct fear of heights but I absolutely love them despite that. I can’t swim but I always, always have to be around water for inspiration. I’d sooner go to a strip club in Anacostia than to an Old Navy in Falls Church. Yeah — now THAT’s fucked up, I know!!!

But this leads to the fact that there is one street in this entire metro area where my blood boils. I unthinkingly pulled into a parking lot on this street recently to make a phone call — a parking lot where I’ve shed many tears and nearly killed many people in my haste to peal the hell out of there and leave it behind.

And anybody who knows me, knows that I am pretty mild. Sure, I get Pissed Off on occasion, but in my family, “fuck you” is like saying “I love you.” We don’t have to like each other all the time, but we love each other. And when I lose my cool, it’s to make room for deeper emotions to take the place of the more toxic ones.

So, I pose the rhetorical question (that we can all answer affirmatively, I assume) of whether you’ve ever been possessed. Now, I don’t mean in a Linda Blair/split pea soup kind of way. I mean that you can almost feel a building crying — you can hear the souls of the damned mourning the death of a million dreams. You feel the inner voices of people you’ve never even met howling for justice.

I was upset in an “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do right now and I would really like some kind of explanation from the universe, even if it’s a pathetic one” kind of way — when I pulled into this parking lot. But when I realized that I’d left a piece of my very heart on that pavement, it’s like the “bad twin” that I’d left behind somehow infiltrated my body and unleashed verbal vitriol, the likes of which I haven’t spewed in, well, nine months.

And, even as I was telling the story the other day, that temporary insanity threatened to come back. But it didn’t, and of all things, I realized How. Much. I. Have. Grown.

But is reverting to who you really were considered growing?
That’s the funny part. I’m an old soul (life No. 6, if you believe in that stuff, and I hang around lots of 8s), and I think I was on the right track but just got blown the hell off course at some point. Not to say that I didn’t have my moments of ridiculous immaturity — I try to forgive myself for those because everybody has to have them.

I think, though, that I had them a lot later than my peers, because instead of making mistakes early in my life, I waited till I was on a decent course. And this, THIS is where the fear resides. That I am on a good course — a GREAT course … one that’s even BETTER than I ever could have IMAGINED that I DESERVED — and the fall would be So. Much. Further. From. Here.

That would explain my newfound fear of heights. I have NEVER had problems stepping on a fucking escalator, and I even fell down a flight of steps as a baby and broke my right arm in a bunch of places. And you thought I got carpal tunnel solely from “overuse” of that wrist. 😉

Lawd, how I go off course sometimes. 😉

Anywho, I saw so many dreams die, all in a row, that parts of me started dying. But you know me — Mom says I couldn’t even say shit (theoretically) even if my mouth were full of it. OK, after we get past your “ewww, gross!” at the imagery, I urge you to think about it. You’re a creative type, aren’t you? We all are. What do we want to do? Express ourselves in any way we can. Is that acceptable in this society? *crickets chirping* Yeah, that’s what I thought. You smile and nod. A lot.

And even when you do fight to the death for your dreams — because some higher power put them there for you to MAKE something out of them — and you have a rebellious streak, you change. You do everything you can in your power to retain some shred of dignity — and in it, you lose yourself. I have seen people (self included) deny their true nature in the name of survival.

But when push came to shove, I did the right thing. And believe you me, NO good deed goes unpunished. Not a one. Kind of made me wonder for a long time why I decided to acquiesce. I saw an opportunity to exhibit grace and hoped for the best.

The power of three times three
What you send out comes back times three. Anybody who’s picked up a spellbook knows that. And while we wonder in our times of misfortune just which spirits we pissed off, it’s pointless to dwell on that. The only thing we have control over is how we handle it. And that gets pretty damn difficult when it seems like all the grace in the world (exuded on your part) isn’t even getting you out of the starting gate.

What I do believe strongly (now) is that if you’re constantly evolving and growing and you become tall enough to ride any damn ride in the amusement park that you want, well, Fate will give you the best seat on the best ride … when it comes along. Trust me on this. I lost hope for a long time for my life to turn around, but I never lost faith in myself. And I would never let my spirits sink to where my heart was hanging out (in the gutter on the boulevard of broken dreams, of course).

So when I tell you guys to fake it till you make it, you’ve got to understand that I’m talking not out of my ass, but in hindsight. People don’t want to help broken people. Not even those of us who spent a lifetime in the helping professions — we want to help people who have the mindset to soar … we just HAVE to TRY to help those who gave up.

And in the power of three times three, we will force ourselves to be good to those who stepped over our lifeless bodies — or, if not to be good to them, to refrain from wishing them harm. We don’t have to celebrate their victories, but we can be the better persons and wish them well. We are grateful that we didn’t have to depend on them and even more grateful that we don’t owe them jack squat.

Traveling companions
Keeping with the “ride” theme, the journey is a lonely one. Really. No one travels the same path as you. No one can wear the same shoes (and who would want to have someone in the same shoes? Then we’d have to change! < / girly girl with the crazy shoe collection >

The circle starts out wide enough, but it gets narrower, smaller. And like any carousel, the faces change almost constantly. And as I found in a jarring moment altogether too recently, everybody grows … but in different directions. The people with whom you had EVERYTHING in common is still there, but the connection starts to crackle. Pretty soon, it’s like you’re on different wireless plans and you resign yourself to wondering what you ever had in common. It hurts to let go, even it’s like you’re perfect strangers — like you once were, so long ago — just another in that endless sea of blank, unintriguing faces.

And it is my belief and hope that one face will become clear and will literally stand out above the rest — one pair of eyes will sparkle more than I’ve ever seen — one smile will draw me in the direction I need and want to go. That will be the one who not only wants to ride as long as you do, but who will make you forget that you had anywhere else to be that you thought might be a better place to spend your time.

And we will recognize them when we see them. We will just hope they recognize us as well and don’t let us go about our merry little way in a different direction … or that they stop us before it’s too late. Because I’m not overly sure that the ride stops and waits for us to board when we are ready. I think we just have to close our eyes and jump onto a moving object if we want to get what we want — and we need to use the velocity as our friend and not fight against it, the way we so often do.

Meaning, we’re all entitled to be shell-shocked — we’re all entitled and EXPECTED to heal. But we can’t lie around convalescing so long that we forget who we are when we need to be showing the world what it has been missing out on. Maybe someone truly special will be watching when that happens. God, I hope so.

On iTunes: Poe, “Strange Wind”

Subtitle: ‘Perfect’ waste

I should have gone to see “Betwitched.” But, alas, riding high on my reaffirmation of my “I’m the best date I’ve ever had” theory, I opted to let myself choose the movie, and the choice was “The Perfect Man.” It was perfect, all right. Perfect shit.

Going into it, I expected it to be formulaic. So with that out of the way, I could try to get past the fact that the best cinema I saw was in the “coming attractions.” Like, try to hold me back when “Pride and Prejudice” comes out! I’ll tell you what — MY perfect man would take me to see that one (potential suitors, take note!).

Anywho, I was kind of inspired that Hilary Duff’s character was a blogger with a beloved little iBook. And I was sort of chagrined that I identified more with her character than Heather Locklear’s (given my awe of Heather and general disdain of Hilary) — the movie ended up reminding me of my mom and me. The mom dates losers, as does mine (Exhibit A: Scumby) — not to mention that these otherwise fabulous women hang on to these obliviots until there’s nothing left of themselves.

And Hilary’s character chose to not get attached to anything or ANYONE because it’s so much easier to walk away when there’s no reason to look back over your shoulder. They moved around a lot — and I did too, growing up (and still do).

Don’t worrry — I’m not giving spoilers. The movie will spoil your will to live, though, so be warned. 😉

But back to the moving-around-a-lot scenario. I was at a fabulous party last night, surrounded by fabulous people that I thank my stars every day for giving me the good fortune to meet and to know. And I had half a bottle of tequila lodged in my brain (generally a good thing), but I was trying to keep quiet and not embarrass myself much because I am a fun drunk and I don’t know if people really need to see my version of fun, which often includes mounting things and people — and not everybody would think it was as cute as did the men I met in bars in my 20s, I presume. 😉 I would like to, after all, CONTINUE to know these people!!!

But during one of my lucid moments, I remember thinking how I’ve often wished I had a home to go back to — that my family would have owned a house and we would have had a home base — a touchstone — a place to go to remember one’s roots or even from which to go back to start over again. Hell, something to pass down through the generations to either keep or sell.

And maybe that’s why I waste so much money on so much shit — I don’t stay anywhere very long (two years max — I’m coming up on two years in my current place and am starting to crave a new setup — it’s in my bones, I suppose) but I cram my places full of crap to make it feel like I’ve been in them forever.

Yesterday, I looked around at this wonderful family home with this wonderful family and wondered what it would be like to have roots — to, instead of wasting money on moving every couple of years (and fixing/replacing all the shit that the fucknut movers manage to break — fuck, I’m still working on that one), reinvest that money in adding something fantastic to the house (like a hot tub. Oooh, they had a hot tub. *drool*).

But back to the movie: While it was cutsey-wootsie and all that fun stuff, it wasn’t a terrible way to spend an hour-plus (although, with previews, that made it a solid two hours). My mind was wandering most of the time anyway, so I enjoyed the air-conditioning on this 94-degree day, in any event. After being spotted by Old Spice at my beloved park and running like HELL to my car before he could get to me (fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK — now where am I going to go to write?!?!) and avoiding his follow-up call, I was looking to hide from the world for awhile. And to indulge myself, just for a spell, to think about what I was trying NOT to think about when I accepted the initial offer.

So, all in all, yes I believe the “perfect man” exists and that’s why I spent the money on the movie. And the fundamental lesson I learned is that you just “know.” And maybe I’ve never had a true *home* up until now, but maybe that’s something I’m going to find — and help to make — when the time is right.

On iTunes: Gina Rene, “U Must Be”

I don’t get lots of comments around here, but when I get folks contacting me in person to learn more about the story behind an entry, I am only too happy to oblige.

Yesterday, I told you about Scumby, the poster child for abstinence.

*pauses to thank God that Mom doesn’t read this page, or she’d kick my ass* Mikey, don’t tell Wobin or I’ll kick YOUR ass!

During the trip from hell that I descibed, let me mention that Scumby had sold the trip as “a week at my cabin in the woods. And we will go boating!”

OK, right on. Although I was mortified when he pulled up in his beat-up, rusty tomato-red van (my grandmother called it the “Tin Can”) with a camouflage-painted canoe attached to a hitch. A CANOE!!! The hell? No boat? No motor? No little fridge full of refreshments for a hot summer’s day?

And, as I mentioned earlier, NO CABIN. A tiny trailer clinging to shaky ground was more accurate. And no hot water. Cheap bastard. Never felt so icky in my entire life. Hello Matt Foley!

Oh, but wait — there’s more.

Like no seats in the VAN.

Oh, the humanity.

Now, I am a prissy girl. Don’t get me wrong — I drink and swear like the boys and, thus, have always had a harem of straight male friends because they liked my low bullshit tolerance and my appreciation of swinging brews, throwing darts and watching football, even if I don’t understand a minute of it but what girl can’t appreciate hot asses in tight pants?

Where was I? 😉

Oh, OK. Priss. Anyway, I like girly things. I appreciate what makes me different from my beloved boys and do my best to appreciate those parts of me and enhance them in any way I can.

Suffice to say, I was expected to flop out on the van floor for the ride. HAH! We ended up buying a bean bag chair for me on the way, and lemme tell you, if I ever end up with a guy with one of those chairs, I will set fire to it. And then kill him for good measure.

I tell you all of this to set the stage for the return trip. Mom was forced to drive the Tin Can twice, with equally abysmal results. First, she had to back the hitch into the water to get the boat canoe (no, we never got into it!) and it’s HARD to judge a piece of shit without sideview mirrors, so she almost annhilated the Scumbalicious one himself because she couldn’t SEE him. Oh, he was hopping mad — I was entertaned.

Let me explain something about Scumby — he was a skinny (ugh — we like big boys, thanks — what was she thinking?!?!) and tall thing who let his beard grow scraggly. I think it weighed more than he did. And remember I told you how he fell in the pond and decided to rot in his own filth? Well, the irony is that he LOVED to wear ballcaps — in particular, an orange cap advertising Surf detergent. So, I turned around to see this orange-cap-with-a-beard literally hopping up and down in the water, swearing. Drunken asshole.

Anyway, once we made the pilgrimage home (and I was completely seasick — I get carsick in backseats, oftentimes, and I get carsick when I’m the one driving, too. And shut up, it’s from the truck exhaust and not from my driving, thankyouverymuch), the adventure wasn’t ready to end.

Mom had to drop Scumby off somewhere (probably at the bar — that two-hour drive must’ve killed him). Although he did enjoy tormenting me by playing Tanya Tucker cassettes and cracking the same joke 40 times: “Tanya Tucker — I’d love to fuck her!”

Oh, you clever rhyming bastard you. Die.

All right, so Mom and I took the Tin Can on the highway. We were chugging along the interstate when …

… oh this is too fucking funny …

… the front seats collapsed!!!

ROFLMFAO

I shit you not, the seats came loose (they were probably lodged in place with chewing gum in the first place — I swear it wasn’t our asses that did it!) and I went SAILING into the murky depths of the Tin Can.

Mom is a goddamned miracle worker — she always has been and remains my heroine. I don’t know HOW she did it, but she clung to the steering wheel and managed to drive STANDING UP while I found the seats and tried to push them back into place.

We got to our destination as safely as humanly possible, and I called my grandfather to come pick us up.

And thus ended the Summer of Scumby.

On iTunes: Emiliana Torrini, “Ruby Tuesday”

Tom Cruise kills Oprah.

I want to kill Oprah myself for starting the TomKat phenomenon.

On iTunes: Better Than Ezra, “Lifetime”

Friday Five. And I’m feelin’ chatty this morning. 😉

Things I’d really, really love to say but for some reason cannot.

Idea swiped from Swirl and Lach.