LaurieWrites

Without a Cause

All parties involved are probably really lucky that I, a lover of purposeful body art, wasn't in a mood to interrupt this conversation just off of Times Square this week.  

Very young teenaged girl A: What are you getting, Keela? 

Keela: A James Dean quote. 

      

VYTGA: Where? 

Keela: Across my ribcage. 

Me, in my head, screaming: DON'T DO IT DON'T DO IT DON'T DO IT DON'T DO IT OH NO YOU'RE 16 WAIT.

VYTGA: Wow. That's gonna be a lot of money. Like, sixty dollars, at least. 

Keela: Yeah, right? 

Not Ready to Make Nice

This started as a message for one person but it occurs to me that there are things that may be useful for other people too. But honestly I'll only hide the body for her. Maybe you, but probably just for her. 

It is an interesting thing, this owning of our power, a phrase that I think is important as much as it makes me a little sick. It ebbs and flows depending on the weather and the circumstance. People talk about it a lot of times like it's easy, like we just need to read the right book or say it out loud three times or click our heels so we're magically at home in ourselves, everyday dragons stabbed in the neck. 

But that's wrong, because a lot of times it's just really fucking hard. 

Like yesterday, I went to pick up my car from this horrible triple-parked garage in downtown D.C., having just left a conference that pissed me off because it wasn't anything that I found useful and it cost me a day and a hundred bucks. I was hot and afternoon-drowsy and generally out of sorts so when the woman in charge of the car-retrieval process spoke too fast while looking away from me and basically blew off my questions about how to get MY VEHICLE out of the basement of this hellhole, I lost it a little. 

"YOU'RE NOT BEING VERY HELPFULLLLLLLLLLLLLL," I yelled, and it bounced off the walls, immediately aware that I'd hit a new low of yelling at a stranger in a parking garage and that she had 16 of my dollars for my trouble. And she didn't say anything, just waved her hands towards a wall where the elevator was, but I was already walking.  

It was this kind of trigger moment. (Go ahead. Read it. I'll wait. Just make sure you come back.) 

**Whistles poorly because palate is broken.** **Kicks rocks.**

Oh hi! Funny, right? 

Anyway, they don't tell you when your parents sign you up for this 80-or-so-year summer camp that someday you'll be flipping out at a stranger in a parking garage who shamed you because you dared to ask for your car back. And this didn't really happen because you're a raging bitch but because you're not a fan of garages in general because of all of those times your mother told you not to go into them alone and you're really just nervous that you won't be able to find your car and you're completely floored and sad that the only person there to help you is functioning in the opposite of that capacity. 

They don't tell you about the glamour of this touring stage production. They don't explain faulty logic and human crazy. They don't always explain nonviolent communication. 

Giving credit where due, I did learn from them that it was nice to tip the guy downstairs who smiled and showed up with my keys and restored my faith in humanity and some balance to my little world. 

Anyway. This circles away from me, thankfully, to the fact that I cannot always be with you and you cannot always hear me preach about stuff like this. But as long as I keep forking over 15 bucks a month to TypePad I guess you can click here and remember that while I don't condone constant yelling in public, that I do fully support the following: 

You too are not only allowed but encouraged to be as powerful as you are capable of being on any given day and as angry as you need to be when it's necessary. 

Even when other people don't like it.  Especially then, yes. (A smart person once said that if you're not pissing some people off some of the time that you're not working hard enough.) 

Nobody -- not one single person -- fundamentally owns your time or your words or your goals or your opinions or anything else for that matter. 

Also, no one can tell you who you are, because they don't know, unless they're telling you that you're awesome. 

And I can promise you that in the middle of the crazy that at least one person will be available to listen to you with minimal interruption, and would, under the right circumstances, help you hide the body. Probably more people would be, too, but at least one.

Because it's really important that you know your worth every day, no matter what anyone says or doesn't say. That's the most important thing, because everything else happens because of that and it's good when the things that happen are good. 

And sometimes? All you need to bond for life is oddly similar values, a mutual disinterest in what other people are doing and an occasional forgiveness of different musical choices. That's a perk, I guess. 

 

I think so. 

Something New Under the Sun

I left my office today and won't go back until August, the exact whys of which I can't and won't explain but it's not very exciting anyway so it doesn't matter. It was more difficult than I thought it would be, beyond my genetic difficulty with clearing out spaces and recycling paper and dealing with the detritus of a couple of academic years. I am so bad at this. It is one of my least favorite things, how I hold on to places and people and things anyway - often way longer than I should, when I should take a break at least. I form attachments and have these feelings. It sucks.

Anyway, this has been a really hard year and I know the change is necessary and good even if it is weird and I don't like it even when I think I do. It is weird when my closest colleague, my non-biological brother and a notorious introvert who is not into displays of emotion, did the equivalent of whimpering outside of my door and said "I DON'T LIKE THIS."

Twice. Unheard of. Unnerving.

But then I left because eventually I got hungry and eventually you have to leave everywhere and there was melted cheese and chocolate and friends and wine where I was going, which wasn't a shabby incentive. On the way out, I got in my car and turned on this Courtyard Hounds cd, that as it turns out I love.

Here's where I out myself as a Dixie Chicks fan, if you haven't been paying attention for the past ten years. I am pretty much unfailingly rock and roll but that little bit that has always been country dies hard.

That is me in my car just before I left campus. Do I look like I'm going to throw up from nerves? Like I'm completely overwhelmed by options and alternatives and the threat of brokeness? No? I AM A FAKER. Total faker, I assure you.

Anyway, Emily and Martie have formed this side project. I have been a fan of the band for years but gained new respect for these two since since I saw Shut Up and Sing and realized that this enterprise, this living as musicians, this Dixie Chicks business? These sisters - gifted multi-instrumentalists and singer/songwriters - had taken their whole lives to build it. And those stupid country music fans who bulldozed their cds because of what Natalie Maines said could and would pry their career from their cold, dead hands.

And I say this as someone who has channeled Natalie Maines for confidence on more than a few occasions, which is a sort of strange story for another time.

The song that was on when I got in the car is called Something New Under the Sun and it was what I needed to hear just right then. It was clearly about a relationship, but I have no problem extrapolating and relating art to my own particular circumstance so it was enough for me.

Take a chance on me cause you know and I know we're on our way to something new under the sun.

Whatever is happening now is new, which sounds supremely stupid and obvious but it is and that's not always the case when routines go on and on for months that turn into years while it's like you weren't looking. I don't know what is going to happen at all but what I do know in these old intuitive bones is that whatever it is it is going to be better. As much as I'm nervous and afraid and all over the place, I know this for sure. As scary and financially unstable and bereft of any commitment to time and place as it is?

It is okay, and it is better. I'm sure I'll waver on this a frillion times a day, but for right now, I believe it. This is what I know -- or at least hope and pray -- to be true.

And if it's not may all of it not bite me in the ass too hard.

Bloggers Without Makeup Day?

Question mark because I didn't know this was a thing. 

I went to work today with zero makeup on. I looked like this, and you know, I don't even care. There is probably something wrong with me and maybe you shouldn't listen to me, so if you have some things to do you can skip off and do them now. 

From Twitter and Facebook and my people of the blogs I learned after I got there that it was Bloggers Without Makeup Day. Oh hey look, I participated accidentally, just like I participate several days a week. I forget so many things and don't do them and fail that it's kind of nice when I actually do become a part of something without even knowing it. 

Today was extra special I don't care day because I didn't even bother with lipstick and if there is one thing I wear 98 percent of the time it's lipstick. I enjoy it. It's a habit. 

Anyway, the above is generally what I look like because I am not a morning person and it's lucky that I can get to anywhere I'm supposed to be before 11 a.m. with dry hair on the mornings that I wash it. I am the most incorrigible non-vampire night owl you have ever met.  I start to perk up around 9 or 10. At night. See? 

Honestly, far from having no beef with reasonable makeup, I really like to wear it and play around with it when I have time. I see photos of myself with makeup on and I think - I THINK POSITIVELY ABOUT MYSELF even - that I look nice with it on. I think it's fun to try different colors and combinations. I like mineral foundation and powders. I like eye makeup. I have relatively prominent brown eyes and I'm mildly obsessed with green eyeliner. I mostly buy drugstore/Target level brands (although I really love MAC and in a perfect world I would have an unlimited supply) so I can justify owning them in several different shades of the same color. 

One of my dream jobs, actually, if I did not have my specific interest in societal contribution (sorry, makeup artists, this is my deal.) would be to be a makeup artist. Maybe I should do it part-time, who knows, but it's probably one of those things that sounds a lot more fun than it is. 

But for the most part, the way I look and what I do to make it that way is low-maintenance (except for exercise. Nothing about that is low-maintenance unfortunately.) I'm by no stretch of the imagination a supermodel. Not even a regular model. Haha. No. I make my peace with how I look daily, which is sometimes easy and sometimes difficult, and do what I have to do to be comfortable with it, that's all. Sometimes that means makeup - to big events or meetings, going out at night, going to the grocery store, whatever - and sometimes makeup doesn't matter at all. I'm pretty flexible like that. 

Drafted

It is really time to deal with the fact that eight of my last ten posts since early April are drafts. These are not your average serial blogger's meant-for-a-diary-but-can't-write-with-a-pen-anymore-hand-cramps-up posts. It's just that right now I can't complete thoughts in very rational ways, much less sentences that turn into posts that maybe have some point or purpose.

I have stuff to write for people that I haven't written. I have so many things swirling around that I don't know how to say. Walking through my on- and offline lives feels very much like slogging through the deepest wet sand part of the beach and has for months. Here are some key points that have not made it to publish, that just kind of died in the water for what appears upon review to be very good reasons.

• I've lost the narrative again and if I told the true story right now it wouldn't be a good one.There was a part where he was playing and talking about music and I realized that even broken he knew what he wanted.
• I wandered as I love to do and chatted with people and probably smoked a lot of cigarettes and drank beers if beers were available (I have no memory, I don't know what trouble of that sort we got into) and it rained and the kids all slid around in the mud and I ruined my Keds, and at the end I bought the most perfect concert shirt ever in the parking lot for ten dollars. 
• And that is where the church leaves me - the rolling away of the rock from the tomb and the body gone, maybe, but literal ascension into heaven? Nah, that's where I can't suspend my disbelief but in all manner of things I can go figurative.
• If I did what I wanted to do right now, it would be extreme. It would be something along the lines of ripping the roof off of this bitch.
• I love professional ice hockey. I've loved it for most of my life and I will love it until I die. (Ed. note: Because finally I can get to the point.)

So. Yes. Who knows? Don't look at me.

I'm actually assuming already that this will be a draft. It's bad habit-forming. And they all kind of say the same thing, I think I just tried to dress them up in different clothes. Let's say the lucky ones got the cute little sundress, the dirges got the big clunky sweaters, I don't know. It's just occurring to me that in the effort to write things true I often end up sounding exactly unlike myself.

I want to burn this place down right now, you know. Kill the archives and start over. I don't threaten ever to quit blogging. It would be the emptiest of threats because that will never happen unless blogs go away or I am somehow incapacitated. And who would I be threatening anyway? It's my own business, what I quit and what I don't, carry on. I just don't like it here anymore. It is on my nerves in every single way. But the simple truth is that I don't know where to go. I am overwhelmed by templates and options and things that go bump in my browser.

It doesn't really matter where you put stuff anyway, what little white box you type into. It's just really, really upsetting when the only currency you've got goes away and just like I have assignments to fix other things in my real life life (oh because I do, I have a rack of assignments at the moment to fix things up around here) I feel like I need to speak to it here, for me. It's just that it's a house falling down. It's a minor disaster.

Because when I lose the words it means that the way I work stuff out is broken and it pisses me off. I mostly don't want to talk about my problems until I absolutely have to and then it's really awkward and uncomfortable. Thankfully there are a few people left in the world who I can talk to right now to whom I feel so closely bonded that I don't care if they think I'm weak or broken and in whom I have the kind of trust it requires to let them see me that way. 

Oh my God, they are so super lucky.

But that actually is really lucky for me. I am oddly guarded for an open person and confidences are terrifying. Honesty sucks because it's difficult. I haven't held a hand in years and meant it except for my grandma's while she was dying. I choke on "I love you." I lost my will to say it for the most part when my heart broke once and for all five years ago and I still don't really want to,  because if you touch me you can maybe hurt me, true story. 

Also I don't like to look or feel like I'm stupid or incompetent or out of control, and I will go to the most stupid, incompetent, out of control lengths to prove that I am not. I am the person who goes to therapy in hopes that I will define my problem for the person in the first ten minutes and save us all a lot of time. I don't want that person to do her job. I want to do her job, better, like I'm up for a certificate of merit or a raise, for God's sake. I just don't want to do any of my jobs, this daily set of odd, mismatched things anymore. I am finally really tired.

It is a strange dichotomy, to be as isolated and off my rocker as I feel right now, and yet to have in some ways the closest relationships to other people, the most honest, the most personally chosen, that I have ever had. I'm not complaining about it, not at all, although it's been hard work except when it was really easy. It has not been without cost and disappointment. I guess when you hit a certain point you figure there isn't time for anything else but the obvious and real, the stuff that works. And the world can surprise you, I'm finding. It gives you people you feel like you've known your whole life, who understand everything the first time. It gives you rooms to cry in and people sitting there handing you tissues who have been watching and knowing something's not right and just weren't quite sure how to put it out there.

Because you thought you were handling this so well on your own? Because when it comes down to it a lot of this shit is hard, I guess. A Facebook friend posted Plato's words as her status the other day:

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

When it is so hard to start with yourself in that endeavor of kindness, it is lucky to have other people who can do a few of those things for you until you can, who will talk to you on phones that you force yourself to dial, who have eyes that give you hope just because they're there, who appear in tiny chat boxes from a highway or a continent away. It is important, I grudgingly admit, even if it's really uncomfortable to retrain yourself to hold hands. And this is especially so when your every other impulse is to dart into traffic alone because the data you have collected about the world somehow suggests that that is where you belong. It's enough to believe in the occasional tiny thing until you can dare to consider bigger ones.

And finally you, which is of course to say I, roll over those inadequate words in draft and click over to "publish," so you can finally let them go.