LaurieWrites

On Stilts and Fire and Walking Through It and On Them

Here I am with a man on stilts:

This is my last week at work forever, and I'm doing things like crying through a two-hour Glee doubleheader, so I've come to this as my visual touchstone.

(Thanks to Deb Rox for the photo of me and my pretend carny husband. All that background needs is a clown pushing a hoop with a stick and maybe a miserable elephant or two, to go with the seaside vehicle. Also, blown up bigger it looks like I'm in danger of snapping his stilts-twig leg, what with my stance there. Later on he made me almost eat fire in front of an entire beach lounge full of people, so maybe I did hurt him. CAH-RAFTY, CARNY MAN.

(Seriously? The guy on stilts was very nice. We were instant friends, in my mind, which is obvious because I look entirely comfortable with him, no?)

You know what, this story is freaking me out in the retelling. I am super not into being on fire and I was really close to his fire sticks and it appears almost happy about it from the pictures. (I go to Florida and lose my fool mind.)

Oh. My. God. I just said all of those things and they are true. HELLO NARNIA, I'M HOME.

Anyway, so yes, I quit my job in March, not with the stated goal of joining a resort carnival, but life is funny. Back then, it felt like May was forever away and would therefore never come, and I'd sit there in my sensible chair in my windowless office pondering the decision I'd made, lalala, I'm a decision maker, forever, looky here at me, but nothing will happen because la. 

Well, hello, calendar and reality-challenged people, i.e., me: May is here. Friday is almost here. Here is almost here. And I'm putting the talents I took to South Beach to use by posting photos of myself with stilts man, because how else would I remember that I almost ate fire unless I did this instead of other productive things?

I don't know what is going to happen, which in some ways I'm totally fine with and in others? Well, we do not want to talk to those others, because they are crazy banshees with snakes for hair who want my heart on a mismatched Pier One plate.

I'm ready to give something else to the space I occupy. I'm ready to let other, so much better, stuff in. If I could tell you, y'all, all that has happened to me within the past six months without boring you to tears and you charging me a co-pay? It's been a lot, inside and out. And it's weird and it's hard and it's making me cry what may seem to be an unhealthy amount at Glee because I think it's supposed to. Transformation that requires slashing through years of settling and rationalizing and denial with a cup of coffee and a keyboard and my own flawed interpersonal skills instead of with a sharp machete? Not easy.

 And yet I believe that all of it -- ALL OF THE ALL OF IT -- has happened in this way over the past two years to manifest what my meditation teacher used to say was the power I had that I refused to acknowledge, that I didn't know how to channel or let out of its size-14 cage. She used to make me put both my feet flat on the floor to try to feel it, not to fidget, to swing one leg up over the other and disconnect, which is my usual posture. She told me to feel it in a way that should have creeped me out but didn't. You are solid. You have to sit in it. You don't even know. Put your feet on the ground and feel it.

I couldn't manage it yet, because my brain is a complicated system of roadblocks and puffy clouds, so it had to show up in an ER this past December in the form of almost stroke-level scary vital signs, and a kind and directive nurse who along with an apparent solid grasp of needles and math told me that fear and stress that deep probably had come out in pressure that high. We can kill ourselves with our own minds, I believe this now.

It's not like I buy it all yet, or even most of it. Power looks very different to me than this way that I feel. I just finally came to a point where I knew I had to change, and so I've been putting one foot and one word in front of the other for six months like I have a plan, when really I'm just a walking, talking Mad Lib, with a sense of humor and a constant willingness to try new things as my fill-in-the-blanks.

This has been a particularly challenging week inside of my skull, as I let the ending of something big into my mind, as I go through the process of shutting it down (while trying not to starve the concurrent growing things, the good, the new.)

Old patterns, electrical currents in my emotional grid, are rising up from beneath my skin, and I'm pissed off about that. I haven't been my best self, at all, and I have felt badly about that in the way I always do when extra stressed, when instead of letting it just wash over me and out the door, as I'm learning, I've been gathering it in subconsciously, stoking it with worry, the ultimate waste of time.

But I can learn. I know what to do when I'm at the end of the particular rope. I had the good sense to talk through a lot of it with people I trust last night, and then I peeking at my shamrocks that I have somehow managed not to kill for more than a year now. Even when they're sleeping you can see a tiny one shooting up now that I've given them a much bigger pot and a space by the door with sun, and that thrilled me more than anything in recent memory. It's always a mystery, what you find to keep you going, what makes you feel competent, after years of telling yourself you kill every green thing you touch so don't bother.

I hate when metaphors happen accidentally. Like hammers to the head, they are.

 I still wonder who in the hell I think I am, walking into an unknown with a questionable net. But what I do know is that I have lived for three years in a state of constant panic, low-grade mostly, but still. I have spent days convinced that this was all there is, my performance declining, my attitude getting ever worse. 

It just  didn't work for me anymore, so it had to change. I wouldn't be sitting here without the patience of friends who have helped me see the other, less self-loathing side, that said maybe the space I was in wasn't working for me as much as I wasn't working for it. It's a lot simpler when you stop insisting it's so complicated.

And what's the worry? That I'll starve now? I have been starving for a long, long time. There are other ways to be broke. There are other ways to die. I didn't want the way it was happening to me to be the final story, for me. And I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't made that decision way back in March, and had what even I'll acknowledge took enormous courage to follow through on? I wouldn't have answered the query that took me on the trip to a place with a blazing sun and a super moon, where I totally almost ate fire.

I'm kind of glad I didn't miss this. I'm looking forward to the rest.

 

*Sarah or Deb took this picture on my camera. I don't remember which. Thanks for catching it, and me.

**Also! I don't want to forget to thank Honda for bringing the amazing -- and for me, life-changing, because this picture will hang on my office wall forever as a symbol of when everything changed for me -- white party to life.  I am a very happy CRV owner with a beloved Civic in my past. I really appreciate it when cool brands I can support without reservation support what we're doing as writers and photographers online to change our own worlds, and hopefully our larger one.

No one gets to miss the storm of what will be.

December. I cannot believe it. Another year just about burned and what? How did that happen? What happened?  Where did it go? 

I've been running since September, it feels like, inside and out, and with four days of rain and a winter weather advisory today I want to stay home and in bed and let it all shake out. (I have the best bed in all the land. I recommend getting a slightly shittier bed so you don't want to be in it all of the time, but I'm already screwed. I love my bed like a person, except slightly more appropriately.) It's true that things are circling back to some kind of center -- I've been having that thought lately, incessantly, actually: "sometimes the center holds." And I don't know where this comes from except it's what I keep thinking in spite of some data to the contrary from this stupid, irritating writer brain.

I could give you a list of where I've been beyond the bits and pieces I've shared here, but that's probably really boring. I could tell you about the people I've been with and that is so much less of any kind of boring, given as I am to hanging with compelling people whenever possible. But those stories will have to hang themselves on the line one by one. I don't know where to begin, so I'm going to let them pick and choose. 

I don't ever know how to catch up after so much time away. But I can say that I've been to Pittsburgh, California, Philadelphia and then back home. I've been in a place called the Mississippi Delta that I knew nothing of before some friends pointed me there, and it will take a good long while to share just what I think and feel from that experience. I've been consoled by rain on a tin roof and delighted by the sight of the Pee Wee's Big Adventure dinosaurs from the highway enough to put returning to see them on my ever-in-progress life list.

"Au revoir, Simone!" 

"Au revoir, Pee Wee!" 

Such is the state of affairs, constantly, around here. 

(The rain on the roof part is as good as you'd expect, and if you've heard it, you know.) 

I've shriveled from three hours drinking Champagne in a steaming hot tub under desert rain with some of the smartest and nicest people I've ever met. (I am not making that up. I am not.) I have chopped up and roasted a sick amount of winter squash hours before I got on a plane simply because I didn't want it to rot on my friend's counter. I have chaperoned a field trip. I have gawked at William Faulkner's story notes from where he posted them on his bedroom wall a long, long time ago, and watched a late-day southern sun slant beautifully through trees in his backyard. I have bought one single Christmas present that now I have to take back because someone else bought it too. I have won a football helmet autographed by this year's NFL rookie squad, and I have had a genuine Hog teach my best friend and me how to pour a Guinness. I had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my family, twice. I have won a $500 Apple gift card. I have lost a camera. I have held Crow for .5 seconds. I have not been eating my vegetables. I have communicated, incessantly, and mostly well. 

And that is just the past 30 days. I've been lucky, mostly. I'm guided and supported in some kind of providential way by some of the smartest and most compassionate people I have ever known. I have had friendship and love of an insane level thrown at me from various quarters. I've sung my way across four or five states in vastly different parts of the country. I have come to some kind of comfortable truce with not knowing much, with throwing my best light and dark intentions in the washer of the world and sort of hoping for a change that they'll run together. 

I have not been stopped once, not on the highway or in security. I have had two plane rows entirely to myself. I have been -- remarkably, and there are a few people out there who will know just how much -- almost entirely unafraid of flying, for the first time in my life. 

And in the middle of all of the problems and confusion and absolute lack of clarity that I've suffered for months on this latest go-round, I have a core of something now that I know is relatively solid in spite of the fact that my brain is porous and short-sighted enough that surely it could all come undone at any time. 

It's been an interesting span of days. 

Let Me Take Your Picture for Charity Water

Some of you who know me in real life know that this is turning out to be quite the year of change and transition for me. I turned 40 last December, which means I'm staring down the crazy barrel of 41 in just a few short weeks. (Oh my hell.) I have a lot of different ideas and plans and goals taking shape, as well as a lot of obviously more challenging things to go through on a daily basis, as I wrote about earlier this week.

Speaking of that, I am so grateful to the people who came and read here this week -- for the support, for the feedback and for what felt like a hundred awesome hugs, I swear. Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you, if you are back again. I really didn't know what to do or where to go with a lot of stuff that was in my head, and I'm very happy that I chose to come here. The morning I wrote that post I woke up and I thought, immediately, that I'd said too much and felt too much and I was going to go put that baby back in draft where it belonged. But by the time I did that, Tracey had written me the kindest comment and a person I'd never met had shared a story of great pain in response, so I had to leave it alone. 

And thank God, really. I really believe that the responses deepened my own understanding of what I was writing about. How much I love my family and my friends -- how I'd gone to the edge of disposing of a friendship for absolutely no reason, how I hadn't considered anything good about myself in the context of all I had convinced myself was bad. I got dms and emails and comments telling me things that I don't think people had ever felt they had a place to share. And people, themselves, wrote in response to the post on their own sites. I couldn't believe it. Tracey expanded on her comment and so did Schmutzie and I swear I felt like maybe it made a lot of this worth it? (Although I never want to go through anything like that again, make no mistake.) 

My blog is a virtual place that's given me a lot and I guess that continues to be so. I guess no matter what I think I've got all figured out, life still has the remarkable capacity to surprise me, every day. 

Anyway! In the interest of all of these goals and dreams and new things, and the good people I've had the fortune to meet in my on and now offline travels, I am going to Camp Mighty, which is, oh goodness, next week. Time is getting short. 

I am part of a team for this event that has committed to raising a certain amount of money for a very worthy cause -- Charity Water. Their mission is to bring clean and drinkable water to places around the world where that is not a given. 

Easy cause to support, right? 

Well, as part of my contribution, I need to raise at least $200 to support water conservation efforts in the places where Charity Water is currently working. Here is Eden's list of what some other people are doing. 

There are a few ways I can do this. 

I can take your picture. I have taken the pictures of many people and they didn't hate it. In fact, I think it's kind of fun to have me take your pictures, because I'm sort of a fool for the whole process, especially if you're the type who doesn't like having her picture taken. I really enjoy working with you and making you laugh so you forget you're supposed to hate it. I shoot: 

Grown-ups. (This one doesn't mind having her picture taken at all, but I've still taken some pretty good ones of her, I'll just go ahead and say it.) 

Little people. (This is Meghan. We are buddies. She doesn't have a blog. Yet.) 

Musicians who have no idea what I was doing. I mean, how weird is it that I have a picture of John Taylor's hands in my possession and he has no idea who in the hell I am? 

RELATED: JOHN TAYLOR'S HANDS. I was that close. Yes. I was. 

Not-people who think they are people. (This is my niece. She is very photogenic.) 

I can do a headshot or more casual portrait session anywhere in the DC metro area -- this includes Baltimore, Northern Virginia and pretty much anywhere else I can drive within an hour. I will happily work with pets and children, and also John Taylor, if you can scrounge him up for me again. I'd ask for a $50 donation to the cause for this, and that includes post-processing of your portraits, a cd of all useable images, and three prints. 

I can also send you a picture that is not of yourself, but is instead a print of any image in my collection. I will share a nicely-printed and perhaps even frame-accentuated print in your choice of size, for a donation of $20. (I'd do $15 but I'm eating some printing costs there because I don't bother doing it at home. Because, the agony.) 

Maybe you love San Francisco. 

Or the sun and the ocean. 

Or maybe, baby, you're a firework. (Or a sparkler, like Tarrant and Rebecca.) 

Or more the Lewis Carroll type. I'm sure there are some of you out there. 

I am in the process of trying to put some things on Etsy, but the uploading feature isn't cooperating with me and I really want to get this out there before I leave on a short trip this weekend. So I can provide you with a Flickr gallery that may include something you'd like. (I'm new at selling my stuff, so bear with me. I'm pretty easy to work with, I think.) 

NOTE: Since I wrote this below I've since gotten a clue that there is a direct Charity: Water donation page here. Super easy. 

Other things I can do for you, if photos aren't your thing? Well, we've got this little NaBloPoMo deal going on. If you're doing it and running out of ideas, I'd be happy to write a guest post on yours, also for a $20 donation. Sound cool? I think so. Writing this November is reminding me again how much better this blogging place is when we all hang out and write and read together. If that's something you'd be interested in, let me know and I'll work out a theme with you. 

With whatever I send you, you're guaranteed some surprises in the package -- a mix cd, most likely, or maybe...oh, I don't know. I guess you'll have to give it a shot. 

Sound cool? Great. Drop me a line at lauriesays@gmail.com, and we'll work out the details. 

Head Like a Hole

It's my third week off and I am restless. I am also keyed up and ready to do something except I'm not sure what it is. There are too many loose ends and options right now and it is imperative that I remain calm. I am compulsively looking for freelance jobs which is taking up a great deal of my mental space and not helping me make the most of any kind of relaxation/down/woohoo I don't really have to go anywhere today time.

It's not going so poorly, actually, the making contacts part. I am just out of practice at quantifying my skills and experience because I've just been dawdling along doing a whole bunch of things with no pressure for the past five years and now here we are. Well, except for that whole journalism school thing where I had to justify every fact of my existence every single day for almost two years. Hey, yeah, come to think of it that was pretty stressful. And also I've been on deadline for something real or imaginary in my brain pretty much every minute of every day since 2002. I am not so much about the mental vacations.

So, okay. Scratch the no pressure. But, really, what can I say when people ask me what I can do? I can write things, a lot of things, effectively. I can speak coherently. I can help you figure things out, tell you what looks good where on your website or where all of your typos are, really quickly. I can take pretty pictures.

That is not specific enough, I'm afraid. And so I re-learn how to package this package that is me, and that makes me nervous because I'm constantly red-penning everything, especially myself, and I'm out of practice with resumes. I have watched some really terrible television. I go for the occasional walk. I try really  hard not to spend money, which, in the summer? Ugh. So I've been staying home a lot, in a house in a city that decided to skip May and head straight for August and our air conditioner is broken.

I did go to New York for a few days, on the Bolt Bus. That was really fun. I saw a really good, old friend who let me stay with her at her conference hotel and some newer blog friends and spent time kicking around the city. It felt good. I have pictures for months backed up or I'd show you some of the better ones, but here's my  new favorite bar near Union Square from my phone.

The bartender was standard issue no-nonsense New York pub but he talked about the oil spill and made me cry.

I can't really look at many of the pictures of that, speaking of which. I feel like I'm not witnessing but I have to really limit myself. I found myself calling up some of the images in my head while I was driving yesterday and it is hard to drive when I'm crying. I am unsettled by the state of the world in general. I don't know how you can't be. I want to write something for the Love the Gulf project (via DebontheRocks) but I'm having trouble finding the words. 

I want a new blog. I need to carve out a few days to understand SquareSpace.

Speaking of walking, which I believe I did up there somewhere, the exercise is going so-so and that has been the big come-to-Jesus this week. When my routine changes things tend to fall apart in that department. I had been going to kickboxing at L.A. Boxing three times a week for over a month. The scale wasn't really moving, although in either direction so that was almost okay, because I was loving it. It wasn't boring and I felt like I was getting back in some kind of shape, then I stopped working and one excuse led to another and there I was on Thursday night, blocked and afraid to go back because I knew it would be so difficult. I cursed myself because for the thousand-millionth time in my life I'd done it, I'd fallen off of an exercise schedule that was really working, that was making at least one part of my life feel in good, stable shape, and I'd blown it.

Stupid schedules. Stupid brain. Stupid stuff that I can't break through sometimes no matter how hard I try when the inertia takes over.

So I went back to the gym, doing the thing I know I need to do in this mind over matter situation and got in the car in spite of the fact that I didn't want to and didn't feel like it. It was hotter than it is in my house in there but I got my favorite bag in the corner and kicked out a lot of the stress and frustration and anxiety of the week. And I didn't die. I felt a little less stressed, even.

Look, face all sunshiny like the hand of HEAVEN blesses exercise.

Not really. Just flare.

I felt a lot weaker during and after class than I had felt even two weeks ago. I need to go back regularly. I need to recommit. The instructor looked at me quizzically but didn't ask me where I'd been and I still felt compelled to babble an excuse at the end, anyway, like he was my platoon leader or something. I take things too damned seriously. But how many times have I said that I can't stop because then it's so hard to start again, unlike other things that I can't stop if I tried forever? How many times has this happened? I know I'm strong. I know I have endurance. I know this isn't even entirely about my body, that my mind is so much better off when I'm burning off all of the nervous energy and feeling good about meeting physical challenges.

And yes, it is a kick to see my arms have some definition.

I am mad, I am so MAD that I've gained back 23 pounds, even though I know how hard it is for me to lose, I know how much harder it is, even, for me to maintain, no matter what the motivational police say. This is a difficult, difficult process for me. I know it. I know it. I know I can't get all negative and crazy about it or I'll stay on the downward spiral. The shame diet, as some idiot broadcaster said on the news the other night, does not work for me in any way. But still? Mad mad mad.

And then my sister and my mother reminded me of a race we'd been planning to do for awhile. It's tomorrow in Annapolis, with a bunch of our friends. It is a 10k that my mother and I -- at least -- will mostly walk, but it's a 10k anyway. My nurse practitioner (who is way better than any doctor I've ever had besides the one who fixed my face, by the way) said a few weeks ago that I should walk every day for 15 minutes just to remind myself that I was moving forward, or maybe just so I could say that I was. I haven't been following that direction either and I'm not sure I can make it all up in one day, though.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ten kilometers. Tomorrow. I don't even know how many miles that is.

But you're reading some ramblings of a sucker who's about to get into her car and drive to Annapolis, yeah you are.

All I ever wanted.

I am leaving town tomorrow for a week and a half. I am so excited about this.

It's been a rough sort of month.

I have purchased a bottle of Stoli Vanilla and I plan to go visit my surly friend at the Myrtle Beach General Store from whom I can potentially purchase Blenheims spicy ginger ale to mix with this tasty stuff to make the best beach drink ever, even if it's not going to be 85 degrees on my beach like it usually is when I'm there. I will pretend. I love that beach hot or not.

I have new tires and an engine that should (please please please) work following ridiculously overpriced service yesterday, so in spite of the fact that I have to drive late into the night tomorrow I won't be as in denial nervous as I usually am about my poor little car.

I have, in my possession, all cameras, plus chargers, and also lenses, that I need to function for two weeks, both still and video (this is huge.)

Two of the sweetest little girls I know are waiting to make their birthday cakes until they get back to Georgia from Disney so we can do it together. Please to see the state of my two-sizes-too-small heart before I heard this:

And kind of what it felt like after: 

I'm not very overwhelmingly grateful right now, I'll admit it. I'm very focused on lack, and what isn't going right, and how I'm disappointing people and not succeeding in ways I'd like to. I'm all "my back hurts," because it does, like every day, and "I'm not losing weight like I want to lose weight," and "that person..." and "he...." and "Oh God I need coffee."

I need not to care about that, any of it (except I can't not care about coffee) for a week. I need to drive on other roads and think about other things. I need to figure out what's next while not thinking specifically at all about it.

Isn't that when it's supposed to figure itself out?

It's hard to hold a candle.

Fort Hood. Orlando.

I'm not sure where to find it. I guess you just do.

Saturday Errata

First of all, I just realized that Top Chef premieres Wednesday and it's kind of embarrassing how much I'm looking forward to this. Some people I know and trust to have excellent taste are crazy about Mad Men and given that I've reduced my tv schedule down to approximately nothing else besides CNN, Bones (God I love that show) and The Office I'm a little afraid to watch it once because I'm sure that I'd get just as crazy. Also I have never seen True Blood. Don't talk to me about it, please. I can't add anything else to my already epic procrastination files, not a thing.

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In the "intentions for the universe" department, I went to an art show at an oppressively hot D.C. gallery on Friday night. It was mixed media but a lot of it was photography. I think I could put some of my own stuff out there, judging from what I saw. Some of it is way better than mine, some of it is just, eh, I'll admit I thought "Wow, I have some pictures that can kick that picture's ass." (I immediately feel guilty about that and want to erase it. I'm not going to. Go ahead. Judge me.) Anyway, I think I might try. If I write it down maybe I'll actually do it.

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I guest-posted on Greeblemonkey yesterday because I love Aimee and she asked and honestly I was totally flattered that she asked. I ended up rambling on about a Dave Matthews Band show I went to with her last summer when I was in Denver for the DNC, and Duran Duran discussions with Sarah and her and other matters related to music and making friends on the Internet who you totally would have been friends with if you had met them in real life first. The Internet - and the  blogging community I happen to hang out in - came in quite handy in these cases.

This is Aimee and me at that show. I love that she included this photo and thank her in advance for letting me share it here. I'm not sure why I look like I'm crying, or maybe stoned, because no, neither. At least I don't remember crying. Maybe I was overcome with Internet friendship, or altitude. I worked so hard that week and my D90 was stolen and I fell unceremoniously in a street in downtown Denver when I was hanging out with my girl Heather C. and also lost my press pass (I'm not kidding when I say I need a minder) so this night out with Aimee was pretty much the highlight, second only to being in Invesco/Mile High Stadium when President Obama accepted the nomination - a first place that she would understand better than almost anyone.)

Note: Aimee will come and pick you up on a street corner after you've met her one time and take you to dinner and to the amazing Red Rocks, if you call her and ask her and throw in a show ticket. Total score.

She also included this shot of Sarah and me that I'll put here again just because I can and I want it on my blog too, yo.

Sarah makes me look good in general. I first recall meeting her for real while attempting to slice my finger off in a door at BlogHer DC last fall. (If this was not the first time I'm sorry, it's like you've always been here dude what can I say? ;)) This didn't bode well for good pictures but we've had a run of good luck since then. I can't make her stand next to me all the time which is a shame. This photo - especially notable because it was way past wine o'clock and my eyes are still open - was taken by Laurie Smithwick, another friend who makes the best kind in real life because she makes me think better and makes me smile big. 

Oh, what the hell. It's Laurie and me. Lauries, even.

I like you guys, all y'all. I keep threatening (like, myself, in my own brain) to do a really late BlogHer post and maybe I will. This year was good.

Haha, Denise, look! I wrote "really late BlogHer post" and I actually meant the conference but that is such an honestly ambiguous statement. May this new leaf turn over with reckless abandon.

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The post I wrote for Aimee is largely about music. And somewhat related, I'm currently stalking archives because as stated above I have these friends now from the computer and I'm realizing how much of their actual blogs I've missed over my past three years of failing at reading blogs (or because I didn't really know them well yet so it wasn't technically my fault. Deflect, deflect! Also I could link like 20 more people which I probably should if I'm going to do it at all but I can't take the pressure. You know who you are.) I am forcing myself to sit still for much of today because I'm fried, and therefore just read a list of Sarah's top 100 albums that she wrote three years ago (do not go back and read it Sarah because you might start arguing with yourself. Leave it alone.)

Sarah and I have some things in common so it's not so surprising that large parts of her music category, in fact, (minus some of the kids' stuff with which I'm not familiar because I just have no reason to turn it on most of the time although I'm essentially a child, and the death metal because I just never went there in spite of my obsession with hair and harder, albeit mainstream, metal) are right out of my life. I'm kind of tempted to try my own list but the thought is so daunting that I'm trying to talk myself out of it, and I'd have to follow the honesty rule and frankly I like some really embarrassing shit. Let's just say reading this made me want to write about music more. I'll probably start with this a little later, just for grins. Maybe you should too.

I really do love archives, which I actually don't think is so weird. I read Eden Kennedy's and Wendy McClure's sometimes just because the writing is so good and it doesn't get old for me. I'll take inspiration where I can get it.

And on a few key points that I'll mention here, Sarah, so I can embarrass myself on my own blog rather than going back and obsessively commenting on three-year-old posts: You said "counterpoint structure in rock music" and I have no idea what that means so I'm glad there are people like you who do; Night Songs is the far superior record for Somebody Save Me and Nobody's Fool alone, although Coming Home is one of my favorite songs of all time and I think I might write about a recent interaction with it next; Soundgarden is one of the greatest bands ever and this is why I despise my ex-boyfriend Chris Cornell all the more for the travesty of his recent inexcusable solo material wherein he managed to remind me of Cher; I'm confused however by your omission of Temple of the Dog; none of Simon LeBon's lyrics make sense, except in Save a Prayer, marginally, and props to you for bonding with the first record because it's by far the best besides "New Religion" and "Last Chance on the Stairway" on Rio which win for (naturally) bass lines alone; I'd like a world with Cliff Burton, Shannon Hoon (my personal addition), Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley still in it. At the very least I feel confident that Cliff would have saved the world from the Napster hearings and the documentary where the band went through group therapy; more people should have always listened to the Cult because some of their stuff is genius, Fire Woman alone, good Lord, and Blood Sugar Sex Magic and Appetite = totally in my top ten, BSSM might have to be 1 or 2. Ten is in the top 15. Also Ramble On is my favorite Zeppelin song and on my top-ten favorite songs ever list as well. And I'll stop there. We are both very smart people with excellent taste, in my own mind. The end.

I could have e-mailed that but I really think my Chris Cornell rage needs to be shared with a wider audience. Bottom line? This archive-stalking really saves a lot of catch-up time.

(Also I'm using the word "stalk" facetiously here. Real, creepy stalking is not funny or appealing at all in the slightest. Don't make me tell you how in-depth my site stats are. Really, because I don't want to talk about it. Moving on. Lalala.)

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Finally, because my mother is making me leave my house to go see Julie and Julia, a book I disliked for much the same reasons that I disliked Eat, Pray, Love (I know. I'm not a real person, and also clearly not a girl either. Bring on the hate, bring it.) and a movie I'm not too excited to see either but she is and I'm curious in a voyeuristic sort of way about how blogging will be portrayed so I'm going, I want this. Badly.

I just got my time capsule e-mail from Photojojo.com, and they sell it through their site (in the "awesomeness" category in their store. I concur.) I've had a combined camerabag/purse for a number of months now because I take my SLR everywhere - hi robbers please don't follow me and steal it, I'm scrappy and hard to pin down anyway, always on the move, yes - and it's fraying on the edges and generally making me look like the crazy camera bag lady, so I needed something cute and functional and this totally scores.

You should get the Time Capsule too. Connect it to your Flickr account and twice a month they e-mail you with a bunch of images that you uploaded exactly a year ago. It's very cool. If you're a nostalgia junkie like me it fits that bill plus it reminds me of pictures I'd completely forgotten about. The only sad part is they sent me photos of my dog after he died and I was in a crappy mood and it kind of made me cry to see him pop up in my e-mail and I'm sure the same will happen with my grandma but whatever, it's still a genius idea and I support it completely. I'm sure they've been waiting for me to weigh in on it, so there it is.

He was cute though.

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I think that's more than enough from me. Make it a great day.

Gustav

Update: I volunteered to edit the Animal Rescue page on Andy Carvin's Gustav wiki. Please e-mail me at laurie@lauriewrites.com or find me on Twitter at @lauriewrites with any news you see about the pets and animals left behind in Louisiana and Mississippi. Thanks.

Hurricane Gustav is shaping up to be a Category 5 storm.

First of all, please God may it spare New Orleans.

Second of all, lots of people are blogging about it, with preparation and preemptive relief efforts. Please visit them and find a way to help, if you can. Even if you don't think you can because you're far away or don't have the means, even writing about it is very, very important. If anything was learned from Katrina (and my ignorance at the time was great, but not so much in the years since) it's that silence is a fatal action in this case.

Katrina recovery was a major theme of the early part of the week at the DNC and I find the timing of the RNC quite apt. If the world pays more attention to this than that event in St. Paul, it'll be a good thing whether the storm hits or not. And if it does hit, the question must be asked of the administration that this candidate is trying valiantly to distance himself from: WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU GOING TO DO DIFFERENTLY THIS TIME? And of the candidate, I might ask: What in the hell would YOU do?

Here are some links:
Gustav Resource Center (via @waynesutton on Twitter.)

Excellent headlines and updates from @jazzychad on Twitter.

Official government weather updates on Twitter: @GustavAlerts

Sometimes (even pretty) people jump out of windows because they're sad.

The footage of the Russian supermodel who jumped to her death from a ninth-floor apartment in the NYC financial district was quite the news bit yesterday. And Fox News, in all its classy goodness, opted to show the footage of her body, obtained from a person who I hope has significant road rash from hitting the pavement but that's wishful thinking with a video camera who shot it from underneath a car.

I can't find the links now, because the one that was sent to me is dead. It was disappointing for the casual voyeur, really. The sheet was mostly covering her, and it was windy in New York so all you could really see was the bruised left side of her face and eyes that were - surprise - closed. I watched it a couple of times, working through my discomfort, to try to determine what the value was - to see, in effect, what there was to see.

Her name was Ruslana Korshunova. She was 21. She is dead.

That's all that anyone needs to know, really, if they need to know anything at all.

The Fox footage I saw gave credence to my view that we're approaching Armageddon, at least in terms of what's accepted as "media."

I could not determine which of the people involved in the Geraldo conversation were more reprehensible. The man who vaguely resembled Albert Einstein who said "After all she is not from this country? She might be isolated?" I can understand that a young woman far from home would feel disconnected, but New York is full of people from all over the world in equally lonely situations. It is a place where people go from everywhere, and it seems ridiculous and somehow patronizing to equate "foreignness" with the urge to plunge from a window. Or the woman in the purple who postulated that because she was so beautiful she surely wouldn't have ended her life so violently and someone must have pushed her? And that she must have, in addition, been completely high on drugs?

Because, right, if you're beautiful and depressed, clearly the need to preserve the appearance of your body and face must trump despair that seems worse than the pain of hitting the concrete full force, hundreds of feet down. You must always keep the outside at the front of the line.

A distant cousin of mine jumped from a building in DC and died a few years ago because he was just, apparently...really sad. Have you noticed that this life is hard? And that some people have days where it being over seems preferable to dealing with whatever shit is shoveled their way? It's not a real stretch sometimes, folks. And it's is sad to see this group of jerks jump all over a person who just died yesterday not even considering that depression can sink in deep and leave you less than concerned with your appearance.

Who knew about this young woman before yesterday? Did anyone, besides the people in her immediate sphere (if they did), see her or know her as anyone other than a page in a magazine? Now that she took the drastic step of plunging out of the window of a high-rise building to her death, she's everyone's business, and everyone with a microphone claims to know why she did it.

I think we have big problems. And as much as stories like this make me ashamed of the media outlets who cover them, they make me all the more determined to be a small part of the solution.

Cringe

Tomorrow I am taking a massive chance in my favorite city. I'm taking the train to New York tomorrow, to do a couple of things and visit with a couple of lovely people, but really just to read at Sarah Brown's Cringe event.

I am the queen of Internet attention deficit disorder, and there are very, very few blogs I read on a daily basis. Lots I check in on a few times a week, but daily is reserved for People.com, Flickr, and Sarah. I don't remember where or how I discovered her, but since I did I have rarely skipped a day checking out her words or her pictures. She is the kind of writer I would like to be, in many ways, and in some ways hope I already am when I cut the crap. Plus she's funny, and she's cooler than you. Sorry, that didn't come out very nicely. But you know how it is.

Sarah started up this series a few years ago, and it's turned into a book for her and a potential tv pilot. The deal is that people get up on stage and read selections from their diaries/letters/journals/detritus in general from their teen years. Since this whole blog is sort of an exercise in self-disclosure, I figured early on that I had to participate in this. A three-hour trip is all that stood in the way of the world hearing the story that I wrote, actually on purpose - about my HUSBAND John Taylor from Duran Duran, and our honeymoon trip to an island somewhere. I think it might have been Anguilla, which I didn't know from Dallas, Texas at that point except that i knew that DURAN DURAN FILMED VIDEOS THERE and JOHN TAYLOR WAS THE BASS PLAYER AND I HAD A FEDORA LIKE HIS THAT I ACTUALLY WORE IN PUBLIC AND HE WAS MY MAN, SO SUCK IT SUPERMODELS. I'll just be over here in my Forenza sweatshirt with the (help) cabbage roses on it, orange Sun-In hair and fake Jordache jeans with the little hippo or unicorn or whatever they gave little fat girls on the pocket as a consolation prize. Also, he wore jazz shoes, and therefore so did I.

Someday I'm going to write a book, a collection of essays entitled: "The Really Low End: Me and the Rhythm Section." (and yes it'll be grammatically incorrect like that. So rock 'n roll.)

In searching for my JT story, which I still can't find, I located my Precious Moments diary. SHUT UP. I KNOW. And when I found it, I immediately spent like an hour delving into my crazy little brain, circa 1985. I read the part to my mom aloud about how much I hated my family because they left me at home when they went to see the Christmas lights at the Mormon Temple. And in case anyone wonders why I take everything super seriously, my mother looked at me gravely and said, seriously, "You really didn't hate us did you?" Even at 14, totally healthy adolescent hatred was unacceptable in our home.

I laughed out loud when I saw that I had written the actual address for the American Top 40 Long Distance Dedications in the inside front cover, in pencil, just above the ominously inked "PROPERTY OF LAURIE," which I had clearly very carefully inked over and over and over, in case the masses who would be dying for a peek inside the pink cover didn't get the message. I even had "Property of LAURIE" stickers on the facing page, like that I obviously bought at a store. Someone sold stickers like that. I would pay big bucks to have those back, I'd just walk around slapping them on everything at this point. They'd have come in seriously handy in some roommate situations, and at work. Except I'd have to add "bitches" in ink now, now that that word contains such weighted ironic power, unlike in 1985 when it just meant more than one bitch was all UP IN YOUR GRILL.

I rejected my neurosis that I really HADN'T progressed that much in 20 YEARS, and I went back to the days when two things made my world go round: John Taylor, and Dante Aguilar, a boy I went to grade school with, who sat behind me in 7th grade and sang "Sexual Healing" to me in his cracking, uber-sexy Bolivian accent. "Get-tup get-tup get-tup get-tup." Really, there was no one hotter than him, all 13 years old and rocking the Catholic school uniform. And I'm sure my Peter Pan collar and green plaid jumper was just as appealing.

All I can say is, that wherever Dante is, and whomever he's involved with/married to, I hope she loves him right, because no one could POSSIBLY have been as devoted to him (as a concept anyway - like I knew what to do with a real person at that point? Ha.) as I was. Sarah says the key to a good Cringe reading is if it makes you - yeah - CRINGE when you read it. Done, totally taken care of. Oh my God, cringing all the livelong day. Still cringing, in fact, inside. My longing emanates from the page. The resigned detachment, the rationalization that it was a good thing when he dated my BEST FRIEND. The almost-running-into-him-at-the-mall if I hadn't had to go to the damned LIMITED to return my FORENZA sweatshirt for an even bigger one with the cabbage roses on it. Anyway, more of the world will learn of him tomorrow than he ever imagined, and I hope he's cool with that. It's a good thing it's a fairly common name. I looked around on Facebook and the other options in the voyeuristic world of "social networking" and I think that might be him? But I'm not sure? And hi, could someone else send that message? That "Hey I wrote about you in my diary alot 20 years ago and now I'm going to read it aloud to a lot of people in a bar in Brooklyn" message? Cause I'm not gonna lie, I'm having a little trouble with the semantics on this one.

I am amazed that more of this book was not written in colored ink, however. I have a tendency to write in obnoxious Sharpie colors even now. (Hello. Am 12.)

So Sarah has held a slot for this craziness, and I can't wait. I'm sure I'll be the really nervous one. In fact, my eye is twitching a little already. If you see me, say a kind word. I can't promise I won't write about you though.