LaurieWrites

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.

2009, right?

This year was really great. It really was. 

I mean it. 

It was hard and it kind of kicked my ass as I believe I have stated here before but among the mess of growing pains and things I complained about and stupid, difficult lessons I had to learn (all of them in some way because of things I screwed up or didn't care to prioritize or procrastinated about, really) so many great things happened to me. So many wonderful people literally entered my life as some of my dearest friends, and others stayed, they stayed like they always stay regardless for some reason beyond my comprehension and for this reason alone I should not be allowed to complain. 

I don't know what has happened to me to deserve it, but there is one thing I can say for sure about my life. And that is that although I may joke about being a freak magnet and how strangers come up to me out of the blue in places like public restrooms and malls and tell me personal information including their most disturbing problems, that I also concurrently have attracted some of the best people I know exist in this world to be my friends. 

(I'm an unequivocal fan of my family so I should note that they are never excluded and never far from my heart or mind. And this year was mostly great and especially meaningful with them, too.) 

I started off my year losing my grandma and I wrap up this year heavy with that knowledge still although it's processing better these days. And I am learning to use her as a catalyst and a guide as I believe she would appreciate, although I still think mortality sucks and we all got a raw deal but there is nothing I can do about that. No wonder everyone loves this Twilight train wreck. It's like global death anxiety permeated the pop culture. 

I also went back to work full-time after finishing my graduate degree and that was a really difficult transition, I admit. I was tired, really, fundamentally, after 15 months of such crazy concentrated newsgathering work and a crushingly disappointing news bureau experience that was so stupid it almost defied description. I was bummed out about my weight and nervous that I couldn't do anything about it due to some bizarre combination of my body's stubborness where that is concerned, my relative dislike of exercise and my infinite love for wine and cheese and things that make you go mmmmmmmm in general. 

I began to deal with that and in some stroke of luck won an insane Biggest Loser contest at my workplace. The mood police were on duty and along with the effort to exercise almost daily and eat better I lost 20 pounds and actually felt really great by the time May rolled around. 

Summer rocked. Summer was fantastic. I was in a naturally fabulous mood for the first time, I shit you not, since my ex-boyfriend left in the winter of 2005. 

Four years. Four years of maintaining, of tolerating my daily life, punctuated with occasional minor happiness. Suck. 

Anyway, I was so grateful that I remembered how to be happy this summer without effort. I couldn't really believe it was happening but it did and I feel very, very grateful that although since then I've hit upon some darker times again that it happened. I know it's in there. I am inspired to keep working and striving towards it, even though that just means living my daily life in the best way I know how. I know I have the capacity for joy. 

(If you don't understand this part it's okay. Just know it's in no way as self-indulgent as it can sound. It's really, really tricky.)

BlogHer in lots of ways made my summer and my year, and not just because Chicago is one of my favorite places in the country and it was invigorating to get a tattoo there. It was a profound experience for me this year. It's difficult to explain it, and that may be why I never wrote a recap post, but it's like a three-day festival of everything good about my corner of the Internet. So maybe it's my Blog Woodstock, or three-day Lollapalooza (I am incapable of speaking in terms other than outdated music festivals, apparently.) 

It is this community that has built up around me in the past five years live and in person. It is wine and words and pictures. It is a ridiculously good time and I'm sure that for a lot of people who have not embraced the particular world of blogging that I do it would make absolutely no sense whatsoever, but that's okay. I wouldn't get what those people do either, maybe. I don't care about skeet shooting or Bunco or any number of other things that are probably pretty cool if you yourself do them, this just happens to be what I do. You know, over there, in that hotel lobby with some fucking awesome women who happen to think it's totally fine to take pictures of ourselves reflected in salt shakers. 

Anyway, I've more or less integrated the people and experiences that mattered to me from this summer's experience into my daily life so it's not such a shocker.I could easily call them out. Karen makes me feel beautiful. Laurie put me in her phone in the lobby and brought me down a barrette the next day because I said I wanted to learn how to fix them in my hair and beyond that is a genius who became someone I could visit at the beach the very next week and at her house months later. Sarah reflects me back to myself in the most peculiar way and makes me believe in best friends like when I was 15 but without the crazy, and also may have to bring me beer in the nursing home. Suebob and Maria make me wish I lived in California. Melissa is illuminated and makes me want to be a better writer. Suzanne and Heather astound me with how much I am inspired when I'm near them. It is infinite, really, and I think we are all so lucky we have it. I believe so much in the ultimate goals of that Web site and this community. I will always be so glad I've had the opportunity to be a part of it. 

By the way? Genie is the best (and also MY) BlogHer roommate who also became a mom this year and I am so happy for her and her little family. This post made me cry, because it is one of the nicest things anyone has ever written about me, ever. It is also one of the most scarily accurate summations of my personality - the darker side of it with the light of understanding and compassion shed upon it, mind you - that I have ever read and this is another freaking example of why I'm so lucky. SO LUCKY.

(This is my year-end recap and is therefore by its very nature allowed to be narcissistic. I'm calling it. ;))

There is such power in relationships. I may not have gotten the boy in 2009 that I really think I want, I may never get him, and in some ways, eh. Maybe I'm the reconstituted Virgin of Guadalupe or some shit like that. But dammit, I have FRIENDS. Offline ones, too. They are not written about so much, they are not often seen here, but they are real and they are so loved and appreciated. They tolerate my iPhone addiction and tell me they love me and know my story as writ on walls in hieroglyphics back when we used those, you see. 

I spiraled out in the fall and the bad times hit again. The living situation was a little weird and work was hard. I struggled with what my next step should be and creative inspiration was limited. 

But I kept writing. I kept shooting. I kept at it, although I didn't know why, and that's probably what should be my epitaph. 

She kept at it although she didn't know why. 

This year I took a long trip to California to watch my sister celebrate her master's degree. We had a really meaningful family vacation in August, and reconvened on the same beach in November to celebrate Thanksgiving and my uncle's birthday. 

I spent some time late in the year with one of my oldest and dearest friends, someone who in spite of miles and distance and such different lives will always be one of my touchstones, who taught me in the weeks after that visit that we never, ever know what effect we're having in the moment. We just have to do and say the best things we can. We have to be honest to the best of our ability with the people who mean the most to us, the people we'd save from fire and flood if we could. We have to trust them to make the best decisions and to be able to hear what we're saying when it is based in deep love and concern. 

I had some great meals this year and some disasters. The best in restaurants were a Cioppino at Sogno DiVino in San Diego's Little Italy that I would have shipped to me frozen without question and a shrimp burger and beer at Fannie's on Tybee Island, Georgia, that combined with an ocean view made my trip and made me believe once again in the restorative power of coastal American food. I ate more sushi and edamama this year than I have consumed in my entire life thus far. I still didn't have my own kitchen yet, so I didn't cook a whole lot myself. That's on my list. 

I drank a lot of wine (mostly Spanish and South American, red) and some reasonably good beer. I hated the Pittsburgh Penguins and lost my mind when they knocked the Caps out of the playoffs, but this season I had a fantastic seat at a game because Sarah and her father-in-law are nice. I still believed in Terrapin basketball and the Washington Mystics. I saw Green Day live and it changed my life. 

I wore MAC #3 perfume and green eyeliner almost every day. Green and orange are still my favorite colors. I still miss having a dog, also daily. I spent ridiculous amounts of money on my paid-off car. I got an iPhone in March in Austin and it is perhaps my most favorite material possession ever, second only to the pink Sony boombox that saw me through the late 80s and many, many dubbed tapes from the radio. 

Michael Jackson's death knocked me sideways. 

I stood in freezing Washington, D.C. at the Inauguration concert and felt an energy that I have never felt before in a city I've lived I've lived beside my whole life. I watched on my television the next morning as the first African-American president, a person I still believe to be a true agent of change, took the oath of office. 

I went to Charlotte twice and Austin for SXSWi and the aforementioned Chicago and San Diego and Pittsburgh and to New Orleans for my most awesome first Mardi Gras. I finally sat on and broke my beautiful green glasses so I have to get another set of frames. I spent a stupid amount of time searching for my chargers for my seemingly endless array of electronic devices. I made three apple pies. I finished NaBloPoMo.

I didn't welcome Christmas. I wasn't ready and to be honest I didn't really care. It came anyway. 

It is January now. The last month of 2009 was punctuated with me entering this photography contest and being so blown away by the nice things people were saying about my entry that I felt that whether I won or lost I had already accomplished something. And then another friend called and asked me to enter this other cool contest for people of the blog sort and these two things combined have served to make me ready to make a life change that has been simmering for a long time. Like a decade. 

I think it involves Virginia and I am seriously freaking out. 

Speaking of the aughts, I think I might do some sort of wrap-up posts this weekend because this was a DECADE here, people, and for me it was the most profound one yet. I'm coming up on an anniversary next week that started out a very happy one and ended up sending me into my own personal bell jar for most of the aughts. It is fundamentally why this blog exists and why I am currently inarticulately telling you about my year. I'm going to write the shit out of something about it because you know what, I can. 

Happy new year. 

And I'll tell you one thing - and you can write this down, as we are wont to say in my family: 

Next January 1, 2011? If I'm not dead, I'll have just turned 40. I'll be writing some crazy wrap-up from Pittsburgh if the Caps play up there in the Winter Classic because Kim and I have a tenuous date for it already. 

And also? Next January? I think I'll have some kickass things to share. Really. Because I'm finally allowing myself to expect a lot from a year, whether I'm ultimately disappointed or not. I'm not staying home so I have to go big. 

39

I have three minutes to post on my birthday and I'm going to do it, no matter how short it's going to be and how inadequate I might feel like it is. 

It was a great day. It was spent with people who matter the most to me, really - who get it and support me and for whom in return I'd pretty much do whatever they need. That's the way it works for me. 

I have high hopes for this year. 

38 was amazing and beautiful in some ways (I am so rich in friends and family it's ridiculous) but mostly it was really fucking hard. It was the worst phase, I hope, of the scab healing over, the caterpillar working extra hard to turn into the butterfly, pick your metaphor. I boxed with the universe for a lot of it. 

I ended it just kind of asking for guidance, from somewhere, for what I need to do next. 

I'm lucky in a lot of ways. This is the year I need to get brave. 

Wish me luck. 

Sorrow is a Dan

Professor: For this assignment you'll produce three images that really reflect your college experience

Dan (to me): So for you that's Def Leppard!

Me: Shut up, Dan.

Lists ahoy

I had put this whole post together, painstakingly I tell you - mostly photos summarizing February, for Leap Day because why wouldn't I post on Leap Day given that the next time it rolls around I could be in a world without blogs, having forever missed the opportunity to post on February 20-effing-9th. And after all this painstakingness, FUCKING (sorry. Only word that fits.) Firefox shut down and ate it. Firefox was all, "Suck it, mama. You're mama's so ugly in your town it's not Halloween, it's YourMamaWeen."

I heard that last week and I laughed for minutes. It's so dumb and yet so enjoyable.

Anyway, if I'd had tears in me at that point of the post explosion I would have cried. I did not, however.

I was blowing off all manner of academic and paid and "paid in clips" assignments to write the post, because February was such an incredibly hectic and photo-filled month in which I posted very little of consequence, as it turned out, and I wanted the pictures to tell the story, at least for my sake. I might try it again but it's a little late at this point.

So here I am. It's March 3. I leave for VIETNAM IN TEN DAYS, oh saints preserve us oh my LORD. I am so not even ready, but given that I've not been ready for even a trip out the door until it actually happens for my whole entire life, this really isn't that much of a newsflash. As much as it makes my life a daring adventure or nothing (or in my case a severely disturbed MadLib) it will not do on this trip. It's one thing when I'm heading across the county and forget my phone or my phone CHARGER or the particular battery for the particular camera that I need for whatever I'm headed out to do (this happens to me, without fail, because I am an idiot stick attention deficit moron. But otherwise I love me.) End up in Vietnam without my right camera battery or charger? I'd lay down in a rice paddy - they grow in the city proper in Hanoi, amazingly enough - and weep.

My story partner is a 19 year old guy who walked across Taiwan last summer and made a documentary about it, probably at the same time that I was prone on the beach sucking down Coronas and taking pictures of my toes. He's got the right amount of youthful idealism to balance me out, and we're getting along fine. Although when he suggested camping, as in "hey it'd be cool to camp on the road to HaLong Bay when we're out covering our story," I got a little peaked. I do not camp at home, just because I never have. I haven't ever. My family didn't and I never really hung out with people who did. I generally enjoy the experience of sleeping indoors, I have to say. I sleep out on the deck at the beach in the summer because the sound of waves, to me, is magic, but then I'm on a deck chair and not the ground.

When Jeff suggested it I was like, hmm. Camping. Vietnamese camping, in unknown territory. Um, okay. I guess if you're going to start, it doesn't really matter where, and now that I'm ripping open the super value meal of my life with my teeth I may as well take it to the wall. I was telling a friend this and she said, "'Camp' is a four-letter word in my world, sister." I guess we'll see how it all plays out.

We're assigned to the industrial corridor story, which will indeed have us heading out to Halong Bay, a beautiful place that's on the Gulf of Tonkin between Vietnam and China. I'll be able to pretend to see CHINA, people, and it'll actually be a body of water away. How cool is that? The bay is a United Nations World Heritage site that was apparently in the running when they redrafted the wonders of the world a couple of years back, although apparently it didn't win.

Anyway, the highway winds out of Hanoi to Halong Bay about three hours east, and our story covers what the industrial growth along this corridor is doing to the area, including the environment. We're going to drive out there the day or so after we get to Vietnam, and it turns out that you can spend the night on junks in the bay. Junks, like in the Little River Band song! And like in Lancelot Link!

My cultural immersion should go swimmingly. Please understand me when I say that I have no idea where I'm going. I have no earthly comprehension of it and I love that.

Posting may be weird again this month, but as I get myself together for this trip I'm going to try to get in the game with NaBloPoMo, mostly because I love the Lists theme for March and my brain could use a daily organization exercise. I've been making a lot of weird lists about music lately, so maybe I'll go with a theme within a theme? I don't know.

Oh, and about the design. Yeah. I had the new black one up, and I kind of liked it, until I talked to my friend Annett who actually reads this page on a regular basis and tells me nice and completely unwarranted things about the way I do go on about my LIFE and mySELF and blahblahblah. Annett is one of the greatest people I know and not just for that reason, I swear. It's because I swear I always laugh with her - as in always always. We make each other laugh. A lot of people do not make me laugh, at least not for the right reasons. When they do I follow them around until they get used to me and agree to be my friend. That's the deal here. So when I called Annett said, "Oh, hi, it's my GOTH FRIEND! I was going to call you and see what was wrong." She kids, she kids, but then when I said that I liked the embossed leaves at the top, she said, "Ghosts! They looked like ghosts!"

So you know, I went all perky with the butterflies, which I can stand because of those moody swirly things and a shade of warm red that makes me really happy. So there you go. Enjoy the warm fuzzy while it lasts. Soon I'll be back to my usual anger with a side of Diet Coke that makes me such a joy to be around.

I'm such a liar. ;)   

You don't really care for music do you

I've been crying off and on for two days. I don't really know what happened, and it hasn't happened in so long that I'm really not pleased. I mean I know my hair is all fucked up and needs help, but really. Just driving down the road to go shopping the other day I was all tweaky about a variety of things and started to feel very weird and bad and self-edit my thoughts and feelings as I am prone to doing so athletically lately. And a frighteningly intense and very specific memory of a neck and a lap popped into my head from out of absolutely nowhere and my heart broke in half over something totally useless and very ancient, and I started crying and crying, I guess because it was so visceral? And then I told myself I was a jerk for crying, which didn't make me stop crying at all, much like when assholes hit their kids and then yell at them to stop crying about it because they'll give them something to cry about, which you ALREADY DID YOU ASSHOLE. My brain is an abusive parent. Great.

All I ever learned from love was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you. It seems like maybe I ought to have a little bit more to show at this point, but that's a flimsy point to prove.

My dear friend and I discussed it and yes, it is a combination of birthday and holiday blues, a comedown from the concentrated variety of stresses from the past few months and the usual stuff that I can't explain to anyone, really. School was good but it was just...a lot - and it's something no one can really understand because they didn't live it. I get some reactions like "Oh, wow, why are you so busy?" because really it's not like I've gone to basic training or something that seems like it would be that difficult. Still, it was the most intense, demanding thing I've done in a very long time, if ever. This is especially because I just brought it, for lack of a better term, and worked really hard in a compressed period of time to do better than mediocre work, because mediocrity in this case just seems like such a waste and besides I really really hate it as a matter of principle.

Last night there was a meltdown involving differing family expectations (oh please, save us all from those) that triggered another attack of something horrible, and holy mother of God there resulted some deep, pathetic sobbing that hasn't been seen in years and demands that Christmas be cancelled. I seriously stated that I wasn't participating and would like it cancelled, a request that was completely ignored, of course, because no one plays along when I really need them to these days.

Then there's everyone linking to this video which just flattened me completely, and isn't December difficult enough already? (I can't even explain the sobbing), and then...

Then. I'm reading this book. It's called "Love is a Mix Tape", by Rob Sheffield, who writes for Rolling Stone. Rob's wife Renee died almost 10 years ago, suddenly at 31 from a pulmonary embolism. He's moved on to New York after trudging through years of grief in Charlottesville and is now remarried, but this book is an elegy to a woman who loved music and him and with whom he loved music. It is a jewel of a book that I've been waiting to come out in paperback for almost a year, although now I wish I'd gotten it over with and bought it with a coupon in hardcover just to support a book like this.

Shortly after the car breakdown the other day this book made me cry in the passport office, just the sheer emotion, beauty and humor with which he writes about her. I felt lonely for him at the time and co-opted my own lonely place when reading about it, which wasn't much of a stretch. I feel really pissed off that Renee died and that I didn't know Renee and that I don't hang out with more people like Renee. I also think I started feeling somewhere around, oh, the second chapter like no one would ever love me like this again, and quite possibly how maybe they never have, and how sad that was because what's all the fuss about over other things that don't matter at all? THEY DO NOT MATTER AT ALL and we spend so much time on them at the expense of the important things. So when I hit the part that really touched me in the passport office I really wanted to scream really loud, but I tried to act all normal sitting on my hard black plastic chair, like the tears were just a natural response to being in a public agency, which really isn't so far from the truth.

Rob is killing me softly. It was just too much, with the words and music and the way he expresses himself about love and grief and coping with kindness after someone dies or really even at all. First of all, the book is set up in a way that couldn't miss (for me), since every chapter starts with a mix tape list and includes an explanation of how that tape or those songs worked together. Specifically, also the mixes relate to him and Renee in some way, too, which is fascinating to read, especially because in the 90s I was into similar music and have a similar relationship with the culture on a grassroots level that he and Renee had - not that I've dj'd at an indie station like they did, but I've stood on the sidelines of that kind of life and have much the same mindset where it's concerned, where you personalize your relationships with the artists and the tunes so they really are your constant soundtrack whether you realize it or not. I also tend to run in smaller circles of people who get it, although that's something I've gotten away from in recent years. So anyway, I enjoyed his reflections on the music so much.

See, I wanted to date this guy not too long ago. It seemed like a distinct possibility which is pretty cool in and of itself given my complete lack of attachment to anyone for years and an accompanying terror of  interest in putting myself out there again, because it generally becomes such a terrible experience for whatever reason in the long run that I trust nothing where this kind of potential relationship is concerned at this point, especially myself. I love what Rob says about "that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Uh no. If it doesn't kill you, it just maims you and leaves you for dead, generally speaking. It's kind of funny when you read it, actually, but you have to have an appreciation for the darkness along wit the light.

Anyway, I knew something was wrong with the situation although a lot of it seemed like it was really right, because this guy is great. So great. And in an alternative universe it could have been fabulous (Alternative. Could have been.) He just - and this sounds so bad and like it really shouldn't matter so much - doesn't get music, not at all, and that seems to have an impact on complementary world views. I don't care that he doesn't play it, and in fact, do you play an instrument? GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME, because you will scorch the very earth I stand on and leave me for dead, you rogue harmonica or whatever player. I mean, not really, but really. But not really. I'm a bit ambivalent about the whole thing at this point. Maybe that's just the price I'll pay, I don't know, and I'll always be that person, "she fell in love with the drummer, another and another."

It doesn't really matter, I just didn't understand this person who is not moved by music in general, who considers it "background noise" and doesn't think to turn it on. I lived with a person like that once, who was pretending to be my boyfriend at the time because he couldn't stand to be without a woman in his domestic situation and he foolishly believed that I was the type to be a placeholder. He listened to radio talk shows and got pissed when I put actual music on. I "took him" to his first concert at the age of 27, and although it was kind of sweet and mildly fun, it just didn't work. If you're 7, I'll dig taking you to your first concert. At 27 it just didn't work. Maybe that does make me a jerk, but for me it was like cooking someone I'm dating the first meal he's ever had so he can learn to eat whereas I've already got it down to a science (and oh wow do I, in that case.) Too weird, too much responsibility, something I don't have the patience for, a trip I need you to already be on with me, not that I help you kick off. It's not something I want to be responsible for, it's just something I really want to do, and that I do indeed do all the time, talk about, and constantly acquire and experience for the rest of my life, all hunter-gatherer like.

The thing is that Rob Sheffield weaves the music into his and Renee's life together so you know it was a hugely important thing for them, and you don't really have to be a music geek, per se, to understand it. It's definitely the third party in their relationship, but like others of that ilk it takes nothing away from them. It adds. It gives them a base for the rest of their common language, as he calls it.

Just gorgeous, a lot of this book. This is the passage that finally did me in, about the night he finally told her that things were shifting for him from friendship to more:

"The minutes dripped by, each one totally bending and twisting my shape. We eventually stopped getting up to flip the tape, and just listened to dead air. I could feel serious changes happening to me the longer I stayed in Renee's room. I felt knots untie themselves, knots I didn't know were there. I could already tell there were things happening deep inside me that were irreversible. Is there any scarier word than "irreversible"? It's a hiss of a word, full of side effects and mutilations. Severe tire damage - no backing up. Falling in love with Renee felt that way. I felt strange things going on inside me, and I knew that these weren't things I would recover from. These were changes that were shaping the way things were going to be, and I wouldn't find out how until later. Irreversible. I remember that we discussed The Towering Inferno that night, the scene with Steve McQueen, the valiant firefighter, and William Holden, the evil tycoon who owns the hotel. William Holden asks, "How bad is it?" and Steve McQueen answers, "It's a fire mister. And all fires are bad!" That's the last thing I remember before I fell asleep."

So go read this book, especially if you care about love and music (please care about those things, I don't know what else you should care about more, really) - and if you've ever made a mix tape or been in love and lost it - at all. It is not all pathos, I promise, although I can't promise it won't make you cry. Still, it's the most interesting and well-written story I've read in a while, sort of an anthropological study of an art form and how two people relate inside of it. 

Yes it's sad but in this week of weirdo breakdowns it actually gives me a particular sort of hope amid the sadness, that maybe I can fix what's broken, although I don't know why I'm extrapolating that from this man's experience exactly because I've not had a loss myself of this magnitude. But I do know from sadness and on that very basic level I can relate to his words and be happy for him that he was able to rebuild and reinvent and recreate, because that's what life really is, a daily act of reinvention. And after he got happy with someone else and in a different city, he was able to write this ode to a woman who apparently made him unafraid to be with her, and in that way seems to have made him less afraid to face the world. He also made me feel really good about holding out for someone who gets it, even if it's decades and decades from now, as it may well be...and equally sad for other reasons. But the bottom line is it's well-written and it speaks to something I can't really grab ahold of yet. When I know, I'll probably, clumsily, try to share that too.

Me:   I don't like it up here.
Dan: Why?
Me:   I used to work here, and it creeps me out.
Dan:  What, it reminds you of Ghostbusters?
Me:   No, not really.
Dan: Oh, I guess the movie actually came out around that time.
Me:   I hate you, Dan.

Tuesday Morning

It's raining again.

"Gloria! I think they've got your numbah! I think they've got the ALIAS!" blares from the end of the hall out of a big boy's cell phone.

"HELLO?"

I imagine that he probably thinks it's some kind of retro-chic song referring to a phone call, perfect for a ringtone...that he wasn't likely even born in 1982, that he doesn't know it was originally an Italian pop song, that it helped to make Laura Branigan a gay icon. And then I remember that she died. Weird.

Or maybe he does know this stuff. Perhaps I underestimate him.

Another boy screams from the other end of the hall.

"I NEED ADDERALL. GODDAMMIT. You ASS."

"I need soup," I think. Adderall would just complicate things.

The Good With the Bad

This is my favorite article I've done this semester so far.

Normally I can't get my articles on the Sentinel Website because they charge for subscriptions, but I guess if they feature your stories it's there for all to see.

Issa is a very cool guy and I can't wait to meet him in person. So far I've only had phone interviews with him and checked out his artwork and documentary.

In other news, I am going to kill this boy in the coffee place with my poisonous x-ray vision. he is now singing hardcore punk a capella (his description, not mine) and recently introduced himself thusly:

"I have the most goyish last name of all time. Laura you’re going to be so disappointed. Yes I am related to the genocidal maniac, Sam Houston. I’m also related to an infamous Confederate pirate. He traveled all over he world sinking Union ships, and he didn’t listen when everyone said, “Dude the war’s over. The south lost.”

Your tomatoes suck

I love grocery shopping. I can't believe it's been more than two years since I first spoke in depth about just how much.

Since I just moved recently, I've been familiarizing myself with my environment, to include a new grocery store. To be honest, I don't like the grocery store near me at all, and it's one of the things that depresses me most about the new spot.(I won't go into the other things. Yet. Denial is still functioning at a really super high level.) It's a mostly shitty store. I judge them solely on produce - first impressions and all - and also, if you can't be bothered to make me a nice salad, I am simply not dealing with you. And since I've moved into a neighborhood that isn't at all wealthy, in fact skewing towards the lower end of the economic scale (at least until you hit the new, overpriced, "urban redevelopment" condos on the other side of the Route), I've noticed that the powers that be must think NO ONE HERE CARES ABOUT DECENT LETTUCE.  It's environmental injustice at its worst, I think, because I've also moved into a really integrated town that skews more African American and Hispanic. I'm one of the few pushing-40 (oh dear GOD it's finally happening.) white women in the store, most of the time. Sometimes the only.

I'm also prone to deep conversations with clerks. And clearly, as my new favorite one indicated, I'm in the very small demographic of people who would actually buy certain unpalatable products on the shelves of her store. Herewith, an inaccurate transcription of my absolute very favorite conversation in recent recorded memory. It makes up for every person who's ever grunted "I'm fine" when I ask them how they're doing.

Me: Hello.
Her (I shamefully do not remember her name but next time I will.): Hey.
(Scan. Scan. Scan. Scan. Stopping at pickled tomatoes.)
Her: Uh, what are these?
Me: Pickled tomatoes. 
Her: These are gross.
Me: No, not really. They're actually really good.
Her: I really don't think so. Look at them. They don't even look right. I thought they was potatoes. They don't even LOOK like tomatoes anymore. They look...WRONG.
Me: Er, actually, I was pretty happy to see you carried them at all. You can normally only get them in delis.
Her (Staring at me like this was a "What's Happenin'" episode, and she was Shirley and I was Rerun): Delis. Hmph. You like pickled things?
Me: Yeah, I do. I like...sour things. Olives. pickles. Gross tomatoes.
Her: I just think that's a bad idea. Like, where did you even FIND those?
Me: Back in the refrigerated section...with the other...umm....refrigerated pickles.
Her: Wow, I've just...I don't know. I've never seen them in here in my LIFE.
Me:Are you a picky eater?
Her: Nah. I just don't like things that look like that.
Me: Well you know, you've really made me think about this, but I think I'm going to have to take my chances. And I'll think about you every time I eat one of my delicious tomatoes.
Her: What?
Man Behind Me, to me: She didn't get it.

I laughed the whole way home.