I re-read the first letter from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. One section has always stood out to me, mostly because I can’t decide if I identify with it or not:
Ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.
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In case you aren’t checking the millions of places I’ve apparently spread myself over the internet, I’ve written a little here. I’ll resolve this duality soon. Maybe.
In honor of my father’s birthday 70th birthday yesterday, here’s a picture of him (he’s the one on the right):
My Dad is the funniest, most brilliant person on the planet. Seriously. You know how you always think your parents know everything when you’re young? Yeah, well, my Dad does know everything. On every subject. And he’s not obnoxious about it. You’ll be having a conversation about, oh, I don’t know, thermodynamics and when you turn to him to ask his opinion, he’s all, “Actually, in 1543 AD, Marie Curie invented the blah blah blah-o-meter, thus causing nuclear cold reactor jibbity jab.”
When I first moved to the mid-west, he thought the word “hot dish” was the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard. Every e-mail he would send would end with: “P.S.: Did you have any hot dish today?” Five years later, every e-mail still ends this way.
So, I accidentally started myself on this new fitness kick when I decided to walk to an appointment yesterday. I assumed it was a short walk, but I should never listen to my directional instincts. 45 minutes later and completely burned, freckled and dripping with sweat, I decided actually making it to my appointment wasn’t as important as remaining alive, so I walked back home.*
Since I walked all that way yesterday, I figured today I could ease into full-force jogging. Ha. Ha. Ha. After three minutes, I almost collapsed and died in the gutter. I was inspired by a running thread on Ask MeFi, but there’s a comment in there where someone’s like, “I don’t understand how any normal, healthy human being can’t run around the block,” and now I feel like a complete exercise failure.
This has no point, except to tell this side story, as indicated by the star:
This is a separate story in itself and should really be titled, “Why I Should Never Be Allowed To Breed.” As I said, I decided to walk to my appointment today, given it was a beautiful day outside and the office is less than a mile away, or so I thought. I did turn back home because of the risk of dying of heatstroke, but I also developed a sudden, paralyzing fear when I had to cross a huge, busy road, at which time I started obsessively thinking about Clint (ex-boyfriend who was killed crossing the street). I could not cross the road, even when the WALK signal flashed.
This was an all-time low, as I used to be a slapdash daring street-crosser in New York City rush hour. So, I stood on the sidewalk for fifteen minutes and then walked back home, too embarassed to call and cancel my appointment, given the reason I didn’t go was because I was TOO SCARED TO CROSS THE ROAD. This brings my apparent road phobia to all an all-time low. I think the Amish are calling my name.
I went to a wedding this weekend, and while it was technically a family affair as it involved Chris’s favorite cousin Nicole. I’ve become good friends with his cousin and her now husband, so the event was a little more heartfelt for me than just a “family affair.” Or something. Nicole was absolutely beautiful. I mean, when she walked under the arch, it was one of those completely magical moments in life, the type you never want to describe as “magical” in fear of sounding like a moron, but no other word pops in your head and so magical it becomes. The wedding included a Smashing Pumpkins duet featuring Chris and Jake (the groom) and a female red-haired officiate, so you know it was a wedding for “our generation.”
The reception was large and lovely, and I practiced my liquor telepathy on Chris when I noticed he received a glass of champagne (being in the wedding party and all), and since he doesn’t drink on principle, I willed him to bring the champagne to my table and it totally worked. I suppose you had to be there. I spent a lot of time watching little kids break dance and explaining to Chris’s 12-year-old cousin, Mary Kate, the intricacies of Rambo and Axel Rose.
Chris DJed the whole night, which was perfect for him as he hates to dance, and when I asked him to slow dance with me to Whitney Houston, he was all: “No! Who’s going to cross fade?” But then he came out during Wonderwall, and we glided across the cake-smushed floor like two people who have no idea what they are doing.
At the end of the night, we were left with the wait staff while we loaded his speakers and sound equipment in the car. And, you know, I’ve always managed to date behind-the-scenes people, the ones who observe rather than flail and then close the night unplugging things. There is something comforting about being the one to turn the lights out, to heave cumbersome equipment into a trunk, then rest against the passenger window in party clothes, icing in between fingers.
Three of the worst suggestions given during a re-naming brainstorm session with my roommates’ band:
1. Bamana
2. Butcher Cushion
3. Onion Farm
I wonder how many people walk out of a court house yelling, “This is fucking ridiculous!” By the drawn, squinty look of the clerk’s face in the parking ticket line, I’d say just about everyone.
P.S.: Did you know there’s a $100 fine for having an out-of-date address on a driver’s license? When the clerk told Chris this, he looked at me like someone had stabbed him with a fork and then turned back to the woman and asked, “One hundred real dollars?”
All right, I guess I should just go ahead and admit this website is in some sort of transition period. I’ve been posting on the Test page for a while, and my laziness is rejoicing at the ease of an automated updating system. Plus, even though I’m not a fan of the generic everyone-and-their-dog template, I still like it better than this design I’ve had for thirty thousand years. So, what to do? I suppose you should just keep checking both places until I’ve made up my mind. I’m pretty terrible at transferring my own design ideas to screen, so I might enlist a Top Secret Designer to produce a non-generic, totally breathtaking new design. But for now, you know, whatever.
P.S.: I’m learning to be patient. In the grand scheme of my character flaws, impatience is up there in the top two. Each day now, I try to take things a little slower and more methodical, instead of rushing through a thing, fucking it up and then tossing it aside and going out for coffee. I find a feel much more accomplished and less prone to bouts of frustrated screaming when I actually ease my brain speed. One of the best things that came from my last relationship was my ex-boyfriend’s advice to, “Take it slow.” And that can mean whatever you want it to, dirty.
While I was standing in line at the bank in Cub Foods, two 60ish Edina elite women got into a fist fight in the middle of the bank. Apparently, the first woman cut in line in front of the second woman. I was already feeling past my negative energy quota, so while usually something like this would’ve fascinated me to no end, I felt suffocated and turned around to go home. When I reached the exit doors, an elderly woman slipped, fell face-first on the sidewalk outside the doorway and died, right in front of me. I only know she died because while I was sitting in my car, waiting for the ambulances to clear out of the parking lot, I overheard whom I assumed was her daughter completely sobbing and freaking out and saying things like, “A funeral, oh my God, a funeral.”
Right after the woman fell, while Cub employees were yelling and racing around me, a man behind me said, “It’s the heat. The heat always does this.”
I’d also like to add that all 30 copies of the obscure book I wanted from the library were checked out or labeled as “missing,” but that seems inconsequential compared to the rest of the afternoon.
I think I’m going to stay in the rest of the day.
These two unsymmetrical pictures are place holders for things I want to talk about later, but let’s face it: I’m really terrible at following up on my promises to tell stories, so let’s say it this way: this first picture is of Chris J., my friend from college*, who just got married to the lovely lovely Barb this weekend, and has officially become the first of my friends to marry, which is frightening in a “Oh, God, the next step is a nursing home” aspect, but is also very sweet, as well as amusing since I can remember Chris J. running around the dorms in glittery eye shadow and high heels once upon a time. So, happy marriage to Chris and Barb. I wish I could’ve been there.
The second picture is Abbey, my roommate and best friend for the past 20 years. Today is her birthday, and she received three cakes in three different cities in Minnesota, including the cake I made which collapsed in the middle and tasted faintly of eggs dipped in barbecue sauce. Happy birthday, Miss Abbs. May you always have fabulous hair. (That’s not a trite wish; she really does have great hair, and I hope that trend continues throughout her life.)
I feel uneasy when I don’t update for a week. This website is the only consistent project I’ve ever invested my time into, and this November, it will be seven years old, and that’s practically grandma-aged in internet years or dog years. So expect more things. This week, I’ve made a resolution to actually do what I say, in all aspects. That should be an interesting and tiring experiment.
*Not only do I have a married friend now, I say things like “friends from college,” which makes me feel a hundred years old. I should really get over the “growing and maturing” thing.
Somewhere along the line I started living on the fringes. When I walk in crowds, unless I initiate direct eye contact, I feel dim, invisible, an observer. Last night I walked into a crowded basement full of hipsters with black hair and chains on their waists, and I leaned against a pillar. Chris turned to me and said: “Doesn’t it feel like no one can see us?” and I said, “Maybe no on can.”
Today I decided to go to the Galleria: Shops of Distinction, just to see the fuss. Chris said there was a store where the only contents were $500 dollar dress shirts on a single rack in the middle of the carpet, and that sounded good enough for me. It’s interesting being a relatively poor 20something, who feels most comfortable in cut-off grass-stained shorts and hole-y shoes, existing in the richest city in Minnesota. It’s almost like a joke. And today in the Galleria: Shops of Distinction, I slinked around corners, peering into shops, ducking my head when slick-haired saleswomen with pink lips revealed teeth.
In one store, I found the most perfect dress, a flowing green wood nymph affair, on sale for hundreds of dollars. I slid it off the rack and breezed by the saleswomen who looked over my head into the mall. In the dressing room, I slipped on the dress and became suddenly so aware of my skin and my breath and the sweat behind my ears that I fainted — literally fainted — banging my head on the mirror.
Seconds later, I was returned to the crowds, the dress back on the rack. I clutched at my elbows and rolled my head on my neck, looking for someone, anyone, to find a momentary kinship. Halfway through the trip back to my car, I stopped at a bar across from a store that sold $3,000 copper vases. I ordered a whiskey-water, feeling disoriented and clenched because: whiskey in the middle of a mall? copper vases thousand dollar dresses women with expensive wrinkles and me, with holes in my shoes.
I left the bar before he finished making my drink. In the parking lot, my car seemed glaringly green and round, a glass marble in a blacktop full of plastic.
There is something appealing about the fringes: the ability to disappear, the ability to walk into broad daylight with unbrushed teeth and last night’s eyeliner smudged halfway up your eyelid and not care what anyone thinks because no one sees you, anyway. But there’s also the wispy unbalanced ghost feeling of not having a box to fit in — because everyone has a box; it’s how nature works, so there’s got to be a box for the fringes somewhere.
My own life is not inspiring me lately; in fact, it’s just been a maze of movies and books and kittens, so here’s a very very small excerpt from a thing I’m working on, a thing that is aimless at the moment, but is in existence, nevertheless. Please be warned the word “cunt” is mentioned and probably won’t stay, but writing it gave me a little nutty thrill. (When I used to write stories, sixteen thousand years ago, I wouldn’t even put curse words in them because I was afraid my mother would read them and not approve, which is a bizarre line of thinking considering the words I’ve heard her spit out over the years.)
I’m nervous about sharing this with you because I’ve read so much embarrassingly bad fiction on the internet over the years, and I’ve also read some that’s blown me into the river, so there is a Complex to be had.
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After being mobbed by the Best Buy Clone Army in the store across the street, I retrieved my weekend pictures from Minh’s camera. Here they are, in all their glory. I also finally added links to the other picture galleries I’ve posted in the past few months, so you can check those, too. Someday, I will write stories about this weekend, and that someday might be tomorrow, but you all know how my promises go.
Also, my stats page is broken, so I’d like for each one of you to e-mail me every time you visit the site. Make sure you make a note of each page you visited, too. Thanks.*
*Joke
I just experienced the best weekend in eight thousand years, and all 300 of the pictures I took are locked on Minh camera. Highlights include singing the absolute worst drunken karaoke version of Total Eclipse of the Heart to a bar full of drunks booing and mistaking a bowl of live leeches for licorice. There will be stories and photographic evidence soon, but for now, feast your eyes on my screaming roommate Rick.