I guess I’m writing a lot of fiction lately, hence the sparseness here. I’ve never been good with fiction, which breaks my little literary heart because I love to read and, like every writer in sixteen universes, want to write the most Perfect Novel Ever, and, well, that’s slow going as I’ve only successfully written three short stories in my lifetime, one of which involved twins with super powers and a man who sold his family’s organs for money. Yeah. The stuff I’m writing now is marginally better and less Hollywood, but still isn’t coming as quickly or smoothly as I’d like.
One summer when I was eighteen, I woke up to my Mom standing next to my bed, telling me JFK, JR., and Caroline had been killed in a plane crash. She switched on the radio in my room and we listened for a few minutes, and then she went downstairs and made French toast. But I remember specifically thinking that day, “Okay, this is when my story starts. From now on, I’m going to collect information, and one day, I’ll be ready to write a novel.”
Well. I’ve never had the epiphany I was convinced would strike. I’ve had several moments over the past few years where I felt that little creative tingle and thought, “This is it! I’m ready!” and then I sat down at my computer and typed absolute crap for fifteen minutes and moaned my existence and had some coffee and forgot about it. But what I’ve been doing instead — as everyone related to writing in the world tells you to do — is writing everyday, without censor. And, what do you know, an actual, fairly decent tale has emerged, one involving bricks and punk bands and brain injury and philosophy professors. So.
. . .
Life is steady. I’m waiting for something to drop. I don’t think the drama will ever leave me. I was driving home from school tonight and wondering if I should stop and get gas or wait until morning, and automatically, something in my brain clicked and said, “But what if you decide to stop for gas and this is the night a maniac decides to throw a lit cigarette in an oil spill?” Instead, I went home, and answered e-mails, and now I’m going to watch a movie with Chris. Tomorrow, I’ll wake up and go to work, and come home, and call about insurance, and mail some letters and read a new recipe and pet the cats. I think I’ve finally settled for evenness for a while. But there’s always that small demon of chaos that nestles in my stomach. For now, it’s going into my writing.
I began making a list of the repeated associations I have when certain situations come up. For example, whenever I have period cramps that make me want to rip out my uterus with my teeth and broil it, I think of Carmen Knight from the 12th grade telling me, in a very low whisper, that she had to take “horse pills” for her cramps. I had never heard that phrase before, so I automatically assumed she meant actual pills for horses. It’s not like I think about this every once and a while; this story pops in my head once a month at the first menstrual twinge, and has for the past six years.
The list is short so far, but the others include:
1. Pantyhose: again, with the Carmen Knight, probably in the same horse pill session, telling me she wears nylons under her pants if she doesn’t want underwear lines.
2. Every day, in the shower, the minute I reach for the shampoo, it’s an episode of Oprah from the 9th grade. She had a beauty expert on, and an audience member mentioned she had never heard her hair squeak before. Oprah was completely shocked, and practically screamed in her face,” YOU’VE NEVER HAD A SQUEAKY CLEAN SHINE?”
3. Mascara, at the end of the day: I’m taken back to 7th grade when my best friend Stephanie and our friend Collette were gossiping about a popular girl named Valerie. Stephanie said, in disgust, “And she never even washes under her eyes! There’s always yesterday’s mascara gunked up there!”
4. Underwear: whenever I find I’ve accidentally worn the same pair of underwear twice in a row, there’s a friend from UMD’s voice saying, “Well, I wear underwear several times in a row. I’ m clean. I don’t fart all that much.”
I’ll expand this list as I remember.
I had planned to go out last night and drink things with fun people, but Minneapolis decided to have a little blizzard, one which made even driving the two miles home from work a scary chore. So, my household stayed in and drank straight gin and played songs. Here’s some pictures.
This work thing sure makes me feel strange. I go to sleep at 11 and wake up a stranger, someone who wears nylons under pants. I tie my hair back because it suddenly feels inappropriate to have long tangly red hair in an office setting. I come home and can’t figure out where I am, so I nap on the couch. I’ll get used to it. But I suddenly feel like I don’t have time to be chaotic about much anymore.
(I owe people many e-mails. This weekend, I promise.)
So, my birthday party came and went, and all was well. Two hours before it started, I was in the worst mood ever in the history of the universe. I was sitting in the living room, thinking, “Okay, I have never been in a worst mood than this. Today, January 14th, will go down in history as the WORST MOOD EVER.” But, then, an hour later, for no reason I can discern, I laughed in one of the uncontrollable, crying, gut-aching fits I used to have all the time. Seriously. I don’t think I’ve laughed like that in two years. It all involved the word “katzenjammer,” and Scrabble, and so, the party went well. People played drums and flirted and groped and spilled shit and scared the cats and got in fights over board games and took pictures, and that’s good enough for me. I spent some time with people I normally wouldn’t talk to otherwise, and made a little peace with some inner grudges. It was also interesting to note who was there, and who wasn’t, and those observations also helped with the inner grudge.
I did set my cold back, but, eh, I’ll live. On Tuesday, I start my new job, which means, as I’ve mentioned before, learning how to wake before sunrise. I might die. But I’ll let you know.
I think this might be the first winter I consider myself a true (transplanted) Minnesotan.
. . .
MOM: Wow, it’s cold there.
ME: You have no idea.
MOM: It’s going to get cold here, too. I’ve brought out all the big blankets.
ME: Yeah?
MOM: Yeah, it’s going down to at least 40.
. . .
Unrelated:
Chris got his vaccinations for his upcoming Vietnam trip this morning.
CHRIS: I’m going to get really drunk at the party tonight and start pointing at people and screaming, “YOU can’t give me polio! YOU can’t give me typhoid! Wooooo!”
Not that he gets drunk.
My last evening being 23 years old found me sitting in my car in the school parking lot, waiting for someone to pick me up. Yesterday was the first day of class, and though I was still full of flu, I decided I couldn’t miss the first day, damn it. There was a snowstorm on my drive there and my windshield wipers broke, so by the time I actually reached the class, I was feverish and pissed at my car, and decided I should have Chris pick me up before I died. My first act as 24 was to retrieve said car this morning.
I’ve talked about my birthday more often than I usually do because 24 is an age I thought about often when I was younger. (Well, okay, 25, really, but 24 is close enough.) I was convinced by this age I’d be in grad school or married or famous or have shorter hair or something. I have none of those things and a few I don’t even want anymore, but, you know, I like where I’m at right now, for the most part. Though I really could’ve done without the car thing and the flu thing, but, that’ll pass. Unless it doesn’t. And then I’ll be dead, so I won’t care. Ah, optimism.
. . .
I made a decree today to take an honest picture of myself on my birthday every year from now on. So, here’s one, unflattering flu face angle and all. I still haven’t learned to smile for pictures:
Hey, ladies.
I don’t think I’ve ever had the real flu before, but here we are. I fell asleep at 10:30 last night, and woke at four AM, shaking and feverish. I now can say I’ve had genuine fever dreams — all neon colors and hyper-reality. I woke up to Chris on the floor, stretching his hamstrings. He, too, apparently fell asleep at 10:30, strange for both of since bedtime is always 2 AM, no matter the next day’s circumstances. He brought me Cheerios in a cup and some Advil, and then I re-woke in the afternoon. The Advil helps, but my body feels twice-removed and shivery. A new feeling, one I would ordinarily become panicked about, but I don’t have the energy.
This is an unfortunate time to be sick because: school starts tomorrow, my birthday party is on Friday, and then I start my new job the following Tuesday. Two of my other roommates are also down, so our house is littered with half-full cups of orange juice and zinc lozenges. The cats keep curling at our feet for warmth.
. . .
On the school note:
which is only reaches its level of fantasticness when compared to my previous semester’s grades (there was a much-needed year off in between these two grade periods):
Of course, 2003 was the year of the boyfriend trouble thing, the rampant anxiety attacks thing, the wildly exciting nervous breakdown thing, and here we are, 2005, with the good grades and the good job and the steady boyfriend and the nice roommates and friends. Of course, I still feel discontent, but so it goes.
Sometimes I find myself praying at odd moments, an old habit from pre-atheism, though I was never very religious. I’m always surprised at the sudden lightness in my body when my brain tries to convince me of a god — I’ll think, before I can stop myself, “Please please please let this plane not crash, okay?” And while that might not constitute as a prayer, it still feels like one because — who am I talking to? Myself? But the moment the command is made, I can feel my muscles shifting, as if something in my body is saying, “Whew, we don’t have to deal with this anymore. Let someone else take control.”
How easy it would be to let go of own personal internal logic and believe what I’m doing is pre-determined and guided. I think it’s difficult not to believe in some sort of God. If things don’t go my way, my anthem doesn’t involve the soothing words of, “This is God’s plan.” My mantra is something different, some version of, “suck it up,” some clarity, weight of shoulders and bucking up.
I believe I can safely say there won’t be a god for me, ever. My brain doesn’t wrap itself around that idea. My brain wants science. I want science to explode in my face. I want to go where science explodes. I want something beyond a god. God feels like sleepwalking, but for all the logic and faithlessness, there’s something that doesn’t go away, the small nameless part that craves surrender.
I guess I want to find relief without religion. How does that work? I’m too uneasy imagining my skin and a planet wilting on its axis, a planet that wobbles three inches to the right and destroys islands; a body that crosses an intersection at the wrong moment and expires. How is this reconciled? Is it just not reconciled?
I wasn’t able to think about these things for a long time. I used to contemplate planets and stop breathing. But I don’t feel like I’m on a quest. I don’t feel like a Chicken Soup spiritual warrior. I just want to fly on a goddamned airplane without resulting to prayer. I want the part of me that hopes to be still.
Well. Here we are, three days into the New Year, and my resolutions aren’t looking so well. I have, however, kept up with the dream journal I resolved to write, and have really enjoyed recording my dreams, which so far have included having sex with an amputee in a botanical garden and yelling at my ex-boyfriend in the middle of The Sharper Image because he had apparently turned into a candy kid.
Otherwise, since school hasn’t started back up yet and because no one’s choosing to hire me, I’ve reverted to my factory default, which is sleeping at 5 AM, waking much later than that, wearing the same pajama pants for three days and leaving the house only for minimal amounts. Today, I mailed some letters. I was going to start some sort of jogging routine this year, but couldn’t get motivated, so I jogged to the mailbox and called it a day.
I’m always so nervous about losing that first-of-the-year feeling. Even when I’m being a slug, I’m being the best slug I can be, all because I still feel that baby-fresh newness of January 1. I know by the end of the month, everything will be back to whatever it is, the fog or the routine or the grittiness. How to retain the satisfaction of the organized fresh start? I think that’s what I’ve been chasing.
I keep getting these surges of, “SHIT! NEW YEAR! I FEEL CREATIVE! MUST CREATE SOMETHING!” And then I sort of sit up in my chair a little and look around the room and pick up a pencil or a teacup or open a Word document or write something down in the planner my Mom always insists on buying me, even though I never use it and then I get the tingles of the muse, but I end up playing online Scrabble for an hour and then chewing on the end of my hair. Then I realize the surge was probably caffeine, since I drink caffeine about once a century these days, and then I wonder if chemical highs count towards a geniune happiness quotient, and so.
Speaking of ages (were we?), I’ll be turning 24 on the 11th, and to celebrate, I’m throwing myself a big party, one in which really all I want to do is sip free liquor and sit in a corner and take notes. More observation, less interaction, which, with the way I’m going lately, might be the easiest resolution I’ve made.