Dear world (self included):
Shut up about money already.
. . .
Also, isn’t it weird how huge, grueling/wonderful events in life inevitably get summarized into one sentence? For example: “Two years ago, I moved to Minneapolis.” What this does not say is: “I moved during a really hot week in June, and I was horribly sick with mono, and I carried all the boxes I could into the house before I collapsed on the front porch and cried into my hands like a little monobaby.” And that’s still only one sentence. Or, of course, there’s the: “He and I dated through most of school in Duluth.” So simple! It includes everything from his dirtied virginity in a Canadian hotel room to getting in a near fist-fight in front of a bookcase in my bedroom.
Sometimes, this helps me get through things, knowing it will all be a one-line summation soon, or is, already. Chris and I currently going through the annoying process of trying to find a new place to live, which is difficult when both of us are rather passive and hate calling strangers. Soon, however, it will just be: “I used to live __________, but then I moved to _______.” It makes me think the in-between doesn’t even matter anymore.
I’m trying to be quieter about my love poems to the world, so this will have to do. I think it’s time to stop getting that strange itchy feeling behind my eyes when I see an old man picking out soup at the grocery store — they all look like my father, who is old, but still very much alive and it would be wise to stop eulogizing before his time. I always feel like I can prepare for things like that, but you can’t and so.
The Rebel, so far, is not very good, but I don’t care. I keep dropping novel names like celebrities, and that’s not really my intention. I’m just suddenly interested in literature genres I never cared about before, and all of this has something to do with ___________.
In other news, I was out in the sun for 15 minutes today and have a full-on face burn.
EDIT: Interesting. At this time last year, I used almost the same title for a post. The Cure must mean Spring to me.
I’m amazed how absolutely stupified I lately become in front of people I consider mentors or idols or immensely hot. I’ve never been a great small talker with people I first meet, but over the years, I like to think I’ve cultivated a little charm, or, at least, some game. In high school, when I was at my most shy and prone to turning firetruck red the moment a stranger breathed at me, I had an after-school job as a waitress, and I sucked more than was universally possible to suck because I just couldn’t talk to people. I was fascinated by customers, and would be perfectly content to just stare at them or listen to their stories, but when it came to making small talk, I stuttured and inversed my words and my hands and chin would quiver. After a few years of college, I managed to the fake the small talk and learned how to manuever the conversation to a point where the other person felt comfortable enough to spill their guts.
Lately, however, my conquering of everyday conversation is slowly regressing. With friends, I’m fine. At work, I’m awkward, but I manage. But, Jesus Christ, in front of the few people I either a) have a crush on or b) see as a mentors, I can’t say anything. I literally open my mouth and move my tongue as if to form a word, and nothing comes out, not even air. At one point, someone I greatly admire in all sorts of the word, actually said my name and asked me a question, and I just stared in complete silence for 45 seconds until he nervously changed the subject.
I’m not quite sure how to conquer this, but I am thinking of attempting a mute act and writing everything on note cards. I would love to be able to write all responses to things — this is the precise reason I fell irrevocably in love with the internet in 1992, when, at age 12, I was in the process of quickly learning how inarticulate I was. Thank you, mean middle schoolers.
So, if you ever meet me in person, perhaps I will test this new note card engagement with you. No promises.
P.S.: I won first place in a poetry contest and received an actual monetary prize for it, which, I’m pretty sure, is the first time I’ve been paid for my writing. So, I’m a little giddy tonight.
I have only loved people with gentle hearts.
Here are some pictures from last night. Right now, my cameraphone is doing just as well as my regular camera, so everything is a bit blurry. Which is how last night was after a whiskey and a martini. I always want to order the pretty pink drinks, but I can never make myself do it. I think since I am so untough in every area in existence, I have to be tough with my liquor. Right? Right.
Also, two Mormons just came to our door and Abbey told them she couldn’t talk because she was in band practice, and that she played drums, even though Andrew is currently in the basement, playing his drums loud enough for the neighbors two doors down to hear. I don’t know why this is so funny, but it is.
Here’s something you might not have known: I’m engaged. Or maybe I’m married. Neither of us are sure what to call it. The second night Chris was back from Vietnam, we rented a hotel room in Duluth. He had a gig that evening, and I was sure he would be jetlagged and dragging, so I called on some work connections and found this fancypants room for the poor girl’s budget. And so, after the gig, right as I was about to take out my contacts, Chris sat on the bed, very nervously, and held out a blue velvet box.
This was surprising, for a number of reasons, and my mind went through all of them immediately. One, neither of us want to get married. It isn’t a commitment issue, but more a fundamental discomfort with the way marriage is handled in this country. I’m all for other people getting married, but I personally feel uneasy having the government regulate personal relationships (hi, gay marriage ban amendments, you filthy creatures). I also don’t enjoy how serious non-marriage relationships are treated — on forms, in conversation, in taxes, children, schools, loans, bank accounts, and more. If you’re not married or intend to be, it’s rare to find an establishment or a person to treat you just as seriously as your married counterparts.
Chris and I had discussed all of this in length, so I was frozen stiff on the bed as he opened the ring box, which contained two rings, both silver with peridot stones. Peridot is known for its evil spirit protection, a fact I learned because of the next thing Chris said. His speech went something like this: “Will you…protect from me evil? I know you don’t want to get married. And that’s fine with me. So, since we aren’t, I really wanted to show you how much I love you and how committed I feel. I want this to be the same sentiment as marriage, but without all the parts you don’t like about it. I know you don’t necessarily like all the traditions, but this is just my way saying I want to be married to you, in our own way.”
And I cried, and he cried, and it was all so wonderfully sentimental because we were in the town in which we fell in love, around the same time of year it occurred and it was snowing and the lights were all dim and rosy and everything was perfect perfect perfect. This happened well over a month ago, so the initial novelty has worn off, but I still can’t imagine any other way for things to be right now. I’ll try to lay off the sweet sweetness a little, but: really, Chris is it for me.
This isn’t to say things will never change, because things do change. I avoid forevers and eternities because I’ve been through enough things now where I can’t rely on that sort of linguistic foundation. But I feel it in my bones and my eyelids with him, and I’m so happy to be with Chris, in our own way, this way. We have always done things a little differently, but it works, and we work, and when people ask, I tell them I’m married. I feel how I would if we had gone through the ceremonies and the dresses and the parties and ribbons and cakes.
I’ve been taking a while to tell people because I’m almost terrified of sounding like a pretentious jerk, even though my reasons are personal to me only, and I’m happy about other people getting married and am not hiding any secret snarky thoughts about them. Also, it’s sort of hard to explain — the phone call to my mother was an hour plus, and I’m still not sure she understands, but she’s definitely supportive, and that’s all that matters to me.
This isn’t to say I won’t change my mind. I might decide, later on, that marriage isn’t the social change battle I want to engage in anymore. I was never a girl who dreamed about her weddings. All my Barbies had complicated sexual scandals, as opposed to happily-ever-after dream lives. I think I always imagined I would stay single or dating for years. I didn’t know there could be an alternative, and it makes me feel not only like I snuck past a gate, but also positively content and glowy. Not to mention protected from evil.
I keep on with it: if my personal religion consists of natural selection, then I shouldn’t be here. I had scarlet fever when I was 2, and whooping cough a year later. For a while, even medicine wasn’t saving me and I was slowly dying in a Californian hospital, refusing to eat and burning alive. But, eventually, something did kick in and I survived. Because of the fevers, I have horrible vision — legally blind without my glasses or contacts. I went to the optometrist last week, and spent an hour fumbling through the different offices without my seeing aids. I fell into walls and doorways and small children.
But if I didn’t live in the modern world with all of its modern candy, I’d be lost, unable to hunt or sleep or evade predators. And more and more, I’m craving this, somewhere away from the trainwreck humanity, the millions of people who were on track on at one point and then jumped the route to the point where even evolution is confused. But I couldn’t survive in the world to which I’m drawn. What kind of place is this?
I keep trying to make him, this new friend, my philosophy mentor, but it doesn’t stick. I dropped him off at his house, and we stayed by my car, him smoking, me flicking matches in the gutter. I told him all this — I’m not supposed to be here. Biologically, I should’ve passed when I was three. I shouldn’t even had made it this far. Wouldn’t that explain everything? But for all he knows, all the information he has locked up in his education (PhD) and his experience (Venice, New York, rock shows), he won’t humor my nihilism. He changes the subject, touches my hair to make a joke, kneels down to rub a stray cat’s tummy.
Who’s going to tell me natural selection doesn’t apply anymore?
1. Atheism
2. Vegetarianism
3. Whiskey
4. Jealousy
5. Tator tots
“On occasion, I danced for nights on end, ever madder about people and life. At times, late on those nights when dancing, the slight intoxication, my wild enthusiasm, everyone’s violent unrestraint would fill me with a tired and overwhelmed rapture. It would seem to me — at the breaking point of fatigue and for a second’s flash — that at last I understood the secret of creatures and of the world. But my fatigue would disappear the next day, and with it, the secret.”
Albert Camus, The Fall
This pretty much sums up 50% of what I’ve been trying to write for the past five years.