Chris just called me from a phone booth in a square in Nafplion, Greece, where he’s visiting his sister, who’s studying abroad. It was pouring rain and sleeting, but all the phones in the hotel were rotary, and the only touch tone was a mile away. So, he grabbed his coat and umbrella and when his family and sister’s friends asked where he was going, he said, “I have to go see about a girl.” And then he walked a mile in huge winds and golf-ball hail just so he could wish me a Happy Thanksgiving. His umbrella broke on the way, so he put his coat over his head, but it was too windy to even do that, so he braved the last half-mile bare-headed and drenched. Let me just say, so far, this has been the best Thanksgiving yet. Sometimes I forget that he and I have a continually beautiful love story.
I’m starting to see traces of what old is going to look like in my face. I’ll only be 25 in a few months, which is still young enough for people 20 years older than me to say, “Hey, did you hear about Ralph? He banged a 25-year-old!” But the dark circles and thin lines under my eyes that used to fade a few hours after I woke up tend to stay all day now. I have a deep groove in my forehead that wasn’t there five years ago and traces of lines on each side of my mouth. It’s nothing that bothers me; in fact, I’m excited for my face to age. I’ve never recognized my face. I look in the mirror and it’s more of a, “Huh.” It would take me a minute to pick my face out of a line-up. But with these additions, the smallest of indications that my body is changing, I’m starting to know my face. I have a feeling in 15 years, I’ll finally catch myself in a store window and think, “Oh, here we go.”
I’m really nervous about missing the first snow, for some reason. It’s such a bizarre cold season already, with the no snow and it being, you know, MINNESOTA. But now there’s this tension and I feel like I have to see the first snowflake fall or I’ll be cursed. I don’t know why.
EDIT: 5 minutes after I posted this, I was doing dishes and zoning out in front of the kitchen window, and I saw one snowflake fall. I thought it was wishful thinking, but then there was another one and another, and, so, no curse for me.
P.S.: The These Modern Socks album is the best local album I’ve heard all year. I feel only so-so about all-ecompassing superlatives. Man. I suggest everyone get it, except it’s an interesting scavenger hunt to find it. I went to a show last weekend, and afterwards, couldn’t find a table anywhere. I finally had to snag one of the musicians, who took me to a tiny table in the back, hidden by a tree, where I then bought a CD from a very nice woman who didn’t have any change, so she just took what cash I had. But the hunt was worth it — their live show was pretty amazing, but this CD…I don’t know. There’s something about it. I’m interchanging listening to it with John Hermanson’s solo CD from 1998 (another A+ album), and feeling at ease with the music world, if nothing else.
This shyness thing has run its course. I don’t even think I’m necessarily shy; it’s something else, some extreme need to avoid causing discomfort in myself and other people. For example, I needed a set list from a band last night, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask. I tried to enlist Erik in helping, but, as he lived through many years of me hiding and making him be my assertive wingman, he declined and called me a wuss.
I just thought — this musician doesn’t want me interrupting his conversation and asking for a set list. He wants to relax after his show, lean against the bar, think about nothing. He doesn’t want a stranger interjecting. Mary finally ended up asking, and even though I engaged in small conversation with the musician, I still managed to avoid eye contact and blush to my belly button.
As I’ve said a million times, I want to do things creatively and in a public forum, but I want to be anonymous. I don’t want anyone to connect me in real life (short-waisted, spare eye-contact, inappropriate jokes, mascara that ends up smeared on my cheeks and hands by the end of the night) with whatever creative persona I have. I should’ve done everything anonymously to begin with, but there’s a section of ego that demands truth.
I want to get to a point where I do a lot of listening and not talking, but the problem is that I always need to sell myself as an interested listener first. I think most people believe no one really wants to hear what they’re saying; sure, people will small talk to death and laugh and say the right things, but inside, I really think the majority assumes what they’re saying is boomerang material, endlessly bouncing off, not striking anything important.
So, whenever I meet people, I have to somehow convince them that I want to listen and that I’m intensely interested in anything they want to tell me. But, as usual, I don’t want the reciprocal — maybe it comes back to the discomfort. I’m discontent in my own life, so I don’t want to talk about it. I feel like when I try to think of things to say about myself, nothing sounds geniune because I have a half-assed heart behind the words. The discontentment has been a life-long battle; my logic tells me happiness lies within, but there’s a saboteur lurking, a result of too much self-indulgence and overactive worry pathways.
So, the perfect world for me would be this: either everything I want and doesn’t seem attainable becomes attainable and I finally feel comfortable sharing details, or everyone I meet has an inner instinct alerting them that I just want to blend in, be only an ear. They’ll know I want to absorb their stories and worries into my cells and carry them with me, complicated hexagonal reminders to be compassionate. At the end of the nights, I feel split open and unprotected. The perfect world would provide a shield, some barrier against my onionskin intentions and everyone else’s need to know things. Only I want to know things; I’ll be the thief and they can be the confessor.
WELL, how about this caffeine thing? I stopped drinking caffeine 3-4 years ago, but I’ll have a small taste every now and then on particularly sleepy days. (As in, today, when I couldn’t sleep because I watched too many Sopranos episodes before going to bed, and, consequently, had half-awake Jersey-accented violent nightmares.) But, zing! Now I’m in a cheerful, productive mood. What needs to be done? Who needs a hug?
Okay, I had a super cursey angry rant here, but I’m going to save it for next week when it’ll have better timing. Trust me! My impulsive temper has fucked me over more than once, so I’ll take a breather here and delay the tantrum.
So! Let’s have a list of good things instead:
I love how Chris and I endlessly talk and debate and discuss and joke. We still have all-night conversations about absolutely everything imaginable and sometimes we argue and often we disagree, but we listen to each other and believe in the healthy sport of debate. I’ve never had this with any of my relationships past — this ability to sit with someone and sift for hours through the fine details and the bullshit.
I have the greatest co-workers in the history of all co-workers.
Goddamn, pumpkin-flavored anything. I won’t tire of it.
A heating pad on tense muscles. The feeling of breathing hot steam. Limes and the juice they provide. The fact that I thought I’d liked certain foods and spices and beverages for years, when it turns out I actually only liked their names or their colors (hello, amaretto, cilantro, criminis, blueberries, bok choy, arugula, brie, and on).
The idea that there’s poetry in everything, everything, which is one of the main reasons I enjoy philosophy so much. Even Nietzsche, bastard and hypocrite he was, has poetry everywhere in his essays even though he claimed poetry was full of thoughts that “couldn’t walk.”
The smorgasboard of people I know — all ages, all types, all professions, all from different parts of my life, all colorful and beautiful. Is that cheesy? Well. I like cheese. GET IT.
Cetaphil. Sitting at my desk in my underwear with a wide-open window. The subtle loveliness of The Remains of the Day, and the way Emma Thompson cries in the shadows as the bus drives away. My green protection-from-evil ring. My parents.
The idea that Chris and I are family, that we communicate openly (some would say too much), that we trust each other so fully and know neither of us would ever harm each other. The way we give each other a wide berth of freedom and independence and the way we smother the cat with all sorts of catly love, leading us both to realize we’ll be great parents someday and that we want to be parents, and that if we felt financially and life-ly ready right now, we would be parents.
Um. What? Where was I? Oh. The fact that I still love the taste of whiskey and the smell of cigarettes and the feel of other people’s skin and my ability to see through everyone, but not even care because I love them for being alive, and, well, I had a really shitty day today, the type where I was holding scissors in muderous rages, and now I’m overdosing on this gratification list — did I just tell you I’m ready to be someone’s mother? The cat’s good enough for now, thank you very much. But seriously. Things are very dark for me, often. It’s a brain chemistry thing, it’s a nihilist thing, it’s a 20something thing, who knows. But I feel joy in the details, and so it is.
Ooh, because Sarah mentioned her day/month colors in a comment, here’s my complete, fascinating list. I’ve associated these colors with months/days since the end of the time, and they’ve never changed. I should mention, too, in my head, these colors are all on some sort of gradiant.
January: light pink
February: copper
March: white
April: green
May: white, with a hint of pink
June: dark pink
July: red
August: brown
September: light blue
October: orange
November: dark brown
December: also light blue
Monday: pinkish-red
Tuesday: brown
Wednesday: medium blue
Thursday: purple
Friday: orange
Saturday: light yellow
Sunday: gold
I also associate colors with people, too, that don’t seem to follow any particular pattern. Like, Chris is greenish-blue and my Mom is red.
Pink and brown is where it’s at, I guess.
It’s early hibernation in these parts, which means I spent my Halloween weekend cleaning the apartment and falling asleep on the couch fully-dressed at 10 PM. For two nights in a row, I’ve been woken by screaming sirens, which is a downfall of living across the street from a police station. For Halloween, I was a sleepy girl with raging allergies. I’m allergic to everything, even my own eyes, apparently, as they’re aching under the weight of rotting-leaf mucous or whatever this year’s killer allergen is.
I’m learning I enjoy interviews, as in conducting them with people for the purpose of articles, if only because they feel like the type of first date I’d like to go on. I think I’ve been on two dates in my entire life, having fallen into my relationships the old college way, with the drinking cheap vodka in dorm rooms until 8 AM and realizing that you kind of like the person. But the interview: the interviewee is usually nervous, unsure if they’re talking too much or too little or spilling everything or not enough. I like to just sit back, let the recorder do its work, and study the people, who are mostly not used to talking about themselves, but are rather giddy to do so, so much their cheeks are flushed and their hand gestures wild. Someone pays for coffee. At the end, if it went well, you feel like you’ve made a new best friend and – do you hug? Seems inappropriate. So, handshake or awkward funny hand gesture.
In that vein, I never know what to do when I meet someone I’ve corresponded with through e-mail or other online means. I’m so much looser with words and so inarticulate in person. I met a very kind, very talented guy who’s given me a lot of breaks in the past year, even though he had no reason to other than the sweetness of heart. I stood up, shook his hand, and smiled, but I felt suddenly bizarre and misplaced: I think I’m often afraid of my own capacity to be overemotional because it’s there, you’ve all read it, so I do some Minnesotan thing where I stiffly hold it back and hope the person knows what I mean. I save all my emotion for endings of sad movies and random bursts of irritation when Chris and I have spent too many hours together and are picking at each other like siblings.
November is a brown month to me, as opposed to the orange of October and the light blue of December. November has been a notoriously depressing month for elections. Clint, an old friend who was hit by a car two years ago and didn’t survive, had a birthday this month. But I don’t necessarily feel weighted by the browness or even obligated to observe it. What am I saying? It’s 1 PM on a Tuesday and I should be doing other things, but tonight will be caramel apple cider, some book worthy of Fall and impending Winter restlessness, which is different from my summer restlessness, a little slower and colder. I’m jealous of everything and trying to forget, so it’s burrowing time.
And to think, I was going to tell you a funny story about sharks and hot dogs. How does this happen?