What I Really Want to Say I Can't Define

House is quiet. Morning. Not making the mistake of turning on the television again today. Maybe later. Maybe not.

Let’s see how this goes. I need to write. Write write write write write fuck it just write and I am having trouble with the typing today although autocorrect has taken care of almost all of it for me and that is lovely too much automation maybe maybe not.

Been talking to Manny’s friend Adam a lot lately because I hang out with Manny all the time and he hangs out with Adam, and anyway we’ve been having the same conversation it seems in different ways. Maybe that’s just the linguist in me: maybe Adam sees them as very separate and distinct conversations, but to me they have all been about the same thing and that is the search for meaning and whether or not searching for meaning is the same thing as searching for god. It’s a difficult conversation for the two of us to have because we disagree on two fundamental levels – first of all, Adam tells me that my trying to make meaning of the world is strictly a spiritual (he uses the word ‘religious’) enterprise. 

I tell him that business is his religion.

He doesn’t like the statement and I can tell he doesn’t like the statement so I start to back off a bit. Then I remember that I taught students like him new ways of thinking in my comp classes. Even the ones who thought I was an idiot.

I got this.

I am the authority in my subject; Adam is a dabbler. I wouldn’t try to lecture him on economic theory. Okay, I would. But only insomuch as most economic theory is only a piecing together of sociological, or political or psychological theory and is therefore nothing more than the study of humanity for economic gain. I think he’d tell me that’s a reductionist argument, and I would agree, but again – diametrically opposite levels – I wouldn’t view that as an inherently bad thing. Mostly, I think, because I am willing and able to understand both the complexities and simplicities of a thought. That makes not a bit of sense.

I lost track of the thought.

So clearly, the statement was false or at the very least incomplete as if to say I can understand the thoughts, I just don’t have the language to express them, which is an argument many linguists and philosophers discuss often – are we able to have a thought if we do not have the language to express it. It’s the other thing I think Adam and I disagree on, whether or not meaning is made or found, or both. It’s a discussion of a priori knowledge. In other words, do we find meaning first or language first? If we find meaning first, is our expression of it limited by the language available to us and if so, is the knowledge consequently corrupted? And if it is the reverse, if we can find no meaning without the language to understand it, is our knowledge constricted by the language we already possess?

These are questions that keep me up at night. Keep me thinking. All the time processing the world around me – from the inane television commercial that suddenly raised the room’s volume by fifteen decibals to the squirrel that peeks out at me from behind the big oak each morning when I walk. These are important questions to me. To a lot of people, I think. More people than realize it. More people than will ever even consider the questions. But I have. And I can contribute to the conversation. And I think I have a lot to share.

So why should I be spending my thinking time trying to solve problems other people are perfectly capable of and content in figuring out?

I know how that sounds and I really don’t care anymore. It feels good. I used to not care and I don’t know exactly how I let all that doubt creep back in again, but I’m seeing more of it each day and remembering the intelligent, articulate, educated woman who doesn’t understand why the uninformed, inarticulate, uneducated people about me believe I am the one who is wrong, just because we don’t think alike.

Back to the Question

Just got off the phone with you.  I was washing the last of the dishes from camping this weekend and thinking about the questions I’ve asked you over the years that you haven’t answered.

It still amazes me how you can always get me to be so honest with myself, but you brush my questions aside as though I hadn't asked. And I always let you. Even though you are the one who taught me not to avoid them, how to find the answers, to get the damned thing over with so I could stop wasting years living a dishonest life. Even if it hurt. You taught me how it was going to hurt anyway – that’s just how life works.

But the joy is greater when you are honest, when your subconscious mind is clear to sleep at night. It saved my life, that advice. More than once. Rather than have the obsessive thoughts stuck on repeat in my brain like  a cassette stuck in the player of your old fiero, it’s easier to answer the questions and move on. Move on. That’s what you taught me. 

You can’t move on until you answer the questions at hand. Well, you can, but then you keep having to come back to them anyway, so you might as well just answer them and then go forward. That’s what you taught me. Sometimes, it is my undoing, but overall it keeps my life simple. Even though my mother would argue otherwise. Maybe a few other people too, but I think their lives are complicated, so . . .

Unshaped

I sit on a lawn chair that straddles the firewood strewn about the ground. My friend sits next to me on an old van seat, beside the bearded dude, the one who it turns out knows my friend’s brother in the farming town somewhere around here. Where the rest of this group lives. My friend’s friend is at one of the picnic tables with the mother of the toddler and a couple who look like they may have been awake since their teen years. The toddler hovers near the campfire. Mostly. Sometimes he meanders to the woods’ edge, and a few times past the parked cars and into the gravel road. The child’s mother lifts her head off the table once or twice to ask after him, but otherwise leaves him to his adventures.

Across from where I sit is another picnic table and another group of twenty-somethings, all with the same high, broad forehead. Similar narrow jawlines, thin lips. The man and woman at the side closest me sit with their backs to the table and to the two men on the other side. All of the men wear baseball caps and the same long, unshaped hair, two of them towheaded. Aside from the bearded dude on the van seat beside my friend, the pig-tailed chick at the second table is the only one interacting with us at all. The rest of them, including the sleeping dog on the other van seat pay little mind to anything outside their own group and the blunt being passed around.

Wow, this is so dry. Trying to write about this all day and it’s just been so slow going so carefully choosing my words, each word, all day today. It must be time to edit. To make things sound amazing and brilliant. Confidence. Keep the confidence. I started to waver and was going to write something qualifying about that, like as brilliant as I can be or at least like I want things to sound. I needed to let the sentence stand. Not just let it stand but stand behind it. I have talent. I have been telling myself otherwise or at the very least letting my failure and lack be proof that I have no talent but I know that isn’t true. I have the talent. 

There will be no failure. No more lack.

Defying Gravity

In the mood for showtunes today. In need of this one:

Writing, Rambling, and Roaming

I’m watching an old episode of will and grace which got me thinking about my mom somehow. Hmm. No idea. I want to free write and was going to lament how I couldn’t but quickly backed away from that bullshit I need to just do it I have nothing else going on and I need to say something maybe the freewriting isn’t helping because I spend all of it telling myself what it is I need to do instead of just doing it but then I am just doing the same shit in my head if I’m not writing it down so I guess at least I am writing it maybe maybe that is okay maybe I am just making excuses for myself I definitely can’t type I want to drive again.

 I need to pay off the last of my fines and get a car and drive again. I miss it so much.

 I need a drive out in the country. An aimless drive to the bounds of my familiarity and comfort. Wandering. Without worry for time or responsibility or obligation. And when I find my destination, I will know it. I will pull over and get out and lean against the front of my truck and look out over everything and just be at peace again, having found the purpose of my drive, and knowing I am free to ramble down the road whenever I want to, and even to roam completely off the path.

Buildup

I'm hating the pills.

I despise this medication. Imposed medication. Just medication. Whatever. Unimportant. Which is exactly why I hate this medication.

Only now I have forgotten that reason. I sit, stare at the blinking cursor, trying for my next thought, willing the words to pop into being, like a tiny universe being born. But as it has been lately, it is all gaseous buildup and no explosion - just a whole bunch of excited molecules with no place to go . . .

and i even lost track of that mother-fucking thought . . .

Get Back On It

Off today. Off-kilter. Off-center. Off my game. Just off. See? I’m not even sure where to take this from there. Stuck on one word. Writ of one- to three-word phrases that if you read them aloud the way I hear them in my head would sound poetic and not so much self-defeating. 

Soul

Listening to some music. House itself is quiet since I have my headphones on. I’m sure the chair I’m dancing in is making some squeaking noises and I may or may not be singing along at various points where I know the lyrics. Funky. Not the music. Well, the music too. But I’m feeling funky. Been so lost these last few days. Weeks. Years. I lost it. lost touch with whatever it is that causes a writer to write. Well besides the draw of money or fame, and not that I wouldn’t enjoy both of those immensely, but writing solely for either of those reasons or even both of them is great and contributes to the broader artistic spectrum and blah, blah, blah but it lacks soul.

Come on, I’m not being a snob here but you can tell the difference. The difference between “According to Jim” and “Modern Family.” I should probably talk about something more literary but I’m not a snob about television at all and am in fact addicted to this medium so I will as I have always done on this blog and elsewhere continue to talk about it frequently. But back to my point, and I hope you are following this because I am sure having a tough time keeping up, the difference between the two shows isn’t in the humor or acting (okay, maybe a little), but in the poignancy, in the way each episode makes you think and reflect and feel.

Watch Belushi bluster about and be a cartoonish version of the stereotypical football watching suburban dad and it’s funny because you’ve seen that guy and maybe hung out with that guy and probably paid that guy ten bucks to jump off of something when you were all drinking once, but it doesn’t make you think about too much else. Watch the episode of Modern Family where Mitchell surprises Cameron with his participation in a flash mob, after they’ve spent the entire episode bickering about how Mitchell isn’t nearly spontaneous enough and needs to just let go more often.

You laugh when Cameron tries to dance along on the side, feeling self-conscious, maybe a little dejected. You laugh because you know that is his character, maybe a little stereotypical (but played with so much more depth), and how much he loves to cut loose. Instead he is relegated to the sidelines. And it makes you think about times when you realize someone’s just done something great for you, given so much of themselves to you, and you somehow wish it was more, or different, or from someone else entirely.

Poignancy.

Does it make you think? And not think about unimportant shit, but does it make you motherfucking think? Do you understand yourself a little bit better because it made you think? Because it made you feel. Because it made you remember that we are all only human and we are all to be pitied and laughed at just as much as we are to be rejoiced and reviled.

That's the difference between art with soul and art without soul. And since I have a soul, I have no choice but to be an artist with soul. It will be my downfall either way.

Congratulations, Patty!

 

How Love Turns Out

This morning I was going to send you an email wishing you a great day because it was so beautiful outside and I'd had fun last night and let go a little bit for the first time since getting back here and Manny had called me on my shit about being hard on myself and making up even harsher things I think other people are thinking of me and he was so right man and I saw it and we all laughed about it. I have to change. I've been trying to change that all my fucking life. But it was beautiful out this morning and I thought of telling you I hoped you had time to get outside and enjoy it maybe take your dogs for a walk because it would be so good for your soul but before i logged on this morning I went for cigarettes. I walked through this historic district that turns abruptly and without notice into the crack district where I bought smokes and toilet paper because I am still not organized enough to remember such things when i should and I'm sorry I let you feel like you needed to take care of me and my shit because the truth is I hate that more than ANYTHING yet I somehow find myself with people who do that and then resent it and I resent the resentment as well as my very existence and it all goes downhill from there.

Before I could send your email I had one from you. Move on. That's what you said. As if I am a dog who stayed too long in your yard. I have been waiting for it. Known it was coming.

Thank you for finally doing it.

Even more than that, thank you for finally being the one to break me of that bad habit I had of trying to be the better person. I have needed it done for years. No one else will hurt me. Not ever again. Thank you for teaching me the very thing I have needed to learn most.

Ruthlessness.

Indiscrete

I hope you are happy. 

Not stress-free, but happy. There's a difference.

Like between 'discretion' and 'dishonesty.' 

        Acceptance and

    

     acquiescence.

Monday

Music is awesome.

Compulsive

I turn my head to blow smoke through the iron bars of a fence where we stand talking about language and politics and life's bullshit tragedies. Some bicyclist whizzes by too close on the sidewalk. Would have served him right if I had blown smoke in his face. He’s supposed to ride that shit on the road. Whatever. Pretty sure I’m supposed to be smoking at home in my closet where I don’t bother another soul with my vile habit, yet I take another drag. Another day I might’ve exhaled toward the whizzer on purpose, maybe even stepped into his path accidentally just to be an ass and remind him why he shouldn’t ride so close to the edge.

I also tell Manny’s friend about everything that came after. About finding out I can only take care of me. About finding out how much I had forgotten and how much I have yet to learn. About being me.

In These Lines From Time to Time

I do remember the story you sent me.

In fact, this story has become part of my own. The story of me and how I've grown to be me and continue to try to be a better me even though I fall flat on my face most of the time by tripping over my own shoelaces I refused to tie just because someone else suggested I lace them up. The memory of you sitting in Anderson House while we workshopped this story and I was already forming a kinship with you in my head, just as an artist, as a fellow traveler who'd visited some of the same strange and dangerous lands, that's one of the memories that sticks with me and plays in my mind whenever I call for it.

I shared it with her once. Not so much the details of your story or your poem with the same title, but the recognition of a sister, a soul mate, and how once you found one in this world, she would always be a part of you.

I Will Not Pretend

I want to talk to you but I don’t know how anymore. I don’t know what to say. I get nervous and uncertain about where we stand as friends, where we stand in our recoveries, and I always end up saying something stupid. Kicking myself. And then I try to fix it. I am like the awkward heroine in some sitcom who is always getting herself into her own trouble. Maybe the heroine’s buddy who gets into her own trouble. Regardless. I miss you. Talking like we once used to, speaking to you more honestly than I even speak to myself sometimes.

Thank you for always challenging me to be true.

Neurotic

We stand in the grass beside an iron fence as I light a cigarette.  I blow smoke between the prison-like bars to avoid hitting a bicyclist in the face. I’m not always an ass. Adam and I talk about accidents. About how life has this tendency to suddenly and inexplicably hit you with an inordinately large pile of steaming hot shit. Out of nowhwere. Right in the damned face. And you have no choice but to stand there and pretend you’re not wearing shit. We talk about other stuff too. But mostly I tell him what happened to us.

Manuel sits on my suitcase. It’s a vintage 1978 American Tourister with western braiding that I bought at the thrift store on my way over to visit him, and I am not certain it’s strong enough to support him. We keep talking, but I start checking over my shoulder.  Manny’s going to crush my fucking suitcase. I’m certain of it.

Adam quotes Chomsky through a nicotine haze. 

I Met a Young Girl

This song came up in my sister's ipod rotation last night or the night before and we both had to stop and sing along. My nephew had no idea what the song was, but as usual, implored me to stop butchering it. I did not acquiesce. Music is for singing. Joyfully. Let others make the noise joyful.

I really can't sing.

I also really don't care.

Anyway, 7-Second Rule coming soon . . . umm, this song came on and it just made us both stop. This was my introduction to Edie Brickell and my adult introduction to Dylan and folk music and the poetic beauty of those protest songs.

When the movie starring that guy from Top Gun came out, I was in the second month of my delayed enlistment into the Air National Guard. I was a senior in high school, set to enter basic training a month after graduation. The Berlin Wall had fallen. That other big meanie was about to fall; there was no reason not be in the military. We had no threat. Sure, my cousin was always getting involved in some third-world skirmish, but he was some special security detail. I was going to fix airplanes. At worst, I would be stuck on a highly guarded air base in some friendly third-world country. And in exchange there would be college money.

7 seconds . . .

I love this song. I knew this version first, so it will always hold a special place with me.

Godspeed to the men and women serving around the world. Thank you for your courage and sacrifice.

And I Tell Myself

Tonight I stand under pine trees much older than the decaying-before-their-time condos where my sister lives and stars dimmed by the industrial haze and excessive heat in the air. Melancholy. It is how I feel. But it isn’t such a bad thing tonight. It is not pain, but ache. Pain alloyed with pleasure. Like the way my soul aches for yours and will never again be satisfied. That kind of ache is nourishment for the soul of a writer. Anguish will slow you down. Anguish is a bitch. But ache. Ache is what gets monuments built.

Badass

We stand in the grass beside an iron fence as we blow smoke into the air. I’m pretty sure I saw signs somewhere saying we can’t smoke outside, but I can’t remember,  and Adam and Manny are smoking so it clearly is okay. If not, I will just get a ticket and have one more item of proof for future historians that we now live in a police state. I’ve been feeling more reassured these days. Sure of myself. I guess. Smoking in public and not caring about rules made up by the same people who profit off the taxes and revenue we generate. Not to mention the civil fines.

Fuck them.

And that’s pretty much my general attitude as I stand beside the iron fence and blow smoke between the bars this time in order to avoid hitting a bicyclist in the face.  

Looping

I am not shitting you I was in the middle of this sentence - the last sentence of this today when my sister called to say she’d just passed our mother on her way here for a surprise inspection or as she merely calls it "a visit" and after entertaining her for an hour and a half during which she sat in my chair and played some sort of dice game with my nephew for which they used the Yahtzee box lid, and the rules for which I couldn't get but seemed to me like something I'd seen played in a back alley in Japan, I am just now, eight and some partial hours later, getting back to this particular freewrite. I had a point. Then. When I was writing it. But now after an entire day of polite conversation and preschool conversation and the narration in my head, I do not know where I was going when I began.

I spend too much time on the internet reading the news which only serves to depress and/or anger me if not both at once which is what it usually is because as I told you before, I am dichotomous.  I have to make sure to stop every so often to write something down. If I read too many articles back to back to back, follow too many links deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, then I find it very difficult to get back. And I’m kind of tired of the return trip.

All about the mixed metaphor today.

Okay. Every day.

Anyway, I’m kind of, you know, an angry radical feminist.  Sometimes when I’m trying to get along and not cause trouble, I pretend not to be so angry or so radical or such a damned feminist, but it does no good. The yellow wallpaper eventually closes in.

My lesson to myself today is what it has been all my life but the thought of all my life is overwhelming and filled with uncertainty of detail

I have no idea what today’s lesson was. Bastards.  I was trying to think about how to maintain, you know, about how to not let myself go too far and to always step back. I have to step back. I’m supposed to write all this shit down. I’m a historian. My job as writer. As artist.

So maybe I’m just a recordkeeper. Or the lady who keeps minutes at church meetings.

You Can Work on That Anytime (or No Time at All)

Did Hemingway have to deal with this?

Or Carver?

While Jefferson was writing the Declaration did his sister arrive midsentence to distract him from his thought? Was there a sequel he never got to because someone always seemed to need dinner made or the laundry carried in or their ass wiped, and he was, after all, “just writing?”

Lesson #2

When you've accepted that you're an asshole sometimes, you can start to forgive yourself for those times.

Nurture

Several persons whom I love dearly are at the moment dealing with issues of great weight – physically, emotionally and spiritually. I want to be for them what they have been for me, yet I feel I never measure up. I never know what to say. I do not provide the right kind of support. I am not a nurturer. I got stuck in a room listening to a radio sermon yesterday in which the preacher was talking about just this thing and about how the most important thing was just to be there. Just be there. It made sense, because that is what is most important to me about the ones I love. Just being with them. There’s reassurance and warmth and hope and just all kinds of gooeyness. Unless you are me and you make it awkward by trying way too hard (and if you are me, you will make it awkward).

The thing is, I am broke. My own deadbeat fault of course. No work = no money. Who knew? But I had my own shit to get through or I was just going to get stuck in that place of barely functionable for even longer. I have to take care of me before I can take care of anyone else. And I hadn’t been taking care of me. And I’m pissed at myself for it, but there’s no point kicking me anymore or I’ll never be able to get anything accomplished, I’d just lie there on the floor, crumpled from the blows to the abdomen.

And really, what’s the point in that?

Back to the original point of this ramble, which I have now forgotten because of something my little hippie friend Emily has named the “7-Second Rule” which has something to do with the amount of time you can pause after a tangent before the point of the original discussion is lost forever, but alas I have remembered:

To those I love and who love me- Please know that I am here. Always here. Maybe a little crazy and disorganized, but I am here. And in every way but physically, I am there.

Lies From the Tablecloth

Have this cranked on the headphones and thought I would share with you fine people.