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.

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.

Woo-Hoo

I have been writing for a few days now. Actual writing. Complete thoughts followed by more (related and compelling) thoughts. Best of all, I have been able to write them down.

I have been able to sit down amid all the chaos and tune it all out. Only me and the words. My words.

My kid, the hero

My son and I adopted two kittens on Saturday!

And that was basically the highlight of my weekend. There are few highlights in my work-filled life, as you can no doubt tell by reading this blog. My week pretty much starts Sunday afternoon at the restaurant and ends Friday night, again at the restaurant, interrupted only by time at the office and an hour or two of television and conversation with the kid when I get home. Save for the occasional dinner or drinks with friends and that little bank-robbing gig I have on the side, the only real highlights, the two things I look forward to with any sort of fervor are Thursday nights when The Office and 30 Rock are on, and Monday night, when I come home after my fourteen hour day and watch Heroes.


It's an exciting life, I know.


In order to catch Heroes though, I have to depend on my son to tape it. Yes, tape. We are one of the last families to still own and actually use a vcr. And because I have still not unpacked all the boxes from our move, I haven't yet found the remote control for said vcr. I did the responsible thing and packed all remotes in one box before the move. I even marked the box to avoid all of this hunting, but when I unpacked the box I found controls for the tv, my son's tv, the stereo, an air conditioner I no longer own, another stereo, an old dvd player that no longer works, my son's PS2, another remote for the tv, and an orb-shaped remote control with two buttons. I have no idea what it operates. But no vcr remote, which means I can't use the timer function on the vcr.


Thus, I am dependent on my son to turn on the machine and hit the record button at 9pm each Monday evening. This sounds like a simple enough task . . .


Last night the restaurant was dead so I was cut from the floor early, early enough to make it home by nine. But the kid was running low on deoderant (again, my life is exciting) and he'd used up all the ketchup and so had refused to eat anything in the house for two days, so I stopped at the grocery store on my way home. And I'd had to pick him up early from school yesterday because his "stomach was about to explode" which I think was code for "I want to go home and play with the kittens," but I bought it, and since he'd been "sick" all day, I ran through the drivethru because he'd said something about wanting french fries the night before. And I stopped to fill up with gas and picked him up a soda. Because he's my son. And I love him. And I do things for him. Because I care.


And when I made it home a few minutes before ten, I handed off all his goodies and settled into my chair, ready to stare at my favorite flashing lights. And he stared at me in horror when I asked him to put the tape in for me.


I just sighed.


He moped around the house for a few minutes, pretending to feel guilty for depriving me of my few moments of weekly joy. He even went so far as to pretend he wasn't interested in the fast food I brought home for him. I assured him that I wasn't mad (I wasn't) and finally convinced him to eat. After several minutes of silence, he offered the following excuse:


"It wasn't my fault," he said. "I was tired. And I fell asleep because the cats wouldn't get up from my lap."


I didn't buy it, but I told him it was fine and to stop obsessing. I really didn't want him to feel bad about it. I was annoyed, and I may joke around, but I don't want him to carry around a bunch of guilt. And it was, after all, just a tv show. I told him I'd watch it Saturday when they play it again. I would just have to avoid any spoilers online this week (I did not. I promptly logged in to tvguide.com to read a recap when I got to work. I suck).


So we went about our night, talked about his (half)day at school, about my night at the restaurant, about the newest video game he has to get for his sometimes-working XBox. But mostly, we sat around and watched the kittens play with a new toy I picked up at the grocery store. And there's something about watching ten-week-old kittens chase a feather on a stick and pounce on each other and roll around on the carpet that just makes everything all right. We sat in our chairs and stared at them, both of us grinning, mesmerized by these tiny, ferocious beasts, and the kid finally let go of his guilt.


Then he turned to me and said, "We could just watch them all day. We don't even need a tv."


And I must have had some stupid look on my face that reminded him about my forgotten recording because he blushed and looked down at the ground and said, "Well . . . "

You should check this out

One of my uber-cool friends has started a poetry journal. And no, not her own personal journal of poetry (though her poems rock and that would be fabulous too), but a literary journal. And she (and her co-founder) solicited some really great poets for their first issue. Here's the link:

http://www.diodepoetry.com/

Go. Read. NOW.

All five of you.

Burn, Philip Morris! Burn!

Sorry for the long absence, but I grew up in a polygamist sect and I had this little court thing to attend. You’re right, incredibly insensitive of me. Especially when the truth is that I’m just lazy.

So, much has transpired since my last pseudo-post before the big end-of-summer holiday. For one, I spent Labor Day weekend at the beach. That’s right, the beach! And I know what you’re thinking, what kind of fool goes to the beach on Labor Day weekend? Isn’t it just full of all those amateur vacationers trying to squeeze a few moments of desperate fun/relaxation out of the last bits of summertime? Isn’t it crowded and noisy and just entirely unpleasant?

Hah! I say. First of all I say this because my last vacation was almost two years ago: I traveled to Iowa to spend a week with my son over his spring break. In March. In Iowa. Iowa. Let me recap: I traveled from Virginia, where the average temperature nears sixty degrees in March, to Iowa, where it is known to snow well into April. The weather did not disappoint that year, and while the folks back here in ol’ Virginny were enjoying days spent reading under early-blooming dogwoods, I was enduring a full-on blizzard, a term which, by the way, was first used by an Iowa newspaper to describe and Iowa snowstorm sometime in the nineteenth century. That was my last vacation.

The friends with whom I spent this summer, seeing how much I’d been working lately, insisted I come along with them for their weekend at the beach, and though at first I balked – I really should have been moving in to my new apartment, not to mention I missed out on a Friday night shift at the restaurant and my son was flying back on Labor Day – they convinced me that a free (did I mention they were paying for everything?) weekend at the beach was deserved by me.

So I went. And for three wonderful nights I got my own room in their suite, complete with surfside balcony and privileges on their oceanfront balcony. We played in the ocean with their kids, we flew kites, we ate at all their favorite restaurants (including one really plush one overlooking the sound), we took afternoon naps with the balcony doors open, and I sat in the hot tub and took a sunrise stroll along the near-deserted beach. That’s right, I said deserted. See, we skipped the commercial, big-resort, boardwalk baloney of Virginia Beach and instead headed to the Outer Banks. And I have to say, for Labor Day weekend, it was under-crowded.

Of course, all of that joy and wonderfulness came to a too abrupt end, and I had to be back in the RIC Monday evening to pick the kid up at the airport and then rush off to my evening shift at the restaurant. Of course, I didn’t realize I would have to go through the gate to pick up the unaccompanied minor, and I had a purse full of lighters. Now I know that last statement makes me sound a bit sketchy, but allow me to explain. I lose things. All kinds of things. Especially the kinds of things that can be stuffed into pants pockets and apron pockets and purse pockets and you get the idea. So I am constantly leaving the 7-Eleven in the morning with my nicotine, only to discover that I’ve left my lighter on the windowsill at home or the pants I wore last night. Consequently, I end up owning at any given time between five and ten lighters.

And since the friends I was staying with have two adorable little girls, impressionable little girls, I had to be very careful not to leave any such dangerous flame-producing tools lying around, and all of them (the Bics, not the girls) ended up in the bag I was carrying all weekend at the beach and then to the airport, where I had to go through the stupid security checkpoint to pick up the kid, and where I had to pause to throw out six cigarette lighters from the bottom of said bag. The scary thing is, when I got to work later and was digging through the bag for a pen, I found a lighter I had missed. A lighter the Transportation Security Administration workers and their high-tech bag x-raying machine had also missed.

So, as payback for enjoying myself for a few days, last week was incredibly busy with work and moving in to the new place and work and registering the kid for school and shopping for furniture at thrift stores (okay, that was fun) and turning on utilities and more work. Then Sunday I came down with a cold, which turned out not to be a cold, but the bronchitis and all I have to say to that is, “Screw the bronchitis!” Okay, in an email to a friend earlier, I used the F-bomb, but I’m practicing restraint. I’m trying anyway.

And the worst part of it is, and you all knew this was coming, I have to give up smoking.

Fuck giving up smoking!

I said I was trying.

Stupid pulmonary inflammations!

So I spent much of this week, sitting in my half-furnished, half-moved into, entirely unpacked apartment, staring at undecorated walls and the kid’s sour mug, and praying for the Philip Morris plant on the south side of town to catch fire and send tobacco smoke spewing into the air and for a freak wind to blow it north west over my apartment. Not that I would be able to inhale anyway with all the hacking and wheezing I was doing. But a TSA bypassing girl like me can dream.

What up, Iowa?

Y'all seen this?

Iowa court rules same-sex couples can marry

That's right, people - former red state goes magenta!

I am so proud of my home state right now I could just pack up my things and move right back there . . . Wait, no.