Saturday, October 17, 2009

rage, rage against the dying of the light

i will be first to admit, and with little remorse, that i am a savage and i speak like one too. last week, on a rant about useless pseudo-celebrities, i referred to kim kardashian and her sisters as walking, well-shaped holes who need to shut up and get fucked, and stay out of the public eye. because, well, let's face it, it's the truth. these past couple of weeks, i've been referring to our class as "those retards"- not the autistic kids i work with closely, but the other kids, the "normal" kids in our mainstream class who act like a.d.d.-addled monkeys. i'm on this fairly intense "hating children" kick, truth be told. they're all stupid and i can't believe i ever wanted one at any point. proof that i too am stupid.

well, so anyway, i am oviri and i fucking well like it like that.

judith warner's blog in the new york times today, titled "i feel it coming together" is about watching her kids come into their own and the passing of the flame. the flame of life, know what i mean? because she's forty-something, because her kids are hitting the teenage years, because she's... well, because she is a fucking idiot she sits around sniffling about how beautiful it is that she's done with longing and intensity and how sweetly nostalgic it is to see her daughter so full of potential, blah blah blah. seriously? is this what we aspire to as human beings? to have kids and drop out of the flow of things? to have kids and be done with longing? to have kids and "hit a plateau- not so bad after all that"- except it is bad! a plateau?? to stop growing and changing and wanting and fighting and raving and screaming and thinking and being conflicted and being exhilarated etc etc? never. never ever ever. i never ever ever want to be THAT person. sitting around, fat and content, waiting for the grave. not in way that denies aging- i will be old someday, someday not too far away, really, because our lives are short and our bodies deteriorate, whatever modern attitudes and science say about the matter- but i will never be old and decrepit and without longing in my head, where it matters. may i drop dead before that happens.

since i have known myself, i have been a conflicted, questioning, seeking, writhing mass of doubts and pieces that don't quite fit and passions that don't make sense, and yeah, sometimes i am unhappy. sometimes i have the luxury of being the unhappiest person IN THE WORLD. sometimes i am full of rage and i want to hit things and curse the universe at the top of my lungs and bleed. sometimes i am sadder beyond the depth of the ocean, hurt unto feeling it like physical pain. sometimes i am deathly afraid of the future and all the things i don't know and all the paths i might take that are wrong and stupid or right and stupid. sometimes, i feel like the stupidest, most worthless person in the world, and even when i am feeling at the top of the world, i know that i will feel that other way again and not too far off. since i have known myself, i have been the type of passionate person whose hackles are up in an instant at a whiff of injustice- a starving, beaten dog, a homeless person, war and famine in some distant part of the world- however cushy and sweet my own life may be at the moment, there's enough going on in this marvelously shitty world of ours to feel angry, discontent, driven about SOMETHING at any given point in time. does having kids mean not feeling this way, being this person anymore? i don't see why it has to, and yet it so often DOES.

having kids makes you conventional. having kids makes you boring, it makes you stupid, it makes you unhappy. having kids makes you OLD. like, in a bad way. because, ok, children are magical and fantastical and watching them grow is like, a miracle of nature and divinity, right? only like, not. maybe if they're your own. working with kids has made me feel that our species would be better off petering slowly into the void, but then i am a terrible over-reactor, so who knows. i mean, a lot of it is probably just that only stupid people are breeding, and no one seems to be big on actually parenting their offspring anymore, and half of the kids in the world are autistic because of vaccines or milk or the way we kill chickens, or whatever, but still. what if those people are only stupid because they had kids and not the other way around? nnnngh. i don't know. sometimes, like when i'm driving, i am convinced that 99% of the human race is retarded, while at other less harrowing times i think that i am just a conceited, self-centered shit and that by sheer strength of probability, most people are smarter than anyone gives them credit for being.

i guess what it comes down to is this, which may be naive, and it may be cliche, and it may also be the only true thing that i know: i don't want THAT. i don't want a normal life, i don't want to be a normal person, i don't want to grow up and get married and have kids and let that be that because whatever emerson may have said well, contributing a healthy child to the world is not the same pinnacle of achievement as a redeemed social condition or even a healthy garden patch. having a healthy child, especially nowadays, is a miracle unto itself, but it's also the most normal and mundane thing in the world, something that idiots do all the time BY ACCIDENT. while i am not one to deny my animal status and slavery to genetics and the machinations of nature and design, i also refuse to bow down and deny that everything about us that doesn't matter is precisely what is best about us and what i want to glorify with my entire life and not just my heated, chocolate-scented words. my children, should i ever have them, will not define me, will not be the end of what i contribute to the world, they won't be the best i contribute to the world, even, though maybe they'll tie with whatever else i do, because if i have kids, i will want them to be amazing and good people too.

i guess this is working up so much because i'm like, frustrated with life and myself, and also with what feels like pressure to do what i "should" do, even just a simple, "don't say that, who knows where you'll be in ten years, you may want kids before then" is like an icepick in my skull lately. having kids done right takes time, people, time i'd rather be using to figure out my own life first. have kids too young, you'll just fuck 'em all up is what i always say, and i know this from experience because my own mother was practically a child when i was born. because while i happen to like myself, mostly, i'm also aware that yeah, i'm kind of fucked up. that's alright though, i like having stuff to work on.

in any case, now that my heart rate has slowed a bit, i will admit too that the prospect of having kids is terrifying in a thousand different ways besides just making you a zombie. pregnancy? miraculous and GROSS and terrifying. childbirth? gag me, please, i love my vagina just the way it is now. will the kid have a tail? will he be... you know, healthy and sane and normal? will he look like my inbred-looking cousin (who talks and thinks like someone whose mom and dad were related, in addition to being hideous- though my parents assure me that i'm just an asshole and his parents were not, in fact, brother and sister)?? what if the little fucker gets all of my bad stuff and none of my good stuff and then i can't stand him despite the fact that i'll be compelled to love him because he came out of me? god, what if he's ANYTHING like those little fucking beasts i teach! perish the thought. it's unfortunate that i love babies so much, because babies grow into, you know, children and people and stuff. i think, though, that IF i ever decide to give in and do the damn thing, WHEN i have lived a lot more and feel prepared to balance everything and not be a boring zombie creature, BECAUSE i am a wild thing, i will make a damn fine mother, and be nothing at all like poopy judith warner and her pathetic, infuriating resignation in the face of life. life, i roar my terrible roar and gnash my terrible teeth in your fucking face.

Monday, September 28, 2009

so long, my luckless romance

schopenhauer and i, we are definitely onto something with this whole "worst of all possible worlds" thing- developed independently from each other, via convergent evolution, just to be clear. and should anyone require proof, all i would have to do is brandish the letter i wrote last night, that i will never mail, but will post here for my own records:

dear chris,

i don't know what to say or how to say it, so i will write instead. it's always easier this way. how do i feel? i feel like, "wow, this is really really shitty. so this is how it feels to be cheated on. hmmm.' except you didn't cheat on me, because you aren't actually my boyfriend. i should have known what that meant, your unwillingness to say anything more concrete than ' i love you'. and that mainly over text.

i feel like the stupidest person in the world. for believing you when you said you loved me, that you wanted me around, that i'm the most amazing girl you've ever met. i have a feeling that when a man thinks he's met the greatest girl in the world, he doesn't go out and fool around with some older woman friend he rejected the month before. i have a feeling that even if he did fool around with mrs. robinson, he wouldn't then tell the most amazing girl in the world about it with a nonchalance bordering on sociopathy. i could be wrong though, clearly i suck at the whole having feelings thing.

it really sucks that i'm only psychic for bad things. i spent the whole day telling my sister that the reason you never called was that you slept with your coworker and were avoiding me. ok, so, not the coworker this time, but still- someone who is distinctly Not Me. it occurred to me this morning, in a flash of insight, and instantly made me uneasy. my sisters called me paranoid and said you would never do a thing like that, not that they know you at all, except apocryphally, through me. i pushed it aside, mostly, though i worried about it enough that i brought it up a thousand times, half-jokingly.

to think that you not only slept with someone else, you lay in bed with her all morning, into the afternoon, while i fought off the urge to call you or message you, not because i had anything of importance to say but because just being in contact with you makes me happy. ow. you spent the night kissing her, holding her, not thinking about me at all, while i text you to see what was up, missing you, waiting for your reply. did you laugh when you saw my pathetic little message? did she look over your shoulder in her bed and roll her eyes at it? i thought i wouldn't care about cheating, when it happened. i still suspect it would have been better if you drunkenly fucked your assistant. this, this is something else entirely. you feel "caught between the two of us", she is unsure of how to proceed because you are not religious. the fact that you have to think about it- and that she gets a say- says it all.

i should have listened to you when you said you were a bad person. i should have listened when you worried that you would hurt my feelings. i should have known better, period. love. three hundred miles away. ' i just want you around all the time.' hey i know! let's move in together! what a great idea! to think i thrilled at the sweet things you said, that i read them over and over again like a lovestruck schoolgirl and showed them to friends and strangers alike. how could i be so incredibly fucking stupid, again? and again and again. a man who is constantly breaking up with you, even though you're not together, even though he follows it up with an i love you, is not a man who cares about you or wants to be with you.

and i know... you're so sorry. so sorry that you can't say it, you have to message it. so sorry that you go into detail about how you 'didn't sleep AT ALL last night' and you're 'so exhausted from not sleeping last night and getting home at four p.m. today' because you were so busy hooking up all night and morning. and how you thought i should know, 'for whatever reason.' not because we're involved in some vague way. not because you love me and i love you and when two people love each other and one of them sleeps with someone else and then doesn't know how he feels, it's kind of a big fucking deal. you're not sorry and you don't care about me and i know that because you did what you did. and hey, i see the appeal, you know. totally. she's there, i'm not. what's love when you can get some action instead, right? i'd thought you incapable of doing something like that, you who blush and stall when i say something sexual, you who don't see the point of sex without feelings. unless you love her too and just didn't know it. wouldn't that be wacky and amazing!

i can only imagine how it would have gone if the situation were reversed. the shouting, the crying, the crushing disappointment and guilt and misery. i can only imagine because i never would have done anything like that because i love you and because i love you i don't do things to cause you pain. though i might be overestimating myself here, you did say you weren't afraid i'd hurt you. someone you don't love can't hurt you, which is how i understood it, but brushed it aside as you being stupid and saying the wrong thing unintentionally. hah.

i can't even bring myself to shout or curse, in part because i don't have the right to, and in part because i'm more full of pain than of anger. 'it's so weird.' damn right it's fucking weird. i woke up this morning aching to see you, to talk to you, and i'm going to sleep now wondering if i'll ever be able to talk to you again, if i'll ever want to. you woke up this morning naked, holding Not-Me, feeling so little guilt or remorse that you kept on doing that for the larger part of the day. but don't worry. you won't have to deal with any of that shit from me. however long it takes me to stop being a jellyfish, you won't have to know about it. i'm a grown up and i take full responsibility for my own feelings. it was my own fault i got so caught up and carried away, whatever you said. i should have known better than to believe. i hope you and brenda are very, very happy together, i know i will be when i finally learn from my mistakes.

sincerely,
trina

p.s. that you did this to me, of all the wonderful people you've been involved with, is the most major burn in the history of the world.

Friday, September 25, 2009

how can i get better once i've had the best?

just got through uploading some pictures of jake to facebook. i think people "in the know" will think that all i do is sit around and cry and think about him, but actually i've been past that stage for a while now. i'm in this space where it's really hard to wrap my mind around the fact of the matter, sometimes, but also really easy to think back on the good times with a lot of love and feel happy about them without immediately collapsing into tears the next moment.

i haven't actually cried about it since earlier this summer, just before i left for big sur, when i was telling chris the short long version of our story. and hello, talk about weird! i felt like a traitor for a while, for thinking about someone else with a warmth that is so much more than friendly when jake died just a year ago. but now i think, if i love someone else does that mean i stop loving him? and the answer is of course, never. ever. even if i tried. so there's that.

these are pointless ruminations, of course. i just hate that i can't bring him up without getting a pitying sad face in return. as if a few pictures or mentions on the internet could begin to convey the depth of feeling behind that issue. i miss that kid every day, but also i am ok, and when i wasn't, you weren't there for me, you sad-face-pulling little finky bastard.

Monday, September 21, 2009

playing hooky? yes, please

i did the thing i should not do when making/saving money is the goal (which it is, naturally, and especially since i have a very special someone to visit as much as i can as soon as i can): i have skipped work today. ricardo's little warrior mother is going to have my scalp tomorrow. alas i care not. i have actually used my time wisely today and done many, many job applications because you know what, faceless internet? i am awesome. and i deserve a better job.

i mean, i hate to be my own cheerleader, but really! i am too awesome to sit around being an over-frustrated glorified babysitter. i have too much to offer the world to spend my days catering to the whims of a child who is more spoiled than autistic and for whom large doses of ritalin would help far more than i, in my infinite power, ever could.

so yeah. i've sent out about ten thousand resumes, at least a few of which should result in calls-back, and they are all or most for positions offering more hours and more relevant experience than what i am doing now. zut alors! i have high hopes.

i mean, maybe it is stupid to give in to discontent and search for or accept a new job when i'm just getting settled at the one i've got (which took forever to find, and feels like i've been there all my bloody life), especially when one considers that in the space of six months or so i plan to move my entire life three hundred miles to the north, in order to be nearer to not only my best friend and the larger quantity of my actual friends, but also nearer to the sweetest man i've ever met, whom i want to cover in kisses pretty much constantly, which desire is thwarted by the entire length of the state of california that lies between us currently. maybe it's stupid, but it's also so necessary if i am to avoid becoming the living dead.

speaking of friends, ahaha, wow, do i have a knack for befriending selfish and stupid people who like my ears and like validation but don't actually like being good friends or even interesting people! ah life. this is a recurring theme with me, starting up or staying in friendships that do not actual provide me any pleasure or benefit or actual... friendship. what would my therapist say about this? hahah yeah right. therapists are for idiots, and only occasionally for people with real problems.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

see my heart, i decorate it like a grave

i have hit, officially, definitively, with a skull-crunching thud, the wall. The Wall, that is. the wall against which all is sound and fury, every motion a study in the futility of existence, every sigh and convulsively clenching fist a tragedy on a grand and minor scale simultaneously.

my life, my twenty four year old life, is like a hobo in tatters on the street corner, begging with tears in his eyes for change. while i have never been one to deny a hobo change, in fact being the sort of person who, if ever a hobo directed his tear-filled eyes at me, would give him every penny i had on me and maybe some jewelry too, despite the fact that costume jewelry and sterling silver probably wouldn't be too much help to a hobo, it is much, much harder to provide change for my own sad annoying little life.

in many ways, it has been like this ever since graduation. life after college is like hitting pause during a movie just as it was getting good- if you're anything like me, anyway. i studied history, i wrote a lot of papers, i enjoyed the hell out of learning stuff, and only occasionally, in moments of existential panic, worried about finding a career, much less a job, when the inevitable end came. history! no wonder my parents glower accusingly at me whenever talk of my college days come up. if it were up to them, i'd be in law school, having done pre-law, or med school, having done pre-med, or engineering, or computer science, or something ANYTHING useful and applicable to the real world. bastards. instead, here i am, 24, a smart kid, no doubt about it, lacking any useful knowledge or experience, incapable of imagining a day when going to work doesn't feel like a march towards the gallows, living at home again, suffocating.

i'm pretty sure that i'm actually chock-full of useful skills that have just never really had cause to see the light of day. i'm a good writer, this whiny, depressive blog aside, i am a terribly quick learner. being a virgo, i am in possession of an attention to detail that is almost a medical illness, it's so intense. being a hideously impatient person (except for when it counts, natch), i am efficient in whatever task i am assigned. i have customer service skills oozing out of every orifice, practically, i worked so long in retail (customer service skills being the ability to grin and bear it, and to say "have a nice day" in such a way that the recipient of this cheerful phrase understands it only subconsciously as "die in a thousand flaming fires"). i can talk to almost anyone, and be jovial, and make friends, to which my unlikely friendship with the jehova's witness girl at work can attest. i like to be busy, do well in high-stress situations, can speak three different languages, type reasonably fast, am ridiculously well-read for my age group, anyway, have opinions about almost everything, and a brain like a rusty steel trap, that gleans and synthesizes information from every angle. so what exactly is the problem here??

shitty economy aside, that is. useless degree aside also, that is. i should be working at something that involves brainpower and creativity. i should spend my days if not improving the human condition then at least feeling useful, like i contribute something good to the world, something amusing or informative or inspiring in some way. i should be surrounded by people with whom i have things in common! god, the idea of a job where i get to talk to adults all day long seems so far-off and unreachable. where would i like to work? i don't even know. yes, that is a lie. for started anyway, to get experience and contribute to something i enjoy fiercely, i would like to write. like for an independent newspaper, something like the l.a. weekly or something. i'd kill- KILL- to work at pixar. because, ok, they make children's movies. but they are children's movies that i LOVE love love love with a love that is more than love. pixar studios makes art, beautiful, accessible, art that makes me- and lots of other people- happy. if it meant i spent the day sharpening pencils for john lasseter, i would work at pixar and be happy as a clam in delicious delicious chowder. i would love to work in a library, the whole no library-science degree having aspect of myself aside, because i love libraries, love books, love people who read, and can spend a day happily wandering around organizing books, ordering books, recommending books, pointing a shotgun at conservatives who want to burn books, etc. etc. hmmm. that's starters, anyway.

i could spend the day running around some shitty paper's offices, the daily breeze, say, writing copy for local cake bakers, and still feel more fulfilled than i do now. i am too young for this shit. and too old, really. it's like julie powell wrote in 'julie/julia', about how for someone like her, and me, the options were either to spend her twenties working ridiculous hours at some soulless bigshot corporation, snorting coke and explosively fucking a variety of rich men, or living in a loft somewhere, making self-centered bullshit, calling it art, making lots of money, getting high, and explosively fucking a variety of slightly smellier rich men, but somehow she ended up married at 24, working as a temp til she was thirty, waiting for her ship to come the fuck in. jesus. i get no big-shot or artistic job and no explosive fucking. i may not be a temp, yet, but by golly do i relate to that girl.

why, life, do we only get answers once we no longer have need of them? what good is it going to do me to look back at my life in ten years and go, duhhhh, clearly that's what i needed to do (and hopefully i'll have done the right thing)? le sigh. it's back to craigslist for me, looking for a new job when what i need is a goddamned clue.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

little expressionless animals

we were not meant to be. you and i, man and woman. i'm beginning to think that we don't even qualify as the same species, boys, except for the fact that we can reproduce with each other and in fact, must reproduce with each other if we are to reproduce at all- a cruel joke, that kind of dependency. it's truly a tragedy that men will never know what it feels like to be women, but i am certain that the reverse is not true: for a woman to step into a man's shoes is like a whale reverting back to its land form, a devolution of sorts. it would be like having gone from having human vision, in full color with cones and rods, to seeing the world in only sepia or gray tones, like some lesser creature than a dog or a pig. a millipede, maybe, some ugly, earth-tunneling, poisonous thing driven entirely by instinct and without capacity for higher things.

does it sound like i hate men? i only wish i did. mostly i am boggled by them, these hairy beasts that consume so much of my time and energy and sanity. i am boggled that i am expected by nature to associate with them, to spend time with them, have babies with them, depend on them, when i can't for the life of me begin to understand them or connect with them on any meaningful level. we are nothing alike, men and women. the basic facts of us can be the same, biologically and otherwise, meaning that on paper we might be a lot alike, but when you get down into it and can see this thing eye to eye, it is a totally fucked situation. i feel things. my actions are driven as much by my feelings as by my rational mind. men, sweet and lovely though they may pretend to be, do not feel things, and if they do feel things at all, it is negligible compared to the depth and breadth of my feelings, the feelings that all of my sex are more than capable of.

how is it that men have written the vastly larger part of our human cannon of love poetry and love stories and love songs? men, i am convinced, do not know what it is to love. when i love, when i care, like all the women i know, i do it wholeheartedly. lover, i think about you all the time, i think about how to make you happy, how you've made me happy, all those things which are specific to you that i enjoy and delight in. it's not obsession, this, it's just what it is for a woman to be in love: her lover is present to her even when he is not physically present. man, on the other hand, does not remember that woman exists unless she is in front of him, preferably naked, preferably prostrate- and if a thought of her flickers in his mind while she is not present, it is this tableau that it features, and is caused only because he is physically desirous of her physical presence and the opportunities it would present.

by virtue of our being carbon-based dna-replication machines, sex is important, i get it. sex is great, sex is fun and fantastic, etc. etc. sex is why we exist, as in: we wouldn't exist without it, and we exist so that we might do it, frequently, and make babies, etc. etc. sex boggles, because why should the two halves of the species interpret the goddamned thing so differently? physical intimacy is nothing like the real thing- a thing i am beginning to doubt actually exists at all- but god doesn't it feel like it? in these sexually liberated times of ours, the womanly tendency to develop feelings out of what is ostensbily purely sexual interaction is a highly ridiculed institution, but why should it be? because i woman, feel close to you, man, because i have opened myself up for our mutual pleasure, because i have committed with you an act of supreme closeness- allowing part of you to enter me, risking pregnancy by you, risking disease from you, whatever precautions we might take- because my feelings (chemically mandated, affected also in part by society, which you, my pigman, have controlled and shaped) elevate this act of biology to something higher, consciously or not, and because to you it is a mere scratching of an itch, an urge on par with passing gas, why should my attitude be ridiculed and your baseness go unnoticed?

you, man, are not evolved highly enough to deserve a crumb of attention from even the stupidest, basest, emotional void of a woman, because even she is capable of a tenderness that you could never recognize or appreciate, much less replicate.

the crux of the matter is our lack of control. why should we think about you, why should we pine for you, why should we waste one breath cursing your name, knowing what we do- that you aren't thinking about us, that we don't exist to you the way nothing exists to a cow in the field besides the grass and the dirt, certainly not the sky or the birds or the god of love or anything that isn't grass and dirt and shit? we shouldn't, but we certainly can't help that we do. beyond you we may be, but not beyond these damnable laws of nature that wired our chemistry to respond to yours, to desire yours, to transmute basic chemical signals into ridiculously overwrought symphonic orchestras of feelings and thoughts. ridiculously out of proportion, that is, ridiculously wasted. a shame, really.

Monday, March 23, 2009

he became an outlaw out of desperation

fredrick is nine years old. he loves his mom, and reading, and when he plays basketball with his friends, he's more often than not the only one who makes a basket. he gets good grades in school, is well-liked by his peers, and is generally a good kid. he's also in love with his t.a., that lucky girl being me, and he likes to show it by taking her stuff and running away, and kissing her hand after pretending he's going to bite her. this basic description, infatuation aside, works for pretty much all my kids, give or take some love of reading or mad basketball skillz.

this week we've just started parent conferences, and i must admit that it's all got me quite worried. because i think ahead, and i can't help but fast forward to three and four years from now when my kids enter their preteens and middle school... and eventually high school, and all the madness that entails. and ok, so i'm not their parents or even their actual teacher, but i do spend several hours a day with them and am involved in the primary activity of their lives right now, that being going to school. and even then, it goes beyond them and what i worry about is all kids going to school now and all the kids i went to school with and just everything, because what can i say, i'm a virgo and worrying is what i do.

it struck me today, when i was tickling him in order to get my badge back, the way he was giggling, openly and like a child, and the way he talked to me after the tickling was done, like a playful but mature little person, which is what he is- it struck me that depending on circumstances entirely beyond his and my control, in a few years he could be a very different person with a very different attitude and on a very different track from the one he's on now. our school is a good school, fairly small and run with an orderliness and insularity that make it feel like the tiny village schools of old (or so i imagine, never having lived in a tiny village of old). when they leave our school, or even next year, when they go into fourth grade and are stuck in much larger classes, budget cuts being what they are, what effect is that going to have on these kids? i think f is lucky because his mother is very involved in his schooling, but at the same time he has another set of circumstances stacked against him, the worst one being that he doesn't live in the same district as the rest of the kids, he lives in what is colloquially known as "the jungle" or compton. and compton is bad. compton is like, gang central, where drive-bys and drug busts are as commonplace as farmer's markets and neighborhood watch in other cities.

so every year, his mom applies for a permit from compton school district so that he can keep going to ramona, because she works nearby and it's a better fit all around. and eventually, she's going to have trouble getting that permit, as compton becomes loathe to lose students from their (seriously overcrowded, seriously underfunded) public schools, the main problems being the middle and high school. and ok, stereotypes are not reality, but they do have a basis in some reality, but what i can't help imagine is this: he has to go to middle or high school in compton. he becomes aware that being a good student and loving your mom are not what make a 12 year old black boy "cool" at cms. he ceases to be a good student, or if he doesn't, he has a hard time socially. he wouldn't even necessarily have to go to school in compton to have problems: ramona is in the same district as one of the worst high schools in the south bay. do kids succeed at these schools, somehow? yeah, they can. but for the most part, and i can say this because i saw it happen to kids i went to elementary and middle school with, going to a bad school is usually bad news. ok, somehow this discussion with myself has become derailed.

our first conference of the week today was with the mother of one of our language students- she's part of a program for children who started school as non-english speakers. her mother, sweet woman, doesn't speak a damn word of english. but she's a good mom, and she does what she can within her limitations. because s is having trouble with reading comprehension, mom reads to her and with her in spanish every night, and works out questions with her on the stories they're reading. ok. so right now, s is in a small class, with kids she's known since kinder, and her class is lucky enough to have an aide, so that the ratio of teacher to student can be 2-1. she's also signed up for extra language help for next year, which she'll need just to keep up because her main class will be almost twice the size of the one she's got now. she has certain things stacked against her, and she's got other things to her favor- things mainly due to the quality of our school. when she goes to middle school, she certainly will not receive nearly as much individual attention and help, and if her mom doesn't pick up some english quick, well that won't help either. it's like a race, almost, to give her the skills she needs now, before we send her out into an indifferent and puzzling world. again, i know there's a point somewhere.

the point is: kids today have a lot of chips stacked against them. good kids, with loving parents, can still get lost in the ridiculous excess of factors influencing their survival, their success, in our school system. well, duh. but working these conferences makes it heartbreakingly apparent, and that's without my elaborate projections into the future. it makes me want to do an obama and get up in front of our class and remind them of their civic and moral imperative to succeed, as blacks and latinos and students in california, nay, LOS ANGELES, the world capital of bad schools. i see it at work with f sometimes, that peer pressure to act like a little jerk who doesn't care about the rules or civility, and it makes me crazy because he's such a smart little guy and he totally knows better, but who the hell can resist peer pressure from time to time? it's a pervasive evil, and it'll be worse when they get to a school where the teachers don't care to or can't correct that behavior. not that i'm the picture of rule-following and tractability, but my rebellions didn't get in the way of learning or even of my education, extra-curricular though the main of it might have been.

another thing that strikes me up and down every time i see it are parents who don't speak one damn word of english! and if we are to be holistic about it, i know why that happens of course: you are a recent immigrant, you and your partner, if you aren't a single parent, are working long hours at shitty jobs just to keep your family afloat. if your community offers esl classes, you either can't make them because you're working or because you're overworked and you've still got a home to order. also consider that english is a damn hard language if you're not a kid, even if you are but everyone knows it's harder for adults to learn a new language than a child, something about mental flexibility or whatnot. but still. that sucks! your kid is disadvantaged one, because she's going into school without speaking the primary language of her educators and her peers, and two, because she needs to in order to move up, get her basics down, and survive! not only will school be harder because she can't communicate as easily as she should, but she also can't really count on your help at home, with homework or language development or anything. it's absolutely, one hundred percent essential that you speak english, if you've got school-age kids- and even if you don't. period. i don't understand all the pseudo-political bullshit uproar about it, people talking about "preserving cultures" or whatever the fuck. you can take it up the ass and refuse, or you fucking do what you need to do to survive and help your kids to thrive in this new world you've found for them. s's mom wants to learn, she told me so herself today, but finds it hard and embarrassing because, well, it is hard and embarrassing. some of the other parents are perfectly content to speak spanish and watch their kids flounder in school, not understanding that the whole "a better life for my family" thing pretty much goes down the drain when the kids can't do well in school.

i worry that i'm not expressing my point as well as i could. but if that is so, it's because my worries, such as they are, are vague and undefined and all-encompassing. i want these kids to do well, and i want to work with people who want these kids to do well, and i want to live in a country where education is important, and schools get more money than prisons and bullshit, and i just want a whole lot of things that aren't going to happen in the forseeable future because it would take a massive, ridiculous paradigm shift to even set the momentous changes they would require to function, over a very long term, in motion. and now i have a headache.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

deseos de cosas imposibles

jake, my sweet, my darling, jake was nothing like "didi" and i am utterly bemused as to why i was recommended that strange book "about" grieving when it is not about grieving at all. but then, nothing really is, nothing's accurate when it comes to that.

when he died, i thought i would cry forever, until the dessicated tissues of my body just scattered with a strong wind and i wouldn't have to feel so sad because i couldn't feel anything at all anymore. before he died, before i the possibility of him dying ever occured to me- back when death was a remote thing that happened to other people- it was a movie-image that came to me when i thought of mourning someone's death: you sob in a dark room for weeks, and refuse food, and sit about prettily disheveled and just deeply, deeply sad until one day a ray of sunlight pierces the fog and you begin to move on again, slowly but surely. like everything else, it has been nothing like the movies.

some days are harder than others. there is constancy, of course, i think about him every single day and miss him whenever i think about him. but in other ways, it is always surprising: i'll be driving and an image of his smile flashes into my mind and the next thing i know, i'm sobbing into the steering wheel and cursing the universe and just totally fucked for the rest of the day at work, having to pretend to be cheerful and attentive with tears waiting just below the surface to be loosed. a few days ago, i was air-guitaring in the shower when the song changed, and the next song was a sweet old love song and i crumpled to the shower floor, completely overcome with the memory of meeting him for the first time and knowing from that moment on that i was screwed when it came to him, that i was going to be damn crazy about him, that probably i already was.

it sucks because it's always there, this misery of longing and of not understanding and of feeling, at every moment, that something very important is missing from me. it sucks that i can't talk to anyone about it, that if people knew i was here now, crying and writing about him, they'd worry for my mental health but the thing is, how else should it be, how else could it possibly be? he is the only one who could really comfort me, but the reason i need comfort is that he is dead. beyond my best friend, beyond my sisters or anyone else, he was the one i wanted whenever i was upset or angry or happy or anything- if happy, it wouldn't be complete unless he could share in it and validate it, if upset, only he could make it better, even if he didn't know what to say or what the hell i was talking about. everything was better just because i could hear his voice, or feel his arms around me, because i knew he was there and he loved me. for whatever reason, without knowing what i was doing, i chose him and now that he's gone i can't unchoose him; he is still the one i want, and he is the one thing i can't have, and what kind of bullshit is that?

the first time i got high, at his gentle but insistent pressure, i puked all over his bathroom. then i made him clean it up, and after he did that, he sat on the bathroom floor and looked at me wonderingly, trying to figure out what was going on in my mind. i couldn't talk, only sit there and trip out, wide-eyed, but we didn't need to talk to understand each other, and once i brushed my teeth- with his toothbrush?- we stumbled out to the couch where we sat under the electric blanket, holding each other, and not really talking at all but mumbling jibberish periodically and feeling very together. if i'm crazy normally, what am i when i'm drunk and high? but he was good at calming me down, about anything really, and he was good at finding just the right position to tuck my head under his chin and wrap his arms around me and make the world feel like a very peaceful place indeed.

on my way to shop for groceries today, my ipod shuffled to an old ryan adams song, "when the stars go blue," and i flashed back to the first time i played that song for him: early on a friday morning, we had gone to the big downtown theater to watch an animated movie about a monster house. i snuck up and scared him before we went in, and he jumped three feet in the air and kind of hit me accidentally-on-purpose, because while he looooved jumping out at me from behind things, he didn't like to have it done to him. we both got dizzy with the 3-d glasses and he offered to share his contraband pop-tarts with me. when the movie was done, we decided to grab a bite to eat and while burgers and fries would have done just as well, i decided we needed mediterranean food, and the only place i knew of was in ventura, about an hour away. long story short, we got there and the restaurant didn't open for another four hours and naturally, we were starved because what the hell kind of a breakfast is one pop-tart each. so we had sandwiches at this weird place where the decor was all frog-related, and then we browsed at a record store where i bought a huge poster of a flying, naked art nouveau girl with a bicycle, and then we headed home. the traffic back was wretched, and we were stuck for about two hours, moving at like, 5 mph. so i played some of my favorite songs for him, starting with "to be young (is to be sad, is to be high)," which he loved and reminded him of a "young bob dylan." when he got to pick, his first choice was naturally "political scientists", by which if i recall correctly he was unimpressed, as it is not actually a political song in the least. it was a warm day, and we were full and sleepy, and we worked our way all over r.a.'s catalog haphazardly and smoked cigarettes which we put out in a half-full bottle of sobe tea so that the situation in my car was pretty stinky and yet i recall it so clearly and so fondly. and just as we were getting into i.v., hours after we'd assumed we'd be back, i picked "when the stars go blue" and went into raptures about it, and he listened attentively, and it wasn't til we were talking later after he'd downloaded some ryan adams for himself that i learned he thought that song was dreadfully boring and unimpressive. we never did have much in common, i guess, but goddamn if that stopped us from getting along like a house on fire.

i remember a lot of things involving him with almost frightening clarity and detail. normally, this would make me feel paranoid and insane, but i know that he remembered stuff involving me in much the same way. our last night in i.v., being deliberately obtuse, i claimed not to remember a certain night he mentioned, one we spent kissing in his bedroom which was my way of comforting him over the beating his favorite team had taken in a playoff game earlier that day. he wouldn't stand for my professed amnesia, and reminded me of the details of that night until i suddenly "remembered" and only then was he satisfied. so i may be crazy, about him, but i think he was crazy about me too. and speaking of kissing, i came across one of his protest pictures yesterday where he had duct tape over his mouth, and one of his friends commented "ahaha this is ironic because nothing in the world could silence jake" but the thing is i could silence him quite easily, he was actually rather loathe to talk about anything, come george bush or high water, when he could be kissing me instead and goddamn but don't i miss those kisses.

i miss his kisses and his bird-lips and his blond stubble and his mole. i miss his arms and his neck and his chest and his legs, one of which he slung over mine whenever we watched a movie together, alone in the dark. i miss his eyes and all the different expressions they could project, and his eyebrows and the way one was always raised at me. i miss his hands and the way he would sigh whenever, at the end of a long night, he would sink down next to me and take my hand in his. i miss the way he smelled and the way he talked and the way he laughed and the way he smiled. i miss his crazy huge t-shirts with their silly slogans, and his black sweatshirt that smelled like pee when he bought it for like three dollars. i miss his goofy screen names and his random calls and the way he said my name, especially when i asked him to so he'd say it all slow and smiling. i miss the faces he made while he played his guitar and i miss watching him eat cereal and i miss the way he said "horchata." i miss being angry at him and waiting for his calls and raving about him to anyone who would listen. i miss eating in n out with him in my car at the beach and i miss smoking cigarettes with him and i miss the disgusting drink recipes he would come up with for me and i miss all his peculiar hand gestures. i miss being able to call him and ask stupid hypothetical questions, like when i was struck by the desperate need mankind has for flying cars and he smilingly suggested that i probably wouldn't get one in our lifetime unless i invented it myself. i miss taking him grocery shopping, and taking him to the doctors, and i miss going out with him for ice cream afterwards and i miss making him finish mine because ice cream is so boring to me.

i miss him. i miss him so fucking incredibly much i almost can't believe it myself. i miss him every moment of every day, and some moments i miss him so much i can't breathe because it hurts so much. i look around sometimes and am surprised that green things are still growing like they've always done, and the earth is still going around the sun, and no one else seems to feel what i feel, a sense of loss so huge that it should throw off the balance of nature and the orbit of all the planets and everything. i wonder if i'm ever going to love anyone like this again, whether anyone has loved anyone like this before, whether i'll ever love anyone at all, even a little because when i'm sixty i'll still be loving him with most of my heart. it's stupid and it's cliche and it's just the truth that sometimes, if i'm sitting still and missing him intensely, every heartbeat seems to say his name "jakejakejakejakejakejakejakejakejakejakejakejake" and all i want to do is turn to the nearest unfortunate person and let it all out, say "i miss him i love him i miss him." but i don't, instead i sit there silently and fight back tears and hate everything and everyone for how completely it and he is not jake. my jake. when i wrote, i seem to spend my life missing you!, i did not realize the kind of violence and misery i was in for. ah life.

Monday, March 16, 2009

my mind's such a sweet thing

i am not angry because
i refuse to be angry because
i don't have permission to be angry and
i refuse to ask for permission to be angry.

i am frustrated but
more with my self than anything else because
when will i learn to ask or assume
when will i allow myself to have certain rights- like
everyone has the right to be angry because anger doesn't have to be
logical, it doesn't need permission so i guess what i mean is
i am angry
but i'm not sure why and i will never
show it, this anger, because
you don't care.

it's all so fucking unfair and it's
bullshit and it isn't even an option
you aren't even an option and i do
know better, ultimately, but who the hell
listens to me.
and it's rather funny, in it's own way,
that i can't or won't and would never tell
you just like i never told him just like
he never knew and will never know
that despite all the things he knew and really
he knew a lot- well he didn't know
that.

so probably i'll never get it because
i'll never ask for it
from anyone, of anyone, because i do it without
being asked and that is the way
it should be.

i miss him and i love him and i can see what debbie saw as clear
as if i had been there and so in that sense i understand
something i didn't understand before but i still cry
in the shower where i do my remembering
and also when i am less sad i wonder if it's
weird to imagine or for lack of a better word
fantasize about someone you know is, well, dead- because
i do so hate the term "passed away"- and i do so hate that
there are many things we should have done that now
we can never do.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

unequivocally

it's a pervasive evil in our society, i think, to be afraid to be miserable. we've got so many different cures and potions and pills and bullshit that it's like sometimes we forget that if things are shitty, it's only natural and right to be downright dog miserable. misery is great. misery writes great songs, it dictates heartbreakingly amazing novels full of truth, it bleeds poetry. misery helps you appreciate a good straight whiskey, and it makes you really sit down and think about what is important to you. if you've never been miserable, if you've never wanted to slit your goddamned throat just to be done with unhappiness, how do you know what it is to be happy, to be glad to be alive? misery an extreme of emotion, and emotion is how you know you're alive.

i am not currently miserable. far from it, actually. but i've been miserable before, and i'll be miserable again. a time will come when all the world could burn in hell and it wouldn't satisfy my misery, my deep-down blood-black depression, the void that opens up for whatever reason- circumstantial or chemical or whatever. life is like, binary, man, and if you're fucking afraid of risking shit because you could fail or because it'll hurt, you'll never really be happy, or succeed, or feel pleasure either. misery, as a wise man once said, is the river of the world. deal with it or get the fuck out, right? easier blogged to no one than advised to your nearest and dearest, stupid though she may be being.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

the earth, my butt

i hate:
  • fingernails. and toenails. but especially fingernails and the way they get all long and girls are expected to have long pretty fingernails but i hate them and i grow them out because in certain situations they are terribly useful, but ultimately i gnaw on one until it bends if not breaks and then i compulsively chew the rest off and become increasingly more anxious until the moment i can properly cut them all off. fucking fingernails.
  • closed doors. i'm peeing. why does the door have to be closed? because if it's closed, then i'm going to have to touch that doorknob with my just-washed hand, and really... who knows what the hell lives on that damned doorknob? what's that? i periodically wipe down every doorknob in the house with anti-bacterial wipes? AND?
  • nose-pickers. nose-picking. boogers.
  • BIG-ASS STADIUMS and auditoriums where music goes to die. leonard cohen, you brilliant, you magic, you lovely old man you WHY are you playing at the goddamned nokia theater? why in the name of all that is holy why? you're a fucking singer-songwriter not goddamned justin timberlake, i don't want to pay $150 to sit a mile and a half from where you are and watch you on a big screen because HELLO if i wanted to watch you sing on a screen i'd stay home and pop in "i'm your man." grrrrrr.
  • writers who excessively and unironically use exclamation marks! like for everything! omg!
  • linda, from my class, who granted is in third grade so cut the kid a break- my fucking ass. no i don't read twilight, no i don't want you to look at what i've just written because it's none of your goddamned eight-year old business, no i don't think it's cute that i'm your idol. i'm a terrible person, leave me alone.
  • ariana! from my class, who embodies everything that is annoying about my grandmother while also displaying everything that is annoying about eight year old girls. don't be a fucking know-it-all, no i can't make the other kids play with you, ever think about not being a tattle-tale? because no, it's not cute and neither is the baby voice you use to speak to me and while we're at it, NO i don't want to be best friends with your damned mother because really she must be awfully annoying to be raising a kid like you.
  • how i'm a terrible person! god.
  • deeply unfriendly service people. because i'm really nice to you, cashier-person, because i've been where you are and so i always smile and say hi and wish you a nice day- but not in an excessive, annoying way- so can you pleeeease pull your head out of your ass and give me at least a wan smile? i'm not making your life suck.
  • not knowing where my phone is/ when my phone malfunctions. it's the same kind of low-level but constant anxiety i get when i break and nail and don't have a file. why am i insane?
  • my ridiculous dependency on my cell phone.
  • my nocturnal tendencies.
  • the way my eyelashes refuse to curl properly because i have my dad's eyelashes and they are like perfectly straight little eye-curtains or the eyelashes on snuffalupagus from sesame street. and yeah they're just eyelashes but dammit, i'm a girl and i want to be pretty.
  • that this fucking weather can't pick a fucking theme and stick with it.
ok. ok. that's done. but goddamnit i really hate fingernails.

i love:
  • haircuts! getting my hair cut instantly makes me feel attractive and lovable. the shorter my hair, the cuter i feel. it goes deeper than plain vanity, too, it's my secret little fuck-you to society.
  • small, yappy, mutty dogs. little dog, are you ridiculously dinky? are your yipping little barks similar to the noises a broken child's toy might make? is your fur all matted and crazy and do your bottom teeth stick out a little weird and ugly? because i love you, and while i know enough to be ashamed that i love you, i would still bring you into my life in a heartbeat and love you more than any dog has ever been loved ever. i'd even let your stinky, dinky little self sleep in my bed with me. and i hate sharing a bed.
  • emotional honesty. because if you're insane, i would like to know. i promise i won't get scared, i won't gossip behind your back. i'm the mayor of crazytown, dont'cha know? so let's be ourselves as much as possible.
  • WHITE CHOCOLATE CRUNCH BARS. this is the love that dares not speak its name. because white chocolate? is gross. and crunch bars? unremarkable. but put them together and what you get is pure magic. i'm no longer allowed to eat this, by my own decree.
  • wall-e. and mo. and burn-e. and wall-e. and the cockroach. it's almost unhealthy, how much i love this movie.
  • speaking of unhealthy, there's babo. like, dude, i know he's a stuffed animal, ok? a stuffed imaginary creature, if we're perfectly frank, because he's not a real animal. but this changes not the fact that i can feel my heart beat a little funny when i squeeze him because he is SO DAMN CUTE and i wish he were real. he can steal my cookies any day.
  • cookies? everyone loves cookies. and i don't actually eat that many cookies on like, a regular basis, but occasionally i'll have a cookie- and this happens a lot with oreos, which is why i avoid them like the plague unless i'm really happy or really sad- and then i just can't stop and i morph into the cookie monster (who is now the carrot monster or something? as if carrots are sooo delicious that people/puppets regularly become obsessed with them. pshaw.) and the moral of the story is not pretty but it is this: i love cookies because cookies are amazing.
  • the one girl who works at the library and is there pretty much everytime i go? she's so cute, and she totally recognizes me now, and she's always complementing my taste in books, although i partly think she thinks i'm crazy because i'm always at the damned library. what can i say, i'm a quick read man.
  • kissing. "french" kissing for hours, pecks on the cheek, kissing upside down, in the rain, in a house, near a goat, in a boat, after eating green eggs and ham (on second thought, ew, get some gum), with boys, girls, trannies, space aliens, etc. etc. what better way to get to know someone? ahhhh.
  • bill watterson/calvin and hobbes. i think if i ever got psychoanalyzed, like really in-depth, it would turn out that deep deep down inside i am calvin.
  • that i am a six year old boy. like, most of the time i think this is one of the best things about me? not when i'm in a bar with a bunch of people my age, of course, and all the girls are dressed like vegas whores and the guys look like fraternity brothers-come-yuppie scum and rihanna is blasting over the sound system... then i feel like a scruffy little boy in a bad way... but mostly, yeah, it's all good.
can i break from this love-fest? i forgot to list one of the things i hate the most:
  • going clubbing/barhopping/drinking at a big douchey party, etc. do i hate the music you're playing? yes. do i hate the types of people who go to bars? yes. do i hate fruity girly drinks where you can't taste the liquor for the sugar content? yes. do i hate being hit on by guys in bars? yes. do i hate not being hit on by guys in bars? yes. i hate bars. i get dragged out to these things by people who are ostensibly my friends, people who know for a fact that i hate the whole desperate-20-something-emptiness of bars and clubs, and it's just like they say, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. i'm not going to sleep with some slick jerk i met in a bar. i'm not going to sleep with a nice guy i met in a bar, for fuck's sake. i'm not going to have a good conversation with anyone in a goddamned bar, unless it's practically empty, unless it's a hole in the wall, unless there's a jukebox playing tom waits and bob dylan in the corner, barely visible through the haze of cigarette smoke, basically unless it's a very very unusual sort of bar full of unusual sorts of folk. fuck, man.
fuck man is right. i don't know what all that was about. i suppose i am having a peevish sort of life right now.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

things which escape those who dream only by night

one time, a long time ago, at a party, i began to- or would have if i hadn't been restrained- slit my wrists. granted, i was very very drunk, but still. i failed then but succeeded later, not at slitting my wrists but rather at working out our steak knives on the inside of my arm, an ugly and surreal incident where watching blood ooze from my body was the only thing grounding me in reality. i lived to regret that, as a teenage co-worker mistook me for a fellow cutter and took to following me around rhapsodizing about the beauty of pain and control. another time i almost slit my wrists again but it was out of rage and in revenge, and not at a party but in the shower. none of these incidents were as melodramatically emo as they sound, and i'm not actually a goth. what happens is that sometimes i am overcome with a certain feeling, not counting that time in the shower because that was 100% rage, the kind where you are literally seeing red and hearing a strange buzzing in your head (the kind of rage that only a mother can rouse, obviously), and that feeling is the distinct sensation of being completely and totally alone in a vast and cold universe. not lonely but alone.

i was a fairly happy kid, and i had billions of friends, so when jeff pulled me aside for a talk at 13, while we were supposed to be watching the game going on in front of us, and somewhere in that conversation insinuated that being exceptional also meant being lonely- from which i was to extrapolate one, that i was exceptional, and two, that i was or would be, down the line, lonely- well, clearly, i didn't know what to think, though pretending to be the mature little person he expected me to be i nodded sagely and agreed that being surrounded by people was the loneliest experience there was. i would, much to my chagrin, realize the truth of my words a mere five months later, upon entering that nightmarish institution also known as "high school."

but lonely and alone are not the same, and the difference is, i think, this: lonely is knowing that someone out there understands you, but you have yet to find that person or those persons. lonely is needing a hug and a sympathetic ear. alone is knowing that wherever you go, however long you live, you will never find a person to understand you, because no such person exists. does that even make sense? mon dieu.

i'm a generally cheerful person. i love to laugh, and to make people laugh, and feel that i have a well-developed sense of humor and the absurd. i have many close friends, most of whom i love dearly and would not trade for the world and with all of whom i am honest and forthcoming and strange. and for all this, i can't think of one person i could point to and say: this person understands me, or this person is very much like me in a pleasing and reassuring way.

there are stories we tell about ourselves that depict us as the people we want to be. but if you, wishing to be known as courageous but knowing yourself to be a yella-bellied cowahd, pretend at courage when facing down whatever (a mugger, your boss, a dragon, etc.)- are you brave, or just a good actor? or are those one and the same, in the end? IN THE END. what big words.

i don't know about soulmates or any such bullshit, and i don't know about 'the one' and 'true love' and all that kinda old-fashioned jazz, but the concept that's always caught my imagination is the idea that there is someone in the world who is 'made for you.' as if life's this paper cut-out storybook where everything is manufactured for some predetermined purpose and all things and people fit together like in a puzzle? as if you can date as many chaps as you please, and even work on building strong relationships with some of them, but IN THE END it will all be for naught because one day, someday, you will be on your way to the post office or the grocery store, and while your attention is diverted from in front of you you crash into someone, let's say his name is hermann and he's from germany, which is like, so random, but anyway you and hermann crash and your papers go everywhere and as you bend down to pick them up your eyes instead fall upon the book he dropped, which is, let's say, a well-thumbed copy of the principia by isaac newton, and your heart skips a beat because, omg lightning and junebugs, that's your favorite book of all time. so then you and hermann say fuck the post office and you get coffee together, because luckily he speaks english, whereupon you find that though you have lived all your life in bumfuck, ca and he's from nowhere, germany, you guys are like, exactly the same person: you love opera, picking your nose, and anal sex and he just like, loves opera, girls who pick their noses, and anal sex. so then it's goodbye david or whatever poor chap you were dating at the time, and you and hermann move in together and live happily ever after because IN THE END, he was made specifically for you, like you ordered him from a catalogue and you just can't believe you ever lived without him. there was a point to this story, somewhere back in the beginning.

point: ummm this girl and hermann are like, total sickos, right? another point: that would be like, totally awesome and radical, if you were you and someone who exactly complemented and could understand you was developing, as in growing, as in existing, along some parallel line, possibly in the next city over or maybe even in germany or something. which is to say that i don't buy it, this 'made for me' thing, this convergence or congruence thing. i think, and i think i've had a small taste of it already, perhaps as much as i'm ever going to have, that for someone to be made for you, you've got to make him yourself. all of which is besides my original point anyway.

the original point is that i feel that i am strange in a novel way, which is not the same as being a dick and saying i'm 'special' or exceptional, except it is but without the overtones of superiority. like i'm different, but not above you, instead next to you, in some weird parallel zone that doesn't ever intersect but only appears to. like if stephen dedalus weren't a snotty prick but instead slightly insecure and more amiable. i'll be damned if this isn't all rambling bullshit. more tomorrow on How I Am Not Like My Age Group And Why It Makes Me Crazy But I Don't Relate To Old People Either Because Like, What The Fuck I Know Stuff, Bitches.

Monday, January 5, 2009

nobody say love

life is strange because: just when you think you have it in hand, it loop-de-loops around you with a pat on the ass and those are your own wide eyes staring back at you, bewildered but only superficially, really, because by now you know it's best to fail to make plans and what you want has but the slightest effect on what you will get, ain't it funny?

so this is the new year and i've learned; she hates me, and i am willing to do exactly nothing about that because ultimately, truly shockingly, i came to the realization that there is nothing wrong with me, nothing i am willing to change, not for her anyway. this is the new year and the one thing i want is left behind in the old year, never to return, never to be mine, and it's a real tragedy that i was born without a sense of time, or that time exists at all, or is reported to anyway because who but a nutcase would make a case for linear time, the time that i'm aware of is like silly putty or those 25 cent stretchy hands you get at the supermarket and it shoots forward quickly only to snap back and slap you in the nose before diving down to gather lint from your shirt and when you pluck at it to shoot it out again it just sags like runny like boogers like what the fuck you cost a whole quarter and i only got one use out of you you fucking thing and in frustration and grossed out because now it's just dirty and no longer translucent you fling it at the window and it sticks and doesn't slide. that's what time is.

and life is weird because this is the new year and so far not that different from the old year aside from the death of potential and the branching off of all sorts of new possibilities, none of which are as pregnant with promise as that deceased one but isn't that just the way it goes. you never know where it's going to take you, this thing, you and your child's sense of magic and your alexander-the-great eyes and your limitless capacity for sorrow and the very exacting-flexible standards you maintain for what will and can happen to you.

i'm like a child in so many ways that it astounds me, because i think i know how i feel about something up until that something comes to pass, and then i hope against hope and believe against the bald facts of things and what i mean is this: i look like a grown up, sometimes, and walk about and function like one as well, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty, to the bare bones of the matter what i do is walk around expecting a miracle, every moment of every day, and every moment that it fails to pass, i wallow in my disappointment and gather the pieces around me and regroup them and still keep on hoping and waiting, in spite of my rational mind, in spite of what i say and do, in spite of the ineffable, ineluctable progression of mundane life.

i wish i believed in something more concrete than possibility, that i had something as simple as your judeo-christian god and devil, something well-defined and drawn out to call upon and barter with. barter! i sing the body electric, etc., which is to say i'm glad i'm alive, that i exist and can touch and be touched and that there are aspects of me that you can't touch, that you don't know, even some that i don't know come to think of it, but anyway what i mean is that while i am consciously, while i decide every day to be, glad to be alive, there are some things, there is one thing for which i would risk that so-called fact- not a thing, really, a person, i suppose, six foot one inch of proteins and chemicals and shaking hands and soul and peculiar timbre, etc. etc.. god so what the fuck!

i woke up this morning from a beautiful jungle dream, very vivid and so on, to a question posed to me by some morbid little reptile part of my brain that hates for me to be content, and the question is this: if by some alchemy, if by some supernatural trade agreement you could have been sick instead of him, knowing very well that you could die just as easily as he did, would...? and the thing is that yeah, i woulda. and it's bullshit that in this magnificently large and mysterious universe, this cornucopaeia of possibilities and potentialities, you can't just call up the devil or some other shadowy force and strike a bargain, a tough bargain, a big deal, something really scary, but if you're willing to do it then you should have the goddamned option, am i right? and that's the crux of it really, that we're given this hideous ability to know that we're alive and that we can die and to contemplate the various implications thereof, but we get no options- not to cheat death, i wouldn't presume, but to rearrange it a little or to- well, the point is, when i say miracles, i really mean options: the option to sacrifice what you're willing to, to whatever end you wish.

none of which is to say that life can't be shocking in a good way, occassionaly. new year's eve was a delicious dark fumble and proof that you can change without fucking well having to think everything to death. this year looks the same but feels different, in more than just the obvious, sad way: if i could wipe the slate clean, i would, and goodbye mother country and friends, hat off in a jolly salute, but i can't or rather, wouldn't or rather- not yet. the next best thing, which you can't see or feel or smell or hear, but which i know the same way i know when my heart skips a beat, is that inasmuch inasmany ways as i can manage, i'm not going to stay where i am. because if it weren't pathetic and cliche, i'd inscribe on my skin this saying this mantra this should-be-obvious lame-o revelation but- there's nothing wrong with me.