another time, another year

It wasn't all for naught!
Because I can make these mistakes alone
But you know we can make them better
Stay with me, eat crow with me
Sometimes the moon's hues resemble
Your skin's tone, and I think maybe
It's your face up there, and perhaps
we're not so bad off after all.

Because it is the last day of the year
I'm writing a list of everything I love
And it grows long because there's no sense
in harboring contempt- we do what we have to
I'm accustomed to this cycling up and down
the dirtiest streets looking for a way to turn
the tables (and me) to face the wall.

I wanted to tell you, after dinner over wine,
Or on your doorstep smoking cigarettes,
when your hair stuck to your sweat-
soaked face, which complimented the lines
that have grown around your eyes.
I wanted to tell you in the park where
the dogs were swimming, and then at
The river when we just stood there thinking,
"More time."

I would have said that of the last 365 days,
360.5 weren't ever this fine.

she said, she said. (not suitable for children)

"He forgot we were supposed to go out for lunch," I said. "Why would I expect him to call on Christmas?"

"I think that's what started it," she replied. Sincere enough.

So is it? Did I make him feel like a failure by setting up a lunch for which odds were, he would fail to show up?  That's how it breaks us. I wondered what would happen when he realized he forgot about it, which he only realized because I told him.

That was Monday. By Thursday, Christmas Eve morning he checked himself into the hospital because he was depressed and thought he might kill himself. He told them that much. He didn't tell them that on top of the bottle of vodka he finished, he'd started in on the Cymbalta. They didn't account for that when they gave him something for the DT's that caused a reaction that made him confused and unrestrainable, except by the sedatives that made him unable to breathe on his own. That's as much of the story as I know thus far, because that's where he lies as of today.

The other reason I haven't been writing. I have the material. I'm spilling over with it for chrissake. I just don't want to be mistaken for crazy by strangers, when even today I'm processing the fuck out of everything, and I'm still getting out of bed every damn day regardless of how many times I come up short in the end. Today I just got up much later than usual. Tomorrow, I won't.

I wonder sometimes in this life how much of it we create, and how much is created for us. And how late in the day one must stay in their pajamas to feel better about all of it.  I say this now, while I'm still in them. Later on, I'll have the right clothes on and these words won't come, which is good, because this sort of thing has to pass, or it becomes all consuming.

absence makes the heart grow (longer).

It's been a year since I've been in love. It's been a year since it left, and I think I've missed having someplace to put mine more than I've missed its recipient. That's not to say he hadn't earned it. Christmas went by blissfully enough, full of as much cheer as we could muster. It just didn't carry over.

I've had a lot to say about love as of late, perhaps because when you have it, it seems far less valuable than when you don't, and maybe I'm guilty of taking it for granted. So I'll refer to a post I made a year ago, a couple of weeks before Christmas.

"If I could change the way I remember things, like if I remembered more birthdays and fewer heartbreaks, something truly good could probably happen. It almost is, except that it's tricky and I'm stuck right now in the very middle of the deciding moment that makes or breaks the momentum that's been gaining on me, which has the potential to propel me far enough over the edge that I can't see anything behind me. I'd like that.

Fingers crossed, it's not broken. I'm still not broken. Fuck you memory."

That said, I'm going to lunch with my father today. It took months of therapy, but I'm going to take him as he is, and try to keep loving him even though he sometimes can't remember the next day that we even talked. I guess I still possess enough hope that a little bit of it will get through, which is to say I'm lucky at this moment to be brimming over because there's so much more to be wasted.

As for that other guy, he can keep what I gave him. After the initial rise and fall, I thought I'd like to take it back. Instead I've just found that love's the sort of thing that the more you prune and trim it, the faster it flowers and grows. Even now, when he comes around, I still have enough to keep me from forgetting the times that were better, even if we can't have them like that anymore. Even if we sometimes still consider having them again, but don't. Just now, I'm reminded of a time when not wanting love was more important than having it, and yes, even that has its place.

Even so, it's a sunny winter morning, and I'd like to be sitting on the receiving end of any such feeling. Better yet, I'd like to be sharing it. A little give and take would do a shit-ton of good these days.

whatever keeps you up at night.

 The only things worth doing are probably the things that set you so free that you feel trapped by them. As if you're going to pale and wither if you don't do them, and you lose sleep, and you forget to eat, and you start to feel as if you're at the bottom of well where the light comes down and shines on the ground right next to you, but never sheds its grace on your face. Like you can't quite put your hands on it.

Those are the things I want to do the most. I haven't been, you know. Not as much.

The holidays are never a good time to endeavor to do such things, but for me this year, they are. I played some music last night, or maybe I only butchered some songs. I'd like to think that I played them well, but I could always use practice, and they could always be better. People seemed happy. Some were dancing, some were smiling, but the truth of the matter is that I didn't care either way. I just wanted to be doing it, and talent be damned, I was enjoying the moment for what it made me feel. Like I'm not slowly dying (as we all are), but rather slowly living up to my life's potential, whether or not it stops short of great.

My posts have been sparse, I know. It might be best to keep it simple, because even though we're all slowly dying, I need to live a little more slowly so that the meaning doesn't lose its appeal. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm taking my time, letting the words come where they may and when they're warranted. The same as I practice a song before I go stand and sing it in front of anyone, I need to practice writing what I mean before I shove it under anyone's nose to be read.

It's been a while since I've felt good about anything I've written. It finally happened this week when after some friends took me out for breakfast, I wrote them a "thank you" card. Right now, I'm writing a letter to a friend, because it seems like a good way to keep it going. 



"One more tired thing/the gray moon on the rise/when your want from the day/makes you to curse in your sleep at night"

and if we fail to see the good...

"Love, it turns out, is as undemocratic as money, so it accumulates around people who have plenty of it already: the sane, the healthy, the lovable."  — Nick Hornby (How to Be Good)

I think I'll be just fine, regardless.

I only quote books I've read. Sometimes I fold the pages over like a triangle to keep track of the places where something's struck me in the gut. This book wasn't the best book I've ever read, but none of them probably are. But I noticed that there were good parts, and I kept going.  I'm glad that I do that, but still wonder now and then whether I've spent too much time on a book, and whether I'm really loving it enough. Sometimes I have to love the bad ones more so that I know I've given it my best or that I didn't give up for the wrong reasons.

I just finished Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger, and had I not made it through one or three so so stories, I wouldn't have read Teddy, the last and best story. That one earned a couple of paper triangles, and I'm even considering underlining some lines just in case I forget what I thought was important at the time.

The nice thing about reading is that you can learn without getting hurt or hurting anyone else. Even so, there's something to be said about living. I have a lot of practice, and with any luck all of these little paper triangles will amount to something I'll feel in the end was worthwhile. Underline.

damn.

"I mean they don't seem able to love us just the way we are. They don't seem able to love us unless they can keep changing us a little bit. They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more. It's not so good that way." -- J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories

I hardly ever say I love you to anyone anymore. My step-mother. Once in a while a cat. I said it to my father the other day, but he didn't remember the next day that I had even been there. That would almost be sad, except I don't think it was a waste.

I've been looking forward to November. It's like a convergence of sorts, where the past meets the present and the future all at once. Today marks the future I'd been thinking about all year, and really I'm not all that far away from where I was. At least less far than I thought I needed to be to be happy with the present. Mostly. I thought for a while I needed to be doing something different than I was last year to get o.k.

That was stupid. I had to be o.k. before I could go anywhere.

Yesterday someone said they're not leaving, because I haven't given them a reason. This didn't really make me feel better, even if the intent was there. I mean, my mom left and I was five. I can't remember whether I gave her a reason to leave, nevermind stay. This isn't a sob story (though it's real). It's just an example, and a poor one at that. I don't need a therapist to tell me it couldn't have been my fault. I'm just saying it's really difficult to love people selflessly. I'm not sure it's even possible. Maybe that makes it hard for me to say it. I'm going to try, though, and when I succeed I'm really going to mean it. Otherwise, what's the point?

Still, I wonder if we're all looking for reasons not to love each other, or if we're clinging to the reasons we do love each other, and whether either one is right.

oh my.

I've been dreaming a lot lately about animals. I had a dream the night before last that I saw a crocodile in the lake where I was swimming for the better part of the summer. It didn't attack. It sort of looked like a blob at first, then it swam away. About a week before that, I dreamt that a spider bit me, and my foot truly hurt when I woke up. A couple of weeks before that I dreamed that a hummingbird landed on my hand. I was a little fearful that it would cut me with its beak, or maybe attack, but it just zoomed in, landed on my hand, hopped off and hovered, then flew away. It was green, if I remember correctly.

There was another week that I dreamt my cat Lucky was in two pieces. He wasn't bleeding or anything, and besides the obvious separation of front and rear, he was acting pretty normal. I told my roommate about it in the dream and asked her if I should call the vet, but she rolled her eyes like I was making a big deal out of nothing.

I did check on the dream meanings for the other animals, but I decided to skip the one about Lucky. If it means anything, I don't think I want to know what it is. Plus I don't think they'll have an entry for "cat in two pieces".

putting her together.

My feet are the shape of my father's feet. I don't think they're pretty, but they prefer summer, and I prefer to go without socks or shoes. My father never goes without shoes. It took him 55 years to put on a pair of sneakers rather than men's loafers. Even to mow the lawn. I've inherited the bite and jaw of my grandmother on my mother's side, but my father's lips and brow line. My nose is a mix of my mother's and my father's.

I went to a family funeral for my dad's step-father a few weeks ago, and I noticed that I have the same gap between my two front teeth as my grandmother and both of her daughters. My youngest aunt had hers closed, but you can still tell it was there. None of the women or their daughters on that side of the family wear their hair its natural color. I like reds and browns. Some of them like browns and blonds. It's a mixed bag, but never gray. They're a pretty bunch, too. My grandmother always accepted the gray, for as long as I've known her, anyway. There was a luncheon after the service. She looked pleased with the turnout, her three sons and two daughters turned mothers and fathers all gathered in the church basement. I don't know if she saw what I saw, and I know she could never feel what I feel, as one of the daughters of a legacy that she began when she married the man who carried the torch for the women and the wine. Her first husband.

There's a story of a man who lived in a two-room house. It was told to me when I was barely 16, by a friend's father. My friend's father was a shop kid turned husband, father and handyman. He went to trade school and learned auto body, wore leather jackets and boots and drank beer with his friends after school. He met his wife, and she liked bad boys, and they started a family. I met his daughter in the ninth grade, and she had the kind of parents you could talk to. Her mother told me she had been on a date with my father's brother in high school. Her father told me the story of the man in the two-room house. The man in the two room house went to church every Sunday. He lived alone, and on each Seventh day, as he walked home from Mass he stopped at the package store and bought a case of beer.

When you walked through the door of the two-room house, he told me, there was a pile of empty beer cans on the floor. A path from the door to the couch was the only part of the carpet you could see, according to Herb.

Years later, my great-grandmother died; I never knew her. My father called me to tell me, should I have seen the obituary and made the connection, though she lived just across the Fifth Street bridge, not far from where I had been living for six or so years. He didn't go to the funeral. And he told me about her husband.

He lived in a two-room house, on Eighth Street. He died of a heart-attack on the shitter among a pile of beer cans, through which a path was cut from the door to the couch. My grandmother had married his son. She had five children with him, and left him while the youngest girl was just 14. It took her so long, I think sometimes, and I wish she'd have had the foresight to save the other four kids from the beatings, the yelling; the sight of their father with other women. Just a few weeks ago, I learned that my father was always at the neighbors' house, the Fosters. Incidentally, their son's kid taught me how to play guitar.

According to my father's most recent account of the grandfather I never knew - except on some occasions when I was small that he showed up on our doorstep with a blond bombshell to ask my father for money - he was a philanderer. A philanderer because he could be. He was the best-looking man in town, my dad claims. And a raging alcoholic. Once in a while he would call my father and ask him to meet him at K-mart restaurant for a coffee. My step-mother was in college at the time, so she was never home. He'd pile my sister and I in the car, and we would stay in the toy aisle while they talked. I still don't know what about.

He died of liver disease several years ago. Some of his kids went to the funeral, some didn't. They fought a lot about it, I remember.

And now there's my father. He asked me to drive him to my grandmother's house last year. He quit drinking for the occasion, which could be viewed as a step in the right direction. He couldn't drink in front of me - he rarely does unless the vodka's concealed in a Coke can or a glass of lemonade. Instead, about an hour into the trip he started shaking. He said he was cold. He got in the backseat and covered himself with his jacket and laid down, shivering. We made it to the house about two hours later, and he could barely stand.

My grandmother and her husband - my father's step-father - were elated to have company. They made lunch. We sat while my father barely picked at the sandwiches, and ate about three spoonfuls of corn chowder, which she made especially for me. Good thing, because he got up from the table, went into the bathroom and threw it up. He came back and said he wasn't hungry, he was feeling sick and slouched down on the couch, still shaking, but worse. My grandmother paid no notice, and made no comment. She just kept smiling, and asked me whether I'd had enough to eat. I looked at my father across the room, and one of his eyes was drifting to the side, the other straight ahead. He went outside on the porch with my grandfather after lunch.

I talked to my grandmother a little about her divorce. She said she never wanted it. That my grandfather left. She said she picked up the pieces the best she could, met a wonderful second husband, and got on with hers and my aunt's life. She said she was just happy that her family turned out so well, and that everything worked out for the best. I felt like retching myself at that moment. And I realized how poorly loved my father was and is. That no one's going to take the leap and help him get out of this horrible Thomas family saga, and that he's probably going to continue on the same path as his father, and his father, and who knows before that. They don't leave much of a mark on this earth, except for maybe the legend of the man in the two-room house. A legend because that's how it was first told to me.

It's so real now, as my father stumbles into the bathroom some nights and falls down, cracking his skull on the side of the sink, or sometimes the toilet. It may very well turn out to be his story, and they won't print it in the obituary, but we'll know. And maybe one of the neighbors kids will know it, since they've been letting him walk their Basset Hound around the park out of pity, and maybe they'll tell it to someone who'll know my someday daughter. That part remains to be seen, since I'm committed to the idea that I'll have no someday daughter. Because of all of this. Because I love my father, and I've only ever been with anyone who acts like him, except for the parts where they tell me all of the things he should be telling me now. That I'm beautiful and smart, and they're proud of me, and they'll be there for me. But they're still like him.

I'm leaving that behind. I'm leaving a lot of things behind me, because if I keep them in front of me, it's only to punish myself for not being loveable enough to make him take exception to the family rule.

Even considering the history, I think maybe if I had a brother, he would remind me of my father. Maybe he would act more like a father than my own and I wouldn't have to do things this way anymore. If that means that I haven't lost hope, then I'm satisfied for now. With so far to go, and me without my waders. I do like the feel of the ground beneath my bare feet.

My father always wears shoes.

are magnets, all my friends are words

I haven't been writing much, here or anywhere. I've been reading a lot, playing some music, but only stuff I like, and I've been on the road a bit. It feels good, like I'm doing things and standing still at the same time.

I have to stay still for just a while. I'm jotting down ideas here and there, but I'll get back to them when I'm ready to move. That's not to say I'm frozen. I'm just standing in one place long enough to finally appreciate what's all around me, good and bad. It's been a lot to take in, and I'm holding my ground. Metaphors aside, I just need some time during which nothing happens.

So to answer the question, "Where have you been?" I've been right here, back to where I started, over to where it's going to end for all of us one day, and back here again. I do feel a big purge coming, and not of the vomitous sort. Just hold tight. 

"As quiet as it was on the outside, it was very loud on the inside." -This Book Will Save Your Life, A.M. Homes.

i am not a veterinarian.

It's been two weeks, and sometimes when I look out my kitchen window to the corner across the street where the telephone pole marks the spot, I can still see the dog, lying there limp and resigned to leave its environs without the usual use of its once agile legs.

It was a Saturday night, and I was just about to take a shower before I left for Cambridge to see Marcellus Hall play a show at TT the Bears. I heard a screech of tires on the pavement, a thud, and then desperate, piercing yelps for more than thirty seconds, and they've lasted over a week. I don't know for how much longer I'll hear them, but they were howling with the last bit of fight it had. It may be a while yet.

I ran outside, bare feet and frantic, with my green sweatpants on and an ugly maroon sweater. The dog was lying there panting, and a few cars had lined up along the road. I was scared for the dog, but he wasn't moving set aside the fast rise and fall of his chest, yet I couldn't bring myself to go to him. The girl who was driving the car he had run into was on my side of the street. I asked her if she was o.k., and she said she didn't see it - that she just heard it and stopped. I offered her some water, because I didn't know what else to say. She said no thank you, and I yelled over to whom appeared to be her boyfriend, who had my then begun to pet the dog and tell it to be calm. I said that I didn't know who to call, and he said maybe the police.

I bolted up the stairs to grab the phone, even though he probably had a phone. I just wanted to do something. The police said yes, they would be right there, dear, and thank you for the call. I went back outside. The girl's boyfriend called out the phone number on Rudy's tag; I tried to call the owner, but was connected to voice mail three times and I gave up. I didn't leave a message, because I wouldn't want to get that sort of information in a voicemail. Meantime, the police arrived blue lights, no sirens. The officer walked around and lifted the dog by its upper body to carry it over to the corner.

I cringed when I saw how its lower body and hind legs dangled beneath it without any sign of movement as the officer carried him for about ten feet, for which the time hung suspended. I wondered why the dog didn't whimper or whine, knowing it's spine was twisted and probably at that point severed. To think of it makes me feel nauseated, knowing that its lean, black body became nothing more than a shell in a matter of seconds.

I've never felt even a splinter in any of my bones, but I can feel my own body's fragility when I picture the dog from the inside out, and my stomach turns and my abdomen quivers like my very own spleen is going to rupture at any moment, or maybe my spinal cord will just sever all on its own. I have this feeling a lot lately, and it's overwhelming at best.

It died soon after, right there on the side of the road. I was already upstairs, because after 10 minutes I finally figured out that nothing I could do would make it feel better. That doesn't make me inadequate, or a failure. It just makes me not a veterinarian.

Not then, but later, my eyes filled up like wells, regardless of how far I'd driven to get to where I was going.

I didn't know the dog, but I knew someone had to have loved it, and I could feel that too. And I felt like everyone and everything you love will inevitably get hurt, no matter how big a fence you build around them. And that sometimes when they do, you're not going to be qualified to make them feel better.

I've been quiet lately, or at least my fragile little burned fingers have been. I've been tending without any formal training or expertise a fire that can't be quenched, and though the blisters are healing, the sensation is only slowly returning. But it is.

A side note: as I was writing the first sentence - the first thought outside of email I've been able to complete in nearly three weeks - my mother called. My grandfather had a massive stroke last night and died at five this morning. I hope they have plenty of wood to split wherever he's gone, because at 89 he was still splitting enough wood over the course of a year to heat the house for the the next in its entirety. It's a fairly simple life if you can cut a road in your heart for simple things.

answers the question.

"Is this really what you wanted,
To listen to a song
That makes you feel
Haunted?" -Chris Leo

Happiness. No one's going to drop by with a silver platter and hand it to me. This is not news. And sometimes when I've got a hold of it, someone's going to come by with a hacksaw and start cutting my hands off until I let go. Believe it or not, that's where hope comes in. I'm not sure if I have a whole lot left. That's the long and short of it. Sometimes it costs you. I've been spending it like it's cool money, and inflation's getting me down.

I turned 35 this week. I didn't do anything special, but I was still happy to be alive. Tired, but alive. Days have been better, it's true. Yet, days have been darker.

About darker. I'm terrified of winter.  Last winter turned me on my side. It took until three weeks ago to get upright again, and it took a lot. I let him pull the rug out one more time, except this time the fall wasn't too far, since I was already down. I was exhausted. Hurt and less hopeful. And I came to an end that I've been hoping to dodge with him. The one where my heart's broken, and the potential for everything turning out fine was gone. You can't maintain a relationship that kills you, because then you'd be dead inside and one person holds all of the cards. Awkward isn't the word. But that's the name he's been giving it.

Awkward is when you don't know how to say the right thing nicely, or when you say the wrong thing at the wrong time, or when you don't know how to act when you see your ex so you look at the floor and try to make small talk. That's not how it went down. Even I bought it, but I knew all along I wasn't going to be able to buy it forever.

"Think of it as a bad dream," is not the same as sorry, and it's certainly not awkward. The words are too calculated to amount to that, and wishing someone nightmares isn't my idea of "It's not you, it's me." Seems to me they say, "I've lured you in, and now I'm going to reel you out, hook in your mouth and bleeding." And I said it was for the last time. It was. Yet, I kept hoping we'd turn up awkward and roses.

And yes, that hope is gone. Yet, I'm out of bed in the morning, even though the rain says I can stay under cover. Thankfully, I woke up with a different hope for better things.

Things that I know I can reach without that wobbly, rusty ladder someone placed in front of me to make me think they must be true.

once was.

I ran into the little girl I once was last Wednesday. She's been turning up here and there all this year, usually at inconvenient times. I'm not going to describe her, because she's had enough trouble. Except to say she was a good reader at an early age, and a true believer that people are capable of love. She only assumed that eventually they would know how to love her, frog face and all. And each other. She has high hopes.

She's here now, and she doesn't want to talk about it, so I'm going to spare her. Flash to the woman I hate to admit that I actually am. Today and for years to come.

I complain about a job that isn't supposed to be my career, but is, if you count that it's the only thing I have seven years experience doing. Experience doesn't always make me perfect, but I get it done. "I don't want to," the little girl says. And I tell her nicely, "But dear, that's just what you have to do." I remind her, "This is just what you have to do so you can afford to have the things that allow you to do what you love."

The little girl becomes angry, and sometimes she makes a big raucous about it. She and my boss's little girl duke it out, and I have to rope her in before she loses my job for me. Ironically, my boss's little girl can still get me fired.

And I begin relationships that may or may not end abruptly, or die slowly, and the little girl says, "How come?"

"Because people change, and sometimes we don't change with them," I say.

"But what if I do everything right?" she asks.

And I tell her that I'm sorry, but that can never happen because sometimes we're going to have to fail, and that if we keep chasing the perfect version of ourselves we're going to be lying to everyone, including us. The little girl thinks that if she keeps her bad feelings under wraps, they'll have to stay. If she pretends not to mind when someone hurts her, they'll stay. And she thinks if she lets them see that she hurts enough, they won't leave.

"I'm feeling uncomfortable," she said just now.

And I'm saying don't worry, I'm going to take over from here. That I'm older, and while I can't make her feel better, I'm going to teach her how to be real. And that once I do, she's going to be in a place where she gets to play with her friends, and won't have any reasons to cry.

"I think I'll like that place," she says.

I'm not telling her yet that she can't stay here,or that we may not meet again, but I know she'll be happier when she's gone. I've allowed her to stay much too long, and while I've always kept her with me, I've come to a place where she doesn't belong. There are things I have to see through, and they're not for her eyes.

It's for her own good.

i'm not out.

Friends. They know how just how to save you. With the very same knowledge, they know just how to hurt you. Whether or not that's a bad thing depends upon how they use it.

I haven't always been right, but I've always tried to be kind. I'm no martyr, either. Sometimes I've been dead wrong about what's good for anyone else, let alone me.

I've never really been sure who anyone thought I was, or whether or not they knew who I really am. Now I know.

I guess the least I can do today is keep writing everything down, because that's who I've always been.

oh, sister.

This is about me. Some things are. I've been carrying the universe on my shoulders, and trying to balance it, too. To the universe, I say I'm sorry, but I need to let you down. To me, I say I'm sorry, but I'm out of rope.

I thought I was going to fall, but I've since landed, only to realize that it wasn't a deepening hole beneath me, but the ground. The very real, very rocky, and sometimes slippery ground. I can't say that I've landed on my feet, but I'm getting up now and I can't let anyone tell me to get back down. Not anyone. I'm dirty and I'm writing it down.

It's been a hard year. Creatively stifling, heartbreakingly disappointing, moderately overbearing, and sometimes just plain ugly. I'm taking a few steps back, assessing the damage, and trying to get back to being right again. I haven't changed, but the lighting's bad, and I've been someone else's duck in a row. I've hated it. It ruins everything I try to write and makes anything I say translate poorly. I have plans, and they don't include falling into place if said place is only where someone else says I should be.

That said, I'm calling some things off. There's cause, there's effect, and then there's a root, or a core. Whatever you want to call it, it's there, beneath your feet, underground. Or maybe it is your feet, planted there solid, safe from the weather, but not the tide.

Knowing this, I'd say it's come time to dig up the dirt and have a look at what's been killing me. It ain't always pretty.

"It's a slow rolling thunder that keeps the blue jays at bay, and the blue jays say she's pretty so it must be true."

these things I've seen.

Regarding the change of scenery here, I needed something new. I hate change. I cope with change, sometimes I roll with change, but I've never been able to like it.

I can't understand it, because I've needed it so badly, which I didn't know until this week.

Status quo is for suckers. How can I say that when I took almost a year off from everything challenging in my life to watch television? Here's how. This year was the most miserable yet. I'm talking lifetime. And who would ever have guessed it? I'd say maybe one or two people. Possibly three.

Before things changed, there used to be my father; he always understood me, at least until the booze soaked in. Sadly, he knows his cognitive skills are bad. He can't comprehend simple hospital forms, or his daughter, but he recognizes that he can't do those things. Yet he remembers when he could. Now that's a bad year.

I'm going to have to move on. From toll booths and trainstops to other, more tangible things. Like destinations. I don't love it, but I figure it's about time I start arriving, since I've grown out of driving just to be anywhere but here. I've never been good at leaving things behind; as a result, I've only become worse at being left behind.

It's been a crap year, and until now, I thought I was falling. I'm beginning to think that I've just been driving down the wrong road.

And if I'm lucky, I'll get a Garmin for my birthday.

"La Maga, without the drugs, this relationship's dead/when we were high, you agreed when I said/that comfort is fraud/and true love is like/true love is like watching you go/so watch me/go." - Vague Angels

kicking television.

I'm in the same boat as a lot of people. Problem stated, most succinct: I accept the love I think I deserve. How cliche, I know.

I don't feel entitled to anything in particular, and I always want to work for the things that I want. Really, really hard. I feel so lucky when I don't have to do anything, that I usually sabotage it just to make it work for me. For that, I apologize. To about eight or twelve guys, and a handful of friends, both former and present.

For the record, I did give back the engagement ring once. I'm not that girl. Instead, I'm the girl who feels really, really terrible when things don't pan out the way you or I or he and I or she or I thought they would. Especially when we've gone to such great lengths to make them good. And I feel so sorry, no matter how long it's been.

There are situations that take a long time to shape your life. Sometimes it takes less than three seconds. Other times, it's both, and you don't even see it coming.

For example, my father's drinking patterns. I'm angry with him now, but it's been such a long time coming. Ten years ago, I figured we were o.k., regardless. He never hit me, or yelled at me unless I deserved it. Most days, I didn't even know he was off his rocker.

Today, he forgets everything I say, he lectures me about things I've already learned how to do, and sometimes he leans on me so hard that I can barely stand myself. And just like that, I hate the way he smells. Almost sterile, and I can smell hospital, because that's where he's spent a lot of time. He hasn't been back in six months, but I think it's gotten into his blood. The lacking stench of the permanently infirm.

I've smelled it before, when my grandfather was dying of cancer. So clean on the outside, so dirty on the inside. I watched him die in what seemed like a week's time. On the first day, I called the hospital to say he needed help, because he wouldn't get out of bed, and he wouldn't take food or drink. I don't know what anyone else was doing, but I knew it wasn't much. On the fifth day, hospice came. On the seventh day, everyone else came, and then he was gone.

I don't always know that I'm doing so much to hurt me when I'm trying to help someone else. I wrote his obituary because I worked for the newspaper at the time, but also because no one else wanted to do it. I don't know whether this was good for me, but I'm leaning toward 'no'. I think I had to suck it up, and I think I do that a lot.

As for my father, I'm doing it now, because no one's talking about the smell. Maybe it won't be seven days, but I don't think it's much longer. And I don't like that my senses haven't lost their memory.

taller than you.

I was the kid whose lunch box was kicked around the schoolyard by the boy she always liked. This did not mean he liked me back. It meant he was a dick.

And when I fell down chasing them both around, hoping to save my yellow Garfield pail from certain damage, someone asked, "Are you hurt?"

That person liked me, or at least had a heart. At the time, I said, "No." But here's what I say today:

"Yes, but for the last time."

Under the advice of my parents, I also told the principal and she got me five bucks from the kid for my broken lunch box. I duct taped the thing together and spent the five bucks on candy. 

This time, I don't need his five bucks, and I'm going to go buy myself a beer. Here's to happiness in small doses.

nine days of Saturdays

"Let's get out of here/past the atmosphere/squint your eyes and no one dies/or goes to jail" -Andrew Bird, Noble Beast

Today, I am officially on vacation. The sad fact that I almost cried tears of joy when I left work yesterday tells me I'm meant to do something else. Something more.

I've done a lot of things. I'd like to say they were all awesome things, but some of them were not. As for those things, and they run few and far between, I have to remind myself that they are not the only things I've done.

I had this roommate once. I had lived with her for about a year, and things were going along swell. Then I had to make a choice.

I quit my job because accounting decided I might be a hot ticket to bed, if accounting was a 47-year-old divorcee with a creepy smile and hands he didn't want to keep to himself. I was 22. I told one of my managers. And I chose the one that said, "I'll tell you what, I can lay you off."

I didn't apply for unemployment. I worked at a cleaning company for three hours a day, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, dusting and vacuuming an office for a guy who thought I was stupid. Better? Probably.

I looked half-assedly for another job, but for some reason, I felt defeated. I did the dishes. 

And I didn't pay rent for five months. As for my roommate at the time, she didn't kick me out. It was 13 years ago, and I still feel badly about it, because I never got on my feet quite well enough to pay her back. There are times I think about doing it now, even though it's much too late. She called me just the other day, and I wonder if she still thinks about it. I do.

And yet, I'm still the girl that will give you her last $20 if you need it, or maybe cook you a meal if I find out you've been hungry and broke.

So, at one point in my life I've been a dead beat roommate. I've been so much more since. That I still hold the worst of me against me tells me I'm self-defeating. I've been a damn good roommate to a lot of people since, for better or for worse.

Today, I'm telling myself that one, I have to eat. Two, I need more sleep. To live. Lastly, I need to keep doing things that are better than the things I wish I didn't. 

By the way,karma is bullshit. At least in the way it's translated these days, which is that people can't rise above their poor behavior because karma's coming to push them down. And maybe if one does something good, something better's going to come and lift them up. That's not real life, man. Sometimes bad people get ahead, and good people suck pavement.

And sometimes, one's best intentions are flawed.

in white.

Paper. It's going out of style. I can't even write on it anymore. I can't hear me on it, but I miss the way it feels in my hands. I miss the truth of it. Pen to parchment, no eras-eys, no copy pasting. It's the realest thing I know.

But for now, this is where I am. 

I don't have a lot to say today. I'm busy listening to the traffic, the crickets, and Calexico, all slightly quieted by way of the Indian summer humidity.

And it makes me wonder who can hear me.