My New Digs

http://imaginarycareer.blogspot.com

Dead Crush Died

Hi Friends. I don't know if anyone reads this anymore, but I certainly don't think about it very often. That's not to say that I don't think about blogging--I have several new and exciting ideas about blogs want to start. Most relate to dream work and my interest in stuff that my 20-year-old self would have guffawed at loudly while ashing a cigarette into her bare hand.

The dead crush thing seems to be over. I'm still aware of my crushes on dead guys, but I have little interest in writing about them anymore. For over a year and in my head I've been working on an essay about Carl Jung, but I will probably save this for the new blog. In fact, the new blog may be kind of a very long essay about him. As soon as I have have something to post, I'll give you the link to the new site. And if you aren't interested in my new agey mumbo jumbo, I'll totally understand.

I will say that my longing for vastly unattainable (dead) persons has waned since I'm in this "relationship" (I don't know what else to call it, but it feels wrong to give it the name I've given to other partnerships that were so completely different. ) I will say now that I love this person but I will never marry him. I will most likely not get married again. And if something were to happen and we decided to not be together (we aren't physically together now as he is in another country), I would most likely meet someone(s) else to not marry.

I don't know why I felt I needed to make that statement. It's kind of like a vow. My vow to not give over ownership of my parts. It's just a vow for now anyway. Vows should be called Nows. That's all. Thank you for reading this. Love, Shrew

Greetings from the din (cleverly hidden in touristy winter wonderland)

I'm writing this from the top of a famous mountain in a very cold state. People come here to ski and hang out at apres-ski bars with names like The Matterhorn. The culture is so fascinating--so many middle-aged people who pretty much ski for a living. I never thought I would be dating (dating? or whatever it is) one of these people, or anyone who knows how to snowboard or do anything physical for that matter. The most physical activity choad did was carry his assortment of pansyass persnickety groceries into the house or move his stupid computer from one room to another. I am not skiing, but I did meet a lot of very kind, rather leathery skiiers this weekend at the bar after they skiied all day while I read, slept, and watched HBO at this amazing vacated house which is owned by the carpenter's loaded uncle. The evenings have been spent in the hot tub outside looking at the gazillions of stars, feeling lucky to be human.

The carpenter is leaving tomorrow for his homeland, which means I'll probably be ending my second postchoad relationship. It's ok. It's all just practice anyway. By it I mean life. I can't imagine living with this person or even calling him my boyfriend, because we've never had any future in what we have. The thing is, there isn't any future in anything anyone has, because the future doesn't exist. I spent most of my twenties talking about it and planning it and it was all a big joke. I don't mean that in a cynical way--I just mean it in a regular way. I'm so sick of living in the past and the future. I'm more interested in now now now. That's been the best part about being with the carpenter (well almost the best thing)--it has forced me to stay completely in the present. Tomorrow he gets on a plane and then I have no idea. Will we email each other? Maybe. If I feel like emailing him. Will I call him? No, probably not since he's getting rid of his phone. Will I see him when he comes back next month to do something complicated regarding his citizenship? I don't know. If I feel like it. If he feels like it.

Don't get me wrong--I'm going to miss him. I can anticipate that. I feel sad that he is leaving because we're just starting to become friends. I know that in a year he will most likely come back for good, but I don't know where I'll be or what I'll want by then. I'm writing all of this stuff about the present like the good little buddhist I'm starting to become, but just last week I was freaking about my feelings for him--feelings that sometimes border on the L word. And then right before I left for this heavenly place I told my roommate that I don't really like him and that I was looking forward to having my life back when he left. So this is why I can't focus on how I'm going to feel in a month or a year--my feelings are very tidelike right now. Are always very tidelike actually, depending on which of my inner beings is in charge. Having this sort of love relationship also unearths all of this ancient archetypal crap in me as well. If you could look inside me right now, you would probably see Psyche and Aphrodite in a huge shrieking cat fight while a weird little girl rocks back and forth trying to tune it all out. And Eros--I won't even go into that. Probably a few fifties housewives in there too, vaccuuming. It's hard to hear what's going on under all of this din. Actually, the din is what's going on. I'm just trying to live within all of the noisiness. It will be still soon enough, I anticipate.

Ok, I'm going to go take my meds now.

The Problem:

I really, really hate my job. The main reason is that I don't know what my job is. The main reason for that is that my boss is a raving psychopath. One minute I'm helping with event planning for an enormous VIP-ridden event (I don't give a shit about VIPs, I've learned, unless they are Emmylou Harris), the next I'm making her foil (single process) appointment with Brad Pitt's stylist and calling the chef to tell him that she needs her crudite on a round plate rather than a rectangular one. Some days I stare at my computer all day and want to off myself. On other days I run around like a crazy person, trying my best to do what I'm asked with only 20-30% of the information I need. Often in heels.

Today I learned that one of my coworkers is quitting in two weeks, which will increase my workload, confusion, and general sense of unbalance that has been accelerating since I got this job about tenfold. I'm kind of in denial about how much it's really going to suck. Maybe I'm just in shock. I had an interview last week for a job I actually want, so maybe I'll get out of there soon.

But for this evening, anyway, I have a solution: 1. Weed. 2. The carpenter. Not necessarily in that order.

Note to Self: Alone

Today I was reading a submission to the major lit journal for which I am a minor reader, and I had a flashback. I'm not sure what unearthed this entirely forgotten memory, but I think it has something to do with the Midwest, isolation, and hermitly scholarship.

The submission came from a woman who lives in the northern midwest and teaches at a small college with a religious affiliation. Her poems were funny and strange and dense with weird imagery. They were kind of like the poetic equivalent of a taxidermist's workshop (I wish I could say I didn't know what one looked like). Having spent a good deal of time in the small city in which she resides, I immediately felt sorry for her, knowing that she probably felt lonely and misunderstood there. Then I had the flashback which kind of froze me for about a half and hour.


1981, maybe 1982. My family went to visit a colleague of my dad's in the northern midwest, close to the taxidermy poet's state. The woman must have been a research scientist of some kind, since she was a friend of my dad's. Or she could have been a lab technician--it doesn't really matter. She lived alone in a beautiful house that I think I've dreamed about in years since, though I haven't been able to identify the house until today. (I still need to ask my dad about this woman. She may not even exist.) The house was all on one floor, with beautiful pale wood floors in a region of the country that favored highly textured and food-colored wall-to-wall carpet. It was the barest house I'd ever seen: there was nothing in it she didn't absolutely need. She lived there alone and seemed unaware of the needs of children. Ordinarily my brother and sister and I would have complained to my parents of boredom, but I don't remember this happening. I remember eating dinner at a beautiful plain dining room table that was like a door. She had unapologetically prepared some kind of food that kids wouldn't like. She talked to all of us in the same way--as though we were all close friends, even though two of us were 7 years old and one was 4. The most resonate part of this flashback was how enamored of this woman I was. Without verbalizing this even internally, I realized she had the life I wanted. I saw how different she was than my parents: no loud TV, no toys and homework and briefcases and student papers scattered everywhere, no hairy pets, no noise, no churchy friends, no mainstream middleclass comfort. She seemed classless--her house was beautiful but small and empty. I had the overwhelming sense, though I wouldn't have had the language to say it, that she had the exact life she wanted. And the life she wanted had little more in it than herself. I think this is the life I saw for myself when I was small: there was no judgement around it, I just knew somehow that her life was the one waiting for me as an adult, and it gave me a huge amount of comfort to see it.

I think I thought about this woman and her house a lot when I was little. But something--the culture, my inherited religion, my parents' need for absolute conformity--buried it. Then I became boy crazy, began my path of serial monogamy, got married and yadda yadda yadda. And now I'm here, not living alone, but more alone than I've ever been...going on two years of aloneness, just blissful (sometimes) shrewness. And in all this time I never thought of this woman until today. I think I had glimpses of her when I would stare at For Rent signs in Swale, stare at them and fantasize of a space all mine, all alone. I loved helping friends look for their one-bedrooms, because I could imagine moving into those spaces too, just me and my things, and cut out the clingy apendage I had somehow grown without wanting it or asking for it. One of the saddest days of my life was when choad annouced that he was moving in with me. I felt my real life scurrying away as I dutifully accepted his massive media-heavy presence in my my my space, my life as a lone person, the life I was supposed to have.

I want to remember this when I'm in boymode (for lack of a better term). I can't tell if these longings are real or dictated by my hetero and coupled family and our relationship-obsessed country. I think there is a huge part of me that wants to be alone forever. It makes me so sad that a 7-year-old girl's greatest dream can't be to one day live alone, completely alone. I think that was my dream, and I erased it. I could blame it on many things, but I did it. And now I'm bringing it back.

Of course, that dream can't exist without its opposite. I need people. I love that I'm developing a loving cohabitation with my roommate, who is one of the neatest people I've ever met. I'm so happy I have so many funny and weird and smart and lovable women in my life. Part of me thinks that I may live with a woman for the rest of my life. Then on some days I think about how nice it is, how balancing it could be for me, to have a man in my life in that way. But mostly that thought just makes me very, very tired. I'm not saying I don't need to get laid because I really, really do. And it would be nice if that could happen with someone who doesn't suck completely. But he doesn't have to move in...there's no room for him anyway, both physically and otherwise.

That being said, I have a crush on a British carpenter who rides a motorcycle, has a daughter and never wants to shack up. Who will be known heretofore as The Carpenter, should further reports be necessary.

I'm just trying to stay balanced, folks.


PS--was disappointed to learn (via one of her poems) that the taxidermy poet is married

Boys

I like them. I guess you probably already knew that, since the blog is dedicated to them and the things that made them die. But what I mean here is that I like the live ones, the general boy population. I mean this right now. This may be a brief window so I figured I should probably exploit it while it can. Then I can come back and read this when I start hating on them again.

I forgot how cute they can be. On my birthday I went dancing with NU and my sister at a hipster bar on Britpop night. I had no idea that dudes 10 years younger than me could know the words to "Metal Mickey," but some do. And they are adorable. There were three of them who danced with us that reminded me so much of my first boyfriend and his Morrissey-worshipping friends--they kind of emanated a sexual confusion or frustration that was acted out by jumping on each other. This looks horrifying in print, but trust me, it was cute. It made me nostalgic, especially since we were dancing to all of my anglophile college music. Later, one of them grabbed me. I turned around to look at him and he gave me a totally stoned and adorable smile. Hours later I realized I could have gone to some dark corner and made out with him...yes, I'm still kicking myself. He was probably 24, tops. Also a gay guy hit on me. Maybe he wasn't gay. Or maybe nowadays gay guys want to date girls; I haven't dated in a while. He was really cute too. Was probably unborn when the Smiths song we danced to was popular.

I know I need to date older guys. I like them too, I think. What I'm saying here is that I kind of remember now what the big deal was. Why I spent most of my life boy-crazy. I like them. It's ok to like them. I like myself too now, so liking them will probably be different. I like the weird ways they attempt to emote. I like their clothes and their glasses. I like it when they travel in awkward packs. I like trying to figure them out.

I sense that there will be drama in my future.

Oh Yeah, I Have a Blog

I'm so damn tired pretty much all of the time that all I can do is look at my life and say "what the fuck?" But due to all of the tiredness it comes out more like "...the fuh..." and is followed by several minutes of staring into space while my dog whines for dog food, my laundry out on the clothesline gets rained on for the 2nd time (I finally brought it in, soaking wet, where it now sits mildewing in the middle of the kitchen while I wait for a nonexistent person to tell me what to do with it), and one of the maintenance guys at work actually comes up to me and waves his hand in front of my face to see if I'm still alive ("barely" is my answer).

I used to be a different person. I'm a Capricorn (my birthday is in 3 days). I got shit done. I balanced my checkbook every week, paid my bills early, flossed, made my bed, brushed my dog's teeth, sent out my poems and entered contests (with the aid of detailed spreadsheets), all while recovering from an abusive relationship, getting married, getting divorced, and preparing to move. I look back at last year and think, huh, that was pretty easy (though deep down I know it wasn't). Somehow I seem to be shutting down. I'm fucking up in major ways. I'm hurting people because I'm too distracted and fucked up to empathize. I don't eat balanced meals. I don't take vitamins anymore (this feels like sacrilege). I am becoming a bad person. And by bad I mean messy.

I could blame it on my job or the transition of moving and learning to be alone again. That would be pretty easy to do. I know I kind of conflate badness with messiness because my mom did this--she grew up in such a chaotic messy environment that I spent my childhood believing that a water glass left on the counter was pretty much equivalent to the aftermath of an earthquake. Here's what I feel like: I'm losing control. Even though I firmly believe that I'm not in control of anything. My head believes this, but somehow the rest of me is breaking down. I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. But I don't think I have any choice but to accept it, because I'm too tired to figure out what else to do.

Here's some things I can still do in the middle of my messiness: Write (weird, strangled things). Dream (though I don't have time to work on them). Work (somehow I'm not fucking up too bad there. Only occasionally. And I'm there 10 hours a day). Sometimes I sleep on a pile of dog toys, the week's clothes, and the several creased books or poem drafts I tried at one point during the weekend to read. Sometimes I wear the same pair of pants two days in a row. Once I ate a Fluffernutter for dinner.

I know you're probably rolling your eyes and thinking "what a pansy ass lame-o," but order is important to me. I don't know why (oh yeah I do--I already forgot that I just wrote about that. See?) That's what I'm thinking about: life if hard whether or not I have enough toliet paper to get me through 6 months. Charging my cell phone every day doesn't really help the fact I feel like I'm sort of crumbling apart. This sounds awful, I know, but I think maybe this is all a good thing. Maybe I'm Learning Something. I'll let you know if I figure out what it is. Right now I'm going to need to stare at the ceiling for at least an hour or two until I remember to go to sleep.