Girlwich

10 Things on Monday

2010-03-09T05:25:22Z

Okay, okay, okay. I'm doing that thing again where I start writing a post, get distracted before I finish, and it never goes up. So I swear that tonight, whatever happens, I will post whatever comes of this. Kitwich may set the house on fire (she's been playing with matches), and I will still post photos of burning cinders for you.

I might as well; there's shit on TV.

Just to be on the safe side, I think I'd better resort to list format. Because, you know, that is the best way to present a random series of thoughts that aren't likely to lead anywhere except yawnsville.

Okay, so.

1. I watched the Oscars last night, and as always it was about the dresses. And as usual, I spent my time mentally redressing them in what they ought to have worn instead of what their apparently hallucinating stylists put them in. I can just hear those stylists, between snorts of cocaine laced with peyote, in Edna Mode's voice: "But you look FABulous dahling. No, you must believe me. It is chic."

2. My hair is growing at an astonishingly slow rate, now that I've been trying to grow it into a different shape, and I'm on the point of racing into the salon and begging my darling gay stylist (dahling) to shear it all off into its usual form. Somebody pass the peyote-laced barrette.

3. Hmmn, I'm hungry.

4. I'd planned to take advantage of the not-snowing, not-frigid weather to ride to my favorite bike-accessible beach this weekend but blew my wad on Saturday, sprinting about town, and hadn't the legs for a 40-miler on Sunday. Alas.

5. I've been knitting as if it's going out of style - which, given that spring is almost upon us, it basically is. For those who haven't been reading very long (or don't bother remembering such trivia), I lose the knitting muse completely every summer. Some years I make a flimsy gesture in the neighborhood of a bamboo bikini top or something, but it never comes to anything.

6. I am dying for a new nose stud, but to say that I am too broke to afford the one I want doesn't even begin to cover it.

7. Still hungry, and damn I wish my hair would just grow itself into the desired length and shape, pronto!

8. Kissed a boy on the way home, and no, I'm not going to give you further details. It was just a kiss. Some days that's exactly right.

9. Found myself out in a very photogenic neighborhood yesterday just at the right hour when the sun is slanting low and golden, pulled over, dug in my bag, and realized...I'd left the camera at home. Damn. There was good graffiti, too.

10. I had a funny dream about looking through an exotic wardrobe for an outfit to dance in, and all I could find that I wanted to try on were hats. They were marvelous hats.

Metamorph

2010-03-02T19:17:07Z

[Note: I wrote this a couple of days ago and delayed posting because I was trying to track down the name of the tribe so I could link you to it, but since the Internets have failed us thus far, here's the - slightly vague - story.]

I'm in quite a state lately. Boywich was telling me about an aspect of the language of a particular Aboriginal tribe in Australia, which describes a state of becoming, and for which there is no exact English equivalent.

We were talking about the degree to which our language reflects and reinforces the way we experience time. We may talk about the future, but we imagine it as a static point in time. We only ever think of the now. Current events, new, modern, 2.0.

It's not that we don't care what happens next; we just can't conceive of the flow of time. And it's no surprise, perhaps, that for many of us things seem to happen suddenly. We wake up one day and look in the mirror and exclaim, "I'm old!" Death seems to be sudden, even when someone's been ill for a long time.

Because of this, we don't really experience change. We notice its effects but it's hard for us to feel it happening. Or when we do feel it, it's excruciatingly uncomfortable. It makes us feel that nothing is stable, nothing is permanent, we can't rely on anything, and it makes us nervous.

But that's what I'm doing right now; I'm becoming. I'm in a state of tidal change, and boy does it feel strange.

I'm trying to remind myself of all the things I love doing that are states of flow, of motion, of being neither here nor there.

Or rather, of being always in the moment that flows into another one, smoothly and naturally. Bicycling, traveling on a train, knitting.

It's not quite the same as the tribe's perception of time, but it will have to do.

The hardest kind of love to admit

2010-03-01T05:57:38Z

There are days when I feel exceptionally beautiful. They don't come often, and I always feel just a tiny bit guilty for saying anything about them, for having the audacity to claim beauty.

But I also suspect that it's on those days that I come closer to seeing myself truly than at any other time.

Most other days my judgment is clouded by a lifetime of hanging back, of not wanting to be upfront about what I can do, what I know. It seemed always as if for me to step forward someone else had to step back, as if acknowledging that I have beauty, or talent, or grace, meant that someone else was going to suffer.

It's indoctrination, I know. It's not uncommon among women. It's also a crock of shit. This I know intellectually, but not with conviction.

I have this persistent belief that I can't be great and nice at the same time. And by great, I mean Great. As in, possessed of greatness. Special.

"Everybody's special, Dash." -Helen
"Which is another way of saying no one is." -Dashiell

It reminds me of The Incredibles, where the supers (as in superheroes) were forced to go underground, to hide their powers and masquerade as ordinary citizens, not just in between acts of saving the world, but all the time. Basically they were told that they had to sit on their gifts, not show who they were, because who they were made the non-supers feel uncomfortably less-than.

Have you ever watched the way kids treat the geniuses among them? It's not pretty. And I think it used to be worse.

These days there's at least some lip service to the idea that it's cool to be a geek, though I don't know how far down it trickles, chronologically. And there are still differences between chic geeks and real live nerds.

I'm one of the latter. I don't look it, but I am.

Tonight I spontaneously solved an engineering problem - quite by accident. Then I threw my arms up in the air and exclaimed, "I'm brilliant!" After which I felt abashed.

One is not supposed to exult in oneself. One is supposed, above all, to fit neatly into some acceptable pigeonhole, within which one may exhibit a high level of competence without threatening other people, because it's confined to a limited sphere.

One is not, for example, supposed to be both an artist and a writer, and also to be good at science. One should not understand astrophysics. One should certainly not be able to immediately and intuitively arrive at the solution for a complex engineering problem that's taken a team of scientists years to unravel.

Man, I am so busted.

And worse, I was proud of it. I still am proud of it. It was a moment of gleeful insight, and those give me great pleasure.

I know for a certainty that some of the people I've dated have trailed away from me because I was simply Too Much. Too big, too much energy, too passionate in all senses of the word, too fast, too funny, too intense, too serious. Always leaving them behind. Not even trying to. Trying to be kind, to bring them with me, to invite them to play.

On the way home tonight I saw all these things I wanted to show you. An art installation of colored lights that created, as a byproduct, two long beams of reflected color on the river. Like a more cheerful version of the 9/11 memorial.

A driver was kind to me. She (I like to think it was a she) waited for me to get over, when I was expecting to have to wait for her. I was surprised, and turned around while we were stopped at the light to mouth "thank you."

I'd like to do a PSA campaign telling drivers that it's good luck to be nice to cyclists, in the same way that chimney sweeps were considered good luck in Mary Poppins's London.

The sound of snow

2010-02-27T05:31:21Z

Wow, that was a mess.

For those of you who didn't notice, the blog was down for about 10 days due to a minor catastrophe at the hardware level. It's all fixed now, and there doesn't seem to be anything missing, and anyway, it's just a blog, not somebody's lifeblood or my novel or anything.

But still, I missed it.

Which kind of surprised me since I've been finding it hard to blog, and I've been posting more intermittently than I did for the first - oh - 6 years of this thing. (Yes, I know the archives don't go back that far; Boywich has the early years saved somewhere safe-ish, and one day he'll get around to revamping this place and adding in all those files, but that has to be done manually and it's a big job, and he's a busy boy)

All of which is to say, hey, sorry girlwich was a blank white page for 10 days. I had things I wanted to say, too - things which would not have fit into 140 characters and so did not appear in the twitter stream. And while I don't remember those would-be essays, I have a minor amount of faith that if there were important ideas in there, they will percolate through my consciousness and reappear.

For now, what I will give you is a random series of thoughts (as opposed to the elegant triumph of organization that's the rule in blogland?).

It snowed again. Fuck. 20 inches. The roads are shite, as they say in Ireland, where it rarely snows at all.

I rode my rollers in the hallway tonight, for a scant fifteen minutes. It's hard riding rollers, and it's only about the third or fourth time I've ever done it.

I also walked, clad in waterproof garments and a certain amount goose down (bad vegan!) and several knitted items, to a pal's house to watch Carl Sagan tell me about Mars. I love Carl Sagan. We're on a first-name basis. I call him Carl and try to remind myself that: a) he was married, and b) he's no longer with us (so sad!). Such a dreamboat, that Carl. Shut up, I'm in earnest.

I am knitting the most brilliant sweater ever devised by mankind (forgive me; I've been thinking in hyperbole all day - watching Carl will do that to you), but I have reached a point of confusion. It's a hazard of seat-of-the-pants design. Yes, I'm calling myself a designer. No, I'm not proposing to make a career of it. But almost every successful piece of knitting I've ever done had its origins in a little drawing on an envelope. That's how my brain works. I'm creative and I don't follow directions very well.

During the last big snow (what, like a week ago?) I happened to walk by a mosque during evening prayer, and the chanting was being piped into the street through a loudspeaker. I stood under the streetlight for several minutes looking up at the falling snow and listening to that haunting melody.

This time, I walked past the mosque again but there was no music, and I was sad.

I have recently come to the conclusion that I am funny and rather brilliant and a mostly delightful companion, and I feel that I deserve an equally delightful boyfriend, and I am somewhat perplexed as to why one hasn't materialized yet. Maybe it's the funny hats.

When you ride the rollers and it is going well, you reach this state where you are floating in mid-air, scarcely aware that you're pedaling at all. It's quite remarkable, but I wish my glasses wouldn't fog up just at that moment. It kind of kills the mood.

Lost in the Wash

2010-02-19T03:24:49Z

Oh my dears, you know what happens when you have a brilliant blog post rambling around in your head while you're folding the laundry, and you think about stopping to write it down, but then you think, oh I'll remember, and anyway, if I leave this pile of laundry unguarded, on top of the bed, the cat will nest in it, and it'll not be so much clean as downy-fresh but full of cat hair.

And then you get it all put away, and all the can't-be-dried stuff hung out (of which there is a considerable amount, me being a cyclist, and American Apparel being given to not edge-finishing their short little skirts so that they shrink to the size of post-it notes if you dry them), you can't for the life of you remember the Big Blog Idea (much less where this sentence was going before that tremendous parenthetical interruption).

All I know is it had something to do with longing, which, you know, is rather a theme of mine.

When I die, my gravestone might just as well say, "Here lies Lizbon. She longed." Though I'd be happier if it said "Here flies Lizbon."

Anyway. The time has come for a new male playmate to enter my life. The only trouble is, no one seems to have alerted the men to this. And then I make the mistake of reading things like this, with all its depressing stats, and its even more depressing (and often barely literate) comments.

But at least Target is offering the Waiting for Your Bangs to Grow Out Collection. So there's that. Plenty of useful implements to tame my growing-out mop.

My least favorite day of the year

2010-02-15T04:48:10Z

I tried, I really did. I went to a party last night (small, intimate) and another tonight (big, anonymous). I had two scoops of ice cream.

I rode my bike in dresses (one black and flowy, one purple and tight). I put on makeup.

I flirted with an unsuitable boy I'd never met and pined (against my will) for another I'd already messed around with and discarded.

Last year I hid in the house and watched a succession of terrible, heartache-inducing movies on TV.

This year, I had the opportunity to be out and socialize. I thought it would help. Nope. Still grumpy. Still hate being in the human race.

Just wish I could ride my bike, alone, forever, into the quiet chill blue starlight. It's all I love right now. (that, and the cat)

Someone stuck a paper heart onto my helmet as I was leaving the party and I pulled it right off.

Whiteout

2010-02-11T04:50:43Z

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. - Mr. Rogers

Everybody's friendly when it snows. The people shoveling, the lone guy on a mountain bike (I take my hat off to you, brother), the parents out playing with their kids, whose tiny legs barely crest the top of the snowfall.

I go out with my camera (pocketcam, because it fits in the pocket of my coat) and walk, a big red hat on my head and a big smile on my face. I think I must have been smiling, because everyone I passed said hi to me as if I'd been smiling at them.

"Lemme know if you need help getting out." - one shoveling guy to another shoveling guy.

"Hey, take my picture!" - friendly man with a very large snowblower, to me.

I've always walked in snowstorms. It's a habit and an instinct, and by now, a kind of ritual. It snows and I walk in it. I was sick the last time it snowed, and I walked anyway.

I once walked in a bonafide blizzard, where the snow was coming down so fast, and the wind swirling so hard that I had to turn back at the end of my street because I was uncertain as to whether I'd make it home if I went farther.

Today was milder. Only about 10 inches. I waited till the wind had calmed down and then out I went.

I bounced around in the drifts and snapped pictures and thought about how it would be to ride tomorrow in the half-plowed streets. I watched the plows go by, chains on their giant tires. I watched SUV drivers, timid, uncertain how to get started. Then the car service drivers, flashing by too fast. The buses, stolid and unconcerned, neither too fast nor too slow.

Two boys walked by carrying snowboards. I wanted to snap their picture but they were gone. Lots of small children in brightly colored snowsuits, their moms looking surprised by the snow, a little worried that the kids were getting tired from walking thigh-deep.

One little boy flung himself face first into it, laughing. I knew just how he felt.
I leapt and jogged through it, backed into big drifts to take pictures.

I wore Gore Tex pants and hiking boots, nice big ski gloves. I was comfortable. Snow is something I understand.

It was just weird to see it in the city, where everything is ash-grey and blocky-looking. Suddenly my country life invaded, and everything wore icing.

Falling, or not

2010-02-07T19:25:16Z

A dear friend of mine said to me last night, after we'd blasted through an intersection to make a light that was turning, "You know, you really ought to be racing."

Every other time that someone has asked me if I race, or why I don't, I've demurred - I'm too old for it, I have knee issues. This time, I didn't. She is herself a racer, and a damned strong rider. She's younger than me; she trains very hard. But she's in a position to know.

She went on with some specific recommendations: sprints, no climbing.

It probably isn't wise.

But last night I dreamed I was with a group of people and we were being chased, and the safest thing to do was to get to the roof and fly away to a distant mountain ledge. I didn't, because I was the only one of our party who had that ability.

My dreaming self is always a flier; it's a basic characteristic, like hair color.

Earlier that evening we'd been talking about our families not understanding the risks we take. That it stems from their own worldview, from their need to feel that life is stable and predictable and safe.

In my case, at least, it's been a challenge for me to believe my own perceptions of what's possible, and to follow my instincts about what to do with my life. It's difficult when what you feel born to do is something that everyone in your family, all your teachers and other authority figures considered completely impossible, not even worth trying. Now I marvel that it never occurred to me to push them on that: Why? Sure, it would be hard and there'd be the possibility of failure, but why isn't it worth trying?

Because I'd get hurt? Oh for gods' sake. I've been hurt so much more by not trying, by denying who I am. Better to take the leap and fall on my face.

I rode over a lot of ice patches last night. When my friend noticed that I seemed to be aiming for them, I explained that I was trying to improve my bike handling skills. I could tell she wasn't criticizing; she said I seemed to know my bike really well.

It occurs to me that I may be trying out strategies on the bike before putting them into larger practice in my life. Taking the risk of falling in order to find my strengths, and to develop them.

Quit drafting me!*

2010-02-06T06:26:16Z

Yep, it's one of those weeks where I keep making drafts and more drafts, sitting next to my (you guessed it) drafty window, where the cat bravely offers to keep me company on the adjacent big fluffy pillow.

I guess when you have fur, drafts don't scare you.

And then I get distracted by the fact that my lunch is ready, or my second dinner, or I need another cup of coffee, or this chair hurts my butt, or the outdoors exists, and so on, and I don't post the thing, because really I am not so sure about that draft, and there it languishes next to the three other drafts I wrote this week, and the hundred-and-something other ones I wrote that will never see the light of -er- cathrode ray tubing.

Yes, I know, hardly anyone has CRT monitors anymore. Shut up and let me have my literary devices, willya?

Anyway. At the risk of injecting yet another unpublished draft into my Folder of Oblivion, I am going to set forth a list, in hopes that my beloved list format will put me at ease about publishing the damn thing.

1. They have promised us 8 inches of snow, and so far all we've got are flurries.
2. I rode around with snow tires and a fender all ready like a badass boy scout, and I hardly even got flaked on.
3. I had a little talk with my hairdresser, and we agreed that growing my hair out is an awesome idea. Then he cut it so that the right bits will grow out in (it is hoped) a non-driving-me-crazy sort of way. It was a big step. I've had the same haircut for years.

4. See? I need a whole extra space between paragraphs after that.
5. Lemon ice cream. Lemon ice cream, I tell you!
6. I am 1.5 hats through my 3 hats of gift knitting that must be accomplished before I get to cast on for the Incredibly Cool Sweater Design I drew on an envelope.
7. I deleted my online profile and then when I went to resurrect it, thinking, what if Mr. Fabulous is looking for me there? the site first wouldn't let me log in, telling me I must've typed in the wrong username (I know my own name, you bastards), and then when I finally got in through a backdoor, it chided me for having disabled the account. "You will now not be able to disable your account again for a period of...one week." Whoop-de-fracking-doo.
8. I haven't written about boys in a while, I know. It might be because I haven't met anyone of interest, or anyone who seems interested in me. And there's been less strife in the former-boys department. I seem to be able to be around the ex-lovers without feeling sad or needing to drag them home by the hair.
9. In point of fact, I had dinner with summerboy this evening and had a pretty darn good time, laughing and joking around. I was only slightly annoyed at him for still looking cute. Don't boys know they should immediately go to pot after you cease to be involved with them? Really, it would be just great if he'd get horribly ugly. How about some gooseturd-colored contact lenses? Try, really try, to gain a hundred pounds (he's skinny, so it would take a hundred). Take up smoking! That's an instant turn-off. No? Oh well, it was fun hanging with you anyway, cutie.
10. Squirrel!

* In cycling, drafting means following another cyclist very closely to take advantage of the reduction in wind drag.

Escapé

2010-01-30T20:29:39Z

I've been experimenting lately with letting myself do just what I want in a given moment. That will probably sound elementary to some of you, so much a given as to be not worth mentioning. But I have to tell you, it is quite difficult for me.

Not only am I not used to doing what I want, I'm so unused to it that I have trouble even hearing what I want.

I use that verb intentionally because finding out what I want is an act of listening. I hover there, listening for it like the sound of waves. Sometimes I can't tell. Sometimes I have a small sensation of it, a little nudge of energy in one direction over another.

It's like learning a new language.

I wonder if most people learn it in their teens. That seems to be the time of willfulness and experimentation and striking out as an individual force in the human landscape. That I am sitting here in my 40s experimenting and looking for clues like this is sad.
I don't mean pathetic. I mean quite literally that it makes me sad.

I should have done this a long, long time ago. I should have been living according to my own desires for decades, and I am sad for myself that I didn't have the chance to do so. And I'm sad that it's so difficult now, that I essentially have to wrest my life into my own hands by brute force and determination and ferocity.

On the other hand, it's nice to know one has brute force and determination and ferocity at one's disposal. I've used those qualities before, but mostly to protect or help others.

Now they're for me, and that is so unfamiliar it makes me squirm. I was sitting there in front of my oatmeal and my body was jumping around in the chair. Yeah, I'm not that wild about oatmeal; I forget about it on the stove, and I lose interest in it about halfway through the bowl. But it's also that I don't like to sit still. It makes me queasy.

I remember sitting next to summerboy in a restaurant once and him reaching out and clamping my leg down to keep it still. I hadn't even realized I was constantly moving it.

Sitting still feels like death to me, and repression, and lack of freedom. No wonder I love cycling; it's the opposite of all those things. And yes, I am now going to escape from this chair and pump tires and find the right layers for this frigid (high of 22F/-6C) weather and run away away away.

There and Back Again

2010-01-28T04:30:37Z

They say in order to love the city you have to leave it, that returning makes you appreciate it all over again.

Bullshit.

All going away did was make me realize how difficult and annoying and stressful (ad infinitum) life here is.

I went to visit a friend, and now I feel how very much I miss him. I went to a place where things are prettier and air is fresher and there are green things and an ocean, and now I feel how little of any of that there is here.

And what there is here instead is: Noise. Lots and lots of noise.

I hadn't realized how much static-level stress all that noise produces in me on a daily basis. That and the overall nastiness of people. I don't know, I really don't, whether people are bastards here on a larger scale or whether that is the true nature of man, and people elsewhere bother to cover it up more often.

But I tell you, I do not like these people. I do not like them in a crowd, I do not like them being loud. I do not like them in cars, I do not like them in bars.

I lost my sunglasses. I played in the cold foam at the water's edge. I rode in rain and then in sun. I hung out and cooked and watched movies and laughed and got sad. I did not knit, or read, or eat too much of anything when I wasn't truly hungry.

I watched some sunsets. I played with birds. Big birds and little ones. I visited a cat and two more cats and worried some about my own cat, who was being watched by a friend but who I knew would be sad and scared and confused.

I had two bad airplane flights. I wanted to take a long bike tour. I thought about how people get into our spheres and make little houses for themselves there. All I can think about now is how come I don't sleep so well or ever feel that relaxed here?

When I got home I overtightened a bolt on my bike and broke it. I fixed it. I spiffed up the bike with new grips and a bell. I don't think very much will change, though.

Shopping

2010-01-18T01:03:37Z

I went shopping. Yes, it's pouring cold rain out. Yes, the bridge was full of broken beer bottles (I have some choice words for whoever put them there). Yes, it's Sunday and I was up late last night.

But I had a quest.

And the weird thing was, the shopping kinda cheered me up. Which wouldn't be weird to someone else, but given my general hatred of all things shopping-related and my lack of patriotic consumerist joy in overspending, it was a bit surprising.

Maybe it was the colors of what I bought. There comes a point in winter when I long to be bathed in a molten pool of Crayola. Well, minus the burns from all that hot wax, but you know what I mean.

The city has its charms - checking out what color they've lit the Empire State as you go over the bridge (it's currently green-and-white). The mind-blowing profusion of fresh flowers lined up outside practically any deli in Manhattan. The charm of sitting down at your favorite haunts, where they automatically bring your ice cream in the long dish because they know you don't like the scoops melting into each other.

The particular delight of rolling up to a bar with a bicycle posse, and seeing other friends roll up, and ye shall know them by their bicycles and the particular brands of helmets they wear and how they look in winter gear or summer gear. "Oh, you haven't met him before? Well, let me introduce you." (then a few minutes later...) "Yes, he does look like George Clooney. He likes younger women; I'm too old for him. You should totally go for it!"

Where was I? Oh yes, the need for color in midwinter. Well, I guess there are various forms of color - literal and metaphorical, maybe even metaphysical.

I needed all of those, and I think I got some. Along with a pretty good dose of silliness. ("Oh crap, there is that guy who always hits on me. I will hang out with my ex-lover who will run interference. Shit, this guy just will not take a hint. Maybe he will think I'm going home with my ex-lover if we walk out together. Oh but wait, then the guy I have a crush on will think that, too. Damn.")

Oh well, it's all good.

The yin and yang of it

2010-01-16T07:26:14Z

Some days the contents of my head are extra-jumbled, and this has been a week of those sorts of days. I've tried to blog a few times and end up realizing that I am Just So Not in the Mood that the results languish in the ever-growing drafts pile. Good thing it's an electronic pile, because I'm not sure my apt has room for any more piles.

I took out my toaster to be recycled on the curb. Either the trash collectors will pick it up (it's mostly metal) or some random person will walk by, like the look of it, and take it, a phenomenon we call urban recycling. Sadly, if it's the latter, when they get it home and plug it in and try to make toast with it, they will find out it gives off a disturbing burnt-wire smell, which is why I suddenly had the urge to reclaim the counter space it was taking up.

Anyway. One less Thing I don't need. If I really, really, really want toast, there is always the oven.

I haven't had a microwave in years, and darlings, I don't want one.

What I do want is a more structurally sound bedframe. If a bed makes horrible rickety noises every time the 11-pound cat jumps onto it, it's time to start thinking about a visit to IKEA. I just would like to earn some money first.

What else don't I want? Let's see. I don't want a fancy coffeemaker. I am happy - make that very happy - with my little silver espresso pot. It sits on the stove, it makes an appealing noise when it's finished. I get to screw parts together (which is vaguely satisfying). I wash it and put it away for next time. Perfect little ritual.

What else do I want? A really pretty handpainted vegan yarn that has some wool-like memory and warmth, but is not produced from animal products. I am not sure it exists, but I have several non-animal-fiber-wearing friends for whom I need to or would like to knit. One of whom is allergic to acrylic. Any suggestions? Also, it would be great if it wasn't too costly.

What else don't I want? flat tires, insomnia, pain, road dangers, financial stress, any other kind of stress, fungi, tummy aches, influenzas or other illnesses, kittens to get left in plastic bags on the street, anything bad to happen to me or anyone I love.

What else do I want? Daily chocolate, love from friends and family and beautiful boys who are nice and funny, bicycles that are in good shape and fit me well, income from an enjoyable source, to get into school, to make art, to open a restaurant that just sells homemade soup and bread (need to talk to that friend of mine who has similar ambitions), for my darling little cat to live very healthily to a very ripe old age with me, my mommy.

Happy 2010, gang. Let's see what we can put together for ourselves, eh?

Life preservers

2010-01-05T07:20:38Z

I have a habit of looking at pretty things when I am having a hard time, and I've been thinking that I'm not the only one for whom beauty is nutritious.

I wrote here a while back about making something beautiful for someone who's dealing with illness, and recently another friend whose family is going through a difficult time asked me to knit something for her.

It's a practical object that fills a specific need, but I think there's more to it than that. I think she wants me to make her something pretty and soft. I think she knows that I will knit it with a lot of love, and I hope she knows how happy I am that she asked, that I'm glad there's something I can do for her - even if it's just a seemingly small thing.

I will have to remember to tell her that, when I give it to her.

I swear that these little things are what keeps our heads above the dark water when it starts to close in around us. That, and soup.

Antimatter.

2010-01-02T06:26:53Z

Have you ever noticed that putting vanilla in hot chocolate makes it less chocolatey? It's like antimatter for chocolate.

Some days you can just feel that things are going to be bad. I was in a fine mood before I left the house, but as soon as I stepped outside I thought, Uh Oh. There was a palpable sense of danger and madness in the air. I wouldn't even have gone out had I not had dinner plans with two friends I hadn't seen in ages.

Sure enough, all the humans were being nasty and belligerent and stupid (except for our waitress, who was pretty awesome). And on the way home one of them nearly ran me over, and then tried to tell me that since there was no bike lane on that street I was not supposed to be riding on it. And that it was somehow my fault for him backing into me. And that it was downright terrible that his window might be in danger of being broken (by my gloved hand smacking it to alert him that he was about to run me down with his giant car).

I was so angry and so flabbergasted and so steeped in adrenaline that I couldn't breathe well enough to get any sensible words out. I ended up trying to yell through sobs and then cried the whole rest of the way home. I don't think I was so much scared as impotently furious.

And I devoutly wished for summerboy, primarily because he would've been able to articulate to the guy just how wrong he was, and why, and then I could've had someone to cry on.

I ran into him unexpectedly at a party a few days ago, and it was a little emotionally charged to see him, but it also made me miss him. We were friends, and now we're not, and somehow I just feel the loss of someone I Iiked having in my life, rather than anything more defined by relationship boundaries.

I am kind of hoping we will become friends again.

One of the friends I was having dinner with confided, when our third member went to the bathroom, that she, too, had detested 2009. I've always assumed that the absurdly resilient hopefulness I seem to carry around in my chest was a permanent characteristic, but lately I am getting skeptical. I am wondering why I bother to make excuses for the horribleness of human beings. It may be, simply, that I wish they weren't so horrible, and so I tell myself that these are simply clouds obscuring the sun.

That might be a lie. Whether or not it's a necessary lie I don't know, but I am getting awfully angry, and I think maybe I am done making excuses for other people.