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the inside of my head.
06 March '10 by admin, under Journal.
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seeking fabulousness, or, making one’s own magic.
02 March '10 by admin, under Journal.
My “inside the revolution” series of three will be concluded as soon as I figure out how the hell the revolution is going to end. Meanwhile… I’m pursuing fabulousness.
Fabulousness is one part treating yourself, one part scaring yourself, and one part decoration. Decorating your life, yourself, or the world, with a project, love offered, or even the right handbag. It’s anything that celebrates, embellishes, and magickifies life.
To use movie analogies, 2009 was a Clint Eastwood western, full of stubbly chins, sweaty chaps and torn Wanted posters. It was real, it was hard, it was… Buffaloan.
Buffalo teaches you to make your own fun. Mix one 20-piece chicken wing with a half-case of beer and a hippety-hoppity station on Pandora, and you’ve got yourself a winter party in B-flo. Throw on your Uggs and wade off through the snow and ice. Bar hop. Drive out to the ‘burbs to go shopping at the shiny new big box stores. Life here is like the childhood our grandparents reminisce about, when kids didn’t have all those “newfangled gadgets,” and just entertained themselves with sticks and pebbles. Buffaloans can do a lot with sticks and pebbles.
Our family’s emotional life has had a similarly rough-hewn texture, with tearful conversations about my parents, my romantic stumblings, job drama. It has been a period of growth and discovery, but there’s very little about my life, for the past twelve, maybe fourteen months, you could call “fabulous.”
Even my hair, at its most awkward face-hugging phase while I grow it out, contributes to what you might call a period of “enh.”
When I go on Facebook, on the other hand, and see photos of my friend’s upcoming theatrical performance, or an old boss windblown and relaxed on a ski trip, or a couple smiling on a tropical beach, I feel awe. Because those things are fabulous. Wearing costumes onstage, traveling, finding gorgeous sunsets, loving a new person, painting a mural, raising a baby, carrying a pink patent leather handbag, and learning to tango, are all fabulous.
But especially travel, creativity, babies, and pink patent leather handbags.
One can be unfabulous in a big city, and completely sensational working as a waitress. It’s not about one’s circumstances so much as what one makes of them.
I wrote the other day about appreciating life’s imperfections, rather than expecting sudden magic. The distinction I’m making tonight is to not only accept what life gives me, but to give something back to my life. I used to think fabulousness was granted to the special, but after having a few fabulous moments myself, I know it’s something one has to create for oneself. Fate may have plunked me in Dodge City, but that doesn’t mean I have to walk around with mud on my boots, shooting strangers. And while the rough-hewn, unfabulous periods of our lives are inevitable and necessary, I’ve come too close to believing that’s all I get, or deserve… or want.
The weather is warming, snow melting. We’ll probably have one more big storm before March is over, but I didn’t even need to wear a coat today. Like so many things in my life, I’m always surprised when something horrid- like winter in Buffalo- can just end, without my needing to take out a warrant or sign a petition to ban it. It’s a pleasant thing to re-learn.
I’ve been offered a fun but low-paying job, here, that I have to either accept, or decline, in the morning. As I do so, I’ll be pondering the topic of my last blog: location, and how it affects one’s… fabulousness. I don’t think any city will ever satisfy my every desire, and I don’t think any city can be blamed for most of my personal problems. But I do think some cities are harder to flourish in than others. And if I have to go, I can’t think of any better guide than, “Where would Starina go?”
Now she was fabulous.
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inside the revolution, part two: life is just a chicken breast.
26 February '10 by admin, under Journal.
My mom’s fond of cooking chicken- breading it, baking it, frying it, putting it in sauces from Asian to Mexican, tacos, salads, pastry shells. When she’s stressed or bored, she goes into the kitchen with a package of skinless thighs and goes to work. She’s never made a chicken omelet but it’s only a matter of time. And that’s the nice thing about chicken- it’s a meat of many colors, adaptable and diplomatic.
I’m twenty-eight years old and have moved twenty times. I’ve lived in six states and three countries, although Spain was only for a month, probably too short to count. I leave it on the list, though, to give my brother a reason to call me pretentious.
What defines relocation, in that context? I had a boyfriend who used to startle me by asking, “are you moving in this weekend?” when he only meant, “are you staying with me this weekend?” To me, a “move” does not require a certain length of time, but intent to stay. You can travel to Thailand for a year, but if you train from village to village, staying with strangers and at hostels, you’ll probably say you “traveled around Thailand for a year.” Move into a Bangkok apartment intending to marry a local, however, and you’ll probably say you lived there, even if he calls off the engagement a month later.
I count the two or three weeks I spent in Seattle in the summer of 2008, because I fully intended to stay, but I do not include the three weeks my mom and I spent in Vegas in January of 2009, because we had no intention of leaving our hotel room. Only two of the locations on my list lasted less than a month, the longest, five or six years.
To finish up the illustrative statistics, roughly half of those moves were initiated by my parents or as a family decision, the other half were solely mine. That means I’ve caught up fast with my parents, absorbing, without realizing it, both their fearlessness and their fear. The logistical challenges of packing up one’s belongings and carting them across the country to a foreign city do not bother us- the logistical challenges of staying put, do. If we had a dispute with the neighbors, or the kids in school were horrid, my brother and I rarely had to compromise, wait, or adapt. We’d soon be on our way. It bred a certain arrogance and dissatisfaction that’s hard to root out.
Over the years, my willingness to move evolved into a sense that, if or when anything went wrong, it was my duty to move. We moved several times for promotions for my dad, causing both his professional growth and our financial comfort. We moved to flee neighbors who held loud late-night parties and parked dead cars in their front yards, again to avoid forced busing to a school forty-five minutes away, a third time because pollution was making us sick (I found my hormone test results taken after we left Spokane- wow). In those cases, staying would have been simply due to fear. Ergo, if you’re unhappy and you’re not packing boxes, it’s because you’re afraid of change.
Those concepts, of location, happiness, and fear, are almost inextricably linked in my family’s consciousness. We’re addicted to change, convinced that unhappiness is our fault, and only curable by renting a U-haul.
This has come to a head here in Buffalo, a city a recent Forbes survey dubbed the “eighth most miserable city in the country.”
Twenty moves in twenty-eight years… but I’ve lived in Buffalo for more than a year.
When I visited my relatives in Seattle before Christmas, my aunt told me, “don’t stay there just because you’re ready to settle down.” I think about going home, about the Puget Sound, the superior jazz, the pine trees, family members who I know I could have a margarita with on a Friday night. I also think about the family members who stiffen when I mention Obama, meditation, or sex, the region’s fondness for Goretex, and the obese people who wheel themselves around Wal-Mart in electric carts.
Buffalo has a similar balance sheet. Relationships I tried to build here, have not lasted, my job’s kaput, the weather’s awful. On the other hand, living is cheap, bars are the best in the world, and my mom, brother and I know a lot of people here, whether by face or by name. It’s here, oh-so ironically, where we find a sense of community we haven’t experienced since I was in high school.
Could we find that community again, if we lived in Seattle in the same spirit? Maybe. Probably. I’m not sure if it matters where the next chapter of this story takes place. I’m not sure if it ever did.
I was jabbing a knife into some raw chicken breasts last night, duplicating something I saw Rachel Ray do to pork chops on the TV at the laundromat last week (we don’t have TV at home). As I stuffed the slivers of garlic into the white flesh, I thought, this is what it always comes down to: hum along to the radio, wash the dishes that have collected through out the day, turn on the oven, and try a new recipe. No matter what I do or where I go, from Portland to Devonshire, if you give me an evening alone at home, that’s probably how I’ll spend it. I usually wind up taking so long with the cooking that I’m not very hungry by the time I sit down to eat. I usually feel angry with myself for not having a nicer dining space in which to eat it. And I usually stay up too late with a craft project or blog afterward, like I am tonight.
But instead of staying put and changing my habits, I move, thinking I’ll establish a different routine somewhere else. That I’ll find myself eating with a lovable man instead of the cat, preparing great meals instead of “could be better” experiments, sitting down in a cute little dining room instead of at the Ikea thing mounted on the kitchen wall. But here I am, ten years out of high school, after so many different apartments, cities, roommates, jobs, weather patterns, sink-to-stove arrangements, and still, if I’m by myself on a weeknight, I’ll probably just cook some damn chicken and eat it alone. And by god, if that’s what I tend to do, what’s so wrong with that? Why am I looking for instant perfection?
Because at some point we forgot to enjoy the benefits of our fearlessness and started feeling compelled by it. We forgot that it’s okay to settle.
Mr. Hotness told me a few weeks ago that instead of changing my life, perhaps I needed to change the “writer’s perspective” on that life. That I needed to go into the “room of my depression” and sit there till I got bored and left. It was a beautiful metaphor, and one I’ve had in mind ever since. Sticking chicken into the oven last night, I kept mentally poking myself, looking for signs of having walked into that “depression room-” but I hadn’t. I even had fresh rosemary, for Pete’s sake, and my, how the asparagus glistens when it’s been burnt in olive oil. So my cooking skills won’t “catch me a husband” any time soon. I’m starting to find real, plain, boring old life just a little more interesting than my quest for an imaginary, perfect one.
The equation is pretty simple. If you say, “I want this kind of apartment, this kind of companionship, this kind of entertainment, this kind of landscape outside,” you can expect to be dissatisfied. If you say, “Ah, a night to do anything I want! Let’s put on a ‘Frasier’ DVD and have a beer,” with the cat snoring in the corner and your fuzziest slipper socks on, suddenly, you’re having fun. I’m not talking about rose-colored glasses or blind complacency, just acceptance. Or “acception,” as that cab driver in Chicago told me last December.
The chicken, by the way, was delicious. When I cooked asparagus again tonight, I did not burn it. And that little forward step, my friends, could have happened in any city from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine.
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inside the revolution, part one: burning bridges.
21 February '10 by admin, under Journal.
Before Christmas, a man I used to work for, and have since referred to here in the blog as the “ex-boss,” even though I’ve worked for five people since leaving his company, got back in touch after months of silence.
I never thought I’d hear from him again after agreeing, last summer, to return to work for him and then bailing two weeks later. I was afraid I’d fall in love with him again, like I had when I worked for him before. I was fully aware of the quality of the bridge I was burning when let him down. I felt that if I still feared developing feelings for him more than a year after working for him, and this was the second time since I’d left that he’d offered me a job, I should probably go ahead and light the match.
Hearing from him six months later was an unexpected pleasure. He sent jokey text messages, chatted cheerfully about his current projects. It was clear he was punchy from overwork, but no longer had hard feelings toward me. Still, right after I’d left the organization I’d been working for here in Buffalo, I was surprised when he told me he’d asked his business partner if they could offer me a job (again). His partner refused, presumably because of what I’d done in June, and I didn’t dispute it. Telling me about it, he sounded genuinely upset, which confused me because I hadn’t even asked him to consider hiring me, and hadn’t even initiated our renewed conversation. “I’m not building up to some big dramatic see-ya moment,” he wrote, and the sentence made me raise an eyebrow… what had I done now to deserve hearing “see ya?”
At the same time, Mr. Hotness and I had begun talking yet again. No matter how much time passes, how frustrated we become with each other, we still wonder how great it could be if we ever lived in the same country. Mr. Hotness is getting his Master’s, which will keep him in England until August. As our conversations grew longer and I grew more excited at the idea of seeing him again, I began to wonder what I could do for six months until he came to the US.
Working for the ex-boss didn’t sound dangerous anymore, it sounded like a mutually beneficial sort-term solution. He was understaffed, I needed work. I knew he preferred having committed long-term employees, but thought that he might consider having me for six months- and that the circumstances might change his partner’s opinion. When I asked the ex-boss about it, he sounded sad, which confused me, asking me if I thought he was a robot. But he asked his partner, and his partner again said no.
I have a girlfriend who’s recently returned from Mongolia- you may remember her guest blog a few months ago. All this talk about New York (where the ex-boss and the girlfriend are) made me hungry to bus it into the city. In fact, I started teling people I was moving back to New York, officially, sure that in light of all my miserable uncertainty of the past several months, the only thing left to do was return to the one city I’d ever truly loved.
I was confused by the ex-boss’s state of mind, from his seemingly random decision to talk to me at all, in December, to the references to robots and “see ya moments.” Wanting to let him know that I wasn’t trying to use him as a Pez dispenser of employment, I offered to buy him a cup of coffee while on this visit to Manhattan.
His response shook and startled me. He said that I had personally and professionally hurt him two or three times, and he now realized he was glad he hadn’t set himself up to be hurt by me again. He needed two or three months of not-talking, to heal.
While I could understand accusations of professional mistakes, I had gone to such great lengths to avoid hurting this man personally that I had no idea- still don’t a few weeks later- what he was talking about. When I responded to that affect he took issue with a few words in the email, as is his wont, and said he wanted permanent distance from me. It was his big, dramatic, “see ya” moment.
A few days later, I sat at the downtown Buffalo bus station, at midnight. There were twenty-five or so people waiting for a bus, some remarking that they’d been there since ten-thirty. We all rose at the sight of an approaching bus, but the Greyhound ticket agent announced that we “might as well all sit down and wait cuz the buses aren’t comin’.” There were five stuck in Toronto, she said, but didn’t say whether the weather or the border patrol held them up. When a few people approached her to find out more, I watched her point fingers and stick out her chin, clearly defensive about her lack of information.
For the next two hours, full buses would appear, take on two or three people, and drive off into the night. I sat in my teal molded plastic chair, the huge heating ducts roaring overhead, and calculated the chances I’d even arrive in Manhattan in time to ride out to my friend’s party in Long Island the following afternoon.
Two border patrol officers in green jumpsuits arrived. A Buffalo police officer with wind-burnt cheeks handed them a photo and print out. I heard the words “has a warrant out” and “she wants…” leaving me wondering who I might wind up riding a bus with in the middle of the night.
They assessed that situation and then moved on to a drunk man slumped in a chair. He’d arrived on a bus from another city the day before, telling a cop he was riding on to yet another city. But here he still was, a day and a half later. The border patrol officers looked on, amusement on their clean-shaven faces, as the officer told the man he’d need to get on the first bus the next morning or he’d have to take him in to jail.
It was starting to occur to me, as the clock spun from one to two AM, and the drunk slurred his story yet again, that I was twenty-eight, broke, alone, unemployed, riding a bus into a city where only one of the people I’d loved there wanted to see me anymore. In the yellow light of that damn bus station, it was easy to wonder how much prevented me from becoming that drunk guy, repeating an incoherent story to the cops, roaming from city to city on the bus, smelling like pee and mouthwash.
Traveling alone had officially lost its novelty. For the past three or more years, I have been proving to myself and the world in general that I can navigate bus systems, train schedules, and subway stairs, fly to foreign countries, buy a bra without speaking the language it’s sold in, get jobs and keep them, and pick up the groceries on my way home from work, all without a car, without a boyfriend, without a guide book, without any help at all except my mom’s care packages and brother’s sympathetic ear. Taking the full-time job here in Buffalo, which looked, at the time, low-drama, instead of returning to work for the boss I’d been in love with, had been my final act of proving that self-reliance. I was left alone in Buffalo, knew about four people, needed to start supporting myself again asap, and chose, not the glamorous-but-dramatic job, but the job fifteen minutes from my house, with women I couldn’t fall in love with, helping artists teach little kids how to dance and write poetry. It was a good decision. I’m proud of that decision. I’m not delighted with the way it ended. But knowing what I did then, it’s one of the more sensible decisions of my life.
Now, going solo just feels a little masochistic and boring. As does returning to New York, that gorgeous, sensational city. Waiting for the bus that night, I imagined climbing the stairs out of Penn Station to dive into the midtown crowds, the clever thing some European man would inevitably say to me at some point during the trip, the smell of urine-soaked trash on a Sunday morning in the Village. I thought about my friend, returned from Mongolia, bless her fabulous heart, already the owner of a new Blackberry. I thought about my old boss, leaving his house early in the morning to carry out certain rituals in the city before he even started work, crafting his eloquent and oh-so effective emails, hurrying through those crowds every night to board his train at Grand Central. I thought about the chaos, the shells people build, and the compromises I’d have to make, creatively, just to get by. Right now, right here, I have the luxury of waiting a bit longer for more freelance web design work, already having found a part-time gig managing the website for a large downtown restaurant. New York would require taking on admin work or grunt web production at a large company.
New York would require effort, loneliness, ear plugs.
I got in a cab and went home.
After doing something similar last March, one might think I didn’t need to come to that decision yet again. But I’m always circling back to review my options. It continually astounds me that I could have lived someplace so fantastic and yet not want to go back. I didn’t gaze into that dark sky outside the station windows and feel overwhelming love for Buffalo, no. I just knew that I had left New York for a reason, as I had said “no” to that former boss of mine for a reason. The reasons had justified burning bridges. So I wouldn’t be tempted to cross them, and even if I was, as I was, I wouldn’t have the manpower or money to rebuild them.
And boy am I good at that.
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Sorry about the ugly design…
14 February '10 by admin, under Uncategorized.
My site was hacked, unfortunately. Fortunately, I was able to keep all the posts and re-install everything so we still have the Palmer’s Blog we know and love. But the problem is somewhere in the folder where I kept my design, so until we figure it out, we’re going to look like toilet paper for a little while.
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a little ado about some things.
05 February '10 by admin, under Journal.
What in the world has your favorite unemployed blogger been up to? After finishing my web design portfolio, I started work on a website for a local winter festival, which is almost done. I also received a batch of gorgeous business cards, that I’ve been pinning on every available bulletin board in Western New York. And of course I’m racking up Craigslist frequent flyer miles responding to ads for web design gigs.
My parents met in Cleveland, over the weekend, to discuss something. The topic caused a lot of emotion and subsequent processing in our household.
An unspoken truce in my circle of friends was broken, the other day, hopefully temporarily. It reminded me that any group of people can become like a family, with the cousin you hate, the lecherous uncle, and the niece everyone adores. You have to put up with all this less-than-perfection in order to have the good nights, when everyone gets along, the beer is fresh, and the jokes all truly funny. And you have to choose your battles carefully.
There are a few other things going on I can’t talk about publicly, among them, the fantasies I keep returning to regarding Mr. Hotness, as we talk once again via short emails sent and received on my erratically effective cell phone.
People keep asking me what I’m going to do or where I’m going to go. I have no answer. I just know that I’m making decisions differently than I used to, and everyone, myself included, is going to have to wait to see the results. 2009 made me tougher, less inclined to question my instincts or needs, and more patient. I’m not the same person who threw everything in her brother’s U-haul and lived out of a suitcase for half a year. Very basic lifestyle requirements I’ve never paid much attention to, like my own apartment, a career with management potential, and a mirror by the goshdarn front door, now seem almost insanely important.
I’m so unaccustomed to valuing these things, I have to readjust my entire decision-making process. When I get crazy-bored hanging around our cat-filled apartment, I remind myself to be grateful I have the time to do this.
Meanwhile, we’re all still in the one bedroom living like refugees. But as they say, admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.
Anyway, not much news, but much love to you all, and I’m sure I”ll have more to say soon.
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JoJo the trained circus bear.
24 January '10 by admin, under Journal.
Graduating high school was a transition I still haven’t recovered from. I wasn’t popular, a class president, or captain of my basketball team. I was just really good at the schoolwork. I missed about three assignments in my entire school career, graduated with honors, passed tests without studying. I was like a trained circus bear, delighted by the applause of the audience as I rode a unicycle around the ring.
My senior English teacher was heartbroken that I didn’t plan to go to college. Instead, after graduating, I stayed home and wrote. I felt compelled to do so, and am glad I did, but it started an inner conflict I still struggle with. My teachers’ words chastised me with the praise they used to give me for meeting results, expectations and standards. Someone who always scored in the top ninety-five percent of anything found it very difficult to work on a project no one might ever see… and would probably suck.
The circus bear had returned to her native habitat, but felt lonely without the cheering audience.
I taught myself the fundamentals of story structure and character development, as well as how to sit down and just finish a story. Many of the people I’ve known since, who studied creative writing in a college setting, have yet to learn that. At the same time, I felt boring and didn’t like myself. My quiet little achievements didn’t matter in my own eyes- it was just another screenplay.
After several years of steadily increasing depression, I moved to the East Coast and was shocked back to life. It had a lot to do with the fact that I made friends and had a lot more sex. But it also had to do with that year in Manhattan working as a recruiter. In that office, my circus bear was brushed, fed with the freshest fish and given very shiny tutus to wear. My boss rewarded me with increasing responsibilities, toys, a raise, my first business card. Our clients rewarded me by hiring people I’d suggested, and those candidates thanked me for helping them find work.
It was an ego feast. But like most feasts, it always left me hungry an hour later. The bear always needed more praise, more tasks, more special moments with her trainers. When the bear wasn’t working she felt lost and a little panicky. I left New York partially because everyone I knew, at every professional level, was a circus bear. People who excelled at riding that unicycle in front of an audience. It was a rough, rough town to pursue quiet fantasies and undefined creative concepts.
Last night I was ashamed to realize that I’d gone through that cycle all over again in late 2008 and 2009. I thought that when I left New York to work as a nanny, my ego totally deprived and my happiness level very high, I had learned my lesson. But I returned home, and started jumping through hoops at a nonprofit in Buffalo, asking for a promotion, more responsibilities, fighting with a new manager for credit, attention, challenges, that have nothing to do with what I started out doing: writing.
And this divide between my inner circus bear and my desire to write affects everything else about my life. Circus bears read the expectations in their trainer’s eyes and do everything they can to live up to them. Circus bears follow rational rules (unicycles and tutus) instead of running off into the woods to follow their own wild urges. Circus bears aren’t really good at taking care of themselves, because they’re used to being fed and groomed in exchange for holding a ball on their nose. They live for others, they live to ignore their own desires, and they live under the hot spotlight.
Take romantic relationships. A guy meets me and thinks, “ooh, she’s going to take care of me, fix me up, and clean me out the way she does her office at work.” But meeting expectations in a relationship the way I do at work is hell.
In the case of big things like values and decision-making, if you’ve been raised by a very logical mother and a father who thinks in a literal, practical way, and you’re naturally an instinctive and emotional person, you alternate between impulsive moments of rebellion and miserable restraint of the “weird” voices in your head.
And, yes, it does explain why I can’t cook, refuse to iron, and don’t notice when seven red lights start beeping on the dashboard of the car.
I don’t actually find all this depressing, I find it liberating, like all self-knowledge. I just want JoJo to retire. I’m always going to have those inclinations, but the more quickly I can spot them, the easier I can avoid the moments I actively seek a master, unicycle, and whip. Be it a job, a lover or a friend who expects me to do anything other than be kind to others, write books, and wear stripey socks.
Just say no.
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dirty little secrets.
23 January '10 by admin, under Journal.
I have a confession to make. I have always wanted to live just like my deeply Christian, politically conservative, gun-owning, Ford-truck-driving grandparents.
They live in a big house surrounded by tall evergreens that are usually dripping wet from a recent rain. My grandma has room for both a decorative and vegetable garden, plus a shed and huge mulch pile. They are part of the generation that considered DIY a necessity rather than a hobby, so if my grandma decides she wants a rock-lined stream flowing down to a fountain accompanied by fake deer statuettes, she and my grandpa build it. Until recent chemotherapy weakened and made my grandpa colder, he would meander out most afternoons to pursue various experiments in his wood shop. A new method of making chess boards, turning out a couple display boxes to sell at the local swap meet, a plate or two for my grandma to tole paint.
My grandparents don’t consider themselves particularly creative, and they don’t particularly value creativity in others. But they’ve lived, in my lifetime, an essentially creative life. They get an idea into their heads, be it a new way to germinate tomatoes, or how to improve the second bathroom, and they do it. Often, together, or with the help of friends and family.
When I moved to New Jersey to live in a million dollar home with a CEO and her two daughters, I was continually surprised by their household’s need to outsource. Cleaning, landscaping, setting up a closet organizational system, retrofitting the upstairs bath, even grooming their dog fell to someone else. My efforts to solve those problems myself or find cheaper solutions usually failed to impress. To that family, doing something oneself was a sign of poverty.
To my grandparents, and my mom and her two sisters, doing something oneself give one greater control, is rewarding, and saves money. My generation is not so self-reliant, but most of us still paint our own walls, dye our own hair, and groom our own damn pets.
In my grandparents’ case, doing things themselves did make them wealthy. Not to the standards of the CEO in New Jersey, but certainly to their own standards. Building their own construction company, raising three daughters with sometimes too-severe thrift, and more than three decades’ dedication to a major Seattle construction firm, has left them with an enormous home, a cabin, that well-outfitted shop, and a big shiny refrigerator.
Perhaps more importantly, they’ve earned the freedom to pursue the activities they love. Together. With family around them. That is my standard of wealth, a standard no one in New York or New Jersey replaced.
I don’t share many of my grandparents’ values. But deep in my roots, under the soil, and hanging over my branches, they are there with that life they built together. In their partnership. In their mastery of their respective crafts. In the importance they place on family rather than status or acclaim. In their home- with the three squares a day, clean sheets in the cupboard, guest room ready, every pipe and beam familiar to each of them.
And, despite everything that’s happened between my parents in the past couple years, I still consider their traditional marital roles equally rewarding and healthy for both of them. It’s still difficult to raise children, make a pleasant home, or nurture growing people, while competing in the outside world. Particularly if you can’t afford to pay people to help you out.
Just like I did when I left Oregon four years ago, I want children, time to write, and someone who loves me enough to make it possible for me to do both, with him. Pretty old school stuff.
At the same time, I want to explore new parts of the world and pursue whatever whim comes into my head next, unencumbered by the responsibilities of property or children. I want to nest and I want to wander, and I have always wanted both. I don’t know if that conflict will be resolved by going through phases of both, or if I’m struggling to reconcile my childhood role models with what I’ve learned about myself as an adult.
I spent most of 2009 reacting to life. To my parents’ conflict, the triad of evil, my job, this town. I haven’t had a lot of time to think about my own goals or desires. Mondo beyondo wishes fell to the wayside in the face of much more practical concerns. So I’m asking these questions, looking at what I want, now that moving and finding another job have gone from theoretical needs to genuine necessities. Settling down would require making very different choices than living the catch-as-catch-can life I’ve lived so far.
At this point, I can barely keep a pair of slippers for a month without losing them.
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irresistible forces and unmoveable objects.
20 January '10 by admin, under Journal.
My mom and I went to Buffalo’s ritzy suburban shopping mall, today. Ordinarily I suffer from involuntary tremors at the thought of crossing a mall door’s threshold, but a week and a half after walking out of my last job, I instinctively knew today was a once-a-decade time for some shop therapy.
The gods did smileth upon us the entire trip. The clerk at Frederick’s of Hollywood helpfully advised my mom and I on garter belt sizing. The soundtrack in New York & Co. kept me bopping while trying on skinny slacks. Fergie, unbeknownst to me, designed a line of sneakers so adorable, I had to buy a pair even though I already have three pairs of sneakers and hardly ever wear any of them. Bath & Body Works was paying people to take away their excess inventory. And when we finally collapsed at Jack Astors, weak and empty of wallet, the waitress greeted us warmly with cheap booze and cheesy, garlicky meat ‘n potatoes fare to strengthen us for our journey home.
Why, you may ask, does an unemployed person spend $150 at the mall on hi-tops and stockings? In my case, an unemployed person spends money because she has a disturbingly strong sense that she won’t be unemployed for long, and she’ll need those black slacks and skirt to look all, like, professional. She also does it because she needs a distraction from sitting around the house fixating on her new design portfolio or emailing the eight hundredth apartment ad.
I keep waiting for someone to say “Snap out of it and just move somewhere!” I am trying. I don’t blog about my attempts to find a volunteer homestay in Europe, or the families I’ve discussed nannying for, or the quantity of Craigslist ads I’ve read and responded to, but that’s how I spend a lot of my time. Since mid-September, I’ve explored every method of moving that I know of or people have suggested. I’ve tried, for months, to take responsibility for my happiness, by initiating change instead of sitting around complaining.
But nothing takes. And I’m starting to wonder whether the best way to figure out why, would be to shut the heck up for a minute.
So I went to the mall, and bought the dangling beaded earrings at Old Navy. I will probably wear them tomorrow, with my hi-tops, and layer the skirt over the pants over the garter belt, and top it all of with a heavy layer of sweet pea scented Bath & Body Works bath foam.
Something’s gotta give. Until then, at least I’ll look (and smell) fantastic.
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two old poems.
15 January '10 by admin, under Fiction.
The other day, my mom and I visited the storage unit where we keep everything she and my brother moved from Oregon after selling our family’s house last August. We used dustpans to shovel the snow away from the doorway, and filled up the car with boxes of my belongings.
Sorting things I still wanted to keep (a pair of black leather boots with ruffles and spike heels) from things I didn’t (a six inch thick English text book from high school) I discovered a stack of high school papers. I have no idea why I kept my AP history and English essays, handwritten and generality-laden as most such essays are. Unless it was to prove that I’ve always been fond of titling things oddly, such as, “Betty Freidan vs. Martin Luther,” and “The Fascinating Issue of Power as Viewed by Orwell, Plus a Few Frogs.”
A few months after graduating I went on a poetry-writing kick, and two of those poems have remained my favorite pieces of writing, ever. They were also lurking in this pile of old papers. So I thought I’d share.
“a friend I wish I’d had”
You appreciated so much of me, that year,
or tried to. But as April turned to May,
this was one thing you never understood.
… Please listen, children. Just one more sonnet before we are through,
one more month before you can leave…
You never believed my concern: My room is a mess.
So is mine, you’d say.
You’d smile.
Mad with thirst, I’d sneak from class and find you in the hall,
sit next to you on the bench with your books.
We’d talk, your hands punctuating the air.
I would drink and drink and
drink,
drink your conversation until the ashen hallway of that sheetrock warren
warbled away.
I saw only your chin,
jutting upward when you laughed.
Then the halls would fill with students, and we’d stand
(In my dreams, you pass by unnoticing)
… Just one more day, children, and you will be free…
Moving through the revolutions of bells, wishing she was wrong,
wishing I had the chance to talk to you…
always.
But, My bedroom floor is covered, I can’t make it to my bed.
Things I haven’t used in years are floating to the surface.
You listened sympathetically, but did not see the point.
Perhaps your mess was different.
The layers covering your floor, the clothes on your chair, books on your bed,
(I have lost so quickly what was never really there)
didn’t frighten you.
My room’s a mess, too, you said, as we stepped around the curtain.
… Just one more step until you have gone…
Sometimes I wish we were still there, laughing around her as she
read aloud a sonnet.
“Senior Year: Girlfriends”
Stalking hallways in black and curvy shrouds,
you girls taught me how to savor
insanity and pain.
Letters on your rumpled t-shirts;
your madness was a slogan.
(I was crazy before it was cool).
With dark eyes and limpid hair, they/we
ate lunch: a manic coven circle sitting
in a crowded high school hall.
Anger and joy passed through unwelcome:
genuine emotion unbalances woe.
Better sorrow, the clothing fit.
(The mall has a whole store of Misery)
Dismal bedroom, suicidal frustration.
Parents who are Mean.
Sorrow is never your fault.
Stepping briefly from our baths of tears,
we had a good time, sweeties.
Thrift store hunting, Mambo Lattes,
cigarette smoke fogged our nostrils.
Nights spent imagining what life looked like.
Remember, not the anguish, but:
sitting in the grass,
blowing glitter on each other’s faces,
cuddling around a scary movie.
Books of revelation, shared poetry,
coffee and rain and
laughing till I could no longer stand.
The lightness when we pretended we had no homework,
and it would always be spring.
That year, you needed a stranger to your sticky, spider’s web.
I needed the glimpses of genius,
your weeping pasts,
loud music in the car and a cloister to dance within.
The puzzle shifts and people who didn’t fit, now do-
pieces once perfect, now cannot be wedged into place.
Funny how so brief a space
can slay a common language.
I returned and asked:
What do I do now?
You couldn’t tell me.
