Juxtapositioning

Prioritizing

This is my last night in Vancouver.

Oh, come on. Not, like, EVER. I’ll be back. Sometime. But everything I own is stacked here next to me. Quite a sight! There are 7 boxes and 2 in the car already. Plus 1 more in the back with computer stuff in it, because GOD HELP ME IF THERE WAS A GOD IF I HAVE TO GO WITHOUT INTERNET. Plus some smaller boxes and some suitcasey things and 2 bottles of wine and a wooden horse statue that used to stand next to the fireplace lo these many years ago in the house I grew up in. And upstairs is a small tote bag filled with my underwear, DON’T ASK BUT SOMETIMES THINGS ARE LEFT OUT, almost.

So here I am blogging my life, because Dude. That’s what I DO. Me and zillions of other exhibitionistic narcissists. And I am thinking about the sheer joy I get from this process, of distilling small moments and then making them public. And I want to spend more time doing that.

And more time all around doing the things that are joyful.

So tomorrow I will try to get up early and then see how everything fits in the car. Yes, I chose the coldest day of the year, or close to it, for this. My fingers are cold just thinking about this. And then I move into the next phase. Still not sure how that will look, exactly. But there will be joy in it.

Pride goeth before the fall

Or something like that. Far be it from me, with an athiestic upbringing and a pagan belief system rooted in the practice of and belief in reincarnation and the oneness of everything, to quote accurately from anything remotely Biblical, but there you are. And here am I.

Here’s the deal: what if you were incredibly optimistic some of the time, seeing everything in its shiny newness, seeing the amazing and myriad possibilities that exists for each of us in any given moment, seeing your own magical perfection and ability to DO ANYTHING AT ANY TIME? That would be great, right?

So what if, some of the time, you saw nothing but black, the inside of a deep dark cave you know that you yourself caused you to be hurled into without provision or hope or light?

Okay, so what I experience is nothing at all like that, but then again it’s sort of close.

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been.

They say something something about balance schmalance  and I say wtf? What do you know about balance, baby?? I am living balance. From both ends.

So today I wasted an entire day lining up teeny weeny links in 4 teeny weeny posts while I steadfastedly ignored the heart out of the column that’s staring me in the face for Friday, the one that needs beaucoup editing and paring down by a third, the one that wrings the heart-juice right out of me to even think about. It’s my kid’s birthday this month and for the first time in his life I won’t be there to see him open his gift and to be the one to see his face when he wakes up knowing this is HIS DAY, his one day among all the days, and it is this kid I am writing about this month. Coincidence. No.

So if you see me silently weeping into my black cave (please send coffee), you’ll know what’s up.

Punishment

Although I don’t particularly like them, not this brand anyway, I am eating organic corn tortillas. Microwaved, to take off that raw edge and render them nearly impossible to chew. Also they taste funny, possibly because the package has been in the fridge for weeks (partially opened, I found out) and there’s some white stuff on them that I told myself was “corn dust” and wasn’t the beginnings of mold and therefore isn’t going to make me sick, and I am bound and determined to finish every last tortilla in this package even though there isn’t anything like CHEESE to go with them because cheese is something I haven’t seen or frankly thought much about since last May, before I open the new fresh package moldering away in the fridge under this one.

Pardon me, I have been packing. Or rather, un-unpacking, since I am doing the reverse of what I did in August when room was made for my stuff in the closet and I hung it all on hangers and that wasn’t very long ago. And apparently all I own are: clothes, legal papers, pots and pans, and cycling gear. Also an iPhone which is useless beyond the border.

Also I own two bottles of wine, one of which is worth about $150 on the open market (email me to bid) and the other is still in its fancy box, intact after flying over the Atlantic, driving 2000 miles and back again, and then driving another 4000 miles to its present place of unrest. That bottle of wine is well-traveled, and it better be good.

Day after tomorrow someone comes to rip up the carpet in this place, leaving us the weekend to admire whatever horrors lay underneath before someone else comes Monday to take 30 boxes of [very heavy and hardly eco-conscious] laminate flooring and merrily click them into place while we amuse ourselves moving furniture from room to room.

And Tuesday I go find myself a new place to put all my clothes and legal papers and cycling gear. And then I have to acquire all the beds tables dishes lamps bookshelves that go into making a house habitable. I am tryng to think of the One Important Thing that I cannot forget, that absolutely makes a house a home. It might be pillows. And I have mine with me, so I’m all right.

It might be the paint fumes

Irony = writing a post on the eco evils of latex paint while wielding a brush full of said paint with the other hand.

Today Matthew decided it was the day to paint. I had mumbled some promise to him about “trim” and “steady hand” and couldn’t resist helping cover up that hideous orangey color with a color I find hard to describe. In a certain light it looks purplish. In another it looks more taupe. I have no idea what color it is, but it’s on three walls and is destined for several more. It looks modern and sleek, which is a good thing if that’s what you’re going for. And it only took four months to get it done.

Something something paint fumes headache something [redacted]. Also [further redacted] jumbled mess of everything that had to be moved to make three walls bare.

While painting, I alternated epiphanies with tremendous inner pain. Life works like that. The tears flowed while the paint dried. Cry me a river. I’m no closer now to making it to the surface, at least from here it doesn’t appear any different, but I’ve decided it would be a good idea to stop taking life so fucking seriously. Since I have had this talk with myself at least 7000 times before, I have a hard time believing I will get anywhere THIS time but you never know. It could be the paint fumes talking, but I may be on to something.

But here’s the thing: which parts do you hang on to and which can you let go of?

I have spam

Spam makes you special. I have spam.

I’m sitting here, still in my coat, because I have been cold for more days than I can count. Bundled up in bed at night with socks—I hate wearing socks in bed, it seems so wrong—and multiple layers including a cashmere sweater, next to a warm man who loves me, I lie awake every night for hours wondering if I will ever be warm again.

The cold is inside me. I tell Matthew not to bother turning the heat up, because I know it will make no difference. The cold is inside.

I’m wearing headphones right now, some string and superglue holding them together, listening to some healing chanting tones. Maybe this music will warm me somehow. Maybe it will help break this unbelievable tension I have been feeling, the feeling that I am about to shatter into a million tiny ice-splinters, shards of what was once me scattering all over the floor.

Everything changes.

I know this with every fiber of my being, but still I resist being IN the space I am in.  I resist allowing the terrible tension to overwhelm me, to envelop me, to become me.

Something will change. Tomorrow will not be like today. Things move and shift. I tell myself partly because I know it, and partly because although I know it I still need to hear it.

Next to me is a list of houses I might live in. One of them might be a home for me. I have been feeling the absence of a home for months, and part of me longs to feel I belong somewhere.  Another part longs for a sense of reckless freedom that owning very little brings.  Somewhere in the middle might be balance, but I have yet to find it.

Tomorrow will be a different day. And I have spam.

I think I forgot to eat today

That would explain a LOT.

However, I did meditate. And I worked and wrote and wrote and worked. My eyes are still bleeding. And I cried a little and had a shower and put makeup on. And wore clothes. And I am getting used to one space after-a-period rather than the years and years of two spaces. if I can unlearn the two-space thing I may actually learn to type one of these days.

Oh, you haven’t seen me type, have you? I understand it’s “interesting.” It makes a lot of noise. And now I know why three keys on my laptop are now nearly obliterated; I don’t keep my fingernails very long but they’re long enough to do some damage. So goodbye N, H, and L.

I type with two fingers, essentially. The middle ones. Giving my audience the one-fingered salute. I salute you! And again! Hah!

Yesterday I made the mistake of pitching a publisher I had been introduced to. I was in emotional turmoil over this border thing and I sent a possibly-incoherent email rambling on about all the places my writing appears. I had spent about 45 minutes prior to that searching through the annals of my old blog looking for a particular post I wrote in late 2006. It took forever because I had cleverly hidden my old blog somewhere no one will ever find it. Not even me, apparently. But in that 45 minutes I had a quick tour of a couple of years of my life.

I used to have another life.

It had kids in it. I cooked a lot. I took pictures of the people I loved. There was love, and there was life. Oh, I’m not regetting the changes I’ve made, not too much. There’s love and life here too. Life is what we make of it, isn’t it? We are always living our creation.

It just felt particularly poignant, looking at the pages of my life like that. As if I was looking at someone else’s life, not mine. And there was passion and joy and hurt. And there was someone making her way day by day, doing the things she thought she needed to do. None of that is wasted. So much energy went into creating the me that was, and the me that is, not to mention the three children who were and are. None of that has gone for naught. But I miss some of those times. I miss the moments of peacefulness and satisfaction. I miss being who I was simply because that’s what I did.

It was good to fall back into meditating again today after two weeks without it. I could relax into that space of knowingness, of nothingness, of everythingness, and of peace, and simply BE. And rest. Most moments my thoughts race ahead into possibility, even when I sleep, so a half-hour of peace is restorative. Some days I think I would like to live only in that world, but I fear I would get nothing done.

Of course, in that space it wouldn’t matter, would it?

eating at home, because that’s where my heart is

Being on the road amplifies lots of things. Small things can become larger. Large things seem untenable and tumultuous. But the worst may be the eating.

I’m well aware of my food issues. I have struggled with food seemingly all my life, food and my feelings about food and all that goes with it, and it’s weird that it came yet again to the forefront during this last trip.

[Before I go on, I need to interject that weeks before we left on this trip I knew it would be a hugely transforming event. I just didn't know what the transformation would be. Still don't, but things become more clear all the time.]

Anyway. Food. Matthew’s mom is a better cook than he makes her out to be, but there were certain offerings I could have done without. Like most of them. And I am hopelessly snobbish about my coffee (does it ALWAYS have to be burnt? What is UP with that anyway??). Sigh.

And then at my brother’s house we had carbs. Pasta. Pasta again. Pizza. Bagels daily. He trains year-round for cycling, so for him I guess the carb thing makes sense. I heart my carbs, but I was longing for a vegetable. Stick of celery. Broccoli. Anything green.

On the way home we stopped for a sustainable burger. No lie. Better than it sounds, but I am SO DONE with fast food. Like for the next 10 years. My body is still screaming WHHHYYYY??? at me.

So today I cooked. Simple. Rice and lentils and vegetables. It felt good. Like home. And with everything else still feeling like not-home, that helps.

Overloaded

I have this habit of taking on too much.  I have an idealistic mind—let’s call her Bertha, shall we?  Big Bertha—and it often tells me things that don’t end up being quite true.  Bertha tells me I can do anything, that I don’t need sleep (much), that I can get things done four times faster than I actually do them.  Bertha gets me in trouble some days.

But I can’t quite seem to let go of Bertha.  When she’s telling me things, it feels awesome.  Like I *can* do anything.  And not needing sleep, why, who needs sleep?  We can all do with less sleep; we’d get way more done that way.

Today I feel a little betrayed by Bertha.  I’m not even speaking to her just now, and whenever she tries to whisper something in my ear I just LALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU for awhile and she goes away again.  But she always comes back.   That’s the thing about Bertha:  no discernment.  She doesn’t know when to stop.  She also has perhaps the worst memory ever.  She doesn’t remember, for instance, that last night I stayed up washing an entire dishwasher’s worth of dishes by hand because of the Sink Vesuvius* problem, and that afterward I cleaned the kitchen (I mean REALLY cleaned it) and also folded a load of laundry and wasted a LOT of time on Twitter and also edited a very long and involved web page on my new, yet-to-be-revealed website, and that I awoke at 5 freaking thirty this morning when Matthew got up (because HE went to bed at like 10 last night) and that my eyelids have been one with my Macbook screen All.Day, answering Skype stuff and editing next week’s column and editing more website stuff and doing work stuff and wasting more time with Twitter, and COMPLETELY FORGETTING A DEADLINE, SHIT.

Also Matthew and I went over and made two little videos that will be up on a very cool open source video project soon, and when they are I will do the linkage thing and talk about it etc, but it involved driving and getting gas and almost getting broadsided by a stupid and very impatient driver who was totally wrong and then had the balls to honk honk honk at ME, when it was clearly my go and they were stopped and waiting for another car anyway, and who the hell doesn’t even LOOK when they are getting in a teeny little roundabout?

Ad the deadline was extended a whole day!  So clearly there was no need to jump into writing the thing right away, let’s have a walk over to the store and get some organic popcorn, shall we?  It’s a nice night.

*Sink Vesuvius happened Sunday and we have been kitchen sinkless ever since, or at least as sinkless as you can be when the water takes like 3 hours to drain down and when you try to run the disposal (awesomely called a “garburetor” here, isn’t that a great word?) it causes yucky water to back up into the nicely-renovated granite-countered (not that I noticed) kitchen sink of the neighbor next door.  However, sometimes ignoring a problem does cause it to go away and I am happy to say that we called the plumber back tonight and told them Never Mind, Don’t Come, and By The Way It’s Okay That You Lost All My Information Yesterday And never Showed Up or Called As Promised, Because Now We Don’t Need You So There.

Blame the blue-haired witch

[warning:  standard "I haven't blogged for a long time and this is my lame apology slash explanation" is forthcoming.  Scroll down to the good stuff.]

Benign neglect, that’s what we’ll call this, shall we?

Oh, and my x365 project is going to take me three or four years at this rate, isn’t it?  Sort of negates the whole “posting daily” idea.  Oh well.  I’ll still continue them.  Hacking away until they’re exactly 100 words has been rather fun, and certainly the trips into the recesses of my memories have been interesting.

When I was nine I was in the 4th grade.  Do the math a minute; I need to point out that I skipped a grade and I was the youngest in my class until grade 9 when I was appalled to meet up with someone even younger than me.  She was smart, too.  Alice Mayall.  Where are you now, Alice?

So I was nine and I was in the 4th grade.  Actually, I was eight most of that year.  Eight and having a spring birthday, turning nine.  This is really irrelevant, but it tells you that I was pretty much a little kid.

I remember two things from that year.  No, three.

That was the year I taught myself to hold my stomach in.  Been doing it ever since.  Except in pregnancy, when I couldn’t, and in sleep, every other moment since then has been one in which my abdominal muscles are contracted.  I walked past a large window every day in the school hallway, and one day I caught sight of myself there.  Skinny kid.  Except in the stomach.  Holding it in looked better.  So that’s what I did.

That was also the year I had mono.  It started with a lot of throwing up and trips to the hospital, a 40-minute one-way drive in the middle of the night.  Then came antibiotics, horrible-tasting pasty white pills that I had to take along several times a day with aspirin, which weren’t so bad because they were orange-flavored.  I lay on the couch for a month, eating Red Vines and saltines, watching Dick van Dyke and Andy Griffith re-runs, reading all the fairy tale books the library contained.  When I went back to school finally, something had changed and suddenly I could wear pants to school instead of dresses.  I always connected the lifting of the pants ban with my month at home with mono.

Somewhere along there was the dream that haunted me for years.  I know it happened while I was in fourth grade because of the location of my classroom in the dream.  And because there was a witch with blue plastic hair that chased me through the empty nighttime school.  There was nothing in my eight-year old life that was scarier than that.  She had Barbie hair, sort of plasticy but long and flexible, and periwinkle blue.  To this day I can’t stand that color.  And she was the scariest thing ever.

I dreamed about that witch for years.  She probably gave me mono.

You can totally die from not sleeping

Which is how I feel just now.  Like dying.  Or is it lying?  Lying down, to be more specific.  This “let’s wake up at 2 am and be awake for hours yet be totally unproductive at the same time” thing is getting to me.  So if my brain had a “slow” function, which it evidently does, it would be operating that way right now.  And it is.  Slowly.

Hey.  I had a thought.  Want to hear what I did this morning from about 1:30 am to 5:30 am?  Sure you do.  Here:

1.  Created a new blank page in Word and quickly downloaded the thoughts that were keeping me awake.  This was my brilliant strategy to allow me to stop thinking about stuff and quickly get back to sleep.  Let’s see how it worked, shall we?

2.  Not feeing sleepy so I crack open the very literary novel Matthew threw over at my side of the bed a few days ago:  “The Bourne Identity.”  I didn’t see the movie and I probably never will, so I’m completely unspoiled.  A Ludlum virgin.  It’s perfect reading for 3 am however because it requires absolutely no thought.

3.  Sort of wishing I was finishing “Anna Karenina” instead, but I’m sort of getting into the Bourne thing.  Wow, it’s a fast read!  I’m two-thirds done already.

4.  This book bores me.  Let’s see what’s good for sale on Craigslist!

5.  Someone is IM-ing me at 2 am?  Who could it be?  The EX??  Didn’t know he did IM.  Google Chat.

6.  It was actually a good conversation.

7.  But now it’s 3:30 and I’m tired.  Upstairs to bed.

8.  Tossing and turning and thinking abut stuff.  Good thing I can’t see the clock.  Unless I sit up and squint.  5:00-something.

9.  The phone rings at 6.  Twice. I am awake now.

Next time I count sheep.  Now where can I get some sheep?