The wretched desert takes its form, the jackal proud and tight
In search of you, I feel my way, though the slowest heaving night
Whatever fear invents, I swear it make no sense
I reach through the border fence
Come down, come talk to me
...
Ah please talk to me
Won't you please talk to me
We can unlock this misery
Come on, come talk to me
Peter Gabriel, "Come Talk to Me" Us
— `phfina commentary:
Okay, what are you doing? Why are you reading this post? Go! Go out and buy Peter Gabriel's CD Us (and while you're at it, get Lana Del Rey's Born to Die ... she wrote that album for us, girls; she really did).
I mean, okay: is that guy even human, or is he his name: an angel? There was not one false note on that entire album, so sad, so serious, so super-silly with his "Kiss that Frog" ...
Wait. Is 'kiss that frog' the same as kissing a 'python' because if it is ... okay: eww!
So: "Come Talk to Me." I mean, it starts beautifully, and stays that way: the (bag) pipes strike a mournful chord, and they never, ever stop, the continuous drone in the background of that entire song reminding us all of the hurt that is happening throughout the world, all the time.
And Peter offers a really stupidly simple solution to it all: "Come, take to me."
No, not: "Hear me while I tell you all the solutions to your problems, you idiot."
He didn't say "Listen to me." He said: "Come, talk to me."
And where are we coming from? We're coming from our wretched desert, where Jesus went off to be alone.
We're all alone, all of us so filled with our own pride, our own self-worth, just like that tight jackal, that we can't even hear what another person from the well of their loneliness is saying to us. We'd rather rip their throats out than sit down, look into their being, and listen to them.
But Peter, he reaches through that border-fence that we erect around ourselves, and begs us: "Ah, please, talk to me. Come on, come talk to me."
Sweetheart. You are hurting.
But talking to yourself, locking yourself up into your wretched desert and erecting that border-fence only feeds that hurt.
Please, talk to me. Come on, come talk to me.
I don't have answers ... I mean, I have tons of answers, all the time, and I'm damn sure I'm right, too, 'cause I'm a weak human being, too, so please forgive me my frailty ...
I don't have answers; I don't have help or relief from your pain. But I can reach out through that border-fence, and listen, and cry, hurting with your pain, and love you.
You are alone in this world. I know this feeling very well. Please, talk to me.
I love you.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Bullying
"But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."
Matthew 5:39
— `phfina commentary:
Okay, peeps, you, my dear friends, are getting this verse all wrong. It's your parents' fault for telling you, 'oh, show them that you're better than them,' and it's your fault for cringing down into yourself and saying, 'I can be strong, I can take this,' when you know goddamn well you're a sissy-ninny playing right into their hands, but you want to do what's right, and you want to come home, shattered and broken inside, but you want to tell mommy and daddy you did right for being the coward that you are.
That is what you are. And you know it.
If you look at American high school (and, watching Låt den rätte komma in, then it's more pervasive than just American high schools) through an anthropological lens, it's all about one thing: self-destruction. That self-destruction is manifested in two forms: tyranny and disengagement. Kids in school are either out to hurt somebody they can prey on, or they are banding together in cliques, or, like me, just checking out, so they can avoid being hurt, so they can be safe with their besties or safe in the library in a corner behind a book and avoid it all.
Like I said, self-destruction.
So, the bullies come around and find their little Oskar, their little `phfina, and pick on him or her until, yup, there's another suicide, call in the counselors and let's assemble in the gym for an hour long crisis management session so we can go right back to doing what we were doing.
And little `phfina or little Oskar goes up the the pearly gates, and instead of St. Peter, there's the big J-man himself there, and He doesn't look happy:
"You stupid idiot! I'm sick and tired of you lame-ass turn-the-other-cheek wimps! Go to Hell!"
And little `phfina or little Oskar go straight to hell, scratching their little heads, mumbling in confusion: "But, I didn't do anything!"
That's right: you're going to hell, and you didn't do anything.
... Actually: you're going to hell because you didn't do anything.
Okay, let's take the complete opposite of what Mr. J-man-G said and ask Elie her thoughts:
=-=-=-=
"Oskar, when they hit you, hit them back. Hit them back ... hard."
Oskar: "But there are many of them!"
Elie: "Then you have to hit them back harder."
=-=-=-=
The problem today, in this 'modern and enlightened' day and age is the bullies are now wise to the old turn-the-other-cheek grin-and-bear-it philosophy. They know it, and they target people, you, specifically for that reason.
"They are going to turn the other cheek! That means I get free second hits, and as often as I see that dumb fvck! BONUS!"
They hit you. You don't hit back. Now you two (or three or four or five ... bullies travel in packs: their own self-sustaining support groups!) are bound together in this sweet, little codependent relationship. They win: they get to bully you, and feel better than somebody, and then masturbate themselves into a frenzy of orgasms with the image of your downtrodden, servile demeanor. You win, too: you get to lick your wounds, and say, 'oh, woe is me!' and 'Everybody's so mean to me!' and be right and justified for being a wuss.
Win-win-win! (The third win is again anthropological: it becomes integral into this totalitarian society that we cover with labels, such as: 'school' and 'work' so the society feeds on it, growing this behavior so it's now ingrained).
What the bully is not expecting, is that when he says (or she says, girls can be so mean) something offensive or belittling (and usually both), or when he hits you or she tears your dress and slaps your face, or when he ...
... all that sh-t.
When they do that, they are so not expecting you to turn right back around and give it to them. Double.
And that's what you have to do. 'Have to' in that if you want to play their game, go ahead and take it, pissing yourself and end up crying in a heap in the bathroom, but my 'have to' is a constructive disengagement, which is this:
"If you wanna fvck with me, then you are going to get so fvcked up!"
It's called setting boundaries. A bully likes to erase your boundaries and extend his, or hers, all over your sh-t. Instead of allowing that, allowing the bully to grow bigger and allowing yourself to shrink, you redraw the line, but instead of drawing a tiny, little circle around yourself, you take that sharpie pen, and you draw the line across the floor between you and the bully.
Does it work? Instantly?
Sometimes, I guess.
But it works for me. It so works for me. And here's how.
I suffered through high school. I was that hangdog who literally had a sign on her back that said 'kick me, I'm gay.'
When I found somebody had put that piece of paper on my back, I lost it that day.
And I still went all the way through school doing what's right, because of ...
Because of everything, because I wanted to do what my parents told me, because I didn't want to get suspended, because I was a scared, little girl who didn't want to stand out and get noticed, so I hid in myself, and got picked on.
And I never had a witty comeback to all those zingers my classmates threw at me, so I was the dumb village-picked-on idiot, too.
Then something changed.
I don't know what. I don't know when.
But one day, on the job, I answered back.
You know how it is at work. They tease you 'all in good fun' and the rule is you're supposed to tease back 'all in good fun.'
So this time, I obeyed the rule. It wasn't witty, what I said, or perfect, or anything, ... skill comes through practice.
But it was something. And: shocker! I didn't die, and I didn't get fired, and they went on with their work and their teasing and life, and I went on with mine.
But I didn't go on with my life saying, 'woe is me! everybody hates me!' No, I went on with my life like: 'Hey, ... I did that!'
And they now knew: they can't just say anything to me now and have me take it, just like that. No, now, they say something to me, they get it right back, sometimes really `phfina-hard vindictively, sometimes with a wicked grin on my face and a soft little zinger, and all the guys scream, 'Whoa! Damn, bro'! You got served by little `phfina!'
And, guess what? Work, now, is a lot healthier place, for me, and for them. For me, because I respect myself, and I can hang with my coworkers and not feel like I'm a piece of furniture to be used, and for them, because now they know that they are dealing with a person, a person who demands respect for herself and so they now are more respectful of her and of themselves.
Real: win-win-win. (The third win is again anthropological: the society is now functional, instead of self-destructive)
Let's go back to the Bible verse, and see what it's really saying.
I addressed this in my first chapter of Sappho's Muse, by the way, but nobody reads, so 'that's okay.'
@_@
Jesus said, 'turn the other one,' because if somebody hit you on the cheek, it was, of course, with their right hand (the left was used to wipe). So they struck you with an open hand: a master, striking a slave, ... hitting you and asserting their dominion over you at the same time: conquering Romans hitting subjugated Jews.
But if you turn the other one, showing him your other cheek then that Roman would have to close his fist, and punch you.
A closed fist means only one thing: a man, fighting a man — equal, to equal.
When you turned the other cheek, it was not a sign of submission. It was a sign of defiance, you fucking turn-the-other-cheek idiots! (I'm counting myself in this crowd here, girls, so hate me for telling you the truth that I lived).
When you turned the other cheek, it told your oppressor, 'You hit me again, you have to acknowledge me as your equal.'
It made the Romans insane with fury, because they couldn't do that. That would redraw the map.
So that means they couldn't hit you anymore. So that means every time they saw you after that, they knew 'Oh, that was the guy I tried to oppress, but he wouldn't let me, so I can't pick on him anymore.'
Sweetheart, listen to me. You let a bully walk all over you, not only does that give him permission to find you again, every time he can (and girls are so good at this, too), but it also emboldens him to find the next doormat that used to be a person and walk all over them, because you enabled that behavior in him.
Every person that bully hurts after you? Your fault.
So, okay.
So, you strike back. Hard.
Happily ever after?
Sometimes, maybe.
Sometimes, the bully turns around, and hits you three more times, hard, and then calls you an a-hole, laughing at winded you as you lie on the floor trying to suck breath back into your lungs.
Sometimes, he goes away, and comes back a few days later, ... with some of his friends.
That happened to Oskar, after all.
But no matter what happens. YOU took a stand for something, and not just for 'something,' but for the most important thing in the world: you. You stood up for yourself.
And he now knows that. And he now has to think twice before picking on you, because he now knows it's going to hurt him. No more free lunch money from you.
And more importantly: you now know that. And nobody can take that away from you, ever again.
Matthew 5:39
— `phfina commentary:
Okay, peeps, you, my dear friends, are getting this verse all wrong. It's your parents' fault for telling you, 'oh, show them that you're better than them,' and it's your fault for cringing down into yourself and saying, 'I can be strong, I can take this,' when you know goddamn well you're a sissy-ninny playing right into their hands, but you want to do what's right, and you want to come home, shattered and broken inside, but you want to tell mommy and daddy you did right for being the coward that you are.
That is what you are. And you know it.
If you look at American high school (and, watching Låt den rätte komma in, then it's more pervasive than just American high schools) through an anthropological lens, it's all about one thing: self-destruction. That self-destruction is manifested in two forms: tyranny and disengagement. Kids in school are either out to hurt somebody they can prey on, or they are banding together in cliques, or, like me, just checking out, so they can avoid being hurt, so they can be safe with their besties or safe in the library in a corner behind a book and avoid it all.
Like I said, self-destruction.
So, the bullies come around and find their little Oskar, their little `phfina, and pick on him or her until, yup, there's another suicide, call in the counselors and let's assemble in the gym for an hour long crisis management session so we can go right back to doing what we were doing.
And little `phfina or little Oskar goes up the the pearly gates, and instead of St. Peter, there's the big J-man himself there, and He doesn't look happy:
"You stupid idiot! I'm sick and tired of you lame-ass turn-the-other-cheek wimps! Go to Hell!"
And little `phfina or little Oskar go straight to hell, scratching their little heads, mumbling in confusion: "But, I didn't do anything!"
That's right: you're going to hell, and you didn't do anything.
... Actually: you're going to hell because you didn't do anything.
Okay, let's take the complete opposite of what Mr. J-man-G said and ask Elie her thoughts:
=-=-=-=
"Oskar, when they hit you, hit them back. Hit them back ... hard."
Oskar: "But there are many of them!"
Elie: "Then you have to hit them back harder."
=-=-=-=
The problem today, in this 'modern and enlightened' day and age is the bullies are now wise to the old turn-the-other-cheek grin-and-bear-it philosophy. They know it, and they target people, you, specifically for that reason.
"They are going to turn the other cheek! That means I get free second hits, and as often as I see that dumb fvck! BONUS!"
They hit you. You don't hit back. Now you two (or three or four or five ... bullies travel in packs: their own self-sustaining support groups!) are bound together in this sweet, little codependent relationship. They win: they get to bully you, and feel better than somebody, and then masturbate themselves into a frenzy of orgasms with the image of your downtrodden, servile demeanor. You win, too: you get to lick your wounds, and say, 'oh, woe is me!' and 'Everybody's so mean to me!' and be right and justified for being a wuss.
Win-win-win! (The third win is again anthropological: it becomes integral into this totalitarian society that we cover with labels, such as: 'school' and 'work' so the society feeds on it, growing this behavior so it's now ingrained).
What the bully is not expecting, is that when he says (or she says, girls can be so mean) something offensive or belittling (and usually both), or when he hits you or she tears your dress and slaps your face, or when he ...
... all that sh-t.
When they do that, they are so not expecting you to turn right back around and give it to them. Double.
And that's what you have to do. 'Have to' in that if you want to play their game, go ahead and take it, pissing yourself and end up crying in a heap in the bathroom, but my 'have to' is a constructive disengagement, which is this:
"If you wanna fvck with me, then you are going to get so fvcked up!"
It's called setting boundaries. A bully likes to erase your boundaries and extend his, or hers, all over your sh-t. Instead of allowing that, allowing the bully to grow bigger and allowing yourself to shrink, you redraw the line, but instead of drawing a tiny, little circle around yourself, you take that sharpie pen, and you draw the line across the floor between you and the bully.
Does it work? Instantly?
Sometimes, I guess.
But it works for me. It so works for me. And here's how.
I suffered through high school. I was that hangdog who literally had a sign on her back that said 'kick me, I'm gay.'
When I found somebody had put that piece of paper on my back, I lost it that day.
And I still went all the way through school doing what's right, because of ...
Because of everything, because I wanted to do what my parents told me, because I didn't want to get suspended, because I was a scared, little girl who didn't want to stand out and get noticed, so I hid in myself, and got picked on.
And I never had a witty comeback to all those zingers my classmates threw at me, so I was the dumb village-picked-on idiot, too.
Then something changed.
I don't know what. I don't know when.
But one day, on the job, I answered back.
You know how it is at work. They tease you 'all in good fun' and the rule is you're supposed to tease back 'all in good fun.'
So this time, I obeyed the rule. It wasn't witty, what I said, or perfect, or anything, ... skill comes through practice.
But it was something. And: shocker! I didn't die, and I didn't get fired, and they went on with their work and their teasing and life, and I went on with mine.
But I didn't go on with my life saying, 'woe is me! everybody hates me!' No, I went on with my life like: 'Hey, ... I did that!'
And they now knew: they can't just say anything to me now and have me take it, just like that. No, now, they say something to me, they get it right back, sometimes really `phfina-hard vindictively, sometimes with a wicked grin on my face and a soft little zinger, and all the guys scream, 'Whoa! Damn, bro'! You got served by little `phfina!'
And, guess what? Work, now, is a lot healthier place, for me, and for them. For me, because I respect myself, and I can hang with my coworkers and not feel like I'm a piece of furniture to be used, and for them, because now they know that they are dealing with a person, a person who demands respect for herself and so they now are more respectful of her and of themselves.
Real: win-win-win. (The third win is again anthropological: the society is now functional, instead of self-destructive)
Let's go back to the Bible verse, and see what it's really saying.
I addressed this in my first chapter of Sappho's Muse, by the way, but nobody reads, so 'that's okay.'
@_@
Jesus said, 'turn the other one,' because if somebody hit you on the cheek, it was, of course, with their right hand (the left was used to wipe). So they struck you with an open hand: a master, striking a slave, ... hitting you and asserting their dominion over you at the same time: conquering Romans hitting subjugated Jews.
But if you turn the other one, showing him your other cheek then that Roman would have to close his fist, and punch you.
A closed fist means only one thing: a man, fighting a man — equal, to equal.
When you turned the other cheek, it was not a sign of submission. It was a sign of defiance, you fucking turn-the-other-cheek idiots! (I'm counting myself in this crowd here, girls, so hate me for telling you the truth that I lived).
When you turned the other cheek, it told your oppressor, 'You hit me again, you have to acknowledge me as your equal.'
It made the Romans insane with fury, because they couldn't do that. That would redraw the map.
So that means they couldn't hit you anymore. So that means every time they saw you after that, they knew 'Oh, that was the guy I tried to oppress, but he wouldn't let me, so I can't pick on him anymore.'
Sweetheart, listen to me. You let a bully walk all over you, not only does that give him permission to find you again, every time he can (and girls are so good at this, too), but it also emboldens him to find the next doormat that used to be a person and walk all over them, because you enabled that behavior in him.
Every person that bully hurts after you? Your fault.
So, okay.
So, you strike back. Hard.
Happily ever after?
Sometimes, maybe.
Sometimes, the bully turns around, and hits you three more times, hard, and then calls you an a-hole, laughing at winded you as you lie on the floor trying to suck breath back into your lungs.
Sometimes, he goes away, and comes back a few days later, ... with some of his friends.
That happened to Oskar, after all.
But no matter what happens. YOU took a stand for something, and not just for 'something,' but for the most important thing in the world: you. You stood up for yourself.
And he now knows that. And he now has to think twice before picking on you, because he now knows it's going to hurt him. No more free lunch money from you.
And more importantly: you now know that. And nobody can take that away from you, ever again.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
"You have such potential!"
Dear Diary,
You know what I hate?
I hate it when people tell me: "You have such potential!"
You know why I hate it?
Because they are right. And I know it.
Let's face it girls, when somebody tells you 'you have such potential!' what do they think they are saying? Well, they're saying you're talented, smart, kind, caring, hard-working, beautiful, and they see that, all of that, in you, and the words just burst out of them, and you see their bursting because they're smiling hugely at you as they say this.
But what do you hear? You hear: "Well, you're certainly going nowhere with the gifts God gave you ... when're you gonna get off your duff and do something?"
Yeah, me, too. I hear those words that they speak, and instead of being complimented and encouraged, what I want to do is scratch their eyes out of their faces ...
... for starters.
But why?
It's called a conscience.
That little voice inside me gets very, very quiet when someone tells me, 'you have such potential!'
And after that person leaves or after I leave, and I control my breathing, and make sure the tears are wiped away, that's when she speaks.
"They're right, you know," she says quietly.
They're right, you know.
You know who don't get the 'you have such potential!' comments?
Rosalie.
She had no potential. You know why?
I'll tell you why: when she saw something she wanted, she was in motion. She worked toward that goal, every step of the way, and she didn't care if she had to fight every man, woman, and child and dig a tunnel through a mountain or walk over the top of it. She didn't care. She what she wanted, and she went for it.
"But, phfina, Rosalie's a fictional character! Who cares who said what to her, because she doesn't exist."
Guess what, girls: that's true for every one of us.
We tell ourselves stories, every second of every day.
"I'm not like that."
"I never could do that."
"I'm not that kind of girl."
"I can't do that."
Then we tell each other stories:
"You can't do that!"
... and we forget that they are all just stories that we tell ourselves and each other. We made pretend, when that chilling, crushing thing happened when we were four or five, that we were such and so, because if we are such and so, then they hurt wouldn't've happened, or, well, we realize, after we make pretend, that hurts happen anyway, so we make more pretends and forget we just playing a game, be it 'don't hurt me' or 'I'm cute!' or 'Math is hard' or 'don't leave me!' or 'love me, mommy, please ... please.' or ...
What happens is we end up by being the pretense, and then the pretense becomes our ego, so we can relegate to our id all those scary monsters that come out anyway so we can add more buttresses to our ego so we can pretend that the hurt doesn't really hurt because we're this or that.
And 'this or that' is not who we are, nor who we can be, it's a safe, little unreality box for safe, little us ... who love, who care, who are smart, and talented and beautiful, ... but if we extend ourselves at all, and write a review in Swedish, then somebody, 5,000 somebodies, in fact, notice us, and when they notice us, then we're opened up, and when we're opened up ... and then hurt can ... hurt us, again.
So we close ourselves up, and forget we read a story 8, 9, 10 times, laughing, crying, and being joyful in that moment, and, in that joy, giving a girl a reason to live, for just one more day ... just one more day, or two more years that she would've lived if you hadn't opened yourself up and told her you loved her, and that you will always love her.
So you shut down, so that's safe.
But playing it safe? being careful? You see those girls at parties (that is: me), sitting in a far corner by herself with her drink and a very tight smile plastered on her face, but you've read her writing, so you go up to her, and enthuse: 'you should publish this stuff! This is amazing! Write more! I love it! Imagine who you'd impact if you reached a broader audience! But why are you writing fan-fics? When are you going to branch out and write your own works instead of copy stuff that's already derivative? You're better than that! You know that!"
And that girl lets that all wash over her, and hands that dude her drink and runs to the bathroom to puke her guts out, then leaves the party, trying to hide her tears.
Why? Fear? What's fear? It's nothing, right? It's being afraid of nothing, because why? Fear is fear of something that may happen, and it seldom does, right, girls? You know that. And when it does, what happens? It happens, and nobody cares, and after it happens, you don't care either, because it happened, it's in the past now. It doesn't need to run your life now, because it happened then, it's not happening now.
But that's what 'you have such potential!' is, isn't it? It points out that you could be there a star or authoress or ... whatever, but you're here, and the only reason you're here is because you're afraid of going there.
Oh, yeah: I went there.
Steph Meyer went to 28 publishers before that last one picked up Twilight.
28 publishers. How many would I have gone through? Easy: zero! Because I'm afraid of going to even the first one. How many more would Steph had gone through?
Oh, come on! She went through 28 already ... that tells me that she was going to get her story published come hell or high water, because she had that much confidence in her story.
Because she had that much confidence in herself.
"Easy for you to say, `phfina: 'Oh, don't be afraid and just do it.'"
Yup, easy for me to say, because I've seen in, too: in my Nana. She was 95 when she died, and she volunteered at the hospital and at the local school until she got terminal cancer at 94. She was a force in motion, always doing something, always in motion.
Nobody told her that she has such potential, because she was in action, all the time.
And it was just so simple for her: time to garden. Time to feed the family. Time to volunteer at the school. Time to grab the fighting boys (my uncles) by the ears and give them what-for. Time to bury Pepe after he killed himself.
She had a hard life, her whole life, including raising a family of eight during the Depression, but she never complained, she was just too busy to complain, because she had something to do, because she saw a need, and she just took care of it.
And that's it, isn't it? You have something, a beautiful voice, a way of writing words, or painting, or a will and determination or a business sense. You have something. And you can put things, life, whatever, between you and you doing something with this something that you have, and be very busy and very successful, and very sad and angry when people tell you have such potential, or you can be just as busy using what you have and creating the world how you see it, how it should be, because you, you call the shots here, because you said so.
And that world that you do create? You created it, and it can be filled with the things you put in the way of yourself, and of others, and you have this nice, safe, little fence around yourself. Or you can just git-r-done and let it rip and not give a flip about what anybody else says, because that's all they do, stand around the water cooler, and that's great, because they can talk, as long as they stay out of your way, because you are woman, strong, beautiful, empowered, talented, and you are going places and making things happen.
Your choice (your ... 'potential').
"But, `phfina, what am I supposed to do?"
Oh, come on. You know the answer, even as you ask the question.
The world is the world.
And you are you.
And there's this huge thing between you and the world, and how you see the world as it should be.
That huge thing? It's nothing to what you can do. I just wrote a few words on paper and published them, and look what happened? I did nothing but a little tiny something, and I have letters in my treasure chest from people telling me how I saved their lives or how they found love or hope.
You put your foot to that first step forward, and your other foot will follow.
And the world will change around you. It has to. Doesn't mean it won't be easy, but you already know what the alternative is like.
It sucks. It sucks a big fat sucky potential suck.
So, read this. Say 'eh, whatever,' and go back to your potential.
Or, read this ... then write me when ...
... or you publish your story ...
... or you manage a multibillion dollar mutual fund, and you're 21 ...
... or you start the next Google or eBay or Amazon ...
... or someone tells you you saved their life.
... or whatever that huge thing is in front of you, and you climb over it (literally) or bust through it or hold it in your arms and tell her you love her.
I love you. You have such potential, and I love you, right now, right as you are, because you, in your potential have done things, and touched hearts, and you, in your potential, are a person. A person who reached out to me, and cried that someone told you these hurtful words, and I cried with you, hurting with the same hurt, and you let me do that. And loved me, little me, in all my stupid fearful, paralyzing potential, and you didn't judge: you loved.
I love you.
You know what I hate?
I hate it when people tell me: "You have such potential!"
You know why I hate it?
Because they are right. And I know it.
Let's face it girls, when somebody tells you 'you have such potential!' what do they think they are saying? Well, they're saying you're talented, smart, kind, caring, hard-working, beautiful, and they see that, all of that, in you, and the words just burst out of them, and you see their bursting because they're smiling hugely at you as they say this.
But what do you hear? You hear: "Well, you're certainly going nowhere with the gifts God gave you ... when're you gonna get off your duff and do something?"
Yeah, me, too. I hear those words that they speak, and instead of being complimented and encouraged, what I want to do is scratch their eyes out of their faces ...
... for starters.
But why?
It's called a conscience.
That little voice inside me gets very, very quiet when someone tells me, 'you have such potential!'
And after that person leaves or after I leave, and I control my breathing, and make sure the tears are wiped away, that's when she speaks.
"They're right, you know," she says quietly.
They're right, you know.
You know who don't get the 'you have such potential!' comments?
Rosalie.
She had no potential. You know why?
I'll tell you why: when she saw something she wanted, she was in motion. She worked toward that goal, every step of the way, and she didn't care if she had to fight every man, woman, and child and dig a tunnel through a mountain or walk over the top of it. She didn't care. She what she wanted, and she went for it.
"But, phfina, Rosalie's a fictional character! Who cares who said what to her, because she doesn't exist."
Guess what, girls: that's true for every one of us.
We tell ourselves stories, every second of every day.
"I'm not like that."
"I never could do that."
"I'm not that kind of girl."
"I can't do that."
Then we tell each other stories:
"You can't do that!"
... and we forget that they are all just stories that we tell ourselves and each other. We made pretend, when that chilling, crushing thing happened when we were four or five, that we were such and so, because if we are such and so, then they hurt wouldn't've happened, or, well, we realize, after we make pretend, that hurts happen anyway, so we make more pretends and forget we just playing a game, be it 'don't hurt me' or 'I'm cute!' or 'Math is hard' or 'don't leave me!' or 'love me, mommy, please ... please.' or ...
What happens is we end up by being the pretense, and then the pretense becomes our ego, so we can relegate to our id all those scary monsters that come out anyway so we can add more buttresses to our ego so we can pretend that the hurt doesn't really hurt because we're this or that.
And 'this or that' is not who we are, nor who we can be, it's a safe, little unreality box for safe, little us ... who love, who care, who are smart, and talented and beautiful, ... but if we extend ourselves at all, and write a review in Swedish, then somebody, 5,000 somebodies, in fact, notice us, and when they notice us, then we're opened up, and when we're opened up ... and then hurt can ... hurt us, again.
So we close ourselves up, and forget we read a story 8, 9, 10 times, laughing, crying, and being joyful in that moment, and, in that joy, giving a girl a reason to live, for just one more day ... just one more day, or two more years that she would've lived if you hadn't opened yourself up and told her you loved her, and that you will always love her.
So you shut down, so that's safe.
But playing it safe? being careful? You see those girls at parties (that is: me), sitting in a far corner by herself with her drink and a very tight smile plastered on her face, but you've read her writing, so you go up to her, and enthuse: 'you should publish this stuff! This is amazing! Write more! I love it! Imagine who you'd impact if you reached a broader audience! But why are you writing fan-fics? When are you going to branch out and write your own works instead of copy stuff that's already derivative? You're better than that! You know that!"
And that girl lets that all wash over her, and hands that dude her drink and runs to the bathroom to puke her guts out, then leaves the party, trying to hide her tears.
Why? Fear? What's fear? It's nothing, right? It's being afraid of nothing, because why? Fear is fear of something that may happen, and it seldom does, right, girls? You know that. And when it does, what happens? It happens, and nobody cares, and after it happens, you don't care either, because it happened, it's in the past now. It doesn't need to run your life now, because it happened then, it's not happening now.
But that's what 'you have such potential!' is, isn't it? It points out that you could be there a star or authoress or ... whatever, but you're here, and the only reason you're here is because you're afraid of going there.
Oh, yeah: I went there.
Steph Meyer went to 28 publishers before that last one picked up Twilight.
28 publishers. How many would I have gone through? Easy: zero! Because I'm afraid of going to even the first one. How many more would Steph had gone through?
Oh, come on! She went through 28 already ... that tells me that she was going to get her story published come hell or high water, because she had that much confidence in her story.
Because she had that much confidence in herself.
"Easy for you to say, `phfina: 'Oh, don't be afraid and just do it.'"
Yup, easy for me to say, because I've seen in, too: in my Nana. She was 95 when she died, and she volunteered at the hospital and at the local school until she got terminal cancer at 94. She was a force in motion, always doing something, always in motion.
Nobody told her that she has such potential, because she was in action, all the time.
And it was just so simple for her: time to garden. Time to feed the family. Time to volunteer at the school. Time to grab the fighting boys (my uncles) by the ears and give them what-for. Time to bury Pepe after he killed himself.
She had a hard life, her whole life, including raising a family of eight during the Depression, but she never complained, she was just too busy to complain, because she had something to do, because she saw a need, and she just took care of it.
And that's it, isn't it? You have something, a beautiful voice, a way of writing words, or painting, or a will and determination or a business sense. You have something. And you can put things, life, whatever, between you and you doing something with this something that you have, and be very busy and very successful, and very sad and angry when people tell you have such potential, or you can be just as busy using what you have and creating the world how you see it, how it should be, because you, you call the shots here, because you said so.
And that world that you do create? You created it, and it can be filled with the things you put in the way of yourself, and of others, and you have this nice, safe, little fence around yourself. Or you can just git-r-done and let it rip and not give a flip about what anybody else says, because that's all they do, stand around the water cooler, and that's great, because they can talk, as long as they stay out of your way, because you are woman, strong, beautiful, empowered, talented, and you are going places and making things happen.
Your choice (your ... 'potential').
"But, `phfina, what am I supposed to do?"
Oh, come on. You know the answer, even as you ask the question.
The world is the world.
And you are you.
And there's this huge thing between you and the world, and how you see the world as it should be.
That huge thing? It's nothing to what you can do. I just wrote a few words on paper and published them, and look what happened? I did nothing but a little tiny something, and I have letters in my treasure chest from people telling me how I saved their lives or how they found love or hope.
You put your foot to that first step forward, and your other foot will follow.
And the world will change around you. It has to. Doesn't mean it won't be easy, but you already know what the alternative is like.
It sucks. It sucks a big fat sucky potential suck.
So, read this. Say 'eh, whatever,' and go back to your potential.
Or, read this ... then write me when ...
... or you publish your story ...
... or you manage a multibillion dollar mutual fund, and you're 21 ...
... or you start the next Google or eBay or Amazon ...
... or someone tells you you saved their life.
... or whatever that huge thing is in front of you, and you climb over it (literally) or bust through it or hold it in your arms and tell her you love her.
I love you. You have such potential, and I love you, right now, right as you are, because you, in your potential have done things, and touched hearts, and you, in your potential, are a person. A person who reached out to me, and cried that someone told you these hurtful words, and I cried with you, hurting with the same hurt, and you let me do that. And loved me, little me, in all my stupid fearful, paralyzing potential, and you didn't judge: you loved.
I love you.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Right Now
Right now.
You know, and you do know, I've come this close. A few times, and more than a few times.
I've come this close to ending it all, calling it a day, saying 'bye-'bye, goodnight, sweet prince(ss), andiamo. Like the Raven, quothing: nevermore.
But...
Today. Right now. There's a war going on, and I'm not talking metaphorically, I'm saying there's a war going on and people are killing each other, and people are dying, and there's a girl there, right in there, right in there that my imagination will never do justice to her reality, but she's there, and she has a gun in her hand, or she doesn't, and she's killing somebody, knowing that she's pulling the trigger, and having that on her soul for the rest of her life, or, she's being killed, and dying, quickly, oh, so quickly in an instant of shock, or slowly, in a combat zone, watching her life-blood bleed out around her mortal wound, and being able to do nothing about it, just watch herself bleed out, as she seen others do, and why did she have to read Wilfred Owen before getting into this shit?
So, I can't imagine what she's going through, ... I can't even touch what she's going through. And I think I have problems. And you think you have problems.
But I do know one thing.
She PMed me, and told me, when she's going through her life crisis, or just going through her day, being so scared that she won't be able to marry the 'man of her dreams' because her 'man' is looking more and more to her like her 'woman' of her dreams, but terrified, scared out of her mind, that her family will out-right reject her, disown her, that she can't even think to herself the words 'gay' or 'lesbian,' and now she's in a place where she's ending somebody's life, or her life is being ended, or she's a clerk behind the front line, but she knows there's no front line when her 'enemy' works right alongside her and she could be getting that next report on that clipboard, or end up as another statistic on that chart labeled 'suicide bombing victim count.'
Civil war. Lovely, isn't it? 'Hate thy neighbor,' and 'eye for an eye' in action, right in front of her.
But I digress.
She PMed, and told me, that ... she writes me little notes, during her day. That my voice, my words, ... me ... I'm the only one she can talk to freely, and share her concerns, and be heard, and know that someone cares and understands, and in knowing this, she has hope.
She has hope, to go through her day, and face her family, or now, face the facts that her decision comes down to her living, because somebody else doesn't, or her dying, just because.
And she can face that.
Right now.
Today, in fucking November when it's not the most pleasant out, and even if it were, you gonna take a shower today? drink clean water? not get shot at? not shoot somebody and watch them die, oh, so slowly crying as they try and fail to hold their guts in or just like that: bang, they fall down and never get up again, and you pulled the trigger? Are you going to do that?
... and, she wrote me and apologized for 'dumping' on me, saying I'm the only one who she can talk to. She apologized for telling me I'm the only one who can give her hope. Right now.
And I think to myself, suicide queen, do I have any right to take that away from her? You. You love me, or you hate me, you think that I am the most wretched, despicable creature God ever created on this planet.
But do you have the right to silence me? To take away the hope of a girl too scared to ask a girl out, but because I PMed her and screamed 'Ask her! Ask her! ASK HER! It'll only weird her out if you don't and keep it to yourself, and all she can say is 'yes' or 'no'" so she asked that pretty girl in her class and that pretty girl said 'yes.' Or she's scared to talk to her family, so she thinks she can only talk to me. Will I silence myself so that she now has nobody to talk to? Will you?
Or she's in a combat zone, and she gets a PM from the girl who's kept her alive all this time quoting Ecclesiastes wondering what's the point, and she's in a fucking combat zone and she reaches out to comfort her friend from the hell and squalor that she's in? Because why? Because even in that, her life is worth living, because she has hope, because she thinks she can talk to me, and she can, and she does?
Do I have the right to take that away from her?
Yes, I do.
I have the right to remain silent. And I have the ability to snuff this, what I am, into nothingness forever.
I can do that, so easily.
And you have that right, too.
It's funny, how sad it is. I got a PM from a reviewer, saying she liked my Chez Melissa but couldn't stand my Rosalie and Me. When I asked her why, she said that when people reveal their personal problems to her, she tells them to man up and quit whining and that's what Rosalie and Me was to her, but it's always nice to have fun baking with friends in the kitchen, because she gets something good out of it.
Think about that, for yourself. When people come whining to you, do you roll their eyes, and say, 'there, there' as you look at your watch? You do know what you're telling them. You're telling them, that you, like everybody else they've gone to before you, has no time nor patience for them, because they are worthy of neither.
Proving to them, again, that they are all alone, unloved, even by their own family.
One more lost person, taken out with the Monday morning trash after the coroner calls it when he doesn't detect her heartbeat anymore. Just another victim, be it suicide, or war, or neglect.
Just like you neglected her.
'Oh, okay, I'll care!' you throw up your hands.
But you don't get off that easily. Nor do I.
I have this friend, all the way across the world, and I helped her live, day to day, year to year, in a marriage she's trapped in, because my words were her only balm, her only beacon of hope. I have this friend, all the way across the country, whose mother sold her daughter's virginity to a hard, callous man who liked fucking the mom, so let's try her fresh teen just because a little rape sounds like fun to him. I have this friend in a combat zone. Right now.
You know how I have these friends?
'Edward and Bella were skipping down the lane ...' sound so fucking trite to me that 21 million girls could fall for a guy who, as far as I could see, was a totally stuck-up asshole who treated Bella worse than shit because at least he doesn't walk all over shit.
So instead, I wrote what I wrote. About Rosalie and Bella, and how they fucked like rabbits, all the time, but at least they cared for each other, enough to love each other, to listen to each other, to make sure their teeth were brushed and hold each other through the laughter and through lots and lots of tears. And I put my heart into every chapter.
... and it hurt, ladies and gentlemen. It hurt, every time I wrote a chapter, and it terrified me to press that 'submit' button. But I did. I put my heart on the line, and I put it right out there, and no, it wasn't cathartic, because instead of getting better, it just got worse and worse.
But I held on. Held onto something. Held onto my words, and when you wrote, held onto you, and I cried. And you cried, and we both ... made it through, when nobody else seemed to care, and you went back to your life, and I kept that in my heart, that you could, and because I wrote, and shared my heart, and cared, you could go back to your life, and live. And hope.
And I have these friends, across the world, at least one, and more, who are alive today, who wouldn't have been if I had exercised my right, and remained silent. Or took away all my toys, forever, because I'm that selfish.
It's your turn now. You can, and you do, exercise your rights.
Whose life did you save today? Whose life changed, forever, because you choose to be 'strong,' and to tell them to fuck off and man up for God's sake, you little crybaby, and can't you see I have enough problems already?
We all have enough problems already. And one of those problems is that we fix other people's problems when they don't want to be a thing to be fixed, they want a shoulder to cry on, someone to listen, really to hear them from the depths of their loneliness, they want to know somebody out there is really out there, dealing with the shit their dealing with, and is trying, and failing, just like them, and cares.
And how can they know this, when you 'don't give a shit' or you say that you do, but you 'don't deal with personal issues.' It's not your problem, after all, right? 'You have a drug problem, not me, go fix yourself,' and you refuse to drive her to 12 step, because you just don't want to get involved, so her only solace is the chemical high that drives her further into despair, because you made it plain: you're not it for her. 'Stay away from me until you get cleaned up.'
It's not your problem that today, right now, somebody else is literally dying, and you have the means to help, but you won't. Don't get involved. It's risky. And it hurts. A lot. I know.
Or you can write, from the heart. And save somebody's life. Somebody that you didn't know until you wrote down your words and saved her life. How much are your words worth? And you don't write, because of any excuse you give yourself to justify your fear and selfishness?
You have that choice.
And so do I. I have that choice to take my ball, walk away from it all, and just play with myself from now on.
Or I have that choice to send a PM to a girl, right now, in the real shit, and hope, and pray, that she's still alive to receive it. To receive my thanks that today, she chose to reach out to me to tell me that she's thinking of me, and that she cares.
Right now.
You know, and you do know, I've come this close. A few times, and more than a few times.
I've come this close to ending it all, calling it a day, saying 'bye-'bye, goodnight, sweet prince(ss), andiamo. Like the Raven, quothing: nevermore.
But...
Today. Right now. There's a war going on, and I'm not talking metaphorically, I'm saying there's a war going on and people are killing each other, and people are dying, and there's a girl there, right in there, right in there that my imagination will never do justice to her reality, but she's there, and she has a gun in her hand, or she doesn't, and she's killing somebody, knowing that she's pulling the trigger, and having that on her soul for the rest of her life, or, she's being killed, and dying, quickly, oh, so quickly in an instant of shock, or slowly, in a combat zone, watching her life-blood bleed out around her mortal wound, and being able to do nothing about it, just watch herself bleed out, as she seen others do, and why did she have to read Wilfred Owen before getting into this shit?
So, I can't imagine what she's going through, ... I can't even touch what she's going through. And I think I have problems. And you think you have problems.
But I do know one thing.
She PMed me, and told me, when she's going through her life crisis, or just going through her day, being so scared that she won't be able to marry the 'man of her dreams' because her 'man' is looking more and more to her like her 'woman' of her dreams, but terrified, scared out of her mind, that her family will out-right reject her, disown her, that she can't even think to herself the words 'gay' or 'lesbian,' and now she's in a place where she's ending somebody's life, or her life is being ended, or she's a clerk behind the front line, but she knows there's no front line when her 'enemy' works right alongside her and she could be getting that next report on that clipboard, or end up as another statistic on that chart labeled 'suicide bombing victim count.'
Civil war. Lovely, isn't it? 'Hate thy neighbor,' and 'eye for an eye' in action, right in front of her.
But I digress.
She PMed, and told me, that ... she writes me little notes, during her day. That my voice, my words, ... me ... I'm the only one she can talk to freely, and share her concerns, and be heard, and know that someone cares and understands, and in knowing this, she has hope.
She has hope, to go through her day, and face her family, or now, face the facts that her decision comes down to her living, because somebody else doesn't, or her dying, just because.
And she can face that.
Right now.
Today, in fucking November when it's not the most pleasant out, and even if it were, you gonna take a shower today? drink clean water? not get shot at? not shoot somebody and watch them die, oh, so slowly crying as they try and fail to hold their guts in or just like that: bang, they fall down and never get up again, and you pulled the trigger? Are you going to do that?
... and, she wrote me and apologized for 'dumping' on me, saying I'm the only one who she can talk to. She apologized for telling me I'm the only one who can give her hope. Right now.
And I think to myself, suicide queen, do I have any right to take that away from her? You. You love me, or you hate me, you think that I am the most wretched, despicable creature God ever created on this planet.
But do you have the right to silence me? To take away the hope of a girl too scared to ask a girl out, but because I PMed her and screamed 'Ask her! Ask her! ASK HER! It'll only weird her out if you don't and keep it to yourself, and all she can say is 'yes' or 'no'" so she asked that pretty girl in her class and that pretty girl said 'yes.' Or she's scared to talk to her family, so she thinks she can only talk to me. Will I silence myself so that she now has nobody to talk to? Will you?
Or she's in a combat zone, and she gets a PM from the girl who's kept her alive all this time quoting Ecclesiastes wondering what's the point, and she's in a fucking combat zone and she reaches out to comfort her friend from the hell and squalor that she's in? Because why? Because even in that, her life is worth living, because she has hope, because she thinks she can talk to me, and she can, and she does?
Do I have the right to take that away from her?
Yes, I do.
I have the right to remain silent. And I have the ability to snuff this, what I am, into nothingness forever.
I can do that, so easily.
And you have that right, too.
It's funny, how sad it is. I got a PM from a reviewer, saying she liked my Chez Melissa but couldn't stand my Rosalie and Me. When I asked her why, she said that when people reveal their personal problems to her, she tells them to man up and quit whining and that's what Rosalie and Me was to her, but it's always nice to have fun baking with friends in the kitchen, because she gets something good out of it.
Think about that, for yourself. When people come whining to you, do you roll their eyes, and say, 'there, there' as you look at your watch? You do know what you're telling them. You're telling them, that you, like everybody else they've gone to before you, has no time nor patience for them, because they are worthy of neither.
Proving to them, again, that they are all alone, unloved, even by their own family.
One more lost person, taken out with the Monday morning trash after the coroner calls it when he doesn't detect her heartbeat anymore. Just another victim, be it suicide, or war, or neglect.
Just like you neglected her.
'Oh, okay, I'll care!' you throw up your hands.
But you don't get off that easily. Nor do I.
I have this friend, all the way across the world, and I helped her live, day to day, year to year, in a marriage she's trapped in, because my words were her only balm, her only beacon of hope. I have this friend, all the way across the country, whose mother sold her daughter's virginity to a hard, callous man who liked fucking the mom, so let's try her fresh teen just because a little rape sounds like fun to him. I have this friend in a combat zone. Right now.
You know how I have these friends?
'Edward and Bella were skipping down the lane ...' sound so fucking trite to me that 21 million girls could fall for a guy who, as far as I could see, was a totally stuck-up asshole who treated Bella worse than shit because at least he doesn't walk all over shit.
So instead, I wrote what I wrote. About Rosalie and Bella, and how they fucked like rabbits, all the time, but at least they cared for each other, enough to love each other, to listen to each other, to make sure their teeth were brushed and hold each other through the laughter and through lots and lots of tears. And I put my heart into every chapter.
... and it hurt, ladies and gentlemen. It hurt, every time I wrote a chapter, and it terrified me to press that 'submit' button. But I did. I put my heart on the line, and I put it right out there, and no, it wasn't cathartic, because instead of getting better, it just got worse and worse.
But I held on. Held onto something. Held onto my words, and when you wrote, held onto you, and I cried. And you cried, and we both ... made it through, when nobody else seemed to care, and you went back to your life, and I kept that in my heart, that you could, and because I wrote, and shared my heart, and cared, you could go back to your life, and live. And hope.
And I have these friends, across the world, at least one, and more, who are alive today, who wouldn't have been if I had exercised my right, and remained silent. Or took away all my toys, forever, because I'm that selfish.
It's your turn now. You can, and you do, exercise your rights.
Whose life did you save today? Whose life changed, forever, because you choose to be 'strong,' and to tell them to fuck off and man up for God's sake, you little crybaby, and can't you see I have enough problems already?
We all have enough problems already. And one of those problems is that we fix other people's problems when they don't want to be a thing to be fixed, they want a shoulder to cry on, someone to listen, really to hear them from the depths of their loneliness, they want to know somebody out there is really out there, dealing with the shit their dealing with, and is trying, and failing, just like them, and cares.
And how can they know this, when you 'don't give a shit' or you say that you do, but you 'don't deal with personal issues.' It's not your problem, after all, right? 'You have a drug problem, not me, go fix yourself,' and you refuse to drive her to 12 step, because you just don't want to get involved, so her only solace is the chemical high that drives her further into despair, because you made it plain: you're not it for her. 'Stay away from me until you get cleaned up.'
It's not your problem that today, right now, somebody else is literally dying, and you have the means to help, but you won't. Don't get involved. It's risky. And it hurts. A lot. I know.
Or you can write, from the heart. And save somebody's life. Somebody that you didn't know until you wrote down your words and saved her life. How much are your words worth? And you don't write, because of any excuse you give yourself to justify your fear and selfishness?
You have that choice.
And so do I. I have that choice to take my ball, walk away from it all, and just play with myself from now on.
Or I have that choice to send a PM to a girl, right now, in the real shit, and hope, and pray, that she's still alive to receive it. To receive my thanks that today, she chose to reach out to me to tell me that she's thinking of me, and that she cares.
Right now.
Friday, October 5, 2012
'Wankers,' n. pl. pej.
A new definition from `phfina on her pensée du jour.
Wankers, n. pl. pej.: of or pertaining to the wankiness of the wankitude, usually uttered by Brits or Brit-like people.
Usual usage: "That dude is a total wanker!" (collq. meaning 1, see 'douche bag')
Unusual usuage: ... well, I don't have a straight-up definition for ya, but girls reading this usage will totally get what I'm saying, esp. girls taking the pressure off, 'blow'ing off steam, or other euphemistic ways of saying this unusual meaning:
"Whoa! I wanked my wanker until I wanking wanked so hard I saw stars and I couldn't feel my arms anymore and I had to wanking lay there for a while until I got my breath back."
n.b.: extremely unusual meaning, most people won't get this meaning without provided context ... and lots of wanking used as ... *ahem* ... 'explanation.'
May or may not have medicinal usage, either in causing blindness or preventing ... 'hysteria.'
... oh, and you know how 'they' say a picture is worth a thousand words? So in lieu of the usage definition of the second, unusual meaning, I should have just shown this:
hm-hm-hm ... ;)
Wankers, n. pl. pej.: of or pertaining to the wankiness of the wankitude, usually uttered by Brits or Brit-like people.
Usual usage: "That dude is a total wanker!" (collq. meaning 1, see 'douche bag')
Unusual usuage: ... well, I don't have a straight-up definition for ya, but girls reading this usage will totally get what I'm saying, esp. girls taking the pressure off, 'blow'ing off steam, or other euphemistic ways of saying this unusual meaning:
"Whoa! I wanked my wanker until I wanking wanked so hard I saw stars and I couldn't feel my arms anymore and I had to wanking lay there for a while until I got my breath back."
n.b.: extremely unusual meaning, most people won't get this meaning without provided context ... and lots of wanking used as ... *ahem* ... 'explanation.'
May or may not have medicinal usage, either in causing blindness or preventing ... 'hysteria.'
... oh, and you know how 'they' say a picture is worth a thousand words? So in lieu of the usage definition of the second, unusual meaning, I should have just shown this:
hm-hm-hm ... ;)
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Booth Babes
*sigh*
Finally, someone else gets it. And this is coming from — bonus! and hold the phone! — a guy!
... I'm moving to the UK right now so I can marry this guy! ... oh, he's married already? Well, I could be his love-slave ... no, wait. He just wrote an article against that.
*blush* and *sigh* (again)
Finally, someone else gets it. And this is coming from — bonus! and hold the phone! — a guy!
... I'm moving to the UK right now so I can marry this guy! ... oh, he's married already? Well, I could be his love-slave ... no, wait. He just wrote an article against that.
*blush* and *sigh* (again)
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Headshot Honch...ess?
Dear Diary,
How I get 100 headshots in a firefight game in Halo, every time. AND a perfection.
First watch this game of skirmiggedon, it's on my recommended list.
Okay, watch it again, and admire my prowess! *preen*
Okay, Skirmigeddon is one of the "Score Attack" game types, it doesn't always show up, and on most maps, with skirmishers who weave, leap, flank and swarm, it's pure hell.
But on the Covenant corvette, where right where you are placed there's a long, narrow corridor with only two access points (one to your side, one lengthy one, right ahead of you) ...
It's pure headshot heaven.
What do I do to get 116 headshots in one game?
How I get 100 headshots in a firefight game in Halo, every time. AND a perfection.
First watch this game of skirmiggedon, it's on my recommended list.
Okay, watch it again, and admire my prowess! *preen*
Okay, Skirmigeddon is one of the "Score Attack" game types, it doesn't always show up, and on most maps, with skirmishers who weave, leap, flank and swarm, it's pure hell.
But on the Covenant corvette, where right where you are placed there's a long, narrow corridor with only two access points (one to your side, one lengthy one, right ahead of you) ...
It's pure headshot heaven.
What do I do to get 116 headshots in one game?
- I choose 'evade' as the armor ability. Why? Skirmishers are feisty bitches, leaping and lively, I have to counter by being equally nimble. When I come under fire and am swarmed, I DO NOT want to run away in a straight line ('Sprint') I want to bob and weave out of the way and behind cover at a distance to recover.
- I let them come to me. Repeated: I. Let. Them. Come. To. MOI! I'm in a perfectly defensible stronghold, and skirmishers take their sweet time coming to me, but come they do (like every girl under me, but that's another story), and when they come to me, where I am waiting at the end of a long tunnel (where's the Dr. Freud who designed this map?), then I get headshot after headshot as they align their heads to my crosshairs.
Here's what happens when I DON'T wait and leave my perfectly defensible fortress and take the fight to them: they swarm, they flank, they surround me, and shoot me in the head, many, many times, and I die.
I go to them, they swarm, I die. I let them come to me, they funnel into my crosshairs, they die.
Once more, with feeling: I let them come to me. - I pick up a needle rifle, and never look back. The needle rifle is like, the perfect skirmisher exterminator, I aim for their head, I get a headshot, instakill. I aim for their chest, the needle rifle auto-corrects to their head before I pull the trigger, headshot, instadeath. I aim for the BIG TOE, the needle rifle autocorrects to their head before I pull the trigger ... you get the idea. Out of 120 enemies, I only missed 4 headshots that game. That's not me (too much); that's the needle rifle. The DMR is a good, penetrating (easy now, girls) tool (of destruction ... THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!), but it doesn't get headshots like the needle rifle does. And in the off-chance you miss the head, three times in a row, the enemy explodes in a bright, pink mist.
What's not to love?
- The skirmishers come in waves, waves of four. I dispatch 4 enemies, reload, pick up any dropped needle rifle ammo, then reset to the back of the long tunnel and await the next wave of baddies. Kill 4, reload, regroup. Lather, rinse, repeat.
- I get hit all the time. No worries, my shield goes down, ... to avoid getting hit, I'm in constant motion; I'm never standing still. When my shield drops, okay, don't panic, and you don't see it in this game, but I take the gloves off. Any living thing facing me is getting 'evaded' (I backpedal when I fight), grenades, and every single needle I can unload into their chest. They go 'BOOM!' and hurt their buddies, and I get my second wind (and a health pack) as the next wave approaches.
- GAME. OVER! (p.s.: I win! ;)
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Shame
Dear Diary (for which the whole world can read),
A friend of mine asked me what I would wear to church today, and I didn't answer, because, as is the common ailment of our sex, I didn't have a thing to wear, in a closet stuffed to overflowing.
I have pretty dresses, and like I fancy the Irish do, I favor the green, and I have solid colors and prints ... and a little yellow summer dress number from the Banana Republic that I love.
But what did I wear to Mass today? I didn't know at the time of the question, so I didn't answer, instead, scurrying, as I do, to the closet to stare at it and grab something off the rack, ready-to-wear.
In the old days, the commoners wore 'off the rack' and 'ready-to-wear.' Rosalie wore neither: her dresses were made for her, and they fit her perfectly, as her hats did, as her gloves did.
Now, we girls try to fit ourselves into 'one-shape-fits-all' dresses, and either suffer the embarrassment of bursting out of them, or the embarrassment of them falling off our nothing-to-cling-to figures.
I don't wear off-the-shoulder numbers, if you didn't guess by now. Partially because of modesty ... what if a guy stared at my collar bone and had licentious thoughts?!?! ... and mostly because of practicality ... I don't have 'milk jugs,' or put another way: my 'happy fun bags' aren't bags, and all they have is happiness and fun, because they've got nothing else to grab or to hold onto ... just ask my dresses.
But the dress I wore today was Shame.
There we were at Mass, bb and I and my nieces up in the choir loft, singing sweetly, like birds, but it wasn't a sweet moment.
bb was getting angrier and angrier. I could see it in his stance. I could see it in the set of his jaw. And I was like: what did I do? I mean, what did I do more?
I am an utter and complete disappointment to my family.
But I didn't see anything I was doing wrongly, so I almost turned on him and smacked him, right there at the beginning of Mass.
And then he ... left.
I was like, what the FUCK!
He left the pew, walked right over to the priest, and handed the priest the laminated placard of the revised responses that the Church just did for the English translation.
And I was like, lightbulb! bb had seen that the priest hadn't had that, and I guess he got angry that everybody else didn't help the priest, so bb goes right up to him, right in the middle of Mass and hands him the sheet.
He came back. He sat next to me. He didn't say one word. He didn't look at me reprovingly.
But I knew what he was thinking. 'Why didn't you notice the priest looking lost up there? Why didn't you help him? You were on the aisle seat. Why did I have to get up, go around you, make a scene when you could have opened your eyes and helped.'
But as if I could. I mean: really! Me, go up in front of all those people, and me, a girl, hand the priest something to continue the Mass?
I mean: I'm getting sick just thinking of it.
But that's just it. It's all me, me, me, and how I think I look, and that paralyzes me into inaction.
Or paralyzes me to wrong action. Stupid action.
And so I do nothing, or I do everything wrong, and bb has to pick up the pieces, and, in Mass, in front of all those people, he goes right up there, fearlessly, I mean, he doesn't even care! and helps the Mass continue, whereas everybody else is just stuck in their pews, not even noticing, like me, or not brave enough, to do something about it.
And that's what he was thinking about me: self-absorbed. Useless. A waste.
And knowing he thought that of me.
You want to know the color of the dress I wore to church today? It was red. Bright red. The color of my cheeks as I burned in embarrassment at what a ...
What a burden I am ... what a burden I am to my family. How useless I am.
Because you don't know the second half of the story. The part of the story of how I moved down to Washington D.C. from nowhere Connecticut.
Because I didn't move.
bb came and picked me up.
From the hospital.
There's the whole precursor of how I ended up there, with my mom screaming and dialing 911 at the same time, and me just looking up at her stupidly from the kitchen floor, but I couldn't say it would be all right, because my mouth was full of cotton and how I couldn't seem to move my arms because they were so heavy, but everything felt ... funny, you know? heavy, and it felt ... I felt tired, but something felt very, very wrong.
Getting your stomach pumped ... it's not something you forget easily.
Mom has to work, she can't watch me 24/7, so what's she going to do? Hand me over to the State?
So bb drove all the way to Connecticut and picked me up from the hospital.
So you think I have my own apartment, with that ... history? histories?
What are multiple suicide attempts called? I mean, besides stupid?
Those steps I fell down, those were the steps from the kitchen to my bedroom they built for me, downstairs.
You think I participate in family activities because they like me so much? Or so they can make sure I don't confuse my diet coke with the kitchen cleaner?
You really have to wonder, considering me, why people try to keep people alive who are so determined to die. I mean, it'd be better for everyone if they just let people like me just ... go away. No fuss, no blame, and no ...
And no more waste of space and effort watching me like a hawk to make sure I don't off myself so that what? so that what? I can face another useless day in my useless job, ... 'and would you like mocha sprinkles on your latte, sir?' ... or my new useless job where, instead of staring at the suits come and go to work, serving them coffee, now I'm one of them, or one of their doormats, staring at a spreadsheet all day, filling in numbers, and getting shouted at when I get something wrong, and getting shouted at when I get something right (yes, you read that correctly), when I do the payroll in half a day where it took a staff of three to do it over a weekend, and yes, they worked over the weekend to get the payroll in Monday morning's mail, and yes, I do what they did in half a day with my spreadsheet, but because it's Excel, everybody thinks they can put their fingers all over it, screwing up the formulæ, and then blaming me when they screw it up saying nobody can understand it and I have to make it simpler.
So here I am, all grown up, with all the other grown ups riding that metro train to their daily grind with their iPhones and droids out to make sure it all gets blotted out so they can make it to 'happy' hour so they can blot it out some more so they can do that again tomorrow, for ... what?
Or I could be a kid again. I could sneak ... no, I don't even need to do that: I could just walk right onto Annadale High School grounds or Edgar Allen Poe, but not TJ, Thomas Jefferson because you need to be somebody with a proven track record for them to look, scornfully, at your grades and deign to allow you to enter, I could have Mrs. A_ drag me in there by the arm and register me in 10th grade, and start that shit all over again and live through, okay, hell, okay? Hell! with me becoming this thing pushed around by everybody else's opinion until I end up on the floor again, either in the classroom, screaming, or on the kitchen, more than half dead, because somebody said, 'Are you really in 10th grade, because it looks like you skipped some grades,' and then look down at my chest, and smirk, and leave me in the girls' bathroom, looking in the mirror reflecting the tears that will, or that I will not allow to fall from my eyes.
The irony of it ... don't you just get the irony of it? Instead of being ratted out for being too old for my grade, I'd be the subject of an exquisite vivisection on posing as 10th grader instead of going back my 6th-grade classes. Now imagine Rosalie going to Forks High School and fitting right in in 10th grade, and now wonder, truly wonder, how she stopped herself, every day, and in every class, from ripping off those vain, self-righteous idiots' heads, and then showing the teachers their own livers for their arrogant presumptive attitudes.
You see, I'm not a woman. A woman is a person who can hold her baby in her arms. My baby didn't come that far to where I could hold her before she died.
Yes, I've had lots of casual sex. Lots of randy college boys on campus, too, if you didn't know that fact.
I'm not a girl anymore, either. I'm trapped in a girl's body, but I've lived too much death to be a girl anymore, and to continue to play the game of being a girl.
I'm neither a girl nor a woman, I'm a girl-not-woman. I'm a child who's seen too much, but instead of allowing me to close my eyes, they keep pumping my stomach. And those hospital bills are another burden I can never repay, another reminder of what a failure I am.
...Writing.
Writing is good therapy. I mean, take this post, for example. Probably very therapeutic for Saga to read and to revel in the fact that she got away from this no-life jailbait loser.
And I can always review this post, and say, "Wow! Look at how far I've come!" and marvel at my amazing ability to claw my way through life, because I'm so gifted and talented at survival.
"Hey, baby," is called out to me, "how's it going?" And instead of answering with the truthful answer of, "You are more right that you know," I answer with the expected answer: "Fine."
I'm doing just 'fine.'
I'm a good student. And I learn from the best. Whenever anybody ever asks Mom how she's doing, she answers, 'Fine,' and says no more, nothing about her just scraping by after her husband left her, her cancer, or her drinking, or smoking, or the one and only failure in her life, a daughter of a college professor who couldn't even succeed in dropping out of life.
Mom and I are on good terms. She came to visit me once, to see how I was doing, because whenever she called and asked how I was doing, I said I was doing 'fine.' Just like Dad, dear old Dad; he came with Mom and wasn't that just a lovely, awkward, family reunion.
But I can tell people I majored in Ancient Greek lit. I have that going for me.
Funny how nobody ever asked to see my degree. They just say, 'Oh, ... impressive!' and give me a job that has a skill level of pouring coffee in a cup, one cup at a time, or putting numbers in columns and making sure they add up ... you know: third-grade math. It's all about style. And I have plenty of that: style and attitude will get you anywhere, baby.
Heh: 'baby.'
So now what? I suppose I could go back to work Monday morning. I got paid this last weekend. I got paid a lot of money. A lot more money than if I were in High school, even selling drugs, which I don't do by the way. ... Sell drugs, that is.
In the supply-and-demand economy, I'm on the demand side ... you know, a 'user,' or as Ayn Rand like to call me, a 'moocher.'
'Guns or dollars!' That was Ayn Rand's lens, that is: how she saw the world. She missed out on high school and college today. Although drugs are all about guns AND dollars, so maybe her lens isn't all that distorted...
But back to the here and now, ... I mean, I have a job and everything!
Just little `phfina, a good little Catholic girl, sharing her opinions with her dear diary. Just a few words on paper, meaning and signifying nothing.
I think I'll have that diet coke now.
A friend of mine asked me what I would wear to church today, and I didn't answer, because, as is the common ailment of our sex, I didn't have a thing to wear, in a closet stuffed to overflowing.
I have pretty dresses, and like I fancy the Irish do, I favor the green, and I have solid colors and prints ... and a little yellow summer dress number from the Banana Republic that I love.
But what did I wear to Mass today? I didn't know at the time of the question, so I didn't answer, instead, scurrying, as I do, to the closet to stare at it and grab something off the rack, ready-to-wear.
In the old days, the commoners wore 'off the rack' and 'ready-to-wear.' Rosalie wore neither: her dresses were made for her, and they fit her perfectly, as her hats did, as her gloves did.
Now, we girls try to fit ourselves into 'one-shape-fits-all' dresses, and either suffer the embarrassment of bursting out of them, or the embarrassment of them falling off our nothing-to-cling-to figures.
I don't wear off-the-shoulder numbers, if you didn't guess by now. Partially because of modesty ... what if a guy stared at my collar bone and had licentious thoughts?!?! ... and mostly because of practicality ... I don't have 'milk jugs,' or put another way: my 'happy fun bags' aren't bags, and all they have is happiness and fun, because they've got nothing else to grab or to hold onto ... just ask my dresses.
But the dress I wore today was Shame.
There we were at Mass, bb and I and my nieces up in the choir loft, singing sweetly, like birds, but it wasn't a sweet moment.
bb was getting angrier and angrier. I could see it in his stance. I could see it in the set of his jaw. And I was like: what did I do? I mean, what did I do more?
I am an utter and complete disappointment to my family.
But I didn't see anything I was doing wrongly, so I almost turned on him and smacked him, right there at the beginning of Mass.
And then he ... left.
I was like, what the FUCK!
He left the pew, walked right over to the priest, and handed the priest the laminated placard of the revised responses that the Church just did for the English translation.
And I was like, lightbulb! bb had seen that the priest hadn't had that, and I guess he got angry that everybody else didn't help the priest, so bb goes right up to him, right in the middle of Mass and hands him the sheet.
He came back. He sat next to me. He didn't say one word. He didn't look at me reprovingly.
But I knew what he was thinking. 'Why didn't you notice the priest looking lost up there? Why didn't you help him? You were on the aisle seat. Why did I have to get up, go around you, make a scene when you could have opened your eyes and helped.'
But as if I could. I mean: really! Me, go up in front of all those people, and me, a girl, hand the priest something to continue the Mass?
I mean: I'm getting sick just thinking of it.
But that's just it. It's all me, me, me, and how I think I look, and that paralyzes me into inaction.
Or paralyzes me to wrong action. Stupid action.
And so I do nothing, or I do everything wrong, and bb has to pick up the pieces, and, in Mass, in front of all those people, he goes right up there, fearlessly, I mean, he doesn't even care! and helps the Mass continue, whereas everybody else is just stuck in their pews, not even noticing, like me, or not brave enough, to do something about it.
And that's what he was thinking about me: self-absorbed. Useless. A waste.
And knowing he thought that of me.
You want to know the color of the dress I wore to church today? It was red. Bright red. The color of my cheeks as I burned in embarrassment at what a ...
What a burden I am ... what a burden I am to my family. How useless I am.
Because you don't know the second half of the story. The part of the story of how I moved down to Washington D.C. from nowhere Connecticut.
Because I didn't move.
bb came and picked me up.
From the hospital.
There's the whole precursor of how I ended up there, with my mom screaming and dialing 911 at the same time, and me just looking up at her stupidly from the kitchen floor, but I couldn't say it would be all right, because my mouth was full of cotton and how I couldn't seem to move my arms because they were so heavy, but everything felt ... funny, you know? heavy, and it felt ... I felt tired, but something felt very, very wrong.
Getting your stomach pumped ... it's not something you forget easily.
Mom has to work, she can't watch me 24/7, so what's she going to do? Hand me over to the State?
So bb drove all the way to Connecticut and picked me up from the hospital.
So you think I have my own apartment, with that ... history? histories?
What are multiple suicide attempts called? I mean, besides stupid?
Those steps I fell down, those were the steps from the kitchen to my bedroom they built for me, downstairs.
You think I participate in family activities because they like me so much? Or so they can make sure I don't confuse my diet coke with the kitchen cleaner?
You really have to wonder, considering me, why people try to keep people alive who are so determined to die. I mean, it'd be better for everyone if they just let people like me just ... go away. No fuss, no blame, and no ...
And no more waste of space and effort watching me like a hawk to make sure I don't off myself so that what? so that what? I can face another useless day in my useless job, ... 'and would you like mocha sprinkles on your latte, sir?' ... or my new useless job where, instead of staring at the suits come and go to work, serving them coffee, now I'm one of them, or one of their doormats, staring at a spreadsheet all day, filling in numbers, and getting shouted at when I get something wrong, and getting shouted at when I get something right (yes, you read that correctly), when I do the payroll in half a day where it took a staff of three to do it over a weekend, and yes, they worked over the weekend to get the payroll in Monday morning's mail, and yes, I do what they did in half a day with my spreadsheet, but because it's Excel, everybody thinks they can put their fingers all over it, screwing up the formulæ, and then blaming me when they screw it up saying nobody can understand it and I have to make it simpler.
So here I am, all grown up, with all the other grown ups riding that metro train to their daily grind with their iPhones and droids out to make sure it all gets blotted out so they can make it to 'happy' hour so they can blot it out some more so they can do that again tomorrow, for ... what?
Or I could be a kid again. I could sneak ... no, I don't even need to do that: I could just walk right onto Annadale High School grounds or Edgar Allen Poe, but not TJ, Thomas Jefferson because you need to be somebody with a proven track record for them to look, scornfully, at your grades and deign to allow you to enter, I could have Mrs. A_ drag me in there by the arm and register me in 10th grade, and start that shit all over again and live through, okay, hell, okay? Hell! with me becoming this thing pushed around by everybody else's opinion until I end up on the floor again, either in the classroom, screaming, or on the kitchen, more than half dead, because somebody said, 'Are you really in 10th grade, because it looks like you skipped some grades,' and then look down at my chest, and smirk, and leave me in the girls' bathroom, looking in the mirror reflecting the tears that will, or that I will not allow to fall from my eyes.
The irony of it ... don't you just get the irony of it? Instead of being ratted out for being too old for my grade, I'd be the subject of an exquisite vivisection on posing as 10th grader instead of going back my 6th-grade classes. Now imagine Rosalie going to Forks High School and fitting right in in 10th grade, and now wonder, truly wonder, how she stopped herself, every day, and in every class, from ripping off those vain, self-righteous idiots' heads, and then showing the teachers their own livers for their arrogant presumptive attitudes.
You see, I'm not a woman. A woman is a person who can hold her baby in her arms. My baby didn't come that far to where I could hold her before she died.
Yes, I've had lots of casual sex. Lots of randy college boys on campus, too, if you didn't know that fact.
I'm not a girl anymore, either. I'm trapped in a girl's body, but I've lived too much death to be a girl anymore, and to continue to play the game of being a girl.
I'm neither a girl nor a woman, I'm a girl-not-woman. I'm a child who's seen too much, but instead of allowing me to close my eyes, they keep pumping my stomach. And those hospital bills are another burden I can never repay, another reminder of what a failure I am.
...Writing.
Writing is good therapy. I mean, take this post, for example. Probably very therapeutic for Saga to read and to revel in the fact that she got away from this no-life jailbait loser.
And I can always review this post, and say, "Wow! Look at how far I've come!" and marvel at my amazing ability to claw my way through life, because I'm so gifted and talented at survival.
"Hey, baby," is called out to me, "how's it going?" And instead of answering with the truthful answer of, "You are more right that you know," I answer with the expected answer: "Fine."
I'm doing just 'fine.'
I'm a good student. And I learn from the best. Whenever anybody ever asks Mom how she's doing, she answers, 'Fine,' and says no more, nothing about her just scraping by after her husband left her, her cancer, or her drinking, or smoking, or the one and only failure in her life, a daughter of a college professor who couldn't even succeed in dropping out of life.
Mom and I are on good terms. She came to visit me once, to see how I was doing, because whenever she called and asked how I was doing, I said I was doing 'fine.' Just like Dad, dear old Dad; he came with Mom and wasn't that just a lovely, awkward, family reunion.
But I can tell people I majored in Ancient Greek lit. I have that going for me.
Funny how nobody ever asked to see my degree. They just say, 'Oh, ... impressive!' and give me a job that has a skill level of pouring coffee in a cup, one cup at a time, or putting numbers in columns and making sure they add up ... you know: third-grade math. It's all about style. And I have plenty of that: style and attitude will get you anywhere, baby.
Heh: 'baby.'
So now what? I suppose I could go back to work Monday morning. I got paid this last weekend. I got paid a lot of money. A lot more money than if I were in High school, even selling drugs, which I don't do by the way. ... Sell drugs, that is.
In the supply-and-demand economy, I'm on the demand side ... you know, a 'user,' or as Ayn Rand like to call me, a 'moocher.'
'Guns or dollars!' That was Ayn Rand's lens, that is: how she saw the world. She missed out on high school and college today. Although drugs are all about guns AND dollars, so maybe her lens isn't all that distorted...
But back to the here and now, ... I mean, I have a job and everything!
Just little `phfina, a good little Catholic girl, sharing her opinions with her dear diary. Just a few words on paper, meaning and signifying nothing.
I think I'll have that diet coke now.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Running/Track
Okay, so ...
Why do shy and quiet girls always start a bold statement with 'okay, so ...' I mean, can't a girl just say something, but, no! she has to say 'okay, so ...' so it minimizes what she's saying so people won't look at her, because if they look at her, she might just be noticed ... SHOCKER! ... and then she's die, so she has to start of everything, with 'okay, so ...'
So, anyway ... (and don't get me started on the 'so, anyway's)
So, I ran in this 5k race this past Monday (or 'weakend' as I almost wrote), 32 minutes, 10 minute miles or ... 6 miles per hour for the whole race ... not bad, not bad for a little nothing of a girl with toothpick legs.
I didn't run again until today ... my whole body hurt but today I was fine so I ran a 5k ...
... and then my arm hurt ... my legs did okay, actually.
Backtrack.
Okay, so I jack-rabbited off the start line, because I was like: 'why is everybody running so slowly?' so I passed a bunch of people. There were young people and middle-aged people and out of shape people and lithe boys and girls jogging along, chatting with each other as they sailed past me.
They didn't irritate me. The ones who irritated me where the little kids, 10 years old, who ran past me, stopped to tie their shoes, and sprinted off before I could catch up to them, the walked along until they heard me coming up to them, the zipped away, then ambled along until I ...
GRRRRR!!!!! #_#
I wasn't running against them, I was running the race to win, and to win, for me, was to run all the way, don't stop, don't walk, and I got my best time in years since I was on the high school cross country team.
(No, girls, don't get all giddy, I didn't get a varsity letter or anything)
And then I crossed the finish line ... nope: it was the half-way mark where they were passing out water!
The half way mark? I almost passed out.
Because, like a total idiot, I sprinted toward what I thought was the finish.
GOD! That second half hurt. But I didn't stop, and I didn't walk. I finished the race, and I didn't let those jr. high girls lap me at the end.
AND I didn't actually puke at the end, either, so: bonus!
AND THEN I hurt, a lot! Runner's headache and runner's achy-ache.
WELL! TODAY!
I ran a 5k jog, went to work, my arm hurting, then I find I have to take my nieces to track after work? (Short story, but not for here) So, what's a girl to do, but to do laps with her nieces?
Yup? Guess who just did another full workout?
Lemme rephrase that: guess who's in agony right now?
*sigh*
Okay. Done with that, on to the Haloz!
So, I get on Live for a little bit in the Campaign to get some more assists, because I so love helping people (actually, ... I do) (The use of the word 'actually' makes the previous statement more emphatic, girls, so, obviously, it's 'more' true @_@)
And I scare one guy right out of the game (Hey, I can't help it; I rawk!)
Another guy was like, 'Hey, cool, wanna play again?' We get into team doubles and DO-MI-NATE! He's like: 'You're really good!' (he didn't say 'for a girl,' either, which was nice) And I'm like "Thanks. I really 'try hard'" And he's like 'no try about it."
Nice kid. And I helped him get his challenges completed and he said, 'you're really nice, lol' (why do people say 'lol' when they are not, in fact, laughing at all?) and I was like 'Wait 'til we play a jerk and you read my nastygrams!' and he was like 'I'll be a good boy, then!'
Like that: nice, easy, effortless.
Life can be like that, I suppose: nice, easy, effortless.
It is for some people. Like at track today. We did it at Annandale High School ('Go Atoms!'), and they had a football game going on at the same time.
High school football.
(`phfina shakes her head)
All those boys? They, each of them, were Greek gods, built like Hercules, strong, powerful, deliberate and graceful, and all the girls on the sidelines, chatting with each other?
They were all taller than me, except for the ones who weren't, they were all more poised than me, they were all projecting confidence and ease, and grace, and belonging. They belonged to each other, to their cliques, yes, but, to their group, of 'young girls who have it all together.' They were smiling and laughing, and playing with the boys or in conversations with each other...
It was intimidating. I was afraid that, like, one of the coaches would be like, 'Water girl! Get over here now! Our boys are thirsty! Tend to them!' And I'd be like a deer in the headlights, and maybe I'd hang my head and get water bottles, and maybe all the girls would look at me and point and talk about me with lifted eyebrows and dropped voices but with castigation evident for the little mouse of a girl invading their turf.
That didn't happen, but I'm almost sick thinking that it could so easily have transpired. And what would I do? I was terrified being at a high school, looking as young, sometimes younger than the student body that a truant officer would grab me by the scruff of the neck and put me right in detention!
DETENTION!?!?!?!
I am so glad I'm not still in High School.
But that's the thing: that's my problem. All those boys ... men, and girls, ... they were at ease, and easy, about their whole 'game of football after school' experience. I never was.
Um ... um ... now I'm supposed to say where I do fit in, but my body's feeling achy, and my mind is shutting down now, at 8:54 pm, for some reasons, like: work and double exercise, so I'll just end here.
Oh, maybe that's life though: trying to fit in, or to conform, and always, always adjusting, or, trying not to conform, but ford your own path, your own way.
I actually (for emphasis) don't know which one I'm trying to do. I'm a try hard, but I don't even know what I'm trying for or what I'm trying at.
Such is life, right now, with my eyes drooping.
And, on balance, right now, right this instant, I feel pretty good about that. I'm trying, and sometimes I succeed, and sometimes, like right now, that's good enough.
Why do shy and quiet girls always start a bold statement with 'okay, so ...' I mean, can't a girl just say something, but, no! she has to say 'okay, so ...' so it minimizes what she's saying so people won't look at her, because if they look at her, she might just be noticed ... SHOCKER! ... and then she's die, so she has to start of everything, with 'okay, so ...'
So, anyway ... (and don't get me started on the 'so, anyway's)
So, I ran in this 5k race this past Monday (or 'weakend' as I almost wrote), 32 minutes, 10 minute miles or ... 6 miles per hour for the whole race ... not bad, not bad for a little nothing of a girl with toothpick legs.
I didn't run again until today ... my whole body hurt but today I was fine so I ran a 5k ...
... and then my arm hurt ... my legs did okay, actually.
Backtrack.
Okay, so I jack-rabbited off the start line, because I was like: 'why is everybody running so slowly?' so I passed a bunch of people. There were young people and middle-aged people and out of shape people and lithe boys and girls jogging along, chatting with each other as they sailed past me.
They didn't irritate me. The ones who irritated me where the little kids, 10 years old, who ran past me, stopped to tie their shoes, and sprinted off before I could catch up to them, the walked along until they heard me coming up to them, the zipped away, then ambled along until I ...
GRRRRR!!!!! #_#
I wasn't running against them, I was running the race to win, and to win, for me, was to run all the way, don't stop, don't walk, and I got my best time in years since I was on the high school cross country team.
(No, girls, don't get all giddy, I didn't get a varsity letter or anything)
And then I crossed the finish line ... nope: it was the half-way mark where they were passing out water!
The half way mark? I almost passed out.
Because, like a total idiot, I sprinted toward what I thought was the finish.
GOD! That second half hurt. But I didn't stop, and I didn't walk. I finished the race, and I didn't let those jr. high girls lap me at the end.
AND I didn't actually puke at the end, either, so: bonus!
AND THEN I hurt, a lot! Runner's headache and runner's achy-ache.
WELL! TODAY!
I ran a 5k jog, went to work, my arm hurting, then I find I have to take my nieces to track after work? (Short story, but not for here) So, what's a girl to do, but to do laps with her nieces?
Yup? Guess who just did another full workout?
Lemme rephrase that: guess who's in agony right now?
*sigh*
Okay. Done with that, on to the Haloz!
So, I get on Live for a little bit in the Campaign to get some more assists, because I so love helping people (actually, ... I do) (The use of the word 'actually' makes the previous statement more emphatic, girls, so, obviously, it's 'more' true @_@)
And I scare one guy right out of the game (Hey, I can't help it; I rawk!)
Another guy was like, 'Hey, cool, wanna play again?' We get into team doubles and DO-MI-NATE! He's like: 'You're really good!' (he didn't say 'for a girl,' either, which was nice) And I'm like "Thanks. I really 'try hard'" And he's like 'no try about it."
Nice kid. And I helped him get his challenges completed and he said, 'you're really nice, lol' (why do people say 'lol' when they are not, in fact, laughing at all?) and I was like 'Wait 'til we play a jerk and you read my nastygrams!' and he was like 'I'll be a good boy, then!'
Like that: nice, easy, effortless.
Life can be like that, I suppose: nice, easy, effortless.
It is for some people. Like at track today. We did it at Annandale High School ('Go Atoms!'), and they had a football game going on at the same time.
High school football.
(`phfina shakes her head)
All those boys? They, each of them, were Greek gods, built like Hercules, strong, powerful, deliberate and graceful, and all the girls on the sidelines, chatting with each other?
They were all taller than me, except for the ones who weren't, they were all more poised than me, they were all projecting confidence and ease, and grace, and belonging. They belonged to each other, to their cliques, yes, but, to their group, of 'young girls who have it all together.' They were smiling and laughing, and playing with the boys or in conversations with each other...
It was intimidating. I was afraid that, like, one of the coaches would be like, 'Water girl! Get over here now! Our boys are thirsty! Tend to them!' And I'd be like a deer in the headlights, and maybe I'd hang my head and get water bottles, and maybe all the girls would look at me and point and talk about me with lifted eyebrows and dropped voices but with castigation evident for the little mouse of a girl invading their turf.
That didn't happen, but I'm almost sick thinking that it could so easily have transpired. And what would I do? I was terrified being at a high school, looking as young, sometimes younger than the student body that a truant officer would grab me by the scruff of the neck and put me right in detention!
DETENTION!?!?!?!
I am so glad I'm not still in High School.
But that's the thing: that's my problem. All those boys ... men, and girls, ... they were at ease, and easy, about their whole 'game of football after school' experience. I never was.
Um ... um ... now I'm supposed to say where I do fit in, but my body's feeling achy, and my mind is shutting down now, at 8:54 pm, for some reasons, like: work and double exercise, so I'll just end here.
Oh, maybe that's life though: trying to fit in, or to conform, and always, always adjusting, or, trying not to conform, but ford your own path, your own way.
I actually (for emphasis) don't know which one I'm trying to do. I'm a try hard, but I don't even know what I'm trying for or what I'm trying at.
Such is life, right now, with my eyes drooping.
And, on balance, right now, right this instant, I feel pretty good about that. I'm trying, and sometimes I succeed, and sometimes, like right now, that's good enough.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Weak
"Dark Paradise" sung by Lana Del Rey
— `phfina commentary:
Okay, you know what Jesus did?
Well, okay: 'said.'
Jesus said a lot of things, but, for the most part, he spoke in metaphor.
Why?
Because words aren't the thing. The thing is the thing, and words describe the thing, but aren't the thing at all.
But the thing is (geddit: 'the "thing" is'? geddit?), people forget that. They start thinking of the words, instead of the thing, and forget that the words are not the thing, the thing is the thing, and in forgetting, confuse words for the thing itself, so they only have words, and, get this: forget the thing, itself, entirely and in fact, now, we live in a world, in a universe, where the only relevant thing is the language that describe things, and we don't care about things anymore, we care about the words around them.
For example. Remember that time when ...
Yup, you're crying already, when she broke your heart, so badly, but she broke your heart. She is not now breaking your heart. Your heart, now, is free to love, or free to laugh, or free to cry.
But no, you bind your heart with those memories, which are descriptions, words, of something that happened in the past and will never happen again, unless you recreate it, and you always do, because all you have is words, memory, and that's all we are, spreaders of memes now, we, ourselves sell our hearts, souls, bodies to memes, so that ideas survive us and what's important, the idea, or this moment, that you're living, right now?
It's the idea, the word, the logos, the meme, that's important, because you're not living anymore, you're just an automaton drifting through the fog.
So.
With me?
So, Jesus was always saying, 'The Kingdom of Heaven is like ..." is like whatever, doesn't matter, because Jesus was taking just one aspect of the thing, Heaven, and saying, the faith of a mustard seed could move a mountain, and everybody stood around and said, 'yeah, sure, whatever, sounds good.' but never, ever, got it, because if they got it, they could move a mountain with a mustard seed of faith, but they didn't, Jesus did, because he had that Faith, and that Faith wasn't words, it was the thing, itself, because He directly experienced what the Kingdom of Heaven was, but all He could do for us was explain, in metaphor and parable what it was like, and then show people, you have 5 loaves and 2 fish and there's 5000 men, let's eat, and they all did, and they still crucified Him because they still never got it, even as they had the fish burps from eating their fill from 5 loaves and 2 fish and they still didn't get it.
And you still don't get it.
Some people get it. Because they have that faith, that ... whatever, whatever they set out to do, and they do it, and a man walked on the surface of the Moon and mountains have been leveled or tunneled through, and the desert has been made an oasis (that city in Kuwait, right?) (or Salmon Fishing in Yemen, right?) and people set up their homes in the middle of, or under, for that matter, the oceans, and you still don't get that these men and women are just like you but they believed they could do it, and you don't.
So, I have words.
That's what I have.
But I know that, see. So I'm going to say something.
I am weak.
That's the thing.
So now I'll use metaphor.
Here's the metaphor.
See that little girl? Her weapons were these: a sniper rifle and a needler.
What are these weapons? A sniper rifle, in the third round, will get you this: the first shot, an Elite will say, "Did a mosquito just bite me?" The second shot, the Elite will say: "You touch me again with that, I will kill you." The third shot, in the head, kills him.
Three shots to kill an Elite. Oh, don't miss: a sniper rifle's clip only has 4 shots.
There are 24 Elites in one wave in the third round.
The needler? Skirmishers laugh at it. It requires a full clip to take out an enemy, or if shielded (like an Elite), to take out just their shields.
And the covies are good dodgers. So you miss. A lot.
Those are my weapons. Weak weapons for a weak girl.
Here were the weapons for the other two players: rockets, and fuel rods. These launch shells so destructive they can take out 8, 9, 10 enemies with one shot. BOOM! They are dead and problem solved.
Strong weapons for strong boys.
Here's the thing. I have weak weapons so I have to work for each and every kill.
They had strong weapons, so they could just aim in a general area and laugh at the destruction they wrought. No skill necessary.
But if you live by the rockets ... you die by the rockets. You shell an Elite, who, because you are lazy, avoids a direct hit. You've just made him mad. He's coming after you.
So okay, your next shell doesn't miss, but guess what? An Elite, charging you, firing at you all the way, takes a shell in the chest, right next to you, who dies in the blast?
He does, yes, but so do you.
Over, and over, and over again.
I was down by 10,000 points that game against those rocket boys, but I had weak weapons, so I ran when I was shot at, and I never died.
Guess who won that game?
Those boys, they were strong, and they rested on their strength and confidence, and, in resting, fell to it.
Pride precedeth the fall.
But I am weak. I know I am weak. I acknowledge it. Freely. I am aware of what my abilities are: I suck at this game, this game called Halo, this game called life, but I use what I have: sniper and needler in Halo, and words in life, and I use them well, and in conflict, where strong people fall, to their own strength, over, and over, and over again, I walk away from fights, triumphant. Right. Victorious.
Whereas other people walk away, angry, selfish, bitter, self-delusionally, wondering: "What the hell just happened? Did that little cunt just walk all over me? I have more skilz than her, I'm a boy, I have the better sex than her. I have more money than her. I have ... all of that. How did she come out on top? How did I look like a fool who didn't know what he was saying in that meeting?"
I am weak. I acknowledge it. I embrace it, and my weakness is my strength.
Other people?
They are strong. Or they want to be. But they are afraid that maybe they aren't.
Actually they are strong, but you can't be strong if you hide things from others or yourself. You can't be strong if you don't know that you are weak.
So somebody lashes out at me, and hurts me, badly, because, yes, I allow it, and yes, they are strong, strong enough to see my weakness, and to bear down into it. Hard.
Like Traci. Like those girls on ffn who looked for understanding, but then found what they really wanted: somebody else to hurt. Me. Because if they can hurt somebody like me, so gifted in her words, as they are not, then that makes their hurting okay, because they hurt somebody else more, so they are now better than me.
But they aren't. But you aren't. You aren't better. You are hurting. And, in hurting, you've hurt somebody else, carefully, thoughtfully, sinisterly, deliberately hurt a delicate, fragile creature: me.
And now you have that deal with. Because now, hurting, you've corrupted yourself, and you see that. You see: 'wow, she sure is a sensitive cunt! All I said was ...' All you said was the exact words that you knew would hurt me, and what happened was that I didn't shrug or laugh it off, I lashed back, or I cried, or I went on a drinking binge, or I slit my wrists.
And you participated in helping me hurt myself, with your words.
So, you can deny that, as people are so good at doing: "I didn't mean that!" "I was only joking!" or "Man up, for God's sake and stop being such a whiny bitch!"
('Man' up?)
Or you can acknowledge that.
How do you acknowledge that?
"I'm sorry"?
No.
"I'm sorry." means all of the above, sugar-coated in sincerity.
Why?
Because "I'm sorry" demands an "It's okay" and in "It's okay" means every mean, little, belittling thing you said is now "okay" somehow because you said "I'm sorry" and you got your "It's okay."
You acknowledge that by acknowledging that. "Holy shit, I was a fucking bitch just then! I meant to hurt you, and I did. Oh, my God! I'm really like that."
And you know what? You're really like that.
Let me say that again: you are really like that.
You, your machinery, kicked into high gear, when you are hurting, and it said, let's hurt somebody really badly, right now, and you snap out those hurtful words, and you hurt somebody. And there are girls, and boys, in high school, right now, killing themselves because there are boys and girls, just like you that, when hurting, hurt others.
That's who you are.
You know why?
Because that's who you choose to be.
And not: "Oh, I choose to be a hurtful person."
No, like this: "I'm strong. I have to be strong. I can't hurt. I'm not allowed to hurt. I'm not weak. If I'm weak, then that means that all these bad things that I allowed to happen to me are because I chose to be weak, and not see them coming, and seeing them coming, not take steps to stop them from happening. Every time I start that fight with my sister she cries and I cry, but no, I start that fight, and now she's dead, or in the hospital with a stomach pump, but I chose to ignore my weakness, because I'm strong and have to be right, even at the expense of my sister's/friend's/classmate's/coworker's life, because it's either them or it's me, and I'm strong, so it's them."
Or: "I've seen my step-father looking at me. And I know, in the pit of my stomach, what that means, but no, mom left home for groceries, and I didn't insist on going, I didn't tell her I think daddy's going to rape me to her, so she left, happy as a clam, and as aware as one, and daddy raped me, and now I have that scar for my life, that I could have stopped. I could have, but now I'm going to scar mom for the rest of her life and every man I ever see for being daddy in my bedroom, and every woman in my life for not stopping what I could have if I had been honest with myself and got help before I needed it, too late."
My dad didn't rape me. But there are Dads raping their daughters, right now. And people just let it happen, because if they don't ...
Then they'd have to admit that something's wrong with him. SHOCKER! But worse, for them: they'd have to admit something is wrong in themselves for picking a man they now know something is not quite right with, but rather than listen to their heart, they do what is safe, they are careful, and turn a blind eye to the thing that hurts them and others, because we can't make waves, can we?
Here's something for you. Examine your histories. Who were the people written in the books? The people who played it safe and got by? Or the people who made waves?
Now.
Now you have a choice. You can get by, and, thereby hurt yourself, more and more and more, playing it safe, and hurt others, and in fact: everyone in your life that you encounter in big ways and in big (for those of you 'confused' about my last declaration, there is no small hurts, you fucking assholes).
Or you can acknowledge who you are being, right now, and right this instant. And choose. And choose to be that, AND make a difference.
"I am weak, and I won that game of firefight."
"I am black, and I have a dream."
"I am Desi, and I am Mahatma."
"I am a woman, and I am God's wire."
I am not MLKjr, Ghandi, nor Mother Teresa.
I am me.
And what can I do? And what can be done, that I am in the world.
Doesn't matter.
What matters, for you, right now, is that you are you, and what can be effected, what can be accomplished in the world because you now choose to be you, instead of using what you believe or what happened to you or what you have been telling yourself that you are, but really whispering deep down in your very core that you're really nothing and shit, ... no: what can you do, what can be done, and done, because you are you, now that you choose to be you, you in your strengths and in your weaknesses.
I am weak.
I acknowledge that.
And none can touch me. None can hurt me.
I am weak.
And I think, and I breathe, and I live, as no one else in this world can, nor ever will.
You? You are so full of your own shit, ... newsflash: just like me, and everybody else in the world, ... the one difference, the one difference between the wave-makers, the doers of this world, and the cannon fodder, the one difference between those two categories of people is that the former, acknowledge them as themselves and, with that, move the world, and the latter say, 'nothing's wrong! nothing's wrong!' and swim in their own shit, and eat it, too, every day, and serve it to whomever they can get to buy it, and call it 'Organic Mango Smoothie' and give you shit for not liking the shit they're serving.
You choose your side, every second. You choose the later by default. It's call the survival mode. But, newsflash: it's just as easy to join the winners' club. You know how I know? A genius and the common man? The mensa and the densa? The difference between the two is 1% more effort of brain power.
Is one percent all that hard? Is one percent effort worth it for you to rise out of the cesspool?
Here's one percent, for me, for you it'll be the same, even as you say it's different, but it's not, because I say so, and I'm writing this entry, so shut the fuck up with your opinion:
Give yourself a good, hard, honest look in the mirror, and acknowledge exactly who you are, and exactly who you aren't.
A child of God, who, with the faith of a mustard see, can say to the mountain, "go," and it will cast itself into the sea.
Have a nice day.
— `phfina commentary:
Okay, you know what Jesus did?
Well, okay: 'said.'
Jesus said a lot of things, but, for the most part, he spoke in metaphor.
Why?
Because words aren't the thing. The thing is the thing, and words describe the thing, but aren't the thing at all.
But the thing is (geddit: 'the "thing" is'? geddit?), people forget that. They start thinking of the words, instead of the thing, and forget that the words are not the thing, the thing is the thing, and in forgetting, confuse words for the thing itself, so they only have words, and, get this: forget the thing, itself, entirely and in fact, now, we live in a world, in a universe, where the only relevant thing is the language that describe things, and we don't care about things anymore, we care about the words around them.
For example. Remember that time when ...
Yup, you're crying already, when she broke your heart, so badly, but she broke your heart. She is not now breaking your heart. Your heart, now, is free to love, or free to laugh, or free to cry.
But no, you bind your heart with those memories, which are descriptions, words, of something that happened in the past and will never happen again, unless you recreate it, and you always do, because all you have is words, memory, and that's all we are, spreaders of memes now, we, ourselves sell our hearts, souls, bodies to memes, so that ideas survive us and what's important, the idea, or this moment, that you're living, right now?
It's the idea, the word, the logos, the meme, that's important, because you're not living anymore, you're just an automaton drifting through the fog.
So.
With me?
So, Jesus was always saying, 'The Kingdom of Heaven is like ..." is like whatever, doesn't matter, because Jesus was taking just one aspect of the thing, Heaven, and saying, the faith of a mustard seed could move a mountain, and everybody stood around and said, 'yeah, sure, whatever, sounds good.' but never, ever, got it, because if they got it, they could move a mountain with a mustard seed of faith, but they didn't, Jesus did, because he had that Faith, and that Faith wasn't words, it was the thing, itself, because He directly experienced what the Kingdom of Heaven was, but all He could do for us was explain, in metaphor and parable what it was like, and then show people, you have 5 loaves and 2 fish and there's 5000 men, let's eat, and they all did, and they still crucified Him because they still never got it, even as they had the fish burps from eating their fill from 5 loaves and 2 fish and they still didn't get it.
And you still don't get it.
Some people get it. Because they have that faith, that ... whatever, whatever they set out to do, and they do it, and a man walked on the surface of the Moon and mountains have been leveled or tunneled through, and the desert has been made an oasis (that city in Kuwait, right?) (or Salmon Fishing in Yemen, right?) and people set up their homes in the middle of, or under, for that matter, the oceans, and you still don't get that these men and women are just like you but they believed they could do it, and you don't.
So, I have words.
That's what I have.
But I know that, see. So I'm going to say something.
I am weak.
That's the thing.
So now I'll use metaphor.
Here's the metaphor.
See that little girl? Her weapons were these: a sniper rifle and a needler.
What are these weapons? A sniper rifle, in the third round, will get you this: the first shot, an Elite will say, "Did a mosquito just bite me?" The second shot, the Elite will say: "You touch me again with that, I will kill you." The third shot, in the head, kills him.
Three shots to kill an Elite. Oh, don't miss: a sniper rifle's clip only has 4 shots.
There are 24 Elites in one wave in the third round.
The needler? Skirmishers laugh at it. It requires a full clip to take out an enemy, or if shielded (like an Elite), to take out just their shields.
And the covies are good dodgers. So you miss. A lot.
Those are my weapons. Weak weapons for a weak girl.
Here were the weapons for the other two players: rockets, and fuel rods. These launch shells so destructive they can take out 8, 9, 10 enemies with one shot. BOOM! They are dead and problem solved.
Strong weapons for strong boys.
Here's the thing. I have weak weapons so I have to work for each and every kill.
They had strong weapons, so they could just aim in a general area and laugh at the destruction they wrought. No skill necessary.
But if you live by the rockets ... you die by the rockets. You shell an Elite, who, because you are lazy, avoids a direct hit. You've just made him mad. He's coming after you.
So okay, your next shell doesn't miss, but guess what? An Elite, charging you, firing at you all the way, takes a shell in the chest, right next to you, who dies in the blast?
He does, yes, but so do you.
Over, and over, and over again.
I was down by 10,000 points that game against those rocket boys, but I had weak weapons, so I ran when I was shot at, and I never died.
Guess who won that game?
Those boys, they were strong, and they rested on their strength and confidence, and, in resting, fell to it.
Pride precedeth the fall.
But I am weak. I know I am weak. I acknowledge it. Freely. I am aware of what my abilities are: I suck at this game, this game called Halo, this game called life, but I use what I have: sniper and needler in Halo, and words in life, and I use them well, and in conflict, where strong people fall, to their own strength, over, and over, and over again, I walk away from fights, triumphant. Right. Victorious.
Whereas other people walk away, angry, selfish, bitter, self-delusionally, wondering: "What the hell just happened? Did that little cunt just walk all over me? I have more skilz than her, I'm a boy, I have the better sex than her. I have more money than her. I have ... all of that. How did she come out on top? How did I look like a fool who didn't know what he was saying in that meeting?"
I am weak. I acknowledge it. I embrace it, and my weakness is my strength.
Other people?
They are strong. Or they want to be. But they are afraid that maybe they aren't.
Actually they are strong, but you can't be strong if you hide things from others or yourself. You can't be strong if you don't know that you are weak.
So somebody lashes out at me, and hurts me, badly, because, yes, I allow it, and yes, they are strong, strong enough to see my weakness, and to bear down into it. Hard.
Like Traci. Like those girls on ffn who looked for understanding, but then found what they really wanted: somebody else to hurt. Me. Because if they can hurt somebody like me, so gifted in her words, as they are not, then that makes their hurting okay, because they hurt somebody else more, so they are now better than me.
But they aren't. But you aren't. You aren't better. You are hurting. And, in hurting, you've hurt somebody else, carefully, thoughtfully, sinisterly, deliberately hurt a delicate, fragile creature: me.
And now you have that deal with. Because now, hurting, you've corrupted yourself, and you see that. You see: 'wow, she sure is a sensitive cunt! All I said was ...' All you said was the exact words that you knew would hurt me, and what happened was that I didn't shrug or laugh it off, I lashed back, or I cried, or I went on a drinking binge, or I slit my wrists.
And you participated in helping me hurt myself, with your words.
So, you can deny that, as people are so good at doing: "I didn't mean that!" "I was only joking!" or "Man up, for God's sake and stop being such a whiny bitch!"
('Man' up?)
Or you can acknowledge that.
How do you acknowledge that?
"I'm sorry"?
No.
"I'm sorry." means all of the above, sugar-coated in sincerity.
Why?
Because "I'm sorry" demands an "It's okay" and in "It's okay" means every mean, little, belittling thing you said is now "okay" somehow because you said "I'm sorry" and you got your "It's okay."
You acknowledge that by acknowledging that. "Holy shit, I was a fucking bitch just then! I meant to hurt you, and I did. Oh, my God! I'm really like that."
And you know what? You're really like that.
Let me say that again: you are really like that.
You, your machinery, kicked into high gear, when you are hurting, and it said, let's hurt somebody really badly, right now, and you snap out those hurtful words, and you hurt somebody. And there are girls, and boys, in high school, right now, killing themselves because there are boys and girls, just like you that, when hurting, hurt others.
That's who you are.
You know why?
Because that's who you choose to be.
And not: "Oh, I choose to be a hurtful person."
No, like this: "I'm strong. I have to be strong. I can't hurt. I'm not allowed to hurt. I'm not weak. If I'm weak, then that means that all these bad things that I allowed to happen to me are because I chose to be weak, and not see them coming, and seeing them coming, not take steps to stop them from happening. Every time I start that fight with my sister she cries and I cry, but no, I start that fight, and now she's dead, or in the hospital with a stomach pump, but I chose to ignore my weakness, because I'm strong and have to be right, even at the expense of my sister's/friend's/classmate's/coworker's life, because it's either them or it's me, and I'm strong, so it's them."
Or: "I've seen my step-father looking at me. And I know, in the pit of my stomach, what that means, but no, mom left home for groceries, and I didn't insist on going, I didn't tell her I think daddy's going to rape me to her, so she left, happy as a clam, and as aware as one, and daddy raped me, and now I have that scar for my life, that I could have stopped. I could have, but now I'm going to scar mom for the rest of her life and every man I ever see for being daddy in my bedroom, and every woman in my life for not stopping what I could have if I had been honest with myself and got help before I needed it, too late."
My dad didn't rape me. But there are Dads raping their daughters, right now. And people just let it happen, because if they don't ...
Then they'd have to admit that something's wrong with him. SHOCKER! But worse, for them: they'd have to admit something is wrong in themselves for picking a man they now know something is not quite right with, but rather than listen to their heart, they do what is safe, they are careful, and turn a blind eye to the thing that hurts them and others, because we can't make waves, can we?
Here's something for you. Examine your histories. Who were the people written in the books? The people who played it safe and got by? Or the people who made waves?
Now.
Now you have a choice. You can get by, and, thereby hurt yourself, more and more and more, playing it safe, and hurt others, and in fact: everyone in your life that you encounter in big ways and in big (for those of you 'confused' about my last declaration, there is no small hurts, you fucking assholes).
Or you can acknowledge who you are being, right now, and right this instant. And choose. And choose to be that, AND make a difference.
"I am weak, and I won that game of firefight."
"I am black, and I have a dream."
"I am Desi, and I am Mahatma."
"I am a woman, and I am God's wire."
I am not MLKjr, Ghandi, nor Mother Teresa.
I am me.
And what can I do? And what can be done, that I am in the world.
Doesn't matter.
What matters, for you, right now, is that you are you, and what can be effected, what can be accomplished in the world because you now choose to be you, instead of using what you believe or what happened to you or what you have been telling yourself that you are, but really whispering deep down in your very core that you're really nothing and shit, ... no: what can you do, what can be done, and done, because you are you, now that you choose to be you, you in your strengths and in your weaknesses.
I am weak.
I acknowledge that.
And none can touch me. None can hurt me.
I am weak.
And I think, and I breathe, and I live, as no one else in this world can, nor ever will.
You? You are so full of your own shit, ... newsflash: just like me, and everybody else in the world, ... the one difference, the one difference between the wave-makers, the doers of this world, and the cannon fodder, the one difference between those two categories of people is that the former, acknowledge them as themselves and, with that, move the world, and the latter say, 'nothing's wrong! nothing's wrong!' and swim in their own shit, and eat it, too, every day, and serve it to whomever they can get to buy it, and call it 'Organic Mango Smoothie' and give you shit for not liking the shit they're serving.
You choose your side, every second. You choose the later by default. It's call the survival mode. But, newsflash: it's just as easy to join the winners' club. You know how I know? A genius and the common man? The mensa and the densa? The difference between the two is 1% more effort of brain power.
Is one percent all that hard? Is one percent effort worth it for you to rise out of the cesspool?
Here's one percent, for me, for you it'll be the same, even as you say it's different, but it's not, because I say so, and I'm writing this entry, so shut the fuck up with your opinion:
Give yourself a good, hard, honest look in the mirror, and acknowledge exactly who you are, and exactly who you aren't.
A child of God, who, with the faith of a mustard see, can say to the mountain, "go," and it will cast itself into the sea.
Have a nice day.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Bigotry
So, okay, I'm in the South.
So, Mrs. A_ leave out the book she's reading on the countertop at the hotel room:
The Help
Yeah.
Well, everybody's nice and Southern polite here.
And there's a clear distinction between Black and White. There's the receptionists and managers at the hotel, and the janitors and maids.
Guess which color is which.
It's really more out in the open down here.
But it's really out in the open anywhere.
I was online with some friends of mine Maia and black00thought, and one of them mentioned where he lives, in Boston, he was at a pizza place, and he offered to pack the left-overs from the meal, only to have his guest reply: 'Nah, that's what black people do.'
He was stunned into silence.
I could go on a tirade here, but Maia's response is better than one I could muster:
"When you're a racist, every pronouncement you make is stupid."
I mean: how can you argue with what bigots, racists, prejudiced people say? You can't.
"Black people pack up their left-overs"? Um, so do a bunch of other people, including poor little Irish me, but no, you can't say that to them. They saw, one time, somebody who is black packing up their meal at a restaurant, and from there on after, that's what black people do, and you can't say dick to shake their belief.
You know what the opposite of racism/bigotry/prejudiced people?
It's not tolerance.
It's intolerance.
Really.
A prejudiced person sees a person they've labeled or they hate, and they see them doing something, and they are like: 'Oh, that's how they are,' and hate them, and accept them as that. Prejudiced people are among the most tolerant people in the world: they label a person and they stick them into that box, and forever allow a person of that color or creed to do what they are doing, because 'that's how they are.'
What we need in this world is not more people to tolerate/accept/allow how things are: we need more people who say: you know, that's how you see it, but I'm not going to stand for that.
You know: like MLKjr, like Ghandi, like Mother Teresa.
She said, 'the poorest of the poor are like that'?
No: everybody else said that. She said: this person is a child of God and has an innate dignity, and I will die, respecting this person as a person, not as an untouchable.
You want to be tolerant?
Go right ahead: the world is as it is, because of your tacit 'acceptance.'
So, Mrs. A_ leave out the book she's reading on the countertop at the hotel room:
The Help
Yeah.
Well, everybody's nice and Southern polite here.
And there's a clear distinction between Black and White. There's the receptionists and managers at the hotel, and the janitors and maids.
Guess which color is which.
It's really more out in the open down here.
But it's really out in the open anywhere.
I was online with some friends of mine Maia and black00thought, and one of them mentioned where he lives, in Boston, he was at a pizza place, and he offered to pack the left-overs from the meal, only to have his guest reply: 'Nah, that's what black people do.'
He was stunned into silence.
I could go on a tirade here, but Maia's response is better than one I could muster:
"When you're a racist, every pronouncement you make is stupid."
I mean: how can you argue with what bigots, racists, prejudiced people say? You can't.
"Black people pack up their left-overs"? Um, so do a bunch of other people, including poor little Irish me, but no, you can't say that to them. They saw, one time, somebody who is black packing up their meal at a restaurant, and from there on after, that's what black people do, and you can't say dick to shake their belief.
You know what the opposite of racism/bigotry/prejudiced people?
It's not tolerance.
It's intolerance.
Really.
A prejudiced person sees a person they've labeled or they hate, and they see them doing something, and they are like: 'Oh, that's how they are,' and hate them, and accept them as that. Prejudiced people are among the most tolerant people in the world: they label a person and they stick them into that box, and forever allow a person of that color or creed to do what they are doing, because 'that's how they are.'
What we need in this world is not more people to tolerate/accept/allow how things are: we need more people who say: you know, that's how you see it, but I'm not going to stand for that.
You know: like MLKjr, like Ghandi, like Mother Teresa.
She said, 'the poorest of the poor are like that'?
No: everybody else said that. She said: this person is a child of God and has an innate dignity, and I will die, respecting this person as a person, not as an untouchable.
You want to be tolerant?
Go right ahead: the world is as it is, because of your tacit 'acceptance.'
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Heart
Oz never did give nothin' to the Tin Man,
That he didn't, didn't already have.
And 'cause' never was reason for believin'
Or the Tropic of Sir Galahad.
America, "Tin Man"
— `phfina's thoughts:
Oz gave the Tin Man a heart, so that he could love.
Oz can't give me that. I don't have a heart. I don't have a soul. I don't have dreams, nor hope. I have nothing. I am nothing.
So, funny, we all think at times, that so much is written and sung about a pumping vessel, a valve, that it has so much meaning to so many, and all it does is sustain life, and, funny, again, that it actually defines, life, or, more accurately, when it stops, it defines Death.
I wish I even had Death, I don't have that. But it will have me. Very soon, today even. There will come a time when time is no more for me, and then what? Then the charade is over, the curtain falls, not to rise again, like everybody else will, on the Last Day. I'm not even Left Behind; I'm not even a Forgotten One, the old Elder God that nobody remembers the names to or even that they existed ... Melissa is my name, and nobody remembers her, the most powerful goddess of Crete, now gone, at least she had her time, and her prominence, ... I have neither. I am neither. I am neither this nor that, neither quid nor haec, neither noumenon nor phenomenon, just nothing, and not even that.
Oz never gave nothing to the Tin Man, that he didn't, he didn't already have.
Oz can't give me a heart, either, it's not that I don't have it. It's that there's no 'I' to give it to.
That he didn't, didn't already have.
And 'cause' never was reason for believin'
Or the Tropic of Sir Galahad.
America, "Tin Man"
— `phfina's thoughts:
Oz gave the Tin Man a heart, so that he could love.
Oz can't give me that. I don't have a heart. I don't have a soul. I don't have dreams, nor hope. I have nothing. I am nothing.
So, funny, we all think at times, that so much is written and sung about a pumping vessel, a valve, that it has so much meaning to so many, and all it does is sustain life, and, funny, again, that it actually defines, life, or, more accurately, when it stops, it defines Death.
I wish I even had Death, I don't have that. But it will have me. Very soon, today even. There will come a time when time is no more for me, and then what? Then the charade is over, the curtain falls, not to rise again, like everybody else will, on the Last Day. I'm not even Left Behind; I'm not even a Forgotten One, the old Elder God that nobody remembers the names to or even that they existed ... Melissa is my name, and nobody remembers her, the most powerful goddess of Crete, now gone, at least she had her time, and her prominence, ... I have neither. I am neither. I am neither this nor that, neither quid nor haec, neither noumenon nor phenomenon, just nothing, and not even that.
Oz never gave nothing to the Tin Man, that he didn't, he didn't already have.
Oz can't give me a heart, either, it's not that I don't have it. It's that there's no 'I' to give it to.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Gratitude
Fuck, I hate this.
Why ...
Okay, here's my beef. My last two posts were on Love and Sadness, two words that are older than Latin, reaching back to their Aryan roots.
I mean look at it. You can say: "I feel amiable." Or "I love you."
You can say: "I have melancholy." or you can say "I'm sad."
Which phrases express the feelings more powerfully?
So this post was going to be titled "Friend."
Because you can be somebody's 'companion' or you can be their 'friend.'
Which is truer? Which runs deeper?
Language. The latin language is all expression, but only at the surface. The greek language is all description, but only from the intellect. ... Okay, Sappho hit on something that nobody else has touch for another 2,600 years ... But if you want to get to the heart (not cor, or core, but heart) you have to use a language that speaks directly to what is.
What is scarier? A dog? or a wolf? It isn't the 'puppy' from Hell, folks, it's the Hound from Hell.
We in our descriptions and expressions and analysis have lost touch with what is.
So, no, this post isn't about Friend-ship, as much as I regret it not being so, and it isn't about that other primitive word: Not 'mortality' but 'Death' or 'Tod' (same word, both from the Elder FUTHARK) but about Gratitude, a fucking wimpy Latin word meaning ...
Well, meaning absolutely nothing, so let's call gratitude what it is, not what you want it to be.
Okay, this is what gratitude actually is, coming from most people in this day and age, and, in fact, if you read your histories, in any day and age.
Gratitude is this: sincerity. And sincerity is this: "Oh, I expressed sympathetic feeling, and I 'promised' to do good, so, now, I'm good."
That's it. They're done with you. "Oh, I'm grateful for all that hard work you did."
They are done with you.
You want proof? Collect on the gratitude.
I have. I do.
But not like you.
Gratitude from most people, today, and any day, last anywhere from two seconds to two days (maximum). So, when I'm told, "Oh, we'll comp you your time when we get out of this squeeze" ... what I hear is absolutely nothing.
Because why? Because 'this squeeze' ALWAYS leads to the next squeeze. Or something else, anything else, happens.
So, when I'm offered comp, I say, "Remember yesterday the extra 6 hours I worked through the night to get the report out? I'm taking today off as comp."
Do you know how much guilt-shit I get for that?
Do you know why I get that guilt-shit? Because now I have them under the gun of their promise and I'm collecting on it, unlike you, who never will.
But so they have to live with eating their words, or being a liar, and getting fucking sued because of the witnesses.
THAT is fucking gratitude, you idiots.
Because try collecting on that a week later? a month later?
'Loan' out your lawn mower to your neighbor ... do you ever get it back? and if you do, is after how much nagging from you and with a surly look and a gas tank filled with water from it being left out in the rain week after week, month after month?
Here's what you do when somebody says, 'Oh, I'm grateful.'
You fucking collect on it, right fucking now.
'Oh, I'll buy you a TV.'
Sit the fuck down, right fucking there, open up your laptop, take his fucking credit card and order the TV from Amazon or bestbuy or wherever. If you don't do it right fucking then, then fucking forget he said it, because that promised TV? It's gone, baby, gone.
'Oh, I'll make that up to you.'
Get in your fucking car, follow him to his house, let him get his checkbook, and fucking don't take a check from him, no: follow him to the fucking bank and have him make out a certified check in your name right there.
Because 'oh, I'll make that up to you.' becomes 'Who are you again? And get off my property or I'll call the police' next week, even it was your former best friend.
What does that mean for you, dear reader, reading this entry?
You. And your word. Is shit.
You've made promise after promise to, now, hundreds of people in your life, and you now have absolutely no intention of ever lifting your little finger to fulfilling even one of them.
Do you know how many people in your life you have damaged? Do you know nearly everyone in your life is looking at you with a hurt inside themselves that they will never tell you nor acknowledge to themselves even, but they remember, and they always will remember, that time you promised them that $5 back, and you've never repaid them, and they are still hurting, over a lousy $5 because that's $5 they couldn't let go of. Or that doll, or that TV set, or that time you said you'd come to bed and you stayed up all night, or ...
You go on with that list. You know it as well, and even better, than I do.
But that's not what it means to you. It does mean that, but here's something you can take away from this illuminating little conversation on a Latin word that means nothing to nobody.
The second you open your mouth to speak to your-fucking-self or to, o God save us, another person, another soul you are going fucking crush with your empty fucking promises ... then ...
Then you have a choice. You can shut your fucking mouth right fucking now.
Primus non nocere
OR, you can do what you've done, and what everybody else has done for your whole fucking entire life and say something and not do a thing about it, but since it's been done to you so many times, it's o-fucking-kay to perpetuate on this innocent person you're taking your shit out on. Have at it, asshole.
OR, hm, try something new. You open your fucking pie hole, you fucking better be already moving to fulfill what your mouth is saying. 'I really should work out.' you say to yourself. Do you have your keys in your hand to get into your car to go to the community swimming pool right fucking now? You'd better. 'Hey, thanks for lunch, I'll get you next time.' Well, 'next time' better be supper or tomorrow's lunch, because they'll remember. Or, 'let's go to the movies.' Take out your calendar or iPhone with them right in front of you, and pick the date, the hour and the movie.
You are your word.
And you are other people's word, too, you know. If you've got a promise from somebody else, but you don't ask for that, you hurt them and you hurt yourself. Get it the fuck off your chest and ask them, point blank, 'hey, I'm hungry, let's do that lunch you owe me.' You are doing them a favor. And if they say, 'Not today, I'm busy/don't have cash/it's raining/what-fucking-ever.' then you take out your calendar or iPhone, and say, 'okay, can we do it tomorrow then?' and with their yes, pencil it in right in front of them. People respect people who keep their word and keep their appointment, even if the appointment is the one they promised.
And if they say 'eh' you have two options, hold them to account with the above 'by what date?' strat above, or ...
Or ... let it go. Get it the fuck off your chest AND theirs. How you do that is up to you. Just know that more guilt is ADDING to the burden, NOT relieving it. So, a 'yeah, whatever, you promised, but you're a shit, so forget it' is not a getting off your chest and theirs. They aren't honoring their word. They never will.
Can you live with that? Or you gonna wear that around your neck, and theirs, dragging you both down to Sheol?
There's something about forgiveness here for some people to ponder. (You, if you fucking haven't figured it out yet, dumbass)
But for me, I'm done with this post for now. I'm going to breathe in, then breathe out, and walk away from writing more and get on with my life elsewhere.
Buh-bai!
Why ...
Okay, here's my beef. My last two posts were on Love and Sadness, two words that are older than Latin, reaching back to their Aryan roots.
I mean look at it. You can say: "I feel amiable." Or "I love you."
You can say: "I have melancholy." or you can say "I'm sad."
Which phrases express the feelings more powerfully?
So this post was going to be titled "Friend."
Because you can be somebody's 'companion' or you can be their 'friend.'
Which is truer? Which runs deeper?
Language. The latin language is all expression, but only at the surface. The greek language is all description, but only from the intellect. ... Okay, Sappho hit on something that nobody else has touch for another 2,600 years ... But if you want to get to the heart (not cor, or core, but heart) you have to use a language that speaks directly to what is.
What is scarier? A dog? or a wolf? It isn't the 'puppy' from Hell, folks, it's the Hound from Hell.
We in our descriptions and expressions and analysis have lost touch with what is.
So, no, this post isn't about Friend-ship, as much as I regret it not being so, and it isn't about that other primitive word: Not 'mortality' but 'Death' or 'Tod' (same word, both from the Elder FUTHARK) but about Gratitude, a fucking wimpy Latin word meaning ...
Well, meaning absolutely nothing, so let's call gratitude what it is, not what you want it to be.
Okay, this is what gratitude actually is, coming from most people in this day and age, and, in fact, if you read your histories, in any day and age.
Gratitude is this: sincerity. And sincerity is this: "Oh, I expressed sympathetic feeling, and I 'promised' to do good, so, now, I'm good."
That's it. They're done with you. "Oh, I'm grateful for all that hard work you did."
They are done with you.
You want proof? Collect on the gratitude.
I have. I do.
But not like you.
Gratitude from most people, today, and any day, last anywhere from two seconds to two days (maximum). So, when I'm told, "Oh, we'll comp you your time when we get out of this squeeze" ... what I hear is absolutely nothing.
Because why? Because 'this squeeze' ALWAYS leads to the next squeeze. Or something else, anything else, happens.
So, when I'm offered comp, I say, "Remember yesterday the extra 6 hours I worked through the night to get the report out? I'm taking today off as comp."
Do you know how much guilt-shit I get for that?
Do you know why I get that guilt-shit? Because now I have them under the gun of their promise and I'm collecting on it, unlike you, who never will.
But so they have to live with eating their words, or being a liar, and getting fucking sued because of the witnesses.
THAT is fucking gratitude, you idiots.
Because try collecting on that a week later? a month later?
'Loan' out your lawn mower to your neighbor ... do you ever get it back? and if you do, is after how much nagging from you and with a surly look and a gas tank filled with water from it being left out in the rain week after week, month after month?
Here's what you do when somebody says, 'Oh, I'm grateful.'
You fucking collect on it, right fucking now.
'Oh, I'll buy you a TV.'
Sit the fuck down, right fucking there, open up your laptop, take his fucking credit card and order the TV from Amazon or bestbuy or wherever. If you don't do it right fucking then, then fucking forget he said it, because that promised TV? It's gone, baby, gone.
'Oh, I'll make that up to you.'
Get in your fucking car, follow him to his house, let him get his checkbook, and fucking don't take a check from him, no: follow him to the fucking bank and have him make out a certified check in your name right there.
Because 'oh, I'll make that up to you.' becomes 'Who are you again? And get off my property or I'll call the police' next week, even it was your former best friend.
What does that mean for you, dear reader, reading this entry?
You. And your word. Is shit.
You've made promise after promise to, now, hundreds of people in your life, and you now have absolutely no intention of ever lifting your little finger to fulfilling even one of them.
Do you know how many people in your life you have damaged? Do you know nearly everyone in your life is looking at you with a hurt inside themselves that they will never tell you nor acknowledge to themselves even, but they remember, and they always will remember, that time you promised them that $5 back, and you've never repaid them, and they are still hurting, over a lousy $5 because that's $5 they couldn't let go of. Or that doll, or that TV set, or that time you said you'd come to bed and you stayed up all night, or ...
You go on with that list. You know it as well, and even better, than I do.
But that's not what it means to you. It does mean that, but here's something you can take away from this illuminating little conversation on a Latin word that means nothing to nobody.
The second you open your mouth to speak to your-fucking-self or to, o God save us, another person, another soul you are going fucking crush with your empty fucking promises ... then ...
Then you have a choice. You can shut your fucking mouth right fucking now.
Primus non nocere
OR, you can do what you've done, and what everybody else has done for your whole fucking entire life and say something and not do a thing about it, but since it's been done to you so many times, it's o-fucking-kay to perpetuate on this innocent person you're taking your shit out on. Have at it, asshole.
OR, hm, try something new. You open your fucking pie hole, you fucking better be already moving to fulfill what your mouth is saying. 'I really should work out.' you say to yourself. Do you have your keys in your hand to get into your car to go to the community swimming pool right fucking now? You'd better. 'Hey, thanks for lunch, I'll get you next time.' Well, 'next time' better be supper or tomorrow's lunch, because they'll remember. Or, 'let's go to the movies.' Take out your calendar or iPhone with them right in front of you, and pick the date, the hour and the movie.
You are your word.
And you are other people's word, too, you know. If you've got a promise from somebody else, but you don't ask for that, you hurt them and you hurt yourself. Get it the fuck off your chest and ask them, point blank, 'hey, I'm hungry, let's do that lunch you owe me.' You are doing them a favor. And if they say, 'Not today, I'm busy/don't have cash/it's raining/what-fucking-ever.' then you take out your calendar or iPhone, and say, 'okay, can we do it tomorrow then?' and with their yes, pencil it in right in front of them. People respect people who keep their word and keep their appointment, even if the appointment is the one they promised.
And if they say 'eh' you have two options, hold them to account with the above 'by what date?' strat above, or ...
Or ... let it go. Get it the fuck off your chest AND theirs. How you do that is up to you. Just know that more guilt is ADDING to the burden, NOT relieving it. So, a 'yeah, whatever, you promised, but you're a shit, so forget it' is not a getting off your chest and theirs. They aren't honoring their word. They never will.
Can you live with that? Or you gonna wear that around your neck, and theirs, dragging you both down to Sheol?
There's something about forgiveness here for some people to ponder. (You, if you fucking haven't figured it out yet, dumbass)
But for me, I'm done with this post for now. I'm going to breathe in, then breathe out, and walk away from writing more and get on with my life elsewhere.
Buh-bai!
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Love
You can tell what a person is in love with by what they give their time to.
Did you know that? It's very telling to watch a person, hear what they say, then actually see what they are doing. So when they say: 'I HATE this' 'this' whatever it is, but you see them doing it over and over and over again, well, they actually love that 'this' thing whatever it is and are perpetuating it, keeping it alive and strong by giving all their time to the thing they are saying they hate.
People are such good liars... they convince even themselves with their lies.
For me, today, as with most days ... I love ... meetings. I've been in meetings all day, a wallflower, the only reason why I'm there is because I'm 'supposed' to be there, my eyes open and my mouth shut, a good little 'yessir' girl.
I also am in SO much love with the bus.
Then haloz.
And those are my loves.
And ...
And throughout today, I've been thinking of you ... what does that say about me? When I am playing haloz, I have more fun when I'm playing with my friends. I don't get much joy of playing haloz alone against and with randoms.
It's like alcohol, I suppose you can make that connection, and raise high the red flag. I drink because I don't really exist at all, except to give a place for the alcohol to live. I don't enjoy drinking, per se, but ...
but that. But I drink, not for me, but for it to live in me. I'm just a receptacle. You know: like, for alcohol, and for sperm. That's what a woman is, right? To men, and that's all that matters in this world.
I play haloz a lot, but I don't enjoy it, except for a brief second here or there, and except when I'm playing with my friends.
I thought about Saga a little, tiny bit this morning, but that was all, and now I feel a twinge of guilt and of sadness, knowing that I think of her so little and when I do, I think of her sadly, wistfully, wondering how she is, hoping she is well, and knowing that she had something special with me and she misses that and feels she can never have that again. And writing that, I wonder what you'll think when you finally wake up and come to your senses and move on, and ... looking back, say regretfully to yourself, 'oh, well, that was nice, sort of, if she weren't so fucked up in the head.'
So, when I say 'I love you,' what does that mean? I mean ... I mean ... so what? I love you, but so what? How does that translate into my feet moving in a directions, my fingers flying over the keyboard, ... what is my heart if what I say affects what I do how?
I don't say 'I love you' easily. And I do. I'm not scared to love, and to be loved, and ... I'm terrified of my own shadow.
What am I saying, if I'm saying both at once? Don't they cancel each other out? Then why say anything at all?
Why, indeed? Other than that I hopelessly hope that somewhere, somehow I can get out of what I am confining myself into.
You know: complaining about the state that I alone put myself into.
And ... to 'explain' ... I don't say, 'iloveuiloveuiloveu' like some empty-headed dumbfuck broad who'll say anything that goes into her head and then goes on an lives her selfish life exactly as she wants and fuck you and yours for getting in her way.
I say 'I love you,' and mean it, and get on with my selfish, lonely, hopeless life, and fuck me and my stupid, useless, pointless life.
Did you know that? It's very telling to watch a person, hear what they say, then actually see what they are doing. So when they say: 'I HATE this' 'this' whatever it is, but you see them doing it over and over and over again, well, they actually love that 'this' thing whatever it is and are perpetuating it, keeping it alive and strong by giving all their time to the thing they are saying they hate.
People are such good liars... they convince even themselves with their lies.
For me, today, as with most days ... I love ... meetings. I've been in meetings all day, a wallflower, the only reason why I'm there is because I'm 'supposed' to be there, my eyes open and my mouth shut, a good little 'yessir' girl.
I also am in SO much love with the bus.
Then haloz.
And those are my loves.
And ...
And throughout today, I've been thinking of you ... what does that say about me? When I am playing haloz, I have more fun when I'm playing with my friends. I don't get much joy of playing haloz alone against and with randoms.
It's like alcohol, I suppose you can make that connection, and raise high the red flag. I drink because I don't really exist at all, except to give a place for the alcohol to live. I don't enjoy drinking, per se, but ...
but that. But I drink, not for me, but for it to live in me. I'm just a receptacle. You know: like, for alcohol, and for sperm. That's what a woman is, right? To men, and that's all that matters in this world.
I play haloz a lot, but I don't enjoy it, except for a brief second here or there, and except when I'm playing with my friends.
I thought about Saga a little, tiny bit this morning, but that was all, and now I feel a twinge of guilt and of sadness, knowing that I think of her so little and when I do, I think of her sadly, wistfully, wondering how she is, hoping she is well, and knowing that she had something special with me and she misses that and feels she can never have that again. And writing that, I wonder what you'll think when you finally wake up and come to your senses and move on, and ... looking back, say regretfully to yourself, 'oh, well, that was nice, sort of, if she weren't so fucked up in the head.'
So, when I say 'I love you,' what does that mean? I mean ... I mean ... so what? I love you, but so what? How does that translate into my feet moving in a directions, my fingers flying over the keyboard, ... what is my heart if what I say affects what I do how?
I don't say 'I love you' easily. And I do. I'm not scared to love, and to be loved, and ... I'm terrified of my own shadow.
What am I saying, if I'm saying both at once? Don't they cancel each other out? Then why say anything at all?
Why, indeed? Other than that I hopelessly hope that somewhere, somehow I can get out of what I am confining myself into.
You know: complaining about the state that I alone put myself into.
And ... to 'explain' ... I don't say, 'iloveuiloveuiloveu' like some empty-headed dumbfuck broad who'll say anything that goes into her head and then goes on an lives her selfish life exactly as she wants and fuck you and yours for getting in her way.
I say 'I love you,' and mean it, and get on with my selfish, lonely, hopeless life, and fuck me and my stupid, useless, pointless life.
Sad
You would think, reading my entries, that I live a bleak existence, moving from sadness to sadness.
I'm not going to comment on your thought. :p *snicker*
But I will say ...
Okay, when somebody says, 'Oh, I'm not going to say anything about that, I'm too grande (like an sbux coffee size?) to descend to your level, but I will say ...'
Didn't they, with their 'but I will say,' just do exactly what they said they weren't going to do because they're not a cunt like you are (but they didn't call you a cunt, they just thought that of you so that makes them so superior to you, see?)?
Anyway, but I will say ... @_@
So, me, C, and Max where in the matchmaking hopper, getting ready to show some bks how to play the game by killing them dead, over and over again, when C asked me how I liked the movie How to Train Your Dragon, and I said many things about how much I liked it, and one of the things I said was that I liked that they got real Vikings to sing the closing song in the credits.
Real Vikings. You know, Jónsi.
I mean, seriously! People think Vikings where like these thugs wearing helmets with horns (which the movie playfully indulged in) whacking people, stealing their goods, particularly the girls to get to their goodies.
Cause Viking men like cookies.
Who doesn't? :p
*snicker* *blush*
But, come on! They had literature, a culture, their own writing, and their own language that wasn't based off that wimpy romantic shit everybody else in Europe (a Greek word, I'll have you know, not Latin) was speaking, but came straight from the Aryans, skipping even those bed-sheet-wearing Greeks! They stole food, and womenfolk, from other people, because the latter: who wouldn't? I'd steal me some hot Irish lass, too! And the former: you ever try to grow anything in Iceland? No? Try that and see if you're not raiding the Giant food store for some Campbell's Chicken Noodle soup tomorrow!
So, anyway, real Viking runes (that didn't spell anything, I mean, where was their linguist and will they hire me? I'm looking! I'll even take the occasional ass fucking from the boss-man and agent if that ... 'facilitates' ... my ... 'entry' into that ... 'target sector') and a real Viking band playing. I liked that.
I remarked, further, that Jónsi sounds like Sigur Rós, except that Sigur Rós is 'sad' and Jónsi is 'trip-happy.'
I should have fastened my seat belt there.
Because after asking if I knew about trip-hop, ... excuse me? I invented trip-hop! I am the trip-hop-happy preteen azn girl whose feet you cannot see fluttering over the DDR mat, thank you very much, ... C said that Sigur Rós wasn't sad, per se (that is French), but was ...
But was what?
"Well," she mused, "they're ..."
"'Sad'?" I offered.
"No," she answered, "Not 'sad,' but they're ..."
"'Sad'?" I suggested.
"No," she said, annoyed, "there's a French word for it, but the American word is ..."
"'Sad'?" I recommended.
Max wasn't helping at all, with this, "Yeah, I know what you mean."
Max is a very agreeable guy.
C, the poor creature, was probably thinking of 'melancholie' which is the French word for 'sad.' Or she was thinking of 'tristesse' which is the French word for 'two people in other relationships, but fucking each other.' Because why? Because one of the guys or girls finds out, and somebody ends up dead, and after that, everybody is ... wait for it: 'sad.'
The problem here is that C was trying to convey a concept to moiself (that is CT French), and the problem with that is, well: I like dancing on tabletops ... nekkid! ... when I'm right, which I always am, and you're wrong, and I win, like I always do.
Those are the kinds of days I have.
Good times! Good times!
I'm not going to comment on your thought. :p *snicker*
But I will say ...
Okay, when somebody says, 'Oh, I'm not going to say anything about that, I'm too grande (like an sbux coffee size?) to descend to your level, but I will say ...'
Didn't they, with their 'but I will say,' just do exactly what they said they weren't going to do because they're not a cunt like you are (but they didn't call you a cunt, they just thought that of you so that makes them so superior to you, see?)?
Anyway, but I will say ... @_@
So, me, C, and Max where in the matchmaking hopper, getting ready to show some bks how to play the game by killing them dead, over and over again, when C asked me how I liked the movie How to Train Your Dragon, and I said many things about how much I liked it, and one of the things I said was that I liked that they got real Vikings to sing the closing song in the credits.
Real Vikings. You know, Jónsi.
I mean, seriously! People think Vikings where like these thugs wearing helmets with horns (which the movie playfully indulged in) whacking people, stealing their goods, particularly the girls to get to their goodies.
Cause Viking men like cookies.
Who doesn't? :p
*snicker* *blush*
But, come on! They had literature, a culture, their own writing, and their own language that wasn't based off that wimpy romantic shit everybody else in Europe (a Greek word, I'll have you know, not Latin) was speaking, but came straight from the Aryans, skipping even those bed-sheet-wearing Greeks! They stole food, and womenfolk, from other people, because the latter: who wouldn't? I'd steal me some hot Irish lass, too! And the former: you ever try to grow anything in Iceland? No? Try that and see if you're not raiding the Giant food store for some Campbell's Chicken Noodle soup tomorrow!
So, anyway, real Viking runes (that didn't spell anything, I mean, where was their linguist and will they hire me? I'm looking! I'll even take the occasional ass fucking from the boss-man and agent if that ... 'facilitates' ... my ... 'entry' into that ... 'target sector') and a real Viking band playing. I liked that.
I remarked, further, that Jónsi sounds like Sigur Rós, except that Sigur Rós is 'sad' and Jónsi is 'trip-happy.'
I should have fastened my seat belt there.
Because after asking if I knew about trip-hop, ... excuse me? I invented trip-hop! I am the trip-hop-happy preteen azn girl whose feet you cannot see fluttering over the DDR mat, thank you very much, ... C said that Sigur Rós wasn't sad, per se (that is French), but was ...
But was what?
"Well," she mused, "they're ..."
"'Sad'?" I offered.
"No," she answered, "Not 'sad,' but they're ..."
"'Sad'?" I suggested.
"No," she said, annoyed, "there's a French word for it, but the American word is ..."
"'Sad'?" I recommended.
Max wasn't helping at all, with this, "Yeah, I know what you mean."
Max is a very agreeable guy.
C, the poor creature, was probably thinking of 'melancholie' which is the French word for 'sad.' Or she was thinking of 'tristesse' which is the French word for 'two people in other relationships, but fucking each other.' Because why? Because one of the guys or girls finds out, and somebody ends up dead, and after that, everybody is ... wait for it: 'sad.'
The problem here is that C was trying to convey a concept to moiself (that is CT French), and the problem with that is, well: I like dancing on tabletops ... nekkid! ... when I'm right, which I always am, and you're wrong, and I win, like I always do.
Those are the kinds of days I have.
Good times! Good times!
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