I fell down some steps.
People are very curious about this. Why? Is it like watching a train wreck? So the fuck what! Who the fuck cares! I fell down some steps. Big deal.
I fell down a whole flight of steps. The very first step on my cheap second, that is top, floor, of my cheap apartment, my foot didn't catch on that little metallic thingie/edge, that would have had me slide down face first on my belly down the steps, no: my heel landed exactly where it would slide, skid over the top of that metal thingie, and I spend a whole flight trying to catch hold of anything as I screamed, "oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!" as my whole body tensed itself, trying to save itself from this unremitting agony, until I finally did flip over and land on the floor with my face -- BANG! -- and cried and cried and cried until some nice Korean people from the ground floor came rushing out with their cell phones calling emergency.
Boy, did I scream then! I screamed that I was okay, and I wasn't hurt, and I was okay, and I dragged my sorry ass back up those self-same steps back to my tiny, shitty, oops I meant: 'efficiency' place and pull the covers over my head and went to sleep and didn't wake up for a day. A whole day.
Why was I going out?
Well, when your girlfriend tells you she wants to be friends now, and she wasn't your girlfriend, she was the reason you were alive for a whole year, and ...
Well, I was a little ... euphoric ... from emotion, so I decided to self-medicate. Alcohol is a depressant, you see, so I could be back on an even keel after a few drinks. The dive they call a restaurant/bar in our little dive town has 'happy' hour where they serve mixed drinks for one dollar.
By the way: I'm a cheap date. One beer, and I'm drunk. A few drinks? You ever read Salinger? He wrote Sappho's poem: "Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters!" as only he could write it. THAT's what'd happen to me. What happened to Buddy after one, very strong, Tom Collins.
Yeah, I was going to self-medicate, then maybe cross the street, and maybe this time God wouldn't stop that oncoming truck, and then everybody's problems would be solved, and it wouldn't even be a suicide, it'd just be some stupid fucking drunk girl crossing the street, crushed under a moving van.
Happens every day.
So, God might've taken preemptive measures, again, on my sorry ass, and had one angel push me down the stairs, and ... but it was okay, I was fine, because the floor caught my fall.
I had a big black and blue shiner that screamed 'SPOUSE ABUSE!' for any and all on-lookers for a few days.
And, well, tensing up like that, and having stair after stair hit tensed muscles like that.
And my tailbone.
Yes, my pride was injured, but then, I couldn't walk for a day, and then running? jogging?
I tried, but I couldn't the pain was general: all over my body, and then 'specific': like, super intense in my neck and back. It was fine walking, but when I tried to push myself, even a little bit, I saw stars through my tears.
And the bruises on my knees and hips.
But why didn't I go (back) to the hospital?
"I fell down some steps."
I fell down some steps.
Yeah, right.
How many times a day do the orderlies hear that lie? In Fight Club, you know: the movie that Saga quoted the 'I haven't been fucked like that since grade school' line, the protagonist used that line, that lie, to justify his beatings, on himself.
In 'Fried Green Tomatoes,' there was some falling down some steps, right, Ruth? But it was because her husband pushed her down them, and she almost lost her baby that way.
And let's not forget the best seller, 22 million copies at last count a few years ago, where Alice DID fall down some steps and crash through a window to cover up the fact that Bella was tortured by James, ... remember how he snapped her leg in half? ... so that she and Edward could live happily ever after?
Stairs, and falling down them, cover up a whole host of sins, of evils.
"I fell down some steps."
I go to the hospital, and say that line, and you know what they would think, and you know what they would do. And they I would have the police over at my house, and more people would be in my life, in my shit, and see just another example of an aborted abortion: poor white trash just taking up space, living in the ghetto.
You know what 'ghetto' is? No, it's not where (now) the Koreans live. It's not where the Black lived in Harlem. No, it's where the Nazis gathered the Jews ...
... collecting them, so they could exterminate them.
And the questions they would ask: "Please give the name of your cohabitating partner. Has he assaulted you before?" He? HE? HE?
Or: "What are the names of your parents? Are you house sitting here? Have you been disciplined by them before this badly? What high school do you go to? Wait: did you graduate grade school yet?"
Yeah: I fell down some steps.
Oh, but I'm fine now. You know why: because I didn't go to the hospital, and have a police report filed against me: Jane Doe, poor white trash, so nobody knows that I can't pay the rent, that I can't go out with the gang from work for lunch, cause I can't pay with credit card and I don't have cash, and if I lose my fare card, I don't have cash to get a bus ride then catch the metro rail, then catch the next bus: two and a half hours to get to work, two and a half hours to get home to get paid a 'fuck me up the ass, boss' secretary's pay that doesn't pay the rent, so, no I don't go to sbux anymore for that $4.25 cup of coffee I don't have the money to buy.
You see: I'm fine. Nobody knows about me; nobody cares, so I can just be a little mouse, shivering in the barn; getting by.
Out of sight. Out of mind.
So, now, when I go down the steps, what I don't do is this: I don't check my email on my phone, I'm not getting any I need to read, like when I needed to read the email when Saga sent it. I don't think thoughts that cloud my sight. Like nearly every thought I think to myself and how I deserve this life I'm living, and I don't even deserve that. No, I grasp firmly on the rail with one hand, and hold the wall with the other, and nudge out my foot, reach out to that first step, and then I tentatively rest my foot on the first step, testing to see whether I rest there, or if I go flying, high as a kite, bonk-bonk-bonk, all the way down.
If I rest there, nobody comes running out their doors, nobody notices. Nobody cares. Nothing to care about.
Being noticed, falling, flying down a flight of stairs, get you noticed, and being noticed ...
I'm tired, and it's not even noon yet. This writing stuff. Wheee! So fun!
And a little tiny voice just now, just fucking right now, whispered in my head: "Saga noticed you."
I have to go to the bathroom now. I don't want my coworkers seeing me crying. They might notice.
Monday, January 30, 2012
`phfina and her boyz
So.
So Saga said ... something. Something like, 'let's be friends.'
Something that sounded to me, in my soul like I'm dying.
So.
So for two weeks now, she hasn't written me. Maybe she thinks about me. Maybe she doesn't. Maybe she thought she'd think about me, but then 'life goes on,' and she doesn't think about me for two days, and praying at night, and reflecting on her day, she realizes she hasn't thought me for two days, and then dies, a little, inside, realizing she hasn't thought about me for two days, meaning to write, wanting to write, but what to write, 'I miss you'? 'It hurts, missing you'? ...
... 'I love you'?
Or maybe I'm writing about me, not about her. And maybe she and I are so much alike, each in our own way, that writing about my loss of her is writing about her loss of me.
I don't know.
So.
So, I've been keeping busy.
No, not writing. Because writing requires a couple things: like honesty, like clairvoyance. Meaning 'clair' and 'voyance.' 'Seeing' 'clearly' ... and to see clearly, you have to look, and to look, and to see, you have to say what is, and what isn't, and you can't wallow, when you say what is, and what isn't.
Like me, what is ... and mostly: what isn't.
I'm ... not.
I'm not anything. I'm nothing. And without Saga, this emptiness, this nothingness, this ... me... hurts. She saw me for what I was and what I wasn't and laughed at my silliness, and scolded my nihilism, and gave me a reason to go on living, for a year, to have my heart beat so painfully hard, to have my toes curl until my (tiny) feet cramped, with the anticipation of getting an email from her, and reading what it says. What did it say? Didn't matter, it killed me every time. Every single time.
And I haven't received an email from my friend, now, for two weeks now.
She's moved on.
I'm left behind: a pair of jeans and sneaks on the side of an abandoned road, not even a ghost to eat the bitter despair of her regrets, and what did I do, besides nothing to ever deserve her and everything in my power to lose her.
"`phfina, why aren't you writing?"
Yeah, I just SO LOVE this self-examination! Thanks for encouraging me. Yeah, it hurts like hell, thanks for caring so much about wanting to read what I write, and not giving a shit how I feel writing it, like I've said over and over again, but does anybody ever listen? No.
I may as well go a buy a gun and shoot myself in the head. If that doesn't kill me, at least all my worries will be gone with the free lobotomy. Happy-happy, joy-joy. Then it won't matter if people listen to me or they don't.
So.
So, I've been online, playing Halo. Why? Why not. My brothers do, and I can kick their asses. Or at least throw it down.
Let me tell you something about girls playing Halo.
Hm. Wrong start? Let me tell you something about boyz playing Halo.
You know the male gender? Yes, you do.
I didn't, however. I mean, I 'knew' ... like in the Biblical sense, the male gender ... you know: Nelson, and ... others.
'I haven't been fucked like that since grade school!' was the line from Fight Club that Saga introduced herself to me, reading one of my chapters. And I responded to her review with 'well, I have.'
Well, I have.
Anything to get Daddy back. See, Daddy? I'm not a queer, right?
Anyway. So I had this rather limited and limiting view of boyz. You know: them, the enemy, and me, the victim.
(You can say I have a rather limiting view of myself, but I can answer, 'shut the fuck up.' Thank you very much)
But a girl, playing Halo?
Let me tell you a little bit about this girl named 'phfina' playing Halo. See, I have two brother who've played Halo since even before it came out, one of them is one of the best players in the world.
I have some good training.
So, my 'BPR' ('Battle Proficiency Rating') is in the 90th percentile. It doesn't mean that in 10 battle I come out the winner 9 of them. No. But I do tend to pick my battles, instead of them picking me, so it's more likely if you see me in your reticle, and I see you (usually I see you, and you don't see me), you're dead.
Because boyz? This is how boyz fight: 'ARRRG! CHARGE!' and they all go at each other, toe-to-toe.
This is how phfina fights. She picks a hidden perch, and she waits. She waits for the boyz to run out into the open straight at each other, and she picks them off with headshots, one by one, as they ignore her, clubbing each other to death.
One fight, I picked up the sniper rifle, climbed a cliff overlooking the entire battlefield, and picked off boyz, one by one. Until they noticed, and came at me in force. So I jumped down from the cliff (banana-roll, phfina!) ran for about 50 meters, turned around, and sniped the boyz taking ineffective pot-shots at me with their magnums.
Some boyz, understandably, don't like this.
That is: a girl who dies the least and kills the most in fight after fight after fight. Girls aren't supposed to fight back, and especially aren't supposed to win fights. That's a rule, or something.
So, there are several reactions from boyz.
A common one, when the do kill me (which is often: boyz are boyz, so they charge and overwhelm me, and bang, I'm dead), then stand over my corpse, 'teabagging' me, and screaming, 'Get back into the kitchen, bitch!'
This has happened more times than I care to remember or to recount.
And, yes, I let them know, by killing them back, after the respawn, and NOT teabagging them, and sending them a message about their behavior.
You know what teabagging is? It's rape. A guy kills a girl, then he humps her corpse. I mean, what? Was that guy unloved as a child? Is that they only way he can get any?
I send them feedback, and a very carefully, and strongly worded, message as to what their behavior means about their character.
That's one type of boy.
But boyz, I have found, can be complex.
Some come right back at me, unrepentant, mouthing profanities.
Those are reported.
Some come back, and say, 'Hey, we're not jerks!'
And I'm like, 'yeah, right.'
But some actually aren't jerks ... they're just boyz, being boyz. And they endeavor to amend their ways, and prove themselves to me.
And I give them a second chance.
So I have three friends on my friend list that are boyz that I called jerks, but came right back at me and asked for a second chance.
I can call out shit, ... and I can forgive.
Other boyz, I go toe-to-toe with, and, sister, they are better than me. WAY better than me. One of those boyz, 'MAD DEZINEZ' he stayed off, and shot me, better than I shot him. So I messaged him after the game, saying he was better, even though he annoyed the hell out of me, how he would shoot, then fade, then shoot, and kill.
And he messaged back, 'I only go after the best players on the other team, and you're really good.'
We've been friends for a while now. And he puts up with my shit, with good grace, which is rather amazing to me.
Another boy, GRAVITY, is the number one player in the world in the game type 'Invasion' (my favorite type. It has everything: a goal, vehicles, tactics, teamwork, everything). You play against his team, you die: it's that simple. Why? He's not that good. He is, but he's not like some I've faced, who, at DMR distance become a blur, hopping from foot to foot, making headshots very difficult, or who, at close range, evade, and turn and twist, so you're dizzy trying to melee them, but you just hit air when they snap the back of your neck. No, he's not like that, he simply plays well and plays with a team that plays well, game after game.
Well, I fangirled him. 'My brother, geophf, told me you're the best invasion player in the world!' And he gave me a '^^' back. And then, one time, our team beat his, and I squeed and did a happy dance, and PMed him right away, and he friended me.
So I have the best invasion player in the world on my friend list. So there's that.
So there's those type of boyz, the ones on my friend list. Good: better than me, but nice to me.
"`phfina always gets at least a killing spree every game."
"Nice snipes"
"A girl that kicks ass at Halo ... I think I'm in love!"
And are still boyz: "faggot assed motherfucker!" (after I said I'm a 'faggot' and don't like that language)
"You have to be mean to girls, 'cause they leave you if you're nice" (um, what? You're obviously seeing the wrong kind of girls if they leave you the opinion you have to be mean to girls, because you pull that shit on me ...)
and all that.
Then there are the third type of boyz who are better than me: Halo gods.
There is a rank called 'Inheritor' as in 'inherit the earth,' but they are not meek at all, oh, no!
They get teased a lot before a battle: "Hey, buddy, how much you pay for that rank?"
They don't deign to laugh in return: "You messing with me, punk?"
And then, in the battle, ... it's like, there is water, and they are walking on it, as the rest of us drown. They move into a fracas, and kill everyone fighting each other, and walk away, unscathed. They run halfway across the field, a blur of motion, to single you out, and take you out with ease. They stand off, and snipe, and snipe, and snipe, and every shot is an impossible headshot if it were you on the sniper rifle. And the end score is them, 25, and the next closest person is like 12 ... not even close. And post-game, they don't even bother to set you down, they just go to the next battle, to kick more n00bs ... behinds.
Those kinds of boyz, I have no dealings with. They kill me, over, and over, and over again, and could care less, cause I ... my level of skill isn't worth their notice, and when I do kill them, I'm like WOOT! and they respawn, and kill me, just because I'm in their sights, not because they want revenge or give a fig that I was one of the very few people able to land a killing shot on them.
Those are the kinds of boyz I meet on line, some nice, some not, and some don't bother to care about 'nice.'
The girls? Across the spectrum. You've already seen how one girl fights in me, but other girls, like lilred and I Love Decline, they'll kill you, kill you dead.
But there aren't that many girls online, so I have to hang with the boyz. It's been educational, realizing I have a rather one-dimensional view of boyz, and with good reason, for most of them: jerks and assholes to a 'T'. But not all boyz are like most boyz, some are kind, and caring, and have families or consideration or both, and have mad skilz, too, and tactics, and dedication, and ... friendship.
And it's been two days, now, that I haven't thought of Saga, that I haven't ached, checking my email, and not seeing a message from her, because I've forgotten, after two weeks, what it feels like to receive a message from her.
And that hurts.
It hurts a lot.
So Saga said ... something. Something like, 'let's be friends.'
Something that sounded to me, in my soul like I'm dying.
So.
So for two weeks now, she hasn't written me. Maybe she thinks about me. Maybe she doesn't. Maybe she thought she'd think about me, but then 'life goes on,' and she doesn't think about me for two days, and praying at night, and reflecting on her day, she realizes she hasn't thought me for two days, and then dies, a little, inside, realizing she hasn't thought about me for two days, meaning to write, wanting to write, but what to write, 'I miss you'? 'It hurts, missing you'? ...
... 'I love you'?
Or maybe I'm writing about me, not about her. And maybe she and I are so much alike, each in our own way, that writing about my loss of her is writing about her loss of me.
I don't know.
So.
So, I've been keeping busy.
No, not writing. Because writing requires a couple things: like honesty, like clairvoyance. Meaning 'clair' and 'voyance.' 'Seeing' 'clearly' ... and to see clearly, you have to look, and to look, and to see, you have to say what is, and what isn't, and you can't wallow, when you say what is, and what isn't.
Like me, what is ... and mostly: what isn't.
I'm ... not.
I'm not anything. I'm nothing. And without Saga, this emptiness, this nothingness, this ... me... hurts. She saw me for what I was and what I wasn't and laughed at my silliness, and scolded my nihilism, and gave me a reason to go on living, for a year, to have my heart beat so painfully hard, to have my toes curl until my (tiny) feet cramped, with the anticipation of getting an email from her, and reading what it says. What did it say? Didn't matter, it killed me every time. Every single time.
And I haven't received an email from my friend, now, for two weeks now.
She's moved on.
I'm left behind: a pair of jeans and sneaks on the side of an abandoned road, not even a ghost to eat the bitter despair of her regrets, and what did I do, besides nothing to ever deserve her and everything in my power to lose her.
"`phfina, why aren't you writing?"
Yeah, I just SO LOVE this self-examination! Thanks for encouraging me. Yeah, it hurts like hell, thanks for caring so much about wanting to read what I write, and not giving a shit how I feel writing it, like I've said over and over again, but does anybody ever listen? No.
I may as well go a buy a gun and shoot myself in the head. If that doesn't kill me, at least all my worries will be gone with the free lobotomy. Happy-happy, joy-joy. Then it won't matter if people listen to me or they don't.
So.
So, I've been online, playing Halo. Why? Why not. My brothers do, and I can kick their asses. Or at least throw it down.
Let me tell you something about girls playing Halo.
Hm. Wrong start? Let me tell you something about boyz playing Halo.
You know the male gender? Yes, you do.
I didn't, however. I mean, I 'knew' ... like in the Biblical sense, the male gender ... you know: Nelson, and ... others.
'I haven't been fucked like that since grade school!' was the line from Fight Club that Saga introduced herself to me, reading one of my chapters. And I responded to her review with 'well, I have.'
Well, I have.
Anything to get Daddy back. See, Daddy? I'm not a queer, right?
Anyway. So I had this rather limited and limiting view of boyz. You know: them, the enemy, and me, the victim.
(You can say I have a rather limiting view of myself, but I can answer, 'shut the fuck up.' Thank you very much)
But a girl, playing Halo?
Let me tell you a little bit about this girl named 'phfina' playing Halo. See, I have two brother who've played Halo since even before it came out, one of them is one of the best players in the world.
I have some good training.
So, my 'BPR' ('Battle Proficiency Rating') is in the 90th percentile. It doesn't mean that in 10 battle I come out the winner 9 of them. No. But I do tend to pick my battles, instead of them picking me, so it's more likely if you see me in your reticle, and I see you (usually I see you, and you don't see me), you're dead.
Because boyz? This is how boyz fight: 'ARRRG! CHARGE!' and they all go at each other, toe-to-toe.
This is how phfina fights. She picks a hidden perch, and she waits. She waits for the boyz to run out into the open straight at each other, and she picks them off with headshots, one by one, as they ignore her, clubbing each other to death.
One fight, I picked up the sniper rifle, climbed a cliff overlooking the entire battlefield, and picked off boyz, one by one. Until they noticed, and came at me in force. So I jumped down from the cliff (banana-roll, phfina!) ran for about 50 meters, turned around, and sniped the boyz taking ineffective pot-shots at me with their magnums.
Some boyz, understandably, don't like this.
That is: a girl who dies the least and kills the most in fight after fight after fight. Girls aren't supposed to fight back, and especially aren't supposed to win fights. That's a rule, or something.
So, there are several reactions from boyz.
A common one, when the do kill me (which is often: boyz are boyz, so they charge and overwhelm me, and bang, I'm dead), then stand over my corpse, 'teabagging' me, and screaming, 'Get back into the kitchen, bitch!'
This has happened more times than I care to remember or to recount.
And, yes, I let them know, by killing them back, after the respawn, and NOT teabagging them, and sending them a message about their behavior.
You know what teabagging is? It's rape. A guy kills a girl, then he humps her corpse. I mean, what? Was that guy unloved as a child? Is that they only way he can get any?
I send them feedback, and a very carefully, and strongly worded, message as to what their behavior means about their character.
That's one type of boy.
But boyz, I have found, can be complex.
Some come right back at me, unrepentant, mouthing profanities.
Those are reported.
Some come back, and say, 'Hey, we're not jerks!'
And I'm like, 'yeah, right.'
But some actually aren't jerks ... they're just boyz, being boyz. And they endeavor to amend their ways, and prove themselves to me.
And I give them a second chance.
So I have three friends on my friend list that are boyz that I called jerks, but came right back at me and asked for a second chance.
I can call out shit, ... and I can forgive.
Other boyz, I go toe-to-toe with, and, sister, they are better than me. WAY better than me. One of those boyz, 'MAD DEZINEZ' he stayed off, and shot me, better than I shot him. So I messaged him after the game, saying he was better, even though he annoyed the hell out of me, how he would shoot, then fade, then shoot, and kill.
And he messaged back, 'I only go after the best players on the other team, and you're really good.'
We've been friends for a while now. And he puts up with my shit, with good grace, which is rather amazing to me.
Another boy, GRAVITY, is the number one player in the world in the game type 'Invasion' (my favorite type. It has everything: a goal, vehicles, tactics, teamwork, everything). You play against his team, you die: it's that simple. Why? He's not that good. He is, but he's not like some I've faced, who, at DMR distance become a blur, hopping from foot to foot, making headshots very difficult, or who, at close range, evade, and turn and twist, so you're dizzy trying to melee them, but you just hit air when they snap the back of your neck. No, he's not like that, he simply plays well and plays with a team that plays well, game after game.
Well, I fangirled him. 'My brother, geophf, told me you're the best invasion player in the world!' And he gave me a '^^' back. And then, one time, our team beat his, and I squeed and did a happy dance, and PMed him right away, and he friended me.
So I have the best invasion player in the world on my friend list. So there's that.
So there's those type of boyz, the ones on my friend list. Good: better than me, but nice to me.
"`phfina always gets at least a killing spree every game."
"Nice snipes"
"A girl that kicks ass at Halo ... I think I'm in love!"
And are still boyz: "faggot assed motherfucker!" (after I said I'm a 'faggot' and don't like that language)
"You have to be mean to girls, 'cause they leave you if you're nice" (um, what? You're obviously seeing the wrong kind of girls if they leave you the opinion you have to be mean to girls, because you pull that shit on me ...)
and all that.
Then there are the third type of boyz who are better than me: Halo gods.
There is a rank called 'Inheritor' as in 'inherit the earth,' but they are not meek at all, oh, no!
They get teased a lot before a battle: "Hey, buddy, how much you pay for that rank?"
They don't deign to laugh in return: "You messing with me, punk?"
And then, in the battle, ... it's like, there is water, and they are walking on it, as the rest of us drown. They move into a fracas, and kill everyone fighting each other, and walk away, unscathed. They run halfway across the field, a blur of motion, to single you out, and take you out with ease. They stand off, and snipe, and snipe, and snipe, and every shot is an impossible headshot if it were you on the sniper rifle. And the end score is them, 25, and the next closest person is like 12 ... not even close. And post-game, they don't even bother to set you down, they just go to the next battle, to kick more n00bs ... behinds.
Those kinds of boyz, I have no dealings with. They kill me, over, and over, and over again, and could care less, cause I ... my level of skill isn't worth their notice, and when I do kill them, I'm like WOOT! and they respawn, and kill me, just because I'm in their sights, not because they want revenge or give a fig that I was one of the very few people able to land a killing shot on them.
Those are the kinds of boyz I meet on line, some nice, some not, and some don't bother to care about 'nice.'
The girls? Across the spectrum. You've already seen how one girl fights in me, but other girls, like lilred and I Love Decline, they'll kill you, kill you dead.
But there aren't that many girls online, so I have to hang with the boyz. It's been educational, realizing I have a rather one-dimensional view of boyz, and with good reason, for most of them: jerks and assholes to a 'T'. But not all boyz are like most boyz, some are kind, and caring, and have families or consideration or both, and have mad skilz, too, and tactics, and dedication, and ... friendship.
And it's been two days, now, that I haven't thought of Saga, that I haven't ached, checking my email, and not seeing a message from her, because I've forgotten, after two weeks, what it feels like to receive a message from her.
And that hurts.
It hurts a lot.
Um, Happy New Year?
Nothing to see here, Ladies and Gentlemen.
(Literally: 'Nothing,' that is: 'me').
Move along.
Oh, you're the type that loves train-wrecks? Great! You've come to the right place.
I'm not eating.
I had a bit of apple for breakfast, with some tea.
I had some pineapple slices for lunch, with some tea. To go along with my lunch: I ate half of the roasted quarter chicken and two brussels sprouts.
I feel stuffed. Bloated.
I wonder how long this will go on.
Hm. Not long, I suppose. I'll get better, or I won't. Whatever.
Happy New Year!
Okay, okay (`phfina relents), here's a Happy image for you:
Me, skip-di-skipping down the road to Rhinestone Eyes ... you have the admit (so: admit it. Go on, then!) that when the chorus comes in, it's very skip-di-skippy-y.
And, after skipping, you just can't plod along, after that; no: a girl has to run, run with a big, huge smile on her face.
Not bad for a girl who, this month, fell down a flight of stairs.
Not bad.
(Literally: 'Nothing,' that is: 'me').
Move along.
Oh, you're the type that loves train-wrecks? Great! You've come to the right place.
I'm not eating.
I had a bit of apple for breakfast, with some tea.
I had some pineapple slices for lunch, with some tea. To go along with my lunch: I ate half of the roasted quarter chicken and two brussels sprouts.
I feel stuffed. Bloated.
I wonder how long this will go on.
Hm. Not long, I suppose. I'll get better, or I won't. Whatever.
Happy New Year!
Okay, okay (`phfina relents), here's a Happy image for you:
Me, skip-di-skipping down the road to Rhinestone Eyes ... you have the admit (so: admit it. Go on, then!) that when the chorus comes in, it's very skip-di-skippy-y.
And, after skipping, you just can't plod along, after that; no: a girl has to run, run with a big, huge smile on her face.
Not bad for a girl who, this month, fell down a flight of stairs.
Not bad.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Merry Christmas!
Does this dress make me look fat?
teehehe :p
My nieces. I swear! The little one drew this and she was all like, 'what do you think? do you like it?'
And what can you say to that?
Well, you can't say: 'I DO NOT have chubby, chipmunk cheeks!'
No, you have say, 'Aw, that's so pretty, and so accurate, too! But why the crown and the halo?'
My nieces are smart girls, but I don't know if they have 'tiara' in their vocabulary yet.
Then the little one, Li'l Iz, explained that it was a representation of St. Rita, ... you know: patroness of the kitchen.
'Oh!' was all I could muster. I couldn't dare ask where she got the representation, 'cause there I was, stick figure and all.
Does red look good on me?
hehehe.
I feel a bit silly.
My nieces have more flesh on their bones than I do, but they did inherit something from me: they are fish in water. Mrs. A_, a woman not to be trifled with, takes them to swim lessons that she herself supervises, just she, Madame, the girls, me, 'cause I happen to be there, and now the neighboring kids. Mrs. A_ commands: '150 meters, freestyle: go!' and the poor neighboring kids are like 'what did she just say?' But Li'l Iz and Elena Marie are like: ZOOM!
... and I could say, 'oh, I hold back to keep pace with them ...' but then again, why I am embarrassed to get my ass handed to me by a 10 year old and an 8 year old?
Why, indeed!
I am rather pleased that I look older than them, and the other neighboring girl who's 12? 13? So, yay! Go me, I'm not mistaken for a preteen.
Oh, my God!
I was walking off to the bus stop, and I saw a bumper sticker in a mommy van pass by: "Verum, Bonum, Pulcherum." And my Latin sucks, but I was sniggering that maybe I knew better what that meant than the mommy or the exclusive prep-school kids going off to school.
"Verum, Bonum, Pulcherum."
What is true; what is good; what is beautiful.
I like that motto. The girls sang at Christmas eve Mass, and the priest was very accepting of all the 'Christmas guests' we had a Mass. It was a full house. What he said at the homily struck me, it was all about historical reconstructions of Jesus not being God and Savior, but a straw-man to forward the zealots aims to overthrow the Roman Empire.
Um, Father, so how are you going to rescue the homily to wish us a Merry Christmas?
And he did, Fr. P, by saying, 'look to the cross.' Because Jesus an Historical Reconstruction, who is that to love, and be loved?
But Jesus, born today, of the Virgin Mary, and then, Jesus on the cross?
He did that because He loves us.
Because He loves me.
Jesus loves me.
And if Jesus can love me, even me, then ...
Then I can love me.
And I can love you.
I love you.
Merry Christmas
Saturday, December 17, 2011
A Man's a Man, for a' That
Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that.
Our toils obscure an' a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The Man's the gowd for a' that.
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an' a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man's a Man for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, an' a' that;
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.
Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that:
The man o' independent mind
He looks an' laughs at a' that.
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that;
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.
Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.
Robert Burns.
— `phfina analysis:
Oh, to be a man, and to laugh at princes, and titles, and what comes what may, and still to be a man, for a' tha'.
But to be a woman. To be me. When what comes what may, but what is left to fall back on?
It's Christmas season, when Santa makes his list, and checks it twice, and all good little girls and all good little boys think about game consoles, bicycles, with training wheels, and maybe a pony.
And `phfina's thoughts, traditionally, turn to suicide.
I caught myself. Thinking that, and all that, and I just went right there, spiraling down into the circle of despair.
And then I said: no.
I said no. I am not determined by ... by anything, Ladies and Gentles. I am not determined by my chemical composition, by the faux-festive 'holi'day season ('Buy more! On sale!'), by other people and what they do, or don't do, to, on, around, or near me.
And so, I was riding home on the bus, and I cranked it, my ghetto iPod. You know that loud music Bella Swan was listening to as she was figuring it all out in Twilight? For legal reasons, Steph couldn't mention it in the book, but she's given interviews saying it was Linkin Park's Meteora. So, it worked for Bella Swan, so I cranked that puppy, got off the bus, and screamed out the lyrics as I ran home, full tilt.
Heh, must of been funny, for oncoming traffic to see this, what?, this little banshee just running, and screaming and smiling so hard, so full of joy. I may have it bad, but not as bad as those guys, with all their millions (of fans) (and dollars), and a' tha' spewing their lyrics of self-hate:
"It's easier to run
Replacing this pain with something more.
It's so much easier to go
Than face all this pain here all alone.
Something has been taken from deep inside of me.
The secret I've kept locked away, no one can ever see.
Wounds so deep they never show, they ever go away,
Like moving pictures in my head for years and years they play.
If I could change, I would. Take back the pain, I would.
Retrace every wrong move that I made, I would.
If I could stand up and take the blame, I would.
If I could take all the shame to the grave, I would."
Linkin Park, Meteora, "It's easier to run" © ™ ® ... don't sue me, it'll cost you way more money to do it than you'll ever get out of me, anyway.
But check the vid (and, yes, do I ever check more than a few vids) of them making the album, there they are, these kids, about my age? older? younger? with a graffiti artist with their wives and babies and fan girls and production team. Happy, active, creative. Being. Doing what they are doing because they are following their vocation.
I mean, Meteora, right? It came right out of Heaven into our hands, and there it was, perfection, from beginning to end, for every goth grrl with combat boots and a convincing snarl ...
(... which I am so not ... there was just such a girl on the bus ride home: big, tall, black nail polish matching her black combat boots and black leather jacket, and henna in her hair, and little me was more than a little fearful of yon warrioress) ...
And for everyone who listens to that album for whatever reason.
And then there's Gorillaz Plastic Beach and, of course, being Gorillaz, it's ... 'alternative' and ... 'experimental' ... and perfect, coming down from Heaven in a pristine jewel case right into my ear buds.
But then, looking at the making of Plastic Beach vid (again, `phfina, watching vids ... yes, I am a perv, and thank you for sharing), you see how hard it was.
How hard it was.
See, we have Plastic Beach to listen to and to admire.
Gorillaz? They had to make it. Just like Linkin Park had to make Meteora.
And what did they make it from?
Watch the vids.
They made it from absolutely nothing.
They had nothing to start with. Nothing at all. And they struggled, and fought, and discussed, and revised, and threw away a ton of stuff, that they kept trying and trying and trying to make it just right and just perfect starting from absolutely nowhere and not having a clue of where they were going with all this.
And.
I mean, it's not enough, the terror of the blank page staring at you, my dear authoresses, even though that is enough to kill more than 90% of us, and with that figure I'm being generous ... or conservative, ... or whatever.
No, it's not just that, the absolute terror of emptiness that creativity faces when it stares at the blank page or canvas or staff.
Although it's more than enough to kill us, right, Vincent? Seymour?
No, what's worse is that there is all that. All that.
A man's a man, for a' tha'.
But there is a' tha'.
A man, or even a little girl like me, has to face a' tha'. Linkin Park had [Hybrid Theory] and then the even more awesome [Reanimation] and in the face of all that success and expectation they had to create Meteora (without the brackets). Gorillaz, omg, Gorillaz with album after album of success and praise, and they had to throw it all out, all of it, and then they had to create Plastic Beach.
Men. All of them. And one little girl named Noodle, facing all that, all that expectation (which translates as: if you don't measure up, we will be disappointed, and you are worthless and should just kill yourself), and the blank page.
And creating.
And when I say, 'creating,' I mean 'creating.'
Do you know what I mean?
No, you don't. Because you're stuck in your life being a human being. "What can one person do?" you justify.
Creating. Doing something other than what the already almost certain future contains for you. Seeing your past, clearly, for what it is, and what it isn't, and putting the past into the past, and seeing the future for what it is ... not.
Because the future? It doesn't exist until you create it. It truly is really 'not'. But then you create it, and then it is: and right now. And, ladies and gentles, make no mistake, you create your future, every second of every day. You choose to continue doing what you've always been doing, living the life you've always been living, or you choose to step out, on faith.
Into the abyss of the new.
Scary there. I know.
... sometimes.
And the new? Funny thing about the new. It's right here. It's right here in front of you.
All you have to do, is to see it. And it's there.
Even in a' tha' ... even in the every day humdrum. It's there. The new.
The time is now 1:34 am. I'm going to go to bed. And then I'm going to wake up tomorrow, and do exactly what I did yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. And so are you.
Or.
Or I'm going to surprise myself, and wake up, and do the same-old, and then, when I settle in/down/for, I'm going to perk up and say, 'hey, I'm going to ...'
And surprise myself. And be. And live. And see things, really, for the first time in my life.
And so can you.
That hings his head, an' a' that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that.
Our toils obscure an' a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The Man's the gowd for a' that.
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an' a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man's a Man for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, an' a' that;
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.
Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that:
The man o' independent mind
He looks an' laughs at a' that.
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that;
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.
Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.
Robert Burns.
— `phfina analysis:
Oh, to be a man, and to laugh at princes, and titles, and what comes what may, and still to be a man, for a' tha'.
But to be a woman. To be me. When what comes what may, but what is left to fall back on?
It's Christmas season, when Santa makes his list, and checks it twice, and all good little girls and all good little boys think about game consoles, bicycles, with training wheels, and maybe a pony.
And `phfina's thoughts, traditionally, turn to suicide.
I caught myself. Thinking that, and all that, and I just went right there, spiraling down into the circle of despair.
And then I said: no.
I said no. I am not determined by ... by anything, Ladies and Gentles. I am not determined by my chemical composition, by the faux-festive 'holi'day season ('Buy more! On sale!'), by other people and what they do, or don't do, to, on, around, or near me.
And so, I was riding home on the bus, and I cranked it, my ghetto iPod. You know that loud music Bella Swan was listening to as she was figuring it all out in Twilight? For legal reasons, Steph couldn't mention it in the book, but she's given interviews saying it was Linkin Park's Meteora. So, it worked for Bella Swan, so I cranked that puppy, got off the bus, and screamed out the lyrics as I ran home, full tilt.
Heh, must of been funny, for oncoming traffic to see this, what?, this little banshee just running, and screaming and smiling so hard, so full of joy. I may have it bad, but not as bad as those guys, with all their millions (of fans) (and dollars), and a' tha' spewing their lyrics of self-hate:
"It's easier to run
Replacing this pain with something more.
It's so much easier to go
Than face all this pain here all alone.
Something has been taken from deep inside of me.
The secret I've kept locked away, no one can ever see.
Wounds so deep they never show, they ever go away,
Like moving pictures in my head for years and years they play.
If I could change, I would. Take back the pain, I would.
Retrace every wrong move that I made, I would.
If I could stand up and take the blame, I would.
If I could take all the shame to the grave, I would."
Linkin Park, Meteora, "It's easier to run" © ™ ® ... don't sue me, it'll cost you way more money to do it than you'll ever get out of me, anyway.
But check the vid (and, yes, do I ever check more than a few vids) of them making the album, there they are, these kids, about my age? older? younger? with a graffiti artist with their wives and babies and fan girls and production team. Happy, active, creative. Being. Doing what they are doing because they are following their vocation.
I mean, Meteora, right? It came right out of Heaven into our hands, and there it was, perfection, from beginning to end, for every goth grrl with combat boots and a convincing snarl ...
(... which I am so not ... there was just such a girl on the bus ride home: big, tall, black nail polish matching her black combat boots and black leather jacket, and henna in her hair, and little me was more than a little fearful of yon warrioress) ...
And for everyone who listens to that album for whatever reason.
And then there's Gorillaz Plastic Beach and, of course, being Gorillaz, it's ... 'alternative' and ... 'experimental' ... and perfect, coming down from Heaven in a pristine jewel case right into my ear buds.
But then, looking at the making of Plastic Beach vid (again, `phfina, watching vids ... yes, I am a perv, and thank you for sharing), you see how hard it was.
How hard it was.
See, we have Plastic Beach to listen to and to admire.
Gorillaz? They had to make it. Just like Linkin Park had to make Meteora.
And what did they make it from?
Watch the vids.
They made it from absolutely nothing.
They had nothing to start with. Nothing at all. And they struggled, and fought, and discussed, and revised, and threw away a ton of stuff, that they kept trying and trying and trying to make it just right and just perfect starting from absolutely nowhere and not having a clue of where they were going with all this.
And.
I mean, it's not enough, the terror of the blank page staring at you, my dear authoresses, even though that is enough to kill more than 90% of us, and with that figure I'm being generous ... or conservative, ... or whatever.
No, it's not just that, the absolute terror of emptiness that creativity faces when it stares at the blank page or canvas or staff.
Although it's more than enough to kill us, right, Vincent? Seymour?
No, what's worse is that there is all that. All that.
A man's a man, for a' tha'.
But there is a' tha'.
A man, or even a little girl like me, has to face a' tha'. Linkin Park had [Hybrid Theory] and then the even more awesome [Reanimation] and in the face of all that success and expectation they had to create Meteora (without the brackets). Gorillaz, omg, Gorillaz with album after album of success and praise, and they had to throw it all out, all of it, and then they had to create Plastic Beach.
Men. All of them. And one little girl named Noodle, facing all that, all that expectation (which translates as: if you don't measure up, we will be disappointed, and you are worthless and should just kill yourself), and the blank page.
And creating.
And when I say, 'creating,' I mean 'creating.'
Do you know what I mean?
No, you don't. Because you're stuck in your life being a human being. "What can one person do?" you justify.
Creating. Doing something other than what the already almost certain future contains for you. Seeing your past, clearly, for what it is, and what it isn't, and putting the past into the past, and seeing the future for what it is ... not.
Because the future? It doesn't exist until you create it. It truly is really 'not'. But then you create it, and then it is: and right now. And, ladies and gentles, make no mistake, you create your future, every second of every day. You choose to continue doing what you've always been doing, living the life you've always been living, or you choose to step out, on faith.
Into the abyss of the new.
Scary there. I know.
... sometimes.
And the new? Funny thing about the new. It's right here. It's right here in front of you.
All you have to do, is to see it. And it's there.
Even in a' tha' ... even in the every day humdrum. It's there. The new.
The time is now 1:34 am. I'm going to go to bed. And then I'm going to wake up tomorrow, and do exactly what I did yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. And so are you.
Or.
Or I'm going to surprise myself, and wake up, and do the same-old, and then, when I settle in/down/for, I'm going to perk up and say, 'hey, I'm going to ...'
And surprise myself. And be. And live. And see things, really, for the first time in my life.
And so can you.
Monday, November 28, 2011
I'm on Masterpiece Theatre!
Ooh! Chez Melissa was read on (sort of) Masterpiece Theatre! ... Actually it's from the author: 'Pretentious Internet Theatre'
The audio link is:
[deprecated:] h t t p (colon slash slash) dl (dot) dropbox (dot) com (slash) u (slash) 48360393 (slash) pit44 (dot) mp3
Updated link from Pretentious: http://pitpodcast.blogspot.com/2011/11/pit-44-why-are-there-so-many-fanfics.html
Pretentious is marked as a favored author on my fanfiction.net page.
kisses
The audio link is:
[deprecated:] h t t p (colon slash slash) dl (dot) dropbox (dot) com (slash) u (slash) 48360393 (slash) pit44 (dot) mp3
Updated link from Pretentious: http://pitpodcast.blogspot.com/2011/11/pit-44-why-are-there-so-many-fanfics.html
Pretentious is marked as a favored author on my fanfiction.net page.
kisses
Sunday, October 30, 2011
My First Cigarette
Okay, writing this post, again.
I'll probably keep rewriting this post until the day I die.
Which may very well be today.
Go for the tragic waif much, `phfina?
Yep.
You remember your firsts, don't you? We all do, don't we. They are like milestones (millstones?) in our lives. Why is that?
I remember my first time. Not that time. Of course I remember that time. I'm talking about my first cigarette.
I was ... oh, I don't remember, actually, as it's coming up, on Oh, my God! 20 years now, because I was 7 or 8 or 9 when I had my first cigarette, don't you know.
What does that say about me? A girl, smoking before her first time, and first period, and first ... well, everything, right? A girl smoking that early in life? Well, girls like that don't turn out well.
That's what you're thinking, isn't it? It's okay, you can fess up, although you won't, being far to polite to be honest, even to yourself.
Me, I get really fucking real with myself, every morning, right in front of the mirror. Yep, there's me.
You should try it sometime: getting really honest with yourself. I like honest people. A lot. And it's really freeing, seeing yourself, exactly as you are, and exactly as you aren't. It clears your eyes and your head.
So you can see everything that way, too.
Scary, that: seeing things as they are.
I get ahead of myself.
My first cigarette.
So, one day, out of nowhere, my mom's sister visits us. That would make her my aunt ('ayhnt'). I didn't know I had aunts on my mom's side. You see, stereotypes are there for a reason, 'cause stereotypes point to a reality. Irish? We die fast, before our time, and violently. All my aunts and uncles on my mom's side? Dead. And not through natural causes ... unless you count the bottle as a natural cause. But gambling and drinking and fighting and violence can lead to a quick end.
So, this aunt comes and visits us, and I had absolutely no idea what to make of her, because she wanted to make nice with her niece, and I was not having any part of this stranger strangling me in a bear hug.
We started off wonderfully.
So, mom and aunt ... who had a name. Had. Cathy. Aunt Cathy. They go off on a walk and talk and ... what? reminisce? about the good old days where their Dad would beat them? and their brothers? ('Brothers'? How many brothers? Meaning: uncles! That I never got to meet) and how their Mom would get so drunk she ...
Hoo, boy! Happy-happy, joy-joy! That's us Irish! Oh, yeah!
So I was sneaking along behind them in their walk in our poor town in CT, one of the poorest States in the union, trying to be inconspicuous, and I guess I was, because Aunt Cathy takes out a cigarette and lights it, and ...
And I will never forget this, even though I've repressed it for a decade.
And gives one to Mom, who lights up, inhales deeply ... gratefully ... and breathes out a cloud of smoke that wreaths her head.
I didn't know Mom smoked.
I didn't know Mom smoked.
I ...
And in that very moment. Right then.
That's when it happened.
That's when I discovered 'right and wrong' and 'us and them' and ... well, everything else when the world is ripped apart and you're left standing on one side of a chasm, looking down into the abyss, and that voice, that voice you never, never, never had until right now, right this instant, pipes up very, very quietly in your ear, and whispers those poisonous words.
That's not right,
She's saying it to me, right now, as I'm writing through my tears. She, her, me. In my voice, is telling me: 'that's not right.'
... And Mom and Aunt Cathy, God rest her soul ... (we Irish say that) ... walked along, and Mom sucked her cigarette down to nothing, but Aunt Cathy carelessly tossed hers aside ... she had packs to spare. Packs.
And they walked along, and I snuck along behind, until I reached that cigarette.
And I stopped.
And I looked at it. Lipstick on the filter. (Lipstick! How shockingly sinful!) ... that's me: little puritan bitch already! Pristine condition, smoldering on the grass.
And I picked it up, as I say Aunt Cathy, no: Mom, hold it, and I put it to my mouth, ...
And I drew it in.
It.
That's what 'it' tastes like: bitter, acidy, tart, burnt.
I didn't cough. No. I took that smoke into my being.
It matched. 'It.' The smoke. Sin.
... and my soul.
Do you know what happened that day? No: that hour of the morning?
I do.
It's funny, what one little thing can do to a person. Do you know Viktor Frankl? He's probably one of the greatest minds of our century. You should know him: you've read The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, right? So you remember how Viktor Frankl was teaching philosophy at Cambridge and two boys wanted to take his class, so he wrote something down in Ancient Greek and asked them to critique.
Of course, the boys had to know what it said first, right?
Well, anyway, Vickor Frankl, a good German Jew, was interned at a concentration camp during WWII, and one day, he was standing in line, and the guy next to him was slightly out of place, so it make Viktor look out of line.
So the German guards beat him.
You know what happened then?
Viktor Frankl developed this entire philosophy. He tried to see reason in all this insanity, and then he went "AHA!" for he realized that he was trying to see reason.
And so he wrote a very little, thin book: "Man's Search for Meaning."
Read it. You already have, because it's shaped how everybody in this post-modern era sees the world. So you ... 'should' read it to know what's pulling your strings all the time, and why.
So, anyway, his title says it all, and the hundred pages after that (inside the book) explain that.
A story that touched my heart when I read it in the book, although I didn't know why at the time, being all of 15 when I read it (yes, I was a 15-year-old girl reading philosophy books. Go ahead and think more about me in that light) (Go ahead and say it, if you dare to be honest to yourself) was that inmates could tell who would be dead in their cots the next day.
All you had to do is see somebody light up.
You see, cigarettes were the only money in that prison camp. You traded them for a deeper dip of the soup, so you had just enough protein not to fall over (and then be very shortly dead) while being worked. You traded them so they guards wouldn't beat you as much. You traded them for things in the black market. But your cigarettes? You never, never smoked them.
Unless you gave up. That very second, and you were ...
... Well, Frankl doesn't say it, but I just put it together. You were taking your smoke before the firing squad.
One final smoke before you gave up the ghost.
And, invariably, you did. Every single time Viktor saw somebody smoking, the very next day, the guy didn't get up from his cot, because all that was left was a few pounds of flesh to be disposed of in the incinerator.
Do you know what?
You'll never guess, so I'll tell you.
But after I tell you this.
Viktor Frankl, and his little book that has literally shaped the world?
It's wrong. Man. Heh, `phfina: 'Man.' Man is a meaning-making machine.
That's all he is. ('He').
(I'm fucking talking like Viktor Frankl, for God's sake).
But reality.
Here it comes, ladies and gentlemen.
Reality is just there. There is no meaning in reality. It's just there. And it doesn't care. It doesn't care about your meanings and your meaning-making. It just goes on and on and on. A million years from now, no: a thousand, no: one hundred.
One hundred years from now, everything you know, and care about, and cried over, or where callous and got scarred 'forever' from your own callousness, everything. You, your parents, your lover, your children, will be dead and buried and gone, and nobody, nobody will care one wit whether you lived or died (because you did) or wrote or sang or loved or cared or cried.
Nobody.
And then, moving beyond that. The world is you, right? Well, the rest of reality could care less about you. You think a zebra is thinking about you and your grades at school as its neck is being torn out by a lion on the hunt? You think the hyenas care about you and your job when they steal that kill from the lion, ripping apart the still bleating zebra?
Reality doesn't care that my mom smoked that day, and reality doesn't care what I thought about it.
But man is a meaning-making machine.
So, look at you. You are so trapped, making meaning out of this entry, because that's all you can do, and you even make meanings around making meaning, and you try to make that meaning-making reality.
But it's not. It's maya. It's chimera. It's dust. Dust to dust.
And that's where all your hurt come from. Listen to me. That's why you cry and cry and cry, because reality's there, but you say, 'but ...'
But you say 'but ...' and that's where all your pain and sin and agony comes from. From you crossing the ford with the dam just up the river broken, but 'I have to get to the other side ..." and why? "Well, because ..."
"Well, because ..."
Listen to all the time you say 'because' and listen to your context. Which isn't reality at all, it's a way of seeing, and a way of not seeing, so you can't even see what's right in front of you until you get gobsmacked by a mack truck that is what reality is.
BLAM!
And the following up phrase: "You're dead." And fade to black and curtains.
But no curtain call for you.
You know what happened to me that day? That day that little girl of seven or eight or nine had her first cigarette?
That was the day I died. No, really. I did. I died.
And all that is left now is this thing. This thing a walking shadow, drifting right through life, right past life, saying 'that isn't right,' and wondering why, wondering why things are the way they should be and i want my mommy i want my mommy i want my mommie bak.
Is this mom's fault? No.
Is this Aunt Cathy's fault, God rest her soul, the fucking bitch, for giving my mom that poisonous stick-snake and killing me KILLING ME!
GOD! It's so easy to say yes, but that's my lie, right? That's my payoff, or, more accurately: my copout.
No, it's not Aunt Cathy's fault, may she sleep with the angels and rest in peace.
No, the fault is that little girl, right there, sneaking along behind her mom, want to grow up and be just like her, and look what happened.
Look what happened.
I grew up.
And I wonder. Am I just like her, so nervous, so caring, so wanting the best for her daughter, and so afraid to say one word about anything but having this huge cloud of meaning floating above her head that you could speak to her because you had to speak, not through, but to it?
I wonder.
she
she
she didnt want me. she
ogod
she didn't want children, and i came along and she was so so old already and ...
and then she had me.
and god did i ever turn out didnt i. nutcase. freak. sociopath.
Major axis: morbid Obsessive-compusive
Minor axis: depression
medicated. isolated. 'treated'
No records of that. Those I shredded.
But I can't shred the mark on my soul. I can't shred how I see how people look at me, knowing they see a freak.
But I can shred something that's shreddable.
Guess what I found at the bus stop a couple of weeks ago. Guess.
A pack of cigarettes. Just opened. Only one smoked. Lemme get'm out of my backpack here.
Their Newport. Green. I like it. Irish.
I look at them. Sometimes. I feel them when I don't dare look.
One day, I'm gonna smoke one of them.
My last cigarette. Just like my first one. Stolen from somebody's discard.
Why?
'Why?' you ask.
You weren't listening, were you.
My mom, who, by all accounts is a saint, insofar as I can tell ... I mean, I would say she's like Mary, except I made that acquaintance already, thank you, and my mom is someone I'd like to flee to, not from. Well, what did she do?
Nothing. She raised me as best as she possibly could, and one day, to blow off steam, she took a long drag, and look what happened!
Me. That's what happened.
Now. Okay. Use your brains like I do for a sec.
Put me in my mom's place, and have my daughter following along, watching everything I do, and creating her world as she sees it looking at me through her eyes.
Women get postpartum depression, and they wonder why.
Well, no duh, stupid! It's because all the sudden reality hits you with a two-by-four and you realize, after the fact, that you're a mommy.
I have prepartum depression.
Because my mom made one mistake, and it wasn't even a mistake, it was just her letting her hair down with her sister, and I formed my whole reality around that.
Me? With a baby?
You know what I'll do, if I find I'm pregnant (again)?
I'll look for a clinic.
No, not an abortion clinic. I'll look for one of those clinics that kill the mother to save the child. From her.
From me.
But they don't have many of those around, and inquiries along those lines in polite society are usually regarded with more than a modicum of approbation.
So I'll take out that pack of Newports. And take a long drag. My last cigarette. To finish the job the first one did.
If I had any strength in my fingers, I'd take that smoke right now.
But I haven't slept in three days, and I'm dead tired, so I'm going to take a nap, and look at the pack again tomorrow. And not smoke again, tomorrow. And look in the mirror again tomorrow.
You ever look into the eyes of a soulless person? Yes you have. Admit it. Into the eyes who as allows the world to beat the life out of them, entirely, and all they do is what everybody else does, and why, because people are cattle, and they are running on autopilot to sbux to job to home to bed to sbux because that's ...
because that's ... because that's all there is.
You ever look into those eyes?
Probably not. You've got to be looking out of eyes to look into somebody else's eyes. And you can't look at anything, can you, because that require too much ... from you. Too much being what again? Exactly.
Well, I look into the depths of soulless eyes every. fucking. day. Every single morning.
And then, I go out, and I look into your eyes. And I try. Oh, God, I try to see you, to see someone there, but I'm not very good looker and im so so tired of looking out, hoping, hoping, and getting nothing back but just people resigned, resigned to just pushing on, pushing through, pushing past me and everything else in their life 'bothering' them.
I'm going back to reading the Eddas.
bye now.
I'll probably keep rewriting this post until the day I die.
Which may very well be today.
Go for the tragic waif much, `phfina?
Yep.
You remember your firsts, don't you? We all do, don't we. They are like milestones (millstones?) in our lives. Why is that?
I remember my first time. Not that time. Of course I remember that time. I'm talking about my first cigarette.
I was ... oh, I don't remember, actually, as it's coming up, on Oh, my God! 20 years now, because I was 7 or 8 or 9 when I had my first cigarette, don't you know.
What does that say about me? A girl, smoking before her first time, and first period, and first ... well, everything, right? A girl smoking that early in life? Well, girls like that don't turn out well.
That's what you're thinking, isn't it? It's okay, you can fess up, although you won't, being far to polite to be honest, even to yourself.
Me, I get really fucking real with myself, every morning, right in front of the mirror. Yep, there's me.
You should try it sometime: getting really honest with yourself. I like honest people. A lot. And it's really freeing, seeing yourself, exactly as you are, and exactly as you aren't. It clears your eyes and your head.
So you can see everything that way, too.
Scary, that: seeing things as they are.
I get ahead of myself.
My first cigarette.
So, one day, out of nowhere, my mom's sister visits us. That would make her my aunt ('ayhnt'). I didn't know I had aunts on my mom's side. You see, stereotypes are there for a reason, 'cause stereotypes point to a reality. Irish? We die fast, before our time, and violently. All my aunts and uncles on my mom's side? Dead. And not through natural causes ... unless you count the bottle as a natural cause. But gambling and drinking and fighting and violence can lead to a quick end.
So, this aunt comes and visits us, and I had absolutely no idea what to make of her, because she wanted to make nice with her niece, and I was not having any part of this stranger strangling me in a bear hug.
We started off wonderfully.
So, mom and aunt ... who had a name. Had. Cathy. Aunt Cathy. They go off on a walk and talk and ... what? reminisce? about the good old days where their Dad would beat them? and their brothers? ('Brothers'? How many brothers? Meaning: uncles! That I never got to meet) and how their Mom would get so drunk she ...
Hoo, boy! Happy-happy, joy-joy! That's us Irish! Oh, yeah!
So I was sneaking along behind them in their walk in our poor town in CT, one of the poorest States in the union, trying to be inconspicuous, and I guess I was, because Aunt Cathy takes out a cigarette and lights it, and ...
And I will never forget this, even though I've repressed it for a decade.
And gives one to Mom, who lights up, inhales deeply ... gratefully ... and breathes out a cloud of smoke that wreaths her head.
I didn't know Mom smoked.
I didn't know Mom smoked.
I ...
And in that very moment. Right then.
That's when it happened.
That's when I discovered 'right and wrong' and 'us and them' and ... well, everything else when the world is ripped apart and you're left standing on one side of a chasm, looking down into the abyss, and that voice, that voice you never, never, never had until right now, right this instant, pipes up very, very quietly in your ear, and whispers those poisonous words.
That's not right,
She's saying it to me, right now, as I'm writing through my tears. She, her, me. In my voice, is telling me: 'that's not right.'
... And Mom and Aunt Cathy, God rest her soul ... (we Irish say that) ... walked along, and Mom sucked her cigarette down to nothing, but Aunt Cathy carelessly tossed hers aside ... she had packs to spare. Packs.
And they walked along, and I snuck along behind, until I reached that cigarette.
And I stopped.
And I looked at it. Lipstick on the filter. (Lipstick! How shockingly sinful!) ... that's me: little puritan bitch already! Pristine condition, smoldering on the grass.
And I picked it up, as I say Aunt Cathy, no: Mom, hold it, and I put it to my mouth, ...
And I drew it in.
It.
That's what 'it' tastes like: bitter, acidy, tart, burnt.
I didn't cough. No. I took that smoke into my being.
It matched. 'It.' The smoke. Sin.
... and my soul.
Do you know what happened that day? No: that hour of the morning?
I do.
It's funny, what one little thing can do to a person. Do you know Viktor Frankl? He's probably one of the greatest minds of our century. You should know him: you've read The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, right? So you remember how Viktor Frankl was teaching philosophy at Cambridge and two boys wanted to take his class, so he wrote something down in Ancient Greek and asked them to critique.
Of course, the boys had to know what it said first, right?
Well, anyway, Vickor Frankl, a good German Jew, was interned at a concentration camp during WWII, and one day, he was standing in line, and the guy next to him was slightly out of place, so it make Viktor look out of line.
So the German guards beat him.
You know what happened then?
Viktor Frankl developed this entire philosophy. He tried to see reason in all this insanity, and then he went "AHA!" for he realized that he was trying to see reason.
And so he wrote a very little, thin book: "Man's Search for Meaning."
Read it. You already have, because it's shaped how everybody in this post-modern era sees the world. So you ... 'should' read it to know what's pulling your strings all the time, and why.
So, anyway, his title says it all, and the hundred pages after that (inside the book) explain that.
A story that touched my heart when I read it in the book, although I didn't know why at the time, being all of 15 when I read it (yes, I was a 15-year-old girl reading philosophy books. Go ahead and think more about me in that light) (Go ahead and say it, if you dare to be honest to yourself) was that inmates could tell who would be dead in their cots the next day.
All you had to do is see somebody light up.
You see, cigarettes were the only money in that prison camp. You traded them for a deeper dip of the soup, so you had just enough protein not to fall over (and then be very shortly dead) while being worked. You traded them so they guards wouldn't beat you as much. You traded them for things in the black market. But your cigarettes? You never, never smoked them.
Unless you gave up. That very second, and you were ...
... Well, Frankl doesn't say it, but I just put it together. You were taking your smoke before the firing squad.
One final smoke before you gave up the ghost.
And, invariably, you did. Every single time Viktor saw somebody smoking, the very next day, the guy didn't get up from his cot, because all that was left was a few pounds of flesh to be disposed of in the incinerator.
Do you know what?
You'll never guess, so I'll tell you.
But after I tell you this.
Viktor Frankl, and his little book that has literally shaped the world?
It's wrong. Man. Heh, `phfina: 'Man.' Man is a meaning-making machine.
That's all he is. ('He').
(I'm fucking talking like Viktor Frankl, for God's sake).
But reality.
Here it comes, ladies and gentlemen.
Reality is just there. There is no meaning in reality. It's just there. And it doesn't care. It doesn't care about your meanings and your meaning-making. It just goes on and on and on. A million years from now, no: a thousand, no: one hundred.
One hundred years from now, everything you know, and care about, and cried over, or where callous and got scarred 'forever' from your own callousness, everything. You, your parents, your lover, your children, will be dead and buried and gone, and nobody, nobody will care one wit whether you lived or died (because you did) or wrote or sang or loved or cared or cried.
Nobody.
And then, moving beyond that. The world is you, right? Well, the rest of reality could care less about you. You think a zebra is thinking about you and your grades at school as its neck is being torn out by a lion on the hunt? You think the hyenas care about you and your job when they steal that kill from the lion, ripping apart the still bleating zebra?
Reality doesn't care that my mom smoked that day, and reality doesn't care what I thought about it.
But man is a meaning-making machine.
So, look at you. You are so trapped, making meaning out of this entry, because that's all you can do, and you even make meanings around making meaning, and you try to make that meaning-making reality.
But it's not. It's maya. It's chimera. It's dust. Dust to dust.
And that's where all your hurt come from. Listen to me. That's why you cry and cry and cry, because reality's there, but you say, 'but ...'
But you say 'but ...' and that's where all your pain and sin and agony comes from. From you crossing the ford with the dam just up the river broken, but 'I have to get to the other side ..." and why? "Well, because ..."
"Well, because ..."
Listen to all the time you say 'because' and listen to your context. Which isn't reality at all, it's a way of seeing, and a way of not seeing, so you can't even see what's right in front of you until you get gobsmacked by a mack truck that is what reality is.
BLAM!
And the following up phrase: "You're dead." And fade to black and curtains.
But no curtain call for you.
You know what happened to me that day? That day that little girl of seven or eight or nine had her first cigarette?
That was the day I died. No, really. I did. I died.
And all that is left now is this thing. This thing a walking shadow, drifting right through life, right past life, saying 'that isn't right,' and wondering why, wondering why things are the way they should be and i want my mommy i want my mommy i want my mommie bak.
Is this mom's fault? No.
Is this Aunt Cathy's fault, God rest her soul, the fucking bitch, for giving my mom that poisonous stick-snake and killing me KILLING ME!
GOD! It's so easy to say yes, but that's my lie, right? That's my payoff, or, more accurately: my copout.
No, it's not Aunt Cathy's fault, may she sleep with the angels and rest in peace.
No, the fault is that little girl, right there, sneaking along behind her mom, want to grow up and be just like her, and look what happened.
Look what happened.
I grew up.
And I wonder. Am I just like her, so nervous, so caring, so wanting the best for her daughter, and so afraid to say one word about anything but having this huge cloud of meaning floating above her head that you could speak to her because you had to speak, not through, but to it?
I wonder.
she
she
she didnt want me. she
ogod
she didn't want children, and i came along and she was so so old already and ...
and then she had me.
and god did i ever turn out didnt i. nutcase. freak. sociopath.
Major axis: morbid Obsessive-compusive
Minor axis: depression
medicated. isolated. 'treated'
No records of that. Those I shredded.
But I can't shred the mark on my soul. I can't shred how I see how people look at me, knowing they see a freak.
But I can shred something that's shreddable.
Guess what I found at the bus stop a couple of weeks ago. Guess.
A pack of cigarettes. Just opened. Only one smoked. Lemme get'm out of my backpack here.
Their Newport. Green. I like it. Irish.
I look at them. Sometimes. I feel them when I don't dare look.
One day, I'm gonna smoke one of them.
My last cigarette. Just like my first one. Stolen from somebody's discard.
Why?
'Why?' you ask.
You weren't listening, were you.
My mom, who, by all accounts is a saint, insofar as I can tell ... I mean, I would say she's like Mary, except I made that acquaintance already, thank you, and my mom is someone I'd like to flee to, not from. Well, what did she do?
Nothing. She raised me as best as she possibly could, and one day, to blow off steam, she took a long drag, and look what happened!
Me. That's what happened.
Now. Okay. Use your brains like I do for a sec.
Put me in my mom's place, and have my daughter following along, watching everything I do, and creating her world as she sees it looking at me through her eyes.
Women get postpartum depression, and they wonder why.
Well, no duh, stupid! It's because all the sudden reality hits you with a two-by-four and you realize, after the fact, that you're a mommy.
I have prepartum depression.
Because my mom made one mistake, and it wasn't even a mistake, it was just her letting her hair down with her sister, and I formed my whole reality around that.
Me? With a baby?
You know what I'll do, if I find I'm pregnant (again)?
I'll look for a clinic.
No, not an abortion clinic. I'll look for one of those clinics that kill the mother to save the child. From her.
From me.
But they don't have many of those around, and inquiries along those lines in polite society are usually regarded with more than a modicum of approbation.
So I'll take out that pack of Newports. And take a long drag. My last cigarette. To finish the job the first one did.
If I had any strength in my fingers, I'd take that smoke right now.
But I haven't slept in three days, and I'm dead tired, so I'm going to take a nap, and look at the pack again tomorrow. And not smoke again, tomorrow. And look in the mirror again tomorrow.
You ever look into the eyes of a soulless person? Yes you have. Admit it. Into the eyes who as allows the world to beat the life out of them, entirely, and all they do is what everybody else does, and why, because people are cattle, and they are running on autopilot to sbux to job to home to bed to sbux because that's ...
because that's ... because that's all there is.
You ever look into those eyes?
Probably not. You've got to be looking out of eyes to look into somebody else's eyes. And you can't look at anything, can you, because that require too much ... from you. Too much being what again? Exactly.
Well, I look into the depths of soulless eyes every. fucking. day. Every single morning.
And then, I go out, and I look into your eyes. And I try. Oh, God, I try to see you, to see someone there, but I'm not very good looker and im so so tired of looking out, hoping, hoping, and getting nothing back but just people resigned, resigned to just pushing on, pushing through, pushing past me and everything else in their life 'bothering' them.
I'm going back to reading the Eddas.
bye now.
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