Getting ready for my first real destination vacation as a grownup (ha! grownup) that Chris and I are taking next week to celebrate still liking each other after almost a year.
I'm so excited. I want to write more about it, but I need to go construct my packing list because I'm excited enough to lose my head and forget important basic shit like my passport or a hairdryer.
Squeeeee.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
back to bugs
It's almost 9:30 on a Tuesday night, and as I sit here in bed trying to decide what to write about, Simon is snoozing at my feet exuding pure contentment as only a cat can while my little black spider ally chills out above the bedroom window. Dunno what Spidey did with the stink bug husk, but it's gone -- li'l arachnid does a better job cleaning its dishes than I do. Although I did my dishes for the third day running, so...yay me.
I wish I could tell Spidey that there are like six billion ants in the kitchen; maybe he could help me out there. Every damn spring the fucking ants come marking nine by ninety-nine into the kitchen, driven up by the warming temperatures and wet ground. (Not-hurrah.) As soon as April dries into May they leave me in peace, but in the meantime, they're running all over the walls like I invited them to. Every year they find a different way in, too. I think of all the crevices in this old house and shudder sometimes; who knows how many horrors are crammed into them, waiting for just the right circumstances to erupt into an infestation of hell?
Last year the ants poured into the kitchen in especially horrifying numbers (cripes, it must sound like I run an entomology park or something, like there are just bugs everywhere, like it's some primal dystopia of the damned. It's not that bad, honest; most of the time you'd never even notice bugs here at all). Unwilling to use Raid because of Simon, and unwilling to keep shrieking with disgust every time I entered the room, I fell back on a bit of deductive reasoning and started using hairspray on them. The reasoning goes like this: I use a lot of hair spray. The hair spray makes my lungs feel like broken balloons. This is probably because it's coating the insides of my lungs and making it impossible to breathe. If it does that to me it will do that to ants because ants need air too. Die, ants.
Seems to be pretty effective. No idea what it's doing to the paint on the walls though.
My whole life I've loved old houses. But when it comes to loose leaky windows and structural sags and gaps, I have to cede the argument to Chris: Newer homes don't have those kinds of issues. And fewer bugs sounds like a lovely prospect.
Although I've kind of come around to Spidey. He doesn't bother anything, just hangs out in his web hoping to get lucky.
Omg. I'll be his wingman. Bwah. Hahahahaha,
Omg. I'll be his wingman. Bwah. Hahahahaha,
Oh Jesus, I need sleep.
Monday, April 27, 2015
simple things
Just about every aspect of my life is a jumble at the moment, so this evening I decided to return to a simple, basic method for grounding myself in a sense of sanity, and washed the dishes.
Keeping things clean has always come as something of a challenge to me. Absentminded preoccupation lends itself to chaos; depression lends itself to squalor: Historically, my living spaces have looked like the corners of the cage of some enormous mutant gerbil. It's always worse when I'm stressed or depressed, and over the last year I've been a bit of both. Plus, while Chris has many excellent attributes, "tidy" isn't on the list, and it's been rather easy for me to sink back into a level of comfort with what I call "living like a troll."
In those times, though, it becomes even more important to maintain cleanly, orderly surroundings: It's easier to relax in a clean room because it's bright and pretty; you can take a measure of pride in having done even the mild forms of work required to make it so (and some days any effort is worth celebrating); and you get rid of the guilt for lying around in voluntary putrefaction. Lots of win. So this evening I checked off one more item on my "teacher-to-be" to-do list for the upcoming summer training program, and then went into the kitchen to tackle the dishes. Which wasn't even that horrible, because I already did them last night (for the first time in a week).
So at the end of the day I didn't get as much work done as I wanted; but goddammit, my kitchen is clean. And that feels really, really good.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
just a small-town girl
The apartment looked perfect.
I had spent several days sifting through Detroit metro area apartment listings on Craigslist. The results were not encouraging: Some of the apartments featured windows with strips of straight-up scrap metal nailed across them, and even those were barely in my price range.
I love city living. It was one of the many life outcomes I never expected. Having grown up at the outskirts of a small western Pennsylvania town voraciously reading books about horses, I thought of the city as scary, dirty, crowded and generally awful. Give me open spaces, wide skies, fresh air, dark nights, and the nearest neighbor a mile away, I thought.
Until I moved to South Bend, Indiana, after college, and into my first solo apartment on the second floor of an old, converted single-family house in the city's graciously seedy historic Chapin Park. Some of the streets were still brick, sunken, banked and grooved by a century of traffic; the paved streets had patches were the asphalt had worn away and the original brick showed through. The large late Victorian houses, refurbished or gently wearing down, stood close together like birds on a telephone line; back alleys interlaced the already haphazardly mapped out blocks; garage- and car-break-ins happened frequently; the neighborhood boasted a racial and socioeconomic diversity I had been brought up to fear. And I loved it. I loved the surprises, the funny clashes of old and new, the compost heaps in the alleys, the scary men walking friendly dogs. I loved the sense of surrounding activity, of private lives tucked away in plain sight, of quick access to the downtown and the farmer's market and the Asian grocery where they sold spices for four dollars a pound.
And I loved my apartment. The Ivory Tower. Small, clean, quiet, it featured turn-of-the-century charm in its moldings and transom windows and claw-foot cast iron tub, and bright, bi-directional light in every room. I loved the side porch outside my front door where I smoked cigarettes and drank coffee and watched the mornings filter through the old weedy trees. I loved the gleaming little kitchen. I loved hearing Simon tear through the rooms. I loved looking out my windows onto the shabby houses and rutted streets.
It's a love that has stayed with me ever since, the love of a quiet old city neighborhood. When I moved back to Erie and could afford to live on my own again, I found The Eyrie, a second-floor flat on the West Side, much like the Ivory Tower, but with hardwood floors, oak molding and a fireplace. As long as I'm on my own, this is the kind of place I want to live in.
So naturally as I planned for the upcoming move to Detroit, that's the kind of place I sought. And this one looked stunning, especially considering the search results leading up to it -- like digging through a trash heap and finding a flower. Large, airy rooms. A formal dining room. Hardwood floors. A gas fireplace. Lots and lots of windows. A dishwasher. As I clicked through the pictures, I could visualize myself there. I knew where I would put the bookcases. I could hear my footsteps moving through the kitchen into the back hallway to the bedrooms.
I wanted it. With my whole soul.
I looked up its location and it seemed to be in one of the nicer neighborhoods in Detroit. So I emailed the landlord, learned that an apartment just like it would be opening up on my planned moving day, and arranged to call him to ask some questions.
Prior to the conversation, I wrote down a list of talking points, particularly questions about the state of the neighborhood. My experience of landlords has taught me caution. Most landlords want an ideal tenant so desperately that they'll promise anything, so I looked up the non-emergency number for the local police station to verify what the landlord might say.
The arranged call time arrived. Excitedly I dialed the phone number. John picked up.
I didn't even get to my first question. He heard my voice and said, "Yeah, let me stop you right there. I don't think you want to live in this apartment." Stunned, I stammered some kind of incoherent response, and he launched into a very firm, stark description of the neighborhood.
"I mean, you're welcome to check it out if you think you'd be comfortable here," he said. "But most Caucasians wouldn't do well here. The building itself is secure because I have floodlights all over it; the place looks like the sun at night. I have security cameras and a sixteen-hundred-dollar security door on the entrance. But you'd need to get an alarm on your car. One of my tenants parked his car across the street, out of the floodlights, and when I watched the footage later, I saw a van pull up alongside it, and a man got out and stood guard in the street while another man slid under the car and gutted it. They were gone in three minutes. And this is right next to one of the best neighborhoods in Detroit, the University District. And even there, in the University District, a federal judge who lives there was taking his trash out one night and a car full of men stopped and pulled a gun on him and demanded that he let them into his house. He said no and they shot him in the leg and left.
"This is Detroit. This is the most dangerous city in America. If you're just moving to the area and you can't afford to live right downtown, you're better off looking in the suburbs. Here are some areas you might want to check out. But unless you come from a really tough place and are able to live in a really tough environment, I don't think this place is for you."
I remembered to close my mouth, thanked him for his honesty ("I wouldn't want you moving here and then finding out what it's really like and not be able to move out," he said), and ended the call.
Disappointment and shame flooded me as I stared vacantly across the room, realizing just how little I knew what I'm getting into. It's always a bitter experience when reality forces your worldview, and your view of yourself, into a new paradigm. I've lived in sketchy neighborhoods before -- I stood down a potential break-in in South Bend with a shotgun, in a neighborhood adjacent to a neighborhood where a badly decomposed body was found under the bushes in someone's backyard. A week after I moved into The Eyrie, a woman across the street was murdered. In both neighborhoods I've walked around at night by myself in perfect ease. And none of that means shit in Detroit. Far from being the badass I've thought myself, I'm just an ingenue with a soft lens blur on my wide eyes and sweet smile.
I wanted to deny it, because goddamn it, I'm a survivor, but I've gained enough self-awareness to realize that there's no point. And there's no way in hell I want to live in that kind of neighborhood, no matter how much I want to crusade against poverty and crime, or how much I want to "take back the city." I don't want to die doing it. After the sting to my pride subsided, I was able to embrace a feeling of gratitude toward John for the kindness of his brutal honesty. And also feel a sense of outrage that anywhere should be that bad. It's completely senseless. (Yes, I know. My privilege betrays itself in my shock that there could even be places where life is that grim.)
So I'm resentfully looking into the suburbs, all newer, where the apartments come in planned communities without character or soul, and where the rent will drive you broke.
But hey, it's better than getting robbed, raped or murdered.
I had spent several days sifting through Detroit metro area apartment listings on Craigslist. The results were not encouraging: Some of the apartments featured windows with strips of straight-up scrap metal nailed across them, and even those were barely in my price range.
I love city living. It was one of the many life outcomes I never expected. Having grown up at the outskirts of a small western Pennsylvania town voraciously reading books about horses, I thought of the city as scary, dirty, crowded and generally awful. Give me open spaces, wide skies, fresh air, dark nights, and the nearest neighbor a mile away, I thought.
Until I moved to South Bend, Indiana, after college, and into my first solo apartment on the second floor of an old, converted single-family house in the city's graciously seedy historic Chapin Park. Some of the streets were still brick, sunken, banked and grooved by a century of traffic; the paved streets had patches were the asphalt had worn away and the original brick showed through. The large late Victorian houses, refurbished or gently wearing down, stood close together like birds on a telephone line; back alleys interlaced the already haphazardly mapped out blocks; garage- and car-break-ins happened frequently; the neighborhood boasted a racial and socioeconomic diversity I had been brought up to fear. And I loved it. I loved the surprises, the funny clashes of old and new, the compost heaps in the alleys, the scary men walking friendly dogs. I loved the sense of surrounding activity, of private lives tucked away in plain sight, of quick access to the downtown and the farmer's market and the Asian grocery where they sold spices for four dollars a pound.
And I loved my apartment. The Ivory Tower. Small, clean, quiet, it featured turn-of-the-century charm in its moldings and transom windows and claw-foot cast iron tub, and bright, bi-directional light in every room. I loved the side porch outside my front door where I smoked cigarettes and drank coffee and watched the mornings filter through the old weedy trees. I loved the gleaming little kitchen. I loved hearing Simon tear through the rooms. I loved looking out my windows onto the shabby houses and rutted streets.
It's a love that has stayed with me ever since, the love of a quiet old city neighborhood. When I moved back to Erie and could afford to live on my own again, I found The Eyrie, a second-floor flat on the West Side, much like the Ivory Tower, but with hardwood floors, oak molding and a fireplace. As long as I'm on my own, this is the kind of place I want to live in.
So naturally as I planned for the upcoming move to Detroit, that's the kind of place I sought. And this one looked stunning, especially considering the search results leading up to it -- like digging through a trash heap and finding a flower. Large, airy rooms. A formal dining room. Hardwood floors. A gas fireplace. Lots and lots of windows. A dishwasher. As I clicked through the pictures, I could visualize myself there. I knew where I would put the bookcases. I could hear my footsteps moving through the kitchen into the back hallway to the bedrooms.
I wanted it. With my whole soul.
I looked up its location and it seemed to be in one of the nicer neighborhoods in Detroit. So I emailed the landlord, learned that an apartment just like it would be opening up on my planned moving day, and arranged to call him to ask some questions.
Prior to the conversation, I wrote down a list of talking points, particularly questions about the state of the neighborhood. My experience of landlords has taught me caution. Most landlords want an ideal tenant so desperately that they'll promise anything, so I looked up the non-emergency number for the local police station to verify what the landlord might say.
The arranged call time arrived. Excitedly I dialed the phone number. John picked up.
I didn't even get to my first question. He heard my voice and said, "Yeah, let me stop you right there. I don't think you want to live in this apartment." Stunned, I stammered some kind of incoherent response, and he launched into a very firm, stark description of the neighborhood.
"I mean, you're welcome to check it out if you think you'd be comfortable here," he said. "But most Caucasians wouldn't do well here. The building itself is secure because I have floodlights all over it; the place looks like the sun at night. I have security cameras and a sixteen-hundred-dollar security door on the entrance. But you'd need to get an alarm on your car. One of my tenants parked his car across the street, out of the floodlights, and when I watched the footage later, I saw a van pull up alongside it, and a man got out and stood guard in the street while another man slid under the car and gutted it. They were gone in three minutes. And this is right next to one of the best neighborhoods in Detroit, the University District. And even there, in the University District, a federal judge who lives there was taking his trash out one night and a car full of men stopped and pulled a gun on him and demanded that he let them into his house. He said no and they shot him in the leg and left.
"This is Detroit. This is the most dangerous city in America. If you're just moving to the area and you can't afford to live right downtown, you're better off looking in the suburbs. Here are some areas you might want to check out. But unless you come from a really tough place and are able to live in a really tough environment, I don't think this place is for you."
I remembered to close my mouth, thanked him for his honesty ("I wouldn't want you moving here and then finding out what it's really like and not be able to move out," he said), and ended the call.
Disappointment and shame flooded me as I stared vacantly across the room, realizing just how little I knew what I'm getting into. It's always a bitter experience when reality forces your worldview, and your view of yourself, into a new paradigm. I've lived in sketchy neighborhoods before -- I stood down a potential break-in in South Bend with a shotgun, in a neighborhood adjacent to a neighborhood where a badly decomposed body was found under the bushes in someone's backyard. A week after I moved into The Eyrie, a woman across the street was murdered. In both neighborhoods I've walked around at night by myself in perfect ease. And none of that means shit in Detroit. Far from being the badass I've thought myself, I'm just an ingenue with a soft lens blur on my wide eyes and sweet smile.
I wanted to deny it, because goddamn it, I'm a survivor, but I've gained enough self-awareness to realize that there's no point. And there's no way in hell I want to live in that kind of neighborhood, no matter how much I want to crusade against poverty and crime, or how much I want to "take back the city." I don't want to die doing it. After the sting to my pride subsided, I was able to embrace a feeling of gratitude toward John for the kindness of his brutal honesty. And also feel a sense of outrage that anywhere should be that bad. It's completely senseless. (Yes, I know. My privilege betrays itself in my shock that there could even be places where life is that grim.)
So I'm resentfully looking into the suburbs, all newer, where the apartments come in planned communities without character or soul, and where the rent will drive you broke.
But hey, it's better than getting robbed, raped or murdered.
Saturday, April 25, 2015
moar sleep pleez
Going to be a boring post. Got another in the works but I'm too tired to do it justice.
Been a rough week; the recovery is going to take some time. In the meantime, today I slept in, did not shower, did put on pants (because it's still too cold to walk around without them - damn you, Erie), selected dresses for the cruise, worked on Teacher Corps assignments, cuddled with Simon, watched a little Game of Thrones.
And there is still so much to be done. Laundry, math, writing, reading Detroit: An American Autopsy (completely fascinating), more sleep.
Ack. I need more hours in the day.
Friday, April 24, 2015
their legs are hair
Woke up sort of exhaustedly grateful that it's Friday and all I have to do is drag myself through one more day at work and then I can stop showering and putting pants on till Monday. Simon was howling in my ear like an air raid siren, so I sat up and blearily turned on the light, whereupon my peripheral vision must have screamed at me because my eyes zeroed in on a very, very wrong-looking dark splotch on the wall across the room.
It was a centipede with a body bigger than my fucking thumb.
It remained perfectly still on the wall as I stared around the room in a kind of shellshock wondering what to kill it with. I decided the cover of Virginia Woolf's The Waves would most easily wash off after the slaughter, so I crept very slowly across the room with a twentieth-century masterpiece clutched in my hands, readying it for use as a weapon.
But the damn bug was too high up on the wall to get a certain shot. The last thing I wanted was to miss and watch it fall behind the dresser where it would doubtless scurry all over the floor. Recalling the flyswatter I keep on the balcony, I sneaked out of the bedroom, fetched the swatter, and returned to the battle zone thoughtfully thwacking myself in the palm and wondering if I could get enough oomph to crush a giant nightmare.
My aim with a flyswatter is just horrible. Carefully I got myself in position, eyed the centipede, gave a couple of experimental shakes like a golfer about to tee off, and let fly.
I missed. The horror-legged thing started to move. Desperately I struck again --
-- and centipede exploded all over my face.
Apparently their exoskeletons are a lot softer than those of wasps and spiders. Waves of legs rippled away from the blast site on the wall, and jelly globules of bug guts flecked my skin. Gagging, I rushed to the bathroom to get that shit off my face, wondering if maybe I should douse my head in bleach.
At least my mouth wasn't open.
So far in this daily writing project I've reflected on arthropods and Chris. Maybe I should call this the Bugs and Boyfriend Blog.
It was a centipede with a body bigger than my fucking thumb.
It remained perfectly still on the wall as I stared around the room in a kind of shellshock wondering what to kill it with. I decided the cover of Virginia Woolf's The Waves would most easily wash off after the slaughter, so I crept very slowly across the room with a twentieth-century masterpiece clutched in my hands, readying it for use as a weapon.
But the damn bug was too high up on the wall to get a certain shot. The last thing I wanted was to miss and watch it fall behind the dresser where it would doubtless scurry all over the floor. Recalling the flyswatter I keep on the balcony, I sneaked out of the bedroom, fetched the swatter, and returned to the battle zone thoughtfully thwacking myself in the palm and wondering if I could get enough oomph to crush a giant nightmare.
My aim with a flyswatter is just horrible. Carefully I got myself in position, eyed the centipede, gave a couple of experimental shakes like a golfer about to tee off, and let fly.
I missed. The horror-legged thing started to move. Desperately I struck again --
-- and centipede exploded all over my face.
Apparently their exoskeletons are a lot softer than those of wasps and spiders. Waves of legs rippled away from the blast site on the wall, and jelly globules of bug guts flecked my skin. Gagging, I rushed to the bathroom to get that shit off my face, wondering if maybe I should douse my head in bleach.
At least my mouth wasn't open.
So far in this daily writing project I've reflected on arthropods and Chris. Maybe I should call this the Bugs and Boyfriend Blog.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Under the Wire
Gah! Almost midnight and almost forgot to post. So I'm mobile blogging because I don't feel like turning the computer back on. Love the Blogger app.
Rough couple of days; relationships are complicated, and there's a lot going on generally. And I'm so fucking tired.
Went out for dinner with Chris's sister tonight - lots of fun. I like Missy. I like all of Chris's family. They're funny and warm and welcoming and I felt instantly at home with them.
I met them pretty early on. Chris came back to town for the Fourth of July, six weeks after we'd started our long-distance relationship and at least six weeks before we made the relationship official. He stayed with his parents the first night of the visit, so the next day I parked my rust-eaten 1999 Buick LeSabre on the street in front of his parents' magnificent house (thinking "oh my god, someone's going to call a tow truck") and rode with him to a picnic at his friend's place. When we returned at approximately 1 a.m., full of burgers and beer, we quietly transferred my picnic contributions from his car to mine while we worked out arrangements for him to come to my place shortly after.
As he carried his cooler up to the house with his golden retriever, the Adorable Vinnster (generally known as Vinnie), pacing his heels, I was halted in the act of getting into the car by his parents' front door opening. Bright light tracked across the broad front lawn to my car and a voice called, "Come in!"
Chris said, "It's my mom." I heard nervousness and humor in his voice. Oh god I'm meeting his parents and it's really soon and I hope he'll still come over afterward because I want to rip his clothes off I thought as I crossed the lawn up the small slope to the door.
Debbie's eyes were bright and warm and assessing as she welcomed me. And then she invited me over for dinner the next day, after which I would have the strong and normal-surreal conviction that my family had just expanded.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
well, it's a post
Wow, what a horrible, horrible day. Just amazingly, grindingly, stupidly awful.
At least there are best friends and cute sleepy kitties. And a really, really comfy bed waiting for just this moment when I say "fuck it" and give up on consciousness for the rest of this stupid twirl of this stupid planet around its stupid axis.
And at least there is the complex and chaotic, but also still and deep, continuous current of love.
At least there are best friends and cute sleepy kitties. And a really, really comfy bed waiting for just this moment when I say "fuck it" and give up on consciousness for the rest of this stupid twirl of this stupid planet around its stupid axis.
And at least there is the complex and chaotic, but also still and deep, continuous current of love.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
in the beginning, there was salad
Drawing inspiration from Bestie Meg over at http://adarknessuponmethatsfloodedinlight.blogspot.com/, I'm going to try to post something once a day. It won't always be much - in fact, it's almost guaranteed not to be for some time, with everything I have going on - but something is better than nothing, and I'm tired of not being a writer.
One of the things I've aimed for over the last fifteen years is happiness. I've blogged about this before in various places (my blogs are as dislocated and myriad as my dating history), but I grew up with this romanticized notion that great writing requires a sort of tortured despair, and that if I wanted to do anything with my writing (I'm not calling any of it great by any stretch), I had to resign myself to the sad. Then I decided that I'd rather be happy than sad, and if that meant giving up my writing, then fine. But I think it's a stupid, false dichotomy, and as Meg astutely pointed out, art comes from every state of mind, because art comes from life.
I think that all my past notions of art and writing must converge somewhere, somehow: the anguish and the joy, the boredom and the interest, the profundity and the mundanity. Maybe that's the still point of the turning world that Eliot talks about so beautifully. And at this point I don't have to choose one kind of writing over another; the choice to write is the only choice that matters, even if what I write is crap.
So here we are. I'm going to attempt to craft something out of each day, whether that something be sad or happy or deep or silly or fascinating or dull.
Today my mind keeps wandering over the past twelve months; a lot has happened in their course, and a lot will happen in the year to come. Just over a year ago I met my boyfriend for the first time, and the narrative that my memory has constructed focuses on the feelings I had (or remember having) at the time, when I first saw him, that I had just encountered someone special.
I was attending an areligious Easter dinner party, Hobbit-themed, hosted by a friend of my then-close-friend Steph. Since Steph and Kacy were the only two people I would know there, I, like a good cautious sometimes-introvert, quizzed Steph on the participants prior to the party. She sat at the kitchen table in the shabby little house she shared with her aunt, carefully applying makeup while I compiled all the ingredients for the salad I was taking, and gave me a brief run-down on the other invited guests. They all sounded quirky and geeky and fun, and then she said, "And then there's Chris. I met him last night helping to set up. He's an engineer in Detroit, and he also writes for our favorite website."
I perked up visibly. "Is he single?"
"I think so."
PERK. "Is he cute?"
"Not particularly."
"Huh. Well, looks aren't everything," I said, thinking Holy shit he sounds smart.
She frowned. "Long distance relationships are impossible."
I shrugged. "Not necessarily. Detroit isn't that far away."
"I guess not."
We assembled our various party offerings, piled into her car, and drove to Kacy's apartment complex. As we set up in the party room, I grew increasingly nervously excited - maybe I would make new friends! Maybe Chris was cute! Maybe I would trip and drop the salad everywhere! Maybe everyone would hate me!
The guests began to arrive, and as I stood chatting with them, I kept my peripheral vision trained on the door. And then a tall, dark-haired guy came walking into the room, and, arrested, I let myself stare for a moment, thinking, What the fuck was she talking about? He's super cute!
And that's where it all began.
One of the things I've aimed for over the last fifteen years is happiness. I've blogged about this before in various places (my blogs are as dislocated and myriad as my dating history), but I grew up with this romanticized notion that great writing requires a sort of tortured despair, and that if I wanted to do anything with my writing (I'm not calling any of it great by any stretch), I had to resign myself to the sad. Then I decided that I'd rather be happy than sad, and if that meant giving up my writing, then fine. But I think it's a stupid, false dichotomy, and as Meg astutely pointed out, art comes from every state of mind, because art comes from life.
I think that all my past notions of art and writing must converge somewhere, somehow: the anguish and the joy, the boredom and the interest, the profundity and the mundanity. Maybe that's the still point of the turning world that Eliot talks about so beautifully. And at this point I don't have to choose one kind of writing over another; the choice to write is the only choice that matters, even if what I write is crap.
So here we are. I'm going to attempt to craft something out of each day, whether that something be sad or happy or deep or silly or fascinating or dull.
Today my mind keeps wandering over the past twelve months; a lot has happened in their course, and a lot will happen in the year to come. Just over a year ago I met my boyfriend for the first time, and the narrative that my memory has constructed focuses on the feelings I had (or remember having) at the time, when I first saw him, that I had just encountered someone special.
I was attending an areligious Easter dinner party, Hobbit-themed, hosted by a friend of my then-close-friend Steph. Since Steph and Kacy were the only two people I would know there, I, like a good cautious sometimes-introvert, quizzed Steph on the participants prior to the party. She sat at the kitchen table in the shabby little house she shared with her aunt, carefully applying makeup while I compiled all the ingredients for the salad I was taking, and gave me a brief run-down on the other invited guests. They all sounded quirky and geeky and fun, and then she said, "And then there's Chris. I met him last night helping to set up. He's an engineer in Detroit, and he also writes for our favorite website."
I perked up visibly. "Is he single?"
"I think so."
PERK. "Is he cute?"
"Not particularly."
"Huh. Well, looks aren't everything," I said, thinking Holy shit he sounds smart.
She frowned. "Long distance relationships are impossible."
I shrugged. "Not necessarily. Detroit isn't that far away."
"I guess not."
We assembled our various party offerings, piled into her car, and drove to Kacy's apartment complex. As we set up in the party room, I grew increasingly nervously excited - maybe I would make new friends! Maybe Chris was cute! Maybe I would trip and drop the salad everywhere! Maybe everyone would hate me!
The guests began to arrive, and as I stood chatting with them, I kept my peripheral vision trained on the door. And then a tall, dark-haired guy came walking into the room, and, arrested, I let myself stare for a moment, thinking, What the fuck was she talking about? He's super cute!
And that's where it all began.
Monday, April 20, 2015
All Quiet on the Bedroom Front (not that connotation of 'bedroom,' perv)
The Stink Bug Wars have begun, and I have gained an ally.
I have never encountered a conflict about which I could not possibly care less but find myself enmeshed in anyway, except maybe for religious conversations with my parents. It's like if being a World War I soldier were an office job. A new skirmish or wave of dysentery or cloud of mustard gas arises and I just sort of sigh and glance at the time.
The other night I heard another stink bug sawing the air in my bedroom as it lumbered unseen from one place to another. (Stink Bug Stealth technology is just crap.) It subsided shortly thereafter so I didn't trouble myself about it. The uneasy peace could not last, however; on the following evening I walked into my bedroom (evidently this is the front) and noticed an oddly shaped shadow suspended from the ceiling above my window. Curious and a little apprehensive, I clambered on top of the mattress and slowly straightened to where I could observe the strange shadow without putting my face too close to it.
A stink bug hung motionless in a hammock of web as a little black spider cocooned it.
I experienced confusing emotions. Historically I fucking hate spiders. I blame it on the time when I was seven and happened to glance up at the ceiling to see one descending onto my face. Ten years on my own should have taught me to kill my own spiders, but instead taught me how to remain ambulatory enough leave the room while my entire body seizes into one giant charlie horse of terror except for my urge to vomit. Finally, fed up with my own cowardice (they are the size of a pimple, STOP SCREAMING), but still too cowardly to man up and kill them (if you miss they curl up and just FALL, probably in your hair or down your shirt), I learned to suppress the gag reflex and continue with my normal activities. You know, while keeping a wary eye glued to the spider and exuding as much nonchalance as a cartoon character with a gun held to its head from behind a curtain while the villain hisses "act natural." But still, you know, it's a sort of peace. Like the peace I had with the stink bugs. And yeah, I'd rather have the stink bugs than bed bugs or cockroaches or centipedes (THEIR LEGS ARE HAIR AND THEY ARE LEGION), but I don't really want the stink bugs.
So when I saw the itsy bitsy spider gamely marching around the stink bug like a smart car driving over a tank, shrouding the shield-shaped armor tightly in magical butt filament, I felt a rapid succession of tiny emotional jolts like the shutter button of a high speed camera: disgust for the spider, disgust for the stink bug, admiration for the spider, pity for the stink bug, and a grim satisfaction that there would no longer be this particular thing going bzzzzz in the night. All before interest dissolved back into apathy in exactly the way my powdered non-dairy creamer collapses into my morning coffee.
"Right on, spider," I said, and left them alone.
I didn't really pick sides. I elected noninterference. You know, like the protagonist in Camus' L'Hote.
And now I'm worried that I'll come back and find stink bug guerrillas encamped behind my bras and stacks of teddy bears.
I have never encountered a conflict about which I could not possibly care less but find myself enmeshed in anyway, except maybe for religious conversations with my parents. It's like if being a World War I soldier were an office job. A new skirmish or wave of dysentery or cloud of mustard gas arises and I just sort of sigh and glance at the time.
The other night I heard another stink bug sawing the air in my bedroom as it lumbered unseen from one place to another. (Stink Bug Stealth technology is just crap.) It subsided shortly thereafter so I didn't trouble myself about it. The uneasy peace could not last, however; on the following evening I walked into my bedroom (evidently this is the front) and noticed an oddly shaped shadow suspended from the ceiling above my window. Curious and a little apprehensive, I clambered on top of the mattress and slowly straightened to where I could observe the strange shadow without putting my face too close to it.
A stink bug hung motionless in a hammock of web as a little black spider cocooned it.
I experienced confusing emotions. Historically I fucking hate spiders. I blame it on the time when I was seven and happened to glance up at the ceiling to see one descending onto my face. Ten years on my own should have taught me to kill my own spiders, but instead taught me how to remain ambulatory enough leave the room while my entire body seizes into one giant charlie horse of terror except for my urge to vomit. Finally, fed up with my own cowardice (they are the size of a pimple, STOP SCREAMING), but still too cowardly to man up and kill them (if you miss they curl up and just FALL, probably in your hair or down your shirt), I learned to suppress the gag reflex and continue with my normal activities. You know, while keeping a wary eye glued to the spider and exuding as much nonchalance as a cartoon character with a gun held to its head from behind a curtain while the villain hisses "act natural." But still, you know, it's a sort of peace. Like the peace I had with the stink bugs. And yeah, I'd rather have the stink bugs than bed bugs or cockroaches or centipedes (THEIR LEGS ARE HAIR AND THEY ARE LEGION), but I don't really want the stink bugs.
So when I saw the itsy bitsy spider gamely marching around the stink bug like a smart car driving over a tank, shrouding the shield-shaped armor tightly in magical butt filament, I felt a rapid succession of tiny emotional jolts like the shutter button of a high speed camera: disgust for the spider, disgust for the stink bug, admiration for the spider, pity for the stink bug, and a grim satisfaction that there would no longer be this particular thing going bzzzzz in the night. All before interest dissolved back into apathy in exactly the way my powdered non-dairy creamer collapses into my morning coffee.
"Right on, spider," I said, and left them alone.
I didn't really pick sides. I elected noninterference. You know, like the protagonist in Camus' L'Hote.
And now I'm worried that I'll come back and find stink bug guerrillas encamped behind my bras and stacks of teddy bears.
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Escalation
I have nearly always lived in old houses and old apartments. Now that I'm dating an engineer with a love of big overblown shiny new houses, I'm grudgingly coming to admit that there's something to be said for dishwashers and central air and windows that don't leak frigid air every winter. Especially the windows. I seal mine in plastic every winter and it's always a big ordeal, and then I spend the season feeling vaguely like I'm living in a sandwich bag.
But it saves about a hundred dollars a month on heating bills, and I do like being warm. Until Williams' "sluggish dazed spring approaches," barely discernible from winter, but nonetheless with a rich flush of warmth under the thin sharpness of the air -- air that rushes through your being reinvigorating your winter zombie animation. For me, that invigoration builds subtly, until it suddenly erupts into a crazed starvation for fresh nighttime air blowing into my bedroom, usually at midnight on a worknight when I should be sleeping but am overcome with the conviction that if I don't get the windows open RIGHT FUCKING NOW I will swelter and suffocate, and it's either rip the plastic off the windows or tear my way out of my own skin.
This moment finally happened, when I knew I could not breathe the stale close air in my bedroom one more night without losing the dubious remnants of my sanity, and I clawed the plastic off the windows and triumphantly threw up the sash...and was thwarted by the ancient storm windows having swollen shut. Thus, midnight on a work night found me kneeling naked in the window yanking madly at the aluminum tabs with a hammer and a screwdriver, alternately pushing up and pulling down the upper and lower windows with sweat pouring down my back and every sense narrowed to the focus on my life's great work, my only purpose in being: getting the goddamn window open.
And victory, in the end, was mine. I sat back on my heels and felt the sweet cold of early spring pour over my skin and into the stuffy room, sweeping out the cloying staleness with every surge of breeze.
But in the quest for freedom there was a collateral casualty. As I pulled down the upper window to try to see if anything was jammed, I recoiled from a stink bug balanced along the top beam. I was startled, annoyed, sweaty and desperate, so that when I ascertained that nothing was in fact jammed, I pushed the window right back up and ignored the crunch.
Oh dear. Sorry, little buddy.
But it saves about a hundred dollars a month on heating bills, and I do like being warm. Until Williams' "sluggish dazed spring approaches," barely discernible from winter, but nonetheless with a rich flush of warmth under the thin sharpness of the air -- air that rushes through your being reinvigorating your winter zombie animation. For me, that invigoration builds subtly, until it suddenly erupts into a crazed starvation for fresh nighttime air blowing into my bedroom, usually at midnight on a worknight when I should be sleeping but am overcome with the conviction that if I don't get the windows open RIGHT FUCKING NOW I will swelter and suffocate, and it's either rip the plastic off the windows or tear my way out of my own skin.
This moment finally happened, when I knew I could not breathe the stale close air in my bedroom one more night without losing the dubious remnants of my sanity, and I clawed the plastic off the windows and triumphantly threw up the sash...and was thwarted by the ancient storm windows having swollen shut. Thus, midnight on a work night found me kneeling naked in the window yanking madly at the aluminum tabs with a hammer and a screwdriver, alternately pushing up and pulling down the upper and lower windows with sweat pouring down my back and every sense narrowed to the focus on my life's great work, my only purpose in being: getting the goddamn window open.
And victory, in the end, was mine. I sat back on my heels and felt the sweet cold of early spring pour over my skin and into the stuffy room, sweeping out the cloying staleness with every surge of breeze.
But in the quest for freedom there was a collateral casualty. As I pulled down the upper window to try to see if anything was jammed, I recoiled from a stink bug balanced along the top beam. I was startled, annoyed, sweaty and desperate, so that when I ascertained that nothing was in fact jammed, I pushed the window right back up and ignored the crunch.
Oh dear. Sorry, little buddy.
Tuesday, April 07, 2015
stink bugs
So there are stink bugs in my house. I've noticed them off and on, over the last few years. Generally if something isn't obviously a pest, or something horrifying like a centipede (THEIR LEGS ARE HAIR AND THEY ARE LEGION), I don't kill it, both because I'm softhearted and because I'm a coward. These bugs never bit me or Simon, they didn't appear to be eating anything; they're just slow and a weird shape and they kind of sit there, or occasionally brrzzzzz into a lamp shade. So I've left them alone. Some half-conscious hunch (I must have read some kind of field guide as a kid) said "maybe they're stink bugs" so I never tried to smash them.
Out of curiosity a couple of months ago I finally looked them up ("bugs shaped like a shield"), and sure enough: stink bugs. I've never noticed anything stinky about them, but again, I've left them alone. The sources I located said that they're not pests, they don't eat anything, and they don't reproduce indoors, so I felt vindicated in not viewing them as a harm.
Well, just before I sat down to type this, a stink bug that likes to hang out in my bedroom because of the illumination from the bedside lamp was in my way on the night table, so I dug out a tissue and gently moved it. I was ever so polite, but it seemed to become quite perturbed, and buzzed harshly around the lamp so that every other sentence I've had to look over my shoulder to see what it was doing. So here I am, writing about how I've taken pains to get along with the stink bugs in my house, and I hear this brrrrzzzzt and a plop, and I look up to see it floating in my glass of water.
Well, fine then, jerk. I didn't really like you hanging out by my lamp anyway.
So I took the glass to the bathroom and emptied it into the toilet. And now my house has one less stink bug.
I just hope I haven't started a war.
Out of curiosity a couple of months ago I finally looked them up ("bugs shaped like a shield"), and sure enough: stink bugs. I've never noticed anything stinky about them, but again, I've left them alone. The sources I located said that they're not pests, they don't eat anything, and they don't reproduce indoors, so I felt vindicated in not viewing them as a harm.
Well, just before I sat down to type this, a stink bug that likes to hang out in my bedroom because of the illumination from the bedside lamp was in my way on the night table, so I dug out a tissue and gently moved it. I was ever so polite, but it seemed to become quite perturbed, and buzzed harshly around the lamp so that every other sentence I've had to look over my shoulder to see what it was doing. So here I am, writing about how I've taken pains to get along with the stink bugs in my house, and I hear this brrrrzzzzt and a plop, and I look up to see it floating in my glass of water.
Well, fine then, jerk. I didn't really like you hanging out by my lamp anyway.
So I took the glass to the bathroom and emptied it into the toilet. And now my house has one less stink bug.
I just hope I haven't started a war.
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