I'm going to Sacramento tomorrow for Thanksgiving. Only as I've gotten a little bit further away from high school do I realize how incredible my family is. Not everyone has a family like I do. As a matter of fact, nobody does. I'm not judging: everyone's familial experiences shouldn't be held to any kind of standard. Everyone has their own beautiful things, and my family is by far the strongest one of my existence (though I will have to further cite Stacy Burcham as a pretty darn beautiful thing in my life... thanks pooks, for everything).
There are two things about this trip to Thanksgiving I am greatly anticipating:
1. The moment right before we pray (and before Emily lets the whoopy cushion loose), where I remember my grandfather and how Thanksgiving was the last time I saw him.
2. The Experience.
Now, number 2's full title is the Core Group Experience 2003. It's the shopping trip. My mother, three aunts, cousin and I go shopping every year on the day after Thanksgiving. But it's no regular shopping trip, no no no. We all dress the same, in shirts that have our picture on them and red vests. We also carry walkie talkies and walk in a V formation down the mall. We start at 7 and end at 10 at night. We drive in the Love Machine (Aunt Maureen's Windstar or something). This year, we have three special "guests" (KLINGONS): Aunt Theresa, my good best friend and ex roommate Lizzy Carley, and Uncle Timmy's Shiny New Girlfriend, Terii Ward. This year is special- shirts, bags, badges, cds. I made them all -- because I'm going for MVS (Most Valuable Shopper). I have yet to win it. I WILL WIN this year. OH yes.
The other part of that tradition has become for me to wear a wig. One year I wore the purpley magenta wig I had that actually looked like my hair- with an Elmo hat on the top of it. The year following, I wore a light purple and silver wig with a tiara. This year I have a shoulder length (with bangs) medium purple wig. I'm still debating what my head gear should be. most likely it'll be a sweat band. A workout band. Gotta get it tonight.
The thing is- between the wigs and mochas, there's just so much love. It's that mixture, the irreplaceable conglomeration of divinities (my irreplaceable mix used to be the scent of a shoulder, peach light, and ella fitzgerald) that brings me such joy on the trip. I cannot wait.
I got a call from the subject of the novel last night. He's getting back together with his ex-girlfriend, who I would like to argue was never his ex at all, but rather his girlfriend the entire time within his mind, explaining his craziness regarding me for the last three years. However. He did call me and we spoke of him getting together with this woman and I have come to a couple of realizations:
1. Everyone I know is getting hooked up with someone they really want to be with.
2. I am not.
Then after that, a couple of different revelations:
1. I always say I want to "be okay alone" but that's really not true. I say that because I think that if I am "okay alone" then I will be more attractive to a member of the opposite sex. So I don't really want to be okay alone, I want to be with someone else, but I think that in order to get there I have to somehow be happy without my goal. That's virtually impossible. I will never "be okay alone" if the only reason I'm doing it is to be "not alone."
2. My entire life is a Catch 22.
3. When I am sad, I produce work that is really complex and intense and has beautiful things as its subject.
4. When I am happy, I edit, write dialogue, write narrative, do the "writing" instead of the "creating," which to me denotes that I again must have the origin and the destination in order to produce art. I had a blog about that up once but I had to take it down for fear of someone reading it, but since he's in this blog anyway, here is a clip from it:
"He performed. For me, for everyone. He told me once that he only writes songs when he’s happy. It’s so funny, because I only create when I’m sad, or when I’m ready to approach something I’ve left alone for a long time, something deep or piercing. Why is it that we visit our art at such different times? It’s the way we deal with our pain. He reminds himself how he ignores his pain because he’s unable to produce in an artistic way when he’s upset or broken. He produces when he is happy, settled, content, still. I remind myself how obsessed I am with self-inflicted pain by writing about it, working it over, kneading it, weaving it, unravelling it, knitting it again, reliving it over and over and over again until I can’t see where the original thread even started.
And the girl, his Hannah, the knife- she told him at one point that she would have to know that she was more to him than the music. But the music was never even on the same scale- how unfair of her to make him choose between everything that caused him pain and everything that was organically happy for him. We must have both: the origin and the end. And the unfairness of it all is that the choice must be made if you're with the wrong person."
And the real unfairness of it all is that I made the choice for a long time, and never reaped the benefits. All I had was the Origin, never the Destination. Now someone else is reaping the benefits of the sacrifice I made. I supported, and supported, and supported, with the hope that I would be able to enjoy what I was helping to fix. I don't want it anymore, it's just so unfair that my presence through those years is being ignored.
Ah, but at least I have the Origin AND the Destination now.
Pet peeve of the day:
"Mmmm buh-bye."
This closing is by far the worst closing ever. If the Mmm is done quickly, it's actually not that bad:
"Mbuh-bye."
Or if the buh is removed, not that bad:
"Mbye."
But the forced Mmm, followed by the drawn out Buh-bye... it's so annoying. Some people go as far as to add in a little laugh inside the Mmm.
"Mmhmm buh-bye."
This is unacceptable.
Just cut out the freaking Mmm. It's SO unnecessary.
To the Call Center People of the World. Please. No Mmhmm buh-byes, no Mmm buh-byes. Just please. Don't do it. It's annoying.
Leaving today for Chicago. There's frost on the ground outside, ice on the streets. I'm wondering if this trip will move me or leave me. I hope it leaves me. I love road trips. I'm taking lots of tshirts and cds. That's all, though. That's all.
Wondering today about symmetry. I have a mirror on my desk today and I'm looking at a poster on the wall for the movie Addicted to Love through the mirror. Matthew Broderick's face looks SO off center and strange, and Meg Ryan's left eye all of a sudden looks SO much smaller than it had before. Funny how when, reversed, the little incongruencies are so much more prevalent.
The reason is because we're just so used to looking at their faces in a certain way- from a certain perspective. The symmetry of it is unnoticed because we view the regular way as the normal way. Once it's switched, we get thrown for a loop-- the things we once saw as normal are now really irregular and off kilter.
It's our own fault. Why don't we look at things through mirrors more often?
So what if I flip my life around, view it from the reverse perspective? I believe suddenly that I'm wrong for wanting to do art, wrong for wanting love, wrong for living the way I live, dressing the way I dress, eating the way I eat. All my incongruencies will be highly contrasted... Will I end up seeing that I'm lopsided? Or will I discover that my lopsidedness is really just an impetus for propulsion- building up momentum with an off-balance load of clothes. Junk inside my brain, inside my self, galumping and thudding along until it gets off the ground with great speed.
The only problem is that I don't know how to shift my perspective (I think I just heard someone whisper my name, but nobody was there...). How do you see yourself from outside yourself, or to the side of yourself? How do you do that? This blog should be called The Posing of Stupid Questions by Rachel Roellke. I'm renaming it.
