Cemetery Makes a Good Neighbor

It’s so so quiet here at night, surprising because of the proximity to downtown. This new neighborhood I’m in is dreamy; beautiful, peaceful, historic, walkable, vibrant. I’m only six blocks away from the action, too, and I can holler at ole Bev Perdue when I walk past her house to get there.

I don’t have Internet. Blogging on an iPhone is tedious, I realize.

The man moved here today from WNC. I can’t believe how excited I am. I thought the intrigue might pass, maybe it was just a phase? Nope, can’t wait to squeeze him tight. Wild.

I like what my life feels like right now, all clean and new and full of secret gardens and surprises.

A Quick Update, Long Overdue

Okay, how is it the end of May already?   This year is flying by, and it’s already been packed full of magical and mysterious events, happenings, and twists of fate.

Contrary to what I said a few short months ago, it looks like Raleigh has gotten its claws into me, and I ain’t going nowhere.  I just got health insurance (after eight years without!) at my stable, enjoyable job.  I have been spending loads of time with my family, which I have been unable to do in a decade and come to find out, it totally lights me up inside.  I have been collaborating with two friends on an arts collective, first show opening at the end of September; more details to come.  I have been writing a book that has been spilling out of my brain in the most delightfully easy fashion.  I’m terribly upset about the oil spill.  I have found my niche once again in the social scene of Raleigh, and I am simply amazed at the offerings that Raleigh has been serving up on a platter for me; amazing food, incredible music, booming local arts scene, and fantastic new friends with which to share all of these things.  I’m looking into buying a house.  I am more in love with my dog every day–yep, I’m that lady.  We spend a lot of time frolicking in the sunshine, and I find the most peace in each day through this.  Oh, and my mojo is back; I’ve been gettin’ digitz like you would hardly believe.  That feels good after a longlong, dry season.  But like a wise man once said, “There is always rain after a dry spell.”

In summation, I am busy and (mostly) happy, enjoying life in my hometown, which, if you had asked me ten years ago, I would have said was simply an impossibility.  Youth is so fickle.  Now that I have put away my vision of what Raleigh once was, and I have come to see it for what it now is, I am enamored, comfortable, and actively building a life here, once again.

Charmed, blessed, lucky, grateful and goofy, as always.

Aw, man…it’s muggy.

Well, it’s been a while.

I’ve been going to the chiropractor every business day for the last month, and my carpel tunnel is now under control enough that I can type for pleasure again, thank goodness, although my month-long restricted computer use has been good for me.  I’ve been painting, writing letters, socializing, and watching very little Netflix, and I assuredly feel better for it.  Although, every season of X-Files just hit instant viewing, and I might go crawl into a hole with that series, but hopefully I can remember that everything is better in moderation.  It’s hard when Mulder and Scully are involved.  Yeah, I’m that kind of nerd, and I’m not ashamed, not even a little.

The Piedmont has been catapulted into summer, after a meager two weeks of blissful spring; it was 94 degrees when I got in my car at lunch time.  I wasn’t ready for it, not just yet.  In addition to the heat, a pollen bomb went off all over town, like nothing I’ve ever seen before.  The air was so clotted with plant seed on Friday night that my headlights cut beams through the yellowish fog.   When I sit on my front porch, I can hear the pollen falling; it makes the same noise as a light mantle of snow settling on the dry leaves in the front yard.  I have the distinct sensation that sound hasn’t been traveling as well as it usually does, and my scratchy eyes have to strain to see through the haze at twilight.

The pollen has never been this thick, oppressive.  Something inside of me knows this is another hangnail of climate change; can the plants feel an impending drought, forcing them to ejaculate yellow powder in quantities that leave everyone echoing the same sentiment:  ”It’s never been this bad.”  It’s amazing, a roiling yellow ocean that rolls along with the tires of a car, swirling over and around my shoes with every step I take, staining my ankles a yellow hue that doesn’t come off with a precursory rinse.  The method is the same, but the volume has changed, and for a whole host of reasons, I am not in love with it.

Tomorrow night is the season opener for the kickball league I have joined.   I’m excited, and a little anxious, as I haven’t played the game in two decades, but I like a little adventure, and I have been known to be a touch competitive.  Hopefully I’ll meet some cool new people…there’s 18 local teams!  It’s mind boggling that there are so many adults into kickball.  Bring it.  Untouchaballs, represent!

Hey Mortality Hey

I had this real shit Monday, ya see.   Like, epically, memorably shitty.  

There’s this woman who lives in town (stick with me, it’s not like that for once) that I’ve known since we were both 14–let’s call her Nutty.  She lived four doors down and across the park when I was in high school, and we rode the same bus, and we had the same friends mostly, and we spent a lot of time together for a handful of years that were pretty enjoyable.  Then, she moved to Philadelphia for college and pretty much turned into a tragic coke whore.   In turn, this made her rude, unpredictable, unreliable and entirely self-absorbed; nothing I wanted to put up with on the regs.  As such, Nutty and I have drifted, but she’s stayed real tight with one of my oldest, closest friends, so I can’t escape her entirely. 

Nutty is a complex character, and I could never truly and accurately describe her in all her horror and beauty.  She is the bubbly teenager with braces and feet still too big that blew doors down in the high school chorus.  She is the 22-year old classical painter that will only work in Thai restaurants and sleep with men that stink.  She is the 24-year old with so much technical talent as a painter that the realism is almost eerie, but she doesn’t laugh as much because she’s fallen into an abusive relationship with a mediocre schmuck.  She is the 26-year old jewelry designer for Liz Claiborne that does too much coke and wakes up in Trump Tower with an older man, spray tanned to within an inch of his life.  She is the greedy 29-year old nicknamed Party Monster; her smiles have become forced.  

She is the 31-year old that got unreasonably drunk for a Sunday night, got jilted by another Real Winner–a real choice pick, this one–and sent a mass text declaring that it was probably a good night to die, goodbye.   She has a bunch of pills, those are convenient, I guess.  Her psychiatrist keeps giving them to her, and they keep not working because she won’t be honest with her therapists about her severe alcoholism, as she knows they’ll insist she stop drinking.  Lethal combo, brain meds and alcohol.  She sent her suicidal text and then she turned her phone. 

She didn’t die, maybe didn’t try whole-heartedly, and maybe she passed out in bed before she could go any further than the mere thought, and action of texting it.    I got to her apartment at around 11 a.m., called by our mutual friend T-Rex who had actually received the text–she knows by now I don’t have time for her triflin’ late night bullshit, and we don’t talk on the phone, anyway.  So there I am this morning, banging on Nutty’s door while T-Rex pretty much has a full-blown panic attack next to me, and every second that she didn’t answer the door, my stomach got colder and colder and colder as fear and adrenaline flooded my system, until finally I couldn’t stand that creeping feeling and I had to dial 911.  It rang twice before she mumbled, “Who is it?” 

The funny thing is: In that instant of relief that she was alive, I wanted to kill her for scaring me.   I spent all of 27 seconds inside of her apartment before I removed myself; I was yelling, and it wasn’t going to help the situation.   There’s so much history I can’t possibly relay, 17 years of some good times and a lot of the Same Old Bullshit, a lot of it offensive and hurtful and disrespectful and thoughtless, and why was I even there?  How did I get picked for that job?  And why, if we haven’t been real friends for a decade, did I damn near vomit through my tears when I drove myself back to work with shaky hands?  

I don’t know how to respond to her cry for help when I decided years ago that I simply didn’t have room for her brand of drama in my life.  I don’t want to go to her funeral, but I don’t want to hold her hand in therapy, either.  I don’t want to have to get up in the mix, but I can’t just let her die, either, when she’s trying to tell somebody, anybody that’s she desperately unhappy and can’t remember why she should bother to ever wake up again.  I called her mom–I still have the number memorized–and she glossed it over, brushed it off.  It’s not the first time she’s threatened suicide before, come to find out. 

It only takes once, you know.  No edit undo function there.   

So her family is non-responsive, and now there are talks of an intervention swirling around, and how I’d be just the perfect person to play that tough love angle because I hardly even like her as a person, but we have all this history and she trusts me, and therefore I can be honest and react authentically, with no real friendship to lose.   At least, that’s what my friends say to me.  But they weren’t there, knocking on the door. 

I don’t wanna.  So much time, so much energy, so much effort…and all I have for her in my heart is the sunshine in the park from high school, and a gritty distaste for the woman she has become.  So what do I do?  Do I help if I can because she is another human in need, or do I preserve myself and save my energy for fulfilling and enriching connections that are positive in my life?  She hasn’t listened to a damn thing I’ve said since we were 19-years old; why on Earth should I imagine she’ll listen now?

She could have been dead, and I might’ve stood there and waited for the battering ram to open the door to her blue lips and cold flesh.  I hate for her that she might have been blue.  I hate for her that she was dead for those two minutes in my mind, and that I never doubted for one second of those two minutes that she was selfish enough and stupid enough and sick enough to take the lazy, irresponsible way out.   She’s not long for the world, through accident or with purpose, and I hate that at her funeral, I’ll be cursing her name.

It’s Quiet Here

This whole living alone thing…boy, it’s been a long time since I’ve done it.  I’m coming up on two weeks that I’ve been in this house, and although there’s a cumulative 220 lbs. of Pet to keep me company, all that nonverbal meat will never get my jokes.  Hence, I am lonely. 

I’m reading 2001: A Space Odyssey, currently, and I think the main character’s solitary predicament must be rubbing off on me without my knowledge.  All of a sudden tonight, I felt like I would silently go insane if I didn’t speak to another human.  This living alone thing definitely has its pros and cons. 

It’s an adjustment period, a learning curve.  Me and the four animals (eff! how did that happen!) are all still adjusting to one another and the new parameters of our own simultaneous existences.  So far, there has been blood, shit, shredded linens, a gnawed-on couch…and then the stuff the animals have been doing.  Heh. 

I think these solitary six months will be good for me, and I think I will be extremely happy when I have a roommate again.  My car alarm went off for a second tonight, and then the dogs went apeshit in the backyard, and I just really wanted someone to be freaked out with me.  I don’t know how people live alone for their entire adult lives.  Not by choice, mostly,  I guess.

MILF Fever

One of my brother’s best friends has the hottest, most charming, delightfully flirtatious mother E V E R.  This lady is seriously killing me.  She gets me all drunk on tequila and touches her chest/plays with her hair a lot, while telling me about how she fondly recalls her days at all-girls college in Connecticut.   Clearly, it’s all innocent flirting, and I’m not trying to holler, but I always walk away from her with ants in my pants.  And so SR gets my vote as Top MILF, with her enviable house, her prestigious job, her almost-famous (totally rad) musician husband, and her Bond-girl hair working together to make me blush when she puts her hand on my arm for emphasis.   Mmmm. 

I got a job offer at a local university in the newly-remodeled theater department.  I don’t know what I’m going to do yet–keep on with the scribe gig, or sew and paint and be all stressed and harried and tired and sore all the time.  Also, it would alter the timeline of my return to Asheville, and that makes me uncomfortable.  It’s a good problem; a year ago, I was sweating having zero jobs, and now I’m going to have to decide between two good jobs that I enjoy, and both pay decently.  Some who? 

I met a rollergirl that teaches school and designs sets on the side.  She was friendly and interesting and funny, and she has this incredible stripe of silver in her hair that might be natural or it could be a dye job because it’s so strategic and flattering.  She asked for my number.   I hope she calls!

Mary McCormack, Come Back to TV Now

Now that I’ve cycled through every. single. episode of Law and Order: SVU to see each piece of leather clothing Mariska Hargitay’s stylist can put her in, I’ve moved onto blonder pastures.  It seems USA has cornered my market in celebrities to fantasize about, this most recent incarnation in the form of Federal Agent Mary Shannon on In Plain Sight.  Seriously, this woman is smoking hot, and my lawd, she’s sassy and spunky and all honest and reliable and she carries a gun and wears leather jackets all the time.  Once again, I find myself wishing for a (ficitional) lethal lady to keep me warm at night.

I wish I knew what it was exactly about me and these authoritative women with gun permits (all imaginary, of course).  I would guess it has something to do with falling victim to the ultimate male fantasy ala Tomb Raider and a host of other TV shows and video games that pair big-busted women with large weapons.  I can’t help that I think it’s so hot; I only know that I like it, which is odd, because I’m mostly a pacifist that is mostly anti-weapon.  Maybe it’s an illusion of safety, like…if I dated a woman that was skilled in self-defense and taking care of perps, I’d never have to worry about somebody getting me in my sleep.  I dunno.   Maybe it simply comes down to the fact that I find self-possessed, strong, brave women immensely attractive.

And I’m sure the fact that Mary McCormack and Mariska Hargitay are both incredible specimens of the female form has something to do with it all.

Man, I want a girlfriend.

My bad?

I think I may or may not have played a role in triggering a full-on midlife crisis with The Mechanic.  I got an email telling me that she’s fully addicted to me, all over again.  When I suggested maybe we just get it out of our system, she responded that that was a foolish idea (which, of course, it is), but that’s neither a yes or a no.  So I guess I’m going to have to make that call, and that’d be a no.  I don’t want to be a homewrecker, and I don’t want the same relationship we already had before; I know how that story goes.

Besides, I have a date this weekend with someone I think I could maybe really like, with whom I have no prior, loaded history.  We seem to have a lot in common.  We’ll see what happens.   She makes me laugh, and I like that.

Dating sure does get harder the older I get.  No two ways about that.  I have no problem making new friends, but where to meet eligible women around here is a friggin mystery.   Of course I have to go back to Asheville to go on a date with someone interesting, attractive, and gay.  Ces’t la vie.

Fortification Station

I’m all shades of fired up after a day of having to carefully listen with painstaking attention to Newt Gingrich.  Sometimes transcription can be brutal.  I could seriously feel my heart beat in my temples on several occasions from the sheer rage…and I have picture-perfect blood pressure, normally.  The hate and the lies and the propaganda and the fear-mongering and the smug nature of all it, wrapped into this psuedo-patriotic, moral package; it’s sickening. 

On days like today, it burns me to think that I signed my soul away to The Man in lengthy confidentiality agreements.  I mean, I’m seriously scared of the reprecussions of sharing, and given the subject matter of what I transcribe, I’d guess it’s not the craziest thing in the world to think I’m probably on a watch-list somewhere.  Kind of a catch-22 to know so many weird/bad/ugly/dishonest/shameful things about the corporations that run the show…and just have to sit on it.  It’s hard though, when the weight of it all starts to make me feel like I just want to hit my head on something until I fall asleep to no dreams.  This is probably why I can’t sleep–my eyes are open so far, they have a hard time closing. 

How in the fuck did I get this job?  Ha.  It’s so strange, some days; our tiny little office full of miscreants, dutifully transferring words to paper for the Big Guns, all of us inflamed.  My boss runs a late-night jazz radio station, and everyone’s known each other for years, and we’re all really concerned about grammar and punctuation.  And the ramifications of secret global practices and philosophies.  (sigh)

Suffice it to say, whatever you might think about where industry, commerce, oil, arms, food, religion, financial, pharma and a technologically-induced disconnect are leading us, sickened and weak and somehow dehumanized, you’re totally right.  Times 34.  The thing I grapple with the most is how calculating and thoughtful The Machine has been with orchestrating this global existence.  Greed scares me more than any other flaw.  Fear is the ultimate money-maker, opinion-swayer, and they’ve mastered it, driven by greed.  How much does any one person really need?  Is there a difference between 30 million and 300 million, really? 

They’ve gotten to me, too; I feel the fear.  But I’m not scared of terrrrrrrists or universal healthcare turning me commie or heathens killing God in my backyard; I’m scared of the fact that the road that 1% of the American population would have 99% of us walk can only lead to our ultimate demise as a world power, and a civilized nation.  The clock’s ticking, in so many ways, with the cancers from the foods we eat, and drugs they would shove at us while refusing us basic, affordable healthcare, and the weather that will just keep getting more extreme, and the war the war this war that war, and our resources drying up, as the population explodes into a society with a faltering education system.  The black-hating, immigrant-hating, gay-hating, mysoginists puppeteer our ‘better world’, all the while keeping an Orwellian-intrusive watchful eye on those who disagree.  They strive for a paved world, where everyone loves Jesus Christ Amen, and has an SVU or two to park in the tidy subdivision, wherein you live by the light of the TV and grill Bubba Burgers with your sanitized neighbors…unless you don’t; in which case, fuck you.  You clealry hate America.  

The upside of being privy to all this insight, via MP3, is that my long-held paranoid distrust has been validated, and now I don’t have to feel so crazy anymore that I’m slowly but surely starting to think in a long-term survival mode, realizing that I should know how to make things work in the absence of power tools, electricity, or a GPS signal to guide the way.  Ya know, just in case.   I feel like if I want to eat chicken occasionally, I had better know that I can raise it, and then muster the intestinal fortitude to pop that sucker’s head off, myself.  Some days, I feel so much sorrow to know that I am watching the slow slide to something different, something that’s going to be very hard, and very ugly, for a great many people, for a very long time.  The strange part of the equation is that I am entirely optimistic that after the hump, life will regulate, and rebuilding will begin.  I just wish I didn’t think that we will have to slog through some medieval shit to get people living right again.  But I think we will. 

Could be the impending eruption of Yellowstone, could be the statistically long-overdue plague, could be the continental ice shelf making it’s way down to Maryland, could be a civil war, could be a large-scale invasion from the east, could be a bomb.  There’s just no telling, really. 

I might be crazy, who knows, but I’m smart, and I’m observant, and I feel more tuned in and aware than the Gen Pop, on any given day.  There is a liberation mixed in with all this apocalyptic doomsday rhetoric; if we’re all living on borrowed time, we had damn well better do what we know is good and right and happy and fulfilling, while we can.  I have great hope that a better world is around a few corners, but I’m not looking forward to the journey through the rubble. 

xoxo

From the Way Back

When I was 16, I feel wildly in love with a woman far too old for me.  Problematically, she fell wildly in love with me, too.  She took the high road, because she is a good person, and she knew it wouldn’t end well on a wide variety of levels, and so we tortured ourselves for a year and a half until I found Percoset and forgot about forbidden love.  Soon after, she moved away, and we haven’t seen each other or spoken since.

Oh, Facebook, the curve balls you deliver.

And so, 15+ years after meeting The Mechanic, there she is again, in pictures and words; ones and zeroes, instead of Fawcett hair and grease-stained fingernails, live in person.  We have been emailing back and forth.  A lot.  Apparently, there are some unresolved feelings hanging static between us.  This couldn’t have surprised me more.  I have rarely thought of her this last decade, and now I find myself day dreaming, again.  These are dangerous waters we’re treading, she and I, tidal pools best left undisturbed, and yet, here we are again, exchanging heartfelt emails packed with innuendo, lamenting years missed, and rejoicing in our reconnection.  Communicating with her again has filled me with an undeniable cheer.

She’s married with children.  She misses sex with women.  She’s 40.  There is no future for us.  And yet.  And yet.

(sigh)

I can’t tell if this is just about sex, finally consummating a Victorian love affair now nearly 16 years in the past, or if it’s something more; a longing for the strange purity of what we had back then: Two people bound together by common interests, passions, dreams, ideals, and how we made each other laugh, untainted by the exchange of fluids, and the expectations and ramifications contained therein.  She was a good friend to me, and I am glad to have that back, but it’s always been so loaded with us.  I’m just not sure that if 16 years hasn’t erased the feelings, anything ever will.  I’m worried we’re going to do it all over again, fall in love from afar, and drive each other wild until one of us simply can’t stand the frustration, and walk away, once more.  I know I should stay back. I know I should, but she excites me, still.

I’m not morally bankrupt, however, and it seems to be my turn to take the high road, much as it pains me.  Oh, my sweet Mechanic, destined to be star-crossed forever.