So, I’m having a bit of a cout d’etat with my Higher Power.

Yesterday, after having spent the day unenthusiastically
clicking on administrative job listings, too disenchanted and lethargic to
actually apply to any, I took out the Jerrold Mundis book How to Get out of
Debt, Stay out of Debt, and Live Prosperously.
I’ve been reading it through at various intervals over the last few months,
having been hanging out with a group of folks who practice the kind of actions
and principles he suggests for about a year now.

I sat with my dinner, started to read, and here was his
suggestion. At the top of a piece of paper write, If I could have, do, or be
anything, it would be… and then he listed
several categories of our lives, like Work/Career, Relationships, etc. As soon
as I read the prompt, I started to well up. A bit surprisingly to me, having done a lot of similar work through the Artist’s Way before.

As I wrote “Work/Career” at the top of a page, I came
to the end of my first sentence: “I work with a group of creative people to …”
I had no idea what came next. I don’t know
what, in my grandest or meekest dreams, the end of that sentence is. And I
started to cry. I sobbed at having no clue what I wanted to do with my life, or
even presently, which I believe has made it that much harder for the “Universe”
to provide it for me. “What happens in Vagueness, stays in Vagueness.”

So, I took out another sheet of paper to try an exercise
that my friend said she did before moving out to SF a year or so ago. She wrote
down all the areas that interested her, careers, in bubble circles on a page.
Then she held her hand over each, and imagined to feel what it would really feel like to her to do that
work. So, I did that. I wrote down “Admin” in one bubble, because I was
curious, and because it’s my fallback. And I held my hand on that part of the
page, and started to cry again. None of the things on the page actually spoke
to me, except one.

And it just feels so “stupid” to even admit it. I shared it
last night with a group of folks who work on the specific debting issue of
“underearning,” and it was hard for me to admit it there, in a safe group – but
out loud. And because as soon as I even try to think about it, all these
attendant flashes — “That’s so unrealistic” “That’s not sustainable” “No one makes that
a full-time job” “You need training” “You need money for classes” “It takes years” — came up even as I sat in my kitchen, soggy eyed, and circled
it over and over. Actress.

See, you pulled back, didn’t you? “Actress, really?” No one
makes a full-time job out of that. Or, as I’ve heard so often about my Poetry
degree, “Glad you studied something lucrative!” FUCK ALL YOU STUPID VOICES.

You all suck. Not, “you,” reader you. Just “you,” stupid
voices and nay-sayers and assholes, who live in and outside my head.

I don’t even want to talk too much about it. It feels so
vulnerable. And open to attack.

And yet, unless I actually share this interest with people,
I won’t be able to get ideas on how to make a viable path and eventual living at it.

Most people actually do
know that I’m interested in performance. It’s been something that I’ve talked
about and been engaged in for years. But I guess I never really let people know
that it’s really something that I
want to do. As in really. There
are just so many messages to contradict it that it’s so hard to even let myself
hold the idea in my own kitchen!.

Any and all of that said, I need to be earning money now, in
a stable job that will enable me that stability and the room to goddamned
breathe in order to pursue anything in that vein. I’m not an idiot. I know it’s
going to take a lot of work, and in order to get to a place where I can do and
engage and even pay for that work, I’ve got to get a fucking job.

So, the cout d’etat. My morning pages this morning looked
like the transcript of Southie dock-workers. Or the script from an episode of Deadwood. “Motherfucking” and “G-ddamned” being the most
common.

I’m tired, people. I feel like I’ve been struggling against
this underearning stuff for … ever. The fall-back on mindless, absolutely
mindless work, because I don’t have the
balls to really try for something better, something that might actually use the braincells G-d put in my head to do more than alphabetize a stack of invoices.

So, I told my HP this morning, that either something
changes, or I’m out. You!, Miracle Maker – make some fucking miracles then.

The irony of long-term job search is that the longer you are
at it, for me, the less enthused or motivated I become. Which, is completely
counter-productive. At the times when I need to remain as vigilant and
productive, I become lethargic and desperate.

Honestly, if I hear one more person suggest something, I’m
going to stab them in the eye with a fork. Don’t you THINK I’ve been doing
that??? I want to scream at these poor,
innocent, just-want-to-help friends and acquaintances.

I am where I am right now. I am angry, frustrated,
desperate, and sad. I’m working on stuff around relationships that is making me
even more techy and vulnerable. And I’m
stretched as far as I can go. I told my HP this morning that if he/she/it/they
wants me to continue on this, then you’ve gotta fucking throw me a bone here.
You have to make me able to
support myself if you want me to do the work that I actually believe I’m here
to do – to get me there, you have to help me here.

I am tapped out and exhausted. I have no room for patience
at the moment. September is arriving, and I have just enough to cover rent. That’s
it. I am undergirded by a thrashing river of anxiety over money and how to feed
myself and my cat. I am tired. And if my Higher Power does indeed want the best
for me, and wants me to be “happy, joyous, and free,” then It better do
something quick, because I’m fucking over it. 

A friend asked me an interesting question yesterday. I was
telling her that I wasn’t sure about reading some of my poetry at the reading,
wondering if it was appropriate, or what my motivations were, if it was the
right forum for it. Not wanting to titillate; not wanting to overexpose. And,
frankly, not wanting to be hella uncomfortable afterward.

She asked me if reading these poems would bring me closer to
the woman I wanted to be, or farther away from her?

I couldn’t answer her. It was a good question.

I get tired of people assuming that I’m an impervious,
white-bre(a)d suburbanite. I get tired of people assuming that I have my shit
together. Or that I haven’t been through anything hard because I am white and straight. That I am worth overlooking in the world because of stereotypes and assumptions.

So, part of the work that I do is to completely turn that on
its head and say, Here motherf*ckers, see this here scar, see this wound, see
this pain, see this triumph or redemption or trauma – now don’t you tell me that I don’t belong here, that what I
have to say isn’t valid.

Don’t you shove me off into a corner because you think that
I’m not like you. And, please, ultimately, don’t assume that you and I have
nothing in common, and moreso, please don’t assume that I don’t need you
because of an assumption that I have my shit together.

I’ve had several people tell me in recent months that
they’re actually “glad” to see that I haven’t got my shit together. That I’ve
been humanized when I share things that are actually going on.

Now, part of this is them, and their own assumptions and even selective hearing, but
part of it, too, is me, and keeping myself to myself. There is a time and a place, and the right people, to share
things with, and I know and have learned that lesson painfully when putting my trust in the wrong people. But also, people want in, and I want out. I want out
from behind the wall of, Everything is fine.

Everything is not
fine. Or at least, everything isn’t all the time.

This isn’t to say that things aren’t good or even great.
It’s just to say that I’m fucking human too, and I’d kindly ask you to stop
placing your readings and interpretations of me as “different” aside.

So that’s part of what the poetry is about. It’s to say very
clearly and succinctly that I don’t have it all together. That I’m as human as
anyone. But, too, my work goes a little, or a lot farther beyond that
sometimes, in a way that can be alienating in the opposite way.

Now you know I’m so
fucked up, or have had so many
problems or experiences, you can’t relate to me. Now I do seem tainted or
scarred, and now you’re not sure how to relate to me, yet again. Stepping down
from a microphone at which I’ve revealed stuff about mental institutions,
incarcerations, or back-alley sex … are we now going to talk about the latest
Steve Carell movie?

Maybe. I mean, it IS
art. It’s a magnification of things. It’s deep exploration of things. It’s not
normal conversation.

But, I don’t know. I can hear my friend’s question about
whether this is bringing me closer or further from who I want to be, and I
don’t know.

I do know that I need
to write what I need to write. No matter what, it’s what I do, and what I’ll
continue to do. But. Do I need to read it in front of a group of my friends and
peers? Do I need to throw it out like a vat of squirming insides for you to see
and perhaps recoil?

And, again, do I need to throw it out there too like some
sort of membership card of artists or fucked up people? Of people who’ve
“really been there, man”?

Is it enough to know within myself that I am not a cookie
cutter white suburban flake with aspirations of account management?

Is it enough to know, that being said, that I still value and
idealize all of that suburban fantasy? That I do now see all the advantages of the place, if not the way, I was brought
up?

There are experiences in my life which were painful. Most
people have those. I write about them, and have been writing about them with
more specificity and honesty than ever. Where is the place for that writing?

I’ve decided that I’m going to bring the work I was
intending on reading to my writing group on Thursday, and ask them their
opinions. They’ll get my hesitation, and they get my writing, however raw it
can be.

There’s something here about balance, I think, that I
haven’t quite grasped. A balance between needing and wanting to prove to you
that I’m not some porcelain doll easily managing the chaos and serenity of
life. And not throwing that information at you like a spiteful attack.

Underneath them both, I suppose, is my own desire to be seen
fully and in a whole way. My desire to allow myself to be seen fully and in a whole way, without protection that
perhaps my poised demeanor may give, and without the protection that your “back
away slowly” provides.

I’m not sure how to do that yet.

Because the reality is that I am all of it. I am both the
poised person who is articulate and brave. And I am the wounded teenager with
scars of emotional self-cutting who wants to hide or repulse.

In the end, though, I suppose, it’s largely about
self-validation. That as I begin to absorb and own the disparate parts of
myself, others will be more able to see them.

Most people who meet me at first would never imagine I were
funny. I appear too erect to be something as bawdy as funny. Nor would most
people imagine that I were walking with the shadow of a past that was insane.

But, I know I’m funny. I know I’d like to be more open about
it. I know that my past was fucked up and my ideas still need help. And I’d
like to be more open about that.

I’m not sure. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the poems I’ve
got. But whatever happens, I have a date with a mic in two weeks, and some of
myself will be spoken there. 

Yesterday, I went dancing with girlfriends. I prised myself
off my couch and away from the gathering winds of chaos of the 2^nd half of Harry
Potter’s final book, and actually put on
make-up.

The thing about being unemployed, not having requirements on
my time is that I’m free to walk around make-up free and sneaker-clad for as
many days in a row as I’d like. But, I’ll admit. This gets boring. It was fun
to get dressed up, try on different heels, put in some gel inserts so as to
soothe what would be rioting feet, and hop in the car.

I could see from my place on the couch what my evening would
be like if I didn’t go out – if I did as I usually do, and flake out. It would
consist of a Saturday night with me, my cat, and a book. Not a bad evening, but
not a social, outward, expansive one either. Even from my lethargic vegetative
state, I could see that should I go out, I knew I’d smile. I knew that likely,
I’d smile like a grinning fool the entire time. And what do you know? I did.

There’s a funny thing that happens when girls go out
dancing, and especially when they aren’t drinking. We all tend to dance in a
circle. Some brave guy will take this as an invitation to step into the middle
and dance his peacock dance, and we’ll all dance a little “ha ha, very funny”
and smile, and eventually, the guy will realize that none of us are stepping
forward to grind with him, and he’ll leave. Looking a little chagrined, but
also a little cocky at having been in the middle of a circle of attractive,
gyrating women.

This is no knock on men. It’s more just a show of why we women go out dancing in the first place. Sure, it
used to be, years ago, about grinding, and finding someone to go home with, but
that’s just not what it’s about anymore. It’s much more fun, and much more
engaging and community-making.

I was dancing with women who were all older than me, but
could cut a rug eagerly and enthusiastically. The great thing about dancing
with other women, is that you get to observe the moves they do, subtly copy
them, incorporating their moves into your own repertoire as you see how they
fit on you. It becomes an interplay. A collaborative dance, in a way, as each
of us watch the other, copy sometimes funny flailing, sometimes a specific arm wave.

I love it. I love to dance. My hips and back and neck are
feeling it today, but, my feet are not(!).

The t.v. screens all showed the videos of the songs the dj
was playing, and they were weird. Weird motherf’in videos. Having fallen out of the tech
generation without a television, cable, or even the ability to watch shows on
my laptop, now that everything else has been upgraded and my laptop can’t sync
with it, I said to my friend as I watched the screens showing strippers,
animatronics, and a rather weird video where men realize there’s another human
male head at their crotch, that it’s like a revelation: “Images!” I yelled.
Moving images. It’s honestly something I rarely see anymore, and these were
such unusual ones that for minutes at a time, half the dance floor would stop
dancing, just to watch the extreme oddity of whatever was happening on the
screen. It was weird. Things
change.

I won’t tell you that I’m not a little trepidatious about
what I wrote yesterday about sex and whatnot. That I feel a little wide-eyed at
the fact that I wrote so honestly. But, also, I realize that this is why I
write here, to put down things that will help me in the rest of my life, as a
record, or a guide. Because of having written what I did yesterday, I feel
it’ll be easier to say these things out loud when I read in a few weeks.

When I was taking a poetry class at school, a teacher said
to me, if you’re writing about a blow job, then write about a blow job, don’t
talk around it in obscure or flowery language. I was aghast, and taken aback,
and more than a bit hurt. But his criticism helped to change the face of my
writing immensely. In vehement “I’ll show you” reaction to his feedback, which included the words
sentimental and cliché, I started to write starkly, unemotionally. The emotion
in it certainly conveyed, but not because I told you “how I feel.” It changed
the shape of my writing.

As I was thinking about it this morning, in reaction to him
also, I wrote a poem called “Titillation and Censorship,” which wrote closer to
what I was talking about. It’s title also brings up one of my fears about writing about
this stuff — it’s not intended to
titillate. It’s not intended to be erotica. It verges on that. It may indeed
titillate you, and that’s a perfectly fine and welcome reaction, but that’s not
its point. And so, as I think about reading this stuff to an audience, I
imagine some uncomfortable squirms in chairs, or maybe an unconscious adjusting
of a crotch here and there, some pink-cheeked flushes of embarrassment. Will that happen? I don’t know.

But as I begin to write or am writing more specifically about
my thoughts and experience about sex than I ever have, I’m writing words that I’ve likely
never said out loud except maybe to a
lover. And that’s another part of the liberation of these poems.

I will rarely tell you what it is that I’m wanting or
needing in bed. I close down, and I feel too shy or ashamed to tell you what I
want. In the times when I feel I have expressed it, I’ve felt disappointed, and
so conclude to continue remaining silent. In fact, I had one lover who I told
what I needed, and who actually said, “Too bad.”

Writing poems that include language that you might find in a
smut magazine or an erotic story means that I have to say these words out loud.
Not yet able to say them in my intimate life, I am forcing myself to say them
in my poetic life, to become comfortable saying them – or at least not mute.

Does it still scare me, thrill me, and sure, even turn me on
a little to write and read these poems? Yes. Am I going to do it anyway?
Apparently. 

Apparently a lot happened yesterday. I found out a friend
had died from cancer, and I found out another is pregnant.

The balance there seems rather cosmic in timing.

To be perfectly honest, though, when I got the news that my
friend had died, I didn’t really react. Not out of numbness, but out of
emotional tapped-out-ness. Really, there’s only so much a person can handle,
before the rest just starts to feel like water off a duck’s back. I wonder if
that’s a mere inkling of what happens to nurses and doctors in hospitals and
hospice centers.

I don’t mean to be callous. I did find myself thinking about
this person as I fell asleep last night, remembering how he’d been a member of
my circle of friends when I moved to SF and started to make friends. We were
never close though. He was just sort of around, a jovial presence. But, I’m
tapped out.

I’ll call my friend back who called to tell me so in a
voicemail, and I’ll look online at the details on the service, and I’ll
probably even go. But, I just don’t have the grief to spare at the moment.

I continued on with my day after I had listened to the
message. I read my Harry Potter (my
friend wasn’t able to get the final book on tape, but luckily I bought it hard copy the
first time I was reading the series and was much too impatient to wait for it
to come back at the library). I made the dinner of salmon and whole wheat pasta
and spinach that I’d intended to cook all week. I talked with another friend
about plans for today.

I. just couldn’t. I hope you know what I mean. After the
already shock of earlier this week finding out a friend of mine had used again,
and the awful dream that brought my friend Aaron’s death back front and center
– there’s only so much. And there are others who can carry the burden, or the
blessing, of remembering this latest friend who passed away. Right now, I need
to refill the well, not tap it further. There’s not really much left.

In that same vein, I’ve been asked/volunteered to read at a
poetry/creative writing reading at the end of this month. And I’m not sure what
I’ll be writing about. I have one piece that I think I’ll read, and another
that I’ve written which I’ll have to check out – both deal with the same
subject, and I don’t want to overdo it. They’re both about sex without intimacy
basically. And it’s what I’m working on in my “internal” life now, and so, it’s
what I’m writing about.

It’s a little exposing (says the woman who read
next-to-naked on a stage earlier this year) to read this stuff out loud –
particularly to a group of friends and acquaintances with whom you’ll have to
chat and make small talk after you’ve just read a poem about how BDSM worked
where nothing else did.

Not like any of those experiences are current. I haven’t had
sex in a year, now. And stayed rather close to first and second base since
then.

Part, I think, of my writing is about exorcising things
past. Or excavating them. When I wrote my thesis, none of that stuff was
current information or experience. It was all ages ago, and in writing it,
although it was evocative of emotions – sometimes too many emotions – I knew
that it wasn’t current emotions.

It’s the same, I think, with this new set of work. Indeed,
it dovetails with some of the thesis work, which wove three strands of my
experience – sex, addiction, and family chaos. The same thread of experience,
interpretation, and thought around sex are being picked up here. As if there’s
still more to say, or explain, or release, or validate.

The way that I’d held sex and intimacy before were not, and
still aren’t quite, healthy. But that doesn’t make them wrong or bad. It just
means, for me, that I still have feelings about how I misused the power of it.
That I still want to parse it out, explore it, and release it. It’s very much
the same way that I felt about the work in my thesis – knowing it wasn’t
current, but knowing that it was sitting like a fetid lake inside a
light-devoid cave.

The act, for me, of writing about it, is an act of siphoning
off the poison. About exposing light to these places, and helping them out, so
that I don’t feel infected by them, but rather simply accepting of, and perhaps
even compassionate toward, them.

Most of the work I’m doing now is around relationships and
sex. The same isolation and retreat that happens for me around this subject, I
believe, is the same thing that keeps me from doing work I enjoy or valuing the
work I do and what I can offer. It’s all back to the lovely same swamp of low
self-esteem; and cliché and junior high as that may seem, even to me, it’s got
to be cleared, however “lame” it seems.

So, I guess I do know, really, what I’ll be reading about in
a few weeks. I’m not totally stoked on exposing it, but I know, too, that I’m
not ever going to be the only person to
have experienced the feelings behind the behaviors, if not the actual behaviors themselves. I know that in sharing
myself honestly, I’m cracking fissures in the sides of that cave. I know that
I’m moving myself out of shame and into simple acceptance.

A friend of mine says often, that the work we do on this
planet is not about self-improvement, but about self-acceptance. And I agree
with her. I don’t need to be “better,” I need to be myself. I need to begin to
understand that there’s something to value in that self, and as I’ve begun to
say here, I’m beginning to see that there is.

The metaphor I’ve been using recently has been thus: If I
were a pie or a pie chart, up until now, I’ve seen only a tiny slice of myself.
This tiny sliver of who I think I am or know myself to be. But, there is, I’m only beginning to see now, an entire fucking pie. For all of my life, I’ve
seen the sliver of myself, and thought and believed that that was all there
absolutely was about myself. Now, I have no idea, yet, what the rest of the pie
of myself contains, but the miracle is that I finally see that there is,
indeed, a rest of the pie. 

Despite my best efforts to find work in the art world –
gallery, museums, auction houses – I’m currently in the process of interviewing
with two different Jewish organizations. This, was not on purpose. But I
suppose I feel a mite lucky to have the instant niche market to appeal to, as a
member of the tribe myself.

It’s funny to me, because this all happened once before. In
2009, I’d quit my job at a property management firm, in order to pursue
something “more creative.” As this was at the heart/beginning of the recession,
jobs in the arts were hard to find, and even harder as I wasn’t really sure
what I meant by that: “a job in the arts.” After several months of Desperately
Seeking Sus—I mean Work, I woke up one morning, and asked myself what else I
might be interested in.

The sentence came back to me, Well, I like being Jewish. 

…
And so I went onto Google, typed in “Jewish San Francisco,” and applied to
every job that was listed. And in fact, I wasn’t chosen for the job to which I
applied and was interviewed for at what would become my new employer – the
hiring manager passed my resume along to someone else in the organization, and
I got that job instead.

I was thinking this morning about how it would have been,
perhaps, if I’d stayed with that “Jewish job,” as it was being cut to half-time
around the time I got into school. What it would have been like to stay in my
apartment in San Francisco, commute in my not-to-be-stolen car, and maintain
that job.

And I realized that my whole life changed when I moved to
the East Bay. Something, I, of anyone, could not have planned or foresaw.

By being here, I immediately eliminated my number one
complaint about San Francisco – the weather. For anyone who doesn’t know,
summer as we might know it elsewhere (perhaps in places that are now melting in
the heat) is not what it is in San
Francisco. And being a hardened NY/NJ girl, I’d become accustomed to a certain
predictable amount of thawing period before moving back into cooler months. The
East Bay, though foggy in the earlier morning, still, is much warmer than San
Francisco, and my poorly heated body is much more relaxed.

For another, by moving here, I’ve been able to form
friendships with people I never would have met, and become closer to those I met
at school. By being here, I’ve had to reach out to folks in a way I didn’t have to in San Francisco, because I’d established
friendships already – who needed more.

That mentality came to bite me after a while in Oakland,
when I really wasn’t reaching out to new friends, but was no longer going back
across the bridge to visit old friends. Something had to change – and, as
always, it was me.

By being here, I got to meet folks who I would host at the
art show I held last summer. By being here, I get to participate in more,
though still infrequent, poetry readings of friends. And, by being here, I’ve
had to come to the other side of this school adventure without a secure job,
and start again.

I watch as I struggle with my ego against applying for jobs
that I would have been a shoo-in for about 10 or even 5 years ago, but which
now feel so draggy, and … “beneath me.” Surely, there’s a lot to learn about
humility here, and yet, I also feel more than ever that I have something more
to offer than I had felt before.

There is a significant amount changing, and it’s not just
external, of course. What sort of tipped me into this course of thought this
morning was what a Jewish friend said to me once, that when you move, you
change your Mazal.

I had no idea what she meant. I’d only ever heard the word
“Mazal” connected with “Tov,” and assumed it just simply meant
“Congratulations,” or “Good Luck.” But, she told me, that Mazal meant more like
Fate or Spirit. That by changing where you live, you change your fate. (“Tov,”
by the way, does mean “good.”)

I am not getting interviews for jobs within the art world
now. But I’m not so worried about it. I’m still applying to them pell mell,
willing perhaps to do more grunt work in that realm than I would in any other,
but, as I’ve had the experience of learning, perhaps there’s a better plan for
me. And maybe that work is not right now, or not in this way.

When my friend suggested I try to hold the job search more
lightly, she equated it to dating. You go on a date with someone, you are
curious, interested to see if this is a good fit, but you don’t throw yourself
off the Golden Gate if an okCupid date doesn’t come off as a match. I was,
however, ready to do so with the job application roller coaster.

What I thought this morning, though, was that perhaps job
interviewing for me isn’t like dating, but could be more like how I held the auditioning for
plays that I’d done in December and January. When I was going out for these
auditions, I was thrilled just to go and have the fun of it. It really didn’t
matter to me whether I got the part, I was happy just to try; to see the
people, to see how this worked, to put my best effort out there, and really really
let go of the results, because I honestly
wasn’t so interested in the results. I was interested in the process.

Observing this about myself was a stroke of interesting in
itself, as someone who often has cared and markedly noted what you thought of
me. Noting that I wasn’t actually concerned when I bombed terribly, which I
assure you I did at least once – there’s a tape of it, and if I ever become a
politician or famous, you’ll see it(!) – but that I was more intrigued by the
process.

Now, sure, it might be a pretty marked leap to apply the
same thrill of interest to the job hunt, but there are a lot of the markers
that are the same. I have something to offer, whether it’s a good fit or not, I
have no idea. I can show up prepared to the best of my ability, and I can let
it go when I’ve done my piece, as there’s nothing more that I can do, except continue
moving forward, whatever their decision may be.

And as to, “changing the course of my life” by moving? I
think it really did. I think it shook me out of the grooves I was in, and
demanded that I make and find new ones. It was not a comfortable transition,
and it wasn’t a quick one either. But, the reality is that subtly, perhaps, my
trajectory has changed. I am not precisely the
person I was when I moved to the East Bay. For one, I’m warmer. 

I’ve been listening to the Harry Potter books on tape. I love it. They’re read by this award-winning British guy, with a thousand character voices. I’d listened to the first
three when one of my best friends from the east coast sent me a thumb drive
with the audio books and photos from when she came to visit me a year ago. I
didn’t begin to listen to the next several until recently.

Mostly, it’s because that’s when people start to die, and
although reading some of the more gruesome or shocking parts is hard of itself,
somehow I couldn’t quite bring myself to listen to them happening. Indeed, now that I have begun to listen to the last
several, it’s quite possible for me to sometimes stop in the middle of walking
and stare wide-eyed and transfixed as a particular bit of action or revelation
is happening on my iPod.

I had to stop listening last night before bed, as I knew
what the next chapter would be, and I couldn’t hang with hearing it so close to
dream time.

When I went on one of my last dates, I was asked what books
I read or what are my favorites. And sad(?) to say, the Harry Potter series is what came to mind. I was a hold-out. I
wasn’t one of those who stood outside of bookstores at midnight waiting for the
next edition, though, surely, had I begun reading when they had, maybe I would
have.

But I have this thing that tells me that anything that a
watershed amount of people like can’t be good. That people are sheep, and
whatever they’re into can’t possibly be any good at all, and they have poor
taste that tells them that cotton candy is a delicacy.

Attitude problem.

The HP books were the
second thing I’d scoffed virulently and vehemently before giving way, and
reading the first one about 4 or 5 years ago. I can’t even remember how or why. But it was certainly
after all of them came out, so once I did crack that first one… I had full
access to dive-bomb read through all of them in a row. I’m pretty sure that I
read the entire series in the course of a week. – They are fat books. And I got little sleep. *so worth it*

The first thing that I scoffed at, I’m still too embarrassed
to admit here. It was a band that got popular when I was in high school, and as
all the popular kids began to wear the t-shirts and talk about the shows, I
thought, loftily, how stupid they were just to jump on the bandwagon that
everyone else had – that if it weren’t popular, they wouldn’t like the band. So
it was several years, too, before I gave that band a listen, and in fact, fell
in love with it – and it remains one of my closet favorites of all time.

The thing about the Harry Potter series is that I now dive-bomb through them, I
realize, at particularly intense or stressful times in my life. I last read the
whole series about a year and a half ago, when I was on a break from school,
and I just wanted to retreat from the whole damn world.

People often say how reading was their first addiction, and I
can fall into that category as well. The great thing about the HP series is that it’s transportive, relatable, and well-written.

When I had the Twilight
book forced upon me by a friend, giving her the same reluctant, “You of all
people can’t be one of the sheep, can you?” look, I read it. And then I read the
rest. But, this was a different kind of read than the HPs. This, was not good writing. Sure, it was/is addictive writing; it’s over-emotional,
and relatable to that angsty teen love thing – she captures that really well.
But, are the sentences well written? I don’t think so. Is it a book that will
be called a masterpiece? Probably not. Did I read them all through with fervor
just the same? Well, yes.

I suppose there’s two points here then. One, is that I can
be a stubborn and lofty fool. Dismissing things others suggest, feeling that I
know better. And this is a streak that
is NOT just around books, but around most everything. I think I know the best
way, and I will be damned to take suggestions from you, whoever you are – what do you know. Luckily, or
painfully, I get a lot of chances to see where my ideas only get me so far, and
then, fortunately, I do have others’ wisdom and suggestions to pull on. But it
often takes me a long large time to get to the point when I’m willing to listen
and then to actually put those suggestions to action.

The second point is that, yes, indeed, I am escaping into
these books right now. I am feeling stressed by the realities of life, and yes,
I would like a little magic, if you don’t mind. Sure, there are a thousand
other books to read, as my date readily pointed out – sounding a little
doubtful that I actually have degrees in English. But, I don’t, right now, want
something that, as my friend put it recently, will subtly shift my soul; I do
want cotton candy. I know what it is. I know its caloric value. But, it’s what
the feverish part of my worried brain needs to soothe it.

I just went through a whole series of memoirs, mostly of
people who were fucked up, and maybe now are less fucked up. Redemption stories
are great; but struggle against self and others is what I have in my waking
life – I’m a little over it in my “hobby” life.

So, as I listen to the last half of the 6^th Harry
Potter book, knowing as I do, that it’s
about to turn devilishly dark for the next while, I’m not sure what I’ll do.
But, like Pringles, once you pop … and maybe I’ll pick up something lighter for
counterbalance. 

I was sitting out front my apartment building yesterday in the afternoon sun, waiting for my friend to pick me up. My property manager drove up the driveway, rolled down his
window and called jovially, “Contemplating the nature of life? It’s a good
art!,” smiled, waved, and drove away.

It was amusing to me because lately, I have been contemplating
the nature of life. I’ve been thinking about the importance of it all. How
important are our lives, humans, as we struggle with what and who we’ll be,
going through manias, depressions, family events – what real impact or
point is there?

I don’t want to seem like I’m all nihilistic or depressed; that’s not it – it’s just why is it important? We didn’t really do much to evolve
to be here — it was sheer luck and Nature that we are, and what difference does
it make? How meaningful is it?

We are creatures who make meaning from things. It’s in our
nature and wiring to create connections between things in order to survive –
but, on the grand scale, 1 out of 8 billion, or even in fact our whole 8
billion – why? Who cares? So, there’s life, we got some, other souls didn’t.

Animals got some – are their lives “significant?” Does it
matter to them that they are alive, but to procreate? Does it matter if we do?
Now going against the one purpose of our destiny and make-up?

Does it matter if I date or not? If I am happy or not? If I
enjoy my life while I’m here and have it, or not? Well, certainly it matters to
me; certainly I want to live in this
world reasonably happy, as do you, but in the end, the final make up – does it
matter?

Sure, it’s great and I want to help others be reasonably
happy in this life and share mine with them, but, on the whole, does it matter?
There really isn’t a great “why are we here?” We just happened to make it. We
get tools and an environment to rub up against that will shape us, as all homo
sapiens before us. But.

When the planet is finally rid of us, through global
warming, disease, or the eventual demise of the sun, did it matter that I paid
59cents for organic carrots instead of 69cents? Will it have mattered who the
2012 election went to? Or even, the 2004?

Does this make my life and lifetime more or less precious to
me? Neither. That’s not really my question. I don’t want to diminish or elevate
the grand fact of being alive, and certainly in light of recent human events,
I’ve been reminded how tenuous and sinewy my/our lives are. I’m certainly glad
to have this life. That’s not what I’m questioning.

I’m questioning, not on the small scale of “does it matter
to my friends and family that I exist,” which I believe it does, as do they to
me – but rather, What is the worth of all the chaos, all the hype, all the
struggling – or conversely, all of the joy?

I am a believer in the sentiment that, When the light is
turned on in one person, the whole world is illuminated. I do believe our joy
or sorrow or anger has a marked effect on the world around us. But. Does it
matter?

I watched a squirrel this morning dig in the garden to bury
or unbury something. In 3 years, he’ll be dead. Will it have mattered?

It’s hard to talk about this without alarming people, or
getting their hackles up in defense. But really, Does it matter that you have a
Lexus or Prius or Bus Pass? Does it matter that Snookie is pregnant when
countless women are infertile? Will it have mattered that your life was spent
homeless, hungry and angry, or that mine was spent sheltered, clothed, and
educated? Will it have mattered that you loved or broke hearts or isolated? On
the whole scale?

If I believe the world is illuminated by one happiness, then
yes, it matters to us.

But still. ?

I suppose another reason for discontinuing the blog for so
long is that when you’re unemployed, and on the job search, there’s not much to
report. Not that when you’re employed, all there is to talk about is work, but
being on the job hunt, it tends to become the primary focus of thought and not
of much interest to others.

A psychological hurdle I did get past during this several month job hunt was to get past my
attachment to every job I applied for. I came to see it as this steep and time-collapsed manic-depressive wave – get SUPER excited and apply for a
job-that-is-everything-I-could-ever-want; either don’t hear back from them, or
hear back and find out, in fact, it is not everything-I-could-ever-want, and
plunge into the depths of despair.

Not pleasant to report from there, and not pleasant to experience
day in and out. Finally, after really recognizing that as I hadn’t heard from
one company within a day and watched my mood plummet as though it were a
Looney Tunes anvil, I found myself tearing on the phone to a friend that I just
couldn’t go through this emotional roller coaster all the time, or any more.

She suggested that I try to hold the search with more
curiosity rather than attachment. “Hmm, this sounds like an interesting
position, I’ll be interested to see what happens.”

This, has helped immensely. But, it’s also taken a lot of
the drama out of daily living! To the positive and negative ends of that. Lack
of drama can equal less exhaustion, but the ho-hum answer to “So what have you
been up to?” as, “Just applying for jobs, interviews, and whatnot,” not the
fodder for the great American blog.

That said, back to what I said a few days ago, about trying
to inject a little levity into the daily slog, I have been managing to have a
bit of fun and adventure.

I was able to finally use the VIP ticket my former employer
gave me to go see the Gaultier exhibit at the DeYoung on a weekday when it was
less but still crowded. However, getting through two of the five jaw-dropping
rooms at my minutiae-examining pace meant that after an hour and a half, I had
to leave to eat something or risk fainting on the motorized runway of
mannequins. An extensive and gawk/awe-inspiring exhibit, I highly recommend to
those of you in the Bay to see it this closing week.

Today, also, I will finally be able to use my ticket to the
Legion of Honor my friend Corinne left to me when she moved back to Chicago
last month. So situated that it’s hard to get to without a car, I’m cat-sitting
for a friend of mine today through Thursday, and will therefore have her car…
and access to the Man Ray exhibit. I love him, and all those Surrealist and
Dadaist weirdos.  

I remember taking early American experimental film in college,
walking in late usually, and reeking mightily of pot, and taking my seat to
watch a Bunuel or Maya Deren, or Dali and his awful cloud cutting across the
moon like an eyeball whereupon he substituted a goat’s eye and really sliced
it, pouring out the guts of it. – Very good stuff to watch stoned. …

In any case, I’m excited to see this exhibit today, plus the
Legion of Honor is one of my favorite museums in the Bay Area, with their
Spanish Moor ceilinged room and the French Baroque one, its ornately inlaid
everything.

I also went to karaoke this weekend. I was reminded
feverishly of the time I was at a karaoke room in Korea and I became such an
enthusiastic (and drunk) tambouriner, that I awoke the next morning with a
wicked 6 inch bruise all up the side of my thigh from where I’d banged it repeatedly – I was a very good
tambouriner. I got to demonstrate my skills again this weekend. A friend of
mine was celebrating her birthday, and being the only one besides her husband
who really gets into that kind of thing, we all play along well because we love
her and it is a laugh. The company is really what makes it though.

Still on the docket, before it runs out in September, is my flight lesson.
I bought one of those LivingSocial deals last year for a two-hour flight
lesson. But the airfield is down in Hayward and hard to get to without a car –
and as it occurs to me now, I will have one for the next few days. I will call
them today. I have loved flying in planes since the first time I was on one.
There’s a feeling of the suspended nature of everything. Any thing I might have been worried about even
minutes before is now literally hundreds of miles away. There isn’t any thing that I have to do at that moment besides enjoy
the ride – I can’t control anything when I’m a passenger in a plane. There’s
nothing I should try to control.
It’s the most tangible manifestation of surrender of perceived control that I
know. And I love it.

Sure, your tuchus will get sore or tired after long enough,
but the sense of anticipation for wherever it is I’m going. I could be landing
in Cleveland, and I’d still get the butterflies of anticipation. I love flying.
I feel like I’ve been up in the kind of plane I’ll be learning on once or twice when I
was young, perhaps on a family trip to Cape Cod, but I asked my dad, and he
doesn’t seem to remember that. So, maybe I made it up, just salivating with the
dream and thought of it.

Lastly, despite the failure of the caffeine-reduction
experiment, I’m getting all this new information from a friend of mine who is
way into herbalist nutrition, having given me a shake comprised of the contents
of a compost bin. Not really, but really, one of the herbs translates as “Mr.
Ho’s Hair Turned Black,” as the herb is purported to reverse signs of aging.
More importantly to me, however, is that she’s helping me to moderate the signs
of adrenal fatigue, which is this lovely thing I’ve been diagnosed with which
says “Sorry Lady, you blew your store of adrenaline too early in life, now
we’re creeping along on fumes,” and means that lately I’ve been getting dizzy
when I stand up, among other things. So, unless I restore my adrenal levels –
and as my herbalist friend tells me, my Jing levels – I’ll be crap out of luck
in maintaining energy throughout the days.

So, I suppose there is enough going on without work to
consider. I’ll be certainly glad to not have that gnawing impending doom
feeling once I have steady work again, but I also do know that it’s not what
makes or keeps me happy. It’s all these other ways that I’m supporting myself
with culture, adventure, and forays into the mystic realms of herbs I can’t
pronounce. 

I dreamt in the minutes between snooze-button pushes this
morning. I dreamt a friend of mine had used again, and for some reason my dad
and brother were there to clear his house. As my brother questioned whether
they should remove his name from the gun and case and cleaning kit, my father
said no, and looked sternly at my friend, as if to convey he’d better have learned
his lesson.

This skips to me in bed with my friend who really had used
again some months ago and overdosed and died. His back to me, both warm with
that early morning light flush, that gently pulsing intimacy between
two people in bed. I peek over his shoulder at his half-hidden face, just
seeing the ragged scraps of unkempt sideburns and light stubble. And I repeat to him, “Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.” Over and over, pleading
with him. He then turns his head to me suddenly, but in a twisted unnatural
way, so that it looks as though he is turning on a broken neck, and says, “No
one is ever really dead, are they?”

And I jump up and run away through the house, admonishing
myself to “Snap out of it, snap out of it!,” and I wake up.

Why tell you this? Knowing so well that listening to
another’s dream is so rarely engaging. Well, yesterday, I did find out that a friend of mine had used again.
Heroin. I was talking to someone very close to him. He’s alive, and apparently
back on the road of recovery, but … She said in a thick voice, People die from shooting heroin.
And well I, and many folks I know, know.

I believe, were I to analyze my own dream, that finding this
out yesterday, about someone who had been so strong in recovery for about as
long as me, that it struck me again about my friend Aaron’s death. Sometimes I think
about it, and get all mad at the universe again. Sometimes I think about it,
and just get sad. I think the gun that my friend in the dream was being allowed
to keep is the same gun all of us hold who are abstaining daily from using
again. We all have the option to pick that up again. No stern admonishments or
reality checks will take that option away. But, for me, I think that’s
precisely what this dream was to me too – a reality check, and a warning. Just
a reminder, more like. To stick close to the things that work; closer to the
people whom I love.

Part of what has occurred as the result of all my job
searching is that I’ve come to realize that I really do want to return to the
East Coast. My family all lives there, and I’ve arrived, finally, at a place
where I feel able to have emotional distance or boundaries with my family,
without needing to have the physical distance.

Coming to realize that to the best of their ability, my
family is just who they are. For better or worse, for whatever the past held,
they are my family, and wacked as sometimes the demonstrations are, they love
me.

A friend chided when I said I was thinking of moving back
east, There are SO many better places than New Jersey! And while that may be true, it’s the place that is
closest to my family. Though my dad and his fiancé will move to Florida within
the year. My brother likely to move to Baltimore with his girlfriend, and my
Mom in manhattan. Worried as she is about early-onset Alzheimer’s that likely
her stringent diet of neurosis and anxiety will keep firmly locked out, a coat
of armor that nothing can penetrate, the truth is too that she is getting older
and there are things that I’d still like to share with her.

I called her about a month ago, upset about the lack of
progress in securing myself a job, and she began to list to me resources and
things I should look into, websites, and this and that. And, before she could
get too far into a monologue of “not what I called you about,” I was able to
stop her. I said that I knew how to search for a job, that I was calling her
not for advice, but for comfort.

To her credit, she was able to hear me; she paused, said of
course, and began to simply give me words of comfort and support and
encouragement. To both of our credit, we are forging a new relationship in
which being able to ask for what I need is becoming easier, and she’s getting
better at hearing me and offering it.

I haven’t lived near my family since I graduated college (a
year late) in 2004. I moved to Korea for two years to teach English, and upon
returning home, near-immediately moved to San Francisco.

I’ve run from them for a long time. I’ve done a lot of work
since I’ve been here, and there is forming a desire to be closer to them as
they are, not as who I wish they were.
They’ll always be who they are, crazy-making at times, disappointing or hurtful
at times, certifiably unhinged at times. But I’m feeling more ready to be there
for that too, because of the rest of the benefits of who they are.

Something that yesterday’s information underlined was the
tenuous nature of life. Another friend of mine, her mother had a stroke during
their family reunion last week, which my friend had refused to attend out of
resentment against her mother. Ironically(?), due to this emergency, she had to
go to Michigan, and join her family. To be with them. I don’t want that. I
don’t want the occasions when I see my family to be as infrequent as they are.
Or based on emergency.

So, with today’s reminder of the thin veil between here and
not, the memory so strong of my friend who died, and the intention to secure
employment so that I might save enough to move home, I’ll go out from here
today, and try, however falteringly, to be open to the love that remains from
both sides of that veil. 

Let’s see if I still remember how to do this.

By the decree of some friends of mine last week, I’ve been
ordered to get back to blogging. Whether it be daily or not, will remain to be
seen, so for today, I will blog.

This decree came from two women I met with on Wednesday
about financial stuff, but more about how else I’m supporting myself
emotionally and spiritually during this slog through. Part of balancing the
idea that I’m “slogging” is to see what else I can do to add in some fun, or
creativity. I told them I got this “fortune” tag in my Yogi tea recently that
read, “A relaxed mind is a creative mind.” and therefore, of course I haven’t
felt much creative lately. How, I asked them, do I, or do they, find the time
to be creative, or the room, rather, to
be creative?

There’s plenty of time. But the time seems to be filled with
the white noise of unemployment and impending bills. So, how do I split those curtains of thought, like on a
stage, and let them move to the wings for even a little while so I
can breathe properly?

Part of it, they suggested, was to get back to this blog.
They also suggested that I make a commitment to spend 10 minutes a day at the
piano. I don’t have a real one, but a USB cord-plug in one that connects to
Garageband, and it works. I told them, as we met, that every time I pass a
piano, I have to tinker on it. Even for a minute. This piano playing was part
of my “mandatory” spiritual practice earlier this year, when I was still going
to school, and there was a piano in the chapel there.

Recently, I went on a job interview at my school, and as I
was early, and feeling desperate, I went into the chapel, and played for about
20 minutes. It was heaven. It always is. I’ve heard it said that we can be “the
kind of people who find something that works, and stop doing it.” I certainly
fall into that category.

So, here I am, back to the blog. Part of the reason I
stopped – well, there were many parts. As some of you who were reading around
that time know, I was starting to look at some patterns around relationships,
to look at my behavior around men, and particularly my avoidance of intimacy.
The very day after I stopped blogging, I had a very strong PTSD/panic reaction – and
I sort of knew something like that was brewing — so how, or why, to tell you about
it.

After arriving at my temp gig that day
in tears and going back home to curl into a fetal position and bawl for an
afternoon, the next few days were not so easy. Part of not writing is that it’s
not easy to talk about drowning when you are drowning, and part of it is that I
wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about how black and dark I was feeling.

A friend told me when I shared this with her several weeks
later that perhaps you would want to match your own dark or hard parts of yourselves
with my own, and that it could have been a service to share it. But I wasn’t
able to then, so I glancingly mention it now, still not willing to talk
completely into it, and not sure where the “appropriateness” line is – or if it’s just a
continuation of my fear of intimacy.

Any of that said, I got better. I was able to stand at the
bus stop with less of a striking sense of EVERYONE IS STANDING ToO FUCKING
CLOSE TO ME – BACK.THE.FUCK.UP. Which is
basically what my PTSD says. It says you are not safe, I am not safe to be
around you, and I have to retreat into myself or into my cave. Part of the
problem with this now is that I am at a point where I am tired of retreating.
So, I’m standing at a place where I’m frightened to let myself be present with you, and I’m exhausted
by refusing to. How do I let myself be in the world, then?

A friend sent me a worksheet on tips for PTSD reaction
response. I’ve talked about it with appropriate people. I remind myself to
breathe – often. And I take it easy on myself.

I’m not surprised all of this is coming about. As I’ve begun
to dig deeper into how my continued financial crises keep me from fully
engaging in life, and have started, however slowly, to find relief or at least
tools around this, I realize that parallel and beneath it is the same sense of
rejection of responsibility regarding intimacy and relationships. Hide. Don’t
be seen. Don’t be bigger than you are. It’s not safe. The same underlying
motivations that have kept me in “underearning” have kept me serially single.
I’m not able to be responsible for myself. To be responsible for myself, for my dreams and
desires is to necessitate coming out of the cave.

Well, fuck. No wonder I had a mini-breakdown.

To stave your fears, I am better. And, I am glad to finally
be working on all of this stuff at a deeper level. I’ve finally come to the
conclusion that I cannot think myself
out of this. I have to have help. Left to my own devices, I would be pushing a
shopping cart. Or, as I am now, left to my own devices, I would be habitually
broke and habitually single. I don’t, really, want to be either. And this means
work on helping myself to get out of the cave.

The cave was an appropriate place to be for many years, many
years ago. It’s outlived it’s usefulness, and I don’t want to be stuck there
any more. This means doing things that are counter-habitual, counter-default,
counter to ways I’ve been for a long time. It means being a person who
continues healthy habits that work, like playing the piano, or blogging and letting you
know what’s going on with me. It means doing my damn dishes so that I don’t
have to wince every time I walk in my kitchen. It means getting out of pajamas
and into the world, if even for an hour at a time. It means reminding myself to
breathe.

It means reminding myself that I am meant to be something
more than small and isolated. That I have things to offer to the world, even if
I feel vague on what those are sometimes. Getting out of my smallness, my fear,
my deprivation on levels physical spiritual emotional and romantic will mean
doing things differently, and trusting that they will produce different
results.

I won’t guarantee that tomorrow I will write to you again.
But, I guarantee that I will try.

Welcome back.