Moooooon

Have you seen it?  That moon is insanely beautiful out there tonight, like something you could reach up and pluck from the sky with your hands.  It's the thing that has been making my kids nuts the past few days, I guess.  Right now, it's doing the same to me.  I totally understand the dogs running around in the yard at top speed and barking at things and the cats staring out into the dark with bright shimmer-saucer eyes.  It all seems like a good idea to me.

Crazy moonlight somehow increases my need to go, to get out and move.  I went to Jackson yesterday for no good reason, just because I couldn't stand to be in the house and that was the grand plan I devised.  I literally went, bought some Christmas ornaments at Pier 1 (my excuse for going...and I did need them for this and that, ornament exchanges I am involved in, etc.), ate at Kismet's, and drove home.  I felt better for the travel somewhat, less like I wanted to shred things with my invisible claws.  Right now, though, that feeling is back....  I would get out and just go drive around and see what there is to get into, but in this neck of the woods...well...that's probably not a good idea.  And.  I don't feel like having to shoot rednecks by the light of the silvery moon.

I wish I knew somebody else who had this same lunar weirdness.  I need a playmate.

After a Lot of Sleep...

There is such a thing as counting chickens before they hatch.  Or before the eggs have even been laid.  Or before you even buy the setting hens.

There is such a thing as building fortresses so strong and protective that you forget to put in doors to let yourself out.  It's true you're very safe that way, I guess, but you also starve to death very slowly, comfortable in the righteousness of your safety....

This is not D. again.  No matter whatever else it ever does or does not come to be, no situation will ever be exactly that again.  The person in question is not him.  Once the panic has passed, I can see that.  The similarities are there, but they are superficial.   I can't keep judging everybody by that yardstick, assuming everybody plays by his rules..  If I do, then...well...I suppose the past always wins.

The other side of the equation is not the me that I was in those days, either.  I don't know that this is a good thing all the way through, but I think for the most part it is.  I know myself more thoroughly than ever I did then, what I want, what I will and will not endure, what I need and what I can offer.  I regret some of what is gone, some of the sweetness I think I probably used to have, some of the trust that is never coming back.

In any case, I have to start allowing whatever amount I have left to be the thing with which I lead.  I have to stop looking for demons in the dark before I have seen positive signs of the cloven hoof.  While everything inside me is screaming that this is going to get me slammed through the floor, is begging to run back inside and brick up all the remaining doors and windows, I'm tired of living this way, and the air in there is stale and dead.

So.

(God help me.)

Maybe I will try to choose to start to trust somebody after all.

Maybe.

(did I leave enough wiggle room in that? ...yeah...)

Cyclical

The worst fault you have is to be in love. ~ William Shakespeare

You're an angel, and I'm gonna cry

'cause I can't have you

and I'm not gonna try.

"You're an Angel and I'm Gonna Cry" ~ Chris Thile

And I'll throw you in the current that I stand upon so still
Love is all, from what I've heard, but my heart's learned to kill
Oh, mine has learned to kill
"Love Is All" ~ The Tallest Man on Earth

______________________________________________

I have suddenly awakened and found myself in the middle of an unexpected nightmare.  It's like a rerun of something from years ago, from the old bad days of D.  When the realization hit me, I almost literally couldn't breathe. I felt the walls all closing in on me.  It had come on so gradually, you see, that I had not felt it closing its grasp around me until it was nearly too late to do anything about it.  

Oh, it's not love, not yet. That takes a long, long time and much more.  However, that doesn't stop me from knowing it's full of danger.  All the signs are there.  All the archetypes are on the stage and costumed appropriately.  Everybody is mouthing the right lines, me included.  I can see that idiot with the wings and the bow trying to sneak around in the rigging.

Right straight to hell with that.

I made a promise to myself a long time ago, and even if it means ripping my heart right out of my chest and stomping it into shattered shards on the floor, I will not walk down that road again.  Not to worry, though; my heart has learned all too well how to kill.  It was taught that lesson at the hands of the master.  

What completely flummoxes me is that it crept up on me.  Was I just so stupid, just having so much fun that I closed my eyes, or God help me, am I just that much of a fool?   It does not end happily for me.  Ever.  Do I forget my history?  Do I forget my scars?  I need to put myself in a convent somewhere high in the hills where I will not be tempted by these things.  The cycle spins, and apparently I learn nothing.  Yeah.  I am a fool.  The Queen of them all......

Favorites

I am taking a bit of a break to drink some tea and try to wake up a little.  A case of weariness has wrapped itself around me like a big blanket, and I am fighting to stay awake.  Even my desk looks like a good place for a nap.  In an effort to get my brain doing something, ANYTHING, here are a few of my favorite things.  (And I deeply apologize if you now have Julie Andrews twirling around in your head.  Unless, of course, you know, that makes you happy....)

• Flowers:  Gerbera daisies and yellow roses .  
• Beverage:  Unsweetened green tea and Diet Mt. Dew (although at present, I also love an eggnog smoothie....)
• Types of cuisine:  Mexican, Thai, Japanese, and Italian
• Places on Earth:  Nara, Japan; my family's pasture and country shack; the high-ceilinged library at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
• Hymns:  "It Is Well With My Soul," "In the Garden," and "Angel Band"
• Items (as in, I have them with me all the time):  Fountain pen, iPhone, handkerchief
• Word:  luscious  (most of the time)
• Sound:  rain on a metal roof

I suppose there are more categories, but some things that seem obvious to include would be impossible for me to select.  I could no more select favorite authors or musicians than the man in the moon.  I have similar problems with movies.  I can select a broad range of what I like, but I don't like to try to pin it down to one.  It feels wrong somehow.  Maybe that seems strange.  I don't know.  

I guess if there was anything somebody wanted to know in particular, that person could use that little feature down at the bottom and ask me.  Trying to fight off the tired with this isn't working.  I think I'm going to fold up shop and go home for the afternoon.  Maybe that's what I need.

It's Official....

 I got my notification from TGC today.  My travel country is BRAZIL.  I read the email on my iPhone after school, and I literally squealed, jumped up, ran to the door of my room, remembered that everybody was gone, and had a little moment of panic.  There was nobody to tell!  Thank God for social media...  (ha)  Then I called home.

I have wanted to see Brazil for years and years.  I have had several wonderful friends from there, been fascinated and enchanted by Portuguese forever (it's just the most gorgeous language...now I have a reason to make myself learn it - YAY), and getting placed there is almost too good to be believed.

This is just fantastic.  I don't know all the details, but I am definitely in Snoopy dance mode.  Now to the fun part leading up to every trip....the research and the PLANNING.  Boo.  Yah.

Uh-huh, Okay. Alright, Then.

It's been an odd pair of days.  I didn't feel much like writing yesterday.  You're getting a list now.  It's the end of the semester, so I'm pressed for time, and I'm running low on sleep.  I still feel good, but there's been no shortage of contenders trying to take that away from me.  Well.  To paraphrase my sage grandfather, "Never, never, never let the b-------s get you."

In the past two days:

• I had a student suddenly and unexpectedly opt to do a front roll through my classroom door instead of entering it the normal, upright way.  No.  There was no reason why.  Yes.  He did a beautiful roll....
• I have been told that I look like a porcelain doll.  No.  I don't know why.  I assume it's because I am so very pale.  Apparently it has been much discussed....  (Is this a good thing?)
• I was mistaken BY STUDENTS for a student when I went through the lunch line today in an attempt to get a pimento cheese sandwich.  (Oh, and the lunch line thing?  NEVER AGAIN.  I will totally cut up the middle next time.  WTF was I thinking?)
• My dog Chewie flung his green squeaky duck in a fit of exuberance.  I don't know where it is.  I am terribly, terribly afraid it is IN the Christmas tree.  Sigh.  Finding it is this afternoon's project.  He looks so sad now that it is missing.
• The first person figured out what my pendant is today.  I didn't even have to tell her.  She just knew.  She laughed and laughed.
• I have just about worn a hole in the new Black Keys album.  God, they're good.  They're keeping me awake when I drive, bless them.  They're almost better than caffeine.  (Well, realistically not, but you know.)  I love that the last song on the album keeps saying, "Oh....don't let it be over...."  They kill me.
• I have come to love my new iPhone even more than my old one.  I am trying not to feel like I'm cheating on an ex by saying that.  How do we come to have the attachment issues to electronics?  It's ridiculous.  (But I'm whisper-typing this and tilting the screen so Minerva never knows she's Minerva the Second....)
• The hat I bought at Chimneyville has paid for itself already.  It's purple and gorgeous, and every time I put it on, I feel gorgeous (if not purple), and I don't hate getting in the car at whatever ridiculous hour it is or going out to stand bus duty.  Definitely money well spent.

That's it.  I have a little left to do here, and then I'm getting out.  I am going to SLEEP tonight.  I am just so tired, and it's so cold and horrid outside.  This would be a wonderful night to curl up with somebody I love and pretend there's no world outside.  Shame that's not an option, really....

Putting a Foot Through

         In this world
 we walk on the roof of hell,
        gazing at flowers.
- Issa
_______________________

I've been working on student papers this morning, but I had to stop just a minute and write. This haiku by Issa has been a favorite of mine for a long time because I think it says a lot about what life really is. We have no idea about what is going on under the surface. We walk around on a thin crust of what we assume is safety until we accidentally fall in a crack or put a foot through.

One of my students' writings just broke my heart. I so want to just wrap my arms around that person and hug that one. It happens here so often and not on purpose. It is never a deliberate thing. It was just a matter-of-fact revelation that made me come back to Issa again, made me both appreciate the flowers, the fact that we get the moments of beauty, and also made me grieve for all the pain everyone has to endure that creates that gaping cauldron that constantly seethes just beneath them.

Those Who Walk Alone

“The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.”
― Albert Einstein

Christmasy

I finally decided to force myself into some Christmas spirit.  Last year, I had none.  Double none.  I barely got a tree up, and I put out none of my Christmas collections.  This year, I decided to try to trick myself into some cheer by decorating the house.  I thought if I surrounded myself with the accouterments of Christmas, maybe I would start to feel a little of the spark of it inside, too.

With that philosophy in mind, I went to get my tree this afternoon.  I am a hard-core girl power advocate.  I can do it ALL ALL BY MYSELF.  I can change my own flat tires, jump my own dead batteries, and all that, but by all that is holy, next year, I am taking some hapless man with me to deal with this Christmas tree thing.  I don't care if I have to guilt him, con him, marry him, feed him, pay him, or what. I HATE trying to cut down my own tree.  HATE it.  This is the second time I've done it, the first being the year Dad had his heart attack, and it wasn't any better this year.  In theory, there are guys with power saws on the tree lot, but they are never within five hundred miles of me and the tree I pick.  It took me about fifteen minutes of hacking at the poor cedar I picked (I always get cedar; I like the smell) to fell it, and then I had to haul it to the "sleigh" because Billy and Bubba were still power sawing somebody else.  I was not in a "merry mood."

I have been going to this place literally since I was a child, though.  My parents have known them forever, and I have run over those hills for things that have nothing to do with Christmas trees, so I wasn't in a bad mood long.  I got a Diet Mountain Dew in their new cafe and looked over their gift shop.  They had a Santa hat shaped like a jester's hat.  Well, you just know that I was going to have to have that...  I paid for my tree, had it tied to the top of the Cruiser, and came on home.

I took the time to make a playlist on iTunes that I called "Chrimma" and set it spinning and then I started fighting the tree for the second time today.  (Going to find a man next year.  Oh yes.  Going to find a man.  Not for anything romantic necessarily.  Just for the freaking TREE.  Although, I suppose I could promise him something romantic in exchange if needed if that's what it takes.  You can see what I've been reduced to here....)  I finally got it in the stand, brought it in the house, and it started wobbling.  I lay down on the floor to adjust it, and it wobbled even more.  This is after about fifteen minutes of wobbling in the stand outside after I made the required "second cut" with my little saw at home.  Then the thing I had been trying to prevent happened.  It fell.  I shoved it hard when it started going over, so I did not actually wind up with cedar on top of me, but it was a near thing.  Again, this is not a situation designed to raise "Christmas cheer."

I finally cursed/coaxed it into a stable position after taking the stand completely off and putting it back on again (easy to do now that it was horizontal).  Then I broke out the new big colorful LED lights I bought on sale after Christmas last year.  It's just chock-full of lights now, just the way I like my tree.  They don't do fancy flashy things, but I found last year that my migraines don't really like the flashy ones anymore.  I haven't put ornaments on it yet, but I may get to that later on tonight.  To me, the lights are the nice part, anyway.  They make the tree.  I like to have all the lights off and music on and just look at the tree with the lights sometimes and unwind when I'm tired.

I moved from the tree debacle to putting out the Santa and nativity collections.  This year, I didn't put out all the pieces I have.  I chose my favorites instead.  Many of them are special because either I made them, got them on a trip somewhere (like my Waterford nativity from Ireland), or somebody I love gave them to me.  I don't know why I forget how much of a pleasure there is in just the unwrapping and remembering that goes along with these collections.  That is probably actually the greatest joy of them to me, looking at them and thinking, "That one came from Mrs. Ruth.  I made that one when I still worked at Fleur de Terre...."

I'm going to go now and get my Santa plates out of the cabinet for the first time in two years, put some leftover eggplant parmigiana on one, pop it into the microwave.  Then, I'm going to watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation like I do every year the night I put up my tree.  I'm going to take my Christmas back from the things that try to pull me out of it, try to destroy it.  It is totally my choice if they get to do that.  I think I choose, in spite of falling trees and all other difficulties, Christmasiness.

Chimneyville Again

Every year, I look forward to Chimneyville.  Almost from the time I'm stepping out the door and headed back to the car with my arms loaded with my loot, I am anticipating going back, in fact.  It is one of the highlights of my year as far as seeing wonderful and unusual handmade things.  This year was no exception.

I got up a little late, left my house a little later, and wound up having to fly to meet my friend on time.  Once again, I was struck by the fact that frequently it's not how many horses one has under the hood but what one is willing to do with them.  I was only about ten minutes late in the end.

My best friend and I ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant we both like and headed over to the Trade Mart.  I knew there were three artists I particularly wanted to see if they were exhibiting.  They are the ones I go to every year, moon over, and most years, buy from.  I also love to look at all the others, though.  There is such unbelievable diversity in the crafts presented.  New artists come in every year, too, so one never knows just what you will see.  It's always a nice mix of new and old.   It makes me feel humbled and happy just to know that there are people in the world who can do these things, who can take their hands, apply them to raw materials, and produce wonder.  When I come away from a really great crafts exhibition, I always feel just a little more hopeful about the world.

My friend and I are profoundly creatures of habit.  We always go the same route through the booths.  Today we took our turn to the right, and we started looking.  It wasn't long before we came to the first of the three I had hoped to see there, Sam Clark.  Sam Clark makes, among other things, these fantastic dragons.  They do different things.  The most wonderful ones read books.  I LOVE them.  They always look so clever, amused, and knowing, everything you'd expect from a dragon.  I have a small red one I bought two years ago, and a "micro" one I got last year that I keep at school.  This year, because of the state of my finances, I knew I probably was going to be in that hellish situation of having to look but not touch with his stuff.  It's not that his prices are extreme; quite the contrary for the level of detail on each piece.  It's that I'm so obscenely poor right now.

Imagine my delight when he had a new line of pieces that he has added that are functional, bowls and containers, teapots and vessels of all kinds.  They have his gorgeous line drawings on engraved into the surface of the clay.  And...I could afford one that had a dragon on it.  I got my dragon after all!  I was grinning from ear-to-ear.  It was like fate took pity on me today.

A few aisles over, we found my best friend's friend, the maker of mouth-blown glass beads and pendants.  His stuff is fantastic.  I already had two of his pieces, but I wanted something blue (school colors and all that).  As I looked at the selection, I saw some that looked remarkably like eyes.  That looked awfully familiar, and sure enough, when I asked, my suspicion was confirmed.  They were a reinterpretation of the charm worn to protect against the evil eye.  I love jewelry with meaning; symbolism is sort of my life as an English teacher.  I bought one that looks for all the world like a gorgeous blue iris  with a black pupil in the center because, well, you know the thing I have with blue eyes... (ha)

The third artist I love, Peter Rose, was further over.  I have three of his crows (I call them ravens), already.  They make me happy every time I look at them.  His pottery is all wood-fired in the traditional Japanese fashion.  I love to talk to him every year when I go to see his stuff.  It's a little piece of contact with the world of Japanese pottery that I miss so much.  I was all ready to get one of his owls this year since I finished out my trio of ravens last year.  I even had picked out the owl I wanted to get.  Then I turned my head and saw that he has started making "mini ravens."  That was the end of that.  I had to have it.  I will take that one to school.  It's just fantastic.  Again, since it was a small piece, I was also able to afford it without going broke.  It was just a wonderful gift from the craft gods.

As I went through the other booths, I stumbled across another thing I loved:  fountain pens.  They were all from exotic woods.  My best friend laughed at me because I just started making little squeaking sounds as I stroked my fingertips over first one and then another of the lovely polished surfaces.  They were exquisite.  I could have bought at least five that I saw, but one caught my eye more than any of the others:  a "miniature" pen made of a wood called purple heart.  I haven't seen purple heart in large qualities since I was in Costa Rica, but I love it.  Without being dyed or tinkered with at all, it has a gorgeous dark reddish color.  It is going to be my "pocket pen."  I've wanted a small one like this for a long time, and it is everything one could ask for.

Chimneyville is just a joy.  The quality of everything you see, the friendliness of all the craftspeople, there's really just nowhere else I know like it.  I was struck again this year by that personal element.  Because I buy from those same artists every year, they have come to recognize me.  I was a little amazed by that (you know, old forgettable me), but it was really nice.  That's what keeps me buying handmade whenever I can, too.  Whether it is from my favorite folks in Jackson every year or the makers I can connect with on Etsy, I just believe that there is something special about this sort of connection that enriches the item itself.

Take It How You Wish

You're very, very lucky.  I don't think you even know it.

I have a Cuchulain-type of temper sometimes, you see, red haze before the eyes, battle rage slipping sandpaper fingers up the spine and all the Morrigan's magic calling for the end of the offender inside me with the rough, harsh cough of a black raven.

And you, you are redlining it.

It's taken me years, painful years of work to get a leash on this thing.  I have broken bones in one of my hands from the lessons I had to learn to do it.  I view them as both a badge of shame and a medal of honor.  They remind me of where I've been and who I am now.

I won't let this thing in me slip its collar for you.  Not even when it grins its big game pit grin because you keep stabbing it with a pointed stick.  Not even because you won't let it have a minute's rest to recover.

I believe what goes around comes around.  It won't be me who dishes it, though.  I love myself too much for that.

You can take this how you will.

Briefly

I haven't had much to say the past couple of days.  Old battles renewed and much busy-ness, I suppose.  Been elsewhere doing other.  I should be at that now, in fact.  There's just something driving me here to make this brief contact, and I will follow this urging even if it makes me have to run even MORE than I already am this morning in just a moment.

In the past few days I've been away, then, I have:

• Come to value copy paper more highly than gold bullion
• Been told that what I love more than anything is worthless
• Seen the happiness that can come from mini cupcakes
• Been grateful once again that I know how to jumpstart a damn car
• Felt the maternal urge ambush me quite out of the blue looking a friend's baby in a frog hat
• Been berated and belittled
• Actually been able to eat a little
• Had moments of pure joy
• Kept my temper despite all odds and expectations and refused to give in to the urge to put my fist through someone
• Had no migraines
• Had songs stuck in my head
• Pondered getting ticket for the Punch Brothers concert in Birmingham in January
• Graded papers
• Missed people

Yeah.  So how have you been?

Grenade, or, WTF Were You Thinking When You Wrote That?

I'd catch a grenade for ya
Throw my hand on a blade for ya
I'd jump in front of a train for ya
You know I'd do anything for ya

I would go through all this pain
Take a bullet straight through my brain
Yes, I would die for you, baby
But you won't do the same

"Grenade"  -  Bruno Mars

______________

I just heard this song again while I was driving home, and I was struck anew with how much it annoys me.  It was popular as a new song when I went to San Francisco, and I remember standing on Pier 39 in the rain listening to it booming through the outdoor speakers thinking how totally asinine the lyrics are.  I try not to be overly judgmental about songs.  I mean everybody likes different things, and I try to respect that.  There's an audience out there for everything, and I know that my own tastes aren't bread-and-butter for all people.  That being said, there's just something about this song that pushes all my buttons one after the other.

I think it's the over-the-top-ness of it.  It's a bit of the old "the lady doth protest too much" for me. I am all for profound expressions of love, for deep and heartfelt commitment, but despite the intention to express that here, somehow, it doesn't come through.  Instead, what I hear is something petulant and immature.  I get Romeo and Juliet love instead, all extreme, all impulse. I hear, "Hey!  I'm showing how wonderful I am!  Aren't you watching?"  There is nothing here that is about endurance or survival.  Instead, this is all about sort of a glorious blowout finale that is supposed to serve as proof of love.  

What about proving that you love someone by sticking out the bad times?  What about proving that you love someone by simply picking up the phone and making a call when you know they need to hear your voice?  By going to the grocery store when they're sick?  By taking care of the daily grind instead of elevating the drama or waiting for the disaster movie?  Is this guy going to be there for that?  I think not.  I don't think he's got the stones for it, personally.  That is the real test of a man, and the point at which all too many fall away, unable to have real courage.

So, really, I guess, I don't want to hear any more of these "romance" songs with swords waving.  I think, gentlemen, that if a woman is asking you to "throw [your] hand on a blade for [her]," you might want to check that out a little more closely before you make a long-term commitment, too, but you know, hey, whatever works for you, personally.  Not my business.  I'm still on the lookout for somebody with that true daily courage myself, not courage to die like a drama queen, but the courage to live like a real man.

Corner

I felt ridiculously good today.  Like...Damon-Salvatore-kissed-me-good.   (ha.  I made a stupid funny.  like that.)  I don't know why, but I've been grinning all day long.  I've had a mental playlist clicking through good songs in my head when I haven't actually had music that I like playing in my room.  I've been more like my old self than I've been in, well, longer than I can remember.

It was great.  I'm very conscious that I am not exactly that person anymore because that old person would have reacted very differently to a couple of situations I faced today, would have gotten angry when faced with two or three things, would have been distressed by others.  The person that I have am at the present has sort of decided that I can't fix every stupid broken thing, looked those issues directly in the eyes and called them what they were (stupid and broken), made the sign of the cross over them, and let them go.  I am proud of this.  It made me a better person for the rest of the day.  I am not going to keep destroying myself over things I cannot control.  It betters nothing and no one.  I cannot help myself or others in that situation.  I may yet chose to throw myself on the pyre someday if it's necessary, but by God, I'm not doing it for nothing.  I am going to pick my battles better.  I don't have to bleed every day.

I also had moments of pure laughter today with my classes like I haven't had in a long time.  One class got off on a brief tangent and I wound up with a "stripper name."  It didn't offend me; you have to work really hard to offend me, and they weren't trying.  They were kidding around, and it was a random comment that just made me laugh.  I'm afraid my new name wasn't fancy or salacious at all.  Just the idea of me in that role humored me endlessly.  Yeeeeah.  Talk about Things That Will Not Happen.  I mean, come on....  I'm hardly anybody's idea of that, I think.

I got work done.  I put up my Christmas lights in my room and all my little decorations, including my Santa Elvis  bear who sings "Blue Christmas" and dances.  I stuck the small Santa hat on Shakespeare.  I rigged an old Yankee Candle I love so I could use part of it in my Scentsy warmer, and now my room smells like Christmas, too.  Every small thing I did made me just a little happier.

I don't know if it's just getting all the rest over Thanksgiving, finally getting that huge thing out of the way with the doctor or other things, but whatever it is, oh how I hope it lasts.  The only thing that could actually make it better is getting to see some of the people I love who are so busy and far away, and I think some of that will happen this weekend.  That will be great, and I can't wait.  I've been looking forward to it for a long time now.

Well, that and if Damon Salvatore actually shows up, obviously, because, well, I mean, DAMN.  (don't judge me, okay? he's...he's... pretty....and....and....just don't judge, you....)

okay.  no more Damon ridiculousness.
probably.  but.... O_O

The Curse

Long ago in the ship she asked, "Why pyramids?"
He said, "Think of them as an immense invitation"

~ "The Curse" - Josh Ritter
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Josh Ritter's "The Curse" is playing on a playlist of some of my favorite songs on iTunes right now. Every time I hear it, I fall a little more in love with it. It's just an impossible little jewel of music, perfect in every conceivable way. I don't think I know of another one like it.

Of course, I was bound to love it, I suppose, because it has Egypt in it.  Since the first time I opened the first illustrated book about Tutankhamen in the tiny cramped library behind the fire department here in Podunk, I have been in love with Ancient Egypt, with the mummies and the beast-headed gods... The pyramids then for me have always been an immense invitation.  They are on my "life list," such as it is, of things I must see with my own eyes, go to, be at, lay my hands against the ancient surface of.  One day I must stand before them, inside at least one of them before I die so I can say that I have no regrets. 

As children, I remember L. and me learning to write messages in hieroglyphics, reading Budge's translations of the tales of the gods and The Book of the Dead.  There was a time when I wanted more than anything to be like the woman in this story, spend my days digging in the shifting sands looking for the past.  

That phase passed as childhood "careers" do, but my love for Egypt didn't.  I guess I've read or watched dozens of variations on this same story....Anne Rice's lush novel The Mummy, the Boris Karloff Universal Horror classic of the same title, the modern film trilogy that takes the same theme and spins it again and again eternally around.  Of them all, though, even though at its heart there is still the same supernatural predator, there is still something undeniably poignant and somehow more delicate in this version.  

And that, of course, is coming from Josh Ritter.  That's his hand at the wheel.  He's taking something that has been told as a horror story, as a blockbuster action film, and he's making it somehow as sweet as an old-fashioned waltz.  I don't think anyone but he could have done that, and even if I had never heard him before, I would have loved him for that one song.  It has everything, longing, imagination, musical magical realism.

The video is fantastic, too, perfectly in keeping with the feel of the song and the story as a whole, sweet and sad.  If you haven't seen it, take the time to watch.  It's well worth it.

Sharp Edges

After church tonight, I went out driving.  Ostensibly, it was to get the only food that sounded good, a bacon cheeseburger from Wendy's, or at least the fry portion thereof.  Right now, if it sounds good, I try to go find it....  Really, though, what I wanted most was the dark, wet two-lane highway unfolding in front of me and very loud music playing.  Sometimes, as one of my students is so fond of saying, "it just be that way."

Tonight, I am not in a folksy mood.  Tonight I need loud bass and a dance beat.  Tonight I wish I had my hands in somebody's back pockets and vice versa on a dance floor.  It's just as well I don't live where that's possible or likely.  I have sharp edges tonight.  Anybody trying to handle me would just come away with blood on his hands.  I am not sure I know of anyone even strong enough to try.

Adding to my odd mood is the fact that I've already produced something like forty pages  of writing the last three days of this week, two complete pieces, and that feels righteously good.  One thing is more a less a throwaway, something I cut my teeth on again because I hadn't written anything in so long, a flexing of the muscles that I like less and less the more I look at it, but the other wasn't too terrible.  Both are finished, and I won't lie to you and tell you it didn't feel good to pull it out of my head, shape it by force of my will, and watch it come together.  It's more than a little like a form of magic. It's more than a little addictive.

Neither of those was the one I want to be working on.  They were just random bits that bothered me, and so I made them, put them where I knew they'd be appreciated.  Someday soon, I am going to start the real thing, the story I used to tell L. about when we were kids.  It's been sitting up there waiting for all these years, and I think I'm almost done with my journeyman phase.  I'm sure it won't be as easy as this other playing I've been doing, but more and more, I think that I want to try my hand at it.

Tomorrow, I will go back into the regular world.  It feels like so much more than a week has gone by.  I feel like I've been gone from there for a hundred years, like I've somehow slipped through one of those "rites of passage" and wasn't paying attention.  I don't know.  As I came home watching the headlights of oncoming traffic dance over the wet pavement, I thought about how I felt before I got out for the holiday and how I feel now.  Somehow, so much has changed.  It's strange.  It's as though I was stuck in a place of total stasis before last Tuesday.

Now, I would have to say that is not the case.  I still have some serious questions about some things, but last Tuesday was... a log-jam destroying moment, for lack of a better term.  Everything is now in a state of change.  What remains to be seen is what happens next.

Sweeping Up

I've come here several times in the past few days thinking that I would have something to say, that if I opened a new post, something witty or clever or even trivial would appear to fill this little blank box, satisfy the demand of the blinking cursor, but each time, I've closed the entry and gone to other things, to Tumblr where I can express myself through images and quotations, to work on a writing project (because, good God, I'm actually producing again...I guess the words just will come out of me somewhere), to read the words of others, because my capacity to put anything here has been as limited as my current appetite for food.

In other words, it seems that I want nothing.

The drive that used to call me here almost compulsively to share my thoughts is empty at the moment.  What shall I tell you?  What would you have me give?  What is there to say that has not already been said?  I feel like the janitorial staff coming out at the end of a major production to find that a member of the audience has not departed but is still sitting front row center waiting for another act to unfold.  I am standing on stage with my broom, the house lights are all up, and I'm forced to lean across the footlights and whisper to you, "What else is it you expect to see here tonight?  Go home.  Go home to the people who love you.  To the people you love.  The show is over.  There are no more shocks or horrors left here.  All the performers are gone now.  All their mysteries are done."

And maybe that, too, would be a kind of performance after all if somebody paid attention, the action of a trouper who had to do double-duty, who had to clean up after her turn in the revels was over.  But I'm still a little off-kilter right now, still trying to figure out what to do with what I've learned this week, and while I know that it really doesn't matter to anybody else but me (and maybe to a few precious ones of you who I am more thankful for than I can say), I'm not really up to resuming my little performances here, I suppose.

For those of you to whom I am just an interesting curiosity, just a thing of clockwork and puzzlement, click back in a few days or weeks as your whimsy leads you.  I am sure your usual service of loud-sounding nothings, of sound and fury, will resume.  For those of you who worry, well... Patience.  Patience.  As the heart-rendingly beautiful Marco once told me in Florence, "These things, they happen."

It's Never What You Think It Will Be

(be warned.  this is not a happy place.  there is broken glass on the ground here.  if you are looking for safety, sun, or sugar, go play somewhere else, child.)

As I type this, I am so tired.  I'd really just like to climb into my bed, pull the covers around me, curl into a ball, and let the grey half-light of this long afternoon fade away, be in a warm and still and quiet place where nothing is or was for an unspecified length of time.

But as I've already told one person today on another topic, that's too much like a defeat for me, and I don't do those so much.  I just keep getting up off the damn floor and fighting, even when I should lay down.

It all went quickly.  Once I got there, all my fear dropped away despite the gown and the table. The appointment as a whole really didn't go down the paths I expected, but that shouldn't really be a surprise, I guess.  Nothing ever does....  I expected to hear that tests were coming and procedures were urgently needed.  I expected him to talk about time limits and endings.  That came up, but very gently and briefly only.  The physical situation stays hanging in its ridiculous knife-edge balance, apparently.  One more year of grace has been, quite pointlessly considering my life and my situation, given.

I also talked to him about the hellish mood swings I've been having lately though, and things went crazy from there.  It might be the Topamax.  It might be more of the fun my body likes to dish out in little doses for me.  I have to call my neurologist and talk to him about the Topamax now since it's gotten scary-ish.  I have to have some relief from the roller coaster.  This conversation, the one I'm glossing so lightly, that I'm touching with such dainty fingers here, was excruciating.  It involved being told that perhaps I was trying to do too much, take too many problems on myself.  At one point, I was told that what I was trying to do was like trying to right a wrecked bus all by myself.

This isn't the first time I've been told this.  This isn't the second, the third.  Hell, I don't even know anymore how many times or how many people now have told me, doctors, coworkers, friends....  What I don't know is what to do about it.  That's the part that keeps getting left out.  That's the part I need somebody to help me with.  That's the part nobody seems to know.  There is only the "not this,"  never the "this instead."  (Although if I am fair, he did have a "this might help while you're looking for the this instead.")

And maybe others can't help find the "this instead."  Maybe that's asking too much.  Maybe I just am so totally screwed up that I don't have any idea about what I want for myself.  Maybe it all sounds equally good or equally dull.  Or maybe....maybe...

Maybe I do know what I really want and know that I cannot get it, not even in my wildest daydreams, so this is just as good as any other pointless substitute.

I'm so tired.  So very, very tired.  I warned you about the broken glass when you showed up.  If you got cut, well, I love you, and I'm sorry, but it's nobody's fault but your own.  I think I'm going to get in that bed now.

Not Running

This is me NOT running.  This is me scared as scared and NOT running.  Nervous energy.  Lalalala.  What time I am afraid I will....

Not run.  That's for sure.

Will not get in the car, head it west, crank the stereo, and pretend I can outdrive, outpass, outaccelerate the afraid.  Will not "accidentally" miss the appointment (oh SHOOT!  That was today?  Can we reschedule?  Like for the fifth of NEVER?).

Will not shake.  Will not cry.  Will not betray my image as the great cold queen in the red brick halls.  Will not keep turning worst-case scenarios over and over in my head because this doctor, unlike that other one, would never blind-side me with "So, your whole life is over today.  When would you like to schedule the surgery, honey?" lightly coated over in slick honey phrased as, "Do you have any children?... No?...I'm so sorry..."

And even if this is the beginning of that end, I will not fall into despair.  Okay.  That is a lie.  But I will try very hard not to go into it in despair, try very hard not to make monsters where there just might not be any, and I will try very hard to remember that for every single stupid hellish thing that has ever happened to me in my life, there has been a reason or at least some kind of thing I could take and use to help somebody else along the way.  If this is to come into my life now, even though it will seem like an ending, I have to remember that there has to be some purpose to it.

If I can hold on to that, maybe I can manage not to break into so many pieces that I cannot recover myself.  Maybe I can manage not to run so far that I cannot make it back.

Distracting Myself

You know this thing I have about blue eyes?
So...Yeah....

Tomorrow is the dreaded day.  I can't think of anything else when I stop to think, so I'm not thinking.  I am distracting myself. To that end, I have immersed myself in more TV.  I found The Vampire Diaries on Roku, and it's seriously fun fluffage.  It's what Twilight could have been and missed.  None of the vampires sparkle, some of them are really dangerous, people actually die, the heroine has a spine, one of the male leads (Ian Somerhalder) is gorgeous enough to burn all your houses right down to the ground and sassy to boot, and the storyline holds together beautifully. I can't believe that this thing is actually written this well.  It's not as neatly put-together as something by Whedon or Moffatt, but it's not what I thought it was going to be, vapid teenertainment.  There's solidity to it.  (Plus...have you seen his eyes?  I mean...O_o)  I'm in the middle of season 2 right now.  I think maybe there are three seasons out so far, so I have a lot more to enjoy.

I'm not exactly sleeping right now, didn't go to bed until 4:30 am Friday night, was up until 2:30 last night, so I am glad to have something to fill my hours.  After tomorrow, maybe I can get my brain out of this chasing-its-own-tail cycle of uselessness and do something other than mark time.  Because even as nicely as I'm being distracted (oh, and btw, I know what I want for Christmas now people...), this stasis is not what I want to be about right now.