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© All text and images copyright 1999-2004
emjaybee |
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December 19 A hectic, crazy pre-Christmas week. Last night, we blew most of our remaining cash to buy gifts for loved ones so we'd have time to ship them Texas-ward. It would've been more fun if we weren't so tired and rushed, but that's what everyone says about Christmas, ain't it? Still, the lights on our street our lovely, and I will post some pictures of them soon (probably not until after the holidays, though, when I have the time.) However, for the weekend, Matt and I have invited ourselves on up to Connecticut to celebrate Overcommercialized Winter Solstice Day with our favorite fellow Yankees, Burke and Michelle. Perhaps we'll catch a showing of Lord of the *&^%! Rings (as Matt would call it). Yay Burke and Michelle, you rock! Someday, we will have a place big enough to let *you* sleep on *our* floor. Or futon.
I am now officially registered at diarist.net. This is not in order to receive a Diarist Award, you understand, (though, uh, feel free to nominate me if you want. Honestly, though, I don't really give a flip). I just wanted to get my little site out there if someone were to search for, say journallers in NYC. In the meantime, I've been browsing my fellow NY journalers. These are the ones that I'm reading this week: Tooth and Nil: A diary of an interesting-looking tiny theater group..and they're *all* from Texas. Creepy. This journal is actually indexed by subject matter which is an unusual amount of effort on its author's part. Actually it's a bit hard to navigate, but the content is pretty well-written, especially (to me) the NY point of view. I've only clicked on about a tenth of the total, but so far the above are the only two I felt like giving a second look. I admit, I make snap judgements when I click to someone's journal. I know it may not be for me if:
The thing is, there's nothing technically wrong with journals that do any of these things, they just don't interest me much, though you could say they're truer to the "diary" format than I am. The websites I do admire tend to be more like columns, or essays...entries that try to reach farther than the author's narrow experience. Of course, I don't always live up to that standard, so there you go. I never seriously kept a diary before the web. When I was in 4th grade, we all had to buy little diaries for school, and then write in them once a week. We got graded on doing it, not on what we wrote (though we'd occasionally get little comments from the teacher). The experience was incredibly tedious to me. I couldn't think of anything more boring than listing what I did that day (School. Home. Homework. Bed. duh.) And I knew, deep down, that if I did write about anything else, say, how much I hated math, that the teacher wouldn't like it. So I automatically censored out what might have been interesting to write. At the time, I felt a faint resentment at the whole assignment, actually, wondering why I should write my "private" thoughts for my teacher to read. None of her dang business. As I got older, I halfheartedly tried paper journalling a few times, only to get bored for a different reason. Writing only for myself to read was deadly dull. I needed an audience, an audience that would let me say what I wanted to but still might be affected by what I wrote.It wasn't until I found hissyfit, and through its (lost and lamented) bulletin boards journallers like Lileks, Rob, and Dana, that I saw it was even possible to do that. I like the way this journal lets me write with some, but not a lot, of feedback. It frees me from worrying too much what people think. I don't even check my stats much. I like to maintain the mystery of who is reading, because I don't want it to affect what I'm writing.
December 15 Once again, I have been writing at work but not updating at home, so I'm making it up to you with a supersized entry for the last two weeks. With subtitles.
Snow Day Passing the christmas-pine vendors down the street, I walked between rows of evergreens frosted with snow, like a tiny sidewalk Vermont. I started humming Christmas carols. It just seemed appropriate.
Eyes front! Where you let your eyes rest affects a lot of things. I was miserably inept at sports, but my dad did teach me that if you watched the ball when you were trying to catch it, you could often watch it fall right into your hands. And I learned when I was a kid how to squint and blur my own vision, which helped me pass the time in boring classes, while making my teachers think I was paying attention. But sometimes I still have to remember not to walk down the street not seeing anything around me because I'm thinking too hard. It's OK
to read me in China Apparently they haven't caught on to my pro-democracy leanings yet. Fight the power! Crafty
Crap
Oh, Dude! We were like, totally up in the mountains, crispin' the curl, you know? And we ran into these spy dudes, and we were all like "Woah, man! Spy dudes, they're gonna blow up America!" And Josh was all freakin out, and then I said, "Man, chill! We gotta save the world, dude!" And he was all "Dude! They have guns, man, what do we have??" And then I was, "Woah! We have our bitchin' extreme snowboarding!" And then we all went after 'em, with our crazy rad bad boarding skillz, and they were all "Oh no! We are too scared of your skillz! We cannot triumph over your American radicalness!" and then they ran away, and we called the forest rangers to come pick up the bombs and stuff. And then we were like, heroes, man, and we got special passes to board and ski in all the best places where no one but the Olympic guys get to go and woah, it was the baddest, dude. You shoulda been there. Sometimes the movies in your head are just so much better than what's actually on the screen. See right there, I cut out all the unnecessary plot points, love interests, and painful dialogue to give you what you really want; a mental picture of snowboarders beating the crap out of a bunch of terrorists. Comedy gold.
My visit home was nice, and more revealing than I expected. Home isn't home anymore. Before I left, I was grumbling--a lot--about the hardships up here. The tiny apartment. The lack of suburban amenities. The way things just aren't going as fast as we would like--getting a new place, getting Matt's CD finished, feeling "successful" or at least "on the way." I was despairing of ever feeling at home here, and depressed by our lack of resources. The anticipation I felt at going back to Texas began to worry me--was it starting to look good to me? Would I end up back there after all? But then, that whole week I enjoyed being back where I used to be from. I had as good a time as I've ever had, saw people I loved, did things I liked to do, and all the time I asked myself, "Is this what you want? Do you miss this? Are you sad you left?" and the answer kept coming back "No." I was still carrying the baggage though, the pressure I felt to produce something from my Grand Experiment. I was still brooding over it a few days after we got back, wondering what I could do to hurry things up, to solve the problems that looked so huge to me. I want so many things; a career, a house, a kid or two, happiness for Matt, bills that get paid with a little less hair-pulling than they do now. Much of which seems impossibly far away, in a place we may never get to, a life that I don't know when we'll get to lead. I was going around and around in my head, worrying and worrying that somehow, some way I was doing it wrong, I was forgetting something, not doing something I should be doing that would solve everything. And then something in my head, my saner half maybe, said, "Hey. Kwitcherbitchen, already. You've only been here 9 months. It takes longer than that. This part isn't permanent, and it isn't all bad. Enjoy the good parts, and quit fussing about what you Don't Have and Haven't Done Yet." And I felt a kind of relief, or a release--I didn't know I'd been so tense, so curled up and manic about the future. Not really noticing that I had a job I liked, a great marriage, writing that I was beginning to enjoy, a vast city to observe and be a part of. A good life, in short, whatever else I accomplish or don't. If I died today, a lot would be left undone, but I wouldn't regret anything about where I am right now. So now, today, I guess I'm trying to not strain to see what's next, to get there fastfastfastfast. Today, I want to just be happy that I have what I have, and cultivate some patience (as opposed to exasperated, toe-tapping, "come on already, dangit" resignation, which is not the same thing at all). It all sounds very Zen, I know. Still, there's something to be said for adopting a philosophy that lets me strive without making me miserable. After last week, I know I'm going the right way, at least, because it's no longer possible to go back. And while that should make me feel alone and helpless, it's funny--it makes the ground seem more solid under my feet. I don't know where the road is going, but I'm figuring out how to keep walking on it. December 3 We're back from the family-togetherness. Highlights of my week in Tejas (The Friendship State!) include:
It is butt-biting cold here today, just in time for our return. Maybe the Aurora Borealis is close by; that would explain the weird and extremely vivid dreams Matt and I have been having. Last night, I dreamed that one of our mutual friends was Matt's younger brother. As opposed to the actual younger brother that Matt has in real life. Anyway, in the dream, Matt's dad had died. Younger brother wanted to get some soil from the gravesite, which was weird. But I thought he should be allowed to--it was his dad, after all. Matt and his mom and sister were against it. We all had a huge fight, where I told Matt he was being an unfair typical older brother, blah blah blah. Everyone was mad at me, but the younger brother got his dirt. Then we went to pick the brother up at the Petro (where else?) and , saw him selling the dirt (to truckers, I guess) for its "medicinal properties". He came up to the car. I asked him "were you selling that dirt?" He said yes. I launched into a tirade. "I stood up for you! I risked my marriage for you! You little &^%$!" and so on. Then Matt woke me up because I was making "nnnnnn" noises in my sleep--I guess I was saying "no." He thought the dream pretty funny, as did I eventually. But when I woke up I was still really mad. Nothing lower then selling dirt from your own dad's grave. *** Any time I think about dreams, I remember bits of Richard Linklater's Waking Life. That film gets under your skin. Matt and I rented it a few weeks ago, since we'd liked it so much in the theater. The first time I saw it, I was swept away by its sheer beauty. It really is the most well-done and expressive piece of animation I've seen in a long time, maybe ever. But on a second viewing, the creepier, darker aspects became more evident. (Spoiler alert!) Your growing realization that the unnamed main character isn't just having dream after dream, that he can't wake up, that he's most likely dead or dying, creates an atmosphere of dread that overshadows all the beautiful imagery and deep philosophical musings. The way Linklater recreates the dream state is unnerving...I hadn't realized that I had never been able to read or tell time or turn lights on or off in my dreams until one of his characters pointed that out. Apparently most people can't, either. It's how you know you're dreaming. |
