40 posts from 2007

Of all of the evils and pain in the world, the worst often comes when one person decides that he- and only he**- has the responsibility to save other people from their sins and deficiencies.

Let us all take responsibility for our own ills.  ***

*evils looks like it is spelled wrong, but I know it isn't.  Weird.  Weird also looks spelled wrong.  Heh. 

**(or she)

***Except just not the two tons of cookies I ate yesterday.  If someone else can take responsibility for those, I'd be obliged.

What a tragedy.  Here is a Reuter's story, but I will try to sum up the details.

    Bhutto was speaking publicly when she was shot by a suicide bomber.  Preliminary news articles said that anywhere between six and fourteen people were murdered, including Bhutto and her bodyguards.

Really, what a tragedy.

    Benazir Bhutto (former Pakistani Prime Minister and opposition leader) stood firm on the need for integrity, honor and equality in government.  She was attacked for being a thief and charlatan, accused of running her political party with an iron fist and being a cold-hearted bitch, but people who heard her speak saw her as being strong-willed but fair and absolutely inspiring.  Bhutto cared more about justice and the voice of the people than she did her own life, and returned from a self-imposed exile to fire up the streets in protest of Musharraf's military rule.

    She has paid dearly.  Society has paid.  Women have been dealt a strong blow, as well as lovers of free speech and rule of law.  We should all take a moment in silence to remember the many strong women who have lived, fought, and died for the rights of the smallest and weakest among us.

    Rest now, Benazir.  May you find in death the comfort that life did not give you.  May your spirit inspire where your voice has been silenced.  May the streets not be silent and the people not be ruled by fear.

In the stillness
Curled in on myself
like a seed waiting for warmth
In the darkness
Wound terribly tight
Like a spring in a box
I whisper accusations
Mostly against myself
I whisper admonitions
Mostly of my own actions
I judge myself
Because it hurts less
Than judging someone else
I run from hate
I run from bitterness
Because to embrace them
Would curdle my thoughts,
and sour my muse
turning my work into lemons

Vodka would help

I turn in on myself
Like a cat cleaning her ears
Wriggling into impossible
positions in my mind
I pound my thoughts into a pulp
examining the pieces

There is only one
who knows the truth

it isn't me

There is only one
who holds the answers

it isn't me

There is only one
who could offer up healing

it isn't me

There is only one,
only one,
just the one

And I feel like the only one
who's asking him for answers
and then bothering to listen.

Vodka would help.

Happy (pre) Secular Gift-Giving Holiday!

I would say have fun celebrating the birth of Christ, except recent research shows that the star that heralded Jesus' birth was likely seen in April (Plus, shepherds guarding their flocks at night would likely not be in open fields in the middle of winter.  Use those things God gave you to think with.)

In any case, I don't have time to write a really long post about my feelings about the secularization of the holiday.  emily sears and I are of one mind about this particular issue, so if you feel like getting into the dirty details peruse her wondrous blog.

So, happy Holidays and days and days!  I may not post much else publicly until post New Year, so good luck breaking those resolutions within the first six days.  You know you want to!

When did you really get to make a difference for someone else? 
Submitted by bodhibound.

    Here, I have this wonderful idea.  Why don't I tell you how amazing I am, and then you can kiss my feet and sent me chocolates? 

    I'd much rather confess to all the times that I made a difference in a BAD way, but I'm sure that's not the way this question will be taken.  Self-aggrandizement and self-deprecation are equally annoying.  But, between the two, I'd choose self-deprecation any day.  When you build yourself up you live in fear of the moment you topple from your wobbly handmade pedestal.  When other people build you up you are left in no doubt of your own quality.

    That's all.
   

    I realize the Election is still a long way off.  Regardless, I'm feeling very political today.  Why?  Because yesterday I listened to a very long debate about whether or not voting should become mandatory.  One pundit was talking about how in Canada they were mortified when there was only a 65% turnout (which, btw, would be impressive by our low American standards) so they are considering a fifteen or twenty dollar fine if you don't show at the poles.  The question then became, if Canadian government finds it hard to consider itself a democracy with low voter turnout- what are WE?
    I hear a lot of griping about how society is falling to crap and no decent laws are getting passed and the government is accountable to no one and Armageddon is coming...  my response to all of this, normally, is "so what are you doing?"
    We live in a democratic society.  We live in a participatory society.  Sure, Congress makes the law- but we have the ability to tell them what law to make or vote for someone new.  Our vote is our weapon.  If we participate, we change things.  How many of the people reading this post have written to a congressperson?  How many have organized or participated in community events?  How many can actually list more than six people currently running for president?  How many, for example, know who the top four are in some of the latest polls?  (You might be surprised.)  Did you, for example, know that John Edwards is fast closing on Obama and Clinton?  At this point, we aren't even close to knowing who the next Democratic candidate could be.
    And don't even get me started on the Republicans.  I know a lot of people love Ron Paul.  I know there are several things about him to love.  But, when you start talking about disassembling the machine that is running this country and rebuilding it with the vast majority of the weight being towed by the states (the way it was originally intended) you are talking about taking a lot of risks, and there will be costs.  Think, people.  Think about the implications of what he's saying.  He can be a little cagey, so you have to use your brain.
    There's also a lot of griping going on about who's in the lead and who people want to have in the lead and how if it's Giuliani against Clinton who can we vote for and on, and on, and on, and on, to which I say:
    VOTE.
    The point of the primary is that people decide who they want their candidate to be.  By people, I mean us.  You and me.  WE decide who we want our candidate to be.  So go out there, register with the party you like- or the party that has the candidate you most like- and VOTE.
    Vote, or so help me God, I WILL smack you upside the head.

    Oh, and inform yourself first.  It's not that hard.  God gave us Google for moments such as this.

After much fiddling, fusing, finger-pricking and generally going insane, I've finally made a pattern for reusable shopping bags that is easy, cute, and tough as nails.  So, I'm making a ton of them and listing them (you know where) and having a good old time. 

Plastic Shopping Bag

Environmentally conscious!

Expands and contracts!

Red, white and blue! (Patriotic!)

Empty, and longing to be filled.

My birthday ice cream was homemade.  And perfect.

Mmm...

Chase is the first novel I ever wrote, and the only one that isn't Genre-specific.  When asked what genre it's in, I usually just waffle around and say, "oh, I don't know, literary fiction without the literary bits?"
    I love this novel, I love it passionately.  Unfortunately it's one of those flop-or-fly novels that no agent will go anywhere near.  It's risky, it's bold.  It's both humorous and touching.  It deals with a lot of unspeakable issues, like spousal abuse and dealing with childhood abuse and rape and pregnancy and abortion and what in the world religion can or should have to do with any of those previous things, as well as why modern psychology sans belief sometimes falls woefully short of helping people.
    Yes, I know, one reads all of those things and then wonders how the book could even attempt humor.  It does, because Chase as a character finds beauty and humor in everything but herself.  She's a bit like someone else you all have come to love, because Chase is 80% pure me.  I decided to re-read it today, just to remind myself of why I write and who I really write for.  I'm glad I did, because I suddenly remembered why I love the art, why I love words, and especially why I believe that I do have the ability to make it. 
A few short passages from the book itself will follow:

    I winced as the warmth of the outdoors engulfed me, beating against my raw and naked face. Clive clutched me even more tightly, his face pressed against the side of mine. When he spoke his voice was surprising. I had never heard it so strained or so soft. “I’m sorry, Chase,” he gasped out, “I knew that she would try to pull something with you. I’m so sorry.”

    I leaned my weight against him. I tried to think of some sort of reply. I was confused. I wasn’t sure there were any words to encompass the whole of my feeling. “It’s not your fault,” I said instead, although that was a lie. Even if Clive was innocent I wanted him to be guilty. I didn’t want him to take my words as a pardon. I wanted him to grovel. I wanted him to beg. I wanted him to be the victim and me to be the victor.

    “Forgive me anyway,” he said.

    I pulled away and stared at him blankly. I tried to see his eyes through all of the confusing shadows of the twilight. I said nothing. I just stood there, feeling bogged down by gravity. Every nerve in my body was screaming. Every emotion was twisted and contradicted and strained, screaming to be felt. My brain was racing through childhood memories, repressed fears, twinges of emotions connected to nothing but spinning colors, vague smells, old hatred. My entire being was pummeling for relief. I sank down onto the warm cement and lay there. I stared up at a sky bloated with color. I heard Clive lying down beside me. I felt his body heat only inches away. For the first time it wasn’t reassuring but oppressive. I was afraid.

    “I feel like I’m on an alien planet,” Clive said. His voice was in a fog, heard as if it were far away.

    “So do I,” I said. “These are the worst times.”

    “I know,” he replied. Yet I wondered if he really did, or if he was just saying so. I knew that he was thinking of a specific event, a time and a place, an emotion that was still poignant. Even so, I knew that no matter how real and strong his memory was, he couldn’t understand. He couldn’t know.

    In that moment I realized how very alone I was. I visualized the warm cement like it was water, like it would lap away from my body and let me sink down into it, surrounded by it’s solidity, comforted in the reality of it’s presence. I visualized the air creeping out of my lungs, my silent death. I knew that I would be happy then, warm and encased in the ground like an embryo. I would be reborn as a single weed, struggling towards the sunlight, happy in my simplicity.

    Waiting to be plucked and thrown away.

* * *

    Clive was waiting for me in the kitchen. He’d put out a bowl of fruit and yogurt with all of the place settings, as if my kitchen was a restaurant. That wasn’t the most shocking thing, though. What really shocked me was the casual way that Clive sat there, cup of coffee and plate of bacon at his side, newspaper folded at the corner of the table, and a Bible open on his lap. I repeat: and a bible open on his lap. This was yet another aspect of Clive that was unexpected and even a little horrifying. Sermonizing about religion is one thing, but practicing it is something else.

    “Hey, Chase,” Clive said, looking up with embarrassment equal to my own. “It’s not what you think.”

    “Oh,” I said haltingly. “That’s what you say when you’re caught with another woman. Not with, with…”

    Clive held up the bible and laughed, “the Holy Bible, New International Version. I hope I don’t smell too much like her perfume.”

    I laughed and forced myself to sit down at the table. Maybe the morning wasn’t as weird as I was tempted to think. Maybe all of this was perfectly normal and acceptable. I picked up my fork and poked at my food. “So you look kind of natural in these settings,” I said, hoping that my voice sounded just as natural. “Do you do this a lot?”

    “I’m assuming you mean reading while eating, not waking up in girl’s bedrooms.”

    “Precisely.”

    “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.” Clive half-smirked and took a sip of his coffee. “Stop staring at me like that, please,” he said. “You’re making me nervous.”

    I flinched and stared at my breakfast, instead. I hadn’t noticed that I was looking at him that strangely, but maybe I was. He was freaking me out pretty badly. I cleared my throat. “So you believe in that stuff?”

    “Yes,” he said. “Don’t you?”

    “You know that I don’t.”

    “And this is as close to saying that you should as I’ll ever come.” Clive smiled, “Let me read you something.” I stuck a large chunk of fruit in my mouth and stared at him blankly. He took that as permission. “We know that we have passed from death into life because we love our brothers,” Clive read, “Anyone who does not love remains in death.”

    “That’s grim,” I said around a mouthful of honeydew. “And not in the least bit comforting.”

    “You need to be comforted?” Clive shoved bacon into his mouth and stared down at the open pages in front of him. I could tell that he was feeling shy now. I didn’t blame him. Watching me in my present condition couldn’t be pleasant. Besides the fact that he’d just opened himself up to me, and I wasn’t responding.

    “Sorry,” I said. I tried to force myself to feel sorry enough to sound genuine. “I’m just having a hard time adjusting.”

    “To what?”

    I gestured towards my own face. “Confronting my own psychosis.”

    Clive laughed, “Remember the thing about the lions in the closet?”

    “Vaguely,” I lied.

    “I’ve had a few of my own,” he said. “I used to be suicidal.”

    It took me a while to process what Clive had just said. It was hard to imagine someone as well adjusted as him even having a bad day. Suicidal was far beyond what I had the capacity to accept. “Oh,” I said, “Why?”

    “My parents died suddenly when I was young, you know that.”

    “Yeah, and Andrew adopted you.”

    Clive took a long sip of his coffee. He stared into the cup for a while. It was long enough that I was starting to wonder if he’d heard what I said. Suddenly he looked up at me, his face grim. “That was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Andrew explained to me in great detail how the God that my parents had worshiped could never exist. If God did exist, Andrew said, then it was clearly his fault that my parents had died. Andrew thought that he was helping me. He thought that belief was a crutch and I needed to be able to walk without it to be strong. But all Andrew did was manage to get me seriously pissed off at a God I’d suddenly stopped believing in. That’s miserable, Chase.”

    “I sympathize,” I said, “but is that really a reason to kill yourself?”

    Clive shook his head, “does it matter if the reasons are good? You of all people know how much it hurts to lose your concept of family, your basic beliefs, your glossy-eyed view of the world. I was alone with emotions that I couldn’t understand. I thought that the only way to know what was true and false was to die. If I died and eternity existed then I could finally get an answer to my questions.”

    “And if there wasn’t?”

    “I’d be at peace.” Clive shrugged, “so I got a knife and I started cutting. It was like practicing. Numbing myself to the pain.”

    I lowered my eyes, avoiding Clive’s gaze. “Did you ever try to go all the way?”

    “No.” Clive answered without even thinking. “I never really meant it. The one time when I thought that I would really do it, I freaked out the second the metal hit my wrist. I knew instantly that death couldn’t ever be the answer. My parents would have mourned for me if they’d seen me so despairing. Their God was a God of kindness, patience, gentleness and love. Their God never would have wanted me to suffer. Their God would have wanted me to wait for death in it’s own time. But most of all, their God would have craved my life.”

    “So what did you do?”

    “I started searching for their God. I went to the library, checked out a New Testament, and started reading. When I got to the verse I just read you, I stopped.”

    “Why?”

    “Because it told me something.” Clive smiled genuinely, remembering. “It told me that I was already dead, because I didn’t love anything. I didn’t even feel anything. I cut myself because at least the pain was real. At least I could feel it. But I didn’t have any emotions and I didn’t have any hope.”

    “Ouch.”

    “Yeah. So I asked God to forgive me and I started trying to figure out how to feel things again.” Clive sighed, “Love, cheesy as it sounds, really is the answer.” The tone of Clive’s voice made me jump. I stared at him like a frightened bunny.

    “I would rather die than see you being the way I used to be,” he continued. “It’s the truth, Chase. I wish I could take all of your pain on myself. I don’t want to see you spending years trying to rediscover how to feel, how to experience, how to want life. I don’t want to see you become blank, become a nothing. You already know what that’s like, don’t you? You know how it feels to go through the whole day faking every laugh, every tear. That makes me sick, Chase. I wish there was a way to make you see that this is unnecessary. No one should ever think that they need to suffer.”

    Clive had taken my hand somewhere during that speech. He’d leaned over the table, staring me right in the eyes. I pulled my hand away and looked in the other direction. I swallowed hard, knowing as I did it that I was just trying to turn myself off again. I was sick of the intensity of emotions. I was sick of the way that Clive’s mental health made me feel guilty for not being okay. “I know that I don’t need to suffer,” I said roughly, “I’m not an idiot.”

    “You think you do but you obviously don’t.” Clive laughed bitterly. “Maybe you can see that what I’m saying makes sense. Maybe you even want to believe; but you don’t. Every time you pull away that tells me something. Every time you stare at the walls instead of talking to me, that tells me something. Your actions tell a story, a story that maybe you can’t even read.”

    “A story?” I laughed, too. This whole conversation was starting to sound staged. I wondered how long Clive had lay awake at night imagining it and polishing his lines.

    “A story about a girl, who, despite all evidence to the contrary, still thinks that she’s done something to deserve all the pain in her life. A girl who won’t let go of the pain because somewhere in her head she thinks that the pain is all she’s got left.”

    My mouth fell open. My breakfast sat in front of me, lonely and forgotten. I’d dropped the spoon, spraying yogurt across the table in tiny pink beads. “That’s not true,” I said, hoping I sounded as adamant as I felt, “you’re kidding yourself.”

    Clive’s tone was admonitory, the tone of a teacher who knows that the student is faking phantom symptoms just to get out of a pop quiz. “If it’s such a lie then act like it, Chase.”

    I closed my eyes, my fingers clenching against my belly. “I really don’t think I act that way.”

“You can do better than that, Chase.”

    I sighed, opening my eyes. “For what it’s worth, I wish that I could believe you. If what you say is true, the cure is easy.”

    Clive put his hands on either side of my face. He leaned in so close that for a few panicked seconds I thought he was going to kiss me. “Stop it, Chase,” he said softly and strongly, “stop saying that you want to. Just let go of yourself and do it. Please. You can. It may be hard, but you can. You’re capable of so much more than you would believe.”

    I tried to drown myself in his words. I tried to just let my feelings float away. Doing that made me afraid, more afraid than I’d ever been in my entire life. Being raped was easy in comparison to simply being me. I was afraid that I’d wake up one day in a world where I was alone with my inner nothingness. Clive, Maria and Estelle would disappear. Who would I be without them? Without the things that they woke in me? My identity was found in the people around me. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed them. Questions asked themselves in a litany of neediness. Had I always been so blank inside? Had I always dredged my emotions out in a way of hiding that pit of blackness in my heart? Had I always hid myself in other people? Had I always been so scared?

     I was afraid of the answers, so I silenced the voices with a heavy had and went back to eating my breakfast. Across the table Clive seemed to accept my reticence. He went back to eating as well, Bible open on his lap, eyes tracing the words restlessly.