Saturday, December 26, 2009
Companions
After spending too much time knitting while watching movies and not enough time digging through the crap in my office or doing actual work, I went over and hung out at the apartment of my friend who has or had a crush on me. Not James Spader (who sent me a really sweet text message this afternoon from Christmas at his parents house in Florida...), but another boy who makes his awkward feelings known. Another Boy in my flock of "gentlemen callers." My minions. And why exactly am I not attracted to this Boy? I have no fucking clue. We had a really nice time last night, but I left his place feeling like a lesbian for the total lack of attraction I felt.
My dog is staying with Neighbor Guy while I'm in New York. I flat out refused yesterday and this utterly and completely terrified me this morning, but Neighbor Guy has been pretty much wonderful about the whole thing and even humoring and placating my nervousness. We had a trial day today, and when I left, my dog was growling and snapping and trying to bite NG's dog, who is a puppy and at least 100 lbs bigger and took the snarls to be just the most fun new game in the world. I feared the worst. NG wasn't even going to be home all day; his upstairs neighbor comes by to walk his dog when he's at work, and NG doesn't have a phone. I was going to board my dog at the kennel, but apparently they require one of his vaccinations to be done every 6 months instead of every 12 like the vet recommends, and it has to be 48 hours or more before his stay, and I didn't learn any of this until yesterday afternoon after everything closed until Saturday, a mere 24 hours before I need to drop him off.
But this may all be for the best. Neighbor Guy is reminding me why we're friends, and when I came to get my dog tonight, he was very unhappy to see NG, but seemed perfectly find with the other dog, and considering how many hours NG will be at work anyway, that's what really matters.
Now, I go snuggle with my favorite little guy. He's had a rough day.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Olive Eeew
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Too Much Frankincense
Maybe I ate too much Trader Joe's polenta.
Sunday was a zombie day, too, but I managed to get my butt out the door and run errands with Aural Girl. JoAnn's and Target and Trader Joe's, oh my. I would like to discuss Possible Boy's Christmas present in here, but that is something I will censor due to his possibly reading this.
Aural Girl's gift, on the other hand, is both harder and easier. My brilliant Plan A is too expensive, and I could get her the cheaper version but I'm not so sure it's worth it. Plan A1 was to get her vintage fabrics from an estate sale, since the one time she came estate saling she got an old sewing machine - the kind build into its own sewing table - with all the table's contents, the matching chair, and the contents of that chair's flip-up seat. Grand total: $25. Even before the sewing machine find, we'd talked about taking sewing classes together, so I've been on the look-out for fabric at every sale ever since. No luck. I can't tell you how many times over the summer and fall I passed up bags and boxes and piles of amazing vintage fabric because I didn't want to start hoarding fabric for myself. Now that I'm looking for it, no luck. I found some scarves that I bought, but they may be better to sell than to gift.
I think Neighbor Guy is an alcoholic.
He told me what he wants me to give him; he wants the vintage maps I got at a garage sale with him this summer. Or at least some of them. Over the summer I tried to give him the one of Camaroon/Viet Nam/that whole mess circa 1970, but he left it here. I thought about getting it framed, but he's the person who looks at the only artwork I've had professionally framed and says "The picture is nice but that cheap frame is hiddeous. It ruins the piece." So I'll get him a Jane Austen novel or something. He loves Jane Austen.
I had to lay down tonight at 7 PM. The zombie weirdness was getting sharp, like a thick hazy cloud rolling around in my head, bouncing off the sides all day that began to turn dark and thundery. I set my alarm for 8 so I wouldn't ruin my chances at falling back asleep for the night, but of course I managed to kill my alarm and wake up at 9:30 with my dog whining at me. At that point, I figured I'd be better off if I could just sleep through the night, but my dog wouldn't stop fussing so I figured he needed to go out. Coat and shoes on, I'm ready to go out the door, and he crawls back into bed. Bastard. I spent half an hour trying to go through and organize some of the crap in my office, popped my bedtime pills, again tried the perky-voiced suggestion of "out?" to Mr. Fuzzlump, and now I'm back in my office, coat and shoes on, creeping up on midnight and feeling the clearest I've felt since Friday. Still, I know my best bet is to go back to bed. I'm going shopping tomorrow with Possible Boy to get a "thank you for hosting" present for Aural Girl's parents.
Which reminds me. I freaked myself out a bit when he called. I didn't realize quite how creepy-out-of-it I was, and I'm pretty sure I sounded normal, but I was on my way to the kitchen for food when the phone rang, and when PB asked about ideas for gifts, it was all too much for my mind to handle. It was like I was still stuck in the tar and sludge of walking down my hallway towards the kitchen while thinking about what to eat (a complicated multitask in my clouded state) and then going from there to a ringing telephone and human contac gave me quite a jolt. Too many stimuli. We'd already hung up before it dawned on me that PB spent the weekend in his home town with his own parents. That I could have just agreed to join to NAMBLA by the time my brain caught up with my mouth's auto-pilot function. Is it the drugs I'm on? The migraines themselves? Something that's causing the migraines? Something totally different? I know I said I'd sit back, relax, and accept my unintentional stonerism. Then again, I say a lot of things.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Be A Part Of It
I'm not that Annabell anymore. The spiky heals and feather boas perhaps, but current Annabell craves something concrete, grounded, stable to hold onto.
Speaking of which, I need to clean up again. The Mess is back on all available surfaces. I'm finishing projects. trying to see things to absolute completion. Right now, my life is the sum of my projects. Everything is a project. Photograph things, list things online, mail things, fix this chandelier, fix and clean up those shoes, find a way to wash the lace, photograph the things that are now fixed and clean, do online promotion things, go to stores and try to sell them things, make cards, make envelopes, buy more things to sell, buy basic life necessities, make food, eat food, tidy things, clean things, call to straighten out a doctor billing issue (because at any given moment in my life, there's always at least one), pay the bills, balance the checkbook, turn a ceramic nativity into a menorah, etc. etc. etc.
My life is juggling bubbles, and since I'm the juggler, I have a huge amount of influence and control, but since I'm not a very good juggler, I get frazzled and punch myself instead of catching any bubbles.
Last night Aural Girl brought over a bottle of wine and we got silly and went to the bar. I had on a sweater dress I'd gotten from my parents for Chanukah and she was trying out her new stretch belt with satiny shirt thing and jeans. I didn't think my outfit was anything particularly special, but one of the bar regulars who has repeatedly made it clear he wants to do me (and I've repeatedly made it clear I have zero interest) thought this dress was the hottest thing ever and kept telling me so. As I flitted about the bar, talking to a few of the people I like talking to, Aural Girl stayed glued to her seat. When I noticed she hadn't moved and wasn't talking to anyone, I made my way back to her corner.
If I had my entire life on film, internal monologue included, I could find all the scenes where I was in AG's place. As we talked, I recognized that feeling and space in the universe: feeling inferior, jealous in a way that you don't wish the other person had less but just wished you could do or be what they do or are. I want so badly for AG to see that she is every bit as shiny as I am, that it's her turn to be the Pretty One, too. We're both so used to being The Smart One or The Friend. She's actually done far better than I have pulling relationships out of nerd status. I tried to remind her that for all the random boys who like me when I'm smiling, the one I was interested in wanted her. But I of all people should know, when you don't think you're pretty, you just don't believe the people who say otherwise.
Dog is warm. Night is late. Tummy is hungry again.
Until next time
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Unconscious Connection
This morning, in dream, I found the cable in my desk drawer where I'd already looked. Realizing I was asleep, I grabbed onto the cable as tight as I could and tried to pull it with me into wakefulness. I did, for once, manage to wake myself up, but of course I didn't have the cable.
Back in real life, I went to check the drawer. The cable was visibly sitting on the shelf under the drawer.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Un-Cycling
To be honest, I don't entirely hate it. I hate it when there was something I had to do and missed. Today, I had enough food in the house to put off going to the grocery store. I almost finished rewiring another chandelier. I read the rest of A Wrinkle In Time. And I danced between the realities un, sub, and mostly consciousness. No fighting it, just drift and play with the wonder of wakefulness.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Good Ideas, brought to you by Technology
It was.
40-year-old guy I'm not actually interested in buy I still find interesting was the only other person there when I showed up. He likes telling me I'm pretty and amazing and since he pays some attention to his surroundings I actually take what he says as a compliment instead of empty flattery. For all the fucked up things with the way gender roles play out in our society, at this particular moment in time, I like whatever it is that makes men spit out as much complimentary garbage as possible. I'm still always the skeptic, and I return compliments a thousand fold when I honestly believe them, but let's be honest here; at least part of me changed out of my PJs an hour before last call so I could hear boys tell me I'm pretty and all the other things I'm trying to learn to believe.
I should make stew more often. It's delicious and easy and cheap.
Can we both shed our need to pair rejection with love?
Thanks,
Annabell
Sense of Smell
Birdie, you'll know what I mean. (Token Pakistani friend, too, if you still ever read this...)
James Spader and Neighbor Guy and a lot of the people at the coop back at Nameless (and, come to think of it, in my family...good thing I have the most recent two so I know it's not just Jews...) have been seriously, deeply, validly hurt by people close to them. We see these scars, conscious or not, and sooner or later we find one another.
But I don't think James, NG, and many many other Wounded Souls ever see beyond themselves. It's not something they do to be cruel or hurtful, their minds just don't work in a way that fully and meaningfully feel for and empathize with other people. It's like the difference between being able to translate from a foreign language and actually thinking in the foreign language. Empathy v. sympathy suggests (to me at least) that you had to have gone through the experience or something comparable in order to empathize, but not to sympathize. What I'm trying to express is different. It's for those of us who can't help but care. Maybe we get labeled "too sensitive" and we still think we're assholes because we can empathize with assholes, too.
Like most things, people come in various shades. In the Wounded Souls Club, I think the wounding process shoves members to one side or another: you can't see beyond yourself and can only relate to people in terms of yourself -or- you're hypersensitive and fear the consequences of exhaling.
I'm afraid to exhale, so I can only spend so much time with people on the other side without recouping. I used to think I had to spend time with and help those people. They are my parents, a number of Boys I've Liked and even Loved, my life-defining friendships. Punish myself for thinking of myself and being a selfish, spoiled little brat and feeling jealousy and disappointment. Find someone truly self-centered and serve them, follow them, fix them.
I get points for realizing that's exactly what Neighbor Guy is very early in our friendship. Maybe I'm being too quick to judge my most blatant current Male Suitors, but every time I tell myself I should give them another chance, spend more time with them, I'm back with the sense that they're somewhere between charity work and punishment.
I've said it before, I'll say it again:
I just want to be understood. By a person I understand. Reciprocal sharing the burden of the universe. And no being mean.
Really, as many people as possible, all within walking distance, would be great. I'm getting so much closer. Stupid non-reciprocal levels of feeling with Possible Boy. Stupid him going on all these dates and enjoying himself and still having his stupid heartstrigns get yanked by Aural Girl and me not being able to be the friend he needs because I am, alas, the stupid girl that I am.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
I want to be there for him, but I don't want to always be around him. Maybe I need more practice to be more comfortable, but I like my friends that feel comfortable. Is that lazy?
Need sleep NOW.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Dimensions
Imagine a computerize chess board. The board itself is second dimensional. Each turn, each piece can scan its possible moves across the second dimensional field, but can only move in the first dimension (the knight is arguable, but I don't feel like arguing). When a piece is taken in a third dimensional game of chess, a person lifts the opponents piece off the board. This depth does not exist in second dimension chess, so the piece just disappears.
Scientists seem to agree that the fourth dimension is time. Makes sense. Put together an infinite number of one-dimensional lines to make a two-dimensional plane. Infinite two dimensional planes create a three-dimensional space. An infinite recording of our three-dimensional moments creates four-dimensional time.
But!
We spend so much time with the dimensions we can touch and comprehend. We like how ordinal they are, one creating the next, demonstrated with a stack of papers and a simple equation.
We're dealing with the infinite here, people. That means, quite literally, anything and everything can and will happen.
Things can exist in the second and fourth dimensions without life in the third. That chess game existed in time. Maybe the chess game could even perceive time in a way we third dimension humans can't. The fourth dimension seems to be an easy one to pair with other dimensions. I personally have the hardest time with the first dimension. No depth or breadth or anything. Just A to B. Yes or no. It just always feels wrong.
Before I go adding in any more dimensions, I want to make it clear with the ones we have that they are less in quantitative or qualitative order and more in order the way musical notes line up on a scale. The pitch sounds higher, note requires more vibrations per second, but we don't consider the quantitative or qualitative value of one note versus another. That's how I'm trying to see the world and that'd unquestionably how we should see the dimensions. We can give them numbers but fuck that whole cardinal/ordinal mess.
Our thoughts seem to be the infinite sum of our experiences, and our experiences are our human familiarity with time. Thus, the fifth dimension contains our human process of thought, our thinking consciousness. I've always been fascinated by how people think and how it varies; pictures, words, feelings.
Quick experiment: If I write the phrase "A very tall woman walked into the flower shop," do you hear the words as you read? Envision it happening? Get some essential sense and understanding of tall woman entering flower shop? Some combination? Something completely different? (PLEASE comment at the end of this post! I think we'd all like to know what it's like in other people's brains.)
Take the infinite summation of everything in the first five dimensions: line, plane, space, time, and thought. Total: feeling. People already use the "sixth sense" to describe something that is clearly based in a dimension of non-physical feeling, so I like feeling as the sixth dimension.
Again, I emphasize that none of these are ordinal and we, being human, are like the computerized chess board that loses sight of things as soon as they leave a dimension we understand.
There's so much I don't know, so much to know, so much universe.
I don't know quite how to explain the way in which this is both a purposeful distraction from Boy thoughts and at the same time justifies and makes whole everything that is incomplete. If you could plot this point where I am right now, it is the place of the spider. There's a lot pulling me down, but I remember how beautiful the world is, how infinite, and how possible and probable do their little dances to keep all of our dimensions and senses on edge with the sweet drug of hope.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Hating Myself over Boy
I want to be perfect. I want to be the perfect friend and perfect person who can objectively see how good it is for Possible Boy to have a romantic interest that isn't me or Aural Girl, allowing him to start separating his friendship support system from his amorous subplots. It's something I need to do, too. Logical Annabell knows this.
But Logical Annabell also has support systems stationed in random pockets around the country. And Annabell's imperfect human emotional side craves a hypothetical boy who can look at all my inside goop and understand and hold me, who has the same inside goop and wants to be heard and held back, and then kissed until all the lonely pain stops tasting so bitter because now you're tasting it on love's lips.
With Possible Boy, I ran things backwards. I was trying so hard to look shiny and perfect, I didn't let him near all the important things. Between phone sex and my disastrous long-term friends-with-benefits non-relationship, all things sex default to a setting of fun with quarantined emotions. Hell, even before I myself got near sex, these are the two versions of it that existed in my world:
1) sex for unemotional fun, power and procreation
2) sex as the extension and completion of the perfect kiss
Now the stuff that makes me feel like an asshole re: Possible Boy.
I'm trying really hard lately to do things differently and do things for myself and not treat myself like crap. To that end, it's either fish or cut bait, either see about reentering myself in the more-than-friends pool or put some space between us so I can move on.
But Possible Boy doesn't have another support system. He needs a friend, and while I'm not so fabulous that I'm the only person in the entire world capable of providing adequate and proper friendship, I do understand in a way that seems manageable by a limited percentage of the populace. Everybody has different pieces of things they do and don't see. Maybe I like feeling important, or maybe after growing up with my parents hyper-controlling every aspect of my life, it's just more familiar for me to be entirely codependent. But Possible Boy is good at the codependency thing, too. He might say every mushy thing I've said about him, only about Aural Girl. It's this wonderful chain of low self-esteem. We are human and we treat ourselves like garbage so that no one else can treat us worse.
I may have to ask him not to read this post. Will someone please tell me what to do and then blame me when it goes wrong? That's what I seem to find most familiar and comforting.
Monday, December 07, 2009
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Esteem
I hurt myself.
So much comes so easily to me, I don't know what to do when something is hard. Things either work or I figure out another way to make it easy for them to work.
My heart hurts. Loss and loneliness and jealousy are the hardest for me to bear. When a Boy likes me, I try to make it very clear from the start if he has any chance in hell so he never gets emotionally sucked in only to be let down. Maybe that's a bit too pre-emptive. I'm fussy and not feeling particularly good about myself this past week, and I know many girls in my position would go out and flirt and get as many of their Male Suitors as possible to tell them that they are pretty and wonderful and all that. I half-assed tried to contact the Boys Who Like Me yesterday and today, dolled myself up for karaoke, and still felt like crap. I couldn't really bring myself to tease forth accolades. Because it's evil or because I don't think I deserve their shiny words? Possible Boy has a new possible Girl, and of course that chokes me with extra jealous and lonely. How can I ever measure up to anyone else with a pulse?
I hate these feelings. Why do I feed them tequila? Why do I have them in the first place?
Friday, December 04, 2009
Worm
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Stupid Antisocial Dog
That sentence had too many clauses. A lot of my sentences do.
Anyway, my dog being my dog cowered at the mass of cigarette-tokers guarding the door to the bar, but I tried dragging him in closer anyway. Next thing I know, I'm holding an empty leash as he bolts towards home. So much for human contact.
My dog is waiting for me around the corner, neither of us particularly concerned about the other's predilection for abandonment.
Dog reattached, we headed home. Who do we see? This uber-nerdy but very nice guy who has met my dog in the past at the bar and just crouched down and ignored my little psychopath until he was ready to sniff him. So we walk a block together while he talks more than I've ever heard him, saying life is hard right now and he's dropping out of his engineering PHD program because it's just too much. I should do full character write-ups on him and the bartender somewhere slightly less public. Or can I get away with putting them on here? Stupid public/private/anonymity/being a decent human being/covering my own ass/etc.etc.etc.
Requests from the Underworld
I want a really great salad with grapes and chicken strips in it, brought to my doorstep by a person who will then keep me company for dinner but only talk of soothing things in low voices and gladly eat with me in the dark, and never even notice the sink full of shnarsty dishes or whatever combination of pants and/or bathrobe I decide to or not to wear.
Persephone
I choke myself
one sweet seed at a time
back into the underworld.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
I Like the Smell of Bleach
My maternal grandmother said this to me once when I was little. We went to the store and both forgot the milk. Twenty plus years later, I still remember forgetting.
Other people try to forget and go to great lengths to do so. Drink to forget, sleep with strange men to forget, play guitar or parasail or set things on fire or join the army. I spend all this time dwelling on thoughts and memories better forgotten, when POOF! I just can't anymore. I can't always reliably remember what just happened, what someone said, any of it. I've been obsessing over my lack of remembering, but really I should take this as a gift. I can't dwell on what happened if I can't remember what happened, and if I stop dwelling on the fact that I'm losing my memory, I can fade into a nice worry-free bliss.
Today has been an eat things and watch things and make envelopes day. My dog contributes by whining at me if I don't actively engage him.
I feel less like writing and more like whining back at my dog. Whiiiiiiiiiiiiine.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Hearty and Fantastick
Aural Girl makes an excellent co-conspirator. Everything feels like a nudge and a wink and an inside joke at the mild expense of the world.
Then she went home and I talked to Possible Boy about the pebbles grinding against the deepest parts of my heart--family, fear, self. I say things out loud that I barely know how to write, tears pouring down my cheeks.
I watch the Social Worker ebb and flow in his words and his eyes, I hear him profess the oaths of painters and poets, praising the inherent beauty of emotion and the expression and art of every life experience.
I want to hear the song that's in my heart sung by another person so I know I'm not alone. When another person starts singing it spontaneously, joy joy joy.
Now let me meditate on the song of your heart.
measured
I keep going back to The Fantasticks:
There is a curious paradox
That no one can explain.
Who understands the secret
Of the reaping of the grain?
Who understands why Spring is born
Out of Winter's laboring pain?
Or why we all must die a bit
Before we grow again.
I do not know the answer.
I merely know it's true.
I hurt them for that reason;
And myself a little bit, too.
Crazy, Evolved, or Crazy Self-Critical?
I've always feared The Crazy. Is my wandering mind The Crazy? My short-term memory getting less and less reliable, attention taken by the shiniest and brightest of the moment and lost to what I was doing seconds before, phantom smells and ringing sounds and flashes in the corners of my peripheral vision. The doctors attribute all this to the migraines, but what if there's something more? Migraines as a symptom of Crazy?
or
Migraine sufferers are a baby-step further along the evolutionary scale and/or we have access to bits of another dimension but since we're still mostly the same old humans, peering into whatever's next tends to cause pain.
or
I just spent time with my family again and anything less than an instantly generated optimal solution is considered a screw-up. I now say things like, "Well, we're human," a lot, especially to and around my parents.
Parable:
Yesterday at brunch, my dad made people omelets to order. I can't eat cheese anymore, so I had mine with egg and tomato. As we were cleaning up, he seemed very concerned that I'd had enough to eat. I explained that I'd eaten lots of egg and more than my share of the lox that was set out for bagels, even though I couldn't eat bagels.
"I could have made you a lox omelet!" This dawned on him like he'd forgotten his prom date. I told him it was really no big deal as I'd eaten both ingredients and ended up quite satisfied, but my dad couldn't let it go because he hadn't optimized everything. So I told him a story.
"Today, I wanted to get a bunch of things done. I realized on my way here that, had I done them in a different order, I could have made it to more places and accomplished more things, but it was already too late to go back in time and change my morning. I am a person, not a robot, and it's pretty impressive that I could ever figure out the puzzle to see places to do more; that doesn't mean I'm always required to do it. I had a productive morning for doing as much as I did because that's exactly how much I could."
My dad liked and appreciated this very much.
I expect both of us still have traces in our hearts of the dwelling self-reproach for not being Perfect Saturday morning.
Un(w)hol(l)y Developed Ideas
At weddings, Humanists look deeply into one another's eyes and say together their full names, able to speak them in true completeness with one single other person. Superstitions will arise about couples who fumble during the speaking of names—fumble the first and you will have many children, fumble the second and one partner will be unfaithful, fumble both and you will be killed by pirates on your honeymoon cruise.
That's it, I'm starting a cult.
Or walking my dog and then making pie and photographing as many things while it's still daylight as possible. Cult might be more lucrative and make a bigger impact on society, but being a regular human being is my current project and, while I find it rather difficult, its rewards are far deeper and more stable than having my visage carved into the hedges by human lemmings.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
I am the only person in the universe who knows the right answer and perfect method for everything
I've been doing much better lately seeing my family in smaller doses and being grateful for their positives and the fact they don't beat me. But it seems I can only take so much before it starts translating into physical pain, even with all the changes in diet and lurking off to the bathroom to give myself booster shots of morphine-grade pain killer.
Ultimately, I don't want to lead the sort of life they lead or consider optimal for a person to lead, but I still have the biological urge for my parents to be proud of me. I guess my house will always have to be cleanest when I invite over the family, and sooner or later I'll learn that I can still have friends if my outfits and my plates don't all match.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Food for Thought
How long did I just sit here trying to write this? Was it two minutes or twenty? At least I'm not in pain today. I cheated on a number of foods yesterday, so I'll take demi-stupor over pain. It's just frustrating that those are frequently my choices.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Thanks Crazy Family
When my eldest cousin was closer to her fifth birthday than her fifteenth, she and our mutual grandmother went for a walk in Washington Square Park.
"Dr. Perlman! Dr. Perlman!"
An enormous black man in a pink tutu bounded towards them, calling my grandmother by her maiden and professional name. My cousin stood in horror as Grandma and the Creature in Tule proceeded to have a very friendly chat. Thirty years later, I expect that same cousin in that same situation would have the same reaction, except she might make her desire to leave more pronounced.
My dad's sister's family was raised in Deerfield, Illinois with a very narrow idea of how things are supposed to be. Artistic endeavors exist to get you into a better college. You go to the "best" college you possibly can, get the "best" job you possibly can, do business, make money, get married, make babies, etc. My dad's brother was treated as the token family failure for never living up to these expectations.
My mom's parents never went to college and my mom had to write an essay for her father to explain what she planned on doing with her schooling to prove higher education wouldn't be wasted on a girl. She wasn't expected to marry a nice Jewish doctor, but she did. My maternal grandmother's greatest wish was for blonde grandchildren, and somehow I showed up despite my two dark-haired parents.
My mom has two brothers. One is a lawyer whose salary so astronomical it would make my dad's side of the family cry, but his debt is on par with Iceland and his third marriage is destroying the offspring it produced. The other two siblings are much more like me, with more intelligence and creativity and depression than directional drive. My mom's mom has had a few paranoid psychotic breaks, but only one or two in my lifetime.
On my mom's side there are ten cousins. One cousin had severe OCD (that's doing much better in the last few years, yay!), most of the cousins have been treated for depression and/or anxiety disorders, at least four or five have tattoos, and my brother and sister are two of the only three whose lives aren't primarily driven by something in the fine or performing arts.
My mom and my dad's sister are very civil to one another though they are secretly battling for my father and the entire world's love and affection. Still, my mom makes more sense on my dad's side of the family than she does her own.
I get a sadistic pleasure out of watching the two sides of my family interact, each making caddy comments about the other in the same key but for opposite reasons. I have a cousin on each side with the same name and only two years apart. They are both fundamentally artists and married around the same time and live in Chicago. But one went to an Ivy League school for undergrad, spent time as an investment banker during the boom, graduated Harvard Business School, owns a condo in yuppie-ville, etc. When we were little, he was my favorite cousin. He's goofy and loved to play with me and have fun all the time. The other cousin dropped out of high school and got his GED. He's an artist by profession, makes amazing things and has his work in magazines and people's homes and such, but doesn't self-promote at all and works obscene hours every week for little or no money. He's extremely shy and socially awkward, but he's also very tall and has a lot of tattoos and piercings so people think he's menacing and standoffish instead of nervous and quiet. Both cousins helped when my parents redid their kitchen.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Lost at Sea
Peachy Fuzz
It's hard for me to express my fuzzies in writing. Writing seems to be one of those micro tasks that I can do amidst the fuzz. I will space out for who knows how long in the middle of a sentence, but that doesn't come across if I'm able to pick up the sentence and you read it all at once later without the five minute lost-inside-my-head-following-some-random-train-of-thought pause.
I fear the crazy in me.
Ok, I may be going to The Mall and Target with Aural Girl. Get me out of the house, and with a baby sitter so I don't walk into walls. I need Draino and a few other things, so this is good. Last night I finally got her and Possible Boy to watch Dr. Horrible. I'm not sure how much they actually liked it, but I probably over-hyped it and then we had to watch it on my tiny little computer and Possible Boy and I were both in odd (not bad, but odd) moods and I ate half the olives my parents left after Sunday's dinner.
Speaking of olives, I need to eat again.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Like Family
So never mind the mess in my office or in my head or everything else. If I can be a good hostess, if I can prove whatever it is I think I need to prove to my parents and to myself, then I am officially a successful human being, deserving of their love and praise, deserving of their financial assistance, deserving of my share of the oxygen on this planet and the space I occupy and everything else.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Crazy
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Seeing Stars and Bars
But now I have friends. Aural Girl and Possible Boy texted me and called me numerous times. Neighbor Guy was responsible for ringing my doorbell.
When I finally emerged tonight I was ok enough for some mild calm social activity. Possible Boy and I really talk now, and he had some absolutely brilliant insight about the Freudian power dynamics feeding the generations on my dad's side (my paternal grandmother was a true Freudian psychiatrist). Aural girl was too tired to come out, and I decided to stay a bit longer after Possible Boy headed home to bed. I went and sat with another friend (boy who used to Like me and may still...he needs a name in here...did I already give him a name at some other point? He's Bart now) who was fussy and brings out the worst in me even when he's in a good mood. Actually, I'm not sure he's ever in a good mood around me. I think he's a good person, but he sparks my inner antagonist and tonight was no exception.
We weren't talking about anything when I spotted a person I'd met months ago and talked to extensively about writing and literature. The Writer came over and we immediately started shmoozing again in a comfortable, carefree way that doesn't exist with Bart. Bart started shooting angry arrows with his eyeballs.
Enter Neighbor Guy and his gigantic dog. When I saw them walk in the door, I was glad I'd stayed out. I was happy to see Neighbor Guy. Neighbor Guy gives me a huge hug and tells me how happy he is to see me, that I'm "his girl," that he woke up today and just wanted to tell me he loved me. He kept hugging me in a way that hurt and I said "gentle! careful! you're hurting me!" and he didn't care.
I tried to introduce him to The Writer and he said, "I don't care who he is, I'm glad to see my girl." He wanted to take me out to dinner right at that moment. When I told him I wasn't feeling great, I'd spent the last two days in bed, there was no way I was up for going out to dinner at this point, he took it personally. He lashed out. He gave me all kinds of crap.
"Why do you never want to do things with me? Why won't you let me show you how much I appreciate you?"
"If you really appreciate me and want to do something for me, you'll respect my feelings and my wishes and let me go to bed. I don't feel well. You are being unreasonable and stressing me out and making things worse instead of doing something nice."
Bart kept chiming with "Oh my god, who cares. You guys are freaking out over nothing." Always the helpful input. Usually that's my sister's chorus when my dad or I get upset about anything, warranted or not.
I went home. I know I said the right things and Neighbor Guy was drunk. I'm still frustrated as all hell. It's hard enough for me that I can't do everything I want to whenever I want to without my body wigging out and turning into a useless piece of painful crap for indefinite periods of time; I don't need a "friend" actively trying to make me feel guilty when I listen to my body's clearest messages.
It's not about you. Everything isn't always about you.
Funny, Possible Boy and I were talking about our parents earlier in the evening, and this reminds me so much of my mom.
I wonder what percentage of writers have/had parents who were the Center of the Universe. When you're born to a Star, it's easy to become the Narrator.
Friday, November 20, 2009
ouch brain whine whine whine
I have a pumpkin from Halloween sitting on my front table and it needs to go in the garbage. Flashback to Birdie and my college dorm, sophomore year when we didn't throw ours out for months as it rotted away. This one still looks like a pumpkin, but there's no need to push it. I just forget about it because it's out of the way.
I ate a lot of puffed rice today. I feel like that may be making the head worse.
Ok, as I'm writing this, Birdie texts me to say she's in upstate New York watching two of our mutual college friends performing in some show with some band. Crazy.
Dear pills,
Please kick in and make ouchy brain stop. I don't feel like giving myself a shot and I've slept enough today as it is. And I'm bored. And it's Friday night. And I want to drill a hole in my head. A lot. Maybe I should spend some time in the jacuzzi...
Thursday, November 19, 2009
It Makes the World Go Around
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Media, Men
I finally watched the new Star Trek movie. That's some super high quality nerdiness. The graphics and everything were so amazing, it's hard to imagine 20 years from now we'll look back on it and roll our eyes or laugh at its campiness, but then you look at the original Star Wars movies and those were revolutionary when they came out. Still, it was fabulously refreshing to see things that didn't look like "The Future" always looks. Not just slight variations or improvements on what we have or are doing now, but bigger jumps and random side-steps so it's not all flying cars and giant computers and robots that do the dishes.
In short, awesome movie.
So good I didn't spend the entire time wishing I was smooching on Possible Boy, with whom I was watching said movie, on his couch, under his blanket. Ugh. For the first time in my life, all these boys want in my pants. There's an argument to be made for "getting my numbers up" while I'm young and spry. Let go. Make stories. Experience life. How many girls would kill for even a kiss from Ken? Beetle's brother invited me over last night while his roommate was out and I doubt his intentions were entirely pure and friendly. Dijon's compliments stopped feeling so friendly and safe. And I suspect even Possible Boy would be more than happy to screw my brains out if there weren't emotions involved.
But there are emotions involved.
Pesky, pesky emotions. I want in boys' hearts, not just their pants. Reciprocal hearty likeyness, which seems to be particularly difficult. No more of these stupid chains of he likes me but I like this other guy who likes this other girl who likes another guy who likes yet another girl. This is what I get for hanging out among the Lonely. Birdie said it really well the other day: the Boys I like and I are deeply and profoundly lonely, but we will also do anything within our power to make sure we stay that way.
Today, I made myself a schedule for my amorphous daily life. It has everything from eating meals to working on long-term projects to taking my pills to writing in my blog (scheduled for now). I missed the whole afternoon chunk because I took a rainy-day coma nap, but I still got tons more done than I have been and it felt good to have direction and something to turn to and say "what's next?" Also, I forget things and get distracted so easily these days. Yay schedule.
I'm hungry again. I made real food for dinner, but I guess I didn't eat enough of it. Must drag dog out for final pre-bed walk.
I know Possible Boy will read this. It makes me pause before writing, then I write what I was going to write anyway. Totally honest. Dammit, why couldn't things have worked out? Maybe NBF, my therapist and 99% of humanity are right: I need a better filter, one can't be totally honest, The Game is important, etc., etc. I tried to play, but I suck at it and don't like it. I just need more practice, maturity, acceptance, or some other adjective I don't quite believe right now.
Seriously. Stop writing. Eat something.
Guys and Dolls and Cupcakes
Today is Ken's birthday. Even though it's a Tuesday, he had a party. I brought Aural Girl and we drove down to Humbolt Park.
Aural Girl wants to know why the hell I haven't slept with Ken. Ken made it very, very clear he wants in my pants. He's made it very clear for awhile now. Ken's a really good person in so many ways. He knew me during the worst part of my life and was one of the few kids that didn't treat me like shit. How do I feel about him now? I don't know. Nervous? He's always been a horny boy with a filthy mind, but we used to tell jokes and turn everything we said into dirty jokes on the back of the bus. Flirting was safe when I thought I was an ugly runt that nobody wanted; now it has power. There's just so much history, so many years of nothing-more-than-friendship.
Regardless of Ken, this goes back to the ol' internal debate over sex and love and everything in between. Do I want notches on my bedpost, more experience, more stories to tell, more life to have lived? Or do I accept the part of me that doesn't feel right? Am I repressed or am I repressing my repression?
I'm thinking about this way too much. Relax, brain. Relax, everything. Can I close up the hole in my heart through deep breathing, diet, and exercise? Tonight I was ever so social, but it still craves something specific and not necessarily healthy.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
2 AM Post Script
Play along at home:
Wings - Josh Ritter
Uncurl - True Margrit
Kathy's Song - Paul Simon
Almost Lover - A Fine Frenzy
Swim - Stuart Davis
Julia - The Beatles
Colorblind - Counting Crows
Selling the Drama - Live
Forget Me Not - Lucie Silvas
Absentminded Melody - Joel Plaskett
Hey There Delilah - Plain White Ts
Monday, November 16, 2009
Between A and B
Aside: Other Girl needs a different name in here. It's the code name that seems wrong every time I write it. NBF always cracks me up to call him New Best Friend because how the name came about, the irony of it, the double-edged smirk. Possible Boy is a bundle of still-blooming kinetic energy, so I think of him as Possible Boy like a super-hero name: Super Man, Wonder Woman, Batgirl and Possible Boy.
I discussed Other Girl's need for a new name with Other Girl and, plied with wine, we decided on Aural Girl. We think it's funny.
We can talk now. All the things I was so careful to hide. Hide the crazy, right?
I want to fix him. I want to take all of his sad and make it go away. I don't know how to make my own sad go away, and I'm back on my weird self-defeatism again. When I feel physically ok, what am I doing to make money or somehow improve the world every moment of the day? Oh, look, it's that little hole in my heart. I can't just stuff it full of imaginary Possibilities and dreams to distract myself, so how do I fill it? I ate all the cookies last week. Warm dog, that feels good. I want something bigger, something to pop or burst or push me in some direction. I have to recognize that I'm the one who makes the choices, chooses to pop and burst things, can set things in motion at any moment. But I keep waiting for something external to happen; peg my emotional currency to random forces. I'll just keep playing until I get one good score, take a nap until I wake up refreshed, walk my dog in any direction until we come across something interesting. If I'm a feather in the wind, then I don't have to take responsibility for any of the decisions I make. Decisions have consequences and then I dwell dwell dwell. That came up in therapy today. Therapy that I had over the phone because I forgot we switched it today to her new office. I definitely didn't remember when I crawled back into my nice warm bed this morning post-writing, but I've been weird about it changing to a new place on a new day. What the fuck? People go about their business all the time with changing appointments and things. Ok, so this has been the only constant appointment in my life over the past year, but I also walk my dog every day and go to the bathroom and ingest food. The other things that I don't keep constant, I wrestle with my real commitment to them being constant. What is my life? What do I want it to be? How and when do I remember I'm alive? At least I'm not jumping off airplanes or anything, but I over-analyze every thought and action and then try to insulate myself from myself by hiding in the hole in my heart and reading or watching Hulu. Never mind all the things I got done today because look at all the time I spent not getting things done. Look at all the oxygen I wasted.
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.
I'm not the only one like this, but can I use that to inspire myself to keep improving? Hello, Annabell! Do you not remember what you were like six months ago? I'm making insanely tremendous leaps here. Patience. Rome wasn't built in a day, and other such sayings and aphorisms and blah blah blah. How much do I coddle myself and say "look how well you're doing!" and how much do I yell at myself to get the fuck off my ass and stop analyzing my lack of motion and (apologies to Nike) just do it? Carrot, stick, carrot, stick. Isn't there another way? An easy answer? Something solid and definitive I can hold onto? I wanted a human to be that thing I could hold. I've imagined that as my panacea. I had a friend a few years ago who was adopted, and she always thought finding her birth parents would be her "cure." White wales and golden fleece, why do people all feel so incomplete?
My parents have all kinds of faults and difficulties and incompatibilities, but there is no question in my mind that they are the ends of one anther's beginnings. They also still have the incompleteness and the insecurity and the melancholy.
Books and movies and television are filled with lies. Like drugs, they get us high on the illusion of a simple answer, a simple happiness, definitive answers and paths from point A to B with story arc and happy ever after. When I wake up and remember I'm trying to narrate myself in a complicated universe, I throw temper tantrums and curl back into my head and books and tv and don't want to do anything that doesn't go into the story. No paying bills or daily tedium. No routine. You don't write about all the days you got up, flossed, brushed your teeth, walked the dog, ate cornflakes, watch Colbert Report, and then farted around on the computer for two hours before showering if you even bothered to shower. The narrative skips to what you did, and I feel I'm failing myself and the narrative and my debt to being alive every moment that isn't story-worthy. At least, that's how I feel while I'm writing.
While I'm talking to Possible Boy, I want to make everything whole, in myself and in him.
While I'm talking to Aural Girl, it's scaffolding around an archaeological dig; building up more support, digging a little deeper.
And then there's the general flock of Boys at the bar. It takes so little for them to tell me I'm pretty.
"She had begun to notice something strange.
Her ugly duckling features
Had undergone a change.
In short, she was growing pretty.
For the
first time in her whole life--pretty.
And the shock so stunned and thrilled her
That she became
Almost immediate
Incurably
Insane."
That's enough rambling and ranting for tonight.
And they all lived happily ever after
and had direction and purpose and willpower and shined like cattle guard on the Little Engine that Could.
Amen.
Remember the Goal
Where's my orange juice?
Sunday, November 15, 2009
For Those Considering Suicide
I'm lucky; I knew my fundamental reason for living by high school. I have something more tenable than faith or goals or people: experience. I live to experience things. The senses themselves blow my fucking mind on a regular basis; all the colors of the world, the nature of color, light, the nature of light, how these visual cues tickle and stimulate and set off things inside the hugeness of life and feeling. And that's just a teeny tiny slice of one sense. Don't get me started on touch. If I feel more pain than the average person because I'm more aware of tactile sensations, I think I'm willing to take my migraines as a sacrifice. Mind you, I'm not in the midst of a migraine right now, but I did have one the last few days and it messed with my Great Life Plans, and I will gladly give up Great Life Plans for a will to live that life. Because that's the fundamental piece of being alive that death, suicide or otherwise, will most likely end: tasting the world, tingling fingers under a hot faucet, smelling memories in damp wood staircases.
One friend faced with the sudden death of a colleague, jarred again by her own mortality. The rug can get yanked out from under us at any time, but we fool ourselves whenever possible, we forget and concentrate on the long-term blur, the big picture, the daily minutia.
Another friend says the biggest thing between himself and suicide is the means.
Today, while I remember my love for existence, death terrifies me. It seems such an easy mistake to make, it's everywhere. I'm not done yet.
Now how do I give every person who ever has and ever will contemplate suicide a drink of my reason to live? Can I go back to younger me and understand it better? Harness its power and pour it over the universe? Would it seep into all the cracks in all the hearts and souls everywhere? Do I have to go around with a caulk gun and give spot treatments to those in arms length (plus booster shots to myself, of course)? Or is this all an exercise in futility, like my other desperations, trying to eke some meaning out of another night of words words words words words...
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
In Decisions
In Running With Scissors, a few of the characters frequently opened the bible to a random page, closed their eyes, pointed with a finger, and took wherever they landed as an answer to their question, direct from God. I want to feel that sort of certainty from as simple a ritual. I want to quiet the worry and the questions.
That may be my answer for tonight: if the worry and the questions are being fussy, the last thing I need is to be around other people. Sometimes it works out and I end up engaged in conversations with fellow fussy souls, but I can't storm off into the night and expect to make lightning.
One problem with the stupid hormones I'm on: I no longer have a normal cycle ever, so I'm never sure if mood flare-ups and/or "heavy spotting" are my period or if I'm just randomly fussy. I was talking to Other Girl tonight about life revolving around medical shit.
Wow. I'm not going anywhere. I'm totally zoing out now. Across the street there is a tv playing something with a lot of movement. I'm staring at the tv, watching the motion. Iowa tomorrow? I'll see where I am in the morning. I'd like to write about the character I met at dinner, but I'm done forming sentences.
On Buffy
I feel a little like puke, but I brought it on myself by eating the cookies I originally bought for my cousin's birthday. They were going to be stale before I saw her again, but that didn't mean I had to be the one to eat them. They were just so tasty.
I wonder what it would be like if I could do and eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted without physiological repercussions. I also wonder what it would be like to be blind, starving, an insect, or live a thousand years from now.
I want more cookies.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Half Measures and Slow Sinking
- Cleaned my kitchen (bleach spray makes me feel like I'm doing something)
Took photos of cards that may need to be retaken, but I didn't actually bothered editing the photos (yet) so I'm not even ready to say if I need to retake them or not - Went to therapy
- Wrote the beginning of something that I realize ties in with my old creator/creation Frankenstein/Golem/Genesis/writer thing that may or may not some day solidify into an actual work of something whole. Golem musical is still the closest I come to a mazzoh ball in that idea soup.
- Talked briefly to Birdie to determine that my weirdness about another work-related thing is now entirely moot (was probably moot to begin with, but I'm weird, thus weirdness) so I should go ahead and write an email and get something going whereby I decorate a person's life in exchange for vegetables. Have I sent the email yet? No, of course not. Today is a day for half-measures.
- I gathered some newspapers off the floor of my office and moved a few things around and took out the dirty dishes. It would be a stretch to say I actually cleaned my office, but these things are at least a step in the right direction.
- Took my pills on time
- Told my mother I wasn't going to take my parents' opera tickets this weekend because I'm trying my hardest to go to my brother's NCAA Division III Soccer game in Iowa on Saturday
Some people teach, others build shelters for the homeless, others cure disease. I'm doing little to justify my use of oxygen and since I'm annoyed with myself, I'm curling up and doing less. I thought about going to the bar for human contact, but somewhere along the line I decided I didn't deserve to go out. Maybe not my best move, since now I'm going to spend more time at home smelling like bleach and fake-tidying my office while watching random tv episodes on Hulu. I should eat something, too. I've gotten away from the regularly scheduled meals thing again, even though I know better. The self-punishing torture misery thing is really satisfying and cleansing when done right for just a day or two, but I have to be careful not to get sucked in. It has to be a low point I bounce off of, not a sticky mud puddle.
If I don't go to at least one lighting store tomorrow to sell my shmancy lamp, please bitch-slap me.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Of Note
I gave Possible Boy my blog address. On purpose. I wrote him a note and included the this very blog address towards the end. I had to write the note on the computer because that's how I write more coherantly and naturally. It seemed a strange thing to have printed off and somehow unfaithful to the words and the recipient to let them live any life but their singular intention, yet something came out of me in that note that I think belongs in here, too. So just that one part, and appologies to Possible Boy:
I feel compelled to write so there is some record of everything in me, so that maybe someone somewhere will read it and understand. There is just so much universe, and I want to catalogue it all so that each lonely feeling can be found and pointed to and said, “Someone is with me on that.” Selfishly, I want someone to read what I write and say “Yes!” to every word and tell me I’m not alone. But that means another person is no longer alone, too, and the magic of books and words is that they can be used over and over again by people who don’t have my compulsion, the same way I can use a computer but have no idea how to build one. I have to remind myself, in that way, too, we’re not alone. Ever. It’s just easy to get lost sometimes.
I guess that's my point, or a point of writing, and what I'm saying, and all kinds of other pointy things, too: adding permanance to the ephemeral. Memory. Antiques. I'm the one person at estate sales who is disappointed when all the vintage cards and stationary in the big box are all still blank. I want to collect stories and smear them all over the world so that things that aren't mine can connect stranger to stranger with silky strands of "Yes! Me too!"
I'm more spider than I realized.
Spin spin spin, a web or a dizzy blonde.
Has anyone checked my medication recently?
Monday, November 09, 2009
Putting Humpy Together Again
Beetle (guy I shtupped in May) is apparently in town this week. I know because last night, while I was sulking and tending my wounds, his brother called looking for pot. Thing I could do: call my model-gorgeous marijuana-connoisseur friend who's been trying to invite himself into my jacuzzi for months. See how many hot, intelligent boys trying to get into my pants it takes before I stop caring that one in particular doesn't want to carve my initials into the sunset.
Most recently revised version of "my type:" The Lonely.
Last night talking to HDS, writing, snuggling my dog, and leaving an appointment time change confirmation message on my therapist's answering machine, it dawned on me quite how well-supported I am. I have all these healthy, expressive outlets, all these ways to be sad and work through everything. How far I've come.
Possible Boy has no one to talk to, and until yesterday, we never really talked. I was always doing some sort of fan dance. He needs a friend. He said that, or tried to tell me that when I was leaking tears on his couch.
I'm a writer. I'm a lonely soul, fascinated by other lonely souls, collecting their stories as evidence in The Case against the Feeling I'm The Only One (as of yet unsolved by Nancy Drew, Freud, Nietzsche, All the Kings Horses and All the Kings Men).
Sunday, November 08, 2009
6 Billion People in the World
He asks for definitions of words but understands the concepts of what I’m feeling. It’s easier to look up “antithesis” than to perpetuate the lie.
That’s a big part of it: The Lie. Smoothing out the edges. Did I show my hand early? I wanted to.
We’re both getting closer to doing things “right.” Maybe we did exactly what we could. We’re both learning. That was part of his appeal: the sense that I wouldn’t have to hide or be quite as ashamed of what an emotional novice I am. Instead of going after assholes who call the shots or the pancake boys who like my too-smart-for-you bitch side, I thought, “Oh. Here’s a person who might be a good balance.” I still have a lot of growing up to do. This is how I do it. I missed a whole earlier chunk of my life when I could have been figuring this stuff out because I thought if I “knew better” on some kind of academic level, I could avoid getting hurt or dirty. I see consequences and hypotheticals everywhere so I refuse to move or do anything for fear of what I might cause. I’m trying to change and live and try things and let myself get hurt for what I do instead of what I don’t. I’m trying to keep my mess to a normal-person limit. I’m trying to make an income and have friends and do all of these regular grown-up things that I’ve gone from fearing to craving. At least this is the pain I know I want to feel. And nothing is so black and white as I used to think. This isn’t a deep and cutting insult. The sense of rejection is unquestionably there, but despite my best efforts to put myself in an “I’m just not good enough” position, emotions have little to do with logic or measure. Dr. Phil likes simplifying. “He’s just using you for sex.” But there’s just so much more in every moment.
So much world. So much room for lonely.
Lonely lonely lonely. But I wouldn't trade it not to feel.
Man plans and God laughs.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Hot Throbbing Stinger
Monday, November 02, 2009
Backstroking
Sunday, November 01, 2009
The Spider and the Bee
Once there was a bee. He knew himself to be a bee. He watched the way other bees swarmed and stung. He watched the way other bees slaved for an apathetic queen then died alone fighting the strange and unknown, but he also saw the beauty and sweetness of every honeycomb, every creature, and everything within and beyond the hives as well.
The spider and the bee became friends. Both were apprehensive at first, for while they saw much beauty in one another, all spiders know that bees can sting, and all bees know of the spiders' deathly tangle. What's more, this spider and this bee each feared her and his own true nature far more than that of the other's.
"Hello, Spider," the bee would say.
"Hello, Bee," would reply the spider.
"Beautiful day," would say the bee.
"Beautiful world," would say the spider.
"Huge world," would say the bee.
"Terrifying world," would say the spider.
"Lonely world," would say the bee.
"Indeed," would say the spider.
One day, after many months of their usual exchange, the spider changed her answer.
"Hello, Spider," said the bee, as usual.
"Hello, Bee," said the spider, as usual.
"Beautiful day," said the bee.
"Beautiful world," said the spider.
"Huge world," said the bee.
"Terrifying world," said the spider.
"Lonely world," said the bee. But the spider said,
"It doesn't have to be. I could keep you company."
"Oh." The bee thought for a moment. "Can I sit with you on your web?"
The spider thought for a moment, too. She cared for the bee and wanted nothing more than for him to come into her web, but she wanted to get to know the bee better within her web. She did not to devour him and leave his empty shell of a carcass like so many other spiders did, and like even she had done in the past.
"Yes, come sit with me," she said.
The bee flew into the spider's web and landed gently beside her. His buzzing made the whole web vibrate with a hypnotic calm. She wrapped a long spindly leg around him to see he was truly there. He sighed and buzzed louder, so she put another leg around him. Now she could feel his wings against the bottoms of her feet. They were such gentle but solid things, not at all like the rainbow wings of dew that would stretch across sections of her web in the morning or after a rain. She curled two more legs to envelop him.
All this closeness, and she so much like a flower unfolding leg by leg, the bee began to pollinate. The spider began to spin.
"I hope I am not adding to the terror of the world," said the bee.
"Only to its beauty," said the spider.
************************
Shit. Now what?