Bin Laden's Death to One 28-Year-Old

When we heard Bin Laden was dead, Corvus spontaneously ran outside to shout with joy. "It's over. It's finally over." Tears dripped down his face.

I wasn't quite sure what ended with Bin Laden's death. I wasn't complaining, but I wasn't feeling the overwhelming relief or joy that seemed to take over my boyfriend. He's three years younger than I am, and it didn't occur to me at the time, but we were in different places in our lives on September 11th and I may be five minutes too old for the jubilance. Or maybe I'm just too skeptical to place my feelings of safety in the mortality of one human. Still, I envy the death revelers.

On September 11, 2001, I had just begun my sophomore year at Nameless Liberal Arts College. When someone in my statistics lab stood up that morning and announced an airplane had flown into the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon, I thought they were doing an experiment for psych class. But no, Google quickly confirmed that the world had gone to shit. Class let out early. Some classes were canceled for the day, others went on with optional attendance. The dorm lounges were packed with students staring at the news, horrific images, and the first time I ever heard the name "Osama Bin Laden."
My most hawkish (and incidentally, at the time, only Republican friend) wanted, to bomb someone. Blow up something in revenge. But being a self-centered 19-yer-old, that was my biggest fear: war. We were in the middle of a middle state, nice and safe. I already knew my family was safe, so my next concern was my of-drafting-age male friend pool. We'd just elected The Bad President and there was no way he was keeping us out of war. I assumed at that point it would at least be the "logical" war, but my peers were the ones who'd have to fight it and I didn't like that. We sat in that lounge and I wanted to be held by the Boy I was pining over at the time as well as every single boy I gave a marginal crap about before they all had to go die for the country.

I had friends in school in New York too close to Ground Zero. One still has PTSD.
I had friends help clean up at Ground Zero.
Then somehow we ended up in Iraq and no one I really cared about at the time had to fight.
But the threat of Terror never felt like it was the threat of Osama Bin Laden. I remember Oklahoma City (though I was quite young) and that was American extremists. There will always be a small percentage of the human population that likes to screw things up for the rest of us, and that is terrifying. I'm glad there's one less ultra-asshole, but he was never the focal point of my fear or pain and therefor doesn't get to be a trigger for great relief.

Maybe if I was just a bit younger, or a bit someone else, I'd need a face for the abstraction of fear. I wouldn't have such concrete non-Bin Laden things from September 11th and he would hold status as the threat of my youth. Maybe he would have been my childhood's boogieman. But he was only a piece of my fear and feels like just one piece of the puzzle, not full closure on a hole in my soul.

I joined my friends for a post-Obama speech tequila shot. Obama is so presidential and doing a shot seemed somehow the most appropriate response to Bin Laden's death, anyway; we drink to life, death, joy and pain, to numb the feelings that are too alive and  to remind ourselves we're alive when we're too damn numb.

Ungrounded

I'm feeling better again. I was going to watch the season premier of LOST at Possible Boy's house but he decided he wanted to go out and not stay home for three hours of couch potato-ness. I texted James Spader to see what he was doing, since I know he watched LOST, too, and he would also be an entertaining watching-buddy. He would be full of conjecture and criticism, a side of myself I've been sprinkling with coarse ground sugar instead of feeding its usual lemons. (Un?)fortunately, James is out of town. The episode will be online tomorrow and I was much more interested in getting out and having fun tonight than watching other people run around an island, so I went to the bar for improv night.

Holy shit am I squirrelly.

I've been cooped up and feeling like crap for a week, and tonight was/is my explosion of all my kinetic energy not knowing where to go.

I left the bar shortly after Aural Girl did. Sometimes Possible Boy and I can't talk to eachother. This was one of those times.

But tonight, I was feeling dangerous. There was a bar full of Boys and I wanted to get in trouble. I wanted to do something with all this energy, wanted to watch something explode.

So I left. Before I could hurt anyone, or even ruffle feathers that might later need to be unruffled. But even now, I'm sitting here completely sober with too much fire behind my eyes, still wearing my boots and my coat. I could go back. I could prowl and devour and find something male and fleshy to prove I'm alive.

Down, girl.

Couch Party

Earlier today I gave myself my ketorolac tromethamine shot, walked the dog, and fell asleep on the couch before I took off my coat. When I woke up from the nap, I still had the headache. I went to the Walgreens drive-thru and forced myself through a quick shopping trip at my little local grocery store. I needed rice milk but there was no way I could deal with Dominicks (now owned by Safeway), so I still have no rice milk. It is amazing what I can do, when necessary, with migraine. It's also amazing how hard some things can be. The mess builds and builds, and at this point I'm still assuming I'll feel better in another day or so, and then I can clear away the rubble. Now, the logic and organization receptors are frustratingly haywire and as long as I'm not back in permanent status migraine mode, it's not worth trying to think in the way that hurts most.

When I came home from my errands, my dog was in my nap spot on the couch. I've since reclaimed the space, forcing him to build himself a little fort out of the cushions. First he had to "dig" the cushions, then my sofa's slip cover provided him a more fruitful excavation. We stayed through sunset, watching Hulu. I ate half a papaya, three bananas, and a generously buttered sweet potato. I knit. I finished the entire season of Lie to Me and a good bit of the scarf I'm knitting. My dog farted a lot.

At least I don't feel bitter or ashamed of my day. Maybe the pain is too wide to fit my standard self-doubt, but I feel like I got today "right." I pushed on the things that required pushing and let go everywhere else. Aural Girl and Possible Boy are wonderful and amazing when I'm migrainey. They say nice things and mean them and care and are concerned in a way that isn't more about themselves (cough, my mother, cough cough). They went to see the NBA game in Milwaukee, and I just got a text from Possible Boy that says "having a blast, wish you were here with us!" and at this particular moment I am very glad I am not with them because they are somewhere with noise and motion and people and things that would make me curl up into a little ball and cry. People confined to wheelchairs don't generally get to climb through ancient ruins or Escher lithographs; I may not be able to plan attendance at indoor sporting events, concerts, or the entire city of Las Vegas. I'm so used to having it all, it's not a bad life to have it most.

Expanding

Feeling really weird today...indecisive,  too. Go to the auction as a proactive move and hope to find something I can turn around for a larger profit or stay home and do the million things I want to get done here?
It's good that  I'm back to doing things and feeling  like I can do things, but I've also welcomed back that unnecessary anxiety that every minute I'm wasting and there's a world of ToDos hovering above. Sort and clean and list and sell go go GO! That's the life I'm trying to step away from. I'm not saying I want to sit around doing nothing all day. I'm trying to see things to do as things that give my life more dimension. Maybe that's the real key--make my daily choices based on some guess as to what will bring the most dimension (which is different from happiness) to my life, knowing full well that each choice is a guess, that I can only measure in relation to myself, and that that's still a worthwhile measure to make.

An undiscussed side effect of migraine: too much time to think.

In other news, I could sure use a fuck-buddy right now. I need something extremely hot and physical and emotionally uncomplicated. I'm going through my head all the Boys who have expressed interest like a closet full of clothes with nothing to wear. It's all a nasty little hornets nest of me making excuses not to go to the ball because I'm afraid my admirers won't want to dance with me and if they do I'll freak out and spend the rest of the night hiding in the powder room. But aside from all that, fuck buddy. Want one. Now.

Dimensions

I took physics in high school, calculus in high school and one one class in college. I don't remember how to find a derivative anymore. I've read very little of Einstein and even less Stephen Hawking or Carl Sagan. What I am reading is A Wrinkle in Time for the first time since I was in fourth grade. Here is what my brain is puking:

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.

Un(w)hol(l)y Developed Ideas

In the future, when Humanism becomes an actual religion with its own rites and dogma, it will have its own ceremony, akin to a christening, welcoming new babies into the world. Parents will choose for their child a Humanist name. It will consist of two names, usually the same number of letters, written on top of one another. The name can then only be pronounced by two people simultaneously, so no Humanist can speak his or her full name alone.

Name generator gave me 10 random girls' names, Serena and Emilia had the same number of letters and sound, poof! Instant Humanist name. Works in any language. Two Hebrew names for Annabell according to another generator, אהובה and תפארה, Humanist-ized:

At the naming ceremony, it takes more than one person to say the name of the child just as it takes more than one person to raise and shape the life of the child.
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.

For Those Considering Suicide

There is the will to live. There is a lack of will to live. There is a will to die. Where and why does one slip into another? While I'm standing on the sunny side of the shore, how can I bottle my reasons to go on and pass them out to people who don't feel the same stability?

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...

Hanibal Lecture

I need a regimen. Structure. Some skelleton for my daily activity. I'm so scared of what happens when I get locked into things and then "fail" to do them, I instead go for the amorphous blob life.

I need to write. Every day. Make a schedule. Give myself hours of writing instead of hours of fucking around on the internet. Write in my journal. Write on here. Write blips and stories and anythings. Just write. Set a timer. There are alarms on my phone. I have one set daily for waking me up so I get up at roughly the same time every day. Get up, walk dog, eat and write until noon? I can do that. Write anything. Write about not writing if I'm feeling that stuck stuff. Write reviews of movies. Just make sure I'm producing words in such a way that those words can be read by another person at another time.
Maybe that'll help my recent brain self-cannibalism....
Chomp chomp chomp there is nothing in the universe to hold onto chomp everything is relative chomp all I have is perception chomp and perception chomp is relative and unreliable chomp so who am I? chomp! What am I? chomp! there is absolutely no way of knowing and no stationary unquestionable and dammit I want something stationary to hold onto chomp chomp gobble gobble swallow wipe juices off corner of mouth with napkin.
I'm reading Tom Robbins's Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. I hated the first 40ish pages. Now I'm much more mixed about it. Staggering. Totally post-modernist. Totally those guys in creative writing classes who are so amused by their own uber-randomness and creativity. Like, come up with some really obscure bit of subconscious something that you force together and make it work because life is crazy anyway, man. Tip your hat as often as possible to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. It reminds me of a boy I liked a lot one summer at camp. I couldn't write shit that summer. It's not my style. I'm forcing myself to read it anyway for the parts I do like and because it is a style and I don't really like the currently popular mid-century revivalist decor, like what 1970 thought 2010 would look like. But I'm studying it because it's popular and people buy it and it doesn't hurt to know what other people like. There's no right answer. Opinion. All opinion. I like to think that what's "right" is what causes the least amount of pain, stress, oppression, etc. But that's all subjective, too. Too much subjective. Give me ether.

These are thoughts I've had since elementary school. Some are more developed than others. Some bother me more than others. Sometimes I can ignore things, like basic questions of existence. Sometimes I trip over those things every step I take. I don't give myself enough credit, allow myself to ponder and wonder without feeling like a pompous asshole. Why, if everything is so subjective and ok, am I so infinitely critical of myself? It's like I use the subjectivity to move from perspective to perspective so that I can shoot myself down wherever I go, whatever I think or do. Use your powers for good, Annabell. And self good. I think about Neighbor Guy. He's imposed all these rules on himself so he'll think about others, but he's just never dealt with his own issues and is way too fucked up to care or notice anybody else's existence. Is there an answer to that? Does society have it? Am I doing the "right" things? What am I doing anyway? Doubt doubt doubt. I am a parfait of doubt.

Then there are the fruit flies. In the last few days, they've attacked in force. I leave out an empty beer bottle from when people came over Saturday night, and the next morning it's a macroscopic orgy. The food that gets caught in the drain stopper after I do dishes is also very popular. I empty it into the garbage under the sink, which has also attracted quite the colony. I attack each space with bleach. Fruit fly holocaust after fruit fly holocaust, and still they send in reinforcements. Why do they like the paper towels sitting in the bathroom? Why do they like the bathroom? My office desk lamp? My printer? When I was a slob, the appearance of bugs told me I needed to clean up. But now, what more am I supposed to clean? I'm sorry I have a garbage can! What can I do! Apples! Those apples are very good and they get mealy in the fridge! I don't want to put them in the fridge, but what else can I do! I'm no longer asking for a fruit fly infestation. How do you ever know when you're doing as much as you can do and the rest is just futile?

And there again is the big question. I want to know something. I want some sense that I'm doing something right. That cleaning my house has a positive cause-and-effect relationship and I'm not just putting on makeup before I get in the shower. I want an answer. When I get like this, I just stay like this until I can sufficiently distract myself back into the day-to-day and ignore my lack of gratifyingly believed purpose and motivation until the next time. Something shiny and busy, or extremely tactile. Boys are good distractions. I need to find a Boy other than Possible Boy. And have more local female friends I can bitch at and talk to about thinking, because we womenfolk don't get enough credit for thinking about thinking, and most of my favorite thinking she-people live anywhere from 45-minutes to 45 countries away.

I ate, I wrote, now I should clean and do errands but I may crawl back into bed with Tom Robbins. It's my first day adding to the "schedule." Go easy on myself. I have to go to my parents' house for dinner tonight. That's enough stress.

Pumpkin Carriages

Possible Boy's best friend came to town for Columbus Day weekend. Possible Boy's best friend brought his wife, 11-year-old step-daughter, and 2-year-old daughter. Tonight, I went over to Possible Boy's new apartment and we all carved pumpkins together with my copy of Nightmare Before Christmas playing in the background.

Possible Boy didn't invite Neighbor Guy and the two of them are being weird and both trying to distance themselves from one another. I felt guilty, since Neighbor Guy is lonely and wanted to spend every possible moment this weekend with me. I didn't think I could handle that much Neighbor Guy and I've been in a Whythefuckisitsuddenlyfall funk anyway. Neighbor Guy would have loved family pumpkin carving, or at least the concept of being included. I feel bad for excluding him. It wasn't really my place, but once I was at Possible Boy's apartment I was too twisted dumb to say or suggest anything.

We had a wonderful time. Really. Possible Boy and I shared a pumpkin. There are now four fabulous jackolanterns glowing in his kitchen window. The 11-year-old is my new bff. She invited me to stay over and hang out before she realized I was going with the menfolk to the bar.

Then I went to the bar. Possible Boy's best friend and I ended up in a conversation about the universe. It was awesome. We didn't have to agree, but at least we followed one another all over the physiasophical playground. I needed that. I've come unhinged lately, and even if I'm still swinging around in the breeze at least I got to play a real match of jello tennis. Possible Boy went home at least an hour before his friend and I did.

I had a beer. I shouldn't have. I'm seeing my neurologist tomorrow, but I messed my meds up a bit in the past few days (refill timing and just being sub-consciously self-punishing and weird) so I didn't need to add beer to the equation. Beer make Annabell happy. Tonight make Annabell happy. Possible Boy is still a giant question mark and I'm still a little bit terrified of another possible Boy something brewing, but happy.

Why don't I have stuff-in-my-face-and-go-to-bed food?

Life is Beautiful, Dammit

Brought my dog to the vet. While he doesn't seem to actually have fleas, he may have been near fleas or "exposed to" fleas, and because his allergies are so bad it made him batshit itchy. $166 and three types of medication later, he should be feeling better very soon.

On the way back from the vet, I stopped at a few used bookstores to sell my applicable wares.
Last stop, I made my sales pitch. She's only interested in selling for trade, so I was only interested in selling the non-shmancy books. My nice architecture coffee table book that I almost didn't bring in she offered $8.
"That seems low," I said. I'd been hoping for $20 from Powells or something.
She went off on me for trying to haggle.
Those of you who know me well can guess how I responded.
We started debating. To her, the haggling culture is inherently aggressive.
"You wouldn't go to 7-11 and argue their prices."
I tried to explain that in the buying and selling of used goods market, it's expected. It's a cultural thing.
She said it's inherrently adviserial and bullshit and bad.
I said it doesn't have to be bad; it's a game. It may very well be bullshit, but you can laugh at bullshit. Bullshit doesn't have to be bad.
She didn't like that.
So, in my infinite wisdom, I kept pushing, tried to explain that the entire universe is only what you make of it and that all these things only have to be negative if you choose to see them as negative. I ended up talking about my migraines, about friendship, about life in general. At some point I started crying in frustration. This mostly just flummoxed her, softened her a bit. I couldn't stop the crying which was embarrassing and made me seem like just a crazy person.

In the end, I kept all my books and bought Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas for $6.06 (including tax).

Life is full of things. This was a thing. Hopefully I didn't ruin her day. I wanted to get through and shine light where I saw bitterness and pain. I'm like those born-again evangelicals who want to smear happy over every bit of misery they encounter. I want misery to see that there's no reason to hate. Laugh at the hate. It's all just part of life and life is amazing and beautiful. The fight, the pain, the tears. All of it. Amazing and beautiful, dammit.

Annabell copes with stress by making statements of grandeur

There is so much life, and so much to life, sometimes it's hard to bear. But it's incredible and I love it and I have to remind myself so it doesn't hurt.

It makes me a writer. I will be a great writer so long as I don't get struck by lightning or anything terrible too soon. I'm never sure how much I buy into all the "meant to be" crap, and it doesn't really matter one way or the other if I believe in it or not. But I can and I will take everything I am and see and experience and use it to be a great writer. Maybe I won't live to see my own success, but I think that's ok, too. My parents and grandparents are almost entirely responsible for my current financial status, so I suppose it's fitting that any wealth or grandeur achieved be visited upon future generations. Not sure I believe that, but it sounds right. I still have the guilt about not supporting myself. I want to support myself. But I also want to accept who and what I am and be happy.

I am not my parents.
It is not my job to appease my parents.
Everything is relative.
Everything is a matter of perspective.
There are no absolutes*.


*mmm...paradoxy...

More Migraine Life Philosophy Crap

Originally written as a response to another person's blog post about dealing with chronic sinus issues:

For as far as we've come in medicine, there's still SO MUCH we don't know. There's this expectation that we can somehow find the "answer" and fix whatever is wrong. And sometimes we can. And maybe that "cure" is out there and if we make the right choices, we'll feel better. And maybe it's not. And even if it is, there's no way to know if we've made the "right" choices or if we ever can. And that's frustrating as hell, especially when you feel like crap for the whateverith day in a row and it's hard enough to function with the constant distraction of pain and ickyness but now you have this extra job of figuring out how to make yourself NOT feel like crap. OR do you just learn to live and love and accept your pain? Know that it is part of you and that you may never find that golden panacea and instead spend that last little burst of energy on coping methods and enjoying the good functional pieces of your life?

There are no answers. I have to decide for myself every day what's most important and what's doable. Some days the decision is very conscious and struggly. Some days I don't even think about it, but I'm still making these choices. It's a strange, strange little world of serious chronic pain that creeps in and becomes a part of your life.