GAYNES:
Do you think if the vows were
“For as long as we both can stand
each other” people’d have a better
go at it?
From "Talking Dogs"
A play I'm writing
Friday, August 31, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Yes, Pema, It's the Purse.
I talked to Allen tonight. We met on the Mission steps at sunset and did some post mortem recon.
It should have been over a week ago, when I got “the speech.” But it wasn’t. I got drop-kicked in the time it took us to walk one block and back. Not exactly satisfying.
Since then, I’ve made large crocks of brandied sangria, and sangria popsicles. I ate whatever I could put in my mouth, and in between, tried to keep feeling. I’ve felt sad, felt good, made some sense of it. But on my own.
And now, if I may bestow a warning against making sense of break-up on one’s own…I submit the list I began to obsess over:
“What turned him?”
Was it my purse? (Can you believe this? Top of the list.)
Is it my breasts? They’re so floppy these days.
My clothes? Too girly.
Or, maybe I’m too sporty.
I’m not intellectual enough. (hah)
Not traveled enough?
Maybe he wants someone bold enough to get him talking.
Or more vulnerable.
Boy, those crows feet sure are prominent.
He wants a geek girl, a scientist like him.
Prim. Exciting. Smart.
That’s not me.
Not the prim part anyway.
Ditch. Cancel. Shut the Hell UP. Well, was it my purse?? Shut up!! Keep feeling.
So I keep feeling and suggest closure would be nice. Then once the plans are made, wonder which part of hearing Allen state all the reasons he dumped me would be fun, useful.
It turns out to be useful after all. We talk. I get to tell him I am mad. Get to tell him how much fun I had. Get to hear him open up and share things he didn't share while we were dating. It is all very enlightened of us, and I am thankful for having followed my instinct, and challenging myself to feel until the very end...instead of chalking up his absence to some dumb guy-move.
And though he didn't confirm or deny, I will be getting a new purse by month-end.
It should have been over a week ago, when I got “the speech.” But it wasn’t. I got drop-kicked in the time it took us to walk one block and back. Not exactly satisfying.
Since then, I’ve made large crocks of brandied sangria, and sangria popsicles. I ate whatever I could put in my mouth, and in between, tried to keep feeling. I’ve felt sad, felt good, made some sense of it. But on my own.
And now, if I may bestow a warning against making sense of break-up on one’s own…I submit the list I began to obsess over:
“What turned him?”
Was it my purse? (Can you believe this? Top of the list.)
Is it my breasts? They’re so floppy these days.
My clothes? Too girly.
Or, maybe I’m too sporty.
I’m not intellectual enough. (hah)
Not traveled enough?
Maybe he wants someone bold enough to get him talking.
Or more vulnerable.
Boy, those crows feet sure are prominent.
He wants a geek girl, a scientist like him.
Prim. Exciting. Smart.
That’s not me.
Not the prim part anyway.
Ditch. Cancel. Shut the Hell UP. Well, was it my purse?? Shut up!! Keep feeling.
So I keep feeling and suggest closure would be nice. Then once the plans are made, wonder which part of hearing Allen state all the reasons he dumped me would be fun, useful.
It turns out to be useful after all. We talk. I get to tell him I am mad. Get to tell him how much fun I had. Get to hear him open up and share things he didn't share while we were dating. It is all very enlightened of us, and I am thankful for having followed my instinct, and challenging myself to feel until the very end...instead of chalking up his absence to some dumb guy-move.
And though he didn't confirm or deny, I will be getting a new purse by month-end.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
At Home at the End of the Sea
At the end of a 2 1/2 month Semester at Sea voyage with 400 new friends, words of wisdom from Malcolm Brickhouse, age 5:
"Daddy, why, oh why, oh why, oh why did we have to move to this stupid house from our boat?"
"Daddy, why, oh why, oh why, oh why did we have to move to this stupid house from our boat?"
Monday, August 27, 2007
Personal Dialect
My step-mom is excitable. Set on normal, her facial expression resides somewhere between placid and steely, depending on the quality of light and purity of your soul.
In my family, she got the speed. Mostly in her brain. Mom's got maybe 27 channels on in there, all moving at lightning speed, and her mouth, God bless us all, couldn't keep up if she were a blue-ribbon speed-talker.
My dad loves this. Wholly entertained, he waits like a dog with a biscuit on his snout, for her newly rendered language, the verbal mishaps between her inside world and outside. He plants practical jokes to catch the 27 channels off guard and to hear her squeal, which is more a squawk as if a bird of prey itself is escaping for dear life from her throat, "Jiiiiimmm!!!!"
Sometimes, on a really really good day, a delicious and God-sent two-biscuit day, she'll encounter her excitability without my dad's help at all, and he'll be right there to hear it.
His recent favorite, they're driving down a Missouri highway and they see a car that has just spun out and rolled. In the middle of exhausting green expanse, this is pretty exciting for a passenger who has heretofore had fairly little to set her brain upon. Her wind-up is zero to 60 in .5 seconds; the bird of prey bursts out.
"Jim! Jim loook!! That car, it's all up under its overneath!!"
In my family, she got the speed. Mostly in her brain. Mom's got maybe 27 channels on in there, all moving at lightning speed, and her mouth, God bless us all, couldn't keep up if she were a blue-ribbon speed-talker.
My dad loves this. Wholly entertained, he waits like a dog with a biscuit on his snout, for her newly rendered language, the verbal mishaps between her inside world and outside. He plants practical jokes to catch the 27 channels off guard and to hear her squeal, which is more a squawk as if a bird of prey itself is escaping for dear life from her throat, "Jiiiiimmm!!!!"
Sometimes, on a really really good day, a delicious and God-sent two-biscuit day, she'll encounter her excitability without my dad's help at all, and he'll be right there to hear it.
His recent favorite, they're driving down a Missouri highway and they see a car that has just spun out and rolled. In the middle of exhausting green expanse, this is pretty exciting for a passenger who has heretofore had fairly little to set her brain upon. Her wind-up is zero to 60 in .5 seconds; the bird of prey bursts out.
"Jim! Jim loook!! That car, it's all up under its overneath!!"
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
We Love Love
Michelle on anticipation...
"Ahh! I was married 17 years! I can't WAIT until my next divorce!"
"Ahh! I was married 17 years! I can't WAIT until my next divorce!"
Friday, August 24, 2007
"The Speech"
Once, I had my heart set on an apartment to rent. I couldn’t imagine a better place for me, in a hundred different ways. I was crushed when I didn’t get it. Till a week later when I found a place that was 10 times better than I'd even imagined. Whenever I get “the speech” and it takes me by surprise, I think of that apartment. There's someone out there for me even better than I have imagined.
I’m putting in my order now for the next good fortune.
Allen’s FUN, friends & romance, Hocoy's head, Dwight's zing, Gary’s connect, Lara’s ambition, Chela’s diligence, Gina’s devotion, Christophe’s emotional intellect, Duane's generosity, Jane’s JOY, and Rian’s spiritual depth.
C’mon, a little Frankenstein mojo never hurt nobody.
I’m putting in my order now for the next good fortune.
Allen’s FUN, friends & romance, Hocoy's head, Dwight's zing, Gary’s connect, Lara’s ambition, Chela’s diligence, Gina’s devotion, Christophe’s emotional intellect, Duane's generosity, Jane’s JOY, and Rian’s spiritual depth.
C’mon, a little Frankenstein mojo never hurt nobody.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Day in the Life
Morning.
So I’m dating again. Or maybe I should say I’m still dating. For anyone not paying attention—or, uh, not inside my head till now—I’ve been dating for, oh, let’s say NINE YEARS. Nine years with no cigar. Go ahead, throw me on the commitment-phobe line-up and trot out your analyses. There MAY have been several “the one” potentials in those years, but it never turned out that my “the one” thought I was his “the one” too, or hers as the case may have been.
Afternoon.
The funny thing about this post is that it started out on a high note, this morning, me giddy from Matt’s congratulations for my dating good fortune—finally! My roommate for two years, I endured Matt’s sex-with-loud-girlfriends in the next room while he endured the string of overly clingy men that found me one after the next. I mean, extraordinary cling. Fire blanket cling. I spent a lot of time giving the “I-don’t-see-the-long-term” speech as a result.
Imagine Matt’s empathetic thrill for the new, improved, anti-cling of Allen! Allen is like dryer-sheets for the love life. Allen makes you feel fresh and soft, AND static-free! We have a ridiculous fun date, he asks me out again, we live our lives in between, then go out and have another ridiculous fun night. Just last week we’re bolting into the ocean, moonlit and naked and so geared up on the rush of our spontaneity that the slippery, salty kisses take on breathless surprise.
Evening.
Tick tock the merry clock goes tick tock-ing all day.
Frick frock the flippin flop has launched me on my way.
Yep. By 3:30 today my stomach starts twisting like a sail in a storm from these few words: “Are you free this afternoon to talk?”
By 4:00, I’m free as no-static, free as no-cling, free as a Bounce sheet left in a Laundromat dryer.
The speech. It’s like currency. I spend it this time, you spend it next. And so on.
So I’m dating again. Or maybe I should say I’m still dating. For anyone not paying attention—or, uh, not inside my head till now—I’ve been dating for, oh, let’s say NINE YEARS. Nine years with no cigar. Go ahead, throw me on the commitment-phobe line-up and trot out your analyses. There MAY have been several “the one” potentials in those years, but it never turned out that my “the one” thought I was his “the one” too, or hers as the case may have been.
Afternoon.
The funny thing about this post is that it started out on a high note, this morning, me giddy from Matt’s congratulations for my dating good fortune—finally! My roommate for two years, I endured Matt’s sex-with-loud-girlfriends in the next room while he endured the string of overly clingy men that found me one after the next. I mean, extraordinary cling. Fire blanket cling. I spent a lot of time giving the “I-don’t-see-the-long-term” speech as a result.
Imagine Matt’s empathetic thrill for the new, improved, anti-cling of Allen! Allen is like dryer-sheets for the love life. Allen makes you feel fresh and soft, AND static-free! We have a ridiculous fun date, he asks me out again, we live our lives in between, then go out and have another ridiculous fun night. Just last week we’re bolting into the ocean, moonlit and naked and so geared up on the rush of our spontaneity that the slippery, salty kisses take on breathless surprise.
Evening.
Tick tock the merry clock goes tick tock-ing all day.
Frick frock the flippin flop has launched me on my way.
Yep. By 3:30 today my stomach starts twisting like a sail in a storm from these few words: “Are you free this afternoon to talk?”
By 4:00, I’m free as no-static, free as no-cling, free as a Bounce sheet left in a Laundromat dryer.
The speech. It’s like currency. I spend it this time, you spend it next. And so on.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Thunder God
Jackie, on returning from Africa...
"Yes I SHOULD pray to the thunder god so I have more thunder in my life!"
"Yes I SHOULD pray to the thunder god so I have more thunder in my life!"
Monday, August 20, 2007
Naked Thievery
I'm feeding my friends' cat. They live up the hill from me. But, damn, I left the key inside their house last night!! I realize this upon arriving this morning.
Maybe the back door is unlocked? No, but a back window is open, on this dirty, ashy, smoke-over-the-sun morning. (We're getting blanketed from the fire in the mountains.) I'm girlie to the hilt today in my work dress and heels, jewelery. What's a girl to do?? The cat is yowling in the background over an empty bowl. Her owners are out of town.
So I remove the screen, remove my dress, and wriggle into the house head first in my half-slip and heels...the media release tumbling in my head, "Beware the Half Naked Burglar."
Maybe the back door is unlocked? No, but a back window is open, on this dirty, ashy, smoke-over-the-sun morning. (We're getting blanketed from the fire in the mountains.) I'm girlie to the hilt today in my work dress and heels, jewelery. What's a girl to do?? The cat is yowling in the background over an empty bowl. Her owners are out of town.
So I remove the screen, remove my dress, and wriggle into the house head first in my half-slip and heels...the media release tumbling in my head, "Beware the Half Naked Burglar."
That Smell
"Why does it smell like an eternal fart?"
...on sniffing another blast of the sewage smell that's been roving around Santa Barbara all summer.
08/20/07
...on sniffing another blast of the sewage smell that's been roving around Santa Barbara all summer.
08/20/07
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