Trying To Belch It All Out

Does it even work that way.

Is there any purpose in having an expectation of a thing, does anything ever work out the way that one intends it to...? I will not feel guilty or weak for writing this right now, this is my blog, repeat it to yourself.

I had written myself a note in mid-June, "There were myriad chances for things to change, work out differently. There were so many opportunites, but none of those changes ever came to fruition. Never forget that." A warrior for myself, why did it so often [in my mind] mean feeling like I wasn't giving enough, caring enough? So I gave more than I could afford and eventually the bank went dry. You can only be a rock for yourself, emily. It's not catastrophes or infidelities that end relationships, it's the way that people stop saying "I love you," with any pause, the way things get taken for granted, the way the considerate-ness stops mattering. The way I waited to say anything about it. The way that things crumble even after. And on and on, life is not always pretty, but it is always magnificent. I digress, and it seems that I've lost my train of thought.

Underneath all of this dead skin is so much happiness.

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

Does this qualify me to be Vin Diesel's younger sister?

Yeah, ok, I'll admit. I'm obsessed with my tattoo. Cmon, the novelty still hasn't worn off.
Anne's will be cooler, and then I will have to beat her up. Or one-up her...

I liked how it came out 

The Cantankerous Old Bat

So it's first thing this Monday morning, an unremarkable Monday morning made bleak by the fact that there's no coffee and the sky is ominous with the threat of rain, and Dee (the septuagenarian secretary here) is standing at my desk rasping out some type of question or demand that as yet I am unable to translate from Whinespeak. Later she will feel badly about coming at me with such abrasiveness so early in the morning, and she'll compensate by being overly nice and interested in my life, and this will be worse than her pontificating.

I was feeling so angry last night, after Lee came over. It made me feel silly to have such a reaction to her aloofness, but it also made me see just how tightly the strings that connect my mind to my ego are tied. I was trying to think of the last time I felt so judged/mislabeled/unnecessarily awkward, and I think it was while interacting with Kevin at OU. Feelings I haven't dealt with, I guess... Walking to work this morning involved sort of the same feelings, though duller; black and white instead of technicolor. The OC students are back, walking around downtown and the campus, dressed to disguise the affluence that they come from, as I pass them I wonder about the glances in my direction, disdaining, blonde headed chica with lipstick and a skirt, I am not a doormat and you don't own what it means to be tough. It's a tender issue but only because I used to be the one doling out these wary looks. I suppose that I hate that I used to be that way, hence the reaction. Being judgemental is most limiting for the person doing the judging. The more I live the more I believe that the average person has much more depth than they are willing or able to show.

So Tongue Tied

Lucky to have sisters such as the ones that grace has given me. Real with their mates. Real with themselves.

Lucky to not be afraid of the healing process, to appreciate the raw along with the tough. To not pretty up or hide the ugly emotions in the name of being strong. To not disdain weaknesses as anathema, and also to not revel in them, or find my identity in them. Balance in all things.

So much change, constant turn over of new ideas, fresh perspectives. Life is not so bad, and people aren't out to get each other. We make our own realities all the time, and you can either look for the good, or look for the bad. I am retiring Myzel, because really it was my rudder guiding the raft the whole time.

A nod to Icarus....

Let's Not Get All

A ticking time bomb waiting to hear the words that will never be uttered; never ever. Like a wolf with too little food waiting greedily, ravenously, and there is no satiation with the next meal. The absolute disappointment. Let down.

I am your ridiculous expectation.

Slow the thoughts in your mind until you see them one at a time, until they pass slowly enough that you are able to see the stem. For so long I have been terrified of not being "enough" of something. The fallacy of perfection, who in the world has gotten past this insidious malady? Darwin had it wrong, or there has been some huge ideological shift since his time; humans aren't geared towards survival, we're geared to hate ourselves, to find ourselves base, awful, disgusting. Knee-jerk reactions. So silly, so silly. Ego defense mechanisms in full swing when really the ego is the first thing that would get you killed. (For something as petty and meaningless as pride.) Is there such an existant thing, as a real human being? How the hell would I even define such an idea?

Anne.

Patrick.

No more fronts, no more of the bullshit that just keeps us caught on the same ridiculous train track, head on the rail. Breaking up is fucking hard, and it makes you feel like you're crazy. In between feeling like you have no idea who the hell you just spent the last three years of your life with, you want this familiar stranger to admit that they miss you, to show you the tracest amount of compassion, and why? To what end? There is no logic in any of it. Being human is so frustrating sometimes. So, instead of anything real there's just all of this vague nonsense that doesn't mean anything, this posturing, fronts, back spin, and none of it matters. Egos. No one feels pain, right? There is no point to get across, it's all just words flying out into space, and the past doesn't belong to you anyway. So you get on with it.

The idea that humans are meant to find their "one" in this world, their "soul mate" is so indelibly ingrained into our brains from such an early age, and why? That shit is like crack that people sell to each other to justify twenty years of having their cooking insulted, twenty years of picking up dirty socks. And now I'm sounding quite jaded indeed. I need people in my life, yes, I have my friends, and I can't imagine what my sanity would be like without them. But a soul mate? Please. In the words of Manny, "fuck that shit mang." It's work enough being my own soul mate.

Work done by Dan Wulff 

Morning Haiku

Crunch of cat litter
underneath my feet this morn'
catalyzes rage.


Getting a tattoo is a religious experience.

There is this requisite level of control that one must have over their body and mind... at first, the pain is excruciating. Once this initial shock is dealt with, you look for the acute sharpness of the needle with the hungry desire to keep defeating the sensations of the body. I am a rock, emily, let me prove it to you.(Of course it's entirely possible that this experience was unique to me because I'm simply a masochistic control freak.) There's this interesting level of affinity that exists for the artist, too. Imagine putting that much trust in a complete stranger... imagine going through that kind of mind/body ordeal at the hands of someone that you may have only spoken with once or twice. He worked so gently, but so resolutely; such an unwavering hand. I feel like he could be one of my closest kinsmen, and yet I know barely anything about him. Confidence, I guess, is the name of the game. I already want to do it again. My good sense (for the moment) won't allow me to add Dan Wulff's contact information to my palm pilot, regardless of how tempting it might be... (picture to follow)

Hey Ya

Gliding langorously past the hullaballoo of the past month, my determination today is akin to the voice of the guy from Outkast, that is, deep and slow like a tugboat churning through a turbulent sea. Eye on the prize and hands firmly at ten and two. The nice thing about life is that it keeps going...

At any rate, in the next week or so there will be a new addition to the emily family, and it looks an awful lot like this:


Monday at 5:30! 


Inch below my belly button, I have three days to convince myself that pain is simply weakness leaving the body. I run off of diesel fuel, what fear could I possibly have of a little needle?!

Are You Ready? (Cause I Am.)

It's just that I'm not used to not getting what I want. That sounds so product-of-the-suburbs brat, but there it is. It mystifies me, seeing something as being so so extremely, torturously close, and yet so horrendously unbridgably far away. And it's not that I'm some insatiable consumer, hungrily devouring anything flashy and shiny, anything that catches my eye. I don't want a lot, or often, but when I do want something I generally go after it with fierce determination, until it's mine. But you? I pose no threat. These words cripple me. Less and less it's true, but the sucker punch still smarts.

And so with white knuckles I close the chapter. The hunter returns to the pride having caught no prey. How does he explain that what he thought was a gazelle was simply an arrangement of grasses blowing in the wind?

Yall Get Scared Now

The story behind your eyes, the story that I'll never hear. The story
whose intrigue is waning. People shore up their saddnesses, tuck them
away underneath their fingernails, in the area behind their eyes that
gets hot when they cry, waiting until there's enough time to go back
and deal. Time has a tendency to march on, and the past accumulates
like a brick wall building a fortress around our tomorrow. How would
things have been different, how would they have been different? The
question cannot even be addressed. Once you pick at the foundation, the
whole structure begins to crumble.

So we must meet apart --
you -- there; I -- here
with just the door ajar,
that oceans are,
and that pallid sustenance --
despair.

It's More Than That First Glance

A butterfly floats on the breeze of a sun lit day
As I feel this reality gently fade away
Riding on a thought to see where it's from
Gliding through a memory of a time yet to come
Smoke paints the air swirling images through my mind
Like a whirlpool spin beginning to unwind
And I stand at the edge cautiously awaiting as time slips by
Carefully navigating by the stars in the sky
And I sit and I think to myself...
And on the horizon the sun light begins to climb
And it seems like it's been so long since he shined
But I'm sure it was only yesterday
Namaste

A cold chill of fear cut through me
I felt my heart contract
To my mind I brought the image of light
And I expanded out of it
My fear was just a shadow
And then a voice spoke in my head
And she said dark is not the opposite of light
It's the absence of light
And I thought to myself
She knows what she's talking about
And for a moment I knew
What it was all about.

Breakin Beats

I was at the mall in Strongsville watching the young couples go past. The misrepresentation of the female gender. Pat made the comment, "it's weird that it's fashionable now for women to look trashy."

Yep.

I don't like to use my blog as a means for direct communication, but here goes. Hey Ahniwa. Wassup. I just read your blog, and I wanted you to know that you don't have to read the things here as though I'm writing about/to/in reaction to you. That's it, that's my rhyme.

Except really this is:

Everyday I sit, while my n**** be in school,
thinkin' about the second album at the dungeon shootin pool,
like e.s. to the p.n.,
cause we just to the be in the zone,
honey i'm home,
but i'm not married
carried
a lot of problems 'round being frustrated,
and now i'm sitting at the end of the month I just made it
like you make the B team,
or like your daddy's wife be making the coffee,
you heard that h-e-l-e-s,
so back the hell up off me...
[can't get it out of my head]

Yeah Dogg, You The Mannnn!

Eyes like beachstones and a demeanor to match. That girl on your arm is as important to you as the shoes you got on your feet, in other words, tertiary to you and your blown up sense of importance. Just a piece of the image, a part of the connect-the-dots that makes you feel like a complete person. It's sad really, but kind of angry-making at the same time, though obliquely so. Do you even care about the thoughts in her head, or have you not yet gotten past the fruity perfume she douses herself with, the sweatpants with "angel" emblazoned across the ass? It's pathetic, dogg, there really are other people in the world, you know, and not everybody is waiting on the edge of their seat for the next platitude to waggle itself out of your chip hole. Privileged white boys whose minds didn't leave college with their bodies. That hole you have inside of your center isn't going to get any smaller the way you're going, Snidely Whiplash!

"Trying to find a soul mate you end up getting so tired."

I feel you, Mase.

[You aren't going to meet anyone else like me.]

I Was Politicking At Murray's Cheese Shop

Believe what you heard, when ya talk.

So, basically. The only redeeming part of Old School is a line coined by Luke Wilson... "I feel more like myself than I have in I can't remember how long..."

What's with all this twin stuff going on lately? Chunky in Gibsons (or on the corner everyday after work) announcing my birth status. Jeff with that deer caught in the headlights look. It's like being in high school again or something, when people would simply call us "jindra," as though that would somehow suffice, as though Anne and I are necessarily different or anomalistic because we came from the same zygote. Yes, we're both different, and anomalies, but this has nothing to do with our being twins. Ah well. I'm that freak from cirque de soliel, with my leg behind my head and a rhyme to say...

But, this is all so far from what I had intended to say. There is so much substance, there is so much grey matter kicking around in my head and I absolutely revel in it. He comes into my work, looks for me with dogged determination, I have no idea what to make of this. Look for the steep mountain pass if you want into my world. Longing glances and ambiguous conversation will supply you with no shortcut. Diamond earrings and all of that bling bling will only set you back. I am in no hurry, Sisyphus, you just keep rolling that boulder. Monday. I had hoped that by this evening I would be saying to myself, "well, you're through it, then." Monday. What will you say? (When I already know the answer.) When the pawn hits the conflicts he thinks like a King...

Tooth and nail lately. Such a good thing for me right now, so many surface layers have been excoriated, and the rawness has become new flesh faster than I had imagined possible. The journey is far from over, but I've discovered this powerful weapon that never runs out of ammunition [so i'm ready for war] The M-L-E. Where you been, girl?

I Got A Remote For My B-Day...

Yeah, so, new suit, city slick, ready to go to town. Down to the brass tacks. This week will probably be hustle and bustle like the last, but in a different way... new frontiers. I have this vague sensation of hope when the phone rings, but something in me really feels that he isn't going to call. I have to admit, there's some level of disappointment at this idea, but ... life goes on.

A bird of hope goes out to Chuck, be well and remember that none of this matters...

From This Satellite Dish

Things have been so hectic lately. So much bustling activity, my brain
feels full to bursting with all of these left over endorphins swimming
around up there -- the remnants of my fight or flight mechanism. (It's
been fight lately... to the tooth.) A letter from my sister reappeared
last night, just as the self-doubt began its infinite loop in my head:

"You do not have to be good, emily, only fight with ridiculous bravery
to protect what alchemy's afforded you, that is, an unwavering thirst
for truth, understanding in the face of ignorance and the ability to
accept change, grow, move on."

There is no time for hesitation. Although this weekend, I hope there is
time for lounging. Pittsburgh. I drew Yann Martel last night before I
went to bed, I looked around my room and began to wonder how things
could have possibly ended up this way. I remembered the Alchemist, that
when you want something greatly enough, all the universe conspires with
you. I offer thanks to my best friends for providing the detached
perspective that I've been needing to get myself back on track. More
and more I am aware that I have arisen from a great slumber; I'm still
scratching the dust from my eyes, but there is this clarity that somehow
I had forgotten about.

"From wing tip to wing tip -- what's the meaning of any of this?"

So very thankful.

Towards Mecca

There's this Marcus Aurelius quote that's encased itself into my brain today, "soon you will be dead, and none of this will matter." I am so thankful for the strong people that I've met throughout life. Jon Brogger and his wife are divorced. Talking to Ahniwa on the phone last night about the Y was like being transported back in time two and a half years, beautiful moments all. Jon used to come back into my office while it was slow (sometimes when it was busy, hehe) and we'd talk about change and possibilities. There was so much energy in these talks, so much action just crazy to get the chance to come to fruition. One of these talks stands out in my mind, there was one thing he said in particular that grabbed my attention and etched itself into my memory. He was talking about his relationship with his now ex-wife, and he said "I'm basically her last chance to have kids."

There were hours of guilt and forboding that came out with the statement, it was obviously something he had spent quite a lot of time thinking about.

I am so excited that Jon made the choice that would make him happy in the long. It's so easy to get tied up in guilt, that false sense of responsibility (that would entomb you), unhappiness. There is more to life than keeping your head above water. There is more to life than just maintaining, just for the sake of someone else's happiness. Jesus that's a hard one to learn. I have that strength in me, too; the strength of Jon Brogger when he looked at his wife and said, "this isn't working anymore." Life keeps going.

son of a...

I'm playing the damn bongo, and the world go to hell...

To The Matresses

We were talking, some of us women in the office, about something that Bev had seen recently on the tv news. "The perfect gift for the woman you love," the anchorman said with that faint amount of skepticism one acquires after divorce or infidelity has forever marred one's outlook on the opposite sex, "coming up at eight."

When we asked her what the perfect gift according to Fox News ended up being, we were somewhat surprised when her response was that she hadn't stayed tuned in long enough to find out. "What does it matter?" she mused. "Scrub the toilets and fix supper once in awhile, and you'll have me eating out of your hand."

Yes.

So, here we go, kids. I'm thinking about that Eminem song this morning, "Lose Yourself." Today, I have to act. I know what I want, it's time to stop screw-dicking around. "If you only had one moment to seize everything you ever wanted, would you take it? Or would you just let it pass by?" Her palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy....