Pulling Up Anchor

Have to prevent the stasis from setting in. Disappointed to the point of prostration. Things go on, em. Make plans.

25. I should learn how to deal with adversity better. These visions of flying crowbars are probably not healthy.

An opportunity to exercise patience.

Will not limit my job search to just northeast ohio. A-ashte, Tahoma!

What I've learned from my mom is to be magnanimous, to the point of putting other peoples' sanity ahead of your own. It's a beautiful thing, to be that giving. But in this world of maddness, the beautiful things are the first to be torn asunder. Clandestine kindness probably works better than the overt variety because it's harder for people to latch onto and suck dry. Oh, Mike D. Everyone just takes and takes takes takes takes. Gotta straighten my thoughts. Thinkin' too much sick shit.

The trial begins today. Anne and Pat hit the road this morning which means I'm the caseworker for the next week and a half. Plus having Anne out of the office means that she who shall not be named has one less person onto whom she can leach her cancerous bile. I feel stronger today, like I will put up a good fight if it's called for. Done trying to placate her. It's an impossible goal. Yesterday when Jan was leaving the office she gave me her card and said to me, (in a whisper because she who shall not be named doesn't like it when people who work together get along well and talk to each other...) "call me anytime. I really value your friendship. Don't lose your perspective that this is all just pettiness, and that you'll get through it." And both Connie and Chuck had sent me supportive emails, both of which were so touching in their kindness it made my heart swell to remember that there actually are nice people out there.

How lovely.

It's just this one thing.

Stress fracture. Everything’s getting to me. I’m about to snap. Wound up so tight I can’t see straight. Everything’s going to pieces. Get a grip, man.

Constant negativity. Everywhere. Everywhere. Can’t escape it. Can’t get caught up in it. Might be too late.

Work/friends/sex/talking/drinking/looking/being all simply too much. The reed is stronger than the massive oak. Whoever said that was a damn fool.

Run over me.

Can’t take it. Who is interested anyway? It always feels faned. And in our conference today about my work she kept cutting me off and talking over me to the point that it was laughable. Did she never …

You don’t even know what. You/what. Yeah. Everything is tenuous, everything is cyclical, circles are ugly, boredom and rage disgust me, I have a sickening taste in my mouth and a vat of acid for a stomach. I am not an oak. They don’t tell you that reeds can crack. They don’t tell you how ugly a thing it is, to bend. That this human race is a pestilence and it will see your bending as something flawed and beautiful, it will seize you, and it will devour you. There is no future.

Like Anne Said,

Down but not out.

I feel so beat up, so downtrodden. It's been like this for the last several weeks, and my ability to deflect the negativity is wearing down to nil. Today I feel like Frodo at the foot of Mount Doom, prostrate with exhaustion, tapped, drained.... but not yet beaten. Only, I have no ring of power around my neck, there is no tangible goal at the end of all of this, no great evil that I can throw to a fiery death in the heart of a volcano. It's just this grindstone that I keep pecking away at, despite the sparks that are constantly kicked into my face. O these contrived metaphors, these failings of the mind. These eminent positions of the soul, this society teeming with facts.

I will never be an intellectual equal to her. This is a bitter pill. Difficult to swallow. I've been working under the auspice that if I keep doing a good job here she'll realize. She hasn't realized. She isn't going to realize. I will never be capable enough. Smart enough. Connected enough. Productive enough. I could secure a $500,000 grant, design the code for an entirely new database, revolutionize our bookkeeping system, magically transform her office into something that functions, and still she would complain that I shouldn't have mailed an in-town bill because we need to save the thirty-seven cents. Run over me.

And now it turns out that at the end of December I might not even have a job here. While it smarts, the blow is not crippling because I've begun to realize just how incredibly toxic my relationship with this place is. No, not with this place. With her. She's never going to tell me that I've done something right. She'll never actually be concerned about what my ideas are. She'll never care. Why is that so hard a thing for me to understand? My confidence has suffered so much since I've been here. I find myself beginning to question my ability. Craziness! I just have to think about the praises I received all the time at the Board Office to remember that I can do a good job. God, that's pathetic. I feel sick to my stomach, just thinking about it. What's it all for? Been thinking about making the decision for her. In the form of a letter of resignation.

Anyone hiring?

Aimeeeeeeee! 

Si J'etais Diable...

Sur les routes, par les nuits d’hiver, sans gîte, sans habits, sans pain, une voix étreignait mon Coeur gelé: "Faiblesse ou force, te voilà, c’est la force. Tu ne sais ni où tu vas ni pourquoi tu vas, entre partout, responds à tout. On ne te tuera pas plus que si tu étais cadavre." Au matin j’avais le regard si perdu et la contenance si morte, que ceux que j’ai recontrés ne m’ont peut-être pas vu.

This week it is taking all of my strength not to quit. All of my strength not to debilitate her with words. All of my strength to not lose the tenuous grasp I have on my quality of work. She's like a cancer. If we were on a pirate ship, a mutiny would be totally justifiable. A vote of no confidence. The crew does not trust your ability to steer us out of the storm, so we will do it ourselves. That's what you do with cancer, right? Cut it off, if you can. And we can.

Weapons. Destruction. A thousand images of horrific violence. Milk guy's gettin paid. The chip guy's gettin paid. The beer guy's gettin paid. They're ALL gettin paid, and she chooses ME to fuck with?

500.

Thanks.

(The things you do make the words incontrovertible.)

That night you said, "I don't know what those words mean, but whatever it does, I do. I wish there was a phrase that encompassed more, because it just feels like it's not enough."

When I catch you watching me.

The card you made me when I was having a shitty day.

How you would do absolutely anything to get me to laugh. And how you know when I especially need to laugh.

The look you got when I told you about my random weird heartbeat. That it seemed like the first time you thought of me as being mortal.

When I wake up and you're spooning me.

How you bragged to Garyn that I could probably kick your ass. How you think my brain is sexy. How you are always encouraging the artist in me. How you wish I was less independent so there was more you could do for me, but how you admire how independent I am. Everything, everything.

We love uncertainty. We could not bear to know precisely what the future holds for us.

It's In The Water.

I hope you internet type peoples begin to understand the lunacy that I am forced to deal with at work. This is our Client Services Coordinator, obviously she is from a feeble minded bloodline. I was setting up the studio equipment to take a photograph of our current Board of Directors. She walked up into the frame and wouldn't leave until I watched her do an interpretive dance to the Beastie Boys' Intergalactic Planetary. This was one of the shots I captured during said dance.



And this was her reaction when I told her that she'd have to be on her way.

Send help.

For What It's Worth.

I hate it when I cry. What does that stem from? Fear of weakness? Vulnerability? The inability to admit that breaking points exist. That I'm not, after all, Vin Diesel.

To be 68 and so fucking petty. To be that old and bereft of wisdom, or tact, or any grace. To be clinging to the job as a shield against the grave, to look in the mirror and deny that one will inevitably die. To engender frustration and on the really bad days, hatred. That a package so small could contain so much fear and loathing...

I am not a rock and today she broke me. Today sucked, actually. All the way around. The worst thing is that I would do and have done anything for this agency, and she'll never appreciate it. That I'll never be seen as an intellectual equal. That any ideas I have for innovation will immediately be greeted with a "that's a bad idea." Hard, on days like this, to remember the unfathomable depths. She is so awful. How does that happen to a life?

The Aimee.

When I grow up I wanna be as cool as Aimee.

I Want A Remote For My B-Day.

What is nobility, even, anyway. When you break it all down. Even the ones you would hold as sacred will have their moments of faltering, will have their weaknesses, their moments of poor decision making and ignominy. We are only human.

I remember when we were in Southern Ohio and my breath would quicken when he was around, clinging ever tightly to my tough-guy façade I would attempt to speak to him despite my constant feeling that the words exiting my mouth were sophomoric at best and Lilliputian at worst. O these miniscule failures! And now he’s getting married, and though the teenage angst of October has subsided there is still sensation enough to call into question my situation, to call into question my logic, to call into question simply everything. Lately I exist almost entirely in a world inside my head. Fear grapples at my throat. The woman I was last June scoffs at the woman I am today. She must be appeased.

Patience is what I ask for. I don’t know what the catalyst will be. I have not forgotten the oath to myself, the affirmation that my decision was the right one, and the strength that led me to it. I will get there, eventually; it seems that I care more for the feelings of others than I do for my own. And though occasionally the price is my levity I would not change the way that I am. I know that in the end I choose strength. A thousand diversions in the road, and I will always choose strength.

PS, who else thinks that The Fall is Camus' jocular finger pointing at existentialism?

RRAAAAAAGE!

A new beginning every second.

Last night I went to the ER for my increasingly painful case of poison ivy. Going to the ER is anathema to me. That's how bad it was. So, within 10 minutes of being there the doctor came in to see me. Having insurance really makes a difference in how fast you get seen. Anyway, the doctor was... he was... beautiful. I think that his name was Dorian Gray. Pre-painting Dorian Gray.

Anyway, he told me that I'd need a shot of sterroids and would be back to normal in no time. The down side? The shot had to be administered in the ass. I had on clean underwear though, so I didn't mind showing the cute doctor my "trunk" or whatever the kids are calling it these days.

So he disappears to get the syringe, and about three minutes later a giant, bald, tattooed guy is coming towards me, full syringe in hand. "WHAT!" my brain is protesting.

"Heh heh, so I'm probably the last guy you want to see, right? Heh heh." He was good humored, which certainly helped to downplay the fact that he had a massive dagger with a snake coiled around it tattooed onto his bulging forearm. "Gotta see the top of a hip."

I hike up my skirt and clean underwear and let out a self-conscious laugh. It must be laundry time. I had on pink lace undies. Bottom of the barrell. It would only be worse if they had unicorns on them. He makes verbal note of a little bruise on my hip. Another self-conscious laugh.

"This is gonna sting, and then it's gonna burn. It's an anabolic sterroid."

"Sweet!" I reply. "Does that mean I can go directly to the gym and get all beefed up?"

"Heh heh. You'd probably need a couple more doses than just this. But you will notice some of the side effects, like jitteriness, rapid heart beat, you know."

He is standing strangely close to me. He has a nice face. Like he would be the pirate who would smuggle you some non-maggot-infested bread if you got captured by Blackbeard and his crew. "Now just follow this up with some over the counter benadryl and you'll be good as new."

I wander back to the front of the hospital and am already starting to feel better. For awhile I marvel that the entire ordeal, from check in to check out, happened in the space of twenty minutes. The last time I was at the hospital was with Ryan when he had the seizure, and on that occasion it was two hours before we saw a doctor, and another two and a half hours before we could leave. Amazing what a little insurance card will do.

Maybe She Not Like Her Life Mang.

She makes me sick, the physical fact of her presence repulses me and this negative spiral that she catalyzes so many times throughout the day has caused me to become quite grizzled indeed. Today I would keep good company with Akaky Akakyevich, I think. Dreams aren't what they used to be. Smile like you mean it. I spent several hours coming up with a list of ways to celebrate this agency's 50th Anniversary, including how much I figured each idea would cost; she spent 5 minutes going through the list and telling me why certain things were a waste of money, and why other things were estimated incorrectly.

Ba'al put crowbars into my life for a reason.

I have to tell you a secret. For the past several days I have been thinking of loading up the car with what I can salvage, selling the rest, and heading out West without a script, without a reason, without a rhyme. And it's not that I've grown sick of Oberlin or the people I know here, but I do feel that I need more shiver in my timbers, more dragons to contend with. I could find it here if I really wanted to, but Olympia grows lovelier in my homesick eye with each passing moment.

I Said God Damn.

So I have once again been marred by the evil that is poison ivy. My pulchritude notwithstanding, I wouldn't mind the ordeal too much if the freaking rash would just stop waking me up in the middle of the night because it itches so horrifically. It's on my arms. My neck. My pectorals. Behind my knees. My thighs. And I don't have a cool looking "tough-guy" scar down my bicep like I did last year. I blame Rugby. If I had walked through it and then spread the rash by scratching/touching other areas of my body, I'd have it on my lower legs, right? It's placed in all of the areas that Rugby likes to mash himself up against me. So, in a word, if anyone needs some glue give me a call.

Oh yeah. Um. Shot out to my friends who I have been crappy at communicating with of late. I haven't been communicating much at all with anyone. Got a lot brewing between these earholes. Boredom is no longer my love. Rage, perversion, madness, whose every impulse and disaster I know-- my burden is set down entire. Let us appraise with clear heads the extent of my innocence.

I missed you severly all weekend, Ahniwa. I hope that all is well in your corner of the globe!

I Am Not Legal Eagle.

That's a joke for Anne. But there's another meaning for this reference to my blue feathered friend; I was watching the Muppet Show the other day, and Legal Eagle had a segment that wasn't the news. He was berating the "rogue element" and "crazy liberals" for protesting to save a wildlife preserve, one that had been slated for construction. He had a list of all of the animals that the protesters were claiming to be protecting, and he started to read them off (in an effort to denegrate the claim. His rationale was, "these animals are worthless!") The fourth animal on the list was, you've probably guessed it by now, the American Bald Eagle. At this point he stares into the camera open-mouthed, and slowly sidles off stage. Nothing matters until it hits home, right?

And now, the reason for this missive. One of the presents I got Ryan for his birthday was volume 1 of Rock Against Bush. Fat Mike of NOFX (I'm in love with him, btw) wrote several eloquent and glorious passages as to why Bush needs to go; one of these editorials is a long list of quantifiable reasons that the guy just shouldn't be prez. I thought I would share them with you, Gentle Reader. After you've read it, call me and we'll have coffee and draw up a blue print for impeachment. Yeah?

1. The national debt under Bush Jr. has increased so drastically that the average american's estimated share of national debt will be an astronomical $24,000 -- compared to $500 when Dubya first took office.

2. Under Bush Jr. there are now 43 million Americans with no health insurance.

3. Responsible for an unemployment rate of 6%. There are now 9 million people out of work in America -- 3.3 million more than when Bush took office. (And don't even mention the under-employed.)

4. He cut healthcare benefits for war veterans.

5. Bush Jr. deserted his unit during Vietnam and was reportedly AWOL for over a year from his assigned unit: the Texas Air National Guard, or as it's referred to by other military outfits, the "champagne division."

6. Despite a 13% unemployment rate among those aged 16-24, Bush Jr. proposed to eliminate youth opportunity grants -- a program that provides job training to the nation's youth. A $225M program in 2002 is now being done away with so Bush can have more money for Iraq.

7. He cut funding for 375,000 low income college students and reduced Pell Grant amounts to such a severe degree that it effectively caused 84,000 students to no longer be eligible for Pell Grants. Pell amounts have been overall reduced for 1.5 million students.. it's safe to say that the Bush daughters aren't eligible for financial aid, so this won't affect the opulent lives of anyone Bush Jr. may know.

8. Withdrew from the International Criminal Court.

9. First President in US History to refuse United Nations Election Inspectors (during the 2002 US elections.)

10. All-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.

11. The Bush Administration had twice as many FBI agents fighting the drug war than fighting terrorism prior to 9/11. Even after 9/11, more than 2,000 FBI agents are wasting their valuable time assigned to the war on drugs.

12. His proposed "Free Trade" Agreements would result in the loss of US jobs to foreign markets and the exploitation of third world workers.

13. John Ashcroft.

14. He has taken 11 official executive actions to undermine reproductive rights.. how long will it be before a woman is stripped of her right to choose?

15. Failed to fulfill pledge to get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive."

16. Wasted federal resources on a PR trip to Baghdad where he staged a Thanksgiving meal at 6 am with troops that were screened based on their political affiliation. And the turkey? It was a prop.

17. His refusal to fire -- or even reprimand -- Lt. General Jerfy "Our god is bigger than their god" Boykin. Perhaps it's because Boykin said of the President, "George Bush was not elected by a majority of voters in the United States. He was appointed by God. He's in the White House because God put him there."

18. After sending troops off to die in an unjust and unprovoked war, he still has yet to attend any soldiers' funerals.

19. His shameless nepotism for the rich and powerful. Elizabeth Cheney (daughter of ol' dick) got hooked up with a cool gig at the state department where she was in charge of the $129 million Middle East partnership initiative and then was moved over to Daddy and Uncle Dubya's campaign payroll.

20. He dropped his dog on its head.

21. Bush Jr. is the first President in US History to enter office with a criminal record.

22. Bush Jr. has set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest a leader (10 million people,) shattering the record for protests against any person in the history of mankind.

23. He slashed funding to the violence against women act.

24. He has invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of one billion dollars per week.

25. He appointed Charles Pickering, a notorious segregationist from Mississippi, as a federal judge and suspiciously did so on Martin Luther King day.

26. Bush has spent over 100 billion on Iraq, leaving states to face the largest budget crises in decades and forced to cut off public services; now with the federal deficit at a new high, Bush Jr. wants to award more tax breaks to the wealthy.

27. Under new Bush legislation (the Clear Skies Initiative,) power plants are allowed to emit triple the amount of highly toxic mercury into the environment.

28. Bush Jr. failed to protect 3 million acres of the Tongass National Forest from logging. The Tongass has the highest concentration of bald eagles on earth and has already lost 700 square miles to logging with 33 more logging permits pending. Not even the sanctity of our endangered national bird can compete with Bush campaign contributions provided by the Forest Industry.

29. He is on pace to have taken more vacation than any President in history, including a 28-day vacation right before 9/11. Bush Jr. has taken 6 months of vacation in total... do you know anyone that gets 6 months of vacation?

30. He pulled out of the Kyoto Protocal on Global Warming, which had been agreed upon by 178 other countries.

31. Bush Jr. is endorsed by fundamentalist Pat Robertson who claims that God told him Bush will win re-election and that "it doesn't make a difference what Bush does because God is blessing him." Bush keeps some great company, but keep in mind Robertson was also the nitwit that blamed the 9/11 attacks on gays and suggested that we "nuke" the US State Department.

32. He set the record for the most executions by any governor in American history. 152 in total; some of whom were mentally disabled.

33. Has repeatedly stonewalled the public investigation into 9/11.

34. Bush Jr. declined to fully fund the AIDs initiative after promising to do so. The final cuts that resulted were over $2 billion.

35. He still suggests that homosexuals are "sinners" and is pushing legislation that would forbid gay paternerships and deny fundamental civil rights on a national and local level. (I'm ashamed to be an Ohioan.)

36. Choked on a pretzel and nearly lost his life while seated in front of a tv.

37. Bush Jr. has gone to great lengths to prevent investigations of his friends at Enron and Halliburton. More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history.

38. Bush Jr. has sent the record for the fewest amount of press conferences by a President since the advent of television.

39. Responsible for a $521 billion deficit-- less than 4 years after inheriting a 200 billion dollar surplus.

40. He has made repeated attempts to legalize oil drilling in the National Wildlife Refuge.

The time for action is long since passed. We are this country. There is a lot we can do.